The Green Wound Contract

By Philip Atlee

The “grand spy-chase novel . . . highly successful and realistic” that introduced the international operative with a lethal touch (Publishers Weekly).

Secret agent Joe Gall has a puzzle to put together that stretches from the streets of Laredo, Texas, to the steamy island of Trinidad—and along the way, he must deal with a New Orleans nun with some surprising fighting skills as well as civil unrest in a small southern town . . .
 
As he battles bad guys using all the smarts and survival tactics he learned from the CIA, there are two beautiful women who may hold the answers—but Gall has to start asking the right questions—in the debut thriller of this action-packed series that would go on to earn an Edgar Award nomination.

“I admire Philip Atlee’s writing tremendously.” —Raymond Chandler

• Language: English
• Publisher: MysteriousPress.com Open Road
• Release date: Feb 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781504066013

Philip Atlee

Philip Atlee (1915–1991) was the creator of the long-running Joe Gall Mysteries, which is comprised of twenty-two novels published in the 1960s and 70s. Born in Fort Worth, Texas, Atlee wrote several novels and screenplays—including Thunder Road starring Robert Mitchum, and Big Jim McLain starring John Wayne—before producing the series for which he is known. An avid flyer, he was a member of the Flying Tigers before World War II and joined the Marines after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Book preview

Chapter One

The man seemed to be trying to walk up into the sky. One second he was strolling along the noon street in Laredo, distinguishable in the polyglot crowd only by his little white leather cap. Then he lunged forward and went gusting into an antic dance. Face contorted under the direct sunlight, he whirled and took two enormous sweeping steps, high and sideways. Racking away from the glittering store windows, he caromed into the parked car and jackknifed into the gutter.

He was dead when I turned him over. Hands clawed and knees jerked up in the fetal position, as if he might be hiding a monstrous secret. The chic little cap had fallen from his head, and a damp cigarette butt was clinging to his cheek. I brushed it away.

He had made no sound at all during his idiot strut, not even a final stertorous breathing. The pupils of his eyes had contracted, and he had voided his bowels.

I stood up with my nose wrinkling. People were crowding around, murmuring and sniffing; they pressed in on me, but nobody offered to help. Gawkers. A Laredo cop came shoving through and jostled me aside. He tried vainly to find a pulse in the corded wrist, and asked somebody to call an ambulance. Nobody noticed as I moved backward and away from the curious bystanders. They were watching the bow-stringed corpse and the policeman, who was ripping sweat beads off his forehead.

The air-conditioned lobby felt fine. I went up to the room, shed my damp clothes, and showered. Twenty minutes later I was walking across the international bridge. On the Nuevo side, the money-changers, guides, pimps, and gimcrack salesman started hitting me. I went along shaking my head to their entreaties, taking in the sun-ripened smell of the town.

Stale bars, chili peppers, sweat, faked perfume, soiled towels…. As if the civic fathers had buffed up the main thoroughfare for the turistas, but hadn’t swept the excrement far enough away. That gamy aroma is the ingredient you don’t get from the travel posters.

In the second block, one of the sidewalk entrepreneurs wouldn’t quit. He had a thin mustache and a dirty, striped collar, and he pawed at my arm twice and then clutched it, whispering praise of my obvious virility and promising to deliver me straight into the arms of Paradise.

I stopped. Sweat was trickling down my neck. The grabbed arm was just another gambit; he wanted me to wax indignant, curse him, or maybe even belt him one. Usually, then, I could be counted on to become penitent and piece him off with a few pesos.

Amigo, I said, staring down the gaudy street, I’ve got a sister of twelve years. Incredibly beautiful, a retired circus acrobat. For you, oldest of my friends, only forty pesos. And if she didn’t have a suppurating social disease, such bliss would cost you far more….

His hand came off my arm. People were streaming around us, on the sidewalk.

Si. He shrugged his thin shoulders. A filthy business. But here, in this place, what other thing?

Flies buzzed, voices blurred, and the sun came down like a blow as we considered the deplorable human condition. The Mexican is a realist. He will con you relentlessly until he realizes that you are privy to the con. Then he calmly admits to being venal, rapacious, anything. In this attitude, he has a head start on the gringo, because he makes no pious protestation that people are basically honest. It was normal for this man to assume that I had not been culture-impelled when I crossed the bridge.

I invited him to join me in a copita at the Cadillac Bar, for his soul’s sake. That he could have Scotch, or whatever he wanted, but that I was going to have a few tequilas out of the bottle with the blue horseshoe on it. He grinned, bowed with frayed punctilio, and flourished a card. He said he would have the copita later, but that I had upset his timetable. He had to find another pigeon. Waving, he hustled back toward the customs buildings and the flow of tourists.

The cavernous bar was only half-filled. Whistling with relief in the refrigerated air, I walked between the tables to one in the far corner. That selection was an automatic reflex; it works when I am choosing a stall in a pay-toilet. An old waiter with a face like weathered mahogany came shuffling toward me, smiling. He said it had been a long time, and was I well? I assured him of it, and was mildly surprised since I had not been there for several years.

When he came back with the tequila, mineral water, and saucer of quartered limes, he asked how my senora was, and I told him that the senora and I were discompuesto.

Con Dios, he murmured.

Jorge, isn’t it?

Si, señor. He was pleased that I remembered his name. You have only to lift a finger, for service. It is good to see you again.

"Mil gracias, Jorge," I said, and he went shuffling back to his station. I took the chilled shot of Herradura straight, tamped it with mineral water, and nipped a lime. The tiny bomb exploded in my gut, flowered, and I rubbed at my neck with satisfaction, thinking of the Regis bath-house in the City, because I had sweated out a lot of that fine tequila there. While I was relaxing and reflecting on my misspent life, a roistering couple came across the big room and took the table next to me.

One glance told me they weren’t married. She wore no ring, and besides, they were having too much fun. Both of them were a trifle crimped.

The girl was a tall, bold ash-blonde in black shorts and a halter, and her stride was free. If it really is what’s up front that counts, this one was a winner easy. The ankles were a shade too thick, but otherwise the tanned legs were superb. He was an ex-athlete going to fat, and doing it in Bermuda shorts and a screaming sport shirt.

The paramours were bantering. Their frozen daiquiris came, and they sucked on the striped straws with enthusiasm. She had kicked off her silver flats, and from the corner of my eye I could see a bare foot twitching.

… Remember those damned signs, Barb? he was asking. "Something, something … piedras. ‘Watch For Fallen Rocks.’ Wouldn’t it be the gas of the cosmos if we had some duplicates made? Except the new ones would read ‘Watch For Fallen Women!’ He was wheezing, breaking up. An’ y’know, Barb … string out a lot of assorted lingerie, bras, pants, garter belts…."

I motioned to Jorge.

Barb was snickering dutifully. And a little further on, ‘Danger, Soft Shoulders,’ she suggested. He nodded so violently that I thought his retired-fullback head might come off; he had another hiccoughing fit, and added a few whoops. Jorge murmured "señor" beside me, and I told him to bring me the Herradura bottle, then broiled quail with the guacamole salad and frijoles resfriado. He was moving away when the bare foot kicked my knee.

I looked up the tanned leg, bare to the hip, and traced her topography to the generous mouth.

Hardship case! she scoffed. Yah, yah! Imps of glee were dancing in her lilac eyes. (I will submit to the question; her eyes were lilac-colored.) And her pale pink lipstick was smeared, so that she seemed carnival-bound. You hear a perfectly reasonable suggestion, she continued, one that might do a heap of good in a nuclear-depressed world, and just sit there like a clod, ordering quail.

Perhaps I was not paying enough attention—

Her escort, the beefy job, belched and leaned over the table at me. What’s more, you’re dour, sir! he announced. Dour, and possibly even a poltroon. God will punish you for it.

He has, I said. The candle-power of my smile was lower, but I beamed it at him, too. He was the type who could switch from jocular to ugly without warning, and sometimes they require a swizzle-stick up the nose.

Well, by God, have a drink with us, friend! he shouted.

I said I couldn’t, that I was waiting for my mother. Until she came, I could drink nothing but tequila. That triggered him again, and he began to pound on the table, weak with glee. Two waiters started toward us.

A gas … he wheezed weakly. I foresaw the day when we would all get a weekly bulletin from Sinatra’s headquarters, like the Kiplinger Report. Advising us what his sequined malcontents had decided would be the English language for the following week. The fornication bit, the proper obscene scene, and the death of both decency and clarity, a grave to dig. With all the other slangy terms which had been born in the sexually-directed idiom of jazz musicians. Going back to Storyville, the contemptuous jargon code they had developed in defense against the white ofays. Like Beefy.

His face was flushed; he was fighting for breath and coherence. Can’t go a single place … without your mother, eh, old sport?

I waved the waiters away. After glancing at Jorge, they went back toward the bar. A fact, I assured Beefy. Fortunately, mother is a merry old grig, and will go damned near anywhere.

That scuttled him again. She laughed too, but moderately, as if she hated herself for it. I had another shot and reflected that if a man had a complete file of all the old Pan-time and Keith-Orpheum vaudeville jokes, he would never want for anything. Still, we had geared our repartee so high that I was afraid nobody would have an exit line. I got up and walked to the phone on the end of the bar.

Lee? I asked, when the ring was answered. He said yes and I said Joe Gall. How are you?

Better now. His voice was a well-remembered growl. Where the hell are you? No, scrub that remark and come on out. I’ve got a side of beef and a gallon of whisky. I laughed, because I knew he did have them.

I’m across the river, in the Cadillac Bar, and I need to ask a few questions. Possible?

On my way, he said, and hung up. He was, too, because there are still a few people like that in the world. If Lee Norwood said he was coming to meet you, that fact was an absolute. Revolution, earthquake, or other disaster might try to intervene, but through the dust of settling debris, Lee would show up. He was a former national pistol and military rapid-fire champion, had shot for the United States in international competition, and, barring Naval service, had worked for the Treasury Department all his life.

When I got back to my table, Beefy had sought the can but his ash-blonde was still stretched out in that provocative pose. I sat down and had another drink. Her bare foot, now grimed from the floor, was still twitching and a warning flickered through my head.

I realized that after I talked to Lee, and reported, I would be unemployed, at least until morning. Calling on an inner reserve of lechery, I managed to ignore the warning.

People say, I remarked to the dim coolness, that the air conditioning in the Anders Hotel is set way too high. They say it tends to foul up your sinuses, or something. You ever hear people say that? Personally, I find it quite pleasant, up in room 712.

Well, ringa-ding-ding! She was amused. The things people will say.

I turned to face her. Princess, your old plantation-owner is going to flake out like the Laotian army before long. And when that happens, you and I will be lonely strangers in a dead-side border town. I thought you might like to come up for a nightcap.

The lilac eyes flickered over me. Only one drink, I suppose?

Perhaps not even one. We have a problem in semantics, princess. I asked if you would like to come up for a nightcap. That’s me. I always wear one when I go to bed, a long sonovabitch with a tassel on it.

Flick; the eyes came back and she laughed because she couldn’t stop it in time. Then she looked at me and shook her head in wonder. May I have a drink of your tequila? she asked.

"’Cantado." I poured her a double and furnished the Garci-Crespo and lime. She took it like the sergeant’s wife, boom! The black shorts were rumpled, riding high on her hip.

Thank you, she said. I was lighting her cigarette and she was eyeing me through the flame when Beefy came back like an army. He ordered two more double daiquiris and started to fall apart halfway through his.

Got everything back’n that used-beer department, he announced, swaying in his chair like a tethered elephant. "Shoeshine, barber, th’ works … but I wasn’t hav’n any extras. Tol’ that mozo, buddio, caint abide y’r pepper-belly shampoo. No ersatz for me, tol’m, want that real poo …"

His raucous laugh shook the air like the death cry of a toucan. Barb humored and patted him erect, paid the bill, and supported him as they went weaving out into the late Mexican afternoon. She didn’t look at me again. I was working on the quail when Lee Norwood dropped into the chair across from me.

We got through the amenities deadpan, as men do who are really glad to see each other. Lee had picked up about fifteen pounds, but it was solid paunch, and he looked as hard as ever to move off any given spot. He refused my tequila, saying mildly, "Compadre, I live here," and ordered a Jack Daniel’s. When he had knocked it back, I said that a man had collapsed and died that afternoon, on the main street of Laredo.

That’s right. Is it any of your business? I heard you were out of the Great Game. The Great Game phrase was an old joke between us, bom of Kipling’s Kim.

His questions had come automatically. We were old friends, really friends, had been shot at in anger together, but he hadn’t changed a bit. Evenings without number, I had lounged in his living room and watched his tiny but exuberant Hawaiian wife do an eye-popping hula, while he followed her with slaty eyes. No, he had not changed. Show your credentials, stranger; get them up! Sitting opposite me now, enquiring, he was still the rock of the world.

I’m working for Carl, I said, from the outside, and dropped my key chain on the table. He turned the tiny golden ornament over and glanced at the number on its base. But not for the agency itself. Carl put me on the payroll of the Baltimore colonel.

Your first lie. The bulky man said it crisply. You wouldn’t work for that flag-waving bastard if your life depended on it.

Lee, Lee, listen. … I was laughing; he had me taped so closely that he seemed an alter ego. You know the way I left the agency. So I had to have a contract, and a cover. I took this one with the clear understanding that I wouldn’t have to go near Baltimore. Now, the man who died this afternoon, I’ve been on him for nine days. Picked him up in Uruapan.

Lee grunted. You did it pretty neatly, buddy. We were on him, too, and nobody spotted your action. Well, here it is. He was carrying nearly half a kilo of uncut heroin in his butt. Sealed in pliofilm, insertion surgically assisted. When he got across the river, the bundle busted.

I was caught reaching for the iced bottle; my hand stopped. Hitler had acted as toastmaster for Six million Jews, a monstrous, mindless slaughter. But after a while, over the years, you came to reject that thought, the enormity of it. It became statistics. Violent death doesn’t seem real unless you can frame it in individual terms. And a pound of pure heroin blasting into the tissues of a man’s body without warning…. Around us, tourists chattered, laughed, and hooted in the big Mexican bar. That much. No wonder he went on the prancing nod; no wonder he danced so urgently….

He was waltzing nicely, there at the end, I said. Lee looked up, surprised at my vehemence. He didn’t know about Felix Rosas, and I couldn’t tell him.

Rough, he said, even for scum…. He shook his massive head. If you don’t know already, the stuff came out of Sinaloa. Can you stay at my place? I shook my head. Okay, I’ll bring the details down tomorrow. The Anders?

I nodded and motioned for Jorge. When the tab was paid, we went out the back door to the parking lot and got in his plain black sedan and drove across the bridge. In theory, none of the officials on either side recognized Lee, or even glanced at him, but we got waved through like royalty. Which, in a way, he was.

When we stopped before the Anders, he shook hands with me and said, Goddammit, let’s shuck this crap sometime and hunt something clean, like animals. Sounding aggrieved, as if we had been doing the wrong things all our lives, he drove away.

Upstairs, I took another shower and made my call. After giving the area-code number, I heard the ping sound at the Georgetown end, and waited for the second ping. Then I described the past nine days and the death, in detail, emphasizing that until the last few minutes, I had held a very loose tail, successfully enough not to have been noticed by our other agents. I recounted this with some relish, knowing it had galled Norwood. After promising a more detailed report at noon the next day, I pronounced the trigger word distinctly, heard the other two pings, and the sepulchral voice of the machine said thank you. The report had been properly transcribed; the line clicked dead.

An hour later, I was in bed reading the local paper, when someone tapped on the door. Reaching for my robe, I went to answer. Barb was standing in the hall; she was freshly scrubbed and wore a black linen sheath dress. I flourished her in and mixed the drinks. Those sheath dresses are effective; her arrogant legs and breasts seemed to be bursting out of their demure facade.

You hit it on the button, she said, accepting her drink. The old plantation-owner is snoring like a pig. She was half-amused and half-resentful.

He put too much into the build-up. I sat down and stretched my legs. She noticed the scarred ankle but was far too nice a girl to comment on it. He planned it too long and didn’t have any finishing kick left.

Oh? The floor lamp fanned silver wings across her hair; she was smiling into her drink. And your column appears in how many papers?

All the same. People who tighten up when they approach naked pleasure should leave it alone. Ought to go to church instead.

Her voice was lightly mocking. A strange advocate for the new Jerusalem, señor.

Not so strange, princess. You see before you only the tattered remnants of an unfrocked Episcopalian choirboy. Getting up, I walked toward the floor lamp.

How terrible…. She was giggling. To be unfrocked.

And, I continued, the cat is out, and you can certainly do the dishes tomorrow. … I was leaning over her, my hand on the light switch.

In that case, she said, we might as well turn in. Patting at her mouth she smothered a yawn, altogether the least drowsy lady I ever saw. When I snapped the light off, she came sliding up, bit my neck smartly in the darkness, and the dialogue was over.

I was standing at the windows, staring out of the darkened room toward the glare on the Mexican side, when she stirred. Turning and dropping to one knee beside the bed, I kissed her awake. She murmured, stretched with feline grace, and asked distantly what time it was. Shielding the bed light, I looked at my watch. Nearly four.

Oh drat and damnation, she whispered. I’ve got to go. She thought she meant immediately, but when a lady all a’dream of love is kissed awake properly, she will always listen to reason. Most times, she will pursue it at length. This is an axiom.

While she was showering, I put out the new toothbrush I had bought for her, earlier. And before vacating the bathroom, I slapped her tail. It was shapely, pressed against the shower curtain, and could not possibly have been overlooked. She came out cleansed of all sins and tribulations, got her purse, and I kissed her again at the door.

Leaning back in my embrace, she traced over my lips with one finger. I’m sorry you got kicked out of the choir, she said. And then she was gone.

I locked the door, switched off the lights, and went back to the windows. Looking across the Rio Grande, with false dawn cracking the sky. Thinking back over my route…. The seared stretch to Monterrey. The great plains of Tamaulipas; reversing through the red-clay valley of corn and over the arid cactus desert to San Luis Potosi. Leon, and the mule-car in Celaya. And finally, the chill night air of Uruapan….

I was frowning in the darkness, like a jockey who has rated a horse badly. Thinking of Felix. Mostly, though, I was frowning over the man who had improvised the heart-bursting new ballet steps on the street below me. Because now we might not ever find out where he had been going. Or why.

Chapter Two

The story of my life is: He rambled till they had to cut him down. I was a Marine Corps officer in War the Deuce, and caught a daisy-clipper in the ankle, on Iwo Shima. While I was convalescing in the Klamath hospital, a civilian stopped by my ward and asked how I would like serving my country even more. I had done some writing before the war, and he showed me how I could resume that pastime, while ostensibly having no connection with his agency. All I had to do was thread certain angles into my prose.

These angles, naturally, were that all my heavies had to be communists or socialists, thick-necked, brutal blunderers and slobs. My heroes, naturally again, would be clean-cut, clean-living, boyish Yanks. Always, in time’s nick, they would be able to protect democracy from the stain of alien ideas. I ran a check on the man offering me this largess and found that he was a political hack, earning less than half of what he had offered me. I declined.

Returning to my home town, slightly gimpy from the shrapnel wound, I spent two years blowing my pay and any other cash I could get my hands on. When that jubilee was over, I opened a quick car-wash tunnel and attended law school at night. The car-wash had an air-conditioned waiting room, an automatic track, and required three hose and sponge men. Three months after it opened, I checked my books, fired one of the men, and put on