“It is. Thanks.” Bello turned to his shadower. “Come on.” Tony Bello led the way out of the bar into his last brawl — on Turk Street near Eddy, at the fringe of San Francisco’s tenderloin.
“Get the bastard!”
“You phoney sonuvabich!”
It was a different, younger crowd of addicts than the earlier assailants with whom the revolver wielding shadower had first caught up with the pusher. Half sick, crazed without heroin and shooting Bello’s powder sugar, the younger addicts moved in on Bello, neither noticing nor caring for the presence of his shadow — who stepped away from the attack and moved on away from the brawl. Bello was a street fighter and continued to kick, gouge, bite and swing even after he’d been cut by a dozen switchblade knives, sapped with lengths of chain and lead pipe. He stopped swinging only when he dropped to the sidewalk — dead. His attackers ran around the corner on Eddy and disappeared.
His shadower with the.38 revolver was picked up by the first siren screaming cruiser that skidded to a stop as he tried to run across a parking lot. Before the cruiser officers had him leaning on their cruiser, hands on the roof and legs stretched apart for a frisk, other police cars were screaming into the district in answer to the riot call. The addict remained motionless as he was frisked.
“A hot one,” an SFPD sergeant exclaimed, “packing a.38, seven caps of what’s probably H, and, well, well,” he whistled, “look at this!” He handed a wallet to his cruiser partner and flipped up an I.D. card from a hidden compartment. “An N Man. Looks like the Bureau of Narcotics is really on the job. Guess you can stand up now, Padgett,” he called the prisoner by the name he read from the I.D. card. “Let’s have a look at you.” He compared the picture on the card with the face of his prisoner.
“So throw me in the car like it’s for real,” Chris Padgett quipped in a low voice. “You’ll want to check me out at headquarters anyway. Play it like I’m just another junker — all the way. And, if you can, sergeant, make it fast. I think I’ve got something tonight.”
The N Man was run through the SFPD narcotics squad offices and turned out with greater speed than he had been booked in as a suspect. He turned to the lieutenant. “Thanks, Tom. Your boys will have one less to work on now that Bello’s out of the way.”
“There’ll be another one on his corners tomorrow, Chris. They come and go like the fog. Glad to help you. Say hello to your boss when you see him again. Need any transportation?”
“No. Rest is what I need but it’s not for me tonight. Maybe the Bureau’ll plant me on a desk job when this one’s over. If I keep on at this pace, I’ll soon be old — and desk-bound — like you. Night!”
The lieutenant laughed and walked to the door of his office with Chris Padgett. “You boys move too fast to grow old. Be careful, Chris. And good luck.”
Padgett didn’t explain his operation and the lieutenant didn’t ask. His division of the San Francisco Police Department cooperated with the Bureau of Narcotics and that cooperation included all available help but no interference whatever with operations of the Bureau’s undercover men like Chris Padgett. Padgett wanted the late Bello’s source of supply and now he had a handful of leads — the telephone numbers Bello had called from the Chinese pharmacy on Bush Street, the Turk Street bar, and an unknown schooner and its Sausalito anchorage. He had played his undercover role to perfection in San Francisco and was known among local addicts as a user and a rough customer who went armed. He took a cab from headquarters to a modest house on Portola Drive near Twin Peaks, paid it off a block away from the house and walked slowly to the house. It’s living room resembled the signal room of an army command headquarters. Electronic equipment, a teletype and miscellaneous communications equipment took the place of usual household furnishings that passers-by would expect to find inside the Portola Drive house. A rear bedroom was furnished as an office rather than sleeping quarters. Chris Padgett sat across a gray steel desk and talked with a shirt-sleeved Bureau of Narcotics officer.
“If it’s Bello’s connection,” he observed, “it’s probably a kilo man. That means he doesn’t handle the stuff himself. And I don’t think he’s around where the heroin is capped. Someone, between him and Bello, got greedy today. Whoever held out on the heroin and filled those caps with powdered sugar and quinine, made his own killing. The kilo man knows that if Bello didn’t. And whoever did that is on the lam right now — not from the junkies who got Bello but from the kilo man who has that Grant Avenue apartment and the schooner at Sausalito. There’ll be another killing tonight in the tenderloin if that kilo man tracks down whoever swung with the heroin and substituted the sugar and quinine. I’d like to get him before he gets to his capper.”
“Let’s review your position first, Chris. I’ve already got the Coast Guard tracing the schooners over at Sausalito. And the Grant Avenue apartment is staked out. What will the hopheads say when they find out — which they have probably done by now — that Bello got it outside that Turk Street bar and that you disappeared down the street?”
“Nothing. Those two shots I let go in the apartment left the impression that I took off for Bello when he made like he was trying to get away from me.”
“What will this Eddie say when he learns either you or Bello took his car?”
“I’ll tell him Bello got away in it.”
“And what if word gets around that you and Bello were seen buddy-buddy-like, making that phone call on Bush Street, stopping at that Kearny Street cigar store, in the Geary Street bar, and finally at the bar on Turk Street. It’s more than a good bet that you were seen by some junker and that the grapevine has word out that you and Bello have been together all evening. Right, Chris?”
“Not all the way. By now some of those hopheads I was running with are on their way to Tia Juana for more heroin. They took over a thousand dollars from Bello up on Rincon Hill. What if word is around town that I was with Bello before he was killed by these junior league hopheads on Turk Street? I can put it out that I was still pressuring him for some heroin.”
“Alright. You know the crowd, Chris. I dislike seeing you lose the effectiveness of the role you’ve worked on for six months. What do you suggest now?”
“That I try to contact the kilo man over at Sausalito. I’ll try to get Bello’s job. I know the junkers and I can drop enough names to convince this connection that I’m his best candidate to take over and replace Bello. If he’s not the top man out here, I’ll try to get on up the heroin ladder to the man who is on top. If he is the actual importer and transporter, we’ll move in on him with his first delivery to me. Make sense?”
“I’ll get in touch with Washington and see what the director has to say, Chris. Get something to eat and I’ll let you know in a few minutes.”
Chris Padgett listened to the sounds of the teletype as he drank black coffee. He shaved and changed his clothes. He re-loaded the.38 and left the narcotics caps with the Bureau lab man for analysis, carefully tagging each one with its source and date, hour and location. He was on his second cup of coffee when his senior officer of the N Man team joined him in the kitchen.
“You’re cleared for Sausalito, Chris, but we’ll have a snooper on you all the way. Take the green Chev from the garage. It’s already bugged. We’ll be on top of you all the time. And, Chris, check in your I.D. and revolver for this trip. You’re not playing footsie with San Francisco addicts. You can run into a frisk at this level that could mean a dead agent if that card were turned up. The name of that schooner is the Stardust. Its owner is the lessee of that apartment on Grant. He’s also the owner of the bar on Turk. The name’s Karl Gortoff — no record here; white male, 44; supposed to have moved here about a year ago from LA. The LAPD has no record on him. But the schooner has a Panamanian registry. The boys picked up his prints from the Grant Avenue pad and neither the FBI nor Interpol people have anything on him. He’s a mystery man and the Stardust is a mystery ship. It hasn’t moved from its anchorage for six months. We’ll have the Coast Guard keep it under surveillance from now on. But once you’re aboard, you’ll have to play it by ear. If it weighs anchor and sails out of U.S. territorial waters, you’ll be on your own. Better get fixed up with a passport — just in case.”