The Girl Hunters Read online

  I made them take me to the men’s room so I could vomit again, and when I sluiced down in frigid water I felt a small bit better. Enough so I could wipe off the grin. I was glad there was no mirror over the basin. It had been a long time since I had looked at myself and I didn’t want to start now.

  Behind me the door opened and there was some hurried medical chatter between Larry and a white-coated intern who had come in with a plainclothesman. Pat finally said, “How is he?”

  “Going fast,” Larry said. “He won’t let them operate either. He knows he’s had it and doesn’t want to die under ether before he sees your friend here.”

  “Damn it, don’t call him my friend.”

  The intern glanced at me critically, running his eyes up and down then doing a quickie around my face. His fingers flicked out to spread my eyelids open for a look into my pupils and I batted them away.

  “Keep your hands off me, sonny,” I said.

  Pat waved him down. “Let him be miserable, Doctor. Don’t try to help him.”

  The intern shrugged, but kept looking anyway. I had suddenly become an interesting psychological study for him.

  “You’d better get him up there. The guy hasn’t long to live. Minutes at the most.”

  Pat looked at me. “You ready?”

  “You asking?” I said.

  “Not really. You don’t have a choice.”

  “No?”

  Larry said, “Mike—go ahead and do it.”

  I nodded. “Sure, why not. I always did have to do half his work for him anyway.” Pat’s mouth went tight and I grinned again. “Clue me on what you want to know.”

  There were fine white lines around Pat’s nostrils and his lips were tight and thin. “Who shot him. Ask him that.”

  “What’s the connection?”

  Now Pat’s eyes went half closed, hating my guts for beginning to think again. After a moment he said, “One bullet almost went through him. They took it out yesterday. A ballistics check showed it to be from the same gun that killed Senator Knapp. If this punk upstairs dies we can lose our lead to a murderer. Understand? You find out who shot him.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Anything for a friend. Only first I want a drink.”

  “No drink.”

  “So drop dead.”

  “Bring him a shot,” Larry told the intern.

  The guy nodded, went out and came back a few seconds later with a big double in a water glass. I took it in a hand that had the shakes real bad, lifted it and said, “Cheers.”

  The guy on the bed heard us come in and turned his head on the pillow. His face was drawn, pinched with pain and the early glaze of death was in his eyes.

  I stepped forward and before I could talk he said, “Mike? You’re—Mike Hammer?”

  “That’s right.”

  He squinted at me, hesitating. “You’re not like—”

  I knew what he was thinking. I said, “I’ve been sick.”

  From someplace in back Pat sucked in his breath disgustedly.

  The guy noticed them for the first time. “Out. Get them out.”

  I waved my thumb over my shoulder without turning around. I knew Larry was pushing Pat out the door over his whispered protestations, but you don’t argue long with a medic in his own hospital.

  When the door clicked shut I said, “Okay, buddy, you wanted to see me and since you’re on the way out it has to be important. Just let me get some facts straight. I never saw you before. Who are you?”

  “Richie Cole.”

  “Good. Now who shot you?”

  “Guy they call… The Dragon. No name… I don’t know his name.”

  “Look…”

  Somehow he got one hand up and waved it feebly. “Let me talk.”

  I nodded, pulled up a chair and sat on the arm. My guts were all knotted up again and beginning to hurt. They were crying out for some bottle love again and I had to rub the back of my hand across my mouth to take the thought away.

  The guy made a wry face and shook his head. “You’ll… never do it.”

  My tongue ran over my lips without moistening them. “Do what?”

  “Get her in time.”

  “Who?”

  “The woman.” His eyes closed and for a moment his face relaxed. “The woman Velda.”

  I sat there as if I were paralyzed; for a second totally immobilized, a suddenly frozen mind and body that had solidified into one great silent scream at the mention of a name I had long ago consigned to a grave somewhere. Then the terrible cold was drenched with an even more terrible wash of heat and I sat there with my hands bunched into fists to keep them from shaking.

  Velda.

  He was watching me closely, the glaze in his eyes momentarily gone. He saw what had happened to me when he said the name and there was a peculiar expression of approval in his face.

  Finally I said, “You knew her?”

  He barely nodded. “I know her.”

  And again that feeling happened to me, worse this time because I knew he wasn’t lying and that she was alive someplace. Alive!

  I kept a deliberate control over my voice. “Where is she?”

  “Safe for… the moment. But she’ll be killed unless… you find her. The one called The Dragon… he’s looking for her too. You’ll have to find her first.”

  I was damn near breathless. “Where?” I wanted to reach over and shake it out of him but he was too close to the edge of the big night to touch.

  Cole managed a crooked smile. He was having a hard time to talk and it was almost over. “I gave… an envelope to Old Dewey. Newsy on Lexington by the Clover Bar… for you.”

  “Damn it, where is she, Cole?”

  “No… you find The Dragon… before he gets her.”

  “Why me, Cole? Why that way? You had the cops?”

  The smile still held on. “Need someone… ruthless. Someone very terrible.” His eyes fixed on mine, shiny bright, mirroring one last effort to stay alive. “She said… you could… if someone could find you. You had been missing… long time.” He was fighting hard now. He only had seconds. “No police… unless necessary. You’ll see… why.”

  “Cole…”

  His eyes closed, then opened and he said, “Hurry.” He never closed them again. The gray film came and his stare was a lifeless one, hiding things I would have given an arm to know.

  I sat there beside the bed looking at the dead man, my thoughts groping for a hold in a brain still soggy from too many bouts in too many bars. I couldn’t think, so I simply looked and wondered where and when someone like him had found someone like her.

  Cole had been a big man. His face, relaxed in death, had hard planes to it, a solid jaw line blue with beard and a nose that had been broken high on the bridge. There was a scar beside one eye running into the hairline that could have been made by a knife. Cole had been a hard man, all right. In a way a good-looking hardcase whose business was trouble.

  His hand lay outside the sheet, the fingers big and the wrist thick. The knuckles were scarred, but none of the scars was fresh. They were old scars from old fights. The incongruous part was the nails. They were thick and square, but well cared for. They reflected all the care a manicurist could give with a treatment once a week.

  The door opened and Pat and Larry came in. Together they looked at the body and stood there waiting. Then they looked at me and whatever they saw made them both go expressionless at once.

  Larry made a brief inspection of the body on the bed, picked up a phone and relayed the message to someone on the other end. Within seconds another doctor was there with a pair of nurses verifying the situation, recording it all on a clipboard.

  When he turned around he stared at me with a peculiar expression and said, “You feel all right?”

  “I’m all right,” I repeated. My voice seemed to come from someone else.

  “Want another drink?”

  “No.”

  “You’d better have one,” Larry said.

 
“I don’t want it.”

  Pat said, “The hell with him.” His fingers slid under my arm. “Outside, Mike. Let’s go outside and talk.”

  I wanted to tell him what he could do with his talk, but the numbness was there still, a frozen feeling that restricted thought and movement, painless but effective. So I let him steer me to the small waiting room down the hall and took the seat he pointed out.

  There is no way to describe the immediate aftermath of a sudden shock. If it had come at another time in another year it would have been different, but now the stalk of despondency was withered and brittle, refusing to bend before a wind of elation.

  All I could do was sit there, bringing back his words, the tone of his voice, the way his face crinkled as he saw me. Somehow he had expected something different. He wasn’t looking for a guy who had the earmarks of the Bowery and every slop chute along the avenues etched into his skin.

  I said, “Who was he, Pat?” in a voice soggy and hollow.

  Pat didn’t bother to answer my question. I could feel his eyes crawl over me until he asked, “What did he tell you?”

  I shook my head. Just once. My way could be final too.

  With a calm, indifferent sincerity Pat said, “You’ll tell me. You’ll get worked on until talking won’t even be an effort. It will come out of you because there won’t be a nerve ending left to stop it. You know that.”

  I heard Larry’s strained voice say, “Come off it, Pat. He can’t take much.”

  “Who cares. He’s no good to anybody. He’s a louse, a stinking, drinking louse. Now he’s got something I have to have. You think I’m going to worry about him? Larry, buddy, you just don’t know me very well anymore.”

  I said, “Who was he?”

  The wall in front of me was a friendly pale green. It was blank from one end to the other. It was a vast, meadowlike area, totally unspoiled. There were no foreign markings, no distracting pictures. Unsympathetic. Antiseptic.

  I felt Pat’s shrug and his fingers bit into my arm once more. “Okay, wise guy. Now we’ll do it my way.”

  “I told you, Pat—”

  “Damn it, Larry, you knock it off. This bum is a lead to a killer. He learned something from that guy and I’m going to get it out of him. Don’t hand me any pious crap or medical junk about what can happen. I know guys like this. I’ve been dealing with them all my life. They go on getting banged around from saloon to saloon, hit by cars, rolled by muggers and all they ever come up with are fresh scars. I can beat hell out of him and maybe he’ll talk. Maybe he won’t, but man, let me tell you this—I’m going to have my crack at him and when I’m through the medics can pick up the pieces for their go. Only first me, understand?”

  Larry didn’t answer him for a moment, then he said quietly. “Sure, I understand. Maybe you could use a little medical help yourself.”

  I heard Pat’s breath hiss in softly. Like a snake. His hand relaxed on my arm and without looking I knew what his face was like. I had seen him go like that before and a second later he had shot a guy.

  And this time it was me he listened to when I said, “He’s right, old buddy. You’re real sick.”

  I knew it would come and there wouldn’t be any way of getting away from it. It was quick, it was hard, but it didn’t hurt a bit. It was like flying away to never-never land where all is quiet and peaceful and awakening is under protest because then it will really hurt and you don’t want that to happen.

  Larry said, “How do you feel now?”

  It was a silly question. I closed my eyes again.

  “We kept you here in the hospital.”

  “Don’t do me any more favors,” I told him.

  “No trouble. You’re a public charge. You’re on the books as an acute alcoholic with a D and D to boot and if you’re real careful you might talk your way out on the street again. However, I have my doubts about it. Captain Chambers is pushing you hard.”

  “The hell with him.”

  “He’s not the only one.”

  “So what’s new?” My voice was raspy, almost gone.

  “The D.A., his assistant and some unidentified personnel from higher headquarters are interested in whatever statement you’d care to make.”

  “The hell with them too.”

  “It could be instrumental in getting you out of here.”

  “Nuts. It’s the first time I’ve been to bed in a long time. I like it here.”

  “Mike—” His voice had changed. There was something there now that wasn’t that of the professional medic at a bedside. It was worried and urgent and I let my eyes slit open and looked at him.

  “I don’t like what’s happening to Pat.”

  “Tough.”

  “A good word, but don’t apply it to him. You’re the tough one. You’re not like him at all.”

  “He’s tough.”

  “In a sense. He’s a pro. He’s been trained and can perform certain skills most men can’t. He’s a policeman and most men aren’t that. Pat is a normal sensitive human. At least he was. I met him after you went to pot. I heard a lot about you, mister. I watched Pat change character day by day and what caused the change was you and what you did to Velda.”

  The name again. In one second I lived every day the name was alive and with me. Big, Valkyrian and with hair as black as night.

  “Why should he care?”

  “He says she was his friend.”

  Very slowly I squeezed my eyes open. “You know what she was to me?”

  “I think so.”

  “Okay.”

  “But it could be he was in love with her too,” he said.

  I couldn’t laugh like I wanted to. “She was in love with me, Doc.”

  “Nevertheless, he was in love with her. Maybe you never realized it, but that’s the impression I got. He’s still a bachelor, you know.”

  “Ah! He’s in love with his job. I know him.”

  “Do you?”

  I thought back to that night ago and couldn’t help the grin that tried to climb up my face. “Maybe not, Doc, maybe not. But it’s an interesting thought. It explains a lot of things.”

  “He’s after you now. To him, you killed her. His whole personality, his entire character has changed. You’re the focal point. Until now he’s never had a way to get to you to make you pay for what happened. Now he has you in a nice tight bind and, believe me, you’re going to be racked back first class.”

  “That’s G.I. talk, Doc.”

  “I was in the same war, buddy.”

  I looked at him again. His face was drawn, his eyes searching and serious. “What am I supposed to do?”

  “He never told me and I never bothered to push the issue, but since I’m his friend rather than yours, I’m more interested in him personally than you.”

  “Lousy bedside manner, Doc.”

  “Maybe so, but he’s my friend.”

  “He used to be mine.”

  “No more.”

  “So?”

  “What happened?”

  “What would you believe coming from an acute alcoholic and a D and D?”

  For the first time he laughed and it was for real. “I hear you used to weigh in at two-o-five?”

  “Thereabouts.”

  “You’re down to one-sixty-eight, dehydrated, undernourished. A bum, you know?”

  “You don’t have to remind me.”

  “That isn’t the point. You missed it.”

  “No I didn’t.”

  “Oh?”

  “Medics don’t talk seriously to D and D’s. I know what I was. Now there is a choice of words if you can figure it out.”

  He laughed again. “Was. I caught it.”

  “Then talk.”

  “Okay. You’re a loused-up character. There’s nothing to you anymore. Physically, I mean. Something happened and you tried to drink yourself down the drain.”

  “I’m a weak person.”

  “Guilt complex. Something you couldn’t handle. It happens to t
he hardest nuts I’ve seen. They can take care of anything until the irrevocable happens and then they blow. Completely.”

  “Like me?”

  “Like you.”

  “Keep talking.”

  “You were a lush.”

  “So are a lot of people. I even know some doctors who—”

  “You came out of it pretty fast.”

  “At ease, Doc.”

  “I’m not prying,” he reminded me.

  “Then talk right.”

  “Sure,” he said. “Tell me about Velda.”

  CHAPTER 3

  “It was a long time ago,” I said.

  And when I had said it I wished I hadn’t because it was something I never wanted to speak about. It was over. You can’t beat time. Let the dead stay dead. If they can. But was she dead? Maybe if I told it just once I could be sure.

  “Tell me,” Larry asked.

  “Pat ever say anything?”

  “Nothing.”

  So I told him.

  “It was a routine job,” I said.

  “Yes?”

  “A Mr. Rudolph Civac contacted me. He was from Chicago, had plenty of rocks and married a widow named Marta Singleton who inherited some kind of machine-manufacturing fortune. Real social in Chicago. Anyway, they came to New York where she wanted to be social too and introduce her new husband around.”

  “Typical,” Larry said.

  “Rich-bitches.”

  “Don’t hold it against them,” he told me.

  “Not me, kid,” I said.

  “Then go on.”

  I said, “She was going to sport all the gems her dead husband gave her which were considerable and a prime target for anybody in the field and her husband wanted protection.”

  Larry made a motion with his hand. “A natural thought.”

  “Sure. So he brought me in. Big party. He wanted to cover the gems.”

  “Any special reason?”

  “Don’t be a jerk. They were worth a half a million. Most of my business is made of stuff like that.”

  “Trivialities.”

  “Sure, Doc, like unnecessary appendectomies.”

  “Touché.”

  “Think nothing of it.”

  He stopped then. He waited seconds and seconds and watched and waited, then: “A peculiar attitude.”