Hard-core Murder

by Paul Kenyon

  Mister Head cleared his throat. "Sully, you're not thinking of burning down the Ruby Bill Roman buildings?"

  "No, sir," Sully said hastily. "We'll do it with models. And for the scenes with actors, we'll shoot against double exposures of gas flames."

  There was a long pause. "All right, Sully. I'll want to see a treatment on paper. But you've got your million and a half dollars."

  Sully hung up. He gave a whoop and tossed his sun helmet into the air. It bounced off the ceiling and fell to the floor with a clatter. The other people on the set turned to look expectantly at him.

  "We're in!" he said.

  Chapter 3

  "You're clean," Tom Sumo said.

  He peeled the earphones off his head and slipped the little gunmetal box with all the dials into his side pocket. He looked up with a toothy smile from where he was kneeling on the thick burgundy rug. Sumo's features were pure Japanese, his accent pure California — the place he'd been born. He seemed skinny and boyish, but his neat blue suit concealed the iron-hard sinews of a karate master.

  "Thank you Tommy," the Baroness said. "The last person to use this suite was King Constantine. I thought there might be a leftover bug or two."

  She lounged in one of the deep leather armchairs, next to the huge vase of flowers that the management of Claridge's had sent to the suite when she checked in. She was wearing the soft, rust-colored woolen suit that the custom department of Harrods had whipped up for her at an hour's notice. They'd barely blinked a proper British eyelid when she'd shown up barefoot, in a white silk jump suit with nothing underneath. The eccentricities of the Baroness Penelope St. John-Orsini were not to be commented on.

  "Bugs? At Claridge's? Perish the thought!" said the stunning red-haired girl perched on the overstuffed ottoman in the center of the drawing room.

  Fiona was the top female model at International Models, Inc. The Baroness paid her a hundred thousand dollars a year. She had the fragile beauty of a Botticelli Virgin and a lazy, bitchy nature that didn't keep her from being a dependable agent. She wore a puff-sleeved, transparent blouse showing a pale green bra underneath and a shimmering satin skirt that molded her hips like a snakeskin.

  The phone rang softly. Inga moved to answer it. She'd flown up from Florence late that afternoon with Eric and Fiona, after the Baroness' call. Skytop, still processing the pictures for Mademoiselle, would take a later plane. Yvette would come with him.

  "Yes?" Inga said. "No, he's expected. Send him right up."

  "Skytop?" the Baroness said.

  "Yes. He's being unruly."

  A few minutes later there were footsteps and boisterous singing in the corridor. The buzzer sounded. Eric got up and opened the door.

  Joe Skytop's great hulk burst through the door. "Oh give me a home, where the buff…" He broke off his singing when he saw them, and stood there, swaying dangerously. He wore a buckskin jacket decorated with beaded designs, faded jeans, cowboy boots. His massive head was circled by a rattlesnake skin band with three eagle feathers stuck in it. His big fist was wrapped around a bottle of Irish whisky.

  An exquisitely beautiful black girl came through the door after him. "I tried to quiet him down, Baroness," she said in a liquid West Indian accent, "but he was unmanageable. He started in as soon as we got on the plane."

  "What do you have to say for yourself, Joseph?" the Baroness said.

  "I'm celebrating," he said defensively. "Don't you know what day this is? It's the anniversary of Little Big Horn."

  "Joseph, you're a bad boy," Yvette said, pushing past him and sitting down on a settee. A bright flowered print dress was vivid against her smooth milk-chocolate skin. She had a cool, thoroughbred grace that put her "much in demand for beach and evening wear pictures. The Baroness appreciated her for her more lethal talents.

  "Sit down, Chief," the Baroness said. "Inga, get him some black coffee."

  Skytop sat down, grumbling. A Chippendale side chair groaned under his weight.

  "We're all here now except for Paul and Dan," the Baroness said. "Paul should be here any minute. He caught an early flight from New York. Tommy, do you have any word on Dan?"

  "He'll be along shortly, Baroness," Sumo said. "He's flying in from Washington. He stopped off at Fort Meade to pick up a couple of interesting items of ordnance."

  They arrived together. "Met Paul at the airport," Dan Wharton said, setting his bags down in the foyer. Wharton was a large sandy-haired man with steely blue eyes and a broken nose. Once he'd been the toughest sergeant a certain Green Beret unit had ever known. He was a trained chemist and a brilliant ordnance man. No one would have guessed from his rough good looks and brusque manner, but he was a member of the Social Register, with roots going back to the Mayflower.

  Paul put his own bags down and followed Wharton into the drawing room. He was a slim, elegant black man whose handsome face bore an expression of faint, impersonal irony. He wore an immaculate ice cream suit with a wide flamboyant Cardin necktie, looking as if he'd just stepped out of one of the fashion ads he posed for. When John Farnsworth had recruited him for the Baroness' organization, he'd been a member of a black militant underground group. There was nothing he didn't know about street fighting and guerrilla warfare.

  "What have you got for me, Dan?" the Baroness said.

  "A few new goodies from the Special Effects Department at Fort Meade," Wharton said. He snapped open his attaché case and took out something that looked like a disembodied footprint.

  "What is it?"

  "Your sole," he said, enjoying himself. "You peel off the adhesive backing and stick it to the bottom of your foot. It looks like the real thing, calluses and all. If you go barefoot, it even gets dirty the same way as a real sole."

  "And?" the Baroness prompted.

  He flexed it to show how supple it was, then reached into what would have been the web of the big toe. He drew out a long, flat skewer. The sharp end looked discolored.

  "There's a scabbard in there," he said. "The idea is that, even if they strip you naked and search you, no one ever thinks to examine the soles of your feet."

  "What's the tip coated with, Dan?" the Baroness said.

  "Black Widow venom. Same as the darts you use in the trick cigarette holder. It'll kill in three-fifths of a second."

  She nodded soberly. "What else do you have?"

  He had trouble picking the next item out of the attaché case. Finally he trapped it between a thick forefinger and his thumb. He held it up. It looked like three long black hairs, joined at one end.

  "It's made of a very strong polymer," he said. "Tensile strength of over a thousand pounds. It looks like human hair. Your shade, Baroness. You weave it into your own hair. There's another item that goes with it."

  He took out a heavy, ornate finger ring. He pressed it somewhere, and it came apart in three sections that looked like little gold crescent moons. In a series of quick, deft movements, he knotted the three ends of the polymer threads to the metal crescents. Holding the device by the end where the three threads joined, he swung the crescents in a glistening arc around his head.

  "A bolas," he said. "The Argentine gauchos weight it with steel balls. This is a little fancier. You can lasso a thousand-pound steer with this. Or wrap it around a man's throat at a hundred feet."

  He let the bolas fly. It caught Joe Skytop by the ankles, thrust out in front of him on the burgundy rug. Skytop got to his feet in an automatic reflex and tried to take a step. He crashed heavily on the floor. The crystal chandelier overhead swayed and tinkled.

  "Hilarious," Skytop said. He unwrapped the cords and handed the bolas to the Baroness. He didn't seem at all drunk now.

  "Well, Dan," the Baroness said, "you seem to have outfitted me from the top of my head to the bottoms of my feet. What have you got for in between?"

  "This," Wharton said. He produced a pair of pantyhose. There was the faint suggestion of a blush on his face. Wharton, for all his ruthless toughness, was the product of a strai
tlaced upbringing. Nobody teased him. Everybody in the room was painfully aware that Wharton was in love with the Baroness. And everybody, including Wharton, realized that nothing ever could be done about it. Wharton was an instrument to the Baroness, not a man. He had to be. The members of the team depended on one another to keep themselves alive. They couldn't afford to get involved.

  "Thanks for the lingerie, Dan," the Baroness said gently. "I assume it'll do more for me than cover my legs."

  "More plastic," Wharton said, averting his eyes. "It's an atactic polymer with superelastic properties. There're millions of tiny elastic webs between the strands that keep it airtight no matter how far you stretch it."

  "Sounds like a balloon," the Baroness said.

  "That's exactly what it is," Wharton said eagerly. He showed her a can of hair spray with a familiar brand name. "There's compressed helium in the hair-spray can. Enough to blow the pantyhose up to thirty times the volume. You get a balloon as tall as a ten-story building. You can use it as an aerial signal buoy. Or giant lifting crane to move great weights."

  "Fantastic!" Sumo whispered from the corner of the room.

  "Can you make up something similar in a bra?" the Baroness said.

  "I don't see why not."

  "Get them working on it."

  He nodded and went on. "There's an improved model of the Spyder. I didn't bring it with me. Key doesn't like me to carry it through Customs. It looks too much like a gun."

  The Spyder was a unique pistol-winch that fired a threadlike plastic line and reeled its user in with a powerful spring in the butt. You could walk up a skyscraper with it. Or lower yourself down a cliff.

  The Baroness turned to Sumo. "We'll be doing a lot of electronic surveillance on this assignment, Tommy," she said. "We're going to have to keep tabs on people — trace the structure of a porno distribution chain. I'll want you to put together an assortment of bugs."

  Sumo grinned, showing the gold tooth, Penelope knew, contained a miniaturized FM transceiver. The platinum brace he wore was an antenna, and there were more electronic components in his fillings. Sumo was a walking radio station.

  "How about this?" he said, reaching in his pocket and handing her a Band-Aid. "It's a body tag. The beeper's a flat disc under the gauze. You can trigger it by UHF at a distance of up to a mile." His smile grew wider. "It's even sterile."

  The Baroness laughed. "Fine, Tommy. We don't want to give anybody an infection."

  "And of course I can put a transmitter inside any kind of pill or capsule — if you can find out what kind of medication the subject takes. It'll keep broadcasting from the intestinal track for at least twenty-four hours. Longer if they're constipated."

  "Good. Doctor up a few aspirins for a start. And some of the commoner pep pills."

  The Baroness got up and leaned out the window, looking left where the corner of the American Embassy was visible past Grosvenor Square. "And dust off the laser equipment Dan and Eric used for that windowpane tap in Moscow. There are going to be places where we can't physically plant a bug."

  "Check," Sumo said. He cleared his throat. "I've been working on a new kind of microwave generator. For picking up voices in rooms that don't have windows. You don't have to plant this one in an adjoining room. You can focus it on a blank wall from a distance."

  The Baroness looked around, interest animating her face. "How great a distance?"

  "Any practical distance, as long as there's nothing else in the way. A couple of miles. It uses two dish antennae that have to be placed about three yards apart. You read the changes in microwave configuration at the locus with a directional antenna. There's a shoebox-size computer that translates the reading into sound waves. The whole kit fits into a suitcase."

  "Does Fort Meade know about this?"

  "No. They're still using the kind that you plant on the other side of the wall. And they've been using it sparingly, since that Jack Anderson column."

  "Good. We won't tell them, Tommy."

  "In case we want to bug Fort Meade again?" he said innocently.

  "Exactly right. This mission's a touchy one. If they decide to throw us to the wolves, I want to know about it."

  Eight pairs of eyes swung in her direction. It was Wharton who spoke.

  "How touchy?" he said.

  She told them. Everything. Including the part about the cabinet official's wife.

  Skytop whistled when she was through. "The Syndicate's getting bold." He took an absentminded swig from the bottle of Irish whisky. He seemed thoughtful and thoroughly alert.

  "Where do we begin?" Wharton said.

  She ticked off their assignments. "Tommy, you cover the New York scene. The film labs, the freelance editors, the equipment rental places — everything. Eric, you do the same in Los Angeles. Joe…"

  The big Cherokee swung an eager face toward her.

  The Baroness wrinkled her forehead. "…You've shot a lot of movies. 16mm industrials, television, those jobs as assistant cameraman with Hal Mohr and James Wong Howe. The people in the business know your face. I want you to look for jobs moonlighting. Tell them International Models isn't paying you enough. Complain about me. Hint around that you wouldn't mind filming porno movies."

  "Right!" Skytop looked happy at the prospect of action.

  "Paul, Yvette, you're going to Washington. You're a domestic couple. You're going to be working in the home of a certain cabinet officer with an indiscreet wife. It's all been arranged. A maid and a chauffeur-handyman are going to be hired away at inflated salaries by a senator who's a particular friend of mine. The domestic employment agency is going to send over a lot of unsuitable people as replacements. In fact, everybody will be unsuitable except you."

  "Lawd almighty!" Paul said, rolling his eyes and putting on an exaggerated Uncle Tom accent. "Dis yere child is mighty proud to be working for such fine white folks."

  "But ah don't scrub no floors," Yvette said, going along with it.

  The Baroness laughed. "But don't ham it up too much."

  Fiona yawned. She stretched, thrusting her breasts in Dan Wharton's direction. He looked studiously at the floor.

  "What do you want me to do, Baroness?" the redheaded model said.

  "Try to get a job acting in a pornographic film," the Baroness said dryly. "You can use Joe Skytop as a reference."

  Fiona's blue eyes glinted. "I'll be auditioning for a series of television commercials in New York on Thursday. I can begin by pumping the other girls who show up for leads. But Baroness…" She curved her lips maliciously. "If I get a porno part, shall I follow through and act in it?"

  Inga answered for Penelope. "Whatever turns you on, Fi."

  The Baroness turned to Wharton. "Dan, I want you to fly back to Washington tonight. Your job is to monitor the cookie factory night and day. If this mission goes sour for political reasons, I want to know it as soon as it happens."

  A thoughtful frown crossed Wharton's craggy face. "I can set up across the expressway — use Tommy's new microwave bug."

  The Baroness tossed her head. "No. The interior walls at Fort Meade are baffled. And there's too much electronic activity going on inside that you could disrupt. They might detect a strange wave front. You'll have to bug the meetings of the Special Group instead."

  "But how? That conference room is the most bug-free place in the world. It's swept by experts."

  The Baroness looked amused. "The members of the Special Group bring a lot of headaches to those Tuesday morning meetings. They swallow a lot of aspirin."

  Wharton grinned in appreciation. "Bugging the buggers. I'll find out what drugstores they patronize. Anything else?"

  "Yes. There's a way to tap the memory cores of the big 7090 computer at Fort Meade. It'll accept a query program over the telephone lines if the pulses are scrambled the right way. That's how they service the remote terminals. Tommy can give you a counterfeit query program that will drain any part of the 7090's memory you want, once you sneak it past the 7090's layer of f
ilter programs. You can't be traced, because you can tap into any telephone line anywhere in the country and feed a high-speed pulse to Fort Meade, record your data, and get away in a couple of minutes. You can decode the data later with an ordinary general-purpose PDP-12 computer."

  Wharton looked startled. "Okay. Tommy, can you fill me in on the query program?"

  "Sure thing," Sumo said.

  The Baroness crossed to the bath, kicking off the sensible leather shoes that Harrods had chosen to go with the rust-colored suit. "That's all. Get moving. Everybody except Inga. Inga, you're going to stay close to me. I'm going to start wearing a body tag. I'll need someone to monitor it."

  "What will you be doing, Baroness?" Inga said.

  Penelope paused at the door. "Why, I'm going to the movies."

  * * *

  "There," Inga said. "Try pulling on it."

  Penelope sat naked in front of the dressing table mirror, her body glowing pinkly in the light from the bulbs. She tugged at the black strands that Inga had woven into her hair. They held firm. She leaned toward the mirror for a close look. The polymer threads of the bolas blended perfectly into her own abundant mane. There was no way they could be detected.