Velda had no more questions for me. She had accepted every word and knew I spoke the truth and that I shared the same doubts about the Russian motives behind my capture. We had moved from the couch and I was sipping coffee, with her perched on the edge of her desk, a frown creasing her eyes.
“What are you going to do, Mike?”
“About what?”
“About what. About being number one on the K.G.B. hit parade!”
I shrugged. “I go about my business. And wait.”
“For how long?”
“Until they make a try. See, it may all be talk. Do they really want to risk blowing this incident up into another missile crisis? What makes me worth that kind of risk?”
She nodded, her lower lip clenched between her teeth. “So that’s all you do. Wait and see if they’re. all talk.”
“No. We’re going to work this thing from the New York angle.”
“What is there to work?”
“What if Ralph Marley was shot so that I became the guy who accompanied the senator on his Russia trip?”
Her forehead furrowed. “You mean, the K.G.B. wanted to get their hands on you, for whatever reason, and Marley’s death paved the way for you to step in?”
“I was the natural second choice for the senator.”
“If that’s true, that means there is a New York angle to this. That there are deep-cover Soviet agents right in this city who manipulated those events.”
“Bingo, baby. They are directly responsible for Marley’s murder, and they are indirectly responsible for the death of that little Russian doll.”
“Did she. mean anything to you, Mike?”
“She was my friend, kitten. She was just a kid who dreamed about defecting and that made her expendable. An enemy of the state. A convenient pawn to be sacrificed in a very crooked game.”
“So she did mean something to you.”
“Whether she did or not, she didn’t deserve to die.”
Velda swallowed, waved a hand as if using an eraser on blackboard. “No. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound jealous. Ours is an open relationship. I’m fine about that.”
But was she really? I was the only one taking advantage of that open status. Sometimes I was ashamed of myself. Just never at the right times.
I went over and put my hands on her arms. “Look, if you’re right, and there’s more to this than just the K.G.B. wanting to grill me about Rickerby’s group, or play overdue revenge games on my carcass, then looking into Marley’s murder is the place to start. It’s the only window into this dark room that we can see into.”
“Which means you’ll be climbing in through it.”
“You got it, sugar.”
I didn’t have to turn around to know he was there.
That he’d come through that door and was standing behind me—I had felt Velda’s body stiffen with a sudden intake of breath and her fingers bite into my upper arm with a spasm of fear.
I turned easily. I was, after all, unarmed.
The squat little guy in the raincoat and gray suit with feathered fedora stood there with one hand in his side pocket, watching us intently. He had the kind of froggy face that split the difference between goofy and sinister. I had seen that expressionless expression on others in the kill racket, and I was wishing I had the .45 that was still locked up in my apartment uptown.
Sloppy, so sloppy. I had dispatched Des Casey to brace this guy, check him out, even take him out if necessary, and further told the M.P. not to come up to the office right away when he was through with his mission, since I wanted some alone time with Velda. Confidence. Arrogance. A thin line. I’d crossed it....
Velda’s little .22 was on the other side of that desktop where she perched, two and a half feet away. Or was that a million miles?
The froggy face had just started to twist into a peculiar kind of smile when Des Casey came up behind him and laid the leaded end of a collapsible billy over our guest’s ear and the feathered fedora took flight while he dropped like all his bones had melted.
“Nice timing, Des,” I said. “Velda, Des Casey. Des, Velda Sterling. My partner in crime.”
The big sergeant—having traded his M.P. uniform in for a blazer over a gray sweater with white shirt and charcoal slacks— stepped around his fallen victim. He shifted his billy to his left hand so he could shake with Velda, who slid to the floor from the desk perch to smile at our savior.
“You handle that like a pro,” Velda said, nodding toward the billy.
“I have a decent batting average,” Casey said. He grinned at me. “Now I know why you were so anxious to have some privacy up here. Can’t blame you a bit.”
Velda gave me a half-smiling look. “So this is the M.P. bodyguard you told me about,” she said. “You didn’t say he was so good-looking.”
She was needling me a little, probably because of that Russian girl, but the way they were measuring each other up had nothing to do with sex—this was two pros recognizing their own kind and enjoying the privilege.
I nodded at the unconscious lump. “Why did it take Froggy so long to come a courting?”
“He made a call in a booth in the lobby,” Casey said. “Then he stood around smoking for half an hour until he got called back. Looked like serious conversations.”
“And he didn’t make you?”
“Naw. I was rapping with the doorman, asking if he had any job leads in the neighborhood.” He jerked a thumb at his handiwork on the floor. “What shall we do about our friend?”
“I got him,” I said.
I lifted the guy up and threw him on the couch like a bag of laundry. We emptied his pockets and tossed the stuff on the desk. He had a gun all right, but it wasn’t in his pocket where his hand had been. It was a .38 Banker’s Special in a clip on his belt, and on the other side a leather case held a dozen shells for it. This was my first indication I might have misread the situation—that wasn’t the type of rig a hired killer would use at all.
“Oops,” Velda said. “Mike, look at this.”
She held out our uninvited guest’s wallet. Pinned to the inside flap was an agency badge in gold and blue enamel with a matching identity card bearing his photo, prints, and the seal of Rickerby’s select group.
Casey, leaning over the guy, gave me an embarrassed glance. “What about it, Mike? Did I screw up?”
“I told Rickerby to lay off. I treat all tails as unfriendly.”
“Maybe I hit him too hard...”
“Naw. He’s breathing just fine. Get some water, Velda.”
She came back in a minute with a glass and I forced him to sip some. His eyes opened gradually, focused on me, and he mumbled, “Jesus Christ.”
Not a prayer.
The welt over his ear looked like a plump sausage. He’d be a long time before putting a hat on again, feathered or otherwise, and a while longer after that before he didn’t grimace doing it. He took the glass from my hand, finished its contents, and tried to push himself upright. Velda helped him.
After a few minutes, he was breathing regularly. Finally, he spoke: “That wasn’t necessary, Mr. Hammer. Not at all necessary.”
I pulled a chair over and sat. “You could have spelled trouble for me, buddy.”
His eyes burned holes in my face. “I came here to identify myself.”
“Why didn’t you do it earlier? I spotted you on the plane.”
“I was told not to introduce myself until we were in private. Anything in public might mean exposing ourselves unnecessarily. And putting you at risk.”
“I told you feds that—”
“I’m aware of what you told them,” he said curtly.
My hands began to tighten with repressed anger. “Okay. Then I’ll tell you again. Any tail on me is going to be treated like the enemy, get it? Sergeant Casey is all the backup I agreed to, and if anybody, however well-meaning, adds to that, and winds up hurt? It’s their own damn fault.”
His smile intermingled indignation and di
scomfort. “I will be sure to underscore that in my report.” He touched the side of his head gingerly, and winced. “Now, since you’ve destroyed my usefulness, at least temporarily, I’ll get back to the office. If you don’t mind.” He paused, then said: “You’ll stay in touch, of course.”
“I told your boss I would.”
“I know. And he told me to remind you to do so.” The froggy little man sighed, then lurched to his feet. “May I have my things?”
“Not a problem,” I said, and I went and got his gun, glancing at the I.D. in his wallet before handing the stuff over, saying, “Friendly word of advice, Mr. Rath. Stay the hell out of my hair.”
“Don’t worry about that, Mr. Hammer. Once I report in, I’ll be assigned to a desk for a while, and glad to be.” He grunted some displeasure, then put his gun in the hip holster, and the wallet in his pocket, gave us one last disgusted look, and went out the door.
“Your friend Rickerby didn’t waste any time,” Casey said.
“I didn’t expect him to,” I said.
“Think we’ll get any hassle over that?”
“Nope. I told Art what to expect, and I’m sure he passed that on down along the line.”
Casey laughed without much humor. “Too bad nobody told that poor slob.”
“Mike...”
I turned and Velda was sitting in her desk chair, holding the drinking glass up to the light.
“What?”
“Come here.” Her tone was no-nonsense.
I walked over. “You have something?”
“Take a look at this.” Wearing a nasty little smile, Velda rolled the glass around in the overhead light until it caught a clear print on the side. “That’s his. Our guest’s.”
“That could be my print or yours, baby. But so what if it’s his?”
She put the glass down carefully and her eyes were intense. “I just cleaned those glasses. No one else used that.”
“So?”
“So when you threw that’s guy’s wallet over here, I checked his I.D. Photo looked like him, all right, or enough so that I didn’t pay much attention. What I did happen to notice, just by dumb luck, was his thumb print. The central pattern was a distinct whorl with a scar through it.” She nodded toward the displayed print in the light. “The right thumb print on the glass is a loop. No scar.”
I felt the chill go right through me. “Damn!”
Casey, yanking a .38 Special from under his left arm, was already out the door, checking the hallway.
Velda said, “Better make a call, Mike.”
I reached for her phone, direct-dialed the D.C. number I’d long since committed to memory, and got Art Rickerby on the line. When he answered I said, “Mike Hammer, Art.”
“You must be back in the city by now. What is it, Mike?”
“You have an agent named Herman Rath?”
There was a silence of maybe three seconds before Rickerby said, “What do you know about him?”
There was a tight, cold edge to his voice.
“Let’s have it, Art.”
“Rath committed suicide here in Washington about an hour before you left. He was on an extended leave having to do with health problems. There was no connection to—”
“His gun belt and wallet were missing. Right?”
“...Where are you, Mike?”
“My office in Manhattan.”
“Then you just stay put until my people can get there.”
“You’re already too late, buddy. He’s out the door.”
“You just stay there.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
I hung up.
Casey came back in, tucking away the .38. He shook his head. “Checked the stairs, the restrooms. He’s in the wind, Mike.”
Velda and Casey faced me, their arms folded, waiting to hear how I read it.
“It might have been a hit attempt,” I said, “but what I think they were doing was testing our defenses. If we had been sloppy enough, and we damn near were, it might have gone down right here and now. But this feels like recon—now they know about you, Des. And they know you’re my only backup. Why do they know? Because, goddamnit, I told them.”
I slammed a fist on the desk and Velda’s roses jumped.
“Maybe we should close down the office for a while,” Velda said. She turned to Casey. “We have a string of apartments and small hotels available as safe houses for witnesses. Just like the cops. We can bounce from one to the other, till this is over.”
I said, “No way, doll. They don’t scare me out of my own damn Batcave. Anyway, they’ll try it a different way, next time.”
Casey’s voice was a low growl. “Who was he, Mike?”
“The first of many,” I said.
* * *
It was midnight before they got through with us. A retired police artist was called in to sketch a picture of the suspect from our description until we were satisfied it could be used for identification. A photo of the late Herman Rath revealed a general physical resemblance that a quick look would buy, but that might not have stood up to a closer inspection.
Des Casey was able to provide the license number of the cab the fake Rath used. That meant the cabbie could be shown the police sketch for verification, and the same would be true for the flight crew on the shuttle plane from D.C.
Apparently Herman Rath had been selected because he had the same basic physical characteristics as the enemy agent who tailed us or possibly vice versa. Rath died in his own apartment in what was now believed to be a murder staged as a suicide. His body had not been not found for several hours, and the missing gun and wallet had not been initially noticed.
The sophistication of seeking a near lookalike among federal agents for the substitution of their own agent could mean only one thing. The Soviets were expending all of their resources on this effort. We weren’t up against one assassin or even a team or two of them—we had an entire espionage organization opposing us.
The print on the glass was obviously not Rath’s. It was classified by an expert on the spot, then rushed to the local office of Rickerby’s group for Telexing to Washington, where it was run through their computerized files without a match. A copy was fired off to several foreign police bureaus, but nobody seemed hopeful that anything would come of it.
From my desk, I spoke on the phone with Rickerby while his men were still there taking Velda’s statement.
“Mike, this is going to increase the heat I’ll be getting from inside my agency and without. They’ll be after me again to keep you under wraps.”
“Remind them I have legal rights and will fight them down the line. If they want that kind of news coverage, they can go for it. You do know I number Hy Gardner among my best buddies?”
“Well, Hy Gardner and no reporter can have this story, Mike,” Rickerby said, insistent. “This is strictly classified. The real Herman Rath stays a suicide, and nobody came around your office this afternoon except maybe the cleaning lady.”
“If so, she looked like a frog and packed a pistol.”
“You surely realize this means that we have to give you more protection than just Sergeant Casey.”
“Hell you say. You’re gonna lay a cover on me now?”
“My agent-in-charge there will fill you in,” Rickerby said, and hung up. Not so much as a goodbye. What did I ever do to deserve such rude treatment?
“Don’t worry, Mr. Hammer,” a tall blond agent in his early thirties told me. He had the kind of blandly handsome face that didn’t look like it had had much use. “We’ll be discreet about it.”
“Is that right?”
“We’ll have two men in an apartment across the street from yours, and an office down the hall here at the Hackard Building has already been rented to one of our dummy corporations. And a pair of female agents will be down the hall from Miss Sterling’s apartment, keeping watch.”
“Son, this is a crafty, canny bunch we’re up against with a real grasp of spy craft. I’l
l lay you odds our K.G.B. pals will take note of those new rentals.”
“We’re not naive, Mr. Hammer, nor are we inexperienced. It may interest you to know we anticipated your actions before you ever got back. Those places were rented then.”
“Okay. So your boss knows his stuff.”
Still, he didn’t appreciate the doubts I’d expressed at all. “We’ll keep a nominal check on your activities, Mr. Hammer. We won’t be in your way. The personnel we assign will be highly experienced.”
“They’d better be. I haven’t seen a federal tail yet that I couldn’t shake if I felt like it.”
His face settled into a cold mask. “Perhaps you don’t realize the gravity of your situation, Hammer.”
No “mister” now
“Ever kill a man?” I asked him.
His head went back, as if I had slapped him.
“Men somewhere out in that city,” I said, with a nod toward the window on the nighttime world that was Manhattan, “are preparing to kill me. And if you think I don’t understand the gravity of that ‘situation,’ check my record, and see how many have tried. and died.”
He had no reply. He just gave me a steady stare for a few seconds, then gathered his team and left. I was still seated at my desk. The spot in my thigh where I’d taken that bullet for Marley felt like a small misplaced toothache, a nagging little reminder of how this whole vicious mess began.
A while back, Velda and I had taken apartments in the same building—it came in handy for business conferences and the like. Also, remind me to sell you the Brooklyn Bridge. I sent Casey on ahead with the key to mine, then walked Velda up to hers.
She invited me in, but I said, “We’ll have a real reunion when this settles down,” and she gave me a long, lingering kiss that was a dare to do otherwise, then smiled devilishly, said, “Your loss,” and shut me out in the hall.
I went back up to my pad, 9-D, where Casey was waiting just inside, with the door open. While it was pretty much as I’d left it, the telltale signs were there.
“A nice, thorough, professional job,” Casey said.
Complex 90 Page 9