Don Pendleton - Blood Testament

She parked the Honda, locked it and made her way among the condominiums that were arranged like scattered children's blocks around a common green and swimming pool. DeVries was on the ground floor, separated from the pool by thirty yards of lawn. She punched the bell, and he was there before the tinny echo of the chimes had died away, all smiles, inviting her inside. She realized he had been waiting, watching for her since she called him on the phone, and something sour settled in her throat.

Too eager.

"Come on in." He took her hand and pumped it energetically. "DeVries. Just call me Erskine."

"Susan Landry."

She distrusted him at once, the plastic smile, the way his eyes slid over her like groping hands. In any other circumstances she would not have spent another moment in his company, but this was business. He had information that she needed, and he would not be the first man who had undressed her with his eyes.

"Sit down." He gestured toward a brace of chairs that clearly were designed for decoration more than comfort. Susan settled into one of them. "You like a drink? I'm having Scotch."

"No. Thank you."

"Hey, I'm easy."

I'll just bet you are, she thought, but kept it to herself and waited while he poured a double, settling in the chair that matched her own and scooting closer, so that their knees were almost touching. She resisted an instinctive urge to pull away.

"So, shoot."

She tried to meet his eyes, but they were fastened on her chest and finally she gave it up, referring to her notebook and a list of questions she had jotted down in preparation for the interview.

"As I explained before, I'm interested in background information on the case against Brognola. Assuming that there is a case."

His eyes quit mauling her just long enough to meet her gaze, a flicker of uneasiness behind the washed-out gray, and then they dropped back to her hemline, inching up her thigh.

"Oh, there's a case, all right." He sounded cocky, certain of himself. "We've got the bas... We've got him cold."

"And what, precisely, will he be accused of?"

"Well, they haven't drawn the charges yet. Somebody might decide to let him bargain down. From what I've seen, he's in the bag for multiples on bribery, releasing classified material, consorting, perjury, the works."

"As far as evidence..."

"We've got it up the ying-yang, babe. The guy is very photogenic, if you get my drift."

"I wish there was some way..."

"For you to see it? Well, I really oughta make some calls, but what the hell? I've got some things you might be interested in right here."

He jerked a thumb across his shoulder toward what had to be the bedroom, and his smile was crooked, sloppy from the liquor, hungry like his eyes. Too eager. It was not supposed to be this way, and she could feel her hackles rising, the alarm bells going off inside her skull.

"You wanna come with me?.."

Her smile was ice.

"I'll wait."

"Hey, suit yourself."

She kept the frozen smile in place while he unfolded from the chair and walked toward the bedroom. As far as he could tell, Susan wryly thought, he had her hooked, and it was time to reel her in. She wondered why the men behind DeVries had not invested time in acting lessons for their star performer. Or was he precisely what he seemed to be: a horny jerk prepared to barter information for an hour's dalliance?

She put the second option out of mind. It was too pat, a tired cliche that probably could still be found in action anywhere outside official Washington. The penalties for whistle-blowers were increasingly severe, and no one but an idiot would risk his job, his freedom, on the off-chance of an unexpected one-night stand. Perhaps if she had known DeVries for weeks or months, if she had implied availability as her part of a working contract...

No. The guy was obviously hoping for a shot, but he was far from stupid. Still, a third alternative was nagging at her. Suppose DeVries was acting on his own, assuming that his sponsors would appreciate some free publicity to nudge Brognola, turn the heat up. There was just a chance DeVries might use his own initiative, and hope for something on the side.

He reappeared a moment later, carrying two slim manila envelopes. Before he sat, she noticed that he nudged his chair some inches closer to her own. Without a word he opened one of the manila envelopes and handed her a stack of glossy eight-by-tens.

"We never could've tagged him this way two, three years ago," he said. "You wanna know the truth, I think the guy is getting senile."

Silently she scanned the photographs. Each one depicted Hal Brognola in the company of men she didn't recognize. One face recurred in half a dozen of the shots, and Susan memorized it: wavy hair, thick brows and brooding, deep-set eyes, a classic Roman nose. The other men were nondescript.

"Okay." She could not let DeVries know that the faces held no meaning for her. She would play it out and take the information as it came.

"Okay? That's it?" He shook his head and tapped an index finger on the Roman nose. "This guy's a major power with the Family in Baltimore. That ring a bell?"

DeVries was shuffling through the stack of photographs and ticking off credentials for the men who had been captured with Brognola in the camera's eye. A shooter from Toledo. Numbers bankers from Manhattan. A Chicago politician. Cocaine cowboys from Miami. A Las Vegas businessman whose interests ranged from legal gambling to child pornography.

The list went on, and Susan Landry felt a numbness spreading from her stomach, threatening to paralyze her limbs. Could she have been so radically, completely wrong about Brognola? Had the man been fooling everyone for years? She stopped herself before the train of thought could gather perilous momentum. There were still too many things that could not be explained away: Brognola's record of arrests, investigations that had rocked the syndicate and packed its leaders off to prison, his relationship with Bolan in another sort of war against the Mob. It seemed impossible, and yet... "When were these taken?"

"We've been dogging him full-time the past three months. That's ninety days of around-the-clock surveillance. I don't even wanna think about the deals that he was pulling off before we got our tip."

"What kind of tip?"

DeVries put on a thoughtful frown. "I really can't go into that, at least until we get indictments. If you call me in a week or two..."

She didn't take the bait. "What's in the other envelope?"

"Oh, this?" He passed it over. "There, you've got the phone log on Brognola's private line. The past three months, he's gotten a dozen calls from Mr. Baltimore alone, and there's a couple dozen others from around the country. All from members or confirmed associates of Cosa Nostra Families."

She was unfastening the envelope, betrayed by fingers that had suddenly begun to tremble, when the doorbell sounded, causing her to jump.

"Relax," he said, grinning. "I'll lose whoever, and we'll have a drink, okay?"

He was away before she had a chance to veto the suggestion, and she concentrated on the list of numbers in her hand. The digits held no meaning for her; she would have to copy them and check them on her own, but she was worried, afraid that any further digging might reveal that she had been mistaken in her judgment of Brognola. And if she had so misjudged the man from Justice, then what else, who else, had she been wrong about? Was anyone precisely what he seemed in Washington?

The gunshots were explosive, thunderous, reverberating through the narrow corridor and bringing Susan to her feet, the photographs and printouts spilling from her hands. DeVries lurched through the doorway, panting, breathless, with an automatic pistol in his fist.