"I came looking for Don Lee," she said. "He's over there." She gestured toward the desk. "Throat slashed from ear to ear. That's Reno's specialty — the razor. I guess they had no more use for him."
"It was Reno who killed Pat Hammer's family, too, wasn't it? That was a razor job."
"Yes, my man did that. But Johnny Hung Fat and Red Sands were there to help."
Anxiety suddenly twisted Nick's stomach. "What about Joy Sun?" he asked. "Where is she?"
Candy moved away from him. "She's all right," she said, her voice suddenly cold. "I'll get you a towel. You're covered with blood."
When she returned, she was all softness once again. She washed his face and his chest and threw the towel aside. But she didn't stop. Her hands moved rhythmically, hypnotically over his body. "I'm going to prove what I said," she whispered softly. "I'm going to let you go. A man as beautiful as you shouldn't die — at least not the way Reno's got planned for you." She shivered. "Swing over onto your stomach." He did, and she loosened the wire loops-around his thumbs.
Nick sat up. "Where is he?" he asked as he pulled them the rest of the way off.
"There's some kind of meeting at Simian's house tonight," she said. "They're all there."
"There's nobody outside?"
"Just a couple of those GKI cops," she replied. "Well, they call them cops, but Red Sands and Reno drafted them out of the Syndicate ranks. They're just hoods and not the brightest variety at that."
"And Joy Sun?" he persisted. She said nothing. "Where is she?" he demanded sharply. "Are you keeping something from me?"
"What's the use?" she said dully. "It's like trying to change the direction water flows." She walked over and switched the light on. "Through there," she said. Nick crossed to the concealed door, glancing briefly at Don Lee's body lying in a halo of congealed blood under the desk.
"Where's this lead?"
"To the parking lot out in back," she said. "Also to that room with the two-way glass. She's in the office next to it."
He found her lying wedged between the wall and a couple of files, bound hand and foot with telephone cord. Her eyes were closed and the acrid smell of chloral hydrate clung to her. He felt her pulse. It was erratic. Her skin was hot and dry to the touch. An old-fashioned Mickey Finn — crude, but effective.
He untied her and slapped her face, but she only muttered something indistinct and turned over. "You'd better concentrate on getting her to the car," Candy said behind him. "I'll take care of the two guards. Wait here."
She was gone about five minutes. When she returned she was out of breath and her blouse was stained with blood. "I had to kill them," she panted. "They recognized me." She raised her miniskirt and slipped the wafer-flat .22 into her thigh holster. "Don't worry about noise. Their bodies muffled the shots." She lifted her hands and drew back her hair, shutting her eyes for a second to blot out the scene. "Kiss me," she said. "Then hit me — hard."
He kissed her, but he said, "Don't be a fool, Candy. Come with us."
"No, it's no good," she smiled brokenly. "I need what Reno's got to give me."
Nick pointed to the cigarette burn on her arm. "That?"
She nodded. "That's the kind of girl I am — the human ashtray. Anyway, I've tried running away before. I always come back. So just hit me good and hard, knock me out. That way I'll have an alibi."
He hit her the way she'd asked to be hit, pulling the punch only slightly. His knuckles cracked on the point of her rigid jaw and she fell, arms flailing, to crash the full length of the office. He walked over and looked down at her. Her face was in repose now, calm like that of a sleeping child, and there was a shadow of a smile around her mouth. She was contented. At last.
Chapter 15
The Lamborghini glided silently between the high-rent buildings on North Miami Avenue. It was 4:00 a.m. The major intersections were quiet, with few moving cars and only an occasional pedestrian.
Nick glanced at Joy Sun. She sat deep in the red-leather bucket seat, her head back on the folded tonneau, eyes closed. The wind made persistent little snatches at her ebony-black hair. She had stirred only once on the trip south from Palm Beach — outside Fort Lauderdale — to murmur, "What time is it?"
It would be another two or three hours before she could be relied on to function normally. Until then Nick had to find some place to park her while he reconnoitered the GKI Medical Center.
He turned west on Flagler, passing the Dade County Courthouse, then north on N.W. Seventh toward the string of fleabag motel apartments surrounding the Seaboard Railroad Terminal. A jiffy "convenience" hotel was about the only place where he could hope to get an unconscious girl past the front desk at four in the morning.
He worked the side streets around the Terminal, back and forth, until he found a likely looking one — the Rex Apartments, bedding changed ten times nightly to judge from the couple who came out together but walked off in opposite directions without a backward glance.
Above the hutch marked "Office," a single ragged palm tree leaned against the light. Nick opened the screen door and walked in. "I got my girl outside," he told the sullen-faced Cuban behind the counter. "She's had too much to drink. Okay if she sleeps it off here?"
The Cuban barely glanced up from the girlie magazine he was studying. "You dumpin' her or stayin'?"
"I'll be here," Nick said. It would look less suspicious if he made a show of staying.
"That's twenty." The man extended his hand, palm up. "In advance. And on your way in, stop here. I want to make sure it's no stiff you got with you."
Nick returned with Joy Sun in his arms and this time the desk clerk's eyes swiveled up. They touched the girl's face, then Nick's, and suddenly the pupils were very bright. His breath made a soft hissing sound. He dropped the girlie magazine and stood up, reaching across the counter to squeeze the smooth, soft flesh of her forearm.
Nick slapped his hand away. "Look, but don't touch," he warned.
"I only want to see she's alive," he growled. He tossed the key across the counter. "Two-o-five. Second floor, end of the hall."
The room's bare concrete walls were painted the same unnatural green as the outside of the building. Through a crack in the drawn blind, light slashed at the hollow bed, the threadbare carpet. Nick put Joy Sun down on the bed and went back to the door and locked it. Then he crossed to the window and pulled the blind aside. The room fronted on a short alleyway. The light came from a bulb hanging over a sign on the building opposite that read: REX RESIDENTS ONLY — FREE PARKING.
He slid the window open and leaned out. It was no more than twelve feet to the ground and there were plenty of crevices he could get a toe hold in on the way back. He took a last look at the girl, then swung himself out onto the ledge and dropped silently, catlike, to the concrete below. He landed on his hands and feet, going down to his knees, then getting up again and moving forward, a shadow among other shadows.
Seconds later he was behind the wheel of the Lamborghini, speeding through the shiny gas-station-cluttered glitter of predawn Greater Miami, heading down N.W. Twentieth to Biscayne Boulevard.
The GKI Medical Center was a huge, pretentious glass cliff that reflected the smaller buildings of the downtown business district as though they were trapped inside it. A sprawling free-form sculpture of wrought iron stood out in front. Foot-high letters, stenciled out of solid steel, stretched across the front of the building, spelling out the message: DEDICATED TO THE HEALING ARTS — ALEXANDER SIMIAN, 1966.
Nick sped past it on Biscayne Boulevard, one eye on the building itself, the other on its various entrances. The main one was dark, guarded by two green-uniformed figures. The emergency entrance was on the Twenty-first Street side. It was brilliantly lit and an ambulance was parked out in front. A green-uniformed policeman stood under the steel canopy, talking to its crew.