“I got a box of joints for you. No charge. I’d like to show you around, but
Jock-0 said you might be in a hurry.”
“Jock-Us wrong. Id like to have a dhnk.*
“Goodl Come on in… Only one thing, Mr. Matlock I got a nice clientele,
you know what I mean? Very rich, very cube. Some of them know about Jock-Us
operation, most of them don’t You know what I meanr
“I understand. I was never much for swimming ,anyway.
‘Good, good. . . . Welcome to Hartford7s finest” He opened the thick steel
door. “I hear you went for a bundle tonight”
Matlock laughed as he walked into the complex of dimly lit rooms crowded
with tables and customers. “Is that what it’s called?”
“In Connecticut, that’s what it’s called…. See? I got two floors-a
duplex, like. Each floor’s got five big rooms, a bar in each room. Very
private, no bad behavior. Nice place to bring the wife, or somebody else,
you know what I mean?”
“I think I do. It’s quite something.”
‘Me waiters are mostly college boys. I like to help them make a few dollars
for their education. I got niggers, spics, kikes-I got no discrimination.
just the hair, I don’t go for the long hair, you know what I mean?”
“College kidsl Iset that dangerous? Kids talk.7
204 Robert Ludlum
-Hey, what dyou think?l This place was originally started by a Joe College.
It’s like a fraternity home. Everybody’s a bona fide, dues-paying member of
a private organization. They can’t getcha for that.”
“I see. What about the other part?*
“What other part?”
‘What I came for.”
‘What? A little grass? Try the corner newsstand.”
Matlock laughed. He didn’t want to overdo it. “Two points, Rocco. . . .
Still, if I knew you better, maybe I’d like to make a purchase. Bartolozzi
said what I couldn’t use, yoteve got … Forget it, though. I’m bushed.
I’ll just get a drink and shove off. The girrs going to wonder where I’ve
been.”
“Sometimes Bartolozzi talks too much.”
“I think you’re right. By the way, he’s joining me tomorrow night at
Sharpe’s over in Windsor Shoals. I’ve got a friend flying in from London.
Care to join us?”
Aiello was obviously impressed. The players from London were beginning to
take precedence over the Vegas and Caribbean boys. Sammy Sharpe’s wasn!t
that well known, either.
“Maybe I’ll do that… Look, you need something, you feel free to ask,
right?”
“I’ll do that. Only I doet mind telling you, the kids make me nervous.”
Aiello took Matlocles elbow with his left hand and walked him toward the
bar. “You got it wrong. These kids-theyre not kids, you know what I mean?”
“No, I doet Kids are kids. I like my action a little more subdued. No sweat
Im not curious.” Matlock looked up at the bartender and withdrew what was
left of his bankroll. He removed a twenty-dollar bill and placed it on the
bar. “Old Fitz and water, please
TM MATLOCK PAPM 205
&put your money away,” Rocco said.
“Mr. Aiello?” A young man in a waitel~s jacket aPproached them. He was
perhaps twenty-two or twenty-three, Matlock thought.
Yeahr
-If you’ll sign this tab. Table eleven. Ws the Johnsons. From Canton.
They’re O.K-”
Aiello took the waiter’s pad and scribbled his initials. The young man
walked back toward the tables-
wSee that kid? That’s what I mean- He!s a Yalie’ He got back from Nam six
months ago.-
“So?’
OHe was a lieutenant. An officer. Now hies studying business
administration. . . . He fills in here maybe twice a week. Mostly for
contacts. By the time he gets out, hell have a real nest egg. Start his I
business.
“What?”
Heos a supplier…. These kids, thaes what I meanYou should hear their
stories. Saigon, Da Nang. Hong Kong, even. Real peddling. Hey, these kids
today, they’re greatl They know whafs up. Smart, too. No worries, believe
mel”
“I believe you.” Matlock took his drink and swallowed quicidy. It wasn’t
that he was thirsty, he was trying to conceal his shock at Aiello’s
revelation. The graduates of Indochina were not the pink-cheeked, earnest,
young-old veterans of Armenti6res, Anzio, or even Panmunjom. They were
something else, something faster, sadder, infinitely more knowing. A hero
in Indochina was the soldier who had contacts on the docks and in the
warehouses. That man in Indochina was the giant among his peers. And such
young-old men were almost all back.
matiock drank the remainder of his bourbon and
2o6 Robert Ludlum
let Rocco show him the other rooms on the third floor. He displayed the
controlled appreciation Aiello expected and promised he’d return. He said no
more about Sammy Sharpe’s in Windsor Shoals. He knew it wasn1 necessary.
Aiello’s appetite had been whetted.
As he drove away, two thoughts occupied his mind. Two objectives had to be
accomplished before Sunday afternoon was over. The fast was that he had to
produce an Englishman; the second was that he had to produce another large
sum of money. It was imperative that he have both. He had to be at Sharpes
in Windsor Shoals the next evening.
The Englishman he had in mind lived in Webster, an associate professor of
mathematics at a small parochial campus, Madison University. He had been in
the country less than two years; Matlock had met him–quite
unprofessionally.-at a boat show in Say.. brook. The Britisher had lived on
the Cornwall coast most of his life and was a sailing enthusiast Matlock
and Pat had liked him immediately. Now Matlock hoped to God that John
Holden knew something about gambling.
The money was a more serious problem. Alex Anderson would have to be tapped
again, and it was quite possible that he’d find enough excuses to put him
off. Anderson was a cautious man, easily frightened. On the other hand, he
had a nose for rewards. That instinct would have to be played upon.
Holden had seemed startled but not at all annoyed by Matlock’s telephone
call. If he was anything other than kind, it was curious. He repeated the
directions to his apartment twice and Matlock thanked him, assuring him
that he remembered the way.
TEE MATLOCK PAPER 207
TH be perfectly frank Jim,” said Holden, admitting Matlock into his neat
three-room apartment ‘I’m simply bursting. Is anything the matter? Is
Patricia all right?-
“The answers are yes and no. I’ll tell you everything I can, which won’t be
a hell of a lot . . . I want to ask you a favor, though. Two favors, actu-
ally. The first, can I stay here tonight?”
“Of course–you needn’t ask. You look peaked. Come, sit down. Can I get you
a drink?’
“No, no thanks.” Matlock sat on Holden~s sofa. lie remembered that it was
one of those hide-a-beds and that it was comfortable. He and Pat had slept
in it one happy, alcoholic night several months ago. It seemed ages ago.
“Whaes the second favor? The first is my pleasure. If les cash, I’ve
something over a thousand. Yoxere entirely welcome to it”
‘No, not money, thanks just the same… I’d like you to impersonate an
Englishman for me.’
Holden laughed. He was a small-boned man of forty, but he laughed the way
older, fatter men laughed.
‘That shouldn’t be too demanding, now should it? I suspect there’s still a
trace of Cornwall in my speech. Hardly noticeable, of course.”
“Hardly. With a little practice you may even lose the Yankee twang…
Theres something else, though, and it may not be so easy. Have you ever
gambled?”
“Gambled? You mean horses, football matches?”
‘Cards, dice, roulette?’
*Not substantially, no. Of course, as any reasonably imaginative
mathematician, I went through a phase when I thought that by applying
arithmetical princi-
2o8 Robert Ludium
ples-logaridm-de averages–one could beat the gambling odds.’
Did they work?-
“I said I went through the phase, I didn’t stay there. If theriA a
mathematical system, it eluded me. Still doee
“But you’ve played? You know the games.”
‘Rather well, when you come right down to it Laboratory research, you might
say. Why?”
Matlock repeated the story he had told Blackstone. However, he minimized
Pat’s injuries and lightened the motives of those who assaulted her. When
he finished, the Englishman, who’d lit his pipe, knocked the ashes out of
the bowl into a large glass ashtray.
“Ies right out of the cinema, isn1 it? … You say Patricids not seriously
hurt. Frightened but nothing much more than thatr
“Right If I went to the police it might louse up her scholarship money.”
“I see… Well, I don’t really, but well let it go. And you~d rather I lost
tomorrow night.”
‘rhat doesn’t matter. just that you bet a great deaV
‘But yoxere prepared for heavy losses.”
‘I am.”
Holden stood up. Tm perfectly willing to go through with this performance.
It should prove rather a lark However, there’s a great deal you’re not