The Code

Ten

It took me a long time, but I finally climbed out of the deep well of darkness and opened my eyes. Morning sunlight streamed through the windows of the girl's apartment. I squinted and turned my face away from it. I had a faint headache, which could have been a hangover from the drug Barbara Valante had injected in my arm or an effect of the blow she had dealt me with the heavy ashtray.

Everything had its compensations, I thought. At least I now knew why Moose had put the exclamation points after her name in his book. It wasn't every day a cheap hood like Moose scored with the daughter of a Mafia chieftain.

I heard a radio in the other room playing rock music. The volume was high. It didn't help my headache at all. My arms had been bound to the back of the wooden chair in which I was seated. My ankles had been tied tightly to the rungs at the bottom. I tried to move and had little success. An expert had put me in the chair to stay.

I closed my eyes and tried to organize my thoughts. I had been knocked out all night by the drug. The call Barbara had been making must have been long distance. That would account for her putting me to sleep for more than eight hours.

The discovery that Barbara was Valante's daughter had proved a shocker. I wondered how the girl came to be in Denver when her father reportedly operated on the Eastern Seaboard. My memory of what I'd read of Mafia power divisions was spotty, but I knew that Lew (the Doctor) Rossi was in charge of the Mob's Denver territory.

I opened my eyes and called the girl. "Barbara!"

The volume of the radio diminished slightly. Barbara came through a door holding a cup of coffee in her hand. This morning she looked much less like a product of Americas counterculture. She was dressed smartly in a green dress and her black hair was in a neat bun at the back of her head.

"You're completely different today. You should have been an actress," I said.

"If I had become an actress, people would have started falling all over themselves giving me juicy parts as soon as they found out who I was." She took a sip of the coffee and regarded me with clear blue eyes. "I went through a period of enjoying that kind of attention and then I grew up. I came out here to get away from my father's influence and people who had heard of him. I changed my last name and started studying to be a nurse."

"Then you did hand me one piece of truth last night."

She gave me a firm, open smile. When she did that, she looked almost like the girl next door. The only difference was that most girls next door weren't suited for a Playboy centerfold.

"I'm sorry I had to slug you with the ashtray, but I was afraid I couldn't handle you unless you were stunned. I'd been told that you're a hard man to put down and out. My karate instructor says I'm one of his best students, but I'm not especially strong and I felt I needed that little edge on you."

"You handled me like I was an old maid school teacher," I said.

She walked nearer and touched the lump at the back of my head lightly with her fingers. "That knot will go down. And you don't seem to have a concussion."

"A mere concussion is the least of my worries."

"Do you think someone plans to kill you, Mr. Carter?"

"A lot of people have been trying."

"Don't worry about it. You're in good hands with Valante." She held her coffee cup to my lips. "Here. Take a sip of this. It's the best I can do for you at the moment. I have to get to classes."

I swallowed the hot coffee down." You and Moose. That's a pairing that doesn't seem natural."

"I didn't know what Moose was then. I mean, what he was inside. The fact that he was a holdup man didn't matter to me one way or the other. How could it matter to the daughter of Marco Valante?"

She held the cup to my lips again.

An announcer on the radio broke in on the music and gave the hour. It was 8:30 a.m. He began to give the news, which included a shooting at a Reno trailer camp. He didn't describe the kind of trailer camp it was.

"Moose seemed to me to be one of those rare men who make their way through life without relying on anyone else," said Barbara Valante. "He was strong and self-assured and he wasn't afraid of anyone or anything on God's green earth. Later on, after I got to know him well enough, I realized that his strength could become cruelty. And his lack of fear is the result of a fantastic ego. He is so daring he's, well, crazy."

"Everyone seems to agree on that point."

Barbara Valante was an intelligent and articulate girl. Sexy, too. But I hadn't forgotten that she'd laid a trap for me. If I had been able to get my hands free, I wouldn't have been so friendly.

She took the coffee cup back into the kitchen. The radio clicked off. I heard another door open, one which apparently led to the back stairway of the apartment building. Voices murmured. Barbara ran some water in the kitchen sink, apparently rinsing out her cup, then returned.

"I have to leave now, Mr. Carter. My father will soon be here to talk to you. In the meantime, there's someone in the kitchen who's going to keep you company."

She called him. He came into the room and grinned at me. He had taken off his coat and I saw that he was wearing a Smith and Wesson .38 revolver in a shoulder rig. He also had a cast on one wrist. His name was Joe, I remembered. He worked for Valante.

"I know just how you feel, Carter. Embarrassed. You AXE agents are supposed to be the cream of the crop, but one little girl took you all by herself."

"She isn't little," I said. There are places where she is anything but little."

Barbara Valante laughed. Then she picked up a purse and went out the door of the apartment, leaving me alone with her father's lieutenant.

"I was a little embarrassed myself, the way you took me in California. You could ruin an ambitious young man's future that way," Joe said.

"Sorry. At the time, it seemed the thing to do."

Joe sat down and checked his watch. Apparently Valante was due to arrive any time.

"How did you get here?" I asked him. "I thought I'd lost you."

"Valante figured it out. He said you apparently had a list of Moose's girl friends, old and new. There was a possibility Barbara was on the list. So after you shook me in California, he sent me here to try to intercept you." He fished in his pocket and pulled out Moose's little black book. "Now I know where you got the names. I searched you last night."

"You were here, in the apartment, when I was talking to the girl.

"In the neighborhood. Barbara called me after she put you to sleep." He grinned again. "Quite a girl. I ought to have one like her."

"We both should."

"Back when she had something going with Moose and Valante found out about it, there was an explosion you could hear all the way to Poughkeepsie. Valante really blew his stack. I thought he'd kill somebody. The way things have turned out, it would have been better if he had."

"I know what you mean." I was stealthily testing my bonds again. It was no use. If I got free, someone was going to have to set me free.

"When Valante laid down the law to her, she made him eat his words," Joe continued- "She told him that he wasn't running her life anymore. I thought he'd croak. But it worked out. Barbara ditched Moose on her own and Valante forgave her. Now he's even proud that she stuck up to him."

Valante's young lieutenant obviously thought a lot of his boss. And he thought a lot more of the boss's daughter.

He checked his watch again, stood up, and glanced out the window at the street below. "There they are."

Footsteps sounded in the hallway. Joe rushed to open the door. He was so eager to please his boss that it stuck out all over. Valante came into the room and stood scowling at me. The two men with him split up. One leaned against the door and folded his arms over his thick chest. The other walked over and sat down near the kitchen doorway.

"Carter, you've been a trial to me. You were bleeding like a stuck pig that night in Idaho and I stopped up the bullet hole. I let you live. You repaid me by manhandling my people and getting in my way," Valante said.

"You had your own reasons for playing Good Samaritan. You thought I might lead you to Abruze's killers. At the time, you didn't know Moose was involved."

The man who had taken a seat lit a cheroot with a silver lighter. "Smart boy, isn't he, Marco?"

"Very smart. I think it's about time we found out what else he's learned."

"Your daughter promised I wouldn't be hurt," I said to Valante.

"Now, have I said anything about violence? We only want to ask a few questions." Valante walked over and clicked shut the blinds on the windows. That was not a good omen.

"I don't have time for playing games, Marco. Let's finish him off now," the man in the chair growled.

I had been furtively watching the man in the chair since the moment he entered the apartment. I wanted very much to know who he was. The hood who had leaned against the door was a run-of-the-mill Mafia thug, stolid-faced and dull-eyed. But the man in the chair was expensively dressed, with silver cuff links and alligator-skin shoes. He appeared to be a boss of a rank equal to Valante's. I was especially interested in him because he was tall and thin and wore glasses. Except for his natty clothing, he looked like an accountant, not like a gangster. He looked like the man the two girls in Portland had described as a friend of Moose's.

"I brought you along because this is your territory, Lew. But I'm running this show. And I want to know what Carter's found out in his travels," Valante snapped.

I caught the name. The man in the chair was Lew Rossi. Lew the Doctor. Frank Abruze's old enemy.

Pulling out the black book, Joe passed it to Valante. "I found this on Carter. It belonged to Moose. That's where Carter got the names of the girls."

"How'd you get hold of this, Carter?"

"Moose lost it during a scrap."

Valante flipped through the pages. Rossi leaned forward. Behind the glasses, his eyes gleamed like bright black metal. If his name, or one of his aliases, was found in the book the game would be over for him. Valante would suspect what I had just figured out — that Rossi had hired Moose to knock off Abruze.

"Just girls' names,' Valante said and Rossi appeared to relax. Valante came to the page that bore Barbara's name. He tore it out angrily and balled it up. "The bastard." Then he looked at me again. "Only one left to check with, Carter?"

I kept my mouth shut.

"You've been mighty busy lately — tearing up whorehouses, knocking people around, and killing a few... But you haven't got Moose yet, or the money either, I guess."

"There's no sign of the money. Moose doesn't have it. Two of the men I killed were in on the Abruze slaying. They were in Bonham with Moose when he murdered the Brant girl," I told Valante.

"I've figured that out. But I can't let you get Moose. I intend to have the pleasure of collecting the blood debt that's owed me. Frank Abruze was my oldest friend. We went way back. So you're going to be spending some time with Lew here while I go to Vegas after Moose."

Rossi stood up with the cheroot clamped in the corner of his mouth. "And I'm going to take good care of you," he leered.

Valante may not have wanted me dead but Rossi sure did. He was going to put a bullet between my eyes as soon as Valante left, I was sure. No hard feelings involved. Just an item of business to be taken care of.

"You figured some things out, but not all of them," I said to Valante. "You missed the most important one."

"What's that?"

"He's stalling, Marco. You better get going if you want to catch Moose," said Rossi.

"What's the matter, Rossi, afraid to hear what I have to say? I've got your number."

"What are you talking about?" Valante demanded.

"About Frank Abruze being fingered. It wasn't just a heist Moose pulled in Florida. It was a hit on your friend. Rossi set Moose on Abruze and he's been working against you people ever since, trying to keep you from finding out."

Lew Rossi had taken a step backward so that he was standing to Valante's side and behind Joe. He suddenly slammed his fist into Joe's back. The young hood opened his mouth and gasped. He took a step toward my chair and reached out the hand that bore the cast. Then he pitched forward on his face and I saw the knife between his shoulder blades.

Marco Valante spun around. I yelled at him. "No, Valante. The other guy!"

He realized that he had made a mistake, but it was too late. The man at the door, Rossi's boy, shot him and his body jerked as the bullet hit. Valante stubbornly refused to fall. He made a complete turn, bringing his gun around, and faced the man who had put a slug in his back.

The man at the door jerked the trigger again. His gun, equipped with a silencer, made a spitting sound. The bullet hit Valante like a fist pounding into flesh. Valante finally started to fall, but he got his own shot off. Then he collapsed on the floor near my chair.

Rossi's gunman was propped against the door, his legs spraddled as though he hoped to brace himself and avoid toppling over. He had done his job. He had saved his boss. But he was dying. Valante's shot had caught him in the belly. Slowly he slid down the door, like a drunk who had decided to sit on the floor. His knees hinged. His feet suddenly slipped forward and he sank into a curled heap.

Lew Rossi slid the knife smoothly out of Joe's back and wiped it on the young hood's coat. He rolled Joe's eyelids back to make certain he was dead. Then he stepped over Joe and nudged Marco Valante with his foot. He nudged him again, then glanced at me. "Disappointed, Carter?"

"Yeah," I said.

Finally Rossi checked on his own man. He didn't look broken-hearted when he confirmed that the gunman was dead. There were plenty of replacements around. "How'd you find out?" he asked me.

"A lot of bits and pieces fell together. Somebody in the Mafia sent Coogan to kill me and the girl in Bonham. It wasn't Valante — he wanted to get the girl to talk and me to lead him to Abruze's killers. When I discovered that Moose had a friend in the Mob I put two and two together. Abruze had screwed up a drug deal with the Chinese Communists. I figure that was your deal. But you wanted Abruze dead for a more important reason than just that grudge." I was guessing now. "He had found out about your secret dealings with the Communists and was about to talk. You were afraid we'd find out just what those dealings were about and so you got rid of Abruze and Kirby. And after them Meredith and I had to be dealt with before we discovered anything. You must have killed Meredith yourself — his murderer used a knife."

"They don't call me the Doctor because I studied medicine. In the old days I did a lot of instant surgery." He snapped the knife shut and put it in his pocket "I almost got you at the motel. You're a lucky bastard, Carter."

"It's because I'm pure at heart."

"You're mighty curious, too. Since you're not going to leave this apartment alive, I might as well fill you in on the rest of it." He seated himself in the chair again and relit his cheroot. "I have a good deal going with those Chinks. The drug deal was just a cover-up — an excuse for me to be meeting with them. I've been using my men to infiltrate AXE and feed info to the Communists. One of my men in your Carolina base found out the whereabouts of Sheila Brant from your files. The Communists pay for my help with high quality drugs. I've got the best supply in the country. Naturally, the Mob wouldn't be to happy to learn of my private dealings. Abruze had gotten suspicious, so he had to go."

"How do you plan to explain this scene to the Organization? The job you did on Joe practically carries your initials."

"You did it, Carter. You're good with a knife. You also killed Valante and my boy over there. That's my story, and Barbara Valante is going to back it up."

He called Barbara at the hospital and told her that her father had been hurt and she'd better get back to the apartment in a hurry. He hung up and sat looking at me with a flinty smile on his thin lips.

"You've given me a hell of a time, AXE man. But I've got you now."

I was sweating, yanking at my ropes desperately. Somehow I had to let Hawk know what I had just found out. But I didn't want to be within a hundred miles of the old man when he learned that AXE had been infiltrated by Mafia men who were working for the Red Chinese.

Rossi got up. He pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket and stuffed it into my mouth. "Barbara ought to be here in about ten minutes. I don't want you yelling or joining in the conversation."

It was twelve minutes exactly before she came running down the hallway and plunged into the apartment. She turned white when she saw the terrible scene: three bodies, one of them her father's. Many women would have fainted. She only let out a choked sound of agony.

Rossi kicked the door shut and clamped his hand over her mouth. They struggled until he put the knife to her throat.

"I know it's hard for you, Barbara," he said in his smooth voice, "but you've got to keep quiet and behave. Your life and Carter s depend on it."

She nodded and Rossi let her go. She made sobbing noises in her throat, her eyes asking me for explanations I couldn't give her.

"I want you to go to the telephone," Rossi told her.

"Who am I supposed to call?" she asked in a hoarse voice.

"Anybody you want to, as long as it's a member of the board of directors. I suggest Sal Terlizzi or Don Corvone. Let's make it Terlizzi. He always thought a lot of you. He'll believe anything you say."

Barbara sniffed and drew a sharp breath. Her eyes darted to me and I tried to speak despite the gag, but found I was only choking myself.

"What is it I'm going to say, Rossi?" she asked in a voice grown suddenly harder.

"That Nick Carter killed your father and Joe and that I'm out trying to run him down. It'll be all right if you have trouble talking. That'll make it convincing. Then you hang up without giving any more details."

Rossi had gathered up all the weapons in the room and laid them out on a table. He picked up the Browning Valante had been carrying. "Now, Barbara, if you don't deliver the message exactly as I give it to you, I'm going to shoot Carter in the face."

His plan was taking shape. The Mafia boss Barbara was supposed to call would swallow her story. After she hung up, Rossi would murder us both. Then he'd tell the Mob I'd killed the girl before he could get me. He must have thought out a few other details to make the latter part convincing, but the gist of it was obvious.

I caught Barbara's eye and shook my head. I hoped she understood. Once she completed that call, we were both dead.

She walked to the telephone. Rossi moved along behind her. I tilted over my chair and hit the floor, trying desperately to break it so that I could free my hands. I didn't succeed, but the crash as I struck the floor caused Rossi's head to jerk around. When his eyes left Barbara, she snatched up the hypodermic needle she'd used the night before and drove it into his shoulder as hard as she could.

The sudden pain brought a scream to Rossi's lips. Even I winced as I saw the device standing up in his arm like a porcupine's quill. Rossi cursed and yanked it out. While he was doing that, the girl hit him with the telephone. He fell against the wall and she ran into the kitchen and slammed the door. Despite her grief, the girl had thought fast. Flight was better for her than trying to stay and fight Rossi.

Rossi shook his head groggily. He was so angry I thought he was going to shoot me just to vent his spleen. Then we both heard the door to the back stairway slam. He realized that he had to stop Barbara or his entire scheme would fall apart. He lunged for the door she had closed, battered it open with his shoulder and ran through the kitchen. I heard him going down the stairs.

A drawer opened in the kitchen. Barbara darted hack into the room carrying a butcher knife. She was panting. "I slammed the back door and ducked into the broom closet. He ran right past me," she said as she cut me loose.

I grabbed the knife from her and cut the ropes that bound my ankles. I picked up the other gun with the silencer on it and sprinted through the kitchen to the stairs.

Rossi had reached the street and ducked back inside when he failed to see the girl. He looked up as I appeared on the second-floor landing.

His bullet knocked splinters off the side of the open door behind me. Mine tore die sleeve on his coat.

He opened the door that led to the street and sprang through it. By the time I got down to street level, he had vanished around the corner of the house.