Assignment Carlotta Cortez

by Edward S. Aarons

“He married Carlotta Cortez, did he not?”

  “Yes.”

  O’Brien said, “Then he is a man in purgatory. I am sorry for him. Justino will not be kind, because Justino wants Carlotta for himself. Justino uses the General, you understand, to further his own ambitions. He would be dictator in his own name. Carlotta thinks she can use him, but Justino is a man alone.”

  “You seem to know Justino well,” Durell said.

  “Yes, I know him. He killed my father, his men raped my sister, and then he gave another sister to the General. Maria was fourteen years old. She killed herself. Do you know about the General?”

  “I’ve heard.”

  “Justino pimped for him, broke the girls for him, kept Cortez happy in his adolescent brothel while he ran the country with an iron fist and his squads of SN men. I will kill him soon.”

  Durell said nothing.

  “Justino will do the same to this innocent of yours, señor. Unless we stop him quickly. You wish me to drive slower now?”

  “No.”

  O’Brien laughed without mirth or sound.

  A large brick warehouse opposite a gas storage tank provided dark shadow when O’Brien stopped the car and cut the engine. Durell looked up and down the cobblestone avenue. No one was in sight. Nothing moved. The warehouse where they had parked was dark and untenanted, a ghostly relic of industrial decay.

  “We had better walk from here,” O’Brien suggested quietly. “May I have my gun back now?”

  Durell handed him the smoothly machined Luger that Barney Kels had taken. They walked down the irregular sidewalk toward the distant glimmer of dark water in a slip two blocks beyond.

  “How many men does Justino keep stationed here?” O’Brien’s profile was sharp and narrow against the dim glow of a faraway street light. “Fifteen. Perhaps twenty.”

  “And do they live in the warehouse?”

  “Oh, no. You will see.”

  “Tell me now,” Durell insisted.

  They reached the corner. In the next block, there were lighted windows from a waterfront bar, and the uncertain red wash of flickering neon indicating a cheap hotel. The sound of juke-box music came thumping through the night from the bar.

  ‘Over there,” O’Brien said. “They live in that place. But there will be guards at the warehouse, of course. Not all fifteen or twenty, but half a dozen, amigo. Desperate and dangerous men, who know all the shades of cruelty and all the ways of inflicting death.”

  “And how do we get in?”

  “This way. Come.”

  Durell followed. They crossed the street, and then O’Brien pulled him into the shadowed recess of a wooden loading platform. O’Brien pointed briefly. “Do you see him?”

  Durell looked where O’Brien indicated. Their objective was down the street, hard on the waterfront slip beyond. No ship was berthed here, but a canvas-covered truck was parked by the sidewalk alongside the brick building. The warehouse was three stories high, and faded white lettering on the brick above the first-floor windows read: Ferry’s No. 22. A tower on the harbor side of the building lifted squarely two more floors above the slip. There were no lights in any of the tall, dusty windows.

  Beyond the canvas-covered truck at the sidewalk was another loading platform and a wide, recessed overhead doorway. In the dark geometric patterns of shadow in the doorway was another darkness, heavier and less immobile, with now and then a slight movement as Durell looked where O’Brien pointed.

  “One of Justino’s pistoleros,” O’Brien murmured.

  “How long does he stay on guard?”

  “Someone is always there all through the night. He will be relieved at midnight, that one.”

  “And the other entrances?”

  “Equally well guarded. Come.”

  Instead of moving forward, O’Brien took a backward step and seemed to vanish. The doorway in which they had been standing yielded to an unlocked, nicely oiled door. Durell stepped back with him. O’Brien closed the door. They stood in a thick, clammy blackness that smelled of rotten wood, congealed oil, sawdust and rat-droppings.

  O’Brien laughed softly. “There is a passage under the street.”

  “You’ve cased the joint pretty well.”

  “Cased?”

  “Scouted it. Don’t they know about your private entrance?”

  “I hope not. This way, amigo.”

  A thin probing finger of light leaped from a tiny torch in O’Brien’s hand. Durell followed down a series of iron steps to a basement room. A steel fire door opened into a bricked, vault-like passage. Durell marked off the distance mentally, and when they had gone well beyond the width of the street and were under Ferry’s No. 22, a wide doorway blocked the tunnel. But O’Brien ignored this and turned to his left, where a smaller door yielded, again on oiled hinges, and they found themselves in a boiler room. O’Brien motioned him to stand still.

  Beyond a farther doorway a pair of legs was visible, as if a man were dozing in a chair just out of their line of sight. Durell saw a segment of a yellow-painted wall with a greasy thumbed calendar nailed to it, a comer of a washstand, and another chair. The second chair was unoccupied. The man’s legs were outstretched, the shoes black and pointed and highly polished.

  O’Brien spoke in an almost soundless whisper.

  “He is for me.”

  Durell nodded and let him go ahead.

  O’Brien’s method was quick and efficient. He stepped through the doorway quietly and casually. The legs jerked back in surprise. Durell saw a blur of movement, an instant of savagery on O’Brien’s handsome face, the quick sound of a single blow, and it was over.

  Durell stepped in. The guard was a hulking man and even in unconsciousness, his face was cruel, with the stamp of inhumanity that he had seen before, in certain political prisons around the world.

  “You’re pretty good,” he said quietly.

  O’Brien laughed without mirth. “It is my pleasure. These are animals, you understand. I should have killed him.”

  “Where would headquarters be in here?”

  “In the tower, señor.”

  “I’ll go first from here on,” Durell decided.

  He did not fully trust Pablo O’Brien. He wasn’t sure that O’Brien could control himself.

  The street floor of the warehouse was just a vast, darkly echoing shed. On the water side of the building were glass-and-wood partitions where the offices had been.

  A second guard stood near a window far across the wide floor space. Durell saw him first. The man was staring out at the harbor, where moving lights on the black water indicated the passage of a tanker. Durell crossed the floor in a long, silent rush, chopped at the back of the man’s neck, and then a strangled cry began to rise from the surprised throat, Durell choked it off with a swift armlock levered the man off balance, slashed across his upper chest and once more behind the ear.

  He lowered the limp form to the dusty floor.

  O’Brien said quietly, “You are good, too.”

  “It took more than one blow. But none were aimed to kill.”

  “Like mine?”

  “Like yours,” Durell said. “How many more guards are there?”

  “In the tower? I do not know. I have never been able to get up there.”

  “We’ll get there now,” Durell said.

  Beyond the office area was a high stairwell, rising in a series of short flights to the top of the square brick tower. So far, Durell noted, there had been no sign of Justino, the girl, or Johnny Duncan.

  Nor was there anything to show that the stolen tactical bombs were stored here.

  He looked at his watch. Fifteen minutes out of his hour’s grace with Fritsch had already gone by.

  He went up the steel-treaded stairs quickly. Light came from low-wattage bulbs on each landing, and another high up in what seemed to be a sky-lighted tower room. On the second landing, Durell tried the fire door. It was locked and barred. He climbed on to the third floor, and then started toward t
he fourth. Halfway up he paused as someone suddenly leaned over the steel railing up above and looked down.

  “Jose?”

  “Si,” Durell said.

  “What is it?”

  “I must speak to the boss,” Durell said in Spanish. He kept climbing the stairs. There were wedges of shadow along the wall, and he kept in these, with O’Brien close behind him. The face of the man looking down from above was curiously foreshortened and distorted.

  “Who is with you, Jose?”

  “A messenger.”

  “Uno momento.”

  The last half-flight was in the direct glare of the light bulb fixed in the wall above the top fire door. Durell saw there was no way to finish the climb without rising straight into the light.

  Durell went up fast.

  The man yelled and tried to pull back, his fingers clawing at a gun under his jacket. He was too slow. Durell hit him low, slammed him against the landing door. The guard yelled again. His voice was a high, thin shriek of alarm. It couldn’t be helped. Durell slapped his hand free of the gun, tripped him, hauled him roughly forward. O’Brien was right behind him. O’Brien caught the man and with a quick heave, sent the guard over the rail. The body dropped, screaming every inch of the way, and hit the concrete floor of the stairwell five flights down. The screaming ended in the ugly sound of the guard’s body striking the tower floor.

  O’Brien shook his head. “Trouble now, señor.”

  A man shouted somewhere, his voice echoing, and footsteps pounded hollowly in the warehouse rooms below.

  The fire door here was wooden, opening off the landing. It wasn’t locked. As Durell slid through, O’Brien closed it to within an inch of latching shut.

  Then they waited.

  Voices echoed up from the bottom of the tower well, a shout of alarm and anger as the guard was discovered. Then there came a' quick jabbering in Spanish. Durell turned and looked at the tower room behind him, and the breath went out of him in a long sigh.

  Johnny Duncan sat on the floor in a comer, staring.

  Pleasure sat in a chair staring at Johnny Duncan.

  One was still alive. The other was dead.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Johnny Duncan had been killed the hard way—slowly and with fine pain, and then he had been flung into the corner where his body sat propped against the wall, a matter of disinterest now to his killer. His hands looked as if every bone in them had been broken, one by one. His blond head looked battered out of shape. Whoever had worked on him had finally tired of that sort of amusement and cut his throat with one swift slice of a sharp blade. Durell looked for the knife, but he didn’t see it. He crossed the floor with one more glance at Pleasure, and then he knelt and touched Johnny Duncan. The body was still quite warm.

  “Mr. Sam?”

  He ignored the girl’s whispered, frightened plea. He was aware of the heat in this room, of the frost and moisture that obscured the low rectangular windows overlooking the harbor. The windows filled three walls of the room, and he saw that the tower had been partitioned into two halves. A door in the fourth wall was open and he looked inside. His gun was ready in his hand when he looked. Nobody else was in there.

  O’Brien was at the other door to the stairway, his Luger ready. He looked pale under his dark olive skin. From down below came a continuous confusion of quemlous voices.

  “Mr. Sam, untie me,” Pleasure whispered. “Please.”

  He looked at her, but he was listening to the noises that came from down below in the warehouse. So far, there were no rushing footsteps up the stairway. And O’Brien looked ready enough.

  Durell went into the next room again. He noted the furnishings, the steam heat. The place was almost luxurious, except for the barren windows overlooking the harbor. There were mgs, upholstered chairs, sitting-room appurtenances. A huge couch filled one comer of this room. A heavy desk took up the other comer. And there was a large mirror on the interior partition wall. It looked like a combination office and bedroom, and he somehow connected it with the General, who combined business and pleasure in more ways than one.

  He went back to the girl.

  O’Brien was staring at her. “This is the innocent one, amigo?"

  “Yes.”

  “What she has seen here reduces her innocence to some degree.”

  “Unhappily, yes.”

  “But she is lovely,” O’Brien said.

  “Keep your attention on those stairs,” Durell snapped.

  He went to Pleasure and untied the knots that held her in the wooden chair. There were dark smudges under her blue eyes and a puffy welt of a bruise at the comer of her mouth. A streak of dust lay on her cheek. She touched Durell’s arm and he reached down and helped her to her feet. She sagged against him. He felt her shivering through the whole length of her body. He turned her away from Duncan’s corpse in the comer.

  “Don’t keep staring at him, Pleasure. Are you all right?”

  “I want to go home,” she whispered.

  “Who did it to Johnny?”

  “The tall man that I saw before. Justino.”

  “Is he still around?”

  “I don’t know. He killed Johnny maybe fifteen minutes before you came. He went downstairs, and then you opened the door. I thought it was him, comin’ back to—to do things to me.” She paused. “Who is the General, Mr. Sam?”

  “One of Justino’s friends.”

  She shuddered. “Justino said he would let the General have me for a little while. That’s why he was savin’ me, he said.”

  “Who else was with Justino?”

  “A couple of them guards, I guess.” She paused again. “Mr. Sam, I want to go home. I want to go back to Piney Knob. There ain’t nothing for me at home but cornbread livin’, like I said, but I’ve seen enough of your ways and these people to be happy for what I got back there now.”

  Durell thought about Pa Kendall. She still didn’t know her father was dead—murdered on orders from Justino. He didn’t say anything about it. Pleasure was staring at Pablo O’Brien.

  “Who is he?” she asked abruptly.

  “A friend.”

  She listened to the sounds of search going on through the warehouse. Durell wondered why someone hadn’t come up here yet. There seemed to be no other way out, and they were cornered up here for good.

  Pleasure spoke as if she had read his thoughts. “We’re like squirrels in a lonesome tree, huh?”

  “Do you know of any other way out of here?” he asked.

  She frowned and looked quickly at Duncan’s body seated in the comer. “Johnny tried to break away from that man and get into the other room like he knew where he was going. He never loved me, Mr. Sam. He would’ve run away without me, leaving me here. But Justino caught him and laughed at him and said no.”

  Durell went back into the combination office and bedroom of the General’s. At first glance it seemed to offer no exit. Why had Dunk, desperate to escape, tried to get in here? He went to each of the three window walls, looking out at the dark, windy night. One wall overlooked the dead-end street, another the slip, filled with the dark, choppy waters of the Narrows, and the third yielded only to more water far down, too far to jump, directly alongside the warehouse. He turned back to the solid wall with the crested canopy over the couch. He saw that the mirror was divided into three parts, the two on the ends being the size and shape of doors, flanking the bed. He pushed at the first and it slid aside, and saw only racks of expensive men’s clothing and some women’s negligees. Time was running out. He heard Pablo O’Brien call to him with soft urgency. He pushed at the second mirrored door. The dimensions of the tower had misled him. A very narrow corridor opened into a tiled bath, obviously newly installed. The smell of perfume clung to the air, but it was not the scent that Carlotta Cortez used.

  O’Brien called to him again, the urgency sharp in his voice.

  A third door opened from the narrow bathroom. Durell pushed at it and saw a narrow flight of steps goi
ng down to the lower level of the tower. A private way out for the General’s amorous young friends, he decided.

  The stairs opened into darkness below, and he could not see the bottom.

  Turning, Durell went back to the first room. “They are coming up,” O’Brien said. “Shall we fight it out?”

  “Take the girl and get out of here,” Durell said. “Hand her over to Barney Kels, or Fritsch, if you make it.” He described the back stairway off the bath. “I don’t know where it goes, but it may take you around those goons on the main stairs.”

  “And you?”

  “I’m not finished here, Pablo.”

  “You would stay and buy time for us?”

  “Only incidentally. I have more to do.” He was thinking about the missing tacticals. He swung to Pleasure. “I want you to do whatever Pablo says, do you understand? And don’t disobey again.”

  O’Brien moved back from the fire door. It was open about an inch, and garbled, angry voices came up the stairs. O’Brien looked at Durell with a curious darkness in his eyes, then took Pleasure’s arm and pushed her into the other room. Durell waited, watching them go, and then turned back to the main stairs.

  “Durell!”

  The voice came echoing up to him, distorted, angry, explosive with suppressed violence. He did not reply. It would be Justino. He heard enough of the muttered conversation far below to understand why they had been given these few minutes’ grace. Justino had been away from the warehouse, somewhere in the neighborhood—the hotel Pablo had pointed out? Durell wondered—and the guards had been confused by what they had first regarded only as an accident when they found the man at the foot of the stairs. Now Justino was here, aware of what had really happened.

  Footsteps came running up the iron treads, then paused. Others followed. There was a whispered conference on the landing below, out of sight. Durell looked at the light bulb that shed a gray glow on the top landing beyond the steel door. He could shoot it out and bring darkness, but that might be more helpful to his enemies than to himself. He kept listening for sounds that might indicate O’Brien was in trouble. There was nothing. He began to hope that O’Brien and the girl had gotten away cleanly down the back stairs.