The Mike Hammer Collection - Mickey Spillane [48]
“I don’t know where to start, Hy.”
“Well, give it a try.”
“All right. How about this one? Butterfly Two, Gerald Erlich.”
The beer stopped halfway to his mouth. “How did you know about Butterfly Two?”
“How did you know about it?”
“That’s war stuff, friend. Do you know what I was then?”
“A captain in special services, you told me.”
“That’s right. I was. But it was a cover assignment at times too. I was also useful in several other capacities besides.”
“Don’t tell me you were a spy.”
“Let’s say I just kept my ear to the ground regarding certain activities. But what’s this business about Butterfly Two and Erlich? That’s seventeen years old now and out of style.”
“Is it?”
“Hell, Mike, when that Nazi war machine—” Then he got the tone of my voice and put the glass down, his eyes watching me closely. “Let’s have it, Mike.”
“Butterfly Two isn’t as out of style as you think.”
“Look—”
“And what about Gerald Erlich?”
“Presumed dead.”
“Proof?”
“None, but damn it, Mike—”
“Look, there are too many suppositions.”
“What are you driving at, anyway? Man, don’t tell me about Gerald Erlich. I had contact with him on three different occasions. The first two I knew him only as an allied officer, the third time I saw him in a detention camp after the war but didn’t realize who he was until I went over it in my mind for a couple of hours. When I went back there the prisoners had been transferred and the truck they were riding in had hit a land mine taking a detour around a bombed bridge. It was the same truck Giesler was on, the SS Colonel who had all the prisoners killed during the Battle of the Bulge.”
“You saw the body?”
“No, but the survivors were brought in and he wasn’t among them.”
“Presumed dead?”
“What else do you need? Listen, I even have a picture of the guy I took at that camp and some of those survivors when they were brought back. He wasn’t in that bunch at all.”
I perched forward on my chair, my hands flat on the table. “You have what?”
Surprised at the edge in my voice, he pulled out another one of those cigars. “They’re in my personal stuff upstairs.” He waved a thumb toward the street.
“Tell me something, Hy,” I said. “Are you cold on these details?”
He caught on quick. “When I got out of the army, friend, I got out. All the way. I was never that big that they called me back as a consultant.”
“Can we see those photos?”
“Sure. Why not?”
I picked up my beer, finished it, waited for him to finish his, then followed him out. We went back through the press section of the paper, took the service elevator up and got out at Hy’s floor. Except for a handful of night men, the place was empty, a gigantic echo chamber that magnified the sound of our feet against the tiled floor. Hy unlocked his office, flipped on the light and pointed to a chair.
It took him five minutes of rummaging through his old files, but he finally came up with the photos. They were 120 contact sheets still in a military folder that was getting stiff and yellow around the edges and when he laid them out he pointed to one in the top left-hand corner and gave me an enlarging glass to bring out the image.
His face came in loud and clear, chunky features that bore all the physical traits of a soldier with overtones of one used to command. The eyes were hard, the mouth a tight slash as they looked contemptuously at the camera.
Almost as if he knew what was going to happen, I thought.
Unlike the others, there was no harried expression, no trace of fear. Nor did he have the stolid composure of a prisoner. Again, it was as if he were not really a prisoner at all.
Hy pointed to the shots of the survivors of the accident. He wasn’t in any of those. The mangled bodies of the dead were unrecognizable.
Hy