Free Tropical Freeze by James W. Hall

you just bring me out then, Myra? Huh?”
    “Benny insisted on keeping you,” she said. “You were opening so many doors for him down there, introducing him to all your Conch cronies, Benny didn’t care if you were a spy, building a case on him, he was in heaven. He loves rubbing shoulders with all the Bubbas down there. He didn’t want to lose you.”
    “Goddamn, Myra.”
    She said, “So we informed Adamson, and since our operation had priority, Adamson agreed that even though your cover was exposed, you weren’t in any real danger. As long as you didn’t try to move on Benny, you were safe.”
    “How long has Benny known?”
    “A few months,” she said.
    “Jesus shit, Myra. You mean, I’m there busting my ass, trying to make a case on this guy and Benny’s just toying with me? I don’t believe you fucking people. The things you think you can get away with.”
    “It’s a war, Gaeton. Wars get complicated.”
    “God Almighty. I fucking can’t believe it.”
    “It gets worse,” she said. She took a deep breath and said, “Benny’s flipped on us. We set him up in one kind of business and he branched out into another kind. A kind that could do us all a great deal of harm. Not just careers or reputations. But lives. Other missions.” She took her purse off the dresser and snapped it open and drew out a small automatic. “He could do us a great deal of harm. Especially in an election year.”
    Gaeton rose.
    She stepped over to him and held the pistol out by the barrel. He hesitated for a moment, then took it.
    “What’s this?”
    “A very clean ten millimeters,” she said.
    “What the fuck, Myra?”
    She said nothing but turned and went back to her coffee. She drank the last of it and watched him standing there.
    “The bureau wants me to use this,” he said. “To take out Benny? Is that what you’re saying?”
    “The bureau wants you to continue to use your training and imagination.”
    “Kill a guy for conspiracy to bribe public officials? Huh? We doing that now? I didn’t know.”
    “Don’t be that way, Gaeton.”
    “I don’t believe you, Myra. Handing me a gun, telling me to go shoot some guy. Somebody owes me a very big explanation.”
    She dropped the coffee cup in a trash can. The light hit her hair again. Her skin backlit, creamy, the mole at her upper lip. Even in the midst of this, Gaeton noticed it, felt the warm growl rising from his stomach.
    He tried to calm his voice.
    “You think I’m going to shoot a guy and not know why?”
    “The more people who know the specifics of this operation, the more jeopardy for everyone.”
    “OK, well, let me guess then. Just nod if I get it,” he said. “It’s about Claude and these other guys, right? They’re not looking for burglar alarms. Anybody can see that. They’re getting out of the business. Giving you people a little testimony and getting paid off in Porsches, nice houses. They might give you names, drug routes, bad cops. Benny’s the go-between. Huh? Is that it? Am I close?”
    She said nothing, gave no indication.
    “Myra,” he said, “I got to know. You owe me that.”
    She said, “I’ve told you what I can, Gaeton. Probably too much. Benny’s a loose cannon. He’s using his training as a federal agent, his contacts inside the government, and the computer access we gave him to accomplish some very bad things. The problem is, because we assisted him in setting up part of his shop, we’re complicitous. Politically, it’d be devastating, impossible to bring this to court.”
    She let a few moments of silence work for her again. Then said: “The man knows things, he’s threatened to say things that could topple people. Lots of people, and from very high perches.”
    “I don’t give a shit about toppling people,” Gaeton said. “Let him topple away. Maybe they should get toppled.”
    She stepped up close to him, gave him a workover with those new conference-table eyes. The ones she’d won from staring down