Flashpoint

8

The elevator doors opened and we stepped out into a scene worthy of a House Beautiful center spread. A foyerlike room was bathed in soft, amber light. The tile floor was patterned in large black-and-white squares, so highly polished that the grillwork of the gold-painted, wrought-iron room divider beyond was reflected in the surface.

Through the grillwork I could see a sunken living room the size of a tennis court. Except where covered by black tufted throw rugs, its matching black-and-white checkerboard floor mirrored a sparkling, heavy crystal chandelier overhead. The entire decor in the two rooms consisted of stark white and flat black contrasts highlighted by gold accents. Displays of Moorish swords, lances, mail, and armor lined the white walls, with handcarved ivory pieces and decorative brass pitchers containing fresh white flowers adorned oversized ebony end tables.

Two steps off the elevator my left wrist was seized and my right arm was trapped to my side by a viselike grip. Both hands were then pulled behind me, and my crossed wrists were painfully gripped in one giant hand which locked them together with finger-lengths to spare.

I had two quick impressions: over my shoulder a huge figure towering ten inches taller, and the overpowering odor of a musky, heavy-scented male cologne which resembled nothing so much as a whiff of lemon-essenced wine.

Talia stood impassively while a matching giant hand searched me roughly from neck to knees for weapons. The hand then made an additional search of each pocket, turning them out one by one. All my belongings clattered to the tile floor. "Nossing," a guttural voice announced.

I was released and thrust to one side. I nearly fell as I had my first look at the giant's flat-faced features and almond-shaped eyes which suggested Mongol blood. Black slacks disappeared under a white, knee-length, choke-collared Nehru jacket. The shoulders were wide enough to have caused the man difficulty in passing through any ordinary door.

"You said he had the envelope, my dear," another voice said pleasantly. It was high pitched, almost a tenor. The sound of it directed my attention to a thick-cushioned white sofa at the right side of the sunken living room. Seated upon it was a gross caricature of a man who looked as though he could surely match the bodyguard in weight but not dimensions. Pear-shaped, with narrow shoulders, broad hips, heavy thighs, and spindly legs, he looked like one of those inflated punching toys that always rocks back upright awaiting the next punch. Sparse, black hair looked as though individual strands had been glued to his pate, and a thin, waxed mustache diminished to tightly-twisted, needle-sharp ends.

This apparition had on a white-velvet smoking jacket with black satin lapels, and his pudgy fingers were encircled by numerous gold rings. Bulbous, froglike eyes were fixed steadily upon Talia.

"He does have it!" she cried out anxiously. "I saw it!"

"Perhaps you had better check out the sincerity of her statement, Abdel," the fat man said softly. The giant moved toward the girl, and I could see her turn pale.

"Get the hell away from her!" I said harshly. "Did you think I was stupid enough to walk in here with it?" The giant paused. "Or to let her know what I was doing?"

"Obviously not, as regards the first part, at least," the fat man said amiably. "You had better have him tell you where it is, Abdel."

The giant reversed his direction and started for me. I stooped swiftly, snatched the.38 from the loosely confining adhesive around my calf under my pants' leg, and showed it to Abdel. He kept right on coming.

I had no intentions of going through the meat grinder of those massive hands. "Left shoulder, Abdel," I said, and put a bullet into it. The sound of the.38 was just a flat crack in the tiled room. The giant tilted to one side but still advanced. "Right arm," I said, and blasted him in the fleshy part. He rocked to a halt, clutching at his arm as blood stained the sleeve of his Nehru jacket; then he started toward me again.

I lined up on his Adam's apple, but the fat man spoke sharply in a foreign tongue. The giant stopped, his little eyes smoldering. The fat man smiled at me benignly. "You have made your point, Mr. Drake."

"I ought to make it on you, too!" I said harshly. "I came here to talk business, and you go on the muscle!"

"The wise man doesn't buy what he can take," the fat man said smoothly. "Since your-ah-demonstration precluded that, we will now talk business." He shifted his attention to the ashen-faced Talia. "Take Abdel along with you into his bedroom and patch him up."

"I witnessed his shame," she whispered. "He will kill me."

"I think not." The fat man addressed the giant again in the same language as before. There was no change of expression on the stolid features, but Abdel left the room in Talia's wake. "He really deserved that anyway for such a clumsy, inefficient search," the fat man informed me.

"If he brings a gun in here, you're not going to appreciate it," I warned as I descended three steps to the right of the grillwork and entered the sunken living room. I took a chair across from his sofa, and I kept the.38 in my hand. Behind the sofa was a well-stocked bar, and to its left a partly opened door that disclosed a liquor storage closet.

The fat man was smiling. "I am Vizier Iskir Bayak, Mr. Drake," he said. "That was an impressive performance. Not that you concealed the weapon successfully, but that you used it instantaneously when the situation seemed to require it. I'm sure you're aware that the two don't always go hand in hand. Shall we talk about the envelope?"

I nodded. "If you're buying."

"What is your price?"

"Ten thousand dollars."

The frog-eyes didn't blink. "An exorbitant figure. It's a fortunate circumstance for you, however, that I cannot conclude an arrangement to which I'm committed without the contents of the envelope. Ten thousand dollars it is. When shall we make the transfer?"

"If he can walk, send Abdel and the ten thousand with me."

"He will walk."

The frog-eyes considered me. Over Bayak's shoulder, between the corner of the room and the liquor storage closet, I could see a picture whose edges seemed charred. Above it a portion of the ceiling appeared freshly plastered and painted. Brocaded white-gold window draperies seemed newer than elsewhere in the room. The area had the look of a recent fire.

"What is your attitude toward the police, Mr. Drake?" the high-pitched voice resumed. I gave him the ancient thumbs-down signal to signify rejection. "I would need to check that out, of course." The tone was thoughtful. "I'll be frank. The-ah-victim of the incident that brought you to Talia's assistance was an associate of mine. Merely a casual business contact whom I had known only for a short time, but his loss cripples an important plan of mine. He was a man of unusual talents, Mr. Drake, as you appear to be. Perhaps when the transfer of envelope and cash is completed, we might speak about a future arrangement?"

"I don't care for your way of doing business." And I wanted nothing to do with a dope shipment.

"You seem fully capable of protecting yourself against the exigencies of my impetuous nature." The fat man was smiling again. "A merger of our skills could well be of considerable mutual benefit. If we-"

He broke off as Talia and Abdel reentered the room. Beneath a fresh Nehru jacket, I could see lumpy bulges where Abdel's arm and shoulder had been bandaged. The double shock would have put the average man on his back, but the giant didn't even seem slowed down.

Bayak heaved himself awkwardly to his feet. He circled the sofa with short steps and went to the charred picture I'd noticed. "About-face, Mr. Drake," he said to me when he was standing in front of the picture. "Watch him, Abdel," he added when I complied.

Abdel and I watched each other, but I also watched the polished base of a lamp halfway between us. In its burnished surface I could see Bayak take hold of the bottom edge of the picture, raise it head high, then lower it and raise it again. The face of a safe-dial appeared behind the picture, and I knew at once what the fat man was doing.

The double-raising of the picture plainly indicated the cocking and then the deactivating of a booby trap. The charred picture and fresh paint and plaster showed that some unwary soul had raised the picture one time only and blown himself and that corner of the apartment into unsightly fragments.

I watched the base of the lamp as Bayak opened the safe and removed several thick envelopes. He returned to the sofa and busied himself counting money. He held out a stack of bills toward me, then withdrew it after a glance at Abdel. "How far is it to the transfer point?"

"Not far." He handed me the money. "How do you know I won't kill Abdel and take off with both cash and envelope?"

"The envelope will mean nothing to you," he smiled. "And I'm trusting that your business instincts are more highly developed than that. Our next conversation could mean much more to you than ten thousand dollars."

"One thing at a time. Coming, Talia?"

"Talia remains here," Bayak said. He smiled again. "But look her up after the transfer. I recommend it. She will be grateful for the envelope's recovery. You may leave now. Abdel will accompany you."

I thought about the ride down to the lobby in the close confines of the penthouse apartment elevator. Bayak read my mind. He addressed the giant in the foreign language, then spoke to me in English. "I told him that the envelope had priority. And that you would kill him if he tried to seize you on the elevator."

"You told him right."

"Then till we meet again, Mr. Drake. Soon, if you deliver on the envelope." The smile beneath the waxed mustache managed to be both promising and menacing.

The ride down in the elevator was tense. I'd have unloaded the rest of the gun clip into Abdel if he made Move One toward me. It wasn't often I'd doubted the efficacy of a.38 at close range, but I had visions of Abdel's subhuman vitality withstanding the impact of bullets long enough for those huge hands to crush my windpipe.

We reached the lobby without incident, however. I thrust the Smith & Wesson into a jacket pocket but let the giant see its outline before I motioned him off the elevator when its doors opened. A man was passing through the lobby, but he boarded the other elevator. "Do you have the key to the mailbox?" I asked Abdel when the other elevator's doors closed.

He stared at me uncomprehendingly.

"Key," I repeated, and gestured at the bronze lineup of mailboxes along one wall.

The giant removed a small, flat key from somewhere under the Nehru jacket and showed it to me tentatively.

"That looks like it," I said. "Open it up." I moved between him and the front entrance in case he had any kamikaze ideas about recovering the money as well as the envelope.

He opened the mailbox, took out the envelope, studied it intently for an instant, then nodded his huge head slowly.

"See you later, muscles," I told him, and went out into the night.

I expected to be followed when I left Bayak's apartment building, and I wasn't disappointed.

A tail picked me up in the middle of the first block. I walked him sedately through the lobbies of two small, east-side hotels before I speeded up and lost him in the lobby of a third. It had been so easy that I cooled it while I made sure they hadn't given me a tail to lose while they kept another one on me. Nothing else showed on the horizon, though.

So although I was sure I was clean, I took all the usual precautions while approaching Erikson's office. I waited in the brightly lighted lobby for five minutes before I boarded the elevator. No one had entered the front entrance behind me.

The office door was opened at my knock by McLaren. He nodded and stepped back to let me enter. The ubiquitous tape recorder was on McLaren's desk with a set of headphones plugged in. McLaren was transcribing tapes again. I nodded at the recorder. "Any good listening lately?"

"Same old stuff," he shrugged. Then he brightened. "Although there was a real wild one on a reel the other day. I don't know how the hell it ever get on there. You'd never believe it."

I didn't tell him how easily I'd believe it.

Erikson wasn't there, so I gave McLaren a quick rundown on what had taken place. He made notes. The only things I omitted were Chryssie's role and what had happened to the man I'd lured back to her place. "Erikson will want to hear this from you himself," McLaren said when I finished. "I'll call him, and while he's on his way in, I'll check this Bayak character out and see what we have on him."

"Fine," I said. "Meantime I'll flake out on the sofa inside."

I went into the inner office, took off my jacket and shoes, stretched out on the sofa, listened for a moment to the murmur of McLaren's voice on the telephone, and then didn't hear anything.

A hand shaking my shoulder woke me. Erikson's rough-hewn features appeared mistily above me as I tried to focus my eyes. I felt more tired than before I'd sacked out. "What time is it?" I asked.

"Three-fifteen A.M.," McLaren answered. I hadn't seen him standing behind Erikson.

"We've found out a few things, Earl," Erikson said in his usual no-nonsense style. "Iskir Bayak isn't an importer of Oriental rugs. He's the number-three man in the Turkish UN delegation. It could mean smuggling via diplomatic pouch, the hardest kind to do anything about."

I digested it for a moment. "But that hardly ties in with a truck hijacking, or does it?"

"According to the contents of the envelope Bayak has now recovered, we have a truck hijacking about to take place in which these people are involved," Erikson pointed out. "What about this note of McLaren's that the Turk tried to proposition you about joining his operation?"

"He did. At least half-heartedly. He mentioned checking out my supposed anti-police attitude."

"What does that mean to you?"

"His propositioning me? That he lost his wagon boss, Hawk."

"I mean more than that," Erikson emphasized. "It means his timetable might be so tight that he would approach a stranger like you even though he had no real line on you."

"Except that he saw me work out on Abdel."

"We still don't know where the hijacking is supposed to take place," McLaren put in. "Now if Drake were to take up this Bayak's offer to join his gang-"

"Forget it," I said.

"The UN aspect of the situation complicates anything we might want to do unofficially," Erikson added. "That might be traced to us, that is. You're an independent, and you're already halfway inside the door."

"Forget it, you two. I've seen these types. You haven't. I wasn't brought up in a convent, but they're something else. My insurance company wouldn't care for it."

"It would be easy to arrange," Erikson said as though I hadn't spoken. "We could dump you in jail on a minor charge, complete with fictitious gangster personality. Then you could call the Turkish girl and ask her to have Bayak bail you out of a temporary difficulty. It would validate your supposed underworld credentials in the most practical manner possible, and at the same time make you obligated to Bayak so that he wouldn't think it too farfetched for you to accept his recruitment offer. He might even make it a condition for effecting your release."

"Who's writing your scripts these days, Karl? No jail for me."

"It makes sense," McLaren argued.

"From your point of view, maybe. Not from mine. I'm not about to become the cheese in your trap. Get one of your own men."

"We haven't time to work someone in from the outside," Erikson said patiently. "You're already inside, or almost."

"That's right," McLaren chimed in. "And we'd back you up all the way."

"From a thousand yards in the rear. What help would you be when the bullets really start flying?"

But they wouldn't let it alone.

We went round and round for a good half hour. Both men pressed me insistently to take on the job. "Why are you two so interested in intercepting a dope shipment?" I asked when I couldn't think of anything else to ask. "Why not let the narcotics boys take over?"

"I've got a hunch it isn't drugs," Erikson replied.

"What else could it be?"

"How many things can a trailer truck carry? It could be anything."

And we went at it again.

I kept saying no, but not as emphatically. For one thing, I kept thinking of the envelopes of money I'd seen Bayak remove from his safe. "Suppose I said yes and we knocked the guy off on whatever job he's planning?" I said finally. "What's in it for me?"

Erikson and McLaren looked at each other. "The government is hardly in a position to pay-" Erikson began.

"Not the government," I cut him off. I explained about the cash in the Turk's safe. "He's got a bunch of it there. For the sake of argument, suppose we land this fish. Could I get Hazel's seventy-five thousand out of his safe?"

There was a moment's silence.

"I could say yes," Erikson said finally, "but it might not mean anything. This man has one thing going for him that I can't touch. As a UN member, he has diplomatic immunity. He has only to invoke it to any official, even as lowly as a police officer on the street, and we can't lay a finger on him even though we've caught him in the act of hijacking the truck."

"Let me worry about the diplomatic immunity," I suggested. "I want that seventy-five thousand back."

"I'll go for it," Erikson said.

"Then put it in writing. I found out when I was with you in Cuba that you straight arrows take the shortsighted attitude that all recovered cash in an operation is government money."

Erikson sat down at his desk and began to write. "Minus the ten thousand Bayak just paid you for the envelope we gave you to return to him," he said, looking up at me.

"Man, you drive a hard bargain," I complained. "Where the hell do you think you got that envelope in the first place?"

It didn't faze him a bit. I read over his shoulder as he resumed writing. "This-ah-promissory note isn't worth a thing if we don't short-circuit Bayak," he said as he signed his name. "And not then either, if we can't get into the safe."

"Don't worry about getting into the safe." I looked at McLaren. "If I ever ask you on the phone to bring a tool kit, I'll mean the one you had here earlier tonight."

Erikson was rereading what he had written. "What are you going to do with this?"

"Mail it. To Hazel."

He raised an eyebrow. "To Hazel?"

"Correct. You might stand me off afterward, but you'll pay hell trying to stand her off."

Erikson found an envelope in his desk and gave it to me. McLaren handed me a stamp. "You can drop it in the mail chute down the hall before we get going," McLaren suggested.

"I'll find my own mailbox, thanks. You boys can pull entirely too many strings. And where is it that we're going?"

"To find you a nice comfortable jail."

We all left the office together after McLaren put in a busy half hour on the telephone, packaging a deal. It included a detention cell for me plus a phony yellow sheet with a background that added up to exactly what the Turk should be looking for in me: mobster, heist artist, and suspected killer.

So I found myself listening to a sound I'd sworn thirteen years before never to listen to again, the clanging shut of a steel door behind me. I'd been in prison once in the interim, but more dead than alive after the automobile gas-tank explosion which necessitated rebuilding my face. And once I had the new face, I hadn't lingered in the prison hospital. There were still a few people around who would never forget the manner of my going.

I called Talia at her apartment before Erikson and McLaren put me into the cell. "Say, I'm at the Fifty-seventh-street precinct," I began. "It's just a harassment; they got nothing on me, but I need bail money. Call your boss and get me out of here, will you?"

I had wakened her from sleep but Talia seemed alert enough. "What's the charge?"

"Suspicion of being near the scene of a crime. The equivalent of spitting on the sidewalk."

"Why don't you call your lawyer? Or make bond from the money you were paid tonight?"

"I don't spend money when I can use someone else's, sweetheart. I'm testing to see if your boss was serious about that job offer."

"I see. I'll call him."

"You do that." I hung up the phone.

"Very good," Erikson said. "That should draw him into our orbit if he's as tightly pressed for time as I think. I'll stay outside here and play detective for Talia when she shows up. That way I can feed her a few gory details about your fictional past while I give her the old what's-a-nice- girl-like — you- doing- springing- a- hood-like-this routine."

The march of progress had overlooked detention cells. They still contained an iron cot surrounded by steel bars and a cotton blanket. I took off my shoes and stretched out on the cot. It reminded me a little too strongly of my first such experience at the age of seventeen. I'd been picked up by a small-town cop. I had nothing to do with what they were questioning me about, but the cop had an ego to feed. He came into the cell to roust me, and I wound up slamming him on the nose with the heel of my removed shoe. They hospitalized me after he finished with me. It took me six months to get the bastard afterward. They couldn't pin it on me, but my family got so much static from the police that I left town. I'd never been back. Sure, I was a hardheaded kid, used to doing things my way, not someone else's, but it didn't have to happen that way.

Iron cot notwithstanding, I dozed off. The clinking of the turnkey's brass ring on the metal of the cell door awakened me. "Someone to see you at the desk," he informed me.

Talia was waiting. The formalities had been complied with, and my money, watch, ring, and wallet were handed over to me. "We'll be watching you, Drake," the desk sergeant said in a sneering tone as Talia and I prepared to leave. I gave him the finger, and he started to rise from behind his desk, then sank back as if he'd thought better of it.

"It's not clever to antagonize the police," Talia said disapprovingly as we went outside to a car parked at the curb. Abdel was at the wheel. Two slugs in his ugly carcass seemed to be all in the day's work to him. It certainly hadn't slowed him from his appointed rounds.

"They antagonize me, don't they?" I replied to Talia's remark.

"In my country you would be bastinadoed for such insolence," she continued as the car pulled away from the curb. "You wouldn't be able to walk for ten days whether you were guilty of the charge or not."

"Forget it. Where are we going?"

"To Iskir's."

There was no further conversation the rest of the way. Abdel parked the car in a garage under the apartment building and accompanied us to the elevator that carried us to the penthouse. Nothing seemed changed despite the lapse of time except that Iskir Bayak met us at the elevator doors floridly attired in a maroon silk dressing gown and gold-colored slippers with turned-up toes. "Come in, come in," he said in his high, squeaky voice. His grossly obese bulk jiggled obscenely beneath the dressing gown as he led the way down the steps into the sunken living room. Despite this being the twentieth century, his obesity and his voice made me wonder if he hadn't been eunuchized early in his career.

"Drinks for our guest, Talia," Bayak commanded as we seated ourselves. "What will you have, Mr. Drake?"

"Bourbon on the rocks."

"A barbarian's drink," Bayak observed complacently. "No offense, of course."

I watched Talia serve the fat man a Scotch-and-water. She took nothing herself after handing me my drink. Bayak and I sipped in silence. He appeared to be waiting for something. Abdel had placed himself near the telephone, and when it rang I was sure I knew why.

Abdel carried the phone to Bayak, its long white extension cord trailing across the floor. "Yes," Bayak said, cutting his eyes toward me voluntarily so that I knew he was talking about me. He listened for a good two minutes. "No question about it?" he asked finally. "I see. You guarantee it? Then thank you, friend. The money will be left at the usual place."

He handed the phone back to the hovering Abdel while he considered me. "The call confirmed your-ah- unorthodox mode of living," Bayak said. "And since the response was what I expected, I see no reason for further delay. I assume you wouldn't have had Talia call me if you hadn't decided to join me?"

"That's right."

"Then we have no need for further words at this time. Go to Talia's apartment with her now, and I'll call you tomorrow-" He glanced at his watch "-or today, I should say, for a briefing session. In the meantime Talia will look after you." His moon face was a caricature of a leering smile.

I knew that Erikson would be waiting impatiently to hear something concrete from me about the location of the truck hijacking, but it wasn't my timetable.

"Abdel will drive you," the fat man continued, rising to his feet.

"We haven't talked money," I countered.

"There will be no need for haggling," he promised. "It can be negotiated when you understand the scope of the operation."

He escorted us to the elevator. Talia looked tired, or possibly the effect of her last shot was wearing off. Abdel eyed me impassively as we descended to the underground garage. Bayak really kept the giant on a short leash. I wouldn't have been riding so casually in the same elevator with a man who'd put two bullet holes in me so recently, no matter what my recuperative powers.

Abdel chauffeured us to Talia's apartment. He said something to the girl in the foreign tongue I assumed was Turkish as she and I left the car. She made no reply, but I thought her features looked drawn. She looked her age.

She fixed me a drink as soon as we entered her apartment. Her hand was shaking slightly as she handed me the glass, and she disappeared into the bedroom. I still had half my drink when she emerged ten minutes later. She had on a chiffon robe which disclosed a great deal more than the fact that her eyes were now clear, her step firm, and her appearance once more youthful. I wondered where she kept the hypodermic.

A master switch had turned on all the fights when we entered the apartment. Talia went around turning them out until only a single lamp glowed in one corner. Then she slipped out of the robe, removed the drink from my hand, and sat down in my lap.

Beneath the robe she had on only a bed jacket which reached her rib cage. The sleeves of the jacket were opaque, while the rest of it was see-through. Tip-tilted dark nipples and downy black pubic hair winked at me in the instant before the girl fused her lips against mine.

I'm not an imaginative man sexually, but Talia had enough imagination for a roomful. We graduated shortly from the armchair to her bedroom, but it was quite some time before we reached the bed itself. She had several hassocks arranged on the floor in cunning patterns, and the use she made of them presented surprising areas of perfumed bare flesh for various methods of penetration.

We reached the bed finally, but I had to call a halt. I captured Talia's busy hands, pushed her onto her back, and held her there with a palm on her rounded belly. Her black eyes stared up at me inscrutably. Despite our activity, her powdered flesh remained cool to the touch with no hint of perspiration.

I felt drained. This girl could really suck the juices from a man. I didn't flatter myself that it was my beauty or engaging personality that provoked her devoted attention. I was sure that her skilled exhibition was in fact a command performance.

She wriggled from beneath my pinioning palm, sat up on the edge of the bed, and lit two long, dark cigarettes she took from the night-table drawer. The tobacco taste was bitter when she gave me one, but there was no scent of marijuana. "How is it that you call Bayak your boss when you work at the UN and he's in the rug importing business?" I asked.

She considered her answer before giving it. "I do little things for him," she said finally. "My parents and Bayak came from the same small town in Turkey. My father was a politician who died with Menderes in 1961. Before my mother died, Bayak told her that he would keep an eye on me."

"It doesn't bother you that the things you do for him might get you killed, like what happened in the tavern?"

"That was the first time anything went wrong."

"Is Bayak any good in bed?" I asked with more curiosity than I usually have about such subjects.

"He likes young boys," she said matter-of-factly. "Very young." She took a thoughtful drag on her cigarette. "Iskir seems preoccupied these days. There must be something important-" She didn't finish it.

"What's in it for you, Talia?"

She turned her head to look into my face, the blue-black sheen of her glossy hair shaped closely to her small head. "For me?"

"These things you do for Bayak. Does he pay you?"

"No." Liquid-dark eyes stared at me absently as her left hand unconsciously massaged the inside of her right arm where I had seen the needle marks. "I do it because I must."

It was probably the most truthful thing she'd said to me since the moment I first saw her walk into the Fifty-seventh-Street tavern.