[Mike Hammer 03] - Vengeance Is Mine (5 page)

“Ever shoot anybody, Joe?”

His face went white and his fingers had trouble taking the cigarette out of his mouth. “Once ... I did.”

“Like it?”

“No.” He licked his lips. “Look, Mike ... this guy Wheeler ... you were there. He
was
a suicide, wasn’t he?”

“Uh-uh. Somebody gave him the business.”

I could hear him swallow clear across the room. “Uh ... you won’t need me again, will you?”

“Nope. Thanks a lot, Joe. Leave the notes on the bed.”

The sheaf of papers fell on the bed and I heard the door close softly. I sat on the arm of the chair and let my mind weave the angles in and out. One of them had murder in it.

Someplace there was a reason for murder big enough to make the killer try to hide the fact under a cloak of suicide. But the reason has to be big to kill. It has to be even bigger to try to hide it. It was still funny the way it came out. I was the only one who could tag it as murder and make it stick. Someplace a killer thought he was being real clever. Clever as hell. Maybe he thought the lack of one lousy shell in the clip wouldn’t be noticed.

I kept thinking about it and I got sore. It made me sore twice. The first time I burned up was because the killer took me for a sap. Who the hell did he think I was, a cheap uptown punk who carried a rod for effect? Did he think I was some goon with loose brains and stupid enough to take it lying down?

Then I got mad again because it was my friend that died. My friend, not somebody else’s. A guy who was glad to see me even after five years. A guy who was on the same side with me and gave the best he could give to save some bastard’s neck so that bastard could kill him five years later.

The army was one thing I should have reminded Pat of. I should have prodded his memory with the fact that the army meant guns and no matter who you were an indoctrination course in most of the phases of handling lethal weapons hit you at one time or another. Maybe Chester Wheeler
did
try to shoot himself. More likely he tried to fire it at someone or someone fired it at him. One thing I knew damn well, Chet had known all about automatics and if he did figure to knock himself off he wasn’t going to fire any test shot just to see if the gun worked.

I rolled into bed and yanked the covers up. I’d sleep on it.

I STOOD ON THE CORNER of Thirty-third Street and checked the address from Joe’s notes. The number I wanted was halfway down the block, an old place recently remodeled and refitted with all the trimmings a flashy clientele could expect. While I stared at the directory a covey of trim young things clutching hatboxes passed behind me to the elevator and I followed them in. They were models, but their minds weren’t on jobs. All they talked about was food. I didn’t blame them a bit. In the downstairs department they were shipshape from plenty of walking, but upstairs it was hard to tell whether they were coming or going unless they were wearing falsies. They were pretty to look at, but I wouldn’t give any of them bed room.

The elevator slid to a stop at the eighth floor and the dames got out. They walked down the corridor to a pair of full-length frosted plate-glass doors etched with ANTON LIPSEK AGENCY and pushed in. The last one saw me coming and held the door open for me.

It was a streamlined joint if ever there was one. The walls were a light pastel tint with a star-sprinkled ceiling of pale blue. Framed original photos of models in everything from nylon step-ins to low slung convertibles marched around the walls in a double column. Three doors marked PRIVATE branched off the anteroom, while a receptionist flanked by a host of busy stenos pounding typewriters guarded the entrance to the main office. I dumped my cigarette into an ash tray and grinned at the receptionist. Her voice had a forced polite-ness but her eyes were snooty. “Yes?”

“The Calway Merchandising Company had a dinner meeting the other night. Several models from this agency were present for the fashion show that came later. I’m interested in seeing them ... one of them, at least. How can I go about it?”

She tapped her pencil on the desk. Three irritable little taps. Evidently this was an old story to her. “Is this a business or ... personal inquiry, sir?”

I leaned on the edge of the desk and gave her my real nasty smile. “It could be both, kid, but one thing it’s not and that’s
your
business.”

“Oh ... oh,” she said. “Anton—Mr. Lipsek, I mean—he handles the assignments. I’ll ... call him.”

Her hands flew over the intercom box, fumbling with the keys. Maybe she thought I’d bite, because she wouldn’t take her eyes off my face. When the box rattled at her she shut it off and said I could go right in. This time I gave her my nice smile, the one without the teeth. “I was only kidding, sugar.”

She said “Oh” again and didn’t believe me.

Anton Lipsek had his name on the door in gold letters and under it the word MANAGER. Evidently he took his position seriously. His desk was a roll-top affair shoved in a corner, bulging with discarded photographs and sketches. The rest of the room was given over to easels, display mounts and half-finished sketches. He was very busy managing, too.

He was managing to get a whole lot of woman dressed in very little nothing in place amid a bunch of props so the camera would pick up most of the nothing she was wearing and none of the most she was showing. At least that’s what it looked like to me.

I whistled softly. “Ve-ry nice.”

“Too much skin,” he said. He didn’t even turn around.

The model tried to peer past the glare of the lamps he had trained on her. “Who’s that?”

Anton shushed her, his hands on her nice bare flesh giving a cold professional twist to her torso. When she was set just right he stepped back behind the camera, muttered a cue and the girl threw her bosoms toward the lens and let a ghost of a smile play with her mouth. There was a barely audible click and the model turned human again, stretching her arms so far over her head that her bra filled up and began overflowing.

They could make me a manager any day.

Anton snapped off the lights and swiveled his head around. “Ah, yes. Now, sir, what can I do for you?”

He was a tall, lanky guy with eyebrows that met above his nose and a scrimy little goatee that waggled when he talked and made his chin come to a point. “I’m interested in finding a certain model. She works here.”

The eyebrows went up like a window shade. “That, sir, is a request we get quite often. Yes, quite often.”

I said very bluntly, “I don’t like models. Too flatchested.”

Anton was beginning to look amazed when she came out from behind the props, this time with shoes on too. “‘Tain’t me you’re talkin’ about, podner.” An unlit cigarette was dangling from her mouth. “Got a light?”

I held a match under her nose, watching her mouth purse around the cigarette when she drew in the flame. “No, you’re exceptional,” I said.

This time she grinned and blew the smoke in my face.

Anton coughed politely. “This, er, model you mentioned. Do you know her?”

“Nope. All I know is that she was at the Calway Merchandising affair the other night.”

“I see. There were several of our young ladies present on that assignment, I believe. Miss Reeves booked that herself. Would you care to see her?”

“Yeah, I would.”

The girl blew another mouthful of smoke at me and her eyelashes waved hello again. “Don’t you ever wear clothes?” I asked her.

“Not if I can help it. Sometimes they make me.”

“That’s what I’d like to do.”

“What?”

“Make you.”

Anton choked and clucked, giving her a push. “That will be enough. If you don’t mind, sir, this way.” His hand was inviting me to a door in the side of the room. “These young ladies are getting out of hand. Sometimes I could ...”

“Yeah, so could I.” He choked again and opened the door.

 

I heard him announce my name but I didn’t catch what he said because my mind couldn’t get off the woman behind the desk. Some women are beautiful, some have bodies that make you forget beauty; here was a woman who had both. Her face had a supernatural loveliness as if some master artist had improved on nature itself. She had her hair cut short in the latest fashion, light tawny hair that glistened like a halo. Even her skin had a creamy texture, flowing down the smooth line of her neck into firm, wide shoulders. She had the breasts of youth—high, exciting, pushing against the high neckline of the white jersey blouse, revolting at the need for restraint. She stood up and held her hand out to me, letting it slip into mine with a warm, pleasant grip. Her voice had a rich vibrant quality when she introduced herself, but I was too busy cursing the longer hemlines to get it. When she sat down again with her legs crossed I stopped my silent protests of long dresses when I saw how tantalizingly nice they could mold themselves to the roundness of thighs that were more inviting when covered. Only then did I see the nameplate on the desk that read JUNO REEVES.

Juno, queen of the lesser gods and goddesses. She was well named.

She offered me a drink from a decanter in a bar set and I took it, something sweet and perfumy in a long-stemmed glass.

We talked. My voice would get a nasty intonation then it would get polite. It didn’t seem to come out of me at all. We could have talked about nothing for an hour, maybe it was just minutes. But we talked and she did things with her body deliberately as if I were a supreme test of her abilities as a woman and she laughed, knowing too well that I was hardly conscious of what I was saying or how I was reacting.

She sipped her drink and laid the glass down on the desk, the dark polish of her nails in sharp contrast against the gleaming crystal. Her voice eased me back to the present.

“This young lady, Mr. Hammer ... you say she left with your friend?”

“I said she
may
have. That’s what I want to find out.”

“Well, perhaps I can show you their photographs and you can identify her.”

“No, that won’t do it. I never saw her myself either.”

“Then why ...”

“I want to find out what happened last night, Miss Reeves.”

“Juno, please.”

I grinned at her.

“Do you suppose they did ...” she smiled obliquely, “anything wrong?”

“I don’t give a damn what they did. I’m just interested in knowing. You see, this pal of mine ... he’s dead.”

Her eyes went soft. “Oh, I’m awfully sorry. What happened?”

“Suicide, the cops said.”

Juno folded her lower lip between her teeth, puzzled. “In that case, Mr. Hammer ...”

“Mike,” I said.

“In that case, Mike, why bring the girl into it? After all ...”

“The guy had a family,” I cut in. “If a nosy reporter decides to work out an angle and finds a juicy scandal lying around, the family will suffer. If there’s anything like that I want to squelch it.”

She nodded slowly, complete understanding written in her face. “You
are
right, Mike. I’ll see the girls as they come in for assignments and try to find out who it was. Will you stop by tomorrow sometime?”

I stood up, my hat in my hand. “That’ll be fine, Juno. Tomorrow then.”

“Please.” Her voice dropped into a lower register as she stood up and held her hand out to me again. Every motion she made was like liquid being poured and there was a flame in her eyes that waited to be breathed into life. I wrapped my hand around hers just long enough to feel her tighten it in subtle invitation.

I walked to the door and turned around to say good-by again. Juno let her eyes sweep over me, up and down, and she smiled. I couldn’t get the words out. Something about her made me too warm under my clothes. She was beautiful and she was built like a goddess should be built and her eyes said that she was good when she was bad.

They said something else, too, something I should know and couldn’t remember.

 

When I got to the elevators I found I had company. This company was waiting for me at the far end of the hall, comfortably braced against the radiator smoking a cigarette.

This time she had more clothes on. When she saw me coming she ground the butt under her heel and walked up to me with such deliberate purpose that my eyes began to undress her all over again.

“Make me,” she said.

“I need an introduction first.”

“Like hell you do.” The light over the elevator turned red and I heard the car rattling in the well. “Okay, you’re made.” She turned her grin on me as the car slowed up behind the steel doors. “Right here?”

“Yup.”

“Look out, bub, I’m not the coy type. I may take you up on it.”

“Right here?” I asked.

“Yup.”

I let out a short laugh as the doors opened and shoved her in. It could be that she wasn’t kidding and I hated audiences. When we hit the ground floor she linked her arm in mine and let me lead her out to the street. We reached Broadway before she said, “If you
really
need an introduction, my name is Connie Wales. Who’re you?”

“Mr. Michael Hammer, chick. I used to be a private investigator. I was in the papers recently.”

Her mouth was drawn up in a partial smile. “Wow, am
I
in company.”

We reached Broadway and turned north. Connie didn’t ask where we were going, but when we passed three bars in a row without stopping I got an elbow in the ribs until I got the hint. The place I did turn into was a long, narrow affair with tables for ladies in the rear. So we took a table for ladies as far down as we could get with a waiter mumbling under his breath behind us.

Both of us ordered beer and I said, “You’re not very expensive to keep, are you?”

“Your change’ll last longer this way,” she laughed. “You aren’t rich, or are you?”

“I got dough,” I said, “but you won’t get it out of me, girlie,” I tacked on.