The Threateners (28 page)

“They’re both kidding you!” This was the black girl, speaking to Patricia Weatherford. “They’re just cooking up a dirty story between them to keep you happy.”

Patricia glanced at her irritably, seeming reluctant to dismiss Belinda’s interesting nympho fantasy. “What makes you think—”

“Just
look
at them!” After a moment Lenore went on quickly, “
Think
about it! I’m not saying that Mrs. Sexy here wouldn’t climb into any bed that was handy, but if her husband is a respectable businessman—and we checked him out with the rest of the tour, remember—can you see him casually ordering his private secretary or whatever to throw his wife and her lover off a cliff? No, they’re just trying to sell us a hot passion triangle to keep us away from what they really . . . What’s the matter with your chest, Mr. Helm? I’ve noticed that you act as if it’s hurting you.” A moment later she had my shirt open and was pointing to the cigarette bums. “It looks as if somebody’s been interrogating this man rather drastically, Pat. Don’t you wonder why?” She looked down at me. “And please don’t try to tell me it was just dear old Mr. Ackerman trying to make you confess to being his wife’s lover. According to you, he was already taking that for granted when he broke into your room, wasn’t he?”

She was a smart girl, and we’d played around long enough. I started to speak and let my words trail away. After a moment I gave an elaborate shrug of resignation.

“All right, damn it, what do you want to know?”

“First, why don’t you tell us who burned you like that?” I jerked my head toward Belinda. “Hell, she did.” That silenced them again and, after a little, I went on: “Well, she started it. When she started feeling a little icky about it, the boy scout took over.”

“The boy scout?”

“Dennis Morton. The jerkoff I tossed into the Parana River. It was a real pleasure.”

Lenore said triumphantly to Patricia Weatherford, “I damn well knew just by looking at them that they weren’t even close to being lovers!” She spoke to me: “What did they want you to tell them?”

I said, “It wasn’t me they were working on, really, it was Ruth. They figured her for the softhearted type who couldn’t bear to see a man suffer.”

“Ruth Steiner? Well, what did they want from her?”

I made the black girl work for it, but she wrung the whole gripping story out of me gradually. It was augmented by an occasional contribution from Belinda.

At last I said, “Well, that’s about it. Ruth agreed to get the disks to save me, but having me alive made Ackerman nervous, and he figured, the way things stood, if he got rid of me, Ruth wouldn’t know until after she’d kept her part of the agreement, and there’d be nothing she could do about it then. He’d already have what he wanted. So he tipped the wink to pretty boy, who was willing but unable. I flipped him into the river, like I said. When I looked around, Belinda was missing. I went looking for her, and your boy Palomino got me with his lousy scarf, making two guys I’d let sneak up behind me inside a few hours. Not the brightest day of my life.”

Patricia Weatherford, who’d been listening in silence, letting Lenore carry the ball, drew a long breath and asked:

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why would you bother to go looking for a female monster like you make Mrs. Ackerman out to be? First, you say, she burned you with her cigarette, and then she came along to help this Dennis Morton murder you. Why would her disappearance concern you in the least, Mr. Helm? I’d think you’d thank your lucky stars the sadistic bitch was missing and simply run away from that spot as fast as you . . . Lenore, I think this time you’re the one who’s being kidded!” “I disagree. . . .”

Patricia waved aside the black girl’s interruption irritably and went on: "I have a much easier time believing in a homicidal love triangle than in this implausible tale of a career bureaucrat in government service ordering the torture and assassination of a fellow government employee just because the second man had usurped a mission originally assigned to him! I don’t doubt that there are people in the government who take their drug enforcement work very seriously. Maybe they even make something of a religion of it, and who can blame them—it’s something nobody can help feeling strongly about—but this is simply too ridiculous!” She stepped up to me and studied me for a moment. Then she slapped me lightly across the face. “I think you’re still playing games with us, Mr. Helm! I think it’s time you stopped trying to make fools of us with tales of panting nymphomaniacs and wild-eyed fanatics. At least give us a story that makes sense!”

It was too bad. I entered her name carefully, just below Roger Ackerman’s, in the People-Who-Can’t-Keep-Their-Hands-to-Themselves file.

After a moment I said, “Okay, okay, I’ll give you a sensible story, if you insist. It’s about a good-looking dame, bom in the chips, if you know what I mean, family really loaded. And it’s not as if she were a poor little rich girl condemned to a life of dull party-going and coupon clipping; the kid’s got talent, she’s athletic, she’s shown she can be right up there with the good ones in a certain sport." I shook my head as she started to interrupt, and went on, watching her: “No, let me finish, Miss Weatherford. So what does our heroine do? Well, this attractive and talented babe who’s got all the money in the world decides she needs another lousy little million. She gets a bunch of her greedy friends together to help her track down a man she’s never met and keep him located until they can sell him for blood money to one of the worst drug peddlers in the world. . . .” I held up my hand when she stirred angrily under my regard. “Oh, that’s quite all right, Miss Weatherford. I know it’s too wild a yam; I don’t really expect you to believe me.”

The girl was quite pale; the freckles showed clearly on her square, rather boyish face. “You don’t understand,” she breathed. ‘ ‘You just don’t understand!"

“That’s right,” I said. “I surely don’t understand. It seems like such a waste. I mean, you go to all this trouble to arrange it, tracing Mark Steiner to where he’s hiding under a new name and identity out west, trailing him around, checking on his friends and his friends’ friends, following them for weeks to learn their habits and make sure they won’t interfere at the last moment, very thorough, and then you let yourself miss out on the very best part of it.”

She licked her lips. “The best. . . What do you mean?”

I said, “I mean, baby, after sending for the stranglers, why weren’t you there when they moved in? You did send for them, didn’t you? Vasquez wouldn’t trust an amateur outfit like yours to carry out the actual execution; he had his own trained assassins for that. But he wasn’t about to expose those valuable men unnecessarily in a foreign land where they couldn’t operate inconspicuously—many of them probably can’t even speak English—when a bunch of nice American boys and girls, who’d blend right into the scenery, were willing to do the pick-and-shovel work for a mere million. Your job was to case the situation and let the
Compañeros
know when it was time to do their stuff, wasn’t it? But how could you bear to stay away and miss the show? Jeez, it was really something, Miss Weatherford! I mean, the way Mark Steiner’s face turned blue when your pal Palomino pulled the scarf tight, and the way his neck cracked like a tree breaking in a high wind, really a beautiful sound—well, if you’re into people dying violently a million bucks’ worth!”

I guess the tennis people would have called it a big forehand, a powerful, open-handed swing to the side of my face that really rocked me. I mean, the girl had muscle. Roger Ackerman’s feeble slaps had been love taps by comparison. “You simply don’t understand!”

Then she was burying her hands in her face and running out of the room, sobbing. The blond boy, Charles, stepped forward angrily.

“Don’t talk to Pat. . . Miss Weatherford like that!”

I looked at the black girl, who was apparently the most sensible, if also probably the meanest, of the lot.

“Please enlighten me, ma’am,” I said. “Just what is this thing I don’t understand?”

But it was Baldy who answered. He came forward, still holding the loaded revolver he’d been issued as if afraid it would bite him, which is actually a pretty good way to handle a loaded gun. He stopped before me and spoke pedantically.

“There are plenty of people in the world, Mr. Helm,” he said. "There are too many of them, actually. We had to make the decision. One man’s life, the life of a member of a species that is in no danger whatever of extinction, against the survival of a whole species that is about to disappear from the face of the earth. It was unfortunate about Mr. Steiner, or whatever his name was back in his native land—”

“Raoul Marcus Carrera Mascarena,” I said. “If you’re going to kill them, you should at least have the decency to remember their names right."

“We kill nobody!” Baldy said sharply. “I made that clear to Senor Vasquez: we are an organization for peace and preservation. However, with our affiliated organizations, we have members all over die United States, and with the help of this membership network, I told him, we might be able to get him the information he required, for a price, the price he had already offered. What he did with that information was no concern of ours.” The plump man shrugged. “Apparently, his reward had found no takers up to that time. He was willing to settle for our terms. As you probably know, we twice found him the man he wanted, once in the east, where his men apparently fumbled the job, and again in the southwest, where they were more successful.” He shook his head sadly. “It was really too bad about Mr. Steiner. It would have been easier on the consciences of some members of this group, at least, if the man selected had been a wicked person whose death would have benefited society. However, Senor Vasquez had not offered his first reward for a criminal type, he’d offered it for the author of
The Evil Empire.
"

"His first reward?” I said. "I hadn’t heard of any others.” The bald little man smiled thinly. “Well, you wouldn’t, would you?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“One is for you.”

I felt Belinda give a startled little jump beside me, but I had no trouble controlling my reaction. It wasn’t such a big deal. People have wanted me dead before and been willing to pay for it.

I asked, “Satisfy my curiosity. How much am I worth today?”

The bald man shrugged. “Only five hundred thousand dollars, I’m afraid, and in your case there were no conscience pangs. On the record—your record, which we finally managed to obtain—you are obviously the kind of man society can well do without. I tried to drive up the price on the grounds of risk, you are supposed to be somewhat dangerous, but half a million was as high as Senor Vasquez would go for you. And another half million for Mrs. Steiner. Here again the sentimentalists in the group made some difficulties since she is a woman, as if that made a difference, but I managed to convince them that if we turned down this money, we’d never reach our financial goal—three million was the project estimate, and we’ve received some eight hundred thousand in contributions, which, with the sum already received from Mr. Vasquez, leaves us short a million, two. The two hundred thousand we can probably raise somehow; but there are no angels waiting in the wings with million-dollar checks, none but Mr. Vasquez.”

I said, “With angels like Gregorio Vasquez, who needs devils?”

Patricia Weatherford was returning, looking somewhat red-eyed and pink-nosed.

She sniffed and said, “I’m sorry, Dr. Weems.”

Baldy, or to give him his real name, Weems, merely nodded, and went on addressing me: “The money means nothing to Vasquez, of course. His unpleasant business makes him that much in the time he takes to blow his nose; and as I pointed out to him, it was well worth another million to him—actually I asked for two million, one for each of you, but the old man drives a hard bargain—to be rid of the widow who might actually be able to assemble the scattered chapters of her late husband’s manuscript, and of the government killer assigned to protect her while she does it. Particularly since said government killer has a personal grudge to settle with
El Viejo
.”

I said, “I love this govemment-killer routine. If I got up and started to hop toward that door, what would you do, Dr. Weems?”

He shook his head ruefully. “I suppose I would have to try to shoot you. I would probably miss, but Charles wouldn’t; he is quite a good shot, aren’t you, Charles?”

“I get along with a gun,” the blond boy said modestly.

Which meant that he, like the late Mark Steiner, was probably a pretty good marksman, on targets. The question was: how straight could he shoot with somebody coming at him?

I said, “So it turns out that we’re all killers together, but you two simply haven’t been smart enough to get a government to finance your homicidal impulses.”

The bald man shrugged. “However you want to put it. If a cause is important enough to die for—a Greenpeace member died, you’ll remember—it is important enough to kill for.”

I said, “I knew we’d get to a noble cause sooner or later. Just what is this great cause Mark Steiner and Mrs. Steiner and I, and maybe Mrs. Ackerman as well, are being sacrificed for? And why? I mean, the freckled lady over there has money to bum, I’m told; she should be able to produce a couple of mil without breathing hard. Why doesn’t she, instead of becoming accessory to the murder of an investigative journalist who was doing good work in his field, and of his wife, the mother of two children. I won’t mention myself, since you feel I’m not an asset to society, but those two people qualify, don’t they? Are you certain that the good you’ll do with the blood money you got for Mark will be greater than the good he would have done if he’d been allowed to keep on writing?”

The freckled girl said breathlessly, “Oh, God, I wanted to give the money, but I’d long since gone through everything I’d won at tennis, and the trustees wouldn’t let me touch my principal. They said they had to draw the line somewhere; they said I’d wasted enough on crackpot causes. Crackpot? The survival of the world is a crackpot cause?”

The little man said, “As far as Mark Steiner was concerned, what contribution was he really making? All he ever wrote about was drugs, that nonsense. A totally artificial situation. Pretty soon they will pass the same stupid laws against chocolate candy, very bad for you, and we will hear a great many fine speeches about the war against obesity and the terrible Hershey cartel. And people will shoot each other in the street for Nestle’s bars worth a thousand dollars an ounce.” He shook his head. “The crime with which we deal is not artificial; it is the very real crime of extermination, in this case the extinction of yet another marvelous species that can never be replaced, that the world cannot afford to lose. Our wonderful aquatic friends in the southeastern United States are dying daily for want of protected refuges. With all due respect to the labors of the Nature Conservancy, and the rather ineffectual club that’s working in the same direction, the Crystal River is not enough. The MPS has an option on a suitable area on the other side of the state where the need is desperate—”