Checkmate in Rio Read online

  "Get out of here!"

  Nick grinned. "Take it easy, Roz. I just want to check signals with you and make a lunch date. Keep on doing what you're doing; it's all right with me."

  "It's not all right with me." She glared at him and retreated under the bubbles, her slightly olive tinted skin and jet-black hair standing out vividly against the sudsy whiteness.

  He laughed outright. "Aphrodite lurking coyly beneath the foam. I'll leave you in a minute, then I want you to hurry up. We're going out to spend some money, and I may not have a chance to talk to you again for a while. So listen." He had his own well-founded reasons for being sure they could not be overheard, and that their rooms would not be searched again. His own ingenuity, a chat with the management and the outlay of a small sum of cash had seen to that.

  Rosalind tucked suds up under her chin and looked attentive, although allowing herself a small, rebellious murmur.

  "You picked the right time for it, didn't you?"

  "Yup. Okay, now. I've hired a car, and when you're ready we'll have lunch at the Mesbla and then go on to the Jockey Club. With any luck, we'll make some contacts. After that, we may find ourselves acting independently of each other. But let's first establish some sort of pattern. Like this: we'll be together nearly all the time. But when we're apart — in public — you're having your hair done and I'm doing some sidewalk drinking. Or you're shopping and I'm on the beach ogling the girls. If I pick up a date, or some — let's say, business contact, then you do your best to stick with a group of people. All right?"

  "Dandy," Rosalind agreed. "I wouldn't mind a chance to spread my wings a little. But what is all this supposed to achieve?" One hand reached for the soap, stopped in mid-air, and hastily rearranged the bubble-bath tent.

  "Togetherness," Nick said, eyeing her hopefully. "Presumably when we're apart we're each doing something that can be accounted for, something we supposedly came down here for. And when neither of us is seen doing any of these carefree type things, it may very well be assumed that we're together in our love-nest doing something else."

  "Oh. I see. That all for now? Because I'm getting hungry too."

  "That's all," said Nick. He inhaled a mighty breath and blew it expertly at the pyramid of bubbles, baring a small circle of delectable pink-and-white softness.

  "Damn you!"

  He closed the door, chuckling. Too bad he always had to close the door.

  * * *

  He was right. It was almost too easy, picking up interested strangers. And such friendly strangers.

  Both he and Rosalind had an extraordinary run of luck at the races. Exuberant with success, they sat in the bar-lounge and let Rio come to meet them. Rio did, with open arms and inquisitive faces.

  "You are lucky, Senhor Milbank! Lucky with horses, lucky in love! Yours is a wonderful country, but they do not understand luck! What a pity that you had to leave. But we are the fortunate ones! Welcome to our shores. Welcome to our city. May you like it so well that you will always stay!"

  "Thank you, my friend. But you are right — I am a lucky man!" Nick said exuberantly. "Have a drink with us. Please, all of you, drink with us!" He waved an all-embracing hand and grinned cheerfully until he thought his face would split.

  "But the lady…?"

  "The lady would adore It," Rosalind said. She turned a melting gaze on the speaker, a bright-eyed paunchy man who reminded her of the man in her neighborhood delicatessen. "And your friends. You will all join us, won't you? Please!"

  "How could I resist?" the man said gallantly.

  The group grew rapidly. Glad-hander Milbank drew them in, filled their glasses, talked about his luck, and congratulated himself out loud for having found such wonderful new friends in this great and hospitable country.

  "Antonio Teixeira, Senhor Milbank… and your lovely lady. This time you will drink with us?"

  "Miss Montez, you are Spanish, yes? Mexican? But you speak some Portuguese? Ah, good! But the Senhor does not? No? But he will learn!"

  "My wife, Maria…" Nick's eyes flickered. Maria was a dumpy little woman wearing jewelry that should never be worn anywhere near a race track. Pushing fifty, he thought unkindly. "You will perhaps honor us with a visit? My card. Dias, you will remember the name. Like the famous explorer."

  "Icarahy has everything. So, the casino is closed, but one can always find amusement if one knows where to look for it. You need only ask…"

  Voices roared and whispered, hinted and invited. Somehow, a hard core formed, and that core swept Nick and Rosalind back into the city and settled around them in the Night and Day. The club throbbed with Saturday night life. The Milbank group, again, drew others like a magnet.

  Champagne and highballs flowed.

  "Here's to the man who won the big Wall Street lottery in the United States and won again today!"

  Nick danced once with Rosalind and lost her to a tall young man with black hair and a dazzling smile. He picked his way back to their table and sat down. Miraculously, he was almost alone. As he pulled up his chair the remaining couple at his big ringside table excused themselves with smiles and drifted onto the dance floor. That left him alone with a woman he had scarcely noticed before. Looking at her attentively for the first time, he wondered how he could have been so remiss. She was looking at him as though she intended to memorize his face and put the image underneath her pillow. As he appraised her he saw the reddish lights in her thick dark hair and the slow curve of a smile on her sensuous lips. He almost fell into the deep wells of her eyes.

  "Hello," he said, swallowing like a schoolboy. "Forgive me for staring. I'm afraid you come as a bit of a surprise to me. I know we met a few moments ago, but in all the confusion I didn't catch your name. I'm Robert Milbank."

  "I know," she said, her smile widening. "And now my Rodrigo has swept off with your… Rosa, is it?"

  "Rosita."

  "Yes, Rosita. And so we are thrown together. I hope you don't mind that we have gate-crashed your party? Rodrigo was so anxious to meet you."

  "Oh Rodrigo, huh?" So this pale-vivid creature was in company with gigolo-face. They hardly seemed to go together. "What made him so anxious?"

  The woman shrugged. She was younger than he'd thought at first, perhaps twenty-six or -seven. "He thinks rich Americans are glamorous. And he seems to think some of it will rub off on him."

  "Hmm." Nick's eyes sought through the couples on the dance floor and found Rosalind and her partner. "He certainly seems to be trying hard enough."

  She laughed outright. "Rodrigo always dances like that. You are not jealous, are you?"

  "Lord, no. How could I be, in your company? Why don't we dance, and make everybody jealous?"

  "I was hoping you'd ask."

  She rose with fluid grace. Her touch upon his arms was light but electric and her body movement was subtle, rhythmic. Voluptuous music enveloped them and swept them away. So perfectly matched were their bodies and their movements that neither was conscious of the mechanics of dancing. Her legs moved with his, and whatever she was feeling or thinking translated itself into harmonious, almost liquid motion.

  "Wow!" thought Nick, and gave himself up temporarily to the pleasure of his senses. The dance moved them apart and drew them together, made them feel each other's warmth and the pulsations that flowed from one to the other — flowed so smoothly that the two of them were almost one.

  Nick felt his pulse quicken as a moment of music brought her thighs against his. Watch yourself, fella, he told himself, and willed his blood to cool. His pulse slowed and the soft-focus sensation left him, but the feeling of perfect physical harmony remained.

  The beat changed. His partner smiled up at him.

  "You dance superbly," she said, her voice a sigh of something very like fulfillment and her eyes two luminous pools.

  "So do you," said Nick sincerely. "It's an experience I very seldom have."

  "Not even with… Rosita?"

  "Rosita is a professional dancer," said Nick, n
ot quite answering the question. The woman's supple, responsive body swayed with his. "You know, I still don't know your name."

  "Carla," she murmured.

  "Carla." A chord of memory twanged distantly. "And Rodrigo is your…?"

  She gave a little laugh and drew away very, very slightly.

  "Rodrigo is my nothing. I'm Carla Langley. Mrs. Pierce Langley. Mr. Langley it not with us tonight. In fact, Mr. Pierce Langley is very seldom with us."

  Nick's senses jolted back to normal.

  "He doesn't like going out?"

  "He doesn't," she agreed. "He doesn't like much of anything. Anything… He's kind of a tired man." Her nose did something disdainful — not obvious, but unmistakable.

  "That's too bad," he said sympathetically. "But you mean he actually stays home and encourages you to go out with — well, with people like Rodrigo?"

  "Encourages me! Oh, dear no. He hates Rodrigo. And he'd rather I stayed home with him. But now he isn't home. It gives me a chance to let my hair down a little." She stiffened slightly and a shadow of remorse flickered across her face. "Please don't misunderstand me, Robert. Pierce has never been a social butterfly but he's never really denied me anything. I shouldn't be talking to you like this."

  "Why not?" said Nick, letting a hand wander in a suggestive little caress. "Why shouldn't you say what you mean? People should always be themselves — even at the risk of being misunderstood. And I don't think I misunderstand you." Calculatingly, he gazed into her eyes, then lightly brushed his lips against her hair.

  Her fingers tightened on his shoulder and her hips pulsated with the music.

  "Ask me, then," she whispered. "Ask me."

  "On your own terms," he whispered back, not absolutely certain what she meant. "You tell me."

  Her eyelids fluttered. "What about… her?"

  "I hold the strings," said Nick arrogantly. "I do as I please."

  "Tomorrow, then? Just a — brief encounter?" He was astonished by the longing look that came into her eyes. "Perhaps the Country Club? It would be quite natural for a member to introduce you there."

  The music ended and they stood on the floor, still holding each other. Rosalind and her borrowed Rodrigo wafted by, glancing at them curiously.

  "Late lunch, then, to begin with. And after that — the beach, a sail, whatever you like." Her eyes implored him.

  "It sounds wonderful," he said. "You'll let me pick you up?"

  She shook her head. "I'll meet you there. Come, let's sit down. I'm beginning to feel watched."

  They were almost the last to leave the dance floor. Slowly, they made their way back and joined the others. Nick refused to meet Rosalind's eye. He saw a shuttered look come over Carla's face. She left a few minutes later, holding Rodrigo's arm.

  "Now there goes a nice attentive young man," Rosalind murmured.

  "There goes a greasy spiv," said Nick unkindly. "I think it's time for us to leave. C'mon."

  They left in a chorus of bibulous farewells and invitations.

  "Do you remember where you put the car?" said Rosalind doubtfully. Even nightbird Rio had doused its lights now and the abandoned sidewalks looked dark and unfamiliar.

  "Of course I do. Anyway, a Jaguar isn't easy to mislay. Turn right here. By the way, did you glean anything useful from your constant dance partner of the evening, Clammy Hands, who was crawling down your bosom every time I looked your way?"

  "You should talk," she said indignantly. "I thought you and that pale thing were going to do it right there on the dance floor."

  "Do what? Never mind — don't spell it out. That pale thing, sweetheart — your boyfriend's girlfriend — is one of our targets. Mrs. Carla Langley."

  "Oh. Oh!"

  They were so busy thinking this over in their various ways that they didn't see the two hulking shadows that waited in a doorway near the Jaguar.

  "So that," said Rosalind, "was Carla Langley."

  Mrs. Carla Langley

  "…Two months short of twenty-six. Married four years last September. No children. Education, Rio, New York, Lisbon, of the finishing school variety. Both parents part American. Expensive but not unduly demanding taste in clothes and household furnishings; apparently well satisfied with material circumstances of life. Marital relationship less satisfactory, seemingly due to disparity in age…"

  Sentences from Carla's dossier filed across Nick's mind and blended with his personal observations. The bones of the black and white words were already being filled Out with flesh and colored by opinion.

  A street lamp shone down on his borrowed car. Habit made him study the highly-polished surfaces in search of new fingerprints and locks that might show signs of tampering. He opened the door for Rosalind. She got into the Jag gracefully but carefully.

  Nick walked around to his side of the car. He opened the door and suddenly pivoted on the balls of his feet, the short hairs on the back of his neck prickling uncomfortably.

  Two masked men had materialized from the darkness and were almost on him. One had a gun and the other seemed to be unarmed. Nick's arm swung even as his body turned. It sliced through the air in a swift and deadly arc that exploded against the gunman's neck. The man gasped and staggered back. Nick's leg shot out in a swift upward kick while the hard edge of his right hand slammed into the cartilage of an already pulpy nose. The gun clattered somewhere on the sidewalk and the man moaned and sank to his knees. Nick raised his foot again, one eye on the crouching figure of the second man, and brought his heel down on the gunman's neck. The man's knees melted, and he dropped.

  The street lamp glinted off two disparate objects. One was a knife on the upward plunge toward Nick's midriff. The other seemed to be a silver spike coming down on the second attacker's head.

  Rosalind's spiked evening shoe slammed the side of the second man's head. He grunted in pained surprise and the updriving knife lost aim and momentum. Nick twisted at the same time and let the darting blade flash past him. He clamped a vise-like grip on the knife hand as the attacker lost balance. He twisted again, bringing the arm down under his own and his knee up. He snapped. The man made a choking sound and fell. Nick, ignoring the Marquis of Queensberry but not the rules of unarmed combat, hit him when he was down. He kicked him, in fact, accurately and painfully. The groan this time was a voice from hell.

  Nick retrieved both knife and gun and tossed them into his car.

  "Well done, Roz. Thanks," he said, and knelt for a quick search of his two assailants.

  "That was dumb of them," she said matter-of-factly. "They should have forced you into protecting me."

  "Perhaps they thought I wouldn't," he said absently. "Take a look around, make sure nobody's coming."

  She sighted into the night.

  "Not even a mouse. Want any help?"

  "No. Just keep watching. I don't want to explain anything or get involved with cops."

  His fingers raced expertly through two sets of clothing.

  To his surprise he found identification cards, keys, small sums of cash, ticket stubs and laundry marks. He ripped off the dark handkerchief-masks and saw stubbled faces that were twisted more with pain than menace. Their wallets and the tattered cards they held meant nothing to him. He took them anyway, taking out the money and leaving it in the pockets. His eyebrows came together in a thoughtful frown.

  "Shall we take 'em with us?" Rosalind asked, a hint of nervous strain in her voice.

  "Dragging them by the hair through the lobby of the Copa International? No, thanks. We'll leave them where we found them." As he spoke he rolled the gunman into the shadow and propped him against the wall in a doorway recess. "More or less." He turned back for the other one. "They've been thoughtful enough to supply me with name, address, telephone numbers, even baby pictures."

  "What?"

  "Yes, unusual, isn't it?" he agreed, and dragged the knifer into the square of darkness away from the street light. The man groaned pitifully. Nick dumped him onto the tiles and saw that his eyes
were fluttering open.

  "So you're with us again, are you, Mac?" On impulse, Nick stifled the urge to say Who sent you? and said instead: "What the hell's the idea? You looking for a jail sentence — or shall I beat you up again?"

  "Sonofabitch American," the man said distinctly. "Goddamn rich thief." He spat upwards. Nick turned his head abruptly but felt spray settle on his cheek. The back of his hand struck the other man's face.

  "Thief? Isn't that what you are?"

  The man made an obscene, wordless sound. "You, you are dirt. Everything in the world you got. You stole it. Car, woman, everything." He groaned, and clutched his agonized arm. "Come here, make a big show with your lousy money. To hell with you, swine. Get the police if you want to. Bastard crook!"

  "Robert!" Rosalind's voice was urgent. "Leave them, for God's sake. They're not worth worrying about. They didn't get anything. And I don't want to go through any nonsense with the police. Please, honey…"

  "I'll bet you don't!" The agonized voice was a sneer. "How much did she cost you from the stolen money? I read the papers, I know what you…"

  Nick's hand slammed into the sneering face and shut its mouth.

  "You know what I'd do if I were you?" he said, exuding icy hatred. "I'd lie there and pray the cops don't come. And then when I felt a little better, I'd get out of town. Because maybe I'll go to the police and maybe I won't. But I know where to find you — you and your friend." He tapped his coat pocket significantly. "And your sweet little wife and your sniveling baby. You picked the wrong guy to tangle with, mister. But you didn't get anything, so maybe I'll let you go. Maybe."

  The man said something filthy. The gunman stirred and moaned. Out of the quiet night came the sound of a man's voice raised in cheerful, early morning song.

  "Rob, come on!" Rosalind's voice was impatient as she got into the car.

  A hand and foot struck out again, viciously. There were two more pained sounds. Nick climbed into the driver's seat and soon had the Jaguar sliding into a trickle of traffic heading for Copacabana Beach.