Operation Whiplash Page 11

  I was leaving early for the rendezvous because I wanted to get a look at the entrances and exits of the Barbarossa Restaurant in daylight. I headed south on U.S. 19 at an easy pace. I had spent a week once at Indian Rocks Beach on Gulf Boulevard between Clearwater and St. Petersburg Beach, so I had a rough idea of the area.

  South of Tarpon Springs I turned east on Gulf-to-Bay Boulevard and crossed Old Tampa Bay on the Courtney Campbell Causeway. Beyond Tampa International Airport the road became Columbus Drive, and I followed it to Nebraska Avenue where I turned off into Old Town, the Spanish-speaking sector of Tampa.

  The streets became narrower and more cluttered. The upper stories of the blank-faced buildings leaned out over the sidewalks. The gutters were littered with paper and other debris. I found Alvarez Street and followed it until it crossed Escondida. I drove past the Barbarossa Restaurant, an unprepossessing two-story structure with a grimy-looking neon sign. I parked the car two blocks away and walked back.

  It was only 4:00 P.M., the tail-end of siesta-time, and few people were on the street. I glanced in at the Barbarossa’s open door as I passed. No one was sitting in the wire-framed chairs at the restaurant tables, and I could see only a solitary drinker at the bar. I couldn’t see into the booths lining the far side of the cavernous-looking room.

  A narrow alley separated the building housing the restaurant from its next-door neighbor. I strolled down the alley until I came to a slatted wooden gate. Beyond the gate I could see the garbage cans and other detritus of a restaurant’s dirty backside. In one corner I could see the rear entrance which led through the kitchen. Behind the garbage cans was a high brick wall. If the wooden gate was locked, the rear entrance of the Barbarossa became a dead end. I was sure that Mario Rubelli hadn’t selected such a location for our rendezvous by accident.

  The setup didn’t change my mind about keeping the assignation. The one thing I needed to know now was whether Hazel was in Colisimo’s hands. If I once learned that from Robin, I’d know what course of action to follow. It could vary radically depending upon what she told me. And she would tell me, willing or not. I’d already made up my mind about that. Robin Ford was not high on my current list of personality people.

  Rubelli & Company would be set up inside the Barbarossa at 8:00 P.M., waiting for me to act the fly to their spider’s web. I’d be there, too, but I didn’t plan for it to turn out the way Rubelli expected. He was used to having his victims roll over and play dead. One that met him on his own terms was due to be a surprise to him.

  I retreated from the alley and walked back to the car. I had better than three and a half hours to kill before the blowoff. I unlocked the car, removed my briefcase from the front seat, and locked the car again. Then I continued along the street until I came to a movie theater garishly advertising two U.S. westerns. I paid a dollar admission and went inside. In that neighborhood a dollar seemed like a lot of money for a movie.

  I waited at the back of the theater until my eyes adjusted to the dark. There were no ushers. What seemed like acres of empty seats stretched before me. I selected one on the aisle near the fire-door exit.

  The two pictures turned out to have dubbed-in Spanish dialogue. The Indians didn’t do any better in Spanish than they ever do in English. I sat and watched the courageous Apaches lose badly in the second film, then left my seat at seven-thirty and went to the men’s room, carrying my briefcase.

  The men’s room was so small I could keep anyone from entering by placing my back against the door. I worked the combination on the briefcase and took out my makeup kit. It took me seven minutes to alter my facial appearance completely and don a different wig. No one interrupted the transformation. Neither Robin Ford nor Mario Rubelli was going to identify me, even with a close second look, when I walked into the Barbarossa Restaurant at 8:00 P.M. That was the edge I’d depend upon to outsmart them.

  I left the theater, went back to the car, and redeposited the briefcase. I lit a cigarette and set out at a leisurely pace for the meeting place. The Barbarossa was much more active when I approached it this time. Its neon sign glowed dully under its encrusted dirt, and a noisy jukebox pushed a strident melody out into the darkening street.

  I went inside and stood at the street-end of the bar. When the bartender looked my way, I pointed at the tap. He brought me a draft beer. I let it stand in front of me while I looked over the room.

  It contained no surprises. Robin Ford sat in a booth across the room, approximately in its center. Rubelli and a mean-looking confederate sat at a table near the front entrance. It took only an additional moment’s eye-search to pick out two more goons at a table near the rear exit. Once I sat down in Robin’s booth, I was going to be the meat in the sandwich.

  Some meat has been known to disagree with people, though.

  I carried my beer across the floor and slid into Robin’s booth across the table from her. “Hi, kid,” I said. She looked up and didn’t know me. She opened her mouth to tell me to get lost, but I beat her to the punch. “Are you turning two-dollar tricks or five-dollar tricks tonight, dear?”

  Her mouth tightened, and then recognition dawned. “Well!” she said softly. “Mr. Wise Guy himself.” She eyed my makeup curiously.

  I was facing the front entrance. Rubelli could see me, but he couldn’t see Robin because of the back of the booth. The flashily-dressed, dark-faced man glanced down my way casually. He knew that if a stranger sat down and tried to put the make on Robin, Robin was perfectly capable of running him off.

  “What’s the word on Hazel, Robin?” I asked.

  Her upper lip curled. It was plain all gloves were off. “Bolts thinks you know where she is. And if you do you’ll tell us before we’re through with you. If you don’t, we’ll see that there’s an item in the paper after your untimely demise, and that will bring her running.”

  “My untimely demise? How unpleasant for me.”

  “You don’t know the half of it, jokester.” She eyed me malevolently. “D’you know Mario belted my butt when I couldn’t produce you when we came to Hudson?”

  “I hope he set a world record for butt-belting, Robin,” I said sincerely.

  “I hope Bolts lets me work out on you,” she said viciously.

  “Like you did on Deakin?”

  “You do find out things, don’t you?” she countered. “Although I’ll make that past tense.” She glanced toward the rear of the room, the direction she was facing, to make sure the two goons near the exit were in place. She returned her attention to me. “I’ve got something special planned for that big bitch, Hazel, when we get our hands on her.”

  I saw no point in prolonging it.

  I’d learned what I came to find out.

  The balance of the evening wasn’t going to be quite what Robin had anticipated.

  I was going to spring the trap, all right, but Robin wouldn’t know about it. Essentially, she’d been dead since she told me they didn’t have Hazel. I’d purposely kept my arms off the table top. I knew the strength in her hands. She wasn’t going to grab me and hold me so that Rubelli and his goons could frogmarch me out the Barbarossa’s rear door. The only reason she hadn’t called Rubelli already was that she was enjoying herself taunting me.

  “I suppose it was Hazel’s will that was the holdup,” I said conversationally. I leaned forward slightly, reached down, and pulled the derringer from its spectacles-case holster.

  “You know it,” she answered. “But school’s out now, chump. Start sweating.”

  With my left hand, I dumped my untouched beer into her lap, glass and all. She started to jump up, swiping at herself with her hands. I rose and leaned across the booth as though to help her. I put my left hand on her shoulder and held her down. At the same time I extended the hand-hidden derringer until it touched her left breast. I pulled the trigger, and the noise of the little gun blended with the crash of my beer glass on the floor.

  “I’ll get a towel!” I said loudly, pocketing the derringer.

>   Robin’s bulging eyes didn’t believe it. She struggled to rise, but my hand on her shoulder pinioned her. Then she seemed to shrink. Her body started to sag sideways, and I had to prop her up. I picked up her cocktail glass and doused my chest with its contents. “Well, if that’s the way you feel about it, the hell with you!” I exclaimed.

  Only Robin’s lolling head indicated that anything was amiss. I slid from the booth. The couple in the next booth were looking at me. “Goddam wiseass female!” I muttered. I stamped furiously toward the front entrance in the manner of a drippingly rejected suitor. Rubelli favored me with a thin smile as I passed his table. He couldn’t see Robin. Eventually a muscle would cramp and she would fall from the booth—if Rubelli didn’t become impatient at my non-appearance and go to the booth first to give his paramour hell about it.

  But before either of those eventualities took place, the Barbarossa Restaurant would be bereft of my presence.

  I returned to the car, recrossed the Bay on Courtney Campbell Causeway again, and headed north on U.S. 19.

  At point-blank range, instantaneous death is never certain with a weapon as small as the derringer, despite the.41 caliber cartridge. Even a vital place doesn’t guarantee it, but once I’d made myself the meat in Rubelli’s sandwich, it was a chance I had to take. If Robin had been able to scream once, Rubelli and his men would have to outshoot my automatic. There was no way at all I was going to surrender myself to their untender mercies.

  The whine of the tires on the highway and the singing of the night wind through the open window blended into a minor-key melody as I drove steadily toward Hudson. I had so much on my mind, the trip seemed to take no time at all. There was a light on in Jed’s office, but I didn’t stop. Tomorrow would be time enough to bring him up to date on what I intended to tell him had taken place. Not all of it, of course. Just the part I wanted him to know.

  I turned from the highway into the lane leading to the cabin, then made the second turn into the brush-overgrown car-track I hadn’t yet done anything about clearing. A hundred yards from the cabin, Kaiser appeared suddenly in the headlights, facing the car. His appearance acted like a silent alarm. I shut off the motor instantly and flicked off the car lights.

  Darkness closed in with a rush.

  I could hear Kaiser’s tail thumping against the side of the car. I eased the door open as quietly as I could and stepped out into the brush. The shepherd was beside me at once, bumping against my leg, prancing up and down, whining softly. “What is it, boy?” I whispered to him, drawing my automatic.

  He darted along the car-track toward the cabin, a darker shadow in the night, then bounded back toward me again, still whining. I moved a few cautious steps toward the cabin, careful where I placed my feet. Kaiser repeated his dash toward the cabin and his return. The dog’s antics puzzled me. It almost appeared that he was eager for me to go to the cabin. Then he bounded away again and disappeared into the blackness.

  I had left no light burning in the cabin, but now through the trees I could see a light. I started to circle to my left, but then a familiar contralto voice floated across the soft night air. “It’s got to be you out there, Jed,” the contralto stated firmly. “This dog is trying to turn himself inside out to let me know you’re coming.”

  I reholstered the automatic and strode through the brush. “Woman,” I growled, “have you been carrying on an affair with Jed Raymond behind my back?”

  “Earl!”

  I could hear her running through the thicket before I could see her. We met a few yards from the cabin. We held onto each other tightly, saying nothing. We had no need to say anything. Kaiser did a joyful little jog around us. I had never seen the shepherd so excited.

  We broke it up after awhile and walked arm-in-arm to the cabin. Inside, Hazel turned to look at me with a beaming smile. The smile faded as she did a double-take. “What do you have that outfit on for?” she demanded.

  I’d forgotten I changed wigs and makeup in Tampa. “Just confusing the public,” I answered.

  “Sit down while I make coffee,” she ordered. “I just knew you’d be in Hudson after I read about Nate’s death. I just knew that awful woman would lure you here some-how and—”

  “There’s beer in the fridge,” I interrupted her. “Open up a couple of bottles, and then take your story from the top.”

  I sat down at the tiny table in the alcove that made up the kitchen, and Hazel came over and bent down to kiss me. She had on a smart-looking dress that her run through the brush had done no good, but her high-piled flaming red hair looked as though it had just come out from under the dryer. “You don’t look as though you’ve been roughing it, baby,” I observed.

  “I’ve been sitting on my big A wondering what to do next,” she replied ruefully. She opened the refrigerator and handed me a beer. I uncapped it with the opener in the table drawer. She sat down beside me. “You look wonderful, even in that getup I hardly recognize,” she went on.

  Hazel is a special doll.

  Any guy with a burned-off face is never going to look wonderful, no matter how clever the plastic surgeon is. I’d had one of the best, but even a miracle-worker can only do so much. The fact that Hazel saw something in me other than my patched-up features was the basis for our relationship.

  She reached across the table and took my hand. “I was afraid,” she said soberly. “I thought I might not see you again.”

  “You know better than that,” I told her. I handed her the bottle and she took a swallow of my beer. “Where were you?”

  “In Miami. When I decided to leave—”

  “How about starting with when you arrived in Hudson?”

  “All right. I knew something was wrong almost right away. Nate was so jittery he could hardly talk, and what he did say made no sense. The need for my presence in Hudson that he’d invented was so transparent I just had to wonder what was going on. All the time this—this female with the slant-eyed glasses was cozying up to me, being so friendly it made my teeth ache. God, the questions that woman asked! But I didn’t think too much—”

  “What kind of questions?”

  “Oh, if I had a boyfriend, and what was he like, and where was he—that sort of thing. I was being polite at first, and I didn’t realize until afterward how much I’d told her. When I finally began wondering about her, I thought she might be a lezzie. And then there was Nate. He was so shook up I actually thought he’d been fiddling with my account. Anyway, when I left his office Wednesday morning, I decided not to go back to the motel. I wanted to get away for a couple of days and think. I didn’t know how to leave a message for you that wouldn’t lead that woman to me, too. Then when I read about Nate in the paper yesterday I had to come back and see what was going on. I kept wondering if I’d talked too much and told that woman enough to locate you, although why she’d want to I couldn’t—”

  “Okay,” I said. “It’s my turn now.”

  Swiftly I reviewed recent events: Robin’s arrival in Arkansas, the trip to Hudson, getting together with Jed again, digging out Lou Espada’s background, connecting him to Colisimo, the fracas with Rubelli, the gradual realization that Colisimo intended to take over Hazel’s money. I didn’t mention Casey Deakin or the night’s happenings.

  Hazel listened attentively. “Lou was a weak but delightful man at first,” she said quietly when I finished.

  “Perhaps not as weak as Colisimo thought. Jed dug up a couple of instances which seemed to prove that, before he died, Espada tried to protect local people he’d tied into Colisimo’s cash.”

  “Why do you think Nate was killed?” Hazel asked quietly.

  I was sure he was killed because Rubelli thought he knew where Hazel had gone, but I wasn’t about to tell her that. “Under pressure, Nate gave them the copy of your will in his safe,” I said. “If Colisimo got his hands on you and forced you to make him your heir, Bolts didn’t want Nate around as witness to the change. They blew the box in Nate’s office to make it look like an
ordinary robbery.”

  Hazel clapped a hand to her forehead. “My will! That’s why that woman kept pestering me about you! If they got rid of me, they had to get rid of you. Damn! What a favor I did you!”

  “Why’d you change it in the first place?” I demanded.

  She smiled, her warmly beautiful Hazel-smile. “I thought you were a more deserving charity case,” she said demurely.

  “It probably worked out for the best,” I admitted. “If they hadn’t needed me on the scene, which put me where I had a chance to nose around, Colisimo might have blind-sided you.”

  “How could he do it?” she asked indignantly.

  “Your forced signature.” I didn’t say what Colisimo’s next move would inevitably have been after coercing Hazel into signing everything over to him. “There’s a couple of things that still bother me,” I went on. “After Espada died, Colisimo went to jail, but I don’t understand why the syndicate didn’t move in on you right away while you were still here in town to protect their money.”

  The conversation died out. I had another beer, and then we got ready for bed. Hazel came into the bedroom where I was already starting to get out of my clothes. She hugged me once, then began undressing herself.

  One of the great things about the girl is that she always seems to know instinctively whether I’ve got it or not.

  We went to sleep naked in each other’s arms like sated honeymooners in an unheated mountain hunting lodge.

  In the morning it was different.

  I woke with a sense of well-being I couldn’t identify until my hand encountered the warm-fleshed female beside me in the bed. I threw back the sheet that was our only covering and hand-stroked curves and hollows. Hazel woke, smiled sleepily, then knelt up over me and bent down to rub her cheek against mine.

  I played pat-a-cake with her large, strawberry-nippled breasts. She rubbed them against my chest until my tickling body-hair caused them to stiffen erotically. I had just reached for her purposefully when she straightened up. “Hold it!” she exclaimed.