Joe Gores: Menaced Assassin

And gaff him I do.

I start out knowing only three things for certain about Martin Prince: what he looks like, thanks to congressional hearings into organized crime; that he is a Mafia don; and that his center of operations is the Xanadu Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip. Oh, I know one other thing about him. His personal security will be state-of-the-art and of the highest quality.

How am I to get next to him to eventuate his demise in as nasty a way possible? Long-range rifle, as in the case of Gideon Abramson? I would have to hang about resort hotel rooftops for weeks, even months, to catch him entering or leaving the Xanadu. This means I will last two or three hours if I am lucky, before being spotted by some of his bodyguards and suffering the fate I have been dealing out to his compeers.

A pistol shot, a similar problem: He is seldom seen in pub lic, and when he is, he is surrounded by sharp-eyed men versed in the use of their weapons.

Explosives? I have only a stump-blaster’s knowledge of dynamite, would probably blow myself up with pure TNT, wouldn’t know how to get C4.

So it must be in close and personal-and that is the way I prefer it with this man. I want him to know he is dying. Already the savagery is surfacing in Raptor, is it not so? Up close and personal means somehow isolating him, or discovering him when he has isolated himself, from his protective minions.

I begin with newspapers and periodicals, and thus learn an interesting fact: he is a big-game fisherman of some note, and indeed his photo with a dead fish is in last year’s L. A. Times sporting section. Taken in December on a plain wooden pier with a huge motor yacht in the background. Taken where? In Mexico. Where in Mexico? Where they catch big fish. That takes in much of the Mexican coastline. Small help.

Examination with a magnifying glass of an 8 by 11 glossy of the original art sent to the paper gives me, however, the name of the motor yacht: Tosca. He is sport-fishing in Mexico in December from a boat named Tosca.

December. I am beginning my workup on Prince in October.

I instinctively know that security will be more relaxed around that boat than it is in Vegas. So I can try to find where the boat is moored, and wait by it until he arrives; but even if my search is successful, my wait could be months in duration.

I do not have months. Dante Stagnaro is nipping at my heels, even if he doesn’t know it yet. I must complete my list before his synapses complete the circuits within his skull. So I must find a way to trace Prince to his boat rather quickly.

In such an endeavor, I have one hidden asset. I know that one of his personal bodyguards is a very big and very smart man called Red. I watch him casually question Stagnaro in a Death Valley date grove. If I can tag Red in Vegas, and keep him in sight, can Prince be far off? I know him; he does not know me. An auspicious beginning.

I go to Vegas, play slot machines at the Xanadu for days, pulling those bandits’ single arms with as much mindlessness as I can muster, morning, noon, and night, giving myself a zombie face, before I finally spot Red passing through the casino. Then, gradually, by judicious observation, I learn where his apartment is. I learn when he works out, and where. I learn where he parks his cream-colored Lexus. I never let him make eye contact with me; I am reserving my options.

In all this time I have not yet seen Prince himself-he leaves from and returns to the hotel garage where security is too fierce for me to venture. I occasionally see smoked windows passing by my point of observation, with Red’s Lexus behind. So choosing Red as my point of contact is sound.

Red’s parking garage has only locked-doors security, so on a day in mid-December, in midmorning, from behind a pillar I observe him getting off the elevator, suitcase in hand, and opening the trunk of his Lexus. I follow discreetly when he leaves. He drives south and west out of town on I-15 in the brilliant desert sunshine.

Decision time. He might just be going on vacation. But I know he is one of Prince’s trusted men. I know that last year Prince was on his motor cruiser Tosca in Mexico in December. I know that the I-15 freeway is the direct motor route to Los Angeles. And I know that Los Angeles is the logical place for a man who lives in Las Vegas to berth his expensive power cruiser.

So I follow Red. Freeway tailing is easy, especially when the subject has no idea he is under scrutiny, and is in no hurry. Los Angeles it is. Then Marina del Rey. And Tosca. He moves aboard the yacht; there is enough sporadic activity by the permanent crew to suggest the craft will soon be in use.

I hover. A couple of evenings later, Red and a blonde attend a postmodernist art opening at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Being indifferent to postmodernism, I enjoy the life-size prehistoric mammals stuck in the adjacent La Brea tar pits. Red stays overnight at the blonde’s apartment in the 600 block of Grant Street in Santa Monica; I drive to San Pedro.

At dawn I buy fish heads and offal from returning fishermen. At Marina del Rey, I again gain access to the locked pier at which Tosca is moored-nautical clothes, a nautical face, call a cheery, “Hold it a second, will you, I’ve got my hands full,” at someone entering or leaving the dock.

When I see Red’s Lexus driving up, I dump my fish heads and intestines on the dock close by Tosca, am angrily hosing them off when Red arrives. How thoughtless some people are! He agrees.

The rest is child’s play. We talk art, Red lets slip that Prince will be joining Tosca in La Paz, capital of Baja del sud. I fly to Cabo, rent a battered old yellow Volkswagen Beetle at the airport, spend a couple of days familiarizing myself with Cabo and environs.

I am in La Paz with good 10X glasses to see Prince in the flesh for the first time. Learn over a waterfront beer that Tosca will be sailing for Cabo next day. I am there first, continuing my quest, eventually learning where Prince does his December fishing-at Hotel Pez Grande, forty miles north.

I see Tosca safely to its mooring on Christmas Eve and, on the assumption that she left Prince at Pez Grande, drive there. I have a beer in the upstairs bar at the hotel, courtesy of Martin Prince when he buys a Christmas round for the house. I watch him play darts with Tex, observe Tex’s handy limp.

It is as if Prince seeks my blade. He goes down to the beach in the darkness, all souls alone, then out onto the fish ing pier. I walk with Tex’s limp to get close enough for handwork.

This obscene man dies with the Virgin’s prayer on his lips.

I am in a plane to Los Angeles by the time his body is discovered, strung up on the block and tackle like one of the hapless martin he took so much delight in stringing up himself.

Kosta Gounaris was going over the preliminary operating cost estimates for the year just ended when Diana Pym called him on the intercom, not using the speaker so his words could not be heard by anyone in her office.

“Lieutenant Dante Stagnaro is waiting to see you, Mr. Gounaris. He has no appointment.”

“Let him sweat until I tell you to bring him in.”

Kosta stood, walked to the window, stood looking out and down at the human ants far below, hands thrust in his pants pockets. He felt like whistling, or doing a little zembeikiko there in the window.

What a difference three weeks made! On Christmas Eve he had tried to assassinate Stagnaro, result of another hypothetical with Miss Pym, and had missed. He’d been sure Stagnaro would uncover him as the shooter, had been even more sure Mr. Prince would find out he’d been skimming the Atlas profits.

Stagnaro didn’t come after him. And on that same Christmas Eve, Prince had been gutted and strung up like a dead fish at some little pisspot hotel on the Baja coast. Kosta’s whole life had changed. Now there was no chance of his skimming from the Atlas profits being uncovered. And he was the fair-haired boy who had gotten a toehold for the Mafia in the rich San Francisco Bay Area where they had previously been only a shadow presence.