Black Market (6 page)

Once he was out on Broadway, David Hudson struggled onto a city bus headed south. The Lizard Man screeched at him like a jungle monkey as the bus lurched forward. The Lizard Man screamed so loudly, Hudson had to grit his teeth. The Lizard Man laughed and laughed as David Hudson escaped into the awakening daytime city.
Revenge!

A little more than an hour later, his composure intact once again, David Hudson climbed off the grunting, growling bus at the last stop-Columbus Circle and the New York Coliseum. Bundled inside his plain brown greatcoat, he walked farther south. He was almost sure people were staring, and that worried him.

Anonymity, he thought. He needed the cover of beautiful anonymity. He craved it. Especially now, he had to hold on to his New York cabdriver image. He had to be consistent. He also had to keep firmly in mind that he had been one of the very best Special Forces commanders in the world.

He reached the Washington-Jefferson Hotel, where he had a room at the far end of a depressingly drab second-floor hallway. He'd had this particular room for almost five weeks, and that was pushing his luck, perhaps. But the northern Times Square district was so perfectly anonymous, uncaring, and so convenient for the specialized work he still had to do. He specifically hadn't wanted a place too close to either the Vets garage or the Wall Street financial district.

Hudson sat on the edge of his hotel room bed for a moment. His thoughts turned idly back to Laurence Hadford, but he knew he couldn't dwell on the death of the man. He stared at the nearby telephone. Finally he decided to forget Hadford and reward himself for Friday night's success. Some well-deserved, maybe even spectacular, R &R was in order. His only vice, really-David Hudson's only remaining human connection, he sometimes thought.

He picked up the telephone and dialed a familiar local number in Manhattan.

“Hello, this is Vintage.” The connection was terrible. He could barely hear the words over the static.

“Yes. This is David… I've used Vintage Service before. My number is three twenty-three.” Hudson spoke in his usual soft but firm voice. “I can tell you exactly the kind of escort I'm looking for. She's between five feet six and five feet ten. I'd like her between the ages of nineteen and twenty-six. I'll be paying cash.”

Colonel Hudson waited, then he received a time and name for his “date.” He spoke into the telephone again. “In thirty minutes at 318 West Fifty-first. Thank you very much. I'll be expecting… Billie.”

It was just past eleven o'clock when Billie Bogan, her eyes raised to a winking neon hotel sign, stepped from a Checker cab on West Fifty-first Street.

The Washington-Jefferson? Now here was an odd one.

It certainly didn't look like the kind of place where Vintage clients usually stayed. Not the kind of successful men who could afford a hundred fifty dollars and up for an hour with some of the most exquisitely beautiful escorts in New York.

Billie finally shrugged and entered the paint-peeling hotel lobby. She had been told the client would be paying cash. As she walked down the dimly lit second-floor hallway, she shut off her Vintage beeper. It would be unbelievably tacky to get an electronic message while she was in the middle of a session with a client.

But the Washington-Jefferson? She shivered involuntarily.

Billie tapped on the door, and it swung open almost immediately. She was surprised to see someone so good-looking. His smile was open and pleasant. He was quite tall, slender, and…

Then she saw the flaw. The left sleeve of his mufti was empty-he had only one arm.

Billie couldn't feel too sorry for the man framed in the doorway. There was nothing about him that inspired pity; quite the opposite. He was certainly attractive, and his disability didn't seem to trouble him. He did not appear at all self-conscious as he gazed at her. He had the kind of face she somehow associated with the outdoors. Probably he was one of those self-reliant types who loved camping and knew the right knots to tie and the best place to pitch a tent.

“Hi. I'm Billie. How are you today?” She smiled courteously. “You're David?”

Colonel David Hudson stared at her for a few seconds longer before answering.

She was one of the best-looking prostitutes he'd ever seen. Her hair was an unbelievably rich, ash blond with thick bouncy curls. She was long-legged and thin in the manner cultivated by high-fashion models, but without the glossy emaciation Hudson didn't care for. Her breasts were firm under a pricey silk blouse. She wore a flattering straight skirt, dark stockings, and high heels. Her face managed to combine an exotic loveliness with an innocent quality that excited him.

“I'm sorry,” he finally managed with another smile. “I was starting, wasn't I? Come in. You're very pretty. Very beautiful. I didn't expect so beautiful a girl.”

Billie smiled-as if she'd never heard any of this before. The hint of a blush rose along her high, elegant cheekbones. The sudden color sloped down her neck to the deep hollow of her throat.

“I'm sorry. I wasn't paying attention. It was Billie what? Your last name?”

“Just Billie,” she smiled again. All of her gestures were very natural.

For the first time he noticed her accent. She was British. Maybe even upper class from the clipped sound of her phrases.

Hudson gestured around his Spartan hotel room. “I know, it isn't exactly the Plaza. Not just yet… You see, I'm writing a play. I hope this qualifies as an artist's garret?”

For some reason Billie found herself slowly relaxing with this one. He was easy to be with, and he sounded halfway intelligent. The bit about writing a play, whether it was true or not, had come out naturally enough. She sat down tentatively, almost demurely, on the edge of the unmade day bed. As if she were a real date and they hadn't discussed exactly why she'd come up to his room.

Staring at her face, Hudson thought she was twenty-five at the most. She was extremely elegant, even for Vintage.

“I like the theater a great deal. When I first came to New York to live, every single Wednesday I went to a Broadway matinee,” she said. “I'd get these half-price tickets at Times Square. Sometimes at hotel desks. I saw
Death of a Salesman
with Dustin Hoffman,
Torch Song, Cats, Glengarry
. Everything I could get into.”

Very nonchalantly, as she talked about the theater, she unfastened the top button of her silk blouse, then the next.

“Sit down by me?” A very innocent-sounding question.

Hudson did, and she kissed his cheek lightly. Her perfume was hypnotic, an expensive scent that captivated him. It drifted luxuriously up into his face.

“You said I was beautiful. I'd like to repay the compliment-you're very handsome. I hope you write a good play.”

Still innocently, Billie unbuttoned the middle two buttons of his shirt and lightly slid her hands inside. The hair on his chest was downy soft, and his body was muscled and hard.

Her touch was light and warm. Then something extraordinary happened, something unusual. Hudson began to feel.

A severe warning bell went off deep inside.

Yet she was so natural and relaxed. The lightest touch of fingers. She was massaging him tenderly as she undressed. First the silk blouse delicately
shushed
off. Then the straight black skirt. At last she stood over him-only sheer dark stockings, garters, and high heels. There was a glistening droplet on her golden patch of hair. He felt as if he were sinking right through the mattress.

The inner warning alarm sounded again.

He watched her breathe-so unexpectedly beautiful-and she smiled when she realized what he was doing.

“You
are
beautiful.”

“
You're
beautiful.”

Her breasts were swelling in anticipation. Hudson touched them gently, exploring their perfect roundness, exploring each light pink aureole.

She slid on top of him, and her blond hair glowed in the light from the overhead lamp. She rocked back and forth, a peaceful, swaying motion. Everything seemed so easy. The warning signals quieted, like a siren fading in the distance.

He was breathing faster and faster. Her eyes shut, then opened, seemed to smile, shut again.

Faster and faster, faster and faster. He thought of dance rhythms.

He played with her as she gently rocked on top of him like a cresting sea wave. He manipulated her lightly with his hand as she moved to her own rhythm. Then her whole body stiffened, and she began to fall forward against his chest. She arched dramatically backward and jerked forward again. It was as if currents of electricity were passing through her long, slender body.

He was almost certain…

She was coming, her whole body shuddering.

This expensive escort from Vintage… this beautiful prostitute was having an orgasm.

Billie. Just Billie.

Warning signals were going off like a hundred piercing police sirens in his head. He didn't come. He never did.

Arch Carroll was flying on People Express to Miami that morning. It wasn't the most enjoyable experience he'd ever had. People Express happened to be the day's first scheduled Florida flight out of Washington. The light through the jet's tiny windows was dark and ominous for most of the trip, which had begun at the highly uncivilized hour of 4:45 A.M.

The airline service crew was young and inexperienced. They giggled inanely during the seat belt and airbag pep talk. They sold cellophane-wrapped Danish in the aisle for a dollar. Was this the hotshot outfit that had TWA and American shaking in their cockpits?

Carroll shut his eyes. He tried to make everything about the morning, especially about the night before, Black Friday, vanish, vanish far, far away. But nothing went away.

This scenario of terror was more like the state of siege people had learned to live with in the political capitals of Western Europe, all through the teeming urban ghettos of South America-but never inside America, until now.

Until now.

The back of Arch Carroll's eyelids became a crisp white screen for a thousand flashing images: Wall Street ablaze; the frightened faces of ordinary people running amok through New York City 's streets; the way President Justin Kearney had looked at the White House. Why did he keep returning to that same disturbing image of the president? Christ, he had more than enough to occupy himself right now.

Like this sudden trip to Miami…

The first possible break in the Green Band mystery had come quickly. Almost too quickly, Carroll thought. He'd spotted the clue himself on the FBI sheets for the nights before and left as soon as he could for Florida to check it out.

He opened his eyes briefly and stared the length of the aisle at two stewardesses talking in conspiratorial whispers. Then, the next thing he knew it was about halfway through the two-hour-and-forty-minute flight, and he got up wearily and trudged to the plane's bathroom.

The people on the early-bird flight looked thoroughly depressed and groggy, as if they'd risen way too early and their constitutions hadn't had time to catch up. But some of them had early-edition newspapers with stark headlines announcing the Wall Street bombing. The intense black letters burned into Carroll's mind as he moved up the aisle. Beyond the simplistic language, he could sense something else-something that reverberated beyond Wall Street, a far-off thunder that threatened a way of life-nothing less than the free enterprise systems of the Western world.

Inside the small bathroom, he cupped water in his hands and splashed it over his eyes. He took a tiny red plastic case out of his pants pocket.

When Nora had been sick, she'd used this container to hold her day's supply of Valium and Dilantin and a few other prescriptions to help control seizures. Carroll slugged down a small yellow pill, a light upper to keep him alive. He would have preferred a drink. An eye-opener Irish whiskey. Double Bloody Mary. But he'd promised Walter Trentkamp.

Carroll continued to stare at himself in the clouded mirror. He thought some more about Green Band as he examined the puffed, purplish bruises sagging under each eye. He rifled through his mind as if he were sifting through a library's massive index card system. When it came to terrorists and their various specialties, Carroll had a long, reliable memory. During his first year with the DIA, all he'd done was catalog terrorist activities. He'd learned his early lessons well. In some ways, he was an incredibly orthodox and thorough policeman.

The hard evidence so far suggested… what? Maybe Soviet-inspired GRU activity. Why, though? Qaddafi? A very long shot there. The Wall Street plan showed far too much patience for the usual Third World types, especially Middle Eastern hit men…

Cubans? No. Provos? Not likely. Crazed American revolutionaries? Doubtful. Who, then? Most of all-
why?

And how did the latest sketchy report from the Palm Beach Police Department fit?… A south Florida drug dealer had been talking about the Wall Street attack the day before it happened. The local hood had even dropped the unannounced code name-
Green Band!

How would a south Florida drug dealer by the name of Diego Alvarez know anything about Green Band? What possible connection could there be?

Like everything so far, it didn't make much sense. It didn't seem to lead anywhere Arch Carroll particularly wanted to go. Certainly he didn't want to be in southern Florida at this ungodly hour of the morning.

He rubbed his eyes, splashed more cold water on his face, and looked back at his reflection. Death warmed over, he thought. It was like one of the photographs on Wanted posters inside post office buildings, the kind that seemed always to have been taken in dim lighting.

Carroll turned away from the mirror. It would soon be time to come down in the fantasyland of orange juice, Walt Disney World, multimillionaire dope dealers, and, he hoped, Green Band.

The local FBI chief, Clark Sommers, accompanied by an assistant, was there to meet Carroll at the makeshift People Express arrival gate. As usual, Miami International Airport was experiencing an electrical brownout.

“Mr. Carroll, I'm Clark Sommers of the Bureau. This is my associate, Mr. Lewis Sitts.”

Carroll nodded. His head ached from the flight and the effects of the upper he'd swallowed, which was just kicking in now, buzzing through his bloodstream.

“Walk and talk?” Sommers suggested. “We've got an awful lot of ground to cover this morning.”

“Yeah, sure. Tell me something, though. Every time I come through this airport the lights are half out. Am I just imagining that?”

“I know what you mean. It can seem that way. Dope dealers claim the bright lights hurt their eyes.” Clark Sommers flashed a low-key, cynical smile. He was definitely FBI all the way-a neat, buttoned-down man with the body of someone who might have lifted weights years ago and still occasionally hit the bench.

Sommers's assistant, Mr. Sitts, was wearing a lightweight blue sweater, tan golfing slacks, and a matching Ban-Lon shirt. The only thing missing were some espadrilles. Probably getting a promotional fee from Jantzen, Carroll thought. He tried to picture himself as a successful Florida police officer, but he couldn't make the right visual or emotional connection.

As they walked down the corridor, Carroll glanced at the cheery posters depicting surf and sun. They seemed to assault him personally. The sea was a shade too blue, the sun a touch too garish, the people having fun in the photographs a little too all-American beautiful for Carroll's taste. He yearned for New York, where at least there was a sense of reality to the gray, wintry halftones of the familiar streets.

Sommers, fidgeting with a pair of sunglasses, spoke in a quiet, assured voice. “Mr. Carroll, one thing you probably should understand about this territory down here. For reasons of morale, in order to keep my men fully efficient and organized, this bust has to be mine. I have to make the key calls. These are my men, after all. You can understand that, I hope?”

Carroll didn't break stride. His face showed nothing. Almost all policemen were fiercely, irrationally territorial-something he knew from personal experience.

“Sure thing.” He nodded. “This is your bust. All I want to do is talk to our drug-dealer friend afterward. Ask him how he likes the nice Florida weather.”

The South Ocean Boulevard neighborhood was pretty much Spanish and Mediterranean in style, a six-block cluster of pastel blue and pink million-dollar estates. Carroll had the impression of everyone and everything lying dormant around him. People still sleeping peacefully at twenty past eight, flagstone patios sleeping, red clay courts sleeping at the bath and tennis club, putting-green lawns and candy-striped cabanas and swimming pools-all sleeping, as if everything had been placed under a pleasant narcoleptic spell.

Clark Sommers spoke in a steady drone as they rode alongside the glittering, bluish green ocean. “Real estate dealings here on South Ocean aren't exactly handled by Century 21. Most sales are actually arranged by Sotheby's, the big antiques outfit. Owners in Palm Beach, they think of their homes as valuable works of art. Maybe you can see why.”

“Reminds me of my neighborhood in New York,” Carroll said.

Agent Sitts pointed from the backseat suddenly, his long, well-tanned arm between Carroll and Sommers. “That's our people up ahead there, Clark.”

At one of the quiet intersections lined with palm trees and sea-grape, six nondescript blue-and-green sedans were gathered together. The cars were parked in clear sight. Several of the FBI men were checking pump-action shotguns and Magnums right out in the street.

“There goes the neighborhood,” Carroll muttered. “I hope Sotheby's is not showing any houses real early this morning.”

“Don't be fooled by the suburban ambiance,” Clark Sommers said. “The Mizeners, the real big shots, they don't live around here. This is Palms ghetto. Drug dealers and South American pimps. These people here are rich, but they're all street scum.”

Arch Carroll shrugged and began to check his own gun. He was wondering more than ever how a Florida hood would know about Green Band the day before it happened. Could that mean a connection with South American terrorists? Which ones? The Cubans? If the Cubans were involved, he could already foresee some impenetrable network of clues that could lead all the way back to Fidel himself, which wasn't a prospect he liked to consider. Castro had always managed to stay aloof from conspiracies, at least the ones that involved his name.

Sommers suddenly snatched the car's microphone. “All units! We will proceed with extreme caution up South Ocean now. Watch yourselves. These people are probably heavily armed.”

The seven-vehicle caravan began to drift slowly up South Ocean Boulevard. Carroll glanced at the peaceful neighborhood. Every house was set back from the street, isolated by closely cropped, bright green lawns that looked as if they'd been spray-painted by gangs of meticulous handymen.

A
Miami Herald
paperboy rode by in the opposite direction, mounted on a chugging moped the same impossible blue color as the sky. He braked to a stop, scratched his crewcut, and stared.

One of the FBI men frantically signaled for him to keep going.

“That's it. Number six forty,” Sommers said. “That's where our friend Diego Alvarez lives.”

Carroll tucked the loaded Browning back into his shoulder holster. His stomach was rocking and rolling, and the speed was lighting fires throughout his nervous system.

The FBI cars turned single file down an impressive side street of South Palm. They lined up in front of two Spanish-style estates.

Car doors clicked open and shut very quietly.

Carroll slipped into step with a dozen or so gray-suited FBI agents. They trotted back toward the Alvarez place.

“Remember what I said back at the airport, Mr. Carroll. I give all the orders, okay? I hope the capture of this guy's going to help you get what you want, but don't forget who's running the show, okay?”

“I remember.”

Handguns and shotguns caught the hard, bright glint of the early morning Florida sun. Carroll listened to bolt-action apparatus slamming into ready. The FBI agents looked like young professional athletes as they fanned out in the manner of a marathon team.

Combat was full of visual paradox.

Carroll could see peaceful gulls rising from the sea, lazily sliding west to check the sunrise party at the Alvarez house. Being a seagull seemed like a pretty good idea right now, but he had never been much for vocational planning.

The ocean wind was pleasantly warm. It carried a curious scent of salty fish and orange blossoms. The sun was already intense, too blinding to look at without shading your eyes with your hand.

“Elegant house Diego has for himself. Run about two, two point five million with Sotheby's. When I give the signal we're going to put men in every wing of the villa. We'll shoot anything that moves to threaten any of our lives.”

Arch Carroll remained silent. These were Sommers's men. This was his little planet, where he reigned supreme. Carroll looked at the FBI man for a moment, then took out his handgun again. He pointed the massive black barrel upward as a safety precaution. As he knelt in a sniper shooter's crouch, the heavy wooden door of the Alvarez house flew open and banged hard against the pink stucco front wall.

“What the fuck?” Clark Sommers whispered loudly.

First a blowsy white-haired woman in a tattered Maranca shirt stumbled outside. Close behind came a dark, well-built man, bare-chested, in white flare-bottomed trousers. All across the front lawn automatics and revolvers clicked off their safeties.

Diego Alvarez began to scream at the FBI men. “You motherfuckers! I shoot this old lady, man. She jus' innocent old lady. My fuckin' cook, man. Put down all those motherfucker guns!”

Sommers became deathly quiet. His beach-hero tan seemed to be fading fast. The surprised expression on his face was that of a man who saw his private domain slipping out from under his control.

Carroll studied the south Florida drug dealer. The dark eyes of the man were frantic, desperate. There were flecks of saliva at the corners of his mouth. He was well muscled, like a pro fighter. Carroll turned to Sommers and said, “We have to take him. No matter what, we have to take him. You understand that?”

Sommers remained deathly quiet. He didn't even look at Carroll.

“We
have
to take Alvarez now. There are no other options.”

Sommers glanced quickly at Carroll. His look said “You're a New York City cop; this is my backyard, we do things my way down here.” Carroll had a vision of Alvarez escaping, and it was an exasperating vision. That was a possibility he had to prevent. Sommers didn't know what was involved here. The FBI was concerned about the dope bust, nothing more.

Diego Alvarez was awkwardly pulling the enormously fat cook toward a red Cadillac parked outside the garage. The cook's eyes were as wide and as round as two saucers.

Carroll tried to sort through the surprise and sudden, chaotic confusion of the moment. He controlled his breathing the way he was taught during his combat days in Southeast Asia. It helped him regain his focus.