I went to answer him and a pair of clicks, a piece of a word interrupted the connection before it was reestablished and I said, “I’ll deliver. How?” I had no choice. No choice at all.
“Ah, that is very good. Then we shall arrange it.”
“Let me speak to her first. I’m not paying for a dead body.”
I knew she’d be alive. He’d know I’d insist upon it. He called out, speaking away from the phone and once again the connection was interrupted for a split second, then I heard her voice saying, “Don’t do it, Irish.”
Manos Dekker laughed softly to himself. “Oh, he will do it all right. He is a very decent American. He is like all the others of his kind. Very sentimental.”
“Okay, Dekker, you call it.”
“Yes, I will,” he laughed again. “I will call you back within minutes and tell you what it is you have to do. I wouldn’t advise any interference in the matter. You understand, of course?”
“I understand,” I said, my voice cold with the fear in it. He hung up before I did and I put the receiver back slowly.
There was a flaw somewhere. I could feel it. I had it in my hand if I could figure it out. I took it apart piece by piece, bit by bit, going over the picture from the minute I met Karen, remembering every detail of the action.
It took a while, but I got it.
Now I knew where she was and how I was going to work it.
I jacked a load into the breech of the .45, thumbed the hammer back and went out to the elevator and took it down to the lobby. The little fag at the desk had his back to me answering a call on the PBX board when I reached him. I went around the counter and put the gun against his spine and watched him stiffen. He turned around, his face a ghastly gray, his lips quivering as he saw my face.
“You Commie bastard,” I said.
“Please...” he lifted his hands defensively.
“How’d they get you in... use sex appeal? Or was it your hate for everybody in the world in general.”
“I... I’m not...”
“Shut up. I saw a photo of you in a special file the Feds have on all Commie sympathizers. It was taken a while ago and you weren’t in half-drag and without the usual makeup you didn’t quite look the same, but I put it together. You even helped. You cut in on my talk with Dekker because you were scared stiff and loused up your connections at the switchboard there. When Lennie Ames mentioned my name you reported in like a good stoolie. They told you I was hot and where I stood and you were the pipeline. You saw me bring the girl in and got to them right away and they set the deal up right here on the premises. Cute, kiddo, real cute.”
I let him see my best grin, all the teeth. I let him look at the snout of the rod and said, “She’s in the hotel, buddy-boy, buddy-boy. I’m guessing she’s in your room. Am I right?”
The look he gave me told me I was. I reached in his pocket, found the key. Number 309.
“Let’s go,” I said.
I wasn’t in a hurry now. I was going to do this one easy and my way. We got out of the elevator, walked down the hall nice and slowly, the queer’s knees dancing with fright. He was as bad as the worst of them in his own way and he was paying for it. I was willing to bet this wasn’t the first operation he had been on and when he was checked out all the way he’d wind up with a dossier an inch thick and loaded with names. Too many people in the striped pants departments of Washington agencies played games with these types and wound up being patsies for a blackmail racket worked by the Soviets.
When we reached the door I eased the key in, the gun in his back telling the guy not to make a sound. I turned it, felt the latch go back and took the chance the chain was strung in place. Then I turned the knob, shoved the door open and rammed the desk clerk into the room with the flat of my hand.
He was quick, all right. The gun seemed to jump into his hand and the first shot took the clerk through the chest. And I had the time I needed. Manos Dekker saw the play and knew he couldn’t make it and in a desperate attempt to wash it out the most horrible way he knew he whipped the gun in his hand toward the bed but before he could pull the trigger my .45 roared and blew the thing out of his hand, fingers and all. He looked at the bloody mess on the end of his wrist, no longer the killer he was, a fanatic with a political drive that matched his own lusts and made him a big cog in a big machine. He looked back at me, knew what was coming and tried to open his mouth to scream or plead or do anything to stop it. He opened his mouth wide and I shot him right through that gaping hole in his face and he slammed head first into the wall splattering his blood and brains all over the place.
Karen Sinclair looked up at me from the bed and smiled, her eyes bright and shiny. He hadn’t done anything to her. He would have, but he hadn’t. My luck ran just a little too good. I took out the capsule from my pocket and held it out. She opened her hand and I let it fall into her palm.
The way she looked at me and I knew I was looking at her said that it was just the beginning for the both of us. There was a long road to be walked and we’d be doing it together. The hood was gone because my own would never let me back again when the story came out and I had to walk the other side of the street whether I liked it or not. Shaffer didn’t realize what he had gotten himself into.
Karen looked at the capsule in her hand as I bent down to kiss her. Her mouth was a full, wetly warm blossom that tried to envelop me, her tongue tasting me, one finger tracing a line along my face. I stood up and reached for the phone to dial Shaffer’s number.
She said, “How many people are in New York, Irish?”
“Many millions, doll.”
Karen looked at the capsule, then smiled at me, the beauty of her like starlight on a clear night.
“I knew I gave it to the right one,” she said.