She showed Carter to a comfortable room on the second floor. Everything he needed was there, even a change of clothes and a razor.
The whole thing looked like one very large setup.
“I think,” Carter said, “that you and Vinnick tipped off the Hungarians that an American was coming over.”
Ilse smiled. “You are as astute as your reputation says you are.”
“What would have happened if I had not agreed to this?”
She shrugged. “Your body would have been turned over to the authorities here after I killed you trying to escape. Good night.”
Carter undressed and lay on the bed, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to get much sleep.
Six
The place was called the Rotten Apple, and it smelled worse than its namesake. It was on an alley with no name off Dream Street in one of the worst red-light districts in Hamburg.
They sat at a corner table looking out at the dancers moving frantically on a postage-stamp-size dance floor. The music was loud, pounding the walls, and, Carter was sure, damaging his ears.
Sitting across in a pair of hip-hugger jeans, a purple shirt open to expose his chest, and a pair of Gucci loafers, was Count Otto von Krumm. Otto was somewhere close to forty, claimed to be thirty, and bragged that he hadn’t bedded a woman over eighteen for twenty years.
Otto von Krumm’s father had been in the SS. He had survived the war with only the family castle near the village of Bundesdorg, on the West German/Nether-lands frontier. Eventually the old man had died, still saluting the Fuhrer. He had left young Otto the castle, the grounds around it, and a brilliant criminal mind.
For the first thirty years of his life, Otto had stolen everything he could get his hands on and invested it wisely. When he was rich enough, he retired to become an aging hippie who liked a challenge now and then. Quite often Carter offered that challenge.
Von Krumm leaned over and shouted into Carter’s ear. “I like it here.”
“I can see that,” Carter replied. “Can we talk in front of her?”
The German threw an affectionate arm around the voluptuous blonde who sat beside him, his hand accidentally sliding downward to partially cover a breast.
The blonde smiled at Otto. It was an animal smile, earthy and anticipatory. Carter noted that she didn’t have any pupils in her eyes.
Carter tried again. “I said, can we talk in front of her?”
“Of course,” von Krumm bellowed, and grinned. “She doesn’t speak any English at all. Even her German is terrible. But she has the strongest thighs you have ever seen. They are really quite remarkable. Dear me, look at that. And she seems quite taken with you, Nicholas.”
Carter followed his stare toward the knot of dancers on the floor. A couple seemed to have taken up residence right in front of their table.
The man was uninteresting, small and swarthy with a moronic face. But the woman was startling. She was barefoot, with long legs and a hard figure ensheathed in a shimmering lame dress. Her platinum hair was cut short and contrasted sharply with a deep tan.
Each time the couple made a revolving turn, the woman smiled at Carter and ran her tongue along her lower lip.
“Very nice,” von Krumm remarked. “I would look into that if I were you... in a manner of speaking, of course.” He laughed, a deep, rumbling laugh.
Carter got his lips as close as possible to Otto’s ear. “Can we talk?”
“Must we? I assume it concerns money.”
“It could.”
“Gruesome but necessary, I suppose,” von Krumm sighed.
“Somewhere else,” Carter insisted.
“Very well, we’ll go to my flat.” Otto rose and nodded toward the platinum blonde. “Why don’t you ask her along? We’ll have a little entertainment after we talk business.”
“No, Otto.”
“Very well, follow us to the flat.”
“I have the address,” Carter said. “I’ll meet you there.”
Von Krumm led the way out, holding the blonde by the hand. With one eye Carter was watching the shift of her hips as she moved. With the other eye he was watching the hard-eyed little man leave his platinum-haired dancing partner.
Outside, they turned right. Halfway to the corner, Carter whispered, “When you get to your car, drive around the block and keep circling until you see me in your rearview mirror.”
Von Krumm nodded and Carter darted into the alley adjoining the club. He made his way around to the rear and walked into the kitchen. A burly man at the door stood to block his progress. Carter waved a fifty-mark bill in his face and he was waved on in.
The Rotten Apple didn’t much care if you paid at the front or the rear for entrance, just that you paid.
He was halfway through the knot of dancers when he saw the platinum blonde on a stool at the end of the bar, alone.
“Hi,” he said, moving in beside her, close.
“You,” she murmured. “I thought you left.” Her accent was Belgian or French.
“I came back. Where’s your boyfriend?”
“Boyfriend? Haven’t got one yet. You interested?”
“The short, dark little guy with the wilted eyes. Where is he?”
“Don’t know, don’t care,” she said, running her hand over Carter’s crotch. “Want to dance?”
“No.” Carter laid his hand on the inside of her thigh, squeezed, hard.
“Owww, damn you, that hurts!” she exclaimed.
“It can hurt worse. Who is he?”
“Don’t know, I swear. He gave me some marks to dance with him. Said he wanted to dance right by your table. That’s it, I swear.”
Carter believed her. He peeled off another fifty and stuffed it into her cleavage. “Thanks. I like your hair.”
The big one at the rear door just shook his head when Carter exited after so short a time. He moved through the alleys until he was four blocks away, on the street where he had parked the rental car near Otto’s Mercedes. Keeping to the shadows, he moved up the street until he was in the same block, then darted into a doorway. He had already spotted the little man slouched behind the wheel of a beige Audi parked at the corner.
A hand dropped on Carter’s shoulder and he froze.
“You looking for fun, darling?”
He turned slowly, letting the stored-up air in his lungs escape with a hiss.
She was on the wrong side of forty, with a mask of makeup for a face. She wore a thin, clinging black dress relieved by a string of phony pearls and a leather belt with a big silver L on it as a buckle.
“Not fun,” he murmured, “but maybe something else.”
“What else is there?” she said with a throaty laugh, and stepped forward a little so the dim light from the hallway behind lit her.
She had big, heavy breasts, and she showed them by way of a low vee cut to her dress. Her legs were still good where the short skirt revealed them to the darker panty part of her pantyhose. Her skin was dark, swarthy, and it made her nearly white hair stand out like snow on a black stone.
“I can do you back there, at the end of the hall.”
She lifted the skirt. There was no crotch in the pantyhose.
“I’ll take a raincheck.”
“Raincheck? What the hell is raincheck?”
Carter pulled her forward a little. “See that Audi down there, the man behind the wheel?”
“Ja.”
Carter told her what he wanted. As he did, he unrolled two more fifties from the wad in his pocket and curled them into her hand. “Okay?”
“Sure, okay. But for another fifty I give you a quick one to boot.”
Carter saw von Krumm and his blonde go by. “Just do a number on him. That’s enough. And remember — you just forget whatever you see. Go!”
He waited until she was across the street and headed down the block before he moved out himself. He pulled the Rommer and held it at his side as he moved from doorway to doorway.