by Mike Barry
Marasco did not think of himself as an evil man. Evil had nothing to do with it; he was in business. The business he had to do with was drugs but that was an abstraction. It could just as easily have been cars or construction. The way a man could get into trouble and Marasco had seen this too many times not to remember the lesson, was to start thinking about the nature of his work and getting emotional about it. There was nothing emotional here. He was in supply and demand. He did his work well. He was a good organizer. He arranged for certain people to get what they needed from others who could deliver. He worked out prices, arrangements, methods of payment. Drugs? Marasco felt they could as well have been Oldsmobiles he was moving on the network from Turkey to New York to Saigon to San Francisco to Malaga to Chicago to…
But the breakdown in the delivery was distressing. This kind of thing was not supposed to happen. It never happened if you were a good businessman and exercised the kind of control and common sense which had brought Marasco to this point. Son of a bitch he thought and peeked through a shade to see in the closing light a flash of his wife’s buttocks as she bent over on the lawn back from her tennis game, picked up a scrap of paper and walked to a pail to dispose of it. A neat, organized woman, Jill Marasco, with the kind of bearing and walk that showed a quiet, fierce sexuality without any self-consciousness. He had done very well with this one, his third. Very well indeed…
Marasco put back the shade, turned from the window and took the seat behind his desk, elbows on the panelling, rubbing his hands softly, waiting for Scotti and the other man to come in. He warned himself to maintain a glacial reserve and calm against which they could only break and die but became aware, without really being able to control it, of a mad fluttering of his right eyelid which made him feel as if his skull was being displaced. It got to you. Let the fact be faced, after a while, no matter what you did to seal off, it would get to you. It would get to Terello who had panicked and it had gotten to Scotti who had been brought here under a gun and now it was getting, just a little, to Albert Marasco.
He wondered if it was getting to Scotti’s friend.
V
It hadn’t been too difficult. No reason to think that it would have been, the way that Scotti had folded up in the Half Moon Lounge, but sometimes the lack of resistance even in the seemingly tough ones surprised Wulff. Even though, as a cop in the old days who had seen them taking the collapse hundreds of time, he should have been used to it.
Anyway it had not been too difficult with Scotti; the man had crumpled like a lump beside him in the Dart, speaking only when spoken to and the one time that Wulff had raised his hand the man had quivered, cowered, wrapped himself in his own armlock and fallen back against the door. “Albert Marasco,” he had said and had given an address, “I was supposed to deliver it to a guy named Albert Marasco. But not today. Tomorrow. In an office.”
“I think we’ll make a home visit,” Wulff had said, “he’ll be happy to see a quickie delivery, won’t he?”
“You don’t understand. Never go to Marasco’s home in Islip. I’m not even supposed to know his address except that I heard it around. Don’t hit me,” Scotti said, his wide eyes blinking, “I can’t take it. The pain I mean, I just can’t take it.”
“I wouldn’t waste the time,” Wulff said. The West Side Highway, crosstown on 34th to the Midtown Tunnel, the Long Island Expressway. The Southern State Parkway. An easy drive even at this hour but a long one. The Marascos did indeed keep themselves way out of the picture.
“Listen,” Scotti said after a long, long time. Obviously he had been thinking, “you want to do this, why don’t you let me out of it? Let me out of the car.”
“No.”
“You don’t need me,” Scotti whined. “You want to see Marasco, you go the fuck and see him. Leave me out of it.”
“I enjoy your company.”
“He’s going to kill you you know. You ever get past his checkpoints and into that house you’re a dead man.”
“Nobody understands,” Wulff said levelly, “I can’t get the message delivered somehow. I am a dead man. I was killed three months and eighteen days ago and now I’m just going through the moves. There’s nothing your Marasco can do to me even if he could. Which he can’t.”
“That’s okay. You’re a dead man? That’s great. But why don’t you just leave me out of it?”
“Wouldn’t pay,” Wulff said, getting a little struggle from the engine as he cut it up to seventy-five off a curve, checked out an exit sign, “I need some company. You’ve got a great career, Scotti; what you’ve got to do is to stick with it to the end.”
That finished off the conversation all the way to Islip. Scotti sat compactly against the door, rolling his fingers and looking hopelessly out the windshield. Wulff supposed that if the man had had the strength he might have tried to bolt at a tollbooth or swinging off slow at an exit ramp but all the fight had gone from Jack Scotti. He was not the efficient little man who had set up his rounds of drinks at the Half-Moon Lounge, but something very different. Resistance was gone.
A pity in a way because if Scotti had still had some fight Wulff might have killed him. Killing this type was a pleasure; he had discovered that already. It would be fun to shoot him down in a ravine somewhere and leave the body for the creeping plants. But there was no fun in shooting a corpse and Scotti was more than halfway there.
Besides, he might need Scotti to get face to face with Marasco. After that he could or couldn’t handle it but a cold entry through checkpoints might be really tough. Yes, Wulff thought looking at the shaking little man, mercy had its own rewards. You could do the compassionate thing and gain from it at the same time. Maybe there was a reason to be an optimist in this world after all.
He decided that he didn’t like that line of thought. He killed it. There was no hope. You only did what you had to do now because there was nothing else. But the Wolf was a fool if he thought he was going to win or even hold them even. There were millions of them and only one of him and like pack animals they could not care in the least how many of their number dropped as long as the individual got through. He figured right from the beginning that it was hopeless.
But in the absence of anything else you had to try. The Wolf. He liked that. When you got started on a new life the first thing you needed was a new identity and oh yes indeed he was getting one.
They cut off a side road at Scotti’s hand-gesture and drove over bumps and ruts, past greenery and enamel dogs to the checking gate.
Scotti did the talking to the man at the gate who made a phone call and there was no trouble at all. They got right through. There was the frisk, of course, but Wulff had expected that. There was never so much luck in the world that he would be able to face scum like Albert Marasco with a gun. The realities were stiffer.
But they could be more rewarding.
VI
Marasco turned and said, “I want to know what you’re doing here in my house.”
Wulff shrugged carefully, measuring the man. Dapper, controlled, certainly threatening but there was something about this one too which reminded him of the Jack Scotti he had seen for the first time. “I had a few questions,” Wulff said noncommitally.
“I have nothing to do with this,” Scotti said. His face seemed to have turned rounder and more desperate since he had seen Marasco. It was as if the man had had to calculate who frightened him more and Marasco was still the winner by a slight edge. “He pulled a gun on me.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Marasco said quietly. He looked at Wulff through appraising eyes. “I want to hear anything from you, I’ll ask.”
“You want me to take him?” the guard asked. A big, healthy Anglo-Saxon type in his mid-twenties. Blond haid, blue eyes, a nice healthy snout of a rifle barrel poking from between his fingers. Well, it took all kinds. He came a step nearer Wulff. “I’ll finish him off,” he said, “just say the word.”
“In time,” Marasco said with a dismissive gesture. “Back off.”
/>
“Anything you want,” the guard said sullenly. Wulff had the feeling that Marasco underpaid his help. Not necessarily dumb of him: where else did they have to go? “You talk, friend,” he said to Wulff. “You tell the man anything he asks, you hear?”
“I intended to.”
“I told you to lay the fuck off,” Marasco said to the guard. He waved a hand, the guard backed all the way into a corner. Marasco seemed very irritated. in fact, to Wulff, he seemed about to come apart. Hazards of the business.
“He pulled a gun on me,” Scotti said, “and then he beat the shit out of me. I couldn’t do a thing.”
“My heart bleeds,” Marasco said.
“I was making a routine pickup, that’s all. He pulls a gun on me and wants to know where it was going. I had to tell him! I had to tell him, didn’t I? What would you have done?”
“I don’t know,” Marasco said softly. “it’s hard to say, having never been in your position “
“Now listen—”
Marasco raised his head and looked at the guard, pointed toward Scotti. “Shoot him,” he said.
“With pleasure,” the guard said. He lifted the rifle and toyed with the catch.
“Now wait a minute,” Scotti said, his voice breaking, “what is this? I didn’t betray anything. I told him that we’d go right to you and you’d finish him off. I warned him—”
“Now,” Marasco said quietly.
“Yes,” the guard said. He grunted, cleared his throat softly, hoisted the rifle and shot Scotti in the ear.
The man spun, lurched against carpeting, rolled. The guard deposited another bullet into the man’s forehead. Scotti lay still.
It was a good aseptic job. Except for the scant threads of blood, Scotti looked intact. That kind of impact wound, Wulff knew, left very little trail. You had to give the guard credit then. He was a professional.
“Now him?” the guard said, pointing to Wulff.
“Not now,” Marasco said. “Wait.”
“I’ll wait.”
“Just leave the bastard here,” Marasco said, gesturing to the corpse. “It improves the decor. There’s nothing I like more than a dead body in my den. It gives the place a certain aura of class.”
“You want me to get it out of here?” the guard said cautiously.
“No,” Marasco said, “I want you to leave it here for maybe three or four days until it starts to get ripe. Maybe my wife can come in and I’ll introduce her around. Also I can talk to it in odd moments.”
I’ll get it right out,” the guard said. He walked toward the phone, “I mean I’ll get somebody to come right away.”
“No you won’t,” Marasco said. “You shot him. You drag him out yourself.”
“Oh,” the guard said softly, “you mean you want me to leave you alone—” He broke off and pointed at Wulff. “Alone with him,” he finished.
“I’ll take the chance,” Marasco said wryly. “You’ll need two hands to do some wrestling so just let me hold that rifle for you.”
Looking at Wulff a little edgily, the blond passed over his rifle. Marasco took it smoothly, checked the safety, blew out a little powder and putting a knee up on the desk, balanced the rifle across it, holding it in the area of Wulff’s chest.
“You do that very nicely,” Wulff said, “with real skill.”
“Thanks very much,” said Marasco. “Are you going to get that son of a bitch out of here or should I put this thing on you?”
“All right,” the guard said hesitantly. The situation seemed entirely beyond him. He bent over Scotti’s body grunting, seized it by the heels and dragged it slowly toward him. Scotti came easily, lightly into his grasp. The guard eased back a foot, kicked the door open and took Scotti away with him. As he had gone in life so did Scotti in death: submissively. He was nothing if not cooperative. The guard slid the corpse into the hallway and closed the door with an imperceptible click.
Marasco looked at Wulff and said, “I want to know what you’re after.”
Wulff shrugged. “I’m a free-lance investigator,” he said, “a researcher call it. I like to follow things up, trace them down to their sources.”
“You’re cute,” Marasco said. He ran a hand over the stock of the rifle. “You don’t look like a clever guy but you certainly think you are, don’t you?”
“That depends,” said Wulff. The feeling came upon him that in looking at Marasco he was now getting as close to the true source of the power and the enemy as he ever had but he could not give that feeling too much credence. Marasco was too edgy. His hands fluttered just a little bit. When you came right down to it, Wulff was pretty sure, this was just another Scotti after all.
“I want to know what you’re doing here in my house, in my den,” Marasco said. “And I want to know what I’m going to do with you.”
“I can’t answer the second part,” Wulff said softly. “But I’ll answer the first like before: I’m a kind of free-lance researcher. I like to track things down to their source and draw conclusions.”
“Sure.”
“Sure,” Wulff agreed. “I was up at 137th Street and Madison Avenue with a guy named Ric Davis who had some money in his pocket and was waiting to pick up a shipment from a guy named Jessup. Jessup was the second link you see and Jessup told me that he got the stuff from a man named Scotti. So then I had to go and see Scotti and find out who he was supposed to pass the money that Jessup got on to. And you know what? Scotti said the man was you. Now what I want to find out is what happens to the money after it gets out of here. Research.”
“Research,” Marasco said. He shifted his position slightly, raised the rifle barrel a trace, aiming it now at Wulff’s head. “Guys like you, free-lance researchers can get killed you know.”
“Scotti was no researcher.”
“He got killed too,” Marasco said quietly. “A lot of people can get killed when they start poking around into the grounds.”
“All I want to know,” Wulff said, “is what your wife thinks you do. Does she think you’re a gentle trucking magnate? Or maybe she thinks that you’re a stock investigator, a market manipulator. Or do you just tell her that it’s none of her fucking business and hit her in the mouth when she asks?”
Marasco carefully took a cigar from his jacket pocket and put it, still in the wrapping, into his mouth. “I don’t think I like you,” he said.
“It’s kind of mutual, Marasco.”
“I don’t like your interests or your explanations. And I don’t like your fucking questions either. What happened to Jessup and Davis?”
“They had a couple of little accidents,” Wulff said quietly. “Like Scotti, they started imagining that they were dead and guess what? Dreams can come true, even in this world.”
“Very cute,” Marasco said meditatively, chewing on the cigar. “Do you think I should kill you now?”
“You did, Marasco,” Wulff said.
“What’s that?”
“I died three months ago. I died on the top floor of a building on West 93rd Street. You’re talking to a dead man.”
Marasco’s eyes blinked. “Don’t get philosophical with me. You’re in trouble.”
“I’m in no trouble at all, Marasco. I’m dead. There’s nothing you can do but confirm it. I’m a walking, talking, angry dead man, Marasco. The smartest thing you could do would be to put me out of commission right now.”
“And why shouldn’t I?” Marasco said, raising the gun slightly, “why shouldn’t I do just that one simple thing?”
“You won’t,” Wulff said. “You have no mercy. You’ll keep me in commission.”
“You think so?”
“I know so. Men like you never work on margin, Marasco. You’ll deal with anything in the world except doubt. Until you find out exactly who and what I am and what I’ve done you’ll keep me around. That was Scotti’s problem. You had squeezed him dry. No surprises left. So anytime you wanted to, you could just kill him. That was Scotti’s mistake; holding nothing
back.”
“I don’t think I like you,” Marasco said, uncertainty battling hatred in his eyes, “I don’t really like you at all.”
“I told you, it’s mutual. What else do you have to say?”
“I want to know what your game is.”
“If I told you you wouldn’t believe me.”
“Try me,” Marasco said, “come on and try me.” He took the cigar from his mouth finally, stuck it like an exclamation point back into his pocket. “One thing I always was was a good listener.”
“You listen but you don’t believe. That’s the secret of your business success. You really know what I’m going to do, Marasco?”
“I’m waiting.”
“I’m going to put you out of business.”
“Sure thing.”
“I’m going to put you out of business and the guys on bottom and top of you. And two layers bottom and top, all the way down into the sewer and all the way up to Sands Point or Malaga or the Federal cells where the really big ones operate because you’re still small time and I see that. You’re so small time you’re afraid of me; I’m an uncertain element. I’m going to put you and your trade out of business, Marasco and get the country back again.”
Marasco sighed and holding the rifle unmoving reached into his desk drawers, began to prowl around absently with a free hand. No point in trying to jump him: too much distance. Marasco might be small time but he wasn’t that small time. It would be a bad mistake to confuse him with Scotti or Davis or for that matter, even the guard. Different levels, subtle differences of skill all the way along the line. Marasco came out of the desk with a small, thick notebook and tossed it to the glass in front of him, kicked the door closed. “I think I know who you are,” he said.
“I just told you who I was. I’m trying to simplify your life as much as possible now; you ought to be grateful.”
“I really think I know. And if I do it’s all in this book,” Marasco said. “Everything’s written down. All I have to do is to look you up.”