When he was thirty years old, Popeye had been stricken by some disease — I couldn't remember at the moment just what — that had forced him off the streets and into the administrative end of organized crime. There, his fine head for business proved invaluable and in a very short time he was able to achieve a position of real power in the gambling and loan-shark rackets. He and his two brothers built their organization carefully and solidly, and with business acumen. Now, he was Don Joseph, aging, querulous, jealous of the rights he had worked so hard to attain.
It was Popeye Franzini — Don Joseph Franzini — who was behind the move to reinforce the American organization with young blood from Sicily.
I had gone looking for some kind of an entré into Sicilian circles in Beirut, and it looked as if I had hit the jackpot. Certainly, Beirut was a logical port of call for an olive oil dealer. A good bit of the world's supply comes from Lebanon and its neighbors, Syria and Jordan.
But the presence of Louie Lazaro of Franzini Olive Oil at the same time the Mafia was funneling its new recruits through Beirut stretched the coincidence ratio too far.
I had another thought, too. Louie Lazaro might be more than just the bon vivant he appeared to be. Anyone who represented Popeye Franzini would be competent and tough, even if — to judge by the verve with which Louie was attacking the bottle — he tended to drink too much.
I tilted back on the heels of the little wire chair I was sitting on and tilted my glass at my new
amico.
"Hey, Louie! Let's have another
bottiglia di vino"
He roared delightedly, slapping the table with a flat palm. "Why not,
compare!
Let's show these
Arabos
how they do it in the old country." The Columbia University class ring on his right hand belied his nostalgic reference as he signaled for the waiter.
* * *
Three days with Louie Lazaro can be exhausting. We saw a soccer game at the American University, spent a day visiting the old Roman ruins at Baalbeck; we drank too much at the Black Cat Café and the Illustrious Arab, and made it to just about every other bistro in the city.
During those three hectic days, I learned quite a lot about Louie. I'd thought he had Mafia written all over him, and when I found how deeply it was etched, all the bells started ringing. Louie Lazaro was in Beirut on Franzini Olive Oil business, all right — representing his uncle Popeye. When Louie dropped that bombshell over a fourth carafe of wine, I prodded my wine-fogged memory for information on him. Popeye Franzini had raised his brother's son, I remembered from a report I'd read at one time. Was this that nephew? He probably was, and his different last name, then, was most likely a minor cosmetic change. I didn't press him for a reason why he was called Lazaro and not Franzini, figuring that if it was relevant, I'd find out soon enough.
So I had virtually fallen into the hands of my ticket to Franzini's pipeline. My convivial, jesting companion, who gave a first impression of being a comic-opera Mafioso, must be pretty damned sharp under that talkative, wine-drinking mien. Either that, or Uncle Joseph had managed to shield his nephew from the ugly realities of organized crime, shuttling him safely into a legitimate end of the family operation.
Toward the middle of the afternoon on our third day of carousing, I made my move to determine the extent of Louie Lazaro's involvement in Uncle Joe's extra-legal affairs.
We were in the Red Fez, each table tucked into its own little walled niche, rather like stalls in a cow barn. Louie was sprawled loosely in his chair, one lock of black hair beginning to droop over his forehead. I sat erect but relaxed, my forearms on the little wooden table, drawing on what felt like my fortieth Galoise of the day.
"Hey, fella!" Louie burbled. "You're okay." He paused, examining his watch as people do when they're conscious of time, even when they're thinking in terms of days, weeks, or months instead of hours, minutes, or seconds. "We oughta get together back in the States. When you goin' back?"
I shrugged. "Know where I can get a good passport?" I asked casually.
He raised his eyebrows, but there was no surprise in his eyes. People with passport troubles were a way of life with Louie Lazaro. "Don't you have one?"
I sipped at my wine, frowning. "Sure. But…" Let him draw his own conclusions.
He smiled knowingly, waving his hand in dismissal. "But you do come from Palermo, right?"
"Right."
"And you grew up in New Orleans?"
"Right."
"Four years in the French Foreign Legion?"
"Right. What have you been doing, Louie? Taking notes?"
He grinned disarmingly. "Ah, you know. Just makin' sure T got things right."
"Right," I said. I knew where his questions were heading — at least I hoped I did — even if he didn't want to get to the point right away.
He picked up the cross-examination like any good prosecutor. "And the last couple years, you've been… uh… hanging round Beirut?"
"Right." I poured some more wine into each of our glasses.
"Well." He dragged it out, looking thoughtful. "I could probably arrange it if you really want to get back to the States."
I glanced over my shoulder just for effect "I sure as hell have to get out of here."
He nodded. "Maybe I can help you, but…"
"But what?"
"Well," he grinned that disarming grin again. "I don't really know much about you except you got a lot of guts."
I weighed the situation carefully. I didn't want to play my trump card too quickly. On the other hand, this could be my cracking point and I could always — if events warranted it — eliminate Louie.
I pulled the metal cigar tube out of my shirt pocket and dropped it carelessly on the table. It rolled over once and stopped. I stood up, and pushed my chair in. "I've got to go to the John, Louie." I patted him on the shoulder. "I'll be back."
I walked off, leaving the little tube worth, eventually, about $65,000 on the table.
I took my time, but when I got back Louie Lazaro was still there. So was the heroin.
I knew from the look on his face that I'd made the right move.
Chapter 5
At five o'clock that afternoon I met Louie in the lobby of my hotel. The silk suit was blue this time, almost an electric blue. The shirt and tie were fresh, but still white on white. His anxious-to-please smile was unchanged.
Outside on the street we hailed a cab. "The St. Georges," Louie told the driver, then settled back smugly in the seat.
It was only six blocks and we could have walked, but that wasn't what bothered me. What did was the fact that the St. Georges was the one place in Beirut where I was known as Nick Carter. The possibility that a room clerk or floor manager might greet me by name, however, was miniscule. Overfamiliarity is not a way of life in Beirut if you're obviously an American.
I needn't have worried. Even in my down-at-the-heels clothes, no one paid me the slightest bit of attention as Louie first made a quick call on the house phone in the lobby, then ushered me into the elevator, chattering nervously.
"This is a real good-looking lady, man! She's — she's really something else. But she's smart, too. Ooh mama! Is she smart!" He snapped his thumbnail on his front teeth. "But all you have to do is just answer her questions, you know? Just play it easy. You'll see."
"Sure, Louie," I reassured him. He'd been through the same routine a half-dozen times already.
A very tall, spare man with blue expressionless eyes opened the door of the eleventh-floor suite and gestured us in. He stood aside as Louie passed in, but when I followed he suddenly gripped the inside of my right elbow with viselike fingers and spun me around backward. A leg across the back of my knees threw me to the floor as he twisted, so that I hit the thick carpet on my face, my arm wrenched up high behind my shoulders and a bony knee pressed against the small of my back.
He was good. Not that good, however. I could have broken his kneecap with my heel when he made the first move, but that wasn't what I was there for. I lay there and let him remove Wilhelmina from her holster.
A hand made a cursory search of my body. Then the pressure on the small of my back eased. "AD he had was this," he announced.
He was careless. Hugo still rested in the chamois sheath strapped to my forearm.
He nudged me with his toe and I got to my feet slowly. He'd pay for that later.
I brushed my hair back with one hand and took stock of the situation.
I was in the living room of a large suite and there were several doors leading off it. It was extravagantly decorated — to the point of opulence. The heavy, dark blue rug was complemented by gossamer-like draperies in robin's-egg blue. Two Klees and a Modigliani were in perfect keeping with the clean-lined Danish Modern furniture.
Two couches were flanked by small onyx lamps and chrome-trimmed ashtrays. In front of each couch were heavy, low-slung coffee tables, large rectangles of gray marble sitting like pale islands in a dark blue sea.
Standing in front of the picture windows was an exquisite Chinese doll, one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen in my life. Her hair hung straight and black, almost waist length, framing delicate high-boned features. Almond eyes in an alabaster face regarded me somberly, a hint of skepticism tensing the full-lipped mouth.
I ruled my face expressionless while my mind clicked through its memory file. The ten days I had spent at AXE headquarters last year doing what we bitterly referred to as «homework» hadn't been wasted. Her picture on the dossier in File Room B had made me gasp the first time I had seen it. In the flesh, the impact was a hundredfold.
The woman in the high-necked gray silk evening gown before me was Su Lao Lin, next to Chu Ch'en the highest ranking intelligence agent the Red Chinese maintained in the Middle East. Chu Ch'en I had run up against before, both in Macao and Hong Kong; Su Lao Lin, I had only heard of.
What I'd heard was enough — ruthless, brilliant, cruel, fiery tempered but meticulous in her planning. She had been handling the pipeline funneling heroin into Saigon during the Vietnam war. Countless American G.I.s could lay the responsibility for their addiction at the exquisite feet of Su Lao Lin.
Now, obviously, she was in a different pipeline — funneling Mafia recruits into the States. This was no small-time operation. If Louie's uncle and the others on the Commission could afford Su Lao Lin, it would be a multi-million dollar investment, well worth it, perhaps, if they could gain — or regain — the great power they had wielded in the major cities in another time.
Looking at Su Lao Lin, my abdominal muscles tightened involuntarily. The gray silk, diaphanous in the light of the standing lamp behind her, only enhanced the perfection of that tiny body: the boldly full little breasts, the minute waist accentuated by the suppleness of neatly rounded hips, the legs surprisingly long for such a tiny person, the calves slim and lithe as you find so often among the Cantonese.
Sensuality crackled like lightning between the two of us. What Communist China's No. 2 agent in the Mideast was doing tied into the American-Sicilian Mafia was a mystery, but it wasn't the only reason I wanted to get my hands on her.
I let the lust show in my eyes and I could see her recognize it. But she didn't acknowledge it. She probably saw that same lust in the eyes of a half-dozen men every day of her life.
"You're Nick Cartano?" Her voice was soft but businesslike, the Oriental slur of the hard consonants only barely detectable.
"Yes," I said, running fingers through my disheveled hair. I glared at the tall hood who had rousted me as I came through the door. He stood just to my left, about a foot behind me. He held Wilhelmina in his right hand, pointing it toward the floor.
She gestured negligently, her deep red lacquered nails flashing in the lamplight. "Excuse the inconvenience, please, but Harold feels he must check everyone, particularly people with your…" She hesitated.
"My reputation?"
Annoyance clouded her eyes. "Your
lack
of reputation. We haven't been able to find anyone who's ever heard of you, except Louie here."
I shrugged. "I guess that means I don't exist?"
She shifted slightly and the light from the window behind her poured between her legs, sharpening that exquisite silhouette. "It means either that you're a phony, or…"
That hesitation in mid-sentence seemed to be a habit.
"Or?"
"…or you are very good indeed." A ghost of a smile flirted across the slightly parted lips and I smiled back. She
wanted
me to be "very good indeed." She wanted me, period. I could feel it. The feeling was mutual, but we still had to play the game for a while.
"In my business, we don't advertise."
"Of course, but in
my
business we usually can get a line on most people who are in… shall we say… allied lines?"
I fingered the shining cigar tube in my shirt pocket.
She nodded. "I know, Louie told me. But…"
I didn't blame her. She had a reputation for not making mistakes and my only tangible evidence of a "shady past" were the eight ounces of heroin in the tube. That and the fact that Louie had obviously been making a pitch for me. But Louie was the nephew of the man who was most likely bankrolling most of Su Lao Lin's operation. In the end, that had to be the deciding factor. She wouldn't want to displease Popeye Franzini's nephew.
She wouldn't want to displease herself, either. I stared at her insolently. Her eyes widened almost imperceptibly. She was getting the message, all right. I decided to take her off the hook.
I fished the pack of Galoise out of my pocket and tapped the open end against the side of my hand to bring out a cigarette. I tapped just a shade too hard and one popped out all the way and fell to the floor. I leaned over to pick it up.