Koko (85 page)

After that he and Tim Underhill had a long conversation about Henry James. Later all
that Poole could remember of this woozy conversation was that Tim had described a
dream James had had as an old man—something about a terrifying figure trying to break
into the writer’s room, and the writer eventually attacking his own attacker and driving
him away.

That day or the next, for Murphy had ordered them held over for at least another twenty-four
hours, Judy Poole appeared on the threshold of the room just before the end of visiting
hours. Michael could see Pat Caldwell standing behind his wife. He had always liked
Pat Caldwell. Now he could not remember if he had always liked his wife.

“I’m not coming in unless that person comes out,” Judy said.
That person
was Maggie Lah, who immediately began picking up her things.

Michael motioned her to stay. “In that case, you’re not coming in,” he said. “But
I think it’s a pity.”

“Won’t you see Harry?” Pat called to him. “He says he has a lot of things to talk
about with the two of you.”

“I’m not interested in talking to Harry right now,” Poole said. “Are you, Tim?”

“Maybe later,” Underhill said.

“Michael, aren’t you going to get rid of that
girl
?” Judy asked.

“No, I don’t think I am going to do that. Come in here so we can talk in normal voices,
Judy.”

Judy turned around and marched away down the hospital corridor.

“Lot of fun, being in a hospital,” Michael said. “Your whole life appears before you.”

Late the next evening, when Poole was lucid enough to feel
the pain of the wound, Lieutenant Murphy came to the room. He was smiling and seemed
calm and self-possessed, like the man Beevers had admired at Tina Pumo’s funeral.

“Well, you’re in no danger now, so I’m sending LeDonne home to get some rest. You’ll
be able to check out of here in the morning.” He shifted on the balls of his feet,
apparently uncertain of how to give them the next bit of information. In the end he
decided on a mixture of optimism and aggression. “He’s ours now. Thanks to you two
people and Mr. Beevers, we didn’t get him in Chinatown, but I told you we’d get him
in the end, and we will.”

“You know where Dengler is?” Tim asked.

Murphy nodded.

“Well, where is he?” Poole asked.

“You don’t need to know that.”

“But you can’t apprehend him now?”

Murphy shook his head. “He’s as good as apprehended. You don’t have to worry about
him.”

“I’m not worried,” Poole said. “Is he on an airplane?”

Murphy glowered at him, then nodded.

“Didn’t you have people at the airport?”

Now Murphy began to seem irritated. “Of course we did. I had men at every subway station
he might have used, we had people at the bus terminals, and at both Kennedy and La
Guardia.” He cleared his throat. “But he managed to get to New Orleans before we identified
him. By the time we worked out what name he was using and where he was going, he had
already boarded his connecting flight in New Orleans. But he’s on that flight now.
It’s all over for him.”

“Where is he going?”

At length Murphy decided to tell them. “Tegucigalpa.”

“Honduras,” Poole said. “Why Honduras? Oh. Roberto Ortiz. You checked the passenger
lists and found the name. Dengler still has Roberto Ortiz’s passport.”

“I don’t have to tell you anything, do I?” Murphy asked.

“Tell me you’re going to get him this time.”

“You can’t walk out of an airplane. I don’t think he’s going to do a D.B. Cooper.
And when the plane lands at the Tegucigalpa airport in four hours, we have a small
army waiting for him. Those people down there, they want to be our friends. Those
people, when we snap our fingers, they jump. He’s going to be picked up so fast his
feet won’t even touch the ground.” Murphy actually smiled. “We can’t miss him. This
guy might be the running grunt, according to you gentlemen, but this time he’s running
into a
trap.” Murphy nodded good-bye and went to the door; when he had gone out he had another
thought, and leaned back in. “In the morning, I’ll tell you how it went. By then your
boy will be on the way back here.” A grin. “In chains. And probably with a few bruises,
and minus a couple of teeth.”

After he left, Underhill said, “There goes Harry Beevers’ idol.”

A nurse came in and gave them another shot.

Poole fell asleep worrying about his car, which he had left parked at a meter on Division
Street.

As soon as he woke up the next morning, Poole called the Tenth Precinct. On his bedside
table was a vase of irises and calla lilies, and beside the vase was his copy of
The Ambassadors
and the two Babar books. During the night, Maggie had managed to rescue his car.
Poole asked the officer who answered his call if Lieutenant Murphy was planning to
visit St. Vincent’s Hospital that morning.

“As far as I know he has no plans to do so,” said the officer. “But I’m the wrong
guy to ask.”

“Is the lieutenant in now?”

“The lieutenant is in a meeting.”

“Did the Hondurans arrest Dengler? Can you tell me that much?”

“I’m sorry, I cannot give you that information,” the officer said. “You will have
to speak to the lieutenant.” He hung up.

A few minutes later a doctor came around to discharge them, and said that a young
woman had come by that morning with a change of clothing for each of them. After the
doctor left, a nurse brought in two brown shopping bags, each containing fresh underwear,
socks, a shirt, a sweater, and jeans. Underhill’s clothes were from those he had left
at Saigon, but Poole’s were new. Maggie had guessed at his sizes, and the shirt collar
was a size too small and the waistband of the jeans was thirty-six instead of thirty-four,
but he could wear it all. He found a note at the bottom of the bag:
I couldn’t buy you coats because I ran out of money. The doctor says you’ll be able
to leave around nine-thirty. Will you come to Saigon before you go wherever it is
you’ll be going? Your car is in the garage across the street. Love, Maggie.
Clipped to the note was a tag from a garage.

“No coats,” Poole said. “Mine was ruined, and yours is probably evidence. But don’t
worry—we can get something to wear. People are always leaving things in hospitals.”

They signed form after form in the billing office. A young
orderly, St. Vincent’s own Wilson Manly, outfitted them, as Poole had foreseen, with
overcoats that had been the property of two elderly gentlemen without family who had
died during the week. “These are pretty shabby,” the orderly said. “If you could wait
a day or two, there’ll probably be something better coming in.”

Underhill resembled a middle-aged poacher in his long filthy coat; Poole’s was an
ancient Chesterfield with a threadbare velvet collar, and in it he looked like a run-down
man about town.

When they had reclaimed the Audi, Poole sat behind the wheel for a time before pulling
out onto Seventh Avenue. His side hurt, and the Chesterfield smelled of wine and cigarette
smoke. He realized that he had no idea of where he was going. Perhaps he was just
going to drive forever. He stopped at the first light, and realized that he could
go anywhere. For a moment he was not a doctor, not a husband, or anything at all to
Maggie Lah: his greatest responsibility was to the car he sat in.

“Are you going to take me back to Saigon?” Underhill asked.

“I am,” he said. “But first we’re going to pay a call on our favorite policeman.”

Lieutenant Murphy could not see them immediately. Lieutenant Murphy sent word that
they could wait if they liked, but matters related to other cases were keeping him
very busy; no, there was no information about the fate of the fugitive M.O. Dengler.

The young officer on the other side of the bulletproof Plexiglas refused to let them
into the precinct house, and after a while avoided their eyes and kept his back turned
while pretending to be occupied with something at a nearby desk.

“Did they get him when he left the plane?” Poole asked. “Is he coming back all wrapped
up in chains and carrying a lot of fresh bruises?”

The officer said nothing.

“He didn’t get clean away, did he?” Poole was speaking so loudly he was almost shouting.

“I think they might have had some trouble on the flight,” the young officer said in
a barely audible voice.

After they had waited half an hour, Detective Dalton finally took pity on them and
allowed them into the station. He took them
up the stairs and opened the door to room B. “I’ll get him to come in here,” he said,
and grinned at Poole. “I like that coat.”

“I’ll swap you for yours,” Poole said.

Dalton disappeared. Only a minute or two later, the door opened and Lieutenant Murphy
came in. His skin had lost some of its angry healthy flush and his shoulders were
slumped. Even the arrogant Keith Hernandez moustache looked tired. Murphy nodded at
the two men, dropped a file on the table, and then dropped into the nearest chair.

“Okay,” he said. “I don’t want you to think I was avoiding you. I didn’t want to call
you until I had some definite word.”

He spread out his hands as if he had said all there was to say.

“Hasn’t the plane landed?” Poole asked. “What did he do, hijack it?”

Murphy sat slumped in the chair. “No, the plane landed. More than once, in fact. I
suppose that’s the problem.”

“It made an unscheduled stop?”

“Not quite.” Now Murphy was speaking very slowly and reluctantly, and his face had
begun to show the first signs of spring. “Apparently the Tegucigalpa flights from
this country always stop in Belize. We had men waiting there just in case Dengler
tried something funny. Or so the forces in Belize tell us.” Poole leaned forward to
speak, and Murphy held up a hand like a stop sign. “It also regularly stops at a place
called San Pedro de Sula, which is in Honduras, and where the Hondurans had people
check everybody who left the plane. Now hold on, Doctor, I’m going to tell you what
happened. What I
think
happened. Between San Pedro de Sula and Tegucigalpa there is only one more regularly
scheduled stop.” He tried to smile. “A place called Goloson Airport in a jerkwater
town called La Cieba. The plane’s only on the ground about ten minutes. Only domestic
passengers ever get off there—they have different colored boarding passes from the
international passengers, so everybody can see who they are. Domestic passengers don’t
have to pass through Customs, Immigration, any of that stuff. A couple Honduran soldiers
were posted out at Goloson, but they didn’t see anybody except domestic passengers.”

“But he wasn’t on the plane when it landed at Tegucigalpa,” Poole said.

“That’s right. At this distance, it’s a little hard to tell, but it looks like he
never landed there.” He sniffed the air. “What’s that smell?”

“The policeman at the desk downstairs said there was some
trouble on the flight,” Underhill said. “I can’t help remembering what happened at
Kennedy.”

Murphy gave him a flat glare. “There was a little trouble, you could call it that,
I suppose. When the crew checked out the plane they found one passenger who hadn’t
left his seat. He was asleep with a magazine over his chest. Only when they picked
up the magazine and shook him they found out that he was dead. Broken neck.” He shook
his head. “We’re still waiting for identification.”

“So he could be anywhere,” Poole said. “That’s what you’re saying. He could have booked
another flight as soon as he got off the plane.”

“Well, now we have men at Goloson Airport,” Murphy said. “I mean, they have men there.”
He pushed himself away from the table and stood up. “I think that’s all I have to
tell you, gentlemen. We’ll be in touch.” He began to move toward the door.

“But in other words, nobody’s found him yet. We don’t even know what name he’s using.”

Murphy made it to the door. “I’ll call you when I have some positive word.” He fled.

Dalton entered a second later, as if he had been waiting outside the door. “You have
the story now? I’ll take you back downstairs, you guys don’t have any worries, you
know, police all over Honduras are looking out for this guy. Hondurans will bend over
backwards to do us favors, believe me, and our man will turn up in custody in a day
or two. I’m glad your injuries weren’t too serious. Say, Doctor, tell that good-looking
girlfriend of yours if she ever gets sick of—”

They were out on the sidewalk in their dead men’s coats.

“What’s Honduras like?” Poole asked.

“Haven’t you heard?” said Underhill. “They love us down there.”