The Mordida Man (14 page)

“You said fifty,” Dunjee said.

“Fifty. Twenty-five per. In advance. He missed one week and I didn't think nothing about it because he was always in and out—you know, sleeping here only one, two, maybe three nights a week. But after he didn't show for eleven straight days and no word, well, I packed him up and locked him away in the bin.”

“Frank said he owes only one week.”

“I got it down in black and white.”

“Let's take a look,” Dunjee said.

Mr. Thumbolt limped to a desk in the cluttered ground-floor bed-sitter and flipped open a gray ledger with red leather corners. “Right here,” he said, jabbing his finger at a name. The name was Frank Glimm, and Dunjee ran his eyes over the dates of payment and learned that Glimm had been renting the third-floor bed-sitter for three months.

“That's not two weeks,” Dunjee said. “That's eleven days.”

“One day to move him out and clean it up, right? Another day to show it, right? Another day before the new one can move in, right? That's three days. Three plus eleven is fourteen. Two into fourteen makes seven. Seven days in a week at twenty-five per, times two, makes fifty.”

“Frank isn't going to like this, is he, Ralph?” Dunjee said to Hopkins.

“He'll scream,” Hopkins said. “Close, Frank is. Very close.”

“Tell him to come scream at me,” Mr. Thumbolt said.

Dunjee took fifty pounds from his pocket in one- and five-pound notes and counted them slowly onto the desk. “There's your fifty. Where's his stuff?”

“Bit of a walk,” Mr. Thumbolt said and limped out of the room and down the hall. Dunjee and Hopkins followed. “Got this in Africa, I did,” Mr. Thumbolt said, giving his limping left leg a slap. “Bloody Krauts anyway.”

At the end of the hall he opened a door, switched on a light, and started down a flight of stairs. The cellar was crammed with discarded furniture. In one corner old bed slats had been used to build a floor-to-ceiling bin. The bin was full of suitcases, trunks, and cardboard boxes tied with string. Mr. Thumbolt produced a ring of keys and used one to unlock a padlock on the bin's chicken-wire door.

“I flog everything they leave behind but the luggage,” he said. “Chap over in the Portobello Road gives me a price. Wirelesses, gramophones, irons, pots and pans, things like that. One of these days I'm going to flog this lot off.” He pointed to two large suitcases, not new. “That one and that one.”

Dunjee took one; Hopkins the other. Both were heavy.

“Frank said something about a cardboard box,” Dunjee said.

“No box,” Mr. Thumbolt said firmly.

“No box. I'll tell him that.”

“What about the wireless,” Hopkins said. “Frank said he had himself a nice little Grundig.”

“He's a liar,” Mr. Thumbolt said. “No pots, no pans, not a dish, and just a couple of glasses. He says he had a wireless, you tell him I say he's a liar.”

“I'll tell him,” Hopkins said.

“What about mail?” Dunjee said as they went back up the stairs.

“No mail. Never got any mail.”

“Well, he was never one to write,” Hopkins said.

The suitcases weren't locked. They opened them on Dunjee's bed in the Hilton. There was nothing in the first suitcase except clothing—most of it of Italian and French manufacture. It had been packed carelessly. None of it was expensive. Dunjee went through each pocket, turning them inside out when he could, and even checking the waistbands of the trousers. He found nothing except three French francs.

Hopkins found the heavy steel box in the second suitcase. There were scratches around its lock. It looked as though someone had used a screwdriver or a chisel in an attempt to pry up one corner. The attempt had failed. There were four round dents in the top of the box where it had been struck by something, possibly a ball-peen hammer.

“How'd you know there was a box?” Hopkins said.

“I didn't.”

“You asked him about it.”

“I asked him about a cardboard box.”

“Well, he sure had a go at this one. Nice little box.” He weighed it in the palm of one hand. “Quarter-inch steel, or I'm a liar.”

“What about the lock?”

Hopkins used both hands to raise the box up to eye level. He stared at the lock. “Very pretty. Looks German. Or Swiss. They make ‘em and the French buy ‘em to hoard their gold in. Or so I hear. No gold in this one though. Not heavy enough.”

The steel box was not quite as large as those that cigars come in and not nearly as deep—no more than an inch or so. Hopkins put the box back down on the bed, took out his wallet, and selected a steel pick. He knelt and began to probe the lock with his pick. “Tricky little bastard,” he said. “It's Swiss.”

“How can you tell?”

“I can tell.”

Dunjee lit his third cigarette of the day. It took him seven minutes to smoke it. A minute after he had ground it out in a tray Hopkins said, “Ah!” He looked up at Dunjee. “It's open,” he said.

“It's not open.”

“All you have to do is lift up the lid.”

“Well, lift it up.”

“I'm going to take a stroll down the hall, mate.”

“You want me to lift it up?”

“That's up to you,” Hopkins said. “When I was inside, a pal of mine told me about a box like this. Described it exactly, he did. Last thing he ever saw.”

“Blind?”

“Blind. Boom, it went. Little glass fragments. Acid all over his face and in his eyes. He was a right mess.”

“Take your walk,” Dunjee said, went over to the bed, picked up a pillow, and placed it over the box.

“Well, I'll just go over here in the corner.”

Dunjee felt around underneath the pillow until he had a grasp on the lid. He pressed the pillow down hard, turned his head, and squeezed his eyes shut. He relaxed his pressure on the pillow, lifted the lid up quickly, then slammed it and the pillow down again, his eyes still closed. Nothing happened. Dunjee backed quickly away.

“You lift it up?” Hopkins said.

“I lifted it.”

“How far?”

“An inch. At least an inch.”

“Not to worry then.” Hopkins crossed over to the bed, tossed the pillow aside, turned the box around, and lifted the lid. “Aw shit,” he said, turning away in disgust.

“More pretty girls?” Dunjee said.

“How'd you know?”

“I didn't.”

Dunjee sat down on the bed, took the pictures out, and looked at each one, both back and front. These were five-by-seven glossy prints. Some were the same poses and participants as he had seen in the box in Abedsaid's apartment. Others were different. There were twenty-four of them. Dunjee put them aside.

There were two envelopes in the box. One was sealed; the other wasn't. In the unsealed envelope were six Polaroid color pictures. They showed some people at a sandy beach, all of them in swimsuits. There were two women and two men. One of the men was Oriental. The other man was pudgy with unkempt hair that came down almost to his jaw line. The pudgy man wore sunglasses. Five of the pictures were of the group of four. The sixth picture was of a man lying naked in a bed. He was smiling at the camera and pointing at his erection. The smiling man was blond, in his late twenties, and looked hard-muscled.

“Want to see what Frank looks like?” Dunjee said, holding out the picture.

“Shame on him,” Hopkins said. “He hasn't got all that much to be smiling and pointing about. How do you know it's Frank?”

“I'm guessing.”

Dunjee ripped open the sealed envelope. Inside were twenty-five very new, quite crisp hundred-dollar bills. “You got lucky again, Harold,” he said and handed the bills to Hopkins.

“Lord love us,” Hopkins whispered and started counting the money.

Dunjee looked again at the front of the envelope that had contained the money and then at its back. He took a final look inside. Down in the far left corner was a folded piece of paper, no larger than a postage stamp. He unfolded it carefully. It was a ruled piece of paper, apparently torn from a spiral notebook. On it written in pencil were two capital letters, “G. G.” Then an address: “18 via Corrado.”

Hopkins looked up from his money. “Anything?”

“An address.”

“Where?”

“Rome,” Dunjee said. “If we're lucky.”

Hopkins looked down at the money in his hand, then over at the open metal box, and then back at Dunjee. He shook his head slowly. “You've got luck you don't even know about yet, mate.”

15

The Boeing 727 from which the man called Felix had fallen a little more than a mile into the sea landed at Newark International Airport at 7:04
P.M.
—approximately the same time that the apartment of Faraj Abedsaid, the Libyan Embassy's Attaché (Cultural Section), was being burgled in South Kensington.

The 727 landed at Newark rather than at Kennedy International because harassment of the plane's passengers and crew was only pro forma at the New Jersey airport. Some time back its officials, both municipal and federal, had discovered that if they merely fumbled through the motions of carrying out their duties after the plane landed, a plain white envelope would arrive in the mail at each of their homes three days later—or sometimes four—depending on the postal service. In each envelope would be five hundred-dollar bills.

So now when the 727 flew in from the island Democratic People's Republic, the plane's crew and passengers were almost feted. In fact, one U.S. customs officer had been overheard saying to a colleague, “Get out of the way, nigger. Here comes Mr. Keeling. Lemme at him.” And Franklin Keeling, the ex-CIA man, had been taken into the search room, given a perfunctory pat or two, and a nip from the customs officer's half pint of vodka. Similar treatment was also awarded Jack Spiceman, the ex-FBI agent, and the plane's sixty-three-year-old pilot and sixty-five-year-old co-pilot who once had flown for Pan Am and TWA respectively.

When the 727 had flown into Newark International that first time nearly two years ago, the U.S. government had tried to seize it on the presumption that it would help pay up at least some of the $22 million in back federal taxes, which was the IRS's mysterious estimate of what was owed by Leland Timble, the exiled bank robber and computer genius.

Timble had bought the 727 for cash in 1979 from the estate of an overdosed rock star. What the U.S. government hadn't then known was that Timble had quickly sold the plane for one dollar to the island Democratic People's Republic and immediately leased it back for a million dollars a year.

The plane now composed one-fourth of the island Democratic People's Republic's air force, the other three-fourths consisting of a DC-3 with clapped-out engines and two small Cessnas. Seventy-five percent of the annual million-dollar leasing fee went into the Republic's coffers. The other 25 percent was spread around among the Prime Minister, the Minister of the Interior, the Minister of National Security, and the Prime Minister's brother-in-law, who had resigned his bartending job to become Minister of Air and Space.

While pondering the legality of the transaction, the U.S. government had detained Keeling and Spiceman, as well as the two superannuated pilots, in a cheap motel near the airport. Keeling and Spiceman had used the time to ingratiate themselves with the airport's key personnel, both federal and municipal. Five days later the U.S. Attorney General himself had ruled—reluctantly, it was said—that the buy and lease-back transaction was perfectly legal. Spiceman, Keeling, and the two pilots were released. By then the ingratiation process had cost Keeling $9,769. He itemized it on his expense account as “hospitality for others.”

As was their usual practice, the elderly pilot and co-pilot went through customs and immigration first. Later that evening the pilot would bowl a few lanes while the co-pilot sought out the nearest meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. Afterwards, they would meet for a late dinner, go back to the airport, and sleep on the plane. Both were divorced—the pilot thrice, the co-pilot four times. Their combined monthly alimony payments came to nearly four thousand dollars, and neither had much to do with women any more.

It took Keeling and Spiceman longer to get through the airport because they had to butter up various officials and inquire about their families. Once outside, they climbed into the rear of a waiting rented stretched Cadillac limousine.

As the limousine pulled away, Keeling pressed the button that lowered the dividing glass and said, “How are you, Henry?”

“Just fine, Mr. Keeling,” the driver said.

“You bring the dry ice?”

“It's up here in the Styrofoam thing.”

Keeling reached into his breast pocket, brought out two metal tubes, the kind that cigars sometimes come in, and handed them to the driver.

“Jesus, they're cold!”

“They're frozen,” Spiceman said. “We want to keep 'em that way.”

“Yes, sir,” Henry said, opened the Styrofoam container, and carefully placed the two metal tubes on the steaming dry ice. After making sure that Henry refastened the lid securely, Keeling pressed the button that raised the dividing window, and leaned back in his seat to enjoy the ride.

The co-pilot arrived ten minutes early at the AA meeting, which was being held that night in the basement auditorium of the nearby Sinai Temple. He poured himself a cup of coffee, picked out two sugar cookies that looked home-baked, and went in search of a pay phone, which he found in the hall.

He ate one of the cookies first, took a sip of the coffee, looked at his watch, put the coffee and the remaining cookie down on a chair, dropped some coins into the telephone, and dialed a number, which was answered with a hello halfway through the first ring.

“Room 542,” the co-pilot said. “The Gotham, ten
P.M
., Mr. Minder.”