Deadly Memoir

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER TWOAmbrose Decker

It was a June day in Oregon, dry and spring-like. One of the kind that made Decker think of his childhood in the humid heat of Missouri, and gloat to think that he no longer had to cope with it, now he was past middle age. Yet this June was a bit different, for Elise had been talking about moving back home.

He grunted as he stooped to pick up the Oregonian from the lawn. Damn paperboy! He always managed to miss the sidewalk and scuff up another patch of grass, and Ambrose had done enough work on that lawn to make a crop, back in the days on the farm where he spent his boyhood. There was always at least one little track gouged up on his carefully kept Saint Augustine grass.

Surveying his domain, he knew his borders were dead ringers for those in the seed catalogues. The grass was velvety, except for those paper tracks.

What a waste of time! But he had nothing better to do, since he had been eased into retirement. Maybe it would be better if he and Elise moved back to their roots and the little piece of ground they had bought from his uncle when they first married.

At the very least, he might accomplish something with all that work. Every issue of Mother Earth News stirred some instinct inside him that he had thought dead and gone, during his active years. Now he found his fingers, arthritis and all, itching to get back into the Missouri dirt.

When he turned to go inside, Elise was standing in the doorway. She was still beautiful, even at sixty-plus. The only reason for a woman to exist, as far as Ambrose was concerned, was to be beautiful. All this crap about brains—he never did look for such in any of his women. And he soon would have done away with any sign of intelligence he found, too, if there had ever been any.

Elise was content to let her man do all the thinking for her. He was just happy she didn’t suspect a lot of the things he had done over the years to pay for her nice home and her expensive clothes.

She was addle-pated, and he was glad of it. She never suspected that he had been an agent, and if she had she wouldn’t know what it meant. He had played a game with her, pretending to be a traveling salesman.

She was happy when he finally took early retirement, and he knew she would never believe what a narrow escape he had when he was almost caught in his role as a double agent. That damn woman...

His heart still knocked uncomfortably when he thought about that incident. The Agency had come entirely too close to firing him and charging him, as well. Even if they had only discharged him, it would have meant the loss of his pension. A prison term would have killed him. But now things were looking smooth as cream.

He was glad to be free of the internal politics, the danger of being in the field, and the slippery tightrope that was a part of being a double agent. It had been profitable, but it was perilous, too. When the Agency pulled him back into the Portland office and made him a glorified file clerk, he had been relieved.

He’d been tempted to go through the files in his charge before he left, checking to see if anything there might be salable, but he had been put in charge of the records of dead, retired, or inactive agents. Nothing had been worth the risk.

He went into the house and sank into his recliner, opening the newspaper to the stock market pages. Up again—that was good. Some of his funds were cozily invested in carefully chosen stocks.

More trouble in the Middle East. The same old thing. It was all terribly familiar, but he couldn’t break himself of the habit of reading the paper from front to back, including the ads. He read everything he picked up that way, every word.

He turned the page and a headline caught his eye. Then the picture over the caption—it was THAT WOMAN! She was one of those God oughtn’t to have made, all brains and no body. Thin brown face, almost like a boy. Hair cut short, and about as sexy as a turnip. But she was still recognizable as the one he remembered.

He rummaged through his memory of that time in his life. Then he thought of his work with the files. He had handled her dossier when she went inactive. He always pulled and read those, just from curiosity, and her report on his killing of the Sheikh was right there in the file.

She’d been right, too, though she hadn’t seen enough to swear to it and carry through with charges. But it had been her word that put the Agency on his tail. If she had been facing toward him when he made his move, she’d have had him cold. For once in his career, he hadn’t been paying close enough attention to the people around him, in that thick, pushy crowd. He had been intent upon getting his man into his sights without being seen. His luck had been with him still, but only barely.

He perused the story beneath the photo. Oregon writer—spy book—oh, damn! He read the thing again, and it really meant what it said. That amateur! She’d missed him the first time, but now she was going to blow the whistle on him. In print! With God knows what sort of advertising budget from the company, aimed at recovering the incredible advance she was being paid.

The Agency’s comments didn’t fool him a bit. He was no longer in the field. They wouldn’t care if he was. He had known for years there were those in authority just waiting for a chance to nail him, and it had been nothing but luck that allowed him to skin through to draw his pension.

He read the story again, carefully. Silver Falls. That was...convenient.

He went through the paper as always and then he headed toward the kitchen. Elise had breakfast waiting. He had her well trained, and she knew how unpleasant he would make it if she were a minute late with his meal.

He sat listening to the swallows burble under the eaves. More nests to knock down—but, he thought suddenly, if we should move I wouldn’t have to do that. Some other fool would have to do the job.

The day was bright. The week promised to be beautiful, and he had a brilliant idea. “Elise!”

She turned toward him with his plate containing two perfect eggs, sunny side up, in her hands. “What, dear?”

She set the plate on the table and reached for the orange juice in the bright plastic pitcher. “Is everything all right?” Her voice sounded anxious.

Gauging the exact degree of warmth he intended to project, Ambrose smiled as he unfolded his napkin with precise movements of his stubby hands. “I have been thinking. About Missouri. We know the weather there is going to hurt like hell, until we get used to it again. But we did buy that land from Uncle Richard and we do have a few years yet before we get too old and feeble to work on it. So if you really want to, we will go back home. Make a fresh start.”

She stared down at him as if deciding how serious he might be. He kept his face straight and began eating. “Ambrose, you’re sure? I wouldn’t want—I wouldn’t want to go back and have you get mad at me for talking you into it.”

He nodded, sipping his juice. “I’ve given it a lot of thought. I’m retired and can go anyplace I want, do anything I decide to. Another Oregon winter, duck-footing it through the rain, really doesn’t appeal to me.

“We might keep this place—rent it out, maybe. Then if we should decide to come back here, later, we’d have someplace to come to. Rosa and Sam would keep an eye on it for us, I’m sure.”

Elise’s smile stretched into a grin as he added, “And why don’t we all do something special to celebrate? Maybe take Rosa and Sam and the kids on a picnic.

“Do you realize that as long as we’ve lived here, we never have gone up to Silver Falls and the park? Why don’t we all go up there for an outing? The weather will never be nicer.”

He dabbed at his lips with the napkin and rose. Elise began clearing the dishes away, and he left her to it. Once back in the living room, he took out the entire page of the paper that held the Thackrey story. She would never notice it, he knew, but he wanted none of the pieces of this puzzle in her hands.

Elise didn’t seem intelligent often, but once in a while she could astonish him with a comment that showed she wasn’t as dim as he liked to think. He believed in being careful. When she came to join him, he had gone into the back and was digging in the storage closet after the picnic chest.

“Damn closet needs a good cleaning out and throwing away,” he said. “When we move, most of this stuff has to go. You think Rosa’s kids would like her old sled?”

“I’m sure they would! There’s something about using your parents’ toys that makes it very special,” she said. Her veined hands folded an old mackinaw and put it on the sled. “Maybe Sam can use this when he chops wood, too.”

She sounded blissful. Ambrose smiled inside. She would never in a million years guess his motive for the picnic. She’d been trying for thirty years to get him to pay attention to their goddam daughter, who hadn’t the moxie even to be beautiful. Rosa was homely as a mud fence, to his way of thinking. Why hadn’t she had the good sense to look like her mother, instead of like him?

He didn’t understand why anybody would have married her. So she was a dancer! Big deal! Sam was a wimp or he’d want a real woman—one with t**s. Rosa hadn’t a spare ounce on her, and she intended to keep it that way, even when she was pregnant.

Still he could pretend to feel a belated fatherly interest in her and her brats. Once they moved, he hoped he’d never have to look at the b***h again, and dream of the son she ought to have been.

He straightened. “Why don’t you call and see if Sam can get away tomorrow? We’ll all just drive up there and see the falls and have the damndest picnic ever.” He knew Sam would come. He kept trying to show his father-in-law what a gem he had for a daughter. Ambrose kept going his own way, knowing his daughter was a crock. Nothing could change that, but he was a very good actor.

He heard Elise on the phone. Taking the sled into the garage, he wiped off the dust. The kids weren’t too bad, though four was too many. Still, young Ambrose might like this. Might think his old granddad was okay. The girls could go to hell.

The phone went down. “They can come. Rosa was thrilled, though she’s disappointed we’re going back to Missouri. She wanted the children to have us nearby. But we’ll have a day to remember together. I’ll go right now and make a cake. Start boiling a chicken for salad....” She dithered away, muttering to herself.

Ambrose strolled down the street to the telephone shop. “Do you have a Silverton directory?” he asked the young woman behind the counter.

“Here. But don’t take it out.”

Deckard turned the pages. Bowen—would she have it under Thackrey? That would be just like her! But no, it was Bowen. He knew there would be a mailbox with their name painted on it, but if by chance there wasn’t, he could ask at the little store he recalled being in the area. He would find her.

Walking back, he found himself sweating. It wasn’t that warm; the thought of what Margaret Thackrey might put into the book was his problem. Hell of a thing to happen to a man, after he’d retired and relaxed and thought he was safe. There were, however, always methods for solving problems. Over his years as an operative he had learned them all. There was no woman, no half-baked courier, who could match his skills.

Once he began to hunt her, she was as good as dead.