Tell Me No Lies

by Elizabeth Lowell

  Catlin knew, because it was rather like that for him. The lure of the game was gone, leaving only the lies. And Lindsay, tangled among lies like light in darkness.

  The thought still disturbed Catlin late that night, when he awakened to Lindsay's quiet, incoherent cries. Even as his fingers closed around the cold grip of his gun he realized that there was no danger in the room. Not for him. It was Lindsay whose body moved restlessly, turning and twisting in slow motion, trying to escape nightmare. As he returned the gun to the end table he wondered whether it was the past or the present that haunted her dreams, causing the whimpers that cut into him like tiny knives.

  "It's all right," he murmured, stroking her tangled hair from her face. "You're safe. Shhhhh. You're safe, Lindsay. I won't let anyone hurt you. Shhhhh."

  The soft words and slow, soothing strokes of Catlin's hand penetrated the nightmare. Lindsay half awoke, her eyes dazed, unseeing. With a choked sound she turned toward the source of the comforting words and touches.

  "What is it, honey?" he asked softly. "Can you talk about it?"

  "I never – remember," she said raggedly. "I just – wake up."

  Catlin gathered Lindsay along his body, stroking her back and hair, talking softly to her, trying to draw out the cause of her fear. She pressed even closer, instinctively seeking the safety he promised.

  Desire exploded through him as her soft, resilient body fitted itself to his contours. He ignored the sudden, sweet heaviness of his own arousal. He didn't want to take in physical hunger what she would offer him out of psychic need. That would be another kind of lie, a wounding kind, the game sweeping past all barriers until only the game was real – and therefore everything was lies. He didn't want to do that to her. She was too vulnerable. She didn't know that she was drawn to him because she sensed that he was safety in a world of danger.

  But he knew it. He had felt all the instant, almost overwhelming urgencies that were just one of the hazards of the adrenaline roller coaster. If she had been a different kind of woman, or if she had known the rules and lures of the game, he would have taken her without hesitation. He wanted her. He wanted her husky voice crying for him, her warmth sheathing him until cold was only a fading memory. He wanted to bury himself in her tight satin heat, letting the rest of the chill world slide away while he knew what it was like to be fully alive again.

  And it would be like that with her – hot, vivid, vital. He knew it, and it made him ache to be complete with her.

  Hearing his own thoughts made Catlin smile grimly. He should know better by now. The pleasures of sex were intense but transient. The emotional emptiness sex tried to fill was permanent, the legacy of too many years in hell. He was alive. Period. That was more than most men he had worked with could say. That was more than any of his enemies could say.

  Except for the one enemy who was still alive. Lee Tran, Mei's pimp, the man who had tried to buy Catlin's death at the delicate hands of the woman he had loved years ago because he needed love too badly then to question its source.

  Like Lindsay now, asleep in his arms. He knew what would happen unless the bronzes were found and found very soon. The urgencies of adrenaline and survival would undermine her judgment. The role she played would become the only reality. And on that day she would look up at him and see the love that she needed to survive.

  He hoped that when that moment came he would be strong enough to turn away from her, protecting her in the only way he could.

  Chapter 15

  Stone moved restlessly through the hotel room that had been turned into an FBI command post. Field reports were scattered about, coffee pooled coldly in smudged cups that left rings on unusually expensive hotel furniture, and the sheets lay in a snarl at the foot of the bed because he had refused to allow the maid into the room. With a tired curse he smoothed his palm over his short hair.

  "And he kept the goddamn key?" Stone snarled, shooting O'Donnel a narrow glance.

  The younger man nodded. "Given the circumstances, there wasn't anything the agents could do. Catlin is very quick and not at all careless."

  Stone grunted. "I could have told them that. Hell, I did! Did they believe me?" He made a sound of complete disgust. "For this I'm told to camp in California and run this operation. I could have run this farce by phone. I should have!"

  "Yes, sir," said O'Donnel. He knew as well as Stone did that there had been no real choice in the matter. When the director said follow it to California, you followed it to California. It would have been the same if the moon were the destination. "Catlin kept his word. The bugs are in the suite."

  "Except the bedroom."

  "Except the bedroom," agreed O'Donnel, smiling slightly. "Wonder why he dug in over that? Maybe he and sweet Lindsay have something going after all."

  "Ask him," retorted Stone.

  "Thanks, but I'll pass," O'Donnel said cheerfully. "I saw the bruises on Nancy Conner's wrist. Not to mention the beauty below Ted Marsh's breastbone. Catlin doesn't pull his punches. I pity the guy who has to install the bedbug."

  "There won't be one."

  O'Donnel gave his boss a swift look. "But none of the bugs we used are sensitive enough to cover the bedroom. Hell, we weren't expecting him to be hostile. We figured he'd see the bugs, know they were friendly and not worry about it."

  "You think Catlin was bluffing about open season, don't you?" Stone asked.

  The younger man shrugged. "He knows we're following him. He knows we're not going to trash him. Why would he trash us? It would put him in a world of hurt and not help him at all."

  "Suppose you had to take a walk through a dark alley," said Stone. "Suppose you knew that some sort of friendlies might follow you down the alley, and some real enemies would try to kill you there, and there was no way to tell them apart in the dark. What would you do?"

  "Shoot the first thing that moved."

  Stone nodded. "Catlin was sporting about it, though. He warned us first. Somebody gets shot, it's because we didn't listen."

  O'Donnel stared, hardly able to believe what he was hearing. "Are you saying that we accept his shit with a grin and a shuffle?"

  Without answering, Stone lit a cigarette and accepted the ashtray that O'Donnel brought to him. He gave the young agent a long, measuring look, wondering how to make the point. That was the trouble with young men. They hadn't been around long enough to know the difference between a threat and a promise. Stone had.

  "If I thought it would do any good," Stone said, blowing out a harsh stream of smoke, "I'd let you try to administer the attitude adjustment that you think Catlin needs." Stone looked at the glowing end of his cigarette. "Of course, it wouldn't be Catlin's attitude that got adjusted. It would be yours. And then I'd be mad as hell and probably do something stupid, because you're as close to a son as I've got." O'Donnel's eyes narrowed but he said nothing. "You're out for blood because Catlin roughed up two agents who tried to show how cute they were by blind-siding him in an elevator," continued Stone. "This is one guy who isn't going to be blind-sided, but try and tell that to these California hotshots. They'll argue with you over the color of the sky. They could have gotten a message to Catlin in a hundred other ways, but they're used to rousting rubber check artists. They thought he'd have heart failure when they stopped the elevator." Stone shrugged. "April fool, baby. At the cost of a few bruises they learned how easy it is to misjudge a man and die. Valuable lesson, that."

  "He didn't have to be so hard on the woman," O'Donnel said flatly.

  "God Bless America," muttered Stone, looking at his cigarette as though it were burning rubber. "A woman will kill you as quick as a man. Quicker, because you don't expect it. Ask any grunt who fought in Asia. It's the last thing some of those kids learned. Not that I blame them." he added honestly, settling onto the couch. "I still haven't learned it, not all the way to the bone."

  Stone looked at O'Donnel's expression and knew that the young agent wasn't satisfied.

 
"Catlin's living in an undeclared war zone, waiting to be killed," said Stone. "He doesn't have time to sort out enemies and friendlies, not if he wants to survive. He learned that a long time ago. He survived. Think about it, Terry. You're standing there telling yourself that you're good enough, you can take him; and if you can't, he'll recognize you and stop before he kills you." Stone shook his head slowly. "Forget it. The fact that Catlin knows your face is no protection if you try to blind-side him. Catlin's known a lot of men. Some of them betrayed him. He'll kill you and send flowers to your funeral if any apologies are called for."

  There was a silence followed by a muttered curse. "I'd still like to teach him some manners."

  "Try him at the gym on Powell and Stoner tomorrow," offered Stone, smiling thinly. "Before Chen recruited Catlin, he worked out there regularly."

  "Weights," O'Donnel said scornfully.

  "Does he move like a body builder?" retorted Stone.

  "Boxing?" O'Donnel asked, curiosity in his voice.

  "Full contact karate."

  Stone watched that idea penetrate O'Donnel's youthful arrogance. Demonstration karate was one thing. An outright battle wearing only a few pads was another. As a dangerous entertainment, full contact karate ranked just below Russian roulette.

  "All the same " muttered O'Donnel. He swore beneath his breath as he scooped up a handful of papers. He squared the edges automatically before replacing the sheets in the file folder. "What about this Tom Lee, alias Lee Tran? Did the CIA have anything on him?"

  "About four hundred pages. The Bureau had quite a file on him, too."

  "Anything we can use?"

  "Not in the States. We ship his ass back to Vietnam, though, and a whole lot of people will line up to say hello. Seems Lee liked to sell people and information on both sides during the war. Heroin, too. Still does. Works out of Hong Kong and San Francisco now."

  O'Donnel's hands stopped for a moment, then continued their work of straightening up the small dining table that Stone had been using as a desk. "Why is Lee afraid of Catlin?"

  "Lee once duped an assassin into Catlin. Would have gotten him, too, if someone hadn't walked in and turned her into wallpaper."

  "Her?"

  "Yeah. The hit man was a woman. Catlin's mistress, apparently. He damn near died in the saddle."

  O'Donnel gave a harsh laugh and shook his head. "That would be enough to throw a man off his stride. How long had she been his mistress?"

  "It wasn't some Saturday night pickup."

  "No wonder he's hard on women," muttered O'Donnel. "So where does Lee fit into Chen and Catlin and the bronzes?"

  "Hard to say. Officially, Lee is a political refugee, which means we're stuck with him until Ho Chi Minh City turns back into Saigon or hell freezes over, whichever comes sooner.''

  "Lee was one of the Boat People?" O'Donnel asked skeptically, thinking of the poor, ragged, half-starved Vietnamese and ethnic Chinese Vietnamese citizens who had fled to the U.S. after Saigon fell.

  "That's what it says in his file." Stone's mouth flattened in a cynical smile. "Bet his damn boat had a solid gold keel. He hit San Francisco and started buying into the local power structure. Chinatown, not the city. Chinese benevolent associations, Chinese, neighborhood committees, that sort of thing. What he couldn't buy he killed, and he was mean enough to make it stick. They don't like him much here, but they've learned to live with him."

  "Sweet guy."

  "Yeah. Lee could give lessons to the Sicilians. Not that some of the people he killed didn't have it coming, from what our local agents say." Stone stubbed out his cigarette. "Anyway, he's dug in real good here. Gives money to Chinese charities, scholarship funds, churches and cultural preservation societies. Pillar of the community, as long as you don't ask where all that money comes from."

  "Buying his way into respectability?"

  "He's giving it the old college try," agreed Stone. "He's turned the slavery and dope trade over to his sons. Now he spends his money buying ancient Chinese bronzes, classical Chinese calligraphy and ten-year-old boys."

  O'Donnel grimaced. "The things we put up with in the name of fighting communism. Christ. Do you think Lee's smuggling in the bronzes from China along with heroin?"

  "What bronzes?" Stone retorted bitterly. "All we have is Chen's word for it that the damn things even exist. You want to know how much I think Chen's word is worth?" Stone didn't wait for the younger man to answer. "Lee has the money and the contacts to get those bronzes smuggled out of China, as near as we can tell. He's got a heroin smuggling apparatus in place to handle the transport. Whether or not he's actually lifted the bronzes is another question."

  "What does Chen think?"

  "Damned if I know," Stone said 10 a clipped voice. "When I asked him if he had ever heard about Tom Lee, a.k.a. Lee Tran, Chen said he would 'make inquiries'." Stone took a sip of cold coffee from his cup, made a sound of disgust and put the cup down with a thump. "That stuff is bad enough when it's hot." He looked at his watch. "Bring me up to speed on Catlin and Lindsay."

  O'Donnel checked his own watch, pulled a spiral notebook from his breast pocket, and began running down the list. "Five in the morning, someone flushed, brushed and showered. Someone else brushed and flushed. Silence for about ten minutes, then some odd sounds and a lot of heavy breathing. Just when the guys listening were getting all excited, she starts talking to Catlin about tai chi chuan." O'Donnel looked up from the notebook. "Some kind of Chinese aerobics, I guess."

  Stone nodded and tried not to yawn.

  "She showered at 5:22. No conversation other than the rye-toast-or-white variety. He called room service. They delivered breakfast at 6:04. Bellboy was legitimate; he's worked here for ten months. She drank tomato juice, Catlin had orange. Eggs poached and over easy, side of potatoes and ham."

  O'Donnel yawned and flipped to the next page. Stone closed his eyes and wondered why jet lag got worse as he got older. The three hours between D.C. and San Francisco were killing him.

  "Six twenty-three, she called Steve Waters and told him about a bronze she bought last night for the museum," continued O'Donnel. "Six-thirty, she called a D.C. dentist and canceled an appointment."

  Stone smiled faintly. "Conscientious thing, isn't she? At least now she can't say we never did anything for her."

  The younger man laughed in agreement, then continued. "Six thirty-seven. Conversation about going to see her aunt in San Francisco. Six forty-four, Lindsay calls and discovers that said aunt left early for her annual tour of the Orient. Lindsay says, 'Thank God'." O'Donnel looked up. "Guess she doesn't get along with her aunt."

  Stone shrugged, unimpressed. There was a world full of people he didn't get along with.

  "Lindsay reminisces about what it was like to go home every summer to Hong Kong," continued O'Donnel. "Seven-oh-four, Catlin goes downstairs and uses public phones to make two calls."

  "Did we pick up anything?" Stone demanded, suddenly alert.

  O'Donnel shook his head. "We can't cover every pay phone in town with a pen register, boss."

  "In other words, we don't know who he called." Stone rubbed his palm over his hair and sighed. "I should have expected it. Catlin learned to play the game from experts. Anything else?"

  "Short of bugging every public phone within walking distance " O'Donnel's voice trailed off.

  "Dream on," Stone said sarcastically. "The attorney general would faint if he even suspected what you were thinking. Public phones? No way, and we both know it."

  With a grunt O'Donnel returned to his notebook. "Catlin came back at 7:18. Together they compiled a list of bronze dealers."

  Stone looked interested again.

  "We ran the names," continued O'Donnel.

  "Anything?"

  O'Donnel shrugged. "Not a whole lot of information comes out of Chinatown, apparently. The few Chinese agents we have are all third-generation Americans. They don't speak anything but English – Bureau
had to send them to language school so they could work in Chinatown. Can you believe it?"

  "Your grandparents were immigrants. How's your Gaelic?" Stone asked dryly.

  "Nonexistent." O'Donnel smiled unwillingly, seeing Stone's point. "Anyway, none of our Chinese-American agents have family ties in any of the refugee communities – not Taiwanese, mainland Chinese, or ethnic Chinese from the late, unlamented Southeast Asian war."

  "Damn!"

  "Yeah. I gave a duplicate list of the people Lindsay mentioned to Customs. So far only Tom Lee's name caused a hiccup in their computer. The rest are either legitimate export-import types or haven't gotten caught yet. Same for the Drug Enforcement Administration. Only Lee's name rang their chimes."

  "Catlin's going to visit Lee?" asked Stone, disregarding everything but the one surprising fact. "Didn't he recognize Lee at the auction?"

  "If he did, he didn't say anything. We had an agent at the auction, but he saw no sign that Catlin knew Lee." O'Donnel smiled suddenly. "Hell," he said, looking over his notebook again. "Let them run into each other in the dark. Lee is a real badass. Maybe he can teach Catlin some manners."

  "Don't hold your breath. If the surveillance team is correct, Lee looked like a bat coming out of hell when he left Wang's party. Hardly the act of a man eager for combat."

  Without comment O'Donnel turned another page and resumed his recitation of Catlin's and Lindsay's activities since morning. "They spent an hour having coffee with the Chinese Christian Benevolent Society. Apparently Lindsay's mother found immigration sponsors for half the membership at one time or another. Some of them have been over here for a long time. Long enough to be powerful, anyway."

  He looked up as Stone lit a cigarette.

  "Apparently the recent emigrees are giving the locals a run for their money, power-wise," O'Donnel said. "Like Lee. Beg, borrow, earn or steal money, and then use it to buy your way to power and respectability."

  "Face," Stone said succinctly. He rubbed his jaw, testing the length of the stubble. "The Chinese didn't invent that method of getting ahead," he pointed out. "Every immigrant group has done pretty much the same thing. Including the Irish."