He was reaching for the phone. I clamped his wrist. “No,” I said. “He is a friend. I want to surprise him.”
The clerk frowned.
I laid a ten-lira note on the desk.
The frown lightened.
I laid a fifty-lira note on the desk.
The clerk smiled.
“Point out the room,” I said.
He indicated the one at the exact top of the steps on the second floor.
“He is in?” I asked.
The clerk nodded.
“Now, here is what I want you to do. Take a bottle of Scotch — the Arab counterfeit will do — and two glasses and put them on a tray. Just three minutes after I leave this desk, you take that tray up to his room and knock.”
I kept laying hundred-lira notes on the counter until the clerk smiled. It was a seven-hundred-lira smile.
I had him note the time. I synchronized my watch.
I went back out the front door.
In a leisurely fashion, but silently, I went up the outside steps.
With care, I marked the exact outside window of the indicated room. It was open.
I waited.
Exactly on time, a knock sounded on the door.
A bed creaked.
I stole to the window.
Sure enough, there was my man. He had a Colt .45 in his hand and he was cat-footing to the door. His back was to me at the window.
I knew it would be this way. Mafia hit men lead nervous lives.
Jimmy “The Gutter” Tavilnasty reached for the knob, gun held on the door. That was my cue!
The door was swinging open.
I stepped through the window.
I said, in a loud voice, “Surprise!”
He half-turned in shock.
He sent a bullet slamming into the wall above me!
The shot had not even begun to echo before he charged out the door.
The effect was catastrophic. He collided with the clerk and tray!
In a scramble of Scotch and glasses, arms, legs and two more inadvertently triggered shots, they went avalanching down the stairs.
With a thud and final tinkle they wound up at the bottom.
I trotted down the stairs after them and plucked the gun from Jimmy “The Gutter’s” stunned hand.
“What a way to greet an old pal,” I said. That’s the way to handle them. Purely textbook psychology. It says to get them off-balance.
Tavilnasty was not only off-balance, he was out cold.
The clerk lay there looking at me in horror. I realized I had Tavilnasty’s gun pointed at him. I put the safety on. I said, “You were clumsy. You broke that bottle of Scotch. Now get up and get another one on the house.”
The clerk scrambled away.
I picked up Tavilnasty and got him over to a small back table in the lounge. He was coming around.
The clerk, shaking, brought in another bottle of Scotch and two glasses.
I handed Tavilnasty his gun.
I poured him a drink. He drank it.
Then his ugly, pockmarked face was really a study. “What the hell was that all about?”
“I just didn’t want to get shot,” I said.
He couldn’t quite understand this. I poured him another drink.
I tried another tack. “I could have killed you and I didn’t. Therefore that proves I am your friend.”
He considered this and rubbed a couple of bruises on his head. I poured him another drink.
“How’s Babe?” I said.
He really stared at me.
“Oh, come on,” I said. “Babe Corleone, my old flame.”
“You know Babe?”
“Sure, I know Babe.”
“Where did you know Babe?”
“Around,” I said.
He drank the Scotch.
“You from the DEA?”
I laughed.
“You from the CIA?”
I laughed.
“You from the FBI?”
I poured him another drink. “I’m from the World Health Operation. I’m going to make you your fortune.”
He drank the drink.
“Now listen carefully,” I said. “We are building a new hospital. It will be in full operation in about two months. We have new techniques of plastic surgery. We can change fingerprints, dental plates, larynxes, facial bones.”
“No (bleep)?”
“Absolutely. Nobody else can do it but us. Nobody will know. Hippocratic oath and so forth.”
“Is that like the Fifth Amendment?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “But down to business. You know the Atlantic City mob. You know lots of mobs. Right?”
“Right,” he said.
“Now, those mobs have people hiding out all over the place. Those people can’t show their faces because they are in all the fingerprint and police files of the FBI and Interpol. Right?”
“Right.”
“If those people are smuggled in here to the World United Charities Mercy and Benevolent Hospital, we will physically change their identity, give them new birth certificates and passports, all for a stiff fee, of course, and you personally will get twenty percent of what they pay.”
He found a paper napkin and laboriously started figuring. Finally, he said, “I’d be rich.”
“Right.”
“There’s one thing wrong,” he said. “I can spread the word. I can get big names in here in droves. But I can’t do it.”
“Why not?”
“Because I have a job. There’s a contract out.”
“I know,” I said. “Gunsalmo Silva.”
“How’d you know that?”
“I got sources.” I fixed him with a lordly stare-down the nose. “Gunny Silva won’t be back here for seven weeks. So you got six weeks to recruit some trade for the hospital.”
“I’d need money for expenses. I can’t hang this on Babe.”
“Take your expenses out of the advance payments,” I said.
“Hey!” he said, smiling.
“And,” I said, “if you bring in lots of trade and payments ready to begin in two months, I’ll throw something else in.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I’ll give you Gunsalmo Silva on a silva platter!”
“No (bleep)?”
“Set him up for you like a clay pigeon!”
With tears of gratitude in his eyes, he held out his hand, “Buster, you got yourself a deal!”
Ah, psychology works every time!
A bit later I returned to my car, fought my way through the crowd protesting the street blockage, cranked up and drove away.
I felt I was driving on air!
Soltan Gris, a.k.a. Sultan Bey, was on his road to becoming filthy rich!
And, after all, hadn’t the Grand Council said to spread a little technology around on this planet? Where it would really do some good?
Chapter 3
The sun was hot, the sky was clear, as I hurtled down the road.
Then I remembered that I even had a dancing girl coming today!
My prospects seemed so brilliant that I could not help doing a thing I almost never do. I burst into song:
Frankie and Johnny were lovers. Oh, my Gods, how they could love. They swore to be true to each other.
As true as the stars above…
There was an obstruction. It was a string of ten laden camels. They were humping and grumbling along, but I didn’t see any driver. The horn of the Renault was busted so I had to veer out into the other lane to see what was at the head of this parade.
Aha! I thought so!
Around here they sometimes put a lead rope on a donkey and the animal apparently knows where to go and he just leads the hooked-up string of camels to their destination. Shows you how dumb camels are when even a jackass is brighter than they are!
Here was my chance!
I resumed singing at the top of my voice:
He was my man! But he done me wrong!