Ник Картер - The Spanish Connection

“A lovely lady,” he said bowing. I sneaked a glance at Juana. She was trying to keep her face stiff, but I could see temper flaring inside. She suspected I might be laughing at her.

“Mr. Kelly has told me the object of our evening,” Diego said briefly, giving me a significant glance. “Where do we start?” I asked.

He named a place, and we called a cab and got in. Diego sat with Juana, beaming and making small talk in Spanish and then in English. I stared out the window.

In Malaga you would not really know where the stews began and the clubs ended. We started at a restaurant overlooking the Mediterranean just beside the harbor in a section of the town called La Malagueta. The sun sank over the surface of the Mediterranean, and we ate our sea food and drank our wine and cognac. The waiters lit the candles set up in colored glasses and night settled down.

“I have an idea, Diego,” I said.

“An idea?” Diego began to smile. He liked intrigue.

“I am a wealthy American tourist. You can tell by the way I throw my money around. I am out with my wife. But I am bored with my wife. I want not just a simple peasant girl to take to bed. I want two!”

Diego was ecstatic. “But how do you account for the presence of your wife, Señor?”

“She is with you, Diego.”

His face broke into a beaming smile. “Ah!”

“And when we find two girls who work in pairs, we find out whether or not they have been asked to perform within the last few days — especially last night.”

“I see!” Diego’s face was a study in fascination. “Then we go.”

“Right. Let’s see what develops.”

We began hitting the discothèques in Malaga. The European discothèque is essentially a dark place with a low ceiling, and very few windows. Small tables are placed around a platform in the middle. There are various types of decorations hanging from the ceilings — dried moss, belts, ropes, garters, g-strings, bras, whips, almost anything imaginable.

There is always music piped in loudly from a stereo tape set-up somewhere. The speakers blast noise in all directions, from hidden recesses. Strobe lights flash multicolored illumination in all directions. Color slides of nudes and couples in various positions of sexual intercourse are projected on the walls. The noise is fantastic.

Then all the strobe lights cut out, and a group of guitar players stroll onto the stage. A flamenco dancer — male or female — appears.

We hit half a dozen places before midnight, with negative results.

“Well?” I asked Diego after awhile.

“Nothing, Señor,” he said. “Plenty of women available — singles, doubles, even triples — but nobody has performed a triple recently.”

“So we try again.”

“We have run out of places.” Diego’s eyes squinted. “I think we should try Torremolinos.”

“Where is that?”

“A little way to the south. On the Costa del Sol.”

“More discothèques?”

“The best. Lively. Bestial. Depraved.”

I nodded. “Sounds good. Let’s go.”

At about one-thirty we went into a place halfway down the main street of Torremolinos. It was a gloomy place. Caged animals paced back and forth in cages hanging from the ceiling near the bar at the entryway.

Luminescent painted chairs and tables gleamed in the darkness. A male flamenco dancer sweated through the customary steps on a small stage in the center of the room. A slide of two lesbians in ecstasy was projected onto a wall. The amplified guitar music competed with a female singer’s wild lament in an apparent attempt to deafen all patrons.

We sank down, ordered sangría and watched.

Diego disappeared.

Juana and I looked at each other in exhaustion.

A hand gripped my shoulder. I jerked around, startled at the unexpected human contact.

“I have them,” said Diego in my ear.

I touched Juana’s hand, cautioned her to stay there, and followed Diego out through the darkness. At the side of the discothèque there was a small doorway. Diego guided me through it, and we walked down a dark corridor to a room at the end. A woman of indeterminate age sat at a table in a dirty, tom flamenco costume. A feeble electric light glowed in the wall over her head. She had black hair, black eyes, and black bags under them.

“Bianca,” said Diego. “This is the man.”

Bianca smiled a tired smile. “I like you,” she said.

I smiled. “Your companion?”

“She is not as good as me, but she will be there.”

“Her name?”

“Carla.” She shrugged.

“Bianca,” I said. “You’ve got to be good. I don’t want to waste my money.”

“You don’t waste your money with Bianca and Carla!” the woman snorted. “We are good. Very good.”

“I don’t want amateurs!” I said. “I want to know if you’ve worked together before.”

“Sure, we work together,” said Bianca, waving her hand at me reassuringly. “Don’t you worry about that. We split the money.”

“How much?”

“Seven thousand pesetas apiece.”

“That’s a lot! I’ve got to know if you’re good!”

“Listen, you ask anybody—”

Diego said, “Who, Bianca? You got references?”

“Sure, I got references! There’s that Frenchman lives in Marbella.”

I shook my head. “I don’t trust any Frenchman!”

She laughed. “That is good. Neither do I!”

Diego and I shrugged.

“Hey,” she said. “There was one we did just last night! Carla and I. A real bastard that one was! He wanted everything! All at once! Oh, I tell you—”

“Who was he?”

She frowned. “I don’t know. He don’t give us his name. He’s a dark fellow. You know. Looks Italian or something. Didn’t talk good Spanish.”

I glanced at Diego and he lowered the lid of one eye.

“Where does he live?” I asked.

“We went to a villa right here in Torremolinos.”

I fished in my wallet and brought out ten thousand pesetas. “You give me the address,” I said, “and you can keep the ten thousand.”

Her eyes widened and I could see sweat glistening on her forehead. Her lips were wet with saliva. She was torn between greed and caution. Now she suspected I might be more than just a customer with strange sex desires. But she was more interested in money than scruples.

She reached for the cash.

“The address?”

“I don’t know the address. I... I take you there.”

I pulled the money back and peeled off five thousand. “The rest when we get there, Bianca.”

Diego looked puzzled. “Señor. What about the... the other Señora? Your—?”

“You go back there, Diego, and take her home in half an hour.”

I figured if anyone was watching Diego, he would follow him and Juana back to the hotel.

I grabbed Bianca’s arm, and we went out the rear door of the discothèque.

It was very dark outside. Neon lights glared at the front of the building, but in the rear, it was almost pitch black.

Bianca said, “You wait here.”

She left and within half a minute a cab pulled up beside the building, and she waved me in.

I climbed in beside her, smelling the musty scent of her make-up, her sweat, and her clothing.

She talked to the cab driver, a sad-eyed viejo wearing a beret, and he started up, winding through the narrow side streets that led up toward the foothills in back of town. We emerged from the business section of Torremolinos and entered a suburban residential section.

After ten minutes, Bianca leaned forward and slammed the taxi driver on the shoulder.

“Aqui! Here.”

He stopped the cab.

“That one?” I asked Bianca, identifying the villa she was pointing to.