by Jon Land
“Hey, you inside! Help! Open the door! This guy’s sick!”
McCracken could feel himself and the doorman being observed through the peephole.
“Come on!” he urged, striking the door harder.
It finally opened and a short, slender Oriental man stepped out.
“I don’t know what happened,” Blaine explained, as he helped drag the doorman in. “He just collapsed.”
The door closed behind them.
“Excellent performance,” came the voice of a woman through thin raps of solitary applause. And then Blaine saw the gun in the Oriental’s hand. “Now, if you would be good enough to put your hands in the air …”
T.J. Brown met his air force contact for lunch five hours after depositing the computer disk on his desk. The captain’s name was Alan Coglan and T.J. had become friendly with him during research for a story he had done a few months back on the new breed of test pilots.
Coglan arrived at the restaurant late and approached the table nervously, face as stiff as his air force uniform.
“Where did you get this?” he asked, holding the disk in his hand and making no move to sit down.
“Does it matter?”
“I’ll say it does.” Now Coglan seated himself but kept his legs outside the table. He had left his overcoat on. T.J. watched him smother the disk with a napkin and slide it across the table. “I’m giving this back to you because I want nothing to do with it. You never met me, understand? And if you won’t tell me how you got this disk, go to the FBI and tell them—right now before it’s too late.”
T.J.’s eyes showed fear. “Al, you’re scaring the shit out of me. That ain’t no way to treat a friend. All this over a goddamn flight plan?”
“A goddamn flight plan,” Coglan parodied. “Sure, the goddamn orbital flight plan of the space shuttle Adventurer.”
McCracken raised his hands and let the small Oriental push him against the wall in order to search him. The man found his Browning but kept right on jostling him up and down until he was satisfied that was all Blaine had been carrying.
He turned slowly and faced an elegant woman dressed in a blue sequined gown.
“Your errand boy here didn’t take my wallet, Madame Rosa,” Blaine told her.
The woman smiled comfortably. “I thought I’d give you the pleasure of telling me who you are and what you’re doing here yourself.” Her eyes moved to the Oriental. “Chen, show him to my study.”
The Oriental led Blaine down a lavishly appointed hallway lined with original artwork and antique sculptures displayed on pedestals. They stopped at the last door down, and Chen waited inside with him until Madame Rosa made her appearance.
“Stay by the door,” she instructed him.
Chen bowed slightly and took his leave.
Madame Rosa closed the door behind him.
McCracken glanced around the room. It contained a strange mix of colonial furniture and modern technology. A row of video screens was built into the wall above a rolltop desk. A board with either red or green lights flashing for each of the brownstone’s rooms rested on an ancient cherry carpenter’s table.
“So that’s why my ruse didn’t work,” Blaine said, eyes back on the monitors, specifically one that showed the brownstone’s front. Five others provided different views of the building’s exterior.
“It was quite a performance,” said Madame Rosa.
“I aim to please.”
“Just so long as you’re not contemplating any encores in here. Chen is quite adept at dealing with intruders. He would be most pleased if I turned you over to him.”
“Can he buy his clothes in men’s sizes yet?”
Madame Rosa cracked a smile which held no trace of amusement. “All others who underestimated him were buried soon after. I brought Chen over from China. His reputation preceded him.”
McCracken walked about the room, inspecting it. “In which case he must fit in perfectly at this glorified whorehouse. Tell me, did you ever consider putting a red light over the front door?”
Madame Rosa’s face grew taut with impatience. “You mentioned Mr. Easton to the doorman outside.”
“Yes, I suppose I did.”
“If you’re here to threaten closing me down, forget it. I’m protected … all the way to Washington.”
Blaine’s dark eyes dug deep into the madam’s. “Lady, you piss me off and I won’t close you down, I’ll blow you up.”
“You worked with Easton?”
“Let’s say we fished in the same stream and I’m taking over his boat. We have a code in our business that lives on after death. I’m here to find out who killed him.”
Madame Rosa’s sequined gown seemed to blink. “I told everything I know to the others.”
“I like hearing things firsthand.”
“And just who are you?”
“The name’s Blaine McCracken if it matters.”
“It doesn’t.”
“We were talking about Easton. A regular customer, I presume.”
The woman nodded. “Twice a month when he could fit it into his schedule.”
“Same days?”
She shook her head. “Never. His work and security factors made that impossible. Sometimes he would book his appointments only hours in advance, sometimes days. Monday was different.”
“How so?”
“We had filled a … special order for him. He had been waiting for some time.”
The twins, McCracken realized. What kind of world had he entered here?
“That distresses you, Mr. McCracken?”
“Treating people like they were something out of a Sears catalogue has never rubbed me the right way.”
“Then consider yourself in a minority. People need relief, refuge, a place where their wildest dreams can be made a reality. A house like mine releases people’s pent-up inhibitions in a way that hurts no one.”
“Tell that to Easton … and his twins.”
Madame Rosa hesitated. “That was an entirely different situation.”
“And quite puzzling, if you ask me.” Blaine walked over to the bank of six video monitors. “I assume there’s another of these at your security station.”
“Of course.”
Blaine nodded. “So two men were able to bypass all this surveillance to get in and out of the building and murder three people in between. Something smells.”
“They were professionals.”
“So am I.”
“Maybe the killers were just better.”
“More likely they had inside help.”
Madame Rosa’s features flared. “I will not stand here and—”
“I’m not finished yet. Not only did they get in and out without being seen, they also knew exactly what room Easton would be found in. No need for trial and error, right?”
“He used the same room all the time,” she replied defensively.
“But someone would have had to tell the killers that, wouldn’t they? And maybe this same person, or persons, looked the other way, perhaps pulled the plug on your million-dollar surveillance for five minutes or so Monday afternoon.” Blaine paused. “You’re still standing there, madame.”
“Your conclusions are unfounded. Discretion has always been a primary concern here. My people go through more security checks than the President’s staff.”
“What about beyond your people?” he challenged her. “Someone might have known something. Enough.”
“No,” the woman replied after a pause long enough to convince Blaine she was holding something back.
“Madame Rosa,” he began more compassionately, forming a lie, “I’m here on no one else’s authority but my own. This is purely personal. The killers of Tom Easton cannot be allowed to go unpunished. Otherwise, none of our kind are safe.”
“There is nothing I know that can help, I assure you.” Her eyes softened and she seemed to feel less threatened. “But if there’s anything else I can do …”
Blaine nodded
. “I’m retracing all of Easton’s steps up to the time he died. I’d like to see the room where he was killed.”
Chapter 6
“I’LL HAVE CHEN SHOW you upstairs,” Madame Rosa said. “But the authorities have been over the room a dozen times. You won’t find anything they haven’t already.”
“Won’t know that till I try, madame.”
Madame Rosa accompanied Chen and Blaine to the stairs and left them to go up on their own. Following behind the Oriental, Blaine drastically altered his estimation of the man, or perhaps just conceded it. He had known Chen’s kind many times over the years, mostly in ‘Nam. Quick, silent killers who could move with the air and vanish into the wind. They were nimble and lithe, capable of killing efficiently with their bare hands. McCracken had heard of several large and powerful men like himself who had fallen prey to their misjudgments of killers like Chen. He would have to make sure he didn’t follow them.
Blaine kept his distance as Chen led him to the third floor and unlocked a door no different from the others.
The inside of the room was something else again.
Obviously, Washington or Langley or both had decreed that it be left as it was, and no amount of days since the killing could stop Blaine’s stomach from pitching. The blood was everywhere, dried and blotchy, splattered against the walls and floor, soaked into the sheets. The scent of incense was thick in the air, but nothing could erase the lingering smells of death or the feeling of it. McCracken felt certain that even blindfolded he would have been able to pick this room as the one where violent death had occurred. A bit queasy, he stepped farther inside. Chen remained in the corridor and pulled the door three quarters closed.
Blaine could see it all happening in his mind. The children rolling atop Easton, young faces mechanical and uncertain, innocence adding to their fear and thus the perversity of the scene. Then the doors bursting open and two men rushing through, hot bullets tearing from their guns barrels, separating blood and bone from body and spilling them about. Thoughts of the confused, dying children made Blaine tremble, and suddenly the room felt ice cold.
He had to get out. Of course Madame Rosa had been right about there being nothing up here for him to find. But still he’d had to see and feel it all for himself. That much accomplished, he moved for the door.
In the corridor Chen was gone.
That did not fit. His orders would have been to stick close to this intruder into the private world of Madame Rosa. Then where was he?
Blaine pushed the question aside. He just wanted to be rid of this place. There was nothing that could be of any help to him here. He descended the stairs on his own, leery now, senses sharp as an animal’s at a killing field. He reached the ground floor. The brownstone felt deserted.
There was a noise down the hallway in the direction of Madame Rosa’s study, too brief to be identified but sharp enough to be out of place. Blaine moved toward it. Halfway down the corridor he drew the Browning pistol Madame Rosa had returned to him before permitting him to go upstairs.
He neared the woman’s office, uncomfortable with the silence. The door was ajar, and Blaine saw that the room was dark inside save for the light stolen from a window and the dull haze cast by the video monitoring screens. He was operating on instinct now, and it was instinct that led him through the door gun-first.
And instinct that made him pull his wrist back fast so the swirling object struck his gun instead of his hand. The Browning went flying.
Chen came at Blaine with his nunchuku, swinging them hard and fast in a blur of motion. Blaine ducked and a china lamp shattered into a thousand pieces. Blaine back-pedaled, steadying himself. The effectiveness of “nunchuks,” twin foot-long wooden blocks connected by wire or cord, was due mostly to myth. The Americans had made them into a flashy weapon when in truth they were the least effective and glamorous of any weapon from feudal Japan. McCracken had never had much faith in or fear of the nunchuks. You just had to keep your calm and seize the advantage when it came.
Chen charged at him again, snapping the nunchuks in a straight overhead angle, using one as a fulcrum to whip the other out from the cord. Blaine felt the hard wood whistle by his ear twice, dodging at the last instant both times. Chen now seemed like a cobra frustrated by the mongoose, his moves rushed and less certain, sweat forming on his brow. The advantage became Blaine’s until he tripped over something in the dim light and went sprawling. He found himself almost eye to eye with a dying Madame Rosa, whose head lay in the blood pouring from the narrow slit in her throat. So it must be wire, not cord, that strung the twin sections of the nunchuks together, and the wire was what Chen had used to do the job.
Chen swooped at him with a throaty scream and swung the nunchuks in a roundhouse fashion. McCracken managed to get to the side and raise his arm fast enough to keep the weapon from a killing blow, taking the full force on the fatty part of his forearm. The pain exploded horribly, but there was no time to be slowed by it. Blaine grasped the wooden section hard and pulled, only Chen went with his action instead of resisting it, coming straight in and lashing a kick under his chin as McCracken struggled to rise.
Blaine felt himself drifting backward, drifting altogether. His head banged against a table and he managed to move it in time to avoid Chen’s next strike, which split the table in two, showering both of them with splinters. Chen was off-balance now and Blaine came in hard against his legs, using his superior size and strength to its best advantage. He shoved Chen backward, but again the Oriental flowed with the move, using McCracken’s own momentum to smash him headlong into the wall. The nunchuks came down hard on his muscular back and Blaine felt his whole spine go numb.
Somehow he found the strength to rise and this time it was Chen who did the underestimating, coming in with a wide strike to finish him. The wood whistled through the air in a long arc, too long, giving Blaine the time to dart inside Chen’s center and grab his flailing arm when the nunchuk strike was well past its impact point. Blaine threw his right hip across the Oriental’s small body and circled his thin neck hard with his free arm with enough force to throw Chen up and over his hip. The Oriental’s back and head smashed onto the floor.
As he struggled to rise, Blaine slipped behind him, manipulating the nunchuks to his advantage now. Holding on to one section with his left hand, Blaine grasped the other with his right and drew the sections back fast and hard, yanking them apart. Whatever grip Chen retained on them was relinquished.
Blaine’s knee found Chen’s back at the same time the wire dug deep into his throat, slicing the flesh as smoothly as cheese. Blood sprayed forward. The Oriental’s head snapped backward and then slumped over obscenely to his chest, nearly severed from his neck. McCracken pushed the writhing corpse to the floor and stepped over it on the way to Madame Rosa’s body.
Incredibly, he found she was still alive. Just barely, but alive. Her dying eyes sought him out. He thought he saw her mouth move, trying to form the shadow of a syllable. Her face was ghastly pale and the blood was still oozing from the tear in her throat.
“Se … bas … tian,” she rasped, and the disjointed word seemed to come more from the slit in her neck than her mouth. “Se—”
She started the word again, but this time a gurgle swallowed it and her eyes locked forever on the six monitors broadcasting black and white pictures of what had been her world.
McCracken was back on his feet immediately. He had to get out of there before Chen’s people arrived. The front door was the only way out he knew. He found his Browning and held it before him as he rushed back up the corridor.
Still there was no one. What had happened? Where were Madame Rosa’s customers, her security guards?
He was almost to the door when a closet caught his eye. He threw it open and grabbed the first coat he saw, black cashmere and perfect for hiding his bloodied clothes. Shoving his arms through the too short sleeves, McCracken rushed out the heavy door into the street.
No doorman either. Madam
e Rosa’s seemed utterly deserted.
The cold air struck him and with it the pain. Blaine instinctively catalogued his injuries. His forearm was swollen thick and numb but nothing was broken. His back ached and made movement painful; again, though, nothing serious. Beyond that there was a throbbing through his entire body. He blocked out the pain, glad for the frigid air because it braced him.
Blaine didn’t run because that would draw too much attention. At a fast walk he passed several pay phones and debated using one to call Stimson at the Gap. No, his first priority was to escape the area. A cab would do; he needed a cab. Hailing one would mean staying in the same spot, perhaps for several minutes. Blaine decided to chance it.
Luckily, one pulled over in seconds. McCracken was in the backseat almost before the driver came to a halt.
“Take it easy, Mac,” the driver said. “You in a rush?”
“Yeah.”
“Where to?”
“Just drive.”
It was the icy stare in Blaine’s black eyes that made the cabbie turn back around, gulping air. McCracken needed time to think, to regroup and find a safe place from which to call Stimson.
And tell him what?
Madame Rosa had been murdered because she knew something, something she might have told Blaine if given time.
Sebastian …
Her last word. But who or what was Sebastian and why would she send Blaine to him or it? Another connection perhaps, a link in a chain being severed one piece at a time.
He could tell that much to Stimson. It was all he knew. The people behind Easton’s murder were not going to leave a trail. All tracks had to be covered. Stimson would run Sebastian through his computers, Chen, too, and perhaps some of those tracks would be revealed. There was the microfiche to consider as well. If they had been able to decipher it at the Gap, Blaine’s job would be that much easier.