In the last episode of Special Delivery, Rocky was given a choice: either take the money from Frank Weller and retrieve the missing package, or put Dave the delivery driver in danger. The following continues the April 25th entry in the Rocky Stone notebooks:
Blackmail, the oldest trick in the book. I've been through it so many times it's become part of the landscape, a fact of life in Los Diablos as frequent and damaging as earthquakes or traffic jams, the only way things get done in the halls of power and the only way the rich get richer. And what was I going to get out of it? I stared at the money that had been placed on my desk twice and thought about how much my country was worth to me, how I had fought and watched men die.
“The statue can be found at this address,” said Rollo, and slid a piece of paper face down across the top of the desk, placing it right next to the money.
His arm bent just slightly as if he might extend it to shake my hand on the deal, but the awkwardness of the moment tripped him up and he decided it wasn't appropriate. The stack of bills stayed put on the top of my desk and I couldn't take my eyes off of it. I was nauseated by it and enticed by it all at the same time. When I looked up again, Rollo was gone.
A few seconds later, Wanda came back in. As soon as she saw what Rollo left behind, she couldn't help but gawk at it, too. “Rocky, that's...”
I interrupted her before she got too far. “It's filthy. This whole deal stinks. I'm chasing after a statue that may or may not exist. Throw in a handful of Russian and Chinese spies and you have the limit. If I didn't make a promise to that poor dumb cluck who came into my office this morning I'd wash my hands of the whole thing. Maybe I...”
A nasty thought hit me, nastier than the one I was giving voice to. There was something about the way Rollo disappeared from my office, something about the way he walked and he talked and the way information just fell off his lips, almost like he had been practicing it. Even further back: how he had stormed out of the Weller house at the very moment I came to visit. Something stunk more than the deal and the cash and the package that went missing.
I asked Wanda: “Frank Weller has an office somewhere, right?”
“I would think so,” she replied.
I ripped the receiver off the hook and asked the operator what she knew about Frank Weller's office. In a few moments she had connected me and in another few more I was talking to a personal assistant to the secretary of the something-or-other who told me that Frank Weller was in New York at the moment and he couldn't come to the phone. After a question or two I found out where in New York and at what number he could be reached. Next I talked to a long-distance operator, hen to the New York operator, and after all that, to Frank Weller himself.
“Is this important?” was his first question.
I picked up the piece of paper with the address on it, flipped it between my fingers. “Maybe not,” I replied, “but it might clear up a few things. Does one of your employees go by the unlikely name of Rollo Betancourt?”
“Yes. What about it?”
“Tall, lean, angular fellow?”
He laughed. “You're a funny guy. Rollo's anything but.”
“It wasn't meant to be a joke. Somebody going by the name Rollo Betancourt just stopped by my office and that's what he looked like. He dropped a wad of cash in my lap and told me to get your missing package back.”
“I haven't had a package go missing. In fact, I haven't been in Los Diablos in over a month. Listen, lay off the sauce, will you, buddy? I'm a busy man.”
He slammed the receiver on to the hook and then it was my turn to laugh. I read the address on the paper: 5480 Oceanic Way in a seaside town called Parker Beach where the millionaires hide. My hunch was right. This was a set-up from the word go and I was the target.
What will Rocky do now that he's discovered the truth? Find out in the next episode of The Adventures of Rocky Stone!
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