Len Deighton - Twinkle Twinkle Little Spy

‘It’s official,’ I said.

‘ID, feller,’ he said and poked a finger at my chest.

‘He’s all right, Sammy.’ We both turned. The other mortuary attendant had come in by the centre door. ‘I talked to Charlie Kelly about him. Charlie says OK.’

‘I don’t like guys creeping around here without my permission,’ said the pugnacious little man. Still murmuring abuse, he studied his clip-board and wandered back upstairs with that twitchy walk one sees in punchy old prize-fighters.

‘Sorry about that,’ said the first attendant. ‘I should have told Sammy that you were here.’

‘I thought he was going to put me on a slab,’ I said.

‘Sammy’s all right,’ he said. He looked at me before deciding that I should have a fuller explanation. ‘Sammy and me were cops … we joined the force together, we were both wounded in a gun battle near Delancey, way back in the ’sixties. Neither of us was fit enough to go back into the force. He’s a good guy.’

‘You could have fooled me,’ I said.

‘Saw his fifteen-year-old kid brought in here one day – hit by a truck coming out of school – that happens to you once and you remember. You start getting dizzy every time you unzip a body bag.’ He turned away. ‘Anyway, it was all OK for you, was it? I hear you were right in the middle when the shells started flying.’

‘I was lucky,’ I said.

‘And the third guy took off in a black Merc.’ He was reading it all on the report. ‘You get the plate number?’

‘FC,’ I said. ‘They tell me that’s a Fulton County registration.’

‘Well, at least you didn’t get suckered by the Fulton County plate.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, any cop who’s been in the force a few years will tell you the way those people from Fulton County used to come into the city and double-park all over Manhattan. And no cop would ever give them a ticket. Jesus, the number of times I saw cars … would you believe treble-parked on Madison, jamming the traffic … and I just walked on and forgot about it.’

‘I don’t get it.’

‘Well you wouldn’t, being from out of town, but a Fulton County plate is FC and then three numerals. Not many cops noticed any difference between that and three numbers followed by FC … I mean, a cop’s got a lot on his mind, without getting into that kind of pizzazz.’

‘And what is it about a car with a registration plate that has three numbers followed by FC? What is it that makes it OK for him to treble-park on Madison Avenue?’

The mortuary attendant looked at me sorrowfully. ‘Yeah, well you’ve never been a patrolman, have you. Three digits FC, means a car belonging to a foreign consul … that’s an official car with diplomatic immunity to arrest, and I mean including parking tickets. And that’s what all those smart-ass drivers from Fulton County were betting on.’

‘Got you,’ I said.

He didn’t hear me; he was staring into the ’sixties and watching one of those nice kids we all used to be. ‘Midnight to eight,’ he said. ‘I liked that shift – no dependants, so what’s the difference – and you make more money, overtime and payments for time in court. But it was a rough shift for a cop in those days.’

‘In those days?’ I said.

‘This was an all-night city back in the early ’sixties – bars open right up to the legal 4 a.m … all-night groceries, all-night dancing, all-night you-name-it. But the city got rougher and rougher, so people stayed home and watched TV … You go out there now, and the streets are dark and empty.’ He picked up a piece of cloth and wiped his hands. His hands looked very clean but he wiped them anyway. ‘Streets are so empty that a perpetrator can take his time: no witnesses, no calls to the cops, no nothing. Midnight to eight used to be a tough shift for a cop …’ He gave a humourless little laugh. ‘Now it’s a tough shift here at the morgue.’ He threw the rag aside. ‘You should see some of them when we get them here … kids and old ladies too … ahh! So you’re from out of town, eh?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Three thousand miles out of town.’

‘You got it made,’ he said.

Outside the night was cold. The sky was mauve and the world slightly tilted. Around the access points for the city’s steam supply the crust of snow had melted so that the roadway shone in the moonlight, and from the manhole covers steam drifted as far as the cross-street, before the wind whipped it away. A police car siren called somewhere on the far side of the city. It was a pitiful sound, like the repeated cries of a thrashed animal crawling away to die.

The Washington Square house is ‘twinned’ in the CIA style – divided vertically – so that the back of the house, shuttered against telescopes and double-glazed against focusing microphones, is all offices, while the front half provides apartments for the staff, and so presents all the outward appearance of domesticity.

I lived on the second floor. Bekuv lived above me. Bekuv’s appearance had changed during those few days in New York City. His hair had been cut by some fancy barber, and he’d had enough sleep to put some colour back into his cheeks. His clothes were transformed too: tailored trousers, a blue lambswool shirt and bright canvas shoes. He was sitting on the floor, surrounded by loudspeakers, records, amplifier components, extra tweeters, a turntable, a soldering iron and hi-fi magazines. Bekuv looked despondent.

‘Andrei was screwed,’ Mann told me as I went in. I found it hard to believe that Mann was sorry about it.

‘In what way?’

‘Coffee on the warmer,’ said Bekuv.

I poured myself a cup and took a blini.

‘All this damned hi-fi junk,’ said Mann.

Bekuv applied the pick-up to one of his records and suddenly the whole room was filled with music.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Mann shouted angrily.

Delicately Bekuv lifted the pick-up and the music ceased. ‘Shostakovich,’ he said to anyone who was seeking that information.

Mann said, ‘Andrei spent nearly two thousand dollars on all this stuff, and now he’s been reading the discount-house adverts.’

‘I could have got it for five hundred dollars less,’ Bekuv told me. I noticed that several of the hi-fi magazines were marked with red pentel, and there were little sums scribbled on the back of an envelope.

‘Well, perhaps we can do something about that,’ I said vaguely, while I drank my coffee and thought about something else.

‘Andrei is not going downtown,’ said Mann, ‘and that’s that.’ I realized they had been arguing about whether Bekuv was allowed to go out on the street again.

‘Now this loudspeaker is buzzing,’ said Bekuv.

‘Listen, dummy,’ Mann told him, bending forward from his chair, so that he could speak close to Bekuv’s ear. ‘There are citizens out there waiting to ice you. Didn’t you hear what I told you about the shooting last night? We spent the small hours downtown in the city morgue – I don’t recommend it, not even for a stiff.’

‘I’m not frightened,’ said Bekuv. He put the pick-up arm back on the record. There was a loud hissing before he reduced the volume a little. It was still very loud. Mann leaned forward and lifted the pick-up off the record. ‘I don’t give a good goddamn whether you are frightened or not frightened,’ he said. ‘In fact I don’t give a damn whether you are alive or dead, but I’m going to make sure it happens after you are moved out of here, and I’ve got a receipt for you.’

‘Is that going to happen?’ asked Bekuv. He began looking through his loose-leaf notebook.

‘It might,’ said Mann.

‘I can’t go anywhere for the time being,’ said Bekuv. ‘I have work to do.’