Assignment — Stella Marni (3 page)

"What about this ring?"

Greenwald said bitterly, "They're Americans."

"You're sure of that?"

"They're doing it for money. So much per head. It's a racket for them, an easy way to make some sugar, that's all."

Durell's eyes darkened. "Who have you told about this, Frank."

"I started to tell Mr. Blossom, but he shut me up. He got sore at me and insulted me about Stella and I wouldn't tell him any more. But I'm on the right track. I may be dumb and inexperienced about these things, but I've got somewhere. Four men and two women. That's who they are. I found out from Johnny Damion, at the New American Society. He told me. Johnny's in the accordion business — he used to have a little plant in Warsaw. His wife vanished two months ago. Do the cops care? Does the FBI do anything? Hell, they're not American citizens, they're only here on sufferance, so nobody thinks it matters."

Durell said gently, "You're wrong, Frank, it does matter. We don't want to lose potentially good citizens. And we don't want the other side to win any more propaganda hands than we can help. It matters a lot."

"That's what you say."

"That's the way I feel."

Greenwald's eyes were dark and brooding. His mouth was slack. "Art told me about you. He swears by you. He thinks you can do anything. But he also said you're out of your own pond when you fish in this thing. If I know Blossom, he'll clobber you if you interfere in his job."

"I'll interfere," Durell said. "I'll help you."

"And invite trouble for yourself?"

"I'm used to trouble."

"Not just from your own people, either. This crew is tough. They've killed and, tortured and pulled out all stops. They'll clobber you first, if Blossom doesn't get you transferred to the Aleutians."

Durell touched his small, dark mustache. He was aware that something was being held back behind Frank's nervousness. The man was impatient to get out of here. He was afraid. When the elevator hummed and stopped at the floor below, he twisted his head and listened.

Then the telephone rang again, muted in the foyer with its soft gold Chinese tea paper. Frank jumped.

"Don't answer it," Durell said. "You're not here."

"But it might be Stella!"

"Leave it alone,"

The telephone rang again and again. Rain tapped on the windows. A car beeped its horn, very gently and discreetly. The phone rang a fourth time. Frank jumped up, slid under Durell's restraining arm, and snatched at it.

"Stella?"

Durell stood watching him with troubled eyes. There was a long moment while a voice crackled unintelligibly in the receiver. Whatever was being said, Frank had no answer for it. Durell couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman speaking. He saw the muscles twist and knot on Frank's jaw, and there was a touch of white at the corners of the man's mouth.

"Yes," he said hoarsely. "Yes. I'll be there."

There was more crackling on the phone.

"No, I'm alone. Yes, I swear it! Yes, all right. Please, don't do anything until I get there. I'll come alone. Of course. Yes."

Frank Greenwald hung up, turned to face Durell. His eyes were suddenly dangerous. His breathing was ragged, and he pointed a finger. "You stay out of this. I've got to go somewhere, meet someone. It's important. I'm going alone. With some money. If I'm followed, Albert Marni will be killed. And worse things will happen to Stella."

"Who was that on the phone?"

"Nobody you know."

"Frank, don't be a fool."

"Leave me alone," Greenwald said. He was sweating suddenly. "I warn you. I know what I'm doing."

There was a small Chinese ceramic pillow in yellow glaze beside the telephone. Frank Greenwald scooped it up and threw it at Durell with one swift motion. As Durell ducked, the other man spun through the hall doorway and plunged out. The pottery crashed against the wall. Durell yelled and sprang after him. Greenwald hadn't waited for the elevator. His clattering feet pounded on the stairway to the ground floor. Durell hit the treads fast, cursing the man's stubborn, frustrating fear. This was no game for amateurs to play.

Greenwald's desperation lent him unsuspected speed. He was through the narrow lobby, yanking at the street door, before Durell turned on the last landing. Cold rain slashed at his face as he came up the steps to the pavement level. Greenwald was running diagonally across the street. A car stood there, motor idling. A man shouted something from it and Greenwald swerved, looked back at Durell with a white, frightened face, and yanked open the back door of the waiting car. The sedan lurched, pulled away from the curb as Durell started across the street for it. A taxi came around the corner, and he had to duck back.

He stood motionless on the pavement, watching the sedan disappear. The license number registered hard on his mind, a New York plate. There was no point in giving further chase. Greenwald was gone.

The shadow no longer stood in the doorway across from Stella Marni's apartment.

The wind was cold, angling down the street from the East River. Traffic flickered and hissed by on Madison Avenue, Durell looked at his watch. It was a little after six. He started walking toward Madison, to get a cab to his hotel. Deirdre had said she might take the train up from Washington to have dinner with him, and he suddenly wanted to see her and look into her eyes and feel the anger purged from him.

He was halfway to the corner when Blossom stepped from a doorway to intercept him. "Durell!"

He halted and looked at the FBI man. Blossom was tall and thin, and his hunter's face was narrow and bloodless. Durell had run into him here and there, but not too often, since Blossom was attached to his New York district office. There had never been too much coordination between K Section and the FBI, except when their orbits of duty overlapped. Blossom's face was like the blade of a hatchet, steel-cold.

"Was that Frank Greenwald in the car?" Blossom asked.

"Weren't you watching?"

"I got the number. What are you mixing into this for, Cajun?"

"My own reasons."

"You're out of step. This one is our baby."

"And if I make it mine?" Durell asked.

"Your throat gets cut."

"That's official?"

"Official and personal."

Durell said, "What's eating you, Blossom? Why the hate on this job? You warned off Art Greenwald, you made a flap to Senator Hubert, you pulled wires all the way back to Washington, just because Art asked you a few questions. Art is only worried about his brother."

"He's got good reason to be worried."

"Well, what is it? I'd like to help."

"Stay out of it, Cajun. This one is all mine." Blossom's narrow face was hard. His pale eyes glistened in the light from the street lamp. He grinned quickly and turned it off just as quickly. "I hate these people," he said. He had a high, grating voice. "These bastards who don't know enough to be grateful for the break we give 'em by letting them into our country."

"That's a hell of an attitude."

"It's mine. That's the way I feel."

"Your boss know how much you love 'em?"

"I haven't made any secret of it."

Durell said, "Then maybe you don't belong on this job. These people need help. Not hate. Not bigotry. I'm surprised you stay with it."

Blossom laughed. "Take it easy with me, boy. I've heard about you, and I never went for what I heard. McFee's fair-haired Cajun lad. You're tangling with something else when you tangle with me. This one, this bitch, this Stella Marni. You heard what she told the Senator today? Cold-blooded, icy-faced babe. Beautiful, so damned beautiful. I'm going to fix her. She'll wish she never came here and she'll wish she never chose to go back."

Durell felt suddenly wary as he listened to Blossom's grating voice. He had known good men who went bad, for one reason or another. Usually it was a persona! reason. He sensed the change in Blossom's voice when he mentioned Stella Marni. Not good. Worry moved in him. Now and then, in spite of careful screening, in spite of everything administrative checks could do, a sour apple got into the barrel. There had been Swayney, in K Section, a traitor, a man beguiled by visions of power and money. For every sour apple, there were hundreds and thousands of hardworking, sincere, devoted men who gave up sleep and careers and even love to pursue their jobs. Durell felt as if he had put his foot into an evil-smelling quagmire when he listened to Blossom's voice.

Blossom pushed a thin forefinger against Durell's chest.

"So you stay out of it, Durell. Go back to Washington. Stay in your own backyard. This is a matter of internal security, and State doesn't have any say in how we handle these cases. So that leaves you out."

"And if I don't stay out?"

"I told you. Hang by your thumbs. You get no more from me."

"Fair warning." Durell said. He tasted anger in his throat, pushed it down. "Take your hand off my chest."

"Sure." Blossom stepped back. "You've had your chance. There won't be any rules next time."

"Dealer's choice," Durell said. "You picked the game."

He walked to the corner. He could feel Blossom's strange, pale eyes following him. He didn't turn around to look back.

Deirdre was waiting for him in the lobby of his midtown hotel. He saw her at once, with that instinctive searching of eye that would always pick her out, no matter what the crowd. She sat alone, long legs crossed, sheathed in nylon, small red rain boots on her patrician feet, a small red felt hat aslant on the raven hair that curled with the rain about her ears. Her smile and the look in her eyes were just for him as he approached. They would always be just for him. He knew this with a warm certainty that made him grateful just to know her.

"Sam, dear."

He kissed her and said, "Isn't Art here yet?"

"Was he supposed to join us?"

"He said he would. Never mind. We'll have dinner right here."

"I'm sorry," Deirdre told him. "I must get the next train back. I'm a working woman, you know, and something came up, a story with Congressman Jordan's wife that I have to cover tonight. I'm really terribly sorry."

"I thought you might stay over," he said.

Her blue eyes met his, remembering nights that only the two of them knew, remembering passion and tenderness, joys and fears they had shared. She was beautiful in a way that made the breath catch in his throat, beautiful all over, from lustrous dark hair to her toes. He knew her as intimately as she knew him, and he would never tire of her and never stop wanting her. There was a breathless electricity between them always.

She patted his arm. "Take me to Penn Station. Didn't you get anywhere today, Sam? You look so angry. Didn't you see Stella Marni? Didn't I tell you she was lovely?"

"I haven't met her yet. I hope to, tonight."

"In public, I trust," she said smiling.

"Jealous?"

"Always."

"You're the one who asked me to help her. You and Art."

"I know. But if you're a scamp and a Lothario, I might as well know it now as later." She said very earnestly, very quietly: "I love you, Sam."

He had no need to answer.

"Will you ring General McFee in the morning and tell him I'm taking a few days up here?" he asked. "On my own, of course. There's going to be some trouble about it, but the General will get the brunt of the squawks, from the White House on down."

"Is it that serious?" Deirdre asked.

"Worse."

He did not tell her more about it. She understood how it was with him now, although in the early days when they were together they had sometimes come to the verge of breakup because of the nature of his work, his secrecy, his taciturn refusal to discuss any aspect of his job with her. And she did not press him now.

He ate in a restaurant on Seventh Avenue after leaving Deirdre at the train gate. He felt curiously let down, empty and frustrated. He had hoped for and looked forward to this evening with Deirdre in New York, where few people knew them and they could do as they pleased. For one reason or another, it had been a long time since they had spent the night together, with that candid, sweet freedom of giving and loving that was unique with Deirdre. Restlessness moved in him, and he felt tense and frustrated. He wondered how legitimate Deirdre's new assignment was. Then he felt guilty for doubting her. But there was no denying that he needed and wanted her.

He phoned his hotel to inquire if Art was there, but Art had not come in and there was no message. He phoned Senator Hubert for an interview, presuming on a brief acquaintance he had made with the man in Washington; but the Senator was not available. He stepped outside the booth and looked up Frank Greenwald's address in the phone book. He was registered at a small apartment-hotel on Central Park West. Durell dialed the number and let it ring half a dozen times before he gave up. He consulted the business directory for Greenwald's name, using the "photog supplies whls" after his name as a key. He found Greenwald's name under "Chemical Wholesalers" at an address on Fourth Avenue, debated for a moment whether to try to phone there, decided it would be futile, and went out for a cab.

It was still raining. The chill November night made the city seem bleak and dark. For once, the cab driver was not garrulous. Durell did not know whether or not he was chasing a will-o'-the wisp; it was possible he might have been better off refusing Art's plea to mix into this, Frank certainly didn't want any help.

His mind drifted back to days and nights in New York when he studied law at Yale, his dates with girls here and in Connecticut. He recalled several in particular in those free, wanton days when he had been a dealer in a New Haven joint, earning his tuition at the poker table and using the skills Grandpa Jonathan had taught him as a boy in Bayou Peche Rouge. He pushed those days and nights from his mind. He wanted Deirdre now, tonight, not memories of long ago.