There was silence. I unbuttoned my shirt and transferred the envelope from under my armpit to inside my shirt, then rebuttoned. The bedroom door opened and Talia held the phone out to me. "He wants to speak to you."
I took a step toward her, then stopped. "Not on the phone."
"But you must!" she pleaded.
I wasn't about to commit myself to anything until I checked with Erikson. I'd already learned in Erikson's office what could be done with voice prints, too.
"Look, I've got to check out a couple of things first," I said. "If it's local people, there's all kinds, right? Some I can talk to, some I can't. Tell your boss I'll have an answer for him tomorrow, but I don't do business by telephone."
She said something into the mouthpiece in a foreign language. After a silence she spoke again for a good two minutes before she walked back to the table and hung up the phone. She didn't look happy. "No later than tomorrow," she said. "And he will pay you well."
"I should know by then if there's anything I can do," I agreed. "How do I get in touch with him?"
"Through me." She looked down at the bloody handkerchief around her arm and began to unwind it.
"Better let me rebandage that before I go, Talia." She hesitated. "I get the feeling you don't want to go to a doctor, and I've had a little experience with wounds."
"Well-all right."
She led the way through the frilly bedroom into the bathroom. There was a rose-tinted, lighted wall mirror behind a pink, formica-topped lavatory. All the tiling was pink. An array of bottles and jars containing creams, lotions, shampoos, and perfumes covered the space in front of the mirror. I sat down on the toilet seat which was capped with a pink, furry cover.
Talia opened the medicine cabinet and took out a bottle of medicinal alcohol, a box of absorbent gauze, a jar of clear Vaseline, and a roll of adhesive tape. She unwrapped my handkerchief from her arm, then shrugged the jacket of her suit from her shoulders. I stood up and helped her remove it. It was warm in the bathroom. Under the jacket, she had on a long-sleeved white blouse. The left sleeve was spotted with dried blood.
"Off with the blouse, too," I told her.
"Just cut the lower sleeve away," she said.
"Don't play the schoolgirl," I said. She was standing with her back to me, and I reached around in front of her and began to unbutton the tiny, pearl-white buttons lining the front of the blouse. She resisted me for a moment, then apparently thought better of it. I unbuttoned the blouse completely, pulled its bottom edge from the confines of her skirt, and tossed the blouse into a corner.
She folded her arms at once across her lacy-brassiered, large breasts with her palms cradling her biceps, but not before I saw a spot of blue discoloration on the inside bend of her right elbow and needle marks along the purple line of her largest vein. She'd folded her arms so quickly I couldn't tell if the marks were on both arms or only one, but one was enough. The girl was a hophead, and from the number of punctures, not a recent one.
I didn't say anything. I took her left arm and washed the raw-looking slash on her outer forearm with warm water. She flinched when I swabbed it with alcohol, but made no sound. The slash wasn't deep, but she could wind up with a hairline scar. I'm an authority on scars.
I put Vaseline on some folded gauze to form a dressing, wrapped it around her arm with more gauze, and taped it in place. Talia's right arm remained curved across her breasts, but I knew it wasn't the breasts she was hiding. It was the telltale needle marks on her arm. "That ought to do it," I said. "Time for me to hit the road."
"But I haven't even had a chance to thank you!" she protested. "Do have a drink first. It's the least I can offer you." It was said in a tone of voice calculated to convince the hearer that the least was just the beginning. She gave me a smile which made me realize all over again just how much this girl had going for her in the way of good looks. "The liquor cabinet is against the wall under a picture of the Blue Mosque of Istanbul. Pour a glass of raid for me and whatever you like for yourself. The raki is in the square, unmarked, milk-glass bottle. I'll join you as soon as I get into a robe."
From her point of view a robe made sense. Exposed arms exposed too much. "One quick one, then," I said, and walked through the bedroom to the living room.
The liquor cabinet wasn't large but it was well stocked. I found the unmarked milk-glass bottle and poured a drink from it. The liquor was clear and syrupy, and when I held the glass to my nose it gave off a sweet, licoricelike scent. I fixed myself a bourbon on the rocks before I sat down.
I ran an eye appraisingly around the room as I took the first swallow of my drink. Talia obviously had expensive tastes and a large monkey on her back. If there was no sugar daddy taking care of the expenses of this establishment, she needed to work every angle open to her to take care of her habit. She had the youth and looks to do it, but the way she appeared to be mainlining it, she was due to have a very short run.
I wondered if part of the answer to her financing might not lie in the envelope tucked inside my shirt. If Erikson's Israeli contacts were right about a connection between the plane hijacking and dope smuggling, Talia was a good bet to be a connecting link.
But there was also the chance that the envelope contained money enough to buy a few days' drugs supply for a hard-hooked addict, certainly a serious matter to Talia. It didn't explain her fear of the man to whom she had made the phone call, though.
She came out of the bedroom with a smile designed to inflate any male ego. She had changed to an Oriental-looking, choke-collar costume of shining red silk. It had the long sleeves that I expected to see, but it was form fitting, and she had the form to fit it. The skirt was slit to the waist, exposing bare thigh to the hip. I didn't need a fluoroscope to determine that she was as bare underneath as her crimson-nailed bare feet.
"Thank you," she murmured as I rose and handed her the glass of raki. Her eyes looked different, heavy-lidded and unfocused. I guessed that she had shot herself up while she was in the bedroom to quiet her jangled nerves. "Why don't we sit on the chaise longue and make ourselves comfortable?" she went on.
It came to me suddenly what this production was all about. She was trying to freeze me in place until her boss could get someone downstairs to tail me when I left. I downed my drink quickly. She sensed my intention to leave and grabbed my hand. "Put it on ice, Talia," I said, backing away. "I'll see you tomorrow."
She still clung to my hand. "Don't go," she protested. Her full lips pouted provocatively. "There is much of the evening left."
"I've got to put out the word to people I know that I want the envelope intact," I improvised. "Your boss wouldn't pay me for it if it had been opened, would he?"
"That's right," Talia said. She released my hand. "Tomorrow, then," she called after me as I went out in the corridor. "You won't be sorry."
No one was in the lobby when I stepped off the elevator downstairs, but the threat would be outside in the darkness of the street. I couldn't detect anything unusual. I decided to walk the short distance to Chryssie's pad. I wanted to look in on her anyway since I'd left her locked in.
I detoured into an all-night cafeteria on the Avenue of the Americas and called Erikson. "This is Little Boy Blue," I said.