“Who is she?”
“All we have so far is proof she’s not Niki Webb. Your Mr. Wilther in Cleveland did a nice job. The photographer who takes the graduation pictures at the high school she went to keeps a file of negatives going way back, for no good reason. We got a blowup of her. There’s a fair resemblance, until the experts start measuring and comparing facial dimensions — placement of the ears, interpupilary gap, etc.”
“Where did she come from?”
He shrugged. “We’ll find out. It’s been narrowed down. The one that looks best so far is Mary Gerrity, code name Charlotte. Slum kid from Chicago. When she was fifteen, tough as hemp and alley-cat smart, a pinko professor bedded her down, sold her his version of social paradise and steered her into the YCL. That was in 1941. He sensed when he was about to be picked up and took off with her for Mexico City. Three years later he got killed down there. We got the word it was a party discipline thing. She disappeared. In 1947 when our people were trying to plug some bad leaks in Berlin it turned out she was servicing a BG who should have known better. She was netted and while they were still trying to crack her open, indignant consular types showed up with papers all in order proving she was a Polish citizen and pried her loose. In the next few years we made her a couple of times in group photos out of Moscow, big party fetes and banquets. I’m telling you all this because I’m sure this is the right one, and we’ll know for certain when that maid, Victoria, turns over something with some good prints on it. Next time we picked up her trail was, for God’s sake, in Cambodia, but it was a old trail and the damage was done, and she’d gone the bedroom route to do it. Five years ago we knew she was back in Mexico. It was a good guess she was coming in, and it was our hunch she was all set up for some kind of permanent cover, but we lost her, and we’ve been looking for her ever since, because we know she’s been given top training and she’s one of the very best they’ve got. Five years ago any fool could guess that Dean Products would get some critical space contracts. So they sent the Dean brothers a special package.”
“And it blew us to hell,” I said in a sick voice.
“Because the package was tailored for bachelor brothers, Mr. Dean. The laymen who sneer at the Mata Hari angle and think it’s corny are damn fools. One shrewd broad who despises men so much she adores every minute of banging them because it cuts them down to animal level, and who can accept party discipline out of a tough, genuine dedication, and is such a package it dries out your mouth to look at the walk on her, a broad like that is worth, at the very least, one pair of nuclear subs. Don’t call yourself a fool. You swing an amateur bat against big league pitching, and you should average out zero zero zero. But you’ve batted about zero two five, which is exceptional. She chased you off and swung the door open for Mottling when the time was ripe. Now you’re helping us close it a lot sooner than we would have.”
“Can you pick up Mottling too?”
“Wish we could. We’d have to have solid proof, and there won’t be any of that laying around, or anybody who’ll talk. But I hope from here on we can keep him away from critical areas. That’s the most we could expect, and we’ll be happy with that.”
“How about Lester Fitch? He’ll break easy.”
“But give us nothing. He’s a fringe operator. He cut himself into Dolson’s take. Blackmail based on something he found out by accident, I’d say. It’s made him anxious to have things keep going exactly as they were. If you or Granby took over, Dolson might get moved away from the trough, so it made him a hot Mottling man. Perhaps your brother said just enough to him so that Fitch felt there was more to your brother’s death than met the eye. I think he’s been highly nervous lately.”
“You said Joan and I are going to stay murdered for a while. How long?”
“Until the Monday meeting, and then we’ll see if shock has any effect on those people. Probably it won’t. Think this over, Mr. Dean. If they had killed you two, and if we had fumbled the ball when we got around to looking into Dean Products, Mottling would be in, and, because your will still leaves everything to your brother, his estate would pick up the marbles, and that shifty broad would be sitting on sixteen thousand shares of voting stock. If our shock doesn’t work, you can at least vote Mottling out.”
“And put Granby in?”
“That’s your problem.”
“No little lecture about where my duty lies?”
He stood up. “I’ve got to have some sleep. About duty, so-called, you have to live with yourself, and I have to live with myself, and that’s the one trap nobody ever gets out of.” He walked out.
I went to the window overlooking the walled garden. May is a good month in Florida. The tarpon are moving north. The mosquitoes aren’t out in force yet. It’s a good month to go to Marathon and stalk bonefish across the flats.
The size of the alternative frightened me. I would be shouldering a tremendous responsibility. It would ride my back, day and night. But at the same time the thought of it gave me a crawling holiday-feeling of anticipation.
Chapter 17
I was in the small walled garden at three o’clock when Nurse McCarthy came walking slowly out into the sunlight, with a wan Joan leaning on her arm. I stood up quickly, went over to her and took her other arm.
“Joan! God, should you be walking around?”
“It was either this or tie her to the bed,” McCarthy said.
“How do you feel, honey?”
“Want to race?” Joan said. Her head bandage was bright white against the coppery hair.
She stood with McCarthy holding her while I unfolded a deck chair for her. We put her in the chair. She shut her eyes. “Whooo! Now go away, McCarthy, because when the world stops going around I’m going to get kissed.”
“Don’t tax your strength, dearie,” the nurse said, and beamed, and rustled off.
Joan opened her eyes. “Now?”
“Now,” I said. And did. Her lips were sweet.
“Better than that,” she said. “I’m not that fragile.”
So we made it a little better, and it was very fine indeed. She sat back, looking smug. “Now you’ve got my cold too, probably.”
“Indubitably.”
“Now tell me about it. I ran. I was going to get away and get help and something hit me on the back of the head and I fell clunk into a hospital bed, with a headache like a brass band and a case of sniffles and my back feeling like somebody had worked it over with a ball bat.”
I told her. In detail. I tried to keep it calm, but I heard my own voice getting a nervous edge to it. She listened and became more pale. I saw what I was doing to her and exerted more control. I tried to make light comedy out of dropping her, and fumbling over those fences and falling on my face in the kitchen. Her color became better. But she was very grave.
“Thank you, Gevan,” she said in a small voice.
“For what?”
“For all the days of my life from now on. Thank you very much because they are going to be good days.”
“You don’t mind my taking an ownership interest in them?”
“Try to get out of it. Just try. I’ll follow you on the street, beating on a pan and waving a sign: ‘This man ruined me!’ ”
“Ruined you?”
“That’s just a suggestion — for after I get my strength back. My God, Gevan, that’s a delicious black eye!”
“And that’s a delectable bandage.”