At the Point of a. 38

4

Rashid Abd El-Din, a dark young man with a pencil-line mustache, wearing a black turtleneck, black slacks and sneakers, had been watching for headlights. When they turned in from the street, he swung over the marble balustrade and dropped lightly to the grass.

He moved on the balls of his feet, soundlessly. He was built like a scimitar-a rather sentimental woman had said that about him once, and he liked the metaphor. The scimitar, with which his people had driven to the Pyrenees and Vienna; forged from Damascus steel (Rashid himself had been born not far from Damascus), and ground to a fine edge that could take the whiskers off a goat or the head off an enemy. Of course at this moment, after two years of starchy prison food and enforced idleness, he was no longer quite as narrow as a scimitar. Never mind; a few weeks of desert marches would bring him back to his usual trim.

The car rustled across the gravel and parked, as arranged, under the single outside light at the end of the six-car garage. Six cars! And all enormous-black, gleaming Cadillacs and Lincolns, none with a mileage reading in five figures. What did they do with cars in this rich country when they travelled 10,000 miles, take them out in a field and abandon them to the crows?

This car, having been stolen off the street earlier in the evening, was considerably less costly. It had once been white. The paint had been patched here and there, with no effort to match shades. One patch on the roof was considerably lighter than the rest.

Rashid focussed his energies on the man at the wheel. He could become a problem, this old man. Rashid had known him six months, had studied him intensely, but he was still a puzzle. His name was Murray Gold, a prominent gangster, a Jew.

Gold came out holding a pistol. At the sight of the drawn weapon Rashid felt a perverse stir of pleasure. There had been little chance for action in prison, until those final minutes.

“Is that truly a gun?” he said in lightly accented English, smiling. “I had begun to believe we were friends.”

“Don’t be dumb.”

At the best of times the Jew looked slightly weary. Now he looked tired enough to fall asleep where he stood. All the vertical lines of his face had lengthened. His glasses had slid down his nose. He had no more flesh than a sparrow. He had stopped shaving in prison, producing a scraggly beard which after their joint escape he had dyed a depressing shade of brown. In his cocky American sporting cap he looked a little disgusting-to tell the truth, more than a little. Unlike some in the movement, Rashid had nothing against Jews except that they had had the poor judgment to designate Palestine as their so-called homeland, on the basis of a dubious reading of history. They were like roaches. You couldn’t reason with them; stamp on them was all you could do.

“I’ve done some driving tonight,” Gold said. “A few things worked out, a few things didn’t. I’ve got the guns. Let’s finish right now.”

“Finish in what way?”

“I give you the guns, you give me the heroin.”

“No,” Rashid said coolly.

“The big rule with that stuff is, get rid of it fast. I’m beginning to feel itchy. This is a bad part of the world for me, I want to get out.”

“The morning after tomorrow morning, in accordance with plans.”

“One of the reasons for having plans is so you can change them.”

“But the gun,” Rashid said gently. “We are working so closely together. Why does a gun appear suddenly between us? There is a saying among Arabs that when you take out a gun, you should be ready to use it.”

The two men, adversaries and co-conspirators, examined each other. The exhausted old man was trying hard to look dangerous. A joke! Rashid was surrounded by sleeping friends. The last thing Gold would do now was shoot anybody-and in spite of the Jew’s reputation, Rashid secretly believed he was incapable of shooting.

With a sigh, Gold put the pistol into the waistband of his disreputable pants.

“I almost fell asleep about six times. Is there any chance of getting some coffee?”

“Of course. But your battered automobile-on this property it seems absurd. I believe you should unload the guns and park on the street.”

“We’ve got some talking to do first.”

“Then come in over the garage. Two of our people have been sleeping here. Will it bother you to be outnumbered?”

“I can probably handle it, if I can stay awake. I need more sleep these days than I used to.”

Rashid led the way after another glance at the bearded Jew. The number one professional criminal in the United States, supposedly! In prison, he had been so lacking in definition that he had seemed to blend with the walls. An interesting man, all the same. But what did he want? Surely not money alone? During the violence at the end, he had turned his face aside, his hands in his pockets. There were guards who had beaten him with bamboo rods. Apparently he forgot and forgave. He let somebody else kill them.

Upstairs, Rashid awakened one of his friends, a student named Sayyid, and told him to make coffee. Sayyid gave Gold a malevolent look, widening his nostrils. This one hated Jews when he went to sleep, and he hated them when he woke up, and in between he dreamed about strangling them and blowing them to bits with explosive. A second Arab, a Syrian pilot named Fuad Sabri, was asleep in a bedroom. Rashid would use him only if he had to.

“I begin to understand,” Rashid said. “The guns are not in your car. You unloaded them elsewhere.”

Gold nodded, and picked a chair in which he would have the wall behind him. “You’ll love them. Ten brand-new Thompsons, with the grease still on. Two hundred rounds of ammo. You’re going to want more. It’s standard. 45 caliber, look up a gun store in the yellow pages and they’ll sell you all you can carry, no questions asked.”

“Thompsons. I would like to see them.”

“When the time comes,” Gold said. “And I’m going to be cagey about that. Not that I don’t trust you.”

“You don’t trust us?” Rashid said, surprised.

Gold laughed. “You people are so strange. I never met anybody like you.”

Rashid opened his hands. “In what way are we strange? We want our country returned to us, nothing more. We are willing to die for this.”

“I’m not willing to die to keep it away from you, I can tell you that,” Gold said. “I just want to make sure you come through on your end of the deal. I know how you feel about handling heroin-”

“It will be consumed by Americans. Why should we care what Americans choose to inject into their bodies?”

Sayyid came in with the tiny cups. Rashid asked the Jew if he minded Syrian coffee.

Gold shrugged. “I’m getting used to it. I wouldn’t want you to think I like it. It’s like the Front for the Liberation of Palestine. I’d prefer to work with a Jewish organization, but in my case you’re the only game in town.”

They sipped ceremoniously.

“Ugh,” Gold said. “I mean, delicious. Now if we can talk business, I want to move up the timetable. I didn’t think we could get everything organized here in less than three days. But we’ve been making good headway and the sooner we get it over with the better, for both of us. I’m sorry to say I ran into some trouble tonight.”

“Of what kind?”

“Rashid, believe me, you don’t want to know. As far as I can tell, I took care of it O.K. But the longer we hold off, the more chance there is of that kind of thing happening. I’m too known. It’s not the cops I’m thinking about. We’ve got good protection there, as I told you. Our man couldn’t be in a better spot to look out for us. It’s the bondsmen. They took a bad bath with me, over a million bucks, and they’d like to get some of it back. Or some satisfaction if they can’t. They’re not in the business of killing people, but they know people who are. So do it tomorrow morning, Rashid. I urge you strongly.”

“Two of my men are still on their way.”

“A couple of kids. Hell, you’ve got seven, and you’re going to have absolute surprise, I mean absolute surprise. Because it’s the first time anything like this has ever happened in this hemisphere. You’ve got everything covered three ways. I don’t say you couldn’t still blow it, but right now I’d give you four to one odds, and in your line of work that’s a very good price.” He rubbed his forehead. “I’ve got this skittery feeling. Do it twenty-four hours early, that’s twenty-four hours when things can’t go wrong.”

Rashid sipped the sweet, strong, brew. There was much, much that he wasn’t being told. Trust each other? Of course they didn’t, couldn’t. As for the heroin, Gold had made an acute political observation. Heroin was the wrong kind of contraband for members of an idealistic nationalist group to carry from the Middle East to the south of Florida. The Arab masses would find it a difficult thing to understand. Americans called it shit-a good name for it, Rashid believed. Dear God, the risk. Everybody in the U.S. was in a state of hysteria on the subject, suspicious, frightened. Of course Murray Gold, selling Rashid the scheme in those long conversations in the prison exercise yard, had maintained that the risk would be zero. When Sheik Muhammed al-Khabir of Dubat, on a semi-state visit to the Boca Raton mansion of his dear friend and business associate Harvey West of Union Petroleum, arrived at Miami International in his personal D-6, there was no conceivable chance that one of the American customs inspectors would take members of his party aside and subject them to a personal search. So Gold had maintained. But it is known that in the real world, the inconceivable frequently happens. Drug spies are everywhere. The risk might be negligible, but it wasn’t quite zero.

So Rashid had thrown Gold’s heroin away. He had emptied the bags into the Beirut sewer, and replaced it with quinine and ground chalk. This had its own dangers, but they could be identified and contained. It was a single-time transaction. They had no reason to establish a reputation for probity with Murray Gold and his dirty friends. In Ramleh, Rashid had become, unwillingly, somewhat fond of the old man, unquestionably a schemer of genius. And at the same time, of course, had despised him, and the way he put the security of his own skin ahead of the interests of his people. To cheat him would be a pleasure.

“Tomorrow morning,” Rashid said thoughtfully.

“At least you’re thinking about it. I honestly can’t think of any reason why not. Maybe those two guys you’re waiting for won’t even show up. Can we talk about this with just the two of us, Rashid? I don’t like the way your boy is looking at me. What does he drink before bedtime, blood?”

Sayyid understood English, though he spoke it badly. He looked down.

“Certainly,” Rashid said. “Sayyid can leave if you will let him hold your gun and search you to be sure you have no other.”

“Hell, let him stay,” Gold said irritably. “Why would I want to shoot you? I’d come out without a cent.”

“But no longer in an Israeli jail. Back in your native land.”

“I’m a hot property in my native land. I’d rather be somewhere else.” He set the cup back on the tray with a clink. “If you agree, this is the last time we’ll talk about it, so what we say now has to stick. Everything the same except one day earlier. I checked out the parking garage. It’s a good place to exchange cars. I thought of a couple of new points. Don’t drive anywhere with more than three of your guys in one car. Three total. You all look alike. I don’t mean really-by comparison. Everybody else can catch a bus down to Miami and taxi over.”

He went on talking for several minutes, sketching a diagram on the carpet with his finger. Rashid had questions. Gold answered patiently. He was looking older than when he arrived, and he was nearly asleep.

Rashid looked at Sayyid for an opinion. Sayyid, a doctor’s son, had come into the movement as a student at American University, and he had done several difficult and dangerous things while Rashid was growing fat and impatient in prison. He had been prudent up to the moment when the fighting started, then fearfully imprudent, a combination of qualities not usually found in one person. In the look that passed between them, it was agreed that the Jew would be faithful to the plan only so long as it served his purposes, but that this proposal had some merit. They were getting edgy after the long wait, the discussions, the postponements. To do the action at once, the following morning, would catch them at the peak of tension.

Rashid agreed, therefore, implying by his manner that he would prefer to keep to the original schedule, and was consenting only because the old man wished it. Gold nodded without surprise.

“Then we’re in business.”

Rashid accompanied him back to the dilapidated car. It would be fine, the Arab was thinking, if they had those guns now, and could avoid the touchy moment when they turned over a hundred pounds of worthless powder to a suspicious man who had lived all his life at the edge of violence. They would be seven, however. Gold would be two. Perhaps, even so, Rashid should think about arranging a diversion. In guerrilla doctrine, though a seven-to-two superiority was considered good, seven-to-nothing was better.

The Jew’s demeanor changed instantly as he approached the car. His fatigue dropped away. Stepping closer, he examined the splotched roof.

“What is it?” Rashid said.

Without replying, Gold took off the glasses he was wearing and replaced them with another pair with thicker lenses. He touched the paint and then moved around the car to get another angle, with the light behind him. He hammered his fist on the roof and began to swear, in a voice choked with emotion, using rhetorical combinations that were unfamiliar to the Arab.

“I ask you again,” Rashid said. “Something is wrong. Please tell me. We are concerned in this also.”

“It could be bad,” Gold said. “Very bad.”

When Rashid tried his question again, the old man flared out at him. The Arab was a son of a dog, and copulated with his mother, using forbidden instruments and positions. He also ate shit. Rashid reminded himself again that the man was an enigma. There was real passion inside him, and enemies would be wise not to take him for granted.

“Why are you calling me these names?” Rashid asked. “Mother fucking? A really exotic practice. We had nothing to do with this, whatever it is.”

Gold continued to stare at the paint. “Mike Shayne,” he whispered. “That has to be who.”

“The conversation begins, finally. Who is Mike Shayne?”

“Trouble. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. The son of a bitch used a chopper on me.”

“A chopper? A sort of knife?”

“I kept hearing helicopters. But it was always right near an airport. I thought-”

Lines of concentration appeared around his eyes. He changed glasses slowly.

He half turned, turned back and said decisively, “Something you guys have got to do. You’ve got to kill somebody for me.”

“Indeed? This man Shayne? Why?”

“O. K.,” Gold was over his brief panic, and his tone was dry and businesslike. “Go back a couple of hours. I didn’t want to tell you because I know it’s going to make you nervous. Somebody did some guessing or had some fantastic luck, I don’t know which. I was spotted. I told you I took care of it. I thought I took care of it good. I haven’t had to hit anybody for a long time, but there isn’t that much to it, you pull the goddamn trigger and if your aim is right they fall over.”

“I’ve seen this happen.”

“I didn’t know Shayne was there, but he saw it. There I was with a dead body. I hope I’m not shocking you. I locked it in the car trunk and threw the key away. Cars come and go there, and the body wouldn’t be found till it started to smell. I was hoping to be on the other side of the Equator by that time. So Shayne called in, and the body was found tonight. I know it was Shayne because it was on the news, and I heard about it when I picked up the guns. I didn’t think it was too bad. I’ve had experience being tailed, and I know good and goddamn well I lost him.”

“But before you managed to do that, he put this paint on your car?”

“I didn’t know what it was. A big bang behind me. The chopper pilot picked me up from the air and Shayne could hang out of sight.”

Suddenly Rashid felt a spurt of adrenalin, and understood what the Jew was telling him, that a helicopter had followed him here. “When was the last time you heard a helicopter, as you entered this driveway?”

Gold shrugged. “They went to a lot of trouble. They wouldn’t knock off because it was after their bedtime or they crossed a county line.”

“So this Mike Shayne, whoever he may be-”

“He’s a private detective, and a bad man to know. Tough and smart and goddamn fast on his feet sometimes.” He looked up at the big house, an imposing Spanish-style structure of stucco and stained timbers. “So if he’s made the connection it’s not just me. It’s you guys and me, both.”

“We must move elsewhere at once.”

Gold was thinking, his eyes moving like cornered animals. He took several steps on the gravel and came back, several more and came back-these were the inside dimensions of his cell in the Israeli prison.

“This isn’t your house. You’re just staying here. If you start running around turning on lights, he’ll wake up the cops and move in.”

“You assume he’s nearby.”

“He’s got to be. He’ll want to know if he’s put me away for the night, or do I have some more errands. He’s driving a beat-up Buick with plenty of juice. Let’s set it up like this. I pull out and start south on One. Theoretically, I got rid of him hours ago, and I won’t be watching for headlights. I’ll take a couple of you with me, out of sight in the back seat. I’ll pick a spot and pull over. You come up behind in another car and we’ll wipe him out.”

“Making a certain amount of noise,” Rashid said skeptically.

“But fast. Then we scatter. I know that stretch of road. I’ll pick a place where we won’t be bothered.”

“I see why having this detective put out of the way would be a relief for you, to remove a witness to a killing. For us, it seems less urgent.”

“This is a special kind of private detective. I know him from way back.”

“But only one man, Murray. We can leave at once, now that you have been careless enough to lead him here. As for you, simply steal someone else’s car so that trick with the helicopter can no longer work. We can make sure he doesn’t follow you, without having to kill him. In my judgment, we should do as little as possible to draw attention before eleven o’clock tomorrow morning.”

“You can’t make book on this guy. All the people who’ve tried it have ended up dead or in jail. Without exception.”

“You’re an exception.”

“Am I?” Gold said bitterly. “He’s one of the big reasons I had to blow the country. Let me tell you about him. He’s no super-hero out of the comic-strips, but there are things he’s good at. He knows somebody on every block in town. He gets the feel of a thing, and anticipates. He’s stubborn as hell and when he’s underway he doesn’t give a shit about anything or anybody. Believe me. He can wreck us.”

“You, perhaps, if you’ve been rash enough to do murder underneath his nose. But we are a new species. All that experience of his will count for nothing. What sort of intuition will cause him to be waiting at the Hotel St. Albans tomorrow morning with a battalion of paratroopers?”

Gold shook his head. “He’s pulled off swindles I’ve never been able to explain.”

“No,” Rashid said. “We’ll take a chance with this miracle-worker. We didn’t come to this country to shoot somebody at the edge of a highway, like cinema gangsters. You say you know that road. You have a memory, from the last time you travelled over it. But things change. Here in America they change fast. There may be a police barracks there now, a hundred meters from the spot you choose. It is a strong principle of mine, to see the terrain, to prepare alternative plans, to know the strength of the enemy. Mike Shayne? Merely a name.”

“Let me tell you-”

Rashid interrupted, “I have decided. I am in command. We do it my way.”

“Then without me.”

“Sayyid,” Rashid called without turning his head.

“I am here,” Sayyid answered from the shadows at the edge of the garage. “I have a revolver. I am watching the Jew with it.”

Gold shrugged and started walking away. Rashid watched him go. He was bluffing, surely. That shipment of narcotics was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, perhaps a million. Gold reached the grass.

“Those plastic bags filled with the white dust,” Rashid said. “What would you like us to do with them?”

Gold looked back. “You can shoot it up your ass. I want to live.”

Sayyid stepped into the light, and the two Arabs looked at each other. Apparently this American, Mike Shayne, was a genuine threat.

“Murray,” Rashid called, and Gold stopped and turned. “You hire somebody to kill him, one of your own people.”

“I tried that once. It didn’t work out. Can’t you get it through your skull that I don’t want people to know I’m back?”

“The killing of this one man would satisfy you? It wouldn’t become necessary to kill the helicopter pilot, and after that someone else?”

Gold came back a step. “No, the one good angle on Shayne is that he works alone. He doesn’t check in until he has his package all tied up, nice and pretty.”

“I don’t like it, but very well, we’ll do it.”

The Jew came back. “In the desert, O.K., you’re in charge. But this is the pleasure capital of the world, and I know the ins and outs. I won’t take you into anything risky.”

“What if you’ve guessed wrong and he isn’t outside waiting for you to appear?”

“We’ll try something else.”