Killing Town Read online

  I began, “Mrs. Loomis—”

  “Make it Mitzi, Mr. Hammer. Mike?”

  “Mike.”

  “And we both know my name isn’t really Loomis, although, well… I believe I may eventually have it changed, legally. Assuming I can get my job back at the cannery.”

  “You’re a local girl?”

  She nodded. “Yes, and my folks still live here, so my mom will play babysitter. Bob had a really good job at the fish-glue factory. He was on his way to foreman. I wish… I wish he could have been more patient.”

  Something prickled at the back of my neck.

  “How do you mean?” I asked, although I was afraid I already knew.

  The lovely face gave me the saddest, sweetest smile you ever saw. “Mike… I know about what Bob did. How he died. His brother Bill—who I’ve never met—called and said Bob died ‘suddenly in his sleep.’ That Bob had heart trouble since childhood that he never told me about.”

  “But you already knew Bob was gone, and about—”

  “The robbery? The shooting? Yes. A girl friend of mine from here got a job a few months ago in Brooklyn, and she saw it in the papers and called me.”

  “How did Bob’s brother keep you away from the funeral?”

  Her shrug was barely perceptible. “Well, it was already over by the time he called. He said Bob’s folks preferred I stay away. I’m Baptist and Bob was Catholic, and his people didn’t want anything to do with me. That much was true, when he was alive. How they feel now, I have no idea.”

  I leaned an elbow on the Formica, gestured with an open hand. “I understand they passed the hat for you. Family and friends, they really came through.” I got out the packet of thousand dollar bills and tossed it on the kitchen table between us, like a poker bet.

  I lost.

  “I know where that’s from,” she said, staring at it expressionlessly, the baby-blues unblinking. “Bob didn’t lie to me about his past. I know he was involved with those Mafia people. He did bad things before I met him. Not terrible things, maybe, but bad enough. And I didn’t care, as long as that part of his life was over. We started a new life here.”

  Seemed to me that there were better places to live than Killington, but what the hell—everybody has to live somewhere.

  She leaned forward a little, just a little, because that’s all she could manage. She tapped the envelope with a forefinger. “I know what this is. I don’t know how much it is, but I’m going to guess quite a lot.”

  “It’s twenty-nine thousand dollars,” I said.

  She blinked.

  I went on: “I kept out a thousand for the job and expenses. Bob was insistent about that.”

  She frowned, curious. “I thought you were a policeman. Didn’t you always want to be a policeman?”

  I grinned at her. “Well, at first I wanted to be a numbers runner. But I came around. Anyway, I’m a private detective now. And this is a job I’m doing for Bob. If you don’t want to keep the money, that’s up to you. I don’t want anything more to do with it.”

  “It’s stolen money. You could turn it in.”

  “It’s off-the-books money. Dirty money being cleaned through a front business. And the one thing I won’t do for you, Mitzi, is give that money back to those crumbs.”

  She smiled. “He wrote about you.”

  “In V-mail, you mean?”

  She nodded. “He wrote about a lot of the fellas he served with. But he really liked you. He said you were very brave but a little crazy.”

  “He had that backwards.”

  She liked that. Wow, could this dame work up a smile.

  We drank coffee.

  “So you would suggest I take it,” she said.

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No. I insist.”

  She laughed a little. “What would I do with it?”

  “Is this house free and clear?”

  “Heavens no!”

  “How did Bob afford it?”

  “He got a loan. The bank here is very cooperative with factory workers who get a high approval rating from the Old Man.”

  That was how Lawrence had referred to his father.

  “The Senator, you mean?”

  She nodded. “He’s good to his workers. Pays them well. Bit of a windbag and full of himself, but that…”

  “Comes with the territory?”

  Another nod.

  “So, Mitzi—how much do you owe on this place?”

  “Four thousand.”

  “That will leave twenty-five thousand. How much do you make a year, when you’re at the cannery?”

  “Two thousand.”

  “So take a couple years off and be a mom. The cannery will survive. Call it four grand. That leaves twenty-one thousand. You drive a new car?”

  “Don’t be silly. But what I have gets me around.”

  “What is it?”

  “A beat-up old Nash.”

  “Call it two thousand for a new Oldsmobile with all the trimmings. Live a little.”

  Her lips pursed in amusement. “Won’t all that be a little bit conspicuous?”

  “Do it gradually. Pay the house off, wait a year, buy the car. Do you have a nursery decked out?”

  “No. Why do that till I know what I have?”

  “Well, it’ll be a baby.”

  “Yes, but a boy or a girl?”

  “Probably.”

  She laughed. “Bob said you were funny.”

  “Did he?”

  “In particular, a master of the off-color joke.”

  “Well, you’ll have to take Bob’s word for that. Telling an expectant mother about a farmer’s daughter just seems wrong somehow.”

  We both laughed a little.

  I stood. “Well, I have things to do.”

  “Having to do with the Charles girl?”

  That blindsided me. “Pardon?”

  “Sit down, Mike. Have another cup of coffee.”

  I sat and had one. “You know about the… jam I got in?”

  “Everyone in town knows about it. They might not recognize you, as I didn’t at first, because those weren’t exactly… flattering photos the papers ran. But your name’s on everyone’s lips. Not everyone comes to town on a freight, gets indicted for rape and murder, and then winds up in the society column with the woman who cleared him.”

  “That sums it up nicely.”

  “I knew the Warburton girl a little. The Old Man is something of a rake, and his son isn’t much better. She was a flirt who wound all the men in that cannery around her little finger, and finally ended up in the office.”

  I frowned. “Was she having an affair with one of them?”

  “That I can’t tell you. Wouldn’t be surprised. Tell me something, Mike.”

  “Okay.”

  “Why hop a freight? They have trains you can catch in New York, I understand. And a bus or two.”

  She had a right to know. I really should have told her already, but I didn’t want to discourage her about the money.

  “Sneaking into Killington made sense,” I said. “The people Bob liberated that dough from know I was a friend of his. And word got out I visited him in that hospital shortly before he passed.”

  “Am I in any danger?”

  Should I tell her how I got the nicks and scrapes on my face, or just let her figure the local cops did that?

  “You might be,” I said. “Whether you accept your husband’s money or not. If they somehow track you down, you could be in danger, yes. That’s something else to spend some money on—a gun.”

  “Bob covered his tracks well when he came to town.”

  “I’m sure he did. But two men found out I was in Killington—I may have sneaked in, but trouble found me just the same. Like you said, I made the papers.”

  “What about the two men?”

  “They’re not a problem now. Possibly someone else knows what they found out, but I’ll deal with that, too. It should have no bearing on the money
.”

  The blue eyes saucered. “Well, of course it has a bearing on the money!”

  “Mitzi—Bob wanted you to have it. He wanted his kid to have it. He gave his life getting it.”

  “But it was a stupid thing to do what he did. A crazy, stupid thing!”

  “But he did do it. For you.” I nodded to the bulge beneath the smock. “And him, or her.”

  I got up. She started to rise, but I motioned her not to. “You just finish your coffee. I’ll find my way out.”

  She nodded. Her eyes were on the packet.

  “You need to tell me you’re taking it,” I said. “Even if you drop it in the collection plate at the First Baptist Church. Mail that thing back to me, and I’ll be on your doorstep again, shoving it at you.”

  Her face was all screwed up with doubt. “You think… you really think it’s the right thing to do?”

  I shrugged. “It’s the thing Bob wants you to do.”

  She swallowed, reached for the packet, pressed it to her bosom. “Thank you, Mike.”

  “Don’t thank me. Thank Bob.”

  And I went back out to the Packard, good deed done.

  By all rights, I should take the train back to Manhattan, this time with a ticket and a seat. Only I still had business in Killing Town.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I headed back to the Killington Arms hotel, which wasn’t the Ritz but was a big step up from the near-flophouse I’d checked into on my first night in town. The room was well appointed, clean and comfortable, and I closed the curtains, stripped down to my skivvies and flopped on top of the covers.

  A couple of hours was all I needed to make up for the beauty sleep the Two Tonys interrupted. I rolled out of the rack refreshed, went and splashed water on my face, and got back into my suit, tie, raincoat, and hat, with the .45 and .38 snugged in their respective homes.

  I was ready to make mischief.

  The dingy hash house run by a bald little wop named Lonnie Shaker wasn’t jumping, not at three o’clock on a Saturday afternoon. Lonnie wasn’t around, but the green-eyed waitress with the black-streaked blonde hair was waiting tables, or would be if somebody walked in.

  I took a corner booth. Her back was to me, her slender frame with the nice fanny taking up a stool at the counter, where she was loafing and sucking on a smoke till a customer came in. And I qualified, so she spun around, ditched the cig, climbed off the stool and walked over with the enthusiasm of a taxi dancer at the end of a long shift.

  She didn’t recognize me. Hell, she didn’t look at me, her eyes on her order pad, her pencil ready. “What’ll you have, bud?”

  Not very original.

  Nor was my response: “Why don’t you take a load off, sugar?”

  Lifting her chin so that her eyes could take me in seemed like a job she was barely up to. But she did it. Then those eyes, those pretty green eyes, flared. She backed away a step.

  “I… I don’t want any trouble,” she said.

  I showed her the sawbuck. “No hard feelings. Just a little conversation.”

  She shook her head, looking around, as if ghosts at the empty tables littering the joint might be eavesdropping.

  “He has a little finif brother,” I said, with a nod to the ten-spot. “Be a shame to break up a happy family.”

  Her brow furrowed and she got less pretty. “Do you know the kind of trouble you could get me in?”

  “The cops aren’t interested in me anymore, doll. I’m in the clear. Just curious about a few things. Your boss around?”

  “Lonnie’s in back.”

  “Tell him you’re taking a ten-minute break. Get us both some coffee and come back and get comfy. We’re about to make friends again.”

  She frowned in thought, then nodded, and did all that.

  Across the booth from me now, she was pouring sugar into her coffee. I put some cream in mine.

  “Did they do that to you?” she asked, wiggling a finger at my face, chipped red polish on its nail.

  “No. I took a walk in the woods.”

  “You can get poison ivy doing that.”

  “There’s worse things a guy can catch. Really, I just have one question, and maybe a follow-up or two.”

  She glanced at the ten. Shrugged. “Okay.”

  “Who approached you? Who arranged the frame?”

  “What frame?”

  “Let’s skip that, sister. You want the tenner, you got to play for my team. Who set me up?”

  She snorted a laugh. “Who do you think? Who is it always?”

  “I’m a stranger in town, remember. Help me out here.”

  “Sykes.” She giggled. “I hear you put him in the hospital.”

  “Yeah. You may recall, I was kicking a field goal and his balls got in the way.”

  She almost spit out a mouthful of coffee. She swallowed and said, “They say… they say he got hauled in with two and came out with one. You know, ball? Testi-what’s-it?”

  “Testicle. I heard that. You suppose he holds a grudge?”

  Overly plucked eyebrows rose. “Kind of amazing you’re still alive, mister. Sykes is kind of the… other police chief around this burg. That Belden character, he’s no crook. No saint, but no crook. Sykes fixes the fixes, frames the frames, and every bent cop in town kicks back a piece of their action.”

  I slid the ten over to her. “Thanks, honey.”

  “What happened to his little brother?”

  “I have one other question and it may be harder. You may have to settle for the Alexander Hamilton.”

  “Who?”

  I tapped on the face on the bill. “Somebody who got shot. You weren’t the only one who fingered me, kid.”

  “I didn’t finger you. I said I didn’t remember you. That’s different.”

  “Not when a cop puts on wet leather gloves and plays slap and tickle with me, it isn’t. They rounded up a little guy who did identify me. Little dipso. Any chance you know who that would be?”

  She nodded. “That’s one of Sykes’ favorite witnesses. Eddie Something. Sykes uses him all the time. But word is he hopped a freight after you got sprung. I heard he was afraid you might come lookin’ for him.” She shrugged. “Isn’t that what you’re doing now?”

  I admitted it was. And the irony of Eddie hopping a freight to escape my attentions wasn’t lost on me.

  I got out the engraving of another guy who got shot and tossed it to her, and she brightened and said thanks, then told me she’d take care of the coffee. On the house!

  But I bet Lonnie didn’t know.

  * * *

  The cellar bar where the cops had caught up with me was doing better business than the hash house, but just barely. I knew it was a long shot the brunette would be there. Too early, and she hadn’t seemed to be a regular—more like she was slumming on a slow night. But I had to try.

  No luck.

  I tried six other gin mills of varying standards.

  No luck there, either.

  But that’s the funny thing about luck—you never know when it’ll tap you on the shoulder. Back at my hotel, I stopped in at the cocktail lounge for a highball. I sat at the bar and nursed it, thinking about my next move, when the brunette I’d been looking for settled in on the stool next to me. Didn’t tap me on the shoulder exactly, but close enough.

  She didn’t see me at first, or at least I don’t think she did. She was in a sexy red satin off-the-shoulder number with a V neckline. V for victory, if you had the loot.

  She said to the bartender, “Whiskey and ginger.”

  I said, “Make it Scotch. Best you got. Soda on the side.”

  Like before.

  All that hair bounced as she turned to me with a lovely smile, not so professional this time. “Don’t tell me this is that better time and better place?”

  “It’ll do till the real thing comes along. Shall we?”

  I collected my drink and nodded to the bartender to have hers brought over and we took a corner booth, black leather,
button-tufted. A fancy framed black panther picture hovered. This was more than a step up from the cellar bar.

  “I’ve been following you,” she said, “in the papers.”

  “You make me sound like a comic strip.”

  “You get those scratches from our friendly local gendarmes?”

  “No. This is from an ill-advised outing. The swelling the cops gave my baby face finally came down, but I have a good memory.”

  She leaned forward, previewing the goodies. “I just bet you do.”

  “Did you know I was looking for you?”

  “No! Be still my heart. Rumor is you got a girl. Rich. Beautiful. What do you need with me?”

  “I’m sure we could think of something. But what I’m really after is information. When somebody frames me for rape and murder, I take it personal. Kind of want to do something about it.”

  “I can see that.” She got a deck of Chesterfields out of her little red clutch purse and made a selection. “But how could I be of any help on that score?”

  I gave her a light from a matchbook. “You know this town. You work in it. Your line of endeavor takes grease. And before that you did time in the cannery. You know things an out-of-towner wouldn’t. For example—what can you tell me about this Sykes character?”

  She shrugged, let out an “o” of smoke through a red lipstick portal. “He’s the top crooked cop in town. What else do you need to know about him? If you were framed—and you were framed, right?—he either did it or gave it his stamp of approval.”

  “Yeah. I had his stamp of approval, all right.”

  “I really don’t know any more about him than that. I never dealt directly with him. Sorry.”

  “That’s okay, kid. What about the Warburton girl?”

  That threw her a little. “What about her?”

  “Did you know her? Was she a working girl?”

  She shook her head, but said, “I knew her a little, only she never hooked that I know of. Not that she didn’t have the makings and the… inclination.”

  “How did you know her?”

  “Well, where I knew her was at the cannery. She could play the guys above her like cheap kazoos. She started on the line, but wound up in the office. She was the Senator’s secretary for a while. Then she got transferred over to the fish-glue factory, where she was the Senator’s son’s gal Friday.”