Ник Картер - The Code

“The girl’s telling you the truth. There’s no sense in torturing her,” I said.

“You don’t understand Moose. He enjoys this kind of stuff. Even if he believed her, he’d probably do the same thing.”

“He must have got himself a lot of kicks down in Florida, when you shot up Abruze’s cottage.”

“Yeah, the four of them were lying there dead and Moose grabbed the shotgun away from me and gave them another blast. Laughing all the time. He’s one crazy bastard, that Moose.” Sid said this in the tone of voice most people would use if they said a friend was the life of the party.

I sliced the flesh of a knuckle and winced. “Why did you give the money to the girl in the first place?”

“We had to stash it. We couldn’t show up rich overnight, could we? For six months after those killings, any strange dollar that fell in the underworld was going to be reported to the men who run the Mob. You know that.”

I had almost forgotten the lie I’d told Moose, that I was a professional hit man sent to take care of Sheila Brant. I said, “I was just carrying out a contract. I’m not in the Mafia.”

“We broke two of the Mob’s laws. We heisted some of their dough and we knocked off an honored capo. They’ve been looking for us harder than the cops have. For the girl, too. We thought we had the girl and the money stashed in a safe place, but she disappeared.”

The conversation was giving me precious time and I tried to prolong it. “I’d like to know how you happened to find the girl. I thought I had the inside track there.”

Sid walked over to me. Matter-of-factly he kicked me in the ribs. “Enough of the stalling. You aren’t going to get loose, pal.” He produced a revolver and fitted a silencer on it “Moose always gives me the jobs he isn’t interested in. He gets the girl and I get you.”

I realized that he had come to the room to kill me. Believing that I worked for the Mafia, they weren’t going to leave me alive to tell my bosses what I’d learned. I squirmed across the floor toward the man with the gun, determined to go out resisting. He only backed away, scorning my futile efforts to reach him. I saw the barrel of the revolver rise and point at me like a cold and deadly eye. Falling on my side, I rolled toward the gunman, trying to knock him off balance. He backed up again, the revolver unwavering. Then he shot me.

I heard the pop of the silenced weapon and felt the bullet tear into my chest like a blazing-hot rivet. He shot me again. I felt a stab of pain when the second bullet hit my neck, but I seemed now to be a participant in a dream. The shot was like a bee sting, no more.

Lying on my side, my shirt blotted with blood, I watched Sid move in my direction, almost soundless on his sneakered feet. My vision was fuzzy. By the time he reached me, he appeared to be no more than a vague shape.

He put his foot against me and pushed me on my back. I gazed helplessly up at him. He pointed the revolver again. I thought he was going to administer the final coup, a bullet between the eyes, but he lowered the weapon. He had decided to let me bleed to death.

My eyes stared at the ceiling. I was paralyzed with weakness. Sid reached down and flipped open my jacket to look at the chest wound. He seemed satisfied. He went away.

I could hardly see the ceiling now. Darkness was creeping in at the corners of my mind. I thought about Hawk and how he’d react when he learned he’d lost a Killmaster. I supposed he’d put a posthumous letter of commendation in my file before he closed it for good — epitaph for an agent killed in the line of duty.

I thought about Pat Steele, the redhead who’d wished me luck. She might be a long time finding out that I had followed N1 and N2 and David Kirby into the ranks of those whose luck had failed. I thought about Kirby and Sheila Brant and told myself I’d let them down by getting myself killed...

But then, like a swimmer coming up for air, I burst out of the blackness that had engulfed me. I couldn’t explain it, but I was still alive. My eyes fixed on the ceiling and brought it into hazy focus. I had no conception of time, no idea how long I had been unconscious.

The house was silent, caught in an eerie stillness. A faint light had entered the room, as though dawn had come outside. The killers were gone, I thought I was alone.

I heard a car. From the sound of the motor, I knew it had stopped outside the house. The car’s door slammed. I lay listening, hoping. The front door opened. I heard footsteps in the living room. They moved toward the kitchen.

I worked my mouth, but no sound came out. I was too weak. When I tried to move, the ceiling seemed to dip and I almost fainted.

The footsteps again, steady and heavy. A man appeared in the doorway and looked in on me. He wore a striped suit and a hat. I made a sound, a strained grunt.

He heard me. He walked into the room and gazed down at me. I saw cold grey eyes in an expressionless, pockmarked face. Finally he knelt beside me. He took out a knife and slit the front of my shirt and examined my wound. I couldn’t tell if he was interested in helping me or merely curious about how long I had to live.

“Who are you?” he said at last. He had a faint Sicilian accent.

My mouth formed the word. “Harper.”

He got up and went to the bathroom and came back with a household first-aid kit. He knew something about gunshot wounds. He stopped my bleeding quickly, then cut up a sheet and began winding the strips around my chest like a bandage. He paid no attention to my neck wound, so I assumed it was only a graze and not serious enough to be of concern.

“Who shot you, Harper?”

I shook my head to indicate I didn’t know. I was in no condition to talk about what had happened.

He studied me for a minute as if deciding what to do about me, then slit the strips of cloth binding my wrists and ankles. That pockmarked face of his was vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

Rising, he glanced around the room once more, then left the house without speaking to me again. I heard his car start up and drive away.

The name sprang suddenly into my mind. Valante. Marco Valante. I had seen his picture in the newspapers during a Justice Department investigation of organized crime. According to reports, he was one of the men at the top.

When I remembered that he had spent a few minutes in the kitchen before he found me, I got to my hands and knees. Crawling took a great deal of effort. I was moving slowly toward the door when my hand brushed the address book. My fingers closed around it.

I had to rest anyway. I lay on my side, fighting off dizziness, and examined the book. It must have fallen from the pocket of one of the intruders at the time we were struggling. Recalling how I had torn Moose’s coat, I decided the book belonged to him. Thrusting it into my pocket, I started crawling again. I had to pause and rest three times before I finally reached the kitchen.

Sprawled in the doorway, I raised my head and looked at Sheila, who lay motionless near a chair where she’d been tied. The strips of cloth that had bound her still dangled on the chair’s arms and lower rungs.

I found my voice. “Sheila?”

The fact that she didn’t move or reply did not surprise me. But I croaked her name again in a voice charged with pain and fury. Then I crawled to her. The fragile face was bruised and bloody. The hoods had worked her over savagely.

I touched the girl’s outstretched wrist. It was cold. I closed my eyes for a minute, bringing my emotions under control. Then I pulled myself nearer the body.

She had been killed, I saw, by a blow so powerful that it had broken her neck. The one man who could have delivered such a blow was Moose. The son-of-a-bitch, I thought.