was the kind of face people remembered.
BRAYER OPENED THE door of his office and beckoned to Elizabeth, who was sitting at her desk glancing at a newspaper. She brought it with her into Brayer’s office.
“Get down to Disbursement and pick up your travel vouchers,” Brayer said. “There’s a plane at eight that’ll get you to L.A. International by ten o’clock Pacific time, and a hop to Ventura that’ll get you in by eleven.”
“Me?”
“Do you see anybody else?”
“But I’m an analyst, remember? Good old Elizabeth? I’m no investigator. I haven’t been out of this office since—”
“You’re going, Elizabeth,” he said. “You’ve got the rating and the qualifications. Just because you haven’t done it before doesn’t mean you can’t do it, or if it comes to that, that I can’t order you to. I checked it with Martin Connors. So you’re going.”
“So the FBI wouldn’t do it?” she smiled slyly.
“Yes, they will. But they’ll only guarantee to let us use Hart for two days. They can pull him back any time after five o’clock Wednesday afternoon. And they’ll only send him if he’s there to investigate explosions, not handle the whole case by himself. Now get down there to your friendly local travel agent in Disbursement so they have some chance of getting you both on that eight-o’clock plane.”
“I’m on my way,” she said, heading for the door. “I hate snow anyway.”
“If you come back with a tan anywhere but on your face I’ll skin it off you and nail it to the wall,” said Brayer. “You’re not on a vacation, Waring.”
She stopped in the doorway and said, “I thought the usual thing was the Death of a Thousand Cuts?”
“Get going,” he said. To himself he thought, Damn. The best I’ve got. Maybe the best data analyst outside the National Security Agency, off on a wild goose chase. The worst part was that he had needed to convince Connors to arrange it. He tried to remind himself there was no need to worry. The case and the timing could hardly be better for starting her in the field. It was the longest kind of long shot, complete with a trail that was already cold. She’d have little chance to put herself in harm’s way before she was ready, getting in on armed surveillance or arrests. With four of the capos suddenly showing up in the West on the same day, it hadn’t been hard to convince Connors that it was time to try Elizabeth in the field. The department really did need seasoned field investigators, and if she worked out, who could tell? A female with her brains out in the field—hell, it might make a difference some time. But, he thought, if Connors ever got around to reading the preliminary reports and saw the kind of case he’d sent two people out to investigate, Brayer would have some explaining to do. He consoled himself by planning what he’d say to Grosvenor, when and if he finally bothered to report in from Tulsa.
AS ELIZABETH STOOD IN THE ELEVATOR she was glad Brayer had said that about the suntan. California would be warm. It wouldn’t do to show up wearing a heavy overcoat and wool skirts. It wasn’t a vacation, as he’d said, but there was nothing in the rules that said you had to humiliate yourself in front of strangers, looking as though you’d arrived in California by walking over the North Pole. Besides, the bathing suit she had in mind didn’t take up much room.
At the United Airlines desk there were two men. One sat drinking coffee, looking impatient, while the other did all the work. When Elizabeth reached the head of the line and handed the man her travel voucher, he nodded to the other and said, “Miss Waring, Mr. Hart is here waiting for you.”
Hart dropped his cup in a basket and stepped around the desk to help her with the suitcase. “Good to meet you,” he said, looking at the suitcase instead of at her.
“Same to you,” she said. For once she meant it. He was tall and thin with a kind of delicacy about his hands and a rather unruly shock of light brown hair that probably made him look younger than he was. He guided her away from the desk to a line of seats facing the loading gate like a man conducting a lady off a dance floor. This wasn’t going to be so terrible after all.
When they were seated she noticed that he had somehow managed to pick a spot that looked as though it was in the middle of things, but wasn’t close enough to anyone so they couldn’t talk.
He said, “Before I forget, are you carrying a weapon?”
“Yes,” she said. “They admitted there wasn’t any reason, but regulations say field investigators have to. Are you?”
“Yes,” he said. “Same regulation. We’ll have to board early so we don’t attract too much attention when they wave us through the metal detectors.”
“I’m glad you came,” said Elizabeth, venturing onto the most dangerous ground first so she wouldn’t have it in front of her later. “What made the FBI decide to get involved?”
“Your Mr. Brayer. He asked for cooperation and the Bureau is being very cooperative these days. Ten years of bad press, all the political stuff, massive housecleaning after Hoover died—you can imagine. Brayer offered a fairly straightforward murder case with a chance of something bigger, and all he needed was two days of legwork.”
“So the Bureau jumped at it? I hope it’s not a waste of your time,” said Elizabeth.
“No,” said Hart. “The Bureau is re-establishing its usefulness, doing favors. So either way it’s no loss to the organization. As for me,” he said, and Elizabeth could see he was going to step out on the tightrope, “I’ve been on assignments that didn’t pan out before, and none of them involved flying to Southern California with a pretty lady.”
Nicely managed, she thought, if a little clumsy. So he too liked to cover the hard part first. She rewarded him with the best smile she could risk. No sense in setting him up for some kind of embarrassment, but at least let him know we’re friends.
The voice in the air said, “United Flight 452 arriving at Gate 23,” and Hart looked at his ticket. “That’s us,” he said.
THEY SAT IN SILENCE and watched the rest of the passengers filing in and getting settled. Then the door slammed with a pneumatic thump and the engines wound themselves up to a high whine and the plane began to taxi out away from the buildings into the night. At the end of the apron it spun around and faced into the wind, the engines screamed, and they shot down the runway into the sky.
Elizabeth said, “You had your job long?”
“Four years, about,” said Hart. “You?”
“Only a little over a year. It’s interesting, though. What made you decide to work over there?”
“Came back from the service, went to an undistinguished law school where I earned an undistinguished record,” he smiled. “Seemed like a good idea at the time. Either that or spend the next twenty years researching precedents and hoping to become a junior partner somewhere. This sounded like more fun.”
“Sounds familiar,” said Elizabeth.
“You too?”
“With variations. For me it was Business Administration, and the twenty years would have been spent doing market analyses,” said Elizabeth, and turned to look out the window. They were above the clouds now, and she wondered how long she could keep looking out there before he remembered that all she could see was the tip of the wing.
MOVIES WERE ALWAYS a good way to spend those early hours of the evening in a strange town. A large crowd, a dark place, and a built-in etiquette that kept people from looking too closely at each other or starting a conversation. By the time the lights came up in the theater and he joined the file of people pouring out onto the sidewalk, he was hungry.
Years ago Eddie Mastrewski had told him always to forget he was using a cover. You should be whatever you pretended to be, all the time except when you were actually working. That way there were only a few hours a year when anything could happen to you. The rest of the time you really were an insurance salesman or a truck driver or a policeman, and you weren’t in any more jeopardy than anybody else. If you slipped once your other life would go a long way toward saving your ass. Besides, it gave you something else to think about. Eddie was a butcher.
Of course that had all happened in the days before the trade got so busy. Nobody had that kind of time anymore. You were crazy if you passed up the kind of business you could get. It was easier now too. Everybody was a stranger, and everybody traveled. The only cover you needed was to look like the others and do what they did when they did it. Right now people were eating. He walked down Colfax looking for a restaurant that was crowded enough.
“DON’T BE A JACKASS, Carlson,” said the old man. “If I’m in any danger it’s not from some guy with a gun,
