The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 3 Read online

  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 ma
n, 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.