Ruby Redfort 1 - Look Into My Eyes (21 page)

Ruby tore out the page and handed the pad to Clancy. “And I’ll bet if you rubbed a soft pencil over that blank sheet you would see the message.”

Clancy did as Ruby suggested and the impressions made by Ruby’s pen were revealed on the paper.

“Pretty smart,” said Clancy. “But how come Lopez didn’t tell anyone?”

“Because she didn’t want to get into trouble with Spectrum,” said Ruby. She paused. “And you see now I find myself in exactly the same position. What do I do? Should I tell LB how Lopez is not the goody-goody they think she was, or what?”

Clancy was torn. He understood the problem: never rat on a friend or ally — that was his rule. He would rather die a thousand horrible deaths than betray a comrade.

“I can see another problem,” said Clancy.

“Yeah, and what’s that?” said Ruby.

“You are going to be in same trouble yourself if you tell Spectrum how you know what you know.”

“You’re not wrong there my friend, I just gotta get some proof and then they’ll listen.”

“And if you can’t?” said Clancy.

“Then I just have to convince them with the old Redfort gift of the gab.”

“Good luck with
that,
” said Clancy.

When Clancy and Ruby walked into the living room they were greeted by a smiling Mr. and Mrs. Redfort, who were sitting on lawn furniture while Hitch set up a brand-new slide projector. Hitch gave her a look which Ruby took to mean, “Better you than me.”

“I’ll make some popcorn,” she said, and she and Clancy disappeared into the kitchen. Clancy chatted excitedly while Ruby set up the popcorn popper.

“Hey, you two,” called her mother. “Almost ready!”

“Just coming,” said Ruby, adopting the face of a condemned prisoner.

“Hey, Clancy,” came Brant’s voice. “Come and tell us what you have been up to — we haven’t seen you for a while.”

Clancy reluctantly slipped off his stool and went into the living room.

While Ruby waited for the corn to pop she felt around in her pocket, pulled out the key ring, and started sliding the rainbow colored letter tiles up, down, and across.
Maybe it transforms into something cool,
she thought. But no, it really did seem to be just some dumb old puzzle. She had made a word:
FLY.

Big deal,
she said to herself.

From the kitchen she could hear Clancy doing his best to fake enthusiasm. “Wow, Mrs. Redfort, that looks like a great portrait of your shoes.” And, “Nice close-up of your thumb,” and, “Gee, Mr. Redfort, that’s a very snowy picture of snow.”

“Isn’t it?” Brant Redfort beamed proudly.

“And what’s that one, Mr. Redfort?”

“Oh, that’s the tile floor of the airport.”

Ruby started making the drinks; she took a long time about it. As she turned the blender off, she could hear her mother saying, “And this is us at the airport, just before that funny little man with the mustache spilled his drink over me.”

“Oh, there he is, honey,” said Brant Redfort. “Boy, was he in a hurry.”

Ruby turned the blender on again.
How am I gonna explain Clancy to Hitch?
she wondered.
But maybe I don’t have to. Clance won’t blab. Hitch never needs to know.
Ruby poured the liquid into highball glasses and put them on a tray. The conversation hadn’t gotten any more interesting.

“And who are
these
people?” asked Clancy, in a desperate attempt to sound interested.

Bad move, Clance my old pal,
said Ruby to herself.
Cause now they’re gonna tell ya.

“Well,” started Sabina, “that couple there, they’re the Zimmermans, and that’s Mr. Rodrigez, and let me think, oh yes, the blond couple must be the Summers, and the redhead in the background there, did we meet her, honey?”

“No, darling,” replied Brant.

Oh, boy! Poor Clance. Better get him outta there before he loses his mind.

Ruby entered the room, all smiles. “Fruit drink anyone? Hey, where’s Hitch?” she said, looking around. “I thought he wasn’t leaving until eight?”

“He looked at his watch and suddenly
decided
that he had to go out and fix something in the yard,” said Clancy pointedly. “It seemed kinda urgent.”

“I’ll bet it did,” said Ruby, glancing up at a slide that showed her mother and father looking into each other’s eyes while biting into the same strudel.

RUBY GOT UP VERY EARLY THE NEXT MORNING,
walked into the bathroom, looked in the mirror, made a face at herself, and said, “Ruby, my old pal, you look terrible.”

Her mind was buzzing with thoughts — she had not been sleeping well.

She went downstairs. Hitch was in the kitchen drinking a cup of coffee. “Hey,” she said, “that was a neat trick you pulled last night, disappearing at the last minute.”

“Well, it wasn’t planned. I got a strange signal on my watch — flashed up for just a second. Didn’t make any sense — like a call from beyond the grave.”

“Huh?” said Ruby.

“It was a signal from a non-existent agent,” explained Hitch.

Ruby paused before dropping some bread into the toaster. “Meaning, an
extinct
agent?”

“Yeah, he’s dead all right — though there’s not a soul in Spectrum who doesn’t wish he wasn’t. I had to check it out, though of course it was nothing.”

“This dead agent, he wouldn’t be this guy Bradley Baker would he?”

Hitch flinched, almost imperceptibly, but Ruby caught it. “It’s confidential,” was all he said.

Ruby let the subject drop. She was thinking about another extinct agent — just what
had
happened to poor old Lopez?

But all she said was, “Well, call it what you like but I figure you were saved from a fate worse than drip torture.”

“I’m glad you survived it, kid. So you know I’ve got to ask you — you going to have anything to report tomorrow?”

“Maybe,” said Ruby. “I just need to check out a couple more things before I know for sure — but I’m close.”

“That’s not what Froghorn said — he seemed to think you’d struck out.”

“Yeah well, you know Froghorn — always likes to rain on someone else’s parade.”

Ruby’s toast popped up and Hitch slid it on to a plate.

“Looks like you’re out of time, kid — LB wants to see you
today.
”

Ruby looked down at the plate and instantly lost her appetite.

Redfort, report to Spectrum at 0800 hours

When they arrived, Buzz informed them that LB was giving a briefing to some of the Spectrum staff.

“She’s in the screening room — looking at key suspects for the City Bank robbery.”

Hitch led the way down a black-and-white tunnel until they reached the circular doorway of the screening room.

“You better wait here, kid, this is highly confidential — I’ll call you in when we’re done.” Hitch entered, and the door locked shut behind him.

Ruby stood around gently kicking at the wall until she heard footsteps running down the passageway. Agent Blacker appeared, out of breath and even more crumpled than usual.

“You meant to be at this thing too?” he wheezed.

“Yeah,” replied Ruby. “I forgot the password — talk about dumb!”

“No worries,” said Blacker. “We can probably slip in unnoticed if we sit in the back — I know all this stuff anyway so I’m not missing anything.”

He tapped in the password and they crept in silently; a projector was whirring, and grainy pictures were being thrown up on to the screen. Twenty or so people sat listening as LB talked. Ruby caught sight of the back of Hitch’s head and sank as low as she could into her seat; Agent Blacker made himself comfortable, propping his feet up in front of him. The image being projected was of a big, thuggish man in a raincoat.

“I wouldn’t like to meet him on a dark night,” whispered Ruby.

“I wouldn’t want to meet him on any night,” replied Agent Blacker.

The next picture came up: a strangely comical face — ugly, sinister even, but definitely comical.

There was a wave of muffled laughter from the Spectrum audience.

“I see you have taken an instant liking to our dear friend Hog-Trotter,” said LB. “Not as funny as he looks, I’m afraid.”

“Is he as
stupid
as he looks?” said a young man in the front row.

“Oh, never underestimate this portrait of crime — where Hog-Trotter is concerned it’s always wise to bear in mind the cliché “never judge a villain by his face”— however ugly that face may be. He is strangely good at second-guessing people and quite the intellectual. I wouldn’t rule him out.”

LB clicked the button again.

“Wow,
he
doesn’t look like the criminal kind,” whispered Ruby, peering at the green-eyed, sweet-looking man who filled the screen.

“Ah yes, Baby Face Marshall — now he
always
surprises everybody,” replied Blacker.

“He’s dangerous?” said Ruby doubtfully.

“Quite the cold-blooded killer,” hissed Blacker. “You see Baby Face, don’t bother calling for Mommy — run!”

Ruby gulped. She was used to the baddies she saw on TV. There the murderers always seemed to have a hump, or a hooked hand, or half a dozen gold teeth, something to give them away, but this guy looked like he might run the local pet store. The projector clicked again, and up came the face of a woman.

“Valerie Capaldi, also known as Nine Lives,” said LB.

“Wow, she’s pretty,” said the same mouthy young man.

“Not as pretty now,” replied LB. “A couple of years back she got into a nasty tangle escaping one of our agents — I would imagine she has a fairly ugly scar across her left eye. Be kind of hard to miss. They call her Nine Lives because she has cheated death as many times as any cat.”

The woman on the screen didn’t look the type, Ruby thought — in fact she looked like someone her parents might know.

“She’s a decadent sort and pretty stylish,” continued LB. “Though I would be surprised if she were involved in a gold heist — jewels and precious stones are more her style. She was trained by
this
gentleman.”
Click.
“Fenton Oswald — he loves planning a good robbery, enjoys the challenge, but he is, strictly speaking, more of a jewel thief — spends most of his time in Europe.”

He looked ordinary enough — the picture showed him exiting a jewelers in Berlin. He was wearing tinted glasses, a tweed suit, and carried a rolled umbrella.

Then came a very different sort of face, the
kind
of face you might expect to appear in an old movie, very melodramatic looking with slicked gray hair and pointed sideburns. The nose was long and elegant, which gave the face a dignified look, but the chiseled cheekbones were those of a gothic villain. His clothes were different too, long black coat and pointed black shoes polished to a high shine. The slide was aged, and the picture black-and-white. LB clicked past him without explanation.

“Who was
that
guy?” asked Ruby.

“Oh, him?” said Blacker. “That was the Count.”

“The Count of what?”

“The Count von Viscount. If you think he looks like something from some old B-movie then that’s because he is.”

“He used to be an actor?” asked Ruby.

“Not an actor but a director — there’s a theory that he turned to crime when all his movies were trashed by the critics. Some say he was a little ahead of his time — the moviegoing world wasn’t ready for him back then. Still isn’t — too dark, too strange, too dangerous. Unfortunately, he became a much more successful criminal than he ever was a filmmaker — only one of our agents ever met him and lived to tell the tale.”

“Who was that?” asked Ruby.

“Oh no one,” said Agent Blacker quickly. “No one you would know.”

Bradley Baker?
wondered Ruby.

“It’s been a long time since we heard from the Count,” said Blacker.

“But he’s a contender?” asked Ruby.

“Oh, he’s been off our radar so long we are wondering if he isn’t pushing up daisies — that, or he retired.”

“How would you know if you
had
heard from him?” asked Ruby.

“You can recognize a Count von Viscount crime because it is always bizarrely melodramatic. You can be sure if someone is dangling you over a bubbling volcano rather than just dropping you in it then it is almost bound to be the Count.”

“That’s a comfort,” said Ruby.

“Of course, I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting him myself but they say he was always very charming — right up until the moment he decided your time was up.”

Ruby shivered.

Suddenly the lights came on — the briefing was over. Ruby managed to slip out, hidden amongst the crowd; in the corridor she adopted the pose of someone who was fed up of waiting.

A short while later Hitch stuck his head out of the door. “You’re up, kid.”

When Ruby walked in, LB didn’t waste time with hellos.

“So, Redfort, anything to report?”

Ruby tried to look confident, even if she didn’t sound confident.
Here goes everything
. She cleared her throat. “Um, not quite but almost.”

“What does that mean?” said LB.

“I think I have almost figured something out but I kinda need, well, I sort of wondered if I could, you know . . .”