The Girl Hunters Read online

“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 Geo
rge 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 any more. 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.”