The Girl Hunters Read online

  In a finger-thick beam of the pencil flash I picked out the sofa bed, an inexpensive contour chair, a dresser and a desk. For a furnished room it had a personal touch that fitted in with what Bayliss suggested. There were times when Richie Cole had desired a few more of the creature comforts than he could normally expect in a neighborhood like this.

  There were a few clothes in the closet; a military raincoat, heavy dungaree jacket and rough-textured shirts. An old pair of hip boots and worn high shoes were in one corner. The dresser held changes of underwear and a few sports shirts, but nothing that would suggest that Cole was anything he didn’t claim to be.

  It was in the desk that I found the answer. To anyone else it would have meant nothing, but to me it was an answer. A terribly cold kind of answer that seemed to come at me like a cloud that could squeeze and tear until I thought I was going to burst wide open.

  Cole had kept a simple, inexpensive photo album. There were the usual pictures of everything from the Focking Distillery to the San Francisco Bridge with Cole and girls and other guys and girls and just girls alone the way a thousand other seamen try to maintain a visual semblance of life.

  But it was in the first few pages of the album that the fist hit me in the gut because there was Cole a long time ago sitting at a table in a bar with some RAF types in the background and a couple of American GI’s from the 8th Air Force on one side and with Richie Cole was Velda.

  Beautiful, raven hair in a long pageboy, her breasts swelling tautly against the sleeveless gown, threatening to free themselves. Her lips were wet with an almost deliberate gesture and her smile was purposely designing. One of the GIs was looking at her with obvious admiration.

  Bayliss whispered, “What’d you say, Mike?”

  I shook my head and flipped a page over. “Nothing.”

  She was there again, and a few pages further on. Once they were standing outside a pub, posing with a soldier and a WREN, and in another they stood beside the bombed-out ruins of a building with the same soldier, but a different girl.

  There was nothing contrived about the album. Those pictures had been there a long time. So had the letters. Six of them dated in 1944, addressed to Cole at a P.O. box in New York, and although they were innocuous enough in content, showed a long-standing familiarity between the two of them. And there was Velda’s name, the funny “V” she made, the green ink she always used and, although I hadn’t even known her then, I was hating Cole so hard it hurt. I was glad he was dead but wished I could have killed him, then I took a fat breath, held it once and let it out slowly and it wasn’t so bad any more.

  I felt Bayliss touch my arm and he said, “You okay, Mike?”

  “Sure.”

  “You find anything?”

  “Nothing important.”

  He grunted under his breath. “You’re full of crap.”

  “A specialty of mine,” I agreed. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “What about those guns? He had a trunk some place.”

  “We don’t need them. Let’s go.”

  “So you found something. You could satisfy my curiosity.”

  “Okay,” I told him, “Cole and I had a mutual friend.”

  “It means something?”

  “It might. Now move.”

  He went out first, then me, and I let the window down. We took the same route back, going over the fences where we had crossed earlier, me boosting Bayliss up then following him. I was on top of the last one when I felt the sudden jar of wood beside my hand, then a tug at my coat between my arm and rib cage and the instinct and reaction grabbed me again and I fell on top of Bayliss while I hauled the .45 out and, without even knowing where the silenced shots were coming from, I let loose with a tremendous blast of that fat musket that tore the night wide open with a rolling thunder that let the world know the pigeon was alive and had teeth.

  From a distance came a clattering of cans, of feet, then windows slammed open and voices started yelling and the two of us got out fast. We were following the same path of the one who had followed us, but his start was too great. Taillights were already diminishing down the street and in another few minutes a prowl car would be turning the corner.

  We didn’t wait for it.

  Six blocks over we picked up a cab, drove to Ed Dailey’s bar and got out. I didn’t have to explain a thing to Bayliss. He had been through it all too often before. He was shaking all over and couldn’t seem to stop swallowing. He had two double ryes before he looked at me with a peculiar expression and said softly, “Jeez, I’ll never learn to keep my mouth shut.”

  Peerage Brokers could have been anything. The desks and chairs and filing cabinets and typewriters represented nothing, yet represented everything. Only the gray man in the glasses sitting alone in the corner drinking coffee represented something.

  Art Rickerby said, “Now?” and I knew what he meant.

  I shook my head. He looked at me silently a moment, then sipped at the coffee container again. He knew how to wait, this one. He wasn’t in a hurry now, not rushing to prevent something. He was simply waiting for a moment of vengeance because the thing was done and sooner or later time would be on his side.

  I said, “Did you know Richie pretty well?”

  “I think so.”

  “Did he have a social life?”

  For a moment his face clouded over, then inquisitiveness replaced anger and he put the coffee container down for a reason, to turn his head away. “You’d better explain.”

  “Like girls,” I said.

  When he turned back he was expressionless again. “Richie had been married,” he told me. “In 1949 his wife died of cancer.”

  “Oh? How long did he know her?”

  “They grew up together.”

  “Children?”

  “No. Both Richie and Ann knew about the cancer. They married after the war anyway but didn’t want to leave any children a difficult burden.”

  “How about before that?”

  “I understood they were both pretty true to each other.”

  “Even during the war?”

  Again there was silent questioning in his eyes. “What are you getting at, Mike?”

  “What was Richie during the war?”

  The thought went through many channels before it was properly classified. Art said, “A minor O.S.I. agent. He was a Captain then based in England. With mutual understanding, I never asked, nor did he offer, the kind of work he did.”

  “Let’s get back to the girls.”

  “He was no virgin, if that’s what you mean.”

  He knew he reached me with that one but didn’t know why. I could feel myself tighten up and had to relax deliberately before I could speak to him again.

  “Who did he go with when he was here? When he wasn’t on a job.”

  Rickerby frowned and touched his glasses with an impatient gesture. “There were—several girls. I really never inquired. After Ann’s death—well, it was none of my business, really.”

  “But you knew them?”

  He nodded, watching me closely. Once more he thought quickly, then decided. “There was Greta King, a stewardess with American Airlines that he would see occasionally. And there was Pat Bender over at the Craig House. She’s a manicurist there and they had been friends for years. Her brother, Lester, served with Richie but was killed just before the war ended.”

  “It doesn’t sound like he had much fun.”

  “He didn’t look for fun. Ann’s dying took that out of him. All he wanted was an assignment that would keep him busy. In fact, he rarely ever got to see Alex Bird, and if—”

  “Who’s he?” I interrupted.

  “Alex, Lester and Richie were part of a team throughout the war. They were great friends in addition to being experts in their work. Lester got killed, Alex bought a chicken farm in Marlboro, New York, and Richie stayed in the service. When Alex went civilian he and Richie sort of lost communication. You know the code in this work—no friends, no relatives—
it’s a lonely life.”

  When he paused I said, “That’s all?”

  Once again, he fiddled with his glasses, a small flicker of annoyance showing in his eyes. “No. There was someone else he used to see on occasions. Not often, but he used to look forward to the visit.”

  My voice didn’t sound right when I asked, “Serious?”

  “I—don’t think so. It didn’t happen often enough and generally it was just a supper engagement. It was an old friend, I think.”

  “You couldn’t recall the name?”

  “It was never mentioned. I never pried into his business.”

  “Maybe it’s about time.”

  Rickerby nodded sagely. “It’s about time for you to tell me a few things too.”

  “I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”

  “True.” He looked at me sharply and waited.

  “If the information isn’t classified, find out what he really did during the war, who he worked with and who he knew.”

  For several seconds he ran the thought through his mental file, then: “You think it goes back that far?”

  “Maybe.” I wrote my number down on a memo pad, ripped off the page and handed it to him. “My office. I’ll be using it from now on.”

  He looked at it, memorized it and threw it down. I grinned, told him so-long and left.

  Over in the west Forties I got a room in a small hotel, got a box, paper and heavy cord from the desk clerk, wrapped my .45 up, addressed it to myself at the office with a buck’s worth of stamps and dropped it in the outgoing mail, then sacked out until it was almost noon in a big new tomorrow.

  Maybe I still had that look because they thought I was another cop. Nobody wanted to talk, and if they had, there would have been little they could have said. One garrulous old broad said she saw a couple of men in the back court and later a third. No, she didn’t know what they were up to and didn’t care as long as they weren’t in her yard. She heard the shot and would show me the place, only she didn’t know why I couldn’t work with the rest of the cops instead of bothering everybody all over again.

  I agreed with her, thanked her and let her take me to where I almost had it going over the fence. When she left, wheezing and muttering, I found where the bullet had torn through the slats and jumped the fence, and dug it out of the two-by-four frame in the section on the other side of the yard. There was still enough of it to show the rifling marks, so I dropped it in my pocket and went back to the street.

  Two blocks away I waved down a cab and got in. Then I felt the seven years, and the first time back I had to play it hard and almost stupid enough to get killed. There was a time when I never would have missed with the .45, but now I was happy to make a noise with it big enough to start somebody running. For a minute I felt skinny and shrunken inside the suit and cursed silently to myself.

  If she was alive, I was going to have to do better than I was doing now. Time, damn it. There wasn’t any. It was like when the guy in the porkpie hat had her strung from the rafters and the whip in his hand had stripped her naked flesh with bright red welts, the force of each lash stroke making her spin so that the lush beauty of her body and the deep-space blackness of her hair and the wide sweep of her breasts made an obscene kaleidoscope and then I shot his arm off with the tommy gun and it dropped with a wet thud in the puddle of clothes around her feet like a pagan sacrifice and while he was dying I killed the rest of them, all of them, twenty of them, wasn’t it? And they called me those terrible names, the judge and the jury did.

  Damn. Enough.

  CHAPTER 7

  The body was gone, but the police weren’t. The two detectives interrogating Nat beside the elevators were patiently listening to everything he said, scanning the night book one held open. I walked over, nodded and said, “Morning, Nat.”

  Nat’s eyes gave me a half-scared, half-surprised look followed by a shrug that meant it was all out of his hands.

  “Hello, Mike.” He turned to the cop with the night book. “This is Mr. Hammer. In 808.”

  “Oh?” The cop made me in two seconds. “Mike Hammer. Didn’t think you were still around.”

  “I just got back.”

  His eyes went up and down, then steadied on my face. He could read all the signs, every one of them. “Yeah,” he said sarcastically. “Were you here last night?”

  “Not me, buddy. I was out on the town with a friend.”

  The pencil came into his hand automatically. “Would you like to—”

  “No trouble. Bayliss Henry, an old reporter. I think he lives—”

  He put the pencil away with a bored air. “I know where Bayliss lives.”

  “Good,” I said. “What’s the kick here?”

  Before the pair could tell him to shut up, Nat blurted, “Mike—it was old Morris Fleming. He got killed.”

  I played it square as I could. “Morris Fleming?”

  “Night man, Mike. He started working here after—you left.”

  The cop waved him down. “Somebody broke his neck.”

  “What for?”

  He held up the book. Ordinarily he never would have answered, but I had been around too long in the same business. “He could have been identified. He wanted in the easy way so he signed the book, killed the old man later and ripped the page out when he left.” He let me think it over and added, “Got it figured yet?”

  “You don’t kill for fun. Who’s dead upstairs?”

  Both of them threw a look back and forth and stared at me again. “Clever boy.”

  “Well?”

  “No bodies. No reported robberies. No signs of forcible entry. You’re one of the last ones in. Maybe you’d better check your office.”

  “I’ll do that,” I told him.

  But I didn’t have to bother. My office had already been checked. Again. The door was open, the furniture pushed around, and in my chair behind the desk was Pat, his face cold and demanding, his hands playing with the box of .45 shells he had found in the niche in the desk.

  Facing him with her back to me, the light from the window making a silvery halo around the yellow of her hair was Laura Knapp.

  I said, “Having fun?”

  Laura turned quickly, saw me and a smile made her mouth beautiful. “Mike!”

  “Now how did you get here?”

  She took my hand, held it tightly a moment with a grin of pleasure and let me perch on the end of the desk. “Captain Chambers asked me to.” She turned and smiled at Pat, but the smile was lost on him. “He came to see me not long after you did.”

  “I told you that would happen.”

  “It seems that since you showed some interest in me he did too, so we just reviewed all—the details of what happened—to Leo.” Her smile faded then, her eyes seeming to reflect the hurt she felt.

  “What’s the matter, Pat, don’t you keep files any more?”

  “Shut up.”

  “The manual says to be nice to the public.” I reached over and picked up the box of .45’s. “Good thing you didn’t find the gun.”

  “You’re damn right. You’d be up on a Sullivan charge right now.”

  “How’d you get in, Pat?”

  “It wasn’t too hard. I know the same tricks you do. And don’t get snotty.” He flipped a paper out of his pocket and tossed it on the desk. “A warrant, mister. When I heard there was a kill in this particular building I took this out first thing.”

  I laughed at the rage in his face and rubbed it in a little. “Find what you were looking for?”

  Slowly, he got up and walked around the desk, and though he stood there watching me it was to Laura that he spoke. “If you don’t mind, Mrs. Knapp, wait out in the other room. And close the door.”

  She looked at him, puzzled, so I nodded to her and she stood up with a worried frown creasing her eyes and walked out. The door made a tiny snick as it closed and we had the place all to ourselves. Pat’s face was still streaked with anger, but there were other things in his eyes this t
ime. “I’m fed up, Mike. You’d just better talk.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  The coldness took all the anger away from his face now. “All right, I’ll tell you the alternative. You’re trying to do something. Time is running against you. Don’t give me any crap because I know you better than you know yourself. This isn’t the first time something like this cropped up. You pull your connections on me, you try to play it smart—okay—I’ll make time run out on you. I’ll use every damn regulation I know to harass you to death. I’ll keep a tail on you all day, and every time you spit I’ll have your ass hauled into the office. I’ll hold you on every pretext possible and if it comes to doing a little high-class framing I can do that too.”

  Pat wasn’t lying. Like he knew me, I knew him. He was real ready to do everything he said and time was one thing I didn’t have enough of. I got up and walked around the desk to my chair and sat down again. I pulled out the desk drawer, stowed the .45’s back in the niche without trying to be smug about what I did with the gun. Then I sat there groping back into seven years, knowing that instinct went only so far, realizing that there was no time to relearn and that every line had to be straight across the corners.

  I said, “Okay, Pat. Anything you want. But first a favor.”

  “No favors.”

  “It’s not exactly a favor. It’s an or else.” I felt my face go as cold as his was. “Whether you like it or not I’m ready to take my chances.”

  He didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He was ready to throw his fist at my face again and would have, only he was too far away. Little by little he relaxed until he could speak, then all those years of being a cop took over and he shrugged, but he wasn’t fooling me any. “What is it?”

  “Nothing I couldn’t do if I had the time. It’s all a matter of public record.”

  He glanced at me shrewdly and waited.

  “Look up Velda’s P.I. license.”