[Mike Hammer 03] - Vengeance Is Mine Page 15

  We spoke of the little things, forgetting all the unpleasantness of the past few days. We spoke of things and thought of things we didn’t speak of, knowing it was there whenever we were ready. We ate, but the taste of the food was lost to me when I’d look at her in that sweeping gown that laughed and danced in the rising and falling of the lights. The cuffs of her sleeves were huge things that rose halfway to her elbows, leaving only her hands visible. Beautiful large hands that were eloquent in movement.

  There was a cocktail instead of coffee, a toast to the night ahead, then she rose, and with her arm in mine, the short wisps of her hair brushing my face, took me into the library.

  Cigarettes were there, the bar set was pulled out and ice frosted a crystal bowl. I put my crumpled pack of Luckies alongside the silver cigarette box to remind me that I was still a mortal, took one and lit it from the lighter she held out to me.

  “Like it, Mike?”

  “Wonderful.”

  “It was special, you know. I’ve been home every minute since I saw you last, waiting for you to come back.”

  She sat next to me on the couch and leaned back, her head resting on the cushion. Her eyes were beginning to invite me now. “I’ve been busy, goddess. Things have been happening.”

  “Things?”

  “Business.”

  One of her fingers touched the bruise on the side of my jaw. “How’d you get that, Mike?”

  “Business.”

  She started to laugh, then saw the seriousness in my face. “But how ...”

  “It makes nasty conversation, Juno. Some other time I’ll tell you about it.”

  “All right, Mike.” She put her cigarette down on the table and grabbed my hand. “Dance with me, Mike?” She made my name sound like it was something special.

  Her body was warm and supple, the music alive with rhythm, and together we threw a whirling pattern of shadows that swayed and swung with every subtle note. She stood back from me, just far enough so we could look at each other and read things into every expression. I could only stand it so long and I tried to pull her closer, but she laughed a little song and twisted in a graceful pirouette that sent the gown out and up around her legs.

  The music stopped then, ending on a low note that was the cue to a slow waltz. Juno floated back into my arms and I shook my head. It had been enough .. too much. The suggestion she had put into the dance left me shaking from head to foot, a sensation born of something entirely new, something I had never felt. Not the primitive animal reflex I was used to, not the passion that made you want to squeeze or bite or demand what you want and get it even if you had to fight for it. It made me mad because I didn’t know what it was and I didn’t like it, this custom of the gods.

  So I shook my head again, harder this time. I grabbed her by the arm and heard her laugh again because she knew what was going on inside me and wanted it that way.

  “Quit it, Juno. Damn it, quit fooling around. You make me think I want you and I lose sight of everything else. Cut it out.”

  “No.” She drew the word out. Her eyes were half closed. “It’s me that wants you, Mike. I’ll do what I can to get you. I won’t stop. There’s never been anyone else like you.”

  “Later.”

  “Now.”

  It might have been now, but the light caught her hair again. Yellow candlelight that changed its color to the gold I hated. I didn’t wait to have it happen to me. I shoved her on the couch and reached for the decanter in the bar set. She lay there languidly, waiting for me to come to her and I fought it and fought it until my mind was my own again and I could laugh a little bit myself.

  She saw it happen and smiled gently. “You’re even better than I thought,” she said. “You’re a man with the instincts of some jungle animal. It has to be when you say so, doesn’t it?”

  I threw the drink down fast. “Not before,” I told her.

  “I like that about you too, Mike.”

  “So do I. It keeps me out of trouble.” When I filled the glass I balanced it in my hand and sat on the arm of the couch facing her. “Do you know much about me, Juno?”

  “A little. I’ve been hearing things.” She picked one of her long cigarettes out of the box and lit it. Smoke streamed up lazily from her mouth. “Why?”

  “I’ll tell you why I’m like I am. I’m a detective. In spirit only, now, but I used to have a ticket and a gun. They took it away because I was with Chester Wheeler when he used my gun to commit suicide. That was wrong because Chester Wheeler was murdered. A guy named Rainey was murdered too. Two killings and a lot of scared people. The one you know as Clyde is a former punk named Dinky Williams and he’s gotten to be so big nobody can lay a finger on him, so big he can dictate to the dictators.

  “That isn’t the end of it, either. Somebody wants me out of the way so badly they made a try on the street and again in my apartment. In between they tried to lay Rainey’s killing at my feet so I’d get picked up for it. All that ... because one guy named Chester Wheeler was found dead in a hotel room. Pretty, isn’t it?”

  It was too much for her to understand at once. She bit her thumbnail and a frown crept across her face. “Mike...”

  “I know it’s complicated,” I said. “Murder generally is complicated. It’s so damn complicated that I’m the only one looking for a murderer. All the others are content to let it rest as suicide ... except Rainey, of course. That job was a dilly.”

  “That’s awful, Mike! I never realized ...”

  “It isn’t over yet. I have a couple of ideas sticking pins in my brain right now. Some of the pieces are trying to fit together, trying hard. I’ve been up too long and been through too much to think straight. I thought that I might relax if I came up here to see you.” I grinned at her. “You weren’t any help at all. You’ll probably even spoil my dreams.”

  “I hope I do,” she said impishly.

  “I’m going someplace and sleep it off,” I said. “I’m going to let the clock go all the way around, then maybe once more before I stir out of my sack. Then I’m going to put all the pieces together and find me a killer. The bastard is strong ... strong enough to twist a gun around in Wheeler’s hand and make him blow his brains out. He’s strong enough to take me in my own joint and nearly finish it for me. The next time will be different. I’ll be ready and I’ll shoke the son-of-a-bitch to death.”

  “Will you come back when it’s over, Mike?”

  I put on my hat and looked down at her. She looked so damn desirable and agreeable I wanted to stay. I said, “I’ll be back, Juno. You can dance for me again ... all by yourself. I’ll sit down and watch you dance and you can show me how you have fun on Olympus. I’m getting a little tired of being a mortal.”

  “I’ll dance for you, Mike. I’ll show you things you never saw before. You’ll like Olympus. It’s different up there and there’s nothing like it on this earth. We’ll have a mountaintop all to ourselves and I’ll make you want to stay there forever.”

  “It’d take a good woman to make me stay anywhere very long.”

  Her tongue flicked out and left her lips glistening wetly, reflecting the desire in her eyes. Her body seemed to move, squirm, so the sheen of the housecoat threw back the lithe contours of her body, vivid in detail. “I could,” she said.

  She was asking me now. Demanding that I come to her for even a moment and rip that damn robe right off her back and see what it was that went to make up the flesh of a goddess. For one second my face must have changed and she thought I was going to do it, because her eyes went wide and I saw her shoulders twitch and this time there was woman-fear behind the desire and she was a mortal for an instant, a female crouching away from the male. But that wasn’t what made me stop. My face went the way it did because there was something else again I couldn’t understand and it snaked up my back and my hands started to jerk unconsciously with it.

  I picked up my butts and winked good night. The look she sent me made my spine crawl again. I walked out and fou
nd my car half buried in a drift and drove back to the street of lights where I parked and checked into a hotel for a long winter’s nap.

  Chapter 10

  I SLEPT THE SLEEP of the dead, but the dead weren’t disturbed by dreams of the living. I slept and I talked, hearing my own voice in the stillness. The voice asked questions, demanded answers that couldn’t be given and turned into a spasm of rage. Faces came to me, drifting by in a ghostly procession, laughing with all the fury the dead could command, bringing with their laughter that weird, crazy music that beat and beat and beat, trying to drive my senses to the furthermost part of my brain from which they could never return. My voice shouted for it to stop and was drowned in the sea of laughter. Always those faces. Always that one face with the golden hair, hair so intensely brilliant it was almost white. The voice I tried to scream with was only a hoarse, muted whisper saying, “Charlotte, Charlotte ... I’ll kill you again if I have to! I’ll kill you again, Charlotte!” And the music increased in tempo and volume, pounding and beating and vibrating with such insistence that I began to fall before it. The face with the gold hair laughed anew and urged the music on. Then there was another face, one with hair a raven-black, darker than the darkness of the pit. A face with clean beauty and a strength to face even the dead. It challenged the golden hair and the music, commanding it to stop, to disappear forever. And it did. I heard my voice again saying over and over, “Velda, thank God! Velda, Velda, Velda.”

  I awoke and the room was still. My watch had stopped and no light filtered in under the shade. When I looked out the sky was black, pinpointed with the lights of the stars that reflected themselves from the snow-covered street below.

  I picked up the phone and the desk answered. I said, “This is Hammer in 541. What time is it?”

  The clerk paused, then answered, “Five minutes to nine, sir.”

  I said thanks and hung up. The clock had come mighty close to going around twice at that. It didn’t take me more than ten minutes to get dressed and checked out. In the restaurant that adjoined the hotel I ate like I was famished, took time for a slow smoke and called Velda. My hand trembled while I waited for her to answer.

  I said, “Hello, honey, it’s Mike.”

  “Oh ... Mike, where have you been? I’ve been frantic.”

  “You can relax, girl. I’ve been asleep. I checked into a hotel and told them not to disturb me until I woke up. What happened with you and Clyde? Did you learn anything?”

  She choked back a sob and my hand tightened around the receiver. Clyde was dying right then. “Mike ...”

  “Go on, Velda.” I didn’t want to hear it but I had to.

  “He almost ... did.”

  I let the phone go and breathed easier. Clyde had a few minutes left to live. “Tell me,” I said.

  “He wants me in the worst way, Mike. I—I played a game with him and I was almost sorry for it. If I hadn’t gotten him too drunk ... he would have ... but I made him wait. He got drunk and he told me ... bragged to me about his position in life. He said he could run the city and he meant it. He said things that were meant to impress me and I acted impressed. Mike ... he’s blackmailing some of the biggest men in town. It’s all got to do with the Bowery Inn.”

  “Do you know what it is?”

  “Not yet, Mike. He thinks ... I’m a perfect partner for him. He said he’d tell me all about it if ... if I ... oh, Mike, what shall I do? What shall I do? I hate that man ... and I don’t know what to do!”

  “The lousy bastard!”

  “Mike ... he gave me a key to his apartment. I’m going up there tonight. He’s going to tell me about it then ... and make arrangements to take me in with him. He wants me, Mike.”

  A rat might have been gnawing at my intestines. “Shut up! Damn it, you aren’t going to do anything!”

  I heard her sob again and I wanted to rip the phone right off the wall. I could barely hear her with the pounding of the blood in my head. “I have to go, Mike. We’ll know for sure then.”

  “No!”

  “Mike ... please don’t try to stop me. It isn’t nearly as ... serious as what you’ve done. I’m not getting shot at ... I’m not giving my life. I’m trying to give what I can, just like you ... because it’s important. I’m going to his apartment at midnight and then we’ll know, Mike. It won’t take long after that.”

  She didn’t hear me shout into the phone because she had hung up. There was no stopping her. She knew I might try to, and would be gone before I could reach her.

  Midnight. Three hours. That’s all the time I had.

  It wasn’t so funny any more.

  I felt in my pocket for another nickel and dialed Pat’s number. He wasn’t home so I tried the office and got him. I told him it was me without giving my name and he cut me off with a curt hello and said he’d be in the usual bar in ten minutes if I wanted to see him. The receiver clicked in my ear as he hung up. I stood there and looked at the phone stupidly.

  The usual bar was a little place downtown where I had met him several times in the past and I went there now. I double-parked and slid out in front of the place to look in the windows, then I heard, “Mike ... Mike!”

  I turned around and Pat was waving me into my car and I ran back and got in under the wheel. “What the hell’s going on with you, Pat?”

  “Keep quiet and get away from here. I think there’s been an ear on my phone and I may have been followed.”

  “The D.A.’s boys?”

  “Yeah, and they’re within their rights. I stopped being a cop when I lied for you. I deserve any kind of an investigation they want to give me.”

  “But why all the secrecy?”

  Pat looked at me quickly, then away. “You’re wanted for murder. There’s a warrant out for your arrest. The D.A. has found himself another witness to replace the couple he lost.”

  “Who?”

  “A local character from Glenwood. He picked you out of the picture file and definitely established that you were there that night. He sells tickets at the arena as a sideline.”

  “Which puts you in a rosy red light,” I said.

  Pat muttered, “Yeah. I must look great.”

  We drove on around the block and on to Broadway. “Where to?” I asked.

  “Over to the Brooklyn Bridge. A girl pulled the Dutch act and I have to check it myself. Orders from the D.A. through higher headquarters. He’s trying to make my life miserable by pulling me out on everything that has a morgue tag attached to it. The crumb hopes I slip up somewhere and when I do I’ve had it. Maybe I’ve had it already. He’s checked my movements the night I was supposed to have been with you and is getting ready to pull out the stops.”

  “Maybe we’ll be cellmates,” I said.

  “Ah, pipe down.”

  “Or you can work in my grocery store ... while I’m serving time, that is.”

  “I said, shut up. What’ve you got to be cheerful about?”

  My teeth were clamped together, but I could still grin. “Plenty, kid. I got plenty to be cheerful about. Soon a killer will be killed. I can feel it coming.”

  Pat sat there staring straight ahead. He sat that way until we reached the cutoff under the bridge and pulled over to the curb. There was a squad car and an ambulance at the wharf side and another squad car pulling up when Pat got out. He told me to sit in the car and stay there until he got out. I promised him I’d be a good boy and watched him cross the street.

  He took too long. I began to fidget with the wheel and chain-smoked through my pack of butts. When I was on the last one I got out myself and headed toward the saloon on the corner. It was a hell of a dive, typically waterfront and reeking with all the assorted odors you could think of. I put a quarter in the cigarette machine, grabbed my fresh deck and ordered a beer at the bar. Two guys came in and started talking about the suicide across the street.

  One was on the subject of her legs and the other took it up. Then they started on the other parts of her anatomy until the bartende
r said, “Jeez, cut it out, will ya! Like a couple ghouls ya sound. Can the crap.”

  The guy who liked the legs fought for his rights supported by the other one and the bartender threw them both out and put their change in his pockets. He turned to me and said, “Ever see anythin’ like that? Jeez, the dame’s dead, what do they want of her now? What ghoulsl”

  I nodded agreement and finished my beer. Every two minutes I’d check my watch and find it two minutes later and start cursing a slimy little bastard named Clyde.

  Then the beer would taste flat.

  I took it as long as I could and got the hell out of the saloon and crossed the street to see what was taking Pat so long. There was a handful of people grouped around the body and the ambulance was gone. The car from the morgue had taken its place. Pat was bending over the body looking for identification without any success and had the light flashed on her face.

  He handed one of the cops a note he fished out of her pocket and the cop scowled. He read, “He left me.” He scowled some more and Pat looked up at him. “That’s all, Captain. No signature, no name. That’s all it says.”

  Pat scowled too and I looked at her face again.

  The boys from the morgue wagon moved in and hoisted the body into a basket. Pat told them to put it in the unidentified file until they found out who she was.

  I had a last look at her face.

  When the wagon pulled away the crowd started to break up and I wandered off into the shadows that lined the street. The face, the face. Pale white to the point of transparency, eyes closed and lips slightly parted. I stood there leaning up against a plank wall staring at the night, hearing the cars and the trolley rattle across the bridge, hearing the cacophony of noises that go to make up the voice of the city.