The Code (16 page)

The man at the door jerked the trigger again. His gun, equipped with a silencer, made a spitting sound. The bullet hit Valante like a fist pounding into flesh. Valante finally started to fall, but he got his own shot off. Then he collapsed on the floor near my chair.

Rossi's gunman was propped against the door, his legs spraddled as though he hoped to brace himself and avoid toppling over. He had done his job. He had saved his boss. But he was dying. Valante's shot had caught him in the belly. Slowly he slid down the door, like a drunk who had decided to sit on the floor. His knees hinged. His feet suddenly slipped forward and he sank into a curled heap.

Lew Rossi slid the knife smoothly out of Joe's back and wiped it on the young hood's coat. He rolled Joe's eyelids back to make certain he was dead. Then he stepped over Joe and nudged Marco Valante with his foot. He nudged him again, then glanced at me. "Disappointed, Carter?"

"Yeah," I said.

Finally Rossi checked on his own man. He didn't look broken-hearted when he confirmed that the gunman was dead. There were plenty of replacements around. "How'd you find out?" he asked me.

"A lot of bits and pieces fell together. Somebody in the Mafia sent Coogan to kill me and the girl in Bonham. It wasn't Valante — he wanted to get the girl to talk and me to lead him to Abruze's killers. When I discovered that Moose had a friend in the Mob I put two and two together. Abruze had screwed up a drug deal with the Chinese Communists. I figure that was your deal. But you wanted Abruze dead for a more important reason than just that grudge." I was guessing now. "He had found out about your secret dealings with the Communists and was about to talk. You were afraid we'd find out just what those dealings were about and so you got rid of Abruze and Kirby. And after them Meredith and I had to be dealt with before we discovered anything. You must have killed Meredith yourself — his murderer used a knife."

"They don't call me the Doctor because I studied medicine. In the old days I did a lot of instant surgery." He snapped the knife shut and put it in his pocket "I almost got you at the motel. You're a lucky bastard, Carter."

"It's because I'm pure at heart."

"You're mighty curious, too. Since you're not going to leave this apartment alive, I might as well fill you in on the rest of it." He seated himself in the chair again and relit his cheroot. "I have a good deal going with those Chinks. The drug deal was just a cover-up — an excuse for me to be meeting with them. I've been using my men to infiltrate AXE and feed info to the Communists. One of my men in your Carolina base found out the whereabouts of Sheila Brant from your files. The Communists pay for my help with high quality drugs. I've got the best supply in the country. Naturally, the Mob wouldn't be to happy to learn of my private dealings. Abruze had gotten suspicious, so he had to go."

"How do you plan to explain this scene to the Organization? The job you did on Joe practically carries your initials."

"You did it, Carter. You're good with a knife. You also killed Valante and my boy over there. That's my story, and Barbara Valante is going to back it up."

He called Barbara at the hospital and told her that her father had been hurt and she'd better get back to the apartment in a hurry. He hung up and sat looking at me with a flinty smile on his thin lips.

"You've given me a hell of a time, AXE man. But I've got you now."

I was sweating, yanking at my ropes desperately. Somehow I had to let Hawk know what I had just found out. But I didn't want to be within a hundred miles of the old man when he learned that AXE had been infiltrated by Mafia men who were working for the Red Chinese.

Rossi got up. He pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket and stuffed it into my mouth. "Barbara ought to be here in about ten minutes. I don't want you yelling or joining in the conversation."

It was twelve minutes exactly before she came running down the hallway and plunged into the apartment. She turned white when she saw the terrible scene: three bodies, one of them her father's. Many women would have fainted. She only let out a choked sound of agony.

Rossi kicked the door shut and clamped his hand over her mouth. They struggled until he put the knife to her throat.

"I know it's hard for you, Barbara," he said in his smooth voice, "but you've got to keep quiet and behave. Your life and Carter s depend on it."

She nodded and Rossi let her go. She made sobbing noises in her throat, her eyes asking me for explanations I couldn't give her.

"I want you to go to the telephone," Rossi told her.

"Who am I supposed to call?" she asked in a hoarse voice.

"Anybody you want to, as long as it's a member of the board of directors. I suggest Sal Terlizzi or Don Corvone. Let's make it Terlizzi. He always thought a lot of you. He'll believe anything you say."

Barbara sniffed and drew a sharp breath. Her eyes darted to me and I tried to speak despite the gag, but found I was only choking myself.

"What is it I'm going to say, Rossi?" she asked in a voice grown suddenly harder.

"That Nick Carter killed your father and Joe and that I'm out trying to run him down. It'll be all right if you have trouble talking. That'll make it convincing. Then you hang up without giving any more details."

Rossi had gathered up all the weapons in the room and laid them out on a table. He picked up the Browning Valante had been carrying. "Now, Barbara, if you don't deliver the message exactly as I give it to you, I'm going to shoot Carter in the face."

His plan was taking shape. The Mafia boss Barbara was supposed to call would swallow her story. After she hung up, Rossi would murder us both. Then he'd tell the Mob I'd killed the girl before he could get me. He must have thought out a few other details to make the latter part convincing, but the gist of it was obvious.

I caught Barbara's eye and shook my head. I hoped she understood. Once she completed that call, we were both dead.

She walked to the telephone. Rossi moved along behind her. I tilted over my chair and hit the floor, trying desperately to break it so that I could free my hands. I didn't succeed, but the crash as I struck the floor caused Rossi's head to jerk around. When his eyes left Barbara, she snatched up the hypodermic needle she'd used the night before and drove it into his shoulder as hard as she could.

The sudden pain brought a scream to Rossi's lips. Even I winced as I saw the device standing up in his arm like a porcupine's quill. Rossi cursed and yanked it out. While he was doing that, the girl hit him with the telephone. He fell against the wall and she ran into the kitchen and slammed the door. Despite her grief, the girl had thought fast. Flight was better for her than trying to stay and fight Rossi.

Rossi shook his head groggily. He was so angry I thought he was going to shoot me just to vent his spleen. Then we both heard the door to the back stairway slam. He realized that he had to stop Barbara or his entire scheme would fall apart. He lunged for the door she had closed, battered it open with his shoulder and ran through the kitchen. I heard him going down the stairs.

A drawer opened in the kitchen. Barbara darted hack into the room carrying a butcher knife. She was panting. "I slammed the back door and ducked into the broom closet. He ran right past me," she said as she cut me loose.

I grabbed the knife from her and cut the ropes that bound my ankles. I picked up the other gun with the silencer on it and sprinted through the kitchen to the stairs.

Rossi had reached the street and ducked back inside when he failed to see the girl. He looked up as I appeared on the second-floor landing.

His bullet knocked splinters off the side of the open door behind me. Mine tore die sleeve on his coat.

He opened the door that led to the street and sprang through it. By the time I got down to street level, he had vanished around the corner of the house.

Barbara was kneeling at her father's side when I got back to the apartment. Pain lined her pale face.

"This is going to demand a lot of you, I know, but I need your help. I have to find Rossi fast," I said.

"What do you think hell do?"

"He isn't going to give up his position and run. He'll make up another story to tell the Organization. For example, that you betrayed your father and joined forces with me."

She stood up. "Then we have to stop him before he can get in touch with them."

"Exactly."

She was driving a little Fiat. As we sped away from the apartment house, she said, "Rossi has an estate in the suburbs. I guess he'll go there."

I directed her to the street where I'd left my rented car the night before. The car was still there, with a ticket for illegal parking on the windshield.

"You drive," I ordered. I sat alongside her, putting together the rifle I'd checked out at the AXE base in South Carolina.

Rossi's house sat on a hill. Iron gates guarded the entrance and a high fence surrounded the grounds.

"An alarm goes off if the gates are forced," Barbara said. "You have to call the house and ask to be admitted."

I slid under the steering wheel and took her place. Then I drove through the gates, popping the lock and knocking them apart. The car shot up the paved drive with one of the gates still hanging onto the hood. A bent fender scraped a tire, sounding like a buzzsaw.

A man in a gardener's clothing yelled at us as we passed him. A second man came running through the shrubbery with a gun in his hand. I picked up the rifle with one hand, crossed my arm over my chest and thrust the barrel out the window. I pulled the trigger and the running man swerved and pitched sideways into a fishpond.

"That's Rossi's car," Barbara yelled, pointing at the Cadillac in the driveway. "He's here, all right."

I jumped out of the car and fired a shot into the Cadillac's gas tank. 1 pumped in two more bullets, then pulled out my AXE lighter and tossed it into the gas that had started to seep from the tank.

"What are you doing?" the girl asked in a bewildered voice.

"Making sure he can't get away," I said.

Flames burst up the body of the Cadillac and then the tank exploded. A man in a chauffeur's uniform appeared on a flight of stairs running down from an apartment above the garage.

"Nick!" the girl cried, pointing at him.

I leaned against the hood of my car, dropped the rifle into position and put a bullet in the chauffeur's chest while he was still trying to get the revolver from inside his jacket.

A slug whined off the fender near me. Someone inside the house was shooting at me. I dropped into a crouch and ran around to the other side of the car where Barbara was already squatting. Another gun started up. There were at least two men inside the house.

Holding the rifle across my knee I looked at the girl. She was breathing hard and the color had returned to her face.

"Barbara," I said, "you're all right."

"So are you, Nick."

"I want you to roll away from the car and hide among those rose bushes," I told her. "Can you fire a gun?"

"Sure, I can."

I pressed my Luger into her hand. "Shoot at the house. You don't have to have a target. Just shoot. I want some cover."

Then I wormed through the open door of the car and turned the key. I got the motor started while lying on my side on the seat, pressing down the accelerator with my hand. I reached up and pushed the gear and the car lumbered up the walk to the front of the house.

I rolled out on the lawn and squirmed through some shrubbery so that I was against the wall. I crawled under a row of windows to the corner of the house. There was a patio and a glass-enclosed porch at the back. Lew Rossi lived in style.

Picking up a small stone bench, I hurled it through the glass. A man came running out, looking for me. I waited, standing with my back against the wall. He finally ventured into the yard. As he passed me, I stepped out and hit him with the butt of the rifle.

I entered the house through the broken glass doors and found a woman in a red dress crouched in a corner. She was in her thirties and so scared she was shaking all over.

"Who in the devil are you?" she said in a quavering voice.

"I'm Nick Carter. Are you Rossi's wife or his mistress?"

"Neither one. I'm visiting from Vegas. And if I ever get out of here, I won't come back."

I walked into a larger room and a man bobbed out of a hallway and took a shot at me. I fired the rifle from my hip and my bullet hit a vase on a long table to the mans right. He jumped back. Turning the long table over, I pushed it out to block the entrance to the hallway. Then I used it for a shield.

The man put two bullets through it, near my shoulder. I lay on my side and moaned. I counted to ten before he took the bait. Then I heard him moving toward me. I waited until he reached the table and leaned over it to look for my body. Then I swung the rifle and knocked the revolver out of his hand.

He grabbed me by the hair, which was the best thing handy. My howl was not as phony as my moan had been. I thought he was going to pull my hair out by the roots. Rising up, I hit him under the chin with the rifle stock. Then I stepped over him and moved down the hallway, which was lined with doors.

"Rossi," I yelled. "Are you too yellow to come out?"

No answer.

I kicked open a door of an empty bedroom, then moved on.

"Rossi," I yelled. "You have to catch a man from behind like you did Joe?"

Silence.

I tried another door. A bathroom. A woman in a maid's uniform was cowering in the bathtub.

"You've got a fine place here, Rossi," I yelled. "Tell you what I'm going to do to it. I'm going to set it on fire if you don't come out."

He came out. He sprang out of a linen closet, hit me with the door and knocked me sprawling, then jumped on me.