The Mike Hammer Collection Read online

  “But I would, Charlotte. And later we can take our time to worm out the truth without the interference of a court trial. We won’t have to worry about a smart lawyer cracking our chains of circumstance and making them look foolish to a jury. We will know the answer as we do the problem, but the solution will take time. A trial wouldn’t give us that time.

  “No, Charlotte, I’m the jury now, and the judge, and I have a promise to keep. Beautiful as you are, as much as I almost loved you, I sentence you to death.”

  (Her thumbs hooked in the fragile silk of the panties and pulled them down. She stepped out of them as delicately as one coming from a bathtub. She was completely naked now. A suntanned goddess giving herself to her lover. With arms outstretched she walked toward me. Lightly, her tongue ran over her lips, making them glisten with passion. The smell of her was like an exhilarating perfume. Slowly, a sigh escaped her, making the hemispheres of her breasts quiver. She leaned forward to kiss me, her arms going out to encircle my neck.)

  The roar of the .45 shook the room. Charlotte staggered back a step. Her eyes were a symphony of incredulity, an unbelieving witness to truth. Slowly, she looked down at the ugly swelling in her naked belly where the bullet went in. A thin trickle of blood welled out.

  I stood up in front of her and shoved the gun into my pocket. I turned and looked at the rubber plant behind me. There on the table was the gun, with the safety catch off and the silencer still attached. Those loving arms would have reached it nicely. A face that was waiting to be kissed was really waiting to be splattered with blood when she blew my head off. My blood. When I heard her fall I turned around. Her eyes had pain in them now, the pain preceding death. Pain and unbelief.

  “How c-could you?” she gasped.

  I only had a moment before talking to a corpse, but I got it in.

  “It was easy,” I said.

  MY GUN IS QUICK

  To all my friends

  past, present and future

  CHAPTER 1

  When you sit at home comfortably folded up in a chair beside a fire, have you ever thought what goes on outside there? Probably not. You pick up a book and read about things and stuff, getting a vicarious kick from people and events that never happened. You’re doing it now, getting ready to fill in a normal life with the details of someone else’s experiences. Fun, isn’t it? You read about life on the outside thinking of how maybe you’d like it to happen to you, or at least how you’d like to watch it. Even the old Romans did it, spiced their life with action when they sat in the Coliseum and watched wild animals rip a bunch of humans apart, reveling in the sight of blood and terror. They screamed for joy and slapped each other on the back when murderous claws tore into the live flesh of slaves and cheered when the kill was made. Oh, it’s great to watch, all right. Life through a keyhole. But day after day goes by and nothing like that ever happens to you so you think that it’s all in books and not in reality at all and that’s that. Still good reading, though. Tomorrow night you’ll find another book, forgetting what was in the last and live some more in your imagination. But remember this: there are things happening out there. They go on every day and night making Roman holidays look like school picnics. They go on right under your very nose and you never know about them. Oh yes, you can find them all right. All you have to do is look for them. But I wouldn’t if I were you because you won’t like what you’ll find. Then again, I’m not you and looking for those things is my job. They aren’t nice things to see because they show people up for what they are. There isn’t a Coliseum any more, but the city is a bigger bowl, and it seats more people. The razor-sharp claws aren’t those of wild animals but man’s can be just as sharp and twice as vicious. You have to be quick, and you have to be able, or you become one of the devoured, and if you can kill first, no matter how and no matter who, you can live and return to the comfortable chair and the comfortable fire. But you have to be quick. And able. Or you’ll be dead.

  At ten minutes after twelve I tied a knot in my case and delivered Herman Gable’s lost manuscript to his apartment. To me, it was nothing more than a sheaf of yellow papers covered with barely legible tracings, but to my client it was worth twenty-five hundred bucks. The old fool had wrapped it up with some old newspapers and sent it down the dumbwaiter with the garbage. He sure was happy to get it back. It took three days to run it down and practically snatch the stuff out of the city incinerator, but when I fingered the package of nice, crisp fifties he handed me I figured it was worth going without all that sleep.

  I made him out a receipt and took the elevator downstairs to my heap. As far as I was concerned, that dough would live a peaceful life until I had a good, long nap. After that, maybe, I’d cut loose a little bit. At that hour of the night traffic was light. I cut across town, then headed north to my own private cave in the massive cliff I called home.

  But the first time I hit a red light I fell asleep across the wheel and woke up with a dozen horns blasting in my ears. A couple of cars banged bumpers backing up so they could swing around me and I was too damned pooped even to swear back at some of the stuff they called me. The hell with ’em. I pulled the jalopy over to the curb and chilled the engine. Right up the street under the el was an all-night hash joint, and what I needed was a couple mugs of good black java to bring me around.

  I don’t know how the place got by the health inspectors, because it stunk. There were two bums down at one end of the counter taking their time about finishing a ten-cent bowl of soup; making the most out of the free crackers and catsup in front of them. Halfway down a drunk concentrated between his plate of eggs and hanging on to the stool to keep from falling off the world. Evidently he was down to his last buck, for all his pockets had been turned inside out to locate the lone bill that was putting a roof on his load.

  Until I sat down and looked in the mirror behind the shelves of pie segments, I didn’t notice the fluff sitting off to one side at a table. She had red hair that didn’t come out of a bottle, and looked pretty enough from where I was sitting.

  The counterman came up just then and asked, “What’ll it be?” He had a voice like a frog.

  “Coffee. Black.”

  The fluff noticed me then. She looked up, smiled, tucked her nail tools in a peeling plastic handbag and hipped it in my direction. When she sat down on the stool next to me she nodded toward the counterman and said, “Shorty’s got a heart of steel, mister. Won’t even trust me for a cup of joe until I get a job. Care to finance me to a few vitamins?”

  I was too tired to argue the point. “Make it two, feller.” He grabbed another cup disgustedly and filled it, then set the two down on the counter, slopping half of it across the wash-worn linoleum top.

  “Listen, Red,” he croaked, “quit using this joint fer an office. First thing I got the cops on my tail. That’s all I need.”

  “Be good and toddle off, Shorty. All I want from the gentleman is a cup of coffee. He looks much too tired to play any games tonight.”

  “Yeah, scram, Shorty,” I put in. He gave me a nasty look, but since I was as ugly as he was and twice as big, he shuffled off to keep count over the cracker bowl in front of the bums. Then I looked at the redhead.

  She wasn’t very pretty after all. She had been once, but there are those things that happen under the skin and are reflected in the eyes and set of the mouth that take all the beauty out of a woman’s face. Yeah, at one time she must have been almost beautiful. That wasn’t too long ago, either. Her clothes were last year’s old look and a little too tight. They showed a lot of leg and a lot of chest; nice white flesh still firm and young, but her face was old with knowledge that never came out of books. I watched her from the corner of my eye when she lifted her cup of coffee. She had delicate hands, long fingers tipped with deep-toned nails perfectly kept. It was the way she held the cup that annoyed me. Instead of being a thick, cracked mug, she gave it a touch of elegance as she balanced it in front of her lips. I thought she was wearing a wedding band until s
he put the cup down. Then I saw that it was just a ring with a fleur-de-lis design of blue enamel and diamond chips that had turned sideways slightly.

  Red turned suddenly and said, “Like me?”

  I grinned. “Uh-huh. But, like you said, much too tired to make it matter.”

  Her laugh was a tinkle of sound. “Rest easy, mister, I won’t give you a sales talk. There are only certain types interested in what I have to sell.”

  “Amateur psychologist?”

  “I have to be.”

  “And I don’t look the type?”

  Red’s eyes danced. “Big mugs like you never have to pay, mister. With you it’s the woman who pays.”

  I pulled out a deck of Luckies and offered her one. When we lit up I said, “I wish all the babes I met thought that way.”

  She blew a stream of smoke toward the ceiling and looked at me as if she were going back a long way “They do, mister. Maybe you don’t know it, but they do.”

  I don’t know why I liked the kid. Maybe it was because she had eyes that were hard, but could still cry a little. Maybe it was because she handed me some words that were nice to listen to. Maybe it was because I was tired and my cave was a cold empty place, while here I had a redhead to talk to. Whatever it was, I liked her and she knew it and smiled at me in a way I knew she hadn’t smiled in a long time. Like I was her friend.

  “What’s your name, mister?”

  “Mike. Mike Hammer. Native-born son of ye old city presently at loose ends and dead tired. Free, white, and over twenty-one. That do it?”

  “Well, what do you know! Here I’ve been thinking all males were named Smith or Jones. What happened?”

  “No wife to report to, kid,” I grinned. “That tag’s my own. What do they call you besides Red?”

  “They don’t.”

  I saw her eyes crinkle a little as she sipped the last of her coffee. Shorty was casting nervous glances between us and the steamed-up window, probably hoping a cop wouldn’t pass by and nail a hustler trying to make time. He gave me a pain.

  “Want more coffee?”

  She shook her head. “No, that did it fine. If Shorty wasn’t so touchy about extending a little credit I wouldn’t have to be smiling for my midnight snacks.”

  From the way I turned and looked at her, Red knew there was more than casual curiosity back of the remark when I asked, “I didn’t think your line of business could ever be that slow.”

  For a brief second she glared into the mirror. “It isn’t.” She was plenty mad about something.

  I threw a buck on the counter and Shorty rang it up, then passed the change back. When I pocketed it I said to Red, “Did you ever stop to think that you’re a pretty nice girl? I’ve met all kinds, but I think you could get along pretty well ... any way you tried.”

  Her smile even brought out a dimple that had been buried a long while ago. She kissed her finger, then touched the finger to my cheek. “I like that Mike. There are times when I think I’ve lost the power to like anyone, but I like you.”

  An el went by overhead just then and muffled the sound of the door opening. I felt the guy standing behind us before I saw him in the mirror. He was tall, dark and greasy looking, with a built-in sneer that passed for know-how, and he smelled of cheap hair oil. His suit would have been snappy in Harlem, edged with sharp pleats and creases.

  He wasn’t speaking to me when he said, “Hello, kid.”

  The redhead half turned and her lips went tight. “What do you want?” Her tone was dull, flat. The skin across her cheeks was drawn taut.

  “Are you kidding?”

  “I’m busy. Get lost.”

  The guy’s hand shot out and grabbed her arm, swinging her around on the stool to face him. “I don’t like them snotty remarks, Red.”

  As soon as I slid off the stool Shorty hustled down to our end, his hand reaching for something under the counter. When he saw my face he put it back and stopped short. The guy saw the same thing, but he was wise about it. His lip curled up and he snarled, “Get the hell out of here before I bust ya one.”

  He was going to make a pass at me, but I jammed four big, stiff fingers into his gut right above the navel and he snapped shut like a jack-knife. I opened him up again with an openhanded slap that left a blush across his mouth that was going to stay for a while.

  Usually a guy will let it go right there. This one didn’t. He could hardly breathe, but he was cursing me with his lips and his hand reached for his armpit in uncontrollable jerks. Red stood with her hand pressed against her mouth, while Shorty was croaking for us to cut it out, but too scared to move.

  I let him almost reach it, then I slid my own .45 out where everybody could get a look at it. Just for effect I stuck it up against his forehead and thumbed back the hammer. It made a sharp click in the silence. “Just touch that rod you got and I’ll blow your damned greasy head off. Go ahead, just make one lousy move toward it,” I said.

  He moved, all right. He fainted. Red was looking down at him, still too terrified to say anything. Shorty had a twitch in his shoulder. Finally she said, “You ... didn’t have to do that for me. Please, get out of here before he wakes up. He’ll ... kill you!”

  I touched her arm, gently “Tell me something, Red. Do you really think he could?”

  She bit her lip and her eyes searched my face. Something made her shudder violently. “No. No, I don’t think so. But please go. For me.” There was urgent appeal in her voice.

  I grinned at her again. She was scared, in trouble, but still my friend. I took out my wallet. “Do something for me, will you, Red?” I shoved three fifties in her hand. “Get off this street. Tomorrow you go uptown and buy some decent clothes. Then get the morning paper and hunt up a job. This kind of stuff is murder.”

  I don’t ever want anybody to look at me the way she did then. A look like that belongs in church when you’re praying or getting married or something.

  The greaseball on the floor was awake now, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at my wallet that I held open in my hand. His eyes were glued to the badge that was pinned there, and if I still didn’t have my rod dangling by the trigger guard he would have gone for his. I reached down and pulled it out of the shoulder holster, then grabbed his collar and dragged him out the door.

  Down on the corner was a police call box and I used it. In two minutes a squad car pulled up to the curb and a pair of harness bulls jumped out. I nodded to the driver. “Hello, Jake.”

  He said, “Hi ya, Mike. What gives?”

  I hoisted the greaseball to his feet. “Laughing boy tried to pull a gun on me.” I handed over the rod, a short-barreled .32. “I don’t think he has a license for it, so you can lock him up on a Sullivan charge. I’ll press charges in the morning. You know where to reach me.”

  The cop took the gun and prodded the guy into the car. He was still cursing when I walked up to my heap.

  It was early morning when I woke up to stay. Those forty-eight hours were what I needed. I took a hot and cold shower to shake the sleep out of my eyes, then stood in front of the mirror and shaved. I certainly was a mess. My eyes were still red and bleary and I felt like I was plowing my whiskers under instead of shaving them off. At least I felt better. A big plate of bacon and eggs made my stomach behave to the point where I could get dressed and start the rest of the day off with a decent meal.

  Jimmy had a steak in the broiler as soon as I entered the door of his snack bar. Luckily, I like it rare and it was on deck before it was fully warmed through. While I was shoveling it down Jimmy said, “That dame in your office has been on the phone all day. Maybe you better call her back.”

  “What’d she want?”

  “Wondered where you were. Guess she thinks you were out with a broad somewhere.”

  “Nuts. She’s always thinking something.” I finished my dessert and threw a bill down. “If she calls up again, tell her I’m on my way up to the office, will you?”

  “Sure, Mr. Hammer, glad t
o.”

  I patted my meal in place, lit up a smoke and hopped into my car. The trip downtown didn’t take long, but I was a half hour finding a parking place. When I finally barged into the office Velda looked up with those big brown eyes starting to give me hell before she even opened her mouth. When I got a girl to hold down the office I figured I’d might as well get a good-looking one as a bean head, and I sure skimmed the cream off the top. Only I didn’t figure she’d turn out to be so smart. Good-looking ones seldom are. She’s big and she’s beautiful, and she’s got a brain that can figure angles while mine only figures the curves.

  “About time you got in.” She looked me over carefully for lipstick stains or whatever those tip-offs are that spell trouble for a guy. I could tell by the way she let a slow grin play around with her mouth that she decided that my time was on the job and not on the town.

  When I shucked out of my coat I tossed most of the package of fifties on her desk. “Meal money, kiddo. Take expenses out of that and bank the rest. Any callers?”

  She tucked the cabbage in a file and locked it. “A couple. One wanted a divorce setup and the other wanted himself a bodyguard. Seems like his girl friend’s husband is promising to chill him on sight. I sent both of them over to Ellison’s where they’d get proper treatment.”

  “I wish you’d quit making up my mind for me. That bodyguard job might have been all right.”

  “Uh-huh. I saw a picture of the girl friend. She’s the bosomy kind you go for.”

  “Ah, bugs. You know how I hate women.”

  I squeezed into the reception chair and picked up the paper from the table. I riffled through it from back to front, and as I was going to lay it down I caught the picture on the front page. It was down there in the corner, bordered by some shots of the heavyweight fights from the night before. It was a picture of the redhead lying cuddled up against the curbstone. She was dead. The caption read, HIT-AND-RUN DRIVER KILLS, ESCAPES.