Гарольд Роббинс - The Raiders

Ben nodded solemnly. His broken left arm was in a sling. He couldn't drive. Jo-Ann had delivered him to the airport in Los Angeles, and Angie had driven him from the Las Vegas airport to The Seven Voyages. He wore a lightweight blue-and-white checked jacket, a white polo shirt, and gray slacks. He was subdued.

Angie handed Ben a vodka martini.

"What?" Jonas asked. "You a public-relations guy? You got connections? You can plant stories?"

"Yes, sir."

Jonas flared. "Don't call me sir. Or Mr. Cord. Or, God forbid, Dad. My daughter calls me by my first name, and so do you. Now— I've got some pictures. And I've got a piece of tape. You don't have to be a genius to figure out what I want done with them. Here. Look at these."

Infrared flash had penetrated Glenda Grayson's bold sheer costume even more than bright stage lights did. In the six 8 x 10 prints Jonas handed Ben, she appeared to have gone on stage stark naked, with nothing covering her but the strings of beads.

"Jesus Christ," Ben murmured.

"It's her, okay?" Jonas asked. "I mean, you oughta know."

"It's her, all right. What did she have in mind?"

"Ask Angie."

Angie shrugged. "What do you suppose she has in mind? She thinks she's been had. I guess I don't need to say how and by whom."

"Listen to this tape," said Jonas.

Angie pressed the button and started a tape rolling between reels. The voice of Glenda came out clear. "So, the guy says, 'I got one like a baseball bat.' And his wife says, 'Naahh. More like a soft ball bat.' The old guy asks the cute young chick for a date. She says, 'I don't think so. You're too bald.' He says, 'No. What I'm gonna show you is, I'm two-balled.'" The tape rolled on silent. Then a little laughter broke out, then more, and then more and more. "Took you a while to catch it, huh?" asked the voice of Glenda Grayson.

Angie switched it off.

"Old burlesque routines," said Jonas. "They say she was once a stripper. I guess she was."

Ben nodded. "You want this stuff placed."

"You got it."

"Okay, Jonas. I can do it."

"Keep your ass outa trouble, Ben. When you signed on with this family, you signed on for a war."

"Goddammit! Goddammit! " Jimmy Hoffa slammed his fist down on the table in the dining room of the house on the private airport. There were only three men in the room — Hoffa, John Stefano, and Morris Chandler — and Hoffa's outburst drew the attention of no one but the single hooker sitting at the bar, forlornly hoping for business.

"You knew the Cords are bastards," said Chandler.

"Well, so am I! Aren't I? Aren't I a bastard?"

"It's been suggested," Stefano replied dryly.

"Am I supposed to be afraid of those bastards? By God, I came up from the streets! I worked to get someplace. My daddy didn't leave me nothin' . He couldn't. I wasn't handed my living on a silver platter. Were you?"

Chandler shook his head. "I never ate a mouthful of bread I hadn't earned."

Hoffa's mood made another abrupt swing, and he grinned. "That somebody else hadn't earned," he said. "I've heard stories about you."

"All right, guys," said Stefano. "A plane just landed. It's maybe the guy we're waiting for. Time for you to blow, Maurie. I mean, go. You can't have a look at this guy."

Chandler shrugged. He took a final slug from his drink and stood. "I'm gone," he said. "Have a good meeting."

Five minutes later a sad-faced man entered the room.

"Here's Malditesta," said Stefano nodding toward the door. "Be careful how you talk to him."

No one — with maybe an exception or two among the dons — knew the real name of the man called Malditesta. In street talk, to shoot a man in the head was called giving him a major headache. The Italian words for headache were mal di testa . Combined they made the pseudonym given this man after he had shot three or four people in the head. At fifty or so, Malditesta was aging but still handsome, taller and broader in the shoulders than the average man, with gray at his temples but sleek black hair not in the least thinned. His face was long, his nose and chin sharp, his eyes heavy-lidded, and he wore a lugubrious expression. His long raincoat was rumpled, as if he had worn it on the plane. He wore a brown hat.

Before he came to their table to join Stefano and Hoffa he stopped to listen to a proposition from the hooker, and from her smile it looked as if he had agreed to visit her a little later.

Stefano and Hoffa stood and shook hands with the hit man.

"Well ... Glad you're here," said Hoffa. "You talk with Don Carlo?"

"Don't ask who I talked to," said Malditesta. "I won't tell anybody I talked to you, either."

Hoffa fixed a hard glance on Malditesta, but he might as well have fixed a hard glance on a tree for all the reaction he got.

Malditesta was a pro. In the past twenty years he had killed eighteen men and three women. It was said of him that he had never failed to hit his target. What was more important, he had never so much as been suspected. He had never been arrested, never questioned. Stefano had heard of him but had never met him. Jimmy Hoffa had never heard of him, until now.

"This has gotta be done fast and clean," said Hoffa.

Malditesta summoned a waitress. "A Beefeater martini on the rocks with a twist," he said. "Medium dry. Tell the bartender I do like about a quarter of a teaspoon of vermouth in my martini — assuming he's using a good vermouth." He spoke to Stefano. "What do you eat here?"

"Steak."

Malditesta nodded. "Rare. And a good red wine? Whatever's the best you've got. Dry. I'd rather have a Bordeaux than a Burgundy."

"It may have to be a California, sir," said the waitress.

Malditesta wrinkled his nose. "If there's a problem, tell the bartender to come out and show me what he's got."

When the waitress had left, Hoffa spoke impatiently. "You wanta talk business or not?"

"There is nothing to talk about, Mr. Hoffa. I work one way and one way only. You name a person and set a date. You hand me money, the down payment. What happens after that is none of your business."

Hoffa grinned scornfully. "What if the guy dies of typhoid?"

"If by the date you set the man is shot by a jealous wife, you still owe me the balance of the fee," said Malditesta coldly.

"You mean even if you didn't do it?"

"How would you know I didn't do it? Things can be arranged in a variety of ways."

"How do I contact you?" Hoffa asked.

"You don't. You can't. When you hear word that the job has been done, you hand over the balance of my money to Don Carlo Vulcano."

"How do I know you won't take the money I hand you today and scram?" Hoffa asked.

Malditesta turned his heavy-lidded eyes on John Stefano.

"Jimmy," said Stefano solemnly, in a voice so low Hoffa had to frown and strain to hear it. "Don't even talk like that to this man."

Hoffa pondered for a long moment, then shrugged.

"No offense," he said. "But if Don Carto is handling the payout, why am I sitting here with a briefcase full of cash I'm delivering personally?"

"I always meet personally with the people I do business with," said Malditesta. "I want to know what they look like, in case I have to hunt for them later."

Angie reached over from the driver's seat and put a hand on the hand of the weeping and trembling blond girl. "Look. We'll take care of you," she said. "It's over. We'll take care of you and protect you."

A little later she led the girl from the black Porsche to the private elevator that carried them from the garage under The Seven Voyages to the suite where Jonas waited.

"The bastard beat her," said Angie to Jonas as she brought the sobbing girl into the room where Jonas sat at his coffee table desk.