"You mean there's something different left? It's going to take me a month to get over the something different you've already shown me."
She was smiling. "A steady horse for a long race," she said. "You qualify."
"You have yourself to thank. Hurry back."
"I will." She left the bedroom, and I listened for the solid click of the apartment-door lock. Then I dashed to her closet. Some clothing remained in it, but not much. The underwear drawers in her dresser were empty. The only cosmetic items left were almost-empty tubes and jars,
I didn't bother with underwear or socks. I slid into shirt, pants, and jacket, shoved my.38 into the holster I had recovered from Talia's bathroom, jammed my feet into my shoes, and started for the door. If I could follow Talia, it might be a shortcut to information we lacked. But I had to hurry.
I stepped out into the corridor and started down the hall. There was a whirr of movement behind me and the back of my head seemed to explode. I caught one quick whiff of a musky, lemon-essenced cologne as I started falling face-forward, and then I plunged into blackness.
The first thing I felt when consciousness returned was a sharp, stabbing pain in my head. Fiery, throbbing lances pulsed through my skull with each heartbeat. When I opened my eyes cautiously and the walls stopped swirling, I was prone on Talia's white carpet. Someone had dragged me inside from the corridor, and I knew who the someone was.
Automatically I reached for the.38 in my shoulder holster. It was gone. This job was sure hell on guns. I swallowed hard to subdue incipient nausea, then fingered a Ping-Pong-ball lump under my ear. I pushed myself up to hands and knees, hung on until the dizziness subsided, and made it to my feet. Sweat drenched my face as I grabbed the back of a chair to retain my uncertain balance, but the unsteadiness dissipated.
Feet wide apart, I shuffled to the apartment door. It was locked, and from the outside. My celluloid pick was no help. Second thought convinced me that if Abdel was still patrolling the corridor outside, I didn't want to see him now. Not without my.38.
But I had to let Erikson know about Talia's being manipulated out of the action" by the Turk. The elephant-clock told me that she already had a half hour's head start. I headed for the telephone. I had dialed the first three numbers of Erikson's office phone before my scrambled brain began to function properly. If Erikson could bug Talia's phone, so could Iskir Bayak, and with his suspicious nature, he was a damn sight more likely to have bugged it. If I called Erikson from here and Bayak was able to listen to the conversation, the whole operation would be blown.
I replaced the receiver.
But I had to let Erikson know somehow.
I had to get to a safe phone.
I went to the balcony's french double-doors and opened them. A reviving damp breeze flowed over me. It was raining again, and the street below glistened with reflected light from its rain-wet surface. There was another balcony above my head. I leaned over the guard rail and looked downward with the rain blowing in my face. A duplicate balcony extended outward from the apartment below.
I could go up or down. The bottom of the balcony floor above me was three feet above my upstretched hand. I'd either need something to stand on-and nothing was available-or I'd have to balance myself atop the half-round guard rail before I could grip the iron uprights supporting the concrete on the balcony. I was hardly in shape to perch on the rail and lean out into space while trying for a secure handhold on wet, slippery iron and concrete. I doubted that I'd be able to muscle my entire body weight up the balcony's concrete facing even with a good handhold.
So it had to be down.
I didn't give myself time to think about it.
I went over the railing and eased myself downward with both hands gripping the cold iron uprights and my toes anchored to the platform rim. I took a solid hold, then removed my toes from the edge and hung freely, extended at full length. I clenched and unclenched my palms, dropping in short jerks until the heels of my hands reached the bottom of the vertical iron bars.
I swung myself cautiously in a gentle, pendulumlike movement. The tip of my shoes scraped against the guard rail below. I knew the balcony floor was a drop of only three feet. The trick was to fall inside, not outside, the railing.
Too hard a swing forward and I'd lose my balance upon landing and fall backward with a good chance of smashing my head against the guard rail grillwork and knocking myself out again. Too easy a swing and I could look forward to a quick glimpse inside each lighted window as I clawed the air on my way down to the street.
My pendulumlike momentum built up until I felt it was right, and then I let go. My feet hit concrete, all right, but my kidneys struck the iron railing painfully at the same time. I had slightly underdone the forward swing. The kidney-contact threw me forward sharply, and I landed on hands and knees in a puddle of water that was trapped in a slight depression on the unlighted balcony.
I scrambled near the french doors out of the worst of the rain and massaged my wet, abraded palms. Sudden light from inside the apartment flooded over me. I ducked instinctively, thinking I'd been seen. When nothing happened, I straightened slightly so I could look into the apartment through glass curtains covering the double doors.
A fat, middle-aged woman in a quilted robe was placing a towel on the floor. Her hair was in curlers and her face was greasy with cream. She went to a low, cabinet-style stereo set and placed a large record on the turntable. All I could think of was that if she settled down for a music session in the room, she had me trapped on the balcony.
I tried the door latch quietly and found it locked. I reached for my wallet and extracted my celluloid pick. Martial music blared forth from inside the locked french doors. Then a male voice boomed forth in a tone of command from the stereo set.
"We'll now do the cross-body bend in four counts. Take your position, please. Feet spread and arms extended. Bend from the waist, left hand to right toe at the count of one, upright at the count of two, right hand to left toe at three, and back to starting position at four. Are you ready? Now… in time to the music, please. One, two, three…"
I looked inside again. The fat woman had tossed her robe to one side. Beneath it she was totally nude. Jiggling breasts and buttocks looked like four pale basketballs attached to a flesh-covered barrel. Jellolike quivering accompanied each movement as she strained to reach her toes with the opposite hand. Each time she managed halfway down her shin.
My position had changed unwittingly to that of Peeping Tom. I tried the pick on the lock as the booming voice from the record player issued new instructions. "The bicycle exercise now," the exercise master announced. "Down flat on the rug."
The lock on the french doors was an old-fashioned type that wouldn't permit insertion of the pick. The fat woman had lowered herself to the towel on the floor with an audible thump. She stretched out on her back, elevated her chubby legs, and pedaled furiously as the music-cadenced "one, two, three, four" issued from the speaker.
At least she was in no condition to pursue me. I wrapped my handkerchief around my knuckles and broke the glass near the lock. It smashed into a hundred tinkling fragments, and I reached inside and turned the lock.
The woman had frozen with her legs still upright at the sound of the breaking glass. Her massive bare behind and furry slit pointed right at me as I stepped inside. Her mouth shaped itself into a round O as I sprinted across the room, but no sound emerged. I manipulated the chain bolt on the apartment door, stepped outside, slammed the door, and took off down the corridor.