“Sitting in a car out front. I parked around the comer and came through the back.”
“What... has happened?” The ice clinked in the glass as his hand shook.
“We found a guy who had contact with Agrounsky. He was part of the pattern. Maybe you’d like to see him.”
“No... no, it doesn’t matter.” He swallowed hard and waited for me to speak.
I said, “The contact was minimal but important. Like yours. He’s dead. I thought you might like to know because you might be next in line.”
Small backed away, staggered to a chair, and sat down heavily, the drink forgotten in his hand. “But why... why me?”
“Louis Agrounsky talked just enough. They all do when they’re riding the horse. If he told you and Claude about his little hideaway he could have told somebody else about that too. Narcotics addicts don’t keep secrets very well, especially when they’re hurting for the junk.”
“Mr. Mann...”
I stopped him short. “You call Boster and tell him what I told you. Then sit and think. You go over every word he ever said and chew it good. Between you and your friend, you’re holding this explosion in the palm of your hand, and buddy, if you think your own neck isn’t on the line, you’re wrong. If you doubt it, a short ride across town will prove it to you. A dead man is pretty convincing evidence.”
“I never thought...”
“That’s the trouble with everybody... they never think,” I said.
Chapter 10
When I tapped on the door of the room Charlie Corbinet said, “Come in, Tiger.” He was sitting there in the light of the TV watching an old movie, his coat off and his sleeves rolled up. “You took long enough. I don’t like to wait. You ought to remember that.”
“Those were the old days, Colonel. Now you wait if you have to.”
“Quit getting raunchy,” he said testily. “You’re the one on the hook now.”
“Nuts.”
His smile took the sternness from his face a second. “I wish I could have trained more respect into you.”
“What’s the pitch?”
“Hal Randolph wants you out. The other agencies are squeezing.”
“Let them squeeze. They haven’t got anything to yelp about.”
“They’re dismantling the installations.”
“I know. It won’t do them any good.”
“They know it, but they have to try something.”
“Sure, and leave us hanging on the ropes again.”
“Have you got a better answer?” he asked. “We’re waiting for one.”
“Soon.”
“Not quick enough.”
“Then add something to the picture.”
Charlie Corbinet sat back in his chair, crossed his arms with that old familiar gesture and looked at me across the shadows. “Randolph kept the pressure on Doug Hamilton’s secretary. She began remembering things. Some fast footwork dug out a few facts that may or may not have a bearing on the case.”
“Like what?”
“Like he was efficient but not clean all the way. It looks like he had a sideline of blackmail going for him. Not too big, but not too little either. In checking out the backgrounds of potential employees he ran into some odd arrangements involving people in the upper brackets who scorned our capitalistic system and took up with ultra-liberal types for lack of something better to do. He put it to his own use. Most of them were the student types with sneakers and beards who should have known better, but you know this younger generation. Anything for a kick, anything to show their own self-importance and to break loose in an orgy of self-indulgence.”
“Little bastards. They need a hitch in the Army and some time laying face down in the mud while the ones they admire try to take their hides off. All the guts they’ve got is to wave placards and wear hair like the girls. Their grandfathers fought Indians and built this country out of the bare dirt and the only kind they ever see is under their fingernails.”
“So be it.”
“They don’t inherit over my dead body, Charlie.”
“Nor mine. Like you said, there are still some of us left. Doug made money out of it.”
“But how does it stand here?”
“I don’t know. It may not mean a thing.”
“Maybe it does.”
“Then figure it out.” His eyes came to meet mine, half closed in an attitude of study. He was trying to read me again and annoyed with himself because he couldn’t do it. Lightning swept through the night again, a bright swelling light with a strange tremor to it, lasting a few seconds before fading out. We both waited until the thunder came on, slowly at first, then with a dramatic crash of sound that burst directly overhead.
“I’ll be waiting,” he told me at last.
“You’ll know when,” I said. He nodded and turned back to the TV set deliberately ignoring me the way he used to do when he was finished explaining. I opened the door, backed out after checking around me and walked to the car. The rain laughed and rumbled deep in its throat, slackening long enough for me to get in before clawing at the windows again.
When I reached the highway there was a casual roadblock at the intersection, four patrolmen inspecting licenses of passing vehicles and going through the backs of trucks. I saw it in time, swerved into an empty driveway, waited a while, then backed up and took a route that led me around them. At a diner a mile north I had coffee and a sandwich beside a pair of truckers who bitched about being stopped and having to shift cargo in the middle of the night and rain for no apparent reason at all. When I finished I picked up my change, told the counterman good night and left.
But you could feel the thing in the air. Impending action. Coffeyville waiting for the Dalton gang to pull the raid. Too many cars cruising. Too many people where there shouldn’t have been any. Too many cars parked where the sweep of headlights could pick up the outlines of men sitting waiting for a call. The sky was cooperating and a dead man on the floor a short drive away said it all.
The thing was there.
It was coming.
Or was it here already?
A family of tourists was disgorging itself from an overloaded station wagon at the motel when I got there, two small children squalling in protest at being disturbed, two others dragging themselves behind their father who had driven too far and wasn’t in a mood for arguing. A woman stood at the door of the wagon, holding it open until a white poodle jumped out, cringing at the rain before making a dash for the shelter of the roof of the building. Down further a white Jaguar and a pickup truck were nestled in their ports, lights on in the rooms.
I switched the lights off and drove to my own complex and cut the engine. Behind the drawn curtains of Camille’s room a pale yellow line of light showed through the break in the drapes. I tried the door and it swung open easily.
Camille was lying in bed, the night light on beside her, the covers rising and falling with her breathing. I watched her a minute until she coughed in her sleep, turned on the pillow and rubbed at her nose with the back of her hand. She sneezed once, almost awakened, then squirmed back to her original position and relaxed. I adjusted the catch on the knob and pulled the door shut, then went next door to my own room.
Automatically, I felt for the thread I had left caught in the door. Nothing was there. I had the .45 in my hand without realizing it, knowing it was too late to back off without alerting the one who was waiting inside. Two windows led off the room, one to the back, the other to the side, and if I didn’t make an entrance he could be gone if he had planned it right.