One Lonely Night (27 page)

Another minute to make myself cool off. Another minute to let instinct and training take over.

Another minute for my eyes to see and they picked out the path that led through the rubbish, a path I should have seen sooner because it had been deliberately made and often used. Old paint cans had been pushed aside and spilled their thick, gooey mess on the floor. The larger drums had been slop pails for left-over stuff and marked the turns in the trail.

My eyes saw it, my feet followed it. They took me around the bend and through a hall then up the stairs.

And the path that was cleared through the dirt on the floor led to the middle, then the top story. It led to rooms that reeked of turpentine so strong it almost took my breath away. It led to a corridor and another man who stepped out of the shadows to die. It led to a door that swung open easily and into a room that faced on other rooms where I was able to stand in my invisible cloak of blackness with barely the strength to hold the gun.

I stood there and looked at what I was, hearing myself say, “Good God, no, please ... no!” I had to stand there for a moment of time that turned into eternity while I was helpless to intervene and see things my mind wanted to shut out ... hear things my ears didn’t want to hear.

For an eternal moment I had to look at them all, every one. General Osilov in a business suit leaning on his cane almost casually, an unholy leer lighting his face. My boy of the subway slobbering all over his chin, puking a little without noticing it, his hands pressed against his belly while his face was a study in obscene fascination.

And the guy in the pork-pie hat!

Velda.

He said, “Where is it? You’ll die if you don’t tell me!” She never opened her mouth. Her eyes came open, but she never opened her mouth!

And in that moment of eternity I heard the problem asked and knew the answer! I knew why I was allowed to live while others died! I knew why my rottenness was tolerated and kept alive and why the guy with the reaper couldn’t catch me and I smashed through the door of the room with the tommy gun in my hands spitting out the answer at the same time my voice screamed it to the heavens!

They heard my scream and the awful roar of the gun and the slugs tearing into bone and guts and it was the last they heard. They went down as they tried to run and felt their insides tear out and spray against the walls.

I saw the general’s head splinter into shiny wet fragments and splatter over the floor. The guy from the subway tried to stop the bullets with his hands and dissolved into a nightmare of blue holes.

There was only the guy in the pork-pie hat who made a crazy try for a gun in his pocket. I aimed the tommy gun for the first time and took his arm off at the shoulder. It dropped on the floor next to him and I let him have a good look at it. He couldn’t believe it happened. I proved it by shooting him in the belly. They were all so damned clever!

They were all so damned dead!

I laughed and laughed while I put the second clip in the gun. I knew the music in my head was going wild this time, but I was laughing too hard to enjoy it. I went around the room and kicked them over on their backs and if they had faces left I made sure they didn’t. I saved the last burst for the bastard who was MVD in a pork-pie hat and who looked like a kid. A college boy. He was still alive when he stared into the flame that spit out of the muzzle only an inch away from his nose.

I cut her down carefully, dressed her, cradled her in my arms like a baby and knew that I was crying. Me. I could still do that. I felt her fingers come up and touch one of the wet spots on my cheek, heard her say the three words that blessed everything I did, then I went back to the path that led out into the night that was still cold and rainy, but still free to be enjoyed. There was a soft spot on the ground where I laid her with my coat under her head while I went back to do what I had to do. I went back to the room where death had visited and walked under the rafters until I reached the pork-pie hat that lay next to the remains of the thing that wore it. I lifted his wallet out of his back pocket and flipped his coat open so I could rip the inside lining pocket out along with some shreds of the coat fabric. That was all. Except for one thing. When I went down the stairs once more I found a drum of paint whose spilled contents made a sticky flow into some empty cans. When I built up a mound of old papers around the stuff I touched a match to it, stood there until I was satisfied with its flame, then went back to Velda. Her eyes were closed and her breathing heavy. She came up in my arms and I fixed my coat around her.

I carried her that way to my car and drove her home, and stayed while a doctor hovered above her. I prayed. It was answered when the doctor came out of the room and smiled. I said another prayer of thankfulness and did the things that had to be done to make her comfortable. When the nurse came to sit by her side I picked up my hat and went downstairs.

The rain came down steadily. It was clear and pure. It swept by the curb carrying the filth into the sewer.

There were only a few hours left of the night. I drove to the office and opened the lamp. I took out the two envelopes in there and spread them out on my desk. The beginning and the end. The complexities and the simplicities. It was all so clever and so rotten.

And to think that they might have gotten away with it!

It was over and done with now. Miles away an abandoned paint factory would be a purgatory of flame and explosions that would leave only the faintest trace of what had been there. It was a hell that wiped away all sins leaving only the good and the pure. The faintest trace that it left would be looked into and expounded upon. There would be nothing left but wonder and the two big words, WHY and HOW. There were no cars at the scene. They wouldn’t have been foolish enough to get there that way. The flames would char and blacken. They would leave remains that would take months to straighten out, and in that straightening they would come across melted leaden slugs and a twisted gun that was the property of the investigating bureau in Washington. There would be cover-up and more wonder and more speculation, then, eventually, someone would stumble on part of the truth. Yet even then, it was a truth only half-known and too big to be told.

Only I knew the whole thing and it was too big for me. I was going to tell it to the only person who would understand what it meant.

I picked up the phone.

THE SIXTH time it rang I heard it come off the cradle. A sharp click was the light coming on then Lee Deamer’s voice gave me a sleepy hello.

I said, “This is Mike Hammer, Lee.” My voice had a tired drag too. “Hate to call you at this hour, but I have to speak to you.”

“Well, that’s all right, Mike. I was expecting you to call. My secretary told me you had called earlier.”

“Can you get dressed?”

“Yes. Are you coming over here?”

“I’d rather not, Lee. I don’t want to be cooped up right now. I need the smell of air. A hell of a lot has happened. It isn’t anything I can broadcast and I can’t keep it to myself. You’re the only one I can talk to. I want to show you where it started and how it happened. I want you to see the works. I have something very special to show you.”

“What Oscar left behind?”

“No, what somebody else did. Lee, you know those government documents that were copied?”

“Mike! It can’t be!”

“It is.”

“This is ... why, it’s. ...”

“I know what you mean. I’ll pick you up in a few minutes. Hurry up.”

“I’ll be ready by the time you get here. Really, Mike, I don’t know what to say.”

“Neither do I, that’s why I want you to tell me what to do. I’ll be right over.”

I put the phone back slowly, then gathered the envelopes into a neat pack and stuck them in my pocket. I went downstairs and stood on the sidewalk with my face turned toward the sky.

It was still raining.

It was a night just like that first one.

The rain had a hint of snow in it.

Before I reached Lee’s house I made a stop. The place was a rooming house that had a NO VACANCY sign in front and a row of rooms with private entrances. I went in and knocked on the second door. I knocked again and a bed squeaked. I knocked the third time and a muffled voice swore and feet shuffled across the floor.

The door went open an inch and I saw one eye and part of a crooked nose. “Hello, Archie,” I said.

Archie threw the door open and I stepped in. Archie owed me a lot of favors and now I was collecting one. I told him to get dressed and it took him about two minutes to climb into his clothes.

He waited until we were in the car before he opened his yap. “Trouble?” That was all he said.

“Nope. All you’re going to do is drive a car. No trouble.”

We went over to Lee’s place and I rang the bell. They have one of those speaking-tube gadgets there and Lee said he’d be right down. I saw him hurry through the lobby and open the door.

He grinned when we shook hands. I was too tired to grin back. “Is it pretty bad, Mike? You look like you’re out on your feet.”

“I am. I’m bushed but I can’t go to bed with this on my mind. My car is out front.”

The two of us went down the walk and I opened the door for him. We got in the back together and I told Archie to head for the bridge. Lee sat back and let his eyes ask me if we could talk with Archie in the car. I shook my head no so we just sat there watching the rain streak across the windows.

At the entrance to the bridge I passed Archie a half a buck and he handed it to the cop on duty at the toll booth. We started up the incline when I tapped him on the shoulder.

“Stop here, Archie. We’re going to walk the rest of the way. Go on over to Jersey and sop up some beer. Come back in a half-hour. We’ll be at the top of the hump on the other side waiting for you.” I dropped a fin on the seat beside him to pay for the beer and climbed out with Lee behind me.

It was colder now and the rain was giving birth to a snow-flake here and there. The steel girders of the bridge towered into the sky and were lost, giant man-made trees that glistened at the top as the ice started to form.

Our feet made slow clicking sounds against the concrete of the walk and the boats on the river below called back to them. I could see the red and green eyes staring at me. They weren’t faces this time.

“This is where it started, Lee,” I said.

He glanced at me and his face was puzzled.

“No, I don’t expect you to understand, because you don’t know about it.” We had our hands stuffed in our pockets against the cold, and our collars turned up to keep out the wet. The hump was ahead of us, rising high into the night.

“Right up there is where it happened. I thought I’d be alone that night, but there were two other people. One was a girl. The other was a little fat guy with a stainless-steel tooth. They both died.”

I took the fat envelope out of my pocket and shook out the pages inside. “It’s amazing, isn’t it? Here the best minds in the country are looking for this and I fell right into it. It’s the detailed plans of the greatest weapon ever made and I have it right here in my hand.”

Lee’s mouth fell open. He recovered and reached for it. “How, Mike? How could this come to you?”

There wasn’t any doubting its authenticity. He shook his head, completely bewildered, and gave it back to me. “That’s the story, Lee. That’s what I wanted to tell you, but first I want to make sure this country has a secret that’s safe.”

I took my lighter out and spun the little wheel. There was a spark, then a blue flame that wavered in the wind. I touched it to the papers and watched them smolder and suddenly flame up. The yellow light reflected from our faces, dying down to a soft red glow. When there was nothing left but a corner that still held the remnants of the symbols and numbers, I flicked the papers over the edge and watched them go to the wind. That one corner I put in my pocket.

“If it had happened to anyone else, I wonder what the answer would have been?”

I shook my head and reached for a Lucky. “Nobody will ever know that, Lee.” We reached the top of the hump and I stopped.

The winter was with us again. The girders were tall white fingers that grew from the floor of the bridge, scratching the sky open. Through the rift the snow sifted down and made wet patches on the ground.