The Lemur by Benjamin Black

She took the goblet from him and walked away soundlessly down the shadowed room, and opened a door and closed it softly behind her; she would be gone for some time, Glass knew; she was adept at reading her father’s signals. The old man sat forward in the armchair and set his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands in front of his chin. He wore a dark gray Savile Row suit and a handmade silk shirt and John Lobb brogues. Glass fancied he could smell his cologne, a rich, woody fragrance. “This fellow Cleaver,” Big Bill said, “you know who I mean? One of life’s mosquitoes. He’s been buzzing around me for years now. I don’t like him. I don’t like his tactics. Guy like him, he thinks I’m the enemy because I’m rich. He forgets, this country is founded on money. I’ve done more for his people, the Mulholland Trust has done more, than all the Mellons and the Bill Gateses put together.” He chafed his clasped hands, making the knuckles creak. He did not look at Glass when he asked: “And who is this Riley fellow?”
    Glass made no movement. “A researcher,” he said.
    The old man glanced sidelong from under his eyebrows. “You hired him?”
    “I spoke to him,” Glass said.
    “And?”
    “And then he got shot.”
    “I hope you’re not going to tell me that the one thing followed from the other?” Mulholland suddenly grinned, showing a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of clean, white, even teeth. “Say you’re not going to tell me that, son.”
    “I’m not going to tell you that.”
    The lamplight formed still pools around their feet, while above them the dimness hung in billows like the roof of a tent.
    “See, I’ve got to know,” Mulholland said. “I’ve got to know if you’re in trouble, because, frankly, if you’re in trouble then most likely so am I, and so is my family, and I don’t like that. I don’t like trouble. You understand?” He rose from the chair, without, Glass noted, the slightest effort, and walked to the fireplace and stood there with his hands in his pockets. “Let me tell you a story,” he said, “a tale from the bad old days, when I was in the Company.” He laughed shortly, and had to cough a little. He had an eerie aspect, standing there with the top half of him in gloom above the lamplight, a truncated man. “There was a friend of mine—personal friend, as well as professional—who managed to get himself on the wrong side of J. Edgar Hoover. Now that, as I’m sure you know, was not a good place to be, J. Edgar being—well, J. Edgar. I’m talking about the sixties, after Kennedy’s time. Doesn’t matter what it was that my friend—let’s call him Mac—doesn’t matter what Mac had done to displease that fat old fag. Matter of fact, I thought it was pretty stupid of him, in the circumstances. Hoover was the kingpin then, and the FBI was unassailable.” The lamplight was picking out high points in the shadows, the shine on a clock face, a gleam of polished wood, a spark from Big Bill’s ruby ring. “Anyway,” he said, “Hoover was real mad at my friend Mac, and decided to bring him down. Now, Mac was pretty high up, you know, at Langley, but that wasn’t going to stop J. Edgar. What he did was he organized a sting operation, though that wasn’t what we called it in those days.” He paused, musing. “Matter of fact, I can’t remember what we called it. Memory’s going. Anyway. The trap was that Mac was to be at a certain place at a certain time to take delivery of papers, documents, you know, that were supposed to have come from the Russian embassy in Washington. In fact, what was in the package, though Mac didn’t know it, was not papers at all but a big stash of money—serious, serious money—and when it was in Mac’s hands J. Edgar’s people were supposed to jump out of the bushes and nab him for a corrupt agent taking money from a foreign power, the foreign power, and our number one enemy. Anyway, someone in Hoover’s office, who