The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 2 Page 23

  “But none of that is bad when you compare it to the big thing. That’s you, Mr. Deamer. You, the little man whom the public loves and trusts ... you who are to lead the people into the ways of justice ... you who shouted against the diabolic policies of the Communists ... you are the biggest Communist of them all!

  “You know the theory ... the ends justify the means. So you fought the Commie bastards and on the strength of that you hoped to be elected, and from there the Politburo took over. With you in where it counted you could appoint Party members to key positions, right in there where they could wreck this country without a bit of trouble. Brother, that was a scheme. I bet the boys in the Kremlin are proud of you.”

  I saw the gun snake out of his pocket and I reached over and plucked it out of his fingers. Just like that. He stared after it as it arched out and down into the river.

  “Tomorrow,” I said, “the boys in the Kremlin are going to be wondering what the hell happened. They’ll wonder where their boys are and they’ll put up a yell, but there will be fear behind that yell because when they learn what happened they’ll have to revise their whole opinion of what kind of people are over here. They’ll think it was a tough government that uncovered the thing secretly. They’ll think it was one of Uncle’s boys who chopped down that whole filthy mob, and they won’t complain too much because they can’t afford to admit those same boys who were here on diplomatic passes were actually spying. The Kremlin mob will really stand on their heads when they get my final touch. It’s a beauty, Mr. Deamer. Do you know what I’m going to do?”

  He was staring at my face. His eyes couldn’t leave my eyes and his flesh was already dying with the fear inside him. He tried to talk and made only harsh breathing sounds. He raised his hands as if I were something evil and he had to keep me away. I was evil. I was evil for the good. I was evil and he knew it. I was worse than they were, so much worse that they couldn’t stand the comparison. I had one, good, efficient, enjoyable way of getting rid of cancerous Commies. I killed them.

  I said, “The touch is this, Oscar. You, the greatest Commie louse of them all, will be responsible for the destruction of your own party. You’re going to die and the blame will go to the Kremlin. I’m going to stick a wallet and some shreds of cloth in your fist when you’re dead. In your other hand will be the remains of those documents, enough to show what they were. Enough to make the coppers think that somehow you alone, in a burst of patriotic effort, managed to get hold of those important papers and destroyed them. It’ll make them think that just as you were destroying them the killer came up and you fought it out. You came out second best, but in the struggle you managed to rip out the pocket that held his wallet and the cops will track it down thinking it came from your murderer, and what they find will be this ... they’ll find that it came from a guy who was an M.V.D. man. He’ll be dead, but that won’t matter. If they manage to tie it in with the bodies in the paint shop they’ll think that the killer went back to report without the papers he was sent after and the Party, in their usual manner of not tolerating inefficiency, started to liquidate him and they smeared each other in the process. No, the Kremlin won’t think that. They’ll think it was all a very clever plan, an ingenious jumble that will never be straightened out, which it is. You’re going to be a big hero. You saved the day and died in the saving. When the news is made public and the people know their favorite hero has been knocked off by the Reds they’ll go on a hunt that won’t stop until the issue is decided, and brother, when the people in this country finally do get around to moving, they move fast!”

  The irony of it brought a scream to his lips. He made a sudden mad lurch and tried to run, but the snow that came down so white and pure tripped him and I only had to reach out to get his throat in my hand.

  I turned him around to face me, to let him look at what I was and see how I enjoyed his dying. The man who had thrown a lot of people on the long road to nowhere was a gibbering idiot slobbering at the mouth. I had his neck in my one hand and I leaned on the railing while I did it. I squeezed and squeezed and squeezed until my fingers were buried in the flesh of his throat and his hands clawed at my arm frantically, trying to tear me away.

  I laughed a little bit. It was the only sound in the night. I laughed while his tongue swelled up and bulged out with his eyes and his face turned black. I held him until he was down on his knees and dead as he was ever going to be, then I took my hand away and watched while he fell forward into the snow. I had to pry his fingers apart to get the wallet in them. I made sure he had a good hold on the thing then I laughed again.

  Maybe Archie would guess, I thought. He could guess all he wanted to, but he couldn’t talk. I was holding a murder over his head, too. A justified killing that only he and I knew about. I saw the headlights of my car coming from the other end of the bridge and I walked across the steel walk to be there when Archie drove up.

  The snow was coming down harder now. Soon that dark mass over there would be just a mound. And when the sun shone again the thaw would provide the deluge that would sweep everything into the sewer where it belonged.

  It was lonely standing there. But I wouldn’t be here long now. The car had almost reached the top of the ramp. I saw Archie bent over the wheel and took a last look around.

  No, nobody ever walked across the bridge, especially not on a night like this.

  Well, hardly nobody.

  THE BIG KILL

  CHAPTER 1

  It was one of those nights when the sky came down and wrapped itself around the world. The rain clawed at the windows of the bar like an angry cat and tried to sneak in every time some drunk lurched in the door. The place reeked of stale beer and soggy men with enough cheap perfume thrown in to make you sick.

  Two drunks with a nickel between them were arguing over what to play on the juke box until a tomato in a dress that was too tight a year ago pushed the key that started off something noisy and hot. One of the drunks wanted to dance and she gave him a shove. So he danced with the other drunk.

  She saw me sitting there with my stool tipped back against the cigarette machine and change of a fin on the bar, decided I could afford a wet evening for two and walked over with her hips waving hello.

  “You’re new around here, ain’t ya?”

  “Nah. I’ve been here since six o‘clock.”

  “Buy me a drink?” She crowded in next to me, seeing how much of herself she could plaster against my legs.

  “No.” It caught her by surprise and she quit rubbing.

  “Don’t gentlemen usually buy ladies a drink?” she said. She tried to lower her eyelids seductively but one came down farther than the other and made her look stupid.

  “I’m not a gentleman, kid.”

  “I ain’t a lady either so buy me a drink.”

  So I bought her a drink. A jerk in a discarded army overcoat down at the end of the bar was getting the eye from the bartender because he was nursing the last drop in his glass, hating to go outside in the rain, so I bought him a drink too.

  The bartender took my change with a frown. “Them bums’ll bleed you to death, feller.”

  “I don’t have any blood left,” I told him. The dame grinned and rubbed herself against my knees some more.

  “I bet you got plenty of everything for me.”

  “Yeah, but what I got you ain’t getting because you probably got more than me.”

  “What?”

  “Forget it.”

  She looked at my face a second, then edged away. “You ain’t very sociable, mister.”

  “I know it. I don’t want to be sociable. I haven’t been sociable the last six months and I won’t be for the next six if I can help it.”

  “Say, what’s eatin’ you? You having dame trouble?”

  “I never have dame trouble. I’m a misanthropist.”

  “You are?” Her eyes widened as if I had something contagious. She finished her drink and was going to stick it out anyway, no matter what I said.
<
br />   I said, “Scram.”

  This time she scowled a little bit. “Say, what the hell’s eatin’ you? I never....”

  “I don’t like people. I don’t like any kind of people. When you get them together in a big lump they all get nasty and dirty and full of trouble. So I don’t like people including you. That’s what a misanthropist is.”

  “I coulda sworn you was a nice feller,” she said.

  “So could a lot of people. I’m not. Blow, sister.”

  She gave me a look she kept in reserve for special occasions and got the hell out of there so I could drink by myself. It was a stinking place to have to spend the night but that’s all there was on the block. The East Side doesn’t cater to the uptown trade. I sat there and watched the clock go around, waiting for the rain to stop, but it was as patient as I was. It was almost malicious the way it came down, a million fingers that drummed a constant, maddening tattoo on the windows until its steady insistence rose above the bawdy talk and raucous screams of the juke box.

  It got to everybody after a while, that and the smell of the damp. A fight started down at the other end and spread along the bar. It quit when the bartender rapped one guy over the head with an ice stick. One bum dropped his glass and got tossed out. The tomato who liked to rub herself had enough of it and picked up a guy who had enough left of his change to make the evening profitable and took him home in the rain. The guy didn’t like it, but biology got the better of common sense again.

  And I got a little bit drunk. Not much, just a little bit.

  But enough so that in about five minutes I knew damn well I was going to get sick of the whole mess and start tossing them the hell out the door. Maybe the bartender too if he tried to use the stick on me. Then I could drink in peace and the hell with the rain.

  Oh, I felt swell, just great.

  I kept looking around to see where I’d start first, then the door opened and shut behind a guy who stood there in his shirt sleeves, wet and shivering. He had a bundle in his arms with his coat over it, and when he quit looking around the place like a scared rabbit he shuffled over to one of the booths and dropped the bundle on the seat.

  Nobody but me had paid any attention to him. He threw a buck on the bar, had a shot then brought the other shot over to his table. Still nobody paid any attention to him. Maybe they were used to seeing guys who could cry.

  He set the drink down and took the coat off the bundle. It was quite a bundle, all right. It was a little kid about a year old who was sound asleep. I said something dirty to myself and felt my shoulders hunch up in disgust. The rain, the bar, a kid and a guy who cried. It made me sicker than I was.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off the guy. He was only a little squirt who looked as if he had never had enough to eat. His clothes were damp and ragged, clinging to him like skin. He couldn’t have been any older than me, but his face was seamed around the mouth and eyes and his shoulders hung limply. Whatever had been his purpose in life, he had given up long ago.

  But damn it, he kept crying. I could see the tears running down his cheeks as he patted the kid and talked too low to be heard. His chest heaved with a sob and his hands went up to cover his face. When they came away he bent his head and kissed the kid on top of his head.

  All of a sudden my drink tasted lousy.

  I turned around to put a quarter in the cigarette machine so I wouldn’t have to look at him again when I heard his chair kick back and saw him run to the door. This time he had nothing in his arms.

  For about ten seconds I stood there, my fingers curled around the deck of Luckies. Something crawled up my spine and made my teeth grind together, snapping off a sound that was a curse at the whole damn world. I knocked a drunk down getting around the corner of the bar and ripped the door open so the rain could lash at my face the way it had been wanting to. Behind me somebody yelled to shut the door.

  I didn’t have time to because I saw the guy halfway down the street, a vague silhouette under the overhead light, a dejected figure of a man too far gone to care any more. But he was worth caring about to somebody in the Buick sedan that pulled away from the curb. The car slithered out into the light with a roar and I heard the sharp cough of the gun over the slapping of my own feet on the sidewalk.

  It only took two of them and the guy slammed forward on his face. The back door flew open and another shadow ran under the light and from where I was I could see him bend over and frisk the guy with a blurred motion of his hands.

  I should have waited, damn it. I shouldn’t have tried a shot from where I was. A .45 isn’t built for range and the slug ripped a groove in the pavement and screamed off down the block. The guy let out a startled yell and tore back toward the car with the other guy yelling for him to hurry. He damn near made it, then one of the ricochets took him through the legs and he went down with a scream.

  The other guy didn’t wait. He jammed the gas down and wrenched the wheel over as hard as he could and the guy shrieking his lungs out in the gutter forgot the pain in his legs long enough to let out one final, terrified yell before the wheels of the car made a pulpy mess of his body. My hand kept squeezing the trigger until there were only the flat echoes of the blasts that were drowned out by the noise of the car’s exhaust and the futile gesture as the gun held opened, empty.

  And there I was standing over a dead little guy who had two holes in his back and the dried streaks of tears on his face. He didn’t look tired any more. He seemed to be smiling. What was left of the one in the gutter was too sickening to look at.

  I opened the cigarettes and stuck one in my mouth. I lit it and breathed out the smoke, watching it sift through the rain. The guy couldn’t hear me, but I said, “It’s a hell of a city, isn’t it, feller?”

  A jagged streak of lightning cut across the sky to answer me.

  The police cars took two minutes getting to the spot. They converged from both ends of the street, howling to a stop under the light and the boys next to the drivers were out before the tires stopped whining.

  One had a gun in his hand. He meant business with it too. It was pointed straight at my gut and he said, “Who’re you?”

  I pointed my butt at the thing on the sidewalk. “Eyewitness.”

  The other cop came behind me and ran his hand over my pockets. He found the gun, yanked it out of the holster and smelled the barrel. For a second I thought he was going to clip me with it, but this cop had been around long enough to ask questions first. He asked them with his eyes.

  “Look in my side pocket,” I said.

  He dipped his hand in my coat and brought out my wallet. The badge was pinned to the flap with my P.I. ticket and gun license inside the cardcase. He looks them both over carefully, scrutinizing my picture then my face. “Private Investigator, Michael Hammer.”

  “That’s right.”

  He scowled again and handed the gun and wallet back. “What happened?”

  “This guy came in the bar back there a few minutes ago. He looked scared as hell, had two drinks and ran out. I was curious so I tagged after him.”

  “In this rain you were curious,” the cop with the gun said.

  “I’m a curious guy.”

  The other cop looked annoyed. “Okay, go on.”

  I shrugged. “He ran out and a Buick came after him. There were two shots from the car, the guy fell and one punk hopped out of the car to frisk him. I let loose and got the guy in the legs and the driver of the car ran over him. Purposely.”

  “So you let loose!” The lad with the gun came in at me with a snarl.

  The other cop shoved him back. “Put that thing away and call the chief. I know this guy.”

  It didn’t go over big with the young blood. “Hell, the guy’s dead, isn’t he? This punk admits shooting, don’t he? Hell, how do we know there was a Buick?”

  “Go take a look at the corpse over there,” the cop said patiently.

  Laddie boy with the gun shoved it back on his hip and walked across the street. He starte
d puking after his first look and crawled back in the prowl car.

  So at one o‘clock in the morning Pat got there with no more fanfare than the winking red light on the top of the police car. I watched him step out and yank his collar up against the rain. The cops looked smart when he passed because there wasn’t anything else to do. A killing in this neighborhood was neither important nor interesting enough to drag out the local citizenry in a downpour, so the harness bulls just stood at attention until the brass had given his nod of recognition.

  The cop who had frisked me said, “Good evening, Captain Chambers.”

  Pat said hello and was led out to look over the pair of corpses. I stayed back in the shadows smoking while he bent over to look at the one on the sidewalk. When he finished his inspection he straightened up, listened to the cop a minute and wrinkled up his forehead in a perplexed frown.

  My cigarette arched through the night and fizzled out in the gutter. I said, “Hi, Pat.”

  “What are you doing here, Mike?” Two cops flanked him as he walked over to me. He waved them away.

  “I’m the eyewitness.”

  “So I’ve heard.” Behind Pat the eager beaver cop licked his lips, wondering who the hell I was and hoping I didn’t sound off about his gun-waving. “What’s the whole story, Mike?”

  “That’s it, every bit of it. I don’t know any more about it than you do.”

  “Yeah.” He made a sour face. “Look, don’t screw me. Are you on a case?”

  “Chum, if I was I’d say so then keep my trap closed. I’m not on a case and I don’t know what the hell happened. This guy got shot, I nicked the other guy and the boy in the car finished him off.”

  Pat shook his head. “I hate coincidence. I hate it especially when you’re involved. You smell out murder too well.”

  “Sure, and this one stinks. You know either one of them?”

  “No. They’re not carrying any identification around either.”