The Girl Hunters Page 14

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 Dvorak, 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 Erlich 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 le
ft 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 told 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 backtracked 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?”