The Erection Set (24 page)

“Cheers yourself.” She polished her drink off without a pause and told the bartender to fill it up again. She waved her glass at the chattering mob and clucked with disgust. “Look at them. Dig all the phony tits and store-bought hairdos. Everybody out making points.”

“What for?”

My question caught her off base. “You kidding, my big friend?”

“Nope.”

“Hell, there isn't a kid out there who isn't angling for a part in that new picture. Tonight everybody even remotely connected with Cable-Howard will be well bedded down and in hock for a line or at the very least a two-shot in a crowd scene. You watch the guys. They're pulling the same trick too. Two days after a working script is done, pirated copies will be peddled around town so that all the hams will be able to give a good first reading.”

“Crazy,” I said.

“Nice for all the studs, though. Watch the operators go to town. They'll move in on all the choice ass and cut them out before the idiot dames can find out that they're only flunkeys on the lot.” She made a motion with her hand at an overly made-up middle-aged woman smiling up at a pair of good-looking young junior executive types. One of them seemed familiar. “It's not all the dames, either. That's Sylvia Potter. Her husband's an assistant director for S. C. Cable. Right now she's picking herself out a playmate for this week who'll let her take out all her fetishes on his ripe young body because he thinks she might get him an in with her old man.”

“Will she?”

“A lucky few will make it. Just a bit part that won't hurt anything. And Bibby Potter will go along or she'll blow the whistle on him and his philandering and wind up with half his estate.” She took another drink of her highball. “It's a nutty business.”

“The picture worth all that?”

“Oh, it'll be a winner. It can't miss. They'll drop five million in the production and bring back ten times that You read the book?”

“Haven't had time. Is it good?”

“Big sex novel,” Mona said. “Living and loving in an old-fashioned nineteenth-century manufacturing town. Pantalettes and petticoats lying all over the place, men struggling out of their waistcoats. You know, zippers were a great invention. Today a couple strips, naked in ten seconds.”

I let her see my expression of disbelief.

“All right, wise guy, except me. At my age I have to have my undergarments engineered for me and they take time to dismantle.”

“I bet it's worth it.”

“Give it a try and see.”

“Careful, I might.”

“Baloney, you belong out there with the studs. You see those kids eyeing you when they found out you knew Walt? If I were in your shoes I'd be getting all I could.”

“Let's say I'm particular.”

“Sure you are. Like with... Sheila McMillan?”

“You got a dirty mind, kid. I just met the lady.”

“Then let me clue you... she's a teaser. That's what drives her husband nuts. Frigid as a penguin's balls and as beautiful as they come. You'd never know it to look at her, would you? All that meat just going to waste.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“A bit here, a bit there. Cross let it slip to a business acquaintance who's a friend of mine during some bourbon blues. Most of it's servants' gossip, though.”

“You believe all you hear?”

“Very little of it,” she said, “but in this case it's true. Why do you think he's such a tiger when it comes to finance? He takes out all his frustrations raping the business world. He'd give his left nut just to get a hunk of his own wife and it's never going to happen.”

“Then why did he marry her?”

Mona put her empty glass down on the bar and looked at me like I was a kid. “Because he's crazy mad in love with her, that's why. My guess is that she loves him too, but when it comes to sex, it's forget-it-time.”

I finally found Cross McMillan and his wife across the room. They were standing there talking to a few others and Sheila was smiling at him, her eyes adoring, one hand on his arm. I suddenly felt sorry for the poor bald bastard and wished I hadn't planted that scar on his pate where everybody could see it. He would have been better off if I had castrated him.

Mona said, “What are you thinking of? You have a funny look on your face.”

“Nothing printable, doll.”

Her finger tapped the back of my hand. “I do have something I can print,” she said mischievously.

“Oh?”

“About a possible romance between a Barrin scion and a certain secretary for a picture firm.”

“Sharon?”

Mona's raised eyebrows gave me a positive nod.

“Kid, I'm damn near old enough to be her father.”

“A perfect Hollywood twosome,” she smiled. “How would you like to be a son to me?”

“You know what they'd call me then?”

“Sure. A son of a bitch. Very appropriate. You watch out for all those little hot-pants chippies out there, you hear?” Mona said and left.

My watch said ten forty-five. The call should have come in by now. I waved Lee out of the group he was with and made sure he had reservations at his club. He and another member were going to drive Sharon home, be certain she was locked in until I called her, then go directly to the Ryder A.C. where no one except members were admitted. I went out into the lobby, picked up a copy of
Fruits of Labor
and headed for the elevator.

My contact at Weller-Fabray answered my coded inquiry in French with the statement that they were closed until morning, which meant I was to call back on the hot line that had a scrambler attachment. I redialed and asked, “Your lines bugged?”

“They could be. We had Treasury Department agents in here this morning. Apparently the Surete in Marseilles are monitoring overseas calls. Jason placed two to us from the Pavilion of Crosses restaurant just before one of the couriers from Istanbul was shot to death. He had twenty kilos of heroine in a suitcase prepared for shipment to the United States.”

“Who hit him?”

“Nobody knows. They seem to think it was an attempted hijacking. The murderer escaped completely.”

“Damn,” I said. “Who got the stuff?”

The voice on the other end chuckled. “That is the joke. Nobody. The courier had anticipated a possible double cross and had substituted packages. The genuine stuff is still hidden somewhere. Had all gone well he would have accepted the money and told the transfer agent later where to recover the proper goods. Unfortunately, he didn't anticipate being killed.”

“Any leads at all?”

“So far, none. The courier was a professional. Now the big hunt is on. It will be ... how do. you say? ... finders keepers”

“Who's working our end?”

“The Irishman O'Keefe and Pierre Dumont.”

“Hell, O'Keefe has a record in Berlin and...”

“A simple assault charge. It's not very likely he'll be recognized. Besides,” ... he chuckled again “you should be the one to worry.”

“Now what's up?” I asked him.

“The affair had your stamp on it. Your MO, so to speak. It is being rumored that the courier didn't know a switch had been made and it was a first-class hijacking with the killing only a red herring thrown in to confuse everybody.”

“Nice.”

“Certain parties are very angry. Le Fleur himself has directed a bonus for either the recovery or your demise.”

Le Fleur, the flower. A gentle name for a human fungus.
Someplace the bastard sat in royal opulence and pushed the buttons that could trigger the kill of anyone from a dope-head to a diplomat. Narcotics built his empire and the ones he couldn't squeeze out he eliminated or organized. The only ones he couldn't control were nibbling holes in his elaborate structure and if it happened often and successfully enough the whole damn thing would fall apart.

I said, “This may bring him out into the open.”

“No, I'm afraid not, although there are many who would like to know his true identity. Once that happened any one of the others in a fairly strong position would take steps to have him removed. These are the days of science and equipment. An aerial bombing raid on a stronghold is not an improbability and financially simple to arrange.”

“But complicated,” I told him.

“Quite. Therefore it is simpler to pick the fly out of the ointment, which, in this case, they think is you. One member of the syndicate has been selected to act as your executioner, especially in view of the fact that his natural animosity and suspicion has led him into instigating a kidnap order on you... followed by your death, of course.”

“The Turk?”

“Exactly. They already know what has happened to his two men. Either they succeed in the near future or The Turk becomes the object of Le Fleur's attentions. This he certainly doesn't desire.”

“Hell, he's working at it. They tried again and I was lucky. They missed me. My friend wasn't so lucky and they damn near killed him.”

“You shouldn't expose your friends to yourself, Dog.”

“The Turk should know better.”

“Perhaps he didn't take your retirement seriously.”

“But he's going to. Who's come in the last few days?”

For a second he didn't speak and I could hear his fingers tapping against the phone. “Nobody we know of through routine channels, but that means very little. I understand they landed a shipment through Mexico and into Nevada a day ago. Someone could have come in with that. And the Coast Guard missed a night interception of a fast cruiser that was heading toward Miami, so who can be sure?”

“Okay, then we'll take it from there. I want two foreign types about my size with no outstanding characteristics. They speak English with an accent, possibly Belgian. Their clothes are all new and expensive, but they're wearing brown shoes with dark outfits, so that might give you a lead. Check into foreign-language movie houses, hotels catering to people from that area, restaurants... you know the scoop.”

“I understand.”

“Somebody's laid the groundwork for them here, so they have a contact. I doubt if they've had time to establish any kind of reliable identification, so that might help. They'll be operating on a cash basis in a credit card economy.”

I could hear his pen scratching as he wrote it all down. “Another thing... one had a .38, the other guy packed a .22 on a nickel-plated heavy frame.”

The writing stopped a moment. Then he said, “Arnold Bell.”

“A Belgian national.”

“Dog, you know what kind of a man this is, don't you?”

“I've heard the stories.”

“No one's better. He works in close because he likes to do it that way. He has been the hit man on eleven important people. His only failure was an attempted assassination of General De Gaulle. He was almost caught then. Almost. So far he has been apprehended for nothing. Dog ... they must want you very badly.”

“Why would he use a backup man?”

“Most likely because he is unfamiliar with the country. Like you say... the brown shoes?”

“Looks like they both need a refresher course,” I said.

“When will you be calling in?” he asked me.

“Tomorrow.”

“That isn't much time.”

“Do what you can,” I said. “Incidentally, how did you explain the scrambler phone to the T-men?”

I could almost see him shrug. “A business necessity. The competition would most like to have the identity and whereabouts of our very select clientele.”

 

Leyland Hunter's friends in the right places had made it easy for me. Both Bridey-the-Greek and Markham were released from the hospital at their own request and against the advice of the doctors. The only thing they forgot was that cops can be curious creatures of habit even in matters that don't necessarily concern them. One detective had left word to be notified if there was any unorthodox departure. The clerk at the desk, who had a brother on the force, complied.

The cop's name-was Sergeant Tobano.

He didn't get in from a special assignment until a quarter past two, booked the two punks he had with him, then turned around when the uniformed desk man pointed to me at the bench in the back of the room. He was tired, unshaven, his clothes rumpled and he looked annoyed at the world.

His eyes had that universal flat look and he shoved his hands in his pockets. “I was wondering when I'd see you again.”

“Why?”

“One of those feelings.”

“Let's go talk,” I said.

“There's an office back here.”

I followed him through the gate and into a wood-paneled room that smelled of a century ago, waited until he had closed the door, then sat in the chair on the other side of the cluttered table facing him. “Let's hear it,” he said.

I reached for a pencil, wrote a number down on a piece of scrap paper and pushed it over to him. “Make a call first.”

“What?” The word had a sharp, nasty tone to it.

“Just call. It's a local number.”

Tobano didn't do anything at first. He sat there watching me with those dark hawk eyes, imprinting me in his mind. Finally he reached for the phone. “If you're another joker, your tail is in a sling.” He dialed the number, and when it answered his eyes went from the paper in front of him to me, narrowing slightly. He identified himself, then started to say he was interrogating a person named Dogeron Kelly. He didn't get much further. He nodded absently twice, said okay and hung up. Then he called another number, ran a check on the first one and cradled the receiver. “You got some pretty important friends, Kelly.”