The Shadow Man (3 page)

A week later, at ten o’clock on an unpredictably gusty evening, Andrews parked his car on Hyde Boulevard and walked a few blocks farther to the Adelaire Hotel. The night was cool, and it was beginning to drizzle, forming dark, wind-rippled puddles and spotting Andrews’ lined raincoat. Sewer grates steamed with the unexpected warmth.

The neighborhood once had been one of Washington’s better areas, had declined and now was being revitalized by fresh federal funding and construction. The buildings were old, many of them Georgian, and lately had acquired a refurbished colonial charm that mixed curiously with the angular new construction on the street.

A traffic light in the next block changed to green, and half a dozen cars swished past on the wet street like intense caged animals suddenly released. Andrews brushed the rain from his hair and began unbuttoning his coat as he stepped into the Adelaire’s lobby.

The hotel was one of the older ones that recently had been redecorated. It was a good, even a plush, hotel, but still not regularly frequented by the real movers and shakers, the politicos of the city. It was where Andrews could be certain of privacy whenever Pat Colombo came into Washington to see him.

There were quite a few people in the opulently furnished blue-carpeted lobby, most of them probably tourists, none of them familiar to Andrews. He walked past the entrance to the small, dim lounge and crossed to the elevators. Pat had given him her room number when she’d phoned that afternoon.

There was no one in the hall when he knocked. She opened the door immediately and smiled at him. After he kissed her, she suggested that he close the door and take off his coat.

“It’s raining out there,” Andrews told her, unnecessarily. He always was at an initial loss for meaningful words when they met.

“It doesn’t matter what’s happening outside,” she said.

Pat Colombo was a dark-eyed brunette with a short, fetchingly ten pounds overweight figure and a smile straight out of Italian Renaissance art. Her features were classic and serene, but her real beauty lay in her gracefulness and her seeming unawareness of self. They both knew that she was not at all like Ellen.

Two years ago Pat had been one of the aides to Senator Jack Zale, and had been assigned by Zale to work with Andrews in organizing the opposition to an accelerated arms-race bill. They had worked closely for months, and Pat had sensed Andrews’ problems with Ellen. But it was Andrews who had made the abrupt and unplanned advance that resulted in their becoming lovers. He’d never regretted it.

On the table before the suite’s sofa was a scotch and water waiting for Andrews. A half-full wineglass was beside it. Andrews draped his wet raincoat over the back of a vinyl chair and picked up his drink. It was hardly diluted; she must have just mixed it.

“Tough week?” she asked, posing the question almost like a suburban housewife asking her husband if he’d had a hard day. She brushed past him, picked up her wine and sat down on the sofa.

“A busy week,” he said.

“But you love your work.”

“Do I?”

“Too strong a word, love?”

“I don’t know yet. Politics is like scuba diving. The deeper you get, the more pressure comes to bear.”

Pat’s dark eyes appraised him as she sipped her drink. “I’d have thought you’d regard your progress as getting higher rather than deeper.”

“Maybe I should.” He sat next to her, near her. “Each day in office, power becomes a more recognizable currency: favors owed, favors paid. If you’re not careful, the balance of one to the other becomes the object of the game.”

“You’ve just described politics in the proverbial nutshell,” Pat told him. “But isn’t the important thing how you use that accumulated power?”

“The important thing is what’s backing up that power as currency. Is it the will of your constituents or the fear of your peers?”

“It sounds complicated enough to provide plenty of convenient outs,” Pat observed.

Andrews laughed and pulled her to him, kissing her again and feeling himself drawn toward her calm and mysterious center. She spilled the rest of her wine, splashing some of it onto her dress. Ellen would have leaped up, screaming her indignation, calculatingly choosing words to further wound their already maimed marriage.

Pat said nothing as Andrews released her. Then she suddenly clung to him, working her fingertips into his back as if reassuring herself of his presence. He carried her to the bed, as he often did jokingly, but this time he didn’t laugh and she didn’t do her usual exaggerated swoon.

Pat Colombo approached sex as she did everything else, directly and honestly. A need recognized and filled, a giving and sharing without implications. As Andrews held her more tightly and thrust himself into her with increasing intensity, she seemed to encourage him with her own compounding passion, her lush body writhing and contracting beneath him as if straining to give birth to their relief and renewal.

When Andrews withdrew from her, lay breathing deeply beside her, she rested a weightless hand on his arm. Someone ran water in the room above or alongside theirs, and Andrews could hear and feel the flow of it through the pipes within the walls. For a moment he felt as if he and Pat were within some protective massive organism, with copper pipes, air conditioning and heating ducts for arteries, electrical wiring for some bizarre nervous system. Then, with a squeal and a rattle, the flow of water ceased. From outside, six stories below, came the angry sound of a car horn blasting several times in rapid succession.

“The Senate recesses for three weeks after next Thursday,” Andrews said. He felt the mattress shift as Pat stirred beside him. “Why don’t we go to the cabin for that last week?”

Andrews and Pat had spent time at the cabin before. It was a small, modern and very secluded structure in the mountains of Colorado. Shortly after meeting Pat, Andrews had bought the cabin through a straw party and had it refurbished. It was equipped with a furnace and air conditioner, kitchen facilities and a telephone that had never once rung. Everything he and Pat needed was there.

“I’ll let you know if I can get away from work,” Pat said. She was an editor for a national financial magazine headquartered in Boulder, Colorado. “You know I’ll try.”

“I could use a week of quiet and sanity.”

“I’d settle for just one of the two,” Pat remarked drowsily.

Andrews raised his upper body, supporting himself on the mattress with his elbows. “Dammit,” he muttered.

Pat rearranged her hair and turned to look at him. “What’s the matter?”

He said, “I just remembered something I forgot to do.”

Dr. Dana Larsen sat in his office in his West Fifty-seventh Street Manhattan condominium and gave the rough schedule on his desk a last quick check. It was here in New York that Martin Karpp had through his six identities pursued what were in effect six different lives. Each of these identities had been shallowly explored for sensationalism by the news media immediately following Karpp’s confinement. And defense psychiatrists had delved into the lives of these identities only deeply enough to establish legally that they did indeed exist, each in the body of Martin Karpp. But Larsen would be the first to study thoroughly and scientifically the splintered pasts of Karpp’s five other personalities.

He was excited by the prospect. Court transcripts had provided him with several leads, as had his conversations with Karpp. It wouldn’t be difficult to contact people who had known the various Karpps by their pseudonyms, not suspecting that their acquaintance was at times different people entirely in every way but physical. How these lives interrelated was what interested Larsen.

The cloying uneasiness that had gripped him in Carltonville had all but disappeared. There was much still unexplainable about what had happened there, but it was the more immediate and important unexplainable that now compelled Larsen. He regretted his visit with Jerry Andrews. But at least he could depend on Jerry not ever to remind him or anyone else of those unreasonable and inexact fears. Jerry Andrews always had recognized and respected the various needs and apprehensions in people, which was why he was such a successful politician.

Though it was well past midnight, lighted windows still sequined the night beyond the sliding glass doors opening onto Larsen’s small balcony. Larsen got up from his desk and stretched elaborately, then walked out onto the balcony and breathed in the cold night air. A dozen stories below, a few pedestrians scurried like nocturnal insects on the sidewalk, and a tiny, foreshortened cab veered to the building’s entrance to deliver a passenger. Larsen wasn’t tired and knew he wouldn’t be able to relax fully until he’d completed the second phase of his research on Karpp.

Though he’d already begun that phase, it occurred to him that some of the places he needed to visit, some of the people he needed to talk with, would be most accessible in the late night hours. Why not continue his investigation now—tonight?

The idea gained appeal for Larsen. It would be more interesting than a glass of milk and a few hours of scrap-time TV, and undoubtedly more productive. So enthusiastic was he that he didn’t realize he was shivering from the cold.

He returned to his desk, copied a name and address on a slip of paper which he stuffed into his shirt pocket, then shrugged into his brown sport jacket and topcoat. After placing his precious notes in a safe place and locking the door behind him carefully—there had been three break-ins in the building during his absence—he took the elevator down to the basement garage where his car was parked.

Larsen turned left on Fifty-seventh and headed for Broadway and Columbus Circle. There was comparatively little traffic on the streets, and few pedestrians. A young couple walking arm in arm stepped gingerly around a ragged figure slumped against a building and tenaciously clutching a brown-bagged bottle. The girl was wearing a long dress that swept the pavement, and her escort had on a dark suit and black tie. The pathetic figure at their feet didn’t move. Manhattan’s mad juxtaposition of ugliness and beauty, wealth and poverty, never failed to intrigue Larsen.

He was making a left turn onto Eighth Avenue to get onto Broadway when he glanced in his rear-view mirror.

A pair of flat dark eyes stared back at him from the rear seat.

Judy Carnegie stood in the doorway to Andrews’ office wearing an expression between puzzlement and dismay. Andrews glanced up at her, waiting for her to speak, then did a double take when he saw her face.

“You all right, Jude?”

“I phoned Belmont sanitarium,” she said. “Your friend Dr. Larsen, he’s dead . . .”

Andrews felt that dark sinking sensation he’d felt before on learning of the death of an old friend, on being reminded that time was demanding its due. He had known Dana Larsen when Dana still was bothered by youthful acne, then when he had become “Dr.” Dana Larsen, and now Dana would become a name and date chiseled on cold stone.

“What happened to him?” Andrews asked.

Judy gave a vague shrug. “His body was found in New York, in the Hudson River.”

“When?”

“Yesterday. They said at the sanitarium that he’d drowned, but they didn’t know much else about it.”

Andrews sat silently for a moment. Dana Larsen dead by drowning. That, of all things, struck with heavy irony. Andrews remembered Dana stroking through the sun-shot waters of Lake Michigan on a long-ago summer vacation, pulling in the small boy who had become separated from his rubber raft in the wind-roughened, surprisingly powerful surf. Dana had reached the floundering boy within minutes, placed him back on the raft and effortlessly propelled him to shore. And Dana had been wearing pants and shirt.

It was meaningless to speculate without facts, Andrews cautioned himself. “Get me a
New York Times,”
he said to Judy, who nodded and disappeared.

The
Times
account of Dana’s death shed little added light. His body had been spotted by a cabdriver in the early morning floating in the Hudson near Manhattan’s lower West Side. The corpse apparently hadn’t been in the water long. Dana was identified by some plastic credit cards in his wallet, which also contained sixty-seven dollars, and transported to the city morgue. At this time, the police had no reason to suspect foul play.

Andrews tossed the folded paper onto a desk corner, walked thoughtfully to the small bar in the office and poured himself three fingers of scotch.

No reason to suspect foul play, he repeated to himself. Yet Dana had felt threatened. That was why he had come to Andrews. And Andrews had, in the press of more “important” matters, done nothing until this morning—when it was too late.

Half the scotch in Andrews’ glass disappeared in one gulp.

Judy knocked on the door, tentatively opened it and peered inside. She was her practical and calculating self again. When she saw the glass of liquor in Andrews’ hand, her dark eyes barely registered the fact. Her voice was its usual crisp instrument of efficiency. “Senator, you have the meeting with Bethancourt and Hallock in ten minutes.”

Andrews stared into the amber prism of his drink and nodded. “Thanks, Judy.”

When she’d left him alone again, he went back to his desk and sat down. He thumbed through his telephone index to find a name he had almost forgotten. The name belonged to a captain on the New York Police Department who had been a friend of Andrews’ father. The captain, Amos Franks, had known Andrews casually since childhood, though they hadn’t seen each other in over five years.

Andrews didn’t locate Franks’ name in his desk index. He pressed an intercom button. “Judy, call Hallock and tell him I’ll be about twenty minutes late. Then get the New York Police Department and see if you can run down a Captain Amos Franks for me.”

Within ten minutes, Franks was on the phone.

“Senator Andrews, it’s been a while. How are you?”

At the sound of the deep, mellow voice, the image of Franks became vivid in Andrews’ mind. Amos Franks was a huge black man, ugly, amiable and tough. And smart. “I’m fine, Amos. Yourself?”

“As ever. I’ve been reading good things about your work down in Washington.”

“You know how it is, Amos. The media is always with you until you screw up.”

Deep laughter rumbled over the line. “Isn’t that just the truth!”

“I need to know a few things, Amos. About a Dr. Dana Larsen. His body was found yesterday in the Hudson.”

“I know the case but not the details. What sort of information do you need?”

“Whatever’s available. Maybe some that isn’t. Larsen was a close friend of mine, Amos.”

“Hm ... let me get back to you, Senator. Say an hour?”

“It’ll have to be an hour and a half, Amos. I’ve got a meeting that’s a must.” Andrews gave Franks his number and told him Judy would put his call through immediately.

At the meeting with Hallock and Bethancourt, Hallock asked Andrews several times if something was bothering him. The old senator was shrewd enough to know when not to push, and apparently he decided that whatever pressure he and the adamant Bethancourt were going to bring to bear should be applied at another time.

The meeting ended prematurely with Hallock urging Andrews to reconsider his vote on the water appropriations bill during the coming recess. Andrews assured the senator that he would, though he couldn’t envision himself changing his mind until the President changed those deceptive and costly amendments. And Andrews wasn’t the only dissenter who held that opinion, so a compromise might be reached. Always a compromise.

Amos Franks called back exactly on schedule.

“Not much to tell you, Senator,” he said regretfully.

Andrews searched Franks’ voice for any sign of hesitancy. So many people still had reservations about being candid on the phone. The vestiges of Watergate.

“Anything is more than what I have, Amos,” Andrews said.

“The deceased was spotted in the Hudson River at six-oh-three yesterday morning by Edward Mariquan, a cabdriver who’d just dropped a fare nearby. Mariquan phoned us and we responded by patrol car. The deceased was drowned, according to the autopsy just conducted. He’d also received a blow on the head hard enough to fracture the skull.”

Andrews felt his stomach lurch. “Received a blow before or after drowning?”

“Before.”

“But... Wouldn’t that mean... ?”

“Not necessarily, Senator. He must have fallen into the water, and chances are he was knocked unconscious and couldn’t save himself. Most of the stiffs—bodies—we fish from the river have injuries sustained before death.”

“Were there any other wounds on the body?”

“That was the extent of it,” Franks said. “It’s going down as accidental death.”

“That’s on the official records,” Andrews said. “How is it going down with you, Amos?”

There was a pause. “Now, Senator...”

“I understand your position, Amos.”

“Do you? It’s not my job to speculate irresponsibly, or to buck the record unless I have some cause, some sort of evidence.”

“I’m not asking you not to do your job,” Andrews said. “And what you say will be off the record—off any kind of record.”

“I can’t tell you he was murdered, Senator. And I can’t tell you he wasn’t.”

“I want a guess.”

“I can’t make a guess, can’t give you percentages. We find a man with a cracked skull and water in his lungs. No other injuries, no apparent robbery. We make a preliminary investigation, then go on to other things. We’ve got no choice. Sure, Senator, your friend might have been murdered. He might have been killed by a mugger that panicked and didn’t take his money or jewelry. Or our preliminary might turn up somebody with a strong motive that bears further investigation. But I’ll be honest, Senator. Odds are, it ends right here.”

“Will you do me a favor, Amos? Call me if anything else turns up?”

“Sure.” The tone of Franks’ voice indicated that he was going to say something more. “You understand, sir, we find hundreds of people every year who might have been murdered. It’s not like in the detective novels. Sometimes people kill for reasons so petty they don’t register as motives, sometimes for no reason at all. Those kinds of killings are like when lightning strikes. Nobody can predict them, prevent them or do anything about them after they occur. The thing is to accept them and go on to matters we can do something about, because we don’t have any alternative.”

“I understand, Amos. Thanks.”

Andrews hung up the phone and realized that his muscles were rigid from the tension of his conversation. He settled into his desk chair and made himself relax. Maybe he should have told Franks about the message left at Dana Larsen’s motel in Carltonville, about Dana’s suspicion that someone had searched his cabin in his absence. But that was nothing, Andrews knew. A practical joke, an unfounded, unreported assumption. Nothing. Unless you had known Dana Larsen for the unflappable realist that he was, and had witnessed his uncharacteristic uneasiness when he’d told his story.

Andrews’ intercom buzzed, startling him.

“Senator,” Judy’s voice said briskly, “Mrs. Hopperman of the Highway Beautification League is here.”

Andrews stood up from behind his desk and left his office to usher in Mrs. Hopperman personally, launching himself on the business of the day.

But he didn’t completely forget about Dana Larsen. Not this time.