It had been a long time since I had seen him.
I was hoping he was still alive.
When I went back to the outer office I stood there a minute. The cleaners had gone over the area, the rug had been replaced, but there was still that almost imperceptible smell of Velda there. For a single second my mind flashed to the crumpled, smashed heap the killer had left her in and I knew the explosion was coming on unless I forgot about it.
One by one, I let my fists unclench, the tautness go out of my shoulders and my breathing slow down. When I was okay I locked up the office and took the elevator down. It stopped two floors below mine, and Ed Hawkins, who likes to work all night, got on with his usual two briefcases, said hello and started complaining about business. This week was bad. He barely doubled his quota and that big million wasn’t coming in fast enough.
Together we walked through the foyer, signed out with the guard at the desk and pushed through the doors. We were heading in opposite directions, said so long when I saw a car break away from the curb with a wild swerve, straighten up and lay on speed. The driver’s window was down, and there was a pro sitting there bringing up an Uzi automatic in his left hand to squeeze off an unimpeded burst of incredibly rapid fire.
Motion seemed to be slowed down. I was yelling, falling and grabbing at Ed’s jacket all at once, then he was twisting in the air as the muzzle of the Uzi came alive with a string of unmuffled fire that sprayed bullets directly over our heads. My action had blown the gunman’s rhythm and the speed of the car took him past us, and while the glass was still falling out of the doors behind us, it was all over. The car squealed around the corner and was gone.
Ed was on his face, eyes staring in terror, papers from one briefcase spilled out around him. I said, “You all right?”
He turned his head, still bug-eyed, and said, “I don’t feel anything.”
“You hurt?”
“No.” He moved a little, his arms, then his legs. “I think I’m all right.” He sat up and grinned foolishly, turned and saw the shattered doors in the office and said soberly, “Why would anybody want to kill me?”
Before I could answer, the guard came out, his service revolver in his fist. He made sure we were both unhurt, then got back to the phone and called the police. I got Ed back inside, sat him down at the desk, gave him a glass of water and grabbed the phone as soon as the guard put it down.
By now Pat would be on the way home and there was no use getting him in on this. I dialed Candace’s home number, let it ring half a dozen times, then an obviously sleepy voice said, “Yes?”
I didn’t want to risk an irate cut-off, so I threw it at her fast. “This is Mike, kid. Somebody just tried to hit me here at my office. It was nicely set up, an Uzi from the car window and he almost got two of us.”
Suddenly the voice wasn’t tired any more. “You are ... uninjured?”
“Only my vanity was hurt. Damn, everybody wants me dead.”
“Where are you?”
I gave her the address.
“Have you called the police?”
“Squad cars are on the way.”
“You stay right there. I have to see you.”
“Hell, I’ll give my statement to the cops when they get here. I just wanted you to know this thing is coming to a fucking head.”
“Stop swearing. And stay there.”
This was one night the cars were in the area. The cops from two cruisers came in, visually checking the area, then came directly to the desk. I went through the ID bit again, gave them the details that were confirmed by the guard and the shaken Hawkins. There would be a followup of detectives coming by at any second and I was hoping Candace Amory got there first to keep the pressure down.
She did. She came in with a white trenchcoat thrown over a powder blue jogging suit and nobody had to tell the cops who she was. The detectives were right behind her wondering what the hell was going on, but the Icicle Lady got them all squared away in a hurry. I knew the plainclothes guys and they were giving me those strange looks that guys who have an in with girls get. She caught it too, and just let it pass.
Somehow, most of the activity had bypassed Ed and when his nerves were back on straight, he finally stood up and looked at me like Jackie Gleason’s Poor Soul character and said, “They didn’t want to kill me at all.”
Nobody said anything.
“They were trying to kill ...
you,
Mike.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Nothing ever happens to me,” he said dejectedly.
“Enjoy your near miss,” I told him.
He packed the rest of his papers in his case, nodded good night and made his way to the door, stepping over the neat piles of glass the janitor was sweeping up.
Candace had a magic way of clearing the aisles for us. There were no more questions and I knew the back way out to get around the reporters and the pair from the TV news broadcast. I wondered if that pair ever slept. Candace picked me up on the opposite street where the garage exit was and I climbed in.
I asked her, “Where to now?”
“It may sound silly, but your place or mine?”
“Let’s go to yours.”
“Why?”
“Because I can get out of yours.”
Once again, I got that inquiring sideways look.
“It’s hard to be a nice guy and get a broad out of your apartment,” I explained.
“Talk about macho,” she said.
“Let’s talk about now. They’re coming down on my head like a ton of bricks. This being-a-target shit is for the birds.”
“Stop the nasty talk.”
“I’ve heard you cut loose. Just get yourself shot at and see what you say then.”
“All right. What about tonight? Who knew you’d be at your office?”
“I said it loud enough at the hospital. I was talking to Pat, but ten other people would have heard me. But that doesn’t matter ... my place had been staked out. That car was waiting there. Hell, if the mob guys want my ass, they could keep a dozen guys placed for a hit.”
“They told me about the attempted mugging.”
“Sure, that was for getting wise with one of the big boys. They don’t like that attitude. I guess they didn’t like what I did to their goons any better. By now they think it’s time to go all the way.”
I sat back in the seat, mulling it over again. She reached her building, let the doorman park the car for her, and we went up to her apartment. She flipped on four locks and a chain, threw her trenchcoat over a chair and went to the bar and made a pair of drinks. All the activity seemed to have run up some static electricity and the power blue jogging suit clung to her like Saran Wrap. Now she looked like a blue nude.
When she handed me the drink she motioned for me to come over to the desk. There was a sheet of paper there with the city letterhead. It was full of numbers, ending in a nine-digit figure. She put her finger under the $905 million total and said, “That’s what they want to kill you for, Mike.”
I put the drink down without tasting it.
“You were right. It all went back to DiCica, straight back to when he shot those two gang leaders and picked up that envelope.”
“And you know what’s in it?”
“Yes. Directions.”
“To what?” I picked up my drink and finished half of it. I was beginning to feel that I was going to need a boost.
Unconsciously, she flicked on the record player and the opening movement of Franz Liszt’s Dante Symphony flowed out of the speakers. If she wanted suitable background music, she was going to get it.
“When does a rumor become fact, Mike?” Her voice was thoughtful.
I could have answered, but it was her show and I let her play it out.
“The officers your friend had assist me knew what they were doing. They didn’t even bother assembling data or gathering evidence. All they did was have me talk to a half dozen people. Strange people. Workmen in the underworld. Everyone had the same thing to say, more or less. Do you know what the cocaine consumption in the US is?”
“I can give you the latest estimate,” I told her, “and that’s probably five thousand percent too low.”
“Why?”
“Because interception accounts for only five percent of the narcotics trade. The suppliers have an insatiable demand to fill. Hell, they’ll put up twenty percent of volume to keep the narcs away from their main shipments. Our guys used to throw a party when they grabbed a few kilos of H, and now that’s real low-volume stuff. The coke coming in now runs in tons. Can you imagine that? Tons of pure shit ... and translated to street money, it can pay off our national debt.”
Liszt was getting heavy now, gently thunderous. She turned, faced me, her eyes watching me. “Twenty years ago we never thought of deliveries in tonnage. It seemed almost impossible. There wasn’t the manpower to enforce action against anything that large. The street dealers at that time weren’t even set up to handle a quantity like that. Money wasn’t available, the farmers, the initial producers weren’t organized to grow a crop that size. Right?”
I nodded.
“Wrong,” she said. “That cartel was way ahead of us. The farmers
were
producing, the laboratories were set up and while nobody thought it possible, those cocaine exporters were ready to unload on us and they made the contacts with the East Coast families to get in on the deal at a beautiful price.”
Now I remembered hearing about that years ago. It was a rumor then and it was a rumor now.
She went on: “Remember, this is street talk. It’s been around a long time and could have escalated with the telling.”
“I know,” I said.
“The cartel made the proposition through Juan Torres. The families got together, checked it out, pooled their money and bought a tractor-trailer solidly loaded with the purest cocaine you could find.”
Just the thought of that much stuff hitting the street made me want to vomit. “You realize the money involved here?”
“Certainly, but imagine what it would be on the retail end when it’s cut down.”
“Someplace a lot of hundred-dollar bills changed hands,” I said.
“They store it in temperature- and humidity-controlled bins now,” she told me. “Their banking systems equal anything in Geneva, Switzerland. The cartel was given the key to the money and they gave the directions to the trailerload of coke to the organization’s representatives. When DiCica killed them and picked up that envelope he turned the whole deal upside down. He held nearly a billion-dollar shipment in his hands. No way the cartel would deliver a duplicate set. Their end of the deal was over. From here on in the organization handled it themselves.”
“That’s some some rumor,” I said. “Why did they let Torres keep operating?”
“No way Torres could have bucked the organization. He could have had the shipment, but not for long. The other side had all the guns.”
I rattled the ice around in my glass, then drank it down. “So it was DiCica all the way, huh?”
“All the way. A stupid man who did a stupid thing. He knew where the trailer was. When they finally found him they were supposed to take him somewhere where they could squeeze the information out of him the hard way. They have some interesting ways of extracting information. The trouble was, he put up one hell of a fight and one of his attackers leaned on him a little too hard with that pipe. The fight was interrupted by a police cruiser so they didn’t drag him off, but the trauma from the pipe took him out of action very effectively.” She paused and took a deep breath. “I wonder what he would have done with all that cocaine?”
“He would have used it for one hell of a big bargaining chip, that’s what. Even the mob would have cut a clean deal with him and let it go at that. Our own government would even set him up for life under an assumed identity to get their mitts on that load.”
For one second her back went up and she started an angry denial.
I held up my hand. “Smarten up, lady. We have people in politics as dirty as those on the other side.”
“Well,” she told me, her face still tight, “he
really
paid for that mistake in your office.”
“You know,” I said, “you’re back to me again.
It always comes back to me. With the kind of money going down on this project, somebody could afford to call in an outsider like Penta to nail my ass ... but that leaves one fucking, excuse me, big hole in the picture.“
“Like what?”
“Who the hell needed him? We have pro hitters in this country.”
She seemed to look at me for an eternity. “He said you killed him, Mike. What was he talking about? Could that note really have been for DiCia?”
“All I know, baby, is that it wasn’t meant for me.”
“It isn’t over, you know.” She finished her drink too and set the glass down beside mine. The first side of the Dante Symphony slid to a close and the machine flipped the record over. Now the real meat of Liszt’s symphony would begin to show. “What are you going to do?”
“What I started out to do,” I said. “That one son of a bitch is going to fall. I don’t give a damn what happens to all the money or all the coke as long as I get that bastard under my gun. We’re playing around with somebody who likes to kill, likes to get paid for killing and likes to sign his name in chopped-off fingers.”
Coolly, she said, “One of you is going to find the other, Mike.”
This time I grinned. “Has to happen. But before it does, sugar, I’m going to make sure you have your truckload of nose candy. When you do, you’re going to let Petey Benson in on the story, lay some credit on Ray Wilson and his espionage system, then you can hop into your boss’s chair and be on your way to the White House.”
The beautiful blue icicle moved toward me and the static fire in the jumpsuit crackled minutely, and when her body touched mine, I felt shock that jumped from her nipple tingle in my chest, and whatever that charge did to her melted the ice completely and her mouth was on mine, eating at me, swirling and tasting, trying to vulcanize us together.