“I will not kill. It’s that simple.”
“You’re absurd, Mr. Merle. Absurd.”
“That’s your opinion. Are you willing to proceed, knowing we may get involved in that kind of risk?”
“Certainly. If I know the nature of the scheme and if in my judgment it has an appropriate chance to succeed. Unlike you, Mr. Merle, I don’t draw artificial lines. I’ve never quite understood people who did. I’ve known dope dealers who drew the line at rape. I’ve known killers who drew the line at dealing drugs. I’ve never understood any of them. Once one crosses the line of morality any further distinctions are arbitrary and capricious.”
“You’re a fundamentalist.”
“A meaningless label. I distinguish between good and evil. I think I do so far more realistically than you do.”
“A moralist who’s cheerfully willing to indulge in extortion, fraud, illegal entry, kidnapping and God knows what other offenses.”
“Offenses against what, Mr. Merle? Against evil men. I justify my existence by jousting with evil. But I’ve never defrauded an innocent man or extorted anything from an honest citizen.”
“Robin Hood, are you?”
“I’m Diego Vasquez, Mr. Merle. Perhaps I make my own legend but I certainly don’t model myself on others’.”
“You’re extraordinary, you know that?”
“Are you going to tell me what your scheme is so that I may evaluate it?”
“I suppose I’ll have to, won’t I. All right. You may as well sit down.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
New York City: 24 October
1
THE BUILDING WAS EMPTYING OUT. WHEN THE LAST STRAGGLERS had disappeared Ezio locked the door of the office and returned through the anteroom to his desk. He picked up the phone and punched ten digits.
“Ordway Enterprises.”
“Ezio Martin. Mr. Ordway in?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Ezio. That you?”
“Me. Turn on your scrambler,” Ezio said.
“Just a minute …”
Ezio opened the drawer and switched on his scrambler. “OK, you hear me?”
“Good enough.” Ordway’s voice was distorted now.
“That order I placed yesterday morning. You got anything yet?”
“Working on it, Ezio. It takes a little time, it’s a complicated order.”
“I’m waiting for Mr. Pastor in my office now, that’s why I called. Thought I’d give him the latest.”
“We ought to have a crew for you in maybe forty-eight hours.”
“Clean?”
“Squeaky clean. That’s what you asked for.”
“Mr. Pastor’s going to appreciate that.”
Ordway said, “I don’t suppose you want to tell me anything at all, do you?”
“Out of bounds right now. You’ll make a nice profit on it, though. Mind telling me who you’re sending us?”
“Well we haven’t got them yet, Ezio. But two of the men we’re trying to get, they’re a couple of soldiers. I mean real army soldiers, they were out in Vietnam. Officers, Green Berets. No police records at all. Squeaky clean.”
“But their fingerprints would be on file.”
“Hell, anybody’s fingerprints are on file, Ezio. So they wear gloves, whatever it is. These guys are into demolitions, communications, you name it.”
“We’re not expecting to invade a Vietcong village,” Ezio said. “I’m not sure it’s a bright idea. The operation we’ve got in mind, it needs to be real quiet. This doesn’t want demolitions types, it wants second-story types.”
“These are good men, Ezio. They ran some shit into the country for us from Nam. They did it efficient and quiet. These are not loud guys.”
“I told you I wanted three men.”
“The third guy, I was thinking maybe Tony Senno up in Burbank.”
“No. Definitely out.”
“Why?”
“Because we’ve used him before. I told you, nobody we’ve ever used before. Senno drove the car for Deffeldorf, right?”
“Then I’ll cancel him, get you somebody else. No sweat, Ezio.”
“You don’t mention our names to whoever it is, you understand that. They’re not going to know who they’re working for. You’ll call me back when they’re ready to take off.”
“Today’s Friday. I’ll probably send them out Sunday on a plane. Where do I reach you?”
“It’ll have to be here, the office, because I’ve got the scrambler here. I’ll come in around noon, that’s nine in the morning your time, you call me here then.”
“Fine. So long, Ezio.”
Ten minutes later Frank arrived. He tossed his coat and hat on the couch and shot his cuffs. “So?”
Ezio told him about his conversation with Ordway.
“Fine, fine. What about the schedule?”
“Everybody arrives in New York by Sunday night.”
“Assembly point?”
“Midnight Sunday, one of the piers in Brooklyn. It’ll be empty—no ships in, no cargoes waiting. We slipped the watchman a few bucks, he won’t see anything.”
“That’s fine, Ezio.”
“Who briefs them?”
“You do. Buy some longshoreman’s clothes, wear a stocking over your face, don’t talk unless you have to. Rent a typewriter and have the instructions typed up, pass it around, make sure they understand. If they ask questions you answer them with a pencil, you write the answer down in block letters so they can’t figure the handwriting, you let them read it and then you burn it.”
“Down payments?”
“Two thousand a man. The other eight thousand each when they bring us the files.”
“You worked out a plan for the drop or do you want me to take care of that?”
“Use a truck. They drive it to a given point, you pick it up there. You personally. Nobody else is in on this, Ezio.”
“Right.”
“Keep it that way.”
“I pay them off when I pick up the truck, then.”
“Yes. Treat them square, this is a hard job for them.”
“Got you,” Ezio said.
2
She put down five tiles and scored it. Frank rotated the board and scowled.
She said, “What now? Another seven-letter word?”
“No. How do you spell ‘harass’?”
“One are, two esses.”
“No good.” He lapsed into silent contemplation.
She said, “How long will it take them to do it, Frank?”
“How long will it take who to do what?”
“The files.”
“No telling.” He rearranged tiles on his rack. “First they’ll have to scout the place, every inch. Find out what the security setup is. How many people work there weekends and nights. Bringing in one guy from Minneapolis who used to install alarm systems—he’s supposed to figure out a way across whatever they’ve got but it may take equipment and time. You can’t pull off anything this big overnight. And they’ve got to get away clean—it means working out complicated maneuvers, trucks inside trucks, diversions, all that kind of crap. It’s a Goddamn military operation.”
“But it can be done. I’m sure it can.”
“Anything can be done,” he said. “Once they pull it off there’s going to be all hell breaks loose. You know what we’re going to do? We’re going to put the stuff in the mail.”
“In the mail?”
He was smiling. “Sure. Bust it up in little packages, wrap it up in plain brown paper, mail, them out from all kinds of little branch post offices to guys all over the country who got testified against. Then we sit back and watch it all hit the fan. The government hasn’t got enough agents to cover all of them at once. Eleven hundred witnesses? Eight, nine hundred of them be dead by the time the federals start catching up. And the first four are going to be Merle, Benson, Draper and Fusco.”
“If they still have a file on Merle.”
“There’s that. But it doesn’t bother me anymore. We miss Merle, OK, we miss one man. But we make our point, that’s the important thing.”
“Then you still think Gregory was mistaken.”
“Sure, the both of them. Couldn’t have been Merle. What’s Merle want with a junkie connection? It doesn’t make any sense. It was just some cop trying to run a bluff. Couple of clumsy cops running a poor tail, they got caught, they had to dream up some story.”