A Gathering of Widowmakers (The Widowmaker #4) Page 8

  "Quiet!" whispered the older man.

  Kinoshita blinked his eyes very rapidly, trying to figure out what had happened. When Nighthawk was sure the smaller man was awake, he took his hand away.

  "Someone's out there," he whispered.

  "The janitor, maybe?" suggested Kinoshita softly.

  "Could be," agreed Nighthawk, screecher in hand. "But he's got a prosthetic leg, and a man with a prosthetic leg followed me to Horatio's."

  "How long has he been out there in the corridor?" asked Kinoshita.

  "Maybe ten minutes."

  Kinoshita checked his timepiece. It wouldn't be dawn for another two hours. "Don't you ever sleep?"

  "I slept for a century," replied Nighthawk. "It hasn't got much to recommend it." He paused, listening intently. "There are three of them now, maybe four. It doesn't take that many men to clean a dump like this."

  Kinoshita pulled out his pulse gun and positioned himself where he could see the door.

  "Why don't they come in?" he whispered nervously.

  "They don't know for sure that we're here. My guess is that one of them was stationed outside, and since he didn't see us leave the building they finally figured out that we're holed up here. It took them four hours, so it's safe to say we're not dealing with the brightest men on the planet."

  Kinoshita half-expected Nighthawk to step through the doorway and open fire, but the older man stayed where he was, seated on the wood floor, his back propped up against a wall. He was so relaxed that if Kinoshita didn't know better he'd have sworn he was asleep.

  Finally Nighthawk turned to his companion. "They've left," he announced. "They're probably searching the rest of the building."

  "When they don't find you they'll be back," predicted Kinoshita.

  "No they won't," replied Nighthawk. "They don't want to face me. They're just following someone's orders." Kinoshita looked unconvinced, so Nighthawk continued: "We have all the advantages. It's dark, we've had time to take up defensive positions, we know where they are when they enter and they have no idea where we are. They'd be dead meat and they know it. If they were serious about wanting to find us, they'd have opened the door and searched the room."

  "So what do we do now?"

  "I don't know about you," said Nighthawk, "but I'm going back to sleep."

  "But they're still in the building!" protested Kinoshita.

  "Not for long. In another five or ten minutes they'll convince themselves that One-Leg was asleep on the job and we walked right out past him. He'll protest like all hell, but the last thing they want to do is learn that he's right, so they'll go back to their boss, put the blame on him, and live to fight—or run away—another day."

  "Why didn't you take them out?" asked Kinoshita.

  "We're not here to collect all the bad guys," answered Nighthawk. "We're here to make a handful of kills that will draw Jeff to the planet, and killing a bunch of flunkies won't do any good."

  "They'd kill you if they could."

  "Probably," agreed Nighthawk. "But they can't."

  Nighthawk lay back down and was sleeping peacefully in less than a minute, while Kinoshita spent the rest of a very nervous night listening for footsteps that never came. He fell asleep just before dawn.

  He'd been asleep less than two hours when Nighthawk shook him awake, gave him a few minutes to gather his wits about him, then went to the airlift. Then took it down to Horatio's, then back up to the main floor.

  "What was that about?" asked Kinoshita as they stepped into the building's foyer.

  "If anyone's watching, let them think we found some place to hide down in Horatio's," explained Nighthawk. "Why encourage them to look upstairs tonight?"

  "Now I'm confused. I thought you said they didn't want to find you."

  "Last night's crew didn't. I don't know who's going to come looking for me tonight."

  "And in the meantime, who are you looking for?"

  "There are a few possibilities," said Nighthawk. "But the first thing I'm looking for is breakfast."

  He stepped out into the open. There were a few men and aliens on the street, and every last one of them immediately stopped to stare at him—but no one approached or drew a weapon, and after a moment he turned to his right and began walking, Kinoshita at his side.

  The street took a pair of sharp turns, seemed to dead-end at an alien temple guarded by a trio of winged, forty-foot-tall stone statues. Suddenly the door vanished and the street continued right through the center of the church, and Kinoshita realized it had only been a holographic projection. The church itself was real, run by an orange-skinned bat-eared race that neither man had ever seen before. There was an incomprehensible service going on, one that seemed to involve screaming, chanting and ritual flagellation, but the priest and congregation had deactivated their t-packs, the mechanisms that translated most alien into Terran and vice versa, and all the Nighthawk and Kinoshita could hear was a combination of guttural clicks and high-pitched trilling.

  The door at the far side of the church proved also to be a projection, and a moment later they were back on the street. It rose, it dipped, it turned at crazy angles. They passed a number of shops, including a pair of restaurants, and finally Nighthawk stopped walking.

  "What is it?" asked Kinoshita, scanning the area for potential killers.

  Nighthawk indicated a storefront restaurant. "This looks like as good a place as any."

  Kinoshita peered in through the window, then straightened up. "It's for aliens. Look at the tables—there's not a single Man sitting there." The odor of alien food and spices assailed his nostrils. "You passed up two perfectly good human restaurants for this?"

  "Wait for me out here if you're not hungry," said Nighthawk, entering the restaurant before Kinoshita could respond. The smaller man stood his ground for a minute, then shrugged and followed Nighthawk in.

  They took a table near the window, punched in their orders, and Kinoshita surveyed the clientele more closely. There were the usual Canphorites and Lodinites, Man's two greatest rivals in the galaxy, plus an Antarean, two Mollutei, a Hesporite, a Drigonsie, and a couple that he couldn't recognize. To his surprise, none of them seemed to be observing him and Nighthawk with open hostility.

  "You've been here before, right?" he said at last.

  "No, never."

  "Well, you sure as hell know something."

  "I know a lot of things," said Nighthawk. "For example, I know that one of our fellow diners will approach me before I finish my coffee."

  "Which one?"

  Nighthawk shrugged. "I don't know. If I were to guess, I'd say it'd be the smallest of the three Lodinites at that table off to the left."

  Sure enough, the Lodinite waddled over less than a minute later.

  "You are the Widowmaker, are you not?" it said through its t-pack.

  "Yes, I am," replied Nighthawk. "Have a seat."

  "I am more comfortable standing."

  "As you wish. Would you like some coffee?"

  "I cannot metabolize it."

  "Then I suppose we'd might as well get down to business."

  "You know why I have sought you out?" asked the Lodinite.

  "Of course."

  "I will want something in exchange."

  "Five thousand credits now, or one percent of the reward, which will be considerably larger," said Nighthawk.

  The two men could see the Lofinite greedily computing the total. "That's ninety thousand credits," it said.

  "Your choice."

  Suddenly the Lofinite's pudgy little body seemed to sag. "I will take the five thousand now."

  "You're sure?"

  "I wish it were otherwise, Widowmaker, but you cannot kill her."

  "I killed Hairless Jack Bellamy."

  "I heard about that," said the Lodinite. "He met you on neutral ground. She will know better."

  "Not if you tell me what I want to know," said Nighthawk.

  "I will tell you, but it will not help you. The money,
please."

  Nighthawk pulled a wad of bills out of a pocket, counted off ten five-hundred-credit notes, and laid them on the table. The Lodinite reached a hairy hand for them, but Nighthawk's hand shot out and grabbed what passed for its wrist.

  "After you tell me," he said.

  "Two blocks due south of here is the Royal Ascot hotel. That is where she can be found."

  Nighthawk released its hand and it grabbed the money.

  "Lodinites don't all look alike to me," said Nighthawk. "If you lied to me, I'll be back—and I'll find you."

  "No one lies to the Widowmaker," said the Lodinite, scurrying off to its table.

  "You'd be surprised," muttered Nighthawk as he watched the alien's hasty departure.

  "All right," said Kinoshita. "What was that all about?"

  "Cleopatra Rome. She's at the Royal Ascot."

  "It's hardly royal," said Kinoshita. "That's one of the places where I rented a room. It's a three-century-old dump." He paused. "You knew when we came in here that one of the aliens was going to tell you where she could be found. How?"

  Nighthawk turned to his companion. "What do you know about her?"

  "Just that she's a notorious killer."

  "You know how many aliens she's killed?" asked Nighthawk.

  "No."

  "More than eighty. Do you know how many men?"

  "No."

  "Three," said Nighthawk. "I figured if we went to an alien establishment, at least one of them was going to want her dead even more than he wanted to hinder me."

  "So are you going after her now?"

  "Is that what Jeff would do?"

  "Absolutely," said Kinoshita. He smiled. "Now you're going to tell me he's a young healthy man and you're a sick old one."

  Nighthawk shook his head. "No. I'm going to tell you that as good as he is, if he went after her without knowing what he's up against he's a foolish young man and he might not be destined to live to be a sick old one."

  "I don't follow you."

  "I'm the Widowmaker," said Nighthawk. "I was a legend before any man or alien on the planet was born. Newman and Jeff have kept that legend alive in recent years, and last night I killed a man who everyone believed couldn't be killed." He paused. "The Lodinite knew that, because he knew who I was."

  "So?"

  "So why did he take five thousand credits now instead of ninety thousand credits after I confront Cleopatra Rome?"

  "I don't know," admitted Kinoshita.

  "I don't either," said Nighthawk. "But I sure as hell intend to find out before I face her."

  12.

  Nighthawk spent the next couple of hours walking through the District, trying to learn his way around it. He had Kinoshita point out every hotel and rooming house where he'd paid for rooms, passed them by, and examined a couple that Kinoshita had overlooked.

  "This one will do," he announced as they entered a small boarding house called The Burnished Moon. "I'm going out into the street now. When I do, see if you can find a back way into this place."

  "They followed me to the last fourteen hotels," said Kinoshita. "What makes you think they won't be watching me now?"

  "Because they'll be watching me," answered Nighthawk. "They only followed you because they didn't know where I was."

  "You sure know how to pump up a guy's ego," said Kinoshita.

  "You watch to be watched? Go shoot a couple of them for the reward." Nighthawk half-smiled, half-grimaced. "I've had people watching me from windows and porches and alleyways for most of my life. It's not as flattering as you seem to think. A lot of them were watching me through telescopic sights."

  "Okay, okay, I'm sorry I mentioned it."

  Nighthawk walked out into the street, walked to the weapon shop the faced The Burnished Sun, stared at the window for a moment, then entered and browsed for a few minutes. Finally he asked to see a molecular imploder.

  "I'm sorry, Mr. Nighthawk," said the elderly woman behind the counter, "but they're illegal even in the District."

  "You know who I am?"

  "I think almost everybody knows who you are, especially after last night." She paused. "If you're going to be here for, say, a week, I could possibly find an imploder."

  "Let me see how long I'm going to be here," said Nighthawk. "I'll get back to you later today if I still think I'll need it."

  "There'll be a 50% discount for you," she promised.

  "Oh?"

  She smiled. "Mr. Nighthawk, there are seventeen weapon shops in the District. If I can advertise that the Widowmaker patronizes mine, it's more than worth the discount to me."

  "I'll let you know," he said, walking out into the street, where Kinoshita was waiting for him. "Well?"

  "There's a back door, and a service airlift right next to it."

  "Good."

  "What's this all about?"

  "We're never going to get away with sleeping in Horatio's building two nights in a row, and we know they'll have fourteen hotels staked out. We needed another place."

  "I could have been spotted out back behind the place."

  Nighthawk shook his head. "They weren't watching you."

  "What makes you so damned sure?"

  "They were watching the Widowmaker, and for the next couple of hours they're going to be so busy trying to figure out why I need a molecular imploder. Even if someone saw you back there they'll be too busy to care."

  "Why do you need an imploder?" asked Kinoshita.

  "I don't. But I've always believed in the art of misdirection."

  Suddenly Kinoshita smiled. "Wouldn't it be funny if that's what it took to kill Cleopatra Rome?"

  "Hilarious," said Nighthawk.

  "What now?"

  "Now we leave the District long enough to find a subspace radio and pay a visit to the police station."

  "The police station?"

  "To see if the reward money's been delivered. No sense leaving temptation in their path. It doesn't take much brainpower to figure out that no matter how frugally you live and how much you save, if you're a cop you're never going to get your hands on anything half the size of that reward unless you turn it over to a court as evidence—or steal my reward."

  "And the radio?"

  "I want to check in with the Giancola II hospital every couple of days to see how Newman's doing."

  "I knew you felt a bond with him."

  Nighthawk observed him the way he might study an exceptionally slow child. "I hope I can reason with Jeff, explain what he did wrong and why he's got to start using his brain. But if I can't, then I'm going to need all the help I can get—and in all immodesty, I can't think of any help I'd feel more comfortable counting on than another Jefferson Nighthawk."

  He started walking toward the edge of the District. Kinoshita became aware that every person they passed was staring at them, but Nighthawk paid them no attention at all.

  "Aren't you worried?" asked Kinoshita. "Any one of those men or women might take a shot at you."

  "They won't."

  "How can you be so sure?"

  "The ones on the left side of the street are more likely to hit you, and they know they won't get a second shot."

  "And the ones on the right side?"

  "The sun's in their eyes." Nighthawk paused. "I'm not an egomaniac, but I am a realist—and I think it's fair to say that every last one of them knows that if you want to kill the Widowmaker, you'd better take him with your first shot."

  "True," agreed Kinoshita. He looked at some of the faces. "But they'd sure like to kill you."

  "What they'd like isn't my concern. I only care about what they're capable of."

  Suddenly a lean, unshaven man stepped out into the street some twenty yards ahead of them. His fingers hovered above the weapon he had tucked into his belt.

  "Think very carefully," said Nighthawk with no show of fear or tension. "I haven't come to New Barcelona for you. You can walk away right now."

  "You're an old man," said the man. "Maybe you used t
o be something special, but that was a long time ago."

  "I want you to consider three things," said Nighthawk. "First, there's no paper on me; you won't make a credit for killing me."

  "I'll be the man who killed the Widowmaker," replied the man. "That's enough."

  "Second, this old man killed Hairless Jack Bellamy last night."

  The man's eyes widened. He obviously was one of the few residents of the District who hadn't heard the news. "I don't believe it!" he said at last.

  "What you believe doesn't interest me," said Nighthawk. "Third, you're not the first or the hundredth fool who thought he could make a reputation by killing me, and I'm still here." Nighthawk came to a stop some six feet from the man and stared into his eyes. "Okay, I'm all through trying to save your life. Make a move, or slink off with your tail between your legs. It makes no difference to me. But make up your mind fast; I'm in a hurry, and I feel no obligation to let you go for your weapon first."

  It was Nighthawk's total confidence, his complete lack of concern, that finally got through to the man. He swallowed hard, held his hands well out from his body in plain view, and backed away.

  "You're blocking my way," said Nighthawk. "Get off the street."

  The man glared at him and did as he was told.

  "I'm sure you're thinking about taking a shot at me after I pass you," said Nighthawk. "I wouldn't like that." Suddenly his burner was in his hand, and an instant later, almost faster than the eye could follow, he'd turned, aimed, and melted the handle of the man's weapon. "I wouldn't touch that for a few minutes if I were you."

  Without another glance at the man, he began walking again, and Kinoshita joined him.

  "Don't tell me," said Nighthawk.

  "Tell you what?"

  "You were going to tell me there was paper on him and I should have killed him."

  "I don't know about the paper—there probably is. But why didn't you kill him?"

  "Killing him wouldn't make news five feet outside the District," answered Nighthawk. "And I'm not here to kill every man with paper on him. I'm here to attract Jeff's attention. This guy wouldn't even attract the local cops' notice."

  In another five minutes they reached the edge of the District, crossed the street that was the dividing line, and headed to a subspace radio sending station. Nighthawk let the robot clerk read his retina and thumbprint. The clerk checked them against his identity file in the Master Computer on Deluros VIII, cleared his credit with the Cataluna branch of the Bank of Deluros, and finally connected him to the hospital on Giancola II.