“All right, all right. Hold on. You going to let me tell this my way? Seems one of the customers was in the park that night. Taking care of a little business. He don’t want to talk about that, though. Anyway, point is he saw someone taking old Karl into the bushes. Just like you figured-thought he was drunk. Car pulls up and before you know it the two of them are heading somewhere quiet. Our boy don’t think nothing of it. Tell you the truth, sounded like he was annoyed. Didn’t want any company around.”
“What was he doing there?”
“Said he was taking a leak.” Holliday paused. “Yeah, I know, looks like I got to keep an eye on the Alameda now too. All kinds of stuff going on I didn’t know about.”
“Did he get a look at him?”
“Nope. Said he was tall.”
“Tall.”
“That’s right. Now Ramon, he struck me as on the short side, wouldn’t you say? So I asked him about that. But he says tall. ‘Course, given what he might have been doing there, maybe anybody’d look tall.”
“What else?”
“Nothing else. Next thing he knew was when he heard the car driving away. Like I said, he didn’t think nothing of it. And then, when it comes out there’s a body found there, well the whole thing just goes right out of his head. You know.”
“He didn’t see his face?”
“No. Tall, that’s it. I asked.”
Connolly was quiet. “So what have we got?” he said.
“Not much. He’s not even what you’d call a real witness-all he saw was two guys going into the bushes, one of them drunk. Court of law, it wouldn’t mean shit. But he saw what he saw. Only reason I got it out of him now is he probably thinks it was Ramon he saw and it’s all over anyway. He’s the nervous type. But I figured you’d like to know you weren’t imagining things. Happened just like you thought.”
“Yeah. Thanks, Doc. What about the car?”
In the pause, Connolly felt he could see Doc smiling.
“Oh, I almost forgot that. He did see that. Funny thing, isn’t it, he didn’t see the guy but he did remember the car.”
“Let me guess.”
“If you said a Buick, he wouldn’t argue with you.”
“You still holding him?”
“No, I’ve got no call to do that. I could charge him with something, but why would I want to go and do that and stir up everybody? He was practically pissing in his pants the way it was. Now what’s all this about a woman? You on to something up there?”
“No, nothing. Just thinking out loud. Trying to figure out, you know, how strong-”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’ll be down in a few days. I’ll fill you in.”
“What’s the matter? Your phone tapped?”
Suddenly he was Karl again. His hand instinctively recoiled from the black telephone, as if Doc’s words had carried their own shock. Of course. Oppenheimer’s phone. His. Naturally they’d do that. He looked over at Mills, blandly signing forms, paying no attention. He tried to remember everything he’d just said, imagining it typed up, one carbon for the files. Was there a phrase that drew the eye, that would have to be passed along? His mind was busy again.
“Mike?” Doc said.
But don’t let them know that you know. “That click you hear is me hanging up, Doc,” he said easily. “I have to go. I’ll call you. And thanks.”
Then, the receiver back in its cradle, he looked at it again. They had every right to know. That’s what they were all doing here. Karl, at least, had known that, had stayed alert.
After a while he felt Mills looking at him.
“Now what?” Mills said.
“Nothing. I’ve been thinking. You know those security files?” Karl had noticed her right away.
“Intimately.”
“The vetting and the updates. I want to see everybody who arrived on the Hill-when was the first two hundred bucks? October? Let’s say from September on. Just the new arrivals. Foreigners. How many do you think there are?”
Mills shrugged. “Some. The Tube Alloys group came through Canada about then. They’d all be foreign. But not Americans?”
“If they were naturalized. First I want the ones who were vetted abroad.”
Mills raised his eyebrows. “What’s up?”
“We’re looking for any left-wing history-groups, contributions, Popular Front, any of it.”
“Communists?”
“Not officially. What was it Karl said to you? It’s what’s not there. I think that’s what Karl knew. A Communist who wasn’t there.”
Mills looked at him for a minute. “What makes you think so?”
“A hunch.”
“A hunch.”
“That’s right,” Connolly said, looking at him directly.
“Okay. I’ll get started on the arrival list. You want to look at all these yourself?” It was another question.
“Both of us,” Connolly said. “But no one else. No reports.”
Mills stood in front of the desk, raising his palms in a kind of pleading. “It’s my job, Mike.”
Connolly looked up at him, just a soldier following orders, but what he heard was himself, talking to Emma, mad as the rest of them, and then the noise in his head began to clear and he felt ashamed. “Trust me a little,” he said, and now the voice was hers.
