Lone Wolf #7: Peruvian Nightmare

OTHER TITLES BY MIKE BARRY

Lone Wolf #1:
Night Raider

Lone Wolf #2:
Bay Prowler

Lone Wolf #3:
Boston Avenger

Lone Wolf #4:
Desert Stalker

Lone Wolf #5:
Havana Hit

Lone Wolf #6:
Chicago Slaughter

Lone Wolf #7:
Peruvian Nightmare

Lone Wolf #8:
Los Angeles Holocaust

Lone Wolf #9:
Miami Marauder

Lone Wolf #10:
Harlem Showdown

Lone Wolf #11:
Detroit Massacre

Lone Wolf #12:
Phoenix Inferno

Lone Wolf #13:
The Killing Run

Lone Wolf #14:
Philadelphia Blowup

Wulff found himself in something called the Hotel Crillon in Lima. It was steel and glass, looked like a Hilton, from the windows he could see views of what appeared to be a modern city but Wulff wasn’t fooled. It was banana country: there was a technological front for the tourists and one percent of the population controlled the machines and did pretty well, but one mile out of the central city it was wild country. There were beggars living in the eaves of the hotel; he had seen them. Up in the hills somewhere was Cuzco, the ancient city of the Incas filled with ruins and the artifacts of a long-vanished civilization that would probably stay around longer than the technological front, but he had no interest in seeing Cuzco either. He wanted to get the hell out of Peru—even though it had been very thoughtful of Calabrese to stash him here. He supposed that he should be appreciative.

The man who was going to be his ticket out of Peru leaned against a wall in Wulff’s room and said, “I have my reasons for this, Mr. Wulff. Do not question me too closely. For sufficient reasons I want to get a few million dollars of heroin out of this country and you are the means by which I can do it.” He was a small man with an expressionless face; he had done something with mustache and sideburns, Wulff thought, to look vaguely Spanish but the effect wasn’t working. Actually, the man was probably German if anything. “It should be a relatively simple assignment,” the man said. “We’ll give it to you here and arrange passage out and when you get back to your country there will be a man for you to give it to. The fee will be one hundred thousand dollars.” The man brushed some imaginary lint off a sleeve of his coat. “Payable at the other end.”

“I don’t think you understand the situation,” Wulff said. “I’m not in your country or hotel of my own free will. There are a lot of people watching me here. I don’t think that an inconspicuous drop is what you’re going to get from me.”

“Let that be my problem,” the man said. He appeared pleased with himself. He looked as if he had the situation entirely under control. “I respect your credentials,” he said. “Let me put it this way: I respect your work, your potential, what you can do.”

He looked at the two bodies lying in sprawled postures on the floor, one on either side of the bed. They were breathing shallowly but at least one of them, the heavier man on the far end, would not be doing much more than breathing for a short time unless he got some help. Maybe he would not even be breathing. The man against the wall, however, looked away from the forms with disinterest and said, “I can deal with the men who are watching you. It is, after all, my hotel in which you were placed. I have certain prerogatives, certain methods of my own. The question is, will you do this job for me?”

“I don’t think you understand,” Wulff said. Despite the circumstances, the dialogue with the man who claimed to be the owner of the Crillon was settling down to the same kind of exchange he seemed to recall having had many times before. Order out of disorder; it was amazing how there were only a few basic combinations which time and again would reassert themselves. “I don’t think you understand,” he said again. “I’m not in the drug distribution business. I’m trying to blow it up.”

“I know about that.”

“I’ve even made a little progress,” Wulff said.

“I’m quite familiar with your record,” the man said. “Do you think that I’m a fool? I know exactly what you’ve been doing and why you’re here. And I’m not asking you to adopt a moral position on this.”

“It would be easier if I knew your name,” Wulff said. “Wouldn’t it?”

“That is not necessary,” the little man said. One of the bodies on the floor shook in its coma, limbs flailing like an insect’s, then came to rest again. The form gulped and groaned. The respiration of the other one seemed to have become uneven. “I’m afraid that we cannot extend our conversation, Mr. Wulff,” the little man said. “We are going to have to call some people and get these from the room. Also I do not have the time for an extended dialogue.” He moved away from the wall, came toward Wulff, stopped a few feet in front of him and looked at Wulff flat on, his face shrouded, the eyes strangely penetrating. “I can get you out of Peru,” he said. “I can get you back to your country to continue, as it were, your excellent work. I may be the only alternative you have at this time, and after you make the transfer of the goods you are perfectly free to go on and do what you will. It’s merely a business proposition, Mr. Wulff.”

“What makes you think I’ll do your job for you? If you send me out of the country with that quantity of stash on me how do you know I won’t—”

“I’ll take my chances, Mr. Wulff,” the man said solemnly. “I am perfectly willing to take my chances; I’ve been doing so for a long time. Life is a gamble or haven’t you noticed? Your job will be to take delivery of the narcotics, convey them to a destination of which you will be advised and go on about your own distinguished work. There will be no follow-up, of course.”

“You must think I’m desperate,” Wulff said.

“You are desperate,” the man said. “You have been desperate for a long time and now your desperation has peaked. You’ll never get out of Peru alive unless you accept my help, don’t you understand that? Which would you rather be, Mr. Wulff, alive and able to continue on your so-called mission or dead as a man of integrity who refused to participate in an assignment which would enable him to continue?”

Wulff looked at the little man and the man looked back; momentarily he felt himself locked into a frieze where nothing—the country, the hotel, the two bodies on the floor—seemed to exist. There was only that intensity and an exchange; at some base level of calculation, then, Wulff felt that they probably understood one another perfectly.

“All right,” he said then, “I’ll run your shit. If you think you can trust me you’re crazy but I’ll take your shit out of the country for you if you can get me out of here.”

The little man smiled but the smile was not an unbending; it was in fact a tightening, an increased intensity passing from his face to limbs. “That’s quite reasonable,” he said, “that’s a very reasonable attitude. I think that we can cooperate remarkably on that basis.”

“I hate your fucking country,” Wulff said with a flare of rage.

The little man nodded. “What makes you think it’s my country, Mr. Wulff?” he said.

And then he picked up the telephone.

The man whom Calabrese knew as Walker said to the old man, “That was stupid. That was very stupid. You had him right in front of you and a gun in your fucking hand. Why didn’t you kill him?”

Calabrese let that one go by. He looked at Walker trying to hold onto that feeling of fondness for the man that was the only thing holding him back from killing him on the spot. That would have proven if nothing else that Calabrese had lost none of his willingness to kill. There were certain people, however, whom he indulged with the impression that they could talk to him this way. If they wanted. It made for a certain safety valve effect, besides which there were worse people around than this Walker. He owed the man these little prerogatives. For the moment. Just for the moment.

“No, it wasn’t stupid,” Calabrese said. “It would have been a weak man’s decision to kill him here in my house.”

“Out of the house, then.”

“Or to have taken him somewhere to do the job. Why tie it to me in any way? Send him out of the country,” Calabrese said and, taking the pack of cigarettes from his pocket, he split one and tossed it into the ashtray—only his third of the afternoon. That wasn’t bad, it showed that he was in control. “And take care of him very quietly. Why poison Lake Michigan?” he said lightly.

“I don’t believe that,” Walker said. His speech was easy but his position—a stance in front of Calabrese’s desk, where he tried to find a relaxed position by leaning back on his heels—belied that easiness. In fact, Calabrese decided looking at the man whimsically, he was as fearful as any of the others.

Well, good. That was good. He would not want Walker to regard him without fear; that would have created problems too. This way he could have the fondness. “All right,” he said mildly, “don’t believe it.”

“You had something else in mind, Calabrese,” Walker said and went to the window, looked out at the lake, its dull vapors miles out, then came back again. “I think you like knowing he’s alive,” Walker said in a different tone as if having made a decision to plunge ahead. “Having him in your hands, getting him someplace where you know you can kill him anytime … But there’s just the chance that he might be able to come back to you. Letting that little chance stay around, that’s your style. It excites you.”

Calabrese said nothing, holding his position. He lifted his eyebrows in what was meant only to be mild inquiry, but it seemed to shake the man, and rapidly Walker became a mass of small, uncoordinated motions. “I don’t want to talk about it any more,” Walker said. His eyes seemed retracted, his face smaller. “I’d better get back,” he said. “I’ve got nothing else to say here. We’ve got nothing left to conduct now, you know that. I just wished you had gotten rid of the fucker, that’s all, but it’s your decision and I don’t give a shit, all right?”

Walker got his hand on the door, touching it, his fingers clawing for the wooden surfaces when Calabrese said, “Wait.” Calabrese raised a hand and Walker locked himself into position against the door, not moving, a strange alertness coming and going from him as he reached for a gun that was not there and then took his hand off his pocket. No one saw Calabrese with a gun. The man named Walker tried a smile which fell off his face like a teardrop under Calabrese’s gaze. “Well, all right,” he said, mumbling, “well,
all right.
”

Walker was a lieutenant on the Chicago force. Calabrese knew everything about the man: home, mortgage payments, wife’s age, two sick kiddies, badge number, and so on but if it suited Walker to think that Calabrese knew nothing of him and that their relationship was protected, so be it. Calabrese would not break the pact. He would not even call Walker by his true name. “That’s interesting, Walker,” he said then, “that you would say that it
excites
me, letting him off the hook as I did, or at least giving him a long line.” He paused, looked at Walker ingenuously. Walker’s hand came off the door as if it were hot. “Just what do you mean?” Calabrese said.

“I didn’t mean a thing,” Walker said. “Not a fucking thing. I don’t even want to talk about it,” he said, turning back toward the view of the window. Then, as if he were displacing some substantial weight, he faced Calabrese again and said, “All right. I do think it’s your style.”

“Go on.”

“You let that crazy fucker get away. You were the first man in maybe four months, since this whole crazy thing started to get a clear shot at him and you let him slip away anyway.”

“Not too far,” Calabrese said, “not too goddamned far at all.”

“You know why I think you did it?” Walker said and now he was not guarding himself. Calabrese could see that he was really caught up. Well, so be it. “You did it because knowing he’s around, having him in the picture, having everyone know that you could have killed him but you didn’t … that’s kind of a check on people, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“It makes people think. That’s a hell of a way to operate, Calabrese, but that was really what it was all along, wasn’t it now?”

“You’re not talking like an officer of the law.”

“I’m no more a fucking officer of the law in this room than you’re an officer of the law. We have mutual interests, remember?” Walker put a knuckle into his mouth, bit it, brought it away with a drop of blood. “This guy is a killer. Maybe if this killer is walking around somewhere, free and clear, people will figure that you worked out an agreement with him, right? That you have him under supervision. He might even be working for you now. It makes for a tight organization.”

“I don’t work in drugs,” Calabrese said softly. “I don’t believe in it. I stay clear of that shit.”

“Maybe you do,” Walker said, “and maybe you don’t. Our arrangements have nothing to do with drug shit but if there’s a percentage in it, Calabrese, you figure you might as well go for it as anything else. The organization is what matters to you, holding onto it.”

“You’re a cop,” Calabrese said, “but that doesn’t give you the right to talk to me that way.”

Walker exhaled, bent over slightly as if Calabrese had punched him and all the effect went out of his voice. “I was just speculating,” he said. “It was just
a
line of thought, that’s all.”

He went over to the door again. “I’m disgusted with the thing,” he said. “You want to play games, Calabrese, that’s your affair. But the games are starting to get dangerous. Having that guy still around was a big mistake, letting him get away was a worse one.”

“You’ve made a worse one,” Calabrese said.

Walker stood at the door. Calabrese could see him struggling with the impulse to turn, fighting it, trying not to, but fear or attention won out; he slowly wheeled around and Calabrese looked at his eyes, those eyes slowly shifting from dullness to apperception. “Is that a threat?” he said. He tried to keep his voice down but it shook. “Is that a fucking threat, Calabrese?”

“I never threaten,” Calabrese said. “Making threats isn’t the way I do things.” He held himself behind the desk in rigid posture but a sudden thrust of tension lashed out at him. Son of a bitch, I’m getting old, Calabrese thought. Was Walker telling the truth? Was he losing his grip on matters after all? Impossible. He broke another cigarette. “Threats are for weak men,” Calabrese said. “You’re a cop, you ought to know how and with whom you’re dealing by now.”

“I don’t know anything.”

“Why do you think I told you about this, Walker?”

“You didn’t have to tell me,” the man said sullenly. “The word on this was around. Everybody knew that the guy was in Chicago.”

“You didn’t answer my question. I don’t care what’s around. Why do you think I told you?”

“I don’t know,” Walker said. He tried to hold himself level at the door but something in his shoulders quivered. It was like a claw had gripped him at a place in his body. Calabrese smiled. With all of them there was always that point of breakage—some sooner, some later … but the difference between men was always only at the point that they would break; each of them would do so in the same way. “I don’t know why you did anything,” the man said. “I’ve got to get going. I just dropped by.”

“I told you because I thought you’d be interested,” Calabrese said. “I like you and I value your opinion. But I didn’t expect to be called stupid. Friends don’t call each other stupid, Peter.”

At the use of his real first name the man shook again. He turned and faced Calabrese slowly. “Don’t you ever,” he started, “don’t you ever—” and then he saw what Calabrese was doing and he became very quiet.

Calabrese, moving from the desk, had the pistol in his hand. It had been a while since he had last had a gun in hand but there were things you never forgot. The metal curved warmly into his hand as he held it on the man called Walker. He said nothing.

“You wouldn’t do it,” Walker said. “This is crazy. You just wouldn’t do it.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re a careful man. You run a tight shop: you’re a professional and you’re not going to start pulling triggers without a reason. I’m too useful to you to kill, Calabrese.”

“You don’t believe a word of that.”

“Yes I do.”

“Maybe I’m not so careful. Maybe I’m not so bright as you think I am. I let him go, remember. That wasn’t so smart according to you, even if I know exactly where I stashed him and my men are with him all the time. But you thought that that was stupid. So I can be stupid twice, eh?” He looked at the pistol, turned it so that it caught a fragment of light coming in from the window, bounced that light off Walker’s eyes. “I’m an old man,” Calabrese said. “I think about dying all the time now; there’s very little else to occupy me. Maybe I want to take risks, maybe I’m bored with the careful life. The careful life gets you mostly as dead in a hundred years from now as the risky one. Maybe I’m looking for a little bit of a challenge, something to keep my mind off the fact that age is going to kill me; I want to control my life myself.”

“That doesn’t mean shit to me,” Walker said but his hand did not come off the doorknob. “I really don’t care what you do or how long you live.”

“You’re a cheap informant, Peter,” Calabrese said. “Mostly that information of yours stinks. I think that you’re three quarters of a cop at heart anyway, maybe even a double agent.”

“That’s bullshit. It’s just not so.”

“But mostly,” Calabrese went on in a slow, patient tone, “I’ve been getting bored with you recently. You’re not doing me any good alive, anyway. Maybe it would be interesting to see you dead.

Walker shook his head again. “I’m leaving.”

“You want to leave. You keep on saying that. But you’re not moving, are you, because you know that I’d probably shoot you.”

“This Wulff has gotten to you. Maybe it’s contagious, whatever he’s got. Whatever the hell it is I don’t want any part of it.”

“Don’t you?” Calabrese asked softly. “Don’t you want to cut in on it?”

“No,” Walker said, “no,” and as if fighting himself up and over some level of attention, gasped, inhaled irregularly and then fell against the door, struggling with the doorknob. His motions were irregular, he did not seem quite able to coordinate but finally, in a spasm, he did. He seized the glistening knob and turned it, opening a thin sliver of light into the empty hallway.

Calabrese smiled in a private way.

He shot the man in the back of the neck.

Walker staggered in reverse—two steps, three—in a posture of astonishment, reaching a hand toward the wounded area as if he were dabbing tentatively at a sneeze, as if the wound were in the front rather than the back. He half-turned, showing Calabrese profile, his eyes rolling and then tried to say something, something which no doubt was profound and would have addressed the heart of the issue in a basic way (Calabrese had always wished that he could speak to a dead man) but the sounds only came out like those of a frog. Sounding like a frog seemed to amaze Walker. He reached his other hand toward the area, gripped the back of his neck as if trying to seat his head into place. He twisted. He turned, looked at Calabrese fully, trying to hold his head on his shoulders.

Calabrese shot him in the forehead.

Walker squeaked. He leaped, danced two dance steps and then, like a man making himself a careful bed in the woods, knelt, patted the floor twice and then lay in the spot that he had made. Lying on the rug he kicked once as if descending into sleep, then lay quiet. Blood moved cautiously away from him in bright, red rivulets.

Calabrese, sighing, put the gun away, looked at the corpse for a moment and picked up the intercom. Killing a cop, even this cop, was supposed to be a bad business—even for Calabrese—but he figured that this was not the major problem; he could always get around it. What he could not get around so easily was the loss of control which the murder had betrayed. But then you could not, he supposed, have everything. Better to discharge one’s feelings than to bottle them up; that was the secret to a long, healthy life. “Get a couple of people,” he said into the intercom. “I’ve got a goddamned accident on the rug here and I’d like to have it cleaned up.”

“Yes,” the voice said and clicked off. The person on the other end had heard this before but not for a while. Probably, Calabrese thought, they’ll be thinking that it’s like old times around here. It isn’t, not quite—but there were certain purgative effects in blood. They could not be discarded. Always, no matter how far you got away from it, you might have to come back to the blood eventually just to retrace your origins. It was what made you strong.

Calabrese leaned back, broke another cigarette, looked impassively at the man on the floor. Was Walker right, he wondered. It was important in his position to hear all angles and discard none of them; a lot of people in similar positions had gotten into trouble eventually because they had not kept open minds. Calabrese did not consider himself to be in that class; nevertheless Walker might have brought something to his attention that he had not acknowledged. Maybe if he had shot Wulff he could have saved himself some difficulties. He did not think so, he thought he had the man under the tightest wraps possible and he believed that he could get rid of him with a simple phone call anyway … but still, you did not know. You simply did not know.