Billy broke the pause, the momentary silence among them, with a question. “You want me to write it up?”
“Put me down for Roosevelt Grier,” said Ike. “Thank you. Walter, if you don’t mind.”
“I’ll take Tommy John,” said Billy, showing loyalty to himself and his unwillingness to be moved off his original conviction. “Walter, what about you?”
“No,” said Walter. “Don’t write it, not yet. You say the Kennedys are more famous for being dead. Okay, I say the same for Wild Bill Hickok.”
“Wild Bill Hickok?”
“That’s right, Billy. Aces and eights.”
“Well now, boys,” cautioned Ike. “This is getting out of hand, if you know what I mean. Billy, you say the Kennedys, either one. Walter, you have Wild Bill Hickok-which I think is a good one-but I’m taking John Lennon.”
“That’s a stretch, don’t you think? Christ, he was a Beatle.”
“You don’t like it, Walter, don’t vote for it. Go on now, Billy,” said Ike, “Now you write it up.”
On the chalkboard, near the old register, Billy scrawled, KENNEDYS/WILD BILL/THE BEATLES.
“Beatles? Not what I said, but that’ll do,” said the old man with the silly cap. “They ain’t all dead yet, but that’ll do.”
“And just what does this prove?” asked Helen pointing toward Billy’s handiwork. “I don’t get it, and I’m not sure you fellas do either.”
“It shows,” Ike pronounced, “you never can tell what you’ll be remembered for. Isn’t that right, Walter?”
“As rain, my old friend. Right as rain,” said Walter. Helen seemed unconvinced.
Walter went to Boston. He spent two days there, talking to people, some at Harvard, others in the financial trade. He also had former clients in Boston. One in particular, a mature woman from a legitimate old New England family-not one like the more popular, Johnny-come-lately Kennedys-was eager to help Walter. So many of the pre- Revolutionary Protestant families hated the upstart Irish, thought of them as twentieth-century fakes. Plus, Walter had helped this woman in a way she could never have hoped for, at a time when she thought she might lose everything. Now she could do him a service and she was truly thankful for the opportunity. He wanted to know as much as he could about Abby O’Malley. He wanted to know who her friends were, where she spent money and how much, and especially who she talked to on the phone, both hard-wired and cell phone. Such information could be had. He had done it before, more than once. All you needed was the right contacts and sometimes enough money.
“Would you like me to hire an investigator?” she asked Walter.
“I don’t want anyone to do anything that might alert Miss O’Malley.”
“Of course not. And the last thing I would ever do is something that displeased you, Walter. You know how grateful I am.”
She said she would retain an investigator of the highest respectability, someone who would act with great discretion. The investigator’s work would never be shown to anyone but her. When he was finished, his work product would disappear just as he would. That was important, Walter said. No records. She said she would call Walter when she had something. He thanked her, said he would be in Boston for a few days and would wait for her call. He never asked about her daughter. That’s not the way he worked.
Sean Dooley was more than a little surprised to hear from Walter. A man doesn’t hold a gun to your head, strip you naked on the floor and threaten to crush your balls beneath his foot, then call you up on a Sunday afternoon.
“You remember me, don’t you Sean?”
“That I do.”
“Good. I need a favor from you.”
“A what? A favor… from me?”
“Tell me about Abby O’Malley.”
“Tell you what?”
“Tell me everything. I’ll listen.”
It wasn’t much. Dooley told Walter he’d never seen her. Spoken to her a few times, but never in person, always by phone.
“How’d she find you?” asked Walter.
“I don’t know,” answered Dooley.
“You don’t know? You get a call from a stranger and you never ask how?”
“Not with the kind of money she was offering.”
“To do what exactly?”
“Mostly to watch this old man. Englishman, a Lord or something. You never know with them. Follow him around. See where he went, write down how long he was there. Things like that.”
“How many times did you break in?”
“A few-broke into a few places…”
“Places where the old man had been?”
“Yes, that’s right. But I never found nothing.”
Louis Devereaux didn’t call for very much research. His background information was easy to get, some of it public record-Yale, University of Chicago, CIA. Of course, there came a time in Devereaux’s public resume when he began taking on titles at the CIA Walter knew to be pretense. The truth behind those things was harder to get at, perhaps impossible. But it hardly mattered. Walter was certain Devereaux had told him the truth about himself when they were in Atlanta. Men like that don’t tell small lies, he told himself. Devereaux was eager to get Lacey’s confession. But why? Walter was sure he was working on his own. It made no sense to think the CIA was behind such a thing. No, it was Devereaux. The question of motive, however, remained open. What could Devereaux want with Lacey’s confession and why would he kill for it?
Walter considered the situation, the series of events that led him to this point. What Devereaux had going for him was the President of the United States. If the President wanted Lacey’s document, if the President knew Harry Levine had it, why didn’t he just ask for it? And wouldn’t Harry have delivered it to the President? Walter was sure he would have. Why didn’t he then? Perhaps he did, or perhaps he thought he was. Perhaps the President did ask for the document and put Devereaux in charge of getting it. Walter considered that as a possibility. Harry had never told him about details like that. He never said what the President specifically told him to do.
Of course, Walter thought, it was Devereaux. It had to be. He figured Devereaux for a killer, a big-time killer. Walter couldn’t be exactly sure what Louis Devereaux did for the CIA, but he knew Tucker Poesy worked for him, and Tucker Poesy was definitely a hitter and probably not much else since she proved inept at what she tried to do in Walter’s house. She paid a high price for that misstep. A busted jaw maybe, and a week, naked, tied to a chair, hand fed and watered, never knowing what might happen next, shitting and pissing all over herself. That’s a high price, he thought. But in the end he let her go. She didn’t kill Harry. She pulled a gun on him, in his own house. Ten years ago he would have killed her without a second thought, without a moment’s hesitation. Ah, fuck her! he thought, with some degree of frustration.
Abby O’Malley and Louis Devereaux had some unknowns hanging out there. Still, Walter had every reason to believe all their unanswered questions would be resolved, soon. It was the Georgians who presented a more pressing problem. Walter had no idea who they were. Aminette Messadou was all he had. He’d never heard of her great-uncle or the story of his retreat from Georgia. He didn’t know very much about the Russian Revolution except that was how the communists got their foot in the door. He didn’t know the Czar’s name. Never saw the movie. Never heard of the transwhatever federation.
After a few hours looking up these and other things on the Internet, Walter placed a call to Dr. E. Bard Leon, a professor at Marlboro College in Vermont. One of the skills Walter had perfected over the years was his ability to call a perfect stranger, tell the stranger he needed their help, and get it. Despite whatever decline he was in, if he’d kept anything he’d kept that. Like so many had done before him, professor Leon agreed to see Walter. It was an easy drive from Boston to Marlboro, Vermont, just a few miles west of Brattleboro. Before getting to the campus, he stopped at a small diner, on the side of the road, in an old wooden building, not a modern aluminum diner, and had a bowl of macaroni and cheese made with pure, white Vermont cheddar. It was the best he’d ever tasted.
Professor Leon turned out to be a walker, a nature lover, one of those fifty-year-old men who wore hiking
