Capital Crimes

29

ED RAWLS WAS WORKING at his desk in the library when his mail was delivered by a trusty pushing a metal cart. He picked up the stack-three magazines and a couple of envelopes-and set it next to the computer where he was working. He had intended to look through the stack later, but he recognized his own prison-issue envelope in the pile.

He picked it up and looked at it. NO LONGER AT THIS ADDRESS, NO FORWARDING ADDRESS, the stamp said. “Shit,” Rawls said aloud, attracting a frown from the librarian, a fiftyish schoolmarm type who Rawls had been screwing on a sofa in her office for two years, twice a week, like clockwork. “Sorry, Imelda,” he said.

“You must learn to control your language, Ed,” she replied, then went back to her filing.

Rawls finished his work, read the other letter, which was a fund-raising appeal from a Republican candidate, who hadn’t figured out yet that his box number address was the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. He threw that away, ripped the returned letter to shreds and put the pieces in his pocket, then he went back into the stacks as if he were looking for something.

He found the volume, Songbirds of North America, a book that had never been checked out of the library, and opened it. He had cut out the pages enough to allow him to hide a cell phone in the book. The charger was hidden elsewhere in the library. He switched on the phone and dialed a number.

“Yes,” a man’s voice said.

“You know who this is,” Rawls replied. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes. What can I do for you?”

“I want to find a guy we used to know at work,” Rawls said. He spoke the name. “Remember him?”

“Yes. I don’t see how I can help.”

“Do I have to remind you that you would be in my company at this very moment, had I chosen to-”

“All right,” the man said, cutting him off. “Do you have his last address?”

“ Sixty-nine Riverview Drive, Arlington. Mail is being returned from that address. They’re not forwarding.”

“You have any clue where he might be?”

“He’s traveling, I think, but he’s got to have a base somewhere.”

“Does he have any family?”

“He had a wife. I don’t know if she’s still alive.”

“Kids?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’re a big help.”

“I do what I can.”

“How will I get in touch with you?”

“Email me, but be circumspect.” Rawls gave him a Hotmail address.

“Give me a couple of days,” the man replied.

“Thanks for your help,” Rawls said, and hung up. He replaced the phone in the book and went back to his computer. He logged on to the Internet and checked his email. There was one from Hotbooks.

“Dear Fast Eddie,” she wrote. “I’m still wet from your last email. I printed it out and took it to bed with me last night, and I still can’t get it out of my mind.” She described what she had done to herself while reading it, then what she would have done to him, if he had been there. “Are you sure there isn’t some way we can get together soon?”

Rawls wrote back that he’d love to, but the demands of work kept him constantly on the road. “I’m in Kansas City right now, putting out a fire, then I have to go to Witchita, then to L.A. Believe me, I’d rather be with you. We’ll work it out soon.” He would, too, just as soon as he had a fix on this guy, as soon as he was a free man again. Rawls finished his workday and went to the rec room to wait for dinner. There had been a time when he had been uncomfortable in the company of large numbers of prisoners, but he had grown accustomed. Anyway, when prisoners were gathered in the yard or the common room, they tended, like everybody else in the world, to gather in groups that had something in common-murder, rape, gang activity-and Rawls nearly always sat with the stockbrokers, accountants, bankers, and other con men who, in their past lives, had worn suits to work. Today, however, he took a seat with a tall, skinny man who sat alone at one of the steel tables.

“Hello, Nickolai,” he said. “I hear you wanted to talk.” Rawls had known the man professionally, when they were working opposite sides of the street in Scandinavia. Nickolai had posed as a chauffeur for the KGB at the USSR embassy in Stockholm, and later, in Washington, until CIA people had caught him working in their embassy without a diplomatic passport. His lengthy interrogation had been a disappointment, and now they kept him on ice in Atlanta for a time when they might want to exchange him for an American agent. But time had overtaken Nickolai; the USSR was defunct, and it was extremely unlikely that he would ever be exchanged.

“Hello, Ed,” Nickolai replied. He sounded less mournful than usual. “I wish you to send a message to your people at Langley.”

“What sort of message?”

“I have something to offer them in exchange for… exchange.”

“Yeah? And what would that be?”

Nickolai’s thin mouth twitched into something resembling a smile. “I cannot tell you that, of course. Not until we have established contact.”

“And what makes you think they would want to hear from me?” Rawls asked. “I’m no more popular at Langley than you are.”

“Ah, but you have friends, right, Ed? People whose friendship is stronger than… what you were punished for.”

“Maybe, but what’s in it for me?”

Nickolai looked serious, now. “I may be able to get myself sent home and you released from this place.”

Rawls laughed heartily. “Nickolai, don’t you understand that ”home‘ isn’t there anymore? Everything has changed. The KGB, or whatever they call it now, is run by people your children’s age. Everybody you knew there is dead or pensioned off.“ He waved an arm. ”This is your home now.“

“Ed, I can make my way in the new Russia. Don’t worry about that. But aren’t you interested in getting out of here before you die?”

“Well, sure, Nickolai, but you’re going to have to convince me that what you’ve got is important enough to get us both out before I’m willing to contact anybody at all. Now tell me about it.”

“And what’s to keep you from acting for yourself and forgetting all about me?”

“Well, I guess you’re just going to have to trust me, Nickolai. After all, who else in here could do what you want?”

Nickolai sighed. “Ed, do you give me your word that you will not act just for yourself, that I go, too?”

“Yeah, sure I do. Now tell me what you’ve got. We’ve been talking too long already.”

Nickolai placed his hands on the table and interlocked his fingers. “Tell them that I can give them this fellow who’s killing your reactionaries everywhere.”

Rawls blinked and looked shocked, because he was. “And how the hell can you do that?” he asked.

“Because I know his name.”

“And how the hell do you know his name?”

“In my former profession I had reason to know this man’s work,” Nickolai said.

“You’re not making any sense, Nickolai,” Rawls said. He was alarmed, and he had to get this out of the man.

“Ed, just as your people tried to know as much as possible about our people, so did we try to know as much as possible about your people.”

“Are you saying that this guy was a Company man?”

“Precisely.”

“Did I know him?”

“No, you would have been in very different jobs.”

“How do you know for certain that the name you have is the guy they want?”

Nickolai shrugged. “I know, that’s all. When they check out the name, they will have their man. If he’s not the man, then they have lost nothing. They will not owe me-or you-until they have arrested him.”

“What’s the man’s name?” Rawls asked. “They’ll want to know that right away.”

“Of course they will, Ed, but that will have to come directly from me to them.”

“And how will you do that?”

“I’m sure you could arrange a telephone call. I will give this information directly to Ms. Katharine Rule.”

“You think the director is going to call you on the phone?”

“I suppose that depends on how badly they want this person. Tell them to act quickly, before he kills somebody else important.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Rawls said. “In the meantime, don’t you mention this to anybody else, you hear?”

“I will deal only with you, Ed, unless I become convinced that you can’t help. Then I’ll have to use other means.”

The dinner bell rang and both men got up and joined the crowd heading toward the mess hall. Rawls was frightened and angry. Unless he played this right, Nickolai could screw up his chances for a pardon.