The Demolishers (22 page)

“I don’t mean that it isn’t important,” she said, seating herself and reaching for the insulated coffee jug on the tray. “If it develops the way I hope, it could be very important. But it may be a few days before I can confirm. . . . Cream or sugar?”

“Black, thanks.”

“What about Mrs. Helm?” She glanced towards the bathroonj.

I called, “Sandy, do you want some coffee?”

After a moment, Sandra appeared in her dressing gown but this time, I noted, there were no pajamas underneath. She made it easy to note. So much for embarrassing suggestions of intimacy. She gave me a sweet smile.

“Did you call me, dear?” she asked.

“Miss Delgado, Mrs. Helm, and vice versa,” I said. “Dana, Sandra, and vice versa. Do you want some coffee, Sandy?”

Sandra nodded. “Yes, darling, I’ll drink it in there and finish dressing while you two transact your secret business. . . . Black, please. Thank you so much, Miss Delgado.”

We watched her go holding the cup, the unrestrained robe fluttering around her.

“An attractive child, even with her hair like that,” Dana Delgado said.

“Cut it out, Computer Lady,” I said. “Patronizing her will get you nowhere; and I’m a little tired of this female infighting. Last night I had to listen to a presumably intelligent woman reporter making snide remarks about a dead beauty who’d offended her in some way. This morning I have a normally sensible young lady playing femme fatale in a peekaboo dressing gown just because you’ve turned up. Now you’re making with the catty comments. Ugh!”

Dana Delgado laughed. “Poor man, does he have a hard time with his women?”

“None of them is exactly mine at the moment, including you.” I looked at her and went on deliberately: “Of course, I’m always open to suggestions.”

“I’m sure you are.’’ She smiled coldly. “Let me see, if you’ve refrained from having relations with your daughter-in-law—in spite of her sexy antics, and this cozy room, neither of you has that blissful look—your last confirmed conquest was her stepmother, am I correct? Do you really think I’d want to follow in the footsteps, if that’s the right word for it, of that overpriced callgirl?”

I started to make a sharp retort and checked myself. It was ridiculous to feel protective about Lia Varek. After all, it had only been a business transaction of sorts, even if it had been conducted in a bed; and the pretty lady in Palm Beach with the dubious history would be the first to laugh if I went charging to her defense like a latter-day Galahad.

“Well, it was just an idea,” I said.

Miss Delgado gave me some more of that edged smile. “Oh, don’t dismiss it too hastily,” she said. “If my theory develops as I expect it to, we will be traveling to the beautiful islands of the Caribbean together, under orders, fairly soon. You can work on your ideas on the way. Judging by your record, I’m sure you will.”

I stared at her. “Whose brainstorm was that?” I asked.

“You’re not pleased?”

I said, “You’re undoubtedly terrific with computers, Delgado, but that’s not much help out here on the firing line. I’m already responsible for one untrained female; but at least she seems to know something about guns. Do you?”

“No, but I speak fluent Spanish. Yours is rudimentary, if I’m not mistaken. I’m also well acquainted with the little island nations we’re to visit, in fact I was born down there; and it’s my understanding you’ve never been there. I have local contacts that will be of value to us. I think, even if you have to handle all the firearms chores yourself, you will find me useful.”

I’d taken the other big chair. I leaned forward to push
168

my coffee cup towards her and she refilled it; then I drew a long breath and leaned back to study her for a moment. She was really a very good-looking woman. She even had brains, or she wouldn’t be working for Mac in her present capacity. I don’t usually react unfavorably to handsome and intelligent ladies. There had to be a reason.

I asked, “How are you on apologies?”

She glanced at me sharply. “Giving or taking.”

“Taking.”

“Oh, I accept them if they’re reasonably sincere.” After a moment, she asked, “Are you offering one?”

“Yes. Reasonably sincere. My attitude has been reprehensible. I’m sorry.”

“Apology accepted. May one ask the cause of this reprehensible attitude?”

I said, “I’m one of those sensitive people who love to i be loved, and hate to be hated.”

She smiled thinly. “That isn’t exactly the reputation you have around the shop, Mr. Helm. You’re supposed to be one of the best-hated men in the country, in certain undercover circles at least. And I never heard that it bothered you greatly. ’ ’

I said, “Oh, that. I don’t mind a little hatred in the line of business. But when a lady I’ve never met before, who’s supposed to be on my side, offers me undisguised hostility ... I thought at first it was just the natural antipathy between office people and field people, but it’s stronger than that. When I opened that door for you just I now, that first look you gave me was like the ice wind pouring off an Antarctic glacier. I guess my own attitude was an instinctive response to yours; besides, I thought if I was objectionable enough you might get mad enough to give me an answer. What have you got against me, Delgado?”

She said calmly, “My dear man, you’re imagining
things. Just because I’m not in awe of your fierce reputation or your homicidal talents ...”

‘‘No, that won’t do!” I said sharply. ‘‘Hostility is my business, lady. I can smell it, like a retriever smells ducks. It’s a sense that has saved my life more than once, and it tells me that antagonism is coming off you in waves. Why? Did I take a boyfriend of yours out on assignment and lose him? Not likely, since I gather you’re a recent acquisition as far as the agency is concerned; I get the idea you were drafted for this particular operation I because of your computer skills and your special knowl- | edge. So it isn’t very probable that you’d have established a close relationship with any of our people, earlier. Well, did I ever damage a relative or lover of yours, in the line of busirtess? I’ve never worked down in the Antilles, that I can recall, except for Cuba; but I have worked in Mexico and the Bahamas. Just what did I ever do to you or yours?”

She licked her lips. “I think you’re confusing one emotion for another. It isn’t hatred that I feel for you.”

‘‘It certainly isn’t love.”

“How about fear?”

I laughed at that. “Yes, you look like the timid type!” She said, “You don’t understand. As you said, I was engaged for my special qualifications with respect to the people you’re after. I ... I made myself available because they must be stopped. The Legion must be destroyed! But I was brought up very gently, Mr. Helm, and suddenly I find myself working with men, and even women, whose whole outlook is so different from the humanitarian attitude I was taught as a girl. ...”

“You find yourself in a den of snarling wolves, is that it?”

She smiled faintly. “Yes. And who, by reputation, ts one of the most wolfish of the senior canines of this killer-
pack with which I find myself associating? Can you blame me for treating you with, let’s say, a little reservation?”

I looked at her grimly. “If that’s a little reservation, I’d hate to be around when you really put the chill on somebody, Delgado. But okay, let’s say my apology and your explanation are both accepted. On to business. What’s the big news that’s so important that you couldn’t pass it over the phone, you had to bring it here yourself?”

“The Caribbean Legion of Liberty is probably planning to hold a full-scale Council meeting very soon. Do you find that interesting?”

I whistled softly. “Yes, indeed. Where?”

“Probably in San Juan, Puerto Rico. They seem to have a command post of some kind there. I can’t give you the address yet, I don’t have all the data, but more are coming in all the time.”

“The purpose of this gathering?”

“I don’t know that, either. Maybe they want to plan their next atrocity. Or maybe you’re making them nervous. Two of the three people involved in the Mariposa bombing died the other day. Two members of their Council died last night. That’s too recent to be reflected in my figures, but they could be getting together to plan effective countermeasures. Of course I’m just guessing.” She shook her head ruefully. “I’m not even certain the meeting will take place; I’m extrapolating from very skimpy data at the moment. But it’s statistically enough of a possibility that I thought you’d like to know so that you could make some contingency plans.”

“Plans including you?”

“Yes. It is felt in Washington that you will need my local knowledge.”

I shrugged. “Actually, there’s nothing I like better than having a pretty girl guide show me the sights of a foreign land. But you’re going to have to get along with Sandy.

She’s still the only person on our side who knows the bomb-throwing blonde by sight; and I’ve got private rea sons for wanting to keep an eye on her until things settle down.”

Dana Delgado smiled faintly. ‘‘It should be an interesting
menage a trois.
Very well, I promise to be good.” ‘‘What are the indicators pointing towards a meeting?” She said, “Several Council members I’ve been tracking on the computer have disappeared from their usual haunts; a couple have already turned up in Puerto Rico. Dominic Morales has also been seen there recently—well, a week ago. I hope to have the date and the meeting place for you fairly soon. With that information, you
lobos
should.be able to make a very good killing.”

For a girl who claimed to have been brought up gently, she showed a lot of satisfaction at the thought.

Outside,
it was a modest white frame house with a green roof, set under some large trees—I identified the big one shading the walk, tentatively, as an oak—in the middle of a lawn that had only a few dead leaves on it, meaning, at this time of year, that somebody’d been doing a lot of conscientious raking. Some of the neighboring lawns were pretty well littered.

Inside, it was a shrine.

“Come in, come in,” said Mrs. Anson. She was a
thin woman in her sixties with blue-white hair carefully arranged about her head. She was wearing a flowered cotton dress and low white sandals that looked comfortably worn and showed the reinforced toes of her stockings. She ushered us into the living room. “You are the Mr. Helm who called? And this is the young lady who was married to your ... Oh, my dear. I see that you suffered more than a bereavement; you were badly hurt j yourself! ’ ’ She was looking at the scar almost hidden by Sandra’s growing hair.

“I’m all right now,” Sandra said. “Yes, I’m his daughter-in-law.”

“And those devils won’t let you alone? It isn’t enough what they did to you the first time?” Mrs. Anson raised her voice and called up the stairs. “They’re here, Wally. Wally, did you hear me? They’re here.”

“Coming.”

“He’s a little deaf. You have to shout,” Mrs. Anson said to us. “Oh, yes, that’s our Belinda. Isn’t she lovely?

She liked having her picture taken. We are grateful. It helps. It’s as if she’s still with us, a little. We keep her room upstairs like it was when she went away to college. Afterwards, you know, she went to New York and did modeling for a while, but she was a good girl and you know how they are in New York. She wouldn’t put up with any of
that
, I can tell you, so she came back and took the job with the insurance company and got that little place of her own although why she wanted to pay all that rent—aren’t rents
awful
these days?—when she knew we’d be so happy to have her living at home . . .

Oh, there you are, Wally. Here they are, the ones who called. Mr. and Mrs. Helm. I showed it to you in the morning paper. She was married to a boy who was . . . was murdered like our Belinda; and Mr. Helm was the boy’s father. And they’re still after her, they almost killed her again last night, isn’t it awful?”

“Yes, I read the story.”

It took me a moment to focus my attention on Mr. Walter Anson; I had a hard time looking away from the endless collection of photographs that hung on the living-room walls and stood, in expensive frames, on every available piece of furniture including the coffee table, the end tables by the sofa, and the upright piano at the end of the room. They ranged from tiny amateur snapshots to giant professional enlargements and traced the development of Linda Anson from a crawling baby in diapers, to a blonde and blue-eyed little girl with very long straight hair and braces on her teeth, to a startlingly pretty teenager, to a real beauty. A little too knowing, perhaps, a little too skillful at presenting herself to the camera, but still so lovely it was hard to stop looking.

I shook the hand of the rather short man who’d entered the room. “It’s good of you to let us come here and bother you, Mr. Anson.”

It was hard to see how the two of them could have produced a Linda Anson, but you never know what those genes and chromosomes are going to do. Still, the thin, plain woman and the small, bald man weren’t the dam and sire I’d have picked if I’d been breeding for beauty. He was wearing a white shirt, dark trousers that looked like part of a suit and bagged at the knees, and well-worn black shoes that needed polishing.