The Girl Hunters

I made the decision quickly. 'All right, we'll keep it quiet. If that slob has any sense he'll know we won't be stationary targets again. From now on I'll be doing some hunting myself.'

'You sure, Mike?'

'I'm sure.'

'Good. Then let's go through Leo's effects.'

Inside she led me upstairs past the bedrooms to the end of the hall, opened a closet and pulled out a small trunk. I took it from her, carried it into the first bedroom and dumped the contents out on the dresser.

When you thought about it, it was funny how little a man actually accumulated during the most important years of his life. He could go through a whole war, live in foreign places with strange people, be called upon to do difficult and unnatural work, yet come away from those years with no more than he could put in a very small trunk.

Leo Knapp's 201 file was thick, proper and as military as could be. There was an attempt at a diary that ran into fifty pages, but the last third showed an obvious effort being made to overcome boredom, then the thing dwindled out. I went through every piece of paperwork there was, uncovering nothing, saving the photos until last.

Laura left me alone to work uninterruptedly, but the smell of her perfume was there in the room and from somewhere downstairs I could hear her talking on the phone. She was still tense from the experience outside and although I couldn't hear her conversation I could sense the strain in her voice. She came back in ten minutes later and sat on the edge of the bed, quiet, content just to be there, then she sighed and I knew the tension had gone out of her.

I don't know what I expected, but the results were a total negative. Of the hundreds of photos, half were taken by G.I. staff photogs and the rest an accumulation of camp and tourist shots that every soldier who ever came home had tucked away in his gear. When you were old and fat you could take them out, reminisce over the days when you were young and thin and wonder what had happened to all the rest in the picture before putting them back in storage for another decade.

Behind me Laura watched while I began putting things back in the trunk and I heard her ask, 'Anything, Mike?'

'No.' I half threw his medals in the pile. 'Everything's as mundane as a mud pie.'

'I'm sorry, Mike.'

'Don't be sorry. Sometimes the mundane can hide some peculiar things. There's still a thread left to pull. If Leo had anything to do with Erlich I have a Fed for a friend who just might come up with the answer.' I snapped the lock shut on the trunk. 'It just gives me a pain to have everything come up so damn hard.'

'Really?' Her voice laughed.

I glanced up into the mirror on the dresser and felt that wild warmth steal into my stomach like an ebullient catalyst that pulled me taut as a bowstring and left my breath hanging in my throat.

'Something should be made easy for you then,' she said.

Laura was standing there now, tall and lovely, the sun still with her in the rich loamy color of her skin, the nearly bleached white tone of her hair.

At her feet the bikini made a small puddle of black like a shadow, then she walked away from it to me and I was waiting for her.

Chapter 9

Night and the rain had come back to New York, the air musty with dust driven up by the sudden surge of the downpour. The bars were filled, the sheltered areas under marquees crowded and an empty taxi a rare treasure to be fought over.

But it was a night to think in. There is a peculiar anonymity you can enjoy in the city on a rainy night. You're alone, yet not alone. The other people around you are merely motion and sound and the sign of life whose presence averts the panic of being truly alone, yet who observe the rules of the city and stay withdrawn and far away when they are close.

How many times had Velda and I walked in the rain? She was big and our shoulders almost touched. We'd deliberately walk out of step so that our inside legs would touch rhythmically and if her arm wasn't tucked underneath mine we'd hold hands. There was a ring I had given her. I'd feel it under my fingers and she'd look at me and smile because she knew what that ring meant.

Where was she now? What had really happened? Little hammers would go at me when I thought of the days and hours since they had dragged me into Richie Cole's room to watch him die, but could it have been any other way?

Maybe not seven years ago. Not then. I wouldn't have had a booze-soaked head then. I would have had a gun and a ticket that could get me in and out of places and hands that could take care of anybody.

But now. Now I was an almost-nothing. Not quite, because I still had years of experience going for me and a reason to push. I was coming back little by little, but unless I stayed cute about it all I could be a pushover for any hardcase.

What I had to do now was think. I still had a small edge, but how long it would last was anybody's guess. So think, Mike, old soldier. Get your head going the way it's supposed to. You know who the key is. You've known it all along. Cole died with her name on his lips and ever since then she's been the key. But why? But why?

How could she still be alive?

Seven years is a long time to hide. Too long. Why? Why?

So think, old soldier. Go over the possibilities.

The rain came down a little harder and began to run off the brim of my hat. In a little while it seeped through the top of the cheap trench coat and I could feel the cold of it on my shoulders. And then I had the streets all alone again and the night and the city belonged only to me. I walked, so I was king. The others who huddled in the doorways and watched me with tired eyes were the lesser ones. Those who ran for the taxis were the scared ones. So I walked and I was able to think about Velda again. She had suddenly become a case and it had to be that way. It had to be cold and logical, otherwise it would vaporize into incredibility and there would be nothing left except to go back to where I had come from.

Think.

Who saw her die? No one. It was an assumption. Well assumed, but an assumption nevertheless.

Then, after seven years, who saw her alive? Richie Cole.

Sure, he had reason to know her. They were friends. War buddies. They had worked together. Once a year they'd meet for supper and a show and talk over old times. Hell, I'd done it myself with George and Earle, Ray, Mason and the others. It was nothing you could talk about to anybody else, though. Death and destruction you took part in could be shared only with those in range of the same enemy guns. With them you couldn't brag or lie. You simply recounted and wondered that you were still alive and renewed a friendship.

Cole couldn't have made a mistake. He knew her.

And Cole had been a pro. Velda was a pro. He had come looking for me because she had told him I was a pro and he had been disappointed at what he had seen. He had taken a look at me and his reason for staying alive died right then. Whatever it was, he didn't think I could do it. He saw a damned drunken bum who had lost every bit of himself years before and he died thinking she was going to die too and he was loathing me with eyes starting to film over with the nonexistence of death.

Richie Cole just didn't know me very well at all.

He had a chance to say the magic word and that made all the difference.

Velda.

Would it still be the same? How will you look after seven years? Hell, you should see me. You should see the way I look. And what's inside you after a time span like that? Things happen in seven years; things build, things dissolve. What happens to people in love? Seven years ago that's the way we were. In Love. Capital L. Had we stayed together time would only have lent maturity and quality to that which it served to improve.

But my love, my love, how could you look at me, me after seven years? You knew what I had been and called