“What's your full name?” said Calvert, sounding about as excited as he would if he were issuing a traffic ticket.
“Angelo Mexis Casefikis.”
Calvert made him spell it in full.
“Where do you live?”
“Now at Blue Ridge Manor Apartments, 11501 Elkin Street, Wheaton. Home of my friend, good man, please don't give trouble.”
“When did this incident take place?”
“Last Thursday,” Casefikis said instantly.
Calvert checked the date. “24 February?”
The Greek shrugged. “Last Thursday,” he repeated.
“Where is the restaurant you were working in?”
“A few streets from me. It called Golden Duck.” Calvert continued taking notes. “And where was this hotel you were taken to?”
“Don't know, in Georgetown. Maybe could take you there when out of hospital.”
“Now, Mr. Casefikis, please be careful about this. Was there anyone else working at this luncheon who might have overheard the conversation in that room?”
“No, sir. I only waiter attend in room.”
“Have you told anyone what you overheard? Your wife? The friend whose house you're staying at? Anyone?”
“No, sir. Only you. No tell wife what I hear. No tell no one, too scared.”
Calvert continued to interview, asking for descriptions of the other men in the room and making the Greek repeat everything to see if the story remained the same. It did. Mark looked on silently.
“Okay, Mr. Casefikis, that's all we can do for this evening. We'll return in the morning and have you sign a written statement.”
“But they going to kill me. They going to kill me.”
“No need to worry, Mr. Casefikis. We'll put a police guard on your room as soon as possible; no one is going to kill you.”
Casefikis dropped his eyes, not reassured.
“We'll see you again in the morning,” said Calvert, closing his notebook. “You just get some rest. Good night, Mr. Casefikis.”
Calvert glanced back at a happy Benjamin, still deeply absorbed in
$25,000 Pyramid
with no words, just money. He waved again at them and smiled, showing all three of his teeth, two black and one gold. Calvert and Andrews returned to the corridor.
“I don't believe a word of it,” Barry said immediately. “With his English, he could easily have got hold of the wrong end of the stick. It was probably quite innocent. People curse the President all the time. My father does, but that doesn't mean he would kill her.”
“Maybe, but what about that gunshot wound? That's for real,” said Mark.
“I know. I guess that's the one thing that worries me,” Barry said. “It could just be a cover for something completely different. I think I'll speak to the boss to be on the safe side.”
Calvert headed for the pay phone by the side of the elevator and took out two quarters. All agents carry a pocketful of quarters; there are no special telephone privileges for members of the Bureau.
“Well, was he hoping to rob Fort Knox?” Elizabeth
Dexter's voice startled Mark, although he had half-expected her to return. She was obviously on her way home: the white coat had been replaced by a red jacket.
“Not exactly,” replied Mark. “We'll have to come around tomorrow morning to tidy things up; probably get him to sign a written statement and take his fingerprints, then we'll pick up the gold.”
“Fine,” she said. “Dr. Delgado will be on duty tomorrow.” She smiled sweetly. “You'll like her, too.”
“Is this hospital entirely staffed by beautiful lady doctors?” said Mark. “How does one get to stay the night?”
“Well,” she said, “the flu is the fashionable disease this month. Even President Kane has had it.”
Calvert looked around sharply at the mention of the President's name. Elizabeth Dexter glanced at her watch.
“I've just completed two hours' unpaid overtime,” she said. “If you don't have any more questions, Mr. Andrews, I ought to get home now.” She smiled and turned to go, her heels tapping sharply against the tiled floor.
“Just one more question, Dr. Dexter,” said Mark, following her around the corner beyond the range of Barry Calvert's disapproving eyes and ears. “What would you say to having dinner with me later tonight?”
“What would I say?” she said teasingly. “Let me see, I think I'd accept gracefully and not too eagerly. It might be interesting to find out what G-men are really like.”
“We bite,” said Mark. They smiled at each other. “Okay, it's 7:15 now. If you're willing to take a chance on it, I could probably pick you up by 8:30.”
Elizabeth jotted her address and phone number on a page of his diary.
“So you're a left-hander, are you, Liz?”
The dark eyes flashed momentarily up to meet his. “Only my lovers call me Liz,” she said, and was gone.
“It's Calvert, boss. I can't make my mind up about this one. I don't know if he's a jerk or for real so I'd like to run it past you.”
“Fine, Barry. Shoot.”
“Well, it could be serious, or just a hoax. He may even be nothing more than a small-time thief trying to get off the hook for something bigger. But I can't be sure. And if every word he said turned out to be true, I figured you ought to know immediately.” Barry relayed the salient parts of the interview without mentioning the Senator, stressing that there was an added factor he did not want to discuss over the phone.
“What are you trying to do, get me in the divorce courtsâI suppose I'll have to come back to the office,” said Nick Stames, avoiding his wife's expression of annoyance. “Okay, okay. Thank God I got to eat at least some of the moussaka. I'll see you in thirty minutes, Barry.”
“Right, boss.”
Calvert depressed the telephone cradle with his hand momentarily and then dialed the Metropolitan Police. Two more quarters, leaving sixteen in his pockets. He often thought the quickest way to check out an
FBI agent would be to make him turn his pockets inside out; if he produced twenty quarters, he was a genuine member of the Bureau.
“Lieutenant Blake is on the front desk. I'll put you right through.”
“Lieutenant Blake.”
“Special Agent Calvert. We've seen your Greek and we'd like you to put a guard on his room. He's scared to hell about something so we don't want to take any chances.”
“He's not my Greek, damn it,” said Blake. “Can't you use one of your own fancy guys?”
“There's no one we can spare at the moment, Lieutenant.”
“I'm not exactly overstaffed myself, for God's sake. What do you think we're running, the Shoreham Hotel? Oh hell, I'll do what I can. But they won't be able to get there for a couple of hours.”
“Fine. Thanks for your help, Lieutenant. I'll brief my office.” Barry replaced the receiver.
Mark Andrews and Barry Calvert waited for the elevator, which was just as slow and reluctant to take them down as it had been to take them up. Neither of them spoke until they were inside the dark blue Ford.
“Stames is coming back to hear the story,” said Calvert. “I can't imagine he'll want to take it any further, but we'd better keep him informed. Then maybe we can call it a day.”
Mark glanced at his watch; another hour and forty-five
minutes' overtime, technically the maximum allowed an agent on any one day.
“I hope so,” said Mark. “I just got myself a date.”
“Anyone we know?”
“The beautiful Dr. Dexter.”
Barry raised his eyebrows. “Don't let the boss know. If he thought you picked up someone while you were on duty, he'd send you for a spell in the salt mines in Butte, Montana.”
“I didn't realize that they had salt mines in Butte, Montana.”
“Only FBI agents who really screw it up know there are salt mines in Butte.”
Mark drove back to downtown Washington while Barry wrote up his report of the interview. It was 7:40 by the time they had returned to the Old Post Office Building, and Mark found the parking lot almost empty. By this time at night most civilized people were at home doing civilized things, like eating moussaka. Stames's car was already there. Goddamn him. They took the elevator to the fifth floor and went into Stames's reception room. It looked empty without Julie. Calvert knocked quietly on the chief's door and the two agents walked in. Stames looked up. He had already found a hundred and one things to do since he'd been back, almost as if he had forgotten that he had specifically come back to see them.
“Right, Barry. Let's have it from the top, slowly and accurately.”
Calvert recounted exactly what had happened from
the moment they had arrived at Woodrow Wilson to the moment he had asked the Metropolitan Police to put a guard on the room to protect the Greek. Mark was impressed by Barry's total recall. At no point had he exaggerated or revealed any personal prejudice. Stames lowered his head for a few moments and then suddenly turned to Mark.
“Do you want to add anything?” he asked.
“Not really, sir. It was all a bit melodramatic. Although he didn't come over as a liar, he was certainly frightened. Also there's no trace of him in any of our files. I radioed the Night Super for a name check. Negative on Casefikis.”
Nick picked up the phone and asked to be put through to Bureau Headquarters. “Give me the National Computer Information Center, Polly.” He was put straight through. A young woman answered the phone.
“Stames, Washington Field Office. Would you please have the following suspect checked out on the computer immediately?âAngelo Casefikis: Caucasian; male; Greek ancestry; height, five feet nine inches; weight, about a hundred and sixty-five pounds; hair, dark brown; eyes, brown; age, thirty-eight; no distinguishing marks or scars known; no identifying numbers known.” He was reading from the report Calvert had placed in front of him. He waited silently.
“If his story is true,” Mark said, “we should have no listing for him at all.”
“If it's true,” said Calvert.
Stames continued to wait. The days of waiting to
find out who was in the FBI files and who wasn't had long gone. The girl came back on the line.
“We have nothing on a Casefikis, Angelo. We don't even have a Casefikis. The best the computer can offer is a Casegikis who was born in 1901. Sorry I can't help, Mr. Stames.”
“Thanks very much.” Stames put the phone down. “Okay boys, for the moment let's give Casefikis the benefit of the doubt. Let's assume he is telling the truth and that this is a serious investigation. We have no trace of him in any of our files, so we'd better start believing his story until it's disproved; he just might be on to something, and if he is, then it goes way above me. Tomorrow morning, Barry, I want you back at the hospital with a fingerprint expert; take his prints in case he is giving a false name, put them through the identification computer right away and make sure you get a full written statement, signed. Then check the Met files for any shooting incidents on 24 February he could have been involved in. As soon as we can get him out, I want him in an ambulance showing us where that luncheon took place. Push the hospital into agreeing to that tomorrow morning, if possible. To date, he's not under arrest or wanted for any crime we know about, so don't go too far, not that he strikes me as a man who would know much about his rights.
“Mark,” Stames said, turning his head, “I want you to go back to the hospital immediately and make sure the Met are there. If not, stay with Casefikis until they do arrive. In the morning, go round to the Golden Duck
and check him out. I'm going to make a provisional appointment for us to see the Director tomorrow morning, at 10:00 A.M., which will give you enough time to report back to me. And if, when we check the fingerprints through the identification computer, nothing comes up at all, and the hotel and the restaurant exist, we may be in a whole heap of trouble. If that's the case, I'm not taking it one inch further without the Director knowing. For the moment, I want nothing in writing. Don't hand in your official memorandum until tomorrow morning. Above all, don't mention that a senator could be involved to anybodyâand that includes Grant Nanna. It's possible tomorrow, after we have seen the Director, that we will do no more than make a full report and hand the whole thing over to the Secret Service. Don't forget the clear division of responsibilityâthe Secret Service guards the President, we cover federal crime. If a senator is involved, it's us; if the President's involved, it's them. We'll let the Director decide the finer pointsâI'm not getting involved in Capitol Hill, that's the Director's baby, and with only seven days to play with, we don't have time to sit and discuss the academic niceties.”