The Removers (7 page)

In Europe, they’d have had a little roof garden where you could sip your cocktail, apéritif, or aquavit outdoors, and look at the lights of the town, and the mountains beyond, while you conversed intelligently about matters that had nothing to do with love—at least the words didn’t. Then you’d go inside to a nice big table with a white tablecloth and plenty of room around it and be served an exquisite dinner by waiters who took pride in their work... I don’t want to sound subversive or unpatriotic. They do some things worse over there and some things better. Eating is one of the things they do very well.

This was a table about the size of one of the new small tires on one of the new small cars. There were, roughly speaking, a million of these tables crammed into the room—a slight exaggeration, but that was the general effect. There wasn’t space enough left for the waiters to maneuver conveniently. They had to ooze through the cracks by a process of osmosis. Maybe this was what had ruined their dispositions, or maybe they’d never had any to start with.

At the end of the room was a stage, and on the stage, assisted by an orchestra of sorts, a man was singing. Well, let’s call him a man, just for purposes of reference, and I suppose it went under the name of singing. I looked at the girl on the other side of the table. She was the right age, or close enough to it, to explain the phenomenon to me.

“Does he send you?” I asked. “Does he arouse anything in you?”

“Yes, sure, my maternal instinct,” she said. “I’ve got a practically irresistible yearning to go up there and change his diapers and see if he’ll stop crying.”

Her resilience was fantastic. Nobody looking at her would have dreamed that less than half an hour ago she’d been lying on a rumpled bed, flushed and breathless, with her nice dress bunched immodestly about her waist and her bright hair tumbled untidily over the pillow. Now she looked cool and crisp and immaculate again, and even kind of innocent, as if a sinful thought had never crossed her mind—at least not since she’d put those fine clothes on. Only her eyes had changed, a little, and maybe that was just my imagination. You like to think it’s made some difference to the girl.

She reached out abruptly and touched my arm with a white-gloved hand. “Just one thing,” she said. “Don’t say anything about Lolita. Promise.”

“I wasn’t going to—”

“That other guy, the one in New York, I was his lousy Lolita all the lousy time. I thought it was cute until I read the book. What a pill! Anyway, I’m no teen-age kid. Just because he was a few years older... Just because you are, don’t start thinking. If you say one damn thing about Lolita, I’ll get up and walk out.”

I glanced at the loose-lipped, wailing character on the stage and said, “It might not be half a bad idea, if I get to go with you.”

“Well, I just wanted to tell you. No Lolita.”

“In that case,” I said, “you’d better tell me your name, hadn’t you?”

She looked a little startled. “Don’t you know?”

“Fredericks I know. Not what goes before.”

“It’s Moira. Isn’t that corny?”

“Not particularly,” I said. “Mine’s Matt.”

“I know,” she said. She looked around, as if seeing her surroundings for the first time. “Don’t you like it here?” she asked. “We can go someplace else if you don’t like it.”

She’d recommended the place. I said, “I’m just spoiled, I guess. In Europe you get less noise and more atmosphere.”

“It is kind of crowded,” she admitted, “but the food’s supposed to be good.” Her green eyes touched me lightly. “What were you doing in Europe, Matt?”

“Business,” I said.

“What kind of business?”

I didn’t answer at once. I didn’t particularly want to lie to her; besides, nobody’d supplied me with a real cover for this job, and when you start making it up as you go along, you’re apt to talk yourself into a corner.

Her hand was still on my arm. “You’re a government man, aren’t you?” she murmured, watching me closely.

“A G-man?” I said. “Now, do I look like one of Mr. Hoover’s fine, upstanding, clean-cut young men? Why those fellows are selected for character and integrity. If I’d been one of them, you’d never have seduced me in a million years. I’d have been a rock, I tell you: solid, immovable, granite.”

She smiled at me across the table. “All right, Matt, I’ll try not to ask questions. Anyway, I wasn’t thinking of the FBI. I had in mind—” She hesitated, and looked down at her glass, containing something that was supposed to be a martini—-well, there probably was some gin in it, somewhere, judging by my own specimen. I won’t answer for the vermouth. She looked up quickly. “I had in mind... a certain branch of the Treasury Department.” I said, “I’ve never investigated an income tax in my life.”

She frowned slightly, withdrawing her hand. “You’re ducking awfully hard, baby.”

“You’re pushing hard. Why can’t I just be Mrs. Logan’s cast-off husband?”

“With those scars? And the way you looked when you heard the name Fredericks, and—” She looked down. “You can’t blame me for wanting to know. As a matter of fact—”

“What?” I said when she hesitated.

“As a matter of fact, I didn’t come to your motel just because I was lonely. I was. well, kind of curious, too.”

Her face was pink. I grinned. “You were going to play Mata Hari, is that it?”

She said, with some stiffness in her voice, “I haven’t done too badly, baby. You’re her ex-husband, all right, I don’t suppose there’s any doubt about that. But you’re something else, too. Something—” She hesitated.

“Something what?”

“Something kind of special, in a gruesome sort of way.” She didn’t smile. “I’ve met a lot of them, you know; I’ve spent my whole life, it seems, falling over snoopers of one kind or another trying to get something on Dad. Half of them had their hands out wanting to be bought off—ninety per cent is closer, I guess—and the rest were so sincere they made you sick, saving suffering humanity, for God’s sake. Those I can spot a mile off, both kinds. But I don’t dig you, baby. You’re not hungry and you’re not particularly sincere. It makes me wonder just what you’re after.”

I hesitated, and asked, “How much do you care for your old man, Moira?”

“I hate his guts,” she said readily enough. “He put my mother away in an. in a home, I guess you’d call it. Some home! She could probably have been cured, lots of alcoholics are, but he couldn’t take the trouble. I guess he just didn’t want her around drinking tomato juice at his parties and reminding people that Sal Fredericks’ wife had been a helpless lush; anyway, she wasn’t very pretty any more, and he likes his women decorative. So he had her put away, in a nice friendly place where she could drink herself to death without disturbing anybody. She hasn’t quite made it yet, but she’s working on it...” Her eyes were intent on my face. “That’s the answer to your question. But if you’re asking what I think you’re asking... Don’t get any wrong ideas, Matt. I didn’t pick him and he didn’t pick me, but there are certain things you can’t do a damn thing about. He’s my pop and I’m stuck with him, if you know what I mean.”

“I know,” I said. “I know what you mean.”

“It’s corny,” she said. “I know, these days if your best friend turns out to be a Red or a crook or something, you’re supposed to turn him in right now; it’s your duty to society and to hell with friendship and personal loyalty and all that crap—people used to die for it, but nowadays it’s crap. And as for family ties, I went to college, I learned all about it. I know it’s perfectly all right if Junior takes an axe to ma and pa. He’s just getting rid of his repressions, the dear little thing. But the plain lousy fact, Matt, is that I’m not one of those complex types, and I’m just a real lousy citizen; I don’t give a damn about my duty to society. I’m a dumb and simple country girl, and my old man is my old man. Even if he’s a sonofabitch, he’s my sonofabitch.” She drew a long breath. “What I’m trying to say is—”

I said, “It’s all right, kid. I know what you’re trying to say. Even if the situation should arise, I won’t ask you for help. And I’m really not very interested in your old man. Honest Injun.”

She ignored this. “What I’m trying to say is, maybe you’re a swell guy and maybe you’re saving the country, but I’m not going to be a stool pigeon or a judas goat for anybody.”

“I read you loud and clear,” I said. “Drink your martini; you’ll never find another like it, I hope.”

She hesitated. After a moment, she said, “Matt.”

“Yes?”

“I was coming back from Mexico a couple of weeks ago. They stopped me at the border. You know, usually they don’t pay much attention to you, coming out of Juarez. You tell them you haven’t bought much of anything except some cheap liquor, and they send you over to pay that lousy hold-up tax to the state of Texas, and that’s it. But this time they gave me the works. They practically took the car apart. I thought they were even going to get a matron or something and make me strip, but I guess whatever they were looking for was bigger than that. When Dad heard about it, he almost blew his safety circuits.”

“So?”

She looked at me steadily and said, “Damn you! It’s dope, isn’t it?”

There was a little pause. The waiter picked that moment to come up and stick his elbow in my face so he could put some food in front of her. Then he stuck his elbow in her face so he could put some food in front of me. He went away, proud that he’d remembered to serve us in the right order.

“Isn’t it?” she said. “He’s tried every other lousy racket; he was bound to get to it sooner or later. It’s dope, and they’re expecting him to receive a... a shipment, perhaps, and they thought maybe I was running it across the border for him?” She waited a little. I didn’t say anything. She said, “Well?”

I said, “You’re doing the guessing. Don’t expect any help from me.”

She sighed. “No. Of course not. But I think I’m right. That would explain why Duke Logan left him. The Duke always said he’d run guns to anybody who’d pay—he’d done it, too—but he drew the line at trafficking in dope and women.”

“Good for old Duke,” I said.

“Don’t sound so cynical.”

I said, “These guys who keep drawing lines never impress me very much. I know a dozen fishermen who’ll let a trout fight its heart out against a nylon leader, but who are real proud of themselves because they’ve never shot anything in their lives. And then there’s a man I know who’ll shoot any bird that flies—ducks, geese, quail, doves, you name it—but he feels quite moral because he’s never killed a big animal like a deer or an elk. And I even know a deer hunter who gets his buck every fall but who’d never dream of going to Africa and murdering a great big elephant just for sport, he thinks that’s terrible. They’ve all got something they won’t do, and it makes them feel swell.”

She studied my face for a moment. “And you?” she murmured. “What won’t you do, Matt?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I draw no lines, kid.”

She said, “We were talking about dope—”

“You were talking about dope.”

“It’s a lousy business, isn’t it?”

I moved my shoulders. “I never could get very excited about saving people from themselves, but some folks seem to.”

She said, “You’re a funny man. You ought to be giving me a lecture on the evils of this horrible trade, showing me where my duty lies.”

“I should worry about your duty,” I said. “I’ve got trouble enough with my own.”

“Yes,” she said. “I just wish I knew what the hell it was.” After a moment, she said, “There’s something that worries me. I’m going to tell you about it. Probably I shouldn’t, but I’m going to anyway.”

“Think it over first,” I said.

She laughed, a little sharply. “Don’t overdo it,” she said. “It’s the old reverse-English technique, isn’t it? Pretend you’re not interested and they’ll spill their guts. Particularly if you’ve gone to bed with them first.”

I said, “Let’s not make cracks about that. You can’t help having the thought, but just keep it in your head, will you? I mean, you can talk things to death, you know.”

Her eyes widened slightly. “I know,” she murmured after a little pause. “I know. I’m sorry. You’re really a pretty nice guy, aren’t you?”

“Don’t count on it.”

“Hell,” she said, “you’ve got to count on something. What kind of a life would it be if you didn’t? There’s a man here who worries me, Matt. He’s working for Dad, and he scares me. He looks like... well, he looks a little like you. I mean, he’s about five inches shorter, and his hair is dark, and I’d never want to be alone in a room with him, but he’s got the same—”

“The same what?”

She frowned. “I don’t know. There’s really no resemblance, now I think of it, but... It’s just a feeling, but somehow he reminds me of you. And Duke Logan. I bet he’s got bullet-scars on him, somewhere. Watch out for him.”

She reached out to touch my hand. “You see, I did stool-pigeon for you, just a little.”

After dinner, we made the rounds of the gambling places. She was a roulette addict, which was nice for my simple mind. I never have understood the more complicated ways of losing money, like craps. As a matter of fact, I can’t get much of a kick out of playing games where I know the odds are mathematically and inexorably against me—money games, that is. I played a few times, enough to make certain this wasn’t the night I was meant to get rich; and then I just followed her around and watched her throw the stuff away.

What she did with her money didn’t bother me, but she’d started drinking quite heavily, too, and you can never be sure, when they’re young, just how much they know about their own capacities. I was tempted to warn her to slow down; but I had a hunch she was just waiting for me to make like a stern parent so she could inform me again that she was no teen-age kid, particularly not my teen-age kid, and that her alcoholic intake was none of my business. They’re always so damn sensitive about their new-found adult independence, at that age. I kept my mouth shut and made each of my drinks last out two of hers, so that at least one of us would be able to find the way home when the time came. It was a long time in coming.

“Matt,” she said abruptly, well on towards morning.

“Yes, kid?”