Survival... ZERO! mh-11 Page 10

  A flash of annoyance tugged at her eyes and that beautiful mouth tightened slightly. "I had help, big man. I went for it right after you left. Dr. Vance Alien. You've heard of him?"

  I nodded and studied her. Vance Alien wasn't new to me. He was a longtimer in the field of narcotic rehabilitation. Some of his measures were extreme and some not yet accepted into general practice, but his results had been extremely significant.

  "Hurt any?"

  "At first. You're looking at an experiment with a new medication. In a way I'm lucky. I wasn't hooked as badly as you thought."

  "Who put you on it?"

  "That's one of those things I'd rather not talk about. In time it will be taken care of. Meanwhile, I'm working at being unhooked."

  I shook my head and looked past her. "Not yet. Right now you're nibbling at another line."

  Heidi tilted her face and squinted at me, not understanding.

  "That pair you're with are a couple of hoods."

  "Oh . . . don't be silly." She gave me a disgusted grimace. "They work for Mr. Ballinger and Mr. Ballinger

  "

  "... is a legitimate businessman," I finished for her. "One day try old issues of the newspapers . . . about July, four years ago, or check into your nearest friendly precinct station. The desk sergeant will fill you in on his background."

  "I don't believe . .."

  "You got any reason not to believe me?"

  "No." But her voice was hesitant.

  "Somebody tried to kill me last night." I looked past her to the bar again and she almost turned to follow my gaze.

  "But . .."

  "When you go back there," I said, "tell your friends that I'll be looking them up. Right after I see their boss. We have a little business to discuss too."

  Some of the color drained out of her face and she gave an annoyed toss of her head, her lower lip pinched between her teeth. "Damn! You men ..."

  "Just tell them, Heidi."

  "I don't know why ..."

  "Tell them. And have the message passed on to Larry Beers too."

  I winked at her and left her standing there a moment watching me before she walked back, that wild hip-swaying walk reflecting her annoyance. Carl and Sammy weren't going to be too happy with the news. They'd been too used to doing the chasing and calling the shots when and where they wanted them.

  The maitre d' and headwaiter had seen Woody Ballinger earlier, but he had left about an hour ago. His office secretary had called a little while back looking for him, so he wouldn't be there. I just told them that they could tell Woody Mike Hammer was looking for him on a "business matter" and if he didn't find me I'd find him. Let Woody sweat a little too.

  Between three and four in the afternoon the New York cabbies change shifts. It's bad enough on a nice day trying to fight the women shoppers and the early commuters for one, but in the rain, forget it. You could stand in the street and get splashed by their wheels or try walking, but either way you'd get soaked. For once the weathermen had been right and they were predicting three more days of the same. Intermittent heavy rain, occasional clearing, windy and cool. It was a hell of a time to be on the streets.

  A girl walked by the store entranceway I was nestled in, head lowered into the slanted rain, her plastic coat plastered to her body, outlining her scissoring thighs as she doggedly made her way to the corner to make a green light. At least she reminded me of something. I went inside the store, bought a pack of cigarettes, walked back to the phone booth, put a dime in the slot and dialed a number.

  The secretary told me to hold, checked me out, then put Renée Talmage on the line. She chuckled once and said, "Hello, teaser."

  "But fun, kid."

  "Too frustrating, but yes ... fun. At least different. Where are you?"

  "A couple blocks away and soaking wet."

  "There's a nice little bar downstairs in the building where you can dry out while we have a drink."

  "Fine," I told her. "Five minutes."

  It was closer to fifteen and she was part of the way through a cocktail, totally engrossed with the bartender in a discussion about the latest slump in the stock market, When I got there. I tossed my soggy trench coat and hat

  on the back of a chair and climbed on the barstool next to her. "Must be great to be intelligent. Bring me a beer," I told the bartender.

  She stopped in the middle of Dow-Jones averages and tilted her head at me. "And I thought you had class. A beer. How plebian."

  "So I'm a slob." I took the top off the beer and put the glass down with a satisfied burp. "Good stuff, that. You have to raise your hand to get out of class?"

  "Recess time." She laughed and sipped her cocktail. "Actually, the day is done. William is socializing with the wheels of the world and I'm left to my own devices for the time being."

  "You got nice devices, kid," I said. The dress she had on wasn't exactly office apparel. The vee-neckline plunged down beside the naked swell of her breasts to disappear behind a four-inch-wide leather belt. "Don't you have anything on under that?" I asked her.

  "We women are exercising our newfound freedom. Haven't you heard about the brassiere-burning demonstrations?"

  "Yeah. I heard. Only I didn't figure on being this close to the ashes. It's distracting."

  "Well?"

  "Don't guys find it hard to keep their eyes off you?"

  Renée looked at me with an amused smile, her mouth formed into a tiny bow. "Very hard."

  "Cut it out."

  Her smile got deeper. "Me? You're the one making all the dirty remarks."

  I almost spilled my beer before I managed to get it down.

  "Now what have you been doing to get so wet ... tailing a suspect?"

  "Not quite. There are better ways of nailing them. I’ve been walking and remembering a dead friend who shouldn't have died and thinking out why he died until things begin to make a little sense. One day, one second, it's all going to be nice and clear right in front of me and all those targets will be ready to be knocked off."

  The funny little smile on her face warped into a worried frown and some deep concern showed in her eyes. "Is it... that personal, Mike?"

  "All the way."

  "But you're serious ... about killing."

  "So was somebody else," I told her.

  Renée looked into her glass, started to raise it, then put it down and looked at me again. "Strange."

  "What is?"

  "My impressions. I read about people in your line of work, I see the interpretations on TV and in movies ... it's rather hard to believe there really are people like that. But with you it's different. The police ..."

  "Cops are dedicated professionals, honey. They're in a tough, rough, underpaid racket with their lives on the line every minute of the day. They get slammed by the public, sappy court decisions and crusading politicians, but somehow they get the job done."

  "Mike ... I thought I knew people. I'm personally responsible for the actions and decisions of several thousands and answerable only to William Dorn. I can't afford to make mistakes in selecting them for sensitive positions, but I would have made a mistake with you."

  "Why?"

  "Because ... well, there are different sides of you that nobody can truly see."

  "You've just lost touch with the lower class, kid. You work on too high a level. Get out there on the street where the buying public is and you'll see a lot of other faces too. Some of them probably work for you too. Not everybody is in an executive position. Macy's and Sears Roebuck still do a whopping big business by catering to their tastes."

  "Take me with you, Mike," she said.

  "What?"

  "You could be right. I'd like to see these people."

  "Renée, you'd get your clothes dirty, your nails broken, and your ass patted. It's different."

  "I'll survive it."

  She was so serious I had to laugh at her. I finished the fresh beer the bartender set in front of me and thought, what the hell, a change of pace could
be good for her. It was one of those evenings where nobody was going anyplace anyway, so why not? We could cruise through the entrails of the city and maybe pick up pieces here and there that were lying around loose.

  Down at the end the bartender had switched on the TV to a news station and the announcer finished with the weather and turned the program over to the team who handled the major events. Somebody in Congress was raising a stink about the expenses involved in calling up National Guard and Army Reserve units for a practice maneuver that apparently had no meaning. Film clips taken by some enterprising photographer who had slipped past the security barrier showed uniformed figures slogging through mud and water, flashlights probing the darkness. Another shot had a group locating and dismantling some apparatus of destruction around a power station. He even included the information that they were deliberately planted decoys with a minimum explosive capacity to sharpen the soldiers' abilities. It seemed that most of the activity was centered around the watershed areas in key areas across the nation with chemical analysis teams right in the thick of things. The commentator even speculated briefly on sophisticated chemical-biological warfare techniques and this exercise was possibly for training in detection and neutralizing an enemy's attack from that direction.

  He never knew how nearly right he was.

  Tom-Tom Schneider's killers had escaped a trap laid by the Detroit police. Somebody had passed the word where they could be found and there was a shoot-out in the Dutchess Hotel. Two cops were wounded, a porter killed, and it was believed that one of the suspects was shot during the exchange. An hour later a known police informer was found murdered with three .38's in his chest along a highway leading from the city. It was going to make a good pictorial spread in tomorrow's papers.

  The mayor was screaming for more crime control and was setting up a panel to study the situation. Good luck, mayor.

  "Great world out there," I said.

  "I'd still like to see it with you."

  "Okay. Finish your drink."

  I hoped I wouldn't run into Velda. Women don't exactly appreciate other women's plunging necklines.

  Caesar Mario Tulley was a professional panhandler who bused over from Patterson, New Jersey, every day, picked up a hundred bucks in nickels and dimes from the tourist suckers, then went back to his flashy suite in a midtown hotel. He had pageboy hair, a faceful of stringy whiskers and a motley outfit of clothes held together with beads and chains that no decent hippie would be caught high in. But it was his gimmick. That and the lost look in the young-old face and tired eyes. The women felt sorry for him and the men flipped .their quarters in his hand to pay for the snide remarks that went with the coin. Hell, he probably was making out better than any of them.

  He saw me and Renée squeezed together under her umbrella, half stepped out of the shoe store doorway, then recognized me and those deliberately tired eyes pepped right up. A loose-lip grin split the whiskers and he said, "Oh, hi, Mike. Almost put the bite on you."

  "Fat chance," I told him. "How you doing, Caesar?"

  "Lousy tonight. Tried working Radio City and got rousted by the fuzz. Then some drunk belts me in the chops figuring I was his own kid and tried to drag me back to Des Moines, Iowa. I was halfway to the Forty-second Street subway before I shook him loose. What kind of kooks they got around here these days?"

  "Look in the mirror, kid."

  "Man, I'm straight! A working stiff! You think I'd go this route if it didn't pay off! Twice a week I take acting classes and already I got a future lined up. You see me on TV the other night?"

  "Great show." Last Tuesday they did a special on the hippies in town and managed to round up a few of the real pros like Caesar. Twenty-seven runaway kids in Greenwich Village were recognized and picked up by their parents, four narcotics pushers were spotted by sharp-eyed detectives and hauled in on possession charges, and the public had a good idea of what the city was coming to.

  "Pig's ass it was a good show," Caesar said sullenly. "Practically everybody spots me. I even got a call from the Internal Revenue Service. Making it ain't so easy now."

  "So act."

  "What do ya think I'm doing? It ain't Shakespeare, but it sure takes talent."

  "And nerve." Renée smiled.

  "Lady, come on. It's all part of the game." He rattled his beads and stepped back into his doorway shelter again. "What you doing out, Mike?"

  "Trying to find somebody. Tall, skinny, in his forties and boosting wallets in the theater district. Got anything?"

  He cocked his head and peered at me, eyes squinting. "Hey, some hustler was asking the same thing. Big chick, long dark hair, real knockout. Don't know why she was hustling, but I tried to make out and she brushed me off. Me! How about that? I wanted to give her a twenty . . ."

  "You would have had your head handed to you," I said, grinning again. Caesar boy had run into Velda.

  "Fuzz?" he asked, incredulously.

  I nodded, not explaining all of it.

  "Man, they sure make them real these days. She coulda busted me for panhandling. Awful pretty for fuzz though, even under that face crap."

  "The guy I mentioned, Caesar?"

  "Hell, I don't butt in to somebody else's .. ."

  "You buck the theater crowds, Caesar. He would have been in the same area."

  He shrugged, giving a small negative shake to his long hair, but his eyes didn't want to look at me. I stepped out from under the umbrella and got up close to him. "Compared to withholding information, panhandling is a chintzy rap."

  "Mike ... you ain't the fuzz. You ..."

  "My license makes me responsible to turn certain facts over to them, buddy."

  "Hey, I thought we was pals."

  "After office hours."

  Caesar Tulley made a resigned gesture and ran his fingers through his hair. "There was some talk. Wooster Sal saw this guy hit a couple of joes and tried to cut himself a chunk. He got a busted lip for it."

  "You see him?"

  "I saw him pop Wooster Sal. Like a sneak punch. Wooster shoulda kept to his own racket."

  "Anything special abut him ... facial characteristics ... you know?"

  Another shrug. "Just a guy. I didn't get a real good look. Anyway, I didn't want one. I'm opposed to violence."

  "What about this Wooster Sal?"

  "Hell, after that he dug out for the West Coast. Gone like two weeks now."

  "Keep looking, okay? I'm in the phone book."

  I flipped him a wave and started to walk away when he called me back. "Hey, Mike, there was one thing."

  I turned and waited.

  "He wore a red vest. Pretty dumb in his business."

  One more little piece to add to the pile. In time it would mount up to a face and a body. One red vest, and it probably wasn't dumb. It was a good luck charm, vanity or any other of a dozen reasons a petty crook could consider imperative.

  I hooked my arm through Renée's and pushed the edge of her umbrella out of my face. "You have odd friends, Mike. Those newsstand dealers, the pair at the hamburger stand ... who else do you know?"

  "You'd be surprised," I said. "Still feel like prowling?"

  Renée glanced at her watch and tightened her hold on my arm. "It's almost ten, my big friend. I told you I had to meet William at that reception in a half hour."

  It was the same one Pat had mentioned to me, the opening of the new Soviet delegation buildings. "Since when are you people messed up in politics?"

  "Since Teddy Finlay from the State Department invited us. One of the new delegates was a foreign supplier for our Anco Electronics before we bought him out. Finlay thought it would be beneficial to have a less formal introduction to him."

  "And where do you come in?"

  "I pick up William's memos he made at the meeting today, give him his tickets for his Chicago trip tomorrow, murmur a few pleasantries and leave. Impulsively, she added, "Why don't you come along?"

  "We aren't exactly in evening clothes, baby."

 
"But we won't be going to the reception proper. I'm to meet him in office A-3 in the west annex, not where the crowd will be. Please, Mike?" She nudged me expectantly, her leg touching mine in a long-legged stride. The wind gusted and blew the rain under the umbrella into my face. Hell, it would be good to get out of it for a few minutes.

  "Why not?" I said.

  The two uniformed cops covering the annex entrance scanned Renée's admittance card and checked our ID's. The older one, sweating under his rubber raincoat said, "Hold a second," then walked across the street to a squad car, talked through the window and stepped back when the door opened. I let out a grunt of amusement when Pat got out, hunched against the rain, his hands in his pockets.

  When he saw me his face finally registered something besides tired boredom. "Now what are you doing here?" he asked me.

  "Personal invitation, old buddy."

  "His name isn't on the card," the cop told him. "What do you think, Captain? The dame's okay."

  Pat flipped the rain from the brim of his hat and stepped away, nodding for me to follow him. He swung around, his voice a low growl. "This stinks. No matter what you tell me, it plain stinks. What are you building?"

  "Not a thing, Pat. Miss Talmage has a business appointment with her employer there and invited me along. Can anything be simpler?"

  "With you, nothing's simple," Pat said. "Look, if you pull anything .. . "

  "Unwind, will you buddy? Can't I talk to you any more?"

  For a long few seconds he studied my face, then let a smile crack the corners of his mouth. "Sorry, Mike. I guess I got too much bugging me. There's more than one meeting going on in there."

  "So the Soviets really are cooperating on that C.B. deal?"

  "You called it. And they're scared stiff. All the top brass from Fort Derrick arrived at seven with a limousine of Russkies straight off a chartered nonstop plane from Moscow right behind them."

  "Military types?"

  "Hardly. Some were too old for that."

  "Specialists in chemical-biological warfare," I suggested.

  "Could be."

  "Any newspapers covering it?"

  "Only the social end. They missed the first batch. That's why you spook me. Nothing better interrupt that meeting."