Cat pulled out the pistol and shoved it hard up under the man’s jaw. “Tell me,” he said.
“I could be killed for talking to you again,” Rodriguez stammered. “Please, you must go away.”
“You are about to be killed for not talking to me,” Cat said, cocking the pistol.
The man’s eyes bulged. “Suite 800,” he said quickly.
“And who was occupying Suite 800?” Cat asked.
“Please, señor, I can—” Cat pushed the pistol harder against the man’s neck. “Tell me all of it right now,” he said. “I’m not going to ask you again.”
“Suite 800 is permanently rented,” Rodriguez managed to say. “Please, señor, you are hurting me.”
Cat lowered the man from his tiptoes, held him against the wall with one hand, and put the pistol to his forehead. “Go on.”
“A business rents the suite. I don’t know any names.”
“What business?”
“The Anaconda Company.”
“And what business are they in?”
“I don’t know, señor, nobody knows for sure.”
“But you have an idea.”
“I think, perhaps, an illegal business.”
“Drugs?”
“I think, perhaps.”
“Where is the company located?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where are the bills sent? You must know that.”
“The bills are paid in cash. They come, they go in a jet airplane. They always have much cash.”
“Who is the head of the company?”
“I swear to you, señor, I don’t know any names. I don’t deal directly with these people. Not even the manager does. They come, they sit around the pool, they order room service, they pay cash, they go away in their jet.”
Cat produced the photograph of Jinx. “Did you see this girl?”
Rodriguez looked fearfully at the photograph.
“Don’t lie to me, Rodriguez.”
“Yes, once, when they arrived. She was taken immediately upstairs to the suite. She never came down again. I didn’t see them leave. I think she...” He paused.
“Tell me.”
“I think she was drugged. She looked... sleepy. They took her upstairs very quickly. When they left it was at night. I wasn’t on duty.”
“How long were they here?”
“They left on the third of the month. The day after the telephone call.”
“Who is in the suite now?”
“No one. No one has been here since the third.”
“All right, now listen to me carefully, Mr. Rodriguez. You and I and this lady are going up to the eighth floor and have a look around this suite. We’ll use your passkey.”
“Dios,” the man said, quaking, “I cannot do this. I will be seen. I will lose my job, my life even. You do not know these people, señor.”
“Give me your passkey,” Cat commanded.
Rodriguez fumbled in a pocket and produced a key.
Cat handed Meg the pistol. “Keep him here. I’ll be as quick as I can. If he gives you a problem, kill him.” He winked.
Meg took the pistol. “Sit down on the floor,” she said to the man, holding the pistol to his temple.
“Which way?” he asked Rodriguez.
“In the old part of the hotel,” the man replied, breathing hard. “Into the lobby and turn right to the elevators, the one at the far end. For God’s sake, señor, don’t let anyone see you. It is my life.”
Cat left the maintenance closet and closed the door behind him. He walked back into the hotel lobby, went to the right-hand elevator, and looked around him. Only one woman was at the desk, and she was dealing with a guest. He pressed the button, and the doors opened immediately. He got in and reached for the button for the eighth floor. There was no button, just a keyhole. “Shit,” he said aloud to himself. He tried the passkey; to his relief, it worked. The elevator rose. The doors opened into a vestibule. Cat strode to the door of the suite and inserted the key. It opened easily. Instinctively, he reached for the pistol, then remembered he had given it to Meg. He entered a large sitting room, decorated, he imagined, to the owner’s taste. It certainly was not standard hotel decor in the tropics. The furniture was well chosen, with some antique pieces, and there were good pictures on the walls. It had the look of the home of an old-line investment banker, he thought.
Hallways led, left and right, off the room. Cat turned right. He came into a comfortable, panelled library, filled with books, many of them leather-bound. There seemed to be nothing in the room of a personal nature.
He went back to the living room and tried the other hallway. It turned and ran along the rear side of the hotel. Opening doors as he went, he found four large bedrooms, all elegantly decorated, but devoid of anything of interest. At the end of the hall he came to a large door, which was locked. He tried the passkey. It worked. The bedroom inside was as large as the living room and decorated even more richly. There was a large television set, a bar, a couple of sofas, a fireplace, and a huge bed with a canopy. There were closets on either side of the bed. The first held a wardrobe of negligees and expensive dresses. There seemed to be at least three different sizes, and there were labels from Bergdorf Goodman and Bonwit Teller. Shoe racks held at least a couple of dozen pairs of shoes with Charles Jourdan and Ferragamo labels, again in several sizes. A bank of drawers held lacy underwear.
The closet on the other side of the bed held a dozen men’s suits in tropical fabrics. There were no store labels, so Cat looked for a tailor’s label inside a pocket. They were all from Huntsman, in London, and had been made in the last year, but there was no customer’s name in the usual place on the label. There was a stock of shirts and shoes from London makers as well, and a rack of neckties. In the drawers there were underwear and beach clothes, all custom-made. There was nothing in the closet to reveal the identity of the owner, but on all the shirts, there was a monogram, an A.
Cat went methodically through the room, looking for anything else with a name, but found nothing. There was a telephone on a desk, with a card describing in English and Spanish how to make an international call. Cat felt he was where Jinx had been. Next to the phone was a large crystal ashtray and two books of matches. One was the hotel’s, the other, different. It was a large matchbook, made of heavy, enameled black paper. Stamped in gold on the front was a rather good drawing, Cat thought, of a large snake dangling from a tree. On the back was a monogram, an A. He slipped the matches into his pocket.
What else could be in the suite? A kitchen, perhaps. He retraced his steps, and as he entered the sitting room he heard a key scrape in the lock of the front door. Not breaking his stride, he continued straight across the room, down the hall, and into the study. As he ducked into the room, he heard the voices of a man and woman, speaking quietly in Spanish. As far as he knew, there was not another entrance to the suite, but he thought there must be a fire escape. He was about to look for it when a loud noise interrupted the thought. A vacuum cleaner.
Placing the noise in the living room, he walked in that direction and peeped into the room. A woman was pushing the machine a few feet from him, and a man was dusting furniture. Both had their backs to him. He made quickly for the front door. Then the vacuum cleaner stopped.
“Buenos días, señor,” a man’s voice said.
Cat stopped and turned. The man and woman were staring at him. The man spoke again, asking a question in Spanish. Cat had no idea what he was saying.
“It’s okay,” he said, waving a hand at the room. “Go right ahead. I’m just going out for a while.”
“Si, señor,” the man said, smiling. “Gracias.”
“De nada,” Cat said, smiling back at him. He closed the door behind him. The elevator was waiting, its doors open. He inserted the key, turned it, and the elevator started down. Cat took a deep breath and released it. Sweat stood out on his forehead, and his knees felt weak.