The Infiltrators (32 page)

The little girl licked her lips and said stiffly, “It’s been doing terrible things to him all these years, Mrs. Ellershaw. He still thinks you’re innocent; and he feels it’s his fault you were convicted because of the way he failed to protect your rights the night you were arrested… And all these years imagining dreadful things happening to you in there, and finally that curt little note—he said your handwriting was very shaky—asking for some clothes to be sent because you were getting out at last, but telling him so definitely that you did not, repeat not, want him to come and meet you. Naturally, he figured they’d hurt you so badly, left you in such awful condition, that you couldn’t bear to be seen by anybody you’d known before… But you look all right to me, Mrs. Ellershaw. Not exactly what I expected; but there doesn’t seem to be a great deal wrong with your condition.”

Madeleine’s lip curled. “Expected? What the fuck did you expect? Did you think I’d still be the dainty young glamour girl of Baron and Walsh after spending eight years in the asshole of the federal prison system? For something I didn’t do—but you don’t believe that, do you?”

The little girl hesitated, and squared her shoulders bravely. “No, Mrs. Ellershaw, I do not. I think Walter is just blinded by… well, let’s call it heroine-worship. And his own sense of guilt. But the fact that he should have done better for you that first night doesn’t make you innocent. Actually, nothing that happened that night affected the final result of your trial, did it? And I’ve read all about your trial, and talked to people, and frankly I can’t see any way you
can
be innocent.”

Madeleine laughed harshly. “Tell me all about it, honey,” she said. “No, on second thought, don’t bother. Tell him.” She waved a hand in my direction. “Miss Lowery, Mr. Helm. Helm is from Washington, and I’m sure he’ll love to hear how I’m really guilty as hell, even though I’ve seduced him into reopening my case with my gorgeous gowns and gracious manner, not to mention my refined fucking language. Get me a drink, Helm, will you? And let’s all sit down, for Christ’s sake. Why are we standing around like telephone poles?” She dropped carelessly into a chair, her jean-clad legs sprawling wide. “You didn’t come here just to ask me to let your boyfriend out of my clutches, did you, Lowery? You do want an interview with the glamorous lady spy; you want her reactions upon being released at last from the grim penal institution in which she wound up spending damn near a quarter of her life to date. Or did you bring all that crap that’s cluttering up my table just for show?”

Vangie Lowry turned out to be a rather clumsy and inexperienced interviewer; she even had trouble working the little tape recorder she produced out of one of the numerous pockets of her camera bag. However, she was very sneaky with her camera and flash. She went for the low-angle shots that make them look all prognathous jaws and apelike nostrils, and the bottom-lighted shots that can make Mother Teresa look like the Auschwitz lady—or was it Belsen or Buchenwald?—who specialized in lampshades made of human skin. A very wicked little girl.

“Thank you very much, Mrs. Ellershaw,” she said at last, smiling sweetly as she gathered up her belongings. “I’m sorry to have taken up so much of your time, and I do appreciate your cooperation. Well, er, goodbye.”

After she’d gone, and the sound of her car had dwindled down the drive, I closed the door and looked at Madeleine, who was standing by the big window staring bleakly out into the night.

“Don’t silhouette yourself against the light like that,” I said. When she let the curtain fall and turned to face me, I asked, “Are you all right?”

She shook her head minutely. “What do you think? Am I supposed to enjoy making myself look and sound like that, with the help of a little creep like that?” She hesitated. “Matt?”

“Yes?”

“Do you mind if we don’t… I seem to be suddenly feeling kind of depressed and antisocial.”

“I think I can restrain the raging beast within,” I said dryly. “Anyway, I have to slip out for a moment. I’ll make sure your protection is in place out there, but maybe you’d better keep this handy just in case.”

I slipped the snub-nosed Smith and Wesson out of its holster and gave it to her. I was glad to see her check the loads, as you do routinely with any weapon that’s given you—people have died from assuming that a gun was handed to them loaded or, for that matter, unloaded.

She said, with a return of the old bitterness: “Like I said before, once I was a nice little girl. If somebody’d handed me a gun I’d have screamed in horror and dropped the nasty thing on my foot.”

“The dinosaurs were nice, too,” I said. “At least I suppose other dinosaurs thought so. But they became extinct because they couldn’t adapt to changing circumstances.” I grinned. “Try not to become extinct while I’m gone, Mrs. E.”

Outside, the night was cool and clear. I walked deliberately towards the street, waiting for a sign; then a shadow moved near one of the parked cars. I gave the unobtrusive signal that meant I didn’t want an escort and he should keep his eye on the subject and forget about me. Then I walked for a while. When I was reasonably sure there was nobody behind me, I made another signal and a car pulled to the curb beside me and stopped. I got in. McCullough sent the car away.

“You’re clear,” he said.

“I thought so,” I said. “What the hell happened?”

“Nothing happened.”

“We almost got run into an ambush.”

“There was no ambush.” His young voice was cold. “We took care of it before you were a quarter of the way down that hill; you’d have had a clear road if you’d kept going. We thought of doing something about the semi, like with a rifle bullet or two, but then we figured if you couldn’t keep ahead of a big clumsy rig like that, in a fast sports car, to hell with you.”

I grinned. “Okay. Sorry. So Jackson let himself be sucked in by a decoy, but our backup system worked. Good enough.” I glanced at him. “Did you get anything out of the men who were laying for us?”

He said in the same cold voice, “We didn’t have a hell of a lot of time from when we saw what was up to when you started down that toboggan slide.”

“Not enough time to waste time taking them alive.”

“You got it, mister.”

I glanced curiously at his handsome young face. He was one of the icy ones, and in a way I envied him; he’d never have to worry about getting emotionally involved with a troubled lady he’d been assigned to protect. She’d always remain strictly a subject to him. It was the safe and professional way to handle it. But ice is pretty brittle, and he’d crack some day; the cold ones always do. But that was in the future. Right now he was the right man for the job.

“Find me a pay phone,” I said. “And keep up the good work.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” he said.

The phone booth was in the lobby of La Fonda Hotel, the big old one on the Plaza. Legend says that an exuberant gent rode a horse into the lobby once, but that was before they got it all cluttered up with little newsstands and giftee shoppees. Mac answered immediately, once I’d gone through the preliminary nonsense with the pretty girl on the switchboard—at least she had a pretty voice; I hoped the rest of her lived up to it.

“Yes, Eric?”

“Reporting. I think we may be gaining on something, but I don’t know what.” I told him what had happened today, with emphasis on what we’d learned, or thought we’d learned, at the mysterious Center up Conejo Canyon. “Advanced Human Managerial Studies, for Christ’s sake!” I said irritably. “Look, isn’t it time somebody broke down and said what the hell’s going on? Presumably, since they tried to kill the President, they’ve got somebody in mind to take his place? Or maybe not exactly his place, since we did get a hint that he was afraid of being the last
elected
chief executive, right? So who’s in the wings, waiting to step on stage, King John the First of America? Or Emperor Jim, or Dictator Hank? And who the hell’s behind him, and just what are they after? There’s got to be a political party of some kind, doesn’t there? A lot of people with a lot of influence, more influence every day, who don’t like the way the country’s being run and think they can do better. So the man said. But, Jesus Christ, what do they really want, and who are they, and where are they?”

“Where?” Mac said. “I think you’d better assume that they’re everywhere, Eric. Remember that poor ole hound with the heartworms all through his bloodstream. As for who they are, and what they want, you don’t need to know that. And neither do I. Or so we’ve been told, repeatedly. Don’t think I haven’t asked those questions, too.”

I said, “Okay. But pass the word. Since they won’t tell me who the bad guys are, or even the good guys, I’m assuming that anything that moves in the bushes is hostile if I didn’t put it there myself, and I’m taking it out. And I don’t want any complaints later.”

“Just do the job you were sent out there to do and there will be no complaints,” Mac said.

The hike back to the motel stretched my muscles nicely after the long drive, but it didn’t do much for my mental state. I felt trapped and frustrated by all the secrecy. Not for the first time I envied the boys in the military, where you got to wear a conspicuous, unmistakable blue uniform and shoot at the guys in conspicuous, unmistakable gray. Or whatever. In this angry condition, I barged into my room heedlessly, and brought up short seeing that the bed had been disturbed since I’d left. The little stainless steel automatic—a Bauer, if it matters—slid into my hand.

“Don’t shoot me, please. I’m turning on the light.” The sudden illumination showed me that not only had the bed been disturbed, there was somebody in it: my depressed and antisocial lady, in her soft and pretty old nightgown, the expensive satin one with all the lace on it.

She gave me a slightly tremulous smile. “May the silly wench change her silly mind?” she asked.

Awakening, with daylight in the room, I had to disentangle myself gently before I could sit up. By that time she was awake, too—if she’d actually been asleep—looking up at me gravely from the pillow. Even allowing for the fact that the girl always looks even lovelier afterwards, kind of sweet and soft and young no matter what her age, this was, I thought, a very good thing to find in my bed.

I was aware that I’d never got around to locating my pajamas, let alone putting them on; and we’d never got her nightie off, either—it was somewhat disordered and crumpled now after valiant active service. I leaned over and kissed an exposed breast, done to a nice golden brown, I noticed, and carefully returned a displaced shoulder strap to its proper location and function.

“An investigation is in order,” I said sternly. “Candidates at our super-secret training facility are not supposed to have enough leisure time to get themselves smooth allover tans. We must get to the bottom of this.”

She said, unsmiling, “If that’s meant as a pun, it’s pretty bad. Even if it isn’t meant as a pun it’s pretty bad. And the bottom of me is just as tanned as the top—you’re welcome to investigate—and I got it that way while waiting for you to get back after the course was over. And I’m not going to tell you where, because if I did you’d spend all your time at the Ranch trying to get a peek at the nekkid girl agents, wouldn’t you? And now that we’ve got that important matter disposed of… Matt,” she said softly, with a total change of expression, “Matt, you’ve got to help me.”

Startled, I looked down at her lying there beside me. “Help you how?”

“This isn’t any good, for either of us. We’ve got to stop it.”

I said, a bit stiffly, “I thought it was pretty damn good, myself. I regret that the lady found it unsatisfactory.”

She shook her head quickly. “Please don’t be stuffy! The lady found it… very beautiful, you know that. I think she made that very clear. That’s why we’ve got to stop it. Because it’s taking us both where we shouldn’t go. At least it’s taking me where I don’t want to go. Or maybe I should say, it’s making me what I don’t want to be.”

“And what is that?” I asked.

“A depraved female with a criminal record, in tight pants, who sleeps with men under bushes and in tacky motel rooms.” She shook her head again. “I know, I know, I’m making it dirty now, I’m spoiling it, and I’m very sorry, my dear; but I’ve been lying here thinking it out, trying to find out what I really want—”

“And I’m not it,” I said.

“That’s right, Matt. You’re not it. You don’t need a wife, let alone a jailbird wife, and even if you were crazy enough to ask me, I don’t need a sinister secret agent for a husband. What I really need…” She stopped, and swallowed hard. “The trouble is, I’m a coward.”

“Sure,” I said. “Sure. I remember being told all about that scaredy-cat dame crouching in the snow beside my unconscious body brandishing a cowardly revolver in her trembling hand. That’s the same yellow broad who went through the basic course at the Ranch with flying colors, and only yesterday did a job of driving under very hairy conditions that would make Andretti and the Unser boys sick with envy.”

She allowed herself a faint smile. “Oh, that,” she said. “I guess maybe I’ve got a little physical courage hidden somewhere, enough to get by on normally, although the way I gave up completely and tried to kill myself, back there in Ames, doesn’t make me any Joan of Arc, does it?”

“Anybody can be worn down in time,” I said.

She shook her head once more. “But I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the other kind of courage, the kind of… of inner strength and confidence that enables you to face… Matt, I’m not only a coward, I’m a snob; and I can’t take too many days like yesterday. I remember that nightmare year, of humiliation, of being a public spectacle, between the time I was first arrested and the time I was tried and sent off to serve my sentence. Yesterday brought it all back: being publicly insulted by the Lowery woman, seeing the ghoulish expressions of all those people in the restaurant, being sneered at contemptuously by Dr. Johansen, and even treated like trash by that cheap security guard… While you were still asleep just now, I was lying here figuring out what I must have now to make a reasonable new life for myself. And I decided that what I desire more than anything else in the world…” She stopped and swallowed hard. “What I really yearn for, Matt, is respectability.”