Beirut Incident (17 page)

With a great threshing effort, Droppo reared backward and upward, the classic stud movement before the final screaming plunge. Not having a glass of ice water handy, I did the next best thing and kicked him in the ribs with the point of my shoe.

He froze. Then his head snapped around, eyes wide in disbelief. "Wha-a-a-at…?"

I kicked him again and he gasped in pain. He pulled out, rolling off the girl and onto his back, holding his side in agony.

The sudden departure of her lover left the girl spread-eagled on her back, eyes protruding in terror. She half-raised herself on her elbows, her mouth opened to scream. I clasped my left hand over her mouth and forced her flat back against the sheets, then leaned over and pointed Wilhelmina at her, the muzzle just an inch from her eyes.

She struggled for a moment, arching her sweaty body under the pressure of my hand, then realized what she was looking at and froze, her gaze riveted on the gun. Beads of perspiration stood out on her forehead, matting the disheveled strands of her red hair.

Next to her, Droppo started to swing his legs over the side of the bed but Locallo was there. Almost casually he whipped the barrel of his revolver across Droppo's face and he dropped back with an anguished howl, clutching at his bloody nose. With one hand, Locallo whipped a crumpled pillow up off the floor and crammed it over Droppo's face, shutting off the sounds. With the other, he smashed between Droppo's extended legs so that the butt of his pistol slammed into the naked man's groin.

An animal sound came from beneath the pillow and the body convulsed high into the air, back arched, all the weight on the shoulders, then collapsed limply on the bed.

"He's passed out, boss," Locallo said laconically. I think he was disappointed.

"Take the pillow away so he doesn't suffocate," T ordered. I looked down at the girl and waved Wilhelmina menacingly. "No noise, no nothing when I take my hand away. Understand?"

She nodded as best she could, eyes staring at me in terror. "Okay," I said. "Relax. We're not going to hurt you." I took my hand away from her mouth and stepped back.

She lay motionless, and the three of us stood there, guns in hand, taking in her beauty. Even with the sweat of sex on her, the terror in her eyes, and the tangled mass of hair, she was exquisite. Her bare breasts heaved and tears suddenly poured from the green eyes.

"Please, please don't hurt me," she whimpered. "Please, Nick."

Then I recognized her. It was Rusty Pollard, the little redhead in the green dress I'd flirted with at the party at Tony's, the same one who, years before, had begun Philomina's torment with an anonymous envelope containing a clipping from the
Times.

Standing next to me, Manitti was beginning to breathe hard. "Son of a bitch!" he exclaimed. He leaned over the bed, one hand reaching for her breast.

I cracked him across the side of the head with my gun hand and he jerked back, stunned.

Tears streamed down Rusty's cheeks. I looked at her naked body contemptuously. "If it's not one little squat Italian, it's another, right, Rusty?"

She gulped, but didn't answer.

I reached over and prodded Droppo, but he was inert. "Bring him to," I told Locallo.

I turned back to Rusty. "Get up and get dressed."

She started to sit up slowly and looked at her own naked body as if just realizing that she was lying completely nude in a room with four men, three of whom were virtual strangers.

She jerked into a sitting position, snapping her knees together and doubling them up in front of her. She crossed her arms over her breasts and glared at us wildly. "You lousy sons of bitches," she spat.

I laughed. "Don't be so modest, Rusty. We've already seen you making it with this jerk. We're not likely to see you looking any worse." I yanked her by the arm and pulled her out of bed onto the floor.

I could feel that one little spark of fight go out of her right there. I let go and she slowly got to her feet and went over to the chair next to the bed, avoiding our eyes. She picked up a lacy black bra and started to put it on, looking away at the wall as she did. Complete humiliation.

Manitti licked his lips and I glared at him. Locallo came back from the kitchen carrying four cans of cold beer.

He put them all down on the dresser and opened them carefully. He gave one to me, one to Manitti, and took one himself. Then he took the fourth one and poured it steadily over the inert body of Lemon-Drop Droppo, the beer slopping over the sweaty form and soaking the sheet around him.

Droppo came to with a groan, hands instinctively reaching for his outraged genitals.

I tapped him on the bridge of his mangled nose with Wilhelmina just hard enough to make tears start in his eyes. "Who?" he gasped, "what…?"

"Just do exactly what I say, chum, and you might survive."

"Who?" he managed to get out again.

I smiled benignly. "Popeye Franzini," I said. "Now get up and get dressed."

Terror showed in his eyes as he slowly rose from the bed, one hand still clutching his groin. He dressed slowly, and gradually I could sense a change in his attitude. He was trying to appraise the situation, looking for a way out. He was hating more than hurting, and a hating man is dangerous.

Droppo finished the laborious process of tying his shoes, an occasional groan escaping his tightly compressed lips, then used both hands on the bed to lever himself to his feet. As soon as he was standing I slammed my knee into his crotch. He screamed and crumpled to the floor in a dead faint.

I motioned to Locallo. "Get him up again, Franco."

On the other side of the room, fully dressed now, Rusty Pollard suddenly came alive again. Her hair was still mused and her lipstick smeared, but the kelly green skirt and black silk blouse she had put on over her bra and panties had given her courage again.

"That was brutal," she hissed. "He wasn't doing anything to you."

"Sending that clipping to Philomina Franzini years ago was brutal, too," I retorted. "She wasn't doing anything to you, either."

The last bit of brutalizing had taken the final vestige of fighting spirit out of Lemon-Drop Droppo and he came down the stairs with us quietly, slightly bent over, both hands pressed tightly to his abdomen.

We put Rusty up front with Locallo and Manitti, and jammed Droppo between Louie and me in the back seat. Then we drove to the Chalfont Plaza. Louie, Droppo, and I went in the main entrance of Manny's place while the other three went in through the Lexington Avenue side.

We met in front of Room 636. I took the Do Not Disturb sign off the door and turned the key. The smell wasn't too bad since I had turned the air conditioner on full blast before leaving two nights before, but it was noticeable.

"What's that smell?" Rusty asked, trying to pull back. I gave her a hard shove that sent her sprawling halfway across the room and we all went in. Manitti closed the door behind us.

I had warned the others what to expect and Droppo was in too much pain to really care. Not Rusty, though. She got to her feet with a look of sheer viciousness. "What the hell is going on here?" she screeched. "What's that smell?"

I opened the bathroom door and showed her Larry Spelman's naked body.

"Oh my God! Oh my God!" Rusty wailed, hiding her face in her hands.

"Now take off your clothes, both of you," I ordered.

Droppo, his face still drawn with pain, began dumbly to comply. He was past asking questions.

Not Rusty. "What are you going to do?" she screamed at me. "My God…"

"Forget God," I snapped, "and get undressed. Or do you want me to have Gino do it for you?"

Manitti leered at her, and slowly Rusty began unbuttoning her blouse. Stripped down to her bra and bikini panties, she hesitated again, but I waved Wilhelmina at her and she finished the job defiantly, throwing her clothes in a little heap on the floor.

Louie picked up both sets of clothing and stuffed them into a small bag he had brought along. Droppo sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the floor. Rusty was backed in a corner by the dresser, half-turned so that all we could see was her bare hip. Her arms covered her breasts and she shivered a bit. The room was cold from the air conditioning.

I paused at the doorway as we went out. "Now I want you two lovebirds to stay right here," I said. "Somebody will be up in a little while and you can get everything straightened out. In the meantime, Manitti here is going to be standing right outside the door. If it so much as opens one little crack before anyone else gets here, he'll kill you. Do you understand that?" I paused. "At least hell kill you, Droppo. I don't know what he'll do to Rusty."

I closed the door and we all went down on the elevator.

In the lobby, I used a pay phone to call Jack Gourlay.

"Son of a bitch!" he grumbled over the phone. "It's two o'clock in the morning."

"Forget it," I said. "I've got a story for you in Room 636 at the Chalfont Plaza."

"It had better be good."

"Well," I drawled. "Sounds pretty good to me, Jack. There's three people up there in Room 636, they're all naked and one of them is dead. And one of them is female."

"Jesus Christ!" There was a long pause. "Mafia?"

"Mafia," I said, and hung up.

We all went across the street to the Sunrise Cocktail Lounge and had a drink. Then we went home.

Philomina removed my hand from her left breast and sat upright in bed, squishing the pillow up behind her so it supported the small of her back. She frowned perplexedly.

"But I don't understand, Nick. It's kind of funny, or awful, or something. The police won't be able to prove that Rusty and Droppo killed Larry Spelman, will they? I mean…"

I kissed her right breast and squirmed around so I could rest my head on her stomach, lying crosswise across the bed.

I explained. "They're not going to be able to prove that Rusty and Droppo killed Spelman, but those two are going to have one hell of a time for awhile trying to prove that they
didn't".

"You mean the cops will just let them go?"

"Not quite. Remember, I told you I left that metal cigar container on the dresser before I left?"

She nodded. "It was full of heroin. They'll both get busted for possession."

"Oh." She frowned. "I hope Rusty doesn't have to go to jail. I mean, I hate her, but…"

I patted her knee, which was somewhere to the left of my left ear. "Don't worry. There'll be a lot of stuff in the newspapers, and a lot of people scratching heads, but it's such a screwy setup, any good lawyer will be able to get them off."

"I still don't understand it," she said. "Won't the police be looking for you and Louie?"

"Not a chance. Droppo
knows,
but he's not about to
tell
the cops what happened. It's too damned humiliating. He'll never admit to them that a rival gang could get away with that. The Ruggieros are going to be pretty pissed off, on the other hand, and that's just what we want."

"What will they do?"

"Well, if they react like I hope they will, they'll come out shooting."

The papers certainly came out shooting the next day. Give a newspaperman a nude man and a nude girl in a hotel room with a nude corpse and he's going to be happy. Add two rival underworld factions and a container of high-grade heroin and he's going to be ecstatic. Jack Gourlay was in journalistic seventh heaven.

The pictures in the
News
the next morning were as good as I've ever seen. The photographer had caught Droppo sitting naked on the bed with Rusty naked in the background, trying to shield herself with crossed arms. They had had to do a little air-brushing to make it decent enough to print. The headline writer had had a good time too:

The New York Times
did not consider it a front-page story, as the
News
had, but it rated a six-column binder on page sixteen with a column and a half of type and a sidebar about the history of the Mafia in New York. Both Franzini and the Ruggieros got a big play, including a fairly detailed account of Popeye's alleged set-to with Philomina's father years before.

Popeye himself couldnt have cared less. He was delighted to the extent that his hatred of the world would let him be. He roared with laughter when Louie showed him the story the next day, leaning back in his wheelchair and howling. The fact that Larry Spelman had been killed didn't bother him in the slightest, apparently, except as Spelman's death reflected an insult by the Ruggieros to the Franzinis.

As far as Popeye was concerned, the embarrassment and loss of dignity suffered by the Ruggieros through having one of their button men caught in such a ridiculous situation more than made up for murder. With the Franzinis of this world, murder is commonplace, absurdity a rarity.

Louie was delighted, too, with the new stature he had gained in his uncle's eyes. I didn't have to give him all the credit. By the time I got to the offices of Franzini Olive Oil that morning, Louie was already basking in praise. I'm sure Louie didn't actually tell Popeye that it was his idea, but he didn't tell him it wasn't, either.

I sat back and waited for the Ruggieros to retaliate.

Nothing happened, and I re-examined my position. I had apparently underestimated Ruggiero. Thinking back, I had to realize that Gaetano Ruggiero was not the type of leader who could be panicked into a bloody and expensive gang war by the kind of shenanigans I had been up to.

Popeye Franzini might be easily provoked, but not Ruggiero. This being the case, I picked on Popeye again. I could depend upon him to react, and react violently. I'd had a plan earlier, which was why I had ordered that 17B kit from Washington, and I just needed a little help from Philomina to put it into operation. My target was the Counting House, the heart of the entire Franzini operation.