Quiller Barracuda

She used the gear shift, the heavy gold bracelet shimmering in the glow from the facia panel, and we turned again, eastward towards the Bay.

I didn't say anything. I'd had to roll twice on the sidewalk back there and the stitches must have pulled because my shirt was sticking to the wound and the right shoulder was bruised because it had taken the impact but the worst of the shock was over by now and I was beginning to feel the heady lightness that suffuses the organism when it comes to know that life is sweet and that it has not been taken away.

Proctor had come very close to doing that, and it was nice to be driving through the late night streets of this fair city with a pretty little undercover agent of the Miami Police Department.

She was still watching me, and I suppose it would have been rude not to answer.

'One has to keep busy,' I said.

'It's this Foreign Bureau thing I don't get. It doesn't gel with all that.'

'Office.'

'Huh?'

'Foreign Office.'

'Oh, sure, yeah. Maybe intelligence?'

'I was afraid you'd never catch on.'

Proctor knew; Toufexis and the mob knew; it was practically in the papers.

'Okay,' she said in a minute, 'that makes sense.' She turned her head to study me. 'Yeah, you got the look. Mean, hard as a nail, sell your own mother and not for much.' She slipped a slim dark hand into the gold bag on the seat. 'You mean this one?'

'Yes.' A lieutenant, yet.

'Just a bit of gold tin, but I like the life.'

'It suits you. Does he deal? Proctor?'

'No. He smokes crack, that's all. But he's in with Toufexis like you said. We go to your place or mine?'

'Yours.'

'Okay. Fix you some protein. You gotta be feeling hungry after a ride like that. I been there.' I suppose she meant the Corvette thing.

'I can imagine,' I said.

'See, I moved in on Proctor to find out what he was doing. I knew he was in with Toufexis.'

'And Toufexis is your assignment.'

'Absolutely. Pull him in, I pull in the most powerful branch of the mob in Florida, that don't get me captain, nothing can. Proctor, he doesn't deal, no, but tell you this, he's into something bigger than that. Political. And very sophisticated. Like when I move in on him I have to move La Cambridge out, and she's – she was really quite attractive. So what happened, you going to tell me Nicko got a sign from heaven to spare you out there in that boat, or what?'

She'd done a lot of interrogation in her time, been taught how to drop a subject for a while and then snap back to it, catch you by surprise.

'They weren't professionals,' I said.

'You bet your sweet ass they were professionals, man. They -'

'I mean they weren't trained in close combat.'

'Oh, come on. You mean you had a teeny weeny XM-177 assault rifle tucked in your sock and they never frisked you.'

'I never carry a gun.'

She stopped at the lights, hand on the gear shift, her head turned to look at me. 'You never carry a gun. But there were four of those guys out there with -'

'Look,' I said, 'this is very embarrassing. I had some luck, and that's it.'

Watching me, a shimmer of dark eyes between smoky lashes. 'You're really annoyed aren't you?'

'Yes.'

A soft explosion of laughter as the lights changed and she hit the gear shift and took the Mazda away. 'You real, real cool cat!'

Very annoyed cool cat. 'So why didn't you just flash your badge and call the police and get me put into protective custody?'

'Huh? Well see, it's this way. I thought you were a rival dealer horning in on his operation, or maybe you'd stashed away a little bit of Toufexis's merchandise when someone wasn't looking, and normally I don't give a shit if one of those mothers gets in the way of a spray gun, it lightens the load for us and it saves all that bullshit in the courts when we work our ass off for months on end and bring a bunch of those suckers into the court and see some bleeding-heart jury give them an acquittal on all counts and send them whistling on their way, happens all the time. But like I say, the execution thing gets under my skin a little, I mean I like to sleep nights, so I put in my bit for you and tried to cool Nicko off, but that was all I could do because you know what? I flash my badge and he'd have shipped me out there with you on that boat, you better believe me, and if he hadn't done that I'd have blown my cover, and I've been working more than six months getting closer and closer to Toufexis and I would've thrown the whole thing out the window for the sake of one little waterfront dealer, which like I say is what I thought you were, didn't know you were a real live dude in the British Foreign Bureau – sure, Office, right. But then, gee, big deal, you didn't need my help anyway.'

'All the same,' I said, 'it was civil of you.'

'Hey, any time.' White flash of her smile in the windscreen.

She turned again and headed south and started slowing along a street full of waterfront apartment houses.

'That was a Mafia hit?' she asked me. 'Cambridge?'

'I don't know.'

'Oh. That's a shame.'

We ran into an alley behind the houses and hit two speed bumps and she swung the Mazda alongside a broken-down fence and switched off the engine. 'I was kind of hoping you'd be able to tell me about that. You seemed to know her pretty well, the way you were talking to her at the party. See, narcotics are okay but she was a big time gal and that was a big time hit, and if I could get a handle on that operation I might take it straight to the FBI and who knows, they could offer me a job with them, change of pace, little more prestige, you know?'

She locked the car and we went across a concrete yard and into the rear of the nearest house and took the lift to the fourth floor, a broken strand of one of the cables twanging through the pulleys. At the third door along a dim-lit passage she got out her keys and opened up and went inside and I followed.

'You want some eggs?'

'That would be nice.'

'Make yourself at home. Bathroom's through there, you want to clean up. Boy, you got legs, you know that?'

'I'm sorry?'

Throwing her gold bag on to a chair, checking her hair in a mirror, 'I saw you get out of that limo so fast I thought you were going to mash your head all over the sidewalk. Then you were up and running and I figured you were going to keep on flat out right to the end of that alleyway, and I had to burn rubber through a red light and get the whole of that block behind me and make another turn and get my ass all the way down to where you were in time to catch you, is what I mean, I only just made it, you got legs.' Turning away from the mirror and facing me with her hands on her hips in her black leather skirt with her moist skin glowing in the light and her eyes half-hidden in her long dark lashes, 'I'm real glad I made it, you know? I don't have a man now Proctor's taken off, you go for black gals?'

'Oh for Christ's sake, Lieutenant,' I said, 'we've got business to do.'

A flash of laughter – 'And just dig that accent – leff-tenant, wow! You want them boiled, fried, Benedict, sunny side up, over easy, two, three, four?'