The Way You Look Tonight (30 page)

He turned the volume all the way down so he could figure out exactly how to exploit the press conference he’d just learned about, courtesy of Todd Rodgerson. Now he
could see good old Todd mouthing his good-nights and then the screen cut to President Kennedy, sitting behind a desk yacking away to the camera. It looked like he was speaking from the White House.
Another my-fellow-Americans piece of horseshit propaganda, no doubt. He switched the TV off.

This news about the press conference fitted pretty well damn perfectly into the general plan he’d been formulating. He was still playing the odds, of course – there was a lot
that could go wrong, he realised that – but those odds had definitely just shortened in his favour.

The first thing to do was to establish if the old queen owned a car. If not, he’d have to go out and steal one. Risky, as would driving the thing be, even for the short round-trip
involved. If the theft was reported, some on-the-ball cop might spot the licence plate and pull him over. He’d probably end up dying in the inevitable shoot-out that would follow.

But last night when he returned from killing the hooker as bait, he’d noticed there was a single garage tacked on to the side of the house.

He went downstairs, opened the front door a little way, and peered out cautiously. It was dark and the street lighting was poor. No one seemed to be around. In fact he was beginning to
wonder if the dark, silent homes on each side of him had been condemned and abandoned like the boarded-up house opposite.

He stood there, taking his time. He heard a car door slam much further down the street, towards the town, and a few moments later the sound of the engine starting up before the car was
driven away. Then all was silence again.

He decided it was safe for him to move. He slipped outside and turned left to the garage. The double doors were padlocked so he had to go back into the house to look for the key. It took him
a while to find it, hidden in a large coffee mug on a shelf in the kitchen. A set of car ignition keys were there too. His hopes began to rise.

He unlocked the garage and tried to open the doors, which were stiff on their hinges and creaked loudly. He cursed under his breath. Dead leaves and dirt scrunched back with them as he
hauled on the handles. He figured the garage couldn’t have been opened for weeks, months even.

Eventually he dragged both doors open barely wide enough to squeeze through. In the darkness he could just make out the outline of a car and the faint, dull gleam of chrome.

So far, so good.

He felt around on the wall for the light switch. When he found it he carefully noted its position before going to the doors and yanking them closed again. Then he groped his way back in the
pitch dark to the switch and flicked it up.

There was a feeble glow from the ceiling, accompanied by a humming noise, and after a moment a pair of fluorescent strips reluctantly came on, filling the garage with a flickering, sickly
light.

He was looking at a Ford Country Sedan, probably a late ’50s edition. It was covered in dust and grime, and the roof was encrusted with gecko shit from the little bastards that lived
in the roof tiles above.

He figured the car hadn’t been driven for at least a year.

But beneath all the dirt the Ford looked in good condition. He walked slowly around it. There were no dints or scrapes on the side panels, green and cream in colour, he thought – it
was hard to tell under all the filth – and the white-walled tyres seemed OK when he kicked them in turn. Maybe one of the back ones was a little squishy, but it would do.

The car’s doors were unlocked and he slid behind the steering wheel and put the keys in the ignition. He wasn’t expecting anything to happen when he turned them, and it
didn’t. The battery was flatter than a witch’s teat.

He climbed out again and walked to a pile of assorted junk heaped against the garage’s back wall, hoping against hope that he’d find a trickle-charger for the battery.

There wasn’t one.

OK, he’d just have to crank-start the bitch.

The handle was missing from where it was supposed to be stored along with the spare wheel.

‘Shit.’
He realised he’d cursed aloud.

Refusing to give up hope, he went back to the mountain of junk and rooted through it.

The handle was lying on top of a box of old newspapers.

Slightly giddy with relief, he went back to the car, switched on the ignition, pumped the gas pedal a couple of times and pulled the choke all the way out.

Then he moved around to the front where the hole for the crank-handle should be. He found it and pushed the open hexagonal end of the handle inside, feeling it engage smoothly with a
satisfying metallic click.

He removed his jacket – crank-starting a car that hadn’t been fired up for a year was going to be the very bastard, bugger and bitch of a job – and swung the
handle.

It took him ten minutes and all the strength he had, but at last herd the engine coughed, stuttered, and burst into life with a throaty roar that settled back immediately into a satisfying,
steady tick-over.

Drenched in sweat, he staggered round to the driver’s door and peered at the dashboard to see how much gas was in the tank. The needle was still rising slowly from the empty position,
and as he watched it settled a little way above the red warning zone. That was fine. There must be about four gallons in the tank. He’d use less than half a gallon running the engine to
charge up the battery, and that would leave more than enough for his needs.

He detached the crank handle and snapped out the light. The space was beginning to fill with exhaust fumes and he wasted no time pushing the doors back open far enough for him to slip out.
He walked down to the sidewalk and turned back towards the garage.

The set-up wasn’t perfect – an alert passer-by would notice the doors were ajar, and would probably just be able to hear the quiet purr of the engine, but fuck it. There was
nothing suspicious in that, and anyway, this end of the street remained deserted. In any case, the battery would be charged up in twenty minutes or so and then he could switch off the engine and
close the doors.

He went back inside the house. Crank-starting the Ford had not only exhausted him because of the effort involved: he was famished, too. He realised he hadn’t eaten all day.

In the kitchen larder he found some tins of corned beef and beans in ketchup. He put a pan on the stove to heat up while he opened the tins and chopped up an old onion he’d found
languishing in the refrigerator.

He’d make corned beef hash, get his strength back, and then go through the hotel section of the Yellow Pages and make a few calls. He had already mentally written his script for that
part.

Operation English Rose, he thought to himself when he sat down to eat, was going like clockwork. All he had to do now was remember the name of that
Courier
reporter who’d
written most of the stories about him when he was up in Key Largo. What was he called? It would come to him. He never forgot a name.

‘It wasn’t my idea, Stella, I swear. This has come from the state governor and Hoover’s rubber-stamped it. I tried to make excuses to get you out of it but no
one wanted to listen. You won’t have to say much, I promise, and I’ll be sitting right next to you all the time.’

Lee looked unhappily at her. She had taken the news about tomorrow afternoon’s press conference every bit as badly as he’d feared. They had just sat down to dinner at her hotel, La
Concha, but they hadn’t stopped arguing since he had reluctantly given her the news in the car on the way there.

‘But I don’t
want
to talk to a whole roomful of reporters, Lee,’ Stella said stubbornly for what must have been the fourth time. ‘One journalist on their own, I
wouldn’t mind so much. But this is going to be a complete circus, by the sound of it. And what good will it do? We should be trying to find Woods, not waste time talking to the
newspapers.’

He grimaced. ‘Er . . . not just the newspapers, honey. Radio and TV will be there too.’

‘Oh God, this gets worse and worse. What am I supposed to
say
to them all? And, I repeat – what’s the bloody point?’

He reached across the table and took both her hands in his.

‘Listen to me, Stella. You haven’t let me explain properly. Every time I try, you cut me off. Will you just give me one shot at this? If when I’m done you still feel the same
way, I’ll tell everyone and you can forget the whole thing. I’m not going to let anyone, be it C. Farris Bryant, J. Edgar Hoover or your new best friend JFK, make you do anything you
don’t want. OK?’

She looked at him, a little mollified.

‘OK. Sorry, Lee, but I can’t help being stubborn. I always have been, ever since I was a child. I loathe being told what to do.’

He took his cue from her slightly softened tone. ‘Then let me try and
persuade
you. Here goes . . . Now, this is—’

He was interrupted by the waiter, who arrived to take their order. But the atmosphere further lightened when, as seemed to be becoming something of a habit, they opted for exactly the same
starters and main courses.

When the man was gone, Lee took her hands in his once more and began again.

‘I was going to say, this is
America
, Stella. The press are hugely powerful here. They assume the right to know just about everything that’s going on, and if I’m
honest, I don’t think that’s a bad thing. It means we live in a very open, accountable society.

‘Whether you like it or not, you’ve become a huge story, and not just here – back home in England too. But our papers
love you
– how smart you are, how you
managed to stop the slaughter up in Key Largo by practically giving us the killer’s name, date of birth and eye colour and forcing him to go on the run.’

‘That’s a bit of an exaggeration,’ Stella objected. ‘All I did was—’

‘All you did was break the case wide open, Stella. But since I came down here and you went back to Massachusetts, things have stalled.
I’ve
stalled.’

She impulsively squeezed his hands. ‘That’s not your fault, Lee.’

‘Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t, but now Woods has started killing again and the agency has its back against the wall. If I don’t get the cuffs on the guy PDQ I’m gonna
have J. Edgar shooting at me from one side and the newspapers from the other. And I’ll be totally straight with you, Stella. You appearing at the press conference tomorrow will buy me a
little more time. You’ll wow the press boys, you’ll look great on the TV cameras . . . in short, my dear,
you
will become the story for a while. Most importantly of all,
you’ll put a positive shine on things. And then you and I can get on with the job of working out where the S.O.B. is holed up.’

He paused for breath. ‘That’s it. I’ve said my piece.’

He realised she was smiling at him.

‘Lee,’ she said gently, ‘if you’d told me in the first place that by doing this I’d be helping
you
, I’d have said yes straight away and we’d be
talking about something else now.’

He looked at her with a slightly stunned expression. ‘As simple as that?’ he asked her.

‘As simple as that. I’d kiss you to . . . how is it you Yanks put it? Oh yes, “seal the deal”, but look, our waiter’s coming back and he seems to be in something of
a flap.’

‘He certainly does,’ he agreed, noting the approaching man’s distracted expression and rapid walk.

‘Agent Foster,’ he said to Lee, ‘I’m sorry to disturb your evening but the manager has asked if you would care to join him in his office immediately, given your position
with the FBI.’ He nodded politely to Stella. ‘You too, ma’am, of course. He has a TV in there and he thinks you should be watching it. Apparently it concerns a matter of vital
national importance.’

They both stared at the waiter.

‘What do you mean?’ Lee asked him. ‘What’s going on?’

‘I have no idea,’ the man shrugged. ‘The TV networks are telling everyone to stand by for a live personal statement from President Kennedy at seven o’clock
tonight.’ He looked at his watch. ‘That’s in less than two minutes. The manager’s office is next to check-in. Shall I tell him to expect you?’

The hotel manager was staring at a blank television screen when they arrived in his office.

‘Hi,’ he said, turning round to them. ‘Don’t worry, this thing ain’t bust – the last show just finished and the network’s waiting to be patched through
to the White House. Ah, here we go.’

A full-frame photograph of the domed building Stella had visited days earlier appeared, to be replaced after a few moments by a mid-shot of President Kennedy. He was sitting absolutely still and
staring blankly at them from behind a desk.

‘Waiting for his cue,’ Lee said quietly.

Someone must have delivered it, because the next moment the leader of the western world began to speak. His tone was calm, measured, matter-of-fact.

But as the meaning of his words became clear, the millions of people across the country watching him felt the blood in their veins run cold.

‘
Good evening, my fellow citizens. This government, as promised, has maintained the closest surveillance of the Soviet military build-up upon the island of
Cuba.

Within the past week, unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on that imprisoned island.

The purpose of these bases can be none other than to provide a nuclear strike capability against the western hemisphere.
’

Lee turned to Stella. ‘Holy Christ, Stella. He’s talking about nuclear war. And we’re right on the fucking front line down here.’

Stella had gone pale. ‘No wonder he spoke about being in uncharted waters. No wonder he said Bobby was beaten to the wide and—’