The Detonators (6 page)

We stared at each other for a moment longer. Amy Barnett was making tearfully indignant noises, but she didn’t understand. Maybe in the next century the women’s libbers will have us all weeping and wailing pitifully in time of grief; it’s supposed to be very therapeutic. Meanwhile, girls still do it one way and boys another, and Sanderson and I were both boys together in that moment.

He knew what I was telling him. He knew how I felt about Doug Barnett. He also knew how I felt about him.

The freak’s name was Ernest. Ernest Love, he said. Well, I suppose it could have been. He was almost too good to be true, or too bad to be true. He had a scraggly reddish beard, maybe to make up for the fact that his scraggly reddish hair started fairly well back from his forehead, leaving quite a bit of bald pinkish scalp exposed, although he wasn’t very far along into his twenties. It gave him a prematurely aged and rather degenerate look.

He had small greenish eyes and a long thin nose and big bad teeth with wide spaces between them. He wore ragged jeans, a dirty green jersey with dirty white letters across the front—nix the nukes—and worn-out jogging shoes. I wondered whatever happened to Keds, but it’s all Adidas these days, or reasonable facsimiles thereof. Ernest Love needed a bath very badly; but what he really wanted, he said, was information.

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” he demanded. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

They always ask who the fuck you think you are and what the fuck you think you’re doing. Our man in Miami, Jerome, who’d tracked him down with help and brought him to my hotel room, held him by the arm. Beside Ernest Love’s scrawny, ragged, antisocial figure, Jerome looked solid and conventional, although he, too, was in jeans and jogging shoes—a husky beachboy type, very tanned, with golden locks almost as long as his captive’s straggling red hair. The two of them made me feel quite ancient, brought up as I was in a bygone age of sneakers and haircuts.

But that was irrelevant, of course. I thought of a small round cloud of smoke on the horizon; and I looked at Ernest Love and thought he was a hell of a thing to bring about the death of a good agent who’d survived the best homicidal efforts of truly dangerous enemies. We don’t go in for friendship much in the business, and Doug had been an abrasive guy to work with anyway; but that made no difference now. I looked at Ernest Love and felt a strong desire to pistol-whip him a little, and then maybe kick him in the balls a little, and then maybe boot the shit out of him a little, just a little, when he fell down screaming and hugging himself. I told myself I was a reasonably civilized person and didn’t do such brutal and barbaric things. Well, at least not unnecessarily.

I said, “I’m a friend of Douglas Barnett’s, Mr. Love. Somebody framed him on a drug charge, and one thing led to another, and he wound up committing suicide. Would you know anything about that, Mr. Love?”

“Barnett? I never heard of any Barnett!” There was innocent, self-righteous indignation in the redhead’s voice. Then his assurance wavered as the rest of what I’d said penetrated. “What… what do you mean, framed?”

“An anonymous phone call to the Coast Guard telling them to check out a thirty-two-foot sailing yacht called
Seawind.
And exactly where on board to look.”

He licked his lips. “Oh, Christ!
That
boat?”

“That boat.”

“Who remembers what they call themselves? Was that his name, Barnett? Jesus, man, I didn’t mean nothing. I mean, shit, the guy hassled me so I hassled him back, that’s all. Getting all holier-than-thou just because he owned the fucking boat! Roughing me up and throwing overboard most of my… Christ, do you know what that shit
costs
these days? So after I got ashore I made a phone call. Why the fuck should I let him get away with shit like that? Okay, I made a phone call. What are you going to do about it?”

I said, “Me? Shit, man, I’m not going to do fuck about it. I’m just going to turn you over to another friend of mine. Did you ever hear of Giuseppe Velo?”

“Velo?” He frowned. “Wasn’t he a Mafia bigshot? I thought he was dead.”

I shook my head. “No, but you’ll wish he were about an hour from now. And for two or three hours more, depending on how long you last. No, old Seppi isn’t dead, not quite, and he kind of owes me a favor. Anyway, he says that now that he’s retired his boys need exercise. They’re getting fat and lazy with nothing to do except guard the body.” I turned to Jerome, who was watching with a certain amount of disapproval. To hell with him. I said, “Call the lobby and have Velo’s wrecking crew come up here and haul this away, will you? And then turn up the air-conditioning a couple of notches and see if we can’t get the stink out of here.”

Ernest Love licked his lips. “But… but what are they going to do to me?”

“Do?” I said. “I don’t know what they’re going to do and I don’t want to know, Mr. Love. I’m a respectable employee of Uncle Sam; how would I know anything about things like that? Strictly against regulations. Hell, a man could get into trouble doing
that
to people, even to a cheap creep who drove his best friend to kill himself.” I thought Doug Barnett would be surprised to learn about our fine relationship, wherever he was. To be sure, he’d saved my life once, and I’d promised to look after his daughter m return; but it had been all in the day’s work. However, it sounded impressive. I said, “Later, they’ll bring me your confession so I can clear Doug’s name. What they do with you when they’re through with you, what’s left of you, is no concern of mine. Who’ll miss you? They have their own ways of putting out the garbage. I don’t pry into things that are none of my business.”

There was a knock on the door. Jerome went to open it. Old Seppi, from the Miami Beach penthouse where I’d called him, had done very well by us. The first one in was menacing enough, an obvious ex-pug not quite big enough for a heavyweight, and perhaps not very good in the ring considering the way he’d got his nose and ears and eyebrows battered, but still nobody you’d want to tackle without a shotgun. But the second one was truly spectacular, over six feet tall and very black, with his head shaved in a peculiar manner. What a gent of African ancestry was trying to prove by wearing an Iroquois Indian scalplock, I couldn’t say—if there was a message there, it wasn’t being delivered at my address—but even though it was a recognized TV getup it made him look as mean as a king-sized rattlesnake, and I think it was what did the job.

At least Ernest Love was clutching at my arm in a panicky way. “Oh, Jesus, man, can’t we make a deal? Hey, you want a confession, I’ll give you a confession…”

The rest of it kind of went by me; I wasn’t listening any longer. Because there was real terror in his eyes now, and I realized that everything that had gone before had been just an act: fake arrogance, phony defiance, pretend fear.

Waking up at last, I looked at the bald spot and saw the very faint reddish stubble where the hair had been shaved away for effect. I looked at the carefully soiled jersey with its protest legend. I looked at the artistically frayed and dirtied jeans and the skillfully broken-down shoes. I remembered that we’ve got a costumer in Washington who’s a real artist at turning out convincing clothes for any role, flashy or shabby. And the skin of neck and knuckles grimy enough to pass at a glance but lacking the ingrained dirt of weeks. All good enough to fool an unsuspicious audience—a sucker named Helm, for instance; and the young man was a fair country actor, too. But he hadn’t expected to be thrown to a couple of syndicate man-breakers.

He’d obviously thought—and the people who’d sent him had thought—that I’d keep it in the family and, if persuasion was needed, apply it myself. It had been expected that if things started getting too rough—if I started getting too rough—Mr. Ernest Love, whatever his real name might be, would be able to stop it with a few words; that he could save himself by identifying himself and telling me what a ridiculous patsy I’d been, to be taken in by this elaborate performance in which he’d played only a minor role. He was panicking now because he knew that somebody’d misjudged the situation badly. He knew that unlike me, Seppi Velo’s goons wouldn’t be stopped by anything he had to say. But he was just a bit player in this farce. The comic relief, of course, was being supplied by one M. Helm, while Amy Barnett added feminine interest to the cast; but the leading man was obviously Doug Barnett himself.

I couldn’t flatter myself that I’d suspected the hoax consciously; but I must have sensed something wrong when I broke the rules and asked old Seppi to send me some truly impressive muscle to blast things apart. Now I started remembering the little things: Doug Barnett in jail with a neat patch of tape on his skull, looking just a bit too tidy and unbruised for a man who’d recently taken on two law-enforcement agencies bare-handed. I remembered the subtle way he’d called my attention to his failing vision. I remembered the uncharacteristically sentimental way he’d referred to his daughter, overacting a little there; and how, according to her report, he’d pulled exactly the same weak-sighted routines on her before picking a fight with her about her mother that had probably been deliberate.

It would take time to make sense of it all; but how could I forget the dramatic boat ride up the Florida Straits with the camouflaged Coast Guard admiral passing on to me a lot of dramatic radio dialogue that I never actually heard—hell, anybody can talk into a mike and pretend to listen—all leading up to selling me, and Amy Barnett, a clap of sound and a ball of smoke?

Most clearly of all I remembered the fact that the coast guard’s 110-footer, the
Cape March
, supposedly in the danger zone, had escaped unscathed. But I’d worked with Doug Barnett in the past and, regardless of what I’d said to Sanderson, I knew he was really no more Mister Nice Guy than I was. If he’d
really
been driven to despair and suicide, and some of the people responsible were within reach, as they had been, he’d have made damned sure he wouldn’t have to take the long, dark journey alone…

It’s roughly seventy miles from Miami up to West Palm Beach. I took the turnpike, joining the spring flight of Cadillacs leaving their Florida wintering grounds for their nesting grounds up north.

The motorized Chevrolet roller skate I’d rented for the previous job, because it was small, and inconspicuous, had legroom only for a dwarf—I hadn’t noticed it so much in city driving, but a seventy-mile run brought it clearly to my attention. Oddly enough, the rather diminutive Japanese have caught on to the fact that their American customers often have long legs; but the big men in Detroit still figure that only small people buy small cars, reminding me of the days when firearms manufacturers used to think that only peewee-handed people used peewee-caliber guns. If you had a big mitt like mine you were practically doomed to shoot a roaring, thundering .44 or .45 because you couldn’t get a good grip on anything smaller.

The cramped driving conditions didn’t improve my disposition. I was followed, discreetly, at a distance, by a small white Volkswagen Rabbit. I took the first West Palm exit as directed and slowed as I came off the ramp, letting my escort slip by. The driver, a middle-aged woman, gave me the all-clear signal as she passed. To hell with her. I spent most of an hour making sure she was right and nobody hostile was tailing me. I mean, I might eventually kick somebody’s rump for the trick that had been played on me; but I’m a pro and I don’t blow an elaborate operation, such as this seemed to be, just because I’m mad. After confirming that I was clean, I proceeded to the indicated rendezvous, a small, pink motel that was shaded, if you don’t mind a slight exaggeration, by a few ratty palm trees. I parked between a large sedan and a small station wagon. When I knocked on the door with the right number, in the indicated way, Mac opened.

It was something of a shock, since I’d thought he was speaking from Washington when I’d called there angrily a couple of hours earlier and had gotten no sympathy, just instructions to proceed to this place with utmost care. But they can make telephone circuits do funny things these days. I looked at the familiar, lean, gray-haired gent with the black eyebrows who, while I’ve sometimes seen him look a bit tired, never really seems to get any older. Maybe he sold his soul to the devil years ago in return for eternal life, except there’s no evidence he ever had one to sell.

His neat gray business suit reminded me of Amy Barnett, whose neat gray business suit had also been a bit too substantial for Florida in the spring. For some reason I found myself wondering what the girl was doing now. But of course I knew what she was doing, since I’d put her into a taxi early that morning, before I got involved with the Ernest Love problem, and aimed her at the Miami airport. By this time, barring unscheduled delays, she was riding a plane home to Cincinnati, if she wasn’t there already.

“Come in, Eric,” Mac said. He always uses the code names for official conversations.

I walked past him into the shabby motel unit. There were the usual stylized works of motel art on the wall: a cute little Indian boy facing a cute little Indian girl. The big double beds had either not been slept in last night or they’d already been made up, not likely, since a breakfast tray—apparently sent over from the all-night restaurant next door—had not yet been removed. The breakfast had been for two people, one of whom had had the works: steak and eggs, hashed browns, toast, and coffee. A pretty good trencherman. The other had settled for a continental breakfast of rolls and coffee and left one of the rolls in the basket. A frugal eater. Mac. I took Ernest Love’s confession from my inside jacket pocket and tossed it onto the cluttered table beside him.

“Too sad about Doug Barnett,” I said. “But here’s the proof of his innocence. At least his memory will be forever bright. And ours.”

Mac picked up the paper and gave it a brief glance before dropping it into the nearby wastebasket, which was the fate it deserved. There wasn’t a word of truth in it, of course. There had been no hassle on board the
Seawind
on the way up from Key West and no drugs thrown overboard, there had been no hidden marijuana left on the boat, and there had been no anonymous phone call to the authorities; but I’d made Love confess to his supposed guilt in detail, in writing, because I was feeling mean. Or maybe I just wanted somebody else to look bad for a change.