Hood of Death (16 page)

"No, but I get the picture."

"We're watching her. Do you have any suggestions for our next move here? Do you want to continue as Deming?"

"I'd protest if you told me not to." It was Hawk's way. He had their next moves planned, but he always asked for
suggestions.

Nick produced the packet of letters addressed to the girls and described them. "With your permission, sir, I'll mail them. There must be a weak link among them. I think it will make a strong impression. Let them wonder — who's next?"

Hawk produced two cigars. Nick accepted one. They lit them. The aroma was strong. Hawk studied his thoughtfully. "A worthwhile needle, Nick. I wish I had thought of it. You'd better write four more."

"More girls?"

"No, extra copies for these addresses for Pong-Pong and Anne. We're not completely sure where they get their mail." He checked a notebook and wrote rapidly, tore out a page and gave it to Nick. "It will do no harm if a girl gets more than one. It would weaken the threat if one got none."

"You're right."

"Now another thing. I detect a certain sadness in your usual jolly attitude. Look." He put a five by seven photoprint in front of Nick. "Taken at the South Gate Motor Hotel."

In the picture were Wheel-and-Deal Tyson and Jeanyee Ahling. It was a poor sideshot taken in bad light, but you could see the faces. Nick handed it back. "So she did scrub Tyson. I was almost sure."

"Feel better?"

"Yes. And happy for Tyson. He went out satisfied."

"I'm glad, Nicholas, that your research is so thorough."

"That hood gimmick is fast. The gas must have astonishing expansion and lethal qualities. Then it seems to disperse or break down quickly."

"Well work on it. Of course the lab will find it easier when you bring back a sample."

"Where will I find one?"

"You have me there, and I know you know it." Hawk frowned. Nick kept quiet. "We ought to have everyone under surveillance who has anything to do with Akito or the girls or the men in Pennsylvania. You know how hopeless that would be, with our staff. But I do have a small lead. Many of our friends go often to the Chu Dai Restaurant. On the shore below Baltimore. Know it?"

"No."

"The food is excellent. They've been open four years and do a big gross. It's one of the places with a dozen big banquet rooms that cater to weddings and business parties and such. The owners are two Chinese and they check out clean. Especially so since Congressman Reid has a piece of the action."

"Chinese again. How frequently I catch a whiff of Chicom possibilities."

"Quite so. But why? And where does Judas-Bormann fit in?"

"We
know
him." Nick listed slowly, "Selfish, greedy, cruel, ruthless, cunning — and in my opinion mad as a hatter."

"But every so often we peer into the looking glass and there he is," Hawk added meditatively. "What a combination it might be. Chicoms using him because they need Caucasian fronts, connections, heaven knows what."

"Do we have a man in the Chu Dai?"

"We had. We let him get out because he found nothing. And that lack of staff again. It was Kole. He posed as a slightly rummy parking lot attendant. He found nothing but he said the place smelled wrong."

"That was the kitchen." Hawk did not give his usual small smile. He was really worried about this one. "Kole is a good man. There must be something there."

Hawk said, "The inside help is almost all Chinese. But we've been in as phone men and we helped sand and wax floors. Our boys found nothing that way either."

"Should I check it?"

"Whenever you wish,
Mr. Deming.
It's expensive but we want you to live well."

For four days and nights Nick was Jerry Deming, pleasant young man at the right parties. He wrote the extra letters and mailed all of them. Barney Manoon had a look at the former Lord estate, posing as a stale Conservation man. It was guarded and deserted.

He went to a party at the Manger Annapolis given by one of the seven thousand Arabian princes who love to swing in the city where the money originates. Watching the fat smiles and never-still eyes he decided that if he really were a Jerry Deming he would chuck the deal and get as far from Washington as possible. After eight weeks it was boring.

Everyone played a role. You weren't really Jerry or John... you were Oil or State or White House. You never talked about vital or interesting matters, you chattered on the fringes of them. His frown changed to a warm and genial expression as he spotted Suzi Quong.

About time! It was his first sight of one of the girls since Jeanyee's death. They and Akito and the others were staying out of sight or busy with other matters, about which Nick Carter as N3 would have given a lot to know. Suzi was part of a Utile cluster around the prince.

The lad was a bore. His hobby was blue movies and staying off the big, rich peninsula between Africa and India as much as he could. He had his interpreter explain, twice, that the hors d'oeuvres for this little get together were especially flown from Paris. Nick had tasted them. They were excellent.

Nick eased his way to Suzi. Caught her eye by planned chance, and reintroduced himself. They danced. After small talk he isolated the chic Chinese girl, snared a pair of drinks and let fall the key question. "Suzi, I've had dates with Ruth Moto and Jeanyee Ahling. Haven't seen them around for ages. Are they abroad, do you know?"

Of course, I remember, you're the Jerry Ruth is going to try and help make a connection with her father." It was too quick. "She thinks a lot of you." Her expression clouded. "But you didn't hear about Jeanyee?"

"No."

"She's dead. Killed in an accident in the country."

"No! Not Jeanyee."

"Yes. Last week."

"Such a young, lovely girl..."

"It was a car or an airplane or something."

After an appropriate pause Nick raised his glass and said softly, "To Jeanyee."

They drank. It established a cord of intimacy. He spent the rest of the evening weaving the first-line-aboard into a hawser. The connecting cable was secured so swiftly and easily that he knew he was having help on her end of the lines. Why not? With Jeanyee gone, if the other side was still interested in the services of "Jerry Deming" they would have instructed the rest of the girls to strengthen contact.

When the doors were opened to another large private room in which was spread a buffet, Nick escorted Suzi into the feeding chamber. Although the prince had engaged a number of conference-banquet-party rooms, his name must have gotten out on the sucker-list circuit. The rooms were crowded, the booze and lavish buffet consumed with gusto by a large number of Washington casuals whom Nick recognized as party crashers. Good luck to them, he thought, as he watched a neatly dressed couple fill plates with beef and turkey — spread the goodies at home.

Shortly after midnight he discovered that Suzi planned to take a taxi home. "... I live near Columbia Heights."

She said her cousin had brought her and had had to leave.

Nick wondered if the other five girls were attending functions tonight. Each one brought by a cousin — so that she would be available to contact Jerry Deming. "Let me drive you home," he said. "I'm going to take a little spin anyway. It would be nice to go by way of the park."

"That's sweet of you..."

And sweet it was. She was quite willing to stop at his apartment for a late nighter. She was delighted to take her shoes off and nestle "just for a moment" on the couch overlooking the river.

Suzi was as cute and cuddly as one of the pretty Chinese dolls you find in the better San Francisco shops. All charm and smooth skin and gleaming black hair and attentiveness. Her conversation was smooth.

And that gave Nick his lead. Smooth! He recalled Jeanyee's polish, and the way the girls had talked while he eavesdropped in the Pennsylvania mountains. All of the girls fitted a mold — they behaved as if taught and polished for an objective, as the best madams used to school their courtesans.

It was more subtle than just providing a group of superior playmates for affairs like the one at the ex-Lord place. Hans Geist could handle that, but it went deeper. Ruth and Jeanyee and Suzi and the rest were...
experts?
Yes, but top teaching might make experts. He pondered while Suzi blew warm breath against his chin.
Dedicated.
That was it He decided to push.

"Suzi, I wish I could get in touch with Jeanyee's cousin. I suppose I could find him somehow. She said he might have a very interesting proposition for an oil man."

"I think I can reach him. Would you like me to have him call you?"

"Please do. Or do you think it might be too soon after — after what happened to her?"

"It might be better. You would be — someone she wanted to help. Almost like one of her last wishes."

That was an interesting angle. He said, "But are you sure you know the right one? She may have many cousins. I've heard about your Chinese families. I think he lives in Baltimore."

"Yes, that's the one..." She stopped. He hoped that Suzi was such a good actress that she would take her cue too quickly and the truth would slip out. "At least, I think he does. I can reach him through a friend who knows the family well."

"I'll be awfully grateful," he murmured, kissing the top of her head.

He kissed much more of her, for Suzi had learned all her lessons well. Instructed to captivate, she went all out. She did not have Jeanyee's contortionist's skill, but her smaller, resilient body offered enthusiastic vibrations especially her own. Nick fed her compliments like syrup, and she lapped them up. Under the agent there was a woman.

They slept until after seven, when he made coffee and brought it to her in bed and awakened her with proper gentle affection. She tried to insist on a cab but he wouldn't have it — protesting that if she insisted she was angry with him.

He drove her home, and noted the address off 13th Street It was not the one listed in AXE's records. He phoned it in to the data office. At six-thirty, as he was about to dress for what he dreaded as a boring evening — Jerry Deming was no longer fun — Hawk called him. Nick switched on the scrambler and said, "Yes, sir."

"I noted the new address for Suzi. That only leaves you three girls to go. Extracurricular, I mean."

"We played some Chinese checkers."

"Imagine. So fascinating you kept at it all night?" Nick refused the bait Hawk knew he would call in an address promptly, deduced he had left Suzi in the morning. "I have some news," Hawk went on. "The contact number you gave Villon was called. Heaven knows why they would bother checking it at this late date unless we are up against Prussian thoroughness or a bureaucratic boggle. We gave nothing away and the caller hung up, but not before our countercircuit established the area. The call was from area code three-o-one."

"Baltimore."

"Very probably. Add that to something else. Last night Ruth and her father went to Baltimore. Our man lost them in the city but they were headed south of the city. Note the connection?"

"The Chu Dai Restaurant."

"Yes. Why don't you drive up there and have a nice dinner? We think the place is innocent, which is all the more reason why N3 might find out otherwise. Stranger things have happened in the past."

"O.K. I'll leave at once, sir."

There was more suspicion or intuition about the Baltimore place than Hawk would say. The way he put it —
we think think the place is innocent
— was a cautionary signal if you knew the logical workings of that intricate mind.

Nick hung up his dinner jacket, donned the shorts with Pierre in its special pocket and the two incendiary caps forming a V where his legs joined his pelvis, and put on a dark suit. Hugo the stiletto was on his left forearm, and Wilhelmina under his arm in the especially fitted, tilted sling. He carried four ballpoint pens — only one of which could write. The other three were Stuart's grenades. He carried two cigarette lighters, the heavier one with an identification knob on its side was the one he treasured. Without the ones like it he would still be in the Pennsylvania mountains, probably buried.

At 8:55 he turned over the Bird to a parking lot attendant of the Chu Dai Restaurant, which was a lot more impressive than its name. It was a cluster of connected buildings on the shore with giant parking lots and much glowing neon. A large, obsequious Chinese maitre d' greeted him in an entrance lobby that could have been used for a Broadway theatre. "Good evening. Do you have a reservation?"

Nick handed him the five-dollar bill folded in his palm. "Right here."

"Yes, indeed. For one?"

"Unless you see someone who would like to make it two."

The Chinaman chuckled. "Not here. The Oasis downtown for that. But first you have a good meal with us. Just three or four minutes. Wait in here please." He gestured grandly at a room furnished in the carnival decor of a North African harem with Oriental touches. Amid the red plush, satin drapes, bold gold tassels and luxurious couches a king-size color TV flamed and bleated.

Nick grimaced. "I'll have a breath of air and a smoke."

"So sorry, there's nowhere to walk. We had to use it all for the parking lots. You can smoke in here."

"I may want to rent a couple of your private meeting rooms for an all-day business conference and banquet. Anybody handy to show me around?"

"Our convention office closes at five. A meeting for how many people?"

"Six hundred." Nick picked the respectable figure out of the air.

"Wait right here." The Chinese factotum put up a velvet cord which caught the people behind Nick like fish in a weir. He hurried away. One of the potential customers caught by the rope, a flush-faced jolly with a gorgeous woman in a red gown, grinned at Nick.