“How far did you go in checking her out?”
“She was registered at the Sinbad as Helen Lewis, giving an address in Sarasota. A call there verified it. The manager said she had lived in an apartment there the past two years.”
I held out my hand and he dropped the reports in it. I scanned them quickly, picked up the address and phone numbers listed there and handed them back. “Could be okay,” I said.
“We’re still asking questions. If there was anything irregular, we’ll dig it out.”
“Mind if I drop back?”
“With your connections I don’t mind at all.”
“They may go sour,” I told him.
“I run my own department,” Hardecker said.
I looked around for Dave and didn’t see him outside anywhere. The rain had put a glaze over the street lights and hammered at my face as I walked into it toward my car. When I reached it I pulled the door open and slid into the seat.
Behind me Dave said, “You’re getting careless, chum.”
I grinned at his reflection in the mirror. “Not really. You ought to try squatting in the middle. All your weight was on the one side.”
“Forget it.” He clambered over the seat and got beside me. “Anything new?”
“Nothing in your department.”
“Well, I have something. I had to use a little heat to get it and it cost Grady two grand, but a fairly big buy was made from a peddler in Savannah who palmed off a lot of low-grade stuff to a sucker for a bundle. The contact was a guy named Sonny Kipton who had a reputation for this sort of thing. The same sucker called back here to a friend to make the original connection for another contact and was steered to a man in Charleston.”
“We’re working our way north into the Myrtle Beach area.”
“Check, buddy. Remember me telling you about the guy Agrounsky took off the hook by selling him some of his supply?”
“Yeah.”
“So he talked some more. He used to be located up there and put Agrounsky on both of them.”
“He made his deal?”
“Yeah, and got the same old switcheroo. The guy’s contacts were lousy. The Kipton punk tried it a week later and got knocked off for his trouble by a hophead who’s being held for it. The other one can’t be located. They don’t stay put very long. Want me to scratch him up?”
“No. I want Fish.”
Dave shook his head. “Not a sign, and brother, I looked.”
“Keep looking,” I said. I reached in my pocket and brought out the photo of Henri Frank, stared at it a moment, and held it out for Dave to see. “Here’s another one we’re after. This one’s dead, but he ties in someplace.”
Dave took the picture from my hand, glanced at it, then frowned at me. “Hell, Tiger,” he said, “this is Fish. The description matches every damn detail.”
Chapter 9
The street that ended at the beach was deserted, flanked by two empty summer cottages with shuttered windows that accentuated the eerie feeling of desertion. Wind had blown the sand up into a soft roll at the edge of the concrete, partially covering the walks on either side. I cut the engine and sat there staring out into the rain toward the blackness of the ocean, occasionally taking a drag on the cigarette.
Dave said, “Spell it out, Tiger.”
“They had this going a long time, buddy. It was no sudden thing. The Soviets keep their people around all our hot spots looking for a weak link and somebody spotted it in Agrounsky.”
“When he went back on the needle?”
I nodded. “They ran their own supplier in and got him hooked but good, then cut his source off to put the squeeze on him. When an addict is cooking he’ll talk, rationally or not, and someplace he let the cat out of the bag about the by-pass control. That put the finger on him. Once he was on H strong enough they could control his supply and make him come across. They just didn’t figure on him doing a disappearing act, that’s all. He was important enough to call in their best man to run him down, so Vito Salvi got the job.”
“Salvi was working in New York,” he reminded me.
“Hell, they knew where he was heading. They were lined up waiting for him. Agrounsky was out of cash and the biggest source of the stuff was the city. And don’t bet his moves weren’t prearranged. That little guy he did the favor for by sharing his junk was probably part of the setup. He put Agrounsky in touch with the other peddlers who slipped him out cut loads and reported back to Fish where Agrounsky was.”
“I can check it out fast enough.”
“Then do it.”
“Where did they slip up?”
“I’ll know for sure when I contact Ernie Bentley.” I turned the key in the lock and started the engine. Dave had left his car back in the middle of town and we drove over to it. When he got out I said, “Locate your contact and call me at the Sand Dunes.” I looked at my watch. “I should be back in an hour.”
“He may not be available that fast.”
“I’ll wait. If he’s in on it he might steer us to somebody else.”
“Okay, Tiger. See you later.”
Flight 804 was taxiing up to the ramp as I parked the car. Four men came down the anus-like stairs in the rear of the plane before I saw Camille Hunt. She had her suitcoat over her shoulders, leaning against the downpour with her head ducked into it. I ran over, took the briefcase from her hand and said, “Hi, spider.”
“You would drag me out into this.”
I grinned at her. “You don’t know how easy you have it. The car’s over here.”
She got in, shook the rain from her shoulders, and tossed the silly hat she had on in the back seat. “My goodness, Tiger, is this really necessary?”
“It was.”
She gave me an exasperated glance. “Was? You mean I made the trip for nothing?”
“I’m here.”
“That’s a consolation.”
“I’ll try my best.”
Camille nudged me with an elbow, her face still shining wetly from the rain. “Seriously, what is this all about?”
As I threaded my way out to the road I said, “I wanted you to make an identification. It isn’t important any more. Henri Frank is dead.”
“Dead? But... how?”
“He blew himself to bits trying to knock me off. It was a case of a guy who couldn’t understand his own failure and tried to check on it. I was there before him.”
“Tiger... this whole thing...”
I let it hang there. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll get you back to Belt-Aire in the morning.”
She gave me a long, steady stare. “You just haven’t read the weather reports. My flight was the last one in. They expect everything to be grounded tomorrow. If it weren’t for some slight mechanical trouble we would have gone on into Miami.”
“So you got an unexpected vacation.”
“My foot,” Camille exploded. “With all the work piling up I can’t afford it. Do you know orders came in from Martin Grady himself this morning to arrange for an expansion program? The Belt-Aire project has been approved and goes into full production at once. I shouldn’t be here now.”
“Well, I’ll try to make your stay enjoyable.”
“Swell,” she said with a hint of sarcasm. “Where will we go?”
“First, to a whorehouse.”
She turned her head to see if I were joking or not, then decided I was serious and frowned with annoyance. “I don’t understand you.”
“That’s good. We’ll never have any trouble then.”
Louis Agrounsky had frequented a place that had all the earmarks of respectability if you didn’t know what it was. The house was a two story affair barely different from its neighbors; better kept, if anything. The lawn and hedgerow were trimmed, the siding freshly painted, and the two cars in the double garage were both late model Fords inconspicuous anywhere.