The Mike Hammer Collection - Mickey Spillane [53]
“Because from now on I’m going to be a very busy girl, Mike. Congress convenes this week and the race is on for hostess of the year.”
“That stuff is a lot of crap.”
“Maybe, but that’s what Leo wanted.”
“So he’s leaving a dead hand around.”
There was a hurt expression on her face. “Mike—I did love him. Please . . .?”
“Sorry, kid. I don’t have much class. We bat in different leagues.”
She touched me lightly, her fingers cool. “Perhaps not. I think we are really closer than you realize.”
I grinned and squeezed her hand, then ran my palm along the soft swell of her flanks.
Laura smiled and said, “Are you going to—do anything about that shot?”
“Shall I?”
“It’s up to you. This isn’t my league now.”
I made the decision quickly. “All right, we’ll keep it quiet. If that slob has any sense he’ll know we won’t be stationary targets again. From now on I’ll be doing some hunting myself.”
“You sure, Mike?”
“I’m sure.”
“Good. Then let’s go through Leo’s effects.”
Inside she led me upstairs past the bedrooms to the end of the hall, opened a closet and pulled out a small trunk. I took it from her, carried it into the first bedroom and dumped the contents out on the dresser.
When you thought about it, it was funny how little a man actually accumulated during the most important years of his life. He could go through a whole war, live in foreign places with strange people, be called upon to do difficult and unnatural work, yet come away from those years with no more than he could put in a very small trunk.
Leo Knapp’s 201 file was thick, proper and as military as could be. There was an attempt at a diary that ran into fifty pages, but the last third showed an obvious effort being made to overcome boredom, then the thing dwindled out. I went through every piece of paperwork there was, uncovering nothing, saving the photos until last.
Laura left me alone to work uninterruptedly, but the smell of her perfume was there in the room and from somewhere downstairs I could hear her talking on the phone. She was still tense from the experience outside and although I couldn’t hear her conversation I could sense the strain in her voice. She came back in ten minutes later and sat on the edge of the bed, quiet, content just to be there, then she sighed and I knew the tension had gone out of her.
I don’t know what I expected, but the results were a total negative. Of the hundreds of photos, half were taken by G.I. staff photogs and the rest an accumulation of camp and tourist shots that every soldier who ever came home had tucked away in his gear. When you were old and fat you could take them out, reminisce over the days when you were young and thin and wonder what had happened to all the rest in the picture before putting them back in storage for another decade.
Behind me Laura watched while I began putting things back in the trunk and I heard her ask, “Anything, Mike?”
“No.” I half threw his medals in the pile. “Everything’s as mundane as a mud pie.”
“I’m sorry, Mike.”
“Don’t be sorry. Sometimes the mundane can hide some peculiar things. There’s still a thread left to pull. If Leo had anything to do with Erlich I have a Fed for a friend who just might come up with the answer.” I snapped the lock shut on the trunk. “It just gives me a pain to have everything come up so damn hard.”
“Really?” Her voice laughed.
I glanced up into the mirror on the dresser and felt that wild warmth steal into my stomach like an ebullient catalyst that pulled me taut as a bowstring and left my breath hanging in my throat.
“Something should be made easy for you then,” she said.
Laura was standing there now, tall and lovely, the sun still with her in the rich loamy color of her skin, the nearly bleached white tone of her hair.
At her feet the bikini made a small puddle of black like a shadow, then she walked away from it to me and I was waiting for her.
CHAPTER 9
Night and the rain had come back to New York, the air musty with dust driven up by the sudden surge of the downpour. The bars were filled, the sheltered areas under