The Demolishers

by Donald Hamilton

  “What’s the word from the hospital?”

  “Mrs. Helm’s asleep, under sedation. Vital signs strong and positive; no unfavorable symptoms noted.”

  “Watch over her carefully, please, amigo,” I said. “We don’t want to lose her. A safe house would be best when they kick her out of her hospital bed. Tuck her Porsche away somewhere for the time being; here are the keys. And put somebody on the boy who just dropped us off. I’ve been in touch with Washington about him. We’ll be using him shortly, so keep him safe, too. I’ll probably be asking you to ship him down to me, complete with some toys that the airlines won’t like.”

  “Sure. I’ll see if Air Force One is available.”

  “Do that. Well, we’re all still breathing, in spite of some efforts to the contrary. There would undoubtedly have been more without your nursemaids in attendance. Tell them thanks from me.”

  “Keep your nose clean, hero.”

  Delgado took my arm as we moved on down the walk and into the hotel. We didn’t speak until we were in the elevator. I’m not usually affected much by perfume; in fact when there’s a lot of it I always find myself wondering if the lady’s trying to conceal the fact that she hasn’t bathed recently. But this was just a faint, intriguing fragrance and I found myself very much aware of it—and of her, but I’d been in that painful state of awareness most of the evening.

  She broke our silence. “Do you think Mr. Benison checks his nice silk necktie in the mirror and combs his nice brown hair before he pulls out his gun and shoots a dope pusher?”

  I said, “Don’t kid yourself. It’s an act. He’s taking advantage of the fact that a lot of rugged gents in grubby jeans can’t believe that a fancy chap with a necktie and a crease in his pants can possibly be a threat to them. They judge the amount of danger in a man by the amount of whiskers on the chin and the quantity of dirt under the fingernails. I have a hunch a lot of grimy fellows have found our Mr. Clean a very unpleasant surprise.”

  “Well, we certainly met a couple of odd ones tonight,” she said. “That Lester is also quite a specimen.”

  “Cross a stockbroker with a debutante and you never know what you’ll get.”

  I found the casual chitchat hard to manage. The elevator stopped, and the doors slid open. I followed her out into the corridor, feeling like a high school kid on his first date wondering if the girl expects to be kissed, and how to find out without offending her, and how to go about it if she does. I mean, the signals weren’t clear. She was being very polite and pleasant, but I still sensed a small residue of her old hostility, a little reserve, as if she found it a strain to be friendly with a homicidal type like me. At least that was the explanation she’d given earlier. I wasn’t sure how far I believed it.

  She stopped at the door of her room and turned to face me. The events of the evening had left no marks on her except that, somehow, she didn’t look quite as severe and untouchable as she had. Nevertheless, I half expected her to send me on my way, and she knew it. She smiled faintly.

  “I have a little silver flask in there,” she said. “Chivas Regal. Just enough for a nightcap. I mean, two nightcaps.”

  “Wow, we’re really doing ourselves well in the Scotch department tonight,” I said. “In that case, I won’t even mention my old workhorse bottle of J and B. You’ve got yourself a customer, ma’am.”

  She unlocked the door and preceded me into the room, which was a duplicate of the one down the corridor that Sandra and I had shared platonically the previous night. There was a suitcase open on the nearer of the big beds. Delgado got a small shiny flask out of it and turned to look at me.

  “This is rather silly, isn’t it?” she said quietly. “You don’t really want a drink, do you?”

  I said firmly, “No one shall ever claim that Helm entered a lady’s room under false pretenses. I’ll choke down a drink if you want me to.”

  She laughed, and dropped the flask back into the suitcase, watching me. “That little girl has got you in a bad way, hasn’t she?”

  “I was hoping it didn’t show.”

  “It shows. But it’s not very flattering, Matt. I mean, it’s not as if you were overwhelmed by my unique grace and beauty. After a chaste week on the road with that nubile child, including a night spent in the same bedroom, you’d react the same way to any reasonably presentable female, wouldn’t you?” There was nothing to say to that, so I remained silent. She went on, looking at me curiously: “You’re an experienced older man. I’m sure you could have… persuaded her, if you’d really tried.”

  “Seduced her, you mean?”

  Delgado shrugged. “Whatever. But you didn’t try?”

  “That’s right.” I cleared my throat. “In an old-fashioned costume movie, I’d be saying nobly that I’d sworn an oath on my son’s grave. Well, I don’t have the sentimental feeling for graves that some people do, and I haven’t even seen that one; but when I learned that Matthew was dead I found myself remembering that I’d never done much for him although he was my son. Then it occurred to me that there was something I could do for him now. I could see to it that his young widow made it all right.”

  Delgado said dryly, “A very interesting project, as Lester Leonard would say.”

  “Don’t be snide, Delgado,” I said. “I’m quite aware that my young-widow resistance is very low. I was also quite aware from the start the last thing the girl needed was to get mixed up in any important way with a superannuated veteran of the undercover wars, particularly one who was related to her by marriage and looked a little like the husband she’d lost and probably had a few of the same mannerisms. Even if you couldn’t call it incest, technically, the weird kind of relationship we’d have, with Matthew’s ghost between us, would tear her apart, and maybe me as well. Hence Iron Man Helm.”

  There was a little silence, then Delgado said: “You’d better not let it get around that you’re really kind of a nice person, Matt. It would ruin your reputation around the shop.” She turned and moved to the dresser and, with the aid of the big mirror above it, started pulling the pins out of her hair. Standing there with her back to me, she spoke to my image in the glass: “A woman taking down her hair is supposed to be very sexy. Am I?”

  I said, “You’re teasing me.”

  She didn’t turn her head. “What do you expect? A young girl gets you all wound up like a clock, and you come into my room with fairly obvious motives; and I’m not allowed to tease you a little? You’re lucky I don’t take it as a deadly insult and slap your face.” She shook her head and dark hair came tumbling down over her shoulders. There was more of it than I’d thought. She reached back with both hands and lifted it all to expose the zipper down her back. She spoke, still without turning her head: “Now you may help me off with my dress. Please don’t get impatient and damage it. It’s survived a number of indignities tonight, including a tumble on the sidewalk; it deserves to be removed with care and hung up properly.”

  I moved closer in order to operate the long zipper. Bending over her, I said, “I don’t know if I can bear this dreadful penance. You’re a cruel, sadistic bitch, Delgado.”

  “I’m a woman and my name is Dana.” Standing there in front of the mirror, she helped me work the red dress down from her shoulders and arms. She stepped out of it. “Now hang it up, please.”

  “Yes, Dana.”

  “No, not on a hook. I said properly. Use a hanger.”

  “Yes, Dana.”

  With the dress properly stored away in the closet, I returned to her. She was the loveliest thing in the world in her lacy slip with her dark hair loose on her shoulders. She was smart enough to know that it’s difficult for a woman to look severe and untouchable half undressed; she’d settled for looking breathtakingly desirable.

  She said, “That’s better. That’s much better, my dear. I wanted you to see me. Now you’re looking at me as me, not just as a convenient substitute for the little girl you’ve forbidden yourself to touch.”

  I said, �
��I see you, Dana. You have my full attention.”

  She smiled as she came forward. “Not quite, but I will have.”

  She did, too.

  25

  I awoke in the night to hear her crying. It surprised me; I hadn’t judged her to be a crying girl. It wasn’t a violent paroxysm of grief or regret or whatever, just an occasional quiet little sniff or stifled sob.

  Lying beside her in the dark, I said, “Whatever it is, I didn’t mean it.”

  “There’s K-Kleenex on the table beside you. Please?”

  “Light?”

  “I don’t m-mind.”

  I switched it on and gave her a wad of tissues, and watched her while she mopped and wiped and blew.

  I asked, “Anything I did?”

  “No.”

  “Anything I can do?”

  “No. I’m sorry I woke you.”

  “It’s all right. I ought to get to my room pretty soon, anyway. Got to get showered and packed.”

  She was a tidy weeper and didn’t look as destroyed afterwards as they sometimes do. A lovely lady who had problems. Well, who doesn’t? I remembered another dark-haired lady who’d also cried in bed, although Lia Varek had shed her tears before the act rather than afterwards. It wasn’t a comfortable memory. It made me feel disloyal, although I couldn’t say to whom. Maybe myself. Don Juan Helm. I consoled myself with the fact that at least I’d kept my hands off the kid. I didn’t seem to have much resistance, but at least I’d had that much.

  Aware of my regard, Dana pushed away a lock of hair that clung damply to one cheek, and retrieved an escaping shoulder strap of the slip she still wore. After making certain that her dress had been removed to safety, she’d relaxed and let the rest of her costume take care of itself. The pumps she’d kicked off were presumably undamaged, but I wasn’t so sure about the panty hose. Removing them had, I recalled, been a community effort accompanied by breathless laughter—she’d called them a ridiculous garment—and afterwards the situation had become quite urgent, so we’d wasted no time on the slip beyond displacing it as far as necessary.

  “It’s too bad,” Dana said, tugging the rumpled garment straight about her as she lay there. “I brought a beautiful nightgown along, just in case I should meet somebody irresistible; and here I wind up making love in my underwear!”

  “Well, it’s pretty underwear.” I kissed her lightly. “Are you all right now?”

  She nodded. “I’m sorry. It was really very nice. A little… well, desperate, but nice. I don’t know what I woke up feeling so sad about. Just the well-known tristesse, I suppose. Yes, I’m fine now. Do you have to go?”

  Under those circumstances, there’s only one acceptable response to that question, put that way; and it took me awhile to make it. Later, after reawakening in my own room, shaving, toothbrushing, showering, dressing, and packing, I transported my single bag to the lobby and found that starvation had got me down ten minutes early. Some people get sad afterwards; others merely get hungry. However, there was a coffee urn for early risers in a corner, complete with Styrofoam cups, packets of sugar, and little plastic pots of the soluble talcum powder that’s supposed to whiten your coffee and make your eyes believe it’s actually got cream in it even as your taste buds say no. Fortunately, I mostly drink it black.

  By the time I got all the hot, brown, wake-up liquid down without burning myself too badly, they were letting people into the breakfast room. I established myself at a table for two. It was a glassed-in veranda that reminded me of the Vareks’ sunporch—and of Lia Varek herself in her scarlet sundress with little bows at the shoulders. I wished she would go away and stop bothering me. I guess I’m just not comfortable with promiscuity. Then Dana appeared, slender and lovely in the wine-colored slacks and sweater I’d seen before; and I found my high-principled guilt feelings evaporating.

  “I brought my suitcase down,” she said, after I’d done my gentlemanly duty by her chair. “It’s beside yours in the lobby.”

  “That’s cozy,” I said, sitting down to face her. I was surprised to see her blush like a young girl, as if I’d said something very intimate.

  She licked her lips. “Matt.”

  “Yes, Dana.”

  “Don’t… don’t let’s allow it to become too important.”

  I looked at her for a moment. I said, “Sure. Hell, it was just an act of mercy on your part. My endocrine balance was all loused up and you generously restored it to normal, for which I thank you. Okay?”

  “Yes,” she said, smiling faintly. “Yes, okay. I’m very glad to hear that your balance is normal.” She went on rather hastily: “It looks like a good day for flying. Of course you can’t tell how it’ll be down where we’re going. Regardless of what the travel folders say, they’re not islands of eternal sunshine. I was in Santo Domingo once when it didn’t stop raining for a month.”

  “Is it diplomatic to ask what you were doing in Santo Domingo?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “I get the impression that you’re a little more than a computer jockey, Dana.”

  “More? Or less?” She shrugged. “I’m not a trained agent, if that’s what you’re asking. Well, you know that. You complained once that I was so helpless I didn’t even know how to shoot a gun, and you were going to have to look after me and hold my hand when we get down there.”

  I said, “Somehow my attitude seems to have changed. It will be a pleasure, looking after you and holding your hand. But it isn’t fair.”

  “What isn’t?”

  “Since Mac sent you here to work with me, he probably told you as much about me as he thought fit for public consumption. But he hasn’t told me a damn thing about you.”

  “There’s very little to tell,” she said. “I was born down in the islands, I got to know them pretty well as I grew up, I became acquainted with a few useful people, and I learned a few useful things like how to run a computer, so when the job came up of correlating information on a terrorist group based down here, I was the top choice among those available.”

  “That doesn’t tell me how you came to be applying for a job in that crazy-house—or were you recruited? Most people don’t know we exist.”

  She smiled serenely. “No, it doesn’t tell you, and I’m not going to. Nobody’s told me how you came to be working there, either, and I’m not asking.”

  I grinned. “The old whore answer is: Just lucky, I guess.”

  She said, “Let’s leave it at that, Matt.”

  “Sure.” Actually, it was bad form, as the British say, to question a colleague about his, or her, origins and motives. I saw the waitress heading our way with a laden tray, and glanced at my watch. “Well, here it comes. We’d better gulp it down. Our limousine will be at the door any minute.” I grimaced. “I don’t like making the trip naked, even just from portal to portal, or airport to airport.”

  “Naked?”

  “Unarmed. I get very unhappy without my little thirty-eight-caliber security blanket. Well, let’s hope our friend Modesto, whoever the hell he may be, is on the ball down there in San Juan and doesn’t let us get shot before giving us something to shoot back with.”

  Dana said a bit reprovingly, “I know the man they call Modesto. He’s a very reliable person. I’m sure he won’t let anything happen to us.”

  I said, “Only God is that reliable, and we haven’t been able to recruit Him yet. But it’s not for want of trying.”

  It was a good thing Trask had given us plenty of lead time because we had to run a gauntlet of construction zones on our way to Kennedy. When we got there, it was the same madhouse as always, it doesn’t matter which airline building you’re sentenced to. After checking our bags and receiving our boarding passes we still had the better part of an hour to waste, having arrived as early as ordered in spite of the driving delays.

  We wandered around a bit. I picked up a couple of hunting-fishing magazines at a newsstand. Dana, more intellectual, settled for a news magazine and a journal of
opinion a little to the right of center; well, everybody’s going conservative these days, except me. I’ve learned to remain apolitical since Mac never asks our opinions; he’s just as apt to send us after a rabid rightist as a wild-eyed leftist. I led Dana along the concourse to a wide-open coffee bar where she had coffee, and I had coffee and a very gooey cinnamon roll.

  After we’d sat there for a while on our stools, sipping and chewing as appropriate, she glanced at me curiously. “Why are we stalling?” she said. “Why don’t we just go to the gate and read our magazines comfortably in real chairs, until they find us a plane? I don’t think you really wanted that sugary mass of dough. We’ll be having lunch on board shortly.”

  “Shhh,” I said. “You’re interfering with extrasensory perception.”

  “What?”

  I said, “Somebody’s interested in us. I’ve been catching activity out of the corners of my eyes, movements that don’t fit the crowd pattern. Somebody’s following us closely; several somebodies, in fact. After enough years in the business you learn to sense it, even if you don’t quite see it or hear it. But I haven’t been able to pick out a face…”

  Then I saw him, shuffling along with the crowd with the slow movements of the sick or aged: a bent old man with a cane. He was wearing a shabby black suit and hat, and carrying a worn, old-fashioned black-leather valise. The cane was also old-fashioned, also black, and I wondered if the two feet of steel inside would show up on the airport scanners.