by Walter Wager
The voice was familiar, despite the distortion of the bull horn.
“No tricks…no tricks…Okay, take them.”
The four Sledgehammer invaders watched, waited, said nothing.
“Groovy…Just groovy…Now, will the creative types who sprang Mr. Samuel Roosevelt Clayton from the Paradise City police headquarters please step forward?…Please? I’m talking to First Lieutenant, or should I say Professor, Andrew Williston, formerly attached to OSS Operational Group 73 and now on summer vacation from Columbia University…I’m talking to Sergeant Parker Terence Carstairs, also attached to Operational Group 73. I don’t have the names of the others, but I’d be mighty obliged if they would also cooperate…This is your Uncle Sam, gentlemen, so come on out without any hardware.”
Williston put down the M-3, started forward toward the speaker.
The others stepped out into the open to follow.
The four walked together to the man with the bull horn, stared.
“Surprise, surprise,” the Federal agent chuckled.
It was Harry Booth, the Paradise House bartender who spoke so glibly and owned a yellow Mustang.
27
“I’ll take a double Pernod,” the millionaire announced as he shook his head in awe-shock.
“Sorry,” Booth apologized. “I quit that job about two hours ago. It was only temporary. Good enough cover for an undercover FBI agent, but it really had a limited future. The Civil Service money’s much better, and if I’m clean and diligent I might get to run a field office like my friend Mr. MacBride.”
He grinned, shook hands with Carstairs.
“Aren’t you going to introduce me to the professor?”
“Sure. Andy, this is Harry Booth, the sneaky bartender at the Paradise House. Harry, Professor Andrew Williston—our fearless leader.”
They too clasped hands.
“Where’s Judy?” Booth asked.
“Back in the trailer. There she is, coming out with Clayton now…How do you know about Judy?”
The undercover agent winked.
“Man, I’ve been taping your romance for several days now,” he explained. “Put a bug in her room as soon as Washington identified those prints you left on the wheelchair. Torrid stuff. Once we had you identified and discovered that you preferred her hotel to yours, it seemed the logical thing to do. That’s how we found out about your jail-delivery scheme.”
“But you didn’t stop it?” challenged Gilman.
“Who’s he?”
“Sam Gilman. He was with us in France too. So was the big guy. Tony—Tony Arbolino—meet Harry Booth, our friendly neighborhood undercover agent.”
The FBI operative studied them thoughtfully.
“That’s the entire outfit?” he asked.
“The operational side,” Williston answered. “We’ve got an intelligence network of about two hundred.”
“You’re kidding. You’ve got to be kidding. Two hundred people?”
The teacher nodded.
“Fantastic,” Booth judged admiringly. “Your whole deal has been fantastic. Who the hell are they? How’d you infiltrate them?”
“All blacks, all local. All friends or neighbors or supporters of Sam Clayton, people who signed on to help us when we helped them by bringing in Davidson.”
Booth calculated swiftly.
“That must have cost you lads a bundle.”
Carstairs laughed—nicely.
“Sixty-five thousand. Easy come, easy go. And we nearly went,” he added a moment later.
“Uncle certainly saved your collective ass,” the FBI man agreed. “You asked why we didn’t try to stop the raid on police headquarters. Well, we did. We tried and tried—until five-thirty this afternoon—to get a Federal judge to sign an order giving us custody of Clayton so they couldn’t do the phony suicide and you wouldn’t have to pull the raid, but we didn’t have any hard evidence—not enough to convince a judge—that anybody was going to kill Clayton illegally and thereby deprive him of his civil rights. I tried and MacBride tried too.”
Booth pointed to a large man who was speaking into a walkie-talkie radio.
“That’s MacBride—SAC—Special Agent in Charge of the Atlanta office.”
They all heard the car.
They turned in unison, saw a black air-conditioned Cadillac swing off Route 121—nearly overshoot the curve—and jerk to a halt some twenty yards from where they stood. It was easy to tell that the big sedan was air-conditioned, for the windows were all closed on this hot August afternoon. The same windows told something else about this vehicle. Three of them were shattered, and so was the windshield. Someone had shot this car up pretty badly. Gasoline was dripping from the fuel tank; half a dozen bullet holes disfigured the left side of the Cadillac and a dozen more marked the trunk.
Five FBI machine guns swung to cover the vehicle, to cope with whoever got out. But no one got out—not for twenty, thirty, forty seconds. It was odd, almost eerie. Finally, the door beside the driver opened slowly and the driver slid out.
No, fell out.
He was white-faced, blood-splattered, seriously wounded.
He was Tom Waugh, Pikelis’ chauffeur.
On his knees, he made one failing effort to reach the back door—to open it for his passenger as a conscientious chauffeur should. His fingers touched the door handle for a moment, but then Waugh toppled over unconscious. He lay there face up in the sunset, eyes open and bubbles of blood at the corners of his mouth.
“It’s Pikelis’ car,” Booth announced. “That’s his driver.”
“Must be the car that tried to run our roadblock,” reported MacBride, tapping the radio. “Just got word that a big Caddy smashed through the roadblock on 121 a couple of minutes ago.”
Silently, they approached and surrounded the luxurious wreck.
Williston and Arbolino looked in one window, Gilman and MacBride a second and Booth and Carstairs a third. They all saw the same thing. John Pikelis, the all-powerful ruler of Jefferson County, sat in the rear compartment. There was a glowing cigar in his right hand, an impassive expression on his face. His eyes moved from left to right, then right to left as he scanned them all. Shards of broken glass littered his clothes and red seeped from two small cuts on his left cheek and forehead, but he seemed to be unaware or perhaps indifferent.
No one—in the car or beside it—seemed to know what to say.
Then MacBride took another look—a long professional look—and he began to speak.
“Eagle One to Eagle Two,” he said crisply into the walkie-talkie. “Eagle One to Eagle Two. This is MacBride. We’ve got your Caddy. Repeat, we’ve got your Caddy. You boys really shot it up, didn’t you?”
“Eagle Two to Eagle One,” answered the section chief a mile down Route 121. “That’s what roadblocks are supposed to do, aren’t they?”
Williston watched the ganglord’s face, saw the dim gleam in Pikelis’ eyes and realized that John Pikelis was listening.
“Eagle One to Eagle Two. I guess so. Vehicle and two men—driver and one passenger—are in custody. Both men badly shot up. We’ll need an ambulance and a hearse out here immediately.”
“Eagle Two to Eagle One. Did you say a hearse?”
“One ambulance and one hearse. Repeat, one ambulance and one hearse. The driver’s just about had it,” MacBride judged dispassionately. “Shot to pieces and bleeding badly. Should be DOA before the ambulance gets here.”
Pikelis’ eyes moved to Carstairs, stared the question.
The millionaire nodded silently, almost apologetically.
Yes, Tom Waugh was dying in the dust a few feet away.
“Eagle Two, I’ll want an escort car with four agents to accompany the ambulance to the hospital and men to stand guard over the wounded subject,” the Atlanta SAC continued.
He’d almost said “prisoner” instead of “subject,” but had caught himself just in time. Pikelis hadn’t been charged with any Federal offense yet, hadn’t been arreste
d. He’d been machine-gunned, but he hadn’t been arrested—yet. It was a fine point, but FBI agents are both well trained and disciplined and they respect fine points.
Now the old racketeer’s eyes swung to Harry Booth, narrowed.
“Harry?” he whispered as he recognized the bartender.
“Yes, it’s me. I guess you got hit going through our road-block…I’m with the FBI,” he added in explanation. “It was an FBI team at the roadblock. We’ve moved in on you, John.”
“Bastards,” Pikelis replied coldly.
Then his eyes moved to Carstairs.
“Petie?” he asked uncertainly. “You FBI?”
The jet-set sportsman was astonished to find that he felt sorry for Pikelis. This cruel, evil man was his enemy, his mortal enemy. It didn’t make any sense—this surge of confused, sentimental compassion for the murderous Nazi.
“No, John. I’m one of the people who’ve been grabbing your money and machines, who broke Clayton out of jail. We’re not Federal, strictly private. It may sound crazy, John, but we came for vengeance—to avenge Eddie Barringer. We owed him that.”
The pale-faced gangster nodded.
He could understand vengeance.
It was a savage, primeval emotion that he knew, and this familiarity seemed to give him new strength. Again, he scanned the faces of the people who were peering into the car, eying him as if he were some animal in a zoo. There was a lean, handsome man standing beside a swarthy muscular type—both strangers—and on the other side he recognized the face of a stickman who worked at the Fun Parlor. Another traitor, another sneaky bastard like Harry Booth.
Pikelis sat up, his face taut with anger.
He opened his mouth, cursed obscenely.
Then he fell forward, and they saw the two red-brown stains that blotted much of the back of his silk sport jacket. Instinctively, Carstairs reached for the door handle to help him.
“Don’t touch him,” MacBride ordered curtly. “There’s nothing you can do—except maybe kill him.”
“He’s right,” Williston agreed. “The ambulance will be along soon, and they’ll know what to do.”
MacBride opened the rear door, reached in to remove the cigar still glowing in the unconscious gangster’s fist.
“Could set off an explosion with that leaking gasoline,” he announced as he prepared to extinguish the flame. He paused, sniffed at the Partaga and then dropped it to the earth and stepped on it.
“Cuban,” he identified mechanically.
“That’s a Federal offense,” Booth declared with dead-pan gravity. “Importation of Cuban products is prohibited, and the penalties are a possible fine of—”
“Don’t be stupid,” the Atlanta supervisor interrupted. “Smuggling belongs to Treasury, not us…Oh, this must be Clayton.”
Williston was the first to turn, to see the recently rescued black and the singer approaching.
“They’re FBI all right, Judy,” he said to the blond. “They’re the ones who bugged your room.”
“And saved your lives from the forces of evil,” Booth added righteously.
Parker Terence Carstairs wasn’t listening. He was still staring into the Cadillac. Gilman was looking too, counting the Federal agents thoughtfully.
“Twenty-three agents,” he announced. “You must have been expecting trouble—a lot of trouble.”
“Thirty-two, including the men at the roadblocks,” Mac-Bride corrected. “We came ready for trouble all right, but you’re the boys who’ve got it. It’s going to take a week to add up all the laws you’ve broken. The sentences ought to run at least three hundred years apiece.”
Williston responded instantly to the threat-challenge.
“Hold it. Hold it and cool it,” he ordered.
He didn’t appear to be the least bit afraid.
“First of all,” the teacher pointed out, “your jurisdiction is limited to offenses that are violations of Federal statutes, and I don’t think that we’ve violated many Federal statutes. I’m not admitting that we’ve violated any state or local laws either—that’s for a jury of our peers to decide. As a matter of fact, I—we—aren’t going to say anything till we see our lawyer.”
Booth nodded.
“You’ve got a right to consult with counsel, and we’re supposed to tell you about it,” he agreed. “I read it in The New York Times, or was it the Washington Post?”
Williston stared at MacBride, who blinked his assent.
“According to the Supreme Court, you have a right to talk to a lawyer within a reasonable time after being taken into custody,” he admitted, “but who said you’re in custody now?”
“You don’t mean now,” corrected the teacher. “You mean yet. Pete, you’ve got at least thirty or forty thousand worth of credit in your account with one of the hottest criminal lawyers in the country. He’s right in town too, and he’s your buddy, so why don’t you give old Joshua a call—now?”
“You mean it, Andy?”
“It’s only a dime, Petie,” Williston replied.
Carstairs shrugged, held out his hand toward MacBride.
“You fellows are supposed to supply the dime, right?” he queried.
The Atlanta SAC hesitated, startled at the thought that this multimillionaire was asking him for ten cents.
“I’ll spring for it,” Booth intervened.
He gave Carstairs the coin, walked with him to the office, where Fred Crowden was cowering. He was also cringing, sweating, salivating excessively and on the verge of tears. They ignored him as the second most eligible bachelor in North America dialed the Paradise House.
“Five cents more, please,” said the operator.
“Another nickel, Harry.”
“I don’t have to do this, you know,” the FBI man announced in mock protest. “The Supreme Court said a dime, not fifteen cents.”
“Cossack,” the blond millionaire sneered. He supplied the extra coin himself.
Twenty seconds later, he was speaking to Joshua David Davidson.
“What’s up, Petie?”
“A great deal. I want to hire you to represent me and some friends. I think we’re about to be arrested by the FBI, and Mr. Milburn Pembroke of Ackley, Pembroke, Travis, Cabot and Hoover says you’re a good criminal lawyer.”
“Son-of-a-bitch, it was you,” Davidson diagnosed. “It was your money he paid me to defend Clayton!”
“Son-of-a-bitch, it was me and my money all right. And it was me and my friends who broke Clayton out of jail so the local cops wouldn’t stage a phony suicide.”
“Son-of-a-bitch, a fake suicide?”
Carstairs sighed.
“Joshua, you seem to have a rather limited vocabulary for a brilliant trial lawyer,” he observed. “I’m not sure that you’re the man to defend us.”
Davidson laughed exultantly.
“You’re too late. I took the case thirty seconds ago, and besides, I’ve already got a nice sixty-five thousand dollars relationship with you. I love rich clients. Once I’m finished with Clayton, you’re next on the agenda, Petie. By the way, what are the charges?”
Carstairs explained what some of the charges might be, and Joshua David Davidson was properly impressed.
“Fabulous, absolutely fabulous,” he judged.
“The FBI says we could get a couple of hundred years for this, Joshua.”
“Nonsense. You’ll get medals. Before I’m through, people will want you to run for Congress. Don’t pay any attention to those FBI men, and don’t give them any statements or sign anything. Nothing, you hear? Just your name and home address, and my name as your attorney. Remember what I said, you’re national heroes.”
Carstairs turned to Booth.
“My lawyer says we’re national heroes and we’ll get medals, Harry.”
“Could I have your autograph, sir?” the FBI agent countered.
“Petie,” Davidson continued, “tell me one thing. Why did you do all this?”
The millionaire exp
lained.
“Now you tell me one thing, Joshua. What made you take the Clayton case?”
He listened to the answer, shaking his head in surprise.
“You’re not putting me on, are you?…No, okay…I believe you. Right…Lunch tomorrow, one o’clock…Right. So long, Joshua.”
The two men walked back to where MacBride was speaking with Williston.
“We’ve got ourselves a lawyer, Andy,” Carstairs announced. “He’s a bit odd and highly emotional, but terribly confident. He says we’re heroes, that we’ll never serve a day.”
“Tell him about the medals,” teased Booth.
“Yeah, Davidson—that’s our lawyer, Joshua David Davidson—says we’re going to get medals for our noble deeds. He also told me why he agreed to defend Clayton—because he drives an ice truck. Davidson’s father drove an ice truck on the lower East Side forty years ago; that’s how he earned the money to send Joshua to college and law school. Crazy, huh?”
“Crazy,” Williston agreed. “Bizarre, sentimental and preposterous. Our brilliant lawyer was right about our never serving a day, Petie. As a matter of fact, we probably don’t need a lawyer anymore.”
Carstairs was puzzled.
“Are you crazy now too, Andy?”
“Andy had a very man-to-man talk with Mr. MacBride while you were phoning,” the blond singer reported, “and they reached an understanding. We’re all going to cooperate with the FBI, and there may not be any charges against any of us.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Judy?”
“Pete,” said the teacher, “Mr. MacBride’s top priority target is the Pikelis organization. That’s why they planted Booth, to get evidence to clean up the town. With the stuff we’ve collected—the tapes and the pictures and the rest—MacBride can get Ashley to crack wide open. Ashley can deliver Pikelis, Marton and the rest, and the FBI will get all the credit for destroying this notorious criminal syndicate that no other law-enforcement agency could ever touch.”
“What do we get?”
“The Bureau’s thanks and my advice to leave Jefferson County within forty-eight hours if not sooner,” MacBride replied. “Go, quickly and quietly and thank your lucky stars that Professor Williston is such a persuasive salesman.”