The Mike Hammer Collection (42 page)

Down the corner from the address Lola had given me was a joint called Monica's. The red neon sign was a blur through the rain, and when I cruised past I could see a bar with a handful of people on stools huddled over their drinks. It was as good a place to start as any.

I parked the car and pulled up my coat collar, then ducked out and stepped over puddles, my head bulling a path through the downpour. Before I got to the joint my legs were soaked and my feet squished in my shoes.

The heads at the bar came up and around like a chorus line, looking at me. Three belonged to guys trapped there on their way someplace else. They went back to their drinks. Two were dames more interested in each other than men and they went back to low, sensual looks and leg holding. The other two were all smiles that exchanged nasty glances as if they were going to fight over the new arrival. Monica's catered to a well-assorted clientele.

Behind the bar was a big, beefy guy with a scar on his chin and one ear cauliflowered to look like a dumpling. If his name was Monica I'd eat my hat. He came down the bar and asked me what it would be. I said whiskey and his top lip curled up into a grin.

“Annoder normal.” His voice was a croak. “The place's gettin' reformed.”

The two patsies made a
moue
at him and looked insulted.

He put the bottle on the bar in front of me. “Even th' dames is screwy. Odder place I woiked they kicked hell outa each other to get a guy. Here th' dames don't think of nuttin' but dames.”

“Yeah, there's nothing like a dame,” I said.

“Inside's a couple loose ones, bub. Go see if ya like 'em.”

He gave me an outsized wink and I picked up my glass, threw a buck on the bar and walked inside. The two babes were there like he said, only they were already taken. Two women in man-tailored suits were showing them a better time than I could have done.

So I sat down by myself at a table next to a piano and watched them. One of the boys from the bar came in and sat a drink in front of me, smirking a little as he pulled out the chair.

He said, “The bartender's too fresh, don't you think?”

I grunted at him and gulped the drink. These guys give me the pip.

“You're new around here, aren't you?”

“Yeah.”

“From uptown?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh.” Then he frowned. “You ... have a date already?”

The guy was asking for a punch in the mouth and he was just about to get it when I changed my mind and muttered, “I'm gonna see a guy named Murray Candid. He told me where he lived, then I forgot.”

“Murray? He's a
dear
friend of mine. But he moved again only a week ago. Georgie told me he has a place over the grocery store two blocks south. How long have you known him? Why, only last week I ... say, you're not leaving yet ... we haven't....”

I didn't bother to look back. If the punk tried to follow me I'd wrap him around a pole. The bartender looked at me and chirped that the make-up crowd could spoil the business and I agreed.

But the guy gave me the steer I wanted. I was lucky. Maybe I should have patted his behind to make him feel good.

I came down the street slowly, made a U-turn and came back. There were no lights on in the store and the shades in the apartment above were drawn and dark. A few cars were parked along one side and I wedged in between them, waiting there a minute until a couple of pedestrians lost themselves in the rain.

It was hard to keep from running. I crossed over, walked toward the store, then stepped into the doorway as if to light a butt, but more to look around. There wasn't anything to see, so I stepped back into the gloom of the hallway and tried the door, feeling it give under my hand. I dragged on the butt and looked at the mailboxes. One said “Byle,” the name on the store. The other one was for the top floor and was blank.

That would be it.

My eyes took a few minutes to become accustomed to the darkness, then I saw the stairs, worn and rickety, covered with sections of old carpet. I stayed on the wall side, trying to keep them from creaking, but even as careful as I was they groaned ominously, waiting to groan again when I lifted my foot.

The first-floor landing was a narrow box flanked by a door and a railing with “Byle” lettered on it in white paint. They should have used green to go with the name. I held on to the rail, using it for a guide, and felt my way to the next flight. These stairs were new. They didn't make a sound. When I reached the door my hand went out for the knob and I stiffened, my ears chasing an elusive sound.

Somebody was inside. Somebody moving softly but fast.

I had the knob in my hand, turning it slowly, without sound until the catch was drawn completely back. The hinges were well oiled and the door inched open soundlessly, bit by bit until I could see inside. There were no lights on and the shuffling sounds were coming from another room.

When the door was opened halfway I unpacked the .45 and stood there with it in my hand waiting to see what would happen. Something hit the floor and shattered and somebody whispered to somebody else to be quiet for the love of God. That made two of them.

Then the other one said, “Goddamn it, I cut my hand!”

A chair was pushed back and the glass that was lying on the floor went skittering into the wall.

The first voice said, “Didn't I tell you to be quiet?”

“Shut the hell up. You don't tell me anything.”

There was the tearing sound of cloth, then it came again. The voice whispered, “I can't bandage this. I'm going inside.”

He came in my direction, picking his way around the furniture. I was pressed back against the wall, hanging on to the rod. His hand felt the opening into the foyer and for a second he just stood there, black silhouetted against a deeper black, then his hand brushed my coat and he opened his mouth to yell.

I smashed the barrel of the gun across his forehead with a sickening dull sound and his knees went out from under him. He fell right in my arms, limp and heavy, his head lolling to one side, and I heard the blood drip onto the floor. It would have been all right if I could have laid him down, but his body rolled in my hands and a gun fell out of a holster and banged along the woodwork.

Inside there was a complete silence. Nothing, not even the sound of his breathing. I moved my feet around and swore under my breath, muttering like a guy who had just bumped into a wall.

In a voice barely audible the guy called out, “Ray ... was that you, Ray?”

I had to answer. “Yeah, it was me.”

“Come back here, Ray.”

I threw my hat off, shrugged my coat to the floor. The other guy was about my size and maybe I could get away with it.

Just in time I smartened up and dropped to my hands and knees and went around the corner. The guy was standing there pointing a gun where my belly would have been.

My pal's name wasn't Ray and I answered to it.

He saw me at the same time and a tongue of flame licked out in my direction with a noise that was almost a “plop,” but I was rolling before he pulled the trigger and the slug thudded into the wall.

Somehow I got my feet under me and squeezed the .45 into a roar that shook the room. I wasn't waiting for any return fire. I saw the shadow of a chair and dived for it, hearing the other guy going for cover only a few feet away.

From where I was the darkness made it impossible to tell whether or not I was exposed, and I lay there, forcing myself to breathe silently when I wanted to pant like a dog. The other guy wasn't so good at it. He gasped, then moved quickly, afraid that he might have been heard. I let him sweat. I knew where he was now, but I didn't fire. He moved again, deliberately, wondering if his first blast had caught me. My leg began to tighten up in a cramp, and there was a tremor in my arm from leaning on it. I wasn't going to be able to hold the tableau much longer.

The guy was getting up his nerve, but carefully. I fixed my eyes a little to one side of where I thought he'd show and waited, scanning the area, not focusing my gaze on any one spot. I tried to remember what they taught us in phase training. It worked in the jungle. Damn it, it had to work now.

I saw his head then. Barely enough light came through the curtained windows to give the background a deeper shade, and against it his face was just a spot of motion. He was creeping right into the line of my rod.

My fingers were starting to squeeze when the boy in the hallway came back to life. His feet slammed the wall and his nails scratched the floor. He must have lain there a second, remembered where he was and what had happened, and then he let out a choked-off curse and scrambled to the door.

It pulled the stop on the tension. The guy behind the chair jerked, his breath coming out in a long wheeze and he sprang out of his crouch into a chair that tipped over on me just as the .45 went off.

He screamed, tripped and fell, then got up and hit the wall before he made the door. I fought the chair and the gun went off into an empty room because I heard the other guy falling down a flight of stairs. By the time I was on my feet an engine roared outside and a car ripped into gear and was gone up the street.

There was no use chasing them. I lit a match, found the light switch and turned it on. It only took one look to see what they had been doing. Along one side of the wall was a bookcase with half the books lying on the floor. Some had closed shut, but at least fifty of them were lying there opened and discarded.

I stuck the gun back under my arm and picked up where they left off, yanking the books down and flipping through them. With the light on I made better time, and I was halfway across the next to last shelf when one book opened and another fell out of the well that had been cut into the pages.

Somebody was yelling on the street and a door slammed in the apartment below me. I shoved the book under my belt at the small of my back, ran out to the corridor long enough to grab my hat and coat and made a mad dash down the stairs. When I came to the landing the door started to open but banged shut and a bolt clicked into a hasp.

The open front door was a welcome invitation, even with the rain still coming down outside. I took that last flight two at a time, hit the bottom running and felt my head explode into a whirlwind of spinning lights and crazy sounds as something crashed into the side of my neck.

My body wasn't a part of me at all. It collapsed in a limp heap and my head cracked the floor, but there was no pain, just a numbness that was lit by another light, a brighter red this time, and there was a pressure on my chest, and in that final moment of recollection I knew that I had walked into a trap and somebody had pumped a bullet into me point-blank.

How long I lay there I couldn't tell. There are times when the body has recuperative powers beyond belief. A sound penetrated, a high wailing sound of a siren, and I climbed to my feet, grasping at the banister for support. Unconsciously I got my coat and hat back in my hands, staggered toward the door and came out. There was a crowd down the street pointing in my direction, but if they saw me they didn't show it. I was glad of the rain and the night then, the shadows that wrapped themselves around me as I lurched across the street looking for my car.

When I found it I half fell across the seat, dragging the door shut behind me. My chest felt crushed and my skull was a throbbing thing that sent tongues of fire lacing down my body. All sensation had been torn loose from my neck, and although I felt nothing there it hurt to breathe and hurt even worse to make a sound.

I heard the police car screech to a stop, heard the pounding of feet, the shouts, the excited murmur of a crowd that expanded every minute. I couldn't stay on the seat any longer. The hell with them. The hell with everything. I let my eyes close and my arms relaxed without warning, and I dropped forward on the floor boards, gasping into a puddle of dirt.

I was cold, colder than I had ever been before. I was wet and shivering and I didn't want to raise my head because the Japs were only twenty yards away waiting for me. Some place back of the lines a chow wagon had been rolled up and I could smell hot coffee and stew, hearing the guys line up for chow. I wanted to call for them to come and get me, lay down an artillery barrage so I could get the hell out of the foxhole, but if I yelled the Japs would spot my position and lob a grenade in on top of me. Just to make it worse it started raining harder.

Fighting to get my eyes open was a job in itself. The rain was coming in the open window and I was drenched. I could smell the coffee again, coming from some window. With my hands propped under me I pushed myself back to the seat and got behind the wheel.

The crowd was gone, the police were gone and the street was normal again. Just rain, black squares of windows, a drunk that weaved up the sidewalk. I knew how he felt. My mind was unfogging, bringing with it the throb in my head and chest. I put my hand inside my jacket, felt the tear in the cloth half fearfully, then eased the .45 out. A slug had smashed into the top of the slide mechanism tearing it loose, embedding itself in the blued metal looking like some nasty amoeba cast in lead. My chest hurt like hell from the impact but the skin wasn't even broken.

And someplace somebody was thinking I was a dead duck.

I reached in back of my belt, feeling for the book. It was still there. I couldn't see what it was so I tossed it in the glove compartment until later.

It was another ten minutes before I felt right enough to drive or strong enough to hold the wheel. I kicked over the motor and turned on my lights.

Right away I got it. The redhead's ring didn't wink back at me in the frosty gleam of the dashboard light. It was gone.