She was aware of my scrutiny, of course, and she spoke without expression: “Twenty-seven stitches in the leg. A lot more in the scalp; but I think they take smaller stitches up there for cosmetic reasons. Greenstick fracture of the radius bone; that’s the smaller one in the forearm. My hands got pretty well sliced up as you can see; my knees look like hamburger. Of course I’m black and blue practically all over, turning a beautiful green in spots. My ears only stopped ringing from the blast a couple of days ago. Does that satisfy your curiosity?”
“It’s a wonder they let you out of the hospital,” I said. “The flight from Washington can’t have been much fun for you.”
She shrugged. “I’m tough. I don’t like hospitals. How did you know we came from Washington?”
“It’s the only place you could have learned where to find me. Although I don’t check in there any longer, my former chief has ways of keeping track. But he wouldn’t have given you this address over the phone. I wouldn’t have thought he’d give it to you at all.”
“Elizabeth said she’d met him once before, your boss, many years ago when you were being divorced. He looked her up then and tried to persuade her to change her mind about leaving you.”
I said, “My ex-boss, please. My former chief, I said. I quit two weeks ago.”
“So he told us; but he let Elizabeth come to see him anyway, for old times’ sake, I guess.” Sandra shrugged. “I went with her, because she’s still a bit shaky—and of course I had a personal interest, too. That’s a polite and soft-spoken man, but I wouldn’t want to get him mad at me. I don’t think he’s a very kindly person, really.”
I laughed. “We’re not a kindly outfit. My own humanitarian impulses can hardly be called dominant. What did he say?”
“He wanted to know why Elizabeth was looking for you. When she told him, he was very sympathetic and gave her this address. He said he thought you were probably here, since the waterfowl season was opening today and you had a new hunting dog you wanted to try out.” The kid laughed shortly, watching me. “What is it, some kind of a compulsion, Mr. Helm, that you just can’t stop shooting things?”
It’s never any use arguing with them, young or old, when they get on that kick. “Man gets in a rut, I guess,” I said. “But you’d better call me Matt. All this formality doesn’t go with such high-minded disapproval.”
She said, “Maybe my disapproval isn’t so very high-minded… Matt. Maybe I don’t really care what you shoot. Maybe I’m just trying to give you a hard time for other reasons.”
“Reasons such as?”
She licked her lips. “Maybe I’m remembering a very nice guy, a guy you might even have liked if you’d made an effort to know him. A guy who’d have enjoyed having a father, even an offbeat daddy like you. But you were never there. Oh, there were occasional letters, and presents when presents were indicated, and a check now and then, but never a warm body, not even at his wedding, not even at his graduation.”
I said, “I gave you my reasons. And Larry Logan makes a pretty good substitute papa. I checked him out.”
Sandra shook her head. “Elizabeth’s husband is very much okay, and he did what he could to fill the daddy spot, but a stepfather isn’t the same thing even when he’s adopted his new wife’s kiddies legally and given them his name. If you’d died and Elizabeth had remarried, that would have been bearable. But knowing that you were still around, somewhere, and just couldn’t be bothered with your own son, with any of your children…” She drew a long breath. “Of course, that was what drew us together in college, Matthew and me. We had it in common. My daddy was a lot like you in many ways. My mother died when I was very young, and he couldn’t be bothered with being a papa, either. So he wished me off on nurses and governesses and boarding schools, and never once… Well, to hell with that. Sorry. I didn’t mean to inflict my bleak childhood on you.”
I said, “Did Beth know how Matthew felt?”
Sandra grimaced. “What you want to know is, did she make him feel that way, did she turn her children against their father deliberately, like many divorced wives? No, of course she didn’t, she’s too nice a lady. In fact, Elizabeth has been defending you stoutly all these years, telling your kids how busy you were saving the world for democracy, or something; and how you couldn’t visit them anyway, even when you had time, because you were afraid somebody who didn’t like you, somebody you’d injured in the line of duty, say, might strike at your family if they knew it existed. That routine you just used on me. I don’t think it’s a very plausible excuse for neglecting your kids, Mr. Helm… Matt, and they didn’t think so either. It might have been better if you’d been honest and simply let them know you weren’t interested, the way my daddy did. At least I could console myself, a little, with the fact that I hadn’t been sired by a hypocrite.”
I asked, “Is that why Matthew changed his name back to Helm?”
She said, “Yes, he wanted to show that he was still your son, even though you’d practically disowned him, getting Larry to adopt him and make him a little Logan. I don’t blame him. He wanted you to know, I suppose, that there was another Matthew Helm around whether you liked it or not, and that he’d seen through your ridiculous pretense of trying to protect him by giving him another name and staying away from him, when what you were really doing was washing your hands of him and the rest of your offspring!”
I regarded her for a moment. “Do you believe that, Sandra? Now?”
“Of course I do! What do you mean, now? What’s changed?”
“Look in the mirror,” I said. “I’d say there were some changes, wouldn’t you?”
“I don’t understand what you—”
I said harshly, “Use your brains, little girl! If any. There you are, all stitched up like the bride of Frankenstein, and there is Matthew, dead, and you still call my precautions ridiculous?” She started to speak, but I went on anyway: “You’re blaming me for not seeing my kids often enough. I’m blaming myself for maybe seeing them too often. I did drop in on them once in a great while, you know. Maybe I shouldn’t have allowed myself even those few visits.”
She said, shocked, “You can’t think… But that’s crazy!”
“Well, maybe it wouldn’t have made any difference, under the circumstances,” I said. “That’s something I have to find out.”
“Now you’re talking riddles,” she said angrily. “And you can’t truly believe that… that somebody blew up a whole restaurant and killed five people in addition to your son, and put a dozen more into the hospital including me, just because they were mad at you! That’s… that’s paranoid!”
I said, “I’ve spent most of my life in a paranoid profession; you can’t expect me to change overnight.”
“But we know who’s responsible for that bomb!” she protested. “It’s right there in the clipping you just read. A terrorist gang calling itself the Caribbean Legion of Liberty. The CLL. Why do they all go in for those idiot acronyms? They’re against what they call American imperialist domination of all those little island countries down there. Fuck the Monroe Doctrine, or words to that effect. At the moment they’re particularly concerned with a place called Gobernador that just gained its independence recently—but they claim it’s not really independent. They say we only helped it gain its freedom from its previous imperialist oppressor so we could take it over for our missile bases or tracking stations or whatever we have down there. They want to replace the present regime, which they claim is a puppet government controlled from Washington, with a true People’s Republic of Islas Gobernador… Anyway, the West Palm Beach bombing was clearly a political protest against American foreign policy by a recognized gang of international terrorists; they’ve done the same thing elsewhere. It can’t possibly have been a personal attack on you.”
“Can’t it?” I asked. “Even if the bombing was the work of a genuine gang of terrorists, who aimed them at that particular little restaurant? Who ever heard of a hash joint called La Mariposa, the Bu
tterfly? The Palm Beaches are full of targets that make more sense politically; and why West Palm Beach anyway? Why not stage the blast in Miami, a major city, and really shake up the lousy Americanos? The casualty list shows no important people to explain why that particular food dispensary was chosen for their explosive attentions; no ambassadors or presidential advisers or senators or congressmen, not even any generals or admirals. Just a bunch of ordinary citizens; some locals, some tourists. And Matthew Helm, Jr. What the hell were the two of you doing in Florida, anyway?”
She made a wry face. “We were watching my daddy get married to still another tramp, under the waving palms of the ten-acre backyard of his cozy little twenty-room Palm Beach cottage. It always draws me back, the humble home of my childhood, with its tender memories of surly bodyguards and snarling guard dogs and alarms that I was always setting off in my snoopy childish way. It’s a wonder I didn’t get myself shot.”
“I see. So you’ve got yourself a stepmother.”
She made a wry face. “There’s been a long parade of them. The blushing brides last him two or three years, maybe five, and then he pays them off according to his standard matrimonial contract—he got the lawyers to write up an ironclad one after a bright dame stung him badly back when I was a little girl—and uses temporaries for a while. But I guess he prefers live-in sex; he always finds another one to marry sooner or later. I’m gaining on them. They look younger all the time; or maybe they stay the same age and I just keep getting older. Well, I guess this one’s crowding thirty, although she won’t admit it. She’s very sweet to me. They all are at the start.” The kid shrugged. “Anyway, Matthew and I just had to get away from that madhouse on the ocean, so we decided to sneak away from all the nuptial gaiety and have dinner together in a quiet little place… Quiet!” She moved her shoulders awkwardly. “So much for that brilliant idea.”
“Yes,” I said. “And I’m still wondering just how it happened that these political crazies just happened to select for their political demonstration an obscure eatery where my son just happened to be dining with his wife.”
She said, “And I still think you’ve got paranoia problems. I suggest a visit to the shrink.”
She was an irritating girl, and she looked like hell at the moment, but I was beginning to have considerable respect for her. She had the guts not to sit around feeling sorry for her poor little damaged and widowed self, and I liked the way she spoke her mind in spite of my considerable seniority and the relationship between us, whatever it might be now that Matthew was dead.
“Well, maybe,” I said. “But in any case, do I gather that you’re all for these noble Caribbean patriots, since you seem to be trying to keep me from going after them, telling me how Beth doesn’t really want them all killed no matter what she came a few thousand miles to ask me?” I watched her closely. “Am I to understand that you don’t want anybody to hurt a hair of their cute little heads?”
“I didn’t say that!” She shook her head vigorously and winced as the gesture reminded her of her injuries. She went on fiercely, “I hate them; of course I hate them! I never did a thing to harm their lousy little island, wherever the hell it is, and neither did Matthew; and now he’s dead and I have the rest of my life to remember that awful moment, those dark hating faces outside the restaurant window, and the glass shattering like that, and his weight on top of me as he knocked me out of my chair and covered me with his body. And then that awful noise like the end of the world and everything crashing down on us. And… and afterwards crawling through the broken glass and rubble and spilled food and broken dishes with my clothes in rags and my scalp hanging into my eyes and my arm not working right and blood all over me, my own blood, Matthew’s blood. That’s when I cut my hands and knees like that, but I didn’t even know I was doing it. I was trying to find somebody to help him… Yes, I hate them! Yes, I want to see them caught and punished! But legally by the proper authorities, not by you!”
“Caught is caught. Punished is punished,” I said.
“No, it isn’t, and you know it! The law is one thing and private vengeance, private violence, is something totally different, something the world has too much of already and has to get rid of if we’re ever going to live together in peace.”
When they start talking about living in peace, under present world conditions, they lose me completely. I’m not that good at daydreaming.
“Do you think Matthew would have wanted his murderers to get away with it?” I asked. When she glanced at me sharply, I said, “It’s not a rhetorical question. As you’ve pointed out so diplomatically, I didn’t know my son very well. Was he a turn-the-other-cheek kid?”
She hesitated. “I’m sorry if… I didn’t really mean to hurt you.”
I grinned briefly. “The hell you didn’t.”
“All right, I suppose I did. Yes, Matthew was a nonviolent person; that was another thing we had in common. I guess we were both rebelling against our macho male parents. You with your ugly government work, my daddy with his… Well, never mind that; but even in his private life he was always shooting things, just like you. Pistols and rifles and shotguns everywhere. Even Larry Logan hasn’t always been the peaceful ranching gentleman he seems, as you probably know; and his house isn’t exactly weaponless, although he keeps them pretty much out of sight for Elizabeth’s sake.” Sandra frowned. “I don’t know why she didn’t just go to her current husband when she got this revenge obsession. Larry was very fond of Matthew, and I have a feeling he can still be a pretty tough character when he puts his mind to it. It would have saved her all this trouble tracking you down.”
I said, “You’re not thinking. If she loves the guy, would she want to involve him and get blood on his hands? Although he took his stepfather duties seriously, it’s not really his son who was killed.”
“I guess that makes sense, if anything does in this crazy mess.” Sandra shook her head ruefully. “Anyway, to answer your original question, yes, Matthew would certainly have wanted his murderers to get away with it rather than have his mother spend the rest of her life with a bloody vendetta on her conscience, that she’d set into motion when she wasn’t her normal, gentle self.”
I said, “Never mind Beth’s conscience. Whatever happens, it won’t be her responsibility.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not quite the wild man my son seems to have thought me, judging by what he’s apparently told you about me.” I regarded the girl grimly. “I don’t go around killing people just because I’m mad at them, even if I have a very good reason, like my boy’s murder. Nor do I grab a gun and start blasting away merely because I’m asked to by a lady I was once rather fond of. There’s only one person from whom I’ll take that kind of instructions, and I’m not working for him any longer. At least I don’t think I am.”
Sandra drew a long breath. “Then you’re not going to do it?”
“I didn’t say that. The message I’m trying to convey is that, except where ducks and other gamebirds are concerned, I don’t take up weapons for personal reasons.”
“I don’t understand. What other reasons could there be…?”
Mac’s timing was good; it always is. The hall door opened and Doreen Hapgood beckoned to me. “You have a call from Washington. You can take it in my office.”
“Excuse me a moment, Sandra.” I took my time walking in there. Let him wait a little. I picked up the phone and said, “Eric here.”
The voice that answered was the right one. I’d never doubted that it would be. “You will have spoken with the ladies I sent you by this time,” Mac said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Please accept my condolences.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Mrs. Logan informed me where your other two children are living. I have taken the liberty of having them covered, discreetly, just as a precaution.”
I’d had it on my mind. I was glad there was somebody around who thought along the same ugly, paranoid lines as I did. It
was nice of him to arrange for the kids’ protection without even being asked. He always scares me most when he’s being nice.
“Thank you, sir,” I said.
“You have certain questions, I suppose.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I thought you might. And I have no answers. They must be found elsewhere. But you will want to make certain of that. If you drive to Houston right away, you can catch a two o’clock flight that will get you into Washington this evening. Reservations have been made for you. A car will be waiting to bring you here; the driver will identify himself in the usual way.”
“Yes, sir,” I said; and the line went dead.
4
The agency car dropped me four blocks from the office, as usual. Unless you’re crippled temporarily, which happens in this business, you don’t pull up in front when you answer the summons; too much vehicular traffic is deemed undesirable. Furthermore, a short hike lets you make a few routine checks, so you can brush off at least the most obvious insects that might have attached themselves to you, or send out the exterminators with the DDT if it seems desirable.
The driver was taking care of my suitcase, so I had nothing to carry. It was a nice fall night, good for walking. I didn’t mind stretching my legs after the plane ride. However, it was a poorly lighted part of town and, as a private citizen, I’d avoided the problems of bringing a gun by air. I therefore took out the little Gerber knife I’d acquired recently and flicked it open, carrying it so the pretty pear-shaped blade would not reflect what light there was. I mean, I don’t run wild rapids without a life preserver; and I don’t walk wild Washington streets unarmed. I’m full of admiration for the brave citizens who do; but I’m still here and some of them aren’t.
There’s an inconspicuous entrance a couple of buildings away that’ll get you inside unseen by way of some tricky cellar passages; but Mac hadn’t indicated we were operating under that kind of security tonight. I used the customary side door. There aren’t any obvious checks or controls on any of the entrances; but an unidentified stranger wouldn’t get very far inside. The place is always better at night, nice and peaceful. There’s only a skeleton crew downstairs; and the upstairs offices are empty except for the one in which he’s waiting for you, no bigger than the others and no more elaborately furnished. But at night you see him against a background of drawn blinds instead of that damn bright window. The building is almost quiet, and even kind of cozy—well, the way I suppose a lion’s den is cozy if you’re a lion—and sometimes he relaxes and has a drink with you if you look as if you need it. Or if he has a reason for wanting to put you at your ease.
The Demolishers Page 3