I told myself that we were gaining on the mission, a little. Howard Koenig and Arthur Galvez, with Dominic Morelos, gave us three names out of the thirteen on the Council, leaving us a mere ten to go. Then there was Angelita Johansen. She gave us one name out of the three directly involved in the Mariposa bombing, complete with a local address. We could hope that, caught and properly interrogated, she’d lead us to the other two.
Varek had offered to handle her and I’d told him okay, as if doing him a favor; actually, if he hadn’t offered, I’d have suggested it. The age of chivalry was past. Varek’s goons probably wouldn’t be very nice to little Angelita, any nicer than they’d been to Bernadette Saiz; but there was no reason for me to trouble myself about the fate of a young woman who’d helped murder my son. Was there?
I sat there for a while reviewing the events of the day, and the information received, and the actions taken. At last I got tired of the jerky images on the screen and switched off the set and went to bed. Then I was trying to tune a guitar but the strings kept breaking on me. Sandy kept telling me I was cranking them too tight; but how was I going to get the right pitch with a slack string…? Suddenly wide-awake, I realized that the snapping sound on which I’d built my dream had been the latch clicking home as somebody, slipping into the room, had pushed the door gently closed behind them.
I opened my eyes cautiously, only enough to peer through the barely parted lids but not enough, I hoped, to expose a gleaming eyeball. Fortunately, I was lying on my left side facing the door. The window blinds were drawn and the room was dark, but I could make out a white figure over there. An intelligent murderer operating at night wouldn’t be likely to wear white; but you can’t count on all assassins being smart. I let my hand slip down my leg to the ankle holster in which rested a very small .25 automatic, not the most comfortable sleeping companion imaginable; but if you use the traditional hiding place under the pillow, the weapon stays behind if you have to make a hasty dive out of the bed.
My uninvited guest took a couple of steps towards me and paused to let one ghostly white garment slip to the rug with a silky whisper, retaining another. If I hadn’t already guessed the sex of the intruder, the perfume that reached me would have given me the clue—somebody’d got themselves all fixed up pretty and fragrant for this visit. I reminded myself that men have died trusting perfumed ladies; but I thought I had things figured out and I reached down to stuff the little pistol back into its holster. I meant to sit up, after that, and switch on the bedside light; but it took me a moment to secure the automatic. They come out of holsters more easily than they go back in. By the time I’d finished, I had company in the bed.
There was a confused melee for a moment. I don’t know what my unexpected bedmate was trying to do except that it was definitely not hostile. I was trying to reach the light switch and illuminate the situation. I touched a warm, satin-covered body and identified a pleasantly shaped breast. I resisted the temptation to investigate it more thoroughly, although I was being encouraged, even helped, to do so.
“Sandy, for God’s sake, cut it out!” I said. “Who the hell do you think you are, Mata Hari, Junior?”
Freeing myself, I reached for the lamp again and felt a lock of hair brush my hand… Hair? The girl I’d had in mind had been pretty well shorn when last seen. I sat up abruptly and found the switch at last. I’d had a momentary thought that Sandra had sent me the pretty maid, Maria, as some kind of a girlish joke or test; but in the sudden glare I saw Lia Varek smiling up at me lazily, her heavy black hair spread over the pillow.
11
The breakfast room was actually a glassed-in sun-porch looking out on a peaceful, sunlit scene: the lawn, the beach, and the ocean. There was a white metal table with a glass top, surrounded by four white metal chairs with colored cushions on the seats. A couple of long chairs of similar design allowed you to recline, after eating, in a nook at the other end of the room, surrounded by enough potted plants, many blooming, to stock a greenhouse. Somehow, although very casual compared to the formal dining room we’d used last night, the room conveyed the message that it was still a very high-class place, infinitely superior to an ordinary sunporch with ordinary sunporch furniture.
The barman of last night, Philip, in his white coat and automatic pistol, was doing sentry duty by the door. Maria, dressed in her cutie-pie maid’s uniform complete with frilly apron, was doing the honors at the warming table in the corner. Apparently, due to the size of the mansion, food would get cold if it were carried all the way from the kitchen in individual servings; it had to be brought out and maintained at the proper temperature here for immediate delivery to the breakfasters.
“Ah, there you are, Matt,” Lia Varek said. “Did you have a good night’s sleep?”
Her expression was beyond reproach: the lady of the house inquiring politely after the health and comfort of a guest. She was sitting at the glass-topped table with Sandra. They had both, apparently, just been served. The younger girl was in jeans and a blue T-shirt. Her stepmother was wearing a scarlet sundress, just a sheath of some linenlike material supported by narrow shoulder straps tied in little bows—it wasn’t easy to overlook the fact that if you took the ends of the straps delicately between the thumb and forefinger of each hand and pulled gently, the bows would come untied and interesting things would probably happen.
“Very good, thanks,” I said, equally polite. “Your guestroom is very comfortable. I slept just fine.”
“Sit down and tell Philip if you want a drink,” Lia said. She glanced at the tiny watch on her wrist. “It’s only nine and Alex sleeps late; he won’t be down for a while. Tell Maria what you want to eat. Bacon and scrambled eggs, or cereal and cream. Toast or warm rolls. And if you’d prefer your eggs done some other way, it could be managed.”
“Scrambled is fine, with bacon,” I said, seating myself. “It’s too early for a drink. Orange juice if available. Toast. Black coffee…”
Sandra made a strangled little sound, threw her napkin down, and ran out of the room, her high heels clattering on the tiled floor. High heels and shabby blue jeans still seem like an odd combination to me, but I’m not complaining. From a masculine standpoint, at least my masculine standpoint, it makes for a much better view than sneakers or jogging shoes.
Lia was looking after her wonderingly. “Whatever is the matter with the child?” she asked.
I said, “Cut it out, Lia. She’s not a child. She’s been married, she knows all about the birds and bees; and she sleeps only a couple of doors down the hall from the Blue Room, as you call it. She’s also a very observant young lady.”
“Snoopy is the word,” Lia said a bit grimly.
I shrugged. “Whatever.” I reached out and touched her shoulder. “You do like those bows, don’t you?”
Lia gave me a slow smile that was not the smile of a hostess conversing with a guest in the house. “They were very convenient last night, were they not, darling?”
When I came back to the bed last night, gun in hand, after checking the bedroom door and the hall outside, she was still lying there smiling at me, in the shining satin nightie that had the same kind of little bow-tied shoulder straps. I picked up the negligée she’d dropped on the floor and draped it over a nearby chair. Tidy. I regarded her rather grimly, thinking about the fact that the door had no bolt, and that whatever keys had once existed for the old-fashioned lock had gone missing or been removed—one reason why I’d worn the gun to bed in the first place. Somehow, I didn’t have all the faith in the world in Sonny Varek’s hospitality.
“You’re beautiful,” I said to the lady in my bed, “you’re exquisitely desirable, or desirably exquisite, but I can’t help wondering at what point in the proceedings your husband comes charging in with that .44 Maggie I saw on the gunroom wall, and invokes the unwritten law, boom! He doesn’t like feds on general principles; I imagine he’d be even more prejudiced against a fed he caught sleeping with his brand-new wife.”
Lia la
ughed and patted the bed beside her. “Relax, darling. Don’t stand there scowling. You’re being very silly and naive.”
“Naive about what?”
“Alex and me. You’re acting as if I were a respectable matron living with a dull nine-to-five husband in a split-level suburban bungalow, with two and a half children—or whatever is the current average—raising hell in the back of the house.”
“I don’t know about your respectability,” I said, “but your husband isn’t dull. He’s got a gun. Several guns in fact. No man with a gun is really dull.”
She glanced at the little automatic I still held. “You are wrong about that, my dear. I am finding you very dull at the moment, gun or no gun. Here I put on my prettiest lingerie and my most expensive perfume and the man just stands there! The least you can do is sit down and put away the firearm and listen… Well, all right, hold it if you must, but don’t tower over me like a thundercloud. That’s better.” She smiled again. “I think you simply do not understand my position in this household, Matt.”
I grimaced. “Now tell me you’re here in the performance of your wifely duties!”
She laughed and said slyly, “Would you rather believe that I am here because women, even married women, naturally gravitate to your bed?”
I shrugged. “Strangely enough, once in a while they do seem to, as a matter of fact. For one reason or another.” I shook my head. “And mostly the reasons are pretty goddam murderous, sweetheart. No, I don’t kid myself I’m so fascinating. No, I don’t believe your little heart went pit-a-pat the moment you saw me. I once knew a gent in my line of work who considered himself irresistible. Once. He’s not around anymore. Unlike him, I don’t take for granted it’s my natural magnetism at work when the ladies throw themselves at me. I just wonder which hand has the knife, and who’s sneaking up on me from behind while my attention is being drawn so prettily the other way.”
Lia studied me gravely. She said, “You must understand that Alex and I have an agreement. At the end of an unspecified length of time, when he ceases to find me interesting, he will divorce me as he did his other wives, and give me a substantial sum of money in return, enough to keep me in reasonable comfort the rest of my life. Why he feels that marriage must be part of the arrangement, I don’t know; but all men have peculiar ideas where women are concerned.”
I said, “I’d say that, being in a disreputable business, he feels the need to be super respectable in other ways. Like dressing for dinner and marrying the girl.”
She shrugged. “Maybe. And I certainly have no objection to a wedding ring. I have spent too many years doing without one. Being legitimately married is a pleasant change.”
It occurred to me that I was learning a lot about Sandra’s stepmother tonight, and she could be learning things about me; but Miss Manners would hardly have approved of the circumstances under which we were getting so well acquainted, houseguest and hostess, more or less undressed on a rumpled bed.
I said, “As a matter of fact, Sandra told me about her daddy’s standard marriage contract.”
“I doubt that the child knows the fine print in that contract,” Lia said wryly. “The unwritten fine print, shall we call it? Alex was very clear about what my duties were to be. I was to share his bed when he wanted me, of course. I was to make a pleasant home for him, and be gracious and decorative at all times, but particularly when we entertained. I was to make friends with his daughter if I could; although he conceded that might be impossible.” Lia hesitated, and looked away from me, speaking to the windows with their drawn blinds. “There is one more clause, not actually printed but understood by both contracting parties. I doubt that my stepdaughter is aware of it. From time to time I must perform for Alex the kind of task I was doing for him before we were married. An attractive woman can be very useful to a man in Alex’s position, in a business way. If you understand what I mean, darling.”
I looked at her sharply. I guess I was a little shocked. I said, “In certain Indian tribes, I understand, the host supplied the honored guest with a tepee to keep him dry and a squaw to keep him warm. Hospitality.”
She shook her head. “Hardly that, pale-faced stranger. Your comfort is the least of my husband’s concerns; he’s just worried about your reliability. Of course, old Seppi Velo did say you could be trusted. He said your agency doesn’t concern itself with drugs, for one thing; but Alex can’t really believe that there’s any part of the U.S. government that isn’t rabid about drugs.”
I said, “My chief says he’s not going to waste his time or ours trying to hold back Niagara Falls with a teaspoon.” I glanced at her curiously. “Doesn’t your husband’s business bother you, just a little?”
Lia laughed harshly. “Have you any idea where I grew up, my dear? Fortunately a man noticed that I might be cleaned up to look moderately presentable. He was looking for suitable female material. He had me put through the mill. I was taught to wear clothes properly, to speak reasonable English, to be attractive to men. Never mind how I was taught.” Her voice was grim. “When I hear of the terrible sufferings of those poor brainwashed prisoners, I laugh and laugh. And if you think that, coming from where I came from, I am going to concern myself about a little white poison being smuggled by the man who has given me all this, who even condescends to let me feel like a real human being occasionally, you are even more naive than I thought. He doesn’t force the stuff on them, does he? If they want to commit suicide slowly, or OD overnight, that is their business. Why should I worry about them? They never worried about me.”
I shrugged. “Sure. I’m not much for saving people from themselves, either.”
She said, “Anyway, there are other things besides drugs… Alex can’t help wondering if you could be working some kind of a law enforcement scam, the kind the FBI is so fond of these days. You could be using the fact that your son married his daughter to gain his confidence, while you’re really helping out some other government agencies that have been after him for years. They would still like to nail him for something, anything, even though he is retired now.” She laughed shortly. “He thinks you were a little too good to be true, Matt. Letting him listen to all that information coming over the phone, even ordering your computer girl to break security. And steering him so subtly to that bomb-happy blonde and her two boyfriends. Alex can’t help wondering, if he does go for those three, as you obviously want him to, who will be hiding in the bushes to catch him with the smoking gun in his hand.”
She was sitting up now, beside me. Whereas the fragile negligée she’d discarded was quite an elaborate garment, the nightgown was very plain, unruffled and unadorned, like a simple, long satin slip that left her arms and shoulders bare but covered her smoothly and shinily elsewhere. I wondered how she’d known that I don’t find instant nudity very attractive; I like the revelations to come gradually. Well, she was obviously an experienced woman; she was also a very lovely one. I noticed that she was wearing no makeup tonight, which was all right with me. She looked better without it, softer and less artificial.
I said crudely, “So your generous husband sent you here to climb into my bed and fuck me silly and find out what kind of a guy I am and what I’m up to. But why are you telling me all about it?”
She gave me a sideways glance. “You wouldn’t have believed me if I had claimed to have fallen passionately in love with you. Would you?” She hesitated. “I rather hoped that, waking from a sound sleep, you would find yourself fully involved, if you know what I mean, before you realized what was happening; but you mistook me for someone else, someone you had no intention of making love to. I find that very interesting, and very sweet of you, my dear. But it left me with no approach but this one; and I am not quite sure what to do next. Just what turns you on, Mr. Helm?” Her voice was expressionless, but the words came swiftly. “Do I tease you with a displaced shoulder strap, or just slide out of my nightie completely? I assure you, I am very good at getting out of my clothes gracefully, and I have a very nic
e body, and no diseases of any kind, and some very special skills. Who’ll start the bidding on this healthy twenty-seven-year-old female, five feet eight, a hundred and thirty pounds, clean and attractive and well trained in the arts of love…?” Her compulsive chatter stopped. After a lengthy silence, she sniffed and said, “Get me a Kleenex, please. No, never mind, I will use the sheet.”
She started to dab at her eyes. Abruptly, she let out a gasping sob and buried her face in a handful of white percale and huddled there crying desperately. After a little, I reached over and put an arm around her. She turned towards me helplessly and clung to me, crying into the shoulder of my pajama jacket; but suddenly she dug her nails into my back and raised her wet face to glare at me.
“D-damn you!” she gasped. “Sitting there looking so smug and superior! Making me feel so cheap and dirty! What gives you the right? You are just another mercenary, no better than those Alex hires! You sell your skill with a gun, I sell my skill with something else, where is the difference? We are all whores together… Hold me, damn you! I don’t know what… I seem to be coming all apart inside! Hold me, please hold me!”
I laid the pistol aside so I could do the job properly, telling myself this was the corny way experienced agents got themselves killed; but nothing happened. Well, at first. I just held her and stroked her hair and let her cry it out. It was only gradually that I found myself becoming very much aware that one of the straps of her gown had come untied. I discovered that sympathy for her despair was no longer my primary reaction. There seemed to be a lot of woman in my arms, and very little clothing.
Her sobs had dwindled away to an occasional hiccup. Then I heard a sudden, choked little laugh, but it held no disapproval. “Ah,” she whispered, “pure Sir Galahad you are obviously not, darling. How about Lancelot, who played around with Guinevere behind King Arthur’s back…? Here, why leave me only half naked?”
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