by Nick Carter
I couldn’t blame Denver for feeling smug. His men had done a damned fine job.
“How do you figure it?” I asked, “You think Stocelli’s been fingering his own associates?”
“It sure looks that way, doesn’t it? And the Commission seems to think that way, too, since they’ve put out a contract on him. Stocelli’s a dead man.”
“Maybe,” I said, noncomittally. “He also heads one of the biggest families in the country. It’s not going to be easy for them to get to him. Anything else?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“I guess so,” I said. “If anything else breaks, let me know.”
I put down the telephone thoughtfully and sat in the armchair on the small balcony outside my window. I lit a cigarette, staring into the darkness of the soft Mexican night and reviewing the information that had been dropped on me so suddenly.
If what Denver had said was true—if there was a contract out on Stocelli—then he’d have his hands full for months to come. So much that he wouldn’t have time to bother Gregorius. In that case, my job was done.
Yet it seemed too simple, too fortuitous a solution to Gregorius’ problem.
I went over the facts again. And doubts began creeping into my mind.
If Stocelli really had set up the frames, he would have known that his own life was in danger. He’d have known that he’d have to go to ground until the heat disappeared. Certainly, he’d never come down here to Acapulco so openly.
It didn’t make sense.
Question: Where the hell would he go to get a hundred and two kilos of horse? That’s a lot of heroin. He wouldn’t get it from his Marseille friends—not if he was going to use it to frame them. And if he went to other sources, they’d have heard about so big a buy.
Question: Where would he lay his hands on more than a million dollars in cash to make the buy? Even in the underworld of the Mafia and the Syndicate, that kind of cash is hard to come by in one lump sum and in small, untraceable bills. No one takes checks and no one offers credit!
Question: Where would he have stored the stuff? Why hadn’t word gotten around about the stuff before it had been planted? Interpol, the French narcotics bureau—L’Office Central Pour la Suppression du traffic des Stupefiants—our own U.S. Department of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs—all should have heard about it beforehand from their vast networks of paid informers.
Another thought: If Stocelli could write off that large an amount of heroin, did it mean that he could lay his hands on even larger quantities?
Now, that was really something to produce chills in a person’s spinel.
Those questions and their numerous possible answers went around and around in my mind, like a riderless carousel with the wooden horses prancing up and down on their steel poles, and as fast as I reached for one idea, another would pop up that seemed more logical.
I finally became lost in a maze of frustration.
The biggest question of all was why Hawk had lent me to Gregorius? The clue lay in the. phrase, “lend-lease.” I was being lent, and Hawk was going to get something in return for my services. What?
And more than that. “No AXE” meant I couldn’t call on AXE’s facilities or manpower. This was strictly a private venture. Hawk was telling me that I was on my own!
Okay. I could understand that. AXE is a U.S. government super-secret agency, and this was definitely not a government job. So, no calls to Washington. No back-up men. Nobody to clean up the mess after me.
Just me, Wilhelmina, Hugo, and, of course, Pierre.
I finally said to hell with it and went downstairs to enjoy one last, pleasant drink on the terrace before I turned in for the night.
CHAPTER FIVE
I awoke in the darkness of my room to some atavistic, primordial sense of danger. Nude beneath the light blanket and sheet, I lay without moving, careful not to open my eyes or to indicate in any way that I was now awake. I even continued to breathe in the slow, regular pattern of sleep. I was aware that something had awakened me, a sound that did not belong in the room had touched my sleeping mind and thrust me into wakefulness.
I tuned my ears to catch anything that was different from the normal night sounds. I heard the slight rustle of the curtains in the breeze of the air conditioner. I heard the faint ticking of the small travelers’ alarm clock that I’d set up on the night table beside my bed. I even heard a drop of water that fell from the bathroom faucet. None of these sounds had drawn me from sleep.
Whatever was different spelled danger to me. An interminable minute went by before I heard it again— the slow, cautious slide of shoe across the carpet nap followed by a thin exhalation of breath that had been too tensely held.
Still without moving or changing the rhythm of my breathing, I opened my eyes the merest slit, watching the shadows in the room out of the corners of my eyes. There were three that didn’t belong. Two of them moved toward my bed.
In spite of every impulse, I forced myself to remain motionless. I knew that in a moment there would be no time for deliberately planned action. Survival would depend on the sheer speed of my instinctive, physical reaction.
The shadows moved closer. They separated, one moving to each side of my bed.
As they leaned over me, I exploded. My torso snapped erect, my hands swept out and caught them by their necks to smash their heads together.
I was too slow by a fraction of a second. My right hand caught one man, but the other pulled out of my grasp.
He made an angry sound and swung his arm down. The blow caught me on the left side of my neck at the shoulder. He’d hit me with more than just his fist; I almost passed out from the sudden pain.
I tried to throw myself out of bed. I got as far as the floor when the third shadow came diving at me, slamming me back against the bed. I knocked him away with my knee, driving it hard up into his groin. He screamed and doubled over, and I stabbed my fingers into his face, just missing his eyes.
For a moment, I was free. My left arm was numb from the blow on my collarbone. I tried to ignore it, dropping to the floor in a crouch just long enough to get the leverage to spring up into the air. My right foot slammed out horizontally in a flat-footed kick. It caught one of the men high on his chest, sending him smashing into the wall. He let out a grunt of pain.
I spun toward the third man, the edge of my hand sweeping out toward him in a short, sideways chop that should have broken his neck.
I wasn’t quite fast enough. I can remember starting the blow and seeing his hand swinging at me with a sap in it, and realizing, in that fraction of a second, that I wasn’t going to be able to get my head out of the way in time.
I was right. Everything went all at once. I dropped into the deepest, blackest hole I’ve ever been in. It took me forever to fall down and hit the floor. And then, for a long time, there was no more.
I came to and found myself lying on the bed. The lights had been turned on. Two of the men were sitting in armchairs near the window. The third man stood at the foot of my bed. He held a big, Spanish-made, Gabilondo Llama .45 calibre automatic pistol pointed at me. One of the men in the armchairs held a Colt .38 with a nasty looking two-inch barrel. The other tapped a spring-loaded sap into the palm of his left hand.
My head ached. My neck and shoulder ached. I looked from one to the other of them. Finally, I asked, “What the hell is all this about?”
The big man at the foot of my bed said, “Stocelli wants to see you. He sent us to bring you.”
“A telephone call would have done it,” I commented sourly.
He shrugged indifferently. “You mighta run.”
“Why should I run? I came down here just to meet with him.”
No answer. Only a shrug of a meaty shoulder.
“Where’s Stocelli now?”
“Upstairs in the penthouse. Get dressed.”
Wearily, I got off the bed. They watched me carefully while I pulled on my clothes. Every time I reached with my left arm, my shoulde
r muscles ached. I swore under my breath. The six months I’d been away from AXE had taken its toll. I hadn’t kept up with my daily yoga exercises. I’d let my body go slack. Not by much, but that little bit made the difference. My reactions were no longer as fast as they once had been. The fraction of a second delay had been enough for Stocelli’s three thugs. Once, I’d have been able to catch the two of them leaning over my bed and smash their heads together. The third would never have gotten off the floor after I’d kicked him.
“Let’s go,” I said, rubbing my aching collarbone. “We don’t want to keep Carmine Stocelli waiting, do we?”
Carmine Stocelli was seated in a low, deeply upholstered leather arm chair at the far end of an enormous living room in his penthouse quarters. His burly figure was wrapped in a silk lounging robe.
He was drinking coffee as we came in. He put down the cup and looked me over carefully. His small eyes peered out of a round, darkly jowled face filled with animosity and suspicion.
Stocelli was in his late fifties. His head was almost bald except for a monk’s tonsure of oily, black hair that he let grow long and combed in scanty wisps over a polished, bare skull. As he eyed me up and down, an aura of ruthless strength radiated from him so strongly that I could feel it.
“Sit down,” he growled. I sat on the couch across from him, rubbing my aching shoulder.
He looked up and saw his three boys standing nearby. A frown crossed his face.
“Out!” he snapped, gesturing with his thumb. “I don’t need you no more right now.”
“You gonna be okay?” asked the big one.
Stocelli looked at me. I nodded.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m gonna be okay. Beat it.”
They left us. Stocelli looked me over again and then shook his head.
“I’m surprised they got you so easy, Carter,” he said. “I heard you were a lot tougher.”
I met his gaze. “Don’t believe everything you hear,” I said. “I just let myself get a little careless.”
Stocelli said nothing, waiting for me to continue. I reached into my pocket and took out a pack of cigarettes and lit one.
“I came down here,” I said, “to tell you that Gregorius wants you out of his hair. What do I have to do to convince you that it would be bad for you to move in on him?”
Stocelli’s small, tough eyes never left my face. “I think you already begun to try to convince me,” he growled coldly. “And I don’t like what you been doing. Michaud, Berthier, Duprè—you framed them good. It’s gonna be damned hard for me to set up another source as good as them.”
Stocelli went on in his angry, rasping voice.
“Okay, I’m gonna give you the benefit of my doubt. Let’s say you set them up before you talked to me, okay? Like you had to show me you had balls and you could do me a lot of damage. I don’t grudge you that. But, when I talked to you from Montreal, I made it a point to tell you, no more games. Right? Didn’t I tell you no more games? So what happens?”
He ticked them off on his fingers.
“Torregrossa! Vignale! Gambetta! Three of my biggest customers. They got families I don’t want to fight with. You got your message across to me, all right. Now it’s my turn. I’m telling you—your boss is gonna be sorry he turned you loose on me! You hear me?”
Stocelli’s face was red with anger. I could see the effort it cost him to remain seated in his armchair. He wanted to get up and use his heavy fists on me.
“I had nothing to do with it!” I snapped the words into his face.
“Bullshit!” he exploded.
“Think about it. Where would I lay my hands on more than a hundred kilos of horse?”
It took a moment for that to sink in. Slowly, disbelief registered on his face. “A hundred kilos?”
“One hundred and two, to be exact. That’s what it added up to when they picked up Maxie Klein and Solly Webber—”
“—they picked up Maxie?” he interrupted.
“Tonight. Around ten o’clock. Along with fifteen kilos of the stuff.”
Stocelli didn’t bother to ask for the details. He was like a man stunned.
“Keep talking,” he said
“They’ve put out a contract on you.”
I let the words fall on him, but the only reaction I could see was a tightening of Stocelli’s jaw muscles under his heavy jowls. Nothing else showed on his face.
“Who?” he demanded. “Who put out the contract?”
“Cleveland.”
“Donati? Hugo Donati put out a contract on me? What the hell for?”
“They think you’re trying to take over the whole East Coast. They think you set up your friends.”
“Come on!” growled Stocelli, angrily. “What kind of shit is this?” He glared at me, and then he saw I wasn’t joking with him. His tone changed. “You serious? You really serious?”
“It’s the truth.”
Stocelli rubbed one thick hand across the rough bristles on his jaw.
“Goddamn it! It still don’t make sense. I know it wasn’t me.”
“Then you’ve got another headache,” I told him bluntly. “You could be the next on the list to be set up.”
“Me?” Stocelli was incredulous.
“You. Why not? If you’re not behind what’s going on, then someone else is trying to take over. And he’s going to have to get rid of you, Stocelli. Who would it be?”
Stocelli continued to rub his jowls with an angry gesture. His mouth twisted in a grimace of irritation. He lit a cigarette. He poured himself another cup of coffee. Finally, he said, grudgingly, “Okay, then. I’m gonna sit it out here. I took the penthouse. All four suites. Nobody comes in or goes out, except my boys. They can send down anybody they want, but I’m protected as long as I park my ass up here. I can stay for months if I have to.”
“And what happens in the meantime?” I asked.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Suspicion beetled his brows.
“While you sit here, Donati’ll be trying to take over your organization in New York. You’ll sweat out every day, wondering if Donati got to one of your button men here to set you up for a hit. You’ll live with a gun in your hand. You won’t eat because they might poison your food. You won’t sleep. You’ll he awake wondering if someone hasn’t planted a stick of dynamite in the rooms below you. No, Stocelli, face it. You can’t stay here safely. Not for long.”
Stocelli listened to me without saying a word. His swarthy face was gravely impassive. He didn’t move his little black eyes from mine. When I was through, he nodded his round head somberly.
Then he put down his coffee cup and suddenly grinned at me. It was like being smiled at by a fat vulture, his thin lips in his round face twisting themselves into a humorless parody of friendliness.
“I just hired you,” he announced, pleased with himself.
“You just what?”
“What’s the matter? You didn’t hear me? I said I just hired you,” Stocelli repeated. “You. You’re gonna get me off the hook with the Commission and with Donati. And you’re gonna prove to them that I didn’t have nothing to do with what happened.”
We glared at each other.
“Why should I do you a favor like that?”
“Because”—again Stocelli grinned at me—”I’m gonna make a deal with you. You get me off the hook with Donati, and I leave Gregorius alone.”
He leaned forward toward me, the thin, humorless smile sliding off his face.
“You know how many millions I can make on those gambling casinos in Gregorius’ projects? You ever stop to figure it out? Well, that’s what it’s worth to me for you to do this job?”
“What’s to stop me from letting the Commission take care of you?” I asked him, bluntly. “You wouldn’t be around to bother Gregorius then.”
“Because I send my boys after him if I don’t get my deal with you. I don’t think he’d like that.”
Stocelli paused, his little black button eyes boring in
to me.
“Quit screwing around, Carter. Is it a deal?”
I nodded. “It’s a deal.”
“Okay,” Stocelli growled, leaning back on the couch. He gestured rudely with his thumb. “On your way. Get going.”
“Not just yet.” I went over to the desk and found a pad of hotel stationery and a ballpoint pen. I sat down again.
“I want some information,” I said and began to make notes while Stocelli talked.
Back in my own room, I picked up the telephone and, after arguing with the hotel operator and then the long-distance operator, I finally-got Denver on the line.
Without preamble, I asked, “How quickly can you get me a check on half a dozen airline passenger manifest lists?”
“How old are they?”
“Not more than a couple of weeks. Some just the other day.”
“Domestic or international flights?”
“Both.”
“Give us a day or two.”
“I need them sooner than that.”
I could hear Denver sigh unhappily. “We’ll do our best. What is it you want?”
I told him. “Stocelli was on the following flights. Air France from JFK to Orly on the twentieth of last month. Air France, Orly to Marseille on the same date. TWA from Orly to JFK on the twenty-sixth. National Airlines, New York to Miami on the twenty-eighth—”
“Hold on a second. You know how many flights a day they run?”
“I’m just interested in the one that Stocelli was on. The same goes for Air Canada, New York to Montreal on the fourth, Eastern to New York on the fifth, and Aeromexico to Acapulco the same day.”
“Just the flights Stocelli was on?”
“That’s right. It shouldn’t be too hard. I’d also like you to get the passenger manifest of the flight Duttoit was on from Montreal to New York.”
“It would save us a lot of time if we had the flight numbers.”
“You’ve got most of them if your men were tailing him,” I pointed out.