“Nice,” I said.
“Or you, Dog. Walt thinks you’re a real cobra.”
“Oh?”
“I think you are too.” She put her coffee down and came over and sat beside me. “You’re a snake, my friend. You don’t hiss and you don’t rattle. I haven’t decided if you’re a constrictor or venomous. I’m wondering what it would cost me to find out.”
“Some one of these days you’re going to lay your virginity on the line and I’m going to pop it, kid.” I looked at her and let her see a face full of teeth. Getting played with by a slippery, beautiful blonde wasn’t my idea of fun when there wasn’t sand around to make up some friction.
“Keep talking, Dog.”
I handed her my cup and stood up. “Screw you, little girl, I’m not all that moral. I wish I knew your fiancé. I’d slam him on his ass and make him marry you just to take a walking land mine out of circulation. I heard you put down that lover boy ... what’s his name?”
“Raul?”
“Yeah. Just don’t give me that garbage. Not again. You got a hot wet body, sugar. I like it. I shouldn’t but I do. No more skinny-dipping like Hunter and old Dubro and no more sacking it in cobwebby houses. I couldn’t take it.”
“Dog,” she said softly.
“What?”
“You love me?”
“Hell no.”
“You bastard.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
I grinned at her and slipped into my coat. “You love me, kid?”
“Certainly,” she said matter-of-factly.
“A terrible affliction I infect all the women with,” I said.
“You really are a bastard, Dog.” She smiled back at me, her teeth white and shiny.
“A cobra, remember?”
XIV
Next to the Ormin Hotel, the shattered remains of a row of tenements gaped out at the street, windows smashed, the frames smoke blackened and whole areas of brickwork crumpled in a miniature landslide to the sidewalk. Somehow one building still stood between the ruins and the hotel and a lone figure curled in the shadow of the stoop.
There was no Markham registered, but the clerk remembered the guy with the torn-up face and gave me the room number for a five-dollar bill, then went back to his scratch sheet on a stool behind the counter. The only thing that surprised him was the five. It was four more than he’d usually get for the same information.
His room was on the west side of the third floor at the far end of a corridor lit by two hanging bulbs. I stayed close to the wall trying to be as quiet as possible, reached the door and stood there listening for any sounds inside. All I heard was the rats scratching inside the wall. I waited another minute and tried the knob, letting it twist slowly and gently under my fingers. When the latch was all the way free I pushed the door in gently, waiting to feel the bite of a chain, but it went past the distance a chain would have held it and I didn’t bother waiting anymore. I shoved it open all the way and it clattered back against some barrier and stayed there.
The hammer going back on the .45 was enough for any body to hear. I said, “Markham,” and waited. I could see almost one-half the room in the dull light from the corridor, the dresser and chair with the pants thrown over the back, even one corner of the bed that nestled out of my line of sight. I said, “Markham,” again, then rolled inside in a tight ball, spun on my stomach with the gun ready to cut loose and nothing happened at all.
But I could see Markham. He was on the bed with one arm dangling over the side and there was just enough light to see that his eyes were open. I found the switch on the lamp beside the bed and flipped it on.
My strong-arm friend was out to lunch. Somebody had retired him from the land of the living with a single tiny puncture square in the middle of his forehead halfway between his hairline and the bridge of his nose. There had been no fuss and no mess. There was a half-empty bottle of codeine tablets on the night table and Markham had bought his ticket in the middle of a deep sleep he needed to deaden the pain from his smashed face.
I went over and took a look at the door. The lock was old-fashioned and simple, easy to open with a skeleton key or a pick. There was a chain lock too, but it dangled free because whoever installed it put the catch too close to the edge of the door and there was enough play for it to be opened by reaching in from the outside and flipping it back.
Markham had made too many other people hurt without knowing the bite of pain himself. He forgot that it could make you careless about the things that could get you dead fast.
I went back to the body, felt the clammy skin and lifted the arm that dangled so stiffly, then went out, closed the door and went back downstairs. The clerk looked at me over his scratch sheet and said, “Find him?”
I nodded. “He get any other visitors?”
“Nope.”
“Anybody check in the last twelve hours?”
“We don’t get much trade, feller. Like I’m only here to see nobody tears the place up. In this neighborhood ...”
“I didn’t ask you that,” I said.
He faked a smile, waiting to see another bill in my fingers, but he saw what was in my face and the smile turned sour. “One guy comes in. So I give him a room.”
“He there now?”
“Nah. I figured he needed it for a broad. He went out maybe a half hour later to get one. He ain’t shown yet.”
“Luggage?”
“When they pay in advance, they don’t need it. Besides, you think we got fancy trade yet? Here they come in with paper bags. This guy was looking for a quick shack, that’s all. The way he was dressed he could do better uptown.”
“Describe him.”
“Mister, I don’t look at my customers. You I’ll remember from talking. You want that?”
“I don’t give a shit, buddy. Where’s your register?”
“Hell, I’ll tell you his name. Peterson, that’s what. New-ark, New Jersey. Look, what’s ...”
“Give me your phone.”
“Pay phone’s on the wall.”
I looked at him for about three seconds and he handed me the phone. I had to go through the police emergency number, but I finally raised Tobano and said, “I found Markham, Sergeant. He’s nice and dead.”
For a minute I listened, then said into the mouthpiece, “Ease off. He’s cold and rigor’s set in. I’m covered for every minute of the day. If I were you I’d get to the Greek. He might have been a little luckier.”
Tobano finally calmed down, but the annoyance was still there. “You stay put until we get there, understand?”
“Unh-uh, pal. Consider this call from an anonymous source. I’ll check in with you later. By the way, did you get a report on those prints?”
His voice was quiet and hard. “I did,” he said, and hung up.
The night clerk had put down his paper and was trying to light a cigarette. I handed his phone back and held a match under the butt in his lips. “Don’t bother going upstairs, mister. Just stay here until a squad car shows. After that tell them anything you know.”
He sucked in a lungful of smoke, coughed and nodded. “If that guy comes back ...”
“He won’t,” I told him.
The pancakes and sausages weren’t sitting very well with Lee at all. He couldn’t keep his eyes from drifting to the front page of the News where the body shots of Markham and Bridey-the-Greek were laid out side by side with the “Mystery Murders” caption hinting at some dark intrigue. The same .22 caliber gun had killed both of them, but Bridey had tried to scramble out and it took four shots to pull him down. The last was through the back of the head and he lay face down halfway out the open window leading onto a fire escape.
Lee finally pushed his plate away and tried to swallow some coffee. It was a bad try. His hand was shaking and coffee spilled down on his shirt. I said, “Relax, buddy.”
“Sure, relax. Easy to say, isn’t it?”
“No trouble at all
.”
He stopped dabbing at his clothes and looked up at me “lf I were you I’d be scared shitless. How the hell can you sit there like that?”
“Look at the bright side. Two of those punks are ooled. The odds are going down.”
“Why, Dog? Hell, if they were after you ...”
“Object lessons. You screw up an assignment and you’re in line for a tapout yourself. The lesson goes a little higher than to the hit men themselves.”
“Dog ...”
I knew what he wanted and shook my head. “Don’t ask me, kid. From now on I’m not going to be close to anybody so there’s not much chance of anybody trying the bathtub routine again. That little bit didn’t work either, so the next time out it will be the direct approach. There’s a cover on you and Sharon just to make sure, but my bet is they’ll go straight after me.”
His clenched knuckles rapped against the edge of the table with impatience. “Damn it, Dog ... why?”
“Because sombody thinks I had something to do with a situation I wasn’t involved in at all.”
Lee pursued his mouth, then nodded with his eyes tight. “Okay. Just one other thing Did you ever have anything to do with something like it?”
I picked up my coffee cup and watched him because he was looking to see if my hand was shaking too. It wasn’t. “All the time,” I told him.
“You know, Dog. I knew it when I opened that damn suitcase. I could almost taste it. And I wasn’t the only one. Everybody else could feel it too, except they didn’t know it for what it was. Remember how we always seemed to know when there were krauts hanging around in the sun overhead or on the other side of a cloudbank? That’s the way it is with you now. You’re there and you’re trouble. It was better with the krauts when you had some sky to maneuver in, but with you it’s like being on a strafing mission when you lose one of those beautiful dimensions to run in and the krauts could pick you off like flies because they had the altitude and the speed and you were all wrapped up in trying to keep your K-14 sights on a fat-bellied locomotive.
“It was all so nice and easy when you weren’t here. Life was one big ball with a lot of laughs and just the normal tangles that make it interesting. Everybody was getting laid and nobody was getting killed, then you decide to pick up a lousy ten-grand bonus to add to that suitcase and it was like Titanic time. The fucking ship is sinking only nobody knows it. They keep eating and singing and when it comes time for the big bailout there aren’t enough lifeboats and the only ones having a ball are the sharks.”
“You think too much,” I said.
“What happens to your little doll, buddy? Suddenly you got her all turned upside down too.” I went to talk but he stopped me short. “Shit, man, don’t put me on. Everybody knows everything in this town. That kid’s turned colors like a chameleon since you gave her that tingly look of yours. You melted the ice, now you’re going to let her drip all over the place. What happens if they try giving her the bath too?”
“She’s got a cover on her.”
“Great. Fine. Beautiful games you play, kiddo. For what? Just what the hell are you after, Dog?”
I snubbed out my cigarette in the coffee cup and looked at the wet filter floating in the dregs. “I keep saying it, but nobody wants to believe me. I don’t want anything. Just my ten grand.”
“Suppose they keep on not believing you?”
“Then they’re going to have to find it out the hard way.”
The late editions of the papers carried a bigger story on Markham and Bridey-the-Greek. A reporter with an inside track to classified information blew the whistle on their being contract men and the six o’clock TV news report confirmed it with an overseas source tying them in with The Turk’s operation in Europe. One of the wire services had managed to contact The Turk, but he claimed he was a legitimate businessman and denied the connection. The analysis mentioned the suspected killing of a narcotics courier in Marseilles and the furor in certain circles because a multimillion-dollar shipment of heroin was supposedly sidetracked and hinted at a connection between all the events.
Al DeVecchio gave the new color TV a disgusted slam with the flat of his hand and switched the set off. “Now we know,” he said.
“Now you know nothing.”
“I made some calls today,” Al told me. He eased out of the sofa and poured himself another beer, watching me in the mirror in the back of his bar. “I finally got to a police chief in the south of Spain who was willing to talk upon recommendation of a certain friend.”
“So?”
“There was a shadowy figure they referred to as El Lobo who raised all kinds of hell over there. Nobody ever identified him and very few knew him. One that did claimed he died in the hills just outside that city in the south of Spain.”
“So?” I sipped my beer and waited.
“El Lobo seemed to take particular pleasure in muscling in on the activities of another shadow figure they call Le Fleur. In fact, he was so damn good at it that he was inching his way up to being top man in the narcotics racket.”
“If he’s dead, why worry about it?”
“Because nobody has ever seen the body and his handiwork is still being felt.”
“That’s a police problem,” I said.
Al turned around, walked over and stood in front of me and dug his eyes into mine. “It goes a little bit further. The police are on one side and those pretty deadly organizations are on the other. The cops are restricted. The others aren’t. They got the money, the men and the expertise to enforce their own rules and they couldn’t care less who gets in the way. They don’t think El Lobo is dead at all.”
“Get to the point, Al.”
“It’s not the first time I’ve picked up the similarity between El Lobo... the wolf... and your name. Tell me, pal, did anybody ever refer to you as The Dog?”
“I’ve been called worse.”
He shook his head and waited. I nodded. “Come on,” I said, “it’s a natural for anybody with my name.”
“All right, Dog ... just don’t lie to me this time. It’s something I can do very few other people can do. I can tell when you’re lying without any doubt at all. Are you... were you El Lobo?”
This time I let my own eyes do the digging. “Nope. Sorry to disappoint you.”
Across the room the clock ticked on the wall. It was a long time before Al gave me a tight little smile and took another pull of his beer. “Okay, Dog, I believe.”
“I’m glad somebody does.”
He eased back down on the sofa again and crossed his legs. “I cross-checked on Roland Holland today too. Our old buddy is sitting pretty.”
“Smart boy, that one.”
“You guys were pretty close at one time.”
“Hell, we flew together,” I said. “You knew him as well as I did.”
Al nodded, finished his beer and got up for another one. “Funny, him taking his discharge overseas the way you did.”
“He didn’t have anything to come home to either.”
The beer can popped open in Al’s hand and he sipped the foam off before it could spill. When he wiped his mouth he said. “Rollie was a Phi Beta Kappa man. Masters degree and all that stuff. Pretty brilliant guy with a hell of a lot of potential.”
I knew what he was getting at. “That’s why he stayed in Europe. That’s where all the big opportunities were. If you checked on him you damn well know he didn’t make any mistakes. Right now he heads up some mighty big industries. Hell, even government leaders consult him before they make any moves.”
“Does he ever consult you, Dog?”
I let out a laugh. “Sure. Who do you think is the brains behind all that Phi Beta Kappa business?’
Al grunted and tried his drink again. “Not you,” he said “You never could even count.”
“Then why the interest in Holland?”
“Because, Doggie boy, friend Roland Holland comes across as thinking you’re the greatest and praise from somebody in that quarter
is praise indeed, especially when you balance it against the fact that you have an unexplained source of wealth, your name seems to draw a clamlike silence in certain quarters, you’re a target of attack by a couple of killer and you’re damn inquisitive about the machinery of narcotics traffic.”
“I’m an enigma,” I said.
“You’re a pain in the ass and you scare me.”
“Did you get what I asked for?”
He put the beer down on the table beside him and made circles on the polished mahogany with the wet bottom of the can. “I got some information by not asking anything. Two important parties were conspicuously absent from our meeting and from what I overheard during a phone conversation, and extrapolated from the tone of voice, those two parties are not in good standing with key figures because of a bungled operation, and unless they come up with the answer... and a missing product, the situation is likely to turn into one of those concrete overcoat affairs.”
“You extrapolate pretty well.”
“That’s my business.”
“Who’s holding the dirty end of the stick?”
“Familiar with the Guido brothers?”
“Didn’t they work the waterfront and the airport rackets?”
“They moved up,” Al said. Then he paused and gave me another hard look again
“For a guy who’s been away. you’re pretty knowledgeable ”
“We have newspapers in Europe. They go in heavy for sensational crime in America.”
“The Guido brothers handle narcotics. The state and the U.S. Senate ran two investigations on them and couldn’t get past their cover. Neither one ever took a fall. They lie behind a legitimate front and play it from there.”
“If they’re that good, then why the sudden heat from their friends?”
“Good question,” Al told me. “I’d say their track record. It was rumored that they used to hold out on the organization. They weren’t as big then and it wasn’t all that uncommon a deal at certain levels and for the sake of keeping peace in the outlying areas the organization let it pass. Now it doesn’t smell so good. The in boys think the whole thing could be a fast play to gain leverage or to buck the syndicate. It’s been done before in the days of the beer barons. They don’t want it to happen again. Narcotics comes in a small package with millions in profits, easy to ship, easy to dispose of, and with enough laid by, a smart operator could buy his own organization.”
The Erection Set Page 20
