Survival... ZERO! mh-11 Page 17

  "You were going to meet me too, Caesar."

  His face tried to scowl. "Look, if you're going to be like that ..." He saw me pick up the pail. "Okay, okay. I'm sorry. It ain't the end of the world."

  I almost felt like telling him right then.

  "Hey, Mister." The other one looked like he was coming apart at the seams. "I did like Caesar asked. My friend, he told me where this guy ... the one in the red vest, where he flops."

  "Where?"

  He gulped and tried to look straight at me. "Take ... this sheet off, huh?"

  I hated to waste the time, but I couldn't afford to put up with a stubborn idiot. I undid the knots Tower had twisted the ends into and yanked the wet cloth away and he stumbled out of his chair and reached for the coat Towers had left and pulled it tightly around him, still shivering.

  "Where?" I repeated.

  "Carmine said he seen him at the Stanton Hotel. They're on the same floor."

  "He describe him?"

  "Tall. Skinny. Like kind of a mean character. He ain't there all the time, but he hangs onto his pad."

  "What else?"

  "Always the red vest. Never took it off. Like it was lucky or something." I started to leave, then: "Mister ..."

  "Yeah?"

  "You got a quarter? I'm flat."

  I tossed five bucks on the chair. "Unwrap the idiot there and you can both blow your minds. Someday take a look in a mirror and see what's happening to you."

  I picked up a cruising cab on Eighth Avenue and gave him the address of the Stanton. Before the turn of the century it had been an exclusive, well-appointed establishment catering to the wealthy idler who wanted privacy for his extramarital affairs, but time and changes in neighborhood patterns had turned it into a way station for transients and a semipermament pad for those living on the fringes of society.

  A fifteen-truck Army convoy was blocking traffic, white-helmeted M.P.'s diverting cars west, and the driver-cut left, swearing at all the nonsense. "Like the damn war, y’know? You'd think we was being invaded. The way traffic is already they could hold them damn maneuvers someplace else."

  "Maybe they hate the mayor," I said.

  He growled in answer, swerved violently around a timid woman driver who was taking up a lane and a half and yanked the cab through a slot and made a right on Tenth Avenue. I looked at my watch. Five after ten. An hour and a half since the slaughter uptown. Enough time for Beaver to collect his gear and make another run.

  I didn't wait for change. I threw a bill on the seat beside the driver and got out without bothering to close the door. Fingers of rain clawed at my face, wind-whipping the drenching spray around my legs. Inside the lobby of the Stanton clusters of men trying to look busy were staying away from the night. A uniformed patrolman, a walkie-talkie slung over his shoulder, finished checking the groups and pushed through the doors, looked up at the sky in disgust, then lowered his head against the wind and turned west.

  I went in, cut across the lobby to the desk where a bored clerk with a cigarette drooping from the corner of his mouth was doing a crossword puzzle on the counter.

  He didn't bother looking up. "No rooms," he said.

  I flipped the puzzle to the floor and knocked the cigarette from his mouth with a backhanded swipe and his head snapped up with a mean snarl and he had his hand all cocked to swing when he saw my face and faded. "You got bad manners, friend."

  "If you're looking for trouble ..."

  "I am trouble, kiddo." I let him look at me for another few seconds, then he dropped his eyes and wiped his mouth, not liking what he saw. I reached in my pocket for the photos of Beaver. There were two left. Someplace I had left one, but it didn't matter now.

  The clerk had seen cards like those before, but cops carried them, and I got the eyes again because he had figured me first for one thing, now he was trying to make me for another and it didn't jell. I put the card on the counter facing him. "Recognize him?"

  He didn't want to talk, but he didn't want to know what would happen if he didn't, either. Finally he nodded. "Room 417."

  "There now?"

  "Came in earlier. His face was swollen and he was all bloodied up. What'd he do?"

  "Nothing that would interest you."

  "Listen, Mac ... we're trying to stay clean. This guy never gave us no fuss so why are you guys ..."

  I grabbed his arm. "What guys?"

  "There was another one before. Another cop. He wanted him too."

  "Cop?"

  "Sure. He had one of these mug cards."

  Pat might have made it. One of his squad just might have gotten a lead and run it down. Enough of them had copies of the photos and one way or another Beaver could be nailed.

  "You see them come out?" I asked him. "Naw. I don't watch them bums. You think I ain't got nothin' better to do?"

  "Yeah, I don't think you have. Just one more thing ... stay off that phone."

  A swamper in filthy coveralls was oiling down the wooden steps, so I pushed the button beside the elevators instead of walking up. The ancient machinery creaked and whined, finally groaning to a halt. The door slid open and two drunks were arguing over a bottle until one behind them pushed through with a muttered curse, almost knocking them down. He looked familiar, but I had seen too many lineups with these characters playing lead roles, so any of them could be familiar. The other two guys that pushed their way through were Vance Solito and Jimmy Healey, a pair of the Marbletop bunch who ran floating crap games on the side. I shoved the two drunks out to do their arguing and punched the button for the fourth floor.

  Outside 417 I stopped and put my ear to the door. No sound at all. I slid the .45 out, thumbed the hammer back and rapped hard, twice. Nobody answered and I did it again with the same result. Then I tried the knob. The door was locked, but with the kind of lock it only took a minute to open. When I had the latch released I stepped aside and shoved it open and stared into the darkness that was intermittently lit by the reflected glow from a blinking light on the street below.

  I waited, listening, then stepped around the door opening inside, flipped the light switch on and hit the floor. Nothing happened. I stood up, put the .45 back and closed the door. Nothing was going to happen.

  Beaver was lying spread-eagled on the floor wallowing in his own blood, as dead as he ever was going to be, his stomach slit open and a vicious hole in his chest where a knife thrust had laid open muscle and bone before it carved into his heart. There were other carefully planned cuts and slices too, but Beaver had never made a sound through the tape that covered his mouth. His face was lumpy, bruised from earlier blows, with nasty charred and blistered hollows pockmarking his neck from deliberate cigarette burns.

  But this was different. Woody had taken care of the first assault, but he hadn't gotten around to killing him and when the break came Beaver had dumped himself out of his chair, broken loose and gone through the window while all the action was going on. But this was different.

  No, this was the same. It had happened before to Lippy Sullivan.

  I took my time and read all the signs. It finally made sense when I thought it out. Beaver's break wasn't as clean as he had figured. He had been tailed to his safe place, hurting bad and terrified as hell. And when the killer finally reached him he couldn't run again. He was supposed to talk. He was tied up, his mouth taped while the killer told him what he wanted and what he was going to do to him if he didn't talk and just to prove his point the killer made his initial slashes that would insure his talking.

  Except Beaver didn't talk. He fainted. There were more of those nicely placed slices, delivered purposely so the pain would bring Mm out of the faint. But Beaver didn't come out of it . . . there had been too much before it and he lay there mute and 'unconscious until the killer couldn't wait any more and made sure he'd never talk to anybody else either. And when he was done killing he had torn the room apart, piece by piece, bit by bit.

  I followed the search pattern looking for anything that migh
t have been missed, fingering through the torn bedding, reaching into places somebody already had reached into, feeling outside around the window ledges, going through the contents of the single dresser whose drawers were stacked, empty, along one wall.

  Beaver wasn't a fashion plate. He only had two suits and two sport jackets. The pockets were turned inside out and the coat linings ripped off. On the floor of the closet was a bloodstained shirt and a crumpled red vest with more blood, stiff and dried, staining the fabric.

  I took another twenty minutes to make sure there was nothing I had missed and finally sat down on the edge of the bed, lit up a cigarette and looked at the mutilated body of Beaver on the floor.

  I said, "You weren't lucky this time, chum. That red vest didn't bring you any luck at all, did it?"

  Then I started to grin slowly and got up and went back to the closet where the red vest lay in a crushed lump. It wasn't much. It was old and worn and it must have been expensive at one time because it still held its color. Beaver had thrown it there when he took off his bloodied clothes, hurting and not caring about his lucky charm. It was too carelessly tossed off and not much for the killer to search because it didn't even have pockets.

  But it had been Beaver's lucky charm once and a place to hide all his luck, something that was always with him and safe.

  I found where the hand stitching was around the lower left hand edge, picked at the thread and pulled it out of the fabric. The sheet of onionskin paper folded there slid out and I opened it, scanned it slowly, then went to the phone and gave the desk clerk Eddie Dandy's number.

  He said he knew how he could give his watchdogs the slip, but if he did that was the end of him in broadcasting, in life, in anything. He had been given the word strongly and with no punches pulled. He wanted to know if it was worth it.

  I told him it was.

  CHAPTER 12

  I let him vomit his supper out in the toilet bowl and waited until he had mopped his face with cold water and dried off. He came back in the bedroom, trying to avoid the mess on the floor, but his eyes kept drifting back to the corpse until he was white again. He finally upended one of the drawers and sat on it, his hands shaking.

  "Relax," I said.

  "Damn it, Mike, did you have to get my ass in a sling just to show me this?"

  I took a drag on my cigarette and nodded. "That's right."

  Very slowly his face came out of his hands, his eyes drifting up to mine, fear cutting little crinkles into the folds of skin at their edges. "You ... did you ..."

  "No, I didn't kill him,"

  Bewilderment replaced the fear and he said nervously, "Who did?"

  "I don't know."

  "Shit."

  I went and got him a glass of water, waited while he finished it, looking out the window at the glassy-wet tops of the buildings across the street. Down below a police cruiser went by slowly and turned north at the corner. "Quiet out," I said.

  Behind me, Eddie said softly, "It'll be a lot quieter soon. Just a few more days. I don't know why I was worrying about coming here at all. What difference can it make?"

  "It hasn't happened yet."

  "No chance, Mike. No chance at all. Everybody knows it. I wasted all that time worrying and sweating when I could have been like you, calm as hell and not giving a damn about anything. Maybe I'm fortunate at that. In a few days when the lid comes off and the whole world knows that it's only a little while before it dies, everybody

  else will go berserk and I'll be able to watch them and have an easy drink to kiss things goodbye." He let out a little laugh. "I only wish I could have been able to tell the whole story. They talk openly now. It doesn't seem to matter any more. You didn't know the Soviets ran down more of the story, did you?"

  I shook my head and watched the rain come down, only half hearing what he said.

  "That other regime ... they never thought the strain of bacteria was so virulent. It would be contained pretty much in this hemisphere and die out after a certain length of time. They made tests on involuntary subjects and decided that one out of ten would be immune, and the vaccine they had developed would protect those they wanted protected. It wasn't just two agents who were planted in this country. There were twenty-two of them, and each was supplied with enough vaccine to immunize a hundred more, all key people in major commercial and political positions who would be ready to run the country after the plague was done wiping out the populace. Oh, they could sit back and not give a damn, but there was one thing they never got to know. The vaccine was no damn good. It was only temporary. They'll last a month or two longer after the others have died, but they'll die harder because it is going to take longer. Only they're not going to know this because everyone involved in the project is dead and there's nobody to tell them. They were going to know when it happened, because the single unknown, the key man who was going to plant the stuff around the country, was the only one who knew who the others were and he was going to notify them so they could set all their grand plans into motion."

  "Nice," I said.

  "So he planted the stuff ... all those containers. My guess is he lucked out because of the vaccine he was injected with. There was a possibility it could do that. Funny, isn't it?"

  "Why?"

  "Because they have that organization all set up. They're ready to move in and set up another semislave state. The elite few get it all and the rest get the garbage. Not bad if you're one of the elite few and have the only guns around to back you up. It doesn't even make any difference if those agents were given the date or not. Either way they think they'll be ready to grab it all. It might screw up their timing, but that's about all. They move in, think they have it made, then all of a sudden it hits them too."

  "It won't happen."

  Eddie Dandy laughed again, a flat, sour laugh that ended in a sob. "Mike, you're mad."

  I turned around and looked at him perched on the edge of the drawer, muscles tightened with near hysteria bunching in his jaw. I grinned at him, then picked up the phone. It was five minutes before they located Pat Chambers and I let him take me apart in sections before I said, "You should have gone with me, friend. It wouldn't have taken all this time."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "You can buy next year's calendar, Pat. You'll be able to use it."

  For ten seconds there was a long silence on the other end of the line. He knew what I was talking about, and his voice came back with a tone of such absolute consternation that I barely heard him say, "Mike . .."

  "It was all wrapped up in Lippy Sullivan," I told him. "Handle this gentry, Pat. And Pat ... you'd better pass the word that the President doesn't have to have a heart attack tomorrow. There'll be plenty of news for everybody to chew on ... and when you're passing the word, pass it high up where it counts and none of those eager lads with all that political ambition will be able to get their teeth in my ass for what's going to happen. Tell the thinkers to get a good story ready, because there's going to be the damndest cover-up happening tomorrow you ever saw in your life, and while it's happening I'm going to be walking around with a big grin, spitting in their eyes."

  Before he could answer I told him where I was and hung up. Eddie Dandy was watching me like I had gone out of my mind. I handed him the sheet of onionskin paper.

  "What's this?"

  "The exact location of every one of those containers. You have the manpower already alerted and placed, the experts from Fort Derrick on hand to decontaminate them and the biggest scoop of your whole career. Too bad you'll never really be able to tell about it." I looked at him and felt my face pull into a nasty grin, "Or the rest of it."

  I tried one more call, but my party wasn't at home, which confirmed what I already knew. I took the two last photos of Beaver out of my pocket, looked at them and threw them down beside the body. He didn't look like that any more.

  Spud Henry didn't know how to say it, the white lies not

  quite fitting his mouth. Finally he said, "Oh, he
ll, Mikey boy, it's just that I got orders. He gimme special orders on the house phone. Nobody goes up. It's an important business meeting."

  "How many are up there?"

  "Maybe six."

  "When'd the last one come in?"

  "Oh, an hour ago. It was then I got the call. Nobody else."

  "Look, Spud ..."

  "Mike, it won't make no difference. They got the elevator locked up on that floor and there ain't no other way. All the elevators stop the next floor down. There's a fire door, but it only opens from the inside and you can't even walk up. Come on, Mike, forget it."

  "Sorry, Spud."

  "Buddy, it's my job you got in your hands."

  "Not if you didn't see me."

  'There's no way in that I can't see you! Look, four of them TV's cover the other exits and I got this one. How the hell can I explain?"

  "You won't have to."

  "Oh boy, will I catch hell. No more tips for old Spud. It's gonna be real dry around here for a while. Maybe that longhaired relief kid will get my job."

  "Don't worry," I said.

  "So go ahead. Not even a monkey can get there anyway."

  The elevator stopped at the top, the doors sliding open noiselessly. It was a bright blue foyer, decorated with modem sculpture and wildly colorful oil paintings in gold frames. The single door at the end was surrealistically decorated with a big eye painted around the peephole and I wondered how long ago it was that I was watched by another painted eye.

  I touched the bell and waited. I touched it again, holding it in for a full minute, then let go and waited some more. I wasn't about to try to batter down three inches of oak, so I took out the .45 and blew each of the three locks out of their sockets. The noise of the shots was deafening in that confined space, but the door swung inward limply. I wasn't worried about the sound. It wasn't going to reach anyplace else. The tenants here were paying for absolute privacy that included soundproofing. Tomorrow the shattered door would even be an asset when the explanations started.