The Mike Hammer Collection - Mickey Spillane [43]
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 speciality.”
“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 brushfire wars to its own advantage