Ник Картер - The Spanish Connection

Kelly was talking to me as he worked.

“It’s some new stuff. We’ve got supplies of it. Knocks you out so you cant move, but you can see everything that’s going on. Temporary paralysis. Comes from curari, also known as ourari, urari, woorali, wourali, and woorara. But it’s been cut with something else. Don’t ask me what. The formularies always disappear the minute we get them.”

I soon revived.

“Quick!” I said. “It’s Tina. She came up from Granada to meet Barry Parson and found his body here. She’s on her way out now. She thinks Corelli killed him. If she escapes now, she can kill him later.”

“Hold it!” snapped Kelly. “I came up here to find you. Tina’s been downstairs in the lobby, you know, creating a scene!”

“Who?” I asked impatiently.

“Tina Bergson.”

“Tina!”

“Exactly. But she’s gone now.”

“Gone? But—?”

“She was in the lobby, but she left,” Kelly told me as we ran out of the room and down the corridor. We started down the stairs, and I could see a crowd of people in the lobby. They were all peering out into the parking lot.

I saw Juana, who turned to wait for us.

“What’s this all about?” I snapped.

“She’s in the red Jaguar,” Juana said, pointing out at the parked cars. I could see the headlights come on in one of them. The light cut through the darkness and illuminated the snow-covered mountainside where the road turned from the Prado Llano and wound up toward the main highway.

“She made a big scene,” Juana said quickly. “It t was very dramatic.”

“Too dramatic!” Kelly said dryly.

“Are you going to tell me what she did?” I asked impatiently.

“She came in here not ten minutes ago, raising hell and asking for Mario Speranza!”

“Who is Mario Speranza?” I asked.

Kelly shook his head. “When they told her that Señor Speranza was not here, she broke down and almost went into hysterics right out here in the lobby.”

I could see the Jaguar start to move. Tina’s blond hair was blowing out behind her.

“It brought all of us out of the lounge on the run,” Juana explained.

“And then she collapsed here and had to be revived by the desk clerk,” Kelly concluded. “I went up to get you.”

I frowned, thinking quickly. “It’s an act — the scene down here. What it’s for, I don’t know. But I’ve got to stop her.”

“Right,” said Kelly. “What do we do?”

“Check out that Mario Speranza,” I said to Kelly. “He probably doesn’t exist. I’m going after Tina!”

I was moving through the crowd toward the revolving doors and I spotted Herr Hauptli there, with his crew of sycophants. He waved and then turned away.

The Renault was cold. It started up fairly well. I pulled out onto the road and skidded twice before I got it under control. There were ice patches in the roadway, the same as two nights before.

The road descended and then made a right turn. I could not see the red Jaguar at all, but I remembered the road turned right, and then began to curve to the left in a long, wide, horseshoe-shaped turn that clung to the rim of the barranca.

I gunned the engine because I did not want to lose sight of the Jag.

The edge of the road showed in my headlamps, and I involuntarily put on the brakes to test the drag. I was relieved to feel the tension in the bands.

I took the Renault around the turn and I could see Tina Bergson’s red Jaguar halfway around the wide horseshoe bend. She was driving slowly, but then she accelerated, just as I caught sight of her.

The car seemed to leap ahead in the darkness, the lights bouncing upward on the road, almost as if they were climbing the sky. And then — as I could hardly believe my eyes — the Jaguar bumped up against the cutbank, almost smashing into the rock wall head-on.

“Turn, Tina!” I yelled involuntarily. “Turn!”

Whether she did or not I do not know, but the next thing I saw was the Jaguar headed not for the cutbank but for the outer rim of the road. “Tina!”

It was a lost cry.

The Jag gained speed and went over the edge, almost as if it had been trained to do a very shallow swan dive into a pool.

The headlamps caught the jagged mica schist below, the patches of snow snuggled in the schist, and lit a tangle of lights and reflections in the snow, then the car burrowed into the rocks, bounced off, turned over and over, the headlamps describing a pinwheel in the night, and smashed with a grinding roar into a segment of sharp rocks near the bottom of the barranca.

There was a moment’s silence.

Then a high flaring blast of fire shot into the sky, and a loud explosion ripped through the air. Smoke billowed up past the orange flames, harsh, choking black smoke.

The fire soared and then fell back into the wreckage of the twisted Jaguar and began eating slowly at the metal. Smoke rose slowly, then, the fire dancing along the edges of the red steel and the clear glass and the colored plastic.

Shaken, I drove carefully along the highway and made the spot where the red Jag had gone over the edge. I looked down. All I could see was a break in the rocks imbedded in the shoulder at the edge of the roadway.

I parked the Renault, pulled the key, and climbed out. It was cold on the highway. I walked over to the edge of the road where the Jag had gone through the rocks. I stood there, staring down at the displaced stones and followed the charred black line on the schist below to the spot where a bright red fire was crackling over the remains of Tina Bergson and the red Jaguar.

In only brief moments the first of the hotel guests came zooming up in a Fiat, parked and joined me at the edge of the roadway. Ogling.

And then more came.

And more.

Thrill-seekers.

They made me sick.

I climbed down the rocky slope, using my pocket flash, and passed the charred section of rock where the red Jag had first hit, and finally reached the section near the car itself.

But the flames were eating at the wreckage and it was impossible to stand any closer without burning myself.

Arm across the top of my head, I stood there and waited.

A fire truck screamed up on the roadway, and soon a big fireman in a ski jacket and loaded with a portable extinguisher came crashing down the slope and began to spray the burning wreck.

I shuddered.

The fireman stood there, staring at the charred wreckage. A Guardia Civil joined him and pointed a flashlight at the burned car. The light’s beam was more powerful than mine.

I came closer.

I saw it, then.

There was a charred body in the front seat. What was left of it was black and smouldering.

Tina.

All that was left of the golden girl with the golden skin.

I turned away, sick.

I must have sunk down on a rock near the wreckage and lapsed into a kind of mental funk. Someone joggled my arm and shoulder. I realized a voice had been speaking to me for some moments.

I stirred.

“Nick.”

It was Kelly.

“She’s dead,” said Kelly. “Damndest thing.”

“I guess she just felt it was all over and she’d better run.” I sighed. “She knew Rico Corelli would be after her for the rest of her life.”

“But Corelli didn’t even know!”

“He would find out. That’s why he left,” I said. That was the way I had it figured.

“I checked out that name, Nick.”

I looked up, frowning. I did not understand what he was getting at.

“There’s no Mario Speranza registered at the hotel.”

I sat there thinking about that. “But that’s the name she gave the clerk.”

He nodded. “The clerk says he told her that. The clerk says that it was then that she went out of her skull.”