Night Raider (6 page)

For an instant he thought that he actually had a chance to get away with it. The blond was unarmed and Marasco, Wulff had settled, was not going to fire that rifle.
Could
not fire that rifle. If the situation had held for just ten seconds longer he might have, crazily, walked out of Islip with all the laurels although, unfortunately, no kill. Not yet.

But the blond was more alert than his employer. He came against the door, backed it, held out his hands in a karate posture and Wulff backed off. Going into a karate chop was one thing and he didn’t think the blond really knew how to handle himself, but once activity started Marasco would forget what kind of man he was and shoot in self-defense. No odds. He stopped and stayed there, hanging on his toes, his hands in position to block anything the blond threw if the man made the first move.

“Pretty good Wulff,” Marasco said, “that was really nicely handled.”

“Thanks.”

“But what kind of
poison
you think I am you son of a bitch? You really think I’d let you get away with this? I’m no Jack Scotti.”

“That’s right,” Wulff said quietly, not facing the man. The blond glared at him. “Scotti didn’t have an estate or a gun.”

“Take the son of a bitch down,” Marasco said. “Put him away for a little while and in the morning I’ll play with him. I want to do a couple of things before I get tired of him.”

“All right,” the blond said. He reached toward Wulff and then became hesitant. Wulff could see the man thinking, however uncertainly. “I think though—”

“Wait,” Marasco said with disgust and there was the sound of a receiver being taken off a hook, “I’ll get some assistance on this.”

“Yes,” the blond said gratefully. “I think that would be best.”

“Would you like ten guys or fifteen?” Marasco said. “Should I ask for double riot guns and grenades or do you think that you could make it with a little less?”

“Now I don’t need all that.”

“Oh fuck you,” Marasco said furiously and began to talk quietly into the receiver.

Wulff almost smiled. The blond’s confusion was so total, Marasco’s rage so uncontrollable, Scotti’s death—and this was the kicker—so final that it almost felt like a victory. They were going to put him on ice and he felt that it was a victory.

With victories like this, Wulff thought, who needs defeats?

Wulff sat alone in a room in the bowels of the house. No mansion Marasco’s three-story home but large enough, more than large enough to stuff away subterranean passages, little rooms like piping strung along the bottom, spaces in which a dead man could lay for a very long time. Advantages of the newly-crowned he thought. He leaned forward in the darkness, testing the dimensions of the room. It was small. It smelled. It felt like a grave.

He had to get out.

He knew that it would only be a matter of time; awe or curiosity had determined Marasco’s decision to stack him on ice for a while but awe or curiosity were never qualities which could withstand the dawn. By noon tomorrow Marasco would know everything he needed to about Wulff and would have concluded that there were no penalties in eliminating him. The blond would come down and put a pistol to Wulff’s belly, pull the trigger and black him out. Then again the pistol might go to his temple. Compulsively neat. That was what the blond was. If nothing else he did nice work.

In his pocket Wulff had a pack of matches and a deck of keys. Little enough to be left but then he might as well be grateful; the blond had sneered at him before he was pushed at gunpoint into the chamber and said, “We ought to strip you naked. How would that be?”

“Not good,” Wulff had said, “it’s cold down here.”

“Going to be a lot colder for you,” the blond had said with a hollow laugh but then apparently having not been given such orders by Marasco settled for pushing him into the room, closing the door and leaving him to the darkness. At seven in the evening or maybe it was eight, Wulff’s time sense having been wrecked by the darkness, some cold cereal and a closed thermos filled with water had been tossed in through an opening in the door. Marasco seemed to have planned his Islip lodgings with care; this room and probably others were equipped with locked partitions. The imprisonment business must have been good, at least for those that the blond had not finished off in the reception room. Well, be that as it may, Wulff drank the water, ate the cereal without trepidation—if Marasco had decided to poison him he simply would have found a more direct way of elimination—and considered his situation.

He had gone so far. The tracing through Marasco was significant; the real dealings did not end here but they certainly seemed to begin. Marasco was only another link in the network, the network was infinite; it went on and on but here he had reached a dead stop and that in itself was meaningful.
The degree of resistance was the key to the importance of the connection
, that was an old police procedural and the police background came in handy although, of course, it would be a mistake to take that kind of thing seriously. The best, the most cautious, the most diligent kind of police work might have traced its way painfully to Maasco and there it would have quit: a laughable arraignment, five or seven years later, after all the appeals, a laughable indictment and sentencing. Marasco was just the beginning. He was on the trail, that was all.

He had to get out of here.

Wulff crouched in a corner of the room, considering the situation. The room was impermeable; he had already tried the routine methods of exit. Possibly with a revolver he might have been able to do something with the locks but the blond had not sent him down here,
por favor
, with artillery. If there was a way out of this he would have to work it out himself, more in his own head than elsewhere. It was that important to get out, Wulff had decided. He figured his expected lifespan at this moment to be slightly less than seventeen hours. Sooner or later, even police work would give you instincts worth cultivating and that was what the instincts said. Maybe twenty-four hours if he was running in great luck. Marasco would certainly have him killed before dinnertime tomorrow; judging from Marasco he ate at seven thirty or eight o’clock like all of the newly crowned. The fashionable hour, they thought. But part of making it, however cautiously, into society was to manufacture the corpses before dinner so that you could eat without excess acid. Wulff sighed, less from panic than enormous regret. His entire outlook might have been different if Marasco had not moved out to Islip. In Little Italy, people like Marasco were hardly so regularized in their habits.

Wulff reached into his inner pocket and took out the matches. Bought with a pack of cigarettes two days ago, the cigarettes appropriated by the blond with eighteen still left in that pack—concentrated tension, he had found, reduced smoking rather than raised it—but the matches had been tossed back contemptuously.
Smoke ‘em
the blond had said. Eighteen left; Wulff cautiously expended one to gain light and looked for the first time at his quarters; he was living in a room six by eight, a ceiling another eight feet high, a room in short just large enough for a man six four and two hundred and fifty pounds to go crazy in if he conserved his time and luck. Asphalt of course with little interstices of glue between the bricks and the match flicked out.

He lit another. His stock was limited, this meant only sixteen left but sixteen matches, his entire riches in this place could be worth more than the four hundred and fifty dollars which the blond had also taken from him. The glue was interesting; it was a characteristic of this kind of building of course. Hasty construction for the
nouveau riche
who usually were in a great hurry to move in and claim the premises for their own meant that corners had to be cut almost anywhere you could and certainly by the time you got to the basement or the sub-basement (Wulff was not quite sure) you would get into an area where glue was forgivable; it was the quickest way to slap the bricks together and although it would hardly work in the living room, guests were not likely to come poking or prying around in the nether regions checking out the builders for an angle-job. Not that the kind of guests which the Marascos would have would know the difference, of course.

Glue was highly flammable.

Wulff allowed the fourth match from his priceless pack to burn down, shook it out quickly to avoid the sulphur fumes and thought about this for a while. It was entirely possible that a single match, touched to any of those interstices would result in instant ignition. It was possible by the same token that it would result in an explosion; the glue going up with a grateful
whoomp!
as it seized upon the first real food that it had received in all of its constricted life. The
whoomp!
could well absorb the pyromaniac, however. If the glue could contain the force of the first combustion and then merely feed the fire into the brick neatly, everything would be under control, but a builder who would use glue in the first place would not be likely to order the best with the most controlled combustion he could find. It would be something like ordering the best kind of newsprint to print an art text on.

Wulff sat in the darkness and thought about this for a time. The room was soundproof and contributed to his thinking. Somewhere in the house above him Marasco and his family were enjoying the sounds and scent of the evening: entertaining perhaps or merely sitting in relaxed positions around an airconditioner in the living room, involved in their separate tasks. Central airconditioning come to think of it; Marasco would settle only for the best. He had two daughters, Wulff had found out from Jack Scotti, eighteen and twelve, and was devoted to them to say nothing of his third wife who had once been a debutante. Marasco had really made it. Did the wife and daughters have any idea what he was doing? Wulff wondered.
Probably not
, he answered himself. In fact, after about six o’clock in the evening, there was severe doubt that Marasco himself would acknowledge what he did during the days. It all went away after hours; it did not matter. He was an enterprising businessman who had moved his family to Islip and was giving them the best of all worlds.

A partition in the thick door opened and light filtered in. In the light was filtered the face of the blond. “Hello,” the blond said, “you still here?”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way?”

“How do you like the accommodations?”

“I love them,” Wulff said. “Why don’t you come in and share them with me?”

“I’d love that,” the blond said, “but I have another engagement tonight.”

“A pity,” Wulff said, “why don’t you take me along with you? We can discuss your future plans.”

The blond giggled. “Let me tell you about your future plans,” he said, “tomorrow morning for openers.”

“Oh?”

“At about seven o’clock tomorrow morning. We’ll get you up at six, though so you can have a good breakfast. Ought to have a good breakfast on your stomach. It’s a full day tomorrow.”

“Is it?”

“Oh definitely,” the blond said, “except that it’s going to be an early day too. It ought to end at about eight for you. Eight in the morning that is.”

“So the word’s gone out?”

“I wouldn’t say the word’s gone
out,
” the blond said and put a hand like a paw over the opening so that he could lean in and stare down at Wulff, “it’s more like the word has gone
in.
”

“Of course.”

“You get a good night’s sleep tonight.”

“What are you going to do?” Wulff asked, “date one of the daughters?”

“Well—”

“Why don’t you propose tonight? I’m sure that Marasco would love to have you in the family.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

“Marasco would be delighted to have you in the family circle,” Wulff said, “I happen to know that he has not only a great professional respect for you but feels a personal relationship and tie as well. Like a son-in-law.”

“Tomorrow morning,” the blond said, “at seven o’clock. I’m looking forward to it Wulff.”

“Me too.”

“I’ll see you then,” he said and closed the partition, leaving Wulff in darkness. The odor of the glue seemed to rise now in the pitch and Wulff inhaled it, felt the tongues of odor lapping at him like the frantic beating of a dog’s heart. It was a high, exhaled, dense sweetness and breathing it in Wulff thought that it was like breathing in knowledge itself. His outcome had been decided. Marasco had either found out everything he needed to know or had lost interest or both. Either way, there was no postponing decision now.

Wulff fondled the matches in both hands now and then, very deliberately, extracted one, feeling that slender reed in the darkness, poor crutch to carry him to freedom, stretching out the moment. It was no longer a question of decision. Decision had passed. He knew exactly what he was going to do.

Rather it was like holding something in place until the last moment, like leading a suspect on the street with the car, knowing that he saw the pinch coming, feeling the wings of the moment tighten until at last, the clips broke and you flew in to take him. It was just like that. There was a kind of pleasure in extending the moment even when you knew, as in a case like this, that the odds were so long that it hardly mattered.

But maybe that was the point. The chances were so slender, the situation so bad that at least, if you were lucky, you could savor the moment and the anticipation.

They might be the only thing you would have.

In the living room, Marasco excused himself from his wife and went into the adjoining room to pour himself another scotch, neat. He didn’t like to have bottles in the living room, not when there was a full bar next door and besides, although he hated to admit it, he did not want Pauline to know the full extent of his drinking. It was his business. He claimed that he watered the scotches and paced himself carefully, drinking only after five in the evening; best that the woman believe it. She believed everything that he said, unthinkingly. Even though it was more like five in the morning which was his starting time.

Marasco poured himself a double shot of scotch, looking beyond him down the long passageway toward the servant’s quarters through which the blond was now slowly moving, his head bowed, his hands in his pockets. He finally saw Marasco and assumed a more alert posture, nodded at him, indicated that he was taking the side exit.

“Did you tell him?” Marasco said.

The blond nodded. “I told him. You told me to, right? So of course I did.”

“That’s good. How did he take it?”

The blond shrugged. “How do I know how he took it? He’s very cool. A very cool type.”

That, Marasco thought, dismissing the blond with a nod, sending him out the short steps to the grounds, was for sure. Whatever else this Burt Wulff was or was not he was a man of almost no visible emotion. Perhaps what he had told Marasco was the truth; he indeed was a dead man, to kill him would be simply to finish the job. But that was hard to believe.

Marasco liked life too much, he found it too interesting, it meant too much for him to think that there was such a thing as a man who could toss it away as Wulff seemed willing to. He had worked hard at life, manipulated it the way a juggler worked a group of balls in the air; now at forty-eight he had everything bouncing and moving neatly in the air and he intended to keep it that way for another thirty years, twenty at least, all things being equal.

He downed half of the scotch outside the living room so that Pauline would take it to be just a short, watered one and walked in, finding her as he had left her on the couch, listening to the music that poured out of the speakers. Opera? Something like opera he guessed; at least there were voices and strings and no real tune. All of it sounded pretty much the same to Marasco. But if it gave her pleasure she could have it on all the time for all he cared and sooner or later he would stop making excuses and even go with her to one of her opera nights. Why not? Wife number three was the real stuff; he had to admit it.
Third try never fails
,
three on a match
and what he had here was the real item.

He sat beside her on the couch, never too closely, Pauline did not appreciate affection outside of the bedroom and even there insisted upon it only on her terms. He stretched out an arm, touched her hand, smiled and leaned his head back against the wall. It was a little boring, Marasco was willing to admit, but compared to how and where he had spent evenings years ago it suited. It suited very well.

“Who were those two men who came through the gate this afternoon?” Pauline asked absently.

Marasco shifted a little on the couch. “Which two? When?”

“When I was on the tennis court. About four o’clock.”

“Oh,” Marasco said, “customers.”

“I never saw one of them before. The other has been around a few times but one was a stranger.”

“New customer,” Marasco said and winced slightly. He ran his fingers along his wife’s palm. “Just business.”

“Anything important?”

“No. Nothing too important.”

“You know,” Pauline said moving toward him slightly, “I have absolutely no idea of what you’re doing. People come in and out all day, you’re here and gone and I have absolutely no idea of what’s going on.”

“Is it important?” Marasco said, “do you really need to know what’s going on?”

“No,” Pauline said. Her fingers brushed against his, Marasco felt the familiar warmth, “but sometimes you can get curious, can’t you?”

“Curiosity killed the cat,” said Marasco with slight unease. “Didn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” Pauline said. “Did it?”

“Once upon a time.”

“I’m not a cat.”

“Oh yes you are,” Marasco said and moved imperceptibly closer to her. Why did he always feel with this woman that each approach was the very first? Why did each approach necessitate seduction? It was like starting from the beginning time and again which on the one hand could be very exciting—and, in his late forties, he was not one to knock excitement—but on the other hand, times like now when a man simply wanted in an uncomplicated way to get laid without preliminaries, could be very exasperating. She looked up at him, the bland, impenetrable features as if sculptured, and he put a hand to her cheek feeling the cool surfaces, feeling the slow rising excitement as he drew her against him realizing that this evening was not going to be too difficult. They would always surprise you, these women, just when you felt you had them figured out they would veer in a different direction. Marasco drew his wife against him and thoughts of the missed shipment, of Terello, of the big clown in the basement went scuttling away down a long, dark corridor.

“I smell something,” Pauline said.

“What’s that?”

She pushed her hands against his chest, disengaged him gently but firmly, her head raised. “Don’t you?” she said, sniffing in what was even then a patrician way. “Don’t you smell something?”

“Look,” Marasco said, “you can’t do this to me. I want—”

“I’m not putting you off,” she said with irritation. “I tell you, I smell something.” She stood rapidly, backpedalled. “Don’t you?”

And then Marasco did smell it. Desire or at least preoccupation may have blocked his sinuses but now, attention drawn, he took in the odor that Pauline had sensed before he. It was a high, dense sweetness, behind it something blacker like the odor of combustion and in an instant, for reasons that he could not quite understand, Marasco felt himself seized by a mounting, unreasoning fear. He had never liked fire. And fire was not something which happened to you in Islip.

“You
do
smell it,” she said.

“Yes,” he said, standing, “I do.” And indeed he did; he could not understand why he had not minutes before because once conscious of it the odor was overpowering, it lapped at him, came at him in sickening, sweetish ripples and Marasco found himself gagging. One hand on his wife he moved toward the door, the odor coming at him more and more rapidly. He could feel it beginning to straighten him up; the first tendrils of the odor reached his lungs. Marasco gagged.

“What is it Albert?” Pauline said. “What’s going on here?”

“I don’t know,” he said, holding onto her but for comfort or protection he did not know. He leaned out the door, beginning to choke her and looked toward the rear stairs.

He could barely see them. Thin knives of smoke were coming up from below. He could feel them digging at him like spears.

“We’re on fire, Albert!” Pauline screamed, “the house is on fire!”

That’s ridiculous,
Marasco wanted to say,
fires are something that happen in tenements on the Lower East Side; junkies are rolled and wrapped in fires all the time but nothing like that ever happens in Islip
,
Long Island.
He opened the door to the basement, felt the heat storming at him, groaned and by leaning all of his suddenly-panicked weight on the door managed to get it closed, turned toward his wife with streaming eyes. He began to feel the fear, then. It was like nothing he had ever before known.

“Where are the girls?” he said.

“They’re both out for the evening,” she said,
“you see? you don’t even care where your daughters are.”

“I do,” he said, “I do.” Strains of opera lofted foolishly from the living room; something happened to the wiring then and one of the speakers began to rumble, a high, splitting whine that caused him to put his hands in his ears. “We’ve got to get out of here,” he said.

“The fire department—”

“No time,” Marasco said, “no time.” He was panicking now for sure and in some detached corner of the mind he knew this
but he had to get out.
Fire could suffocate, it could kill; the odor was beating on him now like a bird, he could suffocate here in his own house
unless he got out.
“Let’s go,” he said, seizing her by a shoulder, “for God’s sake, let’s get out.”

It was getting suddenly difficult to see in the hallway or maybe that too was the panic reaction. He reached out, touched her shoulder, brought her to him and gave her a push ahead.

“Go,” he said, “get out of here.”

“We can’t just go, Albert. The house—”

“The hell with the house!” Marasco screamed, “I can’t see!” the basement door coming open again and thick, greenish plumes of smoke right behind it; the smoke gripping him like ropes; the blanket of smoke tearing at his neck, squeezing, constricting. He tried to close the door but at that point lost all orientation whatsoever and found that he could not.

It was then that panic utterly consumed Albert Marasco. In his own house, no more than six yards from the nearest exit, the fire still only at the smoky, warning stage, plenty of time to deal with it if only he could have, Marasco lost control. In his mind was a voice and the voice was saying get out, get out,
save yourself now before it’s too late, just get out
and it was this voice alone to which Marasco responded. It was the only thing that mattered, the only communication left in the world: the voice that told him
get out
and he shrieked
yes, I will, I will
and headed toward the voice, the beckoning voice that would be his salvation if only he could heed it.

The voice knew. He must trust the voice.
Get out
it said and Marasco obeyed. He forgot his wife, the exit, instructions, possibilities, sinking into the certainty that only one thing mattered and that was escape. Was it possible that the man listening to it now had not ten minutes before been sitting on a couch with his wife, listening to opera, gently trying to nudge her into sex? Impossible. Impossible. The man who was listening to the voice had no wife. Had no couch, no feelings about the opera one way or the other, certainly no interest in sex. The man responding to the voice had no estate, no business, no contact, no intricate network of supplies and appointments, rendezvous and conditions which had made him behind the guise of the respectable, one of the most significant drug traffickers on the East Coast.

The thing in the hallway was a blind, staggering animal who heard only the call for its own preservation. Listening, waving its arms, stumbling in the darkness and the tongues of smoke, the thing that had been Albert Marasco lurched one way, lurched the other, collided with the swinging door, lost its balance and fell gracelessly, screaming all the way, down the flight of stairs toward the basement.

Landing at the end of the fall, babbling, in Burt Wulff’s arms.