Don't Look Behind You Page 19

  The tallest Singer Midget gave me the stack of magazines with Saga on top and Playboy hidden half-way down, out of respect to Velda.

  I said, “You don’t look much the worse for wear, kiddo.”

  “Hey, Mike, I feel like a million bucks and change. It’s like I took a rest cure!” Billy grinned at Velda on my arm, and there was a hint of lechery in it. “And best of all, I had me a real babe of a nurse.”

  She gave him a kiss on the forehead that must have made at least his day and probably his week. Then we caught another cab and headed back to our home base at the Hackard Building.

  The afternoon went quickly. I had some insurance company paperwork to deal with that had piled up. Velda had stacks of mail to go through, and now and then she’d come into my office with a question or a menial task—sign this, check that.

  “Hey, you got something today from that Dr. Beech,” she said, waving an envelope at me.

  “Wonder what this is,” I said, taking it. “Pat should be dealing with him by now, going after those contract-kill donors. I don’t see where I’d have anything to do with Dr. Beech at this point.”

  She shrugged and went out, moving in that liquid way, like her bottom was operating on pistons. I took time out to watch. Some views you can’t ever see too many times.

  The letter from Beech did include a paragraph about cooperating with Pat, but mostly it was something else. Something that made me really smile. I tucked the letter away and tossed it on the desk and had a big old laugh that damn near rattled the blinds.

  Velda stuck her head in. “What’s so darn funny?”

  “Nothing, doll. I just have a sick sense of humor.”

  She smirked. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  I reached for the phone and soon had Pat on the line.

  “What is it, Mike? Kind of busy here.”

  “Why, is there a line of cops going out your door wanting to pat you on the back? Or maybe you have to see the Commissioner to hear about a medal or commendation for service above the—”

  “Or maybe I’m just trying to live down saving Mike Hammer’s tail. You think there aren’t guys on the force who wouldn’t have liked to see you fall off that ledge? That would’ve been the splat heard round the department.”

  He had a point.

  “Just a couple of things I’d like to go over,” I said. “Some things aren’t tracking for me.”

  “Okay.” Slight impatience in it.

  “The other day, I got a look at that bank book you found. That hundred grand was deposited in a new account, just a few days before. Doesn’t that make your antennae tingle?”

  There was a shrug in his voice. “Not particularly. I’m sure guys in Clark’s business move money around all the time. Is that all, Mike?”

  “No. There’s the little black book you found. It only has three entries in it.”

  “So what?”

  “Well, start with this—what the hell kind of address book has only three names in it?”

  “There’s no law that says it has to have more.”

  “Hell, Pat, don’t you think it’s just a little suspicious? Kind of goddamn convenient? That it had the three names we wanted to see, and nothing or nobody else?”

  “No. Those were the hitmen Clark recruited from out of town. Maybe there would have been more, eventually.”

  “My middle-of-the-night caller didn’t have an ‘eventually.’ Not a few weeks away from that Phasger’s Syndrome kicking in.”

  “Well, I just don’t see any significance.”

  “Think! You need to have the coroner check and see if Clark had the disease.”

  “There’s already been an autopsy, which is no picnic when the deceased hit cement from eight stories up, and nothing came up. Except maybe a few lunches.”

  “But was the coroner looking for Phasger’s?”

  “Mike—”

  “I went down to Greenwich Village earlier today. Stopped by the Bloom girl’s building. Did you know that kid moved out?”

  “Actually, I did.”

  “And you didn’t mention it to me? Christ!”

  “Mike, you aren’t on the Homicide Squad, last time I checked. But for your information, yes, our hippie pal ran out of headquarters scared shitless and skedaddled out of that apartment. Can you blame him?”

  I laid on the sarcasm. “Surely he would have seen the media coverage of how a brave captain of homicide had brought the Borensen case to a successful, exciting conclusion…”

  “Mike, Shack moved out that same afternoon. Before things came to a conclusion. Just kind of… disappeared. The building manager says these hippie kids are always moving suddenly. They don’t stay in one place long.”

  “Ever consider that if the kid has ‘disappeared,’ maybe he’s dead? Gone swimming, maybe—the kind where you don’t come up for air until gas bloat brings you up? Maybe Shack’s another loose end that got tied off, and if so, Clark wasn’t our man.”

  “Clark wasn’t our man? Damn! What the hell are you talking about, Mike?”

  “I’m saying it smells like a set-up. You were handed just the right items, Pat—the bank book, the address book, and the perfect patsy, the perfect corpse, to make this case look closed.”

  “You need to tame that imagination of yours, buddy.”

  “And you need to develop an imagination, Captain Chambers!”

  He hung up on me.

  I called out to Velda. “Damnit! He hung up on me!”

  From her desk, she called back: “Imagine that.”

  * * *

  Just before five, Velda leaned in the doorway between our offices and said, “How about a home-cooked meal tonight, Handsome? I think you know how to get to my apartment. But it does require the mastery of an elevator.”

  From behind my desk, which was piled with paperwork, I said, “Okay, but let’s make it a late supper. Look for me around nine. I’m going to stay late and catch up on this work.”

  She nodded her okay and went out. From the connecting doorway, she leaned back in with a wry smile and called, “I’ll make sure to lock up good and proper.”

  I heard the outer door close behind her and the appropriate clicks, then got up, walked out there and undid the secondary lock. I returned to the inner office and cleared everything off my desk except Dr. Beech’s letter. I slipped out of my suit coat and slung it over the desk chair, then got the .45 out, checked the action, and returned it to its home under my left arm.

  Then I stretched out on my back on the black-leather couch along the side wall, to the left as you entered. My hands were intertwined behind my neck, and I used an arm of the couch as a pillow, my elbows winged. I had a good view of the door between this office and the outer one. The couch was well-padded and I’d had many a nice snooze here.

  But I was wide awake—relaxing, relaxed, but alert.

  It would end where it began.

  Velda had been gone maybe half an hour when I heard the door open and the footsteps move cautiously toward my inner chamber. I’d left the connecting door open. I wanted to make it easy for him.

  The man, rather tall in a well-tailored charcoal suit, stood framed in the doorway, a Garcia-Beretta nine millimeter in his right hand. No gloves. He had a narrow, smooth face with unmemorable features, his eyes dark and cold, like polished stones.

  Those eyes went to the desk first, then to me on the couch.

  “Have a seat, Shack,” I said.

  He smiled just a little. I had a feeling that emotions were something that didn’t run deep with him, at least emotions that required empathy or sympathy. That gave his face an unused look. A younger-than-it-was look. But he had really appeared young with that wig of shoulder-length brown curls helping him play hippie.

  I said, “I figured you’d have a copy of the key that Woodcock made. And since you could defeat the secondary lock anyway, with your kind of skills, I just unlatched it for you. As a time-saving courtesy.”

  He nodded his thank
s.

  Then cautiously he made his way to the client’s chair and with his free hand turned it toward me, then sat. He crossed his legs and rested the barrel of the nine millimeter on his knee.

  I said, “I’m going to very slowly sit up and swing around. So we can make eye contact as we talk. Is that all right, Shack?”

  He nodded.

  I did so, positioning myself on the edge of the middle cushion. “How old are you really?”

  The tiny smile again. “Thirty-five.”

  “You interest me, Shack. I’m going to use that name, because it’s the only one I have for you. That okay?”

  He nodded again.

  I said, “Tell me a little about yourself.”

  “You must be joking, Hammer.” The voice was somewhere between the hippie kid and the middle-of-the-night caller.

  “No. I’ve encountered all kinds in my line of work. What’s your story? Chapter and verse is fine, or condense it if you like.”

  He shook his head. The cold eyes blinked only rarely.

  “Then do you mind if I take a stab? You were in the military. You’re the right age for Korea, if you went right out of high school. You found out over there that killing people didn’t bother you at all. In fact, you got a kick out of it. You came home with some medals and went to college on the G.I. bill. You took business courses.”

  The blank, unused face made it difficult to discern, but I detected the frown, which was mostly a tensing of the eyebrows. He really thought maybe I knew who he was and had found all this stuff out.

  I continued: “You may have opened an insurance agency or some other small business, something white collar, no retail for you. And then it dawned on you that you had a marketable skill, not to mention the college background to take that skill to a new level. How many years have you been killing people for profit, Shack?”

  “Seven,” he said.

  “Not all of it here in New York. You were somewhere else for a while, things got hot, a change of name, a change of location, and you aligned yourself with the Bonettis.”

  The polished-stone eyes narrowed slightly. “You’re shrewder than I expected, Hammer. You’re smarter. I knew you were a ruthless killer, and good at it. But I admit it—I’m impressed.”

  I grinned at him. “Thanks. A few other questions, before we get to it, if that’s all right?”

  He nodded.

  “How long,” I asked, “were you Shack, the hippie kid across the way?”

  “Five weeks, more or less.”

  “The purpose? No, let me try. It was several things. You wanted to get rid of Blazen’s incriminating materials for Joey Pep. No wonder nobody heard or saw those boxes of research leave the apartment building—all you had to do was lug them across the landing into your own pad. And, too, you wanted to see how long it took me to track Marcy Bloom down. Of course you always intended, in your own good time, to kill her. She would make too important a witness for the cops, with all she knew about Blazen’s digging. She was a loose end. And you do not like loose ends, do you, Shack?”

  “I don’t,” he admitted.

  “And that I don’t understand. What’s wrong with loose ends in your situation? After all, that disease is going to kill you. Who cares if you’re revealed as a hired killer? I mean, don’t you see yourself as the greatest gun that ever shot some poor innocent kid? Like Marcy Bloom?”

  No expression now. Blank. “Now you don’t seem so smart, Hammer.”

  “Oh, you want me to think it through for you? How about this? If the cops get you, they’ll stick you in a prison hospital where keeping you comfy will be a priority rating somewhere between changing shit-on sheets and emptying bedpans. You have a high-priced clinic lined up somewhere… maybe in Europe?”

  The minuscule smile returned.

  I laughed. “That’s it! Somewhere with the best care, the best drugs, though as I understand it, there’s not much ahead for you, no matter how much you spend, but horror.”

  The smile disappeared.

  “Also,” I said, “you figured to get me off-guard. You wanted me to buy what Captain Chambers did—that Dennis Clark was the mastermind. Really, Shack, that was pretty transparent—a hundred grand deposited a few days before, three solitary names in an address book. You left some of your things in that apartment, which I believe really was yours, but you took a lot with you. So I figure your man Dennis Clark came at your request to that apartment, to meet you on business. You gave him a key or let him in, then told him you had to step out for a while… whatever. You were the boss. He did as he was told. And you repaid his loyalty by setting him up for the kill. You’d told him that the cops were closing in, right? So that he’d blast away when they showed. And the mastermind hitman would be dead. Anything you’d like to correct?”

  He shook his head, a small motion.

  “You know, I should have tipped sooner, at the Bloom girl’s pad. You said you were a painter, but there was no coloration under your fingernails. But I thought the painting bit was a sham designed to get money out of your parents. That is, the imaginary parents of an imaginary hippie… Do you mind if I smoke, Shack? This is a tense situation, and it may calm me.”

  “No,” he said sharply. “Don’t smoke.”

  “I’m not going to throw an ashtray at you or anything, like I did your boy Woodcock. Oh, wait… I know. I get it. It’s that ever-present smell of ashes that you experience. It’s an early symptom. Getting more extreme, as time runs out, is it? Okay, to help you stay comfortable, Shack… I won’t smoke.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I do have another theory I’d like to run past you, before we get to the fun-and-games portion of our program. I don’t think you developed a stable of killers at all. Maybe Clark, but no one else. I think they may have thought that was what you were up to—but it wasn’t. They were strictly here as game pieces in our little competition. You looked for people in your line of work who had done well. You brought them in and sicced them on me, one at a time. It would, as you said once, demonstrate whether or not I was worthy of your regard. And if one succeeded in killing me, perhaps you’d have found a successor. Someone you could turn your business over to. Just a thought.”

  He said nothing.

  “One last question—when you shot at Billy that night, you had a perfect opportunity to take me out, too. Why didn’t you?”

  He lifted the nine mil and said, “Stand up.”

  I stood, slowly, arms at my side.

  He placed the nine mil on the desk, within easy reach.

  I grinned at him. “Just like the Old West, huh?”

  “Just like that. Let’s see how fast you really are, Hammer.”

  Traffic sounds outside my window were a reminder of a world that didn’t know and didn’t care what was happening here.

  I said, “There’s another possibility, Shack. It’s possible that all you want from me is to kill you. That you’ll be slower than me, intentionally, now that you’re convinced I’m a worthy executioner. That’s why you didn’t kill me when you went after Billy—I’m your chosen suicide method. I’m your rope. Your razor. Your gun.”

  He reached for the nine mil and my .45 flew into my hand and thundered and the bullet carved a deep notch in my desk, missing his fingers by a fraction of an inch, as it sent the nine millimeter flying. The gun clunked to the floor somewhere, out of sight.

  The man who wasn’t really called Shack stood there shaking. The cordite in the air couldn’t be helping that smell symptom of his.

  “Do it,” he said. “Goddamn you, Hammer. Do it.”

  “You shouldn’t have killed that girl in the Village, Shack. I couldn’t care less about Leif Borensen. But Martin Foster was a good man. Only the last straw, my friend, the last goddamn straw, was Marcy Bloom. She just didn’t deserve it.”

  I moved slowly toward him, .45 trained on him. His eyes were filling with the tears he’d been incapable of shedding for others. He was shaking like a leaf. Or maybe a Leif. He
didn’t want to die, not really. But he knew it was his best option.

  Then I was right on him, inches from him. “If I were to shoot you, Shack—and I’m not going to—I’d give it to you low and in the belly, where a .45 slug goes in small and comes out big, and it takes a long, long time to bleed out and die. It’s what you’re going to suffer when Phasger’s kicks in, but in miniature. Only even that is too good for you.”

  I shoved the gun in his gut, its nose pressed deep.

  “No, Shack, you get to take the full ride. You’re going to prison, to some dismal ward, where nobody will give two shits that you are suffering. You’ll get it all, the whole attack of your nervous system on itself—constant pain, the loss of comprehensible speech, bleeding from the eyes and God knows where else, feeding through an I.V., teeth falling out, blindness, and pain, so much pain, that even morphine will bring no mercy.”

  His hands flew between us and he clutched my Colt in both, its nose still deep in his belly, and he grinned at me maniacally as a thumb forced my finger on the trigger and the .45’s explosion was muffled by his body as the slug thrust into and through him and took him down in a sudden well-dressed pile.

  “You lose, Hammer. You l-lose.”

  I backed away, holstered the .45, and lighted up a cigarette. Then I reached for the letter from Dr. Beech. “Here’s something interesting I got in the mail today.”

  I took out and unfolded the sheet and held it before the eyes of a man whose grotesque expression of a pain both physical and emotional was so exquisite, no words could do it justice. The veins of his neck bulged out in pale blue relief and the crazy wrenching that was tearing at his torn guts was eating at his mind, too, making his eyes bug out as if they might burst like balloons.

  I said, “Maybe you can’t see so well right now, so I’ll summarize. You know, Dr. Beech has been on the verge of a breakthrough in Phasger’s Syndrome for some time. Thanks largely to generous donors like yourself. And now there’s a cure. And you lived to see it! Think of that.”