The Consummata (17 page)

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.

And when I finally nailed Halaquez, I would remember this beautiful body made hideous.

But at least she wasn’t dead—not yet, anyway.

She
was
unconscious, probably a blessing at the moment, her pulse light and unsteady. When I yanked the tape from her mouth, she never even stirred. I cut her wrists free and released her arms, retrieved my .45 from under a chair, then went over for a better look at the dead man.

He wasn’t as big as Halaquez, but larger than the average Latin—Jaimie did not seem lacking in brutal henchmen from his native land. As the gurgling I’d heard had indicated, the bullet had caught the prick in the throat and exited at the back of his neck. The gun was still in his hand.

I went through his pockets, found nothing except his car keys, some loose cash, and a half-empty pack of cigarettes. His clothes were all well worn with labels common to stores in every big city, and the touch of the professional was there in every detail. Nothing but his basic appearance identified him as a Cuban, with or without a green card.

The drawers of the motel-room dresser were open, and had been tossed, but not much was there—no sexy working clothes, just casual stuff and underthings. She’d arrived, apparently, with a single suitcase, and what was left of it was shredded over by the wall, a blade having gutted its lining. Next to the dead suitcase was the woman’s emptied handbag, by a scattering of the usual female junk, the bag apparently tossed there in disgust.

Whatever Halaquez had been looking for, he hadn’t found it in this room. His next step had been to try to squeeze it out of the girl the hard way.

But now a peculiar little factor had popped up.

Tango wouldn’t have been the type to keep quiet under
that kind of treatment. If she had anything to say, she would likely have talked, not been subjected to beating and burning.

That left just one answer. Whatever Halaquez wanted from her, she either didn’t have...

...or didn’t
know
she had.

Yet somebody
thought
she had it, or that she maybe
knew
something.

I picked up the bedside phone with my handkerchief, dialed the police, told them where to find the trouble, and to send an ambulance.

“I’m a guest here at the Vincalla Motel,” I told the dispatcher.

“Sir, what is your name?”

“John Smith. I’m sure you’ll find it on the register.”

I hung up.

There was nothing more that John Smith, Good Samaritan, could do for Tango now. I rubbed my handkerchief on anything else I might have touched, gave the corpse one last dirty look, then shut the light off, eased out of the room and got back out to the street.

From the south I could hear the wail of sirens over the rock ’n’ rolling partyers.

We were in Bunny’s office now. She looked damn fetching for an older broad in a gold lamé halter top and matching loose pants. She was behind her desk where a .38 was serving as a paperweight on those ancient papers of her husband’s that she’d shared with me earlier.

But her face was again showing her years, as the dismay
over what had happened to Tango mingled with fear generated by the events of recent days.

She said, “But why
torture
her, Morgan? What did they want? What did she know?”

I was seated across from her. “No idea. She was out when I got there, and still out when I split. What did the hospital say?”

Bunny sighed. “Severe concussion and suspected skull fracture. She hasn’t regained consciousness.” The madam covered her face with her hands, her shoulders limp. When she looked up her eyes were misty and tired. “She’s on the critical list.”

“Think the cops can connect her to you?”

“Maybe not right away, but they will. She’s always used the address of her family, on the north end, and all that’s left there is her father, and they won’t get anything from that drunken bum. She paid his bills and went up there a couple times a month, but all he knows is that she worked someplace in Miami. She told him she was a waitress.”

“A waitress who could pay all his bills?”

“Reprobate parents getting their bills paid by their kids, Morg, don’t ask a lot of questions.”

“Good point. Otherwise she stayed here at the Mandor?”

Her shrug was grandiose. “Where else? She has her own room, like the others. My girls are welcome to live here fulltime, if they like. Most, like Tango, have an apartment or motel room somewhere, to get away on their days off, at least.”

“Let’s see her room.”

Bunny sat and watched me, her mouth tight. “Morgan...I think it’s time to let this thing end.”

“Look...”

Her expression beseeched me. “Look at all you’ve brought on, since you got here! Two men dead. And we have a girl who may die because of it.”

“Not my doing, Bunny. And I didn’t bring
anything
on. It was already here.”

“You can’t deny you’ve stirred things up.”

So I dropped the bomb on her.

“Bunny—one of the two men I tangled with in her motel room? Not the one who bought the farm, but...the
other
one?”

“Yes?”

“He was Jaimie Halaquez.”

Her expression fell and all the blood drained from her face.

Silently, I rose, slipped off the sport jacket, draped it over the back of my chair, then I slipped off the sport shirt and turned my back to her.

Showed her the nasty welt there, a welt about the size and shape of the side of a human hand, swung as a weapon.

With my back still to her, I said, “If I hadn’t moved a fraction of a second before he struck the blow, that would have hit my neck. And I’d be on a slab next to your old pal Dickie Best.”

She said nothing. She sat staring at the sheaf of papers and the revolver playing paperweight on top of them.

In the meantime, I got back into my shirt and jacket. “I figure you have a doc on call, right?”

She frowned in confusion, then nodded.

“Well, could you call him, and get him over here to check me out, in between passing out penicillin tablets? I think maybe Halaquez busted a rib for me. I could use taping up, and some decent damn drugs.”

She swallowed, nodded, and reached for her phone.

When she hung up, she said, “Half an hour.”

“Cool. While we’re waiting, let’s go see Tango’s room.”

Tango lived in relative simplicity. Her clothes were few, if expensive, the opposite of the casual things in the dresser at the motel—these were working clothes, or in some cases, evening wear. After all, she’d been known to date Richard Best.

“She didn’t meet johns in this room,” I said.

Bunny said, “No. Each of the girls has her own living quarters, modest but her own. You’ve been in Gaita’s. There are suites designed for entertaining guests—the girls share those. Those spaces are assigned when the client and a hostess are matched up.”

That explained the simplicity of a room bare of decorations except for two bowls of artificial flowers and a few abstract paintings of the starving artist variety. The only expensive item was a 21-inch color television set nestled in one corner with a battered comfy armchair before it. Tango’s small desk held a few cancelled bills, a dictionary, and a dozen historical romances with bodice-bursting damsels and swashbuckling bare-chested heroes on the front—everybody had their fantasies, even a woman who represented other people’s fantasies.

Her irritation with me ever more obvious, Bunny said, “Well? Does it send you any messages?”

I ignored her and went to the closet again. Tango’s shoes were neatly aligned in a rack with a matching handbag above each. Out of curiosity, I took the handbags down one by one and looked in them. Each one had some odd toiletry items along with a few coins. One had a letter from an old friend sent to her home address, four months ago, full of chatter about the other girl’s marriage and children in a more normal life than Tango had managed so far. I noted the street number of Tango’s house, and put the letter back.

But the blue bag held the kicker.

In the side pocket was a worn-edged picture that I held out for Bunny to see.

Softly, she said, “My God...it’s Jaimie Halaquez.”

“I thought Tango didn’t take to men. Especially younger men.”

Bunny frowned and handed the picture back. “That photo doesn’t mean she flipped over him or anything.”

“Hell, Bunny, it’s the only photo she has.”

“So?”

“You ever notice them together? Was Halaquez a client of hers?”

“Morgan, in this business, it’s a business to be together. You know already that he was a client here. Sure, he knew her, but he liked variety too much to single any girl out. Understand, this Halaquez was a real self-styled stud.”

“And an S & M freak. Don’t leave that out.”

“Yes, and not all of the girls were willing to go down that
road. So that does narrow it for you. Within reason, if the money was right? Tango was willing.”

“In other words, two to tango.”

“Very funny.”

“Maybe,” I said, thinking out loud, “she had the same kind of yen and you didn’t know about it. Some women who were abused as young girls develop their own weird kinks.”

The madam didn’t argue that point—she knew all too well how many weird sexual byways there were for human beings to go down.

“Maybe,” Bunny said, “Tango had a thing for Halaquez, at least enough to hang onto his picture.”

“Do you know if she ever saw Halaquez outside of the club?”

“I don’t,” she admitted.

“But we
do
know she sometimes dated her clients outside the Mandor’s doors. Dick Best a case in point.”

Bunny nodded, but then contradicted it with a head shake. “If Tango
did
date Halaquez, she never mentioned it. Nobody asks too many questions around here. And Dick Best is the only one I know of that she dated away from the club.”

I stuck the photo in my pocket and put the handbag back on the shelf. “Think I can beat Gaita out of her room tonight? She can stay here in Tango’s room instead.”

“I’m not crazy about you staying around, Morgan. You’re trouble.”

“You’re telling me? That’s why I want that handy back exit out of her room. Look, I can’t risk a hotel and the cops might spot me on a park bench.”

She sighed, a world-weary one, but then she gave me a little smile that said all was forgiven. Or most, anyway. “All right, Morg, I’ll arrange it.”

“Thanks.”

“Although Gaita may prefer sharing her room with you, to giving it up.”

“She and I can negotiate that. Just make sure she knows I’m coming.”

“Somehow,” Bunny said archly, “I think she’ll
know
when you’re coming. Morgan...what about Tango? How much heat is this liable to raise here at the Mandor?”

“And here I thought you were concerned about Tango as a friend.”

She
whapped
me on the arm—sort of a friendly
whap,
but a
whap
. “Bastard,” she said.