“Will you tell them I just left?” She corrected herself instantly. “No, I’ll take it.”
This might save her the trouble of dialing. The public phones were hung on the wall beyond the end of the bar. One of the drinkers, a man in a brilliant sports shirt, spoke to her as she passed, and she stopped to see if she knew him. He was holding a lighted cigar. Only the cigar was familiar; everything else she was seeing for the first time. Perhaps it didn’t matter. It would set a precedent, but that would be one way of guaranteeing that he wouldn’t be thinking of her in terms of the losing side in a celebrated murder case.
She smiled at him and picked up the phone. “Hello. Camilla Steele.”
“At last,” a voice said. “I am overjoyed to locate you. But I must make sure. Is it indeed the famous Camilla Steele?”
“Who is this?” she said sharply.
“Speak louder. There is much noise there.” She didn’t recognize the voice; the accent was vaguely Spanish. “Hold the phone tightly to one ear and stop up the other with your finger. I think we will do OK. This is in connection with a pig named Eliot Crowther.”
She clattered the phone back on the hook. She looked at the dial, frowning. The pill had dissolved and was beginning to run through her veins. The air darkened and filled with swirling black dots, but each number and letter on the dial was brilliantly distinct, as though lighted from within. When the phone rang again she snatched it up and said, “I have to know who’s talking.”
“I could invent a name for you, but why is it necessary? I have been phoning all day, here and there at various places, because I have an amusing proposal, perhaps you would say a preposterous proposal. To begin with, as a form of password, tell me simply the given name of your husband.”
“He’s dead,” she said, and added, almost against her will, “Felix.”
“Yes. Dead, buried, but not forgotten. He never raped and murdered anybody, as is well known. But Eliot Crowther climbed up on his dead body and became rich, successful. Now I will tell you the reason I am calling you, and why I do not wish to pronounce my name. I would like very much to kill Eliot Crowther.”
She sucked in her breath. “What?” she said faintly.
“Now my dear Camilla. I hope you can hear me over all the hubbub. I am told that you, also, have mentioned such a desire, but possibly you were not serious. Possibly it was something to speak about over coffee, to startle, to make yourself seem interesting and tragic.”
“I don’t know. I-”
“But you must know. You must decide, so I will waste no more time or thought. I am in earnest! I have an excellent plan, I think, but it requires a woman. I will count ten to myself.”
There was silence. Camilla touched her forehead to the shiny blackness of the phone. The fog closed in. Suddenly she knew with absolute certainty that Paul London had been her last chance, and she had sent him away. Why would he bother with her after he came back? She had chosen-instead of someone who knew her and cared what happened-a succession of indifferent strangers. Life was dirty and tiresome, and she could see how it had to end, too much to drink some night, too many pills. Sirens. Headlines. And who would care? But first-
“Ten.”
“If I only could,” she said. “I dream about it. In dreams I get away by sprouting wings.”
“If you’re serious, you know,” the voice said, “escape should not be part of the dream. Sirhan Sirhan was not foolish enough to try to escape. I know things about you. You have attempted suicide. This way, to kill an enemy first, is more honorable, it has significance.”
She giggled, a surprising sound considering what they were talking about. “I’ve made plans, but I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
“That is most simple, the beginning. You first decide you will do it. Then it is one step at a time. I will make it simple for you. I promise to arrange everything.”
“I want to do it,” she assured him. “I hate everything he represents.”
“I like people who know how to hate. So many today are without feeling, without spirit. I detest such people. I think we will do well together. I will telephone you tomorrow night, at six precisely, at your apartment. Please be home. Be alone, OK? Simply say yes, you are determined, you have decided to revenge yourself and show there is a place for justice in the world. I will tell you to do thus and so. I will provide the weapon. Believe me, we will kill this son of a bitch, one hundred percent. You will become a footnote in the history books. Consider everything carefully, please, and tomorrow at six I will call you.”
The phone clicked in her ear.
As she turned back to the bar a face swam out of the fog and closed with her. The jowls were meaty, the voice was too loud, but the eyes, Camilla thought, showed signs of kindness and warmth. He was lonely in a strange town. “That drink we were talking about,” he said.
She enunciated carefully. “A martini, thank you. Very dry, on the rocks, a twist of lemon.”
He used his cigar to summon the barman. “Coming right up.” He touched her arm. “Baby, I’m dying. I was beginning to think there weren’t any friendly women in Miami Beach.”
The fog withdrew slightly and she saw that his eyes, far from being kind, were cold and appraising. He was fingering her skin as though it was some kind of dress material.
“Cancel that drink, will you? I’m sorry. I feel-sick all of a sudden.”
He tried to hold her, his smile fading, but she brushed past him.
CHAPTER 2
Eliot Crowther’s secretary nodded to Abe Berger.
“Go right in. He’s expecting you.”
Berger, a big, rumpled, carelessly dressed man, entered the attorney-general’s office. Crowther reached across the desk to shake hands. He kept in shape playing four-wall handball with subordinates, and Berger was quite sure that he invariably won. He was tall and lean, with a shock of wavy white hair, which made him look a little too handsome. This is almost as much of a handicap for a politician as seeming too intelligent. As a corrective, he wore a pair of half-moon reading glasses.
“Everything under control, I hope, Abe.”
He spoke briskly, but something about his diction always gave Berger the impression that he was speaking lines written by somebody else. Everything about him was carefully packaged. Even his reputation for coldness and disdain, Berger thought, was a part of that package. A reporter had once astonished Berger by asking if he liked the man, a completely meaningless question. He neither disliked nor liked these people. His job was to see that they stayed alive through their term of office. Some gave him more trouble than others. That was the only difference.
He sat down and lit a cigarette deliberately. “We want to ask you if you’ll consider calling off the Miami trip, Mr. Crowther.”
Crowther’s head shot forward. “Why on earth should I do that?”
“You saw the proofs of Jack Anderson’s column.”
Crowther shrugged. “Abe, is that going to hurt anybody? The Friends of Pan-American Democracy have decided to give me their Freedom Medal. It’s been in the works for months. It’s an annual affair, and we both know that the award doesn’t necessarily go to the person who deserves it most. It’s a way of getting a nationally known speaker. They’d have every right to be miffed if I pulled out now, just because a crusading newspaper columnist, with a ruffle of drums and a blare of trumpets, has revealed that my law firm has been receiving a retainer from an American copper company. The company happens to be on cordial terms with a Latin American government which happens to be headed by a man who doesn’t happen to be a Jeffersonian Democrat. But what does it signify? I don’t condone Colonel Caldera’s political tactics for one moment. Naturally U.S. Metals has a stake in the political stability of the area. So does the United States government. So do the Friends of Pan-American Democracy. It just isn’t a sinister thing, that’s all. I hope nobody’s going to believe that with my record I’m in favor of any kind of political dictatorship.”
He laughed and sat back. “I didn’t mean to give you a stump speech, Abe. Let’s just say-cynically, if you will- that canceling Miami because of some half-baked allegations from a discredited newspaper columnist would be the
