The Golden Kill

by Marc Olden

  The one step the small cop took brought him directly in front of her, and when his feet were planted strong into the beige-colored carpet, he swung his open hand hard into the left side of her face, making her dark-red hair fly sideways. “I said shut up! Open your fucking mouth again, and I’ll kick it closed, you hear!”

  Her hand went to her mouth, and to keep from crying she bit her thumb until the pain traveled up her arm. Her other hand touched the stinging heat where the small cop’s leather-gloved hand had burned into her cheek.

  “Man, that jig’s far away by now,” said the stocky cop with the double chin. His name was Lou, and when he leered at Beth she saw that all of the teeth on the right side of his mouth were black-rotten. Phil, the lean cop, took off his cap, running a hand across his thinning gray hair.

  “If he shows,” he said, “it’ll be to plant cotton in this place. Hot as a bitch in here. Hey, lady, you ought to get your money back, it’s a pisser in here. You some kind of heat freak?”

  Beth said nothing, her lips pressed tightly together, her hands knotted into tense fists at her side. She was watching Lou, now standing in front of her, slowly scratching his crotch, his eyes on her face, then creeping down along her body. Then, without a word, he moved up to her, both of his hands reaching out to her breasts, his thick fingers and dirty nails grinding painfully into her flesh.

  Shaking her head from side to side, her eyes shiny with tears, Beth pleaded. “Don’t. Please, don’t …”

  “Ummm. Nice.” said Lou. “Hey, Cal”—he turned to the small cop—“we got time, I mean, shit, the Chink ain’t due for another half-hour, and besides, why waste it, you know?”

  A corner of the small cop’s mouth pulled up, and his eyes narrowed as he tilted his head toward his right shoulder. “Why the hell not? And you ain’t got a half-hour, you horny bastard, you got less than twenty minutes. Take her inside, but make sure she stays quiet. She yells and scares the Chink away, it won’t just be me taking a piece out of your ass, understand?”

  Lou was facing Beth now, rubbing first her shoulders, then her breasts, as though he were trying to wipe his hands clean of something. He was smiling, and still smiling when Beth stopped pleading and a high-pitched scream of terror exploded from her small mouth.

  Cal, the small cop, covered the distance between him and Beth in seconds, ripping the belt from around her waist, then grabbing a handful of her hair, twisting it painfully, and shoving part of the thick belt into her small mouth. His bony knuckles pushed hard, driving the soft flesh inside of her mouth slicing into her teeth. The salt taste of warm blood and the thick rag brought her to the edge of vomiting.

  Facing Lou, Cal hissed coldly, “I said I want her quiet!”

  Nervously smiling, Lou said, “Shit, Cal, I would have kept her quiet, man.” He dug his right hand into Beth’s upper arm, keeping her from moving or falling down. Her robe hung open, and her nakedness inflamed Lou even more. With her hair wild over her face and tears rolling silently down her cheeks, the call girl stood in the grip of a nightmare, her stomach heaving up and down with fear.

  “Now you’ve got less than twenty minutes,” said Cal.

  Without replying, Lou pushed the half-naked, terrified woman toward the bedroom. Phil grinned as they walked past him and said, “I guess this one’s on the house, lady.” With his left hand, Lou closed the bedroom door behind him, and in almost the same motion, yanked the robe from Beth.

  Hoarsely he whispered, “My God!”

  On the other side of the door, Cal stared at it for a few seconds and said, “I hate whores.” Then he went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator, taking out a quart of milk and drinking from it.

  Cal liked things tight. Right now, he had a tight situation, and he was standing on top of it with both feet. There was only one way into the apartment, and that was through the front door. Even the fire escapes were out in the hall. As for that nigger dropping in unannounced, no way. He’d need wings to come in through the bedroom or living-room window. Nothing to do now but relax and wait for the Chink to walk through the door, and if the nigger showed his face, Cal was going to shoot it off.

  Inside the darkened bedroom, Lou shoved the frightened naked woman down on the bed. “Keep that goddamn rag in your mouth,” he snarled. “Cal wants you quiet. What I want to do with you, I don’t need no conversation.” Breathing heavily, he unbuckled his pants, his eyes on the silently weeping woman.

  He never saw the muscular figure slide quietly toward him in the darkness. Then, with blinding speed, the Black Samurai drove the knife edge of his right hand into Lou’s throat, the powerful blow crushing his larynx with the strength of an ax. There would be no crying out for the stocky man, not ever.

  Like a snake striking twice, Sand drew his right hand back to his own left ear, then shot it back at Lou’s head, this time smashing the edge of his stiff open hand against Lou’s right temple. Lou’s eyes turned up and slipped back into his head as agonizing darkness grabbed his brain and squeezed it, and he slumped toward the floor.

  In a fraction of a second the Black Samurai was holding the stocky man under both armpits, and turning to Beth, he whispered, “Stay quiet. I’m here to help you. Don’t scream. Do that, and they’ll come in here and kill you, understand? Just nod your head.”

  Her face shiny with tears, the rag still crammed in her mouth, the naked woman nodded her head slowly.

  “Good,” whispered Sand. “I’m going to undress him. He’s going in bed with you. It must look as though you two are occupied with each other. No time to explain, but I’m here to keep Mr. Choy—and you—alive.”

  Hesitating, Beth nodded once, pulling the cloth from her mouth. Motioning her into bed first, Sand watched the naked woman lie down and move away from him. When she was on the other side of the huge bed, he lifted up Lou’s pudgy, hairy nude body to the edge of the bed, then rolled it in until Lou was next to Beth. Leaning forward, Sand turned the phony cop over on his stomach, at the same time motioning to Beth to slide closer to Lou.

  She edged herself near to him and slightly under his body. Sand pulled a sheet over them both, covering Lou’s body completely but letting Beth’s face be seen.

  “I’m going to unscrew the bulb,” he whispered, “then I’ll try for those two in the next room. I need one of them to talk, so I’ll try to avoid gunplay. Whatever happens, you stay here.”

  She spoke her first word to him. “Yes.” Her voice was weak with fear.

  Seconds later the Black Samurai stood on a chair unscrewing the bulb and thinking of something else he could have told her. Lou wasn’t breathing. She was in bed with a dead man. At the moment, she was too scared to notice anything, which Sand felt was just as well.

  Telling her a dead man’s beside her, he thought, will push her into screaming hysterics. It was not to his advantage or hers to bring on an emotional collapse. She was within inches of it now and was barely holding on with the little strength she had.

  Stepping to the bedroom door, he waited, his keen sense of hearing picking up the low mumble between the two phony cops in the next room.

  Print Drewcolt and CCE were relying heavily on killers and assassins dressed as policemen, and it made sense. A cop could walk around in public with a gun in his hand and no one thought twice. No one questioned a cop’s actions, and nine out of ten people couldn’t describe a cop’s face if he was sitting on their laps at the time.

  It was a smart move, thought Sand, and a hard one to stop. New York City alone had more than thirty thousand cops in uniform, a large enough crowd for Drewcolt’s men to hide in.

  “Hey, Lou,” yelled Phil, “you better fire off your cannon and get your ass out here.” His laughter roared into the bedroom, and in the darkness of the room, Sand heard Beth Crane shift on the bed.

  Seconds later he heard Cal angrily raise his voice and say to Phil, “Goddamn it, go in there and pull him off that whore! Maybe she gets paid for fucking, but he don’t. We got a job to do, and th
at comes first.”

  Phil’s laughter moved closer as he neared the bedroom door. Alert, ready, his mind totally concentrated yet calm, the Black Samurai coiled his fingers into powerful fists and inched away from the door.

  It opened, shooting a yellow carpet of light into the dark room. Opening his eyes wide to get used to the dark room, Phil fumbled for the light switch, flicking it again and again, as he stood grinning at the pink sheet-covered figures. Still in the dark doorway, his eyes temporarily night-blinded, he neither saw nor heard the Black Samurai step from behind the door.

  Quickly Sand’s left arm shot out stiff as far as it could go, the hard bones of his fist crushing Phil’s nose into purple pulp. Then, yelling “Kiaaai!” at the top of his voice, Sand’s arms moved like twin speeding pistons, smashing Phil twice in the stomach.

  As the thin man staggered back into the living room, the shock and pain still registering throughout his mind and body, Sand lifted his own knee to his chest, then, in a front-thrust kick that seemed to have the force of a speeding truck, drove his stiff foot into Phil’s stomach, propelling him from the bedroom doorway halfway into the living room and down on the floor. He lay on his back, moaning, his arms spread wide, blood flowing from his flattened nose.

  In a fraction of a second Sand stood, legs apart, in the bedroom doorway, and as a surprised Cal leaped up from the couch, clawing at the ivory-handled handgun on his right hip, Sand’s voice said evenly, “Don’t.”

  Cal blinked his eyes in disbelief, and when he focused them again on the black man, he saw the gun. A Colt .45, gripped tightly in a fist that looked big enough to go through walls. “Hand away from the gun,” said the black man, and he said it in a tone of voice that was as deadly as anything Cal had ever heard in his thirty-three years of living.

  The small cop nervously bit the corner of his lip and straightened up from a crouch, his hand coming away from the gun, then flopping at his side in a gesture of defeat.

  “Left hand,” said the black man. “Unbuckle the gunbelt, let it drop, then step away. Right hand behind the head.” He didn’t have to say what would happen if Cal didn’t do it his way. His voice, his manner, said it all, and Cal got the point.

  Without turning around, Sand called out to the bedroom behind him. “Beth! In here, quickly!”

  He heard her moving behind him, and seconds later he felt her ease past him, then stand at his side, her face as pale as the terrycloth robe she again wore. Her lips trembled, and as she stood hugging herself in fear and tension, Sand said, “Tell the doorman downstairs not to admit Mr. Choy. Then put on some clothes and pack a small bag. You’re leaving here tonight.”

  Her eyes were on his face, and suddenly she looked much younger than her twenty-six years. “No problem,” he said. “You’re leaving here alone. It’s best you get away from this apartment for a while. In a few days, two weeks at the most, you can come back. The people behind these phony cops play hard. When they learn things went against them tonight, they’ll come back here for sure. You don’t want to run into them a second time.”

  In a small weak voice she said, “Not unless you’re around.”

  As Sand walked over to Cal, she ran to the kitchen, picked up the phone, and spoke to the front doorman. As far as Mr. Choy was concerned, she was not in, she had left earlier today, and would be back in two weeks. The doorman, who got fifty dollars a month from her for asking no questions, listened and said, “No sweat,” then hung up.

  When she finished, she turned to see Sand cuff Cal’s hands behind his back, then spin him around. “Where’s Lou?” asked Cal.

  Looking at Beth, then at Cal, Sand said, “He’s still in the bedroom.” Staring directly into Cal’s eyes, the Black Samurai said, “I don’t have much time, so I’ll ask each question only once, no more. Do you understand me?”

  Swallowing hard, Cal looked from Sand’s face down to the unconscious figure of Phil lying on the living-room floor. His eyes then flicked to the darkened bedroom, then back to the black man’s face. Nodding his head, the small frightened man made a noise that was as close to “yes” as his dry throat could get.

  “How were you going to kill Choy?”

  “Inside my shirt,” he said.

  Patting Cal’s chest, Sand felt the hard lump. Reaching inside the damp blue shirt, he found it, a seven-inch-long black box, only three inches wide and still body-warm. Opening it, he looked down at two hypodermic needles filled with a cloudy white liquid.

  Heroin.

  “Overdose,” mumbled Cal. “Him and the girl.”

  Beth made a sound, and Sand turned to her, then back to Cal. “Why the girl?”

  “Looks better that way. Looks like they had a wild private party; they were both shooting up and OD’d. Letters in my back pocket tying her in with some people, making it look like she was working for them against the Chinese.”

  Sand took out the letters, glancing at them quickly, noticing one thing in common. All seven letters were addressed to Beth Crane from someone in The Czars; all had different dates and a Russian name as signature. Phony names. As usual, The Baron was on target.

  “Anyone downstairs?” said Sand.

  “Two. Unmarked car across the street, two guys in suits. They’re supposed to be watching out for you.”

  Cal was sweating with fear as well as with the heat. Turning his head to the right, he wiped perspiration from his chin by rubbing his face against his right shoulder.

  Turning to Beth, Sand said, “Hurry.”

  As if waking up from a dream, she shook her head left to right, then started for the bedroom. At the door she stopped and said, “Why? Why is all this happening?”

  Picking up Cal’s gunbelt, Sand said, “If you don’t know, there’s no reason for them to come for you again. All I can say is that it involves dangerous people and a lot of money. You just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Get changed; we’re leaving right away.”

  Taking the handcuff key and wallet from Cal’s pocket, Sand walked over to Phil’s unconscious body and took his gun and wallet. He called out to Beth, “You dressed?”

  “Yes, just combing my hair.”

  He walked into the bedroom. Wearing a yellow dress, she crouched in front of a mirror, furiously stroking her hair.

  As he quickly found Lou’s wallet and gun, he said, “Forget it. Grab some clothes. The two men downstairs won’t stay there forever. When they see Choy leave and don’t see these three come down, they’ll come upstairs. And they’ll have guns.”

  Four minutes later the Black Samurai and the woman walked out of her hot, stuffy apartment and climbed the staircase to the roof. In the cool, moonlit darkness they stepped carefully across the roofs of three buildings. Opening a huge steel door he had unlocked earlier, Sand led the way down a staircase, then along a hallway to an elevator.

  Reaching the basement, they moved through a side door and out to the street. Glancing once behind him at a dark car a half-block away in front of Beth Crane’s apartment house, Sand led her to the corner.

  Turning it, he stopped, stepped back, and again looked at the dark car. It hadn’t moved, and no one had left it. They were not being followed.

  During the taxi ride, the Black Samurai answered some of her questions, but not all. Telling her too much about himself or his mission was creating an unnecessary risk.

  The rest of the ride was in silence.

  Staring out the window, she chain-smoked, while Robert Sand thought about a man who wanted money bad enough to kill with hand grenades and heroin.

  Chapter V

  THE COLD ENGLISH WIND tore at the flickering flames of the torches lining the castle courtyard, making the fire snap as though it were fluttering orange streaks of cloth.

  Print Jerrold Drewcolt’s white mane of hair blew around his lean, long face like a small private fog. Beside him on the gray stone walk fifty feet above the Crafford Castle courtyard, Lady Lisa Warren shuddered, her hands in long suede gloves touching her thr
oat. She shuddered both at the cold wind and at the thought of what she was about to see.

  Directly across the courtyard from them, also on the stone walk, half-hidden in darkness, flickering flames from the torches sending black shadows racing up and down his body, Talon stood calmly looking down into the castle courtyard. His eyes gleamed brightly, and his round face seemed within seconds of smiling.

  He held his left arm straight out to the side and parallel with the ground, a thick, black leather glove a foot and a half long covering his arm, fingertip to elbow. Perched lightly on the glove, claws gripping the leather, was a huge hawk, its cruel eyes bright in the torchlight.

  Gently, the hawk lifted up one foot, put it down, then did the same with its other foot. Its cruel head snapped toward Talon, still looking down at the courtyard, where four men stood staring up at him. As though knowing the huge bird was staring at him, Talon turned, smiling, to face it, and the bird, which had lifted its wings slightly, lowered them as if calming down.

  The hawk and Talon stared at each other for almost thirty seconds, as though in a private, mystical conversation understood by the two of them alone. When Talon turned away to look down at the courtyard, the hawk turned away as though the conversation had been mutually ended by both of them.

  Watching this in the torchlit darkness, Lady Warren said in a soft voice heard only by Drewcolt, “Sick.”

  “Necessary,” snapped Drewcolt.

  “I mean Talon and his damn killer hawks. He talks to them, and they understand each other like blood brothers.”

  Turning his head toward her, Drewcolt said, “He’s not sick, he’s efficient. And what you’re seeing is necessary. As for Talon, you know how I feel about him.”

  Sighing, she said, “If he had breasts and a vagina, I think you might add him to your stable of sexual necessities. Fortunately or unfortunately for the both of you, Talon’s idea of sexual pleasure supreme is to watch his hawks do it to each other. Oh, yes, he does have killer dogs he can spy on if sexual bird-watching gets dull. I wonder if perhaps he does it to one of his dogs.”