The Black Death

by Nick Carter

  He rasped at me. “Who in hell are you and what do you want?”

  It seemed a fair question and I had the answer ready. I took a dead man’s name. Not, I hoped, in vain.

  “Steve Bennett. CIA agent. You are P.P. Trevelyn? Paul Penton Trevelyn?”

  The girl laughed nervously. “Is he ever, mister! And you must be some kind of nut. Boy, are you in trouble!”

  The old man and I spoke at the “same time. To the girl We both said, “Shut up.”

  P.P. said: “I suppose you’re after Dr. Valdez?”

  I nodded. “You suppose right. Shall we go find him?”

  His mouth did look like an anus, and now it curled in blanched pink contempt. “You’re a little late. Dr. Valdez was killed this afternoon. Murdered. I thought you people did it.”

  I shook my head. “No. And let’s not kid around. That wasn’t Valdez who was shot. That was a ringer. A decoy used for that very purpose—so someone would kill him! So you could spread the word that Valdez was dead and take off the heat.”

  Trevelyn nodded. “So you know that, eh? I thought you might. I never did have much faith in the plan. Or in Valdez for that matter.”

  That caught me a little off balance, but there was no time for puzzles. I made a nasty little movement with the Tommy gun. “So the real Valdez is alive and well and working for you under duress? So come on—let’s go find him. It’s the last time I’ll tell you.” I loaded my voice with menace and let my finger tighten on the trigger.

  He was a stick-legged and paunched old sphinx in a dark blue dressing gown. He didn’t move. His eyes taunted me behind the dark glasses. When he spoke his voice was casual and unafraid and I began to sweat a little. Maybe this wasn’t going to be so easy.

  “You don’t make a very good zombie,” he said “Too intelligent. But still not intelligent enough. Or your information is faulty. You haven’t got me, son. I’ve got you! I’m the spider and you’re in my web. What do you say to that?”

  I had memorized the precis Hawk gave me in Key West Every word flashed through my mind now.

  The croaking old voice went on. “You can’t very well intimidate a dying man, Mr. Bennett. I am dying. Of throat cancer. I have had three operations already and there isn’t anything left to cut out. I might live another two months, they say. They are the best specialists in the world and I believe them.”

  I accepted that as truth. Accepted it and began trying to find a way around it.

  Before I could say anything the girl got into the act. This time I placed the voice tone and inflection. Under stress she reverted back to Hell’s Kitchen.

  “Why don’t you take off, Junior, and go back where you belong. You do that, and don’t cause no more trouble, and maybe my sweet old P.P. will let you live.”

  The black man chuckled. Laughed. Turned over and buried his face in the pillow, his well muscled shoulders shaking.

  Still trying to figure a way around this block, I gave the girl a sad smile. “You disappoint me, honey. I thought I was saving you from a life of shame and degradation. I intended to take you back to your mother, and rehabilitate you. You know—back to school, serving milk and cookies at the local Sunday school, the whole wholesome bit. You would turn that down?”

  She stared at me and bit her lip with white perfect teeth. As lovely a moron as I had ever seen. I knew what I had to do and I regretted it some. Not too much.

  “You’re a crazy son of a bitch,” the girl said. “Coming in here like this and trying to spoil everything for me.” Her voice raised in pitch as she glared. “P.P. is gonna make me a movie star. He promised and my P.P. keeps his word. Now why don’t you just do what I said and take off!”

  The White Rabbit was already with us. I expected the Mad Hatter any moment.

  The black man was laughing. He couldn’t stop. He grabbed a corner of a pillow case and stuffed it in his mouth and he still couldn’t stop. He kept his head buried in the pillow and went— "huhhhh—huh—ahhhh—huhhhh—”

  P.P., the kind ole uncle, spoke in reproof to the girl. Avuncular tones dipped in slime. “Now, Betty, honey. That’s no way to talk to the CIA. Try to be calm. Everything is going to be all right. I promise that—”

  I clicked the stiletto down into my hand. The weapon glittered in the mirrors as I raised and threw it in the time of a heart beat. “You’re so goddamned right about that, Dad. Everything is going to be all right.”

  The stiletto clung to her like a scarlet decoration for bravery. The cruel needle loved tanned skin beneath her left breast. Worms of blood writhed down to her navel. She stared down, poor girl, and did not believe and when at last she did believe she made a move to pluck out the steel and it was too late and she died with her red mouth open and still doubting.

  Silence in the mirror room. I moved the muzzle of the Tommy gun back and forth between the black and the old man.

  “Shock of recognition,” I said. “Nature of reality, P.P. Not so gentle hint. Shall we get on with it now? Or don’t you really care about those two months you’ve got left? Think of all the dirty pictures you can take in two months, P.P.”

  The black man rolled away from the lovely corpse. His eyes wide, he stared and his throat was a dry well without sound. He did not yet believe it.

  P.P. did. The dark glasses flashed at me. He folded his hands over his paunch and his whisper was a husk of conviction and slowly rising fear.

  “You murdered her, Mr. Bennett. By God, sir, you murdered her in the presence of two witnesses! I, ah, I saw it. With my own eyes I saw it I had heard that you people were ruthless, but this—this is beyond belief.”

  “You had better believe it,” I said curtly. “Now get out of that chair and take me to Valdez. Quickly and quietly with no fuss. You’re my hostage and I’ll have this Tommy gun up yours every step of the way.”

  “Crude,” he said. “So crude and vulgar, you people.”

  “It’s a little different,” I admitted, “when you do your own killing. Not the same as paying to have it done. Now move, you old bastard. I’m fresh out of patience.”

  He shook his head. “No. I think not. I think you will just have to kill me, Mr. Bennett.”

  If he wanted to play bluff it was all right with me. I could see the sweat on his bald dome. He was cracking.

  I wiggled the Tommy gun at the black, who was still staring in fascination at dead Betty girl. “Pull out that stiletto,” I commanded. “Wipe it on the sheet.”

  He hesitated. I cracked my voice at him. “Do it!”

  He did it. He lay there with the stiletto in his hand, glancing from it to me.

  I nodded to P.P. and said mildly, “You love this old bag of guts?”

  The black man stared at me, his mouth working. P.P. shifted nervously in his chair. He pulled his dressing gown tighter over his ridiculous legs. He had an inkling of what was coming.

  I snapped at the black man. “Do you? Love him? Lie and I’ll kill you.”

  “N—no, sir. I don’t love him.”

  I grinned at the black man. “Does he love you?”

  Wide eyes. Lots of white showing. “I—I don’t know what you mean, sir. I don’t think—”

  “That’s it,” I said. “Don’t think. Feel. Just feel. You know P.P. doesn’t love you. You know he doesn’t respect you. You know he despises you, considers you an inferior black animal. Calls you nigger, doesn’t he?”

  He took a deep breath and looked at P.P. Something flickered in his eyes and I knew I had him.

  “Yes, sir. He calls me nigger.”

  “Okay,” I said blandly. “I know how you must feel about that. No real man would take it. And you’re a real man. I can see that. You’re a handsome and educated man and you’ve been doing dirty shows for this old pervert. You must feel dirty. I know you do. So 111 give you a chance to wash yourself—in his blood. Take that stiletto and go to work on him. Easy at first, though. Save his balls for last.” I watched P.P. from a corner of my eye. He sat unmoving. Sweat ran off
his smooth skull and trickled down behind his ears.

  The black man looked at the stiletto. He looked at P.P. and his mouth curved in a smile that was not pleasant. What a door into dreams I had opened for him.

  Yet he was a sensible man. He hesitated. “I don’t want to die.”

  I smiled at him. “We all have to die sometime. Think of what you can do to him before you die. And at least you’ll die like a man. Not like an animal, bought and paid for, screwing in public for money and for the pleasure of this horrible stinking old money bag!”

  Still he hesitated. I went on: “Maybe you won’t die. I’ll take you out with me, if you want to go. I can’t promise that you will live, but I will promise that if you die I’ll die with you. I won’t leave you to face it alone.”

  That was the convincer. The black man slipped off the bed and padded toward P.P., the stiletto gleaming in his hand. “All right,” he said. “All right. Let’s tie him up.”

  P.P. Trevelyn raised a hand. “No. That won’t be necessary. I know when I’m beaten. I know you will do it. And you are quite right, Mr. Bennett. I was bluffing. I do want that two months of life. I will take you to Dr. Valdez.”

  I halted the black man. He stopped, reluctant, and I told him to toss the stiletto on the bed. He did.

  P.P. said, his voice ice-encrusted, “I do not really blame you, Thomas. But you know what to expect if you are taken alive—I do not forgive such treachery!”

  The black man looked scared.

  “Forget that,” I told him. “He’s just & dying old nothing talking through his head. Get dressed.”

  While he dressed hurriedly I poked the Tommy gun in P.P.’s skinny neck. “Get over to that phone and call your people, your guard house or whatever, and explain the facts of life to them. One wrong move from them and you’re dead. Be sure they understand.”

  His slippers scuffed on the carpet as he walked to the phone. He started to pick it up, then hesitated. “Some of my people, the rank and file, aren’t too bright. I wouldn’t like for there to be a mistake made.”

  I grinned. “That’s good thinking, P.P. You just make sure there isn’t a mistake.”

  He did not pick up the phone. “If I can show you something?”

  I nodded. “Do that. Carefully.”

  He opened a closet and showed me a long rank of handsome uniforms on hangers. “I am a Lieutenant General in the Haitian Army, you see. Also a Colonel in Duvalier’s Elite Guard. I have many ranks and titles.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “The point is that if we wore uniforms, the three of us, it would look better, more natural, and there is less chance of an, er, accident. I would not want to die because of some trigger-happy fool.”

  The man had a point. But a thought struck me—I didn’t have any burnt cork with me and there was no time for the makeup bit anyway.

  I pointed this out. “I’m Whitey, remember? This is the Haitian Army!”

  His expression was sour. “I know. It doesn’t matter too much. We hire white mercenaries from time to time, though Papa Doc hates to admit it. You can pass as one. You’ll be working fast—and the uniform is the important thing.”

  He was right. It had to go fast or not at all. By the time anyone questioned the color of my skin it would be too late—for them. I weighed the deal very briefly.

  It meant that I would have to ditch the machine gun. It would look a lot better. And it would carry a certain logic— because of the attack, the firefight, we were staging an inspection. I couldn’t very well carry off that illusion if I had a Tommy gun jammed in his ass. I nodded.

  “Okay. Get with it. I’ll tell you what to say. Every word. You say anything else, just one extra word, and I’ll kill you.”

  Trevelyn reached for the phone. He looked at me, eyes hooded behind the big dark glasss, and there was fear and resignation in his words.“You lied to me, Mr. Bennett. You are not CIA. You’re AXE!”

  Chapter 13

  Half an hour later, dressed as high rankers in the Haitian Army—decked in plumage finer than even Sutton Place doormen—we entered an elevator and started downward. No sweat. No interference. P.P., at my urging, had dispatched every available guard and officer to the gate, to patrol the fence and organize pursuit of the invasion forces. I had an inward chuckle about that. Some invasion force! Lyda, Hank Willard and Duppy.

  I washed my face and took out the contact lenses. The uniform was a miserable fit—I had to slash a lot of seams with the stiletto—but I was the very model of a modern major general. In Papa Doc’s army. P.P. outranked me, the old bastard.

  I was walking a very thin plank and knew it. Killing the girl had cowed them both, which was my intention, and I had to act before the shock wore off. And before Thomas, the black, began having second thoughts. I thought I could trust Thomas, to a point, but I did not give him a weapon. I left the Tommy gun in the suite and herded them into the elevator with the Luger.

  As we descended Trevelyn took off his glasses to clean them and for the first time I saw his eyes. Small, set too close to his nose, with a sly bird-like dark twinkle, they told me nothing that I didn’t already know. P.P. was an amoral man, not immoral. A constitutional psychopath who inherited a fortune in millions and built it into billions, and became the slave of those billions. He was a sincere man. He really believed that his billions gave him the right, the burden and the duty, to call tunes for the world. A sort of reverse noblesse oblige.

  I herded them through corridors and sub-basements, P.P. shuffling in the lead on arthritic legs, to a large room where there was a turntable for narrow gauge tracks emerging from a tunnel. On the table was a small electric car with three padded leather cross seats.

  I indicated the car with the Luger. “Goes to the Citadel?”

  “Yes.” P.P. lurched painfully into the car and sank back; with a sigh. He wasn’t faking his pain or his decrepitude. The old boy had just about had it. I wondered how it felt to leave all those billions behind.

  Thomas, now a full Colonel—and looking smart and handsome in the uniform—took over the controls Thomas was having second thoughts. Not about his own plight so much as about me. Thomas was just beginning to realize to fully and actually know, that I had killed the girl in cold blood. He had to think that, since he couldn’t know my real reasons for the killing. And he knew I was AXE and he knew what that mean!. Thomas was wondering what I would do to him when I no longer needed him.

  “Take her away,” I said. Thomas touched a lever and the car glided into the tunnel, running smoothly with a near silent whir of electric motor. I sat in the rear, covering them the Luger on my knee and out of sight below the side of the Cap P put on his dark glasses and peered at me. He appeared to have recovered some of his cool, but I sensed that it was superficial. The knowledge that I was AXE had put a deep gut fear into him.

  He surprised me when he said, “It has come to my attention that some of the natives, from time to time, put a voodoo curse on me. Do you believe in the efficacy of such charms, Mr. Bennett?”

  I thought it time to give him another shock. Things were going smoothly, greased by fear, and I wanted them to continue that way.

  “My real name is Carter,” I said. “Nick Carter. Thomas made a sound in his throat and gaped at me. P.P. stared at me and his claw-like hands twitched and he shriveled a bit into the garish uniform. There was a quaver m his cancer-ruined voice when he spoke.

  “The Nick Carter! Of course. I should have guessed that.”

  I grinned at him. “Now you know. As to the efficacy of voodoo curses—until recently I didn’t believe in them. Now I do.”

  “You do?”

  “Of course. Simple. I’m here, P.P. I am the obeah!”

  P.P. fell silent. He folded his hands in his lap and stared down at them. Thomas, dumb struck, stared at me with eyes that grew larger by the second.

  We whined along the narrow rails. The tunnel was tall and broad and well lighted by overhead bulbs caged in wire. There was a
dank smell of recently finished concrete.

  I brought the Luger into view. “How long till we get to the Citadel?”

  “Half an hour’s ride.” P.P. shrugged his puny shoulders. “The cars are slow. I have been meaning to get new ones, faster ones, but there has been so much that needs doing. A new power plant, for instance. Mine is no longer adequate now that this tunnel has been completed. But when a man is dying he tends to postpone matters. Now, of course, it is not really important.”

  “Valdez stays in the Citadel all the time? He never comes to your place? You used the decoy to create the illusion that he commuted? And to give anyone who wanted it a good shot at him?”

  Silence but for the small whine of the car. P.P. twined his yellowed fingers. Then: “Yes to all your questions. I have not seen Valdez, face to face, for weeks. He has insisted that it be that way, that he be allowed to work in peace. But you are laboring under a delusion, Mr. Carter. Valdez does not want to be rescued. He will not leave this place. I have already paid him ten million dollars, deposited in a Swiss bank, with another ten million to come when he successfully completes his work. You can see the odds against you.”

  I smiled at him. “Valdez will come with me. Or—”

  I did not have to finish it. P.P. nodded and shrugged. “Or you will murder him, too. Of course. I thought those might be your instructions.”

  The car rounded and approached a well-lighted platform. A guard in a black uniform was pacing back and forth, a rifle on his shoulder. I lowered the Luger out of sight.

  “Not a word or a move out of you two,” I said. “I’ll handle him. Thomas, you take the musette bag. Careful of it. Drop it or bump it and we all go sky high.”

  Thomas nodded and worked his lever. The car glided to a stop by the platform. The guard approached us. I smiled at him and nodded to P.P.

  “Help Mr. Trevelyn,” I said. “He isn’t feeling very well.”

  He made no move to obey. He was big and black, wearing the same dark uniform, but there was something different about him. He was grim and uneasy, confused by our sudden appearance, yet it was more than that. Then I got it. This wasn’t P.P.’s man! Whose, then?