Lone Wolf #6: Chicago Slaughter

by Barry, Mike

  There was nothing left to prove.

  He wanted to get rid of the valise then. Dump it on the federal authorities, let them worry about it. He supposed vaguely that there would be much more to this than simple pickup and delivery, that they were going to have a lot of questions to ask and that the sudden possession of a million dollars worth of shit would create more problems than this particular branch of the government would want to handle. Also they must know by now, as well as the organization, exactly who Wulff was and what he had done. They would want to talk to him. They might even try to frame some kind of prosecution although there was nothing that they could bring that would really stand up because who was going to testify against him? All of the witnesses were dead. Wulff left no witnesses. Still, he would deal with it.

  The simple truth of the matter was that he was tired. He had had enough. You went on and on and there were always two or three men in a car somewhere, bounty hunters or employees or federal agents, who were out to get you. He could not battle them off eternally. Sooner or later they would get him and all that he had done would be wiped out. He would be dead. Certainly they would kill him. Righteously, eagerly,greedily, defensively—for any one of a multitude of reasons they would want to kill him … and whatever the reason the outcome was the same.

  He didn’t want to live, not all that much. The effective parts of him had been killed when he had seen Marie Calvante dead in a funished room on West 93rd Street. But he didn’t want to die either. Not exactly. Not in their way anyway. He was entitled to pick the ways and the means of his death and he did not like their plans at all.

  So Daley City. A TWA carrier out and no one had looked at him. The valise stashed in the luggage compartment and no one had looked at that either. Fuck their x-ray devices, fuck their sky-marshals, fuck their hijacking and suicide teams. Havana had been a freak; no one had expected him to get out of New York in the way he had and as quickly. The only precaution he had taken was to have ditched his guns in a locker before boarding. Small loss. He could stock up anywhere in Chicago, if he wanted. It was an open country.

  Daley City. It looked pretty much as he had seen it years ago, passing through, attending a national police seminar on riot control and the techniques of infiltration. That had been during the summer of the year when everyone had seen an international Communist conspiracy to subvert the country through longhaired, bomb-building radicals who took drugs and also fornicated with one another in the basements of abandoned buildings. The siminar had focussed on the best way to control this menace and a sequence of speakers and discussion leaders had agreed that killing was the answer. But unfortunately, since there were grand juries and communist attorneys who got stuffy about this, you might as well settle for the most sophisticated and forceful means of riot control. Spray guns. Mace. Infiltration at the highest level of their filthy organizations. Clubbing and preventative detention. Well, Wulff thought, that had been a difficult summer. The war had been near its height and the nadir of its public support, and presidential candidates, right and left, were falling into the practice of stepping out of cars or into kitchens and getting themselves shot or shot at. You could explain this kind of hysteria simply by saying that it was inevitable and that it would begin at the bottom levels of the populace, slowly filtering its way up until some group of clerks, somewhere, began to write memos for high-grade clerks on what had to be done. The cops were really close to the situation, closer than the clerks; they could hardly be condemned for getting edgy. Everybody was pretty edgy. Wulff had still been a narco that summer and the informants themselves had clammed up saying that the atmosphere was so mean and tight that there was no spare information lying around. They had run out of information and the free market in drugs simultaneously.

  “Like it?” the driver said, pointing to the Loop skyline, then gesturing off in the direction of the lake. The driver had been delivering a nonstop soliliquy on the advantages of Chicago throughout the clogged, rush-hour drive, probably on the assumption that Wulff was a businessman on company time who would appreciate this kind of backgrounder instead of having to think about the convention upcoming. Either that or the driver was under constant threat by the city administration to plug Chicago nonstop or face expulsion. The taxi union like everything else in town was almost a branch of civil service. “It’s some godamned city,” the driver said. “There’s never been a godamned city like this, not ever. Your first time here?”

  “Not quite,” Wulff said, adjusting himself on the seat. He did not want conversation but the effort of avoiding it meant other dangers. He looked out the window into the gathering traffic, the air—for all the density of the highway and the industry of the city—surprisingly clear at this time of the morning.

  “Federal offices, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What brings you into the federal offices? Marshal or an attorney? Something like that?”

  Wulff leaned forward, elbows on the seat and stared at the driver. He was a short man with enormous, ill-proportioned wrists which lay crosswise across the steering wheel, otherwise he was completely unremarkable. “What’s the difference?” he said.

  “Just asking.”

  “Don’t ask.”

  “All right,” the driver said, “I won’t ask. I won’t ask a godamned thing. I try to be friendly, I try to make conversation—”

  “Don’t be friendly. Don’t make conversation.” Wulff fought for control, almost saying just drive and shut up and held onto himself. “I’ve got things on my mind.”

  “Oh,” the driver said. “I can understand that. Having things on your mind, I mean.” He leaned over, tapped the valise which lay next to him on the front seat. “Important papers?” he said. “Or do you have some stash here?” Driving one-handed, he toyed with a clip. “Might as well take a look in, see what’s making you so unfriendly.”

  “All right,” Wulff said abruptly. He felt stunned. Were all the taxi-drivers this way or was this man a damned lunatic? “Get your hands off that valise. Just drive now.”

  “Just curious,” the driver said. He handled the car skillfully, weaving through traffic one-handed, his free hand resting on the valise. “I’d like to know what you have in here that you’re so distracted. Chicago’s a beautiful city, you should be able to sit back and enjoy it. Without having your mind bothered with strange thoughts.”

  “All right,” Wulff said again. “That’s it. Enough. Pull the cab over.”

  “I don’t think so,” the driver said very softly. He turned still driving one-handed, the wheel neatly balanced in a pocket of that enormous wrist and showed Wulff a gun, “I don’t think that I can do that you see.” He turned his attention back to the road, delicately shifted the cab into the slow lane and then with no unnecessary haste or lapse of control turned back toward Wulff and showed him the gun again. “I think we’ll just have to keep going,” he said.

  Wulff sat back in the seat, shoulders flat to the leather and confronted the gun. He found that there was no fear, only an odd detachment. This had been rigged cleverly, he had to admit that. He had to give them their due; they had set this one up very well. Coming out of the TWA exit he had gone into the nearest cab without a second thought, even tossing the valise on the front seat next to the driver before he had gone into the back, leaving the valise unattended for that perilous instant. He had been so sure of himself that it had never occurred to him until a moment ago that the level of attention concentrated upon him now was nationwide. It was no casual factor whatsoever. Did he really think that he could get in and out of the plane unobserved and over to the government offices so easily? Well yes, he had, he had indeed. That was his mistake.

  “I advise you to relax,” the driver said softly, back to the road again one-handed, the gun now withdrawn to a safer distance from Wulff. The man was good, no question about it; there was no way that Wulff could reach the gun before the driver had a chance to fire. And he was handling driving and gun at such a level o
f skill that it was obvious Wulff was dealing with a professional, one of the very few real professionals he had run into so far. “That’s fine,” the driver said, “you’re taking this the right way. I respect you and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t respect me. You know that I know what I’m doing. Now, you sit back and cooperate and we’ll get you where we want to go with no conflict at all, but on the other hand if you make things difficult we won’t. It’s up to you. It’s your decision.”

  The driver said nothing else. He slipped the car at high speed off an exit ramp and Wulff found himself on Michigan Avenue, driving quickly along the lakefront, the tires of the cab squealing just a little as the driver whipped it in and out of lane. It occurred to him as they pulled up to a stoplight that his way out of the cab was clear; he could jump free and evade the driver. There would be no shooting. But to jump clear would mean that he would lose the valise and he suspectedthat they wanted the valise as much or more than they wanted him. He was a fringe benefit, extra pay for the driver if he was brought in as well.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said involuntarily, “son of a bitch.” He was no longer a person. He was a valise. That was about the way it had been since he left Vegas. And before that, in Boston. “Son of a bitch.”

  “I happen to disagree with that,” the driver said almost cheerfully, “but I’ll fight to the absolute death for your right to say it.”

  They whipped along the lakefront.

  Chapter 7

  Versallo felt happy. He had got up that morning with a singing feeling deep in his chest, the kind of feeling he used to get when he got a good high going, before he had made himself quit the stuff. And all day the high was building, building within him, fed this time by nothing more than coffee, cigarettes and the sure feeling that he had got him. He was going to get the son of a bitch. He could not lose.

  Sometimes you just knew it; you knew when you were on a hot streak, building and building toward something really good, a breakthrough and you had that perilous feeling of taking the wave at its highest point, moving beyond collision, simply rising. Sometimes—and it was rare but when it came it was unmistakable—you knew that you were on a streak, in the groove and nothing could beat you. Horse was much better, sex a little, but luck was all right. He had lost the one, gotten slow with the other; he would take his kicks where he could find them. Luck. He had the bastard nailed.

  He knew somehow that Mendoza would bring him in. He had had no contact with the man since he had dispatched him to the airport but with that peculiar extra-sensory feel which was one of the many things which made him superior to other people he could feel that Mendoza had him. Mendoza was his best man, his most competent and trusted assistant; he could not have put the job in better hands than his and at around three o’clock that afternoon, give or take no more than a couple of moments, he had had a sharp jab, a flame almost, of knowledge. He knew that Mendoza had him. He had gotten him into the disguised cab and now he was bringing him in. They were on their way. They were coming in, Mendoza and Wulff and the fucking valise with the smack. He could have started singing, he was that happy, he was that sure. But Versallo had cultivated professionalism the hard way, working at it from the bottom. He would keep that knowledge, beating like a small bird, to himself.

  So he did nothing. He betrayed no emotion. He hung around the offices and went through the motions of work instead. He dispatched three trucks to Milwaukee to pick up a small meat consignment. He took a call from city hall and verified that he was good for sixteen tickets, hundred dollars a plate, to the farewell dinner for some retiring hack sewer commissioner a week from Thursday.

  He met with the union shop steward who said that the complaint this week was that the washrooms on the second and third levels were filthy and almost never provided with paper towels and the men were mutinous. They were threatening a job action of some sort. The steward wanted Versallo to know that although he did not personally condone this kind of action the men were quite angry and felt that their complaint was justified. This was the kind of thing, the steward pointed out, that, just because it was so minor, should be straightened out quickly. Otherwise the smaller resentments built into larger ones and at the time of the new contract negotiations …

  It was this last which, despite the burning happiness within him almost caused Versallo to lose his good humor and temper simultaneously. If his mind had not really been on the abduction, if he had not been looking forward to two million dollars worth of purest whitest shit he would have gotten into real trouble with this steward just as he had with the one this guy had replaced. Lost his temper with the man, thrown him out of the office, possibly beaten the shit out of him … which was not the most progressive way, even Versallo had to admit, to handle the union problems. As it was, he was able to keep a lid on himself, although just barely.

  “These meatballs are getting seven and a half fucking dollars an hour plus fringes,” is what he pointed out, trying to be mild. “So what the fuck are they worried about the fucking washrooms for.”

  He always used fuck a lot when in any kind of negotiations, be they with the union, city hall, or the men down state. They would get the idea that he was a rough, tough, abusive character and would not try to get an edge on him. Little things like that really counted in this business. Versallo did not use the word fuck in ordinary conversation and never anywhere around women. Although he was fifty-three years old he was still more than mildly surprised every time he heard a woman say the word. Fuck was simply not something which women were even supposed to know let alone say. Yet he had grudgingly come to admit over the years, particularly since he had two daughters now in their twenties, that not every girl who used the word was necessarily a whore. Usually. Usually a whore but not necessarily.

  “Get the fuck out of here with your fucking towels and fucking soap,” he said to the steward.

  “It’s not my say-so,” the steward said. He was a young man, much younger than Versallo, and trying to do the best he could within the limits of a very difficult situation but right now he looked uncertain. “I’m just conveying to you—”

  “Convey yourself the fuck out of here,” Versallo said, “convey yourself back to those fucking assholes and tell them that they can have their fucking soap and fucking water, all they need, when they wash their hands to get on the fucking unemployment line. You understand that?”

  “I think you’re taking, the wrong attitude,” the steward said, still acting as if he were conducting a valid grievance session. But something in Versallo’s eyes or maybe it was the set of his hands as he stood from his desk, clenching and unclenching them in a gesture only partly conscious was what convinced the steward that he was working on a difficult and possibly unprofitable path of negotiation. “All right,” he said, going to the door, “all right but you’ve got to understand the safety valve function here, I’m acting as a safety valve, letting you know what’s happening here, trying to keep you informed before we get to a serious confrontation—”

  “Get the fuck out of here,” Versallo said again. “Get out of here before I use some fucking soap and water on your fucking mouth,” and the steward went, he left Versallo standing there. For a moment he wanted to laugh with the excitement of it, the skill he had manifested, the way that he had caused the steward to crumple and had made a fool of him. But then, as was happening more and more often these days, the mood shifted and he found that he was not so pleased with himself after all. The thing was that nothing was as easy as it had been. The mood in which he had been was fine, knowing that Mendoza was coming, knowing without being told that his best man had justified all of his trust by accomplishing the mission and bringing in the two million dollars worth of smack along with the lunatic who had been carrying it … but how far could the mood go? How was it possible to sustain this kind of lift when, no matter what the ups or downs there was still the same shit to deal with, the constant shit: the unions, the campaign contributions, the hundred-dollar-a-plate dinners
that were oh-so-voluntary, the trucks moving in and out of the country? No, he was too old for it, too old to have to put up with all of this nonsense and now like a damned kid he had allowed himself to be bucked into a mood of optimism where he thought that a million dollar valise would solve his problems. It would not. His problems in a basic sense were insoluble. They came, he thought, from being fifty-three years old.

  But all right then, he was fifty-three. Past his prime, but so what? He still had a tight hand on his affairs, he knew what was going on; he knew how to handle an organization. Versallo was no fool; no fucking shop steward or idiot potitician could take him lightly. And so the mood began to swing again, it arced right back toward ebullience; now with the business of the day settled and nothing to do but bide his time and wait for Mendoza to come in with the big clown, Versallo allowed himself to be happy once more.

  He called in his secretary, this one a twenty-four-year-old (he was big on knowing ages) with huge boobs and demanded that she strip. She did. He locked the doors and checking his watch decided that he could give her ten minutes. Ten minutes was more than enough for what he needed; he banged the shit out of her, working her up and down, and demanded that she finish him off with her mouth. She balked, one timid peep of resistance, but he gave her the look and repeated the demand and she went at it without another word. Drained him dry. Drained him fucking dry. He came into her mouth gasping, groaning, beating on the slick surfaces of the couch like a butterfly, forgetting for the moment that he was fifty-three years old, that he was hooked up to his neck, that most of the time he had trouble coming, that he had kicked horse five years ago and there had truly never been a period of more than an hour since then when he had not been in agony, literal agony for it … forgot all of this beating and screaming against the couch, coming into her mouth and she held it in there when he had finished, her cheeks bloated until at a look from him she swallowed all of it with a gasp. Thought that she would be able to ditch his seed in some toilet but no one was going to get away with that.