7. ‘SHADY’ TREE

       Table of Content

      THE CUSTOMS officer, a paunchy good-living man with dark sweat marks at the armpits of his grey uniform shirt, sauntered lazily over from the Supervisor’s desk to where Bond stood, his three pieces of luggage in front of him, under the letter B. Next door, under C, the girl took a packet of Parliaments out of her bag and put a cigarette between her lips. Bond heard several impatient clicks at the lighter, and the sharper snap as she put the lighter back in her bag and closed the fastening. Bond felt aware of her watchfulness. He wished that her name began with Z so that she would not be so close. Zarathustra? Zacharias? Zophany ...?

      ‘Mr Bond?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Is this your signature?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Just your personal effects?’

      ‘Yes, that’s all.’

      ‘Okay, Mr Bond.’ The man tore a customs stamp out of his book and pasted it on the suitcase. He did the same for the attaché case. He came to the golf clubs. He paused with the stamp book in his hand. He looked up at Bond.

      ‘What d’ya shoot, Mr Bond?’

      Bond had a moment of blackout.

      ‘They’re golf clubs.’

      ‘Sure,’ said the man patiently. ‘But what d’ya shoot? What d’ya go round in?’

      Bond could have kicked himself for forgetting the Americanism. ‘Oh, in the middle eighties, I guess.’

      ‘Never broken a hundred in my life,’ said the customs officer. He gummed a blessed stamp on the side of the bag a few inches away from the richest haul of contraband that had ever been missed at Idlewild.

      ‘Have a good vacation, Mr Bond.’

      ‘Thanks,’ said Bond. He beckoned a porter and followed his bags across to the last hurdle, the Inspector at the door. There was no pause. The man bent over, searched for the stamps, overstamped them and waved him through.

      ‘Mr Bond?’

      It was a tall, hatchet-faced man with mud-coloured hair and mean eyes. He was wearing dark brown slacks and a coffee-coloured shirt.

      ‘I have a car for you.’ As he turned and led the way out into the hot early morning sun, Bond noticed a square bulge in his hip-pocket. It was about the shape of a small-calibre automatic. Typical, thought Bond. Mike Hammer routine. These American gangsters were too obvious. They had read too many horror comics and seen too many films.

      The car was a black Oldsmobile Sedan. Bond didn’t wait to be told. He climbed into the front seat, leaving the disposal of his luggage in the back and the tipping of the porter to the man in brown. When they had left the cheerless prairie of Idlewild and had merged into the stream of commuter traffic on the Van Wyck Parkway, he felt he ought to say something.

      ‘How’s the weather been over here?’

      The driver didn’t take his eyes off the road. ‘Either side of a hundred.’

      ‘That’s pretty hot,’ said Bond. ‘We haven’t had it much over seventy-five in London.’

      ‘That so?’

      ‘What’s the programme now?’ asked Bond after a pause.

      The man glanced in his driving-mirror and pulled into the centre lane. For a quarter of a mile he busied himself with passing a bunch of slow-moving cars on the inside lanes. They came to an empty stretch of road. Bond repeated his question. ‘I said, what’s the programme?’

      The driver gave him a quick glance. ‘Shady wants you.’

      ‘Does he?’ said Bond. He was suddenly impatient with these people. He wondered how soon he would be able to throw some weight about. The prospect didn’t look good. His job was to stay in the pipeline and follow it further. Any sign of independence or non-co-operation and he would be discarded. He would have to make himself small and stay that way. He would just have to get used to the idea.

      They swept into up-town Manhattan and followed the river as far as the forties. Then they cut across town and pulled up half way down West 46th Street, the Hatton Garden of New York. The driver double-parked outside an inconspicuous doorway. Their destination was sandwiched between a grubby-looking shop selling costume jewellery and an elegant shop-front faced with black marble. The silver italic lettering above the black marble entrance of the elegant shop-front was so discreet that if the name had not been in the back of Bond’s mind he would not have been able to decipher it from where he sat. It said ‘The House of Diamonds, Inc.’

      As the car stopped, a man stepped off the pavement and sauntered round the car. ‘Everything okay?’ he said to the driver.

      ‘Sure. Boss in?’

      ‘Yeah. Want me to park the heap?’

      ‘Be glad if you would.’ The driver turned to Bond. ‘This is it, bud. Let’s get the bags out.’

      Bond got out and opened the rear door. He picked up his small attaché case and reached for the golf clubs.

      ‘I’ll take the sticks,’ said the driver behind him. Obediently Bond hauled out his suitcase. The driver reached in for the clubs and slammed the door of the car. The other man was already in the driver’s seat and the car moved off into the traffic as Bond followed the driver across the sidewalk and through the inconspicuous door.

      There was a man in a porter’s lodge in the small hallway. As they came in, he looked up from the sports section of The News. ‘Hi,’ he said to the driver. He looked sharply at Bond.

      ‘Hi,’ said the driver. ‘Mind if we leave the bags with you?’

      ‘Go ahead,’ said the man. ‘Be okay in here.’ He jerked his head back.

      The driver, with Bond’s clubs over his shoulder, waited for Bond beside the doors of an elevator across the hall. When Bond followed him inside, he pressed the button for the fourth floor and they rode up in silence. They emerged into another small hallway. It contained two chairs, a table, a large brass spittoon and a smell of stale heat.

      They crossed the frayed carpet to a glass-fronted door and the driver knocked and walked through without waiting for an answer. Bond followed him and shut the door.

      A man with very bright red hair and a big peaceful moon-shaped face was sitting at a desk. There was a glass of milk in front of him. He stood up as they came in and Bond saw he was a hunchback. Bond didn’t remember having seen a red-haired hunchback before. He could imagine that the combination would be useful for frightening the small fry who worked for the gang.

      The hunchback moved slowly round the desk and over to where Bond was standing. He walked round Bond, making a show of examining him minutely from head to foot, and then he came and stood close in front of Bond and looked up into his face. Bond looked impassively back into a pair of china eyes that were so empty and motionless that they might have been hired from a taxidermist. Bond