“You’re going to have to go in there,” she said. I turned my head to stare at her. She answered my questioning gaze. “Unless you want to leave your clothes behind. The Pan-Am night flight to Honolulu leaves in just over three hours. We’re supposed to be on it. That’s one of the things I was instructed to tell you. I don’t think we should discuss the reasons why out here in the hall, even if we speak French.”
I swore under my breath. I felt manipulated, even though I knew I should be accustomed to having Hawk pile one thing on top of the other. Hawk would never withdraw an order, but I was irked because he hadn’t issued it himself. I suspected Hawk had some idea he was going to extend my wild goose chase when he had me on the satellite link from Washington. He could have told me that the helper I was to be saddled with was female.
Nothing was turning out right.
And now a stubborn hotel door was testing my patience further by not swinging open as readily as I thought it should.
“Well?” cooed Willow.
I knew that Ginger Bateman had packed my usual contingency wardrobe. Extra ammunition for Wilhelmina and a carton of my private-blend cigarettes — neither easily acquired except from special sources — ballasted my fine-grain leather bag. It was an irreplaceable item as well; it was a personal gift to me from Hawk. My custom-tailored jackets, slacks and shirts represented a considerable investment.
“Stand back,” I cautioned Willow. The door resisted when I pressed against it gently with my fingertips. I reached a hand around the edge of the door and moved it lightly up-and-down. My fingers touched nothing. Still, I wasn’t satisfied.
“We could call the manager,” Willow suggested.
My reply was curt. “When the manager shows up he’ll ask a lot of questions, quite a few of which I wouldn’t want to answer. Even if this turns out to be a false alarm, the police will get into the act. In that case—”
“The hand grenade will explode in the honey bucket,” she aptly modified the old cliché.
There were ample reasons for not drawing attention to what I considered a predicament. I knew we faced one when I peered through the slit on the hinge side of the door.
The damn door was booby trapped!
I backed off and went over to Willow. I took off my shoes and handed them to her. “Go back to the elevators. Push the call buttons to bring both of them up here. Block the automatic doors with a shoe to keep them from closing. That will hold them here. We may need one in a hurry, and we don’t want anyone showing up on this floor for the next minute.”
I placed myself in front of the partially opened door again. The device inside could be a simple light beam interruption device to signal someone that the room had been entered. On the other hand, it could be an explosive pack lethal enough to unhinge the whole of Nob Hill, but that hardly seemed likely. Whoever rigged it were experts. The thought of defusing it never crossed my mind. What concerned me was whether the surprise package was time or pressure activated. Probably the latter, but I couldn’t be positive.
I flattened myself against the wall next to the door frame. Feeling behind me, my hand found the doorknob. I saw Willow stoop down the second time to wedge a shoe between the closing doors of the last-arriving elevator. When she stood up empty-handed and waved, I shoved on the doorknob like I was heaving a shotput.
For a moment nothing happened.
The sigh of relief I gave was drowned by a dull, reverberating Whumph! A quick puff of smoke blew out of the door. Then an enormous fireball, pushing the wrenched-off door before it, rolled across the corridor and splashed into the opposite wall. I heard wallpaper sizzling as the fireball dissolved limply and oozed along the baseboard and rolled across the carpeting. Thick, choking smoke spread rapidly. The acrid odor of singed wool stung my nostrils. The door, broken when it rammed against the wall, crackled as flames licked at it.
I pulled out a handkerchief and covered my nose and mouth. I ducked through the doorway, holding my breath and avoiding the fingers of flame fringing the wooden door frame. Inside, I saw the two-seater sofa turned over, frame twisted and fabric burning. The TV set was across the room from the stand that once held it. The picture tube was miraculously intact.
The smoke wasn’t as bad as in the hall, but the walls on both sides of the door were charred. Scorched tatters was all that was left of the bedspread. My valpack had been blown into the bathroom where it rested up against the tub. One side was blackened and felt tacky to the touch.
I grabbed it by the handle and made for the door. The smoke was getting to me despite my handkerchief filter. I exited at a fast walk, heading for the elevators.
A door opened behind me. From far down the corridor a man’s voice called out: “What’s happening?” I stepped into the waiting elevator whose door was being held open by Willow with one hand, my retrieved shoes in the other. The inquisitive hotel guest, aghast and now silenced by what he saw, ducked back into his room as the automatic sprinkler system went into action.
I had my shoes on by the time we reached the lobby. We got to the cashier’s window to settle up my bill in time to hear an alarm bell go off in the hotel manager’s office. The switchboard operator in her secluded niche was trying to make sense out of a frantic call coming from inside the hotel.
I led Willow out through the front door. A doorman whom I hadn’t seen before was on duty. He whistled for a cab when I held up a finger. Willow crowded next to me. She had finally found her voice. “If I’d gone on info that room—” she said under her breath.
I reached for her hand. It was cold, but not trembling. Her grip tightened around my fingers. “But you didn’t,” I said.
A Checker cab came up the drive. “Have you got money?” Willow nodded. “Go to the airport and wait for me.”
“I want to go with you.”
I hardened my voice and lowered it. “If that joker upstairs got a look at us, the police will be looking for a couple, a suitcase-carrying man with a tall, Oriental beauty who is just too fantastic-looking to be forgotten. We have to separate.”
For a moment, it looked like she was going to argue. “I have some things to pick up at a motel,” she said.
“I understand. There’s plenty of time. I have to turn in my rental car before I do anything else.”
“Be careful, Nick.”
I shoved my bag into the rear seat next to her feet after she got inside the cab. “Keep that as a hostage,” I said.
I slammed the door on her retort and watched the cab pull away before I walked down the drive and entered the garage from the street. I had to jump aside to avoid being struck by a fire truck that careened down the ramp behind me. The five-man crew jumped off next to the service elevator.
A uniformed chauffeur was standing in wait beside a plum-colored Bentley. I had to walk past him to get to the Dime-A-Mile rental car. He called out to me: “Hey, Mac! What’s bringing in the fire brigade?”
He could remember me if I ignored him. “Beats me,” I replied. “Maybe some drunk doing an impromptu night club act in the Zebra Room pulled a smoke bomb instead of a rabbit out of his hat.”
Nine
Pink rays of the just-rising sun coated the east slope of Diamond Head as the Pan-Am 747 approached Honolulu Airport. From my window on the starboard side I could make out a faint rainbow arched over the hills behind the University of Hawaii. The shoreline of Waikiki Beach was backed by a solid wall of high-rise tourist hotels.
There had been no incidents at Los Angeles International Airport to match the misadventure encountered at the Dulles terminal outside of Washington. Willow left me to pay off the cab while she went ahead. She was waiting at the Pan-Am check-in counter talking amicably with a beefy individual when I caught up. He looked like a plainclothes cop. He was, and he was waiting for me.