I REALIZED AS I RAN her out into the freshening breeze and sparkling sea toward the mainland, that it was the first time I had ever had Daisy Mae out alone. Always before there was somebody with me, Sonny, or Chantal, or Marie. I loved being alone on her.
I would have loved to take her up along the coast exploring by myself.
Instead, I ran her to Glauros.
The chauffeur and the big black Rolls were waiting on the dock. It was going to be the same routine, with me the football again. Well, I had had some practice being a football lately. I told the chauffeur he was going to have to wait a bit for kickoff time.
“Very good, sir,” he said, with English unruffleability. He was still sporting his big .357 Magnum in his armpit.
The doctor was down the single street of Western storefronts. He had a snazzy waiting room. His receptionist took me ahead of several poor-looking Greek women with haggard faces, when she saw my face. It took him about ten minutes to sew me up. Nine stitches.
But it was when he looked at the X-ray of my ribs that he got excited.
Unfortunately, he spoke English. He also had that overdeveloped sense of his own importance the medical profession gives a man who gets used to being vastly overpaid for helping humanity.
“When did this happen?” Sternly.
“Four days ago,” I said.
“My dear sir, you have been walking around for four days with two broken ribs. Your physical activity, whatever it has been, has aggravated them considerably. You should be in bed. Instead, it appears you have been in some kind of a fight. You have this strange abrasion on your back that looks like a human bite.”
“Doc,” I said. “What can you do for the ribs?”
He shrugged. “Tape them up. Then go to bed. Take care of yourself until they can knit.”
“I’ll do that, Doc, as soon as I can,” I said.
“You must do it now,” he said brusquely. “By the way, that was an excellent bandage, that you had there. Who did it?”
“I did it myself.”
He stared at me.
“Well, I instructed a friend how to do it. She actually did the taping.”
He gave me a sort of Don Juanish look. So I gave him back one of my merry winks.
“And now, Doc, if you will just tell me what I owe you for all this humanitarian aid and advice. I’ll pay you and let you get back to fleecing your regular customers.”
His eyes turned to black flint. He grabbed a piece of letterhead paper that must have cost a dollar a sheet and wrote on it and handed it to his girl. Outside, as if all this part was too lowbrow for the doctor’s sensibilities, she read me what was on it. I paid, but bitterly.
It was pretty high, for nine stitches, an X-ray, and a lecture.
Kronitis’s chauffeur was still waiting patiently by his big Rolls. He opened the door for me and I got in and we started the routine. We went up and over the same dry, sere hills. The same peon was at the gate, or anyway he had the same face.
When I came into the big deep-carpeted office, there were two men in it now, instead of one. Kronitis was behind the desk.
The other man turned to me, as the male secretary shut the door. He had a rueful, sorrowful smile on his face.
Tarkoff was tanned, slim and muscular. But he was always tanned, slim and muscular. His New York suit pants and white shirt and tie stuck out like a sore thumb here. He had taken the suit coat off.
“Hello, Freddy,” I said.
“Hello, Lobo,” he said, warmly, and stepped toward me with his hand out.
I put my hands in my pockets.
“Let’s do this fast,” I said. “There’re only a couple of things. I’m returning Mr. Kronitis here his $4000 retainer, because he fired me before I finished the case. I’ve made out a bill for my daily fees and expenses up to the time he fired me. He can send a check to my New York account.”
I took Kronitis’s bills out of my old wallet. It collapsed. I put it away.
“The other thing is that I’m turning over to Pekouris all the information I’ve turned up on this little heroin operation of yours. I don’t honestly know what Pekouris will do with it. Or whether he’ll do anything. You guys can take it from there.”
They both started to talk at once. Freddy held up a lean, tanned hand. “First, the money.”
“I told him he should keep it, Freddy,” old Kronitis said. He came out from behind the desk. Between us two he looked elderly.
“Then you should keep it,” Freddy said, and looked at me.
“I don’t figure I earned it,” I said. I stepped to the desk and laid out the forty $100 bills in a leafed row. They were only a little more wrinkled than when Kronitis gave them to me brand new. “Anyway, it’s pretty dirty money,” I said. It didn’t look dirty.
“As for Pekouris,” Freddy said, “we don’t have any special dealings with him.”
It was not as if a look passed between them. It didn’t. It was more that they seemed to particularly avoid movement that might even be construed as a look passing between them. At the moment, that seemed enough evidence to me.
“So we don’t know either, what he will do with your information,” Freddy said. “We assume he’ll have to put it on into the grinding machine. If it’s laid in front of him baldly.”
“I’ll believe that,” I said, “because two such honest upright gentlemen like yourselves tell it to me.”
“That’s a bit harsh,” Kronitis said.
I gave him a stony look. “Is it?” I said. I shook my head at him. “You had me fooled, Mr. Kronitis. You fooled me completely. That hurts my vanity a little. I just couldn’t believe an upstanding decent old gentleman like you could be an international heroin trafficker. I believed you were being honest with me. That’s my fault.”
“The reason you believed him,” Tarkoff said, “was just because he was being honest. He didn’t know anything about Kirk and Girgis Stourkos being involved in a stupid local hashish racket. He told you the truth.”
“He didn’t tell me the truth about anything else,” I said.
“He wasn’t asked,” Freddy said.
“That’s true. And that’s my fault.” I turned to Freddy. “Naturally, I didn’t make any connection between Mr. Tarkoff here and the heroin ring. My fault again.”
“I’m sorry as hell this had to happen, Lobo,” Tarkoff said.
I gestured at the money, and then at Kronitis. “I’m out of it. You gentlemen have to take it from here.” I started to turn to the door.
“Hold on,” Kronitis said. “We would like to talk to you just a little bit about this whole thing.”
“I’m out of it,” I said. “You talk to Pekouris.”
“Have you told him yet?” Kronitis asked.
“Not yet,” I said. “But it’s only because I missed him in Athens. He should be arriving here any time.” They were a good team. They worked well together. It was like the Russian cop routine. If Tarkoff had asked me that, I would have told him to go to hell.
“Will you just listen to us for five minutes?” Kronitis said, in his cool mathematician’s voice.
I didn’t answer. Behind me Freddy stepped to me and put his hand on my shoulder. “Lobo.”
“Don’t do that,” I said sharply. His hand went away.
“We would only like for you to listen,” Kronitis said levelly. “I think that’s reasonable.”
I turned back. “I’ll listen,” I said. “But nothing is going to change my opinion.”
“We don’t want to change your opinions,” Kronitis said patiently.
“My opinion is that you are a couple of low, sneaking, lying, conniving, criminal bastards,” I said.
“We still wouldn’t want to change your opinions,” Kronitis said. “But we’d like for you to listen just a little to some factual aspects of this whole situation.”
“Go ahead,” I said. “Tell me some factual aspects.”
“First,” Kronitis said, “we have talked to Kirk.”
I stared at him. “How the hell could you have talked to Kirk?”
“He came here,” Kronitis said in his dry matter-of-fact way. “As soon as you left the villa with Duval in the Daisy Mae, he came here in the Polaris. He went around the island the other way. He brought the girl, the uh woman, Jane Duval, with him. We have also talked to her.”
I just looked at him.
Freddy Tarkoff, who knew my facial expressions pretty well, said, “That’s the God’s truth, Lobo.”
“Oh, it’s the truth,” Kronitis said hastily. “They’re still here. If you’ll look out the window, you’ll see Polaris down at my dock.”
I went to the window. I could see the top half of her at the man-made cove below the house. She sat there rocking quietly. Nobody was visible on her. Her cabin windows stared back blindly.
“He’s a shrewd son of a bitch,” I said grudgingly.
“They’re waiting on board,” Kronitis said.
“I don’t want to see them,” I said quickly. “I might punch both of them in the head. And I’m not up to it.”
“You don’t have to see them,” Freddy said.
“The point is,” Kronitis said patiently, “we have talked to both of them. Kirk can keep the girl quiet. It will cost us something.”
“Kirk is not famous for his generosity or honesty,” I said.
“As I’ve learned,” Kronitis said patiently. I suddenly had the feeling I was talking to a well-programed, well-oiled computer system, walking around posing as a man. “But we’ll have to pay the girl, too. In any case, the girl is willing to keep her mouth shut about the villa and our business affairs there. She will keep it out of her deposition, to protect Kirk, and she’ll keep it out of her testimony at the trial.”
“I see,” I said. “But what about Sonny?”
“I think I might be able to arrange a trade with Duval,” Kronitis said. “I’m not without influence in Athens, and I think I can arrange to guarantee him that he will not get a death sentence. In return, of course, he will have to keep his mouth shut about our business interests. The girl assures me that he will co-operate on such a deal.”
“So that leaves only me,” I said.
“That is right,” he said, and smiled his thin dry smile.
“I don’t expect to be here for the trial,” I said. “Sonny’s confessed, anyway. But I would fly back for it if it meant the difference in getting a conviction.”
“You’re a hard man, when you set your mind to something, aren’t you,” Kronitis said. It was not a question.
“Are you going back to New York, Lobo?” Freddy Tarkoff said.
“I don’t know,” I said shortly.
“The girl is very shrewd,” Kronitis said. “If there is no deal, if you give your information to Inspector Pekouris or the other law-enforcement people, and implicate Kirk, she will tell everything she knows at the trial. She expressly mentioned Chantal von Anders. She seems to know about your feeling for Chantal.”
“Who told her that?” I said.
Kronitis raised his shoulders. “I can only assume that Kirk told her, when he briefed her, on their way here.”
I didn’t believe him. I didn’t believe him at all. But it didn’t make much difference.
“Is Jane Duval trying to get Sonny released entirely?” I asked.
“I think,” Kronitis said, “I uh think if she had her choice, if she could pick the ending she wanted, she would have Duval committed somewhere to an institution for the criminally insane. Preferably in the United States.”
I shook my head. You had to admire it.
“I think there is some reason for thinking him perhaps slightly deranged,” Kronitis said softly.
“Yes. There’s reason,” I said. “And is she ever happy there is.”
Kronitis raised his shoulders again, and spread his hands. He didn’t speak.
“So,” I said. “That lays it all in my lap.”
“Exactly,” Kronitis said.
I didn’t have to think about it. I had been thinking about it already. Ever since he first mentioned Chantal. They had me up the back. Unless I wanted to just say screw it.
“This is the way they do it when the big shots and money get involved,” I said, and grinned at them. It hurt my cheek. “Everybody saves a little something. I keep forgetting that, when I’m picking up pieces in my dirty little job down in the East Village. That’s the way we used to do it in Chicago. Horse trading, my dad would call it.”
I guessed I didn’t really mind it.
“It’s one of the reasons I left Chicago,” I added.
It wasn’t really such a bad solution. I didn’t really want to see Sonny executed. And I didn’t want to see Chantal ruined. The one I really wanted, the one who had really murdered both Girgis and Marie, was untouchable. Jane Duval. There was no way I could touch her.
“Okay,” I said. “You’ve got yourselves a deal. Except that I’m a pretty good horse trader myself. And I’ve got a couple of conditions of my own.”
“What are they?” Freddy Tarkoff said.
“First, I want Chantal out of your racket, and your influence. She told me she wanted out. And I told her I’d get her out. I want a promise that you’ll never try to use her as a carrier again, under any circumstances.”
Tarkoff smiled. “What if she changes her mind, and comes and asks us someday?”
“Even then.”
Freddy shrugged.
“Second, I want this thing broken up. Here on Tsatsos. Totally. Dismantled, dismembered, shut down.”
“There’s not much question of that,” Freddy said ruefully. “You’ve already successfully accomplished that. Inadvertently, maybe. But nonetheless completely. When Kirk goes back, he’s taking everything out and dumping it way off shore in the sea. I think we can guarantee you both of those, Lobo.”
“For this week,” I said. “I’m thinking about next month. I’ll keep an ear to the ground, Freddy. If I ever hear about you starting up again, here or anywhere, I’ll come back around and blow you sky-high, by God. I’ll go to Washington, even. I’ve got some contacts there. You guys didn’t know it but you had a Narcotics Bureau man working undercover right under your noses. You very nearly hired him to work on the Polaris.”
They looked at each other. Freddy gave Kronitis a hard look.
“God,” Kronitis said. “That man Gruner? Was a Narcotics fellow?”
“I can’t prove it,” I said. “He denied it. But I’d bet my bottom dollar on it.
“The truth,” I said, “the truth is, you’re a couple of rank amateurs. You may be good at figures,” I said to Kronitis, “but you don’t know anything about handling the creatures of the lower depths like Kirk. He’s robbed and cheated you all around the horn.”
“You’re absolutely right,” the old man said. “I had no idea about anything.”
“But you’re the one I really don’t understand,” I said to Tarkoff. “You’re on the City Anti-Drug Commission. You make trips to Washington to help fight the drug traffic. You make speeches at the universities against drugs. I don’t understand you.”
“They are two different things,” he said, and smiled. “This was business. The other was a social duty.”
“So you’re the angry citizen, fighting the criminal drug traffickers. Who turn out to be yourself,” I said. “Do you ever catch you? You must be some kind of a schizophrenic.”
“Maybe I am,” Freddy said. “But it was business. And a damned good business. And if I didn’t do it, somebody else would. The other,” he shrugged. “Well, I’m against the heroin traffic, in principle.”
“You’re a wheeler-dealer,” I said contemptuously. “You may blow yourself all apart someday.”
“Actually, it was you who gave me the idea,” Freddy said and gave me a rueful smile. “Running around with you on your cases showed me what a really great market it was, in America. I had the rest of it, the contacts and the geographical position, all just waiting for me here, by accident. As they get tougher and tougher on the French labs in Marseille, it’s beginning to spread out to other quieter areas.” He shrugged. “It was a natural.”
“Was any of that money I helped you recover in Athens part of this?”
He gave me an unreadable look. “A little. But only a very small part of it. That’s the truth, Lobo.”
“You must be nuts, sending me down here for a vacation,” I said.
He shrugged again, sorrowfully. “Who knew some nut was going to start killing people, and blow it open? Normally you would have come and gone, and never noticed a thing.”
“I’m not trying to understand it,” I said. “Or you. I don’t even want to try. But if I ever hear of you starting anything else up down here, or getting Chantal von Anders involved in anything, I’ll hound you all the way to the moon. I mean that.”
“I know you do. And I know what you’re like when you get your teeth in something.” He gave me a sad smile. “I’m just sorry all this happened. But there’s not much chance of that, now,” he said. “We’re getting out of it. Entirely. Like you said, I’m afraid we’re amateurs.
“Will you shake hands with me?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “I shook hands with Sonny Duval, but I wouldn’t shake hands with you. You’ve done me a lot of harm that you don’t even know about. As far as I’m concerned you’re not my friend. I never knew you. Maybe ten years from now I might be able to think about it. Shaking hands with you. Think about it, not do it.
“Well, I guess that winds it up, gentlemen,” I said. I hit the Gentlemen hard. I looked both of them in the face for a long moment. They both looked like sheep-killing dogs, as my old granddad would have said.
“Oh, there’s one more thing,” I said. I stepped to the desk and picked up the still crisp sheaf of $100 bills. “I’m taking this.”
“But, please,” Kronitis offered.
“No. Don’t ‘Please’ me,” I said. “I’m taking it. You’re not giving it. You’ve got nothing to do with it. You couldn’t even stop me. Try to think of it like that. Think of it as though I’ve got a pistol at your head, and I’m taking it, and there’s nothing at all you can do about it.”
“If you like,” Kronitis said. “If that’s how you prefer to think of it.”
“That’s how,” I said. “I prefer to think of it as if I’m holding you up and robbing you.”
I put the sheaf of bills back into my wallet, and felt it grow fat again. I put it back in my pocket.
“You’ve still got my bill,” I said to Kronitis. “Send the check to New York. Goodbye, Gentlemen,” I said, and went across the long room over their thick carpet to the door. There wasn’t a sound behind me.
I went out the door and turned myself back into a football for delivery at Glauros and the Daisy Mae.