The Girl Hunters

by Mickey Spillane

  His jaw dropped open stupidly for a brief second, then snapped shut and his eyes followed suit. He stood there, knuckles white as they gripped the edge of the desk and he gradually leaned forward so that when he swung he wouldn’t be out of reach this time.

  “What kind of crazy stunt are you pulling?” His voice was almost hoarse.

  I shook my head. “The New York State law says that you must have served three or more years in an accredited police agency, city, state, or federal in a rating of sergeant or higher to get a Private Investigator’s license. It isn’t easy to get and takes a lot of background work.”

  Quietly, Pat said, “She worked for you. Why didn’t you ask?”

  “One of the funny things in life. Her ticket was good enough for me at first. Later it never occurred to me to ask. I was always a guy concerned with the present anyway and you damn well know it.”

  “You bastard. What are you trying to pull?”

  “Yes or no, Pat.”

  His grin had no humor in it. Little cords in his neck stood out against his collar and the pale blue of his eyes was deadly. “No,” he said. “You’re a wise guy, punk. Don’t pull your tangents on me. You got this big feeling inside you that you’re coming back at me for slapping you around. You’re using her now as a pretty little oblique switch—but, mister, you’re pulling your crap on the wrong soldier. You’ve just about had it, boy.”

  Before he could swing I leaned back in my chair with as much insolence as I could and reached in my pocket for the slug I had dug out of the fence. It was a first-class gamble, but not quite a bluff. I had the odds going for me and if I came up short, I’d still have a few hours ahead of him.

  I reached out and laid the splashed-out bit of metal on the desk. “Don’t punk me, man. Tell ballistics to go after that and tell me what I want and I’ll tell you where that came from.”

  Pat picked it up, his mind putting ideas together, trying to make one thing fit another. It was hard to tell what he was thinking, but one thing took precedence over all others. He was a cop. First-rate. He wanted a killer. He had to play his own odds too.

  “All right,” he told me, “I can’t take any chances. I don’t get your point, but if it’s a phony, you’ve had it.”

  I shrugged. “When will you know about the license?”

  “It won’t take long.”

  “I’ll call you,” I said.

  He straightened up and stared out the window over my head, still half in thought. Absently, he rubbed the back of his neck. “You do that,” he told me. He turned away, putting his hat on, then reached for the door.

  I stopped him. “Pat—”

  “What?”

  “Tell me something.”

  His eyes squinted at my tone. I think he knew what I was going to ask.

  “Did you love Velda too?”

  Only his eyes gave the answer, then he opened the door and left.

  “May I come in?”

  “Oh, Laura—please.”

  “Was there—trouble?”

  “Nothing special.” She came back to the desk and sat down in the client’s chair, her face curious. “Why?”

  With a graceful motion, she crossed her legs and brushed her skirt down over her knees. “Well, when Captain Chambers was with me—well, he spoke constantly of you. It was as if you were right in the middle of everything.” She paused, turning her head toward me. “He hates you, doesn’t he?”

  I nodded. “But we were friends once.”

  Very slowly, her eyebrows arched. “Aren’t most friendships only temporary at best?”

  “That’s being pretty cynical.”

  “No—only realistic. There are childhood friendships. Later those friends from school, even to the point of nearly blood brotherhood fraternities, but how long do they last? Are your Army or Navy friends still your friends or have you forgotten their names?”

  I made a motion with my shoulders.

  “Then your friends are only those you have at the moment. Either you outgrow them or something turns friendship into hatred.”

  “It’s a lousy system,” I said.

  “But there it is, nevertheless. In 1945 Germany and Japan were our enemies and Russia and the rest our allies. Now our former enemies are our best friends and the former allies the direct enemies.”

  She was so suddenly serious I had to laugh at her. “Beautiful blondes aren’t generally philosophers.”

  But her eyes didn’t laugh back. “Mike—it really isn’t that funny. When Leo was—alive, I attended to all his affairs in Washington. I still carry on, more or less. It’s something he would have wanted me to do. I know how people who run the world think. I served cocktails to people making decisions that rocked the earth. I saw wars start over a drink and the friendship of generations between nations wiped out because one stupid, pompous political appointee wanted to do things his way. Oh, don’t worry, I know about friendships.”

  “So this one went sour.”

  “It hurts you, doesn’t it?”

  “I guess so. It never should have happened that way.”

  “Oh?” For a few moments she studied me, then she knew. “The woman—we talked about—you both loved her?”

  “I thought only I did.” She sat there quietly then, letting me finish. “We both thought she was dead. He still thinks so and blames me for what happened.”

  “Is she, Mike?”

  “I don’t know. It’s all very strange, but if there is even the most remote possibility that some peculiar thing happened seven years ago and that she is still alive somewhere, I want to know about it.”

  “And Captain Chambers?”

  “He could never have loved her as I did. She was mine.”

  “If—you are wrong—and she is dead, maybe it would be better not to know.”

  My face was grinning again. Not me, just the face part. I stared at the wall and grinned idiotically. “If she is alive, I’ll find her. If she is dead, I’ll find who killed her. Then slowly, real slowly, I’ll take him apart, inch by inch, joint by joint, until dying will be the best thing left for him.”

  I didn’t realize that I was almost out of the chair, every muscle twisted into a monstrous spasm of murder. Then I felt her hands pulling me back and I let go and sat still until the hate seeped out of me.

  “Thanks.”

  “I know what you feel like, Mike.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes.” Her hand ran down the side of my face, the fingers tracing a warm path along my jaw. “It’s the way I felt about Leo. He was a great man, then suddenly for no reason at all he was dead.”

  “I’m sorry, Laura.”

  “But it’s not over for me anymore, either.”

  I swung around in the chair and looked up at her. She was magnificent then, a study in symmetry, each curve of her wonderful body coursing into another, her face showing the full beauty of maturity, her eyes and mouth rich with color.

  She reached out her hand and I stood up, tilted her chin up with my fingers and held her that way. “You’re thinking, kitten.”

  “With you I have to.”

  “Why?”

  “Because somehow you know Leo’s death is part of her, and I feel the same way you do. Whoever killed Leo is going to die too.”

  I let go of her face, put my hands on her shoulders and pulled her close to me. “If he’s the one I want I’ll kill him for you, kid.”

  “No, Mike. I’ll do it myself.” And her voice was as cold and as full of purpose as my own when she said it. Then she added, “You just find that one for me.”

  “You’re asking a lot, girl.”

  “Am I? After you left I found out all about you. It didn’t take long. It was very fascinating information, but nothing I didn’t know the first minute I saw you.”

  “That was me of a long time ago. I’ve been seven years drunk and I’m just over the bum stage now. Maybe I could drop back real easy. I don’t know.”

  “I know.”

&
nbsp; “Nobody knows. Besides, I’m not authorized to pursue investigations.”

  “That doesn’t seem to stop you.”

  A grin started to etch my face again. “You’re getting to a point, kid.”

  She laughed gently, a full, quiet laugh. Once again her hand came up to my face. “Then I’ll help you find your woman, Mike, if you’ll find who killed Leo.”

  “Laura—”

  “When Leo died the investigation was simply routine. They were more concerned about the political repercussions than in locating his killer. They forgot about that one, but I haven’t. I thought I had, but I really hadn’t. Nobody would look for me—they all promised and turned in reports, but they never really cared about finding that one. But you do, Mike, and somehow I know you will. Oh, you have no license and no authority, but I have money and it will put many things at your disposal. You take it. You find your woman, and while you’re doing it, or before, or after, whatever you like, you find the one I want. Tomorrow I’ll send you five thousand dollars in cash. No questions. No paperwork. No reports. Even if nothing comes of it there is no obligation on you.”

  Under my hands she was trembling. It didn’t show on her face, but her shoulders quivered with tension. “You loved him very much,” I stated.

  She nodded. “As you loved her.”

  We were too close then, both of us feeling the jarring impact of new and sudden emotions. My hands were things of their own, leaving her shoulders to slide down to her waist, then reaching behind her to bring her body close to mine until it was touching, then pressing until a fusion was almost reached.

  She had to gasp to breathe, and fingers that were light on my face were suddenly as fierce and demanding as my own as she brought me down to meet her mouth and the scalding touch of her tongue that worked serpentlike in a passionate orgy that screamed of release after so long a time.

  She pulled away, her breasts moving spasmodically against my chest. Her eyes were wet and shimmering with a glow of disbelief that it could ever happen again and she said softly: “You, Mike—I want a man. It could never be anybody but—a man.” She turned her eyes on mine, pleading. “Please, Mike.”

  “You never have to say please,” I told her, then I kissed her again and we found our place in time and in distance, lost people who didn’t have to hurry or be cautious and who could enjoy the sensual discomfort of a cold leather couch on naked skin and take pleasure in whispering of clothing and relish the tiny sounds of a bursting seam; two whose appetites had been stifled for much too long, yet who loved the food of flesh enough not to rush through the first offering, but to taste and become filled course by course until in an explosion of delight, the grand finale of the whole table, was served and partaken.

  We were gourmets, the body satisfied, but the mind knowing that it was only a momentary filling and that there would be other meals, each different, each more succulent than the last in a never-ending progression of enjoyment. The banquet was over so we kissed and smiled at each other, neither having been the guest, but rather, one the host, the other the hostess, both having the same startling thought of where was the past now? Could the present possibly be more important?

  When she was ready I said, “Let’s get you home now, Laura.”

  “Must I?”

  “You must.”

  “I could stay in town.”

  “If you did it would be a distraction I can’t afford.”

  “But I live a hundred and ten miles from your city.”

  “That’s only two hours up the Thruway and over the hills.”

  She grinned at me. “Will you come?”

  I grinned back. “Naturally.”

  I picked up my hat and guided her to the outer office. For a single, terrible moment I felt a wash of shame drench me with guilt. There on the floor where it had been squashed underfoot by the one who killed old Morris Fleming and who had taken a shot at me was the letter from Velda that began, “Mike Darling—”

  We sat at the corner of the bar in P. J. Moriarty’s steak and chop house on Sixth and Fifty-second and across the angle his eyes were terrible little beads, magnified by the lenses of his glasses. John, the Irish bartender, brought us each a cold Blue Ribbon, leaving without a word because he could feel the thing that existed there.

  Art Rickerby said, “How far do you think you can go?”

  “All the way,” I said.

  “Not with me.”

  “Then alone.”

  He poured the beer and drank it as if it were water and he was thirsty, yet in a perfunctory manner that made you realize he wasn’t a drinker at all, but simply doing a job, something he had to do.

  When he finished he put the glass down and stared at me blandly. “You don’t realize just how alone you really are.”

  “I know. Now do we talk?”

  “Do you?”

  “You gave me a week, buddy.”

  “Uh-huh.” He poured the rest of the bottle into the glass and made a pattern with the wet bottom on the bar. When he looked up he said, “I may take it back.”

  I shrugged. “So you found something out.”

  “I did. About you too.”

  “Go ahead.”

  From overhead, the light bounced from his glasses so I couldn’t see what was happening to his eyes. He said, “Richie was a little bigger than I thought during the war. He was quite important. Quite.”

  “At his age?”

  “He was your age, Mike. And during the war age can be as much of a disguise as a deciding factor.”

  “Get to it.”

  “My pleasure.” He paused, looked at me and threw the rest of the beer down. “He commanded the Seventeen Group.” When I didn’t give him the reaction he looked for he asked me, “Did you ever hear of Butterfly Two?”

  I covered the frown that pulled at my forehead by finishing my own beer and waving to John for another. “I heard of it. I don’t know the details. Something to do with the German system of total espionage. They had people working for them ever since the First World War.”

  There was something like respect in his eyes now. “It’s amazing that you even heard of it.”

  “I have friends in amazing places.”

  “Yes, you had.”

  As slowly as I could I put the glass down. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  And then his eyes came up, fastened on my face so as not to lose sight of even the slightest expression and he said, “It was your girl, the one called Velda, that he saw on the few occasions he was home. She was something left over from the war.”

  The glass broke in my hand and I felt a warm surge of blood spill into my hand. I took the towel John offered me and held it until the bleeding stopped. I said, “Go on.”

  Art smiled. It was the wrong kind of smile, with a gruesome quality that didn’t match his face. “He last saw her in Paris just before the war ended and at that time he was working on Butterfly Two.”

  I gave the towel back to John and pressed on the Band-Aid he gave me.

  “Gerald Erlich was the target then. At the time his name wasn’t known except to Richie—and the enemy. Does it make sense now?”

  “No.” My guts were starting to turn upside down. I reached for the beer again, but it was too much. I couldn’t do anything except listen.

  “Erlich was the head of an espionage ring that had been instituted in 1920. Those agents went into every land in the world to get ready for the next war and even raised their children to be agents. Do you think World War II was simply the result of a political turnover?”

  “Politics are not my specialty.”

  “Well, it wasn’t. There was another group. It wasn’t part of the German General Staff’s machinations either. They utilized this group and so did Hitler—or better still, let’s say vice versa.”

  I shook my head, not getting it at all.

  “It was a world conquest scheme. It incorporated some of the greatest military and corrupt minds this world has ever known and is
using global wars and brush-fire wars to its own advantage until one day when everything is ready they can take over the world for their own.”

  “You’re nuts!”

  “I am?” he said softly. “How many powers were involved in 1918?”

  “All but a few.”

  “That’s right. And in 1945?”

  “All of them were—”

  “Not quite. I mean, who were the major powers?”

  “We were. England, Germany, Russia, Japan—”

  “That narrows it down a bit, doesn’t it? And now, right now, how many major powers are there really?”

  What he was getting at was almost inconceivable. “Two. Ourselves and the Reds.”

  “Ah—now we’re getting to the point. And they hold most of the world’s land and inhabitants in their hands. They’re the antagonists. They’re the ones pushing and we’re the ones holding.”

  “Damn it, Rickerby—”

  “Easy, friend. Just think a little bit.”

  “Ah, think my ass. What the hell are you getting to? Velda’s part of that deal? You have visions, man, you got the big bug! Damn, I can get better than that from them at a jag dance in the Village. Even the bearded idiots make more sense.”

  His mouth didn’t smile. It twisted. “Your tense is unusual. You spoke as if she were alive.”

  I let it go. I deliberately played the beer into the glass until the head was foaming over the rim, then drank it off with a grimace of pleasure and put the glass down.

  When I was ready I said, “So now the Reds are going to take over the world. They’ll bury us. Well, maybe they will, buddy, but there won’t be enough Reds around to start repopulating again, that’s for sure.”

  “I didn’t say that,” Art told me.

  His manner had changed again. I threw him an annoyed look and reached for the beer.

  “I think the world conquest parties changed hands. The conqueror has been conquered. The Reds have located and are using this vast fund of information, this great organization we call Butterfly Two, and that’s why the free world is on the defensive.”

  John asked me if I wanted another Blue Ribbon and I said yes. He brought two, poured them, put the bar check in the register and returned it with a nod. When he had gone I half swung around, no longer so filled with a crazy fury that I couldn’t speak. I said, “You’re lucky, Rickerby. I didn’t know whether to belt you in the mouth or listen.”