by Buck Sanders
Merriott made a sign of the cross on his chest. “We’ll see’m in hell, sir.”
Baal just laughed.
Steve Workman lived and worked in a penthouse suite in the Garden District of New Orleans. By vocation he was an importer of fine clothing. His shop on Basin Street, sequestered in famed Storyville, specialized in catering to the rich, with a full selection of patterns, silks, and colors. His television ads swept the metroplitan area, and the newspaper spreads always produced healthy business.
He was also the ringleader in a world-wide opium trade and gun-running racket. But his operation was so clean the cops and G-men could never gather enough evidence to bring him to court. Informants who said they’d squeal either clammed up under pressure from Workman’s cadre of Enforcers, or took a plunge in the muddy Mississippi.
Security men guarded his office building like Fort Knox, and no one got up to the fifth floor without a thorough shakedown and appointment confirmation.
Ben Slayton had something else in mind, however.
His rented car parked three blocks away, he stayed away from the front entrance and Workman’s bullies. In the rear, the service elevator was left unattended while two Enforcers grabbed a bite to eat across the street at a Burger King. Slayton had played the waiting game huddled behind nearby shrubs until the two disappeared into the restaurant. Prying off the elevator ceiling plate with his pocketknife blade, he entered the dark shaft and settled down until someone took a ride to the top floor.
Ten minutes later the two Enforcers returned, one of them stepping into the elevator. “I’m going to check out the fourth level,” he said.
“Get back right away,” the other called out. “Mr. Workman is due to arrive at three-thirty, and he’ll want to see us.”
“I’ll be down in a minute,” came the reply, spoken through a mouthful of french fries.
Both men had New Jersey accents. Workman’s pay scale attracted all varieties of hoods, ex-cons looking for dirty work, and strung-out war vets. A security force clad in expensive three-piece suits was no small expense these days.
The elevator lurched upward, pushing close to the doors to Workman’s suite before crawling to a halt at the fourth floor. While the Enforcer made his rounds, Slayton climbed up to the next level and, legs dangling two feet away from the cab, forced the doors to open.
It was a spacious office. Shag carpet and a sunken indoor pool ran the length of the room nearest to sliding glass doors which led to a sun deck and helicopter landing pad. And while even Slayton envied Workman’s expensive, rich Mediterranean decor, there were a few chintzy Picasso forgeries in the wall, and the water bed and ceiling mirror were Sears, Roebuck catalog items.
The office was deserted, which gave Slayton an opportunity to research Workman’s business files. Most of the cabinets and drawers were locked, but with expert precision, using a few customized additions to his pocket-knife, he forced open the lock and removed what he wanted.
The file folder was marked SHIPMENTS. Two xeroxed sheets contained the following information:
POND 2 Memo dtd 2/12
Axel Trucking, Baton Rouge
Deliver to Box 110, Morgan City
Signed Jacques Telemacques
All SAM7 re-routed from Chicago 2/11 to POND 2
Warehouses full. Delivery confirmed. Await
memo from Bathurst.
The second sheet was a carbon copy. Since there had been no weapons in Chicago, Slayton guessed that “Pond 1” (or Chicago) was some kind of intermediate shipping terminal—he recalled Howard saying that he never handled the merchandise. The plan was good if the shipments received in New Orleans, Washington, or the West Coast were sent to Chicago, loaded onto a second carrier, and then trucked to the final destination. How did they cover the paper work, though? Bills of lading had to be drawn up, authorized, and signed for at delivery.
A further investigation into the file uncovered a list of pay-off receipts:
Axel Trucking, Baton Rouge
Bill #3211-B
$200.00 no delay
Standard Lines, New Orleans
Bill #ZC000789
#ZD217700 $3,000.00
#ZD234577 10 days late
Barringer Express, Chicago
Bill #562-15
$257.00 / 2 days late
Axel, Standard, and Barringer were the only companies paid by Workman to transport the goods.
Slayton detected the elevator humming its way up from the lower floors. Stuffing the receipts into his pocket and stashing the folder back in its drawer, he dived out of sight just as Workman and a bodyguard entered the office.
“Wait for me downstairs while I shower, Paul,” Workman said, “and send Miss Vicki up as soon as she arrives.” Paul left the room.
Workman had been in the Marines during Vietnam, riding shotgun in an artillery tank. His big moment came when, after saving thirty men from a nest of snipers, he was awarded a medal for bravery and sent home a hero. His father, a good old boy from Knoxville, Tennessee, who owned a string of textile plants in every state in the South, gave his son an expensive present, a clothing store acquired in a foreclosure. Workman had determination and shrewdness, with an eye toward profits, and within five years gained statewide recognition as the most ruthless, cunning businessman in New Orleans. With the steady drug trade paying the bills, the store’s take amounted to extra gravy. The new gun-smuggling scheme brought in a nice chunk of the pie, too.
In a fit of confusion, and because the office - was so spacious, Slayton had nowhere to hide but in the bathroom, an ambush point that brought him a flash of deja vu.
Removing shoes and clothing, Workman dawdled around his office, gazed out a window overlooking the city he wished to conquer, skimmed through his subscription copy of Hustler, and chugged a quick snort of whisky. A minute later, he pulled back the shower curtain. Slayton lashed out with his fist, stunning the wealthy tycoon. Workman had no time to react. Slayton drove an arm under his chin, compressing his windpipe; Workman couldn’t breathe. He lost consciousness quickly. When he opened his eyes, Slayton had him hogtied on the bed, sitting in contact with the bedpost.
“What the fuck?” he called out.
Slayton poured himself a shot of Black Russian and settled into the comfy Windsor chair, an arm’s length away. “Mr. Workman, I presume?”
“I don’t get it. ’S this a shakedown?”
“Do you know what an S-A-M-7 is?”
Workman grew calm. “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. Get me outta this!”
“I found the rope in a trunk filled with all sorts of kinky devices. You’re quite a man of the world, aren’t you?”
“All right, bimbo, what’s your plan?”
Slayton opened a medium-sized foot locker pushed against the bed, withdrawing a large pink dildo. “This device is amazing. It does all the work!”
“That’s fuckin’ invasion of privacy!”
This ignorant slob was a businessman? “Behave yourself, or I’ll get annoyed with you.”
“Fuck you, asshole. How did you get in?”
“I asked you about SAM7s.”
A smile split across Workman’s face. “Okay, untie me, and I’ll talk.”
“No deal.”
“Well, I never heard of no goddam SAM7.”
“Ever heard of Howard Westphal?”
“He’s dead, man.”
“You want to know why he’s dead?”
“Not really.”
“Boy, he wouldn’t tell me anything I wanted to hear.” Slayton figured the tough-guy routine was all Workman understood.
“Wha-wha-what are you talking about?”
The bottle of Black Russian was handy, and Slayton poured it all over Workman’s head. “Where’s Bathurst?”
“Who? What are you doin’?” He spit out liquor and tried to wrestle the bonds loose.
“Where is he?” Slayton lit a match, holding it close to Workman’s doused hair.
“
No! NO! I’ll tell, I’ll tell you anything. Don’t do it, blow it out!”
Drawing the match away, Slayton said, “I’m waiting.” “They’ll kill me if I say anything.”
“Hell, pal, I’ll kill you if you don’t.”
Someone in the outer office moved. Slayton dived under the chair and extricated his revolver. It was Paul, the bodyguard.
He had a piece drawn, but didn’t see Slayton crouched on the floor. “I heard talking,” he said.
“He has a gun, Paul,” Workman cried.
Slayton took a pot shot out the bathroom door. As Paul ran for cover, Slayton dived across the bed at Workman and pressed the Smith & Wesson to his head.
Being the coward Slayton suspected, Workman called after Paul, “Hold it, don’t come in, there’s a rod against my head. This dude’s crazy enough to shoot.”
Slayton sounded threatening. “Fuckin’ A, Paul, why don’t you simply throw down your weapon and join us?”
Like an obedient puppy, Paul held his arms high, and Slayton took his little snub-nose pistol. He had them both on the bed when three more Enforcers plowed into the outer office. Slayton had three guns: Workman’s, Paul’s and his own; he barreled into the office, blasting away.
The first shot took one man in the chest; he was out of the race, stumbling over his feet and crashing into a bookshelf behind him. Bullets whizzed past Slayton’s head as he got two more shots into the second Enforcer and jumped behind the maple desk. The third man, shielded by an abstract stone sculpture, wasted cartridges indiscriminately. One shattered a mirror over the bar; two more punctured the desk.
Slayton caught Paul’s movement from the bed and fired, killing Workman in the process. With the hostage spent and twitching in a pool of blood, Slayton had to escape. Paul bought a slug in the head.
The third Enforcer made a break for it, and one shot drilled him in the shoulder. He wouldn’t be any more trouble, thought Slayton, taking the gun from his hand. The shooting had attracted the attention of other security thugs, and the elevator doors fell shut, returning to the ground floor to carry them up. That gave Slayton some time to get away.
Using another length of rope found in Workman’s foot locker, Slayton climbed down the opposite side of the building, letting go ten feet above ground and hurrying to the car. Well ahead of the henchmen on the penthouse patio, he sped out of sight. Opening his breast pocket, he looked over the receipts purloined from Workman’s files and headed into town.
It was Tuesday, April 10.
The late morning shower refreshed Wilma. Rubbing wet hair with a towel, she circled the hotel room in search of some underwear. Her eyes settled on an end table where, minutes before, a small porcelain vase had been. On the floor were bits of broken pottery.
A figure moved in the kitchen. The intruder darted out from behind the curtains and ran at her, raising one hand as if to slap her.
Ben Slayton rounded the corner, walking quickly to Room 409. Approaching the door, he heard Wilma scream, then the sounds of a struggle.
The door was unlocked. He burst in and caught the intruder by the arm, twisting it around his back until the bone cracked. It was the punk who had tailed Wilma from the wire service office. Slayton took hold of the man’s long, black hair and bounced his head off the floor, letting go when he stopped resisting. The body fell motionless.
Wilma was, practically hysterical. “Oh my God, if you didn’t come in when you did—Christ! he was going to beat me up and—”
Slayton wiped sweat from his upper lip.
“Wait a minute!” Her face drained of fear, instantly replaced with anger. “How did you know I was here?”
Shutting the door, running a hand through his hair, Slayton explained, “I wasn’t sure that the Wilma Christian getting a byline on national new stories coming out of New Orleans was the same Wilma Christian I knew. Finding the hotel was easy.” He winked. “I know your style.”
Cocking her head back, she laughed. Very sexy, Slayton thought.
The punk was coming around to the real world five minutes later. Alert, he tried to make a run for it. Slay-ton’s foot landed on his neck, shooting that plan to hell.
“Don’t go,” chided Slayton. “We’re going to be goods friends.”
“I don’t think so,” the punk replied.
“The way I see it,” Wilma interjected, “this creep spotted Eddie Crosby and me talking with Jacques Telemacques, and then followed me here to incapacitate and otherwise keep me from visiting a secret military base hidden in the swamps.”
Slayton’s attention cross-circuited. “Yes, of course.” Everything fell into place. Wilma’s news stories on Parfrey tied in with The Brigade; tie connection was far too obvious to realize, he thought. “Who is Jacques, oh, whatever his name is?”
“He lives next door to the base,” she said. “Came into town to complain to somebody about it and ra7, smack into Eddie Crosby, newsman. Eddie and I have been tracing a bunch of disappearing gun shipments that Senator Parfrey had been smuggling through the New Orleans port.”
“The guns were not disappearing. Three trucking firms have been taking money to move the arms and cover their tracks.”
“How do you know?”
Placing a tighter grip on the punk, Slayton proceeded to capsulize the political ideology of The Brigade and the predicted assassination attempt. Afterward, he turned to the human filth on the rug. “I think this counter-culture leftover should be placed somewhere away from society at large.”
The hotel detective carted the punk out of the room, charging him with attempted robbery, breaking and entering, and assault. “I’ll return in an hour to take a statement,” the officer said, excusing himself.
Now alone, Ben and Wilma agreed to a lengthy reunion. Slayton examined her extensively for any injuries while she unbuttoned his shirt. They made love furiously, bending and twisting in primitive rapture.
Taking breaths in groaning puffs, Wilma screamed for Slayton to stop. She pushed him off when the room started spinning; they lay, resting, filled with pleasure.
“This story you’re working on leads right to a very dangerous terrorist group,” Slayton said, “and I think you should stop pursuing it.”
“You thought you could get rid of me at the Washington Monument. No way I’ll let that happen now.”
“I suppose that it doesn’t matter that you’re risking death for a mere news story.”
Wilma sat up, moderately offended. “Who said anything about death? You’ve some nerve patronizing me like I’d run blindly into a trap or something.”
“You and Crosby were planning to ’fly by’ the military camp, correct?”
“Isn’t two thousand feet a safe distance?”
“If I’m right, these terrorists have anti-aircraft guns in addition to the standard-issue weapons.”
“Oh. Well, I still have to follow it up.”
“Reporting anything at this time carries the chance of jeopardizing national security. But you can invoke freedom of the press.”
“I’m sure you’d find a way to. restrain me legally.” She didn’t appreciate his imposing. a self-righteous badge on her activities.
“You bet,” he said, confirming her disdain.
“If you tell me what you’re after, maybe I’ll keep quiet.”
“There isn’t a place for you in a secret investigation like this. You represent the great media machine, passing information to the public even when that information might endanger—”
“The government’s ego,” she cut in. “Admit it, Ben, they’d cover up anything and everything, given half a chance.
“I know the system doesn’t like to bare its mistakes. No one does. But I don’t think a journalist can take license to interfere on matters of state. You know it’s a debatable point. In this case, however, it’s justifiable.”
“Shit, you always tell me my arguments are worthless.”
“Not worthless. But not always right.”
The moment
was not intimate enough for a tender hug. Wilma was being told to get lost. She wished Slayton would keep business and pleasure separate. The foregoing postcoital discussion was an unqualified turn-off.
“Howzabout we talk about this at dinner?”
Slayton yawned. “I really should continue the investigation, work on a few details. What you told me about the camp in the bayou helps me out. Would breakfast do?”
“What kind of clue-gathering takes the whole evening?”
“To tell you the truth, I haven’t slept in almost two and a half days.”
“You could stay here.”
“Uh-uh. The terrorists are probably onto, both of us by now. I’m a far more visible danger to them. So as long as you lay low, you should be safe. We shouldn’t spend too much time together.”
She frowned. “All right.”
“We have a date to be regular pals back in Washington, though.” He tried to brighten her mood.
Slayton didn’t enjoy reprehending her. But The Brigade would pass over her, hopefully, if she didn’t get too close to that bayou encampment. He blew her a kiss as the hotel room door shut behind him.
“Kiss off,” Wilma whispered. Once alone, she got dressed very quickly.
10
Senator Parfrey’s apparent association with the arms smuggling added new horizons to The Brigade’s vast resources. If terrorism had a hold on some of the Capitol Hill lawmakers, the level of corruption would make Watergate look like a party of mad hatters.
Amused and terrified at the implications of such a threat, Slayton returned to his motel room.
Chucking his jacket on the bed, he suddenly felt uncomfortable, instinctively wary. Shake it off, he thought. Seconds later, it was knocked out of him by a strapping, immense Chinese cutthroat who introduced his meaty fist into Slayton’s lower back.