The Demolishers (30 page)

“But you’re not laughing,” I said.

“No. Any more than a policeman laughs when other cops get killed, even if they weren’t too bright and their commander is an arrogant loudmouth who nobody likes. So I’m glad to hear that you’re not responsible.” The threat implicit in his words wasn’t strong but it was there: He didn’t think I’d been lying to him, but if I had been, I’d regret it. He said, “Good night, Helm. Miss Delgado. Trask.”

He walked out into the parking lot and unlocked an inconspicuous medium-sized car two rows back. Watching him drive away, I said, “It’s nice to meet a guy who doesn’t have to talk tough just because he is.”

“It’s still a goddamn crusade; and crusaders bug me.” Trask shook his head, dismissing the subject. “I’ve got your plane tickets. Kennedy, American, tomorrow at twelve-thirty
p.m.
They want you there an hour early. The hotel serves breakfast at six-thirty. Pack ahead of time and eat fast, because there’ll be a car outside at seven. It’s a hundred and fifty miles and something; and with all the highway construction, the driver likes a bit of leeway. Leave your weapons with him; you’ll get others in San Juan. No sense going through all that firearms red tape if you don’t have to. Lunch on the plane; I think it’s a DC-10. You get in at four, but that’s Atlantic time, an
hour ahead of us. Check with Avis at the airport for your car. Hotel El Convento downtown. Two rooms adjoining. Couldn’t get you into the Howard Johnson over in Con-dado on such short notice, or any of the nearby resort hotels, but there’s not much to see in that restaurant anyway, they’ve had most of a year to clean up the bomb mess. Your contact goes by the code name Modesto. Miss Delgado knows the contact procedures; she’s been in touch with our people down there. Modesto will have the information you wanted on the blast victims. He’ll supply arms, and arrange cover for you if you need it.” Trask took three travel-agency folders from his inside coat pocket, glanced into them, and handed me two. “I’ll take care of canceling this,” he said, pocketing the third ofle.

“What’s the word from the hospital?”

“Mrs. Helm’s asleep, under sedation. Vital signs strong and positive; no unfavorable symptoms noted.” “Watch over her carefully, please,
amigo,”
I said. “We don’t want to lose her. A safe house would be best when they kick her out of her hospital bed. Tuck her Porsche away somewhere for the time being; here are the keys. And put somebody on the boy who just dropped us off. I’ve been in touch with Washington about him. We’ll be using him shortly, so keep him safe, too. I’ll probably be asking you to ship him down to me, complete with some toys that the airlines won’t like.”

“Sure. I’ll see if Air Force One is available.”

“Do that. Well, we’re all still breathing, in spite of some efforts to the contrary. There would undoubtedly have been more without your nursemaids in attendance. Tell them thanks from me.”

“Keep your nose clean, hero.”

Delgado took my arm as we moved on down the walk and into the hotel. We didn’t speak until we were in the elevator. I’m not usually affected much by perfume; in feet when there’s a lot of it I always find myself wondering if the lady’s trying to conceal the fact that she hasn’t bathed recently. But this was just a faint, intriguing fragrance and I found myself very much aware of it—and of her, but I’d been in that painful state of awareness most of the evening.

She broke our silence. “Do you think Mr. Benison checks his nice silk necktie in the mirror and combs his nice brown hair before he pulls out his gun and shoots a dope pusher?”

I said, “Don’t kid yourself. It’s an act. He’s taking advantage of the fact that a lot of rugged gents in grubby jeans can’t believe that a fancy chap with a necktie and a crease in his pants can possibly be a threat to them. They judge the amount of danger in a man by the amount of whiskers on the chin and the quantity of dirt under the fingernails. I have a hunch a lot of grimy fellows have found our Mr. Clean a very unpleasant surprise^”

“Well, we certainly met a couple of odd ones tonight,” she said. “That Lester is also quite a specimen.”

“Cross a stockbroker with a debutante and you never know what you’ll get.”

I found the casual chitchat hard to manage. The elevator stopped, and the doors slid open. I followed her out into the corridor, feeling like a high school kid on his first date wondering if the girl expects to be kissed, and how to find out without offending her, and how to go about it if she does. I mean, the signals weren’t clear. She was being very polite and pleasant, but I still sensed a small residue of her old hostility, a little reserve, as if she found it a strain to be friendly with a homicidal type like me. At least that was the explanation she’d given earlier. I wasn’t sure how far I believed it.

She stopped at the door of her room and turned to face me. The events of the evening had left no marks on her except that, somehow, she didn’t look quite as severe and untouchable as she had. Nevertheless, I half expected her to send me on my way, and she knew it. She smiled faintly.

“I have a little silver flask in there,” she said. ‘‘Chivas Regal. Just enough for a nightcap. I mean, two nightcaps.”

“Wow, we’re really doing ourselves well in the Scotch department tonight,” I said. “In that case, I won’t even mention my old workhorse bottle of J and B. You’ve got yourself a customer, ma’am.”

She unlocked the door and preceded me into the room, which was a duplicate of the one down the corridor that Sandra and I had shared platonically the previous night. There was a suitcase open on the nearer of the big beds. Delgado got a small shiny flask out of it and turned to look at me.

“This is rather silly, isn’t it?” she said quietly. “You don’t really want a drink, do you?”

I said firmly, “No one shall ever claim that Helm entered a lady’s room under false pretenses. I’ll choke down a drink if you want me to.”

She laughed, and dropped the flask back into the suitcase, watching me. “That little girl has got you in a bad way, hasn’t she?”

“I was hoping it didn’t show.”

“It shows. But it’s not very flattering, Matt. I mean, it’s not as if you were overwhelmed by my unique grace and beauty. After a chaste week on the road with that nubile child, including a night spent in the same bedroom, you’d react the same way to any reasonably presentable female, wouldn’t you?” There was nothing to say to that, so I remained silent. She went on, looking at me curiously: “You’re an experienced older man. I’m sure you could have . . . persuaded her, if you’d really tried.”

“Seduced her, you mean?”

Delgado shrugged. “Whatever. But you didn’t try?”

“That’s right.” I cleared my throat. “In an old-fashioned costume movie, I’d be saying nobly that I’d sworn an oath on my son’s grave. Well, I don’t have the sentimental feeling for graves that some people do, and I haven’t even seen that one; but when I learned that Matthew was dead I found myself remembering that I’d never done much for him although he was my son. Then it occurred to me that there was something I could do for him now. I could see to it that his young widow made it all right.”

Delgado said dryly, “A very interesting project, as Lester Leonard would say. ’ ’

“Don’t be snide, Delgado,” I said. “I’m quite aware that my young-widow resistance is very low. I was also quite aware from the start the last thing the girl needed was to get mixed up in any important way with a superannuated veteran of the undercover wars, particularly one who was related to her by marriage and looked a little like the husband she’d lost and probably had a few of the same mannerisms. Even if you couldn’t call it incest, technically, the weird kind of relationship we’d have, with Matthew’s ghost between us, would tear her apart, and maybe me as well. Hence Iron Man Helm.”

There was a little silence, then Delgado said: “You’d better not let it get around that you’re really kind of a nice person, Matt. It would ruin your reputation around the shop.” She turned and moved to the dresser and, with the aid of the big mirror above it, started pulling the pins out of her hair. Standing there with her back to me, she spoke to my image in the glass: “A woman taking down her hair is supposed to be very sexy. Am
I?”

I said, “You’re teasing me.”

She didn’t turn her head. “What do you expect? A
young girl gets you all wound up like a clock, and you come into my room with fairly obvious motives; and I’m not allowed to tease you a little? You’re lucky I don’t take it as a deadly insult and slap your face.” She shook her head and dark hair came tumbling down over her shoulders. There was more of it than I’d thought. She reached back with both hands and lifted it all to expose the zipper down her back. She spoke, still without turning her head: “Now you may help me off with my dress. Please don’t get impatient and damage it. It’s survived a number of indignities tonight, including a tumble on the sidewalk; it deserves to be removed with care and hung up properly.”

I moved closer in order to operate the long zipper. Bending over her, I said, “I don’t know if I can bear this dreadful penance. You’re a cruel, sadistic bitch, Delgado.”

“I’m a woman and my name is Dana.” Standing there in front of the mirror, she helped me work the red dress down from her shoulders and arms. She stepped out of it. “Now hang it up, please.”

“Yes, Dana.”

“No, not on a hook. I said properly. Use a hanger.”

“Yes, Dana.”

With the dress properly stored away in the closet, I returned to her. She was the loveliest thing in the world in her lacy slip with her dark hair loose on her shoulders. She was smart enough to know that it’s difficult for a woman to look severe and untouchable half undressed; she’d settled for looking breathtakingly desirable.

She said, “That’s better.-That’s much better, my dear. I wanted you to
see
me. Now you’re looking at me as me, not just as a convenient substitute for the little girl you’ve forbidden yourself to touch.”

I said, “I see you, Dana. You have my full attention.” 236

She smiled as she came forward. “Not quite, but I will have.’’

She did, too.

I
awoke
in the night to hear her crying. It surprised me; I hadn’t judged her to be a crying girl. It wasn’t a violent paroxysm of grief or regret or whatever, just an occasional quiet little sniff or stifled sob.

Lying beside her in the dark, I said, “Whatever it is,
I didn’t mean it.”

“There’s K-Kleenex on the table beside you. Please?” “Light?”

“I don’t m-mind.”

I switched it on and gave her a wad of tissues, and II watched her while she mopped and wiped and blew.

I asked, “Anything I did?”

“No.”

“Anything I can do?”

“No. I’m sorry I woke you.”

“It’s all right. I ought to get to my room pretty soon, anyway. Got to get showered and packed.”

She was a tidy weeper and didn’t look as destroyed afterwards as they sometimes do. A lovely lady who had problems. Well, who doesn’t? I remembered another dark-haired lady who’d also cried in bed, although Lia Varek had shed her tears before the act rather than afterwards. It wasn’t a comfortable memory. It made me feel disloyal, although I couldn’t say to whom. Maybe myself. Don Juan Helm. I consoled myself with the fact that at least I’d kept my hands off the kid. I didn’t seem to have much resistance, but at least I’d had that much.

Aware of my regard, Dana pushed away a lock of hair that clung damply to one cheek, and retrieved an escaping shoulder strap of the slip she still wore. After making certain that her dress had been removed to safety, she’d relaxed and let the rest of her costume take care of itself. The pumps she’d kicked off were presumably undamaged, but I wasn’t so sure about the panty hose. Removing them had, I recalled, been a community effort accompanied by breathless laughter—she’d called them a ridiculous garment—and afterwards the situation had become quite urgent, so we’d wasted no time on the slip beyond displacing it as far as necessary.

“It’s too bad,” Dana said, tugging the rumpled garment straight about her as she lay there. “I brought a beautiful nightgown along, just in case I should meet somebody irresistible; and here I wind up making love in my underwear!”

“Well, it’s pretty underwear.” I kissed her lightly. “Are you all right now?”

She nodded. “I’m sorry. It was really very nice. A little . . . well, desperate, but nice. I don’t know what I woke up feeling so sad about. Just the well-known
tristesse,
I suppose. Yes, I’m fine now. Do you
have
to go?”

Under those circumstances, there’s only one acceptable response to that question, put that way; and it took me awhile to make it. Later, after reawakening in my own room, shaving, toothbrushing, showering, dressing, and packing, I transported my single bag to the lobby and found that starvation had got me down ten minutes early. Some people get sad afterwards; others merely get hungry. However, there was a coffee urn for early risers in a corner, complete with Styrofoam cups, packets of sugar, and little plastic pots of the soluble talcum powder that’s supposed to whiten your coffee and make your eyes believe it’s actually got cream in it even as your taste buds say no. Fortunately, I mostly drink it black.

By the time I got all the hot, brown, wake-up liquid down without burning myself too badly, they were letting people into the breakfast room. I established myself at a table for two. It was a glassed-in veranda that reminded me of the Vareks’ sunporch—and of Lia Varek herself in her scarlet sundress with little bows at the shoulders. I wished she would go away and stop bothering me. I guess I’m just not comfortable with promiscuity. Then Dana appeared, slender and lovely in the wine-colored slacks and sweater I’d seen before; and I found my high-principled guilt feelings evaporating.