Day of the Guns

Chapter 3

Unless you’ve made a trip to the U.N. and sat in on a meeting of the General Assembly or the Security Council you don’t know what you’re missing. Outside on the door there’s a quotation from Scripture... about turning swords into plowshares. There’s not even a credit line... you’d think they had dreamed the possibility up. But considering the fact that ever since its inception the world has been at war, you’d think that this magnificent conglomeration of brains assembled from the world over were there for one purpose... not to make peace, but to figure out how many ways there were to kill. Hell, it’s an old story, look at the record. We get stuck with the bills and the trouble. They scream for the gravy. But there are still some of us left. They can’t kill us all.

Something had come up about Ghana and week-end passes had been canceled. I made a phone call from the lobby and an innocuous-looking guy had come out to show me to a spectator’s seat. He gave me that funny look I always got when my calls had been routed and didn’t ask any damn questions, but there was a distaste in his face when he saw my eyes. Maybe he knew. Maybe he didn’t. But he felt. I made sure of that.

The Russians were shouting that day. They didn’t like what was coming up. It had to do with U.N. dues and some million-dollar trivialities and all I could think of was the slobs who didn’t let Patton go ahead into Berlin and we had to split the spoils with pigs who later built the wall. We break our asses fighting and the striped-pants gang loses the peace.

Nothing much came out of it, but I found Rondine.

I came up behind her and said, “How much longer, honey?”

She was better than when we met. She looked around slowly, never hesitating in her translation, but the sudden widening of her eyes was enough to spell it out. The only thing that was wrong was that the wetness came back again and all I could think of was how much a woman could hate that she’d cry because one man didn’t die.

I looked at the clock. The session was almost over. “I’ll wait outside,” I said.

She only took fifteen minutes. She came through the door composed and smiling as if death and terror were a daily occurrence. And they were. “Hello, Tiger.”

“Tell me something.”

“All right.”

“Who did the face job... the plastic surgery? You look great. The lines don’t show at all.”

“They weren’t supposed to.”

“Your boys missed last night. I want you to tell them something. Will you?”

“Yes.” Her eyes dropped to the floor.

“I could have killed them, baby. It would have been fun. Tell them they don’t get a second chance. Neither do you.”

“Tiger...” She was clear again. Beautiful as hell, woman all the way. She was almost as big as I was, soft luxurious woman I could fall into and kiss and love... only I wouldn’t. “Are you hurt that badly?” she asked.

“It was a long time ago. The hurt is a long time gone.”

“Revenge?”

“Nope.”

“What then?”

“Satisfaction. I need it. I died too many times since you. All I want is you dead.”

“I’m here.”

“Uh-uh. I want your reason first. I want to see you scared again, then you die.”

She did it too fast for me to stop her. She raised on her toes with her hands behind her head and her mouth was a hot, wet fire that pierced into me with a wild spurt of passion that sucked her body behind it, pressing it flat against mine. Before I could push her away she did it herself, then stood back and smiled, her teeth showing their white edges.

“Don’t die again, Tiger,” she said.

And when I smiled her eyes went dark and tightened at the comers because she read me right. “Don’t worry, I won’t,” I reminded her.

The building on Fifth Avenue was a brand-new modem monstrosity that towered over Manhattan and on the sixteenth floor it housed one single office that bore the label, THOMAS WATFORD, IMPORT-EXPORT. I walked in, told the receptionist I’d like to speak to Mr. Watford, and no I didn’t have an appointment, but he’d see me. She made the call, told me to go in and when I went through the door the gimlet-eyed guy in blue with the tight crew cut looked up, leaned back in his chair and said, “Ah, yes, Tiger Mann. Have a seat, Tiger.”

I sat down.

“We heard you were in town,” he said.

“Your agency has big ears.”

“Not really. The trouble you leave behind you is easy to follow. It isn’t appreciated.”

“Tough, Mac.”

The chair creaked forward and I wondered how many guys he had scared to death with that face of his. “We were aware that you knew of us. I don’t like it.”

“Then don’t try to hide. We’re pros too.”

“Are you really?”

“You got a file on me.”

“The rest of the group you represent, too. Very professional. You call yourselves patriots, don’t you?”

I shrugged. “Not me. I used to, but no more. Now I just like the trouble. We get clobbered by all the pinkos and the liberals, but I gave up the patriot angle a long time ago. Too damn many patriots are going down the wide-open trail to Communism to suit me. They swallow the garbage, the promises, they lead the country down the garden path singing songs of peace and happiness behind the shoe-pounder and the do-gooders, but not me. I’m just one guy who likes trouble.”

“Your bunch is going to get slammed by a Congressional investigation, Tiger.”

“So go ahead. We’re ready.”

“Listen...”

“Who stopped the bit in Nicaragua? Who killed off the uprising in the Honduras? Who went into Colombia and Panama and put the squash on that deal? You slobs tried working it with papers and a couple of money twists when there were guns out in the open. Okay, buddy... get this, we’re a power. We can push. We go right where it hurts those Commie bastards and we’re not stopping. Like Hitler had commercial money behind him, we have top financing too. It’s no Hitler job, but don’t count us out. You’re a secret tunnel here and we know the secret, so play ball or I’ll blow the lid off this outfit now. Pretty?”

Watford sat back again, picked up a pencil and tapped it against the desk. “We heard what you had in mind.”

“You know the way out. You’re too big to break up. You know we can smear you if we want to. I’ll break up this whole goddamn operation unless you cooperate and you can’t afford to lose your cover. Too much is involved.”

“Mr. Mann... you are a traitor.”

“Not yet, friend. Not ever. Maybe in your eyes, but not ever. It’s just that we’re sick of some things and do them our own way.”

“Illegally.”

“The terminology is extralegal. We did it in 1776 too.”

“This is 1964.”

“So we’ll do it again.”

THOMAS WATFORD, IMPORT-EXPORT, was fed from Washington, D.C. It was a tight, secret agency that worked out of L.A.T.S, and what they had nobody was supposed to know.

But we knew.

The grand machinery of The Government vs. People Who Cared, I thought.

I said, “There’s a girl in the U.N., a translator. Her name is Edith Caine. I want a check on her tomorrow.”

“Personal, Tiger?”

“You might say that.”

“Or else, I suppose.”

I shrugged. “I got friends who think public agencies should be public information.”

“No doubt. And where do I deliver this information?”

“I’ll call you,” I told him and left.

I took the bullets I had squeezed out of the pillows to Ernie Bentley and five minutes later had a report on them. They were perfectly bore-marked for a ballistics check and the next time they showed up I’d know where they came from. They were 7.65-caliber Luger ammo fired from another make of gun; they were marked and filed away. I told Ernie thanks, left his office, ducked out the back way and took a cab back to the hotel.