He stared down at the thong, then up at me. Finally he laid down the cards and got clumsily to his feet. He picked up the thong dumbly and stood looking at it.
"Move it! Tie his hands behind his back."
Big Julie did as he was told. When he was through and had stepped back, I checked the knots. He'd done a good enough job.
I waved the pistol at him again- "Okay. Now it's your turn. On the floor."
"What the…"
"I said on the floor!"
He sighed, carefully removed the cigar butt from his mouth, and laid it in the ashtray on the desk. Then he lay down on the floor, several feet away from Raymond.
"Put your hands behind your back."
He sighed again and put his hands behind his back, his cheek flat against the floor.
I laid Wilhelmina on the chair Big Julie had been sitting on and knelt over him, straddling his body to tie his hands.
His feet whipped up, cracking into my back, and his giant body twisted and heaved in a great convulsion of effort, throwing me against the desk and off balance. I cursed my own stupidity and dove for the gun, but he caught my wrist in a viselike grip with one beefy paw, heaving over against me with his body and pinning me to the floor with his great weight.
His face was next to mine, pressing against me. He raised back and smashed downward with his head, trying to crack it against mine. I twisted violently and his head cracked against the floor. He bellowed like a stuck bull and twisted over on me again.
I clawed at his eyes with my free hand, fighting against the weight pressing down on me, arching my back to keep my body from being flattened helplessly under him. My searching fingers found his eyes, but they were squinted tightly shut. I took the next best alternative, jamming two fingers into his nostrils and ripping back and upward.
I could feel tissue give, and he screamed, letting go of my other wrist so that he could pull on the attacking hand. I pushed off with my free hand and we rolled over and over on the floor. We came up against the leg of a desk. I grabbed both of his ears and pounded his head backward against the metal furniture.
His grip slackened and I broke free, tumbling away from him. I snapped to my feet just in time to see Raymond, hands still tied behind him, struggling to stand. I kicked him in the stomach with the point of my shoe and dove to retrieve Wilhelmina from where I'd left her on the chair.
I grabbed the Luger and spun just as Big Julie launched himself from the floor at me like a grunting, sweating catapult. I sidestepped and let him hurtle by me as I smashed at the side of his head with the butt of the pistol. He crashed headlong into the chair and lay there, suddenly inert, blood from his ripped nose spreading over his lower jaw, soaking his mustache. On the floor alongside him, Raymond squirmed and moaned, hands still locked behind his back.
I reholstered Wilhelmina. It had been such a clean operation until Big Julie had gone heroic on me. I waited until I was breathing normally, then tied Big Julie's hands together as I had started to do a few minutes before. Then I turned on all the lights in the office and began going through the big bank of files in Chickie Wright's office.
They were locked but it didn't take me long to break the locks. Finding what I was looking for, however, was a different matter. But finally I found it. A dollar-by-dollar breakdown of the Franzini holdings in the city's business concerns.
I whistled. Popeye was not only into everything illegal in the city, he hadn't missed many legal operations: meatpacking, stock brokerage, construction, taxicabs, hotels, electrical appliances, pasta manufacturing, supermarkets, bakeries, massage parlors, movie houses, pharmaceutical manufacturing.
I pulled open one of the file drawers and noticed some large manila envelopes piled in the back. They had no labels and the flaps were sealed. I ripped them open and knew I'd hit the jackpot. Those envelopes contained the records — with sale dates, drops, names, everything — of Franzini's heroin operation, a complex pipeline from the Middle East to New York.
It seemed my late friend, Su Lao Lin, hadn't gone out of the drug business when our G.I.'s left Indochina. She'd just moved shop a few thousand miles to Beirut. That beautiful woman was funneling drugs as well as men. She was a busy girl.
Her relationship to Franzini always had puzzled me. It had always nagged at the back of my mind why I'd met a Red Chinese agent and former drug distributor working as an employment service for an American gangster. She was just doing double duty and I'd been involved in only one side of her many talents for organization. It all became clear, and I smiled slightly as I thought that I'd inadvertently blown up Franzini's Middle Eastern connection.
Whatever misgivings I'd had earlier about wiping her out were completely gone.
I stacked the papers carefully on the desk next to my attaché case and then took the plastique explosives out of the case and lined them up. Plastique is not too stable, and it should be handled carefully. When I had it sent to me by bus from Washington, I'd had it sent in two packages — one for the explosive itself, the other for the caps and detonators. That way, it was safe.
Now, I carefully went about inserting the caps and the timer-detonators. Set for maximum, the detonators would go off in five minutes once they had been activated. I placed one where it was sure to destroy the computer, then distributed the other three around the room where they would do maximum damage. I didn't have to be too precise. Four plastique bombs would pretty well demolish the Counting House.
"Man, you ain't gonna leave us here." It was more a plea than a question from the black man on the floor. He had twisted around so that he could watch me. He had quit groaning some time ago.
I smiled down at him. "No, Raymond. You and your fat friend are going with me." I looked over at Big Julie, who had raised himself into a sitting position on the floor and was glaring at me through bloodshot eyes. "I want someone to carry a message for me to Popeye Franzini."
"What's the message?" Raymond was eager to oblige.
"Just tell him that tonight's work was with the compliments of Gaetano Ruggiero."
"Well, goddamn…" It was Big Julie. Blood streamed down his face from his torn nose.
I repacked my attaché case carefully, making sure all the incriminating papers were in it, then closed and locked it. I got Raymond and Big Julie to their feet and made them stand in the middle of the room while I went around and activated the timing devices on each of the detonators. Then the three of us got out of there in a hurry, rushing up the stairway to the roof and slamming the rooftop door shut behind us.
I made Raymond and Big Julie lie down on their faces again, then took a deep breath and dashed across my shaky plank bridge to the next building. Once across, I pulled the plank aside, tossed it onto the rooftop and started down the stairway, whistling happily to myself. It had been a good night's work.
Halfway down the stairs I could feel the building shake as four big explosions sounded from next door. When I got outside, the top floor of 415 West Broadway was in flames. I stopped on the corner to pull the fire alarm box, then strolled on over to Sixth Avenue and hailed a cab going uptown. I was back in my seat alongside Philomina before the end of the Amram concerto that was the finale on the program.
My clothes were slightly mussed, but I had brushed off most of the dirt I'd picked up rolling around on the floor of the Counting House. The informal way some people dress for concerts these days, it wouldn't be very noticeable.
Chapter 15
After Philomina had gone to work the next morning, I wrapped up the papers I had taken from the Counting House and mailed them to Ron Brandenburg. There was enough there to keep the FBI, the Treasury Department, and the Southern District Task Force Against Organized Crime busy for the next six months.