The Killing Man mh-12 Read online

  "Penta," I said.

  "What makes you think so?"

  "You said he was here on a high-level assignment."

  "That was a generality."

  "Now it's a specific. He had a target . . . the vice president. He didn't make it a priority and was probably considered unreliable. Bern and Fells were sent to kill him. The only real contact they had with him was through me, so they tried the interrogation under narcotics in Smiley's garage. Hell, they probably used Smiley's premises before when they were on your team."

  "Shall I check on that point?"

  "No use, General. One of them came back and knocked off Smiley so nobody would make the connection. Their mistake was using their old safe house again. If they had let slip to Penta when they worked together where that safe house was, he could have used it himself. It wouldn't have been much of a trick to get keys to the place. A nice piece of information to have just in case."

  "He used it well," Skubal said. "I imagine he staked it out and killed them both together."

  "Looked like a small-caliber hollow-point at close range, right in the heads."

  "Penta has used that technique before. One shot each?"

  "He didn't need any more."

  "What else can keep him in the area, Mike?"

  "Explain."

  "He killed his first person in your office. He's killed two men assigned to wipe him out. If the reports are correct, nothing is going to keep this Penta from fulfilling his contract."

  "Why should somebody want to kill the vice president?"

  "No one can really understand the political mind. What happens at those levels aren't mine to consider, outside investigative situations. I collect facts now. However, there is one thing for you to reflect on."

  Here it came again and I beat him to it. "He doesn't want me, General."

  "If you say so. But somebody wants you. Why?"

  I said, "They still think I know where their billion dollars went to."

  The word billion stopped him momentarily. "For that much money," he told me, "I think they would go to far sterner methods to get you out of the way. Where are you now?"

  "In Pat's office. I couldn't be safer."

  "You realize, of course, that you're vulnerable. Have you seen the tabloid that's on the newsstand?"

  "I picked it up on the way home."

  "Then anyone who knows of your true connection with Velda can have a secondary target. Have you checked on her yet?"

  "No, I was planning to, but-"

  "Get in gear, Michael. That girl had better be kept under close cover. The vice president is under security, money can always wait, but don't let that girl get killed. She was your primary reason for getting involved in this to start with, so keep it that way."

  "Okay, General, you got it." He hung up with a grunt before I could say good-bye.

  Pat was looking at me, washing a couple of aspirins down with a drink of water. He squashed the cup in his fingers and tossed it in a wastebasket. The clock on the wall said it was five minutes after midnight. He said, "It's tomorrow, pal. I think we should talk."

  "You feel it too?"

  He nodded. "It's all closing in and I'm sitting on my thumbs. It started out as the murder of a nobody and now we're into all kinds of shit. Over in the other corner you're playing footsies with the Ice Lady and leaving me out in the cold. So let's put the pieces together. Sooner or later they are going to be asking me questions about your involvement and how and why I tolerated it and I'd like it all to go down clean and neat so that I'm off the hook and back on pension drive again. Now, let's do it."

  Talk. I pushed myself out of the chair and walked to the window. A few drops of rain hit it and inched down the pane, gradually soaking into the New York grime. Talk. Nothing but air and sounds unless it made sense. I turned around and stared at Pat. He had settled down in the desk chair, slowly folding his hands behind his head. He propped his foot on the toolbox and pushed himself back into a leaning position, waiting for me to talk.

  When he saw me grin with my teeth tight and my lips pulled back, he started to frown because he knew something had happened. I picked up the phone. I called Candace again and told her to get down here right away. She got all pissed off this time and insisted I tell her why. I said because she wanted to be president, that's why, and she didn't give me any more argument. I went to the coffee maker, poured a stale cup, stirred in enough sweetener so it didn't matter and sat down on the edge of the desk.

  Pat was giving me all the time in the world. I picked up a copy of Combat Handguns magazine, October 1988, and read the article titled "The Assassin: Who, When, Where, Why." "Got a later issue?" I asked him.

  He shook his head.

  I had just started reading the advertisements when Candace came in. She was mad, curious and beautiful, and now Pat took his hands down, leaned forward, waiting to see what I had to say.

  "You were on the right track, Pat."

  "What?"

  "How come you didn't send that toolbox to the property clerk?"

  "It's active evidence, that's why." He reached down, picked up the box and set it on the desk.

  "Figure it out?"

  I got that odd look again. "It didn't belong there. It was a keepsake. His old man made it." He fondled the handle of one of the chisels and put it back again. "You know what's queer here, don't you?"

  "Sure," I said. "He had no memory of his past except for the toolbox. They delivered him to his mother's house. He didn't know her, but spotted the box and just took it. He never even said why, except for one word. Mrs. DiCica said he told her 'Papa' and that was all."

  "Mike, please," Candace interrupted, "get to the point."

  "After he had his brains scrambled, he went to the hospital. His mother picked up his belongings and took them to her house. This toolbox was in his apartment. When he saw it again after his confinement, something registered in his mind. Something had left an impression heavy enough not to have been wiped out."

  I dumped the tools out on Pat's desk, looked at each piece carefully, then put them aside. Nothing was wrong with them at all. So it had to be in the box itself. The construction was sturdy, of hand-fitted three-quarter-inch-thick pine boards, the wood delicately carved and polished. The inch-thick dowel rod that ran the length of the box was worn smooth from constant handling in the center, with clever swirls growing deeper toward the ends. The box itself was more than a repository for tools. It was a personal thing whose maker was artisan as well as carpenter.

  And the damn thing was all solid wood. No hidden compartments, no secret places that I could see at all.

  But you aren't supposed to see secret places. They were made to remain unseen.

  I turned the box over and studied the initialed V.D., felt the grooving with my fingertip and probed where it fitted into the sides. Nothing. There wasn't one damn thing out of order.

  Pat was getting an exasperated look. There was disgust in his eyes and he pulled his hand across his mouth in an annoyed gesture.

  Candace still had some hope. Her eyes never left the box and when I put it back on the desk, finished with the examination, she still couldn't take her eyes off it. She had taken me at my word and saw the presidency sitting there because I had told her I would do it.

  Pat said, "I hope this isn't a game, buddy."

  I looked down into the empty box trying to think of something to say when I saw something that wasn't there at all. The wood grain of the bottom was typically pine, clear unknotted pine. I turned the box over again and looked at that part, beautifully clear unknotted pine.

  But the grain patterns were not identical. Close, but not identical.

  There was a famous knot in a rope that nobody could untie until the rough boy took his sword and slashed right through it and that ended that deal.

  I picked up the hammer, turned the box over and smashed it into the bottom. I didn't bother to look at how delicately or how cleverly the panel was built into the box . . . I just
pulled out the envelope, and three oversize one-hundred-dollar bills from the turn of the century, still redeemable in gold. I handed the bills to Pat and the envelope to Candace.

  Pat's face had no expression to it at all. We looked at Candace as she opened the envelope and took out two typed sheets of paper. She glanced at it quickly, her eyes widening abruptly. Then she turned the pages around for us to see.

  "It's in code. The whole thing's in code."

  I said, "Pat . . . ?"

  There was no hesitation. "Let's get Ray Wilson. He can set up the computers and have a go at it."

  "Decoding isn't that easy," Candace said.

  "Ray can get a few hours in on it before we even get it to the experts in Washington. Send them a copy anyway, but Ray gets first crack at it." He reached for the phone and started to run down Wilson.

  "Mike . . ."

  "Yeah?"

  "You think this is it?"

  "What else can it be?"

  "If we can locate this cache . . ."

  "Don't go getting your hopes up, baby. All you'll get will be the coke. There won't be any line to the buyers or the sellers by now. What you're getting is like digging up a live blockbuster bomb left over from World War II. All it's good for is destruction. You take the potential destructive value away, then everything goes back to square one. The status stays quo. There's no use for the previous owners waiting for the stuff to show up or go on searching for it. It's over."

  "But we haven't found it yet," she said.

  I could feel my stomach tighten up and I said, "Damn it to hell!"

  Pat waved me to stop, but I ignored him and got out of there as fast as I could.

  11

  Now the rain was making itself felt. It wasn't a clean rain you could shake loose, but a clinging wetness that smelled of concrete and asphalt. This kind of rain hid things you wanted to know and touched all your nerves with an irritating kind of anxiety.

  A Yellow Cab with a lady driver pulled over and I got in, giving her the hospital address. Her eyes bounced up to the rearview mirror. "You want emergency?"

  "Right."

  "You got it, mister." She hauled out into traffic and got heavy on the gas pedal. She made the first light, got right in the sequence and traveled with the green all the way to the turn. She went through a red signal, cut off a truck and went up the ramp as neatly as any ambulance. I handed her a ten-spot and didn't ask for change.

  Sickness and injury never stop in the big city. It was a real bloody night in the emergency room, spatters of red on the walls, trails stringing along the floors, smeared where feet had skidded in its sticky viscosity. The walking wounded were crowded by stretchers and wheelchairs and my shortcut to Velda's floor was blocked.

  Rather than try to bust on through I ran down the corridor and followed the arrows to the front elevators. I passed a dozen people, doctors and nurses, but running was common in a hospital and nobody questioned me. It was long after visitors' hours and if you were there at this time, you were authorized to be there.

  There were three elevators in the bank and all of them were on the upper floors. I wasn't about to wait, found the stairwell and went up them two at a time. I stopped on the third-floor landing, my breath raw in my lungs. I made myself breathe easily and in thirty seconds a degree of normalcy came back. Wasting myself in a wild run up the stairs wouldn't leave anything left, and that I couldn't take a chance on.

  When I reached her floor I pushed through the steel fire door into the corridor and the wave of quiet was a soft kiss of relief. The nurse's desk was to my left, the white tip of the attendant's hat bobbing behind the counter. Someplace a phone rang and was answered. Halfway down the hall a uniformed officer was standing beside a chair, his back against the wall, reading a paper.

  The nurse didn't look up, so I went by her. Two of the rooms I passed had their doors open and in the half-lit room I could see forms of the patients, deep in sleep. The next two doors were closed and so was Velda's.

  Until I was ten feet away the cop didn't give me a tumble, then he turned and scowled at me. This was a new one on the night shift and he pulled back his sleeve and gave a deliberate look at his wristwatch as if to remind me of the time.

  There was no sense making waves when there was no water. I said, "Everything okay?"

  For a second the question seemed to confuse him. Then he nodded. "Sure," he replied. "Of course."

  All I could do was nod back, like it was stupid of me to ask, and I let him go back to leaning against the wall, his feet crossed comfortably. At the desk I edged around the side until the nurse glanced up. She recognized me and smiled. "Mr. Hammer, good evening."

  "How's my doll doing?"

  "Just fine, Mr. Hammer. Dr. Reedey was in twice today. Her bandages have been changed and one of the nurses has even helped her with cosmetics."

  "Is she moving around?"

  "Oh, no. The doctor wants her to have complete bed rest for now. It will be several days before she'll be active at all." She stopped, suddenly realizing the time herself. "Aren't you here a little late?"

  "I hope not." Something was bothering me. Something was grating at me and I didn't know what it was. "Nothing out of order on the floor?"

  She seemed surprised. "No, everything is quite calm, fortunately."

  A small timer on her desk pinged and she looked at her watch. "I'll be back in a few minutes, Mr. Hammer . . ."

  Now I knew what the matter was. That cop had looked at his watch too and his was a Rolex Oyster, a big fat expensive watch street cops don't wear on duty. But the real kicker was his shoes. They were regulation black, but they were wing tips. The son of a bitch was a phony, but his rod would be for real and whatever was going down would be just as real.

  I said, "How long has that cop been on her door?"

  "Oh . . . he came in about fifteen minutes ago."

  It was two hours too soon for a shift change.

  "Did you see the other one check out?"

  "Well, no, but he could have gone . . ."

  "They always take these elevators down, don't they?"

  She nodded, consternation showing in her eyes. She got the picture all at once and asked calmly, "What shall I do?"

  "This a scheduled call you make?"

  "I have a patient who needs his medication."

  "Where are the other nurses?"

  "Madge is on her coffee break. I hold down the fort while she goes."

  "All right, you go take care of the patient and stay there. What room is he in?"

  "The last one down on the right."

  "I'll call when I want you. Give me the phone and you beat it. Don't look back. Do things the way you always do."

  She patted her hair in place, went around the counter and stepped on down the hall. She didn't look back. I pulled her call sheet over where I could see it and dialed hospital security. The phone rang eight times and nobody answered. I dialed the operator and she tried. Finally she said, "I'll put their code on, sir. The guards must be making their rounds."

  Or they're laid out on their backs someplace.

  Overhead, the call bell started to ping out a quiet code every few seconds.

  I hung up and dialed Pat's office. He wasn't in either. I remembered his trying to get Ray Wilson and had the operator put me through to Ray's office. This time I got him.

  I said, "Pat, I have no time for talk. I'm at the hospital and everything's breaking loose. There's a phony cop at the door, so the real officer is down somewhere. They're going to try to snatch Velda. If they wanted her dead, they would have already done it. Get some cars up here and no sirens. They smell cops and they can kill her."

  "They moving now?" Pat got in.

  I heard wheels rolling on tile and squinted around the wall. Coming out of the last door down on the right was an empty gurney pushed by a man in orderly's clothes. "They're moving. Shake your ass."

  I hung up and stepped out into the corridor, whistling between my teeth. The guy pushing
the gurney stopped and started playing with the mattress. I pushed the button on the elevator, looked down at the cop who was watching me too and waved. The phony cop waved back.

  When the elevator halted, I got in, let the doors close and pushed the STOP button. I stood there, hoping the guy pushing the gurney wouldn't notice the lights over the doors standing still. The rubber tires thumped a little louder, passed the elevator, and when I didn't hear them any longer, I pushed the MANUAL OPEN button and stood there staring out into the empty corridor. I took my hat off, dropped it on the floor and yanked the .45 out of the holster. There was a shell in the chamber and the hammer was on half cock. I thumbed it back all the way and looked down the corridor.

  The guy in the orderly's clothes was standing there with an AK47 automatic rifle cradled in his arms watching both ends of the hallway. His stance was low and when he swung, his coat flopped open and it looked like he was wearing upper-body armor. Half the gurney was sticking out Velda's door and even as I watched, it moved out and I saw her strapped onto the carrier. The man in uniform came out with a police service .38 in one hand and one hell of a big bruiser of an automatic in the other. Unless I got some backup, I was totally outgunned and no way I could close in on them without putting Velda's life on the line.

  A quiet little code still pinged from the hall bell. Security still hadn't answered.

  No wasted moves this time. The pair moved the gurney away from me and I knew they were headed toward the emergency-room exit. The orderly had draped a sheet over the gun on his arm, and the uniform had the .38 on the gurney next to Velda and the automatic hidden someplace in front of him.

  I stepped back in the car, let the doors close, pushed the first-floor button and hoped nobody tried to get on. Like all hospital elevators, this one took forever to pass each level and before it stopped, I picked my hat up and held it over my .45. I stepped out. This time I didn't run. The gurney would be moving at proper walking speed, seemingly going through a normal routine, and as long as I hurried, I could meet it outside the building. There was no way this play could be stopped without some kind of shooting, and I didn't want anybody else in the way.