by Max Grant
Cain was pacing the lush oriental carpet set in the center of the room. Emilio occupied a chair near the far wall. Frankie was seated on the couch. He looked to be sweating and his eyes darted back and forth between the two others. Emilio looked more confused than angry, but he was shouting garbled accusations in the direction of the nance.
Frankie jumped up, waving his arms, and pleaded with Cain to listen. Cain took a step toward him and without a word shoved him back on the sofa. He crossed the room and pulled opened the drawer of a small octagonal table. The old Bible was in Cain’s hand when he returned. Standing over the cowering chauffeur he shook it in his face and slammed it to the floor. Emilio shut up and stared. Frankie reared back on the cushions with a panicked clueless look on his map.
Cain sat down close in to the boy and looped a long arm over his shoulder. Shivering with rage, he yanked a dull black .45 from under the davenport and jammed it in Frankie’s right eye. Frankie screamed like a woman. Holding the fag in an iron grip by the back of the neck he tilted the gun up slightly and pulled the trigger.
Frankie’s skull exploded at the temples in a shower of tissue and bone fragments. The force of the shot threw the rest of his head back against the wall behind the couch, dislocating Cain’s cradling arm at the shoulder. However, the gat had started to disintegrate before the bullet even left the barrel. The superheated shrapnel flew in all directions, shearing off most of Frankie’s face even before his brains exploded. Jagged shards of gun metal tore through Cain’s gun hand and peppered his face and upper torso.
Pulled forward into the gore by his ruined shoulder, Cain reared back in dismay. He clawed at his face with his pulped hand in a vain attempt to clear his vision. Shock set on in a blinding rush, and he blacked out and slid to the floor.
Yuki and I looked at each other in awe. “Mother Mary,” she choked out as she turned away and sat down.
“C’mon,” I gasped.
I snatched her up and we hot-footed it out to the street. The lights were on in the next house beyond the hedge and I heaved up there and leaned on the bell. The door cracked an inch and an eyeball peered out at me.
“Shots fired,” I croaked. “Next door. Please call it in.”
The door swung open to reveal a blue-haired matron in her nightdress and robe. Around the corner an old party in a smoking jacket and pajamas was holding down a large cushion chair in the great room. She motioned me to a telephone stand in the hall.
I dialed the St. Petersburg police and gave a brief report to the dispatcher, requesting an ambulance be sent post-haste. The matron stood with us on the porch and waited until a prowl car and ambulance arrived. We thanked her and moved off to linger at the seawall across from the big house.
“I wasn’t expecting that,” Yuki said.
“I was, sort of. But nothing that spectacular.”
“What happened to that pistol?”
“Same thing as if you jammed it in the side of a pumpkin and pulled the trigger. Cain must have had more experience ordering hits than carrying them out. It probably never occurred to him that there’s more than a bullet comes out of the barrel.
“The gases,” Yuki remembered.
“Exactly, if the expanding gases behind the projectile are obstructed they’ll act on the barrel like an explosive. If Cain survived that they’ll still never get all the pieces out of him.”
A few seconds later the old boy was walked out on a gurney to the ambulance and raced away. The county meat wagon pulled up a minute later and swallowed Cain’s girlfriend.
Yuki and I took a leisurely drive up the coast road through Treasure Island and ended up in a cozy seaside motel at Madeira Beach. We sat on the beach and held each in the warm night breeze ‘til we were nodding off from nervous exhaustion. I slept the rest of the dead that night.
The morning flight from Tampa got into New Orleans mid-afternoon and we flew into Dallas after the dinner hour. Mack and Veronica were on the tarmac to greet us as we descended from the airliner and we caught up over a leisurely meal before heading to the ranch. In no particular rush to return to the office Yuki and I spent the week with Johnny relaxing at Mack’s ranch.
May 1948
One evening when we were sitting around the fireplace after dinner, Yuki told us, “Hey, I forgot to tell you about Shafter. I’d heard on the news that he was on trial for murder, but left for Florida before I could get any details. I’ll bet Manny knows something.”
“Give him a call,” Mack prompted. “It’s still early out there and I’d like to hear about this.”
I dialed Manny’s number at the precinct and he was in.
“Hey Manny, how ya been?”
“Ray! About time you showed. What happened to you?”
“I’ve been burying Reds in Florida. How about you?
“Doin’ the same, but I’m on the company phone. Give me a number and I’ll call you back from down the street.”
Good to his word, Manny called back a few minutes later.
“I got good news,” Manny said, but you first. I gave him the condensed version of the bust on Passe-a-Grille.
“So what do we have on Shafter?” I asked. “Yuki told me about a trial. I was wondering what happened?”
“I happened, Ray. I got three birds with one stone. It only took one phone call and about six hours to get two slabs of cold commie meat and one lifer.”
“So how’d you do it Manny?”
“It went down like this. I called that hothead Shafter on a Saturday evening at his home. Made like I was a dick with the Pasadena major crimes unit.
“His daughter’s kind of a wild one. I picked a Saturday night because she was going to be out till all hours, and Ollie carouses late too. So I called Shafter at nine and told him we picked up his daughter in the hills, all busted up and half dead. Her face was cut up, she was blind, and she had multiple fractures on both arms. She came around before going into surgery and indicated all she remembered was she’d been raped and beaten. I told him she was at Pasadena Memorial, out of surgery, but sequestered for the night. She would not be allowed visitors until the morning and I suggested he come out then.
“He asked if we had a line on who did it. I told him maybe he could help on that score. She mentioned an Ollie, no last name, said it wasn’t the first time he’d raped her, but as far as putting the hurt on her he’d never done more than slap her around a bit in the past. When I asked him for an address or some way to get a line on his whereabouts he told me he’d never heard of the guy. Said he’d come out to the hospital in the morning.
“I knew he was shining me on so I got a couple of boys over at Harbor Division to put a tail on Ollie that night and keep an eye on his crib. Made up something about a smuggling operation coming down. Told them to let it unfold until Ollie showed up, then nab him after the meet was over. From what I heard, they watched some union enforcer named Paolo set up in the bushes for the hit but had no real idea what he was up to. Ollie shows up at one, and the two of them Harbor Division boys witnessed the kill.
“The friggin’ wop just stood up and took him out point blank with a double-barreled, sawed-off shotgun. Just popped up out of the bush and gave it to him in the face. Ollie was such a mess if they hadn’t of been tailing him all night it would have taken all the next day just to identify him. Well, they snatched Paolo immediately and took him downtown. It was such a big deal no one thought to question how the boys just happened to be there when the hit went down.
“They sweated Paolo and he told them that Shafter had set up the hit. He had no idea why Ollie was fingered. Hadn’t been told. So they sent some more boys to go pick Shafter up. Seems his daughter was just coming in around three, drunk as a skunk, about the same time they were hauling him away. He started screaming about a frame and never stopped, but no one ever did find any evidence of that. Since the boys hadn’t told him why they were rousting him, all his screaming and complaining did was prove he knew up front about the kill.
�
�The boys downtown figured all his bitchin’ was just a gutsy bluff on his part to throw up some smoke and mirrors and obscure his motive for the hit, which didn’t interest them anyway. Paolo copped a plea and got life. He testified against Shafter, and that boy’s already been convicted and sentenced to burn. He’s got a date with the undertaker in June.
“Sweet as pie,” I said. “I’m sure Lupe will enjoy reading the news.”
* * *
The middle of May found us back to Hollywood and back to work. Or at least holding down the office waiting for the next client to show. We’d been loosely monitoring the late afternoon news roundup on the radio with two purposes in mind. First to see if any of our recent exploits had made the national news, and second to see if any related developments offered avenues for pursuit.
It was during one of these broadcasts that we heard a report vaguely speculating on the whereabouts of the Soviet Minister of Defense, who hadn’t been seen publicly since early May. The speculation tied into reports of an unconfirmed explosion back around then that was believed to have leveled a dockside warehouse in the city of Ulanov, just south of the arctic port of Archangel.
Yuki showed up the next morning clutching the previous evening’s edition.
“Look what I found tucked away on page 7.”
It was a single paragraph under the headline: ‘Mystery Surrounds USSR Defense Minister.’ The print account didn’t supply any more information than the broadcast version but did speculate on a tie-in with the warehouse explosion.
It seemed like a good time to drop by Magnum and brief Moe on the outlines of the operation. After getting with Sally I was in to see the big guy before lunch.
Moe listened intently to the events leading up to our hijacking of the rocket motors. After giving him a complete picture of what went down, from New Mexico to Florida, I tossed the paper, folded to the circled article, on Moe’s desk.
Moe perused the item for a few seconds and threw back his head and laughed. “I guess the nosy Parker couldn’t just wait for a report. He had to be there to open the package himself.”
“Yeah, my guess is that the package was escorted past the usual customs officials straight to its destination. Hopefully they’d put together quite an audience for the occasion, but I guess we’ll never know!”
“I’ll bet it wiped the smug grin off someone’s face!” Moe roared. When the chuckling died down, he slapped his arms back on the desk and cast me a serious look.
“Ray, I’d love to do it again. What’s next?”
“I don’t know, but I’ve got wind of a few new angles. How’s Vivian doing these days?”
“She’s made a full recovery. The sawbones didn’t think it was possible, but she’s a real fighter and she knows what she wants. I know she’s exceedingly grateful for what you’ve done, as are we all.”
“I’m glad to hear it. She’s had her share of trouble. So what do you have in mind?”
“What could you do with a 12-month retainer?”
“Well,” I considered. “You’ve got a pretty good handle on this studio. Are you interested in looking at some of the other lots? What about the schools and libraries?”
“Of course, but what more could we do?”
“Well, we could look there and further afield, try to make the connections and expose the major actors, chip away at the command structure.”
“That’s more what I had in mind.”
“We could develop evidence to hand over to the Feds or the DA.”
“I don’t think so, Ray. The way I see it, going that route is as likely to reinforce their immunity as it is to get them in trouble. The Feds can’t find their ass with both hands. They’re still fighting last year’s battles. They haven’t really caught on to this Red threat. Besides that, anything we toss up to them will get squelched by some mole in Washington.”
“I hear you. We could work with some local boys if we find some we can trust. But I’m worried there too. You know, what with union dues and unlimited funds from the Comintern, this crew has the jack to buy just about as much graft and corruption as they need.
“You know, they’re not a lot unlike the Mob in organization and operations. The sad part is the Feds should be all over this, having cut their teeth on it in Chicago and all. But under the circumstances, given what seems to be a pattern of general complacency about this threat, I’m thinking that any direct interest by law enforcement in your activities is more likely an indication that we are not among friends. No, I’m afraid we’ll have to come up with something a little more original.”
“Well,” I replied, “I guess the most effective thing I can do at the moment is to grow the network that developed on this case. Get our people on the look-out for some cracks we can open up. Put our heads together and find ways to monkey wrench their action. Sort of like: subversion meets subversion.”
“That sounds like a plan: a defensive conspiracy against the global conspiracy. Keep it local initially, but by all means take it as far as you see fit.”
Moe leaned back with a contented smile on his face.
He put a smile on mine when he added, “I’ll have Sally run a check over in the morning. We’ll see how far it takes you. I have no interest in micro-managing this thing. I just want to know that Magnum is getting some bang for the buck. Call Sally whenever you want a meeting and we’ll go uptown for some breakfast.”
I rose to leave, and we shook on the deal. He had the old gleam back in his eye as he crushed my fist.
“Give ‘em hell, boy! Hit ‘em where it hurts!”
* * *
The next day found Yuki and I sitting around the office and reminiscing. She had been cleaning up her desk before heading out to an early dinner and a movie with Monica. I had cracked the office bottle of Jim. After a time she wandered into the office and pulled up a chair.
“You know, Ray, I’ve come to view it like Lupe has. She told me socialism is like narcotics. It ruins the lives of the young, the stupid, and the naïve. They try to disguise it under a lot of different names. But if you’re not talking about individual liberty, family values, and free enterprise, then it’s all the same thing.
“A lot of people fought and died to create and maintain our way of life. These sorts enjoy their freedom, but they’re still subversives. As far as I’m concerned they all carry a death warrant issued in the name of freedom. To the extent they just run their mouth, they’re exercising their constitutional right to free speech. When they take action against the good ol’ USA, they execute the warrant and it can be carried out by any citizen, at will, to defend our freedom. That’s the way I look at it.”
“The do-gooders, they do some good, they do some harm. They’re called useful idiots ‘cause they usually don’t know what they’re doing,” I replied. “’The road to Hell is paved with good intentions,’ I’ve heard said.”
“In the case of the Communists it might better be stated that the road to Hell is paved with evil intent masked as the greatest and most glorious of intentions.”
“And those mealy-mouthed dunces are a royal pain in the ass to boot.”
“Indeed. And whether they know it or not, most of them have a control, usually a dedicated party member. It’s these people that have chosen the path of all-out treason. They know exactly what they’re doing. And they know how to manipulate a sea of idiots to do their bidding and serve their master.”
“You don’t have much use for them, do you Yuki?”
“No, I never have. I’ve seen it first hand. The Reyes family is wonderful. Monica’s old man should have been smarter than to get in bed with those clowns, but he had the victim mentality and he’d swallowed a few of the Big Lies early on. If he’d read his history books he might have at least known that they turn on their own. Especially when they’re thwarted in their ambitions against us.”
“Sounds like it’s more than that.”
“It is. We Japanese value our freedom, our property and our livelihood. Especially a
fter what happened a few years ago. Since I was a child I learned to dare to be free. And to never ever quit. We don’t need to hear from people who think they know it better than us, that want to tell us what to do and how to live. Except for those awful circumstances, we’ve enjoyed our liberty. The flip side of that coin is tyranny. There’s always some fool that thinks he can buy our respect by offering some hand-out. Or they can make a big name for themselves, or buy a few more votes.
“It brings to mind a book I’d like to find for you. It’s called Vespers in Vienna. You might be able to relate to it. It’s about a British soldier after the war working a misplaced persons bureau helping Soviets repatriate their citizens from the British Zone. It doesn’t take him too long to figure out that a lot of those folks have long memories and prefer staying in devastated Austria to returning to the USSR.”
“I remember when the Three Powers at Yalta came out with their statement: ‘we look with confidence to the day when all the peoples of the world may live free lives untouched by tyranny and according to their varying desires and their own consciences.’ Guess that hasn’t work out to well for the Russians and Eastern Europeans, has it?”
“No indeed. According to Lupe, our appeasement to Stalin at Yalta killed thousands. While our troops and the British were forcibly repatriating Eastern Europeans at the behest of Uncle Joe, those same unfortunates were finding any method possible to commit suicide before crossing over the borders. I’m wondering if that evil wasn’t the blackest stain in American history. You sure don’t hear much about it these days.”
Yuki got up to leave.
“So Ray, will we be working for Moe again soon?”
“Funny you should ask. He gave me an advance on another year’s work and told me to use it how I saw fit, including taking a long vacation if that was what I wanted. Here’s the check.”
I reached in my pocket and handed it over to her. Her eyes bugged out.
