Malone wasn"t in the least worried about arriving at Mike Sand"s office late. In the first place, Sand was notorious for sleeping late and working late to make up for it. His work schedule was somewhere around forty-five degrees out of phase with the rest of the world, which made it just about average for the National Brotherhood of Truckers. It had never agitated for a nine-to-five work day. A man driving a truck, after all, worked all sorts of odd hours--and the union officials did the same, maybe just to prove that they were all good truckers at heart.
The sign over the door read:
National Headquarters NATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF TRUCKERS Welcome, Brother
Malone pushed at the door and it swung open, revealing a rather dingy-looking foyer. More Good Old Truckers At Heart, he told himself.
Mike Sand owned a quasi-palatial mansion in Puerto Rico for winter use, and a two-floor, completely air-conditioned apartment on Fifth Avenue for summer use. But the Headquarters Building looked dingy enough to make truckers conscience-stricken about paying back dues.
Behind the reception desk there was a man whose face was the approximate shape and color of a slightly used waffle. He looked up from his crossword puzzle as Malone came in, apparently trying to decide whether or not this new visitor should be greeted with: "Welcome, Brother!"
Taking pity on his indecision, Malone strode to the desk and said: "Tell Mike Sand he has a visitor."
The waffle-faced man blinked. "Mr. Sand is busy right now," he said.
"Who wants to talk to him?"
Malone tried to look steely-eyed and tough. "You pick up the intercom," he said, "and you tell Sand there"s a man out here who"s in the cloak-and-suit business."
"The what?"
"Tell him this man is worried about a recent shipment of b.u.t.tons,"
Malone went on.
"Mister," the waffle-faced man said, "you"re nuts."
"So I"m nuts," Malone said. "Make the call."
It was put through. After a few minutes of earnest conversation the man turned to look at Malone again, dizzied wonder in his eyes. "Mr.
Sand says go right up," he told the FBI Agent in a shocked voice.
"Elevator to the third floor."
Malone went over to the elevator, stepped in and pressed the third-floor b.u.t.ton. As the doors closed, the familiar itch of precognition began to a.s.sail him again. This time he had nothing else to distract him. He paid very close attention to it as he was carried slowly and creakily upward.
He looked up. There was an escape-hatch in the top of the car.
Standing on tiptoe, he managed to lift it aside, grasp the edges of the resulting hole and pull himself up through the hole to the top of the car. He looked back down, memorizing the elevator, and then pulled the hatch shut again. There was a small peephole in it, and Malone put his eye to it and waited.
About twenty seconds later, the car stopped and the doors opened. A little more time pa.s.sed, and then a gun, closely followed by a man, edged around the door frame.
"What the h.e.l.l," the man said. "The car"s empty!"
Another voice said: "Let"s cover the stairway."
Two pairs of footsteps receded rapidly down the hall. Malone, gun in hand, teleported himself back to the previously memorized elevator, tiptoed to the door and looked out. The two men were standing at the far end of the hall, posted at either side of the stairwell and obviously waiting for him to come on up.
Instead, he tiptoed out of the elevator hefting his gun, and came up silently behind the pair. When he was within ten feet he stopped and said, very politely: "Drop the guns, boys."
The guns thudded to the floor and the two men turned round.
"All right," Malone said, smiling into their astonished faces. "Now, let"s go on and see Mr. Sand."
[Ill.u.s.tration]
He picked up the guns with his free hand and put them into his coat pockets. Together, the three men went down toward the lighted office at the far end of the hall.
"Open it," Malone said as they came to the door. He followed them into the office. Behind a battered, worm-eaten desk in a dingy room sat a very surprised-looking Mike Sand.
He was only about five feet six, but he looked as if weighed over two hundred pounds. He had huge shoulders and a thick neck, and his face was sleepy-looking. He seemed to have lost a lot of fights in his long career; Sand, Malone reflected, was nearing fifty now, and he was beginning to look his age. His short hair, once black, was turning to iron-gray.
He didn"t say anything. Malone smiled at him pleasantly. "These boys were carrying deadly weapons," he told Sand in a polite voice. "That"s hardly the way to treat a brother." His precognitive warning system wasn"t ringing any alarm bells, but he kept his gun trained on the pair of thugs as he walked over to Mike Sand"s desk and took the two extra revolvers from his pocket. "You"d better keep these, Sand," he said. "Your boys don"t know how to handle them."
Sand grinned sourly, pulled open a desk drawer and swept the guns into it with one motion of his ham-like hand. He didn"t look at Malone.
"You guys better go downstairs and keep Jerry company," he said. "You can do crossword puzzles together."
"Now, Mike, we--" one of them began.
Mike Sand snorted. "Go on," he said. "Scram."
"But he was supposed to be in the elevator, and we--"
"Scram," Sand said. It sounded like a curse. The two men got out.
"Like apes in the trees," Sand said heavily. "Ask for bright boys and what do you get? Everything," he went on dismally, "is going to h.e.l.l."
That line, Malone reflected, was beginning to have all the persistence of a ba.s.s-bourdon. It droned its melancholy way through anything and everything else. He signed deeply, thought about a cigar and lit a cigarette instead. It tasted awful. "About those b.u.t.tons--" he said.
"I got nothing to do with b.u.t.tons," Sand said.
"You do with these," Malone said. "A shipment of b.u.t.tons from the Nevada desert. You grabbed them from Palveri."
"I got nothing to do with it," Sand said.
Malone looked around and found a chair and an ashtray. He grabbed one and sat down in the other. "I"m not from Castelnuovo," he said. "Or Palveri, or any of the Mafia boys. If I were, you"d know it fast enough."
Sand regarded him from under eyelids made almost entirely of scar-tissue. "I guess so," he said sourly at last. "But what do you want to know about the stuff? And who are you, anyhow?"
"The name"s Malone," Malone said. "You might say trouble is my business. Or something like that. I see an opportunity to create a little trouble--but not for you. That is, if you want to hear some more about those b.u.t.tons. Of course, if you had nothing to do with it--"
"All right," Sand said. "All right. But it was strictly a legitimate proposition, understand?"
"Sure," Malone said. "Strictly legitimate."
"Well, it was," Sand said defensively. "We got to stop scab trucking, don"t we? And that Palveri was using nonunion boys on the trucks. We had to stop them; it was a service to the Brotherhood, understand?"
"And the peyotl b.u.t.tons?" Malone asked.
Sand shrugged. "So we had to confiscate the cargo, didn"t we?" he said. "To teach them a lesson. Nonunion drivers, that"s what we"re against."
"And you"re for peyotl," Malone said, "so you can make it into peyote and get enough money to refurbish Brotherhood Headquarters."