Deadly in New York (6 page)

Patton listened wide-eyed, then smacked a big fist on the table and offered him a thousand dollars U.S., guaranteed box seats to the next World Series, and a very ugly white dog in exchange for Hitler's Iron Cross.

After politely inquiring what, exactly, was a “World Series,” Hendricks refused.

It had been many years since Hendricks had killed the Russian agent in the subterranean complex of what had been Adolf Hitler's death chamber.

But sometimes it was necessary to kill. When the cause was good, and there was no other way.

The war had taught him that.

Hendricks tapped his bowler hat down and began walking steadily along Baker Street.

At the old Black Stag Hotel, he nodded at the doorman and went inside. Without hesitating, he crossed the lobby and went out the back exit. Quickly then, he walked one more block toward Westminster, then cut through an alley toward Baker Street.

Halfway down the alley, a hand reached out from behind a stack of boxes and jerked him roughly against the damp brick wall.

Hendricks found himself face to face with the greasy-haired punk rocker who had been following him.

“Tried to give me the bloody dodge, you old fart, didn't you?” the young man said in a heavy Cockney accent. There was a knife in his fist, and he pressed the blade against the old butler's throat.

“There's no need to kill me,” Hendricks whispered. “If it's money you're after, then I'll give you money.”

The punk rocker had a hoarse, phlegmy laugh. “So you think this a stickup, eh, mate?” he grinned. “Well, old top, you might be right. Be easier for the scum at Scotland Yard to understand, hey! A stickup she will be.” He slammed Hendricks against the wall again. “Now give me your money, Sir Halton,” he added with contempt. “After that, we'll see if Her Majesty's servants bleed the same color as us poor common folk.”

Slowly Hendricks reached into his pocket and found what he had been carrying there ever since he had arrived in London.

The metal was cool in his hand.

It was the same stainless-steel needle he had used to kill Karnakov so many years before.…

nine

New York

With his hands cuffed behind him, James Hawker rode moodily as Detective Lieutenant Scott Callis drove them through the heavy Bronx traffic of 10:30
P
.
M
.

“Damn it, Callis,” Hawker said finally. “You're wasting time. My time and your time. You know god-damn well I killed those three guys in self-defense.”

Callis looked amused. “Do I? And how in the world could I know that? The legal department made us get rid of our crystal balls.”

Hawker looked at him. “You won't drop the sarcasm for even a minute, will you? Okay, I'll tell you how you know it was self-defense. First of all, I stuck around after I did it. I made no feverish attempt to rub out my fingerprints, hide my weapon, and try to escape—and I had plenty of time to do all those things, believe me.”

“Psychopathic killers are almost always very cool and calm after they waste someone,” Callis countered as he turned right and kicked his unmarked car into passing gear on a rare open straightaway.

“Do I strike you as psychopathic?”

“I never did trust guys with reddish hair. Such terrible tempers, you know.”

“I'm not even going to react to that, Callis.” Hawker shook his head in frustration. “Do you want to hear the second reason why you know it was self-defense?”

“Absolutely,” said Detective Scott Callis. “By all means, tell me.”

“Because you're a smart cop, that's how you know. I watched you from the time you pulled up. You made all the right moves, did and said all the right things. You've been around, Callis. You know your job, and you've seen enough crooks and murderers to pick them out of a packed stadium.”

Callis smiled. “Flattery. I like that. Tell me more.”

“Ha,” said Hawker. “That's where the flattery ends. You come on smart, Callis, but you end up real dumb.”

“Dumb?” The Greek cop raised his eyebrows. “Let me get this straight. I'm free to go wherever I please, and you're sitting there with cuffs on, a murder rap hanging over your head, and you call me dumb?”

Hawker snorted involuntarily. As much as he hated to admit it, he liked Callis. The guy had a weird sense of humor. “How long have you been on the force, Callis?”

As the streetlights flashed by, Hawker saw the look of slyness on Callis's face. “Let's see.… Oh, about as long as you were on the Chicago force. Thirteen, fourteen years. Something like that.”

Hawker sat up straight. “Just how in the hell did you know I was a Chicago cop?”

Callis began to laugh softly. “About three months ago, at a law enforcement convention in L.A., I ran into a friend of yours. It took me a while to place your name when you first volunteered it. I knew damn well I had heard that name before. And then I began to match the name with the description. The red-brown hair. That broken beezer of yours. Built like someone had put arms on a stack of bricks—that's the way that funny little Irish detective from the L.A.P.D. described you—”

“Flaherty!” Hawker interrupted.

“That's the guy.” Callis chuckled. “I spent the first day there wondering how a mick as dumb as him could ever rise above a uniform corporal. You know—the way he asks those innocuous little questions of his, with that innocent expression and those twinkly blue eyes. Christ, you'd barely give him credit for having enough sense to come in out of the rain. But then one night we were discussing something serious—I forget what—and all of a sudden I realized those innocuous little questions of his were backing me into a corner. Every time I'd change tacks, he'd nail me with another one. Christ, it was like sitting down to a checker game and ending up playing chess against a god-damn grand master! And never once did that twinkly expression of his ever change.”

Hawker nodded his understanding and said nothing. That was Flaherty all right.

Hawker had run into the Irish detective when he traveled to California on a freelance mission to help clean up two savage street gangs that were making life hell for the residents in one of the suburbs there.

Flaherty had quickly sniffed out Hawker's careful plans.

He could have sent Hawker to the pen for life.

Instead, Flaherty had stepped back and let him do the important dirty work and then suggested in that sly, wry brogue of his that Hawker might do well to leave L.A. before a certain Irish detective was forced to do his duty.

Hawker didn't need to be told twice.

Flaherty had impressed the hell out of him.

As Callis drove, Hawker shifted uncomfortably in his handcuffs. He wondered how much Flaherty had told Callis. More important, he wondered how Callis had reacted to it. Hawker knew it would be the difference between continuing his work and probably a congressional investigation.

“What got Flaherty talking about me?” Hawker asked carefully.

Callis eyed him shrewdly. “He told me what you did in L.A.”

“I did a lot of things in California,” Hawker said evasively.

“Yeah, well, I guess you'd remember this. Flaherty said you were a one-man army. Said he'd never seen anything like it. He said you wasted about twenty street-gang members and completely destroyed their organization.”

“He said that, did he?” said Hawker. “Jeeze, the guy really has an imagination.”

“I don't think imagination has anything to do with it,” Callis countered. “Flaherty told me not to be surprised if you turned up in New York one day. That little spud-face said he had ‘deduced' that you had some big money behind you and one hell of a lot of motivation.”

“Is that all he said?”

Callis dropped every pretense in his voice. “No. He also said that he trusted you and he trusted your judgment. He said that, if I was smart, I'd help you if I ever got the opportunity.”

Hawker relaxed a little bit. “And that's why you charged me with murder one?”

“That's right. The way you needled O'Connor and Davis really put you on their shit list. They would have been suspicious if I hadn't gotten tough with you.” Callis's dark eyes turned to stone. “I'm always tough on crooks and murderers, Hawker. They know that—and I want you to know that. But, as much as I've sometimes wanted to, I've never had the balls to take it as far as you have.”

They had been driving for a long time now. Driving east. As they crossed a high bridge, Hawker suddenly realized they were crossing out of The Bronx.

“Your precinct house is clear over in Manhattan?” he asked.

Callis shook his head. “There's only one reason you would be on Rhinestrauss Avenue, Hawk,” he said. “Some way—I don't even want to know how—you heard about Fister Corporation's scam to drive out those old German immigrants.”

“Yeah? So if you already know about it, why aren't you doing something about it?”

“Don't play coy, Hawker. You know what it's like. We need hard evidence and court orders and legal wiretaps before we can make a move. That takes time and manpower and money—things we don't have at Pelham Station.”

“So what's that have to do with Manhattan?”

Callis's lips drew tight. “Fister Corporation keeps a goon squad on retainer. Renegade Mafiosos. They've got their headquarters over here near the waterfront. They're the ones who have been hitting the folks on Rhinestrauss—and probably the ones in the Lincoln who tried to hit you tonight.” Callis looked at Hawker meaningfully. “It's where you might decide to go to work first.”

“Does this mean I'm not under arrest?” Hawker said with a dry smile.

Callis fumbled in his coat pocket for something. “It means I want you to tell me what happened tonight. I'll help you get rid of any little flaws in your story. After that, I'll take you back to the precinct for questioning. By then your story should hold water. There will be no apparent grounds for arrest, and I'll be able to release you within an hour on your own recognizance, pending an investigation.”

“And what will the investigation find?”

Callis reached over and unlocked Hawker's handcuffs. “I hope it finds that a person or persons unknown have blown Fister Corporation and their fucking goons right out of the water.”

ten

Grand Cayman Island

In the two days before Jacob Montgomery Hayes was kidnapped, he compiled a folder on Fister Corporation potent enough to bring the company to its knees.

He had gathered his information illegally, of course. Hayes had called in debts from old friends, had a half-dozen secret meetings with his bank officers, and put well-placed pressure on banks he did not control to get exactly what he wanted.

And what he found was more disturbing than even he expected.

Blake Fister was more than just an unscrupulous businessman. He was a would-be tyrant on an international level. Fister's dealings in The Bronx were on a very small scale compared to his operations in France, South America, Great Britain, Canada, and West Germany.

And always, his
modus operandi
was the same. He would sniff out businesses or real estate holdings in a vulnerable position, then use strong-arm tactics to buy as cheaply as possible.

His instincts for such situations seemed to be infallible—and that was the most disturbing thing of all. Every large corporation has its own network of spies and intelligence people. A corporation has to to survive.

But Blake Fister's people seemed to be the very best the world's criminal underground had to offer. And even more unsettling than that, Fister had begun moving big chunks of his money into political causes, backing government officials in every country in which he had holdings.

Fister, it seemed, wanted more than just the power of wealth.

He wanted the power of controlling nations.

Jacob Montgomery Hayes was now more determined than ever to stop Blake Fister. But it wouldn't be easy. In the last ten years, Fister had become a recluse, a recluse to a degree that made the late Howard Hughes seem like a publicity hound.

No one knew where he lived. No one knew where or how he worked.

But he
did
work. And he controlled with an iron fist.

It was for that very reason that Hayes knew he must stop him. The world didn't need any more Hitlers.

It had been a busy forty-eight hours, and Hayes was tired. After his second and most productive day on the island, he had driven east out of Georgetown in the battered old Ford he kept there.

The folder he had compiled on Fister Corporation was beside him on the seat.

As he turned down Walker's Road, headed for the thatch-and-wattle cottage he owned at South Sound, a strange feeling of dread came over him. It was the same premonition of death he had experienced the day his young son, Jake, had been murdered—the murder that had brought Hayes and Hawker together in an alliance.

Hayes was too much of a scientist to be superstitious. But he had also studied Zen in Nepal, and he knew the awesome power of the mind.

He didn't live by intuition, but he respected it.

Now his inner mind was trying to tell him something, and Hayes decided to listen.

He pulled over to the side of the road and rummaged through his glove box until he found stamps. He wrote a note on the outside of the Fister Corporation folder, then sealed it in a large brown envelope. He addressed the envelope to a trusted member of his corporate headquarters in Chicago and directed her to Xerox the contents and see that Hawker and Hendricks got copies.

That done, he found a drop box and mailed it before continuing on to his little seaside vacation house.

His house was set back on a long coral drive behind palms and Australian pines. It had been freshly whitewashed, and a path of coquina rock led down to the sea where clear water broke over the reef.