The Girl Hunters

I said, 'Shit.'

There was a hurt look on his face. It barely touched his eyes and the corners of his mouth, but I knew I had hurt him.

'Seven years, Nat. That's a lot of rent.'

He wouldn't argue. I got that shrug again and the funny look that went with it. 'So for you I dropped the rent to a dollar a year while you were gone.'

I looked at the key, feeling my shoulders tighten.

'Nat--'

'Please--don't talk. Just take. Remember when you gave? Remember Bernie and those men? Remember--'

'Okay, Nat.'

The sudden tension left his face and he smiled again. I said, 'Thanks, kid. You'll never know.'

A small laugh left his lips and he said, 'Oh I'll know, all right. That'll be seven dollars. Seven years, seven dollars.'

I took out another ten and laid it on his desk. With complete seriousness he gave me back three ones, a receipt, then said, 'You got a phone too, Mike. Same number. No 'thank yous,' Mike. Augie Strickland came in with the six hundred he owed you and left it with me so I paid the phone bill from it. You still got maybe a couple bucks coming back if we figure close.'

'Save it for service charges,' I said.

'Good to see you, Mike.'

'Good to see you, Nat.'

'You look pretty bad. Is everything going to be like before, Mike?'

'It can never be like before. Let's hope it's better.'

'Sure, Mike.'

'And thanks anyway, kid.'

'My pleasure, Mike.'

I looked at the key, folded it in my fist and started out.

When I reached the door Nat said, 'Mike--'

I turned around.

'Velda...?'

He watched my eyes closely. 'That's why you're back?'

'Why?'

'I hear many stories, Mike. Twice I even saw you. Things I know that nobody else knows. I know why you left. I know why you came back. I even waited because I knew someday you'd come. So you're back. You don't look like you did except for your eyes. They never change. Now you're all beat up and skinny and far behind. Except for your eyes, and that's the worst part.'

'Is it?'

He nodded. 'For somebody,' he said.

I put the key in the lock and turned the knob. It was like coming back to the place where you had been born, remembering, yet without a full recollection of all the details. It was a drawing, wanting power that made me swing the door open because I wanted to see how it used to be and how it might have been.

Her desk was there in the anteroom, the typewriter still covered, letters from years ago stacked in a neat pile waiting to be answered, the last note she had left for me still there beside the phone some itinerant spider had draped in a nightgown of cobwebs.

The wastebasket was where I had kicked it, dented almost double from my foot; the two captain's chairs and antique bench we used for clients were still overturned against the wall where I had thrown them. The door to my office swung open, tendrils of webbing seeming to tie it to the frame. Behind it I could see my desk and chair outlined in the gray shaft of light that was all that was left of the day.

I walked in, waving the cobwebs apart, and sat down in the chair. There was dust, and silence, and I was back to seven years ago, all of a sudden. Outside the window was another New York--not the one I had left, because the old one had been torn down and rebuilt since I had looked out that window last. But below on the street the sounds hadn't changed a bit, nor had the people. Death and destruction were still there, the grand overseers of life toward the great abyss, some slowly, some quickly, but always along the same road.

For a few minutes I just sat there swinging in the chair, recalling the feel and the sound of it. I made a casual inspection of the desk drawers, not remembering what was there, yet enjoying a sense of familiarity with old things. It was an old desk, almost antique, a relic from some solid, conservative corporation that supplied its executives with the best.

When you pulled the top drawer all the way out there was a niche built into the massive framework, and when I felt in the shallow recess the other relic was still there.

Calibre .45, Colt Automatic, U.S. Army model, vintage of 1914. Inside the plastic wrapper it was still oiled, and when I checked the action it was like a thing alive, a deadly thing that had but a single fundamental purpose.

I put it back where it was beside the box of shells, inserted the drawer and slid it shut. The day of the guns was back there seven years ago. Not now.

Now I was one of the nothing people. One mistake and Pat had me, and where I was going, one mistake and they would have me.

Pat. The slob really took off after me. I wondered if Larry had been right when he said Pat had been in love with Velda too?

I nodded absently, because he had changed. And there was more to it, besides. In seven years Pat should have moved up the ladder. By now he should have been an Inspector. Maybe whatever it was he had crawling around in his guts got out of hand and he never made the big try for promotion, or, if he did, he loused up.

The hell with him, I thought. Now he was going wide open to nail a killer and a big one. Whoever killed Richie Cole had killed Senator Knapp in all probability, and in all probability, too, had killed Old Dewey., Well, I was one up on Pat. He'd have another kill in his lap, all right, but only I could connect Dewey and the others.

Which put me in the middle all around.

So okay, Hammer, I said. You've been a patsy before. See what you'll do with this one and do it right. Someplace she's alive. Alive! But for how long? And where? There are killers loose and she must be on the list.

Absently, I reached for the phone, grinned when I heard the dial tone, then fingered the card the thin man gave me from my pocket and called Peerage Brokers.

He was there waiting and when I asked, 'Rickerby?' a switch clicked.

Art answered, 'You still have a little more time.'

'I don't need time. I need now. I think we should talk.'

'Where are you?'

'My own office through courtesy of a friend. The Hackard Building.'

'Stay there. I'll be up in ten minutes.'

'Sure. Bring me a sandwich.'

'A drink too?'

'None of that. Maybe a couple of Blue Ribbons, but nothing else.'

Without answering, he hung up. I glanced at my wrist, but there was no watch there anymore. Somehow, I vaguely remembered hocking it somewhere and called myself a nut because it was a good Rollex and I probably drank up the loot in half a day. Or got rolled for it.

Damn!

From the window I could see the clock on the Paramount Building and it was twenty past six. The street was slick from the drizzle that had finally started to fall and the crosstown traffic was like a giant worm trying to eat into the belly of the city. I opened the window and got supper smells in ten languages from the restaurants below and for the first time in a long time it smelled good. Then I switched on the desk lamp and sat back again.

Rickerby came in, put a wrapped sandwich and two cans of Blue Ribbon in front of me and sat down with a weary smile. It was a very peculiar smile, not of friendliness, but of anticipation. It was one you didn't smile back