The Black Venus Contract by Philip Atlee

Author:Philip Atlee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Published: 2020-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

19

Two hours and forty-eight minutes later, Richardson returned to the mansion and handed me a strapped canvas bag. Inside it were neat bundles of Ù.S. currency, in denominations of $20-and-under banknotes. None of the bundles new money, and no notes in series, as the ransom note had demanded. I broke the label on one of the top bundles and held a $20 bill up to the light, to see if it was marked.

If it was, I couldn’t tell it. I strapped the bag back up, went out to get in Richardson’s dark Karmann-Ghia, and he drove me to a cab rank across town. I used two more cabs, directing them to random addresses, but always across the fog-shrouded city toward Anhembi Park. Then went walking into the park from the side away from the river, and soon my shoes were damp from the fog-drenched grass.

The huge exposition hall was closed, with only dim lights silvering scores of aluminum globes hanging inside. The hotel complex on the other side was staining the low fog-drifts with neon, and samba music grew louder as I approached. I counted the shadowed doorways on the great hall’s dark side, ducked into the third one, and two men took me by the arms. The canvas bank bag was jerked out of my hands, and the men bolted, running away.

They got as far as the nearest trees before a battery of spotlights flared on and a fusilade of automatic gunfire erupted. One spray of it swept toward me, briefly illumined, and as I went diving I saw the last running man whirl and go down, screaming hoarsely. The spots swung on past my doorway, and I lunged up and shot out the lock on the door.

As I ran down the empty, echoing hall of the building, under rows of silvered globes, I was cursing with a metronome effect. Not anger, not rage; I have been crossed-up too many times for that. It was obvious that Richardson, the banker, and the military police had arranged an ambush. I was not the principal guest of honor, but it was another shuck, without any regard for my safety.

My worst fear, as I pounded along the echoing aisles, was that I would meet a night watchman and have to kill him. But I didn’t, and after knocking out a window on the other side of the hall, got out unnoticed. The hotel complex next to the park was going full blast, and I wandered in and had a drink in its bar. Then another one, and caught a cab to Hal Trammell’s apartment.

It was a penthouse on top of the posh San Raphael Hotel, on the Avenida São Joao. All agency station chiefs live well, especially after they have dug in for a few years, and Trammell had been on the coveted São Paulo assignment for almost six years. His penthouse digs would not have disgraced the Dom Pedros, earlier Portuguese emperors of Brazil. Unfortunately, his formally-dressed butler did not let just everybody in.

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