The Girl Hunters

'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 time. 'I'm fed up, Mike. You'd just better talk.'

'And if I don't?'