The Big Kill mh-5 Page 20

  If I thought that would do something to her I was wrong. Longsuffering resignation made a new mask on her face. "You're afraid of him, aren't you?"

  "Not any more," she replied simply. The mascara on her lashes, suddenly wet, made dark patches under her eyes. Her smile was a wry, twisted thing that had no humor in it. "It had to come sometime," she said. "It took years to catch up with me and running never put it behind me."

  "Would you like to stop running?"

  "Oh, God!" Her face went down into her hands.

  I leaned on my knees and made her look at me. "Georgia... you know what's happened, don't you?"

  "I read about it."

  "Now listen carefully. The police will be here shortly. They're your friends too if you'd only realize it. You won't be hurt, understand! Nobody is going to hurt you." She nodded dumbly, the dark circles under her eyes growing bigger. I said, "I want to know about Charlie Fallon. Eveything. Tell me about Fallon and Grindle and Teen and Link and anybody else that matters. Can you do that?"

  I lit a cigarette and held it out to her. She took it, holding her eyes on the tip while she passed her finger through the column of smoke. "Charlie... he and I lived together. He was running the rackets at the time. He and Lou and Ed worked together, but Charlie was the top man.

  "It... it started when Charlie got sick. His heart was bad. Lou and Ed didn't like the idea of doing all the work so they... they looked for a way to get rid of him. Charlie was much too smart for them. He found out about it. At the time, the District Attorney was trying his best to break up the organization and Charlie saw a way to... to keep the two of them in line. He was afraid they'd kill him... so he took everything he had that would incriminate Ed and Lou, things that would put them right in the chair, and brought them to Toady Link to be photographed. Toady put them on microfilms.

  "Charlie told me about it that night. We sat out in the kitchen and laughed about it. He thought... he had his partners where they could never bother him again. He said he was going to put the microfilms in a letter addressed to the District Attorney and send it to a personal friend of his to mail if anything ever happened to him.

  "He did it, too. He did it that same night. I remember him sitting there doing all his correspondence. It was the last letter he ever wrote. He intended to wait awhile, then tell Lou and Ed about it, but something else happened he didn't foresee. Toady Link saw a way to work himself into the organization. He went to Ed and told him what Charlie had done.

  "That's... where I came into it. Lou came for me. He threatened me. I was afraid. Honest, it wasn't my fault... I couldn't help myself. Lou... would have killed me if I didn't do what he said! They wanted to kill Charlie so they wouldn't be suspected at all. They knew he had frequent attacks and had to take nytroglycerin tablets and they made me steal the tablets from his pockets. God, I couldn't help myself! They made me do it! Charlie had an attack the next day and died in the theater. God, I didn't mean it, I had to do it to stay alive!"

  "The bastards!" The word cut into her sobbing. "The lousy miserable bastards. Toady pulled a double-cross as long as your arm. He must have made two prints of those films. He kept one himself and let the boys know about it, otherwise they would have knocked him off long ago. That was his protection. That's what Teen thought I took out of his apartment!"

  Georgia shook her head, not knowing what I was talking about, but it made sense to me. It made a damn lot of sense now.

  I said, "After Fallon died... what happened? What did the District Attorney do?"

  "Nothing. Nothing happened."

  The evil of it was like the needle-point of a dagger digging into my brain. The incredible evil of it was right there in front of my face and needed nothing more than a phone call to make it a fact.

  All along I had tripped over that one stumbling block that threw me on my face. I had missed it because it had been so goddamn small, but now it stuck out like a huge white rock with a spotlight on it.

  I grabbed Georgia by the arm and lifted her off the box. "Come on, we're getting out of here. Anything you want to take with you?"

  She reached out automatically for her hat and purse, then I shoved her out the door. The hallway was empty. There was no guy in the chair down under the light. A pair of tomtoms made the air pulsate with a harsh jungle rhythm that seemed to enjoy echoing through the corridor as if it were in its natural element.

  I didn't like it a bit.

  The red exit light pointed the way out. If Ed Teen was waiting to see Georgia he was going to have a long wait. Maybe he thought he was the only one looking for her and he didn't have to hurry. I pulled the door open and stepped out ahead of her, feeling for the step.

  The voice behind the gun said, "This the one, Ed?"

  And Ed said, "That's the one. Take him."

  I was keyed up for it. There was no surprise to it except for them. A gun is a gun and when one is rammed in your ribs you aren't supposed to scream your guts out while you slam into a woman in the darkness and hit the pavement as the flame blasts out above your head.

  The .45 was a living thing in my hand cutting its own lightning and thunder in the rain. I rolled, scrambled to my feet and ran in a crouch only to roll again. They were shouting at each other, running for the light that framed the end of the alley. The bright flashes of gunfire at close range made everything blacker than before. I saw the legs go past my face and grabbed at them, slashing at a head with the barrel of my gun. Back in the shadows Georgia's voice was a wail of terror. There was the sound of other feet hugging the wall and for an instant a shape was there in the frame. I had time to get in one shot that sparked off the brick wall then a body slammed into mine that was all feet and something heavy that pounded at my head.

  The cursing turned into a hoarse wheeze when my fingers raked across a throat and held on. But a foot found my stomach and my fingers slid off. They had me down on my back; an arm was under my chin wrenching my head to the side and the guy was telling the other one to give it to me.

  Before he could a siren moaned and wheels screamed on the pavement. There was only that one way out. They ran for it and I saw them stop completely when the beams of three torches drenched them. Georgia was still a shrill voice buried under the shadows and Pat was calling to me. His light picked me out of the rubble and he jerked me to my feet.

  I said, "She's back there. Go find her."

  "Who?"

  "Fallon's old girl friend."

  He said something I couldn't catch and went back for her, letting me lean up against the wall until my breath came back. I heard him in there behind the garbage can, then he came back with her in his arms. She hung there limply, completely relaxed.

  I didn't want to ask it. "Is she... dead?"

  "She's all right. Passed out, I think."

  "That's good, Pat. You don't want anything to happen to her. Right now she's the most precious thing you have. The D.A. is going to love her."

  "Mike, what the hell is this about?"

  "She'll tell you, Pat. Treat her nice and she'll tell you all about it. When you hear her story you're going to have Ed Teen just a step away from the chair. He was an accomplice before the fact of Fallon's murder and she's the girl who's going to prove it."

  I followed him back to the street, my feet dragging. The two boys were trying to explain things to a cop who didn't want to listen. Pat passed Georgia into a car and told the driver to get her down to headquarters. He looked at the big boys and they started to sweat. The rain was beating in their faces, but you could still tell they were sweating.

  I said, "They're Teen's men, Pat. Ed was here to supervise things himself. He was real smart about it too. I had a man trying to run down the woman while Ed was doing the same thing. He guessed who was doing it. He came to make sure I didn't get away with it. He's gone now, but you won't have any trouble picking him up. An hour ought to do it.

  The crowd had gathered. They fought for a look, standing on their toes to peer over shoulders and ask eac
h other what had happened. Cookie was on the edge and I waved him over. He had my coat in his hand and I put it on. "Here's the guy I was telling you about, Pat. I'd appreciate it if you'd let him in on the story before it gets out to the papers. Think you can?"

  "Who's going to tell the story... you?"

  "No... I'm finished, kid. It's all over now. Let Georgia tell it. She had to live with it long enough; she ought to be glad to get it off her chest. I'm going home. When you get done come on up and we'll talk about it."

  Pat made a study of my face. "All this... it had something to do with Decker?"

  "It had a lot to do with Decker. We just couldn't see it at first."

  "And it's finished now?"

  "It's finished."

  I turned around and walked through the crowd back to my car. The rain didn't matter now. It could spend its fury on me if it wanted to. The city was a little bit cleaner than it was before, but there was still some dirt under the carpet.

  Back uptown I found a drugstore that was open all night and went into the phone booth. I dialed the operator and got a number out on the Island. It rang for a few minutes and the voice that answered was that of a tired man too rudely awakened. "Mr. Roberts?"

  "Speaking."

  "This is Mike Hammer. I was going to call you earlier but something came up. If you don't mind, there's something I'd like to ask you. It's pretty important."

  His voice was alert now. "I don't mind a bit. What is it?"

  "During your term in office you conducted a campaign to get rid of Fallon and his gang. Is that right?"

  "Yes, quite right. I wasn't very successful."

  "Tell me, did you ever have any communication from Fallon about that?"

  "Communication?"

  "A letter."

  He thought a moment, then: "No... no, I didn't." Then he thought again. "Now that you mention it... yes, there was a peculiar incident at one time. An envelope was in my wastebasket. It was addressed to me and had Fallon's home address on it. I recognized the address, of course, but since he lived in an apartment hotel that was fairly prominent I didn't give it another thought. Besides, Fallon was dead at that time."

  "I see. Well, thanks for your trouble, Mr. Roberts. Sorry I had to bother you." It was a lie. I wasn't a bit sorry at all.

  "Perfectly all right," he said, and hung up.

  And I had the answer.

  I mean I had all of it and not just part of it like I had a minute before and my brain screamed a warning for me to hurry before it was too late even though I knew that it was already too late.

  I cursed the widow-makers and the orphan-makers and every goddamn one of the scum that found it so necessary to kill because their god was a paper one printed in green. But I didn't curse the night and the rain any more. It kept the cars off the street and gave me the city for my own where red lights and whistles didn't mean a thing.

  It gave me a crazy feeling in my head that pushed me faster and faster until the car was a mad dervish screaming around corners in a race with time. I left it double-parked outside my apartment and ran for the door. I took the stairs two at a time, came out on my floor with the keys in my hand reaching out for the lock.

  I didn't stop to feel the gimmick on the lock. I turned the key, shoved the door open and pushed in with my gun in my fist and she was there like I knew she'd be there and it wasn't too late after all. The nurse was face down on the floor with her scalp cut open, but she was breathing and the kid was crying and pulling at her dress.

  "Marsha," I said, "you're the rottenest thing that ever lived and you're not going to live long."

  There was never any hate like hers before. It blazed out of those beautiful eyes trying to reach my throat and if ever a maniac had lived she was it. She dropped the knife that was cutting so neatly into the sofa cushion and got up from her crouch like the lovely deadly animal she was.

  I looked at the partial wreckage of the room and the guts of the chairs that were spread over the floor. "I should have known, kid. God knows it slapped me in the face often enough. No man would cut up a cushion as neat as that. You're doing almost as nice a job here as you did in Toady's place. You're not going to find what you're looking for, Marsha. They were never hidden. You couldn't believe that everybody's not like yourself, could you? You had to think that anybody who saw those films would try to make them pay off like you did."

  She started to tremble. Not from fear. It was an involuntary spasm of hate suffusing her entire body at once. I laughed at her. Now I could laugh.

  Her mouth wasn't soft and rich now. It was slitted until it bared her teeth to the gums. "You don't like me to laugh, do you? Hell, you must have laughed at me plenty of times. Woman, when you were alone you must have laughed your damned head off. You know, it was funny the way this thing went. I based everything I had on a false premise yet I wound up with the right answers in the long run. You had me talked into it as nicely as you please.

  "All this time I thought Decker had made a mistake in apartments. Like hell! Decker knew what he was doing. They had your place cased too well to make any mistake.

  "But just to see if I'm right, let's go back to the beginning. I' haven't got a damn thing to stand on but speculation, yet I bet I can call every turn right on the button. What I have got will hold you until we can dig up the real stuff though. We may have to go back a way, but we'll get it and you'll bum for it.

  "You were even nice enough to give me a lot of hints. There you were out in Hollywood in a spot most girls would give their right arms to be in and there was only one drawback. You weren't big time. You weren't going to get to be big time, either. You were one of that big middle class of actors who were okay, but not for the feature films. Then a man came along who gave you a hard time and you got sour on the world.

  "Right then you were ripe for the kicker. You were shaking hands with the devil and didn't know it. Back in New York a guy named Charlie Fallon was writing a batch of letters. One was a fan letter to you. The other was to the District Attorney with enough evidence on microfilms to put a couple of racketeers where they belonged. Old Charlie was feeling good that night. He felt so good that he got his envelopes mixed and those films came to you.

  "That was just before your secretary died, wasn't it? Yeah, I can tell that much by your face. She was all for turning them in to the authorities and you put the kibosh on that. You saw a way to get yourself a lot of easy dough. That man came in handy too. When you knocked off that secretary you made it look like a suicide and it wasn't hard to explain away at all.

  "Now let me speculate on what happened right here in New York. The D.A. got a letter, all right. It was from Fallon, but it contained a fan letter to you. Teen and Grindle put out a lot of cash to have a pipeline in where it counted and they had a slick cop watching the mail for that letter. When they got it they must have turned green because it didn't take much thought to figure out what had happened. All they could do was to sit back and see what you would do.

  "You did it. You came around with your hand out and they greased it to whatever tune you called. For ten years that went on. Even the time checks. It's a lot of years, too. Hell, you know what blackmail is like. It grows and grows like a damned fungus. Ed and Lou had two of you on their necks. When Toady Link made those films for Fallon he made a copy for himself. But at least he added something to the outfit. Then one day one of you put too much pressure on the boys. One of you had to go. Toady probably pulled the squeeze play. Since he knew all about it anyway they told him that if he could lift those copies you had he'd make out better himself.

  "That's where Decker came in. Good safe men are hard to get for those jobs. Toady located Decker somehow and had Mel Hooker steer him right into a trap where he had to play ball with Toady or else. They figured it out nice as you please and never stopped to figure out what can go on inside a guy's mind.

  "Decker had been through the mill and he wasn't setting his kid up to have any part of it. In his own way he was a martyr. He
knew what he was going to do and knew he'd die for it. When he lifted that stuff from your place I think he planned to take it straight to the police. He didn't move fast enough though. So he did the next best thing. He stuck those films where they'd probably be found and went out and died.

  "You know the rest of it from there, Marsha. I don't have to tell you anymore, do I? I shot my mouth off to you and spilled it about Toady, so you went up there to see him yourself. You did a nice job of bumping him. Nice and clean. Maybe in those ten years you figured it all out for yourself, and if you didn't think Toady had those films you were going to get his copy. Yeah, me and my big mouth. You hung on like a leech and kept giving me the old sex treatment just to know where you stood. And I fell for it. You sure learned how to act these last ten years, all right. I thought it was pretty real.

  "What gets me is the way you thought that I had them all this time. You couldn't get that out of your head. You thought I had them and Teen thought I had them. They were worth a million bucks on the open market and I didn't look like a guy who'd throw it away. You even went to the trouble of getting a copy made of my keys while I was asleep, didn't you? Tonight you used them. Tonight you had to take a look to be sure because you knew that when I talked to Fallon's old girl I was going to know the truth!

  "Yeah, everybody was looking for those pictures. That's what should have tipped me off. Toady searched Decker's apartment and I thought Toady or his boys searched mine. That was where I kept tripping up. That was the one fault in the whole picture. When Toady drove that car he never had time to see who I was at all, so how could he know where I lived? You, Marsha, were the only other person at the time who knew I had gone over Decker's body right after he was shot because I told you that myself.

  "That was a nice set-up here that night. Want me to guess who it was? It was that jerk from the theater... the kid with the broken arm who's so much in love with you that he'd do anything you ask. He got me with that damn cast.

  "Where is he tonight? He'd like to be in on this, wouldn't he?"