Deadly in New York (13 page)

“Please,” the woman cut in. “I must sit down. I must. Before any more questions,
ja?”

Without another word, Hawker led the old blind German woman to the couch and turned his back to go to the kitchen.

twenty-one

Hawker found a bottle of white wine in the refrigerator and poured two water tumblers half full. As he closed the refrigerator door, he looked in to make sure the old woman was okay.

She sat on the couch with her knees pressed together. She wore the same baggy dress she had worn on the day he had first met her. Despite the struggle, she still had the white cane. She propped it against the couch as she brushed back her gray hair and fumbled in her little purse before producing a tissue.

She dabbed at the blood on her face and sat staring straight ahead. The black glasses she wore gave her face a skeletal look.

Hawker walked into the living room and stopped a body length away from her. He held out the wine, but she made no effort to take it. “What were you doing out so late?” he asked, as he took her hand and placed one of the tumblers in it.

Her head swiveled toward him as she sipped the wine. “Time means nothing to me. Is it late?
Ja, es ist
late. But you were kind to me, so I made something nice for you. A nice man, you are,
ja
.”

Hawker remained standing. “Do you have any idea of who the guy was who attacked you? How long ago did he leave?”

The old woman felt the lip of the glass with her fingers and guided it back to her lips. “One half of an hour? Fifteen minutes? I do not know.”

“And he took Brigitte? Or is she still—”

“The lady with the pretty voice? Oh, it was so terrible! How she screamed!
Ja
, the man, he took her. In a car. A very loud car. Such a noise it made as he pulled away.”

Hawker studied the woman's trembling hands as she drank the wine. He was silent for a moment. “You're still upset. Can I get something else for you? A cigarette, maybe?”

Her laughter was a rough cackle. “A cigarette? No. I am an old-fashioned woman. I do not smoke.” The black glasses searched above Hawker's head. “A bit more wine, perhaps—but first, this thing I made for you.”

She found her old purse and began to feel through it. After a moment, she produced something wrapped in aluminum foil. She unwrapped the foil to reveal a small brown loaf. “A fruitcake.” She smiled. “I made it for you, as I said I would.” Her smiled broadened. “You are so deserving.”

Hawker took the fruitcake. He smelled it. “I hope I can find a way to repay you,” he said. He put the cake to his lips and turned away chewing as he returned to the kitchen. He poured another tumbler full of wine and carried it back to the living room.

He could feel the old woman's glasses tracking him.

He stopped in front of her and held out the glass. “The fruitcake is very good,” he said. “Would you care for some?”

“No,” she said quickly. “My appetite, it is not good. But the wine, I like. You have more wine?”

Hawker held out the glass—and let it slip through his fingers.

When Renard's hands lunged instinctively to catch it, Hawker knocked the black glasses from his face with a crashing overhand right. The blow sent the assassin tumbling sideways off the couch.

The Frenchman got shakily to his knees. Blood rivered from the gaping split on his cheek, and the gray wig had turned almost backward on his head. He would have appeared strangely comical if it wasn't for the venomous look on his face.

“It's too late, James Hawker,” the assassin hissed. “You're a dead man. The cake—you ate it before you found me out! And it has four times the saxitoxin you gave me. One bite! One bite and you are gone!” His laughter was shrill. “Now you're going to find out what it's like to die from poisoning—just as I almost did back on that godforsaken island. Now you're going to find out what happens to do-gooders who poke their noses into Fister Corporation's business.”

“What did you do with her, Renard?” Hawker whispered hoarsely. “Where's Brigitte Mildemar?”

“It's not going to matter, where you're going, Hawker!” the assassin half shouted. “The pain—it's going to start soon. You're going to feel like someone has built a fire in your brain. Then the fire is going to drain down into your stomach, and every muscle in your body is going to wrench—”

Hawker took a half step and kicked the Frenchman's mouth closed with his bare foot. “The woman, Renard—where is she?”

The assassin pulled himself off the floor and wiped the blood from his face. His eyes studied Hawker closely, looking for the first signs of the slow and agonizing death he had planned so carefully. They were dark eyes, with a wild, bright gleam: the eyes of a madman.

Hawker's cold blue eyes didn't flinch. Slowly he held out his right hand and opened his fist. The cake was there—uneaten. A cruel smile touched Hawker's lips. “Your fingers, Renard. I suspected it was you anyway, but your fingers gave you away. The nicotine stains didn't match up with an old German woman who claims not to smoke.” Hawker's smile broadened slightly. “And now I'm going to get the chance to repay the favor.”

The assassin moved with startling quickness. As Hawker stepped toward him, Renard rolled to the side and came up with the white cane. He swung it with whistling velocity, and Hawker ducked just enough to catch the brunt of the impact on his shoulder. Even so, it knocked him down.

Again the Frenchman swung at him, and Hawker rolled away as the cane cracked against the floor beside his head. Hawker got his right foot up and wedged his heel into the assassin's groin. Renard grunted with pain, doubling over. Hawker got to his feet, slapped the Frenchman's face twice with his open hand, then grabbed him by the throat and ran him backward against the wall. He used pressure on the killer's throat to force his head up. “You don't look well, Renard,” Hawker whispered, his lips pressed near the assassin's ear. “Maybe you need a little something to eat. Are you hungry, Renard?”

As Hawker brought his hand up, the Frenchman tried to force the cake away from his lips. “No,” he begged. “Kill me, if you have to. But not like this. Please.…”

“Where's the woman,
asshole?”

“The … bedroom … tied up,” Renard sputtered, still trying to fight Hawker's hand away.

“Did you hurt her?”

“She tried to fight me,” he said, pleading. “You must understand. It is my job—”

With cold indifference, Hawker punched upward with his left knee. When the Frenchman's mouth opened involuntarily to scream with pain, Hawker shoved half the poisoned cake into his mouth, then gave him a measured slap in the throat.

“Bon appétit,”
Hawker snapped.

The assassin gulped and then his eyes grew wide with terror. “Oh, my God,” he whispered. “No … no …
no!”

Hawker was unprepared for what happened next. The Frenchman gave an animallike scream and then dove for the purse he had carried in his disguise as an old woman. He brought the stub-nosed revolver out so quickly that Hawker had time only to dive blindly for cover.

The shot was oddly muffled.

Hawker looked up to see the assassin sprawled backward on the couch. A momentary fountain of blood gushed from his head, then settled into a steady black seepage.

The Frenchman's eyes were glassy and wide. His right hand trembled—clenched white on the grip of the revolver. For a microsecond, he seemed frozen in the transition between life and death. Then the muscles contracted, and his hand flapped hard against the floor as the last rigidness of life melted away.

The assassin had taken the ultimate contract—his own.

This time, there was no doubt about it. Renard was dead.

Hawker turned away, feeling, for the first time, the searing pain in his left shoulder where he had been hit by the cane. He rubbed the welt momentarily, then hurried down the hall, flipping on lights as he went.

Brigitte Mildemar was in the bedroom.

The terror was plain on her face when Hawker first stepped into view, but then she visibly relaxed when she saw that it was not Renard.

The Frenchman had stripped the clothes off her, and she lay on her back, naked. Her legs were hobbled at the ankles, and her arms were tied behind her.

In another situation, she would have been quite beautiful: dusky-brown pubic hair arching upward as she struggled against the ropes; hips curving into long, feminine legs; the soft pink of nipples jutting upward on her small, firm breasts.

But here, bound and gagged, she looked pathetically small and vulnerable. In one motion, Hawker yanked a blanket off the dresser and spread it over her, then drew out his Randall knife. The seven-inch blade razored through the gag, then he gently rolled her over on her stomach and cut away the ropes.

She made small whimpering sounds as she tried to pull her arms away from the small of her back. Realizing that the nerves in her arms had gone numb, Hawker rolled her onto her back and began to massage her hands.

“Oh, my God,” she cried, “I was so afraid it would be him again. I couldn't have stood that.”

“Are you hurt, Brigitte? I'm going to call a doctor. It can't do any harm to—”

“No,” she said quickly. “No, he didn't … he just hit me and tied me. But he didn't have time to.…” Her blue eyes couldn't quite meet Hawker's. “You came then. Before he could.” Without looking at him, her hand squeezed Hawker's hand gently. “Thank you,” she said. “I really don't think I could have stood it.”

“You may not thank me after you've seen what happened. The man who attacked you—he's dead.”

For just a moment, her voice regained a small bit of its fire. “I'm
glad,”
she said. “Oh, Mr. Hawker, I was so frightened. I heard you come in. I could hear you two talking. I wanted to scream out, to warn you. He looked and sounded so much like an old woman, I didn't think you could possibly find him out. And the way you kept demanding to see me.…” For the first time, her eyes looked into Hawker's. “I can never ever repay you for that. Never.”

“Brigitte,” Hawker pressed, “I can understand your being reluctant about seeing a doctor. It'll be painful to talk about this with anyone else. But there was blood on your blouse. I saw it. In the kitchen.”

She trembled slightly and pulled the blanket tighter around her neck. “It was his blood. I tried to scratch his eyes out. That's when … that's when.…” Her voice faltered as a sob wracked her body. She held her arms out, childlike, and Hawker pulled the woman close to him, holding her, stroking her hair as she wept.

“He's gone now,” Hawker kept repeating. “You're safe.”

“Why did he attack me?” she cried as the words and the terror drained out of her. “It was like something out of a horrible nightmare. My God, it was so awful. Why? Why would he do such an terrible thing to me?”

Still sobbing, she looked at Hawker as if he might hold some answer. “I've got to tell you the truth, Brigitte,” he said softly. “The man's name was Renard. He was a very bad man. A killer. He has killed a great many people. But he would never have attacked you if he hadn't been looking for me. I brought this on you. It is my fault. I had no right to place you in danger, and if I had used my brain for just a moment, I would have realized that was exactly what I was doing by moving in here.”

“He wanted to kill you?” she asked in a small voice.

“Yes. He wanted to kill me.”

Slowly she drew away from Hawker. She released the blanket and wiped her eyes with her hands. The blanket fell away, showing the small, firm breasts. She made no effort to pull the blanket back. “He called you a ‘do-gooder,'” she said. “He said you had poked your nose into Fister Corporation's business. Do you work for the government, Mr. Hawker?”

“No.” He smiled. “And the name is ‘James.' Sometimes I do people favors. That's why I came here—to do a favor. But, unfortunately, what happened tonight makes it necessary for me to leave even sooner than I had planned. You're going to have to call the police, Brigitte. And you're going to have to tell them exactly what happened. Compromise yourself in no way, because if you lie to them, they're going to find out.”

“But, James,” she insisted, “you didn't do anything wrong. You probably saved my life—”

“Maybe,” Hawker cut in. “But that won't make any difference to them or to the legal system. I would still be detained. And I can't afford that.”

“You're a criminal?” she asked softly. “You're wanted?”

Again Hawker smiled. “No. But a friend of mine is in trouble. Serious trouble. I have to go to him.”

The woman settled back on the bed, studying his face carefully. She brushed a lock of blond hair from her forehead, then reached out and traced Hawker's square jaw with her index finger. There was nothing flirtatious about it. It was more as if she were trying to see him more clearly by using the sense of touch.

“I felt very bad about the way I talked to you this evening,” she said finally. “Normally I wouldn't have. But there is something in your eyes … something beneath the coldness there. You seem to have a goodness in you.”

“There are a lot of people around who would give you a pretty convincing argument about that.”

She shook her head, as if refusing to even comment on it again. “When are you leaving?” she asked.

“Now. As long as it takes to get my gear together.”

“Please,” she whispered. “Please, not yet.” Again, her eyes refused to meet Hawker's. “I would like … like to be held. Just held. For a while. It's been so long since I've been close to anyone, it would make me feel so much better.” She turned and looked into Hawker's face. “Please, James. Please?”

Hawker sighed, trying not to look as uneasy as he felt. He had no time to play nursemaid, and no desire to act as the woman's therapist. Only politeness kept him from looking at his watch. “For just a little bit, Brigitte,” he said finally. “Then I have to go. Really.”