by Jerry Ahern
The green and red Christmas lights came on.
Hughes took his fist and pounded once on the wall which adjoined Babcock’s room. Two knocks came back, meaning that Lewis Babcock as well had seen the signal indicating someone had come through the emergency stairs exit door. The blue and yellow lights would have indicated someone coming down the hall from the direction of the elevators. Earlier in the evening, dressed in their K-Mart coveralls, they had pried up the carpet where it was seamed between the elevators and their rooms, doing the same thing just near enough to the emergency stairwell as well. Using a razor-blade knife to cut out the padding, they had inserted the pressure-sensitive light switches beneath the carpet in the niches cut to receive them in the padding. Running his electrical wire to the wall and then under the carpet edges to their rooms, he had a primitive but effective intruder alert system installed.
While there had still been considerable traffic in the corridor, every few minutes or so the lights from the direction of the elevators would come on. He would automatically click them off with the switch beside him on the nightstand. Once it had passed 2:00 A.M., he began taking the more infrequent lightings more seriously, waiting with his improvised weapons ready just in case it were the real thing.
It hadn’t been yet.
But this was the first time the lights had signaled approach from the direction by the emergency stairs.
He shut off his green and red lights, assuming that Babcock would have done the same. He had guarded against one of them falling asleep by installing the lights in both rooms. However this turned out, Hughes somehow felt the hotel people wouldn’t be terribly happy with their carpets.
There was a series of knocks on the wall. Hughes signaled back they were understood. To his feet, he moved quickly and silently across the room, his water pistol in his right hand.
The series of knocks had indicated someone was entering the room Babcock occupied.
Hughes’s right fist balled on the Luger-shaped squirt gun. He pulled up his safety goggles from beneath his chin.
There was the sound of the safety chain next door being ripped out of the wall.
Hughes worked his own chain off and stepped into the corridor as the first scream came. A tall, thin black man wearing a nylon stocking over his head for a mask wheeled toward him, a .45 automatic in his right fist. Hughes fired for the man’s eyes before the .45 could come on line, the startled man screaming something unintelligible as both hands went to protect his eyes, Hughes’s body slamming him to the floor.
Hughes could hear the sound of the electric fan now and then, someone shouting, “My eyes. Motherfucker!” Hughes’s right knee smashed up into the base of the downed man’s jaw, putting him out. Hughes’s gloved left fist grabbed up the .45, his right hand sweeping over the slide to chamber a first round if one weren’t already chambered.
He was through the doorway, shouting, “Lewis! Me!”
One of the men was down on the floor, rubbing his eyes and screaming, the other man locked in combat with Lewis Babcock. There was a .45 beside the man rolling around on the floor and Hughes caught it up in his right fist as he passed him, crossing the room in two strides, upping the safety of the .45 automatic as he laced the pistol across the side of the third man’s neck. The body slumped to its knees. Lewis Babcock sagged back against the wall. “I can’t believe it! This idiocy worked.”
Hughes grinned. “Turn off the electric fan, will you. I’ll catch a draft.”
He walked over to the other man, satisfied himself the situation was static for ten seconds and went into the hallway. He grabbed the semi-conscious man out of the corridor and dragged him inside the room, then closed the door. The chain was ripped from the wall but the door was otherwise functional.
“Lewis. Call the lobby and complain you heard some people making a terrible racket, looked into the corridor and saw them getting into the elevator.”
“Right. ’
Hughes dropped to one knee beside the man who was still rubbing his eyes, crying now. “The tears will do you good, my friend. Get that pepper out of your eyes better than anything else. Let’s get rid of this stocking over your beautiful face.” Hughes tore the stocking away. A milk-chocolate-skinned black man in his late twenties or early thirties.
“Pepper?”
“You didn’t notice the fan? When you and your friend entered the room, my associate Mr. Babcock turned on the fan—all the way to high. We had twenty pounds of finely ground black pepper in nice neat little one-pound plastic bags. Just shake the bag open in front of the fan and you have an instant blinding pepper storm that even penetrated these things.” Hughes held up the stocking. “But not these.” And he tugged his goggles down to his neck. “Guns make a lot of noise and might interrupt our discussions up here. These don’t.” Hughes produced one of the steak knives and held it to the man’s throat.
“Hey, man—”
“What’s your name?”
“Ahh—”
“Tell me your name.” He pressed the knife against the tip of the man’s nose.
“All right—all right! Balthaszar Roman, man!”
“Balthaszar? Ever called ‘Balls’ for short?”
Balthaszar Roman actually grinned.
“Sometimes, yeah.”
Hughes moved the knife and pressured it against Roman’s testicles just enough so he’d feel it. “If you don’t very shortly tell me what I want to hear, your pals will never call you Balls again. Understand?”
The man’s upper lip glistened with sweat. He nodded vigorously.
“All right. We’re public-spirited citizens. Who pulled the trigger on Officer Hayes’s partner, Mike?”
Balthaszar Roman licked his lips.“I can ’t—”
“I can understand a man of scruples. I’ll wager you won’t even cry out when I saw your nuts off.” Hughes increased the pressure with the knife.
“Tyrone! Tyrone did it, man.”
“Tyrone did it. Is Tyrone with us, Balthaszar?”
“He was in the hallway man!” Balthaszar Roman’s eyes were still streaming tears from the pepper and perhaps from the realization of what he had just said.
“Ahh. Now. Another question, Balthaszar. Is a Mr. Jones with us, too?”
“Yeah, over there.”
“And Tyrone decided he wanted vengeance on Ernie Hayes because of the affair involving Jones’s sister, correct?”
“Ernie Hayes kicked the shit outa Tyrone when he went after her like that with the belt.”
“Why would officer Hayes have done a thing like that, now. A clear-cut case of police brutality if I’ve ever heard it, Balthaszar. You should have lodged a complaint.”
“Man—”
“Shut up, Balthaszar. That’s so you can listen very carefully. Now. If Tyrone killed Officer Hayes’s partner, how did officer Hayes wind up just walking around dazed when he was picked up?”
“We stopped the car with a garbage truck we stole. Hadda snow plow on it. Hayes banged up his head on the steering wheel.”
“Lewis?” Hughes called out.
“There was a big bump on Ernie’s head.”
“You’re doing wonderfully well, Balthaszar. Now. What happened next?”
“Tyrone had it figured we’d smoke Hayes and his partner, but then with Hayes unconscious and his partner kinda that way, Tyrone says he got himself a better idea. Ya know?”
Hughes smiled. “No. But you’ll tell me, I’m sure. What happened then?”
“Tyrone says he’s gonna fix Ernie Hayes good. We throw Hayes in the car Randy was drivin ’ and Tyrone—he takes Hayes’s gun and smokes the other pig with it. Then we dump Hayes in some alley, man.”
“What about the cocaine, Balthaszar?”
“Gimme a cigarrette, huh?”
“Bad for your health. Almost as bad as not answering my questions.” And Hughes prodded him again in the crotch with the knife. “Where’s the cocaine?”
“Princes owns a junk yard over on South
Michigan.”
“So?”
“There’s a fifty-four Cadillac. Red with black upholstery. What’s left of it. He got the coke in the trunk inside the spare.”
“That’s very inventive, Balthaszar.”
“Look, man—lemme go now, huh?”
“Balthaszar, you have two simple choices You can become a public-spirited citizen too or you can have serious problems.”
“Man—I say shit ’bout Tyrone, he gonna burn my ass he hear.”
Hughes looked at Lewis Babcock. “Lewis. When Tyrone makes his break for the door—”
Tyron Cash was up from the floor, breaking into a dead run. Babcock picking up the straight-backed chair and smashing it across Cash’s back as he made for the door, putting him down.
“You see, Balthaszar, Tyrone heard every unkind word you said about him. Now, those two choices again. Either go to the Drug Enforcement Agency people with your story or go out on the street. If Tyrone doesn’t get you, I will. Lewis?”
“Yeah?”
“My little tape recorder still running?”
“It certainly is.”
“Aww shit.”
“Precisely.” Hughes and Babcock had assessed the situation while installing the improvised alarm systems in the hallway. Counting on getting Tyrone Cash to talk about himself and still keeping him in one piece might have proven impossible. And, if Randy Jones was either so hopelessly loyal or terrified that he wouldn’t step in when his own sister was being beaten with a belt, Jones might prove intractable as well. That had left Balthaszar Roman, the one with the least violent reputation of the three and probably the easiest to intimidate.
“Here’s what you’re going to do. I have a friend who did me a favor earlier this evening. I called him up in Washington and asked if he could get a squad of DEA personnel to station themselves across the street discreetly all night. He called me back and said that he could. I told him to tell them that a man wearing white coveralls would walk out of here and come and speak with them. Now, you can either do that, Balthaszar, in which case you’ll be given the fairest treatment possible and protection from your friend Tyrone and the rest of the Devil’s Princes, or you can just walk outside and try to hide from Tyrone, whom I will promptly let go, and me.”
“Man!”
“You have a very limited vocabulary. You should read more. When you’ve made your decision, if it is to cooperate with the DEA and tell them everything, I want the entire thing with Officer Hayes explained first. Before that pre-trial hearing tomorrow.”
Hughes stood up, staring down at Balthaszar Roman. “Do you wish to be given a nearly new pair of coveralls or do you wish to die?” Hughes looked over toward Tyrone Cash. The gang leader was stirring on the floor. “Next time Tyrone wakes up, if you haven’t made up your mind, I let him go. If you have, I’ll hold him for the drug enforcement people. So what’ll it be, Balthaszar? DEA or D.E.A.D.?”
“Gimme the coveralls. Shit!”
Lewis Babcock started to laugh.
Chapter Eleven
Seamus O ’Fallon had felt better throughout the day and had finally gotten some sleep, the headache just a low throb that he could easily enough control.
They sat around a small table in the master’s cabin, the rough seas calmed enough that it was possible to keep a cup of coffee nearly full on the long table and not have to hold onto it to keep it from spilling. Young Martin looked green still, but what better color for an Irishman. O ’Fallon smiled to himself. And it could have been sea sickness.
They were listening to the BBC overseas broadcast.
The death toll from the bombing of the RUC barracks was only a disappointing one hundred and two confirmed. But, there were still five unaccounted-for bodies and several of the injured were listed as critical.
When the broadcast was over, O’Fallon said, “Martin. There’s a good lad and turn off the radio, will ya now.”
“Yes, Seamus.”
Martin turned off the radio, one of those things made to look like the old-time cathedral radios but thoroughly modern and very expensive.
“Well, lads,” O ’Fallon began to the dozen men seated at the table. “We coulda done better with the bombing if we hadn’t had to do it so hastily. But, on the bright side, the bloody Brits’ll barely have time to catch their wind before we do the next job. they will.”
“Seamus?”
It was Patrick Kehoe speaking, a burly young fellow who was as fine a man with a knife as anyone O’Fallon had ever seen. “What is it, Paddy?”
“What is it We’re after doing out here? You can be tellin ’ us now, sure.”
“Ahh, that I can, boyo. We’re engaged in a great endeavor, we are. When I talked about this one, I said chances were none of us would come back alive outa it, didn’t 1 now.”
“For fact you did, Seamus,” Paddy Kehoe responded enthusiastically.
“Well, the truth of it is now that I think none of us will ever touch the dry land again unless they overpower us and carry our bodies home. And the likelihood of that happenin ’ is real remote, it is.”
“What are we up to, Seamus?” Young Martin asked.
“It began when a fine fella, a son of the old sod if ever there was one, told me, ‘Seamus. Could you and the lads be after usin’ my fancy boat? ’ And I says, ‘Well, might be a nice thing for an outing with the ladies and the little ones, for sure.’ And then I got to thinkin’, I did. And I asked this fine fella—a Yank he was and a regular giver to The Aid and a helper many’s the time when we needed somethin’ real special like a LAWs rocket or somethin’. So, I says to him, ‘Would ya be after offerin’ us a crew to boot?’ And himself, he says, ‘Sure.’ Well, lads, the opportunity was too much for the O’Fallon to resist, it was. And me mind started cookin’ up on somethin’ nobody done to the bloody Brits for a long time. And, would any of ya be after guessin’ what it might be I thought up?”
There was dead silence except for the subtle throb of the engines and the creaking of the vessel around them.
“Well, then I suppose it’s me that’ll be tellin’ ya, now. I says to myself, ‘O’Fallon. How could we hurt the bloody Brits real bad and at the same time get ourselves publicity all over the world for the cause? How could a handful of stout-hearted lads such as ourselves do somethin’ that might really force the Brits out? And then it came to me—like somethin’ in a flash, it did. I was walkin’ along and me mind was driftin’ to thoughts of Mary McKeown and takin’ a roll in the covers and then the inspiration comes on me. We hijack us a British ship. One of them humongous floatin’ hotels they suck up to the rich boys with. ‘So fine,’ I says, ‘O’Fallon.’ But it had to be a special boat, it did. Any you lads remember how that one tooth of mine was hurtin’ the devil outa me?”
“I remember, Seamus!” Sean Dougherty announced. “You was worse tempered than usual, you were, Seamus!” Everybody laughed and so did O’Fallon.
“That’s the truth of it, Jack. But I was there polishin’ my arse listenin’ to all the drillin’ noises and all and tryin’ to get it outa me mind, I was. And I picked up some silly woman’s catalog or magazine. I started lookin’ through. And there, right in front of me eyes, was what I wanted all along. Me tooth even stopped hurtin’, lads. And that’s the Lord’s own truth, it is. But I seen the tooth puller anyhow.”
“What was her name, Seamus?” Paddy asked.
“The Empress Britannia, lads.” The cigarette in the comer of his mouth was nearly out and he lit another with the butt.
Chapter Twelve
So far, there had been no sign of the black seaman Alvin Leeds or whatever his real name was. And it was at once too late and yet too early to go prowling about the vessel in search of him. A first-class cabin had been all there was available and, he confessed to himself, a first-class lifestyle was something he could easily get used to again. When he’d lived in England, he’d been there under the guise of a technical writer, a freelancer with a generous expense account. The gen
erous expense account had provided for good clothes, nice weekends in the country, the whole capitalist milieu. The woman who had been assigned to pose as his wife—she’d died six months after returning to the Soviet Union—had been fun to be with, enjoyed the radically altered lifestyle as much as he.
He sipped at a vodka martini and listened to the pretty girl singer. Ephraim Vols had developed a strong liking for American music when he’d done his service in Great Britain, and this young woman not only sang the best of it with aplomb, but the pianist who was doubling as her accompanist had a wonderful touch at the keys.
He brushed a speck of lint from his new tuxedo.
She was doing a medley of Judy Garland songs, but with her own style and flair.
He lit a cigarette. The process was simple, really. He had until they were a day or so out of New York to set the thing up. He would get hold of Leeds and somehow get the truth serum into him and obtain the location of the ampule from the man. Vols doubted that in this case killing could be avoided. The logical thing was to somehow get Leeds’s body over the side just before they hit New York so the missing crewman wouldn’t be noticed until after the passengers had gotten off and through customs. Getting the ampule through customs might prove interesting in itself, but he’d cross that bridge when he came to it. And besides, Anna would be there to work out an escape route—he hoped not to Cuba because he couldn’t stand people like Castro—and she’d probably attack the customs problem for him. And, there was always the possibility that Alvin Leeds wasn’t the American agent, but he’d wagered that Leeds was and his gut-level reactions were rarely wrong.
Vols tried putting the thing out of his head, his eyes scanning the crowd of listeners. There were plenty of unattached women, it appeared. His eyes kept going back to the pretty young woman who was singing, this Jennifer Hall. He wondered, a little more than casually, if she and the pianist—a good-looking fellow in a rough and tumble sort of way-were an item.
There was only one way to find out; and, the more he blended in with the ordinary life of the vessel, the more unnoticed he would be.