The Death Strain (13 page)

I held everything in one arm and swam for shore, finally catching onto the pilings of a rotted pier. Exhausted, I clung there against the powerful current of the river.

After a pause, I clambered up onto the wooden floor. Putting on my wet, dripping clothes, I carefully walked across the pitted, rotted pier. I'd fit the pieces together later. Right now I wanted to get back to one Lin Wang.

But my luck was running lousy. Or theirs was running good. I'd just come off the rotted old pier onto the cobbled stones of the waterfront when I saw the three men standing by the car a few feet back from the water's edge. They saw me just as I did them and with that extra sense that comes from someplace or other, I knew they were the ones who'd dumped me into the Hudson river. I knew it even before I heard the one gasp, saw his eyes widen in disbelief and his body stiffen. They had gone up the street to an all-night coffee house and had just returned to the car, one still holding a piece of cruller he was munching.

"Jesus Christ! I don't believe it!" one exclaimed, his voice hoarse. The other two swirled. All three stood transfixed for a moment and then started for me. These were not Sumo Sam's boys, I saw. They were hired goons, paid to do a dirty job and ask no questions. I knew the type and it stuck out all over them. I put my hand in my jacket and closed it around Wilhelmina. The gun was soaking wet from the river. I couldn't risk trying to use it. Better something else than a misfire at the crucial moment. The something else was to run, and I took off like a jackrabbit, a wet jackrabbit.

Their footsteps clattered behind me as I raced along the waterfront. A big, darkened closed cargo pier loomed ahead and I headed for it. The big main door was shut, a heavy overhead door of steel. But the little doorway to the side was loosely latched. I yanked hard on it and it flew open and I hurled myself into the cavernous darkness of the huge pier. Crates and barrels and boxes were piled high on both sides. I ran deeper and then turned, letting my eyes grow accustomed to the near-blackness of the place. I saw the three goons come in.

"You stay here," I heard one order. "By the door. If he tries to get out you nail him."

I faded back between a high stack of burlap bales. I saw something, a long-handled object leaning against the bales. I picked it up and smiled. It was a vicious-looking baling hook. The other two were beginning a careful row-by-row search among the crates and boxes. I reached up and felt along the sides of the burlap bales. Strong strips of galvanized tin were wrapped around each one, two strips to a bale. I wedged my fingers inside the first strip and pulled myself up along the side of the bales. Using the baling hook to hold on, I shifted my grip to the next bale and pulled myself up farther. When I was about seven feet from the ground, I hung there clinging to the side of the burlap-covered bale with one hand gripped around the tin strips, the other holding the baling hook imbedded into the bale. The contents were tightly packed soft goods of some kind.

I could hear the men below, working their way to the row where I clung. One of them came carefully around a corner of the bales, gun in hand, peering down the narrow corridor between the crates and bales. I could see the other one doing the same thing on the other side of the pier. The one on my side stepped a few feet farther into the passageway, within range. I took the baling hook out of the bale and swung down with it in a fast, clean sweep. The vicious hook caught him right under the chin. I heard the sound of tearing bone and cartilage and his head erupted with a red geyser. A guttural sound escaped him for a moment and then he hung limp, not unlike a side of skinned beef on a butcher's hook. The gun fell from his hand and hit the floor with a harsh thump. I let go of the baling hook and dropped to the floor. The other one was coming on the run from the far side.

Scooping up the gun I knelt and fired twice. Both shots caught him full on as he raced into the passageway. He sprawled on the floor in front of me and I stepped over him and out into the main portion of the pier. Moving with my back to the Crates, I edged toward the door. I couldn't see the third one in the deep blackness. He had moved against the steel door and it gave him perfect protection. Of course he'd heard the shots and with no sound from his friends he knew something had gone wrong. But he had the best position. If I wanted to get out of here I had to get to that little door and he'd see me as I tried for it I had to get a line on him and I paused at the last row of huge wooden crates. A fork-lift truck stood alongside them, and suddenly I had my way out.

Dropping to my hands and knees I crawled around to the side of the fork-lift truck, reached in and switched it on. I stomped on the gas pedal and yanked the wheel and it took off, rolling out at an angle. It worked perfectly. He figured I was in it and started blazing away as it rolled across the pier. It was simple to draw a line on the blue-silver flash of his gun as he fired. I placed three shots in a short line, about an inch and-a-half apart. He cried out in a gasping sound and collapsed on the ground. I'd heard that sound before and I knew he wasn't going anywhere. I tossed the gun away. There was only one shot left in it anyway. Slipping out the little door, I took up where I'd left off, heading for the house of Lin Wang.

I hailed a taxi and the driver, like a good New York cabbie, noted my soaked clothes but said nothing. He dropped me off a block away from 777 Doyer Street, per my instructions. I stayed close to the building line and reached the outside door. I dashed up the one flight of stairs and tried the door. It was locked. I rang the bell, and once more the door was answered by the blowsy Eurasian woman. I slammed into her, knocking her out of the way, and was racing down the hall, through the girls in the reception room and up the back stairs. I heard her screaming for her two goons, but I was on the next floor already. I hit the first door on the right, knocking it half off its hinges. A blonde with big breasts and a small, bald-headed man looked up from the bed, the man with fright in his eyes, the blonde with anger.

"What the hell is this?" the blonde said.

I ran from the room.

"Is it a raid?" I heard the man say, and the blonde muttered something I didn't catch. I hit the next door. A beefy naked man was on the bed with two Chinese girls. The girls fell off him as he sat bolt upright.

"Sorry," I muttered as I dashed out. I saw the madam's two goons coming up the head of the stairs as I slammed into the third room across the hall A Chinese girl was there with an old, bearded Chinese man. They both yelled something. I didn't understand it but I didn't have to. The meaning came through. I turned and the two goons were there. I ducked a blow from one and brought a right up into his belly. He doubled over, and I slammed him into the wall with a hard left and took him out of the picture with a karate chop against the side of his neck. He slid to the floor.

The other one had jumped onto my back, his arm tightening against my throat. I dropped to my knees and flipped him over my back. He was struggling to his feet when I clipped him a right. It caught him on the point of his jaw. He sailed backwards, six inches off the floor, and hit the next door. It crashed open as he fell into the room.

All the noise had taken its toll. The Chinese inside had his pants on already and was grabbing his shirt. The girl was still in bed, wide-eyed, scared. I ran down the stairs and met the madam halfway up. I grabbed her by her lacquered, upswept hair and yanked her down to the next landing and slammed her against the wall. She screamed in pain. The whole place was full of screams and shouts and running feet.

"Where is she, goddammit?" I yelled.

"You crazy sonofabitch," she screamed at me. "I don't know what you're talking about!"

I slapped her hard, and her head bounced off the wall.

"Lin Wang," I said. "Tell me or I'll knock your rotten head off." I belted her again and she knew I meant business. She'd been around too long not to know the signs.

"I don't know anything really," she gasped. I kept hold of her hair and knocked her head against the wall just to help loosen her tongue. "They came here and paid me a lot of money to let her use that room. They said all I had to do was send whoever asked for her up there. It was good money."

"Any money is good money to you, sister. Where is she now? Where'd she go?"

"I don't know. She just left. Some men came and she went with them."

"A big man, a huge man?" I questioned.

"No, two regular-sized men. One Chinese, one white," she answered. "The same ones that came and hired the room from me."

"What else?" I demanded. "Tell me if you know anything else?"

"There's nothing else," she said and I heard the truculence quickly returning to her voice. I had to stop her from getting over her fear. I yanked her forward and threw her into a room just off the second floor landing. I grabbed her and flung her against the wall. She bounced off it and the fear was back in her eyes. "I told you everything,** she screamed.

"I don't believe you," I said. "I'm going to beat you into a pulp just to help your memory along." I grabbed her and she swallowed hard.

"Wait," she said. "They gave me a phone number. They said I should call there if Miss Wang was ever in trouble at my place." She reached into her pocket and pulled out a crumpled slip of paper. I took it and shoved her hard into the wall. She was telling the truth, I knew. There wasn't any more. The operation was such that they wouldn't have told her anything else. I went out the door and took the steps in three long leaps. As I reached the ground floor I heard her screaming after me.

"What about all the trouble you've caused here, you big bastard?" she yelled. "You ought to pay for it!"

"Complain to the Better Business Bureau." I grinned up at her.

I had a phone number to convert into an address. I called the New York Police Department and after going through countless relays I got to the Commissioner. I gave him my identification number.

"You can check me out with AXE headquarters in Washington," I said. "But I need the address that goes with the phone number I gave you and fast."

"We'll check you out, all right," the Commissioner said. He gave me a special, direct-line number. "Call me here in fifteen minutes." I hung up and waited in the shadows of doorways, my clothes still wet and bedraggled. It was a helluva long fifteen minutes but when I called again, the flat wariness was gone from his voice. He'd obviously checked with Hawk.

"That phone is in apartment 6-B at 159 Ninth Avenue. Do you want help?" he asked.

I thought that one over for a second. Ordinarily I'd have said yes, but this was a clever operation. I didn't want to scare anyone off. "I'll go it alone. It's my best chance."

"Good luck," he said crisply. I hung up and hailed a taxi and gave the cabbie the address.

;When we neared it, I told him to slow down and just drive past. It was a dark and dilapidated tenement squeezed between two loft buildings. A shirtsleeved figure lounged on the front steps.

"Turn the corner and I'll get out there," I said. When the cab stopped, I moved quickly around the back of the loft on the left of the tenement. I found an alleyway with a rusted iron fence sealing it off. Scaling the fence, I dropped into the darkness of the narrow alley and sent two cats scurrying away. I moved to the rear of the tenement. Peeling, rusted fire escapes hung down the back. I jumped, caught the lowest rung of the bottom ladder and pulled myself up. Climbing like a cat burglar, I went to the second story. I paused at the windows there and heard a dog begin to bark. Feeling like a thief, I scurried up to the third floor. The window there was partially open, and grasping the splintered wooden sill with both hands, I lifted myself up carefully and slowly. I could hear breathing from inside and I stepped into a dark bedroom.

An old man was asleep in a bed alongside the wall. I moved quietly across the room, opened the door to the next room and then walked out into the hallway. Apartment 6B was on the floor below. I peered over the narrow, wooden stairway and looked down. There was no one standing guard in the hallway. I crept down the stairs and saw light from under the door of the apartment I wanted; it was at the head of the second floor landing.

Wilhelmina's cold steel in my palm, I listened and heard the murmur of voices inside the room. I was just deciding whether to try the knob quietly or slam into the door when the shot rang out, one shot, a small, clear explosion. It sounded like a.22 caliber revolver, but it made my mind up for me fast.

I hit the door with all my strength and it flew open. I was on my knees crouched on the floor and I saw two figures just disappearing into an adjoining room, heading for the fire escape. Lin Wang was a still figure in a blue robe lying on the floor, a small, neat hole in the center of her forehead. The two men looked back as I burst in and I saw that one was Chinese, one white. The white man paused, tried to draw a gun and then leaped into the air backwards as the heavy 9mm slugs from Wilhelmina slammed into him.

I raced into the adjoining room, leaping over his twisted body. The Chinese had one leg over the windowsill and I saw the glint of the gun in his hand.

"Hold it or I'll kill you," I said, though that was the last thing I wanted to do. The gun in his hand was half raised and he froze where he stood, one leg out the window, one leg in. "Don't move," I said. "Just drop the gun."

He looked at me for a long moment and then, with a sudden flick of his wrist, he twisted the gun and blew his head off, or a good part of it anyway. He'd been holding a.38 police revolver. The slug slammed right into his face at almost point-blank range, his head exploded in a gusher of red as he fell back into the room.

"Sonofabitch!" I swore, shoving Wilhelmina back into my jacket pocket. I went out into the living room where Lin Wang lay, looking peaceful A half-dozen fifty-dollar bills lay scattered beside her hand. I had three corpses and no answers, but even in death the two men had said one thing. They were professionals, dedicated, trained professionals with the kind of suicidal reaction that comes only from the Orient. The Chinese had taken no chances that he might be forced to divulge anything. And he'd gained a victory of sorts over me.