Operation Fireball d-3 Page 3

  I went to the phone booth and checked out Area Code 815. It was in northeast Illinois, not too far from Chicago. It told me nothing. I couldn’t even remember in which part of the country I’d been Charlie Gosger.

  I went back to the bar and thought it over. A telephone call would settle it. If I didn’t like what I heard, I could hang up. But why call at all? Did I want to meet anyone from my Charlie Gosger period?

  There was even a reason for not calling. I’d escaped from the prison hospital with my facial bandages still on after the plastic surgery. No one knew what my face looked like. Nobody could connect the current Earl Drake by sight at least with any previous identity of mine. No one with whom I’d ever worked previously could recognize me now even if he sat down at the bar beside me. It was a factor worth protecting.

  And yet—

  I was marking time, and I hadn’t much more time to mark. I had a car, not new, and a little money. Neither was going to last long. I should have been planning what came next. Instead, I was sitting in Curly’s, sipping bourbon. I kept telling myself that I had to get going, but I didn’t do it.

  It’s odd how a man’s mind works. I found myself dwelling upon past jobs, how well they’d gone, and how satisfying it had been. Who was it who said that a man is over the hill when he thinks about what he’s accomplished in the past rather than what he plans to do in the future?

  The hard-core realization that I was ducking the issue set me in motion. I changed a five-dollar bill into silver at the bar, then left Curly’s and went down the street to a pay phone. I didn’t trust Curly’s phones. I gave the operator the number. She asked me for $1.75 for the first three minutes. When the phone started ringing, I glanced at my watch. It was after midnight. Around Chicago it would be two A.M. I hadn’t realized it was that late.

  The phone rang five times at the other end of the line. I was almost ready to hang up when the receiver was picked up and a gruff voice said hello.

  “I’m calling from California,” I began. I realized that I hadn’t planned what I was going to say. “I saw your message to Charlie Gosger. If it’s your message.”

  For a moment I heard only the line hum against a muted background of faint static. “Yeah?” the voice said at last. “Is this Charlie?”

  “I don’t know if it is or not.” Now, that’s a fine thing to say, I thought. “I mean, I might have been once.” My feeling of irritation increased. The second remark made no more sense than the first.

  But the heavy voice seemed to have no qualms about my uncertainty. “Where you callin’ from?”

  I hesitated. “Down the street from Curly’s,” I said at last.

  “I thought you’d make that circuit sooner or later.” There was a complacent note in the voice.

  I had a sudden thought. “Was there more than one of the Charlie Gosger messages?”

  “A dozen. Around the country in places like Curly’s. You still in business?”

  “Wouldn’t that depend on the business you had in mind?”

  “Okay, okay. You remember Slater?”

  Slater? Slater. I opened my mouth and closed it again. Slater. Am image began to form. Big. Hard-nosed. Close-mouthed. Trigger-happy. Slater. Black hair. Bulldog features. Heavy voice. Yes. I remembered a Slater.

  “You got it?” the voice inquired.

  “If it’s the same man.”

  “If you’re Charlie Gosger, you stood next to Slater in Massillon, Ohio, one mornin’ when he was directin’ traffic.”

  I remembered Massillon, but that wasn’t enough. “Two cars left the square that morning,” I said. “Which way did they go?”

  “One north an’ one south.”

  “How many men in each car?”

  “Three an’ three.” The line hummed for a moment. “Okay?”

  “Okay. So far.”

  “I’d like to meet with you, Charlie.”

  I wasn’t ready to go that fast. “You’re Slater?”

  “Right. I got a proposition for you. Biggest thing’s come along in years. Maybe ever.”

  It wasn’t my method of operation. In the past I’d always drawn up the plan and put the proposition. But I had nothing going for me now. I stood there in the phone booth, trying to recall what I could of Slater’s characteristics from the Massillon job.

  “You still there?” the telephone voice inquired.

  “I’m here. I’m trying to make up my mind.”

  “Charlie Gosger never had no trouble makin’ up his mind.”

  It was true. So true that it jolted me. Was that what was the matter with me lately? One of the things? Charlie Gosger would study a situation, and if it looked right and felt right, he’d open the stops and bore in. Life had been marvelously uncomplicated in those days.

  But the old days had nothing to do with my decision now. If I said yes and met this man Slater, I’d be giving away the anonymity of Earl Drake, which I’d literally gone through hell to establish. And depending upon Slater’s proposition, I could be giving it away for nothing.

  But where was I headed now? Into penny ante stuff because my nerve was gone? That wasn’t right, either. It wasn’t my nerve. The affair at the ranch had proved that. It was just that I couldn’t seem to initiate a project any longer.

  I took a breath and released it. “Where do you want to meet, Slater?”

  “How about right in San Diego?” he came back promptly. “The Aztec Hotel. In the bar. I can be there at five tomorrow afternoon.”

  It reminded me. “You won’t know me.”

  “I won’t?”

  “I have a new face.”

  “ ‘Zat right? You been to Switzerland?”

  “It was done here.”

  “Remind me to get the name of the doctor. Couple pals of mine’d be interested. Now about tomorrow. I won’t be wearin’ a sign because I owe Uncle a little time, but you should know me. The Aztec bar at five, okay? An’ come thinkin’ big. You never heard nothin’ like this before.”

  “I’ll be there,” I said, and hung up.

  I didn’t go back to Curly’s.

  I went back to my room and sat in its uncomfortable chair while I tried to figure out why I had jumped so quickly sight unseen at Slater’s unorthodox proposal for a meeting.

  I gave it up finally and went to bed.

  * * *

  At four the next afternoon I scrawled the name of Earl Drake on an Aztec Hotel registration card and was assigned Room 304. I looked around the room after I got rid of the bellboy who had brought up my briefcase, my only piece of luggage. It was a pleasant-looking room. It seemed a shame to waste it on a meeting that might come to nothing.

  No sooner thought than done. I went downstairs to the lobby pay phones. I gave the long distance operator Hazel’s number and waited while the call went through. “Hi,” I said when the familiar deep voice came on the line.

  “Hi, yourself,” she returned in pleased surprise.

  “Any excitement?”

  “With you gone?” she asked demurely.

  “What did you tell the man?”

  “That I did it myself.”

  “That you did it yourself?”

  “Oh, he didn’t believe me.” She giggled. “If it had been done with a two-by-four or a baseball bat, he’d have believed it quick enough, but—”

  “Can you fly down here?” I interrupted her.

  Her voice quickened. “I certainly can.”

  “Get yourself booked and call me back here and let me know what time you’ll arrive at the airport.” I gave her the number of the pay phone booth.

  “I’ll call you right back,” she promised.

  I sat in a lobby armchair while I waited for the call. I had left Hazel’s place thinking that if she kept her mouth shut, there would be no real follow-through on the episode with the sadistic kids. Second thought had showed me the hole in the doughnut. Hazel had had visitors before. Eventually, a copy of the sheriff’s report was going to reach someone who remembered a sharpsho
oting incident in south Florida. Someone who was going to put two and two together. Hazel was going to have more visitors, and I wanted to talk to her first.

  Her call back to me came within ten minutes. “I can’t get there till after midnight,” she said. “One A.M. Is that too late?”

  “That’s fine. Walk right through the terminal out to the cabstand.” I’d have to make sure she wasn’t being followed, although it was a little early for that. “You’ll see me.”

  “Not driving a cab, I hope?”

  “Are you demeaning honest labor, woman?”

  She snickered. “What should I bring in the way of clothes?”

  “The legal minimum.”

  She snickered again. “You certainly do make it easy on a girl.”

  “See you at one A.M.” I said, and hung up.

  I went upstairs to the room. I opened the briefcase, which contained only two items — the.38 and a shoulder holster. I removed my jacket, strapped on the holster, and replaced the jacket. I practiced with the gun until it was drawing freely. Then I sat down and turned on the television set.

  At 4:55 I took the elevator down to the lobby again and stood in the doorway of the men’s bar. Half a dozen scattered figures sat on the stools in the tranquility of the dim lighting. There were as many more at the tables.

  Slater wasn’t hard to locate. He didn’t look like I remembered him, but he looked like Slater ought to look ten years later. Burly, square-jawed, dour-looking. Menacing. Definitely older-looking but still capable.

  I backed away from the doorway to a battery of nearby house phones that permitted me to keep an eye on the end of the bar where Slater sat. I watched him for five minutes to make sure he wasn’t exchanging hand or eye signals with anyone else in the room. If he was, I couldn’t detect it. I picked up the phone.

  “Ring the bar and have Mr. Slater paged, please,” I told the hotel operator when she came on the line.

  The page call didn’t carry out to the lobby, where I was standing, but I saw Slater’s head come up when he heard it. He slid from his bar stool and walked out of my line of vision toward a phone indicated by the barman. “Yeah?” the same gruff voice as the previous night said in my ear.

  “The bar is too public,” I said. “I’m upstairs in Room 529.”

  “Suits me. I’ll be right there.”

  Slater came back to his drink, picked it up, and drained it. His back was toward me as he set his empty glass down slowly, then walked out into the lobby without a backward glance. He passed within six feet of me on his way to the elevators, but I remained where I was and kept my eyes on the bar stool Slater had just left.

  In seconds a huge blond man with walking-beam shoulders moved to the stool and sat down. The barman started in his direction, but the Viking snapped his fingers as though he’d just remembered something. He left the stool and went toward the lobby.

  Before he cleared the doorway, I was walking toward the same bar stool. I didn’t even need to sit down. Boldly traced in the moisture on the bar top were the figures 529. Slater had left a message.

  I made it back into the lobby in time to see the Viking step aboard an elevator. The indicator of the one alongside it marked it as being at the fifth floor. I stationed myself in front of it. Sure enough, it started downward. I glanced around. There was no one standing near me in front of the bank of elevators. When the shining bronze doors opened, I was standing directly in front of Slater. His features were flushed and angry-looking.

  He started to move around me. I put both hands against his chest and pushed. He went backward into the elevator cab, his face comical in its surprise. I stepped aboard and jabbed the control button, which closed the elevator doors behind us. In the same moment I crowded Slater so he could feel the outline of the holstered gun, then stepped away so he couldn’t reach me with his hard-looking hands. “You made a mistake in not coming alone,” I told him. “Let’s hear the story fast or only one of us is going to walk off this thing.”

  His expression was dangerous-looking as he eyed me. Then he decided to smile. “You’re a cute bastard,” he said. His voice was calm. “You’re right about the face. I’d never have known you.”

  “Never mind the chatter. Who’s your oversized blond friend?”

  “Another cute bastard. The guy who’s goin’ to get us where we need to go on this caper.”

  We couldn’t stay on the elevator forever. I punched the third-floor button. When the doors opened, I motioned to Slater to leave first. “Room 304,” I said. “To the right.”

  He moved down the corridor ahead of me. He had a firm, easy stride. He stood back while I unlocked the door. One hand inside my jacket, I waved him inside. He entered warily, scanning the room for possible hiding places that might conceal an accomplice. He looked into the bathroom, then into the closet. Satisfied that we were alone, he spoke up again. This time his tone was businesslike. “You should have been able to tell by lookin’ at him that he’s no cop,” he said.

  That much was true. In the quick glimpse I’d had of him, the big man seemed to have none of the usual police mannerisms difficult to describe but impossible to overlook. “Where does he fit into the proposition?”

  “A full partner,” Slater said without hesitation.

  “How many partners?”

  “There’ll be five of us all together.”

  “And how big is this walnut we’re supposed to cut up?”

  “Let’s get Erikson up here an’ have him tell you.”

  “Erikson?”

  “The man you sidetracked.”

  “Is he calling the shots on the project?”

  Slater started to answer me and then stopped. “Up to a point,” he said at last. He listened to the sound of his own words and seemed to approve of them. “Up to a point,” he repeated, and grinned at me. He had strong-looking teeth.

  “What’s this man Erikson contributing?”

  “Background and knowhow. He’s an ex-Navy type who got in the grease with the brass. He specialized in communications then.”

  The blond man had the look of an ex-Navy type, but so did a lot of other men who’d never been closer to an ocean than the Mojave Desert. “So evidently we need an ex-Navy type who specialized in communications. What else do we need?”

  Slater ticked them off on blunt fingers. “We need a Spanish-speakin’ type a little rigid in the nostrils. We need a guy who can navigate a forty-footer by dead reckonin'. Erikson says he has men for both slots. We need a guy who’s a specialist with locks, explosives, alarm systems, an’ the art of gettin’ cash out of places it’s not considered possible to get it out. That’s you. An’ we need a guy who knows where the cash is.” Slater grinned again. “That’s me.”

  At least it sounded as though some planning had gone into the project. “A Spanish-speaking type and a boat,” I said. “Is this the place to say I’m allergic to South American prisons?”

  Slater’s stare was level. “If we miss on this one, you’ll never see a prison.”

  “So? A blindfold and a last cigarette?”

  “Correct.”

  No lace panties on that pork chop. I thought it over for a moment. “I’d need to know more about this man Erikson,” I said.

  “I thought you’d think so,” Slater said comfortably. He started to raise his right arm, then paused. “I’m gonna take somethin’ out of my jacket pocket, okay?”

  “Carefully,” I answered him.

  In slow motion he removed a flat, foil-wrapped disc a little larger than a hockey puck. He removed the foil and showed me a reel of tape. “Call the desk an’ ask them if they have a tape recorder,” he said.

  I picked up the phone. “Do you have a tape recorder I can borrow for a few minutes?” I asked the front desk clerk.

  “We have a tape recorder you can rent for as long as you like,” he reproved me gently.

  The marts of commerce. “That’s fine. Send it up to 304.”

  “Let me call Erikson before he get
s to thinkin’ I’ve run out on him,” Slater suggested. “He’s bound to get nervous when he bounces off the door of that phony room you gave us.”

  He moved to the phone when I made no objection. “Our man blocked you out of the play, Karl,” he said after he had asked the operator to have Karl Erikson paged in the bar. “Give me ten minutes to tell him the proposition an’ we’ll pipe you aboard.” He listened for a moment and his mouth drew down at the corners. “You know any way you’re not gonna give me the ten minutes?” he asked softly, and hung up the phone. “Likes to think he’s in charge sixty seconds every minute,” he said to me.

  There was a knock at the door. I went to it as Slater stepped into the bathroom, out of sight. I took the portable tape recorder from the bellboy and signed the receipt for it. Slater came out of the bathroom, took the recorder from me, placed it on the desk, and threaded the tape onto it with fingers that looked clumsy but weren’t. “Okay, here’s your sales pitch,” he announced, and flipped a switch.

  For a second there was nothing. Then there was a scratchy sound followed by an authoritative voice. “Watch yourself inside there, Slater. Don’t forget I want to see the palms of your hands after you shake hands.” There was the squeak of a hinge, a shuffle of feet, and a solid-sounding reverberant clang of metal on metal. I could visualize a barred door closing. It’s a sound never forgotten. I’d listened to it for five years when I was a kid. I’d made up my mind then I was never going to listen to it again.

  The feet shuffled again, and then there were a few seconds’ silence. “ ‘Bout time you showed up again, man,” Slater’s voice said. It was followed by a whisper, the prison whisper that pierces the ears at three feet and is inaudible at ten. “Did the screw sit you down here, Erikson? Don’t answer out loud.” There was no reply. “Beef about the light an’ let’s move,” the whisper continued.

  “I can’t see here,” another voice complained in a normal tone. “Can we move to another table?” There was a renewed shuffling of feet followed by the sound of heavy bodies sinking into chairs. “You realize that all these table locations could be bugged, of course,” the same voice said softly. It had a hollow sound, as though the walls were farther removed. Where was the microphone, I wondered?