Warren Murphy: Mafia Fix

He drew his own pistol and the other two policemen put theirs away. Then they advanced on Remo who backed up as far in the small room as he could.

They each grabbed one of his arms and they smirked as he struggled to pull himself free. Fat chance, they thought, but he was tenacious and he skittered along the floor a little bit and then they were closer to the man with the gun than they ought to be, but nothing serious, they had him.

Then they didn't have him, and they each felt a sharp crack on the temple and the driver who had held his gun on the three of them found the gun ripped from his hand and tossed through a burned out window opening. Seconds later, it hit water far below with a splash and then Remo had the blowtorch and he was raising the flame.

The other two detectives behind Remo were unconscious or dead. But they were down and still and now Remo blocked the way to the door.

The blowtorch flame hissed louder, yellower as Remo turned it up, then he said, "All right, officer, now we're going to talk."

The policeman looked anxiously around the room. There was no way out. And his men on the floor had not stirred. They might be dead. Could he get to one of them to get a gun?

Remo moved over toward the two men.

"We'll start out easy," Remo said. "What do you know about Ocean Wheel trucks?"

"Nothing," the policeman said. He started to say "I never heard of them" but never got the words out because his mouth was occupied with screaming as a blowtorch flame seared the back of his hand;

"Try again," Remo said. "That answer was not responsive."

The policeman was shaken. "I saw some once," he stammered. "Coming off the pier. Only time I ever saw them. But they vanished. Someplace on the way out of town. We looked for them, but nobody knows where they went."

Remo turned the flame up higher. "Okay, who do you take orders from?"

"Used to be Gasso."

"Gasso's dead," Remo said.

"I know. Now it's Willie the Plumber. He called us tonight. Told us to get you."

"Who's his boss?"

"Verillio."

"Verillo's dead," Remo said. "Who's Willie the Plumber's new boss?"

"I don't know," the cop said and flinched as the flame came closer to his good hand. "Somebody in City Hall. It's always been somebody in City Hall."

"Not the chief? Not Dugan?"

"No, he's honest. All he's got is numbers and whores," the policeman said, and Remo knew he was telling the truth.

"How about the mayor? Hansen?"

"I don't know," the policeman said. "I don't know." And again Remo knew he was telling the truth.

"Listen," the policeman said, "give me a break. Let me work with you. Ill find out who's running things. I can help you. You can use a guy with brains. Look how good I set up those narco people. They trusted my badge and I unsprung their trap. They were easy kills. I can help you the same way."

He looked at Remo's face hopefully, but Remo was impassive and the policeman knew his offer was going to be turned down, so he did the only thing left to him. He dove for the bodies of the two policemen on the floor, trying to pull a gun from under one of their jackets. His hand circled the butt of one of the guns and then his hand didn't work anymore. He looked up just in time to see a hand speed down toward his up-looking face and he felt nothing after the facial bones splintered.

Remo looked at the three dead men on the wooden floor of the wheelhouse and for a moment felt disgusted with himself. Then his mind went back to the cruise ship and the picture of the young junkie, racked by drugs and fever, and he looked down at the three dead cops who had done their part to protect that kind of traffic. Then he felt a rage turn his body hot, and he did the kind of thing Remo Williams never did. He advertised.

Poor Skorich, at least, had died in the line of duty. Departmental honours. Something for his family to cling to. But these three swine . . . Remo would do his best to make sure there were no brass bands or grieving city for their deaths.

When the sun came up the next morning, the black hulk of the ship would be outlined, silhouetted black against the sun's early rays. As the sun rose higher, the ship would begin to take form, and the early men on the docks would look at it as they always did, without real interest because it didn't mean a day's pay. But sometime during the morning, some of them would look again and they would look at the anchor and then they would look again and some of them would cross themselves, because hanging from the anchor's points, the dull points driven through their bodies, twisted like some terrible fish, would be the three policemen, hooked and hung out to dry. And very dead.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Myron Horowitz was in love. Not only was his girl the most beautiful girl in the world, but she was going to make him rich-rich in a way that no one on Pelham Parkway could understand.

Had she not built for him this new drug plant? Probably unique in the world. Fully-automated. It needed only one person to operate it and he was that one person, Myron Horowitz, Rutgers University, 1968, R.P. Just him and no one else, except of course the janitor whom he had sent home tonight, and a billing service that he used to handle his paperwork.

He supposed it was business that made her ask him to meet her tonight at the factory. He supposed it was, but he was ready in case it wasn't, and so he checked the sofa in his office. It was neat and clean and the stereo was playing softly; he had out a bottle of Chivas Regal and two glasses, was ready in case there was a chance to talk about anything but business.

Late night meetings were not unusual, not when you considered that in a secret basement below the one-story building were hidden four tractor trailers, their drivers frozen to death, but their cargos still intact, ready to make up into powders and pills and ointments and syrups. Any strength.

Four trailer loads. Fifty tons of 98 per cent pure heroin. Fifty tons. And the U.S. drug peddlers used maybe eight tons a year. Six years' supply. Fifty tons. Horowitz was sitting on it.

Fifty tons. Horowitz often did the arithmetic. Fifty tons was 100,000 pounds and when it was cut and cut and cut and thinned at each step along the line, a pound would have a street value of over $100,000. For each pound. And he was sitting on 100,000 pounds.

He knew there had been problems with delivery. Everything was being watched carefully. But he had gotten some out in aspirin bottles and some as stomach powders and all in all he had probably gotten out maybe 100 pounds in the last two weeks. That was $10 million worth when it got down to the users.

Myron Horowitz never considered the morality of what he was doing. Narcotics were like alcohol. A little bit never hurt anybody. Didn't everyone know that most doctors use narcotics regularly? And they still practiced medicine and performed operations and delivered babies and nobody seemed to get upset about it. In a way, maybe he was even doing a service. By making more of it available in a better grade, maybe he was helping to stop accidental deaths from contaminated drugs and if users did not have to steal drugs maybe he could reduce the crime rate a little.

Headlights flashed out in front of his factory and he picked up the telephone and dialled the number of the Parrish Electronic Protective Service. "This is Myron Horowitz, Code 36-43-71. I'm opening the front door at Liberty Drugs on Liberty Road. Okay., Right."

He hung up the phone and walked to the front door. Through the frosted glass, he could see the outline of the familiar dark sedan as it pulled around behind the building, out of sight of the road. He waited a moment, then heard footsteps and opened the door.

Cynthia Hansen stepped inside quickly and he closed the door behind her.