Hamilton, Donald - Matt Helm 14 (17 page)

           
Neither of us spoke for a minute or
two. As I caught my breath, I was glad I'd decided to use the direct approach
instead of playing devious games with beautiful female decoys. Fast as it had
happened, the girl would have loused it up for certain; besides, this way I got
to talk to him more or less as one public servant to another.

           
I noted that he had his big hat on
once more, but that his revolver and cartridge belt were missing. As far as I
could make out in the dark, even the car had been disarmed. There were brackets
that might have held a rifle and a riot gun, but they were empty.

           
"What's your name, Mr. Federal
Government?"

           
His voice carried less of a cornpone
accent than I'd expected of an
Oklahoma
lawman. it reminded me that it's always a
mistake to classify people into types before you know something about them.

           
I said, "Well, it isn't
Janssen, if that's what you're thinking."

           
That could be a mistake, giving him
information he didn't have, but I was gambling that he'd done his homework and
already determined the names of his most probable suspects.

           
Apparently he had. Carl's name
seemed to cause him no surprise. He just laughed shortly.

           
"It did cross my mind just now
that the murdering bastard could have told me to meet him in
Budville
just to see if I was playing it straight, while
all the time he was planning to pick me up right across the road where I
wouldn't be expecting him."

           
"
Budville
,"
I said, keeping the elation out of my voice. My gamble had paid off handsomely.
The information I'd ventured had brought back information 1 needed, for which I
would have paid much more. "
Budville
? Where's
that?"

           
He looked as if he regretted letting
the name slip. Then he shrugged. "Hell, it's on any road map," he
said. "Thirty miles east. Just a store and a gas pump by the side of the
road. And I didn't say where in
Budville
, C-man."

           
"By your description, there's
not much choice."

           
"There's a way it's to be done.
No other way will work, the voice said on the phone."

           
"Sure."

           
"And if your name isn't
Janssen, you're no use to me. If you know so much, you know he's got my boy,
Ricky. There isn't a damn thing you can do to help and I don't want you even
trying."

           
"Ricky?" I said.
"Eric?"

           
"That's right. Why?"

           
"Never mind," I said. I
was neither superstitious nor sentimental, and the fact that the missing boy's
name was the same as my code name had nothing to do with anything, I told
myself. "Talking about names, how did you learn Janssen's?" I asked.

           
"There were three obvious
candidates. Two could be checked on by their local authorities. They'd been
right where they were supposed to be, all the time a couple of good men were
dying with wires around their necks. The third was a mysterious
Washington
character with a government job that seemed
to involve a lot of traveling. Nobody could find out just what it was. They hit
an official security wail when they tried. This man was missing. Anders
Janssen."

           
Rullington
glanced my way. "One of yours?"

           
I nodded. "One of ours. And we
want him back."

           
"To hell with you, Mister. He's
a murderer, a kidnaper, and probably a maniac. The law has first crack at him
now."

           
I said, "You're heading out to
make a deal with this murderer and maniac, aren't you?"

           
"He didn't leave me much
choice. If I didn't come, he said, fingers and toes and ears and . . .and
things would start arriving in the mail. But once I get Ricky back. . . ."
He gripped his steering wheel hard. "If I ever get my hands on that
sadistic
sonofabitch
. . ."

           
I laughed. He turned to look at me,
startled and angry. I said, in a superior and condescending way, "Cut out
the melodrama, Sheriff. Settle down. As far as Janssen is concerned, we're not
really too much concerned about his ultimate fate-agents are expendable-but we
don't want you to make a public spectacle of him. We can't afford that."

           
He drew a long, ragged breath.
"If the bastard is yours, you ought to keep him in a cage."

           
"Shit," I said.
"Don't tell us what we ought or oughtn't, or we'll just tell you that you
oughtn't to go around shooting people's kids, Sheriff. Sometimes it makes them
real mad."

           
He glanced at me once more and
started to speak hotly but checked himself. That told me something. He wasn't
really happy about that campus affair, professionally speaking, which meant
that, as an undercover big shot from
Washington
, 1 could lean on him a bit and get away
with it.

           
After a pause, he said without
expression, "The Janssen girl was an accident."

           
"Sure," I said. "An
accident. You and your boys fired a couple of dozen rounds at a mob less than
fifty yards away, if the newspaper reports are correct. Out of that whole
barrage, you got one solid bulls-eye on a legitimate target-the
Dubuque
kid with a brick in his hand-you got a few
scratch hits, and you sent so many wild bullets flying around that you killed
two innocent bystanders seventy-five and a hundred yards behind the line of
scrimmage. Now, really, Sheriff, what the hell kind of marksmanship do you call
that? That's not an accident, that's just plain incompetence!" I grimaced.
"Janssen's a pro. He knows that things happen and people get killed. What
he can't face, what's sent him off his rocker a little, is having his daughter
shot that way, quite unnecessarily, by a bunch of panicky uniformed jerks who
were then patted on the back by a local jury instead of having their guns and
badges taken away from them and shoved up their stupid incompetent asses."

           
He was close to exploding, but he
still managed to control himself. He said sharply, "I suppose it would
have been better if we'd got two dozen dead college kids to go with those two
dozen bullets!"

           
I sighed. "If that's supposed
to be sarcasm, Sheriff, you're not reading me at all. I'm trying to give you
the professional viewpoint, Janssen's viewpoint, the viewpoint of a man who
knows guns. Sure it would have been better."

           
"You and your friend have a
damn funny way of looking at things!"

           
I said patiently, "If you'd had
a dead body to show for every bullet fired, it would have proved, at least,
that you and your people knew what you were doing, whether or not it was the
right thing ~o do. it would have demonstrated that you didn't shoot until you
knew where your shots were going; that you weren't all just banging way blindly
without knowing or caring whom you might kill. And if you'd been picking your
targets the way you should, Emily Janssen wouldn't have died, or the
Hollingshead
boy, either." I shook my head.
"Well, if your boy dies tonight, you'll have one consolation,
Rullington
. You'll have the satisfaction of knowing he was
killed because somebody had a reason for wanting him dead, not just because
some trigger-happy cop or deputy couldn't be bothered to aim his pistol
properly."

           
There was a little silence. The car
kept rolling along the dark road at a reasonable speed.

           
"You push hard, Mister,"
the sheriff murmured at last.

           
"You started it," I said.
"You wanted us to keep our wild animals in cages. My point is, you haven't
done so well with yours. Now, shall we stop making faces at each other and see
what we can do to get this particular man-eater back into the zoo? How much did
he ask for?"

           
There was another silence; then the
answer came reluctantly. "Fifty grand." I didn't say anything.
Rullington
felt obliged to explain the size of the figure:
"I sold off a big piece of my land last year. Janssen must have learned
about it."

           
I said, "He doesn't give a damn
about your money. One grand or a hundred, it means the same to him: nothing.
You know that."

           
The chunky man's shoulders moved
almost imperceptibly under the khaki shirt. When he spoke, there was
resignation in his voice. "What the hell can I do but play along with the
gag?"

           
"Janssen will kill you," I
said. "That's all he wants from you, your life."

           
"It's been tried before."

           
"If you've got a derringer up
your sleeve or a knife under your shirt collar, forget it. Try to remember that
you're dealing with a pro, not some kid who went joyriding in a stolen
car." He said nothing, and gave nothing away. He was something of a pro
himself. I said, "Suppose I could save you your money, your life, and your
son's life; and give you an answer to your cop-killings...”

           
He threw me a sharp glance. "I
thought you wanted Janssen for yourself."

           
"I didn't say I'd give you the
right answer, Sheriff."

           
There was another pause. I hoped I'd
given it the right buildup: the arrogant, ruthless, unscrupulous government
emissary prepared to stop at nothing to protect the reputation of his agency.
Come to think of it, that wasn't so far off base.

           
Sheriff
Rullington
said, in a faintly wondering voice, "So you're going to frame some poor
bastard-"

           
"This poor bastard I found on
the ridge overlooking your house, with a loaded .300 Savage beside him. He's
got motive and opportunity, what more do you want? His name's
Hollingshead
."

           
I didn't owe the old man anything.
The fact that I'd kind of liked him meant nothing at all. I hadn't promised the
colorful old character anything, not a thing.

           
"You're a liar," said
Rullington
.

           
I drew a long breath. I wanted to
hit him. Well, I wanted to hit somebody, and the trouble was, the only really
logical target was me.

           
"Oink, oink," I said.

           
Strangely, after all the heavy stuff
I'd fired at him without effect, this childishness got to him. The car bucked
as he hit the brakes hard.

           
"Now, listen, you federal
sonofabitch
-"

           
I grinned. "You cops!" I
said. "You can call anybody anything you want, but if somebody badmouths
you it's a criminal offense. What the hell do you expect when you call a man a
liar, kisses and flowers?"

           
After a moment, the car picked up
speed once more. "Nevertheless, you're lying, Mister,"
Rullington
said at last in more reasonable tones. "Or
mistaken. I told you, I checked on all of them. Arnold
Hollingshead
works at a filling station in
Sedgeville
,
Kentucky
. He hasn't missed a day in the last three weeks. He's still there. My
office would have been notified if he'd disappeared."

           
"
Arnold
. That must be the papa of the boy who got
shot," I said. "Good enough as far as it goes, but you didn't go far
enough, Sheriff. You didn't check on Grandpa, an old feuding type from the
hills. Harvey
Bascomb
Hollingshead
,
72, of
Bascomb
,
Kentucky
."

           
That shocked him more than anything
I'd said. I saw his jaw tighten as if at a blow. "Jesus!" he
breathed. "Christ, has the whole world gone crazy? Does every one of the
goddamn brats have homicidal relatives? I suppose that brick-throwing
Dubuque
punk's got an uncle or a cousin sneaking
around with a blowgun or
tommyhawk
or other crazy
weapon!" He shook his head angrily. "If they'd just bring their kids
up right, to respect law and order-"