The Death Dealers Read Online Free Page A

the dialect of Selachin?” I asked him.
    “Hell yes. They’re all from that area. They cut out of there and went west into Saudi when we moved in to pick up some scratch. The peanuts they earned was like a fortune to them and when they learned about the good old U.S. it was like they were hearing about Mecca. That’s all they ever had on their minds. They broke their backs just to stay with us and when the chips were down they stayed on our side all the way.”
    “Good. Think they’d buy into this game?”
    “Tiger buddy, if I ask them to jump off the Woolworth Building they’d jump. Now get to the point.”
    I nodded, straightened it out in my mind and said, “I want to meet a ship tomorrow. Teish El Abin and his entourage will be on it. We’ll dress those guys in their native costumes, give them the right things to say, and get a first-class introduction to the big chief. Me, I’m going along with them but stay in the background. I’ll be a listener. It’s funny, but go to another country only one day’s flight from your own, meet a country-man and you’d think you were having a reunion with a lifelong friend. Teish will be getting a formal reception and all that routine, but I’d like to be there first with a gimmick before the masks can go on. When can we get with your boys?”
    “How about this afternoon?”
    “Good deal. I’ll arrange for the outfits, get a pitch ready and they can rehearse all night. I just want it cool, friend. No pushing. That has to look good. They’ll be up against some experts.”
    “I wouldn’t worry about these boys. They’ve been around a long while and know the angles. Two of them even finished night school. They’ll go along. Where do we get together?”
    I gave him Ernie Bentley’s address in the loft in downtown Manhattan. Ernie was Martin Grady’s expert in special equipment, a graduate engineer and chemist, a hobbyist in explosives and more ingenious than Merlin the Magician. By now Central would have alerted him to the new assignments and he’d be thinking in advance. Twice now, he’d come up with gimmicks that saved my neck and made him purr like a kitten with satisfaction. He’d enjoy playing around with this one.
    At eight I walked Jack to the corner, then ambled uptown toward the Taft. There was one funny angle called Lily Tornay that had to be checked out all the way. In the lobby I wrote a note, gave it to the desk clerk and saw what slot he stuffed it in. I waited five minutes, grabbed the elevator and took it up to her floor and tapped on her door.
    Then I knew why I had the feeling a pro was back of me the night before. Lily was up and dressed, held the door open, but under the towel over her arm I knew she had the Beretta loaded and cocked even though she thought I was the maid, even though she was smiling, ready for anything, and to show her I was just a little bigger pro than she was, I took it away from her again, eased it closed, flipped out the slugs and shut the door behind me.
    I said, “You need some lessons, girl.”
    She never lost her smile. “I never thought so until now.” She stepped back, a silent invitation to come in. “What would you have done?”
    “Pulled the trigger,” I said.
    “And if it were a friend?”
    “He should know better than to stand in the way.”
    “Can I have the gun back?”
    I threw it to her, letting the shells clatter on the floor. “Sure.”
    Very deliberately, she picked them up, loaded the Beretta again and made it disappear into her waistband. “Everything I heard about you was true, wasn’t it?”
    “You never heard everything, sugar.”
    “What was left out?”
    “The good parts.” I walked over to the window, yanked the blinds up and stared down at the street. Out of habit I checked the room out while she watched until I came to the dresser, then I knew I found something. The tape recorder was in the bottom drawer inside a simple stationery box, a lead to the mike going over the back of