The Day of the Guns (6 page)

I said, “Damn, you took your time.”

Toomey grinned and pulled me to my feet. “I like to see my associates work.”

I picked up the gun, looked at it and handed it to Toomey. It was an old job, but in perfect condition, a Soviet-built rod made in 1944, not the Czech slave-labor model ... the one the officers wore during the war.

“Neat?” I asked.

“Neat,” Toomey replied, “but it’s a common piece. Ernie Bentley told me about your last bust. All 7.65’s. Matter of fact, I know a lot of people who wear this rig.”

“So do I,” I said. “It won’t help much. Chances are the blood types are all ‘O’ type.”

“Chances are you better not try to find out. Come on, let’s blow.”

He stopped me by the exit staircase. “They went down here. No telling what floor they took out.”

“I cased the place before I got here. Two floors down you can cut over to the other side of the building and take those exits down, too. They both open into the lobby and outside. If one of them’s bleeding they won’t stick around waiting for us to show.”

“Want to go after them?” Toomey asked me.

I shook my head. “No. They’ll be back. They have to come back. When they do I want it going all my way.”

“You like this crap,” he said, “don’t you?”

“I love it,” I answered.

Tomorrow I’d be asked to leave. One room at least. Tomorrow the whole goddamn city police force would descend on me for the job tonight and it was debatable whether or not it was to get me or get the heat on me that the whole play was pulled.

In a little while we’d find out.

Now here’s the funny part. They were all watching me. They wanted to see what I was going to do ... and hell, if they were smart enough, all they had to do was ask. I could have told them. Kill Rondine. That was all. For the sake of my own cover I’d break hers, but the initial emotion was simply ... kill Rondine.

Everyone was sweating the security leak at the U.N. They even tried left-fielding me in, even Grady. But screw him too. Screw I.A.T.S. and the British and security and all the crap that goes with protecting a billion people. Goddamn, I was the one who caught the slugs. I’m the target now.

How simple can it get? One broad ... that’s all I asked. One lousy doll who needed a slug up her whoosis and who was going to get it from me and the whole world falls apart.

Hell, Grady even gave me orders.

Not really, though. I don’t take those kind. He was just conforming. He had no choice either. I was going to nail Rondine beautifully and someplace I hit the tack and now everybody wanted to nail me.

That’s the way I liked it.

When we hit the street we turned north and walked two blocks unhurriedly to a counter spot, then went in and ordered coffee. I said to Toomey, “You came on like gangbusters. How’d you know what the action was?”

“It figured. Besides, I was in contact with Grady a few minutes earlier. You’re hot, Tiger.”

“That’s nothing new.”

“Grady’s contacts overseas got a message through. There’s an all-out effort going on you. The Reds have you top-priority.”

“Thank you, Rondine,”
I half whispered.

“What?”

“Nothing. What’s the scoop?”

“You have been ordered eliminated by any possible means immediately. From now on you’d better stay in the shadows.”

“Think that accounts for the Tokarev?”

Toomey shrugged. “It’s their pet weapon.”

“Not in this country.”

“Correction. This is not part of the American Commie setup. These are imports. You know they can get all the unregistered guns they want through diplomatic attaché cases.”

“Then they weren’t on their toes.”

“Not necessarily. You were just up higher on yours. Martin says for you to go under cover.”

“Nuts.”

He drank his coffee and left a half a buck on the counter. “It’s your neck.”

“Damn right. Now do something for me. Run a check on John Fredericks Talbot and a U.N. secretary named Gretchen Lark.”

Toomey wrote the names down, slipped them away and said, “Shouldn’t take long.”

“Who will you work through?”

He grinned and shook his head. “I’ll do it my way. You want to get out of your hotel?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll get your stuff moved over to the Chester in the room next to mine. I think your Mr. Watford will get us clearance on this.”

“The local police aren’t going to enjoy the interference.”

“Friend, do I have to remind you that we’re working on an international level or have you only one thing on your mind?”

“Knock it off.”

“No, I can’t. You may want that girl, but the complications of this affair are a little too big to make her the primary target. You are still in the group, still on assignment and still what you are. The years of training and experience you’ve had left their mark on you whether you know it or not and regardless of any emotional involvement, this is still ... a case. Understand?”

“You took long enough to say it.”

“Grady’s instructions. I think he knows you better than you know yourself.”

“Okay, okay,” I laughed. “I’ll keep it down.”

 

Wally Gibbons was finishing off his column at his apartment when I got there. When he ended it, checked it through and stuffed it in a manila envelope he swung around in his chair. “Hell of a time to come calling.”

I tossed a packet of photos on his desk. “Your shots of Edith Caine. I wanted to get them back to you.”

“Do any good?”

“It’ll be a couple of days before the reports come in,” I said.

“Well, I don’t wish you any luck. Frankly, I don’t think you’re going to have any either.”

I sprawled out in a chair across the room. “You told me you researched the family.”

“Thoroughly, buddy.”

“You got the material around?”

“On the shelf right beside your head. That brown folder.”

I reached up and pulled the piece out of the pile. It was a ten-page single-spaced summary with a couple dozen letters attesting to Edith Caine’s background, copies of her birth certificate, school diplomas, recommendations from important people in England and a few general observations.

I said, “Brief me.”

“Can’t you read?”

“Sure, I will, but you give it to me first.”

“Here we go again,” Wally grunted. “Okay ... fine English family. One of four girls and two boys. The oldest girl, Diana, was killed in the second air raid on London. The youngest son was in the R.A.F., shot down and killed in 1944. Ruth and Patricia Caine are both married to Army officers, Vernon, the oldest son, is still a bachelor and is in government service with the Admiralty. The father died in 1951, the mother is a dowager type who maintains the family residence, a sizable estate in the country with another place in London and is well recognized in English society. Not one smear on the family escutcheon; the stationery bears a coat of arms granted by old King John himself.”

“So?”

“So this ... if ever a more respectable bunch ever lived in merrie olde, it was the Caines. Prim and proper with never a breath of scandal. Always, the family has been connected with government service, putting in time with the military, emerging with officer rank in old regiments and what-not. Marriages have always been of their own class and they guard their reputation like we do Fort Knox.”

“Ha.”

“Laugh, but try to bust through the circle. You can’t do it. It just doesn’t have a loophole. Don’t think British Intelligence didn’t check every one of them out. They’re no slobs. You don’t get into government positions without one big security check.”

“I can name a few who did.”

“So can I, but they were exceptions.”

“That’s what I mean. Can I keep this awhile?”

“Be my guest,” Wally said. He paused, looked at me seriously and frowned. “But ... just in case, let’s say ...”

I waved him off. “You’ll get the picture. You can be the hero.”

He nodded, still frowning. “Tiger...”

“What?”

“I finally got a lead on
you.”

“How about that.”

“Seems like you’re a peculiarly important type of person.”

“Oh?”

“Want to give it to me?”

“No.”

“I’ll find out anyway.”

“Go ahead.” I looked at him, expressionless.

“You make me nervous, buddy. What I heard is kind of frightening. Now I know why I could never get a line on you in all these years. It explains a lot of things if it’s true.”

I felt a grin cut the corner of my mouth. “It might be better if you kept it to yourself.”

He nodded, not saying anything. I told him thanks for the package on Edith Caine and pulled myself out of the chair. At the door I turned and winked at him. He was still sitting there frowning and I knew what he was thinking. Maybe I would give him the story at that. He needed a little excitement in his life.

 

The invitation to visit the I.A.T.S. office downtown came from Thomas Watford through Toomey when he cleared the air about the affair in the hotel corridor. It was simply delivered, but the kind you didn’t ignore.

Watford didn’t bother introducing me when I came in. They were all seated at a conference table with an open chair on the end and he pointed to it and I sat down. Nothing else.

They weren’t the striped-pants types, these. Two were field men I had seen before and the other pair matched them equally. The fifth was a big man, heavy in the shoulders with a tight set to his eyes and a hard mouth that had come out of years of war and intrigue. He had been a general once, during the war, now he showed up behind the scenes advising presidents and ambassadors on the fine hairline of action that can divide war from peace.

Hours before, the meeting had begun and decisions made. Although there were no papers showing on the table, the ash trays were full of butts and the room heavy with smoke. On a sideboard against the wall there was an empty water pitcher and another half full and all the glasses right side up with small pieces of ice still melting in their bottoms.

I nodded to them all in general and sat down. It was their play.

Watford said, “We’d like a statement from you about last night.”

I waited a moment. “Simple. I was attacked.”

“You were expecting it.”

“In this business you have to expect anything.”

“Come on, Mr. Mann. You had another room rented and we saw how you got into it. That’s going pretty far.”

“Maybe.” I wasn’t offering anything.

“Who were they?”

“Ballistics check the slugs?”

“Seven-six-five millimeter, a forty-five and thirty-eights.” He tapped the table top with his fingertips. “We know where the last two came from.”

“I take it Toomey gave you the gun we picked up?”

Watford nodded. “Unregistered. Russian make. There are a lot of war souvenir weapons like that in this country.”

“And others brought in deliberately,” I added.

He was noncommittal. “Perhaps.” He glanced around, then said, “What about the first attack?”

“Can I make a phone call?”

“Need a lawyer?”

“Nope.”

He pointed to a phone on the sideboard.

I got up, dialed Toomey at the Chester and asked, “You get the ballistics report on the test shot from the gun?”

Toomey was brief about it. “One of the ones used the first time. You’re right in line.”

“Thanks.” I hung up and went back to my seat. “It was the same bunch who tried for the first hit.”

For the first time the heavy guy spoke. He leaned forward to stare down the table at me, his mouth trying to hide the natural nasty curl of his lip. “It isn’t our habit to divulge information of any nature, Mann, but there is a top level over us again who can alter the code of procedure. How your group manages to exercise such influence I can only guess. I don’t have to like it and one day I’m going to be instrumental in breaking it, but at the moment we have instructions.”

“Fine.”

He ignored the sarcasm. “We ran a ballistics check on that gun too. It had been used before, once to kill one of our couriers and again to kill two supposedly minor British Embassy employees.”

“Minor?”

“They happened to be members of British Intelligence.”

“At least you know which side I’m on then.”

“We don’t need you, Mr. Mann.”

“But you got me, brother. Now get to the point.”

“Ah, yes, I will. We are very interested in uncovering the one who pulled the trigger. Since you seem to be a first-class target and insist upon offering yourself up for sacrifice, we’re going to take advantage of the fact that you might be able to draw this person out in the open. Whatever happens to you is of no importance to us. In this case you are quite expendable and if you go down several purposes will have been served. One, another lead to this killer; two, the opportunity to rid ourselves of unwanted interference. Am I being blunt?”

“Not a bit,” I said. “Only don’t forget one thing.”

“For instance?”

“This target doesn’t fall easily.”

“A matter we will help along if we can.”

“You still haven’t made your point,” I reminded him.

He got a little red in the face and had to suck in his breath. “One of those British Intelligence men lived long enough to give us a description of his killer. Not a big man, thin, high forehead with rather long dark hair combed in the European fashion. He had a peculiar trait ... he pulled the trigger of the gun with the second finger of his hand, not the forefinger.”