"Very nice," I understated the case. "Even an old crock like me wouldn't mind combining business and pleasure in this instance."
"Businesswise, she may be a complete dead end," Erikson answered. "I'll know better when I pull the report. Meantime you go back to the Alhambra and see if Hawk shows again. I'm-"
"Seeing him the first time reminded me of something," I interrupted him. I tapped my left shoulder. "My gun is buried in the sand near the airstrip where the gambling plane came down, and if I'm going to see Hawk again I want another."
"That's not unreasonable," Erikson agreed. "Just a minute." He went into the equipment room, came out with a Smith & Wesson.38 that could have been a duplicate of my own, and handed it to me after taking down the registration number. "It's already been sighted in," he said.
"Not like I'll sight it in when I get a chance," I said, slipping it into the chamois-lined shoulder holster without which I'd have felt undressed.
Jock McLaren waved to me cheerily as I passed through the outer office. He still had the earphones on.
I wondered what his reaction would be if it fell to him to transcribe the segment of tape I'd made of the magazine-studio seduction scene.
It was the cocktail hour when I reached the Alhambra.
The place was a blizzard of bright colors as a hundred people, two-thirds of them in native costume, engaged in high-pitched, alcohol-heightened conversations in half a dozen languages.
All the booths were occupied, and men were standing three-deep at the bar. I eased in at one end. I was in no hurry to be served, since I was going to be there for awhile. There was no sign of Hawk in the swirling smoke eddies in the room, and I resigned myself to waiting it out.
When I was finally served, I nursed my drink for an hour. The crowd began to thin out. I moved to a vacated booth in a corner of the room where I could see the front entrance. I settled myself with as much patience as I could muster.
Only scattered customers remained on the bar stools. One was a woman seated directly in front of my booth. Inside of three minutes I knew she was watching me in the back-bar mirror. After years on the run a man develops a sensitivity about such things.
The woman was an artificial platinum blonde, about thirty, with thin, plucked eyebrows and a lot of makeup. I couldn't remember ever having seen her before. She had on a white blouse and a black skirt of some shiny material. The skirt was so tight it tucked in under her buttocks, delineating each fleshy crease.
I hadn't looked directly at her, but she picked up her drink and carried it to my table. With no invitation from me she plopped herself down in the booth opposite me. She crossed her legs deliberately, far enough out in the aisle to afford me a look at her thigh-high sliding skirt. She smiled at me, disclosing bad teeth. At close range the heavy facial makeup was intended to hide blemishes. She was braless under the blouse, and she might just as well have had HOOKER branded in the center of her forehead.
"I'm Teresa, the original whore with the heart of gold," she said. "I saw you with the kid last night. The skinny little blonde. Chryssie."
"So?"
"So the kid sat here in a booth all afternoon, cryin' about bein' stood up. She had no bread for Mary Jane or anything else. Rex-" she nodded at the bartender "- was gonna throw her out, but I talked him out of it. Awhile ago a pimp sat down in her booth, an' the two of them went out together."
"Your pimp, Teresa?"
"Correct."
"Would he take her to his place?"
"To hers. If you decide to do anything about it, it would help to keep my skin together if he thought you walked in on them accidentally."
She picked up her drink and went back to the bar.
I was supposed to stay in the Alhambra and watch for Hawk. But there was the thought of Chryssie sitting in a booth, crying because I'd stood her up. I'd known she was broke or next door to it. I wasn't her guardian angel by any means, but I didn't care for the idea that I'd turned a pimp loose on her.
It would only take a few minutes. I left the Alhambra and walked rapidly to Fiftieth Street. I didn't have a key to Chryssie's apartment, but that wouldn't be a problem. When I reached her landing, I saw a line of light under her apartment door. It was locked when I tried it. I took a thin strip of stiff plastic from my wallet and eased it into the door jamb. I turned my wrist slightly and the lock moved back with a snicking sound.
I moved inside quietly. The sickly-sweet odor of marijuana was overpowering. Only the light in the bedroom was on, and I moved toward it stealthily. Chryssie was on the bed, naked, face down and sobbing. There were dark blotches on her alabaster behind. Across the foot of the bed was a scruffy-bearded, lanky, hairy type, also naked. He was sleeping.
Male clothing was draped over a nearby chair. I went through it and found an eight-inch, bone-handled knife in a sleeve holster. I dropped holster and knife into my pocket and went back to the bed. I drew the.38 from my shoulder holster, took hold of the bearded character's ankle, and jerked him off the bed.
He landed on the floor with a crash that sat Chryssie bolt upright in the bed, whimpering fearfully. The man on the floor scrambled on his belly toward the chair holding his clothes as unerringly as though he was fitted with radar although bis eyes were still closed. He went slack only when he couldn't find bis knife.
"Get your ass out of here before I fill it full of slugs," I told him when he opened his eyes. I showed him the.38. He stayed a respectful distance from it while he dressed hurriedly although his eyes stayed mean. Chryssie stared at the tableau with panic-stricken gaze.
"How about my knife?" the bearded character asked from the doorway.
"Come and get it," I invited him. "If you're feeling lucky."
He glared at me, then went out. I had moved to the bedroom doorway to make sure he went. When I returned to the bed, Chryssie was crying again.
"What happened to your tail?" I asked her.
"H-he kept kicking m-me to make me do th-things," she sobbed.
"What the hell do you expect if you keep on acting like a victim?" I growled. Her air of helplessness really irritated me. I went into the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. There must have been twenty-five different bottles of pills inside. I stuffed bottles into all my pockets until I'd made a clean sweep. "Take a shower and get into bed and stay there till you hear me at the door," I told Chryssie when I was back in the bedroom. "Understand?"
She nodded, still wide eyed.
I took her key, locked her into the apartment, and went back to the Alhambra.
6
When I left the Alhambra that night, I stopped at an all-night restaurant and carried an order of scrambled eggs and a large coffee back to Chryssie's place.
She started a screaming tantrum at my entrance over the loss of her amphetamines which I'd dumped in a convenient garbage can. I straightened her out with a slap in the face and another on the tail, then pushed the scrambled eggs into her a spoonful at a time. She sat there sulkily afterward, sipping at the hot coffee. "God knows you're probably not worth this attempted salvage job," I told her, "but I'm curious about what's underneath that skinful of poppers."
"Don't do me any favors," she answered me, but she didn't sound as flippant as usual.
The next day I spent fifteen hours at the Alhambra, bored to tears. There was no sign of Hawk. I ate food I didn't want in order to counteract booze I didn't want, and my tailbone ached from just sitting on it.
I kept Chryssie under house arrest at her place. The only time I left the Alhambra was to bring her meals. She didn't want to eat, but I forced her. My association with her hadn't gone unnoticed at the Alhambra. Rex, the bartender, stopped by my booth in the afternoon to ask me how she was. He sounded sympathetic. There was something about Chryssie's little-girlness that evidently got through even to Broadway types.