The Killing Man

Candace had a magic way of clearing the aisles for us. There were no more questions and I knew the back way out to get around the reporters and the pair from the TV news broadcast. I wondered if that pair ever slept. Candace picked me up on the opposite street where the garage exit was and I climbed in.

I asked her, 'Where to now?'

'It may sound silly, but your place or mine?'

'Let's go to yours.'

'Why?'

'Because I can get out of yours.'

Once again, I got that inquiring sideways look.

'It's hard to be a nice guy and get a broad out of your apartment,' I explained.

'Talk about macho,' she said.

'Let's talk about now. They're coming down on my head like a ton of bricks. This being-a-target shit is for the birds.'

'Stop the nasty talk.'

'I've heard you cut loose. Just get yourself shot at and see what you say then.'

'All right. What about tonight? Who knew you'd be at your office?'

'I said it loud enough at the hospital. I was talking to Pat, but ten other people would have heard me. But that doesn't matter . . . my place had been staked out. That car was waiting there. Hell, if the mob guys want my ass, they could keep a dozen guys placed for a hit.'

'They told me about the attempted mugging.'

'Sure, that was for getting wise with one of the big boys. They don't like that attitude. I guess they didn't like what I did to their goons any better. By now they think it's time to go all the way.'

I sat back in the seat, mulling it over again. She reached her building, let the doorman park the car for her, and we went up to her apartment. She flipped on four locks and a chain, threw her trenchcoat over a chair and went to the bar and made a pair of drinks. All the activity seemed to have run up some static electricity and the power blue jogging suit clung to her like Saran Wrap. Now she looked like a blue nude.

When she handed me the drink she motioned for me to come over to the desk. There was a sheet of paper there with the city letterhead. It was full of numbers, ending in a nine-digit figure. She put her finger under the $905 million total and said, 'That's what they want to kill you for, Mike.'

I put the drink down without tasting it.

'You were right. It all went back to DiCica, straight back to when he shot those two gang leaders and picked up that envelope.'

'And you know what's in it?'

'Yes. Directions.'

'To what?' I picked up my drink and finished half of it. I was beginning to feel that I was going to need a boost.

Unconsciously, she flicked on the record player and the opening movement of Franz Liszt's Dante Symphony flowed out of the speakers. If she wanted suitable background music, she was going to get it.

'When does a rumor become fact, Mike?' Her voice was thoughtful.

I could have answered, but it was her show and I let her play it out.

'The officers your friend had assist me knew what they were doing. They didn't even bother assembling data or gathering evidence. All they did was have me talk to a half dozen people. Strange people. Workmen in the underworld. Everyone had the same thing to say, more or less. Do you know what the cocaine consumption in the US is?'

'I can give you the latest estimate,' I told her, 'and that's probably five thousand percent too low.'

'Why?'

'Because interception accounts for only five percent of the narcotics trade. The suppliers have an insatiable demand to fill. Hell, they'll put up twenty percent of volume to keep the narcs away from their main shipments. Our guys used to throw a party when they grabbed a few kilos of H, and now that's real low-volume stuff. The coke coming in now runs in tons. Can you imagine that? Tons of pure shit . . . and translated to street money, it can pay off our national debt.'

Liszt was getting heavy now, gently thunderous.

She turned, faced me, her eyes watching me. 'Twenty years ago we never thought of deliveries in tonnage. It seemed almost impossible. There wasn't the manpower to enforce action against anything that large. The street dealers at that time weren't even set up to handle a quantity like that. Money wasn't available, the farmers, the initial producers weren't organized to grow a crop that size. Right?'

I nodded.

'Wrong,' she said. 'That cartel was way ahead of us. The farmers were producing, the laboratories were set up and while nobody thought it possible, those cocaine exporters were ready to unload on us and they made the contacts with the East Coast families to get in on the deal at a beautiful price.'

Now I remembered hearing about that years ago. It was a rumor then and it was a rumor now.

She went on: 'Remember, this is street talk. It's been around a long time and could have escalated with the telling.'

'I know,' I said.

'The cartel made the proposition through Juan Torres. The families got together, checked it out, pooled their money and bought a tractor-trailer solidly loaded with the purest cocaine you could find.'

Just the thought of that much stuff hitting the street made me want to vomit. 'You realize the money involved here?'

'Certainly, but imagine what it would be on the retail end when it's cut down.'

'Someplace a lot of hundred-dollar bills changed hands,' I said.

'They store it in temperature- and humidity-controlled bins now,' she told me. 'Their banking systems equal anything in Geneva, Switzerland. The cartel was given the key to the money and they gave the directions to the trailerload of coke to the organization's representatives. When DiCica killed them and picked up that envelope he turned the whole deal upside down. He held nearly a billion-dollar shipment in his hands. No way the cartel would deliver a duplicate set. Their end of the deal was over. From here on in the organization handled it themselves.'

'That's some rumor,' I said. 'Why did they let Torres keep operating?'

'No way Torres could have bucked the organization. He could have had the shipment, but not for long. The other side had all the guns.'

I rattled the ice around in my glass, then drank it down. 'So it was DiCica all the way, huh?'

'All the way. A stupid man who did a stupid thing. He knew where the trailer was. When they finally found him they were supposed to take him somewhere where they could squeeze the information out of him the hard way. They have some interesting ways of extracting information. The trouble was, he put up one hell of a fight and one of his attackers leaned on him a little too hard with that pipe. The fight was interrupted by a police cruiser so they didn't drag him off, but the trauma from the pipe took him out of action very effectively.' She paused and took a deep breath. 'I wonder what he would have done with all that cocaine?'

'He would have used it for one hell of a big bargaining chip, that's what. Even the mob would have cut a clean deal with him and let it go at that. Our own government would even set him up for life under an assumed identity to get their mitts on that load.'

For one second her back went up and she started an angry denial.

I held up my hand. 'Smarten up, lady. We have people in politics as dirty as those on the other side.'

'Well,' she told me, her face still tight, 'he really paid for that mistake in your office.'

'You know,' I said, 'you're back to me again. It always comes back to me. With the kind of money going down on this project, somebody could afford to call in an outsider like Penta to nail my ass . . . but that leaves one fucking, excuse me, big hole in the picture.'

'Like what?'

'Who the hell needed him? We have pro hitters in this country.'

She seemed to look at me for an eternity. 'He said you killed him, Mike. What was he talking about? Could