Libra - Don Delillo [144]
The Crescent City garage had a contract with the U.S. government to keep and maintain a certain number of vehicles for use by local agencies.
Sundays the street was empty and the garage was closed and looked like an abandoned Spanish church inside the lowered grille, with light falling through the high dusty windows. This was where he met Agent Bateman, who had a key to the office. They went through the office and sat in one of the cars set aside for the Secret Service and FBI. He told Bateman what he’d learned at 544 Camp, which wasn’t a hell of a lot. He wanted to use the Minox but Bateman said no, no, no, no. He gave Lee a white envelope containing a number of well-wrinkled bills, like money saved by children.
Lee insisted on knowing the informant number he’d been assigned and Bateman told him it was S-172. Then Lee said he wanted to apply for a passport and wondered if there might be a problem, due to his record as a defector. Bateman said he’d look into it.
Mosquitoes in swarms. He saw himself typing a paper on political theory, basing it on experience no fellow student could match, a half-eaten apple at his elbow.
When Lee has a certain look on his face, eyes kind of amused, mouth small and tight, he finds himself thinking of his father. He associates the look with his father. He believes it is a look his father may have used. It feels like his father. A curious sensation, the look coming upon him, taking hold in an unmistakable way, and then his old man is here, eerie and forceful and whole, a meeting across worlds.
“There’s something I know about you, Leon, that I find fascinating. It’s something almost no one else knows. Very few people know. You’re the night-rider who took a shot at General Ted Walker two and a half months ago in Dallas.”
Lee’s mind went blank.
“I can’t tell you how I know,” Ferrie said. “But there are men who are interested in you. At first I only played a hunch. I thought Leon and I, we have a psychic bond. I took your application to Banister. I had an argument all set. I would say to Guy, ‘Here is a man who wants to spy on our operations. He wants to use us but we will end up using him. Not through manipulation or political conversion. He believes in his heart that he’s a dedicated leftist. But he is also a Libran. He is capable of seeing the other side. He is a man who harbors contradictions.’ I was ready to say to Guy, ‘Here’s a Marine recruit who reads Karl Marx.’ I was ready to say, ‘This boy is sitting on the scales, ready to be tilted either way.’ ”
Lee finished off his beer.
“But I didn’t have to present an argument at all. All I had to do was say your name. Banister was eager to grab you and hold on. Turns out he’d been making inquiries about you on behalf of an old buddy of his. A fellow named Mackey. You were lost. Nobody knew where you went after Dallas. Guy cracked his meanest smile when I told him you were greasing coffee machines right around the corner and wanted to join our staff. He picked up the telephone. ‘Look what I found.’ ”
Ferrie ordered two more beers and said, “You are the object of some intense scrutiny. Banister doesn’t know the exact nature of the role being planned for you. But it’s only a matter of time before he finds out.”
Three, four, half a dozen Cubans sat around the Habana tonight in camo T-shirts and pants, boots stained with dry white mud.
“Are you afraid you’ll get caught for Walker? You, never mentioned Dallas to me.”
“I never mention it to anyone.”
“You think they’ll know. All you have to do is say the word Dallas and everyone will know. Prison is terrifying. The first thing they do when they arrest a man is look up his ass.”
“I found that out in the Marines.”
“They look up your ass before they know your name. It’s like some Pygmy ritual in the Congo.”
Lee could not drink more