It was a long, narrow room, bar on the right, booths on the left. There were no customers. When Tony entered, the tall, rawboned barmaid put down the supermarket tabloid she was reading and gave him a gap-toothed smile.
"Am I ever glad to see youshe said. "I was beginning to wonder if we had a quarantine sign on the door.''
As instructed by Ullman, Harker went to the rear and took the last barstool.
"Want to be by your lonesome, huh?" the barmaid said, coming down to stand before him. "What can I get for you, honey?"
"Vodka on the rocks. Splash of water."
"Any special brand?"
"Nah," he said. "The house vodka will do. They're all alike."
"If you say so," she said, made his drink, and put it on a cork coaster in front of him.
He drank it off in four deep swallows and set the empty glass down.
"Another," he said.
"Hoo, boy," she said, "someone was thirsty. Take it easy, honey; the day is young."
He made no reply and she gave up on him, going back to her tabloid. After he finished his second drink, he deliberately knocked over the glass, spilling ice cubes onto the bar.
"Clean this up, will you?" he said.
"Sure," the barmaid said, mopping up. "Happen to anyone. Another?"
"Yeah," Harker said. "Make it a double. This lousy vodka's got no kick." He threw a twenty on the bar.
"You're the boss," she said, but she was no longer smiling.
As he worked on his drink, patrons began to straggle in, taking seats at the bar. Two couples arrived and took a booth. At four-thirty Henry Ullman came in and stood near the center of the bar.
Harker signaled the barmaid. "Another double," he said in a loud voice. "You sure you're not watering this booze?"
She didn't reply but poured him a refill. Then she went back to where Ullman was standing. She leaned across the bar and whispered to him, jerking her head in Tony's direction.
At five after five, precisely, a white-haired man entered the Navigator. Harker figured he had to be Mike Mulligan. He was small, skinny, in a three-piece suit of gray tropical worsted. And he was wearing hornrimmed specs. He went directly to the last booth and slid in. The barmaid was at his side almost instantly with a martini in a stemmed glass.
In about fifteen minutes, Tony glanced at Henry Ullman, and the big man nodded once. Tony got off his barstool and staggered slightly. He didn't have to fake that. He looked around a moment, then carried his drink over to Mike Mulligan's booth.
"Mind if I join you?" he said in a voice he hoped was suitably drunken.
"Yes, I would," Mulligan said. "I prefer to enjoy my drink alone."
"What're you, a goddamn hermit or something?" Harker said boozily. "Wassamatter, I'm not good enough for you?"
"Please," Mulligan said, staring straight ahead. "I just want to be left alone. All right?"
"Well, screw you, buster," Harker said in a loud voice. "I could buy and sell you any day of the week."
Now the bar had quieted, and all the customers were looking in their direction.
"I have to go now," Mulligan said, and tried to get out of the booth. But Harker blocked his way.
"I don't like your looks," he said. "You look like a real wimp to me."
The barmaid was heading toward the booth, hefting
an aluminum baseball bat. But Henry Ullman got there first. He put a meaty hand on Tony's shoulder, spun him around.
"Okay, buddy," he said, facing Harker toward the door. "Out!"
"What?" Tony said, wavering on his feet. "Who're you to-"
"You heard what I said. Out!"
Tony hesitated, then looked up at the big man. "Lis-sen," he said. "I was only-"
Ullman pushed him toward the door. "On your way," he said. "Go sober up."
Harker stumbled toward the street, mumbling to himself, not looking at the people he passed. The joint didn't relax until he was gone.
"Thank you, sir," Mike Mulligan said to Ullman. "What a nasty fellow that was."
"He's drunk," Hank said. "But there's no excuse for acting like that."
"You're absolutely right," Mulligan said, "and I appreciate your assistance. May I buy you a drink?"
"Only if you let me buy the next round."
"Why not?" said Mike Mulligan.
19
The best thing about this job, Roger Fortescue decided, was that his boss, Tony Harker, was letting him run free. None of this "Call me every hour on the hour" bullshit. Harker seemed to feel Roger was capable of figuring out what had to be done and then doing it. The investigator appreciated that. Maybe he moved slowly, but sooner or later he got there.
The worst thing about the job was that Estelle kept busting his balls about the hours he was keeping.
"I never know when you're coming home for dinner," she complained. "Or if you're coming home at all."
"It's my job, hon," he explained patiently. "It's what puts bacon on the table."
He looked up Frank Little's home address. It was way out in the boondocks, in Parkland north of Sample Road. Roger drove by slowly, but when he saw a sign on the fence, unleashed pit bulls, he decided not to stop. It was flatland with no cover or concealment, and Fortescue knew a stakeout would be impossible.
Little's home was really a ranch with a separate garage, outbuildings, and what looked big enough to be a three-horse stable. Roger figured the spread for maybe five acres. There was a guy on a sitdown power mower working one of the fields, and another guy with a long-handled net fishing dead palm fronds from the surface of a big swimming pool.
"Two million," Fortescue said aloud. "Sheet, three million!"
He drove back to Copans Road and cruised by the FL Sports Equipment layout. No activity. Just a car parked outside the office. And what a yacht that was! A 1959 white Cadillac convertible that appeared to be in mint condition. That grille! Those tailfins! Roger's Volvo seemed like a pushcart.
He noted again the boarded-up fast-food joint next to Little's place. That would be it, he suddenly decided; his home away from home.
He was right on time for dinner that night, bringing a five-pound boneless pork loin as a peace offering to Estelle. They put the pork in the fridge for the next day because she had already baked up a mess of chicken wings with hot barbecue sauce. They had that with home fries and pole beans. Beer for the adults, Cokes for the kids.
After dinner, Roger went upstairs, kicked off his loafers, and crashed for almost two hours, sleeping as if he had been sandbagged. Then he rose, changed to dungarees, checked his armament, and began assembling his Breaking amp; Entering kit: small crowbar, set of lockpicks, penlight, bull's-eye lantern, a shot-filled leather sap, binoculars, small transistor radio, and a cold six-pack of beer.
At about nine p.m. he drove back to Copans Road, past FL Sports Equipment, looking for a place to park. He finally located a likely spot, alongside a darkened garage that did muffler and shock replacements. He loaded up with his gear and trudged back to the deserted fast-food joint.
Traffic on the road was light, but he tried to stick to the shadows during his amble. In the rear of the derelict restaurant he found a weather-beaten door secured with a rusty hasp and cheap padlock. He could easily have wrenched it away with his crowbar but didn't want to leave evidence of an illegal entry. So he spent five minutes picking the lock, holding the penlight between his teeth. Then he pushed the creaking door open.
It was unexpectedly warm inside, and smelly. He heard the rustle of wildlife which he hoped was just rats and not snakes. He made a lantern-lighted tour through what had been the dining area, kitchen, lavatory, and a small chamber that had probably served as an office.
It was this last room he selected for his stakeout because it had a boarded-up window facing FL Sports Equipment, Inc. Prying two of the boards farther apart gave him a good view of the blockhouse, driveway, and warehouse. He dragged a rickety crate in from the kitchen to use as a chair, turned on his radio with the volume low
, and popped a beer. Then he settled down to wait.
He was still waiting at four in the morning, peering out the window every few minutes and walking up and down occasionally to stay awake. The beer was finished, and his favorite radio station had gone off the air. He packed it in then, and lugged all his gear back to the Volvo. He left the padlock in the hasp, seemingly closed but actually open. He drove home, and when he went up to the bedroom, Estelle roused and said sleepily, "When do you want to get up?"
"Never," he answered, undressed, and rolled into bed.
But he was back at his hideout the following night, and for three more nights after that. Estelle stopped complaining about his crazy hours, and his sons seemed to like the idea of Daddy being home during the day.
By the time he decided to end his vigil, he had compiled four pages of notes on ruled paper he swiped from one of the kids' notebooks. He read over his jottings on what he had observed and tried to make some sense out of it all.
1. Deliveries were made to FL Sports Equipment, usually well before midnight, by trucks and vans with familiar names lettered on the sides. They were carriers working out of Port Everglades and the Fort Lauder-dale-Hollywood Airport.
2. These deliveries were packed in wooden crates, some secured with steel bands. The boxes were long enough to hold smuggled AK-47s or other weapons, Roger reckoned, but he doubted if they did; each crate was handled easily by two men.
3. Pickups were made after midnight by an assortment of trucks, flatbeds, and vans, all with out-of-state license plates. Most of them were unmarked, although once the big Siena Moving amp; Storage semi showed up.
4. The pickups were cardboard cartons, and there was little doubt what they contained; one of them broke open and white baseballs went rolling all over the place. The loaders carefully collected every ball, and Frank Little, standing nearby with his clipboard, seemed to be verifying the count.
Fortescue, reading over his notes, concluded that for some reason the big wooden crates of baseballs were unpacked in the warehouse and their contents repacked into the smaller cardboard cartons.
One thing he couldn't understand was why the pickups, presumably by those wholesalers Frank Little had mentioned, were always made at godawful hours like two, three, and four o'clock in the morning. And why weren't the wholesalers' trucks painted with their names and addresses?
Most perplexing were the deliveries of imported baseballs from Port Everglades and the Lauderdale airport. After all, baseball was the National Pastime, the Great American Game. Surely baseballs would bear the stamp made in the usa.
"Hey, hon," Roger called to his wife, "you know that girlfriend of yours who works in the main Broward Library. The lady with the big teeth."
"You talking about Claire?" Estelle said. "Her teeth aren't so big. She's just got a lot of them is all."
"I guess. Well, will you give her a call and ask if she can look up where baseballs are made. Tell her I need the information as part of a crucial law enforcement investigation."
"Oh sure," Estelle said. "Baseballs are real crucial."
But she went into the living room to make the call, leaving Roger reading his notes in the kitchen, trying to see if he had missed anything.
Estelle came back in a half-hour. "Claire has a cold," she reported. "She's afraid it might be the flu."
"That's a shame," Fortescue said. "Did she say she'd look up where baseballs are made?"
"She didn't have to look it up," Estelle said. "She knew right off. Most baseballs are made in Haiti."
Roger stared at her. "Haiti?" he said. "That's amazing."
20
Rita arrived with a chilled bottle of premixed strawberry daiquiris and two plastic glasses. Harker took a blanket from his bed, and they went down to the beach. They sat close together, knees drawn up. It was a cool night, but there was no wind and there were so many stars that the cloudless sky looked as if it had been ordered from Tiffany's.
"How come you got out tonight?" Tony asked. "Don't tell me he's playing poker again."
"No," she said, "he told me he had a business conference. I said maybe I'd stop by the Palace and have a drink with the gang, but David said no one would be there. So I guess he's meeting with the other sharks."
"You know that check scam at the Crescent Bank?" Harker said. "Well, you're off the hook. There's no case against Rathbone. No evidence."
He told her how the Treasury check had disintegrated.
"Son of a bitch," she said. "No wonder he told me there was no risk. What do we do now?"
"We're working a couple of angles," Harker said. "Starting with Mike Mulligan at the Crescent. Listen, do you think you could find out where Rathbone got the check? We need to find the source of that trick paper.''
"I asked him straight out, but no soap, he wouldn't say. I'll try again, but he's awfully closemouthed when his own neck is on the block. Tony, it's going to be tough to rack up this guy; he's smart."
"I know," Harker said, "but I'll get him. Sooner or later his greed will trip him up."
"Maybe," Rita said. "Pour me another, will you, baby?"
"I like your white pants," Tony said, filling her glass. "Real leather?"
"You better believe it."
"Rathbone buy them for you?"
"That's right. Any objection?"
"No," he said, "you're entitled. Rita, I don't want you to push him so hard he gets suspicious, but could you suggest that maybe he needs a secretary? A private secretary. You. The aim is to get into that locked office, take a look at his records, find out exactly how he's clipping the mooches."
"I don't think he'll go for it."
"Look, the way to manipulate this guy is through his love of money. He's got a corporation. Suggest to him that he could put you on the payroll legitimately. The corporation will pay your salary, and it'll reduce his corporate tax. The cash you get won't come out of his pocket; Uncle Sam will be financing your relationship."
She was silent a moment. "Yeah," she said finally, "that might work. He surely does worship the green."
"Give it a try," Harker urged. "Don't make a big deal out of it; just throw him the bait and see if he bites. I think he will."
"But putting me on salary as a secretary is no guarantee that he's going to let me in on his secrets."
"No, but it's a start. Maybe he'll like the idea of having someone answer the phone, do his typing, go to the banks and post office for him. It'll make him feel like a tycoon."
Rita laughed. "You know," she said, "you just may be right. He thinks he's pretty important people. Okay, I'll see if I can grift the grifter. Hey, I'm getting goose bumps. Let's go to your place."
Back at the motel, Rita climbed into bed fully clothed. Still shivering, she pulled sheet and blanket up to her chin. Tony made her a cup of black coffee and brought it to her with a pony of cognac.
"Can't have you getting sick," he told her. "You're too valuable."
He sat on the edge of the bed and watched as she sipped coffee and brandy.
"That's better," she said. "I'm beginning to thaw. I really got a chill. I've never been sick a day in my life, and I sure don't want to start now."
He leaned back against the footboard. "Rita, how come you joined the police? Was your father a cop, or maybe a brother?"
"Nah, I'm an only child. And my father was a carpenter. He died five years ago. What happened was that a girlfriend was going to take the police exam and talked me into going along with her and taking it, too. Well, she flunked, and I passed. So then I thought, why not? It sounded more exciting than a typing job or working at K-Mart."
"Ever regret it?"
"Never. It's been a hoot. Something new and different every day. I love it. Honey, turn off the light, will you. It's shining in my eyes."
He switched off the overhead light. When the brightness faded, their voices lowered, almost becoming murmurs.
"Do you plan to get out of it someday?" he asked. "Marry, settle down, have kids?"
/> "Who can plan a life? Looking ahead is a drag. I just take it day by day. When it gets routine, maybe I'll look around for a change. But right now I'm having a ball. How about you?"
"I like what I'm doing, and I happen to think it's worthwhile. There are worse ways to earn a living than putting crooks behind bars. Listen, Rita, I'd like to ask you something, but I'm afraid you'll get angry."
"Why don't you ask and find out."
"You're not falling for Rathbone, are you?"
She finished coffee and cognac, and leaned out of bed to put cup and glass on the floor. "I honestly don't know how I feel about him," she admitted. "Sometimes he can be so sweet and considerate that I have to keep reminding myself that he's an out-and-out thief. Also, he knows how to treat a woman. He washes my hair, gives me a super massage, goes shopping for clothes with me. And he's always giving me unexpected gifts. It's hard to hate a guy like that."
"I can imagine," Tony said.
"But I know I've got a job to do," she went on. "If I ever get to the point where the way I feel about him interferes with that job, I'll tell you and ask you to pull me out. Okay?"
"Sure," he said. "And not only for the sake of the job. Getting involved with that guy could be dangerous for you."
"I can handle it," she said. "Hey, I'm all warmed up now. So what I'm going to do is get undressed. And let nature take its course. How does that grab you?"
Just before nature took its course, she held his face between her palms, peered closely into his eyes.
"Are you sure you're not jealous?" she whispered. "Of David?"
"Maybe," he said. "Maybe I am. Because he spends so much more time with you than I can."
"That's sweet," she said. "Which means we'll have to make the most of the time we do have. Right?"
"Right," he said, and gently pulled her closer.
"Don't be afraid, honey," she said. "I bend, but I don't break."
21
The living room of Frank Little's ranch was decorated in faux Texan: Indian rugs on the polished wood floor; deer antlers on the whitewashed walls; exposed beams overhead; a gun rack; sling chairs covered with pony hides. Looking at this set for a Western movie, and then inspecting Little in his silk slacks and sports shirt unbuttoned to the waist, hairless chest festooned with gold chains and amulets, David Rathbone could only think of the classic definition of a would-be Texan: "All hat; no cattle."
Sullivan's sting Page 9
