Page 18 of Passion's Wicked Torment

Well, he thought, none of that mattered now. He couldn’t let himself love her any longer, now that he knew the truth. And the truth was obvious. He had realized it in a flash when she began asking him those questions about abducting people off the streets. God, how obvious she was! And how blind he had been! Well, now he knew the truth: She was working for Ironman. She had been working for him all along. And all those times she had made love to Hunter, it wasn’t because she wanted—oh, no!—it was because that had been her job. The facts were clear enough. She had been planted by Ironman to see if Hunter was familiar with the abduction of that reporter, Chad Fleming.

God, it hurt to realize this! But Hunter was through lying to himself. Her love had been false, and that’s all there was to it.

The door opened, and a uniformed police lieutenant came in. He carried a pot of black coffee in one hand, two mugs in the other. He kicked the door shut, walked over to the chair next to the cot and sat down. He filled the two mugs with black coffee and held one out to Hunter.

“How’s the arm?” he asked.

“I’ll live.” Hunter sat back down on the cot, careful of his arm that was bandaged and in a sling. He took the coffee and sipped it, grimacing at the satisfyingly strong, bitter taste.

The lieutenant was named Shaeffer. He opened the collar of his uniform coat, pushed his hat back casually on his head and tilted the chair back on its rear legs till the back touched the wall. “I checked your record, Hunter. You’re one strange bird, you know that?”

Hunter grunted. “Did you make that call I told you about?”

“To that man Rogers in Washington? Yeah. I still don’t know what agency he was with. The number’s not listed, and I can’t find out who this Rogers fellow is. But I’m working on it.”

“Don’t bother.”

“A fancy shyster lawyer? Is that who he is? You’re calling down some fancy Dan barrister to spring you on a habeas corpus?”

“Maybe.”

Lieutenant Shaeffer shrugged and opened up the file that had been tucked under his arm. He began reading it, raising pages that were stapled into it. “Says here you’re one of the most famous hoods in Chicago. Gambling. Numbers. Bootlegging Protection.” He laughed. “That’s a good one, protection. Looks like you got some protection of your own. Otherwise I don’t see how you could have operated so openly without being run in.”

Hunter said nothing.

“All right, Hunter, here’s what I don’t get. Your war record’s in here too. You were a pretty straight and narrow guy. Major in the Air Corps. Decorated repeatedly for bravery and valor. The Distinguished Service Cross, no less. Now, that’s something I got a lot of respect for. I know it don’t come easy.” He leafed through a few more pages. “The French awarded you the Croix de guerre. You were wounded in action on three separate occasions.” He looked up puzzled. “So what’s a hero like you doing on the wrong side of the law?”

“Making a living, Lieutenant. Just like any other average citizen.”

“It don’t make sense. After the war you come home, do some stunt flying for a while, some bush piloting. Then you start running booze when the Volstead Prohibition Act passes. After that you disappear for a year, and no one knows where you are or what happened to you. Then you suddenly turn up in Chicago, working for Ironman.” He turned his palm up in a questioning gesture. “I don’t mean to be critical. I just don’t understand it.”

“What happened to the girl I was brought in with?” “Kristin Smith. Or Jones. Or whatever false name it was she gave at the desk. For some reason she’s got a stake in not letting anybody know who she really is. We’ve got her held over for interrogation. We’ll figure out sooner or later what the hell you two were doing floating around in the harbor, you wounded, she half-naked. It may take some time. It may take some unpleasantness for the lady. Unless, of course, you want to save us the trouble, and her the discomfort? A few simple answers to some simple questions, maybe?”

Hunter shrugged. “You can’t hold us for very long. You’ve got no evidence that we broke any laws. You’re on a fishing expedition, and you know it.” Hunter did not intend to say anything further until he talked to Rogers. He lay back down and closed his eyes. The lieutenant did not take the hint and leave. He stayed in the room, watching him. After what seemed like a quarter-hour, the door opened, and another man walked in. He had a deep, gravelly voice. “Lieutenant, your captain would like to speak to you.”

“Who are you?”

“Rogers is the name. Federal Crime Task Force. I came all the way from Washington to talk to that big, bad man you got lying there.”

“You going to supersede our jurisdiction, is that it?” There was a hint of bitterness to the lieutenant’s voice. No policeman liked making an arrest, only to have the case taken out of his hands by a higher-up, especially by a higher-up from a totally different government agency.

“Right now I only want to talk to him.”

Hunter opened his eyes and looked at the two men. He watched Lieutenant Shaeffer shrug, stand up and leave, taking the file with him. The door closed after him.

Rogers was a thin man with a long face and slightly protruding eyes. He wore thick spectacles and looked like a college professor, an image that did not fit with his deep voice. He set his briefcase down on the table, came up to Hunter and stood over him, his hands on his hips.

“Damn it, Dallas, what the hell have you gotten yourself into this time? You missed your last two reporting periods. The old man was sure your cover had been blown, and we’d find you on the bottom of Lake Michigan with cement overshoes.”

“No such luck for you guys. I’m still on the payroll. But it was close. You know that girl I was brought in with?”

“Yeah?”

Hunter hesitated. He did not want to tell Rogers the whole story. He felt foolish enough for ever believing she was somehow an innocent, misguided young woman. He felt foolish for falling in love with her. No, he wouldn’t tell Rogers about that. But he certainly would tell him what he’d learned about her last night from her questions during sex. “She was planted by Ironman,” Hunter reported. “I’m almost sure of it. He probably suspects I’m federal but doesn’t know for sure.”

“What makes you think so?” Rogers offered Hunter a pack of Chesterfields with several cigarettes tapped forward. Hunter took one and let Rogers light it for him.

“She started asking me questions about things like abducting reporters off the street. She wasn’t very subtle about it. She wanted to find out what I knew about Chad Fleming. She was watching me to see if I reacted to her mentioning that bit about abducting reporters. No one but a federal agent would know about Fleming’s being abducted.”

“Fleming,” said Rogers thoughtfully. “He’s the one who stumbled onto your identity while researching a story, isn’t he?”

“That’s the one. Then he disappeared. I’m almost sure it was Ironman who took him out. I had an appointment to meet with him the day he disappeared. He never showed. I think Ironman took him out and maybe made him talk.”

“That doesn’t make sense, Dallas. If he talked, you wouldn’t be around right now to wonder about it. Ironman isn’t what you’d call squeamish about the use of force. And he’s got no liking for T-men.”

Hunter dragged deeply on the cigarette and held the smoke in his lungs for a long, satisfying moment before letting it out. “Well, maybe Fleming didn’t point me out as being the infiltrator. Maybe Ironman’s just grasping at straws, having the girl mention the incident to me to see how I react. To see if I look like I know what she’s talking about. Ironman is sure desperate enough to try something like that. He knows we’ve got an infiltrator in his organization, and it’s driving him nuts trying to figure out who it is. You know, he doesn’t even let his accountant do the main ledger anymore? He’s afraid to let any one man have access to all that incriminating evidence. So now he does it himself.”

“We’ve got him spooked, all right,” agreed Rog

ers. “But driving him nuts isn’t what we want. We want evidence. Enough evidence to put the bastard away for a long, long time. And so far you haven’t given us enough—”

“Damn it!” Hunter exploded, not even listening to what Rogers was talking about. “She must be working for Ironman. How else could she know about Fleming’s being abducted? No one knows about that but the people who did it, meaning Ironman and the people close to him.” He looked at Rogers with a frowning, questioning look. “That’s right, isn’t it? No one else knows about it?”

Roger nodded. “We quashed the investigation into the abduction like a sledge hammer on a grapefruit. No one got any information out of that investigation. We sent orders down to have the Chicago cops cease and desist immediately, and they did just that. We couldn’t have them snooping around while a federal agent was undercover on the case. They might have turned up information on you. And the more people who know about you, the greater the risk of your cover being blown.”

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