The Big Kill mh-5 Page 12

  "Maybe you've been closer to nailing Teen than you thought, chum."

  His fingers stopped their incessant tapping.

  "After Decker was killed a lot of awfully funny things started to happen. Before they didn't seem to make much sense, but just because you can't actually see what's holding them together doesn't mean that they're not there. Wouldn't it be a scream if the guy who killed Decker could lead you to Teen?"

  "Yeah, I'd laugh myself sick." Now Pat's eyes were just thin shiny slits in his head.

  I said, "Those bank deposits of Hooker's weren't wins. Hooker was being paid off to do something. You got any idea what it was?"

  "No," sullenly.

  "I'd say he was being paid to see that a certain guy was put in a certain spot where he was up the creek."

  "Damn it, Mike, quit talking in riddles!"

  "Pat, I can't. It's still a puzzle to me, too, but I can tell you this. You've been routine on this case all, along. It's been too small-time to open up on but I think you'd damn well better open up on it right now because you're sitting on top of the thing that can blow Teen and his racket all to hell. I don't know how or why... yet. But I know it's there and before very long I'm going to find the string that's holding it together. As far as Ed Teen's concerned I don't care what happens to him, only someplace in there is the guy who made an orphan out of a nice little kid and he's the one I want. You can take it for what it's worth or I can go it alone. Just don't shove the Decker kill down at the bottom of the page and hope something turns up on it because you think grabbing Teen is more important."

  He started to come up out of his chair and his face was strictly cop without tired lines anymore. He got all set to give me the business, then, like turning on the light, the scowl and the tired lines went away and he sat back smiling a little with that excited, happy look I hadn't seen him wear for so long.

  "What's it about, Mike?"

  "I think the Decker murder got away from somebody. It was supposed to be nice and clean and didn't happen that way."

  "What else?"

  "A lot of scrambled facts that are going to get put right fast if you help out. Then I'll give it to you so there's sense to it."

  "You know, you're damn lucky I know what makes you tick, Mike. If you were anybody else I'd hammer out every last bit of information you have. I'm only sorry you didn't get on the force while you were still young enough."

  "I don't like the hours. The pay either."

  "No," he grinned, "you'd sooner work for free and get me all hopped up whenever you feel like it. You and the D.A. Okay, spill it. What do you need?"

  "A pair of private detectives named Arthur Cole and Glenn Fisher."

  He jotted the names down and stared at them blankly a second. "Nocky... ?"

  "That's Cole."

  "You should have given me their names before."

  "I didn't know them before."

  He reached out and flipped the switch on the intercom. "Tell Sergeant McMillan to come in a moment, please.

  A voice rasped that it would and while we waited Pat went to the filing cabinet and pawed through the drawers until he had what he wanted. He tossed the stuff in my lap as a thick-set plain-clothesman came in chewing on a dead cigar.

  Pat said, "Sergeant, this is Mike Hammer."

  The cop shifted his cigar and held out his hand. I said, "Glad to know you."

  "Same here. Heard lots about you, Mike."

  "Sergeant McMillan has the inside information on the up-town boys," Pat said. He turned to the plain-clothesman with, "What do you know about two supposedly private detectives named Cole and Fisher?"

  "Plenty. Fisher lost his license about a month ago. What do you want to know?"

  Pat raised his eyebrows at me. "Background stuff," I said.

  "The guys are hoods, plain and simple. Especially Fisher. You ever see them?"

  I nodded. Pat pointed to the folder in my lap and I pulled out a couple of candid shots taken during a strike-breaking melee on the docks. My boys were right there in the foreground swinging billies.

  The cop said, "They're troublemakers. About a year ago somebody with a little pull had them tagged with badges so what they did would be a little bit legal. Neither one of 'em have records, but they've been pulled in a few times for minor offenses. Brawling mostly. They'll work for anybody who pays off. You want me to put out a call for 'em, Captain?"

  "What about it, Mike?" Pat asked.

  "It wouldn't be a bad idea, but you won't find them in New York. Stick them on the teletype and see if they aren't holing up in another city. You might try alerting the railroads dicks to keep an eye out for them. They skipped out last night and might still be traveling. Cole has a broken hand and Fisher's face is a mess. They ought to be easy to identify."

  "You want to do that, sergeant?"

  He nodded at Pat. "I have everything I need. They shouldn't be too hard to trace." He said so-long to me and went back the way he came.

  Pat picked the photo up and studied it. "What's with these two?"

  "They worked for Toady Link." Pat's head came up quickly. "They were on to Hooker for some reason until I started buzzing the guy, then they went into me. I didn't get the pitch in time or Hooker might still be alive. Last night I paid a visit to our friend Link and he was happy to tell me who the boys were."

  "Mike, damn it."

  "If you're wondering how I found out who they were when the cops didn't know... I have a friend who gets around. With blondes."

  "I'm not wondering that at all! I'm wondering how the hell I could have been so negligent or stupid, whatever you want to call it." He grinned wryly. "I used to be a bright boy. A year ago I would have seen the connection or let you talk me into something a lot sooner. Everything you do is tying right in with this Teen affair. Did you know that we had Link slated to go through the mill this week?"

  "No."

  "Well, we had. He and four others. While the D.A.'s been getting pushed around he's been doing one, hell of a job on the organization's working men. Toady's about a month away from a man-sized stretch up the river. Every move you make you step on my toes."

  "Why didn't you pick it up sooner?"

  "Because it's no novelty to be tied up with Teen or Grindle, especially when there's money or murder concerned. Some of the help those two employ have turned up on more than one offense. It wasn't too difficult to suppose that Basil was just out for extra cash when he went in on that robbery and shot Decker afterward."

  "Are you positive that he's the one who did the shooting?"

  "As positive as the paraffin test. Of course, he may have discharged the bullet prior to the killing, but if he did I don't know where. If this Decker thing has even the slightest tie-up with the boys we want then we'll get to it."

  "Hang on, Pat. I'm not saying that it has."

  "I'll damn soon find out."

  I tried to be unconcerned as I pulled on my smoke. "How about letting me find out for you. So far Decker has been my party."

  "Nix, Mike. I know what you want. All you have in your head is the idea that you want to tangle with that killer. Not this time. Taking that one guy out of play could screw up this whole thing so nicely we'll be left with nothing at all."

  "Okay, Pal," I grinned, "go right to it. Just try to get an identification out of me. Just try it."

  "Mike.

  "Aw, nuts, Pat. I'm as critical to this thing as those two mugs are. It was me who saw them and me who pushed them around. Without my say-so you don't have a thing to haul them in on. You're taking all the gravy for yourself... or at least you're trying to."

  "What do you want, Mike?"

  "I want three or four days to make my own play. Things are just beginning to look up. I'd like a file on Toady Link too."

  "That's impossible. The D.A. has it classified top secret. That's out."

  "Can't you get it, kid?"

  "Nope. That would mean an explanation and I'm not giving blue boy a chance to climb up my back
again."

  "Well, hell... do you know anything about the guy at all?"

  He leaned back in the chair and shook his head slowly. "Probably no more than you, know, Mike. I haven't done anything more than listen in and supply a little information I had when Toady's name came up. The D.A. had his own men doing the legwork."

  I looked out the window and while I watched the people on the roof across the street Pat studied my face and studied it hard. I could feel his eyes crawl across me and make everything I was thinking into thoughts and words of his own.

  He said, "You're thinking Toady Link's the last step in the chain, aren't you?"

  I nodded.

  "Spell it out for me."

  So I spelled it out. I said, "Big-money boys like to splurge. They say they go for wine, women and song but whoever said it forgot to add the ponies too. Go out to the races and take a look around. Take a peek at the limousines and convertibles and the bank rolls that own them."

  "So?"

  "So there was a big-money boy named Marvin Holmes who likes his blondes fast and furious and very much on hand. He spends his dough like water and keeps plenty of it locked up in a safe on his wall. He plays the nags through a bookie named Toady Link and doesn't like the way the ponies run so he won't pay off his bet. He's too big to push around, but Link can't take a welch so he looks around for a way to get his dough. Somebody tips him about a former safe expert named Decker, but the guy is honest and wants to stay that way. Okay so Toady waits until the guy needs dough. He finds out who his friend is... a guy named Mel Hooker, and pays him to steer Decker his way. They use a rigged-up deal to make it look like they're winning a pot and everybody is happy. Then Decker goes in over his head. He borrows from a loan shark to make the big kill and loses everything. That's where the pressure starts. He's not a big shot and he's got a kid and he's an easy mark to push around. He knows what happens on this loan-shark deal and he's scared, so when Toady comes up with the proposition of opening a safe... a simple little thing like that... Decker grabs it, takes a pay-off from Link to keep the shark off his neck and goes to it.

  "It would have been fine if Decker had hit the right apartment, but he made a mistake he couldn't afford. He had to take a powder. Maybe he had even planned on taking a powder and arranged for his kid to be taken care of if things didn't go right. I don't know about that. He had something planned anyway. The only trouble was that he didn't plan well enough, or the guys who went out with him in the job were too sharp. They had him cold. Basil shot him then went over him for the dough. He must have yelled out that Decker was clean just before I started shooting. When he went down the driver couldn't afford to let him be taken alive and ran over him.

  "Just take it from there... he already knew where Decker lived and thought that maybe when he went back for his kid he stashed the dough he was supposed to have. The guy searched the place and couldn't find it. Then he got the idea that maybe Basil had been too hurried when he searched Decker's corpse... but I had been right there and figured that I wouldn't overlook picking up a pile from a corpse if I got the chance. So while I was out my apartment was searched and I came back in time to catch the guy at it. I was in too damn much of a hurry and he beat the hell out of me.

  "Now let's suppose it was Toady. Two guys are dead and he can be right in line for the hot seat if somebody gets panicky and talks. After all, Hooker didn't know the details of the kill so he could have thought that Toady was getting him out of the way to keep him from talking. That puts him in the same spot and he's scared stiff. Evidently he did have one run-in with the tough boys before and carried the scar around on his face to prove it.

  "So Hooker spots two of Toady's boys and gets the jumps. They're sticking around waiting for the right spot to stick him. When Hooker got confidential with me they must have thought that Mel was asking for protection or trying to get rid of what I knew so they tried to take me. They muffed that one and went back to get Hooker. They didn't muff that one.

  "Up to there Toady didn't have too much to worry about, but, when I showed my face he got scared. Just before that he packed his boys out of town because he couldn't afford to have them around, so if we can get them back we ought to finger Toady without any trouble at all. Not the least little bit of trouble."

  There was a silence that lasted for a full minute and I could hear Pat breathing and my own watch ticking. Pat said, "That's supposing you got all this dealt out right."

  "Uh-huh."

  "We can find out soon enough." He picked up the phone and said, "Give me an outside line, please," and while he waited riffled through the phone book. I heard the dial tone come on and Pat fingered out a number. The phone ringing on the other end made a faraway hum. Then it stopped. "I'd like to speak to Mr. Holmes," Pat said. "This is Captain Chambers, Homicide, speaking."

  He sat there and frowned at the wall while he listened, then put the receiver back too carefully. "He's gone, Mike. He left for South America with one of his blondes yesterday morning."

  "That's great," I said. My voice didn't sound like me at all.

  Pat's mouth got tight around the corners. "That's perfect. It proves your point. The guy isn't too big to push around after all. Somebody's scared him right out of the city. You called every goddamn move right on the nose."

  "I hope so."

  I guess he didn't like the way I said it.

  "It looks good to me."

  "It looks too good. I wish we had the murder weapons to back it up."

  "Metal doesn't rot out that fast. If we get those two we'll get the gun and we'll get Toady too. It doesn't matter which one we get him for."

  "Maybe. I'd like to know who drove the car that night."

  "Toady certainly wouldn't do it himself."

  I stopped watching the people on the roof across the way and turned my face toward Pat. "I'm thinking that he did, Pat. If it was the kind of haul he expected he wasn't going to let it go through a few hands before it got back to him. Yeah, feller, I think I'll tag Toady with this one."

  "Not you, Mike... we'll tag him for it. The police. The public. Justice. You know."

  "Want to bet?"

  Suddenly he wasn't my friend any more. His eyes were too gray and his face was too bland and I was the guy in the chair who was going to keep answering questions until he was done with me. Or that's what he thought.

  I said, "A few minutes ago I asked you if you'd like to nail the whole batch of them at once."

  "So there's more to it?"

  "There could be. Lots more. Only if I get a couple extra days first."

  Something you might call a smile threw a shadow around his mouth. "You know what will happen to me if you mess things up?"

  "Do you know what will happen to me?"

  "You might get yourself killed."

  "Yeah."

  "Okay, Mike, you got your three days. God help you if you get in a jam because I won't."

  He was lying both times and I knew it. I'd no more get three days than he'd give me a boot when I needed a hand, but I played it like I didn't catch the drift and got up out of my chair. He was sitting there with the same expression when I closed the door, but his hand had already started to reach for the phone.

  I went down the corridor to where a bunch of typewriters were banging out a madhouse symphony and asked one of the stenos where I could find Ellen Scobie. She told me that she had gone out to lunch at noon and was expected back that afternoon, but I might still find her in the Nelson Steak House if I got over there right away.

  It took me about ten minutes to make the four blocks and there was Ellen in the back looking more luscious than the oversize T-bone steak she was gnawing on.

  She saw me and waved and I wondered what it was going to cost who to get hold of that file on Toady Link.

  It made nice wondering.

  Chapter Seven

  She was all in black, but without Ellen inside it the dress would have been nothing. The sun had kissed her skin into a light toast color,
dotting the corner of her eyes with freckles. Her hair swept back and down, caressing her bare shoulders whenever she moved her head.

  She said, "Hello, man."

  I slid in across the table. "Did you eat yourself out of company?"

  "Long ago. My poor working friends had to get back to the office."

  "What about you?"

  "You are enjoying the sight of a woman enjoying the benefits of working overtime when the city budget doesn't allow for unauthorized pay. They had to give me the time off. Want something to eat?"

  A waitress sneaked up behind me and poised her pencil over her pad. "I'll have a beer and a sandwich. Ham. Plenty of mustard and anything else you can squeeze on."

  Ellen made a motion for another coffee and went back to the remains of the steak. I had my sandwich and beer without benefit of small talk until we were both finished and relaxing over a smoke.

  She was nice to look at. Not because she was pretty all over, but because there was something alive about everything she did. Now she was propped in the corner of the booth with one leg half up on the bench grinning because the girl across the way was talking her head off to keep her partner's attention. The guy was trying, but his eyes kept sliding over to Ellen every few seconds.

  I said, "Give the kid a break, will you?"

  She laughed lightly, way down in her throat, then leaned on the table and cupped her chin in her hands. "I feel real wicked when I do things like that."

  "Your friends must love you."

  "Ooh," her mouth made a pouty little circle, "... they do. The men, I mean. Like you, Mike. You came in here especially to see me. You find me so attractive that you can't stay away." She laughed again.

  "Yeah," I said. "I even dream about you."

  "Like hell."

  "No kidding, I mean it."

  "I can picture you going out of your way for a woman. I'd give my right arm to hear you say that in a different tone of voice, though. There's something about you that fascinates me. Now that we have the love-making over with, what do I have that you want?

  I shouldn't have let my eyes do what they did.

  "Besides that, I mean," she said.