The Infiltrators

by Donald Hamilton

  “Santa Paula, New Mexico. Llano County Hospital.” Orientation accomplished, I turned back to business. “Sniper?”

  “We got him.”

  “Alive?”

  He said, a bit stiffly, “Yes. Alive. Name: Ernest Maxwell Reis.”

  I shook my head minutely. “Rings no bells.”

  “One of Otto Rentner’s St. Louis boys, moonlighting. With a nice accurate Remington 7mm Magnum rifle.”

  I frowned. “Syndicate?”

  “We don’t think the corporation is really involved. In fact we suspect the tough boys aren’t very happy with Maxie Reis right now. They don’t like anybody who stirs up government agencies unnecessarily, particularly this government agency. But apparently he was offered plenty to take on an outside job, so much he couldn’t resist. Like I said, moonlighting.”

  “Interrogation?”

  “No real answers so far. The I-team is softening him up slowly. They’ll get the contact method and some kind of a name out of him eventually.” Jackson shrugged. “And probably the name will be Tolliver, like it usually is these days, so that won’t help us much. Sorry we weren’t in time to prevent—”

  I used my limited headshake again. “My fault. Hadn’t briefed her properly. Took for granted she understood … Where is she now?”

  Jackson hesitated. “Protective custody. Well, actually she was kneeling beside you holding your gun when the sheriff arrived. She was defending you, I guess, but at first nobody knew what had happened or where the shot had come from. Naturally, being literal-minded cops, they jumped to the obvious conclusion without even sniffing the damn revolver to see if it had been fired. Particularly when her papers showed she’d just been released from a maximum-security federal pen a few days ago, obviously a very dangerous female character. We straightened them out when we got there, of course, after turning Maxie over to the interrogation team that was standing by, but it seemed best to leave her locked up for her own safety.”

  “No!” I tried to sit up and the nurse pushed me down. “No, goddamn you, I told you how she was to be treated—”

  Jackson said defensively, “There could be a backup man waiting to do the job while we’re patting ourselves on the back and congratulating ourselves on nailing Reis. It’s a clean enough little jail. She’s safer in there, now that you’re out of circulation for a while, until we can make new arrangements for her close-in protection.”

  I had a sickening vision of Madeleine, still so insecure in her newfound identity, once again being subjected to the indignity of handcuffs, once again being bullied by rude officials, once again suffering the humiliation of being locked up in a cell. I couldn’t bear to think of the warm and happy woman of last night being once again transformed into the slaty-eyed, stone-faced automaton I’d once known.

  “Safer?” I said harshly. “Suppose you do keep her alive that way, what the hell good will it do her or anybody else if she freaks out completely, being stuck behind bars again? Or maybe they’ll just find her hanging from the light fixture; she’s tried it before. Get her out of there, damn it! Import some baby-sitters, keep her in your own pocket, but get her out!”

  I heard my voice continue to speak angrily, and a nurse was coming forward and waving Jackson out of the room; and I went off somewhere leaving my voice still talking, which seemed a little odd, but not very. When I awoke, Madeleine was there. She was sitting on a straight chair near the door. She wasn’t reading, and the TV was off; she simply sat there with her hands in her lap in the patient way she’d learned, no doubt, from long and grim experience.

  The low room lights told me it was night without my having to make the effort of looking at the window—it had been day when Jackson was there—and Madeleine’s attitude told me that she’d been waiting for quite a while; but it took her only a few seconds to realize that my eyes were open. She rose and approached the bed. I noticed that there were dark stains on the dark cloth of her jeans.

  My blood. She’d exchanged the plaid wool shirt I remembered, perhaps too blood-soaked to wear, for her pink short-sleeved sweater, and it was getting a bit grubby. Her hair could have been smoother.

  But this was all quite irrelevant, because she was not the totally defeated woman I’d seen once and had been very much afraid I would now see again, after the police ordeal she’d just been through. Although she was quite tired and a bit dirty, she was calm and in control; in fact she looked straighter and stronger than I remembered her.

  “Hero!” she said softly, looking down at me. “Throws himself into the path of the speeding bullet! Do you need anything, Matt? Should I call a nurse?” When I shook my head minutely, she said, “I didn’t.”

  “Didn’t what?”

  “Freak out. Hang myself from the chandelier. In there, where they just had me.”

  “That Jackson. Motormouth.” I looked up at her for a moment. “Gun girl. Calamity Jane Junior. Belle Starr returns. Crouching protectively over the bleeding body with a loaded six-shooter—well, five-shooter, to be precise.”

  “Some protection, considering that I’ve never fired a handgun in my life,” she said. “And bleeding is right, all over my brand-new shirt and jeans. But I didn’t realize the shot had come from so far away. I thought he had to be somewhere close, using a silencer like on TV.”

  “Suppressor,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Not polite to call them silencers anymore,” I whispered. “They’re sound suppressors, just like a dirty old man is a soiled senior citizen these days.”

  “Funny!” She made a face at my attempt at humor, and went on: “What was I supposed to do, just sit there helplessly in the snow holding your head in my lap and waiting for him to stick his gun around the corner of a building and try again? Maybe if I couldn’t hit him with a bullet I could scare him to death with the noise. I… I’m just a little tired of being pushed around, darling. And having men I l-like abducted or shot right under my nose.” She swallowed hard. “Oh, God, I couldn’t stop the bleeding and I thought you’d die before those idiots got an ambulance there!”

  “And the cops,” I said, watching her.

  “Yes, the cops!” she said grimly. “Matt, what makes them that way? The same old muscle routine, so familiar I wanted to laugh. Are they bondage freaks? Do they have nice ejaculations in their pants every time they do that to a woman prisoner? The same damn handcuffs, the same loud mouths, the same total lack of any courtesy or consideration, the same pushy-shovy, the same smelly cell. Cheap thrills for the pigs? Do you want to know something? I could never be a lawyer again even if they’d let me. Not after this last experience. That’s twice I’ve been pushed around and yelled at for something I didn’t do; and how many apologies do you think the crummy broad got this time after it was proved she’d been grabbed by mistake? Hell, since they couldn’t hold me for attempted murder they wanted to get me for having a gun I wasn’t supposed to, being the lousy ex-convict I was! No, I really don’t have a great deal of respect for the law any longer!”

  I licked my lips, watching her, beginning to understand the change I’d sensed in her, the newfound strength and confidence.

  “You wanted to laugh?” I whispered.

  She looked down at me for a long moment. “Yes, darling,” she said very softly. “Laugh! Isn’t that… weird? I thought, when I shouted for somebody to call the police, that I’d be scared to death of them when they got there. Remember how I wouldn’t let you drive fast because we might be picked up for speeding? And I think I told you how I felt, or thought I felt, about ever being locked up again. But it wasn’t that way at all! Really, it was rather funny, like watching a jerky old movie that frightened the hell out of you back when you were a kid. Matt, I was the… the old professional watching those country clowns trying to intimidate me! It was ridiculous! I wanted to tell them they were wasting their time, I knew all about it, I’d been through it in spades. I’d been harassed by experts—government experts—and it would take more than a bunch of sma
ll-town fuzzies in big hats to scare me. And then they put me into that cell and slammed the door, clang, and I waited for the panic to start, and a little voice said, Listen, stupid, you did eight whole years in a cage like this, are you going to let a lousy day or two get you down?”

  “Good girl,” I whispered.

  She smiled down at me. “God, I’ve been awful, haven’t I? It’s a wonder you could stand me. I’m so ashamed when I think of the mopy, self-pitying way I’ve behaved ever since I got out. I guess what I discovered just now is that, well, nobody can really hurt you when you’ve got nothing left to lose. The first time I was hauled away in handcuffs all those years ago and wound up in jail, I literally went into shock at the ghastly disgrace of it—well, I told you—but what’s left to disgrace? Back then I was sick at the thought of how it would affect my wonderful job, my spotless professional reputation, my lovely social standing, my bright and shining future… Well, I don’t have to be concerned about any of those things any longer, do I? I don’t even have to worry about my appearance; these days nobody expects me to emerge from a dirty calabozo looking smart and beautiful. And it’s a damn good thing, too, isn’t it?” She glanced down at herself ruefully. “Well, I’d better find the motel room they’ve got for me here so I can wash off the jail stink and try to soak the gore out of my shirt and pants. I suppose I’ll have to get used to that if I stick with you, Mr. Secret Agent. Gore, I mean.” She hesitated. “Matt.”

  “Yes?”

  She drew a long breath. “About that chandelier. Don’t you know I couldn’t do that to my life now, after what you just did to preserve it?”

  Her gratitude embarrassed me, since I’d done very little to earn it; in fact I’d almost got her killed by briefing her inadequately. “Madeleine, look—”

  She laid a gentle finger across my lips. “No, don’t waste your strength telling me how it was all in the line of duty and you’d have done it for anybody you’d been assigned to protect. I happen to be the girl it was actually done for. I know how I feel about it, and you’re not going to change my mind.” She bent over and kissed me lightly on the forehead. “Be good.”

  I grinned up at her weakly. “I’ve got a choice? You be careful.”

  “I don’t have to be careful. I have two big men outside to be careful for me. With guns. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be back in the morning.”

  She was back next morning and each morning thereafter, spending most of her days with me. The staff of the little hospital, shorthanded, was happy to let her look after me in a nonmedical way; and Jackson, also short-handed, was glad to have her where he could have an eye kept on both of us simultaneously. When I wasn’t sleeping, we spent our time reading the books and magazines she brought, or watching TV, or talking about nothing in particular; but occasionally I’d wake from a nap to find her just sitting there in that patient way of hers and I’d wonder what she was thinking about, if she was thinking at all. Maybe she’d just learned, during the long years of her imprisonment, how to turn off her mind altogether and let the endless, useless penitentiary hours slip by.

  But towards the end of the week she spoiled that theory by pulling her chair closer to mine—I was practicing sitting up by that time—and saying: “Matt, I’d like to talk about me a little, if you don’t mind.”

  “My favorite subject, next to me,” I said, “Says the man who hasn’t told me a thing about himself since the day we met that I didn’t pry out of him with a crowbar!” She laughed, and became serious again: “I’ve been trying to figure out what I’m going to do. I can’t go back to what I was even if they’d let me. Even if I could stomach the law, I wouldn’t want to spend the rest of my life playing catch-up with the attorneys who didn’t have most of a decade amputated from their careers. Anyway, at the moment it doesn’t seem very likely I’ll get the chance, so that’s out.”

  I said, “Don’t be too quick to toss all your legal training out the window. Who knows, you may wind up all vindicated and rehabilitated before this is over, with a dozen law firms clamoring for your services.”

  “Well, I’ll worry about that when it happens,” she said dryly. “In the meantime I’d better figure out what else I’m fitted for. Besides scrubbing floors. Actually, I do know a lot about the law and the courts and the legal system. Not to mention what I’ve learned about the penal system the hard way. I also know how to dig for facts. I’m a pretty good investigator; at least I used to be. And I know how to organize those facts and write them up so they make sense. I’ve done it often enough. I think, particularly if I can find myself some kind of a little job near the campus, even if it doesn’t pay very much, I’ve got enough money waiting for me to get a degree in journalism. The question is, if I get it, will any newspaper or magazine hire a female reporter—maybe a police or political reporter eventually, something like that—with a criminal record, particularly my kind of criminal record?”

  I looked at her for a moment, with an odd, tight feeling in my throat. “Hey,” I said, “welcome back to the human race, Ellershaw Number 210934.”

  She was a little embarrassed. “Well, I’ve done just about enough moaning about my lost lovely past. It’s time to think of the future, isn’t it? But you haven’t answered my question.”

  “I don’t really know the answer,” I said. “But all kinds of people seem to be getting out of prison and buying typewriters these days; I don’t see why you shouldn’t. I can ask around and find out what you’re apt to run up against. You don’t have to be on the staff of a publication, you know. There’s always free-lance work; in fact that’s what I did back when I was married.”

  “I remember—to that gentle and nonviolent girl you told me about. But you didn’t say what you did for a living during your nonviolent phase.”

  “It’s no way to get rich, but we made out all right. But in your case there’s one big catch,” I said.

  “You mean that even as a free-lance I won’t be able to escape my prison background?”

  “No. I shouldn’t think anybody’d give a damn about that, particularly if you stuck to reasonably nonsensitive and noncontroversial subjects; but you wouldn’t, would you? There’d be one controversial subject in particular you couldn’t stay away from.” I studied her thoughtfully. “Isn’t that what’s at the back of your mind, Madeleine? Sure you’d like to make a living as a journalist, and I think you could do it; in fact you’d probably be very good at it. But all the time you were writing fascinating pieces about women’s fashions, or horse breeding, or hang-gliding, or even crime or politics, you’d be dreaming how to break the great story of your innocence, complete with irrefutable proof that would smash the people who killed your husband and framed you into prison.”

  She hesitated. “Well, what’s wrong with that?” she asked defiantly.

  “Two things,” I said. “First of all you can’t make it alone. You seem to be forgetting: there have been at least two and probably three attempts on your life since you left Fort Ames. If we turn you loose right now to carry out your new life plan, you won’t live long enough to get anywhere near your journalism degree, let alone the proof you yearn for—somebody wants you dead, remember? And probably they want you dead precisely because they’re afraid that now you’re free you’ll start digging up stuff they don’t want dug.”

  She said wryly, “I’m not likely to forget that little detail, looking at you in those bandages. It does present a difficulty, since I seem to have decided that there are certain advantages to being alive, after all. And the second obstacle?”

  “Not really an obstacle,” I said. “Just a point to keep in mind as you plan your future: your secret ambition is a little redundant.”

  She frowned. “Translate, please.”

  I said, “What I mean is that the information you were planning to search for eventually, after you got established in your journalistic career, is the information we need right now. We can’t wait around for it while you’re getting yourself properly educated. At least
it seems likely that your innocence, and the guilt of the people we’re after, are two faces of the same conspiracy or whatever the hell you want to call it. Prove one and you prove the other. I can’t promise exoneration, but I’ll certainly do my best to arrange it in return for your help. But there’s another problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  I looked at her and I looked down at myself and I looked back to her. “A pretty ridiculous undercover team, wouldn’t you say, Ellershaw? If things get tough—well, tougher—how would you figure the survival quotient of a task force composed of one feeble one-armed agent and one untrained sedentary dame with a crippled wrist who’s in such lousy shape she can’t climb a flight of stairs without turning blue in the face?”

  Madeleine said resentfully, “Damn it, Matt, I’m not all that flabby!” Then she looked down at herself, noting the way she filled the rather handsome blue slacks she was wearing. She sighed. “Oh, all right. Point taken. What do you suggest?”

  “We have a choice. We can use me in an advisory capacity for the time being—well, as soon as I’m ambulatory again—and get Washington to send us a husky, healthy, violent young man to stick close to you and watch over you while we start stirring things up in Santa Fe—”

  “No!” Then color came into her face, as she heard the unexpected vehemence of her own voice. “I mean… well, damn it, I don’t want to be wished off on some other macho bastard with a gun; I had a hard enough time getting used to this one.”

  I grinned. “Flattery, I love it.”

  “What’s the alternative?”

  “Instead of a husky, healthy, violent young man, how about a husky, healthy, violent young woman?”

  Madeleine groaned. “Oh, God, you mean I’d have to get along with a muscular and very superior female agent, probably with lesbian tendencies…?” She stopped and frowned at me. “Or isn’t that what you meant?”

  I shook my head. “No,” I said. “I meant you.” There was a little silence. We could hear somebody rolling a cart of some kind down the hospital corridor outside.