Operation Stranglehold (13 page)

“Onlee the man ‘ad a ‘ard time theenking who he was. Then he remember once he ‘ad a beeg job.” Julio started up the car. “We go back to the office?”

“Yes.”

Julio drove skillfully along the narrow streets to wider thoroughfares. Walter and Lisa were on my mind; they’d been locked into that grubby tool shed for nearly three hours. It’s hard on the nerves. I described the corner of the railroad yards containing the tool shed to Julio, and he nodded. He knew where it was. “Is there someplace nearby we could stay tonight without attracting attention?” I asked. Our peasant clothes might have been fine in the mountains, but they were a liability in Madrid.

“There ees an inn three blocks from there on same street as direction tracks run,” Julio said. “Posada San Carlos. Not reech.”

“The way we look we don’t want anything fancy. What about not having any luggage?”

Julio rubbed a thumb and forefinger together. “Pay when sign.”

So that at least was no different in Spain. “Will they ask for papers?”

“Not from
nationalistas.
Use Spanish names. Onlee risk ees that police ‘ave sweep ev’ry now an’ then. Seal off ‘otel an’ check all papers. But not ‘appen too much.”

We’d have to risk it. We’d had a long day already and we couldn’t keep going indefinitely. I wondered whether to buy Julio’s VW from him. Even changing drivers, the trip to Málaga would probably take twenty to twenty-four hours. It would be long, hot, and exhausting, but we’d attract less attention than by any other form of transportation.

But Julio’s car wasn’t the answer. If anything happened to us, the car would lead the police back to Julio, and there would go Erikson’s chance of rescue to say nothing about what would happen to Julio. “Tomorrow I want you to buy us a car,” I broke the silence that had settled down. “Come to the inn, this Posada San Carlos, in the morning, and we’ll talk about it.”

“Sí,”
he agreed.

“And you won’t put it in your name, understand?”

He nodded wisely. “I ‘ave done thees before.”

I’ll bet you have, I thought. One of the luckiest things about this whole fouled-up operation had been running into this amiable bandit.

Julio was turning into the Croswell parking lot before I realized we were back at the branch office. He parked as before in the darkest corner. Hazel and Consuelo were knocking it off in Spanish twenty to the dozen when we went inside. “Do any good?” Hazel asked at once.

“Hard to say. Tell you about it later. We’ve got to go back and collect the lovebirds. Julio told me about a place we can stay tonight.” I looked at the smiling Consuelo. “Ask her if she can call a cab for us, but not to this address. An intersection about a mile away. Julio will drive us there. Get the correct pronunciation of the name of the street from him—the one at the end of the railroad bridge—so you can tell the cab driver.”

Consuelo made the call before she locked up the office again, and we got out of there. The four of us had to wait only seven or eight minutes at the address Consuelo had given before the cab showed up. “See you in the morning,” I said to Julio as we got out of the VW.

“I weel be there,” he answered. “W’at name weel I ask for?”

“Senor and Senora Jaime Ruiz Lopez,” I improvised. “Remember that, Hazel, in case I forget it.”

“Buenas noches,”
Hazel said to Consuelo and Julio.

We walked over to the cab.

“I notice you never mention you-know-who in front of Julio,” she said as we settled into the taxi.

“That’s right.” I kept my voice down. “No sense putting too great a strain on his commercial instincts. I think he’s the type that stays bought, but it doesn’t hurt to be careful.”

“What did you find out about—”

“Later,” I said with a warning nod in the direction of the cab driver. “It’s bad enough we’re not speaking Spanish.”

“Bad enough?”

“In case he’s asked any questions.”

“Why would he—”

“Him and every other cabbie in the city. These Spanish narcs don’t miss a trick.”

The taxi let us out at the bridge. The area looked different in the dark, but we walked along the embankment wall until I could see the darker blur of the tool shed below. There were lights on standards all through the yards, but nowhere near as many as there would have been in the U.S.

I checked for the bobbing flashlights of car inspectors or yard detectives, but there were none. It was still a little early in the evening for that. When the taverns closed, the winos would be looking for a place to sleep.

“You stay up here,” I said to Hazel. “No sense your turning an ankle scrambling down the slope. You’re the lookout,” I went on when she started to protest. “When you hear us coming, if anything’s out of line up here, whistle twice.” She can give a two-fingered whistle that will roust crows at a quarter of a mile.

The assignment mollified her. I went over the wall and down the bank, digging in my heels to check my progress. A fall on the cindery slope would have been nasty, but I kept my balance. I eased over to the tool house, staying out of lighted areas, and knocked lightly on the door. “Okay inside?” I called in a low tone.

“Yes, and damn glad to be able to say so,” Walter’s voice replied. He sounded tense.

I found a rock and repeated my performance with the tool shed lock. It opened just as easily as the first time, but I waited until the ringing sound of stone on steel died out before I opened the door.

“Never again on a deal like that!” Walter said emphatically as they emerged. “Someone came by once and shook the lock, and that tightened me up like a violin’s E-string. I was just about ready to take a pick and hack our way out of there.”

I closed the door and relocked it. “This way,” I said, moving along the foot of the embankment.

Lisa, as usual, had said nothing upon coming out of the shed. The girl never complained. And there was another thing about her that got to me. Except when she was looking at Walter, her eyes were always measuring. Calculating. Judging. She was like a deer in open country. I’d been on the run for so many years myself I knew all about how such an attitude becomes second nature.

I started up the steep bank, then paused as Lisa’s presence triggered another thought. “Walter,” I asked, “what did you do back at the border to get away from your own name?”

“I gave them a phony one,” he answered. “My wallet was loaded with identification—credit cards, and all that—but I told them I was carrying it for a friend. The credit cards had impressed them, so they couldn’t imagine I wouldn’t be claiming them if they were mine.”

“That story would never have stood up if you’d arrived where that prison van was taking you,” I observed.

“That’s what your friend Erikson said.”

But it explained how the delayed checkup by the authorities after the van hijack had led them to Croswell Industries. And the American Embassy’s CIA man would naturally have had a pipeline into police headquarters that would have had him trotting over to Sam Morgan’s domain, too.

I started up the bank again. The youngsters followed, Walter helping Lisa. Hazel greeted us at the top, silently folding Lisa into her arms. Walter looked back down into the railroad yard and blew out his breath in relief. “Were you able to line up the help we need to get out of the country at the office?” he asked.

“No. The police had been there.”

He digested the implications for a moment with a sidelong glance at Lisa. “So what do we do now?”

“We get off the street for tonight. There’s an inn about three blocks from here. Tomorrow we’ll get a car and drive to Málaga.”

“Málaga!”

“The next link in Erikson’s underground network,” I explained. “Let’s get into that inn. Hazel, when we get there, bargain for accommodations for four. The police are looking for a couple. And Walter, politeness or no politeness, don’t take that sombrero off until we’re in the room. That blond hair of yours could be our biggest handicap.”

I don’t know how anyone does any business in Spain, they make places so hard to find. I’d have walked right past the entrance to the inn except that Hazel and Walter were more familiar with Spanish architecture. A tiny gate in a blank wall had a badly weather-eroded sign above it: Posada San Carlos. Walter pushed open the gate, and it was like a different world.

A large, brightly lit courtyard with a splashing fountain was just inside the front entrance. Exquisitely manicured patches of grass and green shrubs were dotted with the brilliant blossoms of variegated flowerbeds. After the grubbiness to which we’d been subjected all day, the atmosphere was balm for the soul.

The courtyard was deserted. “Where is everyone?” Lisa whispered. “Don’t they do any business?”

“At dinner,” Walter explained. “The Spanish are late diners.”

“Ask if they have room service,” I said. “We want to stay out of the dining room.”

“Even the smallest places have room service,” Walter said. “Spanish families like their privacy even while traveling.”

“Walter, we are Senor and Senora Jaime Ruiz Lopez,” Hazel said. “You will be our cousins, Senor and Senora Carlos Perez Sautto.”

I could see Lisa’s lips moving silently as she repeated it to herself.

We had been proceeding between a number of trellises bordering narrow paths. Vine leaves clustered thickly all over the trellises. We came out into a low-ceilinged, stone-floored, open area with a fish pond in its center and the registration desk at its far end. I kept recalling that Julio had said the place was “not reech.” Still, these people had been dispensing hospitality to wayfarers since the time of the Romans. They definitely had a flair.

There was no one behind the desk. Hazel stepped up to it and rang a small bell. A pencil-mustachioed youth appeared, and there ensued the interminable palaver that seemed to go with any Spanish transaction. Hazel finally signed the register, though, a dog-eared volume that looked as if it too had been there since the time of the Romans, and a bellboy led us along a tile-floored corridor to a large room with two double beds.

“Just for the record,” I said to Hazel when the bellboy left, “what’s the tariff on this?”

“Thirteen dollars for four people,” she said. “Including dinner and breakfast.”

I shook my head.

“Speaking of dinner,” Walter said, “it’s been a long, long time between meals.”

He told Hazel what to order. We took turns washing up while we waited. It took forty-five minutes for the meal to arrive, but it was worth it. An enormous bowl of shrimp on a bed of rice was surrounded by five or six different kinds of vegetables. On a separate tray were sliced guavas, melons, and oranges. The main dish was both garlicky and spicy, but I was in no mood to quibble.

“Ahhhhhhhh!” Walter breathed finally, loosening the belt on his baggy pants. “That’s the first decent meal since the damn narcs found the hand-rolled cigarettes, right, Lisa?” He kissed the girl’s cheek.

He got up and went over to the nearest bed and stretched out on his back with his hands folded behind his head. “Funny,” he said dreamily, “last year this time I thought I was really living it up. I was taking flying lessons here in Madrid from Jimmy Conway, Croswell’s European executive pilot, in a Piper Cub he rented and brought in to the Croswell landing strip. I was really big-wheeling it.” He turned his head to look at Lisa who was smiling fondly at him. “But then I hadn’t met you. I hadn’t even begun to—”

“Walter,” I stopped him. I was thinking of the first time I’d seen Croswell Industries’ branch office—the only time I’d seen it in the daylight—with its landing strip and neatly parked planes. “What kind of planes are in the Croswell fleet?”

“Well, there’s a Lear Jet and a Beechcraft Bonanza for the long hauls. And a five-passenger Navion. And sometimes in a pinch they rent something. But I never got my license if you’re thinking—”

“Hazel, you can fly a Navion,” I interrupted Walter again. I got up out of my chair. “Amigos, we’re going to be in Málaga in the morning.” I began to pace the floor. “We’re going out to the Croswell airstrip tonight and kidnap us one Navion airplane.”

“Tonight?” Walter echoed. “You mean we’re not going to be able to use these beds?”

“That’s what I mean,” I said.

Walter Croswell groaned lengthily.

“Are you serious, Earl?” Hazel asked. She looked
across the room at me. She was perched on the edge of a chair, with Lisa seated on the floor between her knees while Hazel combed out the girl’s shining black hair. “I don’t have that many hours in a plane at night. I’m not sure enough of my navigation.”

“Hey!” Walter sat up on the bed. “I passed the paperwork part of the flight instruction, including the navigation. I just didn’t get in enough time to solo before I went back to school last fall.”

“There you go,” I said with satisfaction. “The pair of you can check on each other’s navigation.”

“But why tonight?” Hazel argued. “Don’t we need the rest more?”

“No, we don’t.” I continued to pace the room. “The first reason we’ll do it tonight is because there’s no way we could get away with it in daylight. But an even better reason is that with as much heat as there is oozing down from the top in this country in the search for us, every cop in Spain is going to begin to smell a payoff for himself. The longer it takes us the harder it’s going to be.”

“Where would we land?” Hazel asked. “We surely wouldn’t ask for clearance into any Spanish airport.”

“We’ll land on the beach, as close to the hamlet of La Perla as we can make it.”

“In the dark?” she said skeptically. “Come on, Earl!”

“We’ll time it so we reach Málaga at dawn.”

Hazel laid down her comb. “I believe you’re serious,” she declared.

“Damn right I’m serious. We’ll never get a better chance to make it out of here. Hell,” I wheedled her, “you know you can fly a Navion. What’s the problem?”

She pursed her lips. “A night takeoff’s the problem. A dawn landing’s the problem. And on a sandy beach? Why am I listening to you?”

“Because I’m making sense. Those beaches are hard-packed.” I thought of something. “You don’t suppose we’d get to the Navion and find the gas tank empty, do you?”

“No problem there.” Hazel and Walter said it in unison.

“All the company planes are serviced completely as soon as they’re back on the ground,” Walter continued.

“All planes,” Hazel amended his statement.

“So we’re all set.”

“All set!” Hazel snorted.

“Walter, I suppose there’s a night watchman who checks the planes?” I went on.

“He probably does periodically, but his main concern is the warehouse.” Walter frowned. “He’ll have to be avoided, though.”

Avoided, hell, I thought. He’ll have to be immobilized so he’s not spreading the alarm three minutes after we’re in the air.

“The planes aren’t hangared?” Hazel asked Walter.

“No, they’re just staked down.”

“Do you know if they have charts aboard? Most do, but we’d have egg on our faces for sure if this one doesn’t,” Hazel continued.

“I’m not sure,” Walter admitted. “I’ve seen the charts Jimmy Conway uses, of course. Why would he take them out of the plane?”

“To plot a flight.” Hazel shrugged. “To prevent the very thing we’re going to attempt. No charts, no flight.”

“We’ll have to risk it,” I said. “What time is it, nearly eleven? We’d better get going.”

“We’re going to check out?” Hazel asked.

“We’re going to walk out.”

“But Julio will be looking for you here in the morning.”

“Julio’s a smart boy. If we’re not here, he’ll just go on about his business. Our business. He’s been paid.”

“What business is that?” Walter asked curiously.

I explained briefly about sending the wayward brother of the Croswell receptionist to rescue Karl Erikson. “I was going to have him buy a car for us tomorrow, but that won’t be necessary now,” I concluded.

“So what do we do? Get a cab?” Hazel asked.

“Sure. We’ll—” I stopped. “No. Hold it. We don’t want a cab. A description afterward of the four of us together would make it that much easier for the cops.” My thoughts were racing ahead. “And we want to be able to drive right out on the airstrip alongside the Navion.”

“In case there’s no flight charts, or we have to pull out of there for some other reason,” Walter nodded. “But getting an automobile this time of night—” His nod turned into a negative headshake.

“I’ll liberate one,” I said. “Where’s the inn’s garage? I didn’t see any cars on the way in, did you?”

“Yes, beyond an iron grille to the right as we came in. It’s a separate entrance, sort of an alleyway.”

“Let’s hope there’s a few late diners who aren’t staying all night,” I said. “I’ll need a little bait.” I looked at Hazel, then changed my mind. “No, baby, in innocent good looks you’re lacking a little something.” I pointed to the silent Lisa who had been sitting on the floor all this time, listening. “You.”

She rose to her feet at once. “Why can’t I go with you?” Walter asked uneasily.

“I told you. I don’t need muscle; I need bait.”

“Whaddya mean in innocent good looks I’m lacking something?” Hazel demanded.

“You look too much like Salome with John the Baptist’s head on the platter.”

“One of these days it’ll be your head,” the redhead sniffed.

Lisa smiled. “Ready?” I asked her.

“I’m ready,” she answered.

“We’ll all leave,” I said to the others, “but you two wait by the fountain, out of sight, until we come and get you.”

We left the room, with Walter taking a final regretful look at the unused beds. I tucked Lisa’s arm into mine, and we led the way. It was a risk, the two of us pairing up, because neither of us knew any Spanish, but for this expedition we shouldn’t need any.

Lisa and I continued on when Walter and Hazel eased into the greenery near the fountain. We went out the front entrance, turned left on the narrow sidewalk, and turned left again down the alley Walter had described. It was a clear night; there were stars. The air felt soft and balmy. I removed my belt and wrapped it around my right hand so the buckle rested squarely on my knuckles.

There was only a single light in the farthest corner of the parking lot. The cars were almost indistinguishable dark hulks. “When we get a pigeon, give him time to get to his car so we know which one it is,” I said quietly. “Then call attention to yourself so that he wants to talk to you. Let him see your face. You might not see me until the last second.”

“I misjudged you, Mr. Drake,” the girl said softly when I started to turn away from her. I paused. The ridiculous sound of “Mr. Drake” at that moment made me realize she had never addressed me directly. She had very little to say at any time, of course, the result of an environment where it was all too easily possible to say too much.

“I thought you had left Mr. Erikson to die,” she continued when I didn’t answer her. “I apologize for my thought.”

“Where did you first meet Walter?” I changed the subject.

“At a youth hostel. I put myself in his way deliberately.” She said it defiantly. “I had no one to help me, and he was confident, and cheerful, and capable.”

“And good-looking.”

She smiled. “Yes. Although all that came much later. At first I thought I would use him to get across the border. But as time went on—”

“Chemistry took over.”

She nodded. “And then they found the cigarettes he had forgotten in his pack.”

“Did they have anything on you? On the marijuana bit, I mean? Could you have walked away?”

“Not by that time,” she said simply. “Even though I was a courier. But all the time I recognized that it was the newspaper that was important, not me.”

“We’d better get set up here,” I said. “Stand between two cars until our customer shows up. I’ll be right across the way.”

I moved across the parking lot opposite her position, putting my feet down carefully to minimize the whispering sound of loose gravel underfoot. I had already noted that there was a belt of grass around the gravel on which I could move silently to get behind our proposed victim when he appeared.

Lisa was a gutsy kid. At times she sounded much older than her years. Honest, too. Naturally in her position, on the run, she’d grabbed for all the help she could get. She had the quiet kind of good looks that grow on a man. They’d grown on Walter. The way he’d read me off coming back from our midnight foray in the mountain village that night announced the demise of the playboy.

No one had come down the alley, and I was beginning to get itchy. If no one came, going out on the street and stealing a parked car was the only alternative, and that was a far more risky cup of tea. It would probably involve finding an American car, too, since jump-switching a European car might require techniques with which I wasn’t familiar.

I couldn’t see Lisa across the way; she had blended into the shadows. I was thinking again about the two kids making it in such unusual circumstances when I heard the scrunch-scrunch of heels on gravel. I could see a man’s silhouette, bulkier than I would have chosen if I’d been in a position to do the selecting. At this time of night, though, we weren’t going to get too many chances.

The man stopped beside a car, and I could hear him fumbling through the change in his pocket for his car keys. Then the money-tinkling sound stopped. Lisa had moved out from between the parked cars and made a small, feminine sound of distress.

“¿Que pasa?”
the man said sharply, turning toward her.

She turned her head until the parking lot’s single overhead light was upon her face. The bulky man gave a soft, chirruping sound of appreciation. He left his car and walked toward Lisa.

I made a quick half-circuit on the grassy belt until I was in back of him as he stood in front of the girl. He placed two fingers under her chin to tilt her head upward so he could see still better. He chuckled deeply as I tiptoed silently toward him.
“¿Como está, querida?”
he was saying when I stopped behind him, close enough to smell his hair tonic.
“¿Que—”

I knew he hadn’t heard me, but there is such a thing as instinct.

I lived by it myself for years.

The bulky man started to turn toward me.

I had already launched my swing, aimed for under his ear, but he turned the wrong way. I missed him cleanly, and I heard the quick sucking sound of his breath as he gathered it to yell.

I might have got him with a second swing before he bugled his awareness of the ambush. I’ll never know, because Lisa took a quick step forward and drove her knee upward into the bulky man’s groin. He gasped, then started to double up. I grabbed his shoulders and held him up long enough to hit him the shot I’d intended for him in the first place. From the look on his face I did him a real favor when I knocked him unconscious.

“Nice save, partner,” I grunted, stooping to take hold of the man’s feet. I dragged him off the gravel onto the grass and over behind some bushes. I replaced the belt of my pants before I took the man’s car keys and money to make it look like an ordinary robbery. I ripped off his tie and belt to tie his hands and feet. I made a serviceable gag from the tail of his shirt. I didn’t want the car reported stolen too soon.

“Quick, now,” I said to Lisa. The victim’s car was a Renault station wagon. We got into the front seat, and I backed out of the parking slot and maneuvered cautiously along the narrow alley. We made the street successfully, and I parked in front of the entrance to the Posada San Carlos, leaving the motor running. “Wait,” I told Lisa as I got out from under the wheel.

I whistled as soon as I was inside the inn’s garden. Walter and Hazel materialized instantly from behind the thickest greenery. “Okay?” Walter asked anxiously. I knew he had Lisa in mind.

“Thanks to your girl friend,” I said. “I blew it, but she backstopped me.”

We all went out to the car. Walter and Hazel climbed in back, but Walter reached over the front seat to give Lisa a quick hug. “Whew!” Hazel exclaimed feelingly. “That was a long wait in that garden!”

“What’s the flight time from Madrid to Málaga?” I asked.

“We were talking about that,” Hazel replied. “Walter thinks it would take no more than an hour and a half in the Navion, probably not that long. If we don’t want to get there until dawn, we’ve got some time to kill.”

“We’re certainly not going to kill it riding around on the street,” I said grimly. “We’re not wearing the right kind of clothes to be night-time joyriding in this country if anyone should take an interest.” I thought of something else. “Is the airstrip lighted, Walter?”

“Just runway lights. There’s a switchbox on the field near the parked planes, but I know it will be locked. It always is unless Jimmy has filed to come in.”

“If it’s a lock, it can be opened,” I said. “I was afraid we might have to park this car at one end of the runway with the headlights on to give Hazel a target to aim at on takeoff.”

“Please!” Hazel responded in reproof. “There’s enough that can create trouble on this deal without wishing that on me.”

I had been trying to backtrack on Julio’s route from Croswell Industries to the railroad yards, but we were in an area that looked unfamiliar to me. “Better take over the navigation of this vehicle, Walter,” I said. “Get us to Croswell. The sooner we’re off the street the better.”

He checked street signs and had me change direction.

“How much air time does the Navion provide with a full load of gas?” I went on.

“We were talking about that, too,” he answered. “With its twin tanks, I figure three hours, maybe a little more or a little less. That’s twice what we need to make it. Say, what about the night watchman at Croswell? Do you think we can hide out on the grounds for several hours, car and all?”

“No, I don’t think so,” I replied. “We’ll play this hand differently. We’ll drive right up to the warehouse side door with the headlights blazing, so he’ll think it’s something legitimate. Then when he comes out to see what it is, we’ll scoop him. Does he have any time clocks to punch?”

“I doubt it.”

“I’ll check on it.”

We rode the balance of the distance in silence. I kept trying to think of things that might go wrong. If Hazel just got the plane into the air, I felt we’d make it. If she didn’t, well, nothing else needed to go wrong.

“Next block,” Walter interrupted my thoughts.