Nick Carter - Hood of Death

"No."

"She's dead. Killed in an accident in the country."

"No! Not Jeanyee."

"Yes. Last week."

"Such a young, lovely girl…"

"It was a car or an airplane or something."

After an appropriate pause Nick raised his glass and said softly, "To Jeanyee."

They drank. It established a cord of intimacy. He spent the rest of the evening weaving the first-line-aboard into a hawser. The connecting cable was secured so swiftly and easily that he knew he was having help on her end of the lines. Why not? With Jeanyee gone, if the other side was still interested in the services of "Jerry Deming" they would have instructed the rest of the girls to strengthen contact.

When the doors were opened to another large private room in which was spread a buffet, Nick escorted Suzi into the feeding chamber. Although the prince had engaged a number of conference-banquet-party rooms, his name must have gotten out on the sucker-list circuit. The rooms were crowded, the booze and lavish buffet consumed with gusto by a large number of Washington casuals whom Nick recognized as party crashers. Good luck to them, he thought, as he watched a neatly dressed couple fill plates with beef and turkey — spread the goodies at home.

Shortly after midnight he discovered that Suzi planned to take a taxi home."… I live near Columbia Heights."

She said her cousin had brought her and had had to leave.

Nick wondered if the other five girls were attending functions tonight. Each one brought by a cousin — so that she would be available to contact Jerry Deming. "Let me drive you home," he said. "I'm going to take a little spin anyway. It would be nice to go by way of the park."

"That's sweet of you…"

And sweet it was. She was quite willing to stop at his apartment for a late nighter. She was delighted to take her shoes off and nestle "just for a moment" on the couch overlooking the river.

Suzi was as cute and cuddly as one of the pretty Chinese dolls you find in the better San Francisco shops. All charm and smooth skin and gleaming black hair and attentiveness. Her conversation was smooth.

And that gave Nick his lead. Smooth! He recalled Jeanyee's polish, and the way the girls had talked while he eavesdropped in the Pennsylvania mountains. All of the girls fitted a mold — they behaved as if taught and polished for an objective, as the best madams used to school their courtesans.

It was more subtle than just providing a group of superior playmates for affairs like the one at the ex-Lord place. Hans Geist could handle that, but it went deeper. Ruth and Jeanyee and Suzi and the rest were… experts? Yes, but top teaching might make experts. He pondered while Suzi blew warm breath against his chin. Dedicated. That was it He decided to push.

"Suzi, I wish I could get in touch with Jeanyee's cousin. I suppose I could find him somehow. She said he might have a very interesting proposition for an oil man."

"I think I can reach him. Would you like me to have him call you?"

"Please do. Or do you think it might be too soon after — after what happened to her?"

"It might be better. You would be — someone she wanted to help. Almost like one of her last wishes."

That was an interesting angle. He said, "But are you sure you know the right one? She may have many cousins. I've heard about your Chinese families. I think he lives in Baltimore."

"Yes, that's the one…" She stopped. He hoped that Suzi was such a good actress that she would take her cue too quickly and the truth would slip out. "At least, I think he does. I can reach him through a friend who knows the family well."

"I'll be awfully grateful," he murmured, kissing the top of her head.

He kissed much more of her, for Suzi had learned all her lessons well. Instructed to captivate, she went all out. She did not have Jeanyee's contortionist's skill, but her smaller, resilient body offered enthusiastic vibrations especially her own. Nick fed her compliments like syrup, and she lapped them up. Under the agent there was a woman.

They slept until after seven, when he made coffee and brought it to her in bed and awakened her with proper gentle affection. She tried to insist on a cab but he wouldn't have it — protesting that if she insisted she was angry with him.

He drove her home, and noted the address off 13th Street It was not the one listed in AXE's records. He phoned it in to the data office. At six-thirty, as he was about to dress for what he dreaded as a boring evening — Jerry Deming was no longer fun — Hawk called him. Nick switched on the scrambler and said, "Yes, sir."

"I noted the new address for Suzi. That only leaves you three girls to go. Extracurricular, I mean."

"We played some Chinese checkers."

"Imagine. So fascinating you kept at it all night?" Nick refused the bait Hawk knew he would call in an address promptly, deduced he had left Suzi in the morning. "I have some news," Hawk went on. "The contact number you gave Villon was called. Heaven knows why they would bother checking it at this late date unless we are up against Prussian thoroughness or a bureaucratic boggle. We gave nothing away and the caller hung up, but not before our countercircuit established the area. The call was from area code three-o-one."

"Baltimore."

"Very probably. Add that to something else. Last night Ruth and her father went to Baltimore. Our man lost them in the city but they were headed south of the city. Note the connection?"

"The Chu Dai Restaurant."

"Yes. Why don't you drive up there and have a nice dinner? We think the place is innocent, which is all the more reason why N3 might find out otherwise. Stranger things have happened in the past."

"O.K. I'll leave at once, sir."

There was more suspicion or intuition about the Baltimore place than Hawk would say. The way he put it — we think think the place is innocent — was a cautionary signal if you knew the logical workings of that intricate mind.

Nick hung up his dinner jacket, donned the shorts with Pierre in its special pocket and the two incendiary caps forming a V where his legs joined his pelvis, and put on a dark suit. Hugo the stiletto was on his left forearm, and Wilhelmina under his arm in the especially fitted, tilted sling. He carried four ballpoint pens — only one of which could write. The other three were Stuart's grenades. He carried two cigarette lighters, the heavier one with an identification knob on its side was the one he treasured. Without the ones like it he would still be in the Pennsylvania mountains, probably buried.

At 8:55 he turned over the Bird to a parking lot attendant of the Chu Dai Restaurant, which was a lot more impressive than its name. It was a cluster of connected buildings on the shore with giant parking lots and much glowing neon. A large, obsequious Chinese maitre d' greeted him in an entrance lobby that could have been used for a Broadway theatre. "Good evening. Do you have a reservation?"

Nick handed him the five-dollar bill folded in his palm. "Right here."

"Yes, indeed. For one?"

"Unless you see someone who would like to make it two."

The Chinaman chuckled. "Not here. The Oasis downtown for that. But first you have a good meal with us. Just three or four minutes. Wait in here please." He gestured grandly at a room furnished in the carnival decor of a North African harem with Oriental touches. Amid the red plush, satin drapes, bold gold tassels and luxurious couches a king-size color TV flamed and bleated.

Nick grimaced. "I'll have a breath of air and a smoke."

"So sorry, there's nowhere to walk. We had to use it all for the parking lots. You can smoke in here."

"I may want to rent a couple of your private meeting rooms for an all-day business conference and banquet. Anybody handy to show me around?"