“NICKY,” GLORIA SAID ONE evening, looking up from her beer, “you never take me anywhere.”
Nick Velvet, relaxing in the back yard as he soaked up the mild April weather, asked, “Where do you want to go?”
“Well, you’re always traveling someplace—Paris, London, Florida, California, Las Vegas. And never with me.”
“I take you sailing on the Sound.”
“But that’s in the summer. I want to go somewhere now, Nicky.”
He sighed and put down his glass. Perhaps she was right. He had been neglecting her. “Where can we go in April?”
She thought about it for a moment. “How about Washington to see the cherry blossoms? We haven’t been back there since we first met.”
It was true. He’d taken Gloria to Washington for a weekend ten years ago, when they were just getting to know one another. It had been a busy ten years for Nick, but for Gloria the time had brought only a monotonous sameness centered around their house and boat. “Sure,” he said, making a quick decision. “Let’s fly down for a week. We’ve got nothing to keep us here.”
They arrived in Washington on a sunny Monday morning, rented a car at the airport, and drove downtown to one of the newer hotels. Nick guided Gloria to the registration desk through a lobby bristling with diplomats and businessmen. They registered as Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Velvet, as they had ten years before, and were given a room on the seventh floor.
“The city has changed, Nicky,” Gloria said as she stood by the window overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue.
“Some,” he admitted. “But the country has also changed in the last ten years.”
“Let’s go look at the cherry blossoms.”
He still felt good with Gloria walking at his side. She had retained the vigor that first attracted him to her, and a decade’s time had actually improved the loveliness of her face. He always felt a touch of pride when others turned to look at her as they strolled by.
It was a good day, a reminder of how it had been when they first met. But when they returned to the hotel he was surprised to find a message awaiting him, giving only a phone number to call. “Who knows you’re here, Nicky?” Gloria asked. “We didn’t tell anyone we were coming.”
“I’ll see who it is.”
While Gloria stepped into the bathroom he sat on the edge of the bed and dialed the number he’d been given. The phone at the other end rang twice and was answered by a gruff-voiced man. “Yes?”
“I was given this number to call.”
“Would you be Nick Velvet?”
“That’s correct.”
The voice relaxed into friendliness. “I’m Sam Simon, the columnist. This is my private line. I have to see you.”
“How did you know I was in Washington?”
“My staff checks all hotel arrivals. It’s often good for an item.”
“I’m no item,” Nick said. “I’m on vacation.”
“This is business. I want to hire you.”
“For what?”
Sam Simon sighed. “I don’t think it’s wise to be more specific. Not on a telephone. Let’s just say it’s your specialty. You’re a famous guy in some circles, you know.”
Nick glanced up at Gloria as she re-entered the room. “All right, I’ll meet you.”
“My office, tomorrow morning at ten. I’m on Virginia Avenue. I’ll give you the number.”
Nick jotted it down and hung up to face Gloria.
“What was all that, Nicky?”
“Some business. A man who heard I’d checked in offered me a job.”
“Nicky, we’re here on vacation!”
“I know. But it just involves running over to Maryland to look at a new plant site. Maybe I could do it in the morning and be back in a few hours. You could take one of those bus tours that stops at the White House and the F.B.I.”
“Without you?”
“Then wait for me. It’s just tomorrow morning, and I won’t be long. I promise.”
Sam Simon was a little man with a balding head and sharp, deep-set blue eyes. Nick had read his column on Washington politics occasionally in the New York papers, and had often seen his name mentioned in other news dispatches. Some called him a second Jack Anderson in his ability to ferret out leaks in government departments. He stopped at nothing in what he printed. “It’s investigative journalism,” he once told a critic. “Hell, if it won the Pulitzer Prize for Anderson it can do the same for me!”
Now he sat behind a desk cluttered with newspapers and books and the latest wire-service dispatches, flanked on his right by a handsome young assistant with long hair and a bushy mustache. “Glad to meet you, Velvet,” Sam Simon said abruptly. “Good of you to come. This here’s Ronnie Arden, my legman and Number One writer. On days when I’m too lazy to do a column, he takes over for me.”
“Glad to meet you both,” Nick acknowledged. “But as I told you on the phone I’m here on vacation.”
“We want a job done,” Sam Simon said, ignoring Nick’s resistance. “Your kind of job.”
“What kind is that?”
Ronnie Arden answered. “You’re a thief, Velvet. Let’s quit playing games. You’re, a thief and we want something stolen.”
Nick smiled: “I only steal things of no value. I couldn’t take government documents or anything like that.”
“Would a bag of garbage be valueless enough for you?” Arden asked.
Nick turned to look at Simon. “Is that it? A bag of garbage?”
“Yes.”
“I charge twenty thousand dollars. For that kind of money you could buy a truck and collect it yourself.”
“There are—well, complications,” the columnist admitted.
Nick wasn’t surprised. In his business there were always complications. “The garbage is at the Bureau of Engraving?”
“No, no! It’s real refuse, of value to no one.”
“No one but you.”
Sam Simon smiled. “No one but me. Tell him about it, Ronnie.”
The mustached man cleared his throat, as if about to deliver a lecture. “The refuse is that of General Norman Spangler, the President’s adviser on foreign affairs.”
“Military secrets are out of my line.”
“No military secrets. I’m sure he has a paper shredder at his office for those. This would be at his home—the apartment where he and his wife live alone. He’s on the fourth floor of the Potomac Arms, just a few blocks from Watergate.”
It was almost two years since the Watergate scandal first burst on the Washington scene. Careers had been destroyed, men had been imprisoned, some of the highest officials of the government had resigned and been replaced. “I don’t want any part of another Watergate,” Nick said. “My business doesn’t lend itself to testifying before Senate committees.”
“This isn’t another Watergate,” Ronnie Arden said. “You can take our word for it.”
“Where does the general dispose of his trash?”
“That’s the problem. That’s why we need you. Every morning he waits for the mail to arrive. It comes early, around nine, because the building has it picked up at the post office. Spangler checks his mail, leaves his apartment a few minutes later, then drops his daily bag of garbage down the incinerator chute. Then he gets his car and drives to the White House, arriving at his desk by nine thirty.”
“Incinerator chute,” Nick mused. “I see.”
“Naturally he can’t know his garbage is being stolen, so you can’t hold him up or take it by force.”
“Which day do you want it?”
“We don’t know exactly. Let’s say every day for a week, starting tomorrow.”
“That might cost you more than twenty thousand. It would mean more than one theft.”
Arden glanced at his boss. “Can we go a little higher?”
“We can go higher if you deliver what we need, Velvet. Twenty should buy us the first two days, at least.”
“Agreed.” They shook hands and Nick started for the door. Then, as a final thought, he turned and asked, “How is security at the Potomac Arms? I’m sure you’ve checked it out.”
“No problem once you get by the doorman. And that shouldn’t be difficult for you.”
Nick nodded and left.
The problem was with Gloria.
He’d never had her along on a job before, and the idea of sneaking off for two mornings and leaving her alone was something he hadn’t reckoned with.
“Where are you off to now?” she asked the following morning as he tried to dress in the darkened hotel room without awakening her.
“More business. I’ll be back before ten.”
“Nicky, this is supposed to be our vacation!”
“I know. But if I can make a little money at the same time, I should take advantage of it.”
She turned over and buried her head in the pillow. He sighed and finished dressing.
It was not yet eight o’clock when he reached the Potomac Arms, a white T-shaped apartment building near the river. He’d scouted it the previous day, making note of the service entrance at the side. He’d already decided there was little chance of getting by the doorman more than once, and tenants’ keys were needed for the other entrances.
He’d made certain purchases the previous day and hidden them from Gloria in the trunk compartment of their rented car. There was a pair of white pants with a jacket to match, such as milkmen usually wore. He changed into these in the car and brought out the wire milkman’s basket he’d also purchased. He filled this with a dozen cartons of milk he’d picked up on the way over. From past experience he knew that only milkmen and newsboys could gain admittance to these luxury apartment buildings, and he was too old to pass as a newsboy.
He entered through the service entrance, carrying his milk, and immediately came to a locked inner door with a buzzer. He pressed it and waited till the building superintendent made his appearance. “What’s this?”
“Milkman,” Nick said.
“Where’s Eddie?”
“I’m helping him out, learning the route. He’ll be along, too.”
The superintendent grunted and let him pass. Nick covered the first floor quickly, leaving cartons of milk at random doors. The incinerator room was at the center of the building where the wings joined in their T shape. He entered the oversized closet and found a small door set in the wall. It opened directly into the chute. He stuck his head in, hoping no one would choose that moment to drop something from above. The chute was metal, with curved sides, and he could smell the fire below.
He went up on the third floor, checking that incinerator room to make certain it was the same. Then he set to work. The time was 8:30.
Nick was downstairs at nine when General Norman Spangler descended in the elevator to pick up the morning mail. Though he wore civilian clothes, his slim boyish good looks and stiff military bearing were long familiar to television viewers. Like other generals who functioned as White House aides, Spangler was retired from active duty. He’d joined the staff as one of the Secretary of State’s assistants and had managed to stay on during the upheavals of the past year.
He smiled at Nick as he passed him in the hall, carrying a handful of mail back into the elevator. Nick took the next elevator to the third floor, checked the incinerator room once more, then used the fire stairs to climb to the next floor. He had taped the third-floor door so he could return that way.
On the fourth floor he opened the fire door just wide enough to see the door to Spangler’s apartment down the hall. He had only a few moments to wait. The general emerged carrying a brown paper bag of trash. He paused at the door to kiss a pretty dark-haired woman who seemed twenty years his junior. “I’ll be late tonight, dear,” he said. “Don’t wait dinner.”
“So what’s new?” She closed the door after him.
Nick let the door close silently and ran down the steps to the floor below. He made it to the incinerator room with just seconds to spare, closing the hall door so no light would shine into the chute in case Spangler looked down before dropping his bundle. He heard the incinerator door open on the floor above, waited an instant, then shoved the wire milk basket into the chute, effectively blocking it a second before the general’s trash dropped. The paper bag landed on the basket.
Nick held his breath, waiting to hear any sound from the floor above. But the general had more important tasks to do than listen to his garbage hit bottom. The chute door was already closed and he was on his way. Nick gingerly pulled in his prize and set it on the floor of the incinerator room.
There was no time to waste now. He stripped off his white coat and wrapped it around the bag. Carried just right, it looked like a laundry bag. He might have been a tenant going downstairs with his wash, and even the white pants didn’t look that odd. The cartons of milk had already been left at doorways. The wire carrying basket he left behind a stack of old newspapers in the third-floor incinerator room. With luck it would be there the following day. If not, it was no great loss. He couldn’t risk the milkman ruse two days running anyhow. Besides, maybe what Sam Simon wanted so badly would turn up in the first batch.
It didn’t.
Simon and Ronnie Arden carefully spread out each bit of the general’s trash on an office work table, but they were openly disappointed. Two empty beer cans, an empty wine bottle, some frozen food cartons, envelopes, crumpled shopping lists, junk mail—the usual daily accumulation of modern living.
“All right,” Simon said, reflecting his disappointment. “We couldn’t really expect to score the first day. But it would have been nice.”
“You want me to do the same thing tomorrow?”
“The same thing. Let’s hope for better luck.”
“If you’d tell me what you want, maybe I could get it from his apartment.”
“No.”
“All right,” Nick said with a sigh. “But if nothing turns up tomorrow, we’ll have to talk about more money.”
That afternoon he took Gloria down the Potomac to Mount Vernon and they basked in the spring warmth as they strolled across the great lawn to the house where Washington had lived.
“Nicky,” she asked, “what are you thinking?”
He didn’t really know how to answer the question. “Maybe just about how much simpler things were in George Washington’s day.”
“Things were much simpler just two years ago.”
“I know. We live in fast times. Not changing so much as fast, like a rocket headed toward a brick wall.”
She took his hand. “Nicky?”
“What?”
“I want you to know I know. About you.” She tried a little smile. “I guess I’ve known for years.”
“How?” That was all he could manage to say.
“Oh, a lot of little” things, I guess. All the trips you’ve taken, and the time you had to get me out of the house because someone was coming to kill you. And the time you were kidnaped for a couple of days. Your explanations don’t fool me any more, Nicky. Not after ten years.”
“I’m glad you know.”
“Will you be going out again in the morning?”
“Yes. For a little while.”
She squeezed his hand. “Nicky, be careful.”
That evening he took her to the most expensive restaurant he could find, and they talked no more of Nick’s work.
The following morning Nick approached the locked side entrance to the Potomac Arms with key in hand. He waited only a minute before a middle-aged lawyer type came out the door swinging his attaché case. The man smiled at him and held the door open. Nick raised his key in salute and walked in. The key was to his hotel room, and he dropped it back in his pocket.
The wire basket was gone, picked up with the rubbish, but Nick didn’t really need it. The easiest way was still the best. He watched General Spangler open his apartment door, kiss his young wife goodbye, and walk down the hall with the bag of trash. Nick retreated to the third-floor incinerator room, opened the door to the chute, and stuck his arms in. Seconds later the bag fell into them. As simple as that.
This day Sam Simon was alone in his office when Nick arrived. “Ronnie’s off on assignment,” the little columnist explained. “These are busy days on the Washington scene. Let’s see what we’ve got today.”
The assortment was much like the previous day’s haul. Two more beer cans, a milk carton, assorted wrappers and scraps of paper, a few dead flowers, some leftover food in a clear plastic bag, a crumpled letter from a distant relative, envelopes, soggy paper towels.
“Nothing here,” Simon remarked gloomily.
“Those apartments all have disposal units in the sink. Maybe he ground it up.”
“No, not this.”
Nick sighed. “It’ll cost you an extra ten thousand for another day. The risks keep increasing.”
“That’s a lot of money.” Sam Simon scratched his head. “You’re into me pretty deep already.”
“Isn’t it worth it?”
“I guess so, for one more day.”
“Want to tell me what we’re looking for?”
“When we find it. If we find it.”
“It’s the mail, isn’t it? Something he gets in the mail.” To Nick there seemed no other reason why he simply couldn’t enter the general’s apartment and steal whatever it was Simon wanted. “Or rather, something you’re expecting him to get in the mail.”
“You’re smart,” Simon conceded.
“But if it’s that valuable he wouldn’t just throw it away.”
“He’d throw away the envelope. That’s what we need.”
“I see.”
“Since you’ve guessed that much, Velvet, I may as well tell you the rest. It was Ronnie’s work, really, that uncovered as much as we already have. Remember Carter Malone?”
“Who doesn’t?” Carter Malone had been one of the figures in the Watergate investigation, a man who jumped bail and deserted his family rather than face the prospect of prison. He’d been missing for six months, despite an intensive search by police and press.
“You probably know that a few people have hinted from time to time of White House involvement in his disappearance. I think I’m on the verge of proving it.”
“The President?”
“No, not the President, but the one closest to him—General Norman Spangler. Ronnie’s information is that Spangler is in direct contact with the missing man. In fact, Malone writes him every week or so. Naturally the letters can’t go to the White House, so they’re addressed to the general’s apartment. That’s one reason he waits for the mail each morning before going to work. The letter goes into his pocket, and the envelope goes into the garbage bag which he personally drops into the incinerator.”
“The mood this town is in, that information would finish Spangler at the White House. The President would have to fire him.”
“Better men have already gone down.”
“All right,” Nick said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Gloria rolled over in the bed, feeling the sudden movement as he slid out. “What time is it, Nicky?”
“A little before seven.”
“Not again this morning!”
“Maybe I’ll wind it up today. Then we can take that tour of the White House.”
“I hope so.”
He went back to the Potomac Arms, using the same key ruse that had worked so well the previous morning. General Spangler, a man of military habit, picked up his mail exactly at nine and repeated his routine of the first two days. Nick was waiting with outstretched arms to catch the trash bag as it dropped down the chute.
He was just pulling it in when the door of the incinerator room opened. “Oh!” a woman said, startled by his presence.
“I—” Nick straightened, holding the bag of garbage. “The chute seems to be clogged. We’d better call downstairs.”
“Clogged?” She was studying his face uncertainly. “Perhaps we can poke it with a broom.”
“It’s too far down. Let the super worry about it.”
“Who are—” He was already pushing past her. “Do you live on this floor?”
“Down the other end,” he mumbled.
“Which apartment?”
He ignored her and kept walking. He knew if she investigated the chute for herself she’d see it was clear. As soon as he was out of sight he took the fire stairs at the other end of the building, then went out the side door to his car. It had been a close call. He didn’t think he could risk it another day.
But when Sam Simon went through the morning’s garbage bag he shook his head sadly. “Nothing here. Not a thing.”
Nick pointed to one crumpled envelope, with a California address in the corner. “How about this one?”
“From his brother.”
“Shall we give it up?” Nick asked, turning to Ronnie Arden.
Ronnie twisted at his mustache. “We can’t—not with thirty grand invested in you already.”
“Ronnie’s right, Velvet. We have to keep on now, for the rest of the week.”
“Tomorrow’s Saturday. Spangler’s schedule will be different.”
Simon shook his head. “He’s been working Saturdays lately when the President’s in town. He’ll leave at the usual time.”
“All right,” Nick agreed. “Another five thousand.”
“Give us a break, Velvet. We’ve paid you and you haven’t delivered yet.”
“I’ve delivered three bags of garbage, which is exactly what you ordered. But I’ll give you a break. Let me try one more day and see what I get. If I strike out, it’s free. If I come up with the envelope, you pay me another five thousand.”
“Fair enough,” Sam Simon agreed, and they shook hands on it.
On Saturday morning Nick encountered trouble from the beginning. He’d had no trouble pausing at the door, his own key in hand, to wait for someone hurrying out to work. But this day everyone was staying in or sleeping longer. The first one out might well be General Spangler himself, and then it would be too late. Then he remembered the mail pickup and went around to the front of the apartment.
At about ten minutes to nine a car pulled up and a young man yanked two mail sacks from the front seat. “Need a hand with those?” Nick asked.
“Thanks, I’ve got them.”
Nick hurried to open the unlocked front door before the uniformed doorman had a chance. Then, smiling a friendly greeting at the doorman, Nick calmly walked in beside the youth with the mail.
When the sorting began, Nick took the elevator to the third floor. And encountered more trouble.
The woman from the previous morning was standing in front of the incinerator-room door, chatting with a neighbor. If she saw Nick, she’d surely question his presence again.
He pushed the elevator button and descended to the floor below.
The incinerator room there was identical with the ones above, but it presented a problem to Nick. He was now two floors below the general. He could not watch him leave his apartment, because there would not be enough time to run down two flights of stairs. Also, the dropped bag of trash would hit his waiting arms with much greater force, and an especially heavy bag might even escape his grip or split open. But he’d have to gamble on General Spangler sticking to his routine, gamble on holding on to the bag as it slid down the chute.
At ten minutes after nine he heard one of the upper doors open onto the chute. He braced himself and quickly plunged his arms into the darkness. Almost at once the bag landed safely in his arms. He drew the bag in, hardly breathing. Of course it might have, been someone else’s trash, not the general’s, but the paper bag looked the same and that gave him hope. He suspected many tenants used plastic garbage bags these days. He opened it enough to make sure, saw some empty envelopes on top, addressed to Spangler, relaxed, and headed for the stairs.
Once in Simon’s office, the columnist and his assistant pounced on a coffee-stained envelope. “This is it,” the little man said. Nick glanced at the return address. It was a post-office box number in Towers, Delaware.
“I know the place,” Arden said. “It’s a small town on the shore of Delaware Bay. We can be there in ninety minutes.”
“Good luck,” Nick said, rising to leave. “Do you want to pay me the balance now?”
“You’d better come along,” the columnist said. “Till we check this out. If Carter Malone is there, you’ll get the money.”
Nick didn’t argue. His curiosity had got the better of him. “May I use your phone?” he asked, and then dialed the number of the hotel to tell Gloria he’d be delayed.
They went in Ronnie Arden’s car, taking the highway across the bay near Annapolis, then continuing east until they reached the coast. Arden’s estimate of time had been correct. It was ten minutes after noon when they pulled up a block away from the tiny post office building in Towers.
“I’ll park back here,” Ronnie said, “in case he shows up for his mail.” But when no one came he decided finally, “I’d better go check on who rented that box.”
Simon agreed. “Flash your press card with a ten-dollar bill under it. I’ve found it does wonders.”
They sat in silence while Arden went down the street to the post office. Finally Nick said, “Nice little town. But why would Malone stay this close to Washington? If I’d jumped bail I’d get as far away as possible.”
“He still has contacts in Washington—General Spangler for one. And maybe he figures the police won’t look for him quite so close to home. He’s probably disguised himself, anyway.”
Nick decided to drop a small bombshell. “General Spangler certainly has reason to mistrust his wife, doesn’t he?”
Sam Simon’s mouth fell open, “What do you mean?”
“You and Ronnie knew that was the right envelope even before you examined it. How? Obviously, because it was coffee-stained. She’s the only one who could have spilled the coffee on it to tip you off.”
“Getting smart again, Velvet?”
“Smart? Not really. It’s obvious Ronnie must have learned about the letters from Malone and the general’s routine from his wife. And just as obvious that Spangler doesn’t trust the lady, or he wouldn’t wait for the mail every day and empty the rubbish himself before she can see the return address on the envelope.”
Ronnie Arden came out of the post office and headed back to the car. He slid into the driver’s seat and said, “That was easy. The box is rented to a Charles Martin of 122 Bayside Lane.”
“Same initials,” Simon snorted. “He’s not an experienced fugitive.”
Bayside Lane was a narrow winding street that hugged the shore of Delaware Bay. Its houses were mostly small-cottage types, just old enough to be showing signs of wear and neglect. Number 122 was like the others, with peeling paint on the clapboards and shingles missing on the roof.
“It’s a rented car,” Arden said, checking the compact in the carport. Sam Simon nodded and rang the bell.
When the second ring brought no answer, Nick moved around to the side door, in the carport. It was unlocked, as he’d expected it would be. “This way,” he called to the others.
They found the sole occupant of the little cottage slumped in a chair in front of a desk with a portable typewriter open on it. He’d been shot once in the right temple, and a small automatic pistol lay on the carpet near his right hand. In the typewriter was a sheet of paper with the words: I’m tired of running.
The dead man wore a recent growth of beard, but there was no doubt as to his identity. “It’s Carter Malone, all right,” Sam Simon said. “No doubt about it.”
“Who would have thought he’d have the guts to kill himself?” Arden mused, half to himself.
Simon was looking around frantically. “Isn’t there a phone in this place? This is the biggest story of my life!”
“The phone’s over by the window,” Nick informed him.
Simon bounded toward it.
“But maybe we’d better talk a bit before you call anyone.”
“Talk? About what? Your money?” Simon snorted. “Pay him his money, Ronnie.”
“It’s not the money. It’s something else.”
“What else?” Sam Simon asked.
“Post offices close at noon on Saturday.”
“Huh?”
“The post office was closed when Ronnie went to it.”
“If it was closed, how in hell could he have gotten this address?”
“Exactly,” Nick said, looking at Ronnie Arden.
“Wait a minute! Wait a minute!” Simon said. “Let’s sit down and talk this over.”
“I think we’d better,” Nick agreed.
But Ronnie Arden remained on his feet. “Are you going to listen to him, Sam? You’ve got the hottest story of the year right in your lap. Carter Malone, linked to General Spangler, a suicide!”
“Sit down,” Nick ordered. “The corpse can wait a few more minutes.”
Ronnie Arden grudgingly obeyed. “Do you believe this guy, Sam?”
“He’d better believe me,” Nick said. “Because the question immediately comes to mind—once you found the post office closed, Ronnie, why did you lie about it? Why was it so important to get us out here today—so important that you couldn’t simply tell us the post office was closed and we could come back Monday? No, it had to be today, with the side door left conveniently unlocked. You knew he was dead, Ronnie, and that raises the question whether it’s really a suicide.”
“It’s a suicide,” Arden insisted.
“I think you’ll have to prove it.”
“You’d better tell me what you know,” the columnist said. “Tell me, Ronnie.” His voice was deceptively soft.
“He shot himself last night. Mrs. Spangler was with him when it happened.”
“I see. And she called you.”
“She called me, yes! How do you think I’ve been getting this information from her? I guess she thought it was great fun to be cheating on her husband with two men—one a fugitive and the other a reporter who was looking for him.”
Sam Simon stirred on the edge of his chair. “Ronnie, there’s no way I can break this story without implicating you.”
“Why not? Tell the police you got a tip he was here. You don’t have to say where the tip came from.”
“In a case like this I’d have to go further than that, Ronnie. Suicide or not, the papers would be hinting at murder.”
Ronnie Arden glanced at Nick and said, “Then let’s close up the house and go away. Nobody knows we were here except Velvet, and he’s not likely to talk.”
“What about Mrs. Spangler?”
“She’s not about to say anything. Before he killed himself, Malone told her he’d written the general that final letter, hinting at a suicide. But he didn’t confess to an affair with Mrs. Spangler. If she admitted knowing about the suicide, she’d have to tell her husband everything—not only about Malone but about me as well.”
“At least we know why Malone still stayed close to Washington,” Nick observed. “Mrs. Spangler had to remain there and he wanted to be close to her.”
“How do we know Mrs. Spangler didn’t kill him?” Sam Simon asked, gesturing at the body.
“She had no reason to! After her affair with me began, she told me about Malone’s letters to her husband. She knew it was only a matter of time before we found him and he went off to prison. He was no danger to her.”
“Why didn’t she simply give you his address? Why this whole business of our stealing the envelope?”
Ronnie Arden dropped his eyes. “She didn’t want me to know of her affair with him. She didn’t tell me till last night, when she phoned me in a panic. I wanted us to break the suicide story, so I had to pretend I got the address from the post office.”
Sam Simon rose to his feet. “There’s no reason why this should all come out. I’ll cover for you, Ronnie. Your affair with Spangler’s wife could only ruin your usefulness to me, if the word got out, and you’re too good a man to lose.”
But Nick said, “The coverups keep on, don’t they? Just like Watergate.”
“This isn’t the same thing.”
“Isn’t it? This may be suicide or it may be murder, but the truth’s not going to come out unless all the facts do, unless everyone tells the truth, unless Spangler reveals that letter he got from Malone this morning.”
Sam Simon gazed out across the bay. After a moment he said, “Yes, you’re right.”
“You’re going to tell everything?” Arden asked in a panic. “I’ve got a family—”
“Everything,” Sam Simon said, and there was more than a trace of sadness in his voice. “Velvet is right. No coverup this time.”
Nick left them there waiting for the police. He walked into the center of town and caught a bus back to Washington. He had only one regret about the whole affair—he had collected his last $5,000 before leaving, but he’d never got to meet Mrs. Spangler.
Gloria was up early the next morning and was scanning the Sunday paper as they ate breakfast in their room. “Did you see all this, Nicky? About Malone killing himself, and General Spangler’s wife, and this columnist fellow?”
“I saw it all.”
“Washington is an exciting place to visit. There’s always something going on.”
“There certainly was this week,” he agreed.
“Did you get your job done, Nicky?”
“All finished. We can spend the whole day together.”
“I’m glad. I was worried about you.” She smiled across the table. “It’s dangerous being a spy, isn’t it?”
He reached over and squeezed her hand. She would never change, and that was why he loved her. “Well, I’m something like a spy, but not exactly. These government assignments—”