The By-Pass Control (22 page)

“I have to.”

“Don’t leave me here, Tiger.”

“Business, kid.”

“I don’t care. I just want to be with you for a little while longer.”

“Okay, get dressed,” I said, then finished buttoning my shirt. Camille wrinkled her nose at me, rolled into a ball for a second, then pushed onto her knees and stretched, holding a statuesque pose for a moment before getting to her feet.

“Turn around,” she told me.

“Now you get modest,” I said, laughing at her. “Great.” I checked the clip in the .45, jacked one in the chamber, put the hammer on half cock and slid it in the holster. By the time I had finished knotting my tie and getting into my coat she was almost finished. I looked at her, wondering why it was some women could come out of a rainstorm and a flurry of passion in a matter of minutes with nothing more than that look in their eyes and others couldn’t be budged for hours.

Evidently she knew what I was thinking because she smiled with those sleepy eyes and said, “Treat it like enthusiastic applause, my Tiger. The desire of a woman who has found her desire and wants to keep it as long as possible.” Her hands made a pass at her skirt and blouse for those small adjustments that build clothes onto a woman. “Neat but not gaudy. Can you stand me a little bit wrinkled?”

“As long as it isn’t deception.”

“Oh?” She glanced at me, eyebrows raised.

I said, “Isn’t it at this point the spider takes her victim? The male performs, the male satisfies, the male dies from a lethal bite.”

“Ah, but that’s only between spiders. You’re the wasp, the mud dauber. There seems to be something indecent about the relationship and we’ll probably breed a hybrid. However, this is one spider who knows when she’s well off despite the basic biological premises. I like you.”

“You’re weaving a web again.”

She laughed at me, a low, throaty chuckle, and said, “Well, let me try, anyway.”

The storm had taken on a new tone. Thunder rolled out over the ocean, lightning flashes illuminating the terrain briefly with a startlingly white brilliance. Rain drifted in front of the wind, angling sharply as the gusts increased momentarily, then came straight down to flatten out the ripples that disturbed the great puddles that ran from curb to curb.

Pino Lane was a dead-end street in a section that had started as a new development, then was discarded when progress stretched the city in another direction. Number 124 was the last house in the row, a small boxlike affair, never completed. Paint had weathered the siding and the path to the door was a line of two-by-eights laid from the curb to the house through the mud and weeds once intended for a lawn.

No lights were on behind the windows, but Dave’s car was parked fifty feet away in a turning area, nosed back for a quick move if he had to get away fast. I drove by slowly, looking for any sign of movement or fresh tracks laid in the muck, and seeing none, turned beside Dave’s car and drove back to the front of the house.

I didn’t like it at all. There were too many places for a quick gun to be crouched in the shadows, waiting. The thunder could cover the sound of a shot and a getaway would be an easy thing through the brush to a car parked on the next street. I sat there with the .45 in my hand and let the lightning brighten the area twice, scanning the spaces between the houses during the momentary daylight.

Nothing moved.

No dark blotches indicated a possible assassin.

I touched Camille’s arm and said, “I’m going in first. When I reach the door and wave you run for it.”

She nodded curtly, her tongue a nervous little thing that wet her lips. She was scared now, her voice stuck in her throat, but I knew she’d do as she was told so I opened the door, slid out and ran up the planking to the house, ready to dive into the mud if anything at all showed. I reached the two unfinished steps, flattened against the wall, turned and waved to her. She came out of the car running, hobbled by her heels and tight skirt, head down against the rain, but didn’t stop until she got to me. I grabbed her arm, pulled her behind me and waited.

Still nothing.

Then the door opened and I had Dave lined up on the end of the .45 when he said, “I was covering you all the way, Tiger. Come on in. No lights.”

I pushed Camille in first, closed the door and stood there listening.

“We’re clear, Tiger,” Dave said quietly. He flipped on the narrow beam of a pencil flash and pointed it across the room.

“How about this?”

The shaft of light hit a worn mohair armchair in the comer of the room, then ran down until it traced the outline of a shapeless bundle sprawled on the floor. Nobody had to be told he was dead. There’s something special about the human body that has stopped functioning. There is a release from tension, an attitude of terrible finality in the way it can sag and drape itself in total relaxation as it kisses off the world and goes about the business of death. Even the terror and pain of dying disappear and it’s a thing in clothes that never fit over an incongruous posture impossible to attain in life.

“Beezo McCauley,” Dave said. “Puncture scars up both arms and legs. He was holding four caps of H and a new kit with two syringes in his pocket. The house has been leased to him three years; he’s got receipts showing a total disability pension from the Army, deposits in a checking account to match with occasional one-thousand-dollar discrepancies here and there, and the stubs show withdrawals that could mean a big blast off every so often.”

“What’s the rest?”

“I went through a few leads, got one that located him and came right here. Nobody answered the door so I came in a window. He had been dead about a half hour by then.”

“How?”

“Small calibre high-velocity steel slug through the heart. Damn good shot and close. The bullet penetrated his chest with a minimum exit hole, went through the chair and is still in the wall. My guess is a Magnum.”

“Niger Hoppes.”

“He’s caught up with you.”

“Not yet,” I said. “He’s just here.”

Behind me Camille let out a strangled gasp and turned her head, covering her mouth with one hand. “It’s ... terrible.”

Dave lowered the flash to hit the floor at our feet. “I shook the place down as well as I could but there was nothing here. The door was unlocked and one light on by the chair that I switched off. It looks like the killer simply came up, opened the door and shot McCauley while he was sitting in the chair. No wet tracks on the inside ... nothing. The rain would have obliterated all footprints outside anyway. Beezo has a fresh hole in his leg and one of the needles was still wet from being washed. Evidently he had mainlined one and was sitting back to enjoy the effects when he got hit. A nice clean wipe out.”

“Where are his papers?”

Dave reached in his pocket and took out a half-empty checkbook, a pack of receipts wrapped with a rubber band, a few folded papers and handed them to me. I didn’t bother looking at them then. Time for that later.

“You calling this one in or letting it stay this way?” Dave asked me.

“Nobody can help him now. Let’s leave him sit. If we stir things up now we’ll be doing too much explaining. If Hoppes is in the area it means he’s here to eliminate us or else he has a line on Agrounsky.”

“Hell, Tiger, with all the Feds around they ought to be able to run down a new face in the town. It isn’t that big. Hoppes has to hole up someplace.”

“He’s a pro, Dave,” I reminded him. “He won’t take a room where he has to register or be cooped up in a dead end. Either he’s moving around or he has himself a spot where he can stay buried until he wants to come out.”

“Still, it might be worth a try.”

“Let’s not scare him in deeper. If we curtail his activities he’ll be all the more careful. I’d rather give him latitude to pull something in.”

“Somebody else can die too.”

“Like the man said, you all got to go sometime. The picture’s bigger than just that.”

“Those thousand-dollar deposits ... ,” Dave started.

“McCauley’s payoff for his part in steering Agrounsky to the contacts up north. We’ll check out the dates and they’ll match. The nut never figures the final payoff would be bigger than he bargained for. The Soviets aren’t going to leave anybody alive who can mess up their play.”

“Then they wouldn’t run Hoppes in alone.”

“He won’t be alone. They’re screening every move down here. You can damn well bet the C.I.A. and I.A.T.S. have specialists on this operation that can identify all known Soviet operatives, so they’ll have people in they’ve been holding for an emergency. No ... the faces will be new, all right.”

“That leaves us holding the bag.”

“Like hell it does,” I said.

In the semi-darkness of the room, lit by occasional strikes of white lightning from the outside, Dave watched my face and grinned. “What have you got going for you, boy?”

“Some thinking people whose memories need jolting,” I said.

“I’ll wait.”

“Won’t we all?”

Camille’s fingers plucked at my sleeve. “Tiger ... can we go? I ... feel sick.”

“Sure, kid.” I tapped Dave with my thumb. “Cover us going out. I doubt if anybody’s around, but no sense taking chances. We’ll run right after the next flash. You get to the motel and stay there until you hear from me. I’ll make all the contacts. Call Newark Control and give them a full report. Tell Virgil not to assign anybody else down here, but keep a team on tap if they’re needed.”

“Roger.”

I led Camille up to the door, waited until there was another sudden stroke of white from the rolling clouds overhead, then opened it and ran down the plank walk to the car and held the door open for her. Dave would make his own way out after making sure no prints or tracks were left to identify us. Camille slumped in the seat, her body heaving with an occasional convulsion of nausea, hands covering her face. I started the car, drove down to the intersection, then turned north up a road flooded from side to side.

Overhead, the world seemed to crash down in an exhibition of its own fury.

I left her at the motel still shaking, but better than she had been. She was wet from the rain again and her voice had gone hoarse, and although she grinned at me between a sneeze, I knew she was calming down after going through the experience of seeing violent death for the first time. She didn’t want me to leave, but knew better than to ask me to stay.

Her hand fell over mine and squeezed. “Will you be long?”

“No.”

“Tonight ... you’ll stay with me?”

“Tonight,” I said.

“I’ll weave another web. You broke the first one.”

I kissed her lightly, then pushed her from the car. When she was inside I turned around in the gravel drive and cut back across the highway.

 

Vincent Small came to the door, saw me and opened it without a word. When I stepped inside I had a chance to look at a face that had become haggard with worry and the drink in his hand was potent enough so that I could smell the liquor through the mixer and the ice. His eyes had a hazy look, requiring seconds to focus, and his expression was drawn. Somehow he seemed ten years older, a philosopher drowned in his own subject matter. He finally frowned, peering at me and said, “The police...”

“Sitting in a car out front. I parked around the comer and came through the back.”

“What ... has happened?” The ice clinked in the glass as his hand shook.

“We found a guy who had contact with Agrounsky. He was part of the pattern. Maybe you’d like to see him.”

“No ... no, it doesn’t matter.” He swallowed hard and waited for me to speak.

I said, “The contact was minimal but important. Like yours. He’s dead. I thought you might like to know because you might be next in line.”

Small backed away, staggered to a chair, and sat down heavily, the drink forgotten in his hand. “But why ... why me?”

“Louis Agrounsky talked just enough. They all do when they’re riding the
horse.
If he told you and Claude about his little hideaway he could have told somebody else about that too. Narcotics addicts don’t keep secrets very well, especially when they’re hurting for the junk.”

“Mr. Mann ...”

I stopped him short. “You call Boster and tell him what I told you. Then sit and think. You go over every word he ever said and chew it good. Between you and your friend, you’re holding this explosion in the palm of your hand, and buddy, if you think your own neck isn’t on the line, you’re wrong. If you doubt it, a short ride across town will prove it to you. A dead man is pretty convincing evidence.”

“I never thought ...”

“That’s the trouble with everybody ... they never think,” I said.

When I tapped on the door of the room Charlie Corbinet said, “Come in, Tiger.” He was sitting there in the light of the TV watching an old movie, his coat off and his sleeves rolled up. “You took long enough. I don’t like to wait. You ought to remember that.”

“Those were the old days, Colonel. Now you wait if you have to.”

“Quit getting raunchy,” he said testily. “You’re the one on the hook now.”

“Nuts.”

His smile took the sternness from his face a second. “I wish I could have trained more respect into you.”

“What’s the pitch?”

“Hal Randolph wants you out. The other agencies are squeezing.”

“Let them squeeze. They haven’t got anything to yelp about.”

“They’re dismantling the installations.”

“I know. It won’t do them any good.”

“They know it, but they have to try something.”

“Sure, and leave us hanging on the ropes again.”

“Have you got a better answer?” he asked. “We’re waiting for one.”

“Soon.”

“Not quick enough.”

“Then add something to the picture.”