Shall We Tell the President? Read online

  “I was just going, boss.”

  The line went dead.

  “Okay, you two—on your way.” The two special agents headed down the dirty gray corridor and into the service elevator. It looked, as always, as if it required a crank to start it. Finally outside on Pennsylvania Avenue, they picked up a Bureau car.

  Mark guided the dark blue Ford sedan down Pennsylvania Avenue past the National Archives and the Mellon Gallery. He circled around the lush Capitol grounds and picked up Independence Avenue going toward the south-east section of Washington. As the two agents waited for a light to change at 1st Street, near the Library of Congress, Barry scowled at the rush-hour traffic and looked at his watch.

  “Why didn’t they put Aspirin on this damn assignment?”

  “Who’d send Aspirin to a hospital?” replied Mark.

  Mark smiled. The two men had established an immediate rapport when they first met at the FBI Academy at Quantico. On the first day of the training course, every trainee received a telegram confirming his appointment. Each new agent was then asked to check the telegram of the person on his right and his left for authenticity. The maneuver was intended to emphasize the need for extreme caution. Mark had glanced at Barry’s telegram and handed it back with a grin. “I guess you’re legit,” he said, “if FBI regulations allow King Kong in the ranks.”

  “Listen,” Calvert had replied, reading Mark’s telegram intently. “You may just need King Kong one day, Mr. Andrews.”

  The light turned green, but a car ahead of Mark and Barry in the inside lane wanted to make a left turn on 1st Street. For the moment, the two impatient FBI men were trapped in a line of traffic.

  “What do you imagine this guy could tell us?”

  “I hope he has something on the downtown bank job,” replied Barry. “I’m still the case agent, and I still don’t have any leads after three weeks. Stames is beginning to get uptight about it.”

  “No, can’t be that, not with a bullet in his leg. He’s more likely to be another candidate for the nut box. Wife probably shot him for not being home on time for his stuffed vine leaves.”

  “You know, the boss would only send a priest to a fellow Greek. You and I could wallow in hell as far as he’s concerned.”

  They both laughed. They knew if either of them were to land in trouble, Nick Stames would move the Washington Monument stone by stone if he thought it would help. As the car continued down Independence Avenue into the heart of south-east Washington, the traffic gradually diminished. A few minutes later, they passed 19th Street and the D.C. Armory and reached Woodrow Wilson Medical Center. They found the visitors’ parking lot and Calvert double-checked the lock on every door. Nothing is more embarrassing for an agent than to have his car stolen and then for the Metropolitan Police to call and ask if he could come and collect it. It was the quickest way to a month on the nut box.

  The entrance to the hospital was old and dingy, and the corridors gray and bleak. The girl on night duty at the reception desk told them that Casefikis was on the fourth floor, in Room 4308. Both agents were surprised by the lack of security. They didn’t have to show their credentials, and they were allowed to wander around the building as if they were a couple of interns. No one gave them a second look. Perhaps, as agents, they had become too security conscious.

  The elevator took them gradually, grudgingly, to the fourth floor. A man on crutches and a woman in a wheelchair shared the elevator, chatting to one another as though they had a lot of time to spare, oblivious to the slowness of the elevator. When they arrived at the fourth floor, Calvert walked over to a nurse and asked for the doctor on duty.

  “I think Dr. Dexter has gone off duty, but I’ll check,” the staff nurse said and bustled away. She didn’t get a visit from the FBI every day and the shorter one with the clear blue eyes was so good-looking. The nurse and the doctor returned together down the corridor. Dr. Dexter came as a surprise to both Calvert and Andrews. They introduced themselves. It must have been the legs, Mark decided. The last time he had seen legs like that was when the Yale Cinema Club had shown a re-run of Anne Bancroft in The Graduate. It was the first time he had ever really looked at a woman’s legs, and he hadn’t stopped looking since.

  “Elizabeth Dexter, M.D.” was stamped in black on a piece of red plastic that adorned her starched white coat. Underneath it, Mark could see a red silk shirt and a stylish skirt of black crepe that fell below her knees. Dr. Dexter was of medium height and slender to the point of fragility. She wore no make-up, so far as Mark could tell; certainly her clear skin and dark eyes were in no need of any help. This trip was turning out to be worthwhile, after all. Barry, on the other hand, showed no interest whatever in the pretty doctor and asked to see the file on Casefikis. Mark thought quickly for an opening gambit.

  “Are you related to Senator Dexter?” he asked, slightly emphasizing the word Senator.

  “Yes, he’s my father,” she said flatly, obviously used to the question and rather bored by it—and by those who imagined it was important.

  “I heard him lecture in my final year at Yale Law,” said Mark, forging ahead, realizing he was now showing off, but he realized that Calvert would finish that damn report in a matter of moments.

  “Oh, were you at Yale, too?” she asked. “When did you graduate?”

  “Three years ago, Law School,” replied Mark.

  “We might even have met. I left Yale Med last year.”

  “If I had met you before, Dr. Dexter, I would not have forgotten.”

  “When you two Ivy Leaguers have finished swapping life histories,” Barry Calvert interrupted, “this Midwesterner would like to get on with his job.”

  Yes, thought Mark, Barry will end up as Director one day.

  “What can you tell us about this man, Dr. Dexter?” asked Calvert.

  “Very little, I’m afraid,” the doctor replied, taking back the file on Casefikis. “He came in of his own volition and reported a gun wound. The wound was septic and looked as if it had been exposed for about a week; I wish he had come in earlier. I removed the bullet this morning. As you know, Mr. Calvert, it is our duty to inform the police immediately when a patient comes in with a gunshot wound, and so we phoned your boys at the Metropolitan Police.”

  “Not our boys,” corrected Mark.

  “I’m sorry,” replied Dr. Dexter rather formally. “To a doctor, a policeman is a policeman.”

  “And to a policeman, an M.D. is an M.D., but you also have specialties—orthopedics, gynecology, neurology—don’t you? You don’t mean to tell me I look like one of those flatfoots from the Met Police?”

  Dr. Dexter was not to be beguiled into a flattering response. She opened the manilla folder. “All we know is that he is Greek by origin and his name is Angelo Casefikis. He has never been registered in this hospital before. He gave his age as thirty-eight … Not a lot to go on, I’m afraid.”

  “Fine, it’s as much as we usually get. Thank you, Dr. Dexter,” said Calvert. “Can we see him now?”

  “Of course. Please follow me.” Elizabeth Dexter turned and led them down the corridor.

  The two men followed her, Barry looking for the door marked 4308, Mark looking at her legs. When they arrived, they peered through the small window and saw two men in the room, Angelo Casefikis and a cheerful-looking black, who was staring at a television set which emitted no sound. Calvert turned to Dr. Dexter.

  “Would it be possible to see him alone, Dr. Dexter?”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “We don’t know what he is going to tell us, and he may not wish to be overheard.”

  “Well, don’t worry yourself,” said Dr. Dexter, and laughed. “My favorite mailman, Benjamin Reynolds, who is in the next bed is as deaf as a post, and until we operate on him next week, he won’t be able to hear Gabriel’s horn on the Day of Judgment, let alone a state secret.”

  Calvert smiled for the first time. “He’d make a hell of a witness.”

  The doctor ushered