He had a second drink and went into the dining room. He had scarcely ordered when he was pretty sure he spotted Bolivar’s man.
He was dark and young, too young to be hanging around the lobby of the Leme. His manner and his suit didn’t indicate that kind of money. It was also the dark, watchful eyes. They were trying not to dart Carter’s way, but they did. And each time, the Killmaster picked up on it.
Carter stretched lunch and lounged over coffee. By the time he paid the check and walked through the lobby, he knew he would have a tail. The dark young man was literally dancing to be after him.
Outside, Carter crawled into the first cab in the line. There were two names in Huzel’s book with his Rio code, Roberto Perrez and Delgado Raffini. Huzel hadn’t done business with either of them for over two years, but that wouldn’t matter.
Carter gave the driver the address of Roberto Perrez.
Halfway down the block, he took a quick squint out the rear window. He saw the young man dart from the front door of the hotel and slide into a waiting sedan. The driver had the car moving before the passenger door was closed.
It was a working-class neighborhood filled with apartment buildings, all dingy and looking alike. Carter had the driver wait and went looking. There was a Perrez on the third floor of one building. He walked up some stairs and rang the bell. After a moment the apartment door opened and an old woman looked out.
“I’m looking for Roberto Perrez,” Carter said. “Does he live here?”
“He used to live here,” she said. She had a slight accent.
“I wonder if you could tell me where I could find him? Are you his mother?”
“I was his mother.”
“I don’t understand. Aren’t you still his mother?”
“My son is dead, senhor... almost seven months now.”
“Seven months?”
“How you know my son?”
“I did some business with him,” Carter replied.
Her face suddenly became very hard. “Then you are a thief like my son. That’s how he die, stealing.”
She started to slam the door. Carter held it. “I’m sorry, Senhora Perrez, I didn’t know.”
“Go away.”
Carter fluttered two one-hundred-dollar bills in her face. “The fact is, I owed your son some money. Since he’s gone, you might as well have it.”
She studied Carter’s face, then snatched the money. The door slammed and he returned to the cab. The taxi was waiting. So was the sedan, a half block away. Carter gave the driver the next address and settled back in the seat.
One look told him that the passenger in the sedan was writing down the address Carter had just left.
He wasn’t so lucky with Delgado Raffini. The Raffinis had moved and no one seemed to know where they had gone. They weren’t listed in any phone directory, but then the poor or the underworld of Rio were probably never listed. Also, the neighbors took him for police and would say nothing.
More for show than anything else, Carter tried the local stores. It was a druggist who, for a twenty dropped on the counter, came up with an address. He thought that Senhora Raffini had returned to his store to fill a prescription some time after she had moved. He dug around in a drawer until he found it, and gave Carter an address several blocks down the same street.
It was also an old, run-down building. Carter walked up to the third floor and knocked.
The door was opened by a small, dark-haired woman in her early thirties. She must have been very pretty once, but now she looked gaunt and tired.
“Senhora Raffini?”
“Sim.”
“I’d like to talk to your husband, Delgado. Is he home?”
“Who you, police?”
“No. I’ve done some good business with your husband in the past. I haven’t heard from him for a while.”
She threw back her head and laughed. “And you won’t for a long while. The asshole is in prison!” Suddenly she pulled open the loose robe she wore. She was wearing nothing beneath it. “But you can do a little business with me!”
Carter pressed a hundred into her hand. “You tell Delgado when he gets out that Amsterdam is still buying.”
He left her with her mouth — and robe — still open, and returned to the cab.
“Where to now, back to hotel?”
“Not quite yet,” Carter replied. “Just drive around for a couple of hours. Show me the city and a couple of nice bars with naked women.”
Carter leaned back in the seat and smiled as he lit a cigarette.
Bolivar’s little boy would report back that Herr Huzel was his usual self... always doing business.
Carter gave the two in the sedan fits for another two hours. He stopped at several bars, establishing a routine each time. The driver would wait in front; Carter would enter, order a drink at the bar, watch one of the strippers gyrate a little, then return to the taxi and move on.
Each time, one of the two in the sedan — the young one or his partner, a cut-down version of King Kong with a Pancho Villa mustache — would check Carter through the windows or enter and have a drink.
By six o’clock, as Carter expected, they got bored with the game and just waited in the sedan.
It was then Carter decided to school them a little.
“Another bar, senhor?” the driver asked wearily.
“Yes,” Carter said, “let’s go back to that first one.”
The bar was about eight blocks from the hotel. When the driver stopped, Carter pressed a fat wad of bills into his hand.
“You’ve been a very understanding man. That’s it for today, but I do need one more thing.”
“Sim?”
“I won’t be coming out of this one. But I want you to sit out here for about a half hour before you leave. Got that?”
“Sim,” the driver said with a shrug, and picked up his magazine.
Very little had changed inside in the past two hours. The customers were the same, just a little drunker. The bartender polished the same glasses, and the same two girls were on duty, a redhead in a red dress peeling, the blonde watching her at the bar.
Carter slid onto a stool three down from the blonde. The redhead spotted him and moved down the runway.
Her red dress was resting on a chair at the end of the runway and she was now down to panties and a halter. She had a full-blown figure and she danced and strutted with a certain grace as she whipped aside the panties to expose a spangled G-string.
Carter glanced up and the halter came off to reveal what seemed like naked breasts, the net bra being almost invisible. There was a long moment when she faced him at the bar with wide-flung arms and a big smile. Then the spot went off and she relaxed in darkness. An instant later she had picked up the red dress and, holding it in front of her, hurried down the steps toward some black curtains.
The blonde had moved down to the stool beside Carter’s. She pressed her thigh against him and smiled.
“Change your mind?”
“Maybe,” Carter said, returning the smile.
The bartender remembered him as well, and brought him a light scotch. Carter took a sip, not really wanting it.
“Buy me a drink?” the blonde purred.
“How much do you make off drinks?”
“Half,” she said.
Carter slid a twenty under her arm. She looked at it, then him.
“Not here,” she said. “My room, across the street.”
Carter shook his head. “Is there a back way out of here?”
“You in trouble?” she whispered, her eyes wide.
“Nothing bad. I just need to shake a couple of bad boys out front.”
She slipped the twenty into her cleavage. “See those curtains back there?”
“Yeah.”
“Wait a couple of minutes and then follow me.” She slipped off the stool and sauntered away.