I reached way back and found a grin I thought I had forgotten how to make. "Everybody wants to know that, Rickeyback."

"Rickerby."

"So sorry." A laugh got in behind the grin. "Why all the curiosity?"

"Never mind why, just tell me what he said."

"Nuts, buddy."

He didn't react at all. He sat there with all the inbred patience of years of this sort of thing and simply looked at me tolerantly because I was in a bed in the funny ward and it might possibly be an excuse for anything I had to say or do.

Finally he said, "You can can discuss this, can't you?" discuss this, can't you?"

I nodded. "But I won't."

"Why not?"

"I don't like anxious people. I've been kicked around, dragged into places I didn't especially want to go, kicked on my can by a cop who used to be a friend and suddenly faced with the prospects of formal charges because I object to the police version of the hard sell."

"Supposing I can offer you a certain amount of immunity?"

After a few moments I said, "This is beginning to get interesting."

Rickerby reached for words, feeling them out one at a time. "A long while ago you killed a woman, Mike. She shot a friend of yours and you said no matter who it was, no matter where, that killer would die. You shot her."

"Shut up, man," I said.

He was right. It was a very long time ago. But it could have been yesterday. I could see her face, the golden tan of her skin, the incredible whiteness of her hair and eyes that could taste and devour you with one glance. Yet, Charlotte was there still. But dead now.

"Hurt, Mike?"

There was no sense trying to fool him. I nodded abruptly. "I try not to think of it." Then I felt that funny sensation in my back and saw what he was getting at. His face was tight and the little lines around his eyes had deepened so that they stood out in relief, etched into his face.

I said, "You knew Cole?"

It was hard to tell what color his eyes were now. "He was one of us," he said.

I couldn't answer him. He had been waiting patiently a long time to say what he had to say and now it was going to come out. "We were close, Hammer. I trained him. I never had a son and he was as close as I was ever going to get to having one. Maybe now you know exactly why I brought up your past. It's mine who's dead now and it's me who has to find who did it. This should make sense to you. It should also tell you something else. Like you, I'll go to any extremes to catch the one who did it. I've made promises of my own, Mr. Hammer, and I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. Nothing is going to stop me and you are my starting point." He paused, took his gla.s.ses off, wiped them, put them back on and said, "You understand this?"

"I get the point."

"Are you sure?" And now his tone had changed. Very subtly, but changed nevertheless. "Because as I said, there are no extremes to which I won't go."

When he stopped I watched him, and the way he sat, the way he looked, the studied casualness became the poised kill-crouch of a cat, all cleverly disguised by clothes and the innocent aspect of rimless bifocals.

Now he was deadly. All too often people have the preconceived notion that a deadly person is a big one, wide in the shoulders with a face full of hard angles and thickset teeth and a jawline that would be a challenge too great for anyone to dare. They'd be wrong. Deadly people aren't all like that. Deadly people are determined people who will stop at nothing at all, and those who are practiced in the arts of the kill are the most deadly of all. Art Rickerby was one of those.

"That's not a very official att.i.tude," I said.

"I'm just trying to impress you," he suggested.

I nodded. "Okay, kid, I'm impressed."

"Then what about Cole?"

"There's another angle."

"Not with me there isn't."

"Easy, Art, I'm not that impressed. I'm a big one too."

"No more, Hammer."

"Then you drop dead, too."

Like a large gray cat, he stood up, still pleasant, still deadly, and said, "I suppose we leave it here?"

"You pushed me, friend."

"It's a device you should be familiar with."

I was getting tired again, but I grinned a little at him. "Cops. d.a.m.n cops."

"You were one once."

After a while I said, "I never stopped being one."

"Then cooperate."

This time I turned my head and looked at him. "The facts are all bollixed up. I need one day and one other little thing you might be able to supply."

"Go ahead."

"Get me the h.e.l.l out of here and get me that day."

"Then what?"

"Maybe I'll tell you something, maybe I won't. Just don't do me any outsized favors because if you don't bust me out of here I'll go out on my own. You can just make it easier. One way or another, I don't care. Take your pick."

Rickerby smiled. "I'll get you out," he said. "It won't be hard. And you can have your day."

"Thanks."

"Then come to me so I won't have to start looking for you."

"Sure, buddy," I said. "Leave your number at the desk."

He said something I didn't quite catch because I was falling asleep again, and when the welcome darkness came in I reached for it eagerly and wrapped it around me like a soft, dark suit of armor.

CHAPTER 4.

He let me stay there three days before he moved. He let me have the endless bowls of soup and the bed rest and shot series before the tall thin man showed up with my clothes and a worried nurse whose orders had been countermanded somehow by an authority she neither understood nor could refuse.

When I was dressed he led me downstairs and outside to an unmarked black Ford and I got in without talking. He asked, "Where to?" and I told him anyplace midtown and in fifteen minutes he dropped me in front of the Taft. As I was getting out his hand closed on my arm and very quietly he said, "You have one day. No more."

I nodded. "Tell Rickerby thanks."

He handed me a card then, a simple business thing giving the address and phone of Peerage Brokers located on Broadway only two blocks off. "You tell him," he said, then pulled away from the curb into traffic.

For a few minutes I waited there, looking at the city in a strange sort of light I hadn't seen for too long. It was morning, and quiet because it was Sunday. Overhead, the sun forced its way through a haze that had rain behind it, making the day sulky, like a woman in a pout.

The first cabby in line glanced up once, ran his eyes up and down me, then went back to his paper. Great picture, I thought. I sure must cut a figure. I grinned, even though nothing was funny, and shoved my hands in my jacket pockets. In the right-hand one somebody had stuck five tens, neatly folded, and I said, "Thanks, Art Rickerby, old buddy," silently, and waved for the cab first in line to come over.

He didn't like it, but he came, asked me where to in a surly voice and when I let him simmer a little bit I told him Lex and Forty-ninth. When he dropped me there I let him change the ten, gave him two bits and waited some more to see if anyone had been behind me.

No one had. If Pat or anyone else had been notified I had been released, he wasn't bothering to stick with me. I gave it another five minutes then turned and walked north.

Old Dewey had held the same corner down for twenty years. During the war, servicemen got their paper free, which was about as much as he could do for the war effort, but there were those of us who never forgot and Old Dewey was a friend we saw often so that we were friends rather than customers. He was in his eighties now and he had to squint through his gla.s.ses to make out a face. But the faces of friends, their voices and their few minutes' conversation were things he treasured and looked forward to. Me? h.e.l.l, we were old friends from long ago, and back in the big days I never missed a night picking up my pink editions of the News News and and Mirror Mirror from Old Dewey, even when I had to go out of my way to do it. And there were times when I was in business that he made a good intermediary. He was always there, always dependable, never took a day off, never was on the take for a buck. from Old Dewey, even when I had to go out of my way to do it. And there were times when I was in business that he made a good intermediary. He was always there, always dependable, never took a day off, never was on the take for a buck.

But he wasn't there now.

Duck-Duck Jones, who was an occasional swamper in the Clover Bar, sat inside the booth picking his teeth while he read the latest Cavalier Cavalier magazine and it was only after I stood there a half minute that he looked up, scowled, then half recognized me and said, "Oh, h.e.l.lo, Mike." magazine and it was only after I stood there a half minute that he looked up, scowled, then half recognized me and said, "Oh, h.e.l.lo, Mike."

I said, "h.e.l.lo, Duck-Duck. What are you doing here?"

He made a big shrug under his sweater and pulled his eyebrows up. "I help Old Dewey out alla time. Like when he eats. You know?"

"Where's he now?"

Once again, he went into an eloquent shrug. "So he don't show up yesterday. I take the key and open up for him. Today the same thing."

"Since when does Old Dewey miss a day?"

"Look, Mike, the guy's gettin' old. I take over maybe one day every week when he gets checked. Doc says he got something inside him, like. All this year he's been hurtin'."

"You keep the key?"

"Sure. We been friends a long time. He pays good. Better'n swabbing out the bar every night. This ain't so bad. Plenty of books with pictures. Even got a battery radio."

"He ever miss two days running?"

Duck-Duck made a face, thought a second and shook his head. "Like this is the first time. You know Old Dewey. He don't wanna miss nothin'. Nothin' at all."

"You check his flop?"

"Nah. You think I should? Like he could be sick or somethin'?"

"I'll do it myself."

"Sure, Mike. He lives right off Second by the diner, third place down in the bas.e.m.e.nt. You got to-"

I nodded curtly. "I've been there."

"Look, Mike, if he don't feel good and wants me to stay on a bit I'll do it. I won't clip nothin'. You can tell him that."

"Okay, Duck."

I started to walk away and his voice caught me. "Hey, Mike."

"What?"

He was grinning through broken teeth, but his eyes were frankly puzzled. "You look funny, man. Like different from when I seen you last down at the c.h.i.n.k's. You off the hop?"

I grinned back at him. "Like for good," I said.

"Man, here we go again," he laughed.

"Like for sure," I told him.

Old Dewey owned the building. It wasn't much, but that and the newsstand were his insurance against the terrible thought of public support, a sure bulwark against the despised welfare plans of city and state. A second-rate beauty shop was on the ground floor and the top two were occupied by families who had businesses in the neighborhood. Old Dewey lived in humble quarters in the bas.e.m.e.nt, needing only a single room in which to cook and sleep.

I tried his door, but the lock was secure. The only windows were those facing the street, the protective iron bars imbedded in the brickwork since the building had been erected. I knocked again, louder this time, and called out, but n.o.body answered.

Then again I had that funny feeling I had learned not to ignore, but it had been so long since I had felt it that it was almost new and once more I realized just how long it had been since I was in a dark place with a kill on my hands.

Back then it had been different. I had the gun. I was big.

Now was-how many years later? There was no gun. I wasn't big anymore.

I was what was left over from being a d.a.m.n drunken b.u.m, and if there were anything left at all it was sheer reflex and nothing else.

So I called on the reflex and opened the door with the card the tall thin man gave me because it was an old lock with a wide gap in the doorframe. I shoved it back until it hit the door, standing there where anybody inside could target me easily, but knowing that it was safe because I had been close to death too many times not to recognize the immediate sound of silence it makes.

He was on the floor face down, arms outstretched, legs spread, his head turned to one side so that he stared at one wall with the universal expression of the dead. He lay there in a pool of soup made from his own blood that had gouted forth from the great slash in his throat. The blood had long ago congealed and seeped into the cracks in the flooring, the coloring changed from scarlet to brown and already starting to smell.

Somebody had already searched the room. It hadn't taken long, but the job had been thorough. The signs of the expert were there, the one who had time and experience, who knew every possible hiding place and who had overlooked none. The search had gone around the room and come back to the body on the floor. The seams of the coat were carefully torn open, the pockets turned inside out, the shoes ripped apart.

But the door had been locked and this was not the sign of someone who had found what he wanted. Instead, it was the sign of he who hadn't and wanted time to think on it-or wait it out-or possibly study who else was looking for the same thing.