subsequently identified as Rosemary Rita Oliveras, twenty-eight, divorced, an immigrant from Puerto Rico. On March 30, the two had again met at the laundromat, engaged in conversation, and later gone for a wandering walk which lasted more than three hours. On April 1, a Saturday, Hoski had surprised his surveillance by emerging from his apartment before noon and walking to the boardinghouse where Mrs.
Oliveras resided. The two thereupon walked to a cafe, lunched and went to a movie.
Subsequently Hoski spent most of his free time with Mrs. Oliveras. Otherwise, nothing changed.
The mail cover on Hoski continued turning up one outgoing letter every week, either left for the mailman or dropped in a letter slot. The letter was invariably addressed to an Eloy R. Albertson, General Delivery, West Covina, California, and invariably contained the same message: Dear Eloy: Nothing new. Hoski.
No one had ever appeared at the West Covina post office to claim the letters.
The second variation in the pattern of Hoskis behavior came on March 11. A taxicab had pulled up to his address at about 1 P.M. and had taken Hoski to an urban renewal demolition district two blocks from the Potomac. He left the cab at a street corner, walked through a mixture of wind-driven rain and sleet to a telephone booth and made a brief call.
He then walked down the street into the sheltered doorway of an abandoned storefront across the street from the Office Bar. Approximately twenty minutes later, at 2:11 P.M., a taxi discharged a passenger at the entrance of the Office Bar. The passenger was subsequently identified as Robert Rainey, thirty-two, a former activist in the Students for a Democratic Society, and a former AIM member, with a three-rap demonstration-related arrest record. He immediately entered the bar. The FBI agent watching Hoski notified his control that a meeting seemed impending. A second agent was dispatched. The second agent arrived twenty-one minutes after Rainey entered the bar. Informed that Hoski was still waiting across the street from the Office Bar, the second agent parked his van down the street. To avoid suspicion, he left the vehicle and took up a position out of sight in the doorway of an empty storefront. About three minutes after he did so, Hoski walked down the street to the doorway, spoke to the agent about getting in out of the weather, and then walked back up the street and into the Office Bar. The second agent thereupon checked and discovered that the alley exit from this bar was closed off by a locked garbage-access gate. Since the second agent had been seen, the first agent entered the bar to determine whether Hoski was making a contact. Hoski was sitting in a booth with Rainey. The agent ordered a beer, drank it at the bar and left there being no opportunity to overhear the conversation between Hoski and Rainey. Hoski left the bar about ten minutes later, walked to the telephone booth at the end of the block, made a brief telephone call, and then returned to his apartment by bus. He emerged again, as was usual, to take a bus to his job.
It is presumed that Rainey delivered a message, the report said.
Leaphorn rubbed his eyes. A messenger, of course, but how had the meeting been arranged? Not by mail, which was covered. Not by telephone, which was tapped. A note hand-delivered to Hoskis mail slot, perhaps. Or handed to him on a bus. Or a prearranged visit to a pay-phone information drop. There were any of a thousand ways to do it. That meant Hoski either knew he was being watched, or suspected he was, or was naturally cautious. Leaphorn frowned. That made Hoskis behavior relative to the meeting inconsistent. The bar was outside Hoskis regular territory, broke his routine, was sure to attract FBI attention. And so, certainly, was his behavior the long wait outside the bar, all that. Leaphorn frowned. The frown gradually converted itself to a smile, to a broad, delighted grin, as Leaphorn realized what Hoski had been doing. Still grinning, Leaphorn leaned back in the chair and stared at the wall, reconstructing it all.
Hoski had known he was being followed and had gone to considerable pains to keep the FBI from knowing that he knew. The weekly letters to California, for example. No one would ever pick them up. Their only purpose was to assure the FBI that Hoski suspected nothing. And then the message had come. Probably a note to call a telephone number.
From a pay phone. Hoski had picked an isolated bar and a meeting time which would guarantee low traffic and high visibility. He had picked a bar without a back entrance to assure that no one could enter without being seen by Hoski. He had notified the messenger of the meeting place only after he was in position to watch the front door. Then he had waited to watch the messenger arrive-and to watch the FBI reaction to the arrival and Hoskis other unorthodox behavior. Why? Because Hoski didn’t know whether the messenger was a legitimate runner of the Buffalo Society or an FBI informer. If the messenger was not FBI, the agency would quickly send someone to tail the messenger.
Thus Hoski had waited for the second tail to arrive. And when the van had parked down the street, Hoski had walked over to make sure the driver was in fact FBI, watching from the doorway, and not someone with a key and business inside. Then, with the legitimacy of the messenger confirmed by the FBI reaction, he’d gone into the bar and received his message.
What next? Leaphorn resumed reading. The following day the agency had doubled its watch on Hoski. The day was routine, except that Hoski had walked to a neighborhood shopping center and, at a J.C. Penney store, had bought a blue-and-white-checked nylon windbreaker, a blue cloth hat and navy-blue trousers.
The next day the routine shattered. A little after 3 P.M. an ambulance arrived at Hoskis apartment building. Hoski, holding a bloody bath towel to his face, was helped into the vehicle and taken to the emergency room at Memorial Hospital. The ambulance attendants reported that they found Hoski sitting on the steps just inside the entrance waiting for them. The police emergency operator revealed that a man had called fifteen minutes earlier, claimed he had cut himself and was bleeding to death, and asked for an ambulance. At the hospital, the attending physician reported that the patients right scalp had been slashed. Hoski said he had slipped with a bottle in his hand and fallen on the broken glass. He was released with seventeen stitches closing the wound, and a bandage which covered much of his face. He took a cab home, called Safety Systems, Inc., and announced that he had cut his head and would have to miss work for two or three days.
At mid-morning the next day, he emerged from the apartment wearing the clothing purchased at J. C. Penney and carrying a bulging pillowcase. He walked slowly, with one rest at a bus stop, to the Bendix laundromat where he had routinely done his laundry. In the laundry, Hoski washed the contents of the pillowcase, placed the wet wash in a dryer, disappeared into the rest room for about four minutes, emerged and waited for the drying cycle to be completed, and then carried the dried laundry in the pillowcase back to his apartment.
Two days later, a young Indian, who hadn’t been observed entering the apartment building, emerged and left in a taxi. This had aroused suspicion. The following day, Hoskis apartment was entered and proved to be empty. Evidence found included a new blue-and-white-checked nylon windbreaker, a blue cloth hat, navy-blue trousers and the remains of a facial bandage, which since it was not stained by medications-was presumed to have been used as a disguise.
Leaphorn read through the rest of it rapidly. Rosemary Rita Oliveras had appeared two days later at Hoskis apartment house, and had called his employer, and then had gone to the police to report him missing. The FBI statement described her as distraught apparently convinced that subject is the victim of foul play. The rest of it was appendix material interviews with Rosemary Rita Oliveras, the transcripts of tapped telephone calls, odds and ends of accumulated evidence. Leaphorn read all of it. He sorted the materials into their folders, fitted the folders back into the accordion file, and sat staring at nothing in particular.
