The Body Lovers (22 page)

It was almost too quiet and that eerie stillness saved my neck. I heard the whispering thud of feet, the breath and the guttural snarl the same second I ducked to one side and felt something brush my arm and heard the wicked snap of teeth closing on air. The dog’s leap took him into the same bush I had landed on, but to him it was more of an obstacle. I could see him then, clawing to break loose from the entangling branches, a sleek muscular killer, attack-trained to kill silently and quickly in the dark.

I whipped the .45 down across his head, saw him sag, recover, then go down again the second time when the muzzle of the gun smashed his skull. There would be more than one dog on the premises. They’d be like sentinels making their rounds. The others hadn’t gotten the smell of me yet, and when they did, would come in almost silently and unseen like the other one.

I stayed close to the tree line, ran across the open lawn to the parking area and lost myself in the dozen or so cars parked beside the house for a few minutes, trying to figure a way in. As near as I was I could see the vague outlines of the windows and the lights that filtered past drawn curtains.

The main entrance was to my left, but I didn’t want to hit the doors. Those would be well guarded. The larger windows that opened on the main rooms wouldn’t be any good either. I didn’t know what I was going into and had to feel my way there.

I could see the place now. It was built in a Victorian style of native brick and looked like a great stone fortress. But all fortresses had chinks and this one was in its style of architecture. The gingerbread ornaments that littered its face made perfect handholds. I shoved the .45 back in the sling, edged to the side of the building and began climbing.

Twenty feet up I had almost reached the second leveL Down below I heard a snarl of impatience, then a door opened and a shaft of light illuminated the front of the building. Another dog, a huge Doberman, padded by, stood in the light a moment sniffing the air, then a voice said, “What is it?”

Another one answered with, “Nothing. They are always like that.”

The door closed and the night took back its own. The dog snarled again, but from another point this time.

I didn’t take any chances with the windows. The odds were that they had alarms rigged to them. I kept climbing until I felt the cornice of the roof under my hands and wiggled myself over the top. I lay there and looked at the ground a long way below, and when I was satisfied no one had seen me, picked my way to the cupola that sat like a silly little hat right in the middle of the building.

They hadn’t bothered to wire these windows. I leaned my elbow against one until it gave, shattered gently and fell inside with a noisy tinkle, then picked out the larger pieces, opened the catch and swung it in on its rusted hinges.

No practical purpose was served by the cupola. It was dirty and empty, just the remnant of an era long past. I found the stairwell leading down, cupped a lit match in my hand and went down to the door. It had a large, old-fashioned latch that moved easily when I lifted it, and when I pushed against the door it swung out without a sound.

I was on the third level of the building in a corridor dimly lit from the light that rose from an open staircase at the far end. A series of rooms led off the hall, four on each side. I tried a couple of the doors, smelled the mustiness and dust that oozed out of the rooms and knew they weren’t used. At one time they were probably designed for servants’ quarters and had been vacant a long time.

From below I could hear the sound of voices and I followed the hall to the staircase and looked around it. There was a landing below, a ninety degree bend in the stairs and nothing was visible. I started down the first step, saw the small movement of a shadow on the wall beneath me and drew my foot back. They had that area covered by a guard.

Several times when I was a kid I had been in old houses like these and I remembered that they generally had a service exit to the other floors for the servants. I went back down the hall, around the bend and found what I was looking for. The steps were old and dry and creaked under my feet, so I stayed as close to the wall as I could get. I made it to the second level and pushed the door open.

This time I almost wasn’t lucky at all. The man sitting there with his chair tilted back against the wall tried to come to his feet and reach for the gun in his belt at the same time. The movement was too sudden and the chair slid out from under him. Even then he almost had time. He rolled, pulled the gun and was bringing it up when my toe caught him under the chin and almost took his head off. His jaw was tilted at a wild angle, his bottom teeth cutting into his cheek. His eyes were wide open, but he wasn’t seeing anything. I took the gun from his hand, spun the cylinder to make sure it was loaded, then dragged him back into the shadows under the stairs and put the chair back where he had it. If anyone came checking on him they might think he only left his post for a minute and wouldn’t be too worried.

Once past the guard I was able to get a better impression of the layout of the house. It rambled in all directions, doors opening into well stocked pantries, linen closets and storage rcoms. I had spotted two more men at critical points, but there was no way to move in on them without being seen. One gunshot would bring others running and I couldn’t afford that.

Somewhere inside the house there was a burst of sound, voices laughing, muffled by the thickness of the walls. I stood in the niche of a doorway watching the man at the end of the corridor, saw him stretch, bored, then turn and walk in my direction. He got fifteen feet away, stopped, seemed to sense something, then shrugged and turned his back and returned to his original position.

Behind me the door I was leaning against opened with the faintest squeak. The guard stopped again, looked back over his shoulder, then decided to investigate and walked back. I had no choice except to step back through the door and close it, hoping he wouldn’t notice the movement. His feet passed, then came by again as he satisfied himself that there was nobody there.

Now he’d be alert. I swore at myself for not jumping him when I could have, but it was too late now. I lit my last match, found myself in a kitchen cluttered with dirty dishes piled high on the sink, and an ancient gas range littered with used pots. Four rolling serving trays were lined against the wall next to a corridor that led somewhere into the bowels of the house.

The match flickered and went out, but I had my direction fixed and followed it in my mind.

The two great sliding doors that opened onto the room were shut, but age had shrunk them so that a quarter-inch crack showed in their vertical alignment. I pressed my eye to the aperture to get a wider angle of vision and saw them, a small crowd, some in chairs, some standing smoking, enjoying the spectacle on the stage in the middle of the room.

A cage had been erected there about eight feet square, finger-thick bars covered with a thin wire mesh. She stood in the middle, absolutely motionless, uncomfortably poised on a small block of wood, her ink-black hair a startling contrast against the white negligee that had parted down the front and was thrown back over her shoulders. A false smile of frozen horror looked like it had been painted on her face, a look of total disbelief, yet somehow tinged with grim determination. Not a muscle in her body moved, and in the weird blue light that enveloped her I could see a reflection in her eyes as they followed the insidious motion of the two diamondback rattlesnakes that writhed restlessly just inches from her legs, their tongues nervous little feelers sensing danger in this strange atmosphere, their tails buzzing with anger.

How long she had been there I couldn’t tell, but the terrible agony of the position she was forced to hold was evident in the muscular tension of her legs. Any movement, no matter how slight, would bring those snakes striking to an attack.

A figure moved from behind a chair and I saw Belar Ris. For a second the light caught him and I could see his smile of enjoyment. He sat on the arm of the chair and draped his hand across the shoulder of the one sitting there.

From one side a voice said, “How long has it been, Belar?”

He looked at his watch. “Forty minutes.”

Then the one in the chair said, “You’re going to lose your bet, Belar. She’s going to win your fifty thousand dollars.”

My skin crawled all over because the answer was all right there in that room.
The voice was Dulcie McInnes’.

And Belar Ris said, “No, I won’t lose. You’ll have your pleasure.”

It must have shaken her when I came into the picture because until then it all would have been so carefully planned and executed. They had the money and the means to operate with and always the knowledge that the shield of diplomatic immunity was there for them.

I could see more of the faces now. They were the faces of those from countries of sudden wealth and emergence into power, but who still reveled in the savageries of the near-primitive. But not all. Several I had seen at the Flamingo Room the other night enjoying their respectability.

Dulcie’s choice of subjects had been excellent. They were women alone with no one to care about them. They would do anything for a chance at a small fortune.

The exception had been Greta who did have somebody who cared about her. She was willing to take the big gamble because she cared about somebody too. Harry Service might not have been worth it, but he was all she had and she was going to keep her promise to him.

Her face was tighter now than before, fighting the unbearable strain of her position and the proximity of the snakes.

Too bad Mitch Temple couldn’t see what he had stumbled upon. He started chasing down a murderer because a single thread seemed to tie in the deaths of two girls, two inexpensive, sexy nylon negligees. He did the legwork in countless shops and was lucky enough to spot Belar Ris buying another one. Even when he published Belar Ris’s activities in his column, he might not have made any personal contact with the man, so he verified his identification by going through the morgue files until he located Ris’s picture.

Even his call to Norm Harrison fitted in. You couldn’t openly accuse a man in his position unless you had positive proof. But Norm had been out of town. Mitch did have another source of information going for him. Ronald Miller probably had told him about his company’s litigation with Belar Ris in the theft of the C-130. That fitted in too. Ali Duval could have seen the shipment, recognized its potential to Ris and gotten it ashore.

Mitch’s trouble was, Ronald Miller had left too and Mitch had no place to go to except the source itself. It would be like him to call Ris, ostensibly to arrange for an interview on some matter or other, then try to draw him out. But Ris had something going for him too. Mitch’s picture was at the top of his column. Ris could have recognized Mitch and seen through the whole skein and stopped it right there with a single knife thrust through Mitch’s heart.

Yet it
didn’t
stop there. I was looking for Greta and Greta could have led me to them if I pushed hard enough. She had already been recruited and was ready for them regardless of what happened to the other girls who went ahead of her. She had probably been held right here for this very night and she was doing it of her own volition.

They didn’t know what I had though. The papers had made a big thing of my reputation and they couldn’t take a chance. Orslo Bucher was one of their own nationals and could be called upon for the small jobs. He searched my place, then tried for me and died doing it. That threw it back at them again.

I still kept looking for Greta.

So they let Greta come to me.

Ali Duval arranged to use Virginia Howell’s room through Lorenzo Jones, a far-out contact that could have no possible connection with anyone. It was a simple thing for Dulcie to drop a card into Teddy Gates’ rotary file and lead me to it, and just as simple to remove it again and send Gates off on an appointment that would lead to his death. The red herrings and the wild geese were all over the place to foul up the traiL

The thing they didn’t plan for was Lorenzo Jones’ curiosity about All. Jones could smell a buck and would chase it, but he could smell trouble too and was scared to death of it. They didn’t plan on me pushing it any further after I had seen Greta. She was there because she wanted to be there. She had to be there if she wanted the chance at the big stakes she coveted so desperately.

Dulcie, you damn fool. It couldn’t last. You couldn’t keep it covered forever.

There was a hum of voices, then a cold hush. I looked through the crack again. Greta had tottered on the block and both the snakes were poised, tongues flicking to find the source of movement, their buttons a steady, sharp buzz in the quiet.

It had to be now.

I jammed the two guns in my belt, felt for the handles that were indented into the frames of the doors and got my feet braced. I was ready to tear them apart when I heard the shouting and saw a tall guy run in from an alcove and point behind him.

“The dog. It has been killed. Someone is inside.”

The one in front of the door was too intent on what the other had said and didn’t hear me until I was almost through the opening. He whirled, struck out at me and caught the side of the .45 across his face and went down with a scream.