Mafia Fix

by Warren Murphy

  They were also informed to be on the alert for any Ocean Wheel Company trailer-trucks. To stop and to search them. They were not told how many Ocean Wheel trailers or what the license plate numbers were. They saw no such trucks.

  By 1 p.m. the next day, in the oval office of the White House, the assistant attorney general who had coordinated the operation was explaining to the attorney general, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Treasury secretary and a very dour President, what had gone wrong.

  “At about 4 p.m., we lost contact with our Treasury agent, and that was it. No traces. Nothing. We are in the midst of a blanket search now.” He stood at the far end of the conference table, a sheaf of papers before him, wishing for a mild heart attack. Even a severe one would do.

  “You said two tractor-trailers with heroin. How much heroin in each?” This question from the director of the FBI.

  The assistant attorney general moved his lips and mumbled something.

  “I didn’t hear you,” said the director of the FBI.

  “Full,” said the assistant attorney general, forcing out the word.

  “Full? From front to back? Two full trailers of heroin?” The director’s face was red and he was almost shouting; he had never been known to raise his voice in conference.

  “Yes,” said the assistant attorney general.

  There were groans in the oval office of the President of the United States.

  “Excuse me, gentlemen,” the President said. “Stay right where you are. I will be back in a moment. Continue this without me.”

  He rose and strode from the room, down a corridor, up a flight of stairs, and into his private quarters. His wife was napping on a big double bed and she woke her gently, asking to be forgiven, but just as firmly insisting that she leave the room for a moment.

  When the door was shut, he took a key from his pocket, unlocked a dresser drawer, and brought out a red telephone with a white dot. He looked at his watch, as he lifted the receiver. It should be answered at this time. It was.

  “Yes, sir,” came the thin voice.

  “Do you know what happened in Hudson, New Jersey, yesterday?” asked the President.

  “Yes,” came the thin sour voice. “There were many things that happened. You are probably referring to the shipment from Marseilles.”

  “Yes. The two trucks.”

  “There were four.”

  “Then you are working on it,” the President said.

  “I should hope so.”

  “Will you use him? That person?”

  “Mister President. Please save your advice for football coaches. I’m busy. Now do you have anything important to tell me?”

  “No. No. You have it all. Is there anything I can do?”

  “Perhaps. You might try to keep the Treasury and FBI people in that area to a minimum. It might save their lives.”

  “Then you are going to use him?”

  “That is a fair assumption.”

  “Is he there now?” the President asked.

  “He is finishing up a matter elsewhere. He will be there shortly.”

  “Then you have everything under control?” the President said.

  “Is there anything else you wish to tell me, sir?”

  “Please. This is a grave crisis. It would ease my mind if you told me that you have it under control.”

  “Sir, if I had it under control, we would not be using him. By the way, sir, I have told you there were four trucks. Please do not give that information to anyone else, lest they ask you where you got it and you give them little confidential hints.”

  “I understand,” the President said. “I know now that we will solve this crisis. I’m considering it under control.”

  “If that makes you feel better, sir, fine. Unfortunately, you seem to think that person is a solution to problems, when in reality he is a potential problem of far greater magnitude himself.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” the President said.

  “Good,” came the thin voice, and then the click. The President returned the receiver to the cradle and the phone to the drawer, then shut and locked the drawer. He had been hung up on again.

  As he returned to the conference, in much better spirits than he had left it, he wondered where the man on the other end of the line had found that person, what his name really was, where he was born and what his life must be like.

  But most of all he wondered what his name was.

  CHAPTER TWO

  HIS NAME WAS REMO.

  He tried very hard not to be bored, as if the threat were very real. This was necessary to get the exact information he wanted. The exact information was what he had been ordered to get before he could proceed.

  So when the ruddy-faced gentleman in his late 50’s casually asked him if he cared to go fishing, Remo had said “yes, that was what he had come to Nassau for.”

  Then when the ruddy-faced gentleman told him to wear the life jacket for safety and had insisted on buckling it himself, Remo had thanked him. And when the ruddy-faced gentleman guided the small motor launch to a small cove protected from the sweeping breezes of the Caribbean, told Remo that the life jacket was really weighted and the buckles were really reinforced locks and that one stamp of the ruddy-faced gentleman’s foot on a gray plug near the stern of the boat would sink it, Remo showed fear.

  He screwed his face to tension, opened wide his brown eyes and made tugging motions at the jacket with his strong hands. It did not budge. Good. Now the ruddy-faced gentleman felt secure. Remo could tell that by the smile.

  “You bastard,” said Remo. “Why have you done this to me?” The ruddy-faced gentleman in gray Bermuda shorts and a bright tropical shirt crossed his legs and reached into the metal ice container for a bottle of champagne.

  Remo made a short move toward the gray plug but the ruddy-faced gentleman lifted a finger indicating Remo had made a naughty. “Uh, uh. Remember the plug. You can’t swim with lead weights, can you?”

  Remo shook his head and sat back to listen. The man uncorked the champagne, brought out a champagne glass and rested it on the metal container. Then he popped the cork and poured the glass full.

  Remo, who was trying to teach himself psychology, assumed that this was the acting out of a fantasy, sort of action-reaffirmation-of-an-event, to reinforce its reality. He liked that analysis, although he wasn’t quite sure he understood his own words. He wished he could find someone to try them out on and if they didn’t understand them either, he just might have gotten the whole thing right.

  “Excuse the libation, if you will,” said the ruddy-faced man who had introduced himself as Harry Magrudder, “but you see, it’s a little reward I am allowing myself at the culmination of a year and a half’s work.” The man who called himself Harry Magrudder downed a glass, poured himself another, placed the champagne bottle on the metal shelf, sipped from the glass. The clear tropical sun glistened off the edge of the glass and made the champagne appear as if riddled with sunbeams.

  “I’d offer you one. Mister whatever your last name is. I believe it’s Katner this week; one time it was Pelham, another time Green, another Willis and heaven knows what other names at other times. But I know you don’t drink.

  “And you don’t smoke. You eat very little meat, but a lot of fish. You often stay with an elderly Korean gentleman. Occasionally you have sex, which causes you some problems because the women seem to insist on more. Recently, you have taken to only going to bed with a woman the night before you leave a place. Is that correct?”

  “No,” Remo said. “That’s absolutely not correct. You must have me confused with someone else.”

  “Perhaps I have you confused with the bodyguard for that Chinese general. You remember the little incident in Peking; rumors about an old Korean called the Master of Sinanju and his disciple, who was called Shiva, the Destroyer.”

  “I remember nothing,” Remo said. “You’ve got to be
lieve me, Mr. Magrudder. My name is Remo Katner and I’m a salesman for Sensitivity Laboratories in Ocean City, Long Island. We sell success programs to corporations, universities, schools—for people to make better use of their potential. I’m a simple guy trying to make a buck. I went out to fish today and now you got me strapped in this thing.”

  “I’m sure you know a lot about human potential. Yours is rather interesting. Very interesting, as a matter of fact. So interesting that I knew I was a millionaire the second time you crossed my path.”

  The man who called himself Magrudder sipped again from the champagne and put the glass near the bottle. He folded his arms around his red, sunburned knees.

  “I’m in the, shall we say, security business. I work for the government. Some thing very strange happened at a little think tank outside of Washington some time back. It seems an ex-Nazi got killed in a chess game. A parachute instructor lost his chute on the way down. A gang of toughs was beaten up by one man, and just before that a former employee at the think tank was found with his head in a paint-can shaker.

  “My department was watching the think tank carefully because the Russians were interested in it. Well, to make a long story short, we were told to drop the search for the security officer there who disappeared, a Remo Pelham. That was the first clue.

  “Then there was the China incident when our department was called off the disappearance of General Liu. Very interesting—because my department ordinarily would have prime responsibility.

  “So, I and a few other people decided to check back further, especially when bodies—internationally related bodies—turned up very rapidly during that China incident. And there were other strange things. The sudden fortunate disappearance of the executioner of the Cosa Nostra in New York. Here one day. Gone the next. And we ran into the record of an old employee who killed himself in a hospital by tearing out tubes with his hook. You should know the name of the gentleman. His name was Conrad MacCleary.”

  The man who called himself Magrudder finished the glass and poured himself another, savoring the first sip.

  “So I checked. And would you believe that this MacCleary was listed as working for us at that moment, and we had no record of what he was doing. Oh, we had a record all right. It was false. It had him in Bangkok. And my department head said never mind, some secret presidential mission or something. Does this story interest you?”

  “Sure, Mr. Magrudder, but I’d like it a lot more if I could listen to it outside of this contraption.”

  “I’m sure you would. That’s why you’re in it. I probably wouldn’t even get a chance to finish my story. And I’m sure you’ll want to hear how it’s going to end. So I’m taking the wee liberty of the life jacket to make sure you hear me out.”

  “My life, Mr. Magrudder, is not a wee liberty. Please let me out of this. I’ve always been afraid of drowning.”

  The man who called himself Magrudder giggled slightly. “Good. You just stay afraid of me and we’ll be fine.”

  “Now, follow me, if you will,” he continued. “I and two other people I trust began keeping little notes. Nothing big at first, just notes of these strange occurrences and certain small events that seemed to go extremely well for the nation with no apparent reason. Luck, it was attributed to, I believe. And then, one day, my stroke of genius. I put myself in the place of a young president who was to be assassinated in Dallas.

  “I said to myself, you’re the President and you’ve got a problem.”

  Magrudder finished the bottle by draining it into his mouth and tossed it overboard with a splash. He took out another one from the case and this time did not bother pouring into the champagne glass. He drank directly from the bottle.

  “Excuse the indulgence,” he said, “but a year-and-a-half of sobriety must end with a certain joy. In any event, I said, I’m the President and I’ve got a problem. Crime is increasing. If I tell my police no holds are barred, we get a police state. If I don’t, we get chaos, and then, if Machiavelli’s right, we get a police state anyway. I want to save the country. So what do I do?

  “I figured what the President did. He decided to create an organization that didn’t exist. It could break the law to enforce the law, but since it didn’t exist, it would not endanger the Constitution.

  “So I, the President, create this organization, and only I and maybe my vice president and two other men know about it. The man who runs it and the man who heads the killer-arm. The man who heads the killer-arm has to know, because he must violate the law and if he were captured and believed he worked for the FBI or the CIA or what-have-you, then it would be just as bad for the country if he confessed to that. You see, so he knows.

  “And he knows that if he gets into trouble, all he has to do is say he works for the Mafia or something like that and his group will get him out. The head of that killer-arm is you, Remo whatever-your-name is. You see, that security guard who disappeared from the think tank and the special guard for the Chinese general had identical fingerprints. And surprise, surprise—those fingerprints were not to be found in the FBI files, where the fingerprints of all law enforcement people reside.”

  “Mr. Magrudder, what do you want from me?”

  The man called Magrudder giggled. “I’m glad you asked that. Two million dollars in cash and five hundred thousand dollars a year for the rest of my life. I know your people can pay it. An outfit like yours would spend more than that on a computer system.”

  “What makes you think I can get you the money?”

  “Because, Remo, there are three envelopes with the whole story of facts and places; any one of them might wind up at the New York Times or the Washington Post if I should fail to do something each day at a set time. For your organization to be exposed is to fail. Good-bye to what little confidence remains in the government’s ability to govern within the law. Good-bye Constitution. Good-bye America.”

  Magrudder laughed into his bottle of champagne as he lifted it and some spilled over his ruddy face and down his thick neck.

  “You’re full of crap, Mr. Magrudder. If you had all this information, you’d have more than three envelopes.”

  The man who called himself Magrudder raised a finger. “No way, my boy, no way. What if one should get out by accident? No. I needed enough to deter you people, but not so many as to precipitate an accident. Two would have been safer against accidents, but maybe you would have discovered one, leaving me only one envelope as a margin against death. That would be too thin. Four, however, would have been asking for trouble. So I picked three.”

  “Let’s see,” said Remo. “Your aunt Harriet in Cheyenne has one and you’ve got another and… the third. Who’s got the third?”

  The grin disappeared momentarily from the fat red face but then returned.

  “One is as good as a hundred, my boy, and I’ll extend that margin of safety when I get back to the hotel.”

  “You’re so confident because you have four or five or ten of those envelopes stashed around,” Remo said. “You don’t have the kind of guts, Hopkins, to live one envelope away from death.”

  Harry Hopkins, the man called Magrudder, blinked. “So. You know my name. Well, well. Congratulations. But you don’t know me, sonny boy. You skinny young punk. You’ve got to live one way if you’re going to make it big. There are only three envelopes. Now row me back to the frigging hotel and call your boss. I want the down payment by tomorrow afternoon.”

  He swilled the champagne deeply and snorted his contempt. “Get a move on, skinny,” he said. “The only reason I’m keeping you alive is you’re my only contact with that organization.”

  Remo rubbed his hands together and sighed. “That’s where you’re wrong. I’m your second contact with the organization.”

  “Yeah? Who’s the first?”

  “The man who has the third envelope,” Remo said and he smiled.

  “Horseshit,” Harry Hopkins said.

  “Nope,” said Remo sweetly. “Let me describe him to yo
u. He’s tight-lipped, obnoxious, vicious, ruthless and totally without human compassion for anything but his golf game. And at that he cheats. I beat him once even with his fourteen-pencil handicap and as much as he hated that, he hated my losing a golf ball more. He is cheap beyond belief. I mean cheap. I think that’s why he was chosen.”

  “You’re lying,” screamed Harry Hopkins. “You’re lying. The man is absolutely trustworthy. We even wondered how he got into the business, he was so honest.”

  “I rang the bell with cheap, didn’t I?” Remo asked.

  “You’re not getting any more information from me.” Hopkins moved his foot to the gray plug, but stopped suddenly and his mouth dropped open. “No,” he said.

  “Yes,” said Remo slipping the last clinging strap of the lead-weighted life preserver off his arm. It had been a good set of locks but he could have cracked them if he wanted to. He didn’t have to. The chain fasteners had been attached to a nylon band guaranteed to hold three hundred pounds of pressure. It was better than that. It had held close to four hundred.

  “Want to pull the plug, sweetheart?” Remo said. “I rang the bell with cheap, huh?”

  “I’ve known the man who has had the envelope for years. Years. He’d never betray a friend,” Hopkins said. “He got out of the business because it was too dirty. He retired from it. He’s been in on this from the beginning, giving me counsel and advice. And I trust him.”

  “Make believe you’re the President, Hopkins. Who else would you put in charge of such an operation?”

  Remo stood up in the bow of the boat and went to the seat near the gray plug. He looked down at the perspiring red-faced man beneath him.

  Hopkins looked up, in panic, then slowly shrugged. “Mind if I have another drink?”

  “Sure,” Remo said. “Your being an alcoholic is going to be the cover for your death anyway.”

  “I’m not an alcoholic and you’ll kill me if I take another drink or not. So. Bottoms up.” Remo saw the bottom of the bottle come up; the reddish eyelids close and air bubbles rise from within the neck of the bottle.