Operation Stranglehold (12 page)

“I don’t see why. Winters’ political opposition has to be able to prove its case before they say anything, or old man Croswell will sue them for their drawers. Sure, the home office is running scared right now. They probably think it’s another Erikson fiasco. Well, you’d better believe I’m not going to let a hundred thousand go down the drain just because the easy way dried up suddenly. They bought a package from me, and I’m gonna deliver it to them.”

Hazel was looking at me oddly. “A hundred thousand? Dollars? Is that why you’re here, Earl?” I could see her starting to steam. “Why didn’t I hear about this before?”

“It must have slipped my mind.” I sought for something to distract her. “Don’t forget we’ve got a newspaper to deliver too.”

“It’s the first time I’ve heard you speak favorably on that subject,” the redhead said coldly.

“I decided it’d be easier to separate Siamese twins than those kids,” I said glibly. I looked at the twitching Morgan again. “Call Consuelo and get her back to the office,” I told him.

He started to shake. “No, I can’t do it. I can’t—”

“I don’t care if she’s turning down the sheets on the fourposter in your love nest!” I roared. I’d had it with this character. “Call her!”

He grabbed for the phone almost eagerly.

Sam Morgan didn’t care who was in trouble as long as he wasn’t.

“Can I—can I leave now?” he asked after he made the call.

“Turn out the lights and take off,” I told him.

Hazel and I sat in the darkened office after the branch manager’s Citroen pulled out of the company parking lot.

I was thankful Hazel didn’t ask questions about what we were going to do next, because I didn’t know.

“Why do you suppose this ninny of a branch manager
was told to give us no help?” Hazel asked after a brooding silence. The only light in the office came through the single window from a light standard in the parking lot outside.

“Not even Winters wants Croswell Industries’ branch office in Madrid put in the position of doing something actively illegal,” I explained. “That would be as bad as what he was trying to avoid in the first place. No, what the old boy is telling us now—”

“But what about the embassy?” Hazel interrupted me. “Morgan said they’d been here too.”

“They undoubtedly got wind of the Spanish narcs’ visits,” I said. “But they’re not about to choose up sides on a hot potato like this. I’ll bet that embassy third secretary heard a lot more from Morgan than he wanted to hear.”

“You started to say something about what Senator Winters was telling us now,” Hazel said after a moment’s absorption of my previous statement.

“He’s telling us the pot’s still there for the taking, but we’ve got to play our own cards.”

“Yes, this ‘pot,’ “ she said, wrinkling her attractive nose in distaste. “Why, Earl? I don’t—”

“I know you don’t need the money, baby, but I just made up my mind Winters was going to pay for squeezing us off the ranch. It was my fault it happened, so it seemed only right—”

I broke off as a set of headlights made a semicircle on the parking lot. A dark-colored VW parked in a shadowy corner, and two dim figures got out, one considerably larger. “I was positive Julio wouldn’t let Consuelo come back to the office alone,” I said with satisfaction.

“Oh, yes, her brother,” Hazel remembered.

A key clicked in the lock, and Julio opened the door. He flicked on the light without moving from the doorway, his bulk filling it, one hand jammed deeply into a pocket of what looked like the same coveralls. The fat man took a good look around before he came inside and permitted Consuelo to follow.

“Ahhhhh, senor,” he purred with his bandit’s smile, his eyes approving Hazel while he spoke, “I couldn’ let my leetle seestair come alone in thees situation, could I?” He had removed his hand from the pocket of the coveralls.

Hazel and Consuelo were studying each other. The plump girl smiled tentatively, and Hazel returned the smile. “I expected you,” I told Julio. “How would you like a chance to get your hands on some more of Croswell Industries’ money?”

His smile was cautious. “One ‘as read the papers in connection weeth Lanuza, senor. You ‘ave stirred up a large enough hornet’s nest to get many people stung. I wouldn’ like—”

“It has nothing to do with me or anyone with me,” I assured him.

He cocked an eyebrow. “No? Then I am leesening.”

I went to Sam Morgan’s desk and tried to open it, forgetting I’d watched him lock it. Consuelo produced a key from her over-the-shoulder bag. I wondered if Morgan knew she had it. Brother and sister watched expectantly while I found a blank piece of paper and a ballpoint pen. I drew a small square on the paper. “Here is Lanuza,” I said to Julio.

He nodded.
“Aqui está Lanuza,”
he repeated.

I sketched in the road on which I’d halted the prison van, then drew the side road that led to the village from which we’d taken the first train. I backed up from the square with which I’d indicated the village, after producing the single rail line with two parallel lines and a number of cross ties. Julio nodded vigorously. He knew where I meant.

I drew a faint line at a slight angle just prior to the square indicating the village. “This is an old road leading off from a newly constructed section,” I explained. “It’s unused now except by sheepherders. It climbs steeply, and two or three hundred yards from where it leaves the new section there’s a sheepherders’ lean-to fronting on a cave with a natural fireplace.”

Julio was listening intently, watching the ballpoint pen in my hand as I marked an
X
for the cave.
“Sí,”
he agreed.

“There is an injured man in the cave,” I went on. Julio looked up quickly, his round swarthy face alert. “No one knows he is there. I want you to bring him to Madrid and get him medical attention. Secretly.”

Once mended, Karl Erikson would know how to get himself out of Madrid. I reached into my baggy pants and took out the wad of Croswell’s money, diminished only by our train fares. I didn’t bother counting; I split it in two halves and held one out to Julio. “Agreed?” I asked.

He riffled the bills quickly.
“Sí!”
he said heartily, folding the roll and pocketing it. “I ’ave the place for heem.”

The thought of Erikson had reminded me of Karl’s urging upon me his Madrid contact. At the time I’d had no intention of using it because he’d said it was chancy, but it was better than anything I had now. I remembered Calle de Dedillo, Little Finger Street, but what was the contact’s name? Guard something; the word guard always registers with me. Guardoza, that was it; Mañuel Guardoza.

“Do you know the Calle de Dedillo?” I asked Julio.

He nodded. “Veree short street.”

I drew Hazel to one side in the office. “Do you think you can trust him to find Karl and bring him back?” she asked before I could say anything.

“You explain the deal to Consuelo while Julio and I are gone,” I said. “She’ll keep him straight.”

“While you and Julio are gone?” she echoed. “Where?”

“To check out a contact Erikson gave me that might get us out of the country,” I answered. “We shouldn’t be very long.”

“Well—” Hazel looked doubtful.

I didn’t give her time for second thoughts. I beckoned to Julio. “Let’s take a run into town.”

“Calle Dedillo?” he asked shrewdly.

“Correct.” I nodded at Hazel and Consuelo. “They can wait here.”

“Okay.”

The fat man and I left the Croswell office and went out to the parking lot. His VW was a fender-dented, five-or-six-year-old model, but it racketed right along. Julio was a fearless driver; even when we reached heavier traffic nearer the center of town, he cowboyed right along. The fender damage on his car evidently hadn’t been acquired while parked.

The streets became narrower and less well-lit. Julio bored ahead, finally nosing the car into a two-VW-wide street above which the buildings almost came together. It was like driving through a masonry tunnel. “Calle Dedillo,” Julio said.

“I’m looking for the Branch Post Office.”

He pointed to a building in the next block indistinguishable from the others. Most Spanish buildings bear a notable lack of identification. They’ve probably been there a minimum of 200 years, so people are supposed to know. Strangers—foreigners—don’t count.

“Come inside with me and locate the office of a man named Mañuel Guardoza,” I went on. “Then you come back out to the car.”

We parked and walked the remainder of the distance. Inside the building Julio had pointed out, the customer area was bathed in weak, yellow light from feeble bulbs shaded by inverted, cone-type reflectors of a kind I hadn’t seen since I invaded the basement of a 19th century Havana museum. The worn floor was bleached and warped from countless wet-moppings. At a wide service window protected by vertical metal bars, a rectangle of frosted glass with ornate scrollwork etched on its scratched surface was lettered
GIROS.

Julio spoke to the man at the window.
“Entresuelo,”
Julio said to me, turning away from the clerk. “Mezzanine.” He pointed toward a flight of stairs. “Fourth door on right at top.”

“I won’t be more than ten minutes,” I promised.

Julio went outside while I climbed the worn stairs.

The second floor consisted of innumerable rabbit-hutch-sized offices surrounding an oval-shaped central area. Lights were still on in about half the offices. Like workers the world over, some of the boys were evidently delaying a bit before getting home to their wives.

There was a light on behind the partly opened door of the fourth office on the right. Behind a desk piled crazily with what looked like bales of loose papers sat a man so fat he made Julio seem skinny. The man overflowed both sides of a generous-sized swivel chair. The two buttons on his greasy uniform immediately above his platter-sized belt buckle were unbuttoned. His face was shiny with grease just beneath the surface, and he had a full-flowing black mustache. He looked like a caricature of all junior grade Mediterranean officialdom.

He looked up at me from the newspaper he was reading, disapproval plain upon his oily face.
“Mañana,”
he said, making the universal sign of turning a key in a lock.

I had no intention of coming back tomorrow. I leaned down close to him. Another person in the office would have crowded us all. I spoke softly but distinctly, the odor of rank garlic in my nostrils. “I wish to buy the Italian brass candlesticks stored in your Aunt Sophia’s trunk, Mañuel.”

The fat man’s swarthy complexion turned four shades lighter.
“N-no entiendo,”
he stuttered.

“Speak English.”

“I do not understan’,” he said unhappily. “You—you know my name?”

“Like you know about what I just said.”

“Look,” he said rapidly, “once I had fine poseetion,
la grande oficina.
Then because of a happeneeng of thees matter of the candlesticks that you mention—” he paused and with both palms made an upward motion signifying an upheaval.
“A qui deseo
—I weesh no more of that.”

“But you’ve been taking the money sent you, Mañuel.”

He glanced around nervously as though expecting someone to be standing at his side listening. “But it came every month!” he protested. He sounded as though he expected me to chivvy him next for not burning it.

“Then tell me what I need to know.”

“I ‘ave no knowledge of thees things any longer, senor.” The cherub face was sulky.

I had no time for finesse. There was no telling when another late-staying newspaper-reader might decide to lock up and poke his head into Guardoza’s office to invite him to stop for a drink at the nearest cantina on the way home. I drew my 9-mm. automatic from its belt holster and jammed its butt ungently into Mañuel’s belly where his tunic was unbuttoned. He grunted in pain. “Talk,” I invited him.

His shoe-button black eyes bulged above their fleshy pouches. “But, senor, if sometheeng goes wrong I weel ‘ave no job at all,” he pleaded. “I ‘ave a family. I ‘ave—”

I showed him the sharp-edged gunsight, then stroked his cheek with it. He shivered. “How would you like to have a scar from your ear to your chin, Mañuel?”

He knew I meant it. Words tumbled out of him. I had to back him up and start him over to make sense of it. “Feeshing village, La Perla, near Málaga,” he said when I got him going the second time. “Veree small. Een village wine shop, El Tio Pepe, discuss weeth owner merits of Italian wines. Compare Chianti unfavorably weeth Spaneesh vinos.”

Guardoza stopped. “What then?” I urged.

“He weel give you next leenk in chain.” He muttered something under his breath.

“What did you say?”

“Eef he ees still there.”

“How bad was the shakeup you had and what caused it, Mañuel?”

“Muy malo.
My
jefe,
my boss, he lose job. I lose job.” Mañuel shook his shaggy head woefully, his mustache flopping. “I no want to ‘ave anytheeng more to do weeth.”

“But what caused it?”

“I don’ know,” he said firmly.

I reholstered the.38, and he looked relieved. It was possible he didn’t know, I reflected. Mañuel Guardoza’s
jefe
could have lost favor with a bigger chief. Or it could have been some other internal game of political musical chairs. People were always getting shuffled around in jobs. It might have had nothing to do with the underground organization Erikson’s office had subsidized, but that’s what Guardoza had blamed.

Málaga. What a wild goose chase that could be if anything had happened to the owner of the wine shop in nearby La Perla. Or if Guardoza had been telling me something to get rid of me. I looked at the shapeless hulk in the swivel chair. There was an added sheen on the glistening fat face, more than there had been when I first entered his office. For a couple of minutes at least Guardoza had been oozing pure fear. I didn’t think he had been romancing me.

But Málaga.

How were we going to get there. And would we be any better off if we did? The answer to that flashed on my mental screen immediately: an unqualified yes. I couldn’t think of anywhere hotter politically for us right now than Madrid.

I wondered what had led first the Spanish police and then the embassy’s CIA man to Croswell Industries’ Madrid branch office and thrown such a conniption into Sam Morgan. There was probably only one answer, though, and its name was Lisa. Whatever special branch of the Spanish government had been on her heels—the civilians we had seen parleying with the police in the mountains—they had undoubtedly gone back and rechecked on her companion-in-arrest more closely than they had to that point, and come up somehow with the Croswell name. I’d have to ask Walter about that.

Mañuel Guardoza shifted position in his chair, exhaling noisily.

It reminded me that I wasn’t solving anything standing around in Guardoza’s office. I tried to fix my eyes on his. He couldn’t meet my gaze. “You’re not thinking of making a noise when I leave, are you, Mañuel?” I asked him. “Of trying to get me caught? Because if you do I won’t run for the street. I’ll come back here and take care of you. I promise you.”

He shuddered, an actual physical ripple passing through his jellylike flesh. “No, no, no, no!” he protested frantically. “I say notheeng to nobody!”

Mañuel Guardoza believed me.

“Sit still,” I warned him, and left the office.

I descended the worn stone steps to the first floor swiftly but without running. There was no sound from the second floor. A few less clerks were visible on the first floor. No one paid any attention to me. I went out to the street and walked the block to Julio’s VW.

“Anytheeng ‘appen?” he inquired when I settled on the front seat beside him.

“Not too much. Was anything unusual said when you asked for Guardoza?”