by Walter Wager
There was probably a lot of social or psychological significance in what they’d just seen, the professor thought wryly, but it had cost them nearly two minutes. One minute and forty-two seconds to be precise, and that time was more important than any possible implications of the act. There was only one thing that mattered anyway—the mission. It was just like The Old Days.
The mission was simple. The equipment that it involved was complex and sophisticated, but the mission itself was simple. They were going to plant two subminiature electronic devices in this penthouse so that that they could listen to what Pikelis and his associates said. Ordinary “bugs”—the standard little FM transmitters—wouldn’t do. If the racketeer had his quarters periodically “swept” by technicians equipped with gear to detect FM transmitters, such broadcasting devices would be found. No, Gilman had secured something much newer and more ingenious—equipment that listened and relayed sound on command and without broadcasting. It was called the infinity transmitter. It was small, fantastic.
Williston pointed to Pikelis’ office, and as Arbolino started in that direction the professor turned toward the racketeer’s bedroom. There was an unlisted direct-line telephone in each, and in each of those instruments they would place a tiny infinity transmitter. Moving silently in rubber-soled sneakers, the professor entered the bedroom and swept his “black light” around until he found the telephone.
He unscrewed the mouthpiece, inserted the tiny device and screwed the mouthpiece back into place. As he returned to the living room, Arbolino flashed a thumbs-up signal from the opposite doorway and pointed to his watch. Both infinity transmitters were in place, and the spies had more than a minute left for escape according to Gilman’s timetable.
Of course, the timetable for the operation had not—indeed, could not have—provided for all eventualities. It had been based on the known, the logical, the predictable. Actually, the intruders had only about thirty-four seconds left to depart without being detected. Despite Carstairs’ delaying efforts, Kathy Pikelis had pried him from the gambling tables and ever so sweetly—subtly promisingly—persuaded him to bring her home. They had just emerged from the big limousine in front of the Paradise House, were moving arm in arm through the lobby toward the private elevator to the penthouse. Williston and Arbolino had no way of knowing this, of course.
Not until they heard the elevator door open and Carstairs laugh.
Loud and clear and charming, it was meant to alert them.
It succeeded.
They hurried to the terrace, carefully locked the door behind them and sprinted for the nylon ladder. Time—it was a question of seconds now. They had to move swiftly, and it was up to P.T. Carstairs to do what he could to buy them extra moments. As soon as the door to the penthouse foyer closed behind them, Carstairs put his hands on the girl’s bare shoulders. She didn’t resist, simply looked up at him questioningly.
“You’re a very attractive man, Petie,” she said quietly, “but you’re not quite the man described in those articles.”
“Less? Are you disappointed?”
She was very close, her body heat almost magnetic.
“No, not less. More.”
Outside, Arbolino swung the ladder back and swooped over the green wall back to the air-conditioning tower. He caught a rung with one hand, retained his grasp on the nylon with the other. Panting, he sent the ladder back to where Williston crouched on the terrace.
“More what?” challenged Carstairs as he gently framed her neck in his hands.
“More complicated, and I’d bet more trouble.”
He leaned down, kissed her.
“Don’t play games with me, Petie,” she advised several seconds later. “I’m a big girl and I don’t like to play games very much.”
He kissed her again, felt her stiffen and then press closer in woman response.
“I’m not playing games, Kathy.”
She held him tightly, stared up with a look that was almost grim.
“I know you play games and I know you play to win,” she warned, “but I’m the wrong girl for those games. I’m no innocent virgin, but it would be a large mistake for you to play casual games with me.”
His hands moved down her back now, and she shivered in further wanting.
“You’re probably just passing through town, aren’t you?” she whispered as her hips began to move.
“Probably.”
They kissed a third time, even harder and more hungrily.
Eighteen yards away, Professor Andrew F. Williston raced back to the edge of the terrace and swung himself on the nylon ladder across to where the stunt man waited. They unhooked their equipment, coiled it in one of the tool kits and returned to the freight elevator. As it neared the street level, Williston glanced at his watch.
Five minutes and twenty-one seconds.
Not bad.
Not really good, but not bad after all these years.
“We could have done it in under four minutes if that brandy-hound hadn’t barged in,” Williston boasted.
“Maybe.”
Arbolino eyed him soberly, sensing the excitement and elation that his scholarly partner was trying to conceal.
“I’m sure of it, Tony. Four minutes—and clean.”
“Save it for Gilman. He may be impressed. I’m still tense and sweaty, and we’re not home free yet.”
The elevator reached the ground floor. They stepped out, scanned the corridor in both directions. Approaching at the end of the passage on the left was the white-jacketed bartender, three bottles of Haig Scotch whisky under his right arm and a set of keys in his left hand. He was obviously replenishing his supplies for the drinkers in the nearby cocktail lounge.
“They’re really sopping it up tonight,” he announced.
Williston calculated, realized that the liquor storeroom must be off this corridor.
“Giving out any samples?” suggested the teacher.
“Sorry, boys, but the management would be annoyed something fierce if I did.”
He noticed their coveralls, the inscriptions on the tool kits.
“Elevator grief?”
“Not really,” Arbolino answered easily. “Control box overheated a bit. Nothing any kid couldn’t fix with a jackknife.”
Without waiting for any reply, he led Williston out into the alley where the truck was parked in the shadows. The stunt man slipped behind the wheel and drove two blocks before he stopped at the traffic light at the Braden Avenue intersection. A police car cruised up beside them, the blue-suited officers eyeing them automatically. Then the light changed and the truck swung west. It was another minute before Williston saw the telephone booth at the Texaco station, smiled and pointed.
It was time to test the infinity transmitter.
Arbolino parked the truck beside the booth, drew the small metal cylinder from his coverall pocket. It was a whistle, a special whistle. It was a sonic whistle that issued a sound no human ear could hear, and that silent sound was the device that would make the infinity transmitter “live.”
“You blow it, Tony,” invited the professor.
“No, you blow it. I’m tone deaf anyway.”
“It doesn’t matter, Tony. Nobody will hear it anyway.”
So Tony Arbolino blew twice on the whistle and Andrew Williston entered the phone booth and dialed one of the unlisted numbers—one that served the instrument in Pikelis’ bedroom. There was no one in that chamber, but the door to Kathy Pikelis’ room nearby was open and there were two people in that room. They were making love. Her moans and sighs were audible over the ultra-sensitive transmitter. Now the Sledgehammer agents could dial either of the unlisted numbers from any phone and listen. The telephone in the penthouse would not ring, but it would serve as a microphone to transmit—over the phone line—everything being said in the room.
“You bastard, you handsome bastard!” the girl groaned as P.T. Carstairs did one of the four or five things that he did so well.
Williston
didn’t want to, didn’t have to listen to anymore.
He returned to the truck, climbed in and closed the door.
“Well, Andy?” questioned the man behind the wheel.
The teacher nodded.
“It works, Tony.”
Arbolino grinned.
“Beautiful. Just beautiful,” he rejoiced as he started the truck.
Williston didn’t know what to say, so he simply nodded again.
Up in the penthouse, a very honest girl who spoke excellent French and who knew that P.T. Carstairs wasn’t entirely to be trusted was naked, gasping and arching helplessly under the weight of her strange new lover.
18
Sunday in Paradise City, the sabbath in a community where nobody ever said that God was dead but quite a few people suspected as much—and felt relieved. The town wasn’t exactly Peyton Place or Sodom on the Sea, but a substantial percentage of the population cheated on their wives, taxes and golf scores and many others routinely violated the Ten Commandments with a skill that could only come from long practice. Nevertheless, almost everybody dressed neatly on the Lord’s Day and went to church and hoped that He’d give them a break because their transgressions were “only human.” There was a policeman outside every place of worship—at least in the white neighborhoods—to direct traffic, so that you knew that if God didn’t strike you dead inside the church no passing car would finish you off as you left.
A number of people—some of them prominent residents whom you might even call society folk—did not attend services that Sunday. The late Dorothy Parker—or was it Che Guevara’s psychoanalyst?—once said that in California any girl who finished high school was Society. Well, almost all of those who missed the services in Paradise City that morning had finished high school and a number of them had also completed rather substantial breakfasts in addition. Mrs. Ben Marton and Mayor Ashley were not in that group because they were both still drunk—in their own and separate homes—but Captain Marton had a full belly and a certain amount of information. Both of these facts were obvious as he reported to Pikelis in the hotel penthouse.
“Mace. I think it was Mace, John,” the chief of police announced.
Pikelis sipped his coffee, considered, rejected.
“I think you’re crazy, Ben. Either you’re crazy or you’re trying to crap me with some story so you’ll be in the clear. Don’t crap me with any talk about Mace.”
“It was Mace, John,” Marton insisted.
The racketeer shook his head. “Mace is police stuff. Cops use it on rioters, on niggers.”
Mr. Pikelis, who was not running for elective office or expecting to be interviewed by any TV network news crew, could afford to use such old-fashioned epithets when he wished. Mayor Ashley spoke of “our Nigra citizens” and Marton referred to “colored folks,” but they sometimes talked for public consumption and were therefore instinctively a bit more tactful. Such niceties were not necessary for the man who ruled Jefferson County, who had the power and controlled the mass media. He never made statements to or dealt with the working press.
“You’re right, John. Of course, you’re right that Mace is police equipment,” Marton agreed, “but they used Mace on Luther.”
“Where’d they get it?”
“I don’t know. There’s plenty around.”
“You don’t buy that stuff at Sears or J.C. Penney,” Pikelis challenged.
“No, you don’t. But they got it somewhere.”
Pikelis brooded for fifteen or twenty seconds.
“The money? What about the money?”
“They didn’t take a dollar. I don’t understand that. Nossir, I sure don’t figure that at all.”
The ganglord glanced at his watch. His daughter should be up soon.
“Ben,” he said slowly, “I don’t like it. They knew where and when to jump Luther and they had this Mace and they staged this crazy scene in the store window, and they don’t keep any of the money. Who are they?”
“I don’t have the goddamdest idea, John,” Marton admitted.
“And why did they do all this?”
The porky policeman shrugged.
“John, if we knew who they were we could probably reckon out why,” he reasoned carefully.
Marton wasn’t terribly imaginative, but he was more practical than most and more ruthless than almost anybody. That combination, which if otherwise applied could have made him a vice-president at any major movie company or lieutenant-governor of a medium-sized state, also made him a useful junior partner in the Pikelis organization. But Marton probably aspired to a full partnership, the racketeer sensed, and that was impossible. Pikelis would give him more money, but he would never share the power. It was the power—the authority—that counted.
“You don’t think that it was any policemen—maybe some of yours, for example—who used that police Mace on Luther?” Pikelis speculated.
“No. No, it wasn’t anybody connected with any kind of police or law outfit. It wouldn’t make sense.”
Pikelis nodded. Right. It wouldn’t make sense.
“Some out-of-town mob? How about that, John?”
“No, that’s just possible but I don’t see how that makes sense either. I get along pretty well with the syndicate boys, and this doesn’t have the Mafia feel to it. They’d have killed Luther, gunned him on the spot.”
Pikelis saw the police chief eying the mahogany humidor on the desk, gestured an invitation to take one of the Partagas. The racketeer didn’t mind sharing the smuggled Cuban panatelas, for he got a box every week, and it amused him how the deluxe illicit cigars seemed to please Marton. The police chief took one, bit off the end, lit it and puffed happily.
“John,” he began. “Oh, thanks for the cigar. John, I don’t mean to dispute you but don’t you think it wouldn’t hurt to check with New York and Chicago and Miami just to make sure that it isn’t somebody connected with the Mafia?”
“It can’t hurt. Meanwhile, let’s keep it quiet around town,” Pikelis ordered. “I’ve already made sure that the paper, the radio station and the TV news boys won’t say a word. Officially, it never happened.”
“People saw it, John. There’ll be word of mouth, talk.”
“About what? About something that never happened. I say it never happened. Let’s give people something else to talk about, to think about. How about that black girl who got cut up? A nice juicy murder should keep people interested.”
The police chief puffed on the cigar again.
“Could be. We got the bastard who did it. One of those smart-ass colored boys who was so friendly with the civil-rights agitators we ran out of town. Truck driver named Sam Clayton. Meaner’n hell, but he confessed the whole thing.”
Pikelis smiled.
“I’ve really got to hand it to you, Ben,” he complimented ironically. “The way your men track down criminals and get them to confess—mighty fine detective work. I suppose he raped her too?”
Marton peered and squinted, obviously puzzled.
“I don’t know about that. Maybe,” he hedged.
“Of course he raped her, Ben. I’m sure that our brilliant coroner will find that he raped her. Yes, a nice juicy rape-murder,” Pikelis calculated aloud. “That’s just what we need right now. Something rough and dirty to grab everybody’s attention. A real quick and sensational trial—that’s the ticket. Shouldn’t be any problem, I’d imagine.”
“No problem at all. In the meanwhile, my boys will keep working on this crazy thing that happened last night,” the police chief pledged.
“It wasn’t crazy, Ben,” his master corrected. “It was very neatly planned and very neatly done by some very tricky people who had some very goddam special reason for it. You’ve got to keep that in mind every second if you’re going to stop them.”
“Stop them? You think there’s more coming?”
The man who ruled Jefferson County nodded.
“I’m so sure that I bet your badge on it, Ben,” he warned.
Marton didn’t like the threat, but before he could answer the door opened and a smiling Kathy Pikelis entered the room. Her elegant robe looked good, but the young woman who wore it looked even better. Her radiance communicated that she’d either had a wonderful dream or a superb lover the night before—or both. Conscious that matters were none of his business, the beefy police chief hesitated for only a minute’s amenities before making his exit.
John Pikelis also recognized the look on his daughter’s face, and he wondered.
“Quite an evening,” he probed ever so casually after they exchanged morning kisses.
“I enjoyed it, Daddy,” she replied in tones that told him nothing.
“You seem to be getting along pretty well with Petie.”
She looked thoughtful, pleased and not quite sure.
“Yes, Petie Carstairs is an extremely attractive and interesting male—very male and very slick,” she answered as she reached for the coffee pot on the side table.
“He plays a helluva game of poker. I’ll say that, honey.”
She poured herself a cup, added sugar.
“I’d bet that he’s good at a lot of games,” she agreed cryptically.
“You think he’s just a playboy, one of those phony jet-set creeps?” Pikelis asked uneasily.
“He’s no playboy. He’s for real, Dad. No line, no phony charm—and an honesty that’s so outrageous that I’m a little afraid of him…No, don’t look so worried. He was a perfect gentleman. Just perfect,” she repeated with a mischievous animal grin.
“You like him?” Pikelis questioned paternally.
She laughed, and it was the laugh of an adult, knowing woman.
“I could fall in love with him,” she acknowledged between sips of coffee, “but liking him might be more difficult.”
“Why? What’s the problem?”
“I’d like a man who needs me,” she explained softly, “and I’m not so sure that a man like Petie—a man who has everything—really needs anybody.”