Assignment — Stella Marni

by Edward S. Aarons

  "If she's alive," Markey said.

  "She's alive, don't worry," Durell said.

  An open office safe stood to one side of Damion's desk. The heavy steel door yawned on a miniature snowstorm of papers and books. "Check that, Tony," Durell said. "They've cleaned out whatever records they kept there, but they were in a hurry, so maybe they overlooked something."

  He went on up the narrow back stairs. The door to the third floor was closed, bolted. He shot it open. There were sirens outside now, and screams from below. He found himself in a long corridor that ran from the front to the rear of the house. Darkness shrouded every corner. Some of the doors were open, and one of Markey's young agents came out of one of them.

  "I've got them all in here, sir. There were some people taking naps up here. They're just confused."

  "Is there a small blonde with tiny silver bracelets?"

  "Yes. sir." The agent grinned. "She doesn't speak English."

  "The hell she doesn't," Durell said.

  He pushed past him into a bedroom furnished with department-store maple and a blue broadloom rug. Four people crowded against the wall between the bed and the dresser. A middle-aged couple in identical gray flannel robes held hands, r eyes soft and resigned. A boy of about ten stood with them. And Gerda Smith.

  The only light came from the street lamp outside. Gerda's small face was turned in anger toward Durell. Her eyes were trapped, like those of a wild animal. There came a sudden spray of silvery sound as she jerked away from the cowering family and threw herself across the bed, legs flashing and skin billowing as she rolled away on her back. Her thighs were long and white and firm. An instant later she plunged through the open window.

  Durell yelled and dived after her. The elderly woman screamed. Durell hit the sill and saw the steel web of a fire platform with stairs going up and down against the side of the house. There was no more than six feet of space between this building and the next, and several windows across the areaway were open. He looked up for the girl, then down. She was running to the second-floor landing below, skirts flying again, silver bracelets and bells jingling. Durell hit the stairs perilously hard. Gerda looked back over her shoulder at him, her tiny face masked with fear. She hesitated on the landing. A window was open in the opposite house. She was trying to get up enough courage to jump when Durell caught her and flung her savagely away from the rail. She bounced against the brick wall and the fire escape shook.

  "Oh, you bastard," she gasped.

  "Is this the way Krame got out?"

  "You'll never catch him!"

  She came at him with tooth and nail, a tiny hurricane of fury, terror, and female viciousness. Durell caught her, felt the heavy swing of her breasts against his arm. Her nails raked hotly across his face and she kicked with her high spiked heels. He grabbed her by the waist and threw her against the wall again. She would not be held. She made a thin whimpering sound and pushed her hair away from her eyes and slapped and struck at him.

  "Hold it," he said. "This wont buy you anything." Suddenly he let her go, and she plunged to the platform rail. Durell's face was hard, without expression. "Go ahead. I don't owe you anything. Not after you left me in that cage with Karl. You want to jump, go ahead. Jump."

  She stared at him, breathing hard. Her dress was torn in half a dozen places, her flesh gleaming whitely in the gloom. Somebody shouted down at them from the roof — one of Markey's men — and another man ran up the alley, paused, and looked up.

  "Mr. Durell?"

  Durell called down: "Anybody else take this route?"

  "A big guy jumped into the next house. I look a shot at him, but I think I missed. We're searching the block now."

  "Keep on with it."

  "You need any help up there?"

  Durell looked at Gerda Smith. "No. No help at all."

  She gripped the rail with both hands, breathing hard, her head lowered. She made sick noises, and Durell did not help her. Then she raised her head and looked with longing at the opposite window, so near she could almost reach it. Yet she was afraid to jump.

  Durell said: "Where is Stella Marni, Gerda?"

  "To hell with you."

  "Are you still loyal to these snakes? Krame ran out on you. We got McChesney here, Lament in a bar on Forty-second. They're spilling it all over you and Krame. Even if they didn't, I've got you for murder, anyway."

  Her head came up, eyes hot and wild. "I never killed anybody!"

  "You and Krame. You killed Frank Greenwald and Harry Blossom."

  "No! That's a He! It was…" She bit her lip.

  "Who, Gerda?"

  "No."

  Durell said: "Where is Stella Marni?"

  She laughed viciously.

  Durell said: "I've got you for attempted homicide against me, if nothing else. Who cleaned out the safe here, Gerda?"

  "Krame did that."

  "He took all the outfit's papers with him?"

  "You'll never get anything out of him, you..."

  Durell slapped her. His face was hard as her head snapped back and then he caught her and yanked her away from the rail and slammed her against the wall. Her heel caught in the iron slats of the platform and broke; she stumbled and fell, sliding half under the railing until her frantic hands caught the steel pipe. She screamed and froze there, hanging half over the edge of the platform, with the alley three floors down. Durell did not reach to pull her back. He looked at her long, exposed thighs and hips.

  "H-help me," she whispered.

  "You get a charge out of playing with tough cookies," he said. "With Krame and Damion and every other man in the outfit. You don't know what tough is."

  She screamed again. "Pull me back! I'm afraid!"

  "It won't be any loss if you fall and break your neck.

  "Help me!" she screamed.

  "Where is Stella Marni?"

  "You'll... never find... her."

  "Is she dead?"

  "You'll... never know."

  Tom Markey called for him from the platform below. Out on the street, two green-and-white prowl cars had halted with sirens moaning. A crowd had collected and spotlights ranged the brick wall of the house and the alley. The lights came on suddenly as one of Markey's men found the main switch. The raid was almost over. Durell watched Gerda carefully hitch her hips backward, the skirt falling over her head as she slid to safety from under the platform. For a long minute she lay face down on the iron platform, panting. When she leaned up on one arm, pushing her hair back from her face, her body convulsed and she began to retch over the edge of the landing.

  Tom Markey crawled out through the window, his face sober. "It's a dud. Except for McChesney and Lamont Damion doesn't know who hit him. He has no idea what was in the safe. His own records, sure, but there was a locked compartment that Krame used, and Krame had the only key to it. Krame got away." He looked at Gerda. "Who is this one?"

  "McChesney's wife. Krame's girl," Durell said. "Krame ran out on her. He didn't even try to take her with him, and she's a little upset."

  Gerda looked up at him with swimming eyes that reflected only misery. Her hatred was gone. She looked small and helpless, like a precocious street waif in adult clothing who had stumbled and fallen into the mud. When she moved, the sound of silver bells on her wrists and ankles made a forlorn sound against the dark and cold of the night.

  "Where is Stella Marni?" Durell asked again.

  "Leave her alone, Sam," Markey said. "I'll get a statement from her in my office."

  Durell slashed the air with his hand. "There isn't time. The Boroslav sails tonight — unless we've got evidence to hold her."

  "Immigration cleared the ship half an hour ago," Markey said heavily.

  "When does she sail?"

  Markey looked at his watch. "Fifty minutes."

  Durell did not want to admit the fear in him. Everything possible had gone wrong. He had lost Stella. She might be dead by now. She could have been a tremendous force for good, telling the truth to the
world. No human life was so small or unimportant that it wasn't worth fighting for. Alive or dead, he had to find her.

  "Don't look at me like that," Gerda whispered.

  He bad not realized he was staring at her. "The last time, Gerda. Save your neck. Tell us where Krame took her."

  Her mouth curled and she laughed thinly, hysterically. "She got to you, didn't she? Like she got that fat Frank Greenwald and that crazy Harry Blossom. You're in love with her, aren't you? The big tough cop! Just look at you! The bitch got under your skin, didn't she?"

  Durell wondered. "Gerda, if you don't talk, well throw the book at you. You know where Krame has gone. You can turn witness for the government and get leniency for yourself. Or you can keep your mouth shut and take the rap for all of them. It's your choice. Krame was the brains of the outfit, and maybe he'll be out of the country by morning. But we've still got you. Krame made the deal to bludgeon these poor people into going back home, and he's the one who'll get paid off. He'll be taken care of. I'm sure he told you about the rewards be was promised for running this ring. But you won't get any of it, Gerda. You're going to a federal pen. Maybe we can't break the world's headlines with what we've got, but there's enough in it to put you away for a long time. Long enough so you won't be pretty when they let you out. And all those years you're in the pen, Krame will be living it up high, because he didn't give a damn about you and ran out on you to save his own skin."

  The girl stared at him. Her mouth shook and she suddenly pressed her hand against her cheek as if to test the softness of her young skin and wonder how it would be years from now, when she was free again.

  "Yeah. Yeah, Johnny Krame ran out on me," she said with slow wonder. "Y'know, he could've waited a second, just a second, to help me jump. Given me a hand so's I wouldn't be afraid. But no. Not Johnny Krame. He never even looked back. He just kept going."

  "Let's go," Markey said to her. "We're finished here."

  "Wait. Can't we... can I make a deal, like Durell says?"

  Markey shrugged. "It depends on what you have to offer, miss."

  She drew a deep breath. "Krame is scheduled to sail tonight on the Boroslav, all right. It was all set up just in case something like this happened." Gerda looked at Durell. "Stella Marni and her precious papa are aboard, too. But I'll bet a thin dime you never find 'em."

  Chapter Eighteen

  Durell took ten minutes to call Washington once more. Impatience seethed in him while he waited to make contact with Clem Anderson again. His voice rasped when he asked if there had been any news about Grozni's family.

  "Not too bad, Sam," Anderson told him. "We just got a code message from our man in Copenhagen. Our man's fishing smack was chased by an East German patrol boat and they put in at Ronne, on Bornholm Island. That's Danish territory. The whole crew landed there, including Grozni's wife and daughters, and asked for political asylum. The story ought to hit the newspapers in an hour or so. Okay?"

  "They're all safe?" Durell asked.

  "Fine and dandy. They're anxious to have Captain Grozni know so he'll stay here and wait for them."

  Durell expelled a long breath. "Good. That's going to help."

  He hung up, turned to Markey. "Let's get to the water front."

  It took fifteen minutes to reach the Boroslav's berth. The pier looked different at night. The cargo had all been loaded and the noise and confusion were gone from the sheds and dock area. A cold wind blew from the North River and the tide was high, smelling of the sea and flotsam that drifted in the murky harbor water. Over on the Jersey side of the river, the winking advertising signs made rhythmic patterns of color that alternately brightened and faded on the scene. Durell parked his car a block from the pier entrance and Markey pulled up silently behind him. The local police had offered men for a raid in force, but Durell had declined with thanks. The Immigration office was sending a squad, but they would not be here for twenty minutes yet.

  Markey tapped the dottle from his pipe into his palm. Tony Isotti surveyed the pier and vacant, dark sheds. Overhead, traffic hissed and rumbled on the elevated highway.

  "I don't see what this can buy for us, Sam, except an international headache," Markey said quietly. 'They only thing to do is keep her from sailing with an order from Immigration. You won't find the girl working alone."

  "I want to try first," Durell said tightly. "She's got to be aboard."

  "And if she isn't? Or we don't find her?"

  'Then we'll stop the sailing. Then we'll use the local cops and the Immigration people to bottle up the pier — not that it will do us much good. It will only sign Stella's death warrant. Or Krame's. Even then, my feeling is we won't find either of them. And I want Stella Marni. If we go after her in force, we'll lose her."

  "Is she as important as Krame?" Markey asked quietly.

  Durell did not answer directly. "Let's go, Tom."

  He walked toward the pier entrance. There were two watchmen in an inner office beyond a steel chain drawn across the ramp to the sheds, and one of them suddenly burst from the door and started to run down the pier toward the bulking shadow of the freighter. Durell vaulted the chain and caught the man and clipped him with his gun and the man went skidding face down on the rough pier planking. He hadn't made any noise. Turning, Durell saw the second watchman staring in simple astonishment. He was a scrawny old man with a yellow muffler knotted around his dirty neck and a stained gray fedora set squarely on his bald head.

  The watchman did not know anything. He had not seen anything. He had been smoking and reading in the shack with Danny, and what was the idea of Danny running off like that, and why did Danny get slugged? Markey told him he was to answer questions, not ask them. But the watchman had not seen anyone who resembled John Krame. Nor had he seen Stella Marni.

  "Ain't no woman gone aboard that ship," the old man muttered. "What dame would want to?"

  Durell sent the old man and his dazed companion back into the custody of one of the car crews and walked into the shadows of the sheds with Markey. The FBI man was dubious. "She sails in twenty minutes. We can't cover this tub properly, just the two of us."

  "Go on back to your office, then," Durell said irritably.

  "What's the matter with you, Sam'.'"

  "She's aboard. She's got to be aboard."

  "And how do you expect to find her? And what if she decides to sail for home? You can't hold her, Sam. She's all cleared for sailing. If they've got her father, you think she'll let them kill him, just to do us a favor?"

  "You talk too much," Durell said. "And it's all negative."

  "You're as nutty over that girl as Harry Blossom ever was."

  Durell made no reply. A single gangplank was still connected to the pier. Steam was up on the Boroslav, and floodlights played on her afterdeck. where a dozen seamen worked at securing hatch covers. The gangplank was lighted by two spots attached to the roof of the shed, making sharp areas of brightness and shadow along the rust-streaked sides of the freighter. The throb of the ship's idling engines made the damp air pulse. Durell tried to see if anyone was on watch on the bridge, but the windows up there shimmered blankly and it was impossible to tell.

  "Keep your other men posted here in the shed," Durell said quietly. "Nobody goes off the ship for any reason until we get back."

  "We?"

  "You and me, Tom."

  Tony Isotti said: "Hell, I'd like to go along for the ride."

  "You stay here, Tony."

  Markey said: "Well, it's been a dandy life so far."

  A tug hooted out on the river and a probing spotlight ranged the misty river and touched the Boroslav's stern. A brief whistle answered the signal from the freighter's single raked stack. One of the deck hands working aft shouted something in Polish. His companions laughed. Durell drew a deep breath and walked boldly and quickly up the gangway to board the ship.

  Tom Markey was hard on his heels. They were exposed to the glare of the floodlights for perhaps five seconds.

  T
he gangway led to the deck above the one by which Durell had boarded the ship before. Dim bulbs in wire cages illuminated the steel passage that led along the narrow deck of the superstructure. Quickly he crossed the empty dining saloon to the stairs leading up to the officers' quarters behind the bridge. There was no alarm. They met no one, saw no one. He did not waste time searching the passengers' cabins. He knew that Stella and Albert Marni would not be hidden in any of the obvious places. He headed for the captain's stateroom.

  A small placard on the brown wooden shutter door gave the captain's name: Grozni. The louvered door was closed but not locked. Light sifted through the slats and made a ladder pattern on the white bulkhead opposite. Durell moved soundlessly to take the knob in his hand, then paused to listen. There was only the trembling throb and beat of the ship's idling engines. Then the tug hooted out on the river, much closer now. He heard Tom Markey breathe quickly and lightly and glanced at the FBI agent's face. Markey's eyes were icy, his face shining a little with perspiration. He had a gun in his hand and he nodded and Durell turned the knob and then pushed the door inward with the flat of his hand and stepped into the cabin.

  Captain Grozni lay on his bunk in his shirt sleeves, reading a Polish-language newspaper. His bearded face twisted with alarm, surprise, and then anger as Markey closed the door behind Durell. He stared at the gun in Durell's hand and wet his lips, sitting up slowly. The newspaper went rustling to the deck.

  "Don't say a word," Durell whispered. "Not a sound."

  The captain nodded. His breathing was suddenly gusty.

  "Where is Stepov, your second officer? Your boss, the political commissar aboard. Where is he?" Durell asked softly.

  "I do not know," the captain said in his precise Oxford English. "Why have you come back? You were lucky the last time, I had a moment of ideological weakness that has made me suspect..."

  "We want Stella Marni."

  "She is not here."

  "And we want her father," Durell went on. "And one more. The redheaded man, John Krame."

  "You must be insane." The captain's voice was not loud and not frightened and not angry, either. He swung his legs off the bunk and sat gripping the wooden edges, his narrow shoulders hunched under his khaki shirt. His brindle beard looked unkempt. The newspaper was crumpled under his feet "This might be called piracy," Grozni said. "You have no authority for coming aboard. Or is this another of your government's nuisance and search raids? Do you think we have an atom bomb here? We have been checked and checked again. The cargo hatches were sealed by your own Customs men an hour ago. How did you get aboard?"