Hard-core Murder

by Paul Kenyon

  "I dig," Skytop said.

  He motioned Cyril to get down off the saddle. He swung himself up behind the Panavision camera. The boom carried him up, up. He swung over the wall of the Colosseum. Down below, the naked man with the leopard headband was heading toward a marked-off section of sand, followed by a girl in a diaphanous gown and gaudy gold crown. Skytop focused on her through the zoom lens. She had a cheap, stupid face and a spectacular figure.

  The pear-shaped man with the beret was dancing around them, probably explaining the marks. He looked up at Skytop and waved his arm. He raised a huge megaphone to his lips.

  "Camera!" he shouted. "Action!"

  Chapter 11

  The bug said, "It's a Mr. Denaro, sir." It spoke in the butler's voice.

  "Mr. Denaro?" The second voice coming out of the bug sounded choked and apoplectic.

  "I told him you'd retired for the night, sir, but he was most insistent. He said you expected him. Shall tell him…"

  "Send him up."

  "Very well, sir." The butler's voice sounded surprised.

  "Just a minute, Roberts. Keep him down there for four or five minutes. I have something to do first."

  "Very good, sir."

  Paul lay on the bed, his shoes off, the little receiver in his hand and the button-size earplug in his ear. It looked like a cheap transistor radio. Anybody turning it on without knowing about the secret switch would get one of Washington's AM stations.

  "It's getting interesting," Paul said, looking across at Yvette. She was sitting at the dressing table, still in her maid's uniform, editing the previous day's tapes. The stuff worth saving would go onto a two-millimeter strip along the edge of a Billy Paul tape. If you popped the cassette into an ordinary cassette player, you'd get a lovely Billy Paul concert.

  The amber light over the door flashed. A buzzer sounded impatiently.

  "Damn!" Paul said.

  "He's been hitting the bottle an awful lot the last couple of days," Yvette said.

  Paul got up off the bed and handed her the earplug. "Here, you keep listening. I'll be back soon as I can."

  He knotted his black bow tie and put on his white jacket. He arranged his handsome black features into an expression of humble diffidence. He rounded his shoulders a little. He walked to the door with the suggestion of a shuffle. Just a suggestion. You didn't overdo that, these days.

  A minute later he was knocking on his employer's door, balancing a tray with a fresh bottle of scotch, a pitcher of water and a glass filled with ice. Mr. Secretary was sitting slumped in an armchair, looking haggard, wearing a rumpled dressing gown over a tieless shirt. The last bottle was beside him, already empty.

  "Just put it down here, Paul," the large man said. His speech was a little slurred.

  "Yassuh," Paul said. He set down the tray and turned to go.

  Mr. Secretary poured himself a stiff one and downed it before Paul reached the door. He didn't bother with the pitcher of water. "You ever do something really wrong, Paul?" he said. He sounded as if he were talking to himself. "Something against your conscience?"

  Paul made his voice properly wary. "I don't know what you mean, suh."

  "No, how could you?" The large man's tone was as mournful as a beagle's face. "I envy you people, you know that? No worries, no responsibilities."

  "Begging youh pardon, suh?"

  "How do you choose between your country and your woman?"

  "I don't understand, suh."

  The beagle eyes stared through him. "You can go, Paul."

  "Yassuh."

  Yvette looked up when he entered their room. "What was that all about?" she said.

  "We're going to find out." He took the earplug from her.

  There was the sound of a door opening and closing in his ear. "Well, well, Mr. Secretary," a voice said "Having yourself a little drink, I see."

  "Let's get this dirty business over with, Denaro. Then you can get out of here."

  "Do you have it?"

  "I ought to pick up this phone and call the FBI. They'd have you in an interrogation room so fast…"

  "But you won't, Mr. Secretary. Because if you did, every newsman in this town would get a home movie reel showing what a good lay your wife is."

  "Shut up!" There was a rising note of hysteria in Mr. Secretary's voice.

  "All right, let's get down to business. Where is it?"

  "Denaro…" The voice was pleading. "Whatever you are, you're not a Commie. This country's been good to you. And your friends. You don't have any idea of the damage the material in this folder could do to the United States if it got into the hands of the Russians."

  "Hand it over, Mr. Secretary."

  There was a cry of anguish and despair. Then Denaro's voice came on again. "You've been a good boy, Mr. Secretary. This is hot stuff. The Syn will be very happy with you." He gave a short ugly laugh. "If you're ever looking for a job, come around, and see us."

  "Denaro, I beg you…"

  There was the sound of a door opening and closing.

  Paul handed the earplug to Yvette. "Cover for me, baby."

  "What are you going to do, Paul?"

  "Follow Denaro. With any luck, he'll lead us to his bosses. And the guy who makes those porno films."

  "But the folder, Paul! If that gets into the hands of the Syn…"

  Paul's white teeth showed in a wolfish grin. "The folder's not going to get all the way to the Syn. And neither is Denaro."

  "Be careful, Paul!"

  But Paul was already out the door, a chauffeur's cap rolled up in the dark coat under his arm. The Washington cops aren't as likely to stop a black man after dark if they think he's on an errand for a white employer.

  No one saw him leave. He let himself into the garage with the pass key and took Mr. Secretary's black limousine. He rolled out into the dark Georgetown streets without lights and waited. After a minute or two, a dapper man in a pinstripe suit came out of Mr. Secretary's front door, carrying a vinyl legal folder under his arm. He looked like a government lawyer or a lobbyist.

  Denaro got into the back seat of a black Lincoln driven by a tough-looking white chauffeur. The Lincoln headed east, toward the Potomac. Paul gave them enough of a lead, then put on his lights and followed. The black Lincoln turned north on the George Washington Parkway and turned off again somewhere in the Maryland suburbs. Paul eased through traffic, always keeping a car or two between himself and the Lincoln. When they hit a deserted side road, he took the risk of turning off his lights again.

  The Lincoln stopped. Paul pulled off the road and killed his motor. His car was shielded by a thickly leafed magnolia leaning out into the road.

  Two hundred yards ahead, Denaro got out of the Lincoln with the folder under his arm. He began walking across an open expanse of grass. It was the golf course of a country club. Paul cursed under his breath. Denaro had chosen a meeting place that would make it impossible for anyone to sneak up on him.

  Paul did the best he could. He crept along the shrubbery boundary of the golf course, keeping Denaro in sight. Denaro paused at one of the holes, under the flag. After a while a stocky man came from the opposite direction and joined him.

  Paul wished he had a directional microphone. The two men seemed to be haggling. After a while they came to some sort of agreement. The stocky man passed over an envelope. Denaro passed over the folder. The two men began walking away from one another, back in the directions each had come from.

  Paul gritted his teeth. He'd assumed that Denaro was a cut-out. At best, he'd hoped the man would lead him to his superiors, or to some courier who could be tailed in turn. But apparently the Syn was new to espionage techniques. Denaro was making a direct transfer of information.

  And the buyer could only be a Russian. Or some other foreign agent.

  Paul sighed. He'd have to let Denaro go. It was more important now to retrieve that folder.

  He ran, fleet as a greyhound, along the shrubbery border. There was a car parked in the road on
the other side of the golf course: a beat-up Chevy. There was no one with it. The stocky man had come alone.

  Paul was crouched down on the opposite side of the car long before the stocky man came into view. He had no gun: it wasn't worth the risk of smuggling one into the home of a high government official. He didn't even have a knife. He'd have to make do with the nail file.

  He came around the back of the car and behind his prey while the stocky man was unlocking the door. He put a strong hand under the man's chin and put the edge of the nail file against his throat. The stocky man, he hoped, would assume it was a knife.

  "Don't you move, mistah," he said in his best mush-mouth accent. "Ah don't want no trouble."

  The stocky man actually relaxed when he heard the voice and saw the black fingers under his chin. He'd probably assumed that he'd been caught. But it was only a robbery.

  "Don't do anything foolish," the stocky man said. "You can have my wallet. There's a lot of money in it."

  The accent was Russian. It confirmed Paul's suspicions. The man didn't give a damn about the wallet. It was the folder he wanted to hang on to.

  He didn't need the nail file. He pulled back sharply on the Russian's chin, twisting the head around, his knee braced in the small of the man's back. There was a loud, dry crack. The Russian suddenly slumped. Paul let the body fall to the ground.

  He took the man's wallet. There was no sense in giving the police too much to think about. He could toss it over the railing into the Potomac on the way back. The folder was another matter. He'd have to keep it with him until Dan Wharton could arrange a drop. It would be too risky to hide it in his room. He'd hide it in the limousine. If anybody was going to have to explain how it got there, it would be Mr. Secretary. Paul smiled at the justice of it.

  An hour later, he slipped into his room. Yvette ran toward him, looking distraught.

  "What happened, baby?" he said.

  "His wife came into the room after you left. They had a fight. A big one. He called her all kinds of names. Said she was a slut. She'd ruined his career. Made him betray his country. He said there was no way the lid could be kept on. It was all going to come out. Everything was over."

  "And?"

  "She was taunting him. Telling him he was a lousy lover, always had been. She was as drunk as he was. She said she didn't care if it all came out. She was going to tell the world."

  "Keep talking."

  "Paul, there were shots. And there hasn't been a sound since — over twenty minutes now. I was going to take a look, but…"

  "Better you waited for me, baby. I have a reason to be there. You don't. I can say he rang."

  He put his white jacket on and went out the door. He was back two minutes later.

  "What happened?" Yvette said.

  He took off the jacket and loosened his tie. "He killed her. Then committed suicide. Blood all over the place. It's going to be a mess, baby. There'll be cops all over the place tomorrow after the maid finds the bodies. And government security agents crawling all around. Thank the Lord our cover's unbreakable. But be prepared to roll your eyes and answer a lot of questions."

  "I guess this lead's a dead end now."

  "It sure is. Let's hope the Baroness is having better luck."

  * * *

  The Baroness put her teeth into Mitch's neck just as he was reaching his climax, and bit hard. He didn't notice. His brain was too busy with other sensory impressions to register pain.

  But afterward, when he lifted himself lazily off her body and swung his legs over the side of the bed, he winced. He put a hand to his neck and it came away bloody. "You damned tigress," he laughed.

  She inspected the bite. "I'll put some alcohol and a Band-Aid on that for you, darling. Just wait here."

  "Don't bother," he said, reaching for his shirt. "It'll stop."

  "You'll get blood on your shirt," she said from the bathroom door. "Besides, I haven't had my rabies shot."

  Her bag was in the bathroom where she'd left it. If Mitch had inspected its contents during one of his trips to the john, he'd have found a douche, a pocket first aid kit, a pair of spare pantyhose, a makeup kit and other ordinary objects. He wouldn't have recognized the flexible tape recorder, weighing less than two ounces, that was disguised as a tampon, or detected the long-range transmitter whose components were scattered among the bag's ornaments and lining.

  She got a bottle of alcohol and a cotton swab out of Mitch's medicine cabinet. The Band-Aid came out of her kit. It was the one that Sumo had doctored with a little flat disc of a direction finder.

  "There, darling," she said as she pasted the Band-Aid on his neck. "You can go now."

  "You know I'm sorry about this, sweetheart," he said, buttoning his shirt. "But I've got to see this guy. About a problem. It won't wait."

  "It's all right, darling," she said. "I'll find my own way out."

  It had begun about a half-hour earlier. They were lying in bed, smoking companionably and watching an old silent movie from Mitch's private film library, when the phone rang.

  "Who the hell is that, at this hour?" he said, frowning.

  "Tell them you don't want any," she said lazily.

  His whole manner changed when he got on the phone. He'd started out with his usual arrogance. "Yeah, who's this? Don't you know what…" Then he'd become very attentive. He listened carefully for a long time, not saying anything except for an occasional grunt to show he was still on the line. He acted differently, like a man taking orders. Finally he said, "Tonight? But I can't… Yeah, I dig. I'll be there. I'll leave right away."

  He'd mumbled some unconvincing excuse to her and started to get out of bed. But she'd pulled him back and said, "Whatever it is, darling, a few more minutes can't matter that much." She'd roused him to another bout of lovemaking. And she'd bit him.

  Now he was pulling on his trousers. "Don't wait for me," he said. He went to the bureau and took something out of a drawer, his back to her. He put it in his pocket.

  She knew what it was. It was a gun — a snub-nosed Colt Cobra revolver. She'd found it during one of the quick searches she'd made in the last two nights, while Mitch was showering, or downstairs getting refreshments. It was one of the more interesting things she'd found.

  The other interesting item she'd found was in Mitch's private library of blue films. This one was locked away in a drawer. She picked the lock. She asked herself why it had been locked up, when Mitch hadn't shown any particular shyness about the other blue films in his collection. She'd run a few dozen feet of it through Mitch's viewer. It was enough footage to tell her what she wanted to know. There was a murder on it. The victim was the girl the CIA had sent to track down the porno ring. She'd recognized the face from the file Farnsworth had shown her. She'd recognized something else, too. The murder weapon was a dildo that shot a .45 caliber bullet. Some of the footage had been used in the sado-maso fantasy involving the administration official's wife. Other out-takes had gone into Mitch's film. But it all had come out of the same camera.

  The Baroness felt a familiar excitement. It was the excitement of a hunting animal about to close in for the kill.

  "So long, sweetheart," Mitch said. "I'll call you as soon as I can."

  She waited until she heard his car motor start up outside. Then she got dressed. She looked at her wristwatch. It was indistinguishable from the liquid-crystal display watch that contained her satellite relay communication device. But this one was a direction finder.

  She pressed the stem. An illuminated arrowhead appeared on the face of the watch. The arrow pointed in the same direction, no matter which way she turned her watch.

  It pointed toward Mitch.

  The Baroness gathered up her handbag and went downstairs. The Bugazzi was waiting for her, a sleek graceful shape in the darkness. She climbed in. She touched the stem of the watch and the arrow appeared again, pointing east. She stepped on the gas, and the Bugazzi hurtled down the driveway and out into the night.

  Chapter
12

  By the time she hit the San Bernardino Freeway, she knew she was being followed.

  The Baroness looked into the rearview mirror at the jumble of headlights behind her. They were still there, four cars back: one lamp a fraction of a shade yellower than the other. Only someone with the Baroness' superb color sense could have picked them out at all.

  The lights had stayed behind her all along Santa Monica Boulevard and followed her up the ramp to the Hollywood Freeway, changing lanes and varying their distance frequently. She thought it was about time to find out who they were.

  Mitch was somewhere up ahead, part of the river of red taillights stretching endlessly in front of her. She could afford to lose him for a while. The direction finder would tell her if he left the freeway, and she could always double back to the exit where the needle had begun to swing.

  She swung the Bugazzi into the right lane and slowed to an irritating crawl. The car immediately behind her blinked its headlights angrily. The drivers she'd frightened sounded their horns.

  The pursuing car swept past her, two lanes away, carried along helplessly by the stream of automobiles. She saw it wobble as its driver tried to do what she had done. But his nerve wasn't that good.

  She grinned, and picked up speed again. Her tail was a black Lincoln with two hard-faced men in white fedoras riding in front. Hoods. Mitch's playmates. They must have been waiting outside his house when he got the phone call, stationed there to watch Mitch's rear. She pulled out across two lanes to the left and passed them, letting them pick her up again. She and Mitch and the hoods were going to end up at the same place anyway. It was better to have them where she could keep an eye on them.

  The glowing arrow on her wristwatch swung left at San Bernardino. Mitch, a mile or two ahead, was taking the interchange to Route 15. She followed him for another hundred miles, when he turned again, going north on 127. Until then she'd assumed he was heading for Las Vegas. But this detour would put him somewhere in the desert between Death Valley and the vast AEC nuclear test site.