The Pelican Brief

He disappeared down the sidewalk behind the thin man, behind the chapel. Darby poised on the edge of the folding chair. Within a minute, they emerged on the sidewalk from behind the building. They were together now, whispering, but for only a moment because the thin man peeled off and disappeared down the street. Stump walked quickly to his car and got in. He just sat there, waiting for the service to break up and get one last look at the crowd on the off chance that she was in fact stupid enough to show up.

It had taken less than ten minutes for the thin man to sneak inside, scan the crowd of, say, two hundred people, and determine she was not there. Perhaps he was looking for the red hair. Or bleached blond. No, it made more sense for them to have people already in there, sitting around prayerfully and looking sad, looking for her or anyone who might resemble her. They could nod or shake or wink at the thin man.

This place was crawling with them.

Havana was a perfect sanctuary. It mattered not if ten or a hundred countries had bounties on his throat. Fidel was an admirer and occasional client. They drank together, shared women, and smoked cigars. He had the run of the place - a nice little apartment on Calle de Torre in the old section, a car with a driver, a banker who was a wizard at blitzing money around the world, any size boat he wanted, a military plane if needed, and plenty of young women. He spoke the language and his skin was not pale. He loved the place.

He had once agreed to kill Fidel, but couldn't do it. He was in place and two hours away from the murder, but just wouldn't pull it off. There was too much admiration. It was back in the days when he did not always kill for money. He pulled a double cross, and confessed to Fidel. They faked an ambush, and word spread that the great Khamel had been gunned down in the streets of Havana.

Never again would he travel by commercial air. The photographs in Paris were embarrassing for such a professional. He was losing his touch - getting careless in the twilight of his career. Got his picture on the front pages in America. How shameful. His client was not pleased.

The boat was a forty-foot schooner with two crew members and a young woman, all Cubans. She was below in the cabin. He had finished with her a few minutes before they saw the lights of Biloxi. He was all business now, inspecting his raft, packing his bag, saying nothing. The crew members crouched on the deck and stayed away from him.

At exactly nine, they lowered the raft onto the water. He dropped his bag into it, and was gone. They heard the trolling motor as he disappeared into the blackness of the Sound. They were to remain anchored until dawn, then haul it back to Havana. They held perfect papers declaring them to be Americans, in the event they were discovered and someone began asking questions.

He eased patiently through the still water, dodging buoy lights and the sight of an occasional small craft. He held perfect papers too, and three weapons in the bag.

It had been years since he struck twice in one month. After he was allegedly gunned down in Cuba, there had been a five-year drought. Patience was his forte. He averaged one a year.

And this little victim would go unnoticed. No one would suspect him. It was such a small job, but his client was adamant and he happened to be in the neighborhood, and the money was right, so here he was in another six-foot rubber raft cruising toward a beach, hoping like hell his pal Luke would be there dressed not as a farmer, but a fisherman this time.

This would be the last for a long time, maybe forever. He had more money than he could ever spend or give away. And he had started making small mistakes.

He saw the pier in the distance, and moved away from it. He had thirty minutes to waste. He followed the shoreline for a quarter of a mile, then headed for it. Two hundred yards out, he turned off the trolling motor, unhitched it, and dropped it into the water. He lay low in the raft, worked a plastic oar when necessary, and gently guided himself to a dark spot behind a row of cheap brick buildings thirty feet ashore. He stood in two feet of water and ripped holes in the raft with a small pocket-knife. It sank and disappeared. The beach was deserted.

Luke was alone at the end of the pier. It was exactly eleven, and he was in place with a rod and reel. He wore a white cap, and the bill moved slowly back and forth as he scanned the water in search of the raft. He checked his watch.

Suddenly a man was beside him, appearing from nowhere like an angel. "Luke?" the man said.

This was not the code. Luke was startled. He had a gun in the tackle box at his feet, but there was no way. "Sam?" he asked. Maybe he had missed something. Maybe Khamel couldn't find the pier from the raft.

"Yes, Luke, it's me. Sorry about the deviation. Trouble with the raft."

Luke's heart settled and he breathed relief.

"Where's the vehicle?" Khamel asked.

Luke glanced at him ever so quickly. Yes, it was Khamel, and he was staring at the ocean behind dark glasses.

Luke nodded at a building. "Red Pontiac next to the liquor store."

"How far to New Orleans?"

"Half an hour," Luke said as he reeled in nothing.

Khamel stepped back, and hit him twice at the base of the neck. Once with each hand. The vertebrae burst and snapped the spinal cord. Luke fell hard and moaned once. Khamel watched him die, then found the keys in a pocket. He kicked the corpse off into the water.

Edwin Sneller or whatever his name was did not open the door, but quietly slid the key under it. Khamel picked it up, and opened the door to the next room. He walked in, and moved quickly to the bed where he placed his bag, then to the window where the curtains were open and the river was in the distance. He pulled the curtains together, and studied the lights of the French Quarter below.

He walked to the phone and punched Sneller's number.

"Tell me about her," Khamel said softly to the floor.

"There are two photos in the briefcase."

Khamel opened it and removed the photos. "I've got them."

"They're numbered, one and two. One we got from the law school yearbook. It's about a year old, and the most current we have. It's a blowup from a tiny picture, so we lost a lot of detail. The other photo is two years old. We lifted it from a yearbook at Arizona State."

Khamel held both pictures. "A beautiful woman."

"Yes. Quite beautiful. All that lovely hair is gone, though. Thursday night she paid for a hotel room with a credit card. We barely missed her Friday morning. We found long strands of hair on the floor and a small sample of something we now know to be black hair color. Very black."

"What a shame."

"We haven't seen her since Wednesday night. She's proven to be elusive - credit card for a room Wednesday, credit card at another hotel Thursday, then nothing from last night. She withdrew five thousand in cash from her checking account Friday afternoon, so the trail has become cold."

"Maybe she's gone."

"Could be, but I don't think so. Someone was in her apartment last night. We've got the place wired, and we were late by two minutes."

"Moving sort of slow, aren't you?"

"It's a big town. We've camped out at the airport and train station. We're watching her mother's house in Idaho. No sign. I think she's still here."

"Where would she be?"

"Moving around, changing hotels, using pay phones, staying away from the usual places. The New Orleans police are looking for her. They talked to her after the bomb Wednesday, then lost her. We're looking, they're looking, she'll turn up."

"What happened with the bomb?"

"Very simple. She didn't get in the car."

"Who made the bomb?"

Sneller hesitated. "Can't say."

Khamel smiled slightly as he took some street maps from the briefcase. "Tell me about the maps."

"Oh, just a few points of interest around town. Her place, his place, the law school, the hotels she's been to, the bomb site, a few little bars she enjoys as a student."

"She's stayed in the Quarter so far."

"She's smart. There are a million places to hide."

Khamel picked up the most recent photo, and sat on the other bed. He liked this face. Even with short dark hair, it would be an intriguing face. He could kill it, but it would not be pleasant.

"It's a shame, isn't it?" he said, almost to himself.

"Yes. It's a shame."

Gavin Verheek had been a tired old man when he arrived in New Orleans, and after two nights of bar-hopping he was drained and weakened. He had hit the first bar not long after the burial, and for seven hours had sipped beer with the young and restless while talking of torts and contracts and Wall Street firms and other things he despised. He knew he shouldn't tell strangers he was FBI. He wasn't FBI. There was no badge.

He prowled five or six bars Saturday night. Tulane lost again, and after the game the bars filled with rowdies. Things got hopeless, and he quit at midnight.

He was sleeping hard with his shoes on when the phone rang. He lunged for it. "Hello! Hello!"

"Gavin?" she asked.

"Darby! Is this you?"

"Who else?"

"Why haven't you called before now?"

"Please, don't start asking a bunch of stupid questions. I'm at a pay phone, so no funny stuff."

"Come on, Darby. I swear you can trust me."

"Okay, I trust you. Now what?"

He looked at his watch, and began untying his shoelaces. "Well, you tell me. What's next? How long do you plan to hide in New Orleans?"

"How do you know I'm in New Orleans?"

He paused for a second.

"I'm in New Orleans," she said. "And I assume you want me to meet with you, and become close friends, then come in, as you say, and trust you guys to protect me forever."

"That's correct. You'll be dead in a matter of days if you don't."

"Get right to the point, don't you?"

"Yes. You're playing games and you don't know what you're doing."

"Who's after me, Gavin?"

"Could be a number of people."

"Who are they?"

"I don't know."

"Now you're playing games, Gavin. How can I trust you if you won't talk to me?"

"Okay. I think it's safe to say your little brief hit someone in the gut. You guessed right, the wrong people learned of the brief, and now Thomas is dead. And they'll kill you the instant they find you."

"We know who killed Rosenberg and Jensen, don't we, Gavin?"

"I think we do."

"Then why doesn't the FBI do something?"

"We may be in the midst of a cover-up."

"Bless you for saying that. Bless you."

"I could lose my job."

"Who would I tell, Gavin? Who's covering up what?"