Quiller Barracuda

'Try this,' I said, but the telephone on the black lacquered cabinet began ringing and she went over there.

'Yeah. A half hour back.' She lifted her free hand towards the ceiling, very slowly, and as it reached as high as it would go she spread her fingers out, and the gold nails looked like fruit glowing on a tree. Then get him,' she said. 'I don't give a shit. Go get him. Bring him in.' Her hand was turning slowly, the gold vanishing and reappearing from behind her fingers as the floating lights passed over them. Her bare arm, stretched like this, looked like a slim dark vine, the muscle lit and shadowed. 'Okay, Maloney, can you hear me all right? Okay, I don't give a shit he's connected to Washington. Go get that mother-fucker and bring him in and I mean right now or I'll have your badge first thing in the morning, now move your fucking ass, man, those are my fucking orders.'

She dropped the phone and brought her other hand down slowly, watching it, turning it into a black and gold fan, spreading it across the shadows.

'You're beautiful,' I said.

'I know. I'm into dance, nights off. Those guys,' she said, 'they think just because some dude got a pass into the State Capitol they can't arrest him. You give me enough on a guy and I'll go and arrest him inside the State Capitol. Try what?'

'I'll give you as much as I can.' Told her, throwing in details, that Proctor was persona grata on board the motor-yacht Contessa and was involved in Senator Mathieson Judd's campaign for the presidency. That there was, yes, a Soviet connection and Proctor had already been reported as having telephoned their embassy. 'That's as far as I can go, Monique. It's practically all I know about his operation, except that it has got international dimensions. Now that Proctor's gone to ground, you should use the time to get as close as you can to the Cambridge hit, and work from there.'

She dropped onto the floor, facing me in the lotus position, her thigh muscles carved out of ebony, wrists across her knees and both hands hanging with the fingers wide, making a black and gold screen. 'You're taking a risk,' she said.

'Not really.'

'I go blabber-mouthing that to the FBI, trying to look good, trying to get in there?'

'That wouldn't be very intelligent, would it, at this stage? The FBI are going to be working on the Cambridge hit in any case, and I shouldn't think it'll take them terribly long to find the helicopter and start from there. Tell them if you like that it could be a Mafia hit. It's only my supposition.'

She watched me from the shadows of her lashes. 'Not too many people outside the Mafia go and make a hit like that. Takes money, and it's very exposed. Shows how cool they are, giving us guys the finger, part of Toufexis's personality, he's like that, always keeps just out of reach. So that's all you got to show me?'

'It's dynamite, and you know that. Because of the Judd connection. And the Soviet.'

'Jeeze,' she said in a minute, 'you seen the FBI badge?'

'No.'

'It's real pretty.' Looking down, frowning a little, 'Okay, show you mine. I knew he was calling the Soviet Embassy because once when we got in from the Black Flamingo Club there was a message on his machine and I was near enough to watch the numbers he touched on his phone, next day I checked them out and it was the embassy.'

'He was on coke at that time?'

'Sure, he was riding right along.'

Or he would have waited until he was alone before he made that call. He was still slipping, getting cocky in the coke fumes, some of the Mafia braggadocio rubbing off on him, perhaps it'd give me a chance, take him when he was high, if I could do it before he or the mob had another go and brought it off.

'What did he say on the phone?' I asked her.

'Nothing too much, no names or anything, he was just making a rendezvous.'

'Did you surveille it?'

'The timing was wrong – I was on duty.'

'You didn't sent someone else to cover it?'

'Send someone else and I'm giving the whole deal away, you don't watch your ass in this service you get kicked.'

'That was the only time you heard him phoning the Soviet Embassy?'

'Right. But there were other things.'

She told me she'd followed Proctor once to Quay 19 and saw him board the cutter, nothing new, and told me he'd been going with a girl named Harvester before Cambridge had moved in, nothing new, and then she began talking about the canisters.

'He used to bring them back from the Newsbreak studios, couple of times a week, and a guy came for them and returned them later. He -'

'Do you know what was in them?'

'Sure, I checked a couple for drugs, but they were just video tapes. It could be the guy that came for them took them to Riverside Way, because I saw one of them there that time I checked the place out. It seemed -'

'Did you put them into a VCR?'

'I couldn't do that. They were sealed, besides which, I was looking for a big stash of merchandise and tapes didn't turn me on too much. Anyway they were just commercials.'

'How did you know?'

'They'd got labels. Honi-du, Syn -'

'What's that?'

'Uh? Skin cream. Syncrest, that's an earphone unit, Pizzarita, that's a chain of chic pizza stops. Discreet, that's pads for gals.'

'Go on,' I said.

'What's so big?'

I was dead-pan, but it must be showing in my eyes. 'It might be nothing,' I said. I didn't think so.

'Okay, there was Orange Sunset, Yummies, and Tuxedo Junction, that's a soft drink and a junk bar and a cologne for men. They're all I can remember.'

'They're all you saw.'

'You got it.'

In a moment I asked her, 'Where is Proctor now?'

'Last time I saw him he was climbing up your ass in a Corvette.'

'If you know where he is,' I said carefully, 'and don't want to tell me, I could understand that. But if you know, and choose to tell me, I could give you much more -'

'I ain't lying.'

She didn't put on any false resentment. I thought it was probably true.

'Is there any way,' I asked her, 'you could go into the house again, the one on Riverside?'

'Not without a warrant.'

'And you can't get one.'

'I don't have no reason.'

'There is no way, then, that you could get hold of one of those canisters.'

'No way. They're private property.'

It was nearly three o'clock when I looked at my watch.

'When are you back on duty?'

'Varies, on undercover. Maybe eight, maybe nine, report in.'

'Can I use the phone?'

'Go ahead.'

I went across the room and dialled.

'Yes?'

'DIF.'

'Hang on.' Tench's voice.

In a moment: 'Yes?'

'Just reporting in,' I said.

'Where are you?'

'Oh, not long.'

Any kind of answer will do, as long as it doesn't make sense. Means someone is listening. Then they've got to take it from there, asking suitable questions until they make a hit.

'You need support?'

'No.'

'Medical attention?'

'No.'

'Congratulations.' The last time we'd talked over the phone I'd been in the limousine, waiting to ditch. 'You need transport?'

'No.'

'A rendezvous?'

'Yes.'

Silence for a bit. 'It will have to be in the open.'

I didn't like that but I'd been expecting it. I'd become a security risk. It happens a lot of the time, when the shadow executive becomes so exposed and so vulnerable that the whole of the field becomes a permanent red sector. He is then a danger to his director, and must keep his distance from every base and safe-house because he could be followed there. He becomes a pariah dog, unwelcome at any door and therefore without shelter. Ferris would have a bolt-hole for me but it wouldn't be an established safe-house because I could contaminate it.