Years of training--years of expecting the worse-case
scenario to become reality at any second--saved his
life in the lobby.

The instant the hotel clerk's shoulders moved, Snake
flung the throwing knife at him.  Although the
underhand toss was not as accurate as Snake would have
liked, the slender blade hit him in the shoulder and
penetrated just enough to cause him to have trouble
raising the Uzi above the counter.  By then, Snake had
his other knife in hand, had time to cock his arm, had
time to aim.  The second knife caught the man in the
throat.  He dropped the Uzi.  Both hands grabbed at
his throat.  His face became grotesque with a spasm
that was more fear than pain.  He tried to say
something, but couldn't.

Snake stepped around the counter and shoved the man
against a filing cabinet.

"I need my knives back," he said and reached over and
jerked the knife from the man's shoulder.

The man tried to scream.  The knife in his throat
stopped it.

"Be still," Snake ordered.  "This is definitely going
to hurt you more than it hurts me."

The man's eyes grew even wider.  His hands tried
ineffectively to brush away Snake's hand as he reached
for his second knife.  Snake took the handle and
pulled it out of the man's throat.  Instantly, the man
began to cough up blood.

Snake stepped quickly back to avoid getting the blood
on his denim jacket.

"I just had these washed--at length, I might
add--Thursday night," he explained to the thug.

The hotel's regular clerk was dead on the floor.  His
face had been crushed by someone's boot or the butt of
gun.  There was a pool of caked blood on the floor by
the man's head.

"You are one messy son of a bitch," Snake told the
thug and hit him with a right cross that immediately
knocked him unconscious and spun him against the wall.
 He fell across the body of his earlier victim.

Snake waited to see him fall.  Then he took the man's
gun and billfold and ran across the narrow lobby and
slid them out of sight behind a faded, torn couch.

Standing absolutely still by a pillar, Snake surveyed
the room.  No one else was in sight.  He could see the
entire room with phenomenal clarity; every chair stood
out in sharp relief.  He noticed the worn place in the
carpet in front of the counter.  He noticed the
flickering neon light off to his left.  He noticed the
folded newspaper in the chair at his side.  Someone
had been reading the stock market report.

All these things affected him with intense excitement.
 It was great to be back in action.

He realized that someone might be in the lobby
elevator, just waiting for him to punch the button and
the door to open to spray him with lead.  At the very
least, there would be someone waiting for him when he
stepped out of the elevator on the 11th floor.

The stairway, of course, was just as dangerous.  But
in the stairway he would at least have a fighting
chance to reach the roof.

Off to his right he found a door marked "stairs."

He almost shouted in delight as he opened the door to
the stairwell.  Because he now knew precisely what he
was going to find up on the roof.  He had been wrong a
few minutes ago; the dead man in the doorway across
the street hadn't disproved his theory.  The bottle of
poisoned champagne merely added to the now
overwhelming evidence that he was right.

It wasn't even necessary to go upstairs.  He knew who
the Spider Lady really was and he knew what was behind
everything that had happened during the past few days.
 It had come to him in a burst of induction.

But he leaped into the stairwell because he still had
a lot of things to prove to himself.  And, of course,
what if he had made a mistake?

As he sprang into the stairwell, he threw a cherry
bomb as hard as he could upward, then dodged back and
closed the door.  The small bomb hit something up
there.  In the enclosed stairwell, the explosion had
much greater impact than it would have had in the
open.  The noise hit Snake's eardrums like a
sledgehammer even through the door paneling.

Further up the stairwell, someone fired a couple of
shots.  The bullets whined as they ricocheted from
wall to wall.

Snake ran quickly to stand beside the lobby elevator
door.  As he expected, whoever was inside had become
curious about the noise in the stairwell.  As the
elevator door opened, Snake reached inside, pressed
the "close door" button, and as the door began to
close threw one of his cherry bombs at the elevator
floor.

The bomb went off with a deafening roar just as the
door closed.

Like a blur, he was back at the door of the stairwell
and inside.

He ran up the steps three at a time, passing one man
who was holding his head in his hands.  Just to be
sure, Snake chopped him on the back on his  neck with
the edge of his hand as he went by, then doubled back
and took the unconscious man's billfold and gun.  He
placed both into a jacket pocket.

Someone up near the third floor fired a gun his
direction.  The bullet hit the concrete wall by him
and spun off toward the floor.

When a man fires a pistol once in a tense situation or
a situation of conflict, it's usually because he has
pulled the trigger out of nervousness.  They aren't
prepared to immediately fire again.  They didn't aim
the first shot and they are now looking for a target
and not really ready.  If a guy has pulled off two
rounds in a row, watch out.  If he has just fired
once, he'd better watch out himself.

Snake ran up the steps, his shoes making almost no
sound on the concrete steps, and was quickly in easy
range of a knife throw.  This time, he threw the knife
properly.  Like one throws a rock, only with the point
of the blade between the thumb and forefinger of his
right hand.  He delayed the spin of the
blade--estimating the distance of the toss--by holding
back on the point of the blade as he flicked his
wrist.  It's also a matter of feel.

A knife can be thrown with excellent accuracy at least
four or five yards by someone who has made knife
throwing their business.

The knife buried itself in the man's stomach right
below the rip cage.

After that, he wasn't so interested in firing another
shot in Snake's direction.

Snake jerked his knife out and wiped it on the man's
coat sleeve while the man stared at him.

"May I have this gun, please?"  He took the man's gun
out of his hand.  There was no resistance.  Then he
shoved the man on his side and pulled out his
billfold.

"I...that's...."

"I agree with you," said Snake.  "A terrible thing to
do, robbing a wounded man like this.  But, if it's of
any comfort, I will donate the money to charity.  Do
you have a favorite charity?"  When the man didn't
respond, Snake said, "I thought as much.  Oh, well. 
No worry.  But if I were you, I'd worry a little bit
about whether I had poison on my knife blade or not. 
That's a good question, eh?  Are you going to die in a
few minutes?  Or maybe an hour?  I'm sure glad that
it's not my problem."

The man was almost paralyzed in fear.  Both hands were
over the wound in his stomach.  Sweat popped out on
his forehead.  Snake didn't think he'd offer further
trouble.

He ran on up the stairs.

Shooting broke out further up the stairwell.  Bullets
sang down the stairwell, ricocheting off the walls,
the steps, the handrail.

On the fifth floor, Snake opened the door into the
main hallway and walked quickly to the elevator and
pushed the button.

A couple of minutes later, the door of the elevator
slid back to reveal two men unconscious on the floor.
Snake stepped inside the elevator and pushed the
button for the 11th floor.  By now, the others would
be expecting him to come out of the door to the
stairs.

As the elevator moved slowly upward, he relieved the
two men of their guns and billfolds.  One of the guns
was an Uzi.  His pockets were full, so took the butt
of one of the pistols and pounded at the barrel of the
Uzi.  That didn't work too well, so he took a bullet
out of the Uzi and pried out the lead and punched it
into the opening of the barrel.  He tapped the lead
firmly into the mouth of the barrel, then placed the
Uzi on the chest of one of the unconscious men as the
elevator door began to open on the 11th floor.

One man was standing in the open door leading to the
stairwell.  Another stood at his side, looking toward
the elevator.

"Surprise!" said Snake.  He picked up the Uzi and
threw it at the man.

The twirling gun hit the man in the head.  He
collapsed into his comrade standing in the doorway,
dragging him down.

That was all of the time Snake needed.  He picked up
the Uzi from the floor and hit the second man
alongside the head, using the short automatic weapon
as a small bat.

There was a laundry chute on the floor.  Snake
unloaded all of the guns from his pockets and emptied
the clips and tossed the guns and the loose bullets
into the opening.  The noise bought another face to
the stairwell doorway.

Snake slugged him in the face and, as he fell,
relieved him of gun and billfold.  The gun also went
down the laundry chute.

He was careful going up the stairs to the roof.  But
it was needless caution.  There was a beautifully
spread table in the center of the roof.  Champagne
waited in fancy ice buckets.  A cherry pie sat in the
center of the table on a white tablecloth.  There was
a quart of milk sitting by the pie.

But no people.

He knew, without question, that the milk was poisoned.
 Maybe the pie, too.  But not the champagne.  This was
not cheap champagne.  It was Dom Perignon, 1948.  No
one would be crass enough to poison one of the world's
better champagnes.

He dumped the pie onto the roof, then poured the milk
over it.  Then he realized some bird might get into
the pie come morning, so he spread the tablecloth over
the mess. The mess would no doubt drive the police up
the wall when they investigated.  They'd wonder what
it all meant.

He dipped his finger into the cherry pie and wrote
"poison" on the tablecloth and put it back.  It was
the least he could do.

He sat down in the folding chair for a while, slightly
irritated that his guest hadn't arrived yet.

But this, too, Snake had expected.  It was only 7:30
p.m.  The real "party" wasn't supposed to start until
8 p.m.  But he wasn't going to be here either.  The
Spider Lady never got close to the center of the
action; she would come to the perimeter and that would
be as close as she came.

After a moment, he took the elevator down to the
lobby.

King entered the lobby through the front door.  He
handed Snake a cup of coffee in a Styrofoam cup.

He stopped when he noticed the two men in the elevator
doorway.

"Looks as if you've been busy."

"Not very busy at all.  I thought there would be
something more."

"Like a full army?  We could hear gunshots all up and
down this place!"

"Thanks for the coffee," said Snake.  He took a sip. 
It was good and strong.  "Everything ready?"

King nodded.  "Montague and Rudy are outside waiting. 
We borrowed a car."  When he noticed the expression on
Snake's face, he quickly added:  "From Rudy's uncle."

Snake handed him the billfolds.  "Some gentlemen I met
a few minutes ago made some donations to the police
widow's fund.  Would you deliver these to Foley."

"Sure.  You need anything else?"

"No.  But you guys be careful out there."

"We'll think about it," said King.  "How about you?"

"I'll give it some thought myself."

"Good," said King.  He walked over to the hotel
entrance, turned, made a small gesture with his hand
that might have been a wave, then went on out into the
dark.

There was a pay phone in the hallway leading off the
clerk's counter.  Snake called Allied Global and told
the woman on the phone that he wanted Caraboo to phone
him as previously arranged.  "He knows what to do,"
Snake told her.

Snake sat down on the couch and waited for the Spider
Lady to show up.

He knew she was somewhere out there.  The only
question was whether or not her curiosity would draw
her into the lobby.  Perhaps it had been a mistake for
King to come into the hotel.  Maybe she'd spotted him
and become suspicious.

A little more than half an hour later, he gave up. 
New Yorkers are renown for coming late to parties, but
he felt ridiculous.  Waiting was one thing, waiting
with a certain delicious anticipation another.

He stood up and stretched.

Just then, Mary Sue Landis, alias the Spider Lady,
walked into the hotel lobby, catching him in an
awkward and embarrassing pose.  He slowly lowered his
hands down to his side and stood there;  he didn't
quite know whether to sit down again or stand facing
her or go for a weapon.

So, instead, he merely said, "Hello" and waited for a
response.

She wasn't as pretty as his imagination had led him to
believe.  Interesting, yes, in a simple, plain
fashion.  But he was disappointed now that he saw her
up close again.  She was the type of woman who would
grow quite ugly as she got older.  Her hair would gray
early.  Her smile was thin and sour as if she'd just
bitten into a slice of lime; in a few years that mouth
would become like a prune.

Perhaps the smile was there because she hadn't
expected him to be alive.  Perhaps there was another
reason of which he wasn't aware.

He wondered if he, too, wore a similar lime-thin
smile.

She was dressed in a short mouse-colored coat and the
same fur cap she'd worn several days ago when she shot
at him near Central Park.  Her hair was tied in a
ponytail with a gray ribbon.

She was very good at hiding her surprise at seeing
him.

"Is this the place?" was all she said.

"The Bonsoir d'Jour Hotel.  A grand a glorious place
for a Manhattan lullaby, don't you think?"

"Under the circumstances, I suppose it will do as well
as the Hotel Astor."

"The Hotel Astor disappeared a long time ago," Snake
pointed out.

She had not asked him what he mean about "Manhattan
lullaby," thus he was not about to ask her the
significance of the reference to the Hotel Astor.  The
Hotel Astor had once been one of the socially elite
places to be seen of the city; now there was an ugly
and towering office building on the site.

"Imagine that," she said.  Her smile became even
thinner.

They stood there staring at each other.  It was not as
much an examination as careful observation, each
afraid that the other might suddenly try something.

"Originally, I thought we might talk," he said.

"We have nothing to discuss," she said.  Her voice,
while as thin as her smile, was also bitter.

Snake nodded.

"That is mostly true, I guess," said Snake.  "But I
didn't know it for sure until just a few moments ago."

She looked at her wristwatch.  "I have to be going
anyway.  An appointment.  Sorry that I can't stay to
chat."

"I suppose you won't even tell me why you've been
doing all this."

"You're kidding, of course."

"Would you at least tell me one thing...just to
satisfy my curiosity...how did you find out about the
party?"

She was suspicious about the question and somewhat
surprised at it.

"Your posters mentioned a party."

"Yes.  That's true," he said.

He gestured toward the elevator across the small
lobby.  The two men were still unconscious, but from
this distance appeared dead.  The dead hotel clerk and
the thug who'd killed him were out of sight behind the
counter.

"I'm afraid you were a little late," Snake said.  "The
party is over."

"What a shame," she said.

"Doesn't matter.  When you've been to one boring
party, you've more than likely been to more than
enough."

"We'll have to do something more exciting," she said. 
"Next time."

Snake picked up the newspaper.  The Bonsoir d'Jour did
not normally attract the kind of clientele who read
the stock market reports.  He held it in his hand.

"There won't be any next time," he promised.  He
shrugged his shoulders.  "I think you would have
enjoyed the cherry pie at tonight's party."

Although he watched carefully from under lowered
eyelids, she did not react.  She glanced at her
wristwatch again.

"I must run."

"Wise," he said.  "I suspect that some of the noise
here has created quite a stir at the local police
station.  They should be arriving shortly."

As if on cue, in the distance could be heard a siren.

"See you later," she said.  Her voice carried an
immense amount of mockery, as if she were purposely
making fun of him.

He kept his voice low and tried to make his tone sound
as if he were extremely bored by it all.

"I see you again, I will kill you," he said.

Her chin jerked slightly.

"I should have killed you that day in Central Park,"
she said coldly.

He said.  "The truth is that you're a lousy shot,
isn't it?  That poses the question, of course:  Who is
the person who killed Rabbit?"

Suddenly, her face became quite angry.

"We'll see who kills who!"  Her voice was shrill and
loud.

She whirled and darted for the door.

"Are you aware they call you the Spider Lady?"

That stopped her.  She looked over her shoulder.

"What an amusing thought.  I've always thought of
myself as more like a cat.  Preferable a lynx."

"And I?" he said.  "A wolf, perhaps."

"Tell me, Mr. Williams, who has cornered who at the
moment?"

"Neither, I'm afraid," said Snake without raising his
voice.  "However, I'm bored with this game.  Tell
Sussie that I thought he was dead.  That he would have
been better off dead."

She was good at the game.  The only reaction he noted
was a slight tilt of her head.  Without another word,
she turned and ran, as if in a huge hurry, for the
hotel entrance and disappeared in to the dark.

A moment later, a bedraggled King came into the lobby.

"We lost her," he said.

"Doesn't matter," Snake said.  He dropped the
newspaper on the coffee table and stood up.  "I
suppose there was a Mustang waiting."

"Right," said King.  "I couldn't tell what color it
was and the license plates were smeared."

"It was a blue Mustang," said Snake.

"I'm sorry about losing her," King said.

"Don't worry," Snake said.  "I know where she's at. 
Right now, we'd better get a little lost ourselves. 
Unless you'd like to hang around and explain all of
this."

"Not me," said King.

By the time they reached the distant corner of the
block, several police cars were pulling up in front of
the Bonsoir d'Jour.  Just then, the entire building
erupted in smoke, half obscured by the night, as it
collapsed in a tremendous roar, falling in upon
itself.


(continued next week)