The Removers

Chapter Six

THEN I WAS back in Washington, in the basement room with the projector, and Smithy's voice was saying: Martell was seen in Reno recently, carrying a gun for a racketeer named Fredericks. It wasn't an uncommon name; it could have been a coincidence. I'd worked for Mac much too long to believe it for an instant, but the meaning escaped me, for the moment.

Beth was still kneeling in front of me, hugging Betsy and glaring at the Fredericks girl. I would have thought she was being very unreasonable, if I hadn't remembered the guns on the saddles and under Logan's armpit, and her own evasive talk of cattle rustlers, for God's sake! Obviously everyone here was under heavy pressure of some kind.

"Get out!" Beth cried.

There was a little silence. The girl turned sharply away. "Sheik, heel!" she commanded, and marched off down the road with the big dog moving obediently beside her.

We watched them draw away. Beth raised her head abruptly. "Peter, where are you going?"

The boy had started across the yard towards a rustic carport, beneath which stood a racy-looking green Jaguar two-seater, and one of those big four-wheel-drive Land Rover station wagons they use for hunting in Africa- apparently the master of the place still went in for British machinery. Peter stopped and looked back defiantly. It was time for me to take a hand, before this developed into a serious family crisis.

"It's all right, Pete," I said, moving towards the truck. "I was leaving, anyway. I'll see that she gets home."

The boy hesitated. Clearly he'd have liked to play the role of rescuer himself. Logan's voice checked him, as he was about to speak. "All right, Peter. Mr. Helm will take care of it."

"Yes, sir."

I opened the truck door, and looked back. Logan was at Beth's side, erect in his faded khakis and bush jacket. The gun didn't show at all. He looked like the great white hunter. Maybe he'd been that, too. I gave him a kind of salute and he answered it. As I got into the truck, I heard him speak to Beth.

"There was no need for a scene, my dear. The girl has nothing to do with-"

"How do you know?" she retorted. "She's his daughter, isn't she? He could have sent her to-"

I had to close the door before it became obvious that I was listening, so I lost the rest of it. I kicked the starter and drove away without further ceremony, passing close by the boy as I made my turn in the yard. He glowered at me suspiciously. Obviously he had no faith in me as the champion of innocent womanhood. I didn't blame him a bit. I didn't have much faith in me, in that respect, myself.

I caught up with her after about a quarter of a mile, and slowed down to appreciate the sight briefly, before I pulled alongside. I never saw two more intriguing rear ends in my life: the big Afghan with its furry legs and long wispy tail, and the compact, wonderfully well-shaped girl in her tight green pants. She was striding right along, despite her inadequate sandals, with the sun bright on her red-gold hair, which was starting to come down in places. It always does, when they wear it like that, and are that young. Maturity seems to be necessary for a woman to wear her hair up and keep it there.

The dog was following effortlessly at her side, and in motion it was a different animal from the canine clown we'd seen at the ranch. It didn't move like any dog I'd ever seen, but more like a thoroughbred horse. Overbred and shy and temperamental it might be, and probably stupid as well, but it was a hell of a beautiful thing, in motion.

Neither of them looked around as I drove up. The dog did start to lunge aside, frightened, but she spoke to it sharply and it settled back into place beside her. They both kept walking stubbornly down the endless mountain road, heads up, faces forward.

I leaned out of the cab window. "The dog can probably make it," I said, "but I have my doubts about you, in those shoes."

She walked a little farther. Abruptly she stopped and wheeled to face me. There were little shiny tear-tracks down her cheeks, I was startled to see. I hadn't judged her to be a crying girl. She didn't speak at once. She seemed to be sizing me up. I got a leisurely look at her for the first time. She had a wide mouth, a kind of pug nose that wasn't unattractive, and disturbing sea-green eyes that didn't belong in that half-pretty, half-cute kid's face. In a Moslem country, robed and veiled, she'd have had grown men doing flips, with those eyes.

After a moment, she lifted her hands and tucked her hair up quickly all around, and glanced at the dog sitting nicely beside her, watching her.

"I'd better put him in back," she said.

"If he makes a mess on my bedding," I said, "you clean it up."

"He's very good," she said stiffly. Abruptly, she bent down and put her arms around the dog's neck, hiding her face. I heard a sound that might have been a sob. I set the brake and got out and opened up the rear of the truck's canopy, and dropped the tailgate. Presently she led the dog up to me, straight-faced now, and looked inside. "What's in that box?" she asked.

"A few groceries."

"You'd better take the bread and bacon up front," she said. "That's asking a little too much of him."

"Sure," I said.

It took the two of us to load him aboard. He panicked again, and we had to pick him up bodily and stuff him inside, about seventy pounds of him, mostly legs. I made sure the side windows of the canopy were open to give him air. and closed up the rear.

"That," I said, as we got into the cab, "is quite a dog you've got there." I started the truck.

She gave me a sideways glance. "If you'd been brought up in kennels for the best part of your life, you'd be a little shy with humans, too. He'd never been inside a house when I got him, or outside a fence. He's really coming along very well." She made a little sniffing sound. "You don't happen to have a tissue around, do you? I seem to be allergic to the dust or something."

"Yeah," I said, watching the road. "It gets people. Try the glove compartment."

She blew her nose, and went on talking briskly. "He's really a wonderful dog. Very gentle. Very clean. I hardly had to do a thing to housebreak him. And he hardly ever barks and disturbs people." After a little, she said, "You know, it's sort of a challenge, taking a dog like that, almost a wild thing, and teaching it to… to trust you. I mean, I had a little Shepherd bitch that I was very fond of-I almost died when she was hit by a car-but it wasn't the same thing. She was just born to serve humanity, if you know what I mean. She was positively frantic to learn things so she could do them for you. Sheik, well, he just doesn't give a damn for humanity, or thinks he doesn't. At first, he'd only come to me for food. It was like having a half-tame deer around the place..

Well, when you get a dog like that to wag his tail for you just once, because he's finally decided it's safe to like you a little, you've accomplished something. Oh, he's still got a long way to go, but we're gaining."

I didn't say anything. I just drove the truck and let her talk herself out. She took another tissue from the glove compartment and blew her nose again.

"He was just what I needed," she said. "Kind of therapy, if you know what I mean. You see, I was living in New York and doing a little work at Columbia after getting myself kicked out of-well, never mind that. Anyway, I got mixed up with a man, a married guy, and it wound up in kind of a mess all around, if you know what I mean. And then my other dog got run over, and I was about ready to jump off one of the bridges, it was just a matter of deciding which one, they've got plenty to choose from in that damn town, and then I was just driving around on Long Island and I happened to see this kennel along the road. I went in and told them to trot out the wildest, meanest, most difficult dog they had, one that nobody else wanted. I didn't even know what kind of dogs they raised, or care. They brought out Sheik. He wasn't mean-he's never even thought of touching me with his teeth-but he certainly was spooky and difficult. You should have seen him take off when we first snapped a leash on him. Honest, I thought we'd have to go after him with a helicopter and butterfly net… Your name is Helm, isn't it?" she said abruptly.

"Yes."

"You used to be married to Pete's stepmother. He told me."

"That's right."

"You lucky man," she said. "You lucky, lucky man." She blew her nose again.

I said, "If you run out of tissues, there's another box up behind the seat."

She said, "I'm not really the weepy type, normally. Only… well, Sheik's all right, but his vocabulary's kind of limited, if you know what I mean. It was nice to talk to human beings for a change. I've been away so much I don't have any friends here, except the kind you pick up in bars and play the slot machines with."

I glanced at her, sitting there. "That's not the only thing they want to play, I'll bet."

She said, "Are you kidding? None of those creeps dares even look at me hard. They're all so scared of Dad they wouldn't be seen within a block of my place for fear he might misinterpret…" Her voice, which had hardened perceptibly, stopped. She turned to look at me. "My dad is Big Sal Fredericks. The racketeer, I guess you'd call him. But you know all about that, don't you?"

"What do you mean?"

"I saw your face, when you heard my name. It meant something to you, didn't it? What did it mean?"

I moved my shoulders. "Very little, Miss Fredericks. I'd heard the name before, that's all."

She laughed shortly. "Don't be so damn cautious, you're not the type… Dad thinks I still believe he's in the hotel business. At least he'd like me to pretend I believe that." She laughed again. "The hotel business! Choice, isn't it? I've known better since I was nine..

All those damn schools, always at the other end of the country, somewhere, and always they'd find out and start whispering… Pete Logan had it the same, of course, except that it was a little easier for him. His dad wasn't so well known, just Big Sal's bodyguard and right-hand man. And then, suddenly, Duke Logan wasn't there any more, just a tough character with a broken nose; and I wasn't supposed to go out to the Logan ranch, or visit the place in Mexico winters like I used to; and then they made up and I could go there again, but the Duke never came back to work for Dad, and he'd never tell me the reason. And now his wife kicks me off the place, calling down curses on the name of Fredericks. Corny! But if your name happened to be Fredericks, you'd want to know why, wouldn't you?" She drew a long, ragged breath. "I don't mean just words I've heard all my life, like racketeer and gangster. I mean exactly why."