1984 - Hit Them Where it Hurts (14 page)

‘Keep talking,’ I said.

Bill moved a little closer so Hank could feel the heat of the flame. He cringed away.

‘People come to my club and give me envelopes. Angie gives me a wallet. I put everything in a bag. I don’t ask questions. On the first of the month, Hula comes and I give him the bag, and that’s it.’

‘Why is Angie being blackmailed?’

‘I dunno. I swear I don’t! It’s Hula who digs up the dirt about people. I don’t ask questions. I don’t want to know. I guess Hula has something on Angie. Something so hot, she is paying out all this dough. She ain’t right in the head. She’s a real nutcase. She’s always been a nutcase.’

I studied him and decided he was telling the truth. A brutal, ruthless man like Minsky wouldn’t tell a birdbrain like Hank anything.

I was suddenly sick of him, sick of the room, sick of the atmosphere.

‘OK, Bill,’ I said. ‘Unlock him.’

Bill turned off the blowtorch, then removed the handcuffs while I, gun in hand, watched.

Hank sat up, rubbed his wrists and stared up at me.

‘Listen carefully,’ I said, ‘there’s no place now for you in this city. I talked to Hula’s boss. Hula’s feeding the worms. You won’t see him again. You have twelve hours to get out of this city. If I see you again, you will get a bullet in each kneecap and you won’t be able to walk again. Get lost! Understand?’

He continued to stare, shaking his head in bewilderment.

‘I don’t know where to go,’ he muttered. ‘I ain’t got any money.’

‘I won’t tell you twice. If you’re not out of this city in twelve hours, you won’t walk again.’

I turned. ‘Come on, Bill. The sight of this shit sickens me.’

We took the elevator down to the street level and walked out into the humid rain.

CHAPTER 7

F
rom the outside, the Three Crab Restaurant didn’t look inspiring. It had a tatty, weather-beaten air with its bleached wooden front and its narrow glass door, screened by a red curtain: not an enticement to tourists.

When I pushed open the door, I found myself in a tiny lobby with a Vietnamese acting as a hatcheck girl. She gave me a welcoming smile.

‘You have a reservation, sir?’ she asked.

‘I am expected.’

‘Would you be Mr. Wallace?’

‘That’s right.’

She pressed a bell push on the counter.

‘Just one moment sir.’

A short, fat man, wearing a grey alpaca coat, white shirt with a string tie and black trousers, materialised.

‘Mr. Wallace?’

‘Correct,’ I said.

‘Miss Sandra Willis is expecting you, Mr. Wallace.’ I got a flashing smile, revealing white capped teeth. ‘Please to follow me.’

He opened a door, and the sound of voices, the clatter of dishes, startled me. I followed him into a vast room, crowded with tables and packed with people. Some of the men wore white tuxedos. All the women were dressed to kill.

Waiters were moving swiftly and efficiently, changing plates, serving dishes.

‘You have quite a business here,’ I said as he led me by a packed bar and to a flight of stairs.

He turned and gave me his flashing, toothy smile.

‘I don’t complain.’

He led me up the stairs, reached a door, tapped and threw the door open, bowing me in.

‘Mr. Wallace, Miss Willis.’

She was sitting at a table, laid for dinner in a small, but well furnished, air conditioned room. She waved to me and motioned me to sit at the table. She was wearing a dark red dress, and her black hair was caught back by a band of pearls. She looked terrific, and caught her sexual vibes as I sat, facing her.

‘Let’s eat, Wally,’ she said. ‘I’m starving.’

‘Two seconds, Miss Willis,’ the man in the alpaca coat said and vanished.

She regarded me.

‘I need to talk to you,’ she said, ‘but first I must eat. I haven’t had a thing since last night. J.W. is very exacting.’

‘J.W.? Walinski?’

‘Who else?’

There was a tap on the door, and a waiter who looked Mexican hurried in. He put a plate of a dozen oysters Rockefeller before Sandra and the same for me. He then poured a chilled white wine and, bowing, he left us.

The oysters were excellent. As I speared my fifth I said, ‘You seem at home here, Sandra.’

‘I come here most nights. When a woman is usually on her own, it is wise to eat privately, and where she is known.’

‘I shouldn’t have thought you were often alone.’

She shrugged.

‘My working hours are impossible. It is only that J.W. decided to go to the casino, I am eating now.’

‘You want to talk to me?’

‘Yes, but not yet.’

By now we had finished the oysters and I heard a bell ring. I guessed she had pressed a hidden bell push on the floor.

Almost immediately, the waiter appeared and cleared the plates, then yet another waiter appeared, pushing a hotplate trolley.

‘You don’t object to seafood?’ she asked me.

‘I don’t object to any food.’

The waiter served from a big dish. He placed before Sandra half a grilled shelled lobster, fried clams and king-sized prawns, stuffed with crabmeat. He served rice with a scattering of red peppers over which he poured a thick, creamy sauce tinted pink by lobster coral.

He did the same for me.

‘Some dinner,’ I said.

It wasn’t until we had eaten a second helping that she relaxed, leaning back in her chair and regarding me.

‘Coffee,’ she told the waiter as he cleared the dishes. ‘A cigarette, please, Dirk.’

I gave her a cigarette from my pack, lit hers and mine.

‘That’s a lot better,’ she said, and smiled at me. ‘Now we can talk.’

The waiter returned with a pot of coffee, poured, then went away.

I waited, looking at her. She was too good to be true, I told myself. She had everything most women would envy and a saint would be unable to resist, but her glittering green eyes, as hard as emeralds, warned me this woman was very dangerous.

‘So what do we talk about?’ I asked, sipping my coffee.

‘You are the first man I have met in this God-forsaken city who has guts. I need a man with guts.’

‘What makes you think I have guts?’

‘A man who can bomb a stinking hole like the Black Cassette and scare an ape like Smedley so he quits the city has guts.’

‘How do you know he’s quit the city?’

‘Half an hour ago, he telephoned. He wanted to talk to J.W. I recognised his voice so I told him J.W. was tied up and what did he want? He said you had tortured him into telling you that Angela Thorsen had hired him to do the acid job, and he had to quit. Could J.W. give him money?’ She paused, then went on, ‘I told him to go to hell, and hung up. I got one of the boys to check. Smedley has gone, heading for Miami.’

I sat waiting, knowing there was a lot more to come.

‘I haven’t told J.W. what Smedley told me about Angela Thorsen,’ she went on. ‘She is valuable to him. If he knew she was behind the acid job, he would be sure you were going to fix her. You wouldn’t last ten minutes.’

‘All the same, I am fixing her,’ I said.

‘To understand this scene, Dirk,’ she said, lowering her voice, ‘I am going to wise you up.’

‘Why?’

‘I told you: I need a man of guts. Now I have found you, I don’t want you blown away in your hunt for revenge. You can’t buck the organisation. Now, listen! J.W. is the top shot in Florida. His job is to collect money for the organisation. Florida is a gold mine. Anyone with money has a secret, and there are thousands of them who pay blackmail. The big stores, the casino, the top hotels pay protection money. J.W. lives at the Spanish Bay Hotel for nothing. The hotel doesn’t want staff trouble. J.W. has only to raise a finger and the staff will walk out. The monthly take is big: around a million and a half. J.W. is responsible for keeping to this figure or increasing it. This makes him vulnerable. The organisation would replace him if he began to slip. This is I the reason why he is anxious to have no trouble in this city. He gets ten thousand from the Thorsen girl. If you start trouble for her, J.W. will be ten thousand short. I know the organisation is getting dissatisfied with his work. They want a bigger increase. He is living on a tightrope. Let me tell you, Dirk, the only reason he hasn’t had you blown away is that you are too well known here, and are friends with the cops. He doesn’t want any publicity. You with me?’

‘Why are you telling me all this, Sandra?’ I asked. ‘I understood you worked for J.W., and he seems to think a lot of you.’

Her smile was evil and bitter.

‘I’ll come to that. The only reason J.W. wanted to see you was to con you into believing how sorry he was about the acid job. You accepted his story that Minsky was dead and buried. J.W. is a most convincing liar. Minsky is his right hand. It is Minsky, with his team of ferrets, who dig up the dirt for blackmail. Without Minsky, J.W. would be lost. He would no more think of getting rid of Minsky than you would cutting off one of your arms. Minsky is alive and working. Smedley is a birdbrain and useless to the organisation. When he arrives in Miami, he will disappear. Minsky is an expert at making unwanted people disappear.’

I leaned forward.

‘Are you telling me this sonofabitch who sprayed acid in my girl’s face is alive?’

She nodded.

‘That’s what I am telling you.’

I drew in a deep breath, feeling cold rage run through me.

‘Where do I find him?’

‘You won’t. You don’t even know what he looks like.’

‘He’s short, broad-shouldered, wears a white coat and a broad-brimmed hat.’

‘So what?’ Her expression was cynical. ‘He takes off his hat and white coat, puts on a grey coat and doesn’t wear a hat. How many hundreds of short, broad-shouldered men walk about this city? You won’t ever find him unless I help you.’

I stared at her.

‘Why should you help me?’

Her face turned to stone and her green eyes narrowed.

‘Because he murdered my father.’ The words came in a hissing whisper.

‘Why?’

‘So J.W. could replace him. My father ran the Florida racket brilliantly. I was his secretary. We were very close.’ She leaned back and motioned to me to give her another cigarette.

‘You are a mafioso?’

‘Of course, but, now, I am also a worm in the apple. When my father died, I swore over his dead body to revenge him, and that’s why I need a man of guts.’ She leaned forward so I could light her cigarette. ‘Two worms are better than one, Dirk.’

I was absorbing all this.

‘You became J.W.’s secretary?’

‘Yes. He had no idea that I knew he had ordered my father’s murder. The killing was cleverly arranged: a hit-and-run driver in Miami. My father left me a letter. He knew J.W. was after his job, and he knew Minsky would kill him. I had been my father’s secretary for more than three years, and I knew far more about the racket than J.W. did. He was only too happy when I offered to work for him.’

‘Why did you do that? I would have thought you would have hated the sight of him.’

‘The worm in his polished apple.’ Sandra said with her evil smile. ‘For more than a year, I have waited my chance. I knew I couldn’t bring J.W. and Minsky down without help.’ She stared fixedly at me. ‘Now I have found a man of guts. With your know-how, I can revenge my father and you your girl. We have a common cause.’

‘So what you are saying is that if Minsky is put out of action, J.W. will fall off his tightrope?’

‘Yes. Of course, the racket won’t stop. J.W. will be replaced. Someone like Minsky will continue to dig up dirt. No one can stop the organisation, but we two could stop J.W. and Minsky. That would satisfy me.’

I thought about this. I didn’t like the idea of working with a mafioso, but if it meant I could get at Minsky, I wasn’t going to be fussy.

‘Right,’ I said. ‘You can rely on me. What’s the first move?’

She studied me with her hard, green eyes.

‘You mean this, Dirk?’

‘You can rely on me.’

She nodded.

‘The first thing is to find Minsky. He reports to J.W. on the phone. He’s elusive. By now he’ll have heard from Smedley, and he will know that Smedley has talked. But he won’t know that you know he is alive. He could become careless. He won’t return to his rented apartment. He rented it week by week. It was just a roof while he was in the city. The reason why Smedley lived there was a front. Someone had to pay the rent and live there. Minsky will have no trouble finding another roof. We’ll have trouble finding him.’

‘Do you think he could be holed up on the yacht
Hermes?’

She stiffened.

‘Who told you about the
Hermes?’

‘I’ve been asking around, Sandra. Never mind who told me.’

‘He won’t be there. The yacht is only used as the payoff station. J.W. only goes there on the first of the month. He collects the money, then sails for Miami. Yachts aren’t Minsky’s scene. He likes plenty of space.’

‘How do you know?’

‘My father told me. At one time Minsky worked for him.’

‘You can give me a description of him, can’t you?’

She shook her head.

‘I’ve never seen him. I’ve only heard him on the telephone. He has a strong Italian accent.’

‘He must have a girlfriend.’

She thought.

‘Yes. Once when J.W. was talking to him on the phone, he asked how Dolly was. She could be Minsky’s girlfriend.’

My mind switched to Dolly Gilbert, the whore, who lived at the Breakers condo. If she was Minsky’s girlfriend, no wonder she was so frightened when I had mentioned Hank Smedley. Possibly, Smedley was cheating on Minsky and screwing Dolly. This was worth a long, careful look.

‘Do you know where the new drop is going to be?’ I asked, keeping my face deadpan.

‘Now the Black Cassette no longer exists, the blackmail victims will have to be told where to deliver their payoffs.’

‘I don’t know, but I will find out.’

‘Minsky is certain to show up on the first of the month to collect the blackmail money. We have eight days. Find out where the new drop is to be. I’ll stake it out if I haven’t found him first.’

‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘Leave that to me. I’ll telephone you. Give me your number.’