The Rocketeer (20 page)

“I’ve been locked away on a soundstage all day!”

He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Just get in a cab and go to your mom’s in Redlands. Stay there until you hear from me!”

She searched his eyes, wanting to believe him. And yet, part of her was still nursing the notion that this might be some elaborate ruse to get her to ditch Neville. But would even Cliff be so driven that he would have the poor taste to lie about someone being murdered? But—

“Give me one good reason that I should believe a word of this.”

He spoke from the heart with words that could be motivated only by genuine fear for her safety, and a fervency that spoke volumes of what he felt for her. “Because if anything happened to you, I’d go out of my mind, I swear to God I would.”

She melted faster than the half-ton snail ice sculpture that was nearby. “Oh,” she said softly.

Cliff grabbed her and kissed her hard, and then he released her as if she had suddenly become charged with high voltage. For he had spotted, entering the club, Spanish Johnny and Rusty.

To play it safe, he dragged the astonished Jenny down to the floor, completely out of sight, as the two thugs walked to the head of the stairs overlooking the dance floor. Johnny entered the room at the top, which left Rusty standing four feet above Cliff and Jenny, looking around the room.

“That’s them!” he said in a harsh whisper. “The ones with the snapshot!”

Moments later Johnny emerged, and the two of them strolled down the stairs onto the dance floor, casting watchful eyes through the crowd. The dance floor was crowded with happy, swinging couples.

“Go! Right now!” said Cliff urgently.

“What about you?”

“I’ll be okay, I promise. Go on! I’ll call you as soon as I can!”

She clung to him a moment more. Then, giving him a brave smile, she rose and made her way toward the main entrance.

Cliff parted the foliage to make his getaway . . . and then saw that there was no way he could make it to the service hallway without passing in view of the two thugs who were . . .

Standing at Sinclair’s table, talking to him.

To Sinclair! And the way he was talking, he seemed to know them!

Cliff sank back down behind the foliage, now more interested in watching than getting away. Something was definitely going on, and whatever it was, Sinclair was up to his neck in it.

Jenny fought her way through the crowd at the coat check, waving her ticket and keeping an anxious eye out for the two men that Cliff had pointed out. “My wrap, please!” she called.

After what seemed like an endless struggle, like a salmon swimming upstream, she finally managed to get her coat and head for the doors. She gave one last, longing glance around the South Seas Club, hoped that somehow Neville would be able to forgive her—Irma was going to kill her when she found out that Jenny had ditched Neville Sinclair!—and exited through the nearest door.

At precisely the same moment that she left, Lothar entered. He wasn’t wearing a tux, but somehow the bouncers saw fit to let the walking land mass into the club.

Cliff watched Sinclair apparently issuing orders to Rusty and Spanish Johnny, and the two thugs nodded in understanding and walked off to do his bidding.

The thugs who were after Cliff.

Who wanted Cliff because he had the rocket.

Which meant that whoever they worked with wanted the rocket.

Which meant Sinclair was in even deeper than Cliff had surmised.

He knew it. He knew from the moment he’d seen that Limey creep drop a bottle of champagne to the enemy in that stupid film that he had to be no good.

Sinclair was seething as Spanish Johnny and Rusty filled him in on what they had learned. It was madness that all this was taking so long. He had been working one end of the operation, that moronic Valentine had been working the other, and Sinclair had assumed that when they met in the middle, the rocket pack would be sitting waiting for them.

And what did they have? That damned “Cliff” of Jenny’s, the one who had to have the rocket pack in his possession, kept managing through the sheer luck of the stupid to stay one step ahead of them.

Meantime Sinclair had opted for the next best course of action: to wine and dine the young woman, genteelly prying information about this Cliff Secord—as Johnny said he was called—out of her. It hadn’t exactly been a hardship—she was an unbelievably striking young woman. Indeed, another hope of his had been that his courting of Jenny would draw Secord out of hiding in some sort of jealous . . .

All the blood drained from Sinclair’s face.

“The waiter!” he spat out.

Rusty, not understanding, turned and called, “Waiter!”

“It was Secord!” snarled Sinclair.

“What? Where?”

“Here, you imbecile!” he snapped at Spanish Johnny. “And more the fool I! I saw him only from the back before, so I didn’t recognize him immediately! But Jenny must have . . .” His voice trailed off, and he suddenly realized that Jenny should have been back from the women’s room by now.

He forced himself to maintain a polite smile, but when he spoke, his voice was laced with iron. “Secord’s here,” he said. “Somewhere around. He’s dressed as a waiter. He has sandy hair and the belligerent attitude of a bulldog. Find him. And find his Lady Luck . . . I think she may have tried to make a dash for it.”

“And what will you do?”

“Keep up appearances.” Sinclair smiled thinly. “It wouldn’t do to have Neville Sinclair dashing about like a headless chicken. People will know something’s up, and I think it best for all concerned if we keep a low profile, don’t you?”

As soon as the two thugs moved off, Cliff saw his way was clear and seized his chance. He left his hiding place and started in the direction of the service hallway. He kept watching over his shoulder and saw that miraculously, the thugs were looking in every direction except his. He had only a short distance to cover until he reached safety.

And he bumped smack into Lothar.

“ ’Scuse me,” he said quickly, and stepped around, hoping that the giant didn’t have enough brain power to realize where he’d seen him before. This hope lasted for about a half second as the animal growl from Lothar alerted Cliff and he jumped frantically away from the long and grasping arms.

His exit cut off, Cliff turned and dashed out onto the dance floor, disappearing into the crowd. While Cliff wormed his way between the dancing couples, Lothar felt no such need for social niceties—he plowed through the people like a bulldozer, shoving them aside and eliciting screams and curses. Male escorts who felt the dignity of themselves or their dates had been trod upon would turn to chastise the perpetrator, but when they saw the size of him, they quietly turned back to their dates, exasperation clearly on their faces.

Sinclair looked up from his table in reaction to the disturbance and saw the head and shoulders of his henchman cutting a wide swath through the crowd like the dorsal fin of a shark. Immediately he knew what was happening and he half crouched in his chair to try and get a better look.

“Please,” he muttered, “let something go right.”

Cliff saw the swinging doors of the kitchen just ahead and barged through them, squarely nailing a waiter with a tray. Dishes went flying and Cliff spat out a quick apology as he kept going. He had an infallible sense of direction, and that told him that a right turn would bring him back and around to the laundry room.

The waiter, who was on the floor and trying to pull himself together, shouted a curse at Cliff’s departing form as he bent down to clean up the mess, at which point Lothar barreled through like an express train, sending the waiter bellysliding across the floor to get out of his way.

Just up ahead was the laundry room, and Cliff, heart pounding, was congratulating himself. He had done it. He’d used the rocket pack, gotten there in time, gotten Jenny out of there—and even scored major points on their relationship—and now he was going to make a clean getaway as soon as he had the rocket pack. The image of that giant and that creep, Sinclair, standing in the alleyway in helpless frustration as the Rocketeer blasted skyward, free and out of their creepy clutches, was a pleasing one indeed.

He burst into the laundry room, spun, slammed the door, and bolted it. It would take just a few seconds to get his gear on, and even if that behemoth caught up to him, Cliff would simply give him a blast of rocket exhaust right in his ugly mug. Then he would . . .

He turned and screamed.

Where once there had been only three laundry sacks—with his rocket pack securely in the one on the right—there now sat at least two dozen. The place was lousy with laundry sacks, and buried somewhere in that mountain of burlap was his only means of escape.

There came a furious pounding on the door behind Cliff’s head and he moaned softly, “Why me?”

J
enny stood on the curb and waited for a cab to pull up. And as she headed for it, her wrap pulled tightly around her shoulders and her mind working furiously over what Cliff had told her, somebody beat her into the cab. “Excuse me!” she called out, but the cab’s occupant paid her no mind and a moment later the cab pulled out.

She turned, saw another arriving, made a beeline for it, and another couple practically swiped it out of her hands.

She knew what it was. Cabbies made no effort to take single women as fares because they figured single women didn’t tip much, if at all. Men were the ones who showed what great guys they were in front of their dates by tipping generously. If Jenny was going to get a cab, she was practically going to have to throw herself in front of one.

Damn. There was never a big, strong man around when you needed one.

Lothar threw his big, strong shoulder against the door of the laundry room, annoyed that it had taken him a couple of tries to get through. What the hell were they storing in there anyway? Gold? After another moment, though, it didn’t matter as Lothar smashed through, tearing the door from its hinges. Panting, Lothar charged in like an enraged bull and found . . .

Nothing.

Not exactly nothing. There was laundry all over the place, piles and piles, as if someone had gone tearing through the laundry bags and yanked out some of the contents of practically every one.

Was the little creep hiding somewhere in the midst of all this? Was that his plan? If so, it was a damned stupid one, and Lothar started shoveling through the piles looking for some lump that was more solid than the others, some . . .

Then he spotted a pair of boots in the laundry chute. Boots just like the type that punk was wearing. Just like the type he was probably wearing at that moment.

With a roar Lothar leapt for them, and then his roar was drowned out by the ear-shattering explosion. Lothar was blown backward off his feet as the Rocketeer hurtled straight up the laundry chute, out of reach.

In the second-floor ladies’ lounge, several women were checking their makeup in the mirror. A towel girl brought towels to the ladies from a low cart, and then swung around and dropped the used ones down the laundry chute.

Enjoying a peaceful and dignified evening out, away from the insanity that working with Julius and the others entailed, Margaret Dumont primped in the mirror and said in an amused voice to the woman next to her, “This place is really going to the dogs. A few minutes ago”—she thought back to the spectacle of that young couple wrestling behind the dolphin statue—“I saw a couple making whoopee in the bushes.”

Abruptly there was a rumble in the wall behind them, and for a moment all the women thought the same thing—that they were about to be subjected to an earthquake. And then the laundry chute door burst open and out hurtled a jet-propelled, bronze-helmeted man.

As one, the women screamed as the Rocketeer blew out of the chute, moving so quickly that he couldn’t immediately navigate in the unfamiliar surroundings. And when he tried to look around, his finned helmet sent him in the direction of wherever he was looking. As a result, before he could react he smashed directly into Margaret Dumont. The matronly woman let out a yelp and was thrown backward onto the towel cart, her unwilling assailant right on top of her, completely tangled up in arms and legs and dress.

A second later the Rocketeer, Margaret Dumont, and a towel cart blasted out onto the upper mezzanine, plowing through tables and bowling over a couple of men waiting for their dates. People dove out of the way as Margaret Dumont kicked and screamed and demanded to be treated in some manner in accordance with her status.

The cart slammed to a stop against a railing, ejecting the Rocketeer out over the club as he lost his grip on Dumont. The embattled actress sailed in a rather impressive arc before impacting with one of the full-size palm trees that gently broke her fall. It also gently broke at the base with a rather loud snap, and Margaret Dumont was deposited into one of the pools of water.

She sat up, sputtering and spitting up water, and noticed that people were laughing and pointing and actually even applauding. They probably thought it was funny. Julius would have thought it was funny too. She never did understand Julius’s sense of humor and now, looking around at the amused faces, she decided she didn’t understand anybody’s sense of humor anymore.