The Intriguers mh-14

by Donald Hamilton

  "I… I think so."

  "You'll have a bit of a wait. Your daddy's asleep. When he wakes up, he'll turn you loose and you can both go home. Don't try to get free by yourself. You can't do it, and you'll just lose a lot of skin… Eric."

  "Right here."

  "Grab your toys if you want them. Let's go somewhere and talk."

  Xix.

  Carl joined us at the motel back in Amarillo, Texas, after stalling long enough on the road somewhere to start me worrying that, perhaps, he'd changed his mind about coming at all. That was undoubtedly just what he'd intended.

  He arrived at last, however, bland and unapologetic, and we had a briefing session that lasted well past dawn. By that time, the girl was curled up asleep on the bed nearest the wall, and the motel room was saturated with Carl's cigar smoke and littered with his discarded beer bottles- he'd cleaned up the supply of Carta Blanca I brought from Mexico in the boat's ice chest. That didn't worry me. I knew that his capacity for beer was practically limitless, which was more than I could say for my own.

  "Anything else you need to know?" I asked as we broke it up at last and moved towards the door.

  "Are you kidding? There's everything else I need to know. Only you can't tell me." He grimaced, looked down at the soggy stump of his latest stogie, and mashed it out in the ashtray on the little table by the door. "But I've got the names memorized, both lists, and the date. And the fact that it's supposed to look nice and accidental. Did you notice something about those lists, Eric?"

  I threw a glance over my shoulder at the sleeping girl, in a supposedly meaningful way, and said, "Stop blocking the doorway and let me get some fresh air, will you?" I moved past him, out of the air-conditioning into the warm new daylight. As he joined me, pulling the door closed behind him, I said softly, "I'm paid to notice things about lists and so are you. But we're not paid to talk about what we notice in front of Tom, Dick, Harry, or Martha. If you know what I mean."

  "She's sound asleep. Anyway, I thought you said she was his daughter." Carl studied me narrowly. "Maybe there is something else I ought to know, after all."

  I regarded him for a moment, a tall man, a big man, in jeans and a thin, gaudy sports shirt that was unbuttoned far enough to display a fairly hairy chest. It's getting so the men are going in for these pectoral peepshows just like the women-unisex, I suppose. He was a couple of inches short of my own height of six-four, but constructed along considerably huskier lines. He had a long, square-chinned face that showed a good growth of blond stubble in the early-morning light. His hair was yellow and wavy, and his eyes were so blue it almost hurt to look at them-so intensely blue they seemed unnatural. Maybe they were.

  I moved my shoulders casually. "Security clearance isn't hereditary, you know," I said. "Even Mac is quite aware of that. He's passed the word that all numerical information transmitted through the girl should be factored minus twice, just in case. Code double negative. Got it?"

  The blue eyes watched me steadily. "Got it. Throw away two. Does Lorna know?"

  Normally, I wouldn't have told him about a part of the operation that was somebody else's responsibility, but I've seen too many complicated jobs loused up because some security-happy would-be leader of men didn't trust his subordinates with facts that later turned out to be vital. I once killed a woman because nobody'd trusted me enough to tell me she was on my side, even though I'd asked. As it turned out, she'd been on both sides, but that didn't make me feel any better at the time.

  Anyway, it seemed to me that under these special circumstances, everybody who was stuck with this last-ditch assignment was entitled to just about all the facts I had, which didn't really overburden them with information.

  "Lorna knows," I said, and went on, lying a little, "it's not that Mac doesn't trust his kid, or that I don't. It's just that, well, she isn't cleared and we can't take chances. As for what you noticed about those lists of names, tell me your idea and I'll tell you if it agrees with mine."

  He nodded. "Five pairs of names in my bunch." he said. "Five cities. New Orleans, where I was supposed to be. Chicago. Bangor, Maine. Knoxville, Tennessee. Miami. And that's all, east of the Big Miss. Funny, isn't it?"

  "It seemed that way to me," I said. "Not one name from Boston, New York, Philadelphia, or Baltimore, where you'd expect a kind of concentration."

  "And not one solitary name from Washington, D.C., where you'd expect business to be really booming. Well, I suppose if it were our business, we'd have been told. The one good thing about him is, he generally knows what he's doing. At least I try to cling to that thought. Well, I'd better be on my way."

  "Two questions first," I said. "Satisfy my curiosity. I gave him to you. Rullington. Why didn't you take him?"

  The unnaturally blue eyes hit me with a cold blue gaze. "You know damned well why I didn't-when you gave him to me unconscious, with hours to go before he came around. Any pigs I kill, I want them to know it. And you were counting on it, don't pretend you weren't. Next question."

  "Why the wire?"

  He grinned abruptly, showing big, white, even teeth. "Hell, man, I like guns. I wouldn't want to give them a bad name by shooting some slimy cops with them, when there are so many other interesting weapons around." His grin faded as abruptly as it had come. "Those big-bellied bastards! They dish out gallons of self-serving propaganda about how the world is going to hell because more and more people are killing more and more crummy policemen. Doesn't it ever occur to them that it just might be because more and more crummy policemen are killing more and more people? Ah, hell! You shouldn't have got me started on that. Do you want to know something funny, Eric? I used to think the police were on our side. That's what I tried to teach my kid, anyway, after her mother died and I had to make like both parents. So the cops she'd been taught to trust went and shot her in the back while she was trying to get to safety inside the girls' dormitory!"

  "It was an accident, Carl!" I said. It sounded just as ineffectual as when Rullington had said it to me.

  "Accident, hell!" he snorted. "Cops aren't supposed to have accidents like that! If there's a choice between risking the life of an innocent citizen and getting killed, a cop is supposed to stand right there and die, goddamn it! Hell, you and I, Eric, we've both had the cyanide capsule between our back teeth, ready to take a bite of death just to save our native land a little embarrassment. Show me the place in the Constitution that says we're supposed to give up our lives for our jobs and our country but a lousy policeman is supposed to live forever!"

  As he said, I shouldn't have started him on that. I was getting pretty tired of temperamental agents: Lorna with her morbid philosophy, and Carl with his vengeful prejudice. I studied the big blond man grimly, hoping that no unfortunate highway patrolman had occasion to stop him for speeding during the next day or two. He was a bomb set to go off at the sight of a badge.

  "Eric," he said.

  "Yes?"

  The brilliant blue eyes stared at me hard out of the unshaved face. "You were pretty rough back there. You know that."

  "Hell, I was sticking my neck way out, amigo. I had to jolt you before you lopped it off."

  "You jolted me," he said coldly. "Maybe I'll forget it, and then again, maybe I won't."

  The whole damned outfit was crawling with prima donnas, male and female, each one considering himself or herself the toughest, smartest thing to inhabit the continent since the sabertooth tiger became extinct. There was only one way to handle that.

  "Sure," I said. "Any time we've got nothing better to do, I'll be happy to discuss it with you again."

  His grin flashed on once more, like a nervous neon sign. "That's safe enough to say. When does he give us that much time? Tell me something: why do we do it for him? 1 quit, even if I quit to the wrong man. Why don't I just tell you to tell him to go to hell?" He didn't wait for a reply, which was just as well since I didn't have any. He glanced towards the motel room. "Tell the Borden kid goodbye for me. I won't wake her. Ask her to gi
ve my regards to her parent, when she rejoins him wherever it is you're taking her." It was the one thing I'd held out on him, as on Lorna; it was a responsibility they didn't need. Carl grimaced. "That cold-blooded human spider spinning his lousy webs of intrigue!" he said. "And you're pretty damned spidery yourself, come to think of it. Auf wiedersehen, Eric. Maybe."

  I didn't like that. I didn't like anything about him, the way he was. II was like dealing with nitroglycerine, ready to explode at a touch. But I particularly didn't like that qualified auf wiedersehen-which means, in case you're not up on your German, 'until we see each other again.' If he wasn't really expecting to see me again, 1 hoped he'd get his job done before he went and got himself killed in some berserk damn fool way.

  I watched him drive off. Then I turned, and went back into the room, woke up Martha, and told her she could finish sleeping in the station wagon. By nightfall, we were well into Louisiana, on our way to Florida, and the car radio had informed us that the vicious strangler of Fort Adams, Oklahoma, an elderly gent named Harvey Hollingshead, captured by diligent police work on the part of the local sheriff's office, had wound up the case very neatly by dying of a heart attack in his cell after confessing to his crimes.

  xx.

  They have a funny law in Texas. Apparently they don't like to see all vehicles on the highway rolling along safely at the same speed. I guess it's dull around those parts with the Kiowas and Comanches no longer on the warpath, so they try to make life a bit more interesting by slowing down the cars with trailers so the cars without can get a good crack at them. At least that was my theory until I got into Louisiana and found the same crazy speed restrictions in force, only worse.

  What with the ridiculous, discriminatory speed limits and the atrocious, crowded roads-I guess we Southwestern desert dwellers get kind of spoiled by our lonely, high-speed highways-I found myself straining hard to make time, which is no way to drive. There wasn't all that need for haste, anyway. It was only the eleventh of the month. I wasn't due in Florida for several days yet.

  I pulled into the motel in Shreveport, therefore, a little after dark. Martha remained in the car while I checked us in as Mr. and Mrs. once more. Again, I found a spot at the rear of the parking area where I could leave the long rig without unhitching. I grabbed the luggage and headed for the room assigned to us-on the ground floor, this time- aware of her following along in silence. I didn't waste any effort on conversation, or attempts at conversation. I mean, I was truly and legally married once, and I know when I'm in the doghouse. I'd been there ever since we'd heard the radio report informing us of old Mr. Hollingshead's fate.

  Inside the room, which looked like any two-bed motel unit, I placed one suitcase on the luggage rack at the foot of each bed, opened mine, got out the whiskey, poured myself a drink, and went into the bathroom to dilute it. Martha was still standing just inside the door when I came out. She regarded me coldly.

  "Yes," she said, "I should think you would need some alcohol about now! Quite a bit, in fact. How much does it take, Mr. Helm?"

  I grinned at her. "To drown my conscience, you mean? Sweetheart, you flatter me. The feeble little thing expired years ago."

  "You left him there unconscious for the police to find! That poor old man!"

  I sighed. "Won't you even try to be consistent, Borden? Just make a slight effort, please, for my sake. That poor old man was stalking a human being with a rifle, remember? As far as I'm concerned, it's nothing against him, but you're supposed to disapprove of that kind of behavior. Well, if that's your attitude, for Christ's sake stick to it! Don't act as if his dying has suddenly made him a martyred saint." She didn't speak. I hesitated, but there wasn't any sense in pussyfooting around. There were enough secrets between us already without my leaving more lying around for us to trip over. I said, "Anyway, you're overestimating Rullington and his deputies. Find, hell! They're not that smart or that thorough. I told them where to look."

  Her eyes widened. "You told them? But that… that's sick!"

  "Is it? Was I supposed to let him loose to murder that nice sheriff whose life I'd promised you I'd save? I'm a man of my word, Borden. Why are you raising hell with me for doing what you asked me to? Rullington's alive and safe, isn't he? I never promised you a damn thing about Hollingshead."

  She gasped, "If you think you can blame me for your-"

  "All right, all right, simmer down," I said. "I was kidding a little, maybe. The fact is, I'd like things to settle down around Fort Adams, and people to stop asking questions and making investigations. I don't want Rullington on Carl's trail, maybe lousing up Carl's job. The sheriff's got his life, his money, and his son back, but he's a cop, and he'd never have been satisfied as long as he was stuck with two unsolved cop-killings on his books. I knew that, so I made a deal with him. He gave me Carl, whom I needed, and I gave him an answer he needed. It wasn't quite the right answer, but very few people know that, and he was willing to settle for it, under the circumstances. It got him off the hook, and it got him out of my hair."

  "And Mr. Hollingshead went to jail for something he didn't do, and died there, but that doesn't matter!"

  I said wearily, "Why don't you wake up, little girl? It's like Lorna said, you've got a thing about death. Nobody's supposed to die, ever, in your pretty little dream world. WeIl, fine, but in the real world, everybody dies sooner or later. And sometimes somebody's got to do some picking and choosing. It becomes a question of who dies now, and who gets to live a little longer because of it."

  "And you're the one who decides?" Her voice was sharp with scorn. "Really, Matt, you are sick, with delusions of grandeur. What makes you think you have the right to-"

  "The fact that my stalking was better than the old man's hearing gave me the right," I said bluntly. "If he'd heard me sneaking up on him, and got the drop on me, the choice would have been his." I drew a long breath. "Just tell me, Borden, what would you have done with the old gent? What would you have had me do? He could stay free and kill, or he could go to jail and die. I didn't know he'd have a fatal attack behind bars, of course, but okay, say I'm responsible. If I'd left him free, he'd probably have managed to shoot Rullington. He was willing to sacrifice his life to do it, and a man like that is hard to stop. So tell me, what would you have done about him, in my place?"

  "Well, I certainly wouldn't have betrayed him to-"

  "Cut it out!" I said sharply. "Betray means a breach of faith. How could I betray Hollingshead when I didn't owe him anything and hadn't promised him anything?" 1 grimaced. "And why wouldn't you have tipped off the police, for God's sake? You're a good citizen who disapproves of homicide, aren't you? Your duty and your conscience should have sent you racing to warn them about a potential murderer sneaking around with a loaded firearm and a king-sized grudge. Why not?"

  She said sulkily, "You're just twisting things around!"

  "Before you start slinging around loaded words like betray," I said, "before you start lining me up alongside Judas and Benedict Arnold, why don't you give a little consideration to the victim himself and what he thought about it. It doesn't look very much as if Mr. Hollingshead felt seriously betrayed, does it?"

  "What do you mean?" Martha demanded. "How can you tell what the old man felt before he died?"

  "Hell, he told us," I said. "You heard the radio report. He said it loud and clear. He deliberately confessed to two murders he hadn't committed. That was his little trick on the cops, and his message to me."

  "Don't be silly! They must have given him the third degree-"

  "Oh, Jesus Christ!" I said disgustedly.

  "What's the matter now?" she demanded.

  "Nothing," I said. "Nothing at all, just the way you keep switching the cast of characters to suit your mood. Now that worthy, abused, law-enforcement officer whose life you were so desperate to save a few hours back turns out to be a sadistic bully who beats confessions out of his prisoners. And that brave and noble old gent for whom you've just been weeping large tears has
suddenly become a cowardly, chicken-livered old creep who'll cravenly sign his name to anything after a couple of minutes' interrogation. Hell, they only had him for part of a night, Borden. I don't put a little rough stuff past our sheriff friend, but do you really believe that any bunch of cops, singly or in relays, could have made that tough old rawhide character out of the Kentucky hills confess to anything he didn't want to confess to? Well, okay, anybody can be broken in time, but if Rullington can crack a man like that in just a couple of hours, he's got techniques that Hitler's Gestapo never learned."

  Martha shook her head in a baffled way. "Then it doesn't make sense! If they didn't force him to confess, why-"

  "I told you why!" I snapped. "You just won't listen. I told you, he was putting one over on them. And he was sending me a message. He was telling me, wherever I was, that the joke was on him and there were no hard feelings. To prove it, he was taking the heat off me by claiming official credit for my two killings-he thought I was Carl, remember-just the way he'd offered to do when we talked earlier. He was heaping coals of fire on my head, so to speak. He was putting me under an obligation. In return, he hoped I'd do a little something for him."

  Martha licked her lips. "What… what did he want you to do for him?"

  "You know what," I said shortly.

  "You mean… you mean you think he expected you to kill the sheriff for him? But that's insane?"

  "Nothing insane about it. He thought I was Carl. By confessing, he was just getting the cops out of my way so I could do more easily what he thought I was planning to do anyway. It was his contribution to the cause of revenge. It seems a pity to let it go to waste." I grinned abruptly. "Don't jump down my throat, Borden. I was just kidding, in my crude way. I can't go around shooting officers of the law to oblige a bloodthirsty old feudist, even a bloodthirsty old feudist who did me a favor by taking the heat off Carl."

  "I'm glad you told me," she said tartly. "Otherwise I'd certainly have wondered, considering the creepy way your mind works Damn you!"