The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 2 (48 page)

Lou threw the towel at me. “Christ, quit stalling around with him. I’ll make him talk in a hurry.”

“Shut up.” Ed didn’t even stop smiling. “You’re lucky I’m here. Lou is rather impulsive.”

I didn’t answer him.

He said, “It was too bad you had to kill Toady, Mr. Hammer. He was very valuable to me.”

I got the words out. “You’re nuts.”

He pushed himself up off the cane and leaned back in the chair. “Don’t bother with explanations. I’m not the police. If you killed him that’s your business. What I want is what’s my business. Where is it?”

My lips felt too thick to put any conviction in my voice. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“Remind him, Lou.”

Then he sat back chewing on a cigar and watched it. Lou didn’t use his foot this time. The wet towel around his fist was enough. He was good at the job, but I had taken so much the first time that even the half-consciousness I had left went fast.

I tried to stay that way and couldn’t. My head twitched and Teen said metallically, “Now do you remember?”

I only had to shake my head once and that fist clubbed it again. It went on and on and on until there was no pain at all and I could laugh when he talked to me and try to smile when the delivery boy in the corner got sick and turned his head away to puke.

Ed rapped the cane on the floor. “Enough. That’s enough. He can’t feel it any more. Let him sit and think about it a few minutes.”

Lou was glad to do that. He was breathing hard through his mouth and his chin was covered with blood. He went over and sat down at the table to massage his hand. Lou was very happy.

The cane kept up a rhythm on the floor. “This is only the beginning you know. There’s absolutely no necessity for it.”

I managed to say, “I didn’t ... kill Link.”

“It doesn’t matter whether you did or not. I want what you took from his apartment.”

Lou started to cough and spat blood on the floor. He gagged, put his hand to his mouth and pushed a couple of teeth into his palm with his tongue. When he brought his head up his eyes bored into mine like deadly little black bullets. “I’m going to kill that son-of-a-bitch!”

“You sit there and shut up. You’ll do what I say.”

He was on his feet with his hands apart fighting to keep himself from tearing Teen’s throat out with his fingers. Ed wasn’t so easy to scare. The snub-nosed gun in his hand said so.

Lou’s face was livid with rage. “Damn you anyway. Damn you and Fallon and Link and the whole stinking mess of you!”

“You’re lisping, Lou. Sit down.” Lou sat down and stared at his teeth some more. He was proud of those teeth. They were so nice and shiny.

They lay where they were dropped on the table and seemed to fascinate him. He kept feeling his gums as though he couldn’t believe it, cursing his heart out in black rage. Ed’s gun never left him for a second. Right then Lou was in a killing rage and ready to take it out on anybody.

He kept saying over and over, “Goddamn every one of ‘em! Goddamn ’em all!” His mouth drew back baring the gap in his teeth and he slammed the table with his fist. “Goddamn, this wouldn‘t’ve happened if you’d let me do it my way! I would’ve killed Fallon and that lousy whore he kept and Link and this wouldn’t’ve happened!” I got the eyes this time. They came around slow and evilly. “I’ll kill you for it, too.”

“You’ll get new teeth, Lou,” Ed said pleasantly. Everything he said was pleasant.

Grindle gagged again and walked out of the room. Water started to run in a bowl somewhere and he made sloshing noises as he washed out his mouth. Ed smiled gently. “You hit him where he hurts the most ... in his vanity.”

“Where does it hurt you the most, Ed?”

“A lot of people would like to know that.”

“I know.” I tried to grin at him. My face wouldn’t wrinkle. “It’s going to hurt you in two places. Especially when they shave the hair off your head and leg.”

“I think,” he told me, “that when Lou comes back I’ll let him do you up right.”

“You mean ... like old times when Fallon pulled the strings ... with cigar butts and pliers?”

His nostrils flared briefly. “If you have to say something at all, tell me where it is.”

“Where what is?”

The water was still running inside. Without turning his head Ed called, “Johnny. Give it to him.”

The big guy came over. Under his shirt his stomach made peculiar rolling motions. His techniques stunk. His fist made a solid chunk against my chin and I went out like a light. They poured cold water over me so I’d wake up and watch it happen all over again.

It started to get longer between rounds. I would come only partially back out of that jet-black land of nowhere and hang there limply. The big guy’s voice was a hoarse croak. “He’s done, Ed. I don’t think he knows what you’re talking about.”

“He knows.” His cane tapped the floor again. “Give him another dousing.”

I got the water treatment again. It washed the blood out of my eyes so I could see again and the shock of it cleared my mind enough to think.

Ed knew when I was awake. He had a cigar lit and gazed at the cherry-red end of it speculatively. “You can hear me?”

I nodded that I could.

“Then understand something. I shall ask you just once more. Remember this, if you’re dead you can’t use what you have.”

“Tell ... me what the hell ... you want.”

Only for a second did his eyes go to the pair leaning on the window sill. If they weren’t there I would have had it, but whatever I was supposed to know was too much for their big ears. “You know very well what I mean. You’ve been trouble from the very first moment. I know you too well, Mr. Hammer. You’re only a private investigator, but you’ve killed people before. In your own way you’re quite as ruthless as I am ... but not quite as smart. That’s why I’m sitting here and you’re sitting there. Keep what you have. I’ve no doubt that it’s hidden some place you alone can get it, and after you’re dead nobody else will find it. Not in my time at least. Johnny ... go see what’s keeping Lou.”

The guy walked inside and came right back. “He’s lying down. He puked on the bed.”

“Let him stay there then. Untie this man.”

The straps came off my hands and legs, but I couldn’t get up. They let me sit there until the circulation came back, and with it the flame that licked at my body. When I could move Johnny hauled me to my feet.

“What’ll I do with him, Ed?”

“That’s entirely up to you. Martin, drive me back to the city. I’ve had enough of this.”

The little guy saluted with his two fingers and waited until Ed had picked up his topper. He made a beautiful flunky. He opened the door and probably even helped him down the steps. I heard the car purr into life and drag back on the road.

Johnny let go my coat collar and jammed the gun in my back. “You heard what the man said.” He started me off with a push to the door.

The long walk. The last ride. The boys call it a lot of things. You sit there in the car with your head spinning around and around thinking of all the ways to get out and every time you think of one there’s a gun staring you in the face. You sweat and try to swallow. All your joints feel shaky and though you want a cigarette more than anything in the world you know you’ll never be able to hold one in your mouth. You sweat some more. Your mouth wants to scream for help when you see somebody walking along the street. A gun pokes you to keep quiet. There’s a cop on the corner under the arc light. A prayer gets stuck in your throat. He’ll recognize them ... he’ll see the glint of their guns ... his hand will go up and stop the car and you’ll be safe. But he looks the other way when the car passes by and you wonder what happened to your prayer. Then you stop sweating because your body is dried out and your tongue is a thick rasp working across your lips, You think of a lot of things, but mostly you think of how fast you’re going to stop living.

I remembered how I thought of all those things the first time. Now it was different. I was beat to hell and too far gone to fight. I had the strength to drive and that was all. Johnny sat there in his corner watching me and he still had my own gun.

This time I wanted a cigarette and he gave me one. I used the dash lighter again. I finished that and he gave me another while he laughed at the way my hand shook when I tried to get it in my mouth. He laughed at the way I kept rolling the window up first to get warm then down to get cooled off. He laughed at the way I made the turns he told me to take, creeping around them so I’d have seconds longer to live.

When he told me to stop he laughed again because my arms seemed to relax and hang limply at my sides.

He took his eyes off me for one second while he searched for the door handle and he never laughed again.

I shot him through the head five times with the .32 I had pulled out of the boot and kicked him out in the road after I took my gun from his hand. When I backed around the lights of the car swept over him in time to catch one final involuntary twitch and Johnny was getting his first taste of hell.

The gray haze of morning was beginning to show in the sky behind me when I reached the shack again. It was barely enough to show me the road through the grass and outline the car against the house. I killed the engine, backed into the sand and opened the door.

This time the car wasn’t any big sedan. It was the same coupé that had brought the boys to get me then pulled away at their signal. I knew who was in there. The little guy Ed called Martin had come back for Lou.

I made a circuit of the house and stopped under the bedroom window. Lou was cursing the guy, telling him to stop shaking him. I straightened up to look in, but there was no light and the curtains made an effective blind. Somebody started running the water and there was more talk I couldn’t catch. It faded away until it was in the back of the house and I grabbed at the chance.

I hugged the wall climbing up on the porch, squeezing myself into the shadows. The wood had rotted too soft to have any squeak left in it but I wasn’t taking any chances. I got down low with the gun in one hand and reached up for the knob with the other.

Somebody had oiled it not so long ago. It turned noiselessly and I gave the door a shove. The guy with the oilcan was nice people. He had oiled the hinges too.

My breath stuck in my lungs until I was inside with the door closed behind me, then I let it out in a low hiss and tried to breathe normally. The blood was pounding through my body making noise enough to be heard throughout the house. My legs wanted to drag me down instead of pushing me forward and the .45 became too heavy to hold steadily.

I had to fight against the letdown that was sweeping over my body. It couldn’t come now! The answer was there in Lou’s bloody mouth waiting to be squeezed out. I started to weave a little bit and reached out to grab the wall and hang on. My hand hit the door of a closet and slammed it shut.

Silence.

A cold, black silence.

A tentative voice calling, “Johnny?”

I couldn’t fake an answer. My knees started to go.

Again, “Johnny, damn it!”

Lou cursed and a tongue of flame lashed out of a doorway.

There was no faking about the way I hit the floor. Lou had heard too many men fall like that before. It was real, but only because my legs wouldn’t hold me any longer. I still had the .45 in my mitt and I let the feet come my way just so far before I squeezed the trigger.

The blasting roar of the gun echoed and shattered on the walls. I rolled until I hit something and stopped, my free hand clawing my one good eye to keep it open. The remnants of a scream were still in the air and the pin points of light were two guns punching holes in the woodwork searching for me. I got my hand around the leg of an end table and let it go. The thing bounced on the floor and split under the impact of the bullets. They were shouting at each other now, calling each other fools for wasting shots. So they stopped wasting shots. They thought I was hit and waited me out.

Somebody was breathing awfully funny. It made a peculiar racket when you took time to listen to it. I could hear them changing position, getting set. I went as quietly as I could and changed position myself.

It had to come soon. A few more minutes and the light would come through the curtains and they could see better than I could. It went on like a kid’s game, that incessant crawling, the fear that you’d be caught, the deliberate motions of stealth that were so hard to make.

The funny breathing was real close. I could reach out and touch it. It was there on the other side of the chair. It heard me too, but it didn’t change its tone. From across the room came the slightest sound and a whisper from only five feet away. “He’s over there.”

Orange flame streaked across the room and the sound jolted my ears even before the scream and the hoarse curse. The answer was two shots that pounded into the floor and a heavy thud as a body toppled over.

Lou’s voice said, “I got the son-of-a-bitch.” He still lisped.

He moved out past the chair and I saw him framed in the window.

I said, “You got your own man, Lou.”

Lou did too many things at once. He tried to drop, shoot and curse me at the same time. He got two of them done. He dropped because I shot him. His gun went off because a dead hand pulled the trigger. He didn’t curse because my bullet went up through his mouth into his brain taking the big answer with it.

There was nothing left there for me at all.

Outside the gray haze had brightened into morning, very early morning. It took me a long time to get back to the car, and much, much longer to get to the highway.

Fate allowed me a little bit of luck. It gave me a hitchhiker stranded between towns. I picked him up and told him I’d been in a fight and that he could drive.

The hiker was glad to. He felt sorry for me.

I felt sorry for myself too.

CHAPTER 9

We were on a side street just off Ninth Avenue and the guy beside me was pulling my arm to wake me up. He tugged and twisted until I thought the damn thing would come off. I got the one eye open and looked at him.