Part 10 (1/2)
4
The door didn't say anything at all except _Lt. P. Lynch_. Malone looked at it for a couple of seconds. He'd asked the desk sergeant for Lynch, shown his credentials and been directed up a set of stairs and around a hall. But he still didn't know what Lynch did, who he was, or what his name was doing in the little black notebook.
Well, he told himself, there was only one way to find out.
He opened the door.
The room was small and dark. It had a single desk in it, and three chairs, and a hatrack. There wasn't any coat or hat on the hatrack, and there was n.o.body in the chairs. In a fourth chair, behind the desk, sat a huskily built man. He had steel-gray hair, a hard jaw and, Malone noticed with surprise, a faint twinkle in his eye.
”Lieutenant Lynch?” Malone said.
”Right,” Lynch said. ”What's the trouble?”
”I'm Kenneth J. Malone, FBI.” He reached for his wallet and found it.
He flipped it open for Lynch, who stared at it for what seemed a long, long time, and then burst into laughter.
”What's so funny?” Malone asked. Lynch laughed some more.
”Oh, come on,” Malone said bitterly. ”After all, there's no reason to treat an FBI agent like some kind of a--”
”FBI agent?” Lynch said. ”Listen, buster, this is the funniest gag I've seen since I came on the force. Really a h.e.l.l of a funny thing.
Who told you to pull it? Jablonski downstairs? Or one of the boys on the beat? I know those beat patrolmen, always on the lookout for a new joke.. But this tops 'em all. This is the--”
”You're a disgrace to the Irish,” Malone said tartly.
”A what?” Lynch said. ”I'm not Irish.”
”You talk like an Irishman,” Malone said.
”I know it,” Lynch said, and shrugged. ”Around some precincts, you sort of pick it up. When all the other cops are--hey, listen. How'd we get to talking about me?”
”I said you were a disgrace to the Irish,” Malone said.
”I was a--_what_?”
”Disgrace.” Malone looked carefully at Lynch. In a fight, he considered, he might get in a lucky punch that would kill Malone.
Otherwise, Malone didn't have a thing to worry about except a few months of hospitalization.
Lynch looked as if he were about to get mad, and then he looked down at Malone's wallet again and started to laugh.
”For G.o.d's sake,” Malone said. ”What's so d.a.m.ned funny?”
He grabbed the wallet and turned it toward him. At once, of course, he realized what had happened. He hadn't flipped it open to his badge at all. He'd flipped it open, instead, to a card in the card case:
KNOW ALL MEN BY THESE PRESENTS THAT Sir Kenneth Malone, Knight, is hereby formally installed with the t.i.tle of KNIGHT OF THE BATH and this card shall signify his right to that t.i.tle and his high and respected position as officer in and of THE QUEEN'S OWN FBI
In a very small voice, Malone said, ”There's been a terrible mistake.”