Assassins Have Starry Eyes

by Donald Hamilton

  “Dr. Gregory, please!”

  I turned slowly back to face her. “Please what?”

  “Please don’t,” she said. “Don’t joke about it!”

  “Who’s joking?” I said. “How the hell do I know what you’ve got in that purse?”

  She looked down, seemingly startled, pulled the purse open, and dumped the contents heedlessly on the bed, revealing no object larger than a thin wallet and a silver compact. “Are you satisfied?” she asked. “Or do you want to search me?”

  “What’s the matter?” I said. “Didn’t the police ever give you back the .22 pistol? Well, you could have used Junior’s knife, or don’t you like to get your fingers bloody?” I walked past her to the dresser and ripped open the drugstore package which contained some tape, a box of sterile gauze pads, and a bottle of tincture of merthiolate. I said, “I’m sorry, Spanish. I’m in a nasty mood this morning.”

  “You have every reason to be,” she said quietly. “What are you going to do, Dr. Gregory?”

  “You keep asking me what I’m going to do.”

  “Well, what are you? About Tony?”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “He’s not in jail, is he? Just keep him away from me, and he’ll be all right.”

  “All right!” Her breath caught. “After the way you… Granted that you were justified in defending yourself, Dr. Gregory, did you have to be so… so brutal? After all, you’re a fairly big man, and he’s only a boy!”

  I turned on my feet to stare at her. “Spanish,” I said slowly, “for sheer cold unmitigated gall, you take the prize. This is the second time you’ve had the nerve to come into my room uninvited to complain about my behavior on the occasion of one of your friends or relations trying to kill me. Miss Rasmussen, did anybody ever try to kill you? Did you ever lie on the ground with a bullet in your guts, wondering if you were dying or crippled for life, while some crazy punk sprayed lead all around you? Did you ever step peacefully up to unlock your car and have a two-bit squirt try to slip five inches of steel into your back?” I filled my lungs with air and blew it out again. “I’m not hardened to it, Spanish,” I said softly. “You see, I never went to war. I’m not used to people trying to kill me. I spend most of my time at quiet, intellectual pursuits. I wear my pants shiny behind a desk eleven months out of the year, except for an occasional stroll through a laboratory. I’m a big brain, precious; an egghead if you like. Occasionally, come fall, I get out in the open and fire off a gun and pretend I’m Dan’l Boone, but it’s just pretending. I don’t expect to meet any wild Indians and I don’t expect the deer to shoot back. I don’t go out to take any big risks, and when somebody tries to kill me, it upsets me. It makes me mad, even. I don’t want to lie dead up in the Jemez Mountains with your boyfriend’s bullet in my back; or in a Santa Fe street with your brother’s knife between my ribs. I don’t want to lie dead anywhere. I know that’s unreasonable of me, but then I’m an unreasonable sort of a guy. I’m so damn unreasonable that since you’re here I’m going to make you help me with these bandages, since your brother chose to slice me open in a place only a contortionist could reach. Here, catch.”

  I tossed the stuff into her lap and began to unfasten my shirt. After a moment she rose and went into the bathroom. When I came in, she was washing her hands thoroughly. She shook them dry, rather than use a towel that might have germs on it.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t blame you for losing your temper. It was a stupid thing for me to say. Turn around.” I did so, and heard her gasp. “You shouldn’t have used a handkerchief!”

  I said, “I was fresh out of Bandaids eight inches across. You sound like you know something about it.”

  “I took some nurse’s aid training a couple of years ago. Well, it’s kind of pointless to keep it sterile now. I’ll just trim around it and cover it with a dressing. Have you got a pair of scissors?”

  “In my shaving kit.” After a while, as she worked back there, I asked, “How’s Tony this morning?”

  “He’ll be all right. He’s got an ugly slash along the arm, but no tendons or major blood vessels were damaged, so I… I took care of him myself, without calling a doctor.”

  “I suppose you kind of brought him up,” I said.

  “Kind of.” Her fingers smoothed tape into place on my back, one strip after another. “You really should have some stitches taken, Dr. Gregory, or it’ll leave a bad scar.”

  “It’ll have plenty of company,” I said. “Some day let me show you where the surgeons played ticktack-toe on my tummy.”

  “Why didn’t you go to a doctor?”

  “For the same reason you didn’t. A doctor would have had to report to the police.”

  “You’re not going to call them, then?”

  I looked at her over my shoulder. “That’s what you came here to find out, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your own notion,” I asked, “or his?”

  She hesitated. “His,” she admitted. “He wasn’t making much sense when I put him to bed. I gave him a sedative. When he woke up, he was in a panic, expecting somebody to drive up and arrest him at any minute. He wanted to run away. I… I had to promise to come here and intercede for him.”

  “You’ve done it before?”

  She frowned. “Done what?”

  “Interceded,” I said. “Gone to bat for him.”

  She put a final strip of tape into place, and smoothed it down. “There, that’s the best I can do… No,” she said, “that’s the terrible thing, Dr. Gregory. You probably won’t believe it, but this is the first time anything of the sort… I don’t even know where he got the knife.”

  I said, “They’re easy enough to get; every pachuco has one, I understand.”

  She caught my arm and swung me around to face her. “My brother is no pachuco, Dr. Gregory! That’s what I’m trying to tell you. He’s not a juvenile delinquent; he’s never been in any trouble; he got fine grades all through school; and he’s doing very well at the University. I’m not saying he’s an angel. He drinks and smokes and goes out with girls; and sometimes he undoubtedly drives much too fast, but I’ve never had any cause to worry about him until—”

  “Until last fall,” I said.

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  I said, “If he’s really a good kid, as you say, once he gets over feeling scared and sorry for himself, he may realize that it could have been worse. He could have waked up a murderer. Maybe the thought will help me persuade him to talk to me; particularly when he learns I’m not going to have him arrested. How about it?”

  She hesitated; then she said, “All right. I’ve pretty well got to trust you, haven’t I? And if we can learn what’s behind all this, maybe… maybe we can help him.”

  Driving was kind of tricky; it was the first time I had really appreciated all those power gadgets that let me control the car without exerting enough force to push me back against the seat. I pulled up in front of the house; she let us in with her key. I saw her pause; then she was running across the living room, leaving me standing there looking at the pieces of the black San Ildefonso bowl that I had noticed the evening before, now shattered on the floor.

  THIRTEEN

  TEN MINUTES LATER we had been all over the house, and had also checked the patio and the garage out back. There were no dead bodies on the property. There were a few spots of gore in the bathroom, but it was old gore that she had overlooked while cleaning up last night. Clothes were missing, she said, the boy’s jalopy was missing, and sixty-three bucks that had been in the black bowl—household money, she said—was also missing. We decided that the bowl must have slipped out of his weakened hand while he was emptying it; there was no other sign of violence. We decided that there was really nothing to get excited about after all, and went into the kitchen to make coffee, and came out into the living room to drink it.

  “Cream and sugar, Dr. Gregory?” she asked.

  “Thanks,” I said, seating myself on the sofa and
accepting the cup she passed across the low table, a heavily constructed piece of smoky-looking old wood that undoubtedly started its career as something other than a cocktail table. She poured her own coffee, and stood there for a moment sipping it black, as if checking whether it was fit to drink. The straight, tailored blue dress, open at the throat, caused me to revise some of my previous doubtful estimates of her figure; and the heels and stockings improved my already favorable opinion of her legs. In civilized clothes she was a very nice-looking girl.

  I said, “Okay, Spanish. Where’s he gone?”

  She spilled some coffee down her chin and had to grab for a napkin to mop herself off. She did not look at me. “What do you mean? I suppose he’s just gone back to Albuquerque… to the University. Where else would he go?”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “And he suddenly remembered he was late for class and dashed out grabbing a handful of bills, in too much of a hurry to sweep up the pieces of the bowl he dropped.” I shook my head. “It won’t wash.”

  “Maybe not,” she said. “All right; I don’t know where he’s gone.”

  I said, “You’re a pretty liar, Spanish, but not a very good one.”

  She looked at me angrily. “I wish you wouldn’t call me—”

  “What’s the matter, are you sensitive about it?”

  “No, but—”

  I got up and walked around the table to face her. “Where’s he gone?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I said, “When you first came in, and found him missing, you almost fainted. After all, he’d promised not to run out if you went over and talked to me, hadn’t he? You told me that yourself. Then we looked around a little; then you relaxed and became all smiles and hospitality and treated me to the longest and slowest cup of coffee in the history of the bean… He left a message, didn’t he? And you found it. And it seemed like a good idea to keep me here as long as possible to give him a head start. Well, are you going to tell me where he’s headed, or would you rather tell the police?”

  “The police!”

  “You’re damn right, the police,” I said crudely.

  “But you said—”

  “I said I wasn’t going to. That was before he disappeared. Now I’m going to. Where’s the phone?”

  She cried, “But you can’t… What are you going to tell them?”

  “That your brother’s running amok with a knife and had better be taken into custody before he hurts somebody else.”

  She stared at me. “But that’s perfectly ridiculous! Just because he—” She checked herself.

  “Merely because he tried to murder me last night?” I asked dryly. “No, Spanish, I am trying to overlook that insignificant incident. Despite the fact that he tried to murder me last night, I’m trying to save his life.”

  “His life!” For a moment she looked frightened; then she drew herself up. “Isn’t that just a little hypocritical, Dr. Gregory? I suppose you have a right to have him arrested, but you don’t really have to pretend you’re doing it for his own good! There isn’t the slightest indication that his life’s in any danger—except from you! Everything shows that he left this house of his own free will—”

  “Sure,” I said. “And do you know how many other people mixed up in this have left their houses of their own free wills in the past eight months, and never come back?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “About eight months ago,” I said, “early last summer, an old guy named Fischer who worked in Washington—you’ve never heard of him, but he was pretty well known in his field—went sailing on Chesapeake Bay of his own free will. He was never seen again. The boat was found drifting, empty. Last fall, an unsavory scientific character named Gregory, whom you’ve met, went hunting of his own free will. He almost didn’t make it back home either. A month or so later a guy named Justin from over at Alamos went skiing up in the Sangre de Cristos of his own free will. He vanished. They didn’t even find the skis. A week or so ago an associate of mine named Bates down in Albuquerque got fed up, resigned, and drove up into the mountains to commune with nature. He was found the next morning shot to death with his own gun. A day later my wife decided she’d had enough of one thing and another; she headed for Reno, of her own free will. She never got there. They found the car wrecked but she wasn’t around. She still isn’t.” I paused. “That’s just the ones I know. There may be others that security has kept me from hearing about. So when a kid who’s obviously involved in the same mess suddenly takes off for parts unknown, I can’t take the responsibility of keeping quiet. I’ve got to get him back to where somebody can keep an eye on him, for his own sake if nothing else.”

  She studied my face for several seconds after I had finished; then she looked down, seemed to be surprised to discover that she was still holding her cup and saucer, and turned to set them on the tray.

  “You’re trying to frighten me,” she said quietly.

  “Sure.”

  “What… what is this thing that you think Tony’s got himself involved in? Tony and Paul both.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Whatever it is, it’s big. So big that when somebody told them to go out and kill for it, they went. Would they kill for money, Spanish?”

  She started to speak angrily, checked herself, and shook her head. “No,” she said. “No, they wouldn’t kill for money, Dr. Gregory.”

  “There are people who would say that communism is a pretty big thing, to those who believe in it.”

  “My brother isn’t a communist, and neither was Paul Hagen!”

  “Six months ago you’d have said just as firmly that they weren’t murderers… Pass it, Spanish. Don’t get mad. I’d say the same about my wife. She’s a screwball in many respects, but she’s not a communist or a traitor to her country. Yet she’s messed up in this too. I want to find her. Tony’s my only lead. Even if he knows nothing else, he’ll at least be able to tell me why he and Hagen tried to kill me. There’s a chance he knows more. Because it’s very unlikely that he came up here accidentally this weekend, or even that he just happened to learn somehow that I was coming. It’s much more likely that somebody who’s been keeping track of my movements saw where I was heading, got hold of Tony, and gave him his orders and a knife. And the reason Tony tried to talk you into not seeing me—I gather that he did from the way both of you were acting last night—is that he didn’t really want to kill anybody, and if I didn’t come the plan would have to be called off or postponed. But I did come, and he had to make his try, and he missed—maybe he even wanted to miss. That’s a pretty shallow groove in my back. Your brother’s no better at murder than Hagen was, which I guess isn’t really anything against either of them. But now these people, whoever they are, have a failure on their hands; a scared kid, running away, who probably knows too much. All I can say, Spanish, is that if I were running their show, I’d have him wiped out. And if I were you I would let me call the police. They can do more to protect him than we can.”

  I stopped talking and waited. She looked down at her hands, which were locked tightly in front of her. “I… I can’t do that. After all that investigation last fall, if he were arrested now he’d never live it down. It would ruin him.”

  “Sure,” I said. “A friend of mine was ruined last week. You should have seen what the buckshot did to him.”

  She winced. “I’ll take you to Tony,” she said. “If you’ll promise… No. If I can’t trust you, you’d break a promise anyway, wouldn’t you? Just give me time to change my clothes.”

  I said, “If we’re going out of town, you’d better bring along a sleeping bag or a couple of blankets. I don’t like the looks of the weather. And if you’ve got shells for that thirty-thirty on the wall, we might find room for that, too.”

  FOURTEEN

  NORTH OF SANTA FE you hit some places with really tricky names: Tesuque and Pojoaque, for instance, and, after turning northwest of the Taos road, Abiquiu. This pointed us in the direction of Chama and Brazos. It’s
rough country up there and high country; to the west is the Jicarilla Apache reservation which, like most Indian reservations, is country no white man was expected to have any use for. That, of course, was back in the days before oil and uranium, but the Jicarillas, unlike their Cherokee and Navajo brethren, are still not getting rich off the grim chunk of wilderness allotted them by a benevolent government. To the east is a solid mass of mountains sliced north and south by various rivers including the Rio Grande, but practically impenetrable in an east-westerly direction. To the north, among other interesting and elevated landmarks, is the ten-thousand-foot Cumbres Pass leading into Colorado.

  It’s a great country, but it scares the hell out of me. I am, after all, only a part-time pioneer. North of Abiquiu we got rain, which also impaired my morale. Bad weather always worries me west of the Mississippi, particularly between November and May at altitudes over six thousand feet. This was only the end of March; and the gray clouds hung low over the broken landscape as far as you could see—thirty miles and more when the terrain opened up a little, as it did frequently. Ahead, the mountains ran up into the clouds and disappeared.

  The road was wet and black in front of us. There were patches of old snow along the hillsides. In ten miles we passed no more than a single pickup truck carrying a load of firewood. The windshield wipers clicked and the heater whined softly and the tires hissed and the miles passed. Nina Rasmussen sat beside me in an alert and ladylike way, her legs neatly crossed and her hands neatly folded in her lap. She was wearing jeans and a black-and-red Mackinaw jacket; she also had a red knitted ski cap and mittens to match, but she had taken these off after the car had warmed up. I had changed—when we stopped to pick up my stuff at the hotel—into my hunting clothes over a firm foundation of long wool underwear. It may scratch a little, but it can save your life. In winter, I’d as soon go hunting without my gun as without the longies. Presently we met another car from the north. It had snow on the roof and windshield.