The Girl Hunters Read online

  “Long ago, Hammer. Now you’re nothing. Just don’t mess anything up. The only reason I’m not pushing you hard is because you couldn’t take the gaff. If I thought you could, my approach would be different.”

  I stood up and pushed my chair back. “Thanks for the consideration. I appreciate it.”

  “No trouble at all.”

  “I’ll call you.”

  “Sure. I’ll be waiting.”

  The same soft rain had come in again, laying a blanket over the city. It was gentle and cool, not heavy enough yet to send the sidewalk crowd into the bars or running for cabs. It was a good rain to walk in if you weren’t in a hurry, a good rain to think in.

  So I walked to Forty-fourth and turned west toward Broadway, following a pattern from seven years ago I had forgotten, yet still existed. At the Blue Ribbon I went into the bar, had a stem of Prior’s dark beer, said hello to a few familiar faces, then went back toward the glow of lights that marked the Great White Way.

  The night man in the Hackard Building was new to me, a sleepy-looking old guy who seemed to just be waiting time out so he could leave life behind and get comfortably dead. He watched me sign the night book, hobbled after me into the elevator and let me out where I wanted without a comment, anxious for nothing more than to get back to his chair on the ground floor.

  I found my key, turned the lock and opened the door.

  I was thinking of how funny it was that some things could transcend all others, how from the far reaches of your mind something would come, an immediate reaction to an immediate stimulus. I was thinking it and falling, knowing that I had been hit, but not hard, realizing that the cigarette smoke I smelled meant but one thing, that it wasn’t mine, and if somebody were still there he had heard the elevator stop, had time to cut the lights and wait—and act. But time had not changed habit and my reaction was quicker than his act.

  Metal jarred off the back of my head and bit into my neck. Even as I fell I could sense him turn the gun around in his hand and heard the click of a hammer going back. I hit face down, totally limp, feeling the warm spill of blood seeping into my collar. The light went on and a toe touched me gently. Hands felt my pockets, but it was a professional touch and the gun was always there and I couldn’t move without being suddenly dead, and I had been dead too long already to invite it again.

  The blood saved me. The cut was just big and messy enough to make him decide it was useless to push things any further. The feet stepped back, the door opened, closed, and I heard the feet walk away.

  I got to the desk as fast as I could, fumbled out the .45, loaded it and wrenched the door open. The guy was gone. I knew he would be. He was long gone. Maybe I was lucky, because he was a real pro. He could have been standing there waiting, just in case, and his first shot would have gone right where he wanted it to. I looked at my hand and it was shaking too hard to put a bullet anywhere near a target. Besides, I had forgotten to jack a shell into the chamber. So some things did age with time, after all.

  Except luck. I still had some of that left.

  I walked around the office slowly, looking at the places that had been ravaged in a fine search for something. The shakedown had been fast, but again, in thoroughness, the marks of the complete professional were apparent. There had been no time or motion lost in the wrong direction and had I hidden anything of value that could have been tucked into an envelope, it would have been found. Two places I once considered original with me were torn open expertly, the second, and apparently last, showing a touch of annoyance.

  Even Velda’s desk had been torn open and the last thing she had written to me lay discarded on the floor, ground into a twisted sheet by a turning foot and all that was left was the heading.

  It read, Mike Darling—and that was all I could see.

  I grinned pointlessly, and this time I jacked a shell into the chamber and let the hammer ease down, then shoved the .45 into my belt on the left side. There was a sudden familiarity with the weight and the knowledge that here was life and death under my hand, a means of extermination, of quick vengeance, and of remembrance of the others who had gone down under that same gun.

  Mike Darling—

  Where was conscience when you saw those words?

  Who really were the dead: those killing, or those already killed?

  Then suddenly I felt like myself again and knew that the road back was going to be a long one alive or a short one dead and there wasn’t even time enough to count the seconds.

  Downstairs an old man would be dead in his chair because he alone could identify the person who came up here. The name in the night book would be fictitious and cleverly disguised if it had even been written there, and unless a motive were proffered, the old man’s killing would be another one of those unexplainable things that happen to lonely people or alone people who stay too close to a terroristic world and are subject to the things that can happen by night.

  I cleaned up the office so that no one could tell what had happened, washed my head and mopped up the blood spots on the floor, then went down the stairwell to the lobby.

  The old man was lying dead in his seat, his neck broken neatly by a single blow. The night book was untouched, so his deadly visitor had only faked a signing. I tore the last page out, made sure I was unobserved and walked out the door. Someplace near Eighth Avenue I ripped up the page and fed the pieces into the gutter, the filthy trickle of rainwater swirling them into the sewer at the corner.

  I waited until a cab came along showing its top light, whistled it over and told the driver where to take me. He hit the flag, pulled away from the curb and loafed his way down to the docks until he found the right place. He took his buck with another silent nod and left me there in front of Benny Joe Grissi’s bar where you could get a program for all the trouble shows if you wanted one or a kill arranged or a broad made or anything at all you wanted just so long as you could get in the place.

  But best of all, if there was anything you wanted to know about the stretch from the Battery to Grant’s Tomb that constitutes New York’s harbor facilities on either side of the river, or the associated unions from the NMU to the Teamsters, or wanted a name passed around the world, you could do it here. There was a place like it in London and Paris and Casablanca and Mexico City and Hong Kong and, if you looked hard enough, a smaller, more modified version would be in every city in the world. You just had to know where to look. And this was my town.

  At the table near the door the two guys scrutinizing the customers made their polite sign which meant stay out. Then the little one got up rather tiredly and came over and said, “We’re closing, buddy. No more customers.”

  When I didn’t say anything he looked at my face and threw a finger toward his partner. The other guy was real big, his face suddenly ugly for having been disturbed. We got eye to eye and for a second he followed the plan and said, “No trouble, pal. We don’t want trouble.”

  “Me either, kid.”

  “So blow.”

  I grinned at him, teeth all the way. “Scram.”

  My hand hit his chest as he swung and he went on his can swinging like an idiot. The little guy came in low, thinking he was pulling a good one, and I kicked his face all out of shape with one swipe and left him whimpering against the wall.

  The whole bar had turned around by then, all talk ended. You could see the excitement in their faces, the way they all thought it was funny because somebody had nearly jumped the moat—but not quite. They were waiting to see the rest, like when the big guy got up off the floor and earned his keep and the big guy was looking forward to it too.

  Out of the sudden quiet somebody said, “Ten to one on Sugar Boy,” and, just as quietly, another one said, “You’re on for five.”

  Again it was slow motion, the bar looking down at the funny little man at the end, wizened and dirty, but liking the odds, regardless of the company. Somebody laughed and said, “Pepper knows something.”

  “That I do,” the funny little ma
n said.

  But by then the guy had eased up to his feet, his face showing how much he liked the whole deal, and just for the hell of it he let me have the first swing.

  I didn’t hurt him. He let me know it and came in like I knew he would and I was back in that old world since seven years ago, tasting floor dirt and gagging on it, feeling my guts fly apart and the wild wrenching of bones sagging under even greater bones and while they laughed and yelled at the bar, the guy slowly killed me until the little bit of light was there like I knew that would be too and I gave him the foot in the crotch and, as if the world had collapsed on his shoulders, he crumpled into a vomiting heap, eyes bulging, hating, waiting for the moment of incredible belly pain to pass, and when it did, reached for his belt and pulled out a foot-long knife and it was all over, all over for everybody because I reached too and no blade argues with that great big bastard of a .45 that makes the big boom so many times, and when he took one look at my face his eyes bulged again, said he was sorry, Mac, and to deal him out, I was the wrong guy, he knew it and don’t let the boom go off. He was close for a second and knew it, then I put the gun back without letting the hammer down, stepped on the blade and broke it and told him to get up.

  The funny little guy at the bar said, “That’s fifty I got coming.”

  The one who made the bet said, “I told you Pepper knew something.”

  The big guy got up and said, “No offense, Mac, it’s my job.”

  The owner came over and said, “Like in the old days, hey Mike?”

  I said, “You ought to clue your help, Benny Joe.”

  “They need training.”

  “Not from me.”

  “You did lousy tonight. I thought Sugar Boy had you.”

  “Not when I got a rod.”

  “So who knew? All this time you go clean? I hear even Gary Moss cleaned you one night. You, even. Old, Mike.”

  Around the bar the eyes were staring at me curiously, wondering. “They don’t know me, Benny Joe.”

  The little fat man shrugged. “Who would? You got skinny. Now how about taking off.”

  “Not you, Benny Joe,” I said, “Don’t tell me you’re pushing too.”

  “Sure. Tough guys I got all the time. Old tough guys I don’t want. They always got to prove something. So with you I call the cops and you go down. So blow, okay?”

  I hadn’t even been looking at him while he talked, but now I took the time to turn around and see the little fat man, a guy I had known for fifteen years, a guy who should have known better, a guy who was on the make since he began breathing but a guy who had to learn the hard way.

  So I looked at him, slow, easy, and in his face I could see my own face and I said, “How would you like to get deballed, Benny Joe? You got nobody to stop me. You want to sing tenor for that crib you have keeping house for you?”

  Benny Joe almost did what he started out to do. The game was supposed to have ended in the Old West, the making of a reputation by one man taking down a big man. He almost took the .25 out, then he went back to being Benny Joe again and he was caught up in something too big for him. I picked the .25 out of his fingers, emptied it, handed it back and told him, “Don’t die without cause, Benny Joe.”

  The funny little guy at the bar with the new fifty said, “You don’t remember me, do you, Mike?”

  I shook my head.

  “Ten, fifteen years ago—the fire at Carrigan’s?”

  Again, I shook my head.

  “I was a newspaperman then. Bayliss Henry of the Telegram. Pepper, they call me now. You had that gun-fight with Cortez Johnson and his crazy bunch from Red Hook.”

  “That was long ago, feller.”

  “Papers said it was your first case. You had an assignment from Aliet Insurance.”

  “Yeah,” I told him, “I remember the fire. Now I remember you too. I never did get to say thanks. I go through the whole damn war without a scratch and get hit in a lousy heist and almost burn to death. So thanks!”

  “My pleasure, Mike. You got me a scoop bonus.”

  “Now what’s new?”

  “Hell, after what guys like us saw, what else could be new?”

  I drank my beer and didn’t say anything.

  Bayliss Henry grinned and asked, “What’s with you?”

  “What?” I tried to sound pretty bored.

  It didn’t take with him at all. “Come on, Big Mike. You’ve always been my favorite news story. Even when I don’t write, I follow the columns. Now you just don’t come busting in this place anymore without a reason. How long were you a bum, Mike?”

  “Seven years.”

  “Seven years ago you never would have put a gun on Sugar Boy.”

  “I didn’t need it then.”

  “Now you need it?”

  “Now I need it,” I repeated.

  Bayliss took a quick glance around. “You got no ticket for that rod, Mike.”

  I laughed, and my face froze him. “Neither had Capone. Was he worried?”

  The others had left us. The two guys were back at their table by the door watching the rain through the windows, the music from the overlighted juke strangely soft for a change, the conversation a subdued hum above it.

  A rainy night can do things like that. It can change the entire course of events. It seems to rearrange time.

  I said, “What?”

  “Jeez, Mike, why don’t you listen once? I’ve been talking for ten minutes.”

  “Sorry, kid.”

  “Okay, I know how it is. Just one thing.”

  “What?”

  “When you gonna ask it?”

  I looked at him and took a pull of the beer.

  “The big question. The one you came here to ask somebody.”

  “You think too much, Bayliss, boy.”

  He made a wry face. “I can think more. You got a big one on your mind. This is a funny place, like a thieves’ market. Just anybody doesn’t come here. It’s a special place for special purposes. You want something, don’t you?”

  I thought a moment, then nodded. “What can you supply?”

  His wrinkled face turned up to mine with a big smile. “Hell, man, for you just about anything.”

  “Know a man named Richie Cole?” I asked.

  “Sure,” he said, casually, “he had a room under mine. He was a good friend. A damn smuggler who was supposed to be small-time, but he was better than that because he had loot small smugglers never get to keep. Nice guy, though.”

  And that is how a leech line can start in New York if you know where to begin. The interweaving of events and personalities can lead you to a crossroad eventually where someone stands who, with one wave of a hand, can put you on the right trail—if he chooses to. But the interweaving is not a simple thing. It comes from years of mingling and mixing and kneading, and although the answer seems to be an almost casual thing, it really isn’t at all.

  I said, “He still live there?”

  “Naw. He got another place. But he’s no seaman.”

  “How do you know?”

  Bayliss grunted and finished his beer. “Now what seaman will keep a furnished room while he’s away?”

  “How do you know this?”

  The little guy shrugged and waved the bartender over. “Mike—I’ve been there. We spilled plenty of beer together.” He handed me a fresh brew and picked up his own. “Richie Cole was a guy who made plenty of bucks, friend, and don’t you forget it. You’d like him.”

  “Where’s his place?”

  Bayliss smiled broadly, “Come on, Mike. I said he was a friend. If he’s in trouble I’m not going to make it worse.”

  “You can’t,” I told him. “Cole’s dead.”

  Slowly, he put the beer down on the bar, turned and looked at me with his forehead wrinkling in a frown. “How?”

  “Shot.”

  “You know something, Mike? I thought something like that would happen to him. It was in the cards.”

  “Like how?”


  “I saw his guns. He had three of them in a trunk. Besides, he used me for a few things.”

  When I didn’t answer, he grinned and shrugged.

  “I’m an old-timer, Mike. Remember? Stuff I know hasn’t been taught some of the fancy boys on the papers yet. I still got connections that get me a few bucks here and there. No trouble, either. I did so many favors that now it pays off and, believe me, this retirement pay business isn’t what it looks like. So I pick up a few bucks with some well chosen directions or clever ideas. Now, Cole, I never did figure just what he was after, but he sure wanted some peculiar information.”

  “How peculiar?”

  “Well, to a thinking man like me, it was peculiar because no smuggler the size he was supposed to be would want to know what he wanted.”

  “Smart,” I told him. “Did you mention it to Cole?”

  “Sure,” Bayliss grinned, “but we’re both old at what we were doing and could read eyes. I wouldn’t pop on him.”

  “Suppose we go see his place.”

  “Suppose you tell me what he really was first.”

  Right then he was real roostery, a Bayliss Henry from years ago before retirement and top dog on the news beat, a wizened little guy, but one who wasn’t going to budge an inch. I wasn’t giving a damn for national security as the book describes it, at all, so I said, “Richie Cole was a Federal agent and he stayed alive long enough to ask me in on this.”

  He waited, watched me, then made a decisive shrug with his shoulders and pulled a cap down over his eyes. “You know what you could be getting into?” he asked me.

  “I’ve been shot before,” I told him.

  “Yeah, but you haven’t been dead before,” he said.

  The place was a brownstone building in Brooklyn that stood soldier-fashion shoulder to shoulder in place with fifty others, a row of facelike oblongs whose windows made dull, expressionless eyes of the throttled dead, the bloated tongue of a stone stoop hanging out of its gaping mouth.

  The rest wasn’t too hard, not when you’re city-born and have nothing to lose anyway. Bayliss said the room was ground-floor rear so we simply got into the back through a cellarway three houses down, crossed the slatted fences that divided one pile of garbage from another until we reached the right window, then went in. Nobody saw us. If they did, they stayed quiet about it. That’s the kind of place it was.