The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 2 Page 22

  I cut her down carefully, dressed her, cradled her in my arms like a baby and knew that I was crying. Me. I could still do that. I felt her fingers come up and touch one of the wet spots on my cheek, heard her say the three words that blessed everything I did, then I went back to the path that led out into the night that was still cold and rainy, but still free to be enjoyed. There was a soft spot on the ground where I laid her with my coat under her head while I went back to do what I had to do. I went back to the room where death had visited and walked under the rafters until I reached the pork-pie hat that lay next to the remains of the thing that wore it. I lifted his wallet out of his back pocket and flipped his coat open so I could rip the inside lining pocket out along with some shreds of the coat fabric. That was all. Except for one thing. When I went down the stairs once more I found a drum of paint whose spilled contents made a sticky flow into some empty cans. When I built up a mound of old papers around the stuff I touched a match to it, stood there until I was satisfied with its flame, then went back to Velda. Her eyes were closed and her breathing heavy. She came up in my arms and I fixed my coat around her.

  I carried her that way to my car and drove her home, and stayed while a doctor hovered above her. I prayed. It was answered when the doctor came out of the room and smiled. I said another prayer of thankfulness and did the things that had to be done to make her comfortable. When the nurse came to sit by her side I picked up my hat and went downstairs.

  The rain came down steadily. It was clear and pure. It swept by the curb carrying the filth into the sewer.

  We know now, don’t we, Judge? We know the answer.

  There were only a few hours left of the night. I drove to the office and opened the lamp. I took out the two envelopes in there and spread them out on my desk. The beginning and the end. The complexities and the simplicities. It was all so clever and so rotten.

  And to think that they might have gotten away with it!

  It was over and done with now. Miles away an abandoned paint factory would be a purgatory of flame and explosions that would leave only the faintest trace of what had been there. It was a hell that wiped away all sins leaving only the good and the pure. The faintest trace that it left would be looked into and expounded upon. There would be nothing left but wonder and the two big words, WHY and HOW There were no cars at the scene. They wouldn’t have been foolish enough to get there that way. The flames would char and blacken. They would leave remains that would take months to straighten out, and in that straightening they would come across melted leaden slugs and a twisted gun that was the property of the investigating bureau in Washington. There would be cover-up and more wonder and more speculation, then, eventually, someone would stumble on part of the truth. Yet even then, it was a truth only half-known and too big to be told.

  Only I knew the whole thing and it was too big for me. I was going to tell it to the only person who would understand what it meant.

  I picked up the phone.

  CHAPTER 11

  The sixth time it rang I heard it come off the cradle. A sharp click was the light coming on then Lee Deamer’s voice gave me a sleepy hello.

  I said, “This is Mike Hammer, Lee.” My voice had a tired drag too. “Hate to call you at this hour, but I have to speak to you.”

  “Well, that’s all right, Mike. I was expecting you to call. My secretary told me you had called earlier.”

  “Can you get dressed?”

  “Yes. Are you coming over here?”

  “I’d rather not, Lee. I don’t want to be cooped up right now. I need the smell of air. A hell of a lot has happened. It isn’t anything I can broadcast and I can’t keep it to myself. You’re the only one I can talk to. I want to show you where it started and how it happened. I want you to see the works. I have something very special to show you.”

  “What Oscar left behind?”

  “No, what somebody else did. Lee, you know those government documents that were copied?”

  “Mike! It can’t be!”

  “It is.”

  “This is ... why, it’s. . . .”‘

  “I know what you mean. I’ll pick you up in a few minutes. Hurry up.”

  “I’ll be ready by the time you get here. Really, Mike, I don’t know what to say.”

  “Neither do I, that’s why I want you to tell me what to do. I’ll be right over.”

  I put the phone back slowly, then gathered the envelopes into a neat pack and stuck them in my pocket. I went downstairs and stood on the sidewalk with my face turned toward the sky.

  It was still raining.

  It was a night just like that first one.

  The rain had a hint of snow in it.

  Before I reached Lee’s house I made a stop. The place was a rooming house that had a NO VACANCY sign in front and a row of rooms with private entrances. I went in and knocked on the second door. I knocked again and a bed squeaked. I knocked the third time and a muffled voice swore and feet shuffled across the floor.

  The door went open an inch and I saw one eye and part of a crooked nose. “Hello, Archie,” I said.

  Archie threw the door open and I stepped in. Archie owed me a lot of favors and now I was collecting one. I told him to get dressed and it took him about two minutes to climb into his clothes.

  He waited until we were in the car before he opened his yap. “Trouble?” That was all he said.

  “Nope. All you’re going to do is drive a car. No trouble.”

  We went over to Lee’s place and I rang the bell. They have one of those speaking-tube gadgets there and Lee said he’d be right down. I saw him hurry through the lobby and open the door.

  He grinned when we shook hands. I was too tired to grin back. “Is it pretty bad, Mike? You look like you’re out on your feet.”

  “I am. I’m bushed but I can’t go to bed with this on my mind. My car is out front.”

  The two of us went down the walk and I opened the door for him. We got in the back together and I told Archie to head for the bridge. Lee sat back and let his eyes ask me if we could talk with Archie in the car. I shook my head no so we just sat there watching the rain streak across the windows.

  At the entrance to the bridge I passed Archie half a buck and he handed it to the cop on duty at the toll booth. We started up the incline when I tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Stop here, Archie. We’re going to walk the rest of the way. Go on over to Jersey and sop up some beer. Come back in a half-hour. We’ll be at the top of the hump on the other side waiting for you.” I dropped a fin on the seat beside him to pay for the beer and climbed out with Lee behind me.

  It was colder now and the rain was giving birth to a snowflake here and there. The steel girders of the bridge towered into the sky and were lost, giant man-made trees that glistened at the top as the ice started to form.

  Our feet made slow clicking sounds against the concrete of the walk and the boats on the river below called back to them. I could see the red and green eyes staring at me. They weren’t faces this time.

  “This is where it started, Lee,” I said.

  He glanced at me and his face was puzzled.

  “No, I don’t expect you to understand, because you don’t know about it.” We had our hands stuffed in our pockets against the cold, and our collars turned up to keep out the wet. The hump was ahead of us, rising high into the night.

  “Right up there is where it happened. I thought I’d be alone that night, but there were two other people. One was a girl. The other was a little fat guy with a stainless-steel tooth. They both died.”

  I took the fat envelope out of my pocket and shook out the pages inside. “It’s amazing, isn’t it? Here the best minds in the country are looking for this and I fell right into it. It’s the detailed plans of the greatest weapon ever made and I have it right here in my hand.”

  Lee’s mouth fell open. He recovered and reached for it. “How, Mike? How could this come to you?”

  There wasn’t any doubting its au
thenticity. He shook his head, completely bewildered, and gave it back to me. “That’s the story, Lee. That’s what I wanted to tell you, but first I want to make sure this country has a secret that’s safe.”

  I took my lighter out and spun the little wheel. There was a spark, then a blue flame that wavered in the wind. I touched it to the papers and watched them smolder and suddenly flame up. The yellow light reflected from our faces, dying down to a soft red glow. When there was nothing left but a corner that still held the remnants of the symbols and numbers, I flicked the papers over the edge and watched them go to the wind. That one corner I put in my pocket.

  “If it had happened to anyone else, I wonder what the answer would have been?”

  I shook my head and reached for a Lucky. “Nobody will ever know that, Lee.” We reached the top of the hump and I stopped.

  The winter was with us again. The girders were tall white fingers that grew from the floor of the bridge, scratching the sky open. Through the rift the snow sifted down and made wet patches on the ground.

  I leaned on the handrail, looking out over the river. “It was the same kind of night: it was cold and wet and all alone. A girl came running up that ramp with a guy behind her who had a gun in his pocket. I shot the guy and the girl jumped over the railing. That’s how simple it was. The only things they left behind were two green cards that identified them as members of the Communist Party.

  “So I was interested. I was interested in anything that toted around a green card. That’s how I got interested in Oscar. The guy he killed had a green card too. Hell, you know the rest of the story. There’s a few things only I know and that’s the main thing. I know how many people died tonight. I know what the papers will look like tomorrow and the month after. You know what, Lee, I killed more people tonight than I have fingers on my hands. I shot them in cold blood and enjoyed every minute of it. I pumped slugs in the nastiest bunch of bastards you ever saw and here I am calmer than I’ve ever been and happy too. They were Commies, Lee. They were Red sons-of-bitches who should have died long ago, and part of the gang who are going to be dying in the very near future unless they get smart and take the gas pipe. Pretty soon what’s left of Russia and the slime that breeds there won’t be worth mentioning and I’m glad because I had a part in the killing.

  “God, but it was fun! It was the way I liked it. No arguing, no talking to the stupid peasants. I just walked into that room with a tommy gun and shot their guts out. They never thought that there were people like me in this country. They figured us all to be soft as horse manure and just as stupid.”

  It was too much for Lee. He held on to the rail and looked sick.

  I said, “What’s the matter, Oscar?”

  His eyes were glazed and he coughed. “You mean ... Lee.”

  “No I don’t. I mean Oscar. Lee’s dead.”

  It was all there, the night, the cold and the fear. The unholy fear. He was looking at my face and he had the same look of unholy fear as the girl had that other night so long ago.

  I said it slow. I let him hear every word. “The girl that died here that night was Paula Riis. She was a nurse in an asylum for the insane. I had it wrong ... she didn’t help Oscar to escape ... she just quit and Oscar escaped later by himself. Paula came to New York and got tied up with a lot of crappy propaganda the Commies handed out and went overboard for it. She thought it was great. She worked like hell and wound up in a good spot.

  “Then it happened. Somehow she saw the records or was introduced to the big boy in this country. She knew it was you. What happened, did she approach you thinking you were Oscar’s brother? Whatever happened she recognized you as Oscar and all her illusions were shattered. She knew you were Oscar Deamer and demented as hell!

  “That’s why you were a Commie, Oscar, because you were batty. It was the only philosophy that would appeal to your crazy mind. It justified everything you did and you saw a chance of getting back at the world. You escaped from that sanitarium, took Lee’s private papers and made yourself a name in the world while Lee was off in the woods where he never saw a paper of any kind and never knew what you did. You must have had an expert dummy the fingerprints on that medical record... but then, you had access to that kind of expert, didn’t you?

  “It was rough when Paula recognized you. She lost her ideals and managed to contact Lee. She told him to come East and expose you, but she did something else first. She had a boy friend in the party. His name was Charlie Moffit and she told him the story hoping to drag him out of the Commie net.

  “Charlie was the stupid one. He saw a play of his own and made it. He saw how he could line you up for some ready cash and gave you the story over the phone. It was right after the Legion Parade, the 13th, that you had a heart attack according to your secretary ... not because your brother contacted you because his ticket was dated the 15th, a Friday, and he didn’t arrive until the day after. You had a heart attack when Charlie Moffit called you!

  “You contacted the torpedo that went under the M.V.D. title and you worried about it, but there was no out until Lee arrived himself and gave you a buzz. That was the best touch of all! Then you saw how you could kill Charlie yourself, have the blame shifted to your brother with a reasonable story that would make it look good. You knew you had a way to kill two birds with one stone ... and get rid of a brother who could have stood in your way. There was only one thing you didn’t foresee. Charlie Moffit was a courier in the chain that passed along those documents. During one of his more lucid moments he recognized that they were important and held on to them for life insurance. He mailed them to his girl friend, Paula, to take care of.”

  He was white. He hung on to the rail and shook. He was scared stiff.

  “So you waited until Charlie called again and arranged to meet him. You had it all figured out beforehand and it looked good as gold. You got hold of an old actor and had him impersonate you while you went out and killed Charlie Moffit. The actor was good, too. He knew how to make speeches. You paid him off, but you didn’t know then that he liked to drink. He never did before because he had no money. Later you found that he had a loose tongue when he drank and he had to go too. But that was an easy kill and it’s getting ahead of the story.

  “You killed Charlie, switched with the actor at the dinner meeting, and made yourself a wonderful alibi. It happened after the supper when you were going around speaking to the groups, a time when nobody would be conscious of the switch, especially since none of them knew you too well anyway.

  “I don’t know what the play was at your brother’s place when Pat and I went after him, but I’ll try to set it up. See if I’m right. Mr. M.V.D. went there first and got him running. He got him in the subway and shoved him under the train so his identity would be washed out.”

  As casually as I could I took Velda’s envelope from my pocket and fingered out the sheet inside. He didn’t bother to look at it.

  I said, “My secretary dug up this story. She went back to your home state and went through the records. She found out that you and your brother were twins, all right, but you weren’t identical twins. You were fraternal twins and he didn’t look like you at all!

  “But to get back to the beginning. You knew when Lee called you that there was more to it than you thought. You knew Charlie wasn’t smart enough to dig up the stuff by himself, so you and fat boy did some fast snooping and found out about Paula. During that time she saw you or the other guy and got scared. She wanted to talk and called the police, asking them to meet her on the bridge where they could be alone.

  “Your M.V.D. pal was a little shrewder. He tapped her phone line and moved in to intercept her, but she moved a little faster and got out of the house before he came around. She had just enough lead to make it to the top of the bridge right where we’re standing when he arrived. It was pretty—you should have been here. You should have seen what I did to him. The sour note was Paula. She thought I was one of them looking for a cut of the loot or something, because
she couldn’t picture any decent person hauling out a rod just like that and blowing a guy’s face off. She went over the bridge.

  “It would have been so nice for you if I hadn’t had a conscience and wanted to find out what the green card meant. You knew my reputation but never thought I could go that far. You hired me so you could keep tabs on me and now look what happened.

  “Maybe nothing would have happened if those documents hadn’t turned up missing. Those people would have died just to keep your identity a secret. But one of those dead men was a critical link connected with the missing documents, so you cooked up the story of your brother’s having left something incriminating behind him, thinking that maybe I’d come across the documents and hand them over to you. Well, Oscar, I did. You had your boys try to run them down first, but they didn’t quite make it.

  “I got to be a very dangerous guy in your little game. I was all over the picture with my nose picking up a lot of smells. You passed the orders to get me out of the way at any price and damn near succeeded. Too bad your new M.V.D. boy didn’t get me instead of Ethel Brighton up in the cabin there. She was dangerous too. She finally got wise to how foolish she had been and talked to the right people. She was even going to turn me in, but your M.V.D. boy stopped that.

  “You know, I thought Ethel put the finger on me when she saw my identification in my wallet. But it wasn’t Ethel, it was you. You fingered me because I was getting in there. You thought that I had gone too far already and didn’t want to take any more chances. So out come the strong-arm boys and the M.V.D. lad.

  “He sure was a busy little beaver. He wanted to kill me in the worst way. When you guys discovered that I had those documents you must have gone nuts. Maybe it even occurred to you that in the process of getting them I would have uncovered all the angles to the thing. I did that, little man, I did just that.

  “You got real gay at the end, though. You pulled a real smartie when you put the snatch on Velda. For that there was only one answer ... I wanted to see you die. I saw them die. You should have seen what I saw and you would have died yourself even before a bullet reached you.