“But in some things you need help, right?”
I gave her a nasty grin. “Right. Now scram.”
With a slow unwinding motion she eased off the bed, stood there looking at me, then started for the door. Her hesitation was deliberate and she didn’t mind me knowing it. She turned around slowly, her hand on the knob, and asked, “Do you really know where he is?”
“Who?”
“Louis Agrounsky?”
I had my pants on and the holster hooked up, then I shoved the .45 into the speed rig before I even reached for my shirt. “No, but like I said, I think I know how to find him.”
“Can I help?”
“Maybe, but not at this point.”
“The other agencies...?” she started hopefully.
“Screw them, I told you. Later I’ll tell you why.”
“Can you tell me where you’re going now?”
“Sure. Downtown to the New York offices of I.A.T.S. and tender Hal Randolph and Company a report, after which they’ll either put up or shut up.”
“Do you always have to be like this?”
I paused in the middle of tucking my shirttail in. “You want me any other way?”
“Sometimes I think so.”
“Then screw you too, baby.”
Her face went flat, the pain of my words knocking the expression from it. “You didn’t have to say that.”
“No? Then keep out of my business. Otherwise you stop being a broad and become a dame. I’ll do what I want to do and sometimes what I have to do. One thing I won’t do is succumb to sentimentality or the wishful thinking of a woman. When I’m working, stay off my back. You know my business so don’t try to steer me clear. The woman isn’t born and her mother’s already dead who can do that trick. I’ll run things my own way and if you don’t give me credit for being an old soldier type with twenty years over your fair head, then regroup your forces, kid, and find another guy who will bow and scrape and do it when you tell him to go potty. Clear, doll?”
Rondine studied me a moment, smiled, and her shoulders moved in a gesture of resignation. But her eyes were hard. In her own way she was a pro too — a young pro, but she had kills behind her and they had to start somewhere. “Clear, Tiger.” She turned the knob, opened the door and glanced over her shoulder. “Still love me?”
“Stick around and you’ll find out the hard way.”
“You and your play on words,” she said.
Hal Randolph had arranged the inquisition very neatly. I had gone this route too many times before with him to try intimidation. Now the props were staged to impress me. The head men from three agencies were there, faces I knew well, a pair of immaculately groomed court-reporter types perched behind their machines ready to note every word spoken so that they could be analyzed in detail later, and Randolph at the head of the conference table forcing an amiable smile designed to put me at ease. I caught Charlie Corbinet’s eyes from his corner position at the far end, the half-smile in them and winked in his direction.
I took the only empty chair at the table, pulled it out and sat down crookedly, feeling the bite in my side again. “Well, gentlemen?” I said.
Both stenographers took it down immediately.
Randolph cleared his throat and nodded absently before he gave me a second glance, and this time the almost amiable expression was gone. “I’ll come directly to the point. Mr. Corbinet has repeated your conversation to us. In view of the recent... situation, we would like to hear it firsthand.”
“Sure,” I told him. “In detail?”
“From the beginning.”
It didn’t take more than three minutes to lay it out. In three minutes something heavy seemed to hang over the room like a death shroud and the faces of the assembly were drawn tight. The stenographers had taken it down verbatim and were the only ones who didn’t seem to make much out of it. Maybe they had done it too often or heard too much and the lines were just another paragraph in the book of the fall of mankind.
When I finished Randolph sat there a moment, his breathing audible in the silence, then: “There was one thing you left out, Tiger.”
“Oh?”
“You indicated to Mr. Corbinet that you knew how to locate Louis Agrounsky.”
“Not quite, Randolph,” I said.
“What did you say then?”
“I said I thought I knew how to find him.”
“Perhaps you’d better be more explicit.”
“Not just yet buddy.” I twisted around in the chair and leaned back, grinning at him a little. “Like you told me some time ago, I’m walking a thin little line and one slip and over I go. If you can give me a push you’ll even help a little and the end results would be pleasing to a lot of people here and there. You’d like to see Martin Grady fall along with the rest of us and if that ever happens the political stock of a lot of boobs would soar. Right?”
I had all the eyes on me now and Randolph didn’t say a word. “Let me lay it on the line, gentlemen. My neck’s out as far as yours and probably a lot further. We’re in this together whether you like it or not and until this picture is cleared up we’d better start sleeping in the same bed or take the chance of being splashed all over what’s left of the U.S.A.”
The few coughs and quick looks that passed around the table meant that they got the point. The one closest to me, whose seemingly unimportant job in Washington was a cover for his internal security position, held up his hand for attention. “Mr. Mann... you’re suggesting a merger of forces in this case... or a hands-off attitude regarding your rather unique operation?”
“A merger, Mr. Delaney. We can’t afford to be at odds on this.”
“What makes you think we need your organization?”
“Because we can operate at levels you either can’t or won’t,” I told him bluntly. “You know damn well Martin Grady operates on an international basis and isn’t forced to work on a limited budget. Before you can get an appropriation to purchase certain necessities... like information... we can have it bought. We already have men inside legations and embassies and whatever news flows out of an enemy country filters through our hands as fast as it does yours. But that isn’t the end of it. We’re talking about Louis Agrounsky. He must be found. I think I can find him.”
“I see.”
“Do you?”
Delaney stared at me hard, his forefinger tapping the edge of the table silently. “You can give us the benefit of your thought, Mr. Mann.”
“No. You’ll get the benefit of what I find out, but I’m keeping the edge. I want the heat off our group and the advantage of being able to draw from your man power and resources if necessary.”
“Where does that leave us?” Delaney asked softly.
“Stranded,” I said, “unless you do it my way.”
Hal Randolph had that florid look back again, the strain of what he was thinking making the muscles in his neck bulge. I was pushing them all the way and not leaving them open for a lot of empty discussion.
It was Charlie Corbinet who quieted the hum down when he said, “I would like to make a suggestion.”
Heads swiveled toward him and waited. Unlike most of them, Charlie was more than a desk supervisor. He worked in the field when he had to and had never lost his touch. He had been on the big hot ones with the best of them and was rarely outguessed.
Randolph said, “Well?”
“This won’t be the first... or last... time strange bed partners have come together. My association with Mr. Mann is nothing new to anybody present and the results have justified the arrangement. Whether we like it or not, we’ll have to go along with him or go without his services. If his capabilities are lost to us through lack of cooperation on our part it will be to our disadvantage.”
“If I get knocked off,” I interrupted.