Day of the Guns

Chapter 1

I looked past Wally Gibbons at the woman who had just come into the Cavalier Restaurant and felt the same as every other man in the place. Just to see her had a startling effect, but that low laugh and throaty voice was like the caress of fingertips across a naked stomach.

She was tall and auburn-haired with the edges of it curling around an upturned collar onto her shoulders and the wide-belted trench coat made you tingle because you knew she was all real beneath it. She had the lapels thrown back wide so that the flesh of her throat merged into the swell of her breasts before plunging into the black fabric of her dress.

Pedro, the maître d’, bowed lower than was his usual habit, smiled more charmingly than he ever did to anyone else and led her past the tables of craning necks to the back of the room and into the alcove where the two stout men were sitting and hid her out of sight in the corner. Once she was there the table talk around us resumed, but the subject was the same, from the wishful thinking of the junior execs to the dirty cracks of the boys who liked to make like they’d been around.

Wally speared a piece of fish and grinned at me. “How about that,” he said.

I grunted and picked up my drink.

“Come on, Tiger, don’t play it down. Some broad, huh?”

“Swell,” I said.

“Comes in here every once in a while. Never saw it yet when she didn’t stop the action. I ran a piece about the mystery... just a U.N. translator, a sort of foreign-type career girl too dedicated to her job to be seen around much. Not that she doesn’t get the offers.”

Somebody at the next table made a snide remark and the others laughed. “Not that they wouldn’t like to hand them out,” I said.

Wally shook his head. “Hell, Tiger, I’ve seen it tried. Those English broads can knock you off your pins with two words and a look.” He grinned at me. “Being a big columnist and all, I even tried it myself.”

“And...?”

“I got knocked off with two words and a look.”

“Tough.”

“Go give it a try, Tiger. You’re not like in the old days, but from the word I hear you’re still pretty active. I’d like to see you get bounced. Just once.”

“Why?”

“Oh, you know... losers enjoy seeing winners get their lumps once in a while.”

“I got enough to last me, buddy.”

“So be a sport and give it a try. Hell, everybody else did. They’re all waiting for a champ to come along. They’ll hate your guts if you make out, but, man, they’ll be looking up to you the rest of your life if you swing it.”

“Forget it.”

“Come on, Tiger...” he grinned again and shoved his plate away. “Her name is Edith Caine. London background, old family and all that. I understand she has plenty of private loot, so you can’t use that approach. I’ve seen some Hollywood types make their pitch, and public personalities don’t seem to sway her any, so that’s out. All you can do is turn on the charm and whisper whatever the hell it is you whisper in their ears.”

“Quit being a clown. I’ve had it.”

“I’ll write that you’re a fink.”

“So who knows me?” I laughed.

Wally put his drink down and stared across the table. “That, Tiger, is something I’ve always wondered about. Once or twice a year we get together and each time there’s something different about you. At the wrong seasons you come in with a tan, I catch you in the shower last time and you got a new bullet hole in you that wasn’t from the Army days, you have money to sit in on a big game and some funny pull in queer quarters. Now I’m a newspaperman and have ways of finding out things, yet I can’t run you down in anything. I can’t get past that discharge in ’46. You might not even be alive, for all I know.”

“I’m a spook.”

“Sure. So go spook the broad. You’re Tiger Mann, she’s Edith Caine, go introduce yourself.”

I put my drink down, swirled the ice around in my glass a second and took my hand away. “I don’t need any introduction,” I told him. “Her name isn’t Edith Caine... it’s Rondine Lund. She isn’t English, she’s Austrian and during the war she was a goddamn Nazi spy. She shot me twice in ’45 and left me for dead, and if there’s anybody in this world left that I’d like to kill, it’s her. No, buddy, we don’t need any introduction.”

Wally couldn’t answer. He sat there looking at me as though I was crazy, then his eyes squinched up to ask a question, but before he could he waved the thought away and said, “You’re nuts.” He pointed at my drink, then motioned to the waiter for another round. “Damn, what an actor you are. You almost get me believing you. After twenty years on the Broadway circuit in the newspaper business you’d think I could spot a line right off. Buddy, you should be in Hollywood, you and that crazy name of yours.”

“The checker-outer,” I said as the drinks came.

“Damn right. I have a reputation too, Tiger boy. She’s been a news item since she got here six months ago. Everybody was flipping over the glamorpuss at the U.N., and right after she was on the cover of the Sunday-supplement section, I was assigned to do a piece on her. So did a few other columnists. So back we went through the British Embassy, the respectable Caine family in old London, a fashionable girl’s school and a previous position in some obscure agency of the British government. She’s twenty-eight, unmarried and untouchable. You’re just finding out.”

I leaned back in my chair and lit a smoke. “She’s thirty-nine, an Austrian national and in ’45 she tried to kill me.”

“Okay, Tiger, tell me a story. I’ll give you two minutes and have to blow. Maybe I can sell it to Paramount.”

“Drop dead,” I said.

Wally called for the check, signed it, and picked up his envelope off the spare chair. “When do I see you again?”

“Who knows? I’ll call you.”

“Anytime. You’re always good for a laugh. If you ever run across any of the old gang, give ’em my regards. You going to be at the Group reunion this year?”

“Maybe.”

“Try to make it. Terry Atkins and Bob Shiffer won’t be there. Terry got killed down in Honduras during the flare-up and Ben got his from a cheap hood when they were cleaning up that narcotics ring in L.A.”

“I heard about it.”

“Brother, they can stuff the cop angle. One tour during the war with the O.S.S. was all I could take. I get scared.”

“Who doesn’t?”

“Yeah,” he grinned. “Take it easy. I’ll see you around”

He left then, and I sat back with the butt until it was down to the filter, then I squashed it out and got up from the chair.

The two fat guys had the look of importance about them, their clothes tailor-made for shape and the cigars the best. They were dignity and money with the subtle power of governments showing in their demeanor. They were speaking of the Common Market and exchange of trade when I walked up to the table and their eyes showed the intelligence of breeding and knowledge of affairs and they stood up when they realized I was about to join them.

But there was a hint of laughter there because they had evidently seen it happen before, knew why I was there and waited to see sudden death from a frosty glance and a few words.

I said, “Hello, Rondine.”