The Day of the Guns Read Free Page B

Washington, D. C. It was a tight, secret agency that worked out of LA.T.S, and what they had nobody was supposed to know.
    But we knew.
    The grand machinery of The Government vs. People Who Cared, I thought.
    I said, “There’s a girl in the U.N., a translator. Her name is Edith Caine. I want a check on her tomorrow.”
    “Personal, Tiger?”
    “You might say that.”
    “Or else, I suppose.”
    I shrugged. “I got friends who think public agencies should be public information.”
    “No doubt. And where do I deliver this information?”
    “I’ll call you,” I told him and left.
    I took the bullets I had squeezed out of the pillows to Ernie Bentley and five minutes later had a report on them. They were perfectly bore-marked for a ballistics check and the next time they showed up I’d know where they came from. They were 7.65-caliber Luger ammo fired from another make of gun; they were marked and filed away. I told Ernie thanks, left his office, ducked out the back way and took a cab back to the hotel.

Chapter 4
    Edith Caine had a British passport. From the outside it looked good, backed up by the usual birth certificate and a phone call to London put her in the clear. Somehow she had made her way pretty well, but it isn’t too hard to pick up a b.g. when you start back far enough. Somebody had died or was missing in her past and she had taken on from there. All I needed now was definite proof of identity. Two days at the outside. She was here and it could look easy. There was nobody to doubt her. Until she arrived at the U.N., cleared all the way, nobody had known her personally. She came out of London, picked up her job and was well liked. The pattern had a familiar ring to it. I had seen it during the war.
    Wally Gibbons took time out to meet me for coffee and brought along four head photos of Edith Caine that had been taken for the papers. When he handed them over he said, “She tugs at the heart, doesn’t she?”
    “Yeah, man.”
    His grin turned curious. “What are they for?”
    I tucked them inside my coat. “Reproduction. I want to get copies off to every plastic surgeon here and in Europe.”
    “What for?”
    “To see who did a face job on her. It would have been one of the big ones.”
    “Come off it, Tiger. She needs a lift job like you need a hole in the head.”
    “If she had one I’ll find who did it unless it was done behind the Curtain.”
    “You’re sick, friend. You got something on that mind of yours again. Now I’m getting that trouble feeling like before and it scares me a little bit. You want to tell me about it?”
    “Not yet.”
    He picked up his coffee, sipped it and studied me a moment. “I called your hotel this morning.”
    “Oh?”
    “You had already left, but I was asked some questions by a certain Detective Tibbet. When I identified myself, and since we knew each other he mentioned a maid’s complaint about a hatful of bullet holes in the bedding but no spent slugs. Any comment?”
    I shrugged. “Lousy hotel. Who knows what happened after I left? Anybody hear any shots?”
    “That’s the funny part. No.”
    “Then let them figure it out.”
    “Will they?”
    “I doubt it.” I called for a refill and turned back to Wally. “Do something for me. Find out who Edith Caine is familiar with.”
    “How closely?”
    “Personal relationships, business associations ... anybody whose company she’s in with any degree of regularity. Can do?”
    “Why sure. Later you’ll give me a breakdown on this I imagine.”
    “My pleasure”
    “Okay, sucker.”
     
    The Army retired Colonel Charlie Corbinet a brigadier in ‘54, found a place for him in government, couldn’t put up with his intelligence or his refusal to go along with certain proposals and eased him out in ’56. The Russell-Perkins company took him on and now he rolled in millions.
    But he still hadn’t changed from when he was head of the group that was dropped behind the lines during the war. He was older