The Big Kill mh-5 Page 11

  "Only to beautiful women."

  "And you've seen plenty of them." The laugh was in her voice now.

  I said, "You've got the wrong slant, kid. Pretty is what you mean. Pretty and beautiful are two different things. Only a few women are pretty, but even one who's not so hot to look at can be beautiful. A lot of guys make mistakes when they turn down a beautiful woman for one who's just pretty.

  Her eyebrows went up in the slightest show of surprise, letting the fires of her irises leap into plain view. "I didn't know you were a philosopher, Mike."

  "There're a lot of things you don't know about me."

  She uncurled from the chair and picked up the glasses from the table. "Should I?"

  "Uh-huh. They're all bad." I got that look again, the one with the smile around the edges, then she brought in some fresh ice from the kitchen and made a pair of highballs. The one she gave me went down cold and easy, nestling there at the bottom of my stomach with a pleasant, creeping kind of warmth that tiptoed silently throughout my body until it was the nicest thing in the world to just sit there with my eyes half shut and listen to the rain drum against the windows.

  Marsha's hand went to the switch on the record payer, flooding the room with the soft tones of the "Blue Danube." She filled the glasses again, then drifted to the floor at my feet, laying her head back against my knees. "Nice?" she asked me.

  "Wonderful. I'm right in the mood to enjoy it."

  "You still..."

  "That's right. Still." I closed my eyes all the way for a minute.

  "Sometimes I think I'm standing still too. It's never been like this before."

  Her hand found mine and pulled it down to her cheek. I thought I felt her lips brush my fingers, but I wasn't sure. "Do you have the boy yet?"

  "Yeah, he's in good hands. Tomorrow or maybe the next day they'll come for him. He'll be all right."

  "I wish there was something I could do. Are you sure there isn't? Could I keep him for you?"

  "He'd be too much for you. Hell, he's only a little over a year old. I have a nurse for him. She's old, but reliable."

  "Then let me take him out for a walk or something. I really do want to help, Mike, honest."

  I ran my fingers through the sheen of her hair and across the soft lines of her face. This time I knew it when her lips parted in a kiss on my palm.

  "I wish you could, Marsha. I need help. I need something. This whole thing is getting away from me."

  "Would it help to tell me about it?"

  "Maybe."

  "Then tell me."

  So I told her. I sat there staring at the ceiling with Marsha on the floor and her head on my knees and I told her about it. I lined up everything from beginning to end and tried to put them together in the right order.

  When you strung them out like that it didn't take long to tell. They made a nice neat pile of facts, one on top of the other, but there was nothing there to hold them together. One little push scattered them all over the place. Before I finished my jaws ached from holding my teeth together so tightly.

  "Being so mad won't help you think," Marsha said.

  "I gotta be mad. Goddamn, you can't go at a thing like this unless you are mad. I never knew much about kids, but when I held the Decker boy in my hands I could see why a guy would give his insides to keep his kid alive. Right there is the thing that screws everything up. Decker knew he was going to die and didn't try to do a single thing about it. Three days before, he knew it was going to happen too. He got all, his affairs put right and waited. God knows what he thought about in those three days."

  "It couldn't have been nice."

  "Oh, I don't know. I don't get it at all." I rubbed my face disgustedly. "Decker and Hooker tie in with Toady Link and he ties in with Grindle and Teen and it was one of Grindle's boys who shot Decker. There's a connection there if you want to look for one."

  "I'm sorry, Mike."

  "You don't have to be."

  "But I am. In a way it started with me. I keep thinking of the boy."

  "It would have been the same if Decker had broken into the other apartment. The guy knew he was going to die... but why? Whether or not he got what he was after he was still planning to die!"

  Marsha lifted her face and turned around "Couldn't it have been... a precaution? Perhaps he was planning to run out with the money. In that case he would know there was a possibility that they, might catch up with him. As it was, it turned out to be the same thing. He knew they'd never believe his story about the wrong apartment so he ran anyway, bringing about the same results.".

  My eyes felt hot and heavy. "It's crazy as hell. It's a mess no matter how I look at it, but someplace there's an answer and it's lost in my head. I keep trying to work it loose and it won't come. Every time I stop to think about it I can feel it sitting here and if the damn thing was human it would laugh at me. Now I can't even think any more."

  "Tired, darling?"

  "Yeah."

  I looked at her and she looked at me and we were both thinking the same thing. Then her head dropped slowly and her smile had a touch of sadness in it.

  "I'm a fool, aren't I?" she said.

  "You're no fool, Marsha."

  "Mike... have you ever been in love?"

  I didn't know how to answer that so I just nodded.

  "Was it nice?"

  "I thought so." I was hoping she wouldn't ask me any more. Even after five years it hurt to think about it.

  "Are you... now?" Her voice was low, almost inaudible. I caught the brief flicker of her eyes as she glanced at my face.

  I shrugged. I didn't know what to tell her.

  She smiled at her hands and I smiled with her. "That's good," she laughed. Her eyes went bright and happy and she tossed her head so that her hair fell in a glittering dark halo around her shoulders. "I had tonight all planned. I was going to be a fool anyway and make you want me so that you'd keep wanting me."

  "It's been like that."

  She came up off the floor slowly, gracefully, reaching for my hand to pull me out of the chair. Her mouth was warmer than it should have been. Her body was supple and lovely, like a fluid filling in the gaps between us. I ran my fingers through her hair, pulling her face away while still wanting to keep her crushed against me.

  "Why, Marsha?" I asked. "Why me? You know what I'm like. I'm not fancy and I'm not famous and I work for my dough. I'm not in your class at all."

  She looked up at me with an expression you don't try to describe. A sleepy expression that wasn't a bit tired. Her hands slid up my back and tightened as she leaned against me. "Let me be a woman, Mike. I don't want those things you say you're not. I've had them. I want all the things you are. You're big and not so handsome, but there's a devil inside you that makes you exciting and tough, yet enough of an angel to make you tender when you have to be."

  My hands wanted to squeeze right through her waist until they met and I had to let her go or she would have felt the way they were shaking. I turned around and reached for the bottle and glass on the table and while I was pouring one there was a click and the light dimmed to a pale glow.

  Behind me I heard her say softly, "Mike... you never told me whether I was... just pretty or beautiful."

  I turned around and was going to tell her that she was the most lovely thing I had ever seen, but her hands did something to her belt and the fold of the dress that came up over one shoulder dropped away leaving her standing there with one hand on the lamp like a half-nude vision and the words got stuck in my throat.

  Then the light disappeared altogether and I could only drink the drink quickly, because although the vision was gone it was walking toward me across the night and somewhere on the path there was another whisper of fabric and she was there in my hands without anything to keep her from being a woman now, an invisible, naked dream throwing a mantle of desire around us both that had too great a strength to break and must be burned through by a fire that leaped and danced and towered in a blazing crescendo th
at could only be dampened and never extinguished.

  And when the mantle was thrown back I left the dream there in the dark, warm and soft, breathing quickly to tell me that it was a dream that would come back on other nights too, disturbing and at the same time satisfying.

  She was beautiful. She was pretty, too.

  She was in my mind all the way home.

  Chapter Six

  At a quarter past ten I got up, dressed and made myself some breakfast. Right in the middle of it the phone rang and when I answered it the operator told me to hold on for a call from Miami. Velda's husky voice was a pleasure to hear again. She said, "Mike?"

  And I said, "Hello, sweetheart. How's everything?"

  "Fine. At least it's partly fine. Our boy got out on a plane, but he left all the stuff behind. The insurance investigator is here making an inventory of the stuff now."

  "Great, great. Try to promote yourself a bonus if you can."

  "That wouldn't be hard," she laughed. "He's already made a pass. Mike, miss me?"

  I felt like a heel, but I wasn't lying when I said, "Hell yes, I miss you."

  "I don't mean as a business partner."

  "Neither do I, kitten."

  "You won't have to miss me long. I'm taking the afternoon train out."

  My fingers started batting out dots and dashes on the table. I wanted her back but not too soon. I didn't want anybody else climbing all over me. "You stay there," I told her. "Stay on that guy's tail. You're still on salary from the company and if you can get a line on him now they'll cut us in for more business later. They're as interested in him as they are in recovering the stuff."

  "But, Mike, the Miami police are doing all they can."

  "Where'd he hop to?"

  "Some place in Cuba. That's where they lost him."

  "Okay, get over to Cuba then. Take a week and if it's no dice forget it and come on home."

  She didn't say anything for a few seconds. "Mike... is something wrong up there?"

  "Don't be silly."

  "You sound like it. If you're sending me off..."

  "Look, kid," I cut her off, "you'd know about it if anything was wrong. I just got up and I'm kind of sleepy yet. Be a good girl and stay on that case, will you?"

  "All right. Love me?"

  "You'll never know," I said.

  She laughed again and hung up. She knew. Women always know.

  I went back and finished my breakfast, had a smoke then turned on the faucet in the bathroom sink to bring the hot water up. While I shaved I turned on the radio and picked up the commentator who was just dropping affairs in Washington to get back to New York and as far as he was concerned the only major problem of the day was the District Attorney's newest successes in the gambling probe. At some time last night a series of raids had been carried out successfully and the police dragnet had brought in some twenty-five persons charged with bookmaking. He gave no details, but hinted that the police were expecting to nail the kingpins in the near future.

  When I finished shaving I opened my door and took the tabloid out of the knob to see what the press had to say about it. The front page carried the pictures of those gathered in the roundup with appropriate captions while the inside double spread had a layout showing where the bookies had been operating.

  The editorial was the only column that mentioned Ed Teen at all. It brought out the fact that Teen's personal staff of lawyers were going to bat for the bookies. At the same time the police were finding that a lot of witnesses were reluctant to speak up when it came to identifying the boys who took their money or paid off on wins, places and shows. At the end of the column the writer came right out with the charge that Lou Grindle had an organization specially adept at keeping witnesses from talking and demanded that the police throw some light on the subject.

  I went through the paper again to make sure I didn't miss anything, then folded it up and stuck it in the bottom of my chair until I got around to reading it. Then I went downstairs and knocked on the door of the other apartment and stood there with my hat in my hands until the door opened and the nurse said, "Good morning, Mr. Hammer. Come on in."

  "I can only stay a minute. I want to see how the kid is."

  "Oh, he's a regular boy. Right now he's trying to see what's inside the radio."

  I walked in behind her to the living room where the kid was doing just that. He had the extension cord in his fists and the set teetered on the edge of the table a hair away from complete ruin. I got there first and grabbed the both of them.

  The kid knew me, all right. His face was sunny with a big smile and he shoved his hand inside my coat and then chattered indignantly when I pulled it out. "How's the breakage charge coming?"

  "We won't count that," the nurse said. "As a matter of fact, he's been much better than I expected."

  I held the kid out where I could look at him better. "There's something different about him."

  "There ought to be. I gave him a haircut." I put him back on the floor where he hung on my leg and jabbered at me. "He certainly likes you," she said.

  "I guess I'm all he's got. Need anything?"

  "No, we're getting along fine."

  "Okay, anything you want just get." I bent down and ruffled the kid's hair and he tried to climb up my leg. He yelled to come with me so I had, to hand him back and wave good-by from the door. He was so damn small and pathetic-looking I felt like a heel for stranding him, but I promised myself I'd see that he got a lot of attention before he was dropped into some home for orphans.

  The first lunch shift was just hitting the streets when I got to Pat's office. The desk man called ahead to see if he was still in and told me to go right up. A couple of reporters were coming out of the room still jotting down notes and Pat was perched on the edge of a desk fingering a thick Manila folder.

  I closed the door behind me and he said, "Hi Mike."

  "Making news?"

  "Today we're heroes. Tomorrow we'll be something else again."

  "So the D.A.'s making out. Did you find the hole?"

  He turned around slowly, his face expressionless. "No, if that cop is passing out the word then he wised up. Nothing went out on this deal at all."

  "How could he catch on?"

  "He's been a cop a long time. He's been staked out often enough to spot it when he's being watched himself."

  "Did he mention it?"

  "No, but his attitude has changed. He resents the implication apparently."

  "That's going to make pretty reading. Now the papers'll call for the D.A. to make a full-scale investigation of the whole department, I suppose."

  "The D.A. doesn't know a damn thing about it. You keep it to yourself too. I'm handling the matter myself. If it is the guy there's no sense smearing the whole department. We still aren't sure of it, you know."

  He tossed the folder on top of the filing cabinet and sat down behind the desk with a sigh. There were tired lines around his eyes and mouth, little lines that had been showing up a lot lately.

  I said, "What came of the roundup?"

  "Oh, hell, Mike." He glanced at me with open disgust, then realized that I wasn't handing him a dig. "Nothing came of it. So we closed down a couple of rooms. We got a hatful of small-timers who will probably walk right out of it or draw minimum sentences. Teen's a smart operator. His lawyers are even smarter. Those boys know all the angles there are to know and if there are any new ones they think them up.

  "Teen's a real cutie. You know what I think? He's letting us take some of his boys just to keep the D.A. happy and get a chance to put in a bigger fix."

  "I don't get it," I said.

  "Look, Teen pays for protection. That is, if it takes money to keep his racket covered. If it takes muscle he uses Lou Grindle. But supposing it does take dough... then all the chiselers, petty politicians and maybe even the big shots who are taking his dough are going to want more to keep his personal fix in because things are getting tougher. Okay, he pays off, and the more those guys rake
in the deeper in they are too. Suddenly they realize that they can't afford to let Teen get taken or they'll go along with him, so they work overtime to keep the louse clean."

  "Nice."

  "Isn't it though?" He sat there tapping his fingers on the desk, then: "Mike, for all you've heard, read and seen of Ed Teen, do you know what we actually have on him?"

  "Tell me."

  "Nothing. Not one damn thing. Plenty of suspicions, but you don't take suspicions to court. We know everything he's hooked up with and we can't prove a single part of it. I've been upside down for a month backtracking over his life trying to tie him into something that happened a long time ago and for all I've found you could stuff in your ear." Pat buried his face in his hands and rubbed his eyes.

  "Have you had time to do anything about Decker and Hooker?"

  At least it made him smile a little. "I haven't been upside down that long, Pal," he said. "I was going to call you on that. Routine investigation turned up something on Hooker. For the last four months he made bank deposits of close to a thousand bucks each time. They apparently came in on the same date and were all for the same amount, though he spent a little of each wad before he deposited it. That sort of ties in with your story about him hitting the winning ponies."

  I rolled a cigarette between my fingers slowly then stuck it in my mouth. "How often were the deposits made?"

  "Weekly. Regular as pie."

  "And Decker?"

  "Clean. I had four men cover every minute of his time as far back as they could go. As far as we could find out he didn't even associate with any shady characters. The kind of people who vouched for him were the kind who knew what they were talking about too. Incidentally, I talked to his parish priest personally. He's made all the arrangements for the boy and cleared them with the authorities, so he'll pick him up at the end of the week."

  He stopped and watched my face a moment. The silence was so thick you could slice it with a knife. "All right, now what are you thinking, Mike?"

  I let a lazy cloud of smoke sift up toward the ceiling. "It might scare you," I said.

  The tired lines got deeper when his mouth clamped shut. "Yeah? Scare me then."