blond man?'
That was a good point, Peter considered. Not a bad start. He had never seen the men actually get together.
'No. I was really going on the bike by then. It wasn't the kind of thing you wanted to stop and... well, you know... the whole thing lasted about thirty seconds.'
Peter began to smile. An involuntary, nervous smile. A serious moment of doubt and vulnerability. He caught himself twisting his sports shirt between his thumb and forefinger.
Campbell sat forward on his swivel chair. He rushed out his cigarette. 'I've got to ask you to take my word about something, Peter. ' He leveled Macdonald with a stare. 'I'll try. Shoot.'
'Turtle Bay was an isolated incident. It was retribution for a harsh Supreme Court decision here in Coastown.... Except for the fact that some Americans were killed, it's a local affair. I don't know if you've read anything about the murders at Fountain Valley golf course on St. Croix-'
'Okay. That theory is all well and good,' Peter broke in. 'But what about this blond monkey? Seriously. Can you tell me what a white man was doing there with a sniper's rifle? Kind of gun you use to blow John Kennedy's Adam's apple out with. Tell me something comforting about that guy and I'll go home happy. Won't bother you ever again. '
Brooks Campbell got up from his desk. He made a tiny crack in the drapes, and bright sunlight pierced into the attic room. 'You know what, Peter?' he said, giving just a hint of a slick politician's smile. 'I don't know what in hell a white man was doing up there.
'Let me tell you a little state secret, though. I've listened to over, oh, fifty people who have clues about Turtle Bay. I've listened to the police, the army... and everything I've heard so far points to Colonel Dassie Dred. I don't know what else to tell you here, Peter.'
Campbell stopped his pacing. His mind had been wandering back to a meeting one year ago in the Nevada desert. to slick projections made about Damian and Carrie Rose.
Christ! They'd screwed up already. Rose was blown wide open. The great mysterious Damian Rose-whom even they had never been able to see.
Campbell looked across the small attic room at Peter Macdonald. His eyes fell to the Hawaiian shirt. 'Trust me, Peter.' He smiled halfheartedly, his mind still on the Roses. 'Give my secretary a number where I can reach you.'
Peter didn't answer right away. Mind going a little crazy on him. In God we trust. All others pay cash, Brooks.... He had the sudden nauseating feeling that he was all by himself again.
'Jesus,' slipped out of his mouth.
Then the surly black secretary came back, and the interview was over.
Peter left the big white mansion in a sweat. He couldn't remember feeling so alone and down in a long, long time. Not since the march into Cambodia.
As he walked through the pretty embassy grounds, he nodded at the well-scrubbed marines on guard duty, smiled at the Walt Disney World tourists-but he kept thinking back to the government actor Brooks Campbell.
Who, meanwhile, stood behind a big dormer winddow up on the third floor. Smoking a cigarette, watching Macdonald go out the front gates. The Witness.
Just before noon the Loner shuffled down Bath Street in Coastown.
The long-haired man, 'Dyno-mite,' was holding Carrie Rose's letter as if it were a birthday party invitation his mother had told him to keep nice and clean.
Chachalacas and a cockatoo chatted up and down the pretty, quiet side street. A few pariah dogs barked at him, and the Loner barked back. Some goats were lunching mindlessly on garbage and scruffy back lawns-and the Loner remembered that he was hungry, too.,
And stoned out of his mind. Wasted. Blown away. Feeling rather nice on the balmy afternoon.
Fifty Bath turned out to be the office of the Evening Star newspaper.
The Loner rang a bell hanging loose by its own electrical wires. Then he waited.
In a few minutes a black girl with hibiscus in her hair appeared in the doorway. The girl was laughing as if she'd just been told a joke. She accepted the manila envelope. Then suddenly, unbelievably, loud shotgun blasts shattered the quiet of the side street. The Loner was thrown hard against the doorjamb and wall. His skinny, needle-tracked arms flew up, palms out flat. His hair flew like a dirty mop being shaken out. Bullets held him against the wall, stitching his chest and face. He was dead before he slid to the ground.
A few minutes later the Evening Star's flabbergasted black editor was trying to read the letter the man had brought. The letter appeared to be from Colonel Dassie Dred-Monkey Dred.
It promised the most severe and unusual punishments if the white foreigners didn't leave San Dominica.
It promised that if the letter itself wasn't printed for all to see in the evening news, a similar delivery would be made at 50 Bath Street the following morning.
At 12:30 Dr. Meral Johnson arrived at the tiny newspaper office. The black police chief examined the gaping hole in the newspaper office's front door. He looked at the dead man. Talked with the young girl who had accepted the letter. Sent his men to scour the neighborhood, to try to find out if anyone had witnessed the shooting. Then it was Meral Johnson himself who came up with the name 'Dead Letter' to describe the delivery. Thus far, Dr. Johnson realized sadly, it was just about his only contribution to the extraordinary case.
CHAPTER TEN
The cr6me de la cr6me of the Intelligence
people are the plodding bureaucrats. The worst of them are the Ivy League and Eton boys. And in this case, the cr6me didn't necessarily rise to the top.
