Ezio told him about his conversation with Ordway.

“Fine, fine. What about the schedule?”

“Everybody arrives in New York by Sunday night.”

“Assembly point?”

“Midnight Sunday, one of the piers in Brooklyn. It’ll be empty—no ships in, no cargoes waiting. We slipped the watchman a few bucks, he won’t see anything.”

“That’s fine, Ezio.”

“Who briefs them?”

“You do. Buy some longshoreman’s clothes, wear a stocking over your face, don’t talk unless you have to. Rent a typewriter and have the instructions typed up, pass it around, make sure they understand. If they ask questions you answer them with a pencil, you write the answer down in block letters so they can’t figure the handwriting, you let them read it and then you burn it.”

“Down payments?”

“Two thousand a man. The other eight thousand each when they bring us the files.”

“You worked out a plan for the drop or do you want me to take care of that?”

“Use a truck. They drive it to a given point, you pick it up there. You personally. Nobody else is in on this, Ezio.”

“Right.”

“Keep it that way.”

“I pay them off when I pick up the truck, then.”

“Yes. Treat them square, this is a hard job for them.”

“Got you,” Ezio said.

2

She put down five tiles and scored it. Frank rotated the board and scowled.

She said, “What now? Another seven-letter word?”

“No. How do you spell ‘harass’?”

“One are, two esses.”

“No good.” He lapsed into silent contemplation.

She said, “How long will it take them to do it, Frank?”

“How long will it take who to do what?”

“The files.”

“No telling.” He rearranged tiles on his rack. “First they’ll have to scout the place, every inch. Find out what the security setup is. How many people work there weekends and nights. Bringing in one guy from Minneapolis who used to install alarm systems—he’s supposed to figure out a way across whatever they’ve got but it may take equipment and time. You can’t pull off anything this big overnight. And they’ve got to get away clean—it means working out complicated maneuvers, trucks inside trucks, diversions, all that kind of crap. It’s a Goddamn military operation.”

“But it can be done. I’m sure it can.”

“Anything can be done,” he said. “Once they pull it off there’s going to be all hell breaks loose. You know what we’re going to do? We’re going to put the stuff in the mail.”

“In the mail?”

He was smiling. “Sure. Bust it up in little packages, wrap it up in plain brown paper, mail, them out from all kinds of little branch post offices to guys all over the country who got testified against. Then we sit back and watch it all hit the fan. The government hasn’t got enough agents to cover all of them at once. Eleven hundred witnesses? Eight, nine hundred of them be dead by the time the federals start catching up. And the first four are going to be Merle, Benson, Draper and Fusco.”

“If they still have a file on Merle.”

“There’s that. But it doesn’t bother me anymore. We miss Merle, OK, we miss one man. But we make our point, that’s the important thing.”

“Then you still think Gregory was mistaken.”

“Sure, the both of them. Couldn’t have been Merle. What’s Merle want with a junkie connection? It doesn’t make any sense. It was just some cop trying to run a bluff. Couple of clumsy cops running a poor tail, they got caught, they had to dream up some story.”

“But Belmont said he recognized him.”

“He backed off, you know. It’s been nearly ten years. Ezio took him over the photographs again and Belmont admitted he wasn’t sure, it was just a resemblance. I mean I’d love to think we had Merle right in our own backyard but things just don’t work out that easy. Forget it. We’ll find Merle—we’ll find him in San Diego County, I’ll bet you on that.”

“I never bet with you, Frank, I always lose.”

“The hell you do.” He grinned at her. “But that’s the right thing to say.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

New York City: 24–31 October

1

MATHIESON RETURNED TO THE HOTEL IN A SEVERE DEPRESSION. When he walked into the suite he found Vasquez and Homer going through real estate ads in the Times. Roger was fiddling with the Arriflex camera, checking its lens settings against the recommendations on the film pack. Roger looked up; it was clear that one glance at Mathieson’s face told him the answer to the question in his mind; he didn’t speak but Homer voiced it: “How’re they doing?”

“Fine—fine.”

Vasquez was cold. “She’s still upset. Very well—she’d have needed to be superhuman.”

“Don’t we all.”

“Don’t take on like that, old horse.”

“Amy’s all right. A little itchy. The boys are raising some hell.”

“Expected that,” Roger said. “You et?”

He had to think. “No.”

“Then go down and get yourself around some grub. Might improve your disposition some.”

Without arguing he went downstairs, debating the dining rooms, settled on the coffee shop. Afterward he had a drink in one of the bars, a double, and felt slightly mellowed when he returned to the suite. Roger inspected him critically. “My turn to call tomorrow. I hope it don’t have the same effect on me.”

“Hell, Roger, you’ve got the best marriage in the world.”

“Always tend to agree when people tell me that. Strange thing is, it’s true.”

Vasquez folded the newspaper and put it away. “Mr. Merle, you didn’t honestly expect your marriage to survive this. It would be imbecilic to blame its failure solely on these experiences.”

“I don’t need undercutting—not from my wife and certainly not from you.”

“You do, however, need a clear mind. You’ve half-persuaded yourself that if you were to give up your quixotic quest, even at this late date, you’d have a chance of recovering your marriage. You’ve convinced yourself somehow that it’s an either-or situation—that you can have Pastor or you can have your wife, but you can’t have both. It’s idiotic. If you accede to these irrational pressures you’ll surely lose both of them.”

Roger said, “I hate to say this but I agree with the man.”

Acidly Mathieson turned to Homer. “What about you? Nobody seems to have asked your opinion.”

“Haven’t got one, Mr. Merle. I don’t mess in other people’s private lives. Done enough messing in my own. I’ve got a back trail littered with ex-wives—three of them.”

Roger said, “I never knew that.”

Neither did Mathieson but it wasn’t enough of a surprise to distract him. He said savagely, “Nobody said anything about giving anything up. Have I even hinted I ever thought about quitting?”

“That’s beside the point,” Vasquez said. “You’ve created a talisman—the superstitious belief that if you succeed against Pastor it will cost you your marriage. I’m bringing it out in the open now because I believe it’s the kind of superstition that may become a trip wire. Whatever happens to your marriage, it will not be the result of anything that occurs here. The two matters are completely unrelated. You must admit it—without reservation. Otherwise we’re in peril.”

“You may be right. I may have been putting it to myself like that. I don’t know. I haven’t been able to think clearly about it.”

“Then do so now.” Vasquez left his chair and stood looking down at Homer. “I’ve been thinking that perhaps you should leave us, Homer.”

“What?”

“Return to Los Angeles. There are tasks waiting at the home office. Things have piled up during my inexcusable absence.”

“You’ve never thrown me off a case in the middle.”

“There are things that will transpire here, things you don’t need to participate in. Please don’t be whimsically gallant. I need you more at the home office than here.”

Mathieson’s rage shifted toward the available target: “Is that the thanks he gets? At least Homer deserves to be in at the finish.”