Downstairs, somebody started up a printer of some kind. It sent a distant chattering noise through the building. I wondered if the aloof Miss Delgado was punching the buttons.
Mac, having offered his condolences once, seemed to feel that no further sympathy was needed. He asked, “What about the parents?”
I said, “Yes, sir. Sandra’s mother was apparently more than respectable, the daughter of a certain Homer Putnam Ganson, who’d inherited a lot of railroad money and made it grow. Unfortunately, Sally Ganson seems to have been a rebellious girl who went slumming once too often and fell for a very undesirable young man. I presume Homer put his foot down, thereby making a runaway marriage inevitable. There was a reconciliation of sorts, although I doubt that Homer ever took his son-in-law to his bosom; and when the old man died, everything went to the young couple, including the Palm Beach estate where Sandra grew up between boarding schools, her mother having in the meantime managed to get herself killed in an one-car accident that could have been self-inflicted, if you know what I mean. I gather it was not a happy household.”
Mac said, “The suspense is considerable, Eric. Just who was this undesirable young man who married the reckless young heiress?”
“My son’s father-in-law’s name is Varek. Alexander K. Varek. K for Konstantin.”
Mac frowned. “Sonny Varek?”
“That’s who,” I said.
He shook his head ruefully. “The material must have come across my desk on a busy day; apparently I didn’t give it proper attention. Otherwise I would certainly have commented on the fact that one of my operatives was now related by marriage to a member in good standing of the Mob, or however it is known nowadays. The Syndicate? I believe Varek specialized in drugs, did he not?”
I said, “To some extent. Like most of them, he had a lot of things going for him. I gather he’s retired now, to the extent that those guys are permitted to retire. But you can see that his past activities, both in the rackets and the smuggling trade, could easily have given somebody a motive for blowing up his daughter, either using a weirdo organization like the CLL or just laying the blame on them knowing they’d accept it happily.”
5
Young Mrs. Cassandra Helm picked me up at the airport in a black Mercedes three blocks long. There was a chauffeur in uniform who, I noted, carried a two-inch-barreled bellygun holstered on his right hip under his whipcord coat, which he did not button. He was a large, dark gent, shorter than my six-four but heavier than my two hundred, and he gave me a cold inspection and saw nothing because the stuff I’d drawn from the armorer was in my suitcase and the little folding knife, with its space-age plastic grip, was flat enough and light enough not to make itself conspicuous in my pants pocket. Never mind how I get that past the airport scanners. We have our little professional secrets; unfortunately this particular trick doesn’t work with heavier stuff like firearms.
Sandra hadn’t met me at the gate; she’d just described the car over the phone and told me where to find it. She didn’t get out to greet me now; but when I slid in beside her she gave me a good enough smile of welcome.
“I’m glad you could come,” she said.
“It’s nice of you to put me up on such short notice,” I said.
The chauffeur was putting my suitcase into the trunk of the car. He got behind the wheel and took us away without instructions. There was glass between him and us.
“Bodyguard?” I asked.
“Yes. He wouldn’t let me meet your plane, said he couldn’t protect me in there with all those people. Sorry. He also makes sure I behave myself like a proper widow. He’s supposed to report any indiscretions to Daddy. He’s got very good ears and a mike to help him… Don’t you, Leonard?” When there was no answer, she repeated: “Don’t you, Leonard?”
A metallic voice answered, “Yes, Mrs. Helm.”
She grinned, and said ruefully, “Even without Leonard to protect my reputation, among other things, I’d have a problem being indiscreet looking like this, wouldn’t I? But at least I can get my right eye all the way open again.”
Actually, there had been considerable improvement since I’d last seen her. The discoloration around the eye had faded and the swelling had, as she’d said, subsided. Her hands were no longer bandaged, and neither was her head. The cropped hair had grown back a little; but you could see the scar like an erratic furrow wandering through a field of cut wheat, except that the colors were all wrong, of course. I liked the way she seemed to feel no need to hide it under a hat or scarf, telling everybody: Okay, so they had to stitch my scalp back on, so what business is it of yours, Buster?
She was overdressed for the place, Florida, and the time of day, early afternoon, in a black silk dress and black nylons. I couldn’t help noting that, for a short girl, she had legs that were very shapely, with strong calves and slim, lovely ankles. High-heeled black pumps improved the view. Even though my son was dead, it made me feel guilty, admiring the legs of my daughter-in-law. Incest? She held a black silk envelope purse in her lap. It had something inside that was too big and blocky for a compact. She had discarded her sling.
“Daddy insists on proper mourning in public,” she said, with a gesture towards the black dress. “Daddy’s a great one for appearances nowadays. Thank God, the doctor said I could leave off the splint and sling now if I was careful. It wasn’t a real break, you know, just a kind of a crack. This is West Palm Beach, as you probably know.” She raised her voice: “Leonard, drive us past La Mariposa, please.”
The tinny voice said, “But, Mrs. Helm…”
“They’re not likely to be waiting for us with another bomb after all this time, are they? Go on, take us there.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
It was a bright Florida day but, except for the palm trees, the city through which we drove could have been located in any sunny state with blue skies—I’d seen the same sprawling, ticky-tacky neighborhoods spring up all over New Mexico, which used to be a nice place to live back when I was growing up there. Maybe Florida was, too, at the time. From the rugged feel of the Mercedes suspension—usually they ride like silk—I judged that the car was carrying more weight than it appeared to, presumably armor of some kind. The windows weren’t ordinary passenger-car glass and the windshield refracted the light oddly. Leonard spoke into his mike, but on a wavelength we were not receiving. A couple of surreptitious glances aft had already let me know there was a covering car behind; presumably he was communicating with the driver. At first I couldn’t spot anybody breaking trail up ahead, but after a dozen blocks I got that one, too, sorted out from the casual traffic.
Sandra glanced at me with a rueful little smile. “I hope you don’t mind if I hold your hand when we get there. I know I’ve got to look at it again or I’ll never really get over it, but I haven’t had the nerve to do it alone. Like I haven’t had the nerve to return to Connecticut and go through… go through Matthew’s things.”
“Old Saybrook, Connecticut. That’s on the Connecticut River, right?”
“Yes. He got a job with the New Haven Post-Courier right after graduation; and that was the closest place we could find that was really nice. It was a thirty-mile commute, but the turnpike made it not too bad since he worked odd hours and usually missed the big morning and evening rush. There’s also a train. We had a small house on the edge of town, not waterfront but handy to the beach and the launch ramp for the little boat we kept parked in the driveway. Graduation present to me from Daddy. Did you know that Matthew had never sailed in his life until I taught him?”
“Well, he was brought up on Larry Logan’s ranch in Nevada, the driest state in the Union,” I said. I glanced at her. “This restaurant we’re going to, have you done any more thinking about what happened there?”
She shook her head quickly. “Not except when I can’t help it. Sometimes… sometimes at night I have to live it all over again; but I’m getting it under control, I think. I don’t wake up whimpering and sweating so often latel
y.”
“Maybe you should see a psychiatrist.”
“I said I was getting over it. I don’t need a shrink messing with my psyche.”
“Well, I hate to pick at the sore spot, but… you said you saw some dark hating faces outside the window just before the bomb came through the glass. Would you recognize them again?”
“Oh, God, don’t start that routine! I’ve had it from Daddy and the cops and several bunches of federal creeps, not to mention daily-, weekly-, and monthly-type reporters and writers. Terrorism is the fashionable menace of the year, beating out smoking and cancer and drunken driving. No, dammit, I can’t draw you pictures of them; I can’t even describe them. I wouldn’t know them if I saw them on the street. Like I told all those nosies, one seemed to be a woman; she was wearing a skirt, a full peasant thing of some kind, although you’d think she’d do her bombing in jeans, wouldn’t you? But maybe she carried it hidden under that big skirt. Otherwise, aside from the fact that they weren’t blond or albino, I can’t tell you anything about them.”
“What federal creeps?” I asked.
“Oh, God, I don’t know! One pair of clowns all dressed up in three-piece suits and ties. And there were some other civilian types, more informal, in sports shirts and slacks, also U.S. government they said; not to mention the local plainclothes cops who’ll still look like cops when they put on their angel robes and wings, if St. Pete lets them through the Gates, which isn’t likely. Who needs fuzz in Heaven?”
“It sounds as if they really put you through it,” I said.
“It was Daddy they were really after, to hell with the innocent little terrorists. The way they acted, you’d have thought it was a federal and state crime to have you daughter and son-in-law blown up by a bomb.” She glanced at me. “You know about Daddy?”
“Yes. I checked you out before the wedding.”
“I didn’t know whether you knew or not, when we were talking back there in Texas.”
I grinned. “You kept scrambling like hell to talk around it. But we’ve got a good research department. I probably know stuff about your daddy even the cops don’t know. If you report that, Leonard, tell Sonny Varek not to worry. His business isn’t our business.”
“I’ll tell him,” the microphone said. “It’ll be a great big load off his mind, I’m sure.”
Sandra laughed shortly. “All the official comings and goings just confirmed our neighbors’ opinions that we were highly undesirable residents for their pure Palm Beach. They’re very restricted in that high-class community over on the ocean side of the Intracoastal Waterway, which is wide enough there to be called a lake. Lake Worth. They’d get rid of us if they could. I mean, even with all his money, Daddy couldn’t have bought our place there; they’d have blocked him somehow. Gangsters and niggers keep out. But they couldn’t keep him from marrying it.” She gave me another sharp glance. “Talking about marriage, if you knew all about me two years ago, why didn’t you come charging along to save your precious son from that dreadful female he’d dredged up out of the slimy underworld?”
I laughed. “Telling people whom they can’t marry isn’t a very profitable occupation. I was more concerned about the way you kids were jumping the gun; I’d have liked to see you wait until you were out of school. As it turned out…” I cleared my throat. “As it turned out, obviously you did the right thing, and I’m glad I minded my own business. As far as your family was concerned, I figured that if your pop could stand having a Helm in his family, I could stand having a Varek in mine.”
She laughed. “That was very tolerant of you. Daddy’s attitude was pretty much the same. Matthew… Matthew said he knew how Romeo and Juliet must have felt, squished between the feuding Montagues and Capulets, except that you both turned out to be more reasonable than we expected…” She stopped and gripped my arm hard, leaning forward to look out the car window. “Oh, God, here we are! La Mariposa is right around the corner ahead… Slow down a little, please, Leonard.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
We turned into a narrow side street of old two-and three-story buildings; storefronts at street level and offices above. The restaurant was on the right about halfway down the block; it wasn’t hard to spot. Raw plywood, braced by two-by-fours, covered the large front window. The sign hanging over the door, scarred by flying debris from the explosion, showed a colorful butterfly: La Mariposa. The only butterfly I recognize is the Monarch; this seemed to be a gaudy distant cousin. A cardboard placard on the door, black with glowing red letters, read: CLOSED.
As we cruised by, Sandra drew a long, shaky breath, but her voice was quite steady when she spoke. “It’s too bad, they used to serve the best enchiladas in town. All right, Leonard, you can take us home now.” She released my arm and smoothed my coat sleeve. “Sorry. Circulation will probably return in a couple of hours…”
She stopped. An elderly car had come screeching around the corner ahead; now it slued around broadside to block the street. Leonard reacted instantly; I felt the Mercedes leap forward and swing sharply as he tried the maneuver that was still called the bootlegger’s turn back when I was a boy, although the rum runners had mostly vanished with repeal. Times change, but happy-stuff still gets transported illegally, so maybe they call it the drug smuggler’s turn nowadays. Leonard hit the gas hard to break the rear wheels loose and skid the heavy car around in the narrow street; but he never made it. Something punched through the top edge of the thick windshield and took away most of his head and splashed it over the heavy glass that separated us.
The report of the ambush weapon was loud even inside the closed car. I placed it above street level, ahead and to the right. So unload to the left. The Mercedes was still rolling, unguided now; as it jumped the curb I grabbed Sandra’s purse from her lap and threw the same arm around her. I hit the door handle with my free hand and threw myself out, dragging the girl out with me. A moment later, the violent, ringing report came again and a projectile smashed into the rear of the car where we’d been. I caught a glimpse of the muzzle flash at a second-story window, level with the roadblock and on the same side of the street as the restaurant.
I hauled the girl to her feet and shoved at her, trying to head her towards that side of the street, but she resisted me, wanting to get back to the car for some reason. It had come to rest across the sidewalk with its front end buried in the side of a building. She’d cost us too much time, and I swore and slammed her roughly to the ground again, as the heavy weapon fired and something very authoritative blasted through the air above us with a supersonic crack and screamed off the pavement beyond us. I yanked the girl upright once more and slapped her face hard.
“Snap out of it, stupid! That doorway over there. Run!”
She obeyed, limping for a couple of steps with one high-heeled shoe already lost; then kicking off the other and hoisting her narrow dress and running like a deer in her stocking feet. Under other circumstances I’d have found the sight intriguing, but the clock was ticking in my head. Clearly it was a single-shot weapon and so far he’d taken about five seconds to reload… We made it in four and he didn’t shoot at us again. Presumably we’d been too fast for him; now we’d reached a place he couldn’t cover, on the same side of the street and below him. I’d hoped for that. There had been some small stuff flying around, but nothing had hit me.
“You okay?” I asked Sandra, as I crammed myself into the doorway beside her, trying to make myself skinnier than I really am.
She nodded breathlessly. There was another shot from the heavy artillery and some small-arms fire, both single-shot and automatic; we had us a real little war. I saw that the cannon in the window had just taken out a headlight and most of a fender of the car that had been following us, smacking it as it turned the corner after us. But the vehicle was still operative; it was backing hastily out of the danger zone.
It had left two men behind. Widely separated, one on each side of the street, they were crouching as they moved forward to attack, firing
machine pistols in professional little three- and four-shot bursts. One was hosing down the ancient car that blocked the street, from which shots had been coming. The other was trying for the high window—but he didn’t walk his bullets onto the target fast enough. The heavy weapon fired and the projectile picked him up and threw him backwards to land on his shoulders with his legs kicking high into the air before flopping down limply onto the sidewalk. That’s the dramatic way they often die in the movies when shot, but I’d never before seen it happen in real life since real rifle and pistol bullets don’t have that much power. But this slug did.
The weapon the dead man had been holding had slid out into the street, but much too far away for me to try for it. I opened the purse I held and took out the small automatic pistol I’d spotted earlier through the thin silk. I closed the purse and put it into Sandra’s hands, noting that they were no longer very clean after our tumbling act in the street.
“Sorry I had to slug you; there wasn’t time to argue,” I said.
She dismissed the incident with a quick shake of her head. “I didn’t mean… I was all confused, poor Leonard, everything happening so fast, and Daddy said we were supposed to stay with the car no matter what, it’s bulletproof.”
“Bulletproof, hell!” I said. “That’s a big fifty up there, probably with AP ammo. It can make a sieve of a real armored car, let alone a fancy sedan with some tin stuck on it.” Now there was gunfire down the street beyond the roadblock; apparently our lead car was engaging the enemy from behind. A bullet hit the building above us and ricocheted away with a nasty, wavering, dying shriek. I said, “Let’s beat it and let the boys fight World War Three without us. Are you ready for another sprint?”
There was dirt on Sandra’s face as well as on her hands, but her grin was clean and bright. I couldn’t help thinking that my son seemed to have found himself quite a girl; it was too bad he hadn’t lived to enjoy his marriage.
The Demolishers Page 5