Mafia Fix

by Warren Murphy

  Still he might have the heroin. Remo would have to find out.

  And there was Mrs. Hansen, an Italian looking woman, a woman of real beauty, but obviously now well along the road to alcoholism. She was immaculately groomed, but there were the few telltale signs. The slight disjunctive trembling of the hands, the shifting of weight from one foot to the other, the trapped look deep behind the eyes. She was deep in a personal grief that her husband either did not understand or did not recognize. But she wept to herself continuously. She had lost something with Verillio’s death.

  Cynthia was there too. She had been there all day, in grief also, and in grief, drawn near to her mother. She did not look at Remo. Perhaps she did not even see him, but he looked at her, felt the stirrings rising in him and wondered what she was doing afterwards.

  Horgan was a sphinx, sitting in the front row, next to the police chief, chatting, smiling often; he and Dugan the only two men civilized enough to have fun at a wake.

  There were other people that Remo didn’t know. He looked at their faces and could not tell anything about their relationship with Verillio. So he leaned over and asked a man next to him, loudly: “He’s a suicide, isn’t he? How can they bury him in hallowed ground? What’s that priest doing here? Isn’t suicide a sin? He’s going straight to hell, isn’t he? What is this all about?”

  He watched carefully—saw shock in Mrs. Hansen’s face and stupidity in her husband’s, saw hate and anger in Cynthia’s face, outrage in the face of the police chief and the editor.

  Then there was another face that came into the room and the face coughed. It was Willie the Plumber Palumbo. He stood in the back of the room and looked around. Then his eyes met Remo’s and Remo smiled, Willie the Plumber turned away and left rapidly before anyone could see the dark splotch on the front of his pants.

  Somebody in that room knew about the heroin. But who? Remo had to find out.

  Willie the Plumber Palumbo already had found out. And it did not really surprise him. True, he did not yet know where the heroin actually was, but that would be next. And in the meantime he now knew who the boss was and he knew that it was all clear sailing for Willie Palumbo.

  He had already carried out his first assignment, letting the Mafiosi in Atlantic City know that the narcotics were still going to be moved, and by tomorrow the Mafiosi around the country would have to deal with him. He would not be the leader of leaders. He did not delude himself. But he would be the man with the key to the heroin and that was just as good. Millions of dollars would be his. Millions. Women. New cars. Anything he wanted.

  But first he must make sure that he had a chance to enjoy it all. That meant something must be done about Remo Barry.

  Willie the Plumber stopped at an outside telephone booth near the Conwell Funeral Home and dialed a number. He waited while it rang, cursing the uncomfortable dampness of his trousers, and finally after nine rings the phone was answered.

  “Hudson Police,” the woman’s voice said.

  “Give me Extension 235,” Willie the Plumber said, thankful he was not calling to report a fire. The whole world could have burned down before the phone at headquarters was answered.

  Later Remo waited in the parking lot behind the funeral home, standing next to the car he had rented at Newark Airport and kept an eye out for Cynthia Hansen, whose city Chevrolet, black and dented, was still in the lot.

  A green Chevrolet bearing three men pulled in through the narrow driveway into the parking lot and pulled up alongside Remo.

  The driver rolled down his window and looked at Remo. If he had worn a neon sign that said cop, he couldn’t have been more obvious.

  “Your name Remo?” he said.

  Remo nodded.

  “I’ve got a message for you,” the driver said. He was husky and graying, his face was set in a perpetual grin.

  “Oh,” Remo said, “what’s the message?” and stepped closer to the car, pretending not to notice the man in the back seat reach for the door handle.

  And then Remo had a gun stuck into his face by the driver, the man in the back seat was behind him, expertly frisking him, putting his own gun against the back of Remo’s neck. He herded Remo into the backseat and kept the gun on him as the driver peeled off and sped away. Through the window, as the car pulled out of the driveway, Remo could see Mayor Hansen and his wife and his daughter walk slowly down the funeral home stairs, but they did not see him.

  “What’s the message?” Remo said again to the driver’s thick neck.

  “You’ll get it soon enough,” the driver said and chuckled. “Ain’t that right? He’s gonna get the message.”

  He turned right on the city’s main drag, a few blocks later turned left, and then drove straight on, toward the Hudson River, down into the city’s decaying dock area where rotted old barges vied for space with burned out pilings.

  They drove out on an old poured-cement pier, against which was tied the metal hulk of a ship which had been gutted by a fire months before and was now waiting for the start of salvage work.

  The pier was dark and empty and, except for the scurrying of a few rats, they were alone.

  The policeman in the back with Remo poked him in the ribs with the gun. “Get out, wise guy.”

  Remo allowed himself to be herded up a wooden gangplank onto the ship at gunpoint, then into the wheelhouse on the main deck where the cop behind him pushed him hard against the opposite wall.

  Remo turned and faced the three policemen. “What’s this all about, fellas?” he asked.

  “You been causing a lot of trouble,” the one who had been driving said.

  “I’m just a reporter. Trying to get a story,” Remo protested.

  “Save that crap for somebody who believes it,” the driver said. “We want to know who sent you. A simple question. All it takes is a simple answer.”

  “I keep trying to tell people. The Intelligentsia Annual. I write for them.”

  “What are you, their narcotics expert? That’s a funny thing for that kind of a magazine.”

  “It’s just my assignment. I do what I’m told,”

  “So do we,” the driver said, “so I want you to know it’s nothing personal.”

  He opened a cabinet inside the room and took out a blowtorch. He pumped it a few times and then lit it with a cigarette lighter. The flame hissed out—blue, weak—he put it on the floor. “All right, boys,” he said, “get him.”

  He drew his own pistol and the other two policemen put theirs away. Then they advanced on Remo, who backed up as far in the small room as he could.

  They each grabbed one of his arms and they smirked as he struggled to pull himself free. Fat chance, they thought, but he was tenacious and he skittered along the floor a little bit and then they were closer to the man with the gun than they ought to be, but nothing serious, they had him.

  Then they didn’t have him, and they each felt a sharp crack on the temple and the driver who had held his gun on the three of them found the gun ripped from his hand and tossed through a burned out window opening. Seconds later, it hit water far below with a splash and then Remo had the blowtorch and he was raising the flame.

  The other two detectives behind Remo were unconscious or dead. But they were down and still and now Remo blocked the way to the door.

  The blowtorch flame hissed louder, yellower as Remo turned it up, then he said, “All right, officer, now we’re going to talk.”

  The policeman looked anxiously around the room. There was no way out. And his men on the floor had not stirred. They might be dead. Could he get to one of them to get a gun?

  Remo moved over toward the two men.

  “We’ll start out easy,” Remo said. “What do you know about Ocean Wheel trucks?”

  “Nothing,” the policeman said. He started to say “I never heard of them” but never got the words out because his mouth was occupied with screaming as a blowtorch flame seared the back of his hand.

  “Try again,” Remo said. “That answ
er was not responsive.”

  The policeman was shaken. “I saw some once,” he stammered. “Coming off the pier. Only time I ever saw them. But they vanished. Someplace on the way out of town. We looked for them, but nobody knows where they went.”

  Remo turned the flame up higher. “Okay, who do you take orders from?”

  “Used to be Gasso.”

  “Gasso’s dead,” Remo said.

  “I know. Now it’s Willie the Plumber. He called us tonight. Told us to get you.”

  “Who’s his boss?”

  “Verillio.”

  “Verillo’s dead,” Remo said. “Who’s Willie the Plumber’s new boss?”

  “I don’t know,” the cop said and flinched as the flame came closer to his good hand. “Somebody in City Hall. It’s always been somebody in City Hall.”

  “Not the chief? Not Dugan?”

  “No, he’s honest. All he’s got is numbers and whores,” the policeman said, and Remo knew he was telling the truth.

  “How about the mayor? Hansen?”

  “I don’t know,” the policeman said. “I don’t know.” And again Remo knew he was telling the truth.

  “Listen,” the policeman said, “give me a break. Let me work with you. I’ll find out who’s running things. I can help you. You can use a guy with brains. Look how good I set up those narco people. They trusted my badge and I unsprung their trap. They were easy kills. I can help you the same way.”

  He looked at Remo’s face hopefully, but Remo was impassive and the policeman knew his offer was going to be turned down, so he did the only thing left to him. He dove for the bodies of the two policemen on the floor, trying to pull a gun from under one of their jackets. His hand circled the butt of one of the guns and then his hand didn’t work anymore. He looked up just in time to see a hand speed down toward his up-looking face and he felt nothing after the facial bones splintered.

  Remo looked at the three dead men on the wooden floor of the wheelhouse and for a moment felt disgusted with himself. Then his mind went back to the cruise ship and the picture of the young Junkie, racked by drugs and fever, and he looked down at the three dead cops who had done their part to protect that kind of traffic. Then he felt a rage turn his body hot, and he did the kind of thing Remo Williams never did. He advertised.

  Poor Skorich, at least, had died in the line of duty. Departmental honors. Something for his family to cling to. But these three swine… Remo would do his best to make sure there were no brass bands or grieving city for their deaths.

  When the sun came up the next morning, the black hulk of the ship would be outlined, silhouetted black against the sun’s early rays. As the sun rose higher, the ship would begin to take form, and the early men on the docks would look at it as they always did, without real interest because it didn’t mean a day’s pay. But sometime during the morning, some of them would look again and they would look at the anchor and then they would look again and some of them would cross themselves, because hanging from the anchor’s points, the dull points driven through their bodies, twisted like some terrible fish, would be the three policemen, hooked and hung out to dry. And very dead.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  MYRON HOROWITZ WAS IN LOVE. Not only was his girl the most beautiful girl in the world, but she was going to make him rich—rich in a way that no one on Pelham Parkway could understand.

  Had she not built for him this new drug plant? Probably unique in the world. Fully automated. It needed only one person to operate it and he was that one person, Myron Horowitz, Rutgers University, 1968, R.P. Just him and no one else, except of course the janitor whom he had sent home tonight, and a billing service that he used to handle his paperwork.

  He supposed it was business that made her ask him to meet her tonight at the factory. He supposed it was, but he was ready in case it wasn’t, and so he checked the sofa in his office. It was neat and clean and the stereo was playing softly; he had out a bottle of Chivas Regal and two glasses, was ready in case there was a chance to talk about anything but business.

  Late night meetings were not unusual, not when you considered that in a secret basement below the one-story building were hidden four tractor trailers, their drivers frozen to death, but their cargos still intact, ready to make up into powders and pills and ointments and syrups. Any strength.

  Four trailer loads. Fifty tons of 98 percent pure heroin. Fifty tons. And the U.S. drug peddlers used maybe eight tons a year. Six years’ supply. Fifty tons. Horowitz was sitting on it.

  Fifty tons. Horowitz often did the arithmetic. Fifty tons was 100,000 pounds and when it was cut and cut and cut and thinned at each step along the line, a pound would have a street value of over $100,000. For each pound. And he was sitting on 100,000 pounds.

  He knew there had been problems with delivery. Everything was being watched carefully. But he had gotten some out in aspirin bottles and some as stomach powders and all in all he had probably gotten out maybe 100 pounds in the last two weeks. That was $10 million worth when it got down to the users.

  Myron Horowitz never considered the morality of what he was doing. Narcotics were like alcohol. A little bit never hurt anybody. Didn’t everyone know that most doctors use narcotics regularly? And they still practiced medicine and performed operations and delivered babies and nobody seemed to get upset about it. In a way, maybe he was even doing a service. By making more of it available in a better grade, maybe he was helping to stop accidental deaths from contaminated drugs and if users did not have to steal drugs maybe he could reduce the crime rate a little.

  Headlights flashed out in front of his factory and he picked up the telephone and dialed the number of the Parrish Electronic Protective Service. “This is Myron Horowitz, Code 36-43-71. I’m opening the front door at Liberty Drugs on Liberty Road. Okay. Right.”

  He hung up the phone and walked to the front door. Through the frosted glass, he could see the outline of the familiar dark sedan as it pulled around behind the building, out of sight of the road. He waited a moment, then heard footsteps and opened the door.

  Cynthia Hansen stepped inside quickly and he closed the door behind her.

  He turned and followed her down the dark hallway to his office ahead, where two large lamps burned. As he followed her he could not resist reaching out and cupping her cheeks in his hands but she stopped short and said chillingly, “This is business, Myron.”

  He removed his hands reluctantly. “Lately, it’s always business,” he whined.

  “A lot of things have happened,” she said. “I just haven’t been in the mood. Things will be back to normal soon,” she said and gave him just the hint of a smile.

  It was enough to bolster Myron Horowitz’s spirits—to raise his hopes that the stereo, the Chiva’s Regal and the open couch might yet have an effect.

  Cynthia Hansen walked into the office and turned off the stereo. She put the bottle of Chivas Regal back into the portable bar and put the glasses away. Then she took a chair and sat before the desk, facing Horowitz who sat behind the desk.

  She wasted no time. “The shipment downstairs. How much can you package?”

  “The plant’s working real well now,” he said. “I can turn out 500 pounds of heroin in different forms in a week. But can you move it? That’s been the problem, hasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” she said, “that’s been the problem. And the government has had some snooper in and he’s been causing trouble.”

  “I read about Verillio. He must have really been under pressure to blow his own brains out. I thought these thugs never did that.”

  “Mister Verillio to you,” Cynthia Hansen said. “And don’t ever think he was a thug. He died so that there’d be no link to me and to you. Don’t forget it.”

  “I’m sorry, Cynthia,” Horowitz stammered. “I didn’t mean… ”

  “Forget it,” she said. “Anyway this federal man, this Remo Barry. He should be out of it by now. Some of the boys took care of him tonight. And I’ve found out how
to make deliveries. You sure you can do 500 pounds a week?”

  “At least 500 pounds,” he said. “And 98 percent pure heroin. Do you know what that’s worth?” he asked.

  “Better than you do,” she said. “Fifty million on the street. But we’re wholesalers. To us, only one-fifth of that. Ten million.”

  “But every week,” Horowitz said. “Ten million every week. And we can go on forever.”

  “Just don’t get careless. I’ve gone to a lot of trouble to set this up,” She lit a cigarette. “I’ve let the leaders know that the stuff is still available, same prices, same quality, same terms. And now I can guarantee delivery.”

  “How are we going to do that? Everything’s being watched.”

  “We’re going to ship it out with carrots.”

  “Carrots?”

  “Yes, carrots. In vegetable trucks. Don’t worry about it, it’ll work. And I want to move this stuff out of here as fast as I can, then I want to burn this place down, cover it over with dirt, and go live someplace civilized.”

  “The two of us,” Horowitz said.

  “Hmm? Yes, the two of us, Myron,” she said. “Keep preparing the stuff and stashing it. I’ll be in touch with you about delivery.” She stubbed out her cigarette and stood up.

  “Cynthia?”

  “What?”

  “How about tonight?” he said. “Please.”

  “I’ve told you. I’m not in the mood.”

  “I bet you’re in the mood when you’re with that hairy ape I’ve seen you with.”

  “No. He’s got nothing to do with it,” she said. “Besides he’s dead.” And she thought of Remo who by now was also dead and she smiled at Myron and said, “I’m sorry, Myron. I’m really just not in the mood.”

  She left quickly. Myron watched her go out the door, then phoned the protective service again to let them know he had opened the door. While he was on the phone he opened the center drawer of his desk, took out a small bottle labeled “aspirins” and popped one of the pills into his mouth. It was good for the nerves, even better than real aspirin.