Metzger's Dog

17 Porterfield waited for the fourth ring of the telephone. He could imagine Alice on the first ring putting down something she’d been reading and walking from the living room to the phone on the kitchen wall.

“Hello?” There was the slight reserve in her voice that made it a different voice, one he never heard except in the instant before she knew who it was.

“Hello, honey.”

“Ben. I was just wondering if I should get in the bathtub or wait a few more minutes. I fooled you for once.”

“I’ll get you next time. Is everything okay?”

“Of course. Miss me?”

“I always miss you. I should be able to get back in a few days.” There had been an edge in her voice—what was it? There had been thirty years of telephone calls, sometimes made from cities thousands of miles from the place they both pretended he was. She was holding something, almost as though it were an object he couldn’t see. “What have you been doing?”

She sighed, and he could feel she was deciding to pass the object to him. “I went to dinner tonight at Pauline and Charles Compton’s house.”

“We haven’t seen them in—it must be three or four years. What brought that on?” Charles Compton had been retired since the purge of 1977. Now he worked for an insurance agency. In the old days Charles and Pauline had been among the few people they could see socially. Only with other couples in the Company was there no awkwardness in the fact that nobody ever talked about business. There was no need to maintain the usual terrible watchfulness about dates and cities that came up in conversation. All four were comfortable confining conversation to the present—the children, this year’s books, this week’s movies.

Alice’s voice was thoughtful. “I don’t really know. Pauline called last night and said they’d tried the Foundation office during the day. I guess I was the consolation prize.”

“Did you have a good time?”

“They were cordial. Pauline’s a good cook.”

“Sounds pretty dull. What’s the problem?”

“He’s changed. No, I know we’ve all changed, and I know I’m not the one to talk, with my hair looking like the topping on a fancy dessert. But you know, Ben, he was drunk.”

“Well, he’s probably feeling business pressure. The insurance companies must be in the same shape as everything else. What did he say?”

“Nothing. Not a thing that’s worth mentioning. Most of the evening he just drank and asked questions about you. As I was leaving, he said the oddest thing. No, it wasn’t odd in itself, it was just the way he said it. It was, ‘Tell Ben not to abandon old friends.’”

“Oh, well. I’ll give him a call when I’m home. He’ll be okay. Maybe I’ll have a few drinks with him, if that’s what he’s doing these days.”

“If you have to. But just remember, don’t abandon old wives.”

“Never. I guess I’ll turn in now and let you get that bath. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“Good night, Ben.”

“Sleep tight, baby.”

Porterfield sat on the edge of the bed, staring out over the balcony at the vastness of the valley stretching far to the north, the millions of lights seeming to form a glow above the earth brighter here near the center, dimmer and less substantial in the distance. So it had gotten as far as Charles Compton already. The word was moving through the old boy network of retired agents and peripheral people, and some of them were worried. Some of them had things to worry about. He considered for a moment having someone pull out Charles Compton’s file, but he dismissed the idea. It didn’t really matter which chapter of Donahue’s opus was the one that kept Compton awake at night. Compton was of no use to him.

CHINESE GORDON STROLLED ACROSS the vast lawn, feeling the thick, elastic layer of wet grass under his feet and smelling the warm, still evening air, fresh and moist. “Just like a golf course,” he said. “The Official Federal Country Club of Wilshire Boulevard.”

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Kepler asked.

“It’s brilliant, actually. You saw the gardeners leave when they turned off the sprinklers. The conditions are perfect—wet, healthy grass, a beautiful sunset, ideal wind conditions. You should learn to take pleasure in being a tiller of the soil.” He took a deep breath and blew it out through his teeth. “And loosen up a little. You’re holding your trowel like you were going to stab somebody with it.”

Kepler contemplated the luminous deep purple sky beyond the massive white shape of the building. Chinese Gordon moved off a few yards to adjust the nozzle of his weed sprayer. After a few tentative squirts he had choked it to a thin, straight stream. Kepler heard him chuckle and then begin to hum a medley of Sousa marches as he clutched the spray tank under his left arm like a bagpipe. Kepler knelt down and carved out a circle of turf with his trowel, dug a few inches deeper, and buried the bottle. When he looked up he could see Chinese Gordon in the twilight walking back and forth with the sprayer, dousing the lawn with a steady stream of silvery fluid.

On the boulevard the continuous stream of cars was already a blur of headlights reflecting on polished metal, and the stores had lighted their windows. Here and there colored neon swirls had appeared on the shadowy sides of buildings.

As Chinese Gordon’s march brought him closer, Kepler could see that a few inches above the lawn a slight haze like wisps of steam seemed to rise and then drift off into the night. Kepler stood up and backed away to make room.

Chinese Gordon stopped, turned off the valve on the weed sprayer, and said, “As fine a piece of decorative gardening as this group of public servants will ever see.” He smiled as he started the long walk across the lawn beside Kepler. When they reached the car he carefully wrapped the weed sprayer in a blanket and laid it in the trunk.

“What’s the problem?” Chinese Gordon asked. “You haven’t said anything in fifteen minutes.”

“No problem.”

“Then what is it?”

“I was trying to think of the right word. You know how that is. You see something and you know there’s a word for it but instead you keep thinking of other words that maybe sound like it but don’t mean exactly what you want them to mean. And of course it doesn’t matter because you know the right word exists, so you can’t be satisfied until you remember it.”

“Sure.” Chinese Gordon made a right turn onto Wilshire Boulevard and then drove a block before the red light stopped them. “I have that happen a lot. It’s like having one of those tiny bugs fly up your nose. You blow your nose and snort and maybe try to dig it out with your finger if you’re alone. You can’t stop until you succeed completely. What was the word?”

“Simpleton.”

IT WAS NEARLY six o’clock. The sun was rising, and in a few minutes Donald Carney of the IRS would begin what he thought of as the quiet hours. Those last two hours of the late-night shift always seemed to be empty. Between twelve and six he always finished the work that required concentration. When the sun came up it was time for other people to start their turn. He usually made lists. There were lists of things he’d have to work on tomorrow night, things he had to pick up on the way home this morning, lists of messages to Blucher, the man who occupied this office during the day. This morning there would be plenty of messages. The Internal Revenue Service was moving into prime auditing season now, and even the quiet hours were filling up. He stood up and walked to the window. The cars were already flooding the boulevard, and the tiny shapes of people moved along the sidewalk, far below him, their shadows long in the bright, oblique rays of the sunrise.

The view from the twenty-third floor of the Federal Building was almost supernatural, like clairvoyance, or even omniscience. He could see the afternoon’s weather approaching from the sea. If the air was clear he could sometimes even tell how heavy the traffic on the Santa Monica Freeway was going to be. Even the regular things looked different from up here. The painted numbers that people below never noticed on the roofs of buses and police cars were clearly visible. He leaned against the windowsill and sipped his coffee. In a little while the first of the day people would begin walking up that sidewalk from the parking lot.

Four long shadows suddenly appeared at the front of the building on the white pavement. He could barely see the tiny men who made them. As he watched, they began to run. The shadows, five or six times longer than a man, seemed to flicker and bounce and float. At first he thought they were running toward the street, but then the shadows fanned out across the green lawn. It was then that Carney saw it. In the center of the depthless green far below him, Carney could see the brownish yellow letters. The four shadows swept to the spot, then flickered along it and then crossed each other in frantic movements. Finally the shadows merged and stopped, all four of them flailing across the brownish-yellow patch, but the shadows didn’t obscure it at all. It was perfectly visible from the twenty-third floor and just as legible as the numbers on the roofs of the buses on the street. It said, “DONAHUE.” Donahue? He shook his head and gave a humorless snort. Whoever this guy Donahue was, within a day or two he’d be wishing he’d just written “FUCK YOU, IRS” the way the last two had—the way any normal person would.

Carney had worked out the first of his lists, drunk his coffee, and returned the file he’d been working on to its place in the drawer before he felt enough curiosity to look out the window again. Now there were more tiny men surrounding the spot on the lawn, this time men with shovels and wheelbarrows. They had already cut the turf into strips like carpet and rolled it into little strudels to be loaded into the wheelbarrows. By quitting time the new strips of turf would probably be laid in place and the spot would be indistinguishable from the rest of the lawn, at least from the twenty-third floor. The gardeners seemed to be very efficient at making things look as though they’d been growing for years. In a day or two the new turf would be rooted and healthy. At least it would be if it weren’t too trampled to survive. From up here he could count seventeen shadows, only four of them working with shovels and wheelbarrows while the others watched.

PORTERFIELD STOOD AT THE OFFICE WINDOW, staring out at the airport. It would have pleased him to be over there now, looking at this building through the window of an airplane. The ten-o’clock flight arrived in Washington just about the time he usually came home for dinner.

“I’d say that the signs all point to a genuine break for the good guys,” said Gossens.

“Meaning?” Porterfield said.

“Us.” Gossens stretched it to two syllables, obviously annoyed.

“No. I mean what signs?”

“The fact that they did it in such an amateurish way, like vandals, for one thing. Writing on a lawn and leaving a note buried in a bottle—why, it’s downright infantile. And they did it at the Federal Building downtown. That’s especially telling. If it were some group affiliated with a major power, or even independents with some sophistication, they’d have to know that the Company has no office down there. The place is entirely devoted to civilians—the IRS, Immigration, that kind of thing.”

Porterfield sighed. He said wearily, “What would have happened if they’d come to this complex to leave us a message?”

“They’d have been snatched up, of course. Nothing comes within a thousand yards of this building without coming under surveillance.”

“And tell me: Who first noticed the word ‘Donahue’ burned into the front lawn? Did some clerk or tax collector see it and know enough to call your office? It’s now eight o’clock. It’s been light for only two hours.”

“Of course it was one of our people, but…”

“It doesn’t sound as though they did too badly. The KGB wouldn’t have done much better. Let me see the note.”

Gossens handed him several photographs: The top one was of a piece of paper with a hand-printed paragraph on it. The next three were photographs of a beer bottle. Porterfield lifted an eyebrow and tossed them on the desk. He read aloud.

Announcement of auction. The private papers of the late Professor Ian Donahue will be sold to the highest bidder on or about the first of May. Confidential bids will be accepted from qualified purchasers. Your identifying number is 619352, and your bid will be placed in the Los Angeles Times.

He studied the photographs of the grass, some of them taken from the sky, some of them taken with a special closeup lens and looking as though they must be part of a nature study.

Gossens snapped, “Well? Langley is going to want to know what the next move is.”

“How far have they gotten on the lab work?”

“There aren’t any fingerprints, as you might expect. Whatever footprints there might have been weren’t defined enough to do anything with.”

“You mean your people tromped all over the area before they’d thought about it?”

“Well—yes. But there’s going to be a demonstration there in about a half hour. Something to do with nuclear disarmament, so there are going to be people all over the lawn anyway. The permit was issued two months ago. Our people barely had time to do as much as they did before—”

“What did they use on the lawn?”

“Hydrochloric acid, weak enough so that it would take a little while to burn into the lawn. It’s not traceable, and it’s easy enough to make, for that matter.”

“And nobody saw anything?”

“No.”

“Then I’d say the best thing to do is probably get in touch with Deputy Director Pines at Langley and tell him to have Management and Services start working out what our bid is going to be.”