Assignment — Stella Marni (16 page)

'"Have you checked this Krame who owns the studio?"

"Done what we can. He's in Miami Beach."

"Sure of that?"

"Registered at the Carillon."

"You spoke to him?"

"No, he was out for the evening. The Miami Beach cops were asked to hold him for questioning, but we haven't got a report back yet We ran him through the BCI here, but there's no criminal record on him. Got his description from other tenants in the building, poked into his business — he runs a kind of haphazard photographic studio, does some free-lance portrait work, artistic stuff, and also a good deal of commercial photography in advertising layouts for some of the smaller Madison Avenue outfits. First name's John. Single, aged thirty-four, no known associates with Communist or criminal elements. But there's a connection with Stella, all right. When she first came here from Hungary, she worked as a model and Krame used her in his studio for some advertising work. And of course Frank Greenwald met her when he saw her coming and going in the building, right past his office door on the way up to that studio in the tower." Markey blew angry air through his nostrils. "It ties up, but not tight enough. Krame visited the New American Society — he took Stella to dinner there, or was her guest, we're not sure which. We're not sure of too much in any direction, because Blossom played the whole case so close to his vest."

"Well, Isotti will find out," Durell said.

Markey considered the dreary, rain-swept street with blank, tired eyes as they stood on the hospital steps. He relit his pipe with care. "Level with me, Cajun. Did General McFee assign you to this deal after that conference?"

"You know better than to ask me that."

"If he did, I'll buy whatever you're trying to sell me, Sam. But I want that girl. You don't have to worry about Blossom any more, as far as she's concerned. I told you, Harry is off the case, he's going to be transferred. And it's my baby now. I told Washington how Harry is about this, and they're going to give him a change of scene. The boss found it hard to believe, the way Blossom's changed all of a sudden. But that's over the dam now. I want Stella Marni, understand? I want to know where she is and who she's with every minute of every day from now until we file the case. I don't want to find her dead, Sam. I want her to make her speech to Senator Hubert when she knows her father is safe; I want her to blast this thing wide open. If she'll do it."

"Do you doubt that she will?" Durell asked.

"You're overprotective toward her. Nothing is in the bag until the string is drawn tight. Hell, Sam, you know that"

Durell looked at his watch. "I'll bring her to you at four o'clock."

"I'll go with you to get her."

"No. She's afraid of you, Tom — not you, personally, but what you stand for, because of the way Blossom treated her and the way she was mishandled in your office. Not your fault, but there it is. She's scared and suspicious and she knows what might happen to her a year from now, or five years from now, if she changes her song. She recognizes it's a big risk, because the people we're up against have long memories. But she trusts me, I think. I can swing her around to help us. That's why I want to be alone with her and bring her in myself. You'll have her by four o'clock."

"Your word on that?"

"My word," Durell said.

Markey shoved his pipe into his pocket, kept his hand on it "The roof blows off if you miss, Sam. But go ahead." He drew a deep breath. "And I'm a God-damn fool."

Fifteen minutes later, Durell retrieved his clothes from the tailor on Greenwich Avenue, his shoes from the cobbler, and changed in the subway rest room. On the street again, he found a telephone booth in a smoky bar and phoned Washington.

It took five minutes to be connected with Clem Anderson, in K Section of the CIA. Anderson was in charge of Middle European Operations, a small mild man in whose mind rested all the controlling strands of a web of agents at work in the satellite countries. Ordinarily, security would have prohibited Durell's contact in this manner; but he put the call on a high-priority basis and swung a little of his weight as sub chief of K Section.

"Clem? Durell here. In New York. It's a public phone, so be careful. I need some help and some action fast, and you can give it to me. There's a man here, a ship captain named Grozni, Polish, from Gdynia. I've got to pry him loose, but his family has him anchored. Understand?"

"Sure, Sam. Gdynia, you said?"

"Wife and three daughters. Are the railroads running?" Durell was referring to the underground system of helping refugees who wanted to flee Communist rule to the West. "This takes top priority. There will be some risk," he said, "because it's a rush job."

Anderson said carefully: "It will take some time to set it up. You don't know how the family feels?"

"They'll gladly go, from what I can guess. I need Grozni with a free mind, Clem. As soon as possible."

"In a week."

"No. Forty-eight hours, tops."

Anderson whistled. "Sam, be reasonable! Our man in Gdynia is overloaded now."

"Can you make contact tonight?"

"By tomorrow morning. He'll have to dig. That all you got on the family?"

"Wife, three daughters. Four in all. It has to go fast. I have to know they're safe fast."

Anderson was silent for a moment. "It's a tall order, Sam. We don't like to rush these things. It has to go through our West Berlin contact. Code radio. And even then, contact is sometimes uncertain."

"Do what you can," Durell said. "Top priority."

"Sure, Sam. You'll call back?"

"Yes."

Durell hung up, opened the phone-booth door, lit a cigarette. The taproom looked normal. He took a cab from there to the lot where he had parked his rented car.

And he was followed again.

This time he definitely spotted the shadow. A hulking giant of a man in a short woolen jacket that was much too tight for his massive shoulders, a wide-brimmed dark hat pulled low over an anthropoid face, and heavy workingman's shoes. Durell spotted him on Eighth Street going east, again in the subway, again at the parking lot. This man was not an ordinary shadow. A tail is usually chosen for anonymity of appearance and movement; but this man moved blatantly, his pale eyes resting boldly on Durell as if weighing and measuring him.

Durell did nothing about it, not for ten minutes. From the subway station he walked west, stopped for a pack of cigarettes in a corner cigar store, went into a bar for a beer, which he left practically untouched, stopped at a Nedick's for a cup of hot coffee, and then, abruptly and without warning, took evasive action that erased the giant shadower from his trail in a matter of minutes. Then he turned back to the parking lot where he had left his rented Chevy.

He turned in his ticket at the booth, walked back along the rows of cars toward his own. The rain came down harder, with little spits of snow mingling with the steady wash that filled the gutters and made deep puddles on the asphalt His lined topcoat was in the car. He looked back once, but the big man who had been following him was definitely gone, and then he opened the front door and started to reach in for his coat.

Harry Blossom sat there, waiting for him.

The blond FBI agent with the face like a hatchet blade said: "Get in, Sam. No fuss or feathers. I've been waiting here over an hour."

Durell looked at him and then slid carefully behind the wheel. "What is it now?"

"Just a talk," Blossom said. "Want to steer you straight. And first, let me say there's no hard feelings for last night."

"You're singing a different tune all at once."

"Sure. I feel different. Maybe I... well, it's like getting over a fever. You can see things clearly again, all of a sudden. Don't get sore again, Sam. I've got a gun on you. I don't want to have to use it, because I want you to listen to me instead of arguing with me."

Blossom was subtly changed. The angry, flickering light was gone from his pale eyes. There was a strip of court plaster on his left temple, a bruise at the corner of his mouth, and more tape across the bridge of his nose. But he was freshly shaved, with a clean white shirt and a dark blue necktie and a look of calm about him. His thin, harsh voice was quieter and more confident, yet there was an undercurrent of urgency in his words.

"What I want," Blossom said carefully, "is just to talk some sense into you now, Sam. After all, we're both on the same team. I know you from way back, I know what you can do and what you can't do. I know all about you, Cajun. And Stella Marni is going to dig your grave for you unless you listen to me."

"You're not on the case any more," Durell said.

"True enough. I tried to get an ax into your neck because I was crazy. Somebody should have put me in an institution. And the ax hit me instead. I'm due at the Los Angeles district office tomorrow night. They're putting the whole country between us. But I've still got a little free time here. Tom Markey took over and told me to get drunk or get a girl or see a movie or just get on the first plane, anyway. I didn't promise I'd do any of those things. What I'm doing is trying to make up for the mistakes I've made. I'm trying to set you straight. Stella Marni is going to kill you."

"What are you talking about?"

"The beautiful babe. Stunning Stella. The gal with the gorgeous figure and a heart straight out of a frozen hell. The devil's mistress, Cajun. You think you've got her where you want her, but the real situation is the other way around. She's got you. Not exactly where she wants you yet. That's in your grave. But she's pushing you there."

Durell felt angry. 'Talk sense or get out, Harry. I'm busy."

"I know. Are you going back to her now?"

"I'm turning her over to Tom Markey."

"Does she know that yet?"

"She won't object. Her father is safe now," Durell said. He tried to fathom what lay behind the faint glittering of Blossom's eyes, but something was going on in the thin man's mind that defied definition. "You're making some pretty strong accusations against the girl, Harry."

"I'm sorry if it bothers you, Sam. I think I know more about that she-devil than any other man this side of the Atlantic. I ought to. I spent enough time on the subject. Day and night, awake and asleep. I tried to give her every break I could think of. I bent over backward and I refused to believe anything I found out that counted against her. I dreamed about her. She was in my blood as no one else has ever been before. And then last night, after you slugged me and took her out of my hands, I walked on the beach and thought it all out. A man can't work at his job for fifteen years and give his sweat and brains and guts to it and then just kick it in the teeth. Not even for Stella Marni. I wanted to, Sam. I was ready to. I'd have gone over the hill, back to Hungary with her. On her terms. She'd have liked that. Does that surprise you?"

"Maybe not," Durell said.

"Sure. You've had a taste of her. Like honey, but there's arsenic under that sweetness. I vomited it all up last night on the beach. You think I'm crazy, I guess. Maybe I was. But I'm not crazy now."

"Get to the point," Durell said.

"All right. Look, I know what happened to me. I've been a lonely man, never married, never had a woman I could love. I've always lived alone in that damned house out on the shore. And the first time I saw Stella, I knew something special had happened." Blossom's thin voice grew softer for a moment. "When she looked at me, she didn't have to say anything, actually. I knew what was there. It was in her eyes, like a promise, a kind of special excitement I felt was just for me; and she made me feel it was in her, too. She was extraordinary. She's the most beautiful girl in the world, Cajun, and I wanted her right there, during that first routine interview we had, when I was lining up witnesses for Senator Hubert. I took her to dinner that night. I know how cold and distant she looks to most men. She's torture for every man who watches her walk and breathe and sees how she's put together. That night at dinner she let me think it was there just for me. For me alone."

Durell said: "So you fell in love, Harry. It's not uncommon. It happens to most men."

"This was different. Not because it happened to me — happened for the first time. But because Stella is different That night I went up to her apartment with her, that very first night. Saw how she was, how she lived. Next day her father disappeared and she switched her testimony. It damned near killed me. I went to see her. I was pretty sore, but I tried to understand how she felt. She wouldn't let me in at first. She was taking a shower. Told me to go away. I wouldn't. So finally she came to the door, wearing something you could almost, not quite, see through." Blossom swallowed. He was sweating in the closed car, with the rain tapping on the roof, running in rivulets down the windshield. His eyes were hot and unnatural as he remembered. "I was like a guy who's been on a desert island too long. I never saw a woman like her. Perfect," he whispered. "Everything. I kind of went crazy. I couldn't keep my hands off her. She stood there with all that warm flesh, showing it to me, and she just laughed at me. Everything she had offered me last night was right there, and I was down on my knees in front of her, Sam, I was crying. I don't care who knows it, I was begging her. And she just laughed at me."

Durell lit a cigarette. He didn't want to watch Harry Blossom's face. "You don't have to tell me about all this."

"It doesn't make any difference. Not now. I was hooked and she knew it and I knew it. Like a hophead on the main line, screaming for more jam. Crawling and begging for it. She gave me a little. Just enough to keep me groveling for more. I made a fool of myself, no mistake, we both knew it, and when she looked at me she laughed and despised me, and still she kept me. It amused her. I hated her and loved her and I was never the same again after that night. I was a crazy man until you woke me up last night, Sam. Last night I gave it to her straight. I offered to chuck everything for her, quit the Bureau, cover up everything I knew about her, if she'd only give me what I wanted."