Read A Korean Tiger for Free Online

women's shoes with extremely high spike heels and one pair of high-heeled patent leather boots that buttoned to the knee.
    Nick whistled again, softly. "Our boy was a fetishist from way back, it seems."
    Hawk was sour. "That's what the FBI psychologist said in his report. So where does that get us?"
    Nick was cheerful. He was thoroughly enjoying himself. More important, he was beginning to get an inkling, some faint foreshadowing, of what Raymond Lee Bennett was really like.
    He took a collection of dog whips from a shelf in the steel cabinet. Also a slender quirt of braided leather. "Bennett liked to whip people. Probably women. Without doubt women. Hmmm — but where could he find any women to whip? Living in a place like this, and looking the way he did? Not that his looks would work against him in the sort of sexual underworld he obviously wanted, liked, to move in. Did move in — or did he? Maybe he didn't. Couldn't. In Baltimore, sure. Maybe even in Washington, these days. But that would have been risky as hell — sooner or later he would have gotten caught, in trouble, and his cover would have been blown. But he was never blown. This neat little suburban fraud of his was never penetrated until he blew it himself."
    Nick dropped his cigarette to the floor and stepped on the stub. As he did so he noticed the chalked outline on the drab brown linoleum. The chalk was scuffed and partially erased in places, but the outline still denoted a corpse of considerable heft.
    Nick pointed to the chalk marks. "His wife, Hawk!" For once he forgot the "sir" with which he habitually addressed the older man.
    Hawk shook his head doubtfully. "You think she did know about this room, then? That she was his companion in the fun and games that went on down here? But that means that she must have known he was working for the Russians, or been working for them herself. And that I won't buy! Two people couldn't have kept that secret for thirty years. One, just maybe. It looks like Bennett did. But not his wife, too."
    Nick lit a fresh cigarette. He ran strong fingers through his crisp brown hair. "I agree with you on that, sir. I don't think she knew about the spying bit. She wouldn't have to know. No real reason why she should. But I think she was his sexual companion, if you want to call it that, in the nutty sex games Bennett liked to play. I would bet on it. We won't find them now, because Bennett either destroyed them or took them with him, but I'll bet there was a Polaroid camera around here with a lot of exposed film. Probably he had a timer on it so he could join the lady and take his own pictures."
    Hawk, his hands in his pockets, was staring moodily at the desk. "Maybe you're right, Nick. One thing I do know — there's no secret drawer in that desk. The FBI did everything but tear it apart. I trust them on that. They didn't flub it."
    "Yes," said Nick. "Bennett probably has them with him. They'll be some consolation on long cold nights when he's hiding out."
    "You think the man is a real psycho, Nick?"
    "Definitely," said Killmaster. "Though not in any legal sense. I'm beginning to get a pretty clear picture of our Mr. Bennett, and it's a little frightening and a little funny and more than a little pitiful. Look at this."
    From another hook in the cabinet Nick took a trenchcoat and a pearl gray snapbrim hat with a large welt. Both looked new. Nick glanced at the maker's tag in the fawn-colored trenchcoat. "Abercrombie & Fitch. The hat is Dobbs. Both expensive and new, hardly worn at all." He hefted the coat. "Something heavy in the pockets."
    Hawk took a typed flimsy from his pocket and glanced at it. "Yes. The FBI listed it. Pipe and tobacco, never opened, pipe never used, and a revolver. Banker's Special, never fired."
    Nick took the articles in question from the pockets of the trenchcoat and examined them. The pipe tobacco was Douwe Egberts, a Dutch cavendish. The pouch was still sealed. He ran his finger around the inside of the