“I want a slice, too,” said Quinn. “I really want to carve me one out now.”
Turk grinned in the dark, grinned till his jaw hurt. He was afraid to make a sound lest he interrupt Quinn or disturb him in any way.
“Did you hear me?”
“Yes, yes! I see it. I can see how…”
“You don’t see a thing. Now just talk. Tell me everything that goes on with this smuggling operation. And don’t be clever, just talk.”
Turk went on for nearly an hour. Where the girls came from and where they went. It was, Quinn found out, a fairly sparse business and needed connections which he could not make in a hundred years. He learned about the trade in raw alcohol, black market from American bases, and how it left here and then was handled through Sicily. And watches which one man could carry and make it worth while. And inferior grain, sold out of Egypt.
None of the operations were very big and there wasn’t one which was ironclad. Remal, with no competition and with his thumb on a lethargic town, ran matters in a way which looked sloppy to Quinn-unless Turk told it badly-and ran them, for the most part, pretty wide open.
Quinn smoked a cigarette and thought of chances. He thought business thoughts about business and once he thought of Remal who was an enemy. But he stuck mostly to business.
Taking a slice here or there was ridiculous. Remal would hit back. But to roll the whole thing over, and then leave Remal on the bottom “Stuff leaving here goes mostly to Sicily?”
“Yes. Not tonight. Tonight there are just the women, and they go just up the coast. And the silk…”
“Never mind.” Quinn picked up a pebble. “Does Remal run the Sicily end, too?”
“Oh no. He never goes there. Sometimes the Sicilian comes here.”
“What’s his name?”
“I don’t know. He sees Whitfield. Sometimes Remal.”
This could mean anything. It could mean Remal runs the show at both ends, or the Sicilian comes down with instructions for Remal, or he comes just to coordinate. Turk didn’t know. Quinn couldn’t tell.
“Is it important?” said Turk.
It is most likely, thought Quinn, that the two ends are run independently.
“Remal ever send anybody over there?”
“No, he never does.”
And put that together with the Sicilians and their reputation in a business like this-It is likely, thought Quinn, that they’re bigger at the other end.
“Now tell me again about the alcohol. All the details,” said Quinn. “You mentioned something about tonight.”
“Yes. Tonight he went down…”
“But there’s no alcohol going out tonight, you said.”
“I know. I said twice a month, like tonight. Remal goes down to the warehouse to see about the alcohol in cans. It comes in by truck and goes out by boat.”
“Does it come in tonight?”
“No, it comes in and goes out, all in the same day. Tomorrow.”
“Then what’s Remal doing down there tonight?”
“To send the driver out to the pick-up point. Remal always counts the empty cans, and when the truck comes back the next day he counts the full cans or has Whitfield count them. And he gives instructions to the driver, about little changes in plan.”
“What kind of changes?”
“Little changes, like time and place and so on.”
Quinn sat a moment and started to play with a pebble. “On the truck,” he said, “there’s just this one driver?”
“Yes.”
“Kind of careless, isn’t it?”
“Who would dare interfere?”
Quinn nodded. Who indeed. “As far as I know,” he said, “there are only two ways out of this town. One east, one west, and both along the coast.”
“For trucks, yes.”
“Which way does this one come and go?”
“Both ways the same way, west. Because the alcohol is black market from Algerian ports. It comes overland, and then this driver picks it up out of town.”
After that, the talk became more and more detailed, about how many cans and how large, time schedules and distances, and while none of it came out as precise as Quinn might have wanted, it was enough. Enough for a fine, hard jolt.
“Now something else,” Quinn said, “and this time I don’t have questions but you do the listening.”
Turk noticed the difference in Quinn and paid attention.
“With no more effort than you put out now, doing nothing, you can pick yourself off the street and no more handouts, like the kind you’ve been taking all your life.”
“Oh?” said Turk, because he had not understood all the slang.
“Here’s what. You told me Remal picks his help as he needs it.”
“Yes?”
“This is good enough when there’s no competition, but not good enough when the opposition is organized.”
“Are you discussing a war?”
“Just shut up a minute. Remal doesn’t have a gang. I’m going to make one.”
“Gang?”
“A few men, always the same men, working their job not for pennies, but a cut.”
“Ah,” said Turk. “No war. You are talking now like a brigande.”
“Call it what you like. The point is we run it a new way. This leaves out the knife play in the street, it means picking our men with care, and it means no talk whatsoever. Everybody knows of Remal’s operation. Nobody knows of yours and mine.”
“Ah,” said Turk. “Anything.”
“For a start we’ll need three men. Whom can you suggest?”
“There is my friend,” said Turk, “the one who you saw by the steps.”
“Can he be trusted?”
“Absolutely. He is my friend. Then,” Turk said, “there is the man whose face you cut. He has…”
“Him?”
“Not him, he will not be able to help us for a while. I was going to say, he has two brothers…”
“They’ll work for me?”
“They will not hold it against you that you injured their brother. Especially after I explain that it was an accident and they hear there’s money to be made.”
They then talked details about what they would do in the morning. What most impressed Turk was that Quinn would start all this new life immediately in the morning.
“Can you have the men ready on time?”
“Of course. I have already thought about…”
“Don’t of-course me. Remember, we’re not setting this schedule ourselves. We’ve got to follow one.”
“Understood.”
“Make sure your help understands it.”
“I will.”
Quinn threw the pebble away and got up. “I’ll stay at the hotel tonight. You got somebody to watch me?”
“Of course. The man who got hurt in the arm. He is a very good watcher.
“You’re of-coursing me again. He just came over from Remal and he’s going to watch me sleep tonight?”
“Well. I feel…”
“And he’s going to sit there in the hotel with blood all over his arm?”
“I have a great deal to learn, about watching in hotels.”
“Then say so in the beginning and don’t make stupid suggestions instead.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. What you know you know well, I think. Walk me over.”
Turk walked with Quinn to the hotel and they said nothing else. I could love him, thought Turk. If he’d let me. I really could-And after Quinn had gone into the hotel, Turk got a boy from the quarter who had only one eye. He told the boy to sit in the street all night and to kill anyone who went into Quinn’s room or he, Turk, would dig out the boy’s other eye. He forgot to explain how the boy was to know, while sitting in the street, who would be likely to go into Quinn’s room.
At ten in the morning Quinn had an Occidental-type breakfast downstairs, and while he was drinking his coffee Remal walked in. He came up to the table and asked if he might sit down. Quinn nodded.
“And how are you, Mister Quinn?”
“Alive.”
“Yes, I heard. And now I see.”
“Coffee?”
“No, thank you.”
“You see what, Remal?”
“I see you in a new light, Mister Quinn.”
“In the cold light of dawn?”
“You make small talk almost as well as our Whitfield. Only less amusingly.”
“Then let’s drop it.”