Cowboy Angels (29 page)

‘Carol Dvorak is here.’

‘Where are you?’

‘In the phone booth in the diner.’

‘Can you see her? What’s she doing now?’

‘The phone’s in back, I can’t see the street.’ Linda’s voice was pitched a little high but otherwise she sounded calm. ‘Last time I looked, she was talking with those men in the van. She’s had her hair cut and she’s wearing these big sunglasses, but it’s her.’

‘Are the MPs still there?’

‘They left a few minutes ago. Then a big black car drew up and she stepped out.’

‘Anyone else?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Take off,’ Stone said. ‘Get to Grand Central Station and have our friend’s people send you through the mirror.’

‘I’ll see you,’ Linda Waverly said, and cut the connection.

‘Trouble?’ Freddy said solicitously.

‘Can Company officers bust in here without a warrant?’

‘Back in the old days, maybe, but not now. Not unless they want to risk causing a diplomatic incident. Frankly, I’m surprised they’re allowed to sit out there on the street.’

‘How about the COILE?’

‘Those two officers who talked to me yesterday walked into the club around midnight, but they weren’t trying to arrest me. Before that, Stein’s people picked me up on the street. If the COILE want to turn this place over, they’ll need probable cause, they’ll need a warrant, and they’ll need to show the warrant to the people who run this block and look after my interests. You’re lucky no one saw you come in, Adam, or you’d be in real trouble around about now.’

‘One of your guys saw me. I left him tied up in your hallway.’

Freddy pursed his lips and made a kissing sound. The little dog in his lap cocked its head and looked up at him. ‘You just can’t get the help, can you? If Stein has a warrant on file - and I wouldn’t put it past him - his officers could be here any moment. If you’re going to ask me about a way out of here that no one but me knows about, there isn’t one. And there’s an unmarked car parked in the alley out back with two men inside, so I advise you not to try that route.’

‘I’ll walk out the front door after you answer a couple more questions, Freddy. We were talking about where Tom Waverly stayed when he visited this sheaf. Which of your repossessed apartments was it?’

‘You have a wild look about you, Adam.’

‘Don’t try to palm me off with some hotel, Freddy. And don’t make me hurt the dog, I’d hate myself afterwards.’

Freddy gave an address, and the name that Tom Waverly had used while living there, adding, ‘I was going to tell you anyway.’

‘I know you were. You were also going to tell me how he escaped after he killed that woman.’

Freddy looked at him.

‘Those people who look after you, I bet they have an interest in the old gate under Grand Central Station. I’m sure you remember it, Freddy. It was the way we got people in and out of the sheaf during Operation LOOKING GLASS. I think that’s how Tom got out of this sheaf with a little help from your gangster friends.’

Freddy shrugged. ‘You’ll have to ask them.’

‘I think I will.’

‘Keep me out of it if you do. And Adam? I hope this puts me on the right side.’

‘I don’t know how many sides there are yet, let alone which are right and which are wrong.’ Stone said, and pulled a leather belt from the muddle of clothes on the floor. ‘I’m going to have to strap you to your bed, Freddy. Try not to take it personally.’

The man Stone had knocked out and tied up was starting to come around, jerking on the white carpet of the hallway, making a muffled growl into his gag and giving Stone a cock-eyed glare as he stepped past. Stone locked the door of the apartment behind him and at the bottom of the stairs eased back the fire exit door and checked out the club, relieved to see that the bartender had the place to himself. The man challenged Stone as he walked out across the dim room, but raised his hands when Stone showed him the Colt .45.

‘I bet you keep a peacemaker under there,’ Stone said. ‘How about taking it out and laying it on the counter?’

The bartender produced an aluminium baseball bat and a snub-nosed .38 revolver with duct tape wrapped around its grip. Stone tossed the bat across the room, pocketed the revolver, and told the bartender to come around the counter and sit on the floor with his hands on his head.

‘Whatever problem you have with Mr Layne, it’s nothing to do with me,’ the man said.

Stone dropped the keys in his lap. ‘Close your eyes and count to a hundred. When you’re done, go upstairs and check on your boss and his friends.’

He took a quick peek through the bull’s-eye port in the front door and saw Carol Dvorak standing at the rear of the van parked across the street, talking to a tall young man wearing a shoulder holster over his short-sleeved shirt. She was dressed in a black jacket and a thigh-skimming skirt, and a big purse was slung over her shoulder. Her eyes were masked by sunglasses, and her hair had been dyed blonde and cropped close. It wasn’t a bad disguise, but even without Linda’s description he would have recognised the woman anywhere. He thought for a moment, then put on his thick-rimmed glasses, stuck the Colt in the waistband of his khaki pants, its grip snug against the small of his back, and took a breath and walked out into the hot sunlight.

Carol Dvorak glanced at him and looked away, and for a moment he thought he’d be able to walk away free and clear. But then she looked at him again, and reached into her purse and pulled out a pistol. He smiled at her as she trotted across the street toward him, followed by the young officer. His hands raised to shoulder-height, the .38 revolver dangling by its trigger guard from the forefinger of his left hand, he said, ‘How are you, Officer Dvorak?’

‘Stay right where you are,’ she said, watching him over the sight of her pistol as the young officer approached warily.

Stone said, ‘Is this guy with GYPSY, Officer Dvorak, or is he unwitting?’

‘Lose the gun, Mr Stone,’ the young officer said. He was trying to sound calm and reasonable, but there was a slight quaver in his voice and an unsteadiness in his gaze.

‘Do it,’ Dvorak said. Her jaw was puffy and her voice congested.

Stone swung the revolver to and fro, getting the young officer’s attention, then flung it in a long arc across the street. The man’s gaze twitched, following the revolver, and Stone stepped in, grabbed the man’s wrist, thumb pressing into the nerve cluster there, shutting it down. The man dropped his pistol and Stone pivoted on the ball of his right foot as if he and the man were partners in a dance, his left forearm in a choke-hold across the man’s throat as he pulled the Colt .45 from his waistband.

Dvorak stepped back, her pistol jerking in tight little arcs as she sought to aim it at Stone’s face, and Stone shoved the young officer toward her as she fired, two shots that struck the man in the chest. He grunted and collapsed face down on the sidewalk, and Stone shot Dvorak in her right shoulder. Exactly where he’d shot Tom Waverly when SWIFT SWORD had gone bad. The impact spun her around and she dropped her pistol. Stone kicked it into the gutter, seeing in his peripheral vision pedestrians scattering and the back door of the white van across the street slamming open. He put two shots in the door and a man fell down behind it, and he shot out the van’s nearside tyres. Dvorak sat on the sidewalk, clutching her shoulder. She’d lost her sunglasses and was giving Stone a death-ray stare.

The temptation to shoot her was there and gone. No. He needed to talk to her.

‘Are you going to walk,’ he said, ‘or am I going to have to knock you stupid and carry you?’

‘I’m not going anywhere with you,’ Dvorak said, and there was a squeal of tyres and a blare of horns down the block as a battered black car sped through the intersection, swerving wide to overtake a slow-moving army truck, screeching to a halt beside Stone and Dvorak. Its door flew open. Linda Waverly was behind the wheel. She’d lost her wig and her red hair was loose about her face as she leaned across the passenger seat and shouted at Stone, telling him to get his ass inside.

Stone yanked open the back door of the car, hauled Dvorak to her feet and shoved her inside, picked up her purse and swung in beside her and slammed the door as Linda took off in a squeal of tyres. She made a handbrake turn at the next intersection and accelerated down a one-way street the wrong way, working the stick shift with one hand and the steering wheel with the other as oncoming traffic swerved and flashed headlights and blew horns. She went up on the sidewalk to get around a bus, turned left against a red light and settled into a steady stream of traffic heading uptown, finally sparing a second to glance back at Stone. Her face was flushed with excitement.

‘I told you to get out of there,’ Stone said.

‘I wasn’t about to leave you behind,’ Linda said.

Dvorak had pushed herself into a corner of the back seat, her skirt bunched on her thighs, her face grey with shock. The right side of her jacket was wet with blood and her hand was underneath it, clutching her wounded shoulder.

‘Nice disguise,’ Stone told her. ‘After our little disagreement back on the train I guess you must be travelling under an alias. Who sent you after me?’

Dvorak shook her head, then gasped when Stone punched her in the shoulder as hard as he could. ‘I know you’re with GYPSY,’ he said. ‘I bet those guys in the van watching Freddy’s place are with GYPSY too. I want to know who sent you here.’

‘I’m a loyal American.’

Her gaze was hard and bright and full of hate.

‘Who told you to kidnap me and Ms Waverly?’

‘I picked up the order at a drop.’

From the front seat Linda said, ‘Where do you want me to go?’

‘Just keep driving,’ Stone said, and put his pistol in Dvorak’s face. ‘Where were you going to take us?’

‘Fuck you.’

‘They’ll have made the car,’ Linda said.

‘We’ll see about that. One last chance, Ms Dvorak. Who sent you?’

‘You won’t find it so easy to get away from us this time,’ Dvorak said. ‘And if you do, we’ll go after that woman’s kid. Petey. We’ll take the little fucker—’

She screamed when Stone punched her in the shoulder again. Linda lost control of the car for a moment, braking hard just before it slammed into a taxi. Horns blared, Stone grabbed the back of the seat to steady himself, and Dvorak pulled her hand from under her jacket, holding a little two-shot .22. Stone shot her twice in the heart, the noise tremendous inside the car, blood spray across the door, across the rear window, hot blood spattering his face and the glasses he was still wearing and the front of his tunic.

Linda got the car going again, saying ‘Shit, shit, shit’ as she drove. Stone took off his glasses and wiped blood from his face with his sleeve, dropped the empty clip from his Colt and shoved in the spare. He searched Dvorak’s purse and found ID and travel orders identifying her as a captain in Army intelligence, a cell phone with no numbers in its memory or redial, a wallet stuffed with local bills. Linda was watching him in the rearview mirror. He said, ‘Pull over.’

‘Thank you would be nice.’

‘For giving her a chance to draw on me?’

‘For saving your neck.’

‘You should have cut and run, like I told you to. If this woman had had more backup we’d both be bleeding out on the sidewalk.’ Stone spotted a subway entrance, pointed to it, and said again, ‘Pull over. We need to lose this car right away.’

He got out of the car and headed straight for the subway, stripping off his blood-spattered tunic and dumping it in a trash basket. He was pumped up and furious. He knew he should have checked the woman for a backup piece.

Linda caught up with him, half-jogging, half-walking to match his long strides, saying breathlessly, ‘We left a body back there.’

‘I left two more on the sidewalk outside Freddy’s place. Want to go back and clear them up too?’

‘This is how it works in the field? You shoot someone and walk away?’

‘If you have to.’

‘My father told me I would need your help,’ Linda said as she followed Stone down the steps to the subway. ‘But that wasn’t why I came back.’

‘You took a big risk,’ Stone said, and realised that he was taking his anger out on her. ‘You took a risk, but you did the right thing. It wasn’t you that screwed up back there. It was me.’

‘We got away, so we did something right,’ Linda said, and asked if they were going back to Walter Lipscombe’s place, or to the gate under Grand Central Station.

‘Freddy gave me the address of your father’s apartment,’ Stone said.

After a moment, Linda said. ‘Do you think they know about it? Carol Dvorak’s friends from GYPSY, I mean.’

‘If they do, they’ll be waiting for us there. Want to let it go, head for the gate instead?’

‘After we’ve come this far? Of course not.’

The New York subway system was one of the few unalloyed triumphs of the American Bund. The stations were clean, spacious, and air-conditioned, with polished marble floors and pink granite walls decorated with enormous murals. The ones featuring the Dear Leader had been smashed or disfigured, but most of the others were still intact, blazoned with brutalist propaganda: hero workers marching arm in arm with proud soldiers; atomic power stations; fleets of combine harvesters sweeping across wide wheat fields; a parade of tanks and missile carriers stretching to an apocalyptic horizon; a bevy of athletic girls in skimpy shorts and T-shirts pounding over a mountain ridge. Trains arrived every two minutes, clean futuristic designs with bullet noses and unnecessary streamlining.

As they rode uptown, Stone gave Linda a précis of his conversation with Freddy Layne. She listened with her full attention, sitting with her shoulders hunched and her hands clamped between her knees. Every now and then a shiver passed through her entire body, but she was in control, grimly determined to see this through. Doing pretty good, Stone thought, for a back-office number cruncher.