“Mr. Bury was very specific. The young gentleman is expected. He is not to register under his own name but, like any young gentleman, is to register incognito. It’s what all the young bloods do when they go for a fling in town.
“Mr. Bury will call on you in person at precisely eight o’clock tomorrow morning at your hotel. He asked me to reassure you that you are perfectly safe, that no one is the least bit cross with you and that everyone has your best interests at heart. So, you will wait for him at the hotel?”
“Sure,” said Heller.
The idiot! That would be the site of the hit! Or would it be even sooner?
Buttlesby directing, they left the turnpike and went with signs pointing to the Lincoln Tunnel. But at a sign, J. F. Kennedy Blvd., they turned off and were soon in the New Jersey town of Weehawken, a very shabby place.
They rolled along to 34th Street and the fake family retainer gave more directions and shortly they were on the ramp of a large but dingy building, a garage.
The escort got out, rapped on the door three times and then twice with the handle of his umbrella and in a moment the huge mechanical door swung up, revealing a vast, dark interior.
A rather overweight young man with huge, somewhat scared eyes, dressed in paint-spattered khaki coveralls, was standing there, pointing.
Heller drove in the direction of the point.
The floor was paint-spattered. There were some battered machines evidently used in body work. But there were no other cars there.
Way back at the end there was an area cleaner than the rest and no paint spatters. Heller stopped the car.
He got out and opened up the back. Buttlesby was there helping with the baggage — he couldn’t manage all of it and Heller carried one suitcase.
The plump young man had his hand out. “The keys,” he said. “We maybe got to move it.”
Heller separated the keys and for the first time I noticed there were two sets on the ring. And then the idiot handed one set over to the young man.
They went outside and there was a taxi waiting! The driver had his cap down, possibly to hide his face. Buttlesby got the baggage into the cab and stood back, holding the door open for Heller to enter. Heller got in but Buttlesby didn’t.
“Aren’t you going with me?” said Heller.
“Oh, dear no. Cross into Manhattan when I don’t have to? Dreadful place. They ruin cars. Someone will be by to pick me up directly. Driver, take this young gentleman to the Brewster Hotel on 22nd Street. And no accidents, mind you.”
The cab drew away and behind them the Sicilian drove up and Buttlesby got in the Sicilian’s battered old car.
Shortly they were in the Lincoln Tunnel and Heller seemed more interested in the tile work that was flying by than he was in being en route to the hit spot.
As they exited from under the river, his eyes were all over the place, taking in New York. He seemed to be remarking about the fenders. And it is true that New York City fenders are the most bashed fenders in the world. He looked at dents rolling beside them and dents parked at curbs and possibly he was satisfied with Buttlesby’s explanation. I wasn’t. Bury had successfully separated the alleged Delbert John Rockecenter, Junior, from a car link that would lead back to the FBI.
They came at length to 22nd Street, which is narrow. And shortly they were drawn up before the Brewster Hotel, which is squat.
The buildings in that shabby section are only a few stories high. The garbage cans abounded.
While the Brewster may not be the worst hotel in New York, it is where the winos probably stop when they have money.
Heller removed his baggage and paid the driver — who probably already had been paid — and was shortly at the desk in the narrow excuse for a lobby.
The clerk, a man whose complexion was totally gray, looked at him with sunken eyes and then reached for a key. It must be all set up, even the exact room!
A card was pushed at him and Heller registered with a flourish. Al Capone. Address: Sing Sing.
The clerk gave him a key, not even bothering to read the registration card.
Heller squeezed his baggage into the elevator, worked out it must be the fourth floor and was shortly in his room.
What a shabby room! A double bed against the far wall. One easy chair. One straight back. A side table by the easy chair, an 1890 bathroom and a TV.
Heller put his baggage on the bed and went over to the double window. Directly across the street, the building there was exactly the same height: it had a flat roof and parapet — the exact requirements for a sniper post.
But Heller gave it no special heed. He tried to turn on the TV. The picture and sound came on but it was a black and white TV.
Heller tapped it on the side. Then he fiddled with the settings and got it all out of kilter. Then he opened a panel and found some more settings and twisted those with a tool from his tool kit.
I couldn’t comprehend what he was up to. Rigging a bomb? Doing something equally sensible?
And then it came to me. No stereo picture, no color. He thought it was broken!
He finally got the interior settings straight again and then the exterior knobs and got the picture and sound back.
He pulled the TV, which was on casters, slightly into the room and adjusted the easy chair. He had the back of that chair to the windows! My Gods, didn’t he realize that’s where the shot would come from?
And then this utter simpleton sat and watched the evening news in all its gory details.
Then he found a motion picture on the channels and sat yawning while the Mafia won World War II for America in Italy.
I did not wait for the end of that. Gripping my paper picture, I sped through the tunnel to Faht’s office.
I slammed the picture in front of Faht’s face. “Who is this man?” I demanded.
He shrugged and indicated the cabinets marked Student Files. They contain, amongst other things, a rogues gallery of customers so that we do not go adrift and sell to the wrong people.
It took me half an hour of digging — and how I longed for a proper computer system, illegal though it might be to install one on this planet.
I found him!
Unmistakable!
He had visited Turkey on two occasions to inspect the work of buyers for their mob.
It was Razza Louseini! Consigliere of the mob of Faustino “The Noose” Narcotici. The New York Mafia lot that is the outlet for I. G. Barben Pharmaceutical!
Important people.
The direct-line connection to Rockecenter’s disguised control of the drug industry!
And the consigliere, the advisor and administrative head of the most powerful mob in New York, had personally gone down to act as the finger man on Heller!
One of our best customers had been given the job of knocking off Heller!
It was just, of course, but none of these people would know any part of this connection to Heller. Lombar had known. He had quite understood the fury that would boil in the Rockecenter camp when an imposter showed up. The Rockecenter name is sacred!
I felt an awe of Lombar. He had fed Heller straight into the fire. For a moment, at the FBI in Washington, I had thought Lombar had gone wrong. But no! The power of the Apparatus chief was reaching straight through, handled unwittingly by puppets!
And then the awe turned into sickness. Heller had a contact in the Grand Council we had not known about. And I did not have the code!
There was no possible way to get Heller’s baggage ransacked in time.
This planet was a goner!
But who cared about the planet? It was I, Soltan Gris, who would be dead in the echo of a fatal rifle shot through that window!