anything else. Rex-' she nodded at the bartender '- was gonna throw her out, but I talked him out of it. Awhile ago a pimp sat down in her booth, an' the two of them went out together.'
'Your pimp, Teresa?'
'Correct.'
'Would he take her to his place?'
'To hers. If you decide to do anything about it, it would help to keep my skin together if he thought you walked in on them accidentally.'
She picked up her drink and went back to the bar.
I was supposed to stay in the Alhambra and watch for Hawk. But there was the thought of Chryssie sitting in a booth, crying because I'd stood her up. I'd known she was broke or next door to it. I wasn't her guardian angel by any means, but I didn't care for the idea that I'd turned a pimp loose on her.
It would only take a few minutes. I left the Alhambra and walked rapidly to Fiftieth Street. I didn't have a key to Chryssie's apartment, but that wouldn't be a problem. When I reached her landing, I saw a line of light under her apartment door. It was locked when I tried it. I took a thin strip of stiff plastic from my wallet and eased it into the door jamb. I turned my wrist slightly and the lock moved back with a snicking sound.
I moved inside quietly. The sickly-sweet odor of marijuana was overpowering. Only the light in the bedroom was on, and I moved toward it stealthily. Chryssie was on the bed, naked, face down and sobbing. There were dark blotches on her alabaster behind. Across the foot of the bed was a scruffy-bearded, lanky, hairy type, also naked. He was sleeping.
Male clothing was draped over a nearby chair. I went through it and found an eight-inch, bone-handled knife in a sleeve holster. I dropped holster and knife into my pocket and went back to the bed. I drew the.38 from my shoulder holster, took hold of the bearded character's ankle, and jerked him off the bed.
He landed on the floor with a crash that sat Chryssie bolt upright in the bed, whimpering fearfully. The man on the floor scrambled on his belly toward the chair holding his clothes as unerringly as though he was fitted with radar although bis eyes were still closed. He went slack only when he couldn't find bis knife.
'Get your ass out of here before I fill it full of slugs,' I told him when he opened his eyes. I showed him the.38. He stayed a respectful distance from it while he dressed hurriedly although his eyes stayed mean. Chryssie stared at the tableau with panic-stricken gaze.
'How about my knife?' the bearded character asked from the doorway.
'Come and get it,' I invited him. 'If you're feeling lucky.'
He glared at me, then went out. I had moved to the bedroom doorway to make sure he went. When I returned to the bed, Chryssie was crying again.
'What happened to your tail?' I asked her.
'H-he kept kicking m-me to make me do th-things,' she sobbed.
'What the hell do you expect if you keep on acting like a victim?' I growled. Her air of helplessness really irritated me. I went into the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. There must have been twenty-five different bottles of pills inside. I stuffed bottles into all my pockets until I'd made a clean sweep. 'Take a shower and get into bed and stay there till you hear me at the door,' I told Chryssie when I was back in the bedroom. 'Understand?'
She nodded, still wide eyed.
I took her key, locked her into the apartment, and went back to the Alhambra.
6
When I left the Alhambra that night, I stopped at an all-night restaurant and carried an order of scrambled eggs and a large coffee back to Chryssie's place.
She started a screaming tantrum at my entrance over the loss of her amphetamines which I'd dumped in a convenient garbage can. I straightened her out with a slap in the face and another on the tail, then pushed the scrambled eggs into her a spoonful at a time. She sat there sulkily afterward, sipping at the hot coffee. 'God knows you're probably not worth this attempted salvage job,' I told her, 'but I'm curious about what's underneath that skinful of poppers.'
'Don't do me any favors,' she answered me, but she didn't sound as flippant as usual.
The next day I spent fifteen hours at the Alhambra, bored to tears. There was no sign of Hawk. I ate food I didn't want in order to counteract booze I didn't want, and my tailbone ached from just sitting on it.
I kept Chryssie under house arrest at her place. The only time I left the Alhambra was to bring her meals. She didn't want to eat, but I forced her. My association with her hadn't gone unnoticed at the Alhambra. Rex, the bartender, stopped by my booth in the afternoon to ask me how she was. He sounded sympathetic. There was something about Chryssie's little-girlness that evidently got through even to Broadway types.
Erikson called me at her place that night. 'Talia Rhazmet got her job at the UN through the Turkish
Foreign Office,' he told me. 'And she spends more money than she makes working as a guide. I'd like to put a man on her, but I'm shorthanded right now, so we've put a tap on her apartment phone instead. So far there's been nothing interesting. What about Hawk?'
'Not a trace.'
'There's always the chance the Rhazmet girl will lead us to him. Meantime you hang on at the Alhambra. Call me in the morning with the number of the pay phone there in case I need to reach you in a hurry.'
'I don't like being paged in a public place,' I complained.
'I'll ask for Tom Dawson, not Earl Drake.'
'Listen, how long is this going to last? When I let you talk me into coming here from Tucson, I didn't contract to sit in a bar definitely and blot up Jim Beam. The bartender is even trying to get friendly.'
'Just hang on until we can find out if there's a definite connection between the girl and Hawk. Or until he shows up.' Erikson was making his tone soothing. 'Then you can back out and my men will take over.'
'It had better be quick, Karl.'
'Okay. Just sit tight for another day or two.'
He hung up on me before I could give him further argument.
In the morning, Chryssie was still pouting and complaining, but she looked and sounded better. The deep, dark shadows under her eyes had lessened, and her jittery skittishness had calmed somewhat. She had a habit of parading the apartment in the nude. 'I might as well be here with my father,' she said resentfully after flaunting herself in front of me once. 'I think you're on cocaine or heroin yourself the way you don't turn on to me.'
'I'm saving you for an orgy, Chryssie,' I told her.
But I was beginning to wonder if this girl could ever sound like a seventeen-year-old with a seventeen-year- old's problems.
She had improved enough physically for me to take her to the Alhambra. I watched her every time she went to the ladies' room, and sure enough, in the middle of the afternoon her eyes began to get the familiar glazed expression. She'd evidently begged a reefer from someone in the John. I took her back to her place and locked her in again. By that time she was floating so high she didn't even know where she was. I went back to the Alhambra and the monotonous vigil.
The next day she was as low as she'd been high previously. I wasn't going to make the same mistake again, so I left her after force-feeding some cereal into her. She was sleeping when I left her place. I had toyed with the idea of calling her father to come and get her, but in the back of my mind was the thought that he'd probably already done it, perhaps several times. A salvage job becomes less attractive as renewed effort is required.
I settled in at the Alhambra again after walking there in a light rain. The waitress brought me my Jim Beam on the rocks without my even ordering. I wondered how long I had to keep it up before I developed cirrhosis. Years, probably. I'd never make it. I was tired already of my mouth tasting like a boiled boot every morning. I was thinking less kindly of Erikson's operation every hour.
And then at 4:10 P.M. Tom Dawson received a phone call at the Alhambra. I almost blew it. I'd been feeling so sorry for myself I'd almost forgotten Erikson's little ploy. 'The Rhazmet girl just telephoned someone she called
