Ник Картер - The Code

Sheila came up behind me. She gasped when she saw the huddled body pinned in the beam of my light. “I know that man. He worked at the station.”

I clicked off the light. “Yeah.”

“But he hadn’t worked here long. Who was he really, Ned?”

“Another friend of mine. He’d been watching you.”

“And now he’s dead.” Her voice rode high, panic in it. “How are you going to protect me when your own people aren’t safe?”

It was a fair question, I thought.

Sheila turned away from me and ran across a vacant lot, through knee-high weeds. Chances were she didn’t know where she was going. She only knew that she wanted to get away.

I sprang after her. Wet weeds slapped my trouser legs as I ran. I could hear the girl’s breath pumping loudly before I caught up with her. Lunging, I grabbed one of her arms and yanked her back toward me.

“Let me go,” she panted, struggling. “I don’t want your protection. I’m better off without it.”

Her fingernails clawed for my face, but I caught her other wrist. Her breasts heaved against my chest and her breath was hot on my throat as she tried to wrench away. I wrapped my arms around her and forced her to stand motionless.

“Meredith made a mistake. I won’t make one.” I was talking softly, hoping to calm her. “I’ll get you out of this town tonight. We’ll go to your place and I’ll make arrangements and then we’ll put Bonham behind us.”

“Ned.” She spoke my name in a voice as low and as soft as mine. “I know what a man likes.” Struggling no longer, she stood with her breasts against me, her thighs to mine. “I’ll be nice to you. Oh, so very nice. But please let me go.”

I wasn’t insulted by her offer. She was desperate, and had resorted to her best pitch, and I couldn’t blame her for that.

“You make it sound attractive. But my job is to find out what you know. I couldn’t let you run off alone anyway. It would be throwing you to the wolves. Someone is very serious about putting you out of the way. Serious enough to knock off Meredith and to try to do the same with me. Serious enough to send an assassin after you, Sheila. I ran into him today in the hotel. He was packing a rifle and he intended to pick you off from a hotel window when you arrived for work.”

She froze in my arms. “You think Abruze’s killers did all that?”

“It figures. You are the only one who could identify them.”

A bitter laugh spilled out of her. “I don’t have the slightest idea who sent the assassin, but I can tell you one thing for certain. It wasn’t the men who shot Frank Abruze and Kirby. No, indeed. They want me alive.”

“Baby, you are full of little surprise.” Fingers wound tightly around her wrist, I pulled her toward the car and shoved her into it.

I hated to leave Meredith’s body where it was, but his killer might still be around, looking for us. I had to get the girl to a safe place as quickly as possible.

“Tell me about it, Sheila,” I said as I started up the car.

“You won’t be pleased.”

“I probably won’t. Tell me anyway.”

“Frank Abruze didn’t pick me up in Las Vegas by accident. I was introduced to him. This man I knew came to see me and said Abruze was in town and liked my type. He said he could arrange for us to get together. Which he did. Only later, after Frank decided he’d like to keep me around, this man got in touch with me again. He said I owed him and he was ready to collect.”

“You think he planted you with Abruze so you could spy for him?”

“Something like that. He knew the Mafia was going to deliver $200,000 to Abruze at the cottage. He demanded that I let him know when the money arrived. He said it was going to be a holdup, but one one would get killed. I believed him. I was afraid he’d blow the whistle on me if I didn’t do as he said. So I called him when the money got there.”

I digested her story as I drove to her house.

“You know what I’m saying, don’t you?” she asked in a savage voice. “You know what it meant when I made that call.”

I unlocked the door of her house and put on the light in the living room. The Luger in my hand, I glanced around, then walked to the telephone.

“I set Abruze up,” Sheila said. “They came and they killed him and his bodyguards and the man named Kirby. They shot them all. It was a slaughter.”

“You didn’t know what they were going to do,” I told her.

I gave the long distance operator an emergency number. No matter where Hawk traveled, and that covered a lot of territory, the girl who answered the telephone at the emergency number knew how to get in touch with him quickly.

Sheila yanked open a cabinet and pulled out a bottle of bourbon. “I’ve told myself that. But it doesn’t help a hell of a lot. Frank Abruze was a hood, but he treated me decently. I got him killed.” She held up the bottle. “Do you want a shot of this?”

I shook my head. I had Hawk’s girl on the line. I spoke the code words that assured her I wasn’t an imposter, “Aberdeen blue.” I told the girl I wanted to speak to the man.

“I’ll relay the message, N3,” she said in a crisp, efficient voice. “Give me your number and hang up. He’ll call back within fifteen minutes.”

“Hurry it up. Time is burning my coattails.”

I hung up. Sheila had taken the bottle into the kitchen. I followed, and found her standing at the sink crying.

She rubbed at her eyes. She took down a tumbler, poured two fingers of bourbon and downed it like a drink of tea. “This Kirby. How well did you know him?”

“We were friends.”

“He picked the wrong day to visit Frank Abruze.” She dropped the glass and it splintered on the floor. She buried her face in my shirt front. “Who could have sent the assassin, Ned? The Mafia?”

“Maybe. Maybe they found out you set up their esteemed elder statesman.”

“I was afraid they would. I was running from them and from Abruze’s killers.” Her fingers dug into my sleeves. “You blame me for those four deaths, don’t you?”

“Not as much as you blame yourself.”

She tugged at me, placed her mouth on mine. Her lips were warm. “Ned, take me to the bedroom.”

“I’m waiting for a phone call.”

“You’ve been thinking of making love to me. Do it now. I need it now.”

It was true that the thought had occurred to me a few times. Like about a dozen. The first time had been when I saw her in the film Meredith had shot. But there were questions still unanswered between us.

I stroked Sheila’s soft blonde hair. “Later.”

“It would make me feel better. Please.”

“Later,” I promised again. To prove I meant it, I lowered my mouth to hers. I felt her moist lips part, felt her darting tongue. My hand crept up to cup her round breast. She was wearing no bra.

When I heard the noise, I wheeled away from her. I hit the switch on the wall and threw on the light at the back door. The yard lay silent. I stepped outside with the Luger ready and listened, testing the air like a hound on the hunt. Something was wrong. I felt it.

Sheila had rented a house on a dead end street. Her nearest neighbors were too far away to hear anything less than an explosion. Their lighted windows formed small orange squares in the dense shadows far down the street. Sheila had wanted privacy, but privacy could be a trap. I thought of how easy it would be for someone to corner us here.

The telephone jangled inside. I backed to the door and bolted it, then moved quickly through the kitchen and into the living room. I snatched the receiver off the cradle.

A crisp, efficient female voice said, “Hold the line, N3. Mr. Hawk is coming on.”

“What’s up, Nick?” he asked.