Ник Картер - The Code

I got out of the car. Another zero. A wasted afternoon except for the pleasure of getting to know Mr. Haskell a little better, which I could have done without.

“Aren’t you going to tell me who you are?” Haskell asked.

“Why should I? You didn’t tell me anything.”

I threw his chauffeurs gun into a garbage can down the street.

That night, I called Hawk from my motel room. “Let’s compare notes,” I said when he came on the line.

“I have some information on the man who tried to kill you in the hotel in Bonham. For one thing, his name actually was Coogan. He had a police record. He was a gun for hire, one of the best. The FBI seemed a little surprised that you were capable of taking his measure.” There was noticeable satisfaction in Hawk’s voice.

“Who gave him his orders?”

“He was an independent contractor. For hire to anyone who could pay his fee, which was high. The FBI says he was not on the mob’s regular payroll.”

“What about Valante?”

“He was Frank Abruze’s closest friend.”

“I’m afraid I don’t have much. Moose is not in Los Angeles.”

Hawk cleared Ms throat “And what about Trudy? Did she live up to billing?”

There was no doubt about it. My boss had a streak of the dirty old man in him.

I went to bed early and slept until dawn. A hissing sound awoke me. Eyes slitted, I lay listening, my fingers curled around the butt of the Luger. Then I felt a sudden burst of heat against my face.

Kicking off the sheet, I twisted and hit the floor in a crouch, Wilhelmina in my hand. Orange tongues of flame licked up the wall of my motel room. The hissing sound I’d heard had been the curtains at the glass doors to the patio catching fire. Already they were curling into black tinder and the fire was catching on the wall.

I grabbed the extinguisher off the wall in the hall and as I reentered the room I flinched at the heat. The extinguisher made quick work of the flames. I won out, but if I had slept five minutes longer, the story would have been different.

I dropped the extinguisher, picked up the Luger again, and tore down the charred curtains. Someone had cut a neat hole in the glass door and reached through to set the curtains ablaze. It was a fine professional piece of work. While I stood admiring the hole, a bullet pierced the door near my head. I heard the slug go past and thud into the far wall. An instant later I was flat on the floor.

The gunman was hidden behind a short brick wall on the other side of the enclosed patio and pool. In the pale light I could see the snout of his rifle as he poked it over the wall. Since I hadn’t heard the shot, the rifle must be equipped with a silencer. The man was a pro all the way, except that he had missed my head by six inches. Maybe I had moved just a little as he squeezed the trigger.

I didn’t return his fire because I couldn’t see him clearly. He couldn’t get a bead on me, either. We played a waiting game, each of us hoping for an opening. His patience outlasted mine. I decided to move. Hugging the floor, I began to wriggle backward.

When I was well away from the doors, I stood up. I stepped into my trousers. Moving quietly on bare feet, I trotted along the carpeted corridor and climbed a flight of steps to the second floor of the motel. With a little luck, I could get a shot at him from above, I thought. But by the time I reached the railing of the second-floor balcony he had vanished from his hiding place.

Clumps of shrubbery on the motel grounds provided plenty of cover, but the rifleman had to dart between them. Sooner or later I’d spot him. I waited, shivering a little in the cool air. Besides my trousers, all I was wearing was the bandage on my chest.

Finally I glimpsed a crouched figure scuttling away from me. Before I could fire a shot at him, he had leaped behind the far corner of the building.

Quickly I descended the steps, ran past a row of coin-operated drink machines and out the door into a parking lot. My man was in retreat. He had scaled a wire fence and was springing into a car parked on the shoulder of the road beyond the motel property. He started the motor and sped away.

I could have snapped off a shot, but it probably wouldn’t have stopped him and I didn’t want to attract a crowd. I padded back to my room, asking myself the obvious question. How had the would-be killer known where to find me?

I checked out of the motel after breakfast and drove across town to the house where I’d met Trudy.

A burly Chinese greeted me at the door. I hadn’t seen him on my first visit and I didn’t regret it. He was built like a tractor and he didn’t look friendly.

“What do you want this time of day?” he asked, glowering.

“Too early for business?”

“Unless you’ve got an appointment. Which you haven’t.”

I leaned my shoulder against the door as he tried to close it in my face. I smiled at him. “Tell Trudy a friend is here to see her.”

“Trudy isn’t seeing anybody today.”

“You’re wrong about that,” I told him. “She’s seeing me.”

“Mister, don’t try the tough act with me. I could throw you into the next block.”

“Maybe you could. But when I got back there would be hell to pay.”

He threw back his head and burst into laughter that sounded like the roar of an outboard motor. “I used to be a professional wrestler. The Mighty Shang, Terror of the Orient, even though I was born right here in L.A. You ever watch wrestling on television?”

“I try not to.”

“Look, tough guy, I only work here. But I’ll deliver your message, if you want to wait.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s all right. You amuse me.”

He let me inside and moved away, still chuckling. He went into a back room on the ground floor, closing the door behind him. I heard voices, one a woman’s. As I waited, I wondered why a girl who had been so available yesterday was so hard to see today.

A blonde appeared at the head of the stairway Trudy had led me up the day before. She looked a great deal like Trudy except that she was younger and heavier in the hips. She was wearing a negligee that concealed hardly enough to matter.

Yawning and stretching, she called down to me, “What do you need, sugar?” Her tone of voice indicated that whatever it was, she knew where I could get it.

The Terror of the Orient came back and interrupted. “Get lost,” he snarled at the girl. Apparently he was no longer amused. He jerked a thumb at me. “Come on, tough guy.”

I entered a room in which the blinds were drawn tight against the sun. Cheap incense fouled the air and the furniture was a mixture of teak and Hollywood grotesque. The big Chinese closed the door behind me and I heard the lock click.

The woman waiting for me looked nothing like Trudy. She was in her thirties and must have had an Oriental somewhere in her ancestry. Her eyes were slightly slanted and her skin had a sallow hue. Her black hair had been cut close to her head. A glittering mandarin robe clung to her slender body and her long fingernails were painted silver. In the shadowy room her eyes shone like those of the Siamese cat curled in her lap.

“Is this him, Alida?” asked Shang.

“Of course it’s him.”

“You’re no friend of Trudy’s, mister.” He seized my sleeve, gathering a handful of it in his thick fingers. “I may break your neck.”

The cat in the woman’s lap raised his head as though he’d heard the threat. His tiny tongue flicked around his chops.

“Just wait a minute,” I said. “What’s the reason for the hostility?”

The woman stroked the cat and studied me with malevolent eyes. “I run this house. You came here yesterday under false pretenses. You brought us trouble.”