The Demolishers (6 page)

I said, “Even if I take your word for that, you may not have been checking on the right people.”

He frowned. “What are you driving at, Eric?” “We’ve got to keep in mind the possibility that our basic premise is all haywire. There’s a chance that whoever arranged that bombing wasn’t interested in me at all.”

Mac said impatiently, “Of course. There has always been a remote chance that it was a straight political act after all, unlikely as it may seem, and that your son’s death was a complete coincidence. Such things do happen. But I am very wary of coincidences in this business.”

I said, “So am I, but there was someone else present whom you seem to have overlooked.” I leaned forward to set my empty glass on the desk, and sat back again. I said, “Two years ago, when I returned from an assign-

ment to find Matthew’s wedding announcements among the mail that had accumulated in my absence, I took the liberty of using our facilities to conduct an investigation. The results are in my file. Correction, you keep separate dossiers on agents’ families, don’t you? So the stuff about the girl would probably have wound up in Matthew’s file.”

“You mean that young Mrs. Helm ...”

“My researches indicated that my daughter-in-law-to-be was a fairly interesting young lady. Somehow she’d wound up at the same university as my son, Northwestern, studying journalism, after surviving one of those East Coast lady-factories, you know, the expensive boarding schools where they teach you not to blow your nose on your napkin.”

“Northwestern?” Mac said. “I thought everyone truly interested in journalism went to the University of Missouri.”

“You’re behind the times, sir,” I said. “Missouri is still at the top, but nowadays Northwestern’s school of journalism is supposed to be right up there alongside it. And for a young person Evanston, Illinois, right next to the gaudy metropolis of Chicago, might have some attractions that Columbia, Missouri, doesn’t. As a matter of fact, Matthew actually went to Northwestern because they offered him a scholarship. The girl might have been sent there because her papa preferred having her near Chicago where he had connections who could keep an eye on her. ’ ’

“What connections? Wha is this girl, anyway?”

I said, “Reading the stuff our people dug up on her, I came across nothing unfavorable to her personally. Some young women do remain almost human in spite of having been subjected to those cruel early disciplines, like learning what fork to use and how to hold a teacup; and if my son wanted to marry an embryo lady reporter, that was his business. I did think they were rushing it a bit, getting married in their junior year like that, but even if I’d wanted to make them hold off until graduation, it was a little late for me to throw my weight around as a papa. As it turned out, well, I’d hate to be sitting here knowing that I’d kept my boy from having had two years of happiness with his girl, since that’s all he’ll ever have, now. At least he had his marriage and a few months at a reasonable job in his chosen field . . . Well, to hell with that.”

Downstairs, somebody started up a printer of some kind. It sent a distant chattering noise through the building. I wondered if the aloof Miss Delgado was punching the buttons.

Mac, having offered his condolences once, seemed to feel that no further sympathy was needed. He asked, “What about the parents?”

I said, “Yes, sir. Sandra’s mother was apparently more than respectable, the daughter of a certain Homer Putnam Ganson, who’d inherited a lot of railroad money and made it grow. Unfortunately, Sally Ganson seems to have been a rebellious girl who went slumming once too often and fell for a very undesirable young man. I presume Homer put his foot down, thereby making a runaway marriage inevitable. There was a reconciliation of sorts, although I doubt that Homer ever took his son-in-law to his bosom; and when the old man died, everything went to the young couple, including the Palm Beach estate where Sandra grew up between boarding schools, her mother having in the meantime managed to get herself killed in an one-car accident that could have been self-inflicted, if you know what I mean. I gather it was not a happy household.”

Mac said, “The suspense is considerable, Eric. Just who was this undesirable young man who married the reckless young heiress?”

“My son’s father-in-law’s name is Varek. Alexander K. Varek. K for Konstantin.”

Mac frowned.
“Sonny
Varek?”

“That’s who,” I said.

He shook his head ruefully. “The material must have come across my desk on a busy day; apparently I didn’t give it proper attention. Otherwise I would certainly have commented on the fact that one of my operatives was now related by marriage to a member in good standing of the Mob, or however it is known nowadays. The Syndicate? I believe Varek specialized in drugs, did he not?” I said, “To some extent. Like most of them, he had a lot of things going for him. I gather he’s retired now, to the extent that those guys are permitted to retire. But you can see that his past activities, both in the rackets and the smuggling trade, could easily have given somebody a motive for blowing up his daughter, either using a weirdo organization like the CLL or just laying the blame on them knowing they’d accept it happily.”

Young
Mrs. Cassandra Helm picked me up at the airport in a black Mercedes three bjocks long. There was a chauffeur in uniform who, I noted, carried a two-inch-barreled bellygun holstered on his right hip under his whipcord coat, which he did not button. He was a large, dark gent, shorter than my six-four but heavier than my two hundred, and he gave me a cold inspection and saw
nothing because the stuff I’d drawn from the armorer was in my suitcase and the little folding knife, with its space-age plastic grip, was flat enough and light enough not to make itself conspicuous in my pants pocket. Never mind how I get that past the airport scanners. We have our little professional secrets; unfortunately this particular trick doesn’t work with heavier stuff like firearms.

Sandra hadn’t met me at the gate; she’d just described the car over the phone and told me where to find it. She didn’t get out to greet me now; but when I slid in beside her she gave me a good enough smile of welcome.

“I’m glad you could come,” she said.

“It’s nice of you to put me up on such short notice,”

I said.

The chauffeur was putting my suitcase into the trunk of the car. He got behind the wheel and took us away without instructions. There was glass between him and us.

“Bodyguard?” I asked.

“Yes. He wouldn’t let me meet your plane, said he couldn’t protect me in there with all those people. Sorry. He also makes sure I behave myself like a proper widow. He’s supposed to report any indiscretions to Daddy. He’s got very good ears and a mike to help him .... Don’t you, Leonard?” When there was no answer, she repeated: “Don’t you, Leonard?”

A metallic voice answered, “Yes, Mrs. Helm.”

She grinned, and said ruefully, “Even without Leonard to protect my reputation, among other things, I’d have a problem being indiscreet looking like this, wouldn’t I? But at least I can get my right eye all the way open again.”

Actually, there had been considerable improvement since I’d last seen her. The discoloration around the eye had faded and the swelling had, as she’d said, subsided. Her hands were no longer bandaged, and neither was her head. The cropped hair had grown back a little; but you could see the scar like an erratic furrow wandering through a field of cut wheat, except that the colors were all wrong, of course. I liked the way she seemed to feel no need to hide it under a hat or scarf, telling everybody:
Okay, so they had to stitch my scalp back on, so what business is it of yours, Buster?

She was overdressed for the place, Florida, and the time of day, early afternoon, in a black silk dress and black nylons. I couldn’t help noting that, for a short girl, she had legs that were very shapely, with strong calves and slim, lovely ankles. High-heeled black pumps improved the view. Even though my son was dead, it made me feel guilty, admiring the legs of my daughter-in-law. Incest? She held a black silk envelope purse in her lap. It had something inside that was too big and blocky for a compact. She had discarded her sling.

“Daddy insists on proper mourning in public,” she said, with a gesture towards the black dress. “Daddy’s a great one for appearances nowadays. Thank God, the doctor said I could leave off the splint and sling now if I was careful. It wasn’t a real break, you know, just a kind of a crack. This is West Palm Beach, as you probably know.” She raised her voice: “Leonard, drive us past La Mariposa, please.”

The tinny voice said, “But, Mrs. Helm . . .”

“They’re not likely to be waiting for us with another bomb after all this time, are they? Go on, take us there.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

It was a bright Florida day but, except for the palm trees, the city through which we drove could have been located in any sunny state with blue skies—I’d seen the same sprawling, ticky-tacky neighborhoods spring up all over New Mexico, which used to be a nice place to live back when I was growing up there. Maybe Florida was, too. at the time.

From the rugged feel of the Mercedes suspension— usually they ride like silk—I judged that the car was carrying more weight than it appeared to, presumably armor of some kind. The windows weren’t ordinary passenger-car glass and the windshield refracted the light oddly. Leonard spoke into his mike, but on a wavelength we were not receiving. A couple of surreptitious glances aft had already let me know there was a covering car behind; presumably he was communicating with the driver. At first I couldn’t spot anybody breaking trail up ahead, but after a dozen blocks I got that one, too, sorted out from the casual traffic.

Sandra glanced at me with a rueful little smile. “I hope you don’t mind if I hold your hand when we get there. I know I’ve got to look at it again or I’ll never really get over it, but I haven’t had the nerve to do it alone. Like I haven’t had the nerve to return to Connecticut and go through ... go through Matthew’s things.”

‘‘Old Saybrook, Connecticut. That’s on the Connecticut River, right?”

“Yes. He got a job with the
New Haven Post-Courier
right after graduation; and that was the closest place we could find that was really nice. It was a thirty-mile commute, but the turnpike made it not too bad since he worked odd hours and usually missed the big morning and evening rush. There’s also a train. We had a small house on the edge of town, not waterfront but handy to the beach and the launch ramp for the little boat we kept parked in the driveway. Graduation present to me from Daddy. Did you know that Matthew had never sailed in his life until I taught him?”

“Well, he was brought up on Larry Logan’s ranch in Nevada, the driest state in the Union,” I said. I glanced at her. “This restaurant we’re going to, have you done any more thinking about what happened there?”

She shook her head quickly. “Not except when 1 can’t help it. Sometimes . . . sometimes at night I have to live it all over again; but I’m getting it under control, I think. I don’t wake up whimpering and sweating so often lately.”

“Maybe you should see a psychiatrist.”

“I said I was getting over it. I don’t need a shrink messing with my psyche.”

“Well, I hate to pick at the sore spot, but . . . you said you saw some dark hating faces outside the window just before the bomb came through the glass. Would you recognize them again?”

“Oh, God, don’t start that routine! I’ve had it from Daddy and the cops and several bunches of federal creeps, not to mention daily-, weekly-, and monthly-type reporters and writers. Terrorism is the fashionable menace of the year, beating out smoking and cancer and drunken driving. No, dammit, I can’t draw you pictures of them; I can’t even describe them. I wouldn’t know them if I saw them on the street. Like I told all those nosies, one seemed to be a woman; she was wearing a skirt, a full peasant thing of some kind, although you’d think she’d do her bombing in jeans, wouldn’t you? But maybe she carried it hidden under that big skirt. Otherwise, aside from the fact that they weren’t blond or albino, I can’t tell you anything about them.”

“What federal creeps?” I asked.

“Oh, God, I don’t know! One pair of clowns all dressed up in three-piece suits and ties. And there were some other civilian types, more informal, in sports shirts and slacks, also U.S. governfrtent they said; not to mention the local plainclothes cops who’ll still look like cops when they put on their angel robes and wings, if St. Pete lets them through the Gates, which isn’t likely. Who needs fuzz in Heaven?”

“It sounds as if they really put you through it,” I said.

“It was Daddy they were really after, to hell with the innocent little terrorists. The way they acted, you’d have thought it was a federal and state crime to have you daughter and son-in-law blown up by a bomb.” She glanced at me. “You know about Daddy?”

“Yes. I checked you out before the wedding.”

“I didn’t know whether you knew or not, when we were talking back there in Texas.”

I grinned. “You kept scrambling like hell to talk around it. But we’ve got a good research department. I probably know stuff about your daddy even the cops don’t know. If you report that, Leonard, tell Sonny Varek not to worry. His business isn’t our business.”

“I’ll tell him,” the microphone said. “It’ll be a great big load off his mind, I’m sure.”