The Poisoners mh-13

by Donald Hamilton

  "Has he got a boat of his own?" I asked. "He didn't look like a yachting type to me."

  "That's more or less what put us onto it," she said. "He bought a yachting cap and a big seagoing motorsailer a couple of years ago and started getting very nautical indeed. Since then he's been running down to the Ensenada area quite frequently. Ostensibly it's just a matter of booze and broads, if you know what I mean-the shipboard parties get pretty noisy sometimes. We have a hunch some of that noise is generated for public consumption, so to speak, and the parties have actually been a cover for some trial runs. Naturally, we've left him strictly alone so far. We've been trying to determine just how many boats besides the Fleetwind are involved; and where the actual southern terminus is located."

  "So you've got the probable route pinned down," I said. "Have you any line on the laboratory, and the source of supply?"

  "The source is easy, and at the same time impossible," she said wryly. "What I mean is, there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of Mexican farmers back in the hills growing the poppies on a small scale. There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of independent collectors buying the gum from them and boiling it up to get the morphine base, which they'll sell to anyone who'll pay the going price-" She had to stop as the elderly gent in coveralls passed us once more, heading for a grimy door next to the office, presumably the john.

  "It would take the Mexican Army to make an impression at that end," Charlie said when the old man was back on the job once more. "As a matter of fact, the crackdown by our brother agencies along the border has kind of jogged them into taking a little action: burning a few fields and arresting a few peasants. It won't last, of course; it never does; but it's the best we can hope for right now. The laboratory is a different matter. Frankie has got to set up a good one somewhere, if he wants to market a high-class product. We think he must have it just about ready to go."

  "Have you any idea where?"

  She moved her shoulders half-helplessly. "Not really, except that it will undoubtedly be in Mexico. The surveillance problems are smaller there; besides, the refined heroin takes up less room than the morphine base and is easier to smuggle. We figure it's either in Ensenada or between there and the border, but Frankie's been very careful on his south-of-the-border cruises and we've had to do our watching from a distance so as not to tip him off. Once we locate the lab, we can get the Mexican authorities to close it down for us-but of course we don't really want that to happen until the timing is just right. We want to be certain that the place is in actual production, and that Frankie himself has taken delivery of a few kilos and brought them up here, where we'll be waiting."

  "What makes you think he'll handle the smuggling himself?" I asked. "Most of those big boys make a point of keeping their hands clean of everything connected with drugs except the money."

  "Frankie's got a problem," she said. "The syndicate does frown on the dope trade these days, officially, for public relations motives. That means that Frankie's got to keep his activities secret not only from us, but from his Mafia associates and superiors as well. I don't think he'll trust any underlings to handle the first few shipments. He'll take as few syndicate people into his confidence as possible until he's got things running smoothly and profitably."

  "It sounds reasonable," I said. "But you're going to a hell of a lot of trouble, it seems to me, to catch just one man with a few pounds of happy-dust."

  She hesitated. "You don't understand; it's not just one man we're concerned with. At present the syndicate is more or less out of the drug business, except for a few greedy, rebellious individuals like Frank Warfel. Right now, Frankie's superiors would certainly crack down on him if they knew he was planning to involve the organization in a risky gamble with dope. But suppose he manages to hold them off until he can show them a smoothly functioning gold mine from which they can all profit? In that case, they'll be much less likely to chastise him, won't they? They may even be tempted to change their official policy once more. And even if they don't, they may find more and more backsliders like Frankie defying their edict-"

  "Actually, from what little I know about them, I gather the various families don't really have much authority over each other."

  "That's right." Charlie looked at me almost pleadingly. "You see how important it is, Matt? You see that it's got to take precedence over your quest for vengeance. I mean, thousands of lives will be ruined by drugs if Frankie succeeds; or if… if somebody kills him so we can't catch him red-handed and make such a big public 'stink that his Cosa Nostra friends will continue to stay out of the drug business, permanently."

  Well, she had a point. I might kid her about the strange legal logic that tries to cure an addict by making a criminal of him, but I hold no brief for anyone who tries to cash in on his addiction.

  I said, "Well, to the best of my knowledge, I'm not really after Frank Warfel."

  "Perhaps not. But judging by your record, which I've read with great interest-the parts we were able to obtain-you certainly wouldn't hesitate to shoot him if he got in your way. And that mustn't happen." She drew a long breath. "Look, I'll make a bargain with you. You leave us our Frankie and we'll do our best to get you your Nicholas. Okay?"

  I said, "Some bargain. You've got instructions to assist me. I've got no instructions to assist you-" It hit me belatedly, and I stopped and stared hard at her. "Just what do you know about Nicholas, sweetheart? As far as we know, he's never been connected with dope, so where did you get the name?"

  She looked down, clearly embarrassed. "Well, I… I just heard something…"

  "Heard?" I said grimly. "Oh, I see. Over the phone." After a moment, I couldn't help grinning. "Charlie, I'm surprised and shocked at you, eavesdropping like that. And there I thought you were being so kind and cooperative, saving me from wearing out my dime in a public booth."

  She said without meeting my eyes, "All our phones are monitored, naturally."

  "Oh, naturally."

  "You asked your chief to check up on me. I heard you. Did you think I wouldn't check up on you?" She forced herself to look at me defiantly. "Do we have a deal, Matt? Frankie for Nicholas and whoever else was involved in killing your girl-as long as it isn't Frankie." I said, "Hell, I'm not a homicidal maniac, doll, whatever you may have read in my record. If it is Frankie, and you put him away on drug charges, that'll serve our purpose just as well as shooting him. It's a deal." I held out my hand and she shook it. "Okay," I said, "that's settled. Now you'd better give me some license numbers and descriptions. Did you recognize the man who ran you off the road?"

  "Yes, it was the ugly one who was driving you around earlier in that beat-up old station wagon."

  "Willi Keim?"

  "Willy Hansen is the name we know him by."

  "What model jeep?"

  "It wasn't the little Universal, but the longer one, kind of fancy, they call a Jeepster. White. California plates." She gave me the number.

  "And Blame's wheels?"

  "A sporty convertible, gold with a black top, that she picked up at the airport. She had the top up, of course, in this weather. One of the Pontiacs. I can't remember all the jazzy names. A Firebird?" She gave me that number, too, and said a little warily: "You sound as if you were planning to take off after her by yourself and leave me here."

  "That's right," I said. "Somebody's got to keep in touch with home base, in case the police report a bad accident involving a gold convertible, or a dead redheaded female body, or something. And you were going to do some research on Sorenson, remember? I'll head south and check back with you. Have you got anybody at the border to see who goes through?"

  "We've always got somebody at the border to see who goes through, Mr. Helm. And in answer to your next question, yes, they've been alerted and given all available information. But they can't take action without bringing in the police officially; that's not their job."

  I regarded her for a moment. I would have been happy to trade her for a certain tough, unscrupulous, hot-tempered, redh
eaded little girl with whom I'd once worked, but that girl was dead. What I had to back me up now was a lady dope cop with ideals, and in this business nothing will kill you faster or deader than ideals. It wasn't a happy thought.

  "No," I said, "it's my job, Charlie. And yours."

  X

  When I came outside, the mist was just as thick as it had been, or a little thicker, and it smelled just as bad, or a little worse. I went over to the new rental car that had been brought to me by Devlin's people after I'd explained to the guy on the phone that I'd ditched the other one, because somebody might have seen the license plate at the scene of the shooting and mentioned it to the police. He'd promised to deal with the problem, if it turned out to be a problem.

  I'd already driven the replacement far enough to know that it was never going to become my favorite vehicle: a commuter's special with too many power gadgets and too little character. It had one of those space-age names- Satellite-that they like to give to cars nowadays when they're not naming them after animals, birds, or poisonous reptiles.

  Getting into the shiny sedan, I heard a siren on the freeway and saw an ambulance go by up there, heading for Los Angeles. It was the third such emergency vehicle I'd encountered since starting south. Well, it was a bad night for driving. There was bound to be some breakage. With that thought, I slid behind the wheel, swung the car around jerkily-a sports car man at heart, I'm not at my best with automatic transmissions and power brakes-and headed for the nearest on-ramp to join the fun.

  Southern California drivers are a courageous lot. You might even call them reckless-perhaps life has lost its meaning down there without real air to breathe. By the time I'd raced that headlong, suicidal traffic through the gradually lessening fog to the outskirts of San Diego, I was happy to pull off the freeway and find a phone. When I called the garage, Charlie Devlin answered promptly.

  "McCrory's Motor Service."

  "Hi," I said.

  "Oh, it's you. Where are you now?" I told her, and she said: "No farther than that? Well, your subject crossed the border at Tijuana, some twenty miles ahead of you, almost an hour ago. She headed south towards Ensenada, our people report. The white Jeepster was two cars behind her going through the international gate."

  "Your people couldn't stick a pin in his tire to stop him, or plant some marihuana under his seat, or something?"

  "Don't be silly, nobody cares about marihuana smuggled into Mexico. And I told you, these are information people, not action people. When they need muscle they call the police. Or us. Did you want the police dragged into this?"

  "I guess not." Obviously, if I'd wanted the police, I should have made up my mind earlier. "You're sure she's on her way to Ensenada?"

  "No, of course I'm not sure. She could have doubled back, although she wasn't seen recrossing the border. But she could have swung east towards Mexicali; there's a good highway just south of the line that runs well over by Arizona. However, when last seen, she was barreling out on Mexico Highway 1, the road that'll take you clear down Baja California to La Paz, if you and your vehicle are tough enough to make it. It's about eight hundred miles. The pavement ends about ninety miles south of Ensenada at present. After that, things get pretty rough."

  I'd heard about that rugged peninsula road before- they run well-publicized races down it for trail-type vehicles, and a lot of them fall by the wayside-but I let her finish the geography lesson anyway.

  Then I said, "Well, Beverly's not likely to try the Baja boondocks in her flossy convertible, but Willy's all set to make the run with that four-wheel-drive heap, once he does his job. Maybe that's the idea."

  "Or maybe we're just supposed to think that's the idea."

  "I'll keep both possibilities in mind. How's your car coming?"

  "It'll be another hour or so. I had them wake up somebody to get the parts in L.A. and run them down here…"

  She stopped abruptly. I heard some odd, choking sounds over the phone.

  "What's the matter?" I asked quickly. "Miss Devlin? Charlie?"

  Her voice came back on the line sounding kind of hoarse and strangled. "Just this damn allergy. Don't get excited. As I was saying, we've got the parts now, but the man's just started putting them in. As soon as he's finished, I'll come after you."

  "Name a rendezvous," I said. "I don't know the area."

  "The Bahia Hotel in Ensenada. It's on the main tourist drag, on the right-hand side of the street going south; you can't miss it."

  I said, "Okay. Incidentally, I've switched cars. Look for a Plymouth Satellite four-door, kind of reddish-brown. If the sun visors are down, you make contact with me as soon as possible. If they're up, stay clear and wait until you hear from me. Watch that allergy, Charlie."

  "Thanks," she said. "You he careful, too. Oh, I've ordered LA to check on Dr. Sorenson for you."

  "Thanks."

  Getting into Mexico was no problem; the uniformed officials at the gate just glanced at my identification and waved me through. Coming back, however, promised to be a different proposition, judging by the line of backed-up traffic waiting to be searched for drugs on the U.S. side. Considering that any smart smuggler would have the word by now, it seemed unlikely that the Customs boys were making any great hauls to justify the unpopularity they were generating on both sides of the border, but maybe they were hardened types who didn't care whether or not people loved them.

  I followed the sparse highway signs through Tijuana in the dark without learning much about that colorful, wide-open town except that it doesn't spend much money keeping up its streets. Shortly after leaving the city limits, however, I found myself paying toll for the privilege of driving down an excellent four-lane highway at the legal speed of a hundred and ten kilometers per hour, roughly seventy m.p.h.

  I could see the ocean on my right, now, in the growing dawn light. Down here the air was clear, and it looked like a beautiful morning coming up, with only a few clouds in the sky. It was like driving out from under a moist, stinking, gray blanket; but that ocean bothered me. Some people, I know, think of oceans in terms of pleasure boats, or sport fishing, or surfboards, or just plain happy swimming; but in my line of work we tend to regard any large body of water primarily as a tempting place to ditch a corpse.

  Beyond the southern fringes of Tijuana, there wasn't much in the way of human habitation to embarrass anyone planning a burial at sea-or a heroin pickup, I reflected. Infrequent highway signs indicated turnoffs to villages that, as far as I could make out from the highway, were largely collections of shabby house trailers parked along the shore for the convenience of fishermen from the north. At least they looked very much like the seaside slums I'd seen elsewhere in Mexico, inhabited, during the season, by dedicated Yankee anglers. At this time of year, in the middle of the week, the villages were mostly deserted. They became more infrequent the farther south I drove.

  Seeing the lonely road, and the empty, rocky coastline, I decided that Willy had deliberately waited for his victim-we prefer the word subject-to get down into Mexico where he could do his work conveniently and unobserved. Driving along, I watched the pavement for signs of hard, emergency braking, and the shoulder for tracks leading off the road.

  I found them. You'd be surprised how many double streaks of rubber leading away into nothing you'll see on any highway if you really look; and how many wheel tracks run right off the edge of the road embankment without further traces of the vehicles that made them. I must have stopped half a dozen times in forty miles, quite sure that I'd come upon a broken convertible beyond those swerving tire marks leading into empty space, only to find myself looking at a virgin hillside or an unmarked cliff, with no signs of wreckage below.

  The last time, however, as I was turning back to the car, I saw what I was looking for on the distant rocks beyond the small bay ahead: a pile of twisted metal with gold paint on it, gleaming dully in the shadow of the coastal hills. Well, at least it hadn't burned.

  I drove over there and parked above the plac
e and sat a moment in my car, not particularly wanting to see what was down there. I mean, it was too bad about McConnell, I'd been a little slow there, they'd caught me by surprise, but at least I'd been present and trying. Here I might have saved a life by calling in the police and having Willy Hansen picked up on some pretext or other before he crossed the border. Or I could have had the girl picked up and held in protective custody.

  It would have involved a lot of explanations and formalities afterwards; it might even have loused up the mission completely. Mac would have been annoyed, but that wasn't why I hadn't done it. The fact is, I hadn't really thought of it until too late. People like me just don't think in terms of police; and because of my lone-wolf working habits, a girl was dead. There was nothing left for me to do but go look at what was left.

  I got out of the car. At this point, the lanes of the dual highway were cut into the steeply sloping hillside at different levels. There was a masonry retaining wall to keep the upper northbound lane from sliding down onto the lower southbound lane on which I stood. There were plenty of signs to indicate what had happened.

  Beverly had simply failed to make the sweeping right-hand turn around the head of the bay. She'd lost control of her car somehow and gone clear across the road to the left. She'd caromed off the stone retaining wall, leaving gold paint and chipped stonework behind her. Still fighting helplessly for control, perhaps, she had bounced back across the highway and over the edge. The tracks were clear in the dirt of the highway shoulder.

  Professionally speaking, I had to admit that it was a good job. It looked like a simple matter of too much speed and too little driving ability. Well, if Willy was anything, he was a pro in automotive matters. I wondered just how he'd managed to work this.