The Infiltrators (39 page)

McCullough took the case. “This is Bob Wills,” he said. “He’ll work with you tonight; just let him know what you want.”

“And you?”

He gave me his flat gray stare. “I have a lead I’d like to follow. If you don’t mind,”

He wasn’t supposed to have leads. I was supposed to have leads. And if he did have leads, he was supposed to bring them to me so I could follow them.

“A lead to Mrs. Ellershaw?”

“Not exactly.”

I reminded myself that too damn many operations have foundered because the captain of the ship got stuffy about his own importance.

“Go to it,” I said. “Anybody who’s got a lead is a long way ahead of me.”

“What’s the situation? Have they made contact?”

I nodded, and spoke to both of them: “It’s the old coffin routine:
While you stall, mister, your pretty lady’s lying in her own filth buried in a black place where you’ll never find her, slowly dying of thirst and starvation.
So we’d better find her.”

“What do they want for her?” McCullough asked.

I frowned at him. “What the hell does that matter? You know the standing orders. We never go that route no matter who dies. If we did, we’d be patsies for anybody who wanted to wave a gun at anybody.”

His eyes were steady on my face. “Yes. I just wondered if you remembered.”

I said grimly, “Thanks, I don’t need that crap from you. Go chase your clues, whatever they are. Mr. Wills and I have work to do.” I stared at McCullough hard, until he turned and walked away; then I addressed the other man: “Did you bring the rifle?”

“The seven millimeter Maggie you got shot with? Yes, Jackson hung onto it, with official permission, after grabbing Maxie Reis. We got it from the trunk of his car right after you called; I guess he hasn’t had time to miss it. We checked the sighting—four hundred yards on the nose—and made you a rough trajectory table out to six hundred. Pretty tight-shooting gun; Reis knew his business. Two boxes, forty rounds, of fresh ammo, 150-grain soft-point expanding. It doesn’t kick too badly, but it’s quite a hunk of artillery just the same. With a muzzle velocity over thirty-one hundred that Magnum load will damn near tear your arm off.” Then he stopped abruptly, shocked by what he’d just said.

I grinned and rubbed my right shoulder reminiscently. “Don’t remind me. It damn near did. Well, keep it handy and don’t bounce it around too hard. I may want to shoot at somebody later, and it would be nice if I hit him. Now here’s what we do…”

An hour later I was navigating the Mazda one-handed up the sweeping drive that led to the rambling Lowery hacienda, in an expensive development several miles outside town set in rolling hills dotted with twisty green desert junipers where the real estate was sold by acres—lots three acres minimum. It was called El Gobernador Estates, if it matters.

I’d called ahead and Admiral Jasper Lowery was expecting me. He opened the front door himself, a wiry little man with a weathered face and the very pale blue eyes you quite often see on sailors, not quite so often on other kinds of outdoorsmen, although I remembered that the old cowboy who’d taught me how to ride had had the same sun-faded eyes. Crisp short gray hair whitening at the temples. Faded Navy khakis kind of frayed by numerous old punctures at the collar tabs where the captain’s eagles had once been pinned. He’d never worn the rear-admiral’s stars on active duty, I remembered; that had been a retirement promotion.

“In here, Mr. Helm,” he said.

He led me through a living room that made no pretense of being southwestern. The furniture, as far as I could identify it, was all New England and quite old. All it needed was a quaint old spinning wheel—but that wasn’t fair. It was actually a rather formal and handsome room appropriate to the social aspirations of the mistress of the house.

The admiral’s own tastes were reflected in the study into which he ushered me. This was nautical as hell, with half models of several modern warships displayed on one wall, presumably ships on which Lowery had served. There were also full models of a number of modern sloop-rigged racing yachts—maybe he’d served on those, too—and of a very handsome old topsail schooner. Lowery smiled as he saw me looking at the rakish two-master, in the place of honor on the mantelpiece.

“The old
Evangeline Lowery.
She didn’t smell as pretty as she looked. She was a slaver, Mr. Helm, fastest ship ever to run the Middle Passage with a cargo of black ivory; and don’t tell my wife I told you. She prefers to have people think the family fortune was founded in more respectable ways. Drink, sir?”

I shrugged. “If no obligations go with it. This isn’t a social call, Admiral.”

He looked at me for a moment. “Fair enough, Mr. Helm. The offer still holds.”

“Scotch if available.”

He nodded, and poured two Scotches from an expensive-looking bottle, and gave me one. “Now, what can I do for the United States government?”

I said, “It’s not quite as simple as that, sir. There are some personal elements involved. I’d like to show you a few photographs. Perhaps at the desk…”

“As you wish.” He seated himself in the big swivel armchair behind the rather cluttered desk, and swept a clear space in front of him. “Carry on, mister.”

I selected a glossy 8X10 print from the envelope I carried, and glanced at it to make sure I had the right one even though looking at it still hurt after the time that had passed. I turned it around to face him and laid it before him. He glanced at it casually, and grew quite still.

“Her name was Eleanor Brand,” I said. “We met on an assignment. Later, we kind of lived together for a while. Until a man who wanted me to do something for him thought she’d make a good lever to use against me.”

Lowery drew a long breath and studied the photograph carefully. It showed a young woman lying dead in a city street with one shoe missing and considerable amounts of blood on her dress.

“So you refused and the man killed her,” the admiral said softly, without looking up.

“Well, the actual killing was done by his son and a friend, but the basic instructions were his, yes. A daughter was involved, too. Here’s exhibit number two, dated a few weeks later.” I laid the second photograph before him. Taken in a disordered bedroom, it showed a chunky dark man in gory white pajamas lying on his back on the floor with half his face torn away by the submachine-gun fire that had also riddled his body. “There’s the man who gave the instructions,” I said.

Lowery nodded slowly. “In Chicago, wasn’t it? I’ve seen that print before, or one very much like it. They called it the Lake Park Massacre, I believe. It got enough national coverage that we even ran a brief story in the
Journal.
The man’s name was Jimenez, if I remember rightly. He’d been president of one of those little Central American countries and wanted his old job back.”

“Correct,” I said. “He thought he could use my marksmanship skills to help him; we’d worked together once in the past. Here’s a picture of one of the younger murderers he sent to do the job. I was sorry about the dog, it had never done anything to me, but nobody wants to go up against a trained killer Doberman so the boys took him out, too.” I let Lowery look for a little at the dead man and the dead dog sprawled side by side on a dark lawn; then I put down a final 8X10 from the envelope. “And here is the son, who helped with the killing; and the daughter, who conducted the negotiations, and, when they were unsuccessful, passed the death sentence by phone. When the shooting started, they tried to flee the house in their nightclothes. God knows where they thought they were going. As you can see, wherever it was, they never got there.”

Like the previous photograph, it was a stark black-and-white outdoors flash shot, rather shocking, showing a pretty, dark-haired young girl in a dreadfully stained nightgown slumped lifeless against a fence with the bloody head of a handsome dead young man in her lap.

The admiral looked at me across the desk. His voice was expressionless: “I remember the story quite clearly. The attack on the well-guarded Jimenez estate outside Chicago was apparently staged by a disciplined commando group recruited by a soldier of fortune named Bultman, but he was never apprehended.”

I said, “I know lots of soldiers of fortune, sir. I can even get in touch with Bultman if I ever need him again. He’s a very good man, if somebody feeds him the right instructions and information. Somebody with a good motive for turning him loose to kill.”

That wasn’t quite fair to Bultman, who was quite capable of operating on his own and had done so frequently; but in the case in question, while the money had come from elsewhere, I had actually supplied him with the data he’d needed to do his job. Lowery was studying me across the desk.

“What are you trying to say, Helm?”

I shook my head. “Please, Admiral. Let’s not play dumb-dumb games. You know that Mrs. Ellershaw is missing. You know, I’m sure, that she came to Santa Fe under my protection. I’ll throw in something you may not know: I’m rather fond of the lady, in fact I’ve asked her to marry me.” Using the marriage proposal in this way made me feel a little cheap; but it was no worse than the way I was using the ugly death picture of Eleanor Brand; and my feelings were beside the point, anyway. I went on: “As I’ve just demonstrated, I hope, I don’t like losing pretty ladies I’m fond of. I try to make certain, as far as my official duties permit, that things happen to the people responsible. In this case my official duties and my private desires run parallel. My agency wants Madeleine Ellershaw back. I want her back. You would be well advised to help me retrieve her, sir.”

We spent a moment glaring at each other across the desk. Somewhere in the house somebody was running a vacuum cleaner, presumably a maid. I doubted that the admiral’s lady condescended to do her own housework, after all the beds she’d once made in her mother’s Annapolis boardinghouse.

When Lowery started to speak, I forestalled him: “Let’s get the bullshit out of the way. Am I trying to threaten you? Yes, I’m trying to threaten you. Do I know that you’re an important man who can get me fired with one phone call to Washington? Yes, I know that you’re an important man who can get me fired with one phone call to Washington. Maybe. But even if you can, what the hell good will it do you, Admiral? Fired or unfired I’m still the same man, my lady is still missing, I’m still mad, and I’ve still got a gun and a lot of nasty friends. And I’m going to get Madeleine Ellershaw back if I have to reduce the population of New Mexico by fifty percent. Do I have to tell you who goes first, considering the story you ran in your paper this morning?” I stared at him a moment longer. “Do you know where your daughter is at this moment, Admiral Lowery?”

That brought him to his feet. “You bastard! If you’ve laid a hand on Evangeline—”

I said, “Mrs. Ellershaw has just spent eight years in hell. Plus one in purgatory beforehand. She’s earned the right to be left alone. What’s your brat earned, Lowery, except a good spanking for that cheap story she was jealous enough to write and you were callous enough to print?” He started to reach for the desk phone, and I dropped a slip of paper on top of the gory photographs on the desk. “Try that number. Ask for Room 117.”

He looked at me for a moment, and sank back into his chair, and punched out the number on the phone. “Room 117, please… Evangeline? Are you all right?” I saw him relax noticeably. He listened for a moment and said, “I see. That’s fine, my dear, I’ll see you at the paper shortly.” He replaced the phone and looked at me searchingly. “She says she’s all right.”

“She is all right. Free as a breeze, too. Probably just getting into her car to drive back to work.”

“What are you trying to prove, Helm?”

I said, “You disappoint me, sir. All these rhetorical questions! What am I trying to do, say, prove? You know the answers. Your daughter didn’t have to be sitting in my warm and comfortable motel room drinking my coffee and munching my potato chips, at liberty to depart at will. Isn’t it obvious to you by this time that I’m trying to do this politely? Do you have any doubt that I could have grabbed her just as easily and started sending you fingers and toes and ears and noses in the mail—well, just one nose, I guess, and a small one at that. Instead, because I was told that you were a sensible man with a reasonable sense of humor, I’m giving you a chance to come through before I start hurting people.”

He licked his lips. “This is incredible! You’re incredible, Mr. Helm. You’re supposed to be an agent of the United States government.”

I laughed at him. “Who the hell do you think is holding Mrs. Ellershaw? Tell the Office of Federal Security about the duties and responsibilities of federal agencies. What we’ve got here, Admiral, is your federal agency against my federal agency. You’ve got a hostage, Madeleine Ellershaw. But I’ve got your family anytime I want them. Hell, you offered them to me, why the hell shouldn’t I take them?”

He looked shocked. “Offered?”

“Maybe you didn’t know you were doing it. Maybe you thought it was some kind of a game you were playing, driving the dangerous unwanted dame out of town by having her insulted by your wife in a public restaurant and smeared all over the morning paper in your daughter’s story. Or making it look as if she’d been driven out of town, so when she disappeared everybody’d assume that the poor broken ex-convict dame had simply found her reception in her old hometown too unpleasant and had sneaked away in her shame, forgetting her loud and unconvincing protestations of innocence.” I shook my head. “You can’t have it both ways. If you’re willing to use your family against us, why the hell shouldn’t we use them against you?”

“But I never expected…” He stopped.

I said, “Admiral, if you push hard enough, if you hurt people badly enough, sooner or later you’ll always find yourself facing an angry man, or woman, with a gun. In this case, me. Can you get Mrs. Ellershaw back for me? I’m not asking if you will, that’s another question, just if you can.”

He looked at me across the desk. After a moment, reluctantly, he shook his head. “No.”

I said, “I was given to understand that you might be the big cheese in these parts, as far as a certain sinister organization is concerned.”