Kill Me, Darling Read online

  I tossed the ex-captain over, too, keeping his gun.

  At the back and on either side of the boat, the waters were churning and splashing and frothing and foaming as the ivory highlights on the black ocean turned scarlet. Two of them fought over a big chunk of somebody, then one pulled away with it and made a submarine dive. Bits and pieces of the two men were floating and now and then a black-eyed white-faced jagged-toothed head would emerge to snap it up like a dog for a biscuit, then disappear under the choppy blackness.

  Miami Beach was just a vague twinkling of lights, and I was no sailor. But the sharks were bumping up against the hull, wanting more biscuits, and I could handle a motorboat, so I figured I could make my way home.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  My .45 was on the floor just inside the hotel-room door, where the invitation by chloroform vapor had made me drop it. I picked the gun up, holstered it out of habit, thinking about collecting my things and checking out of the Raleigh, but right now whoever had commissioned that pleasure cruise figured I wasn’t a problem anymore.

  So for the time being, this room was safe. Or so, in my frazzled state of mind, I convinced myself.

  It was almost one-thirty in the morning and Mrs. Hammer’s little boy had had a busy day. The hotel bed was a temptress beckoning me, and for the first time since I’d kicked the stuff the idea of a drink before beddy-bye sounded damn good to me. I sat on the edge of the bed and picked up the nightstand phone with room service in mind and then gave the hotel operator Alberto Bonetti’s number at the Betsy instead.

  “This had better be important, Mr. Hammer,” came a growl worthy of a caged grizzly poked with a stick.

  “Somebody just tried to kill me. Went to great lengths to try in fact. I thought you might like to know. Unless you already did.”

  “What the hell—”

  “Gather up your pals in the Kefauver Fan Club and meet me in the bar at the Betsy just after closing. Civella, Meyers, De Luca, the whole lovely bunch. I want everybody there or you can find somebody else to take care of your Nolly Quinn problem.”

  “Damnit, man, you expect me to round up important men like that in the middle of the night to—”

  “To get a timely report from the private eye they hired, yeah. You’re my clients, after all. We aim to please at Michael Hammer Investigations. Twenty-four-hour service.”

  “Wait a minute, Hammer, wait just one damn—”

  “No.” I put steel in it. “You make this happen, Alberto. I want the meet at that bar, so we’re in a public place where it’s harder to take me out. But it’ll be after closing, so you’ll be protected from prying eyes. Bring your bodyguards. In fact, I insist on that. Because I will be armed and not about to stand for a frisk or give up my piece. Get that?”

  Nothing.

  “Get that?”

  The gruff voice was very soft, but I heard it all right: “We’ll be there.”

  I hung up, let out a sigh on loan from Atlas himself, and went into the bathroom to throw water on my face. When I looked up, my reflection in the mirror looked like some crazy street bum—ragged beard stubble, bloodshot eyes, hair like dead grass. I shed my clothes where I stood, showered hot then cold, shaved, dropped some Murine in my eyes, and put on my remaining clean suit.

  And the same old gun in its shoulder harness.

  Now I looked like a million bucks. Or anyway one hundred grand. Just about right for a meeting I’d called of some of the top Mafia bosses in America.

  I walked over. It was only a few blocks to the Betsy, and the Beach nightlife was thinned way out, with the two a.m. last call coming up soon. Couples were stumbling toward their hotels or into cabs, smiling, laughing, cuddling, the guys hoping the gals’d had enough to drink and the gals hoping the guys hadn’t had too much. The white and pink and green hotels with their neon accents formed a surreal canyon for me to stroll through, while keeping an eye out for an ambush. That ocean air smelled just fine, and the coolness with a touch of balmy breeze whispering through the palms made South Miami Beach seem like a very pleasant place to visit.

  I’d have to do that some time.

  The lobby of the Betsy couldn’t have looked emptier if tumbleweed were blowing through. There was a guy in a blazer at the check-in desk and that was all. Again I was reminded of some foreign outpost thanks to the old-time furnishings, slowly whirring ceiling fans, and droopy potted palms.

  The glass-and-wooden doors to the bar were shut and decorated with a hanging CLOSED sign. When I tried the doors, they were locked. I didn’t have to knock before a beetle-browed bodyguard peered out at me and opened up. I went into the dim, dark wood-paneled chamber, a shallow but wide space that had its own slowly churning ceiling fan.

  Behind his counter, the veteran white-jacketed, black-tied bartender looked understandably anxious. He was doing his clean-up, washing glasses, hovering at mid-bar, trying to keep as much distance as possible between him and the two factions of after-hours customers at either end of his domain.

  At right seated at three tables were two bodyguards each. They were big guys in suits that had been hurriedly applied to their considerable frames, and they all needed shaves as much as I had before my impromptu spruce-up. The comical thing was that everybody was playing cards, but each little table had its own separate two-player game going. They all had bottles of Coke or 7-Up in front of them and glasses with ice. All were smoking cigarettes.

  At left, in the big tufted brown-leather corner booth, the four gangland bosses sat. Hail, hail, the gang was all here. They had drinks before them but no cigarettes going and no cigars either. The entire group sat there glowering like disappointed relatives at the reading of a will. On one end was De Luca, wiry and fox-faced; then Civella with his white Caesar haircut next to Bonetti with the bushy black eyebrows and dockworker hands; and on the far end sat Meyers with his gray hair and smart-monkey features. With the exception of Bonetti, they were in the same casual shuffleboard-type attire as before.

  But what Bonetti wore kind of tickled me—since he was staying in this hotel, he had just thrown on a blue silk dressing robe with a fancy AB monogram. I couldn’t see under the booth’s table to tell, but my money was on slippers in his case, and of course sandals and socks for Meyers.

  I hadn’t headed over there yet when the bartender said nervously, “Get you something, sir?”

  “Yeah. A beer.”

  I smiled over at my invited guests, nodding to them, getting nothing back. The bartender gave me a pilsner of beer and I drank it down in three gulps.

  I shoved the empty glass away, tossed a five-spot his way and said, “Blow.”

  He nodded, scurried out from behind the bar and went out.

  I went over to the booth and pulled up a chair and sat. “My apologies for interrupting everybody’s beauty sleep, including my own. But we’re nearing the end of our business arrangement, gentlemen, and this one last meeting is called for.”

  “It damn well better be,” De Luca snapped. The petulance of that would have been comical if this weren’t a guy who could have you killed with a phone call.

  Or maybe in my case, try to have you killed.…

  A scowling Bonetti said, “There better be a goddamn good reason, Hammer, why this couldn’t wait till morning.”

  I remembered when I used to be Mr. Hammer.

  “I wanted to make sure I was still alive,” I said. “Tough calling a meeting when you’re dead.”

  Civella said, “Might be a good thing for you to keep in mind.”

  But a frowning Meyers cocked his head and said, “Why do you say that, Hammer? Is Nolly Quinn trying to have you killed?”

  I shrugged. “I think so. He’s probably part of what happened to me tonight. Which was two heavies chloroforming me and taking me for a boat ride to be followed by a midnight swim. The intention was to feed me to the sharks. Turns out sharks aren’t particular who gets fed to them.”

  Even this hardened group reacted to that kind of thing. Eyes wide
ned, looks were exchanged, with a mutual mixture of surprise and suspicion that was just what I was after.

  “Gentlemen, it’s fair to say that you are an unusual consortium. You are not in business together. You are in the same line of business, and sometimes you cooperate, but also you are competitors of sorts. Only here in Miami it’s different. Miami is neutral territory. You’ve come together here out of mutual self-interest, both as part-time local residents and businessmen with shared concerns.”

  De Luca spat, “We know who and what we are.”

  And so did I.

  I said, “I know you do, Mr. De Luca. I only mean to point out that you are an association of businessmen, not men in business together. Accurately put?”

  Bonetti said, “Get at what you’re getting at.”

  “As affiliated businessmen, and home owners… part-time citizens here in Greater Miami… you have agreed among yourselves to obey certain rules. One of them, the crucial one I’d say, is that you are limiting your business activities in the area to largely legitimate ones. Still with me, fellas?”

  Eyes narrowing under the slashes of black, Bonetti said, “Hammer…”

  “So, like I say, you make certain agreements among yourselves. Like tabling for now the lucrative possibilities of using Miami and Miami Beach as conduits for certain kinds of contraband.”

  Now everybody sat up a little straighter. Except for one person. And that person not reacting was a tell that, as Pat Chambers would say, was suggestive.

  “Someone,” I said, “is violating that agreement.”

  De Luca blurted, “Nolly Quinn! Jesus! We been over this! Why the goddamn hell do you think we—”

  “Quiet, Santo,” Bonetti said. Soft but forceful. “Let Hammer finish…”

  “Maybe we should finish Hammer…”

  “Santo,” Bonetti said with a hint of warning. Then he looked at me again. “Mr. Hammer?”

  I was “mister” again.

  “Nolly Quinn isn’t a part of your association,” I said. “But I doubt he’d go up against you… unless one or more of you encouraged him to do so. My police sources back east tell me that Quinn was in New York not long ago, looking for a partner among the five Mafia families. I think he found one. I think that partner, that silent partner, is sitting right here with us.”

  The simian resemblance emphasized by his wrinkling frown, Meyer demanded, “Damnit, Hammer, who? And what proof do you have?”

  I made a casual, open-handed gesture. “First let’s rule some people out. Chicago. Detroit.”

  De Luca and Civella visibly relaxed.

  I went on: “After all, New York is the port of call for this kind of product. And we already know that Quinn is in league with one of the five families… two of which are represented here at this table.”

  De Luca and Civella turned to Bonetti and Meyers.

  Meyers said, “And three aren’t here at all!”

  Bonetti said, “You pointing the finger at two of us or one, Hammer?”

  The “mister” had slipped away again.

  “One,” I said. “And I wasn’t absolutely sure which one of you it was…”

  My eyes went from Bonetti to Meyers and back again. Neither man betrayed a thing. They were old hands at the stone-faced Mafia look.

  “…until I walked in here tonight.”

  Bonetti raised one black caterpillar of an eyebrow. “So you know, then? Who it is?”

  “I’ll know in a few moments. The two muscle-bound goons who came calling on me tonight were here the other day, when we had our previous business meeting. Here in the bar, I mean, where you fellas had banished your boys as a show of good faith when you called me in to hire me. Each of you brought along two bodyguards. Pretty standard. But there are only six with us tonight. Two are missing. The two who are being digested in the bellies of sharks right now. So tell me, Mr. Bonetti. Whose bodyguards are missing?”

  The eyes of Santo De Luca, Carlo Civella and Alberto Bonetti swung like a hangman’s rope toward Mandy Meyers. He sat there impassively.

  “So my boys aren’t with me tonight,” Meyers said with a dismissive shrug. “So what?”

  To the rest I said, “One creep had one of those flattop haircuts and a baby face. The other had darker hair and a pushed-in schnoz.”

  Those eyes were still on Meyers.

  I said, “I don’t feel like any great detective here, Mandy. I mean, you’re the obvious choice. You’re the guy who took Quinn under his wing, and brought him into the fold. You hid in plain sight by going along with the plan to hire me to take Nolly down. But in the meantime you tried to have me killed—twice. First at the Sea Breeze Motel, where two very nice civilians got needlessly slaughtered, and tonight with my one-way ocean voyage. And tell me, Mandy—were Nolly’s boys after that stripper at the Five O’Clock tonight, or was it me who was meant for those slugs? Or maybe was it a two-for-one sale that didn’t quite make it?”

  Meyers said nothing. He seemed calm enough, but the faintest tremor was starting.

  I said to the others, though my eyes remained on the little financial wizard, “I am giving you gentlemen twenty-four hours to take care of this problem, in-house. If you don’t, I’m going to find Meyers here and kill everything and everybody he loves, starting with that goddamn Pomeranian, and then kill him, too, to put him out of his misery.”

  Looking unsettled but with his dark eyes still cold, Meyers said, “Big talk.”

  I grinned at him. “You’re right, Mandy. You caught me. I was just bluffing.” I shut off the grin. “I don’t kill canines. I stick to the human species.”

  He was full-out trembling now, working hard at keeping his chin up. Coming apart at the seams. How many people had this little man casually sent to their deaths? Feeling nothing more than he would ordering a meal?

  To the rest of the assembled group I said, “Before you give Mandy here his spanking, keep in mind there’s a second silent partner. Somebody from the straight world, most likely. Maybe make Mandy spill that guy’s identity, first.”

  Everybody just looked at me. I seemed to have made an impression on them, the kind I usually only make when my .45 is out.

  Then, very calmly, Bonetti said, “That’s all the time we need from you, Mr. Hammer. Thank you for the information, and your consideration.”

  Meyers, wrapping himself in his remaining shreds of dignity, slipped out of the booth and walked quietly if not steadily out.

  I said to them, “I’ll be happy to handle this. No charge.”

  All three of them shook their heads. It was so much in unison that I almost laughed. See evil, hear evil, speak evil. Only the most evil monkey had already exited.

  “We’ll take care of it,” Bonetti said, “thanks.”

  “Okay then,” I said, smiling and nodding at them. “I’ll be wrapping up here over the next day or so. Let’s not keep in touch.”

  And I got the hell out, glad to be walking in cool night air cut by a warm breeze, hoping they hadn’t noticed my hands shaking. I told myself it was booze withdrawal, but it wasn’t that at all.

  * * *

  Loosening my tie, I had my coat off and hung in the hotel room closet, the sling with the .45 draped on a chair arm. I was still holding exhaustion at bay—meeting with those top hoods required a high that was hanging on. But I could let go now. Could finally let go. The bed was eyeing me seductively when the knock came.

  Several knocks, small, hard, insistent.

  Frowning, I went over and got the .45 and moved to the peephole. At first I almost didn’t recognize her, though I’d seen her just this afternoon, a lifetime ago.

  Erin.

  I groaned to myself. Normally a dish turning up on my doorstep was a welcome sight, but sexual hijinks right now was the last thing on my mind.

  But even through the distortion of the peephole, the fashion-model waif appeared anxious and agitated. My .45 in hand, barrel up, I cracked the door, looking over the night latch.

  “What
is it, kid?”

  She was shaking like a junkie in need of a fix. She was still in the lime-green sundress with the yellow scarf at her throat, but it didn’t look fresh any more, though her make-up and that wealth of red hair remained near perfect. The giveaway was her eyes, wet and worried and red, her mascara in danger of running.

  “Mike,” she said breathlessly, “your Velda’s in trouble.”

  I quickly unlatched and opened the door, letting her in, giving the hall a fast check. Nobody. I shut the door behind me and threw the night latch back in place.

  With my free hand I clutched her arm. “Trouble how?”

  “That hurts!”

  I let go. I’d frightened her. She looked like a wounded bird, hugging herself with thin arms.

  “Take it easy,” I said softly, though fear and hate were pumping through me like high-octane gas in a fuel-injected engine. “Let’s just… sit down, okay?”

  With my free hand gently on her arm now, the .45 in my other hand pointing downward, I guided her to that modernistic couch where not long ago Alberto Bonetti had sat. I made a show of going over and putting the gun in its holster on the chair and coming back to sit next to her.

  “How is Velda in trouble?”

  “It’s Nolly.” She was shaking her head, the long-lashed almond-shaped eyes gazing past me into something terrible. “I think somebody told him, that your girl’s some kind of… undercover agent, for the police? He’s been at her for hours, trying to make her admit it, and tell him what she knows and what she’s told and who she’s told it to…”

  “At her how?” I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake it out of her, but that wouldn’t do any good. “At her how, Erin?”

  I didn’t need to take hold of her because terror already had. “He was… he’s torturing her, Mike.”

  The world turned red. My head throbbed, the chloroform headache back in full force, and music was pounding in my brain, no tune, just drums hammering in relentless rhythms and instruments screeching in crazy non-melodies.

  “Mike… Mike…”

  I swallowed, shook it off. I didn’t grab her, but my hands were fists, shaking at my sides, every cord in my neck standing out in bas relief.