There was a pause while the waitress put our lunches in front of us, and offered rolls around, and asked about coffee. Later. Madeleine tasted her sauerbraten and nodded approvingly.
“Jasper Lowery,” she said, after swallowing. “Rich boy, old New England money, went into the Naval Reserve during World War II and was sent to Annapolis to take some kind of courses at the Academy. That great Santa Fe social arbiter and aristocratic southwestern beauty, Addie Krumbein as she was then, was helping her ma sweep the floors and make the beds in the tacky rooming house where he stayed. Propinquity had its way. If I sound prejudiced, it’s because I am; and not just because of the lovely welcome-home she just offered me.”
“Explain, Mrs. Ellershaw.”
“It’s hard to like somebody who hates your guts,” Madeleine said. “Well, maybe I did act a little too unimpressed when I first started seeing her around at social functions behaving as if Noah had dropped her family off here when he passed by in the Ark. I mean, one gets tired of these phony Old-Santa-Feans. It’s a goddamn cult. Maybe my trouble is that my family actually did come down the Trail way back before New Mexico became a state. The first Rustin hit here about 1895, if I remember right.”
“You were just a kid at the time, of course,” I said.
She grinned and stuck out the tip of her tongue at me; then she sobered quickly and I could see her reminding herself that she was a mature and dignified woman who’d known great hardship and suffering. But the martini was doing its work, and she was relaxing again after the strain of her encounter with Baron, and the shock of the insult she’d just received. The color was returning to her face, and I found myself thinking that, regardless of how she was dressed, she was by far the most attractive woman in the restaurant.
“So you can see that it was a great triumph for Adelaide when the cocky young bitch who’d snooted her wound up behind bars as a common criminal,” Madeleine said. She grinned wryly. “But I’m not the only jailbird in the family. As a matter of fact we’re quite proud of my great-uncle, who spent ten years in prison for shooting a man. Self-defense, he said, but the jury didn’t agree. Very dangerous family, we Rustins.”
“Let’s hope so,” I said, “It’s got a lot of survival value. Let’s hear more about the Lowerys.”
“Jasper must have been a pretty competent young officer. The Navy let him switch from reserve to regular and kept him on after the war, and kept promoting him, although I don’t think he ever really functioned as an admiral; it was one of those courtesy promotions they often give them when they retire them. Anyway, I met him socially a few times, back before I was sent to… back when they first came to town. He likes to tell the ancient story about the old salt who, on the beach at last, throws an anchor over his shoulder and hikes inland; when he finally reaches a place so far from the water that a local yokel asks him what he’s doing with that funny-looking pickaxe, that’s where he puts down his roots. In Lowery’s case, Santa Fe.”
“Does he do anything here except collect his Navy pension and count his old New England money?”
She shook her head sadly. “I don’t know where you keep yourself when you come to town on vacation, Matt. Don’t you ever read the papers? Plural. Back in the good old days there used to be only one, remember?”
“That’s Admiral Lowery? The Daily Journal?”
“That’s him. When he got here, the old Santa Fe New Mexican was the only paper in town. Way back when Lew Wallace was governor, he probably read the New Mexican every afternoon after he’d settled his problems with Billy the Kid and done his daily writing stint on Ben Hur. Lowery started up the Journal a year after he got here. The New Mexican had never been what you’d call rabidly liberal, but the Journal quickly made it look like Pravda West. However, the Journal turned out to be sprightly and interesting to read, if you didn’t mind suffering an occasional attack of apoplexy at the reactionary editorials. Lowery was no newspaperman himself, but he picked good newspapermen to run his paper, and let them run it as long as they followed his basic political guidelines.” She hesitated. “Well, they don’t have completely free hand; there’s a little nepotism. Like a rather amateurish social column entitled “Today with Adelaide.” At least it was amateurish when I last read it; maybe she’s improved with eight years of practice.”
“Anything else?”
“No, but I have an unworthy hope that Waldemar is right about Jasper Lowery. I suppose it’s too much to expect that his wife’s done anything to be arrested for herself, but I’d get a big kick out of seeing her visiting her so-important husband in the same jail they had me, with the newspaper and TV people yapping and snapping at her just the way they did at me.” She made a little grimace of distaste. “Oh, God, I used to be such a nice, kind, charitable little girl, and just listen to me now!”
Then she looked up, quickly and warily, as a man stopped by the booth. He was tall and rather fragile-looking, slightly stooped, with a wispy white mustache and a pink expanse of scalp that didn’t have too much white hair around it. And very sharp old blue eyes beneath white eyebrows.
“It’s good to see you back, Madeleine.”
Her defensive attitude relaxed. She drew a long breath, and smiled up at him. “Thank you, Judge. This is Mr. Helm, from Washington. Helm, Judge Harlan Connors.”
His answering smile was gentle. “Keep your chin up, young lady. It’ll be a little rough for a while, but don’t let them grind you down. A pleasure to make your acquaintance, sir.”
I watched him move away, walking carefully as befitted his age. When I glanced at Madeleine, her eyes were shiny.
“That was sweet of him,” she said huskily. Then she sniffed, and groped in her purse for a Kleenex.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I guess… I guess I just can’t stand people b-being n-nice to me.” After a few more sniffs, and some dabs with the tissue, she swallowed hard and sat up straight, facing me. “I’m okay, Matt. Don’t worry about me. Ill make it, if you’ll buy me a nice big gloppy dessert and to hell with my gorgeous new figure…”
Later, leaving, we had to make our way through the now crowded restaurant to the entrance hall, and past the little knot of people still waiting there to be seated. I could sense that my companion felt as if she were running a gauntlet, even though most of the patrons clearly didn’t know her at all. Even if they were locals who’d seen her picture in the newspapers eight years ago, they’d forgotten. However, there were a few who obviously recognized her but made a point of pretending not to, and a couple who recognized her—a pair of lawyers just coming in—and made a point of greeting her a little too heartily.
“God, Old Home Week!” she breathed as we emerged in the dazzling New Mexico sunlight. “It’s awful of me, Matt, but I find the ones who’re friendly almost as hard to take as the ones who aren’t. They’re all so obviously wondering just what it was like for a nice, well-brought-up girl like me, from a good family, to be locked up in a dirty dungeon all those years; and was I homosexually molested by my depraved fellow inmates or wasn’t I; and just what kind of a degraded female creature have I been transformed into by my brutal penitentiary experiences, really?”
I said, “Tell me about Homer Walsh. I had the impression he was retired; but judging by what Baron said, he still has a voice in the affairs of the firm.”
Madeleine grinned abruptly, walking beside me. “Don’t you want to help me feel sorry for myself?”
“You’re doing fine all by yourself,” I said.
“Good man. Keep slapping me down whenever I start my martyr act. Homer Walsh had a very bad auto accident and wound up in a wheelchair; that was the year after I joined the firm. A thin, dark, intense little man, and a very good trial lawyer, but he never practiced law again after he got well—I gather that, apart from being crippled, he’s never been really well since. But he’s still a partner, kind of an inactive partner, and he does have some say in the policies of the firm. At least that was the way it was when I…
left, and I gather it’s still that way.”
“What about Walter Maxon?”
“Walter’s a very nice boy, that’s his trouble. Nice and a little shy. He’ll never be a real cutthroat lawyer, but he’s conscientious and totally honest. Perhaps that’s why Waldemar’s apparently been pushing him along faster than he really deserves; he wants somebody obviously square and straight right there to pick up the pieces, and the firm, if things go badly for him, after what he was forced to do to me.” She grimaced. “What Walter really needs is somebody to tell him what a wonderful guy he is, and keep on telling him and telling him.”
I said deliberately, “It’s fairly obvious that, with your husband nine years missing, you could have the job anytime. Even legally, with just a little red tape.”
She said, “Maybe, but it’s kind of optimistic of us to arrange my future, Mr. Helm, before we’re sure I’m going to survive this perilous undercover operation I’m engaged in for you and the U.S. government.”
“I’ll do my best to see to it,” I said. “And when it’s over I think that guy’s going to be right there waiting for you loyally—like he’s been for eight years—and you’d better have made up your mind whether or not you want what he offers you. Meaning him.”
She said with sudden sharpness, “Want? What does want have to do with it, Matt? I had what I wanted, everything I wanted, and it was all snatched away from me. Even if I’m given every possible break from now on, even if the old verdict is set aside and my name is cleared and all my rights as a citizen are restored, with all those years lost to me I’m going to have to pass up all the great things I wanted for myself and settle for what I can get—what I can get that I can still make some kind of an endurable life out of. What I really want… God, I don’t even know what it is any longer! And I used to be so sure, so blissfully sure!” She shook her head abruptly. “Whine, whine, whine! You’re neglecting your duties, Mr. Helm. You’re supposed to kick the self-pitying bitch in the pants where they’re tightest—and that’s pretty damn tight—whenever she goes into that sad routine. What’s next on our agenda?”
“Well, as soon as possible we’d better check out that Conejo Canyon installation. I’ve got the names of two scientific guys who knew your husband there before he vanished, and who’re still there. One’s more or less running the place now. But it’s a forty-mile drive to Los Alamos, and you’ve got that appointment with your folks’ lawyer, Birnbaum, in less than an hour. We’ll have to see how much of the afternoon is left when you’ve finished with him.”
But when we reached the motel, we found a handwritten note awaiting her at the desk. She glanced through it and gave it to me to read. My dear Madeleine: Unfortunately I find myself tied up in court this afternoon, how about ten tomorrow morning? Looking forward very eagerly to seeing you again and most sorry for the delay, your Uncle Joe.
Madeleine took it back from me when I’d finished. “I used to call him that when I was a little girl, although there’s no real relationship,” she said. “Well, what do we do now?… Oh, God, look at that!”
She was staring at the nearby newspaper-vending machine. The enormous headlines showed black through the slightly beat-up plastic: PRESIDENT SHOT! That was the Journal, making you read the paper to find out if the shooting had been fatal or otherwise. The New Mexican’s giant headline was equally terse, telling what had happened but not to whom: ASSASSINATION FAILS!
17
Mac said, “You would have been notified immediately if it had concerned you, Eric.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, making a face at Madeleine over the phone. We were in my motel unit, and she was half rereading the newspaper stories and half listening, sprawled in one of the large chairs by the window in the unladylike fashion that seems to go with jeans. “Yes, sir,” I said. “But I would like to protest, sir. Here I am in my rusty tin suit playing knight errant or something to a distressed lady while there’s work of national importance peculiarly suited to my talents and training…”
It had not been the crime of a wild-eyed gent with a cheap rifle and a political grievance, or an unbalanced youth with a target pistol trying to attain some kind of national importance, any kind, as long as it made the headlines. It had been a systematic and well-organized commando raid, somewhat similar to the Sadat assassination, executed by six men with automatic weapons of the submachine-gun persuasion, exact make unspecified. The chief executive had survived through the devotion of a couple of Secret Service men who’d thrown themselves into the line of fire and hustled him back into his car, taking a good many bullets in the process. Fortunately, while one of the men had died on the spot and the other was in the hospital fighting for his life, those feeble little 9mm slugs don’t have all the penetration in the world, and only one had got through to the man they were protecting, inflicting a minor wound.
The other Secret Service men in attendance had not only been badly outgunned, they’d been handicapped by their consideration for the innocent bystanders, something that never concerns us. I mean, if you ask us to protect somebody in public life he gets protected, and to hell with the women and children and stray dogs; which is probably why we’re so seldom asked. In this case, however, on request, we’d had two riflemen covering the scene, one from a rooftop two hundred and fifty yards away, the other from a high window at about four hundred. They’d started cutting down the commandos the instant they revealed themselves. There had been only the initial burst of fire before the attackers started dropping mysteriously—in the melee down in the street nobody’d heard the distant reports at first. With two down and then, in the time it takes to operate a bolt-action sniper’s rifle, another two, the final pair had tried to run for it, but had been smashed to the pavement in their turn by the heavy rifle bullets. Of course there had been some breakage. What with the close-in 9mm automatic fire, and several of the long-range .30-caliber projectiles ricocheting and breaking up after perforating their targets, seven people in the crowd had been hurt, two fatally.
Mac said severely, “We have enough brainless snipers available; we don’t need another. What we need is somebody with intelligence enough to stop this conspiracy at the source, which means, of course, finding the source. Are you making any progress?”
“Yes, sir,” I said sourly. “But I wouldn’t want to say in what direction.”
“There seems to be less time than we’d hoped,” Mac said. “Indications are that these people may have completed their initial infiltration, if we may call it that, of our society and are now starting the action phase of their campaign. The confusion following the violent death of the President was presumably expected to give them the opportunity to make their political move, whatever it may be. Well, we’ll try to parry it if it comes, and in any case to keep him alive. A man in the White House who’s humble enough to admit he’s no rival to Washington or Lincoln is a jewel to be preserved. We’ve had some who thought they belonged on the shining throne of heaven right alongside, or perhaps a little ahead of, the Almighty. Your job is to see that we don’t have to shield him too long, since the advantage is always on the side of the assassins.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, and the line went dead.
Madeleine was looking at me curiously. “You’re envious,” she said.
I said, “Those boys got to shoot. All I’ve been getting is shot at.”
“Is that all you’ve been getting?” she asked slyly. Then a little color came into her face, and she said quickly, “I’m sorry, that was uncalled for, considering the lady’s current chastity program.”
“The Lily Maid of Astolat,” I said. “Come on, Lily Maid, let’s go visit some geniuses.”
Fifteen minutes later, after I’d made a couple of preparatory phone calls, we were on the four-lane interstate heading north up the Rio Grande valley. Another twenty minutes saw us turning west on the twisty two-lane blacktop road that leads to Los Alamos. We crossed the Rio Grande, which was running silty and yellow as always under the old-fashioned,
steel-girdered highway bridge; but the water was not too high yet, since the winter’s snowpack hadn’t really started melting up in the mountains. Leaving the river behind, we drove up through the Jemez foothills. It had been a silent drive so far, but now Madeleine, at the wheel, turned her head to glance at me.
“Any instructions for the chauffeur, Boss? As I recall, that’s kind of a nasty hill ahead, just the kind I’d pick if I were planning a fatal accident.”
I said, “Just go up it fast. Well be on the outside most of the way, and you don’t want to give anybody a chance to pull alongside and nudge us over the edge and into the canyon. Particularly not that blue pickup that’s trailing us.”
She nodded. “Yes, I’ve been watching him… Matt.”
“Yes?”
“There’s something I want to say before… before anything happens; and I don’t want any interruptions while I say it; and no answer is required.” She was looking straight ahead through the windshield as she spoke. “In other words, just shut up and listen. The President of the United States has just been shot. You have a bullet hole in your shoulder. We’re being shadowed right this minute. We’re obviously bucking something pretty big, and I don’t think it’s too melodramatic to consider the possibility that… that I might just possibly be killed sometime during the next few days… No, goddamn you, shut up!”
She glared at me fiercely, and returned her attention to the road, making the right-hand turn that would take us up the canyon to Los Alamos. The road straight ahead was the big-truck route that went the long way around and came in by the back door.
Madeleine said, “What I want to tell you is, if it happens, don’t brood too much about it. Don’t blame yourself. What I’ll be losing is something I didn’t even have that day you picked me up at Fort Ames. For all practical purposes, I was dead then, ready to slink off to some kind of a bleak and hopeless half-life, and quite possibly eventual suicide. At least now I’ve had a little chance to live again, and if I get dead again, permanently this time, it’s just too damn bad. It would have been nice to see what I could do with this new life you’ve helped me find, but at least you won’t remember me as that dough-faced zombie dame in that awful brown suit. I’ve had a chance to be me again—kind of whiny and complainy, I know, but still me—and that’s worth everything that happens next no matter how bad it may be.”
The Infiltrators Page 21