Warren Murphy: Mafia Fix

At 12:17, he stepped out of his office carrying the last sheet of paper.

"How's it read?" he asked his city editor.

"Okay," the editor said. "But do you think we ought to speculate like that?"

"Only until you get somebody around here who can find out a fact." He started to walk away when the city editor called: "You want a by-line on this?"

Horgan stopped. "It's going to be one of those Italian mob things again and I just don't need any more flak about being anti-Italian. Put some Italian by-line on it."

The city editor thought for a moment and his eyes strayed to the reference shelf behind the city desk. History of Great Operas, he read on the back of one book.

He bent over a sheet of paper and pencilled:

"Set 14 point. By Joseph Verdi"

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

When Willie the Plumber Palumbo came to, on the floor of Cynthia Hansen's office, the bitch was gone and so was Remo Barry.

Willie lay there on the heavy carpeting for a few moments, afraid to move for fear the broken bones would hurt. He had seen Gasso's body. He knew what his must look like.

Slowly, exploratorily, he moved his left index finger. He felt no pain. He moved the entire hand. No pain. Then he moved his other hand. And then his feet. At least he was not crippled. When he sat up, he found that he was not hurt at all.

Willie the Plumber scrambled to his feet and paid for the sudden exertion with a violent coughing fit that caused his eyes to blank for a moment.

Then he was all right again. He walked out into the red tiled hall where his cleated heels chipped wax and he walked forward on the balls of his feet to make no noise, heading down the back stairs to the parking lot where his blue Eldorado sat.

He did not know how long he had been out. But any long was too long. Remo Barry must have gotten the girl. He would probably be back for Willie the Plumber. Well, Willie the Plumber would be long gone.

Willie the Plumber was not simple. Big score or no big score, heroin or no heroin, it was more important to stay alive.

Willie had enough to stay alive for a long time. In an ashcan in his cellar was hidden several hundred thousand dollars in cash and it would be enough to move Willie far across the country, maybe even out of the country, and set him up in a new life.

Willie jumped into his car and sped the few blocks to the old four-family tenement that he had made into a one-family home for himself.

He parked the Cadillac at the curb and took the front stairs two at a time, coughing all the way.

It took him only a few minutes to find a brief case and to empty the money from the ashcan into it. It was $227,000. Willie counted it often.

He closed the brief case and walked out the front door, locking it behind him. He would send the key to his sister-in-law. She could come in and clean it until he sold it.

As he was about to get into his Eldorado, he noticed a smudge on the hood and he walked up to the smudge. He leaned over the shiny hood and exhaled onto the smudge, then put his face down close to the finish as he polished off the smudge with the sleeve of his jacket.

He caught a flash of movement on the other side of the car and tilted his head slightly to catch the reflection in the highly-waxed hood.

A man stood there.

Willie stood up and looked across the car into the deep brown eyes of Remo Williams.

Remo smiled at him, then holding his left arm stiffly at his side, bent down below the level of the car for a moment and picked up something from the gutter.

He stood up, holding a rusty old nail in his right hand. Still smiling at Willie the Plumber, he pressed the tip of the nail into the blue enamelled finish of the hood and pressed. First a tiny piece of paint chipped, and then Remo dragged the nail through the finish, running a scar down the hood of the Eldorado from windshield to grill.

Willie the Plumber looked at the vandalized hood of the shiny car and started to cry. Real tears.

The man named Remo said, "Willie, get in the car." Willie, still crying, slid in behind the wheel. Remo got in the passenger's side.

"Just drive around, Willie," he said.

Willie the Plumber, now sobbing only slightly, drove through the heart of the city and finally picked up an old inadequate highway that passed through the meadows bordering the city's western side.

"Turn here," Remo ordered and Willie the Plumber pulled off the highway into a narrow two-lane blacktop road.

"How do you want it, Willie?" Remo asked. "In the head? Chest? Got a favourite organ?"

"You didn't have to do that to the Eldorado," Willie said. "You know, you're a real son of a bitch."

Suddenly, Willie's head dropped onto the steering wheel of the car. Its wheels bit into a hole and the car's weight pulled it off toward the right side of the road, heading at a marshy field.

With his good right arm, Remo slapped Willie's head away from the steering wheel, then grabbed the wheel and wrestled the car back onto the blacktop. He reached his left leg past Willie's feet and slowly began tapping the brake until the heavy car lurched to a halt.

Remo shifted the car into neutral, then walked around to the driver's side. Willie lay with his head back against the seat. His eyes were open, but Remo realized he was dead.

Remo pulled Willie out of the car and let his body drop heavily onto the road. Then he slid behind the wheel of the car and drove off.

He felt bad about scratching a new Eldorado.