The Girl Hunters Read online

  He put the cigar down slowly, getting the implication.

  I said, “He had to smuggle her out, otherwise they would have killed her. If they took a plane they would have blown it over the ocean, or if she sailed under an assumed name and cover identity they would have had enough time to locate her and a passenger would simply fall overboard. No, he smuggled her out. He got her on that ship and got her into this country.”

  “You make it sound easy.”

  “Sure it’s easy! You think there wasn’t some cooperation with others in the crew! Those boys love to outfox the captain and the customs. What would they care as long as it was on Cole’s head? He was on a tramp steamer and they can do practically anything on those babies if they know how and want to. Look, you want me to cite you examples?”

  “I know it could be done.”

  “All right, then here’s the catch. Richie realized how close The Dragon was to Velda when they left. He had no time. He had to act on his own. This was a project bigger than any going in the world at the time, big enough to break regulations for. He got her out—but he didn’t underestimate the enemy either. He knew they’d figure it and be waiting.

  “They were, too,” I continued. “The Dragon was there all right, and he followed Cole thinking he was going to an appointed place where he had already hidden Velda, but when he realized that Cole wasn’t doing anything of the kind he figured the angles quickly. He shot Cole, had to leave because of the crowd that collected and didn’t have a chance until later to reach Old Dewey, then found out about me. Don’t ask me the details about how they can do it—they have resources at their fingertips everywhere. Later he went back, killed Dewey, didn’t find the note Cole left and had to stick with me to see where I led him.”

  Hy was frowning again.

  I said, “I couldn’t lead him to Velda. I didn’t know. But before long he’ll figure out the same thing I did. Somebody else helped Cole get her off that boat and knows where she is!”

  “What are you going to do?” His voice was quietly calm next to mine.

  “Get on that ship and see who else was in on the deal.”

  “How?”

  “Be my guest and I’ll show you the seamier side of life.”

  “You know me,” Hy said, standing up.

  I paid the cabbie outside Benny Joe Grissi’s bar and when Hy saw where we were he let out a low whistle and said he hoped I knew what I was doing. We went inside and Sugar Boy and his smaller friend were still at their accustomed places and when Sugar Boy saw me he got a little pasty around the mouth and looked toward the bar with a quick motion of his head.

  Benny Joe gave the nod and we walked past without saying a word, and when I got to the bar I held out the card Art Rickerby had given me and let Benny Joe take a long look at it. “In case you get ideas like before, mister. I’ll shoot this place apart and you with it.”

  “Say, Mike, I never—”

  “Tone it down,” I said. “Bayliss Henry here?”

  “Pepper? Yeah. He went in the can.”

  “Wait here, Hy.”

  I went down the end to the door stenciled MEN and pushed on in. Old Bayliss was at the washstand drying his hands and saw me in the mirror, his eyes suddenly wary at the recognition. He turned around and put his hands on my chest. “Mike, my boy, no more. Whatever it is, I want none of it. The last time out taught me a lesson I won’t forget. I’m old, I scare easy, and what life is left to me I want to enjoy. Okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then forget whatever you came in here to ask me. Don’t let me talk over my head about the old days or try and make like a reporter again.”

  “You won’t get shot at.”

  Bayliss nodded and shrugged. “How can I argue with you? What do you want to know?”

  “What ship was Richie Cole on?”

  “The Vanessa.”

  “What pier?”

  “She was at number twelve, but that won’t do you any good now.”

  “Why not?”

  “Hell, she sailed the day before yesterday.”

  What I had to say I did under my breath. Everything was right out the window because I thought too slow and a couple of days had made all the difference.

  “What was on it, Mike?”

  “I wanted to see a guy.”

  “Oh? I thought it was the ship. Well maybe you can still see some of the guys. You know the Vanessa was the ship they had the union trouble with. Everybody complained about the chow and half the guys wouldn’t sign back on. The union really laid into ’em.”

  Then suddenly there was a chance again and I had to grab at it. “Listen, Bayliss—who did Cole hang around with on the ship?”

  “Jeepers, Mike, out at sea—”

  “Did he have any friends on board?”

  “Well, no, I’d say.”

  “Come on, damn it, a guy doesn’t sail for months and not make some kind of an acquaintance!”

  “Yeah, I know—well, Cole was a chess player and there was this one guy—let’s see, Red Markham—yeah, that’s it, Red Markham. They’d have drinks together and play chess together because Red sure could play chess. One time—”

  “Where can I find this guy?”

  “You know where Annie Stein’s pad is?”

  “The flophouse?”

  “Yeah. Well, you look for him there. He gets drunk daytimes and flops early.”

  “Suppose you go along.”

  “Mike, I told you—”

  “Hy Gardner’s outside.”

  Bayliss looked up and grinned. “Well, shoot. If he’s along I’ll damn well go. He was still running copy when I did the police beat.”

  Annie Stein’s place was known as the Harbor Hotel. It was a dollar a night flop, pretty expensive as flops go, so the trade was limited to occasional workers and itinerant seamen. It was old and dirty and smelled of disinfectant and urine partially smothered by an old-man odor of defeat and decay.

  The desk clerk froze when we walked in, spun the book around without asking, not wanting any trouble at all. Red Markham was in the third room on the second floor, his door half open, the sound and smell of him oozing into the corridor.

  I pushed the door open and flipped on the light. Overhead a sixty-watt bulb turned everything yellow. He was curled on the cot, an empty pint bottle beside him, breathing heavily through his mouth. On the chair with his jacket and hat was a pocket-sized chessboard with pegged chessmen arranged in some intricate move.

  It took ten minutes of cold wet towels and a lot of shaking to wake him up. His eyes still had a whiskey glassiness and he didn’t know what we wanted at all. He was unintelligible for another thirty minutes, then little by little he began to come around, his face going through a succession of emotions. Until he saw Bayliss he seemed scared, but one look at the old man and he tried on a drunken grin, gagged and went into a spasm of dry heaves. Luckily, there was nothing in his stomach, so we didn’t have to go through that kind of mess.

  Hy brought in a glass of water and I made him sip at it. I said, “What’s your name, feller?”

  He hiccoughed. “You—cops?”

  “No, a friend.”

  “Oh.” His head wobbled, then he looked back to me again. “You play chess?”

  “Sorry, Red, but I had a friend who could. Richie Cole.”

  Markham squinted and nodded solemnly, remembering. “He—pretty damn good. Yessir. Good guy.”

  I asked him, “Did you know about the girl on the ship?”

  Very slowly, he scowled, his lips pursing out, then a bit of clarity returned to him and he leered with a drunken grimace. “Sure. Hell of—joke.” He hiccoughed and grinned again. “Joke. Hid—her in—down in—hold.”

  We were getting close now. His eyes drooped sleepily and I wanted him to hang on. I said, “Where is she now, Red?”

  He just looked at me foggily.

  “Damn it, think about it!”

  For a second he didn’t like the way I yelled or my hand
on his arm and he was about to balk, then Bayliss said, “Come on, Red, if you know where she is, tell us.”

  You’d think he was seeing Bayliss for the first time. “Pepper,” he said happily, his eyes coming open.

  “Come on, Red. The girl on the Vanessa. Richie’s girl.”

  “Sure. Big—joke. You know?”

  “We know, but tell us where she is.”

  His shrug was the elaborate gesture of the sodden drunk. “Dunno. I—got her—on deck.”

  Bayliss looked at me, not knowing where to go. It was all over his head and he was taking the lead from me. Then he got the pitch and shook Red’s shoulder. “Is she on shore?”

  Red chuckled and his head weaved. “On—shore. Sure—on shore.” He laughed again, the picture coming back to his mind. “Dennis—Wallace packed her—in crate. Very funny.”

  I pushed Bayliss away and sat on the edge of the cot. “It sure was a good joke all right. Now where did the crate go?”

  “Crate?”

  “She was packed in the crate. This Dennis Wallace packed her in the crate, right?”

  “Right!” he said assuredly, slobbering on himself.

  “Then who got the crate?”

  “Big joke.”

  “I know, now let us in on it. Who got the crate?”

  He made another one of those shrugs. “I—dunno.”

  “Somebody picked it up,” I reminded him.

  Red’s smile was real foolish, that of the drunk trying to be secretive. “Richie’s—joke. He called—a friend. Dennis gave him—the crate.” He laughed again. “Very funny.”

  Hy said, “Cute.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. Now we have to find this Dennis guy.”

  “He’s got a place not far from here,” Bayliss said.

  “You know everybody?”

  “I’ve been around a long time, Mike.”

  We went to leave Red Markham sitting there, but before we could reach the door he called out, “Hey, you.”

  Bayliss said, “What, Red?”

  “How come—everybody wants—old Dennis?”

  “I don’t—”

  My hand stopped the old guy and I walked back to the cot. “Who else wanted Dennis, Red?”

  “Guy—gimme this pint.” He reached for the bottle, but was unable to make immediate contact. When he did he sucked at the mouth of it, swallowed as though it was filled and put the bottle down.

  “What did he look like, Red?”

  “Oh—” he lolled back against the wall. “Big guy. Like you.”

  “Go on.”

  “Mean. Son of a—he was mean. You ever see—mean ones? Like a damn Indian. Something like Injun Pete on the Darby Standard—he—”

  I didn’t bother to hear him finish. I looked straight at Hy and felt cold all over. “The Dragon,” I said. “He’s one step up.”

  Hy had a quiet look on his face. “That’s what I almost forgot to tell you about, Mike.”

  “What?”

  “The Dragon. I got inside the code name from our people overseas. There may be two guys because The Dragon code breaks down to tooth and nail. When they operate as a team they’re simply referred to as The Dragon.”

  “Great,” I said. “Swell. That’s all we need for odds.” My mouth had a bad taste in it. “Show us Dennis’s place, Bayliss. We can’t stay here any longer.”

  “Not me,” he said. “You guys go it alone. Whatever it is that’s going on, I don’t like it. I’ll tell you where, but I’m not going in any more dark places with you. Right now I’m going back to Benny Joe Grissi’s bar and get stinking drunk where you can’t get at me and if anything happens I’ll read about it in the papers tomorrow.”

  “Good enough, old-timer. Now where does Dennis live?”

  The rooming house was a brownstone off Ninth Avenue, a firetrap like all the others on the block, a crummy joint filled with cubicles referred to as furnished rooms. The landlady came out of the front floor flat, looked at me and said, “I don’t want no cops around here,” and when Hy handed her the ten-spot her fat face made a brief smile and she added, “So I made a mistake. Cops don’t give away the green. What’re you after?”

  “Dennis Wallace. He’s a seaman and—”

  “Top floor front. Go on up. He’s got company.” I flashed Hy a nod, took the stairs with him behind me while I yanked the .45 out and reached the top floor in seconds. The old carpet under our feet puffed dust with every step but muffled them effectively and when I reached the door there was no sound from within and a pencil-thin line of light seeped out at the sill. I tried the knob, pushed the door open and was ready to cut loose at anything that moved wrong.

  But there was no need for any shooting, if the little guy on the floor with his hands tied behind him and his throat slit wide open was Dennis Wallace, for his killer was long gone.

  The fat landlady screeched when she saw the body and told us it was Dennis all right. She waddled downstairs again and pointed to the wall phone and after trying four different numbers I got Pat and told him I was with another dead man. It wasn’t anything startling, he was very proper about getting down the details and told me to stay right there. His voice had a fine tone of satisfaction to it that said he had me where he could make me sweat and maybe even break me like he had promised.

  Hy came down as I hung up and tapped my shoulder. “You didn’t notice something on the guy up there.”

  “What’s that?”

  “All that blood didn’t come from his throat. His gut is all carved up and his mouth is taped shut. The blood obscures the tape.”

  “Tortured?”

  “It sure looks that way.”

  The landlady was in her room taking a quick shot for her nerves and seemed to hate us for causing all the trouble. I asked her when Dennis’ guest had arrived and she said a couple of hours ago. She hadn’t heard him leave so she assumed he was still there. Her description was brief, but enough. He was a big mean-looking guy who reminded her of an Indian.

  There was maybe another minute before a squad car would come along and I didn’t want to be here when that happened. I pulled Hy out on the stoop and said, “I’m going to take off.”

  “Pat won’t like it.”

  “There isn’t time to talk about it. You can give him the poop.”

  “All of it?”

  “Every bit. Lay it out for him.”

  “What about you?”

  “Look, you saw what happened. The Dragon put it together the same way I did. He was here when the boat docked and Richie Cole knew it. So Richie called for a friend who knew the ropes, told him to pick up the crate with Velda in it and where to bring it. He left and figured right when he guessed anybody waiting would follow him. He pulled them away from the boat and tried to make contact with Old Dewey at the newsstand and what he had for Dewey was the location of where that friend was to bring the crate.”

  “Then there’s one more step.”

  “That’s right. The friend.”

  “You can’t trace that call after all this time.”

  “I don’t think I have to.”

  Hy shook his head. “If Cole was a top agent then he didn’t have any friends.”

  “He had one,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “Velda.”

  “But—”

  “So he could just as well have another. Someone who was in the same game with him during the war, someone he knew would realize the gravity of the situation and act immediately and someone he knew would be capable of fulfilling the mission.”

  “Who, Mike?”

  I didn’t tell him. “I’ll call you when it’s over. You tell Pat.”

  Down the street a squad car turned the corner. I went down the steps and went in the other direction, walking casually, then when I reached Ninth, I flagged a cab and gave him the parking lot where I had left Laura’s car.

  CHAPTER 12

  If I was wrong, the girl hunters would have Velda. She’d be dead. They wanted nothi
ng of her except that she be dead. Damn their stinking hides anyway. Damn them and their philosophies! Death and destruction were the only things the Kremlin crowd was capable of. They knew the value of violence and death and used it over and over in a wild scheme to smash everything flat but their own kind.

  But there was one thing they didn’t know. They didn’t know how to handle it when it came back to them and exploded in their own faces. Let her be dead, I thought, and I’ll start a hunt of my own. They think they can hunt? Shit. They didn’t know how to be really violent. Death? I’d get them, every one, no matter how big or little, or wherever they were. I’d cut them down like so many grapes in ways that would scare the living crap out of them and those next in line for my kill would never know a second’s peace until their heads went flying every which way.

  So I’d better not be wrong.

  Dennis Wallace had known who was to pick up the crate. There wouldn’t have been time for elaborate exchanges of coded recognition signals and if Dennis had known it was more than just a joke he might conceivably have backed out. No, it had to be quick and simple and not at all frightening. He had turned the crate over to a guy whose name had been given him and since it was big enough a truck would have been used in the delivery. He would have seen lettering on the truck, he would have been able to identify both it and the driver, and with some judicious knife work on his belly he would have had his memory jarred into remembering every single detail of the transaction.

  I had to be right.

  Art Rickerby had offered the clue.

  The guy’s name had to be Alex Bird, Richie’s old war buddy in the O.S.S. who had a chicken farm up in Marlboro, New York, and who most likely had a pickup truck that could transport a crate. He would do the favor, keep his mouth shut and forget it the way he had been trained to, and it was just as likely he missed any newspaper squibs about Richie’s death and so didn’t show up to talk to the police when Richie was killed.

  By the time I reached the George Washington Bridge the stars were wiped out of the night sky and you could smell the rain again. I took the Palisades Drive and where I turned off to pick up the Thruway the rain came down in fine slanting lines that laid a slick on the road and whipped in the window.