Some women can hit you with a visual impact you'll never forget. There aren't many of them, but there don't have to be many to leave a trail of men whose minds will always be impressed by a single contact. They don't have to be beautiful in any special sense, or with bodies specifically tuned to certain concepts, but to each viewer, they are the total thing that makes them woman.
This one had crazy electric blue eyes that could smile, as well as a full-lipped mouth, and when she said "Good morning," it was like being licked by a soft, satin-furry llama.
She had on a suit. The shoulders were broad, but not with the padding that was in style in 1988. She was real under the jacket and the military cut. It was tailored around beautifully full breasts, but short enough to show the generous swell of her hips. And she had a dancer's legs, muscularly rounded, but perfectly curved. They hardly make them like that any more, I thought. What she's doing here has to be a story by itself.
I said, "Damn!" under my breath and grinned back at her. "My name is Michael Hammer, ma'am. I'm an old friend of the general and I have something very important to see him about, and I'm hoping he'll have time to hear me out." I held out my wallet with the PI license and gun permit behind the plastic windows, wondering where the hell my city schmarts had disappeared to.
She let out a disconcerting laugh. "Well, Mr. Hammer, it is nice to see you. Please, come in."
"Thanks." I stepped up and walked past her. She was another big woman, with elfish grace, yet strangely athletic motion. She closed the door with a sweep of her hand, then thumbed open a panel and touched a red lighted button that went out momentarily and turned green.
"May I have your weapon?" she asked me.
I flipped out the .45 and handed it to her. She took it, slipped it inside a small wall closet and covered that too. "You didn't ask me for a throw-away piece." I said.
"That's because you haven't any." She smiled back. "Keys, pocket change and possibly a penknife, but nothing more. The instrument is very sensitive."
"Supposing somebody just comes busting in here-"
"Why talk of unpleasant things?" she said. "Now, I haven't introduced myself. I am Edwina West, General Skubal's secretary."
"Hold it."
She paused. "Mr. Hammer?"
"Let's keep it simple and square, Miss West. No secretary garbage."
"Oh?"
"You're CIA, aren't you?"
There was no hesitation at all. "Yes, I am. Why should you ask?"
"Women don't generally refer to a gun as a weapon. You knew what a throwaway was."
Her smile had real laughter in it. "I'll have to remember that," she told me. "Do you like me any less now?"
It was my turn to laugh. "You're some kind of doll, Miss West. You make a guy feel like he walked into a propeller."
"Please, call me Edwina."
"Okay, Edwina. Just tell me . . . is it genetic?"
She took my arm and folded it around her own. "My mother seemed to have some sort of attraction for men too. Don't all women have that?"
"Honey, not the way you have it. You must have been a terror when you were growing up."
"Do you know how old I am, Mr. Hammer?"
"Mike," I told her. "And I'd say you were forty, forty-two." Usually, when you lay that on a beautiful woman you feel the chill. A cold can come off them like a shore-bound fog and you get the thrust of mental death.
But not her. She said, "I am forty-eight. Does that disappoint you?"
I said, "Watch it, Edwina, you're touching nerves I didn't know I had."
She squeezed my arm with her fingers. It was a long, gentle, but soft grasp and she said, "Don't be surprised at what I know about you. I've read the profile the general has on you, the accounts the press have touched on and a lot of information you probably consider extremely personal."
I stopped, turned us around and looked at the door forty feet behind us. We were in a big foyer, a generous room lined with expensive fixtures I hadn't noticed until now. I said, "Kid, we just met, we walked about thirteen yards together and I could write a book about what's happened inside three minutes. Does that happen all the time?"
The way her mouth worked when it was starting to smile was startling. Those incredibly blue eyes were almost hypnotic. "Only when I want it to," she said. "And there is something else."
"What's that?"
She turned me around toward a pair of heavy hand-carved oaken doors, tugged very easily on an ornate brass handle and the door opened noiselessly and without effort. "That I will tell you later."
The house was real enough, the kind you could get lost in, the kind they used for background in period motion pictures, or classic horror films.
Edwina gave me a small, tour on the way to see the general, but everything got lost in the throaty rich tone of her voice. There was music in it, low and demanding. There was a light touch of lust and overtones I could feel, but couldn't describe, and when we got to the final door I began to wonder what the hell had happened to me. I was in some kid's damn daydream acting like I had my head up my ass and enjoyed it. I finally let out a laugh and she knew I was laughing at myself, gave me one of those lovely grins back and knocked on the door.
A buzzer clicked and the door swung open. We stepped inside and the door closed automatically.
A light was on us, so bright it cut off all vision of anything behind it like a solid wall.
I heard a chuckle, and a voice that hadn't changed at all with the years said, "Good afternoon, Michael."
The light went off with a metallic ping and another came on that lit up the office. Back there at the same old desk, but now surrounded by rows and banks of electronic equipment, was General Rudy Skubal.
I said, "Hello, General."
"What do you think?"
"Pretty damn dramatic," I told him.
"You're only looking at the surface." He waved at us. "Come on over here." He pushed himself out of his chair and held out his hand. I took it, enjoying the good grip the old man still had. "How long has it been, Michael?"
Hell, he would have known to the day, but I said, "Many moons, General. You still look pretty sharp."
"Eyewash. I'm becoming enfeebled. It's a pain in the butt, yet unavoidable." He tapped the side of his head. "Up here I can go on indefinitely, and with the machines much can be accomplished, but the old physical thrill of the chase is gone. I haven't popped anybody in the teeth in so long I hardly remember what it sounded like."
"It never sounds," I said. "They break off quietly. If you cut your hand on them, you can get one hell of an infection."
General Skubal squinched up his face and shook his head angrily. "Hell, man, you see that? You remember? Damn, you still get to do those things and have the fun. You kick ass and get laid and I push buttons."
"Don't sweat it, General. It's only fun when you live to remember it," I reminded him, "and with the security you have here you'll live long enough."
He ran his fingers through his mop of blazing white hair and let me see a small smile. "Don't overrate Edwina here. She causes me more anxious moments than the enemy. You know she's CIA, don't you?"
"Of course."
"You tell him?" he asked her.
"No, he knew," she answered.
"See, that's why I wanted to recruit this guy," he said. "What an agent he would have made." He paused, looked at the both of us a second, a wrinkle showing in his forehead. "He would have straightened you out, gal."
She looked straight at me, a bright blue stare daring me to say it. So I said it. "General, you never straighten out lovely curves like that."
I watched old Skubie frown again and look up at me from under his whiskery eyebrows. Finally he said, "Edwina, go rassle us some coffee and Danish, okay?"