Death of a Citizen

CHAPTER 20

I BACKED to the door and put my hand on the knob. I thought I could hear the sound of quick, light footsteps in the hall outside, hurrying away, but the girl in the tweed suit started to rise and I had to give her my attention. A lot of good men have died as the result of not taking an attractive lиmale adversary quite seriously. I didn't intend to be one of them.

"Hold the pose," I said. "If you move, you're dead."

She froze, looking at the slim-barreled.22 aimed directly at her. I took a chance and yanked the door open left-handed. Nothing happened. The corridor was empty, except for two objects lying just beyond the threshold of the room: the tall girl's brown leather purse and her copy of Harper's, both of which Tina had been carrying.

They told the story completely. If Tina had been silently overpowered behind my back and whisked away-which seemed implausible in any case-she'd have dropped her own purse as well, not to mention the gun she'd been holding. No, it was no time for me to be kidding myself. Tina had pulled out, tossing aside the unwanted purse and magazine as excess baggage iii her voluntary flight. I crouched, picked them up, dropped them on a nearby chair inside, pulled the door closed again, and locked it.

"She ran out on you," the tall girl said maliciously, still balanced on one knee by the end of the bed. "I saw her. I saw the look on her face. She'd had enough of you, she was saving her own skin. I don't blame her. But now she's gone I want to tell you-"

"I don't want you to tell me anything," I said. "Keep your trap shut until I say otherwise. You may stand up now."

"Yes, sir." She got to her feet.

"It isn't necessary to acknowledge the instructions. Just follow them… Now take one step away from that bed and hold it. Did you ever pose for photographs professionally?"

Her eyelids flickered. "Why, yes."

"I thought so," I said. "I've taken enough pix myself to recognize the type. Then there's no excuse for your not standing perfectly still, is there?"

She said, "You've got to listen to me. I'm not-"

I said, "I'm going to tell you just once more. Shut up. Or comes it a gun-barrel in the teeth." She started to speak. I raised the pistol slightly. She checked herself. "That's better," I said. I reached back to pick up her purse. It contained no weapon. "Mary Frances Chatham," I said, glancing through the identification cards. "Mrs. Roger Chatham."

She started to speak again, thought better of it, and stood with her lips compressed, despising me. I tossed the purse back on the chair and stood looking at her thoughtfully, reviewing in my mind everything that had happened since we entered the room. I didn't think I'd had my eyes off her long enough for her to have got rid of anything she was carrying, but there was no sense in taking chances.

"Take another step forward and hold it," I said.

"May I?"

"What?"

"It's an old game," she said. "Children play it. It's called Giant Step. You have to ask 'may I' before you move."

It was too bad. I'd warned her. If she'd been a man, she'd have got it squarely across the mouth as I'd promised. Since she was a girl-a girl who looked just a little like my wife-I clipped her above the ear, instead. She swayed, and started to raise her hand to the side of her head, but remembered the gun, and stopped the risky movement. When she looked at me again, her gray eyes were wet with pain. I was giving her a bad time. Well, I wasn't having much fun myself.

I said, "Mrs. Chatham, I once spent four hard years at this business. I know all about the technique of chattering brightly to distract the opposition. I can't afford to believe anything you tell me, so I don't intend to waste time listening to it. The next time you open your mouth without being asked, you'll lose some teeth. Is that clear?" She didn't speak. I repeated: "Is it clear?"

"Yes," she whispered, hating me. "Yes, it's clear."

"All right. Now, one step forward without comments. If you please."

She took the step. That put her far enough from the bed so I could search all parts of it she could have reached without being within too easy range of any tricks she might know. I suspected that, with her physique, given an opening, she'd be as hard to handle as lots of men who thought they were really tough. I didn't find ~anything hidden in the bed.

I straightened up, frowning. There were two separate problems involved. There was the problem of Tina's sudden defection, if that was what it was-and now that I thought about it, it occurred to me that she'd kind of made a point, earlier, of saying: goodbye, don 't hate me. In the long run, this might be the more serious problem, but for the moment I thought I could pass it up. I'd just have to figure the immediate play without Tina, that was all.

Then there was the problem of the girl before me and the man behind her-because somewhere in the background, I knew, there was a man, a very smart and dangerous man, thinking very clever thoughts. I'd underestimated him seriously once tonight, when I'd assumed he'd set a simple and obvious trap here. I couldn't afford~to make the same mistake again. He had something more complicated in mind. I didn't have too much time left to figure out what it was.

I looked at the girl again. Well, it was the logical next step. I said, "Strip."

"What?"

"Take it off. Remove it. Peel."

"But-"

I shifted the gun to my left hand, and reached in my pocket for the knife. I flicked it open one-handed, grasping the exposed part of the blade and giving that quick snap of the wrist that lets the weight of the handle carry it open.

"No," I said as the girl's eyes widened, "I'm not going to threaten you. I don't have to. I've skinned rabbits. I've skinned deer. I've skinned bear, moose, and elk. Any man who's wrestled a bull-elk hide ought. be able to dispose of a tweed suit, a sweater, and some assorted nylon junk. Of course, the clothes aren't likely to be much good to you after I get through cutting them off you."

We stared at each other for several seconds; then her glance dropped and she unbuttoned and pulled off her jacket, hesitated, and laid it on the rug at her feet. Reluctantly, she unzipped and unhooked the fastenings at the side of her skirt. I put the knife away and got the gun back into my right hand. I used to be a passable shot with my left hand, too-we all had to be-but that was a long time ago.

"Just let it fall and step out of it," I said as she still stood there, clinging to her opened, sagging skirt. "Keep working, I haven't any designs on your white body, Mrs. Chatham, but I'm apt to get some if you keep teasing me like this."

She flushed, and hurried up the rhythm of her undressing. As might have been expected from her low heels and tweedy outer garments, her lingerie was as unglamorous as could be found outside a men's wear department. There was no lace or embroidery, there were no little pleated nylon ruffles to tickle Mr. Chatham's fancy, if there was a Mr. Chatham and if he had a fancy. Probably his name was Joe Jones, he liked small blondes, and he was just along for the ride, on orders.

When we got down to it, her figure was quite admirable, although it was, if you'll pardon the expression, a studio figure rather than a bedroom figure. It made my fingers itch, but only for a camera.

"All right," I said, "come away from your clothes. Over here." She obeyed, and tried to confront me defiantly, but she couldn't look me in the face. Well, it was kind of nice to meet one who was self-conscious about her body, for a change… I checked that line of thought. Tina was gone. There wasn't anything to be gained by being bitter, at least until I knew for sure I had something to be bitter about. "Lock your hands behind your back," I said to the girl. "Okay, now bend towards me. If those hands let go of each other, I'll club you down."

She bent forward, and I ran my fingers through her lightbrown hair. I found only a small lump over her ear that I had put there. There was nothing taped to her scalp. There was nothing under her armpits or in any of the other crevices of her body. I don't know where they got her, she was almost a pathological case. She'd have to get over it before she could be trusted with serious work. In other respects, she'd done quite well, but who can use an operative, male or female, who can't stand being searched without half dying of embarrassment?

I made her place her hands flat against the wall, leaning well forward, and hold that position precariously while I searched her clothes. If she was carrying so much as a cyanide capsule, it was too well hidden for me to find without methodically dissecting her outfit, seam by seam, and it wasn't that important. She was certainly packing no major weapon, not even a razorblade.

"All right, Mrs. Chatham," I said. "You may cover it up now." She didn't seem to catch on right away. I said gently, "It's all right, Shorty. The nightmare is over. Put your things back on."

She didn't speak until she'd got dressed as far as her slip, a very plain and practical white garment. Then, with enough clothes on to give her courage again, she glanced at me quickly. "I hope somebody does shoot you!" she breathed. "I hope they're careful, so you don't die too fast. And now go ahead and hit me for talking without permission!"

I said, "It's all right. Blow off steam if you want to. You're pretty good, you know, but you've got to get over dying of shame just because some guy who doesn't give a damn sees you with your clothes off… I mean, just a little advice from one pro to another."

She said, "What makes you think I'm a-"

"You made two mistakes, Mrs. Chatham. Or let's say you made the same mistake twice."

"I don't know what you're talking about!"

I said, "Despite what you're thinking of me, I'm not really a sadist. I don't jab pretty girls with knives just for kicks."

Her eyelids flickered. Practically everybody's got some little give-away, particularly the young ones who need further instruction. This was hers. She rubbed her side with her forearm, where I'd stuck her. "What do you mean?"

"I mean," I said, "it was a test and you failed it, Shorty. You should have screamed. A nice, innocent, sheltered young girl, suddenly stuck with a knife, would have jumped six feet in the air and yelled bloody murder, even in the middle of a hotel lobby. She couldn't have helped herself. And when I smacked you with the gun-barrel, you didn't clap your hand to the spot-the nonnal reaction. Oh, you started to, all right, but you remembered that there was a weapon covering you and that if you made a sudden move I might get nervous and shoot. After a painful crack on the head, no untrained young bride from the country would have remembered that, or had the self-control to act on it..

It's the old Trojan-Horse routine, isn't it?"

I watched her eyes. There was that little twitch of the lids that she'd have to learn to control, now that she was in the big time.

She licked her lips. "I don't know what you mean. If you'd only listen to me-"

The telephone rang. She didn't look at it right away; she wasn't that good. You can't wait for something through intolerable ages of fear and humiliation, and then act quite naturally when it happens. But if she hadn't been expecting it, she'd have jumped at the first ring.

We stood there, facing each other, and let the instrument tinkle away on the table between the beds. After the fifth ring it fell silent.

I said, "The old Trojan-Horse routine, and very cleverly done, too. The purpose being to get an accomplice into the enemy camp, somehow. First they showed us a car we'd recognize, following us. That put us on the alert. Then they showed us you, sitting there. I'd seen you yesterday, so I'd be sure to recognize you. What would I do when I saw you? Well, I might lose my nerve and try to make a run for it-they'd have to allow for that possibility. But I might also, being a bold and impetuous character, do something direct and melodramatic, like walking right up to you and taking you along for a hostage or a source of information. If I did, fine. Where would I bring you? Why, up here, of course. Where else in San Antonio could I go?"

She was silent. All around us the hotel was silent, but I could feel them closing in. There wasn't much time left.

"Up here," I said. "Why they chose to move in on us in the middle of a big city full of people and policemen, I don't know, when they could have taken us out in the open, but they've undoubtedly got their reasons. And up here you'd put on the big innocence act until we weren't quite sure we hadn't made a mistake. We'd find that you were unarmed and presumably harmless- no girl who can blush all over can be anything but harmless, can she? And then the telephone would ring. If I picked it up, it would be a wrong number, but it wasn't the wrong number to you. It was the signal to tell you to get ready. And then there'd be a knock on the door, threatening voices perhaps, or just a key in the lock, and as we turned that way, forgetting all about you, you'd whip a gun from somewhere and have us covered from behind… Somewhere?" I looked around the room. "But where, Mrs. Chatham? Where did they cache the gun for you, while we were out to dinner? Or did they? Why hide a gun that might be found and tip off the play, when there was already one handy, as they'd discover soon enough, looking the place over in our absence. All they had to do was tell you where it was."

Still watching her, I moved sideways towards the big chair by the window. Her eyelids betrayed her again, as my hand dipped down behind the cushion and came up with the snubnosed revolver I'd hidden there earlier in the day, the gun that had once belonged to Barbara Herrera.

Her face had changed. When she spoke, so had her voice. It was older and stronger and firmer than it had been. She was no longer a scared young bride trapped in a terrifying and incomprehensible situation, but then, she never had been.

"Mr. Helm…"

I grinned briefly. "So you know my name." -

"Of course I know your name!" she said quickly. "I know your other one, too: Eric. I've been trying to tell you… Yes, yes, you're quiteright about me, but you've got to listen, you can't-"

It was the same old desperate last-minute chatter. They won't let you do it in golf, to make the guy miss his putt, or in trap-shooting or target shooting or chess, but we've got no rules of sportsmanship in our racket; you can talk all you want to, if the guy's fool enough to let you. It made no difference at all what she had to say. It might be the pure, golden, 18-carat truth, but it probably wasn't, and I had no time to run an assay on it.

I said, "If you go over by the door and lie down against the wall, I'll try not to hit you with any stray bullets when your friends break in."

She said fiercely, "You don't understand! You're making a terrible mistake, you've got to listen to me! It's not what you think, you mustn't start shooting-"

"Who's starting anything?" I said. "If nobody comes through that door, nobody'll be hurt. If you want them alive, just call them off."

"I can't," she cried, "I can't, they're already-"

Somebody put a key in the lock. I drew a long breath, held it, and steadied the two guns. I felt it come, the thing that had been missing since the war, the thing that's very close to sex, except that it deals in death instead of life. The girl was staring at me as if I'd suddenly grown twelve feet tall, and perhaps in a sense I had. A man is always just a little bigger when he's ready to kill.

"Come on, boys," I murmured, watching the door. "Come to papa! Come and get it!"

Mary Frances Chatham threw a desperate glance towards the opening door, shouted a cry of warning, and launched herself directly at me. I'd expected that. It was no problem. She had yards to go, and I was ready for her..

She was dead, you understand. It was all over. She was on the floor with a bullet in her brain. There wasn't anything left to do but cart her out and plant her. It was all taken care of, just a distraction from the main business, and I was thinking ahead, about the opening door and how to take care of the first man through so he'd make the most trouble for the guys behind… And then I discovered that I hadn't shot at all. I was still standing there, watching foolishly as she came driving at me like a Notre Dame fullback with goal to go. The sights were steady, the target was clear, and I couldn't pull the damn trigger. I suppose it was the years of peace that betrayed me-that, and the fact that she did look just a little like Beth.

She hit me hard, drove me back against the wall by the window, and tied me up with a kind of suicidal frenzy. It was no longer a question of not shooting her, it was a question of keeping her from shooting herself with one of the guns I was holding. Behind her, the door swung fully open, and Mac came in.