'Maybe it's too theoretical,' I said. 'Maybe it didn't happen like that at all.'
Harris smiled thinly, and said, 'Gatt has this house under observation right now -- and Halstead's house in the city. I can show you the guys who are watching you.'
I came to attention at that and looked at Fallon, who nodded. 'Harris is having the observers watched.'
That put a different complexion on things. I said, 'Are they Gatt's men?'
Harris frowned. 'Now that's hard to say. Let's say that someone in Mexico is doing Gatt a favour -- the Organization works like that; they swap favours all the time.'
Fallon said, 'I'll have to do something about Gatt.'
Harris asked curiously, 'Such as?'
'I swing a lot of weight,' said Fallon. 'A hundred million dollars' worth.' He smiled confidently. 'I'll just lean on him.'
Harris looked alarmed. 'I wouldn't do that -- not to Jack Gatt. You might be able to work that way with an ordinary business competitor, but not with him. He doesn't like pressure.'
'What could he do about it?' asked Fallon contemptuously.
'He could put you out of business -- permanently. A bullet carries more weight than a hundred million dollars, Mr. Fallon.'
Fallon suddenly looked shrunken. For the first time he had run into a situation in which his wealth didn't count, where he couldn't buy what he wanted. I had given him a slight dose of the same medicine but that was nothing to the shock handed him by Harris. Fallon wasn't a bad old stick but he'd had money for so long that he tended to handle it with a casual ruthlessness -- a club to get what he wanted. And now he had come up against a man even more ruthless who didn't give a damn for Fallen's only weapon. It seemed to take the pith out of him.
I felt sorry for him and, more out of pity man anything else, I made conversation with Harris in order to give him time to pull himself together. 'I think it's time you were told what's at stake here,' I said. 'Then you might be able to guess what Gatt will do about it. But it's a long story.'
'I don't know that I want to know,' said Harris wryly. 'If it's big enough to get Jack Gatt out of Detroit it must be dynamite.'
'Is he out of Detroit?'
'He's not only out of Detroit -- he's in Mexico City.' Harris spread his hands. 'He says he's here for the Olympic Games -- what else?' he said cynically.
Five
As I dressed next morning I reflected on the strange turns a man's life can take. Four weeks previously I had been a London accountant -- one of the bowler hat brigade -- and now I was in exotic Mexico and preparing to take a jump into even more exotic territory. From what I could gather from Fallon the mysteriously named Quintana Roo was something of a hell hole. And why was I going to Quintana Roo? To hunt for a lost city, for God's sake! If, four weeks before, anyone had offered that as a serious prediction I would have considered him a candidate for the booby-hatch.
I knotted my tie and looked consideringly at the man facing me in the mirror: Jemmy Wheale, New Elizabethan, adventurer at large -- have gun, will travel. The thought made me smile, and the man in the mirror smiled back at me derisively. I didn't have a gun and I doubted whether I could use one effectively, anyway. I suppose a James Bond type would have unpacked his portable helicopter and taken off after Jack Gatt long ago, bringing back his scalp and a couple of his choicest blondes. Hell, I didn't even look like Sean Connery.
So what was I supposed to do about Jack Gatt? From what Pat Harris had said Gatt was in an unassailable position from the legal point even if he had given the word to Niscemi. There wasn't a single charge to be brought against him that would stick. And for me to tackle Gatt on his own terms would be unthinkably stupid -- the nearest analogy I could think of was Monaco declaring war on Russia and the United States.
What the devil was I doing in Mexico, anyway? I looked back on the uncharacteristic actions of my recent past and decided that the barbed words of that silly little bitch, Sheila, had probably set me off. Many men have been murdered in the past, but their brothers haven't run around the world thirsting for vengeance. Sheila's casual words had stabbed me in the ego and everything I had done since then had been to prove to myself that what she had said wasn't true. Which only went to show I was immature and probably a bit soft in the head.
Yet I had taken those actions and now I was stuck wife the consequences. If I quit now and went back to England, then I suppose I'd regret it for the rest of my life. There would always be the nagging suspicion that I had run out on life and somehow betrayed myself, and that was something I knew I couldn't live with. I wondered how many other men did stupidly dangerous things because of a suspected assault on their self-respect.
For a short period I had talked big. I had browbeaten a millionaire into doing what I wanted him to do, but that was only because I had a supreme bargaining counter -- the Vivero mirror. Now Fallon had the mirror and its secret and I was thrown back on my own resources. I didn't think he'd break his promises, but there wasn't a thing I could do if he reneged.
The grey little man was still around. He was dressed in some pretty gaudy and ill-fitting clothes and he wore his disguise with panache, but he wished to God he wore his conservative suit and his bowler hat and carried his rolled umbrella instead of this silly lance. I pulled a sour face at the man in the mirror; Jemmy Wheale -- sheep in wolf's clothing.
My mood was uncertain and ambivalent as I left the room.
I found Pat Harris downstairs wearing a stethoscope and carrying a little black box from which protruded a shiny telescopic antenna. He waggled his hand at me frantically and put his finger to his lips, elaborately miming that I should be quiet. He circled the room like a dog in a strange place, crisscrossing back and forwards, and gradually narrowed his attention to the big refectory table of massive Spanish oak.
Suddenly he got down on to his hands and knees and disappeared beneath the table, completing his resemblance to a dog. All I could see were the seat of his pants and the soles of his shoes; his pants were all right, but his shoes needed re-pairing. After a while he backed out, gave me a grin, and put his finger to his lips again. He beckoned, indicating that I should join him, so I squatted down, feeling a bit silly. He flicked a switch and a narrow beam of light shot from the little torch he held. It roamed about the underside of the table and then held steady. He
