My jaw throbbed with pain.
"Think you're a pretty smart son of a bitch, don't you Carter?"
I winced mentally. He'd blown my cover, all right. I wondered if he had told anyone else yet. Not that it made a lot of difference. The way things looked at the moment, he would have all the time in the world to tell whoever he wanted.
"I don't feel very smart right now," I admitted.
He permitted himself a slight smile. "I finally remembered, about an hour ago. Nick Carter. You work for AXE."
Damn heroin! It will sometimes do that: trigger a long-forgotten memory. I'd seen it happen before.
"It was about four years ago," he went on. "Tom Murphy pointed you out to me down in Florida."
"Nice company you keep," I sneered. Beneath his façade of being a distinguished lawyer, the dapper gray-haired Murphy was one of the country's most successful purveyors of pornography. And in Murphy's case, it wasn't just a matter of sex and skin; he dealt in real filth.
Spelman jerked the pistol at me threateningly. "Who else is in this with you?"
I shook my head. "If you know I'm Nick Carter, you know I usually work alone."
"Not this time. As soon as I remembered who you were, I called Beirut. Su Lao Lin is dead. Charlie Harkins is dead. Harold is in the hospital."
"So?" At least
that
part of my plan had worked.
Spelman smirked. "So you couldn't be working alone this time. That Chinese gal was killed almost an hour and a half after your flight took off."
"Oh?" I caught myself. It occurred to me that if Spelman thought I had other people working with me, it could buy me some time. I might even be able to implicate some of the legitimate members of Franzini's family. They might prove it a hoax soon enough, but it would cause some consternation at least.
I put that last thought out of my mind. My first job was not to cause consternation. It was to get the hell out of here alive. Right now, the odds didn't look too good.
"If I did have anyone working with me," I fenced, "why do you think I'd tell you?"
The muzzle of the Luger described a small circle in the air. "Popeye Franzini is gonna want the whole story," he said. Another little circle in the air. "And when I go tell him, I'm gonna give him every little bit of it."
Another point in my favor! Spelman hadn't told anyone yet. If I could just get rid of him before he got rid of me, things might start looking up. Starting from an unarmed semi-prone position on a soft bed was not my idea of a good start, but I was going to have to do something.
I had to get him close enough to make a grab at him and the only way I would be able to do that would be if I could provoke him into attacking me. The idea of deliberately provoking an attack from an armed, flying heroin addict wasn't the happiest one I had ever had. My chances were extremely slim. On the other hand, I didn't see any alternative.
"You're an ass, Spelman," I said.
He jerked the gun at me. It seemed to be his favorite gesture.
"Start talking, jerk, or you're going to die."
"Shove it!" I exploded. "You can't kill me until you know who I'm working with. You know that. Popeye wouldn't like that, Larry. Use your head — if you've got one with that snootful of horse running through your veins."
He thought about that one for a moment. Under normal circumstances, I think Larry Spelman was a reasonably bright man. Walking on a cloud of heroin, he was having trouble shifting the direction of his thoughts.
I kept talking. The more I talked, the longer I would live. "How did a nice Jewish boy like you get in the Mafia, Larry?"
He ignored me.
I tried another gambit. "Does your mother know she raised a heroin addict, Larry? She must be proud of herself. How many other mothers can say their sons turned out to be dope addicts who spend most of their lives pushing around a fat old man in a wheelchair? I'll bet she talks about you all the time, you know: 'My son the doctor, 'My son the lawyer, then your old lady pops up with 'My son the addict'…"
It was childish and it was hardly throwing him into an insane rage. But it did annoy him, if only because my voice was interrupting his junk-shrouded thinking.
"Shut up!" he ordered calmly enough. He took a half step out of the chair he was sitting on and almost casually smashed at me with the side of the Luger.
But this time I was ready.
I twisted my head to the right to avoid the blow and on the same instant flicked my left hand upward and outward, catching his wrist with a jarring karate chop that should have caused him to drop the gun, but didn't.
I rolled left on the bed, catching his wrist in my grip and pressing it palm-up against the white sheets, then lowering my shoulder over my upper arm to apply maximum pressure. His other arm circled my waist, trying to pull me back off the pinned hand.
He had my right arm immobilized against my own body. I made a quick, convulsive move, arching my back and getting one knee underneath me for leverage, and was able to free my arm. Now I had both hands free to work on his gun hand, the left one pressing his wrist flat in the tightest grip I could manage, the right one clawing at his fingers, trying to bend them back away from the gun.
I pried one finger loose and began bending it back slowly, inexorably. His fingers were fantastically strong. The pressure around my waist suddenly eased. Then his free hand snaked over my shoulder, and long bony fingers clawed at my face, hooking under my jawbone and yanking my head back, trying to break my neck.
We struggled silently, grunting with the effort. I worked on that gun finger, striving for leverage, while at the same time using every bit of my will power and muscles to keep my head down.
I gained an eighth of an inch with the finger, but at the same time I could feel my head being forced back. Spelman's fingers dug deep into my throat under my jaw, pressing my mouth grotesquely out of shape, his palm flattening my nose. In a moment, with the carotid artery cut off, I would lose consciousness.
A pink haze clouded my eyes and white streaks of pain flashed through my brain.
I opened my mouth and bit down hard on one of Spelman's fingers, feeling my teeth slicing into it like it was a piece of barbecued rib. Hot blood welled into my mouth as my teeth ground into his knuckle, seeking the joint's weakness, then slashing through the tendons, crushing the delicate bone.
He screamed and jerked his hand free, but my head went with it, cocked into his finger by my teeth. I ripped at it savagely, like a dog with a bone, feeling the blood smear ray lips and face. At the same time I increased the pressure on his gun hand. His finger was bending now, and I only had to snap it backward.
But my aching jaws were weakening and I started losing my grip on his finger. With a sudden wrench, he tore free, but simultaneously, the fingers of his other hand loosened their grip on Wilhelmina and the Luger fell to the floor next to the bed.
Locked in each other's arms, we writhed on the bed in straining agony. His fingernails sought my eyeballs but I buried my head in his shoulder for protection and grabbed for his groin. He twisted his hips to protect himself and we rolled off the bed, onto the floor.
Something sharp and unyielding jammed into the side of my head and I realized that I had hit the corner of the bedtable. Now Spelman was on top, his sharp-featured face inches from mine, his teeth bared in a maniacal grin. One fist slammed into the side of my face, while the other hand pressed against my throat in a choke hold, weakened by his savaged finger.
I tucked my chin into my neck the best I could and stabbed at his eyes with extended fingers, but he twisted his head at the last minute to protect them, shutting them tightly.
I grasped one big ear and jerked savagely, twisting. His head snapped back around and I slammed the palm of my hand into his beaky nose. I could feel the cartilage snap loose under the force of the blow, and blood spurted out over my face, blinding me.
Spelman let out an agonized cry as I pulled loose from his grasp and rolled free. For a moment we faced each other on all fours, panting, gasping for breath, blood-smeared, two wounded animals in a confrontation.
Then I spotted Wilhelmina off to the side and near the bed table. From my hands and knees I went into a headlong dive, sliding forward on my stomach as I hit the floor, arms outstretched, fingers grasping for the gun. My fingernail scratched against the butt of the pistol and I lunged again. I felt a great exultation as my palm came flat down on the grip and my fingers circled it familiarly.
I had the gun, but like some big bony cat, Spelman was on top of me, his big hand pinning my outstretched arm, his other fist slamming like a piston into my ribs. I twisted onto my back, rolling my shoulder from left to right and pulling up my knees so that my legs were doubled against my chest.
Then I shoved violently outward with my feet, like an uncoiling spring. One foot caught Spelman in the stomach, the other in the chest, and he flew backward, breaking his grip on my wrist. He landed on his butt, the momentum carrying him over on his back. Then he rolled to the right, twisting his head down and under and came up on all fours, facing me.
He shifted to his knees, hands raised, slightly cupped, ready to attack. His face was a mess of blood from his broken nose. But single-minded bestiality glared from the pale blue eyes.
I shot him full in the face, at a range of about eight inches. His features seemed to collapse inward but he remained upright on his knees, his body swaying.
He was already dead but instinctively my finger moved twice more on the trigger, pouring two more bullets into that battered face.
Then the body toppled forward and lay inert on the carpet before me, one lifeless arm flopping across my leg. I stayed where I was, gasping for breath, my chest heaving. The side of my head throbbed from the blow by the gun butt and it felt as if at least two or three ribs had been cracked. It was five minutes before I could finally stagger to my feet, and then I had to hold onto the bed table to keep from falling.
At first, I was afraid the sound of three shots would bring someone running, but in my befogged state I couldn't think of what I could do about it if anyone did, so I just stood there stupidly, trying to put my battered senses back together. In any other city in the world, the police would have been knocking on my door within minutes. I had forgotten I was in New York, where few cared and where no one got involved if he could help it.
At last I stepped over Spelman's body and staggered into the bathroom. Ten minutes in a steaming hot shower followed by a couple of minutes of biting cold did wonders for my bruised body and helped clear my mind.
From what Spelman had said, I was pretty sure he hadn't gone to anyone else with his information, once he had figured out who I was. I tracked back in my head. He had said, specifically in fact, something about
"when
Popeye Franzini finds out." Good enough. I was clear on that score, then, at least for the moment. Or at least I could hope I was.
I still faced a problem right at the moment. Being found in the same room with the battered corpse of Larry Spelman was entirely out of the question. There was no way such a situation could be an asset in my relations with the Franzini family. And I certainly didn't want any interference from the police. I'd have to get rid of him.
And I'd have to get rid of him in a way that he wouldn't be found for a while.
The Franzinis would be upset about Larry Spelman's absence, they would be in a rage if he turned up dead. And a rage can start people thinking: I'd showed up in Beirut one day, and four days later the Mafia's best penman in the Middle East was dead, along with their borrowed Chinese agent. Then, less than twenty-four hours after my arrival in New York, one of Franzini's top lieutenants was killed. It was a trend I didn't want the Franzinis to ponder. Larry Spelman couldn't be found just yet.
I thought about it while I dressed. What do you do with six feet five inches of dead and battered gangster? I couldn't exactly take him down to the lobby and hail a cab.
In my head, I ran through what I knew about the hotel, from the time I had come in the lobby with Louie, Manitti and Locallo, until the moment I had awakened with Wilhelmina's muzzle staring at me. There wasn't much, just a vague impression of heavy red carpets, gilt-framed mirrors, red-jacketed bellhops pushing buttons on self-service elevators, antiseptic hallways, a laundry room a few doors from my room.
Nothing much helped. I looked around my room. I had slept in it for several hours, almost died in it, in fact, but I hadn't really looked at it. It was pretty standard, a little mussed up at the moment, but standard. Standard! That was the key! Virtually every New York hotel room has a not-too-evident connecting door leading to the room next to it. The door was always securely locked, and they never gave you the key unless you had ordered connecting rooms. Nonetheless, that door was always or almost always, there.
Once I had thought of it, it was right there staring me in the face. The door next to the closet, of course. It just blended into the woodwork so nicely that you never really noticed it. I tried the handle perfunctorily, but of course it was locked.
That was no problem. I turned the lights all out in my room and put my eye to the crack between the floor and the bottom edge of the door. There was no light coming from the other side. That meant it was either empty or the occupant was asleep. At that hour, probably asleep, but it was worth checking.
My room was 634. I dialed 636 and held my breath. I was in luck. I let it ring ten times and then hung up. I turned the lights back on and selected two steel picks from the set of six which I always carry in my toilet kit. After another moment, the connecting door was unlocked.
Opening it, I moved quickly to the other wall and turned on the light; it was unoccupied.