The Aztec Avenger

CHAPTER TWELVE

I went into my hotel through a service entrance because I didn’t want to advertise my presence. Instead of going to my room, I took the service elevator up to the ninth floor.

Suite 903 was at the end of the corridor. I checked my watch. Three-thirty in the morning, yet a tiny spill of light came from the crack between the door and the sill. I wondered why Dietrich would be up so late. Cautiously, I inserted a metal probe into the lock and pressed a thin plastic card into the door at the latch.

The bolt turned back, making only the faintest click. I waited, listening, and when there was still no noise on the other side of the door, I took out the snub-nosed .38 Smith and Wesson Airweight and silently pushed the door open.

I walked into the living room. I heard noises in one of the bedrooms. Almost immediately, a tall, silver-haired man appeared in the doorway. Thin and fine-boned, he appeared as fragile as a praying mantis with his elongated, bony face and his somber dignity. He stopped short in complete surprise,

“What the devil are you doing here?” he demanded imperiously. “Put that gun away!”

“Are you Herbert Dietrich?”

“Yes, I’m Dietrich. What is this? A hold-up?”

“My name is Paul Stephans,” I said, “and I think it’s long past time that you and I had a talk, Mr. Dietrich.”

Recognition leaped into his eyes. “You’re Stocelli’s man!” he said accusingly.

I shook my head. “Why do you think I’m connected with Stocelli?”

“I was told you had a secret meeting with him at three o’clock in the morning on the night you arrived.”

I sighed. Apparently, everyone in the hotel knew about that midnight visit

“I’m not Stocelli’s man. I’m doing a job for Alexander Gregorius. He sent me down here to deal with Stocelli on a business matter.”

Dietrich took a moment to grasp what I’d just told him.

“My god!” he exclaimed, “I’ve just done a terrible thing. And it’s too late to correct it!”

“You mean the five kilos of heroin in my room?” I asked.

Dietrich nodded — and it was the confirmation I needed He’d as much as admitted that he was the one who’d set up Stocelli’s associates and had been trying to do the same to Stocelli and me.

“I got rid of it,” I told him.

Dietrich shook his head. “Even more. I sent a bellhop to your room with a black fabric suitcase. It contains almost thirty kilos of heroin. No more than an hour ago.”

“Have you informed the police yet?”

Dietrich slowly shook his head. “I was about to— when I heard the door open.”

“The police won’t trouble me about it,” I told him, and watched his reaction.

An edge of fright came into his voice.

“Just who are you, Mr. Stephans? What land of a man are you that you’re sent to deal single-handedly with a brute like Stocelli? You’re not bothered by the police. You’re not in the least disturbed by knowing that there’s enough heroin in your room to put you behind bars for the rest of your life. You break into a hotel room at almost four in the morning with a gun in your hand. Just who the devil are you?”

“Someone who means you no harm,” I reassured him. I could see he was on the verge of breaking apart “All I want from you is some information.”

Dietrich hesitated. Finally, he let out his breath. “All right Go ahead.”

“So far, I’ve totalled up more than a hundred and forty kilos of heroin that you’ve distributed. It has a street value of somewhere between twenty-eight and thirty-two million dollars. Now how the hell could a man like you lay his hands on that much heroin? Even Stocelli can’t do it with all his contacts. Where in God’s name are you getting it from?”

Dietrich turned away from me, stubborness coming into the set of his face.

“That’s one thing I will not tell you, Mr. Stephans.”

“I think you should.”

The woman’s voice came from behind us.

I turned around. She stood in the doorway to the other bedroom, clad in a light, semi-transparent negligee. Beneath it, she wore a short, knee-length nylon nightgown. Her long, straight blonde hair fell almost to her waist. She was somewhere in her middle twenties, her face a softer, feminine version of Dietrich’s elongated features. Under a broad forehead, a fine, long nose that barely escaped being too thin divided her tanned face. Her eyes were the same soft gray as her father’s. Her chin was a delicate joining of the sweeping curves of cheek and jawbone.

“I’m Susan Dietrich. I overheard what you’ve told my father. I apologize to you. It was my fault. I’m the one who bribed the bellhop for information about you. He told me you were seen coming out of Stocelli’s penthouse the other morning. That’s why we thought you were part of it.”

She came into the living room and stood by her father, putting one arm around him.

“I think it’s time you told someone. It’s been tearing you apart for years. You’ve got to stop. You’re getting in too deep.”

Dietrich shook his head. “I won’t stop, Susan. I can’t stop! Not until every last one of them—”

Susan put her fingers to his lips. “Please?”

Dietrich took her hand away. “I will not tell him,” he said defiantly, his voice beginning to rise to an almost fanatical pitch. “He’ll tell the police, and they’ll all get off scot-free. Every one of them! Don’t you understand that? All my effort — all those years will have been wasted.”

“No,” I said “Frankly, I don’t give a damn about the men you’ve framed — or how long they’ll rot in jail. All I want to know is where you’re getting all this heroin.”

Dietrich lifted a thin, pale face to me. I could see the lines of suffering that had etched themselves deeply into his skin. Only years of agony could have produced the tortured look in the old man’s eyes. He looked at me steadily, and without a flicker of expression in his voice, he said, simply, “I make it, Mr. Stephans.”

Dietrich held Susan’s hand tightly in both of his as he told me his story.

“I had another daughter, Mr. Stephans. Her name was Alice. Four years ago, she was found dead of an overdose of heroin in a despicable, dirty hotel room in New York City. She wasn’t quite eighteen at the time. For a year before she died, she’d been a prostitute. As the police told me, she’d been taking on everyone who could pay her even a few dollars because she needed money so desperately to pay for her addiction. She couldn’t live without heroin. She finally died because of it.

“I swore revenge. I swore to get the men who count, the ones who make it possible — the ones at the top! The big men that the police can’t touch because they never handle the stuff themselves. Men like Stocelli, Torregrossa, Vignale, Gambetta, Klein, and Webber. The whole filthy bunch! Especially the ones who process it for them. Men like Michaud, Berthier, and Duprè.

“If you know anything about me, you know I’m a chemist. Recently, I found a way I could get my revenge. I found a means by which I could literally bury them in their own foul traffic!”

He paused, his eyes gleaming with a light that came from deep within him.

“I found a way to make synthetic heroin.”

Dietrich saw the look on my face.

“You don’t believe me, do you, Mr. Stephans. But it’s true. I actually discovered a way in which to manufacture heroin hydrochloride of better than ninety-one percent purity” He got to his feet. “Come with me.”

I followed him into the kitchenette.

Dietrich toned on the light and pointed. “See for yourself.”

On the counter was a simple array of glass retorts and glass tubing. Most of it made no sense to me, but I’m not a chemist

“It is true,” Susan said, and I recalled that on the second page of the report that Denver had sent me via Telecopier the key phrase on Dietrich Chemical Inc. was “research and development.” Was it really possible that the old man had found a way to manufacture heroin synthetically?

“Yes, Mr. Stephans,” Dietrich said, almost proudly, “synthetic heroin. Like many discoveries, I practically stumbled upon the technique of synthesizing the drug, although it took me quite some time to perfect it. And then”—Dietrich reached over to the counter and lifted a brown, plastic quart bottle, holding it up—”then, I discovered how to concentrate the synthetic. This bottle contains concentrated synthetic heroin, I suppose a good analogy would be to liken it to concentrated liquid saccharin, one drop of which is equal to a full teaspoon of sugar. Well, this is even more concentrated. I dilute it with plain tap water, half an ounce to the gallon.”

I must have looked dubious because Dietrich caught me by the arm. “You must believe me, Mr. Stephans. You’ve tested the stuff yourself, haven’t you?”

I hadn’t, but I remembered Carlos Ortega reaching out with his forefinger and touching it to the powder and touching that to his tongue and then nodding agreement that it was indeed heroin.

“How does it work?” I asked.

“You know I’ll never reveal the formula.”

“I didn’t ask you that. I just don’t see how you get a crystal powder out of that”—I pointed to the bottle —”and plain water.”

Dietrich sighed. “Very simple. The concentrate has the property of crystalizing water. Just as cold turns rain into snowflakes — which is nothing more than crystallized water. A gallon of water weighs around three kilos. This bottle contains enough concentrate to make almost two hundred kilos of synthetic heroin that can’t be distinguished from true heroin hydrochloride. There isn’t a chemical test in the world that will show the slightest difference. And I can turn it out for only a few dollars a pound. Do you know what that means?”

I surely did, even if he didn’t The implications of what Dietrich had just told were tremendous. Thoughts churned around like wreckage in a typhoon. I couldn’t believe that Dietrich was unaware of what he’d said.

We returned to the living room, Dietrich pacing back and forth as if the energy in him had to find some release other than in words. I was silent because I wanted to sort out the thoughts in my mind.

“I can make it anywhere. The heroin that I tried to plant in your room? Did you think I smuggled that much heroin into Mexico? I didn’t have to. I can make it here as easily as I made it in France when I planted it on those Frenchmen. I made it in New York. I made it in Miami.”

Susan sat down on the couch. I watched Dietrich stride back and forth in the confines of the living room and knew that the man was not completely in his right mind.

“Mr. Dietrich.” I caught his attention.

“Yes?”

“You asked me before if I know what your discovery means? Do you?”

Dietrich turned to face me, puzzled.

“Are you aware of how valuable your discovery is to the very men you’re trying to destroy? Do you know the risks they now take to smuggle narcotics into the States? Or how many millions of dollars in cash they must pay for it? They do it for only one reason. The fantastic profit involved. Hundreds of millions a year. Now you’ve found a way that will eliminate the risk of smuggling narcotics into the States as well as giving them larger profits than they could have dreamed of. Don’t you know what your formula is worth to them?”

Dietrich stared uncomprehendingly at me.

“There isn’t one of these men who wouldn’t commit a dozen murders to lay his hands on your formula. Or on you, for that matter.”

He stopped almost in mid-stride, his face stricken with a look of sudden fright.

“I–I never… I never thought about it,” he stammered.

“Damnit, think about it!” I’d finally gotten through to him. There wasn’t any need to say more.

The old man went over to the couch and sank down beside his daughter, putting his face in his hands. Susan put her arm around this thin shoulders to comfort him. She looked across the room at me with pale gray eyes.

“Will you help us, Mr. Stephans?”

“The best thing you can do now is to go back home and keep your mouths shut. Never mention a word to anyone.”

“There’s no one else to help us,” she said. “Please?”

I looked at them, father and daughter, trapped in a web of revenge. My duty was to Gregorius and in order to help him I had to keep my promise to Stocelli, to clear him with the Commission. All I’d have to do would be to turn these two over to him, but the thought of what Stocelli would do if he got his hands on Dietrich was sickening. And if I turned Dietrich over to Stocelli, it would be the same as handing him Dietrich’s formula. Within a year, Stocelli would control the entire narcotics rackets in the States. No big-time operator would be able to compete with him. With the risk of smuggling heroin into the States eliminated, and with the incredible profits to be had because of its low manufacturing costs, it would be no time at all before Stocelli would be supplying every narcotics ring in every city in the country. There’d be no way to stop him. Giving Dietrich to Stocelli would be like turning a plague loose on the country.

I knew I had to keep Dietrich’s formula out of Stocelli’s grasp. And since it was locked up in the old man’s mind, I had to get the pair of them out of Mexico.

“All right,” I said. “But you must do exactly what I tell you to.”

“We will.”

“How much heroin do you have in there?” I asked Dietrich.

Dietrich looked up. “Almost forty kilos in crystal form.”

“Get rid of it And anything else you’ve been brewing, too. Get rid of all the glassware. You can’t take a chance that it’ll be seen by a maid or bellhop. Clean the place up thoroughly.”

“Anything else?”

“Yes. Tomorrow, I want you to book your return flight to the States on the first plane out.”

“And then?”

“For the time being, nothing. That’s all you can do.”

I suddenly felt exhausted. My arm ached with a dull, throbbing pain. I needed rest and sleep.

“What about Stocelli?” asked Dietrich, the fanatical light in his eyes flaring up once more. “What about him? Does he get off scot-free? Does this mean he’ll not be punished?”

“HI take care of Stocelli. You have my word for that.”

“Can I believe you?”

“You’ll have to.”

I rose to my feet and told them that I was tired and that I was leaving, and I walked out the door, shutting it carefully behind me. None of us said anything as I left. There was no more to be said.

When I left Dietrich and his daughter, it was well past four in the morning, but I still had one final chore to do before I could go to sleep. I went back to my room to pick up two tape recorders — a pocket recorder and a slightly larger one. The larger recorder had been fitted with a high-speed playback. It could play back a full hour of tape in less than thirty seconds. To anyone listening, the sound it made would be nothing more than a high-pitched whine.

With both machines, I went down to the deserted lobby and settled myself in one of the telephone booths. Pretending to be speaking into the mouthpiece, I dictated a report of my activities into the small pocket recorder. I covered almost all the events that had occurred, except for the killing of Luis Aparicio. It took me almost fifteen minutes before I was through talking.

Then I got through to Denver.

“You sound tired,” Denver said when he came on the line.

“I am,” I said, tartly, “so let’s get this over with, okay?”

“I’m taping now.”

“High speed,” I said, wearily. “Let’s not take all night.”

“Roger. Ready for reception.”

“Okay, this is private. For playback to Gregorius only. Repeat — for Gregorius only.”

I put the tape cassette into the high-speed player and held it to the mouthpiece of the telephone. I pressed the ‘play’ button, and the machine gave off a whine like the shrill scream of a distant buzz-saw. The sound lasted for seven or eight seconds, then stopped abruptly.

I put the handset to my ear and said, “How was the reception?”

“The scopes say it was okay,” Denver acknowledged.

“All right,” I said. “I want that tape destroyed immediately after transmission to Gregorius.”

“Will do. Anything else?”

“No,” I said. “I guess that’s all for now.”

I hung up. Before I left the booth, I rewound the original cassette, disconnected the microphone, and ran it in the ‘record’ mode in the high speed recorder until the tape was completely erased.

Back in my room, I had to pull the drapes against the glare of the coming dawn. I undressed and got into bed and lay thinking for a long while because my thoughts were on the last part of the message I had sent to Gregorius:

“What Dietrich has discovered is so dangerous that it cannot be entrusted to him. The man is highly neurotic and unstable. If his formula for synthetic heroin ever gets into the wrong hands, I’d hate to think of the consequences. Objectively, I would recommend that he be eliminated — as soon as possible.”