Дональд Уэстлейк - The Spy in the Ointment

At any rate, I knew C was there and I knew he could hear me, so I didn’t let the lack of response dishearten me. “I want an FBI man,” I said. “I want to report a terrorist plot. You send one up here.”

C still didn’t answer me. I waited a few seconds, repeated, “Send one up,” and put the phone down. “There,” I said. “That ought to do it.”

Angela said, “Won’t it make them mad, you calling them that way?”

“He’s the handiest FBI man I know,” I said.

“Oh. Okay.” She smiled. “Now,” she said, rubbing her hands together, “about that machine.”

“Worry about it later,” I said. “Forget about it. Ignore it.”

Because, on top of everything else, I didn’t want to be reminded of the infuriating relationship between Angela, myself, and that abominable mimeograph. Angela, it seems, is a natural mechanic, a born fixer of every imaginable kind of machine. She’s forever tinkering under the hood of her Mercedes Benz, she takes radios apart and puts them back together again, and she is the only one on earth who can get my mimeograph to quit fooling around and go to work. How exasperating that can be!

And particularly now, when the whole world seemed to be conspiring to make me feel inadequate. So, in a desperate attempt to distract her, change the subject, I said, “Tell me about your day. What’s your old man been up to?”

But nothing would help. “Later,” she said. “Get my smock,” she said, and pulled her yellow sweater off over her head.

What a girl. Beneath that canary-yellow sweater she was wearing a Chinese-red bra. Now, it is impossible to stay irritated with a girl who, beneath her canary-yellow sweater, would wear a Chinese-red bra. Such a girl can’t be all bad.

I shrugged helplessly, said, “Whatever you say,” and went over to the closet by the front door to get her smock.

Actually, it wasn’t a smock at all. It had started life as a muu-muu, in an orange and pink flower pattern à la Gauguin, but was so spattered with various colors of ink by now that it looked like a pop-art reject. I brought this catastrophe back to Angela, who wriggled into it, which gave me ideas. “Listen,” I said. “Why don’t I open the bed?”

“Later,” she said. “Where’s the tools?”

“In with the machine. Why not do that later? Look, I’ll open the bed.”

“After the FBI man comes,” she said, and went into the bedroom.

“Come out of that bedroom!” I shouted. “I want sex!”

“Later later later,” she said coolly, and tools began to clatter.

Damn girl.

He arrived about half an hour later, a young guy who wasn’t really an FBI man yet. There were traces of his former existence still showing; an Adam’s apple, a tendency to smile shyly at beautiful women (Angela), a voice that couldn’t hold a monotone. It looked as though they’d sent me the office boy, which I considered something of an insult.

One thing he did know: don’t give your right name. Call him D.

He came in, at my invitation, and stood there looking uncomfortable. “Well, now,” he said, and stared at me glassily.

I didn’t get it at first, but then I realized he needed my help. He couldn’t admit he’d come here in response to my request for someone, because my request for someone had gone through C, whose existence D could not officially admit. So all he could do was walk into the apartment, smile shyly at Angela, bobble his Adam’s apple at me, and wait for me to break the ice.

If it had been A or B, those hard-noses, I’d have made him stew a while in his own juice, but this poor shnook had troubles enough without me, so I said, “Well, it’s a good thing you happened to drop around.”

With obvious relief he relaxed and said, “It is?”

“It certainly is,” I said, milking my part. “It just so happens I have something to report. Don’t I, Angela?”

“That’s right,” she said seriously, and nodded at D. She was wearing the smock still, with the black stretch pants and black boots showing at the bottom. Her hair was all fluffy around her head and she had a very artistic streak of black ink across her left cheek. Despite the smock, she looked very sexy. I don’t know about D, but I was prepared at that moment to believe anything Angela might want to tell me.

D was enough of an FBI man to have a notebook. Out it came now, plus the ballpoint pen. He said, “Well?”

“This afternoon,” I told him, “I had a visitor, a Mr. Mortimer Eustaly. At least, that’s what he called himself. He’d come here by mistake, thinking the Citizens’ Independence Union, the organization I head, was a terrorist-type group, which we are not. We’re pacifists. Anyway, he told me he was—”

“Mr. Raxford,” said D. He’d stopped writing a sentence or two before. He said, somewhat sadly, “I’m surprised at you, Mr. Raxford.”

I looked at Angela, whose face was unusually blank, then turned back to. D and said, “Surprised at me? What do you mean, surprised at me?”

“The boys at the office,” he said, “told me you were going to be bringing up this Eustaly business again, but I said no. I said I’d read your dossier, and I’d been on assignment to you three or four times, and you just weren’t a practical-joker type. You weren’t one of those smart alecks who writes ‘Screw the FBI’ on a piece of paper, then rips the paper into little pieces and throws it in the wastebasket, knowing how much work you’re going to make us, putting that piece of paper back together again. You’ve never been that type, Mr. Raxford, you’ve always been a gentleman, a serious and earnest citizen, and even if you were a dangerous influence you were never nasty about it, if you know what I mean, so I absolutely refused to believe it was going to be this Eustaly business again. That’s why I came over here, Mr. Raxford, and believe me my face is going to be red when I go back to HQ. You’ve spoiled my illusions, Mr. Raxford.”

I appealed silently to Angela for help, and she said to D, “But it’s true, it really is. This man Mr. Eustaly is a terrorist and he’s going to blow things up.”

D turned disillusioned eyes on her and said, “Did Eustaly tell you so, miss? Did you talk to him yourself, and did he tell you he was a terrorist and he was going to blow things up?”

“Well, gee whiz,” Angela said, “ Gene told me.”

“You mean Mr. Raxford, here.”

“Well, yes .”

D sighed. “Some people,” he said, “will go to any lengths for a joke.”

“It isn’t a joke,” I said. “I have reason to believe this man Eustaly plans to murder me. I want you people to stop him and all his groups. I want police protection, that’s what I want.”

D said, “Murder you, Mr. Raxford? Why?”

“Because I know too much.”

“You didn’t mention that this afternoon when you talked to the other two agents.”

“I didn’t realize it then. But I’ve been thinking over my conversation with Eustaly, and it seems—”

“Please stop it, Mr. Raxford,” D asked me. Surprisingly polite for an FBI man. “Don’t carry this thing on any more,” he said. “We questioned Mr. Eustaly, and he told us what he was doing up here.”

“He did?”

“He sells mimeograph equipment, Mr. Raxford. He showed us his card.”

“Card,” I said, and began to look around the room. “I’ll show you a card.”

“He came up here,” D went inexorably on, “to attempt to sell you equipment for your mimeograph machine. From the ink on the young lady here and yourself, Mr. Raxford, I venture to say you have a mimeograph machine, have you not?”

“Well, of course I do,” I said. “Now, where did I put that card?”