Assassins Have Starry Eyes

by Donald Hamilton

  She shook her head, watching her husband with a wary and yet defiant attitude.

  Larry said, “Well, here we are. It’s very cosy, isn’t it? I suppose it was inevitable. Three years of pretending to be deaf and blind are enough, Greg.”

  I said, “That remark was too subtle for me. You’d better develop it further.”

  He said, “I’m just a stupid little mathematician, to quote my wife. It takes me quite a while to learn what goes on behind my back. I suppose it started back in Chicago when you used to stay at the apartment. You handled that very neatly, I must say, both of you. I never suspected a thing.”

  “There was nothing to suspect.”

  “No? You must take me for a complete fool, Greg! Did you think I could go forever without figuring out why you asked me to join the Project? Particularly when you made it so obvious that it wasn’t my ideas you wanted; all you really needed was a hack mathematician to make routine calculations, and that was all you ever intended for me to be here… But it was a mistake to ask Jack Bates here, wasn’t it? He was younger and better looking; he took her away from you, didn’t he? For a while, at least. Until he died.”

  I looked at him for a while. At a moment like that you wonder if the guy has always been this way and you just never saw it; or whether he changed when you weren’t looking. Maybe, I reflected, I should get into the habit of taking a good hard look at the people around me, every now and then, just to check up.

  I said, “That’s a very interesting thesis, Larry. It seems strange, under the circumstances, that I bothered to get married, doesn’t it?”

  He laughed sharply. “Not strange at all. A rich wife is an asset to a penniless scientist, if he isn’t burdened with too many scruples. Besides making good camouflage for an illicit love affair… You must have handled Natalie badly, though; she saw through the situation and left you fast enough!”

  I said, “I’m really a hell of a fellow, aren’t I? A sonofabitch like I am would be apt to get a big kick out of knocking another fellow’s teeth in, wouldn’t he?”

  “I might have expected that reaction,” he said stiffly. “You always did have a muscular mentality, Greg. It was always a surprise to me that you ever managed to show signs of a genuine scientific imagination—or did you? A man who would steal other men’s wives wouldn’t be above stealing their ideas, would he?” He walked quickly to the hall door. “Never mind threatening me again, I’m going. I’ll leave the two of you alone.” He laughed harshly. “But before you relax in Ruth’s gentle company, just ask yourself one question, Greg. Ask yourself how the scarf that fell out of the pocket of Natalie’s fur coat when Ruth was hanging it up in the closet that night—you remember the scarf, don’t you?—well, just ask yourself how it got from our house to the vicinity of Jack Bates’s dead body!”

  His footsteps marched down the hall. The door closed loudly. The steps went down the walk outside. A car started and drove away. Ruth was on her feet, reaching for me. There are some women who can’t ask you the time unless they’ve got a good grip on you. I side-stepped.

  “You see how he is!” she gasped. “You see how suspicious and unreasonable—”

  “I see,” I said. “I see that you’ve teased the poor guy crazy with things that never happened—and maybe a few that did.”

  Her face became hard and ugly. She, too, was someone I had never known. “Oh, so it’s my fault!”

  “Not entirely,” I said. “I’ll admit that a man’s got to cooperate in order for anybody to make that big a fool of him.”

  She threw back her head and laughed shrilly. “Look who’s talking about fools!” she cried. “Just look who’s calling another man a fool!”

  “Good night, Ruth,” I said.

  “Well, if that’s the way you feel—” She walked quickly to the door, paused to pull her sweater straight, and turned quickly to look at me again. None of them can just walk out of the house. She said, “As for the scarf—”

  I said, “To hell with the damn scarf.”

  She glared at me for a moment, whirled, and ran out, slamming the front door. I needed a drink. I went into the kitchen and pulled open the refrigerator. It was sitting right there on the shelf, propped up against a milk carton—as far as I know you can’t buy milk in glass in New Mexico, it’s all in cardboard. It was a cheap envelope without address or other writing. It seemed like an odd place to use as a mailbox; yet very logical when you came to think of it. The refrigerator was the last place anyone else would search for a hidden communication, yet it was a place I would be bound to look sooner or later, at the very latest for my breakfast eggs.

  I took it out by the edges and pushed the door closed with a fingertip. It seemed unlikely that fingerprints would mean anything, but somebody might get upset if I neglected the more obvious precautions. I slit the envelope with the small, sharp blade of my knife—the same knife I had used against Tony Rasmussen, but not the same blade. Everything was different these days: refrigerators were mailboxes and penknives were lethal weapons and old friends turned into snarling and suspicious beasts. I blew into the slit, and drew out the folded sheet of paper inside, unfolded it carefully, and read the message printed in block letters with a soft pencil:

  BRING FIFTY THOUSAND IN USED BILLS TO HANKSVILLE UTAH IF YOU WANT HER BACK ALIVE.

  TWENTY

  EARLY IN MY brief western career I bought myself a pair of cowboy boots. That was the year I did all the bear hunting up around Chama, on horseback; and the old fellow who took me out recommended this type of footgear highly for riding. He was quite right. The boots were fine for riding—but I never learned to walk in them. You’ve got to start young to get used to those heels. Nevertheless, I broke them out now, since they had certain advantages none of my other boots possessed. They pulled on instead of lacing, for one thing; a definite asset to a man stiffened by an assortment of scars and lacerations. They gave me a couple of inches more height, also; there’s nothing like a cowboy boot to make you feel tall and reckless and daring, and I could use that feeling. The open tops were handy for a purpose I had in mind; and I didn’t think I was going to have to walk very far, anyway. I was just pulling them on, having dressed in my hunting clothes complete to the long johns, when the doorbell rang.

  I swaggered across the living room in my jeans and high heels, and opened up. It was the girl with the horn-rimmed glasses who had been taking dictation from Mr. Walsh in the bar of the Alvarado. She was wearing a light spring coat and a small hat with a rudimentary veil, and she was carrying a rectangular package.

  “Please step back into the light,” she said. “I can’t see your face clearly.” I took a step backwards. She nodded. “All right, Dr. Gregory. Here it is. Mr. Walsh says good luck.” She smiled and put the package into my hand. She was really a very pretty girl, despite the glasses. “So do I,” she said. “Good night.”

  I watched her get into a light sedan that had the anonymous look of a rental car, and drive away. I closed the door. It was the first time I had ever had fifty thousand dollars in my possession at one time, but it did not make my heart beat any faster. I can get excited over a deer, or a scientific discovery, or a mathematical equation, or even a pretty girl, but where money is concerned I have nerves of steel. Five minutes later I was in the car, driving north.

  They let me get almost to Bernalillo, which is a small town eighteen miles north of Albuquerque. Then a state police cruiser pulled away from a filling station as I passed, passed me, and cut in ahead of me, hitting the siren lightly. This was not altogether unexpected, and I followed it out on the shoulder and came to a stop behind it. A blue-clad officer got out and came walking back to me.

  “Dr. Gregory?” he said. “Dr. James Gregory?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “May I see your driving license, please?”

  I held it out. He examined it and passed it back. I asked, “What’s the trouble, officer?”

  “I couldn’t say, sir. We’ll just wait here a few
minutes. They’ll be along pretty soon.”

  He had a dark, grave face. It wasn’t worth while trying to argue with him. It’s never worth while arguing with a policeman; and it’s particularly useless when he is not of your own race and religion, because the difference is always there, cutting both ways, even if you are both intelligent and tolerant men.

  I said, “Sit in the car where it’s warm, if you like.”

  He shook his head, thanking me politely. Maybe there was a rule against it. We waited ten to fifteen minutes. Cars and trucks passed; and people looked out of them with the sympathetic but rather wary interest aroused by the sight of a fellow-citizen in trouble with the law. Finally we heard the sound of a car approaching from the south at considerably more than the legal rate of speed, which, in New Mexico on the open road is sixty miles per hour in the daytime and fifty-five at night. The policeman looked up with professional interest. I wondered how close he could clock them by ear. The car slowed down and came to a squealing and crunching halt behind us. The policeman walked back to meet it. Presently he came past me again, and got into the cruiser, which drove away. There was a tap on the glass of the right-hand door of the Pontiac. I leaned over to release the lock. Van Horn pulled the door open. There was a man behind him.

  I said, “Leave the stooge outside.”

  The man didn’t like that. I didn’t like him. I was no longer much taken with Van Horn either. This passion for little men with badges that has swept the country recently is something I find hard to understand. I was brought up on the theory that a cop was a necessary evil and you tried to get along with as few of him as possible.

  Van Horn said, “All right, Johnson, wait in the car,” and Johnson went back along the gravel, unhappily. Van Horn got in beside me and closed the door. “How’s the Rasmussen boy getting along?” he asked casually.

  “All right, the last I heard,” I said.

  He glanced at me, and at the departing agent. “Why antagonize people, Greg?”

  “Are cops people?” I asked. “I thought they were just like game wardens.”

  He said, “You talk big, but I bet you haven’t shot over your bag limit in fifteen years.”

  “The amount of game left in this country, a man is practically forced to be a sportsman in self-defense,” I said. “When I was a kid, however, the warden and I didn’t get along at all well. That was part of the fun. Nowadays when you see a badge you get down on hands and knees and touch your forehead to the ground respectfully. Particularly if it’s a federal badge. Have you got a federal badge, Van?”

  “I could probably borrow one if I needed it.”

  “I noticed the state police do what you tell them.” After a moment I said, “Don’t tell them again, Van. Next time I won’t stop.”

  He said, “Don’t get tough with me, Greg.”

  “I’m not getting tough with you. I’m just telling you. Next time I’ll keep going. They’ll have to shoot to stop me.”

  “We’ll talk about that in a minute,” he said. “First let me see the letter.”

  I took it out of the pocket of my wool shirt and gave it to him, and switched on the dome light for him. “I won’t be naïve and ask how you knew about that,” I said. “I figured my telephone was probably tapped by this time. Us subversives can’t expect much privacy. Well, I hope you enjoyed eavesdropping on my conversation with my father-in-law.”

  “Hanksville, Utah,” he said. “Anybody can write a note.”

  I reached into my pocket. “Sure. And anybody can enclose with it a gold wedding ring engraved: James-Natalie 1951. From Vladivostok. Or Outer Mongolia. Or Novosibirsk. Or Moscow. Nuts.” I looked at the ring, small and shiny on my palm. He held out his hand. I let the ring slide from my hand to his. “You don’t have to run tests on it,” I said. “It’s hers.”

  He looked at it and gave it back. “Perhaps we owe Mrs. Gregory an apology,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said. “But you don’t really believe that. The ring doesn’t prove anything. She could have taken it off before she left the country, as you think she was trying to do. Or they could have killed her and got it off the body. A week is a long time for kidnapers to wait before sending a ransom note—you’d know more about that than I do. Or she could be working with them, luring me to my doom. Does that cover all possibilities?”

  “Not quite,” he said. “She could have thrown it in your face as she left for Reno. It’s one way for a woman to dispose of an unwanted wedding ring. And you could have decided to put on a little act for me to clear her reputation—and incidentally your own. As the husband of a kidnap victim you’d look a lot better to certain people in Washington and the Project than as the husband of a mysterious disappearance. A refrigerator is an odd place to leave a ransom note—you did tell Mr. Walsh you found it in the refrigerator, didn’t you? I can’t recall anybody ever using that drop before.”

  I said, “Van, you’re cute.” I looked at the ring, took out my wallet and placed the ring carefully in a safe compartment and returned the wallet to my pocket.

  He asked, “Why didn’t you notify the police?”

  I said, “Maybe I figured I didn’t need to, with a bug on my telephone. You’re here, aren’t you?”

  He shook his head. “That won’t do, Greg.”

  “No?” I said. “Well, let’s put it this way, then. I didn’t notify the police or the F.B.I., because they would undoubtedly have tried to stop me just as you doubtless intend to. They are not primarily interested in Natalie’s safety and neither are you. I am. And I don’t intend to be stopped, Van. This may even be a straightforward deal; I can’t take the chance that it isn’t. And even if it isn’t, I have certain theories about the people with whom we’re dealing. I may be walking into a trap, but I don’t have a great deal of respect for their traps. You get a feeling about people just like you get about game; there are the tough hunts and the easy ones. These people don’t strike me as tough. I wouldn’t dream of stacking myself against a real underworld kidnap gang, but I’m willing to take a chance against this outfit. I think I can bust out of any trap they set for me; yes, and take Natalie right out with me. Anyway, I’m going to try.”

  He shook his head. “Maybe you’re willing, but it’s a chance we can’t afford to take. I’m sorry, Greg,” he said. “We can’t let you go. I’ll have to ask you to come back to town with me.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Normally,” he said, “the Bureau would probably advise payment. As a matter of fact, if Mr. Walsh wants to go to Hanksville with the money, I’ll see that he gets all the cooperation he needs.”

  I said, “If he goes, nobody’ll give him a tumble. If they’d wanted Bill Walsh, they’d have left a note for Bill Walsh.”

  “You see that, do you?”

  I said, “I make a few deductions, too, in my line of work.”

  “It smells like a trap to me,” he said.

  “Sure.”

  “A kidnaping for money just doesn’t fit in with anything else that’s happened. I think they’re after you. They’ve tried to kill you twice—three times, if you count the Rasmussen girl’s attempt, which may or may not have been an independent venture—” He waited as if expecting me to comment; but I saw no point in getting into an argument over Nina. He said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if they considered you dangerous game by this time. They might even be having trouble finding men willing to tackle the job, after what happened to Hagen and young Rasmussen. At least not without much more elaborate preparations than before. Do you know Hanksville?”

  “I’ve heard of it and looked it up on the map. I’ve driven through that general part of Utah.”

  “Well, then you know more about it than I do. But I know from magazine articles that it’s in the most desolate part of the uranium country, a hundred miles from nowhere—”

  “To be exact,” I said, “sixty miles from Green River, which isn’t exactly a metropolis to start with.” I looked at him. “Cut out the horsing around, Van.
I’ve told you what I’m going to do and why. Tell me how you’re going to stop me.”

  He said, “Be reasonable, Greg. Realize my position. Let’s say that I have complete faith in your loyalty—”

  “You have a damn funny way of showing it.”

  He went on without pausing: “Let’s say, even, that I fully believe your wife to be an unwilling prisoner of a gang of kidnapers. Under ordinary conditions, any risks you might want to run for her would be your own business. But the conditions aren’t ordinary. The government has a considerable investment in you, Greg; and it’s my duty to protect that investment.”

  I said, “That’s very neat. The government doesn’t trust me to work for it, won’t pay me a salary, but still claims the right to tell me to sit and twiddle my thumbs while my wife is in danger. If I let her be killed, does that make me trustworthy enough to go back to work at the Project?”

  “Look,” he said, “I understand your feelings perfectly—”

  I said, “I don’t think you do, Van. Reach back and pull that blanket off the rear seat.” He did so. I asked, “What do you see?”

  “A rifle and a double-barreled shotgun,” he said. “They’re both loaded,”

  I said. “I wasn’t kidding, Van. Don’t send any more cops to stop me. They’re nice hardworking guys and we’d hate to lose any of them. I’m a dangerous man, pal. I’ve got high-heeled boots and a big hat. I’ve got two tons of car and an assortment of high-powered firearms. And I’m going to Hanksville, Utah.”

  He said, “You’re bluffing.”

  “Try me and see.”

  “I don’t think you’re that crazy.”

  “I’m pretty damn crazy,” I said. “I’ve been shot, knifed, more or less widowed, and suspended from my job. I’ve been called plain and fancy names and heard my wife called the same. By using a few brains, of which I seem to have a monopoly around here, I’ve got myself a tip on what’s going on. Not much of a tip, but enough that when I started to follow it up, I got a reaction. Some people don’t like the direction in which I’m working. I’ve forced a move out of them, which is more than anybody else has done—everybody else being too damn busy watching the posts and borders for hypothetical Russian spies. So now all of a sudden I’m too valuable to risk. Well, nuts to you, my fine federal friend. You have a couple of seconds in which to decide how badly you want to keep me here. The way to do it is pull out the gun you’re undoubtedly packing and squeeze the trigger carefully. You get one shot free. We charge for the rest.”