The Sweeney 02 Read online

  Holman looked sour. “It’s a helluva mess.” He examined his well-manicured fingers as if they could produce an explanation. “When Cassidy saw Hutchins, just a little before you did, he recognized the face in the passport you brought from London—the passport of the man who got away at the Aerial Hotel, Ricky Rossi. Cassidy realized that you were innocent, shot my guy—I think his intention was to incapacitate him. It didn’t work out that way.”

  “Cassidy,” Seebohm said tight-lipped, “has a habit of incapacitating people who subsequently don’t recover.”

  “But that begs another question, doesn’t it? Cassidy saw the Rossi passport I brought from London. He told me he’d had Rossi’s description circulated. Are you saying he didn’t circulate it? And if not, why not?”

  Seebohm’s eyes were studying the floor. “Yes, well, on that point we have not as yet received a satisfactory explanation from Lieutenant Cassidy.”

  Regan studied the two men stone-faced and said nothing.

  Seebohm decided to wind it up. “I’ve been in touch with your chief in London. He says that your Official Secrets Act insures a legal liability on you in the U.K. not to divulge any information obtained in the pursuit of your official work for Scotland Yard in the U.S. I have here a typed memo which you will sign that will give us in the U.S. legal powers to restrain you should you ever attempt to communicate anything that has passed between us to anyone outside this room. Will you sign it?” Seebohm asked.

  Regan shrugged. There was no point in not signing it. “Why not? But one last question.”

  They looked at him.

  “What happened to the Dibouti hundred million?”

  “You will appreciate,” Holman replied immediately, “that the CIA is funded by a nonspecified budget from government sources, but would look to absorb small monies achieved as a random by-product of its operations, especially when these sums have no official existence. For instance, it is a well-known fact that the CIA operates Air America, a commercial airline in the Far East, which is quite a successful airline, and makes profits which are credited back to CIA internal funds—”

  “Just a second,” Regan cut across him. “My question, Mr. Holman, is what happens to the hundred-million-dollar Dibouti money now sitting in an account in the Chemical Bank...”

  Holman’s expression didn’t falter. “What account, Mr. Regan? What money?” he asked quietly.

  He was in the cubicle two days. The first day was the meeting with Seebohm and Major Holman. On the second day he received a bowl of fruit in the night. It had a card in it. On the card, handwritten: FROM THE MANAGEMENT OF MOUNT ANNAN PRIVATE HOSPITAL TO MR. REGAN. GET WELL SOON, SIR. He doubted that many of the patients touched such gifts, and felt the fruit was probably taken back and recycled. The top pieces of fruit were all right, but underneath two bananas, an apple, and an orange, the grapes and a grapefruit were badly out of condition. They would tend to add to the patient’s sojourn in the hospital rather than speed his recovery. Maybe that was the idea.

  He couldn’t work out how large the hospital was. When he arrived he was unconscious with morphine and loss of blood. The first night, from the sounds through the brief pain-stabbed intervals of sleep into waking, he judged it was a small place. Then the following morning he heard carts banging down what were obviously long corridors and voices receding far into the distance.

  He lay for two nights and two and a half days waiting for Cassidy. The only indication from the police department that it remembered his existence was that someone, maybe Cassidy, delivered to the hospital the suitcase that he’d left at the warehouse apartment.

  At eleven o’clock on the third morning, as Regan waited for the cab that would take him and the suitcase to the airport and as he sat at one open window looking down into a forest of pipes and conduits around the white-tiled walls of the service area of the hospital, the door opened and Cassidy walked in with two mugs of coffee. “You speaking to me?” he asked behind an impervious, matter-of-fact expression.

  “I don’t see why not,” Regan returned flatly.

  Cassidy handed Regan the mug as if it were a reward for being agreeable. “I’ve come to drive you to the airport.”

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “I insist.”

  Regan shrugged, sat down on the edge of the bed, and indicated for Cassidy to sit on the only available chair. Cassidy sat.

  “Where have you been?” Regan asked.

  “Seein’ lawyers, a judge, trying to fix this thing about the dead black guy...” Cassidy trailed off.

  “And?”

  “Can’t be fixed. The black guy’s bread is being piled together to wipe the road with me and Ramo.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Leave town like Ramo.”

  “Go where?”

  “Who knows. Maybe London.” Cassidy gave a tight, sad little smile.

  “What about the CIA guy you shot at the bank?” “That’s a corpse that’s not a problem. They understand why I did what I did.”

  “D’you have to leave the country?”

  “No. Maybe I’ll go to California. There’ll be no active detective bureau search for me and Ramo. But still for us there are a few quiet years.”

  Regan mused. “I wonder how you’ll manage that.”

  Cassidy seemed suddenly uncomfortable and awkward, like he now regretted coming to the hospital. “When’s your plane?”

  “About an hour.”

  “That’s what I thought. We should move. This all your luggage?”

  “I want you to answer a question,” Regan halted him.

  “Yes?”

  “Why were you given a bum ride the last phase of the investigation? Seebohm and Holman knew most of the score —you were told less than me. Why?”

  “Because I was suspect number two. Because they believed I was helping you to find the Dibouti money and make a grab for it myself.”

  “And were you?”

  Cassidy hesitated, considered the options of skirting or confronting the truth. “Yeah, Jack Regan, after the death of the black guy I got interested in the money. Is that unreasonable?”

  Regan shrugged.

  “The car’s sitting on top of a fire hydrant blocking the ambulance bay just outside the main door.”

  Regan, walking slowly, painfully, followed Cassidy out of the room.

  They were in the elevator. Cassidy was still studying him, making calculations and rechecking them, obviously about to tell him something, but put off by Regan’s coolness.

  The elevator reached the lobby and they stepped out and moved through a group of a dozen people.

  Then Cassidy spoke. “There’s someone who’d like to come out to the airport with us. She moved out of that apartment, right? She’s left her girl friend. She’d like a chance to have a word with you. Maybe she could drive my car—the two of you could go alone?...”

  Regan slowed in his tracks. Christa was walking across the wide stone-flagged hall toward them. Regan turned and indicated his suitcase.

  Cassidy puzzled, but comprehending, handed it to him.

  Regan didn’t look at her. He walked straight past her and headed for the door.

  Cassidy’s voice, loud and furious, turned the twenty heads in the hall. “All right, Jack Regan, shit. Go. Go fuck yourself.” He took Christa in his arms, produced a Kleenex, and pressed it into the tears that had instantly started down her cheeks.

  Regan pushed his way through the swing doors. There was an empty cab just about to pull away from the front of the hospital. He signaled it.

  He opened the car door, dropped his suitcase onto the floor inside, and climbed painfully in. “Kennedy Airport. British Airways,” he said. He didn’t look back.

 

 

 
k with friends