“I told you,” she said into the mirror but speaking to me, “that I do the choosing.”
She turned to her exhausted conspirator and said, “You are not married. You will not be married until the marriage it is consummated. This is no sin, señor. You remain pure.”
That was a hell of a way to look at it.
On the other hand, she was the first woman I’d been with since I married Kim.
And maybe it didn’t hurt to stay in practice.
CHAPTER NINE
The taxi let me out on the corner and I walked the rest of the way to the Vincalla Motel. Traffic had dwindled and— while the lights of Miami Beach still lit the sky across the bay—this side was quiet and sleepy, the only activity around being restaurants and nightclubs catering to the singles scene.
I looked like just another Miami swinger, Bunny having come up with a black sport jacket, charcoal sport shirt and black slacks for me. I had requested black sneakers, wanting to keep the sound of my footsteps minimal, and the madam of the house had come through for me on that score as well.
Between Bunny and Gaita, I could hardly have any complaints about the service at the Mandor Club.
I skirted the motel office out front, crossed the lawn that circled the pool, and headed toward the room I’d been told was Tango’s, down on the right.
At the opposite end, a party was going on, split between two rooms, the blare of a hi-fi playing rock ’n’ roll and raucous drunken laughter covering the sound of my feet on the concrete walk. The motel’s parking spaces, outside the bottom tier of rooms, were filled, license plates about evenly divided between local and out-of-state. With the exception of three rooms up top and four below, all windows were darkened, Tango’s among them.
For a second I stopped, checked behind me, and slow-scanned the area toward the street to see if anyone was silhouetted against the street-lamp and traffic glow. Five feet away was Tango’s room, and I could see the windows curtained with no light bleeding through at all.
If Bunny was right, the man-hating hooker was probably just asleep—the motel was where she went to relax and cool it. But I still couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something wrong with the play.
You can’t call it instinct, because it’s learned; but it’s nothing mental, strictly physical, as the back of your neck prickles and your belly tightens and your eyes narrow and your mind becomes a resonating space where caution calls to you in vague yet not uncertain terms.
So I just stood there, looking around again and sorting out the details until my inner warning system found the flaw for me.
Tango didn’t have a car. She always traveled by cab, Bunny had said.
Yet all the car slots were filled.
Maybe some of the partygoers down at the other end weren’t guests at the Vincalla, and the overflow had filled up some extra slots.
But down here on this very quiet end of things, a blue Mustang convertible was parked in the stall right outside Tango’s room, and its hood was still very warm. Hot.
I snaked the .45 out, cocked the hammer back and took a run at the door, smashing it open with a kick, then rolling inside just as the phut of a silenced gun poked two fingers of light directly over my head. I scrambled to my knees, brought the .45 up, and a foot kicked the gun out of my hand.
But I got that hand on my would-be assailant’s other leg, yanked hard, and a cursing, flailing heavyweight came down on top of me, the rod in his fist smashing against my back and shoulders trying to find my skull.
I gave him just enough leeway to think he had me nailed, then drove my head up against the point of his chin and, when he reeled back, grabbed him between the legs and squeezed so hard the scream that started in his throat never got anywhere, choking off into an anguished sob as he jackknifed forward with incredible pain.
That put me over onto my back, and I was under him, with no idea where my .45 had got to, and for all the pain he was in, he did still have that silenced rod in his mitt, he’d managed to hold onto it, so I glommed onto his gun hand before he could get his pain in check, and twisted my grip on his wrist, thumb slipping under the butt of the gun into the fleshy palm, digging my thumbnail in, hoping to make his grasp go away, but instead in the struggle I again heard that little phut and a bullet angled up and into him, his sob whistling off into a throaty rattle that had bubbles in it.
I pushed him off me, still wondering where the .45 had got to, and moved to where the door stood open, and peeked out to see if anybody had heard the noise of the struggle. But there was nothing out there, just the laughter and rock music of that party down the way.
Luck was still with me, it seemed.
Only it wasn’t—I never figured on a second man. Never figured the guy I’d tangled with, who was still giving off his death rattle on the floor, had a friend with him, a friend who would quietly wait in the darkness of the bathroom to see how the fight between his partner and the intruder turned out.
Those well-honed instincts had let down, and the only sign luck was still with me was when the karate chop missed the back of my neck, because I was just starting to turn, the blow hitting between my shoulder blade and spine, sending pain through me like a hot spear and maybe cracking or even breaking a rib, but not killing me, not hardly.
And when he shoved me into that open door, rattling my teeth and banging my head, damn near putting my lights out, he didn’t take time to try another karate chop—maybe he knew enough about me to want to avoid any direct confrontation— and just rushed past me.
In the second I needed to recover, I saw that almost handsome face fly by me, with its squashed nose and lightning bolt scar.
Jaimie Halaquez.
My .45 was M.I.A., but Halaquez had a gun in his hand, another silenced automatic that went phut phut, sending two chunks of doorframe exploding into splinters and flying into my face.
Then he was in the Mustang, squealing out, and flashing a white grin of adios at me—I wasn’t dead, but he’d beaten me. He had beaten me.
Me, with no gun. I didn’t even have a goddamn car, having returned Bunny’s station wagon.
Shit!
The only saving grace was nobody seemed to have heard or seen a thing. Only silenced shots had been fired, and the hand-to-hand had been brief if brutal.
But why hadn’t Halaquez waded in to help his partner?
Hadn’t wanted to risk exposing himself, I guessed. He’d figured his crony would take me out, no trouble, and if not, Jaimie boy would deal with me.
Heaving a disgusted sigh evenly divided between the unkindness of fate and my own stupidity, I went back into the still dark room, shoved the door shut, propped a chair against it, and flipped on the light.
Tango was sprawled on the bed.
What had originally been a pretty face was now a battered mass of welts and bruises; a strip of two-inch wide adhesive covered her mouth, another strip binding her hands behind her. The remnants of her pajama tops were tossed on the floor, and she was naked to her waist, pert perfectly-formed breasts exposed, but there was nothing remotely sexy or erotic about it.
Not unless you were a sick son of a bitch.
I felt my face tighten as I took in the ugly red pits that had been burned into the smooth tanned flesh of her stomach and breasts, the mark of lit cigarettes in the hands of her interrogators. I wished I could have taken longer with the bastard on the floor, given him a slower, more painful sendoff to hell.