Assignment — Angelina (2 page)

Slago hit him again. And again. Fifteen minutes later, even Slago was convinced. He was panting and sweating, his sport shirt dark with stains, his face shining with lust for what he was doing. Everett lay crumpled behind the counter, his khaki trousers wet with urine and blood, his face battered almost beyond recognition.

"He ain't got it," Slago admitted. '"It wasn't him."

"All right,' Mark said. "Finish it. Hell call copper if we let him. And we can't let him tell what we asked him about. There are others on the list."

"What about his wife?"

"Let her find him here. She hasn't seen us."

Slago nodded and took his knife and bent over the unconscious man. Mark saw the quick, slashing movement of Slago's thick arm as he drew the blade across Everett's throat. He turned away, surprised at the squirm of nausea lifting in his stomach, and walked out into the sun and waited.

Slago came out in a moment.

"The jerk," Slago said.

Jessie and Erich Corbin were still waiting in the Cad. The highway shimmered emptily in both directions. Mark took a small notebook from his coat pocket and flipped it open and tore off the first perforated page on which Tom Everett's name was written.

"Who is next?" Jessie asked quietly.

"We go to Indiana. John Miller."

"That crum," Slago said happily.

So it was begun. Mark drove the blue Cad east and north, toward St. Louis. Now it was started, there was no way to turn back. Mark had never killed before, except in the war, when his record had earned him a field promotion to lieutenant. He knew it didn't matter that Slago had actually done the killing. They were all equally guilty. Jessie, too, with her cool violet eyes and beautiful body and smooth, blank face. But there wasn't any other way they could make it with safety.

Mark had spent ten years on the Coast in the rackets, working for the narcotics syndicate, gambling, and vice. It had seemed simple and obvious, after the war, when you were familiar with violence and danger. It was the easiest way to make a quick strike and then take it easy like a gentleman for the rest of your life. But it hadn't worked out that way. At one time he had worked the woman angle, taking six thousand from the woman on West End Avenue, taking jewelry from that blonde bitch in Westport, Connecticut. He had the front, the good looks and strength, the acquired polish and easy sociability to do it. But he didn't delude himself. He knew himself for what he was. He had been a gutter animal as a kid, and he could never bury that part of him; he wasn't sure he ever wanted to.

Erich and Jessie Corbin had looked him up four months before, when he had gone to New York from the Coast as a messenger for Big Socks Johnson, a lucky coincidence to be in the East when Corbin was looking for him there. They had already found Slago, working as a teamster for a trucking outfit that fronted for Pat Angeli's rackets. Lucky he had hung around Johnson's place on Fifty-Fourth, the bar where Jessie found him and took him to her chemist husband. Corbin had been in the country almost a year, looking for him.

Mark had turned down Erich's proposition at first, not believing a word of it. Then Erich showed him the missing parts and told him what could be done if they were successful in finding the rest of it. So they started hunting. There was a long road ahead, but Corbin had plenty of money to stake them in luxury. And he seemed patient enough. Even about Jessie.

From the tail of his eve, as he drove the big Cad eastward, Mark saw the long, clean exciting length of her and felt the softness of her hip roll against his. Not for the first time, he wondered why she had hooked up with a mouse like Erich. She was graceful and tall, even for a woman, and she dressed with style, moved and walked with a quiet excitement that was contagious. She needed a lot more than Corbin could give her. And she didn't talk too much. He liked that.

He could see her in the rear-vision mirror. There was a small dew of perspiration on her upper lip, exciting him with the thought of her body under her tan linen dress. She wore large yellow beads, a matching bracelet, and yellow earrings. He liked the way the wind blew her taffy-colored hair and the way it modeled the simple but expensive dress to her body. All at once her eyes met his in the mirror. For a moment they were utterly blank, deep violet. Then she smiled serenely.

"Keep your eyes on the road, Mark." She had a pleasant, deep controlled voice. "Don't drive too fast. It would be stupid to get stopped by a local for speeding.

Her hand rested lightly on his knee as he drove. She knew what he wanted, Mark thought. It would be soon, now.

John Miller was a building contractor in Harlanville, Indiana, It was fiat country, fine for developments, and he had done well in the last ten years. He was even thinking of going into politics. A bachelor, he had a penthouse suite in the Hoosier Arms which would not have amounted to much in New York, but which just about made him top dog in Harlanville. He was a past-commander of the VFW post, active in Rotary and the Lions, and popular with the country club crowd, although he often had to stand still for some ribbing about the quality of the clubhouse, which he had contracted to build. This didn't bother him. The men liked his liquor, and some of the women weren't reluctant about a drive in his car and a late drink up in his suite. He was doing all right. He had put on weight in the past fifteen years, and he had avoided mentioning his fortieth birthday last week. He never gave much thought to the old war in Europe, except when he attended VFW meetings, and even then he thought of it as something glamorous and long ago, with the haze of time mellowing the mad terrors he had known then.

He had the habit of driving every evening to inspect the progress in construction at his newest site. He was a careful man, a cautious bookkeeper, and he always checked the work that had been accomplished by his carpenters and masons. The project was two miles beyond the country club, along the Dearing River, where he had picked up some lush meadowland for a song. The houses were small, rectangular boxes with slab roofs, all identical. They were monotonous and ugly. But they looked beautiful to Miller because he saw them only in terms of profit. He parked his car by the construction shack and walked across the bald, dusty area of what would be the main street of the development.

The evening was sultry, with a heavy quality in the air, a static summer weight that oppressed him. It would rain again soon, and rain always meant delays in his schedule.

He was surprised to see the Cadillac parked beyond the last foundation. And even more surprised to see Sergeant Slago come walking toward him, unchanged after all these years.

Hatred followed Miller's surprise, leaping in full flame from the dark hole where he had buried it long ago. For over a year after being mustered out, Miller had nurtured dreams of meeting Slago somewhere and beating the man until he crawled for mercy. Even now, he was aware of a feeling of guilt, as if he had goofed at some stupid duty ordered performed, and he froze in his tracks to watch Slago walk toward him with that hard, familiar rolling gait.

A gorilla, Miller thought. Hardly changed at all. And in the same breath he knew how much he had gone to fat, soft as a woman in the belly, and even more of a physical coward than he had been during the war. He was frightened.

But Slago smiled, and his handshake was hard and friendly. Miller's guilt and hatred evaporated. He saw Lieutenant Mark Fleming get out of the Cadillac, too, and he felt a small pleasure in the meeting, anticipating his exhibition of civilian success. And this was mixed with surprise and wonder at their appearance here.

Slago wasted no time. Slago asked his questions.

"You're kidding," Miller said. "I don't remember anything about Metzdorf. I wasn't even on that detail."

"Yes, you were," Slago said. "I remember it, all right."

"What difference does it make? It's long dead and buried. You fellows didn't look me up just for that, did you? Listen, come back to town with me and have dinner. We can have a time. I could even get you some women." Jessie and Erich Corbin were not with Mark and Slago this time. They had remained at the motel, five miles west of Harlanville. Miller smiled, then found the effort painful as he saw the bleak look in Slago's eyes. He tried to smile again. "Well, come on, let's not just stand here," he added uneasily.

"We're not going anywhere," Slago said. "Not until you answer us."

"I told you I wasn't in on it. What's so important about Metzdorf, anyway? I don't remember a thing about it."

Slago abruptly began the work he relished. It was easy, softening up this fat pulp of a man. He went slower this time, letting Mark ask more questions between rounds, because Corbin had suggested that perhaps they had rushed things a bit back in Arizona. It was lonely at the unfinished development site. The evening was dark with growing shadows. Under the drooping willows nearby, the river ran placidly on between its banks. Slago didn't worry about Miller's screams; there was nobody around to see or care about it.

In ten more minutes, Mark was satisfied. Slago paused, panting in the evening heat. "Another blank. He ain't got it. He'd spill his fat gut by now, if he had it"

"All right," Mark said. "Finish it."

Slago took out his knife.

They were a hundred miles from Harlanville before Mark chose a motel for the night. While Slago arranged for their rooms with the proprietor, Mark took out his small black notebook and tore off a perforated page and crumpled it in his fist. He got rid of it by burning it in the Cad's ashtray.

Erich Corbin said: "Who is next?"

'Terry Havward. New York"

"Very well. We will go there." Corbin touched the glasses on his pinched, white nose. He wore a seersucker suit and a small prim bow tie. "It will be all right, Mark. We will use the same methods. A man in pain will gladly babble the truth. Slago is excellent for the purpose. The letter and the other papers exist; the answer to our ad proves that. One of the men in your squad that day still has it. Perhaps he keeps it only as a souvenir, since not many men have the training in chemistry to recognize the contents of the papers accompanying the Hitler letter." Corbin smiled thinly. "Otherwise, we would have heard of the product before this."

"And if we make a mistake with one of these men?"

"It is up to you to make sure there is no mistake." Corbin's voice was quiet. 'True, you could play the part of an old war buddy and visit each man, search his home quietly, ask questions without arousing suspicion. You could talk over old times, and what would be more natural than to inspect any souvenirs laying about? But you would be alone then,
nein?
I could not be a guest with you. And if you learned something, you would learn it for yourself."

Mark looked very dangerous for a moment. "You have a lot of faith in me."

"I have none at all, my friend." Corbin smiled easily. "But do not let that insult your vanity. Millions are at stake, too much for trust to exist between us. Not a bank in the country will be safe. But in order to insure this, as I've told you before, there must be no chance of the police making any connection between these men. Who will remember that they served together, so many years ago? Eliminating them is the only way for us to remain safe."

"I still don't see why it took you fourteen years to come over here after them," Mark said.

"And I explained that, too," Corbin said patiently. "I was taken to East Germany and put to work there. I had no chance to escape. But I never forgot, and when the opportunity came, I moved. I am a patient man, Mark. I found you, did I not? So we will find what we are looking for, too. This person, this A. Greene answered our advertisement with a description of the Hitler letter — so we know it still exists." Corbin frowned. "You are concerned because A. Greene did not follow through with the deal and vanished. We must hope that some inconsequential personal affair prohibited his reply to our second letter. But we do know that one of your men picked up those papers when the filing cabinet broke. I saw him do it. And I know they were the papers we want. I have friends in Washington, and they checked the records for me. This one sheet, with the letter attached to it, is missing." Corbin turned and looked at Slago coming out of the motel office. "We must operate on the assumption that the man in your squad who took the paper still has it, or knows where it is. Unfortunately, I was watching from an upper window of the plant. I was virtually a prisoner there. All of your men looked alike in their uniform raincoats. It was impossible to identify him. But I was curious about the man's behavior. So I approached the Military Governor captain and told him the file box had been broken when loading on your truck, and I offered to check to see if everything was in order. I was most cooperative. As soon as I came to the formula papers, I knew that the piece your man took was the one I would need some day. Naturally, I said nothing about it."

Mark wanted a drink. He wished Corbin wouldn't keep repeating what he had been told before. "Well, I hope your pie in the sky makes good eating."

If we succeed in this first step, all the rest will be simple," Corbin said gently. "Think of the money. All we want, simply for the taking of it. Without danger, without any risk at all."

"I'm thinking of it," Mark said.

Mark and Slago occupied the motel room next to the one shared by the Corbins. It was a hot night, with the rumble of thunder muttering over the plains of Indiana. Truck traffic roared steadily on the highway nearby. Mark took a bottle of Scotch from his suitcase and filled half a tumbler and drank it slowly while he stripped off his clothes and took a shower. Corbin was right. There was no risk, as long as they were careful. Each man had to be killed. Nobody could possibly connect what had happened in Arizona with what happened in Indiana and what would be in New York.