can'tdo it for you, after you connected him with Henry. Goddamned deal wouldn't be made except for me. I made the deal but I can't get made.
'Fuck!' he snarled at a red light. Somebody starts taking Henry's operation apart and they ask me to check it out.Like Henry can't figure things oat himself.
Probably can't, not as smart as he thinks he is. So then what - he gets between me and Tony.
That was it, wasn't it? Eddie thought. Henry wanted toseparate me from Piaggi - justlike he got them to take Angelo out. Angelo was his first connection. Angelo introduced him to me... I introduced him to Tony... Tony and I handle the connection with Philly and New York... Angelo and me were a pair of connections... Angelo was the weak one... and Angelo gets whacked...
Tonyand I are another pair of connections...
He only needs one, doesn't he? Just one connection to the rest of the outfit.
Separating me from Tony...
Fuck.
Morello fished in his pocket for a cigarette and punched the lighter on his Cadillac convertible. The top was down. Eddie liked the sun and the wind. It was almost like being out on his fishing boat. It also gave him fine visibility. That it made him somewhat easier to spot and trail hadn't occurred to him. Next to him, on the floor, was a leather attache case. Inside that were six kilos of pure stuff. Philadelphia, they'd told him, was real short, and would handle the cutting themselves. Big cash deal. The identical case that was now southbound would be filled with nothing smaller than twenties. Two guys. Nothing to worry about. They were pros, and this was a long-term business relationship. He didn't have to worry about a rip, but he had his snubby anyway, concealed under his loose shirt, just at his belt buckle, the most useful, most uncomfortable place.
He had to think this one through, Morello told himself urgently. He might just have it all figured out. Henry was manipulating them. Henry was manipulating the outfit. A jig was trying to outthink them.
And succeeding. Probably he whacked his own people. The fuck liked to shit all over women - especially white ones. That figured, Morello thought. They were all like that. Thought he was pretty smart, probably. Well, he was pretty smart. But not smart enough. Not anymore. It wouldn't be hard to explain all of this to Tony. Eddie was sure of that. Make the transfer and drive back. Dinner with Tony. Be calm and reasonable. Tony likes that. Like he went to Harvard or something. Like a damned lawyer. Then we work on Henry and we take over his operation. It was business. His people would play. They weren't in it because they loved him. They were in it for the money. Everybody was. And then he and Tony could take the operation over, and then Eddie Morello would be a made man.
Yeah. He had it all figured out now. Morello checked the time. He was right on as he pulled into the half-empty parking lot of a diner. The old-fashioned kind, made from a railroad car - the Pennsylvania Railroad was close by. He remembered his first meal out of the house with his father, in a place just like this, watching the trains go past. The memory made him smile as he finished the cigarette and flipped it onto the blacktop.
The other car pulled in. It was a blue Oldsmobile, as he'd been led to expect. The two guys got out. One carried an attache case and walked towards him. Eddie didn't know him, but he was well-dressed, respectable, like a businessman should be, in a nice tan suit. Like a lawyer. Morello smiled to himself, not looking too obviously, in his direction while the backup man stayed at the car, watching, just to be on the safe side. Yeah, serious people. And soon they'd know that Eddie Morello was a serious man, too, he thought, with his hand in his lap, six inches from his hidden revolver.
'Got the stuff?'
'Got the money?' Morello asked in return. '
'You made a mistake, Eddie,' the man said without warning as he opened the briefcase.
'What do you mean?' Morello asked, suddenly alert, about ten seconds and a lifetime too late.
'I mean, it's goodbye, Eddie,' he added quietly. The look in his eyes said it all. Morello immediately went for his weapon, but it only helped the other man.
'Police, freeze!' the man shouted just before the first round burst through the opened top of the case.
Eddie got his gun out, just, and managed to fire one round into the floor of his car, but the cop was only three feet away and couldn't possibly miss. The backup officer was already running in, surprised that Lieutenant Charon hadn't been able to get the drop on the guy. As he watched, the attache case fell aside and the detective extended his arm, nearly placing his service revolver on the man's chest and firing straight into his heart.
It was all so clear to Morello now, but only for a second or two. Henry had done it all. He'd made himself, that was it. And Morello knew that his only purpose in life had been to get Henry and Tony together. It didn't seem like much, not now.
'Backup!' Charon screamed over the dying man. He reached down to seize Eddie's revolver. Within a minute two State Police cars screeched into the parking lot
'Damned fool,' Charon told his partner five minutes later, shaking as he did so, as men do after killing. 'He just went for the gun- like I didn't have the drop on him.'
'I saw it all,' the junior detective said, thinking that he had.
'Well, it's just what you said, sir,' the State Police sergeant said. He opened the case from the floor of the Olds. It was filled with bags of heroin. 'Some bust.'
'Yeah,' Charon growled. 'Except dead the dumb fuck can't tell anybody anything.' Which was exactly true. Remarkable, he thought, succeeding in his struggle not to smile at the mad humor of the moment. He'd just committed the perfect murder, under the eyes of other police officers. Now Henry's organization was safe.
Almost time now. The guard had changed. Last time for that. The rain continued to fall steadily. Good. The soldiers in the towers were huddling to stay dry. The dreary day had bored them even more than normal, and bored men were less alert. All the lights were out now. Not even candles in the barracks. Kelly made a slow, careful sweep with his binoculars. There was a human shape in the window of the officers' quarters, a man looking out at the weather - the Russian, wasn't it? Oh, so that's your bedroom! Great: The first shot from grenadier number three - Corporal Mendez, wasn't it? - is programmed for that opening. Fried Russian.
Let's get this one on. I need a shower. God, you suppose they have any more of that Jack Daniel's left? Regs were regs, but some things were special.
The tension was building. It wasn't the danger factor. Kelly deemed himself to be in no danger at all. The scary part had been the insertion. Now it was up to the airedales, then the Marines. His part was almost done, Kelly thought.
'Commence firing,' the Captain ordered.
Newport News had switched her radars on only a few moments earlier. The navigator was in central fire- control, helping the gunnery department to plot the cruiser's exact position by radar fixes on known landmarks. That was being overly careful, but tonight's mission called for it. Now navigation and fire-control radars were helping everyone compute their position to a whisker.
The first rounds off were from the portside five-inch mount. The sharp bark of noise from the twin 5'/38s was very hard on the ears, but along with it came something oddly beautiful. With each shot the guns generated a ring of yellow fire. It was some empirical peculiarity of the weapon that did it. Like a yellow snake chasing its tail, undulating for its few milliseconds of life. Then it vanished. Six thousand yards downrange, the first pair of star shells ignited, and it was the same metallic yellow that had a few seconds earlier decorated the gun mount. The wet, green landscape of North Vietnam turned orange under the light.
'Looks like a fifty-seven-mike-mike mount. I can see the crew, even.' The rangefinder in Spot-1 was already trained into the proper bearing. The light just made it easier. Master Chief Skelley dialed in the range with remarkable delicacy. It was transmitted at once to 'central.' Ten seconds after that, eight guns thundered. Another fifteen, and the triple-A site vanished in a cloud of dust and fire.
'On target with the first salvo. Target Alfa is destroyed.' The master chief took his command from below to shift bearings to the next. Like the Captain he would soon retire. Maybe they could open a gun store.
It was like distant thunder, but not right somehow. The surprising part was the absence of reaction below. Through the binoculars he could see heads turn. Maybe some remarks were exchanged. Nothing more than that. It was a country at war, after all, and unpleasant noises were normal here, especially the kind that sounded like distant thunder. Clearly too far away to be a matter of concern. You couldn't even see any flashes through the weather. Kelly had expected an officer or two to come out and look around. He would have done that in their place - probably. But they didn't. Ninety minutes and counting.
