A Long Time Dead Read online

  “I mean, the ones who go after nitro derivatives.”

  He let a pause go by before saying, “Shit. Only one I know at all is Toby Verez. Hell, man, I’m Homicide. I only ran into him a few times.”

  “Run into him again, Pat, then haul his ass up here. Like now.”

  “What are you talking about, Mike?”

  I said it nice and slow. “This building is a first-class establishment leasing to a hundred well-connected tenants. Let it blow sky-high and your department is going to be balls deep in trouble. Good enough for a starter?”

  “You lay it on pretty heavy, pal,” he said.

  “I damn well mean to,” I told him. “But don’t make a production out of it. No bomb squad. Just a talented pooch and his handler. We don’t need any panic starting.”

  “Hell, if you’re really onto something, I should get that building evacuated.”

  “That can happen soon enough. Let’s make sure my instincts are right before we make suckers out of both of us.”

  It took Big Nell twenty seconds to find the blast.

  The sleek black Lab zeroed in on the second drawer of the dresser like a falcon creaming a pigeon.

  I’d waited for them down on the street, where Pat and Toby Verez suggested I stay. I said if the dog told me to, I would. But the pooch had no opinion and we went up.

  After easing out the top drawer, Toby looked down at the contents of the second drawer, which included eight sticks of Atlas dynamite neatly taped together, triggered to go off the next time I changed my underwear.

  I damn near needed a change now.

  Toby and Big Nell looked at me with big brown eyes. “By the book,” Toby said, “we call the bomb squad now.”

  “For something this simple?”

  Before he could answer, I stuck my hand down and lifted the package while everybody but me and Big Nell gasped. Soon Toby was chopping off the igniter wires, and then he brought out the load. The Lab supervised, slobbering all over the rug, a breach of etiquette I was happy to overlook.

  Eight sticks of dynamite that would have left me a misty spray in the wreckage of the building’s top three stories turned to rubble raining down to halt weekend traffic below.

  Pat moved across the bedroom to join us and said, “You were right, Mike. Somebody doesn’t like you.”

  “You surprised?”

  My big, rangy cop friend looked cool and professional in a suit that didn’t betray the long hours he’d worked yesterday on a matter of mutual interest.

  Pat nodded toward the dresser, in front of which Toby was rewarding the dog with a treat and some neck scratching. The dynamite had already been closed into a padded carrier that made the worst picnic basket you ever dug into.

  “You know how close you came, buddy?”

  I grunted. “Not even hardly. I smelled it first, didn’t I?”

  “And here I thought the dog did.”

  “She just pinpointed it.”

  Toby and his K-9 waited patiently as Pat and I went over to confer in hushed tones across the room. “Mike, you know this has to go on a report.”

  “Certainly,” I said.

  “Okay. As the reporting officer, I have to ask—you have an explanation for this?”

  I shrugged. “You already gave me one. Somebody doesn’t like me.”

  “Spare me the horseshit.”

  I grinned at him. “Now maybe you’ll take it seriously, what I told you at lunch yesterday.”

  He made a face, his hands on his hips. “A car almost running you down? That’s unusual in New York?”

  “Unusual enough to get my attention, when it’s deliberate. And that was just the first try.”

  He was shaking his head. “So you got winged in a shootout. Stop hanging around those damn low-class joints that are always getting held up.”

  “Pat, damn it, I’ve been shot at before. If I hadn’t swung around on that barstool, when the bartender and that ski-masked non-customer started trading rounds, I’d have had an incoming in the back of the head instead of a crease across the chest.” I took a deep breath, as something clicked into place. “That explains those eight sticks.”

  “How so?”

  “Think about it. The other night, at that bar … that was supposed to be a hit, Pat, disguised as a hold-up. I was supposed to get it in the back of the head. But after I hit the deck, I threw a shot at the guy as he ran out. He was lucky he didn’t buy it.”

  “And you weren’t?”

  “That was meant to be a hit, Pat. But the guy who tried it decided up close and personal was no way to deal with Mike Hammer.”

  He rubbed his eyes. “I hate it when you talk about yourself in the third person.” He sighed and looked right at me. “What are you working on?”

  I waved at the air. “Nothing, that’s what. I took two weeks vacation down in Miami with Hy Gardner, then attended that P.I. convention in Vegas … and before that I was tied up in a couple of industrials and organized a security deal for Delaney.”

  “Mike … you have more contacts on the street than all the detectives on the PD put together. Nobody clued you in?”

  “Nobody. Nothing. If I was hot, I’d have heard.”

  “And you haven’t? Really haven’t?”

  “Shit, Pat, I’m not holding out on you. I called you in, didn’t I?”

  He gestured toward the dresser. “Then why the eight-stick sendoff? That’s one hell of a way to wave goodbye.”

  “Pretty damn definite, though.”

  I glanced over at Toby. He was holding the dog back so it wouldn’t go after the cat. Then that crazy pussy decided to go up and smell him and when he growled, she let him have a swipe across the nostrils and walked away with her tail swishing a Screw you, dog.

  Some attitude. I liked her.

  Monday just before noon I took Velda to the Blue Ribbon Restaurant on West 44th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues. George, the owner, served up the best German food in Manhattan, and always saw to it I got my special table in a corner nook overseen by framed celebrity photos. Dark wood gave the place warmth and the lighting was nicely subdued, even at lunch.

  The raven tresses of her sleek pageboy brushing her shoulders, my secretary was tall and curvy but no over-grown baby doll—she carried a P.I. ticket in her wallet and a .32 in her purse. In that simple pale yellow silk blouse and brown pencil skirt, she looked sexier than Ann Corio at the end of her act.

  Velda knew all about my booby-trapped dresser and we’d gone over it plenty of times yesterday in her apartment, just two floors above mine. But not a word on the subject had been exchanged all morning. Still, I could see it was bugging her.

  “Listen,” she said, nibbling at a shrimp salad while I gobbled knockwurst, “while you were making your phone calls, on that insurance job, I was digging through our special file.”

  “You mean the file of my fan club members?”

  “Right, if by that you mean scum you sent up or killed. And you know Pat helps me keep close tabs on ‘friends’ of yours who’ve been sprung from Sing Sing lately.”

  I chewed sauerkraut. “What would I do without you two looking after my interests?”

  She ignored that, spearing a shrimp. “I also keep track of those you’ve jugged or buried who have the kind of family members who might seek revenge.”

  I grinned at her. “Somebody taking vengeance out on me? That’s what they call irony, right? Or is it karma?”

  “For a guy who likes to get even,” she said, with a humorless smirk, “you’re a little cavalier about the loved ones of dearly departeds who you made that way.”

  “Okay, so you looked through the file. Come up with anything?”

  She shook her head and scythes of dark hair swung. “It’s been two or three years since we got into anything that wasn’t paying busi
ness. For such a hardass, you’ve been leading a downright respectable, even boring existence lately.”

  I buttered a hard roll. “Boring except for a phony hit-and-run, that staged shootout, and eight sticks of dynamite.”

  “Except for those.” She leaned forward, urgency in the dark eyes. “We have to dig deeper, Mike. Put everything else on hold and make keeping you alive our top priority. You’re not like that cat of yours—you don’t have nine lives.”

  “I don’t have a cat, either.”

  “You don’t? What would you call it?”

  I swallowed a nice foamy mouthful of Pabst. “Cat-sitting till I can find a nice home for the thing. There’s got to be some family with kids out there who would love to have a pet like that.”

  “If not,” she said, “what will you do with it? Take a ride in the country and dump it somewhere?”

  “No.”

  “Toss it in an alley by a bunch of garbage cans, maybe? Or in a bag off a bridge?”

  “Hell no.”

  Her smile was sly and faintly mocking. “Then answer me this, Mike. Did you round up a litter box for the animal?”

  “Yeah. She has to crap, doesn’t she?”

  “Did you buy cat chow for her? Do you put milk down for her?”

  “Yeah, so what?”

  “So, Mike,” she said, and sipped coffee, “you have a cat.”

  Pat Chambers rolled in. I’d told him we’d be lunching here and to join us. He couldn’t make the meal but said he’d stop by, anyway.

  He pulled up a chair, a pilsner automatically delivered to him, and he said, “No fingerprints anywhere on that present your secret admirer left you.”

  I frowned. “You took fingerprints all over my place. Didn’t you get anything?”

  He shook his head. “Just yours and Velda’s and what turned out to be your cleaning lady. What does that tell you?”

  “That when it comes to tracking down cleaning ladies, you don’t need any help from me.”

  “Laugh it off, Mike. Somebody wants you dead. And that lack of prints screams professional. Also, we canvassed your building and nobody saw anything or anybody suspicious.”

  I shrugged, took another gulp of beer. “What did Toby have to say about that surprise package?”

  “That it was simple but deadly, and showed skills. Again, likely a pro job. I’ll ask you one more time, Mike. What do you make of this?”

  I leaned back. “Same as you. Somebody wants me dead.”

  “Any idea who?”

  “Not a clue.”

  “Don’t get cute.”

  “If what you’re getting at, buddy, is that all of this indicates somebody hiring a kill, I won’t argue. These tries have been sophisticated, and they’ve escalated. The hit-and-run could’ve been written off as an accident. That saloon shootout might have been a coincidence, just Mike Hammer frequenting a rough slopchute and getting tagged. A fitting end for a murderous thug who passes himself off as a private eye.”

  Pat grumbled, “Third person again.”

  I sat forward. “But this latest attempt, trying to make me go boom—all pretense has been dropped of anything but murder, and the kind of murder that indicates somebody is getting desperate.”

  Velda said, “But if that explosion had happened, maybe it wouldn’t have been tracked to your apartment. Maybe it would’ve been written off as a gas leak incident. And that, too, would be seen as a coincidence.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “Pat, your forensics boys would’ve been able to pinpoint where that explosion started, right?”

  “Most likely,” he said with a nod.

  “No,” I said to Velda, “I think somebody is past caring about making my murder look like something else. I think somebody’s going to take a shot at me, maybe not hiring it done this time. But that somebody’s overlooking one small item.”

  “Which is?” Velda asked.

  Pat was smirking. He wouldn’t rise to that bait.

  “I shoot back,” I said.

  The afternoon had barely begun when Velda slipped into my office and said, “We’ve got a walk-in. I think you should see him.”

  “What happened to putting everything on hold?”

  She leaned a hand on my desk. “I’ve been going over that file of possibles again, and I may have a lead or two in a few hours, but not till then. Also, Pat gave me some names on the Lightener case to check up on.”

  I waved that off. “The poor young husband killed the rich older wife and got caught. That’s the beginning and the end.”

  “He has relatives. Any time there are relatives, these things can come back on you.” She nodded toward the outer office. “But right now, why not help this fella?”

  “The walk-in? You look like somebody’s been pulling your heart strings.”

  Her frown dripped sympathy. “Just talk to him, Mike. His name is Oliver Roland, and he’s from Des Moines.”

  “He would be.”

  She gave me the sad eyes, like a cat begging for dinner. “Please?”

  So I had her send the guy in.

  He was of medium size in a light brown suit that was not cheap, and the dark blue tie was silk. For all the crispness of his clothing, he had a rumpled look—dark circles under bloodshot brown eyes, thinning blond hair that a brush or comb hadn’t tamed. He was an odd combination of fresh and stale.

  I gestured to the client’s chair and he gave me a twitch of a smile, nodded and sat.

  “Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Hammer.” The voice was mid-range and tiredness was in it. The way he slumped in the chair played into that. “I didn’t know where else to turn.”

  “Why is that, Mr. Roland?”

  He sighed. His oblong face was droopy with sadness. “The police won’t be interested. Alice is of age, and she left home willingly.”

  “Alice.”

  He nodded. “My sister. She and I live … lived … with my mother back in Des Moines. Our sickly mother, I should say. I think I leaned a little too hard on Alice, taking care of Mother … I work for an insurance company, with long and sometimes unpredictable hours, and since Alice was out of high school, I thought it was … reasonable to have her help look after Mother.”

  “Sounds like it to me. But maybe not to her—she left home?”

  He closed his eyes like a man fighting a headache. Then he opened them and said, “Yes. Six months ago. Mother has since … Mother passed away three months after Alice left. I don’t blame Alice for that in any way. She had … aspirations, Alice did. Had.”

  Why the past tense? I wondered. But I let him go on at his own speed.

  “Alice is a very pretty girl.” He got a photo from his inside pocket and pushed it across to me.

  He wasn’t exaggerating—she was a lovely blue-eyed blonde in a light blue shift, so short it could have been a man’s shirt. Slender, on the flat-chested side, but with legs that went on forever.

  “How old is she here?” I asked.

  “Seventeen. She still looked like that when she went away. She left a note and said she’d be in touch, but she never called or wrote.”

  “You said aspirations. What kind?”

  Another sigh, this one heavy with frustration. “Alice was active in drama and in music. She was a good high school actress and a pleasant singer, but … Mr. Hammer, the idea that she could come to New York and make it in show business, well … it’s almost absurd.”

  “A lot of young ones have tried.” And gotten old in a hurry. “And it’s been six months? Why start looking for her now, Mr. Roland? That’s what you’re doing, isn’t it?”

  He sat forward. “Actually, I wasn’t looking for her. A friend of mine in the insurance business was in New York for a convention last week, and said he saw her. Spotted her on the street with some other girls and women who were very
hard-looking. Overly made-up. Skimpy but flashy attire.”

  It wasn’t a punch worth pulling. “You figure she’s hooking?”

  He swallowed and looked at the hands he’d folded in his lap. “I think so, yes. Everybody knows prostitution is something a lot of girls … runaways … get into.”

  “But she didn’t run away. She was of voting age and she split of her own accord.”

  He nodded glumly. “That’s right. That’s why the police are of no use.”

  “But you think I might be?”

  Some life came into his eyes. “I read an article about you in a true-detective magazine. It made you sound smart and tough, not afraid of anything. And said that you know Manhattan better than anybody else in the private eye ‘game.’”

  “Maybe they exaggerated.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think so. The article covered a lot of your cases. You sound like the genuine article to me, Mr. Hammer. You would know where to look for her, and you wouldn’t be afraid to go looking there, either.”

  “There are a lot of places to look, Mr. Roland. Prostitution is a pretty thriving business in this town.”

  “But … you could do it, right?”

  I hadn’t answered when he shoved a wad of bills on the desk, right next to Alice’s picture.

  “That’s a thousand-dollar cash retainer, Mr. Hammer.”

  “That will buy you a week but won’t cover expenses.”

  “I have more money. I can go as high as ten thousand. Can you find her in the time that would buy?”

  “Possibly. But what then? She’s of age and kidnapping’s illegal, even in this town.”

  The bloodshot eyes were moist, haunted. “Just find her and lead me to her. If I could have a chance to talk to her … tell her Mother has passed … that there’s a better life waiting for her back home, and that I would never judge her. Just want to … to save her from this terrible life.”

  “Is your conventioneer friend certain it was Alice he saw?” I skipped asking how the pal happened to be in the proximity of a bunch of doxies.

  The client nodded. “He was … Stan’s her godfather. It was her.”

  “Did he say where he saw her?”