The Demolishers (15 page)

Sandra shook her head quickly. “I just caught part of the prelims, I didn’t stay for the main bout. Ugh! I said to hell with both of you and ran back to my room!”

I said deliberately, “Actually, it was rather nice. She’s a nice, sexy lady—”

“Lady!”

I was getting a little tired of the kid’s attitude. I said, “What the hell have you got to be so proud of, small fry? Here you are, educated with dirty mob money, sailing a boat bought with dirty racketeering money, driving a car paid for by dirty drug money, feeling superior to someone who’s had to make her own way with her own talents. ...”

“Talents! That’s a new word for it,
talents
!” Sandra’s voice was choked. She drew a long breath, cleared her throat, and spoke in a different tone: “You cross U.S. 1 up ahead, and drive on until you hit the Florida Turnpike going north. It’ll swing northwest up around Fort Pierce. That’s where we switch to 1-95, which will take us all the way up to New England.”

“Check.”

We drove along in silence for a little. I followed the turnpike signs to the on-ramp; soon we were rolling northwards along the interstate at a cagy sixty-four. I didn’t want to make it hard for anybody, friendly or hostile, who was following me; and I didn’t want to get into a hassle with any cops. They’ll usually give you ten miles over the idiot limit, even in a sports car.

“Matt.”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

I glanced at her. “Let’s both be sorry together. I shouldn’t have said that about your dad’s money.”

She shook her head quickly. “1 had it coming; I was acting like a disillusioned little juvenile ninny. Daddy can take care of himself and it’s none of my business whom you sleep with. It isn’t as if she were my real mother. And you’re perfectly right about Daddy’s money. It’s bothered me for years, but I’ve never had the guts to refuse it, so what makes me so great?” She gave me a tremulous grin. “How’s that for an apology? You want sackcloth and ashes, just ask. It’s the little-sister syndrome, you know.”

I frowned, watching the highway come at me smoothly. The Florida freeways take you through the green countryside inland, where you can see that it must have been a pretty state once, before they loaded it with all that condo crap around the edges.

I asked, “Are you trying to say that you don’t like to see me misbehaving because you want to think of me as your noble and stainless big brother?”

“No, that’s not exactly what I was trying to say.” Her voice was carefully devoid of expression. She went on: “It’s a well-known fact that, if a man loses his wife after a happy marriage, he’s very apt to turn right around and marry her kid sister, if available. It makes sense. He’s looking for something as close as possible to the marvelous girl he lost. Well, Matthew’s kid brother wasn’t handy, and he’s a little young for me, anyway; and there was no marvelous older brother available. But Matthew did have a kind of . . . kind of intriguing daddy; a tall, sinister-looking, romantic-looking, secret-agent type. An older man, sure, but hardly ancient.”

“Thanks for the flattery,” I said dryly. “But, Sandy ...”

“Shut up and let me finish!” she snapped. “I don’t normally go around listening at bedroom doors. I ... I
didn’t sneak down that hall in my sexiest nightgown to
listen,
damn you! Do you understand?” When I didn’t speak, she said harshly, “You really had them standing in line last night, didn’t you? Lia, and I; and maybe our pretty little Maria was waiting on the stairs in
her
best negligee! What is this strange power you have over women, Mr. Helm?” She swallowed hard, and went on: “Anyway, when I got there on my tippy toes, all breathless and scared, asking myself how could I be doing such a crazy, shameless thing . . . when I got to your door, I heard voices inside. Lia’s voice! Lia’s theatrical sobbing! It was like having a bucket of ice water dumped on my head. I didn’t really mean to eavesdrop, but I simply couldn’t move at first. Then I fled, very happy that I hadn’t opened the door and made a complete fool of myself.”

It seemed better not to embarrass her by looking at her, so I concentrated on passing a long semi. The little sports car tracked nicely; but with only our suitcases up front holding down the tires that were doing the steering, it was a bit more wind sensitive than my old front-engine Mazda, although it had a lot better acceleration. Sandra stirred beside me.

“So now you know. Don’t say anything. I mean, just tell me what it was that Daddy sent Lia to find out from you.”

I hesitated, but it wasn’t my place to tell her she was a silly girl with a juvenile crush on an older man; and it seemed likely that last night had cured her of the aberration, anyway.

“It’s very simple,” I said. “There are a lot of sentimentalists in this country. Even now, when terrorism is unpopular enough that people will support military action against it, we’d get some backlash if it were known that a government agent like me had been sent out with orders to arrange for the demise of seventeen or more people, no matter what kind of ruthless murderers they may be. Well, look at your own horrified reaction. It seems to be all right to blow them up wholesale with military boom-booms—men, women, and children, innocent and guilty together; but if you pick your terrorist targets carefully, and shoot them neatly through the head one by one, it’s considered too brutal for words and you could get your wrist slapped. At least that’s the current thinking in Washington.”

She said, “But you are going after all those people, regardless. Aren’t you?”

I didn’t answer directly. “That’s the situation as far as
governmental
action is concerned,” I said. “But there’s a double standard operating here. If an
individual
fights back, ^even if he’s pretty ruthless about it, he generally gets forgiven, like that gent in the New York subway who was the most popular guy in the country for a few days. By God, somebody’d turned the tables on Them at last! So here’s your dad, his son-in-law killed by a terrorist blast, his daughter cruelly injured—and They won’t even leave the poor young widow alone to heal her heart and body in peace! Driven by fear of exposure, They’re still coming after her! Can this loving father be blamed if he tracks down the bomb-throwing creeps and punishes them appropriately, even if his reputation isn’t all it might be? Hell, Sonny Varek may even be hailed as a hero for a change!”

Sandra threw me a sharp glance. “I see. You’re asking Daddy to take the rap for . .
¹

“No rap,” I said. “First of all, as I’ve just explained, nobody’s going to complain too much, these antiterrorist days, about what a private citizen does to save his daughter from a bunch of blast-happy fanatics. And, second, if he should happen to run into a little legal trouble, we’ll back him all the way. Well, I told all this to Lia last night.”

“Must have been quite a little postcoital conversation,” Sandra said dryly. “But why pass the word through Lia? Why didn’t you just tell Daddy yourself, when you were talking with him earlier in the evening?”

“He wouldn’t have believed me then,” I said. “He was too suspicious of me; he thought I was pulling some kind of a scam, or setting some kind of a trap for him, using our vague relationship to help out my government colleagues. But I’m hoping that, now that we’ve got a lady in common, his lady, he’ll accept my motives even though he hates my guts. Now he can believe that I’m a conscienceless, calculating jerk who’s just figuring out a sneaky way of getting other people to do my dirty work for me. And he’ll probably do it, since he’s just as mad about the bombing as I am, now that I’ve assured him the ceiling won’t fall on him if he does. The official ceiling.” I glanced at the rearview mirror. “Incidentally, we’ve got company astern.”

She started to turn her head, and checked herself. “Your men?”

“Well, they’re back there somewhere, too. They’re just covering us loosely with instructions to stay out of sight and not spook the game. Our reserves, so to speak. But that maroon sedan behind us, I think it’s a Chrysler of some kind, isn’t ours. It not likely to be the CLL opposition either. At least I don’t think they’d go in for open surveillance like that; they’d just hit and run.”

“Open surveillance, what’s that?”

“It’s when you don’t hide the fact that you’re tailing the subject or subjects. You let them know they’re being followed. It’s supposed to make them nervous.”

She grimaced. “It’s a big success. I’m nervous.”

I grinned. “Cheer up, they wouldn’t show themselves like this if they were planning immediate action; they’re working up to something gradually. We’ll have a bit of fun with them in a little while; but first we’ll give our protection a chance to spot them and make suitable arrangements.”

“I hope they’re good. The arrangements, I mean.” After a moment, Sandra went on: ‘‘Matt, you’re not really going to Newport just to get information on that old bombing incident, are you? You’re looking for somebody else like Daddy who’s mad enough to do your work for you. Carry out your executions. Aren’t you?” f ‘‘Smart girl,” I said.

‘‘Matt, let me come with you.”

I said, “You’re here by invitation. You’re sitting right beside me, moving northward at a discreet nine mph over the lousy limit.”

“I mean, all the way, when you investigate these people. I want to see . . .” She cleared her throat. “I have to see how others have dealt with this kind of violent bereavement, people who’ve had more time to adjust than I have.”

I said, “I wasn’t planning to leave you behind. But we might as well discuss the ground rules. Is your gun loaded?”

“Yes, but not in the chamber. Philip said that with a ... a hammerless automatic it isn’t safe to keep a round up the spout—his words—since safeties aren’t all that dependable. He said that only if I anticipated trouble should I jack the slide back once and set the safety. And then I should put the cartridge back into the top of the clip when the crisis was over; he showed me how.”

I said, “Sounds as if Philip knew his stuff.”

“About guns, all Daddy’s boys know their stuff.”

I said, “Okay, I’ll tell you when to chamber a round, and when to shoot. Don’t get independent. And if I do tell you to shoot somebody, you shoot him dead. None of this movie marksmanship, hitting the shoulder or the leg or, God save us, shooting guns out of people’s hands! They’re always getting guns shot out of their hands and coming out of it with a full set of functioning fingers. Jesus! Forget that nonsense. Shoot for the chest or, if he seems to be wearing too many thick clothes, blow his head off to teach him not to try to fool people with that lousy body armor.” I glanced at her. “Are you still with me, or should I leave you off in Connecticut to do some housecleaning?”

She smiled faintly. “You can’t scare me off that easily.” I grinned. “Well, let’s play some games with our shadows and see how good this glamour buggy of yours really is. Buckle up your sissy-straps and hang on.”

I latched my own harness. It was a pleasure to drop down a gear and put the hammer down and feel the Porsche dig in with the weight of the engine back there holding the tires in firm contact with the pavement, unlike the newfangled front-drive jobs where the driving wheels lift and spin if you try for too much acceleration. We were passing the hundred mark before the driver behind woke up and tried to close the gap, but this was not sedan country, and either his power or his nerve gave out at a hundred and twenty. We’d passed one off-ramp almost too fast to see it; I eased off a bit, looking for another.

“Chicken!” Sandra shouted over the uproar. “Oh, don’t slow down; take it all the way. Go, man,
go!”

She was laughing with excitement. I grinned at her, hit the brakes hard enough to throw us against the webbing, and cut across in front of a thundering semi, almost losing it as I swerved sharply to catch the exit—all that weight in back tends to come around if you overdo things. That’s known as oversteer and I love it because it’s predictable with a rear-engine car; you know it’s going to happen. What I can’t stand is a car full of strange surprises, that sometimes breaks loose at one end and sometimes at the other.

Off the interstate, I made some fast turns on the small
roads below. Then I pulled into a roadside joint and bought coffee for both of us, black for me, cream and sugar for her.

“If the cholesterol doesn’t kill you, the carbohydrates will rot your teeth,” I said.

“Judging by this morning, I’m not going to live long enough to have to worry about it,” she said happily.

Savannah,
Georgia, is a little over four hundred miles north of Palm Beach, Florida. That’s not a great day’s run, but it’s where you get if you drive conservatively after a late start. It’s a nice old city pretty well buried, as most nice old cities are these days, inside a not-so-nice new city. However, when you penetrate to the pleasant sections near the river, you can imagine what Savannah looked like before the internecine conflict I grew up calling the Civil War.

They have a lot of picturesque, old, tree-lined streets. I didn’t spot any Spanish moss, but Savannah would be a good place for it. The shady thoroughfares run oneway around a series of pretty little parks that’ll throw you if you’re trying to get somewhere. I wasn’t, really. That is, we had a reservation in a motel near the waterfront, but I wasn’t in a hurry to reach it. First I wanted to determine how many lice we’d picked up along the way.