Читаем Los Alamos полностью

“Don’t get excited. Not for a long time. See, he had me going there with that queer business. You look at that, you’ve got no reason to look at anything else. Smart. But there’s another thing. How’d he come up with that?”

“It was in the papers.”

“Yeah, but it’s smart. I mean, if he’s too dumb to move the car, how come he’s smart enough to think up something like that?”

Connolly looked at him. “I don’t know. How is he?”

“Well, maybe it’s on his mind, like.”

“You mean he’s a homosexual after all? Doc, we’ve been down that road, and it didn’t get us anywhere. What’s the difference now, anyway?”

“Maybe he just thinks about them. There has to be some way to get to the who. A trail somewhere. Everything counts in a murder. I mean, he thought of it. Now why is that?”

“I don’t know, Doc. Maybe you’d better turn it over some more. I’ll tell you this, though. We got the guy who was passing the secrets.” Holliday looked at him in surprise. “And neither of them liked guys. Not him. Not Karl. It was a blind.”

“Huh,” Holliday said, a grunt of acknowledgment. He sat for a minute, thinking. “What about the one you caught?”

“He’s dead.”

Holliday took another sip of coffee with an almost studied casualness. “You kill him?”

“No.”

“So he’s not the one setting up the meeting?”

“No.”

Holliday mulled this over for a minute, then stood up. “Well, I don’t know. I’m in over my head now. Maybe someday you’ll let me know how this works.”

“I may never be able to do that, Doc,” Connolly said seriously. “You understand that.”

Holliday nodded, then grinned. “You may never catch him, either. Sometimes it happens that way. Even when you wait. You understand that?”

“Then my secret’s safe with you.”

It wasn’t until the next day that, for no specific reason, Holliday’s conversation made Connolly think of Corporal Batchelor.

“He transferred out,” Mills said. “He’s up at Oak Ridge. Why?”

“I just wanted to see how he was doing. Can we get him on the phone?”

“Are you kidding? You can’t call somebody at Oak Ridge just to pass the time of day. Family emergency, maybe. Otherwise, you write.”

“Let’s get him anyway.”

“What’s going on? I’ve never seen you so jumpy.”

“Just call him.”

Mills picked up the phone with a shrug. “You’re the boss. It might take some time, though.”

Amazingly, it took a day. And when Connolly finally heard Batchelor’s voice, wary and apprehensive, he felt foolish for having gone to the trouble. It wasn’t a loose end, just a stray thought.

“The man who beat you up,” he said. “Who was it?” There was no response. “You still there?”

“I don’t know,” Batchelor said, so quietly that Connolly thought it was the connection.

“Look, this is strictly confidential. Off the record. I mean, if you’re worried about that.”

“No, I really don’t know,”

“But someone on the Hill.”

“I don’t know,” he repeated. “Maybe a visitor. I’d never seen him before.”

“A scientist?”

“No.”

Connolly frowned. “Can you describe him?”

“Dark.”

“Mexican, you mean?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Spanish.”

“How do you know? Did you talk to him?”

“I just thought he looked Spanish, is all. He had black eyes.”

Connolly stopped, feeling embarrassed. “Would you recognize him again?”

Batchelor hesitated. “Is this an official call?”

“No, unofficial. Would you?”

“I don’t want you to look for him. Nothing happened.”

“I’m not looking for him. I was just curious.”

“Why?”

Why indeed? “I’m not sure.”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I’m sorry. Nothing happened.”

“Okay,” Connolly said. “I understand. But you’d recognize him?”

Batchelor hesitated. “Yes,” he said finally. “If I had to.”

Connolly stared at the receiver when they’d finished, wishing he hadn’t called. Now Batchelor would worry about what he’d moved a thousand miles away to forget.

“What are you up to?” Mills said, interrupting the thought.

“Nothing. Chasing my own tail. Can’t we get this damn fan to work?” he said irritably.

“Crazy with the heat, huh?”

“No, stir crazy.”

“Waiting for something?”

Connolly shot him a glance, then looked away. “No.”

“Here,” Mills said, holding out an envelope. “Post office said to give this to you. Who’s Corporal Waters?”

Connolly reached up for the letter, meeting Mills’s eyes as his hand touched it. For an instant he stopped breathing.

“Friend of yours?” Mills said. He held the letter suspended between them.

“One of my aliases,” Connolly said, taking it. “For filthy pictures.”

Mills’s eyes dropped in disappointment. “Oh,” he said, excluded. “Sorry I asked.”

Connolly stared at the envelope in front of him. Typed. No return address. Santa Fe postmark. Now that it was finally here, he couldn’t quite believe it. Why a letter? Absurdly, he realized that he had been expecting the guidebook, page turned down at the corner. Mills, mistaking his hesitation for secrecy, moved away from the desk. Connolly fingered the envelope. Not heavy. No more than a page. No, a single rectangle, like a postcard.