Doom Weapon by Ed Gorman

hold her much longer.”
    “I hope not. She’s had a rough time of it.”
    He smiled. “You’ve restored my faith in federal men. Sure glad they’re not all like Grieves.”

Chapter 12
    I had two messages waiting for me at the telegraph office. One was from D.C. The boss was informing me that he’d gotten word that several foreign agents who operated out of the capital had been sniffing around people in our office for information about Grieves. He said that Grieves had apparently put his name in the foreign-agent circuit indicating that he was ready to do business and that he had something that every agent would want to bid on. The boss said that this information had come to a German agent via a telegram from Grieves dated six days earlier. But that apparently none of the foreign agents had heard from him since.
    Every major capital in the world had spies thick as fireflies on a hot summer night. The agents seemed to have special powers for sensing that certain classified information or weapons were on the contraband market. They were rarely violent, they didn’t have to be. The men and women selling the secrets were greedy for money. They were only too happy to deliver the goods without any fuss.
    But I wondered if this particular set of agents mentioned in the telegram weren’t out of luck. By the timethey’d figured out where Grieves had been, the matter would have been closed. At least I hoped so.
    The second telegram was from Grieves’s wife. “You are the only hope my children and myself have of finding my beloved husband and their father. As you know, I am expecting another baby, too. I’m praying for you every waking moment.”
    I felt like a shit. She was back at home well into her pregnancy worried that her “beloved” husband might have suffered an accident or something. I didn’t want to be the one to tell her the truth. That, I would happily leave to somebody else. I’d file my final report and that would be that.
    Rogue agents weren’t all that uncommon. A fair number of temptations were put in our paths, everything from woman flesh to real gold. And just about everybody was susceptible at one time or another. The number of rogue agents was a lot higher than our government liked to let on. It wasn’t any different from the way police departments covered up rogue cops. A few years back in Chicago more than seven hundred cops had been fired at the same time for being crooked. As one of the local newspapers had pointed out, given the pool from which the cops were drawn, a good number of the new officers would be just as corrupt.
    I stood at the table in the telegraph office trying to figure out how to respond to Mrs. Grieves. What I came up with was:
    I HAVE LEADS I AM FOLLOWING.
    HOPE TO HAVE GOOD NEWS SOON.
    I knew it was a chickenshit telegram but didn’t the woman deserve at least a sliver of hope? The “beloved”Grieves was probably in some whorehouse at that moment. His wife deserved some pleasure, too. A little false optimism was all I had to offer.
     
    I took a chance on Swarthout not seeing me in his bank. He seemed to be out on the street a lot. Or maybe he’d be in a meeting. If he found out what I wanted, he’d ask me a lot of questions I didn’t want to answer.
    The bank clerk was a young man straight out of a Horatio Alger novel, those yellowbacks that always featured young men who rose from humble circumstances to become scions of industry. His celluloid collar was so tight you could see the red marks on his neck. He’d battened down his cowlick with axle grease.
    “My pleasure to serve you, sir. Good morning!”
    “I need to speak to an assistant manager.”
    “Perhaps I could help you, sir.”
    “Sorry. Say, is Mr. Swarthout in?”
    “Sir, Mr. Swarthout is out on one of his community calls. He makes a point of locating people in need and helping them. We’re very proud of him.”
    I wanted to add a few red marks of my own to the kid’s neck. I believe the word is