The Removers mh-3

by Donald Hamilton

  It was something else I didn't particularly care to discuss. I said crudely, "You mean, right now?"

  She glanced at me, startled. She even flushed a little. Then she laughed. "Well, it wasn't exactly what I had in mind, baby, but if you want..

  The dog stayed out just long enough, and then, while we were making ourselves more or less fit for civilization again, he came trotting in, grinning from ear to ear, and sat down to have the leash put on him. Moira got a wet rag and washed him off a bit-there was some gore that might have shocked her sensitive city neighbors- and we drove back to Reno.

  I took her to the motel so she could pick up the Mercedes. I escorted her across the parking area, with the Afghan trotting alongside. That dog was hell on rabbits, but apparently he had no interest in humans. He didn't give the slightest warning. As a watchdog, he was a washout. I don't think he even knew they were around, until they jumped me from the bushes, and even then he seemed to figure it wasn't any of his damn business. Well, maybe he was right.

  Chapter Eleven

  WHEN THEY came at you like that, from behind, they never really expect you to be ready for them; and if you act fast and decisively, at precisely the right time, you can generally take care of one of them as you turn. The other-they practically always hunt in pairs, since nobody'd be fool enough to entrust just one with a responsible job-will generally run then, and you can let him go or pick him off as you choose.

  I knew they were there, all right. I've been getting along on my own five senses, without any watchdogs to help me, for quite a while. The trouble was, they were so clumsy it was obviously the freshman team. Fenn apparently hadn't thought me worthy of his own attentions, if Fenn had sent them. Maybe he'd just reported to Fredericks that a certain long, lecherous drink of water was making eyes at his daughter, and Fredericks himself had called some unskilled labor off the street to do the job.

  I took the chance that the awkward characters behind me hadn't been sent to do any shooting. They'd just been sent to issue an invitation, I hoped; and I might learn something by going along. I might also get hell kicked out of me-I wasn't forgetting what had happened to Paul- but on the whole I figured the biggest risk was that one of them might be sap-happy. You see so many TV shows these days in which people get beat over the head without deleterious results that the rising generation of punks tends to overestimate the durability of the human skull.

  There was a very unpleasant moment while they closed in. I guess they thought they were moving with silent efficiency. I continued walking beside Moira. We paused by the car. She was saying something, I don't remember what. Maybe I didn't even hear it. My scalp had tightened up hard enough to pull my ears out of register, waiting for the blow to fall.

  Then one of them had a gun jammed into my kidneys, and the other had danced around to threaten me with a long switch-blade knife. It was so childish I wanted to cry for them. Some day they'd do it to a man who didn't want to be taken, and they'd never be the same again.

  "Don't move, Buster!" the knifeman said in a menacing voice. "Keep him covered, Tony!"

  Tony kept me covered, while Switchblade folded his surgical implement, put it away, and searched me so efficiently that he didn't even spot the little Solingen knife in my pants pocket. Well, he was young. He'd learn, if he lived long enough, which didn't seem likely, or even desirable.

  "Look out!" the man behind me warned him, and Switchblade turned just in time to catch a thrown white purse squarely across the face. He rubbed his nose and took a step forward angrily. The kid was ready for him, with her fists up, ready to take him on, and any three friends he might care to name. She'd apparently been something of a tomboy in her day. It must have been something to see. The one behind me said quickly, "Watch it, Ricky. If you lay a hand on her, The Man will have your hide!"

  Moira said breathlessly, "Get him, Sheik! Get him, big boy! Get them both! Tear their lousy throats out!"

  Switchblade Ricky took a quick step backwards, watching the dog. It opened its mouth lazily, showing the biggest, whitest teeth in the world; and the punk took another step back and reached into his pocket for the knife. The dog finished yawning and looked up' at its mistress in a puzzled way: any fool could see there weren't any rabbits here.

  Ricky laughed, but he'd been scared, he'd shown it, and he had to regain status. He stepped forward, bravely now, and kicked the dog hard. It cried out like a hurt child and slunk away to the end of the leash and cowered there with its long monkey tail between its legs, looking back over its shoulder with big, outraged, heartbroken eyes.

  Moira gave a little cry, and knelt on the dusty pavement, and hugged the beast to her. "Oh, Sheik!" she moaned. "Oh, baby, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have…

  She looked up, kneeling there. "I'll kill you for that!" she breathed.

  Tony, behind me, whose face I hadn't seen, said, "For Christ's sake, let's cut out the comedy… Miss Fredericks, get in your car and go home." He cleared his throat and said a word that probably hadn't crossed his lips in years, if ever; they don't seem to teach it to modern youth much. "Please."

  She glanced at me, standing there a helpless prisoner with the threatening gun in my back. "What are you going to do to him?"

  Tony said, "It's got nothing to do with you, Miss. Big… I mean, Mr. Fredericks just said to bring him in. I'm just following orders, Miss."

  "Well, we'll see about your lousy orders-"

  I said, "It's all right, kid. Go on home."

  She turned on me. "Don't you tell me what to do! What's the matter with you, letting these two lousy delinquents…?" She stopped quickly, and looked at me sharply. She wasn't someone you had to draw blueprints for, labeled in red luminous ink. After a moment, she rose to her feet and said, "All right, but I'm coming along."

  Switchblade Ricky said, "The hell you-"

  "Save it," Tony said. "Miss Fredericks says she's coming, she's coming. How are you going to stop her, when she knows where we're going? Let The Man worry about it." He spoke to Moira. "Suit yourself, Miss Fredericks. But we can't give you a lift; it would be kind of crowded in one car with four of us and that big dog… Come on, you!" he said, nudging me with his firearm.

  We drove into town in a big Chrysler of some kind, with Ricky at the wheel and Tony in the back seat beside me, taking his duty as guard very seriously. I don't think I could have disarmed him more than half a dozen times during the trip. For a punk his age, with a prisoner of my age and experience, that was a pretty good performance. He was an underfed-looking specimen with too-long hair and too-loud clothes. The only thing you could say for him was that he was an improvement on Ricky, which wasn't really a high recommendation for anybody.

  Moira's little Mercedes followed us closely all the way. Ricky stopped in a parking lot, and Moira pulled up alongside. Getting out, under Tony's gun, I discovered we were in the lot where I had parked the truck some hours earlier. Well, that figured, vaguely. Moira said good-bye to Sheik, and we all proceeded into the same hotel, although by a different door.

  A private elevator bore us smoothly upwards, there was no telling how far. The door opened and let us out into an ordinary hotel corridor, like any other hotel corridor, except that there were a couple of men lounging on a leather sofa in a nearby alcove. One of them rose and came up.

  "He's in the office, waiting," this man said. "What kept you?"

  "We've been staked out at the motel, where her car was. They didn't get back until ten minutes ago," Tony said.

  The man jerked his head towards Moira. "Who said anything about bringing her?"

  "She did."

  "Just a minute." The man went away and came back. He spoke to me. "This way… You, too, Miss Fredericks." When the two youths who'd brought us started to follow, he gave them a look of surprise. "Who invited you? Stay here."

  We walked down the corridor to an unmarked door. Our escort opened it and stepped back for Moira to enter. Then he shoved me in after her and closed the door behind us, remaining outside.
There were two men awaiting us in the room. One I'd already seen elsewhere in this hotel. Martell was standing just to the left of the door.

  One glance was enough to show that I'd made an error in judgment. He'd let, Fredericks send a couple of juveniles to bring me in, all right, but it wasn't because he didn't know who I was or why I was there. His voice was very soft, reaching only to me and maybe the girl beside me. It was a smooth, cultured voice with a slight accent: not the voice of a gangster named Fenn.

  "Greetings, Eric," he murmured. "Any friend of Paul's is welcome."

  Well, anyway, I knew now why Paul had tried too hard to reach me before he died. He'd wanted to warn me that, under duress, he'd talked. He'd told all about me- and Martell was just the man to do something about the information, or get Fredericks to do it for him.

  Chapter Twelve

  MARTELL STEPPED BACK, to a point from which he could cover us safely, and it was time for me to forget him, for the moment, and turn my attention to the other man, sitting behind the desk.

  He was a big man, a dark man, a man who'd have to shave twice a day and use plenty of talcum powder between times. He was an ugly man, with too-small features in a face that had spread out around them; particularly below the chin. He had a pug nose that I'd seen before, in a much refined and more attractive edition, but the mouth and eyes weren't familiar-she must have got those from her mother's side of the family, lucky girl.

  "Hello, Dad," Moira said.

  The funny thing was, my first feeling was a kind of embarrassment I hadn't felt in years, not since I was young enough to be taking girls to dances, after one of which we'd gotten bogged down on a dirt road where we'd had no business being-none that we cared to talk about, anyway-and it wasn't until close to four in the morning that I got my date home, muddy and disheveled, to find her parents awake and waiting.

  This man was Big Sal Fredericks: he was a racketeer and worse, but he was also a father, and his daughter was standing beside me, after a night in my company, with her wonderful red-gold hair, as usual, tumbling down around her ears, with her expensive kid pumps ruined by rocks and thorns, with her smart piquй dress wrinkled and far from clean. Even her youthful resilience had its limits, and she'd passed them during the night. At least her costume had.

  She looked very young like that, like a dressed-up baby at the end of a tough birthday party, and I was ashamed of myself. I wouldn't have wanted another man to bring my daughter home like that-particularly not a man so much older than she was. There was a moment in which I really wanted to apologize, quite sincerely. But Sally Fredericks put me at ease at once.

  He got up and looked at us. He walked around the desk and approached his daughter and looked her up and down. Then he struck her hard across the face with his open hand.

  "You slut!" he said.

  He turned to me. He used his fist on me. It was quite a punch, slow but with lots of power. I managed to roll with it or he might have broken my jaw. I went down. It seemed like a good idea to let him think he'd really hurt me, and as a matter of fact, he had. He still wasn't satisfied. He came over and kicked me hard in the side. Then he went back around the desk and sat down, rubbing his knuckles proudly.

  After catching my breath, I looked at Martell, who jerked his head to let me know it was all right to get up. In a way, it was nice to be dealing with at least one professional. With amateurs, you've got to watch every minute that they don't do by mistake what they could never do on purpose. I know of at least one good operative, behaving himself perfectly, who was killed by a jittery farm boy with no more sense than to rest his finger on the trigger of a shotgun.

  But with Martell around, you knew you'd never be killed accidentally-for what it was worth. I thought I could see a kind of malicious amusement in his eyes. He didn't mind a bit watching Fredericks work me over, knowing that, to stay in character, I had to take it meekly… I got up and looked at the kid standing there with her hand to her cheek and hatred in her eyes, as she glared at her father, behind the desk.

  "Who's this creep?" Fredericks demanded. "Another of those barflies you keep picking up? Haven't I told you-',

  "You've told me," she said. She took her hand down, revealing a reddened area along the cheekbone that might go away, but might also color up into a real bruise. Her voice was level and cold and adult. "I'm supposed to stay home all day and watch TV."

  "Nobody's talking about what you do in the day!"

  "All night, then," she said.

  "I warned you what I'd do to any jerk who-" He drew a long breath, and said, "I've tried to do what I should. I've tried to be both parents to you since your mother-"

  "Let's not bring Mother into this!"

  He said, "I've sent you to the best schools, given you money and clothes and cars, and what do you do? First you get yourself mixed up with a married fellow and then you come back here and shame me by trying to act like the town tramp-my daughter! Why didn't you stay back east like I told you and find yourself some nice socialite fellow your own age-"

  "I did," she said, "but you know, it's funny how they always seemed to lose interest when they learned my dad was Sal Fredericks, the big hotel man. I guess there's kind of a prejudice against the hotel business these days."

  He flushed, and controlled himself. "Why do you do it, baby?" he asked, and for a moment he was human and I could feel a little sorry for him. "Why do you do it? Look at you, my daughter that I've tried to bring up nice, like a lady, standing there looking like you'd been sleeping in your clothes-"

  "I have," she said bluntly. "With him. Twice."

  We weren't there any longer, Martell and I. They were alone in the room, the two of them, swinging at each other with spiked clubs, drawing real blood. She didn't look at me as she said it, and he didn't look at me as he heard it; he'd get to me later.

  "Why, baby?" he asked again.

  "Because he was the only man I could find who had the guts! Who wasn't scared of you!"

  "We'll see about his guts," Fredericks said. "Now you go home and clean yourself up-"

  She said, "You're not going to touch him! You're not going to lay a finger on him!"

  He said, "Fenn, take her home!"

  There was a slight hesitation. I didn't look in Martell's direction.

  He said, "Mr. Fredericks, I don't think I ought to leave right now."

  "What the hell do you… Oh, this one? Hell, I can handle this beanpole Casanova. You saw-"

  "Yeah, I saw," Martell said, and I knew he was squirming inside like a hooked angleworm. He didn't want to leave. He wanted to stay and supervise my fate. But it was his turn to remain in character. He tried once more, however. "My advice-"

  Fredericks flushed. "Who the hell's asking your advice, punk? Take her home. And, Fenn…"

  Martell's voice was very soft. "Yes, Mr. Fredericks?"

  "Don't go inside the door. I heard all about you long before you got here."

  "Yes, Mr. Fredericks."

  He came across the room stiffly. Moira seemed to come out on her hate dream with a start. The mark of her father's hand was still red on her cheek, but her eyes were suddenly dark and remorseful as she glanced in my direction.

  She'd used me to hurt the man behind the desk, without thinking of me. Now she was realizing what she'd done to me-or thought She'd done: the outcome hadn't really been changed much by her angry words. Fredericks hadn't brought me here to welcome me into the family.

  I said, "Run along, kid."

  "I won't leave-"

  "Go on," I said, wishing she'd hurry up and get Mar-tell out of there. As long as he was around, I was in serious trouble.

  "I'm sorry," she breathed. "I didn't mean… I just kind of flipped, I guess."

  "Sure. Now go."

  She started to speak again, and checked herself. Martell was waiting. She went up to him, and they left the room together. Before the door closed, I saw a man standing guard outside, the man who'd brought us down the hall.

  It still wasn
't good, but with Martell gone it didn't worry me too much. I'd met Fredericks; I knew where I stood with Martell; I'd learned all I could expect to learn here. It was time to stage a disengagement, as we used to say in the Army.

  Fredericks was staring at me hard over the desk. He said, "So you've got guts, have you? We'll see about your guts!"

  I watched him get up and walk around the table and come to me, and I couldn't help being aware of my aching ribs and throbbing jaw. These hoodlums walk so big and talk so loud.

  He said, "That isn't the only thing we'll see about. We'll fix you so you'll be no more trouble to young girls."

  It wasn't unexpected, it was the way his mind would work, but it didn't help establish him in my mind as a citizen to be protected and preserved. He came to me and slapped me across the face-slapped me, for God's sake! It was pitiful. It was irritating. You get tired of being the cold, impersonal, machine-like hunter of men sometimes; you think of the fun it would be to do one strictly for kicks.

  My hand was in my pocket, and the little knife was in my hand. He slapped me again, and I'd had enough of Salvatore Frederici, and I grinned at him pleasantly, the little man who was dead and didn't know it. All I had to do was bring it out, flick it open, and insert it in the right place. By any standards of judgment, he'd lived quite long enough. My mind gave the signal. My hand didn't move. I couldn't do it.

  I couldn't do it. I heard Mac's voice: It's a war of sorts and you can consider yourselves soldiers of sort… I couldn't do it just because I was fed up with the guy. I couldn't do it because he'd slapped Moira. I couldn't even do it because, in some way that I didn't know about yet, he was undoubtedly the man responsible for turning the ranch where my children lived into an armed camp with an atmosphere of terror.