The Day of the Guns (14 page)

In case Churis had a spotter going ahead of him, I cut out of the area and grabbed a cab to the Village. At Gretchen’s place I told him to wait and went up the three flights to her apartment and knocked on the door.

Nobody answered, but inside a radio was playing softly and I tried the knob, pushed open the door and gave her a call in case she was in the shower. I edged my luck a little bit and walked on in. There was one light on in the living room; it was the radio behind the bar that was playing and nobody was home.

She had probably gone to the store, but I didn’t bother to wait. I flipped over the drape cloth that covered Selwick’s pictrue, saw the progress she had made on it, even to catching some of the realism of the sickness he had and made a mental note to tell her to pretty it up for his wife. Then I went back to the cab.

This time the ticket booth was open at the
Grenoble
Theater and I passed in two dollars, took the ticket and the change, found a spot in the shadows where I could watch the door and sat down with the .45 loose in the holster.

In twenty minutes the place was filled but there was no sign of Vidor Churis. I found a seat in the last row, sat through a garbled propaganda picture and wished K could have seen the reaction. The only reason the public was there was to hear something in their own language, but they laughed at the wrong places and could have been against the wall for it in Moscow.

During the intermission I double-checked the faces in the lobby, waited for the second show crowd to file in, took ten minutes to be sure he wasn’t going to show and cut out.

One lousy lead and it wasn’t paying off. I could feel that funny sensation crawling up my back and walked it off down to Forty-second Street because you can’t afford impatience when you’re playing the game of big guns.

From a drugstore I called Toomey and broke him loose from the TV set. He said there had been one incoming call that our subject had left the U.N. complex, walked to the automat with John Talbot, then taken a cab to her apartment. Talbot had returned to the Embassy building and was presumed there still. Before going in he had been joined by two members of the British staff and Vincent Case, all cleared personnel.

A stake-out was in progress outside Edith Caine’s apartment with a team on the street and one deployed inside the building somewhere. The call had come a half-hour ago so it was a good bet she hadn’t left the apartment.

I told him to stay there and he wasn’t anxious to argue about it. The rain that had been threatening all night had finally found its way through the smog and was angling down against the window outside the phone booth. All I wanted was for him to put a signal call through to Martin Grady with my initial negative-contact report and request a new approach if possible and an expedite order.

Now it was time to stick the needle in deeper.

I spotted the two stake-outs early and felt like telling them to take a refresher course. Both should have known better, they were old enough to have gone through the mill from both ends. One was smoking in a car and all the windows were frosted over from the humidity and the other was standing out of the rain trying to be inconspicuous. They could have walked or doused the butts but the weather got the better of them and they played it down. One day they’d die for being stupid if they stayed around that long.

The other one was on the floor below Rondine’s making a pretense of waiting for the elevator, but actually watching the cables to see if the car stopped at her floor or not. If it had, he would have checked. I had to ride up and walk down six times before I had him clocked, made like I rounded the bend in the corridor to some apartment, then took the fire exit up to her floor.

I put my finger on the buzzer and waited. I touched it again and her voice said, “Yes?” from somewhere inside.

“Tiger, honey.”

There was no hesitancy. She didn’t try the peephole or call out again. No talking through the door. She swung it wide and stood there gorgeous and radiant in a sweeping white gown that accentuated every luscious curve in her body, showing the V glint of chestnut and dagger pink of womanhood, proud and obstreperous in their anger at being accosted so deliberately and I said, “Can I come in?”

“By all means,” Rondine smiled, and the smile went back to years ago when she could hook me with wet lips and the sight of a body that belonged to a lewd calendar and a voice that was a snare and a challenge all at once.

This time she looked at me, a quick glance that ran up and down me, knowing how I had reacted before, watching to see a visual sign of a sexual attraction. Maybe somebody else would have made the grade, but I had had the full treatment and nearly died for it. It didn’t happen now.

I said, “Thanks, kitten,” and walked on in.

She closed the door and followed me into the living room. This time the music was from Wagner ... the Love-Death theme. Fitting, I thought. Nice. It went right with my mood. It had an undulating quality that seeped into your mind and set the scene so nearly perfectly that Hollywood couldn’t have staged it better.

Rondine looked tired now. There were shadows under her eyes and lines down the sides of her mouth that seemed to pull the years together and inside I had that goddamn terrible feeling I had back in the loft when I had loved her so much.

She
was
as
good
as
dead
and
I
was going to do it. She knew it
and l
knew it
and
nothing would change it. If
I
missed
again
somebody else from Central would do it
and
without feeling, but if
I
did it the feeling would be there. So how do
you
want it, kid, from
a
stranger or someone who loved
you so
much
he’d
die for you?

I tossed my hat and coat on a chair, sat down against the arm of the sofa and stretched my legs out. There was a nervous quality in the way she moved and she tried to hide it by walking to the bar. “Drink?”

“Why not?”

“Scotch?”

“You made enough drinks for me before, kid. You know what I take. I haven’t changed any. Just cheap bar whiskey and ginger ale and don’t burn it.” I was beginning to wish she’d quit the act in front of me. There wasn’t any reason for it or sense to it. We were alone. It had all come to an end long ago, except for the climax. What was going to be done was going to be done.

I said, “How was your Mr. Selwick?”

Rondine put the drink on the table at my feet. “Well taken care of. He’ll be at work again Monday as usual.”

“I understand you had lunch with him?”

Her eyes darted my way. “Is there something wrong with that?”

“Possibly.” I picked the drink up and tasted it. Good. She had the balance down pat. I said, “That was nicely timed for him to have an attack.”

She frowned, not getting the point. “He’s had them before.”

“And you’ve had lunch with him before.”

Then she realized what I was intimating and the glass in her hand shook visibly. I could sense her searching for words, but they didn’t come. They couldn’t get through the dark rage that suffused her face.

Before she could think of anything I changed the subject. “We have some information on Diana Caine, honey. Interested or do you know it all already?”

She couldn’t help it. The glass dropped right out of her fingers and spilled all over the floor. One piece of ice skidded across the room and I kicked it back casually with my toe. There was a stricken look on her face and tight, corded lines ran down her neck into her shoulders.

I grinned at her, a nasty thing that twisted my mouth out of shape. “So you got to the Caine family through her. That just leaves one thing left and that can blow you, doll. Where is the real Edith Caine?”

She didn’t answer. She sat there, her face a cross between horror and rage, hating me with everything inside her.

I said, “I’ll spell it out for you then. Somewhere the right Edith is supposed to be in hiding. My bet is that she’s dead. You wouldn’t leave any loose ends like that around. So far all your recommendations are from people who knew Edith Caine as a child, not an adult. Because the family has always been above reproach they never considered that one of the Caines would be a phony and a plant. I bet the family is turned inside out over this. When they see this thing laid out across the papers they’ll do a mass Dutch act.”

Her fingers trembled so hard they barely were able to hold the cigarette. I fished a packet of hotel matches out of my pocket, lit the butt for her and tossed them on the table. She choked once on the smoke, forced herself to a degree of composure. “You are so wrong, Tiger.”

“Not me, sugar.”

“You really wouldn’t ...”

“Try me and see.”

She took a deep drag on the cigarette, snatched it away and snubbed it out in the ash tray until the butt came apart in fragments. Her eyes arched up, caught mine and she said, “I can’t let you drag down the Caine name,” in a cold, calculated tone that was the Rondine of old.

“How do you figure on stopping me? Vidor Churis?”

The pause before she spoke was a long one. There was a note of near-sympathy in her face and she said in a whisper, “You fool, you.”

“I like your dogs, Rondine. They’re the kind I know. I’ve been playing games with that type twenty years and left them lying stacked up behind me like cordwood. I’m surprised you aren’t more subtle. There was a time when you worked every device a woman could and parlayed a smile and a figure into some first-rate kills. This new act of yours stinks. It’s either too obvious or I’m getting jaded ... I’ve had it pulled on me down in Mexico and twice in France. Each time the broad took the big fall because it takes more than an act to put a gun on me.”

“Tiger ...”

“Come here, Rondine. I’ll let you take the act right to the end. Remember the kiss you gave me the last time? That was a real kiss, a real kiss of death. So come here, Rondine. I want to taste you again.”

She stiffened in her seat, her eyes never leaving mine, both hands gripping the edge of her seat.

“I want to see if you taste the same knowing what you’re doing to a fine family and with a young kid named Edith Caine lying dead in a hole somewhere. I want to know if having the smell of your own death in your nose can make you taste any different. Come here, Rondine.”

She rose like an automaton at first, stood there momentarily with mind and body as taut as a bowstring.

“Come, my darling,” I said. “I still have that same blaster on me. You might even have a chance to slip your hand inside my coat, grab the rod and spill my guts out again.” I knew I was smiling. I could feel my lips tight across my teeth and the kill feeling chasing itself across my shoulders.

Something happened to her then. It started in her eyes and flirted down across her mouth. The tension went out of her shoulders bit by bit until she was the Rondine I had known so well, lovely, desirable, deadly ... suddenly finding the situation to her liking and under her control. Each step across the room deliberate, the golden flesh of her thighs breaking through the opening of her gown as she walked toward me. Her pose was provocative, her breasts undulating beneath the sheer fabric totally unrestrained in their movement. The light was soft and kind to her and when it was behind her the glow outlined the sleek flow of her body.

I sat there and looked up at her, reading her mind. It wasn’t hard.

She said, “Tell me how much you loved me, Tiger.”

I had read it wrong. It had to be something else again.

“More than anyone could ever know.”

“Do you still?”

“I told you there are some things that never change.”

“As much as ever?”

“As much.” I wasn’t smiling any more. My stomach was tight and the words came out harsh and a little too loud.

“Once you would have done anything for me.”

“That was a long time ago. Now there’s only one thing I’m going to do for you. Kill you, Rondine.”

“If ... you must ... can you do one thing for me?”

“Nothing.”

She knelt on the couch beside me, then eased into a sitting position and her knee was a gentle pressure against my leg. The top of her gown had parted with the movement and the deep cleft between her breasts was an open invitation she made no attempt to hide.

“Please hear me,” she said with almost innocent simplicity.

“Why?”

“Because you love me.”

I reached out and pushed her knee away. “And how about me, kid? Tell me how much you still love me.”

“Still?”

“You used to make beautiful love talk, baby. I used to lie in bed with you and listen to the sound of your voice and it could turn me inside out. All the while we were having each other whether it was in the mud or in a bed you’d tell me over and over how much you loved me, so let’s hear you say it now. I want to see if you can still get that feeling in your voice.”

“I think I loved you from the first moment I saw you, Tiger.”

“Now you’re being trite, kid. That used to be one of your favorite statements. Try something new.”

Gently, she reached out and touched my face with her forefinger. “I love you, Tiger,” she said.

And she reached me with it.
She
knew she did
and I
hated myself for feeling that slow wave of warmth that started in my
brain
because it was twenty years
ago all
over
again.

“Can I ask you now?”

When I didn’t answer she said, “Don’t do anything to the Caine family.”

“Killers don’t change,” I finally told her.

Her face remained impassive, but there was something new in her eyes. “I’m sure they don’t.”

I tried to stop what she did, but I couldn’t. She leaned forward, eyes partly closed, her hand along the side of my face and then her mouth was on mine and the tip of her tongue searching and feeling. My fingers tightened on her arms, pinioning them and the past came closer and closer. I forced her shoulders back and the gown opened under the pressure and she was tight against me, a perfumed, hilly delight, fire-hot and moaning softly.