The Hunt

that it would get better and better . . . ‘n better .

She closed her eyes, squirming a bit to get comfortable. In a few moments her breathing was deep and constant and he felt her body soften in sleep.

He slid out from under her and walked to the window. The sun was ablaze at the edge of rooftops, throwing slender crimson shadows down the wet streets. The city seemed clean and innocent and silent, its solace disturbed for a minute or two by an ice truck that rattled up the street and vanished around a corner. Then all was quiet again.

He drew the drapes and took off his robe and slid back in bed beside Vanessa. She groaned in her sleep, slid one leg across his hip and cuddled up close to him. In minutes, he too was asleep. It was eight-thirty when the phone rang for the first time. It rang every thirty minutes after that but Keegan didn’t hear it. He was dead to the world.

A loud banging on the door finally awakened Keegan. He put on a robe and went into the living room of his suite, closing the bedroom door behind him. When he answered the door, Bert Rudman rushed past him without waiting for an invitation.

“Where the hell have you been?” he demanded. “I’ve been calling you all morning!”

“I was tied up,” Keegan groaned.

“It’s almost noon.”

“It was dawn before I got to bed.”

“Look, old buddy, I need your help. Did.

Rudman stopped abruptly and stared open-mouthed over Keegan’s shoulder. Keegan turned to find Vanessa standing in the bedroom doorway wrapped in the bed sheet.

“Oh...I...uh...I...”

“Vanessa,” Keegan said. “Vanessa Bromley. This eloquent person is Bert Rudman.”

“How do you do?” she said and pulled the sheet up a little higher.

“Now what the hell’s so important?”

“I’m onto a hot story but I can’t pin anything down. I know Wally Wallingford’s a friend of yours and I thought.

“Not anymore,” Keegan interrupted. “Want some coffee?”

“Great.”

“I’ll call down and order it,” Vanessa said.

“What does Wally have to do with this scoop of yours?”

“You know who Felix Reinhardt is?”

Keegan hesitated. “Yes,” he said. “I know who he is.”

“Apparently he was arrested sometime during the night, although I can’t confirm it. The way I get it, he was with an American officer attached to the embassy when he was nabbed and there’s a big diplomatic stink brewing. But nobody’ll talk to me.”

“What was he arrested for?”

“From what I can put together, he was editing The Berlin Conscience and a man named Probst was printing it. Yesterday afternoon the SA raided Probst’s print shop. A big gunfight broke out, then a fire. Probst was shot and his place burned to the ground. They had the whole damn Sturmabteilung after Reinhardt and caught up with him about two o’clock this morning.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“The Nazis had a press conference and announced the details on the Probst part of it. I pieced the rest of it together, y’know, a little bit here, a little bit there, but I can’t confirm anything. The Nazis are staying mum on Reinhardt.”

“It didn’t happen that way.”

“What?”

“The Probst part of it. It didn’t happen the way you said. He wasn’t even armed. The SA kicked in his door, shot him in cold blood, then set his place afire.”

“How do you know?”

“I pieced it together.”

“C’mon, don’t be a schmuck. Where did you hear that?”

“From an eyewitness. That’s all I can tell you. Just don’t print that official Nazi bullshit.”

“When’d you find out about this?”

“I don’t know, Bert, sometime during the night.”

“And you didn’t tip me off?”

Keegan didn’t say anything. Rudman had never seen this expression in his friend’s eyes.