Flashpoint

3

There were two reasons why I eventually agreed to fly to Tucson with Karl Erikson.

One was forthright: I wanted a shot at recovering Hazel's money. And my own. I wasn't about to overlook the possibility of a bit of interest, either.

The second reason was more subtle.

When I first visited Hazel at her ranch after I escaped from the prison hospital, I was on the run from the law as I had been all my adult life. It didn't make any difference to Hazel, who hadn't been brought up in a vacuum, but I didn't want to bring her any trouble. Then her stepfather, a nice old guy who wouldn't act his age, was killed on the ranch by a bunch of vicious kids who went further than they intended in trying to scare him.

I got into the tail end of the act, and I sickened the kids of the idea that they were running things in that part of the county. Afterward, though, I had to leave the ranch in a hurry because I couldn't afford to hang around and answer lawmen's questions about what had happened. Or about my background.

Erikson knew about the background when he recruited me for Cuba, but he needed me for what I could do for the operation. When he finally got back to Florida with the bundle that turned out to belong to the State Department and wasn't partly mine as I'd expected, in partial recompense Erikson gave me his word that no law-enforcement agency would bother me at the ranch.

I could have kicked myself that I hadn't inserted a stipulation that Karl Erikson couldn't bother me, either. Not that it would really have done any good. There weren't three other men in the world I'd rather have watching my back in a tight spot; but Erikson was a dedicated, hard-nosed government agent who let nothing and nobody stand in the way of getting his job done. I didn't want him twisting my arm in front of Hazel, threatening the removal of my umbrella. I didn't want her upset, but she'd let the cat out of the bag about me getting a good look at the escaped hijacker, and as far as Erikson was concerned, this made me essential to his trip to Tucson.

I'd much rather have gone alone. Erikson was an ex-Navy commander, a specialist in communications. He was also used to giving orders. I wasn't used to taking them. We'd hung up several limes on the Cuban caper-long before I had any idea who he really was-because of his insistence upon doing things his way. He was an odd mixture of practicality and chivalry. I had to keep pointing out to him in Cuba that we weren't in a chivalrous part of the world.

So we landed at the Tucson Municipal Airport and Erikson hired a car. He drove north, after asking directions, clear across town, out past the Rillito Racetrack. He had to ask directions twice more before we found the Colonial Airport tucked away a mile down a dirt road leading off U.S. Highway 80–89.

The field had a single, hard-packed, dirt landing strip, two slant-roofed sheds open to the elements on either end under which three small planes were staked down, and a rickety-looking administration building too small for a game of Ping-Pong. From under one of the sheds came the ringing sound of metal on metal as Erikson cut the engine and we sat there watching heat waves shimmering.

"No rush to welcome visitors," I said. Erikson grunted. "If the hijackers were members of an Arab fedayeen group, that could be why they were so rough on the Jewish plane crew," I voiced a thought that had occurred to me previously.

"And if they weren't, they just might have wanted to give that impression," Erikson said.

"You have a devious mind," I complained. "Who are we going to talk to here?"

"Anyone."

He opened the car door and led the way across the sun-seared parking lot. The clang of metal on metal ceased, and a stocky figure in oil-stained work pants appeared from under one of the planes. His features were so dark I took a second look at him, but his was a young, frank, open face in contrast to the strong-featured mask of violence I had seen behind the machine gun.

"I hope you don't want to fly, gents, because we don't have a pilot," the boy said as he walked toward us. I could see that he had Mexican blood in him. There was grease halfway up his powerful forearms.

"What about Frank Dalrymple?" Erikson asked.

"If you know Frank, brace yourself. He's dead."

"That's what I'm here about."

"Oh, you're one of those." The boy removed a rag from a hip pocket and wiped off his hands, wrists, and forearms. "Well, what about it?"

"That charter flight," Erikson said. "How did Dalrymple happen to take it on?"

"Five reasons." The Mexican boy swept an arm at the desolation around us. "Spelled M-O-N-E-Y. He needed it."

"Badly enough to let a man carrying a machine gun aboard his plane?"

"Who says he did?" The boy said it angrily. "Listen, Frank was no stupe. I wasn't here when they took off, but you can bet if there was a machine gun the guy didn't walk aboard with it on his shoulder. Who the hell are you, anyway?"

Erikson ignored the question. "The man came here and arranged the charter?"

"No. He made the arrangement by phone a week before."

"I'd like to hear about it," Erikson said when the boy showed no sign of continuing.

"How come you're coming at me in relays today?" the boy asked. "Don't you believe what I'm telling you?"

"Relays?" Erikson said, picking out the operative word. "Someone else has been here talking to you about this?"

"As if you didn't know," the boy said scornfully. "Listen, if I knew anything that would help catch Frank's killer, you wouldn't have to ask me about it. I told your partners that. Frank gave me a job when no one else would."

"Oh, you must mean Carmody and Stevens," Erikson said. "A skinny redhead and a heavy-set blond?"

The boy shook his head. "Don't you people talk to each other? It was two dark-looking men, and one of them had no earlobe on his left ear."

Erikson nodded. "And the other one was taller and stood like this?" He went into a military brace with his gut sucked in and his shoulders braced.

"Yeah, that's it," the boy said.

Erikson didn't pursue the subject. "Now tell me-"

"What's your story about who you're from?" the boy interrupted him.

I could see Erikson starting to boil at the all-but-outright insolence in the boy's tone. I had wondered at the kid's attitude almost from his first words. "You don't sound to me like someone interested in finding Frank's killer," I put in before Erikson could say anything.

The effect was startling. The Mexican boy's features crumpled like wet cardboard. Tears spurted from beneath his eyelids and ran down his brown cheeks. "What the h-hell do you know about it?" he blubbered. He swiped at his eyes with the back of a still-greasy hand. "Wh-what the h-hell-"

He swung around and stumbled inside the mangy-looking office, slamming the squeaky-hinged door behind him. Erikson and I stood in the bright sunlight looking at each other. Erikson shrugged finally and followed the boy inside. I was right behind him.

The temperature inside the shack must have been a hundred and twenty degrees. The boy stood with his back to us, facing the single window which was unopened. "How old are you, son?" I asked.

"Si-sixteen." The tone was muffled. "And you g-guys will never know about F-Frank. You j-just come in h-here and ask about the plane. And now Frank's gone and my job's g-gone and the desert will have the f-field back in six months and I don't know h-how I'll s-support my mother-"

"A good mechanic can get a job anywhere," I said when the shaky voice trailed off. "And you're a good mechanic or Frank wouldn't have hired you."

"Even when you're good, they don't h-hire you if you're a Mex," the boy said in a hopeless tone. "I tried before."

"What about the telephone call that set up the charter?" Erikson asked impatiently.

"Go ask Elaine!" the boy snarled. He swung around and faced us defiantly. "She was the one in the office when the call came."

"Elaine?"

"Frank's wife." The boy's lower lip curled.

I picked up a tattered telephone directory from a splintery board counter. I found Dalrymple, Frank with the address 224 Oliveras Street. I showed it to Erikson. "We'd better talk to her in person," he said, and went out the door of the shack.

I stayed behind. "Who was at the field when the man showed up for the chartered flight?"

"Frank."

"How was Frank supposed to know him?"

The boy shrugged. "He must have used the s-same name he gave Elaine on the phone. Hawk."

"Hawk? Mr. Hawk, or was it a nickname?"

"I don't know." The boy had turned sullen again. "I won't even get paid what Frank owes me now. Elaine h-hates everything connected with the field. She was always trying to get Frank to give it up and get a job."

"Did you tell the other men who came about Elaine?"

"They didn't ask me."

I followed Erikson out to the car. He rammed it back out to the highway at a fast clip. He had already forgotten the Mexican boy.

I hadn't.

When a kid like that gets the ground cut from under his feet suddenly, ground he's been depending upon, it takes only a light shove to start him in a direction he'd never have considered previously.

I know because it happened to me.

The homes on Oliveras Street were not mansions. Number 224 was a two-family dwelling with tired-looking grass in the tiny front yard. Erikson pressed the 224-A button after leaning down to check the nameplates. The door opened three inches and a thin-faced, brassy blonde stared out at us. She had on slacks and a bra. No blouse. Her feet were bare. "I want to talk to you about Frank Dalrymple's last chartered flight," Erikson said gruffly.

"I got nothing to say to you!" the blonde retorted. She tried to slam the door but Erikson had a shoe wedged inside. He shouldered the door open, and we walked into a midget-sized hallway. "You get out of here!" the blonde shrilled. She had a voice like the sound of a rat tail file on rusty metal.

"You can get us out of here by answering a few questions," Erikson told her. "Or maybe you'd rather answer them downtown?"

"You're not local," the woman informed him. "And if you're not, you don't have any jurisdiction here." She looked as though she weighed only ninety-eight pounds, but she also looked competent. I had a feeling that this one was a survivor.

"Call your lawyer," Erikson suggested.

She made no move toward the phone on the table.

"What about that charter flight?"

"The phone call was from New York," she said reluctantly.

"Why was your husband selected to make the flight?"

"If he knew, he never told me. Not that I'd have tried to stop him. We needed the cash. With him wasting his time out at that piece of desert acreage instead of supporting-"

"What about the call?"

"Well, I took the message. Frank was away, and he called New York when he came back. The charter customer-"

"Frank called New York? You had a number for him to call? Where is it?" Erikson rapped at her in one breath.

"It's probably still in my handbag. Wait a minute." Her bare feet slap-slapped into the next room and back again. "Here."

Erikson looked at the number scrawled on a torn scrap of paper. "Judson two-four-seven-O-five," he read aloud. He shoved the paper into a pocket. "What else?" he demanded.

"Nothing else," the blonde said spiritedly. "I wasn't at the field when the man came."

"And a good thing for you," I told her. Her eyes widened as though she hadn't thought of that aspect of it before. "And for the Mexican kid. The boy said the charter customer used the name Hawk. Did you get the feeling it was a nickname or his surname?"

"I didn't get a feeling one way or the other."

"Thanks for your trouble," Erikson said, and started for the door.

I lingered. "See to it that the kid gets the wages due him," I suggested to Elaine.

"What the hell do you mean?" she flared up.

"You wouldn't want the wages-and-hours boys looking over your shoulder."

"I'll have you know I pay my bills!" she rasped.

Outside, Erikson beep-beeped the horn of the rented car. "Fine," I said, and left.

"Those two men the kid at the airport described were Israeli intelligence agents," Erikson said as I got into the car. "They didn't lose any time."

He drove until he found a street telephone booth. I waited in the car while he made his call to check out the telephone number he'd retrieved from Dalrymple's wife. "It's a bar on Lexington Avenue not too far away from Grand Central," he said when he returned.

"Does that tell us anything?"

"Not from this distance it doesn't." Erikson sat there frowning, his big hands clenching and unclenching on the steering wheel. Finally he turned his head and looked at me. "You're still the only one who's seen this hijack character. How'd you like to make a quick flight to New York with me?"

"I don't think so," I demurred. "Hazel has a few things for me to do around the ranch." I'd been thinking of going to New York ever since I heard the phone number, but I didn't want to go with Karl Erikson looking over my shoulder.

"You weren't listening, Earl." Erikson's tone changed. "I said that you're the only person to this point who can identify the hijacker. It happens to be important to the government, and as the government's representative, I'm here to persuade you to cooperate with us."

I didn't like the way he said it. "Persuade?" I repeated. "Cooperate?"

"I'm sure that Hazel would prefer to have you return to the ranch with a renewed assurance of no future repercussions."

So there it was. Gloves off and foils unbuttoned. "I had the assurance, you mangy son of a bitch," I told him. "What the hell are you, an Indian giver?"

He ignored the nomenclature. "You have a stake in this, too," he reminded me. "Or Hazel has. Forget your lone-wolf complex for once and get in on a piece of action where people are available to do things you couldn't do yourself."

"Your people?"

"That's right."

"When would we be going?" I wasn't all that opposed to going to New York; I was opposed to going on Erikson's terms. If I could get away from him now, I could make a move on my own.

But he drove a nail in that coffin. "Right now. As soon as we can drive to Tucson Municipal Airport."

I could dump him in New York City any time I took the notion, of course. And if Hazel and I didn't stay at the ranch afterward he couldn't find us. We could set ourselves up anywhere. "Okay," I said. "Since you asked me so nicely."

He ignored that, too. Karl Erikson is a single-minded type with a great facility for ignoring anything not on the main track of his particular interest of the moment. I'd learned that about him in Cuba.

I called Hazel from the airport.

Erikson stood fairly close to the booth. I didn't think he could hear me, but I wondered if he could read hps. A couple of times before he'd demonstrated talents I hadn't expected him to have.

"I've been invited to continue on to New York City with our mutual friend," I told Hazel when she came on the line.

"I was afraid of that." Her tone was resigned. "What does it mean?"

"Not much, probably. Right now he's hung up on the fact that I'm the only one who saw the guy who got away. We've got one lead, a bar on the New York east side, but it will be like looking for a virgin in a sorority house. I'm sure I'll be back in a couple of days."

"You be careful, y'hear?"

"You do the same, big stuff."

I left the booth and rejoined Erikson.

Eighty minutes later we were winging eastward in another of Senor Boeing's man-made birds.

We took a cab downtown from Kennedy International Airport. Erikson kept looking at his watch. "I'll drop you at Lexington and Forty-sixth," he said finally. "The bar is in the next block. It's called the Alhambra. I want you to take a quick look at it, then come to my office at Five-O-Five Fifth Avenue."

"What if the taxpayers find out they're supporting the government in the lap of luxury on Fifth Avenue?" I needled him.

He paid no attention. "Don't spend more than a few minutes in the bar, because there's a meeting at my office I want you to listen in on. When you come to the Fifth Avenue building, take the elevator to the sixteenth floor and turn right when you get off it. Halfway down the corridor you'll find a door marked Intercontinental Plastics Company. Got it?"

"Got it. What should I be looking for in the bar besides the hijacker?"

"Impressions. Is it a neighborhood bar or a flossier place? Some bars in that area cater to Madison Avenue types. Get the name of the owner from the license on the wall, and I'll check out the management. It probably won't tell us anything, but you never can tell. Don't hang around, though. I want you to see the people who are coming to my office."

"You think I might know them?"

"I doubt it, but we shouldn't overlook the possibility. These men are Israelis."

"Intelligence again? How come they're running around loose in this country?"

"It's an unofficial situation." Erikson's tone was dry. "Complicated by the fact that at the moment I have no official status myself. I'm set up as a listening post to filter acquired information. These Israelis are good men, and they have none of the inhibitions inculcated in our own foreign agents. It makes some of the guys on Pennsylvania Avenue a little nervous."

It had turned dark during the ride in from Kennedy, and a fight rain was falling. The cab was hurtling along through the bravura neon atmosphere of east-side Manhattan. I recognized Fifty-seventh as we hummed through the intersection with the green light, and I leaned forward to be ready to tap on the glass and attract the cabbie's attention.

"It's eight-thirty now," Erikson continued. "Be at my office no later than nine."

"Okay." I rapped on the glass. "Forty-sixth," I told the driver when he turned his head. The cab slowed and angled from the center of the street in toward the curb. I stepped out into rain that had degenerated into a heavy mist.

The sidewalks were deserted. Even if the area catered to Madison Avenue types, at this hour the boys in the gray flannel suits were out of the club cars on the New Haven and sitting with their feet cocked up in front of their Darien and Westport mortgaged homes, listening to the sounds of the neighborhood kids in the swimming pool.

The Alhambra wasn't hard to find. In the middle of the block a Gothic-lettered illuminated sign in a plate-glass window flashed on and off. The bottom half of the window was painted black. I walked up the block and opened a door with a massive brass handle. The door felt so heavy I took a second look at it. In the semidarkness I couldn't be sure, but it felt like solid oak.

The interior was dimly lighted. I had the impression of an attempt at an old-world style: heavy, ornate furniture, elaborate gilded mirrors, crystal chandeliers, rich-looking leather and wood. A garish canopy ballooned out over the bar, and the pictures on the walls showed the Alcazar and other Spanish architectural wonders which looked familiar but which I couldn't name. Everything in the place seemed pseudo-Spanish or pseudo-Moorish.

The customers were a mixed lot in looks and dress. The place seemed to be almost a League of Nations. There were black faces in African robes and black faces in Western business suits. In one corner three Japanese women in colorful kimonos chattered to a Japanese man in correct formal dress. In another a bearded Sikh in a white turban spoke animatedly to a shaggy-haired man wearing a Basque-like beret who was sitting next to a goateed, olive-skinned man in a skullcap. Sprinkled throughout the room were a variety of airline uniforms, both pilots and stewardesses.

I slid onto a vacant leather-cushioned stool at the bar beside a slim female in a sari. "Jim Beam on the rocks," I told the Spanish-looking bartender when he materialized in front of me. He turned to the bottles on the back bar. In its mirror I could see that my next-stool companion was a Nordic blonde with enormous gold earrings and a jewel carefully pasted in the center of her forehead. Her sari hung loosely upon her slenderness, and her eyes were wide-staring as they met mine in the mirror. "You're wearing a hairpiece, aren't you?" she said to me in a little-girl voice. Her intonation was slow and dreamy-sounding.

"That's right," I said, seeing no point in denying the obvious to a close observer. This girl hardly looked the part of a close observer, though.

She turned on her stool to look at me. "And you've been badly burned," she continued. "They did a good job on you, but my best friend was burned when she was fifteen, and I can always tell."

The bartender returned with my drink. "I'm looking for Hawk," I said to him as he took the bill I placed on the bar.

"He comes and goes," the man said, and went to the cash register with my money.

So at least there was a Hawk, genus unknown.

"Do you have any speed?" the girl on the next stool asked me.

I took another look at her. New York permits eighteen-year-old drinkers, but this girl didn't look eighteen. Glancing down, I could see her feet under the soiled hem of her orange sari. They were bare and dirty. Her small features had an almost angelic expression, but I could see dirt smudges on her face, too. "No," I said.

"Too bad. I'd like to get high."

There was no particular inflection in the childish voice. A half-empty beer glass reposed on the bar, but she didn't sound drunk. She didn't sound sober, either. I haven't had much contact with marijuana, but the dilated eyes and dreamy-sounding voice had me thinking marijuana. "What's your name?" I asked.

"Chryssie," she said gravely. "C-H-R-Y-S-S-I-E. Short for Chrysanthemum."

"I see. You're a flower child?"

She smiled, a sweet, untroubled smile. "Nobody ever corrupted a flower, did they?"

"You've been corrupted?"

The dilated eyes removed themselves from the introspective examination of her beer glass and fastened upon me. "I corrupt."

"Now that I find hard to believe."

But the blonde girl's gaze had withdrawn itself to her glass again. She said nothing. I tried a few more questions, but she seemed to have stepped into a private room, closed the door, and turned the key. I let it go and resumed my examination of the other occupants of the smoke-hazed room.

Finally I glanced at my watch. It was getting close to the time Erikson had set for my appearance at his office. I drained my Jim Beam and set down my glass. Swiveling on my bar stool before sliding from it, I became aware that the blonde was back in the land of the living. She was watching my face. "So long," she said.

"So long?" I echoed.

"You're leaving, aren't you?"

"That's right." She gave me another of her otherworldly smiles. "So long, Chryssie."

I went out to the street and hailed a cab.