I nodded and scratched my head. “I know, sir, but the sarge sent me. Important, he said. About the shooting, I think.”
He wasn’t buying any. He glanced past me at the stairs and I knew he was going to summon the guard down there and check me out. I wanted to use the stiletto and didn’t dare.
He opened his mouth. I kicked the machine pistol out of his hands, praying the deep pile carpet would absorb the sound, and got my hands about his throat just in time. He managed one squeak, like a mouse when he feels the cat’s claws, and that was all. I wrapped his throat in my hands and put my thumbs into his flab and turned on the pressure. His voice box cracked like an egg, and he lost his head and grabbed at my hands, trying to pull them away, instead of going for his holstered pistol. By the time he thought of it, it was too late.
His eyes bugged at me and began to turn red as they hemorrhaged. They pleaded. His knees went lax. I held him up, at arm’s length in front of me, and carried him a few paces down the corridor. I squeezed his throat. I turned so I could watch the head of the stairs.
I checked him for breath and he was fresh out. I let him down gently, ran back to the stairs and got the Tommy gun and musette bag and the .45 Colt. I began to wish that I had killed the guard under me, but it was too late now. I wasn’t going to do any back-tracking.
I opened a door near the stairs and found a bathroom. Fine. I pulled the body in and stashed it in the tub with the machine pistol on his chest like a bouquet. I looked at myself in the mirror and damned near screamed, then went out and started worming my way up the last flight of stairs. I was riding a rip tide of luck, like a red hot crap shooter, and I was going to listen to the Bard’s advice and take fortune on the flood.
The trouble was that I was getting deeper into the forest. 1 hadn’t even started out yet.
There was no guard on the third floor. I didn’t believe it and I lay on the stairs and peered up and down the corridor. Something was wrong. After the security I’d seen up to now it just wasn’t kosher that P.P. would leave his bedroom floor unguarded. So where was the son of a bitch?
I couldn’t wait. Time was blipping past like nanoseconds on a computer. I had to go, man. Go!
I spotted the big double doors at the far end of the corridor and they said — master bedroom and private suite! Trevelyn’s lair. I ran lightly down the corridor, the Tommy gun at port and the stiletto in my teeth. Deliberate terror tactics. I meant to scare hell out old P.P. and so gain a second or two of advantage. But no guard? I didn’t like it.
I halted outside the double doors and listened. Then stared. I couldn’t believe it at first, but by God there it was. One of the doors was open a couple of inches’!
I thought of a trap and dismissed it. P.P. didn’t know I was within a thousand miles. And if it were a trap they would have made it easy for me, whereas I had killed two men to get here. Four if you counted the guards on the slope.
The words came to me then, from within the doors, and I heard them plainly and without doubt and did not know what to think. I did know that it was P.P. Trevelyn who was speaking. Had to be. A hoarse whispering voice, as worn out and desiccated as the man himself. Yet there was authority in the voice, and breathy malignant laughter, as it gave a command.
“Give it to her again, nigger. Come on! Another thousand dollars if you can keep it up.”
Chapter 12
I pushed quietly into the darkened anteroom and locked the doors behind me. The locks were well oiled. P.P. and his playmates were too engrossed in getting their jollies to pay attention to anything else. As I moved silently down a short corridor I heard Trevelyn’s gravelly, worn-out voice raised again in sly and contemptuous exhortation.
“Come on, kid. You can do it for another thousand dollars! Sock it to her again. Make it five times in a row.”
A woman’s voice said: “You’re an old monster, darling. Please can’t I rest now? I’m a bushed bunny for sure.”
I am no phonics expert, but the voice said Brooklyn, Hoboken, maybe East Orange. Consonants chewed. Vowels slurred. Dropout.
A male voice, rich with Haiti and Creole, bearing overtones of education, said, “You’re breaking your promise again, Mr. Trevelyn. You said you wouldn’t use that word nigger!”
This I had to see for myself. Before the White Rabbit came out of the wall and led me away.
A cream-colored door, slightly open, was all that stood between me and the yo-yo academy beyond. Gently, so slowly, I nudged it open a couple of inches. A blaze of reflected light slashed at me. A hall of mirrors! Three figures endlessly reflected from ceiling and walls and floor. Through eye slits I peered, retinae paining and washed, at a dirty old man and his willing helots.
P.P. sat in a chair facing the foot of a huge circular bed. Purple sheets. On the bed, naked, was the girl I had seen by the swimming pool. She who, at command, had attempted to get the bid bastard some heat. Nubile and gold tanned with narrow strips of ivory. Breasts taut and swollen and, as I had suspected, a shaven mons veneris.
The man on the bed with her was young and tall and lithe-limbed. Black. Shining. Sullen.
The old man, P.P. Trevelyn — sole owner and proprietor of this lush Pool and Pornography Club — aimed a movie camera at the bed and pressed a trigger in the revolver shaped handle. The camera whirred.
He said: “Come on now, Betty. You can do it. Show some interest. This is the last one, I promise. Then you can rest.”
The girl pouted, lovely red mouth all crimped, and said, “All right, then. Let’s get it over with.”
The joys of sex.
I felt a surge of genuine admiration for old P.P. Fascist he might be, but he was a man of single-minded dedication. A small war was raging outside, he had every reason to be concerned for his own safety, yet blithely he leveled his camera and whirred away.
Romeo was having trouble. He was sullen. Not in the mood. Plainly hating what he was doing for money; hating the old man and the white girl. I could use that hate.
That ruined voice was rumbling again. “Come on, Betty! Get him excited. You know what to do.”
The mirrors glittered and flashed and a hundred girls bent over the dark figure and—
I had seen enough. I stepped into the room and waved the Tommy gun at them. I spoke in a calm, matter-of-fact, restrained voice.
“No need for panic,” I said. “Don’t make any sudden moves. Remain calm and quiet and maybe nothing will happen to you. Maybe.”
The girl’s red mouth, wide for another purpose, decided to scream. I waggled the muzzle of the Tommy gun at her. “One sound and I’ll kill you.”
She believed me. The young black man lay still and gave me a sullen stare. He wasn’t much afraid. I liked him.
P.P. sat very still, the camera extended before him. He still wore the dark glasses and there was ferret movement behind them as he fought surprise and outrage. He did not seem much afraid, either, and that I did not like.
He rasped at me. “Who in hell are you and what do you want?”
It seemed a fair question and I had the answer ready. I took a dead man’s name. Not, I hoped, in vain.
“Steve Bennett. CIA agent. You are P.P. Trevelyn? Paul Penton Trevelyn?”
The girl laughed nervously. “Is he ever, mister! And you must be some kind of nut. Boy, are you in trouble!”
The old man and I spoke at the “same time. To the girl We both said, “Shut up.”
P.P. said: “I suppose you’re after Dr. Valdez?”
I nodded. “You suppose right. Shall we go find him?”
His mouth did look like an anus, and now it curled in blanched pink contempt. “You’re a little late. Dr. Valdez was killed this afternoon. Murdered. I thought you people did it.”