The Girl Hunters Read online

  “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 specialty 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.”

  “Wha
t 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 any more, 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 curiousier and curiousier. 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.”