asked for my driver’s license. I surrendered it, and she copied it on the machine behind her, giving me an excellent view of her back half.
“We’ve waited for you, too, Mr. Winston,” she said, handing it back. “Unfortunately our corporate offices are all full just now, although in this frenzied age one never knows when there will be an opening. If you’ll take a seat and complete our application, we’ll call you when we need a new vice president.”
I flashed the grin again and took the indicated seat.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
My name is Mikhail Goncharov,” the Russian said slowly. He was sitting on the screened-in porch of the Graftons’ beach house with Callie. Sections of the morning newspaper were strewn around. She had been translating news stories for the archivist, trying to get him interested in something… anything.
His declaration silenced her. She folded the section of newspaper she had been reading and placed it on her lap, then sat watching him, waiting for more. After a long pause he said, “I am retired from the SVR.”
“Are you married?” she prompted.
He had to think about it. His bland, relaxed expression slowly disintegrated. “Bronislava. She is dead! They killed her.”
He looked at his hands, looked around the porch as if seeing it for the first time. “She always wanted children but they never came. Now she’s gone… Life leaks away grain by grain, like sand running through your fingers. Then one day there is no more left.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Yes. Sorry.” He stopped looking around and seemed to focus his gaze inward. His shoulders sagged and his chin dropped toward his chest.
Jake Grafton went with me to pick up the van. It was indeed ready, with a spiffy new paint job and professional lettering on both sides. The New York commercial plates looked nice, too. “How much trouble am I going to have with those plates?” I asked the fat man.
He took his cigar butt from his mouth and spat on the concrete. “Depends on how long you plan on driving that thing,” he said. “Truck they’re off of was in a wreck. It’s in a Brooklyn shop for repairs and paint. Going to be there about ten more days. When it comes out, I figure somebody will start squawking.”
“Good enough,” I said, nodding.
I had visited the bank where Willie and I had our business account earlier that afternoon and had withdrawn some cash. Then Grafton and I went over to Willie Varner’s, left him five hundred, and dropped off a six-pack.
I introduced him to Grafton, just gave Willie his name. “Most of the stitches came out this morning,” Willie said. “Damn things were itching like crazy.”
“That’s good,” I told him. “Now all you need are some tattoos to cover up the scars.”
“I’ve had enough needles to last me, Tommy. Any more and they’re gonna have to hold me down.”
“Think you could help me out some next week? In New York. I’m going to need someone who has it together.”
“Doin’ what?” he asked, eyeing Grafton. In his jeans and T-shirt, the admiral didn’t look like a cop, but Willie was a careful man.
“Monitoring some bugs in a hotel. I’ve got a guy to help, but I don’t know if I can trust him.”
“Don’t ever do nothin’ with people you don’t trust. Nothin’ at all. Don’t even be around them. How many times I told you that?”
“That’s why I’m asking. Think you can do it?”
“Long as it don’t involve heavy liftin’ or hard lovin’, I can probably help a little. I’m stiff and sore as a diseased dick but the brain is working. I’ll tell you now, though — you, too, Grafton — I don’t want to go back to the joint. Shit goes down, I never heard of your sorry ass. They’ll have to burn down Washington and sift the ashes to find me.”
“I can live with that.”
“Don’t wanta shoot nobody neither.”
“I’ll drop by this weekend and see how you’re doing. We’ll talk about it then.”
“No offense, fella,” Willie said to Grafton, then focused on me. “You come back, be alone.”
“Sure. Hang tough.”
At the garage I inspected the paint job and climbed in the van to inventory the contents. The fat man stood outside with Jake Grafton, who didn’t have anything to say. I could see them in the rearview mirrors, just standing there, the fat man chewing his cigar and Grafton looking like a man waiting for a bus.
I checked carefully. Even if the guy running the chop shop hadn’t stolen anything, the men working for him might not be as honest. Everything appeared to be as I had left it. Then I hit the jackpot — found another dozen bugs in a small box under the computer. I checked them over. Yeah, I could use them.
Grafton was hard to figure. Sure, I had worked for him several times in the past when he was an admiral on active duty in the Navy. While he was tan and lean enough for a man his age, he didn’t look like anyone special. He was, though. The people who knew him best, folks like Toad Tarkington and Rita Moravia, swore by him.
He’d been on the phone more or less continuously since he found me camping out in his beach house. I didn’t think he was talking to his stockbroker. Of course I was curious. Be nice if he shared some info with me.
When I got out of the vehicle I pulled the roll from my pocket and counted out twenty hundreds, which was all of it, into the fat man’s hand.
“A pleasure doing business with you,” he said as he pocketed the money. He dropped the key to the van in my hand. “How’s Willie?”
“Stitches came out this morning. He says they were itching like hell.”
The fat man chuckled. “Tell him I say hi,” he said, and went into his office. I got in the van and backed it out of the garage. Grafton followed me back to Delaware in his car.
Maybe I ought to ask the admiral for the lowdown — the straight skinny. That thought was immediately followed by another: I had assumed that he knew more than I did. Was that true? Surely he knew that I didn’t help murder those people at the Greenbrier safe house. Or did he?
Why was he helping me, anyway?
Jake Grafton was following along a hundred yards behind Carmellini, just keeping him in sight, when his new cell phone rang. “Hi.”
“Hi, yourself.” Sarah Houston. “I am up against the wall here at work. I am supposed to be working with the cryptographers, yet I am spending scads of time on my computer.” Jake well knew what she was doing on that computer — spying on Dell Royston and trying to learn what he was telling interested government agencies about the hunt for the Russian defector and the corpses that kept cropping up. “I’ve run out of wriggle room.”
“Tommy will pick you up at your apartment on Saturday morning. Pack for a couple of days. Bring your laptop.”
“Oh, Lord. You know I can’t stand him.”
“I can’t imagine why. He’s reasonably smart, well within the bell-shaped curve on looks, showers daily. Seems like every other girl in town hits on him.”
“That’s why.”
“We need your help. He’ll be there day after tomorrow.”
As he drove along, Jake smiled. So Sarah liked Carmellini. Who would have suspected that?
When we got back to the beach house there was little light left in the sky. A thick overcast lay just over our heads, one churned by a stiff wind. I wasn’t hungry, but when Callie offered me a beer I thanked her and took it to the porch. Goncharov was already upstairs, in bed I suspected, though I doubted he was sleeping. The man was fighting too many demons.
The Sunday papers were still there piled up, and since I hadn’t read them, I pulled out the latest and turned on the reading light. After I went through the baseball standings and read about the latest tour event, I glanced through the political news.
Normally I don’t read political stuff. Just not interested. Maybe that’s the sign of a poor education, but I’ve
