The Death Dealers Read online

  Beside the wholesale grocery place were two buildings with boarded-up windows and notices of condemnation tacked to their doors. I walked past them, but knew damn well Malcolm Turos wouldn’t take a chance in a place kids could use for nesting pads in a love bout or bums could stake a claim to.

  So I went on past the Flood Warehouse trying to think like Turos would, getting further away from the cab that was only a dark blob on the end of the block now.

  I smelled Tom Lee Foy’s business long before I was near it. It was a smell that brought back all the times I had chiseled the prunelike nuts out of Charlie Hop Soong on Columbus Avenue and for fun we called him Leechee Chuck, a fat old Chinaman with a penchant for kids who let us swipe handfuls when he would have given them to us anyway.

  Either Tom Lee Foy did a hell of a business in litchi nuts or he processed them there himself, because they laid an aroma over the section even the driving rain couldn’t wash away. I hugged the side of the buildings where the shadows were and took my time about locating the possible spots he could be in.

  The river wasn’t far off and any prevailing wind would be from there. On one side of Foy’s place was an electrical winding business that would cut off any gust of air, but on the other there were four tenements still standing and there were no posted notices on their doors. One even had a sign outside that read “ROOMS TO LET.” Two others I wasn’t interested in. One had a baby carriage standing on the porch and the other had a cat sitting lazily on the railing with a kid’s bicycle behind it.

  The one in the middle was a little too innocuous, even with the night light burning behind the glass front door. It was a place where only one person would be, with no prying eyes on other floors to observe him.

  The rain and the thunder covered any noise I made as I went around the place, going over the fence to get into the yard in back of the house. I found the two trip wires and knew I had found Malcolm Turos too. He wasn’t taking any chances, but didn’t have the ideal setup to rig a carefully concealed alarm. He did what I would have done too and I was looking for it.

  Upstairs someplace he was sitting, not realizing that everything had blown on him, believing all avenues covered ... Vey Locca dead, Teish under guard by a stupid compatriot who was ingratiating himself with a foreign power by playing the patsy. He was well hidden and surrounded by traps that could alert him to any intruder and when he was ready he could move at his own leisure.

  Outside the world could fall apart and he’d be there to pick up the pieces.

  He thought.

  I grinned into the night and the rain and felt my way around the windows until I came to the one I wanted with a fine thread of wire not quite in place.

  I cut it, pretty certain that any electrical warning device he had installed wasn’t more than a hasty job to keep out the locals than anyone looking for him. I got the window up, climbed over the sill and dropped inside soundlessly.

  From outside I got the same smell Turos had and closed the window in back of me. There was something else too, something not bred in a Chinese import house. I sniffed the air, located it and remembered what it was. Sarim Shey had smoked a cigar like that when I saw him in the alley of the hotel.

  I took the .45 out and held it in my hand, then put it under my coat a second to muffle the click as I thumbed the hammer back. Little by little my eyes were getting used to the blackness and when I could pick out the vague shapes of the furniture in the room I started to make my way across it.

  And I found Sarim Shey.

  He wasn’t much now. He was a dead body still clutching his chest, knees drawn up in agony, lying in a fetal position on the floor, his skin just beginning to cool. A chair was overturned beside him and when I felt his neck I found the nylon cord around it that was buried beneath the flesh and knew he died the hard way and I didn’t have any feeling for him at all. He had come to demand and died instead. He was in the way of the grand program and just another one considered expendable and it could all be blamed on the viciousness that lay at the heart of the city.

  I heard the feet on the stairs and straightened up so fast my side felt as if someone had a knife in it. I had to hold still until the rush of pain subsided, step across to the door that opened off the front room and wait there. A thin line of light seeped across the opening on the bottom of the sill and I put my hand on the knob, waiting.

  He didn’t expect me. He was almost at the bottom, the man in the gray suit who could disappear in a crowd at any time, an average guy with glasses and a briefcase and eyes so bright they looked like an animal’s.

  I should have shot first instead of enjoying the moment. I should have let one go before the pain got me in the side and doubled me up like Sarim was on the floor behind me.

  Malcolm Turos had his one second to do what he had to do and the little gun with the silencer appeared in his hand like magic and made a soft plopping sound and I felt the bullets tug at my clothes and one tear across the top of my shoulder.

  The same pain that doubled me saved me because he thought I’d throw myself to one side instead of going under the barrage and aimed for there. The look on his face was one of pure joy and the scar at the base of his throat puckered as he let out a hoarse yell of triumph as he recognized me and thought my gift of a bullet in the neck to him was being returned in full.

  But he missed and instinct squeezed the trigger of the .45 in my fist and sheer professionalism and hours of practice put the single slug where I wanted it to go and the silenced rod flew out of his hand into the room and as he went for it I brought the butt of the .45 down on the top of his head with a sickening thud and he fell stretched out on the floor.

  There was Rondine and there was Lily Tornay. There were others who would hear and think many times before they attempted the same thing again. In Moscow the dossier with my name would have another page added to it and the one who had me assigned as a project would find excuses to beg off and whoever else took it would know who had gone before them and how. They would never be able to operate with the efficiency that was expected of them, and in their turn they would die too.

  I found the roll of nylon cord in his pocket and took my time about tying him up. I added a few touches of my own that would insure the muscular reaction of a spasm in a time not too long from now. I tied his hands and feet behind him and as Malcolm Turos regained consciousness I was putting the final loop around his neck that would choke him to death long before he was found and nobody would care at all.

  He was expendable too.

  There would be complaints and I would have to answer questions, but they would get more infrequent and less insistent as the stories were told.

  That’s what happens when you play the odds. Somebody wins, somebody loses.

  First I’d see a doctor, then I would go to Rondine. She would want to know about it too. Not right away. It would take a few days before I let anyone know.

  Malcolm Turos was looking up at me with horrified eyes as the rope bit into his neck. “Kismet, buddy,” I said and left him there.

  I went back into the rain and walked the long street down to the cab. I woke the driver up and climbed into the back. My side was giving me hell.

  “Let’s go,” I said.