Two Songs This Archangel Sings

'I've got heartstrain. I know who our psychopathic killer is.'

Garth glanced sideways at me, and even in the dim light I could tell by the expression on his face that he wasn't quite sure whether or not I was joking. 'Come on, Mongo; you've only had your nose in those papers for less than an hour, and most of the time you've been skimming.'

'I really only had to read one piece, and the follow-up article inside. It leaps right out at you.'

'So? Don't keep me in suspense. What did you find out?'

'Garth, what happened on the day Veil disappeared?'

'Lots of things happened,' Garth snapped impatiently. He didn't like traffic, and he didn't like to play guessing games; still, I felt I had to come at him from an angle in order to make him feel the same measure of shock I had felt when I'd realized the truth. 'Why don't you just get to the point?'

'The president came to town.'

Garth laughed harshly. 'Kevin Shannon didn't do it, Mongo. His wife would never give him permission to do such nasty things; it's bad politics. Trust me on this one; Shannon's not our man.'

'But one of Shannon's key people is.'

'Who?'

'Orville Madison.'

'Who the hell is Orville Madison?'

I looked quickly at Garth, saw that he was serious. It made me very uneasy. 'Did you hear what I said? It's Orville Madison.'

'I heard what you said. You tell me this Orville Madison may be the man behind all this; now tell me who Orville Madison is.'

'You get the paper every day, Garth. How the hell can you not know who Orville Madison is?'

'I read the sports, metropolitan, and sometimes the entertainment sections, brother,' Garth said evenly. 'I don't listen to newscasts, and I haven't followed national or international news since Valhalla. I know the name of the president and the mayor of New York; on a good day, I may even remember the name of the governor. It's enough. Since we're all doomed anyway, I don't give a damn what the stupid politicians and generals are up to. In the end, it won't make any difference. I thought you felt the same way.'

At one time I had. The words spoken by a madman, and the things he had shown us, had left wounds that would never fully heal. However, time and work had wrought a good deal of healing in me, and I had once again begun to take an interest in things and events around me. Not so, I now realized, with my brother. Garth remained trapped as deeply as ever in the depths of depression and despair.

I wondered if it was killing him.

'Orville Madison is Shannon's nominee for secretary of state,' I said quietly, suddenly filled with a great sadness.

'So?' Garth's voice was a kind of shrug. 'What does the Times have to say about Madison that makes you think he's the guy we're looking for?'

'It doesn't call him a psychopathic killer, if that's what you mean,' I replied, countering with a little sarcasm of my own. 'But what's there pretty well matches the profile we already have of the man.'

'A speculative profile.'

'Veil was shot at and disappeared on the eve of the president's announcement of his appointments to the cabinet; Shannon's penchant for secrecy is legendary, and so the public had no inkling of who those men and women were going to be until Shannon made the announcement. It wasn't until the next day that the names and biographical profiles of those people appeared in the papers. It was the next day's Times that Po was reading almost two weeks later when he was killed, which has to mean that he was most concerned about what he found in it.'

'You don't know which of three papers he was reading, and you don't know if he was reading about the presidential appointments.'

'It's easy enough to check the date; all you have to do is call the Albany cops when we stop. They should give you that information. You'll see I'm right.'

'You still haven't told me what makes you so suspicious of Madison.'

'For openers, he's currently Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and will remain so until he's confirmed.'

There was a long silence. Finally, Garth said: 'Go ahead.'

'Being Director of the C.I.A. isn't a big deal in itself. The position can be, and usually is, a political appointment made for lots of different reasons, including political payoffs, and the man who gets it usually has a public record a mile long. That's not the case with Madison. He came up through the ranks, and it was a shadowy journey to say the least. He was appointed to the top post two and a half years ago, but before that he was Director of Operations in charge of all the heavy, sneaky stuff the C.I. A. does. You don't even get a published photo of the Director of Operations, much less a public record, and you usually find out damn little about the man even after he leaves the post-which you usually don't find out about.'

'There has to be information about him available now.'

'Oh, sure. The Times bio is filled with all sorts of personal information-but nothing about his record when he was running Operations. That's all classified. He's fifty-eight years old, and he's been with the C.I.A. one hell of a long time. We can't even know how much of the personal stuff is made up. He's a Goddamn pig in a poke.'

Garth thought about it. 'To the public, yes, but certainly not to Kevin Shannon-and not to the House and Senate members who know him and must have worked with him. Christ, after all the embarrassments caused by cabinet members over the past fifteen years, you have to assume that Shannon and his other people have vetted all those nominees-especially this Orville Madison-more thoroughly than any nominees in history. Nobody's ever accused Shannon of being a dummy. Hell, you even like him. Finally, don't forget that all of the nominees will be grilled at the confirmation hearings by senators who've gotten very picky about whom they consent to put into those kinds of positions of power. It won't fly,

Mongo. Shannon's not about to nominate some crazy who could sink his administration before it even sets sail.'

'Not if he knew Madison was crazy. In fact, that may be precisely what's going on here, the key to it all. Sure, Madison's been vetted-but let's assume the investigators missed something, and it's a biggie, something very dark and nasty that's been buried for a long time and which would prevent Madison from being confirmed if people found out about it. Madison knew that once his nomination was made public, there were certain people-Veil Kendry, for one-who could hurt him badly if they ever started talking about what they knew, and they were believed-his link with Po, for example. God knows why Shannon wants a former C.I.A. Operations man for a sensitive, up-front post like secretary of state, but he obviously does. And Madison wants the post. Now, once Madison becomes a public figure he knows he's going to be vulnerable to disclosures to the press, or at the confirmation hearings, and so he decides to launch a preemptive strike against the man he fears most-Veil Kendry.'

'If Madison were so afraid of these past associations coming to light, why would he wait two weeks to kill Po?'

'He wasn't concerned about Po saying anything to the press, because Po had enough problems of his own and certainly wouldn't make a very creditable accuser. Po became a danger to Madison only when we discovered a link between Po and Veil Kendry. Madison was worried about what Po might say to us. That's how that tune goes. It has to be Orville Madison, Garth.'

Garth began drumming his fingers nervously on the steering wheel. 'Keep looking, Mongo,' he said after a long silence. 'Nobody ever said you didn't have a silver tongue, and you make a pretty good hypothetical case for our man being this Madison joker. But it's still all speculation, without a single shred of proof; no matter what you say, I find it damn unlikely that the kind of cold-blooded maniac we're looking for could get through the kind of screening process any cabinet nominee goes through. There must be something else in one of those newspapers.'

'Damn it, Garth, there isn't. This is it.'

'Keep looking, anyway.'