Donald Hamilton - The Wrecking Crew

"I brought your car," she said. "Those old Volvos w not much good, are they?"

"It runs," I said. "What do you expect for thirty crowi a day, a Mercedes 300SL?"

"Oh, you know sports cars?" she asked. "In Stockholm I have a Jaguar, from Britain. It is very handsome and exciting. I also have a little Lambretta which is much fun. That is a motor scooter, you know."

I said, "Yes. I know."

She laughed. "I am still trying to educate you, aren't I? Well, I must go."

"I'll drive you," I said.

"Oh, no. That is why I came, for the walk back. I love walking, and it is such a fine day."

"It looks kind of gray and windy to me."

"Yes," she said. "Those are the best."

So she was one of the rain-in-the-face kids. Well, she'd outgrow it; she had plenty of time. I said, "That's a matter of taste. Like walking."

"You say you like hunting. If you hunt, you must walk."

"I'll walk if I can't get a horse or a jeep," I said. "I don't mind a little hike, if there's a chance of a shot at the end of it. But not just for the sake of hiking."

She laughed again. "You Americans! Everything must show a profit, even walking… Good morning, Mrs. Taylor."

Lou had come down the stairs, in her working uniform of skirt and sweater and trench coat. Beside the taller, younger Swedish girl in her outdoor clothes, she looked surprisingly slight, almost fragile, although I had good reason to know that she didn't break easily. The thought, for some reason, was a little embarrassing at the moment. I saw the kid look from Lou to me and back again. She was young, but not that young; she saw something and understood it. I guess it usually shows, except on the really hardened sinners, which we were not. When Elin spoke again, there was noticeable stiffness in her voice.

"I was just leaving, Mrs. Taylor," she said. "Good-bye, Herr Helm. Your car is in the parking space across the street."

We watched her go out the door into the gray fall morn'- ing. The wind caught her hair as she came outside, and she brushed it out of her face, and tossed it back with a shake of her head, and went out of sight with the efficient, no nonsense stride of the practiced foot traveler, that you hardly ever see in America nowadays. Come to that, America never was much of a country for walkers and runners, at least after the frontier hit the Great Plains. There was just too damn much ground to cover efficiently on foot. Most of the old-timers sensibly preferred to ride. There are some real fancy foot pilgrimages on record, but if you check closely you'll find that in almost every case they start with a horse getting killed or stolen. Walking for fun is strictly a European custom.

"Who is that overgrown child?" Lou asked as we went on into the dining room. "I never got her name straight last night."

"Child yourself, honey bunch," I said. "From my advanced age, twenty-two doesn't look much younger than twenty-six."

"Well, you ought to know, grandpa," sh amp; said, smiling. "You were right in there looking, at dinner last night."

I seated her at a table by a window. "My interest was purely aesthetic," I said firmly. "I was admiring her as a photographer. You must admit she's so beautiful it hurts."

"Beautiful!" Lou was shocked. "That gawky-" She stopped abruptly. "Yes, I see what you mean. Although I don't go for the nature-girl type myself." She grimaced. "You hear about Sweden being such an immoral country; how do they manage to grow up with that damn dewy look? I never looked like that, and I can tell you, I was innocent as hell practically to the day I married."

"Practically?" I said.

She smiled at me across the table. "Don't be nosy. If you must know, Hal and I anticipated the ceremony slightly. As he put it, you wouldn't buy a car without driving it around the block, would you?".

"Nice, diplomatic Hal," I murmured.

She said, "Oh, I didn't mind. I… learned a lot from Hal. He was pretty conceited, sometimes, and he couldn't always be bothered with being kind, but we both knew he needed me. He was a strange person, very brilliant, but temperamental and erratic. Sometimes I wondered if.

you know, I wasn't quite sure that I really meant anything to him except, well, a convenience. But you can forgive a man a great many things, Matt, when the last thing he does, with a machine gun spitting in his face, is to turn and do his best to protect you with his body. He saved my life, remember that."

She was very intent, very serious, and I knew she was trying to tell me something important. "I'll remember it," I said. "And I'll make no more derogatory remarks about Mr. Taylor. Okay?"

Lou smiled quickly. "I didn't mean to sound as if.

Well, maybe I did." She brought out her long cigarette holder, loaded it, and applied a match before I could act like a gentleman. "Now," she said, "you tell me about your wife and we'll have all that out of the way."

I glanced at her. "I never told you I had a wife."

"I know you didn't, darling. It was very deceitful of

– you, but I already had the information. You have a wife and three children, two boys and a girl. Your wife is getting a divorce in Reno on the grounds of mental cruelty, after fifteen years of marriage. It certainly took her a long time to discover that you're a brute."

I said, "Beth is a nice, sweet, bright, somewhat inhibited New England girl. She thinks wars are fought by brave men in handsome uniforms, engaging each other in open combat according to the rules of civilized warfare and good sportsmanship. Even so, she thinks it's dreadful. She was very glad that I'd spent the war behind a desk in a public information office and hadn't killed anybody. That was the story I told around, under orders. When she learned it wasn't the truth, she couldn't make the adjustment. I wasn't the same person; I wasn't the man she'd married. I wasn't even anybody she'd want to marry. There was nothing left but to call it a day." I glanced out the window, and saw with relief that our transportation was outside. The conversation had been getting slightly personal. "Finish up your coffee quick," I said. "Our escort is waiting."

I used more color on the job today because of the bad light. Black-and-white depends largely on highlights and shadows, not only for effects, but even for sharp details. On a cloudy day, it's hard to get useful black-and-white shots of intricate industrial subjects, particularly with a small camera that, necessarily, doesn't yield the ultimate in sharpness. Color, on the other hand, is almost easier to handle on a cloudy day than otherwise, since it doesn't tolerate or require strong contrasts of light and shade. With color, the colors themselves provide the necessary contrasts. If you don't insist on gaudiness, you can get some wonderful color stuff under lousy weather conditions.

We had a little rain, but not enough to drive us to cover; and we finished up around two o'clock without having stopped to eat. I spent the ride back to town worrying about the tipping problem, and settled by shaking hands with Lindstrцm, our young guide, and thanking him for all his trouble. Then I slipped the middle-aged driver five crowns, the equivalent of a buck, which didn't seem to excite him tremendously, but he didn't throw it away, either.

"Let's get something to eat uptown," I said to Lou after we'd hauled my stuff up the stairs. "I'm getting kind of tired of the hotel food."

"All right," she said, "just give me a couple of minutes to change my socks and scrape the mud off my shoes."

I went into my room to wash up-also to perform my little switch routine with the day's films. Then I went out to the car. I never like to drive a car that's been standing around, while I'm on a job, without first giving it a quick inspection, and this one had spent the night far from home.