The Shadowers by Donald Hamilton Page B

“Isn’t this a little obvious, Eric? Besides not being quite in line with the agreement we made with the lady and her department? We promised to preserve her reputation, remember?”
    “Also her life,” I said. “Things have happened, sir, and I’d like to be in a position to keep a better eye on her. Assure her that her virtue will remain intact and that her reputation will be restored by the matrimony route very shortly. We just haven’t got time to make the preliminary sparring look as refined and proper as we’d planned, and it may not matter anyway. Please switch on the recorder.”
    I heard a click. He said, “Recording. Go ahead, Eric.”
    “Male, forty-five give or take five. Those rocky faces are hard to judge,” I said. “Say a hair under six feet. Say two-twenty give or take five. A lot of shoulder. Some paunch. Pretty much a skinhead. What hair there is, is kind of grizzled. I never got close enough to make the eye color. Nose big, bony, has been broken. Ears protruding, a regular jughead. The name he gives out is Karl, Karl Kroch. They shouldn’t have any trouble running him down. Everything about him says pro. End of description.”
    “Hold on again... All right, he’s being checked.”
    “What about Mariassy?”
    “They’re having a little trouble with the circuits.”
    “Well, I’ll give them another couple of minutes, and then I’d better warn her direct and to hell with our cover. This Kroch has worked over one female tonight; I don’t want to give him a crack at another.”
    “Tell me what’s happened,” Mac said, and I told him. When I was finished, he was silent for a moment. I could visualize him frowning. He said at last, “That isn’t good. Obviously your cover is thoroughly blown already, at least as far as this Kroch is concerned, and he would seem to be the audience you were playing for. What about the Vail girl? Could she be implicated?”
    “It’s hard to see how, sir,” I said. “She could hardly be a plant. I picked her at random out of a whole bar full of people.”
    “Well, she’s obviously involved now. And even if she’s completely innocent, she can make trouble for us if she decides to go to the authorities. It’s always embarrassing having to clear up these things through official channels, and any publicity right now would be a serious handicap to the whole operation.”
    I said, “She won’t go near the police.”
    “So she told you. But women have been known to change their minds, waking up in the morning bruised and disfigured, wondering how they can explain their humiliating appearance to friends and neighbors.”
    I said, “She won’t talk, sir. I’ll bet money on it. But if you want to put a local man to watching her, okay. He can at least see that nobody bothers her again.”
    Mac hesitated. “You seem to have been impressed by this young girl, Eric.”
    I glanced at the mean-looking hombre in the mirror.
    I said, “Hell, I threw her to Kroch deliberately, as it turned out. I just feel kind of responsible for her now. She’s a good kid.”
    “Good or bad, a little surveillance won’t harm her. And it may give us advance warning in case she doesn’t live up to your high expectations. Now what about the man?” I glanced at my watch. Not as much time had passed as I’d thought. I told myself Mariassy was safe enough if she followed instructions. Unlike Toni Vail, she knew she was involved in a dangerous game. If she stuck her neck out contrary to orders, it was her own damn fault.
    “Karl Kroch?” I said. “I only saw him once. As I told you, sir, he’s got the earmarks of a pro. And he does a real smooth job of tailing for such a big man: you’d never know he was there. But he talks too much. All that stuff he told Toni, including his name, for God’s sake! And his warning to me that he’s going to act when the time comes and to hell with me. That’s schoolboy stuff. Either he’s a screwball with delusions of grandeur who