Out

  THE DAY THE SWISS BANKS CALL THE MAFIA'S BLUFF THERE'S A $2-BILLI0N SCORE TO SETTLE.

  "BABE" VOLPONE, Mafia lover boy, ups the ante with murder and vengeance.

  DON GABELOTTI, the rival kingpin, is caught with a fatal hand.

  RENATA, the spoiled beauty, pushes her luck.

  O'BRION, the syndicate lawyer, goes for bust

  ZAZA, the gang moll, puts up more than her body.

  KLOPPE, the kinky banker, plays for sexual pleasure.

  INEZ, the high-priced princess, springs a savage surprise on a cheater.

  OUT

  Pierre Rey

  Translated from the French by Harold J. Salemson

  A Bantam Book published by arrangement with Editions Robert Laffont Bantam edition January 1980

  All rights reserved. English translation copyright © 1979 by Bantam Books, Inc This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. For information address: Bantam Books, Inc.

  isbn 0-353-13139-7

  Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada

  Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, Inc. Its trade mark, consisting of the words "Bantam Books" and the por trayal of a bantam. Is Registered in US. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, Inc., 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10019.

  PRINTED IN THE UN ITED STATES OF AMERICA.

  When you see a Swiss banker jumping out. the window,

  Jump after him. There is surely money to be made there,

  —Voltaire

  At one end of the chain

  The one who is richer than gold;

  At the other end of the chain

  The one who digs till his death.

  Which of the two will die first,

  If God should shut his eyes?

  —Pueblo ,,, Pueblo ..,

  (Bolivian miner's song)

  OUT

  Prologue

  Coming out of the curve, Roland braked a bit too sharply. His hands, on the control lever, and his spine shook with the heavy vibrations of 750 tons of machinery. "Staying with us tonight?" Luciano asked.

  Roland gradually lowered the throttle to reduce the thrust of the locomotive.

  "I’d like to, but..."

  "Is she pretty?"

  "You kidding? My mother!"

  "Cut it some more..."

  The train hissed softly as it glided to a lower speed. For the first time since they started, the parallel tracks before them did not meet in the distance. His hand still gripping the lever, Roland mechanically noted the concrete platforms growing progressively denser with handcarts, packages, and groups of travelers in ranks that tightened as the train moved into the station.

  "What's wrong with them?"

  "Who?"

  "What the hell're they gawking at?"

  The locomotive was no more than a hundred yards from the terminal buffers. And the people along the plat forms stood gaping at Roland and Luciano in disbelief, grimaces frozen on their faces, even as their heads swung around to watch the engine go by.

  "What do you s'pose is wrong?" Luciano wondered aloud. "I got egg on my face or something?""No. Do I?" said Roland.

  The train was doing a bare five miles an hour as it slid beneath the glass-paned marquee under which groups of people stood guard over their luggage.

  "Train number one-two-seven, express from Geneva, now arriving. Please stand back!" yelled a man's voice, bouncing out of ten loudspeakers that fed back over one another.

  Roland saw a plump woman drop her handbag with out bothering to bend down and pick it up; then she pointed a finger at him as she covered the bottom of her face with her other hand in an expression of fright.

  "Shit!" Roland swore uncomfortably. "What the hell's wrong?"

  Wherever he turned, there were the same looks of surprise. As the train went by, everything fell silent Plat form activity usually generated its own typical din: me tallic noises, bumps, rumbles, shouts, but now there was nothing except that sullen movement of withdrawal and those gaping eyes.

  "Hit it!"

  Roland jammed the brake, and the engine grazed the tip of the buffers. Luciano cut the power. Still no one on the platform moved. Two station employees, heads to gether, were whispering. Then one of them darted toward the stntfonmaster’s office, and the other climbed up the locomotive ladder and came into the cab. He was obvious ly embarrassed, glancing first at Luciano, then at Roland, not saying a word.

  He cleared his throat "Where did you pick that up?"

  "Pick what up?’ said Roland.

  "What do you mean—what?"

  "Look," Luciano barked, "we're no geniuses! Why not cut the riddles?"

  "Follow me."

  The crowd remained as if frozen. All that could be heard was the panting of an antique steam locomotive on a siding. Luciano and Roland hefted themselves down to the asphalt, but only when they were in front of their en gine did they understand what was going on.

  On the cowcatcher, as if delicately placed there by a ghoulish decorator, was a man's leg—neatly sheared off at the groin. One could just make out a rust-colored blood stain that came through the dark material of the trousers at the point where the bones had probably been severed. The absurd thought that this was a high-class leg flashed through Roland's mind: the black shoe was made of fine leather, and there was a matching silk sock.

  On looking closer, he could see that blood was trickling down the sock, onto the shoe, and ending in a dark brown puddle on the engine's steel cowcatcher.

  At that moment, neither Roland nor any of the other witnesses could have any idea that this puddle was going to spread with breathtaking speed over several continents. And turn into a bloodbath

  Part One GENEVA-ZURICH EXPRESS

  1

  Morty O’Brion never dared assert himself with his wife. Judith terrified him. The corners of her mouth twisted with a sarcastic bitterness that no makeup could disguise. When she raised her voice, Morty felt like melting away; when she gave him the silent treatment, it was even worse, for it meant she was either repressing her contempt for him or having the kind of migraine headache he would have to handle with kid gloves.

  It had been years since Marty had tried to carry on any real conversation with her. Since they had been sleep ing in separate rooms, their communication had dwindled to short exchanges, summed up by the words headache, ridiculous, gimme, and how much. When they were first married, Morty had hoped Judith would take an in terest in his work, become proud of his success, but all she ever did was nag him about his failures, taking his triumphs for granted, and they had quickly retreated into a kind of deaf-and-dumb hostility, each remaining alone with her or his own thoughts. Judith didn't bother to complain any more, except by making faces, and Morty was careful never to mention his professional achievements, for he felt she would take delight in destroying his pleasure with a cruel word or a scornful grimace.

  Four years before, as a hotshot financial lawyer, he had wanted to crow to her when he was retained to straighten out some of the Syndicate's business deals. But a sixth sense had warned him not to. Even though it was a potential gold mine, this new connection was not going to mean any change in her life—not for the moment, any way. Judith's closets were already overflowing with furs, her drawers crammed with jewels, all intended in some way to make up for the lack of communication between them.

  Judith lit another cigarette and snuffed the match out in the bottom of the coffee cup on her virtually untouched breakfast tray. Morty went about closing his overnighter.

  "You going somewhere?" she asked.

  "Yes."

  "But you just got back from Europe. Oh, what a head ache I have!’"

  "Take some of your pills.’’


  "Where are you going this time?"

  He looked up, surprised. She never pried that way, or dinarily acting as if his goings and comings were beneath her notice. He almost answered, ‘What the fuck do you care? but he simply mumbled, "Nassau."

  She poured the rest of her coffee into her half-finished glass of grapefruit juice, then dropped her barely smoked cigarette in after it

  "You're lucky.’’

  Taken aback, he glanced quickly at her eyes, relieved to see that they reflected nothing but her usual sullen bore dom.

  He challenged her. "Be ready in five minutes and I'll take you along."

  "Don't be ridiculous. I've got a headache."

  If only she knew. She had not realized how he had grown. To her, he was still the penniless young lawyer who almost had to beg to be taken on as a clerk. And she had thought she could keep him under her thumb by castrat ing him. Even if he told her about it, how would she be able to comprehend what he was about to pull off?

  He coughed "Okay, then . . ." He started to bend toward her, as if to kiss her good-bye, but he stopped. "Well, I’d better be going..."

  Perhaps he should have been bothered by heartrending feelings of finality, as are all the heroes of books when they're putting an end to twenty years of double harness. But Morty O'Brion was as calm as if he were planning to be back home that evening for dinner. The fact that they had no children suddenly made him deliriously happy. Leaving her like this, all things considered, he was simply dropping off one part of himself, a sticky piece of his life that he was embarrassed to think about because he had waited too long to work up the courage to run out on it

  Forty-eight hours from now, he would be far away, in a dream place of which no one in the world even suspected the existence. And he, Mortimer O’Brion, would be 'the richest man on earth, richer than any other human had ever been, rich beyond the imaginings of the wildest minds.

  He was almost at the door when Judith called out,. "Mortyl On your way out, ask Margaret to bring me some cold water and my pills."

  He nodded. How appropriate, he thought, that the last word he heard from her should be pills. He turned his back, so she couldn't see his smile.

  The small plane was completing its third loop. Once again it swooped down over the main street of Chiavenna, buzzed the ocher rooftops with its powerful vibration, then righted itself just to the left of the church steeple. Looking up, the people in the small town saw a flock of lit tle pieces of paper dancing on the wind, pirouetting grace fully with the hesitating movements of autumn leaves, to land finally on the street, on the tops of cars, on balconies, or on the brightly colored canvas awnings atop the carts of the market merchants. It was noon, and the market was a once-a-week affair. The street was full of people, and the gentle April breeze off Lake Como outlined the lithe shapes of the younger women who had been the first to take their light dresses out of winter storage.

  Two or three boys picked up what they thought to be some kind of advertising leaflet, turned it over between their fingers, then looked at one another in disbelief.

  One twelve-year-old broke the silence. Tripping over his feet with excitement, he dashed toward his father's bakery, pressing to his chest a handful of folded money. He shouted

  to his parents, who had rushed out when they heard the noise of the motor.

  "It's money! Father! Mother! It's raining money from heaven!"

  Suddenly everyone came to life. People were dashing into the merry-go-round of cars occupying the roadway, bending down to get their share of the miraculous catch amid a cacophony of shrieking brakes, cursing drivers, and families yelling instructions to their most agile members. Threats, protests, and shouts of encouragement were sud denly drowned out by the deafening noise of the returning plane. And while a few of the old women chanted "Mira cle! Miracle!" as they crossed themselves, more manna came floating down.

  Children, held up by sturdier elder siblings, tried to keep their footing on tree branches where early blossoms were flowering into banknotes: real Swiss currency, fine, good mils from the Schweizerische Nationalbank, delicately mauve in shade and worth anywhere from ten to fifty francs. The rush became more violent and people started to fight

  Renata righted her plane and burst out laughing. Seen from above, the view looked something like a chicken coop in which all the birds, suddenly gone mad, had started peck ing at imaginary feed.

  ‘You're disgusting!'‘ Kurt yelled at her, raising his voice to be heard over die motor and the wind.

  To his utter terror, she let go of the joy stick and slammed shut the Plexiglas cockpit cover. The plane did a flip-flop, which only made Renata laugh harder as she glanced sideways and muttered, "Serves you right for daring me!"

  Beneath them they could see a succession of bright green valleys spotted here and there with the darker green of pine trees.

  "Hang on! We're diving," Renata called to him.

  "Renata!" Kurt shouted back.

  The Piper seemed to fall like a stone on the herd of cows Renata had been aiming for, nearly grazing their backs as they spread across the landscape. For a bare second Kurt was able to see the cowherd motion toward the plane and shake his fist at them.

  Trying to sound as reasonable as possible, Kurt said, "Just what are you trying to prove to me?"

  Leapfrogging over tiny light clouds that were dissi pating in the wind, Renata looked serious. "Simply that you're wrong all the way down the line and not honest enough to give a name to your real wishes. Did you see them run and fight when I dropped that money on them? You claimed that it was degrading, that I was insulting the hardworking population! Well, who was right?1'

  Feeling slightly nauseated, Kurt slunk into his seat as if he had not heard her. If he stood up to her, he was afraid he might drive her to the kind of daring in which a flight in her Piper turned into a roller-coaster nightmare.

  "Well, can't you answer?"

  To teach him a lesson, she zoomed into a climb that knocked the wind out of him and pinned him back against his seat After that she treated him to another straight dive, two or three barrel rolls in which earth and sky seemed to be pushing each other around, and a long up side-down glide. "If, as you claim, money were shit," she said, "then people wouldn't get down on all fours to grab after it!"

  He gritted his teeth. If she didn't maneuver a crash in the next few minutes, he had a chance of being alive when they got back to Zurich, where at the end of the week, on Sunday, April 26, they were to be married.

  Zaza Finney thought she was perfect Not a shadow, not a wrinkle marred the smooth skin of her face, and she considered her eyes fantastic and mysterious. Naked be fore her mirror, she swung one of its panels to get a rear view. She was overwhelmed by the harmonious proportions of her narrow waist and ample hips, the satiny velvet of her tanned skin, the daintiness of her ankles, and the soft curve of her thighs. She could almost cry over such breath taking beauty. Once again she wondered whether she had made a smart move in deciding—for the time being—to latch on to that dull, ordinary little man, even though with every step he took gold seemed to appear as if by magic.

  Besides her passion for her own beautiful image, she had a burning ambition to be a star. She was sure that once she got her chance on screen or stage, she would be able to hold the audience captive. But one had to start some where, so she had gotten a job posing for a set of pictures for a canned-asparagus-soup campaign.

  The photographer, after sleeping with her, got her to let him take some more revealing shots, which, he swore, were "just to remember her by" even though he had asked her to sign a release. Three months later, she had been beside herself with delight when she saw the photos in the pages of one of those now highly respectable girlie, maga zines that featured "bedmates of the month." But, even as she was gloating over the pictures, it occurred to her that she might capitalize on his double cross. A small scandal could easily blow up into a media feast, so she had asked a gal friend for the name of the best lawyer in
New York.

  When she got to Mortimer O’Brion's office, the recep tionist wouldn't make an appointment, claiming she didn't know when he would be in. Zaza came back twice. The third time, the receptionist had been interrupted by an un distinguished little man, the kind of guy no woman would look at a second time unless he had a knife stuck in his hack or the figure of his net worth plastered on his chest To her amazement, the receptionist had deferred to him with unexpected servility, saying, "Here is Mr. O’Brion now. He'll be glad to see you."