Eagles fly, p.10
Eagles Fly, page 10
At seven Marion had telephoned as usual with his day’s schedule. Locke was prepped and would be ready for the first of his preliminary operations. The problem was to relieve the nasal blockage and the pressure on the nerves in the right cheek that controlled eyelid muscles without doing anything that would impede the planned reconstructive work that would begin shortly after the first of the year.
Then at eleven o’clock, he had a blepharoplasty on the upper and lower eyelids of a fifty-year-old woman from New York who had such a great amount of herniated fat in both lids that she looked like a hooded cobra.
He was free for lunch, but at one o’clock he had to begin an operation that usually produced tremendous results, but which he hated to do.
A young woman of twenty-five who had suffered severe acne as a teenager had come to him for a dermabrasion, in which the outer layers of her skin would be literally sanded away.
It was a messy operation and always involved acute pain for his patients for weeks afterward. This afternoon’s operation would only be the first of four planned for the young woman, who had been advised fully of the painful aspects, but who had nevertheless agreed.
Marion was emerging from his office when Kelsey came into the entry hall. She hurried over, out of breath, white-faced, obviously disturbed.
“What is it?” he said, forcing himself to remain calm, but a cold feeling was growing in his gut.
“The radio …” she said. “Did you listen to the radio on the way in?”
Kelsey shook his head. “What happened, Marion?”
“The newspaper reporter who was here yesterday … She’s dead.”
For several seconds Kelsey was aware of nothing but his breathing and his dream last night about the young woman. But then he took Marion’s arm and guided her across the entry hall into his office.
“Now, take it slow, and tell me everything you heard,” he said.
“They said Elizabeth Norby’s ear was found in the woods at the bottom of a ravine where it had gone off the road, turned over, and burned. It happened about two this morning.”
“Where?” Kelsey felt cold.
“Off Highway 50, a couple of miles from here.”
It didn’t make sense. He had left her at the cocktail lounge around six-thirty, and she said she would be heading back to Chicago. So what had she been doing near the clinic at two in the morning?
Marion looked at him with a strange expression on her face. He focused his attention back to her.
“What else?” he asked.
“The police …” she started. “They said she had been seen with a man earlier in the evening. The police are looking for him.”
Kelsey nodded. “I had a couple of drinks with her. But I went home—alone—at six-thirty. She told me she was going back to Chicago right away.”
Marion said nothing.
He looked at his watch. It was just past eight o’clock. “I have to get ready for Locke, and afterward Mrs. Hermitage, but I’ll be free about noon. I want you to call those two cops who were here yesterday and have them in my office.”
Marion reached out and touched Kelsey’s arm. “What is it, Richard?” she asked, using his first name, which she rarely did. “What’s happening? First poor Phil and now that woman.”
Kelsey shook his head. “I don’t know, Marion, but we’re going to find out.”
Locke’s operation, although it presented some difficulties, was, for the most part, routine. Beginning with incisions inside the nasal passages, Kelsey was able to get his instruments past the blockage of the airway and clear out the debris that had been pushed inward and toward the center, impeding the man’s breathing. He did little at this point to repair the extensive damage or reshape the structure of the nose itself. That would come later.
The hair on the right side of Locke’s head had been shaved two inches above the ear, and Kelsey made a long, sweeping incision above the normal hairline near the temple, down around the ear, following the natural preauricular crease. It was the same incision used for face-lifts, and in Locke’s case it would be reopened later when reconstruction of the cheek and chin on the right side was begun. Once it healed, the very thin scar would be invisible unless his head was shaved.
Kelsey worked the fingers of his left hand beneath the flap of skin, probing the muscle tissue just beneath the eye until he found the large bone chip that had shown up on the X rays and worked it loose toward the opening. With his right hand he inserted a large curved tweezers and gently removed the chip from the muscle.
Had it been left in place, it would have caused damage to the muscle controlling the right eyelid’s movements. Damage that could have been permanent.
By ten forty-five he was finished with Locke, and had washed up and changed gowns for Mrs. Hermitage’s blepharoplasty, another routine operation.
The lower eyelids were opened just at the eyelash line, the fibers of the muscles were separated, and the tiny globules of fat were forced out of the central, mesial, and lateral compartments. A similar procedure was used to remove the excess fatty tissue from the upper eyelids, except that the incision lines were along the superior palpebral fold, the entire procedure for both eyes taking slightly less than two hours.
It was twelve-thirty when Kelsey was cleaned up, back in his street clothes, and in his office. Wilson and Granville, the two police officers from Lake Geneva, were waiting for him.
“Thanks for coming,” Kelsey said, going around behind his desk. “I’m sorry I kept you waiting.”
The two cops exchanged glances. “When Mr. Lowe telephoned us about the discrepancy in your inventory, we thought we’d better come out and talk with you.”
“What?” Kelsey said.
“You didn’t know anything about it, Doctor?” Wilson asked, a strange expression in his eyes.
Kelsey punched the button on his intercom and Marion answered.
“Marion, have Stan Lowe come in here,” he snapped.
“Yes, sir,” she said. She sounded shook.
“When did Mr. Lowe telephone you?” Kelsey asked.
“About eight this morning,” Wilson said. “He didn’t tell you?”
“No,” Kelsey said, tight-lipped, and a moment later Lowe came in the office.
“What the hell is happening around here, Stan?” Kelsey said harshly.
Lowe closed the door behind him and came across to the desk, nodding at the two cops. “I decided to check the inventory again this morning, and I found most of our morphine gone out of surgical supply.”
“Who checked it yesterday?”
Lowe looked away from Kelsey’s eyes. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to admit that I did. I just didn’t catch it. I’m sorry. I guess I was just a little shook up.”
“Why wasn’t I told this morning?”
“I was tied up with some other work,” Lowe said defensively. “By the time I was free, you were already in the operating theater. I had planned on telling you as soon as you were finished.”
“I see,” Kelsey said. “Is there anything else you’ve neglected to tell me?”.
Lowe looked defiantly at Kelsey. “Nothing,” he said. “Is there anything else, Doctor?”
Kelsey stared at the man for a long moment, but then he shook his head. “No, and I’m sorry I snapped at you, Stan.”
“I understand,” Lowe said, smiling.
When Lowe was gone, Kelsey sat down, his mind racing in a dozen different directions. Everywhere he turned there seemed to be some kind of mystery. And Kelsey did not like puzzles with no apparent solutions.
“I get the impression, Doctor, that there is something else on your mind,” Wilson said.
“It’s about Elizabeth Norby, the woman killed in the accident last night,” Kelsey said. Neither cop’s expression changed. “I had cocktails with her.”
“Yes, we know,” Wilson said. “You left her and returned to your condo about six-thirty.”
Kelsey was startled. “How did you know that?”
“The bartender called us this morning and said you were with her until then. The night man in the garage at your place told us you came in alone about six thirty-five and didn’t leave until a quarter to eight this morning.”
“The news this morning indicated you were looking for a man who had been seen with her,” Kelsey said.
“Yes,” Wilson said. “She was seen leaving town around midnight with an unidentified man in her car. Not you.”
Kelsey slumped back in his seat. Something was wrong, but he could not put his finger on it.
Wilson, who had been standing the entire time, leaned over Kelsey’s desk. “What is disturbing you, Doctor?”
Kelsey looked up into his eyes. “Until yesterday this was a peaceful medical clinic. Yesterday someone broke in here, apparently to steal drugs, and killed my night security man. Later in the day a newspaper reporter came to talk to me, and a few hours later she was dead. What the hell is happening?”
Wilson shook his head. “Trouble comes in bunches, Doctor; believe me, it’s nothing more than that. The FBI is working on the break in because we believe the man who was here is a foreign national. Your unfortunate Mr. Digman was an old man—the knock on his head was too much for him.” He glanced at Granville. “And as for your reporter friend, we have it on a good authority that among other things, she has been working on a Mafia story. They finally got to her.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Kelsey said. “If she was that kind of a reporter, what the hell was she doing chasing a feature about a movie star’s operation?”
“Her editor tells us that she was coming up here to meet a man who was going to give her information. She came to interview you only as a cover.”
The feeling that something was not right was still strong in Kelsey, and it showed on his face.
Wilson smiled pleasantly. “From what I hear, Doctor, you’re a hell of a plastic surgeon. But as a detective you’re a washout.”
Kelsey got slowly to his feet and shook the detectives’ hands. “I suppose you’re right,” he said.
Wilson nodded. “We’ll keep an eye on the place, but I doubt if you’ll have any more trouble.”
“Thanks,” Kelsey said. “I hope you’re right.”
12
The lights of Buenos Aires lay like a million brilliant jewels on a black velvet backdrop as the 747 came in for a landing at Ezezia International Airport, but the splendor of the sight did little to ease Asheim’s growing certainty that they were waiting for him. That they knew he was coming.
No one had been waiting for him when he retrieved his rental car in Chicago, nor had anyone been waiting for him at his room in Cicero. He had picked up his things, had driven up to Milwaukee, and had taken the first plane to New York. The next morning he had taken off for Buenos Aires, no one following him, no one stopping him.
He had expected trouble all along his route, and had planned on driving to Canada if need be. None of that had been necessary. But instead of giving him comfort that he had so easily managed to get out of the United States, it made him all the more leery.
The airliner bumped onto the runway, the jets screamed in reverse, and for a brief instant Asheim could see in his mind’s eye every airport, every restaurant, every hotel, and every public records archive he had visited over the past two years. All of it to little or no avail until the Kelsey Clinic.
He had investigated the associates and families of the other Odessa leaders and had gone to Wisconsin only as a matter of routine, the last step in a long line of hundreds of others. He had not expected to find a thing at the clinic because in every case to that point, the children and families of the eleven Odessa leaders had been clean. The eleven old men had kept their families out of their business, much as the Mafia kept its families separate from its organization.
And, as he had expected, he had found nothing in Lake Geneva to connect Dr. Kelsey with his father’s Odessa work.
But he had missed something. There was a connection. They had made it clear by murdering the night watchman and by informing the FBI that Asheim had done the killing.
It was as if they had lit up a neon sign for him, directing him to the fact that Dr. Kelsey was involved in his father’s business.
And it had become even more obvious with Goldmann’s information that the man called Locke was going to the clinic for plastic surgery.
Dr. Kelsey had to be deeply involved in the Odessa leadership, perhaps even being groomed as his father’s successor.
And yet all of those conclusions set uneasily on Asheim’s mind. After two years of poking around, the Odessa had finally moved against him, but unnecessarily. If they had left it alone, had allowed him to come and go in peace (he had found nothing at the clinic, a fact they must have known), he would have returned to Tel Aviv and dropped the investigation.
As the airliner taxied to the terminal, Asheim had another thought, however. It was possible that Dr. Kelsey did not know what was happening. It was possible that Dr. Kelsey’s father was using him, presenting Locke as nothing more than an injured man who needed help.
In that case Asheim would have to be lured away from Lake Geneva so that he could be killed.
He looked out the window as the Jetway moved out from the building.
It was exactly what had happened. He had been lured away from Lake Geneva. He had come directly to Buenos Aires exactly as they had wanted him to.
If he had been killed in Wisconsin or in Chicago, questions might have been raised. Goldmann would have screamed his head off, of course, and although no one would have officially believed his unprovable allegations, they would have listened. It would have put authorities the world over on alert, thus hampering whatever plans the Odessa might have had for Locke.
But now he was like a fly coming to the spider’s web. He only hoped that he had more cunning than the poor fly.
He left the plane with the other passengers, retrieved his single suitcase from incoming baggage, and went to customs, where he showed the Israeli News Service passport he had used when he had first come here.
The customs officer stiffened perceptibly, and his manner instantly changed from one of bored indifference to that of congeniality.
He handed the passport back, made a cursory check of the suitcase, wished Asheim a pleasant stay in Buenos Aires, and waved him on.
As Asheim passed through the doors from customs into the main terminal area, he had the uncanny feeling that he was being watched, that at this moment someone was sighting a gun on his back, finger on the trigger, squeezing. He resisted the urge to bolt, and instead walked steadily across the terminal and out the front doors where a crowd was jostling for a line of waiting cabs.
The night air was warm and humid, redolent with the odors of car exhaust and jet fumes.
A cab pulled up to the curb in front of Asheim, the rear door popped open, and a man in the backseat pointed a gun at him.
“Get in, Major Asheim,” the man said with a German accent.
Asheim was about to roll to the left when two shots from a silenced pistol were fired from behind him, and the man in the backseat of the cab was flung backward, his face disintegrating into a pulpy mass of blood and bone. Someone grabbed Asheim’s left arm and hustled him to a waiting car that had pulled up behind the cab.
Asheim started to resist, but the man whispered strongly in his ear, “Guter fraynd,” Yiddish for good friend, and Asheim let himself be shoved into the rear seat of the car, the man climbing in behind him.
“Move!” the man shouted to the driver, and they took off away from the growing crowd around the dead man in the cab.
“David Goldmann says to say hello,” the man in the backseat with Asheim said when they were clear of the airport. He held out his hand. “Abraham Silverstein.”
Asheim shook his hand. “You’re running the travel bureau?”
Silverstein nodded. “And our friendly driver is Manuel Santini, my right-hand man, and one of the biggest crooks in all of South America.”
The driver, a man in his fifties, turned and smiled, most of his front teeth missing, the others yellow.
Asheim nodded to the driver, then turned his attention back to Silverstein, who was a man in his mid-thirties, dark, with hooded eyes and sharp, angular features. “I’m going to need some help getting to Aerie, and I’ll need a weapon. I had to get rid of mine before I left the States.”
Silverstein shook his head. “Sorry, Major, but we have our orders. The travel bureau is closed. Santini’s brother has a boat, and we’re going to take it across the La Plata to Montevideo, where a plane will be waiting for us.”
“Goldmann ordered you to pull out?”
“No, it came in the diplomatic pouch from someone higher up, Goldmann asked if we would stay until you arrived.”
Asheim sat back. There were two basic factors in any security operation that could cause its cancellation. The first was the lack of results, in which case funding would dry up. And the second was possible political embarrassment.
There had been no results in this operation for the two years since Benjamin’s death, and Goldmann had hinted that his funding had been eliminated.
And now there was no doubt in Asheim’s mind that the Odessa leaders had begun putting pressure on high government officials the world over to watch the Israelis closely in their peace negotiations with the Egyptians and the Iranians. Begin would be treading carefully, pulling back all possibly embarrassing operations.
“I’m staying,” he said to Silverstein, and a slight smile crossed the man’s features.
“Goldmann told me to expect as much.”
Asheim looked at him. “Am I under arrest, is that it?”
Silverstein held up both hands. “Absolutely not, Major. My orders were simply to close down the bureau and get the hell out of here. What you do contrary to your orders is totally up to you. Like I said, Goldmann just asked me to stick around until you arrived. I’ve done that.”
Asheim turned in his seat and looked out the rear window at the traffic behind them on the wide highway, and then once again looked at Silverstein. “Who was the man in the cab?”
