"Sorry," I muttered as I dashed out. I saw the madam's two goons coming up the head of the stairs as I slammed into the third room across the hall A Chinese girl was there with an old, bearded Chinese man. They both yelled something. I didn't understand it but I didn't have to. The meaning came through. I turned and the two goons were there. I ducked a blow from one and brought a right up into his belly. He doubled over, and I slammed him into the wall with a hard left and took him out of the picture with a karate chop against the side of his neck. He slid to the floor.
The other one had jumped onto my back, his arm tightening against my throat. I dropped to my knees and flipped him over my back. He was struggling to his feet when I clipped him a right. It caught him on the point of his jaw. He sailed backwards, six inches off the floor, and hit the next door. It crashed open as he fell into the room.
All the noise had taken its toll. The Chinese inside had his pants on already and was grabbing his shirt. The girl was still in bed, wide-eyed, scared. I ran down the stairs and met the madam halfway up. I grabbed her by her lacquered, upswept hair and yanked her down to the next landing and slammed her against the wall. She screamed in pain. The whole place was full of screams and shouts and running feet.
"Where is she, goddammit?" I yelled.
"You crazy sonofabitch," she screamed at me. "I don't know what you're talking about!"
I slapped her hard, and her head bounced off the wall.
"Lin Wang," I said. "Tell me or I'll knock your rotten head off." I belted her again and she knew I meant business. She'd been around too long not to know the signs.
"I don't know anything really," she gasped. I kept hold of her hair and knocked her head against the wall just to help loosen her tongue. "They came here and paid me a lot of money to let her use that room. They said all I had to do was send whoever asked for her up there. It was good money."
"Any money is good money to you, sister. Where is she now? Where'd she go?"
"I don't know. She just left. Some men came and she went with them."
"A big man, a huge man?" I questioned.
"No, two regular-sized men. One Chinese, one white," she answered. "The same ones that came and hired the room from me."
"What else?" I demanded. "Tell me if you know anything else?"
"There's nothing else," she said and I heard the truculence quickly returning to her voice. I had to stop her from getting over her fear. I yanked her forward and threw her into a room just off the second floor landing. I grabbed her and flung her against the wall. She bounced off it and the fear was back in her eyes. "I told you everything,** she screamed.
"I don't believe you," I said. "I'm going to beat you into a pulp just to help your memory along." I grabbed her and she swallowed hard.
"Wait," she said. "They gave me a phone number. They said I should call there if Miss Wang was ever in trouble at my place." She reached into her pocket and pulled out a crumpled slip of paper. I took it and shoved her hard into the wall. She was telling the truth, I knew. There wasn't any more. The operation was such that they wouldn't have told her anything else. I went out the door and took the steps in three long leaps. As I reached the ground floor I heard her screaming after me.
"What about all the trouble you've caused here, you big bastard?" she yelled. "You ought to pay for it!"
"Complain to the Better Business Bureau." I grinned up at her.
VII
I had a phone number to convert into an address. I called the New York Police Department and after going through countless relays I got to the Commissioner. I gave him my identification number.
"You can check me out with AXE headquarters in Washington," I said. "But I need the address that goes with the phone number I gave you and fast."
"We'll check you out, all right," the Commissioner said. He gave me a special, direct-line number. "Call me here in fifteen minutes." I hung up and waited in the shadows of doorways, my clothes still wet and bedraggled. It was a helluva long fifteen minutes but when I called again, the flat wariness was gone from his voice. He'd obviously checked with Hawk.
"That phone is in apartment 6-B at 159 Ninth Avenue. Do you want help?" he asked.
I thought that one over for a second. Ordinarily I'd have said yes, but this was a clever operation. I didn't want to scare anyone off. "I'll go it alone. It's my best chance."
"Good luck," he said crisply. I hung up and hailed a taxi and gave the cabbie the address.
;When we neared it, I told him to slow down and just drive past. It was a dark and dilapidated tenement squeezed between two loft buildings. A shirtsleeved figure lounged on the front steps.
"Turn the corner and I'll get out there," I said. When the cab stopped, I moved quickly around the back of the loft on the left of the tenement. I found an alleyway with a rusted iron fence sealing it off. Scaling the fence, I dropped into the darkness of the narrow alley and sent two cats scurrying away. I moved to the rear of the tenement. Peeling, rusted fire escapes hung down the back. I jumped, caught the lowest rung of the bottom ladder and pulled myself up. Climbing like a cat burglar, I went to the second story. I paused at the windows there and heard a dog begin to bark. Feeling like a thief, I scurried up to the third floor. The window there was partially open, and grasping the splintered wooden sill with both hands, I lifted myself up carefully and slowly. I could hear breathing from inside and I stepped into a dark bedroom.
An old man was asleep in a bed alongside the wall. I moved quietly across the room, opened the door to the next room and then walked out into the hallway. Apartment 6B was on the floor below. I peered over the narrow, wooden stairway and looked down. There was no one standing guard in the hallway. I crept down the stairs and saw light from under the door of the apartment I wanted; it was at the head of the second floor landing.
Wilhelmina's cold steel in my palm, I listened and heard the murmur of voices inside the room. I was just deciding whether to try the knob quietly or slam into the door when the shot rang out, one shot, a small, clear explosion. It sounded like a.22 caliber revolver, but it made my mind up for me fast.
I hit the door with all my strength and it flew open. I was on my knees crouched on the floor and I saw two figures just disappearing into an adjoining room, heading for the fire escape. Lin Wang was a still figure in a blue robe lying on the floor, a small, neat hole in the center of her forehead. The two men looked back as I burst in and I saw that one was Chinese, one white. The white man paused, tried to draw a gun and then leaped into the air backwards as the heavy 9mm slugs from Wilhelmina slammed into him.
I raced into the adjoining room, leaping over his twisted body. The Chinese had one leg over the windowsill and I saw the glint of the gun in his hand.
"Hold it or I'll kill you," I said, though that was the last thing I wanted to do. The gun in his hand was half raised and he froze where he stood, one leg out the window, one leg in. "Don't move," I said. "Just drop the gun."
He looked at me for a long moment and then, with a sudden flick of his wrist, he twisted the gun and blew his head off, or a good part of it anyway. He'd been holding a.38 police revolver. The slug slammed right into his face at almost point-blank range, his head exploded in a gusher of red as he fell back into the room.
"Sonofabitch!" I swore, shoving Wilhelmina back into my jacket pocket. I went out into the living room where Lin Wang lay, looking peaceful A half-dozen fifty-dollar bills lay scattered beside her hand. I had three corpses and no answers, but even in death the two men had said one thing. They were professionals, dedicated, trained professionals with the kind of suicidal reaction that comes only from the Orient. The Chinese had taken no chances that he might be forced to divulge anything. And he'd gained a victory of sorts over me.