The Mike Hammer Collection

I let it go. I deliberately poured the beer into the glass until the head was foaming over the rim, then drank it off with a grimace of pleasure and put the glass down.

When I was ready I said, “So now the Reds are going to take over the world. They’ll bury us. Well, maybe they will, buddy, but there won’t be enough Reds around to start repopulating again, that’s for sure.”

“I didn’t say that,” Art told me.

His manner had changed again. I threw him an annoyed look and reached for the beer.

“I think the world conquest parties changed hands. The conqueror has been conquered. The Reds have located and are using this vast fund of information, this great organization we call Butterfly Two, and that’s why the free world is on the defensive.”

John asked me if I wanted another Blue Ribbon and I said yes. He brought two, poured them, put the bar check in the register and returned it with a nod. When he had gone I half swung around, no longer so filled with a crazy fury that I couldn’t speak. I said, “You’re lucky, Rickerby. I didn’t know whether to belt you in the mouth or listen.”

“You’re fortunate you listened.”

“Then finish it. You think Velda’s part of Butterfly Two.” Everything, yet nothing, was in his shrug. “I didn’t ask that many questions. I didn’t care. All I want is Richie’s killer.”

“That doesn’t answer my question. What do you think?”

Once again he shrugged. “It looks like she was,” he told me.

So I thought my way through it and let the line cut all the corners off because there wasn’t that much time and I asked him, “What was Richie working on when he was killed?”

Somehow, he knew I was going to ask that one and shook his head sadly. “Not that at all. His current job had to do with illegal gold shipments.”

“You’re sure.”

“I’m sure.”

“Then what about this Erlich?”

Noncommittally, Art shrugged. “Dead or disappeared. Swallowed up in the aftermath of war. Nobody knows.”

“Somebody does,” I reminded him. “The Big Agency boys don’t give up their targets that easily. Not if the target is so big it makes a lifetime speciality of espionage.”

He reflected a moment and nodded. “Quite possible. However, it’s more than likely Erlich is dead at this point. He’d be in his sixties now if he escaped the general roundup of agents after the war. When the underground organizations of Europe were free of restraint they didn’t wait on public trials. They knew who their targets were and how to find them. You’d be surprised at just how many people simply disappeared, big people and little people, agents and collaborators both. Many a person we wanted badly went into a garbage pit somewhere.”

“Is that an official attitude?”

“Don’t be silly. We don’t reflect on attitudes to civilians. Occasionally it becomes necessary—”

“Now, for instance,” I interrupted.

“Yes, like now. And believe me, they’re better off knowing nothing.”

Through the glasses his eyes tried to read me, then lost whatever expression they had. There was a touch of contempt and disgust in the way he sat there, examining me like a specimen under glass, then the last part of my line cut across the last corner and I asked him casually, “Who’s The Dragon?”

Art Rickerby was good. Damn, but he was good. It was as if I had asked what time it was and he had no watch. But he just wasn’t that good. I saw all the little things happen to him that nobody else would have noticed and watched them grow and grow until he could contain them no longer and had to sluff them off with an aside remark. So with an insipid look that didn’t become him at all he said, “Who?”

“Or is it whom? Art?”

I had him where the hair was short and he knew it. He had given me all the big talk but this one was one too big. It was even bigger than he was and he didn’t quite know how to handle it. You could say this about him: he was a book man. He put all the facts through the machine in his head and took the risk alone. He couldn’t tell what I knew, yet he couldn’t tell what I didn’t know. Neither could he take a chance on having me clam up.

Art Rickerby was strictly a statesman. A federal agent, true, a cop, a dedicated servant of the people, but foremost he was a statesman. He was dealing with big security now and all the wraps were off. We were in a bar drinking beer and somehow the world was at our feet. What was it Laura had said—“I saw wars start over a drink”—and now it was almost the same thing right here.

“You didn’t answer me,” I prodded.

He put his glass down, and for the first time his hand wasn’t steady. “How did you know about that?”

“Tell me, is it a big secret?”

His voice had an edge to it. “Top secret.”

“Well, whatta you know.”

“Hammer—”

“Nuts, Rickerby. You tell me.”

Time was on my side now. I could afford a little bit of it. He couldn’t. He was going to have to get to a phone to let someone bigger than he was know that The Dragon wasn’t a secret any longer. He flipped the mental coin and that someone lost. He turned slowly and took his glasses off, wiping them on a handkerchief. They were all fogged up. “The Dragon is a team.”

“So is Rutgers.”

The joke didn’t go across. Ignoring it, he said, “It’s a code name for an execution team. There are two parts, Tooth and Nail.”

I turned the glass around in my hand, staring at it, waiting. I asked, “Commies?”

“Yes.” His reluctance was almost tangible. He finally said, “I can name persons throughout the world in critical positions in government who have died lately, some violently, some of natural causes apparently. You would probably recognize their names.”

“I doubt it. I’ve been out of circulation for seven years.”

He put the glasses on again and looked at the backbar. “I wonder,” he mused to himself.

“The Dragon, Rickerby, if it were so important, how come the name never appeared? With a name like that it was bound to show.”

“Hell,” he said, “it was our code name, not theirs.” His hands made an innocuous gesture, then folded together. “And now that you know something no one outside our agency knows, perhaps you’ll tell me a little something about The Dragon.”

“Sure,” I said, and I watched his face closely. “The Dragon killed Richie.”

Nothing showed.

“Now The Dragon is trying to kill Velda.”

Still nothing showed, but he said calmly, “How do you know?”

“Richie told me. That’s what he told me before he died. So she couldn’t be tied up with the other side, could she?”

Unexpectedly, he smiled, tight and deadly and you really couldn’t tell what he was thinking. “You never know,” Art answered. “When their own kind slip from grace, they too become targets. We have such in our records. It isn’t even unusual.”

“You bastard.”

“You know too much, Mr. Hammer. You might become a target yourself.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

He took a bill from his pocket and put it on the bar. John took it, totaled up the check and hit the register. When he gave the change back Art said, “Thanks for being so candid. Thank you for The Dragon.”

“You leaving it like that?”

“I think that’s it, don’t you?”

“Sucker,” I said.

He stopped halfway off his stool.

“You don’t think I’d be that stupid, do you? Even after seven years I wouldn’t be that much of a joker.”

For a minute he was the placid little gray man I had first met, then almost sorrowfully he nodded and said, “I’m losing my insight. I thought I had it all. What else do you know?”

I took a long pull of the Blue Ribbon and finished the glass. When I put it down I said to him, “Richie told me something else that could put his killer in front of a gun.”

“And just what is it you want for this piece of information?”

“Not much.” I grinned. “Just an official capacity in some department or another so that I can carry a gun.”

“Like in the old days,” he said.

“Like in the old days,” I repeated.

CHAPTER 8

Hy Gardner was taping a show and I didn’t get to see him until it was over. We had a whole empty studio to ourselves, the guest chairs to relax in and for a change a quiet that was foreign to New York.

When he lit his cigar and had a comfortable wreath of smoke over his head he said, “How’s things going, Mike?”

“Looking up. Why, what have you heard?”

“A little here and there.” He shrugged. “You’ve been seen around.” Then he laughed with the cigar in his teeth and put his feet up on the coffee table prop. “I heard about the business down in Benny Joe Grissi’s place. You sure snapped back in a hurry.”

“Hell, I don’t have time to train. Who put you on the bit?”

“Old Bayliss Henry still has his traditional afternoon drink at Ted’s with the rest of us. He knew we were pretty good friends.”

“What did he tell you?”

Hy grinned again. “Only about the fight. He knew that would get around. I’d sooner hear the rest from you anyway.”

“Sure.”

“Should I tape notes?”

“Not yet. It’s not that big yet, but you can do something for me.”

“Just say it.”

“How are your overseas connections?”

Hy took the cigar out, studied it and knocked off the ash. “I figure the next question is going to be a beauty.”

“It is.”

“Okay,” he nodded. “In this business you have to have friends. Reporters aren’t amateurs, they have sources of information and almost as many ways of getting what they want as Interpol has.”

“Can you code a request to your friends and get an answer back the same way?”

After a moment he nodded.

“Swell. Then find out what anybody knows about The Dragon.”

The cigar went back, he dragged on it slowly and let out a thin stream of smoke.

I said, “That’s a code name too. Dragon is an execution team. Our side gave it the tag and it’s a top secret bit, but that kind of stew is generally the easiest to stir once you take the lid off the kettle.”

“You don’t play around, do you?”

“I told you, I haven’t got time.”

“Damn, Mike, you’re really sticking it out, aren’t you?”

“You’ll get the story.”

“I hope you’re alive long enough to give it to me. The kind of game you’re playing has put a lot of good men down for keeps.”

“I’m not exactly a patsy,” I said.

“You’re not the same Mike Hammer you were either, friend.”

“When can you get the information off?” I asked him.

“Like now,” he told me.

There was a pay phone in the corridor outside. The request went through Bell’s dial system to the right party and the relay was assured. The answer would come into Hy’s office at the paper coded within a regular news transmission and the favor was expected to be returned when needed.

Hy hung up and turned around. “Now what?”

“Let’s eat, then take a run down to the office of a cop who used to be a friend.”

I knocked and he said to come in and when he saw who it was his face steeled into an expression that was so noncommittal it was pure betrayal. Behind it was all the resentment and animosity he had let spew out earlier, but this time it was under control.

Dr. Larry Snyder was sprawled out in a wooden desk chair left over from the gaslight era, a surprised smile touching the corner of his mouth as he nodded to me.

I said, “Hy Gardner, Dr. Larry Snyder. I think you know Pat Chambers.”

“Hi, Larry. Yes, I know Captain Chambers.”

They nodded all around, the pleasantries all a fat fake, then Hy took the other chair facing the desk and sat down. I just stood there looking down at Pat so he could know that I didn’t give a damn for him either if he wanted it that way.

Pat’s voice had a cutting edge to it and he took in Hy with a curt nod. “Why the party?”

Hy’s got an interest in the story end.”

“We have a procedure for those things.”

“Maybe you have, but I don’t and this is the way it’s going to be, old buddy.”

“Knock it off.”

Quietly, Larry said, “Maybe it’s a good thing I brought my medical bag, but if either one of you had any sense you’d keep it all talk until you find the right answers.”

“Shut up, Larry,” Pat snarled, “you don’t know anything about this.”

“You’d be surprised at what I know,” he told him. Pat let his eyes drift to Larry’s and he frowned. Then all his years took hold and his face went blank again.

I said, “What did ballistics come up with?”

He didn’t answer me and didn’t have to. I knew by his silence that the slug matched the others. He leaned on the desk, his hands folded together and when he was ready he said, “Okay, where did you get it?”

“We had something to trade, remember?”

His grin was too crooked. “Not necessarily.”

But my grin was just as crooked. “The hell it isn’t. Time isn’t working against me anymore, kiddo. I can hold out on you as long as I feel like it.”

Pat half started to rise and Larry said cautioningly, “Easy, Pat.”

He let out a grunt of disgust and sat down again. In a way he was like Art, always thinking, but covering the machinery of his mind with clever little moves. But I had known Pat too long and too well. I knew his play and could read the signs. When he handed me the photostat I was smiling even dirtier and he let me keep on with it until I felt the grin go tight as a drum, then pull into a harsh grimace. When I looked at Pat his face mirrored my own, only his had hate in it.

“Read it out loud,” he said.

“Drop dead.”

“No,” he insisted, his voice almost paternal, a woodshed voice taking pleasure in the whipping, “go ahead and read it.”

Silently, I read it again. Velda had been an active agent for the O.S.I. during the war, certain code numbers in the Washington files given for reference, and her grade and time in that type of service had qualified her for a Private Investigator’s ticket in the State of New York.

Pat waited, then finally, “Well?”

I handed back the photostat. It was my turn to shrug, then I gave him the address in Brooklyn where Cole had lived and told him where he could find the hole the slug made. I wondered what he’d do when he turned up Velda’s picture.

He let me finish, picked up the phone and dialed an extension. A few minutes later another officer laid a folder on his desk and Pat opened it to scan the sheet inside. The first report was enough. He closed the folder and rocked back in the chair. “There were two shots. They didn’t come from the same gun. One person considered competent said the second was a large-bore gun, most likely a .45.”

“How about that,” I said.

His eyes were tight and hard now. “You’re being cute, Mike. You’re playing guns again. I’m going to catch you at it and then your ass is going to be hung high. You kill anybody on this prod and I’ll be there to watch them strap you in the hot squat. I could push you a little more on this right now and maybe see you take a fall, but if I do it won’t be enough to satisfy me. When you go down, I want to see you fall all the way, a six-foot fall like the man said.”

“Thanks a bunch.”

“No trouble,” he smiled casually.

I glanced at Larry, then nodded toward Pat. “He’s a sick man, Doctor. He won’t admit it, but he was in love with her too.”

Pat’s expression didn’t change a bit.

“Weren’t you?” I asked him.

He waited until Hy and I were at the door and I had turned around to look at him again and this time I wasn’t going to leave until he had answered me. He didn’t hesitate. Softly, he said, “Yes, damn you.”

On the street Hy steered me toward a bar near the Trib Building. We picked a booth in the back, ordered a pair of frigid Blue Ribbons and toasted each other silently when they came. Hy said, “I’m thinking like Alice in Wonderland now, that things keep getting curiouser and curiouser. You’ve given me a little bit and now I want more. It’s fun writing a Broadway column and throwing out squibs about famous people and all that jazz, but essentially I’m a reporter and it wouldn’t feel bad at all to do a little poking and prying again for a change.”

“I don’t know where to start, Hy.”

“Well, give it a try.”

“All right. How about this one? Butterfly Two, Gerald Erlich.”

The beer stopped halfway to his mouth. “How did you know about Butterfly Two?”

“How did you know about it?”

“That’s war stuff, friend. Do you know what I was then?”

“A captain in special services, you told me.”

“That’s right. I was. But it was a cover assignment at times too. I was also useful in several other capacities besides.”

“Don’t tell me you were a spy.”

“Let’s say I just kept my ear to the ground regarding certain activities. But what’s this business about Butterfly Two and Erlich? That’s seventeen years old now and out of style.”

“Is it?”

“Hell, Mike, when that Nazi war machine—” Then he got the tone of my voice and put the glass down, his eyes watching me closely. “Let’s have it, Mike.”

“Butterfly Two isn’t as out of style as you think.”

“Look—”

“And what about Gerald Erlich?”

“Presumed dead.”

“Proof?”

“None, but damn it, Mike—”

“Look, there are too many suppositions.”

“What are you driving at, anyway? Man, don’t tell me about Gerald Erlich. I had contact with him on three different occasions. The first two I knew him only as an allied officer, the third time I saw him in a detention camp after the war but didn’t realize who he was until I went over it in my mind for a couple of hours. When I went back there the prisoners had been transferred and the truck they were riding in had hit a land mine taking a detour around a bombed bridge. It was the same truck Giesler was on, the SS Colonel who had all the prisoners killed during the Battle of the Bulge.”

“You saw the body?”

“No, but the survivors were brought in and he wasn’t among them.”

“Presumed dead?”

“What else do you need? Listen, I even have a picture of the guy I took at that camp and some of those survivors when they were brought back. He wasn’t in that bunch at all.”

I perched forward on my chair, my hands flat on the table. “You have what?”

Surprised at the edge in my voice, he pulled out another one of those cigars. “They’re in my personal stuff upstairs.” He waved a thumb toward the street.

“Tell me something, Hy,” I said. “Are you cold on these details?”

He caught on quick. “When I got out of the army, friend, I got out. All the way. I was never that big that they called me back as a consultant.”

“Can we see those photos?”

“Sure. Why not?”

I picked up my beer, finished it, waited for him to finish his, then followed him out. We went back through the press section of the paper, took the service elevator up and got out at Hy’s floor. Except for a handful of night men, the place was empty, a gigantic echo chamber that magnified the sound of our feet against the tiled floor. Hy unlocked his office, flipped on the light and pointed to a chair.

It took him five minutes of rummaging through his old files, but he finally came up with the photos. They were 120 contact sheets still in a military folder that was getting stiff and yellow around the edges and when he laid them out he pointed to one in the top left-hand corner and gave me an enlarging glass to bring out the image.

His face came in loud and clear, chunky features that bore all the physical traits of a soldier with overtones of one used to command. The eyes were hard, the mouth a tight slash as they looked contemptuously at the camera.

Almost as if he knew what was going to happen, I thought.

Unlike the others, there was no harried expression, no trace of fear. Nor did he have the stolid composure of a prisoner. Again, it was as if he were not really a prisoner at all.

Hy pointed to the shots of the survivors of the accident. He wasn’t in any of those. The mangled bodies of the dead were unrecognizable.

Hy said, “Know him?”

I handed the photos back. “No.”

“Sure?”

“I never forget faces.”

“Then that’s one angle out.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“But where did you ever get hold of that bit?”

I reached for my hat. “Have you ever heard of a red herring?”

Hy chuckled and nodded. “I’ve dropped a few in my life.”

“I think I might have picked one up. It stinks.”

“So drop it. What are you going to do now?”

“Not drop it, old buddy. It stinks just a little too bad to be true. No, there’s another side to this Erlich angle I’d like to find out about.”

“Clue me.”

“Senator Knapp.”

“The Missile Man, Mr. America. Now how does he come in? ”

“He comes in because he’s dead. The same bullet killed him as Richie Cole and the same gun shot at me. That package on Knapp that you gave me spelled out his war record pretty well. He was a light colonel when he went in and a major general when he came out. I’m wondering if I could tie his name in with Erlich’s anyplace.”

Hy’s mouth came open and he nearly lost the cigar. “Knapp working for another country?”

“Hell no,” I told him. “Were you?”

“But—”

“He could have had a cover assignment too.”

“For Pete’s sake, Mike, if Knapp had a job other than what was known he could have made political capital of it and—”

“Who knew about yours?”

“Well—nobody, naturally. At least, not until now,” he added.

“No friends?”

“No.”

“Only authorized personnel.”

“Exactly. And they were mighty damn limited.”

“Does Marilyn know about it now?”

“Mike—”

“Does she?”

“Sure, I told her one time, but all that stuff is seventeen years old. She listened politely like a wife will, made some silly remark and that was it.”

“The thing is, she knows about it.”

“Yes. So what?”

“Maybe Laura Knapp does too.”

Hy sat back again, sticking the cigar in his mouth. “Boy,” he said, “you sure are a cagey one. You’ll rationalize anything just to see that broad again, won’t you?”

I laughed back at him. “Could be,” I said. “Can I borrow that photo of Erlich?”

From his desk Hy pulled a pair of shears, cut out the shot of the Nazi agent and handed it to me. “Have fun, but you’re chasing a ghost now.”

“That’s how it goes. But at least if you run around long enough something will show up.”

“Yeah, like a broad.”

“Yeah,” I repeated, then reached for my hat and left.

Duck-Duck Jones told me that they had pulled the cop off Old Dewey’s place. A relative had showed up, some old dame who claimed to be his half sister and had taken over Dewey’s affairs. The only thing she couldn’t touch was the newsstand which he had left to Duck-Duck in a surprise letter held by Bucky Harris who owned the Clover Bar. Even Duck-Duck could hardly believe it, but now pride of ownership had taken hold and he was happy to take up where the old man left off.

When I had his ear I said, “Listen, Duck-Duck, before Dewey got bumped a guy left something with him to give to me.”

“Yeah? Like what, Mike?”

“I don’t know. A package or something. Maybe an envelope. Anyway, did you see anything laying around here with my name on it? Or just an unmarked thing.”

Duck folded a paper and thrust it at a customer, made change and turned back to me again. “I don’t see nuttin’, Mike. Honest. Besides, there ain’t no place to hide nuttin’ here. You wanna look around?”

I shook my head. “Naw, you would have found it by now.”

“Well what you want I should do if somethin’ shows up?”

“Hang onto it, Duck. I’ll be back.” I picked up a paper and threw a dime down.

I started to leave and Duck stopped me. “Hey, Mike, you still gonna do business here? Dewey got you down for some stuff.”

“You keep me on the list, Duck. I’ll pick up everything in a day or two.”

I waved, waited for the light and headed west across town. It was a long walk, but at the end of it was a guy who owed me two hundred bucks and had the chips to pay off on the spot. Then I hopped a cab to the car rental agency on Forty-ninth, took my time about picking out a Ford coupé and turned toward the West Side Drive.

It had turned out to be a beautiful day, it was almost noon, the sun was hot, and once on the New York Thruway I had the wide concrete road nearly to myself. I stayed at the posted sixty and occasionally some fireball would come blasting by, otherwise it was a smooth run with only a few trucks to pass. Just before I reached Harriman I saw the other car behind me close to a quarter mile and hold there. Fifteen miles further at the Newburgh entrance it was still there so I stepped it up to seventy. Momentarily, the distance widened, then closed and we stayed like that. Then just before the New Paltz exit the car began to close the gap, reached me, passed and kept on going. It was a dark blue Buick Special with a driver lazing behind the wheel and as he went by all the tension left my shoulders. What he had just pulled was a typical tricky habit of a guy who had driven a long way—staying behind a car until boredom set in, then running for it to find a new pacer for a while. I eased off back to sixty, turned through the toll gate at Kingston, picked up Route 28 and loafed my way up to the chalet called The Willows and when I cut the motor of the car I could hear music coming through the trees from behind the house and knew that she was waiting for me.

She was lying in the grass at the edge of the pool, stretched out on an oversized towel with her face cradled in her intertwined fingers. Her hair spilled forward over her head, letting the sun tan her neck, her arms pulled forward so that lines of muscles were in gentle bas-relief down her back into her hips. Her legs were stretched wide in open supplication of the inveterate sun worshipper and her skin glistened with a fine, golden sweat.

Beside her the shortwave portable boomed in a symphony, the thunder of it obliterating any sound of my feet. I sat there beside her, quietly, looking at the beauty of those long legs and the pert way her breasts flattened against the towel, and after long minutes passed the music became muted and drifted off into a finale of silence.

I said, “Hello, Laura,” and she started as though suddenly awakened from sleep, then realizing the state of affairs, reached for the edge of the towel to flip it around her. I let out a small laugh and did it for her.

She rolled over, eyes wide, then saw me and laughed back. “Hey, you.”

“You’ll get your tail burned lying around like that.”

“It’s worse having people sneak up on you.”

I shrugged and tucked my feet under me. “It was worth it. People like me don’t get to see such lovely sights very often.”

Her eyes lit up impishly. “That’s a lie. Besides, I’m not that new to you,” she reminded me.

“Out in the sunlight you are, kitten. You take on an entirely new perspective.”

“Are you making love or being clinical?” she demanded.

“I don’t know. One thing could lead into another.”

“Then maybe we should just let nature take its course.”

“Maybe.”

“Feel like a swim?”

“I didn’t bring a suit.”

“Well . . .” and she grinned again.

I gave her a poke in the ribs with my forefinger and she grunted. “There are some things I’m prudish about, baby.”

“Well I’ll be damned,” she whispered in amazement. “You never can tell, can you?”

“Sometimes never.”

“There are extra suits in the bathhouse.”

“That sounds better.”

“Then let me go get into one first. I’m not going to be all skin while you play coward.”

I reached for her but she was too fast, springing to her feet with the rebounding motion of a tumbler. She swung the towel sari-fashion around herself and smiled, knowing she was suddenly more desirable then than when she was naked. She let me eat her with my eyes for a second, then ran off boyishly, skirting the pool, and disappeared into the dressing room on the other side.

She came back out a minute later in the briefest black bikini I had ever seen, holding up a pair of shorts for me. She dropped them on a chair, took a run for the pool and dove in. I was a nut for letting myself feel like a colt, but the day was right, the woman was right and those seven years had been a long, hard grind. I walked over, picked up the shorts and without bothering to turn on the overhead light got dressed and went back out to the big, big day.

Underwater she was like an eel, golden brown, the black of the bikini making only the barest slashes against her skin. She was slippery and luscious and more tantalizing than a woman had a right to be. She surged up out of the water and sat on the edge of the pool with her stomach sucked in so that a muscular valley ran from her navel up into the cleft of her breasts, whose curves arched up in proud nakedness a long way before feeling the constraint of the miniature halter.

She laughed, stuck her tongue out at me and walked to the grass by the radio and sat down. I said, “Damn,” softly, waited a bit, then followed her.

When I was comfortable she put her hand out on mine, making me seem almost prison-pale by comparison. “Now we can talk, Mike. You didn’t come all the way up here just to see me, did you?”

“I didn’t think so before I left.”

She closed her fingers over my wrist. “Can I tell you something very frankly?”

“Be my guest.”

“I like you, big man.”

I turned my head and nipped at her forearm. “The feeling’s mutual, big girl. It shouldn’t be though.”

“Why not?” Her eyes were steady and direct, deep and warm as they watched and waited for the answer.

“Because we’re not at all alike. We’re miles apart in the things we do and the way we think. I’m a trouble character, honey. It’s always been that way and it isn’t going to change. So be smart. Don’t encourage me because I’ll only be too anxious to get in the game. We had a pretty hello and a wonderful beginning and I came up here on a damn flimsy pretext because I was hungry for you and now that I’ve had a taste again I feel like a pig and want it all.”

“Ummmm,” Laura said.

“Don’t laugh,” I told her. “White eyes is not speaking with forked tongue. This old soldier has been around.”

“There and back?’

“All the way, buddy.”

Her grin was the kind they paint on pixie dolls. “Okay, old soldier, so kill me.”

“It’ll take days and days.”

“Ummm,” she said again. “But tell me your pretext for coming in the first place.”

I reached out and turned the radio down. “It’s about Leo.”

The smile faded and her eyes crinkled at the corners. “Oh?”

“Did he ever tell you about his—well, job let’s say, during the war?”

She didn’t seem certain of what I asked. “Well, he was a general. He was on General Stoeffler’s staff.”

“I know that. But what did he do? Did he ever speak about what his job was?”

Again, she looked at me, puzzled. “Yes. Procurement was their job. He never went into great detail and I always thought it was because he never saw any direct action. He seemed rather ashamed of the fact.”

I felt myself make a disgusted face.

“Is there—anything specific—like—”

“No,” I said bluntly, “it’s just that I wondered if he could possibly have had an undercover job.”

“I don’t understand, Mike.” She propped herself up on one elbow and stared at me. “Are you asking if Leo was part of the cloak-and-dagger set?”

I nodded.

The puzzled look came back again and she moved her head in easy negative. “I think I would have known. I’ve seen all his old personal stuff from the war, his decorations, his photos, his letters of commendation and heard what stories he had to tell. But as I said, he always seemed to be ashamed that he wasn’t on the front line getting shot at. Fortunately, the country had a better need for him.”

“It was a good try,” I said and sat up.

“I’m sorry, Mike.”

Then I thought of something, told her to wait and went back to the bathhouse. I got dressed and saw the disappointment in her eyes from all the way across the pool when I came out, but the line had to be drawn someplace.

Laura gave me a look of mock disgust and patted the grass next to her. When I squatted down I took out the photo of Gerald Erlich and passed it over. “Take a look, honey. Have you ever seen that face in any of your husband’s effects?”

She studied it, her eyes squinting in the sun, and when she had made sure she handed it back. “No, I never have. Who is he?”

“His name used to be Gerald Erlich. He was a trained espionage agent working for the Nazis during the war.”

“But what did he have to do with Leo?”

“I don’t know,” I told her. “His name has been coming up a little too often to be coincidental.”

“Mike—” She bit her lip, thinking, then: “I have Leo’s effects in the house. Do you think you might find something useful in them? They might make more sense to you than they do to me.”

“It sure won’t hurt to look.” I held out my hand to help her up and that was as far as I got. The radio between us suddenly burst apart almost spontaneously and slammed backward into the pool.

I gave her a shove that threw her ten feet away, rolled the other way and got to my feet running like hell for the west side of the house. It had to have been a shot and from the direction the radio skidded I could figure the origin. It had to be a silenced blast from a pistol because a rifle would have had either Laura or me with no trouble at all. I skirted the trees, stopped and listened, and from almost directly ahead I heard a door slam and headed for it wishing I had kept the .45 on me and to hell with Pat. The bushes were too thick to break through so I had to cut down the driveway, the gravel crunching under my feet. I never had a chance. All I saw was the tail end of a dark blue Buick Special pulling away to make a turn that hid it completely.

And now the picture was coming out a little clearer. It hadn’t been a tired driver on the Thruway at all. The bastard had picked me up at Duck’s stand, figured he had given me something when he had handed me the paper, probably hired a car the same time I did with plenty of time to do it in since I wasn’t hurrying at all. He followed me until he was sure he knew where I was headed and waited me out.

Damn. It was too close. But what got me was, how many silenced shots had he fired before hitting that radio? He had been too far away for accurate shooting apparently, but he could have been plunking them all around us hoping for a hit until he got the radio. Damn!

And I was really important. He knew where I was heading. Even since I had started to operate I had had a tail on me and it had almost paid off for him. But if I were important dead, so was Laura, because now that killer could never be sure I hadn’t let her in on the whole business. Another damn.

She stood over the wreckage of the portable she had fished from the pool, white showing at the corners of her mouth. Her hands trembled so that she clasped them in front of her and she breathed as though she had done the running, not me. Breathlessly, she said, “Mike—what was it? Please, Mike—”

I put my arm around her shoulder and with a queer sob she buried her face against me. When she looked up she had herself under control. “It was a shot, wasn’t it?”

“That’s right. A silenced gun.”

“But—”

“It’s the second time he’s tried for me.”

“Do you think—”

“He’s gone for now,” I said.

“But who was he?”

“I think he was The Dragon, sugar.”

For a few seconds she didn’t answer, then she turned her face up toward mine. “Who?”

“Nobody you know. He’s an assassin. Up until now his record has been pretty good. He must be getting the jumps.”

“My gracious, Mike, this is crazy! It’s absolutely crazy.”

I nodded in agreement. “You’ll never know, but now we have a real problem. You’re going to need protection.”

“Me!”

“Anybody I’m close to is in trouble. The best thing we can do is call the local cops.”

She gave me a dismayed glance. “But I can’t—I have to be in Washington—Oh, Mike!”

“It won’t be too bad in the city, kid, but out here you’re too alone.”

Laura thought about it, then shrugged. “I suppose you’re right. After Leo was killed the police made me keep several guns handy. In fact, there’s one in each room.”

“Can you use them?”

Her smile was wan. “The policeman you met the last time showed me.”

“Swell, but what about out here?”

“There’s a shotgun in the corner of the bathhouse.”

“Loaded?”

“Yes.”

“A shotgun isn’t exactly a handgun.”

“Leo showed me how to use it. We used to shoot skeet together at the other end of the property.”

“Police protection would still be your best bet.”

“Can it be avoided?”

“Why stick your neck out?”

“Because from now on I’m going to be a very busy girl, Mike. Congress convenes this week and the race is on for hostess of the year.”

“That stuff is a lot of crap.”

“Maybe, but that’s what Leo wanted.”

“So he’s leaving a dead hand around.”

There was a hurt expression on her face. “Mike—I did love him. Please . . .?”

“Sorry, kid. I don’t have much class. We bat in different leagues.”

She touched me lightly, her fingers cool. “Perhaps not. I think we are really closer than you realize.”

I grinned and squeezed her hand, then ran my palm along the soft swell of her flanks.

Laura smiled and said, “Are you going to—do anything about that shot?”

“Shall I?”

“It’s up to you. This isn’t my league now.”

I made the decision quickly. “All right, we’ll keep it quiet. If that slob has any sense he’ll know we won’t be stationary targets again. From now on I’ll be doing some hunting myself.”

“You sure, Mike?”

“I’m sure.”

“Good. Then let’s go through Leo’s effects.”

Inside she led me upstairs past the bedrooms to the end of the hall, opened a closet and pulled out a small trunk. I took it from her, carried it into the first bedroom and dumped the contents out on the dresser.

When you thought about it, it was funny how little a man actually accumulated during the most important years of his life. He could go through a whole war, live in foreign places with strange people, be called upon to do difficult and unnatural work, yet come away from those years with no more than he could put in a very small trunk.

Leo Knapp’s 201 file was thick, proper and as military as could be. There was an attempt at a diary that ran into fifty pages, but the last third showed an obvious effort being made to overcome boredom, then the thing dwindled out. I went through every piece of paperwork there was, uncovering nothing, saving the photos until last.

Laura left me alone to work uninterruptedly, but the smell of her perfume was there in the room and from somewhere downstairs I could hear her talking on the phone. She was still tense from the experience outside and although I couldn’t hear her conversation I could sense the strain in her voice. She came back in ten minutes later and sat on the edge of the bed, quiet, content just to be there, then she sighed and I knew the tension had gone out of her.

I don’t know what I expected, but the results were a total negative. Of the hundreds of photos, half were taken by G.I. staff photogs and the rest an accumulation of camp and tourist shots that every soldier who ever came home had tucked away in his gear. When you were old and fat you could take them out, reminisce over the days when you were young and thin and wonder what had happened to all the rest in the picture before putting them back in storage for another decade.

Behind me Laura watched while I began putting things back in the trunk and I heard her ask, “Anything, Mike?”

“No.” I half threw his medals in the pile. “Everything’s as mundane as a mud pie.”

“I’m sorry, Mike.”

“Don’t be sorry. Sometimes the mundane can hide some peculiar things. There’s still a thread left to pull. If Leo had anything to do with Erlich I have a Fed for a friend who just might come up with the answer.” I snapped the lock shut on the trunk. “It just gives me a pain to have everything come up so damn hard.”

“Really?” Her voice laughed.

I glanced up into the mirror on the dresser and felt that wild warmth steal into my stomach like an ebullient catalyst that pulled me taut as a bowstring and left my breath hanging in my throat.

“Something should be made easy for you then,” she said.

Laura was standing there now, tall and lovely, the sun still with her in the rich loamy color of her skin, the nearly bleached white tone of her hair.

At her feet the bikini made a small puddle of black like a shadow, then she walked away from it to me and I was waiting for her.

CHAPTER 9

Night and the rain had come back to New York, the air musty with dust driven up by the sudden surge of the downpour. The bars were filled, the sheltered areas under marquees crowded and an empty taxi a rare treasure to be fought over.

But it was a night to think in. There is a peculiar anonymity you can enjoy in the city on a rainy night. You’re alone, yet not alone. The other people around you are merely motion and sound and the sign of life whose presence averts the panic of being truly alone, yet who observe the rules of the city and stay withdrawn and far away when they are close.

How many times had Velda and I walked in the rain? She was big and our shoulders almost touched. We’d deliberately walk out of step so that our inside legs would touch rhythmically and if her arm wasn’t tucked underneath mine we’d hold hands. There was a ring I had given her. I’d feel it under my fingers and she’d look at me and smile because she knew what that ring meant.

Where was she now? What had really happened? Little hammers would go at me when I thought of the days and hours since they had dragged me into Richie Cole’s room to watch him die, but could it have been any other way?

Maybe not seven years ago. Not then. I wouldn’t have had a booze-soaked head then. I would have had a gun and a ticket that could get me in and out of places and hands that could take care of anybody.

But now. Now I was an almost-nothing. Not quite, because I still had years of experience going for me and a reason to push. I was coming back little by little, but unless I stayed cute about it all I could be a pushover for any hardcase.

What I had to do now was think. I still had a small edge, but how long it would last was anybody’s guess. So think, Mike, old soldier. Get your head going the way it’s supposed to. You know who the key is. You’ve known it all along. Cole died with her name on his lips and ever since then she’s been the key. But why? But why?

How could she still be alive?

Seven years is a long time to hide. Too long. Why? Why?

So think, old soldier. Go over the possibilities.

The rain came down a little harder and began to run off the brim of my hat. In a little while it seeped through the top of the cheap trench coat and I could feel the cold of it on my shoulders. And then I had the streets all alone again and the night and the city belonged only to me. I walked, so I was king. The others who huddled in the doorways and watched me with tired eyes were the lesser ones. Those who ran for the taxis were the scared ones. So I walked and I was able to think about Velda again. She had suddenly become a case and it had to be that way. It had to be cold and logical, otherwise it would vaporize into incredibility and there would be nothing left except to go back to where I had come from.

Think.

Who saw her die? No one. It was an assumption. Well assumed, but an assumption nevertheless.

Then, after seven years, who saw her alive? Richie Cole.

Sure, he had reason to know her. They were friends. War buddies. They had worked together. Once a year they’d meet for supper and a show and talk over old times. Hell, I’d done it myself with George and Earle, Ray, Mason and the others. It was nothing you could talk about to anybody else, though. Death and destruction you took part in could be shared only with those in range of the same enemy guns. With them you couldn’t brag or lie. You simply recounted and wondered that you were still alive and renewed a friendship.

Cole couldn’t have made a mistake. He knew her.

And Cole had been a pro. Velda was a pro. He had come looking for me because she had told him I was a pro and he had been disappointed at what he had seen. He had taken a look at me and his reason for staying alive died right then. Whatever it was, he didn’t think I could do it. He saw a damned drunken bum who had lost every bit of himself years before and he died thinking she was going to die too and he was loathing me with eyes starting to film over with the nonexistence of death.

Richie Cole just didn’t know me very well at all.

He had a chance to say the magic word and that made all the difference.

Velda.

Would it still be the same? How will you look after seven years? Hell, you should see me. You should see the way I look. And what’s inside you after a time span like that? Things happen in seven years; things build, things dissolve. What happens to people in love? Seven years ago that’s the way we were. In Love. Capital L. Had we stayed together time would only have lent maturity and quality to that which it served to improve.

But my love, my love, how could you look at me, me after seven years? You knew what I had been and called for me at last, but I wasn’t what you expected at all. That big one you knew and loved is gone, kid, long gone, and you can’t come back that big anymore. Hell, Velda, you know that. You can’t come back . . . you should have known what would happen to me. Damn, you knew me well enough. And it happened. So how can you yell for me now? I know you knew what I’d be like, and you asked for me anyway.

I let out a little laugh and only the rain could enjoy it with me. She knew, all right. You can’t come back just as big. Either lesser or bigger. There was no other answer. She just didn’t know the odds against the right choice.

There was a new man on the elevator now. I signed the night book, nodded to him and gave him my floor. I got off at eight and went down the hall, watching my shadow grow longer and longer from the single light behind me.

I had my keys in my hand, but I didn’t need them at all. The door to 808 stood wide open invitingly, the lights inside throwing a warm glow over the dust and the furniture and when I closed it behind me I went through the anteroom to my office where Art Rickerby was sitting and picked up the sandwich and Blue Ribbon beer he had waiting for me and sat down on the edge of the couch and didn’t say a word until I had finished both.

Art said, “Your friend Nat Drutman gave me the key.”

“It’s okay.”

“I pushed him a little.”

“He’s been pushed before. If he couldn’t read you right you wouldn’t have gotten the key. Don’t sell him short.”

“I figured as much.”

I got up, took off the soggy coat and hat and threw them across a chair. “What’s with the visit? I hope you’re not getting too impatient.”

“No. Patience is something inbred. Nothing I can do will bring Richie back. All I can do is play the angles, the curves, float along the stream of time, then, my friend, something will bite, even on an unbaited hook.”

“Shit.”

“You know it’s like that. You’re a cop.”

“A long time ago.”

He watched me, a funny smile on his face. “No. Now. I know the signs. I’ve been in this business too long.”

“So what do you want here?”

Rickerby’s smile broadened. “I told you once. I’ll do anything to get Richie’s killer.”

“Oh?”

He reached in his pocket and brought out an envelope. I took it from him, tore it open and read the folded card it contained on all four of its sides, then slid it into my wallet and tucked it away.

“Now I can carry a gun,” I said.

“Legally. In any state.”

“Thanks. What did you give up to get it?”

“Not a thing. Favors were owed me too. Our department is very—wise.”

“They think it’s smart to let me carry a rod again?”

“There aren’t any complaints. You have your—ticket.”

“It’s a little different from the last one this state gave me.”

“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, my friend.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“No trouble. I’m being smug.”

“Why?”

He took off his glasses again, wiped them and put them back on. “Because I have found out all about you a person could find. You’re going to do something I can’t possibly do because you have the key to it all and won’t let it go. Whatever your motives are, they aren’t mine, but they encompass what I want and that’s enough for me. Sooner or later you’re going to name Richie’s killer and that’s all I want. In the meantime, rather than interfere with your operation, I’ll do everything I can to supplement it. Do you understand?”

“I think so,” I said.

“Good. Then I’ll wait you out.” He smiled, but there was nothing pleasant in his expression. “Some people are different from others. You’re a killer, Mike. You’ve always been a killer. Somehow your actions have been justified and I think righteously so, but nevertheless, you’re a killer. You’re on a hunt again and I’m going to help you. There’s just one thing I ask.”

“What?”

“If you do find Richie’s murderer before me, don’t kill him.”

I looked up from the fists I had made. “Why?”

“I want him, Mike. Let him be mine.”

“What will you do with him?”

Rickerby’s grin was damn near inhuman. It was a look I had seen before on other people and never would have expected from him. “A quick kill would be too good, Mike,” he told me slowly. “But the law—this supposedly just, merciful provision—this is the most cruel of all. It lets you rot in a death cell for months and deteriorate slowly until you’re only an accumulation of living cells with the consciousness of knowing you are about to die; then the creature is tied in a chair and jazzed with a hot shot that wipes him from the face of the earth with one big jolt and that’s that.”

“Pleasant thought,” I said.

“Isn’t it, though? Too many people think the sudden kill is the perfect answer for revenge. Ah, no, my friend. It’s the waiting. It’s the knowing beforehand that even the merciful provisions of a public trial will only result in what you already know—more waiting and further contemplation of that little room where you spend your last days with death in an oaken chair only a few yards away. And do you know what? I’ll see that killer every day. I’ll savor his anguish like a fine drink and be there as a witness when he burns and he’ll see me and know why I’m there and when he’s finished I’ll be satisfied.”

“You got a mean streak a yard wide, Rickerby.”

“But it doesn’t quite match yours, Mike.”

“The hell it doesn’t.”

“No—you’ll see what I mean some day. You’ll see yourself express the violence of thought and action in a way I’d never do. True violence isn’t in the deed itself. It’s the contemplation and enjoyment of the deed.”

“Come off it.”

Rickerby smiled, the intensity of hatred he was filled with a moment ago seeping out slowly. If it had been me I would have been shaking like a leaf, but now he casually reached out for the can of beer, sipped at it coolly and put it down.

“I have some information you requested,” he told me.

While I waited I walked behind the desk, sat down and pulled open the lower drawer. The shoulder holster was still supple although it had lain there seven years. I took off my jacket, slipped it on and put my coat back.

Art said, “I—managed to find out about Gerald Erlich.”

I could feel the pulse in my arm throb against the arm of the chair. I still waited.

“Erlich is dead, my friend.”

I let my breath out slowly, hoping my face didn’t show how I felt.

“He died five years ago and his body was positively identified.”

Five years ago! But he was supposed to have died during the war!

“He was found shot in the head in the Eastern Zone of Germany. After the war he had been fingerprinted and classified along with other prisoners of note so there was no doubt as to his identity.” Art stopped a moment, studied me, then went on. “Apparently this man was trying to make the Western Zone. On his person were papers and articles that showed he had come out of Russia, there were signs that he had been under severe punishment and if you want to speculate, you might say that he had escaped from a prison and was tracked down just yards from freedom.”

“That’s pretty good information to come out of the Eastern Zone,” I said.

Rickerby nodded sagely. “We have people there. They purposely investigate things of this sort. There’s nothing coincidental about it.

“There’s more.”

His eyes were funny. They had an oblique quality as if they watched something totally foreign, something they had never realized could exist before. They watched and waited. Then he said, “Erlich had an importance we really didn’t understand until lately. He was the nucleus of an organization of espionage agents the like of which had never been developed before and whose importance remained intact even after the downfall of the Third Reich. It was an organization so ruthless that its members, in order to pursue their own ends, would go with any government they thought capable of winning a present global conflict and apparently they selected the Reds. To oppose them and us meant fighting two battles, so it would be better to support one until the other lost, then undermine that one until it could take over.”

“Crazy,” I said.

“Is it?”

“They can’t win.”

“But they can certainly bring on some incredible devastation.”

“Then why kill Erlich?”

Art sat back and folded his hands together in a familiar way. “Simple. He defected. He wanted out. Let’s say he got smart in his late years and realized the personal futility of pushing this thing any further. He wanted to spend a few years in peace.”

It was reasonable in a way. I nodded.

“But he had to die,” Art continued. “There was one thing he knew that was known only to the next in line in the chain of command, the ones taking over the organization.”

“Like what?”

“He knew every agent in the group. He could bust the whole shebang up if he spilled his guts to the West and the idea of world conquest by the Reds or the others would go smack down the drain.”

“This you know?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No. Let’s say I’m sure of it, but I don’t know it. At this point I really don’t care. It’s the rest of the story I pulled out of the hat I’m interested in.” And now his eyes cocked themselves up at me again. “He was tracked down and killed by one known to the Reds as their chief assassin agent, Gorlin, but to us as The Dragon.”

If he could have had his hand on my chest, or even have touched me anywhere, he would have known what was happening. My guts would knot and churn and my head was filled with a wild flushing sensation of blood almost bursting through their walls. But he didn’t touch me and he couldn’t tell from my face so his eyes looked at me even a little more obliquely, expecting even the slightest reaction and getting none. None at all.

“You’re a cold-blooded bastard,” he nearly whispered.

“You said that before.”

He blinked owlishly behind his glasses and stood up, his coat over his arm. “You know where to reach me.”

“I know.”

“Do you need anything?”

“Not now. Thanks for the ticket.”

“No trouble. Will you promise me something?”

“Sure.”

“Just don’t use that gun on The Dragon.”

“I won’t kill him, Art.”

“No. Leave that for me. Don’t spoil my pleasure or yours either.”

He went out, closing the door softly behind him. I pulled the center desk drawer out, got the extra clip and the box of shells from the niche and closed the drawer.

The package I had mailed to myself was on the table by the door where Nat always put my packages when he had to take them from the mailman. I ripped it open, took out the .45, checked the action and dropped it in the holster.

Now it was just like old times.

I turned off the light in my office and went outside. I was reaching for the door when the phone on Velda’s desk went off with a sudden jangling that shook me for a second before I could pick it up.

Her voice was rich and vibrant when she said hello and I wanted her right there with me right then. She knew it too, and her laugh rippled across the miles. She said, “Are you going to be busy tonight, Mike?”

Time was something I had too little of, but I had too little of her too. “Well—why?”

“Because I’m coming into your big city.”

“Isn’t it kind of late?”

“No. I have to be there at ten p.m. to see a friend of yours and since I see no sense of wasting the evening I thought that whatever you have to do you can do it with me. Or can you?”

“It takes two to dance, baby.”

She laughed again. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

“Sure, come on in. If I said not to I’d be lying. Who’s my friend you have a date with?”

“An old friend and new enemy. Captain Chambers.”

“What is this?”

“I don’t know. He called and asked if I could come in. It would simplify things since his going out of his jurisdiction requires a lot of work.”

“For Pete’s sake—”

“Mike—I don’t mind, really. If it has to do with Leo’s death, well, I’ll do anything. You know that.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Besides, it gives me an excuse to see you even sooner than I hoped. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“See you in a little while, Mike. Any special place?”

“Moriarty’s at Sixth and Fifty-second. I’ll be at the bar.”

“Real quick,” she said and hung up.

I held the disconnect bar down with my finger. Time. Seven years’ worth just wasted and now there was none left. I let the bar up and dialed Hy Gardner’s private number at the paper, hoping I’d be lucky enough to catch him in. I was.

He said, “Mike, if you’re not doing anything, come on up here. I have to get my column out and I’ll be done before you’re here. I have something to show you.”

“Important?”

“Brother, one word from you and everybody flips. Shake it up.”

“Fifteen minutes.”

“Good.”

I hung up and pushed the phone back. When I did I uncovered a heart scratched in the surface with something sharp. Inside it was a V and an M. Velda and Mike. I pulled the phone back to cover it, climbed into my coat and went outside. Just to be sure I still had the night to myself I walked down, out the back way through the drugstore then headed south on Broadway toward Hy’s office.

Marilyn opened the door and hugged me hello, a pretty grin lighting her face up. She said, “Hy’s inside waiting for you. He won’t tell me what it’s all about.”

“You’re his wife now, not his secretary anymore. You don’t work for him.”

“The heck I don’t. But he still won’t tell me.”

“It’s man talk, sugar.”

“All right, I’ll let you be. I’ll get some coffee—and Mike—” I turned around.

“It’s good to have you back.”

When I winked she blew me a kiss and scurried out the door.

Hy was at his desk inside with his glasses up on his forehead, frowning at some sheets in his hand. They were covered with penciled notations apparently culled from another batch beside his elbow.

I pulled up a chair, sat down and let Hy finish what he was doing. Finally he glanced up, pulling his glasses down. “I got your message across.”

“So?”

“So it was like I dropped a bomb in HQ. Over there they seem to know things we don’t read in the paper here.” He leaned forward and tapped the sheets in his hand. “This bit of The Dragon is the hottest item in the cold war, buddy. Are you sure you know what you’re up to?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Okay, I’ll go along with you. The Reds are engaged in an operation under code name REN. It’s a chase thing. Behind the Iron Curtain there has been a little hell to pay the last few years. Somebody was loose back there who could rock the whole Soviet system and that one had to be eliminated. That’s where The Dragon came in. This one has been on that chase and was close to making his hit. Nobody knows what the score really is.” He stopped then, pushed his glasses back up and said seriously, “Or do they, Mike?”

“They?”

I should have been shaking. I should have been feeling some emotion, some wildness like I used to. What had happened? But maybe it was better this way. I could feel the weight of the .45 against my side and tightened my arm down on it lovingly. “They’re after Velda,” I said. “It’s her. They’re hunting her.”

Hy squeezed his mouth shut and didn’t say anything for a full minute. He laid the papers down and leaned back in his chair. “Why, Mike?”

“I don’t know, Hy. I don’t know why at all.”

“If what I heard is true she doesn’t have a chance.”

“She has a chance,” I told him softly.

“Maybe it really isn’t her at all, Mike.”

I didn’t answer him. Behind us the door opened and Marilyn came in. She flipped an envelope on Hy’s desk and set down the coffee container. “Here’s a picture that just came off the wires. Del said you requested it.”

Hy looked at me a little too quickly, opened the envelope and took out the photo. He studied it, then passed it across.

It really wasn’t a good picture at all. The original had been fuzzy to start with and transmission electrically hadn’t improved it any. She stood outside a building, a tall girl with seemingly black hair longer than I remembered it, features not quite clear and whose shape and posture were hidden under bulky Eastern European style clothing. Still, there was that indefinable something, some subtlety in the way she stood, some trait that came through the clothing and poor photography that I couldn’t help but see.

I handed the photo back. “It’s Velda.”

“My German friend said the picture was several years old.”

“Who had it?”

“A Red agent who was killed in a skirmish with some West German cops. It came off his body. I’d say he had been assigned to REN too and the picture was for identification purposes.”

“Is this common information?”

Hy shook his head. “I’d say no. Rather than classify this thing government sources simply refuse to admit it exists. We came on it separately.”

I said, “The government knows it exists.”

“You know too damn much, Mike.”

“No, not enough. I don’t know where she is now.”

“I can tell you one thing,” Hy said.

“Oh?”

“She isn’t in Europe any longer. The locale of REN has changed. The Dragon has left Europe. His victim got away somehow and all indications point to them both being in this country.”

Very slowly, I got up, put my coat and hat on and stretched the dampness out of my shoulders. I said, “Thanks, Hy.”

“Don’t you want your coffee?”

“Not now.”

He opened a drawer, took out a thick manila envelope and handed it to me. “Here. You might want to read up a little more on Senator Knapp. It’s confidential stuff. Gives you an idea of how big he was. Save it for me.”

“Sure.” I stuck it carelessly in my coat pocket. “Thanks.”

Marilyn said, “You all right, Mike?”

I grinned at her a little crookedly. “I’m okay.”

“You don’t look right,” she insisted.

Hy said, “Mike—”

And I cut him short. “I’ll see you later, Hy.” I grinned at him too. “And thanks. Don’t worry about me.” I patted the gun under my coat. “I have a friend along now. Legally.”

While I waited, I read about just how great a guy Leo Knapp had been. His career had been cut short at a tragic spot because it was evident that in a few more years he would have been the big man on the political scene. It was very evident that he had been one of the true powers behind the throne, a man initially responsible for military progress and missile production in spite of opposition from the knotheaded liberals and “better-Red-than-dead” slobs. He had thwarted every attack and forced through the necessary programs and in his hands had been secrets of vital importance that made him a number-one man in the Washington setup. His death came at a good time for the enemy. The bullet that killed him came from the gun of The Dragon. A bullet from the same gun killed Richie Cole and almost killed me twice. A bullet from that same gun was waiting to kill Velda.

She came in then, the night air still on her, shaking the rain from her hair, laughing when she saw me. Her hand was cool when she took mine and climbed on the stool next to me. John brought her a martini and me another Blue Ribbon. We raised the glasses in a toast and drank the top off them.

“Good to see you,” I said.

“You’ll never know,” she smiled.

“Where are you meeting Pat?”

She frowned, then, “Oh, Captain Chambers. Why, right here.” She glanced at her watch. “In five minutes. Shall we sit at a table?”

“Let’s.” I picked up her glass and angled us across the room to the far wall. “Does Pat know I’ll be here?”

“I didn’t mention it.”

“Great. Just great.”

Pat was punctual, as usual. He saw me but didn’t change expression. When he said hello to Laura he sat beside her and only then looked at me. “I’m glad you’re here too.”

“That’s nice.”

He was a mean, cold cop if ever there was one, his face a mask you couldn’t penetrate until you looked into his eyes and saw the hate and determination there. “Where do you find your connections, Mike?”

“Why?”

“It’s peculiar how a busted private dick, a damn drunken pig in trouble up to his ears can get a gun-carrying privilege we can’t break. How do you do it, punk?”

I shrugged, not feeling like arguing with him. Laura looked at the two of us, wondering what was going on.

“Well, you might need it at that if you keep getting shot at. By the way, I got a description of your back alley friend. He was seen by a rather observant kid in the full light of the streetlamp. Big guy, about six-two with dark curly hair and a face with deep lines in the cheeks. His cheekbones were kind of high so he had kind of an Indian look. Ever see anybody like that?”

He was pushing me now, doing anything to set me off so he’d have a reason to get at me but sure, I saw a guy like that. He drove past me on the Thruway and I thought he was a tired driver, then he shot at me later and now I know damn well who he is. You call him The Dragon. He had a face I’d see again someday, a face I couldn’t miss.

I said, “No, I don’t know him.” It wasn’t quite a lie.

Pat smiled sardonically. “I have a feeling you will.”

“So okay, I’ll try to catch up with him for you.”

“You do that, punk. Meanwhile I’ll catch up with you. I’m putting you into this thing tighter than ever.”

“Me?”

“That’s right. That’s why I’m glad you’re here. It saves seeing you later.” He had me curious now and knew it, and he was going to pull it out all the way. “There is a strange common denominator running throughout our little murder puzzle here. I’m trying to find out just what it all means.”

“Please go on,” Laura said.

“Gems. For some reason I can’t get them out of my mind. Three times they cross in front of me.” He looked at me, his eyes narrowed. “The first time when my old friend here let a girl die because of them, then when Senator Knapp was killed a batch of paste jewels were taken from the safe, and later a man known for his gem smuggling was killed with the same gun. It’s a recurrent theme, isn’t it, Mike? You’re supposed to know about these things. In fact, it must have occurred to you too. You were quick enough about getting upstate to see Mrs. Knapp here.”

“Listen, Pat.”

“Shut up. There’s more.” He reached in his pocket and tugged at a cloth sack. “We’re back to the gems again.” He pulled the top open, spilled the sack upside down and watched the flood of rings, brooches and bracelets make a sparkling mound of brilliance on the table between us.

“Paste, pure paste, Mrs. Knapp, but I think they are yours.”

Her hand was shaking when she reached out to touch them. She picked up the pieces one by one, examining them, then shaking her head. “Yes—they’re mine! But where—”

“A pathetic old junkman was trying to peddle them in a pawn-shop. The broker called the cops and we grabbed the guy. He said he found them in a garbage can a long time ago and kept them until now to sell. He figured they were stolen, all right, but didn’t figure he’d get picked up like he did.”

“Make your connection, Pat. So far all you showed was that a smart crook recognized paste jewelry and dumped it.”

His eyes had a vicious cast to them this time. “I’m just wondering about the original gem robbery, the one your agency was hired to prevent. The name was Mr. and Mrs. Rudolph Civac. I’m wondering what kind of a deal was really pulled off there. You sent in Velda but wouldn’t go yourself. I’m thinking that maybe you turned sour way back there and tried for a big score and fouled yourself up in it somehow.”

His hands weren’t showing so I knew one was sitting on a gun butt. I could feel myself going around the edges but hung on anyway. “You’re nuts,” I said, “I never even saw Civac. He made the protection deal by phone. I never laid eyes on him.”

Pat felt inside his jacket and came out with a four-by-five glossy photo. “Well take a look at what your deceased customer looked like. I’ve been backtracking all over that case, even as cold as it is. Something’s going to come up on it, buddy boy, and I hope you’re square in the middle of it.” He forgot me for a moment and turned to Laura. “Do you positively identify these, Mrs. Knapp?”

“Oh, yes. There’s an accurate description of each piece on file and on the metal there’s—”

“I saw the hallmarks.”

“This ring was broken—see here where this prong is off—yes, these are mine.”

“Fine. You can pick them up at my office tomorrow if you want to. I’ll have to hold them until then though.”

“That’s all right.”

He snatched the picture out of my fingers and put it back in his pocket. “You I’ll be seeing soon,” he told me.

I didn’t answer him. I nodded, but that was all. He looked at me a moment, scowled, went to say something and changed his mind. He told Laura good-bye and walked to the door.

Fresh drinks came and I finished mine absently. Laura chuckled once and I glanced up. “You’ve been quiet a long time. Aren’t we going to do the town?”

“Do you mind if we don’t?”

She raised her eyebrows, surprised, but not at all unhappy. “No, do you want to do something else?”

“Yes. Think.”

“Your place?” she asked mischievously.

“I don’t have a place except my office.”

“We’ve been there before,” she teased.

But I had kissed Velda there too many times before too. “No,” I said.

Laura leaned forward, serious now. “It’s important, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s get out of the city entirely. Let’s go back upstate to where it’s cool and quiet and you can think right. Would you like to do that?”

“All right.”

I paid the bill and we went outside to the night and the rain to flag down a cab to get us to the parking lot. She had to do it for me because the only thing I could think of was the face in that picture Pat had showed me.

Rudolph Civac was the same as Gerald Erlich.

CHAPTER 10

I couldn’t remember the trip at all. I was asleep before we reached the West Side Drive and awakened only when she shook me. Her voice kept calling to me out of a fog and for a few seconds I thought it was Velda, then I opened my eyes and Laura was smiling at me. “We’re home, Mike.”

The rain had stopped, but in the stillness of the night I could hear the soft dripping from the shadows of the blue spruces around the house. Beyond them a porch and inside light threw out a pale yellow glow. “Won’t your servants have something to say about me coming in?”

“No, I’m alone at night. The couple working for me come only during the day.”

“I haven’t seen them yet.”

“Each time you were here they had the day off.”

I made an annoyed grimace. “You’re nuts, kid. You should keep somebody around all the time after what happened.”

Her hand reached out and she traced a line around my mouth. “I’m trying to,” she said. Then she leaned over and brushed me with lips that were gently damp and sweetly warm, the tip of her tongue a swift dart of flame, doing it too quickly for me to grab her to make it last.

“Quit brainwashing me,” I said.

She laughed at me deep in her throat. “Never, Mister Man. I’ve been too long without you.”

Rather than hear me answer she opened the door and slid out of the car. I came around from the other side and we went up the steps into the house together. It was a funny feeling, this coming home sensation. There was the house and the woman and the mutual desire, an instinctive demanding passion we shared, one for the other, yet realizing that there were other things that came first and not caring because there was always later.

There was a huge couch in the living room of soft, aged leather, a hidden hi-fi that played Dvořák, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky and somewhere in between Laura had gotten into yards of flowing nylon that did nothing to hide the warmth of her body or restrain the luscious bloom of her thighs and breasts. She lay there in my arms quietly, giving me all of the moment to enjoy as I pleased, only her sometimes-quickened breathing indicating her pleasure as I touched her lightly, caressing her with my fingertips. Her eyes were closed, a small satisfied smile touched the corners of her mouth and she snuggled into me with a sigh of contentment.

How long I sat there and thought about it I couldn’t tell. I let it drift through my mind from beginning to end, the part I knew and the part I didn’t know. Like always, a pattern was there. You can’t have murder without a pattern. It weaves in and out, fabricating an artful tapestry, and while the background colors were apparent from the beginning it is only at the last that the picture itself emerges. But who was the weaver? Who sat invisibly behind the loom with shuttles of death in one hand and skeins of lives in the other? I fell asleep trying to peer behind the gigantic framework of that murder factory, a sleep so deep, after so long, that there was nothing I thought about or remembered afterward.

I was alone when the bright shaft of sunlight pouring in the room awakened me. I was stretched out comfortably, my shoes off, my tie loose and a light Indian blanket over me. I threw it off, put my shoes back on and stood up. It took me a while to figure out what was wrong, then I saw the .45 in the shoulder holster draped over the back of a chair with my coat over it and while I was reaching for it she came in with all the exuberance of a summer morning, a tray of coffee in her hands, and blew me a kiss.

“Well hello,” I said.

She put the tray down and poured the coffee. “You were hard to undress.”

“Why bother?”

Laura looked up laughing. “It’s not easy to sleep with a man wearing a gun.” She held out a cup. “Here, have some coffee. Sugar and milk?”

“Both. And I’m glad it’s milk and not cream.”

She fixed my cup, stirring it too. “You’re a snob, Mike. In your own way you’re a snob.” She made a face at me and grinned. “But I love snobs.”

“You should be used to them. You travel in classy company.”

“They aren’t snobs like you. They’re just scared people putting on a front. You’re the real snob. Now kiss me good morning—or afternoon. It’s one o’clock.” She reached up offering her mouth and I took it briefly, but even that quick touch bringing back the desire again.

Laura slid her hand under my arm and walked me through the house to the porch and out to the lawn by the pool. The sun overhead was brilliant and hot, the air filled with the smell of the mountains. She said, “Can I get you something to eat?”

I tightened my arm on her hand. “You’re enough for right now.”

She nuzzled my shoulder, wrinkled her nose and grinned. We both pulled out aluminum and plastic chairs, and while she went inside for the coffeepot I settled down in mine.

Now maybe I could think.

She poured another cup, knowing what was going through my mind. When she sat down opposite me she said, “Mike, would it be any good to tell me about it? I’m a good listener. I’ll be somebody you can aim hypothetical questions at. Leo did this with me constantly. He called me his sounding board. He could think out loud, but doing it alone he sounded foolish to himself so he’d do it with me.” She paused, her eyes earnest, wanting to help. “I’m yours for anything if you want me, Mike.”

“Thanks, kitten.”

I finished the coffee and put the cup down.

“You’re afraid of something,” she said.

“Not of. For. Like for you, girl. I told you once I was a trouble character. Wherever I am there’s trouble and when you play guns there are stray shots and I don’t want you in the way of any.”

“I’ve already been there, remember?”

“Only because I wasn’t on my toes. I’ve slowed up. I’ve been away too damn long and I’m not careful.”

“Are you careful now?”

My eyes reached hers across the few feet that separated us. “No. I’m being a damn fool again. I doubt if we were tailed here, but it’s only a doubt. I have a gun in the house, but we could be dead before I reached it.”

She shrugged unconcernedly. “There’s the shotgun in the bathhouse.”

“That’s still no good. It’s a pro game. There won’t be any more second chances. You couldn’t reach the shotgun either. It’s around the pool and in the dark.”

“So tell me about it, Mike. Think to me and maybe it will end even faster and we can have ourselves to ourselves. If you want to think, or be mad or need a reaction, think to me.”

I said, “Don’t you like living?”

A shadow passed across her face and the knuckles of her hand on the arms of the chair went white. “I stopped living when Leo died. I thought I’d never live again.”

“Kid—”

“No, it’s true, Mike. I know all the objections you can put up about our backgrounds and present situations but it still doesn’t make any difference. It doesn’t alter a simple fact that I knew days ago. I fell in love with you, Mike. I took one look at you and fell in love, knowing then that objections would come, troubles would be a heritage and you might not love me at all.”

“Laura—”

“Mike—I started to live again. I thought I was dead and I started to live again. Have I pushed you into anything?”

“No.”

“And I won’t. You can’t push a man. All you can do is try, but you just can’t push a man and a woman should know that. If she can, then she doesn’t have a man.”

She waved me to be quiet and went on. “I don’t care how you feel toward me. I hope, but that is all. I’m quite content knowing I can live again and no matter where you are you’ll know that I love you. It’s a peculiar kind of courtship, but these are peculiar times and I don’t care if it has to be like this. Just be sure of one thing. You can have anything you want from me, Mike. Anything. There’s nothing you can ask me to do that I won’t do. Not one thing. That’s how completely yours I am. There’s a way to be sure. Just ask me. But I won’t push you. If you ask me never to speak of it again, then I’ll do that too. You see, Mike, it’s a sort of hopeless love, but I’m living again, I’m loving, and you can’t stop me from loving you. It’s the only exception to what you can ask—I won’t stop loving you.

“But to answer your question, yes, I like living. You brought me alive. I was dead before.”

There was a beauty about her then that was indescribable. I said, “Anything you know can be too much. You’re a target now. I don’t want you to be an even bigger one.”

“I’ll only die if you die,” she said simply.

“Laura—”

She wouldn’t let me finish. “Mike—do you love me—at all?”

The sun was a honeyed cloud in her hair, bouncing off the deep brown of her skin to bring out the classic loveliness of her features. She was so beautifully deep-breasted, her stomach molding itself hollow beneath the outline of her ribs, the taut fabric of the sleeveless playsuit accentuating the timeless quality that was Laura.

I said, “I think so, Laura. I don’t know for sure. It’s just that I—can’t tell anymore.”

“It’s enough for now,” she said. “That little bit will grow because it has to. You were in love before, weren’t you?”

I thought of Charlotte and Velda and each was like being suddenly shot low down when knowledge precedes breathlessness and you know it will be a few seconds before the real pain hits.

“Yes,” I told her.

“Was it the same?”

“It’s never the same. You are—different.”

She nodded. “I know, Mike. I know.” She waited, then added, “It will be—the other one—or me, won’t it?”

There was no sense lying to her. “That’s right.”

“Very well. I’m satisfied. So now do you want to talk to me? Shall I listen for you?”

I leaned back in the chair, let my face look at the sun with my eyes closed and tried to start at the beginning. Not the beginning the way it happened, but the beginning the way I thought it could have happened. It was quite a story. Now I had to see if it made sense.

I said:

“There are only principals in this case. They are odd persons, and out of it entirely are the police and the Washington agencies. The departments only know results, not causes, and although they suspect certain things they are not in a position to be sure of what they do. We eliminate them and get to basic things. They may be speculative, but they are basic and lead to conclusions.

“The story starts at the end of World War I with an espionage team headed by Gerald Erlich who, with others, had visions of a world empire. Oh, it wasn’t a new dream. Before him there had been Alexander and Caesar and Napoleon so he was only picking up an established trend. So Erlich’s prime mover was nullified and he took on another—Hitler. Under that regime he became great and his organization became more nearly perfected, and when Hitler died and the Third Reich became extinct this was nothing too, for now the world was more truly divided. Only two parts remained, the East and the West, and he chose, for the moment, to side with the East. Gerald Erlich picked the Red Government as his next prime mover. He thought they would be the ultimate victors in the conquest of the world, then, when the time was right, he would take over from them.

“Ah, but how time and circumstances can change. He didn’t know that the Commies were equal to him in their dreams of world empire. He didn’t realize that they would find him out and use him while he thought they were in his hands. They took over his organization. Like they did the rest of the world they control, they took his corrupt group and corrupted it even further. But an organization they could control. The leader of the organization, a fanatical one, they knew they couldn’t. He had to go. Like dead.

“However, Erlich wasn’t quite that stupid. He saw the signs and read them right. He wasn’t young any longer and his organization had been taken over. His personal visions of world conquest didn’t seem quite so important anymore and the most important thing was to stay alive as best he could and the place to do it was in the States. So he came here. He married well under the assumed name of Rudy Civac to a rich widow and all was well in his private world for a time.

“Then, one day, they found him. His identity was revealed. He scrambled for cover. It was impossible to ask for police protection so he did the next best thing, he called a private detective agency and as a subterfuge, used his wife’s jewels as the reason for needing security. Actually, he wanted guns around. He wanted shooting protection.

“Now here the long arm of fate struck a second time. Not coincidence—but fate, pure unblemished fate. I sent Velda. During the war she had been young, beautiful, intelligent, a perfect agent to use against men. She was in the O.S.S., the O.S.I. and another highly secretive group and assigned to Operation Butterfly Two, which was nailing Gerald Erlich and breaking down his organization. The war ended before it could happen, she was discharged, came with me into the agency because it was a work she knew and we stayed together until Rudy Civac called for protection. He expected me. He got her.

“Fate struck for sure when she saw him. She knew who he was. She knew that a man like that had to be stopped because he might still have his purposes going for him. There was the one thing she knew that made Gerald Elrich the most important man in the world right then. He knew the names and identities of every major agent he ever had working for him and these were such dedicated people they never stopped working—and now they were working for the Reds.

“Coincidence here. Or Fate. Either will do. This was the night the Red agents chose to act. They hit under the guise of burglars. They abducted Rudy Civac, his wife and Velda. They killed the wife, but they needed Rudy to find out exactly what he knew.

“And Velda played it smart. She made like she was part of Civac’s group just to stay alive and it was conceivable that she had things they must know too. This we can’t forget—Velda was a trained operative—she had prior experience even I didn’t know about. Whatever she did she made it stick. They got Civac and her back into Europe and into Red territory and left the dead wife and the stolen jewels as a red herring that worked like a charm, and while Velda was in the goddamn Russian country I was drinking myself into a lousy pothole—”

She spoke for the first time. She said, “Mike—” and I squeezed open my eyes and looked at her.

“Thanks.”

“It’s all right. I understand.”

I closed my eyes again and let the picture form.

“The Commies aren’t the greatest brains in the world, though. Those stupid peasants forgot one thing. Both Civac—or Erlich—and Velda were pros. Someplace along the line they slipped and both of them cut out. They got loose inside the deep Iron Curtain and from then on the chase was on.

“Brother, I bet heads rolled after that. Anyway, when they knew two real hotshots were on the run they called in the top man to make the chase. The Dragon. Comrade Gorlin. But I like The Dragon better. I’ll feel more like St. George when I kill him.” And won’t Art hate me for that, I thought.

“The chase took seven years. I think I know what happened during that time. Civac and Velda had to stay together to pool their escape resources. One way or another Velda was able to get things from Civac—or Erlich—and the big thing was those names. I’ll bet she made him recount every one and she committed them to memory and carried them in her head all the way through so that she was fully as important now as Civac was.

“Don’t underplay the Reds. They’re filthy bastards, every one, but they’re on the ball when it comes to thinking out the dirty work. They’re so used to playing it themselves that it’s second nature to them. Hell, they knew what happened. They knew Velda was as big as Erlich now—perhaps even bigger. Erlich’s dreams were on the decline . . . what Velda knew would put us on the upswing again, so above all, she had to go.

“So The Dragon in his chase concentrated on those two. Eventually he caught up with Erlich and shot him. That left Velda. Now he ran into a problem. During her war years she made a lot of contacts. One of them was Richie Cole. They’d meet occasionally when he was off assignment and talk over the old days and stayed good friends. She knew he was in Europe and somehow or other made contact with him. There wasn’t time enough to pass on what she had memorized and it wasn’t safe to write it down, so the answer was to get Velda back to the States with her information. There wasn’t even time to assign the job to a proper agency.

“Richie Cole broke orders and took it upon himself to protect Velda and came back to the States. He knew he was followed. He knew The Dragon would make him a target—he knew damn well there wouldn’t be enough time to do the right thing, but Velda had given him a name. She gave him me and a contact to make with an old newsie we both knew well.

“Sure, Cole tried to make the contact, but The Dragon shot him first. Trouble was, Cole didn’t die. He held off until they got hold of me because Velda told him I was so damn big I could break the moon apart in my bare hands and he figured if she said it I really could. Then he saw me.”

I put my face in my hands to rub out the picture. “Then he saw me!”

“Mike—”

“Let’s face it, kid. I was a drunk.”

“Mike—”

“Shut up. Let me talk.”

Laura didn’t answer, but her eyes hoped I wasn’t going off the deep end, so I stopped a minute, poured some coffee, drank it, then started again.

“Once again those goddamn Reds were smart. They back-tracked Velda and found out about me. They knew what Richie Cole was trying to do. Richie knew where Velda was and wanted to tell me. He died before he did. They thought he left the information with Old Dewey and killed the old man. They really thought I knew and they put a tail on me to see if I made a contact. They tore Dewey’s place and my place apart looking for information they thought Cole might have passed to me. Hell, The Dragon even tried to kill me because he thought I wasn’t really important at all and was better out of the way.”

I leaned back in the chair, my insides feeling hollow all of a sudden. Laura asked, “Mike, what’s the matter?”

“Something’s missing. Something big.”

“Please don’t talk any more.”

“It’s not that. I’m just tired, I guess. It’s hard to come back to normal this fast.”

“If we took a swim it might help.”

I opened my eyes and looked at her and grinned. “Sick of hearing hard luck stories?”

“No.”

“Any questions?”

She nodded. “Leo. Who shot him?”

I said, “In this business guns can be found anywhere. I’m never surprised to see guns with the same ballistics used in different kills. Did you know the same gun that shot your husband and Richie Cole was used in some small kill out West?”

“No, I didn’t know that.”

“There seemed to be a connection through the jewels. Richie’s cover was that of a sailor and smuggler. Your jewels were missing. Pat made that a common factor. I don’t believe it.”

“Could Leo’s position in government—well, as you intimated—”

“There is a friend of mine who says no. He has reason to know the facts. I’ll stick with him.”

“Then Leo’s death is no part of what you are looking for?”

“I don’t think so. In a way I’m sorry. I wish I could help avenge him too. He was a great man.”

“Yes, he was.”

“I’ll take you up on that swim.”

“The suits are in the bathhouse.”

“That should be fun,” I said.

In the dim light that came through the ivy-screened windows we turned our backs and took off our clothes. When you do that deliberately with a woman, it’s hard to talk and you are conscious only of the strange warmth and the brief, fiery contact when skin meets skin and a crazy desire to turn around and watch or to grab and hold or do anything except what you said you’d do when the modest moment was in reality a joke—but you didn’t quite want it to be a joke at all.

Then before we could turn it into something else and while we could still treat it as a joke, we had the bathing suits on and she grinned as she passed by me. I reached for her, stopped her, then turned because I saw something else that left me cold for little ticks of time.

Laura said, “What is it, Mike?”

I picked the shotgun out of the corner of the room. The building had been laid up on an extension of the tennis court outside and the temporary floor was clay. Where the gun rested by the door water from the outside shower had seeped in and wet it down until it was a semi-firm substance, a blue putty you could mold in your hand.

She had put the shotgun down muzzle first and both barrels were plugged with clay and when I picked it up it was like somebody had taken a bite out of the blue glop with a cookie cutter two inches deep!

Before I opened it I asked her, “Loaded?”

“Yes.”

I thumbed the lever and broke the gun. It fell open and I picked out the two twelve-guage Double O shells, then slapped the barrels against my palm until the cores of clay emerged far enough for me to pull them out like the deadly plugs they were.

She saw the look on my face and frowned, not knowing what to say. So I said it instead. “Who put the gun here?”

“I did.”

“I thought you knew how to handle it?” There was a rasp in my voice you could cut with a knife.

“Leo—showed me how to shoot it.”

“He didn’t show you how to handle it, apparently.”

“Mike—”

“Listen, Laura, and you listen good. You play with guns and you damn well better know how to handle them. You went and stuck this baby’s nose down in the muck and do you know what would happen if you ever tried to shoot it?”

Her eyes were frightened at what she saw in my face and she shook her head. “Well, damn it, you listen then. Without even thinking you stuck this gun in heavy clay and plugged both barrels. It’s loaded with high-grade sporting ammunition of the best quality and if you ever pulled the trigger you would have had one infinitesimal span of life between the big then and the big now because when you did the back blast in that gun would have wiped you right off the face of the earth.”

“Mike—”

“No—keep quiet and listen. It’ll do you good. You won’t make the mistake again. That barrel would unpeel like a tangerine and you’d get that whole charge right down your lovely throat and if ever you want to give a police medical examiner a job to gag a maggot, that’s the way to do it. They’d have to go in and scrape your brains up with a silent butler and pick pieces of your skull out of the woodwork with needle-nosed pliers. I saw eyeballs stuck to a wall one time and if you want to really see a disgusting sight, try that. They’re bigger than you would expect them to be and they leak fluid all the time they look at you trying to lift them off the boards and then you have no place to put them except in your hand and drop them in the bucket with the rest of the pieces. They float on top and keep watching you until you put on the lid.”

“Mike!”

“Damn it, shut up! Don’t play guns stupidly around me! You did it, now listen!”

Both hands covered her mouth and she was almost ready to vomit.

“The worst of all is the neck because the head is gone and the neck spurts blood for a little bit while the heart doesn’t know its vital nerve center is gone—and do you know how high the blood can squirt? No? Then let me tell you. It doesn’t just ooze. It goes up under pressure for a couple of feet and covers everything in the area and you wouldn’t believe just how much blood the body has in it until you see a person suddenly become headless and watch what happens. I’ve been there. I’ve had it happen. Don’t let it happen to you!”

She let her coffee go on the other side of the door and I didn’t give a damn because anybody that careless with a shotgun or any other kind of a gun needs it like that to make them remember. I wiped the barrels clean, reloaded the gun and put it down in place, butt first.

When I came out Laura said, “Man, are you mean.”

“It’s not a new saying.” I still wasn’t over my mad.

Her smile was a little cockeyed, but a smile nevertheless. “Mike—I understand. Please?”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Then you watch it. I play guns too much. It’s my business. I hate to see them abused.”

“Please, Mike?”

“Okay. I made my point.”

“Nobly, to say the least. I usually have a strong stomach.”

“Go have some coffee.”

“Oh, Mike.”

“So take a swim,” I told her and grinned. It was the way I felt and the grin was the best I could do. She took a run and a dive and hit the water, came up stroking for the other side, then draped her arms on the edge of the drain and waited for me.

I went in slowly, walking up to the edge, then I dove in and stayed on the bottom until I got to the other side. The water made her legs fuzzy, distorting them to Amazonian proportions, enlarging the cleft and swells and declivities of her belly, then I came up to where all was real and shoved myself onto the concrete surface and reached down for Laura.

She said, “Better?” when I pulled her to the top.

I was looking past her absently. “Yes. I just remembered something.”

“Not about the gun, Mike.”

“No, not about the gun.”

“Should I know?”

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t really know myself yet. It’s just a point.”

“Your eyes look terribly funny.”

“I know.”

“Mike—”

“What?”

“Can I help?”

“No.”

“You’re going to leave me now, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Will you come back?”

I couldn’t answer her.

“It’s between the two of us, isn’t it?”

“The girl hunters are out,” I said.

“But will you come back?”

My mind was far away, exploring the missing point. “Yes,” I said, “I have to come back.”

“You loved her.”

“I did.”

“Do you love me at all?”

I turned around and looked at this woman. She was mine now, beautiful, wise, the way a woman should be formed for a man like I was, lovely, always naked in my sight, always incredibly blond and incredibly tanned, the difference in color—or was it comparison—a shocking, sensual thing. I said, “I love you, Laura. Can I be mistaken?”

She said, “No, you can’t be mistaken.”

“I have to find her first. She’s being hunted. Everybody is hunting her. I loved her a long time ago so I owe her that much. She asked for me.”

“Find her, Mike.”

I nodded. I had the other key now. “I’ll find her. She’s the most important thing in this old world today. What she knows will decide the fate of nations. Yes, I’ll find her.”

“Then will you come back?”

“Then I’ll come back,” I said.

Her arms reached out and encircled me, her hands holding my head, her fingers tight in my hair. I could feel every inch of her body pressed hard against mine, forcing itself to meet me, refusing to give at all.

“I’m going to fight her for you,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because you’re mine now.”

“Girl,” I said, “I’m no damn good to anybody. Look good and you’ll see a corn ear husked, you know?”

“I know. So I eat husks.”

“Damn it, don’t fool around!”

“Mike!”

“Laura—”

“You say it nice, Mike—but there’s something in your voice that’s terrible and I can sense it. If you find her, what will you do?”

“I can’t tell.”

“Will you still come back?”

“Damn it, I don’t know.”

“Why don’t you know, Mike?”

I looked down at her. “Because I don’t know what I’m really like anymore. Look—do you know what I was? Do you know that a judge and jury took me down and the whole world once ripped me to little bits? It was only Velda who stayed with me then.”

“That was then. How long ago was it?”

“Nine years maybe.”

“Were you married?”

“No.”

“Then I can claim part of you. I’ve had part of you.” She let go of me and stood back, her eyes calm as they looked into mine. “Find her, Mike. Make your decision. Find her and take her. Have you ever had her at all?”

“No.”

“You’ve had me. Maybe you’re more mine than hers.”

“Maybe.”

“Then find her.” She stepped back, her hands at her side. “If what you said was true then she deserves this much. You find her, Mike. I’m willing to fight anybody for you—but not somebody you think is dead. Not somebody you think you owe a debt to. Let me love you my own way. It’s enough for me at least. Do you understand that?”

For a while we stood there. I looked at her. I looked away. I said, “Yes, I understand.”

“Come back when you’ve decided.”

“You have all of Washington to entertain.”

Laura shook her head. Her hair was a golden swirl and she said, “The hell with Washington. I’ll be waiting for you.”

Velda, Laura. The names were so similar. Which one? After seven years of nothingness, which one? Knowing what I did, which one? Yesterday was then. Today was now. Which one?

I said, “All right, Laura, I’ll find out, then I’ll come back.”

“Take my car.”

“Thanks.”

And now I had to take her. My fingers grabbed her arms and pulled her close to where I could kiss her and taste the inside of her mouth and feel the sensuous writhing of her tongue against mine because this was the woman I knew I was coming back to.

The Girl Hunters. We all wanted the same one and for reasons of a long time ago. We would complete the hunt, but what would we do with the kill?

She said, “After that you shouldn’t leave.”

“I have to,” I said.

“Why?”

“She had to get in this country someway. I think I know how.”

“You’ll find her, then come back?”

“Yes,” I said, and let my hands roam over her body so that she knew there could never be anybody else, and when I was done I held her off and made her stay there while I went inside to put on the gun and the coat and go back to the new Babylon that was the city.

CHAPTER 11

And once again it was night, the city coming into its nether life like a minion of Count Dracula. The bright light of day that could strip away the facade of sham and lay bare the coating of dirt was gone now, and to the onlooker the unreal became real, the dirt had changed into subtle colors under artificial lights and it was as if all of that vast pile of concrete and steel and glass had been built only to live at night.

I left the car at the Sportsmen’s Parking Lot on the corner of Eighth and Fifty-second, called Hy Gardner and told him to meet me at the Blue Ribbon on Forty-fourth, then started my walk to the restaurant thinking of the little things I should have thought of earlier.

The whole thing didn’t seem possible, all those years trapped in Europe. You could walk around the world half a dozen times in seven years. But you wouldn’t be trapped then. The thing was, they were trapped. Had Velda or Erlich been amateurs they would have been captured without much trouble, but being pros they edged out. Almost. That made Velda even better than he had been.

Somehow, it didn’t seem possible.

But it was.

Hy had reached the Blue Ribbon before me and waited at a table sipping a stein of rich, dark beer. I nodded at the waiter and he went back for mine. We ordered, ate, and only then did Hy bother to give me his funny look over the cigar he lit up. “It’s over?”

“It won’t be long now.”

“Do we talk about it here?”

“Here’s as good as any. It’s more than you can put in your column.”

“You let me worry about space.”

So he sat back and let me tell him what I had told Laura, making occasional notes, because now was the time to make notes. I told him what I knew and what I thought and where everybody stood, and every minute or so he’d glance up from his sheets with an expression of pure incredulity, shake his head and write some more. When the implications of the total picture began really to penetrate, his teeth clamped down on the cigar until it was half hanging out of his mouth unlit, then he threw it down on his plate and put a fresh one in its place.

When I finished he said, “Mike—do you realize what you have hold of?”

“I know.”

“How can you stay so damn calm?”

“Because the rough part has just started.”

“Ye gods, man—”

“You know what’s missing, don’t you?”

“Sure. You’re missing something in the head. You’re trying to stand off a whole political scheme that comes at you with every force imaginable no matter where you are. Mike, you don’t fight these guys alone!”

“Nuts. It looks like I have to. I’m not exactly an accredited type character. Who would listen to me?”

“Couldn’t this Art Rickerby—”

“He has one purpose in mind. He wants whoever killed Richie Cole.”

“That doesn’t seem likely. He’s a trained federal agent.”

“So what? When something hits you personally, patriotism can go by the boards awhile. There are plenty of other agents. He wants a killer and knows I’ll eventually come up with him. Like Velda’s a key to one thing, I’m a key to another. They think that I’m going to stumble over whatever it was Richie Cole left for me. I know what it was now. So do you, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Hy said. “It was Velda’s location, wherever she is.”

“That’s right. They don’t know if I know or if I’ll find out. You can damn well bet that they know he stayed alive waiting for me to show. They can’t even be sure if he just clued me. They can’t be sure of anything, but they know that I have to stay alive if they want to find Velda too.”

Hy’s eyes went deep in thought. “Alive? They tried to shoot you twice, didn’t they?”

“Fine, but neither shot connected and I can’t see a top assassin missing a shot. Both times I was a perfect target.”

“Why the attempt then?”

“I’ll tell you why,” I said. I leaned on the table feeling my hands go open and shut wanting to squeeze the life out of somebody. “Both tries were deliberately sour. They were pushing me. They wanted me to move fast, and if anything can stir a guy up it’s getting shot at. If I had anything to hide or to work at, it would come out in a hurry.”

“But you didn’t bring anything out?”

I grinned at him and I could see my reflection in the glass facing of the autographed pictures behind his head. It wasn’t a pretty face at all, teeth and hate and some wildness hard to describe. “No, I didn’t. So now I’m a real target because I know too much. They know I don’t have Velda’s location and from now on I can only be trouble to them. I’ll bet you that right now a hunt is on for me.”

“Mike—if you called Pat—”

“Come off it. He’s no friend anymore. He’ll do anything to nail my ass down and don’t you forget it.”

“Does he know the facts?”

“No. The hell with him.”

Hy pushed his glasses up on his head, frowning. “Well, what are you going to do?”

“Do, old buddy? I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going after the missing piece. If I weren’t so damn slow after all those years I would have caught it before. I’m going after the facts that can wrap up the ball game and you’re going with me.”

“But you said—”

“Uh-uh. I didn’t say anything. I don’t know where she is, but I do know a few other things. Richie Cole came blasting back into this country when he shouldn’t have and ducked out to look for me. That had a big fat meaning and I muffed it. Damn it, I muffed it!”

“But how?”

“Come on, Hy—Richie was a sailor—he smuggled her on the ship he came in on. He never left her in Europe! He got her back in this country!”

He put the cigar down slowly, getting the implication.

I said, “He had to smuggle her out, otherwise they would have killed her. If they took a plane they would have blown it over the ocean, or if she sailed under an assumed name and cover identity they would have had enough time to locate her and a passenger would simply fall overboard. No, he smuggled her out. He got her on that ship and got her into this country.”

“You make it sound easy.”

“Sure it’s easy! You think there wasn’t some cooperation with others in the crew! Those boys love to outfox the captain and the customs. What would they care as long as it was on Cole’s head? He was on a tramp steamer and they can do practically anything on those babies if they know how and want to. Look, you want me to cite you examples?”

“I know it could be done.”

“All right, then here’s the catch. Richie realized how close The Dragon was to Velda when they left. He had no time. He had to act on his own. This was a project bigger than any going in the world at the time, big enough to break regulations for. He got her out—but he didn’t underestimate the enemy either. He knew they’d figure it and be waiting.

“They were, too,” I continued. “The Dragon was there all right, and he followed Cole thinking he was going to an appointed place where he had already hidden Velda, but when he realized that Cole wasn’t doing anything of the kind he figured the angles quickly. He shot Cole, had to leave because of the crowd that collected and didn’t have a chance until later to reach Old Dewey, then found out about me. Don’t ask me the details about how they can do it—they have resources at their fingertips everywhere. Later he went back, killed Dewey, didn’t find the note Cole left and had to stick with me to see where I led him.”

Hy was frowning again.

I said, “I couldn’t lead him to Velda. I didn’t know. But before long he’ll figure out the same thing I did. Somebody else helped Cole get her off that boat and knows where she is!”

“What are you going to do?” His voice was quietly calm next to mine.

“Get on that ship and see who else was in on the deal.”

“How?”

“Be my guest and I’ll show you the seamier side of life.”

“You know me,” Hy said, standing up.

I paid the cabbie outside Benny Joe Grissi’s bar and when Hy saw where we were he let out a low whistle and said he hoped I knew what I was doing. We went inside and Sugar Boy and his smaller friend were still at their accustomed places and when Sugar Boy saw me he got a little pasty around the mouth and looked toward the bar with a quick motion of his head.

Benny Joe gave the nod and we walked past without saying a word, and when I got to the bar I held out the card Art Rickerby had given me and let Benny Joe take a long look at it. “In case you get ideas like before, mister. I’ll shoot this place apart and you with it.”

“Say, Mike, I never—”

“Tone it down,” I said. “Bayliss Henry here?”

“Pepper? Yeah. He went in the can.”

“Wait here, Hy.”

I went down to the end with the door stenciled MEN and pushed on in. Old Bayliss was at the washstand drying his hands and saw me in the mirror, his eyes suddenly wary at the recognition. He turned around and put his hands on my chest. “Mike, my boy, no more. Whatever it is, I want none of it. The last time out taught me a lesson I won’t forget. I’m old, I scare easy, and what life is left to me I want to enjoy. Okay?”

“Sure.”

“Then forget whatever you came in here to ask me. Don’t let me talk over my head about the old days or try and make like a reporter again.”

“You won’t get shot at.”

Bayliss nodded and shrugged. “How can I argue with you? What do you want to know?”

“What ship was Richie Cole on?”

“The Vanessa.”

“What pier?”

“She was at number twelve, but that won’t do you any good now.”

“Why not?”

“Hell, she sailed the day before yesterday.”

What I had to say I did under my breath. Everything was right out the window because I thought too slow and a couple of days had made all the difference.

“What was on it, Mike?”

“I wanted to see a guy.”

“Oh? I thought it was the ship. Well maybe you can still see some of the guys. You know the Vanessa was the ship they had the union trouble with. Everybody complained about the chow and half the guys wouldn’t sign back on. The union really laid into ’em.”

Then suddenly there was a chance again and I had to grab at it. “Listen, Bayliss—who did Cole hang around with on the ship?”

“Jeepers, Mike, out at sea—”

“Did he have any friends on board?”

“Well, no, I’d say.”

“Come on, damn it, a guy doesn’t sail for months and not make some kind of an acquaintance!”

“Yeah, I know—well, Cole was a chess player and there was this one guy—let’s see, Red Markham—yeah, that’s it, Red Markham. They’d have drinks together and play chess together because Red sure could play chess. One time—”

“Where can I find this guy?”

“You know where Annie Stein’s pad is?”

“The flophouse?”

“Yeah. Well, you look for him there. He gets drunk daytimes and flops early.”

“Suppose you go along.”

“Mike, I told you—”

“Hy Gardner’s outside.”

Bayliss looked up and grinned. “Well, shoot. If he’s along I’ll damn well go. He was still running copy when I did the police beat.”

Annie Stein’s place was known as the Harbor Hotel. It was a dollar a night flop, pretty expensive as flops go, so the trade was limited to occasional workers and itinerant seamen. It was old and dirty and smelled of disinfectant and urine partially smothered by an old-man odor of defeat and decay.

The desk clerk froze when we walked in, spun the book around without asking, not wanting any trouble at all. Red Markham was in the third room on the second floor, his door half open, the sound and smell of him oozing into the corridor.

I pushed the door open and flipped on the light. Overhead a sixty-watt bulb turned everything yellow. He was curled on the cot, an empty pint bottle beside him, breathing heavily through his mouth. On the chair with his jacket and hat was a pocket-sized chessboard with pegged chessmen arranged in some intricate move.

It took ten minutes of cold wet towels and a lot of shaking to wake him up. His eyes still had a whiskey glassiness and he didn’t know what we wanted at all. He was unintelligible for another thirty minutes, then little by little he began to come around, his face going through a succession of emotions. Until he saw Bayliss he seemed scared, but one look at the old man and he tried on a drunken grin, gagged and went into a spasm of dry heaves. Luckily, there was nothing in his stomach, so we didn’t have to go through that kind of mess.

Hy brought in a glass of water and I made him sip at it. I said, “What’s your name, feller?”

He hiccoughed. “You—cops?”

“No, a friend.”

“Oh.” His head wobbled, then he looked back to me again. “You play chess?”

“Sorry, Red, but I had a friend who could. Richie Cole.”

Markham squinted and nodded solemnly, remembering. “He—pretty damn good. Yessir. Good guy.”

I asked him, “Did you know about the girl on the ship?”

Very slowly, he scowled, his lips pursing out, then a bit of clarity returned to him and he leered with a drunken grimace. “Sure. Hell of—joke.” He hiccoughed and grinned again. “Joke. Hid—her in—down in—hold.”

We were getting close now. His eyes drooped sleepily and I wanted him to hang on. I said, “Where is she now, Red?”

He just looked at me foggily.

“Damn it, think about it!”

For a second he didn’t like the way I yelled or my hand on his arm and he was about to balk, then Bayliss said, “Come on, Red, if you know where she is, tell us.”

You’d think he was seeing Bayliss for the first time. “Pepper,” he said happily, his eyes coming open.

“Come on, Red. The girl on the Vanessa. Richie’s girl.”

“Sure. Big—joke. You know?”

“We know, but tell us where she is.”

His shrug was the elaborate gesture of the sodden drunk. “Dunno. I—got her—on deck.”

Bayliss looked at me, not knowing where to go. It was all over his head and he was taking the lead from me. Then he got the pitch and shook Red’s shoulder. “Is she on shore?”

Red chuckled and his head weaved. “On—shore. Sure—on shore.” He laughed again, the picture coming back to his mind. “Dennis—Wallace packed her—in crate. Very funny.”

I pushed Bayliss away and sat on the edge of the cot. “It sure was a good joke all right. Now where did the crate go?”

“Crate?”

“She was packed in the crate. This Dennis Wallace packed her in the crate, right?”

“Right!” he said assuredly, slobbering on himself.

“Then who got the crate?”

“Big joke.”

“I know, now let us in on it. Who got the crate?”

He made another one of those shrugs. “I—dunno.”

“Somebody picked it up,” I reminded him.

Red’s smile was real foolish, that of the drunk trying to be secretive. “Richie’s—joke. He called—a friend. Dennis gave him—the crate.” He laughed again. “Very funny.”

Hy said, “Cute.”

I nodded. “Yeah. Now we have to find this Dennis guy.”

“He’s got a place not far from here,” Bayliss said.

“You know everybody?”

“I’ve been around a long time, Mike.”

We went to leave Red Markham sitting there, but before we could reach the door he called out, “Hey, you.”

Bayliss said, “What, Red?”

“How come—everybody wants—old Dennis?”

“I don’t—”

My hand stopped the old guy and I walked back to the cot. “Who else wanted Dennis, Red?”

“Guy—gimme this pint.” He reached for the bottle, but was unable to make immediate contact. When he did he sucked at the mouth of it, swallowed as though it was filled and put the bottle down.

“What did he look like, Red?”

“Oh—” he lolled back against the wall. “Big guy. Like you.”

“Go on.”

“Mean. Son of a—he was mean. You ever see—mean ones? Like a damn Indian. Something like Injun Pete on the Darby Standard—he—”

I didn’t bother to hear him finish. I looked straight at Hy and felt cold all over. “The Dragon,” I said. “He’s one step up.”

Hy had a quiet look on his face. “That’s what I almost forgot to tell you about, Mike.”

“What?”

“The Dragon. I got inside the code name from our people overseas. There may be two guys because The Dragon code breaks down to tooth and nail. When they operate as a team they’re simply referred to as The Dragon.”

“Great,” I said. “Swell. That’s all we need for odds.” My mouth had a bad taste in it. “Show us Dennis’s place, Bayliss. We can’t stay here any longer.”

“Not me,” he said. “You guys go it alone. Whatever it is that’s going on, I don’t like it. I’ll tell you where, but I’m not going in any more dark places with you. Right now I’m going back to Benny Joe Grissi’s bar and get stinking drunk where you can’t get at me and if anything happens I’ll read about it in the papers tomorrow.”

“Good enough, old-timer. Now where does Dennis live?”

The rooming house was a brownstone off Ninth Avenue, a firetrap like all the others on the block, a crummy joint filled with cubicles referred to as furnished rooms. The landlady came out of the front floor flat, looked at me and said, “I don’t want no cops around here,” and when Hy handed her the ten-spot her fat face made a brief smile and she added, “So I made a mistake. Cops don’t give away the green. What’re you after?”

“Dennis Wallace. He’s a seaman and—”

“Top floor front. Go on up. He’s got company.”

I flashed Hy a nod, took the stairs with him behind me while I yanked the .45 out and reached the top floor in seconds. The old carpet under our feet puffed dust with every step but muffled them effectively and when I reached the door there was no sound from within and a pencil-thin line of light seeped out at the sill. I tried the knob, pushed the door open and was ready to cut loose at anything that moved wrong.

But there was no need for any shooting, if the little guy on the floor with his hands tied behind him and his throat slit wide open was Dennis Wallace, for his killer was long gone.

The fat landlady screeched when she saw the body and told us it was Dennis all right. She waddled downstairs again and pointed to the wall phone and after trying four different numbers I got Pat and told him I was with another dead man. It wasn’t anything startling. He was very proper about getting down the details and told me to stay right there. His voice had a fine tone of satisfaction to it that said he had me where he could make me sweat and maybe even break me like he had promised.

Hy came down as I hung up and tapped my shoulder. “You didn’t notice something on the guy up there.”

“What’s that?”

“All that blood didn’t come from his throat. His gut is all carved up and his mouth is taped shut. The blood obscures the tape.”

“Tortured?”

“It sure looks that way.”

The landlady was in her room taking a quick shot for her nerves and seemed to hate us for causing all the trouble. I asked her when Dennis’ guest had arrived and she said a couple of hours ago. She hadn’t heard him leave so she assumed he was still there. Her description was brief, but enough. He was a big mean-looking guy who reminded her of an Indian.

There was maybe another minute before a squad car would come along and I didn’t want to be here when that happened. I pulled Hy out on the stoop and said, “I’m going to take off.”

“Pat won’t like it.”

“There isn’t time to talk about it. You can give him the poop.”

“All of it?”

“Every bit. Lay it out for him.”

“What about you?”

“Look, you saw what happened. The Dragon put it together the same way I did. He was here when the boat docked and Richie Cole knew it. So Richie called for a friend who knew the ropes, told him to pick up the crate with Velda in it and where to bring it. He left and figured right when he guessed anybody waiting would follow him. He pulled them away from the boat and tried to make contact with Old Dewey at the newstand and what he had for Dewey was the location of where that friend was to bring the crate.”

“Then there’s one more step.”

“That’s right. The friend.”

“You can’t trace that call after all this time.”

“I don’t think I have to.”

Hy shook his head. “If Cole was a top agent then he didn’t have any friends.”

“He had one,” I said.

“Who?”

“Velda.”

“But—”

“So he could just as well have another. Someone who was in the same game with him during the war, someone he knew would realize the gravity of the situation and act immediately and someone he knew would be capable of fulfilling the mission.”

“Who, Mike?”

I didn’t tell him. “I’ll call you when it’s over. You tell Pat.”

Down the street a squad car turned the corner. I went down the steps and went in the other direction, walking casually, then when I reached Ninth, I flagged a cab and gave him the parking lot where I had left Laura’s car.

CHAPTER 12

If I was wrong, the girl hunters would have Velda. She’d be dead. They wanted nothing of her except that she be dead. Damn their stinking hides anyway. Damn them and their philosophies! Death and destruction were the only things the Kremlin crowd was capable of. They knew the value of violence and death and used it over and over in a wild scheme to smash everything flat but their own kind.

But there was one thing they didn’t know. They didn’t know how to handle it when it came back to them and exploded in their own faces. Let her be dead, I thought, and I’ll start a hunt of my own. They think they can hunt? Shit. They didn’t know how to be really violent. Death? I’d get them, every one, no matter how big or little, or wherever they were. I’d cut them down like so many grapes in ways that would scare the living crap out of them and those next in line for my kill would never know a second’s peace until their heads went flying every which way.

So I’d better not be wrong.

Dennis Wallace had known who was to pick up the crate. There wouldn’t have been time for elaborate exchanges of coded recognition signals and if Dennis had known it was more than just a joke he might conceivably have backed out. No, it had to be quick and simple and not at all frightening. He had turned the crate over to a guy whose name had been given him and since it was big enough a truck would have been used in the delivery. He would have seen lettering on the truck, he would have been able to identify both it and the driver, and with some judicious knife work on his belly he would have had his memory jarred into remembering every single detail of the transaction.

I had to be right.

Art Rickerby had offered the clue.

The guy’s name had to be Alex Bird, Richie’s old war buddy in the O.S.S. who had a chicken farm up in Marlboro, New York, and who most likely had a pickup truck that could transport a crate. He would do the favor, keep his mouth shut and forget it the way he had been trained to, and it was just as likely he missed any newspaper squibs about Richie’s death and so didn’t show up to talk to the police when Richie was killed.

By the time I reached the George Washington Bridge the stars were wiped out of the night sky and you could smell the rain again. I took the Palisades Drive and where I turned off to pick up the Thruway the rain came down in fine slanting lines that laid a slick on the road and whipped in the window.

I liked a night like this. It could put a quiet on everything. Your feet walked softer and dogs never barked in the rain. It obscured visibility and overrode sounds that could give you away otherwise and sometimes was so soothing that you could be lulled into a death sleep. Yeah, I remembered other nights like this too. Death nights.

At Newburgh I turned off the Thruway, drove down 17K into town and turned north on 9W. I stopped at a gas station when I reached Marlboro and asked the attendant if he knew where Alex Bird lived.

Yes, he knew. He pointed the way out and just to be sure I sketched out the route then picked up the blacktop road that led back into the country.

I passed by it the first time, turned around at the crossroad cursing to myself, then eased back up the road looking for the mailbox. There was no name on it, just a big wooden cutout of a bird. It was in the shadow of a tree before, but now my lights picked it out and when they did I spotted the drive, turned in, angled off into a cut in the bushes and killed the engine.

The farmhouse stood an eighth of a mile back off the road, an old building restored to more modern taste. In back of it, dimly lit by the soft glow of night lights, were two long chicken houses, the manure odor of them hanging in the wet air. On the right, a hundred feet away, a two-story boxlike barn stood in deep shadow, totally dark.

Only one light was on in the house when I reached it, downstairs on the chimney side and obviously in a living room. I held there a minute, letting my eyes get adjusted to the place. There were no cars around, but that didn’t count since there were too many places to hide one. I took out the .45, jacked a shell in the chamber and thumbed the hammer back.

But before I could move another light went on in the opposite downstairs room. Behind the curtains a shadow moved slowly, purposefully, passed the window several times then disappeared altogether. I waited, but the light didn’t go out. Instead, one top-floor light came on, but too dimly to do more than vaguely outline the form of a person on the curtains.

Then it suddenly made sense to me and I ran across the distance to the door. Somebody was searching the house.

The door was locked and too heavy to kick in. I hoped the rain covered the racket I made, then laid my trench coat against the window and pushed. The glass shattered inward to the carpeted floor without much noise, I undid the catch, lifted the window and climbed over the sill.

Alex Bird would be the thin, balding guy tied to the straight-back chair. His head slumped forward, his chin on his chest and when I tilted his head back his eyes stared at me lifelessly. There was a small lumpy bruise on the side of his head where he had been hit, but outside of a chafing of his wrists and ankles, there were no other marks on him. His body had the warmth of death only a few minutes old and I had seen too many heart-attack cases not to be able to diagnose this one.

The Dragon had reached Alex Bird, all right. He had him right where he could make him talk and the little guy’s heart exploded on him. That meant just one thing. He hadn’t talked. The Dragon was still searching. He didn’t know where she was yet!

And right then, right that very second he was upstairs tearing the house apart!

The stairs were at a shallow angle reaching to the upper landing and I hugged the wall in the shadows until I could definitely place him from the sounds. I tried to keep from laughing out loud because I felt so good, and although I could hold back the laugh I couldn’t suppress the grin. I could feel it stretch my face and felt the pull across my shoulders and back, then I got ready to go.

I knew when he felt it. When death is your business you have a feeling for it; an animal instinct can tell when it’s close even when you can’t see it or hear it. You just know it’s there. And like he knew suddenly that I was there, I realized he knew it too.

Upstairs the sounds stopped abruptly. There was the smallest of metallic clicks that could have been made by a gun, but that was all. Both of us were waiting. Both of us knew we wouldn’t wait long.

You can’t play games when time is so important. You take a chance on being hit and maybe living through it just so you get one clean shot in where it counts. You have to end the play knowing one must die and sometimes two and there’s no other way. For the first time you both know it’s pro against pro, two cold, calm killers facing each other down and there’s no such thing as sportsmanship and if an advantage is offered it will be taken and whoever offered it will be dead.

We came around the corners simultaneously with the rolling thunder of the .45 blanking out the rod in his hand and I felt a sudden torch along my side and another on my arm. It was immediate and unaimed diversionary fire until you could get the target lined up and in the space of four rapid-fire shots I saw him, huge at the top of the stairs, his high-cheekboned face truly Indianlike, the black hair low on his forehead and his mouth twisted open in the sheer enjoyment of what he was doing.

Then my shot slammed the gun out of his hand and the advantage was his because he was up there, a crazy killer with a scream on his lips and like the animal he was he reacted instantly and dove headlong at me through the acrid fumes of the gunsmoke.

The impact knocked me flat on my back, smashing into a corner table so that the lamp shattered into a million pieces beside my head. I had my hands on him, his coat tore, a long tattered slice of it in my fingers, then he kicked free with a snarl and a guttural curse, rolling to his feet like an acrobat. The .45 had skittered out of my hand and lay up against the step. All it needed was a quick movement and it was mine. He saw the action, figured the odds and knew he couldn’t reach me before I had the gun, and while I grabbed it up he was into the living room and out the front door. The slide was forward and the hammer back so there was still one shot left at least and he couldn’t afford the chance of losing. I saw his blurred shadow racing toward the drive and when my shadow broke the shaft of light coming from the door he swerved into the darkness of the barn and I let a shot go at him and heard it smash into the woodwork.

It was my last. This time the slide stayed back. I dropped the gun in the grass, ran to the barn before he could pull the door closed and dived into the darkness.

He was on me like a cat, but he made a mistake in reaching for my right hand thinking I had the gun there. I got the other hand in his face and damn near tore it off. He didn’t yell. He made a sound deep in his throat and went for my neck. He was big and strong and wild mean, but it was my kind of game too. I heaved up and threw him off, got to my feet and kicked out to where he was. I missed my aim, but my toe took him in the side and he grunted and came back with a vicious swipe of his hand I could only partially block. I felt his next move coming and let an old-time reflex take over. The judo bit is great if everything is going for you, but a terrible right cross to the face can destroy judo or karate or anything else if it gets there first.

My hand smashed into bone and flesh and with the meaty impact I could smell the blood and hear the gagging intake of his breath. He grabbed, his arms like great claws. He just held on and I knew if I couldn’t break him loose he could kill me. He figured I’d start the knee coming up and turned to block it. But I did something worse, I grabbed him with my hands, squeezed and twisted and his scream was like a woman’s, so high-pitched as almost to be noiseless, and in his frenzy of pain he shoved me so violently I lost that fanatical hold of what manhood I had left him, and with some blind hate driving him he came at me as I stumbled over something and fell on me like a wild beast, his teeth tearing at me, his hands searching and ripping and I felt the shock of incredible pain and ribs break under his pounding and I couldn’t get him off no matter what I did, and he was holding me down and butting me with his head while he kept up that whistlelike screaming and in another minute it would be me dead and him alive, then Velda dead.

And when I thought of her name something happened, that little thing you have left over was there and I got my elbow up, smashed his head back unexpectedly, got a short one to his jaw again, then another, and another, and another, then I was on top of him and hitting, hitting, smashing—and he wasn’t moving at all under me. He was breathing, but not moving.

I got up and found the doorway somehow, standing there to suck in great breaths of air. I could feel the blood running from my mouth and nose, wetting my shirt, and with each breath my side would wrench and tear. The two bullet burns were nothing compared to the rest. I had been squeezed dry, pulled apart, almost destroyed, but I had won. Now the son of a bitch would die.

Inside the door I found a light switch. It only threw on a small bulb overhead, but it was enough. I walked back to where he lay face up and then spat down on The Dragon. Mechanically, I searched his pockets, found nothing except money until I saw that one of my fists had torn his hair loose at the side and when I ripped the wig off there were several small strips of microfilm hidden there.

Hell, I didn’t know what they were. I didn’t care. I even grinned at the slob because he sure did look like an Indian now, only one that had been half scalped by an amateur. He was big, big. Cheekbones high, a Slavic cast to his eyes, his mouth a cruel slash, his eyebrows thick and black. Half bald, though, he wouldn’t have looked too much like an Indian. Not our kind, anyway.

There was an ax on the wall, a long-handled, double-bitted ax with a finely honed edge and I picked it from the pegs and went back to The Dragon.

Just how did you kill a dragon? I could bury the ax in his belly. That would be fun, all right. Stick it right in the middle of his skull and it would look at lot better. They wouldn’t come fooling around after seeing pictures of that. How about the neck? One whack and his head would roll like the Japs used to do. But nuts, why be that kind?

This guy was really going to die.

I looked at the big pig, put the ax down and nudged him with my toe. What was it Art had said? Like about suffering? I thought he was nuts, but he could be right. Yeah, he sure could be right. Still, there had to be some indication that people were left who treat those Commie slobs like they liked to treat people.

Some indication.

He was Gorlin now, Comrade Gorlin. Dragons just aren’t dragons anymore when they’re bubbling blood over their chins.

I walked around the building looking for an indication.

I found it on a workbench in the back.

A twenty-penny nail and a ball-peen hammer. The nail seemed about four inches long and the head big as a dime.

I went back and turned Comrade Gorlin over on his face.

I stretched his arm out palm down on the floor.

I tapped the planks until I found a floor beam and put his hand on it.

It was too bad he wasn’t conscious.

Then I held the nail in the middle of the back of his hand and slammed it in with the hammer and slammed and slammed and slammed until the head of that nail dimpled his skin and he was so tightly pinned to the floor like a piece of equipment he’d never get loose until he was pried out and he wasn’t going to do it with a ball-peen. I threw the hammer down beside him and said, “Better’n handcuffs, buddy,” but he didn’t get the joke. He was still out.

Outside, the rain came down harder. It always does after a thing like that, trying to flush away the memory of it. I picked up my gun, took it in the house and dismantled it, wiped it dry and reassembled the piece.

Only then did I walk to the telephone and ask the operator to get me New York and the number I gave her was that of the Peerage Brokers. Art Rickerby answered the phone himself. He said, “Mike?”

“Yes.”

For several seconds there was silence. “Mike—”

“I have him for you. He’s still alive.”

It was as though I had merely told him the time. “Thank you,” he said.

“You’ll cover for me on this.”

“It will be taken care of. Where is he?”

I told him. I gave him the story then too. I told him to call Pat and Hy and let it all loose at once. Everything tied in. It was almost all wrapped up.

Art said, “One thing, Mike.”

“What?”

“Your problem.”

“No trouble. It’s over. I was standing here cleaning my gun and it all was like snapping my fingers. It was simple. If I had thought of it right away Dewey and Dennis Wallace and Alex Bird would still be alive. It was tragically simple. I could have found out where Velda was days ago.”

“Mike—”

“I’ll see you, Art. The rest of The Dragon has yet to fall.”

“What?” He didn’t understand me.

“Tooth and Nail. I just got Tooth—Nail is more subtle.”

“We’re going to need a statement.”

“You’ll get it.”

“How will—”

I interrupted him with, “I’ll call you.”

CHAPTER 13

At daylight the rain stopped and the music of sunlight played off the trees and grass at dawn. The mountains glittered and shone and steamed a little, and as the sun rose the sheen stopped and the colors came through. I ate at an all-night drive-in, parking between the semis out front. I sat through half a dozen cups of coffee before paying the bill and going out to the day, ignoring the funny looks of the carhop.

I stopped again awhile by the Ashokan Reservoir and did nothing but look at the water and try to bring seven years into focus. It was a long time, that. You change in seven years.

You change in seven days too, I thought.

I was a bum Pat had dragged into a hospital to look at a dying man. Pat didn’t know it, but I was almost as dead as the one on the bed. It depends on where you die. My dying had been almost done. The drying up, the withering, had taken place. Everything was gone except hopelessness and that is the almost death of living.

Remember, Velda, when we were big together? You must have remembered or you would never have asked for me. And all these years I had spent trying to forget you while you were trying to remember me.

I got up slowly and brushed off my pants, then walked back across the field to the car. During the night I had gotten it all muddy driving aimlessly on the back roads, but I didn’t think Laura would mind.

The sun had climbed high until it was almost directly overhead. When you sit and think time can go by awfully fast. I turned the key, pulled out on the road and headed toward the mountains.

When I drove up, Laura heard me coming and ran out to meet me. She came into my arms with a rush of pure delight and did nothing for a few seconds except hold her arms around me, then she looked again, stepped back and said, “Mike—your face!”

“Trouble, baby. I told you I was trouble.”

For the first time I noticed my clothes. My coat swung open and there was blood down my jacket and shirt and a jagged tear that was clotted with more blood at my side.

Her eyes went wide, not believing what she saw. “Mike! You’re—you’re all—”

“Shot down, kid. Rough night.”

She shook her head. “It’s not funny. I’m going to call a doctor!”

I took her hand. “No, you’re not. It isn’t that bad.”

“Mike—”

“Favor, kitten. Let me lie in the sun like an old dog, okay? I don’t want a damn medic. I’ll heal. It’s happened before. I just want to be left alone in the sun.”

“Oh, Mike, you stubborn fool.”

“Anybody home?” I asked her.

“No, you always pick an off day for the servants.” She smiled again now. “You’re clever and I’m glad.”

I nodded. For some reason my side had started to ache and it was getting hard to breathe. There were other places that had pain areas all their own and they weren’t going to get better. It had only just started. I said, “I’m tired.”

So we went out back to the pool. She helped me off with my clothes and once more I put the trunks on, then eased down into a plastic contour chair and let the sun warm me. There were blue marks from my shoulders down and where the rib was broken a welt had raised, an angry red that arched from front to back. Laura found antiseptic and cleaned out the furrow where the two shots had grazed me and I thought back to the moment of getting them, realizing how lucky I was because the big jerk was too impatient, just like I had been, taking too much pleasure out of something that should have been strictly business.

I slept for a while. I felt the sun travel across my body from one side to the other, then I awoke abruptly because events had compacted themselves into my thoughts and I knew that there was still that one thing more to do.

Laura said, “You were talking in your sleep, Mike.”

She had changed back into that black bikini and it was wet like her skin so she must have just come from the water. The tight band of black at her loins had rolled down some from the swim and fitted tightly into the crevasses of her body. The top half was like an artist’s brush stroke, a quick motion of impatience at a critical sex-conscious world that concealed by reason of design only. She was more nearly naked dressed than nude.

How lovely.

Large, flowing thighs. Full, round calves. They blended into a softly concave stomach and emerged, higher, into proud, outthrust breasts. Her face and hair were a composite halo reaching for the perfection of beauty and she was smiling.

Lovely.

“What did I say, Laura?”

She stopped smiling then. “You were talking about dragons.” I nodded. “Today, I’m St. George.”

“Mike—”

“Sit down, baby.”

“Can we talk again?”

“Yes, we’ll talk.”

“Would you mind if I got dressed first? It’s getting chilly out here now. You ought to get dressed yourself.”

She was right. The sun was a thick red now, hanging just over the crest of a mountain. While one side was a blaze of green, the other was in the deep purple of the shadow.

I held out my hand and she helped me up, and together we walked around the pool to the bathhouse, touching each other, feeling the warmth of skin against skin, the motion of muscle against muscle. At the door she turned and I took her in my arms. “Back to back?” she said.

“Like prudes,” I told her.

Her eyes grew soft and her lips wet her tongue. Slowly, with an insistent hunger, her mouth turned up to mine and I took it, tasting her again, knowing her, feeling the surge of desire go through me and through her too.

I let her go reluctantly and she went inside with me behind her. The setting sun threw long orange rays through the window, so there was no need of the overhead light. She went into the shower and turned on a soft drizzle while I got dressed slowly, aching and hurting as I pulled on my clothes.

She called out, “When will it all be over, Mike?”

“Today,” I said quietly.

“Today?”

I heard her stop soaping herself in the shower. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“You were dreaming about dragons,” she called out.

“About how they die, honey. They die hard. This one will die especially hard. You know, you wouldn’t believe how things come about. Things that were planted long ago suddenly bear fruit now. Like what I told you. Remember all I told you about Velda?”

“Yes, Mike, I do.”

“I had to revise and add to the story, Laura.”

“Really?” She turned the shower off and stood there behind me soaping herself down, the sound of it so nice and natural I wanted to turn around and watch. I knew what she’d look like: darkly beautiful, blondly beautiful, the sun having turned all of her hair white.

I said, “Pat was right and I was right. Your jewels did come into it. They were like Mrs. Civac’s jewels and the fact that Richie Cole was a jewel smuggler.”

“Oh?” That was all she said.

“They were all devices. Decoys. Red herrings. How would you like to hear the rest of what I think?”

“All right, Mike.”

She didn’t see me, but I nodded. “In the government are certain key men. Their importance is apparent to critical eyes long before it is to the public. Your husband was like that. It was evident that he was going to be a top dog one day and the kind of top dog our Red enemy could hardly afford to have up there.

“That was Leo Knapp, your husband. Mr. Missile Man. Mr. America. He sure was a big one. But our wary enemy knew his stuff. Kill him off and you had a public martyr or a great investigation that might lead to even greater international stuff and those Reds just aren’t the kind who can stand the big push. Like it or not, they’re still a lousy bunch of peasants who killed to control but who can be knocked into line by the likes of us. They’re shouting slobs who’ll run like hell when class shows and they know this inside their feeble little heads. So they didn’t want Leo Knapp put on a pedestal.

“Control comes other ways, however. For instance, he could marry a woman who would listen to him as a sounding board and relay his thoughts and secrets to the right persons so that whatever he did could be quickly annulled by some other action. He could marry a woman who, as his official Washington hostess, had the ear of respected persons and could pick up things here and there that were as important to enemy ears as any sealed documents. He could find his work being stymied at every turn.

“Then one day he figured it all out. He pinpointed the enemy and found it within his own house. He baited a trap by planting supposedly important papers in his safe and one night while the enemy, his wife, was rifling his safe with her compatriot who was to photograph the papers and transport the photos to higher headquarters, he came downstairs. He saw her, accused her, but blundered into a game bigger than he was.

“Let’s say she shot him. It doesn’t really matter. She was just as guilty even if it was the other one. At least the other one carried the gun off—a pickup rod traceable to no one if it was thrown away printless. His wife delayed long enough so she and her compatriot could fake a robbery, let the guy get away, then call in the cops.

“Nor does it end there. The same wife still acts as the big Washington hostess with her same ear to the same ground and is an important and inexhaustible supply of information to the enemy. Let’s say that she is so big as to even be part of The Dragon team. He was Tooth, she was Nail, both spies, both assassins, both deadly enemies of this country.”

Behind me the water went on again, a downpour that would rinse the bubbles of soap from her body.

“All went well until Richie Cole was killed. Tooth went and used the same gun again. It tied things in. Like I told you when I let you be my sounding board—coincidence is a strange thing. I like the word ‘fate’ even better. Or is ‘consequence’ an even better one? Richie and Leo and Velda were all tied into the same big situation and for a long time I was too damn dumb to realize it.

“A guy like me doesn’t stay dumb forever, though. Things change. You either die or smarten up. I had The Dragon on my back and when I think about it all the little things make sense too. At least I think so. Remember how when Gorlin shot the radio you shook with what I thought was fear? Hell, baby, that was rage. You were pissed off that he could pull such a stupid stunt and maybe put your hide in danger. Later you gave him hell on the phone, didn’t you? That house is like an echo chamber, baby. Talk downstairs and you hear the tones all over. You were mad. I was too interested in going through your husband’s effects to pay any attention, that was all.

“Now it’s over. Tooth is nailed, but that’s a joke you don’t understand yet, baby. Let’s just say that The Dragon is tethered. He’ll sit in the chair and all the world will know why and nations will backtrack and lie and propaganda will tear up the knotheads in the Kremlin and maybe their satellite countries will wise up and blast loose and maybe we’ll wise up and blast them, but however it goes, The Dragon is dead. It didn’t find Velda. She’ll talk, she’ll open up the secrets of the greatest espionage organization the world has ever known and Communist philosophy will get the hell knocked out of it.

“You see, baby, I know where Velda is.”

The shower stopped running and I could hear her hum as though she couldn’t even hear me.

“The catch was this. Richie Cole did make his contact. He gave Old Dewey, the newsstand operator, a letter he had that told where Alex Bird would take Velda. It was a prepared place and she had orders to stay there until either he came for her or I came for her. He’ll never come for her.

“Only me,” I said. “Dewey put the letter in a magazine. Every month he holds certain magazines aside for me and to make sure I got it he put it inside my copy of Cavalier. It will be there when I go back to the city. I’ll pick it up and it will tell me where Velda is.”

I finished dressing, put on the empty gun and slid painfully into the jacket. The blood was crusty on my clothes, but it really didn’t matter anymore.

I said, “It’s all speculation, I might be wrong. I just can’t take any chances. I’ve loved other women. I loved Velda. I’ve loved you and like you said, it’s either you or her. I have to go for her, you know that. If she’s alive I have to find her. The key is right there inside my copy of that magazine. It will have my name on it and Duck-Duck will hand it over and I’ll know where she is.”

She stopped humming and I knew she was listening. I heard her make a curious woman-sound like a sob.

“I may be wrong, Laura. I may see her and not want her. I may be wrong about you, and if I am I’ll be back, but I have to find out.” The slanting beam of the sun struck the other side of the bathhouse leaving me in the shadow then. I knew what I had to do. It had to be a test. They either passed it or failed it. No in-betweens. I didn’t want it on my head again.

I reached for the shotgun in the corner, turned it upside down and shoved the barrels deep into the blue clay and twisted them until I was sure both barrels were plugged just like a cookie cutter and I left it lying there and opened the door.

The mountains were in deep shadow, the sun out of sight and only its light flickering off the trees. It was a hundred miles into the city, but I’d take the car again and it wouldn’t really be very long at all. I’d see Pat and we’d be friends again and Hy would get his story and Velda—Velda? What would it be like now?

I started up the still wet concrete walk away from the bathhouse and she called out, “Mike—Mike!”

I turned at the sound of her voice and there she stood in the naked, glossy, shimmering beauty of womanhood, the lovely tan of her skin blossoming and swelling in all the vast hillocks and curves that make a woman, the glinting blond hair throwing tiny lights back into the sunset and over it all those incredible gray eyes.

Incredible.

They watched me over the elongated barrels of the shotgun and seemed to twinkle and swirl in the fanatical delight of murder they come up with at the moment of the kill, the moment of truth.

But for whom? Truth will out, but for whom?

The muzzle of the gun was a pair of yawning chasms but there was no depth to their mouths. Down the length of the blued steel the blood crimson of her nails made a startling and symbolic contrast.

Death red, I thought. The fingers behind them should have been tan but weren’t. They were a tense, drawing white and with another fraction of an inch the machinery of the gun would go into motion.

She said, “Mike—” and in that one word there was hate and desire, revenge and regret, but above all the timbre of duty long ago instilled into a truly mechanical mind.

I said, “So long, baby.”

Then I turned and walked toward the outside and Velda and behind me I heard the unearthly roar as she pulled both triggers at once.

THE SNAKE

For Bob Fellows,

who knows Mike

from too many angles.

And Donna, who knows Bob

the same way.

CHAPTER 1

You walk down the street at night. It’s raining out. The only sound is that of your own feet. There are city sounds too, but these you don’t hear because at the end of the street is the woman you’ve been waiting for for seven long years and each muffled tread of your footsteps takes you closer and closer and the sound of them marks off seconds and days and months of waiting.

Then, suddenly, you’re there, outside a dark-faced building, a brownstone anachronism that stares back dully with the defiant expression of the moronic and you have an impending sense of being challenged.

What would it be like? I thought. Was she still beautiful? Had seven years of hell changed her as it had me? And what did you say to a woman you loved and thought was killed because you pulled a stupid play? How do you go from seven years ago to now?

Only a little while ago a lot of other feet were pointing this way, searching for this one house on this one street, but now mine were the only ones left to find it because the rest belonged to dead men or those about to die.

The woman inside was important now. Perhaps the most important in the world. What she knew would help destroy an enemy when she told it. My hands in my pockets balled into hard knots to keep from shaking and for a moment the throbbing ache of the welts and cuts that laced my skin stopped.

And I took the first step.

There were five more, then the V code on the doorbell marked Case, the automatic clicking of the lock and I was in the vestibule of the building under a dim yellow light from a single overhead bulb and down the shadowed hallway to the rear was the big door. Behind it lay seven years ago.

I tapped out a Y on the panel and waited, then tapped a slow R and the bolt slid back and the knob turned and there she stood with the gun still ready if something had gone wrong.

Even in that pale light I could see that she was more beautiful than ever, the black shadow of her hair framing a face I had seen every night in the misery of sleep for so long. Those deep brown eyes still had that hungry look when they watched mine and the lush fullness of her mouth glistened with a damp warmth of invitation.

Then, as though there had never been those seven years, I said, “Hello, Velda.”

For a long second she just stood there, somehow telling me that it was only the now that counted and with that same rich voice that could make music with a simple word, she answered, “Mike . . .”

She came into my arms with a rush and buried her face in my neck, barely able to whisper my name over and over because my arms were so tight around her. Even though I knew I was hurting her I couldn’t stop and she didn’t ask me to. It was like we were trying to get inside each other and in the frenzy of it found a way when our mouths met in a predatory coupling we had never known before. I tasted the fire and beauty of her, my fingers probing the flesh of her back and arms and shoulders, leaving marks wherever they touched. That familiar resiliency was still in her body, tightening gradually into a passionate tautness that rippled and quivered, crying out soundlessly for more, more, more.

I took the gun from her hand, dropped it in a chair, then pushed the door closed with my foot and felt for the light switch. A lamp on the table seemed to come alive with the unreal slowness of a movie prop, gradually highlighting the classic beauty of her face and the provocative thrust of her breasts.

There was a subtle leanness about her now, like you saw in those fresh from a battle area, every gesture a precision movement, every sense totally alert. And now she was just beginning to realize that it was over and she could be free again.

“Hello, kitten,” I said, and watched her smile.

There wasn’t much we could say. That would take time, but now we had all the time in the world. She looked at me, talking through those crazy eyes, then her expression went soft and a frown made small creases across her forehead. Her fingers went out and touched my face and the white edge of her teeth went into her lip.

“Mike . . .?”

“It’s okay, baby.”

“You’re not . . . hurt?”

I shook my head. “Not anymore.”

“There’s something about you now . . . I can’t quite tell what . . .”

“Seven years, Velda,” I interrupted. “It was downhill all the way until I found out you were still alive. It leaves marks, but none that can’t be wiped out.”

Her eyes blurred under tears that came too quickly to control. “Mike darling . . . I couldn’t reach you. It was all too impossible and big . . .”

“I know it, kid. You don’t have to explain.”

Her hair swirled in a dark arc when she shook her head. “But I do.”

“Later.”

“Now.” Her fingers touched my mouth to silence me and I let them. “It took seven years to learn a man’s secret and escape Communist Europe with information that will keep us equal or better than they are. I know I could have . . . gotten away earlier . . . but I had to make a choice.”

“You made the right one.”

“There was no way to tell you.”

“I know it.”

“Truly . . .”

“I understand, kitten.”

She wouldn’t listen. Her voice was softly insistent, almost pleading. “I could have, Mike. I know I could have some way, but I couldn’t afford the chance. There were millions of lives at stake.” She paused a second, then pulled my cheek against hers. “I know how you must have felt, thinking you had me killed. I thought of it so often I nearly went out of my mind, but I still couldn’t have changed things.”

“Forget it,” I told her.

“What did happen to you, Mike?”

She pushed away, holding me at arm’s length to study me.

“I got to be a drunk,” I said.

“You?”

“Me, kitten.”

Her expression was one of curious bewilderment. “But when I told them . . . they had to find you . . . only you could do it . . .”

“One mentioned your name and I changed, honey. When you came alive again, so did I.”

“Oh, Mike . . .”

As big as she was, I picked her up easily, kissed her again, and took her across the room to the gaudy mohair couch that nestled in the bay of an airshaft window. She quivered against me, smiled when I laid her down, then pulled my mouth to hers with a desperation that told me of the loneliness of seven years and the gnawing wanting inside her now.

Finally she said, “I’m a virgin, Mike.”

“I know.”

“I’ve always waited for you. It’s been a pretty long wait.”

I grinned down at her. “I was crazy to make you wait.”

“And now?”

Then I wasn’t grinning anymore. She was all mine whenever I wanted her, a big, beautiful animal of a woman who loved me and was ready to be taken now, now. Even touching was a painful emotion and the fire that had been dormant was one I didn’t want to put out.

I said, “Can you wait a little bit more?”

“Mike?” There was a quick hurt in her eyes, then the question.

“Let’s do it right, kitten. Always I do the wrong things. Let’s make this one right.” Before she could answer I said, “Don’t argue. Don’t even talk about it. We do it, that’s all, then we can explode into a million pieces. We do the bit at City Hall with the license and do it right.”

Velda smiled back impishly, the happiness of knowing what I wanted plain in her face. “That really doesn’t matter,” she told me. “First I want you. Now. More than ever.”

“Crazy broad,” I said, then fought her mouth with mine, knowing we were both going to win. My hand drifted across the satiny expanse of her naked shoulder, feeling the minute trembling throughout her body. She twisted so she pressed against me, moaning softly, demanding things we never had from each other.

“Pretty,” he said from the door. “Real pretty.”

I still had the .45 in my belt but I never could have made it. Velda’s convulsive grip around my neck slowed the action enough so that I saw the Police Positive in his hand and didn’t get killed after all. The hammer was back for faster shooting and the look on his face was one I had seen before on other cheap killers and knew that he’d drop me the second he thought I might be trouble.

“Go on, don’t stop,” he said. “I like good shows.”

I made my grin as simpering as I could, rolling away from Velda until I sat perched on the edge of the couch. I was going wild inside and fought to keep my hands dangling at my sides while I tried to look like an idiot caught in the act until I could think my way past this thing.

“I didn’t know there’d be two but it figures a babe like you’d have something going for her.” He nudged the gun toward me. “But why grab off a mutt like this, baby?”

When she spoke from behind me her voice was completely changed. “When I could have had you?”

“That’s the way, baby. I’ve been watching you through that window four days and right now I’m ready. How about that?”

I would have gone for the rod right then, but I felt the pressure of her knee against my back.

“How about that?” Velda repeated.

The guy let out a jerky laugh and looked at me through slitted eyes. “So maybe we’ll make music after all, kid. Just as soon as I dump the mutt here.”

Then I couldn’t keep quiet any longer. “You’re going to have to do it the hard way.”

The gun shifted just enough so it pointed straight at my head. “That’s the way I always do things, mutt.”

He was ready. The gun was tight in his hand and the look was there and he was ready. Velda said, “Once that gun goes off you won’t have me.”

It wasn’t enough. The guy laughed again and nodded. “That’s okay too, baby. This is what I came for anyway.”

“Why?” she asked him.

“Games, baby?” The gun swung gently toward her, then back to me, ready to take either or both of us when he wanted to. I tried to let fear bust through the hate inside me and hoped it showed like that when I slumped a little on the couch. My hand was an inch nearer the .45 now, but still too far away.

“I want the kid, baby, ya know?” he said. “So no games. Trot her out, I take off, and you stay alive.”

“Maybe,” I said.

His eyes roved over me. “Yeah, maybe.” He grinned. “You know something, mutt? You ain’t scared enough. You’re thinking.”

“Why not?”

“Sure, why not? But whatever you think it just ain’t there for you, mutt. This ain’t your day.”

There were only seconds now. He was past being ready and his eyes said it was as good as done and I was dead and he started that final squeeze as Velda and I moved together.

We never would have made it if the door hadn’t slammed open into him and knocked his arm up. The shot went into the ceiling and with a startled yell he spun around toward the two guys in the doorway, dropping as he fired, but the smaller guy got him first with two quick shots in the chest and he started to tumble backwards with the blood bubbling in his throat.

I was tangled in the raincoat trying to get at my gun when the bigger one saw me, streaked off a shot that went by my head, and in the light of the blast I knew they weren’t cops because I recognized a face of a hood I knew a long time. It was the last shot he ever made. I caught him head-on with a .45 that pitched him back through the door. The other one tried to nail me while I was rolling away from Velda and forgot about the guy dying on the floor. The mug let one go from the Police Positive that ripped into the hood’s belly and with a choking yell he tumbled out the door, tripped, and hobbled off out of sight, calling to someone that he’d been hit.

I kicked the gun out of the hand of the guy on the floor, stepped over him, and went out in the hall gun first. It was too late. The car was pulling away from the curb and all that was left was the peculiar silence of the street.

He was on his way out when I got back to him, the sag of death in his face. There were things I wanted to ask him, but I never got the chance. Through bloody froth he said, “You’ll . . . get yours, mutt.”

I didn’t want him to die happy. I said, “No chance, punk. This is my day after all.”

His mouth opened in a grimace of hate and frustration that was the last living thing he ever did.

From where to where? I thought. Why are there always dead men around me? I came back, all right. Just like in the old days. Love and death going hand in hand.

There was something familiar about his face. I turned his head with my toe, looked at him closely and caught it. Velda said, “Do you know him?”

“Yeah. His name is Basil Levitt. He used to be a private dick until he tried a shakedown on somebody who wouldn’t take it, then he did time for second-degree murder.”

“What about the other one?”

“They call him Kid Hand. He was a freelance gun that did muscle for small bookies on bettors who didn’t want to pay off. He’s had a fall before too.”

I looked at Velda and saw the way she was breathing and the set expression on her face. There was a strange sort of wildness there you find on animals suddenly having to fight for their lives. I said, “They aren’t from the other side, kitten. These are new ones. These want something different.” I waited a moment, then: “Who’s the kid, honey?”

“Mike . . .”

I pointed to the one on the floor. “He came for a kid. He came here ready to shoot you up. Now who’s the kid?”

Again, she gave me an anguished glance. “A girl . . . she’s only a young girl.”

I snapped my fingers impatiently. “Come on, give me, damn it. You know where you stand! How many people have died because of what you know? And right now you haven’t got rid of it. You want to get killed after everything that happened for some stupid reason?”

“All right, Mike.” Anguish gave way to concern then and she glanced upward. “Right now she’s in an empty room on the top floor. Directly over this one.”

“Okay, who is she?”

“I . . . don’t know. She came here the day after . . . I was brought here. I heard her crying outside and took her in.”

“That wasn’t very smart.”

“Mike . . . there were times when I wish someone had done that to me.”

“Sorr y.”

“She was young, desperate, in trouble. I took care of her. It was like taking in a scared rabbit. Whatever her trouble was, it was big enough. I thought I’d give her time to quiet down, then perhaps be able to help her.”

“What happened?”

“She’s scared, Mike. Terrified. She’s all mixed up and I’m the only one she can hang on to.”

“Good, I’ll take your word for it. Now get me up to her before this place is crawling with cops. We have about five minutes before somebody is going to be curious enough to make a phone call.”

From the third floor you could hear the rhythmic tap of her feet dancing a staccato number that made you think of an Eleanor Powell routine when prettylegs was queen of the boards. There was no music, yet you knew she heard some and was in a never-never land of her own.

Velda knocked but the dancing didn’t stop. She turned the knob and pushed the door open and with a soft cry the girl in the middle of the room twisted around, her hand going to her mouth when she saw me, huge eyes darting from Velda’s to mine. She threw one glance toward the window when Velda said, “It’s all right, Sue. This is our friend.”

It was going to take more than that to convince her and there wasn’t enough time. “My name is Mike Hammer, Sue. I’m going to help you. Can you understand that?”

Whatever it was, it worked. The fear left her face and she tried on a tentative smile and nodded. “Will you . . . really?”

“Really,” I nodded back. To Velda I said, “Can we get her out of here?”

“Yes. I know of a place I can take her.”

“Where?”

“Do you remember Connie Lewis’ restaurant on Forty-first?”

“Just off Ninth?”

“That’s it. I’ll be there. She has the upper three floors to herself.”

“That was seven years ago.”

“She’ll be there,” Velda told me.

“Okay,” I said, “you get there with the kid. I’ll do the talking on the bit downstairs, then in about an hour you show up at Pat’s office. I’m being a damn fool for letting you out on the street again but I can’t see any other way of doing it.”

Her hand squeezed mine and she smiled. “It’ll be all right, Mike.”

Then the kid walked up and I looked into the face of the prettiest little Lolita-type I ever saw. She was a tiny blonde with enormous brown eyes and a lovely mouth in a pert pointed face that made you want to pick her up like a doll. Her hair was silk-soft and hung loosely to her shoulders and when she moved all you could see was girl-woman and if you weren’t careful you’d feel the wrong kind of feel.

But I was an old soldier who had been there and back, so I said, “How old are you, chicken?”

She smiled and said, “Twenty-one.”

I grinned at Velda. “She’s not lying. You thought she was kidding when she told you that, didn’t you?”

Velda nodded.

“We’ll get straight on this later. Right now take off.” I looked at Sue, reaching out to feel her hair. “I don’t know what your trouble is, girl, but first things first. I’m going to lay something on the line with you though.”

“Oh?”

“Downstairs there are two dead men because of you. So play it the way you’re told and we’ll make it. Try using your own little head and there may be more dead people. Me, I’ve had it. I’ll help you all the way as long as you do it like I say, but go on your own and you’re like out, kid, understand? There aren’t any more people who can make this boy tumble again, big or little. I’m telling you this because you’re not as little as you look. You can fool a lot of slobs, but not this slob, so we’re starting off square, okay?”

“Okay, Mr. Hammer.” There was no hesitation at all.

“Call me Mike.”

“Sure, Mike.”

“Get her out of here, Velda.”

The sirens converged from both directions. They locked the street in on either end and two more took the street to the front of the house. The floods hit the doorway and the uniformed cops came in with .38’s in their hands.

I had the door open, the lights lit, and both hands in view when the first pair stepped through the doorway. Before they asked I took the position, let them see my .45 on the table beside the other guns, and watched patiently while they flipped open my wallet with the very special ticket in the identification window.

The reaction was slow at first. They weren’t about to take any chances with two dead men on the floor, but they couldn’t go too far the other way either. Finally the older one handed my wallet back. “I knew you back in the old days, Mike.”

“Times haven’t changed much.”

“I wonder.” He nodded toward the two bodies. “I don’t suppose you want to explain about all this now?”

“That’s right.”

“You got a big ticket there. When?”

“Call Captain Chambers. This is his baby.”

“I guess it is.”

“There’s a new Inspector in the division. He might not like the action.”

“No sweat, friend. Don’t worry.”

“I’m not worrying. I just remember you and Captain Chambers were friends.”

“No more.”

“I heard that too.” He holstered his gun. Behind him another pair came in cautiously, ready. “This a big one?” he asked.

“Yeah. Can I make a call?”

“Mind if I make it for you?”

“Nope.” I gave him a number that he already knew and watched his face go flat when I handed him the name. He went outside to the car, put the call through, and when he came back there was a subtle touch of deference in his attitude. Whatever he had said to the others took the bull off me and by the time the M.E. got there it was like someone had diplomatic immunity.

Pat came in five minutes later. He waited until the pictures were taken and the bodies removed, then waved everybody else out except the little man in gray whom nobody was big enough to wave out. Then he studiously examined my big fat .45 and said, “The same one, isn’t it?”

“It’s the only one I ever needed.”

“How many men have you killed with it?”

“Nine,” I said. Then added, “With that gun.”

“Good score.”

“I’m still alive.”

“Sometimes I wonder.”

I grinned at him. “You hate me, buddy, but you’re glad, aren’t you?”

“That you’re still alive?”

“Uh-huh.”

He turned slowly, his eyes searching for some obscure answer. “I don’t know,” he said. “Sometimes I can’t tell who is the worse off. Right now I’m not sure. It’s hard to kill friendships. I tried hard enough with you and I almost made it work. Even with a woman between us I can’t be sure anymore. You crazy bastard, I watch what you do, see you get shot and beat to hell and wonder why it has to happen like that, and I’m afraid to tell myself the answer. I know it but I can’t say it.”

“So say it.”

“Later.”

“Okay.”

“Now what happened?” He looked at Art Rickerby sitting in the chair.

I said, “Velda was here. I came for her. These two guys bust in, this one here first. The other came in time to break up the play.”

“Nicely parlayed.”

“Well put, buddy.”

“For an ex-drunk you’re doing all right.” He glanced at Rickerby again.

“Some people have foresight,” I reminded him.

“Do I leave now?” Pat said. “Do I go along with the Federal bit and take off ?”

For the first time Art Rickerby spoke. He was quiet as always and I knew that there were no ends left untied in the past I had just left. He said, “Captain . . . there are times when . . . there are times. It was you who forced Mr. Hammer into circumstances he could hardly cope with. It was a dead man and me who made him stick to it. If he’s anathema out of the past, then it’s our fault. We brought a man back who should have died a long time ago. The present can’t stand a man like that anymore. Now they want indecision and compromise and reluctance and fear . . . and we’ve dropped a hot iron in society’s lap. We’ve brought a man back who almost shouldn’t be here and now you and me and society are stuck with him.”

“Thanks a bunch,” I said.

“Sure,” Pat said to Art, “he’s always been in the special-privilege class, but now it’s over my head. You got the pull, Rickerby. I don’t get all the picture, but I’ve been around long enough to figure a few things out. Just clue me on this one.”

“Pat . . .” I started.

“Not you, Mike. Him.” He smiled with that gentle deceptive-ness. “And make it good. We have two dead men here and I’m not writing that off for anybody. No more I’m not.”

Art nodded and glanced at his watch. “The girl Velda,” he said, “she was the crux. She has information this country depends upon. A team of assassins was assigned to kill her and nobody could get to that team we called ‘The Dragon’ but him because nobody could be as terrible as they were. It turned out that he was even worse. If that is a good word. For that information this country would pay any price and part of the cost was to rehabilitate this man in a sense and give him back his privilege and his gun.

“The Dragon team is gone now. There is only the girl Velda. There is still that price to pay and he can call the tune. You have no choice but to back him up. Is that clear?”

“No, but it’s coming through,” Pat said. “I know most of the story but I find it hard to believe.”

I said, “Pat . . .”

“What?”

“Let’s leave it, kid. We were both right. So she’s still mine. If you want her then take her away, but you have to fight me for her and you haven’t got a chance in the world of winning.”

“Not as long as you’re alive,” he told me.

“Sure, Pat.”

“And the law of averages is on my side.”

“Why sure.”

I didn’t think he could do it, but he did. He grinned and stuck out his hand and instinctively I took it. “Okay, boy. It’s like before now. We start fresh. Do I get the story or does he?”

“First him, buddy,” I said, nodding toward Art, “then you. It’s bigger than local and I’m not just a private cop anymore.”

“They told me about your ticket. Smart.”

“You know me. Never travel small.”

“That’s right. Somebody’s got to be the hero.”

“Nuts. If I’m on a dead play, then I want odds that will pay off.”

“They did.”

“Damn right they did. I stuck it up and broke it off. Everybody wanted me dead and instead it turned all the way around. So I got the payoff. A big ticket and the rod back and nobody puts the bull on me until I flub it royally . . . and this, friend, I’m not about to do again.”

“No?”

“Watch.”

“My pleasure, big buddy.” He grinned. Again. “Mind if I leave and you talk it out with Mister Government here?”

“No. But be at your office soon. She’ll be there and so will I.”

“Soon?”

“An hour.”

“I’ll be waiting, hero.”

When he left Art Rickerby said, “She has to talk right away. Where is she?”

“I told you . . . in an hour . . . at Pat’s office.”

“There were dead men here.”

“So . . .”

“Don’t piddle with me, Mike.”

“Don’t piddle with me, Art.”

“Who were they?”

“I damn well don’t know, but this you’ll do and damn well do it right.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

“No? I’ll shove it up your tail if I want to, Art, and don’t you forget it. You do this one my way. This is something else from your personal angle and leave it alone. Let those dead men be. As far as anybody is concerned they’re part of The Dragon group and the last part at that. There ain’t no more, the end, finis. They came for Velda and I was here to lay on the gravy like I did the rest and you go along with it. What’s here is not part of your business at all, but for the moment you can cover me. Do it.”

“Mike . . .”

“Just do it and shut up.”

“Mike . . .”

I said softly, “I gave you The Dragon, didn’t I?”

“Yes.”

“I was dead. You exhumed me. You made me do things that were goddamned near impossible and when I didn’t die doing them you were surprised. So be surprised now. Do like I tell you.”

“Or . . .?’

“Or Velda won’t come in.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive, friend.”

“It will be done.”

“Thanks.”

“No trouble.”

And Velda told them the next day. She spelled it out in detail and a government organization collapsed. In Moscow thirty men died and in the East Zone of Berlin five more disappeared and in South America there was a series of accidents and several untimely deaths and across the face of the globe the living went to the dead in unaccountable numbers and codes and files were rearranged and meetings hastily brought about and summit conferences planned and in the U.N. buildings whole new philosophies were adopted and decisions brought about in a changed light and as suddenly as she had been a threat to a different world, she had become a person again. She had nothing more to give and in the world of politics there was no retribution as long as you knew nothing new and really didn’t care at all.

But there was something new. There were two dead men to tell about it and somewhere in the city was another with a bullet in his gut looking for somebody to take it out and if the little blonde didn’t tell, one of these would.

You just didn’t lay dead men at your feet without someone coming looking for you.

And I had them at my feet.

CHAPTER 2

I knew I had a tail on me when I left the D.A.’s office. It had been nicely set up even though Rickerby had put the fix in for me. No local police force likes to be queered out of a deal in their own backyard, and if they could move in, orders or not, they were going to give it the big try. If Pat had set the tail it would have been hard to spot, but the new D.A. was too ambitious to figure out there were civilian-type pros in the police business too.

For an hour I let him wait outside bars, fool around a department store while I picked up a few goodies, then went in one door of the Blue Ribbon Restaurant on Forty-fourth, around through the bar, and out that door while he was looking for me at the tables. I was back on Seventh Avenue before he knew I was gone, flagged down a cab, and had him cut over to Forty-ninth and Ninth.

Connie Lewis’ place was called “La Sabre” and turned out to be a downstairs supper place for the neighborhood trade. It specialized in steaks and chops and seemed to be built around a huge charcoal grill that smoked and sizzled into a copper canopy. Connie was a round little woman with a perpetual smile and wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth that said it was for real. It had been years since I had seen her and she hadn’t changed a bit.

But me she didn’t recognize at first. When it did come she beamed all over, tried to get me to drink, then eat, and when I wouldn’t do either, showed me the way to the staircase going upstairs and told me Velda was on the second floor rear with her company.

I used the same VY knock and she opened the door. There was no gun in her hand this time, but I knew it wasn’t far out of reach. She pulled me in, closed the door, and locked it. I grinned at her, grabbed her by the shoulders, and touched her mouth with mine. Lightly. I couldn’t afford any more. Her eyes laughed back at me and told me I could pick my own time and place. Any time, any place.

I said, “Hello, beautiful. Where’s the kid?”

“Here I am, Mike.”

She eased into the room impishly, hands clasped behind her back. She stood at the corner of the bedroom door watching, seemingly unafraid, but inside those huge brown eyes was a worm of fear that had been there too long to be plucked out easily.

I took Velda’s arm, steered her to the table, and motioned the kid to come over too. Automatically, the kid slid closer to Velda, knowing she was protected there, never taking her eyes from my face.

“Let’s have it,” I said.

Velda nodded. “You can tell him.”

“I . . . don’t know.”

For what it was worth I took out my new wallet and flipped it open. The blue and gold card with the embossed seal in the plastic window did the trick again. She studied it, frowned, then made up her mind.

“All right,” she finally told me. “My name is Sue Devon.” When she said it there was a challenge in her voice I couldn’t ignore.