"How did you know I'm not trying to sell Caribbean vacations?"
Dee laughed, and smacked me with the obvious. "Not many telemarketers working out of the campus hotel, that's how. So what became of your day?"
I'd opened my mouth to answer, but before I got a word out she said "check that for a moment. Have you had dinner?" I confessed to a burger at noon, and nothing since. If I'd never met the woman I'd have known she was a mother, probably figured her for a young grandma. It's an attitude the good ones share, and a tone of voice to match.
"Then if you've no objections I'll feed you dinner before I ply you with questions. And besides, I'm tired of leftovers and it makes a good excuse to spend some of Cam's expense account. It won't be totally bogus, I want to talk somewhere we won't be obvious. Give me a couple of minutes, I'll call you right back."
Five minutes later I had a destination, a steak and rib joint thirty miles east of town. The way Dee talked we were running lucky, apparently the locals thought enough of the place it required reservations. Anyhow, I didn't have to find it, five miles out Dee passed me and took point. She wasn't driving what had been in the driveway, she was in a vintage Mustang that didn't look like a woman's car. Probably Jack's favorite toy preserved in his memory, early seventies and pure muscle by the sound of it, an easy match for the bootleggers girl. I'll say this for Jack: his taste in machinery matched his taste in women.
Every now and then you find a treasure in the strangest places. The sign over the door carried the name of the fellow who'd started the place. The food inside would have kept every seat full just about anywhere you wanted to set it down. I'd thought it funny, hoping for reservations in the Oklahoma boonies, but soon enough I understood why there were eight or ten counties represented on the license plates out front.
They put us in a little booth in a corner, a charmingly private place for conversation. Dee seemed pretty well known to the staff, several of them smiled or nodded as they passed by. Most got a smile in return, but there was one handsome young buck where the smile lasted right through a short 'not tonight, pet' shake of her head. He was quick on the uptake, he never slowed down or quit smiling, but I could tell he was disappointed. I can't say I really blamed him, it looked to me like he'd been lucky enough to serve Dee more than her supper on a couple of occasions.
It's damned hard to get a thought past Dee. She noticed me noticing, and chuckled as she locked eyes with me. "He's good fun and a really sweet kid, but I don't want him getting expectations," she said. "It wouldn't be fair."
"What are you talking about?" I parried, filing the paired factoids: Dee wasn't ready to find a replacement for Jack, and from time to time she treated herself to some therapeutic recreation to help heal her loss. She answered by tossing her hair and a smile that means the same thing everywhere. What the hell, she isn't even close to being that old and she plays by civilized rules, which is good enough for me.
"So what did become of your day?" she asked.
"Cordlin, Kansas," I answered. "I took a run up the road to scout the terrain. Not where I'd choose to raise a family, that's for sure."
"That's an interesting way to put it. Why not?"
The waitress pulled up, I didn't answer until she was gone and our drinks were on the table. "That town is rancid with rejects hoping for a rematch of the civil war. I saw some heavy action in places that felt a whole lot kinder."
Dee sipped at her drink, her eyes showing sad and angry over the rim of the glass. "I wish I could say I didn't already know that," she said. "I worked a child custody case there once. I lost fifteen pounds out of the deal, I couldn't keep anything down for two weeks."
That made two. The attitude Cambell had been wearing, and now this from Dee. Dee might be many things, but a weak woman is not one of them. Cambell doesn't allow weak people in his world. What was in her eyes was first cousin to what I'd seen on the medics when the choppers were inbound. Fifteen pounds would have hurt, she doesn't have twenty to spare.
"Sounds like a rough diet to me. How did it turn out?"
She pulled herself up, and frowned. "The boy was dead when I found him. I helped crucify the perps, but that doesn't do much for a little boy who never got half a chance in life."
There wasn't anything I could say. I'm not sure I could have said anything even if I'd wanted to, not for a good thirty seconds. What came from Dee's eyes was way past ferocious, it was solidly into fearful, and cold enough to freeze spit. After a bit Dee got the puma put back in her cage, and forced a laugh to break the silence. "Sorry about that," she said. "I don't normally let a case get to me on the inside, but the kid wasn't a year younger than my youngest, I just couldn't help it." She was trying, but her left hand, her pistol hand, still had just the tiniest of trembles.
"I suppose being a mother might have something to do with that," I said softly.
Dee nodded, and got both hands around her drink. "I suppose so." She pulled down a healthy slug, and when the glass made it back to the table she was back in the present. "So what else did the day bring?" she asked.
“Just a thought on the road home. Dawned on me a motive for what we’re looking at could revolve around the waste stream as easily as anything else. Easier, really. Some real bad people have been into that for quite a while now.”
Dee tipped her drink and thought for a moment. “And our boy did have the final say,” she finally said, swirling the drink. I should have known what was coming when she got that infamous first shirt smile. “Carson, I think you just picked your assignment and earned your dinner. I’m going to pass that back up the chain, see what Cam might come back with. What do we know about Zanchem in that regard?”
“Not much. But it’s right up near the top of things I want to find out.”
*** *** ***
Someday someone is going to explain why every seminar starts out like a sing along at summer camp. I shouldn’t gripe, syrupy as it was it worked out well enough for what Dee and I were doing. Dee marked the Zanchem bunch for me before we’d picked seats, chatting up the personnel man by pretending to have the same job elsewhere. We picked our chairs accordingly, and when the master of ceremonies inevitably split us into mixed groups the maintenance manager was in with me while Dee’s group had the personnel man and one of the supervisors. Before lunch rolled around the co-workers had set it up for Dee and I to introduce ourselves.Before lunch was over I’d learned several things. The personnel man’s name really was Jim Smith, and if his real job was shepherding the crew I’m a camel. He made it a point to tell us how he was fairly new to the company, and then broke etiquette by reaching in front of me to grab the salt and show me a small tattoo. Winged combat boots crossed by a lightning bolt, the insignia of the pj’s, the air force bad boys who go in to retrieve shot down crews. Before lunch was over he’d doubled up the message, explaining to Dee how he’d wrangled a seat at a technical seminar because he was going to be hiring a new inspector and needed some terminology to throw around. Jim’s really pretty good up close and personnel, I don’t think even Dee saw the half wink he shot me.
I was ready for school to be out by the time they turned us loose. We spent the afternoon absorbing the finer points of calculating fugitives, emissions that is. The EPA was recovering after twenty years of Republicans, and to celebrate had changed the rules for the third or fourth time. The word was out they’d be checking numbers. It must have been a pricey seminar, they gave us all fancy calculators loaded with the new equations.
Mid morning the next day Dee started to flirt with me, and she kept it up into the afternoon until I invited her to dinner. It wasn’t hard to figure out her motive. With the way she was coming on none of the others would do more than wish they’d had better luck if we were seen together after hours. Just before we were turned loose that afternoon I noticed there was a memchip in my calculator I hadn’t put there.
When we called it a day Dee said she was going to freshen up before supper, leaving me an hour. I retired to my room to investigate the mystery memchip. My notebook couldn’t read the only file, all I got was binary hash. I plugged the chip back in the calculator, and spent a minute figuring out how to bring it up on the little screen. Whoever had stuffed the memchip was serious about keeping things private. The first thing it did was ask for my mother’s zip code. I spent the five minutes it took the little machine to decrypt the file wondering what in the hell I was involved with. The hour ran out well before I ran out of file, but I’d read enough to have a good guess. Either Cambell was still on Uncle’s salary, or he’d been recruited very, very early in the game. Cordlin was attracting attention in circles both high and secret. Judging by the verbiage I was thinking military intel, which would explain Cambell in the game commanding a pick up team of his own choosing. As I headed for dinner I was hoping all we were for was feeding current information into the alphabet soup and not already committed for blacker things.
About the time dinner was over I’d come to the conclusion someone had slipped something heavy onto Dee’s plate as well. She was bright, bouncy, and provocative enough to wake the dead. Definitely not the same Dee, definitely covering something, and most definitely wanting anyone watching to believe the only thing on her mind was somewhere to wiggle and giggle in private. I played along, but I liked the old Dee better.
I squired her out of the restaurant on a palm, and just for good measure she hung her thumb through my belt as we walked. Halfway up the block she bumped me with a hip, and when I looked around she was stretching up to kiss my cheek. “Baby, I am hot as a two dollar pistol,” she said, and then whispered through the smile “and I don’t mean horny.”
“Time enough for that too,” I said, catching a little rib and making it easy for her to widen the smile. “We need to go somewhere and talk about it.”
“I was so hoping you would say that,” she said, moving away just enough to really get that 'I got mine' strut into a proper roll. When we got to the hotel we stopped one floor below mine. “My room is this way,” she said.
I hadn’t given a thought to Dee having a room. No sooner than we got in the door than she strutted to the window, pulling her hair loose as she went. I stood by the door and made it a point to not react when she put a fine shadow on the blind, making a production of shrugging out of her shirt before she closed the drapes. Anyone watching from outside had a good idea of her bust measurements before the show went dark.
“We gonna talk now or later?” I asked.
“Baby, we need to talk right now,” she said like warm honey running down, nodding at the lamp beside the door, mouthing “bugged”. She wasn’t worried about modesty, but she was more than worried about something. Her pants hit the floor, but the belly holster with her pistol stayed in her hand. She fished under one breast, and came out with a silencer. I pulled the colt as she jumped on the bed.
She laughed, and I jacked the action as she made the bed rattle. “Nuh-uh, boy, not like that. You just turn over and be quiet, cause if you don’t make a sound momma gonna ride you all the way home,” she said, pointing me to the bathroom door where I could cover the room. She gave me a little shrug and a grin, and tossed off her bra. By the time she had the pillows scrunched up in a line between her legs and a blanket tented over her shoulder on the door side I had the silencer screwed on the colt.
Dee has a pretty chest for a three time momma. Creamy pale skin, a few freckles and a bit baby chewed, but still firm and very pretty. I'm sure she was counting on the freckles to buy time. It would have been dead quite, except for Dee, rocking the bed and doing a damn good job of treating whoever was listening to a very believable soundtrack. She’d gotten to the little gasp stage when the lock turned and the door opened. I think he’d been trying to time it out to let us just get finished before he stepped through to shoot us. Gentlemanly of him, but it didn’t save his life.
I suppose he was willing enough, but he wasn’t very professional, his weapon was pointed at the floor, he didn’t clear the room, he wasn’t tracking his target, and he lost time looking at Dee’s chest. Then he was fool enough to hesitate when she let the blanket fall and flopped forward with her bottom shaking like a leaf, putting Meg Ryan to shame faking an orgasm. About the time Dee squealed OH YEASSSSS!! he finally got around to raising the pistol, when it hit forty five degrees Dee popped a round from beneath the pillow that hit him center forehead between the two I fired mid-body. Everything kept sounding plenty enthusiastic, hell, it was, but not for the reasons those listening thought, and plenty loud enough to cover the silencers. He spun like a top, dead when he hit the floor.
He hit the floor, and Dee rolled off the bed shaking. I wasn’t counting on it being over. He might have been an expendable distraction, there might be a real pro waiting for us to get careless. I cat footed across the room staying low.
I played for the bug while I gathered up Dee’s clothes, making it a point to breath a bit loudly at first. “Momma, that was worth the walk,” I said, tossing the bra, dragging her pants with a toe so I was still behind the bed and facing the door. “Sweet lady, its been a long, long time since anybodies done me that much good.”
Dee was tucking herself into the bra as she answered, sultry playful. “Ummm, come again?”
“Sure. But it’s your turn this time.” She had her pants back on, working on shoes.
“My turn? My turn for what?”
“After all that effort I’m thinking something slow, maybe kind of delicate. I want to work it out so a pretty lady has time for all sorts of sweet dreams on the way.”
”Oh, you’re a romantic,” she all but cooed. “I just knew it.”
“C’mon, don’t tell anyone, please? They always give me so much hell about it.”
“Oh, heavens no,” she said, getting the shirt tails strait, “I wouldn’t even dream of it.” Her voice drifted to soft, and the smile was real. So much for that cover.
Dee got the shirt half buttoned before she went to her knees beside the corpse, fishing in pockets, leaving me by the bed to cover. All she turned was a spare clip and a room key. That he had an official key said he had help. She looked up at me with ‘what now?’ written ear to ear.
I held out one hand and put the other across my lips. When she was standing beside me I pulled her close. Steady on her feet, but shaking like a leaf on the inside. Just like me. I walked her back over by the bed, I wanted the volume to be the same. “Let’s go over there,” I said, pointing to the chair.
“Not here on the bed?”
“Nah, chair works a lot better for what I have in mind.”
“Oh my. A romantic and adventurous as well, I might just take you home with me,” Dee said sweetly.
I turned loose of her, and she started for the chair, me for the door. She was three strides from the chair when I cycled the doorknob and popped two rounds a second apart into the corpse, the silencer dead even with the lamp. Dee is great, she bounced off the wall with a grunt and brought the end table over with a little crash. Before the echoes stopped I’d changed clips. If he was coming it was going to be soon.
I risked a fast peek into the hall. It was empty, but the hall went around a corner not thirty feet from the door. Around that corner is where I’d have been, if I’d been the dead man’s backup. The other hall was fifty feet away, still plenty close for a cover, and no way of telling. I pulled my head back in and thought. While I was thinking I stole his spare clip, he was shooting .45 as well. If I had to meet his back-up I wanted lots of ammo.
The deciding factor was time. We’d been in the room long enough. If the idea was us out of the picture then the county jail worked just as well as dead. We policed the brass and wiped for my prints before we slipped out, Dee leapfrogging half way to the far corner to cover as I closed the door. I took the near hall, when Dee nodded we swung around. Mine was clear, a second later she went to port arms. Clear for the moment. I nodded her on, moving fast to close the distance. I wanted thirty feet between us, not eighty. The staircase at the end of her hall opened two doors from mine. We wouldn’t be staying, but there were things in there I needed. She was waiting at the stairs for me to take point. I was in and out in five minutes, leaving the room empty.
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