The Scorpio Illusion: A Novel

  “You mean if your front door isn’t replaced—”

  “They’ll stay away. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Hey, Jackson—”

  “Don’t bother,” the lieutenant said. “You got tools somewhere, whoremaster?”

  “Downstairs, in the cellar.”

  “I’ll go look.” Poole disappeared through the basement door.

  “How long are those air controllers on duty during the seven to eight o’clock shift?”

  “They come on at six and leave at one, which means you’ve got an hour and twenty minutes to reach him—say an hour-minus, since you’re at least fifteen to twenty-five minutes to the airport, if you’ve got a fast car.”

  “We don’t have a car.”

  “Mine’s for rent. A thousand dollars an hour.”

  “Give me the keys,” said Hawthorne, “or you’ve got a tunnel between your ears.”

  “Be my guest,” the pilot replied, reaching to the side table and retrieving a ring of keys. “It’s in the back lot, a white Caddy convertible.”

  “Lieutenant!” shouted Hawthorne, ripping out the only telephone in the room and backing toward the cellar door, his gun in his hand. “We’re moving, let’s go!”

  “Hell, man. I found a couple of old doors down here that I could—”

  “Stow it, and get up here. We’re going to the airport and we’ve got to get there in less time than we’ve got.”

  “I’m on your side, Commander.” Poole raced up the steps. “What about him?” said the lieutenant, staring at Simon.

  “Oh, I’ll be here, yo-yo,” the pilot replied. “Where the hell am I going?”

  The aircraft controller was nowhere in the tower, although the others easily identified him by the description of his high-pitched voice. His name was Cornwall, and his colleagues had been erratically, dangerously, covering for him for the past forty-five minutes. So perilous was his absence that a controller who was taking a stress-relief break was called in to replace him.

  The missing man was found by a cook in the galley, a bleeding red spot in the center of his forehead. The airport police were summoned and the questioning began, interrogations that lasted nearly three hours. Tyrell’s replies were those of a professional, an admixture of ignorance, innocence, and concern for a friend of a friend he had never met.

  Finally released, Hawthorne and Poole raced back to the whorehouse in Old San Juan.

  “Now I’ll fix the door,” said the confused, angry lieutenant, heading down to the basement as an exhausted Tyrell fell into a soft chair. The owner of the establishment had passed out on the couch. In moments, Hawthorne was asleep.

  Sunlight burst through the room as Tyrell and the pilot sat up, rubbing their eyes, trying to adjust to the reality of day. Across the room, on a green chaise longue, lay Poole, his soft, winsome snoring somehow reflecting the essentially gentle man that he was. Where the shattered front door had been was a perfectly acceptable substitute; it was all intact, including a slat in the upper panel.

  “Who the hell is he?” asked the severely hung-over Alfred Simon.

  “My military chargé d’affaires,” answered Hawthorne, getting unsteadily to his feet. “Don’t make a move against me or he’ll smash you to smithereens with one foot.”

  “The way I feel, Minnie Mouse could do that.”

  “I gather you’re not flying today.”

  “Oh, no, I’ve got too much respect for reflexes to get near a plane.”

  “Glad to hear it. You haven’t got a hell of a lot of respect for much else.”

  “I don’t need a lecture from you, sailor, I just need to know you can help me.”

  “Why should I? The man was dead.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me, that air controller was shot, a bullet in the middle of his forehead.”

  “Jesus Christ!”

  “Maybe you tipped someone off that we were going after him.”

  “How? You tore out the phone!”

  “I’m sure there are others—”

  “One other, and it’s in my room on the third floor, and if you think I could have managed those steps last night, then I’m in the wrong business. I should have been an actor. Also, why would I? I want your help.”

  “A certain logic’s on your side.… Then we must have been followed here. Whoever it was knew we’d found you but figured we were looking for someone else beyond you.”

  “You know what you’re saying, don’t you?” Simon’s cold eyes were riveted on Hawthorne. “You’re saying that since I’m part of the chain, I could be next—with a bullet in my forehead!”

  “The thought crossed my mind—”

  “Well, for Christ’s sake, do something!”

  “What do you suggest?… Incidentally, after three o’clock this afternoon I’m occupied with another matter. I’ll be gone.”

  “And leave me in this fucking mess?”

  “Let’s put it this way,” said Tyrell, glancing at his watch. “It’s six-fifteen, so we’ve got roughly nine hours to figure something out.”

  “You could get me protection in nine goddamned minutes!”

  “It’s not that easy. Taxpayers’ money used to harbor a rogue U.S. pilot who happens to own a whorehouse? Think of the congressional hearings.”

  “Think of my life!”

  “Last night you challenged me to pull the trigger—”

  “I was drunk, for God’s sake! You’re so fucking pure, you never got pissed and found out that you didn’t particularly like the way things were?”

  “I’ll let that pass. We’ve still got nine hours, so let’s start thinking. And the better you think, the closer I am to getting you protection.… How did they first recruit you?”

  “Hell, it was years ago, I can hardly remember—”

  “Remember now!”

  “A big guy, like you, but with gray hair, very high-class; good-looking face—y’know, like those advertisements for fancy men’s clothes. He came to me and said that all the bad bullshit about me could be stricken from the records if I did what he wanted.”

  “Did you?”

  “Sure, why not? I started running Cuban cigars—can you believe that, Cuban cigars—they came wrapped, waterproof cartons dropped by instant chutes into the fishing grounds forty miles off the Keys in Florida.”

  “Drugs,” said Hawthorne, no question in his reply.

  “They sure as hell weren’t cigars.”

  “And you kept doing this?”

  “Let me tell you something, Commander. I got a couple of kids in Milwaukee I’ve never even seen, but they’re mine. I don’t push drugs, and when I put two and two together and came up with four, I told them I was out. That’s when the big fancy man, who walked like a swish, made it clear that the government would come down on me like a meat ax. I either did what they said or I was in Leavenworth. I wouldn’t be able to send any more money to Milwaukee. For my two kids I’ve never seen.”

  “You’re a very complicated man, Mr. Pilot.”

  “Tell me about it. I need a drink.”

  “Your bar’s within lurching distance. Get one. And then start thinking further.”

  “Well,” said the damaged whoremaster, weaving toward the bar. “There’s always, like maybe once, twice, or three times a year, an uptight son of a bitch with a jacket and a tie who comes here and asks for the best toaster—”

  “Toaster?”

  “Oral sex, what can I say?”

  “And?”

  “He has a good time, but he never touches the girl, you know what I mean?”

  “It’s not exactly in my frame of reference.”

  “He never takes his clothes off.”

  “So?”

  “So that’s not exactly natural. So, naturally, I got curious and had one of my girls give him a rocket—”

  “A rocket?”

  “A little powder in his drink that sends him into space.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And gu
ess what we found? In his wallet are a dozen IDs, business cards, country club memberships, the whole ball of wax. He’s a lawyer, a real high-class attorney from one of those megabucks firms in Washington.”

  “What was your conclusion?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s not normal, you know what I mean?”

  “I’m not sure I do.”

  “A zipper-jock like that can get whatever he wants in the uptown joints—why does he come downtown? To a place like this?”

  “Because it is ‘downtown.’ Anonymity, that’s understandable.”

  “Maybe, but maybe not. The girls tell me he’s always asking questions. Like who are my customers; who looks maybe Arab or light-skinned African—what the hell has that got to do with good old plain sex?”

  “You think he’s a conduit?”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “Someone who carries information, but doesn’t necessarily know from whom to whom.”

  “You got me.”

  “Could you identify him? In case his IDs were garbage.”

  “Sure. Class acts stand out down here.” The pilot poured himself a half glass of Canadian whiskey, downing it with several swallows. “Similis similibus curantor,” he intoned while closing his eyes and belching.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “It’s an old medieval prayer. Translated, it means ‘the hair of the dog.’ ”

  “Okay, we’ve got two ‘class acts’: The man who recruited you, and a lawyer from D.C. who doesn’t take off his clothes in a whorehouse. What’re their names?”

  “The recruiter called himself Mr. Neptune, but I haven’t seen him or talked to him in years. The legal beagle’s name is Ingersol, David Ingersol, but like I said, he may be just a weird cipher.”

  “We’ll check him out.… Before Gorda, what was your last job?”

  “My bread and butter, besides this place, is legit tourist stuff—”

  “I mean related to your recruiter,” Tyrell interrupted.

  “Seaplane runs, usually once a week, sometimes twice, to a crummy little island you can barely find on the charts.”

  “With a cove, a short dock, and a house built into the hill.”

  “Yeah! How did you know?”

  “It’s gone.”

  “The island?”

  “The house. What did you fly there? Or who?”

  “Supplies, mainly. Lots of fruit and vegetables and fresh meat—whoever lived there didn’t like frozen junk. And visitors, guests for the day who I’d pick up late in the afternoon; they never stayed overnight. Except one.”

  “What do you mean? Who was it?”

  “No names were ever used. She was a woman and one hell of a looker.”

  “A woman?”

  “And then some, pal. French, Spanish, or Italian, I don’t know which, but a long-legged broad, maybe in her thirties.”

  “Bajaratt!” whispered Hawthorne to himself.

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing. When did you last see her? Where?”

  “A couple of days ago. I dropped her off at the island after picking her up in St. Barts.”

  Tyrell gasped, his breath suspended, no air permitted into his lungs. Madness!… Dominique?

  16

  “You’re lying!” Hawthorne gripped the pilot by his soiled shirt, causing the man to drop his glass, which shattered on the floor. “Who the hell are you? First you use my name for a killer on your fucking plane from Gorda, now you’re telling me a close friend, a very close friend, is the psycho bitch half the world is looking for! You’re a goddamned liar! Who put you up to it?”

  “What’s all this caterwaulin’ about?” A startled Jackson Poole, awakened by the noise, swung his legs over the chaise longue.

  “Let go of me, you fruitcake!” The pilot clutched at the bar to steady himself. “You got shoes on; I don’t and there’s broken glass all over the place!”

  “And in ten seconds I’ll scrape your face across it! Who told you to do this?”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “It’s Amsterdam all over again! What do you know about Amsterdam?”

  “For Christ’s sake, I’ve never been there!… Lemme go!”

  “The woman on St. Barts! Light or dark hair?”

  “Dark. I told you, Italian or Spanish—”

  “How tall?”

  “With heels, about my size, and I’m five nine—”

  “Face … complexion?”

  “She was tan, like from the sun—”

  “What was she wearing?”

  “I don’t know—”

  “Think!”

  “White, it was white—a dress or a pantsuit—kinda businesslike.”

  “Son of a bitch, you’re lying!” shouted Tyrell, forcing the man’s back over the bar.

  “Why the hell would I do that?”

  “He’s not lyin’, Tye,” said Poole. “He hasn’t got the strength or the stomach for it; he’s washed out.”

  “Oh, my God!” Hawthorne dropped his hands and turned away from both men, half whispering, half pleading. “Oh, my God, oh, God, oh, God!” He walked slowly toward the thick window that overlooked the filthy cobblestone street, his eyes glazed, a throated cry coming from deep inside him. “… Saba, Paris … Barts—all lies. Amsterdam, Amsterdam!”

  “Amsterdam?” the pilot asked innocently as he lurched from the bar and carefully moved away, his bare feet avoiding the broken glass.

  “Shut up,” said Jackson quietly, staring at the trembling figure of Tyrell Hawthorne by the window. “The man’s hurtin’, sky pig.”

  “What’s it got to do with me? What did I do?”

  “Told him something he didn’t want to hear, I guess.”

  “I just told him the truth.”

  Suddenly, furiously, Hawthorne whipped around, his eyes now glaring, focused, and filled with horror. “A phone!” he bellowed. “Where’s your other telephone?”

  “Three flights up, but the door’s locked. The key’s somewhere over—” It was as far as the pilot got. Tyrell was taking the steps three at a time, his pounding feet echoing throughout the old whorehouse. “Your commander’s a maniac,” said the owner. “What did he mean when he said I used his name before? That crazy spook on the plane was as clear as a compass fix. ‘My name’s Hawthorne.’ He must have repeated it three or four times.”

  “He was lying. That’s Hawthorne.”

  “Holy—”

  “Nothin’s holy about this whole damn thing,” Poole said quietly.

  Hawthorne repeatedly crashed his shoulder against the door of the pilot’s private quarters on the third floor; the lock sprang on the fifth attempt. He rushed inside, momentarily bewildered by the neatness of the open, connecting rooms. He had expected a slovenly mess; instead, the suite might have been designed for an article in Town and Country, the furniture masculine, a mixture of expensive leather and dark wood, the walls paneled in light oak, the paintings costly reproductions of the Impressionists—diffused light, bright colors, gentle figures and gentler gardens. A man was denying himself in these rooms.

  Where was the telephone? Tyrell raced through an arch into the bedroom; all around, on the bureau, the desk, the bedside tables, were framed photographs of two children, the same children pictured at varying ages. There was the phone—on the table at the right side of the bed. He ran to it, taking a piece of paper out of his jacket pocket—a number in Paris. Again he was momentarily stopped by the sight of another photograph. It was a picture of two young adults, a boy and a girl, both attractive and who looked remarkably alike. Good Lord, they’re twins! thought Hawthorne. They were dressed in collegiate attire, a pleated plaid skirt and white blouse for the girl; a dark blazer and a striped tie for the boy. They were standing, smiling, beside a sign that read:

  University of Wisconsin

  Admissions Office

  Then Tyrell saw the writing at the bottom of the photograph. The lettering was small
but precise, the date a few years earlier.

  They’re still inseparable, Al, and in spite of the quarrels, they look after each other. You’d be proud, as they are of their father who died serving his country. Herb sends his best, as do I, and we thank you for your help.

  A very, very complicated man, the pilot.

  No time!

  Hawthorne picked up the phone, waited for the dial tone, then pressed the numbers for Paris, reading them carefully from the scrap of paper.

  “La maison de Couvier,” said the female voice three thousand miles away.

  “Pauline?”

  “Ah, monsieur, it is you, n’est-ce pas? Saba?”

  “That’s one of the things I have to ask her about. Why wasn’t she there?”

  “Oh, I asked her, monsieur, and madame said she never mentioned this Saba to you—you must have assumed it. Her uncle moved to a nearby island more than a year ago. His previous neighbors became too curious, too intrusive, and she saw no reason to—how do you say it?—take the time to explain, as she was flying immediately back to Paris and knew where to reach you when she returned.”

  “That’s a very convenient explanation, Pauline.”

  “Monsieur, you are not filled with the jealousy—no, it cannot be, for there is no reason! You are always in her heart, I alone know that.”

  “I want to talk to her. Now!”

  “She is not here, you know that.”

  “What’s the hotel?”

  “No hotel. Madame and monsieur are on a Monegasque yacht in the Mediterranean.”

  “Yachts have telephones. What’s the oceangoing number?”

  “I do not know, believe me. Maintenant, the madame is telephoning me in an hour or so, as we are to prepare a dinner party next week for the Swiss from Zurich. They dine quite differently—so German, you understand.”

  “I’ve got to talk to her!”

  “Then you will, monsieur. Leave a number for me and I shall have her call you. Or call me back and I shall have a number for you. It is no problem.”

  “I’ll do that.” A yacht in the Mediterranean, its telephone number not left in Paris in case of emergencies? Who was the woman who had gotten on Simon’s plane in St. Barts? To what lengths would those who knew about Amsterdam go to drive him out of his mind? Someone dressed like Dominique inserted into the crazy mosaic!… Or was he lying to himself? Had he lied to himself in Amsterdam? If so, the lying had to stop.