Soft touch (5 page)

"We're a little jumpy today, aren't we?"

"Cut it out, damn it!"

He went over and opened the bag and flipped the chauffeur hat to me. I put it on. It was a half size small, but I could pull it down so that it looked right.

"Where's the gray suit?" I opened the closet door. He looked at it. "Okay. We'll pick up a black bow tie. It'll look more like a uniform then."

He took his hat and glasses off and lay on the bed. "Our little man comes in tomorrow on 675 at three in the afternoon."

"Nothing has changed? Nothing has gone sour?"

"You keep this up and you could hurt my feelings. I have a rental sedan. Raoul thinks I'm in Sao Paulo taking care of a littie matter for him. Carmela is all alerted.

General Peral will receive the detailed account of vile conspiracy at three tomorrow his time. Four o'clock here. It's all a big delicious piece of cake, Jerry boy, oozing chocolate."

"So what now?"

He swung off the bed and went to the bureau and took a city map out of his pocket. The route was marked. I studied it. We went down to the street. The sedan was in a metered parking slot. It was a black Chrysler, about three years old, and highly polished. We went out to Tampa International, slowed by the curbing in front of the main doors, then turned out again. He held the map and the watch, and told me what speed to maintain in each portion of the trip. It was an involved route, ending at the hospital. We went back and went over it again, and I made two small errors. When I did it the third time, I was perfect. Then we started from where my car would be parked, and found the quickest possible way to the department store and from there to Route 301 north. It was not sufficiently complicated to require going over a second time.

When it was time for evening visiting hours at the hospital, we went in through the side door where I would be leaving, and found our way to the corridor to the emergency ward. Vince had made one small change in plans. He had been able to rent the sedan at a centrally located place. He said it seemed smart, and I agreed, to return the sedan and pay the rental fee. He had acquired a small bottle of gasoline and it would take but a moment to wipe the decal off the sedan door. He would put the decal on as near to the time of arrival of the flight as seemed feasible.

We parted near the hotel at ten o'clock on Tuesday night. He said he had a place to stay. I slept poorly. In the morning I dressed in white shirt, black bow tie, gray suit. I had coffee in the hotel and then checked out and carried my suitcase and the hat in the paper bag to my car, put the suitcase in and relocked it. I had but a three-minute wait out in front of the parking lot before Vince came along in the black Chrysler. I put the bag on the

floor in back and took the wheel. We made a final run-through, paying particular attention to time. Twenty-eight minutes, plus or minus two minutes depending on traffic and lights from Tampa International to the hospital. Three minutes after arrival, I would be in my car with the money. Vince had to dispose of the pouch and the hat, return the sedan, remove the decal, and walk six blocks. We allowed tiiirty minutes for that. It would take me only ten minutes to drive to the department store. That would leave me twenty minutes dead time. It was decided I would cruise around the block for twenty minutes. He would spot the car and I would pick him up on the fly. It added up to seventy-three minutes. If the flight was on time, we should be out of town and headed north by quarter after four.

Vince had his own suitcase in the Chrysler. We had sandwiches and coffee at twelve-thirty. The rehearsals had given me a feeling of confidence. I knew that I could do precisely what was expected of me. Vince had found the mailbox where he would dispose of the pouch and the trash container where he would leave the hat. We drove to the lot. I drove my car, with him following me, and we parked mine across from the side entrance of the hospital. We transferred his suitcase to my car and re-locked it. It was a quiet street. He moistened the stolen decal, slid it deftly off its backing onto the sheen of the black door. I put on the chauffeur hat. He sat in the back of the Chrysler. We drove toward the airport and parked a few minutes away from the main entrance. He took out the hypo case and loaded the cylinder, sucking the demerol up through the rubber top of the small bottle, and wedged the hypo down behind the seat on the side where he would sit.

"You know the right dosage?"

"To the last cc. They'll get him awake no earlier than seven tonight. And Senor Zaragosa has damn little English, and by then the consulate will be closed and they will have met the wrong plane and it'll all be one big confusion."

"Now it all depends on your getting him into the car."

"I'll get him into the car, sweetheart."

"I don't really believe in the money yet. Not that much money."

"Wait until you start fondling it." He looked at his watch. "About another six minutes until kickoff."

It was a busy airport. They were coming in and taking off. The parked car was an oven. I was sweating through my suit. The tight hat was giving me a headache.

"Let's roll it," Vince said.

I drove to the airport and turned in the main drive. I passed the entrance to the parking lot and swung around and parked where we had planned, just to the left of the main doors for anyone coming out. It was ten minutes of three. Vince got out. A guard came over and said, "Buddy, you can't park in here."

Vince gave him a broad grin, a half bow, and a flood of Spanish.

"I don't know what you're saying but you can*t leave it here."

Vince, still beaming, patted the black fender and said, "Diplomdtico! Diplomdtico! Offeeessssial!"

Another guard came over and said, "It's okay, Harry. It's okay for them jokers to park it in front." They went away.

Vince went in. He was gone five minutes. He came out alone and came to my window and said, "Be of good cheer, baby. I just made a phone call. Senor Zaragosa is expected at eight-fifteen this evening."

It felt very comforting to be able to stop watching for the legitimate sedan. "Is the flight on time?"

"On the button." He straightened up and looked toward the southwest. "And that very well could be it." He punched my shoulder hard. The white teeth gleamed quickly. He went back inside.

The minutes went by. I watched the main doors. I'd had the same feeling before when, once the ambush had been carefully arranged, all you had to do was wait for the far-off sound of truck engines. Or for the first sight of a platoon on the trail. Then you'd let their point go by and hope to hell he didn't spot anything. And when the last 40

man was within the ambush zone, Vince would open up and the first violent hammering of the weapon on full automatic would be lost in the surging chattering crash as we opened up with all we had. . ..

Vince came out through the main doors. There was a stocky man with him, a man in a dark suit and a white straw hat, a man with a pale pyramidal face, heavy jowls dark with beard shadow, a pursed red mouth and sunken eyes. The small man carried a diplomatic pouch and a briefcase. Vince carried a large black suitcase as though it were very heavy. It was of black shiny metal with chrome corners and hardware. The chrome was dull and corroded, and there were dents in the black metal. Vince was talking volubly, gesturing with his free hand. The man had a remote and troubled look and his steps were lagging. Vince seemed to be urging him along.

I got out, as instructed, and went around the rear of the car and opened the rear door, then went ahead and took the suitcase from Vince. I grunted when the strain came on my arm. It was like lead.

The little man said sharply to me, "Momento! Alto!"

I paid no attention. I opened the front door and heaved the suitcase on to the front seat. I slammed the door. Vince had the man by the arm, urging him toward the car. The man seemed to shrug and came toward the car. It was going to be all right. It was going to work.

But then I saw the two men coming rapidly toward them, coming up behind them. Two lean men in sports shirts and pale jackets, focused on Vince and Zaragosa with an unmistakable intensity. And one hand coming out of the side pocket of a vivid yellow jacket, bringing with it a blued gleam of metal that was incongruous in the bright hot sunlight.

"Behind you!" I yelled.

As Vince spun around a slug at a range of ten feet knocked him a half step off balance. With perfect instinct and his miraculous reflexes, he swung Zaragosa in front of him and, in the same instant said, "Get the wheel!"

I ran around the rear of the car. I skidded on the paving. I felt as if I were running in a dream, trying to run through waist-deep water. I heard two more shots. I could hear some people yelling, hear running footsteps, hear a woman's startled scream. I piled into the car and turned the key and the motor caught.

The two men were close. I saw Vince, with horrid effort, swing the dumpy weight of Zaragosa by crotch and neck and hurl him at the two men. It tumbled one of them and the other made a wild leap to jump clear, but landed off balance and fell. As Vince fell into the back I stepped the gas to the floor and swung in a wide screaming arc and aimed for the entrance from the highway. A fat man leaped, roaring, for his life. A guard jumped out, waving his arms, and jumped back. I heard Vince yank the back door shut. I took one quick glance in the rear-vision mirror. Both men were running hard. Zaragosa was on the sidewalk, his briefcase and the diplomatic pouch ten feet from him.

I picked a small hole in traffic and barreled out without stopping, wedging it larger as brakes yelped behind me and angry horns blew. When I came to the right turn toward town I was doing eighty. I hit the brake and slid through the turn and yanked it straight. I thought I heard a far-off siren. I passed other cars fast and wide, forcing oncoming traffic way over. I banged the brakes again, cut hard behind an oncoming truck into the left turn on the route we had practiced. I slowed to proper sedateness and, three blocks later, a light stopped us.

Vince was on the floor in back. "How bad?" I asked him.

"I don't know. I'm bleeding like a pig."

"Can you do anything about it?"

"I'm trying to do something about it. Jesus!"

"How about what's his name?" I asked, starting up as the light changed.

"When he took the second one I felt all the bones go out of him. I think he had it good."

"Who the hell were they?"

"I think I've seen one of them before, but I don't know

where. So they wouldn't be Kyodos's people. Some kind of a leak, I think. Somebody with the same idea. Son of a bitch." There was a wince of pain in his voice.

"Where are you hit?"

"High on the right, just over the collarbone. That was the first one. And the left thigh, high and inside."

"Could you drive a car?"

"Christ, no! I'm beginning to feel a little foggy already." I remembered the chauffeur hat and dropped it on the floor beside me.

"Want to risk the hospital?"

"That would be the end, wouldn't it, sweetheart? Let's go where we can get this leaking stopped. And in a hurry."

I drove as fast as I dared, circled the hospital and was able to park directly behind my station wagon. There was not much traffic on the street. I moved the black tin suitcase into the back end of the wagon. I went back to the Chrysler. One rear window was starred by a slug. I opened the door a crack.

"Can you make it to the wagon?"

"I've got to make it to the wagon," he said. He had a soapy look under his tan. There was a sweet spoiled smell of blood in the car. Fortunately his suit was dark. The left pant leg was heavy with blood, as was the right side of his chest and the right side of his back. I helped him onto his feet and tried to get him to lean on me, but he straightened himself and walked slowly and steadily to the station wagon and got in. He closed his eyes, fumbled in a pocket, brought out a handkerchief and a small bottle of clear fluid.

"Might as well do all we can," he said. His voice was weak. "Hypo, decal, fingerprints."

I worked as quickly and thoroughly as I could. A small boy stood on the sidewalk and watched me solemnly. I left the keys in the ignition in the hope the car would be stolen.

"That looks like a bullet did it," the small boy said, staring at the rear window.

"No. A kid did it with a rock. He looked just like you." He thought that over and went away. I dropped the bot-

tie of gas in the gutter. I took the chauffeur hat and walked to the wagon and started it up and headed north toward Route 92.

"How are you holding up?"

He was slouched in the seat, eyes closed. "Don't waste too much time."

When I turned off 92 onto 301 we were soon in empty country. I looked at my watch. Almost four. And Vince had been bleeding since about ten after three. He looked bad. I turned on an obscure road, turned off it onto a dirt road and pulled off in a small hollow between two knolls. I parked in such a way that the bulk of the car would hide him from anybody who might come down the road. He was able to get out by himself. He stretched out on the ground. I pulled the trousers off. I knew I would find no spurting of bright arterial blood. Had that been the case he wouldn't have lived until we got to the hospital. Venous blood came darkly, slowly, steadily from a round hole punched in the inside meat of his left thigh and from a larger ragged hole in the rear of the thigh. I opened my suitcase, ripped up a white shirt, made a pad for front and rear wound. I had two thirds of a pint of bourbon, souvenir of a dreary motel night in Tennessee. I splashed bourbon onto the torn flesh and onto the shirt sleeves.

"I smell a heavenly fragrance," he said.

"Shut up. Sit up so I can get your shirt off."

The shoulder wound was not bleeding as badly, but it had an uglier look. I think the slug nicked the collarbone so that when it emerged it was tumbling. The thick shoulder muscles looked badly ripped. I used the same treatment, and rigged a sling for his right arm out of two halves of a shirt sleeve after I helped him into a fresh shirt from his suitcase. I got him into dark blue slacks. I scraped a hole with the tire iron and buried the ruined suit and shirt. After he had taken the second long drink from the bourbon bottle, his color improved.