Black Market

He was playacting that he was in ' Nam again. In a weird way, he figured that he was. Green Band was the unofficial end of Vietnam, wasn't it? It was something close to that.

Tricosas stared around the cramped radio room and felt a rush of claustrophobia tighten his chest. The broom closet was tucked up on the third floor of the Vets garage. The place was bare but for a gray metal card table and matching folding chair, the PRC transmitter-receiver, and a First Blood movie poster taped to the greasy walls.

“Contact. This is Vets Three.” Tricosas's finger finally clicked on the PRC again.

“All right, all you brave veterans of foreign wars, you Purple Heart and Medal of Honor wi

“Over. This is Vets Twenty-two. I'm at Mad Ave and five two. I'll pick up and take Ms. Austin. I know the old chick. Be there in approximately five minutes. Over.”

“Thank you kindly, Vets Twenty-two… Okay, here's another hot one. I have a corporate account at Twenty-five Central Park West. Account T-Twenty-one. Mr. Sidney Solovey is headed for the Yale Club at Fifty Vanderbilt. Mr. Solovey used to work for Salomon Brothers. Before somebody blew the living shit out of Wall Street, that is. Over.”

“Over. Vets Nineteen. I'm CPS and Sixth. I'll take Mr. Solovey to Yale. Listen, Trichinosis, who you like, Knicks and the Philly Sixers? Knicks laying two and a half at home. Over.”

“Contact. Bet your life on the powerful shoulders of young Mr. Moses Malone. Knicks are point three nine one lifetime against the Sixers and the spread. Over and out.”

Nick Tricosas stood up. He stretched another three inches into his body and rubbed the small of his back. He needed a break from the taxi-dispatcher radio clatter, the constant radioman duty since five that morning.

He lit up a cigar, rolling it gently between his thumb and index finger. Then he wandered down the winding back stairs of the Vets building, trailing clouds of expensive smoke. He climbed down another twisting flight of stairs to the main garage.

The basement floor was thick with collected filth and debris. It was a typically rat-infested New York cellar. There was a second dispatcher's office flanked by cabbie waiting benches. Off to the left were rusted candy and soda machines and an unpainted gray metal door.

Tricosas squinted and started down the serpentine, dungeon-type hallway. He sighed. Colonel Hudson had said nobody was to go inside the locked basement room under any circumstances.

Tricosas produced a key, anyway. He turned it into the stout Chubb mortise lock and heard the releasing click-click-click. He pushed the creaking door open. Then he peeked inside Colonel Hudson's forbidden holy of holies…

Nick Tricosas couldn't help smiling, almost laughing out loud. He sucked in his breath. His deep brown eyes doubled in size. His head tensed, felt as if it might actually explode, blow off his shoulders. Right back up three flights of stairs to the claustrophobic radio-dispatcher room.

He had never actually seen so much money! What he was looking at just didn't seem possible.

Billions of dollars. Billions!

Colonel David Hudson did a highly unusual thing-he hesitated before acting. He reconsidered one final time as he waited in the phone booth at the southeast corner of Fifty-fourth Street and Sixth Avenue and stared at the condensation on the glass panes. He understood that he was taking an u

He lightly tapped a quarter against the black metal box and listened to it drop.

Ding. Ding. Co

Yes, he wanted to see Billie again. He wanted to see her very much.

Less than an hour later she glided into the buzzing and crowded O'Neal's on West Fifty-seventh and Sixth. Hudson watched her from a stool at the bar. His head began to swim.

Yes, he wanted to see her again. Billie… just Billie.

She had on a long, speckled charcoal-gray coat and black leather boots to her thighs. A soft gray beret was placed carefully on the side of her flowing blond hair. She stood out in the tide of young and middle-aged businesswomen crowding into the popular bistro.

She smiled when she finally saw him and smoothly moved his way.

“I see you're coming up in the world. Finished and sold your play already, have you?”

“That's a possibility. Or maybe I robbed a bank so I could afford to see you again.” His smile was quiet, genuine.

Billie bowed her head slightly at the mention of payment for their time spent together. The unusual blush he'd seen at the hotel once again streaked her forehead and cheeks. He had the feeling she hadn't been in the business very long-though perhaps that was what he wanted to feel. Perhaps it was her best skill as an escort-to seem so i

“They set an hour for your appointment. Should we go someplace? An hour isn't that long.”

“I'd like to have a drink here with you. We have time. One drink.”

Hudson signaled for the bartender, who came immediately, in his crisp white shirt and black bow tie, like a man answering an urgent summons. Hudson seemed to have a way of getting whatever he wanted, Billie had already noticed. He was very much in command for the Washington-Jefferson Hotel type.

She ordered the house white, finally smiling and shaking her head at Hudson -as if he were a little hopeless, bewildering certainly.

A hundred and fifty dollars an hour, plus the bar tab, seemed extremely steep for the honor of tipping a drink with an attractive call girl. He certainly didn't look as if he could afford it-but she knew enough not to put a lot of faith in appearances and superficial impressions.

“You don't have to pay. I'll say you didn't show.” Then she seemed instantly flustered and embarrassed again.

Now Hudson was quite certain she hadn't been doing this kind of work very long. Sometimes it happened to young actresses, to up-and-coming New York models.

“I like you. I don't think I understand you, but I like you,” she said.

They looked into each other's eyes, and it was if they were all alone in the hectic buzzing barroom. Hudson could feel a strong desire for her growing again. In his mind, he saw her rose-tipped breasts. He remembered her fast breathing as she came.

He leaned forward and kissed her cheek-he kissed her as gently as he'd ever kissed anyone. He had the desire to get close, to try to open up a little with her. At the same time he felt a soldier's warning, an instinct powerfully holding him back.

“Tell me something about yourself. Just one small thing… It doesn't have to be anything important.”

She smiled again, seeming to be enjoying herself. The missing arm, the way he carried himself, made him quite dashing. “All right. Sometimes I'm too impulsive. I shouldn't be offering you what's commonly called a freebie. I could be fired from Vintage. Now tell me something about yourself.”

“I don't even have enough money to pay this bar tab,” Hudson said, and laughed.

“You really don't?”

“Really. Now tell me one true fact. Anything, just something true.”

She hesitated, then shrugged. “I have two older sisters back in Birmingham. Back in England.”

“They're both married. Successfully married. And your mother won't let you forget it,” Hudson said with a smile.

“No. They're both married all right. Right on the button there. That's what you do if you're a sensible girl in Birmingham. But neither marriage is successful. And, yes, my mother won't let me forget I'm still single. Are you honestly writing a play in that awful hotel? Your so-called garret?”