“No positive identification yet. Our sources picked it up from the embassy in Paris and passed it on. We’ll keep trying to get a make on him but since they reorganized their operation it may take a while. One thing we know — he isn’t being sent... he’s already here. They’ve surrounded this deal with the utmost security and it won’t be easy to break. Getting that much was just luck.”
“Grady’s money can buy almost anything.”
“If it’s available,” Virgil said. “We do know they’ve been holding a couple of top operatives somewhere in the country for any emergency ever since the Sokolov and Butenko spy trial bit in ’64. Right now there are some interesting developments overseas. The Kremlin’s big strategic planners who were in Bonn were recalled to Moscow for an emergency session with the brass and it had to do with the situation here.”
“You set the feed lines yet?”
“Grady’s authorized twenty-five thousand for a definite lead. He’ll go higher if he has to. We’ve spread the word so anything can break, but we’re not counting on it. Frankly, my friend, it’s up to you.”
“Thanks a bunch.”
“Do you want anybody else in the field with you?”
“Don Lavois is enough right now. Everybody is cooperating at this point and as long as it lasts we’ll be enough.”
“It’s your game, Tiger,” he said, then added, “Oh, one more thing... you might find it interesting.”
“What?”
“Our informant in Prague mentioned that the price on your head has now gone up. You not only top the ‘A’ list, but are a project in itself.”
“How much am I worth?”
Virgil chuckled humorlessly and said, “Enough to buy a villa on the Black Sea, a new Ziv, a dozen servants, endless ration cards and political recognition.”
“How about that? Why don’t you collect?”
“I like my vacations in Florida,” he said before he hung up.
When I put the phone back I was grinning. Someday I’d have to show him the four pages from the book I had taken from Marcus Pietri’s pocket after I killed him. Virgil didn’t know it, but he was on the “A” list too. Down near the bottom, but on it nevertheless.
Up in the room I dropped the stats in my bag, sealed the originals in the envelope for mailing back to Belt-Aire and put in the call to Don Lavois. He picked up the phone, took my recognition signal, answered it, and said, “Something a little odd on Salvi, Tiger.”
“Like what?”
“The Feds swarmed over the neighborhood where he was holed up and took that building apart. They got nothing at all out of it but a lot of trouble. I dogged them for a while, but as long as they were doing the work there was no use butting in. I went in after they left just for a look around but didn’t turn anything up until I reached the bathroom. One of the cops must have used the john and didn’t check it after he flushed. It had backed up a little.”
“Lousy toilet training.”
“Habit,” he said. “Whoever looks back? Anyway, I got a coat hanger and probed down the well. There was a cute little gimmick there — a thin spring wire across the toilet trap out of sight under the water level with a six-foot length of nylon cord tied to its middle and on the other end, flushed partly down the drain, a rubber prophylactic with a quarter pound of heroin in it. A neat trick, but not exactly an old one. It never would have been noticed if somebody hadn’t been pretty constipated.”
“Hell, Salvi couldn’t have been a hophead.”
“It was there, buddy. It adds some interesting sidelines.”
“Good enough. I’ll get a look at the autopsy report on his body. Think it could have been left there by an earlier tenant?”
“Nope. The spring was simple steel and the surface rust indicated recent installation.”
“What did you do with it?”
“Left it right where it was.”
“Good enough. How you going to play it from here?”
“As far as anyone knows in the neighborhood, Salvi never even existed. His cover was beautiful. He rented that place by phone, paid by cash in advance, probably bought everything in scattered places and transported it himself. But he did have to buy that H from some source. It’s the only lead we have.”
I said, “Then get Ernie to give you the latest list on narcotics suppliers he has. Keep in touch through Newark Control.”
“Roger. Any direct contact with you?”
“As little as possible. And watch yourself. The Reds have a new man in on the play.”
“So I heard... only it’s not me they’re after.”
When I cradled the receiver I walked over and sat on the window sill and looked at the city at night. There was a funny light feeling in my stomach that I never had before. I had been in on the chase and been in on the kill. Often, I had been the rabbit and felt the hot breath of the dogs on my back and smelled the saliva they oozed in the fury of the pursuit, but this rabbit had gotten away every time.
So far.
It wasn’t the dogs that gave me the feeling. It was the thought of the lights of the city going out all at once in the wild terror of an even greater light that would hang in the air like a gigantic mushroom in a field of mushrooms that would all blossom simultaneously if given the opportunity.
I double-locked the door, chained it, stretched out on the bed with the Belt-Aire employee list and ran over each page, detail by detail. Most of the information was a one-or-two-word answer to specific questions, but the end of each page contained a short summary, a personal observation that included notations of “occasional drinker” and “periodic low stake card games.” One even suggested a rather full sex life. Apparently none of these affected the employable qualities of the person because they were all on the payroll now. Evidently Hamilton had done most of his investigative work during the first half of the year because each page had a month typed in the lower left-hand corner. Except for one, it didn’t match the date of the report, so probably marked the date the investigation began.
After an hour of it I put the sheets down, the .45 on half cock beside my hand and fell asleep.
Chapter 4
The faces behind I.A.T.S. had done their work well. They were far from inefficient. Hamstrung by directives and stymied by bureaucratic precedents perhaps, but not inefficient. Hal Randolph and his retinue were there personally a half hour after I requested a look at the autopsy report on Vito Salvi, their expressions bland... waiting.
They had come in shortly after I entered the request and had a mild little man tell me I would have to wait a few minutes. The mild little man had gotten to a phone as he had been told to while I cooled my heels in a drab office that had the antiseptic smell of a dead room and when Randolph saw me he said, “Let’s have it, Tiger.” The other two were the same ones who had come with him when I shot Salvi and they waited with the same professional interest they had shown before.
I said, “Routine check. I killed the guy, didn’t I?”
“No comedy. Just say it.”
“There’s nothing to say until I see the report. Now you quit playing games and clear the air.”
Randolph nodded and the mild little man didn’t have to go any further than the desk drawer that had been in front of him all the time. He took out two sheets stapled together and handed them to me.
Vito Salvi had died of a gunshot wound from a calibre .45 bullet and at the time of death had multiple lacerations and abrasions not directly responsible for his demise. Three other bullet wounds and several knife scars were found, a small stomach ulcer, a possible cured syphilitic condition and the early stages of a cataract beginning to form in the right eye. His last meal had been chili, creamed corn and bread which matched the garbage remains in his apartment.