Q. You stayed in the same room with him?

A. No. We had adjoining rooms. Not connecting, adjoining.

Q. So it was late and you went right to bed?

A. I did. He didn’t.

Q. What did he do?

A. Well he had his portable typewriter along, you know. I heard him typing away in there.

Q. For how long?

A. I have no idea. I went to sleep, he was still banging the damn typewriter.

Q. How about when you woke up in the morning? Was he still typing?

A. No. He called me on the room phone, that’s what woke me up. He was all dressed and ready to go when I came out. We got in the car and drove in toward the city. We stopped for breakfast in one of those pancake houses. Then he went over to a drugstore next door, it was one of those places that sold school supplies and paperback books and stuff—a big drugstore, a Rexall I think. He bought a whole bunch of those big manila envelopes with metal clasps. Then we drove on a ways and he stopped in a post office and bought a bunch of stamps.

Q. But he didn’t mail anything there, did he?

A. No. How did you know that?

Q. Because we know what he mailed and it wasn’t postmarked until the next day. He couldn’t have mailed it in a post office that early that day. All right, Mr. Liddell, what happened after he bought the stamps?

A. Well we went downtown and he parked the car at a meter and he went into a bank. He got me a cashier’s check and some cash.

Q. How much was the cashier’s check for?

A. I don’t think I can tell you that.

Q. All right. How much cash did he give you?

A. Let’s skip that one too, all right?

Q. What did you do with the money?

A. Well I put some of it in my wallet and I put some of it in various pockets. The cashier’s check and some of the cash I put in separate envelopes and I mailed them somewhere. I’m not going to tell you where.

Q. Okay, okay. You don’t want to talk about the money, all right. What happened then? Did he do anything else in the bank?

A. I don’t know. When he got the cash and the cashier’s check he was with an officer in the back, I wasn’t with him, I was waiting out front. I don’t know what he said or did. Anyhow we left the bank and I mailed what I had to mail and then we got back in the car. He dropped me off at a coffee shop and I had lunch, and about a half hour later he picked me up again. He didn’t have the car any more. We took a taxi down to the waterfront and I shook hands with him outside the customs door. That was the last I saw of him. He wished me good luck, I thanked him, the porter took my bags and went inside. Then I got on the boat and here I am.

Q. You didn’t notice whether he hung around watching to make sure you actually sailed on the ship, did you?

A. No. I told you, I never saw him after we shook hands on the pier there. Look, how many times are we going to go over this?

Q. Well sometimes it helps to go over things several times, Mr. Liddell. Each time you tell it you remember something else you hadn’t remember the previous time. I mean like him staying up in his room typing after you went to bed, that sort of thing. Now suppose we just do it one more time. Let’s take it from the night you met Butler in the bar in Trenton, okay?

Ross yawned helplessly and reached for the Styrofoam coffee cup. Cutter switched the tape deck off. “You don’t find anything helpful there?”

“What’s the use of finding out where he bought his typing paper or what motel they stayed in? He’s long gone, he won’t be back to those places. It was weeks ago.”

“You’re missing something then,” Cutter said. “Look, I’m not being smug, I’m not trying to show off my muscles. But you’ve got to pay a little attention. Now stop yawning in my face and sit up and let’s talk about it.”

Ross shoved himself upright in the chair and sucked at the dregs of the coffee. “I can’t handle time zones too well. I’m going to a little bit of a zombie for a day or two—I can’t help it, jet planes do that to me.”

“You want more coffee?”

“I’m waterlogged already. No thanks.”

Cutter said, “He bought a hundred sheets of twenty-pound Southworth Bond paper and a pad of carbon paper.”

Ross shook his head. “You write a book, you need paper. What does it prove? It doesn’t tell us where he is.”

“It may.”

“You’re miles ahead of me, then.”

“It’s a little bit more expensive than most. You buy it by the ream it runs seven or eight dollars for five hundred sheets.”

“So?”

“One thing about Kendig—he’s meticulous, he’s orderly. If he started writing this book on South-worth paper he’ll probably finish it on Southworth paper. Now he bought a hundred sheets and he bought carbon paper. That’s enough to write fifty originals and make fifty carbons. Not enough to finish that book of his, is it. Not unless he had more of the stuff in his luggage. But if he had more of it why make a special stop just to buy it in Norfolk?”

Ross began to see. His eyes widened a little.

“He was low on paper,” Cutter said, “so he bought a packet in Norfolk. But it wasn’t enough to finish the book. So he’s got to buy paper again.”

Ross made a face. “I get what you mean now. But how many places are there in this country that sell typing paper?”

“We can rule out places that don’t sell South-worth, can’t we. So we start with Southworth. We find out who wholesales for them. We go through the wholesalers, find out which stores they supply with bond paper.”

“That’s still got to be thousands of stores.”

“All right. It’s a lot of phone calls. But that kind of mindless legwork—that’s what the FBI has a talent for.”

– 12 –

HE WAS KEYED up and rather enjoying it. They ought to be getting close by now. Kendig had dropped enough clues for them but if they’d allowed their brains to rust on the assumption that their computers would take care of everything then they wouldn’t be within a thousand miles of him. But he didn’t think Joe Cutter had it in him to succumb that way. They’d be a while yet because they wouldn’t take the easy straightforward course even if one was available. Byzantium was in their blood: they would twist and contort, they would set snares within mazes. But they would be along.

For seven years, off and on, he had worked with Cutter and played poker with him. It was possible that no one knew anyone as well as he knew a regular poker opponent. The intimacy of his relationship with Cutter had been something far closer than family and perhaps closer than husband and wife: they knew each other’s shadings, excellences, vulnerabilities—and differences.

Cutter was not so coldly mechanical as he pretended to be but nevertheless Cutter was logical in the procedures of his intellect: a percentage player. You could bluff him out of a good hand if he decided the pot odds weren’t good enough; you could rely on him not to play a wild hunch; he bluffed often enough but he did it with calculation. Kendig relied more on instincts and talents and he had the advantage of flexibility but Cutter had qualities of relentless thoroughness. His ruthlessness included the ability to act with purposeful unpredictability; you couldn’t count on him to plod along a prearranged path with his nose to the ground—Cutter was high-voltage; he had the spark to jump across gaps.

He could show up any time now.

Kendig made his preparations in the evenings after each day’s typing hours. He had bought two identical suitcases in Birmingham and he cut one of them apart and used it to make a false bottom inside the other. Manuscript and part of his cash would go into the hiding place; the rest of the cash remained in wallet and canvas money belt.

He had a tripwire along the rutted driveway up from the road; if man or car approached it would break a thread and the old cowbell would fall to the porch.