Lady, Go Die! (12 page)

“It used to be etchings.”

“Sometimes it still is.”

I was torn between my attraction to this knowing beauty and the memory of the sweet innocent kid she’d been.

“Just look out, Marion,” I said softly. “Some guy is going to bust up that little game of yours, and you’re going to be left holding the bag.”

“Pooh.”

“Some guys take a tease too serious. A girl can get manhandled.”

“A guy can get kneed in the nads.”

She had a point.

“Where’s Louie?” I asked her.

“Upstairs,” she said with a nod in that direction. “Want me to get him?”

“Do that.”

Marion slid from the stool and swayed down the bar, trying a little too hard to impress me now, and disappeared into a tiny alcove. A few minutes later she was back with her boss in tow.

Louie was a big Italian with a smile for everyone, a tuxedo that dated to Prohibition, and an ardent hatred for crooks. There was nothing to say about Louie except that he was square and a swell guy, always good for a touch.

He spied me and beamed all over. “Mike! How do you do!” I never knew whether this was in imitation of the radio catch-phrase or just a greeting. “Glad to see a you. Whatcha know?”

We shook hands, and he ushered me over to a table in one corner.

A smile blossomed under a Clark Gable mustache in a J. Carrol Naish face. “What are you drinking, my friend?”

“Highball. There’s plenty of this one left.”

“That glass has no bottom, Mike. And your money, she’s no good here.”

“Thanks, Louie. How’s business?”

“Good, Mike, verra good. Everybody, they spend plenty of dough. Sunday, a little slow. We have to close early, Sunday.”

Right. Three a.m., instead of four a.m.

I lifted a thumb. “I mean upstairs.”

“Yeah, good up there too. I spin a straight wheel. Plenty of people come to Louie’s. Plenty of people, but not you, Mike. Where you been forever?”

“You know me, Louie. I’m not much of a gambler.”

A grave expression took over the jovial face. “You are the great gambler, Mike. You gamble your life.”

“Ah nuts,” I grinned at him. “Got a few questions for you, Louie. Think you can help out?”

“Maybe so. Let’s a go to my back room. Leave the glass. We can do better.”

Marion, seated on a stool at the bar, saw us heading to the rear and hopped off and tagged after. She fell in just behind me.

Louie noticed, halted the procession, and gave her a long look. Then he said, “You wait out here, Marion.”

“I’m with Mike.”

He shook a finger at her, Daddy scolding. “This Hammer guy, he’s not like them other bums. No games with him now. He’ll poke you one.”

She gave that ambiguous remark a short snort and threw a lush, taunting lipstick smile my direction.

“I don’t think he’s man enough,” she said, then laughed as she walked away.

I could see where she might need a spanking at that. Later maybe.

“Little devil,” Louie said, trying not to smile as he nodded toward the lithe figure. “Some a day she go too far.”

“That’s what I told her. You know, Louie, not all men are as gallant as I am.”

He had no response to that.

The back room was a comfortable little den used exclusively to entertain Louie’s prime guests between rounds of losing money. The chairs were like those in an exclusive old-time men’s club—leather, studded with buttons, but very comfortable. Framed paintings adorned the walls, all winter scenes, except for a huge
hand-tinted photo of the Coliseum in Rome. One corner held a cabinet lined with books, not leather-bound, but well-read volumes, from classics to bestsellers, with half a dozen books on government in the collection. You couldn’t say that Louie didn’t take his citizenship seriously.

Louie went to a small bar in the opposite corner, got behind it and drew out a bottle of good Scotch. He laid out two glasses and poured a stiff one in each. We held them in a mutual toast, took a long pull, and sat down facing each other, him on his side of the bar, me on mine.

“Now, wotta questions you got, Mike?”

“I got a murder on my hands, Louie. Out on the Island. A cookie named Sharron Wesley got herself knocked off. She ran a gambling joint out of a mansion she inherited.”

“Yeah, I know this cookie. Didn’t know she gotta bumped. I pay no attention to the papers much. When did she catch it?”

“A little over a week ago. The body was just discovered yesterday, though. I’m sure it’s been in the papers here, because the reporters were thick as flies last night, and her body turned up in an unusual way.”

“Oh?”

I told him about the Lady Godiva routine.

“So you think... are you saying...?” His voice was querulous. Louie was trying to see where her death had any connection with him.

I hurried to reassure him. “Wipe off the long face, pal. You’re not in on this. I know that. But it so happens that you may have some customers that patronized the Wesley dame’s joint, and I want to find out who they are. They could stand talking to.”

He raised his palms, like the victim of a hold-up. “Mike, please. You my friend, I like a to tell you these things, but I don’t want to be no pigeon. This is a my business, Mike. It is not strictly legal, I know, but it’s all I got to make a dollar. Now, maybe I lose a the business if I rat.”

I understood where he was coming from. But I still wanted the inside dope, and I wasn’t asking him to finger any gambling bosses—just customers. Pat was sure to dig up some names for me, but it might take too long. And with bullets flying and goons shaking down my office, not to mention knocking me on my can, well... time wasn’t something to be spent so leisurely.

Louie interrupted my thoughts with, “Didn’t this Wesley woman leave a some books?”

“I thought of that, Louie, but the operation seems to be backed by a syndicate of a sort. If she did, you can bet your boots those ledgers are damn well hidden. I’m going to let you in on something, kiddo. This isn’t to go farther than this room.”

“Hokay, Mike. I keep a my mouth shut. Shoot.”

Nice choice of words.

“Louie, if I’m not mistaken, there was one hell of a take from Sharron’s dump. She was the one who ran the place and presumably she took care of the income. The books I’m not too worried about. It’s the dough that somebody will be after. The equipment in there cost in the six-digit range—possibly seven, so you can approximate the entire take, especially if the place was crooked.”

“But each week, they must a bank the take in the city.”

“That casino was strictly open on weekends. She got murdered the last night of the last party, so at least that much dough may be
stashed somewhere on those grounds. She may have been keeping her own share of the proceeds there, as well. If not all of it.”

Louie nodded. “I catch. She stash a the cash, then a she die, now nobody knows where to look. Everybody searching for it and more people, they get bumped off. And you in the middle, making life miserable. Yeah.”

I nodded. “That’s how I see it. Now, here’s what I can do. Either you can put me wise to a few people who make the rounds of the gambling joints, with my word it goes no farther... or I can play upstairs here a while myself on the Q.T., and snoop around. What’ll it be?”

He pondered that a moment. “I a tell you, Mike. Do both.”

He dragged a pad out from somewhere and unscrewed the top of a fountain pen. For a minute he wrote, then tore the sheet from the pad and handed it to me. “These are some names. I don’t know where they live. You find a that out. Come here and play, watch a these people, and speak to them. Like one gambler speaks to another gambler. Just friendly. Maybe you learn something.”

I thanked him and stood up.

But a voice nagged at me that this approach still would take too long, and I couldn’t afford being away from Sidon any length of time. And anyway, I was well-known enough to get made.

“I’ll do what I can, Louie,” I said. “Maybe I’ll see you tonight, upstairs.”

“I’ll be looking for you, Mike.”

He escorted me to the mouth of the alcove and stayed behind as I headed back into the outer bar. That’s when I had a swell idea, one that might prove a good shortcut.

I slid into the booth where the lovely legs had taken up residence again. On the same side as those legs, bumping their owner over.

“Just can’t resist me, can you?” Marion said. Her tongue flicked out, the little snake.

I grinned at her. “Nope. You are irresistible, dolly. Like me.”

She laughed once, high up. “I’m just dying to hear your approach. Is it any different than the rest of the he-men?”

“Some girls find it that way, baby. Do you have an apartment around here?”

“Sure, fifteen minutes on foot, less by cab. Why?”

“Let’s go, then. We can discuss this better there.”

She blinked. “What? Don’t you even wanna buy me a drink first?”

“Hell no. That’s such a tired come-on, right? Well? Do you want to take me home or not?”

“I should say not! What do I look like, anyway?”

“I think you know what you look like. I just thought you wouldn’t mind skipping over the dull preliminaries, since you said you can take care of yourself. But if you’re scared, let’s forget it.”

She frowned and it made her nose even cuter. “What have
I
got to be scared of... you? Don’t tell me you think I took Louie’s warning about you seriously. Hell, that’s a laugh. There isn’t a man
alive
I can’t handle!”

I laughed in her face.

And that laugh hurt her. It told her that I thought she was a kid who was just kidding, and couldn’t make it in the big leagues.

Marion reached up and dragged down a flimsy hat and grabbed a light coat from the back of the booth.

“Let’s go, sucker,” she said.

Marion Ruston’s apartment was in an older building, a recently renovated brownstone. Most of the furnishings were covered in flowered chintz, very cozy, but strictly a woman’s place. A man wouldn’t have all the frou-frou junk she had for love nor money. I tossed my hat on a coat-tree hook and, while Marion slunk seductively into the bedroom, I stretched out in an overstuffed armchair and waited.

This should be good
, I thought.

It was—in only about five minutes, she appeared poised at the hallway entry in the sheerest dressing gown imaginable. And that was all. That and red finger-and-toenail polish.

“My temptation togs,” she explained with a
tah dah
hand gesture, her smile turning up at both ends.

She went over to a standing lamp to switch it off and, when she did, moved past a window where the drapes were back, letting the glow of the city at night turn her into a curvaceous silhouette. Her form had the kind of lines usual in pin-ups but unusual in life, plump firm behind, full impertinently tipped breasts, a waist you could put your hands around, and legs that followed gentle, supple
curves on their way to the toes she posed provocatively upon.

“You can take that spider web off, too,” I said, fishing out my deck of Luckies from my suit coat pocket, “for all I care.”

As I lit up the cig, she moved toward me with a dancer’s grace, and this
was
a sort of dance, wasn’t it? I blew out smoke, away from her, gentleman that I am.

She raised her eyebrows and slid onto the arm of my chair with studied ease. When she crossed her legs she let as much skin show as possible. Very nice skin, creamy and white, but hardly necessary. It wasn’t like that gown was making an attempt to conceal anything.

I looked up at her the way a scientist studies a slide. “I liked you better in the dress. At least I could let my imagination do a little work.”

She gestured to herself. “What’s the matter with this?” Her expression was more curious than hurt.

“Nothing, but it just shows what every woman has. The equipment is pretty much the same, though I admit yours is well arranged.” I shrugged and blew a smoke ring. “A guy just gets tired seeing the same show over and over again. Why don’t you sit over there so we can talk?”

I pointed my Lucky at the sofa across the room.

She slipped off the arm of the chair and stood with her fists at her waist and her pretty face crinkled. “The hell with you, Mac. Who do you think you’re fooling with that lousy line? It’s nothing new. Your technique stinks.”

“Look,” I said, trying not to get sore, “I’m not pulling your own kind of hard-to-get routine, I’m being serious.”

“You are, huh?”

“You brought me here to tease me and then pull the rug out from under me and give me the horse laugh. Fine. Everybody needs a hobby. But I came up here to spend a little time with a nice kid I used to know, back when your brother Billy was a pal of mine.”

She sighed and I’d be lying if I said what those breasts did under the sheer nightie didn’t rate a trouser salute.

But she abandoned the sex dolly persona and smirked like a real human gal and said, “Okay, okay, Mike Hammer—you win.”

She moved quite naturally over to the couch, and the truth was, it was more appealing than the sashaying routine. “What the hell
did
you come up here for?”

“Anything but that. It’s too early in our renewed friendship.”

She smirked. “Not for some people, it wouldn’t be.”

“It is for me. Ready to talk a while?”

She threw her painted-toed feet up on the coffee table, then reached over to the end table and withdrew a cigarette from a silver box. I tossed her my matches and she caught them like she was playing first base, smiled her thanks, and batted her eyelashes at me.

“Stop that,” I said.

“Can’t blame a girl for trying.”

I returned to the armchair and got on with my talk. “You ever been out to Sidon, Marion? Little tourist trap out on Long Island?”

A match stopped halfway to the cigarette and she stared at me a moment.

Then she said, “Yes. Well, not Sidon, but a place outside there. Why?”

Interesting that she’d had to think that over before answering.

“A place outside Sidon,” I said. “Wouldn’t be Sharron Wesley’s gambling den, would it?”