Available from Donald Hamilton and Titan Books
Death of a Citizen
The Wrecking Crew
The Removers
The Silencers
The Ambushers (October 2013)
The Shadowers (December 2013)
The Ravagers (February 2014)
DONALD HAMILTON
A MATT HELM NOVEL
MURDERERS’ ROW
TITAN BOOKS
Murderers’ Row
Print edition ISBN: 9780857683403
E-book edition ISBN: 9781781162347
Published by Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP
First edition: August 2013
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Copyright © 1962, 2013 by Donald Hamilton. All rights reserved.
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MURDERERS’ ROW
Contents
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
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23
About the Author
1
The motel was on the left side of the highway leading from Washington, D.C., to the eastern shore of Maryland by way of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. So said the map; I’d never been there and wasn’t about to go. At least I didn’t think I was. In my line of business, you can’t ever be absolutely sure where you’ll wind up tomorrow.
As I made the turn and headed into the driveway, my watch said I was arriving precisely on schedule at a quarter-past-ten in the evening. I parked the little car that had been assigned to me among others displaying an assortment of license plates. Mine read Illinois, and I had a complete and phony identity to go with it, in case of trouble.
My real name is Helm—Matthew Helm—and certain government records have me cross-filed under the code name Eric, but for the evening I was James A. Peters, employed by Atlas Enterprises, Inc., a Chicago firm. The nature of the company, and my exact position with them, remained carefully unspecified on the identification I carried. Anyone who became really interested, however— interested enough, say, to send a set of fingerprints to the Chicago police—would be informed that I was known locally as Jimmy (the Lash) Petroni, a man with influential friends and an unsavory reputation.
In other words, I wasn’t, for the record, a very nice guy. It was just as well. The job wasn’t a very nice job. In fact, one agent had already turned it down.
“Sentimentality!” Mac had snorted, in his Washington office on the second floor of a rather ancient building, never mind where. “These delicate buds we get nowadays, nurtured on beautiful thoughts of peace, security, and social adjustment! They may be brave and patriotic enough in the right situations, but the thought of violence turns them inside out. Not one of them would kill a fly, I sometimes think, to save an entire nation from dying of yellow fever.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “Yellow fever isn’t carried by flies, sir. It’s transmitted by mosquitoes.”
“Indeed?” he said. “That’s very interesting. I could have made it an order, but the young fool probably would have botched the job, feeling the way he did. It’s a damn nuisance. Being on the spot, he was the logical person. However, I remembered that you were on your way in from Cuba; and I thought you might like to spend a little time by the seashore—the bay shore, to be exact. Not that you’ll have much time for swimming, if everything goes according to plan.”
“I’m a lousy swimmer, anyway,” I said. “I lack buoyancy, or something. Besides, it’s getting a little late in the season.”
“You know the area. You took two weeks of small boat training at Annapolis during the war, according to the files.”
“Yes, sir, but there wasn’t much time for sight-seeing. I wouldn’t say I’d learned much about the area. Besides, it will have changed considerably since those days.” Subtlety wasn’t getting me anywhere, so I said bluntly, “Besides, there was some talk of a month’s leave, sir.”
“I’m sorry about that,” he said smoothly. “However, we are setting a trap. We can’t risk failure because a sentimental boy hasn’t got the stomach to prepare the bait properly.”
“No, sir.”
“I hope I’m not interfering with any plans of long standing.”
“No, sir,” I said dryly. “It was only arranged some six months ago—subject, of course, to the call of duty. I was only on my way to Texas to see a lady.”
“I see.” His voice was cool. “That one.”
“You don’t approve, sir? She helped us out once.”
“Against her will,” he said. “Very much against her will, as I recall. She is rich, irresponsible, jealous, impulsive, and totally unreliable, Eric.”
The indictment gave him away. The whole thing was beginning to make sense. I was being recalled from leave to keep me from getting further involved with a woman he considered unsuitable, as a rich college boy might be sent on a sea voyage to forget a pretty waitress. I tried not to show anger. It would be easy enough to blurt out that my private life was none of his damn business, but it wouldn’t be true. In our line of work, there’s no such thing as a private life.
I said carefully, “Gail Hendricks is all right, sir. She’s seen us at work and she knows the score. I don’t have to pretend to be a respectable car salesman, or something, when I’m with her. And she doesn’t have to pretend to be a fragile and sensitive southern beauty, either. I happen to know—and she knows I know—that she’s just about as fragile and sensitive as a female lynx. It makes for a beautiful relationship, sir. I hope you aren’t going to ask me to give it up.”
It was obviously what he’d had in mind, but the direct question, and the implied submissiveness, put him off balance, as I’d hoped it would.
“No,” he said quickly, “no, of course not, but I will have to ask you to postpone your trip West until you’ve attended to this matter. It is quite important, and it shouldn’t delay you more than a few days.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now go see Dr. Perry. I don’t want to waste time briefing you further until you know exactly what’s involved.”
I had seen Dr. Perry, a cheerfully callous young medical man in a starched white coat. I’d been briefed, and now I got out of the car and walked past th
e motel swimming pool, which was empty. A breeze carrying a hint of autumn dipped over the windbreak on the far side and ruffled the surface. The submerged lights made the water look blue-green, luminous, and very cold, like the pool at the foot of a mountain glacier. I didn’t have the slightest desire to try it out.
Some tourists drove up to the office, at the other end of the motel, where there was also a cocktail lounge, coffee shop, and dining room. You can still tell them from hotels, however. Hotels have elevators. The newcomers paid no attention to me, as I let myself into the unit with the right number, using the key Mac had given me.
“Jean has been one of our best female operatives,” he’d said, pushing the key across the desk to me. “Very good appearance, attractive without being conspicuous, the pleasant young suburban-matron type. It’s most unfortunate. We do encounter such breakdowns now and then, you know; and alcoholism is almost always one of the symptoms. Have you noticed how these slightly plump, pretty, smooth-faced women seem to crack up more readily than any other kind?”
“No, sir,” I said. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“It’s a fact,” he said. “That, of course, is why she was selected for the assignment originally. She could make it believable, if anyone could. When the matter suddenly became urgent...” He paused, and let that line of thought go. “As I said, she is good. In addition to drinking too much, she has been showing convincing signs of disaffection, not to say, you understand, of active disloyalty. Overtures have been made. It is very distressing. We are very much disturbed.” He looked at me across the big desk. The window behind him made his expression difficult to read. “At least that is the impression we are trying to convey— trying very hard to convey. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “It’s clear.”
It was still clear as I entered the room and closed the door behind me. I didn’t have to worry about fingerprints, since I was wearing gloves. They made me feel like a hardened criminal. All the lights in the place were on. There was the usual blond motel-modern furniture. There was also as much of a mess as one female lush could make without really straining herself, in a room that had presumably been cleaned by the management earlier in the day.
There was a full fifth of whisky on the dresser, and a half-empty one standing beside a soiled glass on the telephone stand by the big double bed, which was rumpled as if she’d taken an afternoon nap—or just passed out temporarily—on top of the covers. A stocking with a run in it had been discarded on the floor by the wastebasket, a near miss, I guess.
Other garments of an intimate nature, some flimsy, some surprisingly sturdy, were distributed about the premises, again mostly on the floor, along with some wads of Kleenex, the afternoon paper, a pair of thong sandals, a fuzzy pink sweater, and a pair of pink corduroy pants, the narrow, tapered style all women seem to have adopted lately, whether it suits their rear ends or not. Female rears being what they are, mostly it doesn’t.
I’m strictly an anti-pants man myself, where women are concerned, but with all the mad trousers you see on the street nowadays, it’s getting so even jeans look good, while a well-cut pair of Bermuda shorts is a real treat.
I sat down to wait in the big chair facing the TV set, which was turned off. I didn’t bother to look around for mikes or wires. Mac had said there’d be some, and that the phone was probably tapped as well, which figured. If the opposition was interested in our supposedly drunk and disloyal operative at all, they’d be checking up to see if she were the real thing or a plant.
I hadn’t the slightest intention of interfering with any of their electronic equipment. In fact, I hoped it was all in first-class condition and working well, since it was my job to make Jean’s act more plausible, and I wanted an audience.
2
“Plausible,” I’d said in Washington. “Yes, sir. Just how plausible can you get? Does this lady know what she’s let herself in for?”
“She knows,” Mac said. “That is, she doesn’t know the details; she preferred not to hear them, which was only natural. But she knows that it will hurt, and that she won’t be pretty to look at for a couple of weeks. Certainly she has been consulted. She has agreed.” He frowned at me across the desk. “There are two things for you to keep in mind. She has to survive, of course. She even has to be able to function after a fashion within a reasonable time, say three or four days. On the other hand, it must be convincing. Just a dramatic black eye and some spectacularly damaged clothing won’t buy her a thing except a ticket to the bottom of the Bay.”
“I see,” I said. “Do I get to know what it’s all about, sir, or would you prefer to keep me ignorant.”
“A man slipped through our fingers down there, last year,” Mac said. “We’d been after him for a long time; he was high on the removal list. He was finally spotted right here in Washington. There was no real error made, but as you know, for diplomatic reasons we do not operate within certain zones, of which metropolitan Washington is one. It is preferred that we take no action within twenty-five miles of the city.” He grimaced. “It is a reasonable requirement, I suppose, but the people who set these limits often have no idea what their regulations mean to the people who have to do the work.”
“No, sir.”
“When the subject finally departed from Washington, he made for Annapolis. From there, he soon disappeared, leaving behind our agent, dead.”
I raised my eyebrows. “No error, you say, sir? Getting killed is a serious mistake, in my book.”
Mac shrugged. “I’ll grant that, but Ames was a good operative, and he had reason to believe he was dealing with one man only. Apparently he ran into something bigger down near Chesapeake Bay.”
“Ames?” I said. “I worked with him in California, a couple of jobs back.”
“I know.” Mac did not look up. “That is another reason I thought you might like to help out with this business, even if it means postponing your date in Texas.”
I laughed shortly. “You’re an optimist, sir. Some things don’t postpone very well. Gail is not the patient type. As for Ames, he was one of those portable-radio jerks. I came close to making him eat the thing, one transistor at a time. Goddamn a man who’ll climb an eight-thousand-foot mountain just to turn on that kind of noise. On the other hand, I’ll hand it to him, he did fry a mean flapjack, and he had a way with fresh-caught trout—” I stopped. After a moment, I said, “They got him from behind, didn’t they?”
“Yes. He was found on a beach with a broken neck. Apparently somebody slipped up on him while he was stalking the subject. How did you know?”
“He would get excited and forget to watch his back. It never seemed to occur to him that somebody might be stalking him. I warned him. Ah, hell. Scratch Ames, a good man with a skillet.”
“Yes,” Mac said. “As I was saying, after the killing, the subject disappeared completely. Some months later, he was reported in Europe, although he had not been seen leaving the country by any of the usual channels.”
“Who was it?”
“His name doesn’t matter,” Mac said. “One of our people took care of him over there. I checked with other departments, and found that this wasn’t the first mysterious disappearance from that neighborhood. They suspect the existence of a cell or organization with a way station, a cooling-off place, somewhere along the Bay, where fugitives can be hidden indefinitely until transportation is ready for them. Ships move up and down the Bay all the time, remember: big, ocean-going ships. In theory, they can be stopped and searched until they pass the Chesapeake Capes, at the mouth of the Bay, and get three miles out to sea. In practice, searching a ship of any size, under way, is an awkward proposition.”
I said, “According to what I recall from my brief association with the U.S. Navy, Chesapeake Bay is some two hundred miles long and up to twenty miles wide. The map shows rivers, swamps, bays, inlets, islands—”
“The nautical term is chart.”
“Excuse me, sir. Chart.”
&nbs
p; “Your point is well taken, however,” Mac said. “With our limited facilities, it would be fruitless to try to search such an area for a camouflaged waterfront hideout. And we don’t even know that it’s on the water, although everything indicates that the pickups are made by boat, and it seems likely that the deliveries are made the same way. But in any case, it’s a job well beyond our resources, which is why we approached the problem from a slightly different angle.”
“I thought we were supposed to be specialists of a sort, sir. What’s the matter with all the bright government boys with college degrees and button-down collars—the clean-cut lads who can teach judo to the Japanese and shoot a silhouette target to shreds in three-fifths of a second, starting with their hands tied behind them? Can’t they manage to find this subversives’ bus stop by themselves?”
Mac looked up. “You’re forgetting Ames,” he said.
“You said the man he was after had been taken care of.”
“To be sure.” Mac’s voice was cold. “There are, however, some people in the neighborhood of Annapolis, not forty miles from here, who share in the responsibility. An organization like ours cannot afford to overlook interference, particularly when it results in the death of one of our people. That is why I asked that the job be assigned to us.” He made a little face. “The others were glad to let us have it. Apparently there are some local political considerations that make it awkward to handle. You might keep that in mind.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “So our objective is really teaching these outsiders to be careful who they bump off.”
“Let us say,” Mac said carefully, “they must learn not to monkey with the buzz saw when it is busy cutting wood.”
There was a silence. I looked past him, out the bright window and could see one of the shining white buildings in which earnest men conduct the nation’s business openly, with reporters in attendance. I thought about how nice it would be if it could all be handled like that.
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