Operation Bamboozle Read online

  “Come on, chaps,” Luis said. “No point in getting angry.”

  “I’m not bloody angry,” Julie said. “I’m bloody annoyed.”

  “I just saw a big rat,” Princess said. “A bloody big rat.”

  They left. Julie locked up, and they stood in the street, not looking at each other. “Hard cheese, old girl,” Luis said. “Stout effort.”

  “He talkin’ English?” Princess asked. “English English?”

  “You need a haircut, and so do I,” Julie said to her. “We’ll go to Daniel’s, he’s supposed to be the hottest scissors in town. Also most expensive. When in doubt, spend money! I had a boss said that. He went bust. Let’s go.”

  An hour later she had a dashing haircut and a smart deal with Daniel.

  His salon had empty walls and rich women trapped under the drier with nothing to look at. Julie had a supply of small, beautiful paintings that would refresh their eyeballs like the cool splash of a mountain stream. Bring the two together and you combine pleasure with business.

  Daniel looked at some of the pictures and said he was more of an iced-beer man, himself. Princess offered to paint a bottle of his favorite brand, beaded with condensation, cold as charity.

  That evening they came back and hung Daniel’s walls with paintings. No price tags. “We’re in a milieu where folk don’t ask the price,” Julie told Luis.

  “A milieu,” he said. “Has it got panache? How big is the ambience?”

  “Don’t forget Daniel’s beer,” she told Princess. “Plenty of ice.”

  Next day, Luis drove Julie to Daniel’s. He parked the car and enjoyed a couple of hours shopping. He bought a pair of alligator-skin cowboy boots; a Cross pen; a crushproof Panama hat; and two lightweight suits, which he left to be tailored. He felt relaxed and confident. Money did that to him, coming in or going out. The weather helped: wall-to-wall blue sky with a faint tingle of late summer. London wouldn’t know what to make of this weather. New York would boast about it and tax it. Washington DC would stifle it in humidity and hogwash. El Paso turned it on with Texan generosity: help yourself, plenty more tomorrow. Can’t go wrong here, Luis thought. Then he remembered John Wesley Hardin, doing fine until he threw that double-four. “Well, he had it coming to him,” he said aloud.

  “Sure he did,” a woman said with a smile. “But men never listen, do they?”

  What an agreeable city.

  The 777 Building was twenty floors of tinted glass and big bucks. Even the elevator had glass walls, which allowed Luis to glimpse the names of Getty Oil, Bristol-Myers, Shell Oil, IBM, Mobil, Hughes Tool, Texaco, ITT, Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, before he got out at the fifteenth floor.

  The names of Maclean, de Courcy and Gould were spelled out on a big brass plate that had been lovingly polished until it was as smooth as a grenadier’s buttons. Inside the suite, half a dozen men and women were quietly doing whatever the hell it is that lawyers do outside court. Telephones purred. James de Courcy’s office door was wide open and he saw Luis and came out. Wide smiles, handshakes, even a brief hug. Then all the usual white lies about nobody having changed a bit.

  James had changed. Wartime rationing and long hours in Double Cross had kept him thin and his suits baggy. Now he had filled out. In light gray flannel, French cuffs, a sober regimental tie and ruffled hair that was getting silvered at the sides, he had the aura of a good friend and a bad enemy. He limped on his right leg, Luis noticed. That was new too.

  They moved into his office. The desk was a thick slice from the trunk of a giant redwood, smooth as glass. A mug of coffee steamed. “I remember that,” Luis said. “You had it in London.” He looked more closely: a coronation mug, to mark the crowning of Edward VIII in May 1937. “Rather rare, isn’t it? Very short reign.”

  “I keep it as a terrible warning. The poor chap got what he wished, Mrs. Simpson. Beware of getting what you wish. Old Chinese saying.”

  Luis chuckled. “Do you tell your clients that?”

  “It’s what I tell the other side. For their own good.”

  Now they both laughed. The other side was a phrase often used in Double Cross. Never the Wehrmacht, never the Nazis, rarely the enemy. They were all playing a game, a mind game. The stakes were huge, tens of thousands of lives might be lost, but in Double Cross you were a player, always looking at the war from the viewpoint of the other side. Telling them what they wanted to know, in such a way that they did what you wanted them to do. Luis had been only one of a big team, but he was one of the best. What he’d told the Washington Globe was true: before the war ended he was awarded, at about the same time, the British Empire Medal and the Iron Cross (Second Class). Nobody else could say that.

  “Double Cross was fun, wasn’t it?” he said. “I’ve never been so happy.”

  “You were an absolutely brilliant and indispensable utter pain in the ass,” James said. “Sometimes I could cheerfully have strangled you, but for the fact that Hitler liked reading your scurrilous reports. But then, Hitler was also a brilliant pain in the ass, so perhaps that explains why you two got on so well together. Let’s go and have lunch.”

  The penthouse restaurant was supported by nineteen floors of bloated capitalism, so the food was not roadkill hamburger.

  While they ate, they exchanged brief details of their lives after Double Cross. Luis said that seven years as a playboy in Venezuela had lost its charm and now he was trawling the US for a business opportunity worthy of his talents and capital. “I won’t bore you with the details,” he said. His business opportunities so far had involved fraud, larceny, counterfeiting and tax evasion. When a lawyer heard details like that he usually offered to help. Luis couldn’t afford to get into bed with Maclean, de Courcy and Gould. He’d wake up stark bollock naked. “Rather dull, I’m afraid,” he said. “Not like you.”

  After Double Cross, James de Courcy said, he’d done some counter-intelligence work, mainly in Berlin, until he had a row with a Russian and got shot in the leg. “Nothing personal,” he said. “Just an occupational hazard.” Invalided out, moved to America, became an attorney. “Just like that?” Luis said, so James explained: he’d been a barrister before Double Cross wanted him, and he had dual citizenship: his father was American. So the shift wasn’t difficult. Nor was joining the firm: an uncle had been a partner before him, they didn’t even have to change the brass plate. “Oil keeps our wheels turning,” he said. “Texas floats on oil and the lawsuits never stop. Bob Maclean and Tom Gould are arguing cases in court right now, in Houston and Dallas. Frightful climate. I prefer it here. There’s always a nice breeze.”

  Enough of that. They talked of Double Cross characters. Some smart, some erratic, some you wouldn’t want to share a taxi with. They wondered what had happened to old what’s-his-name. Dessert, coffee.

  They were going down in the elevator when James said, “Damn. I must be getting old. Forgot to mention Freddy Garcia.”

  “Freddy? My controller at Double Cross?”

  “The very same. He’s over here too. One of my clients, in fact. Married into an oil company. Hanover Fields.”

  “Lucky fellow.”

  “Well … up to a point.” The elevator stopped to let people in. “Later,” James said.

  As he limped into his office, he said: “Freddy runs the company and I’m sorry to say he’s in a bit of a bind. This is in confidence, Luis. Hanover Fields is contracted to supply a certain amount of oil and now their wells can’t pump that total. Sounds silly, I know, but it happens. After all, nobody can go down and actually measure reserves of the bloody stuff, can they? So Freddy’s got to buy another well, fast, as a top-up.” James flicked through the message notes on his desk.

  Luis said. “And he can’t find another well?”

  “No, it’s not that.” James used a blackthorn stick to lean on and ease his leg. “He’s got an option on a well, not a huge producer but reliable. It’s called Track 29. He can have it for one million. A trifling sum, in Texas. He’s raised a milli
on all bar ten thousand dollars. And the option runs out in …” He looked at his watch. “… two days less thirty minutes.”

  “Surely the banks …” Luis began.

  “Banks want surety, old chap. Freddy’s mortgaged everything except the fillings in his teeth.”

  “You’re saying that for the sake often thousand …”

  “Hanover Fields will go under. The wolves are circling, Luis. Nobody wants Freddy to survive. Oil can be a cruel business.”

  Luis looked around, at the redwood desk, the leatherbound lawbooks, the panoramic view. “You could lend him ten grand.”

  “He’s my client. There are rules. If I invest in a client’s business, I’ll be disbarred. Look: I’m sorry to end on such a gloomy note. Anyways, it’s not your problem. I must say you’re looking very bonny, Luis. Those boots suit you. Come on, I’ll see you off the premises. I need a breath of air.”

  Neither man spoke on the way down. They reached the street, and Luis said, “I owe a lot to Freddy Garcia. Okay, he got paid his salary but I made a truckload of money. I’ll lend him ten thousand.”

  James de Courcy was startled. He dropped his stick. Luis picked it up. “I must advise against it,” James said. “Oil production is extremely risky. There are no guarantees.”

  “Nevertheless.”

  “Please, think it over. Sleep on it.” They shook hands. “I keep thinking of Edward and Mrs. Simpson,” James said. “You know, I don’t care whether he was right or wrong, I really don’t. But he did what he did because he believed it was really fair to everyone. That’s something, isn’t it?”

  2

  Constant dripping wears away stone. Ask any advertising agency. It penetrated the skull of Eugene Lutz at about the same time as he looked at his sad, unhappy lungs.

  He was in his doctor’s office, not listening because for thirty years the man had been saying Smoke less, eat healthy, take more exercise. Rain rattled on the window. He knew what that leaden sky meant: snow tonight, frozen windscreen tomorrow, air straight out the freezer, sinuses burning. Every year winter hit Illinois and punished him for breathing. It was his raging sinuses that had brought Eugene Lutz back to this sonofabitch doctor, but when the man heard his hoarse and gasping demand for medication, pills, anything, he ordered chest x-rays. Now Lutz was back, looking at what was left inside his ribcage. You give forty years to Chicago, he thought, and this is what Chicago gives you.

  “The hell with it,” he said. “I’ll move to Arizona. That’s what it keeps saying on the TV, ‘Take your sinuses to Arizona.’ I’ll go for good.”

  “Good is what Arizona’s air will do them,” his doctor said. “Lungs, too. Hot dry air. Beat’s anything I can prescribe.”

  “I should’ve gone a year ago. Two years. Five.”

  He quit his job that afternoon. “Beats me where we’ll find another accountant like you,” his boss said. Lutz knew he was leaving an interesting job, one that demanded unusual talent and imagination. He called it creative accountancy. The Mob was a very special employer. It paid well. But a man had only one pair of lungs.

  On his way home he stopped off at a bookstore and bought a couple of fat directories of the US. He wanted to check out Arizona, see how it compared, what the statistics showed. Well, he was an accountant.

  Had to be a city. He’d go crazy out in the sticks. Not Tucson: his ex-wife came from there. Phoenix, maybe. Looked promising; it was inland, 1,107 feet above sea level, you don’t want to live in the hurricane belt and get battered every year. Phoenix was set in a broad plain, almost flat. Easy walking. Climate was your usual desert stuff …

  Eugene Lutz stopped right there. In June, July and August the daily high in Phoenix was over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Could he breathe air that was over 100? He wanted to dry out his sinuses, not roast them. Maybe Arizona wasn’t the answer. He searched further and found El Paso, Texas, elevation 3,700 feet. Daily high in summer was in the low nineties. More like it. And El Paso had scenery: mountains and mesas. Plus the Rio Grande. Lutz kept checking. The life expectancy in Arizona was six months worse than in Texas. And Arizona’s suicide rate was 37.4% bigger.

  Seemed that Texas knew something Arizona didn’t. That was enough. Lutz sold up and within a week he’d bought an apartment in El Paso.

  A year later he was content with life. His sinuses lazed in the sun. Daily he exercised what remained of his lungs with a stroll about town. If the temperature nudged 90 he dropped into the Paso del Norte hotel, which had enough marble to equip a small cathedral. In its cool calm, he drank iced coffee and browsed the newspapers. There was rarely anything about Chicago and he did not miss it. Eugene Lutz was comfortable. Hell, he’d earned it. This explains why, when he saw Frankie Blanco, he very nearly turned and walked away.

  Blanco spent his days watching Cabrillo, as usual. It was boring because the guy never did anything special, nothing that made any difference, he just strolled about town. This day was typical. So Frankie had time to kill, and as usual he chewed it to death. A burger here, a hot dog there. Mex stuff for a change: tacos, burritos, fajitas. Maybe a beer or two. French fries gave him a thirst. A fellow had to be nice to his throat, and lately Frankie’s throat had picked up a cementmixer of a cough. He blamed the Pall Malls, the makers must of switched to cheap tobacco, and he cut down from sixty a day to fifty. Did no good. He went back up to sixty. Smoking helped him think. Sometimes he thought he should shoot this bum Cabrillo now. Then Princess had moved in and that confused him. Where did she fit? Some days he thought he should cross the river and find a Mex hitman, there must be dozens would do it for a couple hundred bucks. Then he thought of something he should’ve thought of first of all: that if this Cabrillo got suddenly dead the FBI would straightaway come looking for him, Frankie Blanco, before anyone else. He was only protecting himself, but forget justice. The FBI got paid to protect him. Useless bastards. Justice was a joke.

  The day was cooling. Cabrillo was walking toward the Friendship Bridge over the river. Frankie stayed well back, hidden in the crowd of Mexicans going home.

  Luis strolled onto the bridge, leaned against the parapet and looked at the Rio Grande. It was slow and unexciting. So what? The Thames looked like brown Windsor soup, the Tiber was cold cocoa, you wouldn’t want to fall into the Seine, and the Blue Danube was a damn lie. He was dissatisfied because he felt restless. He hadn’t conned anyone for weeks. He was a craftsman, and like all good craftsmen he felt incomplete when he neglected his craft. All his working life, Luis found that arrogance led to a pot of gold. There must be rich men in El Paso, men who would pay him to gratify their arrogance with the thrill of utterly convincing bullshit. So where were they?

  He looked around and saw a soldier nearby, also leaning on the parapet. Young; hair clipped so short it turned his ears into a clumsy afterthought. The army had trained him to hurry up and wait. Now he could do it without effort.

  “This your home town?” Luis asked. The soldier slowly turned his head to see what sort of fool this shithead was. His eyes were doubleglazed to ensure no human warmth escaped. “Nope,” he said.

  Luis allowed a decent pause for the rush of conversation to subside.

  “What’s El Paso famous for?” he said. “I’m a visitor.”

  “Huh. I’m bustin’ a gut to get the fuck outa here, you’re payin’ to get in.” He spoke in a dull monotone. He didn’t like what he said. “El Paso’s the biggest piece a nowhere in the US. Famous for that.”

  “Not a cheery thought.”

  “Fuckin’ army gives you the shittiest postin’ it can find.”

  “And you’re from …”

  “Pittsburgh.”

  “Ah, yes.” Luis thought of something encouraging. “The Pittsburgh Symphony is widely admired.”

  “Pittsburgh got the Steelers,” the soldier said, suddenly alive. “Steeler offense hits your fuckin’ symphony, they gonna wake up playin’ a different tune.”

  “I see.” Luis understood none of it. “Surely
there’s something comparable here.”

  “El Paso got rodeos. You like watchin’ a dumb cowboy fallin’ off a dumb horse, good luck.” He walked away, in no hurry. Wherever he went in El Paso, it was never Pittsburgh.

  Frankie Blanco watched the soldier leave the bridge and he edged alongside him. “Saw you talkin’ to my pal,” he said.

  “Christ Almighty,” the soldier sighed. “Two old faggots in two minutes. Go fuck yourself, Jack.”

  “Hey! I was in the military. Show some respeck.” Frankie hung onto the shreds of his temper. Where did this skinny kid get off calling him old? “I’m worried about my pal. He ain’t right in the head. What did he say?” That was a wrong question, he knew it at once, but he hadn’t had time to think ahead, he was playing everything off the cuff. “I’m his pal, see. We … we was paratroops. In France. We hit the silk together, you know?” This was getting worse. The soldier lengthened his stride. Frankie was having to hurry. “He took a bad hit, see, on the head, and now …”

  The soldier suddenly stopped. “Go fuck a duck, you fat old creep,” he shouted. Frankie turned away, shamefaced. People were staring. When he looked up the soldier had gone.

  “You sad piece of piss,” he whispered. “Anyone said that in Chicago was Swiss cheese.” But he knew he’d failed. He hadn’t found what that rendezvous on the bridge was about. It might mean nothing, the kid could even be Cabrillo’s son. Or he might be the designated hitman. Soldiers often wore sidearms, so the uniform made for good cover. Now the guy knew exactly what his victim looked like. So now Cabrillo and the soldier had to be whacked, both. Shit and double shit. Frankie felt tired and lonely. He fumbled a Pall Mall from a pack and a man called out: “Hey! Frankie Blanco!” He was so shocked, he dropped the cigarette and turned a half-circle, searching. Ten yards away a man was holding the door of a taxi, giving him a long hard look. The face was familiar. Then he was in the taxi, and gone.

  Half an hour later, Frankie was on his third rye and beer chaser when he remembered the face. Eugene Lutz, chief bookkeeper with the Mob. From that moment on, he couldn’t drink the rye or the chaser, couldn’t think, had difficulty breathing. The barman gave him a glass of water. He couldn’t drink that either. “You don’t look too good, pal,” the barman said. He was thinking: Go die in the street, not in my bar, I got enough to do. Frankie was thinking: That’s three guys I got to whack.