Why Me?

6

Malcolm Zachary loved being an FBI man. It gave a certain meaningful tension to everything he did. When he got out of a car and slammed the door, he didn't do it like just anybody, he did it like an FBI man: step, swing, slam, a fluid motion, flex of muscle, solid and determined, graceful in a manly sort of way. Malcolm Zachary got out of cars like an FBI man, drank coffee like an FBI man, sat quietly listening like an FBI man. It was terrific; it gave him a heightened self-awareness of the most delicious sort, like suddenly seeing yourself on closed-circuit television in a store window. It went with him through life, everywhere, in everything he did. He brushed his teeth like an FBI man—shoulders squared, elbow up high and sawing left and right, chick-chick, chick-chick. He made love like an FBI man—ankles together, elbows bearing the weight, hum-pah, hum-pah.

He also, Malcolm Zachary, questioned a suspect like an FBI man, which in the present circumstance was perhaps unfortunate. While Zachary couldn't remember any suspect ever collapsing quite so rapidly as Georgios Skoukakis, it was unfortunately true that he could also not remember any suspect ever clamming up again quite so fast. One statement—"FBI, Mr. Skoukakis. Agent Zachary" — and the suspect had opened up like a landing craft: "I confess! I did it!" But then came the first question—"We'll want the names of your associates" — and the landing craft immediately snapped reshut and rusted into place.

Having an awareness of other people that was less heightened than his awareness of himself, Zachary had no idea what had gone wrong. He didn't know how fragile and false had been that self-deception in Georgios Skoukakis' brain which he, Zachary, had destroyed by his mere presence. On the other hand he had no clue to the roiled tumble of emotions coursing through the poor man immediately after his blurted confession: the humiliation, the self-contempt, regret, horror, despair, the knowledge that he had now destroyed everything forever, with no hope of ever ever ever repairing the damage he had done.

"We'll want the names of your associates."

Bang! Instant redemption. Georgios Skoukakis had destroyed himself forever, but valor was still possible. He would not betray his associates. Zachary could have put bamboo shards under Skoukakis' fingernails, burning coals between his toes—he wouldn't, of course, that not being the FBI way, but just as a hypothetical—and Georgios Skoukakis would not betray his associates. Very seldom is it given to a man, having failed, to atone for his failure quite so rapidly as in the case of Georgios Skoukakis.

Of none of which was Zachary aware. He knew only that Skoukakis had cracked at the first tap of the shell. So now Zachary was standing here, ballpoint pen in right hand, notebook in left hand (exactly like an FBI man), waiting for the answer to his first question and not yet aware that the answer was not going to come. He prodded a bit: "Well?"

"Never," said Georgios Skoukakis.

Zachary frowned at him. "I beg your pardon?"

"Never."

Zachary's partner, a younger man with a moustache named Freedly—Well, no. The man was named Freedly.

Zachary's partner, a younger man named Freedly with a moustache—

Zachary's partner, a moustached younger man named Freedly—

Freedly said, "Have you got the ring on you?"

"Just a minute, Bob," Zachary said. "Let's get the answer to this other question first."

"He won't answer that question, Mac," Freedly said. "Well, Mr. Skoukakis? Is it on you?"

"No," said Skoukakis.

Zachary said, "What do you mean, he won't answer it?"

The suspect's wife, Irene Skoukakis, said something short, fast, and probably vicious in a foreign language, no doubt Greek.

"None of that," Zachary told her.

Skoukakis looked terribly ashamed of himself. "I'm sorry, Irene," he said. "I just wasn't man enough."

This time the wife spoke one word in English.

"None of that either," Zachary told her.

Freedly said, "Where is it, Mr. Skoukakis?"

Skoukakis sighed. "In my shop," he said.

"I would like," Zachary said, "to return to the interrogation. I asked a question."

"He won't answer it," Freedly said. "Let's go get the ring."

Zachary frowned like an FBI man. "What?"

"It's in his shop," Freedly said. "That's the point, isn't it? He won't give us any names, Mac, so let's forget that and go get the ring. Come along, Mr. Skoukakis."

Zachary didn't dislike Freedly—it would not have been possible for him to dislike a fellow FBI man—but there were moments when his liking for Freedly became less than perfect. Freedly didn't always behave like a proper FBI man, which left Zachary at times out in limbo someplace, being an FBI man all on his own while Freedly was just sort of doing things. Like now—fifteen or twenty minutes of interrogation bypassed completely, and they were merely going to get the ring. Zachary said, "What about the wife?"

"She isn't going anywhere," Freedly said. "Are you, Mrs. Skoukakis?"

Irene Skoukakis was a bit old to smolder, but she managed. "I shall get a divorce," she said. "But first I shall be unfaithful with a Turk."

Her husband moaned.

"Let's go," Freedly said.

Okay, okay; Zachary turned the pages, skipped ahead, found his place, and said, like an FBI man, "Right. Let's go get that ring. Come along, Skoukakis."

"Good night, Irene."

Zachary and Freedly and the suspect went outside, and the wife slammed the door very hard after them. Their agency car, an avocado Pontiac, was across the street under a maple tree. They started in that direction and Skoukakis said, "Do you want to follow me?"

Zachary didn't understand the question. Apparently Freedly did, though, because he grinned at Skoukakis and said, "Oh, no, Mr. Skoukakis. You'll ride with us."

"Oh, yes," Skoukakis said. "Of course. I wasn't thinking."

"Naturally you'll ride with us," Zachary said, having caught up. "What are you trying to pull?"

"Nothing," Skoukakis said.

Freedly drove, Zachary and Skoukakis riding in back, Skoukakis giving directions to his store. Freedly radioed in while they were stopped at a red light, saying, "We picked up Skoukakis. He says the object is at his shop. We're on the way there with him."

"Wrapping it up fast," said the radio, in a loud, distorted, but cheerful voice. "That's the way to do it."

"You bet," Freedly said. He stopped talking on the radio and drove the car forward.

Skoukakis said, "Excuse me."

"You were on our list," Freedly told him.

"Ah," Skoukakis said.

Zachary frowned. "What?"

"I didn't know you had a list," Skoukakis said.

"We've got lots of lists," Freedly told him. "The hit squad was Greek. It seemed political rather than criminal. They'd want to get it out of the country, and you were one of the likelier possibilities."

"The FBI has its methods," Zachary said. He'd caught up again.

At the shop, Skoukakis unlocked the door and went in first, switching on the lights and then stopping dead. "Move along," Zachary said.

Skoukakis cried out in Greek. He ran forward. Zachary made a grab for him but missed, and Skoukakis stopped again.

"Oh, for Christ's sake," Freedly said. "Say it isn't so."

Zachary said, "What?"

Skoukakis turned toward them a dead-white face and gestured at his open safe. "I've been robbed!"

"Shit," said Freedly, and went out to the car to call in. Zachary said, "What?"