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“Sorry, sir. No name like that in the nut box or the informants’ file. Did this guy mention any agent’s name that he knows?”
“No, he just wanted the head of the FBI.”
“Don’t we all?”
“No more cracks from you, Paul, or you’ll be on complaint duty for more than the statutory week.”
Each agent in the Field Office did one week a year on the nut box, answering the phone all night, fending off canny Martians, foiling dastardly CIA coups, and, above all, never embarrassing the Bureau. Every agent dreaded it. Paul Fredericks put the phone down quickly. Two weeks on this job and you could write out one of the little white cards with your own name on it.
“Well, have you formed any view?” said Stames to Blake as he wearily took a cigarette out of his left desk drawer. “How did he sound?”
“Frantic and incoherent. I sent one of my rookies to see him, but he couldn’t get anything out of him other than that America ought to listen to what he’s got to say. He seemed genuinely frightened. He’s got a gunshot wound in his leg and there may be complications. It’s infected; apparently he left it for some days before he went to the hospital.”
“How did he get himself shot?”
“Don’t know yet. We’re still trying to locate witnesses, but we haven’t come up with anything so far, and Casefikis won’t give us the time of day.”
“Wants the FBI, does he? Only the best, eh?” said Stames. He regretted the remark the moment he said it; but it was too late. He didn’t attempt to cover himself. “Thank you, Lieutenant,” he said. “I’ll put someone on it immediately and brief you in the morning.” Stames put the telephone down. Six o’clock already—why had he turned back? Damn the phone. Grant Nanna would have handled the job just as well and he wouldn’t have made that thoughtless remark about wanting the best. There was enough friction between the FBI and the Metropolitan Police without his adding to it. Nick picked up his intercom phone and buzzed the head of the Criminal Section.
“Grant.”
“I thought you said you had to be home.”
“Come into my office for a moment, will you?”
“Sure, be right there, boss.”
Grant Nanna appeared a few seconds later along with his trademark cigar. He had put on his jacket which he only did when he saw Nick in his office.
Nanna’s career had a storybook quality. He was born in El Campo, Texas, and received a B.A. from Baylor. From there, he went on to get a law degree at SMU. As a young agent assigned to the Pittsburgh Field Office, Nanna met his future wife, Betty, an FBI stenographer. They had four sons, all of whom had attended Virginia Polytechnic Institute: two engineers, a doctor, and a dentist. Nanna had been an agent for over thirty years. Twelve more than Nick. In fact, Nick had been a rookie agent under him. Nanna held no grudge, since he was head of the Criminal Section, and greatly respected Nick—as he called him in private.
“What’s the problem, boss?”
Stames looked up as Nanna entered the office. He noted that his five-feet-nine, fifty-five-year-old, robust, cigar-chewing Criminal Co-ordinator was certainly not “desirable,” as Bureau weight requirements demanded. A man of five-feet-nine was required to keep his weight between a hundred and fifty-four and a hundred and sixty-one pounds. Nanna had always cringed when the quarterly weigh-in of all FBI agents came due. Many times he had been forced to purge his body of excess pounds for that most serious transgression of Bureau rules, especially during the Hoover era, when “desirability” meant lean and mean.
Who cares, thought Stames. Grant’s knowledge and experience were worth a dozen slender, young athletic agents who can be found in the Washington Field Office halls every day. As he had done a hundred times before, he told himself he would deal with Nanna’s weight problem another day.
Nick repeated the story of the strange Greek in Woodrow Wilson Medical Center as it had been relayed to him by Lieutenant Blake. “I want you to send down two men. Who’s on duty tonight?”
“Aspirin, but if you suspect it might be an informer, boss, I certainly can’t send him.”
“Aspirin” was the nickname of the oldest agent still employed in the WFO. After his early years under Hoover, he played everything by the book, which gave most people a headache. He was due to retire at the end of the year and exasperation was now being replaced by nostalgia.
“No, don’t send Aspirin. Send two youngsters.”
“How about Calvert and Andrews?”
“Agreed,” replied Stames. “If you brief them right away, I can still make it in time for dinner. Call me at home if it turns out to be anything special.”
Grant Nanna left the office, and Nick smiled a second flirtatious goodbye to his secretary. She was the only attractive thing in the WFO. Julie looked up and smiled nonchalantly. “I don’t mind working for an FBI agent, but there is no way I would ever marry one,” she told her little mirror in the top drawer.
Grant Nanna returned to his office and picked up the extension phone to the Criminal Room.
“Send in Calvert and Andrews.”
“Yes, sir.”
There was a firm knock on the door. Two special agents entered. Barry Calvert was big by anybody’s standards, six-feet-six in his stockinged feet and not many people had seen him that way. At thirty-two, he was thought to be one of the most ambitious young men in the Criminal Section. He was wearing a dark green jacket, dark nondescript trousers, and clumpy black leather brogues. His brown hair was cut short and parted neatly on the right. His tear-drop aviator glasses had been his sign of nonconformity. He was always on duty long after the official check-out time of 5:30 and not just because he was fighting his way up the ladder. He loved the job. He didn’t love anybody else, so far as his colleagues knew, or at least not on more than a temporary basis. Calvert was a Midwesterner by birth and he had entered the FBI after leaving college with a B.A. in sociology from Indiana University and then took the fifteen-week course at Quantico, the FBI Academy. From every angle, he was the archetypal FBI man.
By contrast, Mark Andrews had been one of the more unusual FBI entrants. After majoring in history at Yale he finished his education at Yale Law School, and then decided he wanted some adventure for a few years before he joined a law firm. He felt it would be useful to learn about criminals and the police from the inside. He didn’t give this as his reason for applying to the Bureau—no one is supposed to regard the Bureau as an academic experiment. In fact, Hoover had regarded it so much as a career that he did not allow agents who left the service ever to return. At six feet Mark Andrews looked small next to Calvert. He had a fresh, open face with clear blue eyes and a mop of curly fair hair long enough to skim his shirt collar. At twenty-eight he was one of the youngest agents in the department. His clothes were always smartly fashionable and sometimes not quite regulation. Nick Stames had once caught him in a red sports jacket and brown trousers and relieved him from duty so that he could return home an
d dress properly. Never embarrass the Bureau. Mark’s charm got him out of a lot of trouble in the Criminal Section, but he had a steadiness of purpose which more than made up for the Ivy League education and manner. He was self-confident, but never pushy or concerned about his own advancement. He didn’t let anyone in the Bureau know about his career plan.
Grant Nanna went over the story of the frightened man waiting for them in Woodrow Wilson.
“Black?” queried Calvert.
“No, Greek.”
Calvert’s surprise showed in his face. Eighty percent of the inhabitants of Washington were black, and ninety-eight percent of those arrested on criminal charges were black. One of the reasons the infamous break-in at the Watergate had been suspicious from the beginning to those who knew Washington at all well was the fact that no blacks were involved, though no agents had admitted it.
“Okay, Barry, think you can handle it?”
“Sure, you want a report on your desk by tomorrow morning?”
“No, the boss wants you to contact him direct if it turns out to be anything special, otherwise just file a report overnight.” Nanna’s telephone rang. “Mr. Stames on the radio line from his car for you, sir,” said Polly, the night switchboard operator.
“He never lets up, does he?” Grant confided to the two junior agents, covering the mouthpiece of the phone with his palm.
“Hi, boss.”
“Grant, did I say that the Greek had a bullet wound in his leg, and it was infected?”
“Yes, boss.”
“Right, do me a favor will you? Call Father Gregory at my church, Saint Constantine and Saint Helen, and ask him to go over to the hospital and see him.”
“Anything you say.”
“And get yourself home, Grant. Aspirin can handle the office tonight.”
