The Infiltrators (37 page)

“Matt here,” I said when I heard his voice on the line, using my real name to let him know I didn’t trust the connection.

“Yes, Matt,” he said. “I have a report to the effect that you’ve encountered some trouble.”

“Not much,” I said. “The priceless secret documents that might have saved the nation, or at least restored the girl’s reputation, have been burned; the heroine herself is in the hands of the brutal enemy; the hero has a dented skull and a couple of bent ribs; but otherwise things are going great, just great. I want an I-team standing by. How soon can I have it?”

“There is an interrogation team in Denver.”

“Put them on the road and tell them to goose it, please. What’s the general situation, sir?”

“Not very good, Matt. In fact, rather critical. There’s been another attempt on the life of the prominent gentleman in question, although in this instance we managed to avoid publicity. We have identified the probable replacement, a rather gaudy military character; but of course he would be taking orders from a committee of wealthy and powerful civilians. The word
CADRE
is appearing here and there in association with this movement to save the nation from the degenerates who are leading it to destruction. Indications are that, having failed for the second time to remove the chief executive in order to take advantage of the confusion following his death,
CADRE
is considering an open coup d’état. And I hate to say it, but I am not at all certain that it would fail.”

“What about our mysterious friend, Mr. Tolliver?”

“He seems to be the active power behind the throne. Well, the throne they hope to establish, or dictatorship, or whatever. Have you any clues to his identity?”

“Well, somebody seems to think I’m getting too close; otherwise why bother to try to kill me?”

“But close to whom? What about this lawyer, Baron?”

“Hell, Tolliver could easily be Waldemar Baron, but he could just as easily be his junior partner Maxon—I never trust these meek-and-mild characters too far. Or he could even be a rather intriguing police chief they’ve got here, named Cordoba, who plays the dumb Hispano character very well. But everybody seems to be steering me towards a naval gent named Lowery who owns one of the local papers; and sometimes it’s best to ride along with the tide, so to speak, so I think I’ll tackle him first.”

“Keep in mind that we probably don’t have much time left.”

I said, “As the old Athenians used to say, I will return with my shield or on it.”

“I believe you’re thinking of the Spartans, Matt.”

He was probably right, damn him. I hung up, hoping that if anybody was listening, the conversation would have shaken him up a bit, particularly the part about the interrogation team, and left him wondering just who I’d had in mind for the rack and thumbscrews. But I wished I had something better to do than shake the trees and see what fell out of the branches. I continued to sit there, since moving was no fun at all, wishing I had a job in which I wasn’t expected to cope with a national emergency after being beaten to a pulp; but of course we stoical heroes of the underground services just naturally ignore such insignificant handicaps. That wasn’t the worst that was expected of me, anyway.

When the knock came on the door, I got up without groaning too loudly, pleased to note that the drastic change in altitude produced no noticeable dizziness: perhaps my cranium wasn’t seriously shattered after all. But I still wasn’t functioning as well as I might. Expecting a waiter, I was taken by surprise—the way we aren’t supposed to be—when the door was shoved open roughly the moment I unlocked it. Hastily, I stepped clear, reaching for the .38 left-handed; but it was only Walter Maxon, boy attorney, unarmed and distressed and disheveled.

“Where’s Madeleine, what’s happened to her?” he demanded breathlessly. “My God, hasn’t she suffered enough without… You were supposed to be protecting her!”

I looked at him grimly. “So were you, nine years ago. She doesn’t seem to have much luck with her protectors, does she?” I saw a man with a tray behind him, and said, “Hold everything, let me take care of the waiter.” When the food was on the table by the window, and the bill signed, and the waiter gone, I went into the bathroom for an extra glass, which I had to skin like a squirrel before I could fill it with ice and liquor. Sometimes I wonder what’s so terrible about a few germs. “Here, sit down and have a drink and relax,” I said, handing it to Maxon. “Where did you hear about it?”

He was all dressed up in his dark three-piece lawyer suit, of course—it was still a business hour of a business day, although it seemed to have been going on forever—but he wasn’t in good professional shape at the moment, not by the sartorial standards of Baron and Walsh. His white shirt was leaking out between his vest and his pants, his starched shirt collar was unbuttoned and looked wilted, and the knot of his expensive blue silk tie was at half mast. His sandy hair was tousled, making him look like a rumpled, dressed-up schoolboy. He sank into a chair and gulped at the liquor thirstily.

“I… I’ve been going crazy ever since I read that vicious story in the paper this morning!” he said. “I came over here right away to reassure her; she must have been terribly hurt by it, and I wanted to tell her that none of her friends would pay any attention… Anyway, she wasn’t here, neither of you was here, and I had to stop by the police station on business and I heard… My God, after everything she’s been through, to be subjected to savage libels and violent… What are you doing about it? She’s your responsibility! If anything happens to her…!”

After this incoherent speech, if it could be called a speech, he drew a long breath and gulped some more martini. He was hitting the sore spots, and I was tempted to ask him just what the hell he would have done if attacked by a pair of apparently legitimate policemen, but to hell with that. As he’d said, her protection had been my responsibility, not his.

“Blame is easy,” I said. “But I haven’t heard any constructive suggestions, let alone any offers of help.”

“Help? Of course I’ll help, just tell me what to do!”

I’d done the liquor-and-ice bit for myself. I lowered myself cautiously into the second chair at the small round table by the window.

“For a start, tell me about Admiral Lowery, if you’ve met him,” I said. “Never mind the history, I’ve got that. And a physical description. But I need to know what makes him tick. A lot of Navy officers are pretty arrogant, humorless bastards; and he’s kind of small, like his daughter. That would tend to make him even tougher to deal with. Little guys with rank and money tend to be pretty pompous and self-important.”

“But what has the admiral got to do with…?” He checked himself. “Well, all right. Yes, of course I’ve met him. No, he’s very reactionary in his politics, of course, as you’d expect of a military man with a lot of money. But I wouldn’t really call him pompous. He’s got a lot better sense of humor than his wife with her social ambitions, let alone his daughter… Christ, I always knew Vangie was, well, a bit unreasonable on the subject of Madeleine, but I didn’t realize she was pathological! To write an article like that about somebody who’s already been hurt so badly…!”

I said, “Let’s skip Vangie Lowery, at least for the moment. Back to her daddy. Tell me if he’s in town; and if he is, make a guess as to where I can find him.”

“Right now, probably at home. It’s a morning paper, so he doesn’t usually go there until well after lunch to see how next morning’s edition is coming along. Oh, and yes, he’s in town, all right. Vangie said he okayed her story himself and if I could find anything actionable in it I was a better lawyer than Mr. Rath, the attorney they use, who’d also checked it before they went to press with it.” He drew a shaky breath. “She was right, of course. It isn’t libel to call somebody a convict when they’ve been convicted, even if the verdict was totally wrong and the sentence was positively savage—locking up a… a lovely and sensitive person like that for eight whole years in a brutal place like that without parole!”

I ignored the impassioned oratory. “I gather you’ve spoken with Miss Lowery this morning. Where?”

He licked his lips. “Outside the police station. She’d been checking on a story for the
Journal
; she was coming out when I went in. We… had an argument.”

“Can you get in touch with her?”

He looked startled. “Oh, no, I couldn’t possibly…! I mean, it wasn’t just an argument. I got so angry I did something pretty terrible, Mr. Helm. I couldn’t possibly call her now. In fact, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if she has me arrested.”

I said, “Seems unlikely. She passed up her best chance, right there outside the cop house, didn’t she? What did you do, haul off and slug her?”

“How did you know?” He stared at the floor. “I must have been a little crazy! I never dreamed I’d ever raise my hand against… But that article, just gloating over Madeleine’s… over what prison had done to her! And those pictures that made her look so… And the way Vangie seemed to feel no guilt at all, just standing there taunting me… I just couldn’t help myself! I really struck her quite hard, Mr. Helm, hard enough to knock her down. Actually I think I wanted to kill her. And she picked herself up and ran off crying and I stumbled into the station; but before I could remember what I’d come for they all started milling around and the chief rushed out. I knew something serious had happened somewhere in town and I got one of the desk officers I knew to tell me in confidence…” He swallowed hard. “Why do you want me to call Vangie? I mean, if it’s really important… I said I’d help. She could be at the paper; she mentioned that she was going there. But she’ll probably hang up on me.”

“It’s important,” I said. “Tell her to come here as fast as she can. Tell her I may have a story for her.”

He hesitated. “Look, you’re not going to
hurt
her, are you?”

I regarded him curiously. “Says the man who just smacked her in the puss. No, I’m not going to hurt her. I just want her here for a little while.” I pointed. “Phone’s over there between the beds. I’ll eat my lunch, such as it is, while you talk with her.”

Even as we looked at it, the instrument in question made a sharp jangling sound. After a moment I heaved myself out of my chair and limped over to pick it up.

“Helm?”

“Yes. What do you want?”

The voice at the other end of the line did not identify itself, but as it began to speak rapidly I recognized it anyway. It belonged to the man named Jim Dellenbach who was currently known as Scarface, thanks to the front sight of his own revolver as applied by me. Dellenbach said that a certain lady was being held in custody by the Office of Federal Security. Unfortunately, he went on with malicious satisfaction, circumstances did not permit confinement under civilized conditions, and she was really quite uncomfortable and would remain that way, underground, tied hand and foot in the dark to suffer hunger and thirst and the indignity of soiling herself helplessly, until I’d shown myself willing to cooperate fully by withdrawing all our agents from a case that we’d had no business sticking our long noses into…

In a way it was a relief. It was out in the open now. We weren’t even pretending to be polite and friendly colleagues in government service, not that we ever had. But now we were two federal agencies openly battling each other for survival, and maybe for the nation’s survival, using every dirty weapon in the book including the old buried-alive routine. I said, what I was expected to say, of course, that certainly I’d cooperate in every way I could. The only person who possibly believed me was Walter Maxon, listening; but then he was a very naive young fellow. Maybe.

The porno shop was on a rather public corner and clearly marked. The sign was quite gaudy, in fact, with big red. letters on a yellow background:
ADULT BOOKS
. I drove past and parked the Mazda up the block and hiked back, feeling conspicuous and rather wicked as I went inside. I told myself that for a man who’d just shot a policeman to death, and had a lady friend kidnapped, to be sensitive about being seen in the company of a little obscene literature was pretty ridiculous.

I arrived first, according to the arrangements made over the phone; and I spent my waiting time, as instructed, in front of the shelf marked
BONDAGE
. Most of the magazine covers featured, in living color, lovely young girls with sexy figures who were elaborately gagged and tied up in humiliating positions with unnecessary amounts of rope. The facial expressions of these abused young ladies were truly pitiful; but I noted that, while total nudity sometimes obtained, the usual costume seemed to be the standard porno uniform of high heels, sheer stockings, and sexy garter belts—and that the nylons were always perfectly smooth and totally intact no matter what dreadful suffering the poor girl was enduring.

As it happens, I’ve witnessed and even directed a number of real-life female-captivity situations in the line of duty, and I couldn’t help remembering that it’s practically impossible to overpower and tie up a struggling, scratching, biting, kicking wench who doesn’t want to be overpowered without causing some deterioration of her costume, particularly her fragile hose. If the lady offers any resistance at all, she almost invariably winds up with distressingly sagging and laddered stockings. I decided that, since none of the pretty prisoners depicted on these magazine covers had been disturbed enough about their predicaments to sustain any visible nylon damage fighting to escape, I wasn’t going to worry about their cruel bondage. Besides, a study of the clumsy knots employed indicated that any enterprising dame with any Houdini instincts whatever could have freed herself in short order.

Careful analysis of my own reactions indicated that none of these pictures did a thing for me. Apparently it was not my form of perversion, which was not to say I didn’t have any. I yawned and, waiting for my contact as arranged, reviewed the rather instructive little scene in which I’d just participated in my motel room.

You had to hand it to Walter Maxon, I reflected. For a mild-looking young man, he apparently packed a mean punch when aroused. When she’d arrived at his summons—to his considerable surprise—Vangie Lowery had displayed a left eye that was swollen almost shut and badly discolored. There was also a large Band-Aid on the heel of her right hand. He had reached her at the
Journal
; but she must have stopped at home to make repairs before going there, since she presented herself to us in immaculate, tailored white linen trousers that had obviously never made violent contact with the ground, and a short-sleeved blue jersey blouse, and high-heeled white shoes. She was rushing the spring season a little, but she was a trim and pretty sight except for the spectacular shiner. Surprisingly, she wasn’t a bit self-conscious about it.