The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 3 Page 23

  “You kept track of them?”

  “No, the police did. They thought it best to inform me. I wasn’t particularly worried.”

  “Particularly?”

  “Not for myself. For Sue and anyone else, yes. Personally, my recourse is to the law and the police. But remember this, Mr. Hammer, it isn’t unusual for a District Attorney to be a target. There was a man named Dewey the mobs could have used dead, but to kill him would have meant that such pressure would be brought on organized crime that when Dutch Schultz wanted to kill him the Mob killed Dutch instead. This is a precarious business and I realize it. At the same time, I won’t alter my own philosophies by conforming to standards of the scared.”

  “How often have you been scared?”

  “Often. And you?”

  “Too often, buddy.” I grinned at him and he smiled back slowly, his eyes showing me he knew what I meant.

  “Now about Sue.”

  “I’ll speak to her.”

  “You’ll bring her home?”

  “That’s up to Sue. I’ll see what she says. Supposing she won’t come?”

  Torrence was silent a moment, thinking. “That’s up to her then. She’s a . . . child who isn’t a child. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He nodded. “She’s well provided for financially and frankly, I don’t see what else I can do for her. I’m at a point where I need advice.”

  “From whom?”

  His eyes twinkled at me. “Perhaps from you, Mr. Hammer.” “Could be.”

  “May I ask your status first?”

  “I hold a very peculiar legal authorization. At the moment it allows me to do damn near anything I want to. Within reason, of course.”

  “For how long?”

  “You’re quick, friend.” He nodded and I said, “Until somebody cuts me out of it or I make a mistake.”

  “Oh?”

  “And the day of mistakes is over.”

  “Then advise me. I need advice from someone who doesn’t make mistakes anymore.” There was no sarcasm in his tone at all.

  “I’ll keep her with me until she wants out.”

  A full ten seconds passed before he thought it over, then he nodded, went to the other side of his desk and pulled out a checkbook. When he finished writing he handed me a pretty green paper made out for five thousand dollars and watched while I folded it lengthwise.

  “That’s pretty big,” I said.

  “Big men don’t come little. Nor do big things. I want Sue safe. I want Sue back. It’s up to you now, Mr. Hammer. Where do you start?”

  “By getting you to remember the name of the other guys who threatened to kill you.”

  “I doubt if those matters are of any importance.”

  “Suppose you let me do the deciding. A lot of trouble can come out of the past. A lot of dirt too. If you don’t want me probing you can take your loot back. Then just for fun I might do it anyway.”

  “There’s something personal about this with you, isn’t there, Mr. Hammer? It isn’t that you need the money or the practice. You needn’t tell me, but there is something else.”

  We studied each other for the few ticks of time that it took for two pros in the same bit of business to realize that there wasn’t much that could be hidden.

  “You know me, Torrence.”

  “I know you, Mike. Doesn’t everybody?”

  I grinned and stuck the check in my pocket. “Not really,” I said.

  CHAPTER 3

  You can always make a start with a dead man. It’s an ultimate end and a perfect beginning. Death is too definite to be ambiguous and when you deal with it your toes are in the chocks and not looking for a place to grab hold.

  But death can be trouble too. It had been a long time and in seven years people could forget or stop worrying or rather play the odds and get themselves a name in the dark shadows of the never land of the night people.

  Kid Hand was dead. Somebody would be mad. Somebody would be worried. By now everybody would know what happened in that tenement room and would be waiting. There would be those who remembered seven years ago and would wonder what came next. Some would know. Some would have to find out.

  Me, maybe.

  Off Broadway on Forty-ninth there’s a hotel sandwiched in between slices of other buildings and on the street it has a screwy bar with a funny name filled with screwier people and even funnier names. They were new people, mostly, but some were still there after seven years and when I spotted Jersey Toby I nodded and watched him almost drop his beer and went to the bar and ordered a Four Roses and ginger.

  The bartender was a silent old dog who mixed the drink, took my buck, and said, “Hello, Mike.”

  I said, “Hello, Charlie.”

  “You ain’t been around.”

  “Didn’t have to be.”

  “Glad you dumped the slop chutes.”

  “You hear too much.”

  “Bartenders like to talk too.”

  “To who?”

  “Whom,” he said.

  “So whom?”

  “Like other bartenders.”

  “Anybody else?”

  “Nobody else,” he said gently.

  “Business is business,” I grinned.

  “So be it, Mike.”

  “Sure, Charlie,” I told him.

  He walked away and set up a couple for the hookers working the tourist traffic at the other end, then sort of stayed in the middle with a small worried expression on his face. Outside it was hot and sticky and here it was cool and quiet with the dramatic music of Franck’s Symphony in D Minor coming through the stereo speakers too softly to be as aggressive as it should. It could have been a logical place for anybody to drop in for a break from the wild city outside.

  One of the hookers spotted my two twenties on the bar and broke away from her tourist friend long enough to hit the cigarette machine behind me. Without looking around she said, “Lonely?”

  I didn’t look around either. “Sometimes.”

  “Now?”

  “Not now,” I said.

  She turned around, grinned, and popped a butt in her pretty mouth. “Crazy native,” she said.

  “A real aborigine.”

  She laughed down in her throat. “So back to the flatland foreigners.”

  Jersey Toby waited until she left, then did the cigarette-machine bit himself before taking his place beside me. He made it look nice and natural, even to getting into a set routine of being a sudden bar friend and buying a drink.

  When the act was over he said, “Look, Mike . . .”

  “Quit sweating, buddy.”

  “You come for me or just anybody?”

  “Just anybody.”

  “I don’t like it when you don’t come on hard.”

  “A new technique, Toby.”

  “Knock it off, Mike. Hell, I know you from the old days. You think I don’t know what happened already?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like what’s with Levitt and Kid Hand. You got rocks in your head? You think you can come shooting into the city anymore? Man, things ain’t like before. You been away and you should’ve stayed away. Now before you get me involved, let me tell you one big thing. Don’t make me out a patsy. I ain’t telling you nothing. Not one goddamn thing. Lay off me. I been doing a lot of small-time crap that don’t get me no heat from either direction and that’s the way I like it.”

  “Great.”

  “And no soft stuff too. Save that bull for the enlisted men.”

  “What are you pitching now?”

  “I’m a pimp.”

  “You came down in the world.”

  “Yeah? Well maybe I did, but I got bucks going for me now and a couple of broads who like the bit. I do it square and not like some of the creeps and on top there’s enough juice to pay off who needs paying off, like. Y’know?”

  “I won’t eat your bread, kiddo.”

  “Goddamn right.”

  He sat ther
e glowering into his drink, satisfied that he had made his point, then I reached over and took his hand and held it against my side where the .45 was strung and said, “Remember?”

  When he took his hand back he was shaking. “You’re still nuts,” he said. “You ain’t nothing no more. One push with that rod and you’ve had it. I’m still paying juice.”

  This time I pulled the other cork. I took out the wallet and opened it like I was going to put my money back only I let him see the card in the window. He took a good look, his eyes going wide, then reached for his drink. “An ace, Toby,” I said. “Now do we go to your place or my place?”

  “I got a room upstairs,” he told me.

  “Where?”

  “313.”

  “Ten minutes. You take off first.”

  It was a back-alley room that had the antiseptic appearance of all revamped hotel rooms, but still smelled of stale beer, old clothes, and tired air. Jersey Toby opened a beer for himself when I waved one off, then sat down with a resigned shrug and said, “Spill it, Mike.”

  “Kid Hand.”

  “He’s dead.”

  “I know. I shot him. The top of his head came off and left a mess on the wall. He wasn’t the first and he probably won’t be the last.”

  Toby put the beer down slowly. “You’re nuts.”

  “That’s the best you can say?”

  “No,” he repeated. “You’re nuts. I think you got a death wish.”

  “Toby . . .”

  “I mean it, Mike. Like word goes around fast. You don’t make a hit in this town without everybody knowing. You was crazy enough in those old days, but now you’re real nuts. You think I don’t know already? Hell, like everybody knows. I don’t even want to be in the same room with you.”

  “You don’t have a choice, Toby.”

  “Sure, so I’ll pay later. So will you. Damn, Mike . . .”

  “Kid Hand,” I repeated.

  “He took Tillson’s job. Everybody knew about that.”

  “More.”

  “Like what, you nut! How the hell should I know about Kid? We ain’t in the same game. I’m pimping. You know what he was? Like a big shot! Mr. Dickerson’s right-hand boy. You think I’m going to . . .?”

  “Who?”

  “Knock it off . . . you know.”

  “Who, Toby?”

  “Mr. Dickerson.”

  “Who’s he, buddy?”

  “Mike . . .”

  “Don’t screw around with me.”

  “Okay. So who knows from Dickerson? He’s the new one in. He’s the big one. He comes in with power and all the hard boys are flocking back. Hell, man, I can’t tell you more. All I know is Mr. Dickerson and he’s the gas.”

  “Political?”

  “Not him, you nut. This one’s power. Like firepower, man. You know what’s happening in this town? They’re coming in from the burgs, man. Bit shooters and they’re gathering around waiting for orders. I feel the stream going by but I ain’t fishing. Too long the mobs have been dead . . . now it’s like Indians again. A chief is back and the crazy Soos is rejoicing. That’s all I can say.”

  “Kid Hand?”

  “Crazy, man. A shooter and he knew where his bread was. He was on the way up until he decided to get back in the ranks again. He should’ve stayed where he was.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “He pulled on me. I don’t take that crap.”

  “He knew it was you, maybe? He knew it was anybody?”

  “Somebody said he might have been doing a personal favor.”

  Toby got up and faced the blank window. “Sure, why not? Favors are important. It makes you look big. It proves like you’re not a punk. It proves . . .”

  “It proves how fast you can get killed, too.”

  Slowly, he turned around. “Am I in the middle, Mike?”

  “I don’t see how.”

  “Ask it straight.”

  “Who is Dickerson?”

  “Nobody knows. Just that he’s big.”

  “Money? ”

  “I guess.”

  “Who takes Kid Hand’s place?”

  “Whoever can grab it. I’d say Del Penner. He’s pretty tough. He had a fall ten years ago, but came back to grab off the jukes in Chi, then moved into the bolita and jai alai in Miami. He was pushing Kid pretty hard.”

  “Then maybe Kid’s move in on me was part of a power grab.”

  “Favors don’t hurt nobody.”

  “It killed Kid.”

  “So he didn’t know it was you.”

  I looked at him a long time, then his face got tight and he turned away. When he gulped down his beer he looked at me, shrugged, and said, “Word goes it was a personal favor. You were a surprise. You just don’t know what kind of a surprise. It wasn’t with you. It was something else. That’s all. I don’t know . . . I don’t want to know. Let me make my bucks my own way, only stay loose, man.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re hot now, man. Everybody knows. Everybody’s looking.”

  “I’ve had heat before.”

  “Not like this.” He looked into his beer, shrugged, and decided. “You ever hear of Marv Kania?”

  “No.”

  “He’s a contract man from St. Loo. Punk about twenty-eight, got a fall for murder second when he was a teenager, joined with Pax in K.C., then did the route with Arnold Philips on the coast and back to St. Loo. They figured he was a contract kill on Shulburger, Angelo, and Vince Pago and the big Carlysle hit in L.A. He’s got plenty of cover and is as nuts as you are.”

  “What does that make me, Toby?”

  “A target, man. He’s in town with a slug in his gut and everybody knows how it happened. If he dies you’re lucky. If he don’t you’re dead.”

  I got up and put on my hat. “My luck’s been pretty good lately,” I said.

  He nodded gravely. “I hope it holds.”

  When I went to open the door he added, “Maybe I don’t, too.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t want to be around when it stops. You’ll make an awful splash.”

  “It figures.”

  “Sure it does,” he said.

  Then I went back to her, the beautiful one whose hair hung dark and long, whose body was a quiet concert in curves and colors of white and shadow that rose softly under a single sheet into a woman’s fulfillment of mounded breasts and soft clefts.

  She didn’t hear me come in until I said, “Velda . . .”

  Then her eyes opened, slowly at first, then with the startled suddenness of a deer awakened and her hand moved and I knew what she had in it. When she knew it was me her fingers relaxed, came out from under the cover, and reached for mine.

  “You can lose that way, kid,” I said.

  “Not when you’re here.”

  “It wasn’t always me.”

  “This is now, Mike,” she said. It was almost me thinking again when I walked up the steps a couple of days ago.

  I took her hand, then in one full sweep flipped the sheet off her body and looked at her.

  What is it when you see a woman naked? Woman. Long. Lovely. Tousled. Skin that looks slippery in the small light. Pink things that are the summit. A wide, shadowy mass that is the crest. Desire that rests in the soft fold of flesh that can speak and taste and tell that it wants you with the sudden contractions and quickening intake of breath. A mouth that opens wetly and moves with soundless words of love.

  I sat on the edge of the bed and let my fingers explore her. The invitation had always been there, but for the first time it was accepted. Now I could touch and feel and enjoy and know that this was mine. She gasped once, and said, “Your eyes are crazy, Mike.”

  “You can’t see them.”

  “But I know. They’re wild Irish brown green and they’re crazy.”

  “I know.”

  “Then do what I want.”

  “Not me, kid. You’re only a broad and I do what I want.”
/>   “Then do it.”

  “Are you ready?” I asked.

  “I’ve always been ready.”

  “No you haven’t.”

  “I am now.”

  Her face was turned toward mine, the high planes in her cheeks throwing dark shades toward her lips, her eyes bright with a strange wetness, and when I bent forward and kissed her it was like tasting the animal wildness of a tiger filled with an insensate hunger that wanted to swallow its victim whole and I knew what woman was like. Pure woman.

  Across the room, muffled because of the alcove, came a peculiar distant tone that made the scales, rising and falling with an eerie quality that had a banshee touch, and Velda said, “She’s awake.”

  I pulled the sheet up and tucked it around her shoulders. “She isn’t.”

  “We can go somewhere.”

  “No. The biggest word.”

  “Mike . . .”

  “First we get rid of the trouble. It won’t be right until then.”

  I could feel her eyes. “With you there will always be trouble.”

  “Not this trouble.”

  “Haven’t we had enough?”

  I shook my head. “Some people it’s always with. You know me now. It comes fast, it lasts awhile, then it ends fast.”

  “You never change, do you?”

  “Kitten, I don’t expect to. Things happen, but they never change.”

  “Will it be us?”

  “It has to be. In the meantime there are things to do. You ready?”

  She grinned at me, the implication clear. “I’ve always been ready. You just never asked before.”

  “I never ask. I take.”

  “Take.”

  “When I’m ready. Not now. Get up.”

  Velda was a woman. She slid out of bed and dressed, deliberately, so I could watch everything she did, then reached into the top drawer of the dresser and pulled out a clip holster and slid it inside her skirt, the slide going over the wide belt she wore. The flat-sided Browning didn’t even make a bulge.

  I said, “If anybody ever shot me with that I’d tear their arms off.”

  “Not if you got shot in the head,” she told me.

  I called Rickerby from downstairs and he had a man stand by while we were gone. Sue was asleep, I thought, but I couldn’t be sure. At least she wasn’t going anyplace until we got back. We walked to the parking lot where I picked up the rented Ford and cut over to the West Side Highway.