Her pale yellow uniform was trimmed with white piping, its hem reaching a few inches below the knees. The same standard uniform worn by other room maids Jack had observed while staying at the motel.
No, not quite the same. The other outfits had all been short-sleeved. This one was long-sleeved, with wide, white unbuttoned cuffs.
The utility cart was on her right and the canvas hopper on her left. Both nestled against the side of the building, leaving the way open and unblocked for any passersby on the concrete apron. For now there was none.
“Okay if I make the room up now, mister?” the woman asked, her voice sharp with the nasal twang of a native Southwesterner.
“No Norma today?” Jack asked. “She usually cleans the room.”
“She’s off today.”
“I don’t think I’ve seen you around before,” he said.
“I only work here on weekends.” She sighed. “I’ve got a lot of rooms to do so I’d like to get started if it’s okay with you, mister.”
“Sure, come on in.” Jack stepped back so she could enter.
She crossed the threshold, closing the door behind her. “Don’t want to let the heat in while I’m stripping the bed.”
Jack nodded, turning his back to her and going deeper into the room. Earlier he’d turned the TV set on its counter-top stand so it faced the front of the room. It was switched off, and its dead glass eye served as a mirror so he could see what was happening behind him.
The maid’s right hand reached into the loose cuff of her left sleeve and pulled out a long stiletto-like weapon. She lunged forward, thrusting it at Jack’s broad, unprotected back.
Only he wasn’t there when she made what should have been a killing stroke. He’d sidestepped, and the weapon stabbed empty air. Jack kept moving, pivoting, and facing her sideways to present the smallest target.
She was in a half crouch, legs bent at the knees, striking arm extended to its full length, her fist closed around the shaft of something long, slim, sharp, and glittering. Her weapon was a knitting needle about ten inches long. The spike was lethal enough by itself but it had something extra. The point was covered by a gray plastic protective cap not unlike the sort found on the tip of an ordinary ink pen.
She wielded the long needle like a veteran knife fighter, holding it with the dime-sized disk at its end braced against the heel of her palm, the rest of the spike emerging from the top of her closed hand.
She’d committed to her first stroke and missed. Jack was beside her, his open hand slapping down on and grabbing the wrist of the hand holding the needle. It was like taking hold of a snake, strong, sinewy, and wriggling. She twisted trying to get loose but couldn’t break his grip.
Her free hand shot across her, stabbing at him with fingers spread to spear and claw at his eyes. He bobbed his head out of her reach, still clutching her wrist.
She kneed him but he was ready for that, too. He’d turned his body so that the knee slammed into his thigh instead of ramming home into his crotch as she’d intended. The side of his leg went numb from the force of the blow but he maintained his balance.
She switched tactics, stomping her heel into the top of his foot.
The pain took his breath away and he could feel his grip weakening. She felt it, too, and redoubled her efforts to break free, but before she could do so he got his other hand on her forearm.
In one swift move that was a blur of motion he violently bent her arm backward and thrust the needle deep into her neck. At the moment of impact the plastic protective cap split open, coming apart, leaving the dark-stained needle point nakedly exposed for an instant before it rammed home. There was a crunching sound as the steel tip penetrated flesh, cartilage, and bone.
A fatal blow but not necessarily such as to bring on sudden death. In the natural order of things she might have lived a moment or two before expiring. But for the dark substance staining the needle point, whatever toxin the plastic protective cap had been covering.
In the span of a few heartbeats the would-be killer went into spasms, shaking from head to toe in one massive total body shudder. She went rigid, catatonic. Her eyes bulged like they were trying to pop free from the sockets. They were staring, not seeing. Her mouth fell open — to gasp for breath, to cry out? The light went out of her eyes and the life left her body as the poisoned needle sent her rocketing into eternity.
He let go of her and she fell to the floor with a thump. She lay on her back faceup, the needle sticking out of her neck like a handle. A line of blood so dark it looked black clung from a corner of her mouth to her chin.
Jack stood staring down at her for a timeless interval. After a while he shook his head as if to clear it and said, “Huh!”
His voice sounded funny in his ears. He was breathing hard. “Damn,” he muttered.
He’d wanted to take her alive but things had moved too fast. There hadn’t been time to draw his gun before she was on him. If he’d tried she would have had him. As it was, it had been close, too close.
He was drenched with sweat, and he could feel it cooling on him. The laboring air conditioner continued its uninterrupted juddering and wheezing.
She’d been smart, stomping his foot while trying to wrestle free. The bones at the top of the foot were thin and breakable. He wriggled his toes inside the boot. They all wriggled. Nothing felt broken. He could walk on it, and that’s all that counted.
His hiking boots had steel toes and reinforced tops of the kind worn by construction workers to protect against heavy weights falling on their feet and crushing them. Luck had nothing to do with it. He had selected the boots deliberately because they were good for street fighting, and on this case trouble was liable to come at him from any and every unexpected direction, and everything he had working on his side to give him an edge upped his chances for survival.
Jack was now reminded somehow of the classic mode of hunting tigers. The hunter stakes a goat to a tree as bait and then hides himself in a covert blind. When the tiger goes for the goat, the hunter shoots the tiger. Trouble was, he was goat and hunter both.
The gray plastic protective cap covering the poisoned needle point had split into several large fragments. A couple of them lay on the carpet near the corpse.
Jack held his hands and forearms in front of him, turning them around, inspecting them for any gray plastic shards that might be clinging to them. Some of that toxin might have rubbed off on the inside of the cap, and he wanted to make sure he was clear of them.
They looked clean. He eyed the front of his vest and shirt and pants, and they came up clean, too.
He circled the body and went to the front of the room, moving with a limp, favoring his left leg, the one she’d been working on. He lifted the curtain and looked outside.
There was a commotion nearby but it was of the everyday variety. A woman was trying to ride herd on a half-dozen noisy, hyperactive kids while her husband loaded some suitcases into the trunk of their car.
The oldest kid was a boy of about ten and the others were in various descending age ranges, including a babe in arms held by the mother as she halfheartedly tried to maintain some order among her brood. The whole clan couldn’t have been more obliviously unaware of the mortal struggle that had just taken place in room eight.
His quick visual scan of the scene detected no sign of hostile or suspicious elements. No sign of Sabito’s G-men, either, though they couldn’t be far away. Jack let the curtain fall, locked the door.
He glanced back at the body sprawled on the floor. This’ll put me in solid with Vince, he said to himself, grinning wryly.