The Infiltrators

by Donald Hamilton

  The big cop was on top of me, ready to take another vicious swing at my head; but his face changed as he saw the .25. I fired three times and saw dust fly off the front of the blue uniform. Not a very good group, I must admit: one slid off far enough to nick the shiny badge worn over to the side, but maybe that was the one that did the work. You never know with those feeble little bullets. Anyway, he came down hard, the nightstick flying out of his hand—apparently he hadn’t taken time to use the thong properly. The whole room was a bit hazy, and I was having trouble maintaining single images of things—they wanted to split in two; but I saw the other policeman across the room hunched over, clawing at something wrapped around his face.

  He was holding a gun, but he dropped it so he could use both hands to free himself. I realized that the moment his attention was distracted and he’d turned to assist his partner, Madeleine must have dropped her handcuffed arms over his head. Even as I crouched there, waiting for my vision to clear so I could shoot safely without hitting her, I saw them go down together. She threw herself aside in a twisting way as she fell, applying all the weight and leverage she could. Even across the room, I heard the ugly tearing and cracking sounds as the spinal bones and ligaments fractured and ripped. I realized that she’d quite literally wrung the man’s neck, but it must have been very hard on her handcuffed wrists. But the trainers at the Ranch would have been proud of her.

  The waves of dizziness were getting worse instead of better. I heard the sound behind me, but my reactions were slow, and I didn’t get around quite in time. I just got a glimpse of a strained and hating white face, and of another bulky blue uniform, and of another raised nightstick—or maybe he’d picked up the same one from where it had fallen instead of using his own. As if it mattered. The club came down.

  23

  They’d cleared the broken junk off a slashed-up sofa in one of the small back offices and spread a small rug on it and put me on it. A doctor of sorts had come and said that my brains weren’t leaking out of my skull anywhere that he could see, but I’d better be kept quiet and taken to the hospital for observation as soon as possible. Then he’d gone on to his real clients, the ones who weren’t breathing.

  I hadn’t bothered to tell him about the throbbing ache in my side where one of the later cops to invade the premises had kicked me. There’s really nothing much that can be done about broken ribs—if they were broken—but the medical profession always feels obliged to try, and the cure is usually worse than the disease. I thought I could manage to live without all that tape and benzocaine. At least that was what they’d used the last time I’d let them. They’ve probably figured out something even more smelly and uncomfortable by now.

  After the first rush of eager law-enforcement officers, the lid had gone on; and now only a limited number of let’s-solve-a-murder boys and girls were wandering around the gory premises. I could see them as they passed the open door of the room in which I lay. A young cop was watching over me and pleading with me silently to wiggle a toe so he could get to kick me, too: goddamn cop-killer! Fortunately they were all slightly inhibited by the fact that somebody’d picked up the ID I’d dropped. Otherwise I’d undoubtedly have been resisting arrest until there was nothing left but a bloody pulp.

  For my part, I was fighting my aches and pains in my usual forbearing and Christian manner by making sure I remembered a certain face, the one I’d stomp on if I ever met it in a dark alley with nobody looking. It belonged to the uniformed gent with the fast shoe with the hard, hard toe. I planned to learn his name before I left here. I mean, I’m a pro, and I don’t go around seeking personal vengeance when there’s work to be done; but if somebody drops it into my lap afterwards, when I have time to spare, who am I to question the generosity of the gods—if you want to call them that—who watch over unpleasant men like me?

  Besides, we like to have the word get around. If enough guys, in or out of uniform, have it firmly impressed upon them that we’re not forgiving Christian gentlemen, or ladies, and that it’s not very wise to get in our way when we’re working—if you don’t regret it now, you will later—our work will be easier. We have problems enough with the real enemy, whoever he may be at any given time, without being gratuitously given the boot treatment by any sand-country copper with an itchy toe. At least it gave me something to think about besides my pounding head and throbbing side.

  Then the waiting was over and Chief Manuel Cordoba came marching in, in full regalia, a sturdy and confidence-inspiring officer of the law if you were sucker enough to have confidence in a policeman. At the moment I had none. It wasn’t quite fair, of course. In a sense I was blaming them all for my own abysmal stupidity. I was the jackass who’d loused up a job and lost a lady through my incredible idiocy in putting her, not to mention myself, at the mercy of some armed goons instead of blasting their heads off the instant they came crashing through the door like that. Just because they were wearing pretty blue suits, for Christ’s sake! How naive can you get?

  Cordoba came up to the sofa and stood looking down at me for a moment. Then he waved my young uniformed chaperon out of the room and closed the door behind him and returned.

  “Well, what have you got to say for yourself, Helm?”

  “Where’s Mrs. Ellershaw?” I whispered.

  His voice was harsh. “We’ll get to Mrs. Ellershaw. At the moment, you’re the major problem, you and your fast gun and your fancy Washington connections…”

  He was bluffing hard. He knew he was on a bad spot—how bad remained to be determined. I shook my head. That was a mistake, but I could live with it. It wasn’t as bad as some I’d made.

  “I’m not important,” I said. “You’re not important. Your men aren’t important. We’re all alive and doing well, with a few deserving exceptions. What about Madeleine Rustin Ellershaw? Several attempts on her life already on record. Last seen in handcuffs in the same room with a gent in police uniform who was beating on me with a club, description follows. Five nine or ten. Brown hair. Blue eyes. Age around four oh. Weight around one nine oh. He’s put on a little weight since I last saw him; and he was a patrolman when I last saw him, but that could have changed, too. Name: Philip Crisler. I don’t see him here. Where is he? And where is Mrs. Ellershaw?”

  “How do you happen to know Officer Crisler?”

  I looked at him grimly. He was wearing a very handsome sidearm with ivory grips, presumably acquired before the recent save-the-elephant campaigns. For practicality, it wasn’t quite as bad as mother-of-pearl; but it was still slipperier than good old checkered walnut.

  I said, “Easy, amigo. Are you thinking clearly? Maybe you should have a lawyer standing by. You’re voluntarily admitting that you’re acquainted with this murderous criminal who definitely attacked a federal officer and probably kidnapped a woman who was assisting the U.S. authorities. You’re even admitting, by implication, that he was wearing a police uniform legitimately. Are you sure you want to go on record with all that?”

  He snorted. “Listen, Helm, you’ve killed one of my men, and your ex-convict female accomplice seems to have killed another, although God knows how a woman could have done that…”

  I said sharply, “Chief, you keep making it worse for yourself! Now you’re confessing that those two homicidal characters were your men, too, not just goons masquerading in police uniforms! Hadn’t you better reconsider a little? Do you really want to take all the credit for this bloody mess?” I stared at him hard. “Do you want a little advice? If you don’t care to take it from me, call it advice from Washington.”

  He started to speak angrily and checked himself. “What advice?” he asked.

  “You’ve got three choices,” I said. My head was aching badly, but I tried not to let it show. I went on: “First suggestion. If by any hopeful chance you’re holding Mrs. Ellershaw in jail for some reason, or in secret custody somewhere, produce her. Then perhaps we can settle everything else in simple, friendly fashion.”

  He licked his lips.
“We haven’t got the woman. We don’t know where she is.” He glared at me. “And we want her for resisting arrest and committing homicide upon an officer of the law.”

  I sighed. “You’re trying to fight it, Chief, but it can’t be fought. Any policeman or detective with a few brains can read what happened in this place. Sure you could have the evidence altered to frame me if I were a helpless, independent private eye like in the books, but we both know I’m not. Neither helpless nor independent. And, hell, maybe you’re even an honest officer; it has happened. So you’re stuck with it; and in case you haven’t had time to familiarize yourself with it, I’ll run it past you quickly the way it will go into the record, the way it actually happened—”

  “The way you say it happened!” That was automatic. He drew a long breath, and said, “All right. Go on.”

  “This is the way it reads, amigo. After politely admitting the police to the premises like a good citizen, I was savagely clubbed from behind by Cop Number One, presumably because he didn’t want to use a noisy gun on me. Let’s not discuss my stupidity in letting him catch me off guard. I thought we had a deal, you and I, and you were keeping your department from taking sides in this hassle, which was my mistake… Did you say something, Chief?”

  He glared at me and didn’t speak. I pushed myself up a bit, heroically concealing the agony of my poor fractured ribs, if that’s what they were.

  “All right,” I said, “so I treated these fine law-enforcement officers the way I normally treat policemen, with wary respect, and got half clobbered for my pains. When I decided at last to take defensive action to keep my brains from being completely scrambled, and took care of Cop Number One, Cop Number Two hauled out his piece to avenge his partner. Mrs. Ellershaw jumped him to save me, and took care of him; but then Cop Number Three, Crisler, entered the fray and that’s all she wrote as far as I’m concerned. God knows where he came from. I suppose he slipped in from the parking lot, using the outside door to Birnbaum’s private office. I suppose I should have been ready for that, but somehow I have this picture of bluebellies always hunting in pairs, like hungry coyotes. You will excuse me for being slightly prejudiced at the moment, I’m sure. But I’ll admit it wasn’t the brightest day of my life.”

  “Listen, Helm…!” He checked, himself. “You still haven’t said how you knew Crisler.”

  I said, “You won’t like it. Years and years ago, even before that kidnapping incident we both remember involving my little girl, I had a fender-bender problem up a lane near where I used to live. The other guy came roaring out of his driveway without looking; but when he called the police from his house a young cop friend came to the rescue in a patrol car. Crisler. To protect his buddy-buddy, Crisler wrote me up for every crime since the sinking of the Maine in Havana Harbor in 1898. I was keeping a low profile at the time, I wanted to be an inconspicuous citizen, so I didn’t argue; I just got old Judge Marty Martinez to dismiss the charges afterwards. But I made a note of the name and the face. I always do.” I stared at him hard. “And don’t try to tell me that no cop ever did a favor for a friend in this town, or any town. My ribs hurt, and I’d hate to go into paroxysms of uncontrollable laughter.”

  He answered my stare with a glare of his own, but it wavered after a moment. “Your ribs? I thought it was your head…” Then he stopped.

  “Right on, man,” I said. “One of your fine upstanding guardians of the law gave me a couple of good kicks in the side while I was lying out there half unconscious.” He didn’t speak. I went on: “You’ve checked on me and you know where my orders come from. Pretty high up, right? Or you wouldn’t be here and I wouldn’t be here. I’d be in a cell being beat on in relays because cop-killers always seem to be unruly fellows who have to be subdued by force, right? Now shall we get on with the listing of your possible courses of action, Chief?”

  “If you wish.” His voice was expressionless now.

  I said, “Here’s my next suggestion: just pull that fancy ivory-handled piece you’ve got on your hip and shoot me dead.”

  “That’s a strange thing to say, señor.”

  “Why strange?” I said. “I’d call it obvious. Don’t try to tell me you haven’t thought of it. Don’t try to tell me you don’t wish, at least a little, that one of your boys had got slightly trigger-happy before you got here. Don’t tell me you haven’t considered the possibility that, with me out of the way permanently, a terrible case of mistaken identity of course, and Madeleine Ellershaw also gone, perhaps never to return…” I found myself pausing here, and clearing my throat for some reason, before I went on. “With both of us out of the way, you might still be able to salvage something out of this bloody mess. That’s assuming, of course, that you still insist that you have complete control over your department, and that Officer Crisler was operating under orders from you, as were his two pals. Which is what you were more or less saying just now when you implied they were all your men. But were they? Are they? Do you really want to assume full responsibility for them and their actions, all their actions?”

  “Mr. Helm…” He paused.

  “I know, it’s hard to admit,” I said. “But your final choice, and you’d better make it fast, is to backpedal a bit and admit that you don’t have complete control of your department anymore. They aren’t all your men, really; and these three rogue cops were operating under orders from somebody else. Somebody perhaps using the code name Tolliver, representing a powerful secret organization that seems to have infiltrated a lot of law-enforcement agencies in this country and even created one of its own: the Office of Federal Security.” I looked at him for a moment. “I think it’s too late for benevolent neutrality, Chief Cordoba. Pick your side. Either use that pretty gun—they’ll pay you well for it, either in money or political influence—or sit down and relax and let’s talk this over sensibly.”

  He stood looking down at me for a long moment, his dark face expressionless; and it happened the way it sometimes does regardless of the shade of the skin or the color of the hair or the language spoken by the ancestors. I don’t say that we became friends in that instant; but there’s a relationship between fighting men that the nonviolent ladies and gentlemen of the world can never understand, which may be why they fear us and pretend to despise us as old-fashioned and obsolete and dreadfully immoral—macho is the buzzword they’re always throwing around, very derogatory. Cordoba smiled faintly.

  “But how would I dare draw my weapon, Mr. Helm, when you’ve had me covered from that sling ever since I walked into this room?” He shook his head. “It’s very foolish of you. Even if you have no faith in the police, perhaps with some reason, you could never hope to shoot your way out of here, you know that.”

  I shrugged. “In my business, when you’ve got your back to the wall you don’t waste time figuring the odds. If your life is at stake, you just blow away the guy in front of you and grab his weapon if yours is going dry and start walking and keep firing. Eventually you’re either out of there or dead. And if you’re dead, they’ll remember you, those who’re left standing. They’ll remember how hard you were to put down, and how many you took down with you; and maybe they won’t be quite so eager to tackle the next guy from your outfit who comes along. We call it public relations, Chief.”

  “But clearly my men were careless, to leave you armed,” he said.

  I shrugged again, and it was still a mistake. “They found the .38 from my holster where Cop Number One had dropped it; and I looked pretty damn helpless, so they didn’t bother to search me further. And frankly I have no memory of tucking the little sleeve gun back up where it belongs; and I’d appreciate your not mentioning it to anybody, and soft-pedaling the caliber of the bullets your medical examiner comes up with. That way, maybe I can surprise somebody else sometime.”

  There was a knock on the door. Cordoba went over and opened it, and spoke to the man outside for a minute or two, and came back. His face was grim.

  “What was Mrs. Ellershaw wearing?” he
asked.

  A wave of sick anticipation hit me, but I refrained from asking the obvious question. “High-heeled blue sandals. Blue denims. White cotton wedding shirt. Quilted ski jacket, kind of violet-colored. No hat.”

  “An empty police car has been found on a dirt road just outside town. Tire tracks nearby indicate where a heavier vehicle, probably four-wheel drive, had been parked for a while before being driven away; so apparently there was a change of transportation. Caught on an inside molding of the patrol car was a scrap of violet cloth. It would have been hard to snag a garment in that place accidentally, I’m told.”

  I drew a long, rather shaky breath. “So she was still alive and thinking clearly up to that point. Leaving signs for us to follow. I presume it was Crisler’s official car that was left behind. Any signs of Crisler?”

  He nodded. “Officer Crisler was lying in the bushes nearby. He had been killed by a skillful knife-thrust to the neck, very much as Mrs. Silva was killed. There were traces of blood on his shoe; and I will be very much surprised if the shoe does not match a partial footprint we found in the office next door, near the dead woman’s chair, that was not made on his most recent visit here, after the blood had started to congeal. It would seem that Officer Crisler was the second man involved in tearing this place apart earlier, and killing those two; he must have returned to help his colleagues deal with you, while the first man, the one in charge, waiting in the car unwilling to show himself. And then the first man, the knife specialist, disposed of Crisler after he had delivered the woman and served his purpose.” Cordoba grimaced. “At least that is one old grudge you can erase from your account books, Mr. Helm.”

  “That makes me feel just great,” I said. “Considering that the lady I was supposed to protect is now riding around the boonies helplessly handcuffed, at the mercy of a wild man with a knife.”