"That's good, Joe. You've been a lot of help." My lips peeled back from my teeth in a cold smile. "There's just one more point to cover. Which one of you tried to pick me off this morning?"
"Me or Shorty, you mean? Valante told us to stay with you, but we had no orders to make a hit. We didn't do it."
"Don't kid me, Joe. The man was a pro, like you."
Joe was sweating. "There's a joker in this deck somewhere. Meredith, Coogan — those aren't people I know anything about. The board didn't want Abruze's girl friend dead before she'd sung them a song. I told you my orders from Valante. He said stay with this guy Carter, he's smart, he may help us to find the Moose. He said I wasn't to plug you unless it became absolutely necessary. Didn't I have a chance just a little while ago?"
"Yeah," I said. "Sure, you did And you're right. There is a joker in the deck."
There had been one there ever since Bonham. A man who knew what the Mafia knew and a lot about AXE. A man who had hired Coogan, slit Meredith's throat, and set the trap for me at the motel. I lowered the Luger and left Joe and his unconscious companion on the hillside. I paid the wide-eyed attendant for the gas he'd pumped into the Ford. Then I raised the hood of the Buick and ripped out the wiring.
"They'll be along," I said. But they wouldn't get away from the station in time to catch up with me.
I drove the rest of the 110 miles to San Diego with the speedometer needle steady on the limit. By noon I was within sight of the bay. Circling gulls rode the wind with stylish grace.
While I ate a hurried lunch, I made my plans. I had to call Hawk. There was something I wanted him to have AXE sources check out.
But first there was Therese, who had inspired the second glowing passage in Moose's black book. By now I knew all the telephone numbers in the book by heart I dialed. Therese's and talked to a woman with a whiskey voice.
She cut through the preliminaries. "You want a date with Therese?"
"Yeah." The question didn't surprise me. There was a strong possibility that every girl in the book was a hooker or a call girl.
"You got any special tastes, sweetheart?"
"I'd rather not discuss them on the telephone."
She laughed and gave me an address. It was in a rundown neighborhood near the waterfront, in the middle of a street that looked as inviting as a cellblock.
I locked the door of the Ford when I got out, wondering if even that precaution would assure the car's being there when I returned. This was a part of town where a man could get rolled in church.
The building I approached was an eyesore that should have been razed years before, but the buzzer set in the worn door frame worked. A woman with yellow hair peered out, then glanced up and down the street as if to make sure I hadn't brought a paddy wagon with me.
"I called," I said. "I came to see Therese."
She was suspicious. Maybe I didn't look like her usual customer. "You aren't one of Therese's regular friends."
"I'd like to be one. I've heard a lot about her."
The woman decided to smile. Her teeth weren't the best. Her yellow hair had been dyed long ago, and not well, and her painted eyebrows looked like batwings. She swung the door wider so I could squeeze past, then slid a bolt.
"Are you expecting a raid?"
"These days you never know. It's not easy earning an honest living anymore."
I was sure she knew nothing at all about earning an honest living, or even anyone who did. She wore white boots, skin-tight pants, and a pullover blouse with zebra stripes that were drawn taut over her copious breasts. Big nipples studded the blouse like rocks.
"You're a nice-sized boy," she said, running a quick and experienced eye over me. "I'll bet you're really sweet."
I had been called any number of things, but never sweet. I forced a grin, playing the role dictated by the circumstances. This woman certainly wasn't one who would be interested in doling out information to a stranger.
"Here's Rondo now," she said, laying a hand on my arm. Her fingers were the size of sausages.
A man had come out of a door at the foot of the stairway that ran to the house's second floor. The sleeves of his shirt were cut off and exposed his broad upper arms. Metal studs gleamed in his wide belt. His pants fit as tightly as the woman's, showing the bulges in his powerful legs. His face was moon-shaped, fat pinching in the corners of his small eyes.
"Tell us what you'd like Therese to do for you, sweetheart," he suggested, baring teeth that were in even worse shape than the woman's.
I felt a prickling on the back of my neck. I was in no ordinary bordello. There seemed to be no one in the house but the three of us and the girl I hadn't seen.
"I'd like to see her first."
"She's a lovely chick. You won't be disappointed."
"Let him go up, Rondo," the woman said. "It's a reasonable request."
Rondo shook his head. "I've got a feeling he's a ringer. He didn't give you any references, did he?"
"Moose," I said. "Moose gave me Therese's number."
"That's a good name." He stuck out his hand. "Put fifty right here. It's like a cover charge. A fifty-dollar job is the cheapest trick this chick pulls."
I crossed his palm and he climbed the creaking stairs to confer with Therese, then waved to me from the landing. "She says come on up."
The first thing I saw when I opened the bedroom door was the array of whips and belts laid out on a wooden table. The second thing was the girl. She really was lovely.
"What's your name, darling?" she said in a husky voice.
A thin slip was her only piece of clothing. She was leaning against a stack of pillows on an unmade bed. The furniture in the dim room was old and dilapidated. The dresser held only a hairbrush and a cracked washbasin and the faded curtains smelled of dust. Therese was the only item of value there. She had black hair, an olive complexion, and high cheekbones that drew the skin of her lean face taut. Her body was young and lithe and she looked as though she'd be all that Moose had said in his little black book.
But he hadn't mentioned the whips.
"Ned," I told her. "My name is Ned."
"And what's your game?"
My eyes swung back to the table. I knew now the kind of house I was in, and the games that were played here were very rough indeed. It figured, I thought. Given Moose's leanings, it figured he'd be carrying the number of a place like this. Only the girl didn't figure. She was too lovely to be here.
"You're going to be surprised when I tell you my; game," I said.
"I like surprises." There was perversity in her smile. She was the kind of woman Faust had soul his soul for.
"I want to know where Moose is."
"I'm surprised, all right. And a little disappointed."
"I've got to find him, Therese."
"You didn't mention this to Rondo. If you had, he wouldn't have let you see me."
"That's the reason I didn't mention it."
Therese put a crudely-rolled cigarette in her mouth and struck a match on the wooden floor. The slip skidded down her shoulder, baring a small, round breast. She gave me the tantalizing smile again. "Moose left town."
The odor that took over the room told me her cigarette wasn't the kind she'd have offered the chief of police. I walked closer to the bed. "If you wanted to find Moose, where would you go?"
"To Hell. That's where he ought to be." She laughed, showing her teeth. They were clean and even and white. Everything about her was perfect, everything but what she was.
"Did he have friends in San Diego that I could look up?"
"I look at people and right away, that first time, I know if I'm going to like them or not. I like you." She leaned her head against my leg. Her voice was soft. "If it's important, I'll help you. Why are you trying to find Moose?"