Unfortunately, tropical drink concoctions are my idea of the best way to spoil good rum, and I heartily agree with Albert Einstein that a twenty-four-ounce steak is ideal food for lions, and lions alone. Under more normal circumstances — which I sometimes find hard to imagine — I'd have enjoyed a just-caught "conk," or sea urchins fried in garlic and Caribbean spices. But Thomas C. Dobbs would have turned green at the thought of either one, and for the moment I was Dobbs. So I doggedly Dobbsed it through the evening, consoling myself with the sight of Michelle in a see-through gown which gave every male in the place 20–20 vision on the spot.
Later, when we took a cab to the casino of the Caribe Hilton, I consoled myself with losing a couple of hundred dollars of AXE's money on the roulette wheel, which is what Thomas C. Dobbs would undoubtedly have done. What Nick Carter would have done would have been to play at the Blackjack table and win. Not a gigantic sum, but, with the Carter system, a few thousand for the sport of it.
Which is what Michelle did.
"How much?" I demanded, going back to the hotel in the taxi.
"Fourteen hundred. Actually, it was fifteen, but I gave the dealer a hundred-dollar chip as a tip."
"But I only gave you fifty dollars to play with!"
"Of course," she said cheerfully, "but that's all I need. You see, I have this system…"
"All right, all right," I said gloomily. There were times when being Thomas C. Dobbs was a distinct pain in the posterior.
But there were also times, I reflected back at our suite in the San Geronimo as I watched Michelle emerge nude from the bathroom, when changing back to Nick Carter had its disadvantages too.
And it was time to change back to Nick Carter.
I turned up the television to cover our voices if the room were bugged, and drew Michelle closer to it.
"It's time for business," I said, trying hard to keep my eyes above her neck. "I should be back in four or five hours, at least before morning. In the meantime, stay in the room with the door locked, and don't let anybody in, for any reason. You know what to do if I don't get back by morning."
She nodded. We'd discussed all that before leaving Washington. We'd also discussed the question of whether she should have a gun. She'd never fired a gun of any kind. Therefore, she didn't get a gun. It would have done her no good, in any case, and I don't believe in giving guns to people who don't know how — and when — to use them. What she did get was an imitation diamond ring. The diamond was harmless. Its setting had four prongs which, when the band was pressed, extended just beyond the diamond. If anyone of those prongs punctured the skin of an enemy, the result was an instantly unconscious enemy. The trouble was, the enemy had to get close enough for Michelle to use the ring. I hoped she wouldn't have to use it.
I told her so, then resisted the temptation to emphasize my meaning with a long kiss, and left.
I went out the hotel by, as they say in the movies, "the back way." Except that going out any hotel by "the back way" isn't all that easy. First, you have to find the back way. In this case, it turned out to be in the front, and consisted of a narrow flight of fire stairs. Since our suite was on the fourteenth floor, and nobody in his right mind would have walked down fourteen flights, I walked down fourteen flights. Then, grateful for my gym sessions with Walt Hornsbee, the AXE fitness instructor, I walked down two more flights to the subbasement. There I had to conceal myself behind the stairway until two dungaree-clad hotel employees, telling dirty jokes in Spanish, carried out several dozen garbage cans. When they disappeared upstairs, I let myself out into the street. It was a side street, little more than an alley off the Condado strip. And Gonzalez, sitting behind the wheel of a modest, nondescript, red Toyota, was parked no more than fifty feet away. There was no one else in sight as I climbed into the passenger seat beside him.
"Welcome to the best taxi service on the island of Puerto Rico," he said cheerfully. "We offer…"
"Offer a fast ride to La Perla," I said, sliding Wilhelmina into my hand and checking my ammo. "And while you're driving, tell me how to get to the leper colony in La Perla."
Gonzalez' cheerfulness vanished immediately. He put the car into gear and moved off, but he didn't look happy about it. His mustache began to twitch nervously.
"This," he said slowly, after a few minutes of silence, "is an act of madness. To go to La Perla at this time of night is insanity. To go to the leper colony at any time is unwise, but to go at this time of night is not only insane, but possibly suicidal."
"Possibly," I agreed, reholstering Wilhelmina and checking to make sure that Hugo was snug in his chamois sheath.
"Are you aware that a large section of the leper colony hospital is in the contagious wing?"
"I am aware," I said.
"Are you aware that even the lepers in the non-contagious wing are dangerous, since they are desperately poor and have few legitimate ways of obtaining money?"
"I am aware of that, too," I said, adjusting Pierre against my upper thigh.
Gonzalez spun the wheel, guiding the Toyota off the Condado, and toward Old San Juan.
"And my Blue Cross has expired," he said gloomily.
"You're just the guide," I told him. "I'm going in alone."
"But that is even worse!" he said in alarm. "I cannot possibly let you go in alone. One man would not have a chance, not even Nick Carter. I insist…"
"Forget it," I said tersely.
"But…"
"Gonzalez, your rank is N7. You know what mine is. I'm giving you an order."
He subsided, and we spent the rest of the ride in silence. Gonzalez chewed on his mustache. I kept one eye on the rearview mirror for possible tails. There weren't any. Ten minutes of twisting and turning through small, narrow streets brought us past the old governor's mansion, and down a hillside road to the fringes of the seaside slum called La Perla. As we moved through it, tin roofs rattled in the Caribbean breeze. You could hear surf breaking against the sea-wall and smell decaying fish, garbage, and small, cluttered rooms without indoor plumbing. Gonzalez skirted a small square, navigated the Toyota through an alley that gave it about an inch clearance on either side, and parked around the corner. The darkened street was deserted. Latin music came faintly from a window above us.
"You are determined to do this foolish thing?" Gonzalez asked, his voice thick with anxiety.
"There's no other way," I responded flatly.
Gonzalez sighed.
"The leper colony is at the end of the street. It is a leprosarium, really, a combination hospital and hostel for lepers. It occupies a space equivalent to a city block, and is shaped like a fortress, consisting of one large building with a central courtyard. There is only one entrance and exit. It leads into the offices of the leprosarium. Beyond this there is one locked door. It leads into the courtyard. Off the courtyard there are three wings: the east wing, which is the hospital, the west wing, which is a dormitory for lepers whose condition is stabilized, and the south wing."
Gonzalez turned and looked at me hard.
"The south wing," he said, "houses those lepers who are contagious and who are not allowed out of the leprosarium."
I nodded. I'd done some homework on the ugly subject of leprosy. It is a chronic, infectious disease that attacks the skin, the body tissues, and the nerves. In its early stages it produces white spots on the skin, then white scaly scabs, putrescent ulcers, and nodules. Finally, parts of the body literally waste away and fall off, producing nightmarish deformities. Thanks to antibiotics developed after the Second World War, it's now possible to arrest the disease at a certain point. But in its early stages, it is still highly contagious.