Ник Картер - The Code

“Your story didn’t have the ring of truth,” I told her, “but I got my money’s worth. You led me here.”

“Clever as hell, aren’t you?” she spat.

I tried the door. “Apparently Moose isn’t home. What do you suggest we do about that?”

She ran for the next flight of stairs. I pursued her to the roof and cornered her. She fought and scratched my face, tried to knee me in the groin, and called me some names I hadn’t heard in years. Considering my widely varied travels, that was saying quite a lot for her vocabulary.

I pulled her wrists behind her and forced her over to the edge of the roof. “Now let’s hear the truth about Moose.”

“You won’t push me off. He would, but you won’t.”

“Don’t count on it, Trudy. Moose killed a friend of mine and beat a girl to death. I’m going to find him and I don’t care what I have to do along the way.”

She was panting. “Is that true, about the girl? Are you on the level?”

“The girl’s name was Sheila. Did you ever hear Moose mention her?”

“Never. And I haven’t seen him lately. He lived in that apartment when I knew him. I thought he’d like to know you were looking for him. That’s the only reason I came. I swear it is.”

“Does he call himself Edward Jones, or did you make that up?”

“He used the name when I knew him. He’s probably used a dozen more. If you don’t believe me, go back to the house and quiz the other girls. They’ll tell you the same. He’s a heist man. He boasted about having pulled some big capers.”

I turned her loose. “All right.”

“Can I go now?”

“Take off,” I said.

Trudy looked back when she reached the stairway.

“He beat her to death?”

“Yeah,” I said. My voice was hoarse.

I found the cheap lock on the apartment door easy to spring. The rooms were vacant and dust lay on the furniture. The last occupant had been gone for quite a while. I glanced around me disgustedly. I had hoped for more.

Company was waiting for me at the foot of the stairs. I tried not to show my surprise when I saw her.

“What you said put me to thinking,” Trudy said.

“Did it?”

“About the girl, I mean. Was she your girl?”

“No,” I said. “But she didn’t deserve to die that way.”

“I can’t tell you any more about Moose than I already have. But I can give you another name. Are you clued in on the way heist men operate? If they have a big caper lined up and they need money to make the arrangements, they go to someone in the Mob or to a guy who finances heists for a cut of the loot. There’s a man named Haskell in L.A. He’s loaded with dough and lives like a solid citizen, but I heard Moose boast that he put up the money for some heists.”

“Thanks, Trudy.”

“Forget it. And I mean just that. Forget I told you.”

The sign on Haskell’s door said he was in real estate. The thick carpeting in the outer office indicated he made money at it, or at his moonlighting. His voluptuous secretary gave me a smile that was all teeth and no sincerity and told me Mr. Haskell saw no one without an appointment.

“How does one get an appointment?”

She showed her teeth again. She should have been advertising toothpaste. “If one doesn’t know Mr. Haskell, one rarely does.”

“I know Edward Jones,” I said. “Will that do?”

She gathered up some papers and went in to drop the name to her boss in privacy. When she returned, she said Mr. Haskell was very busy today and as it happened, he’d never heard of Edward Jones.

“In other words, I should get lost.”

The smile bloomed again, twenty-four karat this time. “You got it, buster.”

A black Cadillac was sitting at the curb when I walked out of the building into the California sunshine. Behind the wheel was a uniformed chauffeur with a face like a second-story man.

I leaned down to speak to him when I passed the Caddy. “You shouldn’t wear a tailored uniform. It makes the bulge under your arm stand out like a bump on a tire.”

He grinned and patted the bulge. “That’s where I carry my references.”

I parked a half-block away and waited. The chauffeur had obviously come to pick Haskell up. Within ten minutes, a rotund man who looked as if he was carrying a watermelon under his coat appeared and got into the car.

When the Caddy passed, I fell in behind it. Our destination turned out to be a swank country club in the suburbs. The fat man was a golfer. I spent most of the afternoon watching him through binoculars. He had a drive like an old woman. I was the victim of an advanced case of boredom by the time he finally trudged back to the clubhouse.

It was time for me to make a move. I put up the binoculars and walked to the parking lot. Moving behind a row of automobiles, I came up behind the chauffeur, who was leaning against the Caddy’s hood with his arms folded.

“Hey,” I said softly.

He whipped around and I drove a hard right into his solar plexus. I yanked him between two cars so that we wouldn’t attract attention and hit him again. His eyes rolled like marbles and his fumbling hand slid limply away from his jacket buttons.

“Let’s see your references,” I said and gave the jacket a hard pull. Buttons rained against the side of the Cadillac. I extracted the .38 from the holster under his arm.

“Now we’re going to wait for your boss,” I told him.

When Haskell emerged from the clubhouse, the chauffeur was sitting stiffly behind the steering wheel. His posture was due to the gun I had punched into the back of his neck.

“Max, what’s the matter with you?” Haskell asked as he drew near.

“His belly hurts,” I said. I shoved the right-hand car door open with my foot. “Get in, Mr. Haskell.”

The fat man peered into the back seat at me. He had a smooth golf course tan, but at the moment he looked a little pale. “This doesn’t speak well for your judgment,” he blustered. “I am a man of some influence.”

I had been waiting a long time and impatience was prodding me. “Get into the car, Mr. Haskell, or I’ll spill some of your chauffeur’s blood on these expensive leather seats.”

He eased into the car and settled back with a grunt. Lacing his pudgy fingers together, he said, “You’d better have a very good excuse for this impetuous action.”

“Success breeds overconfidence, Mr. Haskell,” I said. “I’m not a cheap hood and I don’t give a damn how important you think you are.”

His small eyes shifted uneasily, but he maintained his poise. “I assume you’re the man who claims to be a friend of Edward Jones.”

“I didn’t say I was his friend. I said I knew him. What I want from you is some information on where to find Mr. Jones.”

“We never exchanged addresses.”

I saw no reason to handle Haskell with kid gloves. Despite the chauffered Cadillac and his carpeted office and his country club membership, he was no more than a sophisticated mobster. I brought the barrel of the revolver down on his kneecap. The sharp blow drew a gasp of pain.

“Who the hell are you?” he wanted to know.

“I’m the man who asked you a question about Edward Jones.”

“He hasn’t been in L.A. in months. I haven’t had a deal with him in longer than that.”

“Who works with Jones? He has a couple of friends he uses on his jobs. I want to know their names.”

He grimaced and rubbed his knee. “If you were as well acquainted with the man as I am, you wouldn’t be interested in finding him. He isn’t completely right upstairs. He likes to kill people.”

“That’s the reason I’m looking for him.”

“I can’t tell you about his friends because I dealt with him alone. He was very careful about details like that. He stopped coming to me for financing because he found another backer. Someone in the Organization, I think.”