Menaced Assassin (28 page)

“To me that certainly qualifies as God saying, ‘Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life.’ I see no destructive friction between Bible and science.

“Another interesting parallel: Christianity says the one true God created all life on earth; science says that despite its fits and starts, all life on earth sprang from a single line.
Proof of a single source for all life does not depend on what either the Bible or the stones and bones tell us; we need only look to biological facts of medicine that work every day to keep us all (and scientists and creationists alike) alive.

“Basically, all organisms work alike. They’re made alike, they’re made from the same basic stuff, and their genetic blueprints and molecular constructions are extremely close. All species’ DNA has the same essential architecture, all species hold many proteins in common. Everything that lives is kin to everything else.

“So those species fossilized in the Burgess shales that made it through the post-Cambrian mass extinction sprang from the same hereditary line as those species that didn’t. They were all water-dwellers, and they were all invertebrates—none of them had backbones.

“‘And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind… And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas.’

“Whales are mammals, not fish, but the writers of Genesis couldn’t know that. What about the fish that
were
fish? Well, the first primitive fishlike vertebrates appeared a mere 50 million years after the Burgess shales were laid down.

“If we’d been there we probably wouldn’t have realized it had happened. We would hardly have recognized these first fishlike creatures grubbing sluggishly around on the bottom of the sea as vertebrates at all, since they lacked jaws, they lacked fins, and they had a barely detectable skeleton.

“But they were soon followed by other ‘fish’ that are still around in slightly modified form as sharks. Sharks are so ancient and primitive that, unlike other vertebrates, their skeletons remain cartilage, never turning to real bone at all.

“Descendants of two other early lines of these fishlike creatures have survived: ‘ray-fins’ and ‘lobe-fins.’ The ray-fins developed bony fins, light and strong and ribbed by spines, and had air sacs they could use to regulate buoyancy. About 100 m. y. ago they blossomed into fish as we know
them today. Fish are the most numerous of all vertebrates, with thousands of living species and billions of individuals.

“Certainly they have followed God’s exhortation: ‘Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas.’

“Instead of light, strong, spine-ribbed finds, the lobe-fins had stumpy knobs of flesh containing numerous little slabs and splints of bone. And their air sacs not only regulated buoyancy, they passed oxygen from the air they swallowed directly into the bloodstream. See where we’re going here? Some branch of the now nearly extinct lobe-fins ventured or was driven up out of the water into the mudflats surrounding it, and could survive.

“In time, they became the first amphibians. Those little slabs and splints of bone in their fins became the amphibians’ four limbs; those air sacs became, in time, primitive lungs. So they slithered about in the mud by bending their bodies from side to side like fish swimming, and by shoving mightily with the stumpy little legs their fins were turning into.

“Lucky for us; without them, we could not have been. But that belongs with the sixth, last, all-important day of actual creation in Genesis, which we will get to in a moment.” Will paused and smiled around the room. “As soon as I come back from the john.”

There was relaxed, almost relieved laughter at the break. Without apology, Dante preceded Will to check out the rest room across the hall. It was at just such a moment that Raptor might choose to strike.

He didn’t. Will whizzed in peace and safety.

For the first time, Dante wondered whether anything would happen at all. Maybe this was not a night for dying.

“So Mendelson is dying,” said Gideon Abramson. “He says to his wife, ‘Call the priest, tell him I want to convert.’ She says, ‘But Max, your whole life you’ve been an Orthodox Jew. Now you want to convert?’ And Max says, ‘Better one of them should die than one of us.’”

Gid laughed heartily at his own joke, as he always did, and Martin Prince laughed with him, politely. Prince understood what he was doing, breaking the ice, smoothing the way.

Kosta Gounaris gave a weak chuckle, but Enzo Garofano’s aged face was like some ancient, pitted ice floe. It had been a rough trip from Jersey all in one day for the old capo, even if done by Prince’s jet to Vegas, then by limo here to…

“Whadda fuck you call this place?” he demanded abruptly. When he was tired, like now, and a bit disoriented, Garofano’s Bronx beginnings would show through his veneer.

“The Furnace Creek Inn,” said Gideon brightly. “First-rate accommodations and a great golf course over at the ranch.”

Gideon and Kosta had rented both of the inn’s $375-a-day luxury suites, with the king-size beds and the built-in Jacuzzis. The two-story, red tile-roofed, Spanish-style hotel of stucco and local travertine stone, built at the mouth of Furnace Creek Canyon by the Pacific Coast Borax Company in the 1920s, gave Death Valley its reputation as a stylish winter resort.

“They close for the summer months,” continued Gideon. He had suggested Death Valley for the meet because it would be difficult for the feds to put the four of them all together here at the same time. “They just opened for the season last week.”

“I think we should get down to business,” said Prince. Gideon may have chosen the spot, but it was Prince’s meeting, Prince’s agenda.

“It is safe to talk here?”

“Swept an hour ago for bugs, Don Enzo.”

The inn faced out across tan open desert toward the Furnace Creek Ranch a mile away, but the wings enclosed an extensive date palm garden with bubbling streams and placid reflecting pools.

“As for the windows, we’ve got a couple of men strolling through those trees. Anybody there trying to listen to us…”

The aged Enzo Garofano sank back into one of the massive leather-seated hardwood chairs. “Let us proceed,” he said.

Prince was on his feet; the others were seated. He started softly, no passion in his voice. Gounaris wasn’t fooled; Gideon had said the don was fuming.

“Over two years ago we made a decision to extend our new acquisition, Atlas Entertainment, from Los Angeles into the San Francisco Bay Area. It was a deliberate decision on my part…”

Prince began pacing between Garofano’s chair and the couch where Gideon and Kosta sat.

“We have never had much influence in San Francisco, apart from that cheese merchant the feds busted a few years ago. The Italians up there are not
siciliani
. They’re
genovesi, piemontesi
… hard to deal with, hard to control.”

“North Beach is not Little Italy,” agreed Gideon.

“So we moved Atlas Entertainment in, put one of our own in charge”—he gestured at Gounaris—“and what happened?”

Kosta hadn’t spoken yet except for hello-hello: he had just met the legendary Enzo Garofano, survivor of New York’s great mattress wars of the thirties, and was nervous about
him rather than Prince. It was irrational, Prince was the one to watch, the one to fear. To Prince he sent weekly reports by hand-carry messenger. But he not only answered Prince’s rhetorical question, he answered it a little bit smart-ass.

“We’ve shown a profit from the first week of operation.”

The suave, imperturbable Prince suddenly shrieked, veins standing out at his temples,
“I am talking here!”

Gounaris felt the blood drain from his face. He had heard of these sudden flashes of rage, like Bugsy Siegel was supposed to have had, but it was the first he had witnessed.

“I am sorry, Don Martin. I was just—”

“No matter.” Prince gave a magnanimous wave of his hand.

The gesture was casual, but those cold eyes were murderous. Speaking up had been a mistake; why had he? Remembering the tough kid he once had been, the glory days when his nuts were big as bowling balls and belonged to him alone? Dammit, those days didn’t have to be over!

“Last February,” Prince continued, “after our meeting in Las Vegas, Spic Madrid was hit in Minneapolis.”

Kosta felt cold again. What the fuck was going on? He was sure Prince himself had ordered the hit on Madrid, for opposing him at the Vegas board meeting.

“And less than four months later, St. John and Otto Kreiger were hit on the same day. Now—”

“Wait a minute,” interrupted Garofano, “I understood the police and fire people were satisfied that Otto’s death was an accident. Now you’re telling me—”

“I’m telling you that he was hit,” snapped Prince. Both of the capos were ignoring the usual protocol now. “Based on the police department lab forensic workup of the gas explosion.”

“Are you suggesting, Don Martin,” said Gideon, “that the same man carried out both hits?”

“I’m suggesting that the same man
ordered
both hits.”

“I think Kreiger was responsible for St. John,” said Gideon, showing more balls than Kosta would have credited him with. “He voted to have him hit at the board meeting at
the Xanadu in February and was overruled. But the killer’s M.O.—”

“It was not Eddie Ucelli,” said Garofano quickly. “He would never hit one of our own without full board sanction.”

“With all due respect, Don Enzo,” said Gideon, “St. John was hardly one of our own. A paid employee—”

“Who was branching out into new areas without informing us,” snapped Prince. By this time, they had all heard about St. John’s nascent personal management company.

“Could it be someone in Atlas?” asked Garofano.

“Possible, I suppose,” admitted Kosta. “But so few employees of the company know anything about…
us
…”

“The woman found out,” said Prince.

“
Was trying
to find out,” said Gideon in a soothing voice.

“Who else would have the guts to do it?” asked Gounaris, since protocol seemed to have been abandoned.

“Who indeed?” mused Prince. But his eyes locked with Kosta’s for a long moment. “In any event, I want you to find out. Comb that company from top to bottom. Set people to watching other people. I want any word, any whisper, any
breath
about Otto’s death. And Gideon, I want you to check with our Los Angeles people on this St. John thing. It has brought a lot of federal heat into that town. Our financial involvement in his firm is extremely well hidden, but we need this resolved as soon as possible. Be casual but thorough.”

“It will be like old times!” enthused Gid.

The two Mafia soldiers looked like ravens in their black pants and their black shirts hanging out to hide the handguns on their belts. They patrolled the palm grove in a sort of figure eight, so nobody could point a shotgun mike at the windows of the suite.

Pale green fronds clacked overhead, laid lacy patterns of light and shadow over the faces and somber clothes. They stopped to chat between the almost red trunks of the date palms. One man was short, wide, sloppy, with black hair sprouting at his wrists and on the backs of his fingers and growing low and curly over his forehead. More hair sprouted
into the open V-neck of his black polo shirt. His Beretta 92 was considered a classic, but he couldn’t hit anything with it from over three feet away.

“Hey, Red, I’m gettin’ fuckin’ sick of walkin’ around in circles in the fuckin’ desert,” he said.

His partner was a very large redhead with an open face and twinkling blue eyes and a boozer’s complexion. His drink actually was carrot juice and he could bench-press six hundred pounds. On his hip he wore a Colt-clone .45 auto loaded with subsonic rounds that made it effective yet remarkably quiet when fired. He was an excellent shot.

“Tell it to Mr. Prince,” he said. “Hell, Tony, you’re in here under the trees, in an oasis—soft duty.”

“This an oasis? So where’s the fuckin’ belly dancers?”

A bluejay-sized bird with a long beak soared into the palm tree directly over their heads with a loud whistle. When he flew, red patches showed on his wings. Tony went into a shooter’s crouch at the cry, straightened up sheep-faced.

“I didn’t know there was any fuckin’ birds in the desert except them ravens and those big buzzards always soarin’ around.”

“How long you lived in Vegas, Tony?”

“Three, four years.”

“And you never see any birds?”

“Just ones with tits an’ hair between their legs. Anyway, what’s eighteen inches long and makes a woman scream when she wakes up in the morning?”

Before Red could answer, a man appeared, walking quietly through the trees, dark-haired and lean and moving like an athlete. A pair of binoculars was around his neck, a canteen was on one hip, and a skinny paperback book was in one hand.

Red slid over to confront him without seeming to, beaming at the binoculars. “Those Zeiss-Ikon glasses?”

“Good Lord no, I got ’em at Eddie Bauer’s!” The man held up the slim glossy paperback. “I use ’em for bird-watching.” At that instant the bird above them whistled again, then arrowed away. “Did you see that? A red-shafted flicker!” He opened the book to the back page and began writing in it
with a ballpoint pen. “I can add it to my Death Valley life list.”

“I heard they were pretty common here,” remarked Red.

“Not indigenous at all—a late-autumn visitor from the Panamint Range. There’s almost three hundred species of resident and migrant birds in the Valley—”

“Fuck the goddam birds,” said Tony in an aggrieved voice. “I’m tryna tell a fuckin’ joke here!”

Red grinned and winked at the bird-watcher. “Okay, Tony,” he said, “what
is
eighteen inches long that makes a woman scream when she wakes up in the morning?”

“Crib death!” crowed Tony.

“Crib death?” exclaimed the redhead in a disgusted voice. Neither man had laughed. “That’s revolting.”