The Poisoners

I

Nobody was supposed to meet me at the Los Angeles Airport, and nobody did. I made sure of this, although I wasn't really expecting to attract attention so soon. It was highly unlikely that anyone in the area, friendly or unfriendly, could have learned that I was arriving, if only because there had been no time. I was running an errand, for which I'd been selected on a moment's notice, chiefly because I was the only agent Mac had had available within easy flying distance of the West Coast-at least the only one without more important things to do.

"Anyway," he'd told me over the phone, calling from Washington, "you know the girl; you recruited her for us. If she does manage to talk-the doctors don't have much hope that she'll regain consciousness-she might tell you something she wouldn't confess to a stranger."

"Confess?" I said. "Is she supposed to have something to confess?"

He hesitated, a couple of thousand miles away. When he answered, his voice had a kind of baffled shrug in it.

"No, but she wasn't supposed to be in any danger, either. She wasn't even on assignment. And before she came to work for us, she established quite a record for getting into trouble on impulse. If you'll remember, the only way you got her cooperation in the first place was by reminding her that the alternative was a Mexican jail. She's a hot-tempered, redheaded young lady, and I had occasion to reprimand her rather severely just before she went on leave. There's a possibility that she did something foolish, or worse, by way of retaliation."

"In other words," I said, "you think she might have tried to sell us out, only the deal backfired in some way."

"I have to keep the possibility in mind." There was a hint of defensiveness in his voice. "You worked with her below the border on her first assignment with us. Presumably you got to know her fairly well. Do you consider it unthinkable?"

I made a face at the phone. I had got to know the girl in question pretty well. She'd been a competent assistant despite her inexperience, and she'd been a pleasant companion. Personal loyalty, however, does not play a large role in our line of work-it's not supposed to play any role at all.

"It's never unthinkable, is it, sir?" I said, speaking objectively and feeling like a heel. "She's a good kid, but as you point out, she's got one hell of a temper. If something made her mad enough, she'd do just about anything to strike back. As you say, that's how she got into that Mexican trouble we bailed her out of so she could work for us down there. She'd regret it later, but she'd do it."

I heard Mac draw a long breath, like a sigh, far away in the nation's capital. "Sometimes I think I should have been a wild-animal trainer, Eric," he said, using my code name as usual. My real name is Matthew Helm, but it isn't supposed to figure in business conversations except under special circumstances. Mac went on: "I suspect that tigers, for instance, are more predictable, and no more dangerous, than the type of humans we have to employ for this work."

"Gee, thanks," I said. "Is there anything else you'd care to tell this particular tiger?"

"Of course, what I just said about Ruby was pure speculation," he continued calmly, unembarrassed. "We don't know how she got mixed up in whatever got her shot. It could have been a personal matter or a completely accidental involvement. The only facts we have, at present, are that she was found in a vacant lot in Los Angeles early this morning in very bad shape-her assailant probably thought she was dead-and that she wasn't engaged in any official business that could account for her being the recipient of this kind of murderous attention." He stopped, and was silent for a moment. Then he went on crisply, "Well, get out there as fast as you can. I hope you make it in time. In any case, try to discover what happened. I don't like unexplained mishaps to our people. The explained ones are bad enough."

When he'd called, I'd been on leave myself, spending a couple of weeks with some friends in Santa Fe, New Mexico, my former home town. In the business, you have no home, and therefore no home town, but there had been a period, some years ago, when I was out of Mac's clutches and had lived in one place like an ordinary citizen. I still go back there occasionally to do a little fishing and tell a few lies about how I earn my living nowadays.

Although it's the capital of the state, Santa Fe is off the main air routes. A little over an hour of driving had taken me the sixty miles to Albuquerque, and a little under two hours of flying had taken me the eight hundred miles to the coast; just time enough for me to do some research-in a couple of news magazines and a Los Angeles paper I'd picked up-on the area to which I was now assigned.

I learned that a lot of California had been washed out to sea in the heavy rains that had recently plagued the state, and that what was left was expected to slide into the drink whenever the San Andreas Fault decided to stage a repetition of the San Francisco quake on a larger scale. Various psychic and seismic characters seemed to think it would happen fairly soon. Apparently I was taking my life in my hands just crossing the coastal range into this unstable hunk of geography.

But even if the state of California stayed put, I learned I wasn't safe. The water was polluted and the air wasn't fit to breathe, according to various groups struggling desperately to stave off total disaster. One group in particular, boasting a considerable array of scientific talent in the fields of biology and meteorology, was meeting the problem head on by advocating an absolute ban on the internal combustion engine before it irrevocably contaminated the state's atmosphere with its by-products. It was an interesting idea. I found myself reading the column with mixed feelings. I like pure air as well as the next man, but I'm also rather fond of fast automobiles.

Even if I wasn't carried out to sea by a mudslide or an earthquake, or killed by the California air or the California water, I was still, I discovered, jeopardizing my health and morals by entering the state. According to one reporter, the quantity of marihuana and other drugs crossing the border from Mexico was enough to addict a man just standing by the highway sniffing at the vehicles roaring past. The U.S. government had just instituted another major operation-there had been some previous efforts- to cut off this supply of happy, unhealthy dreams. According to the newspaper, the valiant protective work of the Customs and Treasury boys was not appreciated by the tourists delayed by lengthy searches, or by the Mexicans whose businesses were suffering as a result.

All in all, California seemed like a hell of a perilous spot for an innocent lad who'd been hoping for an undisturbed vacation on a peaceful bass lake or trout stream; but undisturbed vacations are hard to come by in our organization. I buckled my seat belt as the plane began to lose altitude. We descended into something that looked like a giant basket of dirty laundry-the smog clouds trapped by the coastal mountains-and discovered, to my considerable relief, that there was an airport under the grimy-looking mess.

I disembarked, retrieved my suitcase after the usual delay at the stainless-steel merry-go-rounds, and grabbed a taxi that looked a little blurred to me, because the impact of the acrid Los Angeles air I'd just been reading about had set me weeping. I wiped my eyes, blew my nose, and told the driver to take me to the Royal Viking Motel on Third Street.

The trip took almost as long as the flight out, and was considerably rougher. The Los Angeles department of streets seems to be boycotting the Los Angeles department of airports. There's no simple and direct way of getting from the terminal into town, or if there is, my driver didn't know about it or had no faith in it. After we'd switched boulevards and streets and freeways a number of times, I was quite certain nobody was interested in me.

Of course, there was no reason anybody should be, yet. So far, I was just another tourist in the big city. Things might change when I made myself conspicuous by visiting a certain patient on the critical list in a certain medical institution. It depended on just what, or whom, our girl in Los Angeles had got herself involved with.

With this in mind, I took time to check in at the motel. It was the only reasonable-looking hostelry around, a logical place to keep under surveillance if you'd shot somebody who hadn't died as she was supposed to, if you had plenty of hired help to spread around, and if you wanted to learn who would come rushing to L.A. to see her. I even made a point of announcing where I was going next, for the benefit of a gent busily reading a newspaper in the nearby lounge.

"Room 37, eh?" I said clearly to the lady behind the desk, as I pocketed the key. "Thanks. I'll just leave my suitcase right here for a little, if you don't mind. I've got to get over to the hospital across the street."

I didn't look at the man with the paper as I went out. Of course, he could be just a guest tired of the four wails of his room, or a man waiting for his wife or someone who wasn't his wife, but I hoped not. If the wounded girl couldn't tell me who'd shot her and why, I'd have to work it out some other way; and a character with a guilty conscience-guilty enough to keep watch on her visitors – was a good starting place, assuming that such a character existed.

At the hospital, I found that the way had been cleared for me. After giving my name at the desk, I was taken straight up to the room. Annette O'Leary lay in the bed surrounded by enough equipment, it seemed, to synthesize a brand-new human female from the basic elements.

I picked the side on which the apparatus jungle seemed slightly less impenetrable, and stood looking down at her, remembering how we'd met. As Mac had indicated, she'd been involved, in an amateurish way, on the wrong side of a job I'd been doing down in Mexico. Afterwards, needing some female help on my next assignment, rd put her to work for us. Perhaps because I'd known her first by her real name, before there was any question of her joining the outfit, I'd never been able to think of her as Ruby, the corny code name she'd been given later, presumably because of her red hair. Ruby always sounds like a tart name to me, and she was no tart.

She was a bright kid with a lot of guts and a lot of spirit, but you'd never have guessed it now, looking at the pinched little face below the neat white cap of bandages. There seemed to be bandages under the hospital gown as well. Her eyes were closed. I couldn't help remembering that I had, after all, got her into this racket – all the way in, on a permanent, professional basis. Even if her alternative had been prison, it didn't seem, at the moment, like something of which I should be very proud.

I reached down for the nearest hand, first making sure it was connected to no vital wiring or plumbing. It was cold and limp and unresponsive in my grasp. Her eyes remained closed.

"Annette," I said softly, "Netta…"

She didn't move. I glanced at the doctor who'd brought me up here. He moved his shoulders very slightly, as if to say that nothing I could do-nothing anybody could do-would hurt her now.

"Hey, Carrots," I said, "snap out of it! This is Matt."

For a moment, nothing happened. Then the eyelids came up very slowly as if infinitely heavy, and her eyes looked straight at me. I felt a very slight pressure of the cold fingers, just enough to tell me she saw me and knew me and was glad I was there. A moment later the eyelids dropped once more. I stood there holding her hand as long as I figured there was still a chance that she was aware of my presence; then I laid it down gently and went over to the chair in the corner to wait.

Three hours later they declared her officially dead.