Line of Succession

“She won’t talk to anybody,” Cesar said, and moved away toward the table.

Alvin looked down at his hands, and turned them over and looked at his palms—as if he had not seen them before. It bothered him that they still didn’t trust him enough to tell him things.

MONDAY,

JANUARY 3

2:10 A.M. EST The Assistant Medical Examiner had just settled gratefully into his chair when the phone rang. “M.E.’s office, Charlton speaking.”

“Ed Ainsworth, Doc.”

“Hello, Lieutenant.” The Assistant M.E. put his feet up on the desk.

“Doc, about that girl they brought in DOA from Northwest. My sergeant seems to have kind of a garbled report on her from your office. Maybe you can straighten it out for me.”

“Garbled?”

“He says you told him somebody’d cut out her tongue with a pair of pliers.”

“That’s right. I did.”

“A pair of pliers?”

“The jaws left clear indentations on what’s left of her tongue, Lieutenant. Maybe I phrased it badly in the report. I said they’d cut out her tongue. ‘Pulled’ would have been more accurate.”

“Good Christ.” After a moment the lieutenant resumed: “You did the autopsy yourself?”

“I regret to say I did.”

“And there’s no sign she was sexually molested?”

“None. Of course that’s not conclusive, but there’s no sign of vaginal irritation, no semen, none of the usual——”

“Okay. Now the cause of death, you’ve got ‘heart removal’ here. Now for Christ’s sake what——”

“Read the whole thing, Lieutenant.”

“I have. God help me.”

“Heart removal by probable use of ordinary household tools.”

“Yeah. You mean kitchen knife, that kind of thing?”

“That’s a utensil. I said tools. I suspect they used a hammer and chisel, although I can’t prove it.”

The lieutenant didn’t speak for a little while. When he did his voice was very thin. “All right, Doc, then tell me this. If the cause of death was a hammer and chisel against the breastplate how in hell did they get her to hold still for it?”

“I wasn’t there, Lieutenant. How should I know? Probably a few of them held her down and one of them did the job on her.”

“And she didn’t scream?”

“Maybe she screamed her head off. You know that neighborhood—they mug you on the street in broad daylight, nobody lifts a finger.”

Another pause. Then: “Doc, this has got the stink of some kind of ritual to it. Some hoodoo voodoo thing.”

“Was she Haitian or anything like that?”

“We haven’t got a make on her yet. I don’t know what she was.”

The Assistant M.E. had her face in his mind. It must have been a pleasant face before. Young—he had put her at twenty-one or -two. The proud Afro haircut, the good long legs. The telephone moved fitfully against his ear. He said, “I admit it’s one I haven’t come across before.”

“God forbid we ever come across it again. Listen, just for the record, if we come across a bloody pair of pliers can you match them up to measurements or anything?”

“I doubt it. Not unless you find tissues adhering to the pliers. We could set up a circumstantial case on the basis of blood type, I suppose.”

“Yeah. All right. Look, anything else you didn’t put in the report? Anything that might give a lead?”

“Up in New York and Chicago they seem to have quite a few mobster killings where they rub out somebody who squealed on them and leave the corpse lying around with a big plaster of tape over the mouth, or they pour a jar of acid in the mouth, that kind of thing. It’s a warning to other potential squealers—you know, see what happens to you if you open your mouth to the wrong people.”

“Sicilian justice.”

“Yes. But this girl wasn’t Sicilian, that’s for sure.”

“Maybe the killer is.”

“Maybe.”

The lieutenant sighed audibly. “With pliers and a hammer and chisel? I don’t know.”

“I’d like to help, Lieutenant. I’d love to put it all in your lap for you. But I’m all gone dry.”

“All right. I’m sorry I bugged you, Doc. Good night.”

3:05 A.M. The make on the dead girl came into the detective squad room on the wire from the FBI fingerprint files and the sergeant ripped it off the machine and took it to the lieutenant’s desk in the corner. The lieutenant read halfway into it and went back to the begi

“A Federal snoop.”

“From Justice.”

“It’s an FSS number. She was Secret Service.” The lieutenant sat back and spent ten seconds grinding his knuckles into his eye sockets. He lowered his hands into his lap and kept his eyes shut. “Cripes. I was starting to get a picture.”

“What picture?”

“I had it worked out. She was a hooker and she rolled some capo from the Mob, not knowing who he was. So the capo sent some of his boys out to take care of her. But this blows it all to hell.”

The sergeant said, “Maybe we’d better call Justice.”

3:40 A.M. A telephone was ringing, disturbing David Lime’s sleep. He listened to it ring. He had never fallen victim to the compulsion to answer every telephone that rang within earshot; anyhow this was not his own bed, not his own bedroom, not his own telephone; but it disturbed his sleep.

He lay on his back and listened to it ring and finally the mattress gave a little heave and a soft buttock banged into his leg. There was a clumsy rattle of receiver against cradle and then Bev said in the dark, “Who the hell is this? … Shit, all right, hold on.” Then she was poking him in the ribs. “David?”

He sat up on his elbow and took the phone from her. “Uh?”

“Mr. Lime? Chad Hill. I’m damned sorry to have to ——”

“The hell time’s it?”

“About a quarter to four, sir.”

“A quarter to four,” David Lime said disagreeably. “Is that a fact.”

“Yes, sir. I——”

“You called me to tell me it’s a quarter to four.”

“Sir, I wouldn’t have called if it wasn’t important.”

“How’d you know where to find me?” He knew Hill had something to tell him but first he had to clear the sleep from his head.

“Mr. DeFord gave me the number, sir.”

Bev was getting out of bed, storming into the bathroom. Lime dragged a hand down his jaw. “Bless Mr. DeFord. Bless the little son of a bitch.” The bathroom door closed—not quite a slam. A ribbon of light appeared beneath it.

“Sir, one of our agents has been murdered.”

Lime closed his eyes: a grimace. Not Smith’s dead. Not Jones has been killed. No. “One of our agents has been murdered.” Like a fourteen-year-old imitating Reed Hadley’s narration for a Grade B Warner’s picture: a mausoleum tone, One of our aircraft is missing! From what plastic packaging factory did they obtain these kids?

“All right, Chad. One of our agents is missing. Now——”

“Not missing, sir. Murdered. I’m down here at——”

“What agent has been murdered?”

“Barbara Norris, sir. The police called the office and I was on night duty. I called Mr. DeFord and he said I’d better get in touch with you.”

“Yes, I imagine he did.” Grandon Pass-the-Buck DeFord. Lime sat up, squeezed his eyes shut and popped them open. “All right. Where are you now and what’s happened?”

“I’m at police headquarters, sir. Suppose I put Lieutenant Ainsworth on, he can explain what they’ve got.”

A new voice came on the line: “Mr. Lime?”

“That’s right.”

“Ed Ainsworth. Detective Lieutenant down here. We had a DOA tonight, a young black girl. The FBI identifies her as Barbara Norris and they gave us an FSS service number for her so I called your office. You’re in charge of her section, is that right?”

“I’m the Deputy Assistant Director.” He managed to say it with a straight face. “DeFord’s the Assistant Director in charge of Protective Intelligence.”