by Walter Wager
“I have one more request, Your Honor,” the defense counsel announced. “If it please the court, I’d like an order authorizing inspection of the jury lists—those eligible for jury duty—in Jefferson County.”
“Why?”
“According to the most recent Federal census, the population of Jefferson County is thirty-one point four percent black, and my client, who happens to be black, is entitled to be tried by a representative jury. Under the Supreme Court decision in—”
“I’ll give you the order,” Gillis snapped in pretended irritation.
It was going to be a mess, an interesting mess. Of the forty-odd thousand colored people in the county, fewer than a hundred were on the jury list. What was “old Reece” going to do about that? What was “old Reece” going to tell those Federal judges when they raised that interesting point? Of more immediate importance was what he might tell Ashley and Pikelis this morning, the judge realized, for it was entirely likely that “old Reece” would fabricate some slick yarn to shift the responsibility for the coming disaster to Ralph Gillis. The best way to preclude that was for Gillis to telephone his own version of the situation—the facts—first, which he succeeded in doing rather artfully by summoning the tricky district attorney to his chambers as soon as the proceeding ended and then keeping Everett waiting in the outer office while he called Mayor Ashley from the inner one.
“I understand, Ralph,” Ashley assured him. “I still remember enough law to realize what a mess this is—and who’s responsible. You can be sure that I’ll explain it to John accurately—and soon. I’ll be talking to him in about fifteen minutes or so.”
Pikelis was already talking—angrily—to Paradise City’s beefy chief of police. Ignoring the panorama beneath the penthouse windows, the racketeer was harshly laying down the law—so to speak—to Ben Marton.
“Gas, fire bombs, silenced tommy guns—that’s fancy stuff but still basically just hardware and hardware can be bought by somebody, anybody with money and connections,” Pikelis pointed out. “What I expect from you is the somebody.”
“Somebodies, I’d say, John. At least three, according to your driver.”
“Right, and I want all three of them. There may be more. I want the entire group—fast.”
Marton nodded.
“Dead or alive, John?”
He saw the anger flush Pikelis’ face again.
“I wasn’t being smart, John,” he apologized. “I want to know exactly what you want. After all, that’s my job—to get what you want done done.”
He was trying to placate the man who ruled Jefferson County, with limited success.
“Don’t you ever get smart with me, Ben. You’re goddam right that it’s your job to get done what I want, and I’m glad that you know it.”
“I never forget it, John.”
This was the only way to talk to Pikelis when he got crazywild.
The ganglord thought, grunted.
“I’d like at least one alive—long enough to tell us who’s behind this operation,” he announced. “Then we’ll know where to ship the bodies. That’s going to be my first answer to the son-of-a-bitch who figured this deal. Burn my car, huh? I’ll burn him—alive.”
Marton had no doubt that Pikelis would do it. He’d done it to enemies before, although not for some eighteen or twenty years.
“I assume that you realize they’ve got somebody working at the Fun Parlor, John,” the police chief warned. “Either somebody there or somebody who scouted the place real good.”
“Somebody there. How else could they get in the back door? How else could they know about the hidden box for the alarm system? I’ll work on that with Dennison,” Pikelis promised, “and you find those other bastards. It shouldn’t be that hard for your men to find three or four or five strangers who’ve arrived in the last month or two. They’re probably holed up in some cheap hotel, or maybe a motel near town. If they work like most mobs do, they’re all together somewhere and I’d bet that the car has out-of-state plates. Anyway, they’re yours, Ben. That’s your number-one priority job.”
“We’ll get ’em. It won’t be easy without any descriptions of either the men or the car, but we’ll get ’em.”
Pikelis extracted two of the smuggled Cuban cigars from the humidor, bit the end off one and thrust the other at the chief of police.
“There’ll be a nice bonus, Ben,” he promised. “I’ll give you ten boxes of these—and ten thousand in cash—ten big ones.”
“The price is right,” Marton admitted a moment before he left.
At the door, he was surprised to face Ashley—but the police chief didn’t show it. If it was characteristic of Pikelis not to tell each of his associates about his dealings and appointments with other members of the organization, it was equally typical of lumbering Ben Marton not to disclose his emotions. “Hope you’ve got some good news for him,” Marton said with a jerk of his thumb toward the living room.
“Could be better, Ben. Is he in a bad mood?”
“You’ll find out, Mr. Mayor,” the police captain chuckled.
Ashley entered, waited patiently for five minutes while the ganglord spoke to hospitalized Willie Dennison on the unlisted telephone that was checked for taps each month. “Two waiters—no, I don’t need their names this minute. Go ahead,” Pikelis urged. “I see…Two waiters…that redheaded hoor with the fat tail…the stick man from Vegas…a cleaning woman, those are the people you hired in the past three months—right?…Good. I’ll look into it. You take care of yourself, Willie. I won’t forget what you did last night. Remember what I said, if there’s anything you want or need, just order it and have the bill sent over to the company.”
He hung up the telephone, sighed.
“If they were all like Willie,” he said admiringly. “A real stand-up guy. They had tommy guns—two of them—and Willie went for his little .32 to protect the house money. Some guts. Balls of brass, that Willie. Took three slugs in the arm—for my money.”
“He’s a good man,” Ashley confirmed.
“The best. Worked for Meyer in Havana, you know. A solid pro, a real loyal company man…Well, what did you want to see me about, Roger?”
Ashley looked tense, worried and badly in need of a drink. That wasn’t a good sign, for the prospect of his puppet mayor’s collapse into alcoholism—daylong boozing—was an additional problem that Pikelis didn’t relish. Drunks couldn’t be relied on, and men who needed liquor at 11 A.M. were close to being drunks.
“The incident at the Fun Parlor, John? Does that mean we’re in some serious trouble?” Ashley blurted. “I certainly don’t like the idea of shooting and violence. This could ruin our tourist business. Very embarrassing for me…for the whole community.”
The man was laughable, pitiful in his notion that anybody actually thought he was responsible for running Paradise City. Well, there probably were some boobs who took him seriously but all the top people—the big merchants, factory managers, lawyers, bankers—knew where the power rested. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to soothe his panicky pride.
“Roger, I’m glad that you asked about this and I certainly see why such an incident might disturb you,” the racketeer answered. “As the head of our municipal government, these matters are your concern. But the Fun Parlor is beyond the city line, so it isn’t your problem. As for serious trouble, I can tell you—confidentially—that there is some difficulty, but it isn’t that serious. It should be settled in a few days.”
“A gang war would be very bad, John,” Ashley muttered.
“Couldn’t agree with you more, but that’s most unlikely. Anything else on your mind?”
The mayor glanced at the liquor cabinet for a moment, fought down the impulse and told Pikelis about the call from Judge Gillis. “I’m not so sure that the idea of this trial was such a great one, John,” Ashley concluded weakly. “I’m not blaming you, but it was sort of risky—with a district attorney like Reece Everett at the helm—wasn’t it?”
The ganglord smiled, just as if he didn’t want to smash this pretentious ruin of a man.
“Maybe so, Roger. Bread and circuses used to work pretty well for those Roman emperors, I hear, and that’s what we’ve been using ourselves for years. I thought it should still work,” he explained.
“Maybe times are changing, John.”
“Maybe so. I’ll talk to Everett and Ben Marton about this situation, and that’ll leave you free for the bigger problems of running our fair city. Okay? Fine. Say, Roger, I’m afraid I haven’t been very hospitable,” the sly racketeer declared with man-to-man affability. “How about one for the road?”
Ashley hesitated guiltily.
“It’s a bit early, isn’t it?” he mumbled.
“Nearly noon. One won’t hurt you,” urged Pikelis, who knew that the mayor would be semiconscious before three o’clock.
Roger Stuart Ashley gulped down a double bourbon, smiled happily and left without the slightest suspicion that Pikelis was already thinking about possible new candidates for the mayor’s office in the next election. Indignant citizens of Sao Paulo, Brazil, had elected a hippo or a rhinocerous as mayor in a write-in protest against the hack candidates of the major parties, Pikelis recalled from a TV news broadcast, and the man who ruled Jefferson County could replace this arrogant alcoholic with an alligator or even that idiot Reece Everett if necessary. After he’d settled with the invaders and solved the Clayton problem in a couple of weeks, Pikelis would shape his plans for political regrouping. If worse came to worse, Mayor Roger Stuart Ashley could always be found—dead and drunk—in his wrecked car out near the swamp. Cheered by this prospect, John Pikelis picked up a pad and pen to make a list of the recently hired Fun Parlor employees for Luther Hyatt to check. Two waiters, the fat-assed redhead, the stick man and the cleaning woman—not too big a list at all.
That afternoon at 4:10, Tony Arbolino entered the Paradise City Public Library to return a book of Tennessee Williams’ plays. After the routine exchange of amenities with Miss Geraldine Ashley about the fact that this very day—July 24—was the birthday of “the great French novelist, Alexandre Dumas, the Elder,” the stunt man left with a copy of The Count of Monte Cristo under his arm and a song in his heart. The song was “Maria” from West Side Story, a matter of minute moment since it was inaudible to anyone except a very well-equipped cardiologist. Arbolino was (1) longing for his wife; (2) pleased with the success of the gambling-house raid; (3) collecting the “mail.” His “postal box” was one of the invaders’ blind drops, a hollow space behind a loose tile set low in the wall of the library’s men’s room. Half an hour later, he reread Williston’s message and made the telephone call to the union headquarters in New York. As the professor had requested, Arbolino pretended to be a newspaper reporter when he asked the question and, as Williston had predicted, he got the answer.
It was a total surprise.
Total.
The stunt man checked his watch, realized that the communication schedule required Williston to be in the phone booth—the far-left booth—in Hammer’s Drug Store at 5:05 on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. This was a Thursday, so Arbolino dialed the number at 5:05.
“Simon says,” announced the voice at the other end in the agreed recognition signal.
“Robespierre here,” answered the stunt man, using the code name he’d carried in France long ago.
“Go.”
“Not go. Wow. I made the call to AGVA, and the key word in this cipher is a large loud wow.”
“Translation?” Williston demanded.
He looked out toward the soda fountain, noticed the meaty blond waitress smile and wondered whether she’d been told a funny story or fondled again.
“Two words, mon ami. Talleyrand’s sister. Now how does that grab you?”
Wow.
“I’m thoroughly grabbed,” Williston answered. “Talleyrand’s kid sister, that figures. None of us had it figured, of course, but it figures. I’ll try to reach the Math Wizard; he can get her address.”
“Don’t do anything rash, mon ami—and let me know how it goes. If you want company—”
“I’ll keep in touch,” the lean professor promised.
Talleyrand’s baby sister.
That grabbed all right.
“Our big sale starts next week,” Mr. Hammer announced pleasantly as Williston started for the door. “Now don’t you forget that, you hear?”
“I’ll remember.”
“Sun creams, men’s colognes, barbecue grills, folding chairs, breath refreshers, insect repellant—fine savings,” chanted the pharmacist proudly.
“I’ll remember. Wild butterflies couldn’t keep me away.”
Williston slipped on his sunglasses as he stepped out into the glare of the street, started slowly through the steamy heat toward the bar where Gilman was to check in at six o’clock. The teacher made his way in stages, pausing to study the lobby display at the Central Movie Theater and the Jefferson before dropping in at Ray’s Records to listen to Dylan’s “country” album titled “Nashville Skyline.” He heard one side, made his way through the tangle of teenagers and bought the disk. It wasn’t a very practical purchase—not for the moment—because his phonograph was in that New York apartment, but he felt that the twenty-odd minutes he’d enjoyed and the future listening made the expenditure a little less silly. Now I’ve got another motive for surviving, Williston thought as he walked out with the parcel under his left arm.
At ten to six, he saw Lucky’s Den up ahead and carefully studied both sides of the street. He circled the block once, entered the tavern and winced under the impact of the air-conditioning. It was a long, low room, with the usual dark wood bar and a few formica tables filling the front and eight slot machines in the back. Lucky Len Lassiter made quite a bit from these one-armed bandits, enough so he didn’t mind giving two-thirds of the coins to a Pikelis-owned firm that supplied and maintained the equipment. Their service men were quick, even faster if you were foolhardy enough to try to hold back any cash. Two or three men would be around within a day; in such cases they used the tools on the bar owner instead of the machines. Such incidents were all but historic, however, for it had been years since anybody required that sort of “maintenance.” As long as Games Inc. got its 66⅔ percent of the take, the tavern proprietor didn’t have to worry about anything—including the police. As a matter of fact, a husky Paradise City sergeant—in uniform—was feeding quarters into one of the slots as Williston sat down at the far end of the bar.
“Beer,” he said to the man in the white apron.
“Comin’ up.”
The spy sipped the cold liquid, listened idly to the three baseball fans nearby debating the strength of Baltimore’s pitching and watched the door reflected in the big mirror that faced him. Six o’clock. A street walker wandered in, exchanged greetings with the police sergeant, downed a gin and tonic, left. Now it was ten after, and Gilman was late. That wasn’t the least bit like him, Williston brooded. When his watch showed 6:20, the former OSS agent realized that something was probably wrong and got up to leave. This was standard operating procedure. If the other agent didn’t make the contact at the rendezvous point within twenty minutes of the assigned time, you were to leave immediately and get out of the area as quickly and unobtrusively as possible—hopefully before the Gestapo cordons sealed it off completely.
They’d be moving in vans to block all the intersections, pouring out men with those nasty MP40 machine pistols. Nine-millimeter parabellum, thirty-two round box magazine, 500 rounds per minute, fully automatic—he remembered the weapon perfectly. All this ancient and useless information had been flooding back into his consciousness since he’d gunned Dennison, surfacing at unpredictable intervals in a random series of increasingly disturbing jolts.
They’d be fanning out now, covering the alleys and deploying squads over the roofs.
In a minute, the Germans would be at the door.
He blinked, shook off the f
ear and reminded himself that it was only one of the old nightmares from long ago.
As he stepped into the heat of the street, he saw Gilman across the street up near the corner. The man from Las Vegas was walking away from the bar, and he had an unlit cigarette in his mouth. He stopped, drew his lighter and flicked it three times before it ignited. Danger. Stay away. The alarm signals were even more familiar than the weapons, Williston realized as his eyes swept the area behind the stick man. Yes, there was the follower—not nearly as good as the surveillance specialists the Vichy Milice had used but still dangerous. Mr. Pikelis had moved impressively quickly to start checking on the gambling casino’s recently hired employees, quickly but not surprisingly, for Gilman had predicted just this tactic. Now the clever planner would have to live with the surveillance for a week or two until the Pikelis organization lost interest and wrote him off as “clean.”
And Marie Antoinette would have to find the address of Talleyrand’s sister without his assistance.
The teacher returned to his hotel after dinner, watched some television and systematically rechecked his room for any signs of search or hidden eavesdropping devices. Nothing, not yet. They—Pikelis and his group—weren’t bitter or desperate enough to investigate every lone and apparently legitimate individual at every hotel—not yet. It would be interesting to see how badly they’d have to hurt before they resorted to such measures. At 11:30, Williston left the Jefferson and drove to a dark block two streets away from the First Baptist Church. He kept to the shadows as he made his way to the small house behind the church, studied it cautiously for several minutes before he walked across the grass to the side window where the lamp shone.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” Reverend Snell announced quietly.
He was sitting in a rocker on the back porch, a black man invisible in the darkness of this cloudy night.
“Would you like to come inside for a cold drink?” invited the minister.
“If you’ve got another rocker I’ll just join you on the porch. Could be more convenient if I have to leave in a hurry.”