Complex 90 Page 8

  From the sidelines, Rickerby ordered, “Cut it off,” and hands unfastened the attachments that had made me a part of the machine.

  We waited in a small break room for the questioners to analyze their findings. Coffee and sandwiches were available in vending machines. Not five-star but welcome. Des guarded the door from out in the hall.

  Rickerby sipped coffee and his smile was genuine if weary. “You just can’t cut us any slack, can you, Mike?”

  “Sorry, kid. I did my best. You know me—when they push the right button...”

  “The press corps may push your buttons, too. They’re waiting for your story right now. How are you going to handle that?”

  “With the truth.”

  “I guess the truth will have to do,” he said. “You’re something of a celebrity again, you know. How many comebacks does this make?”

  “Who’s counting?”

  Rickerby seemed ill at ease suddenly. “Mike, I. I appreciate that you covered for my intelligence group, under that Russian questioning.”

  “For a card-carrying member, I didn’t have that much to spill.”

  “You could have given them my name.”

  “Naw. That wouldn’t happen.”

  “They might have tortured you.”

  “Art, they can’t torture you if you kill them first.”

  He laughed. Actually laughed. “You do have a point of view all your own, Mike. But do you think this could have been about something else? Other than getting intel out of you about my group? Or striking back at you because of the 1952 incident? Or the Dragon...?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like maybe someplace you came across something. On some seemingly unrelated job.”

  “Art,” I said, “don’t you think I haven’t been over that angle? Hell, man, I’ve relived every minute of every case the past few years and I can’t tie in anything. Since the Dragon, there’s been nothing related to international events.”

  He turned over a hand. “The polygraph supports what you say, and I’m confident when they break down your statement, the experts will come to the same conclusion.”

  I had a bite of ham sandwich. “Then there’s nothing more to it than what the warden of Butyrka questioned me about.”

  “Possibly. Of course... there’s that other angle.”

  “What other angle?”

  He seemed hesitant even to say it. “...Velda.”

  Velda, my secretary. Velda, my partner. Velda, my love. Velda who had worked with me at Hammer Investigations from the beginning, who carried her own P.I. ticket, who had worked vice for the NYPD; but before that, during the war, had been in the O.S.I. and the O.S.S., an impossibly young, impossibly beautiful agent, who years later got unexpectedly drawn back into the espionage game. Who for seven drunken years I had thought dead, when in reality she had been behind the Iron Curtain, desperately trying to stay alive even as she served her country, called back to service by fate and circumstance but answering that call because she was, in her way, a patriot. A patriot spending seven long years on a mission that had come out of the past to swallow her up, making my two months behind that same Iron Curtain seem like a guided tour, and when she finally came home to me, after I played St. George to the Dragon that had sought to slay her, she had told Art Rickerby and his people everything she had learned about the deadliest espionage ring on earth, and in Moscow thirty men died and in the East Zone of Berlin five more disappeared and the tremors were felt across the face of the globe.

  Rickerby’s eyes were unblinking. “Nothing small about what Velda did over there, Mike. And her experience was similar to yours.”

  “She had it so much tougher.”

  “Well? What about it?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t buy a connection. That warden, that guy Zharkov, when he was going over my past sins, never mentioned her. There’s been a regime change since then. Hell, what she did may have helped pave the way for it.”

  His eyebrows were up. “I doubt they think she’s due a medal.”

  “Come on, Art, you know these political affairs wash themselves out. When they’re over, they’re over. And anyway, when this Jasper thing came up, she was out of town. For two months before I left, she’d been down in Miami on the Dixon-Mays case. Cummings Insurance hired us directly to get inside the thing.”

  Rickerby was nodding. “I know about that. We talked to her a number of times while you were M.I.A. She handled herself well, as you might expect. and she seems to have run your agency just fine without you around.”

  “If that’s supposed to be a needle, forget it. Nobody has a higher opinion of Velda’s abilities than me.”

  Des Casey stuck his head in the break room and called Rickerby out into the hall. Minutes later, the intelligence chief returned to say, “They’re going to spring you.”

  “Nice of them.”

  “The press has been asked to play it down. They’ll be given a condensed, softened version of your statement and we’ll try to minimize the situation. You’ll be fully briefed before you go out there. On your own, you’ll have to be careful of freelance writers going for the sensational, and stay on your toes with the regular press. They’ve okayed your sergeant friend to accompany you until we think you’re clear to go back to whatever your version of a normal life might be. In the meantime, and this is not negotiable, a few security men from Special Sections will be spotted around.”

  I frowned. “Will they know the chance they’re taking? A tail to me means one thing, Art, and I’m not going to ask for identification if somebody moves the wrong way.”

  Rickerby smiled faintly and nodded. “Please, Mike. They’ve been around, too.”

  “It’ll be your headache, buddy. Who’s my contact?”

  “Me. Any time at all. At the usual stand.”

  That was an address as nondescript as Rickerby himself— Peerless Brokers on Broadway.

  “Am I still in business, Art?”

  “Certainly,” he said. “Even Mike Hammer has to make a living. We’d hate for you to wind up on welfare. Besides, all this publicity should be good for business.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I already have a case.”

  That surprised him. “What could that be, after a two-month hiatus?”

  “This case, Art. This case right here.”

  “There is no case. There’s just you trying to stay alive if the K.G.B. comes calling.”

  I shook my head. “That’s just the sidebar. The headline story is the murders.”

  “What murders?”

  “Of a great guy named Ralph Marley here in America, and a lovely young Russian with a memorable smile called Zora Tabakova.”

  Rickerby was looking at me the way a traffic cop looks at a bad accident. “You shot Marley’s killer and sent him hurtling twelve stories to the pavement. And how are you going to avenge that little translator? Didn’t you already kill forty-five goddamn Reds?”

  “It’s a start,” I allowed.

  * * *

  I wasn’t exactly unknown to the members of the Fourth Estate. They read the government handouts diligently but with a grain of salt, knowing there was more to the story but willing to cooperate from a security standpoint. Too many of them gave me that peculiar stare, wondering when the next phase would begin, their minds automatically formulating a lead or an obit. Most were on my side already and I caught the half-hidden “see-you-later” gestures they passed my way.

  My own statement only verified the handouts, suggesting that the fault lay with the Russian authorities who had abducted me and denied me contact with the American embassy and who therefore took their chances should I choose to seek my God-given freedom.

  I was now back on native soil (I reminded them) and under the protection of the U.S. Government, and any official or non-official action by the Soviet government to take recourse would be looked upon as an unfriendly act. In the meantime, the proper agencies would investigate thoroughly and give a detailed report to Congress, a
nd the Soviet delegation.

  No mention was made of Sergeant Desmond Casey or the details of the events I’d outlined. The lid was on and on tight. I walked out with Casey, who was now in street clothes, and took the north corridor to where they had a car waiting, and drove out to the airport.

  An hour and a half later, I was in New York telling a cabbie to take me to my office, then sitting back wearing a big shit-eating grin as I glanced at the brawny Negro sergeant beside me.

  Both of us had spotted the squat guy in the gray suit who took the same shuttle plane we did, and right now was fifty yards behind us in another taxi.

  But I was going to let him come to me.

  CHAPTER SIX

  By the time we hit the East Side Drive, we had it planned out.

  I gave the cabbie a slightly circuitous route, just to make sure our tail was sticking with us. Then I directed him to a corner near a hotel where I knew cabs would be waiting.

  We pulled over and Des Casey climbed out, making an elaborate show out of saying so long, and heading into the hotel. I went on alone in the cab. Behind me, the squat guy’s hack had paused half a block behind, and now took up my tail, apparently secure in the cover the other cabs were lending.

  But it was a damn near sure bet our squat pal’s hackie didn’t notice Casey slip back out and catch a cab behind him, falling in line on our little caravan.

  My cabbie, a Puerto Rican in his twenties, pulled up in front of the Hackard Building. I leaned up and passed him a ten. His grin was blazing white in his brown face.

  “You’re Mike Hammer, ain’t you, man?”

  “I used to be,” I admitted. “Keep it.”

  “I should have you sign it, man. Frame the damn thing.”

  “Naw. Buy the baby some grub.”

  “How you know I’m a new papa, man?”

  Little knitted blue baby shoes were hanging off his rear-view mirror.

  “I’m a detective,” I said.

  My office was on the eighth floor of the old building, which had seen better days and was overdue a renovation. I had that odd feeling you get when you return to the familiar after a long while away—a mingling of comfort and apprehension. As I stood in the lobby waiting for the elevator doors to open, I thought about how she was up there, waiting for me, business as usual. And yet there was nothing about Velda that was “usual.”

  It had been a long, long time away from her, a hungry time, often a desperate time, wondering if the odds were so long that seeing her even once more was too much to dare hope for...

  At 808, I turned the knob gently and eased the door open, stepped inside, and closed it silently. The outer office was empty, but the roses I’d had sent to her were in a vase on her desk. I smiled.

  My inner office door was open and I found her standing behind my desk, a hand on my chair as if on my shoulder, her back to me, staring out the window into a blazing sunset that was pulling a dark curtain over the city. The black velvet of her hair made a beautiful torrent spilling down over her shoulders, filtering the fading light. She wore a cream-colored silk blouse separated from a dark brown skirt by a wide tan belt, such a simple ensemble and yet they served so well the strength and loveliness of a tall, full-breasted body reflected in the width of her shoulders, the narrowness of her waist, and the athletic grace of her posture.

  I said, “Hello, Velda,” and she turned around slowly, her deep brown eyes wide for a bare instant, a smile taut with concern blossoming into one of pure joy in the microsecond that she saw I was really there and alive and smiling at her.

  “Mike...”

  She didn’t have to say anything more. That was enough. She came to me and I came to her and she was in my arms, one big bundle of love that exploded against me in tears and sobs of pleasure and relief, her mouth searching for mine in a frenzy of passion.

  I held her away and looked at her, not able to do anything more than give her a silly grin. “You’re slipping. I didn’t think anybody could sneak up on you.”

  Her full, sensuous mouth managed to go pixie-ish in a smile as she lifted her right hand and let me glimpse the little .32 nestled in her lady-like palm.

  I laughed and said, “It’s great to be home, kid.”

  “Oh, Mike, you idiot. You great big jerk. How long have you been in country?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “And you didn’t call?”

  “I was under a sort of house arrest. A little hotel called the Pentagon. I think it’s one of the Hilton chain.”

  “Jokes. Your face...” She touched it here, and here, and there. “Some new scars... That’s a new trenchcoat, too, isn’t it? What, Burberry? And a new suit?”

  “Yeah. They decked me out before they showed me off to the press. What I turned up in wasn’t that presentable.”

  “I’m so glad you’re in one piece.”

  “Why, didn’t you think I’d make it?”

  Velda wiped her eyes with the side of a fist and let a laugh take over. “I knew you’d make it. I bet on you. Literally. There are people who’re going to owe me money tomorrow.”

  “I’m glad somebody had confidence in me.”

  “Couldn’t you have called? Couldn’t you have written? No. I’m sorry. Forget I said that. I’m no one to talk.”

  Her jaunt behind the Iron Curtain had lasted seven years, after all.

  “Just getting those flowers ordered,” I said, “was a small miracle.”

  “You didn’t sign the card.”

  “No. Everything’s top secret where they had me.”

  We walked out into the outer office, I hung up my hat and trenchcoat, and we sat on the couch.

  I said, “I just couldn’t risk contact while I was over there, kitten. I didn’t want my location pinpointed. They would have expected that and had the mail covered, and phones were out of the question. That damn country is a mix of peasantry out of the middle ages and technology out of science fiction. No, I wasn’t about to take any chances.”

  Velda nodded. “I know. And I understood. At least we knew you were alive, from the stories coming out of TASS and Pravda. I’ve saved the clippings.”

  “Great. Make a scrapbook out of them and give them to me for Christmas in thirty years.”

  She was sitting sideways on the couch, her skirt above her knees. Her legs were long and muscular and tan. I was a damn fool for ever looking at any other woman.

  “And now,” she said, eyebrows high, “can you please tell me all about it before I bust?”

  I pulled her in close to me and nuzzled the side of her neck. “Why don’t I bust you,” I whispered. “In the mouth...” I put a hand on a full, silk-covered breast and the nub of a nipple poked back at me. “Or why don’t you bust me...”

  She laughed lightly, pushed me away, and leaned her head back with that playful superiority a lovely woman can wield over a guy. “Later, Tarzan. Tell me the story first.”

  “I’ll buy you a paper. I gave a press conference and it should be in the late edition.”

  “I’ll take the uncensored version, if you don’t mind.”

  It took half an hour to tell the story, though I did censor aspects having to do with the late Zora. We had an understanding, Velda and I—I could sow wild oats until I was ready to marry her, as long as I didn’t bring home any big diseases or little bastards.

  Anyway, we went through half a pot of coffee as I gave her chapter and verse, and she was narrow-eyed and intense, as she took it in, asking only occasional pertinent questions when I skipped or blurred over something.

  When I finished, she immediately pointed out the incongruity of it all.

  “A capture, an escape, a chase,” she said. “And the K.G.B., or anyway their masters, risked the kind of international hell that would be stirred up, just to ask you a few questions about Art Rickerby’s espionage group?”

  “There may have been a revenge angle. I took out a hell of a lot of their people, back in ’52.”

  “Oh, I remember...”
<
br />   She should.

  She had been there.

  Stark naked, hangingfrom the rafters by a rope that tore at her wrists as her lovely body twisted slowly in a lantern’s light, and the guy in the porkpie had whipped her with a knotted rope, drooling at her in his perverse passion, unaware I was nearby, tommy gun at the ready, and when I let him have it, I made sure the chopper chopped that arm off first so it could drop on the floor in a splash of gore and he could have a goddamn good look at it before I let him have a bellyful of lead.

  “Mike—are you all right?” she asked, touching my arm. “I lost you there for a minute.”

  “I’m fine, kitten. It’s just. my little Russian tour stirred some things up.”

  Her eyes narrowed; they had an almost Asian cast. “You think they went to the trouble of capturing you to even the books for something that happened over ten years ago? That’s a long time to wait for revenge.”

  “Yeah, me, I’m not one of these dish-best-served-cold types. I like it served up hot and right away. But I’m not a Russian. Anyway, there’s something much more recent.”

  Now her eyes widened. “Loose ends from when I was over there?”

  “Possibly. And there’s the Dragon—I took out the woman and turned the man over to Rickerby, and the K.G.B. was out one top execution team.”

  He’d been big, the male half of the Dragon team, a big, big, burly guy with Apache cheekbones, thick black eyebrows over Slavic-cast eyes, a cruel slash of a mouth, and we’d fought in that barn to the near death, on top of each other like rutting beasts only we weren’t creating life, we were trying to end it, his teeth tearing at me, massive fists pounding, butting my head with his, but in the end I did the smashing and he was a bloody pulp on the straw-flecked floor as I went looking around until I found a nice big axe that I was about to bury in his belly until my conscience got the better of me—I had promised to turn him over alive, to Art Rickerby, who wanted this half a Dragon to suffer a thousand deaths before three thousand volts finished the job. To each his own. So I grabbed a twenty-penny nail and a ball-peen hammer off a workbench and 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 it dimpled the skin, pinning his hand so tight to the wooden floor he’d never get loose, not without some painful help. Better than handcuffs. And then I’d called Art.