Operation Deathmaker

by Dan J. Marlowe

  The kid was stealing the car right in front of our eyes. He headed away jerkily and I saw the brake lights come on.

  Then I couldn’t see anything.

  There was a puff of white smoke, a roar of sound, and a shock wave that pushed me away from the terrace railing. Doors flew off both sides of the car, and a bundle of bloody rags was blown cut onto the roadway.

  The white smoke cloud formed a halo above the shattered car roof while I stared down stupidly at the unbelievable scene.

  That bomb-rigged car had been a death trap meant for me.

  OPERATION

  DEATHMAKER

  Dan J. Marlowe

  a division of F+W Media, Inc.

  Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  Also Available

  ONE

  WE LEFT HAZEL AT A BROKERAGE OFFICE IN THE Armstrong Building in downtown Pasadena. I had volunteered to drive Melissa Andrews, Hazel’s niece, to the Los Angeles International Airport. Hazel would have made the trip with the girl except for her appointment with the broker. Melissa had been staying with us at our Pasadena motel for the ten days of the semester break at her eastern university. She had planned to leave on Saturday, but had unexpectedly advanced her departure by a day.

  I nosed Hazel’s car onto the Santa Monica Freeway. Melissa stirred beside me on the front seat. “I certainly enjoyed being out here with you and Hazel, Earl,” she said politely.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” I said sincerely.

  Hazel’s niece was a quiet, dark-haired, attractive girl. Not beautiful, but with a glow that enhanced the youthful femininity displayed by the slender-but-rounded figure in the bright yellow travel dress. I knew very little about her except that she was the daughter of the brother of Hazel’s first husband, Blue Shirt Charlie Andrews, the gambler.

  When Melissa’s father died, leaving her parentless and without resources, Charlie made a settlement for the girl. And he sent her east to school. It was a gesture above average in generosity, since Charlie’s brother, a straight-laced, hardworking but ineffectual farmer, had regarded Charlie’s free-swinging life-style with aversion.

  Hazel had seen the girl only a couple of times since her bony, ganglingly awkward pre-teen days. She hadn’t mentioned Melissa more than once or twice during our entire relationship. She just informed me casually one day that Melissa was coming for a visit. When the girl appeared at the door of our motel suite, Hazel expressed pleased surprise at her transformation from ugly duckling to poised, shining young woman.

  “Where was the restaurant we had dinner last night?” Melissa asked.

  “Tony’s, on the pier at Redondo Beach.”

  “And the night before that it was Neptune’s at Seal Beach,” she said. “And the night before that it was the Winston Churchill Restaurant on the Queen Mary at Long Beach.” She shook her dark head. “I’m going to have a hard time getting used to the meals at school again.”

  Once or twice during Melissa’s visit I had sensed a slight friction developing between aunt and niece. I hadn’t said anything to Hazel about it, but she knew that I’d noticed. “The poor girl’s trying to cope with her first love affair,” she remarked to me once. “A boy at school.”

  Another time Hazel had been less kind. I had walked in upon the pair to find a flushed Melissa confronting a stern-faced Hazel. “Nothing serious, I hope?” I said in a tone intended to disarm the combatants.

  “Her boyfriend’s putting pressure on her,” Hazel said coolly. “In more ways than one.”

  Melissa flashed a quick look at me to see if I’d caught the sexual innuendo, then blushed brilliantly in a supercrescendoed dramatization of her already glowing color. She walked out of the room without saying a word.

  On balance, though, the pair seemed to get along as well as any two females in the comparative confinement of a motel suite. Hazel admitted that Melissa was a genuinely sweet-tempered girl who had less than the usual amount of youthful arrogance. Melissa never spoke to me about Hazel. Although Hazel had her sharp edges, I thought she responded well to the girl’s half-shy appeal. Neither ever gave me an indication as to the source of their apparently single point of difference.

  I eased the car over to the right-hand lane when the L.A. Airport sign appeared above the freeway. “Don’t forget to have Hazel let me know the charges for the long-distance phone calls I made to the school,” Melissa said as I turned onto the exit ramp.

  “Sure,” I said, knowing Hazel would never do it. I shifted position in the driver’s seat, and my 9mm. automatic in its belt holster prodded me. I glanced at Melissa to see if she had noticed the momentary telltale bulge under my jacket, but she was staring straight ahead, seemingly lost in thought. “Was it your boyfriend you were calling?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she admitted, pinkening slightly. It seemed to be something she did easily. “You’d like Stan,” she assured me earnestly.

  “Sure,” I said again.

  I turned into the perimeter road leading to the airport parking lots, and we slowed immediately. “Look at the traffic!” Melissa exclaimed in dismay, glancing at her watch.

  “It’s usually like this on Friday afternoons,” I said soothingly. “We’ve got plenty of time.”

  Melissa was flying east via American Airlines, which I knew from experience was at the far end of the road just as it doubled back in front of the airline terminals. It was stop and go all the way as drivers searched for space in the parking areas in front of the various airlines. When we came out of the double-back turn in front of the American terminal, the area was a maze of vehicles, passengers, and indiscriminately stacked piles of luggage. Harried-looking airline attendants were hurriedly writing out baggage checks.

  I stopped and looked for a place to double-park to let Melissa out, but the solid line of cars already at the curb had reduced the flow of traffic to a single lane. I heard a whistle. A white-gloved terminal traffic cop was urgently waving me on.

  I glanced into my rear view mirror, hoping that a lack of traffic pressure behind me would allow the cop to ignore my illegal double-parking, but a gray sedan with a black vinyl roof was right behind me. Additional traffic was beginning to accumulate behind it. At least the driver of the gray sedan wasn’t leaning on his horn, trying to blast me into movement again.

  Melissa had already opened the door on her side and stepped out, ignoring the cop. She waited for me to climb out and open the trunk to remove her bags. The cop’s whistle shrilled again, imperiously, and he took several quick steps toward us.

  “Melissa!” I called. “Get back in the car!”

  She glanced toward the cop. “He’s got to let you stand here long enough to get my bags out!” she remonstrated with me.

  “I’ll carry your bags here from the parking lot,” I told her.

  She slid into the front seat reluctantly. “There’s no reason you should have to carry my bags,” she protested. She fixed a resentful stare upon the cop, who was directing a glare of his own toward us even though I was already in motion.

  There was no way Melissa could have known that I never call myself to the attention of the law, whether it be uniformed or plainclothes, federal, state, county, city, or village.

  I just don’t do it.

  I drove to the automatic gate of the parking lot and got in line for a ticket. The black-roofed car followed me through the turnstile. I threaded Hazel’s car through a couple of well-filled parking lanes before I found an empty space.

  It was a tight fit, but I pulled into it. I had my doo
r open and was halfway out before I noticed that the gray sedan had stopped right behind my rear bumper. It was so close it didn’t leave room for me to stand and unlock the trunk. “Hey!” I called to the two men I could see inside the car. “How about pulling ahead a little?”

  The two men literally burst from their car.

  Crouched low, they moved in a rush, one on either side of our car.

  I didn’t understand what was happening, but I didn’t like the look of it.

  I reached quickly to draw my gun, but in my cramped position, half-in, half-out of the car, my elbow struck the steering wheel, misdirecting my hand.

  The man running toward me on my side of the car was a sharp dresser. I had an impression of store-mannequin neatness before he extended his arm toward me while he was still six feet away. I ducked instinctively, but a stream of noxious, acrid-odored wet spray struck me full in the face.

  My first breath half strangled me. Behind me I heard Melissa’s door open and the girl’s stifled scream. I tried to roll in that direction while I attempted to withhold my second gagging breath. I failed in both attempts. Across the front seat I had a rapidly failing view of a hairy-armed, big-shouldered, flat-faced man dragging Melissa from the car.

  I could feel myself slipping farther and farther away from the bizarre scene.

  I fell backward inside the car.

  A momentarily high-pitched sound grew fainter.

  “Drag him offa the goddamn horn!” a voice rasped from what seemed like a very long distance away.

  Then I didn’t hear anything else.

  I came to on my back in the car’s front seat, one foot still outside the open door. I was staring at a dark brown substance. Only after a concentrated, head-swimming effort did I blearily recognize it as the car’s roof lining.

  I failed in my first two efforts to sit up but managed it on the third. I felt sick and dizzy. The brilliantly sunlit parking lot assaulted my still unfocused vision with the impact of a fist.

  I struggled to turn and look across the front seat to the other side of the car.

  Melissa was gone.

  The two men were gone.

  I pushed myself out from under the steering wheel and staggered a few shaky steps. I wanted to get away from any residue of gas that might still remain inside the car. I took long breaths of fresh air, and gradually my queasy stomach settled down.

  I half expected the car keys to be gone from the ignition, but they were still there. I checked my automatic. It was still in my belt holster. I removed the car key, then performed a wobbly balancing act walking to the rear of the car, where I opened the trunk.

  Melissa’s bags were still there.

  I closed the trunk lid slowly.

  I couldn’t seem to make myself think. My temples were pounding. I felt for my wallet. It was in my left-hand hip pocket where I always carried it. I pulled it out and skimmed its contents hurriedly. My money was still in it. Nothing appeared to have been disturbed.

  The attack by the two men obviously hadn’t been a robbery attempt.

  Then what had it been?

  “Melissa?” I said half aloud.

  But there was no Melissa to answer me.

  Melissa was gone.

  Kidnapped?

  It seemed ridiculous, but my fuddled brain could come up with no other explanation. I looked at my watch. It was several minutes past Melissa’s flight time. I had been unconscious for almost three-quarters of an hour.

  I couldn’t do the obvious thing: call the police.

  I couldn’t answer the questions the police would inevitably get around to asking. Like my permanent address, my means of support, and my background. When I thought about it, if Melissa’s sudden disappearance wasn’t a bad joke, I was most likely to end up as a prime suspect if the police ever got a chance to question me.

  I tried to think my way through the maze.

  It was tempting to believe that Melissa might be playing some damn fool game in a fit of pique at Hazel for not getting her own way in something Melissa wanted to do.

  But the girl didn’t seem like the type.

  And the gas bomb militated against it, too.

  That had been no game.

  I needed most of all to talk to Hazel, and right now.

  I had taken half a dozen steps toward the terminal before I stopped. Nothing I wanted to say to Hazel could be safely entrusted to the semibroadcast nature of a telephone conversation going through a motel switchboard. No, much as I begrudged the additional time loss, I decided to wait until I could talk to Hazel face-to-face.

  I went back to the car, took off my jacket, opened both front doors, and flapped the jacket vigorously to fan away any lingering pockets of gas.

  “Trouble, friend?” a voice said behind me.

  I turned so fast I stumbled. I hadn’t heard anyone come up behind me, proof enough that the gas still had me groggy. Belatedly, I remembered to hold my jacket in front of me to hide my holstered automatic.

  A red-faced, bespectacled fat man in an expensive-looking suit had paused in the act of unlocking his car across the lane. A handbag and briefcase were at his feet.

  “A bee flew into the car, but I think I’m rid of it now,” I responded to the unlikely-looking Samaritan.

  “Oh. Okay. Good luck,” the fat man said. He finished unlocking his car, tossed bag and briefcase into the back seat, then drove off with a wave.

  I slid under the wheel of Hazel’s car and did some driving myself. The trip from the Pasadena motel apartment had been leisurely; the return was not. I edged the speedometer reading seven or eight miles above the limit all the way. And during every inch of the freeway journey the same questions kept hammering at me.

  Melissa kidnapped?

  Why?

  By whom?

  How had the gray sedan with the black vinyl roof managed to be right behind me coming into the airport parking lot?

  Had it followed me all the way from the motel?

  A few pieces of the jigsaw fit together in a way I didn’t like. Hazel was a wealthy woman, one who might easily be expected to ransom a college-age niece. The kidnapping itself, if that’s what it was, certainly appeared to be a professional job. Nothing had been left to chance. I doubted if I could identify either of the assailants.

  Hazel had money, but it wasn’t a well-known fact. Who in our highly discreet orbit had been able to find out and take advantage of Melissa’s short visit?

  I had no idea.

  All I really knew at the moment was that I felt like a prime fool having to return to the Viking Motel and tell Hazel I hadn’t been able to perform a simple task like putting her niece on an eastbound plane.

  I parked the car under the drooping branches of the eucalyptus trees across the street from the motel and hurried to the outside stairway leading upward to the second-deck terrace and swimming pool. I could see Hazel sitting at a table overlooking the street, but my rapid pace slowed as I neared the top of the stairs. Hazel had company.

  Valerie Cooper, an attractive grass widow in her mid-thirties, was having coffee with Hazel at the terrace table. Both women were in housecoats. Val Cooper was staying at the motel while her home was being redecorated. Hazel had become friendly with her during our stay—far more so than she usually did with another woman.

  I nodded to Val as I sat down at the table. I’d had no more than a half-dozen brief conversations with her when I’d encountered her in Hazel’s company, but she seemed to possess an understated good sense. All I really knew about her was that her ex had been a lawyer.

  “Traffic must have been heavy,” Hazel remarked. “Coffee?”

  “Not right now, thanks,” I said.

  I must have been radiating impatience. Both women looked at me. Hazel started to say something, then stopped. Val Cooper stubbed out her half-smoked cigarette and covered her coffee cup with her palm when Hazel offered to refill it. “No, thanks,” she said, rising to her feet. “I have a phone call to make. Let me know if
you feel like going shopping later, Hazel.” She nodded to me before she left the terrace.

  “Perceptive,” I commented. “She knew I wanted to talk to you.”

  “So did I,” Hazel responded dryly. “What is it?”

  I was watching Val Cooper’s well-upholstered figure as she turned into the doorway that led to the motel suites. “I’ve seen the lady watching me, trying to fit me into her scheme of things. Has she asked you yet if you can afford a gigolo like me?”

  Hazel laughed. “Not yet. What is it you wanted to talk to me about?”

  “We’d better go inside.” I reached across the table and put a restraining hand on her arm as she was about to rise. “After a moment, when it doesn’t look as though we’re conducting a panic retreat.”

  She glanced around the terrace, deserted except for our table. “It doesn’t look as though we’re overloaded with observers,” she remarked, but she remained seated. She was used to my caution. I stood up after five minutes had passed.

  Hazel led the way to our suite. Her six-foot height, crowned with a mass of flaming red hair, made her a truly striking figure. Shapely curves undulated busily through the thin stuff of her housecoat. Inside, she turned and confronted me. “It’s serious?” she asked quietly. She knew from experience that any number of situations could turn serious for me in a manner they never could for the average citizen.

  “Melissa was kidnapped from the airport parking lot,” I said without preliminary.

  Hazel stared. “You’re kidding,” she said, but without conviction. She knew I wouldn’t joke about a matter like that. Her eyes narrowed, and her hand went to her mouth in an unconscious mannerism she had whenever she was disturbed. I heard her fingernail clicking against her teeth. “Do you think there was any chance it was her idea, Earl?” she asked.

  It was my turn to stare. “A chance that Melissa staged it herself, you mean?” I thought of the fleeting glimpse I’d had of the girl’s fear-strained face when she was being pulled from the car. “She’d have to be a hell of an actress. What ever gave you such an idea?”