Donald Hamilton: The Silencers

LeBaron said, quickly and understandingly, "Not that I don't think you're perfectly capable of taking care of yourself, haha, Mr. Helm, but I probably know Juarez a little better than you do. I'll pick you up at eight."

At eight on the dot, he called me on the house phone. I took the elevator down to the lobby. A short, sturdy, dark young man got off a sofa and came up to me. For all the width of his shoulders, he had a sleek, patent-leather gigolo look. He had dead-white skin and brown eyes. I'm a transplanted Scandinavian myself, and I have an instinctive mistrust of brown-eyed people, which I admit is perfectly ridiculous.

"Mr. Helm?" he said, holding out his hand. "I'm Pat LeBaron. I'm real pleased to meet you in person, after all the dealings we've had by mail and phone."

I murmured something appropriate, took his hand and gave him the little-finger signal we have, the one that confirms recognition and, at the same time, tells the other guy who's running the show. His eyes narrowed slightly at my immediate assertion of authority, but he gave me the proper response. We stood like that for a moment, taking stock.

No brotherly love flowed between us in that moment. It never does. It's only in the movies that people in the business are partners unto death, linked by iron bonds of friendship and loyalty. In real life, even if your assigned assistant is someone you might like a lot, you damn well don't let yourself. Why bother to get fond of a guy, when you may have to sacrifice him ruthlessly within the hour?

There seems to be a theory among modem business organizations that a man has got to love all his fellow workers in order to cooperate with them. Mac, thank God, has never made this mistake of confusing affection with efficiency. He knows he'd never get a bunch of happy, friendly guys to do the kind of work that we're doing, the way it's got to be done.

He pointed out to me once, in this regard, that the Three Musketeers and their pal D'Artagnan were no doubt a swell bunch of fellows, and that the relationship between them was a beautiful thing, but that when you studied the record you came to the sad conclusion that Louis the thirteenth would have got a lot more for his money, militarily speaking, by hiring four surly swordsmen who wouldn't give each other the time of day.

So I didn't worry when LeBaron and I didn't take to each other on sight. He was a trained man; I was a trained man, and we had a job to do. I could always find some other guy to get drunk with, afterwards.

"The car's out front," he said, releasing my hand. "If you don't mind, we'll walk from the bridge. Things sometimes happen to American cars parked in Juarez at night. It's bad enough leaving it on this side."

"Whatever you say, Mr. LeBaron," I said.

"Hell, call me Pat."

"Pat and Mart," I said, as we went outside. "It sounds like a comedy team."

He laughed heartily. "Hey, that's a good one, Mr. Helm… I mean, Matt. I'll have to remember to tell my wife."

He drove us to the bridge in a blue year-old Chevy sedan and parked it in a lot under one of the long sheds that keeps the sun in summertime from turning your car into an oven. Not that Juarez, or El Paso, either, is much of a place to go in summer. Last July, when I was in Juarez, the temperature was a hundred and twenty in the shade.

We both paid our two cents, crossed the bridge and walked through the carnival atmosphere of Avenida Juarez. The short block to the nightclub was darker, quieter and less reassuring. Going into La Fiesta, we were set upon by taxi drivers who wanted to take us elsewhere, now or later.

"Cab number five," one man kept shouting. "Hey, Mister! Cab number five!"

LeBaron nudged me lightly. I glanced surreptitiously towards the yelling driver, a dark individual with a strong Indian cast to his features. Then we were inside.

Even though I'd been there before, years ago, it was something of a shock, after the gaudy front of the building and the sidewalk hubbub, to be standing suddenly on thick carpeting in a place as hushed and elegant as a good Eastern or European restaurant.

"You saw Jesus?" LeBaron asked softly. He pronounced the name Haysoos, in the Spanish manner. "If we get in a jam, he'll try to bail us out."

"Good enough," I said.

He started to say something else, but the headwaiter came up, bowed and showed us to a small table at the side of the room. LeBaron ordered bourbon whiskey, specifying the brand. I'm always tempted to switch bottles on a guy like that, to see if he can really tell the difference. I ordered a Martini and had another on top of it. No more Margaritas for Mr. Matthew Helm from California. He was no longer in an experimental mood. He was fortifying himself for the ordeal ahead with liberal portions of a known tipple.

As far as I could see, I could have ordered milk or prune juice, and it would have made no difference. Nobody around us showed the slightest interest.

"Is anybody watching this show, do you know?" I asked.

"Or are we just performing to an empty theater?"

"We're just doing it for fun," LeBaron said, "unless rye goofed somewhere along the line. In which case we're still just private dick and client."

He had the tough and unreliable look, I thought, of a pool-hall character, and his clothes were flashy enough to point up the resemblance. Well, we can't all look like 0-men. He was supposed to be a private investigator, after all, and it's not the most respectable profession in the world.

"How long have you been using this private-eye cover?"

I asked.

"Three years," he said. "My wife thinks the government check that comes through once a month is a disability pension from the Veterans' Administration. That's the way it's marked. Well, it's none of her damn business. She's glad enough to get the money and spend it, too."

"Sure."

"Before that, I was in the insurance business in San Francisco. Same deal. Piddle along at a lousy little job until the phone rings and a voice tells you to drop everything… Well, you know how it is."

I nodded, although I didn't really know. I'd never had this kind of long-term standby duty. There had been a war on when I joined the organization, and they broke us in fast. The waiter came up. I ordered steak because that was the safe and conservative thing Mr. Helm from California would order tonight. LeBaron ordered steak, too, but he couldn't just say medium rare, he had to make like a gourmet, describing the exact shade of pink he expected to greet his first exploratory incision with the knife.

Waiting for him to finish briefing the waiter, I watched a couple come in and sit near the dance floor. The woman was quite pretty, with soft light-brown hair done in one of those big, loose, haystack arrangements currently fashionable. Her gleaming light-blue cocktail dress was cut very simply and fitted very nicely indeed; the little fur jacket she casually shrugged back was of a pale golden color no animal had ever heard of when I was a kid, but they can get a mink to do the damndest things these days.

In contrast to her smart and attractive appearance, the man looked as if he'd dressed for roping cows-boots, stagged pants, checked gingham shirt, suede sports jacket. He was one of those tall, hipless Texas characters who always act as if they'd mislaid a horse somewhere-that is, until you get them out into the back country and show them a real pony with an honest-to-God saddle on it, and it turns out they were never closer to one than in the nearest jeep.

The two of them showed no more interest in us that did anyone else in the place, but something about the woman kept drawing my attention their way. When LeBaron had completed his gustatory arrangements, I gave him the signal, and after a while he turned around casually and looked. He turned back to me and gave the negative sign: he'd never seen her before. Well, that was all right for him, but I'd been something of a photographer once, for a good many years. Faces had been my business, and this one meant something to me, I wasn't quite sure what.