Survival... ZERO! mh-11 Page 13

  I switched on the transistor radio she had given me and dialed the news station. For ten minutes there was a political analysis of the new attitude the Russians had taken, seemingly agreeable to acting in harmony with U.S. policy along certain peace efforts, then the announcer got into sports. Halfway through there was a special bulletin rapped out in staccato voice telling the world that the hired killers of Tom-Tom Schneider had been located in a

  cheap hotel in Buffalo, New York, and police officers and F.B.I, troops had surrounded the building and were engaged in a gunfight, but refraining from a capture attempt because the pair had taken two maids as hostages.

  Okay, Pat, there's your news blast for tomorrow. Plenty of pictures and plenty of stories. It would cover all news media in every edition and the little find at the Ashokan Reservoir would stay a one-column squib that nobody would notice and you had one more day without a panic.

  There was a four-car wreck on the West Side highway. A mental patient leaped from the roof of an East Side hospital, landed on a filled laundry cart and was unhurt. No other shootings, though, and the regular musical program resumed.

  All I could do was wait awhile.

  At six thirty in the morning I woke up when my feet fell off the desk. Daylight had crept into the office, lighting the eerie stillness of a building not yet awake. There was a distant whine of the elevator, probably the servicemen coming in, a sound you never heard at any other hour. I stood up, stretched to get the stiffness out of my shoulders and cursed when a little knife of pain shot across my side where the slug had scorched me. Two blocks away a nice guy I knew who used to be a doctor before they lifted his license for practicing abortions would take care of that for me. Maybe a tailor could fix my jacket. Right now the spare I kept in the office would do me.

  At eight fifteen I picked up the duplicate photo cards Cabin's Film Service had made up for me, mug shots of the guy they called Beaver with his résumé printed on the back. A half hour later I was having coffee with Pat and gave him all but three of them.

  He called me two dirty names and stuck them in his pocket. "And you said you wanted nothing to do with it," he reminded me.

  "Sorry about that," I said.

  "Yeah. Professional curiosity?"

  "Personal interest."

  "You're still out of line. Regulations state you're supposed to represent a client." He dunked a doughnut in his coffee and took a bite of half of it.

  "Be happy, friend. I'm giving you no trouble, Fm paying for the snack and staying out of your way. You should be glad citizens take an active interest in affairs like this. Besides, you haven't got the time."

  "So why the photos?"

  "You still have routine jobs going. Pass them along to the plainclothes boys. Maybe you got bigger things on your mind, but this is still an open murder."

  "For you it's not open."

  "I'm just throwing back the foul balls."

  "Mike," he said, "you're full of shit. Sometimes I wish I had never known you."

  "You worry too much, friend."

  "Maybe you should. The days are going by fast."

  I took a close look at his face. The lines were deeper now, his eyes a lined red, and when he spoke it was almost without moving his lips. Somehow he couldn't focus on me, seeming to look past me when he spoke. "Our Soviet friends have come up with another piece of information. When we wouldn't let them out of the country they really began digging. That strain of bacteria the former regime packaged and sent here was more virulent than even they suspected. If it's loose there's no hope of containing it, none at all. The lads at Fort Detrick confirmed it and if we don't get a break pretty damn quick it's all over, Mike, all over."

  "That doesn't sound like police information."

  "Crane broke down when he got the news. I was there when he went hysterical and blew it."

  "How many others know this?" I asked him.

  "You're the eleventh." He finished the doughnut and sipped at his coffee. "Kind of funny. We sit here like nothing's happening at all. We want a pickpocket in a red vest, I watch the teletype to see how they're doing in Buffalo with those contract hoods, everybody else is plugging through the daily grind and in a few days we'll all be part of the air pollution until nature figures a way out of it in a couple million years."

  "Man, you're a happy guy today."

  Pat put the cup down and finally got his eyes fixed on mine. "Mike," he said, "I'm beginning to figure you out."

  "Oh?"

  "Yeah. You're crazy. Something's missing in your head. Right now I could lay odds that all you're thinking about is a dame."

  "You'd lose," I said. I picked up the tab and stood up. "I'm thinking about two of them."

  Pat shook his head disgustedly again. "Naked?"

  "Naturally," I said.

  CHAPTER 9

  Something had happened to the Broadway grapevine. Nobody had seen Velda and although a half-dozen of the regular crowd were able to spot the red-vested Beaver by his photograph, nobody had seen him either. Woody Bal-linger, Carl and Sammy were in the nothing pocket too and I was beginning to get those funny little looks like it was "Watch out, Mike, you’re tangling with the trouble crowd now'' time. Not that it was a new experience, but they were beginning to watch and wait, hoping to be there when the action started.

  Some people liked car races. You could see the big kill happen there too. Others took it where they could find it, and now they were beginning to get a blood smell and watched the field leaders to see who was going to crowd who in the turn and wind up in pieces along the walls of Manhattan. By noon the sunny day had turned overcast again, the smog reaching down with choking little fingers, and I had reached Lexington Avenue where I had another cup of coffee in a side-street deli just to get out of it.

  The counterman used to work for Woody and he couldn't give me a lead at all. It was nearly my last straw until I remembered how close I was to that crazy pad in the new building just a few blocks away, and finished the coffee and picked up a pack of butts at the cashier's desk while I paid my bill. There was somebody else who knew the people I was looking for.

  The doorman flipped a fingertip to his cap and said, "Afternoon, sir."

  "Your partner still courting?"

  "He'll never learn. Last night he got engaged. I do double shifts and don't get any sleep, but I'm sure making the bucks. Just wait until he starts buying furniture."

  "Miss Anders in?"

  "Sure. Different girl, that. Something happened to her. Real bright-eyed now. I think maybe she dumped that

  clown she was going with. Playboy, no good at all. Too much money. Last night she got in at ten, and alone. You want me to call up, officer?"

  I grinned at him, wishing Pat could have been here. He would have turned inside out. To Pat I was always the other side of the fence, with my face always the prime type to get picked up in a general dragnet.

  "Don't bother," I said. I returned his casual wave and walked to the elevator.

  Heidi Anders saw me through the peephole and snapped off the double locks on the door. It opened a scant three inches on the chain and that pert face with the tousled ash-blonde hair and full-lipped mouth was peering at me with a disguised smile and I said, 'Trick or treat?"

  The door closed and I heard the chain come off. When it opened again her head was tilted in a funny smile, the upslanted eyes laughing a me. "Trick," she said. Then added, "But if you come in, it'll be a treat."

  "I'll come in."

  She let the door open all the way and I walked inside. I was treated. Heidi Anders was standing there bare-ass naked, prettier than any centerfold picture in a girlie magazine and no matter how lovely those uniquely rounded breasts were, or how all that ash-blonde hair contrasted, all I could see was that crazy navel with the eyelashes painted around it like an oversexed Cyclops.

  "I just got up," she said.

  "Don't you ever take your makeup off?"

  "It's part of my personality," she told me. "Most me
n have an immediate reaction." She closed and locked the door behind me. "I wish you had."

  "I want to wink at it."

  "At least that's different." She smiled and walked down the hall, not bothering to take my hat this time. That wild gait was still there, but naked it had a totally new sway. I let her get all the way into the living room before I moved. Then I went in slowly, watching all the corners just to be sure, glad to have been in enough games not to get wiped out at the first charge of the opposition.

  She didn't know it, but my hand was hooked over my belt, the palm comfortable against the butt of the .45. Too many times naked women and death walked side by side.

  Heidi had thrown back the draperies and stood there in the cold gray light that brought out the tan marks on the flesh, then turned around slowly to face me. "Do I look different, Mike?"

  The navel still watched me. Crazy eye. Blind, but crazy and watching. The lashes were extra long.

  "Different," I said.

  "You did it. You yelled at me. Mike ... you were pretty rough."

  "A broad like you shouldn't get hooked on H. There's too much going for you." I picked a cigarette out of my deck and lit it up. "Sorry about yelling at you."

  "It wasn't that." She picked up something filmy from the chair and drew it through her hands. "I saw your face when I turned you off. I was lying there all ready and waiting and I turned you off. That never happened to me before. I wanted to get laid and I was right there waiting for you and I turned you off. You yelled. I felt like ... you know what I felt like?"

  I nodded. "No retractions, kid."

  "Good. We did well, the doctor and I."

  "How about Woody Ballinger's goons?"

  For a second I thought I had played it wrong, then she kinked her lips in a tiny smile and her eyes lit up again. "I asked around," she said. "You were right, you know."

  I reached up and slipped my hat off casually, and held it in front of me. "Will you get dressed?"

  I got that grin again. "I asked around about more than Woody Ballinger." Once more I got that provocative, tilt-headed glance. "I didn't think you were so sensitive." Then she sway-walked over to me and held out her hand. "Can I take your hat?"

  "Don't be smart-ass," I said. "Just make me a drink."

  "They were right." She stepped back and looked at me with feigned wide-eyed amazement. "They were really right."

  But she made the drinks, a long cooler for me and a short one for herself, and sat down opposite me in all that colorful nudity and crossed her legs like she was at a tea party in a Pucci dress and let me have the full impact of that little eye in her navel that never blinked and just looked at me with an unrelenting stare.

  "Uncomfortable?" she asked flippantly.

  But age has its benefits and experience its knowledge. I tossed my hat on the couch and grinned at her. "Nope."

  Her smile turned into a mock frown. "Damn, I hate you older men. You have too much control. How do you do it?"

  "Science, kitten."

  "Impossible."

  "See for yourself."

  "I do but I don't believe it. How can I turn you on again?"

  "By quitting the damn hippie talk and answering some questions."

  Heidi raised her glass and tasted it, her eyes on mine. "One favor deserves another."

  "Where's Carl and Sammy? And Woody?"

  Her glass stopped just short of her mouth. "What?"

  "You heard me."

  "But ..."

  "I told you to pass the word along."

  "Mike ... I told them what you said."

  "No reaction? No nothing? You aren't the type of broad they pick up at a bar and not one they leave alone. Those damn slobs can buy tail or crook a finger and it'll come running out of their stables for them. You're a class broad and for you they'll give an excuse. They were both on the make the other night and the way they were pushing they wouldn't just bust out of a date. Where are they, Heidi?"

  Her fingers were stiff around the glass and she had tucked her lower lip between her teeth, looking at me intently. "Mike ..."

  "Sammy ... he ... well, he wanted to see me again and we, well, we sort of made a date, but he called and said it would have to wait."

  "Why, honey? Girls don't let a guy off the hook that easily."

  "Woody wanted him to ... do something. He couldn't cancel it."

  "Has he called again?"

  She nodded, glanced at her drink, then put it down. "Today. An hour ago, I guess."

  "Where was he?"

  "He didn't say. All he told me was that he'd see me tonight. His job would be done then."

  "Where'd he call from?"

  "I don't know."

  "Damn it, think!"

  "Mike ..."

  "Look," I told her. "Remember back. Was he alone? Quiet?"

  "No," she said abruptly. "It was noisy, wherever he was. I could hear the tooting."

  "Tooting?"

  "Well, it was like two toots, then while we were talking, three toots."

  "What the hell is a toot?" I asked her.

  "A toot! You never heard a toot? A horn toot. No, it was a whistle toot. Oh, balls, I don't know what was tooting. It just tooted. Two, then three."

  "Heidi ..."

  "I'm not drunk and I'm not high, damn it, Mike . .."

  "Sorry." I let a little grin seep out. How the hell can you get sore at a naked dame four feet away who was so excited she even forgot and uncrossed her legs like she had a dress on. "He say when he was going to see you?"

  "Just tonight." She saw the look on my face and frowned too. "If it helps ... he said he'd call me today sometime to let me know when."

  "There are a lot of hours in the day, kid."

  "Well, I got mad and said I'd be gone all afternoon and if he wanted to call me it had better be before noon."

  I looked at my watch. Noon was an hour away. And in an hour anything could happen. "Let's wait," I said.

  Heidi grinned and picked up her drink again. The eye in her navel seemed to half close in its own kind of smile and never stopped watching me. She got up with studied ease, little muscles rippling down her thighs, her breasts taut and pointed and came across the few feet that separated us. Very gently she sat down on my lap.

  "Hurt?"

  "No," I said.

  "Ummmm." Heidi finished the drink and tossed the empty glass on the sofa, then turned around, her hand behind my neck. "I really don't want to see Sammy anyway, Mike."

  "Do it for me."

  "I owe you more than that."

  She squirmed and the glass almost fell out of my hand. She was all sleek and sweet smells and the heat from her body emanated in all directions like some wild magnetic force. Her hand found mine and pressed it against her stomach and all the concerted thought I had had for what was happening outside started to drift away like smoke in an updraft and her mouth kept coming closer and closer, the lips rich and red and wet.

  But the phone rang, that damn, screaming, monstrous necessity with the insistent voice that demanded to be answered.

  I had to push her to her feet, put her hand on the receiver and wait another second until the shock of the change registered sadly in her eyes.

  "Get it," I said.

  She picked uh the phone, my ear close to hers at the receiver. "Hello?"

  The voice was partly hoarse, a muffled voice trying to be heard over some background noise. "Heidi?" Something rumbled and I heard three short faraway sounds and knew it was what she had called toots.

  "Hello ... Sammy?" she asked.

  Then there was another voice that said, "You crazy!" and the connection was chopped off abruptly.

  Heidi let the phone drop back into its cradle, her face puzzled. "It was him."

  "Somebody didn't want him making a call," I said.

  "I heard those toots again."

  "I know. They're blasting warnings around construction sites. Three of them was the all-clear signal."

  "Mike ..."


  I reached for my hat, feeling the skin tight around my jaws. "He won't be calling back, Heidi. Not right now."

  Someplace things were coming to a head and here I was fiddling around with a naked doll, letting her wipe things right out of my mind. I picked up the phone, dialed my office number and triggered my recording gimmick. One call was from a West Coast agency wanting me to handle some Eastern details for them, the other was from a local lawyer who needed a deposition from me, and the third was from William Dorn who wanted me to call him as soon as possible. I let the tape roll, but there was nothing from Velda or anybody else. I broke the connection, waited a second, then dialed Dorn's office. His secretary told me that he had been trying to reach me, but had gone to a meeting in his apartment thirty minutes ago and I should try him there. She gave me the number and his address and hung up. When I dialed his place the phone was busy, so I gave it another minute and tried again. It was still busy. I said to hell with it, hung up and slapped my hat on.

  Heidi had made herself another drink, but none for me. She knew it was over now. I said, "Tough, kitten. It might have been fun."

  She took my hand and walked the length of the corridor, then turned and stood on her toes, all naked and beautiful, and reached for my mouth with hers. I let my hands play over her gently, my fingers aching with remorse because there wasn't time to do all the things I wanted to do with her.

  Gently she took her mouth away and smiled. "Another day, Mike?"

  "Another day, Heidi. You're worth it now."

  "I think it will be something special then." My fingers squeezed her shoulder easily. "Dump those bums of Woody's."

  "For you, Mike, anything." She stepped back two paces, an impish grin teasing her mouth, and did something with her stomach muscles.

  That nutty eye that was her navel actually winked at me.

  The doorman in the towering building on Park Avenue was an old pro heavyweight decked out in a blue uniform trimmed with gold braid that was too tight across his shoulders and his face was enough to scare off anybody who thought they could cross those sacred portals without going through the elaborate screening process that was part of the high rent program.