Robert j randisi ed, p.4
Robert J. Randisi (ed), page 4
“What’s in the package?” I asked.
“I’ll pay one thousand dollars because you will not ask what is in the package, and because Zareta is a dangerous man.”
He said it direct and simple, expressionless.
“Zareta?” I said.
“Constantine Zareta. This he calls himself. It is to him you will take the package.”
“Why not take it yourself?”
“He would kill me.”
“Why?”
“I possess what he wants.”
“Blackmail, Asher?”
“No, I ask no money. You will take the package?”
I shook my head. “Not without knowing what’s in it, and why you want to send it to this Constantine Zareta.”
Paul Asher thought for a time. He seemed to look again at my empty left sleeve, but his face remained expressionless. He wasn’t angry or even frustrated. I had presented him with a problem, and he was thinking about it. As simple as that.
He made his decision. “The package contains documents, nothing more. I am giving them to Zareta. They are of no value except to Zareta. For him they are of great value. The papers are not a danger, simply of value to Zareta. He would kill me to get them, I am tired of danger. When he has the documents I will not be in danger. Until then, I am not safe from him. I cannot take the documents myself, so? You will take them?”
“Let’s see the package.”
Asher produced a flat package from an inside pocket of his dark suit. It was about as wide as a paperback book, twice as long and thick. I took it. They make bombs smaller and better every day, but the package was much too light for even a plastic bomb. It felt like a package of documents and nothing else. Even a deadly gas has to have a container. I could feel the edges, the folds, the thickness of heavy paper.
“How did you happen to pick me, Mr. Asher?”
“From the telephone book.”
For the first time I didn’t believe him. Too quick? Something in his voice that wasn’t quite toneless this time? I’m in the phone book, but I didn’t believe him. Because he wasn’t the kind of man who trusted to chance? Maybe and maybe. But if it hadn’t been the telephone book, how and why had he picked me out of all the detectives in New York?
“I take the package to Zareta,” I said. “What do I bring back?”
“Nothing.”
“Who pays me? When?”
“I will pay you,” Asher said. “Now.”
He took a thin billfold from his inside pocket, counted out ten hundred-dollar bills. He wasn’t telling me the truth, not the whole truth, but I knew that. Warned of the danger, what could happen that I couldn’t handle? If anything looked a hair out of line I’d toss the package and walk away.
I took the ten bills. Crisp and new, straight from the bank. Maybe I wanted to know why he had picked me for the job. I wanted to know something.
“What’s the address?”
“It is on the package.”
“How do I contact you later?”
“You do not. You are paid. I will know if you do not do what you have been paid to do.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes,” Paul Asher said. “You will deliver the package at midnight. Precisely midnight.”
He walked out. I tilted back in my chair. I was a thousand dollars richer. Why didn’t I feel good?
The address was on the East Side up in Yorkville, far over near the river. Asher’s instructions had been definite—midnight—and the slum street was dark and silent in the rain when the taxi dropped me. There was no one on the street. No one in sight anywhere, but I felt the eyes. When you grow up near the docks, start stealing early because you have to eat even if your father ran out long before and your mother drinks too much, you learn to feel when eyes are watching.
I walked slowly along the dark street in the rain and knew that I wasn’t alone. I sensed them all around. The address was an old unrenovated brown-stone with the high front steps. Two men appeared at the far end of the street. They leaned against a dark building. Two more appeared behind me where the taxi had dropped me. Two stood in the shadows on another stoop across the street. Shadows of shadows all around in the dark and rain. The glint of a gun.
I went up the steps to the front door and into the vestibule. There was only one mailbox and doorbell. I had my finger on the bell when I saw the man outside on the steps. He stood two steps below the vestibule with an automatic rifle. A short, powerful man behind a bandit mustache. There were two more behind him at the foot of the steps. They had guns too. They stood there doing nothing. Too late I knew why, felt the inner vestibule door open behind me.
An arm went around my throat, a hand went over my mouth, another hand held my arm, and I was dragged back into the dark of the entrance hall. I didn’t resist. The short one with the bandit mustache and automatic rifle followed us in. They dragged me into a small room, sat me in a chair, came and went in rapid groups. They barely glanced at me. They were busy. Except two I felt close behind me keeping watch.
“What’s going on?” I tried.
“Do not talk!” He was the short, powerful man with the automatic rifle. He seemed to be the leader, sent the other men in and out with the precision of a drill sergeant. They spoke some language I didn’t even recognize.
I didn’t have to know the language to know what they were doing. They were all armed, and they were searching the street outside and the neighborhood for anyone who might have come with me. It was half an hour before the mustachioed leader sat down astride a chair in front of me. He still carried his automatic rifle, and the package Paul Asher had sent me to deliver.
“Your name is Fortune. What do you want here?”
“I came to deliver that package.”
“Who are you?”
“You’ve searched my papers.”
“You came to deliver this package to who?”
“Constantine Zareta. Is that you?”
“What is in the package?”
“Papers. Documents.”
He studied the package a moment, turned it over in his heavy hands. Then he gave it to one of the other men.
“From who does the package come?”
“Paul Asher.”
“We know no Paul Asher.”
“It’s the name he gave me.”
“Your papers say you are a private investigator. We know what that means. A man who will sell his weapon to anyone. A hired murderer. An assassin. You came to kill Constantine Zareta!”
“I came to deliver a package.” I said. “I don’t have a gun. I don’t even know who Zareta is or what he looks like.”
“Of course not. They would not tell you who you kill or why. They have hired you only to kill. Do not lie!”
“If someone is trying to kill Zareta, go to the police. That’s their work.”
I had been watching all their faces as I talked. They were grim, unsmiling, and they didn’t look like hoodlums. They were nervous and armed, but they didn’t act like gunmen. They looked like soldiers, guerrillas. And as I watched them I saw their faces come alert, respectful. Someone else had come into the room somewhere behind me. A low voice with good English.
“The police could not help me, Mr. Fortune.”
I felt him standing close behind me. His voice had that power of command, of absolute confidence in himself and what he did. Constantine Zareta. I started to turn.
“Do not turn, Mr. Fortune.”
I looked straight ahead at the mustachioed man. “Maybe the police can’t help you because you want to kill Paul Asher.”
The mustache reached out and hit me.
“Emil!”
Emil glared down at me. “He’s another one, Minister. I can smell them.”
“Perhaps,” Zareta’s slow voice said. “Let us be sure.”
“We cannot take the chance, Minister. Kill him now. If they did not send him, what does it matter?”
There was a silence behind me. A chair scraped. I felt hot breath on the back of my neck. Slow breathing. Zareta had sat down dose behind me. That was fine. As long as I could feel his breath I was ahead of the game. As long as I could feel anything.
“A man sent you to me at this address.”
“Yes.”
“Why did he pick you?”
“Out of the telephone book.”
“Do you believe that?”
“No.”
I could almost hear him nod.
“What was his reason for not coming himself?”
“He said you’d kill him.”
“Why would I kill him?”
“Because he had what you wanted. Documents, not dangerous to you, but so important you’d kill to get them.”
“And these documents are in the package?”
“Yes. He said he was tired of danger, wanted to give them to you, but was afraid to come himself.”
It was strangely unreal to be talking straight ahead into the empty air of the dark room, the silent face of Emil.
“This man’s name was Paul Asher.”
“Yes.”
“I know no Paul Asher, but that does not surprise me. You will describe him.”
I described Paul Asher down to the flinty calm of his dark eyes, his silent movement despite his size.
“I do not recognize him, but that does not surprise me either, Mr. Fortune. I do recognize the type of man you have described. It sounds true. You have saved your life, Mr. Fortune. For now.”
Emil did not like my reprieve. “The risk, Minister.”
“I think we can take some risk, Emil,” Zareta said, his breath still brushing the back of my neck. “Mr. Fortune could be lying, but I think not. This Asher sounds like all the men we have known, yes? Mr. Fortune has acted exactly as he would have if his story is true, and you found no one else who could have been with him. Then, he clearly does not know what was in the package he brought to us, or he would have told a better tale, yes? And he has no weapon of any kind.”
That seemed to stop Emil. I’ve said it before, most of the time a gun does nothing but get you in trouble. Sooner or later you’ll use it if you have to or not, and someone else will use theirs. If I’d had a gun this time I’d probably be dead. I wasn’t dead, and I wondered what had been in the package that would have made me tell a different story if I’d known.
“Why?” Zareta said. “I cannot understand what reason this Asher had to send you to me. That makes me uneasy. Tell me everything once more. Leave nothing out”
I told him all of it again. I was uneasy too. Why had Paul Asher sent me if the package wasn’t the reason? Or was it Zareta who was conning me now? Lulling me to get me to lead him back to Asher? If that was his scheme he wouldn’t get far. I couldn’t lead anyone to Paul Asher.
“I do not understand.” Zareta said when I finished the story again, “but you have done me an important service. I know now what this Paul Asher looks like” The chair scraped behind me. ‘Take your money, Mr. Fortune, and go home. Forget that you ever heard of Paul Asher or me.”
There was a silence, and then a door closed somewhere in the dark brownstone. The troops began to disperse. The boss had spoken. Emil’s heart wasn’t in it, but Zareta was boss.
“Tonight you are a very lucky man,” Emil said.
I looked around. I saw no one who looked like a boss, but I saw the package I’d carried lying on a table. It was torn open to show—a stack of folded papers. Just what Asher had said it was. Only there was something wrong, something odd about the package. Not quite right. What? They didn’t give me the time to look longer or closer.
They hustled me out into the dark hall. Then I was alone on the street where I’d started: I walked to the nearest corner without looking back. I didn’t run, that would have been cowardly. I waited until I was around the corner. Then I ran.
By the time I got down to Chelsea and my one-room office/apartment I felt pretty good. I had no more interest in Asher and Zareta and their private feud, whatever it was. I was a thousand dollars richer and still alive. I figured I was home free. I should have known better.
I awoke in the pitch dark to a violent pounding on my door. My arm was aching. The missing arm. That’s always a sign. It’s what’s missing that hurts when the days become bad.
The pounding went on. Cop pounding. As I got up and pulled on my pants, a gray light began to barely tinge the darkness. Captain Pearce himself led his Homicide men into my office area. The men fanned out to look behind the doors and under the beds. Pearce sat down behind my desk.
“What’s it about, Captain?”
“Paul Asher,” Pearce said.
“Nice name. Is there more?”
“Asher is enough,” Pearce said. “He was a client of yours? Or was there some other connection?”
“Was?” I said.
“Asher’s dead,” Pearce said. “You should give him his money back.”
Pearce doesn’t like any private detective much, but especially me. I was too close to old Captain Gazzo. Pearce took Gazzo’s place after the Captain was gunned down on a dark city roof. One of the new breed, a college man, and he doesn’t like me bringing Gazzo’s ghost with me. But he’s a good cop, he does his job first.
“We found Asher an hour ago.” Pearce said.
“Dumped under the George Washington Bridge. Shot up like Swiss cheese. Any ideas?”
The George Washington Bridge is a long way from Yorkville, but that I would expect.
“Constantine Zareta.” I said.
I told Pearce about Zareta and Asher, about Emil and all those silent gunmen. Pearce got up, signaled for his forces.
“Let’s pick them up.”
We went in the Captain’s car. He sat silent and edgy as we headed uptown at the head of his platoon of squad cars, drumming his fingers on his knee. He had no more questions. I had questions.
“You said you found Asher an hour ago, Captain. How did you dig up my connection so fast?”
“Your business cards in his pocket.”
“Cards?”
Pearce nodded as he watched the dawn city, gray and empty of people but teeming with trucks. “He must have had ten, and your name was in his little black book with a thousand dollars and yesterday’s date noted next to it.”
Business cards cost money. I don’t hand them out without necessity. Asher had found me, there had been no reason to give him a card, not even one. I leave some with uptown contacts in case anyone up there wants a kidnapped poodle rescued, so Asher may have picked up the cards from whoever sent him to me before he came down to my office. Or he could have palmed them off my desk when he walked out. But why? And why ten?
In the dawn the Yorkville street was as deserted as it had been last night. We parked all along the gray morning street. Windows popped open in other buildings, but nothing moved in Constantine Zareta’s brownstone. It was as dark and silent as some medieval fortress.
It turned out to be as hard to get into as a medieval fortress. Rings, knocks, shouts, and threats failed to open the vestibule door, the building remained dark.
“Break it down.” Pearce said.
His men broke the door open, and Pearce strode into the dim entrance hall. The mustachioed Emil faced him. Emil had his automatic rifle aimed at the Captain’s heart. Other gunmen stood in the doorway of the rooms and on the stairs. We were all covered. It took Captain Pearce almost a minute to find his voice.
“Police, damn it! Put those guns down. We’re the police.”
Constantine Zareta spoke from somewhere behind Emil, out of sight in the dim hallway. I knew that slow voice by now.
“You will tell me your name, your rank, and your badge number. I will verify that you are police. You will make no moves, my men watch your people in the street also.”
Color began to suffuse Pearce’s face. The Captain isn’t a patient man, and I wondered how long it had been since anyone had asked him to prove who he was. He opened his mouth, looked around the dark hallway at the silent guerrillas and the guns, and closed his mouth. If Constantine Zareta was as tough as he sounded, we could have a bloodbath in the dark hallway and out in the morning street.
“Captain Martin Pearce,” the Captain said through thin lips, and explained that a captain’s shield does not have a number.
In the silent hallway we all waited.
I imagined the scene down at Police Headquarters when they got the call asking about a Captain Pearce, and would they please describe the Captain. It took some time, but whatever they thought down there they must have gone along with it and given an accurate description.
Constantine Zareta appeared in the dim light, and I saw him for the first time—a short, thick man as wide as he was tall, with a shaved bullet head attached to his massive shoulders as if he had no neck. He said something in his unknown language. The guns vanished and the gunmen disappeared.
“Very well, Captain,” Zareta said to Pearce. “We will talk in the living room.”
Pearce and Zareta faced each other in the same room where I had been interrogated earlier. The Captain stood. Zareta sat on a straight chair, Emil close behind him. Neither Zareta nor Emil had seen me yet.
“Just who and what are you, Zareta?” Pearce said. “Why do you need armed men?” His voice was controlled, but I heard the anger in it. No policeman can tolerate a private army.
“A poor exile, Captain,” Zareta said. “My men have permits for their weapons.”
“Exile from where?”
“Albania.”
That was the language I hadn’t recognized— Albanian.
“Was Paul Asher an Albanian too?” Pearce said. “Is that why he was afraid of you? Is that why you killed him?”
For a moment there was a heavy silence in the small living room lit only by a single lamp behind its drawn curtains. Then Emil grunted. Others made other noises. Constantine Zareta leaned forward in his chair.
“This Asher, he is dead? You are sure?”
“We’re sure.” Pearce said.
Zareta laughed aloud. “Good! He is one we will not have to kill! You bring me good news, Captain, I am grateful. But how did you know that this Asher’s death would be something I would want to know? How did you know of Asher and myself? How. . . Ah, of course, Mr. Fortune. You have talked with Mr. Fortune. It is the only way.” He looked around the small room. “Are you here again, Mr. Fortune?”
