Denver Strike (11 page)

“Then why do you sound just a little bitter?”

“Well, maybe just a little. But I'm still not going to make you any promises.”

Hawker found a pad and pencil by the phone, wrote her unlisted number down and put it in his pocket, then wrote the telephone number of his hotel room (but not the number of his hotel room) on another slip of paper and handed it to her. “If you learn anything, give me a call. Is there any way I can reach you at Nek's house?”

She shook her head. “I have a private room, in fact, a private wing of the house. And that includes a great many telephones and three private numbers, but I'm sure that old bastard has them all tapped. He's a fanatic for security. When I get back, he'll practically have me interrogated by those Nazis he keeps around the place. He hates it when I sneak out alone.”

“Tell him you bought the Porsche as a surprise for him,” Hawker suggested. “That will explain your secrecy.”

The woman's eyes flashed. “I wouldn't buy that evil, evil creature anything. Ever. He knows that—”

“Then why does he keep you if you hate him so?”

The woman's face lost its flush of pleasure, and Hawker was immediately sorry that he had asked. “He keeps me because he sees me as his piece of property. That's why; He makes me do things. Terrible things. What we did tonight, you and me, it was good, it was clean, it was a strong, pure thing we did. But the things Nek makes me do are sick. They're nauseating. I know that he watches me when I'm there in the nasty house. I know he has ways of seeing me when I'm in the shower or the bath or on the toilet. Two-way mirrors, maybe. Or some kind of video setup. I can almost feel his nasty eyes on me. I can feel him touching me with his eyes—and there's not a thing in the world I can do about it!” Hawker wrapped his arm around the woman as her voice broke and she began to cry.

“There is something you can do about it, Melissa,” he said softly. “It's called divorce. This is no longer the Old West. Nek may be the richest man in Denver, but he doesn't make the laws. Get a lawyer and have the courts protect you. Sell this house and use the money to move to Europe. You have a lot of options.”

“You don't understand, you don't understand,” she wailed miserably. “My life is so awful, and there's nothing I can do to change it. Nothing!”

Hawker tried to make her feel better, but she could not be comforted.

Melissa Nek was still sobbing as Hawker stepped out into the Colorado night and drove back down the mountain to Denver.

eleven

The telephone rang at five minutes after two in the morning. Hawker's hand speared out, slapped the end table a few times, and found the receiver.

“James? God, where have you been? I've been calling you all night.”

It was a woman's voice. A good, husky, firm voice. He was so sleepy, his mind first registered the voice as Melissa's. But then he realized he was mistaken. “Lomela? What is it? Is something wrong?” Hawker sat up in bed and found the light.

It took him another moment to realize that he was in his Denver hotel room—a suite, really. Deep pile carpet, tasteful wallpaper, kitchenette with a microwave and wet bar, artificial fireplace, mini-health spa in place of a bathroom, his clothes mounted on fiber hangers in the open closet, his weaponry sealed in two coffin-size packing crates, both padlocked.

“I called Tom Dulles this afternoon,” Lomela said. “He said you were in some kind of trouble. He was real upset, and Tom doesn't upset easily. He was damned worried about you, James, but he wouldn't tell me much about it. He said he would get back to me as soon as he knew anything. But then the phone went out in this cabin where we're staying. It snowed up here in our part of the range late this afternoon, and I guess some tree limbs couldn't take it and they fell and knocked the telephone wires down. God, I've been frantic all night. I just got up to make sure the kids were doing okay, and I tried the phone. Wonder of wonders, it worked.”

“How are the kids, Lomela? Are they settling down after what happened to them?”

The woman laughed easily. “James, I wish I had the recovery powers them kids have. Acted like nothing in the world happened to 'em. Kidnappers don't mean nothing to those two. Some kids have cast-iron stomachs. Mine must have cast-iron nerves.”

“Good.” Hawker smiled. “I was worried about them.”

“And I was worried about you,” Lomela replied. “Can't you tell me about it, James? Did it have something to do with trying to find those men you're after?”

“In a way, Lomela. But there's nothing to worry about now. I'm fine. Promise.”

Her voice became shy. “You think there's any chance of you maybe sneaking up here tomorrow to sort of say hello? I sure did enjoy our little visit together. I promise you won't be disappointed if you come see me. In fact, I'll make sure you get everything you want. Everything and more, James, honey.”

The vigilante patted his stomach. He felt the way he once had as a kid when he had eaten too many olives. “I'd love to, Lomela,” he said, trying to sound enthusiastic. “But I think Tom already has something planned for us.”

“I bet it has something to do with my daddy taking a gun and going up into those mountains to look for Jimmy Estes and Mr. Phillips, doesn't it?”

Hawker sat up straighter. “Your father did what?”

“Well, you only met Daddy that one time, but he's got a real stubborn streak in him. He got real restless staying up here in this here cabin. He said he was tired of hiding. So this morning he just up and took his Winchester, some supplies, and that nasty old pack mule of his and headed out. He said nobody in the state knows more about abandoned silver mines than he does, so he figured he'd try to flush them out. I made him promise to come back and tell you or Tom, though, once he finds them.”

“Didn't you try to stop him, Lomela?”

“God knows, I did. But he's such a jar-headed old fool. Got to stewing over the idea of an Easterner—you—having to come in to help us with a Colorado problem. Made him real mad, it did. I tried everything to talk him into staying, but it was no use. When that old man makes up his mind to do something, he does it. It worries me, him being out in that snowstorm.”

“We need to find him, Lomela. He's going to get himself into trouble out there. And I can't help him if I don't know where he is.”

“I can't go out looking, James. I've got the babies. Besides, I promised Tom I wouldn't leave the cabin.”

Hawker looked at his watch. “How long would it take me to get up there? An hour, maybe?”

“Don't even think about coming up now. What could you do in the dark? You don't know these mountains. My daddy will be fine until morning at least. Remember, he's spent almost his whole life hiking these Rockies. He knows how to camp, and where, even at his age.”

“Then I'll talk to Tom, and we'll come up tomorrow, okay?”

“I'd rather you come up by yourself, James,” Lomela said in a flirtatious voice. “That way, maybe we could slip off for a bit and—”

The vigilante was laughing. “If we're going to slip off, woman, you're going to need some sleep. God knows I am.”

“I'll be waiting, James.”

Hawker switched off the light.

Next time I come to Colorado, he thought, I'm going to bring some vitamins.

The cold front that had brought snow to the mountains slid down into Denver during the night. Hawker had double rashers of bacon, toast, and four poached eggs in the hotel restaurant. His table was by a window. As pedestrians strolled by, their breath vaporized.

He went back up to his room to get the goose-down vest that seemed to be more a Colorado state uniform than it did a piece of clothing.

Just as he was about to pull the door shut behind him, the telephone rang.

“Hello?”

“Mr. James, I'm so glad I caught you. I decided I would like to have that oil painting framed for my husband. You're quite right. It would make a very nice Christmas present.”

Even though it was subdued in a cool, business-like tone, the voice of Melissa Nek was immediately recognizable. Hawker played along without hesitation.

“I think you're making a wise decision, Mrs. Nek. How can I help you?”

“Well, you can either send a boy out to our estate to pick up the painting, or I can drop it off in town this afternoon. I'll be coming in around one.”

“Perhaps we could meet for lunch,” Hawker suggested. “That would give us more time to discuss exactly what you want.”

“A very good idea,” the woman replied. “Shall we meet at Marseille? I remember you saying you liked French food.”

“Marseille would be fine,” said the vigilante, who detested French food even more than he disliked the French citizenry.

“One
P.M.
,” said the woman. “And remember, not a word to my husband's business associates. This is to be a surprise.”

Hawker hung up, feeling as if his luck were about to change. The oil painting Melissa had mentioned would undoubtedly be a map. Could she really have found the right map, the one showing the place where the two kidnapped men were being kept?

Hawker felt a small charge of adrenaline move through him.

This was exactly the break he had been needing. He had been on the defensive ever since he had arrived in Colorado. He had been reacting, not acting.

He longed for a chance to take the offensive against Nek and his henchmen. The more he saw of the Silver King and his operation, the more he was struck by the putrescent spirit that marked it. Everything Nek and his men touched seemed dirtier for it, sickened by it.

Hawker thought about Melissa Nek for a moment with a fondness that startled him. An odd woman, no doubt. But then, she had lived an odd life.

At an early age, she had somehow fallen under Nek's power. He had forced her to marry him, and then he had abused her physically. The things he made Melissa do had so disgusted her that she refused to even talk about them.

Many women would have been forever dwarfed by such maltreatment, forever sickened and bitter toward men.

But Melissa's good instincts had somehow survived. Something deep inside her had insisted that she try to live, try to experiment with life.

Hawker had been her first experiment. And it had been a success. Now she was out to help him, do a favor in return.

The vigilante just hoped she wasn't caught. Bill Nek wasn't the type to show much mercy, and the loss of Melissa would be a hell of a loss.

He hoped she took care.

One thing her call did was change his plans for the entire morning. He had planned to meet Tom Dulles and head up into the mountains to look for Robert Carthay. Carthay was taking a hell of a chance looking for Nek's hitmen on his own, and he had to be stopped.

But now Dulles would have to try to find and stop the old man on his own.

Hawker called the Denver cop and told him that he wouldn't be able to make it. Dulles wasn't convinced he was making a wise choice.

“Hell, Hawk, that woman's crazy! She's the one who stuck a gun to our heads and kidnapped us. When you think about it, it's damned embarrassing to have been handled like that by a woman—”

“I agree that she's no ordinary woman,” the vigilante put in. “But I think she really may have something for us.”

“Leading you into a trap is more like it.”

“If that's so, she could have nailed me last night. She had plenty of opportunity to slip away and get in touch with her husband.”

“That's another thing that bothers me,” Dulles objected. “I've lived in Colorado all my life, and I've known about Bill Nek most of that time. You know, a man that rich gets all sorts of stories told about him. But I hardly ever heard anything about his wife. I mean,
nothing
. After she drove off with you yesterday, it started to bother me. I mean, these ugly old rich dudes like to buy themselves beautiful rich socialites. Then they like to show them off at parties and charity balls, stuff like that. Nek is as rich and ugly as a man can get, so he should have a beautiful socialite wife, right?”

“She is beautiful,” Hawker put in.

“Yeah, but she never gets out. Hell, I didn't even remember hearing about the wedding. So last night, while I was fuming around wondering if you were dead or alive, I went down to the
Denver Post
offices. A friend of mine works in the library there. The ‘library' is now what newspapers used to call the morgue—”

“Only a lot more computers,” Hawker added.

“Right. So I looked up Nek. And you know what?”

“They hardly had a damned thing on him.”

“Right,” said Dulles. “All these years he's lived in Denver, and all they had was a few anonymous milquetoast stories on Nek as a silver pioneer, as a minor contributor to some local civic projects. Stuff like that. He's made the Fortune 500 list every year, but the local reporters can't even get him to make a comment about it. He's such a recluse that people hardly even notice that he is a recluse.”

“Was there anything about Melissa?”

“One tiny little story,” Dulles said. “It was in the Sunday feature section. The story was all of two inches long. It was just a blurb that said that Nek, known as the Silver King, had been married to an eighteen-year-old girl named Melissa Agno.”

“Agno? What the hell kind of name is that?”

“Story didn't say. You could tell the reporter had taken the information straight from county records. Tried to flesh it out with some background on Nek, but there wasn't a thing on the woman. Hell, it didn't even appear in the paper until about a month after their wedding.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Just over five years ago. Since then, there hasn't been one mention of Mrs. William Nek in
The Denver Post.”

“Was Nek ever married before?”