Larry Kent was on his way back to New York, fresh from a fishing vacation in the Gulf. When he stopped off in the city of Faro his plan was to get a drink and something to eat and then move on. But the bartender at the Green Light made the mistake of serving him a Mickey Finn and then robbing him.

  Larry woke up in a deserted alleyway with a pounding headache … and inadvertently became the star witness in the cold-blooded murder of a prominent businessman.

  He quickly discovered that Faro was hock-deep in corruption. The Mafia was planning to move in and take over completely. Only Larry stood between the mob and their latest conquest. So he became a marked man … and every hitman around intended to collect on that Big Contract.

  LARRY KENT 702: THE BIG CONTRACT

  By Don Haring

  First Published by The Cleveland Publishing Pty Ltd

  Copyright © Piccadilly Publishing

  First Digital Edition: April 2019

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Series Editor: David Whitehead

  Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Published by Arrangement with The Cleveland Publishing Pty Ltd.

  Chapter 1 ... from an alley ...

  I opened my eyes and saw pinpoints of light in dark velvet, then I closed my eyes and tried to remember what had happened. It came to me slowly ...

  The long drive up from the Gulf. Six hundred miles. Ten hours at the wheel of my Corvette. The neon signs of the city named Faro. I’d read about the place. A town of forty thousand in 1962, a city of over a quarter of a million in 1972, thanks to the discovery of a copper mountain less than twenty miles away.

  It was a lively city. One saloon after another, night clubs, thousands of cars parked at meters, movie houses, ladies of the night in doorways and on street corners. I parked the Corvette outside a place called The Green Light, mainly because it was the first empty parking slot I ran across. I wanted a rest, a few hamburgers and some drinks. I figured I’d get another two or three hundred miles behind me before I stopped at a motel.

  The Green Light was crowded but there was a bit of space at the bar. The big, red-faced bartender seemed a jovial fellow. He looked me over and said, “Just get into town?”

  I told him about my fishing trip in the Gulf and he seemed interested as hell. He poured me a scotch—“first one on the house”—and then he asked what I’d caught, what I’d used for bait, what sort of gear I preferred and so on. I talked freely. When you’ve been off by yourself on a fishing trip and someone shows interest, you exercise your larynx. I finished his free drink and offered him one, but he settled for a cigar. Then a big-hipped blonde slid onto the stool beside me and the bartender introduced us. Her name was Candy. He was known as Ziggy.

  I bought Candy a drink and we got to talking. She was a pretty-enough blonde. Maybe she had a bit too much condition on her but there was a dimple in her chin and she had good teeth and she smelled nice. Before I knew it, Candy and I were good friends.

  And then the lights went out.

  Not just like that. There was a period when I knew I’d been served a Mickey Finn and anger coursed through me. I saw Candy’s face through a kind of haze and she was smiling. Her smile told me that she knew damn well what was going on—I was a stranger in town and an easy mark and she was part of the racket. I reached for her, but then her face became two faces, and four, and all four faces began whirling around and the floor came up to hit me.

  Now I was coming to in an alley. I opened my eyes again and the pinpoints of light became stars and the dark velvet was the night sky. I pushed myself to a sitting position and raised my left hand so I could see my watch. But there was no watch. I reached for my hip pocket. I still had my wallet. I pulled it out. The credit cards and all the other bits of paper and so on were still there—but no money. I moved around and change jingled in my pocket. At least they’d left me some coins.

  Anger burned through me. It’s not a nice feeling to learn you’ve been Mickey Finned and rolled. My first thought was to go back to The Green Light. Candy wouldn’t be there but maybe the bartender was still on duty. I knew the routine. He’d remember me but he’d say I walked out under my own steam. He’d be sympathetic as hell about my money being gone but he’d deny all responsibility or knowledge.

  Fine. Let him be ignorant. All I wanted was to feel my knuckles smash his nose.

  I pushed myself erect and had to lean against the side of the alley to keep myself from falling down. Then I saw the swarthy young man across the street.

  He stood beside a doorway. Something about him caught my attention. I didn’t know what it was until I saw the flash of steel, then I realized that my ESP had been at work.

  I squinted my eyes against the dim light. He was tall and slim and there was something of the killer panther about him. You feel these things without knowing why. I didn’t like him. I couldn’t see his face too well because the light was bad but there was something about him that made him my enemy. It’s not fair to come to snap judgments about any man or woman, but I knew I was right about this fellow. He was bad news.

  My head throbbed. I shook it. A wave of nausea rose in my stomach and lifted to my throat. For a moment I was a child again, regaining consciousness on a hospital bed after my tonsils had been removed. There was the same empty feeling in my head, the same sickeningly sweet taste throughout my body. I opened my mouth and blew out air, shook my head again.

  Keep your eye on that fellow across the street, a voice in my brain said. I did. There was another flash of metal as he moved. I took a step towards the alley mouth and something rolled beneath my foot. It clattered. A tin can. The young fellow across the street looked in my direction, then turned his head away and I realized that I was hidden by the shadows of the alley. He must have figured that the sound he heard was caused by a cat or a rat.

  I stood there against the wall of the alley and looked at him. Why was he there? What had caused the flash of steel?

  But I had already sensed the answer to the second question. He held a knife. Was he waiting for someone, anyone, to come along? No. A man did come along; a portly, well-dressed fellow. The slim man moved back into the shadows of the doorway.

  He was waiting for someone in particular.

  Just as this message flashed across my brain a man descended the stone steps of the brownstone beside the young man’s hiding place. He was in danger—I could tell by the way the man with the knife jerked erect.

  Watch out! I wanted to scream, but the words wouldn’t go past my throat. The man was almost down the steps. The other fellow moved towards him. This time I found my voice.

  “Watch him!”

  The man on the steps looked in my direction. The other fellow closed in on him. I opened my mouth to shout another warning but it was too late. There was the glint of steel, then I saw the knife blade go down and up—into the man’s chest. He rose to his toes. The second fellow pulled the knife clear. The wounded man pressed his hands against his chest and did a crazy little dance. The man with the knife brought the blade high.

  “No!” I screamed.

  The knife plunged down.

  I ran. It was a nightmare. I was moving but I wasn’t conscious of my feet hitting the ground. But words were spilling from my throat. The man with the knife turned to face me and I saw the blade as an extension of his right hand. At the same time I saw the other fellow on his knees, hands still pressed to his chest.

  The man with the knife became larger and larger. Suddenly he was there before me and the blade was coming up at me. There was anger in the swarthy face and then there was the burn of pain through my side and I was screaming. I reached out, blindly, and my hand felt the side of his neck and then I slipped my arm around his neck and I brought his head to me and he made choking sounds. The feel of his face against my chest was good. I exerted pressure and more sounds came out of him. At the same time there was a throbbing in my side and I felt warm wetness against the skin over my ribs. He squirmed. His feet and his knees made contact with my ankles, my thigh. I kept squeezing. More pain. My left arm this time. I swung my left fist, felt it make contact. There was a groan and the clatter of steel to the sidewalk.

  The world spun and there was a pumping, pumping. I was caught in the center of a vortex and I was warm and cold at the same time and nothing was more important than feeling that face against my chest and keeping pressure going with my right arm.

  Then there were bells and voices that made no sense and finally the sucking, whirling, pulling force that had me in its power was too strong to resist.

  I relaxed and blackness swept over me.

  Chapter 2 ... long way back ...

  A pale face hovered over me and a gentle voice said, “Easy, easy ...” I closed my eyes and the face and the voice went away.

  But both came back. They belonged to a nurse. I was in a hospital, she told me. I’d lost a lot of blood but I was going to be all right. I believed her.

  “Just let yourself go,” she said. With the voice came a prick in my arm. I smiled at the face, at leas

t I felt my face move in what I thought was a smile, and then the face blanked out ...

  “You’ve been sleeping for almost two days.” The voice came from the same gray face. “How do you feel?”

  “Bring on Joe Louis.”

  “That’s the spirit.” Another voice.

  I moved my head and squinted and a man’s face shimmered into focus. He had a toothbrush moustache and gentle blue eyes.

  “I’m Dr. Bell,” he said.

  “A pleasure,” I said.

  Still another voice: “Can I speak to him?”

  The doctor’s face grew lines. A frown? “Not this time, Lieutenant.”

  “But—”

  “Sorry. He’s not strong enough yet.”

  “He’s right,” I said, or thought I said, then there was that little prick in my arm again and soon the two faces swam in a background of white and dissolved.

  It was a deep, dark, peaceful sleep. But, like all good things, it came to an end. Actually, it hadn’t been all good. Every now and then my peace had been interrupted by the sight of a sudden flash of steel and then a whirling body and a voice crying out with pain.

  Finally the day came when the doctor told me that a police lieutenant wanted to talk to me. Could I manage it? I told him I could, then he brought a shortish fellow with a bald head into my room.

  “This is Lt. Thomas Vinconi,” the doctor said. Then, to the bald-headed detective: “I can let you have only five minutes.”

  The doctor left the room and the cop sat in the chair beside my bed. He showed good, strong teeth in a smile.

  “How do you feel?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure,” I said.

  Brown eyes looked at me for a long moment. “That was quite a caper, Larry. You don’t mind if I call you Larry, do you?”

  “Not so far.”

  “I’ve made a check on you in New York.”

  “New York police?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then there’s a fifty-fifty chance that you hate my intestines.”

  He grinned. “I got both sides of it. Some of my New York colleagues have nothing but praise for you.”

  “I won’t ask what the others have.”

  “They all respect you.” He paused. “That applies here, too. It took a lot of guts, going after Madera.”

  “So that’s his name.”

  “Ben Madera.”

  “And ... the other fellow?”

  Vinconi paused. “Ron Barclay.”

  “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  Vinconi gave the briefest of nods. “They didn’t tell you?”

  “They didn’t tell me anything.”

  “Well, you lost a lot of blood. As a matter of fact, that knife point just missed your heart and the main arteries. It was close, Larry.”

  I reached under the sheet and felt the bandages that were wrapped around my body. I pressed. There wasn’t any pain. Then I looked into Vinconi’s eyes and I said, “There’s an important question you haven’t asked.”

  “Maybe it’s because I know the answer. You were delirious when they brought you in. You called it murder.”

  “It was. Cold and deliberate.”

  The lieutenant looked away.

  “Something wrong?” I asked.

  “Ron Barclay was a friend of mine,” he said.

  “I’m glad,” I said. “That punk Madera has to be tagged with murder one.”

  Vinconi’s gaze came back to me. He sighed. “That’s not going to be easy.”

  “But I saw it. Madera stood there and waited.”

  Vinconi patted at his pockets. “I’m not supposed to smoke in here,” he mumbled.

  “The hell with it,” I said.

  He took out his cigarettes. Lucky Strikes. He put one in his mouth.

  “They’re not my brand,” I said, “but I’ll have one.”

  “Do you think you—” He cut himself short, shook a cigarette free of the pack and held it out to me. Then he lit both cigarettes with a battered Zippo lighter.

  “There’s a dish in the cupboard,” I said.

  He took the dish out and placed it on the edge of the bed so we could both use it as an ashtray. I sucked deep on the Lucky, let the smoke go down as far as it would travel. It felt good. But there was a troubled look in the lieutenant’s eyes that I didn’t like.

  “You have something on your mind,” I said.

  “Yes.” He let smoke out through his nostrils. “Larry, I’ve been on the police force here in Faro ever since I got my army discharge after Korea. I’ve tried to be a good cop.” He looked around as though afraid someone might overhear him, then he added, “It’s not easy, not in Faro.”

  “Crooked town?”

  He dragged on the cigarette. He was obviously having trouble putting his feelings into words. I understood.

  “So it is a crooked town,” I said. “Corruption.” He didn’t show any sign of agreement but on the other hand he didn’t argue the point.

  “Better talk fast,” I said. “The doctor gave us only five minutes. He’s probably holding a watch on us.”

  “How much did you have to drink that night?” he asked.

  “Two or three scotches.”

  “Not according to the breath test. That shows you had at least a pint of whisky in your system.”

  “Breath tests can be faked.”

  “Not this one.”

  “Then they poured whisky down my throat in that alley.”

  Vinconi nodded. “That’s part of the procedure. You were rolled, I take it.”

  “Mickey Finned and then rolled.”

  “The Green Light?”

  “Yes.”

  “That alley is several blocks from The Green Light. Six or seven saloons are closer. If it were an ordinary roll job I probably wouldn’t have even asked any questions at The Green Light. But I did—and seven people claim you’d been there. Drunk.”

  “That’s a damned lie.”

  “Maybe. But seven people carry a lot of weight in a court of law.”

  “I can tell you who two of them are,” I said. “The bartender, Ziggy, and a peroxide blonde who calls herself Candy.”

  “Right.”

  “Ask yourself a question, Lieutenant. Why are seven people willing to lie?”

  Vinconi took a deep breath, let it out. He said, “Ben Madera works for a man named Stanley Carpathian.”

  The name rang bells. “A transplanted Chicagoan?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Carpathian is an ex-Mafia soldier,” I said.

  “I was pretty sure you’d heard of him.”

  “I more than just heard of him. Carpathian—”

  The door opened and the doctor stepped in. He noted the smoke in the room and looked crossly at my cigarette, which I’d dropped in the plate the moment I heard the doorknob turn.

  “Time is up,” the doctor said to Vinconi.

  The lieutenant got to his feet. “We’ll want a statement from Mr. Kent,” he said.

  “Tomorrow.”

  Vinconi turned to me. “The district attorney would like to have a talk with you. All right if he comes with me tomorrow? We’ll bring a stenographer along, too.”

  “Ask the doc,” I said.

  The man in white said, “You’ll be able to have perhaps thirty minutes with him tomorrow, Lieutenant.”

  Vinconi nodded. “That should do it.” He looked at me. “See you, Larry.”

  “Right, Lieutenant.”

  “Tom.”

  I grinned. “It takes me a while to get friendly with a cop.”

  Vinconi smiled back at me and I decided that I liked him. He left the room and Dr. Bell stayed. He picked up the plate and frowned at the smoldering cigarette.

  “A Lucky,” he said. “Your brand?”

  “No, I smoke Camels.”

  “I’ll see that you get a proper ashtray. And a pack of Camels.” He smiled wryly. “I’m a chain-smoker myself.”

  I decided I liked him, too. “When can I get out of here?” I asked.

  “Three days or so. You lost a lot of blood and one of those stab wounds came close enough to slit the edge of a nerve. We want to watch that for a while.”

  “This must be costing a lot of money.”

  “A small fortune.”

  “Lucky thing I have a comprehensive health insurance policy.”

  “Wouldn’t matter if you didn’t.”

 

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