A Long Time Dead Read online

  “He said a side street off Times Square. That’s all he could say.”

  That sounded right.

  “Would you look for her, Mr. Hammer?”

  “Sure,” I said. “But there’s a condition.”

  “Name it.”

  “I have to be with you when you meet up with her. If I lead you to her, I stick around for the family reunion.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I won’t be party to a kidnapping. If she’s willing to talk with you, and reacts well to seeing you, fine. But if she wants to be left alone, we have to respect that. Understood?”

  He nodded a bunch of times. “Understood. Thank you, Mr. Hammer. You don’t know what this means to me.”

  Getting to his feet, he extended a hand. I got up and shook it. The shake was firmer than I’d expected.

  “When will you get started?”

  “First thing tomorrow. I have another matter to attend to this afternoon and evening. Where can I get in touch with you?”

  “Ritz-Carlton. Your secretary has the details.”

  He grinned and some of the tiredness drained away.

  “You’ve made me very happy, Mr. Hammer.”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Mr. Roland.”

  But a man who had dragged in went out with spring in his step.

  I sat on the edge of Velda’s desk, craning to look back at her. “Find anything?”

  She nodded, file cards spread out on her desk like she was reading Tarot. “Two decent possibilities. Remember Shriver, the pedophile you got sent up who was killed in a Sing Sing shower?”

  “Even that didn’t get him clean. Sure. But his family was straight, as I recall. Strictly middle-class.”

  Her eyebrows went up. “Well, he has an uncle who was a Green Beret, and did a year, post-Nam, for beating up a longhair in a Queens bar.”

  “Okay. We’ll talk to him.”

  “And there’s the Craig case. The embezzler?”

  I shrugged. “We got the goods and he hanged himself. I didn’t even waste a bullet. And that was an upper middle-class family.”

  “Maybe so, but his wife’s father is a welder in Brooklyn who did time for armed robbery twenty years ago.”

  I made a face. “That seems a little thin. But we should chat him up, too, I suppose.”

  “We can take off now.”

  She wouldn’t be calling first—these were the kind of visits that worked better just dropping by.

  “I got nothing else on,” I said, flipping a hand, “but our new client. And he isn’t expecting anything out of us till tomorrow, anyway. Speaking of which …”

  From a suitcoat pocket I got out the grand in hundreds Roland had given me and handed them over.

  “I’ll put this in the safe,” she said, thumbing through the green. Shifting gears, she said, “Do you think we can find his sister for him?”

  I shrugged. “If she hasn’t stuck a needle in her arm too many times, or bought it from her pimp or a john? A good possibility.” From my other jacket pocket I gave her the photo of Alice Roland. “Get a print of this made first thing tomorrow. Send one over to Pat to run past the Vice boys. Then in the afternoon we’ll both head over to Times Square for a little safari.”

  “The girls around there like you,” she said wryly. “You’ll do fine. But what about me?”

  “Maybe you can buy some slutty threads and just, you know, infiltrate. But I’ll have to inspect your wardrobe to make sure you’re up to snuff.”

  “You wish,” she said, but she was smiling.

  Then we headed out to Queens.

  But we got nowhere in particular, in Queens or Brooklyn, either.

  The pedophile’s ex–Green Beret uncle, a garage mechanic who we caught up with at a Texaco station, seemed at first a possibility, judging by the way he patted an open palm with the working end of a wrench.

  Still, when he claimed he thought his nephew got what he deserved, he seemed to be leveling. Velda asked him about the hippie kid he’d throttled in that bar and he got embarrassed.

  “I ain’t proud of that,” he said, a big guy whose paunch didn’t take anything away from his linebacker build. “I was on the sauce in them days but I dried out in stir. That’s one thing that beats the A.A. all to hell.”

  “What is?” I asked.

  “Sing Sing.”

  The welder in Brooklyn was in his driveway washing his car. He was another bruiser gone slightly to seed, though where the Green Beret had been in his forties, this guy was sixty, easy.

  He was standoffish at first, but he took in our P.I. tickets with wide eyes, and took Velda in with wider eyes. She smiled at him and said something or other, and it softened him up. Or maybe got him hard.

  Either way it worked, and we soon learned there was no love lost between him and his dead son-in-law.

  “Creep left my little Lois up a creek without a paddle. If he hadn’t hung himself, I’d have strangled the little scumbag when he got out. Thank God Lois found a better man and things’ve turned around for her.”

  And when he realized I was the guy who’d nailed the son-in-law for that insurance company, he pumped my hand and grinned at me, like I’d done him the biggest turn ever.

  Back in Manhattan, we stopped at P. J. Moriarty’s on Sixth and Fifty-Second where I bought Velda a dainty little steak and myself a big rare slab of one. I cut into mine and let the blood run as Velda said, “We could head over to Times Square now, you know.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t want to go bothering working girls during prime time. They’ll be looser lipped in the afternoon. Anyway, we haven’t bought you those special clothes yet.”

  “Keep dreaming.” She nibbled a delicate bite of dead bovine, then admitted, “I’m pretty tired, anyway. Crawling around Queens and Brooklyn can take it out of a girl.”

  I nodded. “We’ll find Roland’s missing sister, if she’s in town to be found. And we won’t have to dip into that other nine grand he flashed at me, either.”

  So we headed back to our apartment building, where she let me out on my floor like a good little elevator operator and went on up to hers.

  How tired I was hit me the second I stepped into my apartment, but before I could flop into my recliner, the cat was clawing at my pants leg, her purrs more like growls as she demanded her dinner. In the kitchenette, I poured some chow into a bowl and gave her a dish of water. She looked up at me accusingly.

  “Milk’s a treat,” I said. “Sometimes you got to get by on just plain water.”

  She gave me a look, but she settled.

  I settled, too, in my recliner, after divesting myself of my suitcoat, shoulder-holstered .45, and shoes. I was trying to decide whether to read the funnies or see what the tube had to offer when the phone on the stand at my right trilled at me.

  “Yeah,” I said into the receiver. If they wanted “Hammer speaking,” they had to call the office.

  “Mr. Hammer? It’s Oliver Roland.”

  I sat up, spurred by the urgency in his voice.

  “I’ve seen her, Mr. Hammer! I spotted Alice. Right off Times Square, like my friend said.”

  “Well, that’s great. That’s fine. But I’d rather you not approach her till I’m around.”

  “That’s why I’m calling. I don’t dare talk to her.”

  “Why not?”

  “There’s a big black gentleman in flashy clothes with her. I think he’s her pimp. She’s talking to him and they aren’t … aren’t getting along.”

  If it hadn’t sounded so serious, I might have been amused. Only an out-of-towner from Des Moines would have said all of that, that way.

  “Stay away from them, Mr. Roland. Where are you exactly?”

  He told me.

  “Good. I can be there in fifteen minutes. Just stay
away from them.”

  He said all right, then thanked me profusely.

  “I haven’t done anything yet,” I said.

  I hung up, got up, shook my head, then went into the kitchen and threw some water on my face. The cat, still eating, looked up at me with feline disdain. Imagine making her drink water and not milk.

  So I got back into my shoes and put on the shoulder holster, after checking the action on the .45, jacking one into the chamber and clicking off the safety. Wearing the gun like that didn’t exactly seem prudent—till some asshole pulled on you.

  And I was on my way to discuss this and that with a big black pimp. I mean, gentleman.

  I slipped my suitcoat on as I made the trip to the door, and when I opened it, Oliver Roland was standing there with a .38 revolver in his fist.

  And he didn’t look at all tired.

  “Inside, Hammer,” he said, his voice cold and hard, unrecognizable from the concerned tremble of earlier today. Only the bloodshot eyes were the same. “Hands up and empty.”

  I stepped back inside, obeying his instructions.

  “You’re damn good,” I said. “I bought your story, hook, line and sinker, though I admit the grand sold it. What did you do just now, call me from the house phone?”

  When the door was closed behind us, he ignored my question and said, “That fabled .45 of yours? Use two fingers to pluck it out and drop it. Nice and easy, so it doesn’t go off when it hits the floor.”

  I’m fast but not fast enough when a .38 is leveled at me. Again, I did as I was told.

  “Since you’re a pro,” I said, “you won’t mind telling me who hired you.”

  “I’m no pro,” he said proudly, upper lip pulled back in a ghastly smile. “This is my kill, all mine. In a way, I’m glad the first two tries failed. Those I hired. Then I knew it was time to take things into my own hands.”

  “Two tries? What about that lovely bomb tucked in with my jockeys?”

  “That was me.” His nose twitched. He blinked. He swallowed. “I was a demo man with the Marines in Nam. I figured if a job was worth doing … you know the rest.”

  “And now it’s up close and personal.”

  He nodded, his smile a curdled thing. He was still in that crisp suit but he no longer looked stale at all. It had all been an act, a story he concocted. No Alice. Just a damn good sell job.

  He rubbed his nose with his free hand, then nodded past me. “Sit in that recliner, Hammer. Turn it facing the couch.”

  I did so.

  “We’re going to sit and talk. I want you to think about what’s coming, which is a .38 dum dum in the belly, so you can die just as slow as my brother.”

  He was backing slowly over to the couch, keeping the weapon poised to shoot.

  “Then you ought to use my .45,” I said easily, hands still shoulder high. “That’s what I use for maximum discomfort.”

  “You are a cold son of a bitch,” he said, and sat on the couch, facing me, sitting forward, the gun honed right at my belly. “You know, I really did read up on you in those detective magazines. I wanted to know all about the bastard who killed my brother.”

  “I told you those mags exaggerated things. I’m really a pussycat.”

  Perfectly on cue, the cat jumped on the couch and Roland looked at it with something approaching terror.

  And then he sneezed.

  I was on him right now and turned that .38 in his hand upward so that he was staring into the barrel and the barrel was staring right back, and when I pressed my finger over his and triggered the weapon, I gave him a grin to take with him as orange flame blossomed in his face and the inside of his skull ruined my curtains.

  They were old and dirty, anyway.

  The cat had disappeared at the gun shot, but I was grateful to it just the same. I’d fix her up with a bowl of milk when I caught my breath.

  I understood now that I’d been right: somebody had let the cat out. Not accidentally, but on purpose. Because Roland was allergic. Those bloodshot eyes weren’t for the imaginary Alice after all.

  I slumped into the recliner, and was reaching for the phone to call Pat when I heard the key work in the door. I glanced around at Velda rushing in, in her white terry bathrobe, .32 in hand. The sound of the gunshot had carried two floors, and she knew it wasn’t any backfire.

  “My God, Mike,” she said, coming to an abrupt stop beside me. “That’s our client!”

  “Yeah. It was all a bunch of bull. There is no Alice, just a guy after revenge … like what you said this would be about.”

  The big brown eyes were at their biggest. “Revenge? Revenge for what?”

  “For killing his brother.”

  “Who … ? Hell, Mike, who was his brother, anyway?”

  I shrugged.

  “I didn’t ask,” I said.

  It’s in the Book

  Cops always come in twos. One will knock on the door, but a pair will come in, a duet on hand in case you get rowdy. One uniform drives the squad car, the other answers the radio. One plainclothes dick asks the questions, the other takes the notes. Sometimes I think the only time they go solo is to the dentist. Or to bed. Or to kill themselves.

  I went out into the outer office where a client had been waiting for ten minutes for me to get off the phone. A woman had come in after him, but this six-footer was first and I nodded in his direction, but he was already on his feet, brown shoes, brown suit, brown eyes, brown hair. It was a relief his name wasn’t Brown.

  Velda, the raven-haired ex-cop who is both my secretary and partner, gave me a sideways look from her reception desk. Something tickled one corner of her pretty mouth and her dark eyes were amused.

  I said, “I can see you now, Mr. Hanson.”

  Mr. Hanson nodded back. There was no nervous smile, no anxiety in his manner at all. Generally, anybody needing a private investigator is not at ease. For a fraction of a second, like Velda, I let my eyes laugh at him—at the obviousness of who and what he was. Then I walked toward him and he extended a hand for me to shake, but I moved right past, going to the door and pulling it open.

  His partner was standing just to my left with his back to the wall, like a sentry, hands clasped behind his back. He was a little smaller than Hanson, wearing a different shade of brown, going wild with a tie of yellow and white stripes. Of course, he was younger, maybe thirty where his partner was pushing forty.

  “Why don’t you come in and join your buddy,” I said, and made an after-you gesture.

  This one didn’t smile either. He simply gave me a long look and, without nodding or saying a word, stepped inside and walked up and stood beside Hanson, like they were sharing the wrong end of a firing squad.

  After I closed the door, I saw Velda hiding a grin as I took the cops into my private office and got behind the desk.

  I waved at the clients’ chairs and invited them to sit down. But cops don’t like invitations and they stayed on their feet.

  Rocking back, I said, “You fellas aren’t flashing any warrants, meaning this isn’t a search party or an arrest. So have a seat.”

  Reluctantly, they did.

  Hanson’s partner, who looked like his feelings had been hurt, said, “How’d you make us?”

  I don’t know how to give enigmatic looks, so I said, “Come off it.”

  “We could be businessmen.”

  “Businessmen don’t wear guns on their hips, or if they do, they could afford a suit tailored for it. You’re too clean-cut to be hoods, but not enough to be feds. You’re either NYPD or visiting badges from Jersey.”

  This time they looked at each other and Hanson shrugged. Why fight it? They were cops with a job to do—this was nothing personal. He casually reached in a side suitcoat pocket and flicked a folded hundred-dollar bill onto the desk as if leaving a generous tip.

  “Ok
ay,” I said. “You have my attention.”

  “We want to hire you.”

  The way he hated saying it made it tough for me to keep a straight face. “Who is we?”

  “You said it before,” Hanson said. “NYPD.” He almost choked, getting that out.

  I pointed at the bill on the desktop. “Why the money?”

  “To keep this matter legal. To insure confidentiality. Under your licensing arrangement with the state of New York, you guarantee that by acceptance of payment.”

  “And if I reject the offer?”

  For a moment I thought both of them would smile, but they stifled the effort even if their eyes bore a hint of relief.

  Interesting—they wanted me to pass.

  So I picked up the bill, filled out a receipt, and handed it to Hanson. He looked at it carefully, folded it, and tucked it into his wallet.

  “What’s this all about?” I asked them.

  Hanson composed himself and folded his hands in his lap. They were big hands, but flexible. Hands that had been around. He said, “This was not the department’s idea.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  He took a few moments to look for the words. “I’m sure you know, Hammer, that there are people in government who have more clout than police chiefs or mayors.”

  I nodded. He didn’t have to spell it out. Hell, we both knew what he was getting at.

  There was the briefest pause and his eyes went to my phone and then around the room. Before he could ask, I said, “Yes, I’m wired to record client interviews … no, I didn’t hit the switch. You’re fine.”

  But they glanced at each other nervously just the same.

  I said, “If you’re that worried, we can take it outside … onto the street, where we can talk.”

  Hanson nodded, already getting up. “Let’s do it that way then.”

  The three of us went into the outer office. I paused to speak to our waiting client, explaining that Velda, as the firm’s other investigator, would take her information, but that on my return I’d give the matter my full attention. That satisfied the prospective client.

  But as for Velda, a vision in a white blouse and black skirt, any amusement was gone from her eyes now that she saw I was heading out with this pair of obvious coppers.