I went into the bathroom and soaked a towel in hot water. After washing the blood off my face, I broke a cardinal rule and glanced in the mirror. It wasn’t as bad as I thought.
There were raw cuts and scratches around both eyes. I had a fairly deep gouge beneath the right one that was seeping blood. Beauty hadn’t succeeded in getting his fingernails into either eye.
Aside from the scratches, the left side of my jaw was swelling, and I could move one of my front teeth with my index finger. Lifting the lower edge of my bloody polo shirt, I saw that the cut on my chest was superficial. Rinsing the towel in hot water, I went back into the room.
Beauty was still inching along the floor on his quest to get to the doorway. Picking up one of the vinyl chairs, I trudged past him and shut the splintered door as far as I could, wedging the back of the chair against the knob to keep it closed against the wind and rain.
Gripping the back of his collar, I dragged him over to the other chair and sat down. Turning him over on his back, I gently wiped the bloody slime away from his mouth.
“You’re going to need stitches, Beauty,” I said. “But you’ll be as pretty as ever in a month or two.”
An odd whistling sound came from his torn mouth before he managed to snarl, “Fr . . . fr . . . frock . . . you.”
I turned him over to the side to search his pockets. The first one yielded a pair of engraved brass knuckles. They were studded with sharpened conical points that extended a half inch from the frame.
“You get these in your Christmas stocking?” I asked.
In his back pocket, I found a key to room fourteen at the Wonderland and a black leather wallet.
“Goin’ . . . kill you,” he snarled into the chair leg as I rolled him over on his back again.
He had five hundred dollars in fifties and twenties, along with two credit cards and a business card that read, “Devane Investigations Unlimited,” with a Syracuse mailing address. The wallet also contained a faded two-inch-square photograph of a naked blonde girl with enormous breasts. She was staring bleakly into the camera and looked to be about fifteen.
The driver’s license identified him as Salvatore Scalise, 16 Windsor Court, Liverpool, New York. I seemed to remember Liverpool being near Syracuse, which was about sixty miles back down the thruway.
“Listen, Sal . . . we don’t have a lot of time here,” I said, expecting to hear sirens any minute and not wanting to spend the rest of the night filling out police reports. “I need to know who you work for. It’s important.”
“Frock . . . you . . . bastid,” he said.
I knew I could track the girl down pretty quickly. There couldn’t be too many juniors at St. Andrews from Uzbekistan. But I doubted I would find her in her dorm room or sorority when I got back to Groton.
She would almost certainly go to ground for the rest of the weekend, if not longer, and Jordan was facing the blackmailer’s deadline. That left Sal as my only lead to who was blackmailing Jordan and had possibly murdered Dennis Wheatley.
“Sal . . . I don’t want to hurt you,” I said. “Tell me who you work for and we can both be on our way.”
He raised his head off the floor and tried to spit at me, but only ended up with bloody drool on his ruined mouth. Reaching down, I slowly pulled his dislocated elbow toward me. When he screamed out again, I covered his mouth.
“I really don’t want to do this, Sal,” I said and meant it. “Now, is taping the customers one of your regular duties here at the Wonderland or were you hired just to film the man who was supposed to be in this room tonight?”
I took my hand away from his mouth.
“Goin’ kill you, man . . . frist chance,” was his next answer. The eyes looking up at me were snake-hard.
Lifting his dislocated arm, I dug my boot into his armpit and pinioned his wrist with my left hand. With my right, I bent his pinky finger back until it was nearly ready to snap.
As soon as the scream subsided, he threw up on himself.
“Now I’ll ask you once more. Do you do this for the Wonderland or were you hired to film just the man in this room?”
He slowly shook his head back and forth, his eyes closed.
“You’ve got guts, Sal, but if you don’t tell me what I need to know, I’ll have to snap this finger like a lobster claw. Then we’ll have only nine more to go,” I said.
I never would have done it, but after digesting that thought for several seconds, he grunted, “Jess the nigger. Only the nigger.”
“And how did you know the man was going to be here?” I demanded, continuing the pressure on his finger.
“Don’t know . . . we was told to be here at six and set up the camera like we done before.”
“Who told you?”
He shook his head back and forth.
“Who told you?” I repeated, bending the same finger back to the breaking point.
“Bobby Devane!” he shouted up at me from the floor.
“Doesn’t help me . . . I don’t know him,” I said, not letting up on the pressure.
“Oh, God, man . . . he works for the Razzano brothers,” he cried, the words coming now in a rush.
“Who are they?”
“Lawyers . . . the guys on TV.”
“As in, ‘If you’ve swallowed asbestos, call us’?” I asked.
When he nodded, I eased up on his finger again and he drew in a long breath. Even I had heard of the Razzano brothers. Their two conniving faces were plastered everywhere from roadside billboards to the back cover of the Groton telephone book. Theirs was the law firm that had agreed to represent Kelly in her age discrimination lawsuit against Hustlers.
“Where can I find Bobby Devane?” I asked, getting up from the bed.
“Devane . . . Investigashons,” he said, struggling to pronounce the second word. “Shiracuse.”
I took the business card out of Sal’s wallet. There was a cell phone number for Devane that someone had handwritten on the back of the card. I dropped the wallet and his money on the floor next to him. As I was heading for the door, the house phone began ringing and I picked it up. It was Buntid calling from the front desk.
“Maid came back and said you was still in the room,” he said firmly. “That’s another fifty bucks like I told you.”
Apparently, she hadn’t told him the condition of the room. It was probably because she didn’t speak anything but Korean and the other, more universal language. It also struck me that maybe the Wonderland was used to this kind of stuff. I looked over at Angie. He was still out cold on the floor. Sal was trying for the door again, like a baby turtle in the Galapagos yearning to reach the sea.
“Yeah, I’ve got guests here that might want to stay awhile. You probably want to send someone down to collect it.”
“I’m on my way,” he said.
I removed the chair from the back of the door and swung it open.
“Goin’ to kill you, man . . . frist chance,” honked Sal from the floor as I walked out of the room.