The Mike Hammer Collection (66 page)

“I saw a face. Half of it. Not enough to tell who it was except that it was a man. That face will try again and when it does I'll blow the hell out of it.”

“Be careful, Mike. You don't have a license any more. The D.A. would love to run you in on a Sullivan charge.”

I got up out of my crouch and gave her a short laugh. “The law is supposed to protect the people. If the D.A. wants to jug me I'll make a good time out of it. I'll throw the Constitution in his face. I think one of the first things it says is that the people are allowed to bear arms. Maybe they'll even have to revoke the Sullivan Law and then we'll really have us a time.”

“Yeah, a great whiz-bang, bang-up affair.”

For the first time since I came in I took notice of her. I don't know how the hell I waited so long. Velda was wearing a sweeping black evening gown that seemed to start halfway down her waist, leaving the top naked as sin. Her hair, falling around her shoulders, looked like onyx and I got a faint whiff of a deep, sensual aroma.

There was no fullness to the dress. It clung. There was no other word for it. It just clung, and under it there wasn't the slightest indication of anything else. “Is that all you got on?”

“Yes.”

“It's cold outside, baby.” I know I was frowning but I couldn't help it. “Where you going?”

“To see your friend Clyde. He's invited me out to supper.”

My hand tightened into a fist before I could stop it. Clyde, the bastard! I forced a grin through the frown. It didn't come out so well. “If I knew you would look like that I'd have asked you out myself.”

There was a time when she would have gotten red and slammed me across the jaw. There was a time when she would have broken any kind of a date to put away a hamburger in a diner with me. Those times had flown.

She pulled on a pair of elbow-length gloves and let me stand there with my mouth watering, knowing damn well she had me where it hurt. “Business, Mike, business before pleasure always.” Her face was blank.

I let my tone get sharp. “What were you doing here before I came in?”

“There's a note on your desk explaining everything. I visited the Calway Merchandising Company and rounded up some photographs they took of the girls that night. You might want to see them. You take to pretty girls, don't you?”

“Shut up.”

She glanced at me quickly so I wouldn't see the tears that made her eyes shine. When she walked to the desk to get her coat I started swearing under my breath at Clyde again because the bastard was getting the best when I had never seen it. That's what happens when something like Velda is right under your nose.

I said it again. This time there was no sharpness in my voice. “I wish I had seen you like that before, Velda.”

She took a minute to put on her coat and it was so quiet in that room I could hear her breathing. She turned around, the tears were still there. “Mike ... I don't have to tell you that you can see me any way you like ... anytime.”

I had her in my arms, pressing her against me, feeling every warm, vibrant contour of her body. Her mouth reached for mine and I tasted the wet sweetness of her lips, felt her shudder as my hands couldn't keep off the whiteness of her skin. My fingers dug into her shoulders leaving livid red marks. She tore her mouth away with a sob and spun around so I couldn't see her face, and with one fast motion that happened too quickly she put her hands over mine and slid them over the flesh and onto the dress that clung and down her body that was so warmly alive, then pulled away and ran to the door.

I put a cigarette in my mouth and forgot to light it. I could still hear her heels clicking down the hall. Absently, I reached for the phone and dialed Pat's number out of habit. He said hello three times before I answered him and told him to meet me in my office.

I looked at my hands and the palms were damp with sweat. I lit my cigarette and sat there, thinking of Velda again.

CHAPTER 7

I
t took Pat thirty minutes to get there. He came in stamping the snow off his shoes and blowing like a bull moose. When he shed his coat and hat he threw a briefcase on the desk and drew up a chair.

“What are you looking so rosy about, Mike?”

“The snow. It always gets me. How'd you make out today?”

“Fine,” Pat said, “just fine and dandy. The D.A. made a point of telling me to keep my nose clean again. If he ever gets boosted out of office I'm going to smack him right in the sneezer.” He must have read the surprise on my face. “Okay, okay, it doesn't sound like me. Go ahead and say it. I'm getting tired of being snarled up in red tape. You had it easy before you threw away your ticket and you didn't know it.”

“I'll get it back.”

“Perhaps. We have to make murder out of suicide first.”

“You almost had another on your hands today, chum.”

He stopped in the middle of a sentence and said, “Who now?”

“Me.”

“You!”

“Little me. On a crowded street, too. Somebody tried to pop me with a silenced gun. All they got was two windows.”

“I'll be damned! We got a call on one of those windows, the one on Thirty-third. If the slug didn't poke a hole through all the scenery and land where it could be found it would have passed for an accident. Where was the other one?”

I told him and he said he would be damned again. He reached for the phone and buzzed headquarters to have them go through the window for the slug. When he hung up I said, “What's the D.A. going to do when he hears about this?”

“Quit kidding. He isn't hearing anything. You know the rep you have ... the bright boy'll claim it's one of your old friends sending a greeting card for the holidays.”

“It's too early for that.”

“Then he'll grab you on some trumped-up charge and get himself a big play in the papers. The hell with him.”

“You aren't talking like a good cop now, feller.”

Pat's face darkened and he leaned out of his chair with his teeth bared to the gums. “There's a time when being a good cop won't catch a killer. Right now I'm teed off, Mike. We're both on a hot spot that may get hotter and I don't like it. It might be that I'm getting smart. A little favorable publicity never hurts anybody and if the D.A. tries to trim my corns I'll have a better talking point if I have something I can toss at him.”

I laughed. Cripes, how I laughed! For ten years I had sung that song to him and now he was beginning to learn the words.

It was funnier now than it was in the beginning.

I said, “What about Rainey? You find him?”

“We found him.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah what. He was engaged in the so-called legitimate profession of promoting fights. Some arena on the Island. We couldn't tap him for a thing. What about him?”

There was a bottle of booze in the desk and I poured out two shots. “He's in this, Pat. I don't know just how he fits, but he's there.” I offered a silent toast and we threw them down. It burned a path to my stomach and lay there like a hot coal. I put down the glass and sat on the window sill. “I went out to see Emil Perry. Rainey was there and had the guy scared silly. Even I couldn't scare him worse. Perry said Wheeler had spoken of suicide because business was bad, but a check showed his outfit to be making coin hand over fist. Riddle me that one.”

Pat whistled slowly.

I waited for him to collect his thoughts. “Remember Dinky Williams, Pat?”

Pat let his head move up and down. “Go on.” His face was getting that cop look on it.

I tried to make it sound casual. “What's he doing now? You know?”

“No.”

“If I were to tell you that he was running a wide-open gambling joint right here in the city, what would you do?”

“I'd say you were crazy, it's impossible, then put the vice squad on it.”

“In that case I won't tell you about it.”

He brought his hand down on the desk so hard my cigarettes jumped. “The hell you won't! You'll tell me about it right now! Who am I supposed to be, a rookie cop for you to play around with?”

It was nice to see him get mad again. I eased down off the window sill and slumped in my chair. His face was red as a beet. “Look, Pat. You're still a cop. You believe in the integrity and loyalty of the force. You may not want to, but you'll be duty-bound to do just what you said. If you do a killer gets away.”

He went to talk but I stopped him with a wave of my hand. “Keep still and listen. I've been thinking that there's more to this than you or I have pictured. Dink's in it, Rainey's in it, guys like Emil Perry are in it too. Maybe lots more we don't know about ... yet. Dinky Williams is cleaning up a pretty penny right this minute running wheels and bars without a license. Because I told you that don't go broadcasting it around. It may hurt you to be reminded of the fact, but just the same it has to be ... if Dinky Williams runs a joint, then somebody is getting paid off. Somebody big. Somebody important. Either that or a whole lot of small somebodies who are mighty important when you lump them all together. Do you want to fight that setup?”

“You're damned well told I do!”

“You want to keep your badge? You think you can buck it?”

His voice was a hoarse whisper. “I'll do it.”

“You have another think coming and you know it. You'd just like to do it. Now listen to me. I have an inside track on this thing. We can play it together or not, but we're doing it my way or you can stick your nose in the dirt and root up the facts yourself. It won't be easy. If Dinky is paying off we can get the whole crowd at once, not just Dinky. Now call it.”

I think if I had had a license it would have been gone right there, friend or no friend. All I had was a name on the door that didn't mean anything now. Pat looked at me with disgust and said, “What a great Captain of Homicide I am. The D.A. would give his arm for a recording of this little conversation. Okay, Inspector, I'm waiting for my orders.”

I gave him a two-fingered salute. “First, we want a killer. To get him we need to know why Wheeler was killed. If you were to mention the fact that a certain guy named Clyde was heading for trouble you might get results. They won't be pretty results, but they might show us where to look.”

“Who's Clyde?” There was an ominous tone in his voice.

“Clyde is Dinky's new monicker. He got fancy.”

Pat was grinning now. “The name is trouble, Mike. I've heard it mentioned before.” He stood up and pulled a cigarette from my deck of Luckies. I sat there and waited. “We're getting into ward politics now.”

“So?”

“So you're a pretty smart bastard. I still say you should've been a cop. You'd be Commissioner by now or dead. One or the other. You might still be dead.”

“I almost was this afternoon.”

“Sure, I can see why. This Clyde guy has all the local monkeys by their tails. He gets everything fixed, everything from a parking ticket to a murder rap. All you have to do is mention the name and somebody starts bowing and scraping. Our old friend Dinky has really come up in the world.”

“Nuts. He's a small-time heel.”

“Is he? If it's the same guy we're talking about he's able to pull a lot of strings.”

Pat was too calm. I didn't like it. There were things I wanted to ask him and I was afraid of the answers. I said, “How about the hotel? You checked there, didn't you?”

“I did. Nobody registered the day of the killing, but there were quite a few guests admitted to other rooms that same night. They all had plausible alibis.”

That time I let out a string of dirty words. Pat listened and grinned again. “Will I see you tomorrow, Mike?”

“Yeah. Tomorrow.”

“Stay away from store windows.”

He put on his hat and slammed the door. I went back to looking at the pictures Velda had left on my desk. The girl named Marion Lester was laughing into the camera from the folds of a huge fur-collared coat. She looked happy. She didn't look like she'd be drunk in another couple of hours and have to be put to bed by a friend of mine who died not long after.

I slid all the photos in the folder and stuffed them in the desk drawer. The bottle was still half full and the glass empty. I cured that in a hurry. Pretty soon it was the other way around, then there was nothing in either of them and I felt better. I pulled the phone over by the cord and dialed a number that I had written on the inside of a matchbook cover.

A voice answered and I said, “Hello, Connie ... Mike.”

“My ugly lover! I thought you'd forgotten me.”

“Never, child. What are you doing?”

“Waiting for you.”

“Can you wait another half-hour?”

“I'll get undressed for you.”

“You get dressed for me because we may go out.”

“It's snowing.” She sounded pained. “I don't have galoshes.”

“I'll carry you.” She was still protesting when I stuck the receiver on its arms.

There was a handful of .25 shells in the drawer that I shoveled into my pocket, little bits of insurance that might come in handy. Just before I left I pulled out the drawer and hauled out the envelope of photographs. The last thing I did was type a note for Velda telling her to let me know how she made out.

The guy in the parking lot had very thoughtfully put the skid chains on my buggy and earned himself a couple of bucks. I backed out and joined the line of cabs and cars that pulled their way through the storm.