Just as, earlier, he had practised what his leaders had preached, Salsa now began to emulate what they had practised. But he was still too young, a little too brash and incautious in his methods, and it wasn’t long before he had to flee. Several countries were unconscious hosts for him as he wandered about trying to find a place for himself in a suddenly topsy-turvy world. His youth and physical strength had helped and his good looks had helped even more. A number of women had taught him their native languages. He still spoke English with a slight British accent.
Eventually, Salsa discovered the gigolo’s paradise, a luxury trans-Atlantic steamer. Staying aboard and not debarking at either end, he hid from authority when the ship was in port with the assistance of one or another of the shipping company’s female employees. He spent three relaxed years on the same ship. There was good food; there were interesting companions. Clothing and pocket money could always be stolen, and there was inevitably a woman looking for a roommate, so he did not have to sleep on deck. But there was no permanence in that life, and no chance to accumulate the large sums which would enable him to retire to a life of ease. So, one day, he jumped ship in New York.
The United States was the obvious country for him he’d been everywhere else in the world where Caucasians predominate, except Australia but, because of the political foolishness of his youth and the undoubted moral turpitude of his present life, he didn’t even bother applying for permission to enter the States. He already knew the answer. So he simply jumped ship, and waited to see what the New World had to offer.
It offered very little beyond dishwashing jobs and suspicious policemen until the day he ran into a fellow named Rico who was a professional thief. When Rico found out how much Salsa knew about guns, a part of his youthful political training, Salsa’s new career was born. In the eight years since then, he had worked fourteen jobs, eight with Rico, two with Parker. The $17,000 that was his share of the first job he had been on bought him papers proving he was an American citizen, born in Baltimore, a veteran of the Korean War. He had a high school diploma, a driver’s licence, a Social Security card, an Army discharge form everything he needed.
The money from the next two jobs went into setting up his new home on the north shore of Long Island. Salsa had purchased a large house, half-a-century old, on five-and-a-half acres with frontage on Long Island Sound. He owned a Ford Thunderbird and a Cadillac he was a proud, chauvinistic citizen who wouldn’t buy foreign cars or anything else made outside the good old USA and a Chriscraft. His friends were mostly in television and advertising, and, among them, it was rumoured that he had inherited wealth. He took a job whenever the larder was low, and the rest of the time was the proverbial playboy, the one the gentlemen’s magazines describe so aptly.
It was a lucky accident that he found out about Maury and the money in the gas-station safe. He was aware of the lay-off system and how it worked, and knew that commission houses had men stationed around every major race track throughout the season. It just happened that he had stopped at that gas station to feed the Thunderbird one afternoon when a phone call had come from Maury.
Salsa had been driving south, in response to a party invitation which had been tendered him two days before by long-distance. While the attendant was pumping gas into the car, he went into the station office to buy cigarettes. There was a stocky, indolent man sitting at the desk, his feet up on the top. He was smoking a cigar. Salsa, discovering he didn’t have any change, produced a dollar bill and asked the stocky man to change it. The stocky man said, “Jeez, Mac, I only got about eight cents change on me.” He patted his pockets.
Salsa, confused, motioned at the cash register. “But surely”
“I don’t work here, Mac.” Willy disliked and distrusted Maury, so he wouldn’t let him open the cash register. “Willy! Hey! Guy here wants change.”
Willy had come in from the work area and given him change. Salsa had got cigarettes from the machine and gone back to the car, wondering what the story was. A lazy man, feet up on the desk, but he didn’t work there. Then Salsa looked up and noticed the stands farther down on the other side of the highway. He asked the attendant at the gas pump, “What’s that?”
“Race track.”
And then Salsa had understood. He hadn’t needed the rest of it. Just as he was pulling away, he saw Willy answer the phone in the office, then give the phone to the other man. He saw Willy crouch down near the safe, and nodded to himself. A lay-off man with the capital in the gas-station safe. He filed the information away in the back of his mind for a very rainy day and drove on southward.
It would be an easy job to knock over, he thought, one man could do it alone. But Salsa had always worked on lays that somebody else had set up and planned, and he really didn’t see himself as the kind of guy who ran a job from beginning to end. Besides, it was kind of an unwritten rule to leave syndicate operations alone. If he was ever really strapped for cash, he’d break that rule now that he knew about this setup, but until then he would forget it.
Salsa had forgotten till the letter came from Parker. Then he remembered and smiled in anticipation. It would be a pleasure to knock that place over. His first solo job ought to be something easy, anyway.
He had driven down the same day and scouted the territory. There was an additional piece of luck he hadn’t counted on, which came in handy. Next door to the gas station was a roadhouse which had burned down. The insides were gutted but the outer walls still stood. A lot of cheap skates who didn’t want to pay at the race track parking lot left their cars in the parking lot beside the roadhouse, so Salsa simply parked his car among them. He could look straight across at the gas-station office and through the plate glass to the desk where the stocky man sat every afternoon. Salsa had the Thunderbird, decked out in false plates, and he’d worked out his getaway route. All he needed was for the stocky man to get a phone call.
That, he’d decided, was the only way to do it, to wait until a phone call came so the safe would already be open when he went in. In daylight, it would be too chancy to make somebody open the safe during working hours. Better let them open it first and thengo in.
But over a week had gone by, and nothing. Either he was wrong, which was unlikely, or the commission houses were having a long spell of clear weather. So he’d wait till the end of this week, and then the hell with it.
He was just repeating that to himself when he saw Willy go into the office and answer the telephone. It was a wall phone, near the door, and Salsa could see him standing there through the glass of the door. He saw Willy turn away and say something to the other man, saw the stocky man suddenly jump to his feet, and dash to take the phone. Before Willy had even turned towards the safe, Salsa had dropped the binoculars on to the seat and started the engine.
He didn’t even have to go out on to the highway. A line of low scrub separated the blacktop of the roadhouse parking lot from the blacktop of the gas station. Salsa shot through the scrub driving one-handed while he slipped the mask on over his head with his other hand. It was a green Frankenstein mask he’d picked up in a five-and-ten. He clapped a hat on over the mask, and pulled the Thunderbird to a stop in front of the office. He jumped out of the car and strode in, pulling a gun from inside his jacket.