The Code (11 page)

I locked the door of the Ford when I got out, wondering if even that precaution would assure the car's being there when I returned. This was a part of town where a man could get rolled in church.

The building I approached was an eyesore that should have been razed years before, but the buzzer set in the worn door frame worked. A woman with yellow hair peered out, then glanced up and down the street as if to make sure I hadn't brought a paddy wagon with me.

"I called," I said. "I came to see Therese."

She was suspicious. Maybe I didn't look like her usual customer. "You aren't one of Therese's regular friends."

"I'd like to be one. I've heard a lot about her."

The woman decided to smile. Her teeth weren't the best. Her yellow hair had been dyed long ago, and not well, and her painted eyebrows looked like batwings. She swung the door wider so I could squeeze past, then slid a bolt.

"Are you expecting a raid?"

"These days you never know. It's not easy earning an honest living anymore."

I was sure she knew nothing at all about earning an honest living, or even anyone who did. She wore white boots, skin-tight pants, and a pullover blouse with zebra stripes that were drawn taut over her copious breasts. Big nipples studded the blouse like rocks.

"You're a nice-sized boy," she said, running a quick and experienced eye over me. "I'll bet you're really sweet."

I had been called any number of things, but never sweet. I forced a grin, playing the role dictated by the circumstances. This woman certainly wasn't one who would be interested in doling out information to a stranger.

"Here's Rondo now," she said, laying a hand on my arm. Her fingers were the size of sausages.

A man had come out of a door at the foot of the stairway that ran to the house's second floor. The sleeves of his shirt were cut off and exposed his broad upper arms. Metal studs gleamed in his wide belt. His pants fit as tightly as the woman's, showing the bulges in his powerful legs. His face was moon-shaped, fat pinching in the corners of his small eyes.

"Tell us what you'd like Therese to do for you, sweetheart," he suggested, baring teeth that were in even worse shape than the woman's.

I felt a prickling on the back of my neck. I was in no ordinary bordello. There seemed to be no one in the house but the three of us and the girl I hadn't seen.

"I'd like to see her first."

"She's a lovely chick. You won't be disappointed."

"Let him go up, Rondo," the woman said. "It's a reasonable request."

Rondo shook his head. "I've got a feeling he's a ringer. He didn't give you any references, did he?"

"Moose," I said. "Moose gave me Therese's number."

"That's a good name." He stuck out his hand. "Put fifty right here. It's like a cover charge. A fifty-dollar job is the cheapest trick this chick pulls."

I crossed his palm and he climbed the creaking stairs to confer with Therese, then waved to me from the landing. "She says come on up."

The first thing I saw when I opened the bedroom door was the array of whips and belts laid out on a wooden table. The second thing was the girl. She really was lovely.

"What's your name, darling?" she said in a husky voice.

A thin slip was her only piece of clothing. She was leaning against a stack of pillows on an unmade bed. The furniture in the dim room was old and dilapidated. The dresser held only a hairbrush and a cracked washbasin and the faded curtains smelled of dust. Therese was the only item of value there. She had black hair, an olive complexion, and high cheekbones that drew the skin of her lean face taut. Her body was young and lithe and she looked as though she'd be all that Moose had said in his little black book.

But he hadn't mentioned the whips.

"Ned," I told her. "My name is Ned."

"And what's your game?"

My eyes swung back to the table. I knew now the kind of house I was in, and the games that were played here were very rough indeed. It figured, I thought. Given Moose's leanings, it figured he'd be carrying the number of a place like this. Only the girl didn't figure. She was too lovely to be here.

"You're going to be surprised when I tell you my; game," I said.

"I like surprises." There was perversity in her smile. She was the kind of woman Faust had soul his soul for.

"I want to know where Moose is."

"I'm surprised, all right. And a little disappointed."

"I've got to find him, Therese."

"You didn't mention this to Rondo. If you had, he wouldn't have let you see me."

"That's the reason I didn't mention it."

Therese put a crudely-rolled cigarette in her mouth and struck a match on the wooden floor. The slip skidded down her shoulder, baring a small, round breast. She gave me the tantalizing smile again. "Moose left town."

The odor that took over the room told me her cigarette wasn't the kind she'd have offered the chief of police. I walked closer to the bed. "If you wanted to find Moose, where would you go?"

"To Hell. That's where he ought to be." She laughed, showing her teeth. They were clean and even and white. Everything about her was perfect, everything but what she was.

"Did he have friends in San Diego that I could look up?"

"I look at people and right away, that first time, I know if I'm going to like them or not. I like you." She leaned her head against my leg. Her voice was soft. "If it's important, I'll help you. Why are you trying to find Moose?"

"He killed some people."

She raised her head. "You aren't a policeman. I can tell policemen by the way they walk." She stroked my leg. "You don't feel like a policeman, either."

"He killed a friend of mine."

The door to the bedroom burst open. Rondo and the yellow-haired woman came in.

Therese straightened up, her lovely mouth twisting. "You should have waited, Rondo!" she yelled "I could have gotten him to tell me more."

"We heard enough." He picked up the biggest whip on the table. "Mister, if Moose ever found out one of us set you on his tail, we'd all be sorry."

"Don't worry. I won't tell him."

"There won't be anything to tell." He snapped the whip as he moved toward me. "I saw that fat wallet of yours when you shelled out the fifty. You're carrying a nice hunk of cash."

"Get him, Rondo!" the yellow-haired woman said.

I realized that they were perfectly willing to kill me for the cash I carried, or even just as a favor to Moose.

Rondo drew back the whip and as he did, I picked up the straight-backed chair near the bed. The whip sang through the air and snaked around the leg of the chair as I raised it to protect my face. Rondo cursed and tried to pull the whip back.

I took two steps toward him and smashed the chair down over his head. It splintered and he sank to his knees. I belted him in the face with my fist and blood spurted.

With a squeal, Therese bounded back on the bed, reached under the pillow, and hauled out a .25 caliber Bauer automatic. They were ready for anything, this crowd.

Therese didn't tell me to stop where I was or to put up my hands. She pointed the gun and pulled the trigger. The bullet hit the wall. She was too excited to shoot straight.

I had rapidly revised my opinion of the girl. She was lovely, but I wouldn't have wanted to run into her in a dark alley.

"Shoot him, Therese," urged Yellow Hair. She was a great cheerleader. I backhanded her and dived for the girl.

I hit the bed on my belly and it collapsed under my plunging weight. Therese spilled off one side with her feet flailing. She was wearing nothing underneath the slip. The force of my dive carried me across the bed like a hockey puck skidding on ice and I landed on top of her. The fall was cushioned for me, but the girl made a sound like a sick bird.

The vest-pocket gun danced from her hand, careening along the floor. Rondo wiped his bloody nose, got to his feet, and staggered for it.

I reached for the Luger, but Yellow Hair leaped on my back. She must have weighed 160. I spun around and threw her over my shoulder and she crashed upon the bed.

Rondo was trying to pick up the little automatic. He seemed to be having trouble seeing it. I clamped one hand on the back of his neck and jerked him forward so that his head butted the wall. He spilled down on his face and lay still.

Yellow Hair reared up on the broken-down bed and cried out. "Rondo. Did he hurt you, Rondo?"

"No, sweetheart," I said. "He likes butting his head against the wall."

"You bastard. If you've hurt Rondo..."

I pulled the Luger out and her voice choked off in mid-sentence. "What did you say, darling?" I asked in a sarcastic voice.

She crouched on the bed and glared at me silently.

I grabbed the dazed Rondo by his belt, lugged him to the center of the room, and turned him face up.

"Don't shoot Rondo!" the woman screamed.

I had the Luger pointed directly at Rondo's ugly face. I said, "Why shouldn't I shoot him, baby doll?"

"Ill tell you about Moose. That's what you want, isn't it? He left town a few months ago. They had stashed the loot from a heist with some broad and she ran off with it. They were hunting her."

"You did say they, didn't you, sweetheart?"

"Moose and Jack Hoyle and a third man. Hoyle is a short guy, comes to Rondo's shoulder. He has a tattoo right here." She touched her left forearm. "We never saw the third man."

I dug in Rondo's pocket and got my fifty dollars back before I left.

I had just arrived in San Francisco and had Hawk on the telephone.

"You've been in San Diego? Which of the torrid numbers in the little black book is there?" he asked in his most sardonic voice.

"Therese. A lovely girl," I said. "And as sweet as a coral snake."

"I must hear about her sometime. But for the time being, business. Have you made any progress?"

"I have the name and description of a member of Moose's gang. His name's Jake Hoyle."

"We can run a check on him in law enforcement files, but that route didn't give us much on Moose. The research people checked with the FBI and ran computer searches on the name Edward Jones. Nothing. A rundown on the basis of the sketchy description you gave us got the same results."

"I'm not surprised. The man's apparently very good at his trade. So good he's probably never been apprehended by the law. There's no telling how many unsolved heist jobs across the country were his work."

"Well, N3, what next?"

I told him about the attack on me at the motel and the information I'd forced out of Marco Valante's lieutenant. "There's something the research division can do for me. Find out the names of Frank Abruze's worst enemies, especially any former foes of his who might now be sitting on the Mob's board of directors."

"I can give you that off the top of my head. It was part of the Abruze file accumulated before you entered the picture. There's a man named Loggia who was an Abruze rival when they were young thugs on their way up. And there's Rossi. They're both on the Mafia's ruling council"

One name was familiar. "Lew Rossi?"

"Lew the Doctor. Gambling, prostitution, and narcotics. He and Abruze had different views on the Asian deal and they had clashed before on the drug issue," Hawk said. "Nick, tell me what you're thinking."

"This joker in the deck, the man who killed Meredith, sent a killer to Bonham to hit the girl, and took a shot at me at the motel. I think he's in the Organization's top echelon. He must have been at the meeting where Valante heard about me. It's the best explanation for the knowledge he seems to have of the Mafia and of our organization."

"If you're right, what's his purpose?"

"I think he set Frank Abruze up for a kill. The $200,000 was the payoff. He told Moose, 'I know where you can pick up two hundred grand if you'll do a job for me while you're at it.' Now he's in a bind. He can't let the Brotherhood find him out. He didn't want Sheila Brant to talk to anyone and he doesn't want us to bring in Moose."

"That would explain some things that have happened," Hawk agreed. "But for the present, our best bet is still the little black book."

"I'm working on it," I said.

The telephone beside the bed rang sharply. I sat up. The hotel room was dark. I put the telephone receiver to my ear. It was the operator, reminding me that I had left a call for 8 p.m.

"Thanks," I said. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I turned on the lamp and checked under the bandage on my chest. I was healing nicely on the surface, but I carried wounds that weren't visible.

I had been dreaming of Sheila Brant. I had relived the moment when I found her body in the kitchen of the house in Bonham. Since her death, she had been on my mind more often than I would have wanted anyone to know. Although I had known her only briefly, something had rippled between us, an electricity that had been mostly sexual but had held the promise of more.

From the window of the hotel room I saw the lights of the Golden Gate Bridge. Now I had come to look for a girl named Penny, hoping she would give me the key to the whereabouts of those who had killed Sheila and David Kirby.

Penny's name was the third Moose had written in the little black book that had led me to Trudy and Therese. "Penny. Great boobs," read Moose's notation at the top of the page he devoted to the girl. I couldn't imagine hers being any greater than Trudy's. Below that comment, Moose had listed the sexual acts Penny performed with special skill. If Moose was a qualified judge, and apparently he was, Penny was almost as rare as a Stradivarius.

I put up the book and dressed. I had slept for five hours and I felt keen, alert. This was going to be a night to remember. Tonight I was going to Liz Burdick's cathouse.