The Big Kill mh-5 Read online

  He came awake in a hurry. "Nah. Whatcha got, Mike?"

  "What would you like to have?"

  "Plenty. Did you see the papers?" I said no. "I'm not so dumb, Mike. The D.A.'s giving out a song and dance about that triple kill in Islip. Me, I know what happened. The rags gotta clam up because no names are mentioned, but you let me spill it and I'll clean up."

  I sat down and pulled out a butt. "I'll swap," I said.

  "Now wait a sec, Mike..."

  "There aren't any rough boys this time. Do something for me and you'll get the story. Right from the beginning."

  "You got a deal."

  So I told him straight without leaving anything out and he was on the phone before I was finished talking. Dollar bills were drooling out of his eyes and the thing was big enough to get a direct line to Harry Bailen himself. I told him not to play the cops down and when he passed it down with the hint that more was yet to come if it was played right, the big shot agreed and his voice crackled excitedly until he hung up.

  Cookie came back rubbing his hands and grinning at me. "Just ask me, Mike. I'll see that you get it."

  I dragged in on the smoke. "Go back a ways, Cookie. Remember when Charlie Fallon died?"

  "Sure. He kicked off in a movie house on Broadway, didn't he? Had a heart attack."

  "That's right."

  "He practically lived in them movies. Couldn't tell if he was in the classiest playhouse or the lousiest theater if you wanted to go looking for him."

  I nodded that I knew about it and went on, "At the time he was either married or living with a woman. Which was it?"

  "Umm..." he tugged at one ear and perched on the edge of the bed. "Nope, he wasn't married. Guess he was shacking with somebody."

  "Who?"

  "Hell, how'd I know? That was years ago. The guy was woman-happy."

  "This one must have been special if he was living with her." His eyes grew shrewd. "You want her?"

  "Yep."

  "When?"

  "As soon as you can."

  "I dunno, Mike. Maybe she ain't around no more."

  "She'll be around. That kind never leaves the city."

  Cookie made a face like a weasel and started to grin a little bit. "I'll give it a spin. Supposing I gotta lay out cash?"

  "Go ahead. I'll back it up. Spend what you have to." I stood up and scrawled a number on the back of a match-book cover. "I'll be waiting for you to call. You can reach me here anytime and if anybody starts buzzing you about that story your boss is going to print, tell them you picked it up as a rumor and as far as I'm concerned, you haven't seen me in a month of Sundays."

  "I got it, Mike. You'll hear from me."

  He was reaching for his shorts when I closed the door and I knew that if she was still there he'd find her. All I had to do was wait.

  I went back to Marsha's apartment, went in and made myself a drink. She was still asleep. I knew how she felt.

  It wasn't so bad this time because somebody else was doing the work. At least something was in motion. I picked up the phone, tried to get Pat and missed him by a few minutes. I didn't bother looking for him. The liquor was warm in my stomach and light in my head; the radio was humming softly and I lay there stretched out watching the smoke curl up to the ceiling.

  At a quarter to eight I opened the door to the bedroom and switched on the light. She had thrown back the covers and lay there with her head pillowed on her arm, a dream in copper-colored nylon who smiled in her sleep and wrinkled her nose at an imaginary somebody.

  She didn't wake up until I kissed her, and when she saw me I knew who it was she had been dreaming of. "Don't ever talk about me, girl, you just slept the clock around too."

  "Oh... I couldn't have, Mike!"

  "You did. It's almost eight P.M."

  "I was supposed to have gone to the theater this afternoon. What will they think?"

  "I guess we're two of a kind, kid."

  "You think so?" Her hands met behind my head and she pulled my face down to hers, searching for my mouth with lips that were soft and full and just a little bit demanding. I could feel my fingers biting into her shoulders and she groaned softly asking and wanting me to hold her closer.

  Then I held her away and looked at her closely, wondering if she would be afraid like Ellen too. She wrinkled her nose at me this time as if she knew what I had been thinking and I knew that she wouldn't be afraid of anything. Not anything at all.

  I said, "Get up," and she squirmed until her feet were on the floor. I backed out of the room and made us something to eat while she showered, and after we ate there was an hour of sitting comfortably watching the sun go back down again, completing its daily cycle.

  At five minutes to ten it started to rain again.

  I sat in the dark watching it slant against the lights of the city. Something in my chest hammered out that this, too, was the end of a cycle. It had started in the rain and was going to end in the rain. It was a deadly cycle that could start from nothing, and nothing could stop it until it completed its full revolution.

  The Big Kill. That's what Decker had wanted to make.

  He made it. Then he became part of it himself.

  The rain tapped on the window affectionately, a kitten scratching playfully to be let in. A jagged streak of lightning cut across the west, a sign that soon that playful kitten would become a howling, screaming demon.

  At seven minutes after ten Cookie called.

  There was a tenseness in my body, an overabundance of energy that had been stored away waiting for this moment before coming forward. I felt it flow through me, making the skin tighten around my jaws before it seeped into my shoulders, bunching the muscles in hard knots.

  I picked up the phone and said hello.

  "This is Cookie, Mike." He must have had his face pressed into the mouthpiece. His voice had a hoarse uncertain quality. "Go ahead."

  "I found her. Her name is Georgia Lucas and right now she's going under the name of Dolly Smith."

  "Yeah. What else?"

  "Mike... somebody else is after her too. All day I've been crossing tracks with somebody. I don't like it. She's hot, Mike."

  The excitement came back, all of it, a hot flush of pleasure because the chase was still on and I was part of it. I asked him, "Who, Cookie? Who is it?"

  "I dunno, but somebody's there. I've seen signs like these before. I'm telling you she's hot and if you want her you better do something quick."

  "Where is she?"

  "Not twenty-five feet away from where I'm standing. She's got on a red and white dress and hair to match. Right now she's doing a crummy job of singing a torch song."

  "Where, dammit!"

  "It's a place in the Village, a little night club. Harvey's."

  "I know where it is."

  "Okay. The floor show goes off in about ten minutes and won't come on for an hour again. In between times she's doubling as a cigarette girl. I don't like some of the characters around this place, Mike. If I can I'll get to her in the dressing room. And look, you can't get in the back room where she is if you're stag, so I better call up Tolly and have her meet us."

  "Forget Tolly. I'll bring my own company. You stick close to her." I slapped the phone back, holding it in place for a minute. I was thinking of what her face would be like. She was the woman in the compound with me, the other one watching the play. She was the woman Lou Grindle found worth cursing in the same breath with Fallon and Link and me. She was the woman somebody was after and the woman who could supply the answers.

  From the darkness Marsha said, "Mike..."

  My hands were sweating. It ran down my back and plastered my shirt to my skin. I said, "Get your coat on, Marsha. We have to go out."

  She did me the favor of not asking any questions. She snapped on the lights and took her coat and mine out of the closet.. I helped her into it, hardly knowing what I was doing, then opened the door and walked out behind her.

  We got on Broadway and drove south while the w
indshield wipers ticked off the seconds.

  The rain had grown. The kitten was gone and an ugly black panther was lashing its tail in our faces.

  The bars were filling up, and across town on the East Side an overpainted redhead in last year's clothes would be rubbing herself up against somebody else.

  A guy would be nursing a beer down at the end of the bar while a pair of drunks argued over what to play on the juke box.

  The bartender would club somebody who got out of line. The floor would get damper and stink of stale beer and sawdust.

  Maybe the door would open and another guy would be standing there with a bundle in his arms. A little wet bundle with a wet, tousled head.

  Maybe more people would die.

  "You're quiet, Mike."

  "I know. I was remembering another night like this."

  "Where are we going?"

  I didn't hear the question. I said, "All the way it's been Fallon. Whenever anything happened it was his name that came up. He was there when Decker was killed. He was there when Toady died. He was there when Grindle died. He was there at the beginning and he's right here at the end. There was a woman in it. She disappeared after Fallon died and she's the one we're going to see. She's going to tell us why she disappeared and why Toady Link got so important and when she tells that I'll know why Decker made his own plans to die and kissed his kid good-by. I'll know why Teen sat there and watched me being cut up and know what was so important in Toady's apartment. I'll know all that and I'll be able to live with myself again. I went out hunting a killer and I missed him. I never missed one before. Somebody else had a bigger grudge and cut him down before I had a chance, but at least I have the satisfaction of knowing he's dead. Now I want to know why it happened. I want to make sure I did miss. I've been thinking and thinking... and every once in a while when I think real hard I can see a hole no bigger than a pinhead and I begin to wonder if it was really Toady I was after at all."

  Her hand tightened over mine on the wheel. "We'll find out soon," she told me.

  A rain-drenched canopy sagging on its frame braced itself against the storm. Lettered on the side was HARVEY'S. The wind had torn a hole in the top and the doorman in the maroon uniform huddled in the entrance to stay dry. I parked around the corner and locked the car, then dragged my raincoat over the two of us for the run back to the joint.

  The doorman said it was a bad night and I agreed with him.

  The girl in the cloakroom said the same thing and I agreed with her too.

  The headwaiter who was the head bouncer with a carnation didn't say anything. I saw Cookie over at a corner table with another bleach job and let muscles make a path through the crowd for us until we reached him.

  Somewhere, Cookie had lost his grin. We went through the introductions and ordered a drink. He looked at me, then at Marsha and I said, "You can talk. She's part of it."

  The blonde who looked like a two-bit twist caught my attention. "Don't mind my getup. I can get around better when I act like a floozie. I've been on this thing with Cookie ever since he started."

  "Arlene's one of Harry's stenos. We use her once in a while. She's the one who dug up the flame."

  "Where is she, Cookie?"

  His head made a motion toward the back of the bandstand. "Probably changing. The act goes on again in a few minutes." He was scowling.

  The blonde had a single sheet of paper rolled up in her hand. She spread it out and started checking off items with her fingernail.

  "Georgia... or Dolly... is forty-eight and looks like it. She was Fallon's girl friend and then his mistress. At one time she was a looker and a good singer, but the years changed all that. After Fallon died she went from one job to another and wound up being a prostitute. We got a line on her through a guy who knows the houses pretty well. She took to the street for a while and spent some time in the workhouse. Right after the war she was picked up on a shoplifting charge and given six months. Not two weeks after she got out she broke into an apartment and was caught at it. She got a couple years that time. She got back in the houses after that to get eating money, broke loose and got this job. She's been here a month."

  "You got all that without seeing her?"

  The blonde nodded.

  "I thought you were going to speak to her, Cookie."

  "I was," he said. "I changed my mind."

  He was staring across the room to where Ed Teen was sitting talking to four men. Only two of them were lawyers. The other two were big and hard-looking. One chewed on a match-stick and leered at the dames.

  My drink slopped over on the table.

  Cookie said, "I thought you told me there wouldn't be any rough stuff. "

  "I changed my mind too." I had to let go of the glass before I spilled the rest of it. "They see me come in?"

  "No."

  "They know you or why you're here?"

  Cookie's ears went back, startled. "Do, I look like a dope?" His tongue licked his lips nervously. "You think... that's who I been crossing all day."

  I was grinning again. Goddamn it, I felt good! "I think so, Cookie," I said.

  And while I was saying it the lights turned dim and a blue spot hit the bandstand where a guy in a white tux started to play. A girl with coal-black hair stepped out from behind the curtains and paused dramatically, waiting for a round of applause before going into her number.

  I couldn't wait any longer. It was coming to a head too fast. I said, "I'm going back there. Cookie, you get over to the phone and call the police. Ask for Captain Chambers and tell him to get down here as fast as he can move. Tell him why. I don't know what's going to happen, but stick around and you'll get your story."

  I could see Cookie's face going white. "Look, Mike, I don't want no part of this. I..."

  "You won't get any part of it unless you do as you're told. Get moving."

  I started to get up and Marsha said, "I'm going with you, Mike."

  All the hate and excitement died away and there was a little piece of time that was all ours. I shook my head. "You can't, kid. This is my party. You're not part of the trouble any more." I leaned over and kissed her. There were tears in her eyes.

  "Please, Mike... wait for the police. I don't want you... to be hurt again."

  "Nobody's going to hurt me now. Go home and wait for me."

  There was something final in her voice. "You won't... come back to me, Mike."

  "I promise you," I said. "I'll be back."

  A sob tore into her throat and stayed there, crushed against her lips by the back of her hand. Part of it got loose and I didn't want to stay to see the pain in her face.

  I nudged the .45 in the holster to kick it free of the leather and tried to see across the room. It was much too dark to see anything. I started back and heard Marsha sob again as Cookie led her to the front. The blonde had disappeared somewhere too.

  Chapter Twelve

  A curtain covered the arch. It led into a narrow, low-ceilinged alcove with another curtain at the far end. The edges of it overlapped and the bottom turned' up along the floor, successfully cutting out the backstage light that could spoil an effective entrance.

  I stepped through and pulled it back to place behind me. The guy tilted back in the chair put his paper down and peered at me over his glasses. "Guests ain't allowed back here, buddy."

  I let him see the corner of a sawbuck. "Could be that I'm not a guest."

  "Could be." He took the sawbuck and made it vanish. "You look like a fire inspector to me."

  "That'll do if anybody asks. Where's Dolly's room?"

  "Dolly? That bag? What you want with her?" He took his glasses off and waved them down the hall. "She ain't got no room. Under the stairs is a supply closet and she usually changes in there." The glasses went back on and he squinted through them at me. "She's no good, Mac. Only fills in on an empty spot."

  "Don't worry about it."

  "I won't." He tilted the chair back again and picked up the paper. His eyes stayed on me cur
iously, then he shrugged and started reading.

  There was a single light hanging from the ceiling halfway down and a red exit bulb over a door at the end. A pair of dressing rooms with doors side by side opened off my right and I could hear the women behind them getting ready for their act. In one of them a man was complaining about the pay and a woman told him to shut up. She said something else and he cracked her one.

  The other side was a blank beaverboard wall painted green that ran down to, the iron staircase before meeting a cement-block wall. It must have partitioned off the kitchen from the racket that was going on in back of it.

  I found the closet where the guy said it would be. It had a riveted steel door with an oversize latch and SUPPLIES stenciled across the top. I stepped back in the shadows under the staircase and waited.

  From far off came the singer's voice rising to the pitch of the piano. Down the hall the guy was still tilted back reading. I knocked on the door.

  A muffled voice asked who it was. I knocked again.

  This time the door opened a crack. I had my foot in the opening before she could close it. She looked like she was trying hard to scream. I said, "I'm a friend, Georgia."

  Stark terror showed in her eyes at the mention of her name. She backed away until the fear reached her legs, then collapsed on a box. I went all the way in and shut the door.

  Now the figure from the mist had a face. It wasn't a nice face. Up close it showed every year and experience in the tiny lines that crisscrossed her skin. At one time it had been pretty. Misery and fear had wiped all that out without leaving more than a semblance of a former beauty. She was small and fighting to hold her figure. None of the artifices were any good. The red hair, the overly mascaraed eyes, the tightly corseted waist were too plainly visible. I wondered why the management even bothered with her. Maybe she sang dirty songs. That always made a hit with the customers who were more interested in lyrics than music.

  The kind of terror that held her was too intense to last very long. She managed to say, "Who... are you?"

  "I told you I was a friend." There was another box near the door and I pulled it over. I wanted this to be fast. I sat down facing the door, a little behind it. "Ed Teen's outside."