Free Red Rag Blues by Derek Robinson Page A

kitchen. “Just let it go.”
    â€œAnyway,” Luis said. “I have no sympathy for government employees. What makes them think they deserve a job for life? Nobody else has one.”
    â€œNot the point!” Bonnie was prowling the room. “There are men, and women too, who do their job well, get caught up in this witchhunt, disgraced, sacked, maybe they know what they’re accused of, maybe they don’t…”
    â€œAh! Now I understand.” Luis clicked his fingers. “Life isn’t fair. Get the phone book, I’ll find a dozen lawyers only too happy to take this dreadful Senator McCarthy to court.”
    â€œYou don’t understand,” Bonnie said.
    Julie reappeared. “He’s got his head up his ass.” She went away.
    â€œI’m the one with solutions,” Luis said. “You’re in love with problems.”
    â€œListen: McCarthy never fires anyone. How can you sue him? What he does, he puts the fear of God into some dusty corner of government. Soybean subsidies. McCarthy makes a speech: he’s found twenty-three Card-Carrying Communists in the Federal Government’s Division of Soybean Subsidies! Instant panic. The Kremlin’s got a plot to fuck up American farmers! Run for your lives!”
    â€œWhere’s the proof?” Luis asked.
    â€œHere’s the clever bit,” Julie said. She was carrying a tray of soup and sandwiches.
    â€œThe Agriculture Department doesn’t wait for proof,” Bonnie said. “They up and fire two dozen people.”
    â€œSecurity risks,” Julie explained.
    â€œWhich just goes to show that McCarthy must have been right all along,” Bonnie said. “Each time he does that, he gets more power. He points, and everyone poops their pants.”
    â€œHe’s unstoppable,” Julie said. “Like bubonic plague. Eat, eat.”
    They moved to the table. Spoons got handed around. Bowls of soup. Salt was passed. “So now you know,” Bonnie said. “That smell you noticed when you got off the boat was fear.”
    â€œKindly explain one thing,” Luis said. “Why is the government interfering in the soybean market?”
    â€œI quit,” Bonnie said.
    â€œThe government doesn’t give a subsidy to new novels, does it?”
    â€œI double-quit.”
    â€œAnd good fiction is far more important than soybeans.”
    â€œDrink your soup,” Julie told him, “before the strychnine gets cold.”
2
    A mile to the south and three hundred yards to the east, Special Agent Prendergast was reviewing the Ten Banks Con with Agent Fisk. It didn’t take long. They had a heap of witness statements which more or less agreed about what happened, and totally disagreed about what the guy looked like. No fingerprints. No physical evidence except the demand notes. And now the suspect Cabrillo had vanished.
    â€œToo bad our Con Ed man didn’t tail him,” Prendergast said.
    â€œWe didn’t hire him for surveillance, sir,” Fisk said. “We hired him to burgle the apartment, period.”
    â€œThe Bureau doesn’t burgle,” Prendergast said sharply. “When we send a man in, it’s a black bag job. It gives us deniability. The Bureau has no record of last night.”
    â€œOf course.” Fisk checked his fly. It had become an automatic reaction when he made a procedural blunder. All fully zipped. “I still think it was Cabrillo,” he said. “We locate him, he vanishes. Too big a coincidence.”
    â€œMaybe. Did he know we located him? If he didn’t know, why would he stick around? This is New York. People move. What do we know about the Conroy woman?”
    â€œShe’s broke, sir. Owed rent. Maybe that was his motive for hitting the banks.”
    â€œSo now he’s rich. Why doesn’t he just pay the rent?” Fisk had no answer. “The man we want is a thinker,” Prendergast