Dietrich took a moment to grasp what I’d just told him.
“My god!” he exclaimed, “I’ve just done a terrible thing. And it’s too late to correct it!”
“You mean the five kilos of heroin in my room?” I asked.
Dietrich nodded — and it was the confirmation I needed He’d as much as admitted that he was the one who’d set up Stocelli’s associates and had been trying to do the same to Stocelli and me.
“I got rid of it,” I told him.
Dietrich shook his head. “Even more. I sent a bellhop to your room with a black fabric suitcase. It contains almost thirty kilos of heroin. No more than an hour ago.”
“Have you informed the police yet?”
Dietrich slowly shook his head. “I was about to— when I heard the door open.”
“The police won’t trouble me about it,” I told him, and watched his reaction.
An edge of fright came into his voice.
“Just who are you, Mr. Stephans? What land of a man are you that you’re sent to deal single-handedly with a brute like Stocelli? You’re not bothered by the police. You’re not in the least disturbed by knowing that there’s enough heroin in your room to put you behind bars for the rest of your life. You break into a hotel room at almost four in the morning with a gun in your hand. Just who the devil are you?”
“Someone who means you no harm,” I reassured him. I could see he was on the verge of breaking apart “All I want from you is some information.”
Dietrich hesitated. Finally, he let out his breath. “All right Go ahead.”
“So far, I’ve totalled up more than a hundred and forty kilos of heroin that you’ve distributed. It has a street value of somewhere between twenty-eight and thirty-two million dollars. Now how the hell could a man like you lay his hands on that much heroin? Even Stocelli can’t do it with all his contacts. Where in God’s name are you getting it from?”
Dietrich turned away from me, stubborness coming into the set of his face.
“That’s one thing I will not tell you, Mr. Stephans.”
“I think you should.”
The woman’s voice came from behind us.
I turned around. She stood in the doorway to the other bedroom, clad in a light, semi-transparent negligee. Beneath it, she wore a short, knee-length nylon nightgown. Her long, straight blonde hair fell almost to her waist. She was somewhere in her middle twenties, her face a softer, feminine version of Dietrich’s elongated features. Under a broad forehead, a fine, long nose that barely escaped being too thin divided her tanned face. Her eyes were the same soft gray as her father’s. Her chin was a delicate joining of the sweeping curves of cheek and jawbone.
“I’m Susan Dietrich. I overheard what you’ve told my father. I apologize to you. It was my fault. I’m the one who bribed the bellhop for information about you. He told me you were seen coming out of Stocelli’s penthouse the other morning. That’s why we thought you were part of it.”
She came into the living room and stood by her father, putting one arm around him.
“I think it’s time you told someone. It’s been tearing you apart for years. You’ve got to stop. You’re getting in too deep.”
Dietrich shook his head. “I won’t stop, Susan. I can’t stop! Not until every last one of them—”
Susan put her fingers to his lips. “Please?”
Dietrich took her hand away. “I will not tell him,” he said defiantly, his voice beginning to rise to an almost fanatical pitch. “He’ll tell the police, and they’ll all get off scot-free. Every one of them! Don’t you understand that? All my effort — all those years will have been wasted.”
“No,” I said “Frankly, I don’t give a damn about the men you’ve framed — or how long they’ll rot in jail. All I want to know is where you’re getting all this heroin.”
Dietrich lifted a thin, pale face to me. I could see the lines of suffering that had etched themselves deeply into his skin. Only years of agony could have produced the tortured look in the old man’s eyes. He looked at me steadily, and without a flicker of expression in his voice, he said, simply, “I make it, Mr. Stephans.”
Dietrich held Susan’s hand tightly in both of his as he told me his story.
“I had another daughter, Mr. Stephans. Her name was Alice. Four years ago, she was found dead of an overdose of heroin in a despicable, dirty hotel room in New York City. She wasn’t quite eighteen at the time. For a year before she died, she’d been a prostitute. As the police told me, she’d been taking on everyone who could pay her even a few dollars because she needed money so desperately to pay for her addiction. She couldn’t live without heroin. She finally died because of it.
“I swore revenge. I swore to get the men who count, the ones who make it possible — the ones at the top! The big men that the police can’t touch because they never handle the stuff themselves. Men like Stocelli, Torregrossa, Vignale, Gambetta, Klein, and Webber. The whole filthy bunch! Especially the ones who process it for them. Men like Michaud, Berthier, and Duprè.
“If you know anything about me, you know I’m a chemist. Recently, I found a way I could get my revenge. I found a means by which I could literally bury them in their own foul traffic!”
He paused, his eyes gleaming with a light that came from deep within him.
“I found a way to make synthetic heroin.”
Dietrich saw the look on my face.
“You don’t believe me, do you, Mr. Stephans. But it’s true. I actually discovered a way in which to manufacture heroin hydrochloride of better than ninety-one percent purity” He got to his feet. “Come with me.”
I followed him into the kitchenette.
Dietrich toned on the light and pointed. “See for yourself.”
On the counter was a simple array of glass retorts and glass tubing. Most of it made no sense to me, but I’m not a chemist
“It is true,” Susan said, and I recalled that on the second page of the report that Denver had sent me via Telecopier the key phrase on Dietrich Chemical Inc. was “research and development.” Was it really possible that the old man had found a way to manufacture heroin synthetically?
“Yes, Mr. Stephans,” Dietrich said, almost proudly, “synthetic heroin. Like many discoveries, I practically stumbled upon the technique of synthesizing the drug, although it took me quite some time to perfect it. And then”—Dietrich reached over to the counter and lifted a brown, plastic quart bottle, holding it up—”then, I discovered how to concentrate the synthetic. This bottle contains concentrated synthetic heroin, I suppose a good analogy would be to liken it to concentrated liquid saccharin, one drop of which is equal to a full teaspoon of sugar. Well, this is even more concentrated. I dilute it with plain tap water, half an ounce to the gallon.”
I must have looked dubious because Dietrich caught me by the arm. “You must believe me, Mr. Stephans. You’ve tested the stuff yourself, haven’t you?”
I hadn’t, but I remembered Carlos Ortega reaching out with his forefinger and touching it to the powder and touching that to his tongue and then nodding agreement that it was indeed heroin.
“How does it work?” I asked.
“You know I’ll never reveal the formula.”
“I didn’t ask you that. I just don’t see how you get a crystal powder out of that”—I pointed to the bottle —”and plain water.”
Dietrich sighed. “Very simple. The concentrate has the property of crystalizing water. Just as cold turns rain into snowflakes — which is nothing more than crystallized water. A gallon of water weighs around three kilos. This bottle contains enough concentrate to make almost two hundred kilos of synthetic heroin that can’t be distinguished from true heroin hydrochloride. There isn’t a chemical test in the world that will show the slightest difference. And I can turn it out for only a few dollars a pound. Do you know what that means?”