The Poisoners Read online

  Please understand, I’m not saying this in a spirit of criticism. I never did go for the Jersey-cow ideal of feminine pulchritude. I think it’s real nice that nowadays they’re allowed to admit it when their udders aren’t up to State Fair standards.

  But the fact was that this willowy blonde was so slender as to be practically useless for bed warming or child bearing—at least that was the impression she gave. It had to be wrong. Warfel might not be interested in procreation, but it seemed unlikely that he’d keep a female around who was totally unemployable in bed. And rightly or wrongly the girl obviously considered herself the sexiest thing since Jean Harlow, or at least since Marilyn Monroe.

  I glanced at Warfel and made a soft little noise of appreciation. “Some Christmas present,” I said, deadpan. “Remind me to tell you when my birthday is, Mr. Warfel.”

  He didn’t like that. I’d known he wouldn’t; I guess I was just getting a cheap kick out of teasing the animals. Or maybe I was making a scientific test to determine how much his greasy affability would take; in other words, how important it was to him, for reasons yet unknown, to be nice to me. It must have been pretty important. They’re all the same, those little hoodlum kings, and what’s theirs is theirs and nobody poaches on their territory, not even in a joke—but he took it from me and even managed a hollow laugh.

  “Bobbie, this is Mr. Matthew Helm, who works for the U.S. government,” he said. “Mr. Helm, Miss Roberta Prince.”

  “He’s cute,” Miss Prince said in her throaty voice. “I’m simply mad about tall men, particularly tall government men. Can I keep him for a pet?”

  I wondered if she could be doing a little testing, too, because this was also against the house rules. No lady receiving Frank Warfel’s favors should be foolish enough to indicate in any way that she might possibly be interested in lesser men, even just for laughs. But he took this, too, with only a faint narrowing of the eyes and sharpening of the voice.

  “Run along, Bobbie. We’ve got business.”

  “Oh, you and your tiresome old business!” she said petulantly, but she turned away.

  I watched her move out of sight in her exaggerated, undulating fashion. It was a good act, or rather, it was a lousy act that would have been laughed off the screen, but what did she care as long as Frank Warfel liked it. If rippling like a snake in high heels and ice-blue satin was what it took to keep the money-tree shedding its crisp green syndicate foliage all over her, and she could do it, more power to her. I just hoped that that was all she was after. I had trouble enough without blonde trouble.

  “So I’m a government man,” I said sourly to Warfel. It seemed just as well to clarify the situation, since he’d taken the first step. I went on: “I didn’t know it showed. Or could you possibly have had my motel room wired for sound when I made a certain call to Washington a little while ago.”

  He grinned. The idea that he’d put one over on me, electronically, was making him feel better again. He said, “Maybe. Over this way, Mr. Helm. Follow me.” He led me through the living room where the blonde, holding a magazine, had draped herself over a big chair in a position that could only have been assumed by a teenager or an acrobatic dancer. “Right through that door ahead of you,” Warfel said. “There’s your man.”

  It was a bedroom, but it wasn’t being used for the purpose at the moment. I looked at the man tied to the chair at the foot of the bed. He was black, with bushy black hair standing up and out from his head the way it’s worn nowadays—proudly. He wasn’t as big as the man beside me, but he looked compact and powerful. His nose had been broken in times past, and one ear had been thickened. There was another man in the room to guard him, a nondescript individual with a wide, flat, pock-marked face.

  I said, “I liked the first sample better. This one isn’t so cute. Who is he?”

  “Arthur Brown, known as Basher Brown, or simply The Basher,” Warfel said. “You may take him with you if you like, Mr. Helm, but it might be more convenient if you dealt with him right here. Convenient for you, I mean. I’ll be glad to have the boys clean up after you, inconspicuously. That’s how your chief said it should be arranged, when you spoke to him on the phone just now, wasn’t it? Inconspicuously. We’re happy to oblige. It’s part of the service.”

  I looked at the black man, who looked back at me with the careful expressionlessness of a member of another race who’s damned if he’s going to show fear before a bunch of alien tormentors.

  I said, “I see. This is the guy I’m looking for?”

  “That’s your murderer,” Warfel said. “I suggest you use the knife, if you want to take care of him here. I own the building, but I’d rather not have any gunshots, if you don’t mind.”

  He was needling me in some way, deliberately challenging me to commit a cold-blooded killing in front of witnesses. I couldn’t make out if his purpose was to heat me into it or cool me off it. Or maybe he was just sneering because it was his nature. Or maybe he was simply overacting a role, which brought up the interesting question: what role, in what play?

  “What did he use?” I asked. “Where’s the cannon?”

  “The gun?” Warfel made a gesture at the guard. “Give The Basher’s gun to Mr. Helm.”

  The man went around the bed and picked something off a chair that also held a jacket presumably belonging to Arthur Brown, who was in his shirtsleeves. The guard handed me a large Smith and Wesson double-action revolver with a six-and-a-half-inch barrel. Longer tubes are made, and for a powerhouse cartridge like the .44 they have some advantages, but they’re even harder to hide.

  I studied the weapon thoughtfully, pressed the cylinder latch on the left side of the frame, swung out the cylinder, and looked at the brass heads of the six cartridges. Two of the primers showed firing-pin indentations. Annette had been shot twice. It was very neat. I had no doubt the rifling would match the recovered bullets, if they were in condition to be matched, which doesn’t always happen.

  I closed the gun once more and walked up to the bound man in the chair. He looked up at me with steady brown eyes.

  “This is your gun?” I asked.

  “That’s my gun.” His voice was as expressionless as his face, flat and toneless.

  I said, “Tell me what happened.”

  He said, “What’s to tell, man? She looked like somebody else, red hair and all. I got the wrong girl.”

  “But you got her?”

  “Me and nobody else. Like Mr. Warfel told you, everybody makes mistakes. I’m paying for mine, like you see.”

  “How did it happen?”

  Warfel spoke behind me. “That doesn’t really matter, does it, Mr. Helm? This is your man. He admits it.”

  I turned slowly to look at him. “If you overheard my telephone conversation at the motel, you know that my instructions cover the person or persons responsible. Somehow, I don’t think Mr. Brown went out and killed a girl just for private kicks. Who gave the orders?”

  There was a little silence in the room. I was aware that the big man who’d greeted me at the elevator—the official frisker called Jake—had taken up a station in the doorway.

  Warfel said softly, “I wouldn’t push it, Mr. Helm. We made a mistake, a bad mistake. We admit it. We don’t want any trouble with you or your chief in Washington, so we’re giving you the man who shot your agent. I suggest you leave it at that, Mr. Helm.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  Warfel sighed. “We don’t want to buck Washington, not unless we have to. But if you try to push it we’ll have to, won’t we? I mean, you’ll give us no choice. And it’s not your line of work, is it, Mr. Helm? I don’t know exactly what you are, but you’re damn well not F.B.I. You’re not pretty enough, for one thing, and for another, nobody ever told a G-man to go out and kill somebody, not in so many words. They’ve got scruples; they’re gentlemen.”

  “And I’m no gentleman?”

  “No offense, Mr. Helm, but you’re a professional killer, aren’t you? I’ve seen a lot o
f them, and I knew you the minute I saw you. An executioner, a rub-out man. The only difference being that you seem to be a government rub-out man. I’m guessing that you belong to some kind of high-powered secret espionage or counterespionage outfit that plays pretty rough. And now you’ve lost one of your people and you’re mad. You’re not used to having your agents knocked over by punks like Arthur, here, working for hoodlums like me, are you, Mr. Helm? And you’re going to show us that no little private creeps can monkey with a big, bad government agency like yours!”

  His voice had turned harsh. I said, “Easy, Mr. Warfel. You’re saying it, not me. Don’t work yourself into a coronary on my account.”

  He drew a long breath, and forced a grin. “Ah, hell, there I go, losing my temper. Excuse me, Mr. Helm. I’m just upset about losing Arthur, just for one lousy mistake. He’s a good man… Okay, so the mistake was his and you can have him. But don’t try taking it any farther. I’m not crazy enough to think I can buck the U.S. government and win, but I can sure as hell give you a lot of publicity while I’m losing. And I don’t think you secret-agent hush-hush types would like that. Check with your chief and see if I’m not right. He said inconspicuously, remember? Well, you can settle for Arthur, inconspicuously, or you can have a fight that’ll make you conspicuous as hell. Take your choice, Mr. Helm. Check with your boss and see if he really wants to go into the syndicate-busting business just because somebody made a mistake. Okay?”

  I looked at Arthur Brown. “You worked her over before you shot her. Why?”

  The black man looked up sharply, frowning. “What do you mean, man. I didn’t…”

  “Never mind, Arthur,” Warfel said quickly. “Mr. Helm, it was a simple case of mistaken identity. And who your girl was mistaken for, and why, is none of your damn business.”

  “I guess not. May I make a phone call, collect, to Washington, D.C.?”

  He gestured towards the other room, magnanimously. “Be my guest. Live it up. Charge it to me.” He hesitated. “Just one thing, Mr. Helm. On the phone you reported that your girl had told you something before she died. What did she say?”

  I laughed. “Hell, she didn’t say anything. I figured somebody might be listening. That was just sugar to draw flies, Mr. Warfel.”

  The blonde looked up from her magazine and winked at me playfully as I went past. It was quite a wink, since her lashes were almost an inch long. I couldn’t match it so I didn’t try.

  4

  The station wagon was waiting when we came downstairs. I opened the door and let Arthur Brown get in first. He was a little clumsy because of his bound hands. They were tied in front of him, with his jacket draped to hide the ropes.

  Warfel had seemed to think it was sissy of me to want him tied, just as it was sentimental of me not to slit his throat on the spot. I wasn’t really much of a guy, in Warfel’s opinion. I worried about this like I worried about the opinion of the ducks in the pond I passed earlier in the evening, or even a little less. As a hunter of sorts, I have a lot of respect for ducks.

  Arthur Brown looked like a professional boxer to me, and I don’t play games with those; I know some trick stuff that’ll handle the amateurs, but I wouldn’t dream of trying it on a real pro fighter. If he came for me, I’d have to stop him with a gun, and I didn’t want to, at least not yet.

  “All right, Willy,” I said, having learned the driver’s name from Warfel. “Head back the way we came, slowly. If somebody pulls alongside and blows a horn, don’t get excited. Just take it to the curb and stop it. I’m assuming it does have brakes.”

  “If they don’t work, I’ll open the door and drag my foot,” said Willy, cutting out into traffic without a glance at the mirror. Three blocks later he said, “We’ve got company like you said. Do you want me to stop now?”

  “They’ll let you know when.”

  “I don’t like this.”

  “Sure you do,” I said. “Mr. Warfel said for you to do exactly what I told you. I heard him. Sure you like it, Willy. You’re paid to like it.”

  “Okay, I like it.”

  We rode along for a while without conversation. I was aware of Arthur Brown, silent beside me. I’m a firm believer in racial equality, but that doesn’t mean I kid myself that I’ll ever know exactly what thoughts are going through the head of a member of another race. We may all be equal as hell, but that doesn’t mean we necessarily think alike.

  “What’s your real name?” I asked.

  “Arthur Brown,” he said.

  “Go to hell,” I said. “There may be Arthur Browns—there undoubtedly are—but you’re not one of them. Every time you hear the name, your nostrils flare like they’d caught a bad smell.”

  He said, “All right, so my name is Lionel McConnell. Can you see a Lionel McConnell in the ring, man? A black Lionel McConnell? Anyway, they told me I was Arthur Basher Brown, and if you know them, you know that who they tell you you are, that’s who you are.”

  “Sure.” After a while, I said, “Lionel McConnell. That’s pretty damn fancy. Almost as fancy as Annette O’Leary.” The man beside me didn’t speak. I went on: “That was a nice kid you shot. We had plans for that girl, McConnell. You ought to be more careful whom you go firing guns at…”

  “I told you, it was a mistake. A case of mistaken identity.”

  “Sure. The streets of L.A. are just lousy with good-looking little redheads, one exactly like the next. You’ve got to beat them off with a club. What do you think we’re going to do with you, McConnell?”

  “Hell, man,” he said, “it’s obvious. You’re either going to shoot me or talk me to death…”

  He stopped. A car had pulled up on our left as we rolled down a wide boulevard. A horn made a brief, beeping sound. Willy glanced over his shoulder.

  “Now?”

  “Now,” I said.

  When we came to a stop, I helped the bound man out onto the sidewalk and escorted him to the big tan sedan that had pulled to the curb ahead. The rear door was open and a young woman in a neat gray suit stood beside it, surprising me a bit. I hadn’t really been expecting a woman, although there are plenty in the business.

  She wasn’t one of ours, and neither was the driver or, for that matter, the car. We don’t have enough manpower or money to cover the world in depth, or even the country, like some agencies. But there is a certain amount of interdepartmental cooperation, meaning that Mac had apparently done a favor for somebody in the past and now he was collecting a favor in return.

  “Here he is,” I said to the girl. “Can you hold him for me, temporarily?”

  “It can be arranged. Temporarily.”

  Her voice was curt. I glanced at her and decided that for some reason she didn’t like men very much, particularly not a man named Helm, with errands to be run. She was another tall girl—the climate of California, difficult though it was to breathe, seemed to favor the long-stemmed variety—but in other respects there was little resemblance between this girl and the blonde in the shimmering blue pajamas.

  This one was wearing horn-rimmed glasses and had her hair cut shorter than that of a good many men these long-haired days. It was crisp, glossy, and light brown in color with a chestnut tinge—in other words, it was pretty nice hair that deserved a better deal. Her face was handsome rather than pretty or beautiful, with a high nose, strong cheekbones, and a big, contemptuous mouth. What she had to be contemptuous about, besides me, remained to be seen.

  The mannish flannel suit she was wearing was no shorter in the skirt than it had to be, considering the current vogue for mini-garments. Even so, it was mostly jacket, displaying a considerable length of fine leg encased in dark stocking. Her figure was also pretty good, if somewhat more substantial than the one to which I’d recently been introduced by Frank Warfel. This wasn’t an acrobatic dancer’s figure, but I thought it would probably swim pretty well and swing a mean tennis racket if required.

  A white silk shirt and low-heeled black shoes completed the picture, along with a bl
ack purse of practical size, the flap of which was open, leaving the contents ready to hand. I’d caught a gleam of blue steel as she turned to face us. All in all, she was the image of the efficient lady agent. At least she was right in there trying.

  I said, “Okay, he’s yours. Temporarily. What about a quiet place to fire a gun? A fairly big gun?”

  McConnell glanced at me briefly, his black face impassive. The girl frowned and didn’t answer at once, looking from one to the other of us dubiously.

  Then she said reluctantly, “I suppose that can be arranged, too, if it’s absolutely necessary. I’ll check.”

  “You check,” I said. I hauled out the heavy Magnum revolver. “Here’s the gun. Keep it safe for me. Him, too.”

  “How long? We do have other business to attend to besides yours, Mr. Helm.” She hesitated, but went on before I could answer: “Incidentally, my name is Charlotte Devlin. In case you have to ask for me, or about me or something.”

  Her tone was still far from gracious. I realized that she disapproved of me not only because my lousy little errand was beneath her dignity, but also as a matter of principle. Well, our agency isn’t the government’s pride and joy, exactly. Even the C.I.A. boys, much as they’re criticized in some quarters, are popularity kids compared to us. We’re only consulted, as a rule, when people find themselves stuck with something they can’t handle—or don’t want to handle because it stinks too badly. In between the times they need us, they’d like to pretend we don’t exist.

  “Hello, Charlotte,” I said. “Excuse me, I mean Miss Devlin. I won’t be long. I’ve got a kind of hunch I want to check out; I’ll be right back to take care of him properly. Just tell me where.”

  She told me. The driver never turned his head; maybe he disapproved of me, too. The girl got into the rear seat with her prisoner—well, my prisoner—and the sedan moved smoothly away from the curb.

  I went back to the old station wagon and told Willy to take me back to the motel. You had to say this for his driving: it was consistent. I was happy to get out of the ancient heap intact. A blare of horns behind me, as I crossed the sidewalk, told me that Willy had taken off in his usual never-look-behind fashion. There was no accompanying crunch of metal. Maybe he was lucky, or somebody was.