Ed Lacy - Shoot It Again

     The metal shutters were down, disappointing and surprising me—between six and nine p.m. generally was a good time for the tourist trade. Although it was a fairly large gallery, Hank never had help, even dusted himself. I once offered to work part-time but he wasn't interested.

     Standing on the corner for a moment, combing my hair as I wondered how I'd see him before I left... I saw Hank parking his ancient Citroen. He looked quite charming in sharp grey slacks, open white knitted shirt with a wildly colored shot-silk scarf boldly knotted around his strong neck. As I walked toward him, Hank smiled warmly, took a copy of the paper from the car. “Clayton, what a nice coincidence! I've come from your poor excuse for a hotel, looking for you.” He pointed the folded newspaper at me. “Never thought you the hero type. Wanted to have a talk before you leave tonight. Shame, those stinking bureaucrats ordered you out of the country.”

     “It's okay. Suddenly realized I've been over here too long,” I said, resisting the desire to shake—touch—his slim hand.

     “I agree with you.”

     I didn't know what that was supposed to mean. “Hank, I came by to talk about my water colors. If you're willing, keep them on display here. I'll let you know my address in the States, of course, in case you luck up on a buyer.”

     He nodded. “I expect to be in Paris next month, was thinking of placing some of your work in a gallery there run by a friend, perhaps doing an article on you.”

     “Really, Hank?” In my excitement I grabbed his hand, squeezed it.

     “We must talk—Care to take a ride, Clayton?”

     “I'm starved, have supper with me.”

     “Our talk isn't for a restaurant. Since you delight in savage sandwiches, I'll take you to a quiet place where the roast beef is tender, the beer properly chilled.”

     “Okay, if it isn't far. I haven't much time.” I was rattled. Intimate talk... what was he trying to tell me?

     Placing his arm around my shoulder, Hank said, “I'll have you back within the hour.”

     “Let's go.” If Hank cared... the hell with returning to the States!

     We drove up toward St. Roch, passing the dull palaces where Queen Victoria and other crowned heads sweated out the summers in the old days. Stopping at a remote and drab cafe, Hank took a corner table—away from the few customers, ordered sandwiches and beers. The roast beef was delicious and thick, with a sharp relish; the Austrian beer—dark and creamy. Lighting a small Dutch cigar, Hank told me, “We'll talk in English. This is a working man's cafe, I doubt if anybody understands English.”

     “You sound so melodramatic,” I said coyly, feeling contented—with the food, having him near.

     “Perhaps we are about to play out a real melodrama, cops and robbers stuff,” Hank said softly, tired eyes examining me. He had a number of delicate wrinkles around his neat lips. “Clayton, are you interested in making a sizable chunk of money?”

     “Hank, are you for true?”

     “Please! Your colloquial American sayings border the idiotic. Yes, I am for... true!”

     “How much?” I felt some regret but mostly relief—that he wasn't treating me as a fruit—on hearing this was to be a business talk. “What's the deal?”

     “Enough money to live comfortably on for—five years. Or, at the rate you're existing now, it could last the rest of your days. I can't tell you the details, unless you first agree to come in.”

     “Sounds like a con talk. Why all the mystery?”

     “Con? You mean... confidence man? Forget it, Clayton! Finish eating and I'll drive you back to town.” His handsome face was dark with anger.

     “Cool it, Hank. How can I decide when I haven't the faintest idea of what I'm to do?”

     “Merely decide to make more money than you've ever seen! You invest nothing, although there may be an element of risk.”

     “Risk? Doing what?”

     “Can't you understand—if I explain things to you, there's no backing out or... Let me put it this way: the risk involved is small compared to the risk if you refuse—once you know the details.”

     “Well... I have to think... about whatever this is,” I said, confused.

     “I've misjudged you,” Hank said, impatiently, puffing hard on his cigar. “Forget the whole thing... I was merely joking...”

     “How did you misjudge me?” Staring at me hard, he said coldly, “I was certain you'd sell your soul—forgive the trite phrase—for a fat buck.”

     I was so upset I couldn't eat. “You've got a hell of a high opinion of me. Henri, I thought we were friends?”

     “We are, or I wouldn't be risking my life talking to you. Clayton, the world is full of hustlers, everybody has larceny in them—it's the intelligent man who admits it, isn't afraid to take it from there. I'm also in this for the fast franc. Honesty means facing up to life. Clayton, you're a snot-nose.”

     “Thanks!” His eyes seemed to be grinning at me —although the thin mouth was a stern line—as if enjoying my hurt. The hell of it was: I knew I felt the way many of my girls must have—when I was brushing them off.

     “A snot-nose kid is cute, or merely annoying, but to find a forty-year-old...”

     “I'm only thirty-nine, louse!”

     “Biner, you're a tramp. A painting bum is no better than any other kind of tramp. In your case, there's not even the excuse of talent. You've been a pimp with a brush, a small time...”

     “You're blowing hard—for a smug old man with a bad ticker!” I cut in, showing him the check from the New York City gallery. “Even if you can't, they sold one of my abstracts! You've heard of this gallery—big time.”

     Hank laughed in my face. “Clayton, remember who you're talking to! I can sell a piece of used toilet paper if it's framed right! One sale doesn't prove a goddamn thing.”

     “I thought you liked my work? Hung it halfway back in your shop, so...”

     “I didn't bring you here to discuss art. You've learned a little technique, have a nice feeling for color. Right now you're a primitive—but you'll never be another Grandma Moses, believe me! Best you can ever become is a bad commercial artist who... Clayton, since you've never done an honest lick of work in your life, don't act goddamn offended when I offer you a chance to turn a large trick!”

     “As a gallery owner, living off the talents of others, you shouldn't knock pimping! And Hank, what the devil do you know of honest work? You think a season as second tackle on a pro football team was a piece of soggy cake? Sure, I left it because modeling was easier money, and if I've tried making it as an artist, so what? Just you damn well remember I've always been a working artist! I've kept producing, good or bad, working hard at my... Hank, as of this second you represent nothing but a sharp pain in my can!”

     His charming smile turned gentle again as he held up a slim hand. “Arguing will not get us anyplace. Clayton, I offered you a good proposition and all you do is start playing things coy.”

     “You've been beating around a fat bush, what did you expect me to say?”

     “To shout yes at the chance to make quiet money, ask what it's all about later!” He started to stand. “Come, I shall drive you back.”

     “Easy, Hank, old boy; I never said I wasn't interested. It's... How come you never mentioned this... eh... great deal before, during all the months I've known you? When I'm rushing to go home, after a hell of a rugged day, you pop off with a hazy offer.”

     “Hazy?” Hank stared at me again, eyes angry. “You haven't been listening to me carefully: told you I'm risking my life talking about this! That's the kind of deal this can be—I can say no more. Are you interested or not? Yes or no!”

     “Interested,” I mumbled, certain he was putting on some kind of act—his cracks about my work still steaming me.

     “You clearly understand, once I tell you the details, there's no backing out—whether you like the deal or not? They'll see to that.”

     “Who's 'they'?

     Hank placed his palms flat on the metal table, shrugged. “Frankly, I don't know. But 'they' won't hesitate at murder. Be absolutely certain you want in, Clayton.”

     I started eating again, and talking. “One second you're nagging, insulting me because I didn't jump through the hoop. Now, you seem to be discouraging me. Talk about playing it coy...!”

     “Merely reminding you there's no turning back.”

     “Okay. I'm in.”

     “You're positive?”

     “I'm in... in... in,” I told him, hamming it up, a trifle bored with his silly games.

     Hank motioned for the waiter. “Finish your sandwich in the car, while I tell you the details.”

     When I was sitting on the front seat, stuffing my fat trap with the last of the roast beef, Hank reached for a package on the rear seat. Unwrapping it, he held up one of the big, ugly glass cats he sold. “Clayton, tonight you will take such a cat back to New York City. Tomorrow you register at a certain hotel. Within a few hours a man calls for the statue. He will pay you fifty thousand dollars, take the cat with him. That's it.”

     Brushing crumbs from my face, I waited for the punch line to this sorry gag. “Fifty big bills for carrying one of these crummy cats? What's it made of, gold?”

     “The modern day gold, Clayton... inside the cat will be seven kilos of the purest heroin.”

CHAPTER 6

     “... so many people enter the USA, or any other country, it's a physical impossibility for Customs to thoroughly check everybody. When they do bag a smuggler, it's the result of a tip-off, the reward for informing. Most smugglers work on a small scale, making regular trips—word gets around and they're caught. We're only doing it once—one big haul. Few people are in on our deal—no chance of anybody blowing the whistle. I myself don't know who's the top man, and no one can know you're the courier—I hadn't picked you until an hour ago, when I read you were being deported. There's no reason for you to be suspected: you'll have a bill of sale, dated last month, showing you bought the cat at a small shop in Cagnes, for 72 NF. The statue is perfect, cloudy crystal with the inside mirrored —to all appearances a solid piece of cheap crystal. In New York you go to the Hotel Tran, on West 46th Street, register and wait...”

     “Not under my right name!” I cut in, hoping my voice didn't shake. Sitting beside Henri on the front seat of his car, I felt numb—unreal. I'd done many petty and lousy things, but never anything outright criminal... like this.

     Hank's slim fingers drummed impatiently on the steering wheel. “This must be as uncomplicated as possible. What name will you use?”

     “Collins. Stanley Collins.”

     “All right, you are now Stanley Collins—an ordinary name. You register and simply wait in your room—not more than a few hours, but wait there. Whoever calls to see you, will merely ask for a cat statue, hand you an envelope with your money in it; you give him the cat. That's the end of the matter, as far as you're concerned. Your job is to be sure the statuette is neither lost nor broken in transit.”

     “But... what do I do with it at Customs?” I asked, feeling like a spectator listening to my own voice.

     Henri smiled. “Clayton, again you're not listening to me: you are to do absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. You'll declare the cat, of course, along with a few cheap ash trays, perfume—the usual tourist junk. I'll give you everything, including the necessary bills of sale. Far as the weight and craftsmanship goes, you have nothing to worry about. And there can't be any informer—that's the beauty of the plan. Various criminal elements here, and undoubtedly the French authorities, know a quantity of heroin has been brought Into France over the past year. They don't know where it has been stored—and, most important, how it will leave the country! As I told you, this is a one shot deal—a big score—and no one with a criminal record is connected with this—here. There is one other element of risk—a tiny risk if you keep your fat mouth shut —should it become known you were carrying the junk, other... eh... crooks... in the States might try to hijack it. However there is little chance of that, you'll have delivered the cat and be through with your end in a matter of hours. I can assure you this has been a long time in the planning, and whoever is in charge has waited patiently for the right man, the right opportunity.”

     If my guts were in a knot, the food I'd eaten— lead; to my surprise I heard myself ask calmly, “Isn't this a lot of cabbage to pay for a simple operation like carrying a statue into the States?”

     “You have no idea how big this deal is, Clayton. Heroin comes eighty-seven per cent pure, and worth about three thousand dollars per kilo at its source. In other words, to start with, you will be carrying twenty-one thousand dollars' worth of heroin. In the States the value leaps to about seventy thousand dollars, but whoever is handling this has the organization to carry through the distribution: when the heroin is diluted and peddled, it's final price will be about three million dollars! So what you are being paid, and even my share... is relatively small change.”

     If still shaking with fear, the thought I was about to put my meathooks on anything worth three million bucks was staggering. Hand read my mind. Patting my knee he said in his precise English, “Clayton, please don't try to be 'clever.' You're being well paid and any double-cross would certainly result in your death. While I think you're a bit of the fool, I wouldn't have approached you if I considered you stupid.”

     Under my numbness I was angry at the way he kept calling me a fool. “Just to be sure I'm getting that well founded picture, how can you be certain I won't inform?”