Soft Targets

Everett sagged against the railing. 'How?'

'That's what I didn't want to say in front of the lady. D'Este seemed to think he could lose himself among all the other homosexuals in the Gay city—Bay City, that is. He must've been cruising the gay strip near the downtown hotels where they make a lot of pickups off the streets. Pathet­ic little guys carrying overnight kits, feet hardly touching the pavement, waiting for a score like any other hooker; makes you sad to see it, Mr. Everett,' he muttered, smug and sententious.

He picked up his cadence. 'Well, we don't know how the contact was made but somebody got into D'Este's Cadillac with him. After shoo­ing the others off the street, maybe, I don't know how. We're checking. Anyway: A little later the Caddie piled into a building on O'Farrell Street. Must've been moving at a crawl. They found D'Este behind the wheel and an overnight kit on the floor.

'And it smelled like he'd been having an orgy with almond extract. Somebody had snuffed him with a dildo. You know, those rubber dicks they fill with who-knows-what? This one was full of hydrocyanic acid, prussic acid, same thing. He'd taken a full shot of it in the face, and they found the dildo in his mouth. Enough cyanide to snuff an elephant, I kid you not. No prints, just rubber goods.'

Everett hugged himself and shivered. 'Jesus. Oh, Jesus, what a way to go.'

'Show me a nice way; I might take it,' Fulton grumbled. He started down the steps. 'But pass the word, Mr. Everett: beware of almond dil­does.'

Everett, his thoughts racing forward, called out: 'Fulton!'

The agent stopped at the van, unconsciously coming to attention. 'Sir.'

'Have you told Althouse and Charlie George about this?'

'Was Edgar Hoover a fed? Of course, Mr. Everett, we're not amateurs. At least Mr. George knows. Nobody's raised the Althouse guy yet but they'll get to him.'

'Or somebody will.'

'Is that a fact,' Fulton said drily, and slammed the door.

Two minutes later, Gina and Everett were ar­guing. 'Anybody could bully us off the road in that crackerbox of yours,' she spat.

'If they could catch us in this ice, which they couldn't without a Porsche turbo and front-wheel drive,' he returned.

'And besides, how many more crazy Irishmen know you drive that Mini.'

'Good God, Vercours, who's the boss here?'

She dropped her shoulders and her voice. 'You are, of course. I'll get my things out of the Firebird.'

'You will like hell,' Everett grunted. 'I have the better car, but you have the better argument.' He grinned. 'Anyhow, the Mini's heater isn't worth a damn. The 'bird it is, ma'am.'

They were laughing before his weekend gear was repacked in the Firebird. He drove back down the highway toward Golden, explaining that they needed more food. As they neared the town, she was glancing backward. 'When you stop, pull out of sight and face the highway,' she suggested.

He pulled in near a market, turning the car end-for-end in a rum-runner's switch on the icy ground. They waited. After several minutes a big tandem rig came steaming past, chains singing on the pavement. Then nothing. 'I'll go in,' she said; 'I know what kind of junk food I like. And you can keep warm with this,' she added, laying a compact automatic on the seat.

She was back very soon with a single brown sack, celery poking from its top. Everett eased the Firebird onto the highway, soon passed the roadhouse and his forlorn Mini without a glance. Near Empire they slowed at a neat row of cabins with overhead telephone lines stretching away to the office.

Quickly, then: 'None of this two-adjoining rooms crap, Maury. We're together. That's my job.'

He nodded and punched the car's nose through crusty snow into the drive. The owner was pleased to rent his best and most secluded cabin to Mr. and Mrs. Marks.

'Soda pop and cigarettes here, Mr. Marks,' he said, 'but I'll be locking up shortly.'

'We'd appreciate it if you^'d patch the phone in so I can make calls directly.'

'Can't do that.' He found that he could indeed, with a fifty-dollar nonrefundable deposit.

'One more thing,' Gina said. 'We were supposed to meet some folks tomorrow who love to surprise us—and I detest surprises. If anyone asks for us—' A moment's thought '—tell them we're an old couple. And as soon as they leave, please give us a ring.'

A collusive smirk spread across the leathery features. 'I got it,' he said archly, not getting it at all.

Inside the chill cabin, Everett turned up the heat and found a bonus in the dry wood piled beside the fireplace. Gina, blowing on her hands, checked the windows before taking a portable door lock from her bag. She emplaced the heavy steel assembly at breastbone height, wedged into the facing by a heavy setscrew. Then she made a call, using her scrambler over the mouthpiece, which reduced her conversation to gibberish for any monitoring device. Maury Everett imagined himself as a push-pin relocated on some FBI map, and knew he had no real alternative.

As the tiny blaze began to lick upward into the kindling, Maury turned to study the place. Well-furnished, plenty of blankets, electric range and a decent shower. Behind the cabins, he knew, lay an unbroken white expanse leading into the soaring trees beyond. Too bad he had only one set of snowshoes for his morning trek, but— 'What on earth are you doing, Gina?'

'Setting our detectors,' she said absently, ad­justing a dial on the device she had taken from her bag. 'I can sleep with this little rig, and I don't want to be roused by every passing field mouse.'

'That's new Oracle hardware,' he laughed, and stood up to see. He explained his history with the firm that marketed her detectors, oddly warmed to find that the little wireless motion sensors were as useful as his sales people had claimed they would be. With one inside the Firebird, a second dropped into the snow outside the bathroom window, and another placed adhesively under the eaves away from steady winds, they would be forewarned of approach by anything larger than a rabbit. Gina emplaced the sensors while Everett rummaged in their groceries. When she returned he had spread the stuff on the table. He saw her turn quickly to sit on the bed, her head down.

'Problems?'

'I don't know,' she said groggily, her breath­ing deep and rapid. 'It's not time for my period. I just feel like a wet rag.' She looked up, hearing him chuckle. 'I'm glad it meets with your approval^' she growled.

'The altitude,' he said gently; and turned his chair to sit facing her. 'Hey, lady, you're two kilometers high, here. Takes a few days before you can scurry around, jock or no jock, without getting spots before your eyes.'

He placed a tentative hand on her shoulder, felt her stiffen, patted her once, withdrew the hand. 'Prescription is simple: just keep breathin',' he said, and moved back to the table. 'Prognosis is simpler still: you'll be hungry as a hoot-owl in another five minutes.'

Presently, as he sliced a second hunk of the petrified salami to go with his corn chips, he heard bedsprings creak. A moment later she was sitting across from him, the brunette wig dis­carded, her hair gleaming beryllium bronze in the firelight. 'Don't mind me,' she said, her buoyancy gradually returning. 'When I'm not fully fit I feel vulnerable. And when I feel vulnerable, I am not the easiest person to approach. You know?' Her frown was questioning, seri­ous.

He nodded. 'Like being fresh out of videotape when the bridge collapses,' he offered.

'At least,' she smiled, then sniffed. 'What's this stuff?'

He watched her finger the soft disc of cheese he had taken from its airtight tin. 'Camembert; Give it an hour to soften, and it makes the worst beer in Colorado taste like dark Lowenbrau.'

'Can't just be dead, huh? It has to putrify.'

She saw something shatter behind his eyes before he squeezed them shut. He shook off the outward display, turning to stare into the fire. 'I'm sorry,' she whispered. 'That was stupid of me.'

Everett told her, inflections low and halting, of the youth who almost certainly lay under swirl­ing rapids in his expensive metal coffin several kilometers away. 'I keep hearing him yelling. He was scared out of his sphincter, Gina. I don't think he knew what was happening.'

'My synopsis said he had an automatic weapon. He knew.'

'That was the third guy, the one in the back seat; the one I—I aimed at.'

'Then you didn't actually pull the plug on the kid driving?'