Soft Targets

by Dean Ing

  The three who could say, kept well to the rear. For a time the driver sweated to keep in sight of the Mini, settling for occasional glimpses of the tiny vehicle as the terrain permitted. There were few turnouts available after the new snow, and the further Everett isolated himself, the better two of them liked it.

  Everett chose the roadhouse on impulse, back­ing the Mini in to assure easy return. The flakes were dusting down again, powdery dry on his face. He ordered coffee and began shucking his furlined coat before he realized that he was alone with the counterman. He slapped snow from the front of his winter hat, then saw the dark blue BMW ease off the highway. Everett took his cof­fee with hands that shook, watching through fogged windows as the sleek sedan began to emulate his parking maneuver. No, not quite; the BMW blocked his Mini, and only one of the car's three occupants emerged. Three coffees to go, or one Commissioner?

  Everett saw the tall trenchcoated man cradle his long, gaily-wrapped package, speak briefly to the young driver; Everett noted the Mas­sachusetts license plate and used his time wise­ly. He walked to one end of the roadhouse, far from the windows and counterman, and piled his coat high in the last booth, placing his hat atop it. The coffee steamed in the center of the table, untasted bait.

  Everett stepped directly across the aisle from his end booth into the men's room, hoping that his circumstantial case was nothing more than that, hoping that the lean trenchcoated man would get his coffee and go on to Empire, or Georgetown, or hell. He did not close the door or try the light switch.

  There was nothing he could see in the semidarkness that would serve as a weapon and as he settled on the toilet, fully clothed and star­ing at his coffee three meters away, he felt the toilet seat move. One of its two attachment wingnuts was gone. Gently, silently, Everett set about removing the other, unconcerned by the stench of urine below his nose. Early or late, he reasoned, the audacious bird gets the worm.

  He heard the front door of the roadhouse sigh shut, heard a mumbled exchange—one voice had a high lilt to it—at the counter ten meters from him, heard the counterman open a re­frigerator. So Mr. Trenchcoat wanted more than coffee. Cheeseburgers, or diversion?

  Under the clank and scrape of short order cookery, Everett heard soft footfalls. He stood, breathing quickly and lightly through his mouth, gripping the toilet lid with no earthly thought of what he would do with it. He felt like a fool: oh, hello, t was just leaving, sorry about the lid, it didn't fit me anyhow . . . And then Mr. Trenchcoat stepped to Everett's booth as if offer­ing his package, one hand thrust into the false end of the package and he must have seen that he was confronting an uninhabited hat and coat just as Everett swung the lid, edge on, against the base of his skull from behind and to one side.

  Everett was appalled at himself for an instant. He had drygulched a harmless holiday drunk, he thought, as the man toppled soundlessly onto Everett's coat. The contents of the package slidbackward onto the floor then, and Everett re­flected that harmless drunks do not usually carry sawed-off automatic shotguns in Christmas packages with false ends.

  Everett's snowshoes were in the Mini and without them he would be stupid to run out the back way. The counterman, incredibly, was busy incinerating three steaks and had noticed noth­ing. Everett wrote the BMW license number on his table with catsup, though he could have used blood, and wrestled the trenchcoat from the un­conscious man.

  The only way out was past the BMW. He hoped it would flee at his first warning shot, then realized that the occupants were waiting to hear that shot. How would Mr. Trenchcoat exit? Backward, no doubt, holding the shotgun on the counterman. Everett's trousers were the wrong shade of gray but he could not afford to dwell on that. The trenchcoat was of a cut he had not seen in years; perhaps they would not think beyond it for a few seconds. Then too, the blowing snow might help mask him for a moment. Or it might not.

  He slid into the trenchcoat, which pinched at the armpits, turned its collar up, retrieved the shotgun and checked its safety. Gripped in a glacial calm that he knew would not last, he reminded himself of Pueblo and quashed his fear with one thought: my turn! Everett had time to pity the counterman, but not to question his own sanity, as he moved past windows near the door and turned his back on the door.

  Everett's shotgun blast tore a fist-sized hole in the floor and sent a lance of pain through Everett's bad ear. The counterman ran without hesitation out the rear door into a snowdrift, screaming, and Everett backed out the front door fast. The driver of the blue car seemed to be screaming as well. The BMW engine blipped lustily and a voice called, "In, in, Flaherty, ye fookin' twit," and Everett spun to see a red-haired man holding a rear door open with one hand, a machine pistol forgotten in the other. Everett did not forget the weapon and aimed for it. His first shot blew the weapon and a hand out the BMW's front window from the inside.

  Donegal Flynn accelerated to the highway, the left rear door of the car flapping open, and Ever­ett fired twice more. The next shot sent pellets caroming through the inside of the sedan and his last was a clean miss. Everett flopped hard into the snow and only heard, but could not see, the shiny BMW slide off the highway. It was a long vertical roll to the river and by the time they reached it neither of the occupants minded the cold water, being dead at the time.

  Everett burst into the roadhouse to find that his first victim was still unconscious, a stroke of luck since Everett had neglected to check him for concealed weapons. There were things to set right. The counterman must be tamed, the tele­phone must be used; but first things first. He needed that toilet lid for a mundane purpose, and right now.

  * * *

  By the time the FBI mobile lab was en route from Denver, Highway Patrol units had things well in hand, had taken a sullen silent Irishman away in handcuffs, had even located the ruined sedan some distance down the river in three meters of water. Everett apologized for a dozen things including his prints, muddying those already on the shotgun; the instantaneous defec­tion of Smiley Bohlen, the counterman; and all the trouble he had caused in trying to defend himself. Despite his unquestioned identity, Maury Everett knew he was under informal ar­rest until the unmarked brown van pulled up outside the roadhouse. The atmosphere warmed quickly after that. Two of the FBI men in parkas mapped out the area while the third, an immacu­late cigar-chewing gentleman named Will Ful­ton, sat with Everett over coffee and a tape recorder.

  As soon as a tape ended, Fulton would take it to the mobile lab for a fast-track transmission to Denver. Someone located the weapon Everett had blown from the BMW, which tickled Fulton no end even before its analysis in the van. Fi­nally grown hoarse, Everett asked, "How much longer do we go on, Fulton? I needed a rest before any of this happened, and right now all I want is to get in the Mini and disappear."

  "Hard to say," said Fulton, glancing at his watch. "I got a bulletin from the van telling us to wait for a reinforcement. Somebody's flying into Denver, apparently, if the weather'll permit it. Besides, Commissioner, you thought you'd dis­appeared this morning. Care to think again?"

  As Everett shook his head, a little fellow in a parka came in with a friendly nod to them both, then dropped a clipboard at Fulton's elbow before returning to the van.

  Fulton, shifting the cigar no-hands, scanned the pages at length. "It was a hit, all right," he said finally as if to himself. "A Mr. Flynn owned that four-door BMW in a Boston suburb. Flynn's a naturalized citizen from Belfast, and he's already made a statement. Anxious to cooperate; even more anxious about his son. Would you recognize a facsimile photo when it comes in?"

  "Not likely," Everett admitted. "I feel rotten about those two guys in the car."

  "Because they didn't get a shot at you?"

  "Sounds crazy when you put it that way. There was no doubt about that charlie with the shotgun, though. Was there?"

  "None. Just got factual verification of your story; a print tally from him on the weapon. Yours too, of course." Fulton pursed his lips obscenely around the unlit cigar, running a fo
refinger along the lined paper. "Who's Sean McTaggart?"

  "Never heard of him. Or Flynn, that I recall."

  "Eoin Flaherty?"

  Pause. Headshake. "Nope. Wait; the guy with the automatic pistol? I think he called me `flirty'; maybe `Flaherty'. But why is some Boston Irishman I never heard of financing a hit on me? Doesn't make sense."

  "Flynn claims he'd just met the two Irishers, mutual friends back in the old country and so on. Loaned 'em the car with his teen-aged son to drive it, out of a sense of loyalty. Claims he had no idea what they intended to do here beyond sightseeing:"

  "Should we believe in that?"

  "Sure; that and the Easter bunny." Fulton lifted a page to read another. "We have Flynn's prints too, and they're also on the magazine we took from the Vzor."

  "Come again?"

  "Vzor seven point six-five millimetre," Fulton said with satisfaction. "A Czech automatic with magazine, takes a silencer. Little thirty caliber slugs, more or less; it sprays 'em out the barrel like shit through a tin horn. The shotgun barrel was shortened very recently by an expert. And Flynn is a machinist. I'm betting we find metal from that shotgun barrel around his shop somewhere."

  Everett put his hands over his face, sighed into his palms. "Why would American citizens be helping these people?"

  "Lee Oswald was American. Charlie Manson, too," Fulton said. "But there's more to this attempt than your garden-variety political lunatic, Commissioner."

  "How do you know? No, tell me later, Fulton. I've got a case of nerves that won't quit. What if I just drive out a ways, find a motel, and come hack later if you need me? I'd call here and tell you where I am."

  The FBI agent inspected the tattered wet end of his cigar, discarded it, and drew another from his vest pocket before answering. "Go out back here and yell your head off for a minute. Cry, if it'll help. I would, and no apologies," he said, smiling candidly into Everett's face. "But someone you know has made you my responsibility until I'm relieved, since I'm senior in the office. Shouldn't be long."

  Everett squinted, then smiled back. "Dave Engels," he said flatly.

  A shrug. "A minute ago you were curious about something that I can tell you. Yesterday we got some information from a gent we can deport at any time. Jersey City fella; as long as he gets in touch now and then, he doesn't have to chase goats up hillsides in Sicily, or whatever the hell they do there.

  "There are a hell of a lot of thorny types in the FLQ—that's the Front de Liberation du Quebec—who funnel arms to the Irish Provi­sionals. Some of the stuff is American, and some like the little Vzor comes from Eastern Europe through Libya and Syria to Canada. Long way around, but some countries are very sloppy about checking imports. Those are the same ones where the Customs people live on tips, like wait­ers.

  "So the FLQ is well-placed to be middleman for terrorists. And that's where you came in; or rather, didn't come in."

  "You've lost me," said Everett. "Can I borrow a cigar?"

  "Long as you don't light it," Fulton grinned, fishing out another stogie. "They stink. Well, early this week the FLQ offered three hit contracts, a matched set, to—ah--certain undesirable elements, all with names ending in vowels, in the Big Apple area. That territory includes Philly and Jersey City. Ordinarily I suppose the contracts would've been fulfilled and we'd have three more unsolved snuffs on our hands, proba­bly from twenty-two pistols they're using these days and don't ask me why.

  "But when the local banditti learned the names of the marks—people they were to hit—they turned the FLQ down flat." Fulton cocked his head; one side of his mouth twitched. "I like that; even the Mafia has scruples. You'll be in­terested in the marks," Fulton continued, hold­ing up three fingers. "A script writer named Althouse," he turned down his ring finger; "an artsy-fartsy swish named D'Este, and—" he turned down his forefinger, leaving the middle finger thrusting up in emulation of a familiar TV logo.

  "And Charlie George," Everett supplied.

  "You got it. Our informant says it was of Charlie who queered the whole job. It was suddenly obvious that this was a political thing, and believe it or not Charlie G. is a favorite of the Mafia boys. Who knows, they may own a piece of him."

  "Nobody owns much of Charlie," Everett replied, wondering how accurate he was. "But I'm beginning to get your drift."

  "Well, even your corrupt, stodgy old small-minded FBI can add the fourth name that belongs there."

  "Mine."

  "Only it wasn't. Why not? Then we got the call from the Colorado Highway Patrol about lunch-time, and somebody was awake in Washington, and now we think we know why not. The FLQ knew there was already a group setting you up. They must've taken that contract from another bunch, and had the money, and why waste dough they could use to buy more plastique? You were already spoken for."

  Everett stared out the window, squinting as headlights swept the roadhouse in the evening murk. "What does the FLQ do now? What do I do? I mean, do they just give up, or is there an underworld all-points bulletin out for the four of us?"

  Fulton almost laughed. "Nicely put. We don't know who the FLQ finally set it up with, but there must've been somebody. Which brings me to some very unpleasant news. But first, I think what you should do is take a new ID. That's unofficial, man-to-man, Mr. Everett. But I think you should let us tell the media you did a long yoo-hoo-hoo over the cliff in the BMW. Flaherty won't tell on you; we can put him on more ice than Admiral Byrd."

  Headlights swung toward them as a Pontiac Firebird slithered into the parking lot. Everett slapped the table. "That'll be Dave Engels."

  "I doubt it," said Fulton, studying his cigar, "unless he's had a recent sex change."

  The dark hair that emerged from the Firebird was unfamiliar, but the shoulder bag and the stride could not be forgotten. Everett began to smile as Gina Vercours hurried through the snow.

  Her greeting was offhand, unhurried, anodyne for Everett's twanging nerves. Fulton stood up, a thumb tucked under the ornate buckle beneath his vest. "Good thing I remembered about the weather," she said, stamping her feet as she tossed her wrap over a booth. "It was eighty-seven degrees in Phoenix today. And don't tell me what that is in celsius, Maury," she grinned.

  "Gina; still old-fashioned," he said, taking her hand in his.

  "And you still don't believe me," she coun­tered, then turned to the other man. "Are you agent Fulton?"

  Fulton nodded as she said, "I'm Gina Ver­cours, which Maury will verify, and in lieu of a pass phrase they said to give you this." She of­fered him the tiny tape machine, which he took after lowering his hand from his midriff. "Better than working with Wally Conklin," she added; "I don't have to rent cars, and at the air terminal they hand you a synopsis on tape with a very sex-y voice."

  "Can I hear her?" Everett asked.

  "Her? Him, fella." She tossed him a mock-suspicious frown. "So what's the drill, gentlemen?"

  "Bury him somewhere," Fulton aimed his cigar at Everett, then clamped down on it again.

  "What if I hadn't been me," Gina asked inno­cently.

  "I'd have been disappointed." Fulton tapped his buckle. "Gas projector. You'd be in barf city," he explained. He took his coat and snap-brim hat, adjusting them with care. "And let us know where you bury him, Ms. Vercours, which means stay near a telephone. We may pick up more information for you. They gave you a phone scrambler?"

  She nodded, patting the shoulder bag. As Ful­ton was leaving, Everett recalled their unfinished business, "One more thing, Fulton, if you don't mind. How do you know the Cana­dians found somebody to take their contracts after the Mafia refused?"

  Fulton stopped, glanced toward Gina, then took Everett by the arm. Outside, his breath frosty, Fulton said, "Somebody bagged Dahl D'Este about one ayem this morning in San Francisco."

  Everett sagged against the railing. "How?"

  "That's what I didn't want to say in front of the lady. D'Este seemed to think he could lose himself among all the other homosexuals in the Gay city—Bay City,
that is. He must've been cruising the gay strip near the downtown hotels where they make a lot of pickups off the streets. Pathet­ic little guys carrying overnight kits, feet hardly touching the pavement, waiting for a score like any other hooker; makes you sad to see it, Mr. Everett," he muttered, smug and sententious.

  He picked up his cadence. "Well, we don't know how the contact was made but somebody got into D'Este's Cadillac with him. After shoo­ing the others off the street, maybe, I don't know how. We're checking. Anyway: A little later the Caddie piled into a building on O'Farrell Street. Must've been moving at a crawl. They found D'Este behind the wheel and an overnight kit on the floor.

  "And it smelled like he'd been having an orgy with almond extract. Somebody had snuffed him with a dildo. You know, those rubber dicks they fill with who-knows-what? This one was full of hydrocyanic acid, prussic acid, same thing. He'd taken a full shot of it in the face, and they found the dildo in his mouth. Enough cyanide to snuff an elephant, I kid you not. No prints, just rubber goods."

  Everett hugged himself and shivered. "Jesus. Oh, Jesus, what a way to go."

  "Show me a nice way; I might take it," Fulton grumbled. He started down the steps. "But pass the word, Mr. Everett: beware of almond dil­does."

  Everett, his thoughts racing forward, called out: "Fulton!"

  The agent stopped at the van, unconsciously coming to attention. "Sir."