The Revengers (2 page)

I shook my head, puzzled. “As another mere tool in a different toolbox, I fail to see. . . . Oh, you mean somebody set Bob Devine up for the man with the blaster? And Martha knows who that person is?”

“Good,” Mac said mildly. “I’m happy to see some small signs of returning cerebral activity. Yes, at the moment I think my daughter is feeling both guilty and betrayed— assuming that my information is accurate and I judge her reactions correctly. She is feeling guilty because in a way she is probably at least somewhat responsible for Amos’s death; there are clear indications that she told too much to the wrong person. And betrayed because that person was somebody she considered a friend, somebody with whom she went to college, somebody she trusted implicitly and talked with freely, as girl to girl or woman to woman. Somebody who then made profitable use of the information Martha let slip. . . . Well, you will see how when you read the file I’m about to give you.” He patted an envelope on his desk. “You will also see why, if my daughter is considering any kind of vengeful action, she must be stopped. So get out there right away; the funeral is tomorrow. The young lady downstairs has your tickets ready.” He shoved the envelope toward me. “You can examine this on the plane. When you have read it, you will undoubtedly see further steps that should be taken to protect us, after you’ve prevented Martha from creating problems for us. Use your judgment. Good luck.”

The grave was modestly concealed by a large plywood box covered with indoor-outdoor carpeting in a shade of green that was, I suppose, intended to blend with the grassy surroundings. But enough raw dirt showed around it to hint at the waiting hole underneath. The box was apparently designed to support a full-sized casket—it was the right size and shape—but today there was only a small receptacle placed on top of it, containing the cre-mains, as the funeral director had called them. It had taken me a moment to realize that by this term—cremains, for God’s sake!—he was referring to the cremated remains, ashes to you, of the dear departed, who was now being described by the minister in very flattering terms.

I did not recognize my tough, reliable, ruthless, but somewhat oversexed, partner on a number of long-ago assignments in the description I was hearing. However, I suppose this was hardly a suitable place to boast—if the minister was even aware of these facts, which I doubted— that the late Robert Devine had been acceptable with a rifle, passable with a pistol, moderately good with automatic weapons, tops with knife and club, great at unarmed combat, and hell on wheels with women. Although, come to think of it, maybe Big Bob would have liked it better that way.

I felt a hand find my arm and squeeze it hard. I glanced at the black-clad young widow beside me and saw that her head was reverently bowed. A wing of her hair had fallen between us like a curtain, but I knew her features as well as I knew her father’s, which was odd, I realized, since I saw Mac fairly often, but it had been some years since I’d last seen Martha, until this morning. But I guess I’d never really forgotten the tomboy face with the slightly upturned nose, the intelligent gray eyes and the heavy dark eyebrows.

I’d had some uneasy moments when I’d approached the house earlier—would I really recognize the damned girl after all this time?—and I’d been prepared to proceed cautiously rather than make an embarrassing mistake if one of the cars parked in front had been driven there by a helpful female of approximately the right size and age. However, when she opened the door herself, I knew her at once and was surprised that I’d had any doubt. She recognized me, too, although that was not very surprising. Mac’s office had let her know I’d be there in time for the ceremony, if only barely—the girl downstairs had had to scramble, she’d said, to get me the right connections or any connections at all—and bony gents six feet four aren’t all that common. Now Martha was gripping my arm fiercely and I realized that she was having a hard time holding back the hysterical laughter. I covered her hand with mine and pressed it in a conspiratorial way. We stood there studying our shoes soberly and listening to the man of God describing a hilariously saintly citizen named Robert Devine whom neither of us had ever known.

Then there was a moment of silence and a sudden crash of sound that caught us both by surprise: that damned military salute. I heard Martha gasp. Her fingers dug into me convulsively and I felt her sway. I knew she was remembering a time not long ago when she’d been subjected to a similar loud noise and the weapon involved had not been aimed at the sky.

“Easy,” I whispered without turning my head.

“I’m all right. Can we go now?”

“Slowly. You’re supposed to drag it out just a little for the condolences, if you can manage.”

“God! All right, coach. Gotta win this one for ole daddy in Washington, right? And . . . and the poor guy in that crazy can over there. Matt.”

“Yes?”

“Don’t go away, damn you. Stick around for a change.”

“I’m right here.”

Then it was over and, shortly, I drove my rental car into the driveway, now empty, that looped up to the house through a bit of tricky desert-type landscaping involving rocks and gravel and cacti, and back down to the street again—actually a gracefully curving development-type road. This was one of the new mushroom suburban heavens with which I was not acquainted, moderately expensive, set in the rolling arid ranch country outside Santa Fe, where lots were measured in acres—well, at least fractional acres—instead of square feet. We do collect substantial danger pay and apparently Bob had saved a reasonable percentage of his and spent some of it to house his young bride and himself.

The lot was okay, with a spectacular view down the Rio Grande valley. The house itself, however, was fairly small and not very imaginative; a low, brown, flat-roofed, two-bedroom, cinderblock dwelling done in the pseudo-adobe style common out here in the dry southwest where the mud-brick hut is the ancient standard of architecture by which everything else is judged. There was the usual stylistic confusion between the old-fashioned round vigas, roof timbers to you, that stuck out picturesquely in true pioneer fashion, and the big modem picture window that would have given a true pioneer the shakes—think of trying to defend a window like that in an Indian raid!

Out here there was pretty good separation between the houses; and what with the hilly terrain and the winding road, or street, only a few of the neighboring residences were visible from where I parked the car directly in front. Getting out, I was aware that a tall blond woman in a pale green, long-sleeved blouse and well-fitted green slacks was watching us from the front door of a house directly opposite that seemed to be almost a duplicate of the Devine domicile. She did not wave a greeting; she simply watched. I couldn’t quite make out her face at the distance, but her drawn-back hair was smooth and bright and her figure was adult and interesting. I went around to help Martha out. She stood for a moment beside the car, breathing deeply as if she’d just come up for air after a long dive into cold water.

“Well, I guess that’s that,” she said. “Where are your things?”

“I’ve got a suitcase in the trunk,” I said. “I figured the timing was going to be close so I wore my one dark suit and didn’t take time to find a motel.”

“Bring your bag inside.”

I glanced at her quickly. “Is that such a good idea?”

“You don’t want to spoil her whole day, do you?” Martha’s head did not turn and her voice was quite even. “If you don’t give her something to gossip about, she might bite herself and come down with rabies. Bring it in.”

I said carefully, “Sure. If you know what you’re doing.” “I know what I’m doing; I’m doing her a favor. She’s been looking for a good reason to despise me and I’m giving it to her, okay?”

“Why should she want to despise you?” I asked as I opened the trunk of the car.

“That way she doesn’t have to despise herself.” Martha glanced across the street at last, and at me. “I thought you knew Bob pretty well.”

“Oh.”

She laughed. There was a little malice in the sound, but not enough to be disturbing; she was not really sneering at, or hating, the dead.

“Precisely, as Daddy would say. I gave him back something he’d lost. The coronary had undermined his confidence in himself, if you know what I mean. It really shook him very badly. He was afraid . . . afraid that since one important muscle had suddenly and inexplicably betrayed him, another might. I . . . I helped him determine that that did not seem to be happening at all. If you know what I mean.”

I said carefully, “It’s my impression that the organ in question isn’t basically muscular, but I get the general idea.”

She laughed again, a wry sound now. “And then, of course, having married him and made a new man of him, I assumed that he was
m
y new man entirely. But I was wrong. I mean, I don’t have to tell you he was a damned nice guy in many ways; but I don’t have to tell you, either, that he had a compulsive need to prove himself. In every way. And after the scare he’d had, it wasn’t enough, in the end, for him to prove himself to me. With me. He had to check it out elsewhere, too.”

I slammed the trunk and joined her, suitcase in hand. “Um,” I said. “Like across the street?”

Martha nodded. “And since she’s slept with my husband, naturally our suburban Lorelei over there wants a good reason for hating me so she doesn’t have to feel cheap and guilty about her little neighborhood affair. So bring your suitcase along like a good boy and show her what a promiscuous worthless bitch I am, beneath contempt really; a wanton young wench who hauls another man into the house almost before her husband’s cold in his grave.” She took my arm, leading me toward the front door. “Just relax. It won’t hurt a bit. You’re doing your good deed for the day, okay? You’re soothing the poor bruised conscience of Mrs. Roundheels back there; you’re making it easy for her to live with herself again after her reckless fling at passion with the wonderful, exciting, dangerous married man across the street whose young tramp of a wife never appreciated or deserved him. . . .” The door closed behind us. Martha’s voice stopped abruptly. After a moment she said in totally different tones, “Phew! How’s that for prattling vivaciously? You didn’t know I was a compulsive chatterbox, did you, Matt? Just leave your bag right there. How about a drink?”

The inside of the house was pleasant enough if you didn’t take your interior decoration seriously. I mean, the furniture made no particular statement, it was simply comfortable-looking with a sprinkling of the heavy, dark, Mexican-style pieces that are nowadays produced on both sides of the border. There were some pretty good Indian rugs on the floor and some pretty standard prints on the walls, mixed up with a few original landscape paintings by our local artists specializing in aspens. I guess in New England it’s the birch with its gleaming white trunk; here in New Mexico it’s the aspen with its golden autumn foliage. Well, I’m old-fashioned enough, artistically speaking, to prefer a good aspen or birch to a bad cube or tetrahedron. Leaving my suitcase in the front hall, I followed Martha into the living room. There was a small bar of sorts in the comer. She gestured toward it.

“Martini, right?” she asked, and when I nodded, she said, “Maybe you’d better make it yourself. I open a mean beer but I don’t guarantee my mixed drinks. And a little Scotch for me. I’ll get some ice.”

Then we were sitting down with our drinks. It seemed as if I’d been going at a dead run ever since leaving Mac’s office, but of course it was nothing to what she’d just been through. From the massive Mexican armchair I watched her settling into a corner of the husky Mexican sofa, discarding her gracious-young-widow act like a used Kleenex, letting the strain show at last, unconcerned now about the ladylike disposition of her limbs or the graceful arrangement of her dress. I noticed—her careless posture made it obvious—that she was wearing sheer black pantyhose; and I realized that it was permissible for me to notice this now that Bob Devine was properly interred. Permissible but, perhaps, premature. She saw me looking, and gave me a small, amused grin. She flicked her pretty black dress down to where, propriety said, it belonged. Okay, premature.

“Thanks for the helping hand, Matt,” she said calmly. “I didn’t really know if I was going to survive today. It’s been pretty grim. I was afraid I’d make an awful spectacle of myself before it was over. Thanks for helping to preserve the brave image.” She sipped her Scotch, watching me over the glass. “But now tell me what you’re really here for.”

It was a little frightening. The girl had grown up. Not that she’d been painfully juvenile when I’d last seen her; but there had been a hint of baby-softness to her figure, and more than a hint of brash and youthful cocksureness in her attitude. Now she was a mature young woman with a calm assurance that came, not from a lot of self-righteous theoretical beliefs, but from a practical awareness of her own abilities. She’d had some tough years, but she’d used them well. She was leaner, smarter, and more experienced than the girl I’d once known; she was also considerably more attractive.

“What are friends for,” I asked, “but to rally around in times of trouble?”

She laughed. “Bullshit. You’ve acted as if Bob and I had the plague for three years—or is it four now? I forget. Bob was even kind of hurt; we’d hear you’d been in town but you never came around. What kind of a friend is that?” “You didn’t used to be stupid, doll,” I said.

“What. . . oh.”

“I didn’t know the situation,” I said. “I didn’t know how much you’d told him; I didn’t know how you wanted to run this marriage of yours. When I finally heard of it. I was off somewhere when it happened. And if he’d seen us together, he’d have known, wouldn’t he? There’s no sure way of hiding that, ever, not when it happened so recently. Not from an observant guy like Bob. We’re neither of us good actors. I didn’t know all your special problems, but it just seemed better to stay the hell away.”

Martha nodded slowly. “All right. Sorry. I’ll buy that. As a matter of fact I didn’t tell him. He . . . we had enough to handle without comparing old loves and old lovers. So it could have become a sticky scene and you were right not to risk it. But I still don’t believe you came here today just to hold my trembling hand and wipe my runny nose.”