The Spanish Connection (17 page)

She seemed to be moving in speeded-up motion — a hundred frames per second — as she ran through the French doors and along the balcony. Then there was silence.

After what seemed like centuries, I heard someone banging on the door. It was Kelly.

"Nick! Are you in there? Nick?"

I opened my mouth. At least it moved. But I had no voice. Was the paralysis wearing off?

The door shot open, and Kelly hurtled into the room, gun drawn. He just stood there gaping at me in astonishment.

"Hey, Nick!"

I moved my lips again. The paralysis was wearing off. I got out a grunt.

Kelly glanced around, checked the bathroom, and smelled the hypodermic needle. Instantly he came back to me, slapped me in the face, lifted me off the chair, and dragged me into the bathroom. He put my head under the shower, and cold water slammed down on my neck.

Kelly was talking to me as he worked.

"It's some new stuff. We've got supplies of it. Knocks you out so you can't move, but you can see everything that's going on. Temporary paralysis. Comes from curari, also known as ourari, urari, woorali, wourali, and woorara. But it's been cut with something else. Don't ask me what. The formularies always disappear the minute we get them."

I soon revived.

"Quick!" I said. "It's Tina. She came up from Granada to meet Barry Parson and found his body here. She's on her way out now. She thinks Corelli killed him. If she escapes now, she can kill him later."

"Hold it!" snapped Kelly. "I came up here to find you. Tina's been downstairs in the lobby, you know, creating a scene!"

"Who?" I asked impatiently.

"Tina Bergson."

"Tina!"

"Exactly. But she's gone now."

"Gone? But…?"

"She was in the lobby, but she left," Kelly told me as we ran out of the room and down the corridor. We started down the stairs, and I could see a crowd of people in the lobby. They were all peering out into the parking lot.

I saw Juana, who turned to wait for us.

"What's this all about?" I snapped.

"She's in the red Jaguar," Juana said, pointing out at the parked cars. I could see the headlights come on in one of them. The light cut through the darkness and illuminated the snow-covered mountainside where the road turned from the Prado Llano and wound up toward the main highway.

"She made a big scene," Juana said quickly. "It was very dramatic."

"Too
dramatic!" Kelly said dryly.

"Are you going to tell me what she did?" I asked impatiently.

"She came in here not ten minutes ago, raising hell and asking for Mario Speranza!"

"Who is Mario Speranza?" I asked.

Kelly shook his head. "When they told her that Señor Speranza was not here, she broke down and almost went into hysterics right out here in the lobby."

I could see the Jaguar start to move. Tina's blond hair was blowing out behind her.

"It brought all of us out of the lounge on the run," Juana explained.

"And then she collapsed here and had to be revived by the desk clerk," Kelly concluded. "I went up to get you."

I frowned, thinking quickly. "It's an act — the scene down here. What it's for, I don't know. But I've got to stop her."

"Right," said Kelly. "What do we do?"

"Check out that Mario Speranza," I said to Kelly. "He probably doesn't exist. I'm going after Tina!"

I was moving through the crowd toward the revolving doors and I spotted Herr Hauptli there, with his crew of sycophants. He waved and then turned away.

The Renault was cold. It started up fairly well. I pulled out onto the road and skidded twice before I got it under control. There were ice patches in the roadway, the same as two nights before.

The road descended and then made a right turn. I could not see the red Jaguar at all, but I remembered the road turned right, and then began to curve to the left in a long, wide, horseshoe-shaped turn that clung to the rim of the barranca.

I gunned the engine because I did not want to lose sight of the Jag.

The edge of the road showed in my headlamps, and I involuntarily put on the brakes to test the drag. I was relieved to feel the tension in the bands.

I took the Renault around the turn and I could see Tina Bergson's red Jaguar halfway around the wide horseshoe bend. She was driving slowly, but then she accelerated, just as I caught sight of her.

The car seemed to leap ahead in the darkness, the lights bouncing upward on the road, almost as if they were climbing the sky. And then — as I could hardly believe my eyes — the Jaguar bumped up against the cutbank, almost smashing into the rock wall head-on.

Turn, Tina! I yelled involuntarily. "Turn!"

Whether she did or not I do not know, but the next thing I saw was the Jaguar headed not for the cutbank but for the outer rim of the road. "Tina!"

It was a lost cry.

The Jag gained speed and went over the edge, almost as if it had been trained to do a very shallow swan dive into a pool.

The headlamps caught the jagged mica schist below, the patches of snow snuggled in the schist, and lit a tangle of lights and reflections in the snow, then the car burrowed into the rocks, bounced off, turned over and over, the headlamps describing a pinwheel in the night, and smashed with a grinding roar into a segment of sharp rocks near the bottom of the barranca.

There was a moment's silence.

Then a high flaring blast of fire shot into the sky, and a loud explosion ripped through the air. Smoke billowed up past the orange flames, harsh, choking black smoke.

The fire soared and then fell back into the wreckage of the twisted Jaguar and began eating slowly at the metal. Smoke rose slowly, then, the fire dancing along the edges of the red steel and the clear glass and the colored plastic.

Shaken, I drove carefully along the highway and made the spot where the red Jag had gone over the edge. I looked down. All I could see was a break in the rocks imbedded in the shoulder at the edge of the roadway.

I parked the Renault, pulled the key, and climbed out. It was cold on the highway. I walked over to the edge of the road where the Jag had gone through the rocks. I stood there, staring down at the displaced stones and followed the charred black line on the schist below to the spot where a bright red fire was crackling over the remains of Tina Bergson and the red Jaguar.

In only brief moments the first of the hotel guests came zooming up in a Fiat, parked and joined me at the edge of the roadway. Ogling.

And then more came.

And more.

Thrill-seekers.

They made me sick.

I climbed down the rocky slope, using my pocket flash, and passed the charred section of rock where the red Jag had first hit, and finally reached the section near the car itself.

But the flames were eating at the wreckage and it was impossible to stand any closer without burning myself.

Arm across the top of my head, I stood there and waited.

A fire truck screamed up on the roadway, and soon a big fireman in a ski jacket and loaded with a portable extinguisher came crashing down the slope and began to spray the burning wreck.

I shuddered.

The fireman stood there, staring at tie charred wreckage. A Guardia Civil joined him and pointed a flashlight at the burned car. The light's beam was more powerful than mine.

I came closer.

I saw it, then.

There was a charred body in the front seat. What was left of it was black and smouldering.

Tina.

All that was left of the golden girl with the golden skin.

I turned away, sick.

I must have sunk down on a rock near the wreckage and lapsed into a land of mental funk. Someone joggled my arm and shoulder. I realized a voice had been speaking to me for some moments.

I stirred.

"Nick."

It was Kelly.

"She's dead," said Kelly. "Damndest thing."

"I guess she just felt it was all over and she'd better run." I sighed. "She knew Rico Corelli would be after her for the rest of her life."

"But Corelli didn't even know!"

"He would find out. That's why he left," I said. That was the way I had it figured.

"I checked out that name, Nick."

I looked up, frowning. I did not understand what he was getting at.

"There's no Mario Speranza registered at the hotel."

I sat there thinking about that. "But that's the name she gave the clerk."

He nodded. "The clerk says he told her that. The clerk says that it was then that she went out of her skull."

I stared at the wreckage below us. "Are you saying that Rico Corelli never was at Sol y Nieve at all?"

"I'm saying that he certainly hasn't been here — or at any other hotel in the Sol y Nieve — for the past month or so. If his cover name is Mario Speranza."

"But then…"

"Don't you see it? Maybe he knew about Tina. Maybe he knew she had hired a hit man to kill him."

I shook my head to clear it. "And all that jive about the meet was simply to set up Tina Bergson's death?"

"Not at all. I'm saying that Rico Corelli must have known about Tina Bergson and Barry Parson. And he just didn't come to the resort at all. Everybody else thought he was here — the hit man the Mafiosi hired, the hit man Tina hired — and us, because we wanted to meet Corelli. Everybody was here but Corelli!"

"Then where is the son of a bitch?"

Kelly shrugged. "I think we'd better put a signal out to Hawk and start all over again."

We got up to climb the hillside, but I could not leave it alone.

I turned and looked down at the wreck again.

"Why did she go out that way?"

Kelly shook his head. "She was a beautiful woman, Nick. Beautiful women do dumb things. She must have loved Corelli. And hated him, too."

"Or loved that money," I said.

"You don't think much of people do you, Nick?" Kelly sighed.

"Should I? Should I, really?" I calmed down. "I guess she figured it was a better way to go than to run all over the world trying to get away from Rico Corelli's paid guns."

"She'd never know when he was going to hit her," Kelly observed dispassionately.

"I wonder where the bastard is now?" I mused half aloud.

We were the first ones down for breakfast next morning. In spite of Juana's glowing look, she was spiritually depressed. I laid it to the fact that we had botched our assignment.

We had a Continental breakfast and sat in the bright light of the sunshine eating it. I suggested a morning of skiing before departing from Spain, but she demurred.

"I just want to pack up."

I nodded. "I'm going up to the Veleta and do a run or two."

She nodded, her thoughts far off.

"A penny?"

She failed to respond.

"Two pennies?"

"What?"

"For your thoughts. What's the matter?"

"I guess I was thinking about the waste of human life. Tina Bergson. Barry Parson. The Mosquito. Rico Corelli's first double. And even Elena Morales — wherever she is."

I reached across and gripped her hand. "It's the way of the world."

"It's not a very nice world."

"Did someone promise you it was?"

She shook her head sadly.

I paid the bill and went out.

It was cool but very still on the Veleta. The sun shone brightly. There was a good covering of powder on the surface of the run. I got my binocs out and scanned the slope. As I explained once before there were two runs from the top of the Veleta.

I decided to take the longer run this time, the one that branched out to the left as you went down. I was just putting my glasses back in their leather case when someone climbed over the rocks from the cable car turn-around and came toward me.

It was Herr Hauptli, and — for once — he was alone.

I waved. "Good morning, Herr Hauptli."

He smiled. "Good morning, Herr Peabody."

"I missed you yesterday, or whenever it was we were going to ski together."

"Pressure of business, no doubt," he said pleasantly.

"Yes," I said, glancing quickly at him. But he had turned away to gaze down the slope.

"And where is your lovely wife?"

"Packing."

"Then you are leaving?"

I nodded.

"Pity. It's been such a good run of weather."

"Indeed it has."

He smiled and sat on a rock outcrop near the top of the run. I joined him while he laced his boots tightly and started to wax his skis with blue wax.

"Where are your friends?" I asked him as I sat down next to him. What the hell, I had nothing else to do at the moment.

"They are at the hotel," he smiled. "They did not seem too eager to join me today. A late night at the Bar Esqui with lumumbas running out of their ears."

"You usually are inseparable."

"That is the way with money. It attracts like a magnet." He smiled again, the crows' feet at the corners of his eyes deep and shadowed.

"You are a cynic, Herr Hauptli."

"I am a realist, Herr Peabody."

He picked up the first ski and began to apply wax to the bottom carefully. He was a meticulous, methodic worker, exactly what you would expect of a good German.

"Fraulein Peabody reminds me of someone close to me," he said after a moment.

"Indeed?"

"I had a daughter, you know." He glanced up. "Of course, you did
not
know. Sorry." He continued with his waxing. "She was a most beautiful girl."

"
Was
, Herr Hauptli?"

He ignored my interruption. "She was nineteen and away at the University," he went on. "My wife — her mother — died when she was a small girl of five. I am afraid I was never able to give her the proper guidance in growing up. You understand?" His eyes rose and met mine.