The By-Pass Control Read online

  “Tough,” I said.

  She knew what I was thinking and shrugged. “Life.”

  “The office still goes on?”

  “Mr. Miller will handle things. The arrangement was provided for when he became a junior partner. Mr. Hamilton has a sister somewhere in the Midwest and she will inherit according to the terms of his will. She’s already been notified by Mr. Hamilton’s lawyer.”

  “Well, thanks for the help. If I need anything I’ll contact you.”

  “Very well.”

  “If you get the time see if you can locate the reports Hamilton did himself.”

  “I’ll try. I can’t promise anything.”

  “Good enough.”

  Dead ends. The big nothing. Four men dead, one missing who held the secret of world calamity and no place to scratch the surface. There was still the probability that Doug Hamilton’s death was an accident that never should have happened, a coincidence that occurred because he inadvertently blundered into Vito Salvi’s world. It was probable too that the empty folder in his apartment had no real meaning at all, and was simply a place to file notes he later had retyped at his office.

  I picked up my hat and let myself out of the office into the screaming roar of New York going home. It took ten minutes to find an unoccupied cab and a half hour to cross town to Charlie Corbinet’s apartment. He had the door open for me when the elevator reached his floor and waved me in.

  “Drink?”

  “A short one,” I said. “The night’s just started.”

  He mixed a couple, handed me one and sat down opposite me. “Come up with anything?”

  I ran down what I had for him and let him sift the facts for himself. I could see him arrive at the same probabilities I had, then he got up with the nervous impatience he never lost and paced the room deep in thought. Finally he said, “We’ve been backtracking Louis Agrounsky from the time he worked on the ICBM hot-line system. One team’s been going forward, the other back. Since Agrounsky originally had a security check run on him, going back wasn’t difficult. We merely repeated the process looking for flaws in the first investigation.”

  “And?”

  “Clean as a whistle. No criminal record, no unsavory associations, the best references... not a thing out of the way. Not even a political angle. He registered but didn’t bother voting. The only new fact added was an afterthought by his former college dean who mentioned that in his senior year Agrounsky came near a nervous breakdown that was attributed to overwork. The attending physician had died but his records were still available and showed Agrounsky to have been under his care two weeks before returning to school. Complete rest was prescribed and there were no aftereffects.”

  “It could have been the beginning of something,” I suggested.

  “Possibly. Had this ever been uncovered earlier it’s doubtful if he would have been put in charge of the project.”

  “Any evidence that he covered it up?”

  “None. Since it wasn’t a mental illness the dean never thought it important enough to mention. It seemed to be a common complaint of his best hard-working students who get overly dedicated.”

  “Where do you lose him then?”

  “After the hot-line installation he went into the second space project. If you remember, there were two failures before the technical difficulties were overcome and the shot successful. He was scheduled to begin work on the new booster engine the following week but had to be called off it when he had a minor car accident. The hospital reports stated minor lacerations, a broken thumb and a slight back injury. At that time he was living in a house he had bought in Eau Gallie, Florida, with about twenty thousand dollars in the bank. Apparently the back injury bothered him and he canceled out any future work and lived off his savings. It was here that contact was lost.

  “Agrounsky had few friends. He was pretty much of a loner. He was seen occasionally in town making small purchases but it was the bank teller who saw him most often. He made steady and increasingly large withdrawals that were not commensurate with his usual spending habits. However, nobody questioned it. Later he closed out his account entirely, sold his house to an engineer working on the project, and hasn’t been seen since.”

  “Woman involved?” I asked him.

  “No. We checked that angle out thoroughly. He didn’t gamble or drink, either.”

  “Everybody has one bad habit.”

  “Agrounsky didn’t. None that we could find.”

  “People like him just don’t disappear.”

  Charlie turned, stared into his drink, and gulped it down with a quick motion. “He sold his house furnished, packed two suitcases in a five-year-old Ford and drove away. A month later he sold the car to a dealer in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina for a hundred bucks and nothing more is known of him.”

  “If he was broke he’d have to work or go on relief.”

  “No Social Security has been paid. We’ve gone over all the relief rolls, queried every jail and hospital in the country... and still nothing. No passport was issued him and there’s no record of his having gone into Canada or Mexico.” He paused, mixed himself another drink, and shook his head. “Hal Randolph thinks he’s dead.”

  “If he were, Vito Salvi wouldn’t have been looking for him,” I said.

  “I know. I don’t think he’s dead either.” Charlie swirled the drink around letting the ice chink against the glass. “What do you think, Tiger?”

  “The same thing you do,” I told him. “Someplace he’s holed up trying to make a decision and if we don’t get to him before he does, we’ve had it.”

  “And you still think you know how to find him?”

  “I have to, old buddy,” I said. “If the Soviets had their best man looking for him they’ll throw in their next best. We can’t cut it off. Vito Salvi had a big jump on us and could have been closing in when he found himself being tracked by your two men and nailed them. How Hamilton got into the act, I don’t know yet. Now... how far did those two agents get in locating Agrounsky?”

  “Absolutely nowhere. That’s why they concentrated on finding Salvi... hoping he’d lead them to him. Their last report was that an unusual contact was made by a minor Soviet attaché they had been covering who was suspected of passing funds to their agents here. The general physical description matched that of Salvi except for facial characteristics which could easily have been part of a disguise. They followed him and nothing more was heard about them until you pulled the cork.”

  “I suppose Randolph has a team going back on Salvi too.” Charlie nodded. “They’re getting a big zero there too. Salvi was too much of a pro to leave trails. They’ll get to him eventually, detail by detail, but it will probably take weeks.”

  “We haven’t got that long,” I reminded him.

  “Come up with something then.”

  I put my glass down and lit up a cigarette. “There’s a little hook in that picture of Agrounsky I can’t quite put my finger on.”

  “Tiger, we haven’t missed a bet on him.”

  “Just the same, I have that funny feeling.”

  “Play it then... you’re on a fat salary. I don’t think you’ll get anywhere thinking he was employed by Belt-Aire though. He had no reason for falsifying his name or background and if he needed money he could have gone right into any one of the current government projects and made out a lot better.”

  “So I’ll work on it until I’m satisfied.”

  “Remember the time element.”

  “How can I forget it?” I pushed myself out of the chair and reached for my hat. “Reach me at the Salem if you need me. The name is T. Martin. I want the latest photo of Agrounsky you can find.”

  “You’ll get it. Good luck, Tiger.”

  “Thanks,” I said, “we can all use some.”

  Ernie Bentley had left an envelope of photostats at the desk for me with a note to contact Newark Control as soon as possible. I picked up my key, found a pay booth in the lobby and gave the operator t
he Newark number.

  Virgil Adams answered and as soon as I coded my ID he said, “London just called, Tiger. Moscow’s assigned a replacement for Vito Salvi.”

  “They’re working fast. Who is it?”

  “No positive identification yet. Our sources picked it up from the embassy in Paris and passed it on. We’ll keep trying to get a make on him but since they reorganized their operation it may take a while. One thing we know—he isn’t being sent... he’s already here. They’ve surrounded this deal with the utmost security and it won’t be easy to break. Getting that much was just luck.”

  “Grady’s money can buy almost anything.”

  “If it’s available,” Virgil said. “We do know they’ve been holding a couple of top operatives somewhere in the country for any emergency ever since the Sokolov and Butenko spy trial bit in ’64. Right now there are some interesting developments overseas. The Kremlin’s big strategic planners who were in Bonn were recalled to Moscow for an emergency session with the brass and it had to do with the situation here.”

  “You set the feed lines yet?”

  “Grady’s authorized twenty-five thousand for a definite lead. He’ll go higher if he has to. We’ve spread the word so anything can break, but we’re not counting on it. Frankly, my friend, it’s up to you.”

  “Thanks a bunch.”

  “Do you want anybody else in the field with you?”

  “Don Lavois is enough right now. Everybody is cooperating at this point and as long as it lasts we’ll be enough.”

  “It’s your game, Tiger,” he said, then added, “Oh, one more thing... you might find it interesting.”

  “What?”

  “Our informant in Prague mentioned that the price on your head has now gone up. You not only top the ‘A’ list, but are a project in itself.”

  “How much am I worth?”

  Virgil chuckled humorlessly and said, “Enough to buy a villa on the Black Sea, a new Ziv, a dozen servants, endless ration cards and political recognition.”

  “How about that? Why don’t you collect?”

  “I like my vacations in Florida,” he said before he hung up.

  When I put the phone back I was grinning. Someday I’d have to show him the four pages from the book I had taken from Marcus Pietri’s pocket after I killed him. Virgil didn’t know it, but he was on the “A” list too. Down near the bottom, but on it nevertheless.

  Up in the room I dropped the stats in my bag, sealed the originals in the envelope for mailing back to Belt-Aire and put in the call to Don Lavois. He picked up the phone, took my recognition signal, answered it, and said, “Something a little odd on Salvi, Tiger.”

  “Like what?”

  “The Feds swarmed over the neighborhood where he was holed up and took that building apart. They got nothing at all out of it but a lot of trouble. I dogged them for a while, but as long as they were doing the work there was no use butting in. I went in after they left just for a look around but didn’t turn anything up until I reached the bathroom. One of the cops must have used the john and didn’t check it after he flushed. It had backed up a little.”

  “Lousy toilet training.”

  “Habit,” he said. “Whoever looks back? Anyway, I got a coat hanger and probed down the well. There was a cute little gimmick there—a thin spring wire across the toilet trap out of sight under the water level with a six-foot length of nylon cord tied to its middle and on the other end, flushed partly down the drain, a rubber prophylactic with a quarter pound of heroin in it. A neat trick, but not exactly an old one. It never would have been noticed if somebody hadn’t been pretty constipated.”

  “Hell, Salvi couldn’t have been a hophead.”

  “It was there, buddy. It adds some interesting sidelines.”

  “Good enough. I’ll get a look at the autopsy report on his body. Think it could have been left there by an earlier tenant?”

  “Nope. The spring was simple steel and the surface rust indicated recent installation.”

  “What did you do with it?”

  “Left it right where it was.”

  “Good enough. How you going to play it from here?”

  “As far as anyone knows in the neighborhood, Salvi never even existed. His cover was beautiful. He rented that place by phone, paid by cash in advance, probably bought everything in scattered places and transported it himself. But he did have to buy that H from some source. It’s the only lead we have.”

  I said, “Then get Ernie to give you the latest list on narcotics suppliers he has. Keep in touch through Newark Control.”

  “Roger. Any direct contact with you?”

  “As little as possible. And watch yourself. The Reds have a new man in on the play.”

  “So I heard... only it’s not me they’re after.”

  When I cradled the receiver I walked over and sat on the window sill and looked at the city at night. There was a funny light feeling in my stomach that I never had before. I had been in on the chase and been in on the kill. Often, I had been the rabbit and felt the hot breath of the dogs on my back and smelled the saliva they oozed in the fury of the pursuit, but this rabbit had gotten away every time.

  So far.

  It wasn’t the dogs that gave me the feeling. It was the thought of the lights of the city going out all at once in the wild terror of an even greater light that would hang in the air like a gigantic mushroom in a field of mushrooms that would all blossom simultaneously if given the opportunity.

  I double-locked the door, chained it, stretched out on the bed with the Belt-Aire employee list and ran over each page, detail by detail. Most of the information was a one-or-two-word answer to specific questions, but the end of each page contained a short summary, a personal observation that included notations of “occasional drinker” and “periodic low stake card games.” One even suggested a rather full sex life. Apparently none of these affected the employable qualities of the person because they were all on the payroll now. Evidently Hamilton had done most of his investigative work during the first half of the year because each page had a month typed in the lower lefthand corner. Except for one, it didn’t match the date of the report, so probably marked the date the investigation began.

  After an hour of it I put the sheets down, the .45 on half cock beside my hand and fell asleep.

  CHAPTER 4

  behind I.A.T.S. had done their work well. They were far from inefficient. Hamstrung by directives and stymied by bureaucra- tic precedents perhaps, but not inefficient. Hal Randolph and his retinue were there personally a half hour after I requested a look at the autopsy report on Vito Salvi, their expressions bland... waiting. They had come in shortly after I entered the request and had a mild little man tell me I would have to wait a few minutes. The mild little man had gotten to a phone as he had been told to while I cooled my heels in a drab office that had the antiseptic smell of a dead room and when Randolph saw me he said, “Let’s have it, Tiger.” The other two were the same ones who had come with him when I shot Salvi and they waited with the same professional interest they had shown before.

  I said, “Routine check. I killed the guy, didn’t I?”

  “No comedy. Just say it.”

  “There’s nothing to say until I see the report. Now you quit playing games and clear the air.”

  Randolph nodded and the mild little man didn’t have to go any further than the desk drawer that had been in front of him all the time. He took out two sheets stapled together and handed them to me.

  Vito Salvi had died of a gunshot wound from a calibre .45 bullet and at the time of death had multiple lacerations and abrasions not directly responsible for his demise. Three other bullet wounds and several knife scars were found, a small stomach ulcer, a possible cured syphilitic condition and the early stages of a cataract beginning to form in the right eye. His last meal had been chili, creamed corn and bread which matched the garbage remains in his apartment.

  I handed the sheets back to the mild little ma
n who took them impassively and stored them back in the drawer. When he shut it he looked at me quizzically and asked, “Is that all?”

  “That’s all,” I told him.

  “Come off it, Tiger,” Randolph said. “Don’t hide one damn thing. This isn’t a schoolyard.” His face was tight and somehow his eyes seemed buried in the flesh around them. I think for the first time I liked the guy. He was big, mean and nasty, but he was being pushed and knew what it felt like to have a rock hanging over his head. “What are you looking for?”

  I shoved my hat back and got up off the edge of the desk where I was sitting. “Evidence of narcotics addiction.”

  “Why?”

  “To see whether a guy who could torture three people to death was doing it for a reason or because it was part of his makeup.”

  “He didn’t use the stuff.”

  “Now I know.”

  The one leaning up against the cabinets said too casually, “You get off the hook too easily, Tiger.”

  “I’ve had practice.”

  “Not with us.”

  “You too. Let’s just say I’m exploring every possibility.”

  “We thought of it too. Earlier than you did. The question is why you came up with it now.”

  I shook a cigarette out of the pack, lit it and looked across the room at him. “Because drugs are a big item of trade, buddy. The carriers sometimes become the victims and we’re all looking for something to start with. I didn’t think it possible, but I wanted to be sure. Now... if you’re not satisfied with my explanation you can stuff it. I don’t like being run down like a two-bit private op every time I get a thought. Let me remind you that at your instigation I’m back with an official status, cooperating fully with one of your representatives, and try this stunt again and I’ll go it cold and anything I get finds its way to the papers first and you second.”

  “Don’t try it, Mann,” Randolph warned.

  “Mister,” I reminded him, “I did it before and I’ll do it again. Quit crowding and don’t pull any court-martial crap on me or I’ll jam it up your tail.”