Warren Murphy: Acid Rock

Blake did not bother to strap on his gun, because then, to eliminate any chance of drawing attention to himself, he would have had to put on his jacket, and they were only going out on the balcony.

He opened the glass doors and there it was, deep in the west, the sun setting behind the Rockies.

"Yeah, heavy," said Vickie. "Heavy."

"Those are the Rockies, the most beautiful mountains in the world, but also some of the most treacherous."

"Like life, too, you know," said Vickie. "If it's heavy, it can also be a bummer, know what I mean?"

"Yes," said Blake. "It smells better over there, too. No air pollution."

"Wait a few years, man, you won't be able to breathe there either."

Blake smiled. "A bit pessimistic, aren't you?"

"What I see is what we got."

"Is that why you're going to testify?"

"That, and other things. I don't think the pigs should have things their way all the time. My father's got enough money. It's not right to rip off wheat from this country and drive up the price of poor people's bread."

"Am I a pig?" Blake asked.

Vickie giggled. "No. You're heavy. Straight as shit, but heavy, man. Like candy."

"You're not baddest at all," said Blake, and saw her giggle into her hands like young girls did back in Kansas City when he was going to high school and the big daring high was wine and good girls didn't do it unless they were married. It was a changing country, but how bad could it be, how bad could this counter-culture be, if a girl like Vickie was willing to testify against her father just because she thought something was wrong? Wasn't that what they had taught us?

"Don't they ever stop working?" asked Vickie, pointing to the roof and to the right.

Blake looked up. A painter's scaffold, its white slatted bottom coming toward them was descending from the roof. Blake could see shoes and bodies through the gaps between the slats, like black blobs against the darkening sky.

The platform lowered silently and that, more than the odd hour, told Blake they were definitely under attack. Scaffolds always squeaked, even when new. The pulleys would have to be muffled with packed grease to insure silence, and no painter, sand blaster, or steam sprayer would risk a slip just for quiet. Only a killer would.

"Vickie, go inside and tell one of the agents to bring me my shoulder holster, would you please?" said Blake in a very casual voice.

"You going to target shoot twelve stories down?"

"No. Just do as I say, will you, honey?"

"Okeydokey," said Vickie, using her new word. The scaffold was descending just to the right of the balcony. If Blake had brought the radio gear he could have gotten the upstairs room to move on it first. But the radio gear and the government cars were back in Los Angeles. And that was the flaw in the diamond defense. The points weren't connected.

From behind Blake came a knock on the hotel suite door.

"Room service."

"Don't answer it," yelled Blake and with his shout, the scaffold came down quickly and he heard the door to the room open and Vickie scream. One agent was caught with a blast in the belly, but the other returned fire. In the room, the two side doors opened and there was more firing, and just above his head Blake saw a rifle poke down from the scaffold. He yanked and pulled a blond young man along with the rifle. With a snap of his elbow into the man's jaw, he knocked him into the bannister. The rifle disappeared over the railing. Three other men were coming down on the scaffold and Blake was weaponless. He grabbed one of the ropes, braced his feet against the railing, and pushed. One man fell; the remaining two were unable to fire.

Blake pushed again with his body, like a maniac working a playground swing. The scaffold swung far out from the side of the hotel wall. He felt a banging on his back, but he swung back to the wall again and pushed with his legs. Then the heavily greased pulley slipped and his end of the scaffold plunged down. He might have held on with his hands if he hadn't gotten a face and chest full of two sliding men. His hands popped free like two weak safety pins attached to a bail of hay.

Blake hit the Denver sidewalk accelerating, as would any other free-falling object, at thirty-two feet per second per second. The sidewalk remained stationary. They met. Blake felt a crack, and then nothing. He would never feel again.

The last man who fell from the scaffold hit his companion and his fall was cushioned just enough for him to live a day. Before he died of multiple injuries, he told FBI men about an open contract he was trying to fill. The whole gang were beach bums; they had thought that eight of them could pull it off. It was sort of a lark, but if it had worked, they would have been rich for life.

The killing had been a holocaust. Four agents dead. Eight assailants dead. Not in this century had that many people been killed in a federal shoot-out.

But there were indications that even worse might be around the corner. At the funerals of the young men, a single large wreath was delivered for each one. A bright gold envelope with silver lettering was attached. Each envelope had a tassel on it.

When the tassels were pulled, each envelope spilled forth $12,500 in twenty-dollar bills and a note made of letters cut from magazines and pasted on a sheet, almost like a kidnapper's ransom note.

The note read:

"For services almost rendered."

Someone had been willing to pay $100,000 just for an unsuccessful try. The open contract was real.

The wreaths were confiscated as evidence. When the families of two of the dead men wanted to know why, they were told only that the wreaths might lead to the men who had hired the deceased. The funeral directors were warned about the dangers of disclosing the contents of the envelopes to anyone. Word was leaked to the press that the shoot-out was over a narcotics shipment. But the most emphasis was placed on keeping mum about the cash. There was trouble enough without helping to advertise an open contract.

During the shooting at the Denver hotel, Vickie Stoner had disappeared. She might still be alive somewhere. Supervisor Watkins confided to a special agent that he thought the situation was hopeless, that the girl was as good as dead. Later, when he tried to call the same special agent back to mention one other fact, he was told that no such agent existed.

"But you okayed him," complained Watkins.

"We did not," said the director's aide at headquarters.

In Washington, D. C., the man who had posed as a special agent finished writing his report, which he thought was for the National Security Agency. He had done many reports like it. On the two Kennedy assassinations, on the King killing and on many other, discreet deaths that had not made headlines. Officially, he was the authority on specific personnel functions, which translated into as which group was responsible. Each nation had a man like this.

His report concluded that the attempt on the life of Vickie Stoner had obviously been planned by someone with a lot of intelligence and very little experience--which ruled out any foreign power. It was his belief that the men who had attempted the assassination were also the planners of it. Certainly there was nothing in the attempt to suggest that it was beyond the capability of beach bums.

What was of special interest, his report stated, was that this was an open contract, something he had read about but had assumed did not exist, for reasons obvious to anyone familiar with the field. This open contract was real and payable, and the money in the funeral wreaths was proof.

It was inevitable that experienced professionals would now attempt to collect the sum, if Vickie Stoner was still alive-which was doubtful. Supervisor Watkins had stated the case accurately: "hopeless." But it was of no concern to N.S.A., since no foreign power was involved.