The Ambushers

by Donald Hamilton

  “I’m sorry I made a scene,” she said. “It’s been pretty hot and my feet hurt. Do you want to hear my report?”

  “If you want to give it,” I said. “No rush.”

  “I’ve got two of the key interviews so far—the addresses that were visited by von Sachs’ courier or recruiter or whatever he was. The first place, 2032 Montezuma Avenue. Fred Winter. A cheap little house in a trashy suburb. The payments are made by Mrs. Winter, a schoolteacher. Winter, a mechanic when he’s working, seems to spend most of his time in front of the television drinking beer by the gallon—judging by the empties—and complaining about his back and other things. Radio, TV. No phonograph or tape recorder. No short-wave equipment in evidence.”

  I put a drink into her hand. “Go on, I’m listening.”

  “Address number two, 174½ Rosario Lane. Eladio Griego. It’s an adobe shack in Spanish-town, or whatever they call it here. The mother can hardly speak English. I interviewed her, since Eladio’s been in jail since last week for knifing a man. It’s happened before, I gather.”

  “But he wasn’t in jail at the time the courier came around?”

  “No. They’ve got a radio but it doesn’t work. There’s a functioning TV. No phonograph or tape recorder. The place was dark and full of broken-down furniture. There could have been all kinds of electronic equipment hidden in the mess, but I don’t really think there was.”

  I frowned. “Of course, we don’t know that it’s the man of the house who’s involved in every case. Come to that, we don’t even know that every address that was visited is significant. The guy could have taken time off to call on his girl, or his favorite uncle, or something.”

  “Well, so far I’d say we have two good prospects,” Sheila said. “I didn’t meet Mrs. Winter, she was busy at school. But her husband is a surly brute with a grudge against society, which makes him a promising candidate. Old Mrs. Griego is feeble and half blind, but her Eladio is apparently a husky boy who’d kick your head in just for fun. Good strong-arm material.”

  “Unfortunately Eladio’s not going to do us much good in jail,” I said. “We’d have to pull too many strings to get at him. We have to find somebody we can work on easily, who knows where von Sachs-Quintana has his headquarters down in Mexico. This beer-swilling Winter character doesn’t sound as if he’d be trusted with that kind of information, even if he is a member of the outfit.” I sipped my drink. “Anything promising in this third block you’ve been working?”

  Sheila glanced down at a paper in her hand. “Number three,” she said, “1420 Mimosa Street. Ernest Head. He seems to be a little better off than the first two, judging by the house. He was in when I called, but he’d just got home from work and his wife said he was tired and asked me to come back after dinner. I—” She stopped, frowning.

  “What is it?”

  “There was something funny. I’ve just remembered. I wanted to ask you about it.”

  “Go on and ask.”

  “I’m trying to think of it. There was a record player going in a house kind of catty-corner across the back yard. It was turned very loud and the window was open. One of the numbers that was played... it made me feel funny. I mean, it had associations. I’d heard it before, somewhere. I have a feeling it’s important.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. It just seemed terribly out of place, somehow. Dum dum dum dum, ta dum ta dum ta dum ta... Do you recognize it?”

  I grinned. “Well, not really.”

  “Oh, dear,” she said ruefully. “I never could carry a tune. I wish I could remember where I’d heard it before.”

  “Did you check the house?”

  “Of course.”

  “It isn’t one of our key addresses?”

  “No. I told you. I was going up to that when I heard this music from another place behind it.” Sheila hesitated. “If you’d drive out there tonight with me, you could wait outside and listen. Maybe she’ll play it again. I have a feeling you’d recognize it.”

  “She?”

  “Apparently it’s a woman. Miss Catherine Smith, it said on the mailbox.”

  I regarded her for a moment. “You really think this is worth my sitting in the car a couple of hours, Skinny?”

  She moved her small shoulders briefly. “Call it a hunch,” she said. “I know it sounds silly, but—”

  “You win,” I said. “I didn’t survive in this business by passing up anybody’s hunches. But if it turns out to be Elvis Presley who makes you feel funny, you’ll buy me a drink.”

  9

  It was quite a concert. Miss Smith, if that was her name, had a lot of records, and her equipment had lots of volume. Even at the distance I was parked, I had no trouble identifying her selections. Her closer neighbors must have been either very tolerant or very deaf, to put up with the racket. But then, in a development like that, I guess you have to learn to live with each other’s taste in music.

  It was a machine-made oasis at the edge of Tucson, fairly new—parts were still being built up—known as Saguaro Heights. It had reasonable-sized cinder-block houses in pink, blue, yellow, and green. Each house had a TV antenna on the roof and a little lawn out front. The farther out into the desert some people move, the stronger seems to be this compulsion they get to grow and mow grass.

  I was sitting in the station wagon across the street from the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Head. The Heads had a small ornate evergreen tree and some gaudy semi-tropical flowers. Judging by a tricycle and other debris, they also had kids. A shiny new car, one of the new compact Pontiacs—a far cry from my massive relic— was parked on the short concrete apron that connected the garage with the street.

  There was a space of about twenty feet between the Head house, blue, and the pink house next door. Looking through this gap I could see, diagonally across back yards full of swings and clotheslines, the open window from which the music seemed to be coming. Nothing had shown at it yet.

  I glanced at my watch and yawned. Well, it was one of our significant interviews and Sheila was right to spend as much time as she decently could inside. Maybe she was learning something. However, the night was hot and the station wagon upholstery was lumpy with age. I yawned again, trying to find stretching room for my legs. The door across the street opened, and Sheila came out. She looked pretty and unfamiliar in her summer dress and high heels. There were only the white-bandaged tips of her fingers to remind me of the tattered scrap of female humanity I’d helped haul out of the Costa Verde jungle. She crossed the street and came to my window.

  “Well?” she asked eagerly.

  “No picture but lots of sound,” I said. “Selections from ‘My Fair Lady’. Part of the Swan Lake Ballet Suite. Some waltzes, Strauss, and I think a bit of Lehar. She keeps getting tired of a piece and switching to something else. Currently, as you can hear, Siegfried is having a rough time getting to the Rhine. He may make it and then again he may not.”

  “Oh,” Sheila said, disappointed. “I’m sorry. I guess I got you here for nothing.”

  “No strain,” I said. “It’s been a great cultural experience. Did you spot anything inside?”

  She shook her head. “There was nothing out of line that I could see. Mr. Head sells cars. His wife is nice, a handsome dark woman, and the two kids are cute. There’s a phonograph for the kids, and a TV of course, and there are three radios: a clock-radio in the bedroom, a little set in the kitchen for Mrs. H, and an expensive all-wave portable they bought recently to take along when they go camping. Mrs. H says she’s listened to the BBC on it.”

  “That could mean something,” I said. “A long-range receiver like that.”

  “Maybe. There was no hint of any sending equipment or other short-wave stuff.” Sheila looked up, listening. “What’s our music-mad lady playing now?”

  “She’s starting to pick them loud and brassy for a woman,” I said. “From Wagner to Sousa. ‘King Cotton March.’ Does it make you feel funny? Does it have associations?”
<
br />   She shook her head. “Well, I guess that’s all for tonight. I’ll come back and clean up this block in the morning.”

  “Sure.”

  She started around the car, hesitated, and looked back. “Thanks,” she said.

  “For what?”

  “For being nice about it. For not telling me I’m a silly fool, hearing things.”

  I regarded her for a moment, and told myself firmly I didn’t really like thin little girls with big eyes that changed color disconcertingly.

  “Come on, get in,” I said. “Don’t make me sit on these lopsided springs any longer than—”

  I stopped. The distant music had changed again, and there it was, clear and unbelievable. It was a hell of a thing to hear on a starry night in a peaceful residential development in Tucson, Arizona. It took me back to another continent and another time. I was aware that Sheila had started to speak and stopped, realizing from my expression, I guess, that she didn’t have to say anything.

  After a moment I cleared my throat and looked at her. “For God’s sake, Skinny. You mean you didn’t recognize that?”

  She licked her lips. “I still don’t. Maybe it was played for us in training, but my memory for music is terrible. What—”

  “Hold it,” I said softly. “Easy does it. Laugh as if I’d said something funny.”

  I heard her laugh. I was looking past her, across the street. Strains of the music were still drifting across the back yards from the open, empty, lighted window. Nearer, a man was stumbling around the side of the Heads’ garage towards us.

  “Laugh and talk,” I said. “Then look around casually Is that Ernest Head?”

  Sheila laughed again. “Oh, Mr. Evans, that’s priceless!” she giggled, leaning against the car in a casual way that let her look across the street. Her voice reached me softly. “Yes, that’s Head. Did you see his face?”

  “I saw it,” I said. “He’s hearing music from the grave, I think. I am now telling a dirty joke about... Well, you name it. He’s heading for his car. Be ready to get in. We’re going to make like detectives if he drives off.”

  Head stopped by his new little Pontiac, a stocky, balding man in shirtsleeves. As he opened the car door, the courtesy light went on inside and showed me his face clearly. It was the face of a man who’d seen death, or heard it.

  “But what is it?” Sheila whispered. “What is the piece?”

  “I guess it was just a little before your time,” I said. “And lots of people talked about it, but relatively few really knew it, in this country, at least. What you’re hearing is an orchestral version of a ditty called the Horst Wessel Song. Somebody is being clever, I think, not to say mildly fiendish.”

  Across the street, Mr. Ernest Head, car salesman, backed his shiny new car away from his neat new house and drove away as if devils were after him, and I guess they were. I could hear them in the music, too, but they weren’t my devils. Not now. They’d given me a hard time once—me and a few million other men—but now after nearly twenty years they were just some half-forgotten clowns in brown uniforms and heavy boots who’d had a catchy song and a funny way of marching. They’d presented a problem, sure, but we’d solved it the hard way. Or had we?

  “Get in, Skinny,” I said. “Here we go.”

  Driving away, I watched the rear-view mirror carefully. I studied the evening traffic around us. Tucson is a typical, sprawling southwestern city, with wide streets that make an inconspicuous tailing job relatively easy. The only trouble was, this would work two ways. Presently I turned off, letting the little Pontiac keep on going. Sheila glanced at me quickly.

  “You’re letting him go?”

  “No sense having him spot us following,” I said. “He saw the car parked by his house. I have a hunch he’s just driving around to settle his nerves where his family can’t see him, anyway.”

  “Then why—”

  “I wanted to see if anyone else was interested in where he was heading. Nobody seems to be. Whoever’s playing that tune, call her Miss Smith, either she’s got no outside help to watch Head while she tends the turntable, or she’s got reason to think he’s going nowhere important, at least tonight.” I grimaced. “Maybe it’s a break. The question is how to use it. Let’s get back to the motel and do some thinking.”

  Nobody followed us. I made sure of this. There were still kids around the pool when I drove past it and parked the station wagon in the slot in front of my unit, around the corner.

  “I’d ask you in for a drink, Miss Summerton,” I said rather loudly, “if I could be sure my motives wouldn’t be misconstrued.”

  She laughed. “Don’t be silly, Mr. Evans. This isn’t the reign of Queen Victoria, you know. Besides, we’d better decide how we’re going to split the work tomorrow.”

  “Well, in that case—”

  I unlocked and opened the door, switched on the light, waited for her to enter, and closed the door behind her.

  “I think we’re overdoing the Miss Summerton-Mr. Evans routine,” she said after a moment. “We’d better get to be Sheila and Hank tomorrow, don’t you think?”

  I gave her a grin. “And honey and darling the next day?” It was just something I threw out without thinking. Like my hand on her shoulder, it made her freeze up instantly. Her face got cold and remote and a little pale. I said quickly, “It’s a good suggestion. Maybe I was hamming it up a bit. But now let’s hear your thoughts about a disc jockey named Smith.”

  She didn’t seem to hear me. She had turned away from me, perhaps so I wouldn’t be able to see her face. I couldn’t guess what she was thinking, except that it probably wasn’t pleasant, or flattering to me. Well, I’d been clumsy again. On the other hand, as she’d said herself, she was going to have to get over it some day.

  She caught sight of the long cardboard box marked Winchester that I’d left lying on the bed, on the theory that hiding eight pounds and three feet of high-powered rifle in a small motel room isn’t really feasible and merely calls attention to what you’re trying to conceal. In that part of the U.S. people tend to take hunting rifles for granted, anyway. Sheila stepped forward, opened the box, and looked at the weapon inside. After a moment she turned to look at me accusingly, as if she thought I’d been keeping things from her.

  “Just an item that may come in handy,” I said. “I picked it up on my way through town this afternoon.”

  “But you must have found a lead of some kind down along the border or you wouldn’t have—”

  I shook my head. “No such luck. It’s just that kind of wide-open country, clear down into Mexico. Even when we get von Sachs’ mountain hideout located, we may not be able to work in very close.”

  I watched her lift the gun out of the box and, like any well-trained marksman, slip the bolt back to make certain the piece was unloaded. It gave me a funny feeling to watch her and remember that this small, frail-looking person had gone to a very tough school and learned, among other things, how to handle a large number of lethal weapons, many of which the average man had never seen or heard of.

  “Careful,” I said. “You’ll get your dress dirty. It’s right off the rack; it’s still got the factory preservative.”

  She laid it back in the box and rubbed her hands together. “You haven’t fired it yet?”

  “No,” I said. “We’ll have to sneak off tomorrow and find a place where we can sight it in.”

  She gave me a sharp glance. “We?”

  “I want you to have the feel of it, too. We don’t know how this will break.” I looked at her. “Unless, of course, you have some objection.”

  “No,” she said quickly. “No, of course not.” After a moment she said, “Then you didn’t have much luck on your border trip?”

  “Well, I didn’t really expect to pick up any information on von Sachs. That’s what we’re here in Tucson for. I did get some road information from some anthropologists digging up old pots on one of the ranches down there. They were down the road past the Nacimientos,
well down into Mexico, earlier this summer. Apparently it’s no place to go for a Sunday drive. They used jeeps. An ordinary car might make it, they said, but it would be a real rough trip. Anyway, I learned enough from them that I figure once we get some kind of a lead to von Sachs’ mountain hideout, I can probably find my way there.”

  “But they hadn’t seen him?”

  “They hadn’t actually been up in the rocks. They didn’t seem to think there was anything back there except lizards and gophers and a few caves that might have been inhabited by humans a thousand years ago but weren’t now. Apparently it’s great country for caves.” I glanced at my watch. “Well, I think I’ll head back to Saguaro Heights and tackle the musical Miss Smith.”

  Sheila frowned. “Do you think that’s wise?”

  “I can’t see any reason not to stick to our market-research cover just because some gal plays a few records,” I said. “You’d better take the body around the corner and put it to bed. See you in the morning.”

  10

  Miss Smith’s house was green, even newer than the one in front of which I’d waited for Sheila, earlier. The lawn wasn’t fully established yet. The tree in front was a small, new weeping willow, the pale yellow-green variety that’s considered to have more class—in landscaping and gardening circles—than the old-fashioned dark green. There were no tricycles or roller skates.

  By the time I got back there, the concert was over for the evening, or at least for the time being. I had to ring twice before anything happened inside. Then footsteps approached the front door. There was that funny little moment that comes when you reach what may be the turning point of a job, when you don’t know whether a door is just going to open or the world is going to blow up in your face. The lighting fixture above the front steps came on. A chain was unhooked, a lock was unlocked, the door swung back, and there she was.

  It was quite a production. There was a good deal of fine, artificial-looking, pinky-blonde hair fluffed and pinned about her head in an elaborate fashion. It looked like the nylon hair they put on dolls these days. There were baby-blue eyes with long black lashes and lots of surrounding make-up, the kind that looks as if it ought to glow in the dark. There was a big, soft, promising red mouth, and there was a figure constructed to back up the promise, more or less veiled by a short black negligee, like a ruffly, semi-transparent, knee-length coat.