The Box (12 page)

Quinn sat down on the bottom step, head between his knees, and threw up. When he looked up again only Turk was there and he was smoking.

“Better?” he said.

“Gimme a cigarette.”

“I thought you didn’t smoke.”

“Just gimme.”

Turk gave him one and explained, “Remal sent somebody for the girl right away It was stupid of you to take her to Whitfield’s house. Remal figured as much. But no matter.”

“Huh?”

“She had no tongue. Did you know that?”

Quinn put his head down again but nothing else came up.

“I didn’t know it either or I would have told you. Anyway, here we are.”

“What else happened?”

“I sent a man with you. All the time. A friend of mine. Didn’t you know this?”

“No.”

“You cut his face. It’s too bad, but then you didn’t know.”

“Who was the dead man in the street, the first one?”

“One of the three that Remal sent after you. He waited for you, he had seen you, but then the one whom you later cut, my friend, killed him there. It was very unfortunate that you hurt him.”

“You should have told me.”

“Yes. Would you like a drink?”

“And the two who came up these steps, they were Remal’s men?”

“Yes. One is dead, the other, you saw, is with us now.”

“And the one at the bottom of the steps, that last minute?”

“Another friend of mine. He and Remal’s man are now cleaning up.”

“Huh?”

“The dead must be disposed of. Everything will be much more quiet that way.”

Quinn threw the cigarette away and thought, yes, how nice and quiet.

“Except when Remal finds out,” he said.

“On the contrary. What does Remal gain by making a noise over something he already knows? He will soon know that you are not dead, that two of his men are dead and he has lost another.”

“Yes. Good old reasonable Remal. Now he’s scared and won’t lift a finger anymore. I’m sick laughing,” Quinn said.

“You need a drink,” said Turk.

“Where is Remal now?”

“He is busy. He has to attend to the boat.”

“What else? Naturally. Must attend to inventory.”

“You need a drink,” Turk said again.

“And Whitfield slept through it all?”

“I told you Whitfield knows how to live within limitations.”

Quinn nodded and got up from the steps. He felt shaky and hollowed-out. He steadied himself by the wall for a moment and took a few deep breaths. He thought how he had started out on this walk and where he had been going. I was going to her house, but just as well. She probably would have been asleep. And of course going to her house would have meant ignoring everything else. And that can’t be. That can’t he any more.

“Turk,” he said. “I’ve got to plan something now. Find a place where we won’t be disturbed.”

They walked off.

At this point Quinn had just about everything back that he had ever had.

Chapter 12

Where the main street ended and the quarter began there was also a dirt road which went down to the water. They went down to the water, past the rocks, and sat in a black shadow. Only the night sky seemed to have light. Turk said nothing because he was waiting and Quinn said nothing because he was trying not to think. I’ll start with the first thing that comes to my mind—

“I’ve changed my mind,” he said.

Turk didn’t know yet what that meant, but the voice he heard next to him in the dark was hard and impersonal. It was impersonal with an effort and Turk felt uneasy.

“I told you once I’d help you to a slice of Remal if you helped me.”

“I know. I remember.”

“You came through and now I’ll come through. Except for this.”

Turk bit his nail and wished he could see Quinn’s face.

“I want a slice, too,” said Quinn. “I really want to carve me one out now.”

Turk grinned in the dark, grinned till his jaw hurt. He was afraid to make a sound lest he interrupt Quinn or disturb him in any way.

“Did you hear me?”

“Yes, yes! I see it. I can see how…”

“You don’t see a thing. Now just talk. Tell me everything that goes on with this smuggling operation. And don’t be clever, just talk.”

Turk went on for nearly an hour. Where the girls came from and where they went. It was, Quinn found out, a fairly sparse business and needed connections which he could not make in a hundred years. He learned about the trade in raw alcohol, black market from American bases, and how it left here and then was handled through Sicily. And watches which one man could carry and make it worth while. And inferior grain, sold out of Egypt.

None of the operations were very big and there wasn’t one which was ironclad. Remal, with no competition and with his thumb on a lethargic town, ran matters in a way which looked sloppy to Quinn—unless Turk told it badly—and ran them, for the most part, pretty wide open.

Quinn smoked a cigarette and thought of chances. He thought business thoughts about business and once he thought of Remal who was an enemy. But he stuck mostly to business.

Taking a slice here or there was ridiculous. Remal would hit back. But to roll the whole thing over, and then leave Remal on the bottom—

“Stuff leaving here goes mostly to Sicily?”

“Yes. Not tonight. Tonight there are just the women, and they go just up the coast. And the silk…”

“Never mind.” Quinn picked up a pebble. “Does Remal run the Sicily end, too?”

“Oh no. He never goes there. Sometimes the Sicilian comes here.”

“What’s his name?”

“I don’t know. He sees Whitfield. Sometimes Remal.”

This could mean anything. It could mean Remal runs the show at both ends, or the Sicilian comes down with instructions for Remal, or he comes just to coordinate. Turk didn’t know. Quinn couldn’t tell.

“Is it important?” said Turk.

It is most likely, thought Quinn, that the two ends are run independently.

“Remal ever send anybody over there?”

“No, he never does.”

And put that together with the Sicilians and their reputation in a business like this—It is likely, thought Quinn, that they’re bigger at the other end.

“Now tell me again about the alcohol. All the details,” said Quinn. “You mentioned something about tonight.”

“Yes. Tonight he went down…”

“But there’s no alcohol going out tonight, you said.”

“I know. I said twice a month, like tonight. Remal goes down to the warehouse to see about the alcohol in cans. It comes in by truck and goes out by boat.”

“Does it come in tonight?”

“No, it comes in and goes out, all in the same day. Tomorrow.”

“Then what’s Remal doing down there tonight?”

“To send the driver out to the pick-up point. Remal always counts the empty cans, and when the truck comes back the next day he counts the full cans or has Whitfield count them. And he gives instructions to the driver, about little changes in plan.”

“What kind of changes?”

“Little changes, like time and place and so on.”

Quinn sat a moment and started to play with a pebble. “On the truck,” he said, “there’s just this one driver?”

“Yes.”

“Kind of careless, isn’t it?”

“Who would dare interfere?”

Quinn nodded. Who indeed. “As far as I know,” he said, “there are only two ways out of this town. One east, one west, and both along the coast.”

“For trucks, yes.”

“Which way does this one come and go?”

“Both ways the same way, west. Because the alcohol is black market from Algerian ports. It comes overland, and then this driver picks it up out of town.”

After that, the talk became more and more detailed, about how many cans and how large, time schedules and distances, and while none of it came out as precise as Quinn might have wanted, it was enough. Enough for a fine, hard jolt.

“Now something else,” Quinn said, “and this time I don’t have questions but you do the listening.”

Turk noticed the difference in Quinn and paid attention.

“With no more effort than you put out now, doing nothing, you can pick yourself off the street and no more handouts, like the kind you’ve been taking all your life.”

“Oh?” said Turk, because he had not understood all the slang.

“Here’s what. You told me Remal picks his help as he needs it.”

“Yes?”

“This is good enough when there’s no competition, but not good enough when the opposition is organized.”

“Are you discussing a war?”

“Just shut up a minute. Remal doesn’t have a gang. I’m going to make one.”

“Gang?”

“A few men, always the same men, working their job not for pennies, but a cut.”

“Ah,” said Turk. “No war. You are talking now like a
brigande.”

“Call it what you like. The point is we run it a new way. This leaves out the knife play in the street, it means picking our men with care, and it means no talk whatsoever. Everybody knows of Remal’s operation. Nobody knows of yours and mine.”

“Ah,” said Turk. “Anything.”

“For a start we’ll need three men. Whom can you suggest?”

“There is my friend,” said Turk, “the one who you saw by the steps.”

“Can he be trusted?”

“Absolutely. He is my friend. Then,” Turk said, “there is the man whose face you cut. He has…”

“Him?”

“Not him, he will not be able to help us for a while. I was going to say, he has two brothers…”

“They’ll work for me?”

“They will not hold it against you that you injured their brother. Especially after I explain that it was an accident and they hear there’s money to be made.”

They then talked details about what they would do in the morning. What most impressed Turk was that Quinn would start all this new life immediately in the morning.

“Can you have the men ready on time?”

“Of course. I have already thought about…”

“Don’t of-course me. Remember, we’re not setting this schedule ourselves. We’ve got to follow one.”

“Understood.”

“Make sure your help understands it.”

“I will.”

Quinn threw the pebble away and got up. “I’ll stay at the hotel tonight. You got somebody to watch me?”

“Of course. The man who got hurt in the arm. He is a very good watcher.

“You’re of-coursing me again. He just came over from Remal and he’s going to watch
me
sleep tonight?”

“Well. I feel…”

“And he’s going to sit there in the hotel with blood all over his arm?”

“I have a great deal to learn, about watching in hotels.”

“Then say so in the beginning and don’t make stupid suggestions instead.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. What you know you know well, I think. Walk me over.”

Turk walked with Quinn to the hotel and they said nothing else. I could love him, thought Turk. If he’d let me. I really could—And after Quinn had gone into the hotel, Turk got a boy from the quarter who had only one eye. He told the boy to sit in the street all night and to kill anyone who went into Quinn’s room or he, Turk, would dig out the boy’s other eye. He forgot to explain how the boy was to know, while sitting in the street, who would be likely to go into Quinn’s room.

At ten in the morning Quinn had an Occidental-type breakfast downstairs, and while he was drinking his coffee Remal walked in. He came up to the table and asked if he might sit down. Quinn nodded.

“And how are you, Mister Quinn?”

“Alive.”

“Yes, I heard. And now I see.”

“Coffee?”

“No, thank you.”

“You see what, Remal?”

“I see you in a new light, Mister Quinn.”

“In the cold light of dawn?”

“You make small talk almost as well as our Whitfield. Only less amusingly.”

“Then let’s drop it.”

“Very well.” Remal folded his arms on the table and looked out the window. “You have indeed demonstrated,” he said, “that you can draw attention.”

“We cleaned up all the mess lying around.”

“Yes. Thank you. That was thoughtful of you and, I suppose, in the manner of a
beau geste
.”

“A what?”

“You could have left the bodies there and made it difficult for me to cover things up. It was generous of you.”

“Welcome, I’m sure.”

“And of course the meaning is that it will not happen again, but the next time you will draw as much attention as possible.”

Quinn hadn’t thought of the last night’s corpse-dumping that way but he let the impression remain. He said nothing.

“And of course, in the same night’s work you have demonstrated something else I had not known, that you have help. Rather good help, as it turned out.”

“I’m alive.”

“Yes. We discussed that,” and Remal wiped his mouth. “I have learned to be flexible in my position, Mister Quinn, and will make a new proposal.”

“I know.”

“We are not friends, but we are not yet enemies. Let us choose something in between.”

“What’s that?”

“A gentlemen’s agreement.”

“The thought is new to me, but go on.”

“You sit still, Mister Quinn, and I will sit still. You stay in sight and you will come to no harm. Maybe I can harm you with more success than I had last night, but for the moment why risk it? In the meantime, I will do what I can to expedite what needs to be done to get your papers and pas sage.”

“A truce?”

“For the moment.”

“Why should I trust you?”

“Why? Because I no longer underestimate you.”

They parted as politely as they had talked, each wishing that the other would do nothing else.

At eleven Quinn met Turk. This was different. No hotel hush, no polite conversation, no touch of imported European culture. The narrow streets of the quarter were so full of screaming that Quinn thought something terrible was about to happen. But the noise was normal—only he felt excited. Neither he nor Turk talked at all. They walked. They left the street after a while and went through a courtyard, through an arch, then more courtyards, through a house once, and then came out into the open.

This was the back end of the town where the desert started. It was not all sand or large sand dunes, the way Quinn had thought of the desert, but there was gray and black rock strewn around and the sand was not really sand but rather bare packed dirt with nothing growing in it. The last sirocco had blown sand against the backs of the houses, fine and loose like dust, but the expanse of the desert was hard, hard as the light and as hot as the air.