The Shadowers

XIII

WE GOT THE job done in a small town in Alabama, the name doesn't matter. It wasn't the fanciest wedding I'd ever had. I went the cutaway-and-white-satin route once. To be strictly accurate, it was right after the war and I was in uniform-the first time I'd worn my soldier suit in almost four years. What I'd really been doing overseas in various other costumes was an official secret, not to be revealed to anybody, not even my bride.

I was making like an army officer on terminal leave, therefore, but some of the other male participants wore those streamlined tailcoats, and the bridesmaids were in tulle, if I've got the name right, It was very formal and pretty, and everybody said the bride looked perfectly lovely, but it didn't take. She learned a little too much about me eventually, and didn't like what she learned; and now she's married to a rancher in Nevada and the kids are growing up on horseback and calling him daddy. I guess he's better daddy material than 1 am, at that.

Olivia and I had lunch in the town afterward so anybody who wanted to check on the ceremony would have time to do so. The meal was a silent one. I suppose we both felt awkward about our new legal relationship. Finished, we got back into the car.

It was hers, a little foreign job with the engine behind. I guess she'd felt Volkswagens were getting too commonplace with the intellectual crowd; she'd got herself a French Renault, plain black with gray vinyl upholstery and all of thirty-two horsepower working through a three-speed shift, which isn't enough gears to get real efficiency out of so small a mill. I got behind the wheel, started the machinery stirring in back and drove away, watching the mirror.

It was a waste of time. Nothing showed but the ordinary southern small-town traffic. Nothing followed us away from there except a Ford pickup with Alabama plates, which turned off onto a dirt road after a couple of miles.

"It still looks like a water haul," I reported at last.

"What?"

"A country colloquialism, Mrs. Corcoran," I said. "That's what you say when you've come a long way for very little. Not that I'm running down the holy state of matrimony, you understand."

She smiled, and stopped smiling, and looked thoughtful. "Could Kroch just be giving us rope, so to speak, counting on picking us up in Pensacola?"

"Why should he think I'd take you home to Pensacola where your friends and colleagues are? As of this morning, he had no reason to believe my intentions were honorable. Having softened up the lady, wouldn't I be much more likely to take her to a lonely love nest by the seashore?" I shook my head ruefully. "If he's our man, he ought to be sticking with you. If he doesn't show, we've figured wrong somewhere."

"But if he isn't our man, why was he hiding in my room?" Olivia protested. "It doesn't make sense.

"If he is our man, why was he hiding in your room?" I countered. "Mr. Kroch seems to have a habit of not making much sense. I have a hunch, the kind you get in this business, that he was waiting there to kill me."

She looked startled. "That's kind of farfetched, isn't it? Why would he want to kill you? And why would he think you'd come here?"

I said, "After the cozy way you'd spent the night in my room, it wasn't too unlikely that I'd visit yours. If you came alone, you could be made to call me. I should have anticipated something of the sort, but I'd seen no indications that the guy was around and I'm having kind of a hard time following his mental processes. But he was annoyed with Mooney for being there, wasn't he? Presumably he'd expected somebody else, me. As for his motive, he's already served notice that he doesn't like interference."

She said, "It was my room, after all. The most likely possibility is that he was just waiting for me."

I said, "The answer to that is that you're sitting beside me very much alive, thank God. If he'd wanted you, if the word had come through that it was time for him to act, he'd have got you. What was there to stop him, with your efficient bodyguard slurping coffee three stories below?" I made a wry face at the windshield. "He had you, but he didn't kill you. He just shot Mooney in the arm and took off… Wait a minute! We're overlooking something. Suppose he was waiting for just the man he got. Suppose he was waiting for Dr. Harold Mooney."

She was staring at me. "You can't think there's anything between Harold and Kroch!"

"I'm trying out the idea. It has possibilities."

"It's absolutely insane!" she protested. "I should think you'd be satisfied about Harold after this morning. We agreed he's not the stuff one makes secret agents out of."

I said, "Sure. He couldn't be trusted to do the work alone. I'll grant that. But that doesn't mean he isn't the stuff one makes secret agents' accomplices out of. Suppose Kroch is our man after all, but suppose he's playing it real cagey. He hasn't shown previously, has he? You'd never seen his face before, to remember it?"

"No, but-"

"It's a face you wouldn't forget if you saw it twice, even just passing it on the street," I said. "And don't think Kroch doesn't know it. It's his handicap in this business, as my height is mine. He'll be forever figuring ways to get around it. Well, suppose he's using Mooney as his eyes, and keeping his ugly, conspicuous self under cover. Mooney isn't scheduled for any heavy work. Anybody can see he isn't up to it. He just keeps track of you, acting the romantic lover. That's why he followed you here in a panic, not because he was scared of a scandal, but because he couldn't afford to lose contact with you or Kroch would have his hide. His job is to keep you located in a general sort of way. When the time comes, Kroch moves in and makes the kill."

Olivia winced. I guess it wasn't a pleasant idea to have tossed at you casually.

Then she said impatiently, "That's ridiculous! Harold has no interest whatever in politics. Why would he-"

"Does Harold lead such a blameless life that you can't imagine anybody blackmailing him, Doc? Is he such a strong character he'd tell a blackmailer to publish and be damned?"

She was silent for a moment, then she said quickly:

"But Kroch shot him! Doesn't that prove-"

"In the arm?" I said. "A neat, small-caliber flesh wound with a doctor available-two doctors if you count Mooney himself-if anything went wrong, like a severed artery? It's been done before by people with complicated motives and mentalities. Why did Mooney come around this morning to apologize? He's hardly the apologetic type. If you hadn't invited him to your room, maybe he'd have invited himself on some pretext."

"To get shot? Harold would never agree to that. You saw the way he reacted."

"He didn't have to know what was going to happen. He could just have had orders to make an appearance there with you at a certain time. Kroch's acting surprised and annoyed by his presence could have been just a cover up. And after the shooting, Mooney didn't dare squawk." I drew a long breath. "Look, Kroch knows I have him spotted. He can guess I'm also suspicious of Harold, the way he's been hanging around you. This could be Kroch's way of whitewashing Harold and taking all the suspicion on himself. That would leave the handsome doctor, pale and romantic-looking, with his arm in a sling, free to keep up the surveillance unsuspected. Meanwhile Kroch crawls back into his hole, wherever it is, gets regular reports on you from Mooney, cleans his little popgun, and waits for Der Tag."

Olivia shook her head. "I don't believe it!" There was a little pause. She gave a short laugh. "I guess I just don't want to believe it, Paul. It was bad enough thinking Harold at least found me… well, attractive enough at the start. If he did the whole thing under orders, that doesn't leave me any pride at all."

I said, "It could be that Kroch found the situation between you and Mooney already established when he came on the job, and simply looked around for a way to take advantage of it."

"It's a nice thought," she said wryly. "It makes everything much better. Now all I have to face is the fact that Harold is willing to help another man murder me to save his own skin…"

The little car buzzed on down the black highway between the trees of one of those dry-looking southern pine forests. When you come from the West, as I do, you're apt to think everything east of the Mississippi is built up solidly like suburban New York, but it isn't true. There are still some good big forests there, and some bleak lonely island beaches that haven't yet been turned into replicas of Coney Island.

I had one of those offshore strips of white sand near Pensacola in mind as I drove. I'd seen it from the air, returning from the carrier with Lt. (jg) Braithwaite, and I'd talked it over with Olivia, who'd been out there in the summer. She'd agreed that at this time of year, too cold for swimming or picnicking, you could commit murder at leisure there, or any other crime you happened to have in mind. The difficulty would come in getting our subject out there, particularly if he was using another man as a front.

I noticed that Olivia was twisting her new wedding ring on her finger. "It's a funny feeling," she said.

"What is?"

"Being married. Like this. In cold blood, so to speak. Paul?"

"Yes?"

She didn't look at me. "Please remember that in spite of last night it's purely a business proposition."

I said, rather stiffly, "If you mean I'm not to presume on the wedding license-"

"No, that's not what I mean," she said quickly. "But it's not as if we were in love with each other or trusted each other, really. It's not as if we really knew each other and expected to spend a lifetime together."

"What are you trying to say, Doc?"

She didn't look up. "Just that I'm not really a very nice person. I used to think I was. Nicey-nice. Prissy, even. A very high-minded and moral citizen. But I'm just not, that's all. The last few days-the last few weeks-have shown me things about myself that are rather frightening. But you're not marrying me for my character or personality, or my looks or money or background, or anything like that, are you? You picked me out for this job, or your chief did. It wasn't my idea. Please remember that. So if you should learn something about me one day, something not very pleasant, you'll have no right to complain that I tricked or deceived you. Will you?"

I said, "Is this another of those little personal matters you don't care to discuss, Doc? The last one got me a sock on the jaw, as I recall. l hope you don't have any more pugilistic boy friends hanging around."

"No," she said. "No, it's nothing like that. It's just. No, I can't say any more. It's not my secret."

I looked at her for a moment longer, looked ahead, and straightened the little car out at the edge of the pavement. For some reason I found myself remembering that Mariassy was a Hungarian name, and that Emil Taussig had once pulled a big, murderous job in Budapest, or tried. It would be a hell of a coincidence if there was any connection, and if there was one, I couldn't think what it would be, but it made me uneasy just the same.

"You pick the damndest times to go into your mystery-woman act," I said irritably. "The secret life of Olivia Mariassy. Nuts!"

"I shouldn't have said anything. I was just trying to keep the record straight, for my conscience's sake. It's really completely irrelevant."

"Sure," I said. "So was Mooney, you said. If it's not your secret, whose is it?" I looked at her again. She shook her head minutely; she wasn't telling. I said, "Doc, if you'd heard that darling-never-trust-me line as often as I have-"

"And always from a beautiful female agent, I suppose." Olivia's voice was dry. "And usually in bed, no doubt. It must be a fascinating life."

"You'll have an opportunity to judge it for yourself in just a moment," I said. "I'm going to give it a try while we're still on the road. If somebody's tailing us, they're very good, and they're obviously not going to give us a look at them, driving. I think we'd better disappear from the highway temporarily. Get the guy worrying about losing us, if there is a guy, and maybe he'll show himself while we lie in the woods, watching. He may even come in after us, if we arrange it right."

She looked at me, and touched her tongue to her lips. "And if he does?"

"If he does," I said, "we've got orders to take him."

"You mean right now? Right here? I thought you said you were going to wait and lure him out to one of the beaches-"

"We'll keep the beaches in reserve," I said. "This piney country looks pretty good. I'm pretty good in the woods, if I do say so myself."

Olivia shivered slightly. "All right," she breathed. "All right. You don't mind if I'm a little frightened, do you? But it will be nice to have it over, if it works. if there is someone." She hesitated. "You'll have to tell me what to do."

I told her.