Liars and Tyrants and People Who Turn Blue (4 page)

Buck and Hubbs roared at that.

CHAPTER 7

POR FAVOR

Follow the enemy and try to prevent the enemy carrying away the guns
.

—Lord Raglan, much to his regret, 25 October 1854

“Do you understand Spanish?” Sergeant Delgado asked Shelby.

“Not a word. But it won't matter—the aura will show just the same. But we'll have to work out some sort of signal system so I can let you know when he's lying.”

The Sergeant thought a moment. “All right, I'm going to take you into the interrogation room with me. Sit at the table with your hands in your lap. When he's lying, put one arm on the table. Got it? Let's go.”

The next half hour was one of the dullest Shelby ever sat through. She followed Sergeant Delgado into the interrogation room and sat down at a long table, at the end away from the Puerto Rican prisoner to whom she was not introduced. All she knew about him was that his name was Martinez and he'd been acting as an armed watchman at a warehouse filled with weapons. For thirty minutes Shelby listened to a rapid-fire exchange of sounds that meant nothing to her. Her hands stayed in her lap.

Sergeant Delgado called a recess. Outside the interrogation room he said, “Not a single lie? Nobody can talk for half an hour without telling
some
lies.”

“This guy can.”

“Maybe your, uh, vision isn't working today?”

“It isn't a vision. And it's working.” Shelby smiled, watching a red-glowing policeman talking on the phone.

Delgado followed her glance and grinned. “Okay, maybe I'm not asking the right questions. Let's try again.”

“First tell me what he's been saying.”

“He says he was just doing a favor for a friend—a favor he was getting paid for. The friend's name is Pedro, last name unknown, address unknown. But Martinez says he's a good friend.” The Sergeant grunted. “Some friend.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Accept his story, since you're sure he's not lying. I'll ask him where he first met Pedro, how often he sees him, that kind of stuff. What I really want to know is whether those weapons were meant to be used here in New York or if that warehouse is just a transit stop.”

“For shipment overseas?”

“It's possible. But Martinez says he doesn't know what the stuff was to be used for, or where.”

The second half hour wasn't much more productive than the first. Martinez began sneaking glances at Shelby, at last beginning to wonder why she was there. Shelby caught him in one lie, about his immigration visa. But all of Sergeant Delgado's other questions got completely truthful answers. The man simply saw no reason to lie.

The door to the interrogation room opened and a woman stepped in. “Luis,” she said, gesturing with her head. Sergeant Delgado followed her out with Shelby trailing close behind, not wanting to stay alone with Martinez.

The woman was introduced as Sergeant Gravitz. “Report's in on the contents of the warehouse,” she said. “A real mishmash. One crate of M-16 automatic rifles, fully functional. Thirty crates of Soviet AK-47 assault rifles. Seventy-five crates of the British GPMG.” The policewoman flipped a page of the report. “That stands for General Purpose Machine Gun.”

“What else?” asked Delgado.

“Sixty-two crates of West German MG 42-59s,” Sergeant Gravitz went on. “Eighty-six crates of Israeli Uzis—”

“What?” Shelby interrupted.

“Uzi.
U, z, i
. A submachine gun with a folding metal stock, says here. Also, four crates of assorted handguns, mostly American.”

Delgado: “Ammo?”

“Lots. But it wouldn't do anybody any good. Get this—except for the one crate of M-16s, none of this stuff will fire. Bunch of junk. No revolution with
these
weapons.”

Sergeant Delgado whistled. “So the M-16s were used to make the sale and the rest is a rip-off.”

“It's not even that clean,” said Sergeant Gravitz. “These M-16s are early models, the kind used before the kinks were ironed out. The report says the first M-16s jammed a lot, and one of the things they did to help correct that was to chrome plate the chamber. These M-16s don't have any chrome plating. So while they're
functional
—that is, they could probably be fired okay in a demonstration—they wouldn't be too dependable in an actual battle. That means there's not one really good weapon in the entire warehouse.”

“Again!” Shelby gasped.

Sergeant Gravitz shot her a questioning look but Delgado was nodding. “Just like Honduras,” he said. “And that little town in Alabama. I wish I knew what the hell was going on.”

“What happens now?” the policewoman asked.

“Now,” said Sergeant Delgado, “I go back in there and convince Señor Martinez that he's going to be dragged before a UN tribunal and charged with high treason unless he helps us find his good friend Pedro.”

CHAPTER 8

THE MULBERRY BUSH AS CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE

The cream-colored program read:

The St. Louis Jaycees present

MARTITA FLEMING

in recital

Tee sighed and slipped the program back into the desk drawer. St. Louis: the last time she'd ever played before a paying audience, a little over two years ago. Two years. It was easy for Shelby to say
Stop being scared
. She didn't know what performing in public was like. It was Naked Time, and there was no way of making Shelby or anyone else who'd never experienced it understand what it was like.

Tee wasn't even Martita Fleming any more. She was Martita Bradley. The first time she'd ever seen Max Bradley had been on television, on the Tony Awards show. Max had accepted the award for best scene design and had showed more poise than the professional performers who'd followed him. Tee had been impressed.

Four
A.M.
Tee hated technical rehearsals; they often kept Max at the theater all night. Lights had to be set and adjusted, music cues tested, scenery changes and projections rehearsed over and over and over until they moved smooth as clockwork. The week before a play opened was always the worst.

The week after opening was only a little bit better. Max said he'd never worked on a play yet that had been ready by opening night. But by the second or third week, Max's obligations to the production would have been fulfilled and Tee would have her husband all to herself for a while. Then it would start all over again.

At last the sound of a key scraping in a lock. Tee quickly unfastened the other five locks from the inside and pulled the door open.

Max's tired face looked pleased. “Hey, hon, you didn't have to wait up.”

Tee laughed. “You always say that. I wanted to. What do
you
want? Food, booze, bath …?”

“You,” he said, reaching for her.

When the alarm went off at ten the next morning Max was still dead to the world. Tee hated to wake him, but he was due at the theater by eleven. Tee pulled on jeans and a sweater that had shrunk when she washed it and steered her puffy-eyed husband toward the shower.

She was just pouring the coffee when Max stumbled in, told her he liked her new sweater, and lowered himself gingerly into a chair. He reached for the coffee and glowered at the boiled egg he'd asked for but didn't really want.

When he was on his second cup of the bitter coffee, Tee brought up the thing that had been bothering her. “Max, Shelby and Eric are having trouble.”

Max didn't look particularly surprised. “It's the lie-detecting business, isn't it? I thought I saw that coming.”

“Eric wants her to give up her police work.”

“She's not going to, is she?”

“No.”

“Good.” Max put down his cup. “She shouldn't have to give it up. But I can see Eric's side of it. It must get to him, sometimes. He can't even tell
kind
lies—‘Nice dress,' that sort of thing. Has to be a strain on him.”

“But that's not it—he never complained about that. It's only when Shelby started working with the police that the trouble began. Shelby's gift—well, it's as if everything was all right so long as other people didn't know about it. As if it were something to be ashamed of.”

“Oh, now—”

“Really, Max. Eric can't stand people talking about it. And if Shelby has to choose between police work and Eric, she's going to choose the police work.”

“Is she that dedicated to law enforcement?”

“She's that dedicated to being what she is. She can't retreat from the whole thing and pretend she's just like everybody else.”

“An admirable philosophy,” Max said pointedly, “and one I wish
both
the Fleming sisters would follow.”

Tee stage-sighed and rolled her eyes.

“Call your agent,” Max urged, more concerned with Tee's problem than with Shelby's. “See if the New Orleans offer is still open.”

“They want me to play Tchaikovsky,” Tee said with distaste.

Max laughed. “Easier than starting off with Mozart or Bach. But I imagine even symphony orchestras are open to negotiation. Call your agent, Tee. It's time you got started again.”

“You sound like Shelby.”

“Don't put it off any longer—take the plunge. Call him. Today.”

“Well …”

“Tee, you
owe
it to me to start performing in public again.”

“I owe it to you?” Tee stared at him, wide-eyed. “Why?”

“Give me time, I'll think of a reason,” Max said.

CHAPTER 9

WHICH BOBBY WATSON DO YOU MEAN?

MRS. SMITH: Poor Bobby
.

MR. SMITH: Which poor Bobby do you mean?

MRS. SMITH: It is his wife that I mean. She is called Bobby too, Bobby Watson. Since they both had the same name, you could never tell one from the other when you saw them together. It was only after his death that you could really tell which was which. And there are still people today who confuse her with the deceased and offer their condolences to him
.

—Eugène Ionesco,
The Bald Soprano

“So I was wrong about Africa,” said Kevin Gilbert.

“Not necessarily,” Sir John Dudley replied. “If those weapons were meant for New York, why were they kept sitting in a warehouse for two weeks until the police arrested Martinez? They would have been moved long before that. I'd say there was a hitch in the transportation arrangements somewhere along the line. This Pedro, whoever he is, could well have been trying to find cargo space aboard an eastbound freighter when the New York police found Martinez instead.”

“What about our check of the waterfront?”

“We have a couple of possible leads—difficult to be certain, when all we have to go on is that our man is Latin and may or may not be calling himself Pedro. It may come to nothing. Pedro won't be showing his face at the waterfront or anywhere else for a while.”

“Who the hell is this guy anyway?” Gilbert said with irritation. “How could he get away with arming terrorists in remote spots in Burma and Honduras and then blow it in East Harlem? He's been damned efficient up to now.”

“Perhaps it's not the same chap. Isn't it possible that ‘Pedro' is just a code name for, well, ‘middleman'? Or more likely, one of several code names. ‘Pedro' would be right at home with Hondurans and expatriate Puerto Ricans. But in Burma? Or southern Alabama? Doesn't seem likely, does it?”

“A code name for ‘middleman'?” Gilbert repeated slowly. “That would imply a very large organization at work.”

“So it would,” Sir John agreed. “Can you really believe that one man is doing all this? Even with a large staff working for him? How could one man know about potential trouble spots in the world, locate the obsolete weapons, make a deal with the terrorists, arrange the shipments, and then walk away as anonymously as he came? Only on your American telly do such rich and powerful villains exist, commanding armies of human robots that carry out every command without question. In reality things are more likely to be decided in committee. Our picture of the anarchist building bombs in his basement is a thing of the past.”

“You're saying conspiracy.”

“I'm saying conspiracy. Can we be sure that the Pedro who showed up in Harlem is the same Pedro we're hunting in Honduras? How many Pedros are there? Here, take a look at this,” Sir John said abruptly, handing Gilbert a manila file folder.

It was a trace report on the defective weaponry. The arms supplied to the Burmese terrorists had been part of a shipment believed to have been captured by the Japanese during World War II. The defective firing pins in the Alabama grenades had been detected by U.S. military personnel in 1943; the grenades were on record as having been destroyed. U. S. Army records also listed the carbines that had surfaced in Honduras as “lost in transit.” The history of the weapons stored in the New York warehouse had not yet been determined.

“Lost in transit!” said Gilbert, appalled. “The Army
loses
a shipment of rifles and doesn't follow up on it?”

“‘Lost in transit' is a military euphemism,” Sir John said. “The rifles were stolen. The Army knew they were worthless and were shipping them back to the manufacturer when hijackers made off with them. Someone in authority simply figured good riddance and closed the file.”

Gilbert grunted.

“The Harlem weapons all date from the time of the Asian wars, and they'll undoubtedly turn out to be mislaid or captured as well,” Sir John went on. “See the beauty of it? No single supplier, no way to trace the buyer. Just little piles of leftover weaponry here and there in the world. Some Oriental village must have been delighted to make a little money on the useless hardware left behind by the retreating Japanese soldiers. The report says the Burma weapons show signs of saline corrosion—which means they'd been sitting somewhere near the sea all these years since the war ended. On one of those little South Pacific islands, perhaps. Or a harbor town on the China Sea.”