Assignment — Angelina

by Edward S. Aarons

  "Just who are you?" she whispered.

  "A guy who wants a cut of the pie."

  "Will you be back? I want to think..."

  "I'll be back."

  He turned to the windows on the fire escape and got one open just as Erich Corbin called excitedly from the foyer. He heard Jessie answer him, running down the ornate hallway, her heels clicking. He had given her something to consider. Maybe it wouldn't work out too badly, after all...

  He got out onto the fire escape. The courtyard below was dark, and it had stopped raining. Lights bloomed in the flat above, and a woman's voice rattled excitedly about hearing two shots. From inside the Corbin apartment he still heard Erich's voice, too. Durell turned and raced down the steel steps into the darkness of the courtyard. He ran toward the gate in the back fence and unlocked it and got out. He looked up before he closed the gate and saw Erich Corbin leaning from the window above, trying to get a look at him. Then he turned and started down the alley.

  But he didn't get very far.

  A shadow moved with a soft, sliding step behind him and a voice said, "All right, you. Stop trying to run, Lift 'em."

  He reacted instinctively, turning with his weight on his right foot, swinging. He saw the blue uniform and the faint gleam of the badge a second too late. It was the cop on the beat. He had been alerted by Jessie's two wild shots. Durell couldn't check his swing. It was no good, anyway. The cop was young and enthusiastic. His gun crashed down at Durell and he stepped back in the alley out of reach of Durell's hands and then he hit Durell again, taking advantage of his surprise.

  Durell wanted only to get away. He didn't want to fight the cop or hurt him. He tried to break free, but the cop was too good. He hit Durell once more and then there was the sound of a whistle at the open end of the alley and another cop came charging in and Durell finally began to fight him off in earnest. But it was too late by then.

  He was aware only of ironic dismay as he sank back against the courtyard fence and let the young cop jab his gun savagely into his belly.

  Chapter Fifteen

  From an angle of his cell door in the precinct station, Durell could see an electric clock on the corridor wall. It was three minutes after ten. He had been booked and fingerprinted and thrown in here and nothing had happened since. He wondered if the cops would pull in the Corbins. He hoped not. It had gone worse than he had expected. He didn't want the police questioning the Corbins, or interfering with them. And he knew that time was precious, and every moment that passed put him farther behind in the race; but there was nothing he could do about it. The identification he had given to the police told them nothing about his real occupation. He couldn't tell tie police anything. Wittington had ordered him not to, and MacCreedy and the FBI had to be kept out of it for now.

  He went back to the cot in his cell and sat down and lit a cigarette. He thought of Angelina and then he put the thought of her out of his mind, because he couldn't think straight when he considered what might be happening to her at this very moment. The cell smelled of the heat of the past day, of urine and sweat and human misery.

  His head ached where the cop had slugged him, and an intern had come in briefly and swabbed at the cut and taped some plaster over it and had gone away again. Before being brought to the cell, Durell had asked to be allowed to make one phone call. It had been granted grudgingly. The desk sergeant had lifted surprised eyes when he had called Washington, laying money on the desk for the toll charges. He had called the number of McGuire, Sloan & Levy in Washington. It was after eight o'clock by then, but an answering service had replied, much to his relief, and he had asked for Mr. Wittington. Wittington was not available. The answering service would try to trace him. They would call back when he was located.

  Durell had to be satisfied with that. There was nothing else he could do. Wittington had tied his hands with the orders he had given him, and just calling him had been a severe breach of security, but that couldn't be helped. He had to get out of here. He couldn't spend any more time in this place. But he had already been here over two hours.

  He finished the cigarette and got up to look at the clock again. 10:15. He heard voices from down the corridor, two men arguing in low tones, and he smelled cigar smoke through the other smells of the precinct station. Impatience seethed in him. He couldn't help thinking about Angelina, and he could only hope that his parting words to Jessie Corbin had given her reason to pause. One thing he was sure about was that he was too late to keep them under surveillance here in New York. They were certain to be gone by now, unless the police had detained them, too, over the shooting. But apparently, since there had been no sign of them here, they had managed to talk their way out of any implication in the disturbance.

  Finally footsteps came down the corridor and a detective whom Durell hadn't seen before signaled to the turnkey to open the cell door.

  "All right, chum, come out of there."

  Durell stepped out. The detective had keen eyes that raked his face and clothing with open curiosity. "Come on, follow me... It's all right, Dave."

  Durell walked down the hall to a small room in front of the desk sergeant's office. The detective sat down behind a plain oak table and shoved an envelope toward him. "Here are your things, including the gun."

  "Thanks," Durell said.

  "Mind answering one question?"

  "That depends," Durell said.

  "Who are you?"

  "I can't tell you any more than I've told the sergeant."

  The detective nodded. "I've got a lot on my back, thanks to you. A ton of bricks fell on me because of your call to Washington. You bastards can really free-wheel around when you want to. I wouldn't mind being in your shoes."

  "I don't think you'd like it," Durell said.

  The detective considered this and nodded again. "No, maybe I wouldn't. I've got a wife and four kids. No, I guess I wouldn't."

  "Can I go now?"

  "Sure, go ahead. Good luck."

  Durell went out without learning the detective's name.

  * * *

  The rain earlier that evening hadn't helped to clear up the muggy atmosphere over New York, but the air outside felt comparatively fresh and clean after his two hours in the precinct station. Durell walked west toward Lexington and when he found a drugstore he sorted out his change and telephoned Washington again. He figured Wittington would be waiting to hear from him.

  Daniel Kincaid answered the phone when he got through.

  "It's a lack in the teeth," Durell said. 'They got away from me and they've got the girl, Angelina Greene, too."

  "I warned you about that girl..." Kincaid began angrily.

  "Shut up," Durell said. His voice was suddenly ferocious. "If anybody's got a beef, it's me. You tie my hands and blindfold me and then send me out to do a decent job; and when something goes wrong, you blow your stack and take your goddam good time giving me a hand. Go ask your prediction machine what the chances of survival are under the conditions you sent me out on, in this job."

  "Listen, don't tell me…"

  Durell blew air out through his nostrils. He knew his anger sprang from his fears for Angelina and his dismay at the way it had all gone wrong. He forced his voice down to a more moderate level. "Kincaid, I know where they've gone. I'm going to check their apartment and the hotel where the two men stayed, but I'm sure they've already left. I think they're heading for Pennsylvania, for a town named Groversville."

  "Never heard of it. Why are they going there?"

  "Just listen," Durell said. "I'm going after them. They've got some blueprints of a pretty complex installation there. It's got an architect's name on it — Carl Amberley. Look it up. Put it through your machine, if you have to. Find out who Amberley is and where the blueprints came from. That's their objective, whatever it is. And whatever it is, it's big."

  Kincaid sounded more moderate now, too. "All right, Durell. Sorry I blew my cork. You weren't supposed to contact us, you know, except in an absolute eme
rgency."

  "It is an emergency."

  "Take it easy," Kincaid said. "And look, I think you'd better stay where you are in New York, where we can reach you. Don't try to trail them alone. I'll find out about this Amberley and I'll let you know. Maybe that will be the key to this whole business, understand?"

  "I'm going after them," Durell insisted. "I'm not staying in town. They've got Angelina, I told you."

  "You know better than to risk anything for that girl."

  "I've got to risk it."

  "Forget about her, do you understand?"

  There were white lines at the corners of Durell's mouth. "I'll call you from Groversville when I get there," he said, and hung up.

  * * *

  It was perhaps the biggest risk he had taken yet. Maybe Groversville had nothing to do with the objective Jessie Corbin had set for herself. Maybe he was heading in a totally wrong direction, set to wind up with a big fat zero for his score. But it was the only direction open to him, he decided, when he returned to the house in the East Seventies and made his way back to the Corbin apartment. His lock picks got him inside again. They were gone with the clothing, suitcases, and the rolls of blueprints he had left on the bed. He had expected nothing else, and it gave him a little hope.

  He retrieved his rented car from where he had parked it in the neighborhood and drove downtown, parked it again in a nearby garage, and walked to Mark Fleming's hotel. Slago and Fleming were gone, too. They had not checked out officially, and the desk clerk thought they were still in residence. Durell would have liked to get into the room to see if Angelina had left any trace there, but he had no authority to demand a pass key and he didn't want to spend time getting such authority from anyone in New York who might be able to help.

  He asked the clerk, "How long ago did Mr. Fleming leave?"

  The clerk was thin and dapper and supercilious. He kept looking at the thin strip of surgical tape on Durell's forehead. "About an hour ago, I guess. I really didn't pay much attention."

  "Was he alone?"

  "No. His associate was with him."

  "No one else?"

  "No."

  Durell put a twenty-dollar bill on the registration pad. "Think again. Didn't they have a girl with them? A tall brunette, who seemed to be a little sick?"

  "Drunk, you mean," the clerk said.

  "All right, drunk."

  "Yes, now that I recall, she was with them."

  So Angelina was alive when they checked out. Durell felt better about it. A little better, not much.

  "It happens all the time in a joint like this," the clerk said. "Now, when I was manager at the Wharton-Savoy, we wouldn't have permitted anything like that to go on in the premises."

  Durell thanked him and left, retrieved his car after paying an exorbitant fee for twenty minutes' parking. He hadn't eaten since lunch in Washington, but there was no time. He started driving, picking up a road map at the first service station he came to, and when he had located Groversville in the north central section of Pennsylvania, he worked out the fastest and straightest route he could find and headed that way.

  It was a long, hard drive. He took Route 6, heading west, and he kept his speed just a little above the limit, not wanting the delay of being stopped for a traffic violation, although every instinct in him shouted for him to tramp on the gas pedal and make faster time. He had seen the green Buick station wagon the Corbins were using now, when he had watched their house from the room across the street. He knew that they would be equally anxious to avoid being stopped by a traffic cruiser, but even if they were driving no faster than he, they still had almost two hours on him.

  And there was no telling what had happened by now.

  By midnight he was through Port Jervis and into the Poconos. There was no sign of the Buick ahead. He stopped at a roadside diner and ate roast beef and drank three cups of coffee, and by four o'clock in the morning he reached the outskirts of Groversville.

  * * *

  There was little to see of the town at this dark hour. It was cooler here, on the edge of a wilderness of high, rounded mountains covered with dense woods, with here and there the probing scar of an abandoned or worked-out coal mine. There was a colliery outside of town, gaunt and stained and apparently closed years ago when the anthracite veins gave out; and as he drove through the dark, silent main street of the town Durell decided that the economy had shifted from the coal industry to catering to vacationers who sought the mountains for the summer. There was a high proportion of guest houses with small electric signs on the lawns, and a reasonably new motel on the western outskirts of town. He looked at the motels parking lot carefully, but the green Buick wasn't there, and he faced the hopelessness of searching for it before daylight.

  He was in luck when he woke up the proprietor and asked for a room. There was one vacancy. Durell bought a tooth brush and a razor and paid double the normal fee to soothe the man's trouble before going to the room assigned to him.

  The moment he stepped inside, he felt as if he were back in the precinct cell again. He wanted to get out of there at once, to keep driving somewhere, anywhere, and go on looking for the Corbins and Angelina. He forced himself to close the door and turn the latch behind him, and he drew a deep breath to steady himself. For hours, while driving, he had refused to let himself think too much about Angelina; he couldn't let go now. He knew what the penalty might be if he acted on impulse, without an objective plan, and thinking of this made him calmer. He lit a cigarette and went into the bathroom and shaved carefully. Then he took a shower, first very hot, then ending it with a needle spray of cold water. It made him feel better. He still had a couple of hours till daylight, and then a couple more before the town woke up and he could ask some questions.

  He was drying himself after the shower when there came a quick, quiet knock on the door, and when he wrapped a towel around himself and went to open it, he saw the thin proprietor who had rented him the room.

  "Saw your light still on and figured you might need something to help you rest," the man said.

  "Like what?"

  "Maybe a little bourbon? This town is pretty dry. Good liquor is hard to get. You interested?"

  "Some bourbon would be fine."

  "Got it right here. Fifteen bucks."

  Durell looked at the man and saw nothing but bland thievery on his face, so he went back into the room and got his wallet and paid for the bottle. "I need some information," he said. "Will you join me?"

  "Thanks. I can't sleep, either. My wife snores."

  Durell laughed and got the two tumblers from the bathroom and filled each half full and handed one to the proprietor. The man bobbed his narrow head in thanks and drank thirstily. Durell watched him for a moment before taking a drink himself.

  The man said: "I could let you have some shirts and a change of underwear. I notice you've got no luggage."

  "I had to travel unexpectedly,' Durell said.

  "Pushing on in the morning?"

  "That depends. I have some business in your town."

  "Only business here is tourist business, these days."

  "Mine is something else. I'm looking for Carl Amberley."

  "Oh, him." Durell waited. "He's got a summer place up here," the proprietor said.

  "Is he in town now?"

  "Could be."

  "And what's his business?"

  "I thought you might know," the man said cagily. "You're the one wants to deal with him."

  "Is it such a big secret?"

  "Hell, no. He's an architect. Big shot, from New York. Quiet enough fellow, though. Got something wrong with him. Bad heart, or something, ready to give out. Spends all summer here. No visitors."

  * * *

  Durell pressed him for directions to get to Amberley's summer lodge on Kittitimi Mountain, and then he said: "One more thing. Is there a real estate agent in town named George Johnston?"

  "Sure. Old George is right on Main Street. Specializes in summer rentals. You can'
t miss it. He opens at nine sharp. You want me to bring you some fresh shirts?"

  "Not if they're more than ten bucks each."

  "Make it eight."

  "All right. In the morning."

  "Uh... you want the rest of this bottle?"

  "Help yourself," Durell said.

  When the proprietor had gone, Durell turned off the lights and stretched out on the bed and tried to sleep. He wondered if he had made a mistake, coming here. Maybe the blueprints didn't mean anything. Maybe he had jumped to conclusions about them, and they didn't represent Corbin's target. Or maybe they had changed their plans since Angelina had interfered and he himself had appeared in the picture. Jessie Corbin knew he had seen the blueprints. It might frighten her off, or cause her to postpone her plans. On the other hand, by his very appearance, he might have pushed a panic button for them and made them start running. Wherever they went, they would take Angelina, if she were still alive — or even if she were dead. They couldn't leave her body for him to find too quickly.

  If this was the target area, and if he could trace them in the locality tomorrow, then he would know that he and Angelina had not alarmed them too much. They had been sure of their anonymity in New York; the police had no clue to their identity. If he had sold Jessie Corbin with his argument that he wanted a cut of their operation, then they would go ahead — watching for him, of course, wary of his being on their trail, but not worried enough to conceal or postpone their plans.

  He closed his eyes upon a swimming darkness and saw Angelina. He saw her as she had been long ago, in the bayous, as wild and passionate as the land itself, giving herself without restraint or demands. She was a confident, beautiful, intelligent woman. She loved him. She had almost wrecked everything, but he felt no anger or bitterness toward her. He understood her and felt an affinity toward her because she had shared all the things that had made him what he was now. Whatever happened, he had to do what he could for her.