The Girl Hunters Page 5

  “Let me clue you, buddy. It was shock. I was brought back to my own house fast, and suddenly meeting death in a sober condition really rocked me.”

  “I’m not so sure of that,” he said. “Nevertheless, get on with your questions.”

  “What was Richie Cole’s job?”

  After a moment’s pause he said, “Don’t be silly. I certainly don’t know. If I did I wouldn’t reveal it.”

  “Okay, what was his cover?”

  All he did was shake his head and smile.

  I said, “You told me you’d do anything to get the one who killed him.”

  This time a full minute passed before he glanced down at his hands, then back to me again. In that time he had done some rapid mental calculations. “I—don’t see how it could matter now,” he said. When he paused a sadness creased his mouth momentarily, then he went on. “Richie worked as a seaman.”

  “Union man?”

  “That’s right. He held a full card.”

  CHAPTER 5

  The elevator operator in the Trib Building looked at me kind of funny like when I told him I wanted to find Hy. But maybe Hy had all kinds of hooples looking for him at odd hours. At one time the guy would never have asked questions, but now was now. The old Mike wasn’t quite there any more.

  In gold, the letters said, HY GARDNER. I knocked, opened the door and there he was, staring until recognition came, and with a subtle restraint he said, “Mike—” It was almost a question.

  “A long time, Hy.”

  But always the nice guy, this one. Never picking, never choosing. He said, “Been too long. I’ve been wondering.”

  “So have a lot of people.”

  “But not for the same reasons.”

  We shook hands, a couple of old friends saying hello from a long while back; we had both been big, but while he had gone ahead and I had faded, yet still friends and good ones.

  He tried to cover the grand hiatus of so many years with a cigar stuck in the middle of a smile and made it all the way, without words telling me that nothing had really changed at all since the first time we had played bullets in a bar and he had made a column out of it the next day.

  Hell, you’ve read his stuff. You know us.

  I sat down, waved the crazy blonde bouffant he used as a secretary now out of the room and leaned back enjoying myself. After seven years it was a long time to enjoy anything. Friends.

  I still had them.

  “You look lousy,” Hy said.

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “True what I hear about you and Pat?”

  “Word gets around fast.”

  “You know this business, Mike.”

  “Sure, so don’t bother being kind.”

  “You’re a nut,” he laughed.

  “Aren’t we all. One kind or another.”

  “Sure, but you’re on top. You know the word that’s out right now?”

  “I can imagine.”

  “The hell you can. You don’t even know. What comes in this office you couldn’t imagine. When they picked you up I heard about it. When you were in Pat’s house I knew where you were. If you really want to know, whenever you were in the drunk tank, unidentified, I knew about it.”

  “Cripes, why didn’t you get me out?”

  “Mike,” he laughed around the stogie, “I got problems of my own. When you can’t solve yours, who can solve anything? Besides, I thought it would be a good experience for you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No bother.” He shifted the cigar from one side to the other. “But I was worried.”

  “Well, that’s nice anyway,” I said.

  “Now it’s worse.”

  Hy took the cigar away, studied me intently, stuffed the smoke out in a tray and pulled his eyes up to mine.

  “Mike—”

  “Say it, Hy.”

  He was honest. He pulled no punches. It was like time had never been at all and we were squaring away for the first time. “You’re poison, Mike. The word’s out.”

  “To you?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “They don’t touch the Fifth Estate, you know that. They tried it with Joe Ungermach and Victor Reisel and look what happened to them. So don’t worry about me.”

  “You worried about me?”

  Hy grunted, lit another cigar and grinned at me. He had his glasses up on his head and you’d never think he could be anything but an innocuous slob, but then you’d be wrong. When he had it lit, he said, “I gave up worrying about you a long time ago. Now what did you want from me? It has to be big after seven years.”

  “Senator Knapp,” I said.

  Sure, he was thinking, after seven years who the hell would think you’d come back with a little one? Mike Hammer chasing ambulances? Mike Hammer suddenly a reformer or coming up with a civic problem? Hell, anybody would have guessed. The Mike doesn’t come back without a big one going. This a kill, Mike? What’s the scoop? Story there, isn’t there? You have a killer lined up just like in the old days and don’t lie to me because I’ve seen those tiger eyes before. If they were blue or brown like anybody else’s maybe I couldn’t tell, but you got tiger eyes, friend, and they glint. So tell me. Tell me hard. Tell me now.

  He didn’t have to say it. Every word was there in his face, like when he had read it out to me before. I didn’t have to hear it now. Just looking at him was enough.

  I said, “Senator Knapp. He died when I was—away.”

  Quietly, Hy reminded me, “He didn’t die. He was killed.”

  “Okay. The libraries were closed and besides, I forgot my card.”

  “He’s been dead three years.”

  “More.”

  “First why?”

  “Because.”

  “You come on strong, man.”

  “You know another way?”

  “Not for you.”

  “So how about the Senator?”

  “Are we square?” he asked me. “It can be my story?”

  “All yours, Hy. I don’t make a buck telling columns.”

  “Got a few minutes?”

  “All right,” I said.

  He didn’t even have to consult the files. All he had to do was light that damn cigar again and sit back in his chair, then he sucked his mouth full of smoke and said, “Leo Knapp was another McCarthy. He was a Commie-hunter but he had more prestige and more power. He was on the right committee and, to top it off, he was this country’s missile man.”

  “That’s what they called him, the Missile Man. Mr. America. He pulled hard against the crap we put up with like the Cape Canaveral strikes when the entire program was held up by stupid jerks who went all that way for unionism and—hell, read True or the factual accounts and see what happened. The Reds are running us blind. Anyway, Knapp was the missile pusher.”

  “Big,” I said.

  Hy nodded. “Then some louse shoots him. A simple burglary and he gets killed in the process.”

  “You sure?”

  Hy looked at me, the cigar hard in his teeth. “You know me, Mike, I’m a reporter. I’m a Commie-hater. You think I didn’t take this one right into the ground?”

  “I can imagine what you did.”

  “Now fill me in.”

  “Can you keep your mouth shut?”

  He took the cigar away and frowned, like I had hurt him. “Mike—”

  “Look,” I said, “I know, I know. But I may feed you a hot one and I have to be sure. Until it’s ended, it can’t come out. There’s something here too big to mess with and I won’t even take a little chance on it.”

  “So tell me. I know what you’re angling for. Your old contacts are gone or poisoned and you want me to shill for you.”

  “Natch.”

  “So I’ll shill. Hell, we’ve done it before. It won’t be like it’s a new experience.”

  “And keep Marilyn out of it. To her you’re a new husband and a father and she doesn’t want you going down bullet alley anymore.”

  “Aw,
shut up and tell me what’s on your mind.”

  I did.

  I sat back and told it all out and let somebody else help carry the big lid. I gave it to him in detail from seven years ago and left out nothing. I watched his face go through all the changes, watched him let the cigar burn itself out against the lip of the ashtray, watched him come alive with the crazy possibilities that were inherent in this one impossibility and when I finished I watched him sit back, light another cigar and regain his usual composure.

  When he had it back again he said, “What do you want from me?”

  “I don’t know. It could be anything.”

  Like always, Hy nodded. “Okay, Mike. When it’s ready to blow let me light the fuse. Hell, maybe we can do an interview with the about-to-be-deceased on the TV show ahead of time.”

  “No jokes, kid.”

  “Ah, cheer up. Things could be worse.”

  “I know,” I quoted, “‘So I cheered up and sure enough things got worse.’”

  Hy grinned and knocked the ash off the stogie. “Right now—anything you need?”

  “Senator Knapp—”

  “Right now his widow is at her summer place upstate in Phoenicia. That’s where the Senator was shot.”

  “You’d think she’d move out.”

  Hy shrugged gently. “That’s foolishness, in a way. It was the Senator’s favorite home and she keeps it up. The rest of the year she stays at the residence in Washington. In fact, Laura is still one of the capital’s favorite hostesses. Quite a doll.”

  “Oh?”

  He nodded sagely, the cigar at an authoritative tilt. “The Senator was all man and what he picked was all woman. They were a great combination. It’ll be a long time before you see one like that again.”

  “Tough.”

  “That’s the way it goes. Look, if you want the details, I’ll have a package run out from the morgue.”

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  Two minutes after he made his call a boy came through with a thick Manila envelope and laid it on the desk. Hy hefted it, handed it over and said: “This’ll give you all the background on the murder. It made quite a story.”

  “Later there will be more.”

  “Sure,” he agreed, “I know how you work.”

  I got up and put on my hat. “Thanks.”

  “No trouble, Mike.” He leaned back in his chair and pulled his glasses down. “Be careful, Mike. You look lousy.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “Just the same, don’t stick your neck out. Things can change in a few years. You’re not like you were. A lot of people would like to catch up with you right now.”

  I grinned back at him “I think most already have.”

  You drive up the New York Thruway, get off at Kingston and take the mountain route through some of the most beautiful country in the world. At Phoenicia you turn off to the north for five or six miles until you come to The Willows and there is the chalet nestling in the upcurve of the mountain, tended by blue spruces forty feet high and nursed by a living stream that dances its way in front of it.

  It was huge and white and very senatorial, yet there was a lived-in look that took away any pretentiousness. It was a money house and it should have been because the Senator had been a money man. He had made it himself and had spent it the way he liked and this had been a pet project.

  I went up through the gentle curve of the drive and shut off the motor in front of the house. When I touched the bell I could hear it chime inside, and after a minute of standing there, I touched it again. Still no one answered.

  Just to be sure, I came down off the open porch, skirted the house on a flagstone walk that led to the rear and followed the S turns through the shrubbery arrangement that effectively blocked off all view of the back until you were almost on top of it.

  There was a pool on one side and a tennis court on the other. Nestling between them was a green-roofed cottage with outside shower stalls that was obviously a dressing house.

  At first I thought it was deserted here too, then very faintly I heard the distance-muffled sound of music. A hedgerow screened the southeast corner of the pool and in the corner of it the multicolor top of a table umbrella showed through the interlocking branches.

  I stood there a few seconds, just looking down at her. Her hands were cradled behind her head, her eyes were closed and she was stretched out to the sun in taut repose. The top of the two-piece bathing suit was filled to overflowing with a matured ripeness that was breathtaking; the bottom half turned down well below her dimpled navel in a bikini effect, exposing the startling whiteness of untanned flesh against that which had been sun-kissed. Her breathing shallowed her stomach, then swelled it gently, and she turned slightly, stretching, pointing her toes so that a sinuous ripple of muscles played along her thighs.

  I said, “Hello.”

  Her eyes came open, focused sleepily and she smiled at me. “Oh.” Her smile broadened and it was like throwing a handful of beauty in her face. “Oh, hello.”

  Without being asked I handed her the terry-cloth robe that was thrown across the tabletop. She took it, smiled again and threw it around her shoulders. “Thank you.”

  “Isn’t it a little cold for that sort of thing?”

  “Not in the sun.” She waved to the deck chair beside her. “Please?” When I sat down she rearranged her lounge into a chair and settled back in it. “Now, Mr.—”

  “Hammer. Michael Hammer.” I tried on a smile for her too. “And you are Laura Knapp?”

  “Yes. Do I know you from somewhere, Mr. Hammer?”

  “We’ve never met.”

  “But there’s something familiar about you.”

  “I used to get in the papers a lot.”

  “Oh?” It was a full-sized question.

  “I was a private investigator at one time.”

  She frowned, studying me, her teeth white against the lushness of her lip as she nibbled at it. “There was an affair with a Washington agency at one time—”

  I nodded.

  “I remember it well. My husband was on a committee that was affected by it.” She paused. “So you’re Mike Hammer.” Her frown deepened.

  “You expected something more?”

  Her smile was mischievous. “I don’t quite know. Perhaps.”

  “I’ve been sick,” I said, grinning.

  “Yes,” she told me, “I can believe that. Now, the question is, what are you doing here? Is this part of your work?”

  There was no sense lying to her. I said, “No, but there’s a possibility you can help me.”

  “How?”

  “Do you mind going over the details of your husband’s murder, or is it too touchy a subject?”

  This time her smile took on a wry note. “You’re very blunt, Mr. Hammer. However, it’s something in the past and I’m not afraid to discuss it. You could have examined the records of the incident if you wanted to. Wouldn’t that have been easier?”

  I let my eyes travel over her and let out a laugh. “I’m glad I came now.”

  Laura Knapp laughed back. “Well, thank you.”

  “But in case you’re wondering, I did go over the clips on the case.”

  “And that wasn’t enough?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’d rather hear it firsthand.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Something has come up that might tie in your husband’s killer with another murder.”

  Laura shook her head slowly. “I don’t understand—”

  “It’s a wild supposition, that’s all, a probability I’m trying to chase down. Another man was killed with the same gun that shot your husband. Details that seemed unimportant then might have some bearing now.”

  “I see.” She came away from the chair, leaning toward me with her hands hugging her knees, a new light of interest in her eyes. “But why aren’t the police here instead of you?”

  “They will be. Right now it’s a matter of jur
isdiction. Very shortly you’ll be seeing a New York City officer, probably accompanied by the locals, who will go over the same ground. I don’t have any legal paperwork to go through so I got here first.”

  Once again she started a slow smile and let it play around her mouth a moment before she spoke. “And if I don’t talk—will you belt me one?”

  “Hell,” I said, “I never hit dames.”

  Her eyebrows went up in mock surprise.

  “I always kick ’em.”’

  The laugh she let out was pleasant and throaty and it was easy to see why she was still queen of the crazy social whirl at the capital. Age never seemed to have touched her, though she was in the loveliest early forties. Her hair shimmered with easy blond highlights, a perfect shade to go with the velvety sheen of her skin.

  “I’ll talk,” she laughed, “but do I get a reward if I do?”

  “Sure, I won’t kick you.”

  “Sounds enticing. What do you want to know?”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  She reflected a moment. It was evident that the details were there, stark as ever in her mind, though the thought didn’t bring the pain back any longer. She finally said, “It was a little after two in the morning. I heard Leo get up , but didn’t pay any attention to it since he often went down for nighttime snacks. The next thing I heard was his voice shouting at someone, then a single shot. I got up, ran downstairs and there he was on the floor, dying.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “No—he called out my name twice, then he died.” She looked down at her feet, then glanced up. “I called the police. Not immediately. I was—stunned.”

  “It happens.”

  She chewed at her lip again. “The police were inclined to—well, they were annoyed. They figured the person had time to get away.” Her eyes clouded, then drifted back in time. “But it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. No more. In fact, there could have been no time at all before I called. It’s just that I don’t remember those first few moments.”

  “Forget it anyway,” I said. “That part doesn’t count any more.”

  Laura paused, then nodded in agreement. “You’re right, of course. Well, then the police came, but there was nothing they could do. Whoever it was had gone through the French windows in the den, then had run across the yard, gone through the gate and driven away. There were no tire tracks and the footprints he left were of no consequence.”