The Detonators (3 page)

“Yes,” he said. “And if anything happens to me, you’ll look after that impossible, stuffy, little female prick for me, won’t you? Because you owe me one and I’m asking.”

I nodded. That was the second personal matter involved here, the fact that he’d once saved my life. “You didn’t have to say it.”

“Sorry. I had to know. She’s got nobody else, now that that self-righteous bitch I married is dead.”

“Consider it signed and sealed. But Mac has pulled the right strings, and you’ll be out of here in a few hours. Maybe you can make your peace with her and do your own looking-after.”

He shook his head. “It’s a nice thought, but I doubt that what’s between us can be changed in an afternoon, after all the years her witch-mother had to work on her. And I may not have too much time, if you know what I mean; so let me give you a quick rundown on the arrangements I’ve made for her, just in case.” After he’d finished, he said, “Well, that takes care of that. Now, what about the boat?”

I said, “That’s the tough part. The Coast Guard is apparently being sticky. Pressure is being brought to bear, and we’re looking for that creep you were dumb enough to invite on board, to get a confession out of him. But it’ll be another few days, at least.”

He grimaced. “Bunch of uniformed pirates! What do they do with all the vessels they steal? Oh, excuse
me
! Impound. Confiscate. For a bit of grass worth a few hundred on the street—even assuming it was my grass, which it wasn’t—they grab themselves a boat worth fifty grand easy. What the hell kind of justice would that be, even if I were guilty? Legal larceny!”

I said, “Take it easy. Don’t flip all over again. And incidentally, you didn’t do so well the first time, did you?” I stared at him hard. “Granted, that seems to’ve been a good enough blow to the throat, judging by all reports, and you couldn’t know that Coast Guard guy would be so handy at doing emergency surgery with his little knife. But as for the rest, just a bunch of piddling little fractures and lacerations. Very bad for the team’s reputation. We’re supposed to be the guys who leave them dead, Mr. Barnett.”

He stared right back at me with his head held at that odd angle. “You know the answer, Matt. That billy club didn’t do me a damn bit of good in the vision department. I haven’t recovered from it yet and probably won’t. Cop bastard.”

I nodded. “I just wanted to be sure. Anything I can do?”

“There’s nothing anybody can do. That was checked out by the medical experts a long time ago. They told me at the time not to let people bounce things off my skull, ha-ha; that’s why I was retired, although we didn’t publicize it. But thanks anyway. Now let me talk with my daughter, please.”

“One self-righteous young lady coming up.”

“Matt…”

“Yes?”

“Don’t tell her about my eyes, damn you. Not before I’ve seen her, at least.”

“Is that fair to the girl?” When he didn’t speak, I said, “If that’s the way you want it. Be good.”

“I tried that, and they took my boat away and locked me up in here.”

“Well, be careful,” I said.

Amy Barnett was gone less than half an hour. When she returned I saw from her pale, resentful face that the family reunion hadn’t turned out well. She said a polite good-bye to her police escort, and we made our way out the door, down the elevator, and out into the Florida spring sunshine. She didn’t say anything until we were driving away. Then she opened the neatly buttoned jacket of her flannel suit and turned one of the car’s air-conditioning vents her way.

“If I were staying in Florida I’d have to get some lighter clothes, I guess.”

“But you aren’t staying?”

“No. When I get back to the hotel, I’ll see about getting a flight back to Cincinnati tomorrow. It’s too late today.” She glanced at me a little defiantly. “There’s nothing to stay for. I found that out in there.”

“He was just as you expected?” I said. “No surprises? Exactly the same wicked man your mother always told you, right?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

I spoke deliberately: “Pretty well preserved for his advanced years, though, wouldn’t you say? Nice and tanned and healthy after all that sailing. Or were you so busy reciting all your mother’s old grievances that you didn’t really look at him at all?”

She studied me for a moment. “What are you trying to tell me, Mr. Helm?”

I said, “Hell, you spent twenty minutes in there. Why should I have to tell you anything? You’re a smart girl; you can see things for yourself. If you bother to look.” When she didn’t speak, I asked, “Where did you sit?”

She frowned. “Well, I started to sit down in the nearest chair, of course, but he said he’d rather have me on the other side of him.” She looked at me, puzzled. “Does that have some kind of mystic significance?”

I said, “No peculiar mannerisms that caught your attention?”

“Well, he did hold his head to the side and kind of peer at me, but I thought that was just a nervous habit he’d acquired since I last saw him all those years ago… Mr. Helm, will you stop this, please! Tell me what you’re driving at!”

“There’s something else,” I said. “You’re shocked at the amount of damage he did in the fight. We’re shocked at the amount of damage he didn’t do. I mean, we never fight for fun, just for keeps. That’s the way he was trained; yet there wasn’t a single lousy dead man on that dock when he got through. A very poor performance, even for an agent who’s been retired for a while and hammering on a boat instead of practicing his lethal skills.”

She shivered. “What a horrible attitude, to criticize a man for
not
killing!”

I said, “Jesus, that knee-jerk humanitarianism! From a dame who doesn’t even bother to find out why her own father had to be retired. Why don’t you practice a little of that bleeding-heart stuff at home, Miss Barnett?” Driving one-handed, I worked a paper out of my inside jacket pocket and passed it to her. “One of our people, the one who’s negotiating for Doug’s release, stopped by and gave me this while I was waiting for you. Read it.”

There was a little silence. At last she turned to me, aghast. “But this medical report says…”

I said, “Apparently there was a light plane that crashed; I gather Doug made it crash. It was the only way he could accomplish his mission, his last mission. I don’t know what it was; as a matter of fact, I didn’t know any of the details before, only that he’d been retired with a disability a year or two back. But it seems he was knocked unconscious by the crash. He was in a coma for a while; later they had to go in and relieve the pressure or something. Dig out bone splinters. Whatever. As a would-be nurse, you can probably decipher the jargon of that report better than I can. They put the lid back on and sent him to a place we have out west to recuperate. They were just about to turn him loose, put him back on active duty, when the trouble started.”

Amy started to speak but checked herself. She stared at the official-looking paper in her hand.

I went on as I drove: “It’s all in there. Blurred vision in the left eye. Violent headaches. Brief dizzy spells that were almost momentary blackouts. They ran their fancy tests and scans on him. The consensus was that something was going bad in there and would get worse. While they could go in again and try to fix it, the operation might leave him a vegetable; and what was in there probably wasn’t fixable, anyway. Recommendation: immediate retirement. Advice: take it easy, live right, and avoid any more blows on the head. Prognosis: maybe two years, maybe five, you want fortune-tellers, yet?”

Amy Barnett whispered. “Oh, my God!” So she wasn’t totally incapable of blasphemy.

I said, “Apparently he decided to carry out the plans he’d been developing for years, get the boat, fix it up, and sail it as far as he could. Why sit around waiting for the dark?” I shook my head irritably. “And I’m guessing that the reason he didn’t kill anybody in that marina hassle was that he just wasn’t seeing very well after being cracked by that police club. I think he felt something go very wrong inside his head when he was hit and knew he didn’t have left even the few years of vision he’d been promised. Half-dazed, he instinctively used his best shot on the guy who’d hit him, who was right there within easy range. After that, I guess, he was hurting pretty badly and just fighting shadows as they came at him.”

“But he didn’t act as if… I mean, I’m sure he could see me, just now.”

I nodded. “After a fashion, sure, but he obviously has to work at it. My guess is that both eyes are affected now, but the left is worse than the right, which is why he doesn’t like to have people sitting on that side of him.” There was a little silence. Amy Barnett glanced back over her shoulder and started to speak impulsively; but I cut her off: “No, I won’t take you back there. What do you want to do now, offer to hang around and tie his shoelaces and hand him his white cane because you’re so sorry for him?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she whispered.

“He asked me not to. He was running a little test, I guess, to determine just what kind of a brat he’d begotten—was she going to accept her remaining parent at last even though he was behind bars, or was she just going to tell him how much she disapproved of him? He didn’t want the exam complicated by a lot of cheap sympathy. And you flunked, so you can get your damn airplane ticket and go home to Cincinnati. As you said yourself, there’s nothing to keep you here.”

There was a little silence. At last Amy Barnett drew a long, ragged breath. “You really hate me, don’t you!” she whispered.

I was shocked. “Don’t be ridiculous! I’ve only known you a couple of hours; why in the world would I—”

“You do!” she breathed. “And isn’t it wonderful for you, to have somebody to hate at last! After all these years of forcing yourself to be generous and understanding about the way your own family left you. So kindly, so tolerant, gritting your teeth all the time to keep from letting anybody know the way you
really
felt. But now you can take it out on me, all the hurt and anger you’ve been keeping bottled up inside yourself all these years. Telling yourself all the time that you’re just doing it because of your sympathy for my poor daddy, who was betrayed by my mother and me in exactly the same way!”

Mechanically guiding the car through the dense Miami traffic, I told myself that she was executing a typically feminine maneuver, defending herself by attacking me—quite unreasonably, of course. The only trouble was, I realized, that she wasn’t being all that unreasonable. In fact she was perfectly right: I was using her to unload some old private anger and frustration. Which, I suppose, said something unpleasant about me, but that was no great surprise. However, the fact that she was capable of reading me so accurately indicated that there was more girl there than I’d seen. Or wanted to see?

I said rather stiffly, “Very shrewd analysis, Dr. Barnett.”

She licked her lips. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. But you hurt me. Not that I didn’t deserve it.”

I said, “All right. I surrender. Don’t hit me again; I’ll be good, ma’am.” I glanced at my watch. “But I can’t take you back there now; according to the man who gave me that medical report, they should be getting ready to release him, and we don’t want to confuse things by trying to get to see him. You know the red-tape circuit. But if you want to put off your flight home and talk with him in the morning, I’ll let you know where he’s staying. Well, I was told it’ll be the Coral Shores hotel, but I’ll get the room number for you. Of course, he won’t make it easy for you. He’s a proud man, and he’ll know you’ve changed your mind about him simply because you’ve learned of his condition.”

“Everybody’s been too proud, including me.” She swallowed hard. “I wanted to tell him how lonely it was nowadays and how much I needed somebody, him, and the words wouldn’t come. And then, somehow, we started talking about Mother, and he was so sneering and contemptuous that I got mad and…” She shook her head quickly. “I shouldn’t have reacted so defensively. I should have remembered all the years he’s had to brood about it. I really meant to be very reasonable and understanding. I’d like to try again.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said. “In the meantime, may I make amends for my prejudiced behavior by buying you dinner?”

She shook her head and gave me that meager little smile of hers. I thought I’d like to be around some time when she cut loose with a real grin.

But her words were reasonably friendly: “Reparations aren’t necessary, Mr. Helm. But I’m pretty tired. It’s been a long day. When we get back to the hotel, I think I’ll just retire to the room you were kind enough to arrange for me, have room service send up a hamburger, and go to bed early.”

Around nine o’clock that evening I got a call from the local man who’d slipped me the copy of Doug’s medical report, earlier. We don’t have agents all over the world like some outfits, but we do have part-time people in various strategic places including Miami. They aren’t used for heavy work; they just serve as eyes and legs. This one’s code name was Jerome. He reported that Doug, upon his release, had allowed himself to be escorted to the hotel room arranged for him; then he’d disappeared. Jerome was annoyed. He hadn’t been warned that the man whose welfare he was supposed to be looking after might try to give him the slip. But the room had been empty when he’d stopped by to see if there was anything further he could do, and there was no note to indicate where Doug might have gone.

“Did you check the marina?” I asked. “His boat’s still there, isn’t it?”

“Yes, they’ve confiscated so many vessels hauling drugs they don’t know where to put them all; their official dock, wherever it is, is full up,” said the voice on the phone. “No, I haven’t had a chance to get over there; I just called immediately to let you know he was gone. I’ll head right down there.”

“Hold everything.” I thought for a moment, then said, “To hell with it. The way he’s feeling, if he’s going for the boat, you’ll have to shoot him to stop him. Let him run. Let the Hooligan Navy worry about the damn boat; they’re the ones who grabbed it. We’ll stay clear.”

“Okay, but I still think somebody could have told me he might sneak off…”