The Frighteners (12 page)

“What the hell kind of an outfit do you think we are, Mrs. Cody?” I asked. “We’re all walking human sacrifices. Nobody really expects us back when we leave the office in Washington, or wherever the briefing takes place. As a matter of fact, I was warned. I was told that things weren’t what they seemed, be careful. My hunch is that somebody’s been keeping a suspicious eye on Mr. Somerset’s current operation, whatever it may be; somebody in another branch of government. I’D bet that when Somerset started looking cautiously for a substitute Cody, I was volunteered so fast it would make your head swim. Our highly placed governmental person wanted to have a man in there who could find things out and break things up; and my chief elected me as finder-outer and breaker-upper.”

“But if your boss was aware that you were supposed to be murdered . . ."

“Somerset would hardly have told him that, sweetheart. Somerset might have covered himself by saying that the man selected for the impersonation would be running some risk; but risk is the name of the game. And don’t kid yourself about my chief, he wouldn’t hesitate to send one of us into a trap if he had some reason for wanting to see what it looked like turned inside out. Hell, we’re supposed to be survivors; we’re supposed to be smart enough to know when we’re being set up; we’re supposed to be able to cope. With practically anything. Just because a twerp like Somerset may have homicidal plans for us doesn’t mean we run home to bed and pull the covers over our heads, shaking in abject terror. We’ve dealt with lethal creeps before.”

“And it hasn’t made you very modest,” she said dryly. She hesitated. “You said Mason Charles tipped you off, or his presence in Cananea did. But you must have arranged for the cars, that elusive car we haven’t caught up with yet, before you ever saw him. Those telephone calls up in the U.S. before we crossed the border. . .”

I said, “I said Charles gave me the final confirmation. I’d had suspicions before that, enough to take a few escape measures. I called from Deming to have it set up; when I checked in Douglas they told me what had been arranged and where to make contact. That hardware store. I got my final instructions there and the bag of basic stuff I needed.”

“Suspicions?” she said. “What made you suspicious?”

“I’m always suspicious when a bureaucrat is nice to me,” I said. “They do like to throw their weight around, particularly when dealing with us field men, to show that we may think we’re tough but we don’t scare them a bit. But Somerset was just as sweet as sugar, even when I gave him a hard time. It was obvious that he needed me badly. It was also obvious that he felt he could tolerate my rudeness because he had something in store for me that would punish me for my lack of respect.”

She shook her head. “That seems like a vague reason for taking such elaborate precautions.”

“He also made a mistake,” I said. “When he was recruiting me, he’d given my chief the impression that he had nobody in his own agency suitable for the job, just as he told you. That had to mean nobody tall enough to impersonate Buff Cody, since a guy like Somerset would never admit, even to himself, that our people are more competent than his. But do you remember those two operatives of his who turned up in that parking lot to arrest the real Buff Cody and whisk him away?”

She frowned. “I don’t understand what you . . . One was quite short, wasn’t he? The other . . . oh!”

I nodded. “The other was well over six feet tall. With no more makeup work than was done on me, he’d have made a swell Buff Cody. So why didn’t Somerset use him and keep it in the family? I figure it was because, while I doubt that he tosses and turns at night, kept awake by concern for the safety of his people, he’s an economical man and he isn’t going to sacrifice one of his own trained and experienced and trusted agents to get a dead body he needs when he can borrow a suitable stumblebum from another agency.” I shook my head ruefully. “He shouldn’t have let me see that guy. That’s when I got really uneasy; uneasy enough to decide that it wouldn’t hurt to set up a parachute operation in case we had to bail out fast.”

Gloria sighed. “It still seems a little clairvoyant to me.”

I said, “We’re very strong on ESP. And there are no tricks those computer commandos can pull that haven’t been pulled on us before.”

“If you’re such a great mind reader, tell me why Uncle Buffy wants people to think he’s dead.” Then she went on quickly: “Well, obviously it’s because he’s done something so terrible that he has to drop out of sight. I suppose it must be the way he arranged for Papa and Millie Charles to be killed and the fact that Millie’s son has found him out.”

I said doubtfully, “You think that Somerset went to all the trouble of setting up a phony Cody, me, to be murdered, just so the real Cody could disappear and take up a new life as, say, John Jones?”

Gloria said, “You don’t sound convinced. Why not? The government is always arranging new identities for gangsters and racketeers, isn’t it?”

“Yes, in return for important testimony in court, but what’s Somerset getting out of Cody that’s worth all the effort?” I shook my head. “How do we know it’s Cody who wants everybody to think Cody died down here in Mexico? ’ ’

“What do you mean?”

I said, “What if it’s Somerset who wants people to think Cody’s dead down here in Sonora?”

“Somerset?” She was startled. “Why would he want that?” I said, “He’d want it if Cody was really going to be dead up in Texas.”

“I don’t understand!”

I said the same thing in different words: “Somerset would want it if he planned to kill Cody or have him killed.”

“But that’s crazy!”

‘‘Think about it. If that’s the situation, Somerset can hardly just issue a casual press release to the effect that this millionaire U.S. oil man was terminated, for reasons that are classified, by U.S. agents working under the direction of a certain Warren Somerset. And on the other hand, although I’m sure Somerset has ways of doing it, Horace Hosmer Cody can’t just vanish. He’s too prominent and, if what I hear about his finances is correct, he owes too much money; there’d be too many people trying to find him. But suppose somebody named Cody is murdered below the border, shot by a vengeful boy or chopped to death by vicious bandits. The identification is positive, the burial is immediate, and Mr. Somerset can proceed with his little homicide in perfect safety, eradicating a gent who no longer exists.”

Gloria licked her lips. “But that would mean that we’ve been doing Uncle Buffy a terrible injustice!”

“It doesn’t follow,” I said. “There were three phony attempts on your life, designed to make you marry him for protection, weren’t there? And there’s no doubt in your mind, is there, that Buff Cody was responsible; and that once you were Mrs. Cody he intended to have you killed? The fact that somebody planned to murder him, too, and may very well have done it by this time, doesn’t make him Mr. Clean.” I frowned thoughtfully. “Let’s say Cody and Somerset were together in a big deal of some kind, very sensitive, no publicity permitted. But we’ve already been told, even by Mr. Somerset himself, that Cody was running guns into Mexico; well, suppose Somerset was actually a silent partner. It wouldn’t be the first time an important U.S. official got his pinkies dirty in a foreign arms deal. Somerset would probably claim, they all do, that he did it for highly patriotic reasons; but after all the recent scandals—hell, there was another one just the other day, remember—it wouldn’t make him popular if it came out. Now let’s say that the operation fizzled somehow; and that Mr. Somerset, afraid of being connected with it publicly, is wiping the record clean in proper Washington fashion, only he’s not just shredding papers that might incriminate him, he’s shredding people as well.”

“You mean you think he’s the one behind Papa’s murder?”

I said, “Let’s forget, for the moment, Cody’s little plot against you. We can call that a private money-making scheme, irrelevant to the main action. Cody was just going to eliminate one person. There’s much more ambitious homicidal talent around. . . ."

Gloria interrupted: “He could just have asked!” Her voice was soft and bitter. “All Uncle Buffy had to do was ask for the money he needed; he didn’t even have to marry me. I’d have given it to him. I trusted him!”

I said, “Well, apparently he didn’t trust you to be generous to the full extent required. But skip all that. It’s small potatoes. Who cares about one lousy heiress, more or less, when big international affairs are involved? It seems likely that Somerset, covering his tracks, is wiping out everybody who can connect him with this arms deal, and if he also has to slaughter an innocent agent for camouflage purposes, a nice friendly chap like me, it’s just too damn bad.’’

Gloria protested: “But Papa and Millie Charles, how could they endanger Mr. Somerset, if you’re suggesting that he’s the one responsible for what happened to them?”

“What was your pop doing down in Mexico, anyway?” I asked.

“I don’t really know.” She hesitated. “We were . . . we weren’t on speaking terms. I’d made some remarks about the propriety of his traveling openly with a woman from the office— she was just a secretary, you know; but she’d thrown herself at him from the moment she was hired. That was when he told me he was going to marry her! I’d never dreamed it had gone that far. I pleaded with him. I said, sleep with her if you have to, even make the grand Mexican tour with her, I take it all back, but please, please don’t make her my stepmother. It didn’t go over real big, if you know what I mean.”

“I can see that it might not,” I said. “Well, let’s make a guess as to the purpose of the jaunt. Let’s say that your daddy had got wind of Cody’s big arms deal and came down here to investigate, afraid that his money-hungry partner would get them both into serious trouble. And apparently he stumbled onto something Somerset couldn’t afford to have known, so he had to go. Mrs. Charles just had the bad luck to be traveling with him. And having arranged for the removal of Will Pierce, Somerset would be afraid that Cody would guess who’d done it, so Cody had to go, too.”

I felt Gloria shiver slightly beside me. She said after a moment, “But if you’re right, that’s one crime we’ve been attributing to Uncle Bufly—and Mason Charles has, too—of which he wasn’t guilty. I should have known he’d never do anything to Papa after all the years they’d been together!”

“Well, it’s still to be proved, one way or the other,” I said. “But if I’m right, we’re two more human documents for the hungry Somerset people-shredder. He can still use a dead Cody body down here; and in any case he can’t have me testifying about what he tried to do to me. And he can’t have you running loose and talking, either.”

Gloria was silent for a little. “I don’t know what made me . . . made me do that,” she said at last; and we weren’t discussing Mr. Warren Somerset any longer. “I don’t usually . . . Believe it or not, but I’m not usually that much of a bitch. Do you think it was being such a total, grimy mess—in my eight-hundred-and-fifty-dollar wedding suit, for God’s sake!—that released all my baser impulses? Like a little girl getting a weirdo charge from playing in the mud in her pretty party dress?”

I grinned at her in the moonlight. We’d never be friends, and I doubted that we’d ever be lovers again; the worlds in which we lived were too far apart. But there was a kind of understanding between us now that hadn’t been there before.

I said, “If you want analysis, lady, see a psychiatrist. I’m just a poor damn gun-toting government employee, and I’m going to get some sleep.”

Actually, as I said, I’d had all the sleep to which I was entitled. After she’d settled down, I just lay there and listened to the night. You learn to handle the long night watches without either dropping off completely or going ape from boredom. We had a midnight coyote serenade for entertainment, but the girl did not awaken. The incomplete moon slid off the sky to the west, very gradually. At last the rugged horizon became faintly visible in the east and a gray hint of daylight found its way into our hollow. Gloria stirred, threw a slightly embarrassed glance my way, rose, and tiptoed off gingerly to find shelter behind a convenient bush. When she returned, smoothing out her crumpled silk suit as best she could, I made a point of waking up elaborately and making the same pilgrimage, I came back to find her sitting on her favorite rock, once more combing her hair. I decided there was something to be said for my temporary baldness.

“I know we haven’t got much water,” she said, “but could we spare just enough to dampen a Kleenex so I can mop this smeary makeup off my face and look a little less like a circus clown?”

‘‘I think it can be managed,’’ I said, unlimbering the canteen. “Here. You can take a reasonable drink for breakfast and use a few drops for your
toilette
, as we Frenchmen call it. ” I fingered the neat beard Arthur had made of the camping-out whiskers I’d brought him. “One good thing about this Cody disguise, I don’t have to worry about shaving.”

Gloria laughed. “Just the same, you look like a tramp who’s been sleeping in the woodshed. A lot of woodsheds. Well, so do I.”

We were chatting a bit too brightly to cover up the memory of what had happened between us last night. The fact that, in daylight, we both looked like castaways on a desert island was another source of embarrassment. When she’d finished cleaning up, I clapped my smudged white ten-gallon hat onto my head, waited briefly for her to stuff her dirty bare feet into her grimy white pumps, and led the way southwards. We made it through the big arroyo, and I was glad we hadn’t tried it in the dark. I’d hoped for a little water at the bottom, but there was no stream at the moment, although it was obvious that torrents rushed along the eroded channel after heavy rains. On the crest beyond, I spent twenty minutes glassing the basin ahead—it took awhile because the powerful little telescope they’d given me had only a very limited field of view.

“What are you looking for?” Gloria asked. She was sitting a little below me, shoes off, massaging her bruised feet.

I shrugged. “Anybody,” I said. “Anything. I’m just taking the standard precautions. Now we’ll move up about a quarter of a mile and make another area check. Talk only in whispers and keep your head down, please.”