The Sweeney 02 Read online

  He crawled slowly through the broken door and into the wreckage of the apartment and over to the bed.

  It was not an electronic calculator, it was a transceiver, the modern word for a walkie-talkie. The machine would have a mate—it was nowhere in sight. The brand name on its side read SANYO INDUSTRIAL INC. Regan was not reading the brand name, but the single sheet of paper that was propped up against the machine. The note read: REGAN, PRESS CALL BUTTON AND WAIT.

  Regan maneuvered himself into an upright sitting position, still on the floor, back against the ruptured mattress. He took up the transceiver and pressed the call button. He had a minute to wait.

  Meanwhile he studied the transceiver. It was a high-quality job. Its dial showed it was adjustable over a range of 500 kilohertz. It now had been locked into a wavelength about 800 kilohertz with a lock key. It was about twice the weight of any walkie-talkie Regan had ever handled and three times the weight of the standard Metropolitan Police street-call radios. This was a thousand dollars of prime-engineering equipment.

  A man’s voice came out of the transceiver. “Regan. Listen. I wish to negotiate a deal with you. When you talk to me, press the TRANSMIT button and as soon as you have said what’s on your mind, remember to press the CALL button again. In the event of poor reception at your end, actuate the aerial by pulling it out. When you talk to me, talk close to the built-in microphone on the side of the radio. Is all that clear?” It was a soft voice, pitched low, with a slight Italian accent. Regan didn’t think the voice was disguised.

  He pushed the TRANSMIT button. “Who the fuck are you?” He was angry, hurt, exhausted by the trip from the hall to the bed. He assumed that this voice was in some way responsible for the blinding headache and skull wound. He pressed the CALL button.

  “You may find that out, Regan.” The voice purred its answer.

  Regan decided he hadn’t encountered that voice in his New York travels. He could only assume another protagonist had entered the lists.

  “Before we talk, you may have the idea of phoning your cop pals to organize a radio fix, to find where this transmit is coming from. That will not be possible. We’ll talk for periods of two or three minutes, and then both you and I will change our locations. You get me?”

  Regan didn’t bother to press TRANSMIT and reply.

  “Regan. A straight answer. What d’you want for yourself from the Dibouti deal? What exactly d’you want? Answer now.”

  Regan pressed the TRANSMIT button. “I want—all I’ve ever wanted—is the return of documents that were stolen from me at an address on Thirty-ninth Street by certain people.” He pressed CALL.

  “It’s possible we have these documents. What would you do if we gave them to you?”

  Regan pressed TRANSMIT. “Hand them over to the FBI in New York and take the next plane to England.”

  There was a delay, as if the low-spoken Italian was in hasty conference with some other party. Then the voice came back. “Some of these documents are redundant since the deaths of certain parties. We assume you wish repossession because there’s been a query about your integrity by law agencies since they disappeared. We understand that.” The voice paused for a moment. “We can arrange to get these documents to you. Say we put them into three packages and place the packages at various addresses in the city. Then, as you give us the information we want, we will lead you to these various addresses. However, if you lie to us, we will cease broadcasting, and you will not get all your papers. Is that understood?”

  Regan pressed TRANSMIT. “Yes,” he said.

  “Okay, Regan. Take the transceiver and go to the skating rink in Rockefeller Center. At a quarter after eleven precisely, be in Rockefeller Plaza. Then press the call button and you will hear from us.”

  The tiny speaker went dead. Regan looked at his watch. They were going to give him little chance to hang around making phone calls—not that he intended to make any. It was five to eleven. He had twenty minutes to get to Rockefeller Plaza.

  Friday morning, nearly eleven-fifteen, most pedestrians were frozen off the street by the biting, resolute wind. Down on the ice the statistical insane, in tutu or ski slacks, a dozen of them slicing away in the sunken well, paraded skills like bored circus animals to the white-faced customers sealed in warmth behind the coffee-bar windows.

  Regan slowed into a perimeter stroll around the rink and wondered at the deep pain throb of his head and just how long it would take the cold to finger in and throttle his body. Nobody was lingering, not even a Chinese doom merchant, about fifty, with jaundiced, sad eyes, who carried a board and message to the nonexistent strollers: AT HAND IS THE HOUR, PREPARE TO MEETEST THY MAKER. LEAFLETS TEN CENTS.

  Regan’s eyes scanned up and panned around, searching the unbroken glaze of a thousand office windows for an empty one with a guy and a transceiver—an office off the Plaza would be the best place to transmit a clear signal, or maybe something else, Regan realized, like a .38 bullet, or a series of them, rained down on an isolated figure of an English cop, who had just delivered certain information into a walkie-talkie and was now expendable.

  Regan checked his watch. It was between fourteen and fifteen minutes after eleven. He took the transceiver out of his pocket and leaving its aerial down pressed the CALL button. He cradled the little metal box inside a flap of his raincoat next to his chest.

  “Regan, you at the ice rink?” The voice was startlingly clear.

  Regan, with his right hand Napoleon style inside the raincoat, pressed the button. “I’m here.”

  “Regan. As I said, we have your papers. They have Scotland Yard exhibit tags numbered one to two hundred. We’ve divided these papers into three bundles. We’ll give you one bundle at each of three locations, provided we have your answers to certain questions...”

  He pressed the TRANSMIT button and spoke into his raincoat. “Agreed.”

  “Okay, here’s your first question. How did you get on to the Lexington Bank and Hannan Mills?”

  “The same way that I’ll get on to you. An unwillingness to be fucked about. A desire to solve the murders of Galliano, Cohen, and company, and to get you for those murders...” Regan’s eyes went slowly around the office windows again. The voice was so clear it must be transmitting from the immediate vicinity. “Here’s your answer. After the phony FBI offices, I was followed from my hotel to a police surveillance bungalow at Croton-on-Hudson. A guy started snooping around. His name was Brown. We turned the tables. He fled to a marina, to a yacht. We checked the ownership of the yacht. It belonged to the Lexington Bank. Am I going too fast?” He pressed the CALL button.

  “Who is this ‘we’ you refer to?”

  Regan pressed TRANSMIT. “i think you know. Lieutenants Cassidy and Ciales. Fifty-ninth Precinct. So we mounted a stakeout on the bank and it was robbed. By you, correct?” He pressed the CALL button.

  “Who do you think I represent?”

  “No fucking idea, except that none of these wops like Galliano seemed heavy enough to front an operation like the Dibouti deal. So I guess they were brokering it. For someone like you. Possible?” He pressed again for an answer.

  The soft Italian voice ignored the question and put its own. “How did you get on to Hannan Mills?”

  Regan decided he would answer—the guy probably had the answer anyhow and was initially testing him. Besides which, he wanted the papers. He reckoned that he would be fed at least the first two lots of papers. Maybe even the third lot just prior to an attempt, and he was sure there was going to be an attempt, to kill him.

  “Brown was arrested at the bank, wounded. I, on my own initiative, wirephotoed his fingerprints to London. Turned out Tomaso Brown is a dodgy English financier, George Andrew Fellowes, with a New York business partnership in Hannan Mills.” Regan was still moving along the pavement, looking up at office windows and into lobbies and other exit doors, getting ready for pursuit or headlong retreat if he did see someone with a transceiver, and according to the circumstances of this fi
nd. “As far as I can calculate, I, and now you, are the only people at this moment who know I got the Hannan Mills connection through Brown’s fingerprints. Now I want the first packet of my court exhibits. Over.”

  The low voice came back clear. “All right. On the concourse there was an Adventist Chinese with a Prepare To Meet Thy Doom board. The man’s now gone, but his board’s parked thereabouts. Under the board you’ll find a key to a locker in the locker bank, lower basement, International Building. The first third of your papers will be in that locker...”

  Regan could see the board propped against the south railings of the skating rink. He started to run now, the guy’s voice still coming out of his raincoat.

  “Regan, collect your papers, then go to the Jewish Museum, Eleven-oh-nine Fifth Avenue, corner of Ninety-second Street. Go to the first floor, the west side overlooking the park. Be there exactly twenty minutes from now. Eleven-oh-nine Fifth, the Jewish Museum. Over and out.”

  Regan was sprinting faster, pulling the transceiver out of the top of his raincoat, pushing it into a pocket, leaving the raincoat top unbuttoned—access to the Magnum in Cassidy’s borrowed shoulder holster. He reached the board and pushed it aside. A small metal locker key lay in a puddle of wet under the board. Regan grabbed it up, doubled back, and headed for the International Building.

  He pushed through the swing doors into the heat wall of the International Building and veered right for a bank of elevators. He saw a mailman, collared him, and asked exactly where the pay lockers were in the lower basement. The guy looked puzzled for a moment and then gave precise directions.

  A minute later Regan was pushing the key into one of the two hundred alloy locker doors and opening it. He took the packet out. Brown manila secured with a metal staple. He broke off part of his thumbnail in his haste to pry out the staple. It was easy to check the contents and the promise. The documents were obviously intact. They still had the original typed tags on them. The adhesive tags pressed to the top of each document were typed EXHIBIT NUMBER ONE and so on up to EXHIBIT NUMBER SIXTY. He spent another twenty seconds taking a random sample of the documents out to examine them, but there was no question, they were the genuine article, and almost exactly one-third of the consignment that had been stolen from him.

  He started sprinting again. This time along the corridor, up the escalator, and out to catch a cab to the Jewish Museum.

  Two guys in black coats moved swiftly from the same exit of the International Building moments after he’d waved down his cab. They hadn’t moved swiftly enough. Regan had spotted them. They waved down a cab immediately behind.

  His own cab was moving and the driver was asking for the destination.

  “Eleven-oh-nine Fifth, corner of Ninety-second.”

  “Right,” the cabbie grunted.

  “It’s the Jewish Museum. Is that right? Is there a Jewish Museum?”

  “Are you asking me if we have a Jewish Museum in New York?” the cabbie demanded in a laconic voice.

  “Yes.”

  “Let me see. In this city we have a Metropolitan Museum, a Museum of the City of New York, a Museum of Modern Art, a Museum of American Folk Art, a Museum of Natural History, a Chase Manhattan Museum of Monies of the World, a Cunard Ship Museum, a Fire Department Museum, and today, for you friend, a Jewish Museum, Eleven-oh-nine Fifth, corner of Ninety-second, just like you said.”

  Regan was relieved. It was possible that the voice on the walkie-talkie had only wanted information about the Lexington Bank or the Hannan Mills Company, and having got it, was now sending him on a wild goose chase to an invented institution.

  “Thanks,” said Regan.

  “We aim to please,” the cabbie replied.

  The traffic was heavying up into lunchtime streets and klaxon chorus. One of the jams was developing between Ninety-first and Ninety-second streets on Madison Avenue. Regan checked his watch; he was running out of time. He pushed three dollars into the fare box, received the cabbie’s grunt, peeled out of the cab, and took to a fast walk down 92nd Street toward the corner building on Fifth. He looked back over his shoulder. The two guys in heavy overcoats were getting out of the trailing cab, also stuck in traffic seventy yards back. Regan paced up and into the Jewish Museum.

  Four stories of old New York mansion, brooding over its views to the park, stark with white plaster walls, contrasted with polished dark woods, lofty beamed ceilings, and a magnificent carved staircase. Regan walked in, moved around a group of twenty schoolkids in the hall, stopped, read a notice for an art show, and checked some postcards for sale. If this was a trap, why was he stepping into it? He moved through the entry turnstile, taking the gamble. Why should this place be any worse to be cornered in than any other unfamiliar building in New York? Not that he was consigning himself to the role of hunted. Once up the staircase and out of view of the people and kids below, he moved quickly past the exhibits of Jewish ceremonial objects toward the front of the house, where he hoped to get a better view down on the two guys as they entered the museum. Everywhere tables and chests with menorahs, nine-branched candelabra in gold and silver, ritual vessels, scrolls, oil lamps, and shofroth, rams’ horn trumpets sounded on the holiest days. Regan moved fast through the three rooms and a short corridor and found the room with the view over the front entrance. Cautiously he looked down.

  The two guys were there, one apparently tying a shoelace while the other waited. Regan guessed they were discussing a course of action. He didn’t know what to make of them, except that they were expensively dressed, which meant that they were not from any law agency—not that he had thought they would be.

  He looked around the empty room and pulled out his transceiver and pressed TRANSMIT. “I’m in position at the museum.” He pressed CALL.

  The response was immediate. “Right,” said the voice. “Next question, Mr. Regan. For your answer you get the next third of your documents. Explain the role of Lieutenant Cassidy of Fifty-ninth Precinct in relationship to you and your original brief.”

  “I think he was out to investigate and trace the Dibouti investment in order to feather his own nest. When I arrived in New York he found himself with the additional problem of having to keep me olf the trail. He almost succeeded.”

  “Okay, now when Cassidy picked you up at—”

  Regan pressed TRANSMIT. “Wait a minute,” he said, the words nearly frozen on his lips. The guys below had finished their chat. The man who was tying his lace had nodded and straightened up. But in the process of straightening up, Regan saw just the glint of the metal stock plate of a shotgun —it would be a sawed-off shotgun—pushed down the V of the guy’s heavy coat. Small arms never worried Regan—he knew the statistics; most people shot with small arms are not even seriously injured. But nobody except the one in a million walked away from a shotgun wound. The chance of being killed in the grisliest manner was suddenly real and near.

  Regan talked urgently into the transceiver. “I’ve got a problem here. I’m being followed. Two guys closing in on me —one armed with a sawed-off shotgun. Any ideas who they would be?” He pressed CALL.

  “Get out of there, Regan.” The voice had changed: urgent, worried, though somehow conveying that it wasn’t concern at the idea of Regan being wiped out but an information source being canceled. “The service elevator, next to the main elevator, take it to the basement. Go to the back of the building. An office marked RESTORATION in English and Hebrew. Go through that; it leads to the only rear way out of the place. Then to the phone booth beside the Chemical Bank of New York, One-thirty-five Madison. Go.”

  “Wait.” Regan pressed TRANSMIT. “My papers, my fucking papers.”

  “First floor, by the bronze of the birds, two spice containers, silver, on a table. Between them a sacred scroll case. It’s a box in leather and silver. Inside that. And get out, Regan. Those guys want you dead.”

  Still Regan delayed, pressed TRANSMIT. “In the phone booth outside the Chemical Bank you are going to tell me who you are.
I always knew there was a joker in the pack, some bugger twice as bent as any of the villains that got rubbed out. I think I know who you are. But I want an introduction.”

  “Regan, you may be already dead. You have seconds to get out of there.”

  But Regan was already sprinting, hurling himself through the room, making for the main staircase, aware now of fear, of a real image of the polished circle of the barrel end of a shotgun arced around to his head, aware that the voice on the transceiver had lied to him, in a last desperate attempt to draw the veil across the truth that Regan had discovered, and that the voice had sensed that it had failed and now must make a final play. Because Regan knew too much. He had outguessed them all and could talk to newspapers, to his bosses in London, to the President of the United States. Regan had guessed the answer to the hundred-million-dollar floating crap game, and all the cards were turning up now because this was the last hand.