Operation Fireball (3 page)

IN DAGO
I had a room that was just a room. I stayed in it until I got over the worst of the awkwardness in dealing with the splint on my left hand. There’s nothing like a couple of broken bones, no matter how insignificant, to make a man aware of his mortality.

I didn’t really know why I was in San Diego. I usually sign on as a tree surgeon somewhere when I’m presenting a low silhouette to the law after a job. I can cut the mustard anywhere working with an ax and a crosscut saw. Generally I keep the job two or three months. This time it had lasted almost a year. It lasted, in fact, until the interval began to tell me something about myself. My nerves weren’t the same after the botched job that had me lying low. When a man gets older, he doesn’t rebound as well.

Everything about the last job had gone well except the getaway. Well, no, I couldn’t really say that. I’d had two partners on that bank job, and one had been killed because he couldn’t keep his mind off women. The other partner and I got away with the cash.

We each had a car, but the money was in his. Then I had to stand in pouring rain on a slick hillside curve and watch a quarter million burn up in the trunk of my partner’s car that hadn’t made the curve. He died of a broken neck. If I hadn’t already mailed $10,000 to the plastic surgeon who’d made me a new face, the job would have been a total loss. It wasn’t the type of operation that bred confidence for the future.

I hadn’t known much about either partner. I’d taken them on unwillingly only because I needed quick money after my departure without benefit of clergy from the south Florida prison hospital. Then the partnership job went wrong. It left me at a low ebb, mentally and financially. Hazel had struck a nerve when she asked how I was fixed.

So with two fiascos back to back, a short bankroll, a new face, and a new name, I’d come to San Diego. There’s a waterfront bar called Curly’s, which has operated as an underworld meeting place since shortly after the time of the forty-niners. Curly’s was a good place to reestablish contact, I felt.

Before the trip to Hazel’s I’d been dropping in almost every night. Not mixing but sitting at the bar and watching the room behind me in the backbar mirror. Looking for familiar faces and not finding any. I’ve been in the business for fifteen years. After that length of time prison cells and unmarked graves claim a lot of familiar faces.

When I was able to have the lengthy wooden splint on my left hand removed and replaced with a finger cast, I started hitting Curly’s again. It was better than getting cabin fever sitting in the room and staring at four walls.

The tavern had a bulletin board in one corner of the low-ceilinged, smoky room. It was always covered with thumbtacked messages, some cryptic, some not. My first night out after the episode at the ranch I stopped as usual to look the board over. There were the usual assortment of cars for sale, apartments for rent, and
GWENDOLYN, PLEASE CALL BEAUREGARD
personals. And there was a new message I read three times. Or had I missed seeing it before?

IMPORTANT
! said a three-by-five card lettered in red ink.
WILL CHARLIE GOSGER CALL AREA CODE
815, 479-2645.
IMMEDIATELY. IMPORTANT
!

That was all. There was no signature or initials. I moved along to the bar and ordered a Jim Beam on the rocks. About ten years before I had used the alias Charlie Gosger for a short time. I couldn’t even remember the details. Probably I’d used it for a specific job, then dropped it. Could someone from that period be trying to contact me now? It hardly seemed likely.

I went to the phone booth and checked out Area Code 815. It was in northeast Illinois, not too far from Chicago. It told me nothing. I couldn’t even remember in which part of the country I’d been Charlie Gosger.

I went back to the bar and thought it over. A telephone call would settle it. If I didn’t like what I heard, I could hang up. But why call at all? Did I want to meet anyone from my Charlie Gosger period?

There was even a reason for not calling. I’d escaped from the prison hospital with my facial bandages still on after the plastic surgery. No one knew what my face looked like. Nobody could connect the current Earl Drake by sight at least with any previous identity of mine. No one with whom I’d ever worked previously could recognize me now even if he sat down at the bar beside me. It was a factor worth protecting.

And yet—

I was marking time, and I hadn’t much more time to mark. I had a car, not new, and a little money. Neither was going to last long. I should have been planning what came next. Instead, I was sitting in Curly’s, sipping bourbon. I kept telling myself that I had to get going, but I didn’t do it.

It’s odd how a man’s mind works. I found myself dwelling upon past jobs, how well they’d gone, and how satisfying it had been. Who was it who said that a man is over the hill when he thinks about what he’s accomplished in the past rather than what he plans to do in the future?

The hard-core realization that I was ducking the issue set me in motion. I changed a five-dollar bill into silver at the bar, then left Curly’s and went down the street to a pay phone. I didn’t trust Curly’s phones. I gave the operator the number. She asked me for $1.75 for the first three minutes. When the phone started ringing, I glanced at my watch. It was after midnight. Around Chicago it would be two
A.M
. I hadn’t realized it was that late.

The phone rang five times at the other end of the line. I was almost ready to hang up when the receiver was picked up and a gruff voice said hello.

“I’m calling from California,” I began. I realized that I hadn’t planned what I was going to say. “I saw your message to Charlie Gosger. If it’s your message.”

For a moment I heard only the line hum against a muted background of faint static. “Yeah?” the voice said at last. “Is this Charlie?”

“I don’t know if it is or not.” Now, that’s a fine thing to say, I thought. “I mean, I might have been once.” My feeling of irritation increased. The second remark made no more sense than the first.

But the heavy voice seemed to have no qualms about my uncertainty. “Where you callin’ from?”

I hesitated. “Down the street from Curly’s,” I said at last.

“I thought you’d make that circuit sooner or later.” There was a complacent note in the voice.

I had a sudden thought. “Was there more than one of the Charlie Gosger messages?”

“A dozen. Around the country in places like Curly’s. You still in business?”

“Wouldn’t that depend on the business you had in mind?”

“Okay, okay. You remember Slater?”

Slater? Slater. I opened my mouth and closed it again. Slater. Am image began to form. Big. Hard-nosed. Close-mouthed. Trigger-happy. Slater. Black hair. Bulldog features. Heavy voice. Yes. I remembered a Slater.

“You got it?” the voice inquired.

“If it’s the same man.”

“If you’re Charlie Gosger, you stood next to Slater in Massillon, Ohio, one mornin’ when he was directin’ traffic.”

I remembered Massillon, but that wasn’t enough. “Two cars left the square that morning,” I said. “Which way did they go?”

“One north an’ one south.”

“How many men in each car?”

“Three an’ three.” The line hummed for a moment. “Okay?”

“Okay. So far.”

“I’d like to meet with you, Charlie.”

I wasn’t ready to go that fast. “You’re Slater?”

“Right. I got a proposition for you. Biggest thing’s come along in years. Maybe ever.”

It wasn’t my method of operation. In the past I’d always drawn up the plan and put the proposition. But I had nothing going for me now. I stood there in the phone booth, trying to recall what I could of Slater’s characteristics from the Massillon job.

“You still there?” the telephone voice inquired.

“I’m here. I’m trying to make up my mind.”

“Charlie Gosger never had no trouble makin’ up his mind.”

It was true. So true that it jolted me. Was that what was the matter with me lately? One of the things? Charlie Gosger would study a situation, and if it looked right and felt right, he’d open the stops and bore in. Life had been marvelously uncomplicated in those days.

But the old days had nothing to do with my decision now. If I said yes and met this man Slater, I’d be giving away the anonymity of Earl Drake, which I’d literally gone through hell to establish. And depending upon Slater’s proposition, I could be giving it away for nothing.

But where was I headed now? Into penny ante stuff because my nerve was gone? That wasn’t right, either. It wasn’t my nerve. The affair at the ranch had proved that. It was just that I couldn’t seem to initiate a project any longer.

I took a breath and released it. “Where do you want to meet, Slater?”

“How about right in San Diego?” he came back promptly. “The Aztec Hotel. In the bar. I can be there at five tomorrow afternoon.”

It reminded me. “You won’t know me.”

“I won’t?”

“I have a new face.”

“ ‘Zat right? You been to Switzerland?”

“It was done here.”

“Remind me to get the name of the doctor. Couple pals of mine’d be interested. Now about tomorrow. I won’t be wearin’ a sign because I owe Uncle a little time, but you should know me. The Aztec bar at five, okay? An’ come thinkin’ big. You never heard nothin’ like this before.”

“I’ll be there,” I said, and hung up.

I didn’t go back to Curly’s.

I went back to my room and sat in its uncomfortable chair while I tried to figure out why I had jumped so quickly sight unseen at Slater’s unorthodox proposal for a meeting.

I gave it up finally and went to bed.

• • •

At four the next afternoon I scrawled the name of Earl Drake on an Aztec Hotel registration card and was assigned Room 304. I looked around the room after I got rid of the bellboy who had brought up my briefcase, my only piece of luggage. It was a pleasant-looking room. It seemed a shame to waste it on a meeting that might come to nothing.

No sooner thought than done. I went downstairs to the lobby pay phones. I gave the long distance operator Hazel’s number and waited while the call went through. “Hi,” I said when the familiar deep voice came on the line.

“Hi, yourself,” she returned in pleased surprise.

“Any excitement?”

“With you gone?” she asked demurely.

“What did you tell the man?”

“That I did it myself.”

“That you did it
yourself
?”

“Oh, he didn’t believe me.” She giggled. “If it had been done with a two-by-four or a baseball bat, he’d have believed it quick enough, but—”

“Can you fly down here?” I interrupted her.

Her voice quickened. “I certainly can.”

“Get yourself booked and call me back here and let me know what time you’ll arrive at the airport.” I gave her the number of the pay phone booth.

“I’ll call you right back,” she promised.

I sat in a lobby armchair while I waited for the call. I had left Hazel’s place thinking that if she kept her mouth shut, there would be no real follow-through on the episode with the sadistic kids. Second thought had showed me the hole in the doughnut. Hazel had had visitors before. Eventually, a copy of the sheriff’s report was going to reach someone who remembered a sharpshooting incident in south Florida. Someone who was going to put two and two together. Hazel was going to have more visitors, and I wanted to talk to her first.

Her call back to me came within ten minutes. “I can’t get there till after midnight,” she said. “One
A.M
. Is that too late?”

“That’s fine. Walk right through the terminal out to the cabstand.” I’d have to make sure she wasn’t being followed, although it was a little early for that. “You’ll see me.”

“Not driving a cab, I hope?”

“Are you demeaning honest labor, woman?”

She snickered. “What should I bring in the way of clothes?”

“The legal minimum.”

She snickered again. “You certainly do make it easy on a girl.”

“See you at one
A.M
.” I said, and hung up.

I went upstairs to the room. I opened the briefcase, which contained only two items—the .38 and a shoulder holster. I removed my jacket, strapped on the holster, and replaced the jacket. I practiced with the gun until it was drawing freely. Then I sat down and turned on the television set.

At 4:55 I took the elevator down to the lobby again and stood in the doorway of the men’s bar. Half a dozen scattered figures sat on the stools in the tranquility of the dim lighting. There were as many more at the tables.

Slater wasn’t hard to locate. He didn’t look like I remembered him, but he looked like Slater ought to look ten years later. Burly, square-jawed, dour-looking. Menacing. Definitely older-looking but still capable.

I backed away from the doorway to a battery of nearby house phones that permitted me to keep an eye on the end of the bar where Slater sat. I watched him for five minutes to make sure he wasn’t exchanging hand or eye signals with anyone else in the room. If he was, I couldn’t detect it. I picked up the phone.

“Ring the bar and have Mr. Slater paged, please,” I told the hotel operator when she came on the line.

The page call didn’t carry out to the lobby, where I was standing, but I saw Slater’s head come up when he heard it. He slid from his bar stool and walked out of my line of vision toward a phone indicated by the barman. “Yeah?” the same gruff voice as the previous night said in my ear.

“The bar is too public,” I said. “I’m upstairs in Room 529.”

“Suits me. I’ll be right there.”

Slater came back to his drink, picked it up, and drained it. His back was toward me as he set his empty glass down slowly, then walked out into the lobby without a backward glance. He passed within six feet of me on his way to the elevators, but I remained where I was and kept my eyes on the bar stool Slater had just left.

In seconds a huge blond man with walking-beam shoulders moved to the stool and sat down. The barman started in his direction, but the Viking snapped his fingers as though he’d just remembered something. He left the stool and went toward the lobby.