In the Company of Killers Bryan Christy (good books to read for beginners .txt) 📖

seemed to decide something, then got to his feet and began to pace. “Good. Keep at it. Though it might not be a memory at all. Had a gorilla subadult hit me on the head once. Just a punch right on top here—” He poked a finger into his white hair. “Woke up thinking the old man had popped me for playing hooky from Exeter. Saw the whole thing down to the shine on his wingtips. Called for my mother, only mother wintered in Palm Beach and I wasn’t sixteen anymore. You never know. Memory is a tricky thing.” He turned to Klay. “If you think of anything, any clue at all, let me know. We want to get the bastard. By that I don’t just mean me. The public has an interest.”

The public has an interest.

Klay looked at Eady. It had been a while since Eady had used that particular phrase. Klay felt a sharp pain run down his injured arm.

ASSIGNMENT

Washington, DC

Klay was sitting on his usual stool at the end of the Gray Pigeon’s dimly lit bar with a laptop open in front of him, thinking. Eady had gone quiet. He’d seen the old man three, maybe four times since Kenya, and each time Eady had somewhere else to be, something more important on his mind. Klay sipped his drink. Maybe he was making too much of things, overthinking it. It’s why he was here, wasn’t it, watching Billy Thurman stack glasses behind a bar on a Saturday morning with a bourbon in front of him? For the thinking.

“You mind if I switch to the game?” Billy asked.

Klay didn’t have to ask the bar’s owner which game he was referring to. Any other day Billy wore a black T-shirt and jeans, his smoker-veined arms and faded tattoos exposed. But today he had on a blue sweatshirt, sleeves pushed to the elbow, and the word “Navy” emblazoned across his chest in gold. It was eleven o’clock. Except for Phil the Economist, perched on his regular stool, the Pigeon was empty.

Empty. Like his list of ideas on how to take down Ras Botha. That’s what he should have been focused on. Klay raised two fingers off his glass signaling Billy to do as he pleased. Billy looked up at the television, a box the size of a small refrigerator bolted to the ceiling, and flipped channels with a remote.

The Gray Pigeon was what used to be called a reporter’s bar, a Pennsylvania Avenue watering hole where veteran journalists and their powerful subjects could mingle after work and off the record. Photos in black metal frames memorialized the Pigeon’s glory days: David Halberstam at his word processor. Sy Hersh on the telephone. Molly Ivins sporting John Tower’s Stetson. Helen Thomas wagging a finger at Marlin Fitzwater. Even Washington Star columnist Mary “Fawn not upon the great” McGrory had allowed her photo to be taken at the Pigeon, albeit walking out of the place. Klay avoided sitting across from a framed note, typed on FBI stationery, which hung behind the bar. The note read, “Jack Anderson: Lower than the regurgitated filth of vultures.—J. Edgar Hoover.” Both Hoover and Anderson had autographed the yellowing note in ink that was now faded.

The Gray Pigeon had faded, too. The internet, Craigslist, and—Billy’s pet theory—Jim Fixx’s Complete Book of Running—had each taken a turn knocking the wind out of smoke-filled evenings downing dry martinis and pickled eggs. In a corner sat Billy’s one effort to keep up with the times: a piña colada machine that looped a warm mint-green liquid.

“It’s just the march on yet,” Billy said, backing away from the television set. “Then they got the tailgate. Kickoff’s at three.” He set the remote down next to the cash register and refilled Klay’s ice water. “What’s next on your agenda?”

“Wait and see,” Klay said.

Billy eyed Klay for a moment. “Emphasis on ‘wait’?”

“You got it.” Klay glanced at his phone again.

He was ready for a new assignment. He’d told Porfle, but Porfle said he didn’t have anything for him. He could have been wrong, but Porfle sounded like he didn’t want to have anything for him. The only good news from all this delay was that physically he was much improved. His sling was gone. His range of motion had returned. Nerves in his right hand tingled from time to time, but his doctor said that would resolve.

Klay picked up his phone and texted Eady. “Anything?” He held the phone in his palm for a moment, willing a response to appear, then set it down on the bar, facedown.

He nodded at Billy’s sweatshirt. “How’s your grandson doing?”

“Good,” Billy said. “Carl’s doing real good. They got him on the Shiloh.”

“Sounds exciting,” Klay said.

“Sure,” Billy said. “It all sounds exciting.”

Klay didn’t respond. Instead, he did what a good reporter does when he’s having a conversation: he kept his mouth shut.

“Ah, you know,” Billy continued. “His old man left my daughter. Kid had to be a man straight out of the cradle. Said he wanted to do something with his life. Not just a job, an adventure kind of thing. I told him there’s lots of adventures don’t mean getting your head blown off, but what does an old man like me know, right? I’m so smart what am I doing pouring rail booze to has-beens? Present company excluded,” he apologized. “Anyway, kid says he wants to be like his granddad. I told him I was drafted. He thinks I was a war hero.”

“From what I hear you were.”

“What’s that get you?”

“You feel responsible,” Klay said.

Billy shrugged.

“Go Army!” Phil the Economist blurted.

Both men looked down the bar. Billy pointed his finger. “I’ll give you that one,” he said. “No more.”

Phil’s eyebrows shot up. He wasn’t used to being addressed directly. He was large and soft with a few sprigs of hair left on a pale head. He wore a gray sweatshirt over gray sweatpants and black sneakers, giving him the appearance of a