Shadow of a Broken Man

First Avenue.

'I'm sorry about what happened to your friend,' Lippitt said as he came up beside me.

The sincerity in his voice surprised me. I looked into his face and, for a moment, he seemed different: no longer Super Agent devoid of feeling, but a man in his fifties holding himself together well-a hard, tough man doing a hard, mean job. I suddenly realized that I wanted to know more about him; I didn't even know his first name.

'Thank you,' I said.

His eyes and voice suddenly turned cold. 'Damn it, Frederickson, I warned you something like this could happen.'

'Go to hell. I tried to take your advice, but you warned me too late. It was one of your colleagues who killed him.'

'Don't be a fool,' he said contemptuously. 'Bhutal was not killed by the Americans.'

'What's the difference? You're all fucking idiots!' I immediately felt childish, but it didn't make any difference. Lippitt was obviously beyond any insult I could come up with; he didn't even blink.

'How do you know Tal?' he asked calmly.

'How do you know him?'

'I don't know him personally,' Lippitt said evenly. 'I know of him. He's not exactly a friend of the United States.'

'He's not exactly an enemy, either.'

Lippitt picked up a pebble, examined it, tossed it to the sidewalk below. 'That depends on your point of view.'

'What you mean is that he doesn't always agree with our policies.'

'I mean,' Lippitt suddenly shot back, 'that I'd like to know what you were talking about in there.'

'That's none of your business, Lippitt.'

'It's your country's business, and that makes it my business.' He was angry now, making no attempt to hide it. 'When you took on this case, you opened up a Pandora's box that I thought was closed five years ago. Damn it, you've started a chain reaction, and it has to be stopped! Those stains on the concrete could well have been you!'

'Don't worry about me,' I said. 'Why don't you tell me why Victor Rafferty was so important to you? Why did you kill him … if you did kill him?'

'I killed him, but I can't tell you what you want to know. You must tell me who hired you.'

'No.'

'Will you tell me why you were hired?'

'If I tell you 'why,' you'll know 'who.' '

Lippitt scratched a well-groomed fingernail across the pebbled stone in front of him. Again, I had the feeling he was suppressing considerable anger. 'Tell me, Frederickson: Have you run across the name Foster in your investigation?'

'Why?' I asked. The word seemed to stick in my throat as wet cold rippled across my belly.

'Foster is the married name of Rafferty's widow.' Lippitt was staring out at the traffic, but his voice hummed with guy-wire tension. 'She married a construction contractor who used to do a lot of work for Rafferty. Both of them have been under our protection for the past five years, although they haven't known it. Yesterday they dropped out of sight. We don't know where they are, but I suspect their disappearance has something to do with your investigation.' He paused, took a deep breath, straightened up, and stared down at me; I could hear the breath whistling angrily in his lungs. His voice was soft but distinctly threatening, like the deadly hiss of a snake. 'If anything happens to the Fosters, I am going to hold you personally responsible.'

At that point I might have told Lippitt what he wanted to know, but he wasn't listening. He abruptly walked around me and down off the concourse, pushed through a crowd of pedestrians waiting at the corner, and zigzagged across First Avenue without waiting for the light. I stared after him. I wanted to shout at him, tell him that I was already personally responsible. I was on a deadly roller coaster with no way to get off.

A cloud had slipped across the sun and I was cold.

I took a bus crosstown to the New York Times building, made a few inquiries, and was directed into an elevator that led up to the third floor, where I got out and walked down a carpeted corridor until I found a door with the name FRANK ALDEN.

Alden was a man in his late fifties who looked as if he'd spent most of his life auditioning for a part in The Front Page. He was actually wearing a wide-brimmed hat shoved on the back of his head. Naturally, a cigarette dangled from the edge of his mouth and there were ashes strewn down the front of his shirt. His collar was loose, and a thick clump of gray hair protruded between the open buttons. He had his feet up on a scarred desk and was scanning a racing sheet; he was straight out of Central Casting. The walls of the office were covered from floor to ceiling with blown-up, glossy black-and-white photographs. They were fresh, original.

I rapped on the open door. 'Mr. Alden?'

He looked up and stared at me with eyes the same steely gray as his chest hair. Suddenly he put his feet on the floor and began to rapidly snap his fingers. 'Mongo the Magnificent,' he barked in clipped tones. 'Retired circus headliner, used to be with Statler Brothers; now a criminology professor and private detective; real name'-he snapped his fingers some more-'Dick Frederickson.'

'Try Bob,' I said. 'It sounds as if you're preparing my obituary.'

'Nah. I did a photo essay on you once.'

'You've got a good memory, Mr. Alden.'

'Call me Frank. You get mixed up in some pretty strange cases.'

I walked into the office, stopped in front of his desk. 'I've got a strange case now, Frank. I was hoping you might be able to help me with it.'

He pulled his battered hat down low on his forehead and peered at me from under the brim. He actually did: I could almost hear the purr of movie cameras. 'You name it, Mongo.' He made it sound conspiratorial.

I put the newspaper photograph with the question mark on the desk in front of Alden. 'This picture has your photo credit on it. It was taken about five years ago. I want to know if you can remember the circumstances under which it was shot.'

Again the popping fingers. Both hands. 'Rafferty,' he said at last. 'Victor Rafferty, the hotshot architect. That's his house.' He slapped his hands on the desk and corrected himself. 'Was his house. He died a few days after that picture was taken.'

'Right. What's going on there? Do you remember?'

'I remember, all right. But if I'd been able to find out what was going on, they wouldn't have used that question mark as a caption.'

'How did you happen to be there?'

'I've got a police radio in the car. Somebody phoned in a complaint about disturbing the peace. It was early in the morning. Anyway, I was in the neighborhood and I decided to check it out.' He tapped the photograph. 'I saw what you see here. This one guy was on the ground, dead. Another guy looked pretty bad hurt, and the other guys were all standing around him.'

'Could you hear them talking?'

'Couldn't get close enough. The guy in the overcoat was the one giving the orders. The police had set up a cordon across the street, and they wouldn't let anybody past it. I just got up on the hood of the car and watched through a telephoto lens. Oh, you could hear the woman, all right. She was standing in front of the house screaming her head off.' He paused and snapped his fingers softly. 'The guy in the overcoat was a real strange one. There it was the middle of summer, and this guy's bundled up like he's ready to go skiing. His pals didn't even seem to notice. I suppose they were used to it.'

'Anything else you remember, Frank?'

The photographer shook his head. 'We got hustled out of there right after I took the picture. A few reporters tried to follow up on it a few days later, but they couldn't get to first base. Mrs. Rafferty was under guard. Finally the orders came down from the boss to kill the investigation.'