Quiller Barracuda

Chapter 21: FINIS

'… And the last time he went there was two days ago, but it's a dead end because I can't go in there myself a second time without an official backup and like I say, that place sure is no crack house.'

She was sitting on a black leather bean bag, one arm held straight out and resting on her knee, her hand hanging, the gold nails glinting sometimes as the light from the mirror-lamp floated across them.

'How many of the rooms did you see?'

'Maybe three or four, the big hall with the staircase and a couple of rooms either side and a small kind of den. See, you can't have just one cop go into a house and take the whole place apart, this was just a drop-by kind of thing, like I explained to them, they could have asked for a warrant if I'd tried muscling them. You okay there?'

On the floor. Said yes.

'The way it was, see, they should have told me to keep my ass in the street, a great big house like that and the guys got up in pin-stripe duds and everything, and it got me thinking a little bit, why they were so ready to show me around, but maybe I was just over-suspicious because Proctor went there.'

'You didn't see a Japanese?'

'No. Just these three guys, two of them American and one with a French accent – he was on the phone to someone. I took it to the point, see, where I could back out and leave there with my nose clean, said my despatcher had obviously sent me to the wrong address. I wanted them to forget the whole thing as soon as they could because I was taking a risk, they could mention a cute little black cop in Proctor's hearing and he could ask them to describe her and bing-go. But anyway he's gone to ground and unless he shows up again there isn't anything more I can do. But there's a couple of little things that've got my antennae quivering, see, though they're nothing to do with drugs, things like him calling the Soviet Embassy, that get your attention?'

'Somewhat,' I said.

'Somewhat, sure, you being in the intelligence game. But listen, this is a two-way street, you know? I show you mine, you show me yours. If there's anything you've got on Proctor I can take to the FBI, I want it.'

I got off the cushion and walked about, rolling the right shoulder to ease the stiffness. 'I can't promise anything.'

'Shit.' A bright, frozen smile.

'I can ask my superiors to give you anything they're able to. That might be nothing at all.'

'He's into something that big? Proctor?'

'Something rather sensitive.'

'The way you understate things,' she said, 'it sounds like an international spectacular.'

'I didn't say that.'

'It's the things you don't say, Richard, that I listen to the most.' The slim hand hanging from the wrist was moving a little, circling, restless. 'You can't show me yours, gee, why should I flash mine around?'

'Try this,' I said, but the telephone on the black lacquered cabinet began ringing and she went over there.

'Yeah. A half hour back.' She lifted her free hand towards the ceiling, very slowly, and as it reached as high as it would go she spread her fingers out, and the gold nails looked like fruit glowing on a tree. Then get him,' she said. 'I don't give a shit. Go get him. Bring him in.' Her hand was turning slowly, the gold vanishing and reappearing from behind her fingers as the floating lights passed over them. Her bare arm, stretched like this, looked like a slim dark vine, the muscle lit and shadowed. 'Okay, Maloney, can you hear me all right? Okay, I don't give a shit he's connected to Washington. Go get that mother-fucker and bring him in and I mean right now or I'll have your badge first thing in the morning, now move your fucking ass, man, those are my fucking orders.'

She dropped the phone and brought her other hand down slowly, watching it, turning it into a black and gold fan, spreading it across the shadows.

'You're beautiful,' I said.

'I know. I'm into dance, nights off. Those guys,' she said, 'they think just because some dude got a pass into the State Capitol they can't arrest him. You give me enough on a guy and I'll go and arrest him inside the State Capitol. Try what?'

'I'll give you as much as I can.' Told her, throwing in details, that Proctor was persona grata on board the motor-yacht Contessa and was involved in Senator Mathieson Judd's campaign for the presidency. That there was, yes, a Soviet connection and Proctor had already been reported as having telephoned their embassy. 'That's as far as I can go, Monique. It's practically all I know about his operation, except that it has got international dimensions. Now that Proctor's gone to ground, you should use the time to get as close as you can to the Cambridge hit, and work from there.'

She dropped onto the floor, facing me in the lotus position, her thigh muscles carved out of ebony, wrists across her knees and both hands hanging with the fingers wide, making a black and gold screen. 'You're taking a risk,' she said.

'Not really.'

'I go blabber-mouthing that to the FBI, trying to look good, trying to get in there?'

'That wouldn't be very intelligent, would it, at this stage? The FBI are going to be working on the Cambridge hit in any case, and I shouldn't think it'll take them terribly long to find the helicopter and start from there. Tell them if you like that it could be a Mafia hit. It's only my supposition.'

She watched me from the shadows of her lashes. 'Not too many people outside the Mafia go and make a hit like that. Takes money, and it's very exposed. Shows how cool they are, giving us guys the finger, part of Toufexis's personality, he's like that, always keeps just out of reach. So that's all you got to show me?'

'It's dynamite, and you know that. Because of the Judd connection. And the Soviet.'

'Jeeze,' she said in a minute, 'you seen the FBI badge?'

'No.'

'It's real pretty.' Looking down, frowning a little, 'Okay, show you mine. I knew he was calling the Soviet Embassy because once when we got in from the Black Flamingo Club there was a message on his machine and I was near enough to watch the numbers he touched on his phone, next day I checked them out and it was the embassy.'

'He was on coke at that time?'

'Sure, he was riding right along.'

Or he would have waited until he was alone before he made that call. He was still slipping, getting cocky in the coke fumes, some of the Mafia braggadocio rubbing off on him, perhaps it'd give me a chance, take him when he was high, if I could do it before he or the mob had another go and brought it off.

'What did he say on the phone?' I asked her.

'Nothing too much, no names or anything, he was just making a rendezvous.'

'Did you surveille it?'

'The timing was wrong – I was on duty.'

'You didn't sent someone else to cover it?'

'Send someone else and I'm giving the whole deal away, you don't watch your ass in this service you get kicked.'

'That was the only time you heard him phoning the Soviet Embassy?'

'Right. But there were other things.'

She told me she'd followed Proctor once to Quay 19 and saw him board the cutter, nothing new, and told me he'd been going with a girl named Harvester before Cambridge had moved in, nothing new, and then she began talking about the canisters.

'He used to bring them back from the Newsbreak studios, couple of times a week, and a guy came for them and returned them later. He -'

'Do you know what was in them?'

'Sure, I checked a couple for drugs, but they were just video tapes. It could be the guy that came for them took them to Riverside Way, because I saw one of them there that time I checked the place out. It seemed -'

'Did you put them into a VCR?'

'I couldn't do that. They were sealed, besides which, I was looking for a big stash of merchandise and tapes didn't turn me on too much. Anyway they were just commercials.'

'How did you know?'

'They'd got labels. Honi-du, Syn -'

'What's that?'

'Uh? Skin cream. Syncrest, that's an earphone unit, Pizzarita, that's a chain of chic pizza stops. Discreet, that's pads for gals.'

'Go on,' I said.

'What's so big?'

I was dead-pan, but it must be showing in my eyes. 'It might be nothing,' I said. I didn't think so.

'Okay, there was Orange Sunset, Yummies, and Tuxedo Junction, that's a soft drink and a junk bar and a cologne for men. They're all I can remember.'

'They're all you saw.'

'You got it.'

In a moment I asked her, 'Where is Proctor now?'

'Last time I saw him he was climbing up your ass in a Corvette.'

'If you know where he is,' I said carefully, 'and don't want to tell me, I could understand that. But if you know, and choose to tell me, I could give you much more -'

'I ain't lying.'

She didn't put on any false resentment. I thought it was probably true.

'Is there any way,' I asked her, 'you could go into the house again, the one on Riverside?'

'Not without a warrant.'

'And you can't get one.'

'I don't have no reason.'

'There is no way, then, that you could get hold of one of those canisters.'

'No way. They're private property.'

It was nearly three o'clock when I looked at my watch.

'When are you back on duty?'

'Varies, on undercover. Maybe eight, maybe nine, report in.'

'Can I use the phone?'

'Go ahead.'

I went across the room and dialled.

'Yes?'

'DIF.'

'Hang on.' Tench's voice.

In a moment: 'Yes?'

'Just reporting in,' I said.

'Where are you?'

'Oh, not long.'

Any kind of answer will do, as long as it doesn't make sense. Means someone is listening. Then they've got to take it from there, asking suitable questions until they make a hit.

'You need support?'

'No.'

'Medical attention?'

'No.'

'Congratulations.' The last time we'd talked over the phone I'd been in the limousine, waiting to ditch. 'You need transport?'

'No.'

'A rendezvous?'

'Yes.'

Silence for a bit. 'It will have to be in the open.'

I didn't like that but I'd been expecting it. I'd become a security risk. It happens a lot of the time, when the shadow executive becomes so exposed and so vulnerable that the whole of the field becomes a permanent red sector. He is then a danger to his director, and must keep his distance from every base and safe-house because he could be followed there. He becomes a pariah dog, unwelcome at any door and therefore without shelter. Ferris would have a bolt-hole for me but it wouldn't be an established safe-house because I could contaminate it.

'All right,' I told him.

He couldn't say where are you so he said, 'How far are you from where you ditched?'

'More explicit.'

'Five miles?'

'No.'

'More?'

'No.'

'Three?'

'Roughly.'

'Give me a minute.'

Getting a map.

She hadn't moved. Her reflection was in the black lacquered cabinet with the gold inlay, stylised peacocks. She was watching me. She would realise I was shielding the content of my talk with Ferris but I couldn't do anything about that. At worst, it was discourteous: we had established trust.

'You're without transport?'

'Yes.'

'You'll rdv on foot?'

'That's right.'

'Then I'll be at SW 21st Avenue and SW 11th Street, by the school. In ten minutes?'

'No.'

'More?'

'Yes.'

'Thirty?'

'No.'

'Forty?'

'Yes.'

'Right. Look for two vehicles, a dark blue Saab and a black Chevrolet Blazer van, both fairly new. I shall be in the Blazer, and you will therefore rdv with that. You'll take it over. Questions?'

'No.'

'Forty minutes, then, at 03:35.'

'Yes.'

I went back across the room. She was still in the lotus position, her hands spread like fans, a beam of light floating across one of her eyes, brightening its translucent orb like a jewel before it moved away.

'Will you dance more,' I asked her, 'as time goes by? And finally turn in your badge?'

'Think I should?'

'Yes.'

'Look,' she said, and unfurled her legs and rose with the grace of a swimmer surfacing, 'this is the body my spirit chose, but my spirit is feisty and assertive, and I hate men, because they've always called the shots. Most men, sure, not all of them. So it gives me a kick, see, to order them face down on the floor and then have them hustled into the van and sent to the slammer. And it gives me a kick because they're dangerous, and I've got to be good to beat them at the game we play. So maybe I'll dance more, as time goes by, but for now I'm the happiest little gal alive, kicking the shit outa those mother-fuckers. You going?'

'Yes.'

'You don't want to jump in the Jacuzzi with me?'

'Of course I do.'

'But you gotta go.'

'That's right.'

'Some other time. Get you a taxi?'

'I'll find one.'

'Couple of minutes from here,' she said, 'right in front of the hotel, just go left on the sidewalk.' Turning to face me at the door with a quick swing of her hips that went through me like a wave, 'I don't know what it is about you. It ain't the looks – I prefer blacks. I guess it's the brand of pheromones you send out. I'm in most nights, after twelve. Call me?'

I'd asked for forty minutes to give me time to get to the rendezvous absolutely certain I was alone. The taxi dropped me off at SW 11th Terrace and SW 23rd Crescent and I walked from there, covering two blocks and using doorways and double-tracking, making certain, making absolutely certain. Since I've been with the Bureau only three executives have inadvertently blown their directors in the field and the one who survived his mission was fired the day after debriefing.

The Saab and the van were already there and I gave it another five minutes, scanning the whole of the environment until I was sure. Then I walked across the street to the van and got in.

Ferris was alone, sitting at the wheel with his long body slightly hunched, held in on itself, and his hands folded on his lap. I hadn't ever seen him like this before, and I suppose I should have been warned. I began debriefing but he stopped me almost right away and got it over, said I'd been withdrawn from the mission.