Triple Trap

by William H Hallahan

  “Who is there?” Revin called.

  “Deeter Chessmann.”

  “Enter, please.”

  The door opened.

  “Mr. Chessmann, I do hope you will understand these precautions.”

  “I do.” Chessmann, an indistinct form through the screen, walked across the room and sat down opposite Revin. He slid a calling card under the screen. “I presume I am addressing Mr. Moltke?”

  Revin read the card: Deeter Chessmann. Confidential Business Matters. “Yes, Mr. Chessmann, you are.” Revin pushed a business card back under the screen: Franz Moltke. Imported Technical Items.

  “Mr. Chessmann, would you describe your method of operation to me, please? I understand your reluctance to discuss such sensitive matters by telephone, so I know of it only imperfectly through a third party.”

  “Yes. I would be pleased to.” Chessmann had a soft voice, almost unctuous, and he spoke good French—the agreed-upon language—with a definite but unidentifiable accent, perhaps Greek. “I call it stagecraft. A scenario. Things are not what they seem. Perhaps to get specific, I should describe the program you asked me to work out…”

  “That would be excellent, Mr. Chessmann.”

  “Well, to begin. The subject—Mr. Charlie Brewer—will be fitted out with certain props in his home and on his person that will establish him conclusively as a secret drug trafficker.”

  “You mean you will frame him?”

  “Precisely. At the same time, I will set up another place—an apartment in a marginal neighborhood in Washington. This will be staged with props that make it clearly a place where drugs are sold at retail to the local addicts. There is a known drug pusher in that city with the name of Waley. I will arrange to put a liberal supply of Waley’s fingerprints in the apartment. And also a liberal scattering of Mr. Charlie Brewer’s fingerprints there. A key to Waley’s shooting-gallery apartment will be left on the body of Mr. Brewer. The weapon—an ordinary police thirty-eight—will be left at the scene of the crime with Mr. Waley’s fingerprints all over it. Mr. Charlie Brewer’s death will be blamed on a quarrel between him—a drug importer—and Mr. Waley, a long-time street pusher. If I do my job effectively enough, you will be rid of your problem and Mr. Waley will go to prison for murder.”

  “I see. How will you obtain the fingerprints of these men without them knowing about it?”

  “Stagecraft, Mr. Moltke. One of the secrets of my trade.”

  Revin sat in thought.

  Chessmann cleared his throat. “Mr. Moltke. Perhaps I can reassure you on several points. As I explained to you, it is very difficult for me to present references from satisfied customers, but I know that you did receive endorsements from two gentlemen who are in my general line of business. I can also assure you that I have never had a failure. I am very careful. I do a great deal of planning and preparation. The results of my stagecraft are so convincing, even Mr. Charlie Brewer’s own people will believe that he was secretly a drug trafficker. I have done these scenarios so many times, I am an absolute master of the art. I set the highest possible standards for myself. I will not fail you.”

  Revin raised another question and another. He was concerned because there were too many elements out of his control. Chessmann could chose to abscond with the money, and there would be no way of recovering it. Worse, he could fail. Failure could prove disastrous for Revin. The committee would be vengeful, to say the least. Then, afterward, he worried about confidentiality. Suppose Chessmann were caught. What was to prevent him from plea bargaining?

  “With what?” Chessmann asked. “I know nothing about you. I don’t even know what you look like. I wouldn’t be believed.”

  The conversation lasted for several hours. Revin, with some reluctance—but impelled by necessity—opened an attaché case and took out several piles of currency. Half in Swiss francs and half in Japanese yen.

  “Mr. Chessmann, a word about the money.”

  “Yes. I know what you are going to say, Mr. Moltke.”

  “Since you don’t really know who I am, you cannot in confidence expect to find me after the fact in order to be paid.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Therefore, Mr. Chessmann, I am going to pay you the entire amount before the event. Half now and the second half when you have set things up in Washington and are ready to proceed.”

  “Excellent. You understand, of course, that I will not proceed with the final event until full payment is made.”

  “Yes. I do understand.” Revin pushed the packets of currency under the screen to Chessmann. “Mr. Chessmann, I ask that you count it to the last sou in my presence.”

  Chessmann used two fingers to riffle with great speed through the pockets of francs and yen. “Quite right,” he said at last. Revin could see his hands putting the packets in a soft leather carrying case.

  “Just one last point, Mr. Chessmann,” Revin said. “It is often said that a fool and his money are soon parted. And you could believe I am a fool for paying in advance. But it comes down to one of us having to trust the other. Either you have to trust me to pay you after the event. Or I have to trust you to do the deed after full payment. Obviously you are in the stronger bargaining position here, so I must do the trusting. Threats are an empty gesture at best. But perhaps a warning is not out of place here. If for any reason you fail to produce the results I seek, you will be expected to return the money—all of it, to the last sou. My warning is, do not fail to return the money promptly. If there is any doubt in your mind about this matter, let me assure you that my organization is international and notorious for finding people who believed they could not be found.”

  “Mr. Moltke,” Chessmann said, “let me in turn assure you. While this fee is quite substantial, it is not enough to retire on, not enough to hide with. I cannot afford to operate my business while being pursued by a dissatisfied client. So, Mr. Moltke, satisfaction guaranteed. Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back.”

  Chessmann exited, leaving only the sound of the door shutting behind him. Revin remained awhile longer, thinking of the two men from the Bosphorus who now lay in unmarked graves in Washington.

  Revin’s reputation was rooted soundly on his ability to think through all aspects of a problem. Others sometimes called him Mr. Options and Alternatives. And Mr. What If?

  As he sat in the hotel room in London, whiling away the time before going back to the airport, he briefly entertained a different sort of What if?

  What if there were an after-life? A Judgment Day of Christian mythology. He had never seriously considered such a possibility. “Besides,” he had once said, long ago in college. “Am I not dedicating my life to the service of mankind? I would have nothing to fear from such a day.”

  After this meeting with Chessmann, he would not be so sure.

  Chessmann left that night for Washington, and the next day, a few hours after landing, he set about creating his scenario.

  He sat down with several newspapers, a map of the city, and a set of crayons. Then he began making phone calls.

  “I see you have a furnished apartment for rent,” he said. “I need one for about a month. Too short? A lease? Tell you what. I can make it worth your while. I will give you double your monthly rent plus expenses.”

  After the third phone call he struck a deal with a landlord. Triple the monthly rent plus double the expenses. In cash. Upfront. And no questions asked.

  He put the money in a plain white envelope, addressed it to the landlord, and summoned a local messenger service.

  “Hand him this envelope,” he said to the messenger. “And he’ll give you a set of keys. Bring the keys back to me.”

  An hour later Chessmann had the keys to a furnished apartment he had never seen.

  Chapter 30

  Chessmann went to the neighborhood where his furnished apartment was located. The snow, a dirty gray, was mounded every-where and formed long, frozen walls between the sidewalks and the roadways. A cold wind rolled a rogue tr
ash can down the street.

  Chessmann quickly found what he was looking for: the B&B bar. It was housed in a battered old brick building on a corner, with a row of four outside telephone booths along the side wall. Men stood bundled and shivering in small groups by the phones, answering them when they rang, then entering the bar with white slips of paper. Other men sat in parked cars with the motors running. As quickly as one car drove away, another would take its place.

  Chessmann looked at the scene with satisfaction. The advice he had gotten was excellent. This was exactly what he wanted—a thriving drug business with a phone-order delivery service. Now he wanted to see the proprietor. He checked a piece of paper in his pocket: Skits Waley was his name. He went into the bar.

  Inside he ordered a drink. The men with the white slips of paper came into the bar from the phone booths and went into a back room. Seconds later they would emerge, pocketing small packets of drugs, to be driven away in one of the cars at the curb.

  It didn’t take Chessmann long to identify Skits Waley. He fit his description exactly. Sitting at the bar across from Chessmann, the man could easily have been mistaken for a successful politician. Big, with a ready smile and a hearty laugh, he greeted everyone with open arms, knew everyone’s name, slapped backs and asked after the health of family members in either Spanish or English. He was dressed in a custom-made gray pinstripe suit, and wore, in the breast pocket, a huge purple handkerchief in a floral print that matched his necktie. On both hands he wore diamond rings.

  Waley operated a string of runners who covered much of official Washington. Deliveries were made mainly in the lavatories of office buildings and in shops. In a city like Washington, Waley paid particular attention to the politicians and their staffs, who considered drugs as important to a successful party as liquor.

  To operate a thriving drug business like this out in the open, Waley was known to be liberal with bribes, discreet, and adept at good relations with everyone—never using force where negotiations would serve. It was said he himself did not use drugs, and watching him, Chessmann suspected that Waley had a different problem: alcohol.

  In a booth behind the affable Waley sat two very large men who watched everyone with wary eyes. They often took long looks at Chessmann.

  Chessmann felt no need to stay longer. He’d found his target.

  For verification, he went next to a neighborhood lawyer whose name he got from the phone book. He called, said his business was urgent, and was admitted to a consultation.

  “It’s my daughter,” he said to the lawyer. “She’s infatuated with a man. And I’m very suspicious of him. We have been here in the United States only a short time, and we don’t know how things are done. What I would like to know is, can you find out if this man has a criminal record?”

  The lawyer nodded. “Yes. I would need complete identification. And any vital statistics.”

  “But I have none. Only his name. Waley.”

  The lawyer raised his eyes from his pad. “Waley? Skits Waley?”

  “You know him?”

  “Everyone in Washington knows him.”

  “Then what can you tell me about him?”

  “He has a rap sheet that goes back at least twenty years.

  He’s been accused repeatedly of being a drug pusher, pimp, and gambler. His list of arrests fills pages for everything from general mayhem and suspected murder to bribing public officials. But so far as I know, he’s never had a conviction.”

  “Oh dear.”

  “‘Oh dear’ is hardly the word, sir,” the lawyer said.

  Eureka would be a better word, Chessmann thought. In Skits Waley, he’d found just the man he needed.

  Chessmann returned that evening to the bar. He told the bartender he had just moved into the neighborhood, and a few minutes later Skits Waley stood by his side, holding out a large hand.

  “Welcome to our neighborhood,” he said. “My name is Waley. You can call me Skits. And I’m pleased to meet you.”

  Chessmann took his hand. “How do you do. My name is Moltke and I’m pleased to meet you.”

  “When did you move in?”

  “Just today. I’m a writer from Germany and I’m doing a book on American civil rights.”

  Mr. Waley was very interested in civil rights, and he talked volubly about them. In the process, he very adroitly pulled quantities of information from Chessmann. Waley bought Chessmann another drink. His disappointment was clear when he had to excuse himself abruptly: he was summoned to the back room. “We’ll talk some more, Mr. Moltke,” he said with a huge smile and another handshake.

  Chessmann congratulated himself on his great good luck: Waley had left his glass on the bar, right beside Chessmann’s. Unobtrusively he put a handkerchief around it and slipped it into a side pocket of his suit jacket. A few moments later he left.

  The apartment Chessmann had rented was unprepossessing. The furnishings were of mediocre quality and rather shabby. There were two bedrooms, a living room, and a combination dining area with Pullman kitchen. There were roaches.

  Chessmann placed a small food scale on the counter of the kitchen, put a pound package of marijuana in a cabinet with a supply of cigarette papers. He spilled some white heroin powder on the counter then blew on it to spread it out. Next he took a roll of clear plastic tape, unrolled a length of it, and held it up to the light. Barely discernible on the tape were faint fingerprints—Skits Waley’s fingerprints, dozens of them in a row, reproduced on the adhesive side of the clear plastic tape, all taken from a few master prints from Waley’s drinking glass.

  Chessmann occupied himself for the next fifteen minutes placing the tape on various surfaces then rubbing the back of it with plastic stick to transfer the fingerprints to various surfaces. He quickly put Waley’s fingerprints everywhere—on the table, on the counter, on the doors, on the bathroom sink, on the toilet. On the counter he dusted several with heroin powder.

  Getting at Charlie Brewer was an entirely different matter. He scouted Brewer’s neighborhood early that morning then sat in his car waiting. When Brewer came out of his apartment building and drove off, Chessmann went up to the front door and with a lock pick quickly admitted himself to the building. He hurried up the steps and unlocked Brewer’s door.

  Brewer wasn’t much on furnishings. His was the apartment of a man who is rarely in it. There wasn’t even a television set anywhere. But pinned on the walls were dozens of papers—long sections of road maps, American and European, with routes marked off in colored felt pen—as well as receipts, checks, manifests, cargo-claim certificates, export and import forms—most in either English or German. There was one bed, unmade, articles of men’s clothing scattered about the bedroom and more hanging in a closet. In the bathroom cabinet were male toilet articles for one person. No cosmetics or other female paraphernalia. Chessmann learned what he wanted to know: Brewer lived alone.

  He spent an hour dusting the place for clean fingerprints. There were layers of prints, one overlaying the other, but it was difficult to find a clean set. He tried the kitchen, the bath, the glasses and dishes in the sink, cans and jars of food. He found a number of borderline prints. Finally, in the trash, he found a clean set on an empty coffee jar.

  Before leaving, he checked the windows of the apartment. He went up to the next floor and then to the staircase to the roof. Picking his way around the television antennas, he examined the fire escapes and the chimney stacks, then looked down the side of the building where Brewer’s windows were. He would soon be ready.

  Brewer returned late in the afternoon, entered the building vestibule, unlocked his mailbox, then walked back to his car, sorting the envelopes as he went. He drove to Bonnie’s Billiards and Bowling in Crystal City. Chessmann followed him.

  At Bonnie’s, Brewer had several glasses of beer at the bar as he ripped open his mail. He soon had a pile of crumpled papers before him.

  “I can get vitamins at half price,” he said to the bartender. “And I can ge
t a credit card from a Kansas City bank with ten thousand worth of credit. And I can get a weekend for two in Atlanta including Sunday brunch, a real old-fashioned southern dinner in the Confederacy Room, and tickets to a tour of the city.”

  “And I can get you another beer,” the bartender said.

  Later Brewer went into the billiards room. At six-thirty he met with another man, had dinner with him in the hotel across the road, then went home.

  Chessmann was satisfied. He’d had a good long look at Brewer. He was ready for the last phase of his assignment.

  All this talk of death and violence stirred old memories for Viktor Revin. So did the appalling winter that was tormenting all of Europe—the winter in particular haunted him. Even when it wasn’t snowing, the wind blew the loose ground snow so ferociously that Cologne seemed to be living in an unending blizzard.

  He woke at night often now, remembering his childhood when the Russian war was on … the snow, the blowing snow and the freezing weather, and the frozen bodies of the soldiers, and the frozen bodies of the horses, the people cutting the meat off the horse bones with cleavers and axes. Day after day the war and the winter slaughtered more people.

  When he woke, he thought of Chessmann. What manner of man was that? Making a career of taking other people’s lives. Probably in the morning he would hear from him, and he would have to give him final authorization and final payment. Revin wondered how he would live with himself after that.

  He tried to picture himself in his old age back in Russia, a little place out in the country, perhaps, growing bent and gray and slow and recalling old sins and crimes. Would he then be conscience stricken?

  He had watched the old revolutionaries age into their graves, almost all with that bemused look of ‘What have I done?’ For some of them, a look finally of fear.

  If murder is necessary for the survival of Russia, then that’s tragic. Unlike others, he couldn’t order murder casually. He felt himself a misfit.

  Revin’s guess was right: before noon Deeter Chessmann called him.