CHAPTER 19

“Oil,” Caine said finally and glanced out the window at the shiny blue surface of the Pacific, far below.

“What the world needs now is oil, sweet oil,” Harris crooned off-key to the tune of an old love song. He reached up and pressed the button for the pretty blond flight attendant in the modish yellow Braniff uniform that made her look like an extra on the Star Trek set. When she came over, Harris ordered another round of martinis. As she walked back to the first-class cabin bar, Harris contemplated her cute behind with a dreamy smile of pleasure.

“So that was the why behind the Starfish,” Caine mused.

“Biggest damn strike since the North Slope in Alaska. That’s what started all the balls bouncing. It was first brought to our attention by Sobil National, a consortium of American companies headed by Sobil Oil, the company who made the first strike on the Santiago River, a tributary of the Marañon. You were closer than you knew with that Petrotex cover, Johnny. You almost blew it right then and there,” Harris said, glancing around to make sure they weren’t overheard.

The flight attendant returned with the drinks and a couple of extra bags of peanuts. She almost spilled the drinks, because she couldn’t take her eyes off Caine. That was hardly surprising, considering the fact that his picture had been plastered across the front page of every major newspaper in the world for the past two days. Caine smiled absentmindedly at her and she responded with an inviting grin. Caine sipped moodily at his drink and she turned away with a shrug. The martini had that vaguely metallic taste that he always associated with pressurized cabin air.

“Then Sobil Oil was the fifth arm of the Starfish,” Caine said. Harris nodded.

“How did von Schiffen and ODESSA get involved?” Caine asked.

Harris lit two cigarettes and handed one to Caine, as if he were Paul Henreid about to tell Bette Davis that the affair was over.

“That was the funny part,” Harris admitted. “Nobody knows who or where von Schiffen is. All we know for sure is that von Schiffen heads ODESSA. Von Schiffen acquired the mineral and oil rights to almost the entire Peruvian Amazon about twenty years ago as a perfectly legitimate business investment, using some of ODESSA’S vast funds. At the time most of his Kameraden probably thought he was crazy, but ODESSA isn’t exactly run in a democratic fashion. Anyway, von Schiffen owned it all.

“Sobil had information indicating that the left-wing military junta that runs the Peruvian government planned to nationalize the Amazon oil fields and that’s when we got involved. If the Peruvians took over the fields, the American consumer would have never seen a drop of that oil. The biggest oil strike in history, right in our own backyard, found by us and they were going to lock us out of it.

“It went right to the top, Johnny. The DCI himself took it to the National Security Council and they gave us our marching orders: The energy crisis is the moral equivalent of war and we were to secure the Peruvian oil for the U.S. no matter what the cost. Out of that came the Starfish Conspiracy.”

Caine angrily stubbed out his cigarette and stared out of the window at the endless ocean. Somewhere in the shadowed depths of the sea thousands of starfish were undoubtedly crawling. They always came back, he though grimly. The Bourbons. The Nazis. Like starfish, they could regenerate themselves from the tiniest fragment. A starfish cannot be killed, only exterminated, he thought.

“So we decided to overthrow the legitimate Peruvian government and replace it with a Nazi regime who agreed to sell us the oil. Congratulations, Bob. You’ve risen to a new low,” Caine said, realizing how stupid he sounded. Insulting Harris was like pouring water on a duck.

“Not a Nazi regime, Johnny,” Harris said mildly, bringing out his sincere smile as though it were a gift. “A coalition government of right-wing Peruvian Army officers and certain acceptable representatives from ODESSA. Shit, ever since the leftist General Velasco was forced out in ’75, the junta has been moving to the right, thanks to a few key ODESSA appointments in the right spots—and a little help from us. And why the hell shouldn’t we pursue our own interests? We were well within our rights. Monroe Doctrine and all that. Besides, we’re the ones who found the oil in the first place.”

“Monroe Doctrine my ass! If you’re going to be a pirate, at least fly the skull and crossbones. What we’re talking about are Nazis, for Christ’s sake! That means Peru would be a Nazi enclave, just as Paraguay is already. Chile is further to the right than Genghis Khan and if the Nazis make common cause with the Perónistas and their own fascists in Argentina, then most of South America, with all its potential riches, falls into ODESSA’S hands. And we’ll have done it! Us! The good guys!” Caine retorted angrily.

“We’ve always known about your somewhat liberal tendencies,’ Johnny,” Harris said, as if he were describing the symptoms of a disease. “Don’t you think it’s about time you grew up? The Company’s job is to protect American interests. And if getting rid of a leftist Peruvian regime and securing oil for the U.S. in the middle of an energy crisis isn’t in America’s national interest, then what the hell is? You’ve had your head up your ass since Laos. Believe me, if this damned Mendoza business hadn’t cropped up, we would have never pulled you in. You’re a wild card, Johnny. We don’t know which way you’ll jump, that’s why you were marked lousy in the Company. Unfortunately for us, you were the perfect man for the job. So we had to run you blind, without you knowing about it.”

“Did you know that Mendoza was Mengele?” Caine asked.

“No. That was a brilliant piece of work,” Harris admitted. “All we knew was what Sobil passed along from von Schiffen, that Mengele was somewhere in the Amazon. Naturally he had to be brought around the corner. With people crawling all over the Amazon in the middle of an oil boom, it was inevitable that someone would spot him. It wouldn’t look good, us playing ball with a team that had Mengele on their side. If it had been almost anybody else, we might have tried another ploy. But the infamous Angel of Death of Auschwitz was a little too hot for us. You know how it is, Johnny. The public might get the wrong idea about what we were up to.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Caine put in archly.

Harris ignored him. He drained his martini and signaled for another.

“His existence endangered the entire op. That’s when we decided to run a mission. As soon as we knew Mengele was involved, we knew the Jews would be interested. That’s how we connected with Wasserman. He agreed to act as the cover and to finance the Mengele phase. But nobody knew where Mengele was or how to get at him. We needed a specialist. You,” Harris said.

“Why didn’t Mengele go to ground again?” Caine asked.

“Who the hell knows?” Harris shrugged. “He may have actually begun to believe in the role he was playing—the saintly Dr. Mendoza, the Albert Schweitzer of the Amazon. Maybe it was his way of expiating the guilt. Who knows? All we knew for sure was that he was adamant and that his refusal to leave his Amazon sanctuary caused a major power struggle within ODESSA. That’s where you came in,” Harris said.

The flight attendant brought them another round. She stared at Caine like a kid with her nose pressed against the toy-store window. Harris glanced at her with annoyance and she moved away. Harris punched Caine’s arm playfully. The martinis were starting to get to him. Any minute now he would be breaking into a sentimental song, Caine thought irritably.

“It really was a sensational op, Johnny,” Harris enthused, exhaling a miasma of gin at Caine. “Just sensational. You weren’t officially connected to the Company anymore. You had the right languages and skills for the job. We baited the hook with money and a chance for you to be the knight in shining armor against a real, live dragon. There was even the beautiful damsel for you to play with. We thought of everything. That’s why I was in Berlin. To make sure you got on the right track. It was a sensational op. We took every detail into account.”

“Except one,” Caine put in.

“Except one,” Harris admitted grudgingly. “We never figured you to get out of the jungle alive. Nobody knows how you did it, kiddo,” Harris said, and playfully punched Caine’s arm again. Caine looked at Harris with his icy green eyes.

“Don’t ever touch me again, Bob,” he said softly.

Harris looked away, then turned back to Caine with a truculent expression that gave him the cute-ugly appearance of a bulldog puppy.

“Let me tell you, when we spotted your ad in the Times, we all went into a state of shock. But you gotta believe me, Johnny, that was the one part of it that I didn’t like. Sending you on a one-way mission. But I’m glad you made it, you son of a gun. That was the one part that bothered me.”

“How did you spring me?” Caine asked. Maybe it had bothered Harris to send him around the corner. Harris was a little too fastidious to enjoy wet work. It really wasn’t his field. Harris fancied the role of the éminence gris, the man behind the throne with clean hands and a Colgate smile.

Harris raised his glass in a silent toast to himself, then drained the martini with a flourish. He popped the olive in his mouth and chewed it, obviously pleased with himself.

“It’s been a rough two days, Johnny. You don’t know what I’ve had to go through to get hold of you.”

“Remind me to cry when you get to the sad parts, Bob,” Caine said. Harris grimaced, his expression implying that field agents never did appreciate what a senior case officer had to go through.

“We did a deal with Presidente Diaz. It was the only way. The Peruvians were planning a big show trial for you. It was quite a scenario: CIA spy kills the good Dr. Mendoza, the saint of the Amazon, as a part of an American imperialist plot. The Commies and the Third World press would have had a field day with it! By the time I got to Lima to try and plug the dike, you were front-page news all over the world,” Harris said.

That was true enough, Caine thought. They had escorted him from his cell under heavy guard and with great care, as though he were a shipment of delicate porcelain. They returned his belongings to him in the warden’s office, where he put on his linen suit. They returned everything to him, except the vial with Mengele’s thumb. When Caine asked about it, Harris nudged him. That was obviously part of the deal. But that didn’t matter anymore. All that mattered to him was that they returned his keys intact. Most of the keys were phonies, but two were critical; the safety-deposit keys to boxes in L.A. and New York. He was going to need them if he was ever going to stop the Starfish and get out of this alive.

There hadn’t been enough time to wash up before he left the prison. The Peruvians were clearly anxious to get him off their hands. They drove Harris and Caine to the airport in a giant motorcade, flanked by hundreds of soldiers and security police. The police kept a swarm of shouting newsmen and photographers away from him as they ushered him through the terminal and onto the Braniff jet to Los Angeles which Harris had arranged to have standing by. It wasn’t until they were safely aboard in the first-class cabin and the plane had taken off that Caine was able to head for the lavatory. He ignored the curious stares of the few first-class passengers as he made his way back to the lavatory, where he shaved and washed. His white linen suit was smudged and wrinkled, giving him the appearance of one of the seedier characters in a Humphrey Bogart movie and he tried to smooth it out as best he could. He felt almost human again by the time he made his way back to his seat.

“How did the Peruvians know that I had been with the Company?” Caine wondered aloud.

“They didn’t at first,” Harris remarked with a snort of derision. “For them the Company is simply a convenient scapegoat for anything that goes wrong. If a traffic light goes out in Lima, they’re liable to blame it on CIA agents. It was one of their standard propaganda ploys. This time it just happened to be true,” Harris said with a shrug.

“Poor misunderstood CIA. What was the deal, anyway?”

“Obviously we couldn’t let you stand up in court before the world press and blow the Starfish wide open. That would have made the beating we took on Chile from the Congress and the press look like a love-in. Anyway, I made a deal with Diaz and sweetened it with good old Yankee dolares.

“The deal is that we won’t reveal that Mendoza was really Mengele. Diaz was very sensitive to charges that the Peruvian government was providing a haven for Nazi war criminals. In exchange they turned you over to us and let the CIA off the hook. It was all a mistake. Subsequent evidence now indicates that the saintly Dr. Mendoza died of snakebite. Flags are flying at half-mast in his honor all over Peru. The United Nations is thinking of issuing a commemorative plaque,” Harris said, his voice unctuous with mock sympathy.

Caine pressed the seat button and leaned back, closing his eyes for a moment. He was feeling tired and knew that soon he would need all the energy he could get. The irony of it, he thought. Honoring Mengele’s memory. And yet in this topsy-turvy world it made a curious kind of sense. In the army the brass often covered up a fiasco by handing the culprit a medal. But then the whole damned op had been an exercise in irony from start to finish.

“It’s ironic,” he muttered.

“What is?” Harris asked.

“Mengele wasn’t killed for the Jews at all. He was killed to help the Nazis,” he said disgustedly.

“You’re in the big leagues now, kiddo. You can’t tell the players without a Scoreboard these days,” Harris said.

Caine massaged his closed eyelids with his fingertips. Blue and yellow spots floated across the darkness, and for a second he was reminded of the butterflies. He opened his eyes and he was back in the cabin, looking out the window at the pale blue sky. Far below he could see a small white cloud floating on the wind like a dandelion. He turned away from the tranquil skyscape and looked at Harris. Peace was just a dream, he reminded himself. The Starfish was still running.

“Tell me, Bob. Has it occurred to you planning genuises that the ousted left might not take kindly to a Nazi regime?” Caine asked. Harris lit a cigarette with a gold Dunhill lighter and exhaled slowly and evenly. He picked a fleck of tobacco off his lower lip.

“You haven’t been listening, Johnny,” Harris began patiently, like a teacher with a not-very-bright pupil. This is a first-class op. Everything has been taken into account. Everything. If the left wants to try something, we’ll be ready.”

“You realize you’re talking about a guerrilla war. One that just might tear the whole South American continent apart,” Caine said.

“Well, naturally we intend to keep the Russkies out of our backyard. I think we can safely assume that an ODESSA-backed government will be appropriately thorough in handling political extremists. Of course, there is a contingency plan just in case things do get out of hand.”

“You mean advisers, Special Forces, Company men—that sort of thing,” Caine prompted.

“Well, that would be the only logical way to handle it,” Harris admitted.

“Sensational, Bob. Just sensational. It’s just like Nam all over again, only this time we’ll be fighting for the Nazis instead of Diem. I’ve got to hand it to you guys. You’ve come a long way, baby. There’s just one thing—”

“What’s that?” Harris said, looking speculatively at Caine, as though he were trying to guess his weight.

“What are you going to do about me? I’m the only one who knows all about the Starfish and can prove it. You didn’t haul me out of Peru so that I could come back and sell my memoirs to The Washington Post. So what are you going to do about me?” Caine said, his emerald eyes focused directly at Harris, as though he were peering at him over a gun barrel.

Harris sighed heavily. This was the touchy part, the question he had been waiting for. He trotted out his sincere smile, like a singer with a single tune.

“We’ve decided to put you on ice, Johnny. There’s a Senate Intelligence Subcommittee investigation starting and we want to make sure you don’t testify. So we’re going to put you in cold storage for a while. Don’t worry, kiddo. We’ll take care of you,” Harris said and winked, invoking the esprit de corps of the professional agent.

“What about C.J. and Wasserman?” Caine asked.

“Her, too. We’ll keep Wasserman under surveillance, of course. Besides, he knows it’s in his own interest to keep his mouth shut.”

Caine stared at Harris and shook his head slowly. Harris really had him figured for an idiot, he thought. Not even the greenest recruit would fall for that two-bit bedtime story. There was only one way that they could ever be sure he wouldn’t spill his guts.

“You’d be better off terminating me, Bob. Safer that way,” Caine said quietly.

“Now, Johnny, don’t talk that way. You’re family. And you handled this Mendoza business just great,” Harris said, shaking his head. “Don’t go off the deep end on this, kiddo. Remember, I’m your friend.”

“That’s what Benedict Arnold told George Washington,” Caine replied.

“Now just wait one damn minute, Johnny boy. You’re the assassin, not me. You’re the one who murdered Mengele for money—and the Nazis. So don’t go all ‘Holy Joe’ on me, kiddo,” Harris retorted angrily.

Caine turned away and stared out the window for a long while. When he turned back, Harris was grumpily sipping at another martini, an adolescent pout on his boyish face.

“We’re all assassins, Bob. Don’t you know that yet?” Caine inquired quietly. He didn’t wait for an answer and pulled down the windowshade and pressed the seat button to a reclining position. He leaned back gingerly, as if entering a hot bathtub, and closed his eyes. The hum of the jets sounded in his ears like the constant roar of the surf on some distant shore.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are on our final approach to LAX and will be landing in approximately ten minutes. Please fasten your seat belts and observe the No Smoking sign. The weather in Los Angeles is slightly overcast and a pleasant seventy-two degrees. On behalf of Captain Wilson and the flight crew, we want to thank you for flying Braniff and hope you’ll fly with us again. Have a pleasant day,” the flight attendant’s metallic voice announced over the loudspeaker, with all the spontaneity of a tape recording.

Caine pressed the seat button and adjusted the seat to an upright position. Harris crushed out a cigarette and straightened his tie.

“Now listen. When we land, you are not to say anything to the reporters. Not a word, get it?” Harris said.

Caine nodded, but he scarcely heard him. His mind was busy with other plans. It was all a matter of timing, he thought. The only chance he had was to move so quickly that they wouldn’t have the time to react. His best assets were that he was willing to die and they weren’t and that their own secretiveness and bureaucracy would slow down their lines of communication. He would have to complete the job before they even knew what had happened.

The plane made a wide turn over Westchester, the single-family rooftops forming a neat Monopoly board pattern as the plane came in. Just below him he could see the oval green of the Hollywood Park racetrack. Sunlight glinted off the El Segundo oil refinery, looking somewhat unfinished, like the ruins of a vanished industrial civilisation. The air was hazy with smog that misted from the brown Santa Monica hills to the white-capped waves beyond the shore. There was a slight bounce and the rumble of the tires on the runway, his body lurching forward as the brakes were applied.

Caine and Harris were the first ones let off the plane. They walked side by side through the connecting tunnel to the terminal gate. At the mouth of the tunnel he could see a jumble of reporters and photographers, flashbulbs popping, behind a police cordon. Standing at the the foot of the gate to receive him were Chuck Powell, a southerner with a bland “good-ole-boy” expression and blow-dryed hair, who was the Company’s public spokesman; Smiley Gallagher, wearing a rumpled suit and a beatific smile on his pudgy face; and two unsmiling types with beefy torsos straining at their dark suits, who were obviously there for muscle.

“Make it look good, kiddo,” Harris hissed and smiled at the crowd.

“What do I get if I do, Bob? A berth on the Good Ship Dollipop?” Caine remarked.

They were engulfed by Powell, Gallagher, and the Company men, who formed a ring around Caine, reinforced by a flying wedge of LAPD cops. They moved rapidly through the throng of newsmen and wide-eyed spectators that ran alongside the cortege. A noisy jumble of voices shouted questions about Mendoza and the CIA and Powell and Harris kept snapping, “No comment! No comment!” as they shoved their way through the melee. Caine glanced quickly around as they neared the down escalator to the street level. In all this crowd and with all the cameras he didn’t think they would shoot. The escalator was his best shot, because it funneled the crowd and minimized the number of people in front of him. A cop and one of the shields got on in front of Caine, with Harris, Smiley, and Powell right behind.

Caine stepped onto the escalator and Harris moved onto the same step. As they glided down, Caine took a deep breath and shifted slightly, but something alerted Harris and he took hold of Caine’s jacket lapel.

“Don’t do anything stupid, Johnny,” Harris whispered.

“I warned you—” Caine began and started his move.

He locked Harris’s hand to his jacket with his right hand and smashed the base of his left palm against the outside of Harris’s elbow, breaking it. Harris screamed.

Caine slipped past the shield in front as the lead cop began to turn around. Caine’s foot caught him in the chest, knocking him down into the crowd in front. They tumbled like bowling pins and the escalator was clogged with screaming people and tangled limbs. Caine vaulted over the handrail and began sliding down the slick metal incline beside the escalator. A shot rang out near his ear and he was running and sliding down the incline amid the panicked shouts and popping flashbulbs.

He leaped to the ground and dodged through the crowd, knocking people aside. Someone was shouting “Stop him!” and he crashed into a businessman carrying a briefcase and a valise. They tumbled to the ground in a tangle, the businessman cursing loudly, and then Caine was up and running. He glanced briefly back over his shoulder. The second shield and one of the cops had reached the foot of the escalator and had snapped into a two-handed firing position, but people were in the way and they held their fire. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted one of the gray-uniformed airport security guards moving to head him off and he ran even harder, bursting through the open doorway to the street, crowded with double-parked cars unloading.

A middle-aged woman in a Chevy station wagon was seated behind the wheel, while another woman was getting out of the front seat. Caine shoved the woman behind the wheel over, leaped into the driver’s seat, and slammed the car door.

“Don’t move, lady, or I’ll kill you,” he snapped at the startled woman, his eyes glittering murderously as he started the car.

“Who are you?” she asked in a quavering voice, her eyes wide in terror.

“Shut up, goddamnit!” he growled urgently. He put the car into gear and pulled into the heavy traffic flow. He turned around and saw a couple of cops and the second shield running after them on the sidewalk. Another cop jumped into a taxi, but it was momentarily blocked by the traffic.

“Take it easy, lady,” Caine ordered, noting a movement out of the corner of his eye as he picked up speed. He knew he would have to switch cars as soon as possible. It was only a matter of seconds before they had an APB out on him and the vehicle. He took the turn off to Sepulveda Boulevard and raced through the light, nearly sideswiping a van. Then they were speeding down Lincoln Boulevard, weaving in and out of traffic, angry drivers blowing their horns and gesticulating obscenely at them.

He spotted a line of taxis outside the Airport Marina Hotel and suddenly pulled over with a screech of brakes. He leaped out, stuck his fist in his jacket pocket as though it were a gun, and told her to take off. She hardly needed urging, and with a last frightened glance at him she moved over to the driver’s seat and pulled quickly away.

Caine ran across Lincoln Boulevard, just beating a wave of oncoming cars and jumped into the first cab. The Chicano driver started to move and leisurely flicked on the meter. Caine told him there was a C-note in it for him if he got him to Hollywood in fifteen minutes.

“You got it, hombre,” the driver shouted happily and gunned the engine as if he were on the starting line at Indy.

The cab leaped forward and the driver stopped to turn onto Manchester, as a police car tore down Lincoln, its siren wailing like a voice of doom. The cab sped down Manchester and headed north on La Cienega, over Baldwin Hills. The oil pumps scattered over the brown hills relentlessly bobbed up and down like giant mechanical insects feeding on the vast corpse of the city. Oil and money, that’s all it was ever about, Caine thought bitterly as the taxi came over the rise. The city spread out before him, swathed in a smoky white shroud of smog, as though the city were burning from an unseen fire.

As the taxi weaved through the heavy traffic on La Cienega, Caine checked his watch, trying to compute how much time he had before Wasserman and C.J. got the news. The taxi radio was tuned to hard rock music, and fearful of a news broadcast, Caine told the driver to shut it off and concentrate on his driving. The Chicano glanced reproachfully at Caine in the rearview mirror as he turned into the broad expanse of Wilshire Boulevard.

Caine told the driver to slow down on Wilshire and the driver nodded, as they drove past the expensive stores and office buildings. The last thing he needed now was to get stopped for speeding. He ordered the driver to pull over at the Bank of America branch and wait for him, jumping out of the cab before the Chicano had time to object.

He walked directly to the counter without glancing around at the moderately crowded bank and signed the safety-deposit slip. The attractive blond teller, barely out of her teens, verified his signature and buzzed him in. As they fitted the two keys into the locks, he thanked his lucky stars for the hunch that had prompted him to rent the box before he had gone down to Peru.

Carrying the metal box, he followed the teller to the small cubicle. As she turned away, he locked the door and sat down with a sigh of relief. In a way a safety-deposit cubicle is the last sanctuary left to Western man, the one remaining place where his privacy is inviolate, he thought. He opened the box and took out the big S & W .44 Magnum revolver and cracked open the cylinder. He loaded it with the large and lethal-looking Remington hollow-head bullets and placed a handful of cartridges in his sagging jacket pocket. He took the $2,000 he had left in the box and put it in his inside pocket and stuck the heavy gun in his belt, buttoning his jacket over the bulge. At last he was ready for the Starfish, he thought grimly. He signaled for the teller and they returned the box to his slot. She wished him a good day and he mechanically returned her smile as he headed for the door.

Through the glass door he spotted a black-and-white police car stopped by the taxi, and without breaking stride, he turned on his heel, snapping his fingers as though he had forgotten something, and walked calmly to the side door to the parking lot. He walked through the lot away from Wilshire and turned down a palm-lined sidestreet. He walked a long block, then turned up Western Avenue and stopped at a coin-operated newspaper box. His own face grinned up at him from the front page of the Herald-Examiner, under the banner headline:

CIA INVOLVED IN MENDOZA DEATH?

He didn’t need to buy a paper to know that they were playing it cagey. The question mark at the end of the headline told him that the editors were worried about libel and security violation charges. They were probably relying on carefully worded innuendo to handle the story, he decided. He felt naked, standing there on a busy street with his face on the front page like that. He walked away and went into the big Thrifty Drugstore on the corner.

He bought a pair of sunglasses, a silly-looking canvas porkpie hat, and a cheap blue blazer. It was essential that he alter the image now that the APB was obviously out on him. He walked into a nearby restaurant and headed directly for the men’s room, where he put on the hat and sunglasses and changed jackets, putting the money and bullets into the blazer pockets. He left the white suit jacket hanging on the hook of the cubicle door. Whoever found it would assume that it had been left by an absentminded customer. He left the restaurant and mingled with the lunchtime crowd on Western until he was able to hail a taxi.

He had the leering driver drop him off about two blocks away from the massage parlor. As he strolled down Western, he kept checking the street. There was no problem in being open about it: furtive glances were normal in this seedy district. He hesitated as he neared the massage parlor. The beige Mercedes was parked in front and he could see Freddie’s hulking outline behind the wheel. Wasserman must have been tipped and was planning to get out, he surmised. He had gotten there just in time, he thought as he approached the car, checking the street one last time. It looked okay and then he exhaled slowly. Freddie’s nose was buried in a comic book. That was the break he needed, he thought, and walked up to the open window on the driver’s side. Caine pulled the S & W from his belt and stuck the muzzle into Freddie’s ear.

“Don’t even blink, Freddie baby,” Caine said.

Freddie started to turn his massive head. Caine jammed the muzzle harder into Freddie’s ear and the big man froze.

“This is a .44 Magnum, Freddie baby, so don’t even breathe. Now, reach very slowly over to the ignition with your left hand and, using just two fingers, pull out the key and carefully hold it out the window,” Caine said.

Freddie did as he was told and Caine pocketed the keys. Then he ordered Freddie out of the car, keeping the gun aimed at Freddie’s head and standing clear of the door, in case Freddie decided to try some heroics.

“Wasserman inside?” Caine asked.

“No, man. He’s left for the day,” Freddie said.

“You’re a lousy liar, Freddie baby,” Caine retorted, and jamming the muzzle against Freddie’s spine, he marched him into the empty massage parlor. The reception room was still lined with the same photos and somehow this time they made Caine think of Fong and the Venus flytrap. They’d caught him twice with sex. There wouldn’t be a third time, he vowed savagely.

“You’re making a big mistake, man,” Freddie’s voice rumbled as they stepped through the side door into the dim corridor to Wasserman’s office.

“Don’t be stupid. This isn’t one of your comic books,” Caine whispered, easily hiding himself behind Freddie’s giant bulk as they posed before the closed-circuit television camera. Caine prodded Freddie again with the gun.

“Open up. It’s me,” Freddie said.

For a long moment they stood there in the silent corridor, waiting. The steel door slid open with a faint hydraulic hiss. Caine prodded Freddie ahead of him as they walked into Wasserman’s office.