The Revengers (17 page)

“Down, Lady, down,” I said. “Nobody’s going to hurt you, so let’s not have all that defensive growling and snarling, there’s a good doggie.”

After a moment, she drew a long breath and grinned. “I haven’t been called a bitch so nicely in a long time,” she said.

“And Harriet Robinson, how did you get onto her?” I asked.

Eleanor shrugged. “Not from that source. Her name came up in the course of my further researches on you and your fascinating operations; so I went to interview her, as I told you. She wasn’t much help as far as you were concerned. To hear her tell it, she hardly remembered your name. But that was back when the first ship sinkings were in the news and we talked about them casually. She was a mine of nautical information; she really knew her stuff. When I got the idea of going to work on that story, later, after I’d finished up with you and your outfit, I remembered the knowledgeable Captain Robinson; but when I went back to see her, she clammed up completely.

I thought at the time it was just a personal thing, you know we didn’t really get along too well; but I guess there was more to it than that.”

I said, “Yes, I guess by that time she’d managed to get herself mixed up in it somehow, so she was afraid to talk. And you know something? I have a hard time buying the idea that at just about the time you interviewed Harriet about me because you’d been given a lead to me by Lorca, she just accidentally stumbled onto a totally different branch of Mr. Lorca’s mysterious operations.” I frowned thoughtfully. “You weren’t particularly careful how you approached her, I suppose.”

“Careful? How do you mean?”

“You didn’t take any precautions to avoid being followed? Anybody interested could have learned that your investigation into my nefarious past was leading you to a certain charter-boat skipper down in the Florida Keys?”

Eleanor said rather defensively, “You’re the secret agent around here, Mister. I’m just an innocent journalist; I don’t keep looking over my shoulder to see if people are trailing me around.” After a moment, she asked, “Do you think they were? Do you think I. . . led them to her?”

I nodded. “I’m afraid so. You called her to their attention and then I paid her a visit. Between us . . .” I shrugged. “With friends like us, who needs enemies? Not Hattie Robinson.”

“You’re just guessing.”

“Not really. It’s apparently a systematic campaign to find our weak spots and take advantage of them. Hell, if they were watching Bob Devine closely enough to learn that he was playing around, and that it might stir things up a bit for us, in an embarrassing way, if they broke the news to the husband of the lady in question; why shouldn’t they keep an eye on Harriet to see if she might prove useful, once she was brought to their notice? Only it’s my hunch that in this case the strategy back-fired to a certain extent.”

“How?”

I said, “Harriet was not an innocent journalist lady like you, with nothing on her conscience. She had a past that could catch up with her at any time; she was on the alert for that, always. Also, she was a sailor; and she could spot a landlubber ten miles off on a misty day, even if he was all dressed up in Topsiders and sunglasses and nice, white slacks. It wouldn’t take her long to spot some mysterious city slickers tailing her around trying to act salty. She might put up with it for a while, but she was not a patient lady, and after a little she’d just naturally get mad. If they were cops, why didn’t they move in with the handcuffs and get it over with? If they weren’t, who the hell were they? Eventually, fed up, she’d try to backtrack the lubberly jerks to learn something about them. She could do it, too. She was in her territory and they were out of theirs. My hunch is that they got careless and led her to something or somebody they shouldn’t have. So they called the boss and confessed their sins because they were scared not to. Lorca had collected enough information about Harriet’s past by this time that he was in a position to threaten her with exposure to keep her quiet. Which he did.”

“But we still don’t know what or who she saw,” Eleanor said. “It doesn’t seem likely that she stumbled upon George Winfield Lorca himself firing torpedoes at an innocent freighter or tanker.”

I said, “It looks to me as if he’s got two separate operations running. One is a revenge mission: he blames us, particularly me, for what happened to him down there in Baja, and now that he’s the powerful and invulnerable Senator Lorca he’s exacting secret payment for that hole in the head. That’s straightforward enough; but the piratical bit still doesn’t make much sense. It certainly can’t be aimed at us, me. We’ve got no interest in any shipping lines. But there’s got to be a connection between these two different Lorca activities, because Harriet found it. It’s up to us to find it, too. Or up to me.”

“Us,” Eleanor said. She looked at me curiously. “As a matter of fact, I don’t quite see why you’re so interested in that phase of it. I mean, all you need to do is nail him for murder, if you’re going to be so law-abiding about it. He’s responsible for at least three deaths already—”

“Prove it,” I said. “Harriet killed herself. Bob Devine was shot by a jealous husband. Bobbie Prince died in a boating accident, at least nobody seems to have proved otherwise and it seems unlikely that anybody will. And the word is discretion, remember?”

She frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“A popular new Senator gets into a feud with a not-so-popular old government agency; who’s going to get the best of that argument? With your articles running to show what a mean, sneaky bunch we are? We haven’t got a chance in the world of doing anything about him because he’s been mean to us. It will be a simple popularity contest, which we can’t possibly win. No, we’ve got to get something else on him, something that doesn’t concern us at all, like these sinking ships of yours.”

She licked her lips. “Of course you could . . . just shoot him. That’s what you’re trained for, isn’t it?”

I said, “Assassination isn’t all that simple, ma’am, or all that effective.”

She laughed abruptly. “If it were, I’d be dead for what I’ve written about you, wouldn’t I? Instead of having a secret agent all my own, supplying me with booze and protection.” She yawned, and rose. “Well, I think that’s enough for one day, Mr. Bodyguard. Anything we’ve overlooked will just have to wait until tomorrow.”

“Let me check your room before you go in there,” I said. When I returned, I said, “Don’t open the hall door for any reason without waking me. And any strange noises you hear in the night, I want to hear about right away.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Helm, sir.”

I looked down at her for a moment. It had been a long day, but she didn’t really show it. The only indication of how much she’d drunk was that she looked softer and prettier tonight than when we’d met that morning. Or maybe that was an indication of how much I’d drunk.

“I’d like to leave the connecting door open,” I said carefully, “if it doesn’t bother you.”

She said coolly, “It won’t bother me if it doesn’t bother you. Suit yourself. Goodnight, Matt.”

“Good night, Elly.”

She was an odd, contradictory little girl—I couldn’t help remembering her panicky reaction to my touch, when I’d grabbed her outside the door. But she was perfectly self-possessed now.

I had no trouble going to sleep, so the open door between us couldn’t have bothered me very much.

I came out of bed fast on the side away from the connecting door, gun in hand. I didn’t know what had awakened me, but if you wait to find out you may not live to find out. As I crouched there warily, sheltered behind the bed, the sound came again: the gasping, sobbing sound of a woman suffering unbearable pain and terror. Barefoot in my pajamas, gun ready, I moved swiftly to the doorway.

“No, I
won’t!
” I heard her gasp. “No, you can’t, oh you can’t . . . damn you, damn you, damn you I’ll kill you for . . . oh God, oh God, oh God, no. . . .. Ahhh!”

I knew just about what I had to deal with, then. I pushed the half-open door gently aside and stepped past it. There was, of course, nobody in the room beyond; nobody except the girl in the big bed. She’d thrown off the covers and she lay on her back on the white sheet as if crucified there, helpless and vulnerable, her arms flung wide. She was more or less covered by a long disordered nightgown of some kind of printed stuff, but I couldn’t make out the pattern or color in the dim light from the window. Although without sleeves, it seemed to have much more material elsewhere than it really needed, spread out about her like a shroud.

Eleanor Brand was breathing very deeply and audibly, lying there, dragging in each lungful of air as if it might be the last before rationing was imposed. Her eyes were closed.

“I’ll kill them,” she whispered. “I’ll kill them, kill them, kill, kill, kill them, but oh God, oh God, why did they have to. . . ."

Abruptly her eyes opened and she sat up with a start, staring at me. Her hair was matted and untidy; she reached up mechanically to push the damp strands out of her face. Then she drew a long breath and switched on the bedside light and looked at me again.

“Don’t shoot, Mister,” she said in a normal voice. “Just a little old nightmare. Everybody’s got them. Go back to bed. Sorry.”

“Sure,” I said. I noticed that the loose sleeveless gown had slipped from one shoulder; and that it was a rather nice shoulder. Well, a girl you comfort in the middle of the night is supposed to have nice shoulders; it’s in the rules. She pulled the garment straight while I laid the pistol aside and picked up the fallen bedclothes and reorganized them for her. She drew them up over her knees, sitting there. I asked, “How did it happen?”

She didn’t pretend she didn’t know what I meant. She merely shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it. There’s nothing to talk about. Hell, it’s a perfectly normal occupational hazard for young lady reporters who stick their noses where they don’t belong.”

“Whatever you say,” I said. “Have you seen a shrink?”

“I don’t need a shrink. I’m perfectly all right. I just have these dreams, but I’ll get over them. Go back to bed.” After a moment, when I didn’t move, she said, “All right, if you have to be nosy, get me a cigarette, damn you. Over there on the dresser. I didn’t really think it could happen to me.”

I got the package for her, but the fingers with which she tried to extract a cigarette were clumsy, so I got one out for her, placed it between her lips, and lit it. I laid the package on the table beside her, put an ashtray handy, and sat down on the edge of the bed.

“They never do,” I said.

“Don’t be corny,” she said. “Look at me.”

“I’m looking.”

“Well, what do you see?” Her voice was impatient. “I have a face right out of the primate cage in the zoo, right? I’ve got a crazy, skinny, short-legged body with a couple of dumb little breasts stuck on it anyhow. My ankles aren’t bad but who’s going to get their gonads in an uproar about a pair of ankles these days?” She waited for me to speak, but she didn’t really want me to speak. She was busy tearing herself down and she wanted no interference from me, thanks. She went on, “With all the pretty girls around to violate, who’s going to bother with an ugly little monkey with a notebook? At least that was the way I had it figured; and anyway, you can’t spend your life being scared of things, not if you’re going to get any work done. I had to have two teeth capped afterward and you can still see the scar where the big one hit me in the mouth, here.”

“It doesn’t show much,” I said.

“Nothing
shows
much,” she said softly, “but they spoiled me, damn them, they really spoiled me, even if it hardly shows any longer. They spoiled everything. It’s not the same world any longer and it’s not the same me.”

“Physically?”

“Oh, all the pieces are still there. I had a checkup later and some tests to make sure they hadn’t . . . hadn’t given me anything, biological or pathological, if you know what I mean. But the pieces don’t work right any more. I’ve got these goddamned Victorian-old-maid reactions now. Not that I was ever a flaming sexpot—with my looks, who gets the chance?—but I was at least reasonably normal about it when it was offered, or mentioned. But now I can’t even talk about it normally. I can’t bear to be touched. Well, you noticed. I saw you notice.”

“But you’re perfectly all right and you don’t need a shrink,” I said dryly.

“What’s one of those creeps going to do for me?” she demanded. “He can’t turn the clock back; he can’t make it not have happened. They were waiting by the car when I came out of the place, kind of a low-down dive in a low-down part of town, but nobody bothered me inside and the man I’d come to see was very polite and even bought me a beer. But they must have seen me go in and they must have been very hard up for it or something. They were laying for me when I got back to the car, a big one and a little one, real loose-lipped types. I tried to run but they caught me and dragged me around the corner of the building into a dark vacant lot and did it to me, beating hell out of me first when I tried to resist.” She drew a ragged breath. “It’s the unbelievable helpless humiliation of it, you know, as much as anything. They don’t leave you anything. When they’re finished with you there’s nothing left of your dignity as a human being, let alone your dignity as a woman. . . .”

The hotel was silent around us. She wasn’t seeing me any longer. She was no longer talking for my benefit. She was revisiting the scene of her agony, deliberately putting herself through her ordeal again to test how much it still hurt after the time that had passed; to check how far the healing process had gone, how far it still had to go. Her voice was wickedly soft as she reminded herself of how it had been.

“Sobbing in the dirt afterward among the cans and weeds and beer bottles, naked except for the shredded stockings down around my ankles and the grimy sweater up around my neck they hadn’t quite managed to rip all the way off me. Hurting all over, afraid to move at first and learn just how badly I’d been beaten; then terrified that somebody would come along and see me like that. Like a nightmare, bare-ass naked in the middle of the city with car lights going by only half a block away, finding my shoes and purse, and some useless scraps of nylon—well, I used them to scrub the stuff, you know, off my legs. Finding at last what was left of my skirt. Pinning the crazy rag around me, blubbering stupidly as I tried to do something with the hopeless wreck of my sweater, stumbling to the car like a falling-down drunk—and back in the automatic, thank God, hotel parking garage avoiding the elevator and hauling myself up the endless empty stairs and staggering to my room without meeting anybody; safe at last with the door locked behind me, turning on the light and coming face to face with this
thing
in the mirror, this crazy, tattered, filthy, bloody
thing
with its slitty little eyes all squinched up in its swollen fright-mask of a face, and its ghastly, mangled, broken mouth. . . .” Her voice rose hysterically. She stopped and swallowed hard and spoke in normal tones, “I guess I hadn’t really grasped until then what they’d done to me, what they’d made of me, how thoroughly they’d spoiled me inside and out.”