Crawford raised his voice to the room. “If he calls at all, it’ll be short, so let’s play him perfect. Want to go over the drill, Will?”
“Sure. When we get to the point where I talk, I want to ask you a couple of things, Doctor.”
Bloom had arrived after the others. He was scheduled to speak to the behavioral-science section at Quantico later in the day. Bloom could smell cordite on Graham’s clothes.
“Okay,” Graham said. “The phone rings. The circuit’s completed immediately and the trace starts at ESS, but the tone generator continues the ringing noise so he doesn’t know we’ve picked up. That gives us about twenty seconds on him.” He pointed to the technician. “Tone generator to ‘off’ at the end of the fourth ring, got it?”
The technician nodded. “End of the fourth ring.”
“Now, Beverly picks up the phone. Her voice is different from the one he heard yesterday. No recognition in the voice. Beverly sounds bored. He asks for me. Bev says, ‘I’ll have to page him, may I put you on hold?’ Ready with that, Bev?” Graham thought it would be better not to rehearse the lines. They might sound flat by rote.
“All right, the line is open to us, dead to him. I think he’ll hold longer than he’ll talk.”
“Sure you don’t want to give him the hold music?” the technician asked.
“Hell no,” Crawford said.
“We give him about twenty seconds of hold, then Beverly comes back on and tells him, ‘Mr. Graham’s coming to the phone, I’ll connect you now.’ I pick up.” Graham turned to Dr. Bloom. “How would you play him, Doctor?”
“He’ll expect you to be skeptical about it really being him. I’d give him some polite skepticism. I’d make a strong distinction between the nuisance of fake callers and the significance, the importance, of a call from the real person. The fakes are easy to recognize because they lack the capacity to understand what has happened, that sort of thing.
“Make him tell something to prove who he is.” Dr. Bloom looked at the floor and kneaded the back of his neck.
“You don’t know what he wants. Maybe he wants understanding, maybe he’s fixed on you as the adversary and wants to gloat—we’ll see. Try to pick up his mood and give him what he’s after, a little at a time. I’d be very leery of appealing to him to come to us for help, unless you sense he’s asking for that.
“If he’s paranoid you’ll pick it up fast. In that case I’d play into his suspicion or grievance. Let him air it. If he gets rolling on that, he may forget how long he’s talked. That’s all I know to tell you.” Bloom put his hand on Graham’s shoulder and spoke quietly. “Listen, this is not a pep talk or any bullshit; you can take him over the jumps. Never mind advice, do what seems right to you.”
Waiting. Half an hour of silence was enough.
“Call or no call, we’ve got to decide where to go from here,” Crawford said. “Want to try the mail drop?”
“I can’t see anything better,” Graham said.
“That would give us two baits, a stakeout at your house in the Keys and the drop.”
The telephone was ringing.
Tone generator on. At ESS the trace began. Four rings. The technician hit the switch and Beverly picked up. Sarah was listening.
“Special Agent Crawford’s office.”
Sarah shook her head. She knew the caller, one of Crawford’s cronies at Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Beverly got him off in a hurry and stopped the trace. Everyone in the FBI building knew to keep the line clear.
Crawford went over the details of the mail drop again. They were bored and tense at the same time. Lloyd Bowman came around to show them how the number pairs in Lecter’s Scriptures fit page 100 of the softcover Joy of Cooking. Sarah passed around coffee in paper cups.
The telephone was ringing.
The tone generator took over and at ESS the trace began. Four rings. The technician hit the switch. Beverly picked up.
“Special Agent Crawford’s office.”
Sarah was nodding her head. Big nods.
Graham went into his booth and closed the door. He could see Beverly’s lips moving. She punched “Hold” and watched the second hand on the wall clock.
Graham could see his face in the polished receiver. Two bloated faces in the earpiece and mouthpiece. He could smell cordite from the firing range in his shirt. Don’t hang up. Sweet Jesus, don’t hang up. Forty seconds had elapsed. The telephone moved slightly on his table when it rang. Let it ring. Once more. Forty-five seconds. Now.
“This is Will Graham, can I help you?”
Low laughter. A muffled voice: “I expect you can.”
“Could I ask who’s calling please?”
“Didn’t your secretary tell you?”
“No, but she did call me out of a meeting, sir, and—”
“If you tell me you won’t talk to Mr. Pilgrim, I’ll hang up right now. Yes or no?”
“Mr. Pilgrim, if you have some problem I’m equipped to deal with, I’ll be glad to talk with you.”
“I think you have the problem, Mr. Graham.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t understand you.”
The second hand crawled toward one minute.
“You’ve been a busy boy, haven’t you?” the caller said.
“Too busy to stay on the phone unless you state your business.”
“My business is in the same place yours is. Atlanta and Birmingham.”
“Do you know something about that?”
Soft laughter. “Know something about it? Are you interested in Mr. Pilgrim? Yes or no. I’ll hang up if you lie.”
Graham could see Crawford through the glass. He had a telephone receiver in each hand.
“Yes. But, see, I get a lot of calls, and most of them are from people who say they know things.” One minute.
Crawford put one receiver down and scrawled on a piece of paper.
“You’d be surprised how many pretenders there are,” Graham said. “Talk to them a few minutes and you can tell they don’t have the capacity to even understand what’s going on. Do you?”
Sarah held a sheet of paper to the glass for Graham to see. It said, “Chicago phone booth. PD scrambling.”
“I’ll tell you what, you tell me one thing you know about Mr. Pilgrim and maybe I’ll tell you whether you’re right or not,” the muffled voice said.
“Let’s get straight who we’re talking about,” Graham said.
“We’re talking about Mr. Pilgrim.”
“How do I know Mr. Pilgrim has done anything I’m interested in. Has he?”
“Let’s say, yes.”
“Are you Mr. Pilgrim?”
“I don’t think I’ll tell you that.”
“Are you his friend?”
“Sort of.”
“Well, prove it then. Tell me something that shows me how well you know him.”
“You first. You show me yours.” A nervous giggle. “First time you’re wrong, I hang up.”
“All right, Mr. Pilgrim is right-handed.”
“That’s a safe guess. Most people are.”
“Mr. Pilgrim is misunderstood.”
“No general crap, please.”
“Mr. Pilgrim is really strong physically.”
“Yes, you could say that.”
Graham looked at the clock. A minute and a half. Crawford nodded encouragement.
Don’t tell him anything that he could change.
“Mr. Pilgrim is white and about, say, five-feet-eleven. You haven’t told me anything, you know. I’m not so sure you even know him at all.”
“Want to stop talking?”
“No, but you said we’d trade. I was just going along with you.”
“Do you think Mr. Pilgrim is crazy?”
Bloom was shaking his head.
“I don’t think anybody who is as careful as he is could be crazy. I think he’s different. I think a lot of people do believe he’s crazy, and the reason for that is, he hasn’t let people understand much about
him.”
“Describe exactly what you think he did to Mrs. Leeds and maybe I’ll tell you if you’re right or not.”
“I don’t want to do that.”
“Good-bye.”
Graham’s heart jumped, but he could still hear breathing on the other end.
“I can’t go into that until I know—”
Graham heard the telephone-booth door slam open in Chicago and the receiver fall with a clang. Faint voices and bangs as the receiver swung on its cord. Everyone in the office heard it on the speakerphone.
“Freeze. Don’t even twitch. Now lock your fingers behind your head and back out of the booth slowly. Slowly. Hands on the glass and spread ’em.”
Sweet relief was flooding Graham.
“I’m not armed, Stan. You’ll find my ID in my breast pocket. That tickles.”
A confused voice loud on the telephone. “Who am I speaking to?”
“Will Graham, FBI.”
“This is Sergeant Stanley Riddle, Chicago police department.” Irritated now. “Would you tell me what the hell’s going on?”
“You tell me. You have a man in custody?”
“Damn right. Freddy Lounds, the reporter. I’ve known him for ten years. . . . Here’s your notebook, Freddy. . . . Are you preferring charges against him?”
Graham’s face was pale. Crawford’s was red. Dr. Bloom watched the tape reels go around.
“Can you hear me?”
“Yes, I’m preferring charges.” Graham’s voice was strangled. “Obstruction of justice. Please take him in and hold him for the U.S. attorney.”
Suddenly Lounds was on the telephone. He spoke fast and clearly with the cotton wads out of his cheeks.
“Will, listen—”
“Tell it to the U.S. attorney. Put Sergeant Riddle on the phone.”
“I know something—”
“Put Riddle on the goddamned telephone.”
Crawford’s voice came on the line. “Let me have it, Will.”
Graham slammed his receiver down with a bang that made everyone in range of the speakerphone flinch. He came out of the booth and left the room without looking at anyone.
“Lounds, you have hubbed hell, my man,” Crawford said.
“You want to catch him or not? I can help you. Let me talk one minute.” Lounds hurried into Crawford’s silence. “Listen, you just showed me how bad you need the Tattler. Before, I wasn’t sure—now I am. That ad’s part of the Tooth Fairy case or you wouldn’t have gone balls-out to nail this call. Great. The Tattler’s here for you. Anything you want.”
“How did you find out?”
“The ad manager came to me. Said your Chicago office sent this suit-of-clothes over to check the ads. Your guy took five letters from the incoming ads. Said it was ‘pursuant to mail fraud.’ Mail fraud nothing. The ad manager made Xerox copies of the letters and envelopes before he let your guy have them.
“I looked them over. I knew he took five letters to smokescreen the one he really wanted. Took a day or two to check them all out. The answer was on the envelope. Chesapeake postmark. The postage-meter number was for Chesapeake State Hospital. I was over there, you know, behind your friend with the wild hair up his ass. What else could it be?
“I had to be sure, though. That’s why I called, to see if you’d come down on ‘Mr. Pilgrim’ with both feet, and you did.”
“You made a large mistake, Freddy.”
“You need the Tattler and I can open it up for you. Ads, editorial, monitoring incoming mail, anything. You name it. I can be discreet. I can. Cut me in, Crawford.”
“There’s nothing to cut you in on.”
“Okay, then it won’t make any difference if somebody happened to put in six personal ads next issue. All to ‘Mr. Pilgrim’ and signed the same way.”
“I’ll get an injunction slapped on you and a sealed indictment for obstruction of justice.”
“And it might leak to every paper in the country.” Lounds knew he was talking on tape. He didn’t care anymore. “I swear to God, I’ll do it, Crawford. I’ll tear up your chance before I lose mine.”
“Add interstate transmission of a threatening message to what I just said.”
“Let me help you, Jack. I can, believe me.”
“Run along to the police station, Freddy. Now put the sergeant back on the phone.”
Freddy Lounds’s Lincoln Versailles smelled of hair tonic and aftershave, socks and cigars, and the police sergeant was glad to get out of it when they reached the station house.
Lounds knew the captain commanding the precinct and many of the patrolmen. The captain gave Lounds coffee and called the U.S. attorney’s office to “try and clear this shit up.”
No federal marshal came for Lounds. In half an hour he took a call from Crawford in the precinct commander’s office. Then he was free to go. The captain walked him to his car.
Lounds was keyed up and his driving was fast and jerky as he crossed the Loop eastward to his apartment overlooking Lake Michigan. There were several things he wanted out of this story and he knew that he could get them. Money was one, and most of that would come from the paperback. He would have an instant paperback on the stands thirty-six hours after the capture. An exclusive story in the daily press would be a news coup. He would have the satisfaction of seeing the straight press—the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the sanctified Washington Post and the holy New York Times—run his copyrighted material under his byline with his picture credits.
And then the correspondents of those august journals, who looked down on him, who would not drink with him, could eat their fucking hearts out.
Lounds was a pariah to them because he had taken a different faith. Had he been incompetent, a fool with no other resource, the veterans of the straight press could have forgiven him for working on the Tattler, as one forgives a retarded geek. But Lounds was good. He had the qualities of a good reporter—intelligence, guts, and the good eye. He had great energy and patience.
Against him were the fact that he was obnoxious and therefore disliked by news executives, and his inability to keep himself out of his stories.
In Lounds was the longing need to be noticed that is often miscalled ego. Lounds was lumpy and ugly and small. He had buck teeth and his rat eyes had the sheen of spit on asphalt.
He had worked in straight journalism for ten years when he realized that no one would ever send him to the White House. He saw that his publishers would wear his legs out, use him until it was time for him to become a broken-down old drunk manning a dead-end desk, drifting inevitably toward cirrhosis or a mattress fire.
They wanted the information he could get, but they didn’t want Freddy. They paid him top scale, which is not very much money if you have to buy women. They patted his back and told him he had a lot of balls and they refused to put his name on a parking place.
One evening in 1969 while in the office working rewrite, Freddy had an epiphany.
Frank Larkin was seated near him taking dictation on the telephone. Dictation was the glue factory for old reporters on the paper where Freddy worked. Frank Larkin was fifty-five, but he looked seventy. He was oyster-eyed and he went to his locker every half-hour for a drink. Freddy could smell him from where he sat.
Larkin got up and shuffled over to the slot and spoke in a hoarse whisper to the news editor, a woman. Freddy always listened to other people’s conversations.
Larkin asked the woman to get him a Kotex from the machine in the ladies’ room. He had to use them on his bleeding behind.
Freddy stopped typing. He took the story out of his typewriter, replaced the paper and wrote a letter of resignation.
A week later he was working for the Tattler.
He started as cancer editor at a salary nearly double what he had earned before. Management was impressed with his attitude.
The Tattler could afford to pay him well because the paper found cancer very lucrative.
One in five Americans dies of it. The r
elatives of the dying, worn out, prayed out, trying to fight a raging carcinoma with pats and banana pudding and copper-tasting jokes, are desperate for anything hopeful.
Marketing surveys showed that a bold “New Cure for Cancer” or “Cancer Miracle Drug” cover line boosted supermarket sales of any Tattler issue by 22.3 percent. There was a six-percentile drop in those sales when the story ran on page one beneath the cover line, as the reader had time to scan the empty text while the groceries were being totaled.
Marketing experts discovered it was better to have the big cover line in color on the front and play the story in the middle pages, where it was difficult to hold the paper open and manage a purse and grocery cart at the same time.
The standard story featured an optimistic five paragraphs in ten-point type, then a drop to eight point, then to six point before mentioning that the “miracle drug” was unavailable or that animal research was just beginning.
Freddy earned his money turning them out, and the stories sold a lot of Tattlers.
In addition to increased readership, there were many spinoff sales of miracle medallions and healing cloths. Manufacturers of these paid a premium to get their ads located close to the weekly cancer story.
Many readers wrote to the paper for more information. Some additional revenue was realized by selling their names to a radio “evangelist,” a screaming sociopath who wrote to them for money, using envelopes stamped “Someone You Love Will Die Unless . . .”
Freddy Lounds was good for the Tattler, and the Tattler was good to him. Now, after eleven years with the paper, he earned $72,000 a year. He covered pretty much what he pleased and spent the money trying to have a good time. He lived as well as he knew how to live.
The way things were developing, he believed he could raise the ante on his paperback deal, and there was movie interest. He had heard that Hollywood was a fine place for obnoxious fellows with money.
Freddy felt good. He shot down the ramp to the underground garage in his building and wheeled into his parking place with a spirited squeal of rubber. There on the wall was his name in letters a foot high, marking his private spot. Mr. Frederick Lounds.
Wendy was here already—her Datsun was parked next to his space. Good. He wished he could take her to Washington with him. That would make those flatfeet’s eyes pop. He whistled in the elevator on his way up.