Manhunt. Volume 14, Number 1, February/March, 1966

Gortoff lunged at the thoroughly frightened blonde. Her fear died quickly — as she did. His heavy, clutching hands no longer carressed. They held her throat in a vise-like grip while her face turned a greenish-purple and her eyes bulged as she strained to breathe. When he released her, marks on her once-white throat were the only trace of his attack. She no longer breathed. He raised the lid of the opposite berth in the cabin and propped it open. He lifted the blonde, crudely grabbing the dead body with one hand clutching long blonde hair and the other closing in on the soft flesh of a thigh. He hurled the body into the storage space below the starboard berth and slammed its lid. He cursed and gathered her clothes and purse. He flung them into the storage space. He spun around as if discovered in his act of murder when he heard the sound of a small boat bump the schooner’s hull. He went on deck.

“Ahoy the Stardust,” Jim Coleman’s voice came through the fog. “OK to come aboard?”

Gortoff sighed. He leaned over the schooner’s edge. “What’s on your mind, Jim?”

“A guest at the Inn says he’s a friend. Wants to see you. Name’s Padgett.”

Gortoff thought quickly. The name didn’t ring a bell. And he didn’t want Coleman aboard the Stardust. He didn’t want anyone aboard the schooner that night. “I’ll be with you in a minute, Jim.” He returned to the cabin, threw on a blazer, and locked the cabin door. “Who is this Padgett?” he asked as Coleman moved the dinghy back to shore.

“I don’t know. Never saw him before. He just came into the bar and asked the barman on duty if you were around. Said he was a friend.”

Gortoff made no comment. “I’ll probably sail on the tide, Jim. Anything for me to sign, I’ll stop in the office before I leave.”

“Expect to be gone long, sir?”

“No. I should be back Friday.” Gortoff looked back at the Stardust. “Just a shake-down cruise. I may leave for the winter in another couple weeks. I’ll see this Mr. Padgett in the bar. See you later.” He walked up to the inn while Coleman made fast the dinghy to the dock.

Padgett was alone at the bar. Gortoff looked at him from an alcove, unseen from the bar and lounge. He saw a tall, blonde, tanned — a little on the sallow side — solitary drinker. He was neither well dressed nor shabby. He appeared neither out-of-place nor as a typical guest of the Stardust Inn. He saw Gortoff for the first time in the bar mirror.

“I’m Gortoff,” the swarthy, older man announced himself at a discrete nod from the barman. “Did you want to see me?”

“Why, yes,” Padgett smiled. “Join me?” He rose from the bar stool and shook hands with the Stardust Inn owner.

“In the lounge?” Gortoff suggested. He turned to the barman. “The usual, John, and whatever Mr. Padgett’s drinking — in the lounge.” The kilo man and the N Man walked together into the carpeted lounge. They made small talk on the Stardust, the inn and the fog while they were served their drinks.

When the barman left, Gortoff looked at Padgett. “What was it you wanted, Mr. Padgett? I don’t think we’ve met before.”

Padgett decided a direct approach would be more effective. He had the advantage of knowing who Gortoff was. “I’d like to take over Bello’s deal with you, Karl.”

“You’d like to take over what? Whose deal?”

“Bello’s.” Padgett smiled. “His end of the San Francisco H traffic.”

“I don’t have any idea of what you’re talking,” Gortoff shot back at him.

“Let me explain, Karl,” Padgett spoke in a low voice. “I was with Bello when those hopheads outside your place on Turk Street caught up with him tonight. I was pressuring him myself for some of the powdered sugar he pushed earlier in the day. I tailed him from the time he called you earlier this evening. I got him away from that mob of junkers who tore your Grant Street apartment to pieces. I had a lot of trouble convincing him he should lead me to you. In fact I had to work him over with the wrong end of a 38 once or twice during the earlier part of the evening. I’ll say one thing for Tony. He was loyal to you ’til the going got really rough.”

Gortoff didn’t blink an eye as Padgett continued with his effort to win the kilo man’s confidence. “Your conversation is amusing, Mr. Padgett, even if it isn’t of interest.” He toyed with his drink, a liqueur, and looked straight into Padgett’s blue eyes. “Go on.”

Padgett talked. He named names and places, that could be known only to an initiated addict or pusher in the San Francisco narcotics world. He sold Gortoff when he told him of the works found in his own bath at the Grant Avenue apartment.

“Did you find the hypo?”

“No. I was keeping an eye on Bello. I wanted to get him away from that mob of junkers. They were ready to kill him.”

“You know, Mr. Padgett, you could be a smart policeman, or an N Man.”