The By-Pass Control

Chapter 4

The faces behind I.A.T.S. had done their work well. They were far from inefficient. Hamstrung by directives and stymied by bureaucratic precedents perhaps, but not inefficient. Hal Randolph and his retinue were there personally a half hour after I requested a look at the autopsy report on Vito Salvi, their expressions bland... waiting.

They had come in shortly after I entered the request and had a mild little man tell me I would have to wait a few minutes. The mild little man had gotten to a phone as he had been told to while I cooled my heels in a drab office that had the antiseptic smell of a dead room and when Randolph saw me he said, “Let’s have it, Tiger.” The other two were the same ones who had come with him when I shot Salvi and they waited with the same professional interest they had shown before.

I said, “Routine check. I killed the guy, didn’t I?”

“No comedy. Just say it.”

“There’s nothing to say until I see the report. Now you quit playing games and clear the air.”

Randolph nodded and the mild little man didn’t have to go any further than the desk drawer that had been in front of him all the time. He took out two sheets stapled together and handed them to me.

Vito Salvi had died of a gunshot wound from a calibre .45 bullet and at the time of death had multiple lacerations and abrasions not directly responsible for his demise. Three other bullet wounds and several knife scars were found, a small stomach ulcer, a possible cured syphilitic condition and the early stages of a cataract beginning to form in the right eye. His last meal had been chili, creamed corn and bread which matched the garbage remains in his apartment.

I handed the sheets back to the mild little man who took them impassively and stored them back in the drawer. When he shut it he looked at me quizzically and asked, “Is that all?”

“That’s all,” I told him.

“Come off it, Tiger,” Randolph said. “Don’t hide one damn thing. This isn’t a schoolyard.” His face was tight and somehow his eyes seemed buried in the flesh around them. I think for the first time I liked the guy. He was big, mean and nasty, but he was being pushed and knew what it felt like to have a rock hanging over his head. “What are you looking for?”

I shoved my hat back and got up off the edge of the desk where I was sitting. “Evidence of narcotics addiction.”

“Why?”

“To see whether a guy who could torture three people to death was doing it for a reason or because it was part of his makeup.”

“He didn’t use the stuff.”

“Now I know.”

The one leaning up against the cabinets said too casually, “You get off the hook too easily, Tiger.”

“I’ve had practice.”

“Not with us.”

“You too. Let’s just say I’m exploring every possibility.”

“We thought of it too. Earlier than you did. The question is why you came up with it now.”

I shook a cigarette out of the pack, lit it and looked across the room at him. “Because drugs are a big item of trade, buddy. The carriers sometimes become the victims and we’re all looking for something to start with. I didn’t think it possible, but I wanted to be sure. Now... if you’re not satisfied with my explanation you can stuff it. I don’t like being run down like a two-bit private op every time I get a thought. Let me remind you that at your instigation I’m back with an official status, cooperating fully with one of your representatives, and try this stunt again and I’ll go it cold and anything I get finds its way to the papers first and you second.”

“Don’t try it, Mann,” Randolph warned.

“Mister,” I reminded him, “I did it before and I’ll do it again. Quit crowding and don’t pull any court-martial crap on me or I’ll jam it up your tail.”

It sat that way for a good ten seconds, the slight movements of their eyes recording their impressions. I let them sweat it long enough, then I said, “Shove a probe down the toilet of Salvi’s bathroom and see what you find. Don’t bother pushing on the deal because you had all the time in the world to come up with it. I would have told you only you didn’t ask politely.”

Randolph’s face started to blossom into the familiar florid hue and I grinned at him. He said, “You bastard.”

“Any number of people could have told you that.”

There wasn’t anything more to say. I knew what I wanted to know and walked out. From the corner I watched the three of them scramble into a black sedan and take off out of there in a hurry. Somebody on that Salvi searching party was going to catch hell pretty shortly.

I found a phone booth in a drugstore to call Charlie Corbinet. He still had his fingers on enough direct contacts through the local police and the Treasury Department to come up with some possible new leads in the narcotics situation and I wasn’t betting on full cooperation from Hal Randolph at all. He’d play it his own way as long as he could and would call me in only when it was expedient. That was a chance I couldn’t take.

Charlie mulled the information over, said he’d get right on it, then added, “I sent over those photographs of Louis Agrounsky to your hotel an hour ago.”

“Thanks, Charlie.”

“He was a rarely photographed person so there isn’t much to go by. One set is the official pictures used on his project admittance badge and the other lifted from a motion picture film the government authorized for a news broadcast when the last space shot was made. It wasn’t our policy to let these men be well known and they preferred the anonymity anyway, so it was the best I could do. A detailed physical description is there too in case you need it.”

“Good. I’ll pick them up right now,” I said. “Heard anything on the hot-line circuits yet?”

“Tiger, we have every available technician checking out the entire system, but it’s so damn complex it will take a long time to locate the by-pass. One team is concentrating on how it could have been done to start with. There were supposed to be a dozen positive locks that would eliminate any possibility of accidental or deliberate firing except from the final control but there are still ways it could have been done by a man like Agrounsky as long as he was in charge of the system’s installation. It’s a pretty shaky deal, friend.”

“It could be worse.”

“Another note’s been added.”

I waited, saying nothing.

Charlie said, “One of the few people close to Agrounsky told us he had a peculiar off-duty hobby he had been working on for years — miniaturization of electronic components that would make transistors as out of date as a vacuum tube. He had a sub-mini circuit no bigger than a dime that could run a twenty-one-inch TV set an hour before it blew. He never explained his experiments and if he recorded his experiments, we haven’t been able to find any notes on it.”

“Damn!” I said.

“Yeah, I know what you’re thinking of,” Charlie told me quietly. “A remote control system that can activate a unit so completely hidden it will be impossible to find.”

“The entire hot line will have to be totally disassembled.”

“Tiger, we can’t afford it. Agrounsky must be found.”

“I know. Who was the friend who knew about his hobby?”

“Claude Boster, a technician still assigned to the Cape. He lives in Eau Gallie, Florida, but he has nothing more to say than what I’ve told you. We’ll still look for Agrounsky’s notes, but he probably took them with him.”

“Okay, Charlie, thanks, I’ll keep in touch.”

Twenty minutes later I was at the hotel, picked up the envelope he had delivered and took my first look at Louis Agrounsky. He was a harried little man crowding fifty, thin, partly bald with an intense look to his eyes and a tight, withdrawn set to his mouth. I stuck the photos in my pocket and walked out of the building.

When I spotted the first cruising cab I flagged it down and gave the driver the address of the Belt-Aire Electronics Corporation and settled back to watch the city go by on the way out over the Triborough Bridge.

One man, I thought, one little man who held the world in his hands. Louis Agrounsky. A loner, dedicated. He had worked himself into a nervous breakdown when he was a student and those things always left scars. A genius with scars. Then one of those scars developed adhesions and while he was involved with the mechanical solutions of world problems he took exception to the belief that control of world stability should be in any single person’s hands whether it was the President’s or the head of NATO. What did they call the hot-line system? Yeah... the permissive action link. Nuclear weaponry, whether aggressive or retaliatory, was locked tight under the control system, totally impotent until the safety factors were rendered impotent, until an electronic message communicated by the President, who holds the coded electronic key to the weapons in his sole possession, was delivered by the right push of the right button.

But Agrounsky didn’t favor ultimate control. He wanted a say in the matter and that’s what comes of being a genius. He could force the matter himself. He installed the system, but gimmicked it quietly, and in the labyrinth of electronics who could say how or where? A reinstallation of the entire system would take years, and to nullify the present system would leave us immediately helpless. And all this while one man was sitting there trying to make up his mind.

Where, damn it, where!

I got out of the cab and walked up to the gate where a guard met me with a nod of recognition, checked my identification, and telephoned into the main office. Henry Stanton came out to meet me, still licking his lips with a nervous gesture, and ushered me inside.

“I... hope everything is all right. Drink?”

“No thanks. I want to see Camille Hunt.”

“Certainly. I’ll have...”

“I know where she is.”

“But you need a pass and...”

“Get me one. I’m tired of chaperones.”

Stanton drew himself up, an overworked executive who has to put up with things not in his own domain and was ready to read me off. There were tired lines around his eyes and he was sick of being polite.

“Just do it,” I said. “If you really feel like forcing the issue I’ll make one call and get you canned. Or I can belt you in the mouth. So scrap all the regulations you’ve been issued, drop the ideas you have and play along. I’ll assume that by now you’ve contacted Martin Grady and are just trying to protect your own status. Forget it. I’m no efficiency expert or anyone who can jeopardize your job or the project here. All I want is to protect both and I’m as tired as you are of all the manure. Now hop to it or you’ll see what I can do if I’m pushed.”

Stanton had made the call, all right. It showed in his eyes and in the sudden change of demeanor when I laid it at his feet. It didn’t take him long to have a little blue temporary pass issued me that I could wear pinned to my lapel, and when I pinned it on he said, “I trust there will be no interference with this project, Mr. Mann. It’s a matter of national importance.”

“Not from me,” I assured him. “We’re all in this thing together.”

“What thing?”

“You just take care of your project.”

Stanton’s face seemed to set itself. In his own way he was dedicated too. “I intend to,” he said, and his tone was as cold and hard as steel wire.

Patriots, I thought. In ’42 they went into factories and drove rivets into the bellies of bombers. They read the signs that said SILENCE SAVES LIVES and TALK SINKS TANKERS and you couldn’t pry their mouths apart with a crowbar. Some were big and strong and some were short and weak, but they had one thing in common — they were patriots out of an old school you could hardly find any more in this age of radicalism and super-liberal stupidity.

I winked at him, made sure my badge was on firmly and walked outside past the guard who was ready to be my date if it weren’t for the blue badge and found my own way down to the door that read CAMILLE HUNT, PERSONNEL.

The secretary wanted to announce me, but I pushed her hand away from the phone and let her see the Martin Grady ID in the wallet I held in my hand, and to make sure she didn’t budge, let her catch a glimpse of the .45 in the speed rig on my belt when I put the wallet back.

Just to ease the tension I patted her cheek and said, “That’s a good girl. Now how about making a pit stop in the powder room for a little bit until I finish my business?”

She was glad to get out of there. Interested, but glad. Later she could have something to add to the office gossip.

It was nice to catch her off guard for a second. Nice to see the sudden rise of her head with the desk lamps framing her face with shadows that brought out all the loveliness of every striking feature and accentuated the blossom of a lower lip held between teeth in concentrated thought. Her hair was still lost in the darkness of the background, but this time there was no concealing the ripe maturity of her body in reflectionless black because now she wore a gossamer thing of yellow that made her breasts fuller and swept in tucks to a waist girded in a broad green belt.

“Hello, spider.”

Camille Hunt held one hand up to shield her eyes from the glare of the light, giving me time to cross the room, then she smiled. “Hello, fly. You took your time.”

“It’s only been a day.”

“That’s much too long. They usually can’t wait to be bitten.”

“You’re talking about the true diptra types.”

“And you?”

“More like a mud dauber. I break down webs and eat spiders.”

Camille leaned back and smiled gently. “Oh?”

“Don’t get dirty,” I said.

“You mentioned it.”

“But I didn’t mean it.”

“Then we’ll start over without any promises.”

“We’d better.”

She smiled again and sat back in her chair. “Now... about that job...”

“I’m unemployable.”

“Then...”

“I came to see you, understandable?”

She waved me to a chair, still smiling. “Oh, I understand, but I just don’t believe it.”

I threw the envelope on her desk. “That was my excuse. You can put these files back in the vault again. When I’m done with the copies I made I’ll destroy them.”

“Were they any use to you?”

“Not specially. Look... how familiar are you with the personnel here?”

“I know everyone by sight, Mr. Mann.”

“Tiger, kitten... remember?”

“I won’t forget any more.”

“Ever see this man here?” I spread the Agrounsky photos out in front of her and waited while she studied them carefully.

Camille took her time about it, making sure of the details of his face, then she frowned very slightly. “This man doesn’t work here, I know that.”

“Could he be disguised in any way?”

“No... I’m sure I would see through it. Besides, our people are all fingerprinted and filed with Washington. There is no doubt as to their identities.” She put the photos down and looked at me across the desk. “Facially, he isn’t an impressive-looking person. Rather common, I’d say, the type who could get lost in a crowd of two. However, there is a slight degree of familiarity here.”

There was a sudden constriction in my stomach and my hands wrapped tight around each other. “How?”

“When we last expanded we interviewed several hundred people for employment. Those I selected were given to Mr. Hamilton to process in the usual manner and the final selection was made on the basis of his reports and my personal approval. I have the feeling that this man might have been among those interviewed.”

I sat back and rubbed my face. “And you don’t have the original applications,” I stated flatly.

Her expression took on a serious note. “No... but often I do record my own personal observations of people as a matter of interest. It isn’t part of my job, actually, but character studies are important in this work.”

“You have the notes?”

“At home. They may not be very helpful because sometimes I use names or numerical identification rather than names.”

“It’s worth a try.”

“Who is he, Tiger?”

“Louis Agrounsky.”

“The name isn’t at all familiar and names I recall well. Why is he so very important?”

“Because he’s holding a death threat over the heads of everyone in this country.” I got up and nodded my head toward her. “Let’s go, sugar. We need every minute we can get.”

Camille Hunt didn’t answer. She simply looked at my face and without a word reached for her coat and handbag and followed me out the door. I turned in my badge at the gate, was cleared into the parking lot, got in her car beside her and we drove out to the highway.

Her apartment was on the east side of Central Park in the Seventies, an upper-middle-class section newly renovated to accommodate those who still liked the sprawling octopus of the city enough to live in it. The doorman took care of the car while a black-suited assistant in the lobby ushered us to the elevator with a smile of subservience and made sure we pushed the right button.

Camille lived on the sixth floor, her apartment facing the street with a grandiose spread of glass. She threw her coat carelessly across the back of a chair, pushed a panel open to expose a built-in wall bar and said, “Make a drink while you’re waiting.”

I built a pair of them, whiskey and ginger ale heavy with ice, and set them on a coffee table. Camille didn’t take long. She came back in a few minutes, changed into a black skirt and sweater, with a fistful of papers in her hand and laid them out on the table in front of me. “There they are. I’ve noted physical characteristics and reactions to the interview along with my personal reflections, and if it can help... I’m glad.” She picked up her drink and sat down opposite me.

The notes were impersonally objective, recording what her eyes saw and her ears heard. They described the interviewees well right down to the shape of their heads and the tone of their voices. In places that seemed like simple doodles she explained the meaning of the characters there, what might denote intelligence or lack of it, or what might mean to her a personality trait not suitable for a Belt-Aire employee.

Each one I went over in detail, trying to make a description fit Louis Agrounsky, but none came up. If he had ever been face to face with Camille Hunt it wasn’t acknowledged there.

It took an hour. She said nothing, merely refilling my glass when it was emptied, occasionally handing me a page when I took one out of sequence, letting me digest every word she had written until I threw the last page down in absolute disgust and leaned back in the couch with my eyes half closed.

“Hell,” I said, “it’s another blank.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault, kid.”

“Is it something you can talk about?”

“No.”

“Does it involve Belt-Aire?”

“I don’t know. It involves Doug Hamilton’s death but I don’t know how.” I looked up at her. “How well did you know him?”

“Very impersonally. He was employed by the head office. We... worked together as part of personnel requirements, but I knew little about the man. When we got the contract and he was assigned to investigate our employees, I had lunch with him twice, helped him with the files and accepted his recommendations. Personally, I found him rather ordinary. He was very efficient in his work though.”

“He made one mistake. The big one.”

Camille got up from her chair, picked up our glasses, and filled them again. Then she sat on the arm of the sofa and held one out to me. “The papers said he was involved in an accident. Two detectives came to ask me questions and a pair of nice young men who were polite but determined in finding out all I knew about Mr. Hamilton.”

“And?”

“I answered their questions as directly as they were put. They didn’t seem quite as determined as you. What really happened to him?”

“Killed, sugar. I know how, but not why.”

“And this Louis Agrounsky?”

I shrugged. “A name. Nothing more. It’s ended here now.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Why?”

The fragrance of her perfume was a gentle thing like flowers in the night. Gently, her fingers touched my face and I felt her lips touch my hair. “Because I won’t see you again.”

“Afraid of the fly, spider?”

“I haven’t had time to weave him into my web.”

My fingers hooked into the soft texture of her hair and I brought her face down close to my own. “It wouldn’t do you any good, baby. I could always break loose.”

“It would be a great fight.”

“Would it?”

“Not really,” she said. “You’d win in the end.”

“I always do, kitten,” I told her.

She smiled, her mouth wetly pink and inviting, offering itself to be taken. I touched her lips with mine, the warmth of her a subtle radiance I couldn’t resist, a quiet ember that flamed into a wild heat stirred by the frantic quest of her tongue.

The glass fell from her hand and tinkled in fragments on the floor. Almost in slow motion, she tumbled from above me into my lap, a tremulous abandon hardening her body into firm complexities of muscular curves that rose and fell under my hands, quivering with each touch.

Her voice was a demanding sob, whispering to me, her breath a sweet thing that was at one with her lips as she reached out for me and when I held her face in my hands and looked at her there was a wetness to her eyes like a beggar’s plea and she said, “Tiger... now... please.”

Camille Hunt was an animal in her own right, a wonderful, primitive thing suddenly released from the constraints of civilized bondage and her own hands stripped her naked in her yearning for fulfillment. Her skin had the glossy texture of satin, tanned by the sun and striped with ribbon bands of a bikini. The swell of her breasts and hips, the hollow of her stomach and the luxuriant sweep of her thighs burst upon my sight like the clashing of great cymbals and I reached out and let my fingers bite into the resilient flesh and dragged her down beside me.

And suddenly time seemed to disappear, events jumbled themselves into a kaleidoscopic pattern that had no meaning at all and the only sounds were the short breaths of savage desire, the sigh, the gasp of success and the moaning demand of even greater achievement until it all was finished like a parachute collapsing over inert jumpers who have known the thrill of the free fall and lay in the pleasure of survival.

I looked at my watch, shook her awake and felt the edge of anger gnawing at myself for letting any time out of my grasp at all. Outside the day had turned into night and the lights of cruising cars threw a brief glow against the windows that bore the trickling stains of a light rain.

“Camille...”

She turned in my arms, her voice drowsy. “Tiger?” she said softly.

“Have to go, doll.”

“Don’t.”

“No choice.”

Her eyes came open, the sleep still in them. Very gently she smiled up at me. “My web isn’t very strong, is it?”

“Too strong.”

The tips of her fingers crossed my mouth. “I know,” she told me. “Will you ever come back?”

“Like the moth to the flame.” I got dressed quickly, found a blanket in her bedroom and threw it over her and watched while she tucked it under her chin with a contented grin.

“You got the job,” she laughed and closed her eyes.

Someday I was going to find out when Ernie Bentley slept. He had a wife at home but he never seemed to make it there. Something going on in his test tubes or under his microscope was always too fascinating for him to leave. Any industry in the world would be glad to give him a top-ranking position in their organization, but he preferred the setup Martin Grady offered him and the freedom of unlimited experimentation every scientist hoped to achieve.

He came out of the darkroom with copies of Louis Agrounsky’s pictures and handed me several. “I’ll mail copies to Newark and the other centers,” he said. “I may even have a few leads myself. A character like this one isn’t going after nominal employment with a background like his.”

“For instance?”

“Some of the places that deal with subminiaturization components. It’s been fairly well developed for the practical purposes of rocketry, but there’s no end to the field in sight. Eventually they’ll wind up with power units as big as the head of a pin. I know a few people who have put out papers on the subject and there might have been correspondence between them.”

“There’s only one catch, Ernie... Agrounsky deliberately left his field and disappeared. He hasn’t shown up.”

Ernie shook his head in disagreement. “He still won’t take anything small. His mind won’t work that way. No matter what he does, he’ll have to emerge.”

“That first breakdown he had could have been just that — the first,” I reminded him.

“Possibly. In that case, all his knowledge, his training would come out in a hobby. He couldn’t cover it up.”

“Like hell. If he broke completely everything could be shattered.”

Ernie gave me a little shrug, not really caring one way or another. That one motion said it was up to those in the field, not to him, to locate the guy and solve the problem. His was more immediate. He shoved his glasses back on his head and said, “Have you contacted Don Lavois yet?”

“No.”

“Then you’d better,” he told me. “He picked up something about a big buy in the narcotics market.”

“Damn,” I said and reached for one. I dialed his hotel, asked for his room, and let it ring a dozen times before I hung up. “Not there. Look, Ernie, I’m going back to my place and change. If Don calls, have him hop on over, otherwise I’ll call him from there.”

“Will do, buddy. Take care of yourself.”

I stuck the photos he had given me in my pocket and took the stairs down to the street, picked up the first cab and had him take me over to the Salem. It took ten minutes to shower and change and when I was ready I tried another call to Don. The desk said he still hadn’t come in and the message I left was to have him call on Mr. Martin as soon as possible.

While I made the call I fingered the employee list Doug Hamilton had checked out, tried to think it through without getting anywhere, then threw the papers back in my suitcase in disgust.

It was time again, all-important time. What was the next step? Which direction? You’d think that there were enough men in the field to come up with something, but so far there was nothing but blanks. Vito Salvi had a good reason for killing those Washington boys, but why Hamilton? Why him?

I kept remembering the bodies the way I had seen them last, remembering something I had almost forgotten. Of all the three, Hamilton had shown the signs of being there the longest. Salvi would never have involved himself with him if he hadn’t been important. Hamilton hadn’t walked in cold... he had been directly involved somehow. If he had stumbled on the deal accidentally he simply would have been killed and his body disposed of. But no... he did have that address book. He knew about Salvi and where he was. For some reason he had waded into the situation head first and had gotten trapped in something way over his head.

Doug Hamilton might have been stupid, but not that stupid. He wasn’t exactly new in investigative work and would have covered himself somehow. I looked at my watch, the time twenty minutes to ten, then slapped my hat on and went back downstairs. At the desk I left a not for Don to wait for me, told the clerk to let him have my key to get in and slipped him a buck for his trouble. I took the first cab in line outside the door and gave him the number of Hamilton’s apartment, sweated through the six-minute ride and paid him off in front of the building.

The superintendent wasn’t too happy about the intrusion. There was a time and a place for everything, he told me, and the middle of his favorite program wasn’t it. But he didn’t argue too much. I was still cop to him and he knew the value of staying on the right side when his own skirts were clean.

“Okay,” he said, “so now what?”

“Did any mail come in for Hamilton since I saw you last?”

“Few things.”

“I’d like to see them.”

“Don’t they go back to the Post Office Department?”

“Sure,” I told him, “after I check the addresses.”

“They’re at the desk.”

I stepped back, let him give me a disgusted look, and followed him back to the lobby. He went through the door in the wall, back around the counter and rummaged around in his shelves. Then he handed me five envelopes and leaned on his elbows while I went through them.

Three were bills, one from Con Ed and two from gasoline companies whose credit services he apparently used. The other two were circulars from merchandising outfits I recognized.

“This all?”

“He never got much here. Had an office, didn’t he?”

I tossed the envelopes back on the counter. “Uh-huh. We just have to keep checking, that’s all.”

“Think I ought to readdress them to there then?”

“Hold them for a few more days. You’ll be told what to do with them.”

“Okay by me. He’s still a paid-up tenant as far as I’m concerned. All part of the service.”

“Anybody ever been up to see him since I was here?”

“Nope. He never had many visitors. Besides, we aren’t that exclusive. If anybody wanted in they only had to ring the bell. The doorman isn’t on except daytime and I’m pretty busy all over the building.”

“But they’d have to ring the bell?”

The super shrugged, making another vague gesture. “Unless they come in behind somebody else. Then what good would that do? They all keep their doors locked here.”

“Standard equipment?”

“What else?”

“Pick proof?”

“Depends on what racket you’re in. The locksmith over on Third that we use when a tenant loses his keys opens them fast enough. He’s bonded though. Good man.”

“You have a master key?”

“Nope. Nothing except for building entrances, storerooms and like that. You think somebody jimmied his place?”

“Possible.”

“Well, he was a funny guy.”

I looked at him. “Why?”

“Nothing special,” the super chuckled. “He wrote a letter to himself once though, about a week before he died. That’s funny. Now what was he going to say in his answer?”

I leaned on the counter, staring down at him, and his face seemed to tighten when he saw my expression. “Where did he send it to?”

“Damned if I know. It was just from himself to himself. He gave it to me to mail on the way out like he did sometimes. I do it for everybody. Part of the service,” he said defensively.

“Well, where was the address?” I demanded, an edge in my voice.

“I told you, I don’t know. It wasn’t here or I just would of stuck it in his box.”

“His office?”

“So who can remember? Look, mister...”

“You checked it, didn’t you?”

“Sure, I told you, but I just thought it was funny. I didn’t look. If that’s all you want I got things to do. I...”

“Go ahead and do them,” I said, and watched him swallow hard and scuttle back into the office. He came out the door, gave me the look too many people reserve for cops, and walked up the lobby indignantly.

A break, at last there was a lousy break in the pattern. I went back to the street, turned north to the first open store that had a pay phone in it and dialed Charlie Corbinet.

He finally lifted the receiver and I got a taciturn “Yeah?”

“Tiger, Charlie.”

His tone changed immediately and he said, “Nothing new on this end yet. One team thought they had a lead on Agrounsky in Philly but it turned sour.”

“Then try this... get the Post Office Department checking all the General Delivery boxes in the area for a letter Doug Hamilton addressed to himself. He might have had something hot and didn’t want to keep it where it could be found.”

I could hear him scribble on a pad beside the phone. “Where’d you pick it up?”

“By accident from the super at his apartment building. It may not be worth anything but it will have to be run down. He was in this tight, buddy.”

“Will do. Shouldn’t take long. Call me back in a couple of hours.”

“Right.”

I hung up impatiently. With luck the Post Office boys wouldn’t take that long and we’d be able to move out. It had been morning since I had eaten so I stopped by the Blue Ribbon Restaurant on my way back to the hotel, had a welsh rabbit with a cold beer on the side, then took my time getting back to the Salem.

The desk clerk saw me as I came in, and remembering the buck, smiled. “Your friend is waiting for you upstairs, Mr. Martin. He came in a few minutes after you left. He has your key.”

“Thanks,” I said.

The elevator was on self-service and crept up to my floor, the door opening as if it were getting tired of the job. I walked down the carpeted hallway to my room, knocked twice, out of habit standing back from the door jamb.

Inside a TV was softly reciting the news and sports. I knocked again, louder this time. Nobody answered.

I didn’t like it. There was something there I could smell and when the feeling started up my spine I knew it was all wrong somewhere. I yanked the .45 out, cocked it in my fist and tried the knob. The door opened, all right, and that was all wrong. Don Lavois never would have sat behind an unlocked door for anything.

With the nose of the gun I gave the door a shove and it opened almost soundlessly, swinging inward until a shaft of light flooded the hallway. I hated to take the chance but I had no choice. I went in in a crouch, the gun ready to spit if anything I didn’t know moved.

But it wasn’t necessary. Nothing was moving. There was nobody in the small bathroom or the closet. There was only Don Lavois on the floor dead with a small-calibre bullet hole directly between his eyes, lying on his back where the shot had thrown him when he had opened the door for a killer, thinking it was me.