The Infiltrators (31 page)

It was quite a climb, on another twisting little two-lane road; but there were no indications that we were being followed by anybody, friendly or hostile. For the moment we were on our own. It wasn’t a bad feeling. The high country was quite lovely, and I saw that Madeleine was recovering, beside me, and enjoying the mountain scenery.

“Can we stop?” she asked at last. “That’s a pretty place up ahead.”

“Sure,” I said, and pulled up among the trees, far enough so the car couldn’t be seen from the highway. “What did you have in mind, Mrs. E?”

She laughed. “Well, I was promised an opportunity to have some hysterics, remember. But first of all I’ve got to pee very badly, if you must know. Don’t go away, I’ll be right back.”

Being better equipped for the purpose—as the little girl said enviously, watching her little brother, it’s
such
a handy thing to have on a picnic—I had my own bladder problems solved and was back at the car before she returned. I watched her come towards me and felt a kind of possessive pride at the attractive picture she made even in her shabby jeans. I mean, hell, I’d practically built this handsome wench from scratch, hadn’t I? I warned myself to cut it out; she’d hate me if she ever got a hint I felt that way. I was taking too much credit, anyway. The good stuff had been there right along, just badly disorganized by her devastating experiences. She’d merely needed a little help in putting it back together.

She stopped in front of me. “We killed that man, didn’t we, Matt?” she said quietly.’

I shook my head. “As far as I’m concerned, he killed himself. We didn’t ask him to come chasing after us.”

“But at the end, there, you deliberately had me tease him, tempt him, let him think he could catch us and finish it right there.” She shook her head quickly. “No, I’m not blaming you,. my dear. Because I… I loved doing it to the great big bully in his monster truck!”

“Good girl,” I said.

“No,” she said. “No, I’m not a good girl, not any longer. Not at all the sweet young lady I used to be, the gentle and sensitive person who died in Fort Ames, or maybe even earlier in one of those dreadful jails into which they stuck me on the way there. That’s what made me so sick just now, Matt. Not just the reaction, but the knowledge that I
liked
seeing that truck falling down into the deep canyon with that man in it! It was a… a wonderful triumphant rush, almost a sexual feeling, knowing that we’d beat the bastard at his own game!” Her face seemed to crumple and her eyes grew shiny with tears. “Oh, God, Matt, what have they made of me? What have you made of me?”

Then she was in my arms, crying. I tried to hold her in gentle brotherly fashion and let her work her own way through it; but her distress was too disturbing and her nearness was too tempting. Soon I found myself touching my lips to her hair and, when she raised her tear-wet face questioningly, to her lips. The kiss was tentative and passionless at first; but soon it became something very different. Her breathing changed, and I felt her breasts pressing warmly against me as she drew me against her hard, her nails digging fiercely into my back; and my own hands moved downwards from her slender waist to possess the smooth roundness of her buttocks, finding them, although I’m normally a lace-and-satin man at heart, very pleasing and exciting under the taut rough cloth of her jeans…

She drove us away from there in silence, and I said nothing, because it had been a fine thing that really didn’t need talking about. I just hoped she wasn’t hurt or angry at the impulsive way we’d broken her stern nonintercourse pact. Then I heard her laugh softly, and I knew everything was all right.

“I’ve still got pine needles in my hair,” she murmured. “No self-control, no self-control at all! And you weren’t much help, Buster!”

“What do you want me to say, that I’m sorry?”

“If you do, I’ll slug you. It was a dumb idea anyway, that one of mine. My God, with people trying to kill me all over the place, I’d better do all the living I can while I’m still around to enjoy it.”

“Sir Matthew at your service, Milady.”

“Service?” She laughed again. “Keep it clean, darling. Now tell me how the hell we get out of this lovely mountain wilderness…”

We stopped for dinner at a little Mexican restaurant in the town of Bernallillo, just before picking up the interstate north. The food was chile—hot, but we put out the fires with adequate quantities of cold Mexican beer. It was a pleasant starlit night by the time we’d finished, traffic was light on the four-lane highway, so it was an easy enough drive; but sitting in the copilot’s seat with nothing to do I found myself yawning repeatedly. It had been a long day.

But it wasn’t through with us yet. When Madeleine stopped the car under the sheltered breezeway in front of the motel office, and I went inside to check for mail and messages, a young man coming out—Marty—brushed against me and spoke a couple of words in a lipless way. I went on to the desk and found nothing there for us. I went back and got into the Mazda.

“Brace yourself,” I said. “Welcoming committee of some kind. Your room.”

“Oh, my God,” she said. “Do you think, if I ask nicely, they’ll give me back my nice quiet cell in Fort Ames?”

I said, “It seems a kind of simpleminded way for anybody to lay for us, but we’d better give it the full-dress treatment anyway, if only for practice.”

“Matt, am I supposed to be scared all the time?”

“If you weren’t scared, I’d worry about you,” I said. “When we go in, don’t brandish any weapons unnecessarily, and don’t shoot anybody you don’t have to, including me.”

Actually, of course, I did worry about her. She’d done very well so far, but you always worry when you’re working with one of the new ones; and this one, I couldn’t help remembering, had been brought up to be afraid of guns. If she’d been brought up to be afraid of golf clubs, I wouldn’t have been happy having her behind me with a number two iron or, heaven forbid, one of those terribly dangerous woods. But it really went quite smoothly.

She stopped the car in front of her door. We got out on opposite sides and strolled up the walk together. I spoke clearly, “Let me make like a gentleman, doll. Where’s your key?”

I felt the small tug at my waist, left side, as I slipped the key she’d handed me into the lock. We’d worked out all the moves pretty carefully; and I was wearing a left-handed FBI-type holster high on my belt back under my jacket. Usually I prefer the gun more in front, rigged for a cross draw but available to either hand; but at present we didn’t want anybody getting the idea that I might possibly consider using my poor useless right hand, and this made it easier for her, too. As long as she was somewhere to my left, front or back or side, she could get at the weapon; and still I’d been telling Chief Cordoba the gospel truth when I said she wasn’t carrying, as the jargon goes.

In an obvious emergency she would, of course, simply go for it. Otherwise the signal for her to arm herself was any term of endearment. As long as I called her Madeleine, or Mrs. Ellershaw, or just plain Ellershaw, or Mrs. E, or Convict #210934, nothing was supposed to happen, but if I called her sweetheart or honeybunch, or dear or darling, or doll, she was supposed to go to battle stations soonest. I’d been afraid it might have an inhibiting effect on our relationship, having her grab for a loaded revolver whenever I whispered tenderly that she was my own true love; but as we’d demonstrated a few hours earlier, that fear had obviously been groundless.

“Excuse me,” I said politely, entering the room ahead of her.

I elbowed the door clear back with my left arm. I’d already pressed the release, and the little sleeve gun had slipped down into my right hand, concealed by the black silk of the sling. We moved into the room like that, and I was ready to throw myself aside to clear the field for her weapon while bringing my own into the open to lay down a barrage of nasty little jacketed .25-caliber slugs—I didn’t have much faith in the accuracy of the lousy little palm-sized automatic, but even a small bullet just whistling past your ear can be distracting. Madeleine, with her heavier .38-caliber artillery, was supposed to really mow them down while I and my popgun were holding their amused attention.

The cause of all this activity was curled up in one of the big chairs by the room’s front window sound asleep: a small dark-haired girl I’d never seen before in my life. There was a purse on the low round table between the chairs; and what seemed to be a camera case, one of the light canvas jobs that had replaced the heavy leather gadget bags we used to lug around when we wanted to look professional.

I signaled to Madeleine to keep the intruder covered, and moved forward to check her luggage for weapons, and found none. She continued to sleep soundly. I stole silently away to inspect the bathroom, empty, and my own adjoining room, ditto. Returning through the connecting door, I found Madeleine still watching the little girl, who was still slumbering like a baby.

“Cute,” I whispered.

“So’s a coral snake,” Madeleine breathed. “Mr. Helm, let me introduce you to Miss Evangeline Lowery, spoiled-brat daughter of Admiral Jasper Lowery and his gracious wife Adelaide, whom you’ve already met.”

“How do you know she’s a spoiled brat? She can’t have been more than thirteen or fourteen when you last saw her.”

“Well, she was impossible then, why should she improve? With a mother like that?”

I grinned. “I think you’re just prejudiced against Lowerys in general. You were probably pretty impossible at fourteen, yourself. But what the hell’s the kid doing here?”

“We could try asking.”

I felt the .38 being returned to my left hip. As Madeleine moved forward, I returned the sleeve gun to its clip and went over, belatedly, to close the outside door. The sleeping girl started when Madeleine touched her, and sat up abruptly. She stared blankly at Madeleine, and glanced at me, and looked back to Madeleine, frowning as if she’d expected someone quite different from the suntanned and healthy-looking but rather cheaply and carelessly dressed woman before her.

“Mrs. Ellershaw?” she said uncertainly.

When Madeleine nodded, the little girl gave a toss to her head to settle her short dark hair into place, finishing with a couple of quick pats. I saw that she had a rather intriguing snub nose and freckles. She stood up and hauled at her nicely tailored and obviously expensive dark-blue slacks and tucked her crisp blue gingham shirt into them. Her waist was tiny. She located a pair of neat little blue shoes with rudimentary heels, and stepped into them.

“Sorry about that, Mrs. Ellershaw,” she said. “I must have dozed off; I didn’t think I’d have to wait so long. You remember me? Vangie Lowery?”

“Yes, I remember you. What do you want?”

Vangie Lowery hesitated, and seemed to lose her youthful assurance. Her mouth quivered. “Set him free, Mrs. Ellershaw!” she breathed. “Oh, turn him loose, please! Don’t keep him worshiping at your feet forever! Oh, damn, where’s the crummy john in this crummy place?”

She was sobbing loudly as she dashed across the room and disappeared into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. When I turned to look at Madeleine, she had moved to the table to examine the kid’s blue sailcloth purse.

“What was that all about?” I asked.

Madeleine shrugged. “Walter Maxon, I suppose. She had a terrible crush on him. Followed him around like a puppy. He was dreadfully embarrassed. It seems a long time for a childish fixation to last, but I can’t think of anybody else I’m holding in thrall at the moment.” She smiled at me across the room. “Present company excepted; of course. Are you enthralled, Mr. Helm?”

“Mesmerized,” I said. I grimaced. “Lowerys for breakfast, courtesy of Brandon and Walsh. Lowerys for lunch, courtesy of Adelaide. Lowerys for dinner, courtesy of Evangeline, known as Vangie. Do you have a feeling somebody’s trying to send us a message, Mrs. E? A message that reads Lowery, Lowery, Lowery?”

“We still haven’t actually met Admiral Jasper.”

I said, “But I get a distinct impression that we’re supposed to, expected to, don’t you?” I frowned. “Anything interesting in her purse?”

“A press card. Surprise, surprise. She’s a reporter-dash-photographer for, guess what, the Santa Fe
Daily Journal
.”

“So that’s how she got in, waving her credentials at the maid or somebody,” I said. “Seems like Daddy Lowery’s got the whole family on the payroll. The question is, if she didn’t come here just for personal reasons, if she really wants an interview for her paper, do you want to give it to her?”

Madeleine shrugged. “Why not? Isn’t that what we’re after, publicity?”

“Better think about it a bit,” I said. “It could get kind of rough. The way she seems to feel about you, you can be sure she won’t write you up nice. Are you prepared to appear in print as a foul-mouthed broad calling down obscene curses upon those who framed her into prison, she claims, although she was really innocent as the snow is white, she claims. With a deadpan recap of all that overwhelming trial evidence to show what a pitiful liar you are. With pictures of you looking as old and hard and jail-worn as the camera can make you. And for contrast, an old professional portrait from the files, with the smiling young subject looking very smart and lovely and refined. Mrs. Ellershaw before prison versus Mrs. Ellershaw after. Can you take that?”

Madeleine said quietly, “After Fort Ames, I should be able to take just about anything, shouldn’t I?” She shook her head quickly. “Don’t worry so much about me, darling. This is exactly what we want. It’s why I got myself up like this, isn’t it? Turn the little bitch loose on me and let her do her worst.”

The kid emerged from the bathroom at last. Except for some pinkness about the eyes she’d done a good job of reconstruction. She marched right up to Madeleine.

“I suppose you think I’m an awful little fool, Mrs. Ellershaw,” she said, “but I thought maybe, if you really understood what you were doing to Walter…”

“Doing?” Madeleine’s voice had changed, becoming harsh and vulgar. “I’ve never done a fucking thing to your Walter, dearie. Hell, I answered a couple of his letters with short notes of thanks, since I was brought up to be a polite little girl; I was even taught to curtsy, if you can believe it. But that was early in… in my sentence, while I was still remembering what it was like to be a human being. I also let him come to see me once because he wanted it so bad and I thought it might help me to have a little contact with… with the outside world. But it didn’t. You try being locked away like that for years, just sitting in a cage watching your life run away uselessly, and see if you want people coming to gawk at you through the bars like in a fucking zoo.”