“Now that you’re married to a junior officer, Miss Marjorie, you better understand that they don’t tell us peasants nothing.”
“I’ll call when I know something, baby,” Jack said.
De la Santiago went to the telephone and dialed a number from memory.
“We may not get out in the morning,” he said when he had finished listening to the weather forecast. “Or at least into Washington. There’s a front coming in from the West.”
“We’re going to have to try,” Oliver said. “You can ride out there with us, Jack. We’ll be at my car at six.”
“I’ll take him out to the field,” Marjorie.
“You don’t have to do that, baby.”
“I want to,” she said. “I’ll even throw in breakfast for your friends.”
And then I’ll come back here and wash the breakfast dishes, and see if I can get the dirt from the stove out of my new carpet, and then I will twiddle my thumbs for five days.
“I accept,” Johnny said.
“Thanks, baby,” Jack said.
[ FOUR ]
Room 914
The Hotel Washington
Washington, D.C.
0830 11 January 1965
When the doorbell chimed, Lieutenant Colonel Craig W. Lowell, wrapped in a terry-cloth bathrobe, got up from the room-service breakfast table, walked to the door, and opened it.
Two men were in the corridor. One was a bellman, carrying a uniform in a plastic bag. The other was Colonel Sanford T. Felter.
“Good morning, Colonel,” Lowell said cheerfully. “Let me have a couple of bucks, will you, please?”
Felter shook his head, but took out his wallet and handed Lowell two one-dollar bills. Lowell gave them to the bellman.
“Thank you,” he said, and took the uniform from him.
Felter walked to Captain Portet, who was sitting in his shirtsleeves at the table.
“Thank you for coming, Captain Portet,” he said. “I realize it’s an imposition.”
“I got to ride in a Learjet,” Portet said. “Good to see you, Colonel.”
“Did Craig explain what this is all about?” Felter asked.
Lowell ripped the plastic cover from the uniform, balled it up, threw it at a wastebasket, missed, shrugged, and then laid the uniform against the back of a couch and began to pin insignia and ribbons on it.
“He led me to me to believe you wanted to ask me about General Mobutu,” Portet said.
The telephone rang.
Lowell picked it up.
“Craig, Powell, Kenyon and Dawes,” he said, then: “Good morning, Porter. Hold it a minute, will you?”
He waved at Portet and Felter.
“It’s my cousin,” he said. “I want you to hear this. Both of you.”
Felter looked annoyed, but he followed Portet to where Lowell was standing, and both stood behind him so as to be able to listen to the conversation.
“Okay, Porter, what have you got?” Lowell said.
“Who’s with you?”
“Colonel Felter and Captain Portet,” Lowell said.
“The Gresham Investment Corporation has a two-room suite, 1107, in 27 Wall,” Porter Craig announced. “They have been in there four months, on a two-year lease.”
“What does Dun and Bradstreet have to say about them?”
“Not much. They’ve got a little over two million in Chase Manhattan. No other assets that D and B knows about. The officers were listed, or course, but I never heard of any of them, including J. Richard Leonard.”
“What about their credit references?”
“They gave us the Riggs Bank in Washington as a credit reference. I called a fellow I know there, and he assures me their credit is impeccable. I asked him how he knew, and he said I should trust him, they were as solid as the U.S. Treasury.”
“Interesting,” Lowell said.
“I thought so. I called their office a minute ago. A woman answered the telephone. I asked for Mr. Leonard. She wanted to know who was calling, and I lied to her; I said I was my friend in the Riggs bank. She told me Mr. Leonard was in Washington, and she knew I had that number. I didn’t ask for it.”
“Porter, you’re wonderful,” Lowell said.
“You want me to inquire further?”
“No, thanks,” Lowell said. “I just hope this Leonard guy doesn’t call your friend at Riggs, and he remembers you called him.”
“I don’t think that’s likely,” Porter Craig said. “I told him that it was a random check of credit references by the 27 Wall Street Corporation, and that I thought we could probably save us both time and money by me calling him.”
“Thanks again, Porter. I owe you one,” Lowell said, and hung up.
“What was that all about?” Felter asked.
“You tell him, J. P.,” Lowell said. “While I finish with my uniform. ”
“Hurry up with that, will you?” Felter said, a tone of annoyance in his voice.