The Infiltrators (35 page)

“And whether or not it would have helped me, it’s burned now,” she said grimly. “So I can’t even use it to help me now.”

“The experts can do very fancy things with ashes nowadays, but I wouldn’t be too optimistic,” I said. “That must have been the reason you had to be killed when you got out of Ames. The people with whom we’re dealing, call them the
CADRE
people, must have learned somehow that your husband had left you more than what was found in your safe-deposit box, maybe even a whole second copy of the Monkey House computer stuff. It’s quite possible that the stuff Bennett stole from your bank made reference to additional material awaiting you elsewhere, but obviously it didn’t say where. So they presumably searched all the likely places where Roy Ellershaw might have cached something for you—it would be interesting to see if there were some unexplained burglaries or break-ins eight or nine years ago—but it never occurred to them he might have approached the lawyer representing his parents-in-law. Until you got back here and made a beeline for your Uncle Joe; and somebody started wondering, just like you, why Mr. Birnbaum had been so insistent upon your coming in person to clean up some estate matters that could undoubtedly have been handled by remote control. So they sent out the wrecking squad and hit the jackpot.”

“So in a way I’m responsible for bringing this… this disaster upon two nice people.” Her voice was bleak. “I’m gaining on it, aren’t I? Yesterday I helped send a man crashing to his death in a canyon, and today I’m accessory to two murders. And now we had better call the police.”

I said, as she reached for the phone, “Don’t trouble yourself. I think they’re here.” I’d heard heavy footsteps outside. “At least we’ve got company coming, and it sounds official. Let me have that .38 back, quick.”

I tucked it away, and returned the .25 to its arm clip. Somebody was trying the knob even as I moved towards the locked front door.

“Open up! Police!”

“Hold your horses, I’m coming,” I shouted. “Take it easy coming in, Officer. Federal government here.”

Whatever that might mean. One of these days—or years—I’m going to have to learn how a real FBI-type G-man does it. I got out my fancy identification folder. It made me a little clumsy getting the door unlocked one-handed, but you never know with cops. They do get nervous, and I wanted the situation perfectly clear from the start. I didn’t want to have to shoot one just to stay alive…

The door slammed back the instant the bolt was clear. Well, I’d anticipated that and stepped back, but the husky uniformed gent who charged in wasn’t holding a gun, as I’d expected. It would have slowed him down a bit, and we’d have had to go through the up-with-the-hands routine, and the assume-the-position-against-the-wall routine; but he just grabbed the wrist of the left hand in which I was displaying my ID and wrenched it around behind me, ignoring the leather folder that dropped to the floor, swinging me around roughly at the same time. Holding me there facing away from him, my arm twisted up between my shoulder blades, he gave me a nasty one-handed pat-down and found the .38 on my hip and yanked it free.

“I’ve got this one.” His voice was harsh with strain. “Put the cuffs on the woman.”

“Already have.” This one was just a voice, with a slight local accent.

“Close the door.”

“Already have.”

The one behind me released his hammerlock. “You! Straight ahead. Hands against the wall. High!”

I said plaintively, “Officer, I’m not wearing this sling for show, I can’t raise my—”

“Forward march! You’ll be surprised what you can do when you really try!”

“Matt, watch out!”

It was a warning cry from Madeleine. I threw myself down but not quite fast enough; the baton or billy club or whatever they call it nowadays glanced off the back of my skull hard enough to make my extremities tingle as if they’d been frozen and were just coming back to life. I almost lost the little automatic as it slipped into my hand; then I was rolling away and coming back up…

The big cop was on top of me, ready to take another vicious swing at my head; but his face changed as he saw the .25. I fired three times and saw dust fly off the front of the blue uniform. Not a very good group, I must admit: one slid off far enough to nick the shiny badge worn over to the side, but maybe that was the one that did the work. You never know with those feeble little bullets. Anyway, he came down hard, the nightstick flying out of his hand—apparently he hadn’t taken time to use the thong properly. The whole room was a bit hazy, and I was having trouble maintaining single images of things—they wanted to split in two; but I saw the other policeman across the room hunched over, clawing at something wrapped around his face.

He was holding a gun, but he dropped it so he could use both hands to free himself. I realized that the moment his attention was distracted and he’d turned to assist his partner, Madeleine must have dropped her handcuffed arms over his head. Even as I crouched there, waiting for my vision to clear so I could shoot safely without hitting her, I saw them go down together. She threw herself aside in a twisting way as she fell, applying all the weight and leverage she could. Even across the room, I heard the ugly tearing and cracking sounds as the spinal bones and ligaments fractured and ripped. I realized that she’d quite literally wrung the man’s neck, but it must have been very hard on her handcuffed wrists. But the trainers at the Ranch would have been proud of her.

The waves of dizziness were getting worse instead of better. I heard the sound behind me, but my reactions were slow, and I didn’t get around quite in time. I just got a glimpse of a strained and hating white face, and of another bulky blue uniform, and of another raised nightstick—or maybe he’d picked up the same one from where it had fallen instead of using his own. As if it mattered. The club came down.

They’d cleared the broken junk off a slashed-up sofa in one of the small back offices and spread a small rug on it and put me on it. A doctor of sorts had come and said that my brains weren’t leaking out of my skull anywhere that he could see, but I’d better be kept quiet and taken to the hospital for observation as soon as possible. Then he’d gone on to his real clients, the ones who weren’t breathing.

I hadn’t bothered to tell him about the throbbing ache in my side where one of the later cops to invade the premises had kicked me. There’s really nothing much that can be done about broken ribs—if they were broken—but the medical profession always feels obliged to try, and the cure is usually worse than the disease. I thought I could manage to live without all that tape and benzocaine. At least that was what they’d used the last time I’d let them. They’ve probably figured out something even more smelly and uncomfortable by now.

After the first rush of eager law-enforcement officers, the lid had gone on; and now only a limited number of let’s-solve-a-murder boys and girls were wandering around the gory premises. I could see them as they passed the open door of the room in which I lay. A young cop was watching over me and pleading with me silently to wiggle a toe so he could get to kick me, too: goddamn cop-killer! Fortunately they were all slightly inhibited by the fact that somebody’d picked up the ID I’d dropped. Otherwise I’d undoubtedly have been resisting arrest until there was nothing left but a bloody pulp.

For my part, I was fighting my aches and pains in my usual forbearing and Christian manner by making sure I remembered a certain face, the one I’d stomp on if I ever met it in a dark alley with nobody looking. It belonged to the uniformed gent with the fast shoe with the hard, hard toe. I planned to learn his name before I left here. I mean, I’m a pro, and I don’t go around seeking personal vengeance when there’s work to be done; but if somebody drops it into my lap afterwards, when I have time to spare, who am I to question the generosity of the gods—if you want to call them that—who watch over unpleasant men like me?

Besides, we like to have the word get around. If enough guys, in or out of uniform, have it firmly impressed upon them that we’re not forgiving Christian gentlemen, or ladies, and that it’s not very wise to get in our way when we’re working—if you don’t regret it now, you will later—our work will be easier. We have problems enough with the real enemy, whoever he may be at any given time, without being gratuitously given the boot treatment by any sand-country copper with an itchy toe. At least it gave me something to think about besides my pounding head and throbbing side.

Then the waiting was over and Chief Manuel Cordoba came marching in, in full regalia, a sturdy and confidence-inspiring officer of the law if you were sucker enough to have confidence in a policeman. At the moment I had none. It wasn’t quite fair, of course. In a sense I was blaming them all for my own abysmal stupidity. I was the jackass who’d loused up a job and lost a lady through my incredible idiocy in putting her, not to mention myself, at the mercy of some armed goons instead of blasting their heads off the instant they came crashing through the door like that. Just because they were wearing pretty blue suits, for Christ’s sake! How naive can you get?

Cordoba came up to the sofa and stood looking down at me for a moment. Then he waved my young uniformed chaperon out of the room and closed the door behind him and returned.

“Well, what have you got to say for yourself, Helm?”

“Where’s Mrs. Ellershaw?” I whispered.

His voice was harsh. “We’ll get to Mrs. Ellershaw. At the moment, you’re the major problem, you and your fast gun and your fancy Washington connections…”

He was bluffing hard. He knew he was on a bad spot—how bad remained to be determined. I shook my head. That was a mistake, but I could live with it. It wasn’t as bad as some I’d made.

“I’m not important,” I said. “You’re not important. Your men aren’t important. We’re all alive and doing well, with a few deserving exceptions. What about Madeleine Rustin Ellershaw? Several attempts on her life already on record. Last seen in handcuffs in the same room with a gent in police uniform who was beating on me with a club, description follows. Five nine or ten. Brown hair. Blue eyes. Age around four oh. Weight around one nine oh. He’s put on a little weight since I last saw him; and he was a patrolman when I last saw him, but that could have changed, too. Name: Philip Crisler. I don’t see him here. Where is he? And where is Mrs. Ellershaw?”

“How do you happen to know Officer Crisler?”

I looked at him grimly. He was wearing a very handsome sidearm with ivory grips, presumably acquired before the recent save-the-elephant campaigns. For practicality, it wasn’t quite as bad as mother-of-pearl; but it was still slipperier than good old checkered walnut.

I said, “Easy, amigo. Are you thinking clearly? Maybe you should have a lawyer standing by. You’re voluntarily admitting that you’re acquainted with this murderous criminal who definitely attacked a federal officer and probably kidnapped a woman who was assisting the U.S. authorities. You’re even admitting, by implication, that he was wearing a police uniform legitimately. Are you sure you want to go on record with all that?”

He snorted. “Listen, Helm, you’ve killed one of my men, and your ex-convict female accomplice seems to have killed another, although God knows how a woman could have done
that…
”

I said sharply, “Chief, you keep making it worse for yourself! Now you’re confessing that those two homicidal characters were your men, too, not just goons masquerading in police uniforms! Hadn’t you better reconsider a little? Do you really want to take all the credit for this bloody mess?” I stared at him hard. “Do you want a little advice? If you don’t care to take it from me, call it advice from Washington.”

He started to speak angrily and checked himself. “What advice?” he asked.

“You’ve got three choices,” I said. My head was aching badly, but I tried not to let it show. I went on: “First suggestion. If by any hopeful chance you’re holding Mrs. Ellershaw in jail for some reason, or in secret custody somewhere, produce her. Then perhaps we can settle everything else in simple, friendly fashion.”

He licked his lips. “We haven’t got the woman. We don’t know where she is.” He glared at me. “And we want her for resisting arrest and committing homicide upon an officer of the law.”

I sighed. “You’re trying to fight it, Chief, but it can’t be fought. Any policeman or detective with a few brains can read what happened in this place. Sure you could have the evidence altered to frame me if I were a helpless, independent private eye like in the books, but we both know I’m not. Neither helpless nor independent. And, hell, maybe you’re even an honest officer; it has happened. So you’re stuck with it; and in case you haven’t had time to familiarize yourself with it, I’ll run it past you quickly the way it will go into the record, the way it actually happened—”

“The way
you
say it happened!” That was automatic. He drew a long breath, and said, “All right. Go on.”

“This is the way it reads, amigo. After politely admitting the police to the premises like a good citizen, I was savagely clubbed from behind by Cop Number One, presumably because he didn’t want to use a noisy gun on me. Let’s not discuss my stupidity in letting him catch me off guard. I thought we had a deal, you and I, and you were keeping your department from taking sides in this hassle, which was my mistake… Did you say something, Chief?”

He glared at me and didn’t speak. I pushed myself up a bit, heroically concealing the agony of my poor fractured ribs, if that’s what they were.

“All right,” I said, “so I treated these fine law-enforcement officers the way I normally treat policemen, with wary respect, and got half clobbered for my pains. When I decided at last to take defensive action to keep my brains from being completely scrambled, and took care of Cop Number One, Cop Number Two hauled out his piece to avenge his partner. Mrs. Ellershaw jumped him to save me, and took care of him; but then Cop Number Three, Crisler, entered the fray and that’s all she wrote as far as I’m concerned. God knows where he came from. I suppose he slipped in from the parking lot, using the outside door to Birnbaum’s private office. I suppose I should have been ready for that, but somehow I have this picture of bluebellies always hunting in pairs, like hungry coyotes. You will excuse me for being slightly prejudiced at the moment, I’m sure. But I’ll admit it wasn’t the brightest day of my life.”