by Barry, Mike
“I’ve got to do it,” Wulff said quietly. He let the man wander toward a little group of bushes about twenty yards downrange; instinctively Trotto must have been, like a wounded animal, seeking cover. “But I want to tell you why I’m doing it.”
“Don’t kill me. Don’t kill me!”
“I have to,” he said. “You see, the trouble is, Trotto, that you just don’t care. You just did your job always, you never thought about what it meant or what was happening to people. People never meant anything to you Trotto; you never thought about them. But if you’re going to be a piece of machinery then you have to pay the price of being machinery. When it malfunctions, you replace it.”
He raised the gun.
“It’s nothing personal,” Wulff said as the man started to run, and shot him.
The man seemed to collapse into sections; little pieces of him hitting the ground unevenly, his body falling not so much in a heap as in scatters as if a bag of stones had been exploded upon the ground. No rolling, kicking, he took to the ground and he lay still, his face buried in the dust. Wulff went over and looked at him.
Medulla oblongata. Clean drill. It was a job that Trotto himself could have been proud of.
Wulff put the gun away and walked back to the Fleetwood. Three more cars like dogs, came prowling up the hill and, sniffing, went away. No one looked out of them. There was nothing to look at. The road was just a passage of time like a dream. It did not exist at all.
He got into the Fleetwood, slammed the door, locked up everything and started the motor. Trotto was right; it was a hell of a good performing, quiet automobile. The bloodstains on the mats and seat, the odor of death in the car was almost gone. The climate control was fantastic. It could clean out everything.
He put the car into gear and began to drive. He was not all that familiar with the geography but Trotto’s instructions had been pretty good, particularly for a man issuing them at gunpoint. Wulff guessed that he could find his way.
He was going to see Nicholas Severo.
VI
There had been a good deal of security getting into Albert Marasco’s estate in Islip, Long Island, Wulff remembered. Marasco was only a minor boss but he had a checkpoint system which would have done the Berlin Wall proud. Severo, he suspected, was a bigger operative in his territory than Marasco in New York, and he expected a lot of difficulty, but there were no checkpoints at all. Not even a booth; nothing on the outside of the high house indicating an observation point.
They did things differently here, that was for sure. A more informal, relaxed culture, that was what they said. Wulff wheeled the car down a long rutted driveway, bounced the Fleetwood toward a small parking area that had been ringed out to the rear of the house.
All the time he was hunched over the wheel, much as Trotto had been forty-five minutes before, half-expecting the whining impact against the windshield or back panel that would warn him that his safety margin had expired. One or another of Severo’s stake-out men would know that the Fleetwood showing up here with only one man was sure indication that something had gone wrong. Even if he could not recognize Wulff from that distance, the fact that a man was coming back alone would have been sufficient for this theoretical point-man. He might try to blow up the car on the spot.
But there was no point man. There was no observation post. There appeared to be no security at Nicholas Severo’s quarters at all. The driveway had been open to the highway, no gate closing it off, that driveway had led straight to the house, the house seemed open and accessible. Was it possible that his man felt himself so far above danger that the thought of protecting himself was absolutely foreign? Or more ominously, had Trotto, holding out to the end, given him false information and sent him to the home of some unsuspecting suburbanite?
Wulff doubted it. He thought he knew his customers pretty well by this time, and Trotto had been a man broken and squeezed open. If he was sure of anything it was that he had taken everything out of Trotto that he could before he had thrown him away. Nevertheless this situation struck him somehow as being even more ominous than being received by machine-guns. A situation he would have been prepared for in Fleetwood. He had been in a worse situation at Marasco’s and gotten out of it. But this was something that he did not know quite how to tackle.
A question of differing lifestyles.
Wulff stopped the car, shut off the motor with a tick! and let the keys dangle as slowly he eased himself from the car. However he went out of here—if he went out of here at all—he was pretty sure that it would not be in the Fleetwood. Coming to ground he reconnoitered carefully, checked the upper levels of the house, the small, neat grounds, the three swans circling idly in the small pool of clear water on the lawn before the house, a nice touch this, and then very carefully, holding the gun, he walked toward the main entrance.
Sitting duck of course. Or sitting swan. If Severo was watching behind glass the man could finish him off with one shot. But Wulff’s instincts were holding now. He had a feeling that if he were indeed being watched and if no shot had been taken by now, he was going to get into this house. Curiosity would overtake caution. Had overtaken it already. Or maybe there was some kind of bounty for his being taken alive as opposed to dead. A promotion for Severo within the ranks, from sergeant major to warrant officer, say. Who knew exactly how they worked? He would find out though.
He kept on walking. Into the enemy’s lair. He was driven; had been driven from the first. Since he had seen Marie Calvante’s body lying on the floor of that damned room, since he had died three and a half months ago, he had been driven by only one purpose: to keep on moving. To come into their center. To simply keep on going up the line until he confronted them in one naked, open moment. Then he would kill them. Or be killed. But he would not stop coming. They could kill him but they could not stop him. He was a machine. Machinery could not be stopped. He kept on going.
Up the stucco stairs and to the house. Large, ornate door, a bell prominently displayed. He reached for the bell. Chimes, something symphonic. They did things nicely in Southern California. No response. He hit the bell again. A new theme, not a repetiton of the previous one. Good system. Highly elaborate. Severo had taste. All of these people in San Francisco had taste. They probably tied up the junk in rolled up prints of old masters for delivery. The special touch.
The door opened slowly and before him stood a short, bald man holding a cigar in one hand and a revolver in another. It was levelled directly at Wulff’s heart, Wulff noticed. That was good. Whoever this man was he had some alertness after all. It was not as easy as it had looked.
“Mr. Wulff?” the man said.
Wulff said nothing. He stood and stared. For the first time since he had hit the bell he realized that he still had his own pistol in his hand and that that pistol was covering the short man. They were covering one another. The short man looked at him and something almost like amusement moved through his features, discoloring them slightly. “I said,” he said, “are you Wulff?”
Wulff said nothing. What was there to say? He held his pistol and the short man held his own. They looked at one another. Dead stalemate. Both could die or neither but there was no progress from this position.
“Look” the man said quietly, “this is a draw.”
“Favor the runner,” Wulff said.
“What’s that?”
“Never mind. It’s an old expression.”
“Stalemate here. I think we should talk.”
“I don’t think we have a damned thing to talk about, Severo.”
“Oh?” the man said, his eyes widening slightly, “then what are you here for?”
“I came here to kill you.”
The man exhaled flatly. “They’re right,” he said, “the reports are right. You’re crazy.”
“Maybe.”
“You’re crazy, Wulff; you want to take on the whole world. Don’t you understand there’s nothing to take on? I think that we should talk.”
�
��There’s nothing to talk about,” Wulff said. “I’ve just killed two of your men, don’t you know that? What could we have to talk about?”
Severo looked at him flatly. “I’m not surprised,” he said. “I figured you would kill them. After I talked around a little and read the reports I knew that we should have sent out a fucking army.”
“There’s a big shipment coming through this territory very soon, I figure,” Wulff said. “A couple of million dollars worth of junk. You want to talk about something? You want to help me? Tell me where it’s moving in and when. That’s what we can talk about.”
Severo shook his head and chuckled. With his free hand he beckoned to Wulff. “Come in,” he said, “come on in and we can talk about it.”
“Go in there? You think I’m crazy, Severo? I may be crazy but not by half. I’m not going into your house on your terms to talk about anything.”
Wulff willed himself to a further pitch of alertness, held the pistol so as to discharge it at the instant that Severo seemed to bring concentration to bear on his own gun. But he had misjudged his man; either that or Severo was operating on some level which Wulff could not yet comprehend. For the man shrugged, ducked his head and dropped the pistol abruptly to the ground. It clattered and lay by Wulff’s foot.
Severo spread his hands and looked at Wulff. “All right,” he said, “let’s go for a little walk along the grounds.”
“Why don’t I just kill you now and save the little walk?”
“You’re not going to kill me now, Wulff. If you were going to you would have done it ten seconds ago. You’re not crazy at all, I respect you, you’re a man of purpose and it doesn’t suit your purpose right now to kill me. You think I might be able to tell you about that shipment.”
“Will you?”
“I don’t know,” Severo said. “I want to see what you have in mind. Maybe I’m not so crazy about this damned business myself, maybe I’m looking for an edge of some sort. You never know. We might be of some use to each other Wulff.”
“I doubt that.”
“I’ve been looking for someone like you for a long time,” Severo said. For the first time emotion seemed to infiltrate his voice. Can’t you understand that? Can’t you follow what I’m saying to you? I’ve been looking for this for a long time, Wulff, and maybe now it’s come. Now you don’t want to go into the house that’s all right. We can just walk around these grounds and talk. Or I’ll get into your death car over there and we’ll take a ride and talk.”
Severo looked at him, five feet five inches of curiously concentrated authority, and Wulff felt the unreasonable respect building. It was impossible but he was dealing here with a man of force and responsibility who on some level had taken over from Wulff. It was now Severo pushing the bounds of the confrontation. “You really hate this don’t you?” he said, “you hate us.”
“I hate junk,” Wulff said flatly. “I hate junk. I hate the people who deal in it, I hate the politicians and the businessmen locked away in safe places who make it all possible. Yes, I hate that.”
“So do I,” said Severo softly. “So do I.”
“So what does that mean?” Wulff said. “Should I give you a fucking medal because you say you hate junk? You’ve lived on it all your life, Severo. It built this place with walls to keep the junkies out.”
“Not all my life. Not all my life by half. I think that we ought to take that ride, Wulff.” Severo kicked at the pistol, moved it further from him. “I’ve put myself in your hands, don’t you see? I’ve laid myself down in front of you. Now are you going to listen to me or not?”
“I’ve killed two men today. I’ve killed three since I’ve been in San Francisco. Why shouldn’t I kill another?”
“You can kill a lot more,” Severo said quietly, “if you want to, you can kill hundreds. I want you to kill hundreds. But first we’ve got to talk. All right,” he said with an abrupt gesture, a change of mood, “I’m not going to go on with this indefinitely. I’m going to go to that car and have a seat and if you don’t join me in thirty seconds I’ll assume that you don’t want to talk and you have nothing to say and I’m going to get out of that car and go on back inside, and lock the door. So you’ll have to either kill me or let me go or talk to me, Wulff, that’s all there is to it.”
He brushed by him quickly with the gesture of a stranger rushing to catch a train in the New York City subway and strode toward the Fleetwood. Wulff watched him for a minute and then slowly putting the pistol away, followed the little man at a moderate pace.
All right. He would admit it. The little bastard if nothing else did have the habit of command.
They certainly did do things differently out here, didn’t they?
VII
Severo was angry. That was all it came down to; they were trying to squeeze him out, bypass him, circulate the traffic around his domain, eventually shut him out of the lucrative junk trade altogether. Why they were doing this was obscure but it seemed to have something to do with a power struggle in which he had been involved, a power struggle which he was losing. Severo’s business was just like anything else corporate in America; it went through levels of influence, interlocking directorates, conglomerates, spheres of influence and so on. Severo was a good American. Now he was being undercut in a business which he had spent two decades building from the ground, a business which had given him much pride and sustenance, and he was mad. Extremely mad.
Junk had nothing to do with it at all. It could have been anything that the fat little man was involved in. Talking to him Wulff could begin to understand that. He had a lot to learn about this business, he was the first to admit it, and Severo taught him a lot. The people who dealt in junk didn’t think of it as junk at all. They thought in terms of gross lots, profit, loss, inventory, turnover, round figures and even distribution. What they were buying and selling never crossed their minds, at least in any way that they would have to come to terms with it. They were poisoning the country, they were killing people, they were breaking up the old social order of America, that’s what Severo and his interlocking conglomerates were doing, but they just didn’t see it that way at all. They didn’t see it any way. It was just a job.
So there was nothing to do with the fat little man. You might want to kill him—Wulff had not discarded the possibility—but it would be just like putting the squeeze in a junkyard on an old car. The car was in no position to understand what was being done to it. It was inanimate, insensate, it didn’t realize that it didn’t work. The same way with Severo. Pull the trigger and you would get elimination but you would never, never get understanding. You could parade his victims in front of him by the hundreds and thousands, quivering, beaten addicts, the victims of the victims following them, all of the people who the addicts had stomped and burned and mugged and stolen from and killed to keep the mainline running, but that would not make any difference to Severo either. He just would not see it. Really? he might say raising his eyebrows and whispering so that his gentle voice would not disturb the addict’s march. Is that so? Terrible social condition; what can I do to help? Will you take a check?
So that was the way it was. It was no more personal to the Severos than Trotto’s murder had been personal to Wulff. In that way if no other, he guessed, Nicholas and he had a great deal in common. They were out to achieve objectives and people who got between them and those goals simply had to be cleared out of the way. The trouble was that Severo, at least to date, had been a hell of a lot more successful than Wulff ever expected to be.
They drove around and around the surrounding area in the Fleetwood, Wulff at the wheel, Severo hunched forward near him, hands outstretched, talking earnestly and inexhaustibly. If the little man took any notice of the bloodstains he made no comment; he was like a well-bred relative talking to a child with a harelip. He would not embarrass Wulff. He would not make him feel awkward about the blood in his car. They drove past estates, wooded areas, trees and glades, they drove past children playing in the
streets and beautiful women in tennis shorts carrying racquets and walking their way gracefully toward the courts. They drove past used car lots and hamburger stands, Wonder Waffles and clothing discount stores and then past the estates again. It was a nice area. It was convenient to all shopping, as the real estate ads would put it, but secluded enough from the shopping that commerce did not have to infringe upon the private life-style. Just like the junk, in short. Severo was a man of taste, it would seem. He knew how and where to live.
The junk was coming into San Francisco Bay tomorrow night. It would get there by a circuitous route according to Severo. From Saigon to Peking, a little crossover at Istanbul, switch to airplane to get to Malaga, another flight then back to Peking and finally by laborious freight, weeks on the ocean, toward San Francisco. Severo did not try to explain the reasoning behind this. Wulff did not press him.
Traffic was always a complex and dangerous business and nothing which he had ever tried to understand; the point was that it worked. Customs was a joke, security a punch line. The country had ten million points of access. Who could cover them all?
All that mattered was that it was coming in by freighter tomorrow night, and a little piece of it was for Severo. Most of it was not; the shipment was being cut up in twenty to thirty pieces to be taken by various distributors and point men all over the country. Severo was only a twentieth or a fiftieth of the pickup. But because the delivery was being taken in his territory he had a kind of loose control over it, a loose responsibility for the connections. That was the way the business worked. In San Francisco you had to clear everything with Severo. Drive twenty miles east or five miles north and it was two other people you had to talk to. But here his control was what mattered.
They drove into Severo’s driveway again just as the man had finished mapping out the specifics. Wulff had been listening for an hour, saying very little, saying nothing in fact, taking it all in and wondering if he dared trust the man. He supposed that he could. Severo by getting into the Fleetwood had absolutely put himself at Wulff’s mercy. You did not put yourself under a gun and then begin to babble lies. Or did you? He could not figure these people out. He supposed that he did not have to as long as he could beat them.
