The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 3 Page 19

  My hand smashed into bone and flesh and with the meaty impact I could smell the blood and hear the gagging intake of his breath. He grabbed, his arms like great claws. He just held on and I knew if I couldn’t break him loose he could kill me. He figured I’d start the knee coming up and turned to block it. But I did something worse, I grabbed him with my hands, squeezed and twisted and his scream was like a woman’s, so high-pitched as almost to be noiseless, and in his frenzy of pain he shoved me so violently I lost that fanatical hold of what manhood I had left him, and with some blind hate driving him he came at me as I stumbled over something and fell on me like a wild beast, his teeth tearing at me, his hands searching and ripping and I felt the shock of incredible pain and ribs break under his pounding and I couldn’t get him off no matter what I did, and he was holding me down and butting me with his head while he kept up that whistlelike screaming and in another minute it would be me dead and him alive, then Velda dead.

  And when I thought of her name something happened, that little thing you have left over was there and I got my elbow up, smashed his head back unexpectedly, got a short one to his jaw again, then another, and another, and another, then I was on top of him and hitting, hitting, smashing—and he wasn’t moving at all under me. He was breathing, but not moving.

  I got up and found the doorway somehow, standing there to suck in great breaths of air. I could feel the blood running from my mouth and nose, wetting my shirt, and with each breath my side would wrench and tear. The two bullet burns were nothing compared to the rest. I had been squeezed dry, pulled apart, almost destroyed, but I had won. Now the son of a bitch would die.

  Inside the door I found a light switch. It only threw on a small bulb overhead, but it was enough. I walked back to where he lay face up and then spat down on The Dragon. Mechanically, I searched his pockets, found nothing except money until I saw that one of my fists had torn his hair loose at the side and when I ripped the wig off there were several small strips of microfilm hidden there.

  Hell, I didn’t know what they were. I didn’t care. I even grinned at the slob because he sure did look like an Indian now, only one that had been half scalped by an amateur. He was big, big. Cheekbones high, a Slavic cast to his eyes, his mouth a cruel slash, his eyebrows thick and black. Half bald, though, he wouldn’t have looked too much like an Indian. Not our kind, anyway.

  There was an ax on the wall, a long-handled, double-bitted ax with a finely honed edge and I picked it from the pegs and went back to The Dragon.

  Just how did you kill a dragon? I could bury the ax in his belly. That would be fun, all right. Stick it right in the middle of his skull and it would look at lot better. They wouldn’t come fooling around after seeing pictures of that. How about the neck? One whack and his head would roll like the Japs used to do. But nuts, why be that kind?

  This guy was really going to die.

  I looked at the big pig, put the ax down and nudged him with my toe. What was it Art had said? Like about suffering? I thought he was nuts, but he could be right. Yeah, he sure could be right. Still, there had to be some indication that people were left who treat those Commie slobs like they liked to treat people.

  Some indication.

  He was Gorlin now, Comrade Gorlin. Dragons just aren’t dragons anymore when they’re bubbling blood over their chins.

  I walked around the building looking for an indication.

  I found it on a workbench in the back.

  A twenty-penny nail and a ball-peen hammer. The nail seemed about four inches long and the head big as a dime.

  I went back and turned Comrade Gorlin over on his face.

  I stretched his arm out palm down on the floor.

  I tapped the planks until I found a floor beam and put his hand on it.

  It was too bad he wasn’t conscious.

  Then I held the nail in the middle of the back of his hand and slammed it in with the hammer and slammed and slammed and slammed until the head of that nail dimpled his skin and he was so tightly pinned to the floor like a piece of equipment he’d never get loose until he was pried out and he wasn’t going to do it with a ball-peen. I threw the hammer down beside him and said, “Better’n handcuffs, buddy,” but he didn’t get the joke. He was still out.

  Outside, the rain came down harder. It always does after a thing like that, trying to flush away the memory of it. I picked up my gun, took it in the house and dismantled it, wiped it dry and reassembled the piece.

  Only then did I walk to the telephone and ask the operator to get me New York and the number I gave her was that of the Peerage Brokers. Art Rickerby answered the phone himself. He said, “Mike?”

  “Yes.”

  For several seconds there was silence. “Mike—”

  “I have him for you. He’s still alive.”

  It was as though I had merely told him the time. “Thank you,” he said.

  “You’ll cover for me on this.”

  “It will be taken care of. Where is he?”

  I told him. I gave him the story then too. I told him to call Pat and Hy and let it all loose at once. Everything tied in. It was almost all wrapped up.

  Art said, “One thing, Mike.”

  “What?”

  “Your problem.”

  “No trouble. It’s over. I was standing here cleaning my gun and it all was like snapping my fingers. It was simple. If I had thought of it right away Dewey and Dennis Wallace and Alex Bird would still be alive. It was tragically simple. I could have found out where Velda was days ago.”

  “Mike—”

  “I’ll see you, Art. The rest of The Dragon has yet to fall.”

  “What?” He didn’t understand me.

  “Tooth and Nail. I just got Tooth—Nail is more subtle.”

  “We’re going to need a statement.”

  “You’ll get it.”

  “How will—”

  I interrupted him with, “I’ll call you.”

  CHAPTER 13

  At daylight the rain stopped and the music of sunlight played off the trees and grass at dawn. The mountains glittered and shone and steamed a little, and as the sun rose the sheen stopped and the colors came through. I ate at an all-night drive-in, parking between the semis out front. I sat through half a dozen cups of coffee before paying the bill and going out to the day, ignoring the funny looks of the carhop.

  I stopped again awhile by the Ashokan Reservoir and did nothing but look at the water and try to bring seven years into focus. It was a long time, that. You change in seven years.

  You change in seven days too, I thought.

  I was a bum Pat had dragged into a hospital to look at a dying man. Pat didn’t know it, but I was almost as dead as the one on the bed. It depends on where you die. My dying had been almost done. The drying up, the withering, had taken place. Everything was gone except hopelessness and that is the almost death of living.

  Remember, Velda, when we were big together? You must have remembered or you would never have asked for me. And all these years I had spent trying to forget you while you were trying to remember me.

  I got up slowly and brushed off my pants, then walked back across the field to the car. During the night I had gotten it all muddy driving aimlessly on the back roads, but I didn’t think Laura would mind.

  The sun had climbed high until it was almost directly overhead. When you sit and think time can go by awfully fast. I turned the key, pulled out on the road and headed toward the mountains.

  When I drove up, Laura heard me coming and ran out to meet me. She came into my arms with a rush of pure delight and did nothing for a few seconds except hold her arms around me, then she looked again, stepped back and said, “Mike—your face!”

  “Trouble, baby. I told you I was trouble.”

  For the first time I noticed my clothes. My coat swung open and there was blood down my jacket and shirt and a jagged tear that was clotted with more blood at my side.

  Her eyes went wide, not believing what she
saw. “Mike! You’re—you’re all—”

  “Shot down, kid. Rough night.”

  She shook her head. “It’s not funny. I’m going to call a doctor!”

  I took her hand. “No, you’re not. It isn’t that bad.”

  “Mike—”

  “Favor, kitten. Let me lie in the sun like an old dog, okay? I don’t want a damn medic. I’ll heal. It’s happened before. I just want to be left alone in the sun.”

  “Oh, Mike, you stubborn fool.”

  “Anybody home?” I asked her.

  “No, you always pick an off day for the servants.” She smiled again now. “You’re clever and I’m glad.”

  I nodded. For some reason my side had started to ache and it was getting hard to breathe. There were other places that had pain areas all their own and they weren’t going to get better. It had only just started. I said, “I’m tired.”

  So we went out back to the pool. She helped me off with my clothes and once more I put the trunks on, then eased down into a plastic contour chair and let the sun warm me. There were blue marks from my shoulders down and where the rib was broken a welt had raised, an angry red that arched from front to back. Laura found antiseptic and cleaned out the furrow where the two shots had grazed me and I thought back to the moment of getting them, realizing how lucky I was because the big jerk was too impatient, just like I had been, taking too much pleasure out of something that should have been strictly business.

  I slept for a while. I felt the sun travel across my body from one side to the other, then I awoke abruptly because events had compacted themselves into my thoughts and I knew that there was still that one thing more to do.

  Laura said, “You were talking in your sleep, Mike.”

  She had changed back into that black bikini and it was wet like her skin so she must have just come from the water. The tight band of black at her loins had rolled down some from the swim and fitted tightly into the crevasses of her body. The top half was like an artist’s brush stroke, a quick motion of impatience at a critical sex-conscious world that concealed by reason of design only. She was more nearly naked dressed than nude.

  How lovely.

  Large, flowing thighs. Full, round calves. They blended into a softly concave stomach and emerged, higher, into proud, outthrust breasts. Her face and hair were a composite halo reaching for the perfection of beauty and she was smiling.

  Lovely.

  “What did I say, Laura?”

  She stopped smiling then. “You were talking about dragons.” I nodded. “Today, I’m St. George.”

  “Mike—”

  “Sit down, baby.”

  “Can we talk again?”

  “Yes, we’ll talk.”

  “Would you mind if I got dressed first? It’s getting chilly out here now. You ought to get dressed yourself.”

  She was right. The sun was a thick red now, hanging just over the crest of a mountain. While one side was a blaze of green, the other was in the deep purple of the shadow.

  I held out my hand and she helped me up, and together we walked around the pool to the bathhouse, touching each other, feeling the warmth of skin against skin, the motion of muscle against muscle. At the door she turned and I took her in my arms. “Back to back?” she said.

  “Like prudes,” I told her.

  Her eyes grew soft and her lips wet her tongue. Slowly, with an insistent hunger, her mouth turned up to mine and I took it, tasting her again, knowing her, feeling the surge of desire go through me and through her too.

  I let her go reluctantly and she went inside with me behind her. The setting sun threw long orange rays through the window, so there was no need of the overhead light. She went into the shower and turned on a soft drizzle while I got dressed slowly, aching and hurting as I pulled on my clothes.

  She called out, “When will it all be over, Mike?”

  “Today,” I said quietly.

  “Today?”

  I heard her stop soaping herself in the shower. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “You were dreaming about dragons,” she called out.

  “About how they die, honey. They die hard. This one will die especially hard. You know, you wouldn’t believe how things come about. Things that were planted long ago suddenly bear fruit now. Like what I told you. Remember all I told you about Velda?”

  “Yes, Mike, I do.”

  “I had to revise and add to the story, Laura.”

  “Really?” She turned the shower off and stood there behind me soaping herself down, the sound of it so nice and natural I wanted to turn around and watch. I knew what she’d look like: darkly beautiful, blondly beautiful, the sun having turned all of her hair white.

  I said, “Pat was right and I was right. Your jewels did come into it. They were like Mrs. Civac’s jewels and the fact that Richie Cole was a jewel smuggler.”

  “Oh?” That was all she said.

  “They were all devices. Decoys. Red herrings. How would you like to hear the rest of what I think?”

  “All right, Mike.”

  She didn’t see me, but I nodded. “In the government are certain key men. Their importance is apparent to critical eyes long before it is to the public. Your husband was like that. It was evident that he was going to be a top dog one day and the kind of top dog our Red enemy could hardly afford to have up there.

  “That was Leo Knapp, your husband. Mr. Missile Man. Mr. America. He sure was a big one. But our wary enemy knew his stuff. Kill him off and you had a public martyr or a great investigation that might lead to even greater international stuff and those Reds just aren’t the kind who can stand the big push. Like it or not, they’re still a lousy bunch of peasants who killed to control but who can be knocked into line by the likes of us. They’re shouting slobs who’ll run like hell when class shows and they know this inside their feeble little heads. So they didn’t want Leo Knapp put on a pedestal.

  “Control comes other ways, however. For instance, he could marry a woman who would listen to him as a sounding board and relay his thoughts and secrets to the right persons so that whatever he did could be quickly annulled by some other action. He could marry a woman who, as his official Washington hostess, had the ear of respected persons and could pick up things here and there that were as important to enemy ears as any sealed documents. He could find his work being stymied at every turn.

  “Then one day he figured it all out. He pinpointed the enemy and found it within his own house. He baited a trap by planting supposedly important papers in his safe and one night while the enemy, his wife, was rifling his safe with her compatriot who was to photograph the papers and transport the photos to higher headquarters, he came downstairs. He saw her, accused her, but blundered into a game bigger than he was.

  “Let’s say she shot him. It doesn’t really matter. She was just as guilty even if it was the other one. At least the other one carried the gun off—a pickup rod traceable to no one if it was thrown away printless. His wife delayed long enough so she and her compatriot could fake a robbery, let the guy get away, then call in the cops.

  “Nor does it end there. The same wife still acts as the big Washington hostess with her same ear to the same ground and is an important and inexhaustible supply of information to the enemy. Let’s say that she is so big as to even be part of The Dragon team. He was Tooth, she was Nail, both spies, both assassins, both deadly enemies of this country.”

  Behind me the water went on again, a downpour that would rinse the bubbles of soap from her body.

  “All went well until Richie Cole was killed. Tooth went and used the same gun again. It tied things in. Like I told you when I let you be my sounding board—coincidence is a strange thing. I like the word ‘fate’ even better. Or is ‘consequence’ an even better one? Richie and Leo and Velda were all tied into the same big situation and for a long time I was too damn dumb to realize it.

  “A guy like me doesn’t stay dumb forever, though. Things change. You either d
ie or smarten up. I had The Dragon on my back and when I think about it all the little things make sense too. At least I think so. Remember how when Gorlin shot the radio you shook with what I thought was fear? Hell, baby, that was rage. You were pissed off that he could pull such a stupid stunt and maybe put your hide in danger. Later you gave him hell on the phone, didn’t you? That house is like an echo chamber, baby. Talk downstairs and you hear the tones all over. You were mad. I was too interested in going through your husband’s effects to pay any attention, that was all.

  “Now it’s over. Tooth is nailed, but that’s a joke you don’t understand yet, baby. Let’s just say that The Dragon is tethered. He’ll sit in the chair and all the world will know why and nations will backtrack and lie and propaganda will tear up the knotheads in the Kremlin and maybe their satellite countries will wise up and blast loose and maybe we’ll wise up and blast them, but however it goes, The Dragon is dead. It didn’t find Velda. She’ll talk, she’ll open up the secrets of the greatest espionage organization the world has ever known and Communist philosophy will get the hell knocked out of it.

  “You see, baby, I know where Velda is.”

  The shower stopped running and I could hear her hum as though she couldn’t even hear me.

  “The catch was this. Richie Cole did make his contact. He gave Old Dewey, the newsstand operator, a letter he had that told where Alex Bird would take Velda. It was a prepared place and she had orders to stay there until either he came for her or I came for her. He’ll never come for her.

  “Only me,” I said. “Dewey put the letter in a magazine. Every month he holds certain magazines aside for me and to make sure I got it he put it inside my copy of Cavalier. It will be there when I go back to the city. I’ll pick it up and it will tell me where Velda is.”