Day of the Guns

Chapter 9

At nine P.M. I put a credit-card call through to London and, after a ten-minute wait, got Peter Johnson in our office there. He operated out of a fashionable haberdashery shop near Piccadilly Circus with a crew of four and after a four-month lay-off since the Berlin affair he was glad to get back on an assignment.

So far, he hadn’t come up with anything on the Caine family outside of what Wally had given me, but was going to dig into the deceased Vernon and Diana Caine to see if there was any possibility of blackmail tactics being used against the Caines because of them. To date his research had been pretty thorough with no tangible results, so he wasn’t especially hopeful about going back into the war years to find something new.

He did have one interesting piece of news though. In the general backtracking of Rondine Lund he had contacted a former maqui officer who said he had heard that the beautiful Rondine made two successful escapes from her captors at the war’s end, and although he wasn’t certain, he heard later she had been recaptured and shot. At that time she had been caught in a round up of Nazi collaborators when justice had been swift, burial quick and no reference made of identity after the act.

It wouldn’t have been hard for Rondine to switch identities with some sucker. There were ways of working it. I had done it myself once. An unsuspecting woman gives the name of Rondine Lund and before she knows what’s happening to her it’s over. Exit Rondine, Enter Edith Caine.

I told Johnson to stay with it until I called and hung up.

The next call was through a relay and took five minutes before Martin Grady answered. As usual, he simply picked up the phone and held it without speaking, waiting for the caller to make the first move.

“Tiger here,” I said.

“Is this necessary?” He had the cool, polished voice of a diplomat, but behind it was all the raw power of the man he was.

“Yes,” I said. “I need to draw on all the resources. I.A.T.S. and the rest are looking for Vidor Churis. I want him first. He’s in this area.”

“Time element?”

“Now. This is a Class One.”

“I’ll have Newark call. Where can you be reached?”

“Tomorrow at exactly six P.M. I’ll be at this number.” I read it off to him. “It’s a pay station in the Eighth Avenue subway.”

I heard the click as the phone went dead, cradled the receiver and stepped out of the booth. In a few minutes from now the power of money would be doing what the power of great government organizations could not. Word would go out on a name and a description and whoever came out with the lead would find more money in his hand than he had ever dreamed of. Countless front men were used and nobody would be able to trace the inquiry back to its source or even want to, but there were those who knew about getting the word and what it meant, and even if they had to break down the payment to allocate some to others to bring the information to them it would be done. There would be one with a big bite, others with smaller bites, but everyone happy and all hoping to be the one on the fat end the next time.

But tomorrow at six there would be a line to Vidor Churis.

There was one strange note, however. Martin Grady didn’t take direct contact casually. There was usually an explicit instruction or request to explain the urgency of the matter, or more likely a tone of disapproval for not having gone through the regular channels.

Maybe Grady was softening up. No, that wasn’t it. Maybe he was smartening up. Could be age had given him insight into more than the big picture and he was considering personal feelings for once. In a way, he’d better. There were times when the big picture didn’t give a damn... like twenty years ago with Rondine and me. There was even the possibility that he was going to teach me a lesson. If I hadn’t learned it twenty years ago I’d learn it now, so let out the rope.

Screw him if he figured that way, I thought. I was too old at the business now. I’d been behind a gun too long and seen too many men fall in front of it. I had them plow into me and felt the fire of metal inside my skin too many times. I’d mixed it with the wild ones and the shrewd ones too many years to worry about anything now.

So okay, Grady, thanks for the rope. I’ll use every inch of it you’ll give me.

There was one contact I hadn’t made yet, so before I left the phone I checked the number on my pad, dialed Gretchen Lark’s place and waited through a half-dozen rings before she answered. She was breathless and coughing and when she said, “Yes?” it was as if I had interrupted something.

I had. I said it was me and she tinkled a laugh back.

“Tiger... the man with the funny name. I was just coming out of the shower. I’m all wet.”

“Dry yourself off.”

“I can’t. I have no towel.”

“You mean you’re standing there dripping and naked and talking to me?”

“Well, it isn’t exactly television, but you make me feel like it is.”

“I think I can describe every inch of you.”

“Don’t do it!”

I laughed back at her. “Skin talk gets you sexy?”

“You know too much. How did you get my number? It’s unlisted.”

Rather than tell her I said, “No trouble when a guy really wants to meet a girl.”

“Mr. Mann, please. You had a date tonight.”

“Just seeing an old friend. Edith and I have been buddies a long time. Only buddies make strange combos.”

“Tiger... I feel a proposition coming on.”

“You’re right.”

“What about Edith?”

“I’m calling you, kid, not her.”

“Did you two have a fight?”

“Come on, I don’t fight with broads.”

“I know, you’re a tiger.”

“So I’ve been told,” I said. “Feel like getting dressed and going out?”

“Where?”

“Who knows? Maybe some slop chute. I feel like talking to a broad.”

“And you picked me... just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“You excite me, Tiger. I think I’ll go.”

“Naked?”

“No, I’ll get dressed, but if you like you can come up and watch me.”

“I’m too far away. By the time I get there you’ll be ready.”

“I’m a slow dresser,” she said and hung up.

The cab dropped me off on her corner and I waited until it had pulled away before I turned and started walking toward her building. The last time I had waited in a taxi while Burton Selwick made the call, but this time I punched the button under her name and when the door buzzed, shoved it open.

Gretchen Lark lived on the top floor, three long, creaking flights up. And like she said, she was a slow dresser. Women can take two hours to put their faces on, but two minutes to get into clothes. Gretchen Lark had her face on. The rest was being smothered in a crazy beatnik cotton blanket robe that was all efficiency and no charm... but at least she had waited.

“Tiger man,” she said when she opened the door. It wasn’t my name. It was a deliberate dropping of the last letter and the capital and I let her see all the teeth in a smile and walked inside.

“Hello, baby. Should I say thanks?”

“It isn’t necessary.” She knew damn well what I meant.

There were framed oils on the walls, unframed canvases standing on the floor and two in easels with drape cloths hanging over them beside the skylights that faced the north side. Most of them were good, but a few were the expressionless scratchings of an artist that had no subject to paint.

I said, “Neat, but not gaudy.”

“They’ll never sell.”

“What do you care. You’re having fun.”

“I can afford it.”

She was laughing at me now, a tall, superlative doll with a shining brunette page-boy hair set that spilled around a nutty cotton robe that was no class at all. But she was laughing.

“Tiger... what do you think?”

“Good color composition,” I said. “Brush strokes too hard and for Pete’s sake stay off the palette knife; you just don’t have the flair for it. The colored girl is lousy. No anatomy. No nothing there.”

“I realize that.”

“You can paint men, though,” I told her. The one in the corner was a beauty except that it would never sell either. Realism can come to an end at times. There wasn’t even a fig leaf and the exaggeration was too much to be believed. “You got a fetish,” I said.

“No... only wishful thinking,” she smiled.

“Someday you’ll find out that technique can beat a ruler, kid.”

“You’re dirty.”

“Why sure.”

“I love it.”

“Don’t you all,” I said.

“Would you like to watch me get dressed?”

“No. The reverse process is far more interesting. Hurry up.”

Her smile was a teasing thing. “I knew you’d chicken out.” She pointed to an icebox half hidden behind a curtain. “Have a beer while you wait.”

“Thanks.” She walked off into a bedroom at the far end of the room without bothering to shut the door. I found a Pabst, jacked it open and poured it into a glass to get a head on it. At least she drank like a man with the beer barely above freezing.

While I waited for her I toured the room, deciphering her tastes. It wasn’t easy. Her book shelves were lined with everything from the classics to earthy mysteries, one entire shelf being given to treatises on international politics. About twenty books were in German, French and Spanish, all histories of each nation and their current role in politics. There were six volumes of a medical series and a stack of pamphlets from a New York school dealing with the aspects of being a legal secretary.

A real well-rounded broad intellectually as well as physically.

I flipped up the drape that covered a canvas and though it was only partially done it was recognizable and even in these early stages, beautifully executed. It was a study of Burton Selwick.

Behind me Gretchen said, “How do you like it?” She came out, turned so I could button up the back of her dress and looked at the picture over her shoulder.

“It should be your best.” Her flesh was warm under my fingers, firm and young. I tried not to touch her but couldn’t help it. “Why don’t you wear a brassiere?” I asked her.

She let me finish buttoning and spun around. “Because I don’t need it, Tiger.” She smiled impishly. “Do I?”

I had to admit that she didn’t.

With a sudden impulse she picked up a charcoal stick and swept in a line down the shoulder of the figure of Selwick. Just one line, but it added strength. Satisfied, she dropped the charcoal and wiped her fingertips on the drape cloth.

“This is for his wife,” she said. “They have an anniversary in two months.”

“How come he picked you?”

She took the beer from my hand and had a sip of it. “Sometime back I was exhibiting at the Conway Galleries and during lunch the office staff all went down with me. Mr. Selwick saw the studies I did of the President and a U.N. delegate and right then decided he wanted one of himself for his wife.”

“Make much money?”

“Surprisingly enough, I do. That is, if an extra five thousand a year is much.” She turned the drape down over the picture. “A few more sittings and I’ll have it. The only trouble with Mr. Selwick is time. He works too much. He’s not too well, either. Now finish your beer and let’s go somewhere. If I’m going to be late-dated I want it to be in style.”

There was a little place I knew buried on a side street that nobody could find unless they had been there before. The clientele is restricted to a chosen group because some of the things they sold there weren’t on the approved list of the Pure Food and Drug Act. You simply went in a door that adjoined a dirty, vacant store window, down a hall to where the cellar door should be and when you knocked on that one a slot opened in a panel and you got a glimpse of a pair of eyes.

Gretchen’s hand tightened on mine with a touch of fright.

Then the eyes crinkled in a smile as they recognized me and the door opened. The guy there was short, but broad in the shoulders with a face marked from years of dirty fighting. “Ah, Mr. Mann, it is good to see you again.”

“Hello, Dell. How’s everything?”

“Progressing, Mr. Mann. You would like your usual spot?”

“Please. The show on yet?”

“You are just in time.”

We followed him down the stairs into the basement, went through an alcove, through another door and there was a scene from the middle of the Casbah right down to tinkling bells on the toes of the dancing girls to the burnooses of the waiters.

It was a huge place, with a center dance floor surrounded by tables occupied by people dressed in everything from evening clothes to beatnik outfits. A half-level up was a balcony divided into compartments, each with a heavily beaded curtain drawn across its front. But this Casbah joint had the benefit of modern air conditioning at least. Smoke was drawn off through ceiling ventilators and the only odor was that of some rich perfume. Whether it was deliberately introduced or was the conglomerate of that of all the women I couldn’t tell, but was pleasant enough.

I pointed out the powder room to Gretchen and told her to hurry up. When she went through the louvered door I motioned Dell to one side where we were alone. “I’m after a man.”

“Naturally. Otherwise you would not be here, no?”

“Only identification is a stiff right forefinger on the right hand. He may have an accent, but don’t count on it. There’s a possibility he’ll be with another whose only distinguishing characteristic is a round mouth. I don’t know what that means, but it should mean something.”

“They have never been here.”

“I don’t expect they will. Pass the word.”

“The usual fee?”

“We can throw in a bonus on this one.”

Dell smiled gently and rocked on his heels. “I’ll be happy to see what can be learned. We offer many accommodations here.”

He nodded past me. “Here comes your lady. Very exquisite. You always did have good taste. What became of that stunning redhead?”

“She was killed in Mexico.”

“So? Too bad. And the person who did such a thing?”

“I drowned him in a toilet bowl. It was a good ending.”

“Very good,” he said.

Dell turned us over to a bearded waiter who led us up the three steps to the balcony, went to the comer booth and held the curtains open for us.

After we sat down I gave him our order in rapid Arabic and flipped the curtain open so we could see what was going on downstairs.

The effect was showing on Gretchen’s face. “In the middle of New York!” she said, awed. “And I thought I’d seen it all.”

“Baby, there’s a lot you haven’t seen.”

“But this place...”

“It’s called the Hall of the Two Sisters. The atmosphere is exciting, the food authentic and you can arrange anything from a killing to a main-line pop without batting an eye.”

“Incredible.”

“Understand one thing. Nobody... hear that? Nobody comes in here unless they’re cleared. Being with me clears you, but finger this place to anybody, talk about it and you can find yourself with a face full of acid or your fingers off down to the knuckles or tied to a table naked while a pack of goons work you into an idiot.”

Her eyes were perfect circles of horror as she watched my face. I knew what she was seeing there. Everything I told her was the truth and she knew it.

“How... can it exist? The police...”

“Baby, in police work they sometimes let things exist. There are sources of information that can come out of queer places and rather than destroy them they utilize them. Forget it. That’s not your line of work. Just keep in mind what I told you.”

“Then you’re a policeman?”

“Hell no,” I said. “I’m in a business that takes me around and I get to know some strange people.”

The drinks came then, tall and cool in oddly shaped glasses. Gretchen tasted hers, nodded with approval and took another sip. When she put it down she reached for a cigarette and let me light it. Through a gray stream of smoke she said, “And what is your business, Tiger?”

I shrugged. “Exploitation, to put it simply. The people I represent go into undeveloped areas and open them up. Five years ago it was rubber, then tin and tungsten, now we’ve located an untapped source of mahogany.”

“You enjoy your work?”

“As long as you don’t mind heat or cold, bugs, snakes, dry spells, cities or desert it isn’t bad. How about you?”

“Oh, I’m satisfied.”

“Why don’t you stay with your painting?”

She lifted her drink again. “It isn’t enough. I rather enjoy being with the U.N. Things are happening there that are important to the world.”

“Nuts.”

Before she could answer there was a clash of cymbals and immediately the flutes and drums started. Down on the floor the dancers came out, six of them, their only costume a head-dress and gauzy veil. They were all dark-skinned and beautiful with hair black as coal, their bodies going in a frenzied motion that made you almost ignore their nakedness under the gauze.

Minute by minute the beat and rhythm of the music got more intense until it was one demanding tempo of seduction and the girls spun on bare feet so that the veils were wafted out in huge circles at their shoulders. Those at the tables below couldn’t take their eyes from them and you could see the fine glisten of sweat on the foreheads of the men at the ringside. The women were the same way too and when I looked at Gretchen I could see the heat of it getting to her. There was a tight set to her body as if she were ready to go out there with them, ready to strip the clothes off her body and join the six. The tip of her tongue kept wetting her lips and the knuckles on the backs of her hands were white.

The man joined the dancers with a whip, an Arab in the loose white cotton of the desert tribes. He raised the lash, snapped it between the girls, twisted and spun in the rituals of the dance, every so often snaking the whip around the waist of a dancer to draw her to him and at the very moment of being ready to take her, changing his mind to go for another. One by one he tried them all, discarded them, then stood there, angry.

The drum beat was a signal. The girls stopped, then raced off the floor and in their place came the most exotic woman I had ever seen. She was evidently a Eurasian, combining the loveliness of the races. Each wrist and ankle was covered with bracelets that made music of their own as she came out in the classic motion of the dance.

And that was all she had on.

Her jet-black hair hung down to her waist and she could swirl it to cover or expose herself as she wished to. A look of greed and longing crossed the face of the Arab as he watched, then decided and went into motion with the whip. The lash snapped, ripped out and furled about her, to all appearances cutting her to ribbons, but it was as if she weren’t there at all. No mark appeared on her bare skin at all, no welt showed and the girl’s face simply smiled at the faces in the audience as she tinkled past the men and women who were plainly caught up in the act as if they were part of it. One woman was even half standing, her hands gripping the edges of the table and behind her a waiter hovered, waiting to restrain her if she moved. They had evidently seen it happen before.

The Arab was great with the whip, turning it into a living thing, then in a sudden climax he caught the girl up in the folds, this time refusing to let her go and slowly brought her close to him. The music went higher and higher, the tempo getting more furious as he wrapped her inside his cloak and with a sudden smash of the cymbals again the pair folded to the floor as the lights went out completely.

When they came back on again the floor was empty.

Gretchen said breathlessly, “Good gracious!”

“Stuns you, doesn’t it?”

She looked at me, frowning. “How can you just sit there.”

“I’ve seen it all before, kid.” Then I grinned. “You almost joined the act.”

Her face flushed and she licked her lips again, nervously this time. “I know. I felt like it. There’s something... hypnotic about the whole thing.”

“It’s supposed to be.”

“Inside, I feel like... I feel...”

“I know,” I said.

“You know too damn much.”

The bearded waiter came in, took the order I gave him and disappeared. Gretchen said, “How many languages do you speak?”

“Chow and girls I can order in almost any language. Conversationally I stick to English.” It was a lie, but she didn’t have to know it. Abruptly I said, “You know Edith Caine long?”

“Only since she came to the U.N.”

“Close friends?”

“Pretty much. You know how girls are. How come you didn’t take her out tonight? Have a fight?”

“We’ve known each other too many years. I rub her wrong. She ever tell you about her family?”

“A few times she’s discussed them. They’re quite important in England. Society, government and all that. She feels that she has to contribute something too and being part of the U.N. is the post she selected.”

“Like the company?”

“The delegates?”

“More or less,” I offered.

“Well... if you live on an intellectual plane—”

“Do you?” I interrupted.

“Yes, very much so. When you do you can find the work and the company fascinating. Considering that the people involved are all carefully selected and represent the highest order of culture and learning each country can bring here, working with them and sometimes adding to what they have is a satisfying thing.”

“We’ve had nothing but wars, kiddo.”

“True, but could we have had bigger and more wars if they hadn’t been there?”

“It’s a thought,” I said. “How’s Burton Selwick to work with?”

Gretchen made a face. “I’m not assigned to him often. Only twice have I had occasion to be with his staff. He’s funny.”

“How?”

“Oh, he has that staid British humor and isn’t afraid to mix a little fun in with his work. All the girls like him. He’s extremely intelligent. I had a professor like him once.”

“Where?”

“College here in New York.”

“Edith seems to think a lot of him.”

“They’re countrymen, that’s why. Whenever they go out to lunch all they talk about is England. He uses her a lot after hours like all the rest of the Embassy bunch. That woman will work night and day without pay just to be ‘doing her bit’ as they say.”

Sure, and doing her bit can get her a lot of inside information that can be diverted into other channels, I thought. Scratch another up for Rondine.

“She was always like that. Real close-mouthed, though.”

“You have to be. Everyone is cleared security-wise and you don’t last long if you talk out of turn. Look what happened last month and before that with that attaché.”

The waiter came then with a steaming tray of strange dishes that had the pungent aroma of the Orient. He set them down, waited for a smile of satisfaction and went back through the curtain.

Gretchen asked, “What is it?”

“Maybe I’d better not tell you,” I said. “Just eat it.”

She gave a mock shudder of excitement and dipped her fork into her plate. What she tasted pleased her and we ate with small talk about the place itself. I pointed out a couple of politicians, an actor and two big hoods on the level below and gave her some background on the Hall of the Two Sisters. Before we finished Dell came up, spoke in my ear and when I shook my head, smiled and left.

“What did he say?”

I laughed and pushed my plate away. “He wanted to know if the lady and I were interested in sharing a room for the night. It seems that he has just the thing available.”

“And you said no?” she teased.

“Sure. The beds are hard, the mirrors two-way and for a seat behind them somebody who goes for the oddball kicks pays Dell five yards. Besides, your place is better.”

She leaned her elbows on the table, her chin cupped in her hands. “Tiger,” she said, “you are completely overbearing and the picture of supreme over-self-confidence.”

“So do we go to your place?”

“Certainly,” she said.

The fire was still inside her, the picture of the dancers there in her mind. She let me unbutton the dress then shrugged out of it and stood in the soft light from the dresser and shed the black lace that was left. Slowly, she undulated across the room toward me, not dancing, but with the innate classic movement of every female who had ever lived and wanted just one thing. She was tall and sleek and stalked with the subtle grace of an athlete; breasts high and thrusting, swelled with excitement. Her belly was a concave region tense with excitement, merging with hips and thighs that were taut with demand. The Eurasian girl was just that compared to her... a girl.

“Now you,” she said and reached for the buttons on my shirt.

In the living room the phone rang, a sudden discordant note. I looked at her and she shook her head. It rang twice more and stopped. Then her fingers were inside my shirt brushing my skin and I pushed her away to do it quicker.

Outside the Village had gone quiet and beside me Gretchen slept curled on her side, one arm flung across my chest. I lifted her hand, felt the pulse in her wrist steady, her breathing regular, dropped her arm on the bed and rolled out. I got dressed, threw the cover over her and walked to the door.

I looked back, said, “Nice. Very nice,” then left.