Complex 90 Read online

  Tony Wale, gingerly, said, “Mike, this is the option we encouraged you to accept at our last meeting. We use you as bait to attract the remaining Soviet agents. But then we are right there to swoop in.”

  That was when I began to laugh. A good old-fashioned horse laugh that stopped just short of tears, though there was plenty to cry about.

  “When your people ‘swooped in,’ today,” I said, “the party was so long over, the street-cleaners were sweeping up the confetti. No. No more shadowing me and Velda, no more agents watching us from across the street or from the lobby of my apartment building or down the hall from my office. Pull everybody off. Now. Right now.”

  Worth tried out a small smile on that narrow, somber face; it didn’t play well. “All right, then. Option number one. We’ll get you and Miss Sterling cleared out this afternoon and on a plane to—”

  “No protective custody, either,” I said. “I’m just a private citizen, going about his business.”

  Worth was shaking his head. “Unacceptable, Hammer.”

  “Mister” had gone the way of all flesh.

  I said, “I’m not going into some kind of protective custody, like the witness in a damn mob trial... remember that Murder Inc. clown who got tossed out a window at Coney Island, in protective custody? And anyway, if I did allow that, how do I know my next stop isn’t the Soviet Union, thanks to some extradition deal that the politicians cook up?”

  Worth didn’t deny it.

  I said, “I need to find you fellas a real live K.G.B. agent that I can trade you for getting my life back. And the only way I can do that is on my own.”

  Wale said, “Mike, you can’t stop us from putting men out in the field to protect you.”

  “I am going to assume anybody tailing me is the enemy. I am going to assume anybody watching me is the enemy. You may have noticed how I handle enemies. I warned you people at the beginning of this damn thing.”

  Rickerby still had his back to us, looking out that window at a dark gray sky full of rain that refused to come down.

  Worth said, “Are you threatening to kill federal agents, Mr. Hammer?”

  “No. I’m promising to defend myself. But before I put myself in that position, I’ll have a press conference. Just like the politicians. I’ll tell this city and this country and the whole wide world about how you are screwing up. How I was almost killed today under the watchful eye of dozens of federal agents.”

  Worth glanced at Tony Wale, who shrugged. Then Worth looked to Rickerby, whose back remained to us.

  “All right,” Worth sighed. “I believe the expression is... ‘it’s your funeral.’ Now get the hell out of here, Hammer.”

  “No,” I said.

  Worth’s cool evaporated and fire melted the frozen eyes. “What did you say?”

  “Sorry. What I meant to say was hell, no. You and Tony take five. Smoke ’em if you got ’em, fellas. Art and me, we need a little talk between old friends.”

  Worth’s slice of a face was reddening. He was on his feet, and leaning his hands on the table. “Goddamn you, Hammer, you do not—”

  “Vince,” Rickerby said quietly, still looking out the window, “leave Mike and me alone. For just a few minutes. We... I... owe him that much.”

  Worth seemed as confused as he was angry, while Wale—who knew me too well—was just fine with getting out of that room.

  When the door slammed, thunder shook the sky like an overdone echo. Rain came down. Hard. Insistent. And right on cue.

  I got up and walked over to Rickerby and watched the reflections on his face of water trails streaming down the window. His expression was emotionless, but the rain streaks cast onto it were like tears.

  “I didn’t tell them, Art,” I said, “who the other assassin was. But I told your guy at the scene. He obviously told you.”

  Rickerby’s nod was so slight it almost didn’t register.

  “Comrade Gorlin,” I said. “The Dragon—the tooth part, anyway. Was Mandau the new nail? Or is that somebody else?”

  Rickerby said nothing.

  “He’s carrying around a hole in his hand that I gave him,” I said. “That’s one small solace. Fun to know that every time he washes his hands, he thinks of me. If the slob ever washes his hands.”

  “Mike...”

  “You lied to me, Art. Back in that barn, I spared Comrade Gorlin’s life for you, handed him to you on a platter, because you said a quick kill wasn’t good enough. You said he would rot in a cell waiting for the day when he would take the long walk to that oaken chair with the big switch.”

  Thunder cracked the sky; lightning flashed on Rickerby’s solemn face.

  “What about Richie Cole, Art? The agent who was like a son to you? You said you’d made promises over his body, the way I once made promises over the body of a guy who gave an arm for me in the Pacific. You said nothing would stop you from taking your revenge and you sought me out as the best man for the job of hunting down the son of a bitch you would see dead.”

  “I didn’t lie to you, Mike.”

  “Didn’t you?”

  He turned to me and half of his face wore the reflected gray streaky raindrops. “I meant those things when I said them. But when I brought in the surviving half of the Dragon team, my superiors insisted he was just too important to waste on execution. It’s the same situation you’re in, Mike, right now—the need for you to bring us a living K.G.B. agent captured on American soil. A catch like that is worth something.”

  “You traded Gorlin for agents of ours.”

  “Yes. Five agents, Mike. Agents like my late colleague Richie Cole, who were languishing in the kind of prison that you managed to escape. I don’t have the luxury of your emotionalism, Mike. I am, for better or worse, a bureaucrat. A servant of the state. And I have to make decisions in the cold hard reality of a world on the brink of nuclear destruction.”

  Some of the anger had bled out of me. Didn’t swapping a piece of garbage like Gorlin in order to free five of our boys make a hell of a trade?

  Actually, no.

  “Art, you gave Gorlin back to them, you let the Dragon out of his cage, and now another Richie Cole is dead—his name was Des Casey, Art, and he was a soldier, a decorated war hero and he died trying to save my life. He has a family here in New York and a girl back in D.C., and assuming they’ve gotten the word by now, they are in hell and will be there a long, long time. So I will tell you right now, Art, that if I can bring you back a Commie agent alive, I will— just call me Frank Buck, buddy. But it won’t be Comrade Gorlin.”

  Rickerby nodded. He risked touching my sleeve, and I flinched a little, but then let him guide me to the table. He nodded for me to sit and I did. He sat next to me and he put his hand on my arm. I left it there.

  “I know you think I let you down,” Rickerby said. “And maybe I did. In this kind of deadly work, you make judgment calls that cost lives. But I will do this much for you, Mike. I’m going to see to it you have your way. All the watchdogs will be called off.”

  “I appreciate that, Art.”

  “You may be thanking me for your own death, so I’ll pass on saying, ‘You’re welcome.’ As for Comrade Gorlin, I ask only one thing.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Make it slow.”

  “No problem.”

  He reached inside his suit coat and withdrew a picture, a surveillance photo of a tall, thin man with sunken pockmarked cheeks, a sharp nose and hooded eyes behind black round-frame glasses. His hair was gray and cropped close to the skull. Actually, he looked like a damn skull.

  “Colonel Toy,” Rickerby said. “We have confirmed that he is in the United States. Very likely right here in Manhattan, supervising the mission that Gorlin and Mandau botched today.”

  I studied it and gave it back to him. As he tucked the photo away, I said, “And if I bag that bastard, it’ll free some of ours?”

  “Yes. Do that, and I can all but guarantee you that you and Velda can return to your normal lif
e.” He smiled a little. “Well, your kind of normal life.”

  “There’s something I need to give you.”

  “Oh?”

  I got out my wallet and removed the I.D. with the fancy embossed seal, which I tossed on the table before him, like a sullen waiter delivering the check.

  “If this goes wrong,” I said, “you won’t want my body turning up with that in my pocket.”

  “Understood.”

  “And, anyway, I don’t think we’re going to be doing any more jobs together. After today, I’m strictly an Old School private eye. In future, do me a favor? Spare me the cloak-and-dagger bullshit.”

  “Understood. Mike...”

  “Yeah?”

  “I know we won’t be working together, and I know we’ll never be friends again, but... I’d like to shake your hand.”

  What the hell.

  We shook hands.

  He was standing at the window when I left, crying his rain-reflected tears.

  * * *

  Late afternoon, I met Velda at the bar at PJ. Moriarty’s on Sixth and Fifty-second. The rain had let up, but you could feel in the air that more was coming.

  Neither of us was hungry, but we shared a corned beef sandwich just for fuel. No beer. Coffee. Caffeine was my friend.

  “I think we can wrap this up tonight,” I told her.

  The sky was growling out there.

  “Am I sticking with you?” she asked.

  “No, I have an assignment for you. One last assignment on this job, and a damn important one.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. My life may depend it. And yours.”

  “Oh. Okay.” She nibbled at the edge of her half of the sandwich. “The Dragon back? It’s crazy, Mike. Unreal.”

  “Oh, it’s real all right.”

  “Funny.” She shook her head. “To think, that Commie creep tracking me all the way back to the U.S., ready to kill me on sight... and yet I never ever saw the S.O.B. myself.”

  “It’s often that way with the hunter and the hunted.”

  “Good thing you saw him first, Mike.” She took another nibble, rolled those dark lovely eyes. “Hard to believe that Rickerby would let that monster go.”

  “Art was trying to save lives.”

  She touched my hand. “Mike. I’m sorry about Des. I know you really liked him. He was a good guy.”

  “Just a damn kid.”

  “No, he was older than that. He was a soldier. He went out the way he would have wanted.”

  “No, Velda. No soldier really wants to die in combat. Like Patton said, it’s all about killing the other guy.”

  “Good point.” She gave me a nasty, teasing smile as she prepared to take another nibble out of her half sandwich. “Gonna do some killing tonight, Mike?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Forty-five more?”

  “Not that many.” I grinned at her. “I’m in a quality over quantity mood, doll. Pass that mustard, and I’ll fill you in on your assignment.”

  * * *

  I was in no mood to deal with the Wentworth Hotel’s arcane system of monitoring those calling on their guests. I went in the employee entrance off the alley, moving through the kitchen like I knew what I was doing, and bribed a waiter to let me use the service elevator. No matter how posh the hotel, the ass end of it smells like a garbage truck. The Wentworth was no exception.

  When I knocked at Irene Carroll’s door, it took her a while to answer. Finally, I heard footsteps padding on the other side of the door, and I stepped to one side so she couldn’t check the peephole. I figured she’d assume it was a hotel staffer, since that was the regular drill. And she did, opening the door, and I stepped inside, shutting it behind me.

  She looked good, but maybe a little more of her age was showing than last time. Her nice full figure was swathed in a light blue quilted housecoat, its belt hastily tied, and her legs and feet were bare. No make-up but for lipstick, and her white, chin-cut hair looked tousled.

  Her eyes widened with surprise, almost alarm. “Mike! You weren’t announced.”

  “I don’t like to stand on ceremony,” I said, brushing by, walking on into the pop-art-decorated living room. An ashtray on the glass coffee table had two cigarettes going in it and a couple of drink glasses. I smiled to myself.

  As before, I sat on the red chair and she sat opposite me on the blue sofa.

  I crossed my legs. Got comfortable.

  “Yes?” she said impatiently, leaning forward, hands clasped. “Why are you here, Mr. Hammer?”

  “What happened to ‘Mike’?”

  “Why are you here, Mike?”

  “Just wanted to ask you a question.”

  “Just one?”

  “Probably just one, or maybe two. That night, a few months ago—why were you late to Jasper’s party?”

  She tried to sound off-hand. “I ran late. I don’t have any servants in the city, and—”

  “Oh, no servants in the city. That must be a hardship for you.”

  She reached for the black enamel box and got out a cigarette. She was about to light one of the dark gold-tipped numbers when I said, “You’ve already got one going, Irene. In fact, you’ve already got two going.”

  She swallowed nervously, then went ahead and lit the fresh cigarette.

  “Doesn’t take much of a detective,” she said, her voice brittle, “to figure out that I’m entertaining a guest. Let’s be frank. A male guest.”

  “Yeah, since one cig has lipstick and the other doesn’t, that would have been my deduction.”

  “So if you don’t mind, now that you can see that you’re intruding, would you please go? I’ll be glad to talk to you later. Perhaps tomorrow?”

  Still just getting comfortable, I unbuttoned my suit coat, giving her a glimpse of the .45 in the sling under my left arm. “Answer my question, Irene, and I’ll just toddle along.”

  She swallowed thickly. “As I say, I didn’t go to the party until later because I was running late.” She forced the trademark tinkly laugh. “I am notorious for arriving late, and—”

  “You weren’t avoiding the shooting that you knew would take place?”

  She practically dropped the smoke, her eyes wide, her mouth an attractive trapdoor that had sprung. “No! I had no idea...”

  I folded my arms. “There was another Washington hostess, probably your chief rival a few years ago... remember her? The wife of a senator. Want to hear something wild? She was a Russian spy, perfectly positioned to know not only what her powerful husband knew, but, in her charming way, to meet and gain the confidence of all sorts of persons in critical positions in our government and foreign ones. Strangely, a number of those persons died—some of natural causes, others violently, including her own husband during a break-in at their mansion upstate. Get this—an attempted jewel robbery. Small world, huh?”

  “I knew that woman,” Irene said. She had folded her arms, as well. “She was no spy. She died at her home in a terrible accident.”

  “Yeah, I know. I arranged it. You see, she was half of an assassination team—she teed the victims up, and the other half hit a hole in one. Like you said, she’s gone. Dead. But the other half of that team is back. He tried to kill me today. Unsuccessfully, as you may have gathered. But he did manage to kill a nice young M.P. who was protecting me. So my question to you, Irene, is... are you the replacement for that other Washington hostess?”

  “That’s enough!” a familiar male voice shouted from a hallway.

  Senator Allen Jasper entered in a dark-colored robe of his own that indicated just how frequently he spent time at Irene Carroll’s pad.

  Angry as hell, Jasper stood with the crying comic-book woman on the wall just behind him, as if she were the one he was defending as he said, “Irene a spy? Are you out of your mind, man? Mike, get out of here. Now! You’ve gone completely around the bend.”

  I gestured easily, smiling like the old friend I was. “Sit down, Allen. I thought that might bring y
ou out of your shell. By the way, you were casting a shadow where you were standing, eavesdropping. Cheating husbands need better skills than that.”

  He was breathing hard. She reached up a hand to him, touched the elbow of his robe, and he gazed down at her, swallowed, nodded, and sat beside her.

  “You don’t believe that nonsense you were spouting,” Jasper said, much more quietly. “Irene a Russian spy? You can’t mean that.”

  “Well, it’s a workable theory. I’ve been considering it. And if Irene is in the employ of the K.G.B., it would explain a lot... and like that other hostess, she’s gotten close enough to you, Allen, to know exactly what you’re doing and thinking.”

  He slipped an arm around her and she moved closer him, trembling. “This is nonsense, Mike,” he said. “All right, you’ve found out our secret. We’re having an affair, and we have been for some time. Satisfied?”

  “Not really, but I’d imagine you are, frequently. Very convenient, living in the same building, you two. Irene, you were late that night because you were reluctant to be in the same room as Allen’s wife—you remember Allen’s wife, don’t you? Emily? You told me how wonderful she was.”

  She was sniffling. “You’re... you’re cruel.”

  “Well, maybe it’s because my ego got bruised, knowing that you coming on to me yesterday was just to make me think you were unattached. The way you use that Warren Bentley character as your beard.”

  Jasper was frowning at me, as hurt as he was angry. “Why are you doing this, Mike?”

  I ignored the question. “Now I know why Ralph Marley wanted to quit his easy, high-paying easy gig with you, Allen—he didn’t like being the guy who helped you sneak around on your wife. Marley was a straight shooter, a family man who loved his wife, and it rubbed him the wrong way.”

  “What is the point of this, Mike?”

  “You’ve been lucky, you crazy kids, keeping your secret. The press has looked the other way. Hell, maybe your wife looks the other way, too, but I doubt it. She’s probably like the rest of your constituents, who buy you as the upstanding guy you pretend to be.”

  Now Jasper’s anger was gone and only the hurt remained. “Why are you doing this, Mike? What are you trying to prove?”