Sledgehammer

by Walter Wager

  As a result, H-Hour—in the parlance of the Pentagon—was 5:06, when a moderately pretty stewardess flashed her moderately sincere smile as six passengers left Flight 911 at the Paradise City airport. One of these was the point man, the first scout for the invasion force. He was a short, sturdy man who wore Italian sun glasses, a knowing look and a well-made gray suit that cost at least $180, perhaps $200. He had a fine expensive tan that was perfectly color-coordinated with his blue button-down shirt and discreet silk tie, and behind the dark glasses his eyes wandered purposefully, noting and recording, as he walked the fifty yards to the modern white terminal.

  His name was Stanley Gordon. It said so on his California driver’s license, his Social Security card, his Mobil Oil credit card and the two letters in his suitcase—one from a chorus girl named Toni in Las Vegas and the other from his brother in Phoenix.

  It was all a lie.

  He was no Californian and he didn’t have any brothers and he’d never slept with any girl named Toni—in Las Vegas or anywhere else. He was a Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Chicago, but he didn’t wear the key. Instead, he carried a silver-clad cigarette lighter with a tiny camera concealed in the base and a “fountain pen” that fired .22-caliber bullets—one of the unique contributions to Western culture that Britain’s creative Special Operations Executive made in 1942—plus a .38-caliber pistol that nestled within the portable radio packed in his tan canvas two-suiter.

  And his name was not Stanley Gordon.

  His name was Samuel Mordecai Gilman, and, like his biblical ancestors, he had come to spy out the land.

  As he waited at the baggage counter with the other five disembarking passengers, he glanced at his watch—just as they did—and sighed in mechanical impatience—as they did—and noticed the three men peering down from the balcony. He guessed that they were plainclothes detectives keeping track of new arrivals—like the ones who used to work the Dominican airports during the efficiently vicious Trujillo dictatorship—and he was right. Of course. Next he saw the pair of uniformed police joking with the buxom waitress at the snackbar counter, and he appreciated how meticulously Little Johnny Pikelis was protecting his investments. Then he picked up his suitcase, shivered in the chill of the air-conditioning and joined three other travelers in the limousine that would take them into Paradise City.

  The road was a four-lane concrete highway, lined with semi-tropical trees and comfortable middle-class houses plus an occasional fruit-and-vegetable stand. There was nothing poor or cheap or shabby about the unmistakably suburban ten miles between the air field and the city, for this was a solid two-car-per-family Book-of-the-Month Club residential district inhabited by respectable taxpayers. Even though some of them read such New Left periodicals as Time, just about everyone tacitly agreed that it was a good thing the little wooden houses of the African Americans were on the other side of town, for those homes were a bit tacky and wouldn’t make a proper impression on visitors. Appearances counted a great deal in Paradise City; the Department of Sanitation did a first-rate job.

  The streets were clean and traffic moved steadily, the spy observed as the cool limousine rolled toward the center of town. The store windows were attractively decorated, the cars parked were late-model vehicles and the tanned legs of the miniskirted teen-agers were as good as any in Miami or Los Angeles. Defying TV and motion-picture tradition, the local police—the Milice to the spy—were neither gross, ugly or sloppy and they smiled just as if they were the “white hat” good guys instead of tools of the evil villains.

  There was the stone-and-glass building that housed the Jayland Realty Corporation, the firm that John Pikelis used as his legal front and through which he reported such of his income as he chose to mention. Williston’s research team had unearthed the facts that the lord of Paradise City had been born in 1912, left high school to become a longshoreman, endured four arrests with only one conviction, collected old pistols and played poker well—but his income could only be estimated. It might be as low as $600,000 a year, or as high as $900,000. Either figure was as respectable as this downtown area itself.

  The big car eased to a halt in front of the Paradise House, an eight-story hotel incongruously decorated with the facade of an old Southern mansion. This preposterous pillar-and-portico presumption masked the lower three stories of the eleven-year-old building. Mayor Ashley, who secretly loathed mint juleps and found the Civil War—the War Between the States—boring despite its political usefulness, had argued for something more modern “to express the progressive spirit of our growing community.” He’d suggested this on a Wednesday morning when he happened to be sober, but Pikelis had not been impressed. It was easy enough for Ashley, whose great-grandfather had lost an arm at Chancellorsville and whose spinster sister headed the local branch of the Daughters of the Confederacy, to abandon the magnolia tradition, but Johnny Pikelis was no Southern aristocrat. He had no roots, no identity, in that mistily glorious tradition. He was the son of a hard-drinking Eastern European immigrant who’d been illiterate in all tongues, a total outsider. Pikelis required—needed—a classic Dixie mansion with white columns to remind him of the family plantation he never knew, the gracious home that he should have had instead of the roach-infested slum apartment near the docks. Now he lived in the penthouse on the hotel roof, enjoying the splendid service of uniformed black waiters and maids who made him feel that he really was a courtly Southern colonel, just like the one in the frozen turkey pie commercials.

  So the Paradise House looked vaguely like an antebellum mansion, vaguely and illegitimately, Samuel Stanley Gordon Gilman thought as he entered the air-conditioned lobby. At the desk he consented to sign his name and pay $16 a day for a single room with bath, and a few minutes later he was taking a shower in the aforesaid facility attached to Room 411. It was all ridiculous, he thought as he stepped out to dry himself, for he was much too mature and clever to volunteer for such a stupid Boy Scout mission.

  “I must be crazy,” he said aloud as he reached for a towel.

  An improbable mission conceived by an obsessed academic.

  “Crazy, crazy, crazy,” he chanted.

  Saying it made him feel better, and that made him remember what he had to do. First he put on a light bathrobe, picked up the desk chair and carefully wedged it under the doorknob. Then he checked the two mirrors to make certain that neither masked an observation post or a closed-circuit television camera. Reasonably confident that they couldn’t see him, he began to search the room to find out whether they could hear him. After all, Williston had reported that this was their hotel and they probably took very few chances with strangers who flew in from the North. Washington, D.C., was North. J. Edgar Hoover and canny Treasury agents and special investigators for the Senate Rackets Committee were North. Ambitious newspaper and TV documentary teams were North, and so were the merciless Mafia “families” of New York and Chicago.

  North was smart and tough and dangerous.

  Pikelis, himself smart and tough and dangerous, knew all that.

  He’d be alert, ready.

  The man from Las Vegas continued to scan the room, walls, fixtures and furniture. The odds were at least three to one that this room was—in some way or another—wired for sound. Lamps, moldings, the bottoms of the chairs, the TV set and the air-conditioner, the headboard of the bed—zero. The spy paused, remembered that Williston had described Pikelis as “logical and simple” and snapped his fingers in recognition. It had to be. The man who was always right flicked open his Swiss Army knife’s screwdriver, opened the base of the telephone and smiled.

  There it was.

  Right again.

  It was very old-fashioned, if not quaint, to hide a microphone in a telephone nowadays, which was why only a few stubborn classicists would even look inside the instrument anymore. This little eavesdropping device was presumably linked to a nearby voice-activated tape recorder, perhaps some central station used to monitor the entire building. With the same delic
ate care that he’d used to open the base as silently as possible, Gilman screwed it back on and began to sing.

  “‘I’ll never say “Never again” again!’” he crooned as he selected a blue Dacron-and-silk suit from the closet. He hummed as he dressed, and he was still whistling the same tune as he removed the .38 from the radio case and slipped the snub-nosed weapon into the flat linen shoulder holster. Pausing in front of the mirror near the door, he gave his bow tie a final tug of adjustment.

  “Groovy,” he judged impartially.

  Then he descended to the lobby to find the cocktail lounge, a long, cool, dimly lit room with a dozen tables and a bar topped with black plastic intended to resemble leather. The wall behind the bar was covered with mirror, and as Gilman lowered himself onto a stool he noticed the reflected images of the very good legs and eye-catching figures of two young women seated at a corner table. Sleek, bright-eyed and smiling, they had “call girl” written all over them. Gilman recognized the type from Las Vegas, where there were so many pretty professionals with great legs and permanent smiles. It was hardly surprising that Paradise City had its share of Sandies and Bobbies and Terries, the spy thought without rancor.

  “Sir?” the slim white-jacketed bartender invited.

  “Vodka Gibson—on the rocks, my man.”

  The slight shrewd-faced man behind the bar nodded politely. He mixed the drink, filled the glass to the brim and set it down on the shiny plastic.

  “Their names are Jerri and Bobbi,” he announced, “and they make friends easily. I’m not their agent, you understand,” he added a moment later, “but I noticed that you’d noticed.”

  “My, you’re a keen lad,” the spy answered between sips. “And a talented bartender.”

  Gilman took another sip, sighed.

  “Jerri and Bobbi—I’ll bet they’re good conversationalists too.”

  “On any subject. They read both Life and the Reader’s Digest. Never miss an issue.”

  “I’ll bet they’re terrific on pop art and modern marriage,” the spy announced.

  “Out of sight—and you ought to hear them on How Spiro Agnew Found God.”

  Gilman finished the drink, calculated for some seventy seconds and decided two things.

  “Do it again,” he requested as he pushed the empty glass away.

  The man in the white jacket—the button on the left breast read “Harry”—immediately prepared another vodka Gibson. A moment after he served it, he poured himself a wineglass of Cinzano.

  “Isn’t the local drink bourbon, Harry?” the spy asked.

  “I’m kind of freaky.”

  “And not local?”

  The bartender shook his head.

  “No, I’m a home-town boy—strictly Paradise City,” he corrected. “I put in a few years down in Miami, but all that chopped liver was too rich for me, so I’ve happily returned to peaceful Paradise City.”

  Gilman reached into his jacket, hoping that he still had one or two of Carstairs’ fine coronas. He didn’t.

  “It’s a nice town, huh?” he questioned casually.

  The man behind the bar shrugged.

  “Land of the spree and home of the knave, Dad. This is Paradise City, Dad—Lootsville by the sea with girls and wheels and deals and Dixie charm. It’s been in all the funny papers,” he pointed out, “and I’d bet eighty-five cents you know all about it.”

  “I heard it on the radio once,” Gilman admitted.

  At that moment a fat woman in a red dress sat down—almost fell down—at the other end of the bar and waggled her index finger meaningfully. She had obviously consumed considerable alcohol elsewhere, and it seemed quite clear that if she were served any more she would become one of those messy crying drunks in about another hour. The man from Las Vegas was surprised when the hip-talking bartender promptly poured two inches of sweet Southern Comfort for her.

  “She doesn’t look like Janis Joplin to me,” Gilman observed when the man in the white jacket returned.

  “She isn’t. She’s the wife of a very hard and heavy police captain, and he’d be offended if I didn’t serve his beloved.”

  “Isn’t it illegal to serve somebody that smashed?”

  Harry No-Last-Name smiled.

  “I could get myself smashed—and lacerated—if I annoyed Captain Ben Marton. Being a lousy swimmer—especially with my arms broken—I have joined the Don’t Make Waves cult and found spiritual fulfillment. You dig?”

  “I dig,” the spy answered and sipped at the Gibson.

  The bartender finished his Cinzano.

  “I don’t mean to pry, sir,” he began, “but are you just passing through or will you be staying for our annual Benedict Arnold Birthday Ball?”

  It was going nicely.

  This foxy, nosy, talkative bartender would spread the word.

  “I might stay, if the money’s right. I just might do that.”

  The man behind the bar considered this for ten seconds.

  “You’re too hip for a cop and too smart for a hood,” he finally announced, “but you’re no brassiere salesman either.”

  “Stickman. I’m a stickman,” the spy lied.

  “That figures…Vegas?”

  Gilman nodded.

  “That figures too. You don’t talk like a civilian, not a bit. Looking for work?”

  “Maybe.”

  They had shaped the cover story carefully. An experienced stickman from the big-league gambling tables of Las Vegas should be hired immediately in a place such as Paradise City, and Gilman had actually worked as a croupier for a week—as a lark—when a regular stickman was temporarily incapacitated after a bad LSD trip.

  “Vegas?” the bartender reflected. “Well, if you’re good and you’re honest—and you’ll be dead if you’re not—scoot out to the Fun Parlor tonight and talk to Willie Dennison. He’s the manager, used to work a casino in Havana when Batista was el presidente.”

  “Fun Parlor?”

  “Our classiest whoopee center—out on Ocean Road. About two dollars by cab. Whatever you’re buying, they’re selling. Live a little.”

  “May I use your name?” wondered Samuel Stanley Gordon Gilman.

  “I do—all the time. Sure, tell Willie Dennison that Harry Booth suggested that you talk to him. Handsome Harry, the rich bartender.”

  Then he walked off to serve two husky men in expensive sillver-buttoned blazers, middle-aged men who had just joined the call girls. Jerri and Bobbi—the spy couldn’t tell which courtesan was which—were smiling brightly, talking and thrusting forward their impressive bosoms as they’d learned customers liked them to. The prostitutes seemed quite animated and merry, pleased that the boredom of waiting was over and cheered by the prospect of earning fifty dollars each.

  Gilman finished his drink, put four one-dollar bills on the bar and headed for the elevator. It was time now. He’d given them some twenty minutes, which was all they needed if they were on the ball. In his room, he examined the contents of each drawer in the dresser and found what he’d expected. One tie was wrinkled just a little bit less than he’d left it, and the two letters were a quarter inch out of place. They’d searched the room, as he’d planned. Everything was moving exactly as planned, so far. Now he would descend to the hotel dining room for a filet mignon dinner before journeying out to the Fun Parlor.

  At 7:20 P.M. on the evening of July 6, the first invader sat down for his initial meal in enemy territory. At 11:04 P.M. on July 8, the telephone rang in Room 302 of the Hotel Park in Charleston, South Carolina, and a tall thin man with tired eyes answered it quickly.

  “No, you must have the wrong room,” he said in matter-of-fact tones. “There’s no Sarah Ellen Foster here.”

  He hung up the phone, turned to the blond-haired man seated on the bed.

  “Well?” Carstairs asked.

  “Very well,” Dr. Andrew Williston confirmed. “Sam’s got the job. They checked Vegas by phone, and he came up smelling like roses.”

  “How
nice, if vulgar.”

  “Would you settle for Fabergé after-shave cologne?”

  The second most eligible bachelor in the United States nodded pleasantly, stood up to start packing his suitcases. The coded telephone message was all that they’d been waiting for, and the two men checked out of the Hotel Park half an hour later. Now that the first spy had successfully infiltrated the Nazi-occupied town, it was time for the second to move into position.

  13

  Shortly after five o’clock on the steamy afternoon of July 10, a dusty 1964 Ford panel truck towed a battered house trailer into Crowden’s Caravan Camp on Route 121, nine miles beyond the Paradise City limits. A dark muscular man who chose to call himself Phil Antonelli—he’d worked under many names—stepped out of the car into the ugly glare. His face was covered with sweat and dust, and his blue-denim shirt was splotched with dark perspiration stains. The way he licked his parched lips indicated how long he’d been driving through the ninety-degree heat—too long.

  “I need space and a shower and a bottle of cold beer,” he told Mr. Crowden.

  Fred Crowden was a spry, nasty, little man of sixty-four, white-haired and blue-eyed and secretly glad that his scratchy-voiced wife had passed on three years earlier. “Passed on” was one of his many piously hypocritical phrases; it usually went with a dreadfully distant look of sadness that would have done credit to Kim Novak. He was that awful an actor, as well as a mean little bastard. Hostile, bigoted, dishonest and selfish, he could have been some Pravda editorial writer’s Ideal American Man.

  “Trailer space, shower, beer—we’ve got ’em all, stranger,” Crowden answered in a voice that reflected his seventeen years of passionate devotion to TV Westerns.