by Walter Wager
He made his way to the porch, settled into a worn but comfortable slatted wood rocker. He swayed back and forth without speaking, waiting. After forty or fifty seconds, the clergyman broke the silence.
“You paid in advance, sir,” he declared. He was canny enough not to use any names. “And a substantial price. If anybody can save my friend, it’s that man you hired—as you said you could. He said you committed sixty-five thousand dollars and he also said he didn’t even know who you were…No, I didn’t tell him. I keep my promises too.”
“I was sure you were a man of discretion, Reverend.”
“I hope so, although I’m not sure that a man of discretion would make this sort of blind bargain with—if you’ll pardon my melodramatic phrase—a mysterious stranger. I think it’s time you told me who you are and what you want.”
Williston considered the request for several seconds.
“I can’t tell you who I am…who we are…but I can say that we’re a group of men who want to free Paradise City from the criminal Pikelis organization and its political allies. We are committed to the destruction of that organization—by various means. We need the help of local people who want to clean up this community, your help.”
“So you can run Paradise City?” challenged the wary cleric.
“No, we’ll be gone twenty-four hours after Pikelis is smashed. It can be done, you know. He’s not impregnable, not invulnerable.”
Then the spy explained how he hoped to use Snell’s congregation and friends as a vast intelligence network, pointed out how—in the language of black novelist Ralph Ellison—the African Americans were “invisible men” who moved almost unnoticed in this community.
“That’s all?”
“I may ask for more later,” Williston acknowledged, “and you’ll be free then to decide whether you want to go along. There may be additional risks, greater dangers involved.”
“I’d say that there are considerable dangers involved in what you and your…your group…are attempting here…dangers for you…dangers that seem unreasonable if you really don’t mean to seize this city for yourselves.”
“We were trained for this sort of work. We’re professionals, in a sense.”
“Federal agents?”
“No…I can’t tell you any more. Think it over. If you’re with us, run an ad in the classified section of Monday’s paper offering a blue bicycle for sale at fifty-five dollars. If you’d rather not, advertise a green bicycle at sixty-five dollars.”
“And what happens to Sam Clayton if I’d rather not?”
Williston stood up, grunted.
“We’re giving you Sam Clayton’s life as a bonus gift in any case, part of our special introductory offer. It’s like those bookclub deals,” he announced. “If you sign up, we’ll throw in the complete works of Ronald Reagan and an illuminated world globe. Let’s get one thing straight. We’re not promising to emancipate the black population of Paradise City or desegregate your schools or housing. That’s up to you and the Federal Government and your fellow citizens here.”
“We might have a better chance when Pikelis is gone though?”
“You might. That war is your war, and all I can give you is our best wishes plus any leftover stationery we might have when we leave.”
“Thank you for your frankness…Good night,” said Reverend Ezra Snell.
“Good night…Will the same people be escorting me back to my car?”
The clergyman laughed softly.
“So you saw them on your way back here?” he said.
“I said we were trained professionals, didn’t I?”
Without waiting for a response, Williston strode the two blocks to the parked Dart and started back toward his hotel. He had done what he could with the black minister. Now he had to find Talleyrand’s sister.
23
“Don’t scream,” the voice said, and as she opened her eyes somebody put a gentle but firm hand over her mouth.
“Don’t scream—it’s me, Williston.”
It was dark in the room, 2:50 A.M. on a moonless night. Usually Judy Ellis would still be singing the last set with the band out at the Fun Parlor, but the gambling casino was closed for repairs and wouldn’t reopen until Saturday evening. Beneath the thin sheet, the blonde was naked and frightened.
“I’m going to turn on the lamp for one second so you can see it’s me,” the intruder announced.
The light flicked on and off, giving her a glimpse of the face she’d seen only in photographs. The hand moved away, and she sighed.
“You’re very attractive,” he said softly. “I never knew that Talleyrand had such an attractive kid sister. Of course, you were only a baby then.”
“I’m a big girl now,” she answered as she sat up, exposing perfect shoulders and a hint of chest.
“Big enough to mail clippings,” he guessed.
“Yes, and big enough to save you from a bullet last night. Put the light on again for a moment, please…I want to look at you.”
He complied, and she sighed again.
“My brother said you were the bravest man he’d ever met—a born hero. I wanted to see what a hero looked like.”
She heard the muffled laugh in the darkness.
“Your brother was the hero, Judy. He saved all our lives, but I suppose you knew that and that’s why you figured sending the clippings would bring us here.”
“Something like that. I hoped it would anyway. He said you’d come even if the others might not. He said you weren’t afraid of anything.”
The bitter chuckle sounded again.
“Not anything, everything. I was the most desperate wild-eyed agent who ever jumped into France, little sister. Panic, I was on the knife-edge of subdued panic all the time. I’m still afraid of gray days and unemployed Judy Garland fans and the sounds of cars backfiring. I must have been—we all must have been—crazy. Maybe we still are—to buy this deal. Little sister, you’ve awakened some ancient devils and passions that I thought were dead forever.”
“Don’t ‘little sister’ me, dammit!”
“Sorry.”
“And spare me all your psychological clichés and pretended traumas. You came because you wanted to, just as you became a Jedburgh because you wanted to,” she reminded him. “You were hell on wheels then, and from what I saw last night you haven’t changed much. That was a brilliant operation last night, just brilliant. Even Marie Antoinette would have to admit that.”
It was, unfortunately, true.
Unfortunately and fortunately.
“How did you find me?” she asked a few seconds later.
“Finally recognized your voice…had Tony phone AGVA in New York to ask whether Judy Ellis was a stage name. The ever efficient American Guild of Variety Artists told him your real name, and that’s how we learned Judy Ellis is Judy Barringer…Then I just phoned all the hotels and apartment hotels until I got one that had you registered—this one. So I drove over, came up the service stairs—six lousy flights—and quietly picked the lock on your door.”
This time she laughed.
“My, my, so the middle-aged professor is a burglar too.”
“I also earn extra change doing a pickpocket act at bar-mitzvahs and sweet-sixteen parties. Oh yes, they taught us a lot of marvelous tricks such as how to cut off the head of a motorcycle dispatch rider with a cable across the road. I’ll do that one for you sometime, if you’ll provide the motorcyclist.”
She reached for the cigarettes and lighter on the bed table, revealing more of herself. He couldn’t see very clearly in the dim room, but he could make out that she wasn’t anybody’s little sister any more. This was visible when she ignited the lighter. Illuminated briefly by the dancing flame, she was undoubtedly an adult female—a woman. Williston found himself aware of this, decided that his reactions were immature and walked to the window to stare down into the street.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“Just thinking, just checking on
how I’m going to leave. They’ve doubled the number of police patrol cars out tonight, according to the amount of radio traffic. I guess Marton’s getting edgy.”
“You can stay here, Andy. Is it all right if I call you Andy?”
He smiled.
“Only in America, as Harry Golden would say. Only in America does a girl invite you to spend the night with her—and then ask if she can call you by your first name…Yes, you can call me Andy but not in public. I’m Arthur Warren in this town. That’s my stage name.”
The spy sat down in the big armchair by the window, watched the tip of her cigarette glowing red a dozen feet away.
“I want to talk about your brother,” he announced. “Do you know who killed him or why?”
“I’m almost sure it was Hyatt, the ape you left in the store window. He’s supposed to have some experience with bombs and other kinds of killing.”
“Sort of the Assassin-in-Residence on this campus?”
“That’s what they say, Andy.”
Each of them discovered that there was something special about the way she spoke his name, but neither of them said it.
“I suppose we were lucky we didn’t know that when we grabbed him,” the teacher reflected.
“You might have killed him?”
“There would have been a temptation to do something stupid like that. Well, there’ll be enough violence before this thing is over,” he predicted. “More than enough to go around—with enough left over to supply programming for a major television network for two years. Do you know why Pikelis wanted your brother killed?”
She hesitated for a moment.
“No…he might have thought Eddie was collecting some sort of evidence—that’s just a guess.”
She was lying, or at least holding back something. He could sense it, hear it.
There was no point in pressing her; that didn’t work with women. They were born with the self-defense instinct, and they gave in only when they wanted to. There were so few things about human females that one could generalize about, he thought, but this was one of them. It was an animal thing.
“Did Eddie have any other enemies here?”
“I never heard of any…I don’t think he was fooling around with anybody’s wife, if that’s what you have in mind.”
She sounded angry.
“Just checking all the possibilities, Judy. I’ve got the responsibility for committing four lives—including my own—and I’ve got to know what the hell I’m doing. Now, what are you doing in Paradise City? It’s no accident that you’re here.”
Smoke spiraled from her cigarette in an oddly erotic eddy.
“He asked me to come to help him. He was out to break the organization,” she declared, “and I was to work inside—at the Fun Parlor. That’s why I had our agent—the band’s agent—get us this job.”
“You find out anything much?”
“Nothing big enough to send anybody to jail…Say, would you like a drink or something? I’ve got half a bottle of Scotch, and you can run some cold water in the bathroom. Over there, the bottle’s on the dresser—see it?”
His eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and he made out the familiar shape of the glass container without difficulty. He picked up the bottle, found the bathroom and flicked on the light over the sink.
“I’ll have one too,” she announced.
He poured some of the John Begg whiskey into two glasses, added cold water and turned.
“You can leave that light on, Andy.”
He walked into the bedroom, handed her one of the glasses and returned to the armchair by the window. They drank, talked about the situation in Paradise City and the danger—for her and for Gilman—that was growing now that Pikelis realized a spy had infiltrated the gambling club. They spoke of Clayton and Davidson, and then Williston made two more drinks as she told him what she’d learned during her months in Jefferson County. At 3:35, he glanced down into the street and saw the police car stop a passing convertible to question the driver. They’d be checking everyone and every vehicle out at this hour.
“Maybe I had better stay,” he said wearily. “I’ll sleep in the chair, if that’s all right with you.”
“You won’t be very comfortable.”
“I’ll be okay,” he replied as he took off his tie and put it over his jacket already draped on a straight-backed chair. “Go back to sleep, Judy. I’ll be fine.”
He closed his eyes, leaned back and tried not to think. He tried very hard not to think of Eddie Barringer, Sledgehammer, John Pikelis, all those men who’d been dead so many years and the desirable woman twelve feet away. It was not easy, and it took a long time before he could escape into sleep. Even there he found no peace, however, for the ugly memories of the armored-car ambush and the slaughter of the German payroll escort and how Gindler had died kept seeping up from his unconscious. They were terribly vivid and garish, even more than usual.
“Wake up, Andy. Wake up,” she said.
He opened his eyes, saw her standing nearby—white and almost ghostly.
“You were having a nightmare, Andy. It was only a dream, that’s all.”
He nodded.
“No, remembering. No dream…it all happened.”
Her hand touched his face, cupped his chin.
“You’d better come to bed, Andy,” she urged. “You’ll sleep better.”
She was naked, near, lovely—very attractive.
Much more than attractive—desirable.
“No,” he said quietly.
It was the compassion that stopped him.
She felt sorry for him—almost maternal—and he couldn’t handle, couldn’t accept that.
Even if she wanted him too, it wasn’t him—not a professor past forty—she really desired. She wanted to sleep with the hero, the young wild warrior who didn’t exist anymore. She didn’t know Professor Andrew F. Williston nearly well enough for that, and he wouldn’t let her give herself to a legend, a romanticized memory, a gilded ghost. It was bad enough that he couldn’t escape the past in his day and nightmares, but this would be too much.
God, she was beautiful.
He was either very stupid, very arrogant, very idealistic—or in urgent need of psychotherapy, the psychology teacher realized wearily. She would be warm, tender, everything—everything he needed—but it would be another fantasy and he was already too deeply immersed in fantasy in Paradise City.
If they knew each other it could become a reality, and that would be very good. Would be or could be; it was so difficult to tell. He didn’t know her either, but he wanted to. He ought to tell her that, he brooded.
All these thoughts flooded through his consciousness in a few seconds.
“No, I’m too restless and I’d keep you up all night,” he evaded.
It was so hard not to reach out, not to touch her.
“Do you want to talk?” she asked gently.
“Tomorrow.”
She went back to her bed, accepting but discontented. She lay there for some minutes, wondering about this man who was so near and so remote. She listened for the regular breathing that would signify he was sleeping again, but it was not there.
“Judy?” he said suddenly.
“Yes?”
“Judy, I’m glad I found you.”
“Why?”
He hesitated again.
“I think we might…well, we might get along—well. You’re so lovely, warm, maybe even wise.”
“No, not wise. You’re wise enough for both of us—maybe too wise.”
Then she laughed softly.
“I’m glad you found me too—I think,” she said in the darkness. “You’re a serious man, and I could use a serious man, Andy. Do me a big favor and stay near, stay alive.”
Now he chuckled.
“Staying alive is one of the things I do best,” he answered, “but staying near sounds very attractive too. I don’t want a mother, though, because I don’t feel the least bit filial.”
She heard him sigh across the room.
“You must be as crazy as we are,” he judged.
“I sent the clippings,” she insisted.
“Yes—and we’ll get you for that. If the others don’t, I’ll get you myself.”
He was teasing, but his voice held something more.
“Can I count on that?” she challenged.
“Of course, I’m compulsive. Now go to sleep, woman.”
There was something good about the way he said “woman”—something that let her smile, relax and begin the descent into unconsciousness.
Out at the trailer camp, Arbolino was awake—for the third time that night. He was thinking of his wife and children again, and he was wondering—again—about why he’d left them for this dangerous mission. An honorable man paid his debts, of course, but did vengeance justify this? This wasn’t like the war, no matter what Carstairs and Williston said. It was different. Things that had been so right in that war didn’t really make the same sense now. He was older, he reflected, and maybe that made things appear more complicated. Yes, this town was dominated by a Fascist organization, as Williston had said, and somebody had to do something about it, but should four middle-aged private citizens from other states be the ones? What was that thing Andy quoted from Jefferson—or was it the Declaration of Independence?—about the people’s right to overthrow tyrannical governments? The stunt man tried to remember that comforting noble justification, tried and failed. “When in the course of human events—”
No, that wasn’t it.
Well, it didn’t matter that much anymore.
They were in it now, and they couldn’t quit.
In the morning, he’d drive seventeen miles south to Tracy and mail his wife a letter from that small town. There might be mail from home waiting for him c/o General Delivery. That would surely help, he thought wearily, and he could certainly use every bit of help he could get. Tony Arbolino was still struggling to recall the Jefferson quote when he finally fell asleep.
