The Mike Hammer Collection (46 page)

“How do they know what you said?”

His face grew livid. “Who cares? Think they worry about what I said? Some guys is poison and you're one, because you was on that redhead ! Why didn't she drop dead sooner!”

I reached out and grabbed his arm and brought him up to my face. “Shut up,” I said through my teeth.

“Aw, Mike, I didn't mean nothin', honest. I'm just trying to tell ya.”

I let him go and he backed off a step, wiping his forehead with a sleeve. The light glistened on a tear that rolled down his cheek. “I don't know what it's all about, Mike. I don't wanna get knocked off. Can't you do something?”

“Maybe.”

Cobbie looked up, hopefully. His tongue passed over his parched lips. “Yeah?”

“Think, Cobbie. Think of the boys you saw. Who were they?”

The lines in his face grew deeper. “Hard boys. They were carrying rods. I think they came outa Detroit.”

“Who do they work for?”

“The same guy what gets the pay-off jack, I guess.”

“Names, Cobbie?”

He shook his head, the hope gone. “I'm only a little guy, Mike. How would I know? Every week I give a quarter of my take to a guy who passes it along in a chain until it reaches the top. I don't even want to know. I'm ... I'm scared, Mike, scared silly. You're the only one I knew to call. Nobody'll look at me now because they know the heat's on, that's why I wanted to see you.”

“Anybody know you're here?”

“No. Just you.”

“What about the landlady?”

“She don't know me. She don't care, neither. How'd you find me, Mike?”

“A way your pals won't try. Don't worry about it. Here's what I want you to do. Sit tight, don't leave this room, not even to go downstairs. Keep away from the window and be sure your door is locked.”

His eyes widened and his hands went to my arms. “You got an out figgered? You think maybe I can get outa town?”

“Could be. We'll have to do this carefully. You got anything to eat in the place?”

“Some canned stuff and two bottles of beer.”

“It'll hold you. Now remember this. Tomorrow night at exactly nine-thirty I want you to walk out of this place. Go down the street, turn right one block, then head west again. Keep walking as if you didn't know a thing was up. Take a turn around your neighborhood and say hello to anyone you want to. Only keep walking. Got that?”

Little beads of sweat were standing out on his forehead. “Christ, ya want me to get killed? I can't leave here and...'

“Maybe you'd sooner get bumped off here ... if you don't starve to death first.”

“No, Mike. I don't mean that! But jeez, walking out like that ...”

“Are you going to do it or not? I haven't got time to waste, Cobbie.”

He sank into the chair and covered his face with his hands. Crying came easy for Cobbie. “Y-yeah. I'll go. Nine-thirty” His head jerked up, tears streaking his face. “What're ya thinking of? Can't you tell me?”

“No, I can't. You just do what I told you. If it works, you'll be able to leave town in one piece. But I want you to remember something.”

“What?”

“Don't ... ever ... come ... back.”

I left him with his face white and sick-looking. When the door closed I heard him sobbing again.

Outside a premature dusk was settling over the city as the gray haze of rain clouds blew in from the southeast. I crossed the street and walked north to a subway kiosk. Before I reached it the rain had started again. A train had just pulled out of the station, giving me five minutes to wait, so I found a phone and called Lola's apartment. Nobody answered. No news was good news, or so they say. I tried the office and Velda told me it had been a fairly quiet afternoon. I hung up before she could ask questions. Besides, my train was just rattling past the platform.

At Fifty-ninth I got off, grabbed another cab and had the driver haul me over to where my car was parked. I thought I saw a guy I knew walk past and I went into a knee bend fumbling for my shoelace. It was getting to be a pain in the butt playing corpse.

When I finally got the chance I hopped in and shot away from there as fast as I could. Some chances I couldn't afford, one was being spotted near Lola's place. She was one person I wanted to myself, all nice and safe.

The wind picked up and began throwing the rain around. The few pedestrians left on the sidewalks were huddled under marquees or bellowing for cabs that didn't stop. Every time I stopped for a red light I could see the pale blur of the faces behind the glass store fronts, the water running down making them waver eerily. All with that same blank look of the trapped when nothing can be done to help.

I was wondering if Lola was having any trouble. The rain was going to slow her up plenty at a time when speed was essential. That damn camera. Why did Red ever mess with it in the first place?

Lola had said a job, didn't she? A place called Quick Pix or something. It had slipped my mind until now. I spotted a parking place ahead and turned into it, ready to make a dash into a candy store the moment the rain slackened. There was a lull between gusts that gave me a chance to run across the pavement and work my way through the small crowd that had gathered in the doorway out of the wet.

Inside I pulled out the directory and thumbed through it, trying each borough, but nothing like Quick Pix showed up. Not even a variation. I bought a pack of butts and asked the clerk if he had an old directory around and he shook his head, paused, then told me to wait a minute. He went into the back room and came up with a dog-eared Manhattan phone book covered with dust.

“They usually take 'em back but this was an extra they forgot,” he explained. “Saw it the other day in back of the shelf.”

I thanked him and ran through it. The hunch paid off. Quick Pix had a phone number and an address off Seventh Avenue. When I dialed the number there was a series of clicks and the operator asked me who I was calling. I gave her the number and she said it had been discontinued some time ago.

That was that. Or not quite. Maybe they still had an office but no phone.

One of the boys asked me if I was going uptown and I nodded for him to come along. For ten blocks he kept up an incessant line of chatter that I didn't hear until he poked me to let him out at a subway station. I pulled over, he opened the door and thanked me and ran down the stairs.

Behind me a line of horns blasted an angry barrage in my direction and over it a cop's whistle shrilled a warning. I came back to the present with a dirty word and my mind in a spin, because on the newsstand by the subway was a pile of the late evening papers and each one screamed to the world that the police were conducting a city-wide clean-up campaign of vice.

Somebody had talked.

I stopped for another red light, yelling to a newsy to bring one over and I gave him a buck for his trouble. It was there, all right, heads, captions and subcaptions. The police were in possession of information that was going to lead to the biggest roundup of this, that and the next thing the city ever saw.

Which was fine, great. Just what we wanted in the pig's neck. Pat must be raving mad. The papers were doing a beautiful civic job of chasing the rats out of town. Damn them, why couldn't they keep quiet!

The light changed and I saw my street coming up. I had to circle the block because it was a one way, then squeeze in between a decrepit delivery truck and a battered sedan. The number I wanted was a weather-beaten loft building, with an upholstery shop fronting on the street. On one side was a narrow entrance with a service elevator in the rear and a sign announcing the available vacancies hanging on the door.

I rang the bell and heard the elevator rattle its way downward, and come to a stop. The door opened and a guy with a week's growth of beard looked at me with rheumy eyes and waited for me to say something.

“Where can I find the super of this building?”

“Whatcha want him fer?” He spat a stream of tobacco juice between the grill of the elevator.

I palmed my badge in one hand and a fin in the other and let him see both. “Private cop.”

“I'm the super,” he said.

He reached for the fin and tucked it in his shirt pocket. “I'm listening.”

I said, “I'm looking for an outfit called Quick Pix. They were listed as being here.”

“That was a long time ago, buster. They pulled out in a hurry 'most a year ago.”

“Anybody there now?”

“Naw. This place's a dive. Who the hell would want to rent here? Maybe another outfit like Q.P. They was a fly-by-night bunch, I think.”

“How about a look at the place.”

“Sure, come on.”

I stepped aboard and we crept up to the fourth floor and stopped. He left the elevator there and turned the lights on, pointed to the end of the hall. “Room 209.”

The door wasn't locked. Where an ordinary house night latch should be was a round hole like an eye in a skull. The super did some trick with a switch box in a closet and the lights went on in the room.

It was a mess, all right. Somebody had packed out of there like the devil was on his tail. Finished proofs and negatives littered the floor, covered with spider webs and long tendrils of dust. The two windows had no shades and didn't need them, that's how thick the dirt was. Hypo had blown or was knocked from a box, covering one end with once white powder. Even now a few heel prints were visible in the stuff.

I gathered up a handful of snaps and looked them over. They were all two by three prints taken on the streets of couples walking arm in arm, sitting on park benches, coming out of Broadway theaters grinning at each other. On the backs were numbers in pencil and scrawled notations of the photogs.

A large packing box served as a filing cabinet, spilling out blank tickets with a slot built in for a quarter. The back half of the box contained other tickets that had been sent in with the mailer's name and address written in the right spot. They were tied in groups of about a hundred and all in all, there was a couple thousand dollars represented in cash right there. Quick Pix had done all right for itself.

To one side was a shelf running around the wall lined with shoe boxes and inscribed with names. One said “N. Sanford” and my interest picked up. In it were cards numbered to correspond with the film in the camera, which looked like a three- or four-day supply. A penciled note was a reminder to order more film. Neat, precise handwriting. Very feminine. It was Nancy's without a doubt. I plucked it out and tucked it in my pocket.

The guy had been standing near the door watching me silently. I heard him grunt a few times, then: “You know something? This place wasn't like this when they moved out.”

I stopped what I was doing. “How's that?”

“I came in to see if they left the walls here and all this junk on the floor was stacked in one corner. Looks like somebody kicked it around.”

“Yeah?”

He spat on the floor. “Yeah.”

“Who ran the business?”

“Forgot his name.” He shrugged. “Some character on his uppers. Guess he did pretty good after a while. One day he packs in here with a new convertible, tells me he's moving out and scrams. Never give me a dime.”

“What about the people that worked for him?”

“Hell, they was all out. They came in here that night and raised a stink. What was I supposed to do, pay their wages? I was lucky I tagged the guy, so I got the rent. Never said nothing to nobody, he didn't.”

I stuck a match in my mouth and chewed the end off it. When I gave one last quick glance I walked out. “That does it.” He shut the door and played with the switch box again, then stepped into the elevator after me and we started down.

“Get what you come for?” he asked

“I didn't come for anything special. I'm, er, checking on the owner. He owed some money and I have to collect. For films.”

“You don't say. Come to think of it, there's some stuff down in the cellar yet. One of the kids what worked there asked me if she could park it there. I let her when she slipped me a buck.”

“She?”

“Yeah, a redhead. Nice kid.”

He spat through the grill again and it splattered against the wall. “Do you ever read the papers?” I asked him.

“Funnies sometimes. Just the pictures. Broke my glasses four years ago and never got new ones. Why, what's going on?”

“Nothing. Let's see that stuff downstairs.”

Before he could suggest it I came across with another five and it went in the pocket with the other. His grin showed teeth that were brown as mud. We passed the main floor and jolted to a stop at the basement. The air was damp and musty, almost like the morgue, but here was the smell of dirt and decay and the constant whirr of rat feet running along the pipes and timbers. There weren't any lights, but the guy had a flashlight stashed in a joint and he threw the beams around the walls. Little beady eyes looked back at me and ran off, to reappear again farther down. I got the creeps.

He didn't seem to mind it at all.

“Down back, I think.” He pointed the flash at the floor and we stepped over crates, broken furniture and the kind of trash that accumulates over a span of years. We stopped by a bin and he poked around with a broom handle, scaring up some rats but nothing else. Beyond that was a row of shelves piled to capacity and he knocked the dust off some of the papers with a crack of the stick. Most of them were old bills and receipts, a few dusty ledgers and a wealth of old paper that had been saved up carefully. I opened a couple of boxes to help out. One was full of pencil stubs; the other some hasty sketches of nudes. They weren't very good.