The Infiltrators (38 page)

“Isn’t it a beaut?” she said to me cheerfully as I opened the door for her. “I’m just happy he didn’t sock me in the mouth; I’d have been spitting teeth for a week. Hi, Slugger.”

Maxon was staring at her in dismay. “Gosh, Vangie, I didn’t mean to—”

She made a face at him. “Stop it! At least have the courage of your lousy convictions. You thought I needed a poke in the eye so you poked me in the eye. And knocked me down. And ruined a pair of slacks. And left me with a bleeding hand where I’d tried to break my fall and a big bruise on my fanny in addition to this eye. I was a real disaster area when I sneaked into the house to change, I can tell you; but the worst part was knowing that… that you should have kicked me a couple of times, hard, when you had me down. Mr. Helm?”

“Yes, Vangie?”

“That woman. She’s really innocent, isn’t she?”

“We’re working on that assumption. As you were told. What made you change your mind about her guilt, if you have?”

Vangie shrugged. “Maybe I didn’t. Maybe I’ve always suspected, deep down, that she probably hadn’t done… I mean, Walter has always been so sure she wasn’t guilty; and he’s a lawyer and not really a dope, although he sometimes acts like one. Maybe it just took a poke in the eye to make me understand that I was just clinging stubbornly to any reason I could grasp for despising her. And then hearing rumors that she’d been kidnapped right after my lousy piece came out…” Vangie licked her lips. “Is it really true? The police are being very hush-hush about what happened.”

I said, “It’s true. When the time comes, I’ll see that you get the whole story.”

“At the moment I couldn’t care less.” Vangie drew a shaky breath. “Look, Mr. Helm, can’t we do something to get this tragic bitch back? Damn her, she’s always getting herself into these awful spots. Who can compete with the lovely lady saint brutally hauled into court and convicted of false charges, the dainty princess cruelly confined in the dungeon vile, or the tormented beauty trembling in the hands of the wicked beasts? Jeez, an ordinary girl just hasn’t got a chance!” She was totally ignoring Walter Maxon; he might not have been present. She looked at me gravely. “I suppose you had me come here because you thought I could help. How?”

I looked down into the small disfigured face and realized that there was a very real young woman behind the cute snub nose and the freckles and the ugly swollen eye, not just a spoiled little brat making a breathlessly romantic game of pursuing a somewhat older man, and of hating the somewhat older woman with whom he was obsessed. When I told her what I wanted, she looked disappointed.

“That’s all? Just stay here until I get a phone call?” She frowned at me. “A call from whom?”

“You’ll know him,” I said. “After that, you’ll be free to go.”

“Mystery, mystery!” She grimaced. “Oh, all right, I’ll play. But if you’re not going to finish those potato chips… I never got any lunch.”

“Help yourself. I’m afraid we’ve cleaned up on the martinis, but there’s coffee in that fancy thermos jug if you want it,” I said. I turned to Maxon. “As for you, if you still want to be helpful, I’ve got a legal-type job for you. We’re looking for a hole in the ground that could hide a dead body. Madeleine was going to search the public records for any suitable mining property within, say, fifty miles. You should know how to look; maybe you’d be willing to take over now that she’s… not available. Here’s a list of the owner names to watch for.”

He frowned. “A dead body? Whose…? Oh, that’s right, she thought her husband had been murdered, but she never managed to convince the authorities. But what made her think of a mine—”

I interrupted: “It’s too long a story, and you probably wouldn’t believe it if I told you. Okay, it’s a long shot, but it should be checked, particularly now that there’s a possibility that a live body may be hidden in the same place. Gloating over Madeleine’s predicament, the guy on the phone was just a little too specific about the crummy, dark, underground conditions under which she was being held.”

Maxon’s face was pale and eager. “Do you think there’s a possibility we can discover where…? I’ll get right on it!”

I said, “Incidentally, don’t get mad when you see your own name on the list of suspects. We’re trying to be fair to everybody.”

When I left them, he was studying the slip of paper I’d handed him, and she was sitting at the low table sipping coffee and munching the potato chips I’d left on the sandwich plate. Neither of them was paying any attention to the other…

Alone in the pornography emporium now, I found that I didn’t really like facing that solid shelf of captive Kodachrome lovelies, remembering a lady who was suffering the discomforts and humiliations of real bondage, not just posing for a photographer. It was a relief to see Jackson enter, carrying an attaché case. He stopped at the counter to get change for the quarter machines, and walked past me towards the dark little corridor marked
MOVIES
.

“You’re clean, just give me a minute,” he breathed as he passed. “Booth two.”

I gave him his minute, and followed. When I entered the second booth of the four back there, he was watching the screen, upon which a handsome woman in high black leather boots with high heels, black tights, and a black leather garment that looked like a bullet-proof corset was doing very mean things to a naked man. I was happy to see it. Equality of opportunity. I’d thought only women got to suffer in that place.

“Did you get it?” I asked.

“It’s in the case.”

“Well, let’s have it.”

Reluctantly, he took his attention from the screen and picked up the case and started to unfasten the catches; then he stopped, having spotted the gleam of the .38 in my hand even in that darkened place. But, hampered by the case, there was no quick response he could make.

“Helm, what the hell?”

“If you throw it at my head, you’re dead,” I said. “Just keep holding it like that with both hands on it, in plain sight. Where’s your sidekick, young Marty?”

He licked his lips. “We just learned from the police that Marty has been found dead in the trunk of his car in the parking lot behind that lawyer’s office; apparently he was killed several hours ago. That’s why you were allowed to walk in on two dead bodies without warning. Helm—”

I shook my head, silencing him. “So Marty wasn’t in it with you and had to be taken out when things got tight. Was he starting to get suspicious? How long did you think you could get away with it, amigo? Once or twice, okay, but it was getting kind of ridiculous.”

He licked his lips. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“My escort!” I said softly. “My bodyguard. Was I supposed not to notice that nothing has worked right since the day I picked up Madeleine Ellershaw at Fort Ames with you supposedly watching over us? Oh, you did keep that shotgunner from taking a crack at her that day—but dead, so he couldn’t talk. And next day you let us walk right into the arms of Mr. OFS Bennett. And Maxie Reis was allowed one good shot at her. That should have been enough. And you put on a nice show at the top of that Los Alamos hill, but we still wound up with fifty tons of semi chasing us. Hell, the only person who
wasn’t
allowed to sneak up on us without warning in spite of your valiant protective efforts was little Miss Lowery, who wasn’t going to hurt us anyway!” I grimaced. “And today young Marty died very conveniently so we could be found associating with a couple of stiffs and dealt with appropriately by a couple of outlaw cops.”

In the silence that followed I sensed a change in him as he switched his attitude from denial to defiance.

“Outlaw?” His voice had changed, too. “Isn’t there some question about what’s law and what’s outlaw these days, Helm? I don’t really think you’re in a position to make the distinction, a lawless establishment mercenary like you!” He laughed harshly. “You’re a little late with that gun, my friend. There are going to be some changes. Very soon we’ll be the law and you’ll be the outlaws, you and those who still support this decadent, dirty, drug-ridden society. We’re going to make this country fit for
decent
people to live in!”

“Decadent and dirty?” I said, and glanced at the screen where the black-leather-clad lady, having roped the naked gentleman to a post, was sticking spring-type clothespins on all his obvious anatomical features including the most obvious one. It seemed an odd way for either of them to get their kicks. “If you don’t like decadent and dirty, what the hell are we doing here?”

He cleared his throat. “One must know the evil in order to combat it.”

I said, watching the screen for a moment, “I don’t think much of the plot, but the action is terrific. But there are some people waiting outside to keep you comfortable until the I-team gets here.”

That shocked him. “You have an interrogation squad coming? You
knew
—”

“You’ve been under surveillance ever since Santa Paula,” I said. “I had plenty of time in that hospital to figure things out, amigo. To figure you out. I’ve been saving you; I thought you might come in handy, some day. Now you’re going to tell us where they’re holding Mrs. Ellershaw. The easy way or the hard way. I don’t give a damn which; but those I-team boys just love hurting people and are very good at it. I’m sure they’re licking their chops and hoping you’ll be stubborn.”

I saw the fear in his eyes, even in the vague flickering light from the screen where the nude gent was still having a very rough time and, I suppose, enjoying it immensely. But that was why I’d left Jackson on the job and let him think himself unsuspected, because when I started really checking on him, I’d learned that his record showed that he could be cracked. It was, in fact, why he’d been relegated to this kind of support duty, because he had cracked once. Knowing that it could happen to anybody, certainly to me, I didn’t venture to judge him; but Mac had decided that he was just a little too vulnerable to pain to be trusted with first-line assignments. Apparently the shame of this demotion had festered inside the man, leaving him susceptible to being bought, whatever had been used to buy him—perhaps just an ideology that turned him on. Or maybe they’d used their Advanced Human Managerial Studies on him.

Now he was pale and sweating, once more facing the kind of interrogation he knew he couldn’t stand. “Helm, I swear I have no idea where—”

“Who does know?”

“Bennett. He’s been looking for a chance to get back at both of you, remembering the way you humiliated him in front of her in that motel back in Missouri or wherever it was. He’s going to leave her securely tied up somewhere, some secret place he knows but didn’t say; leave her there unattended to die eventually if you don’t come through with what he wants. They want.”

I said, “I know. I got all that over the phone, complete with threats. Who’s he using?”

“The Bobbsey Twins. Jim Dellenbach, the big blond one, the one you gunwhipped back there—”

“Yes,” I recognized the voice.”

“And Roger Nolan, the handsome dark one you put to sleep in the john, remember?”

“I remember. But there’s another one, the one who did the knife work on Birnbaum’s secretary, not to mention on a certain cop who’d served his purpose. Who’s he?”

Jackson shook his head. “I don’t know. I wasn’t told about anybody else.”

“What about the heavyset older guy, Burdette?”

Jackson hesitated. “Burdette doesn’t run that kind of errands.”

“Burdette is special?”

“Hell, they have to keep a token pro around the joint, don’t they? That bunch of half-ass amateur night watchmen?”

He was trying to tell me something without saying it; and I thought I knew what it was. But there wasn’t time to go into it now. I looked at him grimly.

“Again, the sixty-four-dollar question, friend. Where?”

“I swear I don’t know where they’re holding her! I swear it!”

I studied him for a moment longer in the flickering darkness. It had been worth a try; but I thought he was telling the truth. One hope down the drain.

“Shhh, not so loud,” I said. “Let’s go.”

The naked man was still suffering happily on the screen when I left; I hoped the lady in the black boots was getting her jollies, too. As we passed the bondage section, the tied-up girls on the magazine covers grimaced at us with phony terror as we passed—there was also a big-boob section for those who were turned on by bosoms; and there were other shelves devoted to fellatio, cunnilingus, and various forms of homosexual entertainment. Outside, the sun was bright and the world looked surprisingly normal; not that I’ve got any strong objections to abnormality, even assuming that somebody knows what it is. Jackson’s lined farmer face Looked perfectly normal, too; but he started apprehensively when two men stepped out from behind a parked car to seize him by the arms.

“Careful,” I said. “I haven’t frisked him. Better check him for death pills, too, or you may lose him.”

“We’ll take care of it.”

“I think he’s told me as much as he knows.”

“The boys who are coming will check it out.”

I shrugged. “He’s all yours.”

I watched them put Jackson into the rear of a rental sedan, one on each side of him. The driver took them all away. I couldn’t help remembering that Jackson and I had recently done a job in Chicago. Although we’d never got to be exactly friends, we’d functioned well together. Goddamn it anyway.

But the thought of Chicago reminded me of the attaché case that was now tucked under my sling-hampered right arm. I opened it and took out the large envelope that was lying on top of the miscellaneous stuff inside. Two men came up to me as I stood there. One was Pretty Boy McCullough, with his goddamn blow-dried hair and his cold, cold, boyish face. He didn’t even give me the satisfaction of punching him in the nose for showing satisfaction at the clever way we’d kept Jackson on a string and reeled him in when we needed him. I didn’t know the man with McCullough, a rather plump and pleasant-looking young fellow. I made them wait while I checked out the contents of the envelope. Then I tucked it under my arm and handed the attaché case to McCullough.

“You might as well look through this, although it isn’t likely he was carrying anything around that would help us.”