it.”
“Mr. McAulif!” came the shouted inquiry from across the table. “Surely
you know the Bensons, from Kent. . .”
The timing was right, thought Alex. Hammond’s reaction was one of
astonishment. Shock that changed swiftly to angered acceptance. The
ensuing conversation about the unremembered Bensons would give Hammond
time to think. And Alex wanted him to think.
“What exactly did he say?” asked Hammond. The revolving psychedelic
lights now projected their sharp patterns on the table, giving the agent
a grotesque appearance.
“The exact words.” .
” I What does the word ‘Halidon’ mean to you?” That’s what he said.”
“Your answer?”
“What answer? I didn’t have one. I told him it was a town in New
Jersey.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Halidon, New Jersey. It’s a town.”
“Different spelling, I believe. And pronunciation. Did he accept your
ignorance?”
“Why wouldn’t he? I’m ignorant.”
“Did you conceal the fact that you’d heard the word? It’s terribly
important!”
“Yes … yes, I think I did. As a matter of fact, I was thinking about
something else. Several other things-”
“Did he bring it up later?” broke in the agent.
“No, he didn’t. He stared hard, but he didn’t mention it again. What
do you think it means?”
Suddenly a gyrating, spaced-out dancer careened against the table, his
eyes half focused, his lips parted without control. “Well, if it ain’t
old Mums and Dadsies!” he said, slurring his words with rough Yorkshire.
“Enjoying the kiddie’s show-and-tell, Mums?”
“Damn!” Hammond had spilled part of his drink.
“Ring for the butler, Pops! Charge it to old Edinburgh.
He’s a personal friend, good old Edinburgh.”
The solo, freaked-out dancer bolted away as quickly as he had intruded.
The other middle-aged straights were appropriately solicitous of
Hammond, simultaneously scathing of The Owl’s patrons; the youngsters
did their best to mollify.
“It’s all right, nothing to be concerned with,” said the agent
good-naturedly. “Just a bit of damp, nothing to it.”
Hammond removed his handkerchief and began blotting his front. The
table returned to its prior and individual conversations. The Britisher
turned to McAuliff, his resigned smile belying his words. “I have less
than a minute; you’ll be contacted tomorrow if necessary.”
“You mean that … collision was a signal?”
“Yes. Now, listen and commit. I haven’t time to repeat myself. When
you reach Kingston, you’ll be on your own for a while. Quite frankly,
we weren’t prepared for you so soon—”
“Just a minute!” interrupted McAuliff, his voice low, angry. “Goddamn
you! You listen … and commit! You guaranteed complete safety,
contacts twenty-four hours a day. It was on that basis I agreed-”
“Nothing has changed.” Hammond cut in swiftly, smiling
paternalistically-in contradiction to the quiet hostility between them.
“You have contacts; you’ve memorized eighteen, twenty names-”
“In the north country, not Kingston! You’re supposed to deliver the
Kingston names!”
“We’ll do our best for tomorrow.”
“That’s not good enough!”
“It will have to be, Mr. McAuliff,” said Hammond coldly. “In Kingston,
east of Victoria Park on Duke Street, there is a fish store called
Tallon’s. In the last extremityand only then-should you wish to
transmit information, see the owner. He’s quite arthritic in his right
hand. But, mind you, all he can do is transmit. He’s of no other use
to you. Now, I really must go.”
“I’ve got a few other things to say.” Alex put his hand on Hammond’s
arm.
“They’ll have to wait.”
“One thing. Alison Booth. You knew, didn’t you?”
“About her husband?”
“Yes.
“We did. Frankly, at first, we thought she was a Dunstone plant. We
-haven’t ruled it out…. Oh, you asked about Warfeld’s mention of
Halidon; what he meant. In my judgment, he knows no more than we do.
And he’s trying just as hard to find out.”
With the swiftness associated with a much younger man, Hammond lifted
himself up from the booth, slid past McAuliff, and excused himself from
the group. McAuliff found himself seated next to the middle-aged woman
he presumed had come with Hammond. He had not listened to her name
during the introductions, but as he looked at her now, he did not have
to be told. The concern-the fear-was in her eyes; she tried to conceal
it, but she could not. Her smile was hesitant, taut.
“So you’re the young man . . .” Mrs. Hammond stopped and brought the
glass to her lips.
“Young and not so young,” said McAuliff, noting that the woman’s hand
shook, as his had shaken an hour ago with Warfeld. “It’s difficult to
talk in here with all the blaring.
And those godawful lights.”
Mrs. Hammond seemed not to hear or be concerned with his words. The
psychedelic oranges and yellows and sickening greens played a visual
tattoo on her frightened features. It was strange, thought Alex, but he
had not considered Hammond as a private man with personal possessions or
a wife or even a private, personal life.
And as he thought about these unconsidered realities, the woman suddenly
gripped his forearm and leaned against him. Under the maddening sounds
and through the wild, blinding lights, she whispered in McAuliff s ear:
“For God’s sake, go after him!”
The undulating bodies formed a violently writhing wall.
He lunged through, pushing, pulling, shoving, finally shouldering a path
for himself amid the shouted obscenities. He tried looking around for
the spaced-out intruder who had signaled Hammond by crashing into the
table. He was nowhere to be found.
Then, at the rear of the crowded, flashing dance floor, he could see the
interrupted movements of several men pushing a single figure back into a
narrow corridor. It was Hammond!
He crashed through the writhing wall again, toward the back of the room.
A tall black man objected to Alex’s assault.
“Hey, mon!” “Stop it! You own The Owl, I think not!”
“Get out of my way! Goddammit, take your hands off me!”
“With pleasure, Union!” The black man removed his hands from McAuliff’s
coat, pulled back a tight fist, and hammered it into Alex’s stomach. The
force of the blow, along with the shock of its utter surprise, caused
McAuliff to double up.
He rose as fast as he could, the pain sharp, and lurched for the man. As
he did so, the black man twisted his wrist somehow, and McAuliff fell
into the surrounding, nearly oblivious, dancers. When he got to his
feet, the attacker was gone.
It was a curious and very painful moment.
The smoke and its accompanying odors made him dizzy; then he understood.
He was breathing deep breaths; he was out of breath. With less strength
but no less intensity, he continued through the dancers to the narrow
corridor.
It was a passageway to the rest rooms, “Chicks” to the right, “Roosters”
to the left. At the end of the narrow hallway was a door with a very
large lock, an outsized padlock, that was meant, apparently, to remind
patrons that the door was no egress; The Owl of Saint George expected
tabs to be paid before departure.
The lock had been pried open. Pried open and then reset in the round
hasps, its curving steel arm a half inch from insertion.
McAuliff ripped it off and opened the door.
He walked out into a dark, very dark, alleyway filled with garbage cans
and refuse. There was literally no light but the night sky, dulled by
fog, and a minimum spill from the windows in the surrounding ghettolike
apartment buildings. In front of him was a high brick wall; to the
right the alley continued past other rear doorways, ending in a
cul-de-sac formed by the sharply angled wall. To his left, there was a
break between The Owl’s building and the brick; it was a passageway to
the street. It was also lined with garbage cans, and the stench that
had to accompany their presence.
McAuliff started down the cement corridor, the light from the
streetlamps illuminating the narrow confines. He was within twenty feet
of the pavement when he saw it.
Them: small pools of deep red fluid.
He raced out into the street. The crowds were thinning out; Soho was
approaching its own witching hour. Its business was inside now: the
private clubs, the illegal all-night gambling houses, the profitable
beds where sex was found in varying ways and prices. He looked up and
down the sidewalk, trying to find a break in the patterns of human
traffic: a resistance, an eruption.
There was none.
He stared down at the pavement; the rivulets of blood had been streaked
and blotted by passing feet, the red drops stopping abruptly at the
curb. Hammond had been taken away in an automobile.
Without warning, McAuliff felt the impact of lunging hands against his
back. He had turned sideways at the last instant, his eyes drawn by the
flickering of a neon light, and that small motion kept him from being
hurled into the street.
Instead, his attackers huge black man-plunged over the curb, into the