The Poisoners

VII

It was an anonymous kind of office in an anonymous kind of building, don't ask me where. I can find my way around Washington and New York, not to mention London, Paris, Stockholm, Oslo, Copenhagen, and East and West Berlin, but Los Angeles is an unexplored and unmapped wilderness as far as I'm concerned. Anybody who can figure out those freeways is wasting his time behind a steering wheel. With that kind of genius, he ought to be doing advanced research on space travel.

Anyway, it was the place to which Charlie Devlin-so help me, Charlie was what they called her around home base-had brought me after the firearms demonstration, when I asked to make a long-distance phone call. I thought it was damn nice of her. She could have taken me back to that filling station pay phone and made me call collect and supply my own dime. I had a hunch that her new, accommodating attitude was due, at least partly, to the fact that she felt she'd misjudged me: I hadn't shot up anybody after all.

"Yes, sir, it was a phony," I said into the telephone. "That's right, sir. Strictly a snow job for our benefit."

I looked across the desk at the black man and the red-haired girl watching me from the doorway. Charlie stood behind them, guarding them. I didn't feel the nickname really fit her-or maybe there was more to her than I'd been allowed to see. An arrogant, inhibited, self-righteous young lady who nevertheless allowed her colleagues to address her as Charlie just couldn't take herself as seriously as she seemed to. But Miss Devlin's character was strictly beside the point, at least for the moment.

"Yes, sir," I said. "Warfel must have got a scriptwriter over from Hollywood to do the screenplay. It was good typecasting, but the sinister pug-type didn't shoot Annette O'Leary and the heartless starlet-type didn't set her up for it, even though they were both eager to claim the glory. No, sir, I have no idea how Warfel got them to cooperate. They aren't saying. But guys like that have ways of applying pressure."

I watched the two faces as I said it. McConnell's features remained impassive, but Beverly's eyes widened and darkened a bit as if at a frightening memory.

"What was the tip-off? Well, no one thing exactly, sir, except that Warfel looked like a man putting on an act and overdoing it, casually inviting me to spill blood all over his bedroom carpet, for God's sake! And McConnell was willing enough to confess to murder-maybe a little too willing-but when he heard that the girl had been roughed up before she was shot, he was jolted just like any black man accused of manhandling a white girl would be. He hadn't expected that, and he wasn't braced for it… Just a minute, sir."

McConnell had taken an angry step forward. "You're just playing Sherlock Holmes, man!" he snapped. "What do you know about black men and white girls?"

I regarded him without affection. The name he had called me, back at the pistol range, didn't bother me greatly, but the attitude it illustrated did. I don't like people who think tolerance is a one-way street. If Mr. McConnell wanted his origins treated with respect by me, he could damn well treat mine the same way, and keep his loaded racial terms to himself.

"I don't know too much," I said, "but you did react, amigo, and you didn't know how to handle that big pistol that was supposed to be your pride and joy. You may have shot lots of people with other guns, but not with that one or anything like it, and that's what killed Annette O'Leary. Maybe I got the right answer for the wrong reasons, but I got it, didn't I?"

I waited. He was silent. The girl known locally as Charlie spoke a soft command and he stepped back into the doorway. I addressed myself to the telephone once more, watching Beverly as I talked.

"The Blame girl clinched it, of course," I said. "They kept hinting at some mysterious female Annette had been mistaken for, but she was supposed to be a great big secret. I had a hunch, however, that if the whole performance was as phony as I'd begun to suspect, and if I gave them half a chance, they'd actually be happy to drop their red-haired mystery woman into my lap to support their fairy tale-which was exactly what they did, with melodramatic trimmings. Just how many times have we used the ancient gag of roughing up an agent to make him, or her, look good to the other side, sir? And how many times have we had it used on us? Well, chalk up one more occasion, for the record."

I looked at the girl and saw that she was tense, waiting for something. I could guess what it was. She was waiting for the humiliation of having me describe, in front of everybody, her abortive attempt at seduction.

I grinned at her, and went on: "Five will get you twenty, sir, that if we check back on her carefully, we'll find she was a ravishing blonde, or a sultry brunette, who couldn't possibly have been mistaken for our redhead or vice versa, until sometime this morning, many hours after the shooting… What about it, Miss Blaine?"

She hesitated. Then she nodded minutely. It was her way of thanking me for sparing her embarrassment, not that I really needed confirmation. Her hairdo had been just too pretty-too bright and soft and beautiful-for a girl who was supposed to have spent the past twenty-four hours on the run; her clothes too, if you discounted the minor damage incurred in the struggle staged for my benefit. For instance, nobody keeps a white turtleneck immaculate, particularly around the collar, for a hectic day and night in the City of Smog.

It had been a good idea, but Warfel or whoever had thought it up had been careless about the details. Maybe he'd counted on the fact that when people confess to being involved with murder, the tendency is to accept their stories without too much skepticism.

I looked from the girl, silent, to McConnell, whose expression said he wasn't talking either. I said into the phone: "No, sir, they're not volunteering any information. Warfel's got them in his pocket. Anyway, there's not much chance he told them anything important. They probably don't know enough to make it worth offering asylum or protection or any other kind of a deal. They're just a couple of expendable red herrings… Yes, sir, I'll turn them loose as soon as I'm through here. Warfel may not like them very much, now that his elaborate scheme has flopped, but they'll just have to take their chances. As you say, it's not worth tangling with the mob for nothing. Organized crime is the F.B.I.'s business, not ours."

It didn't work. At least it didn't work immediately. The threat of being turned out on the street, unprotected against syndicate vengeance, didn't bring either of them rushing forward to trade valuable information in exchange for a safe place to stay. I nodded to Charlie Devlin, and she led them away. When the door had closed, I turned back to the phone.

"Okay, sir, I'm alone," I said. "I just wanted them to hear that much of the conversation. I hoped it might persuade them to give us a little help, but either they actually don't know anything worth telling, or Warfel scares them more than I do."

"So I gathered." Mac hesitated, far away on the other side of the continent, and asked with professional caution: "What is the status of your telephone?"

"Our friends assure me that the room and phone are safe as Fort Knox."

"Indeed? Such confidence is touching. But they do seem to be giving you adequate cooperation."

"Yes, sir," I said. "Reluctant but adequate."

"This Mr. Warfel apparently put on quite a show for you. Can you suggest a motive?"

"Yes, sir," I said, "but first I'd like to drop a few names and descriptions into the hopper. I presume you're already digging up what's known on Warfel himself-there should be plenty-but he had two tough gents in his immediate mйnage when I saw him, one called Jake and the other nameless. There was also a lousy driver he called Willy, and a guy sitting in the lounge in my motel reading a paper. Then there's a slinky blonde called Roberta Prince, Warfel's current house pet. She's either a dancer or an acrobat or both. Also Lionel McConnell, known as Arthur Brown, known as The Basher; and of course the imitation redhead. And you might as well check out my lady colleague while you're at it, the girl they seem to have assigned to me here, Miss Charlotte Devlin, called Charlie for short…

He pounced on that. "Do you suspect this Miss Devlin? Of what?"

"Of nothing, really," I said. "But the Blaine girl was kind of surprised to see her. Maybe she was just surprised at seeing a woman-that's what I figured at first-but maybe she had some reason for being surprised to see that particular woman. If so, I'd like to know why Anyway, if I'm going to be working with Devlin, I'd kind of like to know what her record looks like. I mean, what can I count on her for and what can't I? And has she been doing any work recently that brought her in contact with the Warfel mйnage? I mean, maybe her people had some reason for assigning her to me other than pure friendship and cooperation. Could they have an interest in Warfel that might conflict with ours?"

"That would be difficult to determine at this point, since we don't know exactly what our interest is," Mac said slowly. "Very well, I'll try to investigate, although it will be ticklish business. Give me what you have on the rest and I'll set the machinery in motion…" It took a little while for me to describe all the individuals concerned for the tape recorder some three thousand miles away When I was through, Mac said, "Now what, exactly, are your ideas about Warfel?"

I said, "I figure he must have been trying to cover for the real murderer, who must be somebody important enough to give him orders or rich enough to hire him. I'm no expert on the operations of the syndicate, but I gather it's willing to cater to just about any human weakness. That presumably includes murder. If you happened to shoot somebody, and knew the right people in the right underworld circles, they might just furnish you with a fall guy or two if the price was right."

Mac said thoughtfully, "Of course, there's also the possibility that Warfel himself killed Ruby, or had her killed, and then offered up these sacrificial goats to protect himself."

"Maybe, but why would he kill her?"

"A man like that has many secrets. She could have stumbled onto one of them."

"A man like that keeps his secrets well hidden, sir, and they're generally secrets that wouldn't have interested our girl very much. If she'd stumbled onto one, she'd have minded her own business like a good little government girl, and refused to get involved unless… Is there any indication that Warfel might have political connections overseas? And I don't mean in Sicily or wherever it is so many of these rackets characters seem to originate"

"I see what you have in mind," Mac said slowly. "No, Mr. Warfel plays ball with the local politicians, of course, or they play ball with him, but there's been no hint of any other type of political activity. He's been investigated frequently and thoroughly by competent people who'd have been happy to pin something-anything – on him. No, the idea of Mr. Warfel as the agent of an unfriendly foreign power, or the accomplice of such an agent, is intriguing, Eric, but I'm afraid it's improbable."

"I disagree, sir," I said. "If he's not one, then he's covering up for one, although he may not know it. Our murderer's contact may be somebody higher in the organization. Warfel may simply have got a phone call telling him what to do, and maybe how to do it. He may not even know the name or business of the man he's shielding. If that's the case, I've got a very tough job ahead of me, tracking the guy I want through a forest of high echelon racketeers."

Mac said, "This is highly theoretical, Eric, You have absolutely no proof-"

"Annette was killed, wasn't she? And a great effort was made to sell us a couple of phony murderers, presumably to take the heat off the real one. You're not thinking, sir. You're not thinking about our girl O'Leary, and what kind of a girl she was, and where she'd been before she came to us, and what frame of mind she was in when she landed in Los Angeles yesterday-well, I guess it's the day before yesterday by now. Of course, you didn't know her as well as I did, sir. All you've got to go on is a couple of interviews and some dry personnel records. I worked against her on one job down in Mexico, and with her on another, remember?"

We're not a buddy-buddy, call-me-Mac kind of outfit. He likes a certain amount of formality and protocol. I guess I'd let myself get carried away, a bit disrespectfully, because his voice was cool when he spoke again.

"And just what do you deduce from your superior knowledge of Ruby's character, Eric?"

I said, "What I'm remembering right now is three things. First of all, the girl was a pro-"

"I wouldn't go so far as to say that." Mac's voice was still rather stiff and severe. "Promising, yes, but she had by no means achieved true professionalism."

I said, "Okay, so she hadn't quite learned how to control her temper, if that's what you mean. But on the whole, when I worked with her, her reactions were pretty sound. She certainly wasn't afflicted with any overpowering, irresistible do-good impulses. Even if I hadn't already figured out that Beverly Blame had to be lying, I'd have known it when she claimed to have sold Annette a sob story of some kind. The kid would never have fallen for anything like that. She was a pretty tough little cookie, and she wouldn't have stuck her neck out an inch…

Mac interrupted. "That's more fine-sounding theory, Eric, but the fact is that she obviously did stick her neck out, somehow."

"You didn't let me finish, sir," I said. "I was going to say that she wouldn't have stuck her neck out an inch- for anything that wasn't in the line of business. Our business. She wouldn't have got herself involved with any weeping cuties with husband trouble, and if she'd seen a murder being committed, or a suitcase full of dope being smuggled-by Warfel or anybody else-she'd have looked the other way, like any of us would, like the rules require. She would have remembered the standing orders not to risk her effectiveness as an agent, by attracting attention either as the good Samaritan or the public-spirited citizen. To that extent, sir, I say she was a pro."

"Perhaps you're right. But there's still the possibility I suggested earlier, that she was a pro selling out."

"There wasn't time. I'll admit she might have been capable of it under the right circumstances, meaning if she was mad enough, but I think you'll agree that she wasn't a cold-blooded traitor with her plans laid in advance. That means she came to L.A. without any prearranged contacts. It takes time to sell out, sir. You've got to find the right people. You've got to convince them of your sincerity. You've got to convince them you've got something worth buying-and then you've got to deliver your information, all of it. If somebody did get one of our people talking about our setup, even a novice agent, would they finish with her and dispose of her in less than a day? You know they wouldn't. They'd want to spend at least a week on thorough debriefing, going over every detail of our training and operations arrangements again and again until they were absolutely sure they'd pumped her dry."

Mac said, a little impatiently, "Very well. Assuming that she wasn't killed because she'd stumbled on some syndicate secrets, or because she'd got involved in a treason scheme that backfired, what do you suggest as a cause of her death?"

"I suggest she was trying to help us. I think what she saw, either on the plane or in the airport, was somebody in whom we're highly interested, somebody on the high priority list perhaps…

"Then why didn't she get on the phone and report it before taking action, as the normal procedure requires, particularly of inexperienced young agents in her category?"

"Because, as you point out, she wasn't quite professional enough, sir. Because she had a temper like dynamite and you'd just lit the fuse. Because she was mad at you and was going to show you up, by dealing with the situation herself in her own way. She was going to prove to you that initiative and daring were better than conformity and discipline, and to hell with normal procedure."

Mac said, rather reluctantly, "It's plausible. So your theory is that she spotted somebody important and tried to follow but was detected and killed."

"Yes, sir. Her attitude was professional enough, but her experience was still pretty limited. I think the guy she was tailing set a trap for her, caught her, and took care of her with his overgrown cannon, after first knocking her around just enough to learn that she was operating alone. And then, because his presence in Los Angeles-maybe even in the U.S.-was supposed to be a very hush subject indeed, he got hold of some local underworld talent and arranged f or them to make it look as if she'd been killed by mistake, so we'd have no reason to investigate her motives and movements." There was a thoughtful silence. Presently I said, "That's the way I figure it, sir. She was pro enough not to get sidetracked on something that was none of our business, but she was amateur enough to try to handle it alone. There's also a third factor that might be important."

"What's that, Eric?"

"She'd recently been mixed up in a communist operation in this very area, remember? It could be that she ran into somebody she was in a special position to recognize, better than anybody else in our outfit. Remember the assignment on which I met her, sir. Remember the circumstances. Her husband had been killed in Vietnam. She'd blamed this country for sending him to his death, if you recall, and a fast-talking enemy agent-I never learned exactly who-had taken advantage of her resentment to persuade her to help with a fancy anti-U.S. plot they had going below the border in Mexico."

"I remember," Mac said. "What is your point?"

I said, "We broke up the conspiracy, all right, and got all the people immediately concerned, with the help of the Mexican authorities, but we didn't get the ones who'd pulled the strings from up here, north of the border. At least, if we did, I was never told about it."

"We didn't," Mac said.

"Afterwards, when I recruited Annette for that job working on our side-she was pretty disenchanted with the opposition by that time, and she had a Mexican prison staring her in the face-I didn't ask her too many questions. I was too busy telling her things she needed to know for the mission coming up. I just kept an eye on her until I was sure she could be trusted. Actually, knowing her low boiling point, I was careful not to antagonize her by probing into her past. I needed her cheerful and cooperative, and to hell with ancient history. But I presume that after our joint assignment was finished, and she was being considered for permanent employment, she was questioned pretty thoroughly-particularly about the people she'd known during her brief career as a subversive."

"That is correct," Mac said. "And you think she may have come across one of those people again?"

"Well, it would have given her a special reason for lone-wolfing it, sir. This was information only she had. This was a person only she could recognize. Even if she hadn't been mad at you, she'd have been reluctant to call in and let somebody else get the credit for nailing the guy. If you'd check her file-"

"I am checking it," Mac said. "I suppose I should have done it sooner, but I admit I was operating on a different theory… Here we are. She gave us two descriptions and a name. The name, she said, she'd heard only once, but she gathered it was that of the man in charge. You'll recognize it, Eric. We've come up against the gentleman before. The name she heard was Nicholas."

I grimaced. "That's nice. So we could be dealing with old man Santa Claus himself."

"Santa Claus?"

I said, "Just a joke, sir. He doesn't call himself that, as far as I know, but you know how some of our people tend to make up nicknames for members of the opposition, even those they haven't seen. Wait a minute. Nicholas is a man who likes heavy artillery, if I remember the dossier correctly. That fancy new computer should have given him to us by now, just from that angle."

"Unfortunately," Mac said dryly, "that fancy new computer has contracted some kind of electronic indigestion. I'm sending for Nicholas' file but I think you're quite right. As I recall, the lightest pistol he's on record as having used is a Browning 9mm High Power, no Magnum but still something of a handful. In another instance he left a.45 Colt Automatic beside a victim, that's no child's toy, either. Yes, a.44 would suit Nicholas very well, from what we know of his shooting habits."

"But Annette said she never saw him?"

"None of our people has seen him, or questioned anyone who has. So far, his cover has never been broken."

I said, "Then it couldn't have been Nicholas she spotted here in L.A. and tried to follow." I hesitated. "What about the two guys she actually met, the ones she described for you?"

"One was shot and killed by the Mexican police while resisting arrest after that Mazatlan affair. From what she said, I gather he was the one who recruited her in the first place. The other was just a man who drove a car in which she was transported to a rendezvous. He disappeared, like Nicholas himself-we've had no reports on either of them since. The description Annette gave us fits a small-time European motorcycle racer named Will Keim-Willi, with an 'i'-who got into some trouble with the law and now specializes in driving chores for the opposition…

"Willi!" I said. "Does he fit the description I just gave you, of the rock-jawed, potato-nosed character in the Ford wagon? Willy, with a 'y'?"

"I'm afraid I didn't monitor what you fed into the recorder. I planned to play it back later. Just a minute." I heard him find the right section of tape and run it through. "Yes. It could very well be the same man."

"My God!" I said. "I should have known nobody could drive that badly without working at it."

"Mr. Keim is apparently an expert at handling all kinds of wheeled machinery."

"And Annette would have recognized him. He's hard to miss. That could be our lead. Suppose Willi-Willy was still driving for Nicholas, either with or without Warfel's knowledge, probably with. Suppose Willy picked u~ Nicholas at the airport. Say Annette spotted a familiar face and watched to see who joined Willy and was caught doing it. Obviously, she had to be killed. She'd seen old Santa Claus in the flesh and she had enough of the background to know, or at least guess, what she'd seen. So Nicholas took care of the job, arranged for a syndicate cover-up, and had Willy on the spot to see how well it worked out."

"That could be the way it happened, certainly. If it should be Nicholas… Well, you know the standing orders. He is on the high-priority list. We've lost enough good men-and women-to Nicholas."

"Yes, sir."

"However, there's a lot of guesswork involved, Eric. Don't rely too heavily on this one theory."

"No, sir," I said, "but assuming we're on the right track, the big question now is: just what brings Nicholas back to these parts? It must be something fairly important or his superiors wouldn't take the risk of returning him to the scene of a job that flopped as badly as that Mexican operation of his. A lot of underlings were caught and they must know that one might put a finger on their boy somehow-as Annette did. Do we know of anything big brewing down here, big enough to call for a man of Nicholas' talents?"

"No," Mac said, "we don't know, and we don't really care, Eric. Don't let your curiosity get the better of you. Remember that intelligence is the business of other departments. Your job is Nicholas, and whoever killed Ruby, if they are not the same person. Take care of that. If you happen to learn anything interesting in the process, by all means pass it along, but don't let it distract you from your primary mission…