Free The Piranhas by Harold Robbins

laughed. “I never said that you were stupid. But we better find a quick way out of here.”
    “This is the only way,” she answered. “The kitchen door will only take us down the stairway.”
    I looked through the peephole. The elevator doors began to open. I gestured to her. “Check. See if it’s your friend.”
    She glanced through the peephole. “It’s him. But there is another man behind him.”
    I looked through again. Her friend was not a tall man. But he wore a police uniform and high-heeled boots that added some height. The flap on his leather holster was snapped open, with no gun in it. There was also no gun in his hand. The man behind him was a head taller than he and his arm seemed to be pushing against the captain’s back.
    The captain’s voice came through the door. “Alma! Estoy Felipe! ”
    “What do we do now?” she whispered.
    I slipped the safety from my gun and stepped behind the blind side of the door to hide myself. I held the gun tightly in my clasped hands and nodded, whispering to her, “Let him in.”
    She turned the knob and stepped back as the door began to open. The captain seemed to be pushed into the apartment. He stumbled against Alma. The other man was still on the other side of the door, and I couldn’t see him.
    “The Americano!” the man said harshly.
    Alma kept silent. She gestured to the bedroom behind her. The man shouted in Spanish at them. I didn’t understand what he was saying, but I could understand the tone of his voice. Alma shook her head. The man shouted at her again and started to move into the apartment toward her. Now it was my turn.
    I slammed my heavy automatic against his gun hand and wrist. His gun fell to the floor as he turned to me and tried to grab my arm. There were a few things I had learned in the army. I stepped back from him slightly, then kicked him in the balls. He grunted and bent forward; this time I laid the gun over the side of his head. Now he was on the floor. He stared at me, then tried to reach for the gun.
    But this time the policeman was fast. He had picked the gun up from the floor. He looked at me and gestured with the gun. “My revolver,” he said.
    “Good,” I said.
    The policeman bent over the man and quickly snapped a pair of handcuffs on his wrists behind his back. He rolled the man over on his back and snapped at him harshly. The man snarled back at him. The policeman smashed his gun against his face. A trickle of blood began to come from his mouth and nose. The policeman began to hit him again.
    Alma spoke quickly: “Not on the white rug. It won’t clean.”
    The policeman stared at her, then half smiled and nodded. He wasn’t a big man but he was strong. Easily he pulled the man across the floor out to the marble balcony, then he hit him across the face again. This time the blood began flowing freely. The policeman growled at him. The man shook his head silently.
    I spoke to the policeman. “Do you know anything about him?”
    The policeman answered me in English. “Nothing, only that he’s Colombian. We thought there were only three of them. We had watched them in the car. He was hiding in the garage and he got me when I got out of the car.”
    “Where are your men?” I asked.
    “In the street watching the others in the car,” he answered. He turned to Alma and spoke in Spanish.
    She answered in English. “I don’t know anything about why they are after us. Maybe they had the same tip that you had about the other man.”
    I looked at her admiringly. She didn’t use Angelo’s name. No reason she should call attention to it.
    “But did you ever meet this Angelo Di Stefano?” the captain asked.
    “Possibly,” she said. “Maybe at one of the discos or a party. I meet many people.”
    “And this man?” he asked, nodding toward me. “How did you meet him?”
    “One of my girlfriends from school in the States. She called me and said that he would be calling on me.”
    He looked at her. “But you went