Clusser’s face lost all emotion and regained it again…in about a millisecond. “ Peter Arnott?”
“I guess. He works at Stratford University.”
Clusser smiled his white teeth. He tilted his head again, but there was no glow in his eyes. “No he doesn’t. Is this the man who shot you.”
Porter waited, of course well-aware of the answer. “No.”
“Then who did.”
Porter paused. “I don’t know his name.” He couldn’t very well say he was shot by Joseph Smith! It was obviously a pseudonym.
“You’ve gotta work with me on this, Porter!”
“I’m going to be tried for an international crime in a Federal court, right? For what, stealing Ulman’s merchandise.”
“You got it. Look…by law you have the right to say nothing here without legal counsel-”
“Clusser, I need your help! I told you, the University took KM-2 away from me!” Porter said, leaning into his friend’s face.
“Stratford strictly states that you, John D. Porter, are in possession of the codex.” Clusser stopped with his mouth open. His probing eyes dug deep into Porter’s brain, scanning for the facts Porter couldn’t explain.
Porter half-hoped Clusser would find what he needed and say nothing. But the throbbing silence ached. Clusser stared until Porter moved to speak for the sake of killing the quiet and salvaging their friendship.
But Clusser’s words were faster. “You don’t trust me anymore.”
“Only because you refuse to believe me when I’m telling you the truth,” said Porter, sitting back slowly.
Clusser swished his tongue in his closed mouth. “You think I’m with those who tried to kill you. I’m not. But unless you help me figure out what’s happening here, one thing’s for sure: your middle initial stands for Dead-meat. Either in the courtroom…or outside it.”
“Thanks for the confidence,” said Porter, folding his arms.
“They don’t want you alive, Porter.” Clusser added, “You were involved in the incident at the library, weren’t you.”
“How did you-”
“The librarians made a list of the odd conglomeration of books you’d left on a table. It’s amazing the police didn’t trace them to you.”
“I never checked them out.”
“How many students at Stratford would have a mixture of Mayan, Hebrew, and Egyptian texts and dictionaries spread open in one place? It was in the report, but never followed for some reason.”
“I can give you one. They didn’t want the police involved.” Porter crossed his legs under the table, then loosened his limbs as he realized he was hugging himself-a common sign of insecurity and an attempt at psychological self-defense.
“The night librarian was given three hundred-dollar bills by an unrecognized man to step out for a coffee. The librarian came forward with the guilt-ridden truth. So if you were the only one in the library…you broke the window to get off the second floor. It was your blood the officers typed.”
“And you can’t see why I’m in here now? They want to destroy all evidence of Ulman’s find.”
“And they killed Dr. Ulman,” Clusser said for him.
Porter nodded.
Leaning forward, Clusser said, “The nebulous they won’t hold up in court, Porter.”
“If they got into Stratford, who’s to say they wouldn’t gain control of the codex after the judge is through?”
“So you do have KM-2.”
“No! I’m saying a ‘what-if!’” Porter was slipping up. He needed help, but was afraid to open his mouth anymore. He wiped his face with both hands. “What does Arnott have to do with all this, then.”
The FBI looked silently through the transparent air, thick with dust visible in the bright beams from over their heads. “I shouldn’t say anything.”
Porter slapped the table. “Yes you should! Comp.!?!”
“Don’t call me that. We haven’t been missionaries for years.” Clusser groaned as their eyes held each other in a silent bond full of crackling electricity. “Raymond Polaski, the suspect in the Wilkinson murder, came forward. He said he was hired by a man called Gerard Jasper. Polaski said, however, that he heard a number of people call Jasper a different name: Peter.”
“Then you have your proof! Polaski can testify and-”
“Polaski shot himself while in Police Protection.”
“Really,” Porter said in disbelief. “Do people in safe houses usually have access to guns?”
“We don’t know how he obtained the weapon. But with Polaski’s information, I was able to find out a bit about this…Peter Arnott.”
“False name,” Porter said with a dull voice. Reality was crumbling around him. With innocence, he looked at Clusser. “You’re FBI. You told me agents handled cases in their own areas, never chasing them personally across the US like in the junk novels, but transferring the info and responsibility to whatever office is closest to the relative location.”
Clusser stood and looked with dark eyes at his one-time companion.
Porter licked his lips. “You have no jurisdiction here.”
With a flat smile, Clusser said, “Just came to help a friend.” He turned to the exit.
“Where are you going?”
The agent stopped and looked back. “Porter…you’re not lying to me… I need to know.”
Porter shook his head.
“Then I’m off to the bat-cave. See you in court.”
May 5
8:40 a.m. PST
Well, the tuna was a little old, but Harvey Goodwill munched away without noticing. He’d waited in his beat- up ‘92 Mustang for over two hours, watching for his mark, one John D. Porter, to show his face.
It would be an effortless assassination.
Goodwill’s mark had a rather simple face with no peculiarities, the kind of kisser Goodwill wanted for himself-Porter would make the perfect killer! The student’s hair was flat and dry brown, his eyes a haze of plain gray. Even when Porter smiled there wasn’t a glow. At least not in the photographs. Goodwill memorized the snapshots before tearing them into the toilet of a motel with no name.
Goodwill had taken easier men down, like the rich fellow of many years who’d been feeding his own organized criminal unit enough funds to make them immortal and beyond reach. That man had never openly posed as a crime lord, and therefore never suspected that anyone knew of his existence. He’d lived in obscurity behind electronic defenses and more than ten angry rottweilers that chewed on whole tires for fun. That guy was a sip of soda. He never awoke from his sleep, and the doctors blamed his death on his yellow liver.
This Porter job wouldn’t be much of a bother at all. It would be over within an hour. Goodwill would be on a Greyhound to Florida before eleven o’clock, reading the sports page and chewing on apple skins.
He smiled at the thought.
The plan was basic. One man on the outside: the hit man. One on the inside: the point man. The point man went by the name Red Rover, while Goodwill was known only as Sunshine.
Goodwill waited and watched as Red Rover took care of all preliminary operations. Someone made the stupid jurisdictional decision to put Porter in a small bus for the trip to court.
The point man had already checked: there was no one else but the driver on board, one Jackie Golb, and he was a competent officer. Golb wasn’t a US Marshall, which was out of the ordinary. And normally, a second Marshall accompanied the driver while transporting a prisoner aboard a bus. These intentional errors in propriety amused Goodwill. Who knows, Goodwill’s employers may have had a hand in setting up this folly. The lax attitude on the part of the administrators would become a point of contentious debate during the investigation that would inevitably follow the assassination. The officers would yell at each other while Goodwill put up his heels and spent his well- earned bucks faraway.
