“Wait!” Bello gasped.
“Wait, hell, you dirty, phoney pusher bastard. We can’t wait. Come up with some money so we can send some one down to Tia Juana. Or come up with the stuff.”
“Wait,” Bello insisted. “Listen to me. You know me. I’ve been pushing stuff around this town too long to try and beat you people. If I’d wanted to beat you, I wouldn’t hang around to let you catch up with me. Would I?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I didn’t know those caps were phonies. My connection crossed me. I just phoned him now. Your money? Here, I’ll give you what you want...”
“Let’s take his roll and dump him down in the bay,” a tall youth moved from behind the addict who was holding Bello’s twisted arm.
“No. Wait,” another interrupted. “Let’s give the bastard a chance. We’ll all be sick by the time anyone can get to Tia Juana and back with more stuff. We’ll all need a fix before midnight — or be too damn sick to do anything about it.” The junker turned to Bello. “Alright, pusher, like you say, your connection crossed you. Let’s go see this smart sonuvabitch. Let’s find out who’s crossing who.”
“You know gawdamn well I can’t take you hopheads there. I’d be killed!”
“Take your pick, Bello. Your connection kills you. We kill you. You can get it right now if you want to stall.” The words were emphasized with the mouth of the.38 in another pistol-whipping blow, across his mouth this time. “Throw him in the back seat. We’ve been around here too long now anyway. I’ll be there in a minute.”
While the three other addicts muscled Bello to their car, the revolver wielding heroin addict prowled Bellow’s car. With a switch blade knife, he slashed the upholstery and ceiling as he searched for any possible hiding place. He tore up the seats and looked in coil springs. He ripped wires from under the dash; examined the engine; and crawled under the car seeking any hiding place where drugs might be hidden. He slashed wildly at the spare tire in the trunk and swore when he discovered no sign of narcotics of any description. “Not even a grain of powdered sugar,” he shrugged when he returned to the other car. “Let’s get down the hill and see if we can’t induce Mister Bello to talk about his connection. We can use one tonight, real bad.”
“Where to?” the driver asked.
“You tell him, Bello,” the revolver wielder ordered with a heel grinding into the captive’s ribs. “Sit up here!” He jerked the half-conscious Bello from the car’s rear seat floor. “In this fog you won’t be seen by the junkers who want to knock you off or the law who want to lock you up. And start talking. Like Eddie says, where to? Where do we find this connection who puts out powdered sugar and quinine for the real stuff?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“You can’t live and not tell us!”
A dozen slamming fists in his guts and a knee in his groin made Bello more talkative. “In an apartment,” he growled, “on Grant Avenue. But let me go up alone and see him. If I show up there with you junkers, we’ll all get shot. This guy’s a kilo man and the last thing he wants is any part of a deal with you.”
“He’ll get his deal with us, Bello, and it’ll be his last deal. And, if he can’t come up with some H, it’ll be your last chance.”
Bello peered through the fog. “That’s it. Turn down into the basement ramp. We can get up to his apartment from there without being seen. But I’m telling you, this guy’ll blow his top when he sees you.”
The addict laughed. “Always did want to do some business with one of these behind-the-scenes vultures who bloodsuck a living from us. All he’ll blow’ll be some good stuff for us. Or else!” Bello stumbled from the car when it’s lights faded off the basement wall, staggering from the addict’s kick. “We’ll follow, Bello. No tricks!”
“There’s no one here,” Bello quivered when the door failed to open to the fifth floor apartment.
“We’ll just see.” The driver of the car pulled a strip of reinforced celluloid from his pocket and eased the spring lock back more quickly than a key could have been inserted in it. “We’ll just see.”
The five addicts piled into Gortoff’s apartment like a squad of vice cops crashing into a call girl headquarters. The one waving the.38 spun Bello in front of him and the groggy heroin pusher stumbled to a deep leather chair.
“There’s no one around here,” one of the intruders screamed from a bedroom. “I told you that Bello’s as phoney as the caps he pushed on us. Let’s give it to him right here. This trip was just another stall.”
“Wait a minute,” another shouted from the bath. “Here’s a works. This place is a shooting pad. There could be some stuff around. Let’s take it apart.”
The “taking apart” process was thorough. Only Bello and the revolver-waving addict failed to join in the ripping, tearing, furniture smashing, plumbing-ripping, fixture-breaking search for heroin.
“This is your one and last chance, Bello,” the armed addict whispered into the pusher’s one good ear. “I’ll give you a chance that these hop-heads won’t. Make like you’re trying to get away. I’ll let you go and chase you. Lead me to your connection and let me do business with him. Just me. No one else. We can get out of here and away from them without being noticed. Now!”
“I can’t...”
“You’ve no time to talk. Get going!”
Bello lurched for the apartment door and ran. The.38 cracked twice and two harmless slugs hit the ceiling. By the time the destruction-happy addicts noticed the pseudo flight, Bello and his pursuer were in the elevator.
“Say where, Bello,” the addict shouted above the roar of the sedan’s motor as it roared up the ramp into the Grant Avenue fog, “and don’t be fool enough to play games with me. You heard this piece work back upstairs. Every slug left in it belongs to you. Which way?”
“All I can do it make a couple phone calls and try to find where he is. Pull down Bush Street and stop at that Chink pharmacy. I’ll call from there.”
“I’ll be right with you.”
Bello entered a coin booth, feeling in his pocket for change.
“I’ve got a dime, Bello, Don’t close the door. I’ll tune in.”
He listened as Tony Bello dialed. And he scribbled down the number on the inside of a pack of book matches. There was no answer. Bello tried another number. The waiting addict scribbled it down. Again, Bello got his dime back from the pay phone.
“No luck,” Bello shrugged.
“You mean your luck’s running out, Tony.”
“Let’s go over to Kearny Street. I know one spot where he might be about this time.”
“We’ll go, Bello. I’ve got lots of time but you sure haven’t much left. Your time’s running out.”
Bello and his persistent and patient armed escort made three stops — at a Kearny Street cigar store, at a Geary Street bar and finally at a small baron Turk.
In the Turk Street bistro, Bello talked to a bartender. His silent shadow, on the next bar stool, listened.
“See Karl around tonight?”
“Not yet.”
“Know where you can get in touch with him?”
“Probably in his pad with Marie. You call there? And what the hell happened to your face, Tony? Run into a truck?”
“Accident. This damn fog; hit a street light standard over on Stockton. I called Karl at his pad. He wasn’t there.”
The bartender knew Bello was Karl Gortoff’s man. And Bello knew the bartender and the bar belonged to Gortoff. He leaned over the bar, close to Bello’s good ear. “He lays up over in Sausalito, Tony, when he’s not around town. His schooner’s anchored there. But don’t tell him I tipped you off and your business better be damned important to bother him over there.”