Donald Hamilton: Murderers Row

I drew a long breath. "Yes, sir," I said. "I understand."

WAITING IN THE motel room, I did not think about this. It wasn't something you'd pick to while away the lonely minutes, and it was Jean's problem, anyway.

Instead, I glanced at the wrinkled paper to pass the time, and learned that a hurricane named Eloise was giving Florida a tough time; it had been expected when I came through from Cuba. The paper didn't say how far north it might be felt. Well, bad weather is usually an advantage, if anything, in our line of work; besides, I hoped to be through with the job long before the storm had time to work its way up the coast-through, and on my way to Texas.

I tossed the paper aside and thought about Gail Hendricks. To be sure, our date had been very tentative-as tentative as the leave that had been promised me after the last assignment-but I'd made the mistake of wiring that things looked promising when I first hit Washington, and now I'd had to wire again. She wasn't any Penelope to wait years for her Ulysses…

I heard my people coming well before they reached the door. There were two of them, as I'd been told there would be. The man was delivering Jean right on the dot of ten-thirty, as he was supposed to. She was giving him a loud, drunken argument, as she was supposed to. They paused outside long enough to let me rise and take shelter in the bathroom. Then the door opened.

"I'm all right, I tell you!" Jean was protesting. Her voice was slurred. "Won't you please, please, please leave me the hell alone? The way you hang around watching me, anybody'd think I was sick or something-or that somebody didn't trust me!"

The man sounded reasonably sober. He had a young, embarrassed voice. "It's not that, Jean. It's just, well, I'm supposed to stick around and, well, help you through this phase."

"Just because some snoop saw me taking a little drinkie, I've got to have a guardian!" she complained. "What's the matter, is somebody afraid I'm going to talk too much, or something? What I do to my liver is my own damn business!"

"Please, Jean. Not so loud. Here, let me-"

"Keep your cotton-picking hands off me!" Her footsteps came across the room unsteadily. I heard the bottle rattle against the glass as she poured herself a drink. "Not so loud!" she mimicked. "You're always telling me not so loud! Don't drink so much, don't talk so loud. Like a nice little boy saying please Mama don't make another scene. How old are you, anyway, honey? I swear you make me feel like Mrs. Methuselah!"

The young male voice was stiffly self-conscious. "I don't really think my age is pertinent to the discussion."

"Pertinent!" She laughed. "Well, I'll talk as loud as I damn please, hear? And I'll talk about what I please! I'll even talk about- Do you know what folks in the know call that house in Washington we operate out of? They call it Murderers' Row, that's what they call it, and a damn good name, too! But we're not supposed to talk about that, are we? Not even in whispers, heavens no! We're not supposed to talk about the house, and if we go there, we can't drive straight to the door even if it's raining. Oh, no, we've got to get out blocks away and make sure nobody's following-"

"Please, Jean' This room hasn't been checked. It may be wired for all we know!"

She paid him no attention. "-and we mustn't ever, ever tell anybody what we really do, not on your life! And of course we mustn't say a word about the horrible gray man who sits in that upstairs office in front of that bright window and sends us out to-no, I won't shut up! If people only knew the dreadful things that are done in the name of peace and democracy! Horrible things!"

I heard her gulp at her drink. The man said hastily, "All right, Jean. All right. We'll talk about it when you're not

– when you're feeling better. I'll be going now, but I'll be right next door as soon as I've had a cup of coffee. Call me if you need me. Remember, we're all trying to help you. Just don't make it too hard for us."

"If thatsh a threat," she said thickly, "if that's a threat, to hell with you, honey! You don't scare me a bit. You don't scare me one little bitty bit, hear?"

"I didn't mean-good night, Jean." He seemed to hesitate. "I-er, good night."

He moved away. The door opened and closed behind him. I glanced at my watch. It read ten-forty. His timing was good and he'd delivered his lines pretty well. But Mac had been right. This was, of course, the kid with the weak stomach-code name Alan-who'd refused to do the job; and I was ready to agree that he'd have botched it. It wasn't a job for a sentimental kid; particularly not a sentimental kid who, by his voice, was desperately in love with the somewhat older agent he'd been assigned to watch.

I now had twenty minutes while he drank his coffee, before witnesses. I pushed the bathroom door aside and went in there. She was standing by the big bed, swaying slightly. From the information I'd been given, the appearance of her room, and the sound of her voice, I'd expected a sodden female bum, but she looked surprisingly good, considering.

She was wearing a simple, long-sleeved black dress with a lot of pearls at the throat-the kind of standard dress-up outfit in which they can look reasonably well-groomed as long as they can stay on their feet and keep their stockings up. She was obviously loaded, sure, but at first glance she looked just like an attractive suburban housewife who'd overestimated her capacity at somebody's cocktail party and would be dreadfully embarrassed in the morning, wondering if anybody'd noticed.

Upon further examination, of course, I could see that the attractive picture was terribly out of focus in a very fundamental way. This wasn't just a pretty woman who'd had one too many, slightly rumpled, apologetic, and appealing. This was-or seemed to be-a real lush, going downhill fast.

"Hello, Jean," I said, coming forward.

She waited for me to reach her, and looked up. Most women have to, even the tall ones, and she wasn't very tall. She had soft, light-brown hair, a little mussed now, and bright, baby-blue eyes, a little bloodshot. Her hands made a clumsy, mechanical gesture towards tidying the hair, while the eyes searched my face.

I guess she'd been wondering what kind of a guy would be sent to do the job friend Alan had turned down. She'd agreed to have the operation, but she wanted to know that the surgeon was a capable man. It was a reasonable attitude; but she looked hard enough and long enough for me to wonder if she'd forgotten her lines. Then she moistened her lips with her tongue, and said, as she was supposed to, "Who-who are you?"

"Never mind names," I said. "You can call me Eric if you like. A man in Washington asked me to look you up. He's disappointed in you, Jean, very disappointed indeed."

"What-what do you want?"

There was a nice note of drunken apprehension in her voice, but she shouldn't have worn those pearls. Close up, I could see that they were too big and perfect to be real, just costume jewelry; nevertheless their luster made her skin look gray and tired. Well, maybe that was the idea.

I felt very sorry for her. The worst assignments aren't the ones requiring you to do something nasty; the worst assignments are the ones demanding that you be something nasty, maybe for weeks or months at a time. I'd been through it myself, and I knew the humiliation she must be feeling, seeing herself through a sober stranger's eyes: a sloppy, swaying figure of disintegration and decay. One day, she'd be thinking, one day I'll show this supercilious jerk what I'm really like-that is if I can ever be human again.

It was hard to remember that this unpleasant playacting had a purpose, that it was necessary because a certain man was thought to be held somewhere for eventual transport overseas, with knowledge in his head that threatened the national security. It was hard to remember that this woman, who looked hardly capable of putting herself to bed, was supposed to reach Dr. Norman Michaelis, somehow, and either rescue or destroy him before he could be made to talk about an invention with the unlikely name of AUDAP.