Running Dog (3 page)

“And it moves,” Moll said.

Lightborne sat back and crossed his legs, holding the cup and saucer to his belly.

“So,” he said, “a small-time dealer in erotic knickknacks, some good quality, some not so good, and here I am with a chance to act as go-between in some monumental pornography caper. I begin to send out feelers, veiled hints, to this part of the country, that part, to this fellow in Dallas, that fellow in Stockholm. As things begin to happen, as the market heats up, my man suddenly disappears. I have no idea how to reach him. He always insisted he would contact me. So I call people, I make inquiries, I hang around our usual meeting place. Finally I hear from the same man who put us in touch at the outset. X is dead, he tells me. Not only dead—murdered. Not only murdered—done away with under strange, very odd circumstances.”

“How odd?” Moll said.

“He was wearing women’s clothes.”

Selvy looked at Moll Robbins, at the same time motioning for Lightborne to pause.

“What’s in that case you’ve got?”

“Nikon F2,” she said.

“It stays inside, okay?”

“I don’t know, you’ve got a fairly nice profile, Mr. Selvy. Might look good somewhere near the tail end of a story, just to break up lines of print.”

“It stays or you go.”

“And a Sony cassette recorder,” she said.

“Take it out, please. I’d like to see it.”

“Mr. Lightborne, this is your residence. You invited me to come here. You placed no restrictions.”

Selvy picked the leather case off the floor, opened it, took out the tape recorder, turned it over, removed the battery case, opened it, took out the four small batteries and set them on the nearest table.

“Quite a routine,” she said. “You must be handy around the house.”

“No words, no pictures.”

“It wasn’t necessary, you know. I’m not about to tape your insipid voice if you don’t want it taped.”

Lightborne reacted to all this by taking his cup and saucer to the sink and washing them out. Returning, he pushed the box of crackers toward Moll. This time she took one, halving it neatly before taking a bite.

“After this depressing turns of events,” Lightborne said, “the whole matter dried up and total silence prevailed. But I wanted to give you a little background, Glen, because just yesterday the smallest whisper reached my ear. If things get interesting again, I think your employer ought to be informed.”

“Sure, absolutely.”

“As for you, Miss Robbins, you’ll have to forgive a garrulous old man.”

“It’s been interesting, really.”

“Who do you work for?” Selvy said.

“
Running Dog
” she said.

He paused briefly.

“One-time organ of discontent.”

“We were fairly radical, yes.”

“Now safely established in the mainstream.”

“I wouldn’t say safely.”

“Part of the ever-expanding middle.”

“We say ‘fuck’ all the time.”

“My point exactly.”

“Was that your point exactly? I didn’t realize that was your point exactly. I didn’t know you had a point exactly.”

Selvy got to his feet, saying goodnight to Lightborne and then bowing toward Moll Robbins, clicking his heels together as he did so. She followed as far as the gallery area in order to pluck her sweater from the rigid appendage where she’d left it earlier, returning then to thank Lightborne for his time. He watched her replace the batteries in the tape recorder.

“I was wondering,” she said.

“Yes?”

“Is he always in that much of a hurry? Could be a plane he’s got to catch. Or commuter train maybe.”

“Glen’s not the type to hang around and make small talk.”

“Of course if I found out who he buys for, and if it’s someone interesting and important, and if I use this information in one of the pieces I’m doing, it wouldn’t do
you
any good, would it?”

“Wouldn’t do me much harm either,” Lightborne said. “The collector Glen represents hasn’t shown much interest in the stuff I’ve been coming up with. According to Glen, he may be on the verge of dropping me completely.”

They walked out into the gallery and Lightborne went around turning off lights. He looked at Moll from a distance of thirty-five feet or so.

“You mentioned trains and planes.”

“Just wondering aloud,” she said.

“If you were heading Glen’s way, and this is only speculation, you’d probably choose to fly. Although if you didn’t like flying, you’d be able to take a train.”

“I don’t mind short flights. Anything over an hour, I get a little restless.”

“I think you’d be all right.”

“Trains are fun. I like trains.”

“Three and a half hours on a train can be a little tiring.”

“You could be right.”

“Although Penn Station. If the old structure still stood.
That would make it worthwhile. Just walking in the place. A gorgeous piece of architecture.”

“I was also wondering,” she said.

“What else?”

“What would I need in the way of clothes?”

“It might be slightly warmer.”

“Slightly warmer, you say.”

The last light went out and Moll stood in shadow in the open doorway, unable to see Lightborne at all.

“I’m only speculating, understand.”

“You’re not a meteorologist,” she said.

“I only know what God wants me to know.”

When she was gone, Lightborne locked the door and went back into the living area, where he took off his jacket, his string tie and his shirt. He went to the wash basin, took his razor out of the cabinet and then removed the top on an aerosol can of Gillette Foamy, noting a bit of rust on the inner rim. He had an appointment first thing in the morning and thought he’d save time by shaving now.

Moll Robbins hailed a cab on Houston Street and twenty-five minutes later was on the phone in her West Seventies apartment, talking to Grace Delaney, her managing editor.

“Do we still have a Washington office?”

“It’s called Jerry Burke.”

“What’s the number?”

She put down the phone and dialed again.

“Jerry Burke?”

“Who’s this?”

“I understand you have terrific access to the corridors of power.”

“What time is it?”

“This is Moll Robbins in New York, Jerry. We haven’t met, I don’t think, but maybe you can help me.”

“You do movie reviews.”

“From time to time, yes, but this is a different sort of thing completely. I’d like you to help me track someone down.”

“You were full of shit about the new
King Kong
.”

“I don’t doubt it, Jerry, but listen I’m looking for a man named Glen Selvy, white, early thirties, six feet one, possibly in government down there. There must be some kind of giant directory of government drones that this man’s name is listed in. If you could look into it or ask around or whatever, I’d be forever in your debt, within reason.”

“Six foot one?”

“I thought it might be important.”

“What do I need his height for?”

“Detective work,” she said. “All the particulars.”

Glen Selvy drove from the airport to a four-story apartment building in a predominantly black area near the Navy Yard. He’d been living here for several months but the place looked recently occupied. It was severely underfurnished. A number of unpacked cartons were arrayed near the bed. There was a floor lamp with the cord still tied in a neat bundle at its base.

This quality of transience appealed to Selvy. It had the advantage of reducing one’s accountability, somehow. If you were always ten minutes from departure, you couldn’t be expected to answer to the same moderating precepts other people followed.

He took off his suit coat, revealing a small belt holster that contained a lightweight Colt Cobra, .38 caliber. The Smith & Wesson .41 magnum, with six-inch barrel and custom grips, he kept wedged in a carton near the bed.

Late the next day Moll got a call from Jerry Burke.

“I’ve been through a number of registers. No results at all.
Then I remembered the Plum Book.
Policy and Supporting Positions
. Many, many government jobs. Descriptions. Names of incumbents.”

“Excellent,” she said.

“Your man isn’t listed there.”

“Damn.”

“But I came across an appendix in a Senate bulletin and there’s something called Congressional Quota Transferrals and it’s chock full of names and next to each name there’s an alphabetic code that refers you to page something-something. Anyway on this one little list I found a Howard Glen Selvy. According to his code letters he’s on the staff of Senator Lloyd Percival.”

“Jerry, that’s terrific.”

“He’s a kind of second-level administrative aide.”

“Isn’t Percival in the news these days?”

“It’s been going on for a while, really, but in closed committee sessions. He’s investigating something called PAC/ORD. It’s ostensibly a coordinating arm of the whole U.S. intelligence apparatus, strictly an above-board clerical and budgetary operation. Whatever Percival’s digging for, it hasn’t been leaked.”

“Secret hearings.”

“Every day,” he said.

“What do the letters stand for?”

“What letters?”

“PAC/ORD,” she said.

“Not many people in Washington could answer a question like that.”

“Not many people in the whole world, I bet.”

“Personnel Advisory Committee, Office of Records and Disbursements.”

“Has to be evil, with a name like that.”

“Or why else would Percival be involved?”

“He’s a righteous type, is he?”

“Never mind that,” Burke said. “What I’d like to know is why you’re interested in this guy Selvy.”

“It’s just he’s so cute,” she said.

Glen Selvy in a three-piece suit walked slowly around the quarter-mile cinder track. There were birds everywhere, wheeling overhead, hopping mechanically in the grass.

Fifty yards away a black limousine turned into the quiet street that skirted the athletic field. Selvy headed over there, watching the back door swing open, his mind suddenly wandering to a nondescript room, a bed with a naked woman straddling a pillow, no one he knew, and then sex, her body and his, relentless crude obliterating sex, bang bang bang bang.

Lomax had a penchant for rented limousines. This was fine with Selvy, whose own car was a cramped Toyota. It was safe to assume the chauffeur didn’t come with the car; he’d be someone Lomax knew. Maybe the thinking was that inconspcuiousness no longer amounted to much. Or that in a town like Washington a limousine was not readily noticeable. Maybe it was Lomax himself. A personal style. A departure from established forms.

Lomax was pudgy, his hair mod-cut, graying a bit at the temples. He liked to pat and smooth and lightly stroke his hair, although it was never mussed. He was dressed for golf today, Selvy noticed. A set of clubs leaned against the far door.

“I learned something yesterday,” Selvy said. “Lightborne knew Christoph Ludecke. Before Ludecke was killed, he and Lightborne had several meetings.”

“In what connection?”

“Ludecke claimed to have access to some movie that apparently the whole smut-industry power structure would love
to get the rights to. So Lightborne was all set to act as agent for the sale.”

“Help from an unexpected quarter,” Lomax said.

“Sure, Lightborne. Who figured Lightborne would link up to any of this? It explains the whole thing.”

“Does it?”

“The Senator’s connection to Christoph Ludecke. Now we know. One way or another he knew Ludecke had this footage. One way or another his phone number, or one of his phone numbers, his least traceable phone number, which we nevertheless traced, ended up in Ludecke’s little book. That’s the absolute central fact, the core of his involvement. Percival wanted the movie for his collection.”

“Does he do movies?”

“This would be the first.”

“What’s so special about it?” Lomax said.

“It’s a genuine Nazi sex revel.”

“Wonderful.”

“Supposedly shot in the bunker where Hitler spent his last days.”

“Grand,” Lomax said. “Simply grand.”

Off the road a creek meandered east into the distance. In a park a group of young Orientals practiced the stylized movements of
t’ai chi
, a set of exercises that seemed to some degree martial in nature. The tempo was unchanging and fluid, and although there were eight of them involved it was hard to detect an individual dissonance in their routine. Almost in slow motion each man thrust one arm out while moving the other back, this second arm bent at the elbow, both hands extended, fingers together, as though the arms were hinged weapons and the hands not terminal attachments but rather the pointed ends of these weapons. Moves and countermoves. Front leg bending, rear leg stretching. Active, passive. Thrust and drag. A breeze came up, the lighter branches on the trees rising slightly as their leaves tossed in the agitated air. Eight bodies slowly moving in a revolving lotus kick. The creek
reappeared at the end of a stretch of elms, swifter here, running in the sun.

“We’ve got more than enough leverage to use against the Senator.”

“I don’t make policy,” Lomax said.