I stumbled out of bed and opened the door groggily. Susan was clad only in a bikini and a sheer beach jacket. Her long blonde hair cascaded in a tangle over her breasts.
“My father’s gone!” she cried out.
Fear was written in a pale wash across her features. Her eyes were an unfocused blank stare from the shock she was barely able to control.
When I finally calmed her down, I slipped into slacks, a shirt, and sandals. We went up to her suite.
I looked around the living room of the Dietrich suite. It was a shambles. Lamps had been overturned, the coffee table lay on its side. Ashtrays had spilled cigarette butts onto the floor.
I turned to the kitchenette. It was completely empty. Nothing remained of the retorts and tubing and other laboratory apparatus that I’d seen there only hours before.
“There!” said Susan. “See for yourself!”
“Tell me what happened.”
She took a deep breath to calm herself. “I awoke around ten-thirty this morning. Father was still sleeping. We’d gone to bed right after you’d left, but he was so disturbed that I made him take a sleeping pill. I called the airlines as soon as I was up and made reservations for us to leave this afternoon. It was the earliest flight I could get. Then I had a cup of coffee. By that time it was eleven o’clock. I wanted to get a little more sun and I didn’t think it would hurt if I let Father sleep as long as he could, so I went down to the pool. I was down there until just a few minutes ago. I came back to pack and — and found this!” She swept her arm around in a despairing gesture.
“Did you find a note or anything left here?”
She shook her head. “Nothing! Apparently, Father awakened and got dressed. He must have made breakfast for himself. The dishes are still on the table on the terrace. All he ever has is juice, coffee, and an egg.”
I looked around the kitchenette. “Did he clean up in here?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t last night. He was too tired. He said he’d do it this morning.”
“What would he have done with the lab equipment?”
“He’d told me he would smash it and put the broken pieces in the garbage pail.”
“Did he?”
Susan lifted the lid of the trash container. “No. There’s no glassware in here.”
“He told me that he’d made another forty kilos of heroin. Where did he store it?”
“In the cupboard over the sink.”
“Is it there?”
She swung open the cupboard doors so that I could see that the shelves were bare. She turned a baffled face toward me.
“Did he dump it?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. He didn’t do anything last night except go to bed.”
“What about the concentrate?”
Susan looked around the kitchenette again. She lifted the lid of the trash container. “Here,” she said, lifting some used paper towels. She held up the plastic bottle. “It’s empty.”
“Thank god for that, at least.”
I walked back into the living room.
“Is he playing another of his games?” I asked Susan. “Has he gone after Stocelli?”
“Oh, my god!” she exclaimed, aghast “I never thought of that!”
“I told him he was playing with killers! What the hell did he think he was doing?”
Susan shook her head silently. Tears filled her eyes. She suddenly threw herself into my arms. Her long, blonde hair streamed down her back. I could feel the heat of her almost naked body against mine, her small, firm breasts pushing against my chest.
She made sniffing sounds against my chest, and I cupped her chin with my hand to turn her face up to mine. She closed her eyes and put her lips against mine and opened her mouth.
In a moment, she took her mouth away, but only a fraction of an inch.
“Oh, god,” she whispered, “make me forget! I can’t take any more of it Please, please… make me forget!”
And I did. In the wreckage strewn living room. In the shafts of light streaming through the windows. Somehow, we tore our clothes off and embraced each other, both of us finding forgetfulness and release from our own tensions.
Her breasts fitted the palms of my hands as if they had been molded to their shape. Her thighs spread and wrapped themselves around me. There was no teasing. Nothing but a sudden, furious taking of each other. She took me as much as I took her.
And, finally, engulfed in perspiration, slippery with sweat, pounding in a furious burst of sexual energy, she exploded in my arms, her nails raking at my back, her teeth biting into my shoulder, and her moans filling the room.
We had just moved apart, tired but replete, when the telephone rang.
We looked at each other.
“You answer it,” she said, wearily.
I crossed the room to the table by the window. “Hello?”
“I’m glad to find you there, Carter,” said the man’s voice, abruptly. “Senor Dietrich’s life is in your hands. The lady you have been dating will meet you this evening. Eight o’clock. The same place you dined with her previously. And make sure you aren’t followed by the police.”
The phone went dead in my ear, but not before I recognized the voice of Carlos Ortega, bland, suave, controlled, and with not the slightest hint of emotion or drama.
I put down the phone.
“Who was it?” Susan asked.
“Wrong number,” I said and went back to her.
We spent the afternoon in pleasant carnality. Susan burrowed into me as if to hide from the world. We went into her bedroom and pulled the blinds down and shut out the light and the honor. And we made love.
Later, much later, I left her to go down to my room to change.
“I want you to stay here,” I told her. “Don’t leave the room. Don’t open the door. No exceptions. Do you understand?”
She smiled up at me. “You’ll find him, won’t you?” she asked, but it was more of a statement than a question. “Father will be all right, won’t he?”
I didn’t answer her. I knew that there was no way at all that I could make her aware of the vicious brutality of the men among whom I prowled, or their callous indifference to another man’s pain.
How could I explain to her a world where you wrapped a chain around your gloved fist and smashed a man in the ribs again and again until you heard the dry, crunching snap of breaking bones and watched impassively as he began to spew up his own bright blood? Or laid his hands flat on a board and smashed a crowbar across his knuckles? And ignored the animal screams of pain that came out of his torn throat and paid no attention to the wracking spasms that wrung his body into limp muscle and ripped tissue.
How could I make her understand men like Carlos Ortega or Stocelli or Luis Aparicio? Or myself, for that matter.
With Susan in her present state of mind, it was best to say nothing. She was no Consuela Delgardo.
I kissed her on the cheek and went out, locking the suite behind me.
In my own suite, I immediately noticed the black suitcase that Herbert Dietrich had told me about Thirty kilos of pure heroin. Without opening it, I put the suitcase with mine. Jean-Paul’s body was another matter. If I could have called on AXE, it would have been a simple matter to dispose of it. But I was on my own, and it was a problem.
There was simply no way to get rid of it, and time was getting short I finally decided to delay taking any action. I unwrapped the body, then I lifted him in my arms and brought him out to the terrace, putting him gently down in one of the sundeck chairs. To any casual observer, he looked as if he were taking a nap.
I showered and changed quickly, then strapped Hugo to my left forearm and put on a low-slung shoulder holster. I checked the elbow-slide action of Wilhelmina. I took out the clip of 9mm cartridges, reloaded the clip, and snapped a round in the chamber before I set the safety.