The Day of the Guns (7 page)

“A pretty acute observation from a guy getting shot.”

“He was a well-trained operator. There was another one with him, slightly taller, medium build. All he remembered was his mouth. He said he had a round mouth. That’s a peculiar description and our man died before he could explain, but it should be apparent if he’s spotted again.”

“You have more than just that,” I said.

The guy hesitated, then nodded slowly, the information coming out of him reluctantly. “A name. We think ... not know ... think, that the first one is a Red agent named Vidor Churis. Until now he has been assigned to and involved in the various situations in Central and South America.” He stopped then, and looked at me squarely. “I’m surprised you don’t know him, Mr. Mann.”

My eyes held his a long second. “I’ve heard of him,” I said.

“Have you anything to offer?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Or is it that you won’t?”

“I haven’t. If I had I wouldn’t.”

For a second it looked like he would pop. Then he said, “Will you?”

“When the right time comes, yes.” I tilted back in the chair. “It seems funny that you should be coming to me. Cooperation of this sort isn’t usual.”

Thomas Watford dragged in a hissing breath. “In our society and system of government people like Martin Grady can wield a sizable amount of influence.”

“No doubt.”

“Charles Corbinet’s voice is listened to carefully.”

“Good old Charlie,” I said.

“In the latter case he’s in a position of official authority, carefully covered, which you seem to know. I still can’t understand why he prefers to trust you ... or others in authority who seem to be swayed by Martin Grady.”

“Simple bribery,” I said.

One of the guys at the table said, “You bastard.”

I grinned at him and set the chair back right. “The Commies used the bribery of exposure as queers on certain ones in high places to extract what they wanted. Sometimes there’s good bribery, like the promise of results that can be gotten no other way. Keep it in mind. Now, is that all?”

“That’s all for now,” Watford said.

I looked down the table, fastening all the faces in my mind. They sat there hating the orders they had but not being able to do anything about it. I got up, poured a drink of water for myself, waved and left.

It was Friday. The rain had stopped at last and the low scud hid the tops of the buildings above the twentieth floors. On the street people still carried their umbrellas and raincoats, not wanting to take a chance on the weather.

Outside the U.N. buildings the black limousines were pulling away from the curbs with taxis filling in the places they left. I waited ten minutes before Rondine came out, watched while she paused in the doorway until a tall brunette in a tan suede coat came out and they walked toward me together.

The brunette I had seen before. She was the one Burton Selwick had visited down in the Village and taken out to supper. When they reached the street I walked up and said, “Hello, Rondine.”

It should have startled her, but didn’t, that’s how good she was. She turned her head almost casually, but her smile was a shade too tight to be real.

“Oh ... Tiger,” she said.

“Like a bad penny.” I looked at the brunette.

“Gretchen Lark ... Tiger Mann.”

The brunette said, “How do you do, Mr. Mann. Or is Tiger a pet name?”

“My real one.”

“Very picturesque. It has certain connotations,” she smiled. Gretchen gave Edith a small puzzled glance then. “Rondine?”

“Now
that’s
a pet name,” I exclaimed. “We’re real old friends.”

Her eyebrows went up and her mouth pursed with a humorous, pseudo-knowing look and she laughed, “Well, then, I’ll just say so long and leave you two old friends alone.”

Edith said, “Oh, but ...”

I just winked and grinned at her as if she had said the right thing and took Edith’s arm. I thought for a moment she’d pull away when I felt the muscles harden under my fingers, but when I squeezed just a little bit she shrugged resignedly and said, “I’ll call you tomorrow, Gretch.”

“Do that. Good-bye, Tiger.”

“See you,” I said.

Most of the crowd had found taxis by then and we didn’t have to wait. I flagged down a cruiser, eased Edith in, told the driver to take us to the Blue Ribbon on Forty-fourth and leaned back into the cushions with my beautiful killer beside me.

It was almost pleasant, that ride. It was almost like those times twenty years ago when we could sit and feel each other there in the dark and quiet and I could know the sensation of love long before the knowledge of hate. Neither of us spoke. We didn’t have to. We knew what was in the other’s mind and it was enough. I closed my eyes and thought about it and suddenly had to stop myself from reaching for her hand.

When the cab stopped at the intersection I could hear her breathing, forcing herself to keep control and I grinned because that’s the way I wanted her to be. She knew she was going to die but didn’t know when. My lovely Rondine was sweating inside.

At the restaurant I got out, paid off the cab and she stood there waiting dutifully, with perfect composure, knowing yet not being quite sure, that it wouldn’t happen there. Rondine had always been like that. Even when she killed it had been with class. A lady, I thought. A lovely guise. It could cover almost anything.

We took a booth in the back, ordered a drink first, then steaks, and over the highball I grinned at her and she spoke for the first time. “You are making a big mistake, Tiger.” There was ice in her voice.

“I’ll take my chances on how I live or die, kid. No more mistakes for me.”

Then for some reason the ice went out of her. There was a sudden heat in her eyes and the tip of her tongue moistened her lips before she sipped her drink. That was an old trick of Rondine’s too. She could switch from hot to cold before you were aware of it and the new attitude almost made you forget the former one. She hadn’t forgotten a thing.

When she tilted her head back I looked for the surgical scars, but the shadow of her chin obscured the region there. Later I’d find out.

“I don’t understand your new technique, Tiger,” she said. “You were going to kill me earlier.”

“I still will, kitten, so keep sweating.”

“Then why...” she made a motion of her hand around the booth.

“People have been telling me about you. I have feelers out. How’d you do it, Rondine?”

Her eyes creased in a frown. “Do what?”

“Get inside the Caine family.”

Both her hands held the glass delicately and her eyes were steady on mine. “I was born into it. If you asked, then you would have found out.”

“That’s what I was told, but I have other ideas.”

She flicked open her cigarette case, put one between her lips and waited for me to light it for her. Over the flame she said, “And they are?”

“A staid, respectable British family loaded with pride and tradition can have a lot to lose if somebody can jangle a skeleton in their closet. I wonder what they’d do or what they’d agree to do if they were suddenly confronted with something that could put them up to public ridicule and scorn to the point that they couldn’t hold their heads up. Sometimes honor can tumble in the face of pride. It’s an old dodge, sugar.”

I knew I hit it right when her face went almost white. Tiny lines fixed themselves beside the corners of her mouth and eyes and her fingers nearly snapped the cigarette in two. For a few seconds her breath was caught in her throat and if ever she wanted to kill me it was then.

The laugh I made was the nastiest thing I ever heard. “What did you hold over their heads, Rondine?”

Through her teeth she said gently,
“I’d like to kill you.”

“I know,” I told her.

Only Rondine could have done it, that quick reversal of emotion, one second full of hate, the next totally calm and poised, thinking fast, ready with an answer. “Why don’t you ask them?”

“I will. There are people working on it now. Before long I’ll have all the facts and you’ll fall. This minute pictures of you are all over the continent going to the offices of plastic surgeons and sooner or later I’ll have the right one who did the face job. Or did you get it in Russia?”

Her smile was ambiguous. “Find out for yourself, Tiger.”

“My pleasure.”

The steaks came and we waited until the waiter left and then began eating to resume the pleasantries. It was like twenty questions now, the probing and parrying. It was fun being with her again, like the old days when we were on opposite sides, lovers, yet enemies, digging for information without wanting to hurt the other.

“Parents?” I asked casually.

“Richard and Agnes Caine: 1892 to 1951; 1896, still living.” She smiled and went on, “Ruth, Patricia, Diana, sisters, Vernon, John my brothers. Both Diana and John were killed during the war. The dates of ...”

“Never mind.”

“You have a family crest,” I started.

“Honorably won. Unicorns bearing a shield of red and blue with the bar dexter, beneath, an unfurled scroll with the insignia...”

“You’re doing great,” I cut her off. “You always were a quick study.

“Remember Cal Haggerty, Rondine?” I said abruptly.

She stopped eating, giving me a curious look.
Damn, she was better than ever!

“Who?”

“You killed him, baby. You let him have it with a tommy gun. Right after you shot me.”

She almost dropped her fork and the expression in her eyes was unreadable.

“Hurt to bring those things back? Hell, kid, I don’t feel bad when I think about the people I knocked off. They all needed it. To your way Cal and I needed it too so don’t feel bad about it.” I stopped and picked up my drink and finished it. “Or does the thought scare you?”

Then she was back to normal again. “No,” she said, “it doesn’t scare me.”

“It should, doll.”

We finished eating then, not saying much more. I paid the bill and walked out with her and if anyone had looked we could have been nothing more than man and wife, not executioner and victim. On the corner of Broadway and Forty-fourth I whistled a cab over, gave her address and sat back, smiling to myself. She was on edge now and that’s the way I wanted her.

Unconsciously, she had set her handbag between the two of us and I gave it a squeeze. There was a gun in there, all right. It was easy to wait until she glanced out the window to flip it open, finger the clip out of the small automatic, close it and drop the clip in my pocket without being noticed. Colonel Corbinet had trained us well and we kept up the practice.

She made no objection when I got out and followed her into the apartment, but she did make a point of speaking to the doorman and the porter inside. Both had a good chance to look at me and very deliberately she asked the porter the time and she made a pretense of setting her watch. No matter what I did now there would be personal and time identification by two people and my neck would be in the trap.

What Rondine didn’t know was why I was there.

It wasn’t to kill her. Not just yet.

She pushed the number twelve button in the elevator and I said, “Very nice, Rondine. Good thinking.”

Rondine knew what I meant. She looked at me, smiled and said, “Do you blame me?”

“Not at all. You’ve had the training for it, haven’t you?”

Her smile and the set of her face were peculiar. “Yes, I have.”

She held the bag with her thumb and forefinger on the snaps, the other hand ready to dip into it if she had to and unless you were aware of those things you’d never notice the stance. It just wasn’t quite the way a woman holds her purse. It would have been funny to see what happened if she tried it.

At her door I took the key out of her fingers, unlocked it myself and handed the key back. She walked in, held the door open and said, “A nightcap, Tiger?”

“Sure.”

One switch seemed to turn everything on in the room. Three lamps blossomed into a soft glow and the haunting strains of Dvorak’s
New World Symphony
chanted from hidden speakers. She threw her coat on the back of a chair, went behind the bar and reached for glasses and bottles. When she made the drinks she handed me mine, said, “Luck,” sipped from hers and put it on the bar. Then she walked out of the room. I didn’t worry. Her bag was still on the chair with her coat.

But she was clever. The door to her bedroom was open enough so that if I walked to the chair she’d see me. As long as I stayed at the bar where I was she’d play the game my way, thinking I was playing it hers.

Come, darling, I have seen the act before. It’s nothing new. Remember Hamburg? Remember that little town in occupied France where you did the bit in a ripped-open pillowcase? Man, but were you hot then. All white, soft skin and flowing, soft flesh and lovely hair and all mine. Mine. Remember the things we did that night? If they knew, the names they’d call us, eh? But fun. Great. Love. Real, true love.

She came out in a quilted, blue housecoat and I didn’t have to be told that there was nothing beneath it. Her legs were the same lovely flash of pink, beautifully molded like a dancer’s, that melted into fabric before they revealed their true beauty; her waist pinched in and rising into the proud outthrusting of her breasts that were so deliberately Rondine’s.