Lone Wolf #3: Boston Avenger by Barry Mike

Author:Barry, Mike [Barry, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4405-4236-7
Publisher: Prologue Books
Published: 1973-09-21T16:00:00+00:00

XI

Sands was frantic. His wife had left him but that hardly seemed to matter, not in the context of this new and larger disaster. The bitch should have left him years ago, that was his only thought on that matter. No, he was in trouble now. He was in a quarter of a million dollars worth of trouble and the trap was springing. But he could not let go of the valise. Damn it, he would not do it. The valise was his way out.

His normal channels wouldn’t touch it. Not that he could blame them; this was no nickel-and-dime stuff, it would make a disastrous dent in any market into which it was poured, and the whole business of the fringe operators was working on the margins, making sure that they had no effect upon the overall picture. If they did it was no longer a hobby for them but sheer murder. But up at the higher levels he was completely blocked. “Are you crazy?” the man who he called in desperation said when Sands had finally got through. “Do you really think I want it?”

“I have your name and number as someone who might be interested in this kind of goods,” Sands had said. He had tried to be calm, tried to play it cool, even though he knew he was way beyond his depth now. “I’m willing to meet at an agreeable neutral zone and discuss this.”

“I wouldn’t meet you at the circus,” the man had said. “I wouldn’t meet you at a strip joint, I wouldn’t have a cup of coffee with you on the turnpike. Do you think that I’d get near stuff like that?”

“The price is right.”

“The price is wrong, the price is always wrong. This is no candystore I’m running here, I’m in business and I know what my business is. I won’t touch it.”

“You’re not being reasonable.”

“Reasonable! How reasonable do you want me to be? I’d be very reasonable with a bullet in my head. You take that fucking shipment of yours whatever it is and you drop it in the river, that’s my advice. I don’t know where you got it from or exactly what you think is going on here, but you’re in deep water man and you are sinking. The best thing you can do is to get off the phone.”

“Now listen,” Sands had said with a series of gestures which were of course invisible and thus of no help at all, his free arm wildly flailing through the air, “listen, you’re not giving me a chance—”

“Get the fuck out of my life,” the man had said and had hung up on him leaving Sands sitting, sweating in his living room, the valise still between his legs. He could not get rid of it. He could not move it. Achilles heel, albatross, the son of a bitch stood there like a quarter of a million dollars worth of jewels under glass in a vacant museum and he could not do a thing with it.

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