Operation Whiplash (11 page)

Pushing aside the heavy door took nearly all my strength. It was purposely weighted and mounted on an inclined track to keep it closed. I forced it open far enough to insert a shoulder and my head through the opening. When I looked downward through the intervening bars of the fire escape’s two iron platforms between me and the alley-bed, I saw four men get out of the car I’d seen. It was now parked near the end of the alley.

“I don’t know why Bolts wants the stuff checked out right now, but get with it,” the first man out of the car rasped. “I got other fish to fry tonight.”

The speaker was Mario Rubelli.

Two of the other three were the goon-pair who had guarded the rear exit of the Barbarossa Restaurant the night before.

And once again I had become the meat in a sandwich.

The foursome stood bunched together at the front of the car as though waiting for something. “Wasn’t that the damndest thing last night that Bolts thought
you
killed Robin, Mario?” a voice floated up from the alley. The query was punctuated by a nervous laugh.

“What the hell, he’s so shit-scared the feds are onto the setup here he can’t think straight,” Rubelli growled. “He’s gettin’ old. Where the hell is the goddam man on the door?”

“Prob’ly asleep,” someone said.

“If he is, I’ll fricassee his ears with my cigarette lighter,” Rubelli threatened.

Nobody replied. Rubelli sounded as though his nerves were giving him a bad time. “Maybe I should go around—ahhhhhh, there it is!” a different voice said.

Just before the “abhhhh” sounded, a bright floodlight came on above my head at the building’s third-floor level. I hadn’t noticed it when I’d examined the fire escape. The sudden brilliance startled me. One of Rubelli’s men had already started to enter a door that opened in the side of the building when I instinctively jerked back inside. The smooth metal surface of the fire door slipped out of my grasp, and the heavy door slammed shut with a booming crash.

“What the hell was that?” I could hear Rubelli demand although the closed door muffled his voice.

“I thought I saw someone pull back inside the second-floor fire door, Mario,” someone answered him. “I anyways saw a shadow move.”

“Leave the back buttoned up, Frank,” Rubelli directed excitedly. “There shouldn’t be no one on that second floor. Chris, you ride the elevator up to the third floor an’ head him off from above. Frank, you an’ I will go up the stairs inside. Tony, make sure he don’t get into the garage an’ grab a truck.”

I could hear the thud-thud of heels in the alley below as three men ran toward the front of the building. I was almost sure the mechanics were legitimate and I wouldn’t need to be concerned about them. That still left four-to-one odds.

I didn’t want to be trapped between men above and below me, so I dashed to the stairwell and raced up the wide steps two at a time until I reached the third level. I could hear the whine of the rising elevator as I ran toward it. The elevator’s wheezing ascent would cover any noise I made. I stood to one side of the closed wooden gate and waited.

The elevator stopped with a thud. The gate slid upward in comparative silence. Nothing happened for a moment, and then the wary Chris stepped forth onto the wooden floor, gun in hand. He peered into the darker corners of the largely barren area, the pale blur of his face the only movement.

My automatic had been in my hand since my third two-steps-at-a-time stride up the stairwell. Chris had just taken a prudent few steps to the side to place the wall at his back from which position he undoubtedly intended to circle the warehouse floor. I pinched a quarter out of my pocket be tween thumb and forefinger, then flipped it out in front of the gunman.

He fired three times at the sound, his over-anxious finger freezing to the trigger. Stabbing bursts of flame punctuated by the
crack-crack-crack
of his weapon placed him perfectly for me. The sound of my single shot blended with his third, and the reverberating echoes of the gunfire were still resounding in the vaulted space when Chris pitched forward heavily.

There was dead silence for a moment.

“Chris?” I heard Rubelli’s questioning voice carry then from the floor below. “Didja get him, Chris?”

“Yuh,” I grunted. “Sure.”

I tiptoed toward the stairwell soundlessly. I left the gate up on the elevator to immobilize it. I eased myself down to the second-floor landing but didn’t turn the corner for fear I’d be exposing myself to a second-floor crossfire. I reached my arm around the corner, automatic in hand, and exposed just enough of my head for a quick glimpse of the greater portion of the second-floor area.

I couldn’t see anyone, but I could hear whispers. “That sure as hell didn’t sound like Chris,” the man Rubelli called Frank husked in a rasping whisper.

“Don’t stay so close to me,” Rubelli returned in a less cautious voice. “Spread out.” He raised his voice. “Tony, y’hear me? Drive a truck around an’ plug the alley with it. Jesus, lookit the guns all over the floor! We can’t let this bastard get away.” He had lowered his voice as he apparently addressed this remark to Frank, but now he raised it again. “Chris! Answer me, Chris!”

The better light on the second floor had enabled me to locate Rubelli even before his shout to Chris. His body was shielded behind a large crate except for the top slope of one shoulder. I had to hurry now. Unless I wanted to shoot my way out a flight of stairs at a time, the alley was my only exit. I didn’t want it plugged by a big jimmy-diesel.

I lined my sights up on the exposed tip of Rubelli’s shoulder, then fired. He yelped loudly. “Sonofabitch!” he got out in a half-gasp. “He nailed me in the shoulder!”

A fusillade of shots swarmed toward the stairwell, my position having been disclosed by my gun-flash. Richocheting bullets whined viciously and flying cement chips stung my face. I waited until the firing stopped, then inched my arm and head around the corner again.

Rubelli was behind the crate again, but with his gun hand extended around it. I fired. Rubelli screamed as the slug ripped into his wrist and arm. He sounded half out of his mind with pain and rage. His gun clattered across the cement floor. “Goddamit, I’ll kill the mother! Throw me your gun, Frank! D’you hear me? THROW ME YOUR GODDAM GUN!”

He was on his knees, leaning out incautiously from the crate. I could see a quarter of his body and all of his head. I leveled the automatic, and then I saw something I didn’t believe. A man appeared behind Rubelli with a gun aimed at Rubelli’s unknowing head. The gun fired, and Rubelli’s head seemed almost to jump off his shoulders. It must have been a magnum. Rubelli’s face was the first part of his body to touch the concrete.

“Sorry, Mario,” Frank’s voice said in the same husky whisper I’d heard before. “Bolts said you’re a loser.” Then he raised his voice. “Tony! Chris! The bastard got Mario!”

I was already running for the stairwell to the third floor again. Far below me I could hear the grumbling roar of a big diesel firing up. I could also hear Frank’s pad-pad-pad on the stairs as he pursued me. Taking care of Rubelli for his boss Bolts hadn’t taken Frank’s eye off the main course.

I ran past the open mouth of the freight elevator and struggled to open the third-floor fire door which was the twin of the one I’d had open on the floor below. The door slid back with a screeching groan. A gun went off behind me, and a star-splash of paint-battered steel appeared around a hole in the thick door. That damn gun of Frank’s could shoot through a mountain. I bulled the door open and forced myself out onto the creaking fire escape. The door closed automatically behind me with another night-shattering boom.

Frank was still coming, but he’d be careful how he opened that fire door. He didn’t know at what point I’d stop and line up on the opening, waiting for him to step out. And I still had to clear the alley before the roaring diesel I could now hear much more plainly blocked it.

I raced down the fire escape at top speed, the swirling fog no wetter than the moisture already on my face. My breath caught in my throat as the rickety metal under my feet groaned, sagged, and shifted. It felt as if I were descending on rope. Anchor bolts started to protest with metallic shrieks as I swung around the bobbing second floor platform and started down the last flight. The entire structure was shuddering so uncontrollably I found myself holding my breath.

I reached the bottom landing of the ripplingly rusted pile that appeared to be about to fall away from the side of the building, dropped to my knees, jammed my automatic into my belt, grabbed the bottom rung of a sawed-off ladder, and suspended myself above the alley still nine feet below me.

Then I let go.

The shock when I landed in the alleybed ran from my ankles through my spine to the top of my head. I staggered, forced myself upright, snatched the automatic from my belt, and started to run toward the street end of the alley.

Then I stopped.

I could see the swing of huge headlights as an enormous truck was steered deftly into the mouth of the alley. There couldn’t have been more than six inches’ clearance on either side, but the driver, Tony, was teaming it at 20 m.p.h. I turned and ran for the rear of the building.

A bullet bounced off a chunk of brickwork beside me before I heard the sound of the shot. I looked over my shoulder. Frank was standing on the uppermost fire escape platform. He started to fire again, then either changed his mind or found he’d emptied his gun. He started to run down the fire escape.

At the building line, I turned and raised my automatic. I was already lined up on Frank when the entire fire escape pulled away from the building with an ear-splitting scream of tortured metal. Frank yelled piercingly when he felt himself falling. I don’t think he even had time to realize that the fire escape was dropping directly into the path of the truck thundering through the alley.

The fire escape smashed to the ground and bounced. Before it settled the gigantic truck flattened the whole thing under its sixteen wheels with a monstrous crunching noise. I could see the wide-eyed look of horror on the driver’s face as he stamped on the brake too late to do anything except lurch forward and crack his own skull against the windshield.

One headlight of the truck had been punched out by a jagged end of rusted fire-escape steel.

The other, glowing like a one-eyed monster crouched above its prey, showed a fine mist of powdery red-brick dust sifting slowly down into the alley.

Nothing moved.

There was no sound from the warehouse.

The mechanics had probably taken shelter in the grease pits.

The night’s silence after the previous uproar made me feel as if I’d gone deaf.

I had to force myself into motion. I walked to the truck, got down on my hands and knees and then my belly, and crawled under the side with the least debris beneath it. I came out at the back after pushing some metal out of my way, got to my feet, and approached the mouth of the alley very, very carefully.

It wouldn’t have surprised me to see a thousand people in the street, attracted by the gunfire and assorted pandemonium. There was no one in the street. I had to reassure myself that it had all happened in a few short minutes.

The fog made the lights coming from the open door of the maintenance shop just a whitish glow.

I turned my back on the lights and walked away.

At the first corner I stopped and waited for a full two minutes.

I didn’t want to take any company back to the car with me.

When nothing happened, I holstered the automatic I’d been carrying under my armpit, then set out again.

I wondered grimly what Jed’s reaction would be when he saw the next day’s newspaper.

• • •

“You haven’t said a word,” Hazel complained ten minutes later when we were rolling across Tampa Bay. The gray-cotton fog held our speed down to twenty miles an hour. Only a thin strip of dark water could be seen on either side of the causeway. Hazel glanced over at me impatiently. “Say something, will you? What
happened
? And what’s all that red dirt on your sweater?”

“I had to crawl under a truck.”

Hazel’s disgusted snort rolled right off me. I was still marveling at the nonappearance of neighborhood people after the tremendous hubbub at the warehouse. That area of Tampa, of course, had had years of practice in minding its own business. And while the action had seemed to me to drag on interminably, it had actually been compressed into a very brief period of time.”

Hazel poked me in the ribs. “What did you
find
?” she persisted.

“That you’ve been leading a double life.”

“Double life? What are you talking about?”

I patted the folders under my sweater. Roger Craig, I was sure, would be happy to see the one on Lou Espada. It would probably fill in for Craig some previous blank spots in Hudson’s financial history. “I have here indisputable evidence,” I told Hazel solemnly, “that you’ve been running guns into Central and South America.”

“Gun running? Smuggling guns? You’re kidding!”

We had turned onto Route 19, and the fog was thinning. I leaned back and lighted a cigarette. Belated reaction was setting in. The adrenalin that had sustained me during the deadly hide-and-seek warehouse session had evaporated. I felt drained.

“Colisimo wasn’t kidding,” I said. “He had you carefully documented as the prime force in the Andrews Trading Company, which apparently had been a steady supplier of illicit weapons.” I took a long drag on my cigarette. “The thing is, why didn’t he use it? What was he waiting for? Why didn’t he see to it that this folder was put into the hands of the feds?”

“I’d have beaten it in any court in the country!” Hazel snapped.

“Sure you would, after you’d paid four million in legal fees.”

“Maybe it was his last resort? If nothing else worked?”

“I’d have thought he’d do it the other way around,” I said slowly. “If he’d hit you with this when you arrived in Hudson, you’d have been tied up indefinitely. Even if he’d only threatened you with it, via Nate Pepperman, he’d have had a handle on you until you figured a way out. So why did he decide to go the ugly route instead?”

Hazel furnished no answer. We rode in silence for awhile. My brain seemed to have shifted down into second gear during the warehouse episode, but it began to pick up speed again. “There’s something else I don’t understand about this mess,” I broke the silence. “Ordinarily the syndicate stays away from crime that carries a federal rap. They don’t kidnap, except each other. They don’t rob banks. Until the money got so big, they didn’t peddle dope. I never heard of them running guns, until this time. Nowadays most of them even pay their income taxes. Colisimo is running dead against the grain, and I’d like to know why.”

“This whole business of trying to make me look like a gunrunner just seems silly to me,” Hazel said tartly.