Flashpoint

by Dan J. Marlowe

  McLaren was waiting with Erikson when I arrived. He gave me a sardonic grin as he stared at the lump that still persisted behind my ear. Erikson wasted no time on levity. "We've located the girl at Kennedy," he said without preliminary. "She purchased a one-way ticket to Damascus on a flight that leaves in three hours."

  "And I suppose you'll just stand around and let her take off?" I said. Neither man answered. "Why are you letting her leave the country?"

  "Don't you read the papers?" McLaren inquired. "It's a free country."

  "We're watching her," Erikson chimed in.

  "Watching her? What the hell good is that? We know we're getting close to the time of this hijack, but what do we know about it? Not even the location. I don't think the girl knows everything about Bayak's business, but she damn sure knows more about it than we do. And she could tell us."

  McLaren's eyes were upon my face. "Could?"

  "Could be made to."

  "Like?"

  "Like pick her up, grab her hypodermic, sit her down in a corner until the skinful of dope she's carrying now evaporates, and in six or eight hours she'll tell you her sins back to her fifth birthday."

  McLaren grimaced at Erikson. "You do come up with these direct-action types."

  "Give me an alternative if we're going to get anywhere with this thing," I challenged them.

  The office was quiet for a moment. "There's Doc Walsh's private clinic in Queens," McLaren suggested. "Ol' Doc owes us a favor or three." He was watching Erikson. "I could have the girl paged at the flight desk, asked to step into the airline-terminal office, and whisko- Long Island via very private car."

  "It sounds like a winner to me," I said.

  "Well, chief?" McLaren said. "Can do. Can do easily if you say the magic word."

  "I don't like it," Erikson frowned. "If anything went wrong, the UN angle alone would splash us on every front page in the country. Let alone the mysterious disappearance of a damned attractive girl."

  "You think Bayak's going to the police?" I argued. "No way. If you don't step in, Talia may never reach Damascus, anyway. She's expendable in the Turk's plan right now." I waited for that to sink in. "You might be the means of keeping her alive." I thought of Chryssie spread-eagled to the four corners of the bed in the tenement flat. I still hadn't raised a hand to the man who had authorized that.

  "Thanks for appealing to my better nature," Erikson said. "What would your role be if we did this?"

  "I'd borrow a.38 from you, hustle over to Bayak's penthouse, and ask him what the hell he thought he was doing when he had Abdel put the chop on me. It's what he'll expect to hear. Then business as usual."

  There was another silence. "Somehow the thought of you running loose over there with a.38 does nothing for my blood pressure," Erikson said at last.

  "Bayak knows he needs me," I said. "I'm the only one still wired into this operation. Sure, he's planning on stopping my clock, but not until I've pulled his marshmallows out of the fire."

  "Wish to God we knew what the marshmallows were," McLaren grumbled.

  "Give me the gun and I'll get going," I suggested. "One thing I should have mentioned before. Bayak must be paying off everyone in that building. His safe has been blown once, and I put two bullets into the air there the other day, yet he's never been asked to leave."

  "We'd tip him off if we tried to shake anything out of the apartment-building people now," McLaren said. "Later, maybe."

  Erikson gestured toward the hidden room. McLaren went toward it, activated the concealed latch, and disappeared through the revealed door in the wall. He was back at once and handed me a well-oiled.38 and two clips. I loaded one and dropped the other into my jacket pocket. "Like you're getting to be expensive to keep in armament," McLaren said to me. I ignored him.

  "Have her picked up," Erikson said to McLaren. "But with discretion, damn it. Handle it yourself. I've no desire to have my hide nailed up on a barn wall."

  "Nothing to it, chief," McLaren said confidently. "You coming out to the clinic when we get her settled?"

  "I'll be there. I want to talk to you a minute, Earl." He waited until McLaren left the office. "What do you know about the magazine office next door to us?"

  "Only that it's there," I said innocently. "Why?"

  "Two detectives burst in here past Jock this afternoon with a woman who screeched hysterically in my face that I was raping her daughter. I can tell you it was damned embarrassing. When we got it straightened out that it wasn't me, the troupe went down the hall and played the same bill next door."

  "Girls will be girls," I remarked. "Are you regretting a lost opportunity?" Erikson snorted. "How do I get in touch with you out in Queens if necessary?"

  He unlocked a drawer in his desk, took out a metal box which he also unlocked, found an address book, and wrote down an address and telephone number. "Don't overreach yourself with these people," he cautioned me as he returned the metal box to his desk.

  "I'm all right as long as they think they're dealing with the mobster you set me up to be," I said. "See you."

  ***

  I left the office three minutes after McLaren and took a cab uptown. In the private elevator on the way up to the penthouse I had an unpleasant thought. If Abdel had been outside Talia's apartment, my mysterious disappearance could have made Bayak suspicious. I had to act more suspicious than he did.

  When the elevator doors parted, it wasn't Abdel who stood there. It was a smaller man I'd never seen before. He had a gun in his hand, but I brushed past him as though I didn't even see it. Bayak was sitting at the far end of the sunken living room, his pudgy hands steepled in front of his face and his shrewd black eyes studying me from above his pressed-together fingertips.

  "Where the hell is that big tub of lard, Abdel?" I yelled at him across the combined distance of the two rooms whose length resembled a train station.

  "He will be here presently," the Turk said suavely. "Come and sit down."

  "Sit down? I'll-"

  "Calm yourself," Bayak interrupted me.

  "Calm myself? I'll calm myself when I've cooled off that water buffalo. What did he think he was doing when he put the slug on me like that?"

  "He was following orders. Sit here."

  "Orders? Why, you fat creep, I ought to put the blast on you, too. I don't know what-"

  "Exactly. You do not know," Bayak cut me off sharply. "Your little sex holiday is over, friend. It's time you went to work. I simply removed temptation from your path so you could concentrate on the job at hand. I assume you're still interested in money?"

  "Certainly I'm interested in money," I grumbled, pretending to be slightly mollified.

  "Then come sit down and look at this plan."

  I descended the stairs to the living room. I hadn't seen a signal from Bayak, but the gun the new guard had been holding on me during the conversation disappeared. Abdel could be standing behind one of the billowing draperies with a gun lined up on my head, of course. Iskir Bayak wasn't the type to take unnecessary chances with his own oily skin.

  Bayak was removing papers from a manila envelope and spreading them on the surface of a low coffee table whose lacquered top contained a black-and-white collage of the Blue Mosque. "See what you think of this," Bayak said to me.

  "This" was the same hijack plan I'd already seen in Erikson's office. I pulled a chair up to the coffee table, sat down, and leaned forward to study the map which the

  Turk swiveled in my direction. I hoped it would now contain identifying marks as to location, but it still showed Roads A, B, C, and D and nothing else. I looked at it long enough to give the impression I'd never seen it before, then sat back in my chair. "This doesn't tell me a thing," I declared.

  "It should tell you enough," Bayak retorted. A pudgy finger pointed to the largest rectangle on the plan. "A truck approaches from this direction, so, on Road A. Four men will be stationed, so." The finger indicated the circles numbered 1,2, 3, and 4. "They will halt the truck, recover a packag
e from it, and escape in this vehicle." The finger settled on the small square indicating a getaway car that I'd shown to McLaren and Erikson. "A simple operation." Bayak looked at me. "Yes?"

  "How the hell do I know?" I gestured at the sheet. "What does that tell me that I need to know? Nothing. I'd want to check out escape routes, meter the flow of traffic to judge pursuit possibilities, set up a system-"

  "All that has been done by an expert."

  "Not by this expert, and he's the one you're expecting to put his head in the lion's mouth. What does your expert list as necessary for the job?"

  Bayak blinked. "Necessary?"

  I waved an impatient hand. "Weapons, disguises, tools, contingency explosives, rehearsal time."

  "Oh." The fat man thumbed through the sheets of paper on the coffee table and handed me one. "Here."

  It was a rather complete listing of the type I'd just mentioned, but I tossed it aside in pretended disgust after scanning it. "Without even knowing the particular problems, I can see two requirements that aren't on here at all," I said.

  "That cannot be," the Turk responded immediately. "Hakim was a thorough man."

  "So thorough you need me to replace him, right?" Bayak didn't reply. I picked up the sheet of paper again. "There's no hand-held acetylene torch listed here, in case we need to burn through the lock on the truck's loading door. And we should also have a back-up supply of plastic explosives if it looks as though the torch won't do the job quickly enough."

  Bayak nodded slowly. "It doesn't sound unreasonable. You will have only the one chance. Unfortunately, I am unable to furnish these items on short notice."

  I tapped myself on the chest. "I'll see to it. I'd rather do the selecting anyway, since I'm the guy who'll have to use them. Just produce a little cash." The fat man heaved himself awkwardly to his feet, and I knew he was going to the wall safe. I was glad he'd bought the idea I'd just sold him, because it would give me a chance to get away from him while I was supposed to be picking up the items. If we were as close to the action as he sounded, he'd want someone from his organization to stick to me as closely as two teenagers at a drive-in movie. "But we haven't come to the important point," I went on.

  He stopped and looked at me inquiringly.

  "I want to know where this job is taking place. You can't expect me to take it on cold without knowing the location and the escape hatches."

  Bayak returned to his chair and dropped into it heavily. "That you will know at the proper time, friend, and only then." I started to say something but he held up his hand. "As it stands now, there is a man who knows the location, the men to be used, the escape routes, and nothing else. And there is a man-" the familiar pudgy finger leveled at me "-who knows what we seek to acquire and the necessary techniques. If either man had both pieces of information-" he paused for effect "-what need would he have of me?"

  I didn't answer him.

  I couldn't answer him.

  From his point of view, there wasn't any satisfactory answer. He had engineered the situation so he was protected every step of the way. Only when the two men with the dovetailing bits of information were brought together could the job be activated, and obviously the Turk had no intention of bringing them together until it was time for the hijack.

  He sat there with a satisfied smirk on his fat face as he read my mind. "You will be taken to the location at the proper time," he said. He looked at his watch. "In approximately five and one half hours."

  That really shook me up. Even though I'd told Erikson that Bayak's attitude indicated that the time was getting close, I hadn't expected it would be this soon. "What kind of men am I getting to work with?" I asked.

  Bayak hesitated. "You should have an honest answer to that," he said finally. "There have been personnel losses among the group assigned to me to recover this item. Two even before Hakim. Two good men." Those would be the two in Nevada, I thought. "Hakim himself, of course. And one who disappeared completely." The truck must have mangled the one I'd dropped out Chryssie's window so that identification had never been made.

  "Those were the cream," Bayak went on. "The rest-" he gestured vaguely "-loyal but inexperienced. Make no mistake-they will enter a blazing building if ordered. But they need leadership. Your leadership. And they are expendable."

  Like I was expendable. "What happens to the 'item' when we get it?"

  "That is not your department," he retorted, unruffled. He rose to his feet again. "How much money do you require for the purchases you mentioned?"

  "Three thousand." Actually it wouldn't take a sixth of that unless the torch and the explosive came encrusted with diamonds, but I was testing. Bayak made no protest.

  My back was to the wall safe as he waddled toward it. "Do not turn around," he said over his shoulder. I knew he couldn't open the safe and watch me, too, so someone else was watching me. I shifted position slightly until I could see his obese figure in the same polished lamp base as before.

  "Something I forgot," I said as I saw in the lamp base the same up-and-down movement twice of the concealing picture next to the liquor storage closet before the safe dial appeared. "How much does the 'item' weigh? Will there be any difficulty in moving it?"

  "There will be no difficulty." Bayak's voice was muffled as his face pressed close to the safe's opened door. "It weighs twelve pounds."

  Twelve pounds of heroin wasn't a small amount, but it hardly seemed like enough to warrant the elaborate preparation and the money Bayak was throwing around. For the first time I began to feel that Erikson could be right in his insistence that dope wasn't the target. But what else could be valuable enough to warrant such a violent laying on of hands?

  Bayak turned away from the safe with money in his hand. "Do not return here again," he said brusquely as he confronted me and thrust the money at me. "There is a cocktail lounge on Lexington Avenue near Forty-sixth Street, called the Alhambra. Be there in four hours. Call me here-I will be able to verify from where you are calling-and you will be told where to go to meet the individual who will take you to the hijack spot"

  I really had to admire the bastard.

  Whatever else happened, Iskir Bayak's coattails were going to remain out of the grease pit

  He would have a contact at the Alhambra to note and report to him anything unusual, either in my conduct or my companionship.

  Iskir Bayak was protecting himself right down to the fifth decimal place.

  "We haven't talked about how I'm to be paid off," I suggested. I knew he would expect it, and be ready for it.

  Nor was I mistaken. "When you leave the Alhambra, you will be taken to Grand Central Station by a man who in your presence will deposit forty thousand dollars in U.S. currency in a locker," Bayak said smoothly. "At the hijack location, when you are committed, you will be given the only key, and upon the completion of the job you will return and recover the money."

  Beautiful.

  Except that I knew it was this fat slug's intention that I never return from the hijack. One of the hijack crew would have orders to finish me off with a bullet in the back of the head. I'd gone this far thinking I had only to learn the location and let Erikson know and have his people take over. Now I was being firmly locked into the operation with no possibility of finding out the essential factor: where the hijack was to take place.

  It was in a thoughtful mood that I left the penthouse apartment.

  I had to get to a phone and call Erikson at the Queens number he'd given me.

  10

  IT took me ten minutes to lose the tail who picked me up on the street in front of Bayak's apartment building.

  I led him to a busy intersection where I hailed a cab in a bumper-to-bumper and curb-to-curb mass of cars. I watched while the tail scrambled frantically for another cab, and the instant he opened the door, I leaned forward and dropped a bill on the front seat of my cab. "Changed my mind," I told the cabbie as I went out the opposite door I'd entered. I inched my way through jammed cars to the sidewalk. />
  When the light changed, the traffic surged forward. I watched the cab with the tail in it follow the cab I'd been in across the intersection, and I wondered how long it would be before the tail realized he'd been had.

  I found a street pay phone and called Erikson at the Queens phone number. "You mean you still don't know where the hijack is going to take place?" he demanded after I brought him up to date.

  "That's right. The Turk is too cute to tip his hand even five minutes in advance of the action."

  "And we have five and a half hours?"

  "Less thirty minutes," I said after checking my watch. "How did you make out with Talia?"

  "She's four doors down the hall. Doc Walsh thinks she was waiting to load up again just before she boarded the plane, so she was on a down cycle when we brought her out here. He says she's in the first stages of actual withdrawal, but he won't guess how soon she'll be willing to talk."

  And if she didn't talk-or didn't know anything useful when she did talk-I was right up to the gate of the Turk's project with no way out.

  Unless I pulled out.

  Erikson must have read my mind. "Take a cab up here and we'll talk this over," he said. "There's got to be some way we can set this thing up so we can give you an umbrella." The phone clicked in my ear.

  I went over it all again during the long cab ride, and I could find no better answers than I had in Bayak's apartment. The Turk had covered himself well at every turn. A man had to be crazy to go into a midnight-black cave without a flashlight, and I was going to tell Erikson so.

  The cab pulled up at the emergency entrance of a small clinic, the main building of which was hidden from the road behind stone walls and high hedges. Erikson came down a white-walled corridor to rescue me from the questions of the nurse at the admissions desk. "She's cracking up," he said quietly after drawing me to one side. "Doc thinks she might spit it out anytime. Brace yourself. It isn't pretty."

  I followed him down the hall. We went into an antiseptic-looking room with a hospital bed and a single chair. I heard the click of a solid lock as Erikson closed the door. A gray-haired, white-coated man with a stethoscope stood beside the bed which had high metal bars raised on either side of it.