A Korean Tiger

by Nick Carter

  "You think the man is a real psycho, Nick?"

  "Definitely," said Killmaster. "Though not in any legal sense. I'm beginning to get a pretty clear picture of our Mr. Bennett, and it's a little frightening and a little funny and more than a little pitiful. Look at this."

  From another hook in the cabinet Nick took a trenchcoat and a pearl gray snapbrim hat with a large welt. Both looked new. Nick glanced at the maker's tag in the fawn-colored trenchcoat. "Abercrombie & Fitch. The hat is Dobbs. Both expensive and new, hardly worn at all." He hefted the coat. "Something heavy in the pockets."

  Hawk took a typed flimsy from his pocket and glanced at it. "Yes. The FBI listed it. Pipe and tobacco, never opened, pipe never used, and a revolver. Banker's Special, never fired."

  Nick took the articles in question from the pockets of the trenchcoat and examined them. The pipe tobacco was Douwe Egberts, a Dutch cavendish. The pouch was still sealed. He ran his finger around the inside of the pipe bowl. Shiny clean.

  The revolver was a Smith & Wesson with a stubby two-inch barrel — a .38. It would pack a hell of a wallop at very short range. A light film of oil glistened on the weapon. Some of it adhered to Nick's fingers and he wiped them on his trousers.

  Hawk said: "Are you thinking what I'm thinking, N3? Something real nutty — like make-believe and pretend and children's games?"

  Before he answered, Nick Carter glanced again at the bookshelves containing the mysteries, the spy stories, the stacked assortment of comic books of like tenoi His keen eyes flicked to a little taboret where stood two bottles of scotch and a soda siphon. The seals on the whiskey were intact, the siphon was full.

  Hawk followed his glance. "Bennett didn't 6moke or drink."

  Finally Killmaster said: "It would make it nice and simple, sir. To decide that Bennett is just a nut who read too many spy stories, saw too much television. A juvenile mentality whose idea of glory was to earn his Junior G-Man's badge. I'll admit a lot of things point that way — but on the other hand a lot of things don't. Kids, even grown-up kids, don't usually take a hatchet to their wives."

  "He's a psycho," Hawk grumbled. "A schizo. Split personality. He was a psycho, a nut, all his life. But he kept it pretty well concealed. Then suddenly something triggered him into a psychotic state, and he axed his wife."

  Nick knew that his boss was thinking aloud and expecting Killmaster to play the role of devil's advocate. It was a technique they often used on a knotty problem.

  "I think you're about half right," he said now. "But only half. You're oversimplifying it, sir. It's all right to say that Bennett was a childish romantic who liked to play at being a spy — but the FBI had turned up evidence that he could have been a real spy. Don't forget the total recall and the camera mind! The man's a walking record of everything important that happened in Washington in the past thirty years."

  Hawk grunted and tore the unoffending wrapper from a fresh cigar. "Then why the hell didn't the Kremlin, if it was the Kremlin, ever try to contact him? Why didn't they pay him? It just doesn't make sense that they would plant a guy like Bennett and then not try to milk him over the years. Unless..."

  Nick had replaced the trenchcoat and hat in the metal cabinet. He crossed the room and stood looking at a fake fireplace, of imitation red brick, that had been installed in one wall. Behind a cheap brass screen there was a small electric heater with an extension cord leading to a wall socket. Nick picked up the cord and plugged it in. The heater began to glow red.

  Before the fireplace was a shabby armchair with torn vinyl upholstery. Nick Carter sank into the chair and extended his long muscular legs to the make-believe flame. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine himself as Raymond Lee Bennett. A dreary little man with a poor physique, not much mouse-colored hair, a bad case of acne scarring an ugly horse face. Very poor equipment with which to face the world. A world in which all the goodies went to the beautiful people, to the brilliant and the clever and the moneyed people. Nick, his eyes still closed, struggling to simulate and attune himself to the pinkish atomic armature underlying the brain of Raymond Lee Bennett — just one brain in billions — began gradually to evolve a hazy picture in his own mind. He could almost savor, nearly taste, the raw juices of defeat. Of frustration and a terrible wanting. A crying out that would not be answered. A soul wanting out of the skimpy body and begging rescue from the ravaged face. A have-not yearning to have. A fuzzy mind, yet conscious of the passage of time and with a horrible awareness of what was being missed. A poor puerile child locked away from the sweets of life.

  Such a man — if man was the word — could only have found relief, surcease, in fantasy. Nick opened his eyes and stared at the glowing electric heater. For a moment he became Bennett sitting there, staring at the leaping flames of an apple wood fire, smoking a Sherlock Holmes pipe — no tobacco — and about to have a drink of expensive scotch — the seals on the bottle unbroken. Time was of the essence. Just time for a pipe and a drink before donning the trenchcoat and the snapbrim hat, pocketing the revolver, and going out in search of adventure. Because tonight the game was afoot, great events were in the making, with villains to slay and governments to save and maidens to rescue. Ah, the girls! The fair maidens. All naked and lovely. Busty and silver-thighed. How they smothered a man in their sweet-smelling flesh, clamoring for it, moaning for it, all of them sick with lust.

  Fantasy. The secret room and the props and the dreams and time slipping away and the dreaming — the dreaming the dreaming...

  Nick sat bolt upright in the chair. "I'll bet that Bennett is impotent!"

  Hawk had not moved from his place in the shadows. He looked just the same, and for a moment Nick found that strange; then he knew that only a few seconds had elapsed. His own dreaming had seemed much longer. Now Hawk said: "You bet what?"

  Nick left the chair and ran a finger through the thick dust on a barren mantel over the fake fireplace. "That our boy is impotent! He couldn't make it in bed. At least not in the normal way. That's the reason for the whips and the shoes and the girdles and all that stuff. The reason for the pornography. Bennett can't function sexually without some sort of artificial stimuli — maybe he has to be whipped first."

  Hawk stared at his Number One boy with an odd mixture of awe and disgust. He moved closer, out of the shadows. "Spare me the Krafft-Ebing bit, for Pete's sake. I didn't bring you down here to look into Bennett's sex life, or lack of it, and I don't care much about his perversions, if any. I thought you might get some ideas..."

  "I have," Nick interrupted. "A hell of a lot of them. More than I can use just at the moment. It will take time to sort them out — if it can be done at all. But if Bennett was a spy — and I'm inclined to think he was, in a dilettante sort of way at least — then I think we can expect another woman to turn up in the picture. Sooner or later, when and if we find Bennett, there will be a woman. And she won't be old and fat and ugly! In short, sir, Bennett has stopped depending on fantasy and gone after the real thing. He's suddenly realized that he's fifty-five, retired, and doesn't have too much time left. That's why he killed his wife! She reminded him of too much — of what he no doubt considers a wasted thirty years. And she was in the way! He couldn't just go off and leave her alive. That way he would never really be rid of her. She had to die. He had to kill her. It was Bennett's way of making a clean break, of making positive that he couldn't chicken out and come back home. Back to dreaming instead of action."

  Killmaster put a cigarette in his mouth and snapped his lighter. "In a way you have to hand it to the little man — it took a lot of guts, of a sort, to do what he did."

  Hawk scratched at the slight graying stubble on his chin. "You've lost me, son. I hope to God you know what you're talking about."

  "So do I. The thing is — we'll never really know until we catch Bennett."

  "You seen all you want to here?"

  "One thing, sir." Nick pointed to the mantel. Hawk came to peer at the spot indicated. There was a thick patina of dust o
ver the entire mantel except for an oval mark some three inches long and two inches wide.

  "Something has been taken from this mantel recently," Nick said. "Probably it was the only thing kept on the mantel, and I'd guess that Bennett took it with him, but we'd better check it. Anything on it from the FBI?"

  Again Hawk consulted the typed flimsy. "No. They don't even mention the mantel. Or the mark in the dust. They overlooked it, I guess."

  Nick sighed and flicked ashes from his cigarette. "I'd like to know what it was. Probably it was the only thing he took from this room — it must have been important."

  They left the hidden room. Hawk pushed the pseudocement wall back into place. Going up the steep basement stairs he said, "We'll probably never know unless we catch Bennett. His wife sure isn't going to tell us." The old man sounded very gloomy.

  "Cheer up," Nick told him. "I've got a feeling, or call it a hunch, that we're going to catch Bennett. It's not going to be easy, but we'll do it. He's an amateur. He's also a hysteric and a psychotic and a romantic with the IQ of an eight-year-old. But he's not harmless! Far from it. He's deadly — as a child can be deadly. In addition to all that he's carrying those beautiful files around in his brain. I don't think that matters much to Bennett. I don't think he knows how much he knows, if you follow me, sir."

  Hawk groaned audibly as he locked the basement door. "I'm not sure, Nick. I'm not sure of anything about this case any more. I'm not even sure there is a case! I keep thinking I'll wake up and find it's all a nightmare."

  Killmaster gazed at his boss with a hint of commiseration. It was not like Hawk to be so distraught. Then he remembered that Hawk had been carrying the burden practically alone while he, Carter, was fresh from the beauties of nature and the arms of amour. It made a difference.

  As they went through the stifling little house again Nick said, "There's a case, all right. And it might turn out to be a nightmare. But I'll whip it, sir."

  The big cop stood up again as they left the house. As Nick was replacing the metal seal, intact, his roving sharp eyes caught a slight alteration in the placid suburban landscape. Something new had been added. Nick turned to the cop and nodded toward a small stand of silver birch some seventy-five yards to the east. "Who's the guy over there in the trees, watching us? He belong around here?"

  The cop followed the AXEman's glance. "Oh, him! That's only Mr. Westcott. He lives next door. Snoops a lot. Nosey, sir. It was him that called us in on this case in the first place. Nothing we can do, sir. Those trees are on his property."

  "Who said I wanted to do anything?" said Nick mildly. "But I think I will have a word with the gentleman. I'll meet you back at the car, sir." He left Hawk once more putting the fear of God, and the Presidential pass, into the cop and walked toward the little clump of trees.

  Mr. Lloyd Westcott was a thin man in his early fifties with a tanned bald head and a small paunch. He wore slacks and a blue sport shirt and a definitely feisty manner. As Nick approached him he was swinging a weed cutter in a half-hearted manner, grubbing at some ragweed around the boles of the trees. It was, Nick conceded, as good an excuse as any for being there.

  N3 slipped easily into his winning manner. The AXEman could be most personable when he chose. He smiled at the man. "Mr. Westcott?"

  "Yeah. I'm Westcott." The man took a battered briar pipe from between shiny false teeth. "You a cop?"

  Nick laughed. "No. Insurance." He handed the man a card from his wallet. The insurance front usually worked in situations like this.

  Westcott pursed his lips and frowned at the card, then handed it back to Nick. "Okay. So what do you want from me?"

  Nick smiled again. He offered a cigarette, which was refused, then lit his own. "Nothing in particular, Mr. Westcott. It's just that I'm trying to get all the information I can about Mr. Bennett. He's disappeared, as you must know, and he was rather heavily insured with us. You're a neighbor of his — did you know him well?"

  Westcott laughed harshly. "Know him? Nobody knew that nut very well! He and that fat slob of a wife kept strictly to themselves. Which was all right with the rest of us around here — they didn't belong here anyway! I, we, all of us around here, we all knew something like this would happen someday. And sure enough..."

  Nick regarded the man steadily. This might be only suburban spite and snobbishness, yet he could not afford to overlook an angle.

  With intent to flatter he said: "I can't seem to get much out of the police. Either they don't know much or they just aren't talking. Now you, Mr. Westcott, you look like an intelligent and alert man. What do you think really happened over there?"

  There was no mistaking the genuineness of Westcott's expression of amazement. "Happened? No question of that, mister. Just what the cops think. That crazy bastard killed his wife and ran away — probably with some other dame." Westcott grinned nastily. "Can't say I blame him for running away — that wife of his was a real mess. Only he didn't have to kill her."

  Nick looked disappointed. He shrugged his big shoulders. "Sorry I bothered you, Mr. Westcott. I thought you might know something, have noticed something, that the police overlooked. But I guess you're right — it's just a routine case of wife murder. Goodbye."

  "Wait a minute." Westcott tapped his pipe on his teeth. "I do know something the cops don't. Because I didn't tell them. I... I don't like to get mixed up in anything, see, so when they asked me questions I just answered those questions, see. I didn't shoot off my mouth any, didn't volunteer anything."

  Nick waited patiently. "Yes, Mr. Westcott?"

  "I don't see how it would have helped the cops any if I had told them," said Westcott defensively, "but this Bennett was a real nut. He used to dress up and parade around the neighborhood at night, see. In a sort of costume. I used to watch him. Follow him, just to see what he was up to."

  Nick smiled again. "And what was he up to, Mr. Westcott?"

  "Among other things he was a peeper. A Peeping Tom. He used to prowl the neighborhood and look in bedroom windows, trying to watch women dressing or undressing."

  Nick stared at the man. His mobile lips quirked a bit as he said, "You saw him doing this, Mr. Westcott?"

  "Yeah. A lot of times — well, anyway two or three times. He didn't come around my place, though, so I..."

  Nick picked it up smoothly. "He didn't come around your place, Mr. Westcott, so you didn't bother to report him to the police? Is that it?"

  Westcott's face was flushed. "Well, yes. Like I said, I don't like to get mixed up in anything. The guy wasn't really hurting anything and I, uh..." His voice trailed off.

  Nick Carter kept a straight face. Obviously Bennett had interfered with Westcott's own peeping and that, while it must have been annoying, was definitely not a police matter!

  Westcott must have sensed Nick's thought because he hurried on in an attempt to blur the moment over. "I got a pretty good look at him sometimes, when he didn't know I was watching. He was always dressed like he thought he was in a TV show or something — you know, the trench-coat and the smart aleck hat. He would always have the coat buttoned up under his chin and the hat pulled down over his eyes. And he always kept his hands in his pockets, too. Like maybe he had a gun, you know."

  Westcott tapped out his pipe on a birch tree. "After what happened, him murdering his wife, I mean, he probably did have a gun, huh? I'm glad now that I never called him on the peeping stuff. He might have shot me!"

  Nick turned away. He flipped a hand in farewell. "I don't think so, Mr. Westcott. The gun wasn't loaded. And now that you've got the field to yourself again — let me wish you happy peeping. And thanks for everything."

  He did not turn at the faint sound behind him. It was only Mr. Westcott's pipe dropping from his open mouth.

  In the car, on the way back into Washington, he told Hawk what Westcott had revealed. Hawk nodded without any real interest, "It only confirms what we already know. Bennett is a nut. So he liked to peep and play cops and robbers at night — that's not
going to help us catch him."

  Nick wasn't so sure. But he kept his peace and for a time they drove in silence. Hawk broke it. "I had a thought back there in the room — just before you went off into that trance. I'll tell you if you promise not to die laughing."

  "Promise."

  "Okay." Hawk crunched fiercely on a dry cigar. "As I was saying back there — if the Kremlin put one over on us, really succeeded in planting Bennett on us, then why in hell haven't they been using him? Contacting him? Milking him for all it was worth? It just doesn't make sense that the Ivans would plant a sleeper on us for thirty years! Five, yes. Maybe ten. That's been done. But thirty! That's a hell of a long sleeper."

  Nick agreed. "Yet they seem to have done just that, sir."

  Hawk shook his head. "No. I don't think so. And I've got a real screwy theory that just might explain it. Suppose they goofed in the Kremlin. Really goofed, a monumental flub. Suppose they planted Bennett on us way back in 1936 and then forgot about him!"

  At least it was a fresh approach to their problem. Certainly it had not occurred to Nick. But it seemed to him a little wild. He wasn't buying it. Not yet. He reminded Hawk of one of the basic facts of life, one of the first things an agent is taught. Never underestimate the Russians.

  "I'm not," said Hawk dourly. "But it is possible, boy! We make mistakes, as you know, and some of them are dillies. So do the Reds. We usually manage to cover our mistakes, hide them, and so do they. The more I think about it the more plausible it becomes. Remember that they must have told Bennett that he was going to be a sleeper. Told him to lie low, quiet like a mouse, and never try to contact them. Never! They would get in touch with him when the time came. Only it never came. They lost his file somehow. They forgot his existence. A lot can happen in thirty years, and Russians die the same as everybody else. Anyway 1936 was a bad year for them — that and the years just after. Their revolution was still pretty new and shaky, they'd had the purges, they had begun to worry about Hitler. A lot of things. And they weren't nearly as efficient then as they are now. I know! I was just a young agent then."