Mafia Fix

by Warren Murphy

  He ran a few steps straight forward, one leg after another, his bare feet so quickly removed from the wet polished railing that they had no time to slip. And then in full motion, he would turn his body until he was skittering sideways, one leg crossing over in front of the other, then behind. As he ran, he looked out at the sea and he realized why sailors had a special arrogance, because here, away from land, in the middle of an ink-cold sea, man challenged God, and only the arrogant could achieve victory.

  Remo had now reached the stern of the ship and he slowed to make sure no one had ventured out onto the deck. When he saw it was clear, he picked up his speed and continued racing around the oak railing, making the turn and heading back up toward the bow as fast as he could move. He glanced below him into the glass-enclosed swimming pool.

  Ordinarily, a burly man with a mustache would have been sitting there. He was a fire chief from the Midwest, filled with loud opinions and ignorance, and he had sat there almost all day and all night on the trip down. He had called Chiun a “chink” when he thought the old man could not hear, but Remo had heard. Later Remo had seen him pick up a tip that someone had left on a waiter’s tray, and so, when it became necessary to clear out a cabin to make room for Harold W. Smith, Remo had his candidate.

  The Midwestern fire chief one fine day on the beach of Paradise Island, had mysteriously fallen asleep. He had slept in the hot summer sun for four hours and when he was awakened, the skin was already blistering. At Nassau General Hospital, they treated him for sun poisoning and severe burns, and cautioned him about staying out in the sun too long, then decided to hold him for treatment and observation, after he said that he had been knocked out by a touch on the shoulder from a husky young man with deep brown eyes.

  Remo grinned as he passed over the empty chair and thought to himself that if the fire chief was a bad tipper, Smith was even worse. The waiters had gained nothing on the switch.

  Remo padded silently across one of the steel crossbeams that held up the curved plastic roof of the swimming pool, then was back on the port side of the ship. He ran a few more steps, glided quickly around the barrier separating the public deck from his private verandah, and landed noiselessly on the deck outside his cabin.

  He slid his feet back into his slippers and walked into the cabin through the sliding glass door.

  Smith was sitting on the sofa and Chiun was kneeling behind him, pressing practiced fingers into clumps of nerves along the sides of Smith’s neck.

  “Thank you, Chiun,” Smith said, pulling away as Remo came in.

  “Seasick, huh?” Remo said.

  “Never. I’ve spent more time at sea then you’ve spent sober,” Smith sniffed. “Out for your evening stroll?”

  “You might say that,” Remo said, and then because he wanted to be cruel to this man who brought him dehumanizing missions and assignments, he said: “Hopkins knew it was you right away. As soon as I said cheap, he knew.”

  “Yes, yes. Well, that will do,” Smith said. He rolled his eyes toward Chiun, who despite his deadly skills and despite his love for Remo did not really know what CURE was or what it did, and was content to know only that Remo was sent on killing missions and that it was his job to see that Remo was adequate to the task.

  Chiun had sunk back on the sofa, slipping easily into a lotus position and closing his eyes. Smith stood up and opened his suitcase. He reached inside and brought out a shiny paper packet and held it toward Remo.

  “Do you know what this is?”

  “Sure, it’s a fix. Heroin,” Remo said, taking the packet in his hands.

  “Do you know people would kill me for it?”

  “Sweetheart, there are people who would kill you just for the fun of it,” Remo said.

  “Be serious, will you?” Smith said.

  Ignoring Remo’s faint protestation that he was being serious. Smith went on: “That’s our problem right now. “Every year, illegal narcotics peddlers in the United States sell maybe eight tons of heroin. Most of the traffic’s controlled by the Mafia. They grow the poppies in Turkey, process them in France or South America and smuggle them into the country. The Treasury Department slows them down. It harasses them. Occasionally, it makes a big arrest. But a big arrest is a suitcase full, maybe fifty pounds. And in the entire country, we use maybe sixteen thousand pounds a year. On the street, that’s worth over a billion and a half dollars.”

  “So? Hire more men for the Treasury Department,” Remo said.

  “We tried that. It was all set up. And the Treasury men were killed. The stuff got in, Remo. We’re not talking about suitcases full. We’re talking about four truckloads. Maybe fifty tons. Enough heroin to supply the illegal market for six years. Ten billion dollars worth of heroin!

  “And when the Mafia forces out the small dealers,” Smith said, “it might be worth twice that much.”

  Remo looked again at the glassine envelope in his hand and then tossed it back into Smith’s open suitcase.

  “What do you want me to do?,” he shrugged.

  “You know where Hudson, New Jersey, is, don’t you? You’re from that neighborhood, aren’t you?” Smith asked.

  “I’m from Newark. Newark makes Hudson look like Beverly Hills,” Remo said.

  “Well, the heroin’s in Hudson somewhere. It was unloaded from a ship there. Treasury people were killed following the trucks that were carrying it. And now the trucks are someplace in the city with the heroin and we can’t find them.”

  “How do you know they’re still there? They could be in Pittsburgh, you know.”

  “The trucks are still in Hudson. We’ve been monitoring every vehicle that leaves the city for the last week. A special tuber detector developed by the agriculture department. One of our guys adapted it and now it works as a heroin sensor too. Nothing big has left the city.”

  “I never heard of a gadget like that,” Remo said.

  “Neither has our government. We’ve kept it secret. If we let them know about it, two weeks later the damn plans for it will be in Scientific American and the Mafia will have a defense for it, before we even get a chance to use it.”

  “Then why don’t you just wait until your silly-ass tuber detector finds it?,” Remo said.

  “Because if we give them time, they can take it out by the cupful and we’ll never be able to track it down. We want to find it before it gets into circulation in bits and pieces.”

  “Okay,” Remo said, “who do you want me to hit?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe nobody.”

  This isn’t another one of those information things, is it?,” Remo asked. “Every time I get involved in one of them, I nearly get killed.”

  “Not information,” Smith said. “I want you to go in and start making noise. Get whoever’s got the drugs to come after you. Then find out where the heroin is and destroy it. And if anybody gets in your way, destroy them. Destroy the whole damned city if you have to.”

  Remo had not seen Smith so worked up since the last time Remo had filed an expense voucher.

  Smith went to the suitcase again. He took out a photograph. “This is an addict, Remo. This is what those bastards do to them.”

  Remo took the picture. It was a naked girl, maybe in her teens. But her eyes were blank and pained-looking, and her skin was swollen, ulcerated and black. In the upper-right-hand corner of the photo was a close-up inset of her arms and there was not a clear spot left in which a hypodermic syringe could be inserted.

  “That girl’s dead now,” Smith said. “Some of them aren’t so lucky.”

  He took the photograph back and put it back into his suitcase. He started talking again, calmer now. “Hudson’s the chief port of entry. We have to think there’s significant political leverage being used there to protect the heroin imports. The cops are crooked. The politicians are crooked. The Mafia runs the town. But it’s tight and we don’t know much. The leader is a name named Verillio, we think. Or Gasso. Or Palumbo. We just don’t know.”

  “What
would be my cover?”

  “You’re Remo Barry. You’ve got an apartment with Chiun in New York. You’re a staff writer for Intelligentsia Annual. Don’t worry about it, we just bought the magazine. It was the cheapest one we could get. Go in as a journalist and poke around.”

  “Suppose I turn down the assignment?” Remo asked.

  “Remo, please,” Smith said. It was the first time in all the years that Smith had ever said please to him.

  Remo just nodded. Smith reached again into the suitcase and pulled out a thick typewritten report. “All the data’s in here, all the facts, all the names. Look it over. Memorize it. Then throw it away. You have a free hand to do whatever you want. Please, just do it fast.”

  It was the second please, and Remo did not try to think of anything smart-ass to say. He nodded again and Smith closed the suitcase and walked toward the door. Without a word, he left. He was glad he had not found it necessary to tell Remo that one of the addicts not yet lucky enough to be dead was Smith’s own daughter.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  FOR DOMINIC VERILLIO, THE GOOD Italian restaurants would not do. Neither would his sprawling estate in Kensico, New York, nor his three-story English Tudor home in Hudson, New Jersey. The Palm Beach home was out too. They were all being watched. Or bugged. Little electronic devices that so fitted the character of America. Neat. Clean. Technical. Unemotional. And you didn’t know they didn’t work until it was too late.

  But they worked well enough so that Dominic Verillio would not even discuss big business in his office. Not well enough to stop him or even hinder him once he knew about them. But enough so the good restaurants, his country estate, his three-story home or his Palm Beach home were out for something that was really important. The flaw in electronic surveillance was timing. Given time, the feds, the state police—even your credit agency—could bug any place you could build or buy or rent. Given time.

  But what if you didn’t give time? If you conducted your real business within ten minutes at a new location, you were as safe as if the bug had never been invented.

  So on that bright afternoon when the center-lane trees on Park Avenue and 81st Street in New York City still gloried in their summer green, taxis began arriving on the east side of the street, pulling up one after another, letting off their passengers who were, invariably, one middle-aged man accompanied by two young men. All between 2:05 p.m. and 2:10 p.m. The little crowd was consumed by bowing and hand-kissing and nodding until Dominic Verillio, in black business suit, white shirt and black tie, said:

  “None of that. Not now. Not now.”

  And since most of the hand-kissing and bowing was to him, that stopped it. Five rented limousines pulled up, rented ten minutes before in five different locations and the group of people rapidly filled them.

  Dominic Verillio was in the front limousine. It was the car of honor and therefore, with him also was Pietro Scubisci, a sweet-looking gray-haired man from New York City in an off-the-rack suit and white shirt with upturned collar because his wife, now being seventy-two years of age, did not see so well as she used to.

  Pietro Scubisci was Capo Mafioso in New York City and within a day and a half could present, if he wished, eighty-two million dollars, in cash in paper bags. The rolled up, crinkled brown paper bag he now held in his lap, however, contained fried peppers, in case Dominic Verillio was to hold the meeting in a restaurant. Scubisci did not like paying New York City restaurant prices because “all the time they go up.” That he was in a degree responsible for this was not at issue. That was money coming in. Paying the prices was money going out. He brought his peppers.

  Beside him in the back seat was Francisco Salvatore, younger than Scubisci, in his early forties, in a Pierre Cardin suit whose stylish, flowing lines seemed incapable of wrinkling. He had sculptured hair, manicured fingernails, and a deep, tanned face. His teeth were white, even and flawless, and he was often told he could be a movie actor if he wished. He did not wish, however, because, at his age, making what Rock Hudson or John Wayne made would have been a pay cut.

  He carried no money, because even cash would have altered the lines of his suit. When the elderly Scubisci turned to speak to him, he accidentally brushed the greasy bag against the knitted fabric of Salvatore’s pants. It left a dark splotch. Salvatore pretended he did not notice it. Later, on the flight back to Los Angeles, he would curse silently to himself until the suit was off him and in the garbage pail.

  To Scubisci’s right was Filemeno Palmucci—or Fat O’Brien—a lump of a head set on a roll of a neck and expanding out from there to hips. The mound was topped by a gray fedora, a half-size too small. Fat O’Brien never smiled and just stared straight ahead, as if intent on digesting his intestines. He was from Boston.

  In front, of course, was Don Dominic Verillio who had called them all together. He was half-turned, facing the back seat, and was polite and cordial. His face could have graced the cover of business management, but he spoke with more emotion and with gestures—more human as opposed to the cadaverlike expressions of top level American management.

  “I take it you are in good health,” said Dominic Verillio, smiling.

  “Good,” said Pietro Scubisci who had the right to answer first. “The wife she good too, although she no see too good now.”

  “I am sorry to hear that, Pietro.”

  “Life is life, Don Dominic,” said Scubisci. “It begin blind and weak and end blind and weak. I did not make life.”

  “You would have made it better, Don Pietro,” said Francisco Salvatore in a display of white teeth.

  “Francisco. God make life. Nobody make it better. Nobody make it worse either,” said Pietro Scubisci. Somehow the grease from his fried peppers never seemed to smudge his dark suit.

  “And you?” said Verillio to Francisco Salvatore.

  “I am well, thank you, Don Dominic. My wife is well. My children are well. It is a good life in the sunshine. You must visit us some time.”

  “I shall,” said Dominic Verillio. “I shall.”

  “I’m fine too, Don Dominic,” said Fat O’Brien.

  “That is good. Health is most important. We have been having good weather here in the metropolitan area of New York. Good weather makes good wine, as they say.”

  “Good wine makes good weather, too,” said Pietro Scubisci and smiled. All smiled with him.

  And thus it went in the caravan of rented limousines. Health, weather, the family. The big innovative discussion came when Guglielmo Marconne, or Apples Donnelly as he was known from time to time, told Vittorio Pallellio that “you can’t get a good steak in Miami Beach.” They were in the fourth car from the front. Guglielmo Marconne was from Duluth and Vittorio Pallellio was from Miami Beach.

  “We got good steaks,” said Vittorio Pallellio. “Maybe you didn’t look in the right places.”

  “I looked in the right places, Don Vittorio.”

  “You didn’t look in the right places, Guglielmo.”

  “I looked in the Boca Del Sol.”

  “The Boca Del Sol doesn’t have good steaks.”

  “I looked in—what’s the name of that place that looks like a shlock furniture store?”

  “That’s the whole city, Guglielmo.”

  “I didn’t get a good steak there, either. And I didn’t get a good one in the Boca Del Sol.”

  “The Boca Del Sol doesn’t have good steaks, Guglielmo.”

  “I know that. I got a bad steak there.”

  And so the small talk went among the representatives from Dallas and New Orleans, Chicago and Rochester, Portland and Kansas City, Cleveland and Columbus, Cincinnati, Louisville, Denver, Phoenix, Norfolk, Charleston, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Wheeling.

  Downtown went the caravan which, because the rented limousines were not all the same color, did not look like a caravan. Only Don Dominic Verillio knew the destination and every so often he would tell the driver to turn here and turn there, always careful not to lose the cars behin
d. Finally, before a small art shop in Greenwich Village, Don Dominic Verillio signaled his driver to stop.

  He jumped out, opening the door for Pietro Scubisci, Francisco Salvatore and Fat O’Brien, saying “no time for formalities. No time.”

  The driver, Willie the Plumber Palumbo, also jumped out and, checking a wad of bills in his pocket, ran into the little boutique art store with the dresses and paintings in front.

  Almost as soon as he opened the door, he said, “There is a strawberry scene here I want to buy for $5,000.”

  “Into the back room,” Don Dominic Verillio told his guests. “Just go into the back.”

  To each car that stopped, he said, “The back room. The back room.”

  Within forty-five seconds, he was following the last man into the art shop, the sign above which read “Eve Flynn.”

  The attractive owner was still talking to Willie the Plumber. “Oh, my dear,” she said. “So many people at once. This is wonderful. I always knew it would happen like this.”

  Her flaming red hair bounced as she threw back her head and rammed a hand on an outstretched hip, clad in paint-splattered blue jeans.

  “This pitcher here by the door,” said Willie the Plumber. “Right here. Dis one. Here is the money. But first I wanna know watcher modi… modi… what’s the word, moderation is.”

  “Motivation,” said the woman.

  “Yeah. What dat is and how you tink of ya’self in de relativition of let’s say Goggin.”

  “Gaugin?”

  “Yeah. Him.”

  “I’m glad you asked,” said the woman, her head jerking nervously to the mob that had just passed her headed to her back room where her Paris street scenes were. “But don’t you think I should help them?”