The Girl Hunters

Art Rickerby was good. Damn, but he was good. It was as if I had asked what time it was and he had no watch. But he just wasn't that good. I saw all the little things happen to him that nobody else would have noticed and watched them grow and grow until he could contain them no longer and had to sluff them off with an aside remark. So with an insipid look that didn't become him at all he said, 'Who?'

'Or is it whom? Art?'

I had him where the hair was short and he knew it. He had given me all the big talk but this one was one too big. It was even bigger than he was and he didn't quite know how to handle it. You could say this about him: he was a book man. He put all the facts through the machine in his head and took the risk alone. He couldn't tell what I knew, yet he couldn't tell what I didn't know. Neither could he take a chance on having me clam up.

Art Rickerby was strictly a statesman. A federal agent, true, a cop, a dedicated servant of the people, but foremost he was a statesman. He was dealing with big security now and all the wraps were off. We were in a bar drinking beer and somehow the world was at our feet. What was it Laura had said--_'I saw wars start over a drink--'_ and now it was almost the same thing right here.

'You didn't answer me,' I prodded.

He put his glass down, and for the first time his hand wasn't steady. 'How did you know about that?'

'Tell me, is it a big secret?'

His voice had an edge to it. 'Top secret.'

'Well, whatta you know.'

'Hammer--'

'Nuts, Rickerby. You tell me.'

Time was on my side now. I could afford a little bit of it. He couldn't. He was going to have to get to a phone to let someone bigger than he was know that The Dragon wasn't a secret any longer. He flipped the mental coin and that someone lost. He turned slowly and took his glasses off, wiping them on a handkerchief. They were all fogged up. 'The Dragon is a team.'

'So is Rutgers.'

The joke didn't go across. Ignoring it, he said, 'It's a code name for an execution team. There are two parts, Tooth and Nail.'

I turned the glass around in my hand, staring at it, waiting. I asked, 'Commies?'

'Yes.' His reluctance was almost tangible. He finally said, 'I can name persons throughout the world in critical positions in government who have died lately, some violently, some of natural causes apparently. You would probably recognize their names.'

'I doubt it. I've been out of circulation for seven years.'

He put the glasses on again and looked at the backbar. 'I wonder,' he mused to himself.

'The Dragon, Rickerby, if it were so important, how come the name never appeared. With a name like that it was bound to show.'

'Hell,' he said, 'it was our code name, not theirs.' His hands made an innocuous gesture, then folded together. 'And now that you know something no one outside our agency knows, perhaps you'll tell me a little something about The Dragon.'

'Sure,' I said, and I watched his face closely. 'The Dragon killed Richie.'

Nothing showed.

'Now The Dragon is trying to kill Velda.'

Still nothing showed, but he said calmly, 'How do you know?'

'Richie told me. That's what he told me before he died. So she couldn't be tied up with the other side, could she?'

Unexpectedly, he smiled, tight and deadly and you really couldn't tell what he was thinking. 'You never know,' Art answered. 'When their own kind slip from grace, they too become targets. We have such in our records. It isn't even unusual.'

'You bastard.'

'You know too much, Mr. Hammer. You might become a target yourself.'

'I wouldn't be surprised.'

He took a bill from his pocket and put it on the bar. John took it, totaled up the check and hit the register. When he gave the change back Art said, 'Thanks for being so candid. Thank you for The Dragon.'

'You leaving it like that?'

'I think that's it, don't you?'

'Sucker,' I said.

He stopped halfway off his stool.

'You don't think I'd be that stupid, do you? Even after seven years I wouldn't be that much of a joker.'

For a minute he was the placid little gray man I had first met, then almost sorrowfully he nodded and said, 'I'm losing my insight. I thought I had it all. What else do you know?'

I took a long pull of the Blue Ribbon and finished the glass. When I put it down I said to him, 'Richie told me something else that could put his killer in front of a gun.'

'And just what is it you want for this piece of information?'

'Not much,' I grinned. 'Just an official capacity in some department or another so that I can carry a gun.'

'Like in the old days,' he said.

'Like in the old days,' I repeated.

Chapter 8

Hy Gardner was taping a show and I didn't get to see him until it was over. We had a whole empty studio to ourselves, the guest chairs to relax in and for a change a quiet that was foreign to New York.

When he lit his cigar and had a comfortable wreath of smoke over his head he said, 'How's things going, Mike?'

'Looking up. Why, what have you heard?'

'A little here and there,' he shrugged. 'You've been seen around.' Then he laughed with the cigar in his teeth and put his feet up on the coffee table prop. 'I heard about the business down in Benny Joe Grissi's place. You sure snapped back in a hurry.'

'Hell, I don't have time to train. Who put you on the bit?'

'Old Bayliss Henry still has his traditional afternoon drink at Ted's with the rest of us. He knew we were pretty good friends.'

'What did he tell you?'

Hy grinned again. 'Only about the fight. He knew that would get around. I'd sooner hear the rest from you anyway.'

'Sure.'

'Should I tape notes?'

'Not yet. It's not that big yet, but you can do something for me.'

'Just say it.'

'How are your overseas connections?'

Hy took the cigar out, studied it and knocked off the ash. 'I figure the next question is going to be a beauty.'

'It is.'

'Okay,' he nodded. 'In this business you have to have friends. Reporters aren't amateurs, they have sources of information and almost as many ways of getting what they want as Interpol has.'

'Can you code a request to your friends and get an answer back the same way?'

After a moment he nodded.

'Swell. Then find out what anybody knows about The Dragon.'

The cigar went back, he dragged on it slowly and let out a thin stream of smoke.