Day of the Guns

Chapter 2

She was very good. Much better than I had expected. Her smile was lovely and forthright, and when the two men passed a quizzical look between them, I said, “Pet name,” and held out my hand.

There was strength in her fingers, her smile a magical thing, and when I looked at her sitting there I could see why all the others wanted that crazy body so badly. She was woman all the way, bloomed to perfection and proud of the valley between her breasts and the way the tight-fitting dress dipped into her hips and swelled out against her thighs.

“It’s been a long time, honey,” I told her. I let her hand go and looked at the two men. “Tiger Mann,” I said, shaking with them both. “Ridiculous name, but my father gave it to me.”

One was Burton Selwick, the other Vincent Harley Case. Both were connected with the British legation, active at the U.N., both models of propriety and they invited me to join them. Pedro found another chair, brought a fresh drink, and we raised a toast to the beautiful, gorgeous killer sitting in the corner.

Selwick put his drink down and offered me a cigar. I shook my head and dumped the last butt out of my pack. “Are you in politics, Mr. Mann?” His voice had the crisp, cultured tone of an Oxford graduate that didn’t quite conceal the subtle note of authority, a quality heard only behind closed doors at Downing Street.

I took the light he held out. “No... not politics.” I looked across the flame at Rondine. She was sitting there with her chin propped on the back of her fingers, smiling. “You might call it... international business. Of a sort, that is.”

“I see.” He didn’t really, but he said it.

“And how have you been, honey?”

“Fine, Mr. Mann.”

“It used to be Tiger.”

Her laugh was as deep as it ever was. “Fine, Tiger. And you?”

“Not bad at all. I’m surprised to see you again.”

She made a gesture with her hands. “The world changes. Things happen.”

I could still feel those two bullets going into my belly. “But we can still remember, can’t we?” I said.

Her eyes were a peculiar shade. I tried to remember what they were like when I saw them last in the little room in Hamburg. Outside, the Eighth Air Force was plastering the city with block-busters and in another two minutes Cal Haggerty would be coming up the stairs with a tommy gun that would blow that goddamn nest of agents right off the face of the earth... only she had killed Cal too because she was quicker and had all the wiles of a woman going for her. You don’t spray a naked broad with .45’s without looking at her first and he had looked too pointedly and too long and had missed the Luger in her hand.

Vincent Case looked at his watch and snubbed his cigar out. “Well, you two, supposing we leave you to your reminiscing. We have to be back, but since everyone has adjourned for the weekend, you might as well stay, my dear. Mr. Mann, it was a pleasure.” Unlike his partner, there was a slight Scottish burr to his words.

Burton Selwick said, “As for me, I’m afraid my day is ended. A few years after fifty can bring tiredness too easily, ulcers too abruptly, and strange pains that make one yearn for the heath and heather and the hearth.”

Rondine shot him a sudden glance of compassion, but one so easily assumed. “Are you all right?”

“Just the usual complaint. Overwork, my dear. Too many late hours, too much work and the usual complaints. I’ll be happy to be replaced when the time comes.”

“The doctor...”

He spread his palms out and smiled. “Exactly what I’ve just told you. Age, my dear. A few pills, a little administration, and I shall be quite well again to work another day.”

I shook hands with them both. “Nice to see you,” I said and watched them leave. Then I picked up a cigarette from her gold case, put it between her lips like I used to and lit it for her.

“Tiger,” she said softly.

“Yes, dear,” I said just as softly. “And now you’re on your way down because I’m going to kill you just as dead as you thought you did me. Surprised? You shouldn’t be.”

She blew a thin stream of smoke at me, her eyes as steady as ever, not afraid. They had never been afraid. Determined, dedicated, but never afraid. “I was wondering when someone would come,” she said.

“It’s now, honey.”

“I see. Can I explain?”

“No.”

“How are you going to kill me?”

“I’m not sure yet,” I said. “I think I’ll shoot you.”

“Why?”

I grinned at her, enjoying something I had thought about for almost twenty years. “It’s not so much the past, sugar, but the present. You’re back, you’re here. Nobody knows it except me, maybe, but you haven’t changed. Your damn setup is as good as it was then. You’re still what you were, one of those tying the world into knots and you’re in the right place to do it. U.N. translator? Hell kid you can speak seven languages and were trained in the greatest espionage school that ever existed. Right now you have a minor job but a key position to take what you want and wherever your information is going you got it made. With all the background and experiences you have it must be like making mud pies for you. Only now there’s a difference.”

“Oh?”

“Me. Now you can die. You left me with my belly torn out and figured me for dead. You suckered me into a beautiful love trap when I should have known better than to fall for a stinking Nazi agent and even when I let you off the hook... when I gave you a chance to get out when I could have killed you, you didn’t take it... hell no, you gave me a pair of quick ones and blew. Honey... it wouldn’t have mattered... the war was over... you could have made it if the hate wasn’t inside you so deep nobody could get it out.”

I put out my butt and sat back smiling at her as if it were just another luncheon conversation. “So now you die, kid. Whatever you’re up to, tough... you die.”

Her face pulled together and the tip of her tongue wet her lips. “When?”

“Soon. I could do it right now, but first I find out what game you’re playing and why. Then, pretty killer... right in that smooth gut of yours.”

“Tiger...”

“Come on, honey... you’ve had it too. No way out. Maybe you’ve had the face lifted and the gray dyed out, but this is the old soldier who dropped into Germany and made the big one. I don’t go the mistake route twice. Kid... you’re dead. From this minute on, you’re dead. I’d do it now only I want to enjoy it. I want to poke around some and blow your game before I put the big one inside your stomach.”

I pushed my chair back, stood up and grinned down at her. A sudden, strange expression clouded her eyes, then passed.

“You were a great lover,” I said. “Remember the bomb shelter?”

Her eyes were like twin arrows reaching for me.

“Remember the rainy night I lied to keep the Frenchies from finding you?”

Both of her hands were tightened into knots.

“They would have killed me if they had found out, Rondine. But we were lovers, one Nazi spy, one American spy. You showed your appreciation well. Ten minutes after we went to bed together you shot me. Twice. Ten minutes after you were rolling on that bed crying and moaning because you never had anything like it before you gave me two in the gut. That’s real appreciation. Thanks a bunch. Now sweat.”

The wetness that came in her eyes didn’t bother me any. The quick motion of a sob that forced the cleft of her breasts apart had no effect at all.

I said, “Later, Rondine. I’ll see you later. Just sweat.”

They watched when I left. They knew I had been back there alone with her when nobody else was able to make it. They had seen the other two go, the essence of dignity and respectability, and now they saw a different type none of them could put their finger on and wouldn’t really want to because I had to shave every day and looked at too many mirrors not to know what the others had seen.

Only those wouldn’t talk any more. They couldn’t. They were dead.

They came for me that night like I knew they would. I set it up beautifully and it was like the New York Giants pulling the Statue of Liberty play on the Packers. It was so damn old, with the dummy in the bed and all the archaic bits and pieces that went with the play that it was almost pathetic. I wanted to find out how fast they could run me down when nobody knew I was here or where I was, and they did a great job. Just great.

Except they missed.

I was outside on the window sill, forty feet above the street, hanging on to a rig I had snapped into the window washer’s clamps, with a .45 in my fist for safety’s sake and they came in the door with a key, smiling and joking like it was their room and the two of them pumped a full clip of slugs into the mound on the bed, each one going off with an almost inaudible plop, and the idiots were so sure of themselves and so anxious to be out of there they didn’t check to see what they had hit. You don’t catch a slug, even in your sleep, without a twitch or rearing up or some blood spilling out and the jerks didn’t check it. They simply laughed some more, opened the door and walked out.

I gave them a full minute, opened the window, swung in and looked at the holes in the bedclothes. Tomorrow the house-keeper was going to be one teed-off broad. Maybe I’d even make a complaint. Fourteen shots had torn up three pillows under the blankets and left the room stinking of cordite.

I threw the chain on the door, double-locked it, fanned the fumes out of the room and climbed into my nice shot-up sack. Tomorrow was going to be full of surprises. For Rondine, anyway.