The Canadian Bomber Contract, page 12
“Mon Dieu! Yes, I’ll go talk to him now.”
“No need for a large squad,” I said. “Two men will be enough. Is the police strike over?”
“Oui, m’sieu. It lasted only eighteen hours. We will send detectives over right away.”
“Thanks.” I walked back to the Cantlie House and went up to the twenty-fourth floor. Dr. Paulette Noelle was sitting beside my coffee table, drinking a cup of my Blue Mountain Jamaican coffee. It smelled good. I nodded to her, walked into the bathroom, and pissed. After showering and brushing my teeth, I came back out in my robe and had a drink of rye. Sitting across from her.
“Not much of a greeting,” she said quietly.
“No.”
“You won’t help me get across the border where I might find running room?”
“No, doctor, I just turned you in.”
“If I could get to South America … Someone with my skills, especially a blond lady doctor, can always make it there …”
“You’re not listening, Paulette,” I said. “The police are on their way here now. The Mohawk copped a plea and gave us nearly forty names and addresses. Once I might have made a deal with you. But you didn’t have to have the La Roche girl and her daughter shoved under the metro train.”
“That little slum-bred bitch!” The lady doctor’s patrician mouth flattened.
“Lady, lady,” I said, “it’s over now. I’ve been in the security business a long time. When the problem is severe as in this case, we always find monomania. With you it represents a loss to society.”
A heavy knock came on the door. Dr. Noelle stood up, and I arose with her.
“That’s for me, I guess,” she said.
“Yes,” I said. Got up and opened the apartment door. Two tall men in civilian clothes came in. They had a warrant, read it, warned her, and she turned to me.
“I won’t make it in prison,” she said crisply. “I’m too used to giving orders. I’ll die there or kill myself.”
“Probably not. A doctor is important anywhere. You’ll be running a prison hospital, I’d guess.”
“Kiss me goodbye?” she asked. When I nodded, she stepped in close, and we kissed without passion.
“Goodbye, Paulette,” I said. “You’re the most beautiful doctor I ever met.”
She laughed a trifle thinly and walked out of the apartment, flanked by the policemen. I got on the phone and in two hours was on an Air Canada direct flight to New York. The first-class section was not filled, but even with those odds I managed to be the great cuckoo collector.
After I had downed two martinis, eaten three yummy finger sandwiches, and was beginning to relax, a jovial type came lurching up the aisle to sprawl in the wide seat beside me. The uninvited visitor chuckled and read me an item from MacLean’s magazine.
A man in Calgary had bought a power lawn mower and tested it inside a closet in his house. The mower had caught fire and burned the man’s house down.
“Isn’t that a bitch?” inquired the intruder.
“Bitch is right,” I agreed, staring out over the moon-silvered expanse of clouds.
Chapter 25
After I had been cleared by customs at Dulles Airport, I took my bag straight to a chartered Apache and was flown to Warrenton, Virginia. There, in a motel suite, I met Neal Pearsall. This location was at my request; I do not like Washington and never even spend the night there if I can help it. After Pearsall had taped my report, I would head for my Ozark eyrie in the rent-a-car he had driven down. His own official agency car and driver would pick him up.
The hulking man with the encroaching paunch was, as usual, sprawled across a king-size bed covered with newspapers. His metal leg was leaning against the bedtable which held the suitcase, now split into a tape recorder. When I entered and threw my raincoat at a chair, Neal nodded toward the bureau top, so I poured a double drink of the sour mash and had it.
“Ready, Joseph?” he asked. When I nodded, he hit the button. The reels began to revolve slowly.
I began the report by saying that The Mohawk would be put across the international border at noon the next day. Above Plattsburg, New York, by the RCMP. But that one of our men would be on him after that. I had given the boy two hundred dollars.
“He was a friggin’ cheap Judas, wasn’t he?” commented Pearsall.
“Well, I leaned on him a little, too …
“Larry Gaines, the engineer, the deserter?”
“Back attending classes. He was just a feint by Dr. Noelle. She had an astonishing file hidden in her Quebec City apartment; it listed not only most of the FLQ, the separatist movement in Quebec, but also the names of nearly nineteen thousand U.S. draft dodgers, deserters, and their dependents living in the province.
“Her full name is Paulette Senez Noelle and—”
“Just a minute,” said Pearsall, “let me get this in.” He began reading off a card on the bedtable. “The Mohawk’s real name is Charles Iverson. Born twenty-four years ago in Port Huron, where his father manages a store for a chain hardware outfit. Finished high school turned down a scholarship to the University of Michigan. Never in danger from the draft: one leg shorter than the other and an asthma complication.
“From what we have, gravitated to Canada because he wanted to follow the action. Spent part of the summer of’68 and the entire winter at the International Commune of Craftsmen in Fulford, Quebec. Here each acceptable new member gets three acres and whatever services the commune can provide, providing he comes up with nine hundred dollars. The Mohawk didn’t have the money or any acceptable skills but tried to hang in by hauling garbage and cutting firewood. When he tried to ball the wife of a commune leader, they ran him off …
“He drifted to Quebec City like most of these hippie kids. A policeman there skulled him for insolence, and Dr. Noelle was on duty in the emergency ward when they brought him in for treatment. He lived with her for nearly two months, then dropped out of sight until the trackload of stolen explosives was driven away from the Jupiter plant in Ohio.”
“Right,” I said. “That’s where I came in. Paulette Noelle met Claude Plongeur, the con who died in her hospital, the same way. She knew about his construction company experience and also that he couldn’t get a job in Canada. Across the border was something else. She furnished him with an American passport and new identity papers; he already had his old work records. That’s how he caught on at the Jupiter plant.
“She also financed his trips as an observer to the final open meeting of the Weathermen in Flint, Michigan. That was before the Days of Rage in Chicago and the town-house explosion in New York City. He was never Mark Rudd’s bodyguard or even a member of the group, just an old lag who got in because he briefed them in handling all types of explosives, crimping and shaping charges …
“Dr. Duclos, the pathologist at the Hôtel-Dieu in Quebec City, resigned with a roar. I sent Davis, one of the agents assigned to Montreal with me, up to run a final check on Claude Plongeur and heard about it. He says Duclos will sign an affidavit that Plongeur died of a deliberately induced embolism. When the hospital changed his autopsy report, he quit the staff.”
“That kind of testimony won’t hold up,” growled Pearsall. “Never does when doctors are involved. The club’s too tight.”
“Just the same, if he’s right, Dr. Paulette Noelle murdered Plongeur to keep him from talking to me. Maybe he wanted more money; she seems to have spent a lot.”
“What will she get?” asked Neal, reaching for the bottle.
“Bob Cartier, the explosives expert in Montreal, says ten top, more probably five, and that Quebec Province will play it way down. Because she’s French, young, beautiful, and a skilled doctor. Of such materials are martyrs made.”
“Why the Yank side of the falls, Joseph? She must have been getting the attempt ready for several years, and she did want Quebec separate from the rest of Canada.”
“Oh … That would take a psychiatrist. The girl comes from an old Quebec family. Her father was a professional soldier, Sandhurst and all that. He was a full colonel on the lethal Dieppe raid in War Two and got killed in Korea. That might mean anti-Yank. In addition, after graduating number two in her medical class at McGill, her application for internship was turned down by ten principal hospitals in the U.S. Mayo, Massachusetts General, and Johns Hopkins were among them …”
“Unhunh …” said Pearsall.
Rain began to fall on the motel roof. “What we still don’t know is who turned in the professional engineering work, prepared the shot plan, and decided what was to be stolen from Jupiter.”
“I haven’t the faintest idea. Rappold, in the corps’ office in Buffalo, said he was well trained.” And I didn’t really give a damn who had done it, either. We had stopped the attempt and that was what we were paid for. Both countries could go on now, lovingly playing cheap pastel lights on the natural wonder every night to fit the corny tourist atmosphere on both sides of the border.
“Anything else?” asked Pearsall.
“Oh …” I walked into the bathroom and urinated, pleased to see that my output was still normal amber. “That little La Roche girl who helped me and got herself and her daughter pushed in front of a subway train. Could we help her family?”
“Joseph,” answered Pearsall pleasantly, “you know the answer to that. No. The girl was recruited by you in your normal duties. She agreed to accept certain amounts of money for her help and had bad luck. The trouble is, really, that you’re an incurably sentimental prick who wants to send every American newsboy to a university so he can become president. Unfortunately, most newsboys soon realize that they are getting a good shafting by the papers which employ them as coolies and learn to steal, too. Very few of them are presidential material.”
The rain was heavier now. Thunder rumbled and lightning crackled over the dark pastures of the Virginia horse country around us. A certain emotional electricity was building in the two-room motel suite. I was worn out because I had really thought it was one we would lose. Neal Pearsall, always personally involved with his agents and always working too hard, savaged at a phantom pain in his thigh stump. We were both red-eyed with fatigue.
“Don’t you see what we’re becoming, Pappy?” I asked him abruptly. “Were the sounds of the jack-booted troopers going down the Unter den Linden any different from ours when I led that squad to Larry Games’ apartment?”
“It was a lead, Joseph,” said the sprawling, grim-faced man. “Something bad was about to happen to lower our national pride still more, and we can’t afford that. Can we, Joseph? We were near the blast point, and it was the only lead we had.”
“Still made me look bad,” I insisted. “I led the midnight invaders to this fellow’s place of abode. Highly intelligent boy who had already been called on to make a moral judgment which involved the dislocation of his life and the removal of his family to another country. Now he must stand mute while his wife and children are rousted awake, terrorized, and forced to watch their belongings torn apart. Who did I represent while that was happening, Neal?”
I knew I should let up, but I couldn’t. Pearsall reached for a cigar, took the end of it off like a snapping turtle, and lighted it with shaking hands. The storming night outside seemed to be closing in on our private dilemma.
“Neal, there are one hundred thousand former U.S. citizens now living in Canada in protest against their own country. The majority of them are not creeps or cowards or avoiders of anything. Clearer than most, they have looked at an issue and made a moral decision. Most of them are never seen panhandling, wearing beads, or going barefoot. They are trying to build new lives as honorable and decent citizens. Will you suggest that the director of the agency go to the top with an idea?”
“What’s that, Joseph?”
“That the war in Vietnam, Cambodia, wherever in Asia, cannot be really over until a general amnesty is offered to all these draft evaders and deserters. That will turn some freaks loose, sure. But it might return to us many divisions of useful American citizens. We need them badly, Neal.”
Pearsall took another drink. “Never!” he said savagely. “Are you through?”
When I nodded, he leaned over and tapped the reverse button on the tape recorder. Deftly, with both hands, he played the reels back and forth until he had arrived at the point where my political comments had begun. Then he scrubbed the tape free of these comments, the reels whirling noiselessly.
After shutting the recorder off, he leaned back against the banked pillows, smoothing at what little hair he had left. “Joseph, quite a while back this agency asked you to do the star turn before an august body of national fat cats who serve the President of the United States as his principal advisers on intelligence. We were briefing them on the Bay of Pigs invasion.
“Without informing us you told this eminent assembly that our invasion attempt was doomed to failure. That everyone in Cuba knew about it and that there was no support for our attempt among the people there.
“You were right. We got ignominiously beaten back, our planning was exposed as foolish, and you got your ass fired. I was not then the head of this divison, but I was second in charge. Between us, Howard Stone and I brought you back with a special status. As a contract agent acting independently and able to refuse any assignment.
“The reason I wiped the tape clean of your remarks is that if they got heard by most Congressmen, you would again be severed from the agency …” He sighed and shook his massive head. “I think you’d better go back to your mountain hideyhole, talk to your trees and your waterfall, and decide whether or not you wish to continue working for the agency.”
“Fair,” I said.
“You’ve been our top man for certain kinds of interception work, but you might decide to let go. Might conclude that our vibes are too bad to live with. Understood?”
“Absolutely,” I said.
“Good. Would you tell the guy outside I want my driver?”
I nodded. Put on the raincoat and walked out under the covered walkway in front of the cabins. Almost immediately, a rain-sodden figure came toward me, and I told him Mr. Pearsall wanted his car. He nodded and doubled back toward the end of the walkway streaming with rain.
A parked car lighted up and came rolling down in front of the motel suite. The man at the end of the porch was joined by another one who had been staked out in back of the motel. Pearsall came out, stumping on his false leg, and just before he ducked in beside the driver, gave me a final order.
“Clean up the joint, eh, Joseph? Take the booze with you. Sorry I don’t have any grass or speed.”
One of the agents ducked into the suite and came back out carrying the folded tape recorder. He got into the back seat, saying “Goodnight,” while I watched Neal Pearsall. He was not watching me. He was staring straight ahead into the blowing rain. The anonymous black sedan pulled out, tires spraying, and I went inside the motel suite and looked it over carefully.
In another twenty minutes I was driving south. The rain was still falling.
Turn the page to continue reading from the Joe Gall Mysteries
Chapter One
The sidewalks of downtown Vancouver were packed with hordes of fake Christs. These languid replicas were considerably dirtier than their prototype, and even in October most of them trudged barefooted through the spittle and slimy cigar butts. Their girl-women moved with them in tight jeans, faded tie-dyed shirts or blouses, and head-bands.
Youth was the name of the hippie horde, although some of the unkempt dropouts were in their thirties or even forties. Most of them had drifted into Vancouver from the Unites States. Hitchhiking in with little or no funds and a back-pack of meager possessions, they had infested the back alleys and public conveniences of the beautiful Canadian seaport all summer.
Considering the fact that the hippie-lemmings had almost immediately become public charges, only a few trying for jobs where unemployment was already high, their unwilling hosts treated them with considerable restraint. A few muttered imprecations were to be heard when Vancouver residents stumbled over the hairy invaders as they huddled on stairways, lounged in busy doorways, and lay stoned and vacantly dreaming in public parks.
Now the indolent hippie beast was slouching, not toward Jerusalem, but Jericho. That was the name of the empty barracks at the city’s outskirt to which they were being herded. The government of British Columbia had recently evicted them from a downtown arsenal where they slept until noon without segregation of the sexes, and openly turned on night and day with speed, hash, pot, and cocaine. No attempt had been made to conceal their drug use; indeed they flaunted it before reporters and were photographed for news broadcasts giggling, slack-mouthed, and firing off absurd demands that they be given a large amount of society’s largess. But not until noon, please, after they had awakened ….
Many of them were psychotic, displayed severe personality disorders, and the rate of venereal infection was high and climbing. The few volunteer doctors and nurses who tried to combat it had no success because of the incidence of reinfection.
I knew all these facts because I had been sitting for two hours in the Mozart Konditorei on Robson Strasse with a Chinese girl named Kelly. (Of course her name wasn’t Kelly. It was Miss Wu. And the Robson Strasse was really Robson Street, on Vancouver’s glittering west side.)
Man cannot live by nomenclature alone. Miss Wu was Kelly because she had decided that would be a groovy thing for a healthy, shapely girl to call herself. The street was the Strasse because for blocks it featured specialty shops and stores selling European foods and products. German, Dutch, Austrian, Swiss: they were solid foreign enclaves in a city of many foreign colonies.
Not far away was a high-rise apartment building, the Johann Strauss, and a few blocks from that was the handsome new tower of the Rembrandt Hotel. As Kelly pointed these things out, I nodded and said it beat naming such structures after bankers or politicians.
