Микки Спиллейн - The Delta Factor

“But…”

“I’m taking another exit out. Nobody will see me go out or come back. If anyone checks this room I want somebody here. If they ask for me, tell them I’m indisposed.”

Her expression was a little too calculating. “Don’t try taking a powder, Morgan.”

I slammed the suitcase shut and stood up. Before she could protest I had her in my arms and tilted her face up with my fingers and kissed the end of her nose. “With a bride like you waiting for me? Hell, I’m looking forward to my husbandly due.”

A call to Angelo brought us two magnums of champagne and an oversize plate of canapés to precede the supper I ordered. If there was a watch on our activities the indications would be that we’d be spending the rest of the night in the room behaving as a honeymooning couple should.

Without asking questions, Angelo described the way to get out the back entrance with the least risk of being seen. It involved a circuitous route used only by the hotel engineer and maintenance personnel, ending with an exit through the building that housed the central air-conditioning unit.

A foxy little smile creased his face when he finished and he added matter-of-factly, “You are here for something good, senor. That is so.”

“Don’t make me admit it.” I grinned at him. “I have a reputation to protect.”

“Yes, I know of that. It is more that I can sense a person’s motives. Perhaps because I am of no consequence people pay no attention to a bellboy. I can study them at my leisure and understand their compulsions. I have reason to hate many people, señor. In Nuevo Cádiz I have opportunity to see and study the most extreme types.”

I looked at him a little surprised. “Coming from a bellhop…”

“A university-graduate bellhop, senor,” he said simply. “Student of political science. Someday, perhaps…” and he let it drop there.

I nodded. He didn’t have to say any more. Angelo was one of the little ones held in readiness. Carlos Ortega was grossly underrating his opposition. He waved off the bill I offered him and left with a polite little bow.

Kim’s voice had no trace of antagonism in it when she said. “You have the touch, Morgan. How do you reach those types?”

“Why?”

“Because they trust you.”

“Don’t you?”

She looked at me a moment, her face bland. “I have to, don’t I?”

“Not necessarily. Why should you?”

“That’s what annoys me,” she said. “There’s no patriotism behind your actions. There isn’t even the motivation of having your prison sentence reduced. It’s only a game to you. You’re enjoying yourself. You’re being Morgan the Raider again, spoiling everybody else’s pie. That’s it, isn’t it?”

I swung around and picked up my jacket. “No.”

“Then what is it?”

“If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.”

“Try me.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m the only one who hates you enough to understand it.”

“Don’t push me, baby.”

“I’ll push you as far as I want to.”

“And one day that will be too far for you to reach me,” I said.

Before she could answer I was out the door, heading for the service exit Angelo had described.

He had chosen the route well. Only twice did I see anyone, a maid and one of the room-service boys, but neither spotted me and I got into the basement, followed the line of blue lights that barely illuminated the passageway to the outbuilding, felt my way past the humming machinery that threw a waterfall onto the roof overhead and found the door that led outside. It had a one-way latch, so I gimmicked the tongue of the lock with the cover from a matchbook so I could get back in and stepped out into the darkness outside.

Somehow everything smelled different this night. It was like those other nights overseas a long time ago when the sense of smell had greater implications than the simple tasting of odors. You could smell an abstraction then, a danger that hovered in the air like a live thing. I could smell it now too. It was too nebulous to define, but it was there. It wasn’t as real as those other times, not as sharp or as imminently deadly, but it was waiting like a slow-acting poison and barely discernible.

I stood in the shadows, watching the other shadows. For thirty minutes I was motionless before I was certain I was alone, then I picked my way into the stream of pedestrian traffic, got off the main street and walked until I spotted a cab disgorging its passengers and waved it down.

Earlier I had checked the city directory and picked a spot two blocks from Rosa Lee’s house. I gave the driver directions in his own dialect and he made a U -turn and drove off with barely a nod. Ten minutes later he pulled to the curb, took my fare and let me out.

Her house was a simple frame affair set back in a jumble of weeds that sprouted among the trees, the single lighted window hardly visible from the street. I picked my way up the path, waited until the headlights of an oncoming car had swept by, then climbed the rickety porch and knocked on the door.

Inside, the light went out before I heard the latch click and the door open. I said, “Hello, Rosa.”

“Come in, Senor Morgan.”

She pulled the curtains closed before she turned the light back on and I had a chance to look around. Shoddy as the place was outside, the woman’s touch showed here. Rosa caught my casual glance and said, “We who live here are not permitted many luxuries, señor.”

“The casino operations should eliminate taxes,” I told her.

The shrug she gave me matched the cynicism in her voice. “Señor Ortega prefers to keep the people subject to his will. That way his occasional gratuities make him seem like a benevolent person.”

“You should have done something before this.”

“Have you noticed the military?” she asked derisively. “They were field hands, the uneducated, criminals. Now they are in positions of authority and carry out Señor Ortega’s orders to the letter. There was a parallel in Germany when Hitler first took over.”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

She watched me closely. “Perhaps their time is at hand.”

“Perhaps,” I said. “Did you contact Art Keefer?”

“Yes. He will be monitoring the frequency right now. I gave him your message.” She looked at her watch. “I suggest you call him immediately.” She turned on her heel and glanced back over her shoulder. “This way, please.”

The transmitter was a cleverly contrived affair some master craftsman had built into the hand-hewn beams that supported the old carriage house she referred to as the garage. It was so carefully concealed it would have taken a team of pros a week of working a specific area search pattern to locate it, and even then they’d have to have luck on their side. The manually extended antenna rose through a core in the beam and power was supplied to the unit through the house current. Rosa indicated the four supposedly beatup storage batteries haphazardly scattered around and told me they were on full charge for emergency use in the event of a power failure. Old car parts and a few discarded wheels gave the place an authentic appearance of an unused garage in case of a cursory search.

I switched the set on, dialed the frequency and turned up the receiver. “No longer than five minutes, señor,” Rosa advised. “The government keeps a full crew monitoring the channels. We can’t afford to have this position triangulated.”

My hand waved the okay and I fiddled with the dial to break through the static, then picked up Art on the old Kissler code. Rosa listened, a frown on her face, not understanding what I was saying, nor would anybody else, but Art got it, all right.

“Morgan,” I said.