Hemingway's Notebook (20 page)

“Debbi?”

Her voice on the house phone sounded sleepy.

“Come on down. In the library. I want some company.”

“What time is it?”

“What am I, a watch? Fuck the time. I want company. Get your ass down here,” Theodore Weisman growled into the house phone. He put down the receiver.

Debbi heard the click. Asshole. She replaced the receiver. He treated her like meat. She worked Vegas before she met him, she could work there again.

Still, there was Dee. What had happened to Dee a couple of days ago. It never hurt to be too careful. Dee was there one minute and then she was in a black car and Dee didn’t look so good being driven away.

She put on her robe. She opened the door of her bedroom, which was on the second floor of the big house in Captiva Island. You could smell the sea from her open window.

Teddy had been worried the last couple of days. It was probably because of Dee, having to get rid of her. Debbi didn’t like to ask him any questions because they always made him mad. Later, he would calm down and pat her behind and give her a feel—he didn’t have much but he liked to use it a lot, he said—and tell her to buy herself something pretty and tell one of the guys to give her some money. Not Tone. Tone was gone, too. Tone had left about the time Dee left. Nobody asked about Tone.

She stepped into the corridor and felt the hand on her shoulder.

“Jesus,” she said.

It was Anthony. Anthony was supposed to be in St. Michel. “You scared me, coming up on me like that.” She vaguely knew Anthony did errands for Teddy but that was all she knew.

“Be quiet, Debbi. Go on back in your room.”

“Teddy just called me on the house phone.”

“I know. He told me. He changed his mind. Go back in your room.”

His voice was quiet and it frightened her. She went back into her bedroom and picked up the phone to call Teddy and the line was dead.

Anthony Calabrese walked down the stairs and crossed into the library and closed the door behind him. It was a nice room with soft lights from the banker’s lamps illuminating the cherrywood bookcases on the wall. All the best sellers were on the shelves. They were removed twice a year, read or unread, and given to the old people’s home.

Teddy Weisman was sitting at the desk looking right at Anthony. Devereaux sat next to the old man with the muzzle of the pistol braced on the antique desk.

It was interesting, Anthony thought. His old eyes were filled with contempt.

“You gonna roust me, Anthony?”

“Naw, Teddy.”

“Now it’s ‘Teddy.’ ”

“Shut the fuck up, please.”

“Who’s this one?”

“He works for Ready.”

“I thought Ready and I had a deal. I thought you worked for me, Anthony.”

“That was before,” said Anthony. “I made a deal with Ready. It seemed like a good idea.”

“You worked for R Section,” said the old man. “I already talked to Ready.”

“Yeah. I worked for them and flipped them. I flipped you. See, Ready figures he’s got you in his pocket one way or another so he sends us up here to tell you the way it’s going to be.”

“You’re gonna tell me that, huh?”

“We take fifty off the top. That’s in front. And maintenance. We gotta have some juice on the rest of it,” Anthony said.

“Why don’t I just give you the casino, huh? Just make it a gift.”

“You double-crossed Uncle, Uncle has got your tit in a wringer. That’s number one. That’s what Ready got when I went to work for him. I been on your case for two years.”

“You’re dead, Anthony.” The old man crossed his throat with his finger. “You walk around but you’re dead.”

Anthony stared at the old man and did not flinch. “No, Teddy.
You’re
dead because you fucked Uncle and Ready can prove it and he wants to sell you out to keep Uncle off his back. He doesn’t have to deal with you. There’s a lot of people would like to open up St. Michel. Drugs, gambling, everything. He doesn’t need you.”

“You worked for me and you were a fucking government agent,” the old man said. “Now you work for Ready. He’ll get rid of you, Anthony, when he don’t need you.”

“Uncle is bigger than you are, Teddy. Uncle is even bigger than the whole fucking Family. Ready wants you to be nice to him. He told me to tell you that.”

“You tell him he’s walking around dead,” Teddy Weisman said. “I don’t make no deals with him no more. No more deals. You tell him to keep looking over his shoulder.”

Devereaux said, “This is bullshit, you know that, Anthony?”

“Hey, I want to talk to him reasonable,” said Anthony.

“Fuck bot’ of you. Bot’ of yous are dead.”

Devereaux got up and walked around the desk and hit the old man in the face with the barrel of the gun. He hit him a second time so that he could make certain the old man’s nose was bleeding. When there was blood, Devereaux stopped. The old man could taste the warm blood on his lips.

“I’ll tear your balls off and stuff them in your mouth,” Teddy Weisman said.

“He doesn’t get it, does he?” Devereaux said.

“No, he doesn’t listen. Everything I had I gave to Colonel Ready, Mr. Weisman. Everything. I want you to understand that.”

“The G is after you then, Anthony. The G’ll get you before I get you. You fuck the G, you fuck your own life,” said Teddy Weisman.

“Teddy, lemme explain to you once more. I worked for you. I got picked up by the G and I turned. I worked for the G and I worked for you. I was screwing you for two years. Now, you turn around and you fuck up the G yourself, you pretend to make a deal with Langley to knock off Colonel Ready but you and I know that it is all bullshit. The important thing is that I know that. I know the inside of the deal because I was inside the deal. I never told them that. If I told them that, they would have known Ready was going to double-cross them. They wouldn’t have activated the operation. That makes sense, doesn’t it?” He was lying but it was very good because Teddy Weisman kept thinking it was all the same government and that R Section and CIA would cooperate with each other on information and he would not have guessed that Anthony’s information to R Section was never acted upon. Weisman was a believer in the logic of his government.

“So you work for Ready,” Teddy said at last.

“Now you get it. And now you know what Ready wants to deal. And now he wants you to go through the traces for him. He wants to see money very soon, just like you arranged. He wants to see that you are going to honor the new deal.”

“Yeah, I see that,” said Teddy Weisman.

“So we made it clear? Because if he don’t see some action soon, he’s gonna get a new partner and he’s going to hand you over to the G. You see what I mean?”

“I see what you mean,” said Teddy Weisman.

After they were gone, Teddy Weisman sat for a long time alone in the library. His handkerchief, crumpled in a ball, was on the desk, stiff with dried blood. He sat for a long time and thought about Colonel Ready and then decided what he would do.

He picked up the telephone and made a long-distance call to Chicago. He talked to a man. He said he had a very big contract to let out and he wanted all the men necessary.

“It might run you,” said the man in Chicago.

“It might run me what?”

“It might run you forty, fifty dimes,” said the man in Chicago.

“I can handle the action,” said Teddy. “I can handle all of it.”

“Is this personal?”

“Very.”

“This is not about business.”

“No, it’s personal.”

“Okay. Does the guy ever leave? I mean, that island?”

“I don’t think he’s going to. He’s made enemies.”

“Ready. Colonel Ready. Was that the guy in the papers the other day?”

“Yeah.”

“I think I still got a paper, I can take the picture out of it.”

“I can get you pictures.”

“You got any time limit?”

“I got no time limit. As soon as you can. I don’t care who you get but I got no time limit. This month, next month, tomorrow or next year. I don’t care what happens, how much it costs me as long as you tell me what you’re doing, why it’s going to cost me.”

“We’ll get it done,” said the man in Chicago.

Hanley sat in the empty bar of the Holiday Inn outside Washington in Bethesda, not far from Old Georgetown Road. He had a martini in front of him. The room was dark and the musical group that usually played during the week was off for the night. A salesman had talked to him about the imminent World Series and Hanley had not followed the somewhat incoherent conversation. The salesman had finished his monologue and his drink and had long since gone to his room.

Anthony Calabrese had told him nothing except to meet at this place at eleven
P.M.

“You’re playing at spies,” Hanley had protested.

“Yes,” Anthony replied on the phone. “Only playing.”

Anthony had escaped after all. It surprised Hanley but he did not think about it too much. Anthony would want guarantees, a new identity, a new contract in exchange for testimony and information. Hanley was not interested in Mr. Weisman. Hanley was interested in how CIA had stubbed its toe in St. Michel and what Colonel Ready would do about it. Maybe Anthony knew some of those things.

Anthony entered the room, stood at the doorway, and walked across the red carpet to the barstool where Hanley sat. The woman behind the bar came down and threw a napkin at his place and said, “What’s your pleasure?” without any inflection of real interest.

“Bullet with a twist,” Anthony said and turned to Hanley and smiled a big smile. “Surprised to see me?”

“Yes,” said Hanley.

“Good. Thought you’d be surprised. I got out but it wasn’t so easy. I didn’t think you were gonna let me stand there when the shit went down.”

“I told you. We weren’t interested in interfering with the operation. We wanted information.”

“That’s why you sent down Cohn,” said Anthony.

Hanley stared at him steadily but Anthony saw he had scored. He smiled when the woman behind the bar brought the drink. “Just put it on his check.”

“He paid for his drink,” said the bartender.

“Good, then take it out of his change. Right, Mr. H?”

Hanley nodded and the woman shrugged and walked back to the cash register and made a check.

“
Salut
,” said Anthony. “America. Best martinis in the world. That’s what this country stands for, you know?”

“What do you want?”

“No. The question is: What do
you
want? You sent down Cohn and he bought it. You know who killed him?”

“No.”

“Colonel Ready. Or his agent, Celezon. Colonel Ready knew all about Cohn, knew all about everything. What he never had was the notebook. The real thing. Like Coca-Cola, right?”

“What are you babbling about?”

Anthony sipped the martini again. “Mr. D figures you want the notebook because you want leverage on CIA. You want a Caribe operation. You want to remind the administration that they need R Section to keep CIA in check. You know what would happen if Castro got that notebook?”

“What would happen?”

“Every fucking liberal in the country would be pounding on the door to let Castro back into the family of man,” said Anthony. “Mr. D said the book is the proof, in Hemingway’s own hand, and that with Harry Francis—”

“Where is Harry Francis?”

“Hey, what am I, Information Please? Let’s say I know all about what’s going on and I’m trying to fill you in.”

“I’m not interested,” Hanley said.

“Hey, Mr. H. Get interested. You fucked me down in St. Michel. I’m between a rock and a hard place. I gotta go with Ready or alone, I got no other option. You cut me off and Mr. Weisman, Mr. Weisman knows.”

“I told you I wasn’t interested in Weisman.”

“All right. Mr. D—”

“Who the hell are you talking about?” Hanley raised his voice and he swore and both actions were unusual.

“Oh. I forgot you wouldn’t know.” Anthony smiled but he had forgotten nothing; not his instructions, not the signal. The whole thing was a little show. Hanley had to understand how important it was for him, for the Section, to do what he had to do. Anthony raised his hand and extended one finger as though signaling for the bartender.

She came down.

“Vodka on the rocks for the gentleman coming in the room,” said Anthony Calabrese and Hanley gaped.

Devereaux sat down. In the dim light, he looked smaller than when Hanley saw him last, nearly fifteen months before. His hair was cut close, it was gray with little mixes of color still in it. His gray eyes were without threat, without promise. But his eyes were not empty, Hanley thought. He did not look as he had looked in the old business. Before the Section arranged his death.

“He pays,” said Anthony to the bartender and she took the bill again back to the register and rang a charge.

“Hello, Hanley.”

“I thought you were killed. On St. Michel. And Rita.”

“Rita isn’t dead. She wrote a story. I want you to read it. She’s going to give it to a magazine in the morning and it concerns you.”

Hanley took the paper in the dim light. There were twenty typewritten pages. He could barely see the words.

“I can’t read in this light,” said Hanley dumbly. “Why does this concern me? We got your messages. You were going into St. Michel. You left a trail.”

“A red-haired man,” said Devereaux. “And a scar. And he was all over the place. He was in Switzerland and Paris and London and he chartered a boat in Florida and he was in St. Michel. He was an agent named November.”

“You.”

“No,” said Devereaux in a very soft voice, so soft that Hanley could barely hear him. He leaned forward across the corner of the bar.

“I’m not in the old business. It wasn’t me.”

“Who?”

“First, what are you going to do for Anthony Calabrese?”

“What does Anthony want?” said Hanley as though the man between them was not there.

“Anthony wants a new face and money and a new life. That’s not so difficult, is it?”

“What’s he going to do for us?”

“He’s not going to tell the truth about R Section. He’s not going to tell about the Section letting Ready set up CIA and use a crime-syndicate figure, all because of a little bureaucratic rivalry.”