The Demolishers

by Donald Hamilton

  “You’ll be protected, day and night.”

  There was a little silence, then she whispered, “Take care, Matt.”

  “You, too.”

  I stood there by the bed a moment longer. There was something between us: the fact that there was nothing between us, in the popular sense of the phrase. Even if she’d written me off as an object of romance after the night she’d found her stepmother in my room, she couldn’t help but wonder why, if that was the kind of man I was, I hadn’t at least made a try, considering the opportunities I’d had on our long trip together. Of course I’d told her I’d felt an obligation to look after her for Matthew’s sake, but that didn’t necessarily involve a vow of chastity. However, she was a well-adjusted young lady, and she wasn’t about to go into a decline because a certain lecherous character had failed to make a pass at her…

  “Matt?” Delgado’s voice was a little impatient.

  “What? Oh, sure. Salmon is fine.”

  She’d brought me back to Newport, R.I. I knew that we’d already settled on some kind of a Blanc de Blanc, if I have the name straight, at thirty dollars a bottle. Now I’d given my okay to salmon prepared a special way with certain special fixings. When the negotiations had been completed, and the final waiter had gone away, Delgado raised her wineglass to me.

  “Pretentious is the word,” she said softly.

  “What?”

  “That’s what you were thinking, isn’t it? A pretentious bitch showing off her social graces.”

  “To a bloodthirsty roughneck who ought to be fed out in the barn with the other livestock, right?”

  She laughed. “When we come to know each other better, we’ll undoubtedly discover that we’re both very fine people. So Morelos came after you to avenge his brother, as we expected.”

  “Yes. I guess he was hanging around waiting for me to walk into the Saybrook house and blow myself up. He wanted to see it happen. But the wrong people sneaked onto the premises and set off the fireworks prematurely… Has anybody yet figured out who they were?”

  Delgado nodded. “Yes. It hasn’t been released yet, but I got the information, to be passed to you, just before you knocked on my door back at the hotel. There were three of them. Their names were Vance, Johnson, and Spearman.”

  I whistled softly. “Vance… You mean that Presidential Task Force for Illicit Substances? They’re the ones who blew themselves up with the CLL bomb meant for us? Tallman’s little gang of snoops?”

  Delgado nodded. “Yes. Very embarrassing for certain people in Washington. They’re having a hard time trying to explain what Tallman thought he was doing, breaking into your daughter-in-law’s house without a warrant. They’re trying to figure out what he expected to find there.”

  “Find, hell!” I said. “He tried to plant something on the kid once before. Why should he stop with just one try? Oh, I’m sure his boys were instructed to search the premises thoroughly first in the hope of finding something. Tallman has the idea Sandra’s just got to be a drug-using degenerate because of her parentage. However, in case they came up empty-handed, I’m willing to bet he gave them a little chemical evidence to hide in a not-too-obvious place so it could be discovered later under the. proper incriminating circumstances. Only somebody else had been ahead of them and left something louder, and they tripped the trigger when they broke in and started poking around… Tallman’s got a thing about Sandra’s dad, and he doesn’t care who he has to frame if it gives him leverage against Sonny Varek.”

  Dana Delgado hesitated. “You have to understand something, Matt. Robert Tallman has a special reason to hate drugs and the people who deal in them, particularly Alexander Varek. A few years ago Tallman’s daughter Elissa disappeared. A lovely young girl by all accounts. She was just finishing college; but suddenly she dropped out of school and vanished. He found her months later, in dreadful shape, dying. He traced the drugs she’d been taking back through the pusher and dealer to the importer. Varek. He was still in business at that time.”

  It was such an old story, these days, that I found it hard to work up much sympathy for an Elissa Tallman who’d died because she’d chosen to play with stuff she’d been warned was dangerous. After all, Tallman wasn’t the only one who’d lost a child. My son was just as dead as his daughter; but Matthew had been offered no choice and given no warning.

  I said, “Seems like everybody’s avenging somebody. Tallman wasn’t blown up with the rest?”

  “Not unless he was totally vaporized, which they say is unlikely. They could only make three bodies out of what they found in the debris.” She made a little face. “Not very pleasant dinner-table conversation!”

  I said, “So I don’t have to look over my shoulder any longer for Dominic Morelos; but I now have Mr. Tallman to worry about seriously. Before, he was just a potential pest. I hope he doesn’t have some cracked notion that I somehow arranged for his boys to wind up in little pieces, but I wouldn’t bet on it.”

  Delgado said, “That’s pretty farfetched, Matt.”

  I shrugged. “That’s how I’m still alive, by figuring out the farfetched possibilities. But let’s hope you’re right. I don’t want any more intramural conflicts; they raise hell in Washington.”

  She said, “Well, Morelos was a greater danger; at least you’re free of him.”

  I grimaced. “Sure, but we’re losing ground, statistically speaking.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Yesterday, the body count was six for our side as against thirteen for the Legion. Today we made one point, Morelos, but they made three: Vance, Johnson, and Spearman. So the game now stands at seven to sixteen. They’ve gained on us, a little.”

  “Ugh, I don’t like thinking of it as a game.”

  I grinned. “That’s exactly what Sandra said. You girls have something in common at least. Weak stomachs.”

  Delgado said firmly, “That is enough business talk. I will now change the subject. This is the oldest operating tavern in the United States. It was originally built as a residence, in 1673…”

  When we came out of the White Horse Tavern, it was cooler than it had been, quite chilly in fact, and late enough that all light had gone from the western horizon. Delgado took my arm to steady herself on her narrow heels as we walked down the hill towards our hotel. The sidewalk wasn’t as smooth as it might have been and the streetlights could have been brighter. I found myself very much aware of her beside me. I thought she knew it and, perhaps, intended it; but I didn’t know if it was a case of mutual attraction or if she was merely building me up so she could slap me down. I didn’t trust her very far. I could still feel the aura of antagonism that I’d sensed at our first meeting in Mac’s office.

  I said, “In certain societies I would now burp loudly to indicate my appreciation of a very fine meal.”

  Delgado laughed. “Words will suffice,” she said. “Polite belching is not required…”

  She’d been walking on my left. Being right-handed, I always prefer to have the lady over there for the same reason the Three Musketeers made a point of keeping their sword arms free for action; but it put her on the street side, between me and the white van that suddenly drew up alongside us. It seemed as if everybody was driving those bulky heaps today, but this one was much shorter than Morelos’s elongated vehicle, with no side windows except in front. It was elderly and kind of beat-up looking.

  Reaching for my gun, I saw the gleam of something metallic inside the open window as the van stopped abreast of us. I slung Delgado around behind me and heard her stumble and fall. I took a long step to the side to draw any return fire away from her, and looked for a target as my weapon came up. The boy, Lester Leonard, stuck his head out the window and looked shocked when he realized he was looking into the muzzle of a .38 Special. I realized that what I’d seen gleaming in the darkness hadn’t been metallic after all; it had been the glass of his spectacles.

  He spoke apologetically: “I’m very sorry, sir, I didn’t mean to s
tartle you.”

  I drew a long breath, holstered my piece, and turned to Delgado. She was sitting on the sidewalk in a rather undignified manner, legs wide apart. They were nice legs. A wisp of dark hair had come loose and was falling over her left eye. She brushed it aside, checked her nylons for runs as she sat there, and let me help her to her feet. She reached around to rub herself behind, craning her neck to see if she’d incurred any damage back there.

  “Damn you, Helm, I’m going to be black and blue for a week! And if you’ve made me ruin the only good dress I brought along, I’ll sue you!”

  Well, you can’t win them all.

  23

  Although its interior volume was greater than that of most sedans, Leonard’s van had only limited seating accommodations: two bucket seats up forward. There was considerable space between them, presumably so the driver could get through to the stuff he was hauling in back without walking clear around the outside of the vehicle and wrestling with the rear doors.

  Being bigger, I got the outer two thirds of the right front seat; Delgado perched on the inner third and managed somehow to fit her legs past the console up forward that encroached badly on the footwell space. I had to hang on to her to keep her from sliding off into the walkway between the seats whenever Lester Leonard made a right-hand turn. She made no complaints although she must have been thinking ruefully that she’d put on a smart dress and sheer nylons and high heels to eat dinner in a good restaurant, not to take pratfalls on the street and get jounced around in a hippie van.

  “It’s at my folks’ house, where I live,” Leonard had said, asking me to accompany him. “It’s some things I’ve been working on. That’s why I’ve been following you and trying to get in touch with you, Mr. Helm. I’d like you to see them. It’s only a little ways out of town. If she wants, we can drop Miss Delgado off at the hotel.”

  But Miss Delgado would have none of that, even though it was obvious that we were going to travel in something less than limousine luxury. The van was old enough that it must have turned the clock at least once, but I noticed that all the instruments worked and the motor sounded healthy enough. A couple of square buttons, black and red, a toggle switch, and a small keypad displaying numbers from one to six had been neatly installed on the dashboard. I couldn’t begin to guess what purpose they served.

  However, the body metal was dented and the white paint had been touched up here and there with pigment that didn’t match, clearly not for cosmetic reasons, just to keep the body from rusting through in the damp New England climate. The vinyl upholstery was cracked and split. The dark rear of the van behind the seats seemed to house some kind of laboratory or workshop.

  “Oh, that,” Lester Leonard said as we drove. “I just set up my old Atari back there when I got my new IBM-PC; that way I didn’t have to do all my work at home. There’s some other electronic stuff… But you wouldn’t be interested in that.”

  “Miss Delgado might be,” I said. “Those were computers you mentioned, weren’t they? She’s supposed to be a computer whiz, although you can’t prove it by me. I have to take off my shoes to count to twenty.”

  Leonard asked politely, “What kind of computer work do you do, Miss Delgado?”

  “Just routine office stuff,” she said, clinging to me as we turned a corner. Again I tried not to let her nearness bother me, without much success. She went on: “Not very interesting, I’m afraid. I’m just the girl who pushes the buttons. Is that what you’re going to show us, computers?”

  “Oh, no. No, it’s something I’ve been working on ever since… ever since Linda was murdered in that horrible way. What kind of animals would… Oh, oh!” The radio had suddenly let out a beep-beep sound and the tuning dial began to flash on and off. Leonard reduced speed hastily and glanced at a police car that appeared ahead, parked a little off the road. He drove past it at a discreet velocity and grinned. “Our friend the fuzz.”

  Delgado said, “That radio. It’s really a radar detector?”

  “Yes, I don’t drive very fast, myself; but a friend who’s into souped-up cars kept complaining about the laws they were passing against those devices, so I made him one they wouldn’t spot. That’s the pilot model; his was much more elegant, you could actually get AM stations on it.” He shrugged. “Of course I never listened to it anyway. Just the tape deck. Classical music. Strictly a square.” He came back to the previous subject of conversation. “What kind of… of animals would do a pointless and vicious thing like bombing a restaurant full of people thousands of miles from the country they’re trying to change?”

  “Vicious but not exactly pointless,” Delgado said. “There are a lot of wild beasts out there these days, who don’t care who they destroy if it brings them a little closer to their political goals.”

  “Well, it’s time somebody turned the tables on them! That’s what I’ve been working on, but I’d rather show you than tell you about it, if you don’t mind. Otherwise you might think I’m some kind of a kook. Lots of people do.”

  I said, “I can’t imagine why.”

  He grinned boyishly. “I guess I am a bit abnormal, at that, Mr. Helm. I never know who won the World Series, and I can’t ever tell you who’s playing in any of those bowl games. But I do have a B.S. in physics with a minor in chemistry, and I’m pretty good with computers if I do say so myself.” He laughed self-consciously. “They were just a hobby until… Well, they kind of took over and now I’m with CCI, that’s Computer Communications, Incorporated, up in Providence. I’m kind of their resident brain, junior grade, if you know what I mean; and they’re going to send me back to school for some advanced work pretty soon. Just about every company in the field has its tame juvenile genius nowadays, ever since it was discovered that kids seem to catch on to the stuff faster than adults, maybe because they aren’t hung up on traditional ways of thinking. It’s an entirely new field and it demands entirely new thought patterns… Well, of course you know all about it, Miss Delgado. Sorry. Didn’t mean to run on like that. Here we are. The old homestead.”

  Déjà vu is the term, I believe, that describes the feeling you get when you’ve played the same scene before. Less than a week ago, a thousand miles south of here, I’d accompanied another young person through the gates of the drive leading to her old family residence, to which she’d referred with the same self-conscious mixture of embarrassment and pride. Here there were no guards. The ornate iron gates stood open. The lighted drive curved up across the wide lawns to the massive three-story gray-stone house, with lights at many of the lower windows. The structure was as impressive in its way as the late Homer Ganson’s sprawling Palm Beach confection, now the retirement retreat of his mobster son-in-law.

  “That is quite a mansion, Lester,” said Delgado.

  “Yes, isn’t it a monstrosity? I keep trying to live it down.” He glanced at me. “I see my folks are home. I… I’d rather not have to explain you to them, if you don’t mind, sir. I often bring friends to the stables to discuss computers and stuff; they don’t expect me to touch base with them every time.”

  Delgado said, surprised, “The stables? Surely you didn’t bring us here to admire your horses!”

  He grinned. “No horses have been kept here since the horseless carriage came along, Miss Delgado. When I got a job and started looking for a place where I could, well, spread out my work a little, my folks had the old stables remodeled for me. They said it was a shame to waste all the space they had here. I pay them rent… Yes, both cars are there.”

  We drove past a sporty Mercedes and a brand-new Ford station wagon, the kind with phony wood paneling. As we followed the driveway around the corner of the house we could see the lawns sloping down to the rocky shore beyond. If I remembered my geography correctly, the water was technically Rhode Island Sound, but the demarcation line between that and the Atlantic Ocean seems to be pretty fuzzy. I figured that if you headed straight out over the dark horizon you’d eventually hit Bermuda, six hundred miles away on the far
side of the Gulf Stream. A moving cluster of lights, white and colored, not too far out, indicated a boat of some kind.

  “Commercial fisherman,” Leonard said, deciphering the light pattern with the casual glance of an expert.

  “Do you have a boat?” I asked.

  “Dad keeps a thirty-five-footer at the yacht club; he likes to wrestle with tuna and such. I run it for him when I can—Mom’s a pretty good sailor, too—but I don’t fish much myself, except to please him. He likes to think there’s some sport I’m not too awful at.” He glanced at us quickly, clearly afraid that we’d take the remark wrong. “Oh, he’s not compulsive about it like the dads of some boys I used to know in school, who were always after them to make the team, any old team, and raised hell when they didn’t.” Leonard guided the car around a sharp curve that took us away from the ocean. He brought us to rest in front of a long, low building that showed black against some dark trees. “Wait while I turn on the lights and cut off the alarm.”

  He pushed the square black button on the dashboard and illumination flooded the area. Then he touched the toggle switch. The red button lighted up. He pressed it and, holding it down, punched a combination on the nearby keypad. When he released the button, its light went out. He hit the little switch again, and nodded to us.

  “All clear. It makes a terrible racket when I forget.”

  I got out and helped Delgado disembark. It was a long step down and she couldn’t make it without a nice display of stockings and lingerie—I noticed that there was pretty lace around the hem of her slip. She went through the usual feminine routine of smoothing her dress and patting her hair. Leonard came around the van to join us.

  “Do you really need that much security?” I asked.

  He laughed. “The lights? I’m always hauling stuff in and out of here I wouldn’t want to trip and fall with. The other’s just a system I worked out for one of Mom’s friends whose husband died. She was petrified of coming home alone; she was always sure a rapist was waiting in her bedroom. A simple burglar alarm wouldn’t do; somebody could have outwitted it and turned it off in her absence; she wanted to be able to check it from her car. If the red light doesn’t come on, that means the system has been tampered with. I wouldn’t call her a promising candidate for sexual molestation, she’s over seventy, but I guess rapists aren’t much more selective than terrorists.” He shrugged as we walked towards the door. “Actually, I’m kind of glad to have it. Not that I’m afraid anybody’s going to steal things, but it guarantees that nobody’ll enter the lab when I’m gone, even with the best intentions in the world. As long as I was just working on the electronic projects it didn’t matter, but when I started on this other stuff… Well, some of it was pretty sensitive in the early experimental stages. I wouldn’t want Mom to get hurt, for instance, because she happened to bump into something in the lab when she was just looking for a beaker to use for a vase to put some surprise flowers in my apartment.” He laughed again. “She’s used to it, of course; they both are. I was a secretive kid. When I lived in the main house, I always locked my rooms when I went out so nobody’d disturb my important experiments. My folks were nice about it, once I convinced them I wasn’t doing drugs in there; but they’ve been wondering ever since how a nice normal stockbroker and a nice normal debutante managed to beget a nut like me.”