The two goons had caught up with the lady, but she wasn't going as quietly as I had the day before. Maybe they'd missed with their drugged dart she was muffled to the nose in her raincoat, with the collar turned up. Or maybe they wanted her talkative when they got wherever they were going. No matter. They were distracted, and the driver was watching the show.
I came up beside the window out of his blind spot. Using the .45 as a pair of knucks, I punched right through the glass into the back of his head. Then I pulled the door open and him out with it, spilling him onto his back in the street. I kicked him once on the point of the chin while he lay there.
"For these and all thy sins I absolve thee," I muttered, making a cross over him with the Colt.
The whole thing hadn't taken more than a couple of seconds, and now it was time to go help the lady. Generally speaking I'm not the kind of knight who goes around rescuing damsels in distress but I wanted to talk with this one, and keeping her alive was the only way to go.
I used the roof of the car as a vaulting horse and landed feet first on top of one of the goons, bringing him down with me in a tangle of arms and legs. It took me a second to extricate myself, with elbows, knees, and the heavy automatic smashing into my man along the way. He got in a couple of good licks, then gave up all interest and started holding what was left of his nuts.
Meanwhile the lady in black was doing the best she could. But her little nine-millimeter was caught under the raincoat, and the man who had her was too strong. He'd thrown an arm around her neck in the classic choke come-along and was dragging her into the backseat. Maybe he hadn't noticed that the driver wasn't there anymore.
I took him in the back of the skull with the butt of the Colt Commander. He slipped to the ground to join his moaning pal.
"Come on!" I yelled at the lady. "Let's get out of here!"
"Where to?" she gasped.
"Into the car."
I slid behind the wheel the keys were still in the ignition and the engine was turning over and slammed the driver's-side door. The lady didn't argue. She got in beside me and closed the other door, and I took off from the curb.
I made a left turn across traffic into a side street, and said, "Where to, sister?"
"Who are you?"
Rather than give her an answer, I said, "The cops are gonna be all over this block in a couple of minutes I saw the doorman go running inside like a man with 911 on his mind. You got a safe place to go?"
She gave an address down in SoHo. I drove to the address, ditched the car, and went with her up to an apartment: third floor of a brownstone, three rooms and a kitchen. I hoped she was in a rent-controlled building, or this place would be costing her a pretty penny.
The apartment was almost empty: nothing but a coffee-maker in the kitchen, a couple of sofas, and a bed, all visible from right inside the front door.
"Take a seat," she said. "I'll make coffee."
She stripped off her coat and turned to hang it on a peg by the door. When she turned back, the little nine-millimeter was pointing right between my eyes. I'd stuffed the .45 into my waistband in back again, to keep her from getting nervous. Her get nervous? That was a laugh.
"You've missed three recognition signals," she said. "You aren't from Section. So how's about you tell me who you are?"
"People call me Crossman," I said. "Peter Crossman."
"Is that your real name?"
"No, but it'll do. I'm the connection for midtown. You want coke, you call me."
"Your kind isn't known for making citizen arrests," she said. The muzzle of the nine-millimeter never wavered, even though from the way her chest was going up and down she had to be nervous about something. "What did you think you were up to tonight?"
"Someone who doesn't work for me using muscle in my territory, that interests me. Let one bunch get away with it, pretty soon it's all over town that Crossman's gone soft, and they're all trying to move in. Can't let that happen."
"So" she started, but never finished. A knock sounded on the door.
"Maggie," came a voice from outside. "Maggie, I know you're in there. Open up."
She made the little pistol vanish. "Come on in it isn't locked."
The door swung open, and I got a sinking feeling in my guts. The Mutt and Jeff act waiting on the landing were the same pair who'd given me the ride back to town the day before. The watchers from the dock in Babylon. I didn't think they recognized me the Tarnkappe had kept me invisible at first, and then I'd changed my face. I was glad now that I'd taken the precaution.
They came in. They were wrapped in dripping raincoats no way of telling what kind of firepower they were carrying underneath, but it would take 'em a while to pull anything clear. The first guy, the short one, nodded over at me. "Who's the meat?"
"A guy named Crossman," Maggie said. "He's some kind of drug lord. Showed up tonight and pulled my buns out of a bad situation while you two were sucking down cold ones in some bar."
"Get rid of him," the second guy said.
"No, I think I want him to stay." She looked at me. "You do want to stay, don't you? I'll let you buy me a drink after all this is over."
"Yeah," I said. "I want to stay."
That was the truth. This whole affair was getting more interesting by the minute. And as for buying that drink I couldn't help wondering what sort of temptation she had in mind for me to resist.
She started to say something else, and that was when the door to the apartment flew open again. This time it was the two guys from the street the ones who had tried to stuff Maggie into their car, the same ones who'd grabbed me outside the UN. One of them was carrying a Remington Model 870. The other was lugging a Stoner. They both looked pissed off.
They didn't bother with the formalities.
"One of you bastards," the guy with the Stoner said, "knows something we want to know. So we aren't going to kill you now. But we have other ways of finding out, so don't think we'll hesitate to shoot you if we have to. So. Who's going to tell me: Where's the Holy Grail?"
"It's in Logres, asshole," said Maggie's shorter guy.
The new arrival with the riot gun butt-stroked him across the room. He went down hard.
"I sure hope he wasn't the only guy who knew," Remington said, "or the rest of you are going to have a really rough time. Who wants to give us a serious answer?"
Maggie was standing beside and a little behind me. I felt something soft and warm pressing into my hand while everyone else was looking at the guy on the floor. It felt like a leather bag with marbles inside. I took it and made it vanish into my front pants pocket.
Stoner looked at me maybe he'd seen me move. "Don't I know you from somewhere?"
I shook my head a fraction of an inch one way and then the other. "I don't think so."
I wasn't as scared as I hoped I looked, but things weren't shaping up too good. The new guys hadn't disarmed anyone yet, and neither weapon was pointing right at me, but with my piece tucked into my waistband in back, I wouldn't have put a lot of money on getting it clear before they could turn me into Swiss cheese with ketchup. Besides, I wanted these gents alive. Someone knew where the Grail was, and all of these jokers looked like they knew more than I did.
"Lay off," Maggie said. "This one's your basic crook I picked up. You don't want him, you want me."
Whatever they were after, odds were it was in that little sack at least Maggie thought it was. But I knew better. You don't carry a six-point-five-ton block of lodestone around in a leather drawstring bag.
"Yeah, sister, we want you," Remington said. "What were you doing at the Waldorf tonight?"
"Visiting a friend. Got a problem with that?" She'd drifted a little away from me. Maybe no one remembered she'd ever gotten close.