by Lionel White
“O’Farrell also happens to know of my contact with you, Captain Morales,” I said.
“Your contact with me, Senor Johns, merely involved my recommending a source of supply. To all intents and purposes it ended there. You were not working for me, and we had no business relationship.”
“All right,” I said. “You want me to look up this Dr. Constantine, to use O’Farrell as a reference. And how exactly am I to explain that I know who Dr. Constantine is and what he does?”
“As I say, you have been out of the country for a long time. Dr. Constantine is a man of mystery, but the mystery is limited. There is no mystery about what he does. Anyone in drug traffic is aware of his name and of his significance. You would have heard of him sooner or later. He is a legend in the underworld of several continents, and there’s hardly a newspaper man in the country who doesn’t know about him. If you were anxious to get into the business it would only be natural that you would look him up. And, as I say, with O’Farrell’s recommendation you will probably have no difficulty in making a deal.”
“All right, captain, assume you are right. I go to Acapulco and I meet this Dr. Constantine and I make a deal with him. He hires me. And then what?”
“You make one trip across the border. I want to know two things. I want to know where you make your delivery and to whom you make your delivery.”
“But not when?” I asked skeptically.
Again he gave me that thin smile. He was way ahead of me.
“Are you thinking I merely plan to hijack the stuff once you’ve taken it across the border?” he asked. “Hardly. To begin with, on your first trip, I seriously doubt if he will trust you with anything of great value. He will try you out first with a small parcel. No, I’m not interested in stealing a relatively insignificant amount of narcotics. I’m interested in discovering his market. I want to find out to whom he is selling. As I told you, there are many suppliers, but only a very few really large buyers. He deals with the largest.”
I thought it over for a few moments and then I shook my head.
“I don’t like it,” I said. “I told you in the beginning I was not interested in becoming involved in hard drugs.”
“You are involved,” Captain Morales said. “But aside from that, you are interested in something else. You’re interested in seeing that your friend Angel Cortillo is not convicted on a murder charge. And let me assure you, he can be and he will be.”
“Unless I am willing to play along with you?”
“Unless you are willing to play along.”
Captain Morales stood up. “I want your decision, Senor Johns, and I want it right now. We might just as well settle this one way or the other. Time is running out. And so is my patience. I will remind you that I am an officer of the law and I have my duties to perform. And believe me, I am prepared to perform them.”
“You are prepared to see an innocent man convicted,” I said, unable to keep the bitterness out of my voice.
“If you care to put it that way.”
“All right, captain,” I said. “You give me no option. Let us talk a little more about Mr. Constantine.”
Captain Morales resumed his seat.
When he was again ready to leave, I spoke as he got to the door. I said, “It would seem to me that with your organization you’d have no difficulty���”
He shook his head. “We need you because you are a very clever man, Senor Johns. A clever man and a cautious man. And we can trust you. We can trust you completely. We know that you have a great deal at stake here. And we can’t afford to take chances on anybody that we do not trust completely.”
“I wish I could trust you as completely, captain,” I said.
Again his face flushed and he frowned. “It is not necessary that you trust me,” he said. “Just do as you are instructed.”
Before he left he again took out the five hundred dollars from his wallet and tossed it on the table.
And then he was gone.
***
An hour and a half later, I was one of five passengers on a twin-engine, charter plane winging across the gulf of California and heading south on the first lap of the 1,400 mile air trip to Mexico City. Two of my fellow passengers got off at Durango where we made a stop to take on additional fuel, and there was an hour and a half delay before we were again airborne.
The unexpected delay caused me to miss my connections at the airport outside of Mexico City, and I was forced to hold over for four hours until the next flight took off.
I’d managed to pick up a few hours sleep on the trip south and was feeling fairly rested. The bar at the airport was closed, but a coffee shop was open, and I stopped at a newsstand before going in and ordering some ham and eggs and coffee. I had found a three-day-old Los Angeles newspaper and I looked it over as I waited for the food to arrive. Most of the news was stale, and I probably would have missed the item altogether had I not been killing time.
It was a small story lost in the second news section, and I probably wouldn’t have bothered to go beyond the headline had I been able to find anything else beside the newspaper to read. The headline read: BANDIT KILLED DURING HOLDUP OF AGED COUPLE. The story was datelined San Luis Obispo.
***
One man was shot and killed and two others made their escape just before noon yesterday on Route 5 near the intersection of Wheeler’s Ridge, when the three attempted to hijack an elderly couple and were interrupted by two FBI agents who were in a passing car.
Dr. Philip Hutchinson, 73 years old, a retired college professor, and his wife Bertha, 69, were on their way from Los Angeles to San Francisco yesterday morning when their Buick station wagon was forced off the road by three men in a pickup truck.
The driver of the pickup truck, carrying a sawed-off shotgun, and his two companions ordered Dr. Hutchinson and his wife out of the car. Dr. Hutchinson stepped to the ground and was explaining that his wife, an invalid, was unable to walk, when an automobile carrying two FBI agents, Gordon Martinson and James O’Connell, of the Los Angeles office came upon the scene.
Seeing the guns in the hands of the three men, O’Connell, who was driving, jammed on his brakes and pulled over behind the station wagon, which had been forced into a ditch at the side of the road. As he did, the bandit with the sawed-off shotgun fired several rounds, the shots penetrating the radiator and windshield of the car being driven by the FBI agents. Martinson leaped to the ground and returned the fire, killing the bandit with the shotgun.
Both Martinson and O’Connell took shelter behind their car as the other two bandits opened fire. Miraculously, in the exchange neither Dr. Hutchinson nor his wife were struck. O’Connell’s gun was shot out of his hand, injuring him slightly, and the two bandits were able to make their escape in the pickup truck.
A certain element of mystery surrounds the incident, as Dr. Hutchinson’s car has been impounded by the FBI. Both Dr. Hutchinson and his wife were taken to a local hospital, suffering from shock.
FBI officials questioned by a reporter from this newspaper refused to say how they happened to be at the scene at the time, and further mystery has been added as a result of Dr.
Hutchinson and his wife having been placed under guard at the hospital. All attempts to communicate with them have been without success, and the FBI office merely says that a statement will be released later on.
The identity of the dead man is not known at this time. Dr. Hutchinson and his wife had been touring in Mexico and were on their way to San Francisco to visit a daughter and grandchildren at the time of the attack.
***
I didn’t eat the ham and eggs after all. I had suddenly lost my appetite. I realized what a close call they’d had, and I knew that had anything happened to them, I would have held myself responsible.
I had known, of course, that an effort would be made to retrieve the package I had secreted in their car, but it never occurred to me that the method would be so crude and violent.
I was temp
ted at that moment to give up the whole thing. What had started out only those few short weeks ago as my plan to make a little fast money bringing marijuana into the States, had already resulted in the death of one girl, the beating of Angel Cortillo and his framed-up murder charge. And now this-I was beginning to wonder who the next victim would be.
But then I thought of Angel, who was still in that cell up in Ensenada. If I were to walk out now, I wouldn’t have to guess what would happen to him. I wouldn’t be putting him in jeopardy. I would be condemning him irrevocably.
The plane for Acapulco took off on schedule, and the rental car was waiting for me when I arrived at the airport. The Santa Marino was listed as a motel, but it was seven stories high, had a beautiful ocean view, two Olympic-sized swimming pools, private tennis courts, and was as elaborate as any first-class hotel, and more expensive than most of them. My room was seventy dollars a day.
Captain Morales’ instructions to me had been simplicity itself. He had explained that Dr. Constantine lived in a heavily guarded villa on the outskirts of Acapulco. I was given the telephone number, and he explained that it was an answering service where I should leave a message. There was no hope of reaching Dr. Constantine directly. I was merely to give my name and room number at the Santa Marino and say that I was a business associate of Mr. O’Farrell in San Francisco, and that I would like to get in touch with Dr. Constantine. And then I was to wait. From that point on, I was to play it by ear.
“He will check back, of course, probably before he attempts to get in touch with you. Constantine has worldwide connections and so you must be extremely careful to tell him nothing that cannot be checked out, and you may be assured that he will check very thoroughly.”
I decided to get a good night’s sleep and postpone the call until the following day.
It was easier than I thought it would be, almost too easy. I made the telephone call at ten-thirty the next morning, but instead of an answering service, I reached an electronic device which taped messages.
I did as Captain Morales had advised me. Gave my name, my address, my room number, and said that I was an acquaintance of Mr. O’Farrell of San Francisco and would like to see Dr. Constantine.
I hung up and waited.
I stayed in my room and called room service for lunch and had the bellboy bring up newspapers and a couple of magazines. At four-thirty that afternoon, the call came.
I was simply told that I would be picked up in half an hour by a chauffeur-driven car, and that the driver would call me from the lobby when he arrived.
This time there was no patting-down for concealed weapons, no blindfolds, no hocus-pocus The chauffeur was a Japanese in a rather threadbare black uniform, and the car was a thoroughly respectable and slightly ancient Bentley limousine.
The trip from the motor lodge to the villa took something under forty minutes, and we entered the grounds through iron gates, which were opened electronically by a remote-control device triggered from the car. There was nothing even slightly sinister about the place, and the chauffeur merely stopped in front of the entrance and opened the car door for me, and I walked over and rang the door bell.
The door was opened after a moment’s delay by an elderly servant, also wearing a slightly threadbare uniform. He motioned me to follow him, and we passed down a long hallway, and I was left in what appeared to be a combination library and den.
I sat there for some ten minutes and was becoming restless when the door was again opened and a very small, slender man with a bald head and a Van Dyke entered the room. He was wearing a smoking-jacket.
He nodded to me, but made no effort to shake hands. He walked over and sat behind a desk, then looked up at me rather shyly and said, “You are Mr. Johns.”
I nodded.
He said, “I am Dr. Constantine.”
I was beginning to wonder if perhaps Captain Morales hadn’t finally slipped up. This shy little man with the Van Dyke looked as though he might have been an assistant instructor in some second-rate college, or perhaps a family dentist. I couldn’t quite conceive of him as a sinister head of an international drug cartel.
“Now Mr. Johns, if you will tell me what you wanted to see me about���”
I said, “I have done some business with Mr. O’Farrell in San Francisco, and I thought it might be possible I could do some business with you.”
He nodded, not seeming particularly surprised. “Just what business did you do with Mr. O’Farrell?”
“I sold him a certain commodity which I brought into the States from Mexico.”
He nodded. “And you want to sell me something?”
“Not exactly,” I said. “My business is not really selling, nor is it buying. I’m essentially a mover, a carrier of goods. May I say, of goods which sometimes are very difficult to import and export.”
Again he didn’t seem in the slightest bit surprised, and I was having a difficult time figuring him out. I began to have the eerie feeling that the whole conversation wasn’t actually taking place. It followed no script which I had ever read or heard about.
“Mr. Johns,” he said. “I am a simple man. I do not beat about the bush. When I received your call, I, of course, immediately checked with Mr. O’Farrell in San Francisco. He remembered you. He also explained to me the extent of your relationship. Let us be quite frank with each other. Why have you come to me?”
I had been prepared to go through the usual devious hocus-pocus, and gradually lead up to things. He was laying it right on the table. I decided to play it the same way.
“I came to you, Dr. Constantine, because I have reason to believe that you are a dealer in hard narcotics, perhaps one of the most important dealers on this continent. I would like a job. A very high-paying job. I would like to be one of your runners. It is as simple as that.”
He smiled at me rather benignly. “You too are refreshingly frank,” he said. “You say you would like to work for me. Let me ask you something. Why me?”
“A very simple reason,” I said. “My understanding is that you are a major exporter. I want to go where the money is.”
He looked thoughtful for a moment and then looked up again. “Have you had experience in this particular field?”
“Not directly,” I said. “I have moved marijuana across the border. I’ve done certain things in the Orient, while I was in the service.”
“But not narcotics.”
I shook my head. “Not so far.”
He stroked his Van Dyke. “Odd,” he said. “I told you that I had talked to Mr. O’Farrell in San Francisco. Among other things he told me about you is that he had suggested your going into narcotics and that you were not interested. But now you are interested. Would you like to explain?”
“The explanation is simple.” I said. “I had hoped to stick solely to marijuana. I discovered, however, that because of the bulk involved, the risk was too great for the profit to be made. I am interested in money. Big money and fast money. I am willing to take larger risks for larger profits.
“I also came to the realization that it is a lot more difficult to get a large package across the border than a very small one. Having reached that conclusion, it seemed to be only logical to seek employment from the people who are bringing the stuff into the country, rather than from those who are pushing it once it is there. Hence I am here.”
“You are delightfully straightforward, and in this business those are two qualities one doesn’t often encounter. If you are telling the truth, then it is possible we might actually get together. On the other hand, if you are not telling the truth, it is equally possible that you might never leave this place alive.”
He spoke the words as though he were saying nothing more sinister than that I might catch a bad cold if I walked out in the rain, and again I had that weird feeling that the conversation wasn’t really taking place and that he didn’t really exist.
“I’m going to ask you some questions, Mr. Johns. In fact a great many questions. I want
to know who you know, what you’ve done, where you’ve been, who your friends are. In short, everything there is to know. It may take a little time, and I want you to think very carefully before you answer any of my questions. I want you to be absolutely sure that you stick strictly to the truth. You may as well relax, because this will take time. Perhaps you would like a drink before we begin?”
I thought that I would like a drink, and also that it would show supreme self-confidence if I trusted myself to have one. I said I’d like a scotch and soda, and he fixed me one from a cabinet, taking ice from a bucket very punctiliously with a pair of silver tongs and using an old-fashioned soda splasher on whatever it was he poured from the cut-glass decanter. He took soda and ice for himself.
He watched me with some interest as I tasted the drink cautiously, wondering what he was giving me.
“Is your drink all right?” he asked.
“It has the taste of very good scotch,” I said.
“What a carefully weighed reply,” he said. “Perhaps we can do business. Assuming, of course, that you check out.” Then he began to ask the questions.
It took the better part of three and a half hours, and he took the whole thing down on tape. If I had had any previous idea that he was over-simple or in any way naive, I was swiftly disillusioned.
I don’t think he could have done a better job of it had he had me wired to a lie-detector machine. It wasn’t that he was tricky. He was just thorough. Completely and absolutely thorough.
He handled the inquisition with the skill and dexterity of a brain surgeon wielding a scalpel. Before he was through, he probably knew more about me than I knew about myself.
I held nothing back. Not even my initial contact with Captain Morales. The one thing that I did not tell him was the fact that it had been at Morales’ suggestion that I came down to see him.
He had not been surprised when I told him that it was through Morales that I had found my contact to purchase marijuana in Mexico. Apparently, it was common knowledge that Captain Morales operated outside, as well as inside, the law.
I knew that I would have to stay completely within the confines of the truth, and I did so. Even to the extent of mentioning my dates with Ann Sherwood when I had been in San Francisco. He had wanted to know the names of every person that I had spoken to since I had been back in the United States.
