The Threateners Page 3

  It took me a moment to recognize her. She hadn’t changed all that much, but it had been five years. Then I exchanged my scowl for a welcoming grin and hurried forward.

  "Madeleine! Damn, it’s been a long time! It’s good to see you!”

  There was no answering smile on her face. "What are you trying to do to me, Matt?” she asked as I came up. “What in God’s name are you trying to do to me?"

  Chapter 3

  Looking at her, I remembered certain things, of course, the kind of things you remember about a woman to whom you’ve made love, particularly a woman to whom you’ve made love in times of peril. We’d shared some violent adventures and some tender moments; but while I’d found myself deeply involved at the time, she’d never let herself be drawn into a full commitment.

  A bright and ambitious young woman from good family with a shining law career before her, not to mention a happy marriage, Madeleine Rustin Ellershaw had suffered intolerable disgrace and lengthy imprisonment for a crime involving national security of which she had not been guilty. Freed at last, and eventually exonerated, but with her career and life in ruins—her husband, a scientist employed at one of the secret government installations near Los Alamos had been murdered at the time of her troubles—she’d been determined to achieve the kind of complete social rehabilitation no gun-toting secret-agent type could give her, even if he’d been instrumental in proving her innocent.

  I’d thought she’d attained her goal with her second marriage, to a very respectable young lawyer named Walter Maxon. I’d made a point of keeping away from them—no marriage needs old lovers hanging around the bride—but after a couple of years I’d read about the divorce in the newspapers and heard that she’d left town. I’d been sorry, the way you are when things don’t work out for people you like, but not sorry enough to look her up wherever she’d moved to. I mean, that hand had been played.

  The autumn sun was bright and hot and I remembered that I’d left Happy in the closed station wagon with the engine, and therefore the air conditioner, turned off.

  I said, “Just a minute. Let me get the dog.”

  “Matt—”

  “Hold everything, this is no place to talk. Lock up your car and get out of the street, they take this comer like it was Indianapolis on Memorial Day.”

  I snapped the leash on Happy, grabbed the gun case, waited for an old pickup truck to roar past, and joined her at the entrance to my miniature estate. She was looking at the yellow sign indicating that the premises were protected by the Guardian Security System, known as GSS. I dealt with the padlock. Although the hasp is on the inside, a hand-sized hole lets you work the lock from outside. I rolled back the heavy gate far enough to admit us and rolled it closed again.

  “Give me time to turn off the alarm,” I said, leading the way to the front door, which is actually at the side of the house. “Once the door is open, I’ve got about sixty seconds to push the right buttons or all hell breaks loose. . . . Here, hold the dog.”

  I must admit that the crazy burglar alarm has me bugged; I’m always terrified that I’m going to forget the code and run out of time trying to remember it, or punch it wrong even if I do remember it. I don’t know why I make such a big deal of it; it’s not as if the system was wired to a lethal load of plastique or TNT. If I don’t turn it off within the allotted sixty seconds, all that’ll happen is that the noisemakers will scream and disturb the neighbors a bit, and the private security outfit monitoring the system will phone to find out if I goofed or if they should really call the cops. However, I made it to the control box in time and punched the right number on the keypad, and the little red light went out.

  “Okay, all clear.”

  After letting Madeleine enter, I took the leash off Happy and put him out into the yard, hearing Madeleine laugh as I closed the door behind him.

  “He’s kind of sweet, like a big friendly teddy bear, not at all the kind of dog I’d expect you to have,” she said as I turned back to face her.

  “You think I’m more the snarling pit-bull type?”

  "Or killer Doberman." Her voice was expressionless, but there was a hint of mischief in her eyes.

  I grinned. “I don’t need a dog to defend me; I can defend myself. But I’m very lousy at fetching ducks out of deep water in freezing weather, which is Happy’s specialty. Well, what do you think of my cozy domicile? Living-dining room before you. Bedroom to the left. Kitchen and bath to the right. . . Did I say something interesting?”

  “I’ve been waiting out there for quite a while,” she said.

  “Sure,” I said. “Into the kitchen and hard left. Guest towels on the top shelf. In the meantime, I’d say the sun is practically over the yardarm, wouldn’t you, ma’am? As I recall, the drink is Scotch.”

  “Your recollection is accurate, sir.”

  I watched her move away from me, a slender woman in her thirties, looking very competent in a severely tailored business suit, black with a fine white stripe. Nylons black, very sheer. Pumps black, with high, slim heels. Height medium. Hair brown, not too long, carefully arranged about her head. A lady who, five years ago, had made a spectacular comeback from almost total disaster with, although I wouldn’t have dreamed of reminding her, some help from me.

  She’d been in bad shape, defeated and hopeless, when I’d picked her up at the prison on the day of her release, with orders to keep her alive, never mind why. There had been others around who’d had instructions that conflicted with mine. Playing bodyguard, I’d wound up having to throw myself heroically between her and a distant rifle, taking a bullet in the shoulder. After getting patched up locally, I’d had her drive me to the Ranch in Arizona for more permanent repairs. The reconstruction had taken some time, and I’d arranged for her to be put through the less classified parts of our basic training course so she could help defend herself while I was semidisabled. The experience had taught her a number of things most women don’t know, and our demanding exercise program had turned her from a soft, helpless victim into a lean female predator who’d repaid me for saving her life once by saving mine twice. I was glad to see that she’d kept the taut figure she’d attained back then. I wondered how much else of the Ranch course she retained. No one unaware of her history would associate knives and guns and unarmed combat with the handsome businesswoman in the pinstripe suit and severe silk blouse who emerged from the kitchen.

  She took the glass I offered her and sipped from it while looking around the room. It was typical Santa Fe, with heavy mud-brick walls plastered smooth and painted white, a rounded kiva fireplace in the comer, and a rather low ceiling with the round exposed roof beams, natural timbers, that we call vigas. The wooden dining table and four chairs at one end of the room, and the cocktail table and the two big wooden armchairs facing the fireplace at the other, were all of local manufacture, heavy and dark and picturesque and ethnic as hell, but, I’ll admit, not remarkably comfortable.

  Madeleine said, “I always thought people who went in for burglar alarms must be slightly paranoid.”

  "It was already installed when I bought the house," I said. “The lady who lived here used it as a summer home; she spent the winters in Scottsdale, Arizona. The place was ripped off twice in her absence, so she put in the alarm system; but nothing could keep the crazy drivers from knocking down her front fence occasionally, and she was getting pretty old, so she decided to live in Scottsdale full-time and sold me the property complete with furniture, kitchen appliances, and security system. Considering my line of work, I feel I’d be tempting fate if I didn’t use it; and it does make me worry a bit less when I’m away on business. These days, around here, most people feel obliged to hire house sitters for protection while they’re gone.’’ I grimaced. ‘‘I can remember a time in this town, not too many years ago, when we didn’t even lock our doors.”

  I took the Anschutz out of its case and slipped it into its place on the five-gun rack on the wall beside the fireplace, below the two shotguns that are de
signed to cope with big birds and little ones, and the two hunting rifles intended for use against larger animals and smaller ones. The firearms designed to cope with people of all sizes I do not keep on display; but there was a large knife in an elaborately carved leather sheath lying on the shelf below the guns. It was a giant Bowie of presentation quality, with elaborate grips and engraved blade. At fourteen inches it was really too big to be a practical fighting knife unless you had Tarzan dreams and a tiger in mind. It had been a tongue-in-cheek Christmas present from Jo, my late lady love. I locked up the gun rack and gestured toward one of the chairs by the fireplace, picked up my drink, and settled into the other.

  Madeleine sipped her drink, watching me. “Matt?”

  “Yes, Madeleine?”

  “Why are you having me followed?”

  We’d taken the long way around, but we’d finally got to it. I regarded her for a moment, thoughtfully.

  “How many people do you think I have following you?” I asked.

  She glanced at me sharply, but answered the question: “I made it four at the last count, but there could be more.” Then she said, angrily, “Damn it, I thought it was all over, five years ago when my conviction was reversed and my record was cleared and full citizenship was restored to me. . . . It didn’t make up for my lost career, or the years of my life wasted in that ghastly federal penitentiary, but goddamn it, at least it was over, or I thought it was. And then, just recently, I started seeing little men trailing me like before, when they were trying to pin all the treason in the world on me, Jesus! It was like a crazy time warp taking me back to that terrible year before the trial. . . . What are you trying to do to me, Matt?”

  “When did you first spot these people watching you?” She glanced at me irritably, but again answered the question: “It must have been three or four weeks ago. And I shouldn’t say ‘men’; there seem to be two of each sexual persuasion—well, of the two standard sexual persuasions. An equal opportunity employer, hah! They could have been following me quite a bit longer. Denver is a big city; and it took me a while to realize that I kept seeing the same cars too often, and the same faces. I guess, after five years, I’d started to forget some of the lessons they taught me at that gruesome spy school of yours.”

  “What makes you think these people are taking orders from me?”

  Madeleine didn’t seem to hear the question; she drew a long breath and went on harshly: "Don’t you have any imagination at all, can’t you understand how being followed like that makes me feel? But to hell with my feelings, don’t you realize that even if my record has been cleansed, purged, completely purified, I can’t afford to be under surveillance? This new law firm has been very good to me, but if it got around that I was being tailed, as we ex-cons say . . . It would destroy everything I’ve built since I moved to Denver. No respectable firm can afford to employ a woman, innocent or guilty, who has teams of government agents following her around.”

  “What makes you think they’re government agents, Madeleine?”

  When she didn’t answer at once, I reached over to take her black purse out of her hands. I’d already noted that she handled it as if it was heavier than it should be. I looked inside and saw one of the smaller Colt revolvers, .38 caliber, with a four-inch barrel. I closed the purse and gave it back to her.

  She spoke defiantly: “It’s perfectly legal. All my civil rights were restored, remember, including the right to buy a gun.”

  Actually, while owning the pistol was legal enough out here in the west, where no pickup truck is properly equipped without a couple of firearms across the back window, carrying it concealed like that probably wasn’t; but it was no time for technicalities.

  I repeated my question: “What makes you think they’re government agents, Madeleine? And how do you know I sent them?”

  “They’ve got to be government agents if you’re involved, don’t they?” She smiled grimly. “One of them told me, Matt. Oh, not willingly, but eventually she spoke up like a good little girl and told me everything.”

  I studied her face carefully and saw the burning anger she was trying to keep in check. “I see. You’re getting tough in your old age.”

  She said harshly, “Remember, when we were traveling across the country together, after you picked me up at Fort Ames, that man you wanted to answer your questions who wouldn’t? Well, at first he wouldn’t. He must still be carrying the scar you gave him, unless he’s had a plastic job done. I catch on quickly, Matt; it only takes me five years or so to take a hint. So I cut the pretty one out of the herd and pistol-whipped her a little, following in the footsteps of the master.”

  She was waiting for something, perhaps shocked disapproval. I said, “I had a hunch it was going to turn out to be all my fault.”

  “Well, whose else? You shouldn’t have set me such a brutal example, back when I was weak and impressionable. And you shouldn’t have put me through that lethal course and then sent a bunch of wet-nosed kids after me. It didn’t take much to make the little bitch talk, just one good taste of the gun sight. I left her blubbering about her lousy face. To hell with her face, it’s my lousy life she and her friends are wrecking, damn it. What little of it I managed to save out of that other wreck!” She drew a long, shuddering breath. “Give me another drink, damn you!"

  I took her glass away, refilled it, and returned it to her. She drank and sat for a moment staring into the glass.

  “If you think I’m sorry for spoiling the stupid brat’s looks, think again! I’d happily mangle the whole lot of them. I didn’t fight back last time. I let them humiliate me and walk all over me and give me a farcical trial and call me a traitor to my country and lock me away; but this time it’s going to be different. Last time I was a starry-eyed young lawyer and I was naive enough to trust the law to protect me, ha! Well, I’m still a lawyer, because it’s the only way I know how to make a decent living, but I'm not starry-eyed and naive any longer. This time I know where the real protection is, right here!” She slapped the purse in her lap and lifted her head to look at me. “You see? You see what you’ve done? I was almost civilized again, almost human. I’d almost forgotten the gutless, prideless slob who crawled out of prison and the savage fighting beast you and your trainers and weapons instructors made of her. I’d almost forgotten about killing two men to save your life. But it’s coming back to me, darling! Nobody’ll ever put me behind bars again. They may kill me, but I promise you I won’t die alone, and if the bastards I take with me are wearing police badges or government IDs, so much the better. They still owe me for the years they cost me—‘Oops, just a slight mistake, ma’am, but it wasn’t really our fault, ma’am, we hear so many perpetrators claim they've been framed, sorry about that, ma’am.’ Well, this time, damn it, I’ll make them regret their little mistakes in spades, and that goes for you, too, Matt, if you’re trying to use me for something tricky!”

  “Sounds like a threat,” I said mildly.

  She glared at me. “Are you laughing at me? Oh, I know you’re tough and trained and experienced, and undoubtedly armed to the teeth, and all I have to work with is one crummy little pistol and a quickie course in mayhem that’s five years old, but don’t fool yourself that I’m going to be such an easy patsy a second time—”

  “Nobody’s laughing,” I said. “Come on, let me show you something.”

  “Matt, damn you—”

  “Come on!” I rose and took her reluctant hand to help her out of her chair. ‘ ‘We’ll go out the back way through the bedroom.”

  She started to protest further, but checked herself and allowed herself to be guided out of the living room and past the big double bed to the French doors opening onto the patio at the rear of the house. Happy, who spends most of his time in the front yard—perhaps he enjoys listening to the cars going by in the street outside—came charging around the comer to greet us as if he hadn’t seen us for a week.

  I coped with his enthusiasm and said, “This way.”

 
The lot is a narrow one, leaving only room for a flagstone walk along the side of the house and a flower bed—well, decorative shrubs and small rosebushes—along the fence. Madeleine followed me with due regard for her nylons.

  “It must be pretty when they’re in bloom,” she said. “I didn’t know you were a gardener.”

  “I inherited the staff. It seemed a pity to let it all die, the old lady had spent a lot of time and love on it, so I have a man come in once a week. . . . Okay. Do you see that knothole in the fence over there near the gate? Take a peek through it and I’ll tell you what you see.”

  “Isn’t this kind of silly?” Madeleine asked, making her way to the indicated spot. “Why don’t you just tell me—” But she rose on tiptoe to look through the hole.

  I spoke in tour-guide fashion: “You are now looking up a typical old Santa Fe thoroughfare, ma’am, with houses and property walls right on the street, not much in the way of sidewalks, no front lawns, a few parked cars. Well, I don’t have to tell you about Santa Fe; you’ve lived here. There’s a gray Honda parked next door on this side, you can just see the rear of it, and a blue Audi across the way. At least they were there just now when we came inside. And somewhere well up the street, with some other heaps, probably on the other side facing this way with a good view of my gate, is an old tan Volvo station wagon. There’s a dark-haired woman sitting behind the wheel. Am I right?”

  Madeleine hesitated. “Oh, up there. Yes, you’re right, although I can’t be sure it’s a woman, but what makes her so special—”