Soft touch (6 page)

"Thank you, Doctor Jamison," he said.

"You're going to need a legitimate doctor."

"In good time." 44

"What the hell do we do now, Vince?"

"Hole up where we can look at the money."

I helped him into the car. I drove back to Route 301. I thought we should stop as soon as we found a place, but he wanted to put more miles between us and Tampa. I remembered the chauffeur's hat and scaled it out into some heavy roadside scrub.

I picked up the five o'clock news out of a Tampa station on the car radio. He covered the international and national scene in about twelve seconds and then got down to the meat. He seemed to be getting a big boot out of it. It must have been a dull week in Tampa until all this happened.

Senor Alvaro Zaragosa was entirely dead, mostly of a bullet through the heart. The killers had attacked the

"diplomat" from while he was standing talking to

an unknown man beside a chauffeur-driven sedan in front of the terminal building at Tampa International Airport. The unknown man had made good his escape in the sedan in a "hail of bullets." The assassins had escaped in a blue and white Ford sedan bearing local license plates. The "diplomat" had arrived from South America on a three o'clock flight en route to the regional consular office in Tampa. The diplomatic pouch and other official papers were left behind by the assassins when they fled. The man attacked along with the dead "diplomat" was described as tall, swarthy, powerfully built, wearing a dark brown suit, a straw hat and sun glasses. It was believed that he spoke no English. The consul, when contacted, had no comment to make on the assassination. Police had blocked all roads and were still looking for the chauffeur-driven sedan and the blue and white Ford. He gave a very sketchy and somewhat erroneous description of the gunmen.

When he started on the baseball scores, I turned it off.

"We got through before the road-blocking bit," Vince said.

"It looks that way."

"I'll bet that consul is very damned confused. People

will come winging down from Washington. But there shouldn't be any big hooraw about it"

"No?"

"Why should there be? Zaragosa was a nonentity. Nothing is missing. They'll figure that the little man had gotten himself mixed up in some kind of a smuggling deal, and it was a falling out of thieves. And they won't want to have an abuse of diplomatic courtesy publicized. Kyodos may be mildly disappointed but he won't give too much of a damn. There's always a market for his products. And he'll tie it up with Peral smashing Melendez. I'm surprised it wasn't on the news wires in time for that joker to let us know about it. It might come out just fine, Jerry."

"Sure. It's fine. You've got two bad holes in your hide, one man is dead, and those two playmates are undoubtedly looking for us. Everything looks rosy."

"Pile on some more miles, Jerry boy. Move this wagon."

At the time of the six o'clock news we were just beyond Ocala. I missed the hour by a few moments and turned on the radio in the middle of one of those self-nominated oracles with a voice like a mixture of corn syrup and cathedral bells: ". . . little news out of the country, we do know that the strong man, General Peral, with the loyal assistance of his small but effective professional army, has utterly crushed the Melendez revolt. The capital city is under martial law this evening, and all citizens have been requested to stay off the streets. Reliable sources have informed your reporter that except for the few who were shot down resisting arrest, the entire Melendez group has been captured and imprisoned. The insurgent strong point at Melendez's Hacienda de las Tres Marias has not yet been reduced, but it is completely surrounded and surrender is expected momentarily, if indeed it has not already occurred.

"Your reporter has warned many times of the danger to the free world of such revolts. This would appear to be another Communist-inspired attempt to upset the government of one of the strong friends of this country. It appears that the Melendez group has been stockpiling

weapons for many months, and it was only through chance, through some circumstance we will never know, that the government was advised in time."

"How wrong can you be?" Vince said.

"We have just received a new bulletin, and it seems to add the final touch to our story. Raoul Melendez employed a beautiful personal secretary named Carmela de la Vega. In some way Carmela received warning in advance of the government's move to crush the incipient rebellion. Though not a licensed pilot she took off today in a single-engine airplane owned by Melendez in a desperate attempt to cross the border and land, two hundred miles away, at the city of Viadiad. It is perhaps possible that as a loyal citizen of the Americas, she was the one who informed Peral, then fled in case the Melendez forces should achieve victory and control. Perhaps she planned to land and disappear. We shall never know. For Carmela de la Vega's desperate gamble did not pay off. She crashed on landing and was instantly killed."

A younger sounding man with an even more unctuous and juicy voice began to advertise a dainty deodorant. I turned it off. I took my eyes from the traffic to glance at Vince. His face was carved from hard stained wood. There was no expression on it.

"Flew it right into the ground," he said finally. "Had the tendency. Lousy depth perception. Either bang it in hard, or try to land thirty feet in the air."

"How much farther can you go?" I asked him.

"Not too far, Jerry. I lost too damn much fluid. I've got to have water pretty soon."

We holed up at Stark, Florida. The motel was new. It was after dark. The round and pleasant woman behind the desk told me that she had a twin bed double. I said I would sign for my friend if it was all right. He was asleep when I pulled in, I told her. She said that would be fine. The boy would show us where to park and bring ice.

I followed the boy and parked by Number 20. After he had unlocked it and handed me the key, I sent him after ice. While he was gone I helped Vince inside. He could barely walk even leaning most of his weight on me. I

met the boy at the door when he brought the ice, and tipped him. I brought the luggage in, made certain the door was locked. I fixed the blinds and pulled the draperies across the windows. The air-conditioner huffed and whined busily. Vince sat in the only armchair. It took five glasses of water before he felt satisfied.

"Better get to bed."

"First I look at what we've got. First I want to be sure we haven't got a suitcase full of roof tiles, baby."

"That's a hell of a thought."

I put the suitcase on the floor in front of the chair, on its side. It was locked. The two locks were sturdy. I went out and got the tire iron. I pried the locks open, opened the suitcase. A piece of coarse off-white cloth covered the contents. I snatched it off and looked at what we had.

Chapter 5

A one-dollar bill has a humble and homely look. A five-dollar bill has a few meek pretensions. A ten is vigorous and forthright and honest, like a scout leader. A twenty, held to the ear like a seashell, emits the far-off sound of nightclub music. A fifty wears the faint sneer of race track. It has a portly look, needs a shave, wears a yellow diamond on the little finger. And a hundred is very haughty indeed.

Then there is quantity. A wad of ones in the bottom of a grubby pocket, or fanned between the fingers in an alley game. Or three frayed fives in a flat cheap billfold. Then there is the flashy billfold, padded fat with ones and fives and tens and twenties. Next step is the platinum bill clip, with its dainty burden of twenties and fifties, crisp and folded but once. After that is the unmarked envelope with its cool sheaf of hundreds, slipped from hand to hand in the corridor of a government building.

Or there are banks. And when you get up to the win-48

dow there is a stack at the teller's elbow that can stop your heart.

When cute little girls visit the mint the kind man sometimes lets them hold a million dollars. In ten-thousand-dollar bills, the sort of bills that circulate inside the mysterious and cabalistic recesses of the Federal Exchange System. One hundred of them. A little packet only so thick for a whole million dollars. And if the little girl should cut and run with it, it wouldn't do her a damn bit of good.

But there was nothing like what I looked at when I whipped that piece of cloth aside. Nothing. I was one man when I pried the locks loose. And I was somebody else after I looked at the money. And I knew in some crazy way that I couldn't ever go back to being the man who pried the locks, no matter how desperately I might want to.

I was sitting on my heels. I looked up at Vince in the chair. Our eyes met, and we looked at each other in a strange way for a moment or two, with shame and guilt and a high, wild, uncomfortable exaltation. And looked away in awkwardness.

"At a time like this," Vince said, "what does one say?"

"One says count it."

The bills were wired together in bricks about four inches thick, two strands of wire around each brick twisted tightly about one inch from the end of each brick, and cut off. The bricks were tightly fitted into the suitcase. I pulled one out. The top and bottom bill were both hundreds. Neither was new. I bounced it in my palm and frowned at it. Vince asked to see it and I handed it to him. He held it between his knees and riffled the tightly packed edges of the bills with the thumb of his left hand.

"Probably five hundred of them," he said.

"Fifty thousand in a block."

"So how many blocks?"

I pulled them out, counting them as I pulled them out. It seemed to be a thing you should do slowly, but my eye kept racing ahead. Sixty-eight blocks of hundreds.

And one block of five-hundred-dollar bills, the same size.

"I can't do it in my head," Vince said breathlessly. "Jerry, that block of five hundreds. That's a quarter of a million bucks. Get a pencil and paper and we'll—"

"Hold it." I took the scrap of paper out of the bottom. It had been hidden by the money. Figures typed on an ancient machine with a worn-out ribbon, type badly out of alignment. I looked at it and handed it to him.

34,000 X $100 = $3,400,000 500 X $500 = 250,000

$3,650,000

I got a pencil and paper from the desk. Sixty-eight times five hundred made thirty-four thousand, so there were five hundred in a brick. I wouldn't have expected there to be thirty-four thousand hundred-dollar bills in existence. Two million for Vince and one for me.

"Carmela is out?" I said.

"You heard the man. So everything over three is down the middle."

So I had one million three hundred and twenty-five thousand bucks all my own. I looked at the stacked money. "We'll have to bust a brick."

"Go ahead."

The wire was too heavy to untwist. I used the tire iron. I tore the top bill badly. When the wire popped, the bills took up a hell of a lot more room. I reassembled the toppled stack and cut the deck in half by eye. I counted one half. Two hundred and sixty-two of them. So I took twelve off and put it with the other stack. I took my two hundred and fifty bills over and put them in my suitcase, under my underwear. Small change. Twenty-five thousand lousy bucks. The torn one was on top. I waved it at Vince. "Better throw this one away."

"Hell no. Give it here and take one of mine."

"Can you spare it?"

"For a friend."

I got out the cigarettes and lighter. He held the torn 50

bill. I lit it. He held it out and lit my cigarette and then lit his own. He held it by the corner until it burned down to his fingers.

"Never thought I'd get to do that," he said.

And suddenly we were laughing in a gasping, gone way as if we were hopped up or had lost our minds. Then I remembered his five hundred and wanted to return that to him, but he said no, I was insulting him. We divided the big pile. I came out with twenty-six bricks of hundreds. He said he would take the five hundreds. Where he would be, he said, he could unload them easier.

I looked at my stack and arranged it in a new way. I looked at his stack of money. And felt a sudden twinge of resentment. His was a fatter, more florid, more overwhelming pile. Then told myself I was being a child. Once we knew the split, I packed it all back in the tin suitcase. Though the locks were gone, I had pried so carefully they would latch and keep the bag shut. I put it in the big closet and shut the door. I brought him more water, then helped him into the bathroom, then helped him undress and get into bed. He said he had begun to stiffen up. I knew the feeling.

I went out and drove around and found a diner and ate and brought him back two hamburgers and a container of coffee. When I unlocked the door I had the ridiculous hunch, but absurdly strong, that he and the money would be gone.

But he was asleep. I thought he should eat so I woke him up. He managed one hamburger and half the coffee.

"Now what?" I said.

"Now we see how I mend."

"It isn't going to be very fast."

"If the meat doesn't start to spoil, ten days should do it. Then I can be on my way."

"Where?"

"I've got a spot and a way to get there. And Carmela's little booboo means I don't have to make a side trip."

"What I don't know won't hurt you?"

"Precisely."

"So for the ten days?"

"The safest and most comfortable place I can think of, Jerry, is your house."

I thought that over. He was right, but it was an imposition. I wanted to be rid of him. He could be tied to the mess a lot more readily than I could.

"Look, did you enter legally?"

"This time, yes."

"But I take you home and it increases my risk."

"That's a fair statement."

"The more the risk, the more the profit, Vince."

He looked at me for long seconds, then yawned and said, "Name it."

"One more stack of the little ones."

"That's a hell of a high rate. That's a hell of a rental."

I do not think the man who pried the suitcase open would have tried to make that kind of a deal. But I wasn't that man. I wasn't as soft as he was.