Line of Succession (2 page)

The preparation of the watches had been delicate and Alvin had watched with interest. Each watch crystal had to be unscrewed; the tip of the minute hand had to be bent up, and a metal prong soldered to the watchcase so that the minute hand in its circle would touch the prong, completing the electric circuit that would detonate the explosive. The watchcase was screwed to the housing but everything else was imbedded in the soft clay of the gelatine, so that the entire apparatus lay flat and looked a bit like a printed electronic circuit. Flattened neatly across the leaded bottom of each case, the bomb was no more than half an inch thick, but each case carried eighteen ounces of plastic explosive and that was enough.

Above the false bottoms the handbags and briefcases contained a variety of journalists' commonplaces: pencils, pens, spiral notebooks, odds and ends of paper secured with paper clips, small pocket pencil sharpeners, ink jars, pocket combs, cosmetics, keys, cigarettes and cigarette lighters, banded packets of three-by-five index cards. Sturka had selected the items for their shrapnel value. A hurtling paper clip could pierce an eye; a cigarette lighter could kill.

Sturka was fitting sheets of lead foil across the tops of the molded bombs now; he was almost finished. It only remained to fit the false bottoms into the cases.

Cesar stood up, pressed his fists into the small of his back and stretched, bending far back; he windmilled his arms to loosen cramped muscles and came across the room to the window. Glanced at Alvin, glanced at Darleen and Line outside, and peeled back his sleeve to look at his watch. Alvin followed his glance: almost midnight. D Day. Alvin looked around the room and after a moment he said, “Where's Barbara?”

“Gave her an errand to run,” Cesar said very offhandedly.

It bothered Alvin. Sturka and Cesar had gone out three hours ago with Barbara and had returned without her twenty minutes later. Alvin made his voice very low because he didn't want to disturb Sturka. “Shouldn't she be back by now?”

“No. Why?”

“Getting kind of close for time. We don't want our people wandering around on the street where they could get picked up and maybe talk.”

“She won't talk to anybody,” Cesar said, and moved away toward the table.

Alvin looked down at his hands, and turned them over and looked at his palms—as if he had not seen them before. It bothered him that they still didn't trust him enough to tell him things.

MONDAY,

JANUARY 3

2:10
A.M. EST
The Assistant Medical Examiner had just settled gratefully into his chair when the phone rang. “M.E.'s office, Charlton speaking.”

“Ed Ainsworth, Doc.”

“Hello, Lieutenant.” The Assistant M.E. put his feet up on the desk.

“Doc, about that girl they brought in DOA from Northwest. My sergeant seems to have kind of a garbled report on her from your office. Maybe you can straighten it out for me.”

“Garbled?”

“He says you told him somebody'd cut out her tongue with a pair of pliers.”

“That's right. I did.”

“A pair of pliers?”

“The jaws left clear indentations on what's left of her tongue, Lieutenant. Maybe I phrased it badly in the report. I said they'd cut out her tongue. ‘Pulled' would have been more accurate.”

“Good Christ.” After a moment the lieutenant resumed: “You did the autopsy yourself?”

“I regret to say I did.”

“And there's no sign she was sexually molested?”

“None. Of course that's not conclusive, but there's no sign of vaginal irritation, no semen, none of the usual——”

“Okay. Now the cause of death, you've got ‘heart removal' here. Now for Christ's sake what——”

“Read the whole thing, Lieutenant.”

“I have. God help me.”

“Heart removal by probable use of ordinary household tools.”

“Yeah. You mean kitchen knife, that kind of thing?”

“That's a utensil. I said
tools.
I suspect they used a hammer and chisel, although I can't prove it.”

The lieutenant didn't speak for a little while. When he did his voice was very thin. “All right, Doc, then tell me this. If the cause of death was a hammer and chisel against the breastplate how in hell did they get her to hold still for it?”

“I wasn't there, Lieutenant. How should I know? Probably a few of them held her down and one of them did the job on her.”

“And she didn't scream?”

“Maybe she screamed her head off. You know that neighborhood—they mug you on the street in broad daylight, nobody lifts a finger.”

Another pause. Then: “Doc, this has got the stink of some kind of ritual to it. Some hoodoo voodoo thing.”

“Was she Haitian or anything like that?”

“We haven't got a make on her yet. I don't know what she was.”

The Assistant M.E. had her face in his mind. It must have been a pleasant face before. Young—he had put her at twenty-one or -two. The proud Afro haircut, the good long legs. The telephone moved fitfully against his ear. He said, “I admit it's one I haven't come across before.”

“God forbid we ever come across it again. Listen, just for the record, if we come across a bloody pair of pliers can you match them up to measurements or anything?”

“I doubt it. Not unless you find tissues adhering to the pliers. We could set up a circumstantial case on the basis of blood type, I suppose.”

“Yeah. All right. Look, anything else you didn't put in the report? Anything that might give a lead?”

“Up in New York and Chicago they seem to have quite a few mobster killings where they rub out somebody who squealed on them and leave the corpse lying around with a big plaster of tape over the mouth, or they pour a jar of acid in the mouth, that kind of thing. It's a warning to other potential squealers—you know, see what happens to you if you open your mouth to the wrong people.”

“Sicilian justice.”

“Yes. But this girl wasn't Sicilian, that's for sure.”

“Maybe the killer is.”

“Maybe.”

The lieutenant sighed audibly. “With pliers and a hammer and chisel? I don't know.”

“I'd like to help, Lieutenant. I'd love to put it all in your lap for you. But I'm all gone dry.”

“All right. I'm sorry I bugged you, Doc. Good night.”

3:05
A.M.
The make on the dead girl came into the detective squad room on the wire from the FBI fingerprint files and the sergeant ripped it off the machine and took it to the lieutenant's desk in the corner. The lieutenant read halfway into it and went back to the beginning and started again.

“A Federal snoop.”

“From Justice.”

“It's an FSS number. She was Secret Service.” The lieutenant sat back and spent ten seconds grinding his knuckles into his eye sockets. He lowered his hands into his lap and kept his eyes shut. “Cripes. I was starting to get a picture.”

“What picture?”

“I had it worked out. She was a hooker and she rolled some capo from the Mob, not knowing who he was. So the capo sent some of his boys out to take care of her. But this blows it all to hell.”

The sergeant said, “Maybe we'd better call Justice.”

3:40
A.M.
A telephone was ringing, disturbing David Lime's sleep. He listened to it ring. He had never fallen victim to the compulsion to answer every telephone that rang within earshot; anyhow this was not his own bed, not his own bedroom, not his own telephone; but it disturbed his sleep.

He lay on his back and listened to it ring and finally the mattress gave a little heave and a soft buttock banged into his leg. There was a clumsy rattle of receiver against cradle and then Bev said in the dark, “Who the hell is this? … Shit, all right, hold on.” Then she was poking him in the ribs. “David?”

He sat up on his elbow and took the phone from her. “Uh?”

“Mr. Lime? Chad Hill. I'm damned sorry to have to ——”

“The hell time's it?”

“About a quarter to four, sir.”

“A quarter to four,” David Lime said disagreeably. “Is that a fact.”

“Yes, sir. I——”

“You called me to tell me it's a quarter to four.”

“Sir, I wouldn't have called if it wasn't important.”

“How'd you know where to find me?” He knew Hill had something to tell him but first he had to clear the sleep from his head.

“Mr. DeFord gave me the number, sir.”

Bev was getting out of bed, storming into the bathroom. Lime dragged a hand down his jaw. “Bless Mr. DeFord. Bless the little son of a bitch.” The bathroom door closed—not quite a slam. A ribbon of light appeared beneath it.

“Sir, one of our agents has been murdered.”

Lime closed his eyes: a grimace. Not
Smith's dead.
Not
Jones has been killed.
No. “One of our agents has been murdered.” Like a fourteen-year-old imitating Reed Hadley's narration for a Grade B Warner's picture: a mausoleum tone,
One of our aircraft is missing!
From what plastic packaging factory did they obtain these kids?

“All right, Chad. One of our agents is missing. Now——”

“Not missing, sir. Murdered. I'm down here at——”

“What
agent has been murdered?”

“Barbara Norris, sir. The police called the office and I was on night duty. I called Mr. DeFord and he said I'd better get in touch with you.”

“Yes, I imagine he did.” Grandon Pass-the-Buck DeFord. Lime sat up, squeezed his eyes shut and popped them open. “All right. Where are you now and what's happened?”

“I'm at police headquarters, sir. Suppose I put Lieutenant Ainsworth on, he can explain what they've got.”

A new voice came on the line: “Mr. Lime?”

“That's right.”

“Ed Ainsworth. Detective Lieutenant down here. We had a DOA tonight, a young black girl. The FBI identifies her as Barbara Norris and they gave us an FSS service number for her so I called your office. You're in charge of her section, is that right?”

“I'm the Deputy Assistant Director.” He managed to say it with a straight face. “DeFord's the Assistant Director in charge of Protective Intelligence.”

“Uh-huh. Well Mr. DeFord said she was your agent. Do you want the details by phone or would you like to come down and see for yourself? I'm afraid they made a mess of her.”

“Definitely a homicide, then?”

“You could say that. They ripped out her tongue with a pair of pliers and they dug out her heart with a hammer and chisel.”

The door opened and Bev walked naked across the room, sat down in the chair and lit a cigarette and blew smoke at the match. She didn't look at him: she stared at the floor.

Lime said, “Sweet Jesus.”

“Yes, sir. It was pretty God damned vicious.”

“Where did this happen, Lieutenant?”

“An alley off Euclid. Near Fourteenth Street.”

“What time?”

“About six hours ago.”

“What have you got?”

“Next to nothing, I'm afraid. No handbag, no visible evidence except the body itself. No evidence of sexual molestation. We found a junkie searching the body but he claims he found her that way and the evidence supports his story. I've had people combing the neighborhood but you know the way things are in those parts of town—nobody saw anything, nobody heard anything.”

“Any possibility she was killed somewhere else and dumped there?”

“Not likely. Too much blood in the alley.”

Bev stood up and padded to the bed. She handed him a freshly lighted cigarette and an ashtray and went back to her chair. Lime dragged suicidally on the cigarette. Choked, coughed, recovered, and said, “Do you need me down there to identify her? I seem to recall she had no next of kin.”

“Mr. Hill here gave us a positive identification on her. It won't be necessary. But if you can give us a lead—if I knew what she'd been working on.…”

Lime ducked it: “She was on a security case—I can't give it to you. But if we come across evidence that might help in a criminal prosecution we'll pass it on to you.”

“Sure, that's okay.” A voice of resignation: the lieutenant had known the answer before he'd asked the question. But you had to go through the motions. Everybody has to go through the motions, Lime thought.

“Tell Chad Hill I'll be in the office as soon as I get dressed.”

“I will. Goodbye, sir.”

Lime rolled over on his side to cradle the phone. Light in the room was weak, splashing in through the open door of the bathroom. He thought about the dead girl and tried to remember her alive; he smashed out the cigarette and climbed off the bed.

Bev said, “I don't know about the other guy. But your end of that conversation was right out of a rerun of
Dragnet.
”

“Somebody got killed.”

“I gathered.” Her soft contralto was deepened by the hour and the cigarette. “Anyone I know? Knew?”

“No.”

“Now you're being strong and silent.”

“Just silent,” he said, and climbed into his drawers. He sat down to pull on his socks.

She got back into bed and pulled the sheet and blanket up over her. “It's funny. No two men get dressed in the same order. My ex used to start from the top down. Undershirt, shirt, tie,
then
his shorts and pants and socks and shoes. And I knew a guy who refused to buy tight slacks because he always put his shoes on first and couldn't get them through leg-huggers.”

“Is that right.” He went into the bathroom and washed his face with cold water. Used her toothbrush and glanced at the lady-electric shaver on the shelf, but decided against it; he had a shaver in the office. In the mirror there were bags pendant under his eyes.
I can't possibly be as old as I look.
He looked like a big sleepy blond Wisconsin Swede gone over the hill and a little seedy. A little bit of office paunch, a fishbelly whiteness about the upper chest and arms. He needed a couple of weeks on a beach in the Virgin Islands.