24

Snow was keeping an eye on the hotel lobby through the window behind the drugstore counter late the next morning when the elevator doors opened and the Admiral, suppressing a yawn, stepped out. His face was full of blotches, his hair disheveled. He wore backless bedroom slippers on his large bare feet and had an enormous terrycloth bathrobe wrapped around his lanky body. He threaded his fingers through his chalk-white hair as he shuffled across the lobby to the mail desk. The elderly man with two white poodles on leashes stopped to have a word with the Admiral. Snow left her seat at the counter and went to the phone booth at the back of the drugstore. She pushed a coin into the slot and dialed the hotel. Through the booth, through the drugstore window, she could see the desk clerk checking the Admiral’s cubbyhole and handing him a newspaper and his mail. The desk clerk turned his back on the Admiral and reached for the phone.

“Please, I want to speak to Admiral Toothacher.”

“Hang on.”

Snow could see the clerk calling the Admiral back to the desk.

The Admiral’s voice, hoarse, cranky, came over the line. “That you, Huxstep? Don’t you think it’s a bit early to be making plans for the night? You could at least wait until I have had my morning bath.”

Snow covered the mouthpiece with a hand. “This isn’t Huxstep.”

The Admiral, puzzled, asked, “Who is this?”

“Open the manila envelope you got in the mail this morning.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“Open it.”

Over the telephone Snow could hear the Admiral slitting open the envelope. Through the drugstore window she could see him start as he caught sight of the photographs. Taken with the Minox through a hole in her pocketbook, developed early that morning at the store where she bought the camera, one showed Toothacher whispering into the ear of the young man who looked half-Indian. Another showed the young man with an arm over the Admiral’s shoulder. The Admiral, visible over the boy’s shoulder, was flushed with excitement. In the lobby the Admiral shoved the photographs back into the envelope and looked around in panic. He came back on the line.

“Who are you?” he whispered harshly. “If you want money you’re barking up the wrong tree. All I have is my retirement checks and they barely cover my bar bill.”

“I don’t want money,” Snow said.

There was a long pause. “What do you want?”

“I want Silas Sibley set free. If he isn’t released, and soon, those photographs are going to wind up on every city desk in the country. I don’t think the Company would appreciate that. A former head of Naval Intelligence, a former CIA big shot spilling secrets in a gay bar.”

When Toothacher finally replied, Snow detected a note of pathos in his voice. “Whoever you are you’re making a terrible mistake. I don’t know any Silas Sibley. My God, I haven’t been associated with anyone or anything official in Washington for years.”

“I’m not bluffing,” Snow warned.

She could hear the Admiral breathing heavily into his end of the telephone connection. “Dear kind lady, if you have an ounce of charity in your heart I ask you, I beg you, don’t do this to me. Even if I wanted to help you I couldn’t. You’re blackmailing the wrong person. I don’t have the vaguest idea who this Silas Sibley is. I’m an old man. You can’t drag me through the mud like this. You’ll ruin me. Dear God in heaven, you absolutely have to believe me. I’m telling you the truth.”

Snow whispered, “Whose truth? Which truth?” And then she severed the connection.