I shrugged. “Your people had the CIA and the Mob and everybody else helping you, not long ago. But those days are over.”
“Perhaps. But the struggle goes on. And men in your government, when they come to this place that they find so enjoyable, they are the instructors. The...” She searched for just the right word. “...the unwitting instructors.”
“Pillow talk,” I said, smiling a little, getting it now.
She smiled back, drifting nearer where I sat. “And we are the ones who learn, and who pass what we learn along to those who can use it most profitably.”
“Nice,” I said. “So who gets squeezed in the middle?”
“You do not yet understand.” She sucked in her breath and began to prowl the room, as cat-like as her name promised, touching decorative items idly along the way. “We are pro-American, but for all the Americas.”
“Then you have others besides U.S. citizens on your client list?”
“Naturally.” She turned, smiling again. “Many men from below the border have a passion for your pale blonde women. This...type also has a place here in this house. It is very profitable.”
“I would imagine.”
Her hair tossed as she slowly shook her head. “By profitable, I do not mean in the monetary sense...at least not primarily.”
This was a whorehouse dealing in state secrets and probably blackmail, and the money the girls made was only incidental.
I leaned back in the chair and opened the other beer she had set out. “Sooner or later you’re going to get to the point, honey.”
Her laugh was sudden and low, but with a lilt to it. “We have a quarry, one Jaimie Halaquez, who must be found. It is a matter of necessity and pride and as an example that will prove a deterrent for others in the future.” She stopped, her mouth pursed. “The trail to Señor Halaquez is not so obscure as you might think.”
“Really?”
“Oh yes. Señor Halaquez was a frequent guest here, and as such, certain things were learned about him. Not from him as much as about him. In retrospect, we should not have been surprised by his betrayal.”
“Pedro said it was a complete surprise.”
She sighed. “We knew that Halaquez was a traitor by definition— after all, he worked for Castro, took money from that regime, and yet he helped us. This blinded us to his most obvious trait.”
“That his chief loyalty was to himself.”
“Si, señor.”
I smirked at her. “You really couldn’t have stopped him?”
“For over a year he lay in wait. Then he moved quickly. He had to. My people have a vengeful nature.”
I nodded. “Do you have him located?”
“Not yet. But we do know where he has been, and one other thing—and this, señor, is most important—we know the single weakness that will trap him eventually.”
I leaned forward, the beer almost forgotten. “What?”
“His thirst for sexual gratification,” Gaita said. “His vanity and his physical need for a woman. Not just any woman, Morgan—only the most beautiful will do.”
“So what’s his kink?” Sounded like a game show.
“His tastes run to the...rough. He likes them young, but he also likes a woman of experience—any woman older than thirteen and younger than fifty, if she is beautiful and willing to...to play his sick games.”
An S & M freak. Hell, it was a place to start.
She looked at me for a long moment. “With just that one thing, you should be able to find him.”
“If it’s that easy, why don’t you just run him down yourself?”
Gaita’s face was absolutely impassive, but there was a strange expression in her eyes.
“Because, Morgan, he is a totally deadly person—a ruthless man trained to kill, who enjoys killing...and is more than the match for anyone we might send after him.”
Well, maybe not anyone....
She went on: “We have many who have volunteered for the mission, but these are brave Cuban boys we cannot afford to lose—young men of bravery but who were...what is the expression? In water over their heads.”
“But you’re okay risking a gringo’s life?”
“That is not fair, señor.” Her expression turned grave. “Three who took the assignment on their own initiative were successful enough to locate him, only to die painfully for their efforts. Slow deaths, señor. With a knife. Here.”
She touched her belly.
“Since then,” she said, “we have discouraged any such attempts. All those three succeeded in doing was to warn Señor Halaquez...and now he will be more wary than ever.”
I drank half the beer and put the can down. “He’s only safe with the money when he gets to Cuba. You don’t head west to get there. He could go south and try to cut across from Mexico, but my bet is you have pipelines into there, too, and he’d be picked up or your people alerted.”
She nodded.
“He wouldn’t chance getting caught in open country by somebody with a rifle, so he’d have to stay where any hostile contact would be made personally, so he could handle it, and that would mean sticking to the cities, and those Mexican cities sure wouldn’t be friendly to him at all. If he went north, his only available exit points would be international ports, and even there your people and sympathizers might lay hands on him.”
She nodded again, slowly. “Where then, Morgan?”
“Right here in his own back yard,” I said, “where he has previously established contacts. He’s close to Cuba, if he can make escape arrangements, he knows the area, and the probable moves of your organization...and all he has to do is wait for the right time and place to skip on out. Do you have any theory about why he hasn’t already skipped?”
“We do not.”
“I do. He needs to launder that money—well, not launder it, exactly. He’ll need to get it exchanged for currency that’s legal in Cuba—money from a country with normalized relations.”
“Would that be difficult for him?”
“No, but he would likely go through underground channels. And because he’s keeping his head down, he’s probably using middlemen. That may give me a lead on him. It’s the one thing that would force him out of hiding.”
Her eyes tightened. “Unless...”
“Unless what?”
“His own lust for the perverted sex, that may also...as you say, force him out.”
I looked around the room. “Well, he’s not coming here.”
“No. But there are other such places. And there is one other possibility.”
“Yeah?”
“When he learns, señor, that one capable of matching his skills is hunting him down? He may come after you. The hunted may prefer to become the hunter.”
I snorted a laugh. “So that’s how I got picked for the job. You fine folks want me to do the flush job.”
She shrugged, smiled just a little. “It was you who volunteered, Señor Morgan.”
I picked up the beer, finished it and leaned back again. “Hell, kid, I’m not complaining. Everything was getting too damn dull anyway. I was getting stale. I can use a break in the routine, to pick up my thinking again.”
She stood there in front of me, that enigmatic smile playing with the corners of her mouth again. Her hand went up to her throat, her fingers wove inside the drawstring of the blouse, and this time when she moved her shoulders the blouse came slipping off to her waist and she was like one of those bare-breasted Tahitian natives Gauguin loved to paint.
Once again her hands and arms moved, flowing behind her with swift, definite purpose, then the full skirt fell, taking the blouse with it, a fabric waterfall that pooled around her feet and she was a naked, lovely thing with olive skin that had a sheen to it and midnight hair that ornamented her to perfection. She pulled down white panties to fully reveal the dark delta that had already been showing through, and she kicked them away.
“You can have me, Señor Morgan, for a...break in your routine.”
“But I won’t,” I said.
Her eyes changed again. Surprise. Disappointment? “Why, Morgan?”
“I don’t like to be tested, baby.”
She luxuriated in an animal-like stretch, her lips opening in a smile, her pelvis jutting forward sensuously, the suckedin breath lifting her breasts even higher until she looked more like an artist’s conception than the living, vital thing she was. The expression in her eyes was clear now. It was one of relief.
She let her breath out slowly, a look of pleasure crossing her face. “Yes, Señor Morgan. You are man enough to take Jaimie Halaquez. He could not stand before you.”
I saw the tip of her tongue dart pinkly between her teeth. “And now since you have passed the test...you may really have me, if you wish. Not as a reward or a bribe or even a gesture of thanks. But because I want you to.”
And it wasn’t an act this time.
My throat felt tight. “Honey,” I said, “haven’t you heard? I’m a married man....”
Her eyes didn’t leave mine. Something seemed to satisfy her at last, because she still smiled and the pleasure remained in her face. “Your wife must be a very special woman.”
“I haven’t seen her for a year. If we’re both lucky, I’ll never see her again.”
She frowned. “I do not understand.”
“Not sure I do either, kid.”
Her head went back. Her breasts jutted. And this time, if those feds had flashed a light on me, I’d have been hard enough to pass the audition.
“A man of such determination I must kiss,” she said. “That you cannot refuse me. A woman’s heart is pleased that such men still exist.”
I couldn’t have stopped her if I’d wanted to.
She stepped out of the pile of clothes and walked toward me, exhilarating in her nakedness, the constant challenge apparent in the subtle, eager flexing of the muscles that played under that soft olive flesh. She reached down, tilted my chin up, then bent at the waist and let her mouth brush mine softly, the wish plain behind the lush dampness, but no insistent demand at all. Inadvertently, my fingertips brushed the firm texture of her thigh, then I drew them back and she stood.
“I could love you, Morgan.”
“Not a good idea.”
“You are right. I should not fall into a trap that you do not wish to set.”
She walked away and stood in front of the mirror over the dressing table, studying me in the glass. Her rump was a rounded, dimpled distraction.
“What is it you do want, Morgan? There are things I could do for you, to you, that may not violate your quaint morality. Tell me, and whatever it is I will give it to you.”
“A gun,” I said. “Standard Army issue Colt .45 automatic.”
Her eyes laughed at me. “That is all?”
“For now,” I said. “So put your clothes on and fill me in.”
Watching her go through the measured motions of dressing was even more torturous than seeing her strip. Everything she did now appeared unconsciously exciting, and I couldn’t stop looking at her.
You could die tomorrow, man, a voice was saying. Hell, you could die tonight. And you don’t want to say yes to this finely stacked beauty?
Maybe she didn’t mean to tempt me. Right. She had to be deliberately tantalizing about the whole process or she wouldn’t have been a woman. When they have you in a bind, they like to put the screws to you all the way.
When she was done, she smiled gently at me and said, “You really could have taken advantage of me, SeñorMorgan. But I do think morality becomes you.”
“I was just thinking it’s a pain in the ass,” I said. “Now fill me in some more on this operation you have working here.”
“Gladly, Señor Morgan. What you have seen up to this point was simply an emergency route, if there was ever necessity to make a quick and safe exit. It leads only to this room.”
These were very special quarters, then—a sort of hotel suite-style safe house.
“I assure you,” she was saying, “that the remainder of the premises are much more elaborate, and more varied in their escape possibilities.”
“Well, you never know when you’re going to have to make a fast exit out of a whorehouse.”
That actually got a little laugh out of her. She gestured. “Come, there are others waiting to meet you...and I can give you a glimpse of what else is on offer here....”
CHAPTER FOUR
Gaita’s brief description of the establishment was much too modest.
From selected apertures at strategic locations, I was able to see the plush bar and tap room, a polished mahogany restoration of the gilt-edged 1900s. There was a casino adjoining with a Vegas-like array of gaming and a small stage at one end, and buffet tables against two walls, prime rib and cracked crab and all sorts of goodies for patrons who had worked up an appetite, presumably having sated other appetites they’d brought with them.
The dark-haired Cuban cutie pointed out tactfully concealed entrances to the upstairs rooms where customers could discreetly avail themselves of certain services. And everything was modernized now—no such thing as cash anymore, this was strictly a credit card business with coded statements at addresses or post office boxes of the client’s choice. Those enjoying the facilities were carefully screened before admittance, vouched for and vetted and to date there had been no police intervention at all.
It took longer than it should have, but finally it hit me.
I was inside the notorious Mandor Club, that ultra-select bordello whose existence was whispered about in elite circles and known to but a few.
I had stumbled across the name ten years earlier, in Rio, when a lovely-but-been-around redhead had invited me out on a cruise on her yacht, which she hadn’t obtained by selling Girl Scout Cookies door to door. She’d been great company and a memorable lay, but had become a little maudlin halfway through a magnum of champagne and damn near told me the story of her life, whether I wanted to hear it or not.
Four years as a Mandor Club hostess had set the redhead up in luxury for life, but the stipulation was that she retire outside the United States, a requirement for all of the club’s retirees. Giddy or not, she realized fairly deep in her tale that she’d spilled too much, got a little pale, spilled some more over the rail of the boat, then said no more on the subject of one of the world’s greatest whorehouses.
“Well laid out,” I told Gaita, “if you’ll pardon the expression.”
A smile twitched the lush lips. “A grand old dream of a grand old man...long dead.” She gestured like a guide on a palace tour. “The building itself was once a mansion, surrounded by others of its kind, but over the years people of wealth moved to other places, and many of the structures were brought down. This fine old place, sitting back on generous grounds, was in a good position for new owners to...conduct business.”
“You’re not talking about last week.”
“No. More like...last century.”
I gazed down at the floor again where several beautiful women in tasteful if low-cut evening dress had gathered, preparing for a cheerful night’s debauch. They were Latin, they were Asian, they were black, they were white. I might have to revise my opinion of the United Nations.
I asked, “Who runs the joint this century, querida?”
“You are about to meet her.” Gaita took my arm. “This way please, señor.”
A door activated by a buzzer from the interior opened onto a room as functionally modern as an insurance company office. Business machines were beside the two empty desks, filing cabinets lined the walls, a new, formidable-looking vault dominated the rear, and the only decorative concessions to the nature of this business were two oil-painting nudes by a world-famous pin-up artist in elaborate gilt frames, and a leather couch beside a paisley wall hanging.
Beneath the paintings, at a gray, glass-topped steel desk, sat a woman of almost timeless beauty, fingering the neckline of a sleek black dress, then idly running her fingers through piled
-high blonde hair with weird purple highlights. This stunning, mature beauty was slowly scanning the pages of a ledger.
Her birth name had been Louise Cader Gibbs. Her husband had died in a federal prison ten years ago, early in a term resulting from a stock market scandal that had turned Wall Street upside down and sideways. She hadn’t looked up yet, so she didn’t see me grinning.
I said, “Hell, Bunny, you do bounce back, don’t you?”
Then her eyes rose to mine, and hit with the force of a punch. Her face went through a strange transformation as a montage of reminiscences played in her brain and reflected out her eyes.
Finally she chuckled deep in her throat. “Damn,” she said. “Morgan the Raider. The only son of a bitch who ever managed to take that old fox I married for a hunk of his illacquired fortune.”
“It’s what I do,” I said with a shrug. “Or anyway, what I used to do.”
Gaita was looking quizzically at us both. “Madam...I am not surprised you know ofMorgan...but you knowMorgan?”
Bunny sat back and relished the moment, then rose and walked over to me with her hand outstretched. “Know him? Honey, I once paid out a contract to have him killed.” Her hand was strong and warm in mine. “Remember that, Morgan?”
“Rings a bell.”
“But...” Gaita smiled. “...he does not seem to be dead, Madam.”
Bunny laughed that deep laugh again and shook her head. “No, but two times, guys supposed to do the job were found completely dead. And seemed nobody wanted to pick up my contract after that.”
“Can I help it,” I said, “that you hired accident-prone types?”
“Anybody who takes you on, Morgan, is an accident waiting to happen.”
“Still sore?”
“Hell no, Morgan! A major rule of business is knowing when not to throw good money after bad....I wrote it off as a loss. Even found a way to deduct it off my taxes that year.”
“Must have been interesting wording on that tax form.”
The Consummata Page 5
