The Day of the Guns (15 page)

The incredible desire was there and I knew I was going to take her. I was going to do something I swore I’d never do again and couldn’t help myself. But it was Rondine who made the move. Her breath jerked in her throat and she went rigid under my hands and tried to wrench herself away with a sudden sob. There was fright in her eyes and something else I couldn’t fathom and, as quickly as it had started, it was over. I let her go and she twisted, grabbing for the front of her gown, and scrambled to her feet. She stood there breathing heavily, watching me, her mouth working until she half-blurted, “I’m ... sorry. Truly ...”

I grinned at her. The act was still going strong. A new act, a damn good one, but an act just the same. The only thing that surprised me was that she didn’t make a try for my gun.

I eased out of the chair, got my hat and coat and turned to smile at her. “Soon, Rondine. I’ll spoil it for you first and kill you. Sleep on it.”

All the way out the door I knew her eyes were on my back and I was giving her one hell of a target, but somehow I knew she wasn’t about to try one damn thing.

The rain was driving down now, whipping up the streets in front of the intermittent gusts that whistled around the buildings. All the cabs that came by were filled so I turned west and started walking. The last time I made the trip I had company and wound up with dead men at my feet. Maybe this time I’d have better luck.

By the time I reached Broadway I was soaked through my raincoat and still hadn’t seen an empty cab. But there was an empty bar that was warm and dry so I went in for a drink. An old movie was running on the “Late Show” that got me caught up in it and it was an hour and a half before I left. I got a cab on the comer this time, told him the Chester Hotel and rode back still damp.

I knocked, but Toomey didn’t answer so I supposed he was asleep and stuck my key in the lock. I closed the door, flipped the light on and saw Toomey face down on the bed. But he wasn’t asleep. There was a neat little hole at the base of his skull and a pool of red on the mattress that seeped up into the pillows. The body had barely lost any of its heat so the kill was only minutes old and I knew I had the answers.

Nicely timed,
Rondine,
I thought. A book of hotel matches carelessly left in your apartment, a phone call to a killer named Vidor Churis who gave me time to sack out, a passkey in the door, one nice shot with a silenced gun and out. The bad joke was on Toomey. The big joke was on the killer. He thought he had nailed me. He couldn’t see Toomey’s face while he napped and didn’t think a positive make was necessary. It was my room and a guy asleep in my bed and it looked pat.

The switchboard operator was a tired old guy who said a call had come in for me earlier, he gave the room number and was about to ring the room when the line went dead on the other end. Both he and the desk clerk said there had been traffic in and out of the lobby all night and neither had paid any special attention to people going either way.

I went back to the room, checked through it but found nothing. Later I’d get a report on the bullet, but it was still lodged in the body and I didn’t want to probe for it.

There was one thing though. In Toomey’s coat hanging on a hook in back of the door were two letters to me transshipped from the other hotel. One was a notice that my trunk had arrived by freight from Mexico. The other was from a German doctor specializing in plastic surgery who stated that although he never had her as a patient, she resembled a woman named Rondine Lund whom he had known when he was a medical officer in the Luftwaffe during the war. He understood that she was dead, but couldn’t be certain.

Well, I could put him straight on that one.

My first call went through the relay to Martin Grady, the second to Thomas Watford. He said to stay there until a team arrived but I wasn’t about to. I gave him the picture as quickly as possible, said I’d check back with him on the slug that killed Toomey and hung up. I didn’t have time to waste sweating out all the details of a police investigation no matter what agency handled it and if Hal Randolph was brought in he wasn’t going to let me off the hook.

I got my gear together, went downstairs and paid the bill, leaving no forwarding address. Three blocks away I checked into another small commercial hotel under the name of Frank Wilson of Memphis, Tennessee. Just three blocks but in the complex of the city, twenty thousand people away.

As late as it was, I called Stephen Midros and got him out of bed.

His voice was a querulous, “Yes, please?”

“Tiger Mann, Midros. Hate to roust you out but something important has come up.”

“Yes, yes, it is all right.”

“I don’t want to make any direct contacts, so you do this for me.”

“Certainly.”

“You know where to reach Gregory Hofta?”

“His home. He will be there. I spoke to him earlier tonight.”

“Good. Have him get the address of Alexis Minner. He’s a clerk at their Embassy ...”

“Mr. Mann ...” he stopped me. “This one is more than a clerk. He is dangerous.”

“Hofta gave me his history. If his present assignment is just a cover then he’ll be working with other people, too. He may be the lead I want.”

“I was there when this man was in Hungary,” Midros said carefully, keeping the emotion out of his voice that tried so hard to show itself. “He is a killer. Right now he enjoys diplomatic immunity and no matter what he does he can only be considered persona non
grata
and returned to Russia.”

“He can do one other thing.”

“What is that, Mr. Mann?”

“He can be buried.”

Midros said nothing a moment, then a slight chuckle came over the receiver. “I wish you the best of luck, sir. Anything I can do to assist will be done. I will pass on your message at once.”

“I’ll call you back,” I told him, said so long and hung up.

I needed sleep badly; too much had piled up and there was too much to come and I had to be right to finish it. I double-locked the door, checked the window and pulled the blinds shut, then flopped back on the bed.

How beautifully everything fit, I thought. They had to throw the package together in a hurry because I was something they had never planned on. Into the midst of their intricate planning that had taken years to set up, into their grand scheme to lock up the world through legalistic international maneuverings, comes one guy out of the past with one thing on his mind he never expected to find and that one guy could blow the basket for them.

Rondine knew what would happen. As soon as she left me that first day she had contacted her group and the order went out for an immediate hit.

Only I knew it would happen, too, and they shot up some pillows.

Ah, but she played it cute. She didn’t know where to reach me so she contacted Wally Gibbons, and like a sucker took up my invitation to meet me at my hotel. Then she knew. Then she could pass it along and this time they came back in force for the second try and muffed it again because Toomey and I were ready for them.

She even knew the story would be quashed. The dirty ramifications of international politics aren’t handled by local police and reporters are taboo. All you could do was play the game out as far as it would go until only one was left and that was the final answer, simple and complete.

Gretchen Lark put her finger on it when she inadvertently pointed up the way Rondine played Burton Selwick. He was the key, all right. He had the inside track and all the facts in his head. Rondine was a person to be trusted in his sights, a respected member of a fine old patriotic family, a countryman, a beautiful woman, one whom he had personally recommended for her position and one with whom he wouldn’t be too guarded. She was on the inside, doing overtime work for him in addition to her regular duties and nobody knows more about the boss than his secretary. Or his work.

Rondine,
it was
a
magnificent package!

You knew I’d visit you, kid. You knew I would want to be sure I knew how you did because I’m built that way. You knew I’d want to see how the plastic surgery worked and you were willing to take the chance because they had done such a good job you could afford it. You waited me out and had somebody standing by for the emergency. You had a gun and would have killed me yourself but I caught you on that one too and you had to pass the word down the line and it didn’t take long. Two cars made the swing and tried for a hit on the street. That was a smart angle, calling in professional help. If they had made it nobody would have tied in the political bit. My reputation was enough to justify a kill like that and anybody could have done it, but it was still good thinking. Too bad it didn’t work. Get your money back from the ones in the first car, sweetie, or are they still on the job? If they work it the usual way it’s over for a while. You didn’t tell them they were going after a big one and all contracts are canceled in their book. By now they’ll realize what happened and you won’t be getting them in again.

But it’s the last one you’re going to pay through the nose for, honey. You gave me plenty of time to get back to the hotel and fall asleep. You saw the book of matches and knew where I was. You didn’t think I’d stop off for a few drinks and see a “Late Show” all the way through and your killer hit the wrong man. He’s made too many mistakes to stay in business and now he’s had it too.

And you know, stopping Burton Selwick’s speech was a nice piece of cake. A delaying action. You got wind of what was going to happen and made sure you had time to work up a change of plans. What did you feed him for lunch ... the same stuff we used on General Von Selter or the gook you dropped in the Greek’s coffee that time in Athens? You didn’t want to kill the old boy ... he was too vital a source of information. Just putting him out of action was enough and his natural illness would cover up the real thing.

I grinned up at the ceiling and fell asleep, the .45 in my hand, a shell jacked into the chamber and the hammer on half-cock.

 

At ten A.M. I showered, shaved and got dressed. I called Stephen Midros and without discussion he simply said, “One-one-four-nine, Sixteenth. Upstairs over an Italian grocery store. There are four exits in the building, front, roof and two through the cellar, one on either side. Hofta advises extreme caution, the man is known to be an expert in all fields of murder.”

“So am I, buddy.”

“Will you need assistance?”

“Not at this point. I’ll call for it if I do.”

“We have a large organization, Mr. Mann, nothing official, but our people can be trusted and themselves have had experience in this sort of thing.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it, but don’t expose them to this. You might need what you have for the big play coming up.”

“I understand.”

I hung up, made sure I had the address down in my mind, slapped the gun in the holster and grabbed my coat and hat. Pay-off day was shaping up.

The apartment was the middle one of five that had just been renovated into a higher rent bracket, the occupants having the dubious advantage of living in the area of Greenwich Village. I toured the block, separating the funny ones from the real ones, stopping in a few stores to buy things I didn’t need just to pick up the flavor of the locale.

Most of the permanent residents seemed to have international backgrounds, the older ones still speaking with thick accents and having mementos of life in another country on display behind counters and in their windows. A general sampling put them in the Slavic-German category with a few Italians sprinkled about. Twice I heard Russian spoken on the street in conversation, but nobody seemed anxious to exhibit that particular nationality with any artifacts.

Funny how patterns kept repeating themselves. Like Americans going across the ocean to Paris only to wind up in the American Bar or eating hot dogs that they wouldn’t eat at home. There was always that unconscious search for your own kind, the innate desire to know you weren’t alone. There was a sense of security, no matter how false, to hear a word spoken in a native tongue or taste back-yard spices on some familiar dish.

When I was ready I called Charlie Corbinet and told him to use the lever. Both Randolph and Watford wanted to talk to me but he would see that they were put off long enough for me to get this phase out of the way. What I wanted was a city fireman, in uniform, to accompany me on a simple inspection of the premises. All stops would have to come out because we were going to cross agencies and it had to be handled carefully. I said I would meet the one assigned on a corner two blocks away in an hour and got the “good-luck-and-go-ahead” signal from the Colonel on our old Tike R. code and hung up.

At ten after twelve a red city fire-chief sedan pulled to the curb and I got in. The driver was a young guy, the other a man in his fifties, with more the look of a cop than a fireman. There were burn scars on the backs of both his hands and another along the side of his face. He nodded, introduced himself as Captain Murray, the driver as Ron Kelly and wanted to know what the pitch was.

“Inspect all exits at One-one-four-nine, Sixteenth,” I said.

“That’s the Gorbatcher-Smith job. We went through there a week ago.”

“Let’s do it again.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “No violations there. That’s a good outfit and the super is on the ball. They complied with specs right down the line and the place is kept that way.”

“Think of something.”

“Can I ask any questions?”

“Sure.”

“This came through some big channels. Police work?”

“Of a sort.”

Murray grinned and nodded. “Okay, I get the picture. How do you want to handle it?”

“Regular routine,” I said. “Nothing to draw any attention.”

“No sweat. We pull spot checks all the time.”

Kelly took us up the street and stopped in front of the buildings. A police cruiser passed, the cops waved casually and we threw them a wave back. Nobody on the street bothered giving us more than a first look. Cops and firemen were too common and unless there was some action nobody gave a damn what went on that wasn’t their own business.