by Basil Copper
I covered the ground in five seconds flat. I stopped in the shadow with my foot on the lowest rung of the staircase. The silence was unnatural and I found myself sweating. I made my way up about a millimetre at a time. It seemed like ten years before I got to the top; the damned thing kept creaking and flaking rust from the handrail was falling into the area below. The noise was probably equivalent to a feather falling three feet into cold rice, but to me it sounded like steel chain hitting a bass drum from a thousand feet.
So I lay down and went up the staircase on all fours; it was damn silly but the characters we were dealing with could knock a fly’s eyelash out at fifty paces and the time for taking chances was gone. It was still quiet and I finally got to the top; the effort involved made Everest seem like an afternoon stroll on a bowling green. I eased my gun out of the holster on the way up and fanned it in front of me as I put one foot down after the other. I walked so softly it wouldn’t have bruised the surface of a greengage jelly.
I found myself on a wide wooden planked platform which ran around the top of the building. It went away into the darkness for perhaps a couple of hundred feet; there were beams and gantries jutting out at the top, a line of windows and several doors. Not a light showed anywhere, but I decided to try the doors, one by one, before looking elsewhere. The owl hooted again and my nerves felt like they always do when someone slides a squeaky pencil down a slate. I eased along the platform and softly tried the handle of the first door; I put my weight against it, but it didn’t budge. I tried the second without any result.
I was just moving on to the third when, with heart-stopping suddenness, a brilliant light sliced across the front of my face and chopped the boards ahead of me with harsh clarity. I felt sweat running down inside my coat. I took two quick steps to my right and flattened myself against the wall. The gun automatically came up and I transferred it to my left hand and edged along the wall with my right. I worked over to the window with infinite slowness. The interior was empty, but it looked something like the inside of a mill except that the machinery I could see was made of metal instead of flat grinding stones.
There were some rough wooden benches and crates. A single naked bulb burned in the ceiling fitting. It looked pretty dusty, like the plant hadn’t been operating for years. I went down below the level of the window and made for the door. I got the door open about two inches and my doubts dropped away. There was a big wooden crate just inside. On the top of it was a single green apple-core that could have belonged to only one person. It was a beautiful sight.
I stepped inside the door and lowered my gun to look around for Tucker. It wasn’t the only mistake I had made that evening, but it was the biggest and pretty nearly fatal. I found myself looking at one of the ugliest faces this side of the Chamber of Horrors. It belonged to a big, chunky-built negro with mean eyes and one of the grimmest mouths that ever came out of San Quentin. His gun was rock-steady and perfectly level; it pointed straight at my navel and I didn’t have to look at the silencer to know who he was what he was or to realize that the safety-catch was off and that the bullet was a fraction of a second off my gut.
I stood perfectly still and we stared at one another for perhaps two whole seconds. He gave a sinister smile that was probably the last thing quite a number of people in L.A. had to remember on their way to the grave.
“Come on in, white trash,” he said with a soft, Southern slur.
I dropped the gun at the same time as something stirred behind me. Then the top of my head exploded, cannon shells were pumping into my engine and I went down in flames into a shark-filled sea.
*
Dan Tucker looked worried. His face was red, his eyes were hot and angry. So far as I could make out he was trussed up like a Christmas parcel. He sat in the angle of some machinery and looked at me with concern. My mouth felt like the floor of a coke store and a couple of boiler makers were playing a Bach cantata with steel bars on the top of my skull. I tasted blood on the inside of my mouth. Carefully — I was worried in case the front of my face fell off — I tried to move my hands. They seemed to be tied together with something like baling wire.
“Don’t try to move,” said Tucker. I had just voted him Comic of the Month, when I realized he was being solicitous about my physical condition, rather than humorous about my situation.
Tucker was roped to what looked like a piece of earthcrushing machinery. We were alone but I felt that company was close at hand. I closed my eyes for a bit and when I opened them again the mist had cleared somewhat. I spat to clear my throat and it was pure blood; that could mean anything. I didn’t like the blood from my insides. I explored with my tongue. I was relieved to find it was only a tooth which had cut the inside of my mouth. I should live — for a bit, anyway. Half an hour? An hour? I weighed it up quite dispassionately, for it was for sure that our friends Charlie Johnson and Sirocco couldn’t afford to let us go. Too much was at stake for that.
I flicked my eyes at Tucker. “No cops?” I said.
“No cops,” he said. “Where’d you get the call from?”
“One of your sergeants,” I said. “He’s probably halfway to Alaska by now.”
He looked incredulous.
“Don’t let’s waste a lot of time on this,” I told him. “A chummy fellow name of Clark. He said you wanted to see me here alone. I presume you got the same message from him, only giving my name. The oldest gag in the world.”
It was obvious Dan still had no idea what I was talking about.
“We’re in a tough spot,” I said. “How long have we got?”
“Might be half an hour,” he said. “These babies — Sirocco and the negro — are waiting for someone higher up. They obviously want to find out how much we know — before the execution.”
“Sounds great,” I said without enthusiasm. “Are we being watched?”
“They ain’t far away,” he said. “That’s why I asked you not to move. I’ve been working on these ropes ever since I got here.”
“Any luck?” I asked. He winced and I saw sweat on his forehead.
“Matter of time,” he said. “But time is one thing we ain’t got.”
“How did they get the drop on you?” I asked.
“Simple,” he said. “I expected you. Someone came out on the balcony and shouted for me to come on up. I got up the ladder. I was pretty puffed so I stood in the door …”
“And finished your apple,” I said.
“Why, yes,” he said without surprise. “Then the two of them came round the door and that was it. Like taking the crutches out from under a cripple.”
“Just about their style, too,” I said. I looked back over my shoulder. I couldn’t see anything, except the corner of a door some way off.
“Listen, Dan,” I said. “This is very important. Sirocco and Jones are only two noodles in a very big plate of soup. You won’t see your desk sergeant again, either. He was another member of the organization.”
Tucker looked up at the ceiling. He smiled very patiently.
“Involving Braganza, Horvis and the rest,” he said.
“Exactly,” I said. “It sounds corny, Dan, I know, but this business is on a very large scale. Leakages of information, details of war plant, atomic installations, all the way from Washington to Alaska.”
Tucker’s mouth sagged open. “How the hell do you know?” he began.
I told him. This time I really levelled with him. I started right at the beginning and filled in all the holes for him. Margaret Standish, the key, the Chase National. It took about ten minutes all told — ten minutes we could ill afford, but somebody else had to be able to hold all the pieces together, though Bert Dexter’s insurance company wouldn’t have handled either of us. I told him about Bert too. His face was grim when I finished.
“I ought to blast you to hell and back for holding out on that key,” he said. “But this is neither the time nor the place.”
As he spoke I could feel my head clearing; the steam hammers
were still going, but blood was coming back into my limbs and I tried flexing my arms against the bonds.
“Let me slice it this way,” I said. “For argument’s sake let’s say this large-scale espionage system has been operating for some years.”
“The Russkies?” he said.
“How would I know?” I said. “What does it matter? The Russians, the Poles, the East Germans, the Communist cell of Peoria, Illinois, who cares? The end result’s the same. Let’s just call them the buyers. They’re the people at diplomatic level who make contact with the mugs on this side. They link up with the respectable people, the big shots like the man who’s coming here tonight. They in turn employ a Horvis or a Braganza; at the lowest end of the scale you get the thugs who do the trigger work. The Siroccos and the Charlie Jacksons of this world. They don’t even know who they’re working for or why. They just line up the victims, squeeze the trigger, collect their money and leave town.”
I stopped for a moment; there was a noise like a car door slamming. We strained our ears but it wasn’t repeated, so I guessed it might have been the wind.
“Go on,” said Dan. “I’m beginning to get interested.” He leaned forward, testing the ropes that tied his hands. Sweat shone on his forehead.
“This is what I think happened,” I said. “Horvis felt, as a link in the chain that he wasn’t getting a big enough cut. He decided to set up his own deal. He sends out Braganza to try one of the most dangerous double crosses in the business. But Horvis plays it smart in the Sunset Canyon caper. Hearing that his employers — the Washington or New York boys perhaps — have got wind of the deal he sends out Braganza with a briefcase filled with worthless paper.
“Sirocco and Jones, the professional hoods, have orders to liquidate the Horvis group. They trail Braganza to the Canyon and wipe him out, but the briefcase has already been passed to the Reds.
“Horvis, who has stashed the stuff away in the Chase National attempts to bluff it out with the big boys. But he gives Margaret Standish the deposit box key for safe keeping. And there’s Horvis sitting on top of a pile of dynamite; in the middle with a fortune within his grasp but unable to make a move because he’s watched by his own group. The documents, which deal with installations whose value will increase as time goes by, won’t depreciate.
“This is the set-up when I’m called in. Horvis hopes to save his own skin by pretending to initiate his own search for the briefcase. He hopes to stave off Doomsday long enough to set up another deal. Also, by spinning me a yarn that smells from here to breakfast, he hopes that I’ll be just dumb enough to play along without turning up the truth. But the top boys have sent the two hatchet men back to L.A. to put the pressure on Horvis; the group makes the wrong move, believing that I’ve been brought in to smoke them out. They fix Horvis, thinking that at the same time they’ll frighten me off.”
I stopped for a second. “They weren’t doing a bad job, either,” I said. Tucker allowed himself a faint smile in the intervals of straining against the ropes.
“It sounds a pretty fair construction, Mike,” he said. “I’ll buy it. But where does Carol Channing come in?”
“I’m working on it,” I told him. “At least all the facts fit. It’s the only set-up big enough to involve so many people. Why would Jacoby be mixed up in it? Would any ordinary gang risk rubbing out a police captain? And Jacoby took his orders direct from the D.A., sometimes in direct contradiction to the line you were working on.”
Tucker’s face looked grey. “You can’t mean the D.A. — ?” he began.
“I don’t mean Stalin’s grandmother,” I told him. “This is big stuff.”
“All right,” he said. “This is a job for Washington and the CIA boys.”
“Now you’re talking,” I said. “This would be great if we were in L.A. Police HQ right now, instead of being candidates for sets of wooden underwear.”
Tucker smacked his lips together like he was in pain. “Are you really sure you’ve got all your marbles, Mike?”
“Look,” I said. “That’s what everybody’s been saying since the thirties. Nobody believes these things until the lid of hell blows off. Alger Hiss, Pontecorvo …”
“Don’t go on,” he said. “I get the general idea.”
He leaned his head back against the rusted mine machinery and closed his eyes. A light wind seemed to have blown up outside, lifting the humidity; it whispered over the tin roof of the hut we were lying in and it wasn’t only the faint rasp over the metal that grated my nerves. I was listening intently as I leaned forward and tested the bindings that tied my hands together; I couldn’t shift them. The job had been too well done and it seemed to be lengths of cable that were biting into my wrists.
There was a scuffling noise outside the hut and I knew we had only minutes, if that. I stretched again and explored the cable that bound me. It wasn’t fixed to anything and I could move my hands. I knew I couldn’t cut it or break it but I had an idea I might do something providing it was long enough. If I could have a few more minutes clear it might be managed. If Sirocco had tied me up and the negro hadn’t noticed, we had a slim chance. I didn’t know whether to make the attempt after the visitor had been or before. We might not be alive after. I told Tucker what I had in mind. He looked dubious. “I think I can work free in time if you can distract their attention,” he said.
I wriggled back against the wall and felt the cable again. It was pretty tight around each wrist, but there was about three inches slack in between. It might be enough for my purposes. Trouble is, I’m a fairly tall guy and I didn’t know if I could wriggle my legs through. It was a miracle they hadn’t tied my ankles; then we could have sung Auf Wiedersehen for sure.
I leaned forward and then fell sideways. The blood was beginning to come back into my hands. The object of the exercise was to force my arms over my buttocks. Either my health wasn’t so good or the knock on the head had been harder than I imagined. The blood pumped in my head and beads of sweat sprinkled my shirt. I felt the toe of Tucker’s boot against the back of my hands. “Hold on,” he said. I braced myself on the floor and tried to stay in position. He pushed hard. I felt like my hands were being torn off. Then something gave. It wasn’t the wire, but I went limp and felt immediate relief. My wrists felt like they were cut and bleeding but were now in a position beneath my knees. If I couldn’t get them in front of me I should be worse off than ever, because I couldn’t stand or run. After resting I hunched back in a sitting position.
Tucker didn’t look like he was doing much but I could sense his hands were going overtime behind his back. He was directly facing the door and couldn’t make a lot of movement if there was anyone watching outside. Then I started again. I leaned back against the wall and pushed my hands down towards my ankles. I wished my legs weren’t so long. At the same time I brought my right leg up and tried to hook it over my hands and the piece of wire that held them together. Without the slack I could never have done it. Sweat ran into my eyes and the room swayed. I had to stop. My heel was just caught over the wire and I stayed like this. Swell position if anyone came in.
“You know what you look like?” Tucker said calmly. He might have been home listening to the radio. “Trussed turkey isn’t everyone’s idea of a good meal, but …”
“Get —” I told him, naming an impossible feat. He clicked his teeth.
“Easy to see you weren’t in the Elks,” he said. It relieved my feelings anyway. I made one big effort, pulled my foot up towards me; felt my knees ramming into my face. Something gave — either the cable or a tendon and I fell over backwards. A slow pain began to creep up my leg, but this was no time to slacken off; lying as I was, it was more difficult but on my back I could brace myself and rest my aching muscles. I started to move my left leg up towards the wire loop round my wrists to complete the job; the strain made impossible demands and the groan which came through my teeth surprised me.
Either I had some serious damage somewhere when I was hit over the head,
or I was really out of condition. Anyway, I should find out in a few minutes. I got the heel of my left shoe over the loop and, like the other, it stuck there, with every nerve of my body shrieking; blood was running down my hands where the wire chafed it and all the weight of my left leg was making it vibrate.
I could feel my shoe slipping forwards, which was worse than useless, so I gave a desperate kick, my shoe came away quite suddenly, and I was free. I rested for a moment, smothered in dust from the floor, my wrists chafed and cut but no longer with that back-breaking strain on my arms and legs. I was lying on my back, my hands tied as before but now they were in front of me.
Like this I should have at least some sort of a chance, providing I could first find a weapon and then retain the strength to hold it. I tried to wipe my forehead on the sleeve of my jacket.
“Over there,” said Tucker very slowly and calmly. Through the popping in my ears the words penetrated with difficulty. He nodded towards the door. Under the bench against which I was leaning, I could see the handle of some sort of tool. I scrabbled towards it and my hands closed over the chill of metal. I had difficulty in holding it but I pulled it back towards me and shoved it in behind me; it was a big steel bar for opening packing cases with. It would be ideal if I could use it properly; it had a claw for pulling out nails and a wicked-looking spike on it. It gave me a lot of confidence.
Just then I heard somebody coming up the stairs outside. They made no attempt to conceal themselves. Whoever it was, was heavy and self-assured; I could hear the treads creak with the strain and the whole balcony seemed to vibrate. We had perhaps thirty seconds. My one chance of passing over the different position of my bound hands lay in the possibility that whoever had done it had done the job alone; if two or more men had carried it out together I was sunk.