The Death Strain (12 page)

When I got back to my place, Rita was asleep, but the sheet over her was more off than on. I contented myself with looking at the beauty of her sleeping body. She lay half on her stomach, one leg drawn up, her left breast a soft, pink-tipped invitation. I pulled the sheet over her and went into the living room where I poured a shot of bourbon. I sipped it, letting the warmth trickle slowly downward. Once again I tried putting the pieces together in a way that would stifle my damned uneasiness, but I couldn't still my suspicions. I was convinced of certain things. One was the attack on the lorry — I was sure that Chung Li had engineered it. His phone call tonight had only reinforced that suspicion. The wily bastard had to find out if we'd really made it back.

"Goddammit to hell!" I said through gritted teeth. Why was I so suspicious of Chung Li, just because we'd been on opposite sides in the past? I had no proof he was acting in bad faith — no proof at all. I forced myself to stop wrestling with it and undressed. When I crawled into bed beside Rita's warm, soft body, she put an arm over my chest and cuddled up to me. I lay there until I finally fell asleep, still unhappy with my own reasoned explanations, still on edge, still strangely afraid.

It was no better when I woke up. But there was Rita, and she proceeded to make me forget about everything for a little while as I woke to her lips, her mouth moving across my body. I felt myself stirring as the hungry eagerness of her desires made their own communication. Her lips, moving down my body, pausing to devour hungrily, were cool and hot at the same time, and it was as if she was trying to erase the troubled tenseness she knew was inside me. While it lasted, she did a helluva good job, and suddenly I found myself thrusting and tossing and forgetting all else but the wildly passionate creature making love to me.

I pulled her up and smothered my face in her breasts and she turned over to receive me at once, her legs a warm embrace. I moved inside her quickly, almost savagely, but she cried out for more and more and then still more. Finally there was that searing, hoarse scream, and then she lay exhausted beside me, but it was a sweet exhaustion, a tiredness that somehow also revived. We lay together, bodies touching, her arm across me in satisfied contentment. Then the phone rang — that special phone again.

"Chung Li has sent a cable I think will interest you, Nick." Hawk's voice came over the wire. "I'll read it. 'Am happy to cooperate further on the eve of the World Leadership Conference. Advise Agent N3 we are told Carlsbad's men are in New York. Woman named Lin Wang, at 777 Doyer Street, has seen the big man. "

Hawk paused. "I've checked the address out with the New York police," he said. "It's a brothel, a quiet, well-run one, catering mostly to the Chinese community and those with a taste for Chinese food, you might say."

"This Lin Wang must be one of the girls," I said. "Do you think she's working for Chung Li?"

"I doubt that or he wouldn't have given us her name," Hawk replied. "She probably told somebody who told somebody else who told one of their people. Frankly, Nick, I'm surprised by all this. I didn't really expect any further cooperation from Chung Li."

"I'm surprised, too," I answered. "And I'm going to follow through right away."

"One more thing," Hawk said. "I checked Dr. Hobson.-Carlsbad's pulse rate is weakening. And he's still in a coma."

"Thanks," I said grimly and put down the phone. If Chung Li had any fears about Carlsbad's talking, it seemed they were unfounded. I turned to Rita, who had put on bra and panties and who looked too delicious to leave. But I was leaving.

"I have to go to New York," I said. "Your uncle's big Japanese friend's there."

"He's in New York?" she said, incredulousness in her voice.

"Not a bad place to hide in," I commented.

"Be careful, Nick."

I kissed her again and cradled her breast in the palm of my hand. "Hurry back," she choked out. I changed and left in time to catch the hourly shuttle flight from D.C. to New York. In a little more than two hours I was threading my way through the narrowed, crowded streets of New York's Chinatown. People and old buildings jostled one another and there was a gray dinginess all the bright lights of restaurants and stores couldn't hide.

Number 777 Doyer Street was a tall old building with a gift shop occupying the ground floor. The other gifts to be purchased were upstairs. I walked up one flight and rang a doorbell. The door was opened and the thick, cloying odor of incense was so strong it was almost a physical blow. The woman standing before me was Eurasian, a little blowsy with too much makeup, lips too red and black hair too lacquered in a tall upsweep. She wore a black hostess gown embroidered with a red dragon. My eyes went past her to the two men in the hallway, neither of them Chinese, lounging against the wall in shirtsleeves. Their narrowed, shifting eyes tabbed them for what they were — "protection."

Her eyes asked me the unspoken question, sizing me up with years of experience. I slouched and returned her look with a truculence.

"A friend of mine told me to stop here," I said. "He said to ask for Lin Wang."

Her eyes moved just a fraction. "Lin Wang," she repeated. "She happens not to be busy at the moment. You're lucky."

I shrugged. "I guess so," I said. She closed the door behind me and beckoned. I followed her down the hallway and into a large reception room. Girls, mostly Chinese but some white and one black, lounged in overstuffed chairs. They wore either bras and bikini panties or diaphanous see-through gowns. Their eyes followed me as I walked behind their madam. The woman led me into another hallway to a back staircase.

"Next floor, first door on the right," she said. I walked up the stairs and she watched for a moment and then went away on silent, gliding feet The damned incense was all over the place, as heavy as smoke at a campfire. I passed a door on the left and heard a girls hard, forced laughter. I saw three more closed doors down the hallway as I paused in front of the first one at the right. I knocked and turned the doorknob. I didn't really want to make like a customer. Cheap whores had never been my dish. But I had to move carefully. I wanted information from this girl and I wouldn't get it by scaring her off. Whores were always scared of involvements that might interfere with business. The door was opened by a small girl, black-haired.

I was struck by her prettiness, her small nose and flat cheekbones, almond eyes deep and liquid. She wore only a light kimono, and her breasts stood out high and proud. Suddenly I smelled a rat. Whatever Lin Wang might be, and it could be a lot of things, she was no common, everyday, run-of-the-mill prostitute found in a house like this. She had the body for it but not the eyes. They were deep, with a dark, shrewd brightness to them. They had none of the jaded, hard, cynical, permanently-wounded look of the whore.

"Come in," she said, flashing a wide smile. "You're new here, aren't you?"

Her voice surprised me. It was nasal, as though she had a cold. But it was a good opening line, I had to admit, one that a regular girl of the house might say.

"Yeah, I'm new here," I said. "And anxious as hell, honey." I gave her a slow grin. I was still going to move carefully but for different reasons. I wasn't afraid of scaring a whore any longer, but if this was going to be an acting contest, I could hold my own. In fact, as my eyes roamed over Lin Wang's pert little shape, I thought it might be an enjoyable contest. I turned to the dresser and put two tens and a five on top of it. Then I started to undress, taking off my necktie first.

I slipped off my jacket, with Wilhelmina in it in one motion and folded the Luger into the jacket as I laid it on a chair. A big double bed stood behind Lin Wang and I wondered how far she'd go with her role. I got my answer as she lifted her arms and whisked off the kimono. She stood before me naked, her breasts round and high with small nipples, piquantly exciting. She turned and took a pack of matches from the end table and lighted two incense urns, one at each side of the bed. Then she lay down on the bed, her legs up and moving out. I wondered if perhaps my evaluation had been wrong. Maybe she was just another little whore, after all.

"I thought you were anxious, big feller," she said, and once again I was struck by the nasal tone of her voice. I decided she was much more attractive when she didn't talk. I lowered myself down on her and felt her legs move up and down, rubbing along my hips. I tried to kiss her but her lips were a tight, closed line and she pushed my head down to her breasts, arching her back and lifting her nipples to my mouth. I inhaled a whiff of the damned incense as I put my lips on her breasts, a sickly-sweet odor I could have done without.

I pulled deeply on her breast and suddenly she had three, four, five breasts and there was a film over my eyes. I shook my head and raised myself on my elbows but the film didn't go away. My chest was feeling tight, constricted, and I tried to breathe through my nose but it only made things worse. Another draft of the incense came up into my nostrils and I felt as though I were tumbling through space.

I reached out and felt myself sliding over the side of the bed, and I clutched at the sheets as I fell to the floor. Dimly I saw a blurred, naked form move past me and all I could do now was to try to breathe and smell the goddamned incense and suddenly I realized it and I shook my head hard, again and again. It cleared for a moment and I saw Lin Wang nearby, watching me, her naked form clearly revealed.

It was the incense, the goddamned incense. There was something in it and I tried to dive across the side of the bed to knock it to the floor. I managed to get my hand on it and send it crashing down but the other one on the opposite side of the bed continued to spew out its fumes. I could hardly breathe and I was coughing, leaning on one elbow, knowing that with every breath I was drawing in more of the fumes but unable to help myself. I rolled over on the floor and banged my head against the wood, hard as I could. It cleared again and I saw the girl nearby and I reached out for her but she just stepped away.

Why didn't the damn incense affect her? And then, from the dim recesses of my mind I remembered the strong nasality of her voice and I had my answer. Nose plugs with filters. Small but efficient nose plugs, allowing only air to enter her lungs and not enough of the incense to have an effect.

I rolled over again and then it was as though I were floating, floating away into thin air and the terrible spinning in my head increased and increased until I was spun away into unconsciousness.

I'd passed out in darkness and I woke in darkness. How much time had passed I didn't know. But this darkness had none of the spinning, soft, suffocating quality of the other. My chest hurt and my lungs were raw and I was twisted and tied up like a pig. I was inside something, cramped and tied, and as I began to focus and orient myself, I realized that my legs were drawn up behind me and tied at the ankles. My hands were tied behind my back, almost touching my ankles. I could feel the roughness of a heavy canvas sack against my skin and I knew I was inside a car as we swayed turning a corner.

My jacket and trousers were stuffed into the sack with me, I realized as I felt them against the bare skin of my legs. They were leaving no evidence behind in the house on Doyer Street. Hugo was still strapped in its sheath against my forearm. I felt the car stop and heard noises and then I was being lifted out and dropped onto the ground. It hurt like hell and it was hard not to make a noise. I was jounced and bounced along as the sack was dragged across what must have been cobblestones.

I felt myself being flung into the air. When I heard the splash and felt the shock as it hit the water, I knew what had happened. They'd tossed the sack into the river. But the heavy sack had been tied tight and the thick canvas was waterproof. I had a few precious seconds but only a few. As the bag sank, the water pressure would force open the top and pour in on me. A few drops were already finding their way through.

I dropped Hugo into the palm of my hand, gripping the hilt with my fingers. I had to work backwards but I could easily reach the ropes binding my ankles together. It was ordinary twine and I dug deeply into it, frantically slashing and gouging with the stiletto, feeling it shred quickly. But I was sinking even more quickly and the water pressure was starting to force the top open. Suddenly the drawstrings at the top gave way and the water cascaded into the sack. I took a deep breath, struck again and felt my ankles part It was all I had time for. I ripped at the sides of the sack with Hugo, kicked out with all my strength and I was free.

Hands still tied behind me, still gripping Hugo, I kicked out for the surface with my remaining breath. I burst into the air of the surface just as my lungs were about to give way. The sparkling lights of the New York skyline glittered down at me in the deep darkness of the night and the river. I kicked out again, turned on my back and floated while I worked Hugo around in my hands and cut against the ropes still binding my wrist. It was slow and hard from such an awkward angle and I had to kick out and turn to stay afloat. The current was carrying me out, and I saw they'd dumped me into the river about a block from the bay. If I didn't get these damned wrist ropes off, a ferry boat might complete their job.

I saw the lights of a big one moving my way as I stabbed again and again at the slippery, wet ropes. Finally they gave way. I brought my arms around, held onto Hugo and swam back toward the place where I'd come up. The surface of the water was oil-slicked and dirty and I swam beneath it. I came up for air once, and then dived again. It was pitch black below but I got lucky. Because of some trapped air, the canvas bag had floated to the top of the water and I caught sight of it a dozen yards away. I struck out for it, grabbed it and found my jacket and trousers were still inside. More important, Wilhelmina was in the pocket of my jacket.