24
After that, Chief Cordoba pumped me quite thoroughly about the case and, since we needed his cooperation, I let him. It was a rather frustrating experience. He was not, of course, willing to accept the idea that a man listed in the records as a fugitive was dead because his wife had dreamed that he was. And he certainly wasn’t going to buy the idea that an innocent woman had spent eight years in prison; no policeman likes to admit that such things can happen.
Nor could he accept the notion that his turncoat cops might have been influenced by mind-bending techniques developed surreptitiously in a secret government laboratory behind chain-link fencing and barbed wire. Advanced Human Managerial Studies, bullshit! As a matter of fact, I wasn’t quite sure I believed that one, either. Why go all sci-fi when a little dough will do the job? I didn’t think a man like Officer Crisler would come very high. Nevertheless, the session wasn’t a total loss. Cordoba might laugh at my crazy brainstorms, but I noticed that he didn’t laugh very loudly. He’d remember them if events occurred to confirm them.
Interrogation complete, Cordoba drove me back to the motel himself. I guess he didn’t want to trust me with any of his men, or vice versa. I didn’t know whether he was afraid that they’d go for me if they got me alone, or I’d go for them; but either way he was probably correct. Certainly, the way I was feeling at the moment, if anything in uniform—whether the uniform was blue, green, or purple with orange zebra stripes—had laid a hand on me, or more particularly a foot, I’d have shot it dead on the spot. I’d done my stint as departmental punching bag and football, thanks.
The chief wanted to take me to the hospital, but I wasn’t having any of that. I wanted to be near a phone where I could be reached by anybody who had a message for me.
“Do you expect a ransom demand?” Cordoba asked, when I explained this. He frowned. “But what will they ask for? They have already destroyed the documents they feared.”
I said, “They’ll ask for something very valuable, amigo.” I grinned. “One way or another they’ll ask for me.”
“You?” He frowned at me uncomprehendingly.
“It’s a whole new ball game,” I said. “Figure it out. Crisler and his knife-wielding partner must have reported that the dangerous papers, whatever they were, had been found and carefully burned. Yet the two of them were sent back here to help out a couple more rogue policemen. Help them do what? Well, it was known that Mrs. Ellershaw had a ten o’clock appointment, remember, and it could be assumed that her diligent bodyguard would accompany her. So it seems likely that we were still the target; but with a difference. Let’s note that after the previous earnest attempts on Mrs. Ellershaw’s life with shotguns and rifles, they used the handcuffs on her this time. Obviously, now that she’s no longer a threat she’s to be preserved, at least temporarily, presumably for bargaining purposes. But it’s clear that the orders concerning me were quite different. That first club that was swung at my skull wasn’t kidding. It would have killed me if I hadn’t been warned in time to duck a little.”
“I see,” Cordoba said softly. “You feel that your death is now considered desirable?”
I said, “Handcuffs for her, club for me, what does it look like? As an experienced officer of the law, you must know that it’s only in the movies that you go bashing people on the head you don’t want dead. Crisler and his club weren’t kidding, either; but he couldn’t quite get a solid swing at me, the way I was weaving around due to the effects of the first guy’s blow. And even after he’d managed to knock me out he presumably had to leave me for the moment to deal with Mrs. Ellershaw—perhaps she even came to my defense again—and by the time he had her subdued there were probably sirens screaming and people beating on the door asking what all the fuss and shooting was about in there. So all he could do was get the hell out the back way fast with his prisoner, leaving me alive. That could be why he wound up with a knife in the neck. He hadn’t done the job he’d been sent to do; he hadn’t disposed of me.”
Cordoba said carefully, “No offense, señor, but what would make you so important now?”
I said, “Certainly no offense, señor; and I’m afraid you’re flattering me. I’m still only of secondary importance. First there were the hidden documents, or computer printouts, or whatever, perhaps with a covering letter from a dead man, that his wife had to be prevented from acquiring and employing to damage this CADRE outfit. But with that taken care of, they could turn to problem number two, just a minor difficulty: a government agent who’s been making a persistent nuisance of himself and whose association with Mrs. Ellershaw has apparently brought him too close to the heart of the organization for him to be ignored. So terminate with extreme prejudice, as the Langley lads like to say. Using the lady as bait if necessary.”
Cordoba started to ask a question, and checked himself, which was just as well. He didn’t want to know how I was going to solve the problem. Always assuming, of course, that I could figure out a solution.
“Any help I can give, you have only to ask,” he said. “The department owes you that.”
I gave him a crooked grin. “Don’t stick your neck out too far, Chief. You mean any legal help, don’t you?”
He gave me a sharp glance and didn’t answer. He left me in front of the motel. I entered the main building, walking carefully so as not to jar my injuries unnecessarily. I asked the dining room to send to my room a pitcher of vodka martinis, a bacon and tomato sandwich on white toast, and a pot of coffee. Cream and sugar, yes. Back in my unit, after limping through the landscaped grounds and suffering no attacks upon my life, I found that the big double bed nearer the door, which had got fairly thoroughly disordered last night by two affectionate and active bodies, looked smooth and virginal once more. The bathroom was beautifully sterile, with all glasses protected from contamination by plastic armor. The telephone was silent.
I considered lying down to rest, but that would have involved getting up again when my lunch arrived, a painful prospect. I compromised by seating myself cautiously on the bed to make a couple of local calls, using certain code words specifically designed for crisis situations. I debated calling Washington as well, but I had nothing to say that could be said over an unsafe line. Then I said to hell with it and called anyway. As always, I got through to Mac without significant delay.
“Matt here,” I said when I heard his voice on the line, using my real name to let him know I didn’t trust the connection.
“Yes, Matt,” he said. “I have a report to the effect that you’ve encountered some trouble.”
“Not much,” I said. “The priceless secret documents that might have saved the nation, or at least restored the girl’s reputation, have been burned; the heroine herself is in the hands of the brutal enemy; the hero has a dented skull and a couple of bent ribs; but otherwise things are going great, just great. I want an I-team standing by. How soon can I have it?”
“There is an interrogation team in Denver.”
“Put them on the road and tell them to goose it, please. What’s the general situation, sir?”
“Not very good, Matt. In fact, rather critical. There’s been another attempt on the life of the prominent gentleman in question, although in this instance we managed to avoid publicity. We have identified the probable replacement, a rather gaudy military character; but of course he would be taking orders from a committee of wealthy and powerful civilians. The word CADRE is appearing here and there in association with this movement to save the nation from the degenerates who are leading it to destruction. Indications are that, having failed for the second time to remove the chief executive in order to take advantage of the confusion following his death, CADRE is considering an open coup d’état. And I hate to say it, but I am not at all certain that it would fail.”
“What about our mysterious friend, Mr. Tolliver?”
“He seems to be the active power behind the throne. Well, the throne they hope to establish, or dictatorship, or whatever. Have you any clues t
o his identity?”
“Well, somebody seems to think I’m getting too close; otherwise why bother to try to kill me?”
“But close to whom? What about this lawyer, Baron?”
“Hell, Tolliver could easily be Waldemar Baron, but he could just as easily be his junior partner Maxon—I never trust these meek-and-mild characters too far. Or he could even be a rather intriguing police chief they’ve got here, named Cordoba, who plays the dumb Hispano character very well. But everybody seems to be steering me towards a naval gent named Lowery who owns one of the local papers; and sometimes it’s best to ride along with the tide, so to speak, so I think I’ll tackle him first.”
“Keep in mind that we probably don’t have much time left.”
I said, “As the old Athenians used to say, I will return with my shield or on it.”
“I believe you’re thinking of the Spartans, Matt.”
He was probably right, damn him. I hung up, hoping that if anybody was listening, the conversation would have shaken him up a bit, particularly the part about the interrogation team, and left him wondering just who I’d had in mind for the rack and thumbscrews. But I wished I had something better to do than shake the trees and see what fell out of the branches. I continued to sit there, since moving was no fun at all, wishing I had a job in which I wasn’t expected to cope with a national emergency after being beaten to a pulp; but of course we stoical heroes of the underground services just naturally ignore such insignificant handicaps. That wasn’t the worst that was expected of me, anyway.
When the knock came on the door, I got up without groaning too loudly, pleased to note that the drastic change in altitude produced no noticeable dizziness: perhaps my cranium wasn’t seriously shattered after all. But I still wasn’t functioning as well as I might. Expecting a waiter, I was taken by surprise—the way we aren’t supposed to be—when the door was shoved open roughly the moment I unlocked it. Hastily, I stepped clear, reaching for the .38 left-handed; but it was only Walter Maxon, boy attorney, unarmed and distressed and disheveled.
“Where’s Madeleine, what’s happened to her?” he demanded breathlessly. “My God, hasn’t she suffered enough without… You were supposed to be protecting her!”
I looked at him grimly. “So were you, nine years ago. She doesn’t seem to have much luck with her protectors, does she?” I saw a man with a tray behind him, and said, “Hold everything, let me take care of the waiter.” When the food was on the table by the window, and the bill signed, and the waiter gone, I went into the bathroom for an extra glass, which I had to skin like a squirrel before I could fill it with ice and liquor. Sometimes I wonder what’s so terrible about a few germs. “Here, sit down and have a drink and relax,” I said, handing it to Maxon. “Where did you hear about it?”
He was all dressed up in his dark three-piece lawyer suit, of course—it was still a business hour of a business day, although it seemed to have been going on forever—but he wasn’t in good professional shape at the moment, not by the sartorial standards of Baron and Walsh. His white shirt was leaking out between his vest and his pants, his starched shirt collar was unbuttoned and looked wilted, and the knot of his expensive blue silk tie was at half mast. His sandy hair was tousled, making him look like a rumpled, dressed-up schoolboy. He sank into a chair and gulped at the liquor thirstily.
“I… I’ve been going crazy ever since I read that vicious story in the paper this morning!” he said. “I came over here right away to reassure her; she must have been terribly hurt by it, and I wanted to tell her that none of her friends would pay any attention… Anyway, she wasn’t here, neither of you was here, and I had to stop by the police station on business and I heard… My God, after everything she’s been through, to be subjected to savage libels and violent… What are you doing about it? She’s your responsibility! If anything happens to her…!”
After this incoherent speech, if it could be called a speech, he drew a long breath and gulped some more martini. He was hitting the sore spots, and I was tempted to ask him just what the hell he would have done if attacked by a pair of apparently legitimate policemen, but to hell with that. As he’d said, her protection had been my responsibility, not his.
“Blame is easy,” I said. “But I haven’t heard any constructive suggestions, let alone any offers of help.”
“Help? Of course I’ll help, just tell me what to do!”
I’d done the liquor-and-ice bit for myself. I lowered myself cautiously into the second chair at the small round table by the window.
“For a start, tell me about Admiral Lowery, if you’ve met him,” I said. “Never mind the history, I’ve got that. And a physical description. But I need to know what makes him tick. A lot of Navy officers are pretty arrogant, humorless bastards; and he’s kind of small, like his daughter. That would tend to make him even tougher to deal with. Little guys with rank and money tend to be pretty pompous and self-important.”
“But what has the admiral got to do with…?” He checked himself. “Well, all right. Yes, of course I’ve met him. No, he’s very reactionary in his politics, of course, as you’d expect of a military man with a lot of money. But I wouldn’t really call him pompous. He’s got a lot better sense of humor than his wife with her social ambitions, let alone his daughter… Christ, I always knew Vangie was, well, a bit unreasonable on the subject of Madeleine, but I didn’t realize she was pathological! To write an article like that about somebody who’s already been hurt so badly…!”
I said, “Let’s skip Vangie Lowery, at least for the moment. Back to her daddy. Tell me if he’s in town; and if he is, make a guess as to where I can find him.”
“Right now, probably at home. It’s a morning paper, so he doesn’t usually go there until well after lunch to see how next morning’s edition is coming along. Oh, and yes, he’s in town, all right. Vangie said he okayed her story himself and if I could find anything actionable in it I was a better lawyer than Mr. Rath, the attorney they use, who’d also checked it before they went to press with it.” He drew a shaky breath. “She was right, of course. It isn’t libel to call somebody a convict when they’ve been convicted, even if the verdict was totally wrong and the sentence was positively savage—locking up a… a lovely and sensitive person like that for eight whole years in a brutal place like that without parole!”
I ignored the impassioned oratory. “I gather you’ve spoken with Miss Lowery this morning. Where?”
He licked his lips. “Outside the police station. She’d been checking on a story for the Journal; she was coming out when I went in. We… had an argument.”
“Can you get in touch with her?”
He looked startled. “Oh, no, I couldn’t possibly…! I mean, it wasn’t just an argument. I got so angry I did something pretty terrible, Mr. Helm. I couldn’t possibly call her now. In fact, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if she has me arrested.”
I said, “Seems unlikely. She passed up her best chance, right there outside the cop house, didn’t she? What did you do, haul off and slug her?”
“How did you know?” He stared at the floor. “I must have been a little crazy! I never dreamed I’d ever raise my hand against… But that article, just gloating over Madeleine’s… over what prison had done to her! And those pictures that made her look so… And the way Vangie seemed to feel no guilt at all, just standing there taunting me… I just couldn’t help myself! I really struck her quite hard, Mr. Helm, hard enough to knock her down. Actually I think I wanted to kill her. And she picked herself up and ran off crying and I stumbled into the station; but before I could remember what I’d come for they all started milling around and the chief rushed out. I knew something serious had happened somewhere in town and I got one of the desk officers I knew to tell me in confidence…” He swallowed hard. “Why do you want me to call Vangie? I mean, if it’s really important… I said I’d help. She could be at the paper; she mentioned that she was going there. But she’ll probably hang up on me.”
“It’s important,” I said. “Tell her to come here as fast as she can. Tell her I may have a story for her.”
He hesitated. “Look, you’re not going to hurt her, are you?”
I regarded him curiously. “Says the man who just smacked her in the puss. No, I’m not going to hurt her. I just want her here for a little while.” I pointed. “Phone’s over there between the beds. I’ll eat my lunch, such as it is, while you talk with her.”
Even as we looked at it, the instrument in question made a sharp jangling sound. After a moment I heaved myself out of my chair and limped over to pick it up.
“Helm?”
“Yes. What do you want?”
The voice at the other end of the line did not identify itself, but as it began to speak rapidly I recognized it anyway. It belonged to the man named Jim Dellenbach who was currently known as Scarface, thanks to the front sight of his own revolver as applied by me. Dellenbach said that a certain lady was being held in custody by the Office of Federal Security. Unfortunately, he went on with malicious satisfaction, circumstances did not permit confinement under civilized conditions, and she was really quite uncomfortable and would remain that way, underground, tied hand and foot in the dark to suffer hunger and thirst and the indignity of soiling herself helplessly, until I’d shown myself willing to cooperate fully by withdrawing all our agents from a case that we’d had no business sticking our long noses into…
In a way it was a relief. It was out in the open now. We weren’t even pretending to be polite and friendly colleagues in government service, not that we ever had. But now we were two federal agencies openly battling each other for survival, and maybe for the nation’s survival, using every dirty weapon in the book including the old buried-alive routine. I said, what I was expected to say, of course, that certainly I’d cooperate in every way I could. The only person who possibly believed me was Walter Maxon, listening; but then he was a very naive young fellow. Maybe.
The Infiltrators Page 29