Sight Unseen (17 page)

“Oh Bill! This is exciting!”

He agreed, and they embraced again, and Lockwood thought he had never hugged another person as hard as he now hugged Myra.
He felt such a solidity and rightness to this moment that he never wanted it to end.

Still, like all moments, it passed. They told each other of the agonies each had gone through all night and laughed over them.
They promised all over again never to allow misunderstandings to come between them.

Shortly afterward they were pulling at each other’s clothes, and before long their eager fingers explored the other’s smooth
flanks. Feeling Myra’s strength within her feminine clothes moved Lockwood to a height of delightful frenzy. Never had he
had a woman like this, and he wasn’t ever going to let her go. Every hour with her drove home the point with more force. Myra
was a strong creature with the power both to be gentle and to protect herself, and nowhere was Lockwood more certain of the
attractiveness of her than in their fierce and gentle love-making.

They were sprawled, half on, half off, the living room sofa. Myra laughed coyly. “Enough here. Carry me in the bedroom again.”

From her waist he removed the last bit of lace and kissed her stomach and breasts, which drove a shiver of delight through
him. She giggled and circled her arms around his neck and held on tightly.

He carried her into the bedroom and placed her in the center of the bed.

“You look delicious,” he said.

She stretched out, showing herself off unabashedly, and said, “I’m all yours.”

“Lockwood! There you are. What are you so chipper about?” Manners asked.

Lockwood had just entered the conference room at the downtown FBI headquarters. Manners looked beat, as if he had not been
to bed all night, and Lockwood felt some guilt at playing while the T-man worked the night through.

“What have you got?” Lockwood asked.

“Humph! What did you get?” Manners asked. He looked annoyed. “You look like a bantam rooster after a night in the henhouse.”

Lockwood gave him a huge grin. “Shows, huh?”

“All over. Maybe that was you with Barbara Wilson last night?”

“Those microphones worked?”

To Manners’ left sat a stack of files about a foot high. He gestured vaguely in their direction. “Transcripts of a busy lady.
Can’t identify all her male visitors, but Miss Wilson doesn’t seem to have any business except selling her favors.”

“Wasn’t me. Not my type. Anything in there on Josef Dzeloski?”

“He’s been back twice to see her, but he just seems to be a lonely guy.”

“It proves nothing. He could still be in this up to his ears.”

“How do you see this business, Lockwood?”

Lockwood shrugged. “I see a different angle than you, being in the insurance business.”

“And?”

“Say a guy like Dzeloski knows this contraption is going to fail the tests at Lakehurst. If it does, no money from the United
States Treasury. So, he arranges a theft. Maybe this thing is at the bottom of the Sound. Better to sell the device to the
insurance company than to fail to sell it to the Air Corps.”

Manners nodded in a speculative way. “Okay. Possibly. What about the others?”

“Well, could be somebody at the plant has sympathies for the old country. You remember how it was in the war.”

“Oh yeah. Don’t.I.”

“So, Greer, the guards, the engineers—hell, how do I know? Even Heatherton.”

“I told you he is a double agent—
our
double agent.” Manners looked around nervously. “Don’t even like to mention his name.”

A knock at the door, and one of the hard-faced young men Lockwood had seen out at Northstar the first day entered with a handful
of papers.

“You know Greg Peters, don’t you, Bill?”

They shook hands. Peters looked about awkwardly as if he didn’t know what to say, but then Manners said, “You got to piss
or something, Greg? Stop hopping about.”

“I’ve got a new report, sir. Could I see you alone?”

“On the L.B.s?” Manners asked.

Peters shot a sharp glance at Lockwood.

“Yes, sir.”

Manners sighed. “I guess we can trust Mr. Lockwood here. Spell it out for me, Greg.”

Despite his attempt to be coolly professional, Peters’ enthusiasm shot out. “We’ve got him, Chief!” The young man smiled triumphantly
and spread out a report in front of Manners. Lockwood peered over their shoulders.

“Louis Braunschweiger,” Manners said. “West 86th Street. What makes him fit the bill?”

Peters drew himself up. “The super saw him bring in a crated refrigerator two days ago. Took four men to get it in. He heard
Braunschweiger tell them it was radio parts—fragile. Braunschweiger didn’t want to, but he had to get the super’s help. The
super says it weighed a ton.”

“Nobody else fits?”

“No sir. We’ve covered 90 percent of the names on this list.”

“Does Braunschweiger know he’s been found?”

“We don’t think so.”

“Who talked to the super?”

“Higgens and Trapp.”

“Higgens knows what he’s doing.”

“Yes sir. Higgens phoned this in not ten minutes ago, and he’s got the super out of the building so there won’t be any chance
of his giving away that we’re on to Braunschweiger.”

Manners looked at Lockwood and smiled in a satisfied way. “Jesus, it helps to have good men.”

“Shouldn’t we get right over?” Lockwood asked.

“I’ve sent ten guys already,” Greg said. He stopped what he saw coming from Manners. “With instructions to do nothing till
you got there.”

Manners smiled and nodded at Greg and then said to Lockwood. “See? It’s terrific to have good men.”

Greg flushed slightly and murmured a thank you.

“Who do we know on the New York police force?” Manners asked.

The names Greg came up with didn’t hit Lockwood as people who would do them much good with the department.

“Let me call Jimbo Brannigan,” Lockwood said. “I think I can get cooperation out of him.”

He felt the momentum of the chase now, and his own excitement mounted. It took him the best part of ten minutes to track down
Brannigan—he was in a tenement basement on the Lower East Side at the site of a gangster’s murder—but only two minutes for
Lockwood to get his full cooperation.

“Meet you at the corner of 86th and Broadway,” Brannigan said.

“Okay, but no sirens,” Lockwood cautioned. “Be sure—absolutely sure—all your patrol cars are silent.”

“You got it. See you in—fifteen minutes.”

“Right.” Lockwood hung up.

Greg said, “I’ve got a car and driver out front.”

“Let’s go,” Manners said, rising. “Have you got your gun, Greg?”

The younger agent flashed his shoulder holster and Lockwood reached under his coat for his .38. He drew it and checked it.
Five shells. The gun felt lumpy and heavy in his palm, and he shivered. There was something pointless and stupid about situations
where he or the other guy might wind up killing or being killed, and yet several times a year the .38 Special became the most
important part of his job.

Lockwood sighed and said to the others, “My valise is in my car. I’ve only got five shells.”

“What’s that?” Greg asked.

“.38 Special.”

“We got plenty. Let’s not stop.”

And they didn’t. They rushed down the stairs and into the waiting car, and the driver raced every car on Eighth Avenue up
to 86th Street.

“What about the FBI?” Lockwood asked as they passed 34th Street. “Didn’t we agree to let them know what we found?”

“I left the special agent in charge a note,” Manners said.

“But he might not see it for an hour or so,” Lockwood said.

Manners grinned wickedly. “Aw, Jesus, Hook, you know you’re right!” He made a gesture of mock despair. “That’s too bad. I
guess we’ll just have to make the collar without him.”

Lockwood grinned wryly and shook his head at Manners. He didn’t like this way of returning the FBI man’s favor.

Manners’ driver pulled right into the nest of black and white police cars.

“Hey, move it along, mister,” a young cop said as he came up to the T-man’s car.

The driver flashed a gold badge, and the young cop became obsequious.

Lockwood hopped out of the back seat. “Where’s Brannigan?”

A voice boomed behind Lockwood, “I am peeved, to say the least, to find that you aren’t swifter to get to the scene of the
hideout.”

Lockwood turned and there stood his old friend, Lt. Jimbo Brannigan of the Midtown Precinct. What he saw was an Irish cop’s
Irish cop, the huge man who was a legend throughout New York City, described in editorials as either a maniac or the best
cop the town ever had, depending on who wrote the story and what stunt Brannigan had just pulled. Typical was the time Brannigan
caught Legs Diamond coming out of the Stork Club with two of his armed goons. Legs Diamond didn’t belong on Brannigan’s beat—this
was back when he had a beat, before he was a lieutenant of detectives —so Brannigan showed him the error of his ways by shoving
him headfirst into a garbage can while his two goons waved their heaters around and protested that nobody did such things
to their boss. Jimbo Brannigan regularly practiced such police work on goons’ bosses, and regularly got away with it.

“I didn’t have the advantage of a police driver,” Lockwood said and stuck out his hand.

The big detective in the suit that looked short by a yard of cloth took Lockwood’s hand in both his and squeezed. “Whatcha
think’s the best way to smoke this rat out, Hook?”

Manners and Peters came up and Lockwood made introductions all around.

“I want to make the collar,” Manners said.

Brannigan looked at Lockwood, and Lockwood nodded. “It’s fine with me, if Hook here says it’s your guy.”

“Do we know which house the guy is in?” Manners asked Peters.

Peters turned and waved to another young man who looked to be Greg’s twin. “Higgens will know.”

Higgens came up. “Hi, Chief.”

More introductions. “Okay, what’s the story, Higgens?” Manners asked.

“Braunschweiger’s in a ground-floor apartment,” Higgens said. Lockwood saw an intense look in the young agent’s eyes, the
thrill of being in on the kill of something important. “One of my men dressed up as the mailman and made the mailman’s delivery
for him. Braunschweiger came out in the hallway to get his mail.”

“What about the crate?” Lockwood asked.

“What crate?” Brannigan asked.

“What this is all about, Jimbo,” Lockwood explained. “This guy’s got a crate he stole from the U.S. Government. Military secrets.”

Brannigan cracked his knuckles as he pursed his lips and nodded.

“Naturally my guy looked, but the door to the apartment was only opened a snatch, and he didn’t see anything, just furniture
and stuff.”

“Anybody else around?” Manners asked.

“We haven’t seen anybody else.”

“They got guns?” Brannigan asked.

Manners smiled and nodded. “I’m very surprised when snakes don’t have fangs. Expect the worst.”

“You know he’s still in there, right?” Lockwood asked Higgens.

“Yes, sir. I put a couple of guys out front.”

“What!” exclaimed Lockwood. “Where he can see them!”

“They took their ties and jackets off, sir. Mussed up their hair. They look like idlers.”

Lockwood wasn’t convinced, but the damage was done.

“And in back?” Manners asked.

“Three guys,” Higgens replied in a confident way. “And one on an open telephone in an apartment across the way back there
in touch with us through the radio cars.”

“Sounds good,” Manners said, and he briefly placed a hand of acknowledgment on Higgens’ shoulder.

“What about the roof?” Brannigan asked.

“The roof?” Higgens asked, sounding somewhat shaken by Brannigan’s gruff tone.

“The roof. This rat could leave the apartment and mount the stairs to the roof and across and down another stair and vamoose.”

“But I didn’t want anybody going into the building because he might see them. A neighbor might say something about the strange
guys going up to the roof.”

Brannigan made a disgusted look at Lockwood. “Send boys out to do a man’s job. Tell them what to do, Hook.”

“I’ll go with them,” Lockwood said. “Give me two guys, Manners. Guys that are in good shape physically. We’ll go in one of
the buildings that’s connected to this one and up the stairs and cross over. Show us which building.”

“You guys come down the stairs, Hook,” Brannigan said. “We’ll come in the front way, and if he tries the roof, he’ll run right
into your arms.”

When Lockwood and Tom and Drew, the two T-men Manners gave him, came out of the hatch door onto the tar roof, New York spread
out around them through a gray haze. The morning air still felt chilly, and Lockwood shivered a bit to throw it off. Lockwood
drew his gun, and the two younger men did the same. They both struggled to put on a calloused air, but their eagerness and
excitement spilled over their faces.

“Tom, you come with me,” Lockwood said. “Drew, you stay up here and just watch the hatchway in case he gets by us. You’ll
stop him up here.”

“Yes, sir.”

They crossed the parapets of three roofs until they were standing on the roof they were pretty sure was Braunschweiger’s building.
Lockwood moved to the front edge of the roof and looked down into 86th Street. Up the block he saw Brannigan’s big frame in
a knot of people he figured were Manners and the other officers. He waved, and Brannigan waved back. Brannigan made an up
and down gesture with his arms, which Lockwood took to mean that he was in the right building. He signaled back that he was
going down the stairs. Brannigan made the gesture prize fighters do when they’ve won a fight, clenched hands over his head.

“Over there, Drew,” Lockwood said. “Behind that chimney. Should he come up here, he’ll be ready to shoot. Stay down.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let’s go, Tom.”

The other agent now looked as tense and jumpy as an unwilling puppy on a leash. Lockwood wondered if in all the excitement,
he was going to get shot in the back by this young agent.