Donald Hamilton: The Ravagers

I took a long chance and said, "Actually, I hate the little creeps, Mrs. Drilling, but I have a job to do."

She was silent behind the wire mesh, and I decided I'd fluffed it. The earnest, humorless approach would have been better. Then I heard a reluctant laugh and the screen door swung open. I got no real invitation, but she moved aside when I put my foot on the folding metal step, and she closed both doors behind me when I had entered the trailer.

It was a compact little portable house with a double bed set crosswise at one end, facing a sort of dinette at the other, which could presumably also be converted to sleeping purposes. A counter to starboard, with stove and sink and associated cupboards, was balanced by a closet, butane space heater, and john to port. All the comforts of home were there, packed about as tightly as could be managed. The floor was a narrow trail of linoleum through the forest of birch plywood.

The kid, Penny, was sitting on the bed at the far end, wiping rain from her glasses. Without them, her small face had an innocent, vulnerable look. Once the dental remodeling was completed, I decided, she might grow into a reasonably pretty girl. She'd shed her raincoat, which left her dressed in a white shirt and one of the little divided skirts popular that year, that looked like the riding skirt of a movie cowgirl, sawed off above the knees. Neither skirt nor shirt was particularly fresh-looking, but then she was camping out after a fashion, and fifteen is young for sartorial perfection.

I said to her, "I didn't mean to imply that you're a creep, honey. I just had to say something to shake your ma up a bit."

Penny gave me a shy glance and showed me a flash of stainless steel in a wary, meaningless smile. Having mended my fences there, I hoped, I turned at last to look at the woman.

It was kind of a shock. I mean, the buildup had been terrific. This was the woman who'd betrayed her husband with a man of unsavory political associations, who'd stolen for him documents, as she thought, of national importance, and who-it was still perfectly possible-might well have sloshed concentrated sulfuric acid into another man's face and, when he was helpless, killed him. It was only natural to expect a pretty far-out female, either an unpredictable featherweight neurotic or a dark figure of mystery and evil- something on the order of a vampire lady with slanting eyes and a sinister smile.

Instead there was just a tallish, nicely proportioned, healthy-looking, pretty woman with, so help me, freckles. I mean, real, all-over freckles, not just a faint, fashionable dusting across the bridge of the nose. Her hair was dark brown with reddish glints, and her face… well, I've already said she was pretty. This is considered a crime in some quarters, where a woman is either beautiful or she's nothing.

Genevieve Drilling wasn't beautiful. You didn't want to hang her on a wall and admire her as a work of art. She was just a damn pretty woman, and you wanted to say something to make her smile, for a start. Once you got her smiling at you, other ideas would doubtless occur to you unless, of course, your heart was set on a vision of pure and perfect loveliness-or unless you were, as I was supposed to be, a dedicated agent whose singleminded devotion to duty was impervious to temptations of any kind.

Well, I didn't have her smiling at me yet, far from it. She was watching me with cool dislike.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"David P. Clevenger, ma'am," I said. "The P stands for Prescott, but I don't use it much."

"Indeed?" she said. "That's very interesting. What do you do, Mr. Prescott Clevenger? To be specific, what are you doing here? Besides molesting young girls, I mean."

I glanced around. "I didn't lest a single mo, did I honey? All I did was tell you I had a message from your pa. Isn't that right?"

The kid on the bed didn't say anything. She just put her glasses back on her small nose so she could see me clearly. Genevieve Drilling said, "We're not interested in messages from my husband."

I said, "I hear you say it, ma'am. I don't hear her."

The woman's gray-green eyes narrowed. "You sound as if you thought I was intimidating… Penny's here of her own free will, aren't you, darling? She's made her choice. You can tell my husband that."

I said, "I can remember some choices I made in my teens, that I'm damn glad now were overruled by higher authority."

Genevieve Drilling said, "Penny and I understand each other. You go right ahead and deliver my husband's message, Mr. Clevenger, if it will reassure you. I'm surprised he'd allow himself to be distracted from his work long enough to send one, I really am. Both Penny and I were under the distinct impression he'd forgotten that we existed. Well, what does he want?"

"He wants her," I said.

I was aware of the kid stirring slightly behind me. I didn't look that way. I had no idea what Dr. Herbert Drilling really wanted. Maybe children, even his own, just bored him. He sounded as if he might be that kind of a man.

"Just her?" Genevieve said challengingly. "Not me?"

"Nothing was said about you, ma'am."

"Well, that figures," she said dryly. "He always did consider me the only mistake of an otherwise perfectly planned life. Is that all he wants?"

I glanced at her innocently. "Probably not, ma'am, but that's all of his wants I'm concerned with. I gather the U.S. government is attending to some other desires of Dr. Drilling's. That part of it is out of my jurisdiction."

She was watching me closely. "Then you do not represent the U.S. government, Mr. Clevenger?"

"Not me," I said. "I'm a private investigator from Denver, Colorado. We were recommended to your husband by another firm that already had an operative on the job."

She frowned. "You mean the man who calls himself Michael Green? I thought…" She checked herself and was silent.

I said, "That's the man. Mike Green."

She asked, "Why would Mr. Green's detective agency, if that's what he really worked for, recommend a rival firm? Don't tell me the confident, handsome Mr. Green needs help to do a simple job like deceiving a woman?"

I said, "Mike needs plenty of help, ma'am, but none of it's going to do him much good. He's dead. He was murdered last night."

I heard the kid behind me gasp. The woman before me changed expression, started to speak, and stopped. At last she said flatly, "I don't believe you! Murdered?"

"It's in the paper," I said. "Of course they don't say murder. They say suicide." I glanced around. "Duck out to my car and get the newspaper from the back seat, will you, honey?"

"You stay right there, Penny!" snapped her mother. She licked her lips. "The paper says suicide but you say murder, Mr. Clevenger?"

I said, "Mike would never have killed himself, ma'am. What, deprive all the women of the world of his fascinating personality? He'd never have been so cruel."

A faint smile touched the woman's lips briefly. "At least you're telling the truth in one respect. Obviously you did know Mr. Green." She hesitated. "Does anybody… is it known who killed him?"

"I wouldn't know, ma'am. I just read the papers. The police may have their own theories, but as a private op I prefer not to consult with them when I don't have to."

"And why are you telling me this?"

I said, "Hell, you asked me. Excuse me. Didn't mean to swear in front of ladies. But you asked me why I was here. I'm taking Mike's place."

"I see."

"Mike was trying to be subtle, I guess, pretending to be an insurance man on vacation or something. Well, I'm not the subtle type of guy, ma'am. Cards on the table, that's me."

"And you have come about Penny? And that was what Mr. Green was after all the time? I wondered what he had in mind."

I said, "Yes, ma'am. Dr. Drilling would have come himself, I'm told, but apparently the government isn't encouraging him to take any long trips right now, particularly out of the country, so he had to hire somebody to come for him."