Lone Wolf #9: Miami Marauder by Mike Barry Page A

supposed this was the very thought that could push him over the edge, the realization that in some complicated way he had become the enemy. But maybe you had to do it: you had to become a killer to destroy the killers, a madman to purge out the lunatics … maybe then you had to become a junkie to squeeze all the junk out of the world.
    He let his mind hang at that thought, the thought dangling like a fluorescent bulb off the ledge of his consciousness and then he was in Miami, poking and prodding through the slums at the outskirts, the Chrysler snaffling almost instinctively toward the rich, beating heart which was the beachfront—all of the seashore cities were laid out the same, it was exactly like Atlantic City—and from that time on there was little time at all to think. Maybe the residue of junk left on his fingers, the fingers resting against his nose had been inhaled and he was reacting to those mild, gentle vapors. You never knew. You just never knew. If this was a heroin jag, perhaps the Governor himself should try it.

IX
    “Come on up,” Calabrese said to him on the lobby phone, “just come on the hell up.”
    Wulff said, “You must think I’m crazy.”
    “I don’t think you’re crazy, I know it,” Calabrese said. He sounded as much in control as ever, his voice firm and assured. “I’m in room seven-oh-one. Come on and we’ll have a nice talk.”
    “Walk into it?” Wulff said, “you think I’m just going to walk into it?” He looked around the lobby. The standard: people in evening dress, bathing suits, all stages between drifting through, a busy newsstand at the far corner, jingling phones, bellboys … but at least three and possibly as many as five of these people had him under tight observation. He knew that. Still, observation was not capture. The call had been a reasonable risk.
    “Why not?” Calabrese said, sounding cheerful. “You’re not going to do anything to me because only I know where I’ve got the girl and your partner stashed and I’m not going to do anything to you because I assume that you’ve got the sack good and hid and only you know where it is. Am I right? So it’s a standoff.”
    “That’s not what I heard from you the last couple of times we talked. You don’t want the sack, you want my ass. You want to kill me.”
    “Oh,” Calabrese said and laughed, a healthy, unfettered laugh that had no trace of affection. “Oh, that was just to get your interest up, Wulff, and besides we all have episodes of temper, you’ve got to admit. Little outbursts; really, they don’t mean a thing. I’m perfectly calm, this is just a business proposition to me now. Bet your life. You come up and we’ll have a nice talk.”
    Wulff flicked a glance through the lobby again. If there was a net of surveillance it was deep and subtle, probably came from the desk clerks themselves because nothing looked untoward at all. Possibly Calabrese was so sure of his position now that he did not even think he
had
to observe Wulff, just let him walk into the lair and start firing … but there was always the chance too that the old man was telling the truth, that indeed the only thing he had in his mind was a casual chat. A casual chat between old antagonists … he had the sack stuffed into a big locker at the airport, the key to that locker checked into a smaller one as the only contents and the key to the small locker taped high in an abandoned alleyway three miles from here … yes, Calabrese was right, the stuff was pretty much under wraps. Still, did any protection justify the risk of confronting the old beast whole?
    He guessed that it did and another jolt of the same force that had been hitting him in the car on US 1 came through. Of course he wanted to see the old bastard, of course he wanted the confrontation … it was what he had wanted since that last time in Chicago when Calabrese had mocked him and laughed at his impotence and even if the old man were holed up there with