It's just after seven now, presumably the next morning, but we're never quite told this. A delivery boy drops off a coffee and some jelly donuts, and once again Gris rants at the HellerVision about how Heller doesn't check for poison or anything, even though it's quite suspicious that a shabby hotel like this would deliver breakfast.
And then there's another section that makes me wonder if Heller is a covert specialist after all. While Heller waits for his appointment with Mr. Bury, he arranges the furniture so that one chair sits with its back to the huge, sniper-friendly window, with the other in plain sight. He makes sure a small table is up against his chosen seat and that there are two ashtrays on it. He gets out some tools - alien tools he brought with him? human tools he purchased when we weren't looking? - and fiddles with the doorknob. Finally, Heller takes apart and reassembles the portable radio he purchased and places it in his luggage.
Gris' reaction to all this is "Fleet guys are crazy with toys. Here he was about to be hit and he was amusing himself with a toy." He doesn't spare any thought for coming up with a better reason for Heller's actions, or consider the implications of the positioning of the room's furniture. Probably because that would spoil the big surprise coming up, but mostly because Gris is staggeringly stupid.
With all his fiddling done, Heller sits down with his back to the window, through which Gris spotted someone climbing to the roof of the building across the street, violin case in tow. The hotel elevator door's dinging can be heard down the hall, someone knocks on Heller's door, and the book's hero bids them come in, it's open. The person who comes through is decidedly non-shabby.
In walked the perfectly-groomed Wall Street lawyer. The type is legendary. Three-piece suit in a somber gray. No hat. Impeccably neat. Dried up like a prune from holding in all the sins they commit. He was carrying a fat briefcase.
Swollen with sin but dried-up and shriveled, huh? Interesting metaphor. Also, this may be the first time I've had Wall Street associated with attorneys instead of bankers.
This is Mr. Bury, who takes a seat and immediately asks where Heller got the idea to call himself the son of the world's most powerful man. Heller is evasive and vague - "Don't know anybody much around here" - but confirms that he hasn't used the name publicly, and only those two dingbats at the FBI know it. Mr. Bury congratulates him on his discretion. Gris notes that Stereotypical English Butler from last chapter probably wasn't told Heller's alias either.
Heller shows Bury his papers, and is asked if the FBI made any copies. Heller replies that they didn't, even though he spent several hours away from the documents tasting drugs and firing assault rifles, hours in which Stupewitz could have easily made duplicates, and hours in which Stupewitz should have made duplicates if he was serious about this blackmail scheme. Mr. Bury is even more pleased, especially when Heller tells him that he doesn't have any copies beyond what he's carrying.
So Mr. Bury makes his offer - in exchange for the Rockecenter Jr. birth certificate and whatnot, he'll give Heller twenty-five grand and a brand spanking new identity as Jerome Terrance Wister of Macon, Georgia. Gris explains to us that "Jerome" is white, blond and male, which is good, because given this book's record on character stupidity it wouldn't surprise me for Heller to be offered an identity as a Chinese-American grandmother.
Jerome's parents are dead, he has no siblings, and he's currently one semester away from graduating from college - though his grades from Saint Lee Military Academy are all D's. He also has a driver's license certifying him for cars and motorcycles, and New Jersey plates for the Cadillac to foil the FBI trace on Heller. A social security card and passport round out the bundle.
The latter gets a raised eyebrow from Heller since it already has his picture in it. Bury smugly explains that it's from the restaurant in Silver Spring. So... they knew he was going to be there? Oh, excuse me, he was told to stop there. So then the Rockecenter Syndicate or whatever you want to call it was able to get an agent hired as a temporary worker with what, twenty-four hour's notice? And the place had an opening available, specifically during the hours Heller would be there? And the guys had a trained waitress available and in the area to take up the job? And the "waitress" was able to keep anyone from taking a very specific seat until Heller arrived? And they got a photographer in position to take a photo suitable for a passport, and not only got one with their first and only try, but was able to do so unnoticed by anyone in the resataurant? Or was there even a photographer at all, did they install some sort of hidden camera beforehand?
If nothing else, this really underscores the power and resources of this Rockecenter fella.
Next Heller asks where "Jerome" came from, but Bury explains that the State Department is quite experienced at creating identities for the Witness Protection Program, "And we, you might say, own the State Department." It's all legal...ish, and all Heller has to do is take the money and sign the hotel registry as his new identity.
Heller takes the cash, but before he signs asks for the rest of the money in Mr. Bury's briefcase, because for whatever reason Bury brought twenty-five thousand dollars extra. The Wall Street lawyer complies. But then Heller has another "One more thing" - call the hotel clerk and tell him to call off the sniper on the roof across the street.
Action!
After a moment spent stunned, Bury goes for the doorknob, but it falls off in his hand. He stares at the detached doorknob for another moment, then reaches inside his coat for a gun, but Heller uses those damned Speed Ball skills and hurls an ashtray, of all things, with enough force to make Bury drop the weapon and send the flying bit of glass to shatter against the door.
That sniper watching from across the street? No reaction to all this. Even though Heller positioned the easy chair he was sitting in with its back to the window, and the chair Bury sat in in plain view of it. You see, the room's "too dark and curtained to see deeply into."
Then why did they... if you've got a sniper, you could at least... Bury could have said "it's dark in here, can I turn on the lights to help me read?" And it's broad daylight in New York City and nobody noticed someone on a roof, eye to the scope of a high-powered rifle?! Wouldn't it have been much less conspicuous to have Mr. Bury's "associate" Mr. Undertaker come in and hit Heller with a silenced pistol?! Wouldn't it be much less risky to hit Heller after anyone associated with Rockecenter left the crime scene?! If they know what Heller's driving, couldn't they get Bang-Bang Rimbombo to leave him a present, since apparently the guy can get away with murder?!
These are the antagonists. These are the guys who run the world. These are villains who we're supposed to take as a credible threat. And they have just utterly botched a relatively routine assassination. They have been defeated by bad lighting and ashtrays.
While brandishing the remaining ashtray and threatening to take the top of the other man's head off with it, Heller takes Bury's weapon, has him call the clerk, then puts him on the bed in plain view of the door. Minutes later there's a knock, and as ordered Mr. Bury says "Come in" in a normal voice. A guy carrying a violin case steps inside, Heller karate chops the back of his neck, catapulting him from the door onto Bury on the bed, which somehow doesn't break his neck, killing him instantly. But Heller does pull a "Cobra Colt" from the man's waistband while he's flying past tumbling head over heels.
The villains are moronic failures and the hero is invincible. Book's over, everybody go home.
The "weaselly" sniper complains that Heller was supposed to be just a kid, rather than laying insensible from the severe damage to his nervous system and spinal column. Heller cows him with a feigned punch, somehow extracting the guy's wallet during the gesture.
The assassin was carrying an I.D. And a wad of cash, but the assassin was carrying his I.D.
Heller is disappointed at this attempt at treachery and murder, but is still willing to go along with the identity swap. Though he does reveal that the dismantled radio he set up that morning has managed to record the entire conversation with Mr. Bury - portable radios have all the equipment necessary to record sound, right? Next he jots down the name and address of the sniper (Torpedo Fiaccola), estimates that the five grand he took from the would-be killer's wallet was half of the hit contract, and makes a contract of his own - if anything funny happens, he'll put out a hit on Mr. Bury. And to make sure Torpedo goes along with this, Heller gets his mother's name and address for contact information, because the assassin was carrying that on him too. And now of course Torpedo is convinced that Heller will kill his mommy if he doesn't go along with the contract.
Our hero wraps things up by taking the "shells" out of the violin case and everybody's guns, then sends Bury and Torpedo on their way, "May we never have occasion to meet again." He puts the room back together, gets dressed and packed, and as he heads out to start his new life, laughs that "There's nothing like FBI training to see you through."
Yes, in the handful of hours Heller spent wandering through the Hoover Building, he learned how to detect and foil an expertly-arranged assassination attempt, much less this amateurish botched assassination attempt. Though Heller is exultant, Gris is terrified, because a man like Bury never loses; people like him "only postpone," and he has literally the entire U.S. government at his command to enact his revenge. Which wouldn't be a bad thing, if Gris just had that "platen" Heller's using to encode his progress reports with secret messages.
And after that utterly exhausting chapter, we're done with this Part.
Back to Part Fifteen, Chapter Eight
No comments:
Post a Comment