The Spy in a Box

by Ralph Dennis

  Hall reached into the pocket of the parka. He closed his hand over the wad of pages there and drew them out. He took his time unfolding the paper.

  “These are from the Worldwide Security files at Flat Canyon.” He slid the pages to his left toward Stiggers. “What we can say in Bilbo’s favor is that he didn’t find them, they found him. Here he was with a struggling bar, trying to make the payments, and some of us young Turks began hanging out here, running off our mouths. It started with a couple of hundred here and there from Worldwide Security for seemingly harmless information. A profile on me before I headed to South America, for example. When I got moved to Costa Verde, the Worldwide people knew everything about me, from my shoe size to my political leanings, thanks to Bilbo.”

  The waitress pushed in on the other side of Bilbo. “Two scotch rocks.”

  Bilbo robotically scooped ice into a couple of glasses. He placed shot glasses on the tray and poured from the bar scotch bottle. But his hand was shaking.

  Hall waited until the waitress stepped away from the bar before continuing. “Worldwide knew enough to manipulate me through Paul Marcos.”

  “That in here?” Stiggers touched the pages on the bar.

  “In brief. The profile Bilbo did on me is in my file.”

  “What put you on him?” Stiggers looked past Hall at his bonebreaker.

  The bonebreaker hadn’t touched his coffee since the talk got serious. He was poised.

  Bilbo saw the look. Without thinking, Bilbo lifted a bar towel and wiped his face. He stopped, looked at the cloth and dropped it in a bucket under the bar. It was over for him and he knew it.

  “It’s been rattling around in my head since the ninja boy made his try at me upstairs. At the time, I thought Boyle, doing his ninja act, was from the Company. Two men knew I was here. Franklin and Bilbo. I thought the try came through information from Franklin. No reason to suspect Bilbo of having any part in it. And now it adds up. Boyle had to get by the security alarms, had to know which room I’d be sleeping in, and had to get past the locked door into my room.” Hall looked at Bilbo. “He had the keys, didn’t he? A key that got him past the alarm and into my room. Maybe the keys were still in the door when you came down the hall after you heard the shot. Maybe they were on Boyle. You had plenty of time to find them before housekeeping arrived, between the time I left and they got here.”

  Bilbo didn’t answer. He placed the bottle of Jack Daniels on the bar and poured some into a shot glass. Hall waited until he released the bottle. Then he poured a stiff shot for himself.

  “Another thing probably in your favor. They wanted you to do the job on me and you wouldn’t. Right?”

  Bilbo dipped his head. A short nod. He lifted the shot glass and poured the whiskey down his throat in one swallow.

  “Not in your favor. You got enough booze in me to drown a wino. It should have been easy for Boyle, except he had to try his silly ninja act.”

  “What cinched it for you?” Stiggers asked Hall. “Why did you go to the ‘J’ file at Worldwide Security?”

  “Because of what Rivers screamed just before he died at the safehouse.”

  “What?” Bilbo raised his head.

  “The house was wired and a tape was running,” Hall explained to Bilbo. “We have the whole strike recorded. Rivers managed to say what sounded like bib. He was trying to say Bilbo. But he got his tongue twisted in his terror.”

  Stiggers stared at Bilbo. “You were there?”

  Bilbo didn’t answer, so Hall did.

  “I think Worldwide called in their marker on him.” He turned to Jackson. “What did they say? ‘You’ve been paid well and now you earn it.’ Something like that?” Bilbo didn’t answer. “Ah, maybe a dollop of blackmail as well. ‘Do it or we pass your name around and you’re out there in the cold by yourself.’”

  Hall could tell from the expression on Bilbo’s face that he’d scored a direct hit.

  “Why use him instead of a professional?” Stiggers pushed the beer bottle away.

  “Time was short. Had to get it done before Rivers and Moss could get their plots and plans underway. Had to finish what they’d started in Ireland. Rivers was too smart for Worldwide to allow him to follow a scent for long.”

  Stiggers looked at Bilbo. “Time to close up for the night.”

  More likely forever. Bilbo knew it, but there was nothing he could do now. He waved a hand at the cocktail waitress.

  “Annie, tell everybody we’re closing early tonight. The last drink is on the house.” Bilbo’s voice was hoarse, raspy.

  “Hey, we got a good crowd and the tips …” she began, but he cut her off sharply.

  “Do it, Annie. Now.”

  “Geez, who pissed in your porridge?” she said and marched off in a huff to give the customers the news.

  Hall stood. There was half-an-inch of the Jack Daniels left in his glass. He tossed it back and tapped the glass on the bar top. He looked at Bilbo.

  “The way we figure it, there were two men at the safe house. Man Number One got Aaron on the front steps. Man Number Two chased Moss into the kitchen and got him. Man Number One then went into the first-floor bedroom and killed Rivers. You were Man Number One. Were those killings your first, Bilbo?”

  “No,” Bilbo’s voice was almost a whisper.

  Hall nodded. He didn’t ask who else Bilbo had killed or the circumstances. Whether it was on a battle field or in a dark alley. If it was for God and Country or for himself.

  “Aaron was an easy kill,” Hall said. “He didn’t see it coming. Why was that?”

  “His guard was down,” Bilbo said. “He thought I was his relief from the Company.”

  The only way Bilbo could know that was if he’d been in contact with the mole in the Company. Hall turned and looked at Stiggers, who nodded. He’d had the same thought. Hall stepped away from the bar. Stiggers followed him. They stood a distance from Bilbo.

  “You won’t have to squeeze Bilbo too hard to find out who Worldwide’s man at the Company is and who worked with him that night at the safe house,” Hall said.

  Stiggers nodded. “He’s given up.”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me if the mole and the shooter were the same man.”

  “You’re probably right,” Stiggers said. “You did good work.”

  “Just trying to get out of the box I was put in.”

  “You want to know the name of the mole when we get it?”

  “No,” Hall said. “It doesn’t mean a thing to me.”

  “How about how it ends for them?”

  Hall knew how it would end. So did Bilbo, unless he had more information to barter in exchange for a longer life expectancy. Perhaps that was what Bilbo was signaling to Stiggers by answering Hall’s question and essentially admitting he knew the mole. More games. It was tiring.

  “Not really,” Hall said. “I’m done.”

  “You don’t have to be,” Stiggers said.

  “Yes, I do.”

  Hall walked out of Madison Hill Bar and Grill without another look at Bilbo Jackson. The man was already dead to him and buried in an unmarked grave. Good riddance.

  It was raining. An ice rain. Hall stood on the curb for a minute or two. No cab passed. His buttoned his parka and lifted the hood. He walked the six or seven blocks to his motel.

  The rain tapped on his motel window all night long.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Ralph Dennis isn’t a household name … but he should be. He is widely considered among crime writers as a master of the genre, denied the recognition he deserved because his twelve Hardman books, which are beloved and highly sought-after collectables now, were poorly packaged in the 1970s by Popular Library as a cheap men’s action-adventure paperbacks with numbered titles.

  Even so, some top critics saw past the cheesy covers and noticed that he was producing work as good as John D. MacDonald, Raymond Chandler, Chester Himes, Dashiell Hammett, and Ross MacDonald.

  The New York Times praised th
e Hardman novels for “expert writing, plotting, and an unusual degree of sensitivity. Dennis has mastered the genre and supplied top entertainment.” The Philadelphia Daily News proclaimed Hardman “the best series around, but they’ve got such terrible covers …”

  Unfortunately, Popular Library didn’t take the hint and continued to present the series like hack work, dooming the novels to a short shelf-life and obscurity … except among generations of crime writers, like novelist Joe R. Lansdale (the Hap & Leonard series) and screenwriter Shane Black (the Lethal Weapon movies), who’ve kept Dennis’ legacy alive through word-of-mouth and by acknowledging his influence on their stellar work.

  Ralph Dennis wrote three other novels that were published outside of the Hardman series – revised and re-released by Brash Books under the new titles The War Heist (aka MacTaggart’s War), A Talent for Killing (aka Dead Man’s Game), and The Broken Fixer (aka Atlanta) — but he wasn’t able to reach the wide audience, or gain the critical acclaim, that he deserved during his lifetime.

  He was born in 1931 in Sumter, South Carolina, and received a Masters degree from University of North Carolina, where he later taught film and television writing after serving a stint in the Navy. At the time of his death in 1988, he was working at a bookstore in Atlanta and had a file cabinet full of unpublished novels.