I said, "You thought she'd just hit the skids, is that it?"
"What else could I think? When some friends-friends!-told me, with that ghoulish kind of sympathy, enjoying every minute of it, that they'd just been to Juarez and there was something I ought to know but they didn't know quite how to tell me… Well, I couldn't go alone, not into a joint like that, so I got hold of Sam, and we drove down together. He didn't want to go, but I told him he owed her that much, we both did."
"Owed her?" I said.
Gail moved her shoulders slightly. "A pretty little family triangle. You know, the attractive older sister-if I may flatter myself a bit-and the big horse of a younger sister, awkward and shy, and the tall, handsome young man. Sam was just doing it for kicks, or maybe he had an eye on her money-we both got quite a bit when Daddy died-but she was desperately in love with him. To her, he was the first man to see the true beauty of her soul underlying the gawky…" She stopped abruptly. "That was bitchy, I guess. She's dead. I didn't mean to make fun of her. Strike it from the record, please."
I said, "So you took him away from her. To save her?"
She shrugged again. "Thank you, sir. I'm sure my motives were lovely, perfectly lovely. They always are. Anyway, she caught us and… well, never mind the details. I'll admit she scared me silly. I thought she was going to kill us both. She had a gun, and she'd always been good with horses and firearms and fishing rods and things. But she just threw the damn gun out the window. In the morning she was gone. I tried to find her, and I did catch up with her once, in New York, where she was doing some modeling, but she slammed the door in my face. After that, I let it go. If that was the way she wanted it…" Gail gave that little shrug again. "The next time I heard, several years later, she was in Juarez. The rest you know." She looked at me steadily. "If you're a government agent of some kind-I suppose that's what you're hinting at-show me something to prove it."
I said, "We don't carry badges. They have a habit of cropping up at inconvenient moments."
"I'm supposed to take your word for it?"
"It would make things easier on both of us," I said.
"I don't doubt it would make things easier for you!" she said scornfully. "But you're forgetting one thing, aren't you? I was there. I saw it. Mary Jane didn't want to give you anything. She didn't want to tell you anything. You were standing right over us, and she looked you straight in the eye and turned to me. How do you explain that, Mister So-called Agent?"
"I don't explain it," I said. "I don't have to."
She frowned. "What do you mean?"
I said, "When we have finished in this room, please remember that I told you the truth from the very start. I told you that I am an agent of the U.S. Government. I asked you to turn over to me certain property and information given you by your sister, a member of the same undercover organization as myself. These are facts. I probably shouldn't have revealed them to you, and I may even catch hell for doing it, but I'm putting my cards on the table and asking you nicely-"
She said, "My dear man, if you expect me to believe you without any evidence whatever, you must think me an awful fool!"
"Oh, I do," I said gently. "I think you're the sophisticated kind of fool who'd rather play safe and assume all men are liars than risk trusting one and maybe have him make a sap out of you. But I had to give you a chance, if only for your sister's sake."
She said angrily, "Why in Heaven's name should I trust you, a man I've never seen before! A man who ran out and left his friend in the lurch!"
"Don't talk about things you know nothing about, Gail," I said. "When two men on the same team are running down a field, and one is carrying a football, does he lay down the ball when trouble occurs and go back to help his poor outnumbered teammate, or does he keep plugging for the goal?"
"It's not quite the same thing! This is… I don't know what it is, but it certainly isn't a game!"
"No, and you're not a football, either. But the principle remains." I looked around for something you find in most hotel rooms. It wasn't in plain sight, but I found it in a dresser drawer-a Gideon Bible. I placed my hand upon it and looked the woman in the eye. "What I have told you is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God."
I put the Bible away. There was a little silence; then Gail shook her head quickly. It was corn and she was no goose; she wasn't going to swallow it.
"Mary Jane obviously didn't want you to have it," she said. "I can't just take your word. If you had something to prove-"
I said, "It would take me anywhere from a couple of hours to a day or two to get proof here that would satisfy you. That's too long to sit in this room watching to make sure you don't do something clever with what you're carrying, or just something perverse to spite me. We'd both get pretty damn tired of it, not to mention such details as eating, sleeping, and going to the john. I'll tell you this. Mary Jane's feeling against me was probably personal. We got at cross purposes once, we got our signals mixed…" I told her about the incident in San Antonio. "That was before she was assigned a job that involved undressing in public and got over being embarrassed by the idea. I know of no other reason why she should have acted the way she did tonight."