Sight Unseen (22 page)

The men under the crate moved it forward and slowly passed it to the two men in the truck, who had only enough strength to
pull it along into the rear. They slammed the doors shut.

From a distance they heard a clatter and looked up to see a dozen Brown Shirts running down the sidewalk to them.

“We’ll take care of them,” Benny said to Lockwood and Manners. “You guys get the hell out of there.”

“Thanks, Benny,” Lockwood said.

“Nice job!” Manners said.

Benny reached under his jacket and drew out a pistol and waved it in their general direction.

“I told you,” he said. “Get the hell out of here. Now.”

Lockwood grinned at him and clapped Benny on the back. Benny gave him a sour grin and held up the hand with the cigar in a
gesture of victory.

“See you at Nathan’s, Hook,” Benny said.

“See you at Nathan’s.” Lockwood answered.

A minute later Manners and Lockwood were barreling down Ninth Avenue at fifty miles an hour.

All the way out to Patchogue Lockwood and Manners kept their guns on their laps. The driver, an Italian named Sally who Lockwood
knew only vaguely, kept the Chesterfield truck moving through the spring night. Small towns came and went. At every red light
Lockwood and Manners peered around, certain that a horde of Brown Shirts was about to jump the truck, but the ride out was
uneventful.

As they pulled up to the gate at Northstar, Lockwood said, “I didn’t see Tibbett at the rally.”

“No,” said Manners. “So what?”

“So, I got an appointment with him.” Lockwood felt tension rise within him. The ridges of the pistol handle felt hard and
bony to his hand. He felt an urge to threaten Manners with it, but that would cause too much trouble. Better to win him over.

“What do you mean, an appointment?” Manners asked. He held up his badge to the sentry, and the truck pulled through the gate.

“I mean he and I got a date together, Manners. Whether he knows it or not.”

“Hook—I mean Bill—let me send some of my guys over there,” Manners said.

Lockwood didn’t answer except to lean forward and put his gun into the holster in the small of his back. He had a score to
settle with Tibbett, and if he had to walk over there, he was going.

“Besides,” Manners went on, “he’s probably already heard we broke up the rally and has skipped town.”

“Will you lend me a car?” Lockwood asked him.

“Where’s yours?”

“Back in the city.”

Manners shook his head. “No. If you want, you can go with a couple of my guys over there.”

“I’m going to see him by myself, Manners.”

“Let’s make it Guy and Bill,” Manners said.

“Let’s rustle me up something to drive,” Lockwood answered.

Manners grinned. “You need to borrow a jeep to run into town to eat, right?”

It took Lockwood a few seconds to get it, the cover story. He grinned back and clapped Manners on the shoulder. “Maybe you’re
not such a bad guy after all.”

“I hope you enjoy your meal.”

“I’ll take the jeep. Thanks a lot, Manners.”

As Lockwood left the Northstar compound, he saw the troops unloading the huge crate. It took him a quarter of an hour to get
to Tibbett’s house. He stopped the jeep a few hundred feet up the road and, after checking his gun in the light from the dashboard,
he set out on foot.

As he approached Tibbett’s shack, he saw a light on in the rear of the house. The rest of the place was dark. He crept around
the house with his gun drawn, wary that Tibbett might be looking for trouble. Lockwood doubted that Tibbett knew he was coming.
He hadn’t said anything to Manners, but he hadn’t seen a telephone in the old man’s shack that day he had searched it. And
he knew why. To keep up the pretense that he was just a poor ex-machinist, a shuffling night watchman, he couldn’t have a
telephone. It would cost too much money.

Lockwood eased up to the kitchen window. Every sense was alert now. He felt the night breeze blow over him. He put his feet
down softly, carefully. He moved slowly. He pulled the hammer of the .38 back, cocking it. He heard the sound of water splashing
and croonings as he came closer to the window.

Through the open window Lockwood saw Pops in his machinist’s overalls at the kitchen table, his back to Lockwood. He was washing
Bingo. The German shepherd sat in a tin washtub of soapy water, and Pops was rubbing the dog with a sponge along its flanks.

“Still, Bingo. Not long now.”

Bingo whined and squirmed.

“Hey, boy. Let me get a little soap there. That’s it.”

On the floor next to Tibbett sat a couple of old fiberboard suitcases. It looked like Pops was getting ready to go on a trip,
and he had no idea that the Brown Shirts weren’t going to show up.

Lockwood crept around to the back door. He would have to go through a screen door onto a porch before he got to the kitchen.
Lockwood dried his palms and prepared himself. He took off his jacket and put it on the ground and rolled up his sleeves.
Then he took the porch steps quietly, a step at a time, and gently eased the screen door open. It screeched softly, and Lockwood
hoped that neither Bingo nor his master heard it.

He got onto the porch and eased the screen door closed. The kitchen door was open.

“Will you be still?” he heard Pops say. “Consarn it! Stop wiggling so much!”

Lockwood stepped into the doorway and said, “Freeze!”

He was met by a wet, soapy, ninety-pound missile that hit him in the chest before he could do a thing.

Bingo’s fangs failed to get a grip on any part of Lockwood, who staggered back from the blow. His finger pulled the trigger
and the .38 smashed the glasses by the sink. The dog slid off Lockwood, who was now pressed against the doorjam. Pops made
a move toward the sink for the butcher knife there.

The German shepherd was scrabbling the floor with its wet paws for a purchase from which to leap again at Lockwood.

Furious, Lockwood drew back the hammer of the .38 and shot Bingo in the face. The dog toppled over. It writhed on the ground
and settled into a puddle.

“You shot him!” Tibbett shouted. “Hey, you shot my dog.”

Lockwood had swung his gun over toward Pops, who held a butcher knife in a threatening posture.

“Yeah, and I’m about to shoot you.”

“I know you. That insurance guy. What do you want with me?”

“You know goddamn well what I want.”

“Mister, I don’t know.” The old man looked down at the dead dog. He looked as he were about to cry. “My dog! My dog! I loved
him, and you’ve killed him. What am I going to do?”

Lockwood faltered. Had he made a mistake? “Listen, you old man. You know what’s going on here. We caught Braunschweiger, and
he told us all about your part in this.”

He saw the tremor shoot through the old man, and the stiffening of Pops’ back. That name had struck a nerve all right.

“Mister, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He looked wary now.

“I think you do.”

“I’m just a guy trying to get along in his retirement.” Feigned innocence.

“Where were you headed, your suitcases packed like this?”

“Going to see my sister.”

“Where?”

“Manhattan.”

“Plant know about this?”

“I got the weekend off.”

“Open them.”

“My bags? What for?”

“Because I told you to.”

The old man didn’t move.

Lockwood said, “You want me to crack you over the head with this thing? You want your kneecap shot, old man?”

Pops shook his head. His face was set now, full of anger and fear.

“Put that knife down, too,” Lockwood said. “Slow and easy. I’d love to drill you one. Love to. Give me a chance, one chance.”

Pops put the butcher knife down on the counter. Lockwood backed away from the suitcases. Pops opened them both and threw back
the lids.

“Now, take the stuff out and spread it around on the floor.”

There were a few clothes on the top of the suitcases, but underneath were manila envelopes. Lockwood had the old man take
the contents out of one; inside were drawings and photos of machinery and mechanical diagrams.

“A trip to your sister’s? What’s she—a Marconi?”

Tibbett looked around at him sullenly.

“Take all that crap out of there,” Lockwood ordered.

At the bottom of the smaller case was a pistol which Lockwood made Pops hand over.

“9mm Luger. This is what killed her, Pops.”

“Who?”

“Stop acting so innocent,” Lockwood spat out. “Myra. You killed her.”

The old man shook his head sullenly. Infuriated, Lockwood grabbed the old man by the overalls and turned him around and dunked
his head in the soapy water he had been washing the dog in. He held his head under.

He pulled him out. “Talk, goddamn it! You killed her.”

“No.”

He pushed Tibbett back under and counted to twenty, then pulled him back out.

“Stop it,” the old man yelled. “You’ll kill me.”

“That’s the idea. She was killed with a Luger, you’ve got a Luger. She was working on military secrets, you got a suitcase
full of secrets. That dumb bombsight was going to go to Germany tonight, and you’re all packed for a long trip somewhere.
You aren’t going, Pops. Get it? Get it through your head we got the bombsight. We broke up the rally. We captured Braunschweiger,
and he told us everything.”

“No, I don’t know nothing. I can explain.”

Lockwood dunked him again, this time holding him down while he counted to forty. At thirty-five, Pops began to squirm more
vigorously than ever. At forty, Lockwood pulled him up.

The old man was red in the face and breathed in deep sobbing gasps.

“No more,” he said between rasps of air. “No more. I tell. I did. Orders.”

“You shot her, didn’t you?”

The old man wouldn’t look at him and nodded. Lockwood bunched up the front of his overalls in his left hand and with his injured
hand hit him across the jaw with his right hook. Then he held him with his right hand and cut the other side of his head with
his left hook. The old man was out. Lockwood turned him over and dunked him again, and in seconds Tibbett was sputtering and
flailing about.

Lockwood set him up again. “You want to talk and tell me the truth? Or do we keep this up?”

Tibbett held his hands up. “No more. Please. I’m an old man. This is all too much for me.”

“Talk.”

“They told me to.”

“Who?”

“Braunschweiger. I couldn’t kill the rest of them.”

“Who?”

“Greer. Dr. Dzeloski. For the Fatherland.”

“You’re going back tonight?”

“To the Fatherland, yes. There they promised I would not have to work in this menial capacity. I would have retirement with
honor.” He looked sadly at the puddle of hair and gore on the floor. “With Bingo. We were to go tonight with the bombsight.”

“Where were you to meet them?”

“At the beach.”

“What beach?”

Tibbett pointed. “Out there. Where I fish. There’s a private road. The truck would bring the bombsight there, and would load
it onto a specially constructed rubber raft.”

“When tonight?”

“In the morning. Three o’clock.”

“Any signals?”

Pops pointed at the flashlight in the small suitcase. “That. Point it at the sea and flash three longs, then three shorts.”

“Any danger signal?”

Pops shook his head, looking baffled. “What?”

“In case of danger, were you to flash some other signal.”

“No.”

“You know what will happen to you if you’re lying?”

“No.”

“Back in the water. Till you die. And I might well keep bringing you back and killing you over and over again. I got no mercy
for the man who killed Myra, you got that?”

“Yes, sir. I’m not lying. It’s all over for me.”

“Yes, it is. Now pack that crap back in those suitcases. We’re going to meet that sub and see what’s what.”

“Why you?” Manners asked.

“Because you don’t have any agents here who look remotely German,” Lockwood said.

“Peters can do it.”

“Besides, I want revenge. This is my scheme and my revenge.”

Manners sighed in exasperation. “Do you have any idea what trouble I can get into if you don’t come back?”

“Sure,” Lockwood answered. “But it’s my hide, isn’t it?”

“Suppose they check with Yorkville?”

“How could they?”

“I don’t know. But they’d have records, wouldn’t they?”

“It’s a point. Shortwave radio.”

“We do have a couple guys in the Bund. Undercover agents.”

“So?”

“So you could use one of their names.” Manners turned to Peters. “What do you think, Greg? Would a description of Fischer
match Mr. Lockwood here?”

“Close, sir.”

“I think so, too. Get me Fischer on the wire.”

Another agent came in. Amazing how they all look the same, Lockwood said to himself, bland and hard.

“We’ve got the crate ready, sir.”

“I’ll go take a look at it, Guy,” Lockwood said.

He followed the agent out to the loading dock. Standing there was the same crate that they had picked up earlier at the Bund
rally.

Lockwood put his hand on the crate, which stood as tall as himself, and gave it a little push to see how much it weighed.

“Feels heavy enough to fool them,” he said. “How many pounds of dynamite?”

“About one hundred, sir.”

“That ought to do it.”

“It ought to make quite a hole in a sub.”

“And it will go off when the air pressure gets above what?”

“Above twenty pounds per square inch. We put in two triggers to make sure it will work.”

“Sounds perfect. Load it on the truck.”

Manners came out. “Well, you’re all set,” he said. “Call yourself Richard Fischer.”

“What about I.D.?”

“Can’t give you I.D. and register you at Bund headquarters, too, Lockwood. Play it by ear. Choose your identity on the spot.
If you need to be Fischer, you can be.”

“Give me Peters and this guy”—Lockwood pointed at the agent who had led him out—“to give me a hand.”