“Perfect,” he said.
Replacing the clip and ramming it home, Ned cocked the pistol. It was ready for action.
Twisting in his seat, he eyed Willy.
“This is not going to take long. I want you to pull the car over there in front of the hotel and have the engine running. Give me about five minutes before you come over, understand?”
“Righto,” Willy said eagerly.
“I’m off,” Ned said. He moved forward on the seat and slipped the gun into his belt at the small of his back. Reaching into the backseat, he lifted the bouquet. Then he got out of the car.
Hesitating before he crossed the road, he leaned into the car through the open window.
“I haven’t seen this Williams fellow for several years,” Ned said.
“Will I recognize him?”
“I think so,” Willy said.
“He’s about your height, sandy blond hair, angular features. Looks more like a stockman than an MD. “Got it,” Ned said. He was about to leave when Willy caught his attention.
“You won’t have any trouble recognizing the woman, will you?” Willy asked.
“Especially not if she’s in her bathers,” Ned said with a wink.
Ned dodged the traffic on Salisbury Road, mindful of the gun tucked in his belt. He didn’t want to dislodge it.
At the Peninsula, the doorman opened the door for him, and he entered the lobby.
At that time of the morning, the lobby was relatively busy with international travelers checking in or checking out. Luggage was piled in heaps near the bellman’s desk, where the bell captain was struggling to keep order. It was to the bellman’s desk that Ned walked.
Ned singled out one of the younger bellboys and approached him as he was piling bags onto a bellman’s trolley. Kelly had learned a smattering of Cantonese through his dealings with the Chinese over the years. In Cantonese he asked the young man for a favor. The boy seemed surprised to be addressed by a gwedo in his native tongue.
Ned slipped the boy a thousand dollars Hong Kong, more than many months’ wages. The boy’s eyes widened.
“Some friends are staying here,” Ned said.
“I want to know their room so that I can surprise them. But I don’t want them to know. Understand?”
The boy nodded, then flashed a broad smile.
“The names are Williams and Blumenthal. I don’t know if they have separate rooms or a single.”
The bellboy nodded again and dashed over to the bell captain’s desk. Peering past the captain, who was busy on the phone, the bellboy perused the master guest list. In a flash he returned. Ned had lighted up a cigarette in the interim.
“Pleased to say that it is 604 and 606,” the bellboy said with another smile and multiple bows. Ned reached out and stopped him from making a scene. Ned thanked him and walked over to the newsstand. While he leafed through the latest Time magazine with the flowers tucked under his arm, he kept his eye on the bell desk to make sure his dealings with the bellboy didn’t arouse any suspicions. But they hadn’t. The ecstatic bellboy had gone back to loading his cart as if nothing had happened.
Ned replaced the magazine. He switched the flowers to his right hand. With an expert eye, he picked out the hotel security people in the lobby. There were two, but neither one had particularly noticed him.
Walking directly to the elevators, Ned pushed the Up button.
Things were going smoothly. So far he was pleased. He anticiated giving Lester a call in about fifteen minutes. He was lookp ing forward to the substantial bonus Lester had promised him for a job well done.
By the time the elevator doors opened on the sixth floor, Ned’s pulse was racing. Despite his conscious attempts to keep himself calm, when he got this close to action, he got tense.
Familiar with the customs of Hong Kong luxury hotels, Ned waited by the elevator once he was on the sixth floor. He gave the hall porter a chance to approach from his cubicle. Ned smiled broadly.
“Hello, friend,” he said in Cantonese.
The hall porter was an elderly Chinese. He smiled weakly, confused as to who this man could be. He wasn’t expecting any new guests that morning.