Flashpoint (12 page)

    The girl rose to her feet, and Hawk left the bar and started toward her booth as she moved toward the entrance. They had just passed each other with no sign of recognition when a foreign-looking man rose from another booth and walked rapidly to the one the girl had vacated.

    At the sight, Hawk accelerated to a run. He landed hard on the back of the foreign-looking man who was leaning into the booth. A knife gleamed in Hawk's hand. One of the wide-tied, velvet-jacketed fags at the bar exclaimed shrilly.

    I was on my feet and moving fast when there was another interruption. I didn't see where he came from, but a second man moved in behind Hawk. He had a knife, too. In a single motion he grabbed a handful of Hawk's plentiful black hair, jerked his head back, and slit his exposed throat. The fag at the bar screamed in a falsetto as the man pushed Hawk away from him. The once-powerful body fell to the floor where it twitched and quivered, dark red blood gouting over the imitation parquet.

    When she saw the commotion, the Rhazmet girl had run back toward the booth. She and I arrived there at the same time. The first man was again trying to pick up the envelope, and I pushed him off balance. The bartender materialized suddenly with a bungstarter in his hand. " 'Ere!" he exclaimed, menacing everyone with it. "What the bloody 'ell's goin' on!"

    Talia Rhazmet leaned across the booth table and tried to recover the envelope. The man with the knife slashed at her and she clutched at her arm. A chorus from the bar echoed her muted scream as she bent double, holding the arm against her body. The man with the knife set himself, and I realized he meant to kill the girl. With Hawk dead, as he surely was from the gaping wound in his throat, the girl was my only link to Hazel's money.

    I reached for the man with the knife with one hand while I drew my.38 with my right. I slapped it against the side of his head, and his knees hit the floor with his body still upright. I looked for the first man, but the bartender had him backed into a corner with the menacing bungstarter.

    For a second no one was watching me. I reached down into the booth and snatched up the envelope, stuffing it under an armpit inside my jacket. Then I turned to the girl. I straightened her up from her semi-crouching position and examined the blood oozing through a slash in the sleeve of her suit. Her pain-glazed eyes took in the.38 still in my hand. "P-please!" she said in a half whisper. "Get me-out of here!"

    It coincided with my own thinking. The man with the knife was on his knees, still dazed. The first man was not. He bounded straight up into the air and nailed the bartender in the throat with a beautiful savage kick. The bartender slid on his back with the bungstarter still in his hand, knocking over chairs.

    The first man jerked his companion to his feet and half carried him toward the door. I showed the barflies the.38, and no one moved as I led Talia in the same direction. I holstered the.38 before reaching the sidewalk. I ran out onto the street, stopped a cab, returned to the girl, and loaded her into it. I couldn't see anything of the two foreign-looking types.

    The girl's lips were bluish white, and I was afraid she was going to faint. I whipped out a handkerchief and knotted it tightly around the crimson crease in her sleeve jacket. The cabbie had noticed something, too. "Where to, Mac?" he asked, turning to look at us.

    "Bellevue emergency," I said. "There's been an accident."

    "No-hospital," the girl murmured in a choked voice. "No hospital. My-place."

    "Where's your place?"

    She had to repeat it twice before I understood her. "Two-twenty East Sixty-third, cabbie," I ordered. If I could handle it myself, it would be better. Once inside a hospital emergency room, I might lose contact with the girl.

    She spoke only once during the ride. "Are you-from Iskir?" she asked faintly.

    "I don't know an Iskir," I answered truthfully.

    We rode in silence then until the taxi pulled up in front of 220 East Sixty-third Street. I could see what Erikson meant about the girl spending more than her wages. The building was a high-rise apartment that looked like ready money. I gave the cabbie five dollars and helped Talia out of the taxi. She had taken a head scarf from her bag and placed it over the sleeve of her suit, concealing the handkerchief I had bound around her arm.

    The foyer was small but richly decorated. A splashy mural of abstract design covered one entire wall. We boarded the elevator and Talia pressed the "seven" button. I could see that she had regained a good deal of her composure, but her face was very pale.

    The seventh floor corridor was well lighted. Talia stopped before a door marked 7-D. She unlocked the door and went inside, discarding her shoes on a rubber mat. When she turned on a light, I saw that the Japanese custom had a practical application since the carpeting was thick, white pile.

    The room we were in was decorated in bright reds, oranges, and black. At the other end of the room a pair of tall french doors that served as windows gave access to a narrow balcony beyond. The decor was Oriental with the furniture being made of natural bamboo. End tables glistened with black lacquer and were topped with lamps with pagoda-shaped bases and coolie-hat shades. On one table was a telephone and a large, smiling, carved ivory Buddha alongside a polished brass elephant with a clock face buried in its side. A black-framed parchment screen half concealed a kitchenette alcove. Another door evidently led to the bedroom.

    It was too garish for my taste. The room was too small to stand the vivid colors. There was a burnt incense odor in the air. Talia sank down upon a brightly colored cushion in a bamboo chair. "Take your shoes off, please," she said to me. She was within arm's reach of the telephone, so despite her acceptance of my help, I was far from being totally in her confidence.

    "What's your name?" I asked her as I took off my shoes. I had to get her to tell me before I made the mistake of using it. I wasn't supposed to know her name.

    "Talia," she said. "Thank you for bringing me here." Her tone was almost formal. I could hear the same slightly foreign accent I'd heard on the voice printer in Erikson's office. She cocked her head to one side until the wings of her dark hair framed her beautiful features so perfectly I knew the pose was calculated. "Now," she said. "Who are you?"

    "Earl Drake."

    She shook her head impatiently. "No. Who
are
you? Why do you carry a gun?"

    "Sometimes I need it. Lucky for you I had it. That guy was going to carve you good."

    She passed it by to ask the question I'd been expecting. "What happened to the envelope?"

    "Envelope?"

    Her gaze was steady upon my face. "An envelope was being-was being-I lost an envelope in the tavern. What happened to it?"

    I shrugged. "In that free-for-all, who knows? Maybe one of the knife-fighters got it. Did you know them?"

    "No."

    "Was the envelope important?"

    "Very." There was distress in her dark eyes. "I shall-I shall have to account for its loss."

    "Maybe I can help you get it back," I suggested. "I've, got a few contacts. What about the man who was killed? Was he a friend of yours?"

    "Just a man I knew. No friend. How can you help to regain the envelope? I think that I would do anything-"

    "Listen, we ought to get you a booster tetanus shot for that arm right away," I interrupted her.

    "I have antiseptic in the bathroom," she said. "What do you mean when you say you can help me get the envelope back?"

    "I said maybe I could," I corrected her. "But it wouldn't be easy. What Was in it? If it was cash, forget it."

    "I wasn't told what it was." She rose from her chair and came to me, standing so close I got a whiff of perfume either from her blue-black hair or from deep within her cleavage, I couldn't be sure which. "My boss is going to be terribly upset with me for not delivering the envelope," she continued.

    "You could hardly deliver it to a dead man," I pointed out.

    Her voice had turned husky, and with the warmth of her full curves crowding me, I wasn't left in much doubt what "anything" was. "If it was local hoods who got it, I can probably get a line on them," I said. "But if the contents are valuable, it will take money to recover it."

    "Iskir will pay," she said quickly. "He will pay well. I must call him now. I should have called before. May I tell him that you will help?"

    "Wait a minute," I warned. "For the right price, okay. Otherwise, no. And no guarantee goes with it."

    "I must call him," she repeated, but she made no move toward the telephone. She obviously dreaded making the call. She was almost literally afraid to touch the phone. Whoever her boss was, he had her buffaloed.

    "Let's fix up that arm of yours," I suggested.

    "I must call first," she said, and snatched it up as though afraid she'd change her mind. I could see that there was easily twenty feet of loose cord attached to the phone.

    Her bosom swelled as she took a deep breath before dialing. "Talia here," she said. "I must speak to Iskir. Yes, it is urgent." She stood up and carried the phone to the door of what I had surmised was a bedroom, trailing the loose cord behind her. "Excuse me, please," she said over her shoulder and went inside and closed the door.

    In the instant the door was open I had a glimpse of my own reflection in a large mirror above a low dressing table on which a lamp glowed with a soft light. The light shone on a gigantic bed covered with a Prussian-blue brocaded spread. A shaggy purple rug covered the floor, and a narrow strip of pale green carpeting suggested a bathroom beyond.

    At first I could hear only the indistinct sound of Talia's voice. As the conversation continued, its pitch increased. Overtones of fright and pleading were stark in its inflections. "The man is here with me now," I heard her say. Then there was something I couldn't catch. "He says he might be able to get it back. What? Yes, a gun. Why? Because his throat was cut before he could get to the envelope." Her voice rose still another notch, and she sounded as if she were nearly in tears. "I am telling you the
truth,
Iskir. You can ask at the tavern. You will anyway. Why do you waste time? I did my best. I-"

    There was silence. I unbuttoned my shirt and transferred the envelope from under my armpit to inside my shirt, then rebuttoned. The bedroom door opened and Talia held the phone out to me. "He wants to speak to you."

    I took a step toward her, then stopped. "Not on the phone."

    "But you must!" she pleaded.

    I wasn't about to commit myself to anything until I checked with Erikson. I'd already learned in Erikson's office what could be done with voice prints, too.

    "Look, I've got to check out a couple of things first," I said. "If it's local people, there's all kinds, right? Some I can talk to, some I can't. Tell your boss I'll have an answer for him tomorrow, but I don't do business by telephone."

    She said something into the mouthpiece in a foreign language. After a silence she spoke again for a good two minutes before she walked back to the table and hung up the phone. She didn't look happy. "No later than tomorrow," she said. "And he will pay you well."

    "I should know by then if there's anything I can do," I agreed. "How do I get in touch with him?"

    "Through me." She looked down at the bloody handkerchief around her arm and began to unwind it.

    "Better let me rebandage that before I go, Talia." She hesitated. "I get the feeling you don't want to go to a doctor, and I've had a little experience with wounds."

    "Well-all right."

    She led the way through the frilly bedroom into the bathroom. There was a rose-tinted, lighted wall mirror behind a pink, formica-topped lavatory. All the tiling was pink. An array of bottles and jars containing creams, lotions, shampoos, and perfumes covered the space in front of the mirror. I sat down on the toilet seat which was capped with a pink, furry cover.

    Talia opened the medicine cabinet and took out a bottle of medicinal alcohol, a box of absorbent gauze, a jar of clear Vaseline, and a roll of adhesive tape. She unwrapped my handkerchief from her arm, then shrugged the jacket of her suit from her shoulders. I stood up and helped her remove it. It was warm in the bathroom. Under the jacket, she had on a long-sleeved white blouse. The left sleeve was spotted with dried blood.

    "Off with the blouse, too," I told her.

    "Just cut the lower sleeve away," she said.

    "Don't play the schoolgirl," I said. She was standing with her back to me, and I reached around in front of her and began to unbutton the tiny, pearl-white buttons lining the front of the blouse. She resisted me for a moment, then apparently thought better of it. I unbuttoned the blouse completely, pulled its bottom edge from the confines of her skirt, and tossed the blouse into a corner.

    She folded her arms at once across her lacy-brassiered, large breasts with her palms cradling her biceps, but not before I saw a spot of blue discoloration on the inside bend of her right elbow and needle marks along the purple line of her largest vein. She'd folded her arms so quickly I couldn't tell if the marks were on both arms or only one, but one was enough. The girl was a hophead, and from the number of punctures, not a recent one.

    I didn't say anything. I took her left arm and washed the raw-looking slash on her outer forearm with warm water. She flinched when I swabbed it with alcohol, but made no sound. The slash wasn't deep, but she could wind up with a hairline scar. I'm an authority on scars.

    I put Vaseline on some folded gauze to form a dressing, wrapped it around her arm with more gauze, and taped it in place. Talia's right arm remained curved across her breasts, but I knew it wasn't the breasts she was hiding. It was the telltale needle marks on her arm. "That ought to do it," I said. "Time for me to hit the road."