The Hunter p-1 Read online

  “Couldn’t we all, honey? What’s your price range?”

  “I want something good, Irma,” he said, visualizing what he wanted. “A blonde, something really good. For all night.”

  “Mal, honey,” she said, “it’s been a while since you called. There’s been something I’ve wanted to say to you.”

  “What?”

  “The envelope, honey. The last two girls complained to me. There wasn’t enough in the envelope.”

  He laughed, feeling not at all like laughing. “What the hell, Irma, discount to a fellow worker in the Outfit, right?”

  “Wrong, honey. The girls got to make a living too. They got their price, they want to stick with customers who pay the price, you see what I mean?”

  Mal was in no mood to argue. “All right,” he said abruptly. “All right, all right. I’ll pay a hundred cents on the dollar. Satisfied?”

  “Rarely, honey. Now I asked you, what price range?”

  “I told you what I wanted. A blonde, something really good. Young, Irma, young and stacked.”

  “You are talking about a hundred dollars, honey.”

  Mal frowned and gnawed his lip, then nodded convulsively. “All right,” he said. “A hundred. For the night.”

  “What else? You’re at the Outfit, aren’t you?”

  “No, I moved. The St. David on 57th Street. Room 516.”

  “You want to take her out to dinner, a show, anything like that?”

  “I want her here, Irma. In the rack, you follow me?”

  Irma laughed throatily. “An athletic blonde,” she said. “She’ll be there by eight o’clock.”

  “Fine.”

  Mal hung up, and turned around to face the room, but there wasn’t any bar in it. Thirty-two dollars a day, and no bar. He turned back and called room service. Two bottles, glasses, ice. They’d be right up.

  It was barely seven o’clock. He had an hour to kill. He paced the room, disgusted. A hundred dollars for a lay: that was disgusting. Parker coming back from the dead: that was disgusting. Getting screwed up this way with the Outfit: that was disgusting. Even the room was disgusting.

  The room was one of four. He wasn’t sure what had made him do that, splurge on a four-room suite costing thirty-two dollars a day, any more than he was sure why he was throwing away a hundred dollars on a broad who couldn’t possibly do any more for him than Pearl would. And who would, probably, since they would be strangers, do even less.

  But he had splurged, reason or no reason he had splurged, on the girl and on the suite. Knowing that neither could be worth it.

  The suite, for instance. This living room. It was old. The paint was new, the furnishings and fixtures were new, the prints on the walls were new, but beneath it all the room was old, and in the way of hotel rooms the oldness managed to gleam dirtily through the new overlay. And besides being old, it was impersonal. The suite at the Outfit hotel was bis, it was where he lived. This suite wasn’t lived in by anybody, now or ever, any more than a compartment in a Pullman car was lived in. It could be occupied, but it couldn’t be lived in.

  The girl would be the same way.

  He was doing things wrong, he was making stupid mistakes, and what made it worse was the fact that he knew it. The knowledge that Parker was alive had rattled him more than he liked to admit. Going to Mr. Carter, for instance. He’d gained nothing, and maybe he’d lost.

  Now Mr. Carter was watching him. Now he had to get Parker, not just avoid him but get him. This was a test and the Outfit was watching, and if he failed now he was through forever. This time he was too far up the chain of command to just be put out in the street. This time they would have to kill him.

  He had to work alone. If he hadn’t gone to Mr. Carter, he could have used some of the boys in his group, even given one of them the assignment of finishing Parker. Now he’d screwed up that chance, too. He had to work alone.

  Stegman wouldn’t find Parker, he knew that. Stegman couldn’t possibly find Parker. It was up to him, completely up to him.

  Suddenly he stopped his pacing, struck with an idea. There was a way to use the Outfit. It was dangerous as hell, but he could do it. He’d have to do it. There wasn’t any other way.

  He hurried across the room to the telephone and quickly dialed a number. When Fred Haskell answered, he said, “Fred, I want you to pass a word around for me.”

  “Sure, Mal. Anything you say. How’d it go with Stegman?”

  “Fine, fine. It’s about that. This guy who’s looking for me, his name is Parker. Now I’ve moved out of the Outfit for a while, I’m staying at the St. David on 57th, room 516. You spread the word around. If anybody asks for me, asks any of the guys, this Parker shows up, tell him where I am. You got that?”

  “You want us to tell him?”

  “Right. Not easy, not right off the bat, or he’ll smell something fishy. But let him know where I am. Then call me right away. You got that? They don’t call you, they call me.”

  “Okay, Mal. Whatever you say.”

  “Make sure they call me right away.”

  “I’ll tell them, Mal.”

  “Okay.”

  Mal hung up and took a deep breath. All right. When the time came, he knew a couple of guys he could hire to hang around with him. They worked for the Outfit sometimes, sometimes not — they were like free-lancers. It wouldn’t be the same as using Outfit people.

  There was a knock at the door. Mal started, eyes jerking involuntarily to the phone. He called, “Who is it?”

  “Room service.”

  “Hold it. Hold on a second.”

  The gun was in the bedroom, on the bed, next to the suitcase. He hurried in, picked it up, brought it back to the living room with him. The pocket of the dressing gown was large; the gun was a smallish .32, an English make. He held tightly to the gun in his pocket and opened the door.

  A kid in a red and black bellboy uniform wheeled in a chrome cart with the liquor and mix and glasses and ice. Mal closed the door after him, and only then relaxed his grip on the gun. He fumbled in the bottom of his pocket, past the gun, and his fingers found two quarters. They went into the bellboy’s open hand, and Mal clutched the gun again as he opened the door for the bellboy to go out. There was no one else in the hall.

  Alone again, he made himself a drink, glancing at the phone. He looked at his watch and it was only quarter after seven. Forty-five minutes. Forty-five minutes. If she was early, she’d get an extra ten.

  He went into the bedroom and cleared the suitcase off the bed and pulled the spread down. He kept standing looking at the bed. His right hand clutched the gun in his pocket.

  Chapter 6

  She was only five minutes early, so he decided the hell with the extra ten. When she knocked at the door, he went through the same routine as with the bellboy, holding hard to the gun in his pocket, calling through the door. He didn’t hear what she answered, but it was a female voice so he opened the door, and she smiled at him and came in.

  She was a knockout. Better than Phil’s, a million times better. She looked like Vassar maybe, or some hotshot’s private secretary on Madison Avenue, or a starlet on the Grace Kelly line.

  She was a blonde, like he’d asked for, with medium-short pale hair in one of those television hairdos. Perched atop the hairdo was a black box hat with a little veil. She wore a gray suit and a green silk scarf, like a photo in Vogue,

  Her legs were long and slender, sheathed in sheer nylon, shod in green high heels. She walked like a model, one foot directly in front of the other, the pelvis rotating back and forth, her left arm and green-gloved hand swinging straight at her side in short arcs, her right hand, bare, holding her tiny black purse and other green glove to her body, just below her breast.

  Her face had been chiseled with care, honed and smoothed to creamy perfection, slender brows arched over green eyes, aquiline nose, soft-lipped mouth with just a trace of lipstick, long slender throat and cameo shoulders.

  He looked at her
and he knew he would never have better. If he lived a hundred years, he’d never have anything again as good as this. Better in the rack, maybe, he didn’t know about that, but not better looking, not more desirable or more perfect than this.

  She smiled, stepping across the threshold with her model’s walk, saying, “Hello, Mal. I’m Linda,” extending her gloved left hand to him, palm down, fingers curved slightly. Her voice was warm velvet, her diction clear and perfect.

  “Hi,” he said, smiling eagerly at her.

  The gun forgotten, he took his hand from his pocket, clasped hers briefly, and then she was past him and he closed the door. He turned to look at the back view, the straight spine, the sides curving in to the waist, blossoming below in the long curve over the hips and sweeping away down the length of leg. She was taller than he, but it didn’t matter. In the rack, he’d be taller.

  He wiped damp palms down the sides of his dressing gown. “You want a drink, Linda?”

  “Thank you, yes.” She smiled again, a warm impersonal smile, and set her purse and one glove down on an end table, then removed the other glove.

  He made drinks for them both, watching her all the time, gratified by every cultured move she made, the grace of her walk across the room to the round mirror between the windows, the supple beautiful shift of curve and line as she raised her arms. She lowered her head slightly, and standing before the mirror removed the two jewel-tipped pins from her hat, took off the hat, stuck the pins back into it and set the hat down on the table by the mirror.

  He watched her as they had a drink together, sitting side by side on the sofa. She turned just slightly toward him, sheathed knees together, costume and body and face and voice and speech all perfect, all meshed in wonderful symmetry, an idealization machine of flesh and blood and bone and sinew and female parts. He didn’t want her now, not yet, not physically. He was content with what he had: the look of her, the presence of her, the sure-ness of her, the knowledge that he would have her tonight, that he had all of tonight to posses her as completely and as often as he wanted.

  “I understand,” she said, “that you are an executive in the organization.”

  He grinned. “Yeah. I’m what you might call administrative.” And he found himself telling her all about his job, the responsibility it entailed, the problems hie faced, the kind of guys he had working for him.

  And she responded with good questions, with an interested expression on her face, with intelligent comments. He talked on and on, knowing he was impressing her and interesting her, delighted with himself and with her, more animated and vibrant than he’d ever been before in his life. When next he looked at his watch it was seven minutes to ten.

  He stopped in mid-sentence, struck by the stupidity of it. Two hours shot, gone forever, and this broad didn’t even have her suit jacket off yet.

  It was time. It was way past time.

  But how the hell was he supposed to start? He’d spent all this time talking, and this was a high-class chick. You didn’t just all of a sudden tell her to spread her legs, you had to be genteel about it. How the hell was he supposed to start?

  She watched him, smiling, and said, “Is it all right if I take off my shoes? I’ve been wearing them for just hours.”

  “Yeah,” he said, distracted. “Sure, go ahead.”

  She crossed one leg over the other, nylon brushing nylon, and removed her shoe. She was half turned toward him, and in that position he had a clear view down the length of the crossed leg, the darker band at the top of the stocking and the creamy flesh beyond.

  Impulsively he reached out, stroking his hand up the underside of her leg, squeezing the top of the thigh beyond the stocking. “You’re great, Linda,” he said. “You’re the goddam best.”

  She smiled again. “Help me off with my stockings, will you, Mal?”

  “You bet I will.”

  He knelt before her, rolled the stockings down the perfect lengths of her legs. She took her jacket off and the green silk scarf and the white blouse with the lace at the throat. Her bra was white. That was better than red, he thought, looking at her — more discreet, more cultured.

  She touched his jawline. “I suppose we ought to go to the bedroom now,” she said softly.

  “Yeah.”

  He followed her into the bedroom. She was barefoot, wearing gray skirt and white bra, the bra strap at the level of his chin. She asked him to unsnap her and he did, and then she stepped out of the skirt and the garter belt and the panties. He was by then out of his dressing gown and trousers and slippers, and when she lay back on the bed, arms up to enclose him, he was ready.

  He should have known that a girl who could charge one hundred dollars for one night of her companionship would have to be worth it in every way. In appearance, yes. In ability to make her customer feel at ease and feel interesting and important, yes. But most of all, she would have to be worth it in bed. And she was.

  Excitement and delayed expectation and her skill finished him almost at once. He lay startled and humiliated and enraged: the boy who got to the matinee just as the chapter was ending. He gnawed painfully on his lower lip, and she murmured, “That’s all right, Mal. That’s only warming up.”

  But he knew himself, he was no champion: he wasn’t born to run relay races all by himself.

  “Let me get up, Mal,” she whispered. “I’ll be right back, and don’t you worry about anything.”

  He rolled over, and watched the grand fluidity of her body as she rose from the bed and left the room. To have had that, and only for those few seconds, that was bitter.

  But when she came back, he found out at last what it truly was he was paying her for. To make him more a man than he was. With gentle smiling urgency she made him ready again, and for the second time he closed his eyes and had the time of his life. And afterwards he slept, content.

  He awoke to find the nightstand lamp still burning, and her asleep beside him. The clock said twenty past three. She was lying on her back, one arm down at her side, the other bent, the hand on her stomach. Her hair was disarranged, the lipstick had been rubbed from her mouth, her body gleamed in the dim light. He looked at her now and felt only physical desire, stronger even than before.

  He woke her, and she reacted at once, her arms coming around him, her body responding to him, and he just barely heard the sound of the window being raised.

  He pushed up with his hands, arching his back, staring terrified over his shoulder, and saw Parker come through the window from the fire escape. His head spun around, and he saw the dressing gown on the chair beyond the nightstand. Desperately he pushed away from her, lunging headlong toward the dressing gown, knowing he would never make it.

  Chapter 7

  Like a machine, he felt a click and it was nine months ago. At the estate, when they came back from the island and he first approached Ryan about the double cross.

  “You know Parker better than I do,” he’d said. “Tell me something. Would he ever try to grab the whole pie in a thing like this?”

  “Parker?” Ryan shook his head. “Not a chance. I worked with him three, four times, and he’s straight. Don’t you worry about it.”

  “Okay,” said Mal doubtfully. “If you say so. It’s just I heard him and Sill talking, and from what they said it sounded like — it must of meant something else, that’s all.”

  Ryan bit right away. “Wait a second. What did they say?”

  “Parker said something about a two-way split. At least, that’s what it sounded like. A two-way split was better, something like that. And Sill said something about you were the only guy who could fly the plane and Parker said there was still a car in the garage. The one Lynn came up in.”

  “Where was this?” Ryan had asked.

  “When we came back, out by the plane. Remember they hung back a little?”

  Ryan worried it over in his mind a minute, frowning heavily, and shook his head. “Parker’s never done anything like that. Sill maybe. I don’t know about him
. But not Parker.”

  “What made me wonder,” Mal said, “is because of the dough Parker needs.”

  “What dough?”

  “Didn’t you know about it? That’s the whole reason he took this job, out of the country and everything. He was going to do some other job in Chicago and it fell through — “

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Ryan, glad to be presented with a fact he could verify. “I was in on that, too, I know about that.”

  “Yeah, well, Parker needs dough bad. That’s why he took this job when the other one fell through. Think about it, Ryan. Did he ever work outside the country before?”

  “Parker? Nah, he’s always worked the states.”

  “That’s what I mean. So I thought maybe he needed dough bad enough to want to cross us. That’s why I wanted to ask your advice.”

  Ryan chewed on it a while longer, his head shaking slowly back and forth as he thought. Finally, he shook his head more decisively and said, “No. He wouldn’t do it, Mal. He’d know better than that. I’d find him — you better believe it — and he knows that. Parker wouldn’t cross me, he knows better.”

  “Listen, that’s the part scares me. If Parker was going to cross us, he wouldn’t want to leave us alive, hunting for him. He’d want to be damn sure we were dead long before he’d leave this house.”

  “Yeah,” said Ryan slowly. “Yeah, I never thought of that.”

  Mal looked up at him. “What do you think we ought to do?”

  “I don’t know,” Ryan said. “I want to think it over. Parker. It just don’t sound like him.”

  “If he’s planning anything, it’ll be tonight. After we’re all in bed.”

  “I got to think this over.”

  “Let me know,” Mal had said. “We don’t have much time!”

  “Yeah. Jeez — Parker.” Ryan went away shaking his head.

  Later that night Mal took a knife and slit the sleeping Chester’s throat. He got rid of the knife and ran to Ryan’s room. “Ryan, wake up! He got Chester — Parker already done for Chester!”