Survival... ZERO!

I turned my coat collar up and threw my cigarette into a puddle where it fizzled out. "Suppose I check my office, then we go out for supper."

"No more prowling?"

"I've had enough for one day."

I signed us in at the night desk and steered Renée to the open elevator on the end of the bank, got in and pushed the button for my floor. She had that impish grin back, remembering the look the night man had given us downstairs, and said, "The direct approach is very fascinating, Mike. Do you have a couch and champagne all ready?"

"No champagne. Might be a six-pack of Pabst beer in the cooler though."

"How about a bathroom? I have to piddle."

"And so ends a romantic conversation," I said as the door slid open noiselessly.

"Well, I really have to," she insisted.

"So go," I told her.

She was taking little mincing steps walking down the corridor to my office, and to make sure nothing would stay between her and the John, I got ahead, stuck my key in the lock and pushed the door open.

Not really pushed. It was jerked open with me leaning on the knob and I tumbled inside knowing that the world would be coming down on my head if all the reflexes hadn't been triggered in time. But there are some things

you never seem to lose. They drilled them into you in the training camps, and made you use them on the firing line and what they didn't teach you, you learned the hard way all at once or you never lived to know about anything at all. I was in a half roll, tucking my head down, one hand cushioning my fall and the other automatically scrabbling for the .45 when heavy metal whipped down the back of my head into my shoulders with a sickening smash. Then you know there's still time because the pain is hot and wet without deadening numbness and the secondary impulses take over immediately and whip you away from the force of the second strike.

I was on my back, the flat of my hand braced for leverage, bringing my foot up and around into flesh and pelvic bone in a high, arching kick that gouged testicles from their baggy sockets with a yell choked off as it was sucked down a throat in wild, fiery agony. I could see the shadowy figure, still poised for another smash at my head, the bulk of a gun in his hand, then it jerked toward me convulsively and the flat of my .45 automatic met frontal bone with all the power I could put behind it. Time was measured in tenths of a second that seemed to take minutes, but it was enough to buy me time. Two blasts of flame went off in my face, pounding into the back of the one on top of me and something tore along the skin of my side, then Renée was screaming in the doorway until another shot rocketed off and cut it off abruptly. I saw the other one run, saw her fall, but couldn't get out from under the tangle of limp arms and legs that smothered my movements in time. Crazy words spilled from my mouth, then I got the body off me, pushed to my feet with the .45 still cocked and staggered into the corridor.

Down the hall the blinking lights of the elevator showed it was almost halfway to the ground floor. None of the others were operating and I could never beat it down the stairway. I shoved the gun back in the speed rig under my coat and knelt down beside Renée. She was unconscious, her eyes half open, a heavy red welt along her temple, oozing blood where the bullet had torn away hair and skin. She was lucky. In her fright she had raised her hands and the heavy ornamental knob of the umbrella handle had deflected the slug aimed for her face and turned sudden death into a minor superficial scratch. I let her lie there for a minute, went back into my office and switched on the light.

The body on the floor was still leaking blood that soaked into the carpet and all I could think of was that

the next time I'd get a rug to match the stains and save cleaning costs. I put my toe under the ribs and turned it over. The two exit wounds had punched gaping holes in the chest and the slash from my rod had nearly destroyed his face, but there was enough left to recognize.

Larry Beers wouldn't be renting his gun out to the highest bidders any more. One slug that had gone right through him and grazed me was still imbedded in the carpet, a misshapen oval of metal standing on edge. There were no alarms, no sirens, no voices; the office building was deserted and we were too high up for gunshot sounds to reach the street.

I stood up and looked around at the absolute destruction of all my new furniture, the mess of cotton batting from torn cushions, papers from the emptied files and remnants of furniture that had been systematically destroyed. But they had started to work from one side to the other and stopped three quarters of the way across. I knew what had happened. They had located the automatic taping system built into the wall behind the street map of New York City. Somebody had played it. Then somebody had destroyed it. The ashes were still warm in the metal wastebasket in the corner of the room.

Like a sucker punch in the belly the picture was clear. There was a call on that tape, probably from Velda. It meant something damn important, enough to kill for. Now one was dead, but the other was still loose and if Velda had identified herself they'd know who to look for and probably where. If she had gotten hold of something she'd want to meet me and would have set a time and a place.

Larry Beers, Ballinger's boy. Out of curiosity I looked at the bottom of his shoes, saw the half-moon-shaped pieces of metal imbedded in the heels that old lady Gostovitch had called clickers and felt good because one was down who deserved it, and the one paying the price would be the guy who ran off and the one who was paying for the hit. It was Woody I had to find before he found Velda. There was one little edge I still had, though. They couldn't be sure I wasn't dead, and if I wasn't I'd be looking for Woody too, and he had to reach me fast because he knew he'd be on my kill list just as sure as hell.

Behind me a small, frightened voice said, "Mike ..."

Renée was standing in the doorway, hands against the frame, her face white and drawn. She saw the body on the floor but was still too dazed to realize what had happened. She tried a painful smile and lifted her eyes. "I ... don't think I like your friends," she said.

CHAPTER 8

There was no way of determining the actual cause of the wound, so the doctor accepted her explanation without question. The tip of an umbrella whipped in a sudden cross-directional gust had caught her, we said. He applied an antibiotic, a small compress she hid behind her hair and had me take her home. She still had a headache, so she took the sedative the doctor had given her, a little wistful at me having to leave, but knowing how urgent it was that I must. She had been caught up in something she had never experienced and couldn't understand, but realized that it wasn't time to ask questions. I told her I'd call tomorrow and went back into the rain again. My shirt was still sticking to my side with dried blood, stinging, but not painful. That could wait. The doctor never saw that one because he would have known it for what it was and a report would go in.

Back in the office a body still sprawled on the floor in its own mess, a note to Velda on its chest to check into the hotel we used when necessary and hold until I contacted her. The door was locked, the "OUT" sign in place, now Woody Ballinger could sweat out what had happened.

The night clerk in the office building had heard the elevator come down, but was at the coffee machine when the occupant left the lobby and all he saw was the back of a man going out the door. Four others had signed the night book going in earlier and he had assumed he was one of those. When I checked the book myself the four were still there on the second floor, an accountancy firm whose work went on at all hours. Woody's boys had it easy. A master key for the door, time to go through my place and time to phone in whatever information they found on the tape. Then they just waited. They couldn't take the chance of me getting that message and knew that if I did I'd want to erase it on the chance that Woody

would make a grab for me after I made it plain enough to his boys that I was ready to tap him out.

Okay, Woody, you bought yourself a farm. Six feet down, six long and three wide. The crop would be grass. You'd be the fertilizer.

I stood under the marquee of the Rialto East on Broadway, watching the after-midnight people cruising the Times Square area. The rain had discouraged all but a few stragglers, driving them home or into the all-night eating places. A pair of hippies in shawls and bare feet waded through the sidewalk puddles and into the little river that flowed along the curb, oblivious to the downpour. One lone hooker carrying a sodden hatbox almost started to give me her sales pitch, then obviously thought better of it and veered away. She didn't have to go far. A pair of loud, heavyset conventioneer types had her under their arms less than a half block away. What they needed around here was the old World War II G.I. pro stations. Nowadays the streetwalkers carried more clap than a thundercloud. Syph was always a possibility and galloping dandruff a certainty.

Earlier, a dozen phone calls to the right people had gotten me the same piece of information. Woody Ballinger had been missing from the scene ever since this morning. Carl, Sammy and Larry Beers were gone too. I had lucked into snagging the apartment Carl and Sammy shared, but the doorman told me they had left in the morning and hadn't returned. He let me confirm it myself by rapping on their door.

And now I was worried. Nobody had seen Velda since four hours ago. Her apartment phone didn't answer and the place she had taken opposite Lippy’s old place was empty. The small bag she had taken with a few extra clothes was in the closet, two sweaters on hangers and a few cosmetics on the ancient dresser beside the bed.

When she worked in the field, Velda was a loner. Except for a few personal contacts, she didn't use informants and stayed clear of places she would be recognized. But Woody knew her and if she were spotted it wouldn't be too hard to grab her if they went at it right.

I knew what she was wearing from what was left over in her luggage and had passed the word around. Denny Hill was pretty sure he had seen her grabbing a coffee and a hot dog in Nedick's, but that had been around seven o'clock. I found Tim Slatterly just closing his newsstand and he said, sure he had seen her early in the evening. She

was all excited about something and he had made change for her so she could use the phone in the drugstore on the corner.

"Thought she was a hooker." Tim laughed. "You shoulda seen the getup she had on." He pulled off his cap, whipped the rain off it and slapped it back on again. Then he looked at me seriously. "She ain't really ..."

"No. She was on a job for me."

He let the smile fade. "Trouble?"

"I don't know. You see which direction she came from?"

Tim nodded toward the opposite side of Seventh Avenue going north. "Over there. I watched her cross the street." He paused a second, rubbing his face, then thumbed his hand over his shoulder. "Ya know, this probably was the closest place to call from. Two blocks up is another drugstore and one block down is an outside booth. If this one was closest she probably came from that block right there."

So she was in a hurry. She wanted to make a phone call. That could have been the one to me recorded on the tape that was destroyed. And what she found could have come from that direction.

"You see her come out, Tim?"

"Yeah," he nodded. "She had a piece of paper in her hand. At first she started to flag down a cab, then gave it up and headed back over the West Side again. Look, Mike, if you want I'll call over to Reno's and the guys can

"It'll be okay, buddy. Thanks."

"Oh ... and Mike, she ever find that guy? The one with the fancy vest? She asked me about that too."

"When?"

"That was, lemme see ... right after I came on this morning. Like I told her, I see them things sometimes. One guy been coming here eight years always wears one. He owns a restaurant downtown. Rich guy. There's another one, but he kind of drifts by once in a while at night. I figured him for a pimp."

I edged back under the protection of the overhang, the rain draping a curtain around us. "Tall and skinny, about forty-some?"

Tim bobbed his head quickly. "Yeah, that's him."

"When did you see him last?"

"Hell, about suppertime. He was still drifting along when everybody else was hustling to get outa the wet. I remember because the bum picked a paper outa the trash

can somebody tossed away instead of buying one. A wet paper yet." Tim stopped, watching me intently, then added, "So he started to cross the street heading west too. I wasn't really watching."

"Good enough, Tim," I said.

And now the reins were pulling in a little tighter. The possibilities were beginning to show themselves. It was me who had put Woody onto it in the beginning. He had his own sources of information and it wouldn't have taken him long to spot the association between Lippy and me and dig around the same way I did. If I had found anything Lippy's former friend had lifted from Woody, the police would have had it by now and he'd be squatting on an iron bunk in the city jail.

But no charges had been leveled, so whatever he was after was still up for grabs. I let the rain whip at my face and grinned pointlessly. So he double-checked Lippy's pad with his boys and they damned near knocked me off. They had taken off fast, not knowing how long I had stayed around, and maybe if I looked hard enough I could have uncovered the item. It wouldn't be big. Large enough for a wallet and easy enough to hide.

It made sense then. They had to take me out to be sure. They ransacked my office first, then waited for me. They had to. After my bit earlier about "doing business" with Woody, he could have assumed I had the stuff and was ready to sell it to him. That would be "business" in his language. Or Velda could have come up with it and phoned in the information on the tape recorder and they couldn't take a chance of me getting it. They'd try to tap me out first, then Velda.

Damn it all to hell, why didn't she stay in the office where she belonged?

From a quarter mile down the avenue came a whine of sirens and tiny red dots winked in the night. I waited and watched another convoy of Army trucks rumble by, escorted by two prowl cars clearing the way. All of them were way above the speed limit. The last four were ambulance vehicles and a jeep. When they passed by I crossed to the other side of Seventh Avenue and started working my way west across town.

At four a.m. I checked out a single lead and came up with a guy in a red vest, a stew bum conked out on wine, sleeping in a doorway on Eighth Avenue. I said something under my breath and walked down to the bar on the corner that was just about to close up for the night. I tried Velda's apartment first, but there was no answer. I tried

the hotel I wanted her to use, but nobody using our cover names had checked in. My office phone rang twice before it went to the recorder with the fresh spool I had inserted. There were no messages. By now Larry Beers' corpse would be cold and stiff, his blood jellied on the floor. Pat was going to give me hell.

He did that, all right, standing there over the body and chewing me out royally, his eyes as tired and bloodshot as my own. Outside the windows the sky had turned to a slate gray, the rain had stopped, but poised and waiting until it could be at its most miserable best when it let loose again.

The body of Larry Beers had been carted off in a rubber bag, the room photographed, the basics taken care of, now two detectives were standing outside the door getting a muffled earful as Pat lit into me.

All I could say was, "Listen, I told you I had a witness."

"Fine. It better be a good one."

"It is."

"You better have a damn good excuse for the time lapse in reporting this mess too."

"Once more for the record, Pat, my witness got hurt in the shuffle. I took her to a doctor who will verify it."

"He had a phone."

"So I was in a state of shock."

"Balls. You know the kind of lawyer Ballinger has to protect his men? You think that other guy's going to admit laying for you? Like hell .. . they'll say you set a trap and touched it off youself deliberately in front of a witness. Nice, eh? You were even supposed to get the other one, but he got away. So maybe your bullets aren't in him. The other guy was firing in self-defense."

"Look at the office."

"You could have done that yourself. You told me you didn't see them in the act of wrecking it. Your witness couldn't help there, either."

"Well, you know better."

"Sure, I do, only I'm just a cop. I can investigate and arrest. I don't handle the prosecution. Your ass is in deep trouble this time. Don't think the D.A.'s office is going to buy your story on sight. What you think happened won't cut any grass with that bunch. Even the shooting at Lippy's won't help any. That could have been staged too. You try using the witness you got there and all you'll get is a cold laugh and a kiss-off. Even your own lawyer wouldn't touch them."

"Okay, what do you want from me?" I asked him.

"Who's your witness, damn it!"

I grinned and shrugged my shoulders. "You know, you forgot to advise me of my rights, Captain. Under that Supreme Court decision, this case could be kicked right off the docket as of now."

Pat let those red eyes bore into me for ten seconds, his teeth clamped tight. Then suddenly the taut muscles in his jaw loosened, he grinned back and shook his head in amazement.

"I don't know why I'm bothering with you, Mike. I'm acting like this is the first homicide I ever stumbled over. After all the nitheaded times you and I ... oh, shit." He swabbed at his eyes with his hands and took a deep breath. "The whole damn country's in line for extermination and I'm letting you bug me." He dropped his hands, his face serious. "Anyway, by tomorrow you wouldn't even make the back page."

I didn't say anything. His face had a peculiar, blank look.

Finally, Pat dropped his voice and said, "They found a canister at the bottom of the Ashokan Reservoir. It was a bacteriological device timed to open six days from now."

I couldn't figure it. I said, "Then why the sweat if you got it nailed down?"

Pat brushed some torn remnants off the arm of the chair and lowered himself down to it. "The guy found dead in the subway was the same one those honeymooners spotted, all right. They searched the area where they saw him and came up with the cannister." His eyes left the window and wandered over to mine. "It must have been the last one he planted. It was marked #20-ashokan. Someplace scattered around are nineteen others like it, all due to release in six days."

"And the papers got this?"

"One of the reservists in the group that handled the stuff was a reporter fresh out of journalism school. He figured he had a scoop and phoned it in. He didn't know about the other nineteen they didn't find."

"There's still time to squelch the story."

"Oh, they're on that, don't worry. Everybody connected with that guy's paper is in protective custody, but they're screaming like hell and they're not going to be held long. There's a chance they might have spouted off to their friends or relatives, and if they did, it's panic tune. People aren't going to hold in a secret like that."

"Who's handling it ... locals?"

"Washington. That's how big it is." Pat reached for his hat and stood up. "So whatever you do doesn't really matter, Mike. You're only an interesting diversion that keeps me from thinking about other things. Six days from now we can all pick out a nice place to sit and watch each other kick off."

"Brother, are you full of piss and vinegar tonight."

"I wish you'd worry a little. It would make me feel better."

"Crap," I said sullenly. There was no mistaking Pat's attitude. He was deadly serious. I had never seen him like that before. Maybe it was better to be like the rest of the world, not knowing about things. But what would they be like when they found out?

"Six days. When it happens you can bet there's going to be some kind of retaliation, or expecting it, the other side fires first. A nuclear holocaust could destroy this country and possibly the bacteria too. If I were on the other side I'd consider the same thing." Pat let a laugh grunt through his teeth. "Now even the Soviet bunch is thinking along those lines. I heard they all tried to get out of the country when we found the thing, but the Feds put the squeeze on them. In a way they're hostages for six days and they'd better run down a lead before then or they've had it too."

"Sounds crazy," I said.

"Doesn't it?" Pat waved me to the door. "So let's have a coffee like it all never happened and then we'll check into the ballistics report on those slugs that tore up your buddy Beers."

I lay stretched out on the bed, not quite awakened from the druglike sleep I had been in. The window was a patch of damp gray letting the steamy smells of the city drift into the room through the open half. The clock said ten after two, and I pulled the phone down beside me and dialed the office number. Nothing. Velda's apartment didn't answer either.

Where the hell was she? Until now Velda had always called in at regular intervals, or if necessity warranted it, longer ones, but she always called. Now there were only two answers left. Either she was on a prolonged stakeout or Woody Ballinger had found her. I tried another half-dozen calls to key people I had contacted, but none of them had seen Woody or any of his boys. All his office would say was he had left town, but Chipper Hodges had gone into his apartment through a window on a fire

escape and said his bags were in a closet and nothing seemed to be missing.

Pat had slept in his office all night and his voice was still a hoarse growl with no expression in it at all. "Sorry, Mike," he said, "still negative. Nobody's seen Ballinger around at all."

"Damn it, Pat ..."

"We'd like to see him, though. Ballistics came up with another item besides those slugs in Beers coming from that same gun that shot at you in Lippy's apartment. That same gun was used to kill the cop who stepped into the cross fire when he was raiding that policy place uptown. Supposedly one of Woody's places."

"And now you got men on it."

"Uh-huh. As many as we can spare. Don't worry, we'll find Ballinger."

"He might have Velda. There isn't much time."

"I know," he told me softly, "not for any of us," then hung up.

Back to that again, I thought. Six days ... no, five days left. In a way there was almost a comic angle to the situation. The ones who didn't know what was impending couldn't care, and those who knew about it didn't. A real wild world, this. Trouble was coming in from so many sources that another one, no matter how big, was no more than an itch to be scratched. Maybe the world wouldn't give a damn either if it did know. Nobody seems to think that big. Sufficient unto the day are the evils thereof. How long since Hiroshima and Nagasaki? You sit on a time bomb so long you get to ignore it. The object of destruction gets to be a familiar thing and one more wouldn't matter anyway. Defusing the problem was somebody else's job and somehow in some way it would be taken care of. That's what we have a government for, isn't it? So why worry, have another beer and watch the ball game. The Mets are ahead.

I picked up a paper at the stand on the corner and riffled through the pages. The News had a two-column spread on page four about how the special Army teams in their exercise maneuvers upstate had located a possible contamination source in the Ashokan Reservoir, and although the water supply to New York City and adjacent areas had been temporarily curtailed, there was no actual shortage and the Army experts were expected to clear the matter up shortly.

Further on was another little squib about a certain Long Island newspaper suspending operations temporarily

due to a breakdown in their presses. Washington was putting the squeeze on, but good. I wondered how Eddie Dandy was making out, wherever he was. By now he must have a mad on as big as his head. Somebody was going to catch hell when they released him, that was for sure.

Little Joe was working his trade on Broadway, pushing himself along on a homemade skateboard. For a beggar he was ahead in his field, peddling cheap ball-point pens instead of pencils, gabbing with all the familiar figures who kept him in business with the daily nickels and dimes.

I drew his attention by fluttering a buck down over his shoulder into his box and he spun around with a surprised grin when he saw me. "Hey, Mike. Thought I just got me a big spender. You want a pen?"

"Might as well get something for my dollar."

He held up his box. "Take your pick."

I pulled out two black ones and dropped them in my pocket. "Velda told me she saw you," I said.

"Yeah," Joe said, craning his neck up to look at me. "She was looking for that dip I saw with old Lippy."

A curious tingle ran across my shoulders. "She didn't say what he was. You didn't know, either."

"That was then. Me, I ain't got much to do except look, and besides, you two always did get me curious. So I look and ask a few people and pretty soon I get a few answers. Since Lindy's closed I moved my beat up here a couple of blocks and you'd be surprised how much can go on just a pair of traffic lights away. Like another world."

"Don't yak so much, Joe."

"Mike ... when do I get the chance to? Like you're a captive audience." Then he saw the impatience in my face and nodded. "He came in from Miami about two months ago where he was working Hialeah. That was his thing, working the tracks where the cash money was and the crowds and the excitement. Only the security boys made him and he got the boot."

"Who fed you that?"

"Banjie Peters. He hustled tout sheets. He even knew the guy from a few other tracks that kicked him out. So the only place he don't get the boot is Aqueduct and he comes up here for the season. He works it one day and blammo ... security spots him and gives him the heave. He was lucky because he didn't even have time to make his first touch. They find him with anything on him and it's curtains out there."

"They have a name for him?"

"Sure, a dozen, and no two alike." He gave me a funny little grin and fished around in his legless lap for something. "I kind of figured you'd be around so I had Banjie con his buddies in security outa a picture they had. They mugged him at Santa Anita and sent copies around."

He held out a two-by-two black and white photo of a lean, sallow-looking face with a mouth that was too small and eyes that seemed to sneer at the world. His hair had receded on the sides and acne scars marred the jawline. The picture cut him off at chest level, but under his coat he had on an off-shade vest with metal buttons that could have been red. His description on the back put him at age forty-six, five feet eleven tall and one hundred fifty-two pounds. Eight aliases were given, no two remotely alike, and no permanent address.

Now I knew what he looked like.

Little Joe said, "He couldn't score at the track, that's why he started hustling around here. You remember Poxie?" While I nodded Joe went on. "When he ain't pimping he keeps his hand in working other people's pockets. This boy sees him working Shubert Alley and beats the crap outa him. Like he laid out a claim and was protecting it. Over there's where he and Lippy used to meet up. You know, Mike, I don't think Lippy knew what the guy was doing."

"He didn't," I said.

"Maybe he found out, huh? Then this guy bumped him."

"Not quite like that, pal. You know where he is now?"

"Nope, but I seen him last night. He come outa one of them Greek language movies on Eighth Avenue and hopped a cab going uptown. I woulda taken the cab number so you could check out his trip sheet, only I was on the wrong side of the street."

"Good try, kid."

"If you want, I'll try harder."

I looked at him, wondering what he meant.

Little Joe grinned again and said, "I saw Velda too. She was right behind him and grabbed the cab after his."

The knot in my stomach held fast, not knowing whether to twist tighter or loosen. "What time, Joe?"

"Last show was coming out. Just a little after two-thirty."

And the knot loosened. She was still on her own then and Ballinger hadn't caught up with her. She had located our pickpocket and was running him down.

Little Joe was still looking at me. "I saved the best until last, Mike," he said. "The name he really goes by is

Beaver. Like a nickname. He was in Len Parrott's saloon when Len heard two guys ask about him. This guy drops his drink fast and gets out. They were asking about a red vest too and the guy had one on." A frown drew his eyebrows together. "They was Woody Ballinger's boys, Mike."

I said, "Damn" softly.

"The bartender didn't tell them nothing, though."

I let a five-spot fall into Little Joe's box. "I appreciate it, buddy. You get anything else, call Pat Chambers. Remember him?"

"Captain Pat? Sure, how could I ever forget him? He shot the guy who blew my legs off with that shotgun fifteen years ago."

If you can't find them, then let them find you. The word was out now in all the right places. It would travel fast and far and someplace a decision would have to be made. I was on a hunt for Sammy and Carl to throw a bullet through their guts and do the explaining afterward. They'd start to sweat because there was plenty of precedent to go by. I had put too many punks they knew under a gun for them to think I wouldn't do it and the only way to stop it would be to get me first. They were the new cool breed, smart, polished and deadly, so full of confidence that they had a tendency to forget that there were others who could play the game even better. Who was it that said, "Don't mess around with the old pros"?

I finished straightening up the wreckage in the office, pulled a beer out of the cooler and sat down to enjoy it. From the street I could hear the taxis hooting and thought about Velda. She was a pro too and it would take a pretty sharp article to top her. She knew the streets and she knew the people. She wasn't about to expose herself and blow the whole job no matter how far into it she had gotten. If the chips went down, she'd have that little rod in her hand, make herself a lousy target and take somebody down too. At least in New York you heard about shootings.

I switched on the transistor radio she had given me and dialed the news station. For ten minutes there was a political analysis of the new attitude the Russians had taken, seemingly agreeable to acting in harmony with U.S. policy along certain peace efforts, then the announcer got into sports. Halfway through there was a special bulletin rapped out in staccato voice telling the world that the hired killers of Tom-Tom Schneider had been located in a

cheap hotel in Buffalo, New York, and police officers and F.B.I, troops had surrounded the building and were engaged in a gunfight, but refraining from a capture attempt because the pair had taken two maids as hostages.

Okay, Pat, there's your news blast for tomorrow. Plenty of pictures and plenty of stories. It would cover all news media in every edition and the little find at the Ashokan Reservoir would stay a one-column squib that nobody would notice and you had one more day without a panic.

There was a four-car wreck on the West Side highway. A mental patient leaped from the roof of an East Side hospital, landed on a filled laundry cart and was unhurt. No other shootings, though, and the regular musical program resumed.

All I could do was wait awhile.

At six thirty in the morning I woke up when my feet fell off the desk. Daylight had crept into the office, lighting the eerie stillness of a building not yet awake. There was a distant whine of the elevator, probably the servicemen coming in, a sound you never heard at any other hour. I stood up, stretched to get the stiffness out of my shoulders and cursed when a little knife of pain shot across my side where the slug had scorched me. Two blocks away a nice guy I knew who used to be a doctor before they lifted his license for practicing abortions would take care of that for me. Maybe a tailor could fix my jacket. Right now the spare I kept in the office would do me.

At eight fifteen I picked up the duplicate photo cards Cabin's Film Service had made up for me, mug shots of the guy they called Beaver with his résumé printed on the back. A half hour later I was having coffee with Pat and gave him all but three of them.

He called me two dirty names and stuck them in his pocket. "And you said you wanted nothing to do with it," he reminded me.

"Sorry about that," I said.

"Yeah. Professional curiosity?"

"Personal interest."

"You're still out of line. Regulations state you're supposed to represent a client." He dunked a doughnut in his coffee and took a bite of half of it.

"Be happy, friend. I'm giving you no trouble, Fm paying for the snack and staying out of your way. You should be glad citizens take an active interest in affairs like this. Besides, you haven't got the time."

"So why the photos?"

"You still have routine jobs going. Pass them along to the plainclothes boys. Maybe you got bigger things on your mind, but this is still an open murder."

"For you it's not open."

"I'm just throwing back the foul balls."

"Mike," he said, "you're full of shit. Sometimes I wish I had never known you."

"You worry too much, friend."

"Maybe you should. The days are going by fast."

I took a close look at his face. The lines were deeper now, his eyes a lined red, and when he spoke it was almost without moving his lips. Somehow he couldn't focus on me, seeming to look past me when he spoke. "Our Soviet friends have come up with another piece of information. When we wouldn't let them out of the country they really began digging. That strain of bacteria the former regime packaged and sent here was more virulent than even they suspected. If it's loose there's no hope of containing it, none at all. The lads at Fort Detrick confirmed it and if we don't get a break pretty damn quick it's all over, Mike, all over."

"That doesn't sound like police information."

"Crane broke down when he got the news. I was there when he went hysterical and blew it."

"How many others know this?" I asked him.

"You're the eleventh." He finished the doughnut and sipped at his coffee. "Kind of funny. We sit here like nothing's happening at all. We want a pickpocket in a red vest, I watch the teletype to see how they're doing in Buffalo with those contract hoods, everybody else is plugging through the daily grind and in a few days we'll all be part of the air pollution until nature figures a way out of it in a couple million years."

"Man, you're a happy guy today."

Pat put the cup down and finally got his eyes fixed on mine. "Mike," he said, "I'm beginning to figure you out."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. You're crazy. Something's missing in your head. Right now I could lay odds that all you're thinking about is a dame."

"You'd lose," I said. I picked up the tab and stood up. "I'm thinking about two of them."

Pat shook his head disgustedly again. "Naked?"

"Naturally," I said.

CHAPTER 9

Something had happened to the Broadway grapevine. Nobody had seen Velda and although a half-dozen of the regular crowd were able to spot the red-vested Beaver by his photograph, nobody had seen him either. Woody Bal-linger, Carl and Sammy were in the nothing pocket too and I was beginning to get those funny little looks like it was "Watch out, Mike, you’re tangling with the trouble crowd now'' time. Not that it was a new experience, but they were beginning to watch and wait, hoping to be there when the action started.

Some people liked car races. You could see the big kill happen there too. Others took it where they could find it, and now they were beginning to get a blood smell and watched the field leaders to see who was going to crowd who in the turn and wind up in pieces along the walls of Manhattan. By noon the sunny day had turned overcast again, the smog reaching down with choking little fingers, and I had reached Lexington Avenue where I had another cup of coffee in a side-street deli just to get out of it.

The counterman used to work for Woody and he couldn't give me a lead at all. It was nearly my last straw until I remembered how close I was to that crazy pad in the new building just a few blocks away, and finished the coffee and picked up a pack of butts at the cashier's desk while I paid my bill. There was somebody else who knew the people I was looking for.

The doorman flipped a fingertip to his cap and said, "Afternoon, sir."

"Your partner still courting?"

"He'll never learn. Last night he got engaged. I do double shifts and don't get any sleep, but I'm sure making the bucks. Just wait until he starts buying furniture."

"Miss Anders in?"

"Sure. Different girl, that. Something happened to her. Real bright-eyed now. I think maybe she dumped that

clown she was going with. Playboy, no good at all. Too much money. Last night she got in at ten, and alone. You want me to call up, officer?"

I grinned at him, wishing Pat could have been here. He would have turned inside out. To Pat I was always the other side of the fence, with my face always the prime type to get picked up in a general dragnet.

"Don't bother," I said. I returned his casual wave and walked to the elevator.

Heidi Anders saw me through the peephole and snapped off the double locks on the door. It opened a scant three inches on the chain and that pert face with the tousled ash-blonde hair and full-lipped mouth was peering at me with a disguised smile and I said, 'Trick or treat?"

The door closed and I heard the chain come off. When it opened again her head was tilted in a funny smile, the upslanted eyes laughing a me. "Trick," she said. Then added, "But if you come in, it'll be a treat."

"I'll come in."

She let the door open all the way and I walked inside. I was treated. Heidi Anders was standing there bare-ass naked, prettier than any centerfold picture in a girlie magazine and no matter how lovely those uniquely rounded breasts were, or how all that ash-blonde hair contrasted, all I could see was that crazy navel with the eyelashes painted around it like an oversexed Cyclops.

"I just got up," she said.

"Don't you ever take your makeup off?"

"It's part of my personality," she told me. "Most men have an immediate reaction." She closed and locked the door behind me. "I wish you had."

"I want to wink at it."

"At least that's different." She smiled and walked down the hall, not bothering to take my hat this time. That wild gait was still there, but naked it had a totally new sway. I let her get all the way into the living room before I moved. Then I went in slowly, watching all the corners just to be sure, glad to have been in enough games not to get wiped out at the first charge of the opposition.

She didn't know it, but my hand was hooked over my belt, the palm comfortable against the butt of the .45. Too many times naked women and death walked side by side.

Heidi had thrown back the draperies and stood there in the cold gray light that brought out the tan marks on the flesh, then turned around slowly to face me. "Do I look different, Mike?"

The navel still watched me. Crazy eye. Blind, but crazy and watching. The lashes were extra long.

"Different," I said.

"You did it. You yelled at me. Mike ... you were pretty rough."

"A broad like you shouldn't get hooked on H. There's too much going for you." I picked a cigarette out of my deck and lit it up. "Sorry about yelling at you."

"It wasn't that." She picked up something filmy from the chair and drew it through her hands. "I saw your face when I turned you off. I was lying there all ready and waiting and I turned you off. That never happened to me before. I wanted to get laid and I was right there waiting for you and I turned you off. You yelled. I felt like ... you know what I felt like?"

I nodded. "No retractions, kid."

"Good. We did well, the doctor and I."

"How about Woody Ballinger's goons?"

For a second I thought I had played it wrong, then she kinked her lips in a tiny smile and her eyes lit up again. "I asked around," she said. "You were right, you know."

I reached up and slipped my hat off casually, and held it in front of me. "Will you get dressed?"

I got that grin again. "I asked around about more than Woody Ballinger." Once more I got that provocative, tilt-headed glance. "I didn't think you were so sensitive." Then she sway-walked over to me and held out her hand. "Can I take your hat?"

"Don't be smart-ass," I said. "Just make me a drink."

"They were right." She stepped back and looked at me with feigned wide-eyed amazement. "They were really right."

But she made the drinks, a long cooler for me and a short one for herself, and sat down opposite me in all that colorful nudity and crossed her legs like she was at a tea party in a Pucci dress and let me have the full impact of that little eye in her navel that never blinked and just looked at me with an unrelenting stare.

"Uncomfortable?" she asked flippantly.

But age has its benefits and experience its knowledge. I tossed my hat on the couch and grinned at her. "Nope."

Her smile turned into a mock frown. "Damn, I hate you older men. You have too much control. How do you do it?"

"Science, kitten."

"Impossible."

"See for yourself."

"I do but I don't believe it. How can I turn you on again?"

"By quitting the damn hippie talk and answering some questions."

Heidi raised her glass and tasted it, her eyes on mine. "One favor deserves another."

"Where's Carl and Sammy? And Woody?"

Her glass stopped just short of her mouth. "What?"

"You heard me."

"But ..."

"I told you to pass the word along."

"Mike ... I told them what you said."

"No reaction? No nothing? You aren't the type of broad they pick up at a bar and not one they leave alone. Those damn slobs can buy tail or crook a finger and it'll come running out of their stables for them. You're a class broad and for you they'll give an excuse. They were both on the make the other night and the way they were pushing they wouldn't just bust out of a date. Where are they, Heidi?"

Her fingers were stiff around the glass and she had tucked her lower lip between her teeth, looking at me intently. "Mike ..."

"Sammy ... he ... well, he wanted to see me again and we, well, we sort of made a date, but he called and said it would have to wait."

"Why, honey? Girls don't let a guy off the hook that easily."

"Woody wanted him to ... do something. He couldn't cancel it."

"Has he called again?"

She nodded, glanced at her drink, then put it down. "Today. An hour ago, I guess."

"Where was he?"

"He didn't say. All he told me was that he'd see me tonight. His job would be done then."

"Where'd he call from?"

"I don't know."

"Damn it, think!"

"Mike ..."

"Look," I told her. "Remember back. Was he alone? Quiet?"

"No," she said abruptly. "It was noisy, wherever he was. I could hear the tooting."

"Tooting?"

"Well, it was like two toots, then while we were talking, three toots."

"What the hell is a toot?" I asked her.

"A toot! You never heard a toot? A horn toot. No, it was a whistle toot. Oh, balls, I don't know what was tooting. It just tooted. Two, then three."

"Heidi ..."

"I'm not drunk and I'm not high, damn it, Mike . .."

"Sorry." I let a little grin seep out. How the hell can you get sore at a naked dame four feet away who was so excited she even forgot and uncrossed her legs like she had a dress on. "He say when he was going to see you?"

"Just tonight." She saw the look on my face and frowned too. "If it helps ... he said he'd call me today sometime to let me know when."

"There are a lot of hours in the day, kid."

"Well, I got mad and said I'd be gone all afternoon and if he wanted to call me it had better be before noon."

I looked at my watch. Noon was an hour away. And in an hour anything could happen. "Let's wait," I said.

Heidi grinned and picked up her drink again. The eye in her navel seemed to half close in its own kind of smile and never stopped watching me. She got up with studied ease, little muscles rippling down her thighs, her breasts taut and pointed and came across the few feet that separated us. Very gently she sat down on my lap.

"Hurt?"

"No," I said.

"Ummmm." Heidi finished the drink and tossed the empty glass on the sofa, then turned around, her hand behind my neck. "I really don't want to see Sammy anyway, Mike."

"Do it for me."

"I owe you more than that."

She squirmed and the glass almost fell out of my hand. She was all sleek and sweet smells and the heat from her body emanated in all directions like some wild magnetic force. Her hand found mine and pressed it against her stomach and all the concerted thought I had had for what was happening outside started to drift away like smoke in an updraft and her mouth kept coming closer and closer, the lips rich and red and wet.

But the phone rang, that damn, screaming, monstrous necessity with the insistent voice that demanded to be answered.

I had to push her to her feet, put her hand on the receiver and wait another second until the shock of the change registered sadly in her eyes.

"Get it," I said.

She picked uh the phone, my ear close to hers at the receiver. "Hello?"

The voice was partly hoarse, a muffled voice trying to be heard over some background noise. "Heidi?" Something rumbled and I heard three short faraway sounds and knew it was what she had called toots.

"Hello ... Sammy?" she asked.

Then there was another voice that said, "You crazy!" and the connection was chopped off abruptly.

Heidi let the phone drop back into its cradle, her face puzzled. "It was him."

"Somebody didn't want him making a call," I said.

"I heard those toots again."

"I know. They're blasting warnings around construction sites. Three of them was the all-clear signal."

"Mike ..."

I reached for my hat, feeling the skin tight around my jaws. "He won't be calling back, Heidi. Not right now."

Someplace things were coming to a head and here I was fiddling around with a naked doll, letting her wipe things right out of my mind. I picked up the phone, dialed my office number and triggered my recording gimmick. One call was from a West Coast agency wanting me to handle some Eastern details for them, the other was from a local lawyer who needed a deposition from me, and the third was from William Dorn who wanted me to call him as soon as possible. I let the tape roll, but there was nothing from Velda or anybody else. I broke the connection, waited a second, then dialed Dorn's office. His secretary told me that he had been trying to reach me, but had gone to a meeting in his apartment thirty minutes ago and I should try him there. She gave me the number and his address and hung up. When I dialed his place the phone was busy, so I gave it another minute and tried again. It was still busy. I said to hell with it, hung up and slapped my hat on.

Heidi had made herself another drink, but none for me. She knew it was over now. I said, "Tough, kitten. It might have been fun."

She took my hand and walked the length of the corridor, then turned and stood on her toes, all naked and beautiful, and reached for my mouth with hers. I let my hands play over her gently, my fingers aching with remorse because there wasn't time to do all the things I wanted to do with her.

Gently she took her mouth away and smiled. "Another day, Mike?"

"Another day, Heidi. You're worth it now."

"I think it will be something special then." My fingers squeezed her shoulder easily. "Dump those bums of Woody's."

"For you, Mike, anything." She stepped back two paces, an impish grin teasing her mouth, and did something with her stomach muscles.

That nutty eye that was her navel actually winked at me.

The doorman in the towering building on Park Avenue was an old pro heavyweight decked out in a blue uniform trimmed with gold braid that was too tight across his shoulders and his face was enough to scare off anybody who thought they could cross those sacred portals without going through the elaborate screening process that was part of the high rent program.

He half-stepped to intercept me when I came through the glass doors and I said, "Hi, Spud. Do I say hello or salute?"

Spud Henry squinted at me once, then stepped back with a grin that made his face uglier but friendlier and held out a massive paw to grip mine in a crushing handshake. "Mike, you old S.O.B.! How the hell are you?"

"Back to normal when you let go my hand." I laughed at him. "What're you doing here? I thought you had saved your money."

"Hell, man, I sure did, but try retiring around that old lady of mine. She drives me bats. All the time wants me to do somethin' that don't need doin'. Take the garbage out. What garbage out? Who cares, take it out. Paint the bathroom. I just painted the bathroom. The color stinks. Get those kids outa the back yard. Whatta ya mean, get 'em out, they're our kids. Man, don't never get married. It was easier fightin' in the ring."

"How many kids you got, Spud?"

"Twelve."

"How old's the youngest?"

"Two months. Why?"

"Some fighting you do."

Spud gave me a sheepish grin and shrugged. "Well hell, Mike, ya gotta take a rest between rounds, don't ya?" He paused and cocked his head. "What you doin' up this way? I thought you was a side-street type."

"I have to see William Dorn. He in?"

"Sure. Got here a little while ago. He got a crowd up there. Some kind of party?"

"Beats me. What's his apartment?"

"Twenty-two, the east terrace. Real fancy place. Since when you goin' with the swells?"

"Come on, Spud, I got a little class."

"That's big class up there, Mikey boy. Man, what loot, but nice people. Big tippers, always polite, even to me. Just nice people. When the last kid was born he gimme a hundred bucks. One bill with a fat one-zero-zero on it and it was like the days back in the Garden when they used to pay off in brand-new century notes. You want me to announce you?"

"Never mind. He called me. I didn't call him."

"Take that back elevator. It's express. Good to see you, Mike."

"Same here. Tell the missus hello."

I got off at the twenty-second floor into an elaborate gold-scrolled and marble-ornamented vestibule that reeked of wealth only a few ever got to know, turned east to a pair of massive mahogany doors inlaid with intricate carvings and set off with thick polished brass fixtures. I located the tiny bell button set into the frame, pushed it and waited. No sound penetrated through the doors or walls, nothing came up from the street and I didn't hear anything ring. I was about to touch it again when bolts clicked and the door opened and William Dorn stood there, a drink in one hand and a sheaf of papers in the other.

His surprise was brief, then he pulled the door open and said, "Mike . . . good to see you. Come in. I didn't know you were on the way up."

I didn't want to get Spud in a jam so I said, "I slipped by the doorman while he was busy. Sneaky habit I can't get out of."

Dorn laughed and closed the door. From the other room a subdued murmur of voices blended into a monotonous hum. I could see the backs and shoulders of a dozen men in quiet conversation and when one looked around I spotted Teddy Finlay with Josef Kudak beside him and a few feet away the six-foot-six beanpole from the Ukraine who made all those anti-U.S. speeches in the United Nations last month. This time they all seemed to be pounding at one nail with no disagreement for a change.

"Didn't mean to break in on your party," I said.

"Business meeting," Dorn told me. "Glad you could come. Let's go into the library where we can talk. Care for a drink?."

"No thanks."

He folded the papers in his hand and stuffed them in his pocket. "This way."

The library was another example of class and money. It was there in rare first editions and original oils, genuine Sheraton furniture giving obeisance to a great Louis XIV desk at one end of the room that nestled there like a throne.

"You ever read all those books?" I asked Dorn.

"Most of them." He waved me to a chair. Before I got comfortable he asked, "What happened to Renée?"

"She got creased by a bullet."

Dorn nearly dropped his drink. His mouth pulled tight and I saw his shoulders stiffen. "She didn't tell me ..."

"Don't worry, she's okay."

"What happened?"

"Nothing I'm going to talk about right now. Why?"

"She ... well, she's important to me, damn it. Right now we have a big expansion move on and ..." He looked at me, shook his head and glanced down at his hands that were clasped together too tightly. Finally he looked up. "It might be better if you said what you were thinking, Mike. I'm a callous person so wrapped up in business and finance that nothing else matters. Nothing is expected to interfere with those vital affairs."

"Don't sweat it, William. She'll be okay."

"Is she ..."

"Just a crease. She was real lucky. I'm surprised she didn't tell you about it."

"Renée can keep a confidence, even from me. I knew she was with you, but it was unlike her to ..."

"It was justified. Hell, doesn't she ever get sick?"

"Never."

"A dame got to get her period once in a while. That's usually a good excuse."

"Not with Renée. She treats ... commerce, let's say, almost as I do. You're the first one she ever took an active interest in."

"You don't know what you're missing," I said.

For a second a flash of annoyance creased his eyes, then disappeared into a wry smile. "You may be right. I've heard that before." He picked up a pencil and tapped it against the polished wood of the desk. "Mike ... do me a favor."

I nodded.

"Check on her. She won't answer the phone and I'd rather not bother her after what you just told me."

"Be glad to."

"And Mike ..."

"If it can be avoided, don't expose her to ... well, anything more in your line. I'd appreciate that."

"I didn't expose anybody. It just happened. She wanted to see how we lived on the other side of the tracks. I could have told her it could be just as rough where she came from too because I've been on the other side of the bridge myself. Nobody ever seems to learn anything, do they?"

The seconds ticked by while he looked at me, finally nodding agreement. "And you, Mike. Do you ever learn?"

"Always something new," I said. I got up and took a last look at all the money that surrounded me. "I'll check in on Renée for you. She'll be fine, so quit worrying."

Dorn held out his hand and I took it. "Sorry you couldn't get me at the office. I didn't mean for you to go out of your way. I guess it really wasn't that important after all."

"No trouble," I said.

He walked me to the door and behind me the hum of voices had grown louder. One was edgy and hoarse, but I recognized it as Crane's from the State Department. The one he was talking to said, "Nyet, nyet!" then subsided while Crane finished talking. I said "So long" to Dorn at the door, took the elevator back down again and looked for Spud. He was gone, and a tall kid with a sad face had replaced him. He had his hair tucked under the back of his visored cap and didn't look happy about it. They probably even made him shave off his beard. He couldn't have run off a Bowery panhandler.

Rain. Someday they'd cover New York like the Astrodome and you wouldn't have to worry about it. The computers had predicted partly cloudy and had sat back in their oiled compartments with all the whirring and clacking, giving off with mechanical laughter at the idiots who had believed their programming. The smart one knew the city. Never predict New York. Never try to outthink it. The damn octopus could even control the weather and when it wanted everybody to be miserable, everybody was miserable.

I looked up at the tops of the buildings and watched the gray blanket of wet sifting down to slick the streets and fog the windows, wondering why the hell I didn't get out like Hy Gardner did. A cab pulled up and disgorged a fat little man who threw a bill at the driver and trotted across the sidewalk to the protection of the building entrance and

before the elderly couple frantically waving at the cabbie from the corner could make the run, I hopped in and closed the door. The driver saw my face in the rearview mirror and didn't try for the Sweetest Cabbie of the Year award. I gave him Renée's address and sat back while he pulled out into the traffic and U-turned at the corner to head north.

The ends. Why the hell don't they meet? It wasn't all that complicated, just a simple rundown of a lousy pickpocket who lost his haul to an honest guy who tried to keep him straight and killed to get it back. A lousy pickpocket who had hit the wrong pockets and now there were others looking for him too, but why? What did Woody Ballinger have to lose? Heidi Anders had a compact with her life wrapped up in white powder in a false bottom. She would have done anything for a single pop of the junk and damn near did until I creamed her out. Now it was Woody trying to beat me to Beaver.

The driver's radio blared out another of those special bulletins the networks loved to issue. In Buffalo, New York the police had shot and killed Tom-Tom Schneider's killers. The hostages were unharmed. Tomorrow the papers and TV would carry the full account and Pat Chambers could count on another day free of panic. But where the hell was Velda? Where was that lousy dip Beaver in the red vest and where were Woody Ballinger and his boys? The rain splattered against the windows and the radio went back to Dow-Jones averages and the cab pulled into the curb. I peeled off a five from my roll and handed it through the window to the driver.

The little patch on her head around the shaved area of her scalp was nearly unnoticeable, her hair covering it with the usual feminine vanity. I grinned at her, lying there under the covers and she smiled back, her eyes twinkling, "I know," she said, "under the covers, the nightgown . . . I'm stark naked."

"Lovely," I said.

"X-ray eyes?"

"Absolutely. I walk down Fifth Avenue and all those broads in their fancy clothes think they're hiding something? Hell, I look right through them and all I see is skin and hair and toenails that need cutting. Everybody's naked, sugar."

"Am I naked?"

"My X-ray eyes are out of order."

Renée looked at me and smiled, then pushed the covers down to her midriff, then all the way to her feet with a quick flip of her hand. Without taking her eyes off mine, she tugged at the nightgown, then slipped it over her head and tossed it to the floor.

"Now you'e naked," I said.

"You don't sound excited."

"I'm an old dog, kid. I had this happen before lunch." I lit up a butt and took a deep drag, then let the smoke blow across the bed.

"I could kill you."

"You are."

"How can you resist me?"

"It isn't easy. Luckily, you're a sick woman."

"Horse manure," Renée said. "Tell me how pretty I am."

I looked at her lying there. "You look like a perfect biological specimen. Everything's in the right place, the titties are pointing in the right direction, but a little saggy because you're flat out like that. The snatch is cute, very decorous, but for a connoisseur like me, maybe a little bushy. A touch with a pair of scissors might sharpen up the angles and trim it down to size...."

"Oh, you duty ..."

"Ah-ah ... you're a sick woman, remember?" I held up my hand to stop her. "But you look kissable and parts of you are wet and inviting and if I didn't have all the moral turpitude I was born with, do you know what I'd do?"

"I wish you'd just screw me and shut up."

"You got no class, Renée."

"You got no dick, Mike Hammer."

"Want references?" I asked her. "How's the head?"

She touched her scalp with her fingertips and winced. "Sore, but not that sore. I've been deliberately taking advantage of my ... condition, and staying bedridden."

"I know. And your boss is up in the air over your disappearance. It seems that he can't get along without you. I'm here on a rescue mission to get you back to work."

Her mouth formed a fake pout. "I thought you just wanted to see me."

"Right now I'm seeing all of you there is to see."

"You've missed the other side."

"Leave something to the imagination, will you? Besides, suppose that maid of your walks in here?"

"Oh, she'll understand."

I shook my head and laughed. Dames. "Get up and get

dressed. If you hustle I'll have a coffee with you while I use your phone."

Renée grimaced and tossed a pillow at me. "Your casual treatment is making me feel married, you big slob. How can you resist me like this?"

"It isn't easy at all, sugar. If I had the time I'd tear you apart."

"Nothing but promises."

I threw the pillow back at her and went back to the living room. The chubby little maid with the odd accent had her coat on and asked me to tell Miss Talmage she was leaving for the afternoon, but would be back around five to prepare supper. If she was needed, she could be reached at her sister's. Miss Tahnage had the number.

When she left I picked up the phone and called Henaghan at the New York City Department of Public Works. His second secretary found him and put him through.

"Hey, Mike," he yelled. "What's new?"

"Need some information, Henny."

"Well, this is a public department."

"See if you can check and find out what construction units have been issued permits for blasting inside the city limits. Can do?"

There was a small silence and Henaghan said, "Aw, Mike, have you taken a look around lately? This town is like a beehive. They're putting up stuff all over the place."

"Yeah, but they only blast during the ground operation. It shouldn't be all that difficult."

"Look, I'll give you a number ..."

"No dice. I'll get handed from file clerks to petty officials who'll want explanations and authorizations and still come up with year-old information. I could do better touring the city in a taxi taking notes and I haven't got that much time. You do it for me."

"Mike ..." Henny sounded harried.

"Or do you forget me having to run up to Albany to get you out of the can last summer? Or that time in Miami when ..."

"Okay, okay. Don't remind me. The memories are too painful. Where are you?"

I gave him the phone number.

"Stay there. It may take a little while, but I'll expedite things."

From the bedroom I heard the shower cut off and clothes hangers rattling in a closet. I stared absently at the rain slashing against the window and picked up the phone

again, dialed my office number and activated the tape recorder.

And Velda had finally called in. Her voice was crisp and hurried, no words wasted at all. She said, "Suspect located at Anton Virelli's area and running fast. Ballinger’s right behind him with his men but haven't pinpointed his location. If you haven't hit it yet, suspect goes by name of Beaver and knows he's being tracked. He's been working his way uptown and has something on his mind, probably a safe place to hide out. He should be making a move soon if he sticks to his timetable. My guess is he'll come out of the west end of the block so I'm going to take a chance and cover the Broadway side. Ill call back as soon as he shows."

That was the end of the message and I was about to hang up when another click signaled a further message and a voice said, "Uh, Mike? Like this is you or a machine. Mike?" There was a pause, then, "So you're automated. Everything's gone automated." I felt like telling that silly Caesar Mario Tulley to hurry up and get with it, but you don't rush the new generation. "You know how you was asking about that guy in the red vest? So I split a joint with an old friend and we get to talking and I asked and sure enough, he knows a guy who knows him. I'm going to see him later, so if you get down this way I'll be working around the Winter Garden. Maybe I'll have something for you. Uh ... how the hell do you say so long to a machine anyway?" He mumbled something else and the connection was ended.

Damn, it was closing in fast. The ends were beginning to meet, but they were all tied up inside a tape recorder and I had to wait for the spool to roll. But Velda had narrowed it down somewhat. Anton Virelli was a bookie who operated from a storefront on Ninety-second Street just off Broadway. At least now I knew what area to concentrate on. I called Pat and rousted him out of bed at home. He hadn't had much sleep, but he softened the growl in his voice and listened when I gave him the information. He thought he could tap a couple of plain-clothesmen to probe the area for Beaver and he could get a warrant out for Woody and his boys that might slow them down long enough for us to reach our man first. I thanked him and hung up,

A lovely voice behind me said, "Beaver. What an odd name. The people you know."

I turned around and Renée was standing there, fresh from the shower, her hair piled on top of her head,

wrapped in a heavy white terry-cloth robe belted tightly enough to make her a living hourglass. She smelled of summery fragrances and bath oils and she pirouetted gracefully so I could see all of her, then wrinkled her nose at me, brought in a tray with a coffee pot and two cups and sat down.

"Great," she said. "Naked, I get no reaction. Completely covered in an old robe you simper like a kid. What's with you men?"

I took the coffee she handed me. "We like the mystery better."

"Liar. Business is more important to you. What have you been so busy about and who is Beaver? Another one of your friends who shoot at people?"

"I never met the guy."

She gave me a hurt look. "All right, you don't have to tell me anything. But don't blame me for being curious, please. After all, I did get shot and it was a new experience, one that I wouldn't like to repeat, and I thought some kind of explanation might be in order."

Wind from the river rattled the window and the rain tried to claw its way in. I looked at her and grinned. Hell, she was entitled. I fished in my pocket and took out the three photos of Beaver, handing her one. I let her look at it while I started from the beginning and brought her up to date. But it was really me I was talking to, trying to jell the details in my mind, picking out the strange little flaws and attempting to force in things that didn't belong or should have.

She handed the picture back and I stuck it in my pocket.

The phone still sat there, impassive and unconcerned with it all.

The muscles were tight across my back and my hands were knotted into balls of rage.

"Mike ..." she came over to me and unbuttoned my jacket, then slipped it off, her hands kneading the back of my neck. I closed my eyes and felt the tension begin to melt under the gentle pressure of her fingers. She tugged the shoulder harness off then and let the .45 drop to the floor, then it was my tie and my shirt, her hands working their way across my chest and arms. Her palms pushed me back on the couch and her fingers worked at my belt and I just let her go ahead until she was done. I felt her stand up, heard the soft whisper of cloth and let my eyes slit open a bare fraction and watched her standing there warmly nude and smiling. "Don't move," she said.

I closed my eyes again, wiping out all thought for the minute she was gone, then heard her come in and opened them again. She threw a pillow on the floor beside the couch, knelt down with her arms outstretched and the vibrator she had attached to her hand started to pulsate crazily as she started at my neck and began a slow, deliberate journey into other areas.

Time went by in slow, lazy circles, then the erotic tingling of the vibrator stopped and a more intense sensation replaced it until time erupted into an explosive spiral that diminished out of sight and left me gasping for breath.

On the table the phone had come to life.

I opened my eyes and Renée said, "Good?"

"Beautiful."

I reached over and picked up the receiver.

Henaghan told me I probably could have done better with the taxi ride, but came up with five places conducting blasting operations at the moment. I wrote them all down, thanked him and hung up, looking at the list in my hand.

Only one place was above Fifty-Second Street, an area off Columbus Avenue at One Hundred-tenth Street. And that wasn't anywhere near Anton Virelli's territory at all. If Velda was holding down a stakeout around Ninety-second and Broadway, she was doing it alone. Somehow Beaver had cut loose earlier and with more manpower to cover the exits, Woody and his boys had caught his move and had him cornered in another location.

In a way it was a relief to me. She was out of the action now and I wanted to keep it that way. If Velda didn't tumble to the fact that Beaver was gone I could move in alone without sweating about her catching a slug. I looked at the paper again and swore softly. An area, that's all it was. A big flat area with hundreds of holes to crawl into. Those blasting signals were clear, but distant, tonal enough to penetrate phone booth walls or old apartments. There wasn't any chance of tracking down every telephone in the neighborhood at all. What I needed was an address. Beaver was heading for one definite spot, that was sure. One place where he figured he'd be safe. He was enough of an old hand to stay out of the hands of other pros so far and he'd be playing it smart and cagy.

Caesar Mario Tulley was going to get me that address.

Renée had slipped back into her robe and was sitting on the end of the couch, watching me with a small, wistful smile. "I hate telephones," she said.

"Things are beginning to move."

"I know. You came, now you have to go."

"Your turn the next time," I said.

"It's all right, Mike. Some things are more important than others." She saw me frowning, not knowing how to answer her, and nodded. "Really, I understand," she added.

"Beaver's someplace around Columbus and a Hundred-tenth Street, Woody's boys have him hemmed in. He's probably pinned down temporarily, but not located yet. I want first crack at that bastard."

"You know where he is?"

"No, but somebody else might have the answer."

"Mike ..." Renée's face went soft and worried. "Please be careful. I would like to see you again."

"You will."

"This wild business of yours ... well, I guess I've been in a pretty distant world." She licked her lips and shook her head in disbelief. "Dead people ... I've been shot ..." her eyes met mine then, "... and you, Mike."

"Things aren't all that bad," I said.

She tried to smile, but it was forced. I suddenly felt pretty silly standing there without any clothes on. She knew what I was feeling, faked a grin, then stood up and frowned. Her hand shot out to the table to support herself.

"You all right?" I asked her.

She touched the side of her head, blinked, then nodded, taking a deep breath. "Just my head. I still can't move too quickly. I get dizzy when I do." Her smile came back, this time with natural ease. "Why don't you go inside and get dressed? I'm going to call my maid back. There are times when I just don't like to be left alone."

I picked up my clothes, somehow feeling guilty, and went into the bedroom. I showered quickly, climbed into my clothes, snugged the .45 down in its sling and went back into the living room.

For a minute I thought she wasn't there, then I saw a small upturned palm sticking out from behind the chair and half ran to where she was lying. Her eyes were partially slitted open and a trickle of blood was oozing down from under the pad on her scalp.

I got my hands under her arms and lifted her to the couch, stretching her out with a pillow under her feet. A couple of ice-cold wet towels finally brought a flicker to her eyes and she moaned softly. "What the hell happened, kid?"

She let her eyelids close, then open. "I was ... calling Maria . .. and I fainted." I looked at the compress on her head. One end had come loose from where it had evidently hit something. She winced and pushed my hand away.

"You want me to get a doctor?"

"No ... I'll be all right. Please ... don't leave until Maria gets here."

"Sure, kid. How do you feel?"

"Awful ... headache."

Luckily, Maria's sister only worked three blocks away and she was there in ten minutes. She helped me get Renée into bed, but kept looking at me suspiciously as though she didn't believe what really had happened. She made me leave while she got a nightgown on her, then came bustling back into the living room, frowning. Just in time I kicked the vibrator under the couch before she saw it. "You stay. I'm going to the drugstore for something to make her sleep."

I got that guilty feeling again and just nodded.

From the bedroom I heard Renée call my name and I walked in and took her hand. There was a fresh bandage in place and the blood had been wiped from her hair. "Mike .. I'm sorry."

"Forget it."

"Go do what you have to do," she said softly.

I looked at my watch. It was still early. Caesar liked to work the later crowds; he looked a little more pitiful under the night lights. "I got time," I told her.

It was thirty minutes before Maria got back with a plastic bottle of capsules, and another thirty before the drowsiness came over Renée's eyes. Just before they closed, she said, "It was nice, wasn't it, Mike?"

"Crazy, but beautiful," I answered.

Maria gave me another of those stern looks and nodded toward the door. "Now you go."

And I went.

I called William Dorn's apartment from the first open bar I came to. A maid answered and said Mr. Dorn was in a business conference and couldn't be disturbed at the moment.

"Give him a message for me, please."

"Certainly, sir."

"Tell him Miss Talmage suffered a slight relapse and has been given a sedative, but there's nothing to worry about."

"Oh ... then she won't be at the meeting this evening?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Yes, thank you, Doctor. Is there anything Mr. Dorn can do?"

"Nothing at all."

"Very well, Doctor, and thank you again."

I hung up and grunted. I didn't think I sounded like a doctor at all.

The rain was coming down harder and I turned up my collar against it. Somewhere Beaver was hiding and Woody and his boys were waiting.

It was going to be a trouble night.

CHAPTER 10

They could only hold the story back just so long. When more than one person knows, there is no secret. The final edition of the evening paper carried the opener that was the crack in the whole faulty scheme of security. An unmentioned source had leaked the information that the dead guy in the subway station had died of a highly contagious disease and upon further investigation nothing could be learned from officialdom about the matter. There were vigorous denials, but no one offered other explanation. The Newark paper went a little further, an editorial demanding an answer over a body-shot of the corpse.

So far nobody had put the obvious pieces in place . . . the sudden show of harmony between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., the burst of activity from the armed forces reservists and the presence of the Fort Detrick C.B. warfare teams. But it was coming. No amount of security was going to stop people with imagination from thinking along certain lines, then proving out their theories. Tomorrow a few more questions would be asked, then when no answers were forthcoming the dam would burst and every end of the news media would be jamming down the throat of bureaucracy. Tom-Tom Schneider was dead, his killers were dead. What other pieces of sensationalism could they dig up to bury the biggest news story of them all?

I walked up Broadway past the offices of WOBY-TV and wondered how Eddie Dandy was doing. On impulse, I turned in out of the wet, found the receptionist just going out for a coffee break and asked her.

Eddie Dandy had just come in an hour ago. He was in his office and wasn't to be disturbed. I thanked her, let her go for her coffee and took the elevator upstairs. I spotted the two guys by his door before they saw me, turned right instead of toward his office, rounded the corridor until I found an empty desk and picked up the phone and dialed Eddie's number.

His hello was tired and curt and I said, "Mike Hammer, Ed. How goes it?"

"Stinking, kid. Where are you?"

"Right down the hall. Can you break away from the watchdogs long enough to go to the John?"

"Yeah, sure, but look, buddy ... I'm strictly off limits. Anybody caught talking to me gets the same solitary confinement treatment."

"Balls."

"Man, they did it to me."

"I'm not you. Give me five minutes, then cut out."

The men's room was across the corridor, out of sight from the pair, and I went in without being seen. Nobody else was there, so I stepped into the end booth and closed the door. Five minutes later I heard the outside door hiss shut and walked out of the cubicle.

Eddie looked tired, but his eyes were bright and his mouth tight with constrained rage. "You look terrible," I said.

His eyes went toward the door. "Quiet. They're standing outside."

"How'd you shake loose? I thought they had you under wraps."

"A few nosy buddies of mine started poking around when I didn't show. The big wheels figured I'd be better off where I could be seen and answer monitored phone calls that could be chopped off fast if I started to squawk. Brother, when this is over asses are going to burn, and I mean burn."

"It isn't over yet," I reminded him.

His face turned gray and he seemed ten years older. "I was in on some high level discussion, Mike. You really know how bad it is?"

"Maybe I'm better off not knowing."

Eddie didn't even hear me. "There's no place to hide. Everybody would be running for cover, but there's no place to hide! They've isolated that damned disease and it's the worst thing they ever came up against. Once it gets started there's no stopping it, no vaccines, no natural barriers ... nothing. The damn stuff is so self-perpetuating it can even feed on itself after it's done feeding on everything else. Maybe a few guys will escape it for a while. The men in the Antarctic on Operation Deepfreeze will miss it because intense cold is the only thing that can stop it, but where will they be when the supply planes stop coming in?"

"Eddie ..."

"Hell, for years they talked about the atom bomb, the big boom that could wipe out the world. They should have talked about something else. At least that would have been quick. This makes nuclear fission look like a toy."

"There's still a chance."

"Not much, friend. Only one guy knew where those containers were planted and now he's dead."

I shrugged and looked at him. "So what's left to do?"

He finally broke a grin loose and waved his arms in mock disgust at me. "I wish I could think like you, Mike. No kidding, I really do. I'd go out, find a few broads and start banging away until it was all over. Me, I'm just going to sit and sweat and swear and worry until my time comes to check out, then maybe I'll cry a little, get drunk as hell and not have to fight a hangover."

"Pessimists are a pain in the butt," I said.

"You're absolutely nuts, Mike. How can you stand there and ..."

"I have my own business to take care of."

Eddie let out a grunt of disbelief. "Still Lippy Sullivan? Just like things weren't ..."

"It keeps me busy," I interrupted. I brought him up to date and by the time I was done he had almost forgotten about what was happening outside.

"Woody Ballinger's a rough boy to snag in a trap, Mike. He's been around. If that dip lifted something from his wallet and tried to shake him down for it, he was plain asking to be killed. You ought to let Woody do you a favor and knock him off."

"Not this guy. As long as we still have murder one punishment, I want him to go through the whole damn torturous process."

"So what can I do?"

I looked at my watch again. Time was going by fast. Outside, darkness had blacked out a wet city and the rain was still scratching against the windows. "Do me a favor," I said. "Get a call through to Pat Chambers for me and tell him to drop the area around Ninety-second and get his men over to Columbus and One Hundred-tenth. If they spot Velda, don't tip her to the move. Can you do that?"

"Sure. Those kind of calls I can make, so long as I stay off the Big Subject."

"They letting you broadcast?"

"Nothing live. I have to tape it first. They thought of everything."

I looked around the room and grinned. "Except this."

"Yeah. Who makes appointments in men's rooms except sexual deviates?"

"Don't let it get around. That might make more news."

Suddenly his eyes clouded. "Wait until tomorrow. They really got a beaut cooked up. The public will flip, Wall Street stocks will tumble and the news outlets will eat it up. There won't be room enough in any paper or broadcast for anything else."

"Oh? Why?"

"The President is scheduled to have a serious heart attack," he said.

Caesar Mario Tulley hadn't shown up and nobody had seen him around since earlier in the day. Little Joe had taken up his usual rainy night station in the back booth of Aspen's Snack Bar, peering out the window, sipping one coffee after another.

He shrugged when I asked him and said, "Don't worry about him, Mike. He'll show. A night like this, the kid makes out, all wet and sorry-looking. Wish I could make half of his take. The suckers feel worse over a long-haired kid in dirty clothes panhandling nickels than a guy like me with no legs."

"Quit complaining," I said- "You got it made."

Little Joe laughed and took another sip of his coffee. "If I didn't I wouldn't be inside. Man, I had my times out there on nights like this. It was good hustling, but hell on the health. You look for him over at Leo's?"

"They didn't see him."

"How about Tessie ... you know, Theresa Miller, that cute little whore from the Village. She never stops. If there's a live one on the street she'll tap him."

"She saw him this afternoon, not since," I said. "Look, he told me he was going to see a friend. You know who he hangs out with?"

"Come on, Mike. Them hippies all look alike to me. Sure, I seen him with a few creeps before, but nobody I could finger. Hell, I don't even want to get close to 'em. He works his side of the street, I work mine. Look, why don't you try Austin Towers? Tall, lanky guy with a scraggly goatee. Always hangs out by the paper kiosk the next block down. He sells them kids pot and if anybody would know, he would."

I told Little Joe thanks and flipped him a five-spot.

He grabbed it and grinned. "I never refuse money," he said.

Austin Towers didn't want to talk, but he thought it was a bust and didn't have time to dump the two paper bags he had in his raincoat pocket and gave me a resigned look and followed me into the semilit entrance of the closed shoe store.

"I want to talk to a lawyer," he said.

All I did was look at him.

For a second he stared back, then dropped his eyes nervously and a tic pulled at the corner of his mouth.

I still didn't say anything.

"Listen, Mister ..."

I let him see the .45 under my coat and his eyes widened and he tried to swallow the lump in his throat. His voice was a hoarse whisper when he said, "Man, look, look ... I'm just pushing grass. I ain't crowding nobody. I don't hold no hard stuff, not me. Man, it's all grass and who puts heat on grass? You guys want me out, I go pick another spot and ..."

"Where can I find Caesar?"

The relief that flooded his face swept over him like a wave. "Oh, man, he ain't nothin', that guy. He just ..."

"You see him today?"

"Sure, about four. He bought some stuff so he and a friend . . ."

He was talking fast and furiously, happy to know it wasn't him I was leaning on. I cut him short. "Where is he?"

"His pal got a pad on Forty-ninth. First floor over the grocery in the front."

"Show me."

"Mister . . ."

I didn't want him making any phone calls that would scare off my birds. "Show me," I said again.

And he showed me. A stinking, miserable two-room flop that reeked of garbage and marijuana smoke where Caesar Mario Tulley and a scruffy-looking jerk in shoulder-length hair were wrapped in Mexican scrapes, stretched out on the floor completely out of their skulls from the pot party.

I said, "Damn!" and the word seemed to drop in the room like soft thunder.

Austin Towers started edging toward the door. "Like I showed you, man, so now I gotta cut, y'know?"

"Get back here, freak."

"Man ..."

"Killing you would be a public service." My voice had such an edge to it that he scurried back like a scared rat, Ms head bobbing, eager to do anything that would keep him alive. "How long are they going to be out of it?"

"How would I know, man?"

I snapped my head around and stared at him, watching his breath catch in his chest. "You sold him the stuff. You know how much they had. Now check them to see what's left and make a guess and make a good one or I'll snap your damn arms in half."

He didn't argue about it. One look at my face and he knew I wasn't kidding. He bent over the pair, patted them down expertly, finding the remnants of the joints they had gone through, then stood up. "Used it all. Man, they tied one on, them two. Maybe three-four hours you might reach 'em if you're lucky."

This time I grinned, my lips pulled tight across my teeth. "Maybe if you're lucky it'll be one hour. One. You're in the business, boy, so you'd better know all the tricks. You start working on them and don't stop until they're awake. Don't bother trying to run out. You couldn't run fast or far enough that I couldn't nail you, so play it sweet and cool and you might get out of this in one piece. One hour, kid. Get them back and I don't give a damn how you do it."

"Man, you don't know this stuff!" His voice was nearly hysterical.

"No, but you do," I told him.

Velda had called in again. She was still on the stakeout but getting edgy because there had been no tip-off to Beaver's whereabouts. She was going to give it one more hour and then try another possible lead. That left me forty-six minutes to work ahead of her.

The taxi dropped me at the corner of Columbus Avenue and a Hundred-tenth Street and when I looked around the memories of the old days from when I was a kid came rushing back like an incoming tide. There were changes, but some things never change at all. The uneven rooftops still were castle battlements, each street a gateway in the great wall. The shufflers still shuffled, oblivious to the weather, urchin noises and cooking smells mingling in this vast stomach of a neighborhood. Plate glass windows protected with steel grilling, others unconcernedly dark and empty. The perennial tavern yellow-lit behind streaked glazing, the drugstore still sporting the huge red and purple urns, the insignia of its trade. On a good night the young bloods would be gathered on the corners, swapping lies and insults, protecting their turf. The hookers

would cruise for their Johns and the pushers would be clearing the path to an early grave for the users.

They didn't know me here, but they knew I wasn't an outsider. I was born part of the scene and still looked it and they didn't mind me asking things and didn't mind answering. I showed the photo of Beaver to the bartender in Steve's Bar and Grill. He didn't know the guy, but took it to the back room and showed it to somebody else. One guy thought he looked familiar, but that was all.

In the candy store, the old man shook his head and told me the man in the picture looked like somebody good to stay away from and tried to talk about the old days until I thanked him and went back outside.

A gypsy cab driver having coffee and a doughnut in his car scanned the photo and said he was pretty sure he had seen the guy around, but didn't know where or when. It was the eyes, he said. He always looked at people's eyes, and he remembered seeing him. He told me to look for Jackie, the redheaded whore who swore she was a prostitute because she wanted money to go to college, Jackie knew everybody.

Jackie knew Beaver, all right. He had bought her pitch about two weeks ago, gone to her apartment and parted with ten bucks for sexual services rendered, leaving her with a few welts and bruises. She had seen him once after that, getting into a taxi down the block. She knew he didn't live in the area, but assumed he dropped up to see a friend who did. No, she couldn't even guess at who it was. The neighborhood was full of itinerants and strange faces. She took my ten bucks and thought I was a nut for not getting the whole go for the money.

Now, at least, I was in the area.

There were three construction sites within two blocks. One was a partial demolition job and the other two were leveled. The last one had wiped out a row of three brownstones all the way to the corner and the cut went deep into the solid rock that was the bed of the city. The hole was spotted with small ponds of rainwater and a yellow backhoe tractor stood lonely and dead-looking in the middle of the gorge, its toothed claw ready to pounce into the granite, but dead, like a suddenly frozen prehistoric beast.

Silent air compressors and equipment shacks lined one side of the street, abutted on either end by battered dump trucks. A square patch of dim light outlined the window of the watchman's stubby trailer and from behind the locked door I could hear Spanish music working toward a

finale of marimbas and bongo drums before the announcer came on to introduce the next number.

I knocked on the door and it opened to a toothy grin and a stale beer smell and the young-old guy standing there said, "Come in, come in. Don't stand in the rain."

"Thanks." I stepped inside while he turned down the radio.

"Not much of a place," he said, "but I like it."

"Why not?"

"Sure, why not? It's a living. I got my own house and nobody to bitch at me. Pretty damn noisy in the daytime, then I got so I could sleep through anything. Maybe that's why they keep me on. Me, I can stay awake all night and sleep daytimes like they want. Don't get much company, though. Now, what can I do for you?"

I showed him the picture of Beaver and let him study it. "Ever see that man?"

He looked at it intently, then handed it back. "Can't say. Daytimes I sleep, y'know. After a while them damn compressors get to be like music and they put me right to sleep. Know something? I got so's I can't sleep without "em going."

"You're sure?" I asked.

He nodded. "Don't remember him. We've been here a month already and I don't remember him. Know most everybody else, though. Especially the kids. The ones who like to climb all over things."

I was about to leave when I turned around and looked at him. "The crew work in the rain?"

"Hell no! They finished up right after it started and shut everything down. Them boys got the life, they have. Busted up my sleep real awful. When the compressors went off, I woke up. Shit, feller, I haven't been able to get back to sleep since. Everything's just too damn quiet. Look, you want a beer?"

"No thanks."

"You a cop? Maybe for the company?"

"Private investigator."

"Oh, about that stuff the kids took last week. Hell, we got it all back before they could hock it."

"You been cooped up here all day?"

"Naw, I walked around some. Didn't leave the block, though. Just bought some grub and beer, walked around to stretch out. Never leave the place alone long, and never at night. That's why they keep me on."

I pulled up a folding chair with my toe and hooked my leg over it. "See any strange faces around at all?"

"Ah, you got bums comin' through all the time. They go from ..."

"Not bums. These wouldn't be bums."

"Who'd come down this way if they wasn't bums? Maybe some kids from ... hey ... yeah, wait a minute. When I went for the beer ... before it got dark."

"So?"

"I see this car go by twice. New job with two guys in the front seat. It stopped halfway up on the other side and one got out. Then the car went up further and parked. I really didn't pay no attention to it on accounta it was raining so hard. When I came back the car was gone."

"A late-model, black, four-door job?"

"Yeah, how'd you know?"

"It's parked up on Columbus outside the drugstore," I said. "You got a phone here?"

"Under the blankets on the cot there. I like to keep it muffled. Can't stand them damn bell noises."

Pat wasn't in, but I got hold of Sergeant Corbett and told him to get a message through and gave him my location. He told me Pat had assigned an unmarked cruiser to the area earlier, but they were being pulled out in another thirty minutes. Too much was happening to restrict even one car team in a quiet zone on a quiet night and I was lucky to get the cooperation I did.

I said, "It may not be so damn quiet in a little while, buddy."

"Well, it won't be like the U.N. or the embassy joints. Everybody's in emergency sessions. You'll still be lucky if you get thirty minutes."

I hung up and tossed the covers back over the phone. The watchman was bent over the radio again with a beer in his hand, reading a comic book lying open on the floor.

My watch said Velda had left her post fifteen minutes ago. Somehow, someway, she'd find a thread, then a string, then a rope that would draw her right to this block.

I went out, closed the door and looked up the street, then started to walk slowly. On half the four-floor tenements were white square cardboard signs lettered in black notifying the world that the building was unfit for tenancy or scheduled for demolition. The windows were broken and dark, the fronts grime-caked and eroded. One building was occupied despite the sign, either by squatters with kerosene lamps or some undaunted tenant fighting City Hall. In the middle of the block was one brownstone, the basement renovated years ago into a decrepit tailor shop no wider than a big closet. A tilted sign on the door said a

forlorn open, and I would have passed it up entirely if I hadn't seen the dot of light through the crack in the drawn blind.

Sigmund Katz looked like a little gnome perched on his stool, methodically handstitching a child's coat, glasses on the end of his nose, bald head shiny under the single low-watt bulb. His eyes through the thick glasses were blue and watery, his smile weak, but friendly. An old-world accent was thick in his voice when he spoke. "No, this man in the picture I did not see," he told me.

"And you know everyone?"

"I have been here sixty-one years, young man." He paused and looked up from his needlework. "This is the only one you are looking for?" There was an expression of patient waiting on his face.

"There could be others."

"I see. And these are ... not nice people?"

"Very bad people, Mr. Katz."

"They did not look so bad," he said.

"Who?"

"They were young and well dressed, but it is not in the appearance that makes a person good or bad, true?"

I didn't want to push him. "True," I said.

"One used the phone twice. The second time the other one stopped him before he could talk. I may not see too well, but my hearing is most good. There were violent words spoken."

I described Carl and Sammy and he nodded.

"Yes," he said, "those are the two young men."

"When they left here ... did you see where they went?"

The old man smiled, shook his head gently and continued sewing. "No, I'm afraid I didn't. Long ago I learned never to interfere."

I unclenched the knots my fingers were balled into and took a deep breath. Time, damn it, it was running out!

Before I could leave he added, "However, there was Mrs. Luden for whom I am making this coat for her grandson. She thought they were salesmen, but who would try to sell in this poor neighborhood? Not well dressed young men who arrive in a shiny new car. They knock on doors and are very polite."

I watched him, waiting, trying to stay relaxed.

"Perhaps they did find a customer. Not so long ago they went into Mrs. Stone's building across the street where the steps are broken and haven't come out."

The tension leaked out of my muscles like rain from my hair and I grinned humorously at Mr. Katz.

His eyes peered at me over his glasses. "Tell me, young man, you look like one thing, but you may be another. By one's appearance, you cannot tell. Are you a nice man?"

"I'm not one of them."

"Ah, but are you a nice man?"

"Maybe to some people," I said.

"That is good enough. Then I tell you something else. In Mrs. Stone's building ... there are not just two men. Three went up the first time, then a few minutes ago, another two. Be careful, young man. It is not good."

And now things were beginning to shape up!

I ran back into the rain and the night, cut across the street and found the building with the broken steps, took them two at a time on the side that still held and unsheathed the .45 and thumbed the hammer back. The front door was partially ajar and I slammed it open with the flat of my hand and tried to see into the inkwell of the vestibule. It took seconds for my eyes to adjust, then I spotted the staircase and started toward it.

And time ran out.

From a couple of floors up was a crash of splintering wood, a hoarse yell and the dull blast of heavy caliber guns in rapid fire, punctuated by the flatter pops of lighter ones. Somebody screamed in wild agony and a single curse ripped through the musty air. I didn't bother trying to be quiet. I took the steps two at a time and almost made the top when I saw the melee at the top lit momentarily in the burst of gunfire, then one figure burst through the others and came smashing down on top of me in a welter of arms and legs, gurgling wetly with those strange final sounds of death, and we both went backward down the staircase into an old cast iron radiator with sharp edges that bit into my skull in a blinding welter of pain and light.

CHAPTER 11

Velda was crying through some distant rage. I heard her say, "Damn it, Mike, you're all right! You're all right! Mike ... answer me!"

My head felt like it was split wide open and I felt myself gag and almost threw up. The light from Velda's flash whipped into my eyes, beating at my brain like a club for a second until I pushed it away.

"Mike ...?"

"I'm not shot," I said flatly.

"Damn you, why didn't you wait? Why didn't you call …"

"Ease off." I pushed to my knees and took the flash from her and turned it on the body. There was a bloody froth around the mouth and the eyes were glassy and staring. Sammy had bought his farm too.

Across the street people were shouting and a siren had started to whine. I let Velda help me up, then groped my way up the stairs to the top. The President wouldn't have to have a heart attack after this. The pictures would take care of all the gory news the public was interested in. Carl was sprawled out face down on the kitchen floor of the apartment with half his head blown away, a skinny little guy in a plaid sports coat and dirty jeans was tied to a chair with a hole in his chest big enough to throw a cat through, his toupee flopping over one ear. Like the little whore had told me, one was partially bald. Woody Ballinger was in a curiously lifelike position of being asleep with his head on an overturned garbage sack, one hand over his heart like a patriotic citizen watching the flag go by. Only his hand covered a gaping wound that was all bright red and runny.

That was all.

Beaver wasn't there.

I walked over and looked at the broken chair beside the table with the ropes in loose coils around the remnants.

Somebody else had been tied up too. Behind the chair was a broken window leading to the rear fire escape and on one of the shards of glass was a neat little triangle of red wool. The kind they make vests out of.

The flash picked out an unbroken bulb and I snapped it on. In the dull light it looked even messier and Velda made heaving noises in her throat.

I looked at the table top and knew why Woody wanted Beaver so badly. His policy code sequence identifying the workings of his organization was laid out there on a single sheet of typewritten paper that had been folded so that it would fit a pocket wallet.

And that was why Woody wanted Beaver. But who had wanted Woody?

My head felt like it wanted to burst. In a minute the place would be crawling with cops. And outside, there still was Beaver, and I wanted him.

I shoved the unfired .45 back in the sling and turned to Velda. "You stay here and handle it, kitten. Give them as much as you know, but give me running tune."

"Mike ..."

"This was only one stop on Beaver's route. He's heading someplace else." I went over to the window and put one leg through. "How did you know about this place?"

"One of Anton Virelli's runners saw Woody's car here. He reported in."

"You see anybody leave the building?"

"I'm ... not sure. I was looking for you."

"Okay, sugar. Stall 'em. They're coming up."

Austin Towers had had more than the hour he expected and he hadn't wasted any of it. Caesar and his friend were sitting up, shivering under cold wet sheets, trying to keep their feet off the sodden rug on the floor. The dull luster was still in their eyes, but they were awake enough to mumble complaints at Towers who threatened them with another bucket of ice water if they tried to get up.

When he heard me come in he almost dropped the pail and stood stiff in his tracks, waiting to see if I approved or not. Caesar let his head sag toward me and managed a sick grin. "Hi, Mike. Get... get this bastard ... outa here."

"Shut up, punk." I took the pail from Towers and sat it on the floor. "How good are they?"

"Man, I tried. Honest ..."

"Can they think coherently?"

"Yeah, I'd say so. It ain't exactly like a booze hangover. They . . ."

"Okay then, cut out." He started to move around me and I grabbed his arm. Very slowly I brought the .45 up where he could see it. His face went pasty white and his knees started to sag. "This is the kind of trouble that stuff brings. You're not invulnerable ... and kid, you're sure expendable as hell. Start thinking twice before you peddle that crap again."

His head bobbed in a nod and new life came back into his legs. "Man," he said, "I'm thinking! I'm thinking right now."

I let him go. "Scram."

He didn't wait for me to repeat the invitation. He even left his coat on the back of the chair. Caesar chuckled and tried to unwrap himself from the sheet. "Thanks, old pal Mike. That guy ... he sure was bugging us. Gimme a hand. I'm freezing to death."

"In a minute." I glanced at the other guy, slack-lipped and bony, like a sparrow under the wet cloth. "This the guy you were going to meet about Beaver?"

"Sure, Mike." He let out a belch and moaned, his teeth chattering. "So we meet like I said."

"You were going to meet me too, Caesar."

His face tried to scowl. "Look, if you're going to be like that ..." He saw me pick up the pail. "Okay, okay. I'm sorry. It ain't the end of the world."

I almost felt like telling him right then.

"Hey, Mister." The other one looked like he was coming apart at the seams. "I did like Caesar asked. My friend, he told me where this guy ... the one in the red vest, where he flops."

"Where?"

He gulped and tried to look straight at me. "Take ... this sheet off, huh?"

I hated to waste the time, but I couldn't afford to put up with a stubborn idiot. I undid the knots Tower had twisted the ends into and yanked the wet cloth away and he stumbled out of his chair and reached for the coat Towers had left and pulled it tightly around him, still shivering.

"Where?" I repeated.

"Carmine said he seen him at the Stanton Hotel. They're on the same floor."

"He describe him?"

"Tall. Skinny. Like kind of a mean character. He ain't there all the time, but he hangs onto his pad."

"What else?"

"Always the red vest. Never took it off. Like it was lucky or something." I started to leave, then: "Mister ..."

"Yeah?"

"You got a quarter? I'm flat."

I tossed five bucks on the chair. "Unwrap the idiot there and you can both blow your minds. Someday take a look in a mirror and see what's happening to you."

I picked up a cruising cab on Eighth Avenue and gave him the address of the Stanton. Before the turn of the century it had been an exclusive, well-appointed establishment catering to the wealthy idler who wanted privacy for his extramarital affairs, but time and changes in neighborhood patterns had turned it into a way station for transients and a semipermament pad for those living on the fringes of society.

A fifteen-truck Army convoy was blocking traffic, white-helmeted M.P.'s diverting cars west, and the driver-cut left, swearing at all the nonsense. "Like the damn war, y’know? You'd think we was being invaded. The way traffic is already they could hold them damn maneuvers someplace else."

"Maybe they hate the mayor," I said.

He growled in answer, swerved violently around a timid woman driver who was taking up a lane and a half and yanked the cab through a slot and made a right on Tenth Avenue. I looked at my watch. Five after ten. An hour and a half since the slaughter uptown. Enough time for Beaver to collect his gear and make another run.

I didn't wait for change. I threw a bill on the seat beside the driver and got out without bothering to close the door. Fingers of rain clawed at my face, wind-whipping the drenching spray around my legs. Inside the lobby of the Stanton clusters of men trying to look busy were staying away from the night. A uniformed patrolman, a walkie-talkie slung over his shoulder, finished checking the groups and pushed through the doors, looked up at the sky in disgust, then lowered his head against the wind and turned west.

I went in, cut across the lobby to the desk where a bored clerk with a cigarette drooping from the corner of his mouth was doing a crossword puzzle on the counter.

He didn't bother looking up. "No rooms," he said.

I flipped the puzzle to the floor and knocked the cigarette from his mouth with a backhanded swipe and his head snapped up with a mean snarl and he had his hand all cocked to swing when he saw my face and faded. "You got bad manners, friend."

"If you're looking for trouble ..."

"I am trouble, kiddo." I let him look at me for another few seconds, then he dropped his eyes and wiped his mouth, not liking what he saw. I reached in my pocket for the photos of Beaver. There were two left. Someplace I had left one, but it didn't matter now.

The clerk had seen cards like those before, but cops carried them, and I got the eyes again because he had figured me first for one thing, now he was trying to make me for another and it didn't jell. I put the card on the counter facing him. "Recognize him?"

He didn't want to talk, but he didn't want to know what would happen if he didn't, either. Finally he nodded. "Room 417."

"There now?"

"Came in earlier. His face was swollen and he was all bloodied up. What'd he do?"

"Nothing that would interest you."

"Listen, Mac ... we're trying to stay clean. This guy never gave us no fuss so why are you guys ..."

I grabbed his arm. "What guys?"

"There was another one before. Another cop. He wanted him too."

"Cop?"

"Sure. He had one of these mug cards."

Pat might have made it. One of his squad just might have gotten a lead and run it down. Enough of them had copies of the photos and one way or another Beaver could be nailed.

"You see them come out?" I asked him. "Naw. I don't watch them bums. You think I ain't got nothin' better to do?"

"Yeah, I don't think you have. Just one more thing ... stay off that phone."

A swamper in filthy coveralls was oiling down the wooden steps, so I pushed the button beside the elevators instead of walking up. The ancient machinery creaked and whined, finally groaning to a halt. The door slid open and two drunks were arguing over a bottle until one behind them pushed through with a muttered curse, almost knocking them down. He looked familiar, but I had seen too many lineups with these characters playing lead roles, so any of them could be familiar. The other two guys that pushed their way through were Vance Solito and Jimmy Healey, a pair of the Marbletop bunch who ran floating crap games on the side. I shoved the two drunks out to do their arguing and punched the button for the fourth floor.

Outside 417 I stopped and put my ear to the door. No sound at all. I slid the .45 out, thumbed the hammer back and rapped hard, twice. Nobody answered and I did it again with the same result. Then I tried the knob. The door was locked, but with the kind of lock it only took a minute to open. When I had the latch released I stepped aside and shoved it open and stared into the darkness that was intermittently lit by the reflected glow from a blinking light on the street below.

I waited, listening, then stepped around the door opening inside, flipped the light switch on and hit the floor. Nothing happened. I stood up, put the .45 back and closed the door. Nothing was going to happen.

Beaver was lying spread-eagled on the floor wallowing in his own blood, as dead as he ever was going to be, his stomach slit open and a vicious hole in his chest where a knife thrust had laid open muscle and bone before it carved into his heart. There were other carefully planned cuts and slices too, but Beaver had never made a sound through the tape that covered his mouth. His face was lumpy, bruised from earlier blows, with nasty charred and blistered hollows pockmarking his neck from deliberate cigarette burns.

But this was different. Woody had taken care of the first assault, but he hadn't gotten around to killing him and when the break came Beaver had dumped himself out of his chair, broken loose and gone through the window while all the action was going on. But this was different.

No, this was the same. It had happened before to Lippy Sullivan.

I took my time and read all the signs. It finally made sense when I thought it out. Beaver's break wasn't as clean as he had figured. He had been tailed to his safe place, hurting bad and terrified as hell. And when the killer finally reached him he couldn't run again. He was supposed to talk. He was tied up, his mouth taped while the killer told him what he wanted and what he was going to do to him if he didn't talk and just to prove his point the killer made his initial slashes that would insure his talking.

Except Beaver didn't talk. He fainted. There were more of those nicely placed slices, delivered purposely so the pain would bring Mm out of the faint. But Beaver didn't come out of it . . . there had been too much before it and he lay there mute and 'unconscious until the killer couldn't wait any more and made sure he'd never talk to anybody else either. And when he was done killing he had torn the room apart, piece by piece, bit by bit.

I followed the search pattern looking for anything that might have been missed, fingering through the torn bedding, reaching into places somebody already had reached into, feeling outside around the window ledges, going through the contents of the single dresser whose drawers were stacked, empty, along one wall.

Beaver wasn't a fashion plate. He only had two suits and two sport jackets. The pockets were turned inside out and the coat linings ripped off. On the floor of the closet was a bloodstained shirt and a crumpled red vest with more blood, stiff and dried, staining the fabric.

I took another twenty minutes to make sure there was nothing I had missed and finally sat down on the edge of the bed, lit up a cigarette and looked at the mutilated body of Beaver on the floor.

I said, "You weren't lucky this time, chum. That red vest didn't bring you any luck at all, did it?"

Then I started to grin slowly and got up and went back to the closet where the red vest lay in a crushed lump. It wasn't much. It was old and worn and it must have been expensive at one time because it still held its color. Beaver had thrown it there when he took off his bloodied clothes, hurting and not caring about his lucky charm. It was too carelessly tossed off and not much for the killer to search because it didn't even have pockets.

But it had been Beaver's lucky charm once and a place to hide all his luck, something that was always with him and safe.

I found where the hand stitching was around the lower left hand edge, picked at the thread and pulled it out of the fabric. The sheet of onionskin paper folded there slid out and I opened it, scanned it slowly, then went to the phone and gave the desk clerk Eddie Dandy's number.

He said he knew how he could give his watchdogs the slip, but if he did that was the end of him in broadcasting, in life, in anything. He had been given the word strongly and with no punches pulled. He wanted to know if it was worth it.

I told him it was.

CHAPTER 12

I let him vomit his supper out in the toilet bowl and waited until he had mopped his face with cold water and dried off. He came back in the bedroom, trying to avoid the mess on the floor, but his eyes kept drifting back to the corpse until he was white again. He finally upended one of the drawers and sat on it, his hands shaking.

"Relax," I said.

"Damn it, Mike, did you have to get my ass in a sling just to show me this?"

I took a drag on my cigarette and nodded. "That's right."

Very slowly his face came out of his hands, his eyes drifting up to mine, fear cutting little crinkles into the folds of skin at their edges. "You ... did you ..."

"No, I didn't kill him,"

Bewilderment replaced the fear and he said nervously, "Who did?"

"I don't know."

"Shit."

I went and got him a glass of water, waited while he finished it, looking out the window at the glassy-wet tops of the buildings across the street. Down below a police cruiser went by slowly and turned north at the corner. "Quiet out," I said.

Behind me, Eddie said softly, "It'll be a lot quieter soon. Just a few more days. I don't know why I was worrying about coming here at all. What difference can it make?"

"It hasn't happened yet."

"No chance, Mike. No chance at all. Everybody knows it. I wasted all that time worrying and sweating when I could have been like you, calm as hell and not giving a damn about anything. Maybe I'm fortunate at that. In a few days when the lid comes off and the whole world knows that it's only a little while before it dies, everybody

else will go berserk and I'll be able to watch them and have an easy drink to kiss things goodbye." He let out a little laugh. "I only wish I could have been able to tell the whole story. They talk openly now. It doesn't seem to matter any more. You didn't know the Soviets ran down more of the story, did you?"

I shook my head and watched the rain come down, only half hearing what he said.

"That other regime ... they never thought the strain of bacteria was so virulent. It would be contained pretty much in this hemisphere and die out after a certain length of time. They made tests on involuntary subjects and decided that one out of ten would be immune, and the vaccine they had developed would protect those they wanted protected. It wasn't just two agents who were planted in this country. There were twenty-two of them, and each was supplied with enough vaccine to immunize a hundred more, all key people in major commercial and political positions who would be ready to run the country after the plague was done wiping out the populace. Oh, they could sit back and not give a damn, but there was one thing they never got to know. The vaccine was no damn good. It was only temporary. They'll last a month or two longer after the others have died, but they'll die harder because it is going to take longer. Only they're not going to know this because everyone involved in the project is dead and there's nobody to tell them. They were going to know when it happened, because the single unknown, the key man who was going to plant the stuff around the country, was the only one who knew who the others were and he was going to notify them so they could set all their grand plans into motion."

"Nice," I said.

"So he planted the stuff ... all those containers. My guess is he lucked out because of the vaccine he was injected with. There was a possibility it could do that. Funny, isn't it?"

"Why?"

"Because they have that organization all set up. They're ready to move in and set up another semislave state. The elite few get it all and the rest get the garbage. Not bad if you're one of the elite few and have the only guns around to back you up. It doesn't even make any difference if those agents were given the date or not. Either way they think they'll be ready to grab it all. It might screw up their timing, but that's about all. They move in, think they have it made, then all of a sudden it hits them too."

"It won't happen."

Eddie Dandy laughed again, a flat, sour laugh that ended in a sob. "Mike, you're mad."

I turned around and looked at him perched on the edge of the drawer, muscles tightened with near hysteria bunching in his jaw. I grinned at him, then picked up the phone. It was five minutes before they located Pat Chambers and I let him take me apart in sections before I said, "You should have gone with me, friend. It wouldn't have taken all this time."

"What are you talking about?"

"You can buy next year's calendar, Pat. You'll be able to use it."

For ten seconds there was a long silence on the other end of the line. He knew what I was talking about, and his voice came back with a tone of such absolute consternation that I barely heard him say, "Mike . .."

"It was all wrapped up in Lippy Sullivan," I told him. "Handle this gentry, Pat. And Pat ... you'd better pass the word that the President doesn't have to have a heart attack tomorrow. There'll be plenty of news for everybody to chew on ... and when you're passing the word, pass it high up where it counts and none of those eager lads with all that political ambition will be able to get their teeth in my ass for what's going to happen. Tell the thinkers to get a good story ready, because there's going to be the damndest cover-up happening tomorrow you ever saw in your life, and while it's happening I'm going to be walking around with a big grin, spitting in their eyes."

Before he could answer I told him where I was and hung up. Eddie Dandy was watching me like I had gone out of my mind. I handed him the sheet of onionskin paper.

"What's this?"

"The exact location of every one of those containers. You have the manpower already alerted and placed, the experts from Fort Derrick on hand to decontaminate them and the biggest scoop of your whole career. Too bad you'll never really be able to tell about it." I looked at him and felt my face pull into a nasty grin, "Or the rest of it."

I tried one more call, but my party wasn't at home, which confirmed what I already knew. I took the two last photos of Beaver out of my pocket, looked at them and threw them down beside the body. He didn't look like that any more.

Spud Henry didn't know how to say it, the white lies not

quite fitting his mouth. Finally he said, "Oh, hell, Mikey boy, it's just that I got orders. He gimme special orders on the house phone. Nobody goes up. It's an important business meeting."

"How many are up there?"

"Maybe six."

"When'd the last one come in?"

"Oh, an hour ago. It was then I got the call. Nobody else."

"Look, Spud ..."

"Mike, it won't make no difference. They got the elevator locked up on that floor and there ain't no other way. All the elevators stop the next floor down. There's a fire door, but it only opens from the inside and you can't even walk up. Come on, Mike, forget it."

"Sorry, Spud."

"Buddy, it's my job you got in your hands."

"Not if you didn't see me."

'There's no way in that I can't see you! Look, four of them TV's cover the other exits and I got this one. How the hell can I explain?"

"You won't have to."

"Oh boy, will I catch hell. No more tips for old Spud. It's gonna be real dry around here for a while. Maybe that longhaired relief kid will get my job."

"Don't worry," I said.

"So go ahead. Not even a monkey can get there anyway."

The elevator stopped at the top, the doors sliding open noiselessly. It was a bright blue foyer, decorated with modem sculpture and wildly colorful oil paintings in gold frames. The single door at the end was surrealistically decorated with a big eye painted around the peephole and I wondered how long ago it was that I was watched by another painted eye.

I touched the bell and waited. I touched it again, holding it in for a full minute, then let go and waited some more. I wasn't about to try to batter down three inches of oak, so I took out the .45 and blew each of the three locks out of their sockets. The noise of the shots was deafening in that confined space, but the door swung inward limply. I wasn't worried about the sound. It wasn't going to reach anyplace else. The tenants here were paying for absolute privacy that included soundproofing. Tomorrow the shattered door would even be an asset when the explanations started.

I walked through the rooms to the back of the building and into the bedroom that faced the fire escape, covered the catch with my sleeve, twisted it open, then raised the window the same way. All around me New York was staring, watching me with curious yellow eyes in the darker faces of the other buildings, seeing just one more thing to store away in memories that could never be tapped.

Gusts of wind whipped around the corner, driving the ram in angular sheets. I grinned again and started up the perforated steel steps to that other window and leaned against it with my shoulder, putting pressure to it gradually until the small pane cracked almost noiselessly. The pieces came out easily and I got my hand through the opening, undid the lock and shoved the window up. A swipe at the catch wiped out any prints and I was inside.

When I eased the door open I heard the subdued murmur of voices, the words indistinguishable. I was in a small office of some type, functional and modern, the kind a dedicated businessman whose work never stopped would have.

Maybe there would be things in there, I thought, but let somebody else find it.

I leaned on the ornate handle of the latch and tugged the door open.

The maid heard me, but never had time to see me. I laid a fast chop across her jaw as she turned around and she went down without a sound. I pulled her into the little office and closed the door on her. And I was in a dining area with the voices a little louder now because they were right behind the one more door I had to go through.

One of the voices smashed a hand on a table hard and in choked-up anger said, "How many times do I have to tell you? There was nothing! I looked everywhere!"

"It had to be there!" I recognized that voice.

"Don't tell me my job! It was not in the room. It was like all the other places. Maybe he did not have it at all. To him, what would it mean? Nothing, that's what. A single piece of paper with names of places written down. Why would he have kept that?"

Then there was another voice I recognized too, a cold, calm voice that could be jocular and friendly at other times. "He didn't have to know what it meant. It was something that came from the wallet of an important person who would keep only important things on that person. It would have a certain value. Why else would he have made those calls?" The voice paused a moment, then

added. "You know, it would have been easier to have paid his price."

The other one said, "A blackmailer could have photostated it. If it were valuable to me, it would have been equally as valuable to someone else."

"To whom would he sell?" the cold voice asked.

"Who knows how a mind like his would work? Perhaps a newspaperman, or by now he might have even suspected just what he did hold. You realize what it would be worth then, the price he could demand for it? That's all it would take to smash everything we have built. We couldn't take the chance."

"I'm afraid the chance has already been taken," the flat voice stated. "Now there is no time for any alternative. We simply have to wait. At this point there is little possibility that we will fail. If the document is hidden or destroyed, it will stay hidden or destroyed. There is not enough time left for anyone to pursue the matter further. I suggest you ring for that maid again and inquire about our drinks so we can conclude this affair."

From another room I heard the annoyed sound of a buzzer. It rang again, then a voice I knew so well said, "Stanley, go see what's keeping her."

I stepped away from the door and crowded behind the angle of an ornate china closet. The door opened and clicked shut on its own closing device and I saw the face of the man who had come in, a still angry face at having been chewed out for bungling the job. It wasn't a new face. I had seen it twice before this night, once in a burst of gunfire at the top of the stairs and again coming out of an elevator in the hotel where Beaver had been sliced to death like Lippy Sullivan.

Like Lippy Sullivan.

The man called Stanley crossed the room and pushed open the swinging door that led into the kitchen calling loudly for somebody named Louise. He never heard me follow him in, but when he didn't find Louise he spun around and I let him see me, one big surprised look, and he knew who I was and why I was there and before he could get the knife out of his belt with an incredibly fast snatch and thrust, I leaned aside and threw a fist into his face that sent his features into a crazy caricature of a human and left teeth imbedded in my knuckles and a sudden spurt of blood spraying both of us.

I should have shot him and had it over with, but I didn't want it to happen that fast. I was a pig and wanted him all for myself and slowly and almost made a mistake. He was a pro and strong. He was hurt and death could be the next step and he was moving and thinking even before he hit the floor. He didn't waste breath yelling. What strength he had left kept the knife in his hand, his feet scrabbling for survival.

The blade flashed around when I jumped him, the gun forgotten now. All I wanted was to use my hands. I got my fingers in his hair and yanked his head around, pounding my fist against his ear. I saw the knife come up and blocked it with my knee, the razor edge slicing into my skin, then I let go of his hair and grabbed his wrist.

He was strong, but I had gotten to him first and he wasn't that strong any more. He was flat out under me and I was bringing his own knife up under his throat and this time he knew it couldn't be stopped and he tried to let out the yell he had held in. Then my knee caught him square in the balls with such impact he almost died then, eyes bugging out of his head in sheer agony.

He still fought, and he was still able to see what was happening when his own hand drove the knife completely through his neck until it was imbedded in the floor behind.

I picked up my rod and eased the hammer back.

Okay, Lippy, it was almost paid for.

You shouldn't stop and think back. I should have known that. All the years in the business and I forgot a little thing that could kill you. It wasn't instinct that turned me in time. It was accident. I should have known they'd send another one out to see what had happened and he was standing there behind me with a gun coming out of his pocket, a flat, ugly little thing with a deadly snout ready to spit.

But you don't beat a guy to the draw who already has a gun in his fist, and I triggered the .45 into a roaring blast that caught him just off center from his nose and threw the entire back of his skull against the door. I was over him before he had crumpled to the tiles and met the other one coming in and this time I was ready. He only saw me as the slug was tearing his chest apart, dropped the Luger and stood there in momentary surprise, then fell in a lifeless heap, blocking the doorway.

Chairs crashed backward outside and there was a shrill scream cutting through the curses. I kicked the corpse out of the way, yanked the door open in time to see that smiling, pleasant Mr. Kudak who was so political, who had come from one regime into another without anybody ever knowing about it, picking himself up off the floor. He didn't have a gun, but he had a mind that was even more

dangerous so I blew it right out of its braincase without the slightest compunction and ran across the room, jumping the knocked-over furniture, and reached the door just as it was locked in my face.

They shouldn't have bothered. One shot took the lock away and I kicked the door open and stood there with the .45 aimed at William Dorn who was pulling a snub-nosed revolver from the desk drawer, then swung the .45 to cover Renée Talmage who was standing there beside him. They never saw me thumb the empty .45 back into the loaded position.

"Don't bother, William," I said. "Toss it in the middle of the floor."

For a second I thought he'd try for me anyway and I got that strange feeling up across my shoulders. I knew what would happen if he did. But there are those who can plan violence and those who could execute it. He wasn't one of those who could pull the trigger.

Right now he was thinking and I knew that too. I could take them in, say what I had to say, and while the police held them the big death would be released and all he had to do was wait long enough and everybody would be gone except them and they could walk out easily enough.

I grinned and said, "It couldn't happen that way, William."

They looked at each other. Finally he straightened and tried to regain his composure. "What?"

"You could be in a cell. So everybody's dead. You'd still be in a cell and you'd starve to death anyway."

Renée spoke for the first time. "Mike . .."

"Shut up, Renée. For a whole lifetime I'm going to have to look back and remember that I liked you once. It's going to be a damn nasty memory as it is, so for now, just shut up."

Now there was something about the way they looked at each other. And I was enjoying myself. It was going to be fun bringing them in like this. They'd hate me so hard after it they would never be able to live with themselves.

"You never should have killed the wrong man, William," I said. "Just think, if your bright boys had really been on the ball when they went after that pickpocket and found where he was living, you would have won the whole ball game. But no, they put the knife to the wrong boy, and the right one hit the road. He was a sharp article too and when he knew what was chasing him he pulled out all the stops. Right then he knew what he had was important and started playing his own game."

"See here ..."

"Knock it off. It's over, William. The trouble with Beaver was, he didn't know who really was out to kill him. The only stuff worth while was what he had from you and Woody Ballinger. He tried to tap you both and almost got tapped out by Woody first. Old Woody has manpower too.

"I guess you thought I was a real clown getting into the act, stumbling all over trying to square things with a nobody who had gotten himself knocked off. Brother, you should have done your homework better. I work on the dark side of the fence myself."

Renée was watching me, her hands clasping and unclasping, something desperate in her eyes. "You're a cutie, honey," I told her. "The act in your apartment was neat, real neat. You saw those pictures I had of Beaver and slipped one out of my pocket when I was lying there all nice and naked and getting beautifully vibrated. You slipped it to your maid to deliver to William here when she was supposed to go to the drugstore. It doesn't take a half hour to go to a drugstore a block away. Then all the manpower went into high gear again. I went and laid out the story for you in detail that made things nice and easy. You got bullet-creased by an enemy I was on to so I thought you were square with me ... not the real enemy after all. I'm getting old, chums. I'm just not thinking hard enough, I guess. In my own way I have a little luck here and there, and people make mistakes. Like William's maid mentioning the meeting here tonight and you not being sharp enough to have your maid tell me you were sleeping in case I called.

"Maybe all the excitement was too much for you. Things were coming to a head and you were ready to be king and queen. Now I'm going to tell you something. You never would have made it. That vaccine doesn't make you immune."

This time their eyes met, held a second, and the fear was there all the way.

I said, "We know the story, at least most of it. Now there will be time to dig the rest of it out. Nobody will ever know about it though and that's the way it should be. Maybe now some of this crappy rivalry between countries will slow down and there will be some sensible cooperation. I doubt it, but it may happen for a while and even that's better than nothing. I found your little sheet of onionskin, William, all nicely detailing where those cannisters were

planted and right now every one of them is being located and deactivated. If you don't believe me I'll name a few."

I gave him four and he knew for certain then.

"By tomorrow there will be some other things added. It won't take the pros long to get all the names of your people and the net will tighten quickly and tightly and all your beautiful hopes will go up in smoke."

Something about them had changed. It had started when they looked at each other. It had grown fast, and now they looked at each other again, a resigned look that had a peculiar meaning to it and William Dorn said, "We go nowhere, Mr. Hammer."

"You're going with me," I told him. "Consider yourself lucky. At least here you get due process of law. Your own people would kill you the slowest way they know how."

"They would manage somehow anyway, I'm afraid."

"That's your tough luck," I said.

"No, long ago we prepared for such an eventuality. The preparation was drastic and simply an eventuality, but the time has come and now there can be no other way. We both have been fitted with cyanide capsules, Mr. Hammer. I'm sorry to spoil your fun."

Once more, they looked at each other, both nodding almost imperceptibly, and there was a minute movement of the lines of their jaws.

I could see the death coming on, but they sure as hell weren't going to spoil my fun.

"Too bad," I said. "You still had another way out." I looked at the stubby revolver that was lying on the floor near their feet and very slowly I raised the .45 to my own temple. I pulled the trigger and there was only that flat, metallic click of the hammer snapping shut on nothing.

They both tried to scream a protest at the world and lunged for the gun on the floor at the same time. They could take me with them ... the final pleasure would be theirs after all.

Renée had the gun in her fingers and William Dorn was trying to tear it from her when the cyanide hit them with one final spasm.

And I was laughing in a very quiet room.