across the street and kept watch from a doorway. Smoking, waiting to meet a friend. Then another corner, a newspaper. The afternoon dragged on. How much longer?
He went back into the store and caught Molly’s eye. A quick shake of her head. He crossed the floor, positioning himself next to ladies’ scarves, then bought some perfume, all the while keeping the men’s department in sight. Almost closing time. Barbara looked at her watch and then toward the door. A missed connection, or just a salesgirl eager to go home?
When the bell rang, Nick’s heart sank. He’d made himself conspicuous and no one had showed. He watched her close the register with Molly, chatting, then had no choice but to follow the other customers out. He waited across the street again and then, on the chance that she was meeting him after work, moved toward the employee entrance. A group of women, talking. He picked out the blond hair easily and began to track it back toward Dupont Circle. Maybe a drink after work? But Barbara, the reliable tenant, went straight home, and when he saw her go through Mrs Baylor’s door he knew the day, with all its nervous expectations, was gone.
“But she asked to switch again,” Molly said later. “Maybe he couldn’t make it for some reason.”
“And maybe she just likes shirts,” Nick said, depressed.
“No, she never asked before. It has to be. Anyway, you could use the clothes.”
The next morning was like the first: sleepwalking past the sales tables, picking through the suits, the clerk puzzled at his being there again but still wanting to make a sale. Nick said he’d try a few on, hoping the salesman would go away, and went into one of the changing rooms. The door was louvered, so that if you bent a little you could see between the slats. Barbara at the shirt counter. But he couldn’t stay here forever, peering out. The clerk had someone else now and was leading him toward the tailor, but he’d knock in a minute, wanting to know if everything was all right. Nick thought suddenly of the station men’s room, the sick feeling as the footsteps came closer.
He was about to give up and open the door when he saw Barbara’s head rise, relieved, recognizing someone. She turned and pulled two shirts off the shelf, ready, then glanced to either side of her to see if the coast was clear as the man’s back came into view. For a second Nick didn’t breathe. The man was picking up a shirt, handing the other back to her, turning slightly as she went to the register. Nick grabbed the slats with his fingers, lightheaded, steadying himself as his stomach heaved. He’d seen the face. A shouting in his head. He opened the door.
“Ah, and how did we like the gray?” the salesman said, but Nick walked by him, one foot in front of the other, as if he were underwater. Moving toward the shirts, a hundred pictures flashing by him, rearranging themselves in place. The same face through the cubicle slats, in a slice, just like the crack at the study door. Molly watching him, her mouth open. And then he was there, behind the familiar shoulders.
“Hello, Larry,” he said.
Chapter 19
“He told you.” They were on a bench in Lafayette Square, across from the Hay-Adams, everything around them drenched in sun, surreal, Larry’s voice as calm as the quiet park. A man feeding birds, a young woman pushing a pram-no one had the slightest idea. Larry had led him here by the arm, guiding him out of the store as if he were a patient, one of those men in Nick’s unit who’d been too near a bomb and had to be helped away.
“No. He never knew,” Nick said, almost whispering, foggy. “Except at the end.” His voice was coming back now. “That’s why he changed his plan that day. He figured out the lighter-that you were the only one who could have taken it. From the study.”
“That was an accident. I must have put it in my pocket. But then I had it-”
“He was going to use you to make the deal for him. Then he realized you were the one person he couldn’t use. He’d have to do it himself.”
“He must have been out of his mind.”
“Yes.”
“Come back. Really, Nick-”
“Are you going to kill me too?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re my son.”
“You killed the other one.” Then, to Larry’s blank expression, “She was pregnant. Rosemary Cochrane. It was yours, wasn’t it?”
Larry was silent. “I didn’t know,” he said finally, past denial.
“Would it have made any difference?”
“No.” He looked away. “It was too dangerous.”
“She wouldn’t have named you. She was in love with you.”
“You can’t trust that,” he said dismissively. “She was just a girl. Then she got-emotional. And she slipped up somehow. They got on to her. It was dangerous. She knew about me.”
“But he didn’t.”
“No. But he was going to crack. I saw it that night.” He glanced over. “When you were spying on us.”
“I didn’t understand anything.”
Larry sighed. “Well, neither did Walter. That was the problem. He didn’t understand how serious it was. He thought-I don’t know what the hell he thought. Buy them off with a name and live happily ever after? It doesn’t work that way. Once you start, you go to the end. And what name? He only had Schulman.”
“Who recruited him.”
Larry looked back, surprised. “That’s right. And me. At Penn. The one point of connection. I couldn’t risk that. If he’d given them Schulman, it might have led them to me.” He wrinkled his face. “The way things work out. I was the one who suggested he try Walter. He was always looking for prospects. I told him Walter might be promising material. But he turned out to be the weak link. You see that, don’t you? He might have brought the whole thing down.”
Nick looked at him, incredulous. Was he being asked to agree?
“They had to protect me. I was in the White House. We’d never had a chance like that.”
“Why didn’t you just kill him too?”
Larry looked at him with an indulgent expression. “Is that what you think of us? Of course we didn’t kill him. Anyway, you take care of your own, unless there’s no other choice. That would have been a foolish risk to run. Two deaths? No one would have believed the other was suicide. There’d be no end to it.”
“The police didn’t believe it anyway. You made sure of that. With the lighter.”
“No, I was making sure of him. I wasn’t sure he’d go. Walter was unpredictable.” He paused. “He had reasons to stay. He might have thought he could tough it out, not accept our invitation.”
“But not if he thought he’d be accused of murder. Then he’d have to go.”
“Well, it never came to that. It was just a precaution. He did go.”
“Convenient for you.”
“Convenient for everybody. Except old Ken Welles, I suppose, but that couldn’t be helped. Oh, you think we wanted him stopped? No-he was useful. He was so busy looking for Commies in all the wrong places, nobody thought to look in the right ones. Loyalty oaths for schoolteachers — Christ. But even a fool gets lucky once.”
“You had Hoover looking too.”
“Well, I didn’t want him looking at me. All I had to do was suggest that Walter must have been tipped off by someone in the Bureau and he was off. Catching his rats.” He stopped. “I never wanted to hurt Walter.”
“You killed him.”
“We got him out. It was the best we could do. He had a life there, you said so yourself. We had to do it.”
“Not then. Now. You killed him. Or had him killed.”
“You don’t know that.”
“We’re sitting here, aren’t we? How do you think I got to you?”
Larry looked up at him, serious. “How did you?”
“First tell me why.”
