Operation Whiplash Read online

  I didn’t say anything, and he decided it was safe to get mad again. “Blow!” he rasped, raising a hand in a threatening gesture. “Lucky for you there’s nothin’ missin’ from my poke or I’d pull your teeth one at a time. Blow!”

  I couldn’t resist the temptation. I drew my automatic and began to sidle toward Rubelli as he had toward me previously. I didn’t say a word. “Hey,” he said again, disconcerted. He began to shuffle backward, eye on the gun. “What’re you, anyways, a goddam ps-psychopath?” His voice was a high-pitched whine.

  I stopped four feet away from him with the 9mm. lined up on his belt buckle. I made my voice as tough-sounding as I could. “Anyone ever tell you that you talk too much, man?” I rapped at him.

  Despite the gun, his ego couldn’t stand the hassling. “Listen, you know who I am?” he blustered. “I’m Mario Rubelli, you goddam jerk, an’ I’ll take that thing away from you an’ stuff it up your ass.”

  “You’re not Rubelli,” I needled him. “Rubelli’s a big shot, not a loose-bladder type afraid of a dog.”

  It struck a nerve. “I’ll kill you, you bastard!” Rubelli screamed, his dark face turning almost purple with rage.

  “I want to hear you say that with three holes in your belly,” I told him. I extended the automatic and simulated squeezing the trigger.

  He believed me, because he was the type to do it himself. He went down on his knees. “No, no, no!” he begged. “You—you got me all wrong, man! Here!” He tossed me his wallet. I caught it in my left hand. “Take fifty. Take a hundred. No hard feelin’s, man. Help yourself.”

  I took the wallet in my right hand and changed the automatic to my left. Then I threw it in his face. It doesn’t take any courage to badger an unarmed man, but Rubelli was so used to operating that way I couldn’t refuse the chance to turn the tables. He was still on his knees, blinking, a hand pressed to his face where the wallet had struck him, when I let myself out the door. I didn’t turn my back on him. I knew he had a gun stashed somewhere in that motel room.

  That was all that could help him, though.

  He wasn’t clean enough to call the motel manager or the police, despite his bravado.

  Kaiser and I hustled away from there in the Ford. I had lost my temper for nothing. The mission had been worse than aborted; Rubelli knew me now, if not by name at least in the context of my present wig-and-facial appearance.

  Nor would he be likely to forget, because of the circumstances.

  I was still chewing myself out mentally for the lack of judgment when I again approached the traffic light in town. On the corner of the intersection was the somber brick front of the Suncoast Trust Company. The sight of it reminded me of Jed’s remark that he had a man there who furnished him under-the-table financial information when Jed requested it.

  I’d had a brief association with the Suncoast Trust Company during my previous stay in Hudson. I’d met its president, Roger Craig. The association had been mutually profitable. Craig wouldn’t know me with my new face. That was all to the good considering the events leading up to its reconstruction. The point was that I could approach Craig now as an unknown, and who better than a bank president could supply financial information?

  If he felt so inclined. But on what basis could he be approached? Not as I had done it before, certainly. Then I’d been an itinerant tree surgeon looking for work. Would Craig listen to a free-lance writer pursuing loose ends in the underworld saga of Lou Espada? Or an I.R.S. man running down cross references to gangster connections?

  Both could present problems, but it might be worth a try. I turned east at the traffic light and drove for half a mile before I took a road leading away from the swamp. It led to higher ground where the better homes in town were located. I located the intersection of University Place and Golden Hill Lane and considered the white-pillared mansion nestled amidst ten acres of trees. I was familiar with the trees nearest the house; they had furnished my previous introduction to Roger Craig.

  I steered the Ford into the elliptical graveled driveway and stopped in front of the house. It was still seventy-five yards away, at the end of a crushed-stone walk. I pressed a button and a set of chimes rang pleasantly. A black butler opened the door. “I’d like to see Mr. Craig for a few minutes if he isn’t busy,” I said. “He doesn’t know me.”

  The man looked doubtful, but he motioned for me to step inside and wait. He disappeared through a doorway halfway along a vaulted passageway so high his footsteps echoed. There was the briefest of pauses, and then Roger Craig appeared in the hallway from the inner room, probably a library. He held a cup of coffee in one hand and a section of the Sunday paper in the other.

  He appeared tired as he approached me. He still had the pasty-white complexion—the telltale residue of the heart attack that had taken him from his lumber business into the family bank. He still had pinched-looking pain lines around his mouth. His suit had been cut when his frame was larger. Roger Craig looked in poorer physical condition than when I had first met him.

  “I know you wouldn’t have talked to me if I’d come to you at the bank, Mr. Craig, and I wouldn’t have blamed you,” I tried to disarm him before he could ask a question. “So I took a chance on coming to your home. My name is Tom Sanders, Mr. Craig, and I’m employed part-time by the Internal Revenue Service.” I hoped the part-time bit would keep him from asking for credentials. “I’ve been sent to Hudson by the Atlanta office to do a little backtracking on a man named Louis Espada. He’s been deceased for some time, but little oddities keep cropping up. I’ve verified that he had no accounts with the Suncoast Trust Company, Mr. Craig, so I’m hoping you’ll agree with me there would be no violation of banking confidence.”

  “Lou Espada wasn’t a customer of any bank,” Roger Craig stated. “He operated strictly out of his pocket.” His voice still had the timbre of the robust man he once was. He stood for a moment, musing. “You’re quite correct, Mr—ah—Sanders. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t talk to you either at the bank or here, unless you came armed with a subpoena. But oddly enough I have a personal interest in whatever you might turn up, so I suppose the only way I can expect your confidence—” he emphasized the your, “—is to share mine.”

  “A personal interest?” I repeated.

  “Yes, that’s right. Shall we sit out on the lawn? Would you like coffee?”

  “I’d appreciate it.”

  The bank president led the way outside to a rustic bench under a huge magnolia tree. The butler promptly appeared with a tray holding a silver urn, creamer, and sugar bowl. I glanced around while the butler poured. “You certainly have beautiful trees on the grounds.” I made conversation.

  “I had an ancestor who took an avid interest in them,” Craig replied. “I’m afraid I don’t possess it myself. A tramp tree surgeon passed this way three years ago and did a handsome job of trimming and sprucing them up. The man had police trouble before he left town, and I’m given to understand if I wanted to rehire him I’d have to contact him in hell.”

  I had been the tramp tree surgeon. It was the first I’d known that the police had given out the word they’d finished me off after the prison hospital escape. Hurt pride produces many such statements.

  The president of the family-owned Suncoast Trust Company was looking at me expectantly. “The major thrust of my local investigation,” I began, “is the search for links between Louis Espada and a minor but rather well-known syndicate operator named Bolts Colisimo.”

  I had expected this to be news to Craig, but he was nodding agreement. “I’ve had my own limited dealings with Mr. Colisimo,” he said dryly. “And the preliminary approach was made by Lou Espada.”

  “Approach?” I ventured.

  “Colisimo was interested in acquiring the Suncoast Trust Company.” A wintry smile appeared briefly at the corners of Craig’s pain-wracked mouth. “At terms extremely advantageous to Colisimo. Anything is for sale at the right price, including the bank, in view of my physical condition, but I
considered his offer inappropriate.”

  “And you told him so?”

  “I told Espada so.”

  “What was his reaction? Colisimo’s?”

  “He made a rather grievous error. He threatened me.” The wintry smile reappeared. “But we bankers aren’t entirely helpless. I notified a friend in the governor’s office who then discovered there was a long-outstanding charge against Colisimo in a state court for second-degree murder. The case had been noticeable mostly for its inactivity until my inquiry. The wheels began to grind again, and Colisimo eventually pled to aggravated assault. He received a five-year sentence, of which he served three and a half.” Craig paused reflectively. “My name never appeared, of course.”

  “You kept close track of this,” I observed.

  “When a man threatens me, I keep an eye on him,” Craig said grimly. “Colisimo was released on parole a year ago. Lou Espada died while Colisimo was in jail, and Colisimo hasn’t reapproached me to date. If he does, he’s likely to find that he has somehow violated his parole.”

  I was trying to fit it together in my mind. Colisimo goes to jail; Espada manages his affairs; Espada dies; Hazel inherits; Colisimo tries to recover from Hazel? Was that what all this was about? Just the way that Colisimo had not only recovered his money in Casey Deakin’s trucking business, but had taken over the whole business.

  “You had an opportunity to form an opinion of Louis Espada,” I suggested.

  “I liked Lou.” Craig said it firmly. “He had a lot of charm. He kept his own counsel very successfully. He used no local lawyers in his business affairs. Everything I know about him—or heard, I should probably say, since none of it was ever documented—came second-hand.”

  “Is there any question in your mind that he was Colisimo’s front man?”

  “None at all, although I must admit the realization was belated on my part. For quite a while I took Lou on his own terms, as a lone wolf operator with a passion for secrecy. Only when he came to me and represented himself as the buyer of the bank did I take a second look at him financially. I checked him out via the usual procedures and learned nothing. But a bank has numerous tried and true methods of obtaining answers where money is concerned. Meantime, Lou changed his story to me and admitted he had partners in the proposed purchase. By that time a reliable source had identified Colisimo as the instigator of Espada’s proposal. I wasn’t about to leave that sort of succession to haunt local depositors, much as I’d like to sell the bank.”

  I waited, but he seemed to have concluded all he had to say on the subject. “Have you learned of any Colisimo activity in town since his release from prison?” I asked.

  Roger Craig’s mouth set itself in a thin line. “Only in the case of the Deakin Trucking Company. Off the record, I tried to get Casey to go to the district attorney. I still feel something might have been done. But Casey refused, and there was nothing I could do. There was an object lesson for me in what happened to Casey, I might say. I’m continuing to keep an eye on Colisimo.”

  Was it time to take a chance? “I wonder if you feel there could be any possible connection between Colisimo and the death two days ago of Nathan Pepperman?”

  Craig’s gray eyes slitted. “It hadn’t occurred to me, but the way Nate died—” He didn’t finish it. “Still, I don’t know what the connection could have been. Nate was a business manager who worked for a fee. He had no money of his own of which I’m aware. From what I know of Colisimo, Nate could hardly have interested him. That sort of slimy—” Craig came to a full stop. “Wait.” He closed his eyes as if he were running a mental microfilm behind his lids. “Didn’t I hear—or read somewhere—that Pepperman was handling the interests of Lou Espada’s widow?”

  “I didn’t know that,” I lied. “If true, it suggests a couple of interesting possibilities.”

  Craig nodded vigorously. “It surely does. Suppose, after getting out of jail, Colisimo decided to recover the cash Espada had been manipulating for him?”

  “Interesting,” I repeated. “It’s a matter of public record that Espada died intestate.”

  “Then the widow was the sole heir!” Craig exclaimed. “And the courts have held repeatedly that there can be no separation of commingled money if good—”

  “Commingled?” I said.

  “The separation of good money and bad,” Craig said impatiently. “Assume Espada’s widow had money of her own, for instance.” Which she had; Hazel had inherited substantially from Blueshirt Charlie Andrews, the gambler who bet ‘em higher than a duck could fly. “When the widow inherited from Espada, she inherited everything he had to leave, which could have included money of Colisimo’s. But if she inherited in good faith, no court would force her to divest herself of Colisimo’s undoubtedly unprovable share.”

  “Interesting,” I said for the third time. I rose from the bench. “You’ve been extremely helpful, Mr. Craig,” I went on earnestly. “I have some definite targets now.”

  Roger Craig stood, also. “I’d be pleased to hear anything you felt you could tell me upon the conclusion of your investigation, Mr. Sanders,” he said.

  I nodded assent. “Officially or unofficially, I’m sure something can be worked out,” I told him. “Thanks again.”

  We shook hands, and I walked back along the crushed-stone path to the car. I exceeded the speed limit every foot of the way to Jed Raymond’s office. The door at the top of the outside landing was open, and I went inside. Jed had the telephone propped between ear and shoulder and was promising someone that anything that person breathed would be held in strictest confidence. Then he listened, but after a moment he shrugged at me to indicate disappointment in what he was hearing.

  He concluded the conversation almost abruptly, then leaned back in his chair and considered me. “It’s like pullin’ teeth,” he reported. “Nothin’ concrete. A few hints that might be worth followin’ up on if—” His voice ran down. “I can’t tell much from that inflexible plastic face of yours,” he resumed, “but your attitude resembles a feline which has just ingested a vireo.”

  I ran through for him what I’d learned from Roger Craig. “It spotlights Hazel as a pigeon,” I concluded.

  But Jed was thinking of something else. “Man, you’ve got your nerve bracing Roger Craig,” he said. “He’s got the reputation of bein’ the most unapproachable man in this area.”

  “How long since someone tried approaching him?”

  Jed’s grin was wry. “You could be right. Once a man gets tagged like that, his reputation feeds on itself. It could have started after his heart attack when he had to take it easy and see as few people as possible.”

  “Suppose we assume Craig is right, Jed.”

  “Okay. What then?”

  “Let’s go back. Colisimo had Hazel here. Then why did he need me, if our previous guess about Robin not having been sent by Hazel is correct?”

  Jed wrinkled his nose. “Suppose Hazel smelled a rat and cleared out to get away from him?” he hazarded. “And Colisimo figured you were the best bet to lead him to her?”

  “Not bad,” I admitted. “How could Colisimo be expected to know that Hazel would hide herself so well I couldn’t find her, either?” I thought about it for a moment. Jed started to say something, but I held up a hand to stop him. A murky idea deep in my subconscious was beginning to force itself to the surface. I had a mental image of the shattered front of Nate Pepperman’s office safe. “I think I know another reason, Jed,” I said slowly.

  “Yes?” he said expectantly.

  “Was Pepperman a lawyer?”

  “No, although he knew as much about contracts as anyone in town. But he always had one of the local talent draw them up.”

  “Do you know which one of the local talent?”

  “I can sure as hell find out.” Jed reached for the phone again, then withdrew his hand. “Why is it so important?”

  “Call it a hunch. I have a feeling—well, just call it a hunch,” I repeated. “Oh, by the wa
y, I met Mario Rubelli.” I did a little more filling in. “He didn’t impress me.”

  “There’s beaucoup people who shared that opinion walkin’ around with permanent lumps,” Jed said gloomily. “Plus a few no longer walkin’.”

  “Find out Nate Pepperman’s lawyer,” I said.

  Jed was reaching resignedly for the telephone again when I clattered down the outside stairs and rejoined Kaiser in the car.

  six

  One place I hadn’t checked for a trace of Hazel in Hudson was the Dixie Pig, the tavern she had formerly operated. Jed hadn’t mentioned the possibility, which probably meant there was no point to checking, but it was one more loose thread that would nag at me until I satisfied myself about it.

  I headed north in the Ford, but just beyond the traffic light I had an interruption. Robin Ford emerged from a drugstore and started to walk down the street on my side.

  I didn’t give myself time to think about it. “Into the back seat, boy,” I directed Kaiser. The dog was still slithering over the seat back when I pulled into the curb beside Robin. “Get in,” I said to her after I opened the door.

  She looked disconcerted. She glanced up and down the street in the manner of a woman wondering whether she dared be seen getting into the automobile of a semi-dissolute character. Given her sexual background, it would have made a wooden Indian laugh. She finally started to get in, then stopped when she saw Kaiser in the back seat. “Say—” she blurted. “Mario said there was a—” She chopped it off in mid-sentence.

  “Get into the car!” I snapped. “Your chubby ass is safe unless I tell the dog differently.”

  She plunked herself down in the passenger’s seat with her body half-turned so she could keep an apprehensive eye on the back seat. “You said you’d call me every day and I haven’t heard a word from you,” she said with a pouting expression around her mouth.