The Damagers

by Donald Hamilton

  I remembered Mrs. Bell’s close-fitting costume with its spectacular display of sheer black nylons, perhaps another statement, rebellious this time. Like the Muslim-forbidden bourbon. But it seemed ironic that the sexier lady wore the more modest clothes.

  Dorothy Fancher opened the packet of hairpins I’d saved out for her, did some work with the comb, wound the heavy black rope of her hair around her head in a practiced way, and pinned it into place.

  “Truman, my husband, never did figure out a place to put a mirror in this deckhouse for me. I must look like a washerwoman.” When I said nothing, she laughed. “All right, don’t tell me I don’t look like a washerwoman. But why would I want to seduce you, Mr. Helm?”

  I said, “It’s the logical next step, isn’t it? I mean, if the man presents a danger, and if a couple of attempts prove that he’s too tough to be taken out with knives or grenades, just render him helpless with love, the old Samson-and-Delilah routine.”

  She studied me for a moment. “This is strictly beside the point, but why do you find me repulsive? Most men don’t.”

  I took a little time to formulate my answer. At last I said, “Repulsive is not the word, Mrs. Fancher. You’re a very handsome lady and I think you’re even pretty bright, really quite an attractive person; but the fact is you scare the hell out of me.”

  She looked at me sharply. “I frighten you? You don’t look like a man who’s easily intimidated.”

  I said, “Of course I’m totally fearless in the face of death—I mean, that goes with the territory. We’re all intrepid heroes in this business, and if we aren’t we certainly don’t admit it. But this isn’t a question of life or death, it’s a question of… Well, I know that if I went to bed with you, you’d eat me up, no dirty pun intended. As you probably devoured old Truman Fancher. I wouldn’t stand any more chance against you than you’d stand against me if you tried to use that cute little pistol you brought aboard. Pistols are my business. Sex is obviously yours. And I’m not dumb enough to try to compete with a pro in his or her line of work.”

  She smiled faintly. “Isn’t that just a long-winded way of calling me a whore?”

  I shrugged. “We professionals are always sadly misunderstood, Mrs. F. So you’re a whore and I’m an assassin, if you want to make with the loaded words.”

  When she had nothing to say to that, I turned away from her and checked the view ahead through the windshield, all clear so far. The depth-sounder said we were running in seven meters of water, over twenty-one feet. Plenty. The little wallet I’d taken from her pants still lay on the chart table. It was wet outside, but when I picked it up I found it quite dry inside. I glanced through the cards it contained. Most were made out to Dorothy A. Fancher; but there was a worn old Social Security card that gave her name, presumably the maiden name I’d wondered about, as Dorothy Ayesha Ajami. There was also a sizeable wad of bills.

  “Ayesha,” I said.

  “Do you find it an odd name?” she asked.

  I said, “Hell, no. I’m an old H. Rider Haggard buff. I guess King Solomon’s Mines was his best-known book, but she was pretty great, too. She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, the beautiful, all-powerful, immortal queen of the secret land behind the mountains. Her real name was Ayesha.”

  “It’s a fairly common Arabic female name.” After a moment Mrs. Fancher went on, “Actually, I grew up as Ayesha Fatima Ajami. Our religion frowns on mixing Islamic and infidel names. However, it was decided that I would… function better if my name sounded more Americanized, so I had it changed legally. Speaking of books, I picked ‘Dorothy’ out of The Wizard of Oz.”

  I said, “Function better doing what?” Then I looked ahead and saw that the buoyage off the port bow didn’t look the way I had it memorized. I said, “Let’s postpone this discussion until we’re safe in port, or we may never get there. Why don’t you make yourself useful and construct some sandwiches? The arsenic is on the top shelf and the strychnine is in the locker under the sink.”

  She said, “As a matter of fact, I didn’t poison my husband, Mr. Helm.”

  I said, “Well, in that case, you’ll find the bread on the galley counter and the flatware… Hell, you probably know your way around this boat better than I do.”

  “To my sorrow, I probably do.” She made a wry face. “Spending a couple of hundred thousand dollars to live in a space the size of a shoe box! If a slum landlord tried to rent out an apartment this small, that rocked on its foundations at the slightest breeze, the housing authorities would have him thrown in jail.”

  I got the problem of the buoys straightened out with the aid of the binoculars and the chart—we’d just come a little farther than I’d expected. Apparently we had the tide with us, giving us an extra knot or so over the ground. I made, and imbibed, a prelunch martini. Mrs. Fancher refused to indulge, another ethnic statement like her voluminous pants, no doubt. I couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to take your race so seriously; any time I start getting cocky about my Aryan origins I can’t help remembering that Adolf Hitler had the same idea.

  Mrs. Fancher served up sandwiches, Swiss on rye, and coffee. With the current and wind behind us, we roared up Delaware Bay, following the main channel now that I could give my full attention to the traffic. My handsome shipmate cleaned up the galley, which surprised me a bit; I wouldn’t have guessed that housekeeping was a big thing with her. She returned to the deckhouse to sit silently in the cocktail corner. The bay grew narrower as the afternoon progressed.

  “What’s that?” Dorothy Fancher asked at last: I hadn’t been aware that she’d come to stand beside me.

  The wasp-waisted towers ahead were unmistakable. I checked the chart. “Salem Nuclear Power Plant, it says here,” I said. “Why, do you plan to blow it up?”

  Her laugh was slow in coming, frighteningly slow. She hadn’t expected the joking question, and she hadn’t been ready for it. Remembering the empty bilge compartment that should have been full of engine oil and antifreeze— you could pack some very interesting stuff into that space—I had a sudden tight feeling in my chest; and it was very hard not to look at her.

  “Don’t be silly,” she said belatedly. She went on quickly: “You’ve got the wrong girl, mister. I’m just the babe who poisons husbands, remember? They die like flies around me, poor dears. But I’d never dream of blowing anything up. I’m a tidy person; explosives are much too messy and noisy.”

  Not Salem, I thought. It was just a coincidence that we’d happened to pass it today and I’d happened to ask about it in a kidding way. Not Salem, but something like it, something nuclear, say something southward that Lorelei III had passed along the waterway, probably while Truman Fancher was still alive. Something near which the mysterious cargo had been off-loaded and left waiting for reasons yet unknown.

  Of course we hadn’t actually passed Salem yet. The wind was picking up, and as we approached the distinctive towers the seas funneling up the bay were becoming so steep that Nicky was losing control; I had to switch him off and take over. Steering a boat running fast downwind in a stiff breeze is a real test of helmsmanship. I was just barely good enough to hold Lorelei III when she tried to round up sharply into the wind—“broach” is the technical seagoing term. “The slow hydraulic steering, while it provided plenty of power, made it hard to respond in time and necessitated a lot of wild cranking of the wheel. We charged past the wasp-waisted towers and up the narrowing waterway.

  After a while, sweating over the wheel, I said, “Take the binoculars and see if you can spot the entrance buoys of the C. and D. Canal, please. I’ve got my hands full here.”

  “What would you do without me?” Mrs. Fancher asked dryly. She studied the view ahead. Presently she said, “There they are. You’re right on course.”

  I remembered something and said, “You’re supposed to be vulnerable to seasickness. With this violent motion, you should be on your knees in the head, heaving up everything and hoping to die.”

  She didn’t respo
nd to that, and the buoys were coming up fast. I made the turn, and Lorelei III took a wave broadside that burst right over the deckhouse. I held her steady as the wipers cleared the windshield and let me see again; then we were gliding through the entrance into the calm water of the canal with the boat just heeling slightly in response to the wind that continued to buffet the masts and rigging. An hour later, with the low sun shining through cracks in the cloud layer to the west, we were docking at Schaefer’s Canal House, having come just about half the distance between the head of Delaware Bay and the head of Chesapeake Bay. The current wasn’t as bad as Lori had led me to expect—it presumably varies with the state of the tide—and with Mrs. Fancher to throw the lines as I brought the boat alongside, and a man coming over from the fuel pumps to catch them, we had no trouble getting tied up for the night; but by the time we had the boat properly secured it was almost dark.

  “That was a pretty hard run. We’d better check the engine in the morning—remind me,” I said, noting the time of our arrival in the log I’d started on a pad of lined paper I’d found on board, since the ship’s official logbook was missing. “That’s assuming you’re planning to stay on board, of course… What is it?”

  I looked around to see her offering me a glass, on a tray no less. She made a little curtsy. “Your evening martini, captain. If you hadn’t thrown all my pretty things overboard, I could have served you more glamorously.”

  I said, “Maybe that was what I was afraid of.”

  Setting the tray aside, she followed me to the settee, sat down beside me, and watched me take a sip from the glass and nod approvingly.

  “You’re a strange man,” she said. “It’s a wonder you’ve survived so long in that savage world of yours. How do you know I didn’t doctor that drink?”

  “Or the cheese sandwich I had for lunch? Or the coffee?” I grinned. “Well, I made sure you didn’t bring aboard anything odorless, tasteless, and lethal, didn’t I? There’s some toxic stuff in the paint locker, and I had to fight off some roaches that were taking over the boat when I came aboard, but you haven’t had time to read all the labels; and I can’t think of anything available that I couldn’t smell or taste before it killed me. Anyway, I’m gambling, now, that my third guess was correct, and you didn’t come aboard with homicide in mind.”

  She said ruefully, “I wish you’d decided that before… I really didn’t have any explosives or poisons in my luggage. Just some very nice and expensive clothes and a perfume that was guaranteed to drive any man mad with passion. Well, looking on the bright side, they might as well be at the bottom of the sea, since obviously they’d have had no effect on you whatever.”

  I grinned. “But you’re still in there trying, aren’t you? Washing my dishes, humbly bringing me my martini, calling me a strange man… Flattery, flattery. All men love being waited on, and all men love being called strange men almost as much as they love being called dangerous men. As you know perfectly well. Are you planning to stay on board and work on me for a while?”

  “Until you get tired of watching me make a fool of myself, throwing myself shamelessly against the solid rock of your integrity.” She got up and walked to the starboard door, on the side of the boat that lay against the dock. It was open to the night air, and she stood looking out, breathing deeply. “The clouds are breaking up; it’s going to be a beautiful night,” she said. After a moment, she went on. “Truman considered the restaurant here one of the best along this coast; he said they have a Long Island duck that’s quite fabulous, and their fish is also excellent. May I repay you for your hospitality by inviting you to dinner, Mr. Helm?”

  I said, “You have finally found the way to my heart, Mrs. Fancher: I’m a sucker for duck. I accept with pleasure. But may I make a suggestion?”

  “Of course.”

  I said, “You may be a pro in some respects, but no pro in my line of work would ever stand like that, silhouetted against the light.”

  She said, “I can’t think of anybody who’d want to shoot me, except perhaps you if you feel your purity endangered by my irresistible charms, or a duck dinner.” She turned her head to look at me. “You’re a clever man, Mr. Helm.”

  “And strange, don’t forget strange.”

  She said, “You’re perfectly right. I did come aboard to seduce you. Those high-powered professionals Roger had hired were obviously a total waste of money.”

  I remembered Lori saying that a gorgeous greasy-gigolo type named Roger Hassim had caused trouble between her father and stepmother—Truman Fancher had even used a private detective to obtain evidence of the relationship, as I recalled. But it was no time to ask distracting questions about stray lovers.

  Dorothy Fancher was saying, “You wouldn’t think destroying one clumsy motor sailer would be much of a problem, but their woman fumbled it twice; apparently she was quite good at killing but not so good at sinking. Then you came along and she died, and the man who followed her died, along with two of ours who’d been drafted to run that ridiculous, overpowered speedboat. Four dead, six if you count the two killed by the hired blonde, and nothing accomplished! It was getting to be a bad joke. It was time to try a different approach, my approach. I was going to make you quite mad about me, my helpless slave…”

  She stopped talking. An odd, dark streak had suddenly appeared on the side of her forehead just below her glossy turban of black hair; the cough of the silenced weapon outside followed immediately. I was on my feet, disentangling myself from the comer table, as Dorothy Fancher collapsed bonelessly on the brief steps leading up to the deck.

  14

  In order to get out of the deckhouse, I had to step over her. I did it without taking time to see how badly she was hurt—if she was dead, there was nothing I could do about it; and if she was alive, with a head wound, depending on its severity, she’d need either a brain surgeon or a Band-Aid, either of which could wait a few minutes. With the help of a weathered piling, I hauled myself up to the boardwalk, a couple of feet above deck level, gambling that the kind of people who would shoot at Dorothy Fanchers were not the kind of people who’d hang around and shoot at Matthew Helms. No shots came.

  Schaefer’s is not the standard marina with finger piers and boat slips; you merely tie up to a very long dock that runs parallel to the shore at the side of the canal. It’s built a little ways out from the bank where the water is deep enough even for the biggest yachts; and it’s connected to the shore, and to the frame building housing the office, restaurant, and showers, by several short bridges or crosswalks. A couple of sailboats lay ahead of us, and half a dozen assorted vessels, power and sail, were tied up astern, including one floating three-story power-palace over sixty feet long.

  The dock was well lighted, and I had no trouble spotting the running figure heading for the nearest bridge to shore—actually, the guy seemed to be handicapped in some way: he was limping badly and not making very good progress. He made a clear target under the lights. I had my short-barrelled .38 Special in my hand, but the range was long for a snubby. Anyway, I felt I could probably run down a cripple without arousing the neighborhood with a lot of noisy gunfire, so I took out after him.

  He was even slower than I’d thought, and I was closing the distance rapidly as we came off the crosswalk and into the lighted parking lot—except that by this time I knew that I’d made a mistake: even limping badly, the figure ahead of me ran like a woman, not a man. She glanced back and I saw that there was something odd about her face; she seemed to be wearing a peculiar white mask. She was still carrying the weapon she’d used on Mrs. Fancher, an automatic pistol, probably a .22, the barrel of which looked quite long since it was extended by the silencer. However, she made no attempt to bring it around to shoot at me; in fact, when she heard me getting close, as we came into the cleared area beyond the shoreline brush, she simply stopped and raised her hands and let me come up behind her and take the lifted weapon from her.

  “Turn around,” I said.

  She tur
ned. It wasn’t a mask; it was a white bandage; actually there were two of them, one on each cheek, symmetrically placed. She was a moderately tall young woman with a rangy, almost boyish figure and short blond hair, potentially attractive, but she looked as if she’d suffered a serious recent accident. In fact, the last time I’d seen such a beat-up female was a few years before, when my daughter-in-law had survived, just barely, the bomb that had killed my older son. This girl wore a normal shoe, a brown loafer, on her right foot, but the left foot was bandaged and stuffed into what looked like a man’s felt slipper. The two last fingers of her left hand were also bandaged, and immobilized with a splint. Then there were the facial bandages; and of course I was being stupid. Accident, hell.

  “It’s about time we met, Miss Kronquist,” I said.

  She was breathing hard from the run. She was wearing blue jeans and a high-necked navy-blue jersey, a sensible costume for night operations. She waited until she’d stopped panting so hard before she spoke. “Take a good look, Mr. Helm! This is what they did to me for trying to protect you!”

  I asked, “What are you doing here, Miss Kronquist?”

  She drew a long breath and let the anger go out of her voice. “You might as well call me Ziggy, everybody else does. I don’t blame them; who wants to wrestle with a mouthful like Siegelinda?” She licked her lips. “I was looking for a job, Mr. Helm, but I see the position has already been filled.”

  “Well, I’m Matt, and you seem to have done your best to create a new opening, Ziggy,” I said.

  She said calmly, “It wasn’t my best; it wasn’t a good shot. I think I just grazed her. I… I guess I don’t make a very good murderer. Although I prefer the word ‘executioner.’”