“I figured it was time I put you to work.”
“You haven’t done badly for a starter, horseman.” She dropped down on the bed again, stretched lazily, then sat up and looked at me. “Could that have more than one meaning?”
I answered her question with a question. “How’d you like to shoot fifty thousand of your hard-earned money at the moon?”
“What’s the odds?”
“Ten to one or better. For our end.”
She leaned down over me until her bare breasts tickled my chest. “Money I’ve got coming out of my ears. Which leads to something I’ve wanted to say before—” She hesitated. “Why take on another job at all? We could go anywhere, live anywhere. Do anything. Sit back. Take life easy.”
“Doing what? Touring Tibet? Exploring the Antarctic? Taking a trip around the world? While I sat in cocktail lounges listening to the rust harden on me?”
“Forget I even mentioned it, horseman. When do we leave?”
I patted her arm. “It’s not set up yet, but it’s getting close.” I reached for her and pulled her closer to me. “If it works out, I’ll need someone to watch my back.”
“I’ll watch the front, too.” She was watching it now. Not only watching it but skillfully stimulating it.
“I’d want you to go to Key West and see about buying a bar. Something on the order of the Dixie Pig, only with a few rooms on the second floor.”
She paused in her endeavors. “How long would we need it?”
“Six weeks to two months at the outside.”
“I could lease it for two months. It’s common practice. It protects the new owner against too-enthusiastic reports of receipts by the old owner. But that’s too easy. What do you really want me to do?”
“That’s it. The bar will be the headquarters for the project. Key West isn’t large enough for strangers to move around unnoticed in the off season. There’ll be a shortwave receiver in the back room. You’ll be—”
“I knew there was a catch to it,” she said gloomily. “I’ll be babysitting with the shortwave set while you’re away on the job.”
“I want someone I can trust monitoring that set.” I waited for a moment before continuing. “You realize I’m giving you a fine chance to blow a fast fifty thousand dollars?”
She resumed her uninterrupted labors. “Just tote yourself back to Hazel in one piece and we’ll argue about the fifty thousand later.” Her labors having produced a natural manifestation, she slithered her long length atop me. “At least I’ll be going with you to Key West,” she murmured. She squirmed against me languidly. “Mmm-m-m! Let me be on top this time?”
I let her be on top that time.
I thought fleetingly of Erikson’s and Slater’s reactions when they learned that our land-based operative would be a woman.
It was all I could do to keep from laughing.
And I didn’t want to laugh right that minute because I was afraid I’d spoil Hazel’s rhythm.
* * *
The second meeting with Erikson and Slater started out with Slater doing most of the talking. I’d moved Hazel out into a motel down on the waterfront near the Harbor House. If the project jelled during the meeting, I could put her in motion with a phone call.
I listened to Slater, but I watched Erikson. He returned the compliment. The big blond man sat slightly to one side, continually sizing me up. If his purpose in abruptly adjoining the first meeting had been to run a check on Earl Drake, I knew it must be frustrating him that he had uncovered nothing about Drake. Or about Charlie Gosger, Slater’s onetime acquaintance.
Slater was in good voice. “This team was put together like the Los Angeles Rams front four,” he assured me. “Each guy has somethin’ special to contribute. Chico Wilson owns a boat an’ speaks Spanish. Karl”—he nodded toward Erikson—“is sharp with all kinds of radio and radar, an’ he can produce the kosher-lookin’ forged naval orders that’ll get us to Guantanamo. Plus he’s better’n a green hand in a skirmish.”
Slater grinned at the unsmiling Erikson, then continued. “You were picked because you’re a wizard with a handgun,” he said to me. “An’ because you’ve had practice gettin’ cash out of tight places.”
“A bank?” I said.
“Not a bank, but a place with a lot of the same problems.”
“If I knew something about the problems, I could be doing some planning,” I suggested.
“You’ll know in plenty of time to be doin’ your plannin',” Slater said. “What else?”
“You’ve mentioned this team concept before, but you’ve never mentioned the most important item. What about the split?” Slater looked blank. “If I’m putting up the risk money, I get a bigger slice off the top. Isn’t that elementary?”
Slater glanced at Erikson, who said nothing. The Viking hadn’t uttered a word since muttering an ungracious hello when he entered the room. “Okay,” Slater went on after his momentary hesitation. “There’s four principals, right? We’ll make it a five-way split, an’ you get two shares while the rest of us get one. You pay off the guy you’re bringin’ in from your cut, an’ we’ll all toss in a specified amount to pay off the guy runnin’ the cruiser. How does that sound?”
It sounded as though he had made it up on the spur of the moment. How could Slater and Erikson have gone that far without working out the split? Not that there was anything the matter with the proposal as such. I looked at Erikson sitting in his chair. “I want to hear him say it, too.”
He shifted position before replying. “It sounds all right.” He said it rapidly as though impatient to move on to another subject. “I’d like some assurance from you,” he said to me, “that you’re capable of cutting the mustard on a job like this.”
“I don’t see your pedigree laid out on the table here,” I told him.
“I’ll vouch for both of you to each other,” Slater volunteered. “Could you ask for anything better’n the stamp of my approval?”
His grin did nothing to dispel the tension. “What about this place in Key West?” Erikson said to me. His tone of voice was as sour as his expression. “What’s so special about it?”
I spoke in the present tense as though the lease had already been signed. “It’s a waterfront bar with rooms upstairs. We won’t want to be doing much moving around in public.”
“You own the bar?”
I stretched another point. “The party you’ll be teaching to operate the shortwave radio owns it.”
Erikson grimaced as though reminded of something unpleasant. “I still feel there’s no need to include anyone else in the—”
“That’s the way it is,” I shut him off. “I’m putting more into this than anyone except the man with the boat, and he wants a deposit on it. I want a shortwave radio in the back of the bar and an operator I can trust, or it’s no deal.”
“Let’s meet again tomorrow,” Erikson said shortly.
I could feel anger rising. “What’s going to make tomorrow any different from today?”
He didn’t answer but looked toward Slater. “One more day won’t hurt things,” Slater said, but I could see he said it reluctantly. Slater didn’t welcome the delay any more than I did. “But we can’t ask Drake to hold off indefinitely on this, Karl,” he added.
“Tomorrow is take-it-or-leave-it time,” I said firmly.
“Tomorrow it is,” Erikson said. He rose to his feet, seemingly in a hurry to leave. “Come on, Slater.” He led the way to the door.
Slater silently mouthed the word “bar” to me while Erikson’s back was turned. I nodded. “See you tomorrow,” Slater said to me with a wink as he followed Erikson from the room.
I waited ten minutes before going downstairs to the bar. With that much time to think things over, it struck me that every time we got down to a nuts-and-bolts discussion of the operation, it was Erikson who did most of the talking.
Slater was seated at a corner table. I joined him after making sure Erikson wasn’t in the bar. “Don�
��t get nervous about things,” Slater said as I sat down. “Everything’s gonna be all right.”
“I hear you saying so, but your partner keeps running for the door. How come he has so much to say about it? Who put the package together in the first place? You or Erikson?”
“Now, what kind of a question is that?” Slater’s tone was injured. “How could he even know there was a package to put together till I told him about the cash?”
“Why did you pick Erikson to tell?”
“Because I knew he an’ his people could put me on the street.”
“Didn’t that make headlines? How can you walk around so freely?”
“They don’t have a mug shot of me fresher’n ten years. An’ the fuss when I hit the bricks simmered down in a few days.” Slater reached for his wallet. “Like this, buried at the bottom of page nine.” He handed me a folded-over newspaper clipping.
I unfolded it. “Police admit no leads on escaped prisoner,” the small-sized headline read. “The third escapee in 43 years from Joliet continues to elude federal, state, and local dragnets,” the body of the item continued. “Both the FBI and State Police Captain Gregory Uhl gave assurances today that Winston Slater will shortly—”
I handed back the clipping. It sounded like a thousand others given out by law enforcement types when they had nothing to say but had to say something. “Isn’t it quite a risk carrying that in your wallet? What if you get picked up?”
“I’m not gettin’ picked up,” Slater said positively. “Unless they fold my hands on my chest.”
I came back to the main issue. “How did you know Erikson to approach him?”
“I didn’t. I had a lawyer, a jerk appointed by the court. He was supposed to be seein’ if he could get detainers lifted that were listed against me after I completed my original stretch. Then I had a little trouble inside. I wound up with an extra slug of time that made the original bit look like a jog across the prison compound. So when I knew I wasn’t never gonna make it out on my own, I told the lawyer I had somethin’ to sell an’ for him to find me a buyer. I didn’t even talk to the first two guys he sent in to see me. Then he found Erikson.”
“What made him the man?”
“His connections.”
“I don’t understand that, either. He doesn’t look like a rackets type.”
Slater offered me a cigarette and lit one for himself when I refused. “That’s why he makes them a good man. He can pass anywhere. He’s an ex-lieutenant commander in the Navy who caught it in the neck from Washington when the admiral whose staff he was on in Vietnam was gigged for losin’ a few million gallons of jet fuel.” Slater stopped as a waitress belatedly appeared at our table. “Budweiser for me,” he said.
“Jim Beam on the rocks,” I told the girl.
“You’ve heard how the brass lives in Saigon,” Slater resumed when the waitress went to the bar. “Erikson got a pretty good taste of high livin’ an’ decided he liked it. In the U.S. of A., that takes big money. So here we are, ready to ease into the trenches.”
“It still makes him an amateur on a job like this.”
“This boy is no amateur. Definitely. Positively.”
“Since he came back from Saigon, you mean? What’s his track record?”
“Would you like me to answer as many questions about you that he’s asked me an’ will be askin’ me again?” Slater inquired. “Don’t forget, I’m puttin’ myself in the boat with you guys. Can’t I get through to you that I think you both got it or I wouldn’t do it?”
The waitress brought the drinks to the table. Slater took a pull at his beer but looked wistfully at my Jim Beam. “Seems to me I remember you drinking the hard stuff,” I said.
“Not since I’ve had Erikson livin’ in my hip pocket.” Slater said it with some bitterness. “Oh, he’s probably right—” He sat staring down into his glass.
I shifted ground again. “Why did Erikson postpone a decision until tomorrow?”
“I thought he was ready to pull the trigger,” Slater admitted. “Could be he’s hopin’ another twenty-four hours will give him a handle to use on you.” He rubbed his chin. “You run pretty low to the ground, and from a couple of things he’s said I know it’s corked him that he hasn’t been able to get a real line on you.” He glanced at his watch. “He’s goin’ to be wonderin’ where I am.”
“Then, let’s rack it up.”
He rose to his feet. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Don’t get shook about Erikson. He wants that big bundle as bad as we do. It’s just that until fairly recently he hasn’t been spendin’ much time with guys sayin’ no to him like you an’ I do. He’s spoiled from all the ‘aye, aye, sirs’ he used to get in the Navy.”
I watched Slater leave.
I still had unanswered questions, but they didn’t seem as important now. I was beginning to get the feeling that the project was ready for launch.
* * *
The meeting the next day took less than ten minutes.
“Do you have the fifty thousand?” Erikson said to me after a preliminary hello.
“I’ll have it a week after the light turns green.”
Erikson glanced at Slater standing with his hands thrust nonchalantly into his pockets, then looked at me. “It just turned. We’ll meet here a week from today and split it up as expenses dictate.”
Split up Hazel’s $50,000? With two almost-strangers? I decided I’d cross that particular rope bridge when I came to it. “The cash will be here a week from today.”
“Then, we’re set,” Slater announced. He sounded exuberant. “We ought to have a drink on it. Call Room Service, Drake.”
“No drink,” Erikson said immediately. “And you and I”—he was looking at Slater—“will stay away from the Aztec until a week from today. The less we’re seen together, the better.”
I wondered if that meant he’d had a report about Slater and me meeting in the Aztec bar. From Slater’s expression, the “no drink” portion of Erikson’s statement didn’t sit well, but he didn’t say anything.
“You’ll be staying here?” Erikson asked. “In case I need to call you about anything?”
I hadn’t intended to, but there was really no reason why I shouldn’t. “I’ll be here.”
“You leave first,” Erikson said to Slater.
Slater looked unhappy again when he left the room. He wasn’t the type who responded well to orders. “I’ll expect to see the whole fifty thousand next week,” Erikson said. “In cash. No stories.”
“You just be ready to hold up your end when the time comes,” I told him. I didn’t want him thinking he was in charge.
He went out the hotel room door, unsmiling.
It struck me that during our conversations I’d never seen him smile.
* * *
I called Hazel from the phone in the lobby. I never like to use a telephone that goes through a switchboard. “You can take off for the southland like a big bird,” I told her.
“With ‘big’ the operative word, sir?”
“I told my partners the money would be ready in a week.”
“That’s easy,” she said in her deep voice. “I’ll get the conversion process started in the morning before I fly south. It shouldn’t take me more than two or three days down there if anything decent is available. The cash will be at the ranch when I get back there, and I’ll wire it to you.”
“Not wire it,” I said. “Bundle it up and send it registered mail. I don’t want to be standing with people looking over my shoulder while that kind of cash is counted over a counter.”
“I should have thought of that myself.” A short pause. “That takes care of tomorrow. I do have some free time tonight.”
I was tempted, but resisted. If Erikson was having me watched, I didn’t want to lead the watcher to Hazel. “Let’s save it for the land of the pomegranate trees.”
“Can I call you to let you know how things are going?”
“If you stay away from specifics.”
“I’ll be on the first plane in the morning. Bye, now.”
“Bye, now,” I echoed, and listened to the phone hum emptily at the other end of the line.
I went into the bar and had a drink.
I should have been feeling all pepped up now that the project was actually on wheels.
That’s the trouble with experience: it sharpens the apprehension while it dulls the enthusiasm.
CHAPTER FIVE
Hazel called me two nights later.
“I’m flying back tomorrow or the day after,” she announced. “Everything’s all set. I found a place on Margaret Street within whistling distance of the shrimp boat fleet. That’s the clientele at this time of the year. It’s a tourist shop later in the season. I insisted on a paint job inside before I signed the lease.”
“It sounds good.”
“You’ll like it,” she said confidently. “I’m having the air conditioning beefed up, too. You wouldn’t believe how hot it is down here.”
“You sound as if you’re planning to stay for fifty years. You should be able to stand a little heat for the length of time we’ll be there.”
“Heat like this I can’t stand for fifteen minutes without some relief. You won’t be able to, either. I feel like a sponge just standing in this phone booth.”
I let it go. “How many rooms?”
“Six. There were two permanents, clerks at nearby motels, but I rousted them.”
“Fine. Having the place painted will give you an excuse to keep it empty until we get there. After you come back to the ranch, how long will it take you to wind things up and get back to Key West?”
“A week. Maybe less. Does that fit the schedule?”
“It does. We’ll begin arriving the second week.”
“Will you be a stranger? Act like one, I mean?”
“Only in public.”
I could hear her snicker. “It sounds like a better deal all the time. Except”—she hesitated—“you really don’t have to stick your head in the lion’s mouth, you know. The living is good without the heroic exploit complex.”
“There’s no heroic exploit complex.”
Operation Fireball d-3 Page 5
