The Ecstasy Connection Page 6

  "You fool!" the fat man wheezed. "You bloody fanatic! You jumped the bloody gun! You've endangered the whole project!"

  Hsi stiffened. "You forget yourself, Mr. Sim. The People's Republic of China has made you rich. We are the ones who supply the heroin you sell through your gangster connections in the United States. Without our protection the Chinese criminal organization here in Hong Kong would kill you."

  The fat man closed his eyes. "I protect myself. I've grown very good at it."

  Hsi felt a sudden chill, despite the hot moistness of the air in the walled garden. "What do you mean?"

  "My agents in the United States are taking steps to correct your stupid mistake. And my gangster connections, as you call them, have agreed to cooperate."

  "You had no right! My superiors…"

  "Your superiors — your real superiors — are as displeased as I am."

  "But…"

  The fat man lifted a face that was like an immense tomato. Lost somewhere in the middle of that vast globular expanse was a normal human face with rosebud lips. The lips parted, showing little white teeth. "The activist faction you belong to does not yet run things at Number Fifteen Bow String Alley."

  "You have been in direct contact with Peking?"

  "Bloody right I've been."

  "But I am your contact. I have been assigned…"

  The bloated shape in the chair heaved like a hippopotamus. "Get your idiotic face out of my sight before I lose my appetite."

  Hsi winced at the insult. It was difficult to ignore. Working relations with Mr. Sim would be strained in the future. "Very well. I will speak to you tomorrow."

  Mr. Sim smiled as if he had said something amusing. Perhaps that was a good sign. The fat Englishman was almost always in a good mood. He liked people to be happy, he always said.

  "Hsiao!" Mr. Sim called, clapping his hands. "Show K'uang Hsi out."

  The servant named Hsiao appeared from nowhere. He was a gaunt, silent peasant from Kwangtung who still dressed in the ill-fitting blue pajamas of the district. His name, Wei Hsiao, meant Smiling One, but Hsi had never seen him smile. He made Hsi uncomfortable with his woebegone face and that peculiar flat place in his skull.

  Hsi headed for the garden gate, the servant gliding silently after him. He waited while the ornamental iron inner door was unlocked then, standing impatiently between the two twelve-foot walls, waited again while the stout oak outer door was unlatched. Mr. Sim believed in security.

  Outside, Hsi paused for a moment to enjoy the magnificent view. It was just twilight and the colored lights of Hong Kong were spread out below. The dark waters of Victoria Harbor sparkled with lights as well — anchored snips and pleasure boats and the nickering lanterns of thousands of sampans

  His limousine was parked where he left it. Hsi slid behind the wheel. It would be a long drive down the mountain road to Victoria, then by ferry across the harbor to Kowloon, where his hotel was.

  He turned on the ignition and put the car in gear. A pajama-clad shadow slipped out of Mr. Sim's walled villa and got on a bicycle. Hsi didn't notice.

  He drove slowly and carefully down the steep mountain road. Even so, the demon-chaser caught him by surprise.

  He had just rounded a corner when a dim form leaped out of the shadows and hurled itself in front of the car. Hsi cursed and jammed on the brakes. The demon-chaser had miscalculated. The car grazed him with a fender and flung him to the ground. He lay there moaning, a young man in a white shirt and dark slacks.

  Hsi got out of the car, intending to give the young man a piece of his mind. Hong Kong was full of demon-chasers, superstitious fools who believed they could get rid of the demons they thought were inhabiting them if they jumped in front of a moving car. The demon was supposed to have slower reflexes; it would be killed by the car while its victim leaped to safety. They were a traffic hazard.

  He bent over the young man. "Ch'ih tzu!" he said severely. "Idiot!"

  The young man raised himself on one elbow and grasped Hsi's necktie. At the same time a bicycle came silently to a stop just behind him. Its rider put out a pajama-clad leg to balance himself. A hand holding an icepick moved in a swift arc.

  The icepick slid precisely between the cervical vertebrae and up into the brain. Hsi felt a sharp pain and a moment of intolerable pressure. He crumpled to the ground, dead.

  The servant named Hsiao withdrew the icepick. There was a single ruby drop of blood at its tip. He produced a wad of cotton and wiped it off. He bent over Hsi's body and used the cotton to absorb the tiny drop of blood that had appeared in the back of Hsi's neck. Nothing showed now.

  With the help of the young man Hsiao put the corpse behind the wheel of the car. The motor was still running. They put the car in gear and sent it down the mountain road. It would eventually hit something — an oncoming car or an obstacle at the side of the road. Perhaps the driver would be presumed to have had a heart attack. Perhaps not. It didn't matter.

  The two men walked back up the road, wheeling the bicycle with them. They didn't talk. At the entrance to Mr. Sim's villa they were met by another servant who asked them a question.

  Hsiao nodded yes. The demon-chaser confirmed it. "Ssu te," he said. "He is dead."

  The man who had let them in handed each of them a small object that looked like a transistor radio. They grabbed at them eagerly.

  "Teng hou!" the other man hissed. "Wait!" He closed the outer door swiftly behind them.

  But neither of them was able to wait. With trembling hands they unreeled the thin platinum wire that was attached to the transistor devices and plugged the jacks into the sockets in their skulls.

  The tension went out of their bodies immediately. Wei Hsiao, the Smiling One, lost his unhappy expression and began to smile.

  6

  "Let's do something else!" Bunny cried. "This party's a bummer!"

  He lay sprawled in his stocking feet in the middle of the fluffy white rug, his hand absentmindedly under the skirt of a redheaded lingerie model named Baby. Bunny was a chubby young man with pink skin and eyes to match. That's where he'd got his nickname. His real name was Lloyd Stanford Hamilton III, and he was heir to a mercantile fortune.

  The dozen or so people in the penthouse living room nodded or murmured assent, except for Baby, who was already zonked out at only eight in the evening.

  The Baroness nodded along with the rest of them. She sat propped up by floor pillows, a glass of some abominable pop wine in her hand, dressed in a flapper skirt and transparent blouse that made it plain that she'd left her bra in her closet.

  "Bunny's soooo right," she drawled lazily. "I only came here because Marietta said she had some real hash."

  "You said it, Baroness!" chirped Ralphie Pardon, the dress designer. He was a birdy little man wearing a violet turtleneck, velvet vest, and pants so tight you could see his truss. "Marietta, you promised us some of the black Russian!"

  "It looked all right," Marietta said defensively. She was a busty, big-boned woman who played sympathetic wives on television stomach-remedy commercials. "Nice and dark. How'd I know it wasn't up to it?"

  "Didn't do a thing for me," said Infra Red, the ever-present groupie. She was wearing a Mexican sombrero and serape over a man's union suit, dyed scarlet. The flap was open.

  "You got taken," the Baroness said over the rim of paper cup. "Probably artificially colored."

  She sat back and relaxed. Things seemed to be moving in the right direction. With a push or two from her, the lead to Reginald T. Perry's drug source was developing nicely. She had been accepted unqestioningly by Monica Firth's friends as a friend of the dead model. After all, the Baroness was a model too. They'd all seen her pictures in the fashion magazines, and several of them were acquainted with one or the other of the two movies she'd made. She was now a member of Monica Firth's ingroup. Several of the girls had slept with Reggie Perry at one time or another.

  "What are we going to do?" whined Bunny.

  "Nina knows," said In
fra Red.

  They all turned toward Nina, a thin, dark, dress model with the painted dot in her forehead that some habitual LSD users affected. "Nina knows, Nina knows…" somebody began, and they all took up the chant.

  Nina looked accusingly at Infra Red. "You weren't supposed to tell."

  "We've got to put our heads together, right?" Infra Red said, and they all laughed.

  "All right," Nina said. "There's a new, kicky thing around. Reggie Perry laid it on me a couple of times. On Red, too."

  "You mean the godfather scene?" another girl asked. "Reggie took me once, too."

  Ralphie Pardon's bright little eyes sparkled with interest. "Are you talking about mobsters? Real live Mafiosi?"

  "Oh, they're nice, Ralphie," Nina said. "They may act tough, but they're so much fun. And they have just oodles of smack and grass and jolly beans. Anything you name."

  Infra Red said, "And there's a new thing. They call it the Big E. It's supposed to be better than LSD. Reggie was getting it from them. Never gave me any, the bum. Said it was still too scarce."

  "I had it once," Nina said. "It was like heaven. You just wanted to die."

  "There're rumors that a supply just came into the country," Infra Red said. "Tonight may be the night."

  Penelope put on a studied, casual look. "Where is this going to be?"

  "A loft on Sullivan Street. About fifty or a hundred people are invited, including Nina and me."

  "Well, another nine or ten shouldn't make any difference," Penelope said. "How much is it going to cost?"

  "A thousand dollars a head. And I do mean heads. Nobody allowed who hasn't heard about the Big E."

  "Well, we've all heard about it now, haven't we?"

  "That's ten thousand dollars — assuming that you two girls already have your entrance fees," Bunny said. "And you needn't expect me to bankroll this crowd. I'm tired of paying for everything."

  Penelope rummaged in her handbag. "I should have ten or fifteen thousand here somewhere," she said. "I never go out without mad money."

  "You're a dear sweet thing, Penelope," Ralphie said. He turned to Nina. "Is it true that those rough, tough gangsters will actually bugger a fellow?"

  Infra Red stood up, her flap dangling. "I don't know about buggering, Ralphie dear. But they do like lineups. The time I went I couldn't sit down for a week."

  "Do you have to?" Marietta asked.

  "Nobody has to do anything," Nina said. "But what's the point of going if you're going to be a drag?"

  "It's just that I…"

  "Stay home and watch your reruns, dear," Penelope said sweetly. "I don't mind saving a thousand dollars."

  They milled around a few minutes, putting on shoes and getting themselves together. Infra Red buttoned up her flap. Ralphie preened like a peahen. "Oh, goodie!" he said. "Are we really going?"

  Penelope herded them to the door. "Three cabs," she said. She rested a hand on Infra Red's flannel-clad arm. "You ride with me and show the way."

  The loft was in a decrepit factory building, now inhabited by artists and poets, or sloppy imitations of them. The street was dark and untenanted. With a professional eye Penelope noted the pair of men in big-shouldered jackets skulking in doorways across from the entrance. Enforcers, she thought, strong-arm men. There were probably two or three more out of sight. They'd be carrying iron under those too-sharp jackets.

  She had a pang of regret for her Bernadelli VB, left behind at her own apartment. Small as it was, she hadn't dared take it. Monica Firth's old crowd was fond of gropes and casual nudity, and she didn't dare blow her cover.

  Her only weapon was the black cigarette lighter that pan Wharton had made for her. It contained a tiny compressed-gas cartridge that shot a splinter of synthetic black widow spider venom. The powerful neurotoxin, a thousand times more concentrated than nature provided, killed through a massive shock to the nervous system. Death came in three-fifths of a second. The needle dissolved in the body within minutes after that

  Penelope screwed a cigarette into the black holder and lit it. I must remember not to let it burn down too far, she thought. The cartridge was triggered either by heat — a burning cigarette providing a sort of time fuse — or by compressing the spring that held the two sections of the shank fractionally apart under a concealing silver band.

  "Is that ordinary tobacco?" Nina squealed beside her. "Baroness, there'll be better than that inside."

  "Well, let's go, then," Penelope said.

  They trooped up the dark stairs of the loft building. Ralphie and Infra Red were giggling together, and Bunny was wheezing manfully. Baby had pulled herself together enough to trail along. There were three other girls — models or television bit-players, and Bud and Stud. Bud did something on Madison Avenue. Stud, a dark muscular young man in jeans and sleeveless top, did his thing anywhere. He looked forward to a lot of action tonight.

  There was a rickety table on the top landing. Two swarthy men with their hats on stood behind it.

  "Hey what is this?" one of them said to Nina.

  "It's okay, they're friends of mine," she said. "They're here for the Big E too."

  The swarthy men exchanged glances. "It's a bill each," the first one said.

  "I've got it," Penelope said. She searched her handbag. "Here's ten thou. Bunny over there will pay his own way."

  Grumbling, Bunny took out a money clip and produced his thousand. They surged toward the door.

  "Hold it," the man said. "You gotta be frisked first. Angelo, you take the broads."

  Angelo ran his hands expertly down Penelopes body

  He leered at her breasts, standing free under the filmy blouse and held them in his hands like a grocer weighing a pair of grapefruits. When Penelope thought he had held them long enough, she said, "What do you think they are, Angelo? Bocci balls?"

  He grinned and give them a squeeze, hard enough to hurt, then went on to examine Infra Red. The other mobster was frisking Ralphie. Penelope heard him giggle when the swarthy man prodded his crotch.

  "Okay, folks, have a good time," Angelo said when they were through. He opened the door.

  The loft ran the whole length of the building. It was an enormous cavern of a place, with big frosted skylights set in the sloping walls. A bar had been set up on a raised platform at the far end, with three white-coated bartenders behind it. A tenor with a mandolin was competing with a hi-fi set blasting hard rock. There were couches lining the walls, and the floor was strewn with mattresses.

  "Whee!" Bunny said, flinging himself on one of the mattresses. "Baby, get me a Chivas Regal and ginger ale, and see if they have any pot at the bar."

  Fifty or sixty people were lolling on the couches or sprawled over the mattresses. Most were already smashed. The air was thick with pot and hash and — Penelope sniffed — opium. She located the opium smokers against the far wall, propped back to back on a divan. One was a fiftyish, prosperous-looking man in a conservative suit. His companion was a cute, pert teenage girl in sweater and micromini.

  She scanned the loft swiftly, sizing up the crowd and locating exits. The merrymakers covered a broad spectrum: artists and entertainers and businessmen and rich college kids and types who looked like doctors or lawyers. They had only one thing in common; they'd all been able to scrape up a thousand dollars. A large man dressed like a prosperous undertaker circulated through the crowd, shaking hands and pausing for a few words here and there. Penelope recognized him; it was Anthony Cremona, who had been running the rackets hereabouts ever since his chief rival for the job had died of lead poisoning at a seafood restaurant. The chunky, somber man sticking close by his shoulder was his bodyguard.

  Cremona stopped at their group. "Hello, Nina," he said. "Brought a few friends along, I see."

  "When do you pass out the Big E?" Nina said.

  "Nobody promised that, but we'll see," he said. "In the meantime you can get anything you want over at the bar. Grass, hash, shit, uppers, downers, acid." He smiled, but his face showed his
contempt for the rich degenerates he was entertaining. He was known to be a clean-living family man himself.

  "When does the action start?" Stud asked.

  "Very soon."

  Penelope was a superb reader of body language. She noticed the violent ripple that went across Cremona's meaty shoulders when he said it, the imperceptible baring of his teeth. She glanced at the waiters and mandolin player. Something very funny is going on here, she thought.

  She screwed a fresh cigarette in her black holder. Cremona snapped his fingers and the bodyguard rushed over to light it for her.

  "Thank you," she said. "What's your name?"

  He looked uneasy. "Vic," he said.

  "I thought this party was going to swing."

  "It's… uh… a little early yet." He looked imploringly after Cremona's broad back, now moving toward another group of celebrants.

  She pulled him by the sleeve. "Vic, dear, how about right now? If you're shy about performing in front of your boss, I'm sure we could find a private spot somewhere else."

  He looked longingly at the torpedo shapes of her breasts under the see-through fabric. She helped him out by placing his hand over one of them. At the same time, with a deft movement that caught him by surprise, she dipped into his fly.

  "I gotta go," he said nervously. He broke away and followed Cremona, tugging at his zipper.

  Penelope had found out what she wanted to know. Vic wasn't prepared for an orgy. His organ had been limp and flaccid in her hand, even after the appetizer she'd given him. He was a man with something else on his mind.

  That didn't apply to some of the lower-level hoods, she noticed. One of them was rammed up against Infra Red's buttocks. She was bent over acrobatically, hands grasping her ankles. The rear flap of her longjohns was open. Two more hoods were lined up behind the one who was occupied.

  There was more action taking place around her. Three of the long-haired kids had stripped naked and formed a daisy chain. A fourth player joined them, then a fifth.

  The lights seemed dimmer. The smoke grew thicker. The rock music was at a deafening level. Oddly enough, the mandolin player continued to strum and sing in another key, only faintly audible above the din.