The Infiltrators

by Donald Hamilton

“One question. Is Mrs. Ellershaw… carrying?”

  I said, poker-faced, “Heavens, Chief Cordoba, for her to have a gun, just out of the pen, would be very illegal, wouldn’t it?” I shook my head. “No, she doesn’t have one and wouldn’t know how to use it if she did; her parents had very strong feelings about firearms. I can shoot pretty well left-handed if I have to, and as I said, I have some agents around to help me keep her safe. Anything else?”

  “Yes.” He looked at me for a long moment. When he spoke again, the formal Hispano act they like to pull on the dumb Anglo was gone. “How much of this crap do you expect me to believe, friend?”

  I gave him a slow grin. “I hope you don’t believe any of it. If you believed it, that would make you pretty stupid, and I’d like to think you’re an intelligent man.”

  He stared at me unsmiling, and said, “I never heard that civil rights were the concern of your rather, if you’ll excuse me, obscure agency.”

  I said carefully, “What you mean is, you’d like to know what’s really going on. Join the club, Chief. I’d like to know too. All I’m doing is following instructions. Nobody’s bothered to tell me what it’s all about either.” I gave him another grin. “Let’s just say I’ve been ordered to set off a few firecrackers in the zoo. The people who sent me are very interested in learning which of the big local carnivores are gun-shy, and how high they’ll jump. I hope you’ll see your way clear to simply watching the show without interfering.”

  Outside, the sunshine was very bright after the gloom of the little office, but the breeze was chilly. Hot, summery Arizona seemed a long way off, up here in the high Sangre de Christo foothills. Madeleine shivered and zipped up her bright quilted jacket as we stood for a moment on the sidewalk outside the police station. I waited. At last she threw me a sharp glance, as if expecting some kind of an unfavorable comment, and started to walk in the opposite direction from which we’d come. I strode along beside her without speaking.

  “That bastard!” she said after a little. “Offers to protect me, more or less, but makes damn sure I’m not carrying a gun to protect myself.”

  I said, “You did fine. Shook him up a bit without, I hope, really making an enemy of him.”

  “Matt, did she really divorce you because of that?”

  “Cut it out, Ellershaw,” I said. “Irrelevant, incompetent, and immaterial, I think you lawyers say.”

  She spoke quietly: “You can’t have it both ways, my dear. You know practically everything there is to know about me; don’t shut me out when I try to learn a little about you. That was you, wasn’t it, that certain mysterious individual who shot that man to death and then… interrogated that woman to find out where the little girl was being held. Your little girl.”

  I cleared your throat. “Okay. Fair is fair, I guess. Yes. They were trying to force me, through my kid, to do something for them, but we don’t play that game, ever. Which you might remember if you’re ever dumb enough to let yourself be taken hostage. Well do our best to blast you loose, but we’ll make no deals.”

  “I’ll certainly keep it in mind,” she said. “And you’re stalling.”

  “The woman’s name, the name I used to know her by, was Tina,” I said. “She was in the business, our business; she was pretty tough; and I had to get very rough before she’d give up the address.”

  “And for that, your wife left you? For saving your child, her child? My God, what kind of a woman was she?”

  “A very nice woman,” I said. “A very nice, sensitive woman who’d never been told what kind of work I’d done before we met—security was very tight back then and I wasn’t allowed to tell anybody, not even my wife—and who suddenly discovered she was married to a man she didn’t know, a violent stranger whose touch made her want to throw up. She walked in on it, you see, although I’d asked her to stay home and wait. It was pretty gory, and she’d never encountered anything remotely like it in her sheltered New England life. I told you once: a gentle and nonviolent girl.”

  “Would she rather have seen her baby dead?” Madeleine asked contemptuously.

  I shook my head. “You don’t understand. Intellectually, Beth could accept what I’d done as necessary for our kid’s survival; but emotionally…” I shrugged. “And before you pass such a quick and arrogant judgment on her, remember that you’re appraising her from the viewpoint of a hardened graduate of Fort Ames Penitentiary, not to mention that other place where you’ve just been learning how to cut people’s throats. The young lady I took out to dinner twelve years ago might not have been quite so ready to accept a man with blood on his hands.”

  After a moment, she said, “I’m sorry. It’s really none of my business, anyway.”

  Her voice had an absent quality, as if she’d suddenly lost interest in the subject; she was looking ahead as we walked along a street lined with trees. I noticed that they displayed very little in the way of leaf buds yet. A few thousand feet of altitude, and a few hundred miles of latitude, made a considerable difference in the seasons.

  “Are we going where I think we’re going?” I asked at last.

  She said, “Yes, it’s right up ahead.”

  “I know. I was there once, remember?”

  She stopped in front of a two-story house set back from the sidewalk, flanked by large cottonwoods, in a grassy yard all its own, one of the few such private oases of greenery remaining in that part of town. She looked down at herself, and glanced at me a bit uncertainly, almost shyly.

  “Do I look all right?” she asked.

  “No,” I said honestly. “You look all wrong, but isn’t that what you want?”

  She nodded. “Will you let me handle it, Matt? I’m going to make a paranoid spectacle of myself—I want to check out some wild and impossible theories that used to come to me in prison when I was feeling particularly downtrodden, betrayed by the whole world—at least my whole world. All I want you to do is look embarrassed and try to hush me, and apologize for me if it seems indicated, just as you did back there at the police station. Take your cues from me, please.”

  “It’s your show,” I said. “Carry on.”

  She hesitated, and glanced down at herself, and gave a rueful little laugh. “Do you want to know something funny? Even after everything that’s happened to me, I still find it very hard to go in there looking like such a tramp. God, I remember how carefully I used to check my hair and lipstick and nylons every morning before I started up this walk. So let’s get it the hell over with before the lady loses her nerve.”

  She squared her shoulders and turned up the neatly swept concrete path towards the massive building. It was an old residence—almost a mansion—that had been lovingly converted to offices in the days before it became fashionable to bulldoze everything flat and cover the solid old foundations with flimsy modern structures. I saw her make her high-heeled, tight-pants walk deliberately vulgar and provocative as she mounted the steps to the covered porch—portal, in the local idiom.

  Mrs. Madeleine Ellershaw walked straight up to the heavy old front door; but before marching inside she paused very briefly to touch—reminiscently, sadly—the discreet brass plate, nicely polished, that read: BARON AND WALSH—ATTORNEYS AT LAW.

  14

  The reception room was large and luxurious and rather old-fashioned, as befitted the building. For waiting clients—one sensed they’d never have to wait long in this well-run place—there was a comfortable sofa with a couple of deep chairs to match, and a low table supplied with a few reasonably current magazines, but not so many that the place looked like a dentist’s waiting room. More like a well-lived-in den or study. There were real rugs on the floor instead of the usual synthetic wall-to-wall stuff. I saw one little Navajo number in the corner, about five by seven, that I’d have liked to have if I’d had anyplace to put it, but it would have given my sterile, furnished Washington apartment a bad case of artistic indigestion. It’s only a convenient place to sleep between assignments, anyway.

  The rec
eptionist at the antique-looking mahogany desk in the alcove by the fine old stairway was a self-conscious beauty with a lot of pale gold hair pulled back severely to roll at the nape of her neck. I recalled from my long-ago forays into fashion photography that you could call it a chignon if you wanted to be fancy. She was wearing a severe white silk blouse, the kind with a built-in ascot-looking arrangement of the same material at the throat. The jacket of a severe gray suit, on a hanger, was neatly suspended from an old-fashioned coat tree in the corner. She was presumably wearing the equally severe gray skirt of the suit—that area wasn’t visible as she sat behind the desk—but I didn’t think she’d have interested me greatly even if she’d left it off. I mean, there’s a rumor to the effect that the ones who make a production of looking untouchable usually aren’t; but my own minor researches in the field indicate that it’s generally a lot of work to find out and hardly ever worth it when you do.

  She raised her delicate, carefully drawn eyebrows as Madeleine marched up. She’d obviously appraised at a glance the roughly dressed female who’d just entered, and decided not to waste on her the gracious smile of welcome reserved for important clients.

  “Ye-es?”

  Madeleine said, “I want to see Mr. Baron and Walter Maxon in Mr. Baron’s office. As soon as possible. Would you arrange it, please?”

  “I’m afraid that without an appointment—”

  Madeleine glanced at me. “Shit, I tried to be polite, I even said please, you heard me,” she said harshly. She put her hands on the desk, leaning forward. “Get on the phone, Blondie! Tell Mr. Baron there’s an unsuccessful case of his downstairs, one of his few failures, and if he tries to give her a runaround she’s going to commence dismantling the fucking premises starting with the bleached number with the penciled eyebrows!”

  I said hastily, “Take it easy, take it easy.”

  I turned to the girl and dropped my ID folder on the desk in front of her, open, to show the pretty badge-thing inside, so carefully designed to impress people. I picked it up, flipped it closed, and put it away.

  “Helm, Matthew Helm,” I said. “Mrs. Ellershaw and I really would like a conference with the attorneys she mentioned, as soon as possible. Government business. Would you arrange it, please?”

  “Mrs. Ellershaw?” Clearly recognizing the name, the blond girl threw a startled glance at the jeans-clad woman on the other side of the desk. “Well… well, as a matter of fact Mr. Baron gave instructions weeks ago that anytime Mrs. Ellershaw came in she was to be shown right up if he wasn’t with a client, but she didn’t give her name, so how could I know?” The receptionist’s voice was resentful. She went on with some satisfaction: “Anyway, there is somebody in his office right now. But I’ll let him know the minute he’s free—”

  “Madeleine! My God, Madeleine!”

  There was a quick pounding of feet on the carpeted stairs as a youngish man threw himself down them and came hurrying up to us.

  “Hello, Walter.” Madeleine’s voice was soft.

  “Gosh, it’s good to see you!” the man said breathlessly. “I… we were beginning to think you’d decided not to come home at all. I was going to try to find you as soon as I could get away…” He stopped, and reached out impulsively to take both her hands. “Let me look at you. Hey, you look great!”

  The funny thing was, he meant it. He clearly wasn’t even noticing how she was dressed; he was remembering only the distressed, disintegrating woman in prison uniform with whom, several years ago, he’d talked so awkwardly in Fort Ames. It was obvious that he’d looked forward to this meeting with considerable trepidation, wondering what shape she’d be in—if she’d even be recognizable after her long imprisonment. His relief at seeing her whole once more, tanned and healthy, was rather touching.

  “I… I got your letters,” Madeleine said. “I’m sorry I hardly ever answered them. There wasn’t anything to write about, in that place. But thank you; and thanks for sending the things I asked for… Walter, this is Mr. Helm, who’s, well, kind of looking into my case for the U.S. government, a little late. Mr. Helm, Mr. Maxon.”

  We shook hands. He was a very boyish and sincere-looking young fellow—well, the record I’d read gave his age as thirty-five, but he didn’t look it. He was almost too good to be true; but his emotions upon seeing Madeleine had been revealing and, I thought, genuine. I decided to take him at face value for the time being. He was a little under six feet and a bit heavy, almost plump; if he didn’t start fighting it soon he’d have a real problem around the middle. He had mousy-brown hair cut moderately short but not short enough to make any kind of a crew-cut macho statement, and he wore a neat blue suit and big horn-rimmed glasses.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir,” he said. “It’s about time somebody looked into—”

  The receptionist, who’d picked up the phone, interrupted: “Mr. Baron will see you now, Mrs. Ellershaw.”

  Madeleine turned towards the stairs. A white-haired woman in an obviously expensive suit and blouse was descending with the care used by those whose knees aren’t quite as reliable as they once were; she glanced at Madeleine as they passed, and then looked back quickly, frowning. Abruptly, she drew her jacket about her and buttoned it carefully as if to protect herself from contamination. She swept out of the place holding herself very straight, her squared shoulders expressing disapproval.

  I heard Maxon, beside me, mutter, “Old biddy!”

  But Madeleine hadn’t even noticed; she was looking up at the man who’d come to the top of the stairs to greet her. I’d got a glimpse of Baron once in court, twelve years ago when I’d come here to get some information out of his client, Willy Chavez. I remembered that the senior active partner of Madeleine’s firm—Walsh had been retired as a lawyer even back then, although I’d gathered he still had a voice in running the firm—had looked like quite a sizable specimen, but he’d been sitting down at the time. I hadn’t realized how big he’d be standing up: a great gray grizzly of a man as tall as my own six-four and a great deal wider. Also, thank God, a great deal older, nearing seventy now, according to our information, so I could probably handle him if I really had to, but it wouldn’t be fun. I don’t mean that I had any specific reason to think I might ever have to tackle Mr. Waldemar Baron, attorney at law, but men who are in my line of work—and lots of men who aren’t—do tend to make that instinctive appraisal of anybody new and husky and masculine: Can I take this large bastard or can’t I?

  It was clear that he’d been quite handsome; he was still a striking man, even though the creases and jowls of old age were getting the better of the strong bony structure of his face. Like Walter Maxon, whose role model he obviously was, he was rather formally dressed for Santa Fe, in another dark blue suit complete with white shirt and silk tie, and highly polished black shoes. The big horn-rimmed glasses perched on his sizable nose gave him an earnest, scholarly look despite his size. The eyes behind the glasses were steel-gray and didn’t miss the fact that I was there, with Maxon, although they didn’t have time for us at the moment.

  As Madeleine reached him, he swept her into his arms and hugged her affectionately. “It took you long enough to get here, girl! I was beginning to think you’d done something stupid, like crawling off to hide under a rock somewhere, instead of facing down a little community disapproval right here where you belong.” He held her away from him. “Well, you look better than I expected, except for being dressed like a tramp.”

  Her sudden laughter was sharp and bitter. “God, it’s like coming home! You’re still on that sartorial kick?” She freed herself irritably and laughed again. “Actually, the main reason I came back here is that Joe Birnbaum wants to see me about my folks’ estate, although why it couldn’t be handled by mail I have no idea. And you forget, Waldemar, I am a tramp, a cheap ex-convict tramp. Why shouldn’t I dress like one? What else is there left for me to be, after what you let them do to me?”

  “Let them?” He stared at her for several seconds. Whe
n he spoke again, his voice was soft: “There were no recriminations after the trial. You were”—he stopped and swallowed—“you were so nice about it, you broke my heart. You’d trusted me to save you and I’d failed you, but not one word of blame did I get from you. And now you’ve decided… Well, I deserve it, but you didn’t give me much to work with, my dear. You wouldn’t take my advice and accept the rather favorable bargain I’d thrashed out with the prosecution… Ah, let’s not stand here on the stairs reviving ugly old memories! Come into my office…. You, too, sir. I gather you have some mysterious government business to discuss, but there’s no reason we shouldn’t do it comfortably. I’ll see you shortly, Walter.”

  “I want Walter present,” Madeleine said.

  Baron started to speak, stopped himself, and shrugged. “As you wish, my dear.”

  He tried to put his arm around her shoulders as they proceeded along the upstairs corridor, but she shrugged it off impatiently, bringing a look of sadness to his face. But I didn’t feel there was anything sexual involved. It was more like a parent’s conciliatory advance being rebuffed by a sulky child. Well, I’d already gathered that she’d been Baron’s personal protégée, selected very young from, presumably, a number of other youthful legal prodigies, and carefully groomed and trained by him for a place in the firm. There would inevitably have been some emotional involvement on both sides, certainly respect and perhaps real affection; but I’d never had a hint of anything beyond that, and I got none now.

  Baron’s office was a big, light, high-ceilinged room that might once have been the master bedroom of the imposing house. The design of the large rug on the floor looked vaguely familiar, and the name Aubusson popped into my mind, but I wouldn’t want to vouch for its correctness. The massive desk was quite old and quite ornate, but the chair behind it was an anachronism: a husky modern swivel armchair, metal, gray. Well, a man Baron’s size would want something solid and comfortable to hold him. Probably his two-hundred-odd pounds had splintered a few of the flimsy antiques bought on the advice of the interior decorator, and he’d got mad, ordered up the biggest and toughest thing the local office-supply store had in stock, and plunked it down in the middle of all the fancy decor and to hell with appearances.