Operation Whiplash by Dan J. Marlowe Page A

me for the first time. “Hell of a fucking mess,” he said unexpectedly. “Not yours. Mine.” A hand rose from his lap and traced the outline of his misshapen face. “Ran out of money to put it back in shape properly. Wasn’t goin’ anyplace where anyone who mattered would see it, anyway.”
    The momentary spark of interest seemed to die out. Deakin’s eyes reverted to their former passive, inward-looking state. His attitude suggested I was no longer present. I tried to capitalize upon the fractional breakthrough. “I wanted to ask you about a man named Colisimo,” I said.
    His answer came quickly enough. “Never met him.” I thought that was all he was going to say, but he cleared his throat again. “Never met him,” he repeated in a stronger voice.
    “But you met Mario Rubelli.”
    There was no answer at all. Casey Deakin spat into the grass surrounding his ramshackle chair. The action appeared to be reflexive, one with no passion nor even much energy. Mentally Deakin had gone away again. I had promised Jed I wouldn’t use his name, but unless I could jar Deakin loose in some way, what was I doing there?
    “Jed Raymond thought you could help me,” I continued after a moment’s self-debate.
    The name roused Deakin, as I’d hoped. “Honest kid,” he said, his eyes returning from that inner far-distance. “But a kid,” he added. “Never talked to him about—” He didn’t finish it. His tone implied that if he hadn’t talked to Jed Raymond about what had happened to him he certainly wasn’t going to talk to a stranger.
    There had to be some kind of handle that fit this man. “Rubelli worked you over,” I reminded him. “Wouldn’t you like to see something happen to him?”
    Some responses are elemental.
    Self-preservation.
    Sex.
    And revenge.
    For an instant there was a feral gleam in Deakin’s sunken eyes. It evaporated, and Deakin shook his head. “Said they’d kill me if I talked,” he said in another of his foreshortened sentences. “Don’t see how it could help, anyway.”
    “I’m looking for an angle,” I explained. “Any angle.”
    “You’re a damn fool.” Once again his voice was unexpectedly stronger. “They’ll plow you under.”
    “They plowed you under because you didn’t know who you were dealing with,” I suggested.
    “God’s truth,” Casey Deakin agreed.
    “If you had, you’d have handled it differently.”
    “God’s truth,” he said again.
    “Do you know a girl named Robin Ford?”
    He was silent.
    “Rubelli’s girl?”
    Casey Deakin spat on the grass again. “She watched,” he said. I was surprised to see a wisp of a smile on the lumpy face. “Gave ’em all they could handle for a bit. Then—” He retreated into his own silent-screen horror movie.
    I looked again at the man in the unbalanced chair. I could believe that he once had the capacity to give Rubelli’s goons, as Jed termed them, all they could handle for a bit. Even in its shrunken state Deakin’s physique suggested a former massivity. And a man doesn’t get to organize his own trucking company by acting like the mother superior of a convent.
    “What’ve you got against Rubelli?” Deakin broke the silence that had fallen between us.
    “I’m not sure,” I said.
    I felt it was a weak answer, but Deakin nodded. “Never sure until it’s too late,” he responded. “Butter wouldn’t melt in their goddam mouths when they gave me the money to expand the business.” His tone was brooding. His gaze had slipped away from me, but it returned. “How’d you handle Rubelli if anything I told you fit your manifest? Run to the cops?”
    Jed had said that Deakin had never filed a complaint. The police apparently couldn’t provide a solution for him. Even aside from the threats against his life, the trucking business provides a lot of situations for which legal authority will never be asked to supply solutions. “No cops,” I said. On a hunch, I unbuttoned my jacket and drew my Smith