The Poisoners mh-13

by Donald Hamilton

There were sirens in the distance now. Apparently, some Los Angeleno had overcome his distaste for involvement long enough to pick up a telephone. Well, it saved me from having to call the police and ambulance, not that I thought an ambulance would do much good. Buckshot is generally for keeps.

  I hurried back to the rental car and drove off, passing the wreck and the man with the shotgun lying face up beside it. He was, I saw, the nameless man who'd been standing guard in the room with McConnell up in Warfel's apartment, one of those I'd asked Mac to check on. Well, it still wouldn't hurt to identify him, as well as the one behind the wheel. You hate to get so casual you go around shooting people without bothering to learn their names.

  I made it out of sight before the police arrived, and kept going until I was well away from the area. Then I ditched the car and walked half a dozen blocks until I found a phone booth near a filling station that was closed for the night-well, booth is too strong a word for it. The phone company no longer provides its clientele with shelter and privacy. You stand out in the smog and fog and tell your business to anybody hanging around. There's a little plastic box to protect the instrument; the customers can damn well protect themselves.

  As you will gather, the weather had closed in once more. The heavy, damp air had a nasty, chemical, ozony tang to it that made my nose run and my eyes water. I called the number Charlie Devlin had given me and asked to be put in touch with her, if possible. This led to all kinds of security-oriented complications, but finally I got a guy who seemed to know something. At least he seemed to know who I was and who Miss Devlin was. He was even willing to stick his neck way out and admit it.

  I said, "I just lost my subject, permanently. Two men in a hopped-up Camaro. Twelve-gauge auto-loading shotgun stuffed full of buck, very effective."

  "What color car? Did you get the license number? Can you describe either of the men?"

  I said, "Cut it out. I'm slow but not that slow. Check with the cops. They were heading that way as I pulled out. I'm sure they'll let you look at the wreck and view the remains in the morgue and make up your own descriptions. One of the men was taking orders from Frank Warfel when I saw him previously, if it matters. I set it up more or less to look as if the black man avenged himself before he keeled over. If you've got any local influence, you might pass a hint to the authorities to let it stand that way, officially, and save us all a lot of trouble. And I made the guy a kind of promise, so would you please put a guard on his family, or take them into protective custody, or something, until the smoke clears. Mrs. Lorraine McConnell…"

  "I'm afraid we're not authorized… Oh, to hell with it. Have you got the address?"

  I gave it to him. "But first you'd better get in touch with Charlie Devlin, if you can, and tell her what's happened. I don't see what Warfel's so worried about, sending his boys rushing out to silence them, but if he was after McConnell he's almost bound to be after Blame. At least we'd better operate on that assumption. Charlie'd better keep her eyes open wider than I did, if she wants to keep our phony redhead alive a little longer." The man at the other end of the line didn't respond immediately. I asked, "What's the matter? Don't tell me they've already taken care of Blaine."

  "No," he said slowly, "not as far as we know, but we just got a call from Charlie. She's at an all-night garage south of town. A guy in a jeep ran her off the freeway about half an hour ago, while she was tailing Miss Blaine. It must have been just about the time you were having your troubles. I would say their timing was pretty good, wouldn't you, Mr. Helm?"

  IX

  "No, I didn't hit my nose!" she said irritably. "It's just this damn smog; I've got some kind of an allergy..

  And don't stand there looking so damn superior, damn you! You haven't done so well, either, from what I hear over the phone. At least my subject wasn't shot down in the street right in front of me."

  She started to rest her hand on a nearby workbench, but changed her mind when she saw how greasy it was. The garage was a shabby, unpainted, badly lighted cinder-block building on the small service road that ran parallel to the freeway. From outside came the steady roar of fast night traffic heading from Los Angeles to San Diego and vice versa. At the other side of the garage, an elderly mechanic in greasy coveralls was investigating the beat-up front suspension of the big, dark blue, Ford station wagon on the hoist, with the reproving attitude of a surgeon examining a compound fracture: people really shouldn't do such things to themselves, or their cars.

  "You've got a point," I said to the girl beside me, "but I wouldn't lean on it too hard if I were you. Not until we find the ersatz redhead. Alive."

  Charlie sighed. "I know. I didn't really mean…

  "What happened?"

  "Oh, I just goofed, that's all," she said wryly. "The visibility was terrible-well, you just came down the freeway yourself, you know how it is up there. I guess I was so busy trying to keep track of the girl's car in the mist, in all that traffic, without tipping her off that she was being followed, that I didn't check my mirrors the way I should have. All of a sudden, there he was with his damn jeep, cutting right in on me. I was out in the mud and rocks of the construction zone before I knew it. I thought I'd torn the whole car to pieces, the way it handled when I finally got it backed out of there, but the old man says it looks as if I just bent up the front end a bit." She hesitated, and glanced at me. "Did McConnell tell you anything useful before he died?"

  I shook my head. "He said he didn't know anything."

  "Then why would Warfel have him killed?"

  "That," I said, "is a damn good question. Of course, he may have known more than he knew he knew, if you know what I mean, but he's not going to remember it for us now, whatever it was. Which makes the girl fairly important. She had even more opportunities for observation than the hired help. She admitted she'd seen and heard a few things as Warfel's girlfriend, if that part of her story was straight…"

  "It was. He's been paying the rent on her apartment for a couple of years."

  "Then she's even more likely than McConnell to have been exposed to some significant piece of information, whether she knows what it is or not… Hell, somewhere there's got to be a connection between that two-bit hoodlum and somebody really dangerous!" I went on, making the question very casual, like an afterthought: "How did you know Warfel had been paying the Blaine girl's rent?"

  She glanced at me, and said smoothly, "After all, this is our territory, Mr. Helm. We try to keep track of the people in it, particularly those with whom we may someday be professionally concerned…"

  I said, "Cut it out, Charlie-girl."

  "What's the matter?" She tried to make her tone very innocent, but she didn't succeed very well.

  "Not someday," I said. "You're professionally concerned with Warfel and company right now."

  "Well," she said, "well, of course, since we're working with you on this business…"

  I shook my head. "You were working on Warfel before I ever came on the scene, sweetheart. It's the only answer that makes sense. His girl did a double take when she saw you; she knew who you were. And we were very careful to shake our shadow when we went out to that pistol range of yours, but we were picked up again immediately when we got back to your office…

  "What makes you think so?" She was stubbornly ignoring the obvious because she didn't want to confess to the truth.

  I said patiently, "Because, doll, there was a driver and shotgunner waiting for me outside, and a jeep jockey waiting for you. Remember? Now, how did all those people of Warfel's know where to find us again after we'd given them the slip? They knew-they had to know-because they knew you, Miss Devlin; and they figured you'd bring us all back to your home base, as you did. And they knew where it was. And why did they know all that? Because people like Frank Warfel make a point of knowing who's trying to get something on them. They can't keep track of every agent employed by the U.S. government, but they can sure spot the ones who are currently snooping around, like you've apparently been doing. Haven't
you?" She didn't answer, but she didn't have to. I said, "That's why you were chosen to 'help' me when my boss asked your outfit to give me a hand; and why you weren't very happy about it. Wasn't it? I was poaching on your Warfel territory and you were afraid I might louse things up for you. Am I right?"

  She drew a long breath. "Maybe. If so, do you mind?"

  "Not a bit, as long as your business doesn't interfere with my business."

  She hesitated. "What about your business interfering with mine, Mr. Helm?"

  "Such as how?"

  "We want to get the goods on Warfel. Legally."

  "How far have you got?"

  "Not very far as yet, but sooner or later he'll make a mistake, and we'll catch him at it." She paused once more. When she continued, her voice was kind of harsh and challenging: "And we don't want some trigger-happy super-spook shooting him down for vengeance purposes so he can't stand trial! We want to make a public example of Mr. Frankie-boy Warfel, not a martyr!"

  I ignored the final half of what she'd said, and asked, "At what?"

  "I… I don't understand," she said, disconcerted.

  "At what are you planning to catch Mr. Warfel?"

  "At… well, at anything illegal. Just let him spit on the sidewalk in front of witnesses… Why are you shaking your head like that?"

  I waited while the elderly mechanic went into a spasm of frantic hammering. When relative silence descended once more, I said, "It won't do, Charlie. You're not the lady gangbuster type."

  "Well," she said, "well, I try not to be, of course. Just as you try not to look too much like-"

  "Like a trigger-happy super-spook?"

  She had the grace to flush slightly. "I didn't really mean-"

  "The hell you didn't," I said. "But don't try to convince me you want to bust Frank Warfel just because he's Frank Warfel. You reek of high moral purpose, sweetheart. There's some peculiarly atrocious crime you're concerned with, not just jailing one racketeer because he's a racketeer."

  She drew in her breath sharply. "You have no right to make fun of-"

  "And you have no right to hold out on me," I said. "You're supposed to be helping me, not obstructing me. Okay, start helping by telling me what Frankie's been up to that's so naughty that you get that holy, dedicated look in your eyes when you speak of making an example of him."

  "Damn you, Helm-" She stopped while the phone rang in the tiny corner office, and the mechanic walked past us to take the call, wiping his hands on a greasy rag. When he'd finished talking, and returned to the car on the hoist, I looked grimly at my female companion.

  "All right, let's do it the hard way," I said. "Let's use the old word-association technique. I've been reading your West Coast news the last day or so. Maybe there's been something in the papers that relates to our problem." I stared at her so intently that she squirmed. It was just part of the act, of course. I had a pretty good idea of the answer I wanted already; but I wanted to get it from her so we could talk about it rationally. I said, "What about mud slides, earthquakes-" "You're being ridiculous!"

  I watched her eyes. "Smog," I said, "drugs, missing scientists-"

  "What missing scientists?" she demanded quickly.

  "Actually, just one that I know of," I said. "A Dr. Osbert Sorenson, meteorologist at UCLA, who recently turned up vanished, according to last night's Los Angeles paper."

  "Sorenson? Isn't he the crackpot who wants to abolish the automobile?"

  "One of them. And his associates in the Anti-Internal-Combustion-League, or whatever they call it, seem to think the big car manufacturers did him in. to stop him. Would that have anything to do with your Warfel problem?"

  "Why, that's just silly!" she said. "What could Frank Warfel possibly have to do with a crazy program like that? And can you really imagine General Motors-"

  "No," I said, permitting myself a grin, "not really, and neither can I imagine you giving a damn about Dr. Osbert Sorenson, lost or found. He's just a red herring, isn't he? The word that made your eyelids wiggle, just a little, was the obvious one: drugs." I sighed. "Well, I figured it would be. It had to be, to explain your semi-religious fervor. There's something about dope that seems to arouse the fanatic in a lot of people, including some supposedly sane and objective law-enforcement characters."

  She said sharply, "How can anybody be objective about a traffic as filthy and degrading as..

  She stopped, realizing that I'd been needling her deliberately to get her to betray herself. Angry, she started to speak once more, but checked herself. We faced each other for a long moment.

  I said, "For a dope cop, you've got a mighty thin skin, doll. What are you people, anyway, some special agency helping out the Customs and Treasury boys?" She remained silent. It was really none of my business, so I went on: "Well, never mind… So Frankie's been playing around with drugs, has he? I thought the syndicate had made a big point of getting out of that racket. I thought they'd decided it brought them more trouble and adverse publicity than the profits justified."

  "That's what they said, but we don't have to believe they meant it. Certainly their boy Warfel doesn't seem to!" Charlie drew a long breath. "Oh, all right. I suppose there's really no reason I shouldn't tell you about it. You've heard of Operation Guillotine, I suppose."

  "Sorry," I said. "I can't keep track of all the fancy code names. What's this one supposed to signify?"

  "A guillotine is a machine for severing the head from the body, isn't it? Well, that's what we're going to do with this dirty business! We're going to separate the great, sprawling, ugly bodies of foreign dope production from the greedy, profit-seeking heads-the importers and distributors-in this country. And one of the heads we're going to chop off is Frank Warfel, to show that even the all-powerful syndicate can't get away with flooding this nation with insidious poison… What are you grinning at now, Mr. Helm?"

  "Sweetheart, I'm a pro, remember?" I said. "You don't have to beat me over the head with all the propaganda clichйs. Okay, it's a filthy and degrading traffic in insidious poison, but let's just try to consider it calmly, like an ordinary racket, like protection or extortion or white slavery. How about it?"

  She said severely, "You seem to think it's something to joke about! Do you think it's humorous that we're trying to protect innocent people from-"

  "From their own bad habits?" I said deliberately. "Hell, no. I think it's serious as hell: protecting kids from the evils of marihuana by subjecting them to the evils of jail. Of course, it's rather like protecting the baby from colic by administering a massive dose of strychnine, but I agree there's nothing funny about it."

  She started to react, instantly and indignantly. She was so easy to tease it was hardly sporting. I held up a hand, quickly, to check the impending outburst of righteousness.

  "Okay, okay, simmer down," I said. "I'm just needling you again, Charlie. I'm sorry. I apologize. The drug traffic is a dreadful thing, and I'm glad we have fine people like you fighting against it. Now tell me all about Frank Warfel's connection with it."

  She disregarded my request, and said stiffly: "I see absolutely no justification for your sarcasm, Mr. Helm, or your air of tolerant superiority. Unless you're one of the misguided people who think-"

  "Who think a joint of grass is no worse than a dry martini?" I shrugged. "Hell, I don't know a thing about it. I'm a martini man myself. I've never tried the other stuff. Honest. Dope-wise, I'm pure as a mountain spring-well, as a mountain spring used to be." I drew a long breath. "Look, Charlie, you've got your hangups and I've got mine, one of which is that I feel strangely compelled to discourage people from shooting at me or my colleagues in a fatal sort of way. And even if I didn't feel that way, my boss does, and he's the boss. Since Frank Warfel is involved in the current incident of this kind, could we please discuss him dispassionately just for a minute."

  The mechanic went back to work again with his little hammer, and for a minute or two conversation was impossible.

  When we could hear again, Ch
arlie said stiffly, "You've referred to marihuana, Mr. Helm, as if nothing else was ever smuggled across the Mexican border, but Frank Warfel isn't interested in that weed. There's not enough profit in it, and the amateur competition is too great. Every long-haired hippie who manages to get into Mexico tries to come back with a car full of pot."

  I couldn't help a quick glance at her crisp, clipped hair, realizing now that it was an anti-revolutionary symbol: as long as the unwashed, protesting, drug-absorbing young wore their hair long, she'd wear hers short.

  "What's Frankie's bag, then?" I asked. "Coke or heroin?"

  "The coca leaf grows only in South America, Mr. Helm," she said rather pedantically. "Frankie would want his source closer at hand. The opium poppy, on the other hand, grows quite well in Mexico. That's where the gum comes from. The Chinese opium addicts use it straight, or did before they were corrupted by Western bad habits, but most other users prefer to get their kicks in more concentrated form. Extracting the morphine base from the gum is a fairly simple process; the catch is refining the base into high-grade heroin. The Mexican product has traditionally been pretty poor. They haven't had the technicians or the equipment, so they haven't been able to compete with the pure stuff refined in Europe. It takes a real chemist with good laboratory facilities-"

  "A real chemist?" I said, frowning. "I don't suppose a meteorologist would have an adequate chemical background."

  Charlie frowned at the interruption. "You've got a fixation on this missing Sorenson man, haven't you? Or do you know something about him you haven't told me?"

  "Not a thing," I said honestly. Then I grimaced, and said, a little embarrassed: "Hell, Charlie, I'm a hunch player. Most agents are. I got vibrations when I read that squib in the paper. Humor me and check on Sorenson's scientific training when you get a chance, will you?"

  She wasn't impressed. "Well, if you think it's important," she said negligently. "Anyway, the border traffic in hard drugs has been relatively unorganized in this area, but we have reason to think Frank Warfel intends to change all that. There are indications that he's trying to set up a smuggling route between some place here in southern California, and some below the border down along the Baja coast, probably in the neighborhood of Ensenada. Hundreds of pleasure boats wander between U.S. and Mexican waters on a good summer weekend; nobody can really check them all."