“Admit one thing, Hank,” I argued. “The most important guy in this setup is Brubaker. We have evidence on everybody but him. We don’t even know if he’ll show at the meeting. Only way we can trap him is for me to walk in there alone and declare my hand.”
“What is your hand?”
“The best. They can’t do business for Donaldson with anyone but me, and I won’t do business with anyone but Brubaker.”
“All right,” Hank said grudgingly. “Go ahead, I’ll be watching the Slipper. Seems to me they’ve got a room upstairs and a direct rear entrance, used to shoot craps up there at one time.”
“Yeah,” I said. “And Hank, will you call San Francisco’s finest off my back? I’d like to go home for a minute.”
“Go ahead, Bill. I’ll cancel the bulletin on you.” He hung up.
I left the hotel, nursed two bottles of beer through the next half hour in a nearby bar, then drove over to my apartment. I decided the time had come to strap on my shoulder holster. There was an assortment of weapons in the safe at my office. Why didn’t I go there?
I opened the door of my apartment and stepped inside, reaching for the wall light switch. The lights were snapped on before I found it. Frankie Mortola used his free hand to slam the door. In his other hand he held a .45 service automatic pointed at my belt buckle.
Ashton Brubaker, a neat white haired man in an oxford gray suit, was sitting in my reading chair. He was petting a black homburg in his lap and watching me gravely through sharp brown eyes. Like his pictures in the financial and society pages, he looked like a man any widow could trust with the life savings. He had a cherubic face with sparse white eyebrows, a Roman nose and full red mouth. His complexion, a credit to his barber, was soft, smooth and pink. His manicurist could take a bow too. His pink hands could easily advertise toilet soap for milady. With him in it, my apartment looked shoddy.
“Mohammed has come to the mountain, Sweeney,” Brubaker said in a cool, well modulated voice.
“Hello, Mo,” I greeted. “How can I be of service?”
“Sit down,” he commanded. When I dropped into a chair he proposed, “Let us begin by saying that you know the whereabouts of some people I am most anxious to see. You are going to tell me where I can locate these people. If you do so immediately, you will be rewarded with a fair sum of money in compensation for your efforts. If you don’t do so immediately... Well, you will eventually, and your only reward will be in the hereafter.”
“You have it all figured out.”
“Nicely.”
“Who are these people you’re looking for?”
“Don’t be evasive,” Brubaker advised sternly. “We are speaking, as you know, of Robert Donaldson, his lady friend, and Ralph Booker’s daughter.” His tone flew further north as he added in a hard cold voice, “I want them, you know where they are. I’m going to get them.”
“How much is this fair sum?”
“Five thousand dollars.”
“Considering you’re in a billion dollar business, that’s rather cheap.”
Brubaker frowned and stared at his manicured nails. He lifted the sharp eyes to Mortola inquiringly. Mortola shrugged.
“I know a lot, Brubaker,” I said. “You control a number of supposedly legitimate enterprises through the Sungate Investment Company. You import heroin, transport it up and down the coast, cut it and distribute it. You control what is probably the biggest illegal holding company in the country. Under the circumstances, five grand is short of the mark.”
Brubaker regrouped his features for bargaining, asked, “What would hit the mark?”
“One hundred thousand,” I told him blandly. “Now, tonight. For that I turn over all I’ve got.”
“Surely you don’t expect me to have that much money in cash.”
“No, but I have an idea. Suppose you give me the equivalent of a box of Bassey’s special brand of candy, say a kilo of heroin, for security. That’s worth more than a hundred grand to you. I’ll hold it until you come up with the cash.”
“Another impossibility,” Brubaker said. “We don’t keep the merchandise around, you know. We get rid of it as fast as it arrives.”
“You have plenty of it on hand now, and you can’t get rid of it through regular channels until Donaldson and friends are decommissioned.”
Brubaker directed another inquiring glance at Mortola. This time the ugly man spat, “The broad, Mr. Brubaker. She must’ve had her ear bent to the door while we was talking and then gone to him with it.”
“You’ve bungled every single thing today, Frankie,” Brubaker’s mouth curled contemptuously at his aide. He turned to me, “I sent Booker’s daughter to you, because you have a reputation for getting things done and I want Donaldson badly. You have done much more than I thought. So you’ve found the girl and learned we received a new shipment today. Do you know where the shipment is?”
“No.”
Brubaker laughed sourly. “It was a silly question.” He said to Mortola, “Give me that cannon.” Mortola handed him the .45 shakily, stood dumbly in the center of the floor until Brubaker ordered, “Now get on the phone. Change the rendezvous. Tell your men to get the stuff out of there and hurry it up.”
The heavy weapon looked ludicrous in Brubaker’s small pink mitt, but lethal enough. Brubaker began to laugh mirthlessly. The joke was on me, I knew.
“I agree to your terms, Sweeney,” he said over the sounds of Mortola on the telephone. “You were right about our having a supply on hand. A surprise shipment arrived this afternoon as a matter of fact. We’ll drive over and consummate our transaction, if that’s agreeable to you.”
“That’s agreeable,” I said. “Where are we going?”
“To my home,” he said, smiling icily.
“Your home.”
“My home,” he repeated.
Ten
They drove me to a rambling wooden mansion on Pacific street, a columnar, corniced affair shuddering in the thickening fog. As we pulled into the driveway the searching beacon on Alcatraz island in the bay below winked imperatively. Benny Lufts, unpleasantly surprised to see me, admitted us to a high ceilinged foyer in which you could have promoted jai-alai games. He ushered us into a thick carpeted library with a red brick fireplace, two draped French windows and walls completely lined with books.
“What, no butler?” I asked.
“The servants have been given the evening off,” Brubaker apologized.
The large, brightly lit room was comfortably furnished with two chesterfields, arm chairs and cocktail tables grouped around the fireplace. There was a flat maplewood desk and swivel chair in one corner. A small brown skinned man with a dry, wrinkled face sat in an overstuffed chair beside the fireplace. As we came in he placed a brandy glass on the table beside him and stood up. He moved lithely, like a jockey, to Ashton Brubaker and shook hands.
“And this is Sweeney,” Brubaker offered, turning to me. “Sweeney, meet Senor Ramero, one of my associates.” The brown skinned man eyed me curiously with flashing eyes as he gripped my hand. Brubaker said, “I’ll fix a drink. Benny, bring Syd and Eddie right in when they arrive.”
I sat in the mate to Ramero’s chair when he reseated himself. Mortola sat on a chesterfield.
“I have heard of you, Mr. Sweeney,” Ramero said with a bare remnant of some south of the border culture. “I have heard you are a very clever man.”
“Thank you, Senor.” I was weighing the availability of the andirons alongside the fireplace. With Hank Stroth geared for the Green Slipper I needed help from somewhere. When Brubaker distributed the drinks I asked, “Just get into town?”
“This afternoon,” Ramero said with a parchment smile.