The gun was still there, dusty now from the continuous stream of air blowing over it, so I pulled it down, disassembled the piece, cleaned it thoroughly, dropped it back together and put it on where it belonged. Then I lay back on the bed and picked up the phone.
Claude Boster still hadn’t returned, though he had called his housekeeper and told her he would probably be back in the evening. Vincent Small’s phone went unanswered completely, so I quit trying and stayed there, waiting. An hour later Dave Elroy rang, told me to meet him at the Rose Bar in fifteen minutes, and hung up.
It was a small unit built to accommodate the construction crews working at the space project, a combination bar and restaurant that had been added on to several times, primitive enough to keep down the overhead, but stocking enough liquor to account for heavy payroll tastes.
Dave was at a table in the back where he could see everything going on, next to a window so he could watch outside too. I walked up, ordered another beer, and slid in opposite him.
“Hello, jailbird,” he said.
“Drop dead.”
He grinned at me and sipped his beer. “Tell me something, Tiger, why didn’t you nail that guy who tried to disintegrate you beforehand?”
“Because he might have been too damn smart to get caught. Once away he would have stayed away and somebody else would have been brought in. At least this way we scratched one assassin and got an ID besides.”
Dave’s eyebrows went up questioningly.
I said, “I found the hand and got prints from it. Nobody else got anything. I should be getting a report from Ernie sometime today.”
“Clever, Tiger, clever. Excuse me for asking.”
“What about you? I got the double-talk, all right, but how about the details?”
Dave finished his beer and signaled for another. “There was some H flowing in here, all right. Not much, but enough to supply a couple dozen users. One guy handled it all from a jobber in Miami. Then he turned his trade over to somebody else... a guy they called Fish. No other name. Just Fish. He laid it on heavier than his predecessor, so he either located some new customers or built up the old ones.
“Now, here’s the part you’re waiting for. When the squeeze went on, Fish was supplying an addict that was identified as Louis Agrounsky. A couple of other users recognized his picture. They had seen him make the contact and one came through with the bit that he even sold some to him when he was told there was none available. My guess is that Agrounsky was deliberately cultivated by Fish. The stuff he was selling Agrounsky wasn’t the usual cut... it was a hell of a lot hotter. Agrounsky was shooting with damn near pure stuff and with short cuts he couldn’t make the grade. He was hooked all the way on big loads and had to have the best he could get. Then, all of a sudden, Fish dropped out of sight and Agrounsky was stuck. He had gone through his bundle, his source was dried up, now he had to make do with whatever he could get, and he couldn’t get it around here.”
I raised my beer and tasted it. There was something sickly sweet about it until I saw the lipstick on the rim and told the waiter to take the damn thing back and get me a new one in a clean glass. “They missed their timing,” I said.
“What?”
“Agrounsky couldn’t wait. He needed it worse than they thought he did... or else he let somebody else have enough of his stuff to diminish his own supply so that he went short before they figured it.”
“So that’s it,” Dave mused. “That’s why the kilo was picked up in New York. They thought he was heading for there. They were going to make it available for him.”
“He wouldn’t have had any trouble getting it in the city,” I said.
“No, not with the right contacts... and those guys can always find them. But what would he use for money? That early cut stuff costs pretty big.”
“That’s what I’m wondering... You know anything about the Myrtle Beach area?”
Dave took a pad out, flipped over a couple of pages, and looked up at me. “A dead spot. Nothing there at all. If he sold his car there it was to get transportation somewhere else. There’s no known narcotics traffic in that section at all. If he worked according to form he had enough H on him to keep him running on the edge. That car of his could have been giving him trouble and he didn’t want to take the chance of a breakdown that could cost him money.”
“Could be.”
“So where do I go from here?”
“Look for Fish,” I told him. “He’s right in the middle, so start the word going.”
“Hell, he’s been off the scene pretty long.”
“Then put him back on again.”
“Okay, you’re the boss.”
“I’m going to register at the Sand Dunes Motel. It might start to get hot and I’ll need an alternate contact point. The name will be Gerrity, T. Gerrity out of Miami.”
“Got it.”
“If I’m not there leave word where you can be reached. Scramble the number the usual way.”
“Expecting trouble?”
“Plenty.”
I got up, laid a buck on the table for the drinks, nodded to Dave and left. If Fish were still around he’d have him spotted before long, but it was still a good bet that Fish had pulled out.
At the door I looked up at the sky. One of those freak Florida storms was moving in and the clouds were a blue gray, rolling along ahead of a stiff breeze and the smell of rain was in the air.
Just like always, I thought, a kill smell — getting ready to wash away the blood before it had been spilled. I walked across to my car, pulled out of the drive and beaded toward Claude Boster’s house. A police car was there, the driver talking to a uniformed patrolman who had been assigned to watch the place, and the garage door was open showing both spaces empty inside.
I didn’t stop. I went up the road, turned north, then angled over to Vincent Small’s. Nobody was there either, so I cut back to the motel as the rain started and got into my room just before it turned into an oblique, slashing downpour.
The phone was ringing as I turned the knob and when I picked it up Ernie Bentley identified himself and said, “Are we clear?”
“Go ahead, Ernie.”
“I got the prints from that glass. Your person is one Henri Frank, age fifty-two, naturalized Austrian subject, five foot, eleven inches, brown hair, chest tattoo that...”
“Any photos?” I interrupted.
“The usual ones taken when he was naturalized.”
“Get them on the teleprinter to the local police office right away. Put it through as a missing persons report.”
Ernie chuckled and said, “Boy, you’re getting official. Ready to wear a badge?”
I ignored his sarcasm. “What else?”
“Suspected Commie affiliations. This came from our own files. You want the entire sheet on this?”
“No.” I was looking at myself in the mirror above the dresser. The name of Henri Frank had rung a bell someplace and I was trying hard to locate the source. I said, “Who did the footwork?”
“Checking out the prints? No trouble... Charlie Corbinet put it through. What kind of hell are you raising down there?”
“I wish I knew.” I paused, looked at myself again and said, “Special detail, Ernie. How many manufacturers of true sub-mini components are there?”
“Five. All reputable.”
“Would they be interested in Agrounsky’s work?”
“Damn right.”
“Contact them right away. See if he made a sale of anything to any of them. They might not want to talk about it if there are patent complications, but put any kind of heat on you can, assure them they’ll stay clean, but find out.”