The Body Lovers Page 10

  The desk clerk was another relic, half asleep in a chair, three empty beer bottles beside him. I walked up and said, “You have a Greta Service here?”

  He looked at me through half-opened eyes and shook his head. “Nobody by that name.”

  “You sure?”

  “I said so, didn’t I?”

  Then I remembered the name on the bottom of the card and said, “How about Howell?”

  He turned partly around, glanced at a chart pinned to the wall and nodded. “Second floor, two-oh-nine.” He reached for the phone.

  “Forget it,” I told him.

  For just a second he started to get irritated, then he took one hell of a good look at me, seemed to shrink back a little, made a motion with his shoulders and settled back into the chair. I took Dulcie’s arm and steered her toward the stairs.

  I knocked on the door twice before I heard a muffled sound from inside. When I knocked again a sleepy voice said, “All right, all right, don’t knock the door down.” I heard a chair being kicked, a soft curse, then a stripe of light showed under the door. The chain slid back, the lock clicked and the door swung open.

  I said, “Hello, Greta,”

  It was her. It wasn’t the Greta Service of the photographs, but it was her. Some of the beauty had eroded from her face, showing in the texture of her skin and the momentary void of her eyes. Her jet black hair was tangled and fell around her shoulders while she clutched the front of a cheap bathrobe together to keep it closed.

  I pushed her inside, took Dulcie with me and closed the door. Greta had gone pretty far down the line. The room was bare as the law allowed. One closet showed only a few clothes and an empty gin bottle lay on the nightstand beside the bed with a broken glass on the floor.

  She looked from me to Dulcie, then back to me again. “What do you want?”

  “You, Greta,” I said.

  “What for? What the hell do you mean by ... ?” She stopped, took a longer look at me, then added, “Don’t I know you?”

  “Mike Hammer.”

  Then she knew me. “You bastard,” she hissed.

  “Ease off, kid. Don’t blame your brother’s fall on me. He was the one who wanted me to find you.”

  Greta took a step back, faltering a little. “Okay, you found me. Now get out of here.” For some reason she avoided looking at my eyes.

  “What’s with this bit?” I asked her.

  Her head came up hesitantly, her lips tight. “Leave me alone.”

  “Harry wants to see you.”

  She spun around, staring dully into the dirty glass of the window. “Like this?”

  “I don’t think he cares.”

  “Tell him for me that I’ll see him when I’m ready.”

  “What happened, Greta?”

  We exchanged glances in the reflection of the glass. “I didn’t make it, that’s all. I had big ideas and they didn’t work out.”

  “So what do I tell Harry?”

  “I’m working,” she said. “I make a buck here and there. My time will come.” There was a funny catch in her throat. When I didn’t answer she spun around, her hands going to her hips. The robe came open as she stood there glaring at me and under the nightgown her body was outlined in lush perfection. “Just tell him to stay off my back until I’m ready, you hear me? And quit following me around. I’ll do what I want to do my own way and I don’t need any interference. He didn’t do so good his way either, did he? All right, at least I’m on the outside doing what I can. Now lay off me and get out of here!”

  “Greta... want to talk about Helen Poston?”

  There was no physical reaction at all. “She’s dead. She killed herself.”

  “Why?”

  “How would I know? She’d been brooding over some man. If she was stupid enough to kill herself over one she deserved it.”

  “Maybe she didn’t kill herself,” I said.

  A small shudder crossed her shoulders and her hands were clenched into fists. “When you’re dead you’re dead. What difference does it make any more?”

  “Not to her. It could to somebody else. Feel like talking about it?”

  She turned angrily and walked to the closet, tore the clothes from the hangers and threw them into a suitcase on the floor. “Damn it,” she muttered, “I’ll go someplace where nobody can find me.” She looked back over her shoulder, eyes blazing. “Go on, get out of here!”

  Dulcie said, “Can’t we do something?”

  “No use. This is what I came for. Come on, let’s go.”

  On the street there were a pair of cabs parked off the corner. I put Dulcie in the first, told her to wait a second, then walked back to the other cab. I wrapped a five-spot around my card and handed it to the driver. He took it cautiously, his eyes wary. I said, “There may be a woman coming out of that hotel in a few minutes. If she takes a cab, you pick her up. Let me know where she goes and I’ll make it worth your while.”

  He held the card under the dash light and when he looked up there was a big grin on his face. “Sure, Mike,” he said. “Hot damn.”

  Dulcie McInnes lived in a condominium apartment that rose alongside the park with quiet splendor that only the very wealthy could afford. I knew some of the names of others who owned their premises there and I was surprised Dulcie could afford it. She saw the question in my face and said, “Don’t be surprised, Mike. The Board of Directors of Proctor insisted on it. Something to do with image-making, and since they own the building, I am happy to comply with their wishes.”

  “Nice. I should have a job like that.”

  “At least you can share my luxury after taking me to that... that place tonight.”

  “It’s pretty late.”

  “And it’s coffee time... or are you a little old-fashioned?”

  I let out a little laugh and followed her into the elevator. The air whooshed in the tunnel we were being sucked up in, the quiet sound of unseen machinery humming in some distant place. Little voices, I thought. They were saying something, but were too far away to be heard. It wasn’t like the old days any more. I could think faster then. The little things didn’t get by me. Like tonight at the Sandelor Hotel. Everything was fine. I could tell Harry that. I did what he wanted me to do. Greta was on her uppers, but well enough and I couldn’t blame her for not wanting Harry to see her. She could have known the dead girls, but that wouldn’t be unusual at all. Greta was alive. She wanted it the way it was. Then what was so damn peculiar?

  I hadn’t realized the elevator had stopped and I was staring past Dulcie, who stood in a small foyer, past the arch into a magnificent living room whose windows looked like living pictures of New York with its myriad of winking lights.

  “Remember me?” she smiled. “We’re here.” She reached her hand out, took mine and led me inside. “Drink or coffee?”

  “Coffee,” I said. “You sure your friends won’t object to me being here?”

  “Friends?”

  “Some of the company you travel in ranks pretty high.”

  Dulcie giggled again, a disturbing quality that made her seem schoolgirlish. “Some are just rank. Now sit down while I put the coffee on.” She disappeared into the recesses of the house, but I could hear her making domestic sounds, unconsciously whistling snatches of a new show tune. I turned the record player on, slipped a few Wagnerian selections on the spindle and turned the volume down so the challenging themes were reduced to mere suggestions of their intent.

  She came back with the coffee and set it on the marble-topped table in front of the sofa and sat down beside me. “You’re awfully pensive. Do I affect you that way?”

  I took the coffee from her and studied her face. Even this close, maturity had only softened her beauty to classic form. Her breasts swelled beneath the sweater, melted into hips poised in an arrogant twist, with her legs crossed, one in gentle motion.

  “Not you,” I grinned.

  “Thinking about Greta Service, weren’t you?”

  “A little.�
��

  She stirred her coffee and tasted it “Weren’t you satisfied?” “Not really. I wish I knew why.”

  Dulcie put her cup down and leaned back thoughtfully. “I know. Unfortunately, I’ve seen it happen before. Some of these girls never realize what a tough world this is. There are thousands of beautiful faces and gorgeous bodies. They aspire for greatness and when it doesn’t happen to them they can’t understand it. The road downhill is steeper than the one going up.”

  “It’s not that. She’s been kicked around before. I thought she was a more determined type.”

  “Frustration can be a pretty terrible thing,” she said. “What can you do?”

  “Nothing, I guess. I’ll just lay it out the way it is. Her brother will have to be satisfied with it.”

  “And you’ll never have another reason for disrupting my routine again,” Dulcie smiled impishly.

  “Maybe I’ll think of one.”

  The light glinted from her eyes when she stared at me, the pupils dark little pools under long, curling lashes. Her tongue stole out, moistened her lips and very softly, very directly, she said, “Think of one now,” then reached up and turned off the light above us.

  She was a gentle, lovely flower that budded slowly, then erupted into a wild blossom of incredible delight. Her hands were tight on my wrists, directing their motion, controlling pressures to her own satisfaction, then, knowing I understood, began a searching of their own. Her mouth was a delectable pillow of warmth that moaned with pleasure when I kissed her, her entire body a writhing masterpiece of sensuality.

  When the gray light of the false dawn touched the city outside, I left and took a cab to the Carter-Layland Hotel. I got the key to my room, went in quietly and kicked off my shoes. The door to the adjoining bedroom was closed, so I lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling, my hands under my head.

  All I could think of... was it over or just beginning?

  chapter 7

  I never remembered having fallen asleep. I awoke with the fading light of day suffusing the room and the mice feet of rain on the window beside the bed. My watch said ten minutes to four and I swore under my breath for letting time get away from me.

  When I rolled out of the sack a note fell off my chest. Blue Ribbon at six, stinker, it read and was signed with Velda’s elaborate V. A quick shower straightened me out, I shaved the stubble off my face and pawed through the suitcase of clothes she had brought for me and got dressed. Automatically, I checked the action on the .45, slipped it into the holster and pulled my coat on.

  Last night had been a rough one. I grinned, reached for the phone and dialed Dulcie’s office number. The one who answered was Miss Tabor, the old maid I had ruffled so badly the first time around. When I asked for Dulcie she said Miss McInnes had left for Washington on the ten o’clock plane and would be out of town for several days. She asked who was calling and when I told her I could hear her quick gasp and she stammered that she would tell Miss McInnes that I had called.

  I hung up the phone and started to get up when it rang. I picked it up again and said, “Yes?”

  “This Mike Hammer?”

  “You got him.”

  “Ray Tucker, Mike. I’m the cab driver you told to follow that girl last night.”

  I had damn near forgotten about that. “Sure, Ray. Where’d she go?”

  “Well, it’s hard to say. She came out and flagged me down and I took her to that five-story public parking lot on Eighth and Forty-sixth. She hopped out and went inside. The gate was closed on one side so I cruised around the other and waited a few minutes, then a car came out I think was her. I was going to follow her a ways, but a passenger boarded me and I was laying back too far to really tail her. She drove down to Seventh, then turned right again on the block where there’s a southbound entrance to the West Side Highway. That’s the best I could do.”

  “Get the make of the car?”

  “A light blue Chevy sedan. A new one. Couldn’t spot the plates,” he said. Then suddenly he added, “Oh, yeah, there was a dent in the right rear fender. Just a little one.”

  “Okay, Ray, thanks. Let me know where to reach you and I’ll send you a check.”

  “Forget it, Mike. Them things are kind of fun.” He hung up and I put the phone back.

  There it was again. Something that didn’t belong there. You don’t own a new car while you’re bedding down in the squalid quarters of the Sandelor Hotel. But Ray Tucker wasn’t sure, either, and if the driver in the car wasn’t Greta Service, she could have used the parking lot as a cute gimmick to check on anyone following her. I knew the place, and while one side was open to traffic, the gate on the other merely admitted a person and not a car. If she thought I might have been on her tail it would have been a perfect spot to dump me.

  I grabbed my hat and raincoat, went downstairs, checked for messages, then went out and waited five minutes before a cab pulled over for me. I gave him the address of the Sandelor Hotel and sat back. I don’t usually get mistaken for a tourist, but the cabbie took a chance on it. He caught my eyes in the rear-view mirror and said, “If anybody steered you to the broads in that place, buddy, drop it.”

  “No good?” I asked absently.

  “Crap. You’d do better with a pick-up from one of the joints. That’s real gook stuff there.”

  The tautness started across my mouth. “Oh?”

  “Sure, foreign seamen, weirdie boys, all that. Maybe half a dozen broads work outa that place and I wouldn’t pay five cents to throw a rock at it.”

  “I’m not after a dame. There may be a friend of mine there.”

  He shook his head sympathetically. “Tough,” he muttered.

  “That’s a real bughouse.”

  There was a new man on the desk this time, a tall sallow-faced guy in a worn blue serge suit with rodent eyes that seemed to take everything in at once without moving at all. When I passed the desk he said, “Say ...” in a whispery voice and I turned, walked back again and stood there for a good ten seconds without taking my eyes off him.

  He tried to bluster it out, but it was the kind of situation he didn’t like. “Can I... help you?”

  “Yeah. You can stay right there and keep your mouth shut. Is that plain enough?”

  Those narrow little eyes half shut and the rodent look turned snakelike. He passed it off with a shrug and went back to his bookkeeping. I went up the stairs and down the corridor to the room I had been in last night.

  This time the light was already on, and inside a man’s hoarse voice was spitting obscenities at a girl. She came back at him with some vile language, then there was the fleshy sound of a hand cracking across a jaw and I shoved the door open.

  She sprawled on the floor against the wall, momentarily stunned, one hand pressed against her cheek, a dirty blonde life had prematurely aged. The guy was a big one, heavy under the sport coat and slacks, his face showing the signs of a losing ring career. His nose was flattened and twisted, one ear lumpy and a scar dragged down one corner of his mouth.

  He looked at me with a sneer and said, “You got the wrong room, buster.”

  “I got the right one.”

  Surprise turned the sneer into a half-smile of anticipation. “Out, out. Like maybe you don’t know any better?”

  I just stood there. He let two seconds go by, then dropped into a familiar crouch and came at me. He started to feint with his left to cross one over to my jaw, only I never let him get that far. I put a straight jab in his mouth that jarred him back, then hooked him in the gut and again under the chin before he realized what had happened. His legs went rubbery and he went into a sagging dance of defeat. I made sure of it with another right that almost snapped his head off and he crashed against the lone dresser and knocked the lamp off it.

  The girl was looking up at me with outright fear, wide awake now. “What... did you do... that for?”

  “Be happy, kid. He belted you, didn’t he?”

  She started to struggle to her feet.
I yanked her up, led her to the bed and let her sit down. “We... hell, he’s my... we work together.” Anger flooded her face and she spoke through clenched teeth. “You damn fool, now he’ll beat the hell out of me. You crazy or something? What did you make trouble for? Why don’t you go ... ?”

  I held out my wallet so she could see the glint of metal inside.

  Like I figured, she wasn’t the kind who wanted to question a badge so far as even take a good look at it. Tiny white lines etched the corners of her mouth and she threw a nervous glance at the guy on the floor. “Let’s start with names,” I said.

  There wasn’t any anger in her voice any more. “Listen, mister ...”

  “Names, kid. Who are you?”

  She looked down at her feet, her fingers twisting at the bedclothes. “Virginia Howell.”

  “Where’s Greta Service?”

  I saw her frown, then she looked up at me. “I don’t know any Greta Service.”

  Too many times I had put up with lying broads and I could tell when they were spinning one off. This one wasn’t. Now it was all back to where it started again.

  “Let’s start with last night, Virginia. Where were you?”

  “I was... out on a trick.” She dropped her eyes again.

  “Go on.”

  “It ... was a hotel on Forty-ninth. Some john from out of town, I guess. Probably from one of the ships. He ... he wasn’t nothing, but he gave me a hundred bucks and I spent the night with him.”

  “Where’d you pick him up?”

  “I didn’t.” She pointed to the guy on the floor. “He arranged the date like most of the time. He don’t like me doing my own business.” A touch of irony came into her voice. “I suppose I got to split with you too. Well, get it off him. He got it all now. Never even let me keep my percentage because I gave him some lip.”