“This must be Rona,” Pilar said.
“Yes. She’s in bad shape. Let’s get a taxi and take her to a hospital.”
“I can do better than that. While you were gone, I rented a Jeep. It’s parked just over there. You take Rona in back; I’ll drive. I know the way to the hospital.” Then, incongruously, she added, “Your Rona is very pretty.”
“Pilar,” I said, “I’m glad to see you. You’re a handy gadget to have around. Let’s go.”
When we were in the Jeep with Pilar tooling expertly through the streets of Willemstad, she said, “What happened on the island.”
“Gorodin was there with a couple of his goons,” I told her. “He was about to torture Rona to make her talk. What he didn’t know was that she had no answers to give him. She was just an amateur in a game for hard-core pros.”
“But she did volunteer,” Pilar observed.
“That’s right, but none of us took the time to tell her the risks involved.”
Pilars black eyes met mine in the rearview mirror. “Do you care for her, Nick?”
I stopped to think a moment before I answered. “If you mean am I violins and candles in love with her, the answer is no. I’ve been in this dirty business for so long I don’t know if I could really love anyone in the classic sense. But if you mean do I care what happens to her, sure I do. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have gone bucketing off to Little Dog island to help her. I know that seems a bit too human for me, but I haven’t quite turned into a block of ice.”
Pilar spoke quietly, keeping her eyes straight ahead. “Nick, tell me something.”
“Sure.”
“Do you care what happens to me?”
I reached up and laid my hand on the warm flesh of her shoulder. “Very much,” I said.
Pilar sighed, then in a curious tone said, “I hope you will never be sorry.”
Just then we turned and gunned up the drive of Queen’s Hospital, a sparkling new building of pastel blue. I left a wad of bills with the cashier and was assured by one of the resident physicians that Rona would have the very best of care. Any extra expenses would be paid by the American consul, I told the doc-tor, and then called the consulate to make the arrangements.
I rejoined Pilar in the Jeep. It was dark, and the sky sparkled with an infinity of stars. I said, “Let’s go rip off some smugglers.”
I took the wheel of the Jeep; Pilar gave directions. We headed back to the waterfront, and then turned south.
“There must be other news you have not told me,” Pilar said. “How did you leave Gorodin?”
“Dead.”
“And the two who were with him?”
“Also dead. And a kid named Boris who died because he was too kind and too careless for the game.”
“So you left four bodies?”
“Right. But somewhere Anton Zhizov and Knox Wamow are preparing to blow up New York tomorrow. If we don’t get to them first it won’t matter a damn if there’s four bodies found on Little Dog Island or four thousand.”
Pilar looked pensive. And was silent.
We drove on into the shabbiest section of the waterfront where the poorest of the local fishermen moored their sorry looking boats in water thick with oil and debris. A couple of miles further on Pilar pointed out a scabrous gray frame building, illuminated in front by a single pale light bulb. It made Vanvoort’s Hideaway seem like Trader Vic’s in comparison.
“This is where we have to start,” Pilar said. “If you want Torio, you go to Little Liza’s.”
The sound waves struck us when we were still fifty feet from the door. A full blown riot could not have been louder. Inside, we joined a hundred or so merrymakers who, though not quite rioting, were at least hysterical. Everyone seemed to be in perpetual motion. It was impossible to talk above the din, so everyone shouted. Occasionally a peal of shrill female laughter would cut through the cacophony. Somewhere a juke box was playing, but only the reverberations of the deepest bass notes could be heard.
Pilar and I picked our way among the frenetic bodies to a simple plank bar set up at the rear of the building. Standing back of this, pouring drinks from unlabeled bottles was a woman roughly the size of Godzilla. And almost as attractive.
“Little Liza?” I shouted in Pilars ear. It was hardly a wild guess.
“Little Liza!” she confirmed with a grin.
Liza wore a cascade of tight curls in a shade of red that couldn’t have been human hair. Somewhere between six and seven feet tall, Liza was all pouches and pockets and odd-shaped lumps of flesh. It was as if an amateur sculptor had hurriedly slapped clay on a framework. Intending to finish the job later, he had rightfully lost faith in his creative ability and had given up.
When I finally got her attention, Liza lumbered toward me from the other side of the plank bar, the flesh of her various parts all dancing to different rhythms.
“What’ll it be?” she rumbled in a voice like an empty barrel rolling over cobblestones.
“I want Torio,” I shouted.
“Never heard of him,” Little Liza boomed back at me.
“Gorodin sent me.”
“Never heard of him either.”
I pulled out my wallet. I was running low on guilders, so I spread out a number of U.S. bills on the plank bar in front of the huge woman.
“Andrew Jackson I’ve heard of,” she said. “Torio’s in the back room sleeping one off.” She pointed a finger about the size of a dill pickle.
With Pilar in tow, I headed for a narrow door at the far end of the bar. The small room behind it was furnished with one chair, one table, and one cot Lying boozed out on the cot, twisted in a tangled grayish blanket that may once have been white, was the squat, baldheaded man I had seen in the smugglers’ launch.
I closed the door and the noise from beyond it diminished. I checked another door in the opposite wall. It led to the open air behind the building. I crossed to the oblivious smuggler, frisked him and came up with a Colt .38 automatic. Passing this to Pilar, I stuck the barrel of my Luger under his nose and slapped him across the face.
“Torio!” I yelled.
He rolled his head, made complaining grunts, then slowly dragged his eyes open. When he saw the gun under his nose, his eyes got very wide.
“Hey, what is this, a heist?”
“Get up, Torio,” I growled. “We’re going for a ride.”
That startled him. He sat up. “Wait a minute,” he pleaded. “I don’t even know you.”
“It’s not that kind of a ride,” I told him. “Play it straight with me and you’ll have a round trip. Now move it!”
I gave him a little poke with the gun barrel for emphasis, and Torio sprang from the cot with remarkable agility for a man with a bad hangover. I shoved him out the back door and he marched obediently around to where we had parked the jeep.
Pilar drove, while I sat in back with Torio and covered him with the Luger.
“Drive up the road about a hundred yards, then pull off when you find a dark spot,” I told her.
“Now, Torio,” I said, when we had driven up a dim side road and parked, “I want to know about the suitcases.”
“Suitcases?” he echoed.
“My time is short, Torio,” I said, “and so is my temper. In only a minute or two, you will hear bones snapping, and you will see lots of blood. Those bones and that blood will be yours, Torio, so please take this opportunity to volunteer information.”
In the glow of moonlight, I could see beads of sweat pop up on his scalp and trickle down the smooth sides of his head.
He nodded rapidly, “Okay, okay. I’m not about to be a hero for a bunch of foreigners. You mean the suitcases I been runnin’ out to the Gaviota, right?”