The Sweeney 02 Page 8

  “Me three years,” Regan said.

  “That’s one poignant topic for discussion over dinner tonight.”

  “Right.”

  She was studying him, weighing him up and adding her own calculations. “What are the chances that someone will walk in with a gun?”

  “High,” Regan said.

  “And what are the chances you’ll stop him before he shoots?”

  “Not easy to calculate. Maybe sixty-forty.”

  “In whose favor?”

  “His,” Regan said flatly.

  “I see.” She spoke softly, almost inaudibly, but Regan realized that she was disguising something, and it was excitement. That intrigued him for two reasons. First, because danger never turned him on. The second reason was more an interrogative—did this beautiful girl just get her imagination stimulated by this stakeout, or was everything else turned on?

  “If you’re thinking about cooking dinner, I’ve looked,” Regan said. “There’s nothing here except tins. We’ll have to get some stuff in.”

  “Fine,” she said. She finished her coffee. “Let’s go to a market. And maybe shop for a gunman.”

  It was cold. Rain was just starting to spot the windshield. He drove slowly and willed himself to relax and enjoy the girl’s company. He began to get confirmation that his suspicions about her being turned on by danger were accurate. She got started on a lot of questions about the stakeout and how he would deal with the situation if an assassin turned up.

  “What happens when somebody starts shooting at you? What do you do?”

  “You want a serious answer to that?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “When somebody shoots at you, either you do or you don’t survive. Then you either advance or run like hell, depending.”

  “On what?”

  “On the accuracy of his fire, and the caliber of his gun— it’s important to know if he has a bigger gun than you.”

  “How can you tell the caliber of his gun?”

  “By the sound. A hundred experts will tell you that I can’t tell the difference between the sound of a thirty-eight and a forty-four—but I can, believe me.”

  “Don says you were shot two days ago.”

  “Right.”

  “What was it like?”

  “Not too pleasant.”

  “It must be a terrible sensation,” she said quietly, “to feel a bullet going into you.”

  “You may find out. I’m warning you; you’re putting yourself in the line of fire.”

  “I get the message.” She was quiet a moment. Then she decided about something. “I don’t think you’re the kind that ends up being killed.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re like Don. As soon as I saw you, I thought, Don likes you because you’re his type.”

  “And what is Cassidy’s type?”

  “Indestructible. There is no known way of penetrating Don’s thick skin, physically or emotionally. Anyone who tries to destroy Don is himself destroyed.”

  “Why d’you say that?”

  “I know him. And I know he’s a winner. I’ve studied him a long time. And the definition of a winner is sometimes a person who succeeds because they make others around them lose.”

  “That sounds like a ten-hour discussion. How long have we got?”

  She told him. She said she’d be staying until eleven that night, and explained that she’d get a cab to the station and take the train back to Manhattan. It was obvious she was laying out the conditions of the visit. And he could understand that she’d want to make it clear that he mustn’t draw wrong conclusions. She was just a friend of Cassidy’s who’d been intrigued enough to meet him. That, on the surface, would be all.

  They ended up in a supermarket in Peekskill. She conceived the idea that they would buy things that had to do with England—English marmalade, English Worcestershire sauce, English muffins, and English roast beef for the main course. The last thing he wanted gastronomically was an ersatz English meal, but he didn’t dampen her enthusiasm.

  Out in the car he found the heater controls and turned everything on full. Cocooned in the warm interior he started the four-mile drive back through the dusk traffic to the bungalow.

  He felt dangerously remote from threat and was aware of it, but still he relaxed. He really liked her. He was grateful to Cassidy for injecting her into a depressing stakeout. He started thinking that he’d like to get involved, sleep with her, but curiously he wouldn’t attempt to force that. He was simply enjoying her company.

  “Tell me about yourself. Where d’you come from?”

  “Country girl. Born and raised in Toilet, Virginia, population one hundred ninety-two—”

  “Tell the truth. You come from around here?”

  “New York.”

  “And what about your husband?”

  “My ex-husband is forty. Works for the Grace Masson corporation. He’s an executive VP. He has a lot of money. I don’t like him but he’s probably nice. There’s nothing else to say about him.”

  “There must be more about yourself.”

  “I live in a place downtown with a girl friend. You must come visit.” She was obviously making a point of steering him away from talk of her. He wondered why.

  “Is Don a close friend?”

  “He turns up from time to time. He spends months running around propagandizing his reputation as the best lay in town. Then he gets it out of his system. Then he’s on the phone to people like me.”

  “What d’you feel about that?”

  “I like him. We were once involved.” She said it gently. “Unfortunately, he’s too much for one female.”

  “You sound sad about it?”

  “Saddest thing I’ve known.” Then she gave a little smile. “However, I’m over it.”

  They got back to the bungalow and ferried four bags of groceries through the rain and in the kitchen door. “I don’t think we’re going to get our walk,” Regan said.

  She headed over to the wall phone. “I have to make a call to my roommate, find out how to cook this beef.”

  “I know,” Regan said. “Less than half an hour a pound in a three-hundred-seventy-five-degree oven.” He took the wrapped beef out and looked at the printed weight. “Two and a half pounds. A little over an hour.”

  “An hour?”

  “Yes.”

  “D’you have a raincoat?” she asked.

  “Yes?”

  “Can’t we live with a little rain? Why don’t we walk?”

  It was nearing dusk. They walked in the long shadows of dark trees through the fine rain, down, following tiny roads, to within a dozen yards of the river. A couple of times they took shortcuts over dripping embankments and Regan helped her with a hand, and finally they ended up arm in arm. At one point they were passing a private driveway when suddenly they were confronted by a huge dog that moved in on them barking hysterically. “Watch this,” Regan shouted to her. “Most dogs are just lousy bluffers. I’m going to put on an expression that shows this dog I intend to eat him...” Regan put on a maniac expression and slowly moved in on the dog. The huge dog moved in on Regan with some awesome growling until Regan was within five feet of it, and then suddenly it turned tail and fled.

  “I did approximately the same thing to a guy in the Plaza Hotel. He shot me.”

  Regan laughed with her laughter.

  They got back to the bungalow and he built a fire and then there were drinks and she started asking him about Scotland Yard and what it was like to be pursuing American criminals in the States. Then the food was cooked and the meal served.

  It was nine o’clock and they were on brandies, and Regan moved close to her on the couch and circled his arm around her.

  She was looking at him, undecided.

  He felt he should talk to her straight. “Why go back tonight? Stay with me. Sleep with me.”

  She shook her head. “Why all that stuff?”

  “Why not?” He couldn’t think of any
other answer.

  “No.”

  “Look.” He put both hands on her shoulders and pulled her around to face him. “You give me a good reason why not. Come on, think of one.”

  “Why not one good reason why we should?”

  “My question came first. Don’t dodge.”

  Her eyes were cold, but thoughtful. And then her expression slowly altered. She shrugged, and she changed the subject. But he realized that somehow she had made up her mind, reached an unspoken agreement with him to stay.

  Night settled black over the Hudson. No stars, and no streetlights visible from the front bedroom of the bungalow aerie. The wind rising to rustle the trees and bang the screens on the outside doors. He relaxed into a feeling of great security and inviolability. He should feel threatened by the unknown forces out there that had pursued him since his arrival in New York. So why didn’t he? Why wasn’t he questioning minutely everything that was happening to him, everything to do with the investigation, Cassidy and his influence, and the appearance at Croton of this beautiful girl?

  He couldn’t remember anyone quite as good as her in bed. It was strange for Regan—there was a girl he’d known years ago who was a faint echo of Christa—both totally different from the other fifty girls. He had assumed the mores had changed. He had assumed that the ambivalence of the sex act of his marriage—was he screwing his wife, or was she simply screwing herself on him?—was the modern way. Now in a stakeout bungalow near New York, through a long haul of their lovemaking, he remembered that this was how it could be, not the cold comfort of nights between the thighs of his wife but something generous, and packaged like an expensive gift, and given.

  She had been sitting on him, straddling him, arcing her body back and forth. Now she slowly came down on his chest, complete, within seconds of the earthquake that shook his limbs. He turned her aside and cradled her head in his arms, then lay there, content, contemplating disparate thoughts. The bedroom ceiling, the pattern of its paper, the girl, her lovely body, the possibilities of a serious involvement between a London cop and someone who lived in New York. The position of Cassidy—wasn’t he insane to have ever let go of a girl like this? This kind of girl was what men murdered their wives for—murdered, mutilated, and stuffed down the waste disposal.

  “What are you thinking?” Her voice was dry and low, difficult to understand.

  “Nothing. Nothing important.” He had been aware that her eyes, still dewy and moist, had been studying him in the half light from the open door to the hall.

  “Bastard, Jack Regan,” she said gently. “When I decided to come here, I promised myself, whatever happened, I wouldn’t end up in bed with you.”

  He couldn’t think of an adequate answer. “I’m glad you did.”

  He was quiet a moment. “Listen,” he said eventually. “Be honest with me. There’s no ulterior motive in your coming here, right? You’re not part of some weird scheme of Cassidy’s to check me out? You are who you say you are?”

  “I don’t know what you could possibly mean by ‘some scheme of Cassidy’s.’ But what I’ve said about me is the truth.”

  He decided he couldn’t see any reason why it shouldn’t be.

  “Hey you,” she said. “I want to make love again.”

  He smiled. “Shortly.”

  Her right hand moved slowly down between his legs. “How long does it take you to recover?” she asked softly.

  He looked at her. “Half an hour. I bet you can’t do anything about that.”

  He lost his bet.

  Then it was ten o’clock. He’d been unaware of the passage of hours, just savoring the moments.

  “I have a train to catch,” she said.

  “Come on. Don’t leave now.”

  The room was cold, and their bed warm and snug. He knew that he’d require a great deal of resolution to get up.

  “I told you I was taking a train. Okay?” Her voice firm. He knew she meant it.

  He got up and got dressed with her.

  Cassidy phoned about twenty minutes later. Regan was struck by the fact that he sounded sober. “I talked to Ciales. He was at the bungalow six hours today. Also you were plugged into the Peekskill Police with that video camera. Sad to say, no sign of any interest in you up there. Tomorrow back to the Alex Hotel. Then repeat the trip back to Croton, just in case any interested party lost you the first trip. How’s Christa?” He had said it all in one continuous statement.

  “She’s fine,” Regan said, looking across the disarranged bed to Christa, who was dressing. “She says she has to go back to town. Don, tomorrow I want to talk about whether this stakeout’s the best way. It does seem an effective way of isolating me. It’s obvious the answer’s in New York City—”

  Cassidy cut across him. “Put Christa on her train. Get some sleep. I’ll be there first thing tomorrow morning. You’ll be under surveillance tonight.”

  The phone went dead. Regan replaced his phone.

  “What did he say?” she asked.

  “He says no snoopers. The fish didn’t bite.”

  He got up and went across to her and sat down on the couch next to her. “Why are you going back to New York tonight?”

  “Jack, I have no intentions of getting hung up on you, without a certain amount of thought first. One can get as messed up by some visiting fireman as by a five-year romance. Tomorrow we’ll talk on the phone.”

  Fifteen minutes later they closed the front door and went down the steps and across to the Pontiac. It was so pitch dark Regan had difficulty navigating her around the car and finding the door. Then he moved around, found his door, got in, fumbled around, and tried to find the headlights by pushing and flicking all the switches on the dashboard. Like most convertibles there was no interior light. Finally he pulled a switch and the four brights came on. His hand reached up to adjust the interior mirror. And something happened—a sequence of three thoughts flashed through his mind in less than three seconds. The first thought was that he had been out this afternoon and had adjusted the interior mirror to his correct angle. The second thought was that the only way it could have subsequently become unadjusted was by somebody knocking against it. The third thought was that this somebody was neither Christa, whom he’d witnessed sitting into the car carefully, nor himself. So that meant somebody else had been in this car since he’d driven it this afternoon.

  He felt the cold circle of metal push into the back of his neck just as he reacted to Christa’s frightened intake of breath.

  The voice of the man who sat in the dark in the backseat and held the gun was low and Italian-accented. “Mister. Any problems I blow your fucking head off...”

  The man’s left hand came slowly over Regan’s shoulder and down, and Regan heard heavy breathing close to his ear as the guy probed inside his jacket and pulled out the Magnum. The man sat back holding both guns. “Drive,” he said.

  Regan slowly leaned forward and switched on the headlights. Then he adjusted the mirror and checked. There was enough light reflected from the brights to identify the man on the rear seat—it was the guy who had attempted to murder him at the Plaza Hotel. Regan pushed the mirror around to just off its correct position, and again slowly—he knew a sudden movement could be fatal—leaned forward and turned the ignition key, pulled the shift into reverse, and backed out and around to face the other way. He put the shift into second and gently accelerated forward.

  “At the bottom make a right,” the man said heavily.

  Regan’s eyes moved to the right to look at Christa, sitting rigid and obviously frightened alongside him. She was looking at him. He tried to give her a reassuring look, although he certainly didn’t feel confidence about anything at the moment. He eased the big car’s speed up to thirty on the narrow lane, down and past the lower bungalow toward the road. His feeling was that if the car was doing thirty the raglan-coated man wouldn’t shoot him and risk personal injury as the driverless car went out of control.

  “Slow. Keep below twe
nty, mister. Turn right now.”

  Regan eased the Pontiac out of the bungalow’s hidden drive and braked at the road edge.

  Traffic was heavying up, a string necklace of yellow lights heading up the damp macadam. Regan looked for a gap and turned sharp right and joined the stream. He looked up at the interior mirror hoping against what he knew were minimal odds that somehow some cop car would be stationed back there and would suddenly materialize.

  “Now talk, mister,” the large man ordered. “I ask you questions. I test you. Some I know the answers to, some I don’t. If you lie about a question I know the answer to, I shoot your fucking heads off, you and the girl. You get me?”