Body Guard (2 page)

“Because it’s the only sports car that fits me,” said Devlin. He ordered two beers from the woman who wandered down from the rental shelves to ask them what they wanted.

“Well, it sure as hell doesn’t fit the two of us,” said Bunch.

“That’s another reason.”

Chris had a good start on size, but he knew he would never grow as big as either Bunch or Devlin. Still, he wondered if in time he could gain the kind of easy comfort they carried with them wherever they went. He’d seen it on a couple of people around Creede, weather-toughened men who knew they could handle themselves no matter what. Not that he felt himself awkward or inept—he wasn’t, not in a lot of situations. But there were times and places around this city when he didn’t quite feel he understood what was going on. He knew it was mostly a matter of time and that a man could do a lot worse than have Devlin and Bunch showing him the ropes. In fact, he’d found himself more than once in front of the long mirror on the bathroom door of that dumpy little apartment of his, standing the way he remembered Devlin standing, or turning with the whole upper body the way Bunch did.

The woman brought the two draft beers and took the money down to the cash register to ring up the sale. When she was out of hearing, Devlin’s voice murmured, “What do you have for us, Chris?”

Keeping his face toward the bowlers, Chris scratched at the mustache he’d struggled to grow for this job. “I think I have a lead on a dealer. But I don’t know if he’s working alone or with somebody.”

A question came back. “Name?”

“Dennis Porter. He’s in assembly. I haven’t seen him sell anything, but he hangs around his locker a lot—just what you told me to look for. And yesterday I heard a couple guys joke about going past the candy store.”

Kirk drank deeply and wiped the foam from his lip with his thumb. “I’ll check the company records tomorrow. What do you think his action is?”

The excitement of hunting a real-life dealer—of discovering one himself—was still in Chris’s voice, though he tried to make it sound as if it was no big thrill. “I think it’s pot. Maybe some pills. But like I say, I’m not sure. I didn’t want to move too close without talking to you first.”

“That’s fine, Chris. You just keep playing it cool. Bunch or I will handle any contacts. Anything else?”

There was. He turned back to the bar and waited until a pair of bowlers passed in the aisle before answering. “I got this feeling about a couple other guys. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.”

Kirk knew that sometimes those feelings were truer than evidence. “Where do they work?”

“Over in shipping. Like I say, it’s nothing I can pin down.” Chris had been trying to define it himself, but couldn’t. That was why he wanted to test his reaction against Devlin’s opinion. “There’re three guys always hanging around together. Warehouse crew, real standoffish. Everybody else, you know, they joke around, say ‘How you doing.’ Not these guys.”

“Do they seem to be into anything?”

“Kind of. It’s like they got some business going that they don’t want anybody else to know about, so they’re playing cool about it.”

“Are they homos?”

Chris hadn’t thought of that. “I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s it.” What he didn’t add was that since coming to Denver, he had run across a couple. Their eager interest in him still made the flesh on his back crawl with embarrassment. But the men at the plant didn’t have that about them.

“Have they done anything suspicious?”

“Well, last week during the lunch break I saw them in the warehouse—the receiving section.”

“They’re not supposed to be there?”

“Oh yeah, that’s where they work. But it was lunch hour, and they went in and out three or four times, like they were busy at something.”

“Was the supervisor around?”

“Not on lunch break.”

“Carrying anything?”

“Nothing I could see. That’s the problem.” Newman ran a hand through his rat -tail of long hair, another touch to his disguise. “You think they might be stealing stuff?”

“What’s there to steal?”

That was another puzzle, because most of the units that came into receiving were in sealed canisters: large electronics components from the East Coast plant shipped here to be assembled with the components that came in from the West Coast. He explained that to Devlin.

Kirk was silent. He jotted a few words down in a small notebook. The woman pushed her folded arms off the glass top of the glowing rental shelf and came back to find out if they would like a refill. When she left again, Kirk asked Chris, “Any names?”

“Just the first names. Off their shirts: Eddie, Scott, and Johnny.” He didn’t have last names because it was hard to ask fellow workers a lot of questions about who this guy was or that one. Most of them would ask why the hell he wanted to know. Or else they’d shrug suspiciously and tell him to ask them himself. Unfriendly, yes, but more than that. Chris knew a lot of it was because he looked so young, and even more was the result of a clannishness the workers felt toward anyone who hadn’t been there awhile. A lot of them, even if they weren’t into pilfering or dealing, didn’t like the idea of a company fink. “I got their locker numbers, though.” He slid a scrap of paper down the bar and Devlin covered it with his elbow. “You want me to try and get close to them?”

“No. You just hang loose. You’ve been doing fine, Chris. Really good work. I’ll get to Reznick with this and see how far he wants us to go. Check in tomorrow.” Kirk folded the scrap into his jacket pocket and drank deeply. “Anything you need?”

“No.” But he had to ask. “How much longer you want me on this?”

Kirk studied the light brown eyes behind the rimless glasses. The lenses were clear glass, he knew, another cosmetic touch to emphasize Newman’s youth and apparent innocence. “It could be another three or four weeks. It’s hard to say. But listen, if you want out, just tell me.”

“No, no—nothing like that. I was just curious, you know.”

And, Kirk thought, perhaps getting a little lonely, too. Even the experienced agents hit those times when the assumed life seemed to isolate them more and more from the world they were familiar with. Then a hunger for old normalities rose like an ache in the chest. “You’re doing a fine job, Chris. Just don’t take any chances, hear me?”

“Yeah. Hey, don’t worry about me. There’s nothing to this.”

“And don’t get too cocky,” said Kirk. “That’s when mistakes are made.”

Chris sobered quickly. “All right, Dev. I hear you. I’ll play it cool.”

“Okay. Any hint of trouble, bail out and call me right away.”

“Will do.”

In the bar mirror, Kirk watched the young man drain his glass and, still apparently ignoring the two large men on the stools, stroll out the door.

Bunch asked, “How’s he holding up?”

“He’s a little nervous. But trying hard.”

“Think he’ll do?”

“Sure.”

They spent another five minutes at the bar and then followed Chris out. Kirk didn’t expect Newman to have a tail, but he didn’t want to be too careless about the possibility either.

After a while in this business, Kirk knew, you discovered there really were people who lived by only one rule: what’s in it for them. Any other rule, or person, that got in their way was expendable. It was something Bunch had known all his life, he told Devlin once. The only thing that surprised him was Devlin’s not discovering it sooner. But then Bunch believed Kirk had led a sheltered life.

Crammed into the Healey and back in the flow of traffic, Bunch asked, “So what did he tell you?”

Kirk explained it and Bunch shifted restlessly on the narrow seat of the car. One of his shoulders and an arm hung over the door’s padded lip. The other shoulder jammed against Kirk’s and made it hard for him to shift. “If the only dope around is pot, Chris should be able to smell it,” Bunch said.

“Unless they’re smoking it outside in their cars or at the motor pool.”

“I don’t know, Dev. That crap sticks like a whore’s perfume. You can smell it in people’s clothes and hair.” He added, “I still think I should have been the one to go in.”

“Let’s give him a chance, Bunch. He has to learn sooner or later.”

“Sure, sure. I’m willing if Reznick is. He’s the one paying the bill.”

Which, Kirk knew, might be a problem. The regional manager for Advantage Corp. had urged haste in the investigation and hadn’t been especially pleased to learn it might take four to six weeks. Now he had to be told it might take longer if there was an extensive network in the plant. Reznick was a decisive executive. He wanted things done and he wanted them done yesterday, by God. And, he made it clear, he didn’t tolerate screw-ups. But in the long run, Kirk believed, it would be cheapest to do the job right, and that was what he intended to advise the man.

M
R.
H
UMPHRIES HAD
been told nine o’clock. He was on time. Kirk wasn’t. Humphries waited restlessly, feeling awkward and embarrassed to have everyone who passed on the second-floor landing glance at him and guess his business. The darkened glass of the door said only “Kirk and Associates,” but Humphries felt people knew it was the office of a private investigator. And they knew he was in trouble. Probably scorned him for needing help, just as he had secretly scorned others for their weaknesses or illnesses. He glanced at his Rolex and promised himself three minutes more, max. Then he was out of here. This had been Mitsuko’s idea in the first place, not his. She was the one who kept bringing up those worrisome what-ifs. She even seemed to enjoy it. It was a cultural thing, he knew—the Chrysanthemum and the Sword view of the world. At least he had to view it that way, because in other ways—so many of them—she was the woman who fulfilled his every dream. In fact, he could feel—just standing here and thinking about her— a gentle tightening between his legs, that strange clenching she knew so well how to stimulate. And then equally well how to relieve. Still, she wasn’t standing here in public making a fool of herself.

Hurrying shoes ran up the iron stairway and echoed in the atrium that formed the center of the remodeled warehouse. Mr. Humphries saw a tall man, younger than himself, take the stairs two at a time. It was, he guessed, the dilatory Mr. Kirk, and Humphries wasn’t all that impressed with what he saw.

A bit late from the morning workout, Devlin sprinted up the stairs toward the man who stood tensely beside the office door. Bunch was still jogging on the Cherry Creek bike path and would reach the office in half an hour or so. With the kind of business Kirk and Associates catered to—industrial security was supposed to be their specialty—few clients came to the office. Most of the contacts came in over the telephone, and then either Bunch or Devlin would follow up with a visit to the prospective customer’s office. Moreover, the phone answerer and fax machine stood watch twenty-four hours a day, so their sense of opening and closing was fairly casual. Which, Kirk supposed, had irritated the slender man in the expensive gray suit, because he let Kirk see him glance at his gold watch as he unlocked the door.

“Sorry I’m late, Mr. Humphries.” He motioned to the only visitor’s chair in the room and opened panels in the window to air out the overnight stuffiness. The red message light blinked on the recorder, and Kirk rewound the tape and turned it off as he sat down. “You say you need a bodyguard?”

Humphries was somewhere in his mid-thirties, possibly nearing forty. But he had one of those faces that aged well and appeared healthily free of wrinkles. Sandy, straight hair fell from a part designed to cover a thinning spot on his crown. He had blue eyes that bulged slightly, hinting of a possible thyroid problem. “First, I’d like to know a little about your qualifications. What guarantees can you offer for such work, Mr.—ah— Kirk?”

Kirk smiled. His face lost some of its lean wariness and made him look even younger than Humphries had assumed.

“As I mentioned yesterday, we don’t often do such work. But if we can’t help you, I’ll recommend several agencies who might.”

“If you can’t do it, why did you tell me to come down here?” Humphries almost added, “And then make me stand waiting at your door.”

“I said we don’t often do it. It depends.”

“On what?”

The young man ticked off the points on three fingers. “On the reasons you need protection. On the nature of the protection you need. On the range of commitment you’re asking for.” He leaned back and placed his fingers together just in front of his chin. Humphries had an intimation that despite his youthfulness, the man might be very capable indeed. Certainly he spoke like a gentleman and not out of the side of his mouth as he’d assumed private detectives usually did.

“Do you want to give me a little background?” Kirk watched Humphries think it over for a few seconds. The long fingers of the man’s left hand twisted a ring on his right. The large wad of ornately carved gold bore Greek letters on its red stone. That, the suit, the supple leather of his shoes, all breathed money, and Kirk was glad the building’s cleaning crew had made its rounds last night.

“I’m not sure how long we’ll need—ah—protection. I’m not even sure I should be here. But my wife insisted.” Kirk said nothing to help out and Humphries took a deep breath. “I think I’m being followed.”

“Why, Mr. Humphries?”

“Well, I’ve seen this car repeatedly. A brown one. And I’m also sure there have been prowlers around my house.”

Kirk was more specific. “Why would someone want to follow you?”

“I don’t know. That’s one of the things I want you to find out. But someone’s watching me, and I’m worried. My wife and I are both worried.”

“Have you gone to the police? It would save a lot of money and probably be very effective.”

“I’ve talked to a policeman. An Officer Fredericks. He said there was nothing they could do. He said no crime had been committed yet.” Humphries snorted angrily. “I guess I’m supposed to wait until after I’ve been attacked to file a complaint.”

Devlin studied the man’s pale eyes and wondered what he was hiding from him and why. It wouldn’t be the first time a client held back the real reason he needed a private detective. “If we do take the assignment, Mr. Humphries, we’ll need to know as much as you do about why someone might want to follow you.”