banks won’t give the company a loan?”
Brayer was right. It was ridiculous. The Organized Crime Division of the Justice Department was—what? three hundred people? And there was no way even to sort out the information that was coming in now from every agency whose jurisdiction included some avatar of the Mafia. Because that was everybody.
Elizabeth walked across the casino toward the corridor with its waiting elevators. When she opened the door to her room, she managed to stifle the scream before it got out, but not the jolt of adrenalin that seemed to pump into her veins. She could feel her temples throbbing as she said, “What are you doing here?”
Grove was the one who spoke. He said quietly, “Please come in and close the door.”
Elizabeth came in but didn’t put down her purse. She remained standing. “What are you doing in my room? Searching my luggage?”
“Oh, no, Miss Waring. You’re in the clear. Completely. We’re here for another reason.” It was Daly who spoke.
Then Grove again, “We’re here because there’s a tap on your telephone. We’ve had a team in here half the day looking for bugs, but all they had was a remote on your line.”
Elizabeth sat down in the chair beside the desk. “So you’ve found the problem.” It wasn’t a question, it was a statement. She was relieved. They were here to tell her she wasn’t under suspicion anymore. For a moment she almost felt grateful, but then it didn’t seem appropriate. “You’ve taken care of it?”
“Yes,” said Daly, “we’ve detected the tap. But it isn’t feasible to remove it. We don’t know where it is, and we can’t take it off without compromising other …” he paused, searching for the right word, “sensitive parts of the investigation.”
“So what do I do?” asked Elizabeth.
“Nothing you wouldn’t do otherwise,” said Grove. He looked at his watch, then said to Daly, “It’s almost six fifteen.”
Daly said, “Miss Waring, in a minute your telephone will ring. Just answer it and say the things you would normally say. But don’t ask for more information than you’re given, and don’t volunteer anything.”
Elizabeth said, “All right. Who is it, though?”
“It’ll be Mr. Connors,” said Grove. The telephone rang and Elizabeth jumped. It was too quick.
“Answer it,” said Grove.
Elizabeth obeyed. “Hello?”
“Agent Waring?” came a female voice.
“Yes.”
“Please hold for Mr. Connors.”
Connors came on immediately, and the secretary was gone. Elizabeth had the sensation that there were numberless people listening to him as he spoke. Her mind ticked off the ones she knew of. The secretary, Daly, Grove, a team of technicians trying to follow some electronic signal that could tell them where in the circuitry an extra milliohm of resistance occurred. And the wiretappers themselves. She couldn’t picture them, of all the invisible listeners. There was no face, no idea what it would look like—there was just the sense that there was a person, an intelligence waiting between her and Connors, not breathing or moving, not necessarily even capable of breath or movement. Maybe it was just a tape recorder. Connors said, “Miss Waring?”
“Yes, sir.”
“We’ve found the leak in the operation.”
What was he saying? Was he telling the wiretappers that Internal Security had found the tap? Why? “Really?” was all she could say. And why was he telling her?
“That’s right. And I’m positive he’ll tell us everything he knows. We’ve finally got the break we needed.”
He? A person? She said, “That’s great, Mr. Connors.” She wasn’t sure how enthusiastic to be, so she tried to modulate her tone to imitate his.
“We’ve got it set up so he’ll have to talk. Immunity from prosecution, money, resettlement. If he doesn’t talk we’ve got enough to charge him. So the problem turned out to be a bonus.”
“That’s wonderful,” said Elizabeth. She almost asked him what he wanted her to do next, but she remembered that Daly had told her not to ask questions. She said, “Thank you for letting me know.”
Connors said, “Quite all right, Miss Waring. You can go on with the investigation from your end, and we’ll handle the rest from here. Good-bye.” He hung up.
Elizabeth put down the receiver. “Do you think that was long enough?” she asked Daly.
Daly was standing up and beginning to move toward the door. “That was fine, Miss Waring,” he said. He seemed to be speaking to the carpet.
“But I always heard it took a long time to find a tap—ten or twenty minutes,” she said.
Grove and Daly were moving toward the door, but she stepped in front of them. “Wait,” she said. It couldn’t be the way it looked, but what else could it be? And if it wasn’t, what was all that nonsense about finding a leak? She said, “Tell me what just went on here. They weren’t looking for the tap at all, were they? It was something else.”
Grove’s face remained impassive. “That’s right. We’re leaving the tap in place.”
Elizabeth’s heart was pounding, and she could feel her temples beginning to throb again. She understood, but she was going to make them say it. “So that’s it,” she said.
Daly’s eyes fluttered to her face and then back to the carpet. “It was necessary,” he said. “There is a leak, we’re sure of it.”
“So you decided to set him up?”
“That’s right,” said Grove. “You did a good job. Now we’ve got to leave here and get on with our work. Thank you for your cooperation.”
“But you know what you did. They’ll kill whoever it is.”
Grove nodded. “Maybe they will. Judging from the rest of the case, they’ll probably try, anyway. Good night.”
She said, “But that’s—”
Grove interrupted, his voice suddenly harsh. “Who do you think that was on the other end of the line, lady? It was Connors. He authorized it, he made the call himself. So forget it. You’ve done your part. Thanks to you the leak has been neutralized.”
“You—we—just made sure somebody in Justice would be murdered,” she said. “Maybe somebody in my office. And he won’t even have any warning because there wasn’t any real investigation. Nobody was even accused of anything.”
Grove’s face didn’t change. He said, “What do you think this is, anyway? Do you think it’s a game? Whoever it is was doing the same thing to you. Ever think of that? And if we got lucky and caught the bastard he was dead already. In jail or out of it his friends would have gotten him.” He stopped, and seemed to remember something. “And by the way, don’t stop using that telephone. Just remember not to say anything you don’t want them to hear.”
Elizabeth sat down on the bed and watched them leave. She tried to decide what she felt. Then she identified it. She knew that a shower wouldn’t wash it off, but she also knew that the shower was waiting for her in the next room and absolution was not.
“WE’VE FINALLY GOT SOMETHING on Edgar Fieldston,” said Brayer. “The SEC called a few minutes ago, and they think they’ve gotten a glimpse of his coattails.” He was smiling, but it wasn’t his enthusiastic smile. Elizabeth waited for the rest of it.
“Yesterday a loan was approved at the United Free Bank of the Bahamas to an Edgar Fieldston—four million dollars’ worth.”
“What was the collateral?”
“A portfolio of stocks. A lot of blue-chip stuff to sweeten the deal: IBM, Commsat, Xerox, ITT, but the main part was FGE stock. Almost five million dollars’ worth, if you take it on today’s market.”
“How did the SEC get wind of it? The Bahamas aren’t subject to our reporting regulations, are they?”
“No, but the United Free Bank wasn’t up to the transaction. They had to get in touch with First National in Miami. You see, the deal was for cash.”
“Oh, God,” said Elizabeth.
But Brayer continued. “Even that wouldn’t have done it, because bank-to-bank transactions aren’t subject to
