Darling, It's Death

by Richard S. Prather

  Actually, it was two or three cases rolled up into one. The blackmailing of Joe, my big union man, by Gunner was one case. This hoodlum convention in Acapulco was another. And although they were completely separate, they fitted together.

  I had known Gunner was headed for Acapulco after throwing a big scare into Joe, and when I'd got here and seen the swarm of other big-time mobsters around I had, at first, started thinking they might have gathered here because of that blackmail file Gunner was carrying. That idea had seemed thin, though, because even as important as my client was in the States, and in his union, it didn't seem likely that there'd be so much commotion simply because of Joe—as an individual, at least. It wasn't likely.

  I knew now that Joe, and the blackmail file on him, had nothing at all to do with the calling of this criminal get-together. Joe was just one bit in the overall scheme, and something that Gunner, looking out for number one, had dreamed up by himself. This Acapulco convention and what it was supposed to accomplish had been planned long before Gunner—or anybody else—had even thought of putting a squeeze on Joe.

  But I knew what was up now. This convention of top-ranking criminals had only one purpose, but one so big and audacious it was frightening: to plan the infiltration and capture, by the underworld, of all the labor unions in the United States! And the biggest prize of all was the union Joe controlled.

  When Archie had first told me the purpose of this convention I'd almost fallen off my stool. But when I thought about it a little, I wondered why it hadn't happened before. The United States unions are now so powerful that they're a prize not only for the labor bosses, but also for gangsters and Communists—any person or group that hungers for power. The men who control the nation's unions also control the nation's industries, and, in a sense, the nation. Lenin himself stressed the necessity and desirability of Communists infiltrating the unions; control labor, he said, and you control the land.

  It appeared that Vincente Torelli was taking a page from Lenin's book. I knew that racketeers had in the past controlled many unions, and that a large number of unions were even now dominated by racketeers. But this convention was the last step in planning a concentrated, intensive, and well-directed campaign to consolidate present positions and start the climb upward to complete and total control of all U.S. labor unions. And that was important enough to bring the boss, Vincente Torelli, all the way from Italy to head the conference. He would be present to supervise operations in person, but because he was forbidden to enter the States, and because of its proximity to the United States, Acapulco was chosen for the meeting place.

  That was the situation when Gunner and Joe came into the picture: Initial plans had been made by Torelli and other top mobsters, the date of the Acapulco conference had been decided upon, and the word had gone out. Gunner had simply, all by himself, stolen a march on the rest of the crooks, and started to dig up dirt on my client. It didn't have to be Joe that he'd started working on; it could have been any other big labor leader in America—but they didn't come any bigger than Joe, and Joe was vulnerable.

  The more I thought about it, the more certain I became that Torelli and his men, up in the Villa al Mar above me now, had a very good chance of getting exactly what they wanted. And if they got what they wanted, they could have their billions and their power and their cops and politicians—even their president. Maybe somebody like the senator up there.

  I had thought of this case as big before, but now I knew it was probably the most important one I'd ever be on in my life.

  It was easy, now, to see the importance of that blackmail file on Joe, the file I'd been hired specifically to recover. The personal intimidation of Joe wouldn't have been important—except to Joe—if he'd been merely another guy sweating for a buck. If the gangsters got Joe under their thumb, they'd have the vitally important industry Joe represented under their thumb, too. The real importance of the file wasn't the fact that it was damaging to Joe, but that to avoid being ruined he'd turn over his union to the gangsters.

  Of course, he couldn't actually "turn it over," like a house or a small business; but he could, with his weight, see that gangsters got the important, controlling spots in the union. And it wouldn't take many men in positions of control.

  With that file Torelli could quietly, unobtrusively, over a period of six months or a year, get actual control of Joe's union. And that was only one facet of Torelli's plan.

  I rolled off the bed. I had lain there thinking for over half an hour. It was three-thirty in the afternoon. I stopped thinking about what might happen as the result of this Acapulco convention, and concentrated on the one thing I had to do: get that blackmail file. And, too, I realized I'd been thinking primarily about the effect of that file in Torelli's hands, and the lever it would give him with which to pry into Joe's union—and, apparently, into other unions. But there was also that recording, highly damaging, it appeared, to several other union bosses. And that War Department document.

  I revamped my schedule for the afternoon. I'd been planning to see Gloria, work on her—one way or another—and see if she'd heard anything important from her hoodlum friends. Also to ask her if George was going to kill me yet. But the way things were shaping up, it appeared I'd better get out of here for a while and dig up a flea-bag hotel for a hideout that nobody but me knew about, and then make a couple of phone calls I wanted out of the way: one to the FBI and one to my client.

  I went out of the room, pulled the door shut. I couldn't lock it because I'd left my key at the desk when I'd gone out to the pool earlier. I started down the walk and suddenly remembered that Torelli had advised me not to leave the hotel. I remembered because, waiting for me at the corner of the patio, was the Joker.

  6

  THERE WASN'T MUCH POINT in my pretending I hadn't seen him. I walked on up to the Joker and stopped in front of him. I was still supposed to be an innocent cluck who had just stumbled into Suite 103, so I said, "You wouldn't still be following me around, now would you?"

  He didn't say anything, but his eyes narrowed slightly. Possibly he was thinking of some practical joke, like breaking my spine.

  I said, "Maybe you don't get it. I've had enough of your company. Too much. Get off my tail."

  He finally spoke. He told me in three short words what I could go do to myself. I returned his invitation, then walked out to the desk. With the Joker. It was apparent that he intended to stay with me, so I picked up the key to 103 and headed back toward my room. The Joker started looking a little puzzled. Ten feet from the desk I took off, walking as fast as I could without running.

  "Hey," the Joker said, and started after me. I got to my room about three yards ahead of him, hit the lock with the key ready in my hand, and pushed the door open just as the Joker reached for my shoulder. I jumped inside and he automatically came after me. With my back against the edge of the open door for leverage, I lifted my foot and planted it hard in his stomach and shoved with all my strength.

  It didn't knock him off his feet, but it sent him staggering away from me. I jumped back out of the room and slammed the door, turned the key in the lock, and trotted down the walk. On my third step I heard the crash as he slammed into the wooden panels. The door wasn't going to last very long, but all I needed was time to get out of the hotel and away. Assuming, of course, that some other big unprintable pile like the Joker wasn't also tailing me. Apparently the Joker was the only one, and the door lasted long enough.

  I strolled down the steps, then walked to where I'd parked my rented Buick. I started it, pointed it down the Calle de Tambuco, and stepped on the gas. I roared downhill to Manuel Guzmán Boulevard, making sure I wasn't followed, then turned right and drove into Acapulco.

  Acapulco is really two towns. There's the lush, plush string of luxury hotels along Miguel Alemán and Manuel Guzmán and dotting Las Playas, with accommodations and service that would be pleasing to Lucullus, and then there is the Zócalo, or square, and the beautiful bay dotted with boats and yachts,
and the long cement muelle fiscal or public pier, or walk, along its edge in front of the town, and then there's the town itself.

  Acapulco, the town, is largely a dirty, ramshackle community like many others scattered all over Mexico. Much of it stinks, and thin streams of foul, germ-filled water trickle down some of the gutters, adding to the stench. There are the inevitable mangy dogs and pigs and people, the Indian woman nursing her baby on the street, the street vendors, and the outstretched hands, palms up.

  You see tourists in their bright sport shirts and thin dresses, gawking at the blind beggar near the Hotel La Marina on the corner of the Zócalo, or taking moving pictures of the quaint old church near the semimodern movie theatre on Juan Alvarez while a kid in what looks like gunny sacking crawls past them on his knees, his spindly, twisted legs projecting out behind him like thin, blotched pieces of driftwood. Glamorous Acapulco.

  I drove to Juan Alvarez, then took a left through the Zócalo. I looked around as I drove down Calle Progreso and into Avenida Cinco de Mayo, but didn't see what I wanted. Coming back up Caleana I found a spot that would do and stopped. It was a little hotel where I was sure no tourists or well-to-do criminals were staying. Here was my flea bag. Possibly only fleas stayed here. Peeling paint over the narrow entrance announced faintly that this was the Del Mar Hotel.

  I parked a block and a half away and walked back, went inside the Del Mar and up to the desk. It smelled. The clerk looked up from his picture book and asked me something in five-hundred-word-a-minute Spanish. He smelled, too. I asked him if he could hablar inglés and he told me un poquito, and finally I registered as John B. Smith and got a rusty key, which smelled. I was going to love it here.

  I took a quick look at the small, musty room, which was on the ground floor. If I had to leave my room by the window I didn't want to break my neck. The room was number 10, at the rear of the hotel, with one dirt-smeared window looking out onto an alley. That suited me.

  I went back to the desk, left my key, then walked across the tiny, empty lobby to the phone in the corner. I had a hell of a time, and it took twenty minutes, but I got larga distancia and was put through to Los Angeles and the Federal Bureau of Investigation office on Spring Street. The office is only a few blocks from my own spot in the Hamilton Building on Broadway, and I know several of the boys. I was particularly chummy with a boy named Art Dugan, and I was hoping I'd get him. It took a while, but finally he was put on the line.

  "Art," I said. "Shell Scott here."

  After a minute of "What the hell you doing in Mexico?" and so forth, I got down to business. First I told him where I was calling from, then, "Art, can you tell me if this guy"—I gave him Joe's name—"is linked in any way with Communists?"

  "What brought this on?"

  "If he is, I'm going to spend about fifteen minutes telling you a bunch of stuff you should know. Maybe you already know it. I'll tell you this now: The guy's my client. If he's OK, well, we've had a pleasant chat. Some of what I've got you're going to hear, anyway."

  "Just a second." He was gone for a couple of minutes, then I heard him say, "Can't we keep this on a friendly basis, Shell? Let's say, suppose the guy was a wheel. What would you want to talk about?"

  I gave him a little; I hit the edges.

  "Uh-huh," he said softly. "OK, Shell. You can give me the rest of it."

  That was enough for me. He'd answered my question about Joe. And as far as I'm concerned, Communists or Communist sympathizers have no "privileged communications." I gave Dugan his fifteen minutes' worth; I gave him everything. When I got through he knew as much about what was going on as I did—and undoubtedly a lot more.

  He was quiet for almost a minute. "Torelli, huh? Didn't know he was down there."

  "He is. Yacht in the bay and all. And the rest is just as I told it. Art, there it all is. And now I want some info, if you can give it to me."

  "Shoot."

  "Have you got any idea what the recording could be? And what's this secret document he babbled about? It sounds a little fantastic; spy and counterspy, you know. But if I get knocked off down here, I'd like to know what the score is."

  "Shell," he said, "secret documents always sound fantastic to most Americans. But not to guys like Fuchs and Rosenberg and Greenglass. Unfortunately. Or to us, fortunately. Hold on a second."

  I heard the clatter as he put the phone down. He was gone for what seemed a long time, maybe five or ten minutes. Then he was back "OK, Shell. I can tell you this: That stuff is so important I wish I were there." That told me plenty; it meant either Dugan or somebody else from an FBI office would be down here soon. He said, "Keep this in mind: Your Gunner and his chums couldn't possibly know how vital that stuff is, so you're probably the only guy around there now who does." He kept talking. There wasn't a lot he could tell me over the phone, but by inference, and by references to other things we both knew about, he got some points across.

  Once he said, "Remember what we talked about in the Colony Club? When you got back from Las Vegas after that deal up there?"

  I tried to remember. The Colony is a pleasant night club in Gardena, featuring strippers. I remember being there with Dugan and two thirsty tomatoes, but that was about all I could think of.

  He added, "You had a date with Stella. We talked so long you were late; you were griped as hell."

  What was the guy talking about? I'd never been out with any doll named Stella. There had been a wild stripper in the Colony show named Stella, though. Now I remembered that Dugan and I had even talked about her, discussing the frantic manner with which she performed her stock in trade: the bump. Even now I had to grin, remembering that Dugan and I had both got a big yak out of referring to Stella's animated—well, to a vital portion of her anatomy—as the guided missile. I stopped grinning. Now I got it.

  "No germs, huh?" I said.

  "Easy, Shell." A pause. "Doesn't that sound like what one of those boys would claim Stella was?"

  Uh-huh. A big part of the Communist propaganda was devoted to "proving" that the United States used germ warfare in Korea, dropped potato bugs in Germany, and other such idiocies—which weren't idiocies when the propagandized believed them. Dugan hadn't really told me anything, but he'd told me a lot. A smart boy, Dugan. I wished he were here. Instead of me.

  We talked another five minutes, then I rang off. While I waited for my second call to go through, to Joe's unlisted number in L.A., I thought about what I'd got from Dugan. Part of it was sketchy, but I had enough. Joe had given me a snow job about the ex- on his Communist tag; he just didn't carry a card any more, that was all. The FBI knew all about him, had been watching him. Joe was as big in the Communist party as he was in the union movement. Well, the union racket was a logical spot for him; he'd listened to Papa Lenin. And that explained part of the recording problem, too. Gunner had got on his spool of tape a recording of the conversation between Joe and six other Communist union leaders—of which there are a hell of a lot more than six in the States. I didn't know what the meeting had been about, but from the talks with Archie and Dugan, and my own knowledge of the Communist conspiracy, it seemed likely they'd been discussing paralyzing, nationwide strikes, if not setting up a timetable for them. It's common knowledge, except among idiots, that a large number of union bosses are waiting only for the word from Moscow, whereupon the strikes, sabotages, picketing, and all the rest of it will begin. Begin in earnest, that is. But, actually, I could only guess at what went on in Joe's house that day. Dugan hadn't even said the other six were Commies, but he had said "some other Joes," which told me enough, knowing Dugan. He'd also used almost the same phraseology another time, saying, "Just thank God Gunner got that bump from Joe before Joe got it." It didn't sound like anything much except gibberish, but I knew who the other Joe was Dugan had referred to. Of course, the "bump" was the dope on guided missiles.

  Good God, I thought. Guided missiles. I knew that the guided missile program was one of the biggest, most secret, and most expensive parts o
f our defense program. Nobody like me could actually know how big or important it was, but it seemed obvious that the next war—the one my client had spoken so solemnly about—would be fought largely with missiles, maybe radar-controlled and with atomic warheads. Nice things to blow up the world with. But from the talk with Dugan I still didn't know what phase of the program the document detailed. I did know it was important. I did not know what the hell I was going to do about it.

  At least, though, I had a couple of ideas. I started in on one when Joe answered the phone.

  "Joe? Shell Scott. I—"

  He broke right in, his voice shaking a little. "Have you got the . . . got it?"

  I had no respect at all for this customer, and it was hard to keep that from showing in my voice, but I tried to keep it toned down. "No. Haven't even seen it. I'm not sure it's down here, but in a little while I'll be betting my life that it is." I briefed him fast on what I'd picked up so far—the part I was willing to let him know. I wound up with: "And the top man down here is Vincente Torelli. He wants that stuff as bad as you do."

  There was silence for so long I thought the connection might have been broken. But finally I heard him say, "My God. Oh, my God."

  As soon as I knew he was still on the line I said, "So it's no picnic. Here's what I want you to do." I talked to him fast for two minutes, telling him what stuff I wanted him to get and send down to me. When I finished he said, "That's a large order. When do you want it?"

  "I want it now. But I'll settle for tomorrow night."

  He didn't even have to think it over. "That's preposterous! Why, it's impossible. I can't get it to you that soon."

  "You get it down here. It's your neck. But it's my neck, too. If I need the stuff and don't have it, I'm dead. I'm not exaggerating. And if I get planted, pal, you're sunk."