Operation Deathmaker

by Dan J. Marlowe

  I inched the door open cautiously. I could hear the murmur of voices, but at a distance. Beyond the door was a small hallway. I moved into it and eased the door closed behind me. The apartment even at first glance was multi-roomed and lavishly furnished. I proceeded quietly through three rooms before I located the one with the voices. Gun in hand, I approached it along one wall, keeping myself out of view.

  The first person I saw was a fat man standing behind a desk in a room that looked like a study. He had a pulpy, veined nose and a perspiring red face. I had seen him before. He was the same fat man whose car was stationed across the lane from mine in the airport parking lot. He was the same seemingly solicitous Samaritan who had inquired if I was all right when I was fanning the gas from my car.

  Again I had to admire the gang’s planning. The senior Kirkman had placed his car in the lot where he could pull in front of me and stop me if his companions somehow missed connections with the gas container, or if they had wanted to delay quick pursuit. Kirkman was undoubtedly stationed there also to learn if I was going to go directly to the police. His negative report was the reason that Swope had placed the dynamite bomb in Hazel’s car so quickly. They had thought they’d have only Hazel to deal with and no complications.

  I could hear Swope speaking. “… the matter with you, man? Don’t you like the present we brought you?”

  Kirkman didn’t seem to hear him. He was staring into a corner of the room I couldn’t see. He passed a hand over his shiny, sweating face as though trying to hide it. He looked like a blob of Jell-O starting to melt. “W-why, Mrs. C-Cooper!” he stammered. “What—what are you d-doing h-here?”

  So Kirkman knew Val. Through her ex-husband, probably. No wonder he was sweating.

  “I’ll tell you what she’s doing here,” Swope said. “She was in Drake’s room at the Miramar when we got there. So Toad and I decided this was a problem for you and Junior to handle. Here she is. We’re leaving now.”

  “L-leaving?” Kirkman squeaked. “No, no, no! What can I—what can we—no, no, no! You can’t walk out like this!”

  “You mean we can’t walk out and leave you to put a gun to her head and pull the trigger?” Swope inquired cynically. “Roger, ol’ pal, that’s exactly what we’re doing. I’ve had it with Junior’s brilliant schemes that always wind up with a stinger in the tail. He can take it from here. Or you can. Come on, Toad.”

  I moved quickly to one side away from the doorway.

  “We could look for the res’ of the monee?” I heard Toad suggesting while I was crouching behind a long divan.

  “We don’t have time,” Swope said. “I’m sure it’s in his safe, but I’ll settle for our end. This thing has gone to hell, and I’m not going to feel happy about it until we get the Hind Site clear of the harbor.”

  “He weel answer my questions about the safe,” Toad proposed.

  “Stay if you like!” Swope said angrily. “I’m leaving. And so is the Hind Site.”

  He walked from the study into the room I was in and passed through it on his way to the door. Toad followed him after a momentary hesitation. Even from where I was concealed I could hear Kirkman’s noisy sigh of relief when the apartment door slammed behind them.

  I crawled out from behind the divan. When I reached the doorway of the study again, Kirkman had the drawer of his desk open and was scrabbling around inside it. “If you—if you will just s-sit down, Mrs. Cooper, until my n-nephew returns, we will find a s-solution to—ahhhh, here it is.”

  His hand emerged from the desk drawer with an ugly little foreign automatic in it. He then saw me standing in the doorway, my automatic trained on his gut. He yelped in a high falsetto, and his gun thudded to the carpeting as his trembling fingers lost their grip on it.

  “Get that, will you, Val?” I said. She was still standing rigidly in the corner where Toad had left her. She advanced like a sleepwalker and kicked the fallen weapon to one side so she could pick it up without being near Kirkman. She had recovered slightly from her totally washed-out look at the Miramar, but the dark hair that usually framed her features attractively now clung to her skull, perspiration-dampened and matted.

  “Fine,” I went on. “Where’s Stan, Roger?”

  “He s-said he’d be back in a c-couple of hours when h-he left a few m-minutes ago.”

  I turned the automatic around in my hand until I was gripping it by the barrel. “Open your safe, Roger,” I told him.

  He was watching me nervously. “I c-can’t,” he begged. “Stan w-would kill me.”

  It enraged me that this excuse for a man should be alive while the bright, cheerful Melissa was dead. I closed the distance between us, reached across the desk, and despite his effort to duck, creased the bridge of his nose with the butt of my gun. Blood spurted down his shirt front.

  “On the next one you’ll be able to wear your teeth for a necklace,” I informed him. I had tried as best I could not to make the blow more forceful. I wanted him conscious. “Now open the damn safe!”

  Roger Kirkman needed no additional persuasion. He had staggered backward from the nose chop. Recovering, he turned to the wall behind his desk, moved a picture to one side, and began dialing the combination of a modern appearing box. The parts of his face not covered with blood seemed to have collapsed inward. All his movements were those of a man who had suddenly aged.

  He opened the door of the safe and then stepped back. “Hold the gun on him,” I told Val. The safety was on the gun she had picked up from the floor, but I was sure that neither she nor Kirkman knew it. I went to the safe and began to explore its contents. It was a short search. Right in front were stacks of the same currency I had packed in the briefcase under Cottonmouth’s instructions and carried out into the country.

  I carried the cash to Kirkman’s desk. It took three trips although only half the ransom money was there. Eye inventory was enough to tell me that. So Swope and Almeida had already received their split. All the more reason for catching up to them swiftly. “Find something to use to tie up this weasel,” I instructed Val.

  I had the cash packaged again, wrapped in Kirkman’s large desk blotter and fastened with heavy rubber bands, before Val came back into the study carrying a bed sheet. I helped her rip it into strips. I motioned for Kirkman to sit down in his swivel chair. He did so with a white-faced abandon approximating total collapse. He looked like a man who was witnessing the end of his personal world.

  I tied him securely in his chair, then gagged him. When I was satisfied that he wasn’t going anywhere for a while, I spoke to him again. “I’ll be back to settle with you,” I said. His eyes rolled upward until all that was visible were the whites.

  I led Val out of the apartment. She still hadn’t fully recovered from her ordeal. I carried the package of money in my left hand. We rode the elevator all the way down to the basement. Before we went out onto the street I holstered my own gun and took from her the foreign automatic she didn’t realize she was still carrying. We walked up the ramp and across the street to the parked Cutlass.

  We were seated in the car and I had reached across her to put the foreign automatic in the glove compartment before Val spoke. “That was you at the motel, wasn’t it?” she said tiredly. “The telephone call? I don’t know how I kept from blurting out your name. That was—that was the most frightening moment of my life in that motel room.” Her voice was low and drained of emotion. “I never thought it was possible to be that afraid. I could smell myself.”

  “Anyone would have been frightened in the circumstances,” I tried to soothe her. “Toad may not be a psycho, but he’s close enough that they may have to find a new measuring stick.”

  She started to shake. The tremors afflicting her body were transmitted to me via the seat. I reached over and wrapped my hand around her skirted thigh, applying gradually increasing pressure. After a moment her hand came down on mine and squeezed as though she wasn’t satisfied with the pain my grip was causing her.

  Her shakin
g finally quieted. “All right,” she said in a breathless, strained voice. “I’m—over it now. I really—am.”

  I released her thigh, watching her face. Her incipient hysteria seemed under control. I pulled the Cutlass away from the curb and headed for the Marina del Rey. I didn’t want Swope and Toad to get the Hind Site out into open water. That would complicate things unnecessarily.

  Twice during the ride Val started to say something and twice she stopped. “What an idiot I was c-claiming I could take care of m-myself,” she said at last. The natural vibrancy was still missing from her voice. “You have a completely different set of values from ordinary people,” she went on. “I can’t try to h-help any longer. I hope you understand.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “I have a sister in San Francisco,” she continued. She was staring straight ahead into the dusk enveloping the waterfront. “I’m going to visit her as s-soon as I can pack a bag. And I’m not coming back for a while.”

  I had my own reasons for wanting her out of town. “It sounds like a winning program,” I said approvingly.

  Stars were out, but it was still twilight when we reached the marina. I parked on a side street away from the entrance. “I’ve got to leave you now for a few minutes,” I said.

  Panic flared in her voice. “I don’t want to be alone!”

  “Lock the car from the inside if you like. Get down on the floor in the back seat.”

  “Yes!” she said quickly, her voice childishly high. “That’s what I’ll do.”

  “Right now,” I said.

  Back to the womb.

  I watched while she climbed over the seat, unaware of her lifting skirt.

  A woman has to consciously put something into whatever she exposes to a man to make it sexy.

  Otherwise it’s just meat.

  I climbed out and watched her punch the lock buttons. Then she crouched down in back. I could see her humped back where her face was pressed against the carpeting. She had her hands over her ears. She didn’t want to see, and she didn’t want to hear. She no longer cared in the slightest how I felt about her reaction.

  I went over the fence into the marina. It had been erected to keep kids out, not anyone with a serious project in mind. It was topped with only a single strand of barbed wire. I worked my way through gathering shadows to the pier area where the Hind Site was moored. Swope and Toad shouldn’t be expecting me, I thought, but Toad, in particular, possessed an animal cunning that demanded caution.

  No lights were visible on the Hind Site, but I detected activity as I drew closer. There were shuffling noises of sneakered feet mingled with muted bumping sounds as Swope and Toad prepared for a quick departure. I could see no one on deck.

  A radio was playing very faintly when I reached the boat and placed a hand on its railing. Predictably, the song being played was in Spanish. I stepped over the railing down onto the deck.

  I thought I had done it noiselessly, but perhaps my weight made an infinitesimal difference in the boat’s balance, noticeable only to a sailor.

  “What the hell was that?” Swope’s voice demanded immediately.

  “I weel see,” Toad answered.

  “I’ll do the seeing,” Swope declared. Then he amended it. “Take the port side topside. I’ll take the starboard.”

  I moved rapidly toward the stern of the Hind Site and stationed myself near the transom where I commanded a full view of the cockpit.

  I drew my automatic again and waited for the first head to be silhouetted against the lightness of the sky in contrast with the dark water.

  Martin Swope fooled me.

  I had expected a silent stalk by the murderous pair.

  Instead, Swope burst from the cabin up onto the deck with a rush. I had one split-second look at his bobbing head before he disappeared behind a pile of gear. My otherwise harmless bullet chipped away a portion of the cabin combing before it whined away at an angle across the rippling water.

  “Hey!” Swope exclaimed in surprise. “Who the hell’s doing the shooting?”

  He didn’t appreciate being shot at, but he had no compunction about rigging pipe bombs and deadfalls. I kept my gun aimed at the bulky cargo boxes behind which he had disappeared.

  “Is that you, Stan?” Swope spoke again. “You silly bastard, I’ll hang you out to dry!”

  I saw nothing of Toad.

  The sound of the bullet had probably sent him back down into the cabin.

  I inched my way along the deck, feeling uncomfortably prominent against its light-colored surface. A whirring sound overhead drew my gun hand upward, but it was Swope who fired at the innocent night bird in the rigging.

  “Toad!” Swope cried out. “Get out here and help!” I could hear him scrambling around behind the heaped cargo. “The office will call the police about all this shooting! We’ve got to move the boat out into the harbor!”

  Toad Almeida made no reply.

  The flash from Swope’s gun had marked his position for me. He hadn’t much latitude in changing his position. I risked resting my eyes upon the inky water alongside for a moment before I returned them aboard the boat in the hope the dark-bright contrast would help my night vision.

  I saw Swope then.

  Part of him.

  The darker blur of an arm and shoulder extended from behind the cargo area. The arm was moving from side to side as Swope tried to anticipate the angle of attack. I fired, aiming at the arm muscle. Swope screamed as he jerked upright from his crouching position. The involuntary reaction brought him into full view.

  I fired again.

  The scream choked off into a gasp.

  Swope pivoted, stumbled over something, and fell. He landed on the deck heavily. There was a skittering sound as his gun slid across the deck. It bounded over the low protective railing and struck the water with just a slight splash.

  I knew where I’d sent the bullet.

  Martin Swope was no longer a part of the problem.

  But I still had a problem.

  I was concerned about the police arriving, too.

  I went back to the cockpit area. There was no sound from below. I shot into the cabin door. I was sure Toad would be close to that door, hoping to surprise me when I entered the cabin. I wanted to move him away from the door.

  I had no time for finesse. I went down the ladder and kicked open the door, dropping to the decking at the same time to prevent presenting even a dim silhouette against the night sky. I didn’t know if Toad had a gun or not.

  I inched my way inside the cabin on my belly, pausing only to listen to the unnerving silence. The blackness seemed absolute. Forcing myself to move ahead was as hard as anything I’d ever done. I told myself that Toad wouldn’t be at the other end of the boat, near the staterooms where Melissa had died so horribly. Toad couldn’t afford a delaying action, either.

  Then he rushed me.

  I heard the chilling sound of his powerful body charging across the cabin.

  I pictured the long knife blade in his upraised hand.

  I couldn’t see him, but I elevated the automatic to waist-high range and fired three times. The second and third bullets struck him because the flash of the first shot illuminated him. He went crashing backward through a flimsy piece of furniture and then collapsed upon the cabin floor.

  I still couldn’t see Toad to know what kind of shape he was in.

  I climbed to my feet as silently as I could manage. I swept my arm head-high along the nearest bulkhead, seeking a light. When I found one, I moved away from it until I could just barely reach the switch with my fingertips. An outstretched arm’s length away from the source of light, I switched it on with my automatic aimed at the spot where I had heard Toad crash to the floor.

  Then I holstered my gun.

  Toad Almeida was doubled up in a fetal position with his legs twitching. The wicked-looking knife was near his slackened right hand. His left hand was cradling his belly. Not even a former circus strong man shakes off two bullet
s in the gut.

  “Don’t go too soon,” I told him.

  Melissa had been cruelly kept alive for a long time.

  I moved quickly then.

  I knew what I was looking for.

  I found the balance of the ransom cash in the same briefcase in which I had delivered it. Toad and Swope hadn’t had time to do anything with it, not even divide it. I picked up the briefcase and started for the cabin door after putting out the light. I emerged on deck and walked quickly amidships where I could leap up onto the dock.

  I had a hand on the railing when a gun went off practically in my face.

  I saw its bright flash, and I heard the bullet smash into the cabin behind me.

  Only an amateur could have missed at that range.

  I went the only way I could go: over the side and down into the water. It felt like a descent of half a mile although it couldn’t have been more than eight feet. I had time, though, to evaluate the features I had seen in the gun-flash: young, round, with the same slightly petulant expression of Roger Kirkman.

  The water was surprisingly cold.

  When my head surfaced and I could get the water noises out of my ears, I heard the pad-pad-pad of running footsteps along the dock. The amateur was so much of an amateur he wasn’t even trying to finish off his job. He panicked and ran.

  “The boy genius,” as Swope called him, had decided to try for the same thing I had, the retrieval of Swope’s and Toad’s share of the ransom money. When I went into the water, he thought both that he’d killed me and that he’d lost the cash.

  I still had the briefcase in my hand.

  I dog-paddled my way around to the stern of the Hind Site and tossed the briefcase up onto the deck I found a trailing line and started to pull myself aboard. I had forgotten my bad left arm. Lancets of pain flashed through it each time my weight dragged at it. I set my teeth and floundered up onto the deck, belly-down. When my breathing was halfway back to normal, I retraced my steps amidships after picking up the briefcase. I stepped up onto the dock with no interference this time, and set off through the shadowy marina yard, dripping.