Survival... ZERO! mh-11 Read online

  "How do we clear any messages?"

  "Let's use the office. I'll keep the tape recorder on and we can bleep in any cross information." Both of us carried electronic units that could activate the tape in either direction so it wasn't necessary to have someone in the office all the time.

  "Where are you going to be, Mike?"

  "Seeing what an old enemy is up to."

  "Woody Ballinger?"

  '"Uh-huh."

  "He can't afford to lose any more," Velda said.

  "Neither can I, sugar," I said.

  "What brings you back to him again?"

  All I could think of was Heidi Anders' compact. What she had in it put her life on the line. I said, "Somebody's not after money. Woody used to keep all his business in his head. Maybe he put some of it in his wallet this time. A smart dip could have spotted it and tried a little blackmail."

  But first I had to be sure.

  They wouldn’t talk to the cops. To a uniform or a badge they were deaf, dumb and blind, but I wasn't department material and they could read it in my face. I was one of them, living on the perimeter of normalcy and the ax I was grinding was a personal one because Lippy had been my friend and they had tried to knock me off too.

  The redheaded whore called Skippy who had her crib across the back court from Lippy had seen them come out the window, two guys in dark suits she could tell didn't come from the neighborhood. They had jumped the fence and gone through the alley between her place and the dry cleaner's. No, she didn't see their faces, but the light hit one and she knew he was partially bald, but not too old because he could run too fast. She took the twenty I gave her since the excitement scared off the John she had in the pad and it was too late to turn another trick.

  Old lady Gostovitch had seen them go right past her when she was coming in from her nightly bash at the gin mill, but her eyes were bad and she was too bagged to make their faces. All she could tell me was that they were in dark suits, climbed into a car and drove away. When she crunched the bill I handed her in her fist she added one more thing.

  Between wheezes she said, "One wore them heel things."

  "What heel things?"

  "Clickers."

  "Clickers?"

  "Clickers. Like kids got, y'know?"

  "No, I don't."

  "Sheee-it, boy. They drag 'em over the floor and scratch everything up. Like dancers got on their shoes, y'know?"

  "Metal taps?"

  "So I call 'em clickers. Only on his heels. Maybe I don't see so good no more, but I hear. Boy, I hear everything. I even hear the cat pissin'. Thanks for the scratch." She looked down at the bill in her hand. "How much is it?"

  "Ten bucks."

  "Maybe I'll buy glasses." She looked up and gave me a gummy smile.

  I said, "How many?"

  "Enough to get slopped. Makes me feel young again, y'know?" She spit on the sidewalk and hunched her shabby coat around her shoulders, her eyes peering at me. "Sure, you know. Boy like you knows too damn much."

  When she had shuffled off I started toward the corner, then stopped midblock to watch a convoy of Army trucks

  ramble by, escorted by a pair of prowl cars with their flashers on, each giving a low growl of their sirens at the intersections as they went through the red lights. There were four jeeps and thirty-eight trucks, each filled with suddenly activated and annoyed-looking National Guardsmen. It hadn't been since the summer encampments that the city had seen one of these processions. I was wondering what excuse they were going to give the public if the public bothered to ask.

  Overhead a cool northeast wind suddenly whistled through the TV antennas on the rooftops and swirled down into the street, picking up dust and papers along the curbs and skittering them along the sidewalks. Hell, I thought, it's going to rain again. Maybe it's better that •way. People don't like to come out in the rain and if they don't they can't ask questions.

  Someplace Velda was roaming around the area doing the same thing I was doing only from a different direction and she could do it just as fast. And right now tune was our enemy.

  I shoved the bar door open and inched past the uglies with their scrapes, the virgin-hair muttonchops and shoulder-length curls. They were the boys. The girls weren't any better. They smelled better, except the smell was artificial and I wondered if it were to enhance the little they had or cover up what they lacked. One idiot almost started to lip me until I squeezed his arm a little bit, then he whited out and let me go by with a sick grin his old man should have seen if he had chopped him in the mouth ten years ago when there was still hope for him.

  Velda had called to say she had canvassed the neighborhood with no results so she was going back into the barnacle she had rented and keep a watch on Lippy's old apartment.

  The other call was from Renée Talmage. "Mr. Tape Recorder," she said, "please tell Mr. Hammer that I am going to be waiting ever so impatiently for him in Dewey Wong's restaurant on Fifty-eighth Street, snuggled against the wall close to the window where all those lovely men will know I'm waiting for someone and perhaps not try to pick me up. And Mr. Tape Recorder, tell him that Dewey says he will stay open very late just to make sure Mr. Hammer gets here."

  I hung up and looked at my watch. It was one twenty-five. Outside the phone booth the uglies were making time with the idiots. In New York, the uglies are the longhaired idiot guys. The idiots are the short-haired ugly

  girls. It isn't easy to tell one from the other. One ugly didn't realize it, but he was kissing another ugly. In a way he was lucky. The idiot he was with was even uglier.

  So I said the hell with it and grabbed a cab up to Dewey Wong's and got around the corner of the bar, sat down next to her and told beautiful Janie who was filling in for her old man behind the bar to bring me a rye and ginger.

  "Pretty isn't she?" Renée asked.

  "A mouth waiting to be kissed," I said.

  "Dewey seems pretty capable."

  "Ever since he's been colonialized," I told her.

  "Colonialize me," Renée said. A little half laugh played around her mouth and her eyes were full of sparkles.

  "Now?"

  She lifted her glass in a challenge, the big black pupils inside all those gold flecks watching me closely. Carelessly, she said, "Why not?"

  I let my hand run up the bare leg that was crossed over the other one until my fingers had the top of her bikini pants under their tips and said, "Ready?"

  Her glass went back to the bar top very slowly, every movement deliberate and slow to make sure nobody was watching. Even the smile was unsure of itself. "You're crazy, Mike."

  "I could have told you that."

  "Take your hand out of my pants."

  "I'm not done yet," I said. I took a drink of my highball. Janie grinned and turned away to serve another customer. At least she knew what was happening.

  Almost pathetically, Renée said, "Please?"

  "You wanted to be colonialized," I told her.

  "But not in front of all these people."

  "Tough," I said. She felt my fingers curling around that silly little hem they build into bikini pants. I wondered what color they were.

  "I know a better place to find out," Renée told me.

  I'm an old soldier. I grew up watching Georgia Sothern, Gypsy Rose Lee, Ann Corio and the rest on the stage of the old Apollo and Eltinge theaters and got my lessons in basic female anatomy from the best of them. There's never been a shape or size I couldn't slam into one category or another no matter what part I was looking at and get clinical about it at the same time. Women are women. The female counterpart. They're supposed to be

  something special, intelligent, loving, pneumatic, sexy as hell, incredibly beautiful, with that little thing they're instinctively supposed to do that can make a man turn inside out. Hardly any fit the pattern. Oh, I knew some.

  Now I knew another.

  She just stood there in the middle of the room and let the funny little smile do the teasing while she unzipped s
lowly and let the dress fall in a heap around her feet.

  "Better?" Renée asked.

  I nodded. But casually, because she still hadn't caught up to Georgia Sothern. That one could really take off her clothes. She used to do it to "Hold that Tiger," but that music would sound silly these days. "You're doing fine," I told her.

  "Can I have a drink?"

  I tasted my own highball and loosened my tie. "If that's what you need to uninhibit yourself, baby, the bar's right behind you."

  She lifted herself on tiptoe, nothing on but a flesh-colored bra and bikini pants with other colors dominating the sheer mesh, and grinned at me like she was running all the plays. "Like?"

  "I like," I said.

  She hooked her thumb in the top of those bikini pants and pulled them down a bare inch. A little tumble of dark hair spilled out over the top. "Like?" Her voice was provocatively inquisitive.

  "I like," I said again.

  She took off her bra. She spilled out there too, full and high, heavy breasted with round, square-tipped, demanding nipples emerging from their even darker cores.

  "Still like?" she asked. I watched her eyes drift down me, all stretched out on my own damn couch. For a second she was puzzled.

  I said, "I'm a leg man, kid."

  Then she grinned again and took off those flesh-colored bikini pants.

  Naked women are pretty. Damn, but they're pretty. Any size, any shape you look, and when they're built like all those pinups we used to have on the inside of locker doors and the kind they plaster up in garages to keep your mind off the repair bills, they can con you into anything.

  And Renée knew what I was thinking. "For real?" she asked.

  "You must be one hell of a business asset," I said.

  "William never saw me like this."

  "Why not?"

  She twirled around, picked the drinks off the bar and handed me another one. "He never put his hands inside my pants," she said.

  "Stop being vulgar," I told her.

  "Ho . . . yeah. Keep talking, fingers."

  "I barely touched you."

  "Except in the right spot," Renée said.

  "Sorry about that."

  "Yes, you are. Little scarred feathers extending from your wrist, delicate, woman-killing tentacles that touch and excite. Look at me, totally bare and throwing it at you, and you lying there with a drink in your hand and all you have off is your top collar button because your tie is too tight."

  "Like?" I said.

  "Like, you dumbhead," Renée smiled. "I often wondered what I could do to a nasty slob like you." She took a big sip of her drink, put it back on the bar and walked toward me, the fingers of her hand spread out over the delicious swell of those sleek, wide hips.

  "I think you're impotent," she said.

  The laugh stayed behind my lips. I put my drink down and looked at her, big and naked and lovely, all nice high titties and a dark curly snatch, her smile almost a sneer, and I said very softly, "Oh, brother."

  "What?"

  "In the Army we said you were ready to be rued, screwed, blued and tattooed."

  "You're not doing anything."

  "I'm wondering why I should."

  "Perhaps you can't."

  As carefully as I could I slid off the couch and shrugged my coat off. I picked the .45 out of the shoulder holster and laid the leather on the floor. Then I picked off my tie, unbuttoned my shirt and flicked the belt out of its restraints. My pants were only a hindrance. I let them go around my feet and kicked them aside.

  "So you're not impotent," she said after a long, hungry glance.

  I sat down on the couch again and picked up my drink. All I had was ice left. "I could have told you that."

  "Talking isn't proving."

  "Sugar," I told her, "you're forgetting something. There's nothing I have to prove. I get what I want whenever I want it. I can name the time, place and position. Twenty years ago I would have hosed a snake if somebody held it down for me, but now I'm selective. It's

  still a man's world, baby, but you have to be a man to live in it. Then again, I'm still curious."

  Her forehead wrinkled inquisitively. "Curious? About what? There's nothing more to show you unless I turn inside out."

  "Don't do that. I just had the rug cleaned." I grinned at her.

  Then she laughed, picked up her drink and sat down in my Naugahyde relincer like she was at a presidential reception. "Curious," she said again. Her eyes went up and down me twice, her smile getting broader. "We make a great couple. Naked six feet apart. What can be more curious than that?"

  I got up, mixed another drink and went back to the couch again. "Why you came on so strong. This is our second time out, kid. Two hellos and you're ready to go fifteen rounds in the hay. You're class, big business and big money with enough style to snag any guy you want ..." I held up my hand to cut off her interruption ". .. and suddenly you get the hots for a lousy beat-up old soldier in the shadow police business."

  Renée's teeth glistened in her smile and she raised her glass in a mock toast to me. "Crude, but very astute, Mike. But I told you I was going to cultivate you, didn't I?"

  I nodded.

  "And I told you it would be hard, didn't I?"

  I grinned back and adjusted my position. There were times when a guy could be quite uncomfortable.

  "So the answer should be obvious," she said. "I enjoy my position, I enjoy my wealth, I take pleasure from my social obligations, but oh, they're so damned dull." She nodded toward the window. "There aren't any challenges left out there. I operate on a man's level, but they won't let me get in there and swing. Everybody's so hellishly condescending and polite, patting my head because I did my homework and came up with the right answers. Then when nobody's looking they try to pat my fanny and always seem to miss. Sometimes I wish one of them would get me alone in the stockroom or something."

  "Attagirl, tiger," I said.

  "Stop laughing. It's serious."

  "Why don't you marry William?"

  "Because he's already married."

  "Oh?"

  "To corporate structure," she said. "Commerce is his wife, children and mistress. Women are nothing unless they

  are an adjunct to the business. We are nurtured, tolerated and exploited according to our abilities to perform."

  "Come on, honey, you like the guy."

  "He's the biggest challenge of all, but the only game you play without any possible chance of winning."

  "That sure pigeonholes me, doesn't it?" I asked her.

  Renée tried her drink again, then swirled the ice around in the glass, making it clink musically. "Who can win with you, Mike?

  "Nobody, unless I let them," I said.

  "Are you going to let me?"

  "No."

  "You dirty dog. Why not?"

  "Right now you're having too much fun sitting here talking about it. The experience is new and exciting. It's like kicks, doll. It's even better than having a guy roped to stakes in the ground and standing over him with a whip. The only thing that bugs you is that I laid down the ground rules."

  "What a bastard you are."

  "How come everybody says that to me?"

  "Because you are. I can even tell what you're thinking."

  I looked at her and waited.

  She said, "You're getting kicks out of it, too, sitting there naked and horny, watching me suffer, knowing damn well there's going to be a next time and when that happens it's going to be something incredible."

  "You called me, remember?"

  "And I'll call you again." She let her teeth show in another brilliant smile. "I don't care if you are a bastard. I wish you didn't know so much about women, though. Tell me one thing, Mike ..."

  "What?"

  "You could have stopped it all by having a casual drink with me and turning the conversation into more normal avenues. Why didn't you?"

  I finished my drink, studied the empty glass a moment then put it on the floor. "It's been
a rough few days, sugar. I lost a friend, got shot at, clobbered, interrogated by ... oh hell. You were a welcome relief, a lift to the old ego. You have to get up to bat before you know if you can hit or not."

  "Now you're going to make me get dressed and send me home," Renée said.

  I felt a laugh rumble out of my chest. "Roger, doll. So hate me. You'll always wonder what it would have been like."

  Her glass went down to the floor too and her laugh had a throaty tinkle to it. "I'll find out. Cultivating you may take longer than I thought. You may turn out to be the biggest challenge of all."

  "Not tonight."

  "I know. But since you've been such a bastard, will you do something for me?"

  "Maybe."

  She pushed herself out of the chair slowly, all naked, smooth skin radiating warmth and desire, little pulse beats throbbing erotically in the lush valleys. She reached out, took my hand and encouraged me to my feet until flesh met flesh, insinuating themselves together in a way that only flesh can.

  "Kiss me," Renée said. After the briefest pause. "Hard."

  I climbed out of bed and stood in front of the window watching the thin patter of rain dribble down the dust-caked glass. The morning crowds were at their desks inside their offices and the shoppers hadn't started out yet. Two blocks away a fire siren howled and a hook and ladder flashed through the intersection, an emergency truck right behind it. Damn games, I thought. I lost a night; I started out for Woody Ballinger and almost wound up doing bedroom gymnastics. I wiped my face with my hand, feeling the stubble of a beard under my fingers, then grinned at my reflection in the window pane. Hell, I needed the break. Even near-sex could be good therapy. "Buddy," I said out loud, "maybe you still got it, maybe you haven't, but either way they think you have and want some of it."

  Okay, so a guy needs an ego boost occasionally.

  I switched on the television, dialed in to a news station and went to the bathroom to shave and clean up. I was putting a new blade in the razor when I heard the announcer talk about a shooting during an attempted robbery on West Forty-sixth Street, one that was broken up by a civic-minded passerby.

  Thanks, Pat, I said mentally.