that too outre even for the rich? Marlene felt out of her depth; the sexual perversions that had come her way over the years, although remarkably varied, had lacked the flavor of real decadence, and ran more to simple wackos like the corpse fucker, Oscar Sobell.
Marlene cranked the film rapidly backward through the viewer, having forgotten that Karp had specifically told her not to do that or the thing would jam, and sure enough the thing jammed. She peered into the film-advance mechanism. It looked like a splice had come loose and jumped the sprockets, causing the film to pile up behind it.
She was just about to try to fix it when the front door burst open and Karp and Lucy bounced in, red-faced and soaking wet. Sweetie came in too, and dashed toward the kitchen, tongue out and dripping spit, raining chunks of matted snow from its coat. Marlene saw what was going to happen and shouted, 'Nooo!' The dog stood in the center of the kitchen and shook itself vigorously, coating every surface and Marlene with a good three quarts of freezing water.
'We want cocoa! We want cocoa!' chanted Karp and Lucy in chorus.
'You planned this,' said Marlene, wiping her face with the dish towel.
'Me?' said Karp, giggling with his daughter.
Thirty minutes later, they had all changed clothes, toweled the dog dry, and mopped the floor. Marlene was melting chocolate on the stove, the little girl and the dog were watching TV, and Karp was at the kitchen table looking doubtfully at his editing machine. The radio was turned up loud, against the bugging.
'You screwed it up,' he said.
'A splice broke.'
Karp popped the hatch on the advance mechanism and pried the errant film out. 'This is the porn film the old lady had in her attic? How was it? Pretty hot?'
Marlene told him about the film and its main characters and what she had surmised about its auteur.
Karp whistled. 'That's quite a story, babe. What're you going to do with it?'
'God knows! This is going to destroy the Dobbses if it gets out-' She stopped, struck by a thought. 'Hey, do you think…?'
'Mmm, yeah, I'm following you. It could explain why Dobbs is messing with the assassination investigation.'
'What, you mean somebody is blackmailing him with this stuff? But who? And why?'
'Well, the 'why' part is easy,' replied Karp. He had smoothed the film down on the edit block and was about to repair the splice, a skill he had picked up in recent months.
'There's any number of people who'd like the investigation to dry up and blow away. As to who-you got me there, kid. Are you sure the camera guy was Dobbs's old man?'
'Pretty sure. It was sort of the same kind of movie he always made: quick nervous pans and arty cuts, using a telephoto for close-ups. And the film was there where only he could've put it. Why, are you thinking that maybe some… agency made it? The FBI or the Russians? Or a private eye?' She was stirring milk into the chocolate, making it smooth.
'I don't know,' said Karp. 'We'll probably never know, but it's… hmm, that's peculiar.'
'What?'
'There's another splice real close to the one you broke, let's see, two, four, eight frames away. Why would anyone want to splice a third of a second into a home movie? You practically wouldn't even be able to register that you saw it before it was gone.'
Marlene put down her spoon and looked over his shoulder. 'What's in those frames? Can you just stick it under the gizmo there?'
Karp placed a frame from the start of the spliced strip over the little window in the editor and snapped the mechanism shut.
'Just a guy in a raincoat. Looks like a cemetery.' Karp tugged at the free end of the film and drew it through the viewer. The man in the film knelt swiftly and placed a bouquet on a grave and then stood up again and faced the camera. Then the film showed the window of the house in Niantic.
'Pull it back, pull it back!' cried Marlene.
'You want the guy again?' said Karp. 'I want to see the hot stuff.'
But he pulled the film back to show the man's face.
'Oh, my God!' said Marlene weakly. She sat down in a chair, her knees trembling. 'That's Weinberg. That was a picture of him leaving a bouquet of flowers at a grave at Arlington. That's how they did it, how he signaled where he dropped the microfilmed secrets for Reltzin. And Dobbs took a picture of him doing it. That means he knew Weinberg and knew what he was doing, just like Weinberg said. Which means he really was a spy and a traitor. Which means Gaiilov must have lied, because Blaine told him to or because he really was a double agent… Oh, God, I'm nauseous already from this.' She held a hand up over her mouth and stared at her husband with wide eyes.
'You could ask Gaiilov,' said Karp.
'Yeah, right, if I could find him. He's probably in Bolivia.'
'No, he's in Texas. In Dallas, as a matter of fact,' said Karp with a calmness he did not feel. 'Calls himself Galinski.'
'What! How did you…?'
'I asked V.T. and he told me. I guess I just forgot until now.'
'Tell me!'
'V.T. said he's a member of the Dallas Russian community. His name came up because he was one of the people who knew Lee Oswald and his wife and because he had some kind of shadowy CIA connection-we thought- just like de Morenschildt and some others.'
'And he's obviously keeping an even lower profile, because Harry didn't turn him up in any of the usual checks,' said Marlene. After a moment, she continued, twirling her fingers through her hair, as she did while in intense thought. 'So here's Harley Blaine's pet ex-spy, who knew Oswald, who knew that Richard Dobbs was guilty and lied about it, and here we also have Richard Dobbs's son, working himself into a position of influence on the assassination committee, and pushing for a strong investigation, he says, but really steering the investigation away from the CIA, or why would he have arranged to have those memos and the film ripped off, and have told someone you were going to Miami to see those guys, and that must mean-' She stopped, confused. 'What must it mean?'
'It means we're becoming Kennedy nuts,' said Karp sourly. He tapped the film on the editor. 'But for sure this is blackmail material. If somebody else has this information, Dobbs is in their pocket. The only question is who.'
'You think your Irishman in New Orleans?'
'Baton Rouge. Yeah, he's looking better and better. I want to go out there and take a look at him. And then talk to Gaiilov in Dallas. And maybe Blaine too.'
'I want to come,' said Marlene.
He stared at her. Behind her, unwatched, the cocoa boiled over, filling the apartment with the dark, cloying odor of burned chocolate.
The man called Caballo looked out on the falling snow and felt cold. He hated snow, not only because it was cold, but because it meant he couldn't move, couldn't do what he had come to Washington to do. He hated Washington too. The public buildings all looked like prisons to him. They were full of little people making little rules for other people to follow, pretending that you could live real life according to lists of rules. Caballo knew that wasn't true. You just had to do what was necessary; you had to survive. That was why he liked Guatemala, that and the climate.
On the second day after the blizzard, Bishop called.
'There's a little hitch,' he said.
'There's always a little hitch lately,' replied Caballo, with uncharacteristic impatience.
'Oh? Getting antsy, are you?'
'Yeah. I want to do the job and get out of here. I'm getting a bad feeling about this operation. What was that hitch, anyway?'
'Our candidate elected not to take over the investigation. However, the man they found is just as good,
