The Mike Hammer Collection Part 15

"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."

"h.e.l.l, 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.

I said, "That's a code name too. Dragon is an execution team. Our side gave it the tag and it's a top secret bit, but that kind of stew is generally the easiest to stir once you take the lid off the kettle."

"You don't play around, do you?"

"I told you, I haven't got time."

"d.a.m.n, Mike, you're really sticking it out, aren't you?"

"You'll get the story."

"I hope you're alive long enough to give it to me. The kind of game you're playing has put a lot of good men down for keeps."

"I'm not exactly a patsy," I said.

"You're not the same Mike Hammer you were either, friend."

"When can you get the information off?" I asked him.

"Like now," he told me.

There was a pay phone in the corridor outside. The request went through Bell's dial system to the right party and the relay was a.s.sured. The answer would come into Hy's office at the paper coded within a regular news transmission and the favor was expected to be returned when needed.

Hy hung up and turned around. "Now what?"

"Let's eat, then take a run down to the office of a cop who used to be a friend."

I knocked and he said to come in and when he saw who it was his face steeled into an expression that was so noncommittal it was pure betrayal. Behind it was all the resentment and animosity he had let spew out earlier, but this time it was under control.

Dr. Larry Snyder was sprawled out in a wooden desk chair left over from the gaslight era, a surprised smile touching the corner of his mouth as he nodded to me.

I said, "Hy Gardner, Dr. Larry Snyder. I think you know Pat Chambers."

"Hi, Larry. Yes, I know Captain Chambers."

They nodded all around, the pleasantries all a fat fake, then Hy took the other chair facing the desk and sat down. I just stood there looking down at Pat so he could know that I didn't give a d.a.m.n for him either if he wanted it that way.

Pat's voice had a cutting edge to it and he took in Hy with a curt nod. "Why the party?"

Hy's got an interest in the story end."

"We have a procedure for those things."

"Maybe you have, but I don't and this is the way it's going to be, old buddy."

"Knock it off."

Quietly, Larry said, "Maybe it's a good thing I brought my medical bag, but if either one of you had any sense you'd keep it all talk until you find the right answers."

"Shut up, Larry," Pat snarled, "you don't know anything about this."

"You'd be surprised at what I know," he told him. Pat let his eyes drift to Larry's and he frowned. Then all his years took hold and his face went blank again.

I said, "What did ballistics come up with?"

He didn't answer me and didn't have to. I knew by his silence that the slug matched the others. He leaned on the desk, his hands folded together and when he was ready he said, "Okay, where did you get it?"

"We had something to trade, remember?"

His grin was too crooked. "Not necessarily."

But my grin was just as crooked. "The h.e.l.l it isn't. Time isn't working against me anymore, kiddo. I can hold out on you as long as I feel like it."

Pat half started to rise and Larry said cautioningly, "Easy, Pat."

He let out a grunt of disgust and sat down again. In a way he was like Art, always thinking, but covering the machinery of his mind with clever little moves. But I had known Pat too long and too well. I knew his play and could read the signs. When he handed me the photostat I was smiling even dirtier and he let me keep on with it until I felt the grin go tight as a drum, then pull into a harsh grimace. When I looked at Pat his face mirrored my own, only his had hate in it.

"Read it out loud," he said.

"Drop dead."

"No," he insisted, his voice almost paternal, a woodshed voice taking pleasure in the whipping, "go ahead and read it."

Silently, I read it again. Velda had been an active agent for the O.S.I. during the war, certain code numbers in the Washington files given for reference, and her grade and time in that type of service had qualified her for a Private Investigator's ticket in the State of New York.

Pat waited, then finally, "Well?"

I handed back the photostat. It was my turn to shrug, then I gave him the address in Brooklyn where Cole had lived and told him where he could find the hole the slug made. I wondered what he'd do when he turned up Velda's picture.

He let me finish, picked up the phone and dialed an extension. A few minutes later another officer laid a folder on his desk and Pat opened it to scan the sheet inside. The first report was enough. He closed the folder and rocked back in the chair. "There were two shots. They didn't come from the same gun. One person considered competent said the second was a large-bore gun, most likely a .45."

"How about that," I said.

His eyes were tight and hard now. "You're being cute, Mike. You're playing guns again. I'm going to catch you at it and then your a.s.s is going to be hung high. You kill anybody on this prod and I'll be there to watch them strap you in the hot squat. I could push you a little more on this right now and maybe see you take a fall, but if I do it won't be enough to satisfy me. When you go down, I want to see you fall all the way, a six-foot fall like the man said."

"Thanks a bunch."

"No trouble," he smiled casually.

I glanced at Larry, then nodded toward Pat. "He's a sick man, Doctor. He won't admit it, but he was was in love with her too." in love with her too."

Pat's expression didn't change a bit.

"Weren't you?" I asked him.

He waited until Hy and I were at the door and I had turned around to look at him again and this time I wasn't going to leave until he had answered me. He didn't hesitate. Softly, he said, "Yes, d.a.m.n you."

On the street Hy steered me toward a bar near the Trib Building. We picked a booth in the back, ordered a pair of frigid Blue Ribbons and toasted each other silently when they came. Hy said, "I'm thinking like Alice in Wonderland now, that things keep getting curiouser and curiouser. You've given me a little bit and now I want more. It's fun writing a Broadway column and throwing out squibs about famous people and all that jazz, but essentially I'm a reporter and it wouldn't feel bad at all to do a little poking and prying again for a change."

"I don't know where to start, Hy."

"Well, give it a try."

"All right. How about this one? b.u.t.terfly Two, Gerald Erlich. b.u.t.terfly Two, Gerald Erlich."

The beer stopped halfway to his mouth. "How did you know about b.u.t.terfly Two?"

"How did you you know about it?" know about it?"

"That's war stuff, friend. Do you know what I was then?"

"A captain in special services, you told me."

"That's right. I was. But it was a cover a.s.signment at times too. I was also useful in several other capacities besides."

"Don't tell me you were a spy."

"Let's say I just kept my ear to the ground regarding certain activities. But what's this business about b.u.t.terfly Two and Erlich? That's seventeen years old now and out of style."

"Is it?"

"h.e.l.l, Mike, when that n.a.z.i war machine-" Then he got the tone of my voice and put the gla.s.s down, his eyes watching me closely. "Let's have it, Mike."

"b.u.t.terfly Two isn't as out of style as you think."

"Look-"

"And what about Gerald Erlich?"

"Presumed dead."

"Proof?"

"None, but d.a.m.n it, Mike-"

"Look, there are too many suppositions."

"What are you driving at, anyway? Man, don't tell me about Gerald Erlich. I had contact with him on three different occasions. The first two I knew him only as an allied officer, the third time I saw him in a detention camp after the war but didn't realize who he was until I went over it in my mind for a couple of hours. When I went back there the prisoners had been transferred and the truck they were riding in had hit a land mine taking a detour around a bombed bridge. It was the same truck Giesler was on, the SS Colonel who had all the prisoners killed during the Battle of the Bulge."

"You saw the body?"

"No, but the survivors were brought in and he wasn't among them."

"Presumed dead?"

"What else do you need? Listen, I even have a picture of the guy I took at that camp and some of those survivors when they were brought back. He wasn't in that bunch at all."

I perched forward on my chair, my hands flat on the table. "You have what what?"

Surprised at the edge in my voice, he pulled out another one of those cigars. "They're in my personal stuff upstairs." He waved a thumb toward the street.

"Tell me something, Hy," I said. "Are you cold on these details?"

He caught on quick. "When I got out of the army, friend, I got out. All the way. I was never that big that they called me back as a consultant."

"Can we see those photos?"

"Sure. Why not?"