by Walter Wager
Davidson suppressed a grin.
“No charge, Your Honor. I love to educate district attorneys. My father wanted me to be a teacher, you know.”
“I didn’t, Mr. Davidson,” the judge admitted, “but it doesn’t really surprise me. Quite a number of the best legal minds enjoy teaching.”
“And others are judges.”
Now it was Gillis who fought down the smile, for the graceful flattery was difficult to resist. Yes, “old Reece” didn’t have a chance with this man. On the twenty-seventh, only one more juror was picked, and that night the program manager of WPAR-TV tipped off Mayor Ashley that CBS News was working on an hour “special” about Paradise City. It was the same evening that eleven FBI agents in Miami and seven in New Orleans received orders to join MacBride; they would all travel separately so that no one would notice them as groups. On the morning of the twenty-eighth, hundreds of Paradise City businessmen found copies of an extraordinary leaflet when they opened their office doors. It listed the crimes, scandals, indignities and collaborators of the Pikelis organization and called for all decent men to fight against the racketeers. It was signed by the Committee of 100 to Free Paradise City. Black janitors and cleaning women had delivered the leaflets in the small hours of the night.
On the night of the twenty-ninth, about one-fifth of Jefferson County was watching the Jackie Gleason show as usual when Arbolino cut into the cable near the transmitter and jammed the audio—for one minute. During that period, viewers watching the leggy June Taylor dancers doing their synchronized high kicks were astounded to hear a spokesman for the Committee of 100 urge them to join in a citizens’ crusade to “clean up our city. If you believe as we do,” the voice urged, “let everyone know by writing the number one hundred on walls, in washrooms, on cars, in public buildings—anywhere. Be careful that no one sees you, because these thugs are close to panic and they won’t hesitate to use illegal violence. Write one hundred. Write one hundred. Write one hundred. Further instructions will follow.”
And then the voice ended and the blaring music came up in time for the final chorus of the big production number. Nobody knew whether to take this seriously until printed copies of the appeal were found in some two thousand prayerbooks at various churches the next morning. People glanced at each other uncertainly and said nothing, but by Tuesday the number one hundred began to appear on walls in various parts of the city. On Wednesday night, a college freshman home on summer vacation was seen by a policeman as he finished whitewashing the Resistance symbol on the back of the bus terminal. The officer fired one shot, shouted a command. When the nineteen-year-old son of Paradise City’s most prominent Episcopalian clergyman started to run, the policeman squeezed off two more rounds that killed him.
Nobody could suppress this news, for the victim and his father were too well known. Nobody could buy the official story that Ben Marton put out either, for everybody realized that Terry West simply wasn’t the sort of young man who’d steal a car or assault an officer. It was a lie, another lie, another proof that the brutal dictatorship of the Pikelis organization could not be tolerated any longer. Now Sledgehammer had a genuine martyr, and the blunt question of “Who Murdered Terry West?” made an effective slogan. The discontent was spreading, growing, festering, seething.
It was almost tangible by September 5 when the Clayton jury was completed and the trial began, but any hopes that the trial might divert public opinion were shattered when Judge Gillis called Marton into his chambers at 5 P.M. and confided that he didn’t think there was much chance of a conviction.
“Davidson has Reece completely outclassed, Ben, and he’s going to shoot his case so full of holes that it’ll be damned hard for even the most loyal and friendly jury to convict. Besides, he’s going to raise the Miranda ruling and argue that Clayton was denied prompt access to an attorney, and even if you win by some miracle,” Gillis predicted, “you’ll lose on appeal. He’s going all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court with this, Ben.”
Marton shook his head grimly.
“What do you suggest, Ralph? Any bright ideas?”
“I didn’t get you into this, Ben. It wasn’t my idea, so don’t get so salty with me.”
“Any bright ideas?” the police chief pressed.
Gillis thought for many moments, shrugged and promised he’d try to figure out some legal solution. By the time Everett finished presenting the prosecution’s case on the ninth, the judge was even more skeptical. That night, Marton heard about the informer’s report that the three missing blacks—the witnesses who could provide Clayton’s alibi—had been smuggled back into the city and were being hidden until Davidson was ready to put them on the stand. All through September 10 and 11, dozens of police went through the African American neighborhoods in a house-by-house and room-by-room search but failed to find even one of the trio.
“They’re going on the stand Monday, John,” Marton predicted after he gave Pikelis the bad news. “I’d bet anything that Davidson’s going to spring them as surprise witnesses on Monday. If that happens, we’ll never hang Clayton.”
The ganglord puffed on his cigar, considered the implications.
“It’ll be a defeat,” he judged.
“A bad defeat, John. It’ll make us look real shaky. With all this other trouble we’ve got and all the bad feeling about that West kid—”
“That was one of your trigger-happy morons,” Pikelis snapped.
“A mistake. Yes, a dumb move—but don’t forget that my men have made thousands of smart moves that helped plenty, helped you and the organization plenty over the years. It isn’t fair to rip my boys up for one dumb move, John. We’ve paid our freight.”
The racketeer sighed, gestured for Marton to continue.
“We’ve got to get out from under, John,” the police chief warned. “We can’t afford to lose this Clayton thing.”
Pikelis’ eyes narrowed, and suddenly his face wore that old look of the waterfront hoodlum he’d been thirty years earlier.
“I don’t lose, Ben. Little Johnny doesn’t lose.”
“Right. That’s right. Clayton has to go, but Ralph says there’s almost no chance of hanging him. Ralph has thought the whole case out very carefully, and he says we’re bound to lose the legal fight.”
The man who dominated Jefferson County paced the big living room restlessly, calculating the odds and the possibilities.
“Ben, if the public executioner won’t hang Clayton and we need to get rid of him,” Pikelis reasoned, “then Clayton may just have to hang himself.”
“Exactly what I was thinking. A nice tidy jailhouse suicide—the perfect solution.”
It made sense.
It would end the entire embarrassing mess, and leave them free to concentrate on this out-of-town group and the goddam Committee of 100.
“Tomorrow night. Late tomorrow night, after midnight,” Pikelis decided. “Take care of it, Ben. Don’t screw up on this.”
“Not a chance. Consider it done,” the police chief reassured him.
“Good. Next week I want to talk to you about Ashley. He’s juicing too much for his health—and for ours too.”
Marton laughed.
“Maybe Luther could give him some driving lessons, John?” He chuckled.
“We’ll talk about it next week. I’m not sure yet, but it might come to that. He’s got no guts anymore, and if anybody leans on him—if things get rough and he’s scared—he’d sell us to save his own ass. That’s my hunch, anyway.”
“He’s a weak sister all right. It’s up to you, John. Luther’s been itching for work since he took care of Barringer. I’d say it ought to be out of the county, though, maybe out of the state,” the porky police chief advised. “We could send Roger off on a vacation—or some mayors’ convention—and then they’d find him five or six hundred miles away. Less stink back here.”
Pikelis nodded.
“I’m not completely sure yet,” he concluded, “but let’s give it a think.”
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Professor Andrew Williston, who’d been eavesdropping via the infinity transmitter, was already thinking. There was only one solution. He telephoned Crowden’s Caravan Camp and left word for Mr. Antonelli to meet Jo-Jo at four o’clock. Arbolino received the message, relayed the assembly call on his radio. When the Sledgehammer quartet assembled at rendezvous point Jo-Jo at 4 A.M., Williston broke the news and explained what he calculated they ought to do about the situation.
“It’s kind of short notice,” Gilman observed. “An operation like this should be planned very carefully, and we ought to give it a dry run. I don’t like it much, Andy.”
“There’s very little time, but we’ve already collected pretty good intelligence on the set-up. Petie was inside last week when Marton invited him to use the pistol range in the basement, and Petie can fill in the details.”
P.T. Carstairs could and did. When he was finished, the man from Las Vegas still grumbled but went ahead to outline several possible plans for the operation. Shortly after 5 A.M., they settled on one that seemed most plausible—a complex scheme that would require all four of them, considerable technical equipment and skill and a reasonable amount of luck.
Seven P.M. on Saturday night.
“I don’t want to be a party pooper,” Gilman warned as they prepared to separate, “but this is still a hastily conceived and inadequately scouted operation. There are too many things that could go wrong. It’s very risky, very amateurish from a professional point of view. If we make a single mistake or get one bad break, we’re all dead. That’s too much to gamble on any one operation.”
“You’re right, Sam,” Williston agreed, “but I don’t see any choice.”
None of the others—not even Gilman—did either.
As Williston drove back into Paradise City, he reflected on the negative estimate they’d just received from the man who was always right. Well, maybe this time he’d be wrong. Maybe not. In fourteen hours they would know. That should please Gilman, for it was a mathematical certainty.
26
“We’ve come full circle—right back to where all this started,” Williston reflected to the woman beside him in the bed.
It was nearly three o’clock in the afternoon, and the blond singer felt safe and silky with her lover so close.
“What are you talking about, Professor?” she asked.
“Full circle—another jail delivery raid,” he repeated.
“You’re a very great and groovy man, Professor, but I don’t have the slightest idea as to what you’re talking about. Maybe it’s because I haven’t done the required reading.”
She rubbed her head against his shoulder, and the scent of her perfume reminded him of their passion at 5:30 that morning. He took her in his arms, kissed her and then explained what they were going to—had to—do.
“You’re crazy, Professor,” she gasped. “It’s a crazy scheme, and you’ll all be killed. I’ve heard some wild ideas, but this is the living and dying end. I want a live hero, not a dead one.”
He stared up at the ceiling, reviewing the plan and visualizing how it would work.
“I don’t want to be a widow before I’m a bride, dammit,” she protested.
“Who said anything about marrying you?”
“I did and you will. We make such a lovely couple, especially when we couple—or hadn’t you noticed?”
He nodded.
“I noticed,” he admitted.
“And I cook up a storm. I’m terrific at emptying ashtrays too. My teeth are in perfect condition and I’ve already been analyzed. Think of the money you’ll save. What’s more, I earn good money, three hundred and fifty or four hundred dollars a week. There’ll be no problems in having babies either,” she recited triumphantly, “because my gynecologist says I’ve got a great pelvis.”
“I noticed.”
She cuddled closer.
“You like the idea of babies, Andy?”
“Absolutely. I used to be a baby myself.”
She swung back her arm to slap, but he caught her wrist and drew her head down onto his shoulder.
“Please, Andy, find another plan,” she pleaded. “This is like something out of a TV series—maybe ‘Mission Impossible’ or the clowns from Uncle. It doesn’t work in real life.”
“It has to, unless you’ve got a better plan that we can put into operation in the next nine hours.”
She sat up, shivered.
“Andy, there’s something I’ve got to tell you. I know why they killed Eddie. I lied to you about that.”
“I knew that.”
“Listen, you smug bastard, I’m saying something important. He was just like you. He knew it all. He was always figuring the angles, working out tricky schemes. He committed suicide, just the way you want to do.”
“No, Luther Hyatt put a bomb in his car,” Williston corrected.
“Eddie asked for it. He leaked word that he had evidence that could break the whole Pikelis syndicate,” she answered bitterly.
“Did he? And why would he leak word?”
She was crying now.
“He didn’t have any evidence. He had cancer. He was dying, and he didn’t want to die for nothing. He wanted them to kill him.”
Yes, that was the sort of thing Barringer might do.
He had the nerve and the righteousness for it.
“So we’d come to avenge him, Judy?”
“That’s right, you damn fool! Just because he killed himself you don’t have to, Andy!”
She was wrong.
It was too late to back out now.
They couldn’t abandon Sam Clayton, even if they wanted to.
“We can’t let those Nazi bastards hang Clayton,” Williston announced.
She stopped sobbing, stared.
“What Nazis?” she blurted. “This is an American city, twenty-five years later. You’re still fighting ghosts in a war that exists only in the history books and American Legion conventions. There are no Nazis here.”
” He shook his head again.
“It’s the same bunch, only they’re Americans instead of Germans and Vichy French,” he said slowly. “I know where we are and what year it is and what we’re doing. I even know that we shouldn’t be doing it. It’s illegal—wrong. I know that this is a job for the government and for the people of Paradise City. But we started it, and we can’t stop—not until we’ve rescued Sam Clayton anyway.”
“You can’t, you suicidal idiot!”
He reached out, touched her wet cheek.
“Maybe not,” he admitted, “but we’re going to try.”
Gilman and Arbolino were, out planting the charges and rigging the radio-control devices now, the teacher thought as he reached for his clothes, and the tape recording should be ready on the Uher by five o’clock. Carstairs would be preparing the weapons and humming, enjoying the anticipation of dangerous combat. He’d be happy, smiling and happy. All Williston had to do was to relay the instructions to Reverend Snell and then show up at the rendezvous at six for a final talk-through review of the timetable.
“Don’t worry, Judy,” he said before he left. “I’ll be back before morning, and then we can discuss babies and ashtrays.”
She didn’t answer.
At 5:55, the watchman at the downtown Atlas Building looked out the glass front door at the crowds of Saturday shoppers on Clarissa Street and checked again to make sure that the office building was securely locked. There wouldn’t be anyone coming into the office building, thank God, and all he had to do was walk through the street floor every couple of hours. That left plenty of time to nibble at the delicious peanut butter and jelly sandwiches his wife had prepared and to study the nudes in the Playboy he’d recovered from the waste basket in the Friendly Credit Corp. Inc. suite. Those young Mexican girls were really stacked, he thought happily, and the Playboy photographers could be counted on to find the most stacked of all and snap them lying on red sports cars or green silk sheets or white polar-bear rugs. Nossi
r, you couldn’t beat Playboy for snazzy color photographs. Even the National Geographic didn’t come close.
At 6:10, a panel truck carrying the name of the Ace Elevator Company—the letters were bright blue and about two feet high—pulled up to the rear of the Atlas Building. A lean, handsome man in coveralls slid out from behind the wheel, swinging his tool box as he walked toward the back door. He rang the bell, waited. The arthritic watchman grunted, put down the magazine reluctantly and muttered in irritation as he strode stiffly to the rear entrance. Through the small square glass panel, he saw the workman. He paused to wipe the jelly smears from the corners of his mouth before opening the door.
“Yes?” he asked.
“Ace Elevator. Emergency repair service.”
The old man shook his head.
“Keerist, you come to fix that door on Number Two, I suppose?” he grumbled. “Didn’t they tell you it was fixed yesterday?”
Williston laughed.
“Must be something wrong with it again. Your superintendent called us last night about five,” he explained.
“Took you a whole damn day to get here? That’s some fast service, Sonny.”
“We’re short-handed. Three men off on vacation.”
“Keerist,” the watchman mumbled.
He opened the door, and the spy entered.
“Up that way,” he gestured as he sat down to resume his acquaintance with the splendidly stacked young women of Mexico.
The repairman paused, started to open his tool box.
“Nobody told me you was coming,” complained the old man. “Nobody tells me nothing.”
He picked up the copy of Playboy, opened it.
“Excuse me.”
When the watchman raised his face to reply, Williston sprayed the Mace. The old man’s hands clutched at his pained eyes, giving the invader a perfect opportunity to snap the handcuffs on his wrists. “Keerist, keerist,” the watchman moaned between coughs and gasps. He couldn’t see, could barely breathe. Williston pulled out the two prepared lengths of nylon cord, tied his ankles together and then lashed him to the chair. Then he blew twice on the small whistle; the others began unloading the equipment from the back of the truck. As soon as it was all inside the building and the rear door locked, Arbolino and Gilman carried the dazed watchman—still in his chair—up the corridor until they found a storage room. They left him in there.