Kiss Me, Deadly mh-6 Page 10

  It was hard to tell what he was thinking. His eyes seemed to harden, then melted into the smile that creased his mouth. "All right, Mr. Hammer, there's no need to get nasty about anything. I've told the police exactly what the score was and it isn't important enough to keep back from you if you're genuinely interested. Berga Torn was a girl I liked. For a while back there I... well, kept her, you might say."

  "Why?"

  "Don't be ridiculous. If you know her then you know why." "She didn't have much to offer that you couldn't get someplace else."

  "She had enough. Now, what else is there?" "Why did you break it off?."

  "Because I felt like it. She was getting in my hair. I thought you had a reputation with women. You should know what it's like."

  "I didn't know you checked up on me that close, Carl."

  The eyes went hard again. "I thought we weren't playing games now."

  I lit the cigarette I was fooling with, taking my time with that first drag. "How do you stand with the Mafia, Carl?"

  He played it nice. Nothing showed at all, not even a little bit. "That's going pretty far."

  "Yeah, I guess it is." I stuck the cigarette in my mouth and stood up. "But it's not nearly as far as it's going to go." I started for the door.

  His glass hit the desk top and he came forward in his seat again. "You sure put up a big stink for a lot of small talk, Mr. Hammer."

  I turned around and smiled at him, a nice dead kind of smile that had no laugh behind it and I could see him go tight from where I stood. I said, "I wasn't after talk, Carl. I wanted to see your face. I wanted to know it so I'd never forget it. Someday I'm going to watch it turn blue or maybe bleed to death. Your eyes'll get all wide and sticky and your tongue will hang out and I won't be making any mistake about it being the wrong joe. Think about it Carl, especially when you go to bed at night."

  I turned the knob and opened the door.

  The two boys were standing there. All they did was look at me and it wasn't with much affection. I was going to have to remember them too.

  When I got back outside Michael Friday spotted me and waved. I didn't wave back so she came over, a mock frown across her face. I couldn't get my eyes off her mouth, even when she faked a pout. "Bum steer," she said, "no business?"

  She looked like a kid, a very beautiful kid and all grown up where it counted, but with the grin and impishness of a kid nevertheless. And you don't get sore at kids. "I hear you're his sister."

  "Not quite. We had the same mother but came from different hatches."

  "Oh."

  "Going to join the party?"

  I looked over at the group still downing the drinks. "No thanks. I don't like the company."

  "Neither do I for that matter. Let's both leave."

  "Now you got something," I said.

  We didn't even bother with good-byes. She just grabbed my arm and steered me around the building, talking a blue streak about nothing at all. We made the front as a car was coming up the driveway and as I was opening the door of my new heap it stopped and a guy got out in a hurry, trotted around the side and opened the door.

  I started wondering what the eminent Congressman Geyfey was doing up this way when he was supposed to be serving on a committee in Washington. Then I stopped wondering when he took the woman's arm and helped her out and Velda smiled politely in our direction a moment before going up the path.

  Michael said, "Stunning, isn't she?"

  "Very. Who is she?"

  She stayed deadpan because she meant it. Her head moved slightly as she said, "I don't know. Most likely one of Bob's proteges. He seems to do very well for himself."

  "He doesn't if he overlooked you."

  Her laugh was quick and fresh. "Thank you, but he didn't overlook me, I overlooked him."

  "Nice for me," I grinned. "What's a congressman doing with Carl? He may be your brother, but his reputation's got spots on it."

  Her grin didn't fade a bit. "My brother certainly isn't the most ethical man I've known, but he is big business, and in case you haven't known about it, big business and government go hand in hand sometimes."

  "Uh-uh. Not Carl's kind of business."

  This time her frown wasn't put on. She studied me while she slid into the car and waited until I was behind the wheel. "Before Bob was elected he was Carl's lawyer. He handled some corporation account Carl had out West." She stopped and looked into my eyes. "It's wrong someplace, isn't it?"

  "Frankly, Friday gal, it stinks."

  I started the engine, sat and listened to it purr a minute then eased the gearshift in. All that power under the hood was dying to let go and I sat on it. I took the heap down the drive, rolled out to the street and swung toward the center of town. We didn't talk. We sat and rode for a while and watched the houses drift past. The sun was high overhead, a warm ball that smiled at the world, a big warm thing that made everything seem all right when everything was so damned wrong.

  Pretty soon it would come. I thought about how she'd put it and how I'd answer it. It could come guarded, veiled or in a roundabout way, but it would come.

  When it did come it was right out in the open and she asked, "What did you want with Carl?" Her voice sounded sleepy and relaxed. I glanced at her lying back there so lazily against the cushions, her hair spilling down the back of the seat. Her mouth was still a wet thing, deliciously red, firm, yet ready to vibrate like the strings on a fiddle the moment they were touched.

  I answered her the same way she asked it, right out in the open.

  "He had a girl once. She's dead now and he may be involved in her murder. Your big-business brother may have a Mafia tie-up." Her head rolled on the seat until she was looking at me. "And you?"

  "When I get interested in people like your brother they usually wind up dead."

  "Oh." That's all. Just "Oh" and she turned and looked out the window, staring straight ahead.

  "You want me to take you back?" "No."

  "Want to talk about it?"

  Her hand reached over and took the deck of Luckies from the seat beside me. She lit two at the same time and stuck one in my mouth. It tasted of lipstick, a nice taste. The kind that makes you want to taste it again, this time from the source.

  "I'm surprised it took this long," she said. "He used to try to fool me, but now he doesn't bother. I've often wondered when it would happen." She breathed in deeply on the smoke, then watched it whip out the half-opened ventilator. "Do you mind if I cry a little bit?"

  "Go ahead."

  "Is it serious trouble?"

  "You don't get more serious than killing somebody." "But was it Carl?"

  Her eyes were wet when they turned in my direction. "I don't know," I said.

  "Then you're not sure?"

  "That's right. But then again, I don't have to be sure." "But... you're the police?"

  "Nope. Not anybody. Just such an important nobody that a whole lot of people would like to see me knocked off. The only trouble is they can't make the grade."

  I pulled the car to the curb, backed it into the slot in front of a gin mill and cut the engine. "You were talking about your brother."

  She didn't look at me. She worked the cigarette down to a stub and flipped it into the gutter. "There isn't much to tell, really. I know what he's been and I know the people he's associated with.

  They aren't what you would call the best people, though he mixes with them too. Generally he has something they want." "Ever hear of Berga Torn?"

  "Yes, I remember her well. I thought Carl had quite a crush on her. He... kept her for a long time."

  "Why did he dump her?"

  "I... I don't know." There was a catch in her voice. "She was a peculiar sort of girl. All I remember is that they had an argument one night and Carl never bothered with her much after that. Somebody new came along."

  "That all?"

  Michael nodded.

  "Ever hear of the Mafia?"

  She nodded again. "Mike... Carl isn't... one of those peo
ple. I know he isn't."

  "You wouldn't know about it if he was."

  "And if he is?"

  I shrugged. There was only one answer to a question like that.

  Her fingers were a little unsteady when they picked up another cigarette. "Mike... I'd like to go back now."

  I lit the butt for her and kicked the motor over. She sat there, smoked it out and had another. Never talking. Not seeming to do anything at all. Her bottom lip was puffed up from chewing on it and every few minutes her shoulders would twitch as she repressed a sob. I drove up to the gateway of the house, leaned across her and opened the door.

  "Friday ..."

  "Yes, Mike?"

  "If you think you know an answer to it... call me."

  "All right, Mike." She started to get out, stopped and turned her head. "You looked like fun, Mike. For both of us, I'm honestly sorry."

  Her mouth was too close and too soft to just look at. My fingers seemed to get caught in her hair and suddenly those lovely, wet lips were only inches away, and just as suddenly there was no distance at all.

  The bubbling warmth was just what I expected. The fire and the cushiony softness and the vibrancy made a living bed of her mouth. I leaned into it, barely touched it and came away before there was too much hunger. The edges of her teeth showed in a faint smile and she touched my face with the tips of her fingers, then she climbed out of the car.

  All the way back to Manhattan I could taste it. The warmth and the wetness and a tantalizing flavor.

  The garage was filled so I parked at the curb, gassed up for an excuse to stay there and walked into the office. Bob Gellie was busy putting a distributor together, but he dropped it when I came in.

  I said, "How did it go, kid?"

  "Hi, Mike. You gave me a job, all right."

  "Get it?"

  "Yeah, I got it. I checked two dozen outlets before I found where those heads came from. A place out in Queens sold ‘em. The rest of the stuff I couldn't get a line on at all. Most of it's done directly from California or Chicago."

  "So?"

  "They were ordered by phone and picked up and paid for by a messenger."

  "Great."

  "Want me to keep trying?"

  "Never mind. Those boys have their own mechanics. What about the car?"

  "Another cutie. It came out of the Bronx. The guy who bought it said it was a surprise for his partner. He paid cash. Like a jerk the dealer let him borrow his plates and it got driven down, the plates were taken off and handed back to the dealer again." He opened the drawer and slid an envelope across to me. "Here's your registration. I don't know how the hell they worked it but they did. Them guys left themselves wide open."

  "Who bought the car?"

  "Guess."

  "Smith, Jones, Robinson. Who?"

  "O'Brien. Clancy O'Brien. He was medium. Mr. Average Man. Nobody could describe him worth a hoot. You know the kind?"

  "I know the kind. Okay, Bob, call it quits. It isn't worth pushing."

  He nodded and squinted up his face at me. "Things pretty bad, Mike?"

  "Not so bad they can't get worse."

  "Gee."

  I left him there fiddling with his distributor. Outside the traffic was thick and fast. Women with bundles were crowding the sidewalks and baby carriages were parked alongside the buildings.

  Normal, I thought, a nice normal day. I hauled my heap away from the curb, cut back to Broadway and headed home. It took thirty minutes to get there, another thirty for a quick lunch at the corner and I went into the building fishing my keys out of my pocket.

  Any other time I would have seen them. Any other time it would have been dark outside and light inside and my eyes wouldn't have been blanked out. Any other time I would have had a rod on me and it wouldn't have happened so easy. But this was now and not some other time.

  They came out of the corners of the lobby, the two of them, each one with a long-nosed revolver in his fist and a yen to use it. They were bright boys who had been around a long time and who knew all the angles. I got in the elevator, leaned against the wall while they patted me down, turned around and faced the door as they pushed the LOBBY button instead of getting off, and walked out in front of them to my car.

  Only the short one seemed surprised that I was clean. He didn't like it at all. He felt around the seat while his buddy kept his gun against my neck, then got in beside me.

  You don't say much at a time like that. You wait and keep hoping for a break, knowing that if it came at all it would be against you. You keep thinking that they wouldn't pop you out in broad daylight, but you don't move because you know they will. New York. This is New York. Something exciting happening every minute. After a while you get used to it and don't pay any attention to it. A gunshot, a backfire, who can tell the difference or who cares. A drunk and a dead man, they both look the same.

  The boy next to me said, "Sit on your hands."

  I sat on my hands. He reached over, found my keys in my pocket and started the car. "You're a sucker, mac," he said.

  The one in the back said, "Shut up and drive." We pulled out into the street and his voice came again. This time it was closer to my ear. "I don't have to warn you about nothing, do I?"

  The muzzle of the gun was a cold circle against my skin. "I know the score," I said.

  "You only think you do," he told me.

  Chapter Nine

  I could feel the sweat starting down the back of my neck. My insides were all bottled up tight. My hands got tired and I tried to slide them out and the side of the gun smashed into my head over my ear and I could feel the blood start its slow trickle downward to join the sweat.

  The guy at the wheel threaded through Manhattan traffic, hit the Queens Midtown Tunnel and took the main drag out toward the airport. He did it all nice and easy so there wouldn't be any trouble along the way, deliberately driving slowly until I wanted to tell him to get it rolling and quit fooling around. They must have known how I felt because the guy in the back bored the rod into me every time I tightened up and laughed when he did it.

  Overhead an occasional plane droned in for a landing and I thought we were going into the field. Instead he passed right by it, hit a stretch where no cars showed ahead and started to let the Ford out.

  I said, "Where we going?"

  "You'll find out."

  The gun tapped my neck. "Too bad you took the car."

  "You had a nice package under the hood for me."

  The twitch on the wheel was so slight the car never moved, but I caught the motion. For a second even the pressure against my neck stopped.

  "Like it?" the driver asked.

  He shouldn't have licked his lips. They should have taught him better.

  The pitch was right there in my lap and I swung on it hard. "It stunk. I figured the angle and had a mechanic pull it."

  "Yeah?"

  "So I punch the starter and blooie. It stunk."

  This time his head came around and his eyes were little and black, eyes so packed with a crazy terror that they watered. His foot slammed into the brake and the tires screamed on the pavement.

  It wasn't quite the way I wanted it but it was just as good. Buster in the back seat came pitching over my shoulder and I had his throat in my hands before he could do a thing about it. I saw the driver's gun come out as the car careened across the road and when it slapped the curbing the blast caught me in the face.

  There wasn't any sense holding the guy's neck any more, not with the hole he had under his chin. I shoved as hard as I could, felt the driver trying to reach around the body to get at me while he spit out a string of curses that blended together in an incoherent babble.

  I had to reach across the corpse to grab him and he slid down under the wheel still fighting, the rod in his hand. Then he had it out from the tangle of clothes and was getting up at me.

  But by then it was too late. Much too late. I had my hand clamped over his, snapped it back and he screamed the same time the m
uzzle rocketed a bullet into his eyeball and in the second before he died the other eye that was still there glared at me balefully before it filmed over.

  They happened fast, those things. They happen, yet time seems to drag by when there's only a matter of seconds and the first thing you wonder is why nobody has come up to see what was going on, then you look down the road and the car you saw in the distance when it all started still hasn't reached you yet, and although two kids across the street are pointing in your direction, nobody else is.

  So I got in the driver's side, sat the two things next to me in an upright position and drove back the way we came. I found a cutoff near the airport, turned into it and followed the road until it became a one-lane drive and when I reached its limit there was a sign that read DEAD END.

  I was real cute this time. I sat them both under the sign in a nice, natural position and drove back home. All the way back to the apartment I thought of the slobs who gave me credit for finding both gimmicks in the heap and then suddenly realized I was dumber than they figured and the big one was still there ready to go off any second.

  Night had seeped in by the time I reached the apartment. I parked and went up to the apartment, opened the door enough to call in for her to take the chain off, but it wasn't necessary at all.

  There was no chain.

  There was no Lily either and I could feel that cold feeling crawl up my back again. I walked through the rooms to be sure, hoping I was wrong when I was right. She was gone and everything she owned was gone. There wasn't even a hairpin left to show that she had been there and I was so damned mad my eyes squinted almost shut and I was cursing them, the whole stinking pack of them under my breath, cursing the efficiency of their organization and the power they held in reserve, swearing at the way they were able to do things nobody else could do.

  I grabbed the phone and dialed Pat's number. Headquarters told me he had left for the day and I put the call through to his apartment. He said hello and knew something was up the minute he heard my voice. "Lily Carver, Pat, you know her?"

  "Carver? Damn, Mike..."

  "I had her here at the apartment and she's gone." "Where?"