“Thank you!”
CHAPTER SIX
This Whore for Hire
The “Thank you” was the result of Lieutenant Rodriguez having explained to Regina Blue why he was releasing her. Of course he hadn’t revealed Hubert Knotts’ identity. But he had warned Regina to close her blinds since the Peeping Tom would undoubtedly go right on peeping.
Regina didn’t share the Lieutenants antipathy to voyeurs. She appreciated that the peeper had put his own neck in a noose by coming forward to clear her. And so she had ignored Rodriguez’ advice and shown her appreciation. After which she had gone to sleep.
The phone woke her at about ten the next morning. It was Angus MacTeague. He wanted to see Regina. “Business,” he specified. “
“I’m sorry, Angus.” Regina cut him short. I’m not in that business any more. I’ve quit. I’ve hung up my diaphragm.”
“Your diaphragm? But you always use birth control pills.”
“I was speaking metaphorically.”
“Oh. Well, the business I mean is mine, not yours. I’d appreciate it if you'd come up to my office, Regina.”
Curious, she agreed to be there that afternoon and hung up the phone. It was then that she realized she had actually turned down a good customer. She was going to quit. Knowing she had really decided made her happy. The next step was to choose a new career for herself.
But what?
Well, a wry thought, her experience should certainly qualify her to teach sex education in the schools. But they’d never hire her. They’d employ some computerized prude with a mechanized text to lay it on the kids sans joy, but never anyone who might teach them that sex is fun.
A Black Belt who had thrown her own instructor on more than one occasion, she could probably get a job as a karate instructor. But she’d been working with her body for seven years. For a change she’d like something that involved her mind as well.
Regina remembered the previous night and smiled to herself. Maybe she should become a stripteaser. Seriously, she had the looks and the contacts to be- come either an actress or a model. Glamorous as these professions were though, they couldn’t match the life of a call girl for excitement. But then what sort of work could be as exciting as what she’d been doing?
She stumbled into the answer during her meeting with Angus MacTeague. His office was in the ultra-modern ATOMICS Agency Building near Lincoln Center. As Regina approached the imposing edifice, she spied a helicopter taking off from the flat roof.
She passed through the main entrance which was framed by giant brass letters spelling out the name Of the detective agency as an acrostic:
A dultery!
T heft!
O bscenity!
M urder!
I nvestigations!
C onfidential!
S urefire!
The building had been under construction during the time Regina and MacTeague were in Jamaica. The detective-tycoon had spoken of it with pride. “ATOMICS is really a conglomerate of interlocking operations with offices around the world. For the past couple of years, it’s really been outgrowing itself,” he’d told Regina. “This new building will really allow us to coordinate things properly for the first time. It will be our main headquarters. All our files will be right there—-over three million dossiers detailed in ways you’d never dream; Credit information, family medical histories, sexual aberrations, political activities, etcetera; all cross-indexed. There will be a computer operation second only to the government’s space program. A department will be set up to maintain an ongoing evaluation of cases progress. One whole floor will be taken up by our billing and payroll division. We’ll have crime labs—chemical, biological, and so forth—modeled along FBI lines and quite probably even more expertly manned.
“There won’t be any room for your detectives, Regina said idly.
“Don’t need any. They can’t work out of there, shouldn’t even be seen anywhere near there. They have to maintain their anonymity. Even their reports will be delivered by courier. They use fronts like an ad agency, or a law firm, or an import house. ATOMICS has them all over the world. If a client calls ATOMICS, a special department handles the call and sets up an appointment with an investigator on the premises of the cover firm. The client’s anonymity is protected that way too.”
“What kind of cases do you handle mostly?”
“Adultery. And the loosening of the divorce laws hasn’t changed that, either. It’s human nature. A woman suspects her spouse is stepping out on her, she wants to know everything about the competition she can learn. A husband thinks he’s being cuckolded, he wants all the tawdry details. Human nature. Still,” MacTeague added, “while we handle more hanky-panky than anything else, that’s not our most lucrative business. What really brings the money in is industrial espionage.”
Regina remembered what she’d been told about receiving a tip on the stock market; she was quick to appreciate the connection. “What about regular espionage?” she asked. “You know. Like James Bond.”
“Nothing so glamorous. But we’ve been known to dabble.”
“Ooh! Tell me!” Regina clapped her hands.
“Sorry. Classified information.”
“Do you spy for other governments?” Regina persisted.
“Some times. But we never accept an assignment of that nature until after it’s been cleared with Washington.”
“Who clears it?”
“Somebody so high up that if I mentioned the name, I would immediately vanish before your very eyes,” MacTeague teased. “Poof! No more Angus! just like that. Poof!”
“Do you ever work with the CIA?”
“One time or another we’ve done work for all the government intelligence services. CIA, Treasury, Secret Service, FBI, Army Intelligence—-all of them. They call on us if they have to augment their own operations.” MacTeague chuckled.
“What’s funny?”
“Once it worked out that ATOMICS was working for two of them at once. Never mind which two. One government intelligence agency hired us to cross-check a second agency’s personnel who were engaged in infiltrating a militant segment of the anti-war movement. They suspected that the second agency’s infiltrators were really counter-agents delivering false information. Meanwhile, the second agency retained us to check on the finks placed in the peace movement by the first agency.”
“Sounds confusing.”
“It was. Two of the first agency’s operators were actually checking the agency itself out for a third government intelligence service. One guy working for the second agency was spying on it for a fourth one. At one radical meeting attended by sixty-seven people, fifty-two of them were infiltrators. The other fifteen were recruited by the agents. Where would the Militant Left be without government manpower?”
“And the taxpayer foots the bill!” Regina was indignant.
“Which is one reason we’re able to lie out here under the glorious Jamaica sun,” MacTeague had pointed out. “So stop stewing about it and start peeling. . . .”
Now, as Regina was ushered into Angus Mac-Teague’s richly understated office in the ATOMICS Agency Building, she remembered what he’d told her about the organization. MacTeague greeted her with his customary savoir faire, guided her to a comfortable chair, and mixed her a cocktail at the mahogany bar. Then he eased into his reason for asking her to come.
“I see you made the front pages.” MacTeague toyed with his drink.
“It was easy. Anybody who finds a murdered heiress in their living-room can make the front pages.”
“How well did you know this Faith Venable?”
“Why do you ask? Is ATOM I CS involved?”
MacTeague picked up a tabloid from his desk and handed it to her. The headline said “GAY BOY AC-CUSED IN SLAYING OF CULTIST SISTER.” Regina quickly read the story: