Unforced Error (16 page)

Peter had seen this painting. He had imagined it hanging in the entrance to the Jackson County Public Library extension. He had realized in an instant's insight that Lawrence might be trying to pervert the naming of the new library wing to serve his own bigotry. Maybe he'd wondered if Linda somehow knew about this, felt guilty about it, if that was what had her vomiting her guts up.

But Melissa didn't need to push her theory that far. Peter being Peter, worshiping at the altar of Words, capable of seeing God's hand in well-wrought similes and humble verbal by-play, needed no more than the painting itself to galvanize him. One shattering instant of realization, and Peter would have concluded that the very next thing he had to do was find out whether, buried in the boilerplate of impenetrable legal documents, the official name of what everyone was calling the proposed Liberty Memorial Library Wing was the “
U.S.S. Liberty
Memorial Wing.” Because if that was what was going on, Klimchock had to be warned not to send Peter's name to the Finance Committee first thing the following morning. That was why Peter had run off. And Melissa knew with apodictic certainty that he hadn't paused for some triviality like killing Quinlan on the way.

Okay, ladies,
she thought,
mission accomplished. Exit, stage rear
.

Melissa scurried out of Lawrence's office and pulled the door closed behind her. She hustled toward the door from the editorial offices to the hallway. She reminded herself to keep under control, to open the door slowly so as not to attract attention. In the depths of her superego, though, a panicky, guilt-ridden, plaid-skirted schoolgirl with Ripple on her breath was screaming,
Get out of here!
She jerked the door open.

She had time to see the bearded, expressionless man in the blue uniform who was waiting outside, and time to notice the large Remington revolver he was holding at his side. She had time to read the unsurprised and indifferent eyes of someone who knew his business and was in no particular hurry.

What she didn't have time to do was scream. She opened her mouth to yell, but before the first well-rounded decibel could form in her throat the man stuffed a large, bunched, woolen sock deep into her mouth.

Choking and furious, Melissa stepped backwards, preparing to turn and run toward Lawrence's office. The man shook his head, once, unconcerned.

She spun on the ball of her right foot. A lancing pain shot through her left arm as the man seized it with his left hand. Effortlessly he crab-walked her toward Linda's desk and pushed her roughly into Linda's chair. She barked her right thigh painfully on the front edge of the seat and her ribs on the top of the chairback as she slammed into the seat.

Looking up, wide-eyed, Melissa saw the man raise his left hand above his right shoulder. Saw the sweaty, hirsute knuckles on the back of the hand. Saw from his face that he did this not in anger, not impulsively, but with the indifferent efficiency of a natural force, like a cold front scattering children at play as it moves through an autumn afternoon. Saw that he wondered whether she'd gotten the message. And without meaning to or thinking about it, told him with her eyes that she had.

Chapter 24

Rep, at roughly this point, was taking off his glasses and rubbing the bridge of his nose. This was a pre-arranged signal, and he prayed Linda would pick it up. She did.

“I just thought of something that might help, but it's a very difficult part of the story for me,” Linda said. “What happened between Tommy and me is something I'm still trying to come to terms with. There are times when I can't even believe I did it. I hate to seem wimpy, but Rep, would you mind stepping outside for a few minutes?”

Perfect
. Murmuring “Of course” he stood up and moved toward the conference room door.

“Most certainly,” Lawrence said at the same time, rising instantly in his turn. “We'll both go. What you say will be for Mr. Pignatano's ears alone.”

Nuts
, Rep thought. They hadn't anticipated this snag when they'd worked out today's plan. He'd have to improvise. Hobbling a bit on his still tender ankle, he walked Lawrence into the hallway and headed for the reception area, doing his best to look like a husband who expected to see his wife there. He tried to show mild surprise—not shock, not overdoing it—when he didn't.

“Excuse me,” he said to Henderson, “do you know where my wife went?”

“Ladies room?” Henderson said uncertainly. “She had to step away.”

“Well,” Lawrence said, “when she comes back please tell her that Mr. Pennyworth and I are waiting for her in my office upstairs. Mrs. Damon wants to be alone for the moment with counsel.”

“Certainly, Mr. Lawrence.”

Alarm bells rang shrilly in Rep's head. In one sentence he had lost control of the situation and he didn't know what to do about it. The plan was to use the chat Lawrence wanted with Linda as cover for a search of Jackrabbit Press. Now, all of a sudden, Rep felt like the one being gamed. Lawrence had the initiative; Rep was reacting. He could turn and run right now, but he wasn't going to leave Linda and Melissa alone in this building. Lacking any better ideas, he followed Lawrence upstairs.

“Is your father still alive, Mr. Pennyworth?” Lawrence asked, glancing over his shoulder at Rep.

Worse and worse.

“No. Dad died when I was sixteen.”

“I am sorry to hear it. It's devastating to lose a parent before his time.”

“‘Before his time' would be debatable in dad's case,” Rep said. “He died of forty Camels and six cans of beer a day plus forty-odd-thousand miles a year on the road. Those are choices.”

“He wasn't your hero, then?” Lawrence asked as he opened his office door and gestured for Rep to enter.

“When he died I thought dad was a loser,” Rep said. “After I got a little older, I realized that sometimes just getting out of bed and going to work in the morning can be heroic.”

“An insight worthy of Saul Bellow at his very best,” Lawrence said. He strode over to a highly polished Empire desk in the center of the room and nodded toward the canvas in front of it. “What do you think of the painting?”

Rep, who had hung just inside the door, now walked over to look at the artwork. He'd had a lot of practice keeping his face straight, but he didn't quite manage it now. A smile played across Lawrence's lips.

“Hung in the conference room downstairs,” Rep said evenly, “I'd call it an eccentric curiosity that's not to my taste. Decorating the main entrance to the Liberty Memorial Wing of the Jackson County Public Library, it would be an abuse of history.”

“Correction,” Lawrence said. “The
U.S.S. Liberty
Memorial Wing. Three letters buried in fine print that no one has noticed—and no one will.”

“Except Peter.”

“A pity, but unimportant. Don't you think the brave American sailors who gave their lives on June 8, 1967 should be remembered?”

“I certainly do. But they shouldn't have their memory hijacked to serve a racist agenda.”

“Why is the agenda racist—because our sailors were murdered by Jews instead of Arabs?”

“Israel was fighting for its life in ' sixty-seven against enemies that could attack across every land border it had. Bad things happen in war. Israeli planes attacked the
U.S.S. Liberty
by mistake. That isn't murder.”

“Mistake?” Lawrence scoffed. “None of the Arab states had any navy to speak of, or a warship anywhere close to the
Liberty
in size or profile.”

“The Soviet Mediterranean Fleet had ships in that category, and they weren't above sailing under false colors,” Rep said. “Egypt had supply ships that big, and tapes of radio messages from the Israeli fighters that were released a while back showed they thought that's what they were attacking.”

“A Zionist construct,” Lawrence shrugged.

“I earn my living in the real world,” Rep said. “Down here on Planet Earth, a horrible mistake in the fog of battle makes a lot more sense than Israel deliberately attacking a vessel of its one indispensable ally.”

“Unless it was the one ally that would let Israel get away with anything,” Lawrence said, affecting a condescending smirk.

Time to cut the nonsense
, Rep thought. Lawrence was playing with him. He knew what was going on and Rep didn't. Rep needed to make Lawrence blow a fuse, lose a bit of the control he was effortlessly exercising.

“That painting is an unforced error,” Rep said. “Like General Order Number 11 and the Brassilach picture and that medal. It's not enough for you to pursue your vendetta, you have to flaunt what you're doing, rub people's noses in it, and then laugh at them for being too dumb to pick up your clever subtleties. Sooner or later, though, someone was bound to.”

“The things you mention are certainly unforced,” Lawrence said smugly, showing no sign at all of provocation. “Whether they are errors remains to be seen. So far they don't seem to have cost me anything.”

“You're wrong. Some reckless questions I asked made a pilfering sutler think you might have Civil War collectibles lying around, and he snuck up here to see. You were afraid he might come across evidence that you're the one who killed Quinlan—like remnants of blood soaked clothing that you burned in one of the outbuildings afterward, for example—and you ran him off with a warning shot. You snuck into the library downtown to see if you could find out how much Peter had told Klimchock. You only escaped by firing another shot. Live ammunition twice in one day doesn't suggest a smoothly functioning plan.”

“It is functioning well enough to get three people I'm interested in under my control,” Lawrence said.

“I think you've actually gone over the edge,” Rep said, shaking his head as he decided to play his most provocative card. “Look, I'm sorry your father died before he should have. If you want to build a private shrine to him, go ahead, and if you want to blame the Jews for it I can't stop you. But public libraries are sacred places. You don't have a right to turn one into a monument to bigotry just so you can bury the ghost of a dead collaborator.”

The calculated insult fell short of his hopes. Lawrence stiffened and recoiled, but then quickly recovered.

“‘Collaborator,'” he said contemptuously. “My father was a
bureaucrat
. A pathetic, paper-shuffling, pencil-pushing, clerk. He took forms from his in-box, centered them on his green baize desk top, scribbled his initials on them, stamped them with a red
tampon
, and handed them to a
huissier
to pass on to the
fonctionnaire
two offices down.”

“Right,” Rep said. “And he did this with enough zeal to get a medal for it. Because some of those forms said, ‘Arrest the Jew so-and-so and his family and hold them for deportation to such-and-such labor camp.' ”

“No doubt,” Lawrence said. “And if he had high-mindedly refused to stamp them, some other glorified clerk would have stamped them in his place. He would have accomplished nothing but to sacrifice food and shelter for himself and his family in a crisis situation.”

“Did he accept a few thousand francs or the odd collection of family jewels in exchange for losing a form now and then?” Rep asked. “Is that where the civil servant got the stake he needed to bribe his way into the United States after the war and start a printing business once he got here?”

“Whatever he did, it didn't deserve the death penalty,” Lawrence said, his speech getting a little faster and less polished, a bit of the icy control finally slipping. “There was no reason to rake all that muck up decades after it happened, threaten him with deportation in the twilight of his life because some Jew who stumbled over him wanted to settle scores.”

The final comments connected the last of the dots, explaining how the deportation proceedings against André Laurent had started. They also removed all doubt about Rep's present situation. Lawrence wouldn't have told Rep this much unless he planned on Rep, Melissa, and Linda ending up dead.

Rep saw no reason to cooperate. He jerked his head and upper body toward the hallway door. Raising a Starr Arms revolver that he grabbed from the desk drawer, the older man moved sideways to block Rep's path.

Rep spun around and hustled for the other door, leading to the editorial offices.
He can't shoot
, Rep told himself,
or I'd be dead already. Even if he could hide my body, gunfire inside the building would be hard to explain to Pignatano and Henderson, who probably aren't in on anything illegal.

He was right. He reached the door without the white hot explosion inside his head that would signal his brains being spattered all over Lawrence's elegant wainscoting. Throwing the door open, he dashed into the other office.

He saw Melissa in Linda's desk chair. Mouth gagged, hands tied behind her, eyes defiant and now widening in alarm. He saw the bearded man in the blue uniform. He didn't see the other uniformed man against the wall next to the door, and so the searing pain from a metallic smash to the back of his head and the inky blackness that followed came as a complete and thoroughly unpleasant surprise. His last conscious thought was
You total schmuck.

***

When Rep groggily shook himself to consciousness a few minutes later, he was bound and gagged in a chair next to Melissa's. Lawrence was on the phone in his adjoining office. Though it made his temples throb to do so, Rep concentrated on picking up Lawrence's words through the still open doorway.

“Yes, Karin, please tell Mr. Pignatano that I don't want to take up any more of his time. He can leave a debriefing on my voice-mail while he's driving back downtown. Mr. and Mrs. Pennyworth are waiting up in my office for Linda. As soon as Mr. Pignatano is on his way you can leave for lunch if you wish, and if you'd like to take an extra hour or so to watch the target-shooting competition at the encampment I don't think that will do any harm.”

Rep convulsively jerked his body in an effort to tip over the chair he was tied to. He wanted to make enough noise to alarm Henderson. He got the chair's two left legs a couple of inches off the floor before one of the uniformed guys grabbed Rep's hair and jerked in the opposite direction.

Lawrence glanced at the action, murmured something else into the phone, and hung up. Then he closed the connecting door.

Hearing Linda's steps a minute or so later on the stairs and then in the hallway outside, Melissa felt as if she were watching a slasher flick. Impotently screaming “DON'T!” in her mind at the coed about to open the fatal door, after several of her friends had already made the same mistake.

Three more minutes passed after the footsteps stopped. Rep could hear occasional sounds—a scrape of shoe-sole on parquet, a snatch of human voice—but he couldn't make out any words. Finally, the connecting door opened and Linda walked in.

She shrieked.

Well naturally,
Rep thought,
she would scream, wouldn't she?

“Yell as loudly you wish,” Lawrence said. “While we were chatting just now I watched both Pignatano and Karin drive off. There's no one to hear you. If you will stop screaming, however, I will take the gags off your two friends.”

Linda choked back what had all the earmarks of a very promising follow-up yelp. Lawrence nodded to his two henchmen, who ungently ripped off the adhesive tape sealing in the socks that had silenced Rep and Melissa.

Rep shook his head and gulped breath. His diaphragm felt hollow. His lungs burned. Gasps ragged and uncontrolled escaped from him. Five agonizing seconds later he trusted himself to speak.

“I assume he took the gags off because he wants us to tell him what we know,” he said to Melissa. He tried for a conversational tone and, somewhat to his surprise, just about made it.

“He's also worried about autopsies finding aspirated fibers in our lungs,” Melissa said, as if they were debating the comparative merits of quiche and subs. “Eleanor Taylor Bland's procedurals are very good on that.”

“You're hardly in a position to be flippant,” Lawrence said. “Your situation at the moment is not entirely hopeless. I want to keep you alive for awhile yet, and it's in your interest to humor me.”

“Until you've got your hands on Peter, you mean,” Melissa said.

“If you like. The point is, as long as you're alive you can pray for a miracle. Prayer is a low-percentage tactic, but it's better than nothing. Since you have something to lose, you should avoid undue annoyance.”

“If all we have to lose is a long lunch-hour with our hands tied behind us,” Rep said, “you can probably bet against complaisance.”

“I can't count on coming up with Peter quite that quickly,” Lawrence said. “There's a silo—an actual silo, for storing grain, quaint Americana at its tackiest—a few hundred yards west of this building. It's empty. After you give me the information I want, we're going to take you to that silo and keep you there until Peter turns up—unless you provoke me into premature unpleasantness in the meantime.”