by Mike Barry
He picked up the phone and by memory dialed To-rello’s number. “Get him there,” he said to the woman who answered.
“He not home now. Who is this calling?”
“Get him to the phone.”
“I told you,” the woman said, “he went out a long time ago. Maybe he be back tonight maybe tomorrow morning. Who is calling?”
“This is Peter Vincent,” he said, “get the son of a bitch to the phone, please.” With news of the fire, Terello would be holed up in his apartment, he knew. Too cunning to expose himself but too frightened to run he would lock himself up like a rat.
“Oh,” the voice said, “Peter Vincent?”
“I said who it was. Get him to the phone right now.” He kept his voice level, calm, played his fingers over the desk. Show no emotion. Show no emotion ever and particularly to the lower echelons play it like a machine. If there was no personna, they could never touch him.
Terello came on the phone, his voice open and breaking. Peter Vincent simply did not call the Terellos of this world; the man must have been terrified. “Yes?” he said, “Mr. Vincent.”
“This is Peter Vincent. What went wrong yesterday?”
“Well I don’t know,” Terello said after a choked pause, “I just don’t know anything about it. I mean, to talk over the phone—”
“Are you trying to tell me how to talk?”
“No,” Terello said desperately, “no. Never.”
“What happened to Marasco?”
“I don’t know,” Terello said. He sounded bleak, stripped now of energy. “I just don’t know.”
“When did you last see him?”
“I was there yesterday afternoon. I left early though. I had to tell him about this thing—”
“I know about that,” Vincent said shortly. “What happened?”
“I tell you, I just don’t know. We were there; the stuff just wasn’t. The guy supposed to be making the transfer—”
“Did you take it?”
“Are you crazy?” Terello squealed. His voice modulated instantly. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I apologize, I really do. But you should know me better than that. I’d never do anything like that at all. I do my work.”
“What about the two ditched on the drive?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t you? Are you sure?”
“Honest to Christ,” Terello said, “what two on the drive? What is this?”
“Two men I know were found on the Harlem River Drive yesterday afternoon, very dead.”
“I don’t know anything about that at all,” Terello said, breathing raggedly, “this is the first I hear about it. I’m not into that kind of work at all—”
“I didn’t say you were. Then the fire.”
“I know about the fire. I told you, I left there in the early afternoon.”
“When did you last see him?”
“About four o’clock,” Terello said. “Jesus Christ, you don’t think I’m messed up in this, do you? He was my boss for God’s sake.”
“So maybe you’re an ambitious man.”
“I’d have to be crazy to think like that. I would have been dead, years ago, if I thought like that. I came home about six o’clock and I was home all night. Ask my wife.”
“Spouses can’t testify in court,” Peter Vincent said dryly, “inadmissible evidence.”
“You’re calling this a court?” The man was babbling now. “Listen, Mr. Vincent, I beg of you. I didn’t want to see him die, I’m just sick about this. I didn’t love the man, I can’t lie to someone like you but I liked him and he was my boss and that was all there was to it. I wouldn’t ever do anything like that, I’d get myself killed. And the two on the drive, I don’t even know who they could be. I’m not into that.”
“What about the shipment?”
“What about it? I was there; the stuff wasn’t. You can’t hang me on something like that for shit’s sake! Please, give me a break, will you?”
Vincent took the phone away from his ear and regarded it for a moment. He had a vivid picture of Terello at this instant even though he had never seen the man: he would be a short, fat, balding character sitting now in a bathrobe, hunched over the phone, smoking, huge beading droplets of sweat pouring off him as his wife looked at him frantically from the bedroom door. He would be waving his wife away, trying to tell her to get the hell out of there but she would not be moving because she had no idea what was really going on and would be afraid that the man was having a heart attack. Vincent sighed. Good instincts didn’t mean that you had to necessarily enjoy the pictures they painted in your mind. He brought the phone back to his ear.
“All right, Terello,” he said, “you sit tight.”
“You mean stay indoors?”
“That might not be a bad idea.”
“I got things to do and I did hope to make the funeral—”
“Don’t worry about the funeral. Going to the funeral won’t do you any good and it sure as hell won’t help Marasco where he’s at now. You stay at the apartment and wait for word.”
“How long? When will I get word?”
“I don’t know,” Vincent said quietly, “that depends on what I decide. It could be five minutes from now and then again you could be sitting around in your bathrobe for ten years. Take up crossword puzzles. Learn solitaire. Watch some television.”
“Okay. Okay.”
“Stay underground and be reachable at all times.”
“Oh I will,” Terello said, “I will.”
“And don’t you ever try to get in touch with me,” Vincent said. “I have something to say, you’ll hear. Otherwise you just sit because if you don’t hear I’ve got nothing to say.”
“I wouldn’t even know where to reach you,”
“That’s good,” Vincent said, “that’s real, real good,” and put the phone down abruptly, took the toothpick from his mouth and considered it.
He guessed that if he wanted he could project his instincts again and see Terello now; the man had barrelled the phone into his gut like a midwife might hold a baby, the cold surfaces were chilling him, the cigarette dangled from his mouth, smoke burning his eyes, he was weeping in terror. What the hell is this? his wife was saying, I thought that you were in sporting goods.
Well, that could wait. Terello was clean at least in the sense that he had had no part of this and had no information. It might be necessary to have him removed simply in the interests of keeping things neat at the end but that would depend upon other factors and strictly speaking might be avoided. There was no way to decide how to deal with Terello, however, until he understood the full picture and Vincent knew that he was a way from that, a long long way.
He sighed and threw away the toothpick. A strange, rolling constriction spread through his own gut: Peter Vincent had a feeling that he was in for it. He picked up the intercom and told the houseman that he had better bring up a pack of cigarettes right away. Also, divert all calls away from him; he was going to be tied up here for a while.
The houseman said sure. He asked Vincent if he really were going to go back to smoking after all the good work he had done to kick the habit. Vincent let him get away with it because the man was a good employee who also knew karate at the seventh level. He said that yes he was going back to smoking. He had tried smoking and that was good and he had tried quitting which was even better so now he would go back to smoking again so that he could have the satisfaction of quitting from the start.
The houseman seemed to understand this. Vincent concentrated on the phone, sharpened every singing nerve, and got down to serious work.
XIII
Wulff got up eight hours later, feeling a little better. The business from yesterday was little more than an ache in his guts; it went away when he stretched. He got out of bed, dressed, had some coffee, went outside leaving the door unlocked to pick up a paper. Let anyone come in; let them take whatever he had. This was the best way to co-exis
t with the rooming house. Everything that he needed he carried around in his head and jacket. The gun came in tight against his ribs.
Story in the late Times about the Marasco fire. The Times called him an executive. No one else had died. The News was somewhat more interesting; there were a couple of pictures in the centerfold and the News seemed to think of him as a mobster. Right on, News Wulff thought, vox populi omnia and went back to the rooming house, meditating.
Time to take on Peter Vincent, of course. But there was not only time, it was a question of timing; Wulff was still pacing it out. Going after Vincent would put him into a truly exposed position for the first time. Davis and Jessup were in a place where they could not talk; Marasco was there too, so far so good. The blond knew plenty of course and in due time would get the word out but it did not seem as if he would have to worry about the blond’s people for a day, a couple of days anyhow. Then they might have a good deal of trouble finding him. The trace would come to the police department and then, like Marasco’s black book, hit a dead stop. No one knew where he was now except Williams and Williams, Wulff was very sure, was not going to spread it around. That had been a sincere offer earlier today. He would have to think about it. He had always seen this as a solo operation, make it all the way or get dragged down alone but never involve or injure other people, but Williams was offering to go in with his eyes wide open. He would have to consider that. He would certainly give it some thought.
He walked back to the rooming house, digging the scene on West 97th which was pretty much like the scene all over town these days except for the residential East Side and parts of the business district, and those two sections were being kept clear only through a massive influx of cops and private security. As long as the business district and the one or two upper-class residential sections held out the city could avoid the appearance of total collapse but Wulff knew, the cops knew, the city knew that they were losing ground. It was only a matter of time now: two years, maybe three and the last vestiges of safety and wealth would collapse and New York City, the cities all over the country, would collapse into the pools of hell that surrounded them.
It was something to see, the West 97th Street scene; it was not even noon yet but the streets had the stuporous languor in August of a combat zone that had been passed through by two massive, if incompetent armies. On the fringes of the devastation or skipping around the middle once again were the isolated sources of energy: a resident struggling with grocery bags and terror trying to make it back to one of the high-rises before the club fell against the neck, a junkie freaked out on cheer dancing in the gutter. Oh, it was just beautiful. Wulff took the Times and pitched it as far as it would go, took the News and kicked it after. The hell with the newspapers. They were on the outside of it too; at best they could tell you what was going on. They would never tell you why. Why was not a newspaper game: start printing the truth and the free press would go out of business.
Wulff thought about Peter Vincent. The name, the address, the general relationship meant that this one was probably holed up in a townhouse with private security and alarm systems; there was probably the arsenal of a small army up there too. How the hell was he going to take it? There was no point in going in frontally; they would wipe him out in one burst. But security was of the type, probably, that could not be circumvented easily. Come in by air? Wulff smiled a bit wryly at that. He was not the 41st Airborne Division and Vincent was no bunch of ignorant peasants in a valley. They would eat him for breakfast.
So why bother? He had gotten three: not much but something and the Marasco knockoff would certainly be instructive to the next man who moved into Marasco’s approximate place. Why not retire or at least back off a long way; why not start picking his spots from now on? It might be more effective in the long run and it would certainly be conducive to a longer life.
The hell with life, Wulff muttered, sprinting up the steps of the brownstone, there’s no such thing for me anymore and that, more or less, seemed to be the point. There was no backing off now. He was already too far committed and more than half-dead. How long before he was tracked down? Did he really think that he could drift underground again, go back to the dreaming and careful planning of these past three months?
Bullshit. They would be coming after him in waves.
Up the stairs and into his room Wulff went, already thinking of the best way to take a reconnaissance on East 83rd Street, and as he opened the door he was hit with something that felt the size of a brick and was filled with spikes. He reeled and instinctively brought himself at bay against the wall, fighting before he even saw. So this was it. What a fool he had been to think that he had any open space at all.
The blond and his friends had been waiting for him.
At that he was lucky. The shot that he had taken ought, by rights, to have killed him, but the one who threw it was an amateur, overeager, a little scared, so anxious to get in the suckerpunch and crusher that he had not timed it properly. It was this one who now dived at Wulff, frantic to make up for the lost opportunity. Not thinking even about the gun he held which had been reversed and used as the clubbing weapon. A well put together beer-drinking type in his mid-twenties, this one, not that Wulff felt that he had the time to do extended character analysis in the middle of this.
The beer-drinker could have given him one shot, just backed off five or six paces like a quarterback dropping back fast into the pocket, and it would have all been over. But the only thing that this one seemed to understand was collision. He came at Wulff screaming, leaped at the last instant and launched himself into a shoulder tackle. Wulff, hurting bad, braced the shoulder that had been hit against the wall and came out fast with a foot, knocking the beer-drinker off balance in the air and upending him with a shriek. He fell to the floor screaming from pain and frustration and then remembered the gun, began like a child to level it with two hands, painfully.
Wulff, shoulder and all, fell on top of the man immediately. He had to bring the gun in he told himself, that was the way the training went anyway, bring it into the subject, the closer the better, you wanted to make him eat that gun, the gun was fine as long as it stayed wedged in close because that way he couldn’t shoot except by accident; the risks were too high. He might hit you or a piece of himself. Wulff concentrated on keeping the contact, letting the blows fall off him as they would. That wasn’t the important thing. The important thing was the gun. He ran a hand down the man’s thick forearm, found the gun finally and began to grapple with it.
The man’s knee flailed toward his groin. At the same time Wulff, turning in struggle, saw his old friend the blond framed suddenly against the window. Oh, the blond was a cute one; he sent his friend out to run the interference and then he came right through the line. If the interference got killed, so much the better, that way the blond could take all the credit with no one to dispute him. There was a gun in the blond’s hand. He levelled it.
“I’m going to kill you, you son of a bitch,” he said, “get ready for it, it’s coming.”
Those who announced their intentions had their doubts. Old police rule; most would-be jumpers simply jumped, didn’t stand on ledges and building roofs for hours gathering and entertaining crowds. If you wanted to do it, you already had done it; simple rule of life or death. Wulff forgot about the blond for the instant. Let him consider the act for a few instants longer while he dealt with the beer-drinker. The beer-drinker was certainly enough of a problem. This one was without doubts of any sort; his only problem was that he was stupid.
“You son of a bitch,” the beer-drinker said as Wulff explored his groin savagely, gambling on one final assault. It became a whine of pain. “For God’s sake Mel, help me,” the man groaned.
Too late. Wulff had the pistol. The beer-drinker went slack underneath him, the pistol rolling free and Wulff took it, rolled and rolled himself on the floor, ducking for the relative safety of the bed, waiting in one partition of his mind for the bullet from the blond to come. If
it ever came it would come now; people like this, if they could hit at all, would do it with a fleeing target. No shot. Wulff pushed the bed aside, wedged himself in there and coming around very, very fast, shot the blond in the throat. The blond’s gun fell, he heard a burbling scream of defiance and revulsion and the blond hit the floor.
Then he shot the beer-drinker in the knee, looking for the tendon right behind the joint. That would incapacitate the man, turn him into a cripple for life, on the other hand there would be so little bleeding from this spot that the man could lie here for hours losing barely a pint of blood. The blond wasn’t going to be doing a great deal more talking although he was bubbling and thrashing about energetically. That meant he had to save one of them for some answers.
The beer-drinker gurgled with an agony so profound that it defied sound of any sort and held himself rigid against the floor like a man on a crucifix. “Shut up,” Wulff said, and kicked him, “you’ll live.”
“Son of a bitch,” the man said, “oh son of a bitch.” He held himself tight on the floor. The lightest movement of the leg, Wulff knew, would cause the man to pass out. He remembered how it was.
Wulff got up fast and investigated the terrain. The blond dead or dying under the window, the beer-drinker screaming deep in his throat in the center of the room. The door itself flapping open, mindlessly, in the weak inner ventilation of the rooming house. He stepped to the door and looked down the hall. Absolutely no sign of activity. Usually there was a fair amount of traffic in these halls at almost any hour; fifteen to twenty living units on a floor full of drifters or drunkards meant plenty of action to and from the bathroom at all times but now Wulff could have been living in a deserted townhouse. He could have been beaten to a pulp in here and killed—and only a certain ineptness on the part of the attackers had prevented that—and no one would have peeked out a door.