That must have been it, for he now started up the Cadillac, doubtlessly disappointed that his ruse had not worked, drove through the complexity of exits and entrances to the turnpike, got another fare ticket and was shortly on his way, rolling once more northeastward.
The traffic was quite heavy, and with all those trucks weaving in and out trying to pass each other, any normal driver would have felt he had his hands full. But Heller was taking time out now and then to read a story about “Economic Chaos Just Down the Road According to Financial Experts of Merrill Bull, Inc.”
This expert watching him knew that the chaos which was down his road was not only economic! The lamb to slaughter had a better chance, in my opinion, than this idiot!
PART FIFTEEN
Chapter 8
At 4:20 that afternoon, Heller arrived at the rendezvous. He had dawdled along, stopping often, but he was still ten minutes early.
He parked the Cadillac carelessly in the higgledy-piggledy lot and made his way through the turmoil of tired kids and savage fathers and mothers that usually populate such temporary stop areas on a turnpike.
He made his way into the restaurant and was shortly seated at a table. He looked around.
I froze! Directly across the room from him was a dimly familiar face. Heller’s glance passed over it but not mine! I mastered my nerves and, using the second screen, got back to that view, stilled.
The face was very Sicilian in bone structure. It was deeply pockmarked. A knife scar ran from the corner of the mouth straight back to the bottom of the left ear. The eyes were reptilian. My memory for faces is unsurpassed. But I could not place him.
Hastily, I yanked a camera from a shelf and, excluding the edges of the screen, got a close-up of that face! Rapidly, I stripped out the finished picture and, working very fast, blew it down onto Earth-type paper.
Keeping an eye on the current screen, I saw a tall, gray-haired man walk up to the Sicilian. The Sicilian showed the gray-haired man something he held cupped in his palm. A photo? Then he nodded almost imperceptibly toward Heller.
The Sicilian was acting as the finger man!
The gray-haired man drew back and idled against the wall. He was wearing a bowler. He was impeccably dressed, a three-piece suit, the vest of which was gray. He was wearing pince-nez glasses connected to his lapel with a black ribbon. He was also carrying an umbrella.
Heller ordered, got and ate a hamburger and washed it down with Seven Up. He was picking up his check when the gray-haired man approached him.
With a touch of a finger to his bowler, the gray-haired man said, “I am Buttlesby, young master. Mr. Bury wanted to be sure you were safely met. I am to show you where to go. If you are ready, may we go?” Very courteous English accent, the perfect fake family retainer.
Heller simply got up, paid his check and followed Buttlesby out.
The Sicilian passed them and, when they reached the parking lot, was getting into another car.
Buttlesby opened the door of the Cadillac for Heller and helped him get under the wheel. Then Buttlesby went around and got into the passenger seat.
“If you please,” said Buttlesby, “proceed on up the turnpike. I will show you the turns.”
Behind them, Heller saw the Sicilian’s car was following them but after that he seemed to give it no heed.
“We will be leaving your car in a garage in Weehawken,” said Buttlesby.
“Why?” said Heller.
“Oh, dear,” said Buttlesby. “Absolutely no one ever drives across the river into New York! Heaven forbid! The Manhattan traffic positively devours cars, bangs them all up, ruins them. Anyone who is sensible leaves his car on the New Jersey side of the river and takes a taxi into New York. And in New York one uses taxis.” He laughed slightly. “Let the taxis take the buffeting. Your car will be perfectly safe in the New Jersey garage.”
Heller drove along in silence.
Buttlesby began to talk again. “Mr. Bury is dreadfully sorry, but he is detained in town. He has arranged for the young gentleman to stay at the Brewster Hotel on 22nd Street. Here is the hotel card.” And he tucked it into Heller’s outside breast pocket.
“Mr. Bury was very specific. The young gentleman is expected. He is not to register under his own name but, like any young gentleman, is to register incognito. It’s what all the young bloods do when they go for a fling in town.
“Mr. Bury will call on you in person at precisely eight o’clock tomorrow morning at your hotel. He asked me to reassure you that you are perfectly safe, that no one is the least bit cross with you and that everyone has your best interests at heart. So, you will wait for him at the hotel?”
“Sure,” said Heller.
The idiot! That would be the site of the hit! Or would it be even sooner?
Buttlesby directing, they left the turnpike and went with signs pointing to the Lincoln Tunnel. But at a sign, J. F. Kennedy Blvd., they turned off and were soon in the New Jersey town of Weehawken, a very shabby place. They rolled along to 34th Street and the fake family retainer gave more directions and shortly they were on the ramp of a large but dingy building, a garage.
The escort got out, rapped on the door three times and then twice with the handle of his umbrella and in a moment the huge mechanical door swung up, revealing a vast, dark interior.
A rather overweight young man with huge, somewhat scared eyes, dressed in paint-spattered khaki coveralls, was standing there, pointing.
Heller drove in the direction of the point.
The floor was paint-spattered. There were some battered machines evidently used in body work. But there were no other cars there.
Way back at the end there was an area cleaner than the rest and no paint spatters. Heller stopped the car.
He got out and opened up the back. Buttlesby was there helping with the baggage—he couldn’t manage all of it and Heller carried one suitcase.
The plump young man had his hand out. “The keys,” he said. “We maybe got to move it.”
Heller separated the keys and for the first time I noticed there were two sets on the ring. And then the idiot handed one set over to the young man.
They went outside and there was a taxi waiting! The driver had his cap down, possibly to hide his face. Buttlesby got the baggage into the cab and stood back, holding the door open for Heller to enter. Heller got in but Buttlesby didn’t.
“Aren’t you going with me?” said Heller.
“Oh, dear no. Cross into Manhattan when I don’t have to? Dreadful place. They ruin cars. Someone will be by to pick me up directly. Driver, take this young gentleman to the Brewster Hotel on 22nd Street. And no accidents, mind you.”
The cab drew away and behind them the Sicilian drove up and Buttlesby got in the Sicilian’s battered old car.
Shortly they were in the Lincoln Tunnel and Heller seemed more interested in the tile work that was flying by than he was in being en route to the hit spot.
As they exited from under the river, his eyes were all over the place, taking in New York. He seemed to be remarking about the fenders. And it is true that New York City fenders are the most bashed fenders in the world. He looked at dents rolling beside them and dents parked at curbs and possibly he was satisfied with Buttlesby’s explanation. I wasn’t. Bury had successfully separated the alleged Delbert John Rockecenter, Junior, from a car link that would lead back to the FBI.
They came at length to 22nd Street, which is narrow. And shortly they were drawn up before the Brewster Hotel, which is squat.
The buildings in that shabby section are only a few stories high. The garbage cans abounded.
While the Brewster may not be the worst hotel in New York, it is where the winos probably stop when they have money.
Heller removed his baggage and paid the driver—who probably already had been paid—and was shortly at the desk in the narrow excuse for a lobby.
The clerk, a man whose complexion was totally gray, looked at him with sunken eyes and then reached f
or a key. It must be all set up, even the exact room!
A card was pushed at him and Heller registered with a flourish. Al Capone. Address: Sing Sing.
The clerk gave him a key, not even bothering to read the registration card.
Heller squeezed his baggage into the elevator, worked out it must be the fourth floor and was shortly in his room.
What a shabby room! A double bed against the far wall. One easy chair. One straight back. A side table by the easy chair, an 1890 bathroom and a TV.
Heller put his baggage on the bed and went over to the double window. Directly across the street, the building there was exactly the same height: it had a flat roof and parapet—the exact requirements for a sniper post.
But Heller gave it no special heed. He tried to turn on the TV. The picture and sound came on but it was a black and white TV.
Heller tapped it on the side. Then he fiddled with the settings and got it all out of kilter. Then he opened a panel and found some more settings and twisted those with a tool from his tool kit.
I couldn’t comprehend what he was up to. Rigging a bomb? Doing something equally sensible?
And then it came to me. No stereo picture, no color. He thought it was broken!
He finally got the interior settings straight again and then the exterior knobs and got the picture and sound back.
He pulled the TV, which was on casters, slightly into the room and adjusted the easy chair. He had the back of that chair to the windows! My Gods, didn’t he realize that’s where the shot would come from?
And then this utter simpleton sat and watched the evening news in all its gory details.
Then he found a motion picture on the channels and sat yawning while the Mafia won World War II for America in Italy.
I did not wait for the end of that. Gripping my paper picture, I sped through the tunnel to Faht’s office.
I slammed the picture in front of Faht’s face. “Who is this man?” I demanded.
He shrugged and indicated the cabinets marked: “Student Files.” They contain, amongst other things, a rogues’ gallery of customers so that we do not go adrift and sell to the wrong people.
It took me half an hour of digging—and how I longed for a proper computer system, illegal though it might be to install one on this planet.
I found him!
Unmistakable!
He had visited Turkey on two occasions to inspect the work of buyers for their mob.
It was Razza Louseini! Consigliere of the mob of Faustino “The Noose” Narcotici. The New York Mafia lot that is the outlet for IG Barben Pharmaceutical!
Important people.
The direct-line connection to Rockecenter’s disguised control of the drug industry!
And the consigliere, the advisor and administrative head of the most powerful mob in New York, had personally gone down to act as the finger man on Heller!
One of our best customers had been given the job of knocking off Heller!
It was just, of course, but none of these people would know any part of this connection to Heller. Lombar had known. He had quite understood the fury that would boil in the Rockecenter camp when an imposter showed up. The Rockecenter name is sacred!
I felt an awe of Lombar. He had fed Heller straight into the fire. For a moment, at the FBI in Washington, I had thought Lombar had gone wrong. But no! The power of the Apparatus chief was reaching straight through, handled unwittingly by puppets!
And then the awe turned into sickness. Heller had a contact in the Grand Council we had not known about. And I did not have the code!
There was no possible way to get Heller’s baggage ransacked in time.
This planet was a goner!
But who cared about the planet? It was I, Soltan Gris, who would be dead in the echo of a fatal rifle shot through that window!
PART FIFTEEN
Chapter 9
At 7:10 New York time, there was a knock on Heller’s hotel room door. A sloppy delivery boy with Gulpinkle’s Delicatessen on his coat was handing Heller a bag.
Heller took it!
“That’ll be two bucks and a four-bit tip,” said the boy.
Heller made out that this was two dollars and fifty cents, paid him and closed the door. He opened the bag and found a plastic container of coffee and two jelly rolls.
No hotel like that ever had service like this! Was the stuff poisoned? Drugged?
Heller sniffed the coffee. He broke open a roll and sniffed it. Then the (bleeped) fool proceeded to consume them. He didn’t pass out or drop dead, so I realized they had just been making sure he didn’t leave his room or walk about to be seen.
He put on a clean baseball pullover. He finished dressing and combed his hair. He spin brushed his teeth.
He arranged the room. He put the easy chair with its back to the window, put the side table against it to the left hand. He put the straight-back chair in front of it, facing it. Then he took the two glass ashtrays and put them on the side table near the easy chair.
Then, possibly finding waiting heavy, he seemed to discover that the inside doorknob of the hall door was loose and he got a tool from his kit and worked at it. Then he unlocked the door completely.
He went over to the bed, made it and then opened both his suitcases on it, wide open!
He emptied the carryall and made a neat pile of the contents at the bed top.
The portable radio he had bought attracted his attention and he fiddled with it, getting a station or two. It seemed to amuse him that the music was not stereo. How could it be, with Earth electronics! The whole thing was made just to dangle from the wrist by a strap. He took it back to the easy chair and sat down. He listened to the morning news. Toys! All Fleet guys are crazy with toys. Here he was about to be hit and he was amusing himself with a toy. The muggings and murders and political corruption of New York aren’t news.
It was getting close to eight. He got up and went to the window. He was looking down into the street, maybe watching for his caller to arrive.
But I saw something else! By peripheral vision, I saw a man come out of a door on that other roof! A man carrying a violin case!
Heller went back and sat down. The radio came to the end of the news.
The elevator door down the hall opened. Heller, possibly because his toy was new, had to do a lot of fiddling to get the radio off. He dropped it into the top of an open suitcase, stepped backwards and dropped into the easy chair.
There was a knock on the door. Heller called, “Come in. It’s open.”
In walked the perfectly groomed Wall Street lawyer. The type is legendary. Three-piece suit in a somber gray. No hat. Impeccably neat. Dried up like a prune from holding in all the sins they commit. He was carrying a fat briefcase.
“I am Mr. Bury of Swindle and Crouch,” he said. Very Ivy League accent.
Heller gestured to the straight-back chair. Bury sat down on it and put his briefcase beside him. He wasted no time. “Where did you get this idea?” he said.
“Well, most people get ideas,” said Heller.
“Did somebody talk you into this?”
“Don’t know anybody much around here,” said Heller.
“How many times have you used the name Delbert John Rockecenter, Junior?”
“I haven’t!” said Heller.
“Did you use it to the men who met you?”
Aha! Razza Louseini and Buttlesby weren’t in on it! They were just there to escort an anonymous somebody. Mr. Bury had kept this pretty tight!
“No,” said Heller. “No one has used it to me and I haven’t used it to anybody.”
Bury seemed to relax. “Ah, I see I am dealing with a very discreet young man.”
“That you are,” said Heller.
“Do you have the papers?”
“They’re there in my coat.”
Bury got them. He also looked in the pockets. He sat back down.
“Now,” said Bury, “did the FBI copy them?”
“They
used them at the phone and they lay on a desk the rest of the time, turned over.”
Bury was becoming more and more pleased. He was almost smiling, if a Wall Street lawyer can ever be said to smile beyond a tiny twitch of the mouth corners. “And you have no more copies?”
“Search the place,” said Heller. “There’s my jacket and there are my baseball clothes and there are my grips.”
Bury got up again and looked through the sports clothes. He was looking for labels! I had more than an inkling of what was intended now.
The lawyer got to the grips. He got tangled up in fishline and then snagged a finger on a bass plug. He drew back cautiously and peeked at the contents.
The sides of his mouth actually twitching, he came back and sat down, facing Heller. “I have a deal for you,” he said. “You give me these papers and in exchange I will give you another, completely bona fide identity and twenty-five thousand dollars.”
“Let’s see it,” said Heller.
Bury opened one side of his case. He pulled out a birth certificate, Bibb County, Georgia. It said that JEROME TERRANCE WISTER had been born in Macon General Hospital on a date seventeen years before. The parents were Agnes and Gerald Curtis Wister and the baby was white, blond and male.
“That is totally valid,” said Bury. “Also, the parents are both dead, there are no brothers or sisters or other kin.”
Heller made a gesture for more. Bury pulled out a Saint Lee Military Academy certified record of grades. The grades were all D’s!
“No junior college certificate here,” said Heller.
“Ah, you have missed something. This credits you with one more year than your other certificate. That gives you only one more year and you will have your full college degree of Bachelor. You will probably finish college, yes?”
“People don’t listen to you unless you have a diploma,” said Heller.
“How true that is,” said Bury. “I couldn’t have stated it better myself. So you see, you are the gainer. One more year of college and you will have your diploma.”