One Lonely Night

"Too damned."

"You were going to tell me something today, Mike."

"I didn't say when."

"One of those deals. You're a fine one." She turned her head and looked out the window.

I tugged at her arm and made her look back at me. "I'm sorry, Velda. It doesn't make nice conversation. I'll give it to you all at once when we get back. It's important to me not to talk about it right now. Mind?"

Maybe she saw the seriousness in my eyes. She smiled and said all right, then turned on the radio so we could have some music on our way across the bridge to Brooklyn where Mother Switcher had her pie factory.

Mother Switcher turned out to be a short, squat guy with long handlebar whiskers and eyebrows that went up and down like window shades. I asked him if I could speak to a few of his drivers and he said, "If you're a union organizer it's no good. All my boys already belong to a union and get paid better'n union wages besides."

I said I was no organizer. "So what is it then?"

"I want to find out about a guy named Moffit. He worked for you."

"That dope! He owe you money?"

"Not exactly."

"Sure. Go talk to the boys, only don't stop their work."

I said thanks and took Velda with me when I went around behind the building where the trucks were lined up for their quota of pies. We waited until the first truck was filled then buttonholed the driver. He gave Velda a big smile and tipped his cap.

She took it from there. "You knew Charlie Moffit, didn't you?"

"Yeah, sure, lady. What's he done now, crawled out of his grave?"

"I imagine he's still there, but tell me, what was he like?"

The guy frowned and looked at me for the first time. "I don't get it," he grunted.

I flashed my buzzer. So did Velda. "Now I get it," he said. "Was he in trouble?"

"That's what we want to find out. What was he like?"

He leaned against his truck and chewed on a match. "Well, I'll tell ya. Charlie was a queer duck." He tapped his head and made a screwy face. "Not all there, ya know. We were forever playing all kinds of gags on him. The dope would fall for 'em too. He was always losing something. Once it was his change bag and once it was a whole load of pies. He said some kids got him in a ball game and while he played they swiped his pies. Ever hear of anything like that?"

"No, I didn't," Velda laughed.

"That wasn't all, either. He was a mean bast . . . son-of-a-gun. Once we caught him trying to set fire to a cat. One of the boys slugged him."

It didn't sound right, that picture of Charlie Moffit. I was thinking while Velda popped the questions. Some of the other men came over and added a little something that distorted the picture even more. Charlie liked women and booze. Charlie molested kids in the street. Charlie was real bright for long periods then he'd get drunk and seem to fall into a conscious coma when he'd act like a kid. He wasn't right in his dome. He had rocks in his head. He sure liked the women, though.

I took Velda out of there and started back to Manhattan, my head aching from thoughts that were too big for it. I had to squint to watch the traffic and hunch over the wheel to be sure I knew where I was going. Away in the back of my mind that devilish unseen conductor was warming up his orchestra for another of those wild symphonies. I must be mad, I thought, I must be mad. I don't think like I used to. The little things won't come through anymore and it was the little things falling into place that made big things.

My mind rambled on until Velda said, "We're here."

The attendant was waving me into the parking lot. I took my ticket and handed him the keys while she flagged a cab. All the way to the office I sat with my eyes closed and kept the curtains down on the orchestra that was trying so hard to play. Whoever was at the drums wouldn't give up. He kept up a steady beat, thumping his drum with a muted stick, trying to make me open the curtain.

Velda brought out the bottle and handed it to me. I stared at the glass, filled it and drank it down. She offered me another and I shook my head. I had to sit down. I wanted to sit down and pull something over my head to shut out the light and the sound.

"Mike." Velda ran her fingers through my hair.

"What is it, kid?" My voice didn't sound right.

"If you tell me I might be able to help you." I opened my eyes and looked at her. She had her coat off and her breasts rose high against the folds of the blouse. She pulled up the big chair and sat down, her legs flashing in the light that streamed through the window. They were beautiful legs, long, alive with smooth muscles that played through the tight fabric of her dress as she moved. It was so easy to love that woman. I ought to try it more often. It was mine whenever I wanted it.

I closed my eyes again.

There wasn't any answer or any special way to tell her. I sat there with my eyes closed and gave it to her as it happened, bit by bit. I told her how I killed on the bridge. I told her about Marty and almost all about Ethel. I told her everything that happened and waited to see what she would say.

A minute went by. I opened my eyes and saw that Velda was watching me and there was no shame, no terror in her face. She believed in me. She said, "It doesn't make sense, Mike."

"It doesn't at that," I said tiredly. "There's a flaw in it that I can see. Do you see it too?"

"Yes. Charlie Moffit."

"That's right. The man with a present and no past. Nobody knows him or knows where he comes from. He's just a present."

"Almost ideal for an MVD operative."

"That's right again. Almost. Where's the flaw?"

Velda's fingers made a little tap-tap against the arm of the chair. "The act was too nearly perfect. It was too good to be anything but true."

"Roger. Charlie Moffit was anything but MVD. I thought those Reds were figuring me to be the man who took his place. I was wrong. I was impersonating the wrong dead man. The boy on the bridge was MVD. Pat handed it to me on a platter but I let it slip by. His only identifiable mark was his bridgework because he had a stainless-steel tooth. There's only one country where they use stainless steel for teeth . . . the U.S.S.R. Fat boy was an imported killer, a checkrein on other agents in this country. Do you know how they knew he was dead?"

"Not from the sketch in the papers. He didn't have any fingerprints, either."

"They wouldn't have found them if he did. I forgot to tell you, but I wore his fingertips to the bone on the concrete before I threw him over."

Velda bit her lip and shuddered. She said "Mike!" too softly.

"No, the reason they knew he was dead was because he dropped out of sight. I don't think they got the connection until later when some smart apple started to check the unidentified bodies in the morgue. Pat said they sent dental charts out. One of those that received them could have recognized what that stainless-steel tooth meant and there it was."

"But they knew he was dead the next night . . . or so you supposed."

"Uh-huh. Fat boy didn't check in. They must have a system for those things. There was only one answer if he didn't check in. He was dead. The dental charts only verified it."

"What must they think? Why . . ."

I kept my voice low so I wouldn't get boiling mad again. "They think it was a dirty democratic conspiracy. It was all too secret to be normal. They think it was our government playing them dirty. They're the only ones who are supposed to be able to kick you under the table."

Velda said something dirty and she wasn't smiling.

I went on: "The other night there was a new note in the party. Something happened to a courier of theirs, something about documents. They are missing. The party is very upset, the poor devils."

Velda came up out of her seat, her face tight as a drumhead. "They're at it again, Mike. Government documents and double-dealing. Damn it, Mike, why do these things have to happen?"

"They happen because we're soft. We're honorable."

"Did they say what they were?"

"No. I gathered they were pretty important."

"They must be."

"Velda, there's a lot of things that are important that we give away for free. Do you know what they were doing one night? They had a pile of technical journals and flying mags you can pick up on any newsstand. They were photographing the stuff onto microfilm for shipment back. A good intelligence man can pick out a lot of data from photos. They take a bit here and a bit there until the picture is complete and bingo, they have something we're trying to keep under the hat."

"But documents, Mike. That's government stuff! That's something the FBI should know about."

"I know, I know. Maybe they do. Maybe they know they're missing and suspect where they've gone. Maybe they don't know because the documents were photostats. They're gone and that's what counts. I'm in a muddle because they found me out and now I can't do any more snooping. They'll be looking for me with a vengeance now. They tried to kill me last night and . . ."

"Mike!"

"Oh, you didn't hear about that. You should read the papers. There's six lines about it on page four. They didn't even print my picture. Yeah, they know me now and it's every man for himself. The next time I'll start the shooting and I won't miss."

Velda had her hand over her mouth, her teeth clamped on a fingernail. "God, you get into some of the most horrible scrapes! I do wish you'd be careful." Her eyes got a little wet and she got mad at herself. "You won't tell anybody anything and you won't ask for help when you need it most. Mike . . . please . . . there are times when you have to let somebody else in on things."

I could feel my lip curling. "Sure, Velda, sure. I'll tell everybody that I go around killing people just like that. It's easy to say, but I'm the guy who's supposed to be a menace to society. Hell, I'll take it my way and the public can lump it."

She wiped away a tear that was feeling its way down her cheek. "He shouldn't have done that to you, Mike."

"Who?"

"The judge."

I swore violently and my voice was hoarse.

"Are you . . . going to keep looking?"

I nodded my head. "Indirectly, yes. I'm still on a case for Lee Deamer."

Velda's head snapped up. "Mike . . . that's it!"

"What?"

"The documents! Charlie Moffit was the courier they spoke about! He was carrying those documents the night Oscar attacked and killed him! Oscar must have taken them from him."

"Damn!" The word exploded out of me. Of course, of course! the pocket that was ripped out of his coat! I shot Velda a grin that had "thanks" written on it. "It comes clear, kid, real clear. Oscar came to town to bleed Lee and he wouldn't bleed. So he goes out and kills a guy hoping to be identified as Lee, knowing damn well Lee would have an alibi and it would just make sensational reading for the public. He figured that would bring Lee to heel when he asked for money again. The gimmick came when he killed the guy. The papers must have stuck out of his pocket and Oscar grabbed them. When he realized what they were he saw the ideal way to bring Lee around. That's what he hinted at to Lee over the phone. If Lee brought in the cops and anything happened to him, the presence of those papers was to be attributed to Lee."

Velda was white, dead-white and her breathing came too fast. "It's rotten, Mike. Good heavens, if it ever gets out . . ."

"Yeah, Lee is finished even if he can prove himself innocent."

"Oh, no!"

"Beautiful. No matter what happens the Commies win. If they get the documents they probably have something juicy for cruddy Uncle Joe. If they don't and somebody else finds them, their worst enemy is yanked off their necks."

"Mike . . . it can't happen!"

"Now do I go it alone, Velda? Now do I take it by myself?"

"Yes. You . . . and me. The bastards. The dirty, filthy red bastards!" They should see her now, I was thinking. Gladow, the general, the boys in the Kremlin should see her now and they'd know what they were getting into. They'd see the face of beauty that had a kill-lust in every beautiful line and they'd stick inside their cold, walled-in city and shake in their shoes!

"When do we start, Mike?"

"Tonight. Be here at nine sharp. We'll see if we can find what Oscar did with those papers." She sat back in the chair and stared at the wall.

I picked up the phone and dialed Pat's number. He came on with, "Homicide, Captain Chambers speaking."

"Mike, pal. Any new corpses today?"

"Not yet. You didn't shoot straight enough. When are you coming in to explain about last night? I went to bat for you and I want a report and not a lot of subterfuge."

"I'm practically on my way now. I'll drop by your office and pick you up for lunch."

"Okay. Make it snappy."

I said I would and cradled the receiver. Velda was waiting for orders. "Stay here," I told her. "I have to see Pat and I'll call you when I'm finished. In case I don't call or come back, be here at nine."

"That's all?"

"That's all," I repeated. I tried to look stern like a boss should, but she grinned and spoiled it. I had to kiss her good-by before she'd let me go. "There's no telling if I'll see you alive again," she laughed. Then she slapped her hand over her mouth and her eyes went wide. "What am I saying?"

"I still have a couple of lives left, kid. I'll save one for you, so don't worry." I grinned again and went out the door.

Downstairs I got tired of waiting for a cab so I walked the half mile to the lot. A car in the city could be a pain in the butt sometimes. But what the hell, it was a nice day for a change and the air felt fairly fresh if a bus or something didn't go by.

I picked up my keys when I handed over the ticket and found my heap. I was in second and heading toward the gate when I saw that the boy had cleaned off my windows, and jammed on my brakes to flip him a quarter. That two-bits saved my skin. The truck that had been idling up the street had jumped ahead to intercept me broadside, saw I was stopping and tried to get me by swerving onto the driveway and off again.

Metal being ripped out by the roots set up a shriek and the car leaped ahead before there was a nasty snap that disengaged it from the body of the truck. I let out a string of curses because the jolt had wedged me up against the wheel and I couldn't get my rod out. By the time I was back in the seat the truck was lost in the traffic.

The attendant yanked the door open, his face ashen. "Gawd, mister, you hurt?"

"No, not this time."

"Them crazy fools! Gawd, they coulda killed ya!" His teeth started to chatter violently.

"They sure coulda." I got out of the car and walked around the front. One side of the bumper had been ripped clear off the frame and stuck out like an oversize L.

"Boy, that was close, awright. I seen 'em come up the street but I never give 'em a thought. Them crazy fools musta been fooling around the cab and hit the gas. They never stopped. You want I should call a cop?"

I kicked the bumper and it all but fell loose. "Forget it. They got away by now. Think you can get this bumper off?"

"Sure, I got some tools. Only two bolts holding it on anyway."

"Okay, take it off and pick one up for this model at a garage somewhere. I'll fix you up for your trouble."

He said, "Yessir, mister. Sure," and ran after his tools. I sat on the fender and smoked a cigarette until he finished then passed him two bucks and told him not to forget a new bumper. He said he wouldn't forget.

When I pulled away I looked up and down the one-way street just to be sure. It happened twice. I said it wouldn't but it happened again anyway. They must have had a tail on me when I came out of the office and saw a beautiful chance to nail me cold. That truck would have made hash of me if it had connected right.

They were going to all kinds of trouble, weren't they? That made me important. You have to be important if you were better off dead. The judge should like that.

Pat was sitting with his back to the door looking out the window at the city when I came in. He swung around in his chair and nodded hello. I pulled a chair up and sat down with my feet propped up on his desk. "I'm all set, Captain. Where are the bright lights?"

"Cut it out, Mike. Start talking."

"Pat, so help me, you know almost everything right now."

"Almost. Give me the rest."

"They tried again a little while ago. This time it was a truck and not bullets."

The pencil in Pat's hand tapped the desk. "Mike, I'm not a complete fool. I play along with you because we're friends, but I'm a cop, I've been a cop a long time, and I know my business. You're not telling me people are shooting you up in the streets without a reason."

"Hell, they gotta have a reason."

"Do you know what it is?" He was drawing to the end of his patience.

I took my feet off the desk and leaned toward him. "We've been through this before, Pat. I'm not a complete fool either. In your mind every crime belongs to the police, but there are times when an apparent crime is a personal affront and it isn't very satisfying not to take care of it yourself. That's how I feel about it."

"So you know then."

I think I know. There's nothing you can do about it so quit being a cop and let's get back to being friends."

Pat tried to grin, but didn't put it over too well. "Are you straightened out with Lee?"

My feet went up on the desk again. "He gave me a tidy sum to poke around. I'm busy at it."

"Good, Mike. Be sure you make a clean sweep." He dropped his head and passed his hand over his hair. "Been reading the papers lately?"

"Not too much. I noticed one thing . . . they're pulling for Deamer in nearly every editorial column. One sheet reprints all his speeches."

"He's giving another tonight. You should go hear him."

"I'll leave that stuff up to you, chum. There's too much dribble and not enough pep talk at those meetings."

"The devil there isn't! Take the last one I was at. We had supper with the customary speeches afterward, but it was the small talk later that counted. Lee Deamer made the rounds speaking to small groups and he gave them the real stuff. It was easier for him to talk that way. Most of us had never met him until that time, but when he spoke we were sold completely. We have to have that guy in, Mike. No two ways about it. He's strong. He can't be pushed or bullied. You wouldn't know it to look at him, but he's the strength that this nation will be relying on some day."

"That was the same night Oscar pulled the stops out, wasn't it?"

"That's right. That's why we didn't want any of it to reach the public. Even a lie can be told to give the people the wrong impression."

"You've sure gotten a big interest in politics, Pat."

"Hell, why not? I'll be glad to go back to being a cop again instead of a tool in some politician's workshop. Lee gave a talk over the radio last night. You know what he did?"

I said no. I had been too busy to listen.

"He's brought some of his business sense into politics. He sat down with an adding machine and figured things up. He wanted to know why it cost the state ten million for it to have a job done when any private contractor could do it for six. He quoted names and places and figures and told the public that if he was elected his first order would be to sign warrants of arrest for certain political joes who are draining the state dry."

"And?"

Pat looked at the desk and glared. "And today I heard that the big push comes soon. Lee has to be smeared any way at all."

"It won't happen, Pat."

I shouldn't have used that tone. His head jerked up and his eyes were tiny bright spots watching me from tight folds of skin. His hand closed into a fist slowly and tightened until the cords bulged out. "You know something, Mike, by God, you know something!"

"I do?" I couldn't make it sound funny.

Pat was ready to split wide open. "Mike, you're in on it. Damn it, you went and found something. Oh, I know you . . . no talking until you're ready, but this isn't a murder that involved only a handful of people . . . this is something that takes in a whole population and you better not tip the apples over."

He stood up, his hands on the edge of the desk for support. He spat the words out between his teeth and meant every one. "We've been friends, Mike. You and I have been in and out of a lot of things together and I've always valued your friendship. And your judgment. Just remember this, if I'm guessing right and you're in on something that might hurt Lee and won't talk about it, and if that something does hurt Lee, then we can forget about being friends. Is that clear?"

"That's clear, Pat. Would it make you feel better if I told you that your line of reasoning is a little off? You're getting teed off at me when you ought to be teeing off on some of the goddamn Commies we got loose in this city."

His face had a shrewd set to it. "So they're part of it too." Muscles stuck out in lumps along his jaws. Let him think how he liked.

"Nothing will happen to Lee," I said. "At least nothing that I'm concerned with." This time I got some conviction in my voice. Pat stopped glaring and sat down.

He didn't forget the subject. "You still have those green cards on your mind?"

"Yeah, I have. I don't like what they mean, and you shouldn't either."

"I hate everything they stand for. I'm sorry we have to tolerate it. We ought to do what they would have done a hundred years ago."

"Stop talking nonsense. You're in America now."

"Sure I am, and I want to stay here. If you want a democracy you have to fight for it. Why not now before it's too late? That's the trouble, we're getting soft. They push us all around the block and we let them get away with it!"

"Calm down, will you." I hadn't realized that I was banging on his desk until he rapped my knuckles. I sat down. "What did you do about Oscar?" I asked.

"What could we do? Nothing. It's over, finished."

"And his personal effects?"

"We went through them and there was nothing to be found. I posted a man to check his place in case any mail came in. I had the idea that Oscar might have mailed something to himself. I took the man off today when nothing showed."

I had to struggle to hold my face straight. Pat had the place watched! Neat, very neat. If we weren't the only ones who wanted to go through that apartment then we wouldn't be going in on a cold deal. Nobody else could have gotten there either!

I reached for a butt and lit it. "Let's go out to eat, Pat."

He grabbed his coat off the rack and locked the door to the office. On the way out I thought of something I should have thought of before and had him open it up again. I picked up the phone and called the office. Velda answered with a silky hello.

I said "Mike, honey. Look, have you emptied the wastebasket by my desk yet?"

"No, there wasn't anything to empty."

"Go look if there's a cigarette pack there. Don't touch it."

She dropped the phone and I heard her heels clicking along the floor. In a moment she was back. "It's there, Mike."

"Swell. Take it out of there without touching it if you can. Put it in a box and have a boy run it down to Pat right away."

Pat watched me curiously. When I hung up he said, "What is it?"

"An almost empty pack of butts. Do me a favor and lift the prints off it. You'll find a lot of mine on them and if I'm lucky you'll find some others too."

"Whose?"

"Hell, how do I know? That's why I want you to get the prints. I need an identification. That is, if we're still friends."

"Still friends, Mike," he grinned. I socked him on the arm and started for the door again.

Chapter Seven

That night the nation got the report on the 6:15 P.M. news broadcast. There had been a leak in the State Department and the cat was out of the bag. It seemed that we had had a secret. Somebody else was in on it now. The latest development in the process for the annihilation of man had been stolen. Supposedly secret files had been rifled and indications pointed to the duplication of the secret papers. The FBI was making every effort to track down the guilty parties.

I threw my cigarette against the wall and started swearing until I ran out of words. Then I started over again. The commentator droned on repeating what he had already said and I felt like screaming at him to tell the world who took those damn papers. Tell 'em it was the same outfit who tried to make a mockery of our courts and who squirmed into the government and tried to bring it down around our necks. Tell everybody who did it. You know you want to say it; what are you afraid of?

There wasn't any doubt of it now, those documents the general had been so anxious to get hold of were the ones we were looking for ourselves! My guts were all knoted up in a ball and my head felt like a machineshop was going on inside it. Here I had the whole lousy situation right in my hands and I had to keep it there.

Me. Mike Hammer. I was up in the big leagues now. No more plain and simple murders. I was playing ball with the big boys and they played rough. The end justified the means, that was their theory. Lie, steal, kill, do anything that was necessary to push a political philosophy that would enslave the world if we let it. Great!

Nice picture, Judge, a beautiful picture of a world in flames. You must be one of the normal people who get the trembles when they read the papers. A philosophy like that must give you the willies. What are you thinking now . . . how that same secret that was stolen might be the cause of your death? And what would you say if you knew that I was the only one who might be able to stop it in time? Okay, Judge, sit your fanny in a chair and relax. I have a little philosophy of my own. Like you said, it's as bad as theirs. I don't give a damn for a human life any more, even my own. Want to hear that philosophy? It's simple enough. Go after the big boys. Oh, don't arrest them, don't treat them to the dignity of the democratic process of courts and law . . . do the same thing to them that they'd do to you! Treat 'em to the unglorious taste of sudden death. Get the big boys and show them the long road to nowhere and then one of those stinking little people with little minds will want to get big. Death is funny, Judge, people are afraid of it. Kill 'em left and right, show 'em that we aren't so soft after all. Kill, kill, kill, kill! They'll keep away from us then!

Hell, it was no use trying to smoke. I'd light up a butt and take a drag then throw it away because my fingers weren't steady enough to hold it. I went inside to the bedroom and took my .45 off the top of the dresser to clean it for the second time. It felt good, feeling the cold butt setting up against the palm of my hand. The deadly noses of the slugs showing in the clip looked so nice and efficient.

They liked to play dirty, I was thinking. Let's make it real dirty. I thumbed the slugs out, laying them in a neat row, then took a penknife and clipped the ends off the noses. That was real dirty. They wouldn't make too much of a hole where they went in, but the hole on the other side would be a beaut. You could stick your head in and look around without getting blood on your ears. I put the gun together, shoved the slugs back in the clip and strapped on the sling. I was ready.

It was a night to give you the meemies. Something happened to the sky and a slow, sticky fog was rolling in from the river. The cold was penetrating, indecisive as to whether to stay winter or turn into spring. I turned the collar of my coat up around my ears and started walking down the street. I didn't lose myself in any thoughts this time. My eyes looked straight ahead, but they saw behind me and to either side. They picked up figures hurrying to wherever it was they were going, and the twin yellow eyes of the cars that rolled in the street, boring holes in the fog. My ears picked up footsteps, timed their pace and direction, then discarded them for other sounds.

I was waiting for them to try again.

When I reached the corner I crossed over to my car, passed it, then walked back again. I opened the door, felt for the handle that unlocked the hood and took a quick check of the engine. I wasn't in the mood to get myself blown all over the neighborhood when I started the car. The engine was clean. So was the rest of the heap.

A car came by and I drew out behind it, getting in line to start the jaunt downtown to the office. The fog was thicker there and the traffic thinner. The subways were getting a big play. I found a place to park right outside the office and scraped my wheels against the curb then cut the engine. I sat there until a quarter to nine trying to smoke my way through a deck of Luckies. I still had a few to go when I went inside, put my name in the night register and had the elevator operator haul me up to my office floor.

At exactly nine P.M. a key turned in the lock and Velda came in. I swung my feet off the desk and walked out to the outside office and said hello. She smiled, but her heart wasn't in it. "Did you catch the news broadcast, kid?"

Her lips peeled back. "I heard it. I didn't like it."

"Neither did I, Velda. We have to get them back."

She opened her coat and perched on the edge of the desk. Her eyes were on the floor, staring at a spot on the carpet. She wasn't just a woman now. An aura of the jungle hung around her, turning her into a female animal scenting a game run and anxious to be in on the kill. "It can't stop there, Mike."

I dropped my butt and ground it into the carpet. "No, it can't." I knew what she was thinking and didn't like it.

"The papers aren't all. As far as they can go is to checkmate us. They'll try again."

"Will they?"

Her eyes moved up to meet mine, but that was all. "We can stop them, Mike."

"I can, sugar. Not you. I'm not shoving you into any front lines."

Her eyes still held mine. "There's somebody in this country who directs operations for them. It isn't anyone we know or the FBI knows or the party knows. It's somebody who can go and come like anybody else and not be interfered with. There are others who take orders and are equally dangerous because they represent the top of the chain of command and can back up their orders with force if necessary. How long will it take us to get them all, the known and the unknown?"

"It might take me a long time. Me, I said."

"There's a better way, Mike. We can get all those we know and any we suspect and the rest will run. They'll get the hell out of here and be afraid to come back."

It was almost funny, the way her reasoning followed mine. "Just me, Velda," I said.

Her head came up slowly and all I could think of was a big cat, a great big, luxurious cat leaning against the desk. A cat with gleaming black hair darker than the night and a hidden body of smooth skin that covered a wealth of rippling, deadly muscles that were poised for the kill. The desk light made her teeth an even row of merciless ivory, ready to rip and tear. She was still grinning, but a cat looks like it's grinning until you see its ears laid flat back against its head.

"Mike, there are men and women in this country. They made it together even when it was worse than now. Women learned how to shoot and shoot straight. They learned fast, and knew how to use a gun or a knife and use it right when the time came. I said we'd do it together. Either that or I take the whole thing to Pat."

I waited a long minute before I said, "Okay, it's us. I want it that way anyhow."

Velda slid off the desk and reached for my hand. I squeezed it hard, happy as hell I had the sense to realize that I knew what I wanted at last. She said it very simply. "I love you, Mike."

I had her in my arms, searched for her mouth and found it, a warm mouth with full, ripe lips that burned into my soul as they fused with mine. I tasted the love she offered and gave it back with all I had to give, crushing her until her breath came in short, quick jerks.

I held her face in my hands and kissed her eyes and her cheeks, listened to her moan softly and press herself closer and closer. I was lucky as hell and I knew it.

She opened her eyes when I held her off. I dropped my hand in my pocket and took out the box that I had picked up that afternoon. When I pressed the button the lid flew up and the sapphire threw back a perfect star. My fingers felt big and clumsy when I took it out and slipped it over her finger.

You don't have to speak at a time like that. Everything has been said and if anything remains it's written there in a silent promise your heart makes and that's all there is to it. Velda looked at it with a strange wonder for a long time before she kissed me again.

It was better than the last time.

It told her everything she wanted to know and no matter what happened now nothing would ever change.

"We have to go," I said.

She snapped out the lights while I waited at the door an we went down the elevator together. The watchman gave me the okay sign, so I knew nobody had been near my car while I was gone. When we were back in the fog I told her about Pat's having kept a man on Oscar's house and she picked it right up.

"Maybe . . . maybe we'll be the first."

"I'm hoping that," I said.

"What will they look like?"

"I don't know. If Moffit had them in his pocket, then they were in a package or an envelope big enough to fit in there. It may be that we're barking up the wrong tree. They might have been on microfilm."

"Let's hope we're right."

About two blocks away I ran the car in between a couple of parked trucks and waved her out. "We're taking the long way around this time."

"Through the alley?"

"Uh-huh. I don't like the idea of using the front door. When we reach the opening between the buildings duck in and keep on going."

Velda felt for my hand and held on to it. For all the world we might have been just a couple of dopes out for a walk. The fog was a white tube all around us, but it could be hiding a lot of things beside us. We crossed the street, came up around the subway kiosk and walked in the protection of the wall, the two of us searching for the narrow passageway that led behind the buildings.

As it was, we almost passed it. I stepped in holding Velda's hand and the darkness swallowed us up. For two or three minutes we stood there letting our eyes accustom themselves to this deeper gloom, then edged forward slowly, picking our way through the trash that had accumulated over the years. Animals and people had made a barely perceptible path through the center of the litter and we followed it until we stood behind the building and could feel our way along the alley by sticking close to the rotted planking that formed the wall of the yards behind the houses.

Velda was fishing in her handbag and I told her, "No lights. Just keep looking for a pile of bottles. There's a door in the wall behind it and that's the place."

I tried to judge the distance from that other night and found little to remember. Soft furry things would squeal and run across our feet whenever we disturbed the junk lying around. Tiny pairs of eyes would glare at us balefully and retreat when we came closer. A cat moved in the darkness and trapped a pair of eyes that had been paying too much attention to us and the jungle echoed with a mad death cry.

Velda tugged my hand and pointed to the ground. "Here're the bottles, Mike." She dropped my hand to walk around them. "The door is still open."

I pushed her through into the yard and we held still, taking in the black shadow of the building. The back door still swung open on one hinge. How many people lived here, I thought. How long ago was it when this dirty pile of brick and mortar was a home besides being a house? I went up the short flight of steps and took the flashlight from my pocket.

Velda flashed hers on the wall beside the door, illuminating a printed square of cardboard tacked to the framework. It read, THIS BUILDING HAS BEEN CONDEMNED FOR OCCUPANCY. A paragraph explained why and a rubber stamp signature made it official.

Ha.

The air had a musty odor of decay that collected in the long hall and clung to the walls. There was a door that led to the cellar, but the stairs were impenetrable, piled high with an unbelievable collection of scrap. Velda opened the door to the room that faced the backyard and threw her spot around the walls. I looked in over her shoulder and saw a black, charred mass and the remains of some furniture. It must have been a year or more since that room had started to burn, and nobody had been in it since. It was amazing to me that the house still stood.

Halfway down the hall there was a doorframe but no door and the room was stacked with old bedframes, a few mattresses left to the fleas and nothing worth stealing. The next room was, or had been, Oscar's. I had my hand on the knob when Velda grabbed me and we froze there.

From somewhere in the upper recesses of the house came a harsh, racking cough and the sound of someone vomiting.

I heard Velda take a deep breath of relief. "Drunk," she said.

"Yeah." I went back to the door. A plain skeleton key unlocked it and we stepped inside, locking it again behind us. Velda went to the windows, and tucked the shade in so there would be no chance of our lights being seen from the outside. Then we started to take that room apart.

Oscar's effects were collecting dust in the police storeroom, but it was unlikely that they had been in his bag or among his clothes. If they had been I would have found them the first time. We peeled the covers off the bed, found nothing and put them back. We felt in the corners and under things. I even tore the molding off the wall and shoved my hand behind it. There was nothing there, either.

Velda was working her way along the rear wall. She called softly, "Mike, come here a minute."

I followed the track of light to where she was fiddling with some aged draperies that had been tacked to the wall in a vain attempt to give a tapestry effect. She had one side pulled away and was pointing to it. "There used to be a door here. It led to that storeroom on the other side."

"Umm. This house was a one-family job at one time."

"Do you suppose . . ."

"That it's in there?" I finished. She nodded. "We better look. This room is as bare as a baby's spanked tail."

The two of us wormed out into the hall and shut the door. Velda led the way with her light and took a cautious step over the sill into the room beyond. From upstairs the coughing came again. I banged my shin against an iron bedpost and swore softly.

It only took ten minutes to go over that room, but it was long enough to see that nothing had been put in or taken out in months. A layer of dust covered everything; the junk was attached to the walls with thousands of spider webs. The only prints in the grime on the floor were those we had made ourselves.

I hated to say it; Velda hated to hear it. "Not a damn thing. Oscar never had those papers."

"Oh, Mike!" There was a sob in her voice.

"Come on, kid, we're only wasting time now."

The flashlight hung in her hand, the penny-sized beam a small, lonely spot on the floor, listlessly trying to add a bit of brightness to a night that was darker than ever now.

"All right, Mike," she said. "There must be other places for it to be."

The guy upstairs coughed again. We would have paid no attention to him except that we heard the thump of his feet hitting the floor then the heavy thud as he fell. The guy started cursing then was still.

It wasn't a conscious thing that held us back; we just stood there and listened, not scared, not worried, just curious and cautious. If we hadn't stopped where we were at the moment we did we would have walked right into the mouth of hell.

The front door opened and for a brief interval the Trench Coats were dimly silhouetted against the gray of the fog outside. Then the door closed and they were inside, motionless against the wall.

I did two things fast. I grabbed Velda and pulled out the .45.

Why did I breathe so fast? I hadn't done a thing and yet I wanted to pant my lungs out. They were on fire, my throat was on fire, my brain was on fire. The gun that I used to be able to hold so still was shaking hard and Velda felt it too. She slid her hand over mine, the one that squeezed her arm so hard it must have hurt, and I felt some of the tension leave me.

Velda wasn't shaking at all. Trench Coats moved and I heard a whispered voice. Something Velda did made a metallic snap. My brain was telling me that now it had come, the moment I had waited for. Trench Coats. Gladow and Company. The hammer and sickle backed up with guns. The general's boys.

They came for me! Even in the fog they had managed to follow me here and now they were ready to try again. The third time they won't miss. That was the common superstition, wasn't it? It was to be at close quarters and a crossfire with me in the middle.

I could feel my teeth grinding together. A hot wave of hate, so violent that it shook me from top to bottom, swept through my body. Who the hell were they supposed to be? Did they expect to come in and find me with my back to the door? Was I supposed to be another sap . . . the kind of guy who'd give people like them the old fighting chance . . . a gesture of sportsmanship? I should take a chance on dying like that?

They went in the room then, softly, but not so softly that my ears couldn't follow every step they took. I could hear their breathing coming hard, the scuffle of leather against wood. I even heard the catch of the flashlight when it snapped on.

Very slowly I jacked the hammer of the .45 back. My hand told Velda to stay there. Just stay there and shut up. I bent down and unlaced my shoes, stepped out of them and into the hall. I lay on my stomach looking into the room, the .45 propped on my forearm. The light of the flash made a circuit of the wall then stopped on the draperies that covered up the opening to the other room. Trench Coat who didn't have a flash stepped forward to pull the drapes down.

And Velda was in there waiting for me.

I said, "Looking for me, Martin?" The sudden shift of the flash and the lance of flame that spit from his gun came at the same time. I heard the bullets smack the wall over my head. He fired at the door where my belly should have been, mouthing guttural, obscene curses.

Then I shot him. I aimed a little below and inside the red eye of his gun barrel and over the blast of the .45 I heard his breath leave him in a wheezing shriek that died in a bubble of blood that came to his mouth. His rod went off once, a bullet ripped into the floor, and Trench Coat dropped.

The other one didn't stay in the room. I heard cloth rip, feet stumble and a heavy body slam against the wood. The other killer had gone into the room with Velda!

I was on my feet trying to decide. I had to decide! Good God, I had to get him before he saw her. If I went in through either door he'd get me and I had to go! I could feel him waiting for me, the darkness screening him completely. He knew I'd come and he knew he'd get me.

I walked toward the door. I didn't bother trying to be quiet.

I stepped into the doorway.

The crack of the gun was a flat noise that echoed once and was gone. There was no steak of flame, only that sudden, sharp sound and a peculiar hiss that seemed out of place. I felt no shock, no pain, only a sudden tensing of the muscles and a stillness that was nearly audible.

I must have caught it, I thought. It wasn't like this before. The last time it hurt. I tried to raise my hand and it came up slowly, effortlessly. In the room a gun clattered on the bare planking and was followed immediately by a soft thunk.

She seemed far away, so far away. "Mike?"

I couldn't get the breath out of my lungs at first. "You all right, Velda?"

"I killed him, Mike."

Dear God, what was there to say? I reached for her and folded her against my chest feeling her sob softly. I grabbed her flash and threw it on Trench Coat. Martin Romberg lay on his face with a hole in his back. She must have held it right against his spine when she pulled the trigger. That's why I didn't see the flash.

I straightened Velda up and pulled her toward the door. "Come on. We can't stay here." I found my shoes and yanked them on without bothering to tie them.

It was easier going out. It always is. The fog was still there, rolling in over the walls, sifting down between the buildings. Our eyes, so long in the dark, could see things that were hidden before and we raced down that back alley heading for that narrow slit a block away from the house.

The curious had already started their pilgrimage toward the sound of the shooting. A police car whined through the night, its light a blinking eye that cleared the way. We lost ourselves in the throng, came out of it and found the car. Two more police cars passed us as we started to cut back to the land of the living on the other side of town.

Velda sat stiff and straight staring out the window. When I looked down she still held the gun in her hand. I took it away from her and laid it on the seat. "You can file another notch on it, kid. That makes two."

I gave it to her brutally hoping it might snap her out of it. She turned her head and I saw that her mouth had taken on a smile. She picked up that nasty little .32 automatic and dropped it in her handbag. The snap catch made the same metallic sound that I had heard back there in the room. "My conscience doesn't hurt me, Mike," she said softly.

I patted her hand.

"I was afraid I wouldn't be quick enough. He never saw me. He stood in the center of the room covering both entrances and I knew what he was waiting for and I knew you'd come after him. He would have killed you, Mike."

"I know, honey."

"He was standing close enough so I could reach out and put my gun right against him." Her lips tightened. "Is this how . . . you feel, Mike? Is it all right for me to feel like this? Not having a sensation of guilt?"

"I feel happy."

"So do I. Perhaps I shouldn't, Mike. Maybe I should feel ashamed and sinful, but I don't. I'm glad I shot him. I'm glad I had the chance to do it and not you. I wanted to, do you understand that?"

"I understand completely. I know how you feel because it's how I feel. There's no shame or sin in killing a killer. David did it when he knocked off Goliath. Saul did it when he slew his tens of thousands. There's no shame to killing an evil thing. As long as you have to live with the fact you might as well enjoy it."

This time Velda laughed easily. My mind turned to the judge and I could picture his face, disappointed and angry that my time still hadn't come. And we had the best alibi in the world. Self-defense. We had a gun license and they didn't. If it reached us we were still clear.

Velda said, "They were there after the same thing, weren't they?"

"What?"

She repeated it. I slammed the wheel with my hand and said something I shouldn't have. Velda looked at me, her forehead furrowed. "They were . . . weren't they?"

I shook my head in disgust at myself. "What a sap I am. Of course they were! I thought they were after me again and they were searching for those damn documents!"

"Mike! But how would they know? The papers never carried any news of Charlie Moffit's murder. They reported it, but that was all. How could they know?"

"The same way the public knew the documents were stolen. Look, it's been a good time since he was knocked off. Just about long enough for somebody to get a loose tongue and spill something. That's how they knew . . . there was a leak. Somebody said something they shouldn't have!"

"The witnessess. They'd be the ones. Didn't Pat say they were warned to keep quiet about it?"

"'Advised' is the word," I said. "That doesn't make them liable to any official action. Damn it, why can't people keep their big mouths shut!"

Velda fidgeted in her seat. "It was too big to keep, Mike. You don't witness a murder and just forget about it."

"Ah, maybe you're right. Maybe I give people credit for having more sense than they actually have. Hell, the leak could just as well have come out of police headquarters too. It's too late now to worry about it. The damage is done."

Velda lost herself in her thoughts for a good five minutes. I stayed hunched over the wheel trying to see through the fog. "It wasn't there, Mike. If it wasn't there then it has to be somewhere else."

"Yeah."

"You looked around the place right after Oscar died. It wasn't among his things. The police must have looked too. Then we looked again. Do you think it could possibly be that Oscar didn't have them?"

"What else is there to think? Either that or he hid them outside his room."

"Doubtful, Mike. Remember one thing, if Oscar showed himself anywhere he would have been mistaken for Lee. He couldn't have done much fooling around."

I had to grin because the girl who was wearing my ring was so smart I began to feel foolish around her. I did pretty good for myself. I picked a woman who could shoot a guy just like that and still think straight. "Go on, Velda."

"So maybe Oscar never got those documents. Charlie's ripped pocket just happened when he fell. If Charlie was the courier, and if the documents he was carrying are missing, then Charlie must have them tucked away somewhere. Remember what the men at the pie factory said . . . that he was dopey for certain periods of time? He was forgetful? Couldn't he have . . ."

I stopped her and took it from there myself. She had tapped it right on the nose.

"When, Mike?"

I glanced at her quickly. "When what?"

"When do we go through his apartment?"

She was asking for more! Once in a night wasn't enough. "Not now," I told her. "Tomorrow's another day. Our dead friends won't be making a report tonight and the party won't be too anxious to make any more quick moves until they figure this one out first. We have time, plenty of time."

"No we don't."

I convinced her that we had by talking my head off all the way up to her apartment. When I let her out I only had one more thing to say. She waited, knowing well enough what was coming. "In case anyone asks, I was with you in your place all night, understand?"

"Can't we partially tell the truth?"

"Nope, we're engaged."

"Oh. Now I have to wait some more."

"Not long, kid, not too long. When this is all finished there'll be time for other things."

"I can wait."

"Good. Now hop upstairs and get to bed, but first, take that gun of yours and hide it somewhere. Put it where it can't be found until I tell you to take it out."

She leaned over and kissed me, a soft, light kiss that left my mouth tingling with the thought of what lay behind this girl who could be so completely lovable and so completely deadly. There were fires burning in her eyes that nothing could ever quench, but they asked me to try . . . to try hard.

I looked at her legs as she got out of the car and decided that I'd never see enough of them. They had been there all the time, mine any time I had wanted to ask and until now I never had the sense to ask. I had been stupid, all right. I was much smarter now. I waited until she was in the door before I turned the car around and crawled back to my own place.

It was late and I was tired. There had been too much in this one night again, I thought to myself. You get wound up like a watch spring, tighter and tighter until the limit is reached and you let go with a bang that leaves you empty and gasping.

When I locked the door I went directly to the closet and took down the box of parts and shells for the gun. I laid them out on the kitchen table and took the .45 apart piece by piece, cleaning and oiling every bit of it. I unwrapped the new barrel and put it in place, throwing the rest of the gun together around it. On second thought I changed the firing pin too. A microscope could pick up a lot of details from empty shell cases.

It took a half-hour to get the gun ready to go again. I shoved the old barrel and pin in a quart beer can, stuffed in some paper to keep it from rattling and dumped the works down the incinerator.

I was feeling pretty good when I crawled into the sack. Now let's see what would happen.

The alarm was about to give up when I finally woke up. There was nothing I wanted more than staying in bed, but I forced myself into a sitting position, fought a brief battle with the sheets and got my feet on the floor. A cold shower took the sleep out of my eyes and a plate of bacon and eggs put some life into my body.

I dressed and called Velda. She wasn't at home so I tried the office. She was there. I said, "How the devil do you do it?"

She laughed and came right back at me. "I'm still a working girl, Mike. Office hours are from eight to five, remember?"

"Any customers?"

"Nope."

"Any bills?"

"Nope."

"Love me?"

"Yup. Love me?"

"Yup. What a conversation. Any calls?"

"Yup. Pat called. He wants to see you. Lee Deamer called. He wants to see you, too."

I brightened up fast. "If they call back, tell them I'll check in. How about the papers?"

"Headlines, Mike. Big black headlines. It seems that a couple of rival gangs met up with each other in an old building over on the East Side. They forgot to carry their dead off when the battle was finished."

"Don't sound so smug. Did Pat mention anything about it?"

"No, but he will. He was pretty edgy with me."

"Okay, give him my love. I'll see you shortly." I hung up and laid out my working suit for the day. When I finished dressing I looked out the window and swore to myself. The fog was gone, but a drizzle had come in on its heels and the people on the street were bundled into coats trying to keep warm. The winter was dying a hard death.

On the way to the office I stopped off at a saloon and saw a friend of mine. I told him I wanted an unlicensed automatic of a certain make and .32 caliber, one that hadn't done anything except decorate somebody's dresser drawer since it was bought. My friend went to the phone and made two calls. He came back, told me to wait a few minutes, served a few customers at the bar, then went into the kitchen in the rear and I heard his voice arguing for a while. He came back with a package in his hand and said, "Twenty bucks, Mike."

I peeled off twenty, took the gun apart and removed the barrel and the pin. The rest I told my friend to dump in with his trash, thanked him and left. I stopped off at the office long enough to hand the two parts to Velda and tell her to slip them in her gun during her lunch hour. Then I went down to see Pat.

As Velda said, he wasn't happy. He said, "Hell, Mike," but his eyes raked me up and down. "Sit," he said.

I sat down and picked the paper off his desk. The headlines were big and black. There was a picture of the outside of the house with an interior shot in the middle section with white dotted lines to indicate where the bodies had been found. "Real trouble, huh, Pat?"

"Yeah, I thought maybe you could explain some of it."

"Don't be silly."

"Been shooting your gun lately?"

"Yesterday, as a matter of fact. I fired one into some waste right in my own apartment to check the ejector action. Why?"

"A paraffin test is out of order then. Mind if I see your gun?"

I said no and handed it over. Pat pressed a button on his desk and one of the technicians came in. Pat handed him the gun. "Get me a photograph of one of the slugs, Art."

"You're assuming a lot, aren't you, Pat?"

"I think so. Want to talk about it?"

"No, wait until you get your photograph."

He sat back and smiled and I read the papers. The two men were identified as Martin Romberg and Harold Valleck. They were good and dead. Both had prison records for various crimes and were suspected of being killed in a gang brawl. The police were expecting early developments in the crime. The reporters didn't have much to go on.

Art came back before I finished the funnies and handed Pat an enlarged sheet that was covered with angle shots of the slug. He laid the gun on the desk. Pat smiled again and pulled another sheet from his desk drawer. There wasn't anything funny about the way he smiled. I looked at him with a frown covering up the grin that was trying to break through, lit a butt and went back to the paper and finished the funnies.

Pat said, "You're too smart to be dumb, Mike. That or you're clean and I'm stupid as hell." His face looked empty.

I had a nice speech all ready to take him down a peg or two when I realized that he was on the spot. "You mean they were supposed to match, is that it?"

He nodded. "Something like that. A .45 killed one of them. There were only three of us who knew about Oscar's being there."

"Were they after Oscar or just there?"

"Hell, I don't know, Mike. Murder isn't uncommon in that neighborhood. Ordinarily I wouldn't give a hoot about it, but this isn't an ordinary thing. I feel about as effective as a clam right now."

"What for? Cripes, you can't help yourself if somebody gets shot. The place was empty. It was a good place for a hideout. Maybe those two eggs were holed up in there when they got caught up with."

Pat leaned back and rubbed his hands across his eyes. "Look, Mike, I'm not too dumb. Anybody can change barrels in a gun. I'll bet you the shell cases won't match your pin either."

"How'd you guess?"

"You're treating me like a kid now, feller. You're the one who's forgetting that we're friends. I know you like a book and I don't want to tear any pages out of that book because if I do I'm afraid of what the ending will be like. I know it was you, I don't know who handled the .32, I'm scared to ask questions and I hate to have you lie to me. Little lies I don't like."

I folded the paper and put it back on his desk. Pat wouldn't look at me. "Why the finger pointing at me, Pat?"

"Nuts. Just plain nuts. You should know why."

"I don't."

"One of those boys had a green Commie card on him. Now do you know why?"

"Yeah," I said. I had forgotten all about that. I lifted the cigarette and dragged the smoke down into my chest. "Now what?"

"I want to know what you're after. I want to know everything, Mike. Whenever I think about things I get cold all over and want to smash things. You've been playing cute and there's no way I can touch you. I have to absorb myself in police work and routine detail when I know I'm on the outside hoping for a look in."

"That's the trouble with the police. They have to wait until something happens. A crime has to be committed before they can make a move."

Pat watched me thoughtfully, his hands locked behind his head. "Things have happened."

"Roger, but, as you stated, they have been played very cute."

"I'm still on the outside looking in."

I snubbed the butt out and stared at the shreds of tobacco hanging out the end. "Pat . . . more things are going to happen. I know you like a book, too, but there's something else I have to know."

"Go on."

"How far can I trust you?"

"It depends on a lot of things. Never forget that I'm still a cop."

"You're still a plain citizen who likes his country and likes to see it stay the way it is, aren't you?"

"Naturally."

"All right. You're all snagged up in the ritual of written law and order. You have to follow the rules and play it square. There's a weight around your neck and you know it. If I told you what I knew you'd bust a gut trying to get something done that couldn't be done and the rats would get out of the trap.

"I'm only one guy, Pat, but I'm quite a guy and you know it. I make my own rules as I go along and I don't have to account to anybody. There's something big being kicked around and it's exactly as you said . . . it's bigger than you or me or anybody and I'm the only one who can handle it. Don't go handing me the stuff about the agencies that are equipped to handle every conceivable detail of this and that. I'm not messing with detail . . . I'm messing with people and letting them see that I'm nobody to mess with and there are a lot more like me if you want to look for them.

"What's going on isn't a case for the crime laboratory and it isn't a case for the police. The whole thing is in the hands of the people, only they don't know it yet. I'm going to show it to them because I'm the only one who has the whole works wrapped up tight trying to bring it together so we can see what it is. You can stop worrying about your law and your order and about Lee Deamer, because when I'm finished Lee can win his election and go ahead and wipe out the corruption without ever knowing that he had a greater enemy than crime plain and simple."

I picked up my gun and stuck it in the sling. Pat hadn't moved. His head bobbed slightly when I said so-long, but that was all.

I was still seeing the tired smile on Pat's face, telling me that he understood and to go ahead, when I called Lee Deamer's office. His secretary told me that he was speaking at a luncheon of U.N. delegates in a midtown hotel and had already left. I got the name of the hotel, thanked her and hung up.

He must be getting anxious and I didn't blame him a bit. It was a little before noon, so I hopped in the heap and tooled it up Broadway and angled over to the hotel where it cost me a buck to park in an unloading zone with a guy to cover for me.

The clerk at the desk directed me to the hall where the luncheon was to be held and had hardly finished before I saw Lee come in the door. He swung a brief case at his side and one of the girls from his office trailed behind him carrying another. Before I could reach him a swarm of reporters came out of nowhere and took down his remarks while the photogs snapped his picture.

A covey of important-looking joes stood on the outside of the circle impatient to speak to Deamer, yet unwilling to offend the press by breaking up the party. It was Lee himself who told the boys to see him after the luncheon and walked through their midst. He had spotted me leaning against the desk and went directly into the manager's office. That little man went in after him, came out in a minute and scanned the desk. I didn't have to be told that he was looking for me.

I nodded and strode in as casually as I could. The manager smiled at me, then took up a position near the door to give us a few minutes in private. Lee Deamer was sitting in a leather-covered chair next to the desk and his face was a study in anxiety.

"Hello, Lee."

"Mike, how are you? I've been worried sick ever since I saw the papers this morning."

I offered him a butt and he shook his head. "There's nothing to worry about, Lee. Everything is fine."

"But last night. I . . . you mean you weren't connected with the doings in Oscar's place?" I grinned and lit the smoke.

"I don't know what to think. I called Captain Chambers and he led me to believe that he thought the same thing."

"He did. I talked him out of it." I raked another chair up with my foot and sat down. Murder is murder. It can be legal and it can't. No matter what it is it's still murder and the less people know about it the better. I said, "I went through Oscar's place right after the accident. Pat went through it himself. Later I took another check and I'm satisfied that if Oscar did leave any incriminating junk lying around, he didn't leave it in his room."

Lee sighed, relieved. "I'm glad to hear that, Mike, but I'm more than glad to hear that you didn't have anything to do with those . . . deaths. It's ugly."

"Murder is always ugly."

"Then there's nothing further to be said, I imagine. That takes a great load off my mind. Truly, Mike, I was terribly worried."

"I should think so. Well, keep your mind at rest. I'm going to backtrack on Oscar a little bit and see what comes up. It's still my opinion that he was bluffing. It's not the easiest thing in the world to frame somebody who can't be framed. If anything comes up I'll let you know, meanwhile, no news is good news, so they say."

"Fine, Mike, I'll leave everything to you. Captain Chambers will co-operate as he sees possible. I want nothing hanging over my head. If it becomes necessary I would rather the public knew about my relationship with Oscar and the facts of the case before the election."

"Forget that stuff," I told him brusquely, "there's plenty the public shouldn't know. If you went into George Washington's background you'd probably kick up a lot of dirt too. You're the one that counts, not Oscar. Remember that."

I put the chair back in place and doused the butt in a flower pot. I told Lee to give me a few minutes before he left, said so-long and took off. Lee looked ten years younger than he had when he came in. I liked that guy.

There was a public phone in the lobby and I called Velda to ask her if she had switched parts in her gun. She said she had, then told me Pat had just been on the wire. I said, "But I just saw him a little while ago."

"I know, but he told me to have you contact him right away if I could reach you."

"Okay, I'll call him back. Look, I'll probably be out most of the day, so I'll pick you up sometime tonight at your place."

"Charlie Moffit?"

"Yeah, we'll take in his joint."

"I'll be ready, Mike."

I hung up, threw in another nickel and spun Pat's number when I got the dial tone. The last time I had seen him he looked tired. This time his voice was dancing.

Like on hot coals.

"Pat, feller, why the sudden rush?"

"I'll tell you later. Get your tail down here chop-chop. I have things to talk over with you. Privately."

"Am I in trouble?"

"There's a damn good chance that you'll be in jail if you don't hurry."

"Get off my back, Pat. Get a table in Louie's and I'll be down for lunch. The check is yours this time."

"I'll give you fifteen minutes."

I made it just in time. Louie was behind the bar and thumbed me toward the booths in the rear. Pat was in the last one on the aisle sucking on a cigarette as hard as he could.

Did you ever see a guy who was burned up at his wife? He was like a bomb trying hard to go off and couldn't because the powder was wet. That's what Pat reminded me of. Police efficiency was leaking out his ears and his usual suavity hung on him like a bag. If he could call those narrow slits eyes then you could say he was looking at me with intent to kill.

I walked back to the bar and had Louie make me up a drink before the session started.

He waited until I was comfortable against the back of the booth and started on my drink before he yanked an envelope out of his pocket and flipped it across the table at me. I slid the contents out and looked at him.

They were photographs of fingerprints. Most were mine. Four weren't.

Attached to the four that weren't was a typewritten sheet, single spaced and carefully paragraphed. "They came off that cigarette pack," Pat said.

I nodded and read through the report.

Her name was Paula Riis. She was thirty-four years old, a college grad, a trained nurse and a former employee in a large Western insane asylum. Since it was a state job, her prints were on file there and in Washington.

Pat let me stuff the sheets back in the envelope before he spoke. I hardly heard him say unnecessarily, "She worked in the same place that Oscar had been assigned to." A cloud of smoke circled his head again.

The music started in my head. It was different this time. It wasn't loud and it had a definite tune and rhythm. It was soft, melodious music that tried to lullaby me into drowsiness with subtle tones. It tried to keep me from thinking and I fought it back into the obscurity from which it came.

I looked at his eyes and I looked deep into twin fires that had a maddening desire to make me talk and talk fast. "What, Pat?"

"Where is she?" His voice sounded queer.

I said, "She's dead. She committed suicide by jumping off a bridge into the river. She's dead as hell."

"I don't believe you, Mike."

"That's tough. That's just too damn bad because you have to believe me. You can scour the city or the country from now to doomsday and you won't find her unless you dredge the river and by now maybe even that's too late. She's out at sea somewhere. So what?"

"I'm asking the same thing. So what, Mike? She isn't an accident, a freak coincidence that you can explain off. I want to know why and how. This thing is too big for you to have alone. You'd better start talking or I'm going to have to think one thing. You aren't the Mike Hammer I knew once. You used to have sense enough to realize that the police are set up to handle these things. You used to know that we weren't a bunch of saps. If you still want to keep still then I'm going to think those things and the friendship I had for a certain guy is ended because that guy isn't the same guy any more."

That was it. He had me and he was right. I took another sip of the drink and made circles with the wet bottom on the table.

"Her name was Paula. Like I said, she's dead. Remember when I came to you with those green cards, Pat? I took them from her. I was walking across the bridge one night when this kid was going into her dutch act. I tried to stop her. All I got was the pocket of her coat where she had the pack of butts and the cards.

"It mad me mad because she jumped. I had just been dragged over the coals by that damned judge and I was feeling sour enough not to report the thing. Just the same, I wanted to know what the cards meant. When I found out she was a Commie, and that Charlie Moffit was a Commie I got interested. I couldn't help it.

"Now the picture is starting to take form. I think you've put it together already. Oscar was insane. He had to be. He and that nurse planned an escape and probably went into hiding in their little love nest a long time ago. When money became scarce they saw a way to get some through using Oscar's physical similarity to Lee.

"The first thing that happened was that Oscar killed a guy, a Commie. Now either he took those cards off Moffit's body for some reason, or he and this Paula Riis actually were Commies themselves. Anyway when Oscar killed Moffit, Paula realized that the guy was more insane than she thought and got scared. She was afraid to do anything about it so she went over the bridge."

It was a wonderful story. It made a lot of sense. The two people that could spoil it were dead. It made a lot of sense without telling about the fat boy on the bridge and setting myself up for a murder charge.

Pat was on the last of his smokes. The dead butts littered the table and his coat was covered with ashes. The fires in his eyes had gone down . . . a little anyway. "Very neat, Mike. It fits like a glove. I'm wondering what it would fit like if there was more to it that you didn't tell me."

"Now you're getting nasty," I said.

"No, just careful. If it's the way you told it the issue's dead. If it isn't there will be a lot of hell coming your way."

"I've seen my share," I grunted.

"You'll see a lot more. I'm going to get some people on this job to poke around. They're other friends of mine and though it won't be official it will be a thorough job. These boys carry little gold badges with three words you can condense to FBI I hope you're right, Mike. I hope you aren't giving me the business."

I grinned at him. "The only one who can get shafted is me. You . . . hell, you're worried about Lee. I told you I wouldn't line him up for a smear. He's my client and I'm mighty particular about clients. Let's order some lunch and forget about it."

Pat reached for the menu. The fires were still in his eyes.

Chapter Eight

I left Pat at two o'clock and picked up a paper on the corner. The headlines had turned back to the cold war and the spy trials going on in New York and Washington. I read the sheet through and tossed it in a basket then got in my car.

I made a turn at the corner and cut over to an express street to head back to my place when I noticed the blue coupé behind me. The last time I had seen it it had been parked across from mine outside Pat's office. I turned off the avenue and went down a block to the next avenue and paralleled my course. The blue coupé stuck with me.

When I tried the same thing again it happened all over. This time I picked out a one-way street, crept along it behind a truck until I saw room enough at the curb to park the car. I went into the space head first and sat there at the wheel waiting. The coupé had no choice, it had to pass me.

The driver was a young kid in a pork-pie hat and he didn't give me a glance. There was a chance that I could be wrong, but just for the hell of it I jotted down his license number as he went by and swung out behind him. Only once did I see his eyes looking into his mirror, and that was when he turned on Broadway. I stuck with him a way to see what he'd do.

Five minutes later I gave it up as a bad job. He wasn't going anywhere. I made a left turn and he kept going straight ahead. I scowled at my reflection in the dirty windshield.

I was getting the jumps, I thought. I never used to get like that. Maybe Pat had put his finger on it . . . I'd changed.

When I stopped for the red light I saw the headlines on the papers laid out on a stand. More about the trials and the cold war. Politics. I felt like an ignorant bastard for not knowing what it was all about. There's no time like the present then. I swung the wheel and cut back in the other direction. I parked the car and walked up to the gray stone building where the pickets carried banners protesting the persecution of the "citizens" inside.

One of the punks carrying a placard was at the meeting in Brooklyn the other night. I crossed the line by shoving him almost on his fanny. An attendant carried my note in to Marty Kooperman and he came out to lead me back to the press seats.

Hell, you read the papers, you know what went on in there. It made me as sick to watch it as it did you to read about it. Those damned Reds pulled every trick they knew to get the case thrown out of court. They were a scurvy bunch of lice who tried to turn the court into a burlesque show.

But there was a calm patience in this judge and jury, and in the spectators too that told you what the outcome would be. Oh, the defendants didn't see it. They were too cocksure of themselves. They were The Party. They were Powerful. They represented the People.

They should have turned around and seen the faces of the people. They would have had their pants scared off. All at once I felt good. I felt swell!

Then I saw the two guys in the second row. They were dressed in ordinary business suits and they looked too damn smug. They were the boys who came in with General Osilov that night. I sat through two more hours of it before the judge broke it up for the day. The press boys made a beeline for the phones and the crowd started to scramble for the doors.

A lot of the people covered it up, but I had time to see the general's aides pass a fat brief case to another guy who saw that it reached one of the defendants.

All I could think of was the nerve they had, the gall of them to come into a court of law and directly confirm their relationship with a group accused of a crime against the people. Maybe that's why they could get ahead so fast. They were brazen. That brief case would hold one thing. Money. Cash in bills. Dough to support the trial and the accompanying propaganda.

Nuts.

I waited until they went through the doors and stayed on their heels. At least they had the sense not to come in an official car; that would have been overdoing it. They walked down a block, waved a cab to the curb and climbed in. By that time I was in a cab myself and right behind them. One nice thing about taking a taxi in New York. There're so many cabs you can't tell if you're being followed or not.

The one in front of us pulled to a stop in front of the hotel I had left not so long before. I paid off my driver and tagged after them into the lobby. The place was still jammed with reporters and the usual collection of the curious. General Osilov was standing off in a corner explaining things to four reporters through an interpreter. The two went directly up to him, interrupted and shook his hand as if they hadn't seen him in years. It was all very clubby.

The girl at the newsstand was bored. I bought a pack of Luckies and held out my hand for the change. "What's the Russky doing?"

"Him? He was a speaker at the luncheon upstairs. You should have heard him. They piped all the speeches into the lobby over the loud-speaker and he had to be translated every other sentence."

Sure, he couldn't speak English. Like hell!

I said, "Anything important come out?"

She handed me my change. "Nah, same old drivel every time. All except Lee Deamer. He jumped on that Cossack for a dozen things and called him every name that could sneak by in print. You should have heard the way the people in the lobby cheered. Gosh, the manager was fit to be tied. He tried to quiet them down, but they wouldn't shut up."

Good going, Lee. You tear the bastards apart in public and I'll do it in private. Just be careful, they're like poisonous snakes . . . quiet, stealthy and deadly. Be careful, for Pete's sake!

I opened the Luckies and shook one out. I hung it in my mouth and fumbled for a match. A hand draped with mink held a flame up to it and a voice said, "Light, mister?"

It was a silly notion, but I wondered if I could be contaminated by the fire. I said, "Hello, Ethel," and took the light.

There was something different about her face. I didn't know what it was, but it wasn't the same any more. Fine, nearly invisible lines drew it tight, giving an Oriental slant to her eyes. The mouth that had kissed so nice and spoke the word that put the finger on me seemed to be set too firm. It pulled the curve of her lips out of shape.

She had a lesson coming to her, this one. Bare skin and a leather belt. Either she was playing it bold or she didn't think I had guessed. Maybe she thought she couldn't have made it out the door without my seeing her and decided to make the first move herself. Whatever her reason, I couldn't read it in her voice or her face.

I was going to ask her what she was doing here and I saw why. The reputable Mr. Brighton of Park Avenue and Big Business was holding court next to a fluted column. A lone reporter was taking notes. A couple of big boys whose faces I recognized from newspapers were listening intently, adding a word now and then. They all smiled but two.

The sour pusses were General Osilov and his interpreter. The little guy beside the general talked fast and gesticulated freely, but the general was catching it all as it came straight from Brighton himself.

A couple hundred words later Ethel's old man said something and they all laughed, even the general. They shook hands and split up into new groups that were forming every time a discussion got started.

I took Ethel's arm and started for the door. "It's been a long time, kid. I've missed you."

She tried a smile and it didn't look good on her. "I've missed you too, Mike. I halfway expected you to call me."

"Well, you know how things are."

"Yes, I know." I threw my eyes over her face, but she was expressionless.

"Were you at the luncheon?" I asked.

"Oh . . ." she came out of it with a start. "No, I stayed in the lobby. Father was one of the speakers, you know."

"Really? No need for you to stick around, is there?"

"Oh no, none at all. I can . . . oh, Mike, just a moment. I forgot something, do you mind?"

We paused at the door and she glanced back over her shoulder. I turned her around and walked back. "Want me to go with you?"

"No, I'll be right back. Wait for me, will you?"

I watched her go and the girl at the counter smiled I said, "There's a ten in it if you see what she does, sister." She was out of there like a shot and closed up on Ethel. I stood by the stand smoking, looking at the mirrors scattered around the walls. I could see myself in a half dozen of them. If Ethel watched to see whether or not I moved she must have been satisfied.

She was gone less than a minute. Her face looked tighter than ever.

I walked up to meet her and the girl scrambled behind her counter. I took out a dime, flipped it in my hand and went over and got a pack of gum. While the girl gave me my nickel change I dropped the ten on the counter. "She spoke to a couple of guys back in the hall. Nothing else. They were young."

I took my gum pack and offered Ethel a piece. She said she didn't want any. No wonder she looked so damned grim. She had fingered me again. Naked skin and ten extra lashes. She was going to be a sorry girl.

When we got in the cab two boys in almost identical blue suits opened the doors of a black Chevy sedan and came out behind us. I didn't look around again until we had reached the lot where I left my car. The black Chevy was down the street. Ethel kept up a running conversation that gave me a chance to look at her, and back over my shoulder occasionally.

If I had been paying any attention I would have gotten what she was driving at. She kept hinting for me to take her up to my place. MAN MURDERED IN OWN APARTMENT. More nice headlines. I ignored her hints and cruised around Manhattan with the black sedan always a few hundred feet behind.

Dusk came early. It drove in with the fog that seemed to like this town, a gray blind that reduced visibility to a minimum. I said to her, "Can we go back to your cabin, kid? It was pretty nice there."

I might have been mistaken, but I thought I saw the glint of tears. "It was nice there, wasn't it?"

"It was you, not the cabin, Ethel."

I wasn't mistaken, the tears were there. She dropped her eyes and stared at her hands. "I had forgotten . . . what it was like to live." She paused, then: "Mike . . ."

"What?"

"Nothing. We can go to the cabin if you'd like to."

The Chevy behind us pulled around a car and clung a little closer. I loosened the .45 with my forearm and a shrug. The dusk deepened to dark and it was easy to watch the lights in the mirror. They sat there, glowering, watching, waiting for the right moment to come.

How would it be? Ethel wanted it in my apartment. Why? So she would be out of the line of fire? Now what. They'd draw alongside and open up and they wouldn't give a hoot whether they got the both of us or not. It was a question of whether I was important enough to kill at the same time sacrificing a good party worker. Hell, there were always suckers who could rake in the dough for them. Those two headlights behind me trying to act casual said that.

We were out of the city on a wide open road that wound into the dark like a beckoning finger. The houses thinned out and there were fewer roads intersecting the main drag.

Any time now, I thought. It can happen any time. The .45 was right where I could get at it in a hurry and I was ready to haul the wheel right into them. The lights behind me flicked on bright, back to dim and on bright again, a signal they were going to pass.

I signaled an okay with my lights and gripped the wheel. The lights came closer.

I didn't watch the mirror. I had my eyes going between the road and the lightbeams on the outside lane that got brighter as they came closer when all of a sudden the beams swerved and weren't there any more. When I looked they were going in a crazy rolling pattern end over end into the field alongside the road.

I half whispered, "Cripes!" and slammed on the brakes. A handful of cars shot by the accident and began to pull in to a stop in front of me.

Ethel was rigid in her seat, her hands pushing her away from the windshield where the quick stop had thrown her. "Mike! What . . ."

I yanked the emergency up. "Stay here. A car went over behind us."

She gasped and said something I didn't catch because I was out and running back toward the car. It was upside down and both doors were open. The horn blasted, a man screamed and the lights still punched holes in the night. I was the first one there, a hundred yards ahead of anyone else.

I had time to see the tommy gun on the grass and the wallet inside the car. So that was it. That was how it was to be pulled off. One quick blast from a chatter gun that would sweep my car and it was all over. Somebody groaned in the darkness and I didn't bother to see who it was. They deserved everything they got. I grabbed that tommy gun and the wallet and ducked behind the car in the darkness and ran back down the road. The others had just reached the wreck and were hollering for somebody to get a doctor.

Ethel screamed when I threw the trunk open and I yelled for her to shut up. I tossed the tommy gun on the spare tire and shut the lid. There were more cars coasting up, threading through the jam along the road. A siren screamed its way up and two state cops started the procession moving again. I joined the line and got away from there.

"Who was it, Mike? What happened back there?"

"Just an accident," I grinned. "A couple of guys were going too fast and they rolled over."

"Were they . . . hurt?"

"I didn't stay to look. They weren't dead . . . yet." I grinned again and her face tightened. She looked at me with an intense loathing and the tears started again.

"Don't worry, baby. Don't be so damn soft-hearted. You know what the Party policies are. You have to be cold and hard. You aren't forgetting, are you?"

The "no" came through her teeth.

"Hell, the ground was soft and the car wasn't banged up much. They were probably just knocked out. You know, you have to get over being squeamish about such things."

Ethel shifted in her seat and wouldn't look at me again. We came to the drive and the trees that hung over it. We pulled up to the front of the cabin that nestled on the bluff atop the river and sat there in the dark watching the lights of the river boats.

Red and green eyes. No, they were boats. From far away came a dull booming, like a giant kettledrum. I had heard it once before, calling that way. It was only a channel marker, only a steel bell on a float that clanged when the tide and the waves swung it. I felt a shudder cross my shoulders and I said, "Shall we go in?"

She answered by opening the door. I went into the cabin behind her.

I closed the door and reached behind my back and turned the key in the lock. Ethel heard the ominous click and stopped. She looked over her shoulder at me once, smiled and went on. I watched her throw her mink on the sofa then put a match to the tapers in the holders.

She thought it was a love nest. We were locked in against the world where we could practice the human frailties without interruption. She thought I didn't know and was going to give her all for the party so as not to arouse my suspicions. She was crying softly as if the sudden passion was too much for her.

I put the key in my pocket and crossed the room to where she was and put my hands on her shoulders. She spun around, her hands locking behind my waist, her mouth reaching up for mine. I kissed her with a brutal force she'd remember and while I kissed her my fingers hooked in the fabric of her dress.

She ripped her mouth away from mine and pressed it against my cheek. She was crying hard and she said, "I love you, Mike. I never wanted to love again and I did. I love you." It was so low I hardly heard it.

My teeth were showing in a grin. I raised my hand until it was against her breast and pushed. Ethel staggered back a step and I yanked with the hand that held her dress and it came off in one piece with a quick loud tear, leaving her gasping and hurt with vivid red marks on her skin where the fabric had twisted and caught.

She gasped, pressed the back of her hand to her mouth and looked at me through eyes wide with fear. "Mike . . . you didn't have to . . ."

"Shut up." I took a step forward and she backed off, slowly, slowly, until the wall was at her back and she could retreat no more. "Am I going to rip 'em right off your hide, Ethel?"

Her head shook, unbelieving what was happening to her. It only lasted a moment, and her hands that trembled so bent up behind her back and the bra fell away and landed at her feet. Her eyes were on mine as she slid her hands inside the fragile silk of the shorts and pushed them down.

When she stepped out of them I slid my belt off and let it dangle from my hand. I watched her face. I saw the gamut of emotions flash by in swift succession, leaving a startled expression of pure animal terror.

"Maybe you should know why you're getting this, Ethel. It's something you should have gotten a long time ago. Your father should have given it to you when you started fooling around one of those Commie bastards who was after the dough you could throw his way instead of yourself. I'm going to lace the hell out of you and you can scream all you want, and nobody will be around to hear you but me and that's what I want to hear.

"You put the finger on me twice now. You fingered me when you saw the badge inside my wallet and the party put a man on my back. They put a lot of men, I guess. Two of 'em are dead already. It didn't go so good and you saw a chance to finger me again in the lobby back there. What did you expect for it, a promotion or something?"

I started to swing the belt back and forth very gently. Ethel pressed against the wall, her face a pale oval. "Mike . . . it wasn't . . ."

"Keep quiet," I said.

A naked woman and a leather belt. I looked at her, so bare and so pretty, hands pressed for support against the paneling, legs spread apart to hold a precarious balance, a flat stomach hollowed under the fear that burned her body a faint pink, lovely smooth breasts, firm with terrible excitement, rising and falling with every gasping breath. A gorgeous woman who had been touched by the hand of the devil.

I raised the belt and swung it and heard the sharp crack of the leather against her thighs and her scream and that horrible blasting roar all at once. Her body twisted and fell while I was running for the window with the .45 in my hand pumping slugs into the night and shouting at the top of my voice.

And there in the darkness I heard a body crashing through the brush, running for the road. I ran to the door that I had locked myself and cursed my own stupidity while I fumbled for the key in my pocket.

The door came open, but there was only silence outside, a dead, empty silence. I jammed a fresh clip into the gun and held it steady, deliberately standing outlined in the light of the door asking to be made a target.

I heard it again, the heavy pounding of feet going away. They were too far to catch. When they stopped a motor roared into life and he was gone. My hands had the shakes again and I had to drop the rod back in the sling. The prints of his feet were in the grass, winding around the house. I followed them to the window and bent over to pick up the hat.

A pork-pie hat. It had a U-shaped nick taken out of the crown. The boy in the blue Chevy. Mr. MVD himself, a guy who looked like a schoolboy and could pass in a crowd for anything but what he was. I grinned because he was one thing he shouldn't have been, a lousy shot. I was duck soup there in that room with my back toward him and he missed. Maybe I was supposed to be his first corpse and he got nervous. Yeah. I turned and looked in the window.

Ethel was still on the floor and a trickle of red drained from her body.

I ran back to her, stumbling over things in the darkness. I turned her over and saw the hole under her shoulder, a tiny blue thing that oozed blood slowly and was beginning to swell at the edges.

I said, "Ethel . . . Ethel honey!"

Her eyes came open and she looked tired, so tired. "It . . . doesn't hurt, Mike."

"I know. It won't for a while. Ethel . . . I'm sorry. God, I feel awful."

"Mike . . . don't."

She closed her eyes when I ran my hand over her cheek. "You said . . . a badge, Mike. You're not one of them, are you?"

"No. I'm a cop."

"I'm . . . glad. After . . . I met you I saw . . . the truth, Mike. I knew . . . I had been a fool."

"No more talking, Ethel. I'm going for a doctor. Don't talk."

She found my hand and hung on. "Let me, Mike . . . please. Will I die?"

"I don't know, Ethel. Let me go for a doctor."

"No . . . I want to tell you . . . I loved you. I'm glad it happened. I had to love somebody . . . else."

I forced her fingers off my hand and pushed her arm away gently. There was a phone on the bar and I lifted it to my ear. I dialed the operator and had a hard time keeping my voice level. I said I wanted a doctor and wanted one quick. She told me to wait and connected me with a crisp voice that sounded steady and alert. I told him where we were and to get here fast. He said he would hurry and broke the connection.

I knelt beside her and stroked her hair until her eyes came open, silently protesting the pain that had started. Her shoulder twitched once and the blood started again. I tried to be gentle. I got my arms under her and carried her to the couch. The wound was a deeper blue and I prayed that there was no internal hemmorrhage.

I sat beside her holding her hand. I cursed everything and everybody. I prayed a little and I swore again. I had thoughts that tried to drive me mad.

It was a long while before I realized that she was looking at me. She struggled to find words, her mind clouding from the shock of the bullet. I let her talk and heard her say, "I'm not . . . one of them any more. I told . . . everything . . . I told . . ."

Her eyes had a glazed look. "Please don't try to talk, kid, please."

She never heard me. Her lips parted, moved. "I never . . . told them about you . . . Mike. I never saw . . . your badge. Tonight . . . those men . . ." It was too much for her. She closed her eyes and was still, only the cover I had thrown over her moved enough to tell that she was still alive.

I never heard the doctor come in. He was a tall man with a face that had looked on much of the world. He stepped past me and leaned over her, his hand opening the bag he carried. I sat and waited, smoking one cigarette after another. The air reeked with a sharp chemical smell and the doctor was a tall shadow passing back and forth across my line of vision, doing things I wasn't aware of, desperate in his haste.

His voice came at me several times before I answered him. He said, "She will need an ambulance."

I came out of the chair and went to the phone. The operator said she would call and I hung up. I turned around. "How is she, doc?"

"We won't know for a while yet. There's a slight chance that she'll pull through." His whole body expressed what he felt. Disgust. Anger. His voice had a demanding, exasperated tone. "What happened?"

Perhaps it was the sharpness of his question that startled me into a logical line of reasoning. There was a sudden clarity about the whole thing I hadn't noticed before I heard Ethel telling me that she had pulled out of the party and it left me with an answer that said this time it wasn't me they were after . . . it was her . . . and Pork Pie had been a good shot. He would have been a dead shot, only Ethel had twisted when I laid the strap across her and the bullet that was intended for her heart had missed by a fraction and might give her life back to her.

The soft kill-music that I always hear at the wrong times took up a beat and was joined by a multitude of ghostly instruments that plucked at my mind to drive away any reason that I had left.

I walked to the doctor and stared at his eyes so he could see that I had looked on the world too, and could see the despair, the lust, the same dirty thoughts that he had seen in so many others and said, "Do you know who I am, doctor?"

He looked long this time, searching me. "Your face is familiar."

"It should be, doctor. You've seen it in the papers. You've read about it many times. It's been described a hundred different ways and there's always that reference to a certain kill-look that I have. My name is Mike Hammer. I'm a private detective. I've killed a lot of people."

He knew me then; his eyes asked if I were trying to buy his silence with the price of death. "Did you do that to her too?"

"No, doctor. Somebody else did that, and for it that somebody is going to die a thousand times. It wasn't just one person who wanted that girl dead. One person ordered it, but many demanded it. I'm not going to tell you the story of what lies behind this, but I will tell you one thing. It's so damned important that it touches your life and mine and the lives of everyone in this country and unless you want to see the same thing happen again and again you'll have to hold up your report.

"You know who I am and I can show you my papers so there will never be any trouble in finding me if you think it should be done. But listen . . . if ever you believed anything, believe this . . . if I get connected with this I'll be tied up in that crazy web of police detail and a lot of other people will die. Do you understand me?"

"No." Just like that, no. I tried to keep from grabbing his neck in my hands and forcing my words down his throat. My face went wild and I couldn't control it. The doctor didn't scare, he just stood there and watched me make myself keep from killing him too.

"Perhaps I do after all." His face became sober and stern. I swallowed hard with the relief I felt. "I don't understand it at all," he said. "I'll never understand these things. I do know this though, a powerful influence motivates murder. It is never simple enough to understand. I can't understand war, either. I'll do what I can, Mr. Hammer. I do have a good understanding of people and I think that you are telling me a truth that could have some very unpleasant aspects, whatever they are."

I squeezed his hand hard and got out of there. So much to be done, I thought, so much that's still left to do. My watch said it was after ten and Velda would be waiting. Tonight we had a mission planned and after that another and another until we found the ending.

I touched the starter and the engine caught with a roar. The night had sped by and there never was enough time to do what I wanted. First Pork-Pie Hat, then those men, then Ethel. I stopped and retraced my thoughts. Ethel and those men. She was going to tell me about them; she almost did. I reached in my pocket and took out the wallet.

The card was behind some others in one of the pockets. It was an official card with all the works. The words I saw stood out as though they were written in flame. FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION. Good Lord, Ethel had fingered me to the FBI! She had turned on the party and even on me! Now it was clear . . . Those two Feds had tailed me hoping to be led to my apartment and perhaps a secret cache of papers that could lead to those missing documents! They tailed me but they in turn were being tailed by somebody else who knew what had happened. Pork-Pie Hat ran them off the road and came after us with the intention of killing Ethel before she could spill anything else she knew!

I let the music in my head play. I laughed at it and it played harder than ever, but this time I didn't fight it. I sat back and laughed, enjoying the symphony of madness and cheered when it was done. So I was mad. I was a killer and I was looking forward to killing again. I wanted them all, every one of them from bottom to top and especially the one at the top even if I had to go to the Kremlin to do it. The time for that wouldn't be now . . . I'd only get a little way up the ladder if one of the rungs didn't break first and throw me to my death.

But some day, maybe, some day I'd stand on the steps of the Kremlin with a gun in my fist and I'd yell for them to come out and if they wouldn't I'd go in and get them and when I had them lined up against the wall I'd start shooting until all I had left was a row of corpses that bled on the cold floors and in whose thick red blood would be the promise of a peace that would stick for more generations than I'd live to see.

The music gave up in a thunder of drums and I racked my wheels against the curb outside Velda's apartment house. I looked up at her floor when I got out and saw the lights on and I knew she was ready and waiting.

I went on in.

She said hello and knew that something was wrong with me. "What happened, Mike?"

I couldn't tell her the whole thing. I said simply, "They tried again."

Her eyes narrowed down and glinted at me. They asked the question.

I said, "They got away again, too."

"It's getting deeper, isn't it?"

"It'll go deeper before we're through. Get your coat on."

Velda went inside and reappeared with her coat on and her handbag slung over her shoulder. It swung slowly under the weight of the gun. "Let's go, Mike."

We went downstairs to the car and started driving. Broadway was a madhouse of traffic that weaved and screamed, stopped for red lights and jumped away at the green. I let the flow take me past the artificial daylight of the marquees and the signs and into the dusk of uptown. When we came to the street Velda pointed and I turned up it, parking in the middle of the block under a street light.

Here was the edge of Harlem, that strange no-man's-land where the white mixed with the black and the languages overflowed into each other like that of the horde around the Tower of Babel. There were strange, foreign smells of cooking and too many people in too few rooms. There were the hostile eyes of children who became suddenly silent as you passed.

Velda stopped before an old sandstone building. "This is it."

I took her arm and went up the stairs. In the vestibule I truck a match and held it before the name plates on the mailboxes. Most were scrawled in childish writing on the backs of match books. One was an aluminum stamp and it read C.C. LOPEX, SUPT.

I pushed the button. There was no answering buzz of the door. Instead, a face showed through the dirty glass and the door was pulled open by a guy who only came up to my chest. He smoked a smelly cigar and reeked of cheap whisky. He was a hunchback. He said, "Whatta ya want?"

He saw the ten bucks I had folded in my fingers and got a greedy look on his face. "There ain't but one empty room and ya won't like that. Ya can use my place. For a tenner ya can stay all night."

Velda raised her eyebrows at that. I shook my head. "We'll take the empty."

"Sure, go ahead. Ya coulda done whatcha wanted in my place but if ya want the empty go ahead. Ya won't like it, though."

I gave him the ten and he gave me the key, telling me where the room was. He leered and looked somewhat dissatisfied because he wouldn't be able to sneak a look on something he probably never had himself. Velda started up the stairs using her flashlight to pick out the snags in the steps.

The room faced on a dark corridor that was hung heavy with the smell of age and decay. I put the key in the lock and shoved the door open. Velda found the lone bulb that dangled from the ceiling and pulled the cord to throw a dull yellow light in the room. I closed the door and locked it.

Nobody had to tell us what had happened. Somebody had been here before us. The police had impounded Charlie Moffit's personal belongings, but they hadn't ripped the room up doing it. The skinny mattress lay in the center of the floor ripped to shreds. The hollow posts of the bed had been disemboweled and lay on the springs. What had been a rug at one time lay in a heap in the corner under the pile of empty dresser drawers.

"We're too late again, Mike."

"No we're not." I was grinning and Velda grinned too. "The search didn't stop anywhere. If they found it we could have seen where they stopped looking. They tore the place apart and never came to the end. It never was here."

I kicked at the papers on the floor, old sheets from weeks back. There was a note pad with pencil sketches of girls doing things they shouldn't. We roamed around the room poking into the remains doing nothing but looking out of curiosity. Velda found a box of junk that had been spilled under the dresser, penny curios from some arcade.

There was no place else to look that hadn't already been searched. I took the dresser drawers off the rug and laid them out. They were lined with newspapers and had a few odds and ends rolling on the bottoms. There was part of a fountain pen and a broken harmonica. Velda found a few pictures of girls in next to nothing that had been cut from a magazine.

Then I found the photographs. They were between the paper lining and the side of the drawer. One was of two people, too fuzzy to identify. The other was that of a girl and had "To Charlie, with love from P." written on the bottom. I held it in my hand and looked at the face of Paula Riis. She was smiling. She was happy. She was the girl that had jumped off the bridge and was dead. I stared at her face that smiled back at me as if there never had been anything to worry about.

Velda peered over my shoulder, took the picture from me and held it under the light. "Who is she, Mike?"

"Paula Riis," I said finally. "The nurse. Charlie Moffit's girl friend. Oscar Deamer's nurse and the girl who chose to die rather than look at my face. The girl who started it all and left it hanging in mid-air while people died and killed."

I took out a cigarette and gave her one. "I had it figured wrong. I gave Pat a bum steer, then when I thought it over I got to thinking that maybe I told the truth after all. I thought that Paula and Oscar planned his escape and Oscar killed a guy . . . just any guy . . . in order to squeeze Lee. Now it seems that it wasn't just any guy that Oscar killed. It wasn't an accident. Oscar killed him for a very good reason."

"Mike . . . could it be a case of jealousy? Could Oscar have been jealous because Paula played up to Charlie?"

I dragged the smoke down, held it and let it go into the light. "I wish it happened that simply. I wish it did, sugar. I started out with a couple of green cards and took it from there. I thought I had a coincidental connection but now it looks like it wasn't so damn coincidental after all. We have too many dead people carrying those green cards."

"The answer, Mike . . . what can it be?"

I stared at the wall thoughtfully. "I'm wondering that too. I think it lies out West in an asylum for the insane. Tomorrow I want you to take the first plane out and start digging."

"For what?"

"For anything you can find. Think up the questions and look for the answers. The part we're looking for may be there and it may be here, but we haven't the time to look together. You'll have to go out alone while I plod along this end of the track."

"Mike . . . you'll be careful, won't you?"

"Very careful. Velda. I won't ask questions if I think a gun will do the job quicker. This time I'm going to live up to my reputation. I've been thinking some things I don't like and to satisfy myself I'm going to find out whether or not they're true."

"Supposing they make another try for you?"

"Oh, they will, they will. In fact, they have to. From now on I'll be sleeping with my gun in my fist and my eyes open. They'll make the play again because I know enough and think too much. I might run into a conclusion that will split things wide open. They'll be looking for me and possibly you because they know there were two guns that killed those boys in Oscar's room. They'll know I wasn't alone and they may think of you.

"I'll have to keep my apartment and the office covered while I'm away. They'll get around it somehow, but I'll try anyway."

Velda took my shoulder and made me look at her. "You aren't sending me out West just so I won't be there if there's trouble, are you?"

"No, I wouldn't do that to you. I know how much it means to be in on a thing like this."

She knew I was telling the truth for a change and dropped her hand into mine. "I'll do a good job, Mike. When I get back I won't take any chance on their finding any information I have. I'll tuck it in that trick wall lamp in the office so you can get to it without waking me from the sleep I'll probably need."

I pulled the cord and the light did a slow fade-out. Velda held her flash on the floor and stared down the corridor. A little brown face peeked out of a door and withdrew when she threw the spot on it. We held on to the banister and went down the steps that announced our descent with sharp squeals and groans.

The hunchback opened his door at the foot of the landing and took the key back. "That was quick," he said. "Pretty quick for your age. Thought ya'd take longer."

I wanted to rap him in the puss, only that would have shut him up when I had a question to ask him. "We woulda stayed only the room was a mess. Who was in there before us?"

"Some guy died who lived there."

"Yeah, but who was in there next?"

"Young kid. Said he wanted a bunk for a night. Guess he was hot or something. He gimme a ten too, plus a five for the room. Yeah, I remember him 'counta he wore a nice topcoat and one of them flat pork-pie hats. Sure woulda like to get that topcoat."

I pushed Velda outside and down to the car. The MVD had been there. No wonder the search was so complete. He looked and never looked hard enough. In his hurry to find some documents he overlooked the very thing that might have told him where they were.

I drove Velda home and went up for coffee. We talked and we smoked. I laughed at the way she looked at the ring on her finger and told her the next thing she knew there'd be a diamond to match. Her eyes sparkled brighter than the stone.

"When will it be, Mike?" Her voice was a velvet glove that caressed every inch of me.

I squirmed a little bit and managed a sick grin. "Oh, soon. Let's not go too fast, kid."

The devil came into her eyes and she pushed away from the table. I had another smoke and finished it. I started on another when she called me. When I went into the living room she was standing by the light in a gown that was nothing at all, nothing at all. I could see through it and saw things I thought existed only in a dream and the sweat popped out on my forehead and left me feeling shaky all over.

Her body was a milky flow of curves under the translucent gown and when she moved the static current of flesh against sheer cloth made it cling to her in a way that made me hold my breath to fight against the temptation I could feel tugging at my body. The inky blackness of the hair falling around her shoulders made her look taller, and the gown shrouded what was yet to come and was there for me alone.

"For our wedding night, Mike," she said. "When will it be?"

I said, "We're . . . only engaged to be engaged, you know."

I didn't dare move when she came to me. She raised herself on her toes to kiss me with a tongue of fire, then walked back to the light and turned around. I could see through that damned gown as though it weren't there at all.

She knew I'd never be able to wait long after that.

I stumbled out of the room and down to my car. I sat there awhile thinking of nothing but Velda and the brief glimpse of heaven she had showed me. I tried thinking about something else and it didn't work.

I couldn't get her out of my mind.

Chapter Nine

I slept with a dream that night. It was a dream of nice things and other things that weren't so nice. There were a lot of people in the dream and not all of them were alive. There were faces from the past that mingled with those of the present, drawn silent faces turned toward me to see when I would become one of them, floating in that limbo of nonexistence.

I saw the bridge again, and two people die while the stern face of the judge looked on disapproving, uttering solemn words of condemnation. I saw flashes of fire, and men fall. I saw Ethel hovering between the void that separates life from death, teetering into the black while I screamed for her not to and tried to run to catch her, only to have my feet turn into stumps that grew from the very soil.

There were others too, bodies of dead men without faces, waiting for me to add that one missing part, to identify them with their brother dead in one sweeping blast of gunfire I was there with them. They didn't want me because I wasn't dead, and the living didn't want me either. They couldn't figure out why I was still alive when I dwelt in the land of the dead men.

Only Velda wanted me. I could see her hovering above the others, trailing the gown of transparent fabric, her finger beckoning me to come with her where nothing would matter but the two of us.

The dead pushed me out and the living pushed me back. I tried to get up to Velda and I couldn't reach her. I screamed once for them all to shut up before there was only the land of the dead and none of the living.

Then I woke up. My head throbbed and the shout was still caught in my throat. My tongue felt thick and there was an ache across my shoulders. I staggered into the bathroom where I could duck myself under a cold shower whose stinging chill would wash away the dream.

I glanced at the clock, seeing that the morning had come and gone, leaving me only the afternoon and night. I picked up the phone, asked for long distance, then had myself connected with the hospital outside the city. I hung on for ten minutes waiting for the doctor, told him who I was when he came on and asked him how she was.

The doctor held his hand over the receiver and his voice was a slight mumble of sound. Then: "Yes, Mr. Hammer, I can talk now. The patient has passed the crisis and in my opinion she will live."

"Has she talked, doc?"

"She was conscious a few minutes but she said nothing, nothing at all. There are quite a few people waiting to hear her words." I sensed the change in his voice. "They are police, Mr. Hammer . . . and Federal men."

"I figured they'd be there. Have you said anything?"

"No. I rather believe that you told me the truth, especially since seeing those Federal men. I told them I received an anonymous call to go to the cabin and when I did I found her."

"Good. I can say thanks but it won't mean much. Give me three days and you can say what you like if it hasn't already been explained."

"I understand."

"Is Mr. Brighton there?"

"He has been here since the girl was identified. He seems considerably upset. We had to give him a sedative."

"Just how upset is he?"

"Enough to justify medical attention . . . which he won't have."

"I see. All right, doctor, I'll call you again. Let me have those three days."

"Three days, Mr. Hammer You may have less. Those Federal men are viewing me somewhat suspiciously." We said our good-bys and hung up. Then I went out and ate breakfast.

I got dressed and went straight to the office. Velda had left a note in her typewriter saying that she had taken the morning plane out and for me to be careful. I pulled the sheet out of the roller and tore it up. There was no mail to look at so I gave Pat a ring and caught him just as he was coming in from lunch.

He said, "Hello, Mike. What's new?"

If I told him he would have cut my throat. "Nothing much. I wanted to speak to somebody so I called. What're you doing?"

"Right now I have to go downtown. I have to see the medical examiner and he's out on a case. A suicide, I think. I'm going to meet him there and if you feel like coming along you're welcome."

"Well, I don't feel like it, but I will. Be down in a few minutes. We'll use my car."

"Okay, but shake it up."

I dumped a pack of Luckies out of the carton in my desk and shoved it in my pocket, went downstairs and took off for Pat's. He was waiting for me on the curb, talking earnestly to a couple of uniformed cops. He waved, made a final point to the cops and crossed the street.

"Somebody steal your marbles, Mike? You don't look happy."

"I'm not. I didn't get but eleven hours' sleep."

"Gosh, you poor guy. That must hurt. If you can keep awake, drive down to the foot of Third Avenue. How're you making out with Lee?"

"I'll have a definite report for him in a couple of days."

"Negative?"

I shrugged.

Pat looked at me querulously. "That's a hell of a note. What else could it be?"

"Positive."

Pat got mad. "Do you think Oscar left something behind him, Mike? By damn; if he did I want to know about it!"

"Simmer down. I'm checking every angle I know of and when my report is made you'll be able to depend on its answer. If Oscar left one thing that could frame Lee, I'll be sure nobody sees it who shouldn't see it. That's the angle I'm worried about. A smear on Lee now will be fatal . . . and Pat, there's a lot of wrong guys out to smear him. If you only knew."

"I will know soon, sonny boy. I've already had a few initial reports myself and it seems that your name has cropped up pretty frequently."

"I get around," I said.

"Yeah." He relaxed into a silence he didn't break until I saw the morgue wagon and a prowl ahead of me. "Here's the place. Stop behind the car."

We hopped out and one of the cops saluted Pat and told him the medical examiner was still upstairs. Pat lugged his brief case along and met him on the stairs. I stood in the background while they rambled along about something and Pat handed him a manila folder. The M.E. tucked it under his arm and said he'd take care of it.

Pat waved his thumb toward the top of the stairs. "What is it this time?"

"Another suicide. Lieutenant Barner is on the case. Some old duck took the gas pipe. They're always doing it in this neighborhood. Go up and take a look."

"I see enough of that stuff. Let Barner handle it."

He would have followed the M.E. down the stairs if I hadn't been curious enough to step up to the landing and peer in the door. Pat came up behind me and laughed. "Curious?"

"Can't help it."

"Sure. Then let's go in and see somebody who died by their own hand instead of yours."

"That's not funny, pal. Can it." Pat laughed again and walked in.

The guy was a middle-aged average man. He had a shock of white hair and a peculiar expression and color that come from breathing too much gas. He stunk of whisky and lay in a heap on the floor with his head partially propped up against the cushioned leg of a chair.

Barner was slipping into his coat. "Damn good thing there wasn't a pilot light on that stove. Would have blown the block to bits."

Pat knelt down and took a close look at the body. "How long has he been dead?"

"Few hours, at least. There hasn't been anybody home in this building all morning. The landlady came in around noon and smelt the gas. The door was closed, but not locked, and she smashed a couple of windows out and called a doctor. There wasn't anything he could do so he called us."

"Any note?"

"Nah. The guy was tanked up. He probably got disgusted with himself and turned on the gas. He used to be an actor. Name's Jenkins, Harvey Robinson Jenkins. The landlady said he was pretty good about thirty years ago, a regular matinee idol. He dropped into character parts, got wiped out when vaudeville went out and picked up a few bucks working in small road shows now and then."

I looked around the room and took stock of his things. There was a good leather chair by the window and a new floor lamp, but the rest of the furnishings had lost their shape and luster with age. There were two rooms, a combination sitting-room-bedroom and a kitchenette. A stack of old theater posters were neatly stacked behind the bed and a new military kit decorated the top of the dresser. The kitchen was big enough to hold one person at a time. A faint odor of gas still hung up high and clung to the curtains. The refrigerator didn't work, but then it didn't have to because it was empty. A jar of jam was on the table next to an empty bottle of whisky. There were a dozen other empties under the table in a cardboard carton.

So this is death. This is the way people die if you don't help them. He was on the long road and glad of it. Too bad he had to leave his most prized possessions behind. The make-up kit was old and battered, but it was clean, unlike everything else, and the tubes and jars inside it were all neatly arranged and labeled. The mirror fastened to the back of the lid was polished clear by a careful hand. I could picture the little guy sitting there night after night playing all the great roles of history, seeing his hand transform him to the glories of his youth.

They were taking the body out in the basket when the landlady came in to see that that was all they took out. Barner said so-long and left us watching the procession down the stairs. The landlady was a chubby woman whose scraggly hair fell down past her ears. Her hands were calloused and red from work and she kept rubbing them together as though they were cold.

She turned to me, clucking through her teeth. "There you see the evil of drink, young man. I lost me two husbands that way and now I lose a boarder."

"Tough. Did he owe you any money?"

"No, not one red cent. Oh, he was an honorable one was Mr. Jenkins. Lived here over three years he did but always paid his rent somehow. Too bad he got that inheritance. It was too much for him who never had any real money. He spent it all on drink and now look at him."

"Yeah."

"Well, I warned him, you can't say I didn't try. He was always making those speeches like an actor does and he told me that drink was food for the soul. Food for the soul! He never went hungry then."

Pat grunted, anxious to leave. "Let that be a lesson to you, Mike." He looked at the landlady pointedly. "How long was he on that binge?"

"Oh, for quite a while. Let me see, the letter with the money came a week after the Legion Parade. That was a Wednesday, the 13th. Yes, that's it, a week later he got the money. He paid me the three months he owed me and for two more months in advance, then he started drinking. I never did see a man drink so much. Every night he'd get carried in still mumbling one of them silly parts of his and messing up my floor."

Pat nodded thoughtfully. "See, Mike, that's what you're heading for. An untimely end."

"Nuts, I don't drink that much. Anyway, I'll shoot myself before I try to get charged up on gas. Come on, let's get out of here."

The landlady showed us to the door and watched from the stoop as we pulled away. I hunched behind the wheel when I began thinking of the old coot who took the easy way out.

I thought about it for a long time.

I let Pat out at his office, found a saloon that was half empty and perched on a stool where I could think about it some more. The rows of whisky bottles behind the bar gleamed with reflected light. They were like women. Bait. They lured you in where you forget what you were doing then sprung the trap and kicked you out.

The bartender filled my glass again, scooping up the rest of my change. I watched myself in the back mirror, wondering if I was as ugly to others as I was to myself. I grinned and the bartender scowled my way. I scowled and the bartender started grinning because my scowl isn't as pretty as most. I swirled the drink around in my glass, slopping it over the top so I could make patterns on the bar.

I made rings, ovals, faces, then overlaid the whole picture with a bridge that towered high at both ends. I stared at the hump in the middle and drained the glass in a hurry to get my mind off it.

A lot of it had fallen into place, piece by piece. Things I didn't see before were suddenly clear. It was a gigantic puzzle that only started here in Manhattan . . . the rest of it reached down to Washington, across to San Francisco, then on across the ocean. And onward still until it encompassed the world and came back to where it started.

It was a picture of hate, terror and death that had no equal in history and it was here with us now. I was the only one who could see it. There were still parts of the puzzle missing, but it had a broad, recognizable outline now. I could make up parts that would fit, but that wouldn't do. I had to know. I had to be sure!

This time I wasn't dealing in murder, I was dealing in war!

It was a curious puzzle that had two solutions. Every part could fit in different places, fooling you into thinking you had it. They were clever, I thought. They were clever, crafty, cunning, anything you wanted to call it.

They had a slogan that the end justified the means.

They would kill to accomplish a purpose.

They would wreck everything to gain their ends, even if they had to build again on the wreckage.

They were here and they were smart as hell. Even the Nazis were like schoolchildren as compared to them.

But that was the catch. They were smart . . . for them! I could laugh now and think rings around them all because I was smarter than the best they could offer. Torture, Death, and Lies were their brothers, but I had dealt with those triplets many times myself. They weren't strangers to me. I gave them my orders and they took them because they had to.

I was a ruthless bastard with a twisted mind who could look on death and find it pleasant. I could break an arm or smash in a face because it was easier that way than asking questions. I could out-fox the fox with a line of reasoning that laughed at the truth because I was the worst of the lot and never did deserve to live. That's what that damned judge thought anyway.

This time I got back in the car and drove over to the building that had the radio antenna projecting up from the roof. There were two police cars parked in front of it and I nodded to the drivers. For once I was glad to have been seen around so much with Pat. I went in and leaned on the railing that separated the room and waited until the cop in the faded alpaca coat and the eyeshade came over to me.

He nodded too.

I said, "Hello, George. I need a favor done."

"Sure, Mike. That is, if I can do it."

"You keep a record of incoming calls, don't you?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Look one up for me. A few days ago a New York prowl car crossed the George Washington bridge." I gave him the date and the approximate time. "See if it was on a call."

He went back to a stall where he rummaged around in a filing cabinet. When he returned he carried a sheet, reading from it. He looked up and raised his eyeshade farther on his forehead. "Here it is. Unidentified girl called and asked to have a police car meet her. I think I remember this one. She was in a hurry and instead of giving her address she said on the walk of the bridge. A car was dispatched to see what went on and called in that it was a wild-goose chase."

"That's all?"

"Yeah. Anything to it?"

"I don't know yet. Thanks a lot, George."

"Sure, Mike, any time. So long."

I went out and sat in the car with a cigarette drooping from my lips. Unidentified girl. That car on the bridge wasn't there by chance. I had just missed things. Too bad, too damn bad in one way that the boys in the car had gotten there late. The weather, no doubt. Then again it was lucky they didn't make it.

The engine came to life under my feet and I drove away from the curb. I took the notebook from my pocket and thumbed the pages while I was stalled in traffic, picking up Paula Riis's address from the jumble of notes. I hoped I had it right, because I had jotted it down after coming from Pat's the time he had thrown her identity at me.

It was a number in the upper Forties just off Eighth Avenue, a four-story affair with three apartments above a shoddy beauty parlor that took up the first floor. A sedan with United States Post Office Department inscribed in the door was double parked outside it. I found a place to leave my heap and got back just as two men came down the stairs and got into the car. I had seen the taller guy before; he was a postal inspector.

A dark, swarthy woman stood in the door with her hands on chunky hips muttering to herself. I took the steps two at a time and said hello to her.

She looked me up and down first. "Now what you want? You not from Post Office."

I looked past her shoulder into the vestibule and knew why those men had been here. A good-sized rectangle had been torn out of the wall. The mailbox that had been there had been ripped out by the roots and the marks of the crowbar that did it still showed in the shattered lath and plaster.

I got that cold feeling again, of being just a little bit too late. I palmed my buzzer and held it out where she could see it.

"Oh, you the police. You come about the room. Whassa matter with other police? He see everything. These crooks! When that girl comes back she be one mad cookie, you bet!"

"That's right, I came about the room. Where is it?"

"Upstairs, what's left of it. Now there's nothing but junk. Thassall, just junk. Go look."

I went and looked. I saw the same thing that had happened to Charlie Moffit's room. This was a little worse because there was more to it. I cursed softly and backed out of the room. I cursed because I was pleased that the room was like Charlie Moffit's room, a room ripped apart by a search that didn't have an end. They were still looking. They tore the room up then stole the mailbox because they thought that Charlie had mailed his girl friend the stuff.

Then I stopped cursing because I knew then that they did have it after all. Charlie mailed the stuff and it lay in the mailbox because she was dead. They couldn't get it out so they took the whole works. This time I cursed because I was mad, mad as hell.

I made a circuit of the room, kicking at the pieces with a frenzied futility. Clothes that had been ripped apart at the seams were everywhere. The furniture was broken, disemboweled and scattered across the floor. The bottom had been taken out of the phone and lay beneath the stand by the window. I picked it up, turned it over then chucked it away.

They had come in through the window and gouged hunks out of the sill when they pried up the sash. I threw it up and looked around, saying damn to myself because it had been so easy. There was an overturned ashcan on the ground below. They had stepped on that, then on to the roof of the extension below and right into the room.

Too bad Mr. MVD couldn't have tripped over the phone line and broken his lousy neck. I picked up the strand of wire that ran out the window to the pole and switched it out of the way. It was slack, too damn slack. I saw why in a minute. The insulator that had held it to the wall had been pulled out. I climbed out on the roof and ran my hand along the wire and the answer was in the slit that was in the insulation.

Somebody had a tap on that wire and when they pulled it off they yanked too hard and it came right off the wall. Damn! Damn it all to hell and back again! I climbed back in the room and slammed the window shut, still swearing to myself.

The woman still stood in the doorway. "You see, you see?" Her voice went higher on each word. "These damn crooks. Nobody is safe. What for are the police? What that girl going to say, eh? You know! She give me hell, you betcha. She was all paid up, too. Now whatcha think?"

"Don't get excited. Whoever searched her room took the mailbox too. They were looking for a letter."

She made a sour mouth. "Huh. They don't get it, I tell you that, for sure. She's a lose her key a month ago and I always get her mail personal. The postman he's give it to me every day and I take it inside."

My heart hammered against my ribs and I heard it send the blood driving into my head. I licked my lips to get the words out. "Maybe I better take it all along then. She can call for it when she returns."

She squinted, then bobbed her head. "That is good. I don't have to worry no more about it. From now on till I get a new mailbox I have to take everybody's mail anyhow. Come inside, I give it to you."

We went into the beauty parlor on the first floor and I waited with my hat in my hand. She came back with a handful of envelopes and one of them was a heavy job stuffed so full the flap had torn a little. I thanked her and left.

Just like that.

How simple could it get?

The murder and the wreckage that had been caused by this one fat envelope, and she drops it in my hand just like that. No trouble. No sneaking around with a gun in your hand. No tight spots that left you shaken and trembling. She hands it to me and I take it and leave.

Isn't that the way life is? You fight and struggle to get something and suddenly you're there at the end and there's nothing left to fight for any longer.

I threw the works in the glove compartment and drove back to my office. From force of habit I locked the door before I sat down to see what it was all about. There were nine letters and the big one. Of the nine three were bills, four were from female friends and had nothing to say, one was an answer to a letter she sent an employment agency and the other enclosed a Communist Party pamphlet. I threw it in the wastebasket and opened the main one.

They were photostats, ten in all, both negatives and positives, on extra thin paper. They were photos of a maze of symbols, diagrams and meaningless words, but there was something about them that practically cried out their extreme importance. They weren't for a mind like mine and I knew it.

I folded them up into a compact square and took them to the lamp on the wall. It was a tricky little job that came apart in the middle and had been given to me by a friend who dabbled in magic. At one time a bird flew out of the hidden compartment when you snapped the light on and scared the hell out of you. I stuck the photostats in there and shut it again.

There was an inch of sherry left on the bottom of the bottle in my desk and I put the mouth to my lips.

It was almost over. I had come to the pause before the end. There was little left to do but sort the parts and make sure I had them straight. I sat down again, pulling the phone over in front of me. I dialed headquarters and asked for Pat.

He had left for the weekend.

The next time I dialed Lee Deamer's office. The blonde at the switchboard was still chewing gum and threw the connection over to his secretary. She said, "I'm sorry, but Mr. Deamer has left for Washington."

"This is Mike Hammer. I was there once before. I'd like to get a call in to him."

"Oh, yes, Mr. Hammer. He's registered at the Lafayette. You can call him there. However, you had better call before six because he's speaking at a dinner meeting tonight."

"I'll call him now, and thanks."

I got long distance, gave the number and she told me the lines were all busy and I would have to wait. I hung up and went to the filing cabinet where I had the remains of another bottle of sherry stashed away. There was a box of paper cups with it and I put the makings on my desk and settled back to enjoy the wait.

After the third half-cup of sherry I snapped the radio on and caught the broadcast. The boy with the golden voice was snapping out the patter in a tone so excited that he must have been holding on to the mike to stay on his feet. It was all about the stolen documents. Suspicions were many and clues were nil. The FBI had every available man on the case and the police of every community had pledged to help in every way.

He went off and a serious-voiced commentator took his place. He told the nation of the calamity that had befallen it. The secret of our newest, most powerful weapon was now, most likely, in the hands of agents of an unfriendly power. He told of the destruction that could be wrought, hinted at the continuance of the cold war with an aftermath of a hotter one. He spoke and his voice trembled with the rage and fear he tried so hard to control.

Fifteen minutes later another commentator came on with a special bulletin that told of all ports being watched, the roundup of suspected aliens. The thing that caused the roundup was still as big a mystery as ever, but the search had turned up a lot of minor things that never would have been noticed. A government clerk was being held incommunicado. A big shot labor leader had hanged himself. A group of Communists had staged a demonstration in Brooklyn with the usual scream of persecution and had broken some windows. Twenty of them were in the clink.

I sat back and laughed and laughed. The world was in an uproar when the stuff was safe as hell not five feet away from me. The guardians of our government were jumping through hoops because the people demanded to know why the most heavily guarded secret we ever had could be swiped so easily. There were shakeups from the top to bottom and the rats were scurrying for cover, pleading for mercy. Investigations were turning up reds in the damnedest spots imaginable and the senators and congressmen who recommended them for the posts were on the hot spots in their bailiwicks. Two had already sent in resignations.

Oh, it was great. Something was getting done that should have been done years ago. The heat was on and the fire was burning a lot of pants. The music I had on the radio was interrupted every five minutes now with special newscasts that said the people were getting control of the situation at last.

Of the people, for the people, by the people. We weren't so soft after all. We got pushed too far once too often and the backs were up and teeth bared.

What were the Commies doing! They must be going around in circles. The thing that would have tipped the balance back to them again had been in their hands and they'd dropped it. Was the MVD out taking care of those who had been negligent? Probably. Very probably. Pork-Pie Hat would have himself a field day. They were the only ones who knew where those documents weren't. Our own government knew where they started to go and still thought they were in their hands. I was the only one who knew where they were.

Not five feet away. Safe as pie, I thought.

The phone rang and I picked it up. The operator said, "I have your party, sir."

I said thanks, waited for the connection and heard Lee saying, "Hello, hello . . ."

"Mike Hammer. Lee."

"Yes, Mike, how are you?"

"Fine. I hear Washington is in an uproar."

"Quite. You can't imagine what it's like. They tell me the hall is filled to the rafters already, waiting to hear the speeches. I've never seen so many reporters in my life."

"Going to give 'em hell tonight?"

"I'll do my best. I have an important topic to discuss. Was there something special you wanted, Mike?"

"Yeah, sort of. I just wanted to tell you that I found it."

"It?"

"What Oscar left behind. I found it."

His voice held a bitter ring. "I knew it, I knew it! I knew he'd do something like that. Mike . . . is it bad?"

"Oh no. In fact it's pretty good. Yeah, pretty good." He paused, and when he spoke again he sounded tired. "Remember what I told you, Mike. It's in your hands. Authenticate what you found, and if you believe that it would be better to publish the facts, then make them public."

I laughed lightly. "Not this, Lee. It isn't something you can print in a paper. It isn't anything that you nor Pat nor I expected to find. It doesn't tie you into a damn thing so you can blast 'em tonight and make it good because what I have can push you right up there where you can do a good housecleaning job."

The surprise and pleasure showed in his voice. "That is fine news, Mike. When can I see it?"

"When will you be back in New York?".

"Not before Monday night."

"It'll keep. I'll see you then."

I pushed the phone back across the desk and started working on the remainder of the sherry. I finished it in a half-hour and closed up the office. It was Saturday night and time to play. I had to wait until Velda came back before I made my decision. I ambled up Broadway and turned into a bar for a drink. The place was packed and noisy, except when the news bulletin came on. At seven o'clock they turned on the TV and all heads angled to watch it. They were relaying in the pics of the dinner in Washington that was to be followed by the speeches. The screen was blurred, but the sound was loud and clear.

I had a good chance to watch Mr. and Mrs. Average People take in the political situation and I felt good all over again. It was no time to come up with the documents. Not yet. Let the fire stay on full for a while. Let it scorch and purify while it could.

The bartender filled my glass and I leaned forward on my elbows to hear Lee when he spoke.

He gave them a taste of hell. He used names and quotations and pointed to the big whiskers in the Kremlin as the brother of the devil. He threw the challenge in the faces of the people and they accepted it with cheers and applause that rocked the building.

I shouted the way I felt louder than anybody and had another drink.

At midnight I walked back to my car and drove home slowly, my mind miles away from my body. Twice I patted the .45 under my arm and out of force of habit I kept a constant check on the cars behind me.

I put the car in the garage, told the attendant to service it fully and went out the side door that led to the street. When I looked both ways and was satisfied that I wasn't going to run into another ambush I stepped out to the sidewalk and walked to my building.

Before I went upstairs I checked the little panel of lights behind the desk in the lobby. It was a burglar alarm and one of the lights was connected to the windows and doors in my apartment. They were all blank so I took the stairs up and shoved the key in the lock.

For safety's sake I went through the place and found it as empty as when I left it. Maybe Pork-Pie was afraid of a trap. Maybe he was waiting to get me on the street. He and the others had the best reason in the world to get me now. It wouldn't be too long before they figured out where the documents went to, and that was the moment I was hoping for.

I wanted them, every one of the bastards. I wanted them all to myself so I could show the sons-of-bitches what happened when they tried to play rough with somebody who likes that game himself!

The late news broadcast was on and I listened for further developments. There weren't any. I shoved the .45 under my pillow and rolled into the sack.

Chapter Ten

I slept all day Sunday. At six-fifteen P.M. I got up to answer the persistent ringing of my doorbell and a Western Union messenger handed me a telegram. He got a buck for his persistence and I went into the living room where I opened it up.

The telegram was from Velda. It was very brief, saying the mission was accomplished and she was carrying the papers out on the first plane. I folded the yellow sheet and stuck it in the pocket of my coat that was draped on the back of the chair.

I had a combination meal, sent down for the papers and read them in bed. When I finished I slept again and didn't wake up until twelve hours later. The rain was beating against the windows with a hundred tiny fingers and the street was drenched with an overflow too great to be carried off by the sewers at the end of the block.

For a few minutes I stood at the window and looked out into the murk of the morning, not aware of the people that scurried by on the sidewalks below, or of the cars whose tires made swishing sounds on the wet pavement. Across the street, the front of the building there wavered as the water ran down the glass, assuming the shape of a face moulded by ghostly hands. The face had eyes like two berries on a bush and they turned their stare on me.

This is it, Judge. Here is your rain of purity. You're a better forecaster than I thought. Now, of all times, it should rain. Cold, clear rain that was washing away the scum and the filth and pulling it into the sewer. It's here and you're waiting for me to step out into it and be washed away, aren't you? I could play it safe and stay where I am, but you know I won't. I'm me, Mike Hammer, and I'll be true to form. I'll go down with the rest of the scum.

Sure, Judge, I'll die. I've been so close to death that this time the scythe can't miss me. I've dodged too often, now I've lost the quick-step timing I had that made me duck in time. You noticed it and Pat noticed it . . . I've changed, and now I notice it myself. I don't care any more.

The hell of it is, Judge . . . your question won't get answered. You'll never know why I was endowed with the ability to think and move fast enough to keep away from the man with the reaper. I kept breaking his hour-glass and dulling his blade and he couldn't do a thing about it.

Your rain of purity has come, and out there in it is the grim specter who is determined that this time he will not miss. He'll raise his vicious scythe and swing at me with all the fury of his madness and I'll go down, but that one wild swing will take along a lot of others before it cuts me in half.

Sorry, Judge, so sorry you'll never know the answer. I was curious myself. I wanted to know the answer too. It's been puzzling me a long, long time.

I showered and dressed, packing the automatic away in the oiled leather holster under my arm. When I finished I called long distance and was connected with the hospital. Again I was lucky and got the doctor while he was there. I told him my name and that was enough.

"Miss Brighton is out of danger," he said. "For some reason she is under police guard."

"Studious young men?"

"Yes."

"How about her father?"

"He visits her daily. His own doctor is prescribing for him "

"I see. My time is up, you know. You can talk if you like."

"For some reason I prefer not to, Mr. Hammer. I still don't understand, but I still believe that there is more to this than I can see. Miss Brighton asked me if you had called and I repeated our conversation. She has taken the same attitude of silence."

"Thanks, doc. It's going to be rough when it starts, but thanks. Tell Miss Brighton I was asking for her."

"I will. Good day."

I put the phone back and shrugged into my raincoat. Downstairs I got my car out of the garage and backed out into the rain. The windshield wipers were little demons working furiously, fighting to keep me from being purified. I drove downtown hoping to see Pat, but he had called in that his car was stuck somewhere along the highway and he might not make it in at all.

The morning went by without my noticing its passing. When my stomach tightened I went in and had lunch. I bought a paper and parked the car to read it through. The headlines hadn't changed much. There were pages devoted to the new aspect of the cold war; pages given to the coming election, pages that told of the shakeup in Washington, and of the greater shakeup promised by the candidates running for election.

Lee had given 'em hell, all right. The editorial quoted excerpts from his speech and carried a two-column cut of him shaking his fist at the jackals who were seeking the protection of the same government they had tried to tear down. There was another Communist demonstration, only this one was broken up by an outraged populace and ten of the reds had landed in the hospital. The rest were sweeping out corridors in the city jail.

The rain let up, but it was only taking a breather before it came down even harder. I took advantage of the momentary lull to duck into a drugstore and put in a call to Lee's office. His secretary told me that he wasn't expected in until evening and I thanked her. I bought a fresh pack of Luckies and went back to the car and sat. I watched the rain and timed my thoughts to its intensity.

I took all the parts and let them drop, watching to see how they fit in place. They were all there now, every one. I could go out any time and show that picture around and anybody could tell that it was a big red flag with a star and a hammer and sickle. I could show it to them but I'd have to have the last piece of proof I needed and I'd have that when Velda got back. I went over it time after time until I was satisfied, then I reached for a butt.

There was only one left. I had just bought a pack and there was only one left. My watch was a round little face that laughed at me for thinking the afternoon away and I stared at it, amazed that the night had shifted in around the rain and I hadn't noticed it. I got out and went back to the same drugstore and looked up the number of the terminal.

A sugar-coated voice said that all the planes were on schedule despite the rain and the last one from the Midwest had landed at two o'clock. I smacked my hand against my head for letting time get away from me and called the office. Velda didn't answer so I hung up. I was about to call her apartment when I remembered that she'd probably be plenty tired and curled up in the sack, but she said she'd leave anything she had in the lamp if I wasn't in the office when she got in.

I started the car up and the wipers went back into action. The rain of purity was starting to give up and here I was still warm and dry. For how long?

The lights were on in the office and I practically ran in. I yelled, "Hey, Velda!" the smile I had ready died away because she wasn't there. She had been there, though. I smelled the faintest trace of the perfume she used. I went right to the lamp and opened the little compartment. She had laid it right on top of the other stuff for me.

I pulled it out and spread it across my desk, feeling the grin come back slowly as I read the first few lines.

It was done. Finished. I had it all ready to wrap up nice and legal now. I could call Pat and the studious-looking boys with the FBI badges and drop it in their laps. I could sit back in a ringside seat and watch the whole show and laugh at the judge because this time I was free and clear, with my hands clean of somebody's blood. The story would come out and I'd be a hero. The next time I stepped into that court of law and faced the little judge his voice would be quiet and his words more carefully chosen because I was able to prove to the world that I wasn't a bloodthirsty kill-happy bastard with a mind warped by a war of too many dawns and dusks laced by the crisscrossed patterns of bullets. I was a normal guy with normal instincts and maybe a temper that got a little out of hand at times, but was still under control when I wanted it that way.

Hell, Pat should be back now. I'll let him get the credit for it. He won't like it, but he'll have to do it. I reached for the phone.

That's when I saw the little white square of cardboard that had been sitting there in front of me all the time. I picked it up, scowling at the brief typewritten message. CALL LO 3-8099 AT EXACTLY NINE P.M. That was all. The other side was blank.

I didn't get it. Velda was the only one to have been here and she would have left more of an explanation, at least. Besides, we had memo pads for stuff like this. I frowned again and threw it back on the desk. It was ten to eight now. Hell, I wasn't going to wait another hour. I dialed the number and heard the phone ring a dozen times before I hung up.

A nasty taste was in my mouth. My shoulders kept hunching up under my coat as if I were cold. I went to the outer office to see if she had left a note in her desk typewriter and found nothing.

It wasn't right. Not at a moment like this. Nothing else could come up now. Hell, I was on my way to being a hero. The door of the washroom was standing open a little and I went to close it. The light from the lamp on the wall darted in the crack and bounced back at me with bright sparkle. I shoved the door open and every muscle in my body pulled tight as a bowstring and my breath caught in my throat.

There beside the faucet was Velda's ring . . . the sapphire ring I had given her and her wrist watch!

Velda wasn't here but her ring was and no girl is going to go off and forget her ring! No girl will wash her hands and not dry them, either . . . But Velda apparently had, for there was no crumpled paper towel in the basket under the sink!

Somehow I staggered back to my chair and sat down, the awful realization of it hitting me hard. I buried my face in my hands and said, "Oh, God . . . oh, God!" I knew what had happened now . . . they had her! They walked in on her and took her away.

I thought I was clever. I thought they'd try for me. But they were clever when the chips were down and now they had something they could trade. That's what they'd say . . . trade. Ha, that was a laugh. They'd take the documents and when I asked them to give her back I'd get a belly full of slugs. Nice trade. A stupid ass like me ought to get shot anyway.

Goddamn 'em anyway! Why couldn't they act like men and fight with me! Why did they have to pick on women! The dirty yellow bastards were afraid to tangle with me so they decided to do it the easy way. They knew the score, they knew I'd have to play ball. They seemed to know a lot of things.

All right, you conniving little punks, I'll play ball, but I'm going to make up a lot of rules you never heard of. You think I'm cornered and it'll be a soft touch. Well, you won't be playing with a guy who's a hero. You'll be up against a guy with a mind gone rotten and a lust for killing! That's the way I was and that's the way I like it!

I grabbed the phone and dialed Pat's home number. When I got him I said hello and didn't give him a chance to interrupt me. "I need a favor as fast as you can do it, kid. Find out where the phone with the number Longacre 3-8099 is located and call me right back. Shake it because I need it right away."

Pat let out a startled answer that I cut off by slamming the phone back. Five minutes later the phone rang and I picked it up.

"What goes on with you, Mike? That number is a pay station in the Times Square subway station."

"Fine," I answered, "that's all I need to know. See you later."

"Mike . . . hey . . ." I cut him off again and picked up my coat.

They thought they were smart but they forgot I had a fast brain and a lot of connections. Maybe they thought I wouldn't take the chance.

I was downstairs and in the car like a shot. Going up Broadway I pulled out all the stops and forgot there was such a thing as a red light. When I turned off Broadway onto Times Square I saw a patrolman standing in front of the subway entrance idly swinging his stick in his hands.

Tonight was my night and I was going to play it all the way to the hilt. I yanked out the wallet I had taken from that overturned car the other night, plucked the FBI card from the pocket and fitted it into mine. The cop was coming out into the rain to tell me I couldn't park there when I stepped out and shoved the wallet under his nose.

I didn't let him have more than a peek at it, but it was enough. I said, "Stay here and watch that car. I don't want it gone when I come back."

He drew himself all the way up with a look that only public servants old in the service can get and passed me a snappy salute. With the headlines blaring from all the papers he didn't have to ask questions to know what was up. "I'll take care of it," he shot back.

I ran down the stairs and slipped a dime in the turnstile. I had fifteen minutes to find the right booth, fifteen short minutes. I made a tour of the place poking my head into the empties hoping the one I was looking for wouldn't be occupied.

It wasn't. I found it over near the steps that led to the BMT line, the last one on the end of five booths. I stepped into one and shut the door. The light above my head was too damn bright, but one crack with the nose of the .45 took care of that. I lifted the receiver off the hook without dropping a nickel in and started a conversation with an imaginary person on an imaginary phone.

At five minutes to nine he walked up to the end booth, obviously ignoring the others, and closed the door. I let the minutes tick off until the hands of my watch were at right angles to each other, then shoved a nickel in the slot and dialed LO 3-8099.

It rang just once. "Yes?"

I forced a bluff into my voice, keeping it low. "This is Mike Hammer. Who the hell are you and what's this business with the card?"

"Ah, yes, Mr. Hammer. You got our card. That is very fortunate indeed. Need I tell you who is speaking?"

"You damn well better, friend."

"No, certainly not a friend. Just the opposite, I would think. I'm calling about a matter of documents you have, Mr. Hammer. They're very important documents, you know. We have taken a hostage to insure their safe delivery to us."

"What . . ."

"Please, Mr. Hammer. I'm speaking about your very lovely secretary. A very obstinate woman. I think we can force her to talk if you refuse, you know."

"You bastard!"

"Well?"

My voice changed pitch and stuttered into the mouthpiece. "What can I say? I know when I'm licked. You . . . can have them."

"I was sure you'd see the light, Mr. Hammer. You will take those documents to the Pennsylvania Station on Thirty-fourth Street and deposit them in one of the pay lockers at the end of the waiting room. You will then take the key and walk about on the streets outside until someone says, 'Wonderful night, friend,' and give that person the key. Keep your hands in plain sight and be absolutely alone. I don't think I have to warn you that you will be under constant observation by certain people who will be armed."

"And the girl . . . Velda?" I asked.

"Provided you do as you are told, and we receive the documents, the girl shall be released, of course."

"Okay. What time do I do all this?"

"Midnight, Mr. Hammer. A fitting hour, don't you think?"

He hung up without waiting for an answer. I grinned and watched him squirm out of the booth, a guy who fitted his voice to perfection. Short, soft and fat, wearing clothes that tried without success to make him look tall, hard and slim.

I grinned again and gave him a good lead, then climbed out of the booth and stayed on his tail. He hesitated at the passages, settled on the route that led up the northwest corner of the block and started up the stairs. My grin like to have split my face open. The famous Hammer luck was riding high, wide and handsome. I could call his shots before he made them and I knew it.

When he reached the street I brushed by him and gave him the elbow for luck. He was so intent upon waving to a cab that he never gave me a tumble. I waited for him to get in then started my car. The cop waved me off with his night stick and I was on my way.

Three hours before the deadline.

How much time was that? Not much, yet plenty when it counted. The cab in front of me weaved around the traffic and I stayed right with it. I could see the back of his head in the rear window and I didn't give a hoot whether or not he turned around.

He didn't. He was so sure that I was on the end of the stick that it never occurred to him that he was being tailed. He was going to get that stick up the tail himself when the time came.

So the judge was right all the while. I could feel the madness in my brain eating its way through my veins, chewing the edges of my nerves raw, leaving me something that resembled a man and that was all. The judge had been right! There had been too many of those dusks and dawns; there had been pleasure in all that killing, an obscene pleasure that froze your face in a grin even when you were charged with fear. Like when I cut down that Jap with his own machete and laughed like hell while I made slices of his scrawny body, then went on to do the same thing again because it got to be fun. The little bastards wanted my hide and I gave them a hard time when they tried to take it. Sure, my mind was going rotten even then. I remember the ways the guys used to look at me. You'd think I had fangs. And it hung on and rotted even further! How long had it been since I had taken my face out of the ground? How long had it been since they handed me the paper that said it was over and we could go back to being normal people again? And since . . . how many had died while I backed up the gun? Now who was I trying to fool--me? I enjoyed that killing, every bit of it. I killed because I had to and I killed things that needed killing. But that wasn't the point. I enjoyed killing those things and I knew the judge was right! I was rotten right through and I knew that at that moment my face was twisted out of shape into a grin that was half sneer and my heart beat fast because it was nice sitting back there with a rod under my arm and somebody was going to hurt pretty quick now, then die. And it might even be me and I didn't give a good damn one way or another.

I tried to figure out where the hell we were. We had passed over a viaduct and a few other things that were vague outlines, but I couldn't tell where we were. If I didn't see the name on the movie house I would have been screwed up, but I caught it in time along with the smell of the river and knew we were some place in Astoria heading down toward the water where the people gave way to the rats and the trash that littered the shore.

There wasn't much more to the block. I cut my lights and drifted in to the curb, snatching the keys out of the ignition as I opened the door. Ahead of me the tail light of the cab was a red dot getting smaller and for one second I thought I had been too soon.

The red dot stopped moving away from me.

Of all the fates who were out for my skin, only one backed me up. It was a lovely fate that turned over a heap and spilled the pair of studious-looking boys out, the ones who had the FBI cards and that gorgeous black tommy gun that was still in the trunk of my car. I held the lid open and yanked it out, shucking the case on the pavement. It nestled in my hands like a woman, loaded and cocked, with two spare clips that made a pleasant weight in my pocket.

I got in close to the buildings and took off at a half-trot. A drunk watched me go by, then scurried back into his doorway. The dot up front disappeared, turned into two headlights on dim and came back and past me.

I ran faster. I ran like a guy with three feet and reached the corner in time to see the guy angling up the rutted street that paralleled the river.

How nice it is when it gets dark. It's all around you, a black coat that hides the good and the bad, and lets you stay shouting distance behind somebody else and never gives you away. My little man stepped right along as if he knew where he was going.

There weren't any houses now. There was a smell of decay, noises that didn't belong to a city. Far away the lights of cars snaked along a bridge happily unaware of this other part of New York.

Then the rain began again. The glorious rain of purity was nothing but light tears . . . the sky protesting because I was walking and thinking when I should be dead. Long dead. I spit on the ground to show what I thought of it.

My little man was gone. The constant, even grinding of his shoes in the gravel had stopped and now there was a silence that shut out all other noises, even the rain.

I was alone in the darkness and my time had come. It had to come, there was only an hour left and never time to undo it if it had all been a mistake! For about ten seconds I stood still, watching those cars in the distance. They wormed ahead, they disappeared as if going into a tunnel, emerging again many seconds later. I knew where my little man was now.

Not far off was a building. That was what stopped those lights. There was a building and I saw it when I took a dozen more steps. It was the remains of a building, anyway. Three floors staggered up from the ground in uneven rows of bricks. Only the windows on the top floors showed a few panes whole and unbroken, most likely because they were beyond a stone's throw. The rest were plastered with boards that seemed to be there to keep things in rather than out.

I was back in the jungle again. I had that feeling. There was a guy at my shoulder in deeper, black than the night and he carried a scythe and a map to point out the long road. I didn't walk, I stalked and the guy stalked with me, waiting patiently for that one fatal misstep.

He was death and I knew him well. I had seen him plenty of times before and I laughed in his face because I was me, see? I was Mike Hammer and I could laugh because what did I give a damn about death? He could laugh back at me with his grisly, bony laugh, and even if we didn't make any sound at all my laugh was louder than his. Stick with me, man in black. Stick close because some customers are going to be made that should have been made a long time ago. You thought I was bad when there was a jungle around me for cover and I learned how to kill and kill and kill and walk away and remind myself that killing was nice. Yeah, you thought I was a wise guy. Stick around, old man, maybe you'll see me for the first time doing something I really enjoy. Maybe some day I'll pick on you and we'll have it out, a hot .45 against that blade of yours.

All the instincts came back. The chatter gun was slung just right for easy carrying and quick action. Without me telling it to, my hand had scooped up gobs of mud and daubed my face and hands, even blanking out the luminous dial of my watch.

The pleasure of the hunt, the wonderful knowledge that you're hot and right! The timing was there, that sense of alertness that gets bred into you when there's blood in the air. I liked it!

I stood in the shadow of the building, melting into the wall with the rain, watching the two men. One was there at the doorway, an invisible figure I sensed rather than saw. The other was coming toward me just as I planned it. It had taken a long while just to get this far. I knew without looking that the hands of my watch would be overlapping. Somewhere back in Manhattan a guy would be looking for me to call me friend. Somewhere inside Velda would be sitting, a hostage who would never talk.

The guy came nearer and I knew he had a gun in his hand. I let him come.

Now I could see him plainly. He stopped three feet away and looked back uncertainly. I had the tommy gun in one hand and the nose of the .45 in the other. I let him look back again and this time I let him see me.

No, it wasn't me he saw, it was the other guy, the one with the cowl and the scythe. I swung that gun butt so hard it made a wet smack and almost twisted out of my hand. The guy didn't have any forehead left. There was nothing but a black hole from his eyes to his hair and I was grinning. I eased him down without a sound and picked up the tommy gun. Then I started around the building.

It goes that way. One guy makes one lousy error and everybody falls into the trap. The guy at the door thought it was the other one when I walked out of the murk. He grunted the last sound he ever made because I wrapped my arm under his neck and started bending him over backwards. I had my knee in his spine, pulling him into a living bow that clawed at my hands to release the scream that sudden fear had driven into his throat.

The goddamn grin wouldn't come off my face even when I heard his spine snap and felt that sickening lurch that comes when the bow is bent too far. Two of them. A pair of bastards who had wanted to play in the Big Game. Slimy, squirmy worms who had visions of being on top where they could rule with the whip.

I went into the building with death at my shoulder and he was mad because I was giving the orders. He was waiting for the mistake he knew I'd have to make sooner or later.

My breath wasn't coming easy now. It was hot and coarse in my throat, rasping into my lungs. I stood inside the door, listening, waiting, letting my eyes use precious seconds to orient themselves to this new gloom. My watch made a mad ticking to remind me that now it had to be quick. Time, it had gone. There was nothing left!

I saw the empty packing boxes that had been smashed and left to rot. I saw the welter of machinery, glazed with rust, lying in heaps under the high, vaulted roof. Long ago it had been a factory of some sort. I wondered incongruously what had been made here. Then the smell of turpentine gave it to me. Paint. There was three hundred feet of length to it, almost that in width. I could make out the partitions of wood and brick separating it into compartments.

But I didn't have time to look through it all, not all three floors of it!

The sons-of-bitches had picked the best spot on earth, not a sound would penetrate these walls! In that maze of partitions and cubicles even the brightest beam of light that could escape would be dulled and unseen. I wanted to pull the trigger of the gun and blast the whole dump to bits and wade into the wreckage with my bare hands. I wanted to scream just like the guys outside wanted to scream and I couldn't.

Another minute to make myself cool off. Another minute to let instinct and training take over.

Another minute for my eyes to see and they picked out the path that led through the rubbish, a path I should have seen sooner because it had been deliberately made and often used. Old paint cans had been pushed aside and spilled their thick, gooey mess on the floor. The larger drums had been slop pails for left-over stuff and marked the turns in the trail.

My eyes saw it, my feet followed it. They took me around the bend and through a hall then up the stairs.

And the path that was cleared through the dirt on the floor led to the middle, then the top story. It led to rooms that reeked of turpentine so strong it almost took my breath away. It led to a corridor and another man who stepped out of the shadows to die. It led to a door that swung open easily and into a room that faced on other rooms where I was able to stand in my invisible cloak of blackness with barely the strength to hold the gun.

I stood there and looked at what I was, hearing myself say, "Good God, no, please . . . no!" I had to stand there for a moment of time that turned into eternity while I was helpless to intervene and see things my mind wanted to shut out . . . hear things my ears didn't want to hear.

For an eternal moment I had to look at them all, every one. General Osilov in a business suit leaning on his cane almost casually, an unholy leer lighting his face. My boy of the subway slobbering all over his chin, puking a little without noticing it, his hands pressed against his belly while his face was a study in obscene fascination.

And the guy in the pork-pie hat!

Velda.

She was stark naked.

She hung from the rafters overhead by a rope that chewed into her wrists, while her body twisted slowly in the single light of the electric lantern! The guy in the pork-pie hat waited until she turned to face him then brought the knotted rope around with all the strength of his arm and I heard it bite into her flesh with a sickening sound that brought her head up long enough for me to see that even the pain was dulling under the evil of this thing.

He said, "Where is it? You'll die if you don't tell me!"

She never opened her mouth. Her eyes came open, but she never opened her mouth!

Then there was only beauty to the nakedness of her body. A beauty of the flesh that was more than the sensuous curve of her hips, more than the sharp curve of breasts drawn high under the weight of her body, more than those long, full legs, more than the ebony of her hair. There was the beauty of the flesh that was the beauty of the soul and the guy in the pork-pie hat grimaced with hate and raised the rope to smash it down while the rest slobbered with the lust and pleasure of this example of what was yet to come, even drooled with the passion that was death made slow in the fulfillment of the philosophy that lived under a red flag!

And in that moment of eternity I heard the problem asked and knew the answer! I knew why I was allowed to live while others died! I knew why my rottenness was tolerated and kept alive and why the guy with the reaper couldn't catch me and I smashed through the door of the room with the tommy gun in my hands spitting out the answer at the same time my voice screamed it to the heavens!

I lived only to kill the scum and the lice that wanted to kill themselves. I lived to kill so that others could live. I lived to kill because my soul was a hardened thing that reveled in the thought of taking the blood of the bastards who made murder their business. I lived because I could laugh it off and others couldn't. I was the evil that opposed other evil, leaving the good and the meek in the middle to live and inherit the earth!

They heard my scream and the awful roar of the gun and the slugs tearing into bone and guts and it was the last they heard. They went down as they tried to run and felt their insides tear out and spray against the walls.

I saw the general's head splinter into shiny wet fragments and splatter over the floor. The guy from the subway tried to stop the bullets with his hands and dissolved into a nightmare of blue holes.

There was only the guy in the pork-pie hat who made a crazy try for a gun in his pocket. I aimed the tommy gun for the first time and took his arm off at the shoulder. It dropped on the floor next to him and I let him have a good look at it. He couldn't believe it happened. I proved it by shooting him in the belly. They were all so damned clever!

They were all so damned dead!

I laughed and laughed while I put the second clip in the gun. I knew the music in my head was going wild this time, but I was laughing too hard to enjoy it. I went around the room and kicked them over on their backs and if they had faces left I made sure they didn't. I saved the last burst for the bastard who was MVD in a pork-pie hat and who looked like a kid. A college boy. He was still alive when he stared into the flame that spit out of the muzzle only an inch away from his nose.

I cut her down carefully, dressed her, cradled her in my arms like a baby and knew that I was crying. Me. I could still do that. I felt her fingers come up and touch one of the wet spots on my cheek, heard her say the three words that blessed everything I did, then I went back to the path that led out into the night that was still cold and rainy, but still free to be enjoyed. There was a soft spot on the ground where I laid her with my coat under her head while I went back to do what I had to do. I went back to the room where death had visited and walked under the rafters until I reached the pork-pie hat that lay next to the remains of the thing that wore it. I lifted his wallet out of his back pocket and flipped his coat open so I could rip the inside lining pocket out along with some shreds of the coat fabric. That was all. Except for one thing. When I went down the stairs once more I found a drum of paint whose spilled contents made a sticky flow into some empty cans. When I built up a mound of old papers around the stuff I touched a match to it, stood there until I was satisfied with its flame, then went back to Velda. Her eyes were closed and her breathing heavy. She came up in my arms and I fixed my coat around her.

I carried her that way to my car and drove her home, and stayed while a doctor hovered above her. I prayed. It was answered when the doctor came out of the room and smiled. I said another prayer of thankfulness and did the things that had to be done to make her comfortable. When the nurse came to sit by her side I picked up my hat and went downstairs.

The rain came down steadily. It was clear and pure. It swept by the curb carrying the filth into the sewer.

We know now, don't we, Judge? We know the answer.

There were only a few hours left of the night. I drove to the office and opened the lamp. I took out the two envelopes in there and spread them out on my desk. The beginning and the end. The complexities and the simplicities. It was all so clever and so rotten.

And to think that they might have gotten away with it!

It was over and done with now. Miles away an abandoned paint factory would be a purgatory of flame and explosions that would leave only the faintest trace of what had been there. It was a hell that wiped away all sins leaving only the good and the pure. The faintest trace that it left would be looked into and expounded upon. There would be nothing left but wonder and the two big words, WHY and HOW. There were no cars at the scene. They wouldn't have been foolish enough to get there that way. The flames would char and blacken. They would leave remains that would take months to straighten out, and in that straightening they would come across melted leaden slugs and a twisted gun that was the property of the investigating bureau in Washington. There would be cover-up and more wonder and more speculation, then, eventually, someone would stumble on part of the truth. Yet even then, it was a truth only half-known and too big to be told.

Only I knew the whole thing and it was too big for me. I was going to tell it to the only person who would understand what it meant.

I picked up the phone.

Chapter Eleven

The sixth time it rang I heard it come off the cradle. A sharp click was the light coming on then Lee Deamer's voice gave me a sleepy hello.

I said, "This is Mike Hammer, Lee." My voice had a tired drag too. "Hate to call you at this hour, but I have to speak to you."

"Well, that's all right, Mike. I was expecting you to call. My secretary told me you had called earlier."

"Can you get dressed?"

"Yes. Are you coming over here?"

"I'd rather not, Lee. I don't want to be cooped up right now. I need the smell of air. A hell of a lot has happened. It isn't anything I can broadcast and I can't keep it to myself. You're the only one I can talk to. I want to show you where it started and how it happened. I want you to see the works. I have something very special to show you."

"What Oscar left behind?"

"No, what somebody else did. Lee, you know those government documents that were copied?"

"Mike! It can't be!"

"It is."

"This is . . . why, it's . . ."

"I know what you mean. I'll pick you up in a few minutes. Hurry up."

"I'll be ready by the time you get here. Really, Mike, I don't know what to say."

"Neither do I; that's why I want you to tell me what to do. I'll be right over."

I put the phone back slowly, then gathered the envelopes into a neat pack and stuck them in my pocket. I went downstairs and stood on the sidewalk with my face turned toward the sky.

It was still raining.

It was a night just like that first one.

The rain had a hint of snow in it.

Before I reached Lee's house I made a stop. The place was a rooming house that had a NO VACANCY sign in front and a row of rooms with private entrances. I went in and knocked on the second door. I knocked again and a bed squeaked. I knocked the third time and a muffled voice swore and feet shuffled across the floor.

The door went open an inch and I saw one eye and part of a crooked nose. "Hello, Archie," I said.

Archie threw the door open and I stepped in. Archie owed me a lot of favors and now I was collecting one. I told him to get dressed and it took him about two minutes to climb into his clothes.

He waited until we were in the car before he opened his yap. "Trouble?" That was all he said.

"Nope. All you're going to do is drive a car. No trouble."

We went over to Lee's place and I rang the bell. They have one of those speaking-tube gadgets there and Lee said he'd be right down. I saw him hurry through the lobby and open the door.

He grinned when we shook hands. I was too tired to grin back. "Is it pretty bad, Mike? You look like you're out on your feet."

"I am. I'm bushed but I can't go to bed with this on my mind. My car is out front."

The two of us went down the walk and I opened the door for him. We got in the back together and I told Archie to head for the bridge. Lee sat back and let his eyes ask me if we could talk with Archie in the car. I shook my head no so we just sat there watching the rain streak across the windows.

At the entrance to the bridge I passed Archie a half a buck and he handed it to the cop on duty at the toll booth. We started up the incline when I tapped him on the shoulder.

"Stop here, Archie. We're going to walk the rest of the way. Go on over to Jersey and sop up some beer. Come back in a half-hour. We'll be at the top of the hump on the other side waiting for you." I dropped a fin on the seat beside him to pay for the beer and climbed out with Lee behind me.

It was colder now and the rain was giving birth to a snowflake here and there. The steel girders of the bridge towered into the sky and were lost, giant man-made trees that glistened at the top as the ice started to form.

Our feet made slow clicking sounds against the concrete of the walk and the boats on the river below called back to them. I could see the red and green eyes staring at me. They weren't faces this time.

"This is where it started, Lee," I said.

He glanced at me and his face was puzzled.

No, I don't expect you to understand, because you don't know about it." We had our hands stuffed in our pockets against the cold, and our collars turned up to keep out the wet. The hump was ahead of us, rising high into the night.

"Right up there is where it happened. I thought I'd be alone that night, but there were two other people. One was a girl. The other was a little fat guy with a stainless-steel tooth. They both died."

I took the fat envelope out of my pocket and shook out the pages inside. "It's amazing, isn't it? Here the best minds in the country are looking for this and I fell right into it. It's the detailed plans of the greatest weapon ever made and I have it right here in my hand."

Lee's mouth fell open. He recovered and reached for it. "How, Mike? How could this come to you?"

There wasn't any doubting its authenticity. He shook his head, completely bewildered, and gave it back to me. "That's the story, Lee. That's what I wanted to tell you, but first I want to make sure this country has a secret that's safe."

I took my lighter out and spun the little wheel. There was a spark, then a blue flame that wavered in the wind. I touched it to the papers and watched them smolder and suddenly flame up. The yellow light reflected from our faces, dying down to a soft red glow. When there was nothing left but a corner that still held the remnants of the symbols and numbers, I flicked the papers over the edge and watched them go to the wind. That one corner I put in my pocket.

"If it had happened to anyone else, I wonder what the answer would have been?"

I shook my head and reached for a Lucky. "Nobody will ever know that, Lee." We reached the top of the hump and I stopped.

The winter was with us again. The girders were tall white fingers that grew from the floor of the bridge, scratching the sky open. Through the rift the snow sifted down and made wet patches on the ground.

I leaned on the handrail, looking out over the river. "It was the same kind of night: it was cold and wet and all alone. A girl came running up that ramp with a guy behind her who had a gun in his pocket. I shot the guy and the girl jumped over the railing. That's how simple it was. The only things they left behind were two green cards that identified them as members of the Communist Party.

"So I was interested. I was interested in anything that toted around a green card. That's how I got interested in Oscar. The guy he killed had a green card too. Hell, you know the rest of the story. There's a few things only I know and that's the main thing. I know how many people died tonight. I know what the papers will look like tomorrow and the month after. You know what, Lee, I killed more people tonight than I have fingers on my hands. I shot them in cold blood and enjoyed every minute of it. I pumped slugs in the nastiest bunch of bastards you ever saw and here I am calmer than I've ever been and happy too. They were Commies, Lee. They were red sons-of-bitches who should have died long ago, and part of the gang who are going to be dying in the very near future unless they get smart and take the gas pipe. Pretty soon what's left of Russia and the slime that breeds there won't be worth mentioning and I'm glad because I had a part in the killing.

"God, but it was fun! It was the way I liked it. No arguing, no talking to the stupid peasants. I just walked into that room with a tommy gun and shot their guts out. They never thought that there were people like me in this country. They figured us all to be soft as horse manure and just as stupid."

It was too much for Lee. He held onto the rail and looked sick.

I said, "What's the matter, Oscar?"

His eyes were glazed and he coughed. "You mean . . . Lee."

"No I don't. I mean Oscar. Lee's dead."

It was all there, the night, the cold and the fear. The unholy fear. He was looking at my face and he had the same look of unholy fear as the girl had that other night so long ago.

I said it slow. I let him hear every word. "The girl that died here that night was Paula Riis. She was a nurse in an asylum for the insane. I had it wrong . . . she didn't help Oscar to escape . . . she just quit and Oscar escaped later by himself. Paula came to New York and got tied up with a lot of crappy propaganda the Commies handed out and went overboard for it. She thought it was great. She worked like hell and wound up in a good spot.

"Then it happened. Somehow she saw the records or was introduced to the big boy in this country. She knew it was you. What happened, did she approach you thinking you were Oscar's brother? Whatever happened she recognized you as Oscar and all her illusions were shattered. She knew you were Oscar Deamer and demented as hell!

"That's why you were a Commie, Oscar, because you were batty. It was the only philosophy that would appeal to your crazy mind. It justified everything you did and you saw a chance of getting back at the world. You escaped from that sanitarium, took Lee's private papers and made yourself a name in the world while Lee was off in the woods where he never saw a paper of any kind and never knew what you did. You must have had an expert dummy the fingerprints on that medical record . . . but then, you had access to that kind of expert, didn't you?

"It was rough when Paula recognized you. She lost her ideals and managed to contact Lee. She told him to come East and expose you, but she did something else first. She had a boy friend in the party. His name was Charlie Moffit and she told him the story hoping to drag him out of the Commie net.

"Charlie was the stupid one. He saw a play of his own and made it. He saw how he could line you up for some ready cash and gave you the story over the phone. It was right after the Legion Parade, the 13th, that you had a heart attack according to your secretary . . . not because your brother contacted you because his ticket was dated the 15th, a Friday, and he didn't arrive until the day after. You had a heart attack when Charlie Moffit called you!

"You contacted the torpedo that went under the MVD title and you worried about it, but there was no out until Lee arrived himself and gave you a buzz. That was the best touch of all! Then you saw how you could kill Charlie yourself, have the blame shifted to your brother with a reasonable story that would make it look good. You knew you had a way to kill two birds with one stone . . . and get rid of a brother who could have stood in your way. There was only one thing you didn't foresee. Charlie Moffit was a courier in the chain that passed along those documents. During one of his more lucid moments he recognized that they were important and held on to them for life insurance. He mailed them to his girl friend, Paula, to take care of."

He was white. He hung on to the rail and shook. He was scared stiff.

"So you waited until Charlie called again and arranged to meet him. You had it all figured out beforehand and it looked good as gold. You got hold of an old actor and had him impersonate you while you went out and killed Charlie Moffit. The actor was good, too. He knew how to make speeches. You paid him off, but you didn't know then that he liked to drink. He never did before because he had no money. Later you found that he had a loose tongue when he drank and he had to go too. But that was an easy kill and it's getting ahead of the story.

"You killed Charlie, switched with the actor at the dinner meeting, and made yourself a wonderful alibi. It happened after the supper when you were going around speaking to the groups, a time when nobody would be conscious of the switch, especially since none of them knew you too well anyway.

"I don't know what the play was at your brother's place when Pat and I went after him, but I'll try to set it up. See if I'm right. Mr. MVD went there first and got him running. He got him in the subway and shoved him under the train so his identity would be washed out."

As casually as I could I took Velda's envelope from my pocket and fingered out the sheet inside. He didn't bother to look at it.

I said, "My secretary dug up this story. She went back to your home state and went through the records. She found out that you and your brother were twins, all right, but you weren't identical twins. You were fraternal twins and he didn't look like you at all!

"But to get back to the beginning. You knew when Lee called you that there was more to it than you thought. You knew Charlie wasn't smart enough to dig up the stuff by himself, so you and fat boy did some fast snooping and found out about Paula. During that time she saw you or the other guy and got scared. She wanted to talk and called the police, asking them to meet her on the bridge where they could be alone.

"Your MVD pal was a little shrewder. He tapped her phone line and moved in to intercept her, but she moved a little faster and got out of the house before he came around. She had just enough lead to make it to the top of the bridge right where we're standing when he arrived. It was pretty--you should have been here. You should have seen what I did to him. The sour note was Paula. She thought I was one of them looking for a cut of the loot or something, because she couldn't picture any decent person hauling out a rod just like that and blowing a guy's face off. She went over the bridge.

"It would have been so nice for you if I hadn't had a conscience and wanted to find out what the green card meant. You knew my reputation but never thought I could go that far. You hired me so you could keep tabs on me and now look what happened.

"Maybe nothing would have happened if those documents hadn't turned up missing. Those people would have died just to keep your identity a secret. But one of those dead men was a critical link connected with the missing documents, so you cooked up the story of your brother's having left something incriminating behind him, thinking that maybe I'd come across the documents and hand them over to you. Well, Oscar, I did. You had your boys try to run them down first, but they didn't quite make it.