They were in the back hallway of the discotheque. Nick could hear the distant thunder of amplified drums and guitars. They tiptoed past an open doorway. He glanced in, saw a gleaming kitchen with a couple of undershirted Chinese sweating at the clipper. The next door they came to was marked "Little Boys." Farther back was a door marked "Little Girls." She pushed this one open and stepped in. Nick hesitated. "Come on!" she hissed. "Don't be an exhaust. It's empty."
There was a utility door just inside. Out came the credit card. The door clicked open. They entered and he closed the door behind them, letting the lock fall quietly in place. They moved along a narrow passageway. There was only one light and that was over the door behind them, so they were a beautiful target. The passageway made a sharp left, then another. "We're behind the banquettes now," she. whispered. "In the restaurant section."
The passageway ended abruptly in front of a reinforced steel door. She paused, listening. Out came the credit card once again. This time it took a little longer — about a minute. But the door finally sprang open.
There were two rooms. The first was small, cramped, with gray walls. A desk was shoved against one wall, a row of filing cabinets against another, and there was a water cooler in the corner, leaving a small circle of black linoleum floorspace free in the center.
A steady, monotonous hum came from the room beyond. The door was open. Nick sidled cautiously around it. His jaws clenched at what he saw. It was a long, narrow room and one entire wall was a two-way mirror. Through it he saw the interior of the Bali Hai restaurant — only with an interesting difference. It was clearly lit. The people sitting along the banquettes and at their individual tables were as sharply defined as if they were sitting under the neon lighting of a hamburger stand. "Infra-red coating on the glass," she whispered.
From a dozen-odd slots above the mirror, 16mm. film was inching down in separate strips into bins. The clockwork mechanism of the hidden cameras whirred softly and spools on a dozen different tape recorders were also turning, recording conversations. Nick moved along the room to the banquette where he and Hawk had sat. The camera and tape recorder were switched off, the receiving reels already filled with the complete record of their conversation. On the other side of the mirror, their waiter was clearing away the dishes. Nick threw a switch. The clatter filled the room. Quickly he turned it off.
"I stumbled on this yesterday afternoon," Candy whispered. "I was in the john when suddenly this man stepped out of the wall! Well, I never… I simply had to find out what was going on."
They returned to the front room and Nick began trying the desk and file drawers. They were all locked. One central lock, he saw, served them all. It resisted his Lockpicker's Special for almost a minute. Then it gave. He opened the drawers one after the other, quickly and quietly sifting through their contents.
"You know what I think's going on here?" Candy whispered. "There've been all kinds of robberies in Palm Beach during the last year. The thieves seem to always know exactly what they want, and when people will be away. I think our friend Don Lee has underworld connections and that he sells the information he gathers here to them."
"He sells to more than the underworld," said Nick. He was picking his way through a file drawer filled with 35mm. film, developers, photographic papers, equipment for making microdots and bundles of newspapers from Hong Kong. "Have you told anyone about this?"
"Only Daddy."
Nick nodded — and Daddy told Hawk and Hawk arranged to meet his top Operative here and to talk clearly into the mike. He wanted the two of them on display apparently — and their plans, too. A sudden image of Hawk spilling his martini and picking the olive apart flashed across Nick's mind. He, too, had been searching for the outlet. That settled at least one thing Nick had been wondering about — whether or not to destroy the film and tape of their conversation. Obviously not. Hawk wanted them to have it.
"What's this?" He'd found a snapshot lying face down on the bottom of the drawer containing the microdot equipment. It showed a man and a woman on a leather, office-style couch. Both were naked and in the final convulsions of the sexual act. The man's head had been cropped out of the picture but the girl's face was clearly visible. She was Chinese, and beautiful, and her eyes were glazed over with a kind of petrified lewdness that Nick found strangely stirring even in picture form.
"It's her!" gasped Candy. "That's Joy Sun." She stared over his shoulder at the picture, fascinated, unable to tear her eyes away. "So that's how they got her to cooperate with them — blackmail!"
Nick quickly slipped the snapshot into his back pocket, A sudden draft told him that a door had opened somewhere along the passageway. "Is there another way out?" She shook her head, listening to the sound of approaching footsteps.
N3 started moving into position behind the door. She beat him to it, though. "It's better if he sees someone," she hissed. "Keep your back to him," He nodded. The name of the game was don't go by first impressions. This girl might look like Vassar '68, but she had the brain and sinews of a cat. A dangerous cat.
The footsteps paused in front of the door. A key turned in the lock. The door started to open. There was a sharp intake of breath behind him. From the corner of his eye, Nick saw Candy take one long pace and twist to bring her leg swinging in an arc. Her sandaled foot caught the man full in the groin. Nick swung around. It was their waiter. For an instant the man's unconscious body was rigid with paralysis, then it melted slowly to the ground. "Come on," whispered Candy. "Let's not pause for station identification…"
Fort Pierce, Vero Beach, Wabasso — the lights rose in the distance and swooped by and fell away behind them with monotonous regularity. Nick kept his foot stamped well into the Lamborghini's floorboard, his thoughts slowly taking shape.
The man in the pornographic snapshot. The edge of his neck was visible. It was badly scarred. A deep indentation, caused either by a cut or a rope burn. He also had a dragon tattoo on his right bicep. Both should be easy enough to trace. He glanced at the girl sitting beside him. "Any chance that the guy in the photo could be Pat Hammer?"
He was surprised by her reaction. She actually blushed. "I'd have to see his face," she said stiffly.
Strange girl. Able to kick a man in the crotch one second and blush the next. And on the job — an even stranger mixture of professionalism and amateurishness. At lockpicking and judo she was an expert. But there was a lighthearted carelessness in her approach to the whole business that could be dangerous — to both of them. The way she'd moved along that passageway with the light behind her — that was asking for it. And when they'd returned to the front of the Bali Hai to pick up the car, she had insisted on mussing her hair and clothing so that it would look like they'd been on the beach in the moonlight. That was overplaying it and therefore equally dangerous.
"What do you expect to find in Hammer's bungalow?" he asked her. "NASA Security and the FBI have been over it with a fine-tooth comb."
"I know, but I thought you should have a look at the place for yourself," she said. "Particularly at some of the microdots they found."
Time to establish who's boss, thought N3. But when he asked what instructions she'd been given, she replied, "To cooperate with you fully. You're top banana."