"Sonovabitch!" he said, with a quick glance at Joey. "I should have told him to take his lousy H and ram it up his… Where the hell do you think you're going, Duchess?"
She looked at him over her shoulder. "Somebody's got to-"
"Nobody's got to nothing," Martell said. The lapse into foreign obscenity seemed to have shaken him; now he was playing Fenn to the hilt. I was interested to see this. It meant that he wasn't too sure of how Joey would react to his real identity. He gave me a shove. "You get out to the car, quick, both of you, and watch yourselves.
You, Shorty, particularly! You aren't fooling me with that dumb and innocent look!"
I liked that. Whether as Fenn or Martell, he was having to remind himself, now, that he knew all about me, and that I was a potentially dangerous person. He'd taken me too easily, and Paul had probably been easy, too, and when I'd had a chance to act, just now, I'd taken shelter on the floor instead. It had been a long time since he'd had to deal with anything but policemen and hoodlums. It had been a long time since he'd had to deal with any of us, and then he'd done all right, in Berlin. His brain was warning him not to underestimate the enemy, but his ego was telling him these American agents weren't so much.
Beth said, horrified, "But you can't just leave the boy-"
Martell grinned at her. "No, I guess you're right. Joey, take your gun and go in there and finish him off.
That's what you meant, wasn't it, Duchess?"
She stared at the two of them, pale and wide-eyed; then she gave a little gasp and ran towards the front door. Martell laughed.
"After her, Joey. Keep an eye on her. I'll watch this one."
"But you said-" Joey had his gun out.
"Ah, the hell with the kid. He's not going anywhere. Let's get out of here." Martell gestured with the foreign automatic. "All right, Shorty. Slow and easy." He grinned at me as I moved past. "Just because The Man wants some information out of you doesn't mean you're bullet-proof. There's a lot of places I can shoot you where you'll live long enough to talk."
That answered one question: why I was still alive. It looked as if the day ahead might be long and eventful, not to say painful. Joey had disappeared outside. I walked slowly towards the door, and spoke without turning my head.
"Having fun, Vladimir?"
I heard him chuckle. "I make a very fine American gangster, do I not, Eric?"
"That foreign gun's a little out of character."
"Not at all. They are very popular among the people who are hep, as the saying goes. You must be new. I do not recall seeing your dossier, and I have a good memory."
I could have told him he just hadn't checked recently enough, or far enough back-they might still have something on me from the war, although we were supposed to be allies at the time-but it wasn't the place to boast of my vast and varied experience.
"I've seen yours," I said.
"That's very good," he said. "Then you know I do not fool when I tell you to be careful, very careful. No false moves. And no conversation with my Neanderthal assistant. If you should be thinking of trying to play on his patriotic sentiments by revealing me as a subversive person-"
"Has he got any sentiments, patriotic or otherwise? I saw no signs of them."
"You do him an injustice. I'm sure Joey is full of nice American sentiments about country and motherhood. If you try to talk with him, I will have to shoot you, even if it means that the objectionable Mr. Fredericks never finds his enchanting daughter. Where is she, by the way?"
"She's safe, for the time being."
He laughed. "So. Well, we have lots of time, Eric. It will give us something to do while we wait, finding out."
In passing, I glanced into the living room where young Logan lay near the fireplace. Well, I'd left better men in worse places. He seemed to be still breathing. You never know. One man will die from an infected hangnail, and the next will survive a machine-gun burst you'd think would kill a rhino. Outside, Joey and Beth were waiting by a big Chrysler sedan that looked familiar. It was the same car in which I'd been brought to Fredericks the day before.
"She'll drive us," Martell said, jerking his head towards Beth. "You know the Buckman cabin, Duchess?" He was Fern again. "Well, take us there… Joey, you watch her close. I'll ride in back with Shorty."
We drove off in pale daylight. Twenty-four hours ago, I recalled, I'd been standing on a hill in the desert with a girl and a pair of binoculars, watching a dog catch a rabbit. Now the dog was dead, the girl hated me, and I was watching the sun come up in another place, waiting for some men to catch a man. The cast was different, but the script didn't seem to vary much. I heard Martell laugh softly to himself.
"That Duke must be quite a character," he said in Fern's best voice. "You've got to hand it to him, cool as a breeze. The Man was telling me; he just got word from a spotter down on the border who saw him go through earlier. They stopped him at customs in that damned imported hot-rod and asked him if he had anything to declare. 'Why, certainly,' said the Duke, 'two quarts of tequila and a gallon of rum.' 'I'm sorry, sir,' said the customs guy, 'you're only entitled to bring in one gallon of alcoholic beverage; we'll have to ask you to take back the excess or pour it out.' 'I say, old chap, that does seem a pity, but the law is the law,' says the Duke, and he gets out and opens up the trunk and pours out the tequila casually-standing there with the trunk wide open and God knows how much horse in the spare tire! The spotter almost ifipped, but the Duke never turned a hair. He closed the trunk, got back into that bomb of his, gave the guy a jaunty salute, and drove off smiling."
Joey said, "The spare tire? That's a hell of a corny place to hide it."
"Maybe, but he made it, didn't he? The Man says he should be here in four-five hours, the way he's pushing.
Keep your eyes on the road, Duchess."
Beth asked breathlessly, "What are you going to do to him?"
"Just drive, Gorgeous," Martell said. "You know what they say; ask a silly question, get a silly answer. That was a hell of a silly question, now, wasn't it?"
The old Buckman cabin was off the road a little ways, and the low Chrysler had a hard time making it over the ruts. Pretty soon they'll start building cars that you can't even get over the hump where your driveway meets the street. Beth stalled twice, braking hard for rocks and bumps.
Martell said, "Just goose it, Duchess. It's not your car, what the hell do you care what happens to The Man's muffler?"
We crashed and thrashed up to the place and went out and went inside. It wasn't much of a house, even for back in the mountains. Whoever the Buckmans had been, they'd moved out long ago. There was a cot, a table, and some wooden chairs in various stages of decay, in the largest room, the one we entered. There was a bedroom of sorts with a built-in double bunk visible through one door, and a kitchen with an old, wood-burning range visible through the other. There's nothing deader-looking than one of those old Iron stoves rusting away from disuse.
"Over here, Duchess," Martell said, dusting off a chair with a flourish and taking her arm to seat her. His hand stayed a little longer and covered a little more territory than absolutely necessary. "Sit here and stay put."
Beth sat down, trying to ignore his touch. She had the prissy, head-high, eyes-forward look a certain kind of nice girl gets when she hears a wolf-whistle on the street. I hoped she didn't mean it. I hoped to God she didn't mean it. I was going to need her badly, soon.
Martell turned to me. "You," he said, "way over here. Now let's hear you talk. Where's Miss Fredericks? Where are you keeping her?" He looked down at me and sighed, and drew a pair of pigskin gloves from his pocket and started pulling them on. "Keep them covered, Joey," he said without turning his head. "This one wants it the hard way…"