Corsican Death

by Marc Olden

  Sure, Claude was a Corsican, and Corsicans never betray their own, never talk to cops, and keep to themselves. Always.

  But pain was something else, and the leap from the hotel room had given Claude Patek more pain than he had ever felt in his life. Jumping out of a window had brought Claude to the point where pain made him cry out in the night, each night he was in the hospital.

  Now Alain Lonzu sat on the edge of the bed staring at Claude’s dead body. You screamed in pain, Claude, and you said things. You mentioned his name, Mr. In’s and you mentioned the four million dollars. You talked too much, Claude, and no one heard you but me.

  Your casts made it impossible for me to take you with me. You would slow me up, and I had no wish to spend the rest of my life in an American prison because you were stupid enough to leap out of a hotel window. I couldn’t take you with me, and I couldn’t leave you behind.

  If you had talked to agents, this deal would be no good. I lose the money and lose our friend in the Justice Department, and my brother, the Count, who loves me, would not love me anymore. I would have cost him more than he could afford.

  I must not fail my brother, for if I do, if I fail to sell the two hundred kilos to the black, if I lose the money, I think my brother would kill me. Reluctantly, perhaps, but he just might have to do that in order to keep his empire.

  He loves me, my brother loves me, but he is a Corsican and a businessman with responsibilities.

  No, Claude. I could not leave you behind. Your agony and pain would have meant my death. My brother will explain to your brother. Perhaps Remy will understand, perhaps he won’t. But that is not my worry now.

  I had to do it, Claude, don’t you understand? I had to.

  Alain Lonzu stood up, nervously locking his lips, half-expecting Claude Patek to turn over, sit up in bed, and begin answering him. But the dead man lay still.

  Sorry, my friend. I am sorry.

  But Alain was not sorry.

  Snapping his head from the dead man, Alain rose to the door, yanked the chair from under the knob, and sent it clattering to the floor behind him. As he stepped cautiously into the hall, sniffing the hospital smells of medicine, bad food, and vomit, he tensed, animal-quick eyes darting from nearby nurses and a lean black man cleaning the floor, to the door Marced “Exit.”

  Pressing his lips tightly together, feeling his heart pound, he rubbed his hands against his thighs and walked quickly toward the door. He didn’t know where the garage was.

  But he’d find it. He had to. And quickly.

  CHAPTER 2

  JOHN BOLT SPOKE IN a whisper, lips hardly moving. “Yeah, that’s him, that’s the bastard. Lonzu the lover. Bandage on his forehead, see it? Never thanked me for giving him that, the prick.”

  In the cool semidarkness of the hospital garage, a corner of Bolt’s mouth moved upward in a small, cold smile.

  Shit, was it three days ago that he had kicked Alain Lonzu in the head? Damn if it wasn’t.

  That night Bolt and three other federal narcotics agents had busted through a hotel door, and everything had happened at once. Claude Patek had either blown his cool or thought he was a fucking bird, because before you can say “boo,” that sucker’s gone crashing through a window and broken his ass two stories below.

  And Alain Lonzu, the big man’s little brother, the cocksman of all France, dope pusher and lover, what the hell does he do? He goes for a gun in his belt, and Bolt, who wants Lonzu alive, grabs a chair and throws it in his face.

  Lonzu falls backward, gun flying from his hand. But damn, that Corsican son-of-a-bitch is a bad-ass, and he starts crawling, and scrambling for the piece, cursing and yelling his fucking head off in French about shooting somebody’s balls off. He reaches the gun, and Bolt remembers the wild look on Lonzu’s face, and what the hell, you want the dude alive, but you don’t want to get blown away bringing him in.

  So you kick him in the head. Hard. And you don’t worry about it. You just kick his fucking brains through his ears. Yeah, Bolt remembered that night.

  But now it was morning three days later. And the hunt was still on. John Bolt, with two other agents, was hiding in the shadows and darkness of the hospital garage, the three of them spending precious seconds watching Alain Lonzu, forty yards away, talk to three men standing around a dark blue 1973 Ford.

  O.K., thought Bolt, no more standing around with our noses pressed against the candy-store window. We move in and grab little brother, before he disappears for good. His friends, too, because anybody hanging around that Corsican bastard ain’t no altarboy.

  Bolt’s harsh whisper came from the side of his mouth. His heart jumped, picking up a faster rhythm and holding on to it. Fear? Nerves? A little of both. Believe it, baby.

  “Spread out. Vanders, you left. Weaver right, and me straight up the middle. Get ’em in between us. And dig it: we want Lonzu alive and well. Little brother’s got a lot to tell us if we lean on him hard enough. Especially that story we keep running into on the street about a Mr. X the Corsicans are supposed to have in the Justice Department. Some funny things have happened with cases we had locked in, so maybe there’s some truth to this particular tale. Anyway, hot lips Lonzu over there can fill us in. Just like he can tell us about those two hundred keys supposedly heading for New York. But first we get our hands on little brother. On my signal. Nobody do shit till then. O.K., move it. And stay loose.”

  Weaver and Vanders nodded once. They were pros and understood. Move in. Stay quiet, keep low, and wait for big John to spring the good news on Lonzu.

  In seconds all three agents had slipped deeper into shadows and darkness, crouching and moving low, guns out and held tightly until it seemed the knuckles would burst through the skin. You needed the gun. Because Alain Lonzu was important in the dope world.

  And important men in the dope world were hard arrests, goddamn hard. They didn’t want to go to a federal prison for life, and to avoid that, some of them would even pull out their mother’s heart and stomp on it. So you kept the gun where it could do you the most good—on the end of your trigger finger.

  And you kept your ass low to the ground. That’s how you stayed alive.

  John Bolt crawled between parked cars, hearing a car door slam somewhere behind him as someone prepared to go upstairs and begin a normal day working at a normal job. Bolt’s nose twitched and his face muscles tightened as he inhaled gasoline, oil, and the stale odor of a place too long in damp darkness.

  He flexed the fingers of his right hand, then tightened them once more around the butt of his Colt .45 APC Commander. My life preserver. Maybe Alain Lonzu will let us grab him a second time. Maybe.

  But chances are he won’t. Not this Corsican. Jesus, those people are tough. They stick together against all strangers, and they’re as vicious as a rattlesnake with an inch of tail chopped off. Suspicious, too. But smart. Goddamnit are they smart.

  And don’t ever get on their shit list. Those bastards will follow you into hell to have their revenge. They’ll dig up your dead body and piss on it if you die before they can even the score. If it takes forever and a day, they’ll get even.

  That’s why the Corsicans had the heroin trade by the balls, exporting more than any mob in the world. In the fucking world. This bunch of hard-nose greedy Frenchmen was bringing America to its knees.

  Ain’t that a bitch?

  The Corsicans deal dope, and what does it get them? Yachts, blond girlfriends with big tits, and they do all their fucking in sixty-room villas on the Riviera. The dope comes to America, and what do we get? Junkies hiding in hallways, their switchblades hidden inside folded newspapers; store windows wrapped in iron gates; and higher taxes to pay more cops to try to stop all this shit.

  That’s why Bolt wanted to get his bands on Alain Lonzu. Now. Not tomorrow, not eventually, but now.

  The narc stopped, crouching beside a brown-and-yellow station wagon, leaning against its cool metal fender. In front of him Alain Lonzu was arguing now, voice higher
and louder with anger and tension, waving his hands and talking fast. Bolt frowned. What the hell was going on over there?

  Hey, I know. Jesus, I know. The bastard’s telling them why Claude Patek’s not coming. Lying his ass off. Well, you and I know, don’t we, hot lips? You fucking wrapped a coat hanger around his neck, didn’t you, little brother?

  So your friend Patek’s off on the big sleep and you are talking some trash in a hurry. Yeah. I’d sure like to get closer and hear your story on my man Claude.

  You have a lot of stories going for you, little brother. Like telling us you’re just a vacationing French businessman, not a Corsican dope dealer. Well, maybe your high-priced lawyer believes that bullshit. Not me, Jack. No way.

  Maybe you’ve got friends in the French consulate who’ll lie for you. Well, I’ve got French friends, too. In the Paris police department.

  And you’ve got fingerprints—you left them all over your hotel room. Toilet seat, drinking glass, mirror, closet doors. Your fingerprints, my French friend, and three days to ask questions. And what do we come up with?

  We come up with your real name, yours and Claude’s. And when we hustle over to the hospital, what do we find?

  We find friend Claude half-naked and all dead, his face purple and blue and his goddamn tongue hanging out like he was a sheep dog on a hot day. He’s got a coat hanger wrapped around his neck like it was a silk tie, but he ain’t about to tell us whether or not he likes the fit.

  ’Cause he’s fucking dead, little brother. Nothing but cold meat now. And you, his one and only roommate, are the man of the hour. If you didn’t do it, your grandmother did. And since your granny’s molding in her grave, it’s you, lover boy. You.

  And I want you. Not because you did in Claude, but because you got things to tell me. About Mr. X, the man inside the Justice Department, the man the street says you own.

  Tell me about the two hundred keys, the load you’re sending to Dumas in New York. Next time, maybe Dumas shouldn’t beat the shit out of his women. That could hurt him. Like now. And it’s going to cost him.

  Lorraine Lana Larum. A sexy black woman. Nice lady. Except she don’t look so nice anymore. Crushed nose, teeth knocked out, and she’s got trouble seeing out of both eyes.

  But she didn’t have to see to betray Dumas, the man who kicked her out of his bed, kicking the hell out of her at the same time. All she had to do was talk, to inform, to drop the dime, to make that one telephone call.

  That’s how we knew you were in town, little brother. A lady. Nice lady.

  Somewhere behind John Bolt a car pulled out, tires squealing on concrete as the car headed up the ramp and toward the street. Off to the narc’s right, rock music shrieked from a garage attendant’s transistor radio. Farther behind the narc, an elevator wheezed to a stop, doors sliding open; then footsteps clattered on the concrete garage floor.

  A woman’s laugh went with the footsteps, and a man said, “Really, it really happened that way. Honest.”

  Honest. Bolt, still crouched low and feeling his legs stiffen, shook his head, eyes on Alain Lonzu. Who the hell was honest these days except the statues in the park? They didn’t steal your tax money or sell narcotics. Maybe that’s why pigeons loved them so much.

  The stiffness in Bolt’s legs was turning into thin needles of pain. He shifted, dropping to both knees on the concrete, still watching Lonzu and friends argue. Now Lonzu was losing his temper, and Bolt, who spoke perfect French and Spanish, could pick up a few words.

  Alain Lonzu, waving his hands in the air like an Italian peasant woman arguing with a butcher, said something about it being none of their business. It. That would probably be the late Claude Patek. Yeah. That’s Who it was.

  Bolt could see how the three other guys would have a few questions to ask Alain. After all, they had probably been told to come back with two men. Two. Now they’re being told only one’s coming with them. Well, if John Bolt had his way, no one was going anywhere.

  At least Alain Lonzu didn’t have manpower problems. D-3, the Department of Dangerous Drugs, damn sure did. Only six agents available to rush over to the hospital minutes after the fingerprint report had come in from Paris. A quick look at the late Claude Patek, then the six agents split up.

  Three tearing the hospital apart and making telephone calls like crazy. And three agents down here in the garage. Because Claude’s body was still warm. Very warm. And that meant Lonzu might be still hanging around.

  But he wouldn’t be for long. What I’d like to know, thought Bolt, is why kill Claude Patek. Why?

  Claude’s brother, Remy, wasn’t going to like it. Not even a little bit. Remy had a bad reputation, and he got it by killing people. Even the Count, big bad Count Napoleon Bonaparte Lonzu, would have a rough time keeping Remy Patek in line after this. Just what the hell had been going through little brother’s mind to make him do a thing like this?

  Why not ask the bastard? thought Bolt.

  The narc stood up, half in shadows and darkness, half in pale dust-filled sunlight. His Colt .45, a handgun powerful enough to tear an arm off, was gripped tightly in both hands. Arms extended, knees bent. Just like on the firing range.

  Except that the targets were men.

  “Freeze! Nobody move! Federal narcotics agents! You’re under arrest!”

  The yelling ripped at his vocal cords, scraping his throat raw, turning his voice hoarse in seconds. Make sure they hear you the first time. Quickly he spoke in French, same words, his eyes never leaving the four men whose heads had all snapped toward him as though all four necks were on the same string.

  “You’re surrounded. We have men on each side of you and in front! Hands on your head, and kneel! Now! Now, goddamnit!”

  Come on hard. Nasty. Get control right away. Put them on the defensive. Take charge.

  That’s the way it’s supposed to work if you’re lucky.

  Bolt’s voice echoed throughout the huge concrete garage, bouncing off damp gray walk stained with dirt, oil, and past rainfalls, off steel pillars patched with orange rust and peeling gray paint.

  To Bolt’s left, a quick motion. Left, and slightly in front of him. He flinched, holding his breath, feeling his heart stop as though embedded in ice. Bullets burned when they dug into you, and they hurt like hell for a long time after the shooting. A man died too quickly in this business.

  Yeah, I’m uptight right now. I tell you truly.

  Vanders. Jesus, it was Vanders. Behind a green panel truck, both hands cupped around a .38 Smith & Wesson and resting on top of the motor. Bolt sighed, feeling the sweat crawl down his face and neck. Close.

  Vanders yelled, “You heard the man. Everybody put them hands on your skulls in a hurry!” His voice was high with tension, and he kept blinking as though he had dust in his eyes. He didn’t. Nerves and fear, but no dust.

  Rage and fear fought a quick, hot battle in Alain Lonzu’s mind. Damnit! His face turned hard, and he began breathing loudly, chest rising and falling. So close, so close. He was within seconds of escaping, of getting out of this stupid, crazy country.

  If he didn’t have to argue with these fucking idiots about Claude, he would have been gone. But no, these assholes, French and Corsican sailors from the ship La Rochelle, are like barnyard animals. No brains.

  Where’s Claude, Where’s Claude? Like a damn broken record. Alain was getting hoarse telling them that Claude wasn’t coming, and anyway, it was none of their business where he was.

  Alain knew why the sailors were scared: Remy Patek would kill them if they came back to France without Claude. Well, too bad. Right now these sailor bastards had better be afraid of Alain Lonzu, because Alain Lonzu had a brother, too.

  Just you bastards wait until I get back to France, he thought. You fucking sailors will be lying on the bottom of the sea, mouths open, sucking raw fish. You pricks got trouble coming. My brother will see to that.

  If I get back.

  Because, right now, it was only more rotten, shitty luck.
Grabbed by the American police again, second time in three days. Jesus, how unlucky can one man be?

  And that voice, thought Alain, that voice coming at me from the shadows. Yes, I know him. The man with the scar, the man who looks like he kills you and eats your flesh raw. Yes, I know him.

  I wear your Marc, scar man. Give me the chance and I vow you will wear mine. By my mother’s blood, I swear to get you.

  Vanders, impatient now, his breathing loud and harsh, shouted again. “Move it, you cocksuckers! We ain’t got all morning. We wanna see them hands go up and press down on top of your curly heads. Pronto!”

  Jesus, what a score, he thought. The Count’s baby brother. We squeeze his ass, and we can maybe come up with enough to make us look good for the next year.

  Vanders was excited. Nervous. And pleased. You don’t grab a big one like Alain Lonzu every day. Vanders, thirty-one, slim, rarely wearing anything but brown sport jackets, blue shirts, and red ties, bit his lip and let the thought flash across his mind that maybe he could work with John Bolt on the report on this bust.

  That’s one way of making sure your name’s included. Shit, why not? How the hell do you get promoted unless the big guys in D.C. know who you are, right?

  John Bolt was hardly breathing. He was waiting. Seconds ago, just seconds ago, he had yelled to the four men to freeze and kneel. Now he was waiting. And sweating. And grinding his teeth together to keep his stomach down.

  His stomach was being a bastard about the whole thing. It kept turning colder while throwing a bitter taste up into his throat.

  Near the front door of the Ford, the four men, all Corsicans, shifted dark, hard, bright eyes from the sound of Vander’s voice back to the sound of Bolt’s voice.

  They didn’t move. No hands on their heads, no kneeling. They stood still, barely breathing, moving nothing but their eyes.

  One of the four, Pietro Giannelli, forty-two, a large man with a balding head, a wide slit of a mouth in a thick jaw blue with ingrown hairs, did something. Pietro, a tough man, was only beginning to be afraid now. But that was enough.