The Silencers

by Donald Hamilton

  As murder attempts go, it was kind of pitiful. The Olds was in sight behind us during the long grind up the pass until the murk got too thick to see anything. I turned on my lights to make things easy for him. We topped out at just under six thousand feet and started down through the clouds on the other side. He waited until the road emerged on the open flank of the mountain. Then he came roaring out of the snow and mist behind us and swung over to give us the nudge that would send us off the edge—blasting away with his horn to terrify us, I suppose, or to make us stop and get out of the car with our hands up.

  I hit the brakes and my tire chains took hold at once. With nothing but rubber to stop him, he was past before he could connect, skidding badly. I saw his face looking at us. The glass was blurred with condensed moisture, but I recognized the sallow face and thin black mustache of the M.C. of the Club Chihuahua.

  I threw a fast downshift into second gear and fed power to the rear wheels. The chains found traction in the new direction, and the old truck lurched forward, digging out hard downhill. For a moment, the touch, as we call it in the business, looked possible. He was right in position ahead, now in a bad slide to the left, having over-corrected his first wild skid. The whole flank of the big car was open and vulnerable. If I could only gain enough relative speed before the impact, it ought to slew him around broadside in front of me and also swing the truck around to the right just about the proper amount. I was ready then to slam the lever into that stump-pulling reserve low-gear that comes with a heavy-duty truck transmission and bulldoze him right off the edge.

  “Down,” I said, without turning my head. “Hit the basement. Cover your face.”

  I mean, there was bound to be a bump, and there was even a possibility that we’d go over with him if I miscalculated. Then the little man got off his brake. Only a flat-lander would have braked so hard in the first place, coming down a slick mountain road without chains. The glowing taillights went out, and the big sedan, wheels no longer locked, straightened out and surged ahead, presenting me with nothing but a massive chrome bumper to shoot at.

  Hitting him there was useless, even if I could catch up with him—I’d just be shoving him down the road ahead of me. So I eased up on the gas and watched him pull away into the mist. Gail, I realized, had made no move towards the floor.

  I said, “Sixty-one Olds hard-top four-door, gray, one aboard. Texas license DD 2109. Write it down, please. There’s a pad and pencil in the glove compartment.” After quite a long time, she reached out and opened the compartment clumsily. I said, “We may see more of him later. I suppose he was after the films—unless he’s just one of those unreasonable guys who get sore when you kick them in a certain place. You recognized him from the club, I suppose—the little runt of an M.C. with a Spanish accent who was telling the girls to take it off.” Her voice was shaky. “No. No, I didn’t see him. I... I wasn’t looking.” She hesitated, then said with a show of defiance, “As a matter of fact, I had my eyes closed.”

  “Your ears, too?” I said. “I told you to get down.”

  “I... I couldn’t move,” she said. “I just couldn’t, Matt!”

  “Sure,” I said. “Well, we’ll stop for lunch in Alamogordo. You can change into dry panties there.”

  Her face came around sharply. She gave me a glance of pure hatred, started to speak but checked herself with an effort. After a moment, she turned away, looking straight ahead.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, stiff-lipped. “I know I’m not very... Don’t be too hard on me, darling. I’m not used to this sort of thing.”

  Her meekness was as phony as a drunk’s New Year’s resolution. She would have loved to cut my throat with a dull knife, but she was saving me for a more elaborate and excruciating fate. At least I hoped that was what was behind the phony humility.

  A woman who hates you, Mac had said. Then he continued thoughtfully, Of course you can’t trust her, but untrustworthy people can sometimes be very useful. There was a case during the war, if you recall, where the whole operation hinged upon one agent’s known weakness...

  We were being very clever, not to say diabolical. We were counting on this woman to hate, despise, and, given the opportunity, betray me—it was a desperate plan, but there was no time to be careful. I couldn’t take a chance on lousing up the job by letting her develop any respect or affection for me. Well, there wasn’t much chance of that.

  11

  In Alamogordo, the cafe that served us lunch made up a stack of sandwiches for us and filled a Thermos with coffee. What with the gin and tequila I’d bought in Juarez, I figured we were well prepared to cope with any blizzard straying this far south. Up north, of course, where they blow for days and involve temperatures far below zero, you have to take them more seriously.

  The weather was getting mean when we came outside. Snow, driven by a rising wind, was falling heavily. When we got out of town, we discovered that every damn fool in the country with a slick set of tires and no brains had picked this stretch of highway to demonstrate his stupidity. It took us almost an hour to cover the twelve miles from Alamogordo to Tularosa, mainly because of the stalled traffic. That left us with forty-five miles to go to Carrizozo. By five o’clock we still hadn’t made it, and I was getting pretty tired of fighting it. The snow was nothing, but the morons blocking the road were enough to drive you crazy.

  I found a ranch road leading off to the right. The unbroken snow indicated that nobody’d been over it since the storm started. I turned off the highway and headed in. Progress was slow, and coming out again would be a problem if the weather held, but on the other hand, nobody was going to follow us through that stuff in an ordinary passenger car, with or without chains. I had no intention of standing guard all night. I’d worry about getting out when the time came.

  The road turned down into a gully containing clumps of desert evergreens. I had the lights on, but the visibility was terrible, and I had trouble deciding where I was supposed to go from there. It was all snow. I said to hell with it, stopped, rocked the pickup back and forth a bit when it wouldn’t come loose at once, and backed it in among the nearest trees. I cut the lights and windshield wipers, leaving the engine and heater running.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing,” Gail said, beside me. Her voice sounded rusty from disuse.

  I said, “A guy tried to run us off a cliff, remember? He may be a hundred miles away by now, but I’d rather not bank on it. Those tracks will be drifted over in half an hour, enough so in the dark nobody’ll know we’re here.”

  “That’s nice,” she said. “I suppose somebody’ll find our bodies, come spring.”

  I said, “You must lead a hell of a life, glamor girl, terrorized by every little snowflake. Look, the highway is only about a mile due west. If we can’t get the truck out in the morning, we’ll just dress up warmly and walk out for help. Okay? Now take your shoes off and make yourself comfortable... Oh, and you can take that wary look off your face, too.”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “The arrangements,” I said, “will be simple and virtuous. You’ll sleep up front here in the cab. The seat’s a little short, but you’ll come a lot closer to fitting in than I would. I’ll bed down in back. Now, with that great load off your mind, suppose you tell me whether you prefer gin or tequila with your ham sandwich...”

  I brought the refreshments out of the rear, switched on the interior light, and we had a kind of picnic there in the cab while the storm-lashed twilight outside gradually turned black with premature night. Over the rumble of the motor and the whir of the heater keeping us warm, we could hear the wind screaming through the nearby trees.

  It was cozy enough in the truck, but it was kind of like being alone in space, hurtling along a predetermined orbit in a sealed capsule. I saw the attractive woman at the other end of the seat wince as the truck rocked on its springs, feeling the blast. I reached out and poured a couple of fingers of tequila into her plastic cup.

  “Didn’t you e
ver sit out a blue norther before?” I asked. “I thought you told me you were born on a ranch.”

  She shrugged. “I never was any more of an outdoors girl than I had to be.” Her eyes narrowed. “Come to think of it, darling, I never told you anything of the sort. Have you been checking up on me?”

  “Did you think we wouldn’t? The dope came through just before breakfast. Just a brief summary.”

  She laughed shortly. “It must have made interesting reading.”

  As a matter of fact, it hadn’t. It had been the usual story of a girl with too much beauty, too much money and too many husbands.

  “I must say,” she said, “that the idea of people snooping around and asking questions—”

  She stopped, as a violent gust swept through our sheltering hollow. A branch beat against the side of the metal canopy. Snow peppered the windshield like thrown gravel. From inside, the glass looked crystallized and opaque. Gail’s knuckles were white, gripping the cup.

  “Relax,” I said. “The end of the world should still be a few days off, if my guess is correct.”

  She said, “Damn you, we can’t all be great pioneer heroes... What did you mean by that?”

  “I’ve been thinking,” I said, “about Sarah—your sister Janie, and what made her do it, go over, as we call it. Mac isn’t often so wrong about the people he picks. Screwy as we are, we don’t usually let him down for reasons of simple biological attraction. She wasn’t a school kid, after all. She’d had training and a couple of years’ experience in a tough racket.”

  “Yes,” Gail said. “One day I’m going to find out exactly how tough this racket of yours is, darling.” It could have been a veiled threat, although her face showed no hint of it.

  I said, “I figure he must have pulled the old doomsday pitch on her. It’s the one they usually drag out when it’s a question of nuclear weapons and they need a few misguided idealists to throw sand in the works. It explains what she said to you when she was dying.”

  “You mean, about her only missing a few days?”

  I nodded. “That’s the way I read it. The world is going to end December thirteenth, she’d been told, presumably due to this underground test in the Manzanitas, if she didn’t do something about it quick or get you to do it for her... Well, they’ve pulled that line before and the world’s still here, so I’m not going to brood about it. I’ll get you a sleeping bag. Which suitcase do you want?” She hesitated, started to ask a question then changed her mind. “The small one has my nightie—”

  “Nightie?” I said. “What do you think this is, a June honeymoon at Niagara Falls? You’ll freeze to death in a nylon nightie. You’d better sleep in those clothes or pull on some warm slacks if you’ve got them; you may even have to keep your coat on. It’ll get cold in here when we shut down the motor. If you haven’t got wool socks, I’ll lend you a pair.”

  She said, rather stiffly, “I’ll wear my own things, thank you.”

  “Suit yourself,” I said. “Sleep well.”

  12

  It took her more than an hour to make up her mind and then having made it up, to do something about it. Lying in back, I saw the cab light come on, illuminating the window above my head. A lot of activity followed— when a greenhorn gets involved with a sleeping bag, you’d think a boa constrictor had got into the act.

  At last the light went out and the cab door opened— and closed noisily, slammed shut by the wind. Seconds later, she was knocking at the rear door of the canopy. I let her wait a little. It wouldn’t do to let her think I’d been expecting her. Finally, I made a grudging sound and crawled back to raise the door which was hinged at the top and swung up like a station-wagon transom.

  “Here,” she said, pushing an armload of bedding at me. I disposed of the stuff behind me and reached down to help her inside.

  “Watch your head,” I said. “This isn’t the lobby of the Hotel Paso del Norte. What’s the matter?”

  “I’m freezing up there,” she gasped, scrambling in beside me. “And scared.”

  “I offered you warm socks. And I told you to wear your coat.”

  “There wasn’t room for it inside that damn zipper bag.

  And when I spread it over me, it kept falling off. Anyway, you can’t talk to a damn coat.”

  I closed and latched the door, shutting out the snow and wind. I switched on the electric lantern I kept back there, got her sleeping bag open like a blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders. She drew it tight about her, shivering realistically. I found the tequila bottle and the plastic cups.

  “We’re going to die!” she moaned tragically, taking the cup I offered her. “We’re never going to get out of this dreadful place alive!”

  I laughed. “Cut it out. Now if we’d counted on staying in a motel, we’d be in real trouble. There aren’t many along this highway, and they’ll all be full of stranded travelers, tonight.”

  “My feet!” she said. “They’re frozen absolutely solid.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Gangrene will set in any minute.” I made an examination. She’d come around the truck in her stocking feet, rather than ruin her shoes in the snow. “You’d better take off those wet nylons,” I said.

  She hesitated then unwrapped herself enough to get her skirt up and one garter disengaged; then she began to shake uncontrollably and hugged the robe about her again. Well, she probably was kind of cold. I wouldn’t have wanted to run around out there practically barefoot. “You d-do it,” she gasped.

  I glanced at her. She had the grace to blush. It was pretty damn corny. I mean, I hadn’t been sure until then— not absolutely sure—but the please-help-me-off-with-my-stockings gambit was a dead give-away. No adult woman who didn’t plan on getting laid was going to start that routine—alone with a man in a cramped refuge on a stormy night.

  “Sure,” I said. “Anything to oblige, ma’am.”

  I got on my knees and arranged the lantern for better visibility. I prepared the patient for the operation. After a little, she laughed softly, watching me work.

  “Does it bother you, undressing a woman, Matt?” She didn’t seem to be shivering so much any more. “No, that’s right, you’re the iron man, aren’t you? The unfeeling brute who strips them and searches them without a thought for anything but duty and country.” There was malice in her voice.

  I shook out a transparent nylon stocking and draped it over a pile of stuff at the side. “Would it have made you feel better if I’d raped you?” I asked.

  She laughed again. “In a way, of course it would. It would have meant you were looking at me as a woman instead of as a suspicious character.” She watched me work the other stocking down and slip it off her foot. When she spoke, her voice was quite different, very soft, very gentle. “You don’t have to stop with the stockings, darling. You know that.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I know it.”

  There was a little silence inside the canopy, while outside the storm whistled and howled. For some reason I was stalling. I drew a long breath and looked at my watch.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked, rather sharply. “What are you doing?”

  “Just checking the time,” I said. “I’ve got a bet riding on this.” I didn’t but it seemed like a good line. I don’t like sex under false pretenses. Sometimes you have to do it that way, in the business, but tonight I couldn’t see that it was necessary. “Five bucks,” I said.

  There was another little silence. When she spoke, her voice was absolutely flat. “Five bucks?” she said, “On what?”

  “On whether or not we’re making love by nine o’clock,” I said, which was another lie. We’d discussed the probability, Mac and I, but no time had been mentioned. “It’s all right,” I said. “My money’s safe. We’ve still got forty minutes to go.”

  There was another stretch of silence, but it didn’t last long. I was ready for her when she came at me, striking at my face with her nails. I got her wrists, as I had once before. She was strong enough, for a w
oman, but she had no conception of the use of leverage.

  “Easy now,” I said. “Take it easy, glamor girl. You’ll only hurt yourself.”

  “You beast!” she gasped. “You... you creature! You contemptible—”

  “Sure,” I said. “There wasn’t any bet, Gail. I was just kidding.” She didn’t speak, breathing heavily, and I said, “You were pretty corny, you know, with that stocking routine. I had to shake you up a bit.”

  “You louse! You stinking, miserable—” She stopped abruptly and spoke in that perfectly flat voice: “I don’t understand.”

  “Truce?” I said, still holding her.

  After a moment, she nodded. I released her wrists, and she sat there rubbing them, not looking at me, while the truck rocked on its spring and hard little pellets of wind-driven snow rattled against the aluminum canopy. I thought the weather would probably break by morning. That hard buckshot snow generally comes with the end of the storm.

  “I don’t understand,” Gail said again.

  “You shouldn’t try to seduce a man my age with such obvious tricks, glamor girl,” I said. “It hurts his pride. Also, there was a matter of principle. There wasn’t any bet, but, last night my chief and I did discuss your possible reactions. The consensus was that you’d probably try this. I thought you ought to know that we’d talked about it.”

  She licked her lips. “You discussed... You actually talked about whether or not I’d... What in the world made you think...?”

  “Cut it out,” I said. “Can’t you see I’m trying to keep this on a reasonably honest basis? Don’t go hypocritical on me, Gail.”

  She hesitated, then said in a different voice: “Did I give myself away that badly?”

  “You didn’t have to. It was obvious that you hated us, me in particular. God knows, you had plenty of reason. It seemed inevitable that somewhere on this trip you’d try to get even, somehow. And how is a woman going to get even with a man who’s too big for her to beat up and has all the resources of the U.S. Government behind him?”