During the next five days I visited the British Museum and looked at the Elgin Marbles, and visited the Tower of London and looked at the initials scratched in the walls of tower cells. I observed the changing of the guard, and jogged regularly through Hyde Park along the Serpentine. I carne in six days after the ad was placed, my shirt wet with sweat, my blue sweat pants worn stylishly with the ankle zippers open, my Adidas Cross-Countries still newlooking. I asked as always were there any messages, and the clerk said "Yes" and took a white envelope out of the box and gave it to me. It was sealed and said on it only "Spenser."
"This was delivered?" I said. "Yes, sir. "
"Not phoned in? This isn"t your envelope?"
"No, sir, that was delivered by a young gentleman, I believe, sir. Perhaps half an hour ago."
"Is he still here?" I said. "No, sir, I don"t believe I see him about. You might try the coffee shop."
"Thanks." Why hadn"t they phoned it in? Because they wanted to see who I was, maybe, and they could do that by dropping off an envelope and posting someone to watch who opened it. Then they"d know who I was and I wouldn"t know who they were. I walked toward one of the armchairs in the lobby where every afternoon tea was served. There was gla.s.s paneling on the far wall and I sat in a chair facing it so I could look in the mirror. I had on my sungla.s.ses and I peeked out from behind them at the mirror while I opened the envelope. It was thin and unsuspicious. I doubted a letter bomb. For all I knew it might be a note from Flanders inviting me to join him for high tea at the Connaught.But it wasn"t. It was what I wanted. The note said, "Be at the cafeteria end of the east tunnel near the north gate entrance to the London Zoo in Regent"s Park tomorrow at ten in the morning."
I pretended to read it again and surveyed the lobby from behind my shades as far as the mirror would let me. I didn"t see anything suspicious, but I didn"t expect to. I was trying to memorize all the faces in the place so if I saw one again I"d remember it. I put the letter back in the envelope and turned thoughtfully in my chair, tapping my teeth with a corner of the envelope. Pensive, deep in thought, looking hard as a b.a.s.t.a.r.d around the hotel lobby. No one was carrying a Sten gun. I went out the front door and strolled up toward Green Park. It is not easy to follow someone without being spotted, if the someone is trying to catch you doing it.
I caught her crossing Piccadilly. She"d been in the hotel lobby buying postcards, and now she was crossing Piccadilly toward Green Park half a block down the street. I was still in my sweat pants and I didn"t have a gun. They might want to burn me right now right quick once they had me spotted.
In Green Park I stopped, did a few deep knee bends and stretching exercises for show and then started an easy jog down toward the Mall. If she wanted me she"d have to run to keep up. If she started running to keep up, I"d know she didn"t care about being spotted, which would mean she was probably going to shoot me, or point me out to someone else who would shoot me. In which case I would bang a U-turn and run like h.e.l.l for Piccadilly and a cop. She didn"t run. She let me go, and by the time I reached the Mall she was gone.
I walked back up to Piccadilly along Queen"s Walk, crossed the street and walked down to the Mayfair. I didn"t see her and she wasn"t in the lobby. I went up to my room and took a shower with my gun lying on the top of the toilet tank. I felt good. After a week of watching the sun set on the British Empire I was working again. And I was one up on somebody who thought they were one up on me. If she was from Liberty then they thought they had me spotted and I didn"t know them. If they weren"t, if they wanted just to see if they could screw me out of the thousand pounds and were taking a look at how hard I looked, I was still even. I knew them and they thought I didn"t, and moreover they thought that"s where they were. There were drawbacks. They knew all of me and I only knew one of them. On the other hand, I was a professional and they were amateurs. Of course, if one of them laid a bomb on me, the bomb might not know the difference between amateurs and professionals. I put on jeans, a white Levi shirt, and white Adidas Roms with blue stripes. I didn"t want the G.o.dd.a.m.ned limeys to think an American sleuth didn"t know color coordination.
I got a black woven-leather shoulder rig out of the suitcase and slipped into it. They aren"t as comfortable as hip holsters, but I wanted to wear a short Levi jacket and the hip holster would show. I put my gun in the holster and put on the Levi jacket, and left it unb.u.t.toned. It was dark blue corduroy. I looked at myself in the mirror over the bureau. I turned up the collar. Elegant. Clean-shaven, fresh-showered, with a recent haircut. I was the image of the international adventurer. I tried a couple of fast draws to make sure the shoulder holster worked right, did one perfect Bogart imitation at myself in the mirror, "All right, Louis, drop the gun," and I was ready for action. The room had been made up already so there was no need for a maid to come in again. I took a can of talc.u.m powder and, standing in the hall, I sprinkled it carefully and evenly over the rug in front of the door inside my room. Anyone who came in would leave a footprint inside and tracks outside when he left. If they were observant they might notice and wipe out the tracks. But unless they were carrying a can of talc they would have trouble covering the footprints inside. I shut the door carefully over the smooth layer of talc.u.m and took the can with me.
There was a wastebasket by the elevators and I dropped the empty talc can in. I"d get another on my way back tonight. I walked down to Piccadilly Circus and took a subway to Regent"s Park. I had my map of London folded and creased in my hip pocket and I got it out and sneaked a look at it, trying not to look just like a tourist. I figured out the best walk through the park, nodded knowingly in case anyone was watching, as if I was just confirming what I knew already, and headed on up to the north gate. I wanted a look at the territory before I showed up there tomorrow.
I went past the cranes, geese, and owls at north gate entrance and across the bridge over Regent"s Ca.n.a.l. A water bus chugged by underneath. By the insect house a tunnel led under a zoo office building and emerged beside the zoo restaurant. To the left was a cafeteria. To the right a restaurant and bar. Past the cafeteria were some flamingos in a little gra.s.s park. Flamingos on the gra.s.s, alas. If they wanted to burn me, the tunnel was their best bet. It wasn"t much of a tunnel, but it was straight and without alcoves. No place to hide. If someone came at me from each end they could put me in two without much trouble. Stay out of the tunnel. At the photo shop in the cafeteria I bought a guide to the zoo that had a map inside the back cover. The south gate, down by Wolf Wood, looked like a good spot to come in tomorrow. I walked down to take a look.
Past the parrot house and across from something labeled Budgerigars, there were kids taking camel rides and shrieking with laughter at the camel"s rolling asymmetrical gait. The south gate was just past the birds of prey aviary, which seemed ominous, past the wild dogs and foxes, and next to the Wolf Wood. That wasn"t too encouraging either. I went back up and looked at the cafeteria setup. There was a pavilion and tables. The food was served from an open-faced arcadelike building. If I sat on the pavilion at an open-air table I was a good target from almost any point. There was little cover. I ordered a steak and kidney pudding from the cafeteria and took it to a table. It was cold and tasted like a Nerf ball. While I gagged it down, I looked at my situation. If they were going to shoot me, there was little to prevent them. Maybe they weren"t going to shoot me, but I couldn"t plan much on that. "You can"t plan on the enemy"s intentions," I said. "You have to plan on what he can do, not what he might." A boy cleaning the tables looked at me oddly. "Beg pardon, sir?"
"Just remarking on military strategy. Ever do that? Sit around and talk to yourself about military strategy?"
"No, sir. "
"You"re probably wise not to. Here, take this with you. " I dropped most of my-steak and kidney pie into his trash bucket. He moved on. I wanted two things, maybe three, depending on how you counted. I wanted not to get killed. I wanted to decommission some of the enemy. I wanted at least one of them to get away with me following, Decommission. Nice word. Sounds better than kill. But I am thinking about killing a couple of people here. Calling it decommission isn"t going to make it better. It"s their choice though.I won"t shoot if I"m not taking fire. They try to kill me, I"ll fight. I"m not setting them up. They are setting me up... Except I"m setting them up to set me up so I can set them up. Messy. But you"re going to do it anyway, kid, whether it"s messy or not, so there"s not too much point to a.n.a.lyzing its ethical implications. Yeah, I guess I am. I guess I"ll just see if it feels good afterward.
They were experienced with explosives. And they didn"t worry about who got hurt. We knew that. If I were they I might wait till I got inside the tunnel, then roll in some explosives and turn me into a cave painting. Or they could do me in on the bridge over the ca.n.a.l. I knew who they were. I knew the girl and I had the pictures that Dixon had given me. Only the girl knew who I was. She"d have to be there to spot me. Maybe I could spot them first. How many would they send? If they were going to trap me in the tunnel, at least two plus the spotter. They"d at least want one at each end. But when they blew up the Dixons there were nine of them that Dixon spotted. They didn"t need nine. It must have been their sense of community. The group that blasts together lasts together. My bet was they"d show up in force. And they"d be careful. They"d be looking for a police setup. Anyone would. They wouldn"t be that stupid. So they"d be watching too.
I stood up. There was nothing to do but blunder into it. I"d stay out of the tunnel, and I"d keep away from open areas as best I could, and I"d look very carefully at everything. I knew them and they didn"t know it. Only one of them knew me. That was as much edge as I was going to get. The shoulder holster under my coat felt awkward. I wished I had more fire power. The steak and kidney pie felt like a bowling ball in my stomach as I headed out onto Prince Albert Road and caught a red double-decker bus back to Mayfair.
7.
On the way back to my hotel I got off the bus on Piccadilly and went into a men"s specialty store. I bought a blond wig, a blond mustache, and some make-up cement to attach it. Spenser, man of a thousand faces. Outside my door there was a white talc.u.m powder footprint. I kept on going past my room and on down the corridor. When it intersected with a cross corridor I turned right and leaned against the wall. There was no sign of anyone lurking. A standard approach to this kind of business would be one on the inside and one on the outside, but that didn"t seem the case. Of course it could have been a hotel employee on innocent business. But it might be someone who wanted to shoot me dead.
I put the bag with my disguise in it on the floor and slid my gun out of the shoulder holster. I held it in my right hand and folded my arms across my chest so the gun was concealed under my arm. There was no one in the corridor. I peeked around the corner. There was no one in that corridor either. I went down the corridor softly to my room. Took the key out of my pocket with my left hand; my right had the gun in it, chest-high now, and visible. The dim sounds of the hotel"s m.u.f.fled machinery whirred on around me. The elevators going and stopping. The sound of air-conditioning apparatus, faintly a television playing somewhere.
The hotel door was dark oak, the room numbers in bra.s.s. I stood outside my room and listened. There was no sound. Standing to the right of the door and reaching with my left hand, I put the key as gently as I could into the lock and turned it. Nothing happened. I opened the door a fraction to free the catch. Then I wiggled the key out, and slipped it back in my pocket. I took a deep breath. It was hard to swallow. I shoved the door open with my left hand and rolled back out of sight against the wall to the right of the door. I had the hammer back on my gun. Nothing happened. No one made a sound. The lights were off, but the afternoon sun was shining and the room shed some light into the corridor.
I edged a few steps down the corridor so that I could get a better angle on the door, and crossed. If someone came out shooting they"d expect me to be where I had been, to the right of the door, on the same wall. I folded my arms again to hide the gun, and leaned against the wall and looked at the open door and waited. The elevator stopped to my right and a man in a tattersall vest got off with a lady in a pink pantsuit. He was bald, her hair was bluish gray. They looked past me, rigorously not being curious as they walked by. They were equally careful not to look into the open door of the room. I watched them as they went on. They didn"t look like bombers but who can tell a bomber by his appearance. You have to be a little suspicious of anyone who wears a tattersall vest anyway. They went into a room about ten doors down. Nothing else moved.
I would feel like a terrible numb-nuts if the room turned out to be empty and I was poised out here like agent X-15 for hours. But I would be a terrible numb-nuts if I just went and bought the farm right here in Merry England because I wasn"t patient. I would wait. He would wait, too, apparently. But I was betting the tension would get him. The open door would get wider and wider open as he looked at it. If there were two of them it would-take longer. One guy gets scareder than two guys. But I had nowhere to go till ten next morning. I was betting I could wait longer.
An Indian woman in a white uniform rolled a laundry cart past me, looked curiously into the open room but paid me no attention. I was finding that more and more women were paying me no attention these days. Perhaps tastes were drifting away from the matinee idol type. The light from my room waned. I kept my eyes on it because I knew there"d be a shadow when the a.s.sa.s.sin made his move. Or maybe he knew that too and was waiting till dark.
Two African men came off the elevator and walked down past me. They both wore gray business suits with very narrow lapels. They both wore dark narrow ties and white broadcloth shirts with collars that turned up slightly at the ends. The one nearest me had tribal marks scarred into his cheeks. His companion had round gold-framed gla.s.ses on. They were speaking in British-accented English as they went by me, and paid no attention to me or the door. I watched them peripherally as I watched the door too. Anyone could be an accomplice.
The phone was near the door, and in the reeking silence I was pretty sure that the a.s.sa.s.sin couldn"t call without me hearing him. But there might have been a signal of some sort from the window, or there might be a prearranged time when if he didn"t call the back-up came looking. It was hard watching both the door and the corridor traffic. I was getting tired of holding the gun. My hand was stiff, and with the thing c.o.c.ked I had to hold it carefully. I thought about shifting it to my left hand. I wasn"t as good with my left hand, and I might need to be very good all of a sudden. I wouldn"t be too good if my gun hand had gone to sleep, however.
I shifted the thing to my left hand and exercised my right. The gun felt clumsy in my left. I ought to practice left-handed more. I hadn"t antic.i.p.ated a gun hand going to sleep. How"d you get shot, Spenser? Well, it"s this way, Saint Pete. I was staked out in a hotel corridor but my hand went to sleep. Then after a while my entire body nodded off. Did Bogie"s hand ever go to sleep, Spenser? Did Kerry Drake"s? No, sir, I don"t think we can admit you here to Private-Eye Heaven, Spenser. I was getting soft standing out there in the corridor. My right hand felt better and I shifted the gun back. No more light came out of the open door of my room. A family of four, complete with Instamatics and shoulder bags, came out of the elevator and walked past me down the corridor. The kids looked into the open door. The father said, "Keep walking." He had an American accent and his voice was tired. The mom had an admirable backside. They turned right at the cross corridor and disappeared.
It was getting late. I was working overtime here. Sudden-death overtime. Ah, Spenser, what a way you have with words. Sudden-death overtime. Dynamite. My feet hurt. I was beginning to experience lower back pain from standing so long. Why do you get more tired standing than walking? An imponderable. Waiting for someone to jump out of a dark doorway and shoot at you is tiring too. Pay attention. Don"t let the mind wander. You tended to lose sight for a minute when the mom with the backside walked past. If that had been fight time you"d have cashed it in right there, kid.
I looked hard at the door. The a.s.sa.s.sin would have to appear from the right. The open door was flush against the left-hand wall. He"d roll around the right wall looking for me down the corridor. Or maybe not, maybe he"d come on his belly, close to the floor. That"s what I would do. Or would I? Maybe I"d dive out of the door and get an angle on me from across the corridor, try to be too quick for the guy who"s been standing there getting hypnotized by staring at the door. Or maybe I wouldn"t even be there. Maybe I would be an empty room and some nervous dimwit would stand outside and stare at the emptiness for a number of hours. I could call hotel security and tell them I"d found my door open. But if there was someone in there the first person through the door was going to get blasted. The a.s.sa.s.sin had been in there too long to make fine distinctions. And if he was a Liberty type he didn"t care much who got killed anyway. I couldn"t ask someone else to walk in there for me. I"d wait. I could wait. It was one of the things I was good at. I could hang on.
Up the corridor past me a room service waiter, dark-skinned in a white coat, wheeled a table full of covered dishes off the service elevator and around the corner to the right. A faint baked potato smell drifted back down the corridor to me. After my steak and kidney pie I had thought about extensive fasting, but the baked potato smell made me reconsider. The a.s.sa.s.sin came out in a scrabbling crouch, and fired one shot down the corridor toward the elevator on the wall opposite to where I was, before he realized I wasn"t there.
He was quick, and half turned to shoot toward me when I shot him in the chest, my arm straight, my body half turned, not breathing while I squeezed off the shot. At close range my bullet spun him half around. I shot him again as he fell on his side with his knees up. The gun skittered out of his hand as he fell. Small caliber. Long barrel. Target gun. I jumped over and dove through the open door of my room, landed on my shoulder and rolled past the bed. There was a second man, and his first bullet took a piece out of the door frame behind me. His second one caught me with a sharp tug in the back of my left thigh. Half sitting, I shot three times into the middle of his dark form, in faint silhouette against the window. He went backward over a straight chair and lay on his back with one foot draped on the chair seat. I raised to a full sit-up against the wall. That"s why they could wait so long. There were two.
My breath was coming very heavy and I could feel my heart pumping in the middle of my chest. I"m not gonna get shot, I"m gonna have cardiac arrest some day. I took in deep breaths of air. In the right-hand breast pocket of my blue corduroy Levi jacket were twelve extra sh.e.l.ls. I opened the cylinder of my gun and popped out the spent cartridges. There was one live round left. I felt down at the back of my left leg. It didn"t hurt yet, but it was warm and I knew I was bleeding. The gun shots in the enclosed corridor had been very loud. That should bring some cops pretty quick.
I edged over to the dark shape with his foot on the chair. I felt for pulse and found none. I got to my feet and walked a little unsteadily to the door. The first man I shot lay as he had fallen. The long-barreled target pistol a foot from his inert hand. His knees drawn up. There was blood on the hall carpet. I put my gun back in its holster and walked over to him. He was dead too. I went back into my room. The back of my leg was beginning to hurt. I sat down on the bed and picked up the phone when I heard the footsteps in the hall. Some of them stopped a little way from my room and some came on to the door. I put the phone back down. "All right in there, come out with your hands up. This is the police."
"It"s okay," I said. "There"s a guy dead in here and I"m wounded. Come on in. I"m on your side." A young man in a light raincoat stepped quickly into the room and pointed a revolver at me. Behind him came an older man with graying hair and he pointed a revolver at me too.
"Stand up, please," the younger man said, "and put your hands on top of your head, fingers clasped."
"There"s a gun in the shoulder holster under my left arm," I said. Several uniformed bobbies and two more guys in civilian clothes crowded into the room. One of them went directly to the phone and began to talk. The guy with the graying hair patted me down, took my gun, took the seven remaining bullets from my jacket pocket and stepped back.
The young one said to the man on the phone, "He"s bleeding. He"ll need medical attention." The guy on the phone nodded. The young cop said to me, "All right, tell us about it, please. "
"I"m a good guy," I said. "I"m an American investigator. I"m over here working on a case. If you"ll get hold of Inspector Downes in your department he"ll vouch for me."
"And these gentlemen," he nodded at the body on the floor and included, with a sweep of his chin, the guy I had dumped in the corridor.
"I don"t know. I"d guess they were going to put me away because I was on this case. I came back to the room and they were waiting for me."
The gray cop said, "You killed them both?"
"Yeah."
"This is the gun?"
"Yeah."
"Some identification, please?" I handed it over, including the British gun permit. The gray cop said to the one on the phone, "Tell them to get hold of Phil Downes. We"ve got an American investigator here named Spenser that claims to know him." The cop on the phone nodded.As he talked he stuck a cigarette in his mouth and lit it.
A man came in with a small black doctor bag. He had on a dark silk suit and a lavender shirt with the collar spread out over the suit lapels. Around his neck were small turquoise beads on a choker necklace. "Name"s Kensy," he said. "Hotel physician."
"You staid British doctors are all the same," I said. "No doubt. Please drop your pants and lie across the bed, face down." I did what I was told. The leg was hurting a lot now, and I knew the back of my pants leg was soaked with blood. Dignity is not easy, I thought. But it is always possible. The doctor went into the bathroom to wash. The cop in the light raincoat said, "You know either of these people, Mr. Spenser?"
"I haven"t even gotten a look at them yet." The doctor came back. I couldn"t see him but I could hear him fumbling around. "This may sting a bit." I smelled alcohol and felt it sting as the doctor swabbed off the area. "The bullet still in there?" I asked. "No, went right through. Clean wound. Some blood loss, but nothing, I think, to be concerned over."
"Good, I"d just as soon not be carrying a slug around in the upper thigh," I said.
"You may choose to call it that if you wish," the doctor said, "but in point of face, my man, you"ve been shot in the a.r.s.e."
"There"s marksmanship," I said. "And in the dark too."
8.
The doctor put a pressure bandage on my, ah, thigh, and gave me some pills for the pain. "You"ll walk funny for a few days," he said. "After that you should be fine. Though you"ll have an extra dimple in your cheeks now."
"I"m glad there"s socialized medicine," I said. "If only there was a vow of silence that went with it."
Downes showed up as the doctor was leaving. And he and I explained my situation to the gray cop and the young one. Two guys came with body bags and before they took away the bodies we looked at them. I got out my Identikit pictures and both of them were in the pictures. Neither one was out of his twenties. Or ever would be. Downes looked at the Identikit picture and the fallen kid, and nodded. "How much you get for him?"
"Twenty-five hundred dollars."
"What will that buy in your country?"
"Half a car."
"Luxury car?"
"No. " Downes looked at the kid again. He had long blond hair and his fingernails were very recently clipped and clean. His still hands looked very vulnerable. "Half an inexpensive car," Downes said.
"He ambushed me," I said. "I didn"t lay in wait for either of them."
"You say."
"Oh come on, Downes. Is this the way I"d do it?"
Downes shrugged. He was looking at the traces of talc.u.m powder still in front of the door. White partial footprints were now all over the room. "You powdered the room before you left," he said.
"Yeah."
"If one of them hadn"t?"
"I"d have opened the door very slowly and carefully and checked the floor inside before I went in," I said.
"And you waited them out. Shoved the door open and stood in the corridor until they made their move."
"Yeah."
"Well now, you"re intrepid enough, aren"t you."
"The very word for it," I said.
"The problem is," Downes said, "we can"t have you running around London shooting down suspected anarchists at random and collecting the bounty."
"That"s not my plan, Downes. I don"t shoot people I don"t have to shoot. I"m here doing a job that needs to be done, that you people are too busy to do. These two clowns tried to kill me, remember. I didn"t shoot them because they were suspected anarchists. I shot them to keep them from shooting me."
"Why did you powder the floor when you left?"
"Can"t be too careful in a foreign land," I said.
"And the ad you placed in the Times?"
I shrugged. "I had to get their attention."
"Apparently you succeeded." A uniformed cop came in with my bag of disguises and handed it to Downes. "Found this down the corridor, sir, round the corner."
"That"s mine," I said. "I left it there when I discovered the a.s.sa.s.sins."
"a.s.sa.s.sins, is it," Downes said. He reached in the bag and took out my wig and mustache and make-up cement. His broad placid face brightened. He smiled a large smile that pushed his cheeks up and made his eyes almost close. He held the mustache under his nose. "How do I look, Grimes?" he said to the bobby.
"Like a ruddy guardsman, sir."
"My a.s.s is hurting," I said. "And I don"t think it"s the wound. "
"Why a disguise, Spenser? Did they know who you were?"
"I think one of them spotted me yesterday."
"And you arranged a meeting?" I didn"t want Downes at the meeting. I was afraid he"d scare off my quarry and I needed to make another contact.
"No, they just left a letter in my mailbox and when they saw me take it and read it they knew who I was. There"s no meeting yet. The letter said they"d be in touch. I think it was a setup. So I thought I"d change my appearance a bit."
Downes looked at me silently for maybe a minute. "Well," he said, "certainly there will be little grieving for these two. I do hope you"ll keep in touch with us as things develop. And I do hope that you do not plan to bring all of these people to justice this way."
"Not if I have a choice," I said. The technicians zipped up the second body bag and trundled it out on a dolly.
"Half an inexpensive car," Downes said.
"What kind of gun did the guy in here have? The one that shot me?"
The cop in the light raincoat said, "Same as the one in the hall, Colt twenty-two target pistol. They probably stole a crate of them somewhere. You"re lucky they didn"t steal a forty-five caliber, or a Magnum."
"Might have taken a good deal more of your b.u.t.t than it did," Downes said.
"Thigh," I said.
"Upper thigh wound." Downes shrugged. "I"d lock my door if I were you, and be quite alert, all right?"
I nodded.
Downes and the other two were all that were left in the room now. "Keep in touch, won"t you?" Downes said.