Ник Картер - The Code

“What kind of trouble?”

“The worst kind. Trudy made a mistake when she didn’t tell me about you to start with. I won’t permit you to see her again. This business you are involved in is none of her affair.”

The Chinese dropped his other hand heavily on my shoulder. “Is he mine now?”

“Not yet,” Alida told him. She pointed a long fingernail at me. “You got to the girl with your talk of Moose beating a woman to death. Maybe you lied. Maybe you have other reasons for looking for him.”

“What would they be?”

“Two hundred thousand dollars, for example.”

It was just a matter of time until she turned Shang loose on me, and I had no intention of leaving without talking to Trudy. So with a savage backward motion, I slammed my elbow into Shang’s hard belly. He grunted with pain and surprise.

Pivoting, I spiked him with my knee. His face was anything but inscrutable. Lines of pain rippled up toward his eyes and he sank into a stoop like a pigeon-toed man trying to hold a walnut between his knees.

As he reached for me, I feinted, then hit him with the edge of my right hand. The blow, which would have split a plank, caught him on the side of his thick neck. His eyes protruded and his breath whistled between his teeth. Catching him by the coat, I yanked him off balance and hurled him over my hip. He hit the floor like a piano falling two stories.

I pulled the Luger. “Now, where’s Trudy?”

Alida stood up and pitched the cat at my face. I dodged and the Siamese sailed past, a ball of spitting fury. He landed on Shang’s back and clawed his way up. The Chinese tried to buck him off and the cat sank his claws into the man’s head.

Poor Shang screamed loud enough to shatter glass.

I rapped the cat lightly on the spine with the Luger. He meowed and sprang to a nearby table.

“You all right?” I asked Shang, but he wasn’t listening. I turned on Alida and she was pulling open the drawer of a table. I had an idea the lady wasn’t looking for a guest book for me to sign. I grabbed her by the back of the tight gown and it tore as she writhed away. When she wheeled, she had a .38 Beretta in her hand.

She called me a name she hadn’t learned from her Chinese ancestors. It was 100 per cent back alley American. Before she could pull the trigger, I slapped her wrist with the heavy Luger and the Beretta spun out of her fingers and struck the wall.

I put the point of the Luger right between her hate-filled eyes. “The question was, where’s Trudy?”

Alida took me upstairs. The girl was sitting on a bed playing solitaire. She gave me a sullen glance. “Look who’s here. My lucky charm.”

“I tried to keep him away from you. Take my advice and tell him nothing,” Alida said.

Trudy had a day-old shiner. I walked over to her and tilted her chin. “Who did the job on you?”

“A guy named Oscar. Oscar Snodgrass.”

“I don’t think that was his name.”

“The word is out that a Mafia capo got hit and a piece of the Mob’s cash heisted. Moose is wild enough to pull a caper like that. And you come looking for Moose. Alicia says that’s an odd coincidence.”

“I’m not interested in the money. I told you the reason I wanted Moose.”

The girl looked at Alida. “What am I going to do? I believe him.”

“I went to see Haskell. He didn’t tell me anything I needed to know. But someone has tried to kill me and now I find you and the sweet-tempered madam here up-tight. What’s the story, Trudy?”

She swept the cards together into a pile on the bed. “Alida, I’m going to tell him.”

“Then hurry up. I want him out of here. I don’t want any more trouble with the Mob.”

“Two men came here last night,” Trudy said. “I can’t tell you their names, but I can tell you who they work for.”

“The Mafia.”

“That’s who. They knew you had been to see me. They wanted to know what you were after. The short ugly one hit me and I got scared. I told him you were looking for Moose.”

They had been following me, I thought. I’d led them here like I’d led them to Idaho. They were patient and they were tenacious and now they knew what they hadn’t known before, that Moose was their heist man.

“They’ll burn you,” Alida said. “I hope they burn you good.”

I went down the stairs. The Mighty Shang was hanging on to the arms of a chair and grimacing as the blonde in the negligee dabbed iodine in his hair. The Siamese cat sat licking his paw and eyed me balefully as I walked past. “Nice kitty,” I said. He was the real terror of the Orient.

I left Los Angeles at ten o’clock in the morning, driving south. The second name in Moose’s little black book was Therese and Therese was in San Diego. I hoped to be talking to her before the day ended.

The race was on now. The Mafia knew almost as much as I knew. They would be sending out soldiers to hunt down Moose. My only edge was the little black book with the seven names in it.

I kept an eye on the rear view mirror, trying to pick out the car that would be trailing me. I decided it was the brown sedan, the Buick. The driver made an effort to throw me off: he let another car come between us briefly, and when I slowed down, he forged ahead of me for a few miles.

While he was up there, I whipped off the main highway onto the first available side road. I pulled up at a service station and told the attendant to fill the Ford’s tank and check under the hood. I went inside and opened a soft drink.

The brown Buick came along before the attendant finished checking the oil. Two men were in the front seat. One turned to look at the Ford, but they kept going. They still hoped they hadn’t been spotted.

Still holding the pop bottle, I walked out the side — door of the station and climbed the hill behind it. The attendant called after me, but I kept going. I stopped in a clump of trees and squatted down. I could see the station clearly, but no one there could see me.

The driver of the brown car would idle along waiting for me to come into sight again. When I didn’t, he would turn around and return.

I finished the drink and watched the attendant clamp down the hood of the Ford. My behavior puzzled him, but he had my car. He wasn’t worried about my running out on the bill.

The Buick came back. The two thugs consulted the man at the service station. He pointed in the direction I had taken. The hoods talked it over. Then they started to run up the hill. They were afraid I had abandoned the Ford and was trying to elude them on foot.

Come on, boys, I thought.

As they drew closer, panting and cursing, I slid behind a tree. The taller man was in better shape. He led his companion by three strides. He sprinted past my hiding place, running along the fringe of the thicket. The shorter man yelled after him, “Hey, Joe. Slow down. You think this is the Olympics?”

Holding the pop bottle by the small end, I stepped from behind the tree. “Hey, Shorty,” I said.

He stopped as if he’d run into a clothesline. “Joe!” he yelled.

I hit him on the head with the empty pop bottle and he dropped in a heap.

Joe had paused He looked back and saw me coming at him. His hand streaked inside his coat and reappeared with a .45. Then he hesitated. He didn’t shoot.

I didn’t ask why he held his fire. I tackled him.

The thug wrapped his legs around me and swung at my head with the .45. We rolled over wild grass and brush as we wrestled. I captured his wrist and wrenched. I broke it. The sound was like a dry stick snapping. The thug moaned. I hit him twice and then crawled away.

He got up and kicked the Luger from my hand. I tripped him. He got up again, broken wrist dangling, and hit me with his good hand. He was tough. He kept coming. Finally I dropped him with a right cross.