Kirby's Last Circus Read online

  Kirby said, “There are two maniacs in this room and I ain’t one of them!”

  Dixie said, “Aw, knock it off, Kirby! You wanted all the kudos but Langley didn’t like the risks involved. Caviar might have pulled a Houdini! Would you believe that she carried a CIA identification card?”

  Jefferson slammed his fist into the palm of his hand. “By God, we’ve got ’em by the balls! Chekov, Kisarze, and Caviar in the tank—three down and one to go! When we throw the net on Tofchitsky, the fucking KGB will have to start from scratch!”

  A slow smile was creasing Kirby’s face. Then he chuckled. “Y’know, you bastards nearly took me in! Tizzie’s in the bathroom—the door’s closed, the light’s on, and I hear water running! Hey, you want some pizza? Best in the neighborhood!”

  Dixie shook her head. “Still playing it stupid, aren’t you, Kirby? Tizzie isn’t in the bathroom—that’s your bodyguard.”

  The bathroom water stopped running, the door opened as the light went out, and a woman pranced into Kirby’s living room. She spotted Kirby and her eyes lit up. Matilda Richwell said, “Hi, dearie!”

  Forty-One

  The spontaneous booming laughter of Lacey Dawes shattered the pristine monastery silence of the Social Room. Colonel Busby Rankles dropped his sports magazine and Commander Gus Belleau’s gin and tonic skidded across the cribbage table into Rear Admiral Stuffy Whitehill’s lap. Jayjee said, “Lacey, you’ll get assessed for that, sure as hell!”

  Dawes regained his composure and wiped his eyes. He said, “And that was the only time Birch Kirby evidenced fear?”

  Jayjee said, “‘Terror’ would be a better choice. Hastings Jefferson’s report said that he turned whiter than a sheet, that he ran like a deer, bum foot or no bum foot, that he fell down the stairs, crashed through the glass, and disappeared.”

  Dawes nodded. “I can understand that. I remember Matty Richwell’s Washington days. When she was in her prime, she chased the fucking Secretary of State right into the Potomac River. How did she get away from that big bird?”

  “Consensus of opinion had it that he sobered up over the Ozarks.”

  “What about Tofchitsky?”

  “Tofchitsky—well, if I’d known then what I know now, I’d have let Kirby do it his way. Kirby was lying in the weeds, waiting for Tofchitsky to show, and then he’d have hooked both of them, but, at that time, a bird in the hand was worth two in the bush, so I instructed Jefferson and Benton to grab Caviar.”

  “There was an odd thing—a Polish girl, making it big in the KGB.”

  “She wasn’t Polish, she was Russian. Tanya Solystyn was born in Moscow and she was the daughter of a General in the Kremlin’s War Plans Division. The Polish business was a clever song and dance.”

  “Why did she key on Kirby in the first place?”

  “Well, you see, I was under KGB surveillance in Chicago, those bastards knew what I had for breakfast. It was obvious that I was interested in Kirby, so they probably checked him out, realized his enormous potential, and figured that I was grooming him for an important assignment. Then Tanya Solystyn moved into his apartment building to gain his confidence and keep an eye on him.”

  “Kirby really believed that Jim Gallagher was dead?”

  “I doubt it like hell. I have a feeling that he knew my death was staged, but he never betrayed that knowledge. Kirby had great awareness, he could read the covert like you read the Racing Form, and he went along like he’d bought the package—like any poker player, he knew that a straight flush beats three deuces.”

  “Then who was the dead man in the warehouse wreckage?”

  “A skid-row stiff, knifed in a Madison Street alley. He was twice my age but he was about my size, and he was unclaimed merchandise. We slipped a Cook County Morgue attendant five hundred for the body, we hung my phony dogtags around the neck, we smuggled it into the warehouse, and we flew Nick La Volpa in from Vegas to torch the joint.”

  “Who owned it?”

  “We did—we’d bought it a week earlier.”

  “Then you came back to Washington.”

  “Yes, right after I’d rifled Doc Anzivino’s office. Doc had done some work for me and I didn’t want my dental records messing up the works. Jefferson and Benton had their orders, Kirby looked favorable, and there was no need for me to stay in Chicago.”

  “And after that you became Joe Grazak.”

  “And Jake Gorton, and Jerry Gentry, and Jonas Gillespie—hell, I don’t remember all of ’em.”

  “But always with initials of ‘J’ and ‘G’.”

  “Yeah, well, a man has to have some sort of identity.”

  “So Kirby hauled ass with no money, no luggage, and no automobile.”

  “Not exactly—he had three thousand dollars of CIA funds to tide him over until he could get to his assets. Make no mistake, Lacey, Kirby had to have money, big money—probably stashed in Switzerland, or invested in blue chips under his real name, which could be Zuckerman, for all I know.”

  “What did Palmer and Naples get out of Caviar, or Tizzie Bonkowski, or Tanya Solystyn, or whoever?”

  “Not a single peep.”

  “She hung that tough?”

  “She didn’t have to hang tough. Palmer and Naples got her into the backroom of Sarah’s Boutique about twenty minutes before the door came off its hinges.”

  “Tofchitsky!”

  “Right! He kicked the shit out of Palmer and Naples, he grabbed Caviar, and they vanished, never to be seen again! That Tofchitsky was one bad sonofabitch!”

  “You’re sure it was Tofchitsky—absolutely certain?”

  “Who the hell else? His violence tagged him—nothing polished about Tofchitsky, he charged like a rogue bull elephant, that was his style. Palmer said that it was like tangling with a runaway steamroller.”

  “That was Palmer’s opinion. What did Naples say?”

  “Naples didn’t say anything—he was unconscious for three days.”

  “They didn’t get a good look at Tofchitsky?”

  “No, he was all over them like a mud-slide. Palmer said that he seemed completely deranged—kept hollering something about ‘hope,’ and how every man was entitled to ‘hope’—possibly a touch of paranoia.”

  Lacey Dawes relit his cigar butt for the tenth time. “One helluva story, Jayjee!”

  “Well, the media got into it early but we managed to tighten the spigots. It’s top secret stuff now—the biggest piece of the file is sealed to the public for another fifty years.”

  “Naturally—so the principals can check out in peace.”

  “It constituted one of the great, if less-heralded, moments in American history, and it’s a crying shame that accolades couldn’t have been passed out, but Kirby wasn’t in it for applause—he came in to save this country, and if I know the man, he’ll take the story to his grave.”

  “Who can say, Jayjee? Someday his contribution may be recognized.”

  “God, I hope so! There should be a Birch Kirby monument!”

  “Yeah, fifty feet tall!”

  “Fifty, hell! Look at what they built for George Washington!”

  “Couple of loose ends—how did they tumble to the Bonkowski woman being Caviar?”

  “Simple! Kisarze cracked. They threatened to turn Kirby loose on him, and he busted wide open!”

  “When did Jefferson and Benton get the information?”

  “About thirty seconds after I got it. I called Jefferson from Langley, but by that time Kirby was in bed with Caviar and they couldn’t go in.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, hell, Lacey, Caviar was a highly-trained Russian agent! If she’d started shooting, Kirby might have been caught in the crossfire!”

  “All right, but how did they learn that he was in bed with her?”

  “It was a logical assumption. He’d been humping the hooker across the hall, that was common knowledge. He’d been out of town for several days so it figured that they’d be getting together. She
didn’t respond to her doorbell, and Kirby’s bed-springs were squeaking up a storm. Does that help?”

  “Uh-huh. You believe that Kirby was hep to Caviar early in the game?”

  “Of course. He’d zeroed in on her, no doubt about it—he’d sensed that she wasn’t what she appeared to be, but until he’d signed on with us, it was none of his affair. He liked Tizzie Bonkowski and he had no reason to interfere.”

  “Was she an easy collar?”

  “Yeah, real easy—they got lucky. They’d laid low until Kirby went across the street to a pizza parlor and, as it turned out, she was taking clothing from a bedroom closet and she didn’t hear them pop the lock. They just walked in on her.”

  Dawes was nodding. “Okay, let’s go over this mess. The KGB wanted Kirby, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Tizzie Bonkowski was Tanya Solystyn, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Tanya Solystyn was Caviar, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Then why the hell didn’t Caviar blow Kirby’s brains out? She must have had a hundred opportunities!”

  Jayjee was shaking his head. “That, my friend, is one helluva question, and we’ll probably never know why she didn’t, but there are a couple of possible answers, one of which I like.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Caviar may have intended to pump Kirby before she killed him. Kirby was dynamite, that was obvious—after all, he’d just torn up her Grizzly Gulch superproduction and an operative capable of such a coup would be a lead-pipe cinch to be sitting on a ton of classified information.”

  “I’ll go with that.”

  “I won’t.”

  “What’s the alternative?”

  Jayjee was silent for quite a long time, studying the charred embers in the white-stone fireplace. Then he said, “I don’t think you’ll like the alternative.”

  “Hell, we’re both drunk—try me.”

  “Lacey, I believe that Tanya Solystyn had fallen ass over tea-kettles in love with Birch Kirby.”

  Dawes thought it over. “Uh-huh, and maybe the feeling was mutual.”

  “Not likely. Kirby used women, but he wouldn’t have fallen in love—love would have been a liability to a man in Kirby’s shoes.”

  “Then why didn’t he bring her in?”

  “Like I said earlier—he was probably waiting for Tofchitsky and a grand slam.”

  “They couldn’t have been understanding adversaries—lovers playing chess with world peace at stake?”

  “Naw, Lacey, that’s Hollywood fodder!”

  Lacey Dawes shrugged. “Maybe so, but I’d sure like to see the movie!”

  Forty-Two

  The hour was late and Lacey Dawes had gone home—something about his wife’s sciatica. Jayjee sat alone by the dead fireplace. Jayjee’s wife didn’t have sciatica. She’d been a paste-up clerk with a communications branch, a woman with a burning desire to write romances, but she’d never written anything, and never would. She read a great deal—“omnivorously,” as she’d put it to those who’d listen and there were still a few who would. Words did it for Henrietta, she revelled in them, like a pig in a manure pile. It had been a late marriage and not a particularly good one, and this was a Wednesday night. On Wednesday nights Henrietta usually wound up with Scarrlone. Tony Scarrlone was forty, divorced, a blue-jowled, heavy-hung Bureau of Immigration stud, and Henrietta wouldn’t get home before dawn. It’d been going on for months. Scarrlone was said to be very good in bed, and older women were his specialty. Bingo at my club, Henrietta would say, and Jayjee would say okay, because he hadn’t given a damn for quite a long time. He cranked up a melancholy smile—Bingo, all right—Bingo-Bango! Jayjee shrugged. Okay, just so nobody was getting hurt. Henrietta was a dozen years his junior, she was grossly overweight, menopause had scrambled her brains, she craved romance in great, gooey gobs, something more than Jayjee’s occasional good-natured pats on her ample posterior, and, all factors considered, it was probably much for the best. Jayjee enjoyed his evenings at the Ambassador Club, relishing the brandy and the chatter and the looking back, and he wouldn’t have changed a thing.

  Juan, the waiter, came by, emptying ashtrays, picking up stray glasses, wiping tables. He said, “It’s raining hard out there, sir.”

  Jayjee growled, “Is that right?” Jayjee didn’t care what it was doing out there.

  Juan said, “Nightcap, sir?”

  Jayjee nodded, glancing reproachfully at the old Sessions clock hung above the fireplace, suddenly aware of a harsh, rustling sound behind him. He turned to see Coleman Dreyfuss approaching, shrugging his way out of a dripping four-hundred-dollar trenchcoat. Coleman Dreyfuss was a Johnny-come-lately by Jayjee’s standards, thirty-six, just ten years out of Harvard Law School, tall, slender, dark-haired, ferret-eyed, ambitious, affected, and brilliant. He was well up the ladder at Langley, but he’d never qualify for Jayjee’s all-star team. Dreyfuss was a desk spook and desk spooks leave something to be desired, particularly where loyalty is concerned. In the last few years, three of the bastards had left the Agency to write books revealing tactics and criticizing policy. Dreyfuss chucked his soggy trenchcoat over the back of a chair, shook his head, and said, “Sonafabitch, a man needs a rowboat on a night like this!”

  Jayjee nodded. Coleman Dreyfuss didn’t know the first damned thing about rain and he wouldn’t until he’d stood in a Bangkok doorway half the night during the monsoon season.

  Dreyfuss whistled at the departing waiter, hollered, “Hey, boy, double up on that order!” and sat beside Jayjee on the big leather couch.

  Jayjee said, “They’ll be closing in a few minutes, Coleman.”

  Dreyfuss lit a cork-tipped cigarette with an exquisite blue-enameled Colibri. He said, “They’ll close when I tell ’em they can close.” He packed quite a bit of weight and he enjoyed throwing it around. Jayjee studied him. Dreyfuss hadn’t driven all the way from Langley just to get a slug of brandy, not in a driving rainstorm, not a desk spook. Desk spooks have a tendency to stay warm and dry. Dreyfuss wanted something, and an anticipatory gleam was kindling in Jayjee’s tired eyes, the same gleam that visits the autumn eyes of old hunting hounds. Dreyfuss said, “Jayjee, I’ll get right to the point—do you think you could see your way clear to come out of mothballs for a few days?”

  Jayjee yawned to veil his excitement. “It’s just possible. Why?”

  Dreyfuss blew smoke through his nostrils in the approved fashion of moving picture private investigators. He said, “Economy drive—they’ve carved our budget to the bone—we’re running light.”

  Jayjee’s face was expressionless. Running light or running scared? They needed him, they needed him in particular, and Coleman Dreyfuss was attempting to conceal the fact behind that clipped budget bullshit—the kid with crumbs on his face, claiming that the dog had eaten the cookies. Jayjee said, “I’m listening.”

  Juan came with their brandies, and Dreyfuss waited until he was gone. He dropped his voice to an ultraconfidential level. “Jayjee, that Grizzly Gulch thing you worked on several years ago, the circus caper—there was a missile-launcher involved, as I recall.”

  “You don’t recall it, Coleman—it was before your time.”

  “Yes, but I’ve gone through as much of the file as was available, and I’ve heard the old-timers discuss it. Tell me about the cannon.”

  “Dual purpose contraption—it’d throw a man across a tent and into a net—stripped for action, it’d fire a medium-range missile.”

  “What sort of bird did it accommodate—what type propellant, what warhead?”

  “Solid propellant, nuke warhead—helluva wallop—maybe half-a-dozen megatons.”

  “Accuracy?”

  “Ordnance dismantled it—probably right on the money at something like fifteen hundred miles—it had eyes—gyroscoped to the nuts.”

  “More about the cannon, please.”

  “There ain’t no more about the cannon.”

  “Just the spe
cs, as you remember them.”

  “I don’t remember them. Nobody remembers them. The cannon was confetti before we got a close-hand look at it.” Jayjee smiled a tight little smile, the smile of a canary-gorged feline.

  “But it would have been adequate—sufficient unto the task?”

  Jayjee frowned. “The Russians must have thought so—otherwise, why all the preparation?”

  Dreyfuss nodded a highly-professional nod. “The file is sketchy.”

  “It should be sketchy—you’re talking ancient history. Don’t tell me that you’re gonna write a book.”

  “No book, but there’s been a matter directed to my attention, and there’s an excellent possibility that it’s related to the Grizzly Gulch shenanigans.”

  The gleam in Jayjee’s eyes was very bright now. “How so?”

  Dreyfuss threw his cigarette into the fireplace and fired up another—he was extremely nervous and Jayjee was reading him like a highway signboard. Dreyfuss took a nip of his brandy and made a face—he was no drinker, never had been, never would be—desk spooks drink beer, they had trouble with the hard stuff. Dreyfuss cleared his throat. He said, “You see, on the western outskirts of Youngstown, Ohio—North Meridian Road, to be exact—there was an abandoned steel-door manufacturing concern—fireproof barriers, that sort of thing. We’ve looked it over—fair-sized cluster of buildings in good state of repair.”

  “Uh-huh. So?”

  “Well, the facility’s no longer abandoned—it’s back in production, swarming with people, seething with activity, working two shifts a day and expanding to three in a couple of weeks.”

  “Pinball machines—video games?”

  “Circus cannons.”

  “Aw, c’mon, Coleman—how many shows run that sort of act these days?”

  “Two in this country, according to our information—Royal Hippodrome and Classic Attractions. This Youngstown outfit is knocking out circus cannons by the gross.”

  “European market?”

  “Europe’s circuses order from a company in France—Cirque Sensationnel, near Lyons. Cirque Sensationnel produces three, maybe four cannons a year—unsophisticated stuff, no lands and grooves—just spring-loaded heavy-aluminum tubes—nothing that would compare with what they’re building on Meridian Road.”