The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 2 Page 25

  The cab was still there with another two bucks chalked up on the meter. It was nearly three o‘clock and I had told Velda I’d meet her at two-thirty. I said, “Penn Station,” to the driver, held the kid against me to soften the jolts of the ride and paid off the driver a few minutes later.

  Velda isn’t the kind of woman you’d miss even in Penn Station. All you had to do was follow the eyes. She was standing by the information booth tall and cool-looking, in a light gray suit that made the black of her hair seem even deeper, Luscious. Clothes couldn’t hide it. Seductive. They didn’t try to hide it either. Nobody ever saw her without undressing her with their eyes, that’s the kind of woman she was.

  A nice partner to have in the firm. And someday....

  I came up behind her and said, “Hello, Velda. Sorry I’m late.”

  She swung around, dropped her cigarette and let me know she thought I was what I looked like right then, an unshaven bum wringing wet. “Can’t you ever be on time, Mike?”

  “Hell, you’re big enough to carry your own suitcases to the platform. I got caught up in a piece of work.”

  She concentrated a funny stare on me so hard that she didn’t realize what I had in my arms until it squirmed. Her breath caught in her throat sharply. “Mike ... what . . .”

  “He’s a little boy, kitten. Cute, isn’t he?”

  Her fingers touched his face and he smiled sleepily. Velda didn’t smile. She watched me with an intensity I had seen before and it was all I could do to make my face a blank. I flipped a butt out of my pack and lit it so my mouth would have a reason for being tight and screwed up on the side. “Is this the piece of work, Mike?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Look, let’s get moving.”

  “What are you doing with him?”

  I made what was supposed to be a laugh. “I’m minding him for his father.”

  She didn’t know whether to believe me or not. “Mike ... this Florida business can wait if there’s something important.”

  The speaker system was calling off that the Miami Limited was loading. For a second I debated whether or not I should tell her and decided not to. She was a hell of a woman but a woman just the same and thought too goddamn much of my skin to want to see me wrapped up in some kind of a crazy hate again. She’d been through that before. She’d be everything I ever wanted if she’d just quit making sure I stayed alive. So I said, “Come on, you got five minutes.”

  I put her on the train downstairs and made a kiss at her through the window. When she smiled with that lovely wide mouth and blew a kiss back at me I wanted to tell her to get off and forget going after a punk in Miami who had a hatful of stolen ice, but the train jerked and slipped away. I waved once more and went back upstairs and caught another cab home.

  Up in the apartment I undressed the kid, stuffed the ragged overalls in the garbage pail and made him a sack on the couch. I backed up a couple of chairs to hold him in and picked him up. He didn’t weigh very much. He was one of those little bundles that were probably scattered all over the city right then with nobody caring much about them. His pale hair was still limp and damp, yet still curly around the edges.

  For a minute his head lolled on my shoulder, then his eyes came open. He said something in a tiny voice and I shook my head. “No, kid, I’m not your daddy. Maybe I’ll do until we find you another one, though. But at least you’ve seen the last of old clothes and barrooms for a while.”

  I laid him on the couch and pulled a cover up over him.

  Somebody sure as hell was going to pay for this.

  CHAPTER 2

  The sun was there in the morning. It was high above the apartments beaming in through the windows. My watch read a few minutes after ten and I unpiled out of bed in a hurry. The phone let loose with a startling jangle at the same time something smashed to the floor in the living room and I let out a string of curses you could have heard on the street.

  If I yelled it got stuck in my throat because the kid was standing barefooted in the wreckage of a china-base table lamp reaching up for my rod on the edge of the end table. Even before I got to him he dragged it out of the clip by the trigger guard and was bringing his other hand up to it.

  I must have scared the hell out of him the way I whisked him off the floor and disentangled his mitt from the gun. The safety was off and he had clamped down on the trigger while I was thanking the guy who invented the butt safety on the .45.

  So with a gun in one hand and a yelling kid in the other I nudged the phone off the hook to stop the goddamn ringing and yelled hello loud enough so the yowls wouldn’t drown me out.

  Pat said, “Got trouble, Mike?” Then he laughed.

  It wasn’t funny. I told him to talk or hang up so I could get myself straightened out.

  He laughed again, louder this time. “Look, get down as soon as you can, Mike. We have your little deal lined up for you.”

  “The kid’s father?”

  “Yeah, it was his father. Come on down and I’ll tell you about it.”

  “An hour. Give me an hour. Want me to bring the kid along?”

  “Well ... to tell the truth I forgot all about him. Tell you what, park him somewhere until we can notify the proper agency, will you?”

  “Sure, just like that I’ll dump the kid. What’s the matter with you? Oh, forget it, I’ll figure something out.”

  I slammed the phone back and sat down with the kid on my knee. He kept reaching for the gun until I chucked it across the room in a chair. On second thought I called the doorman downstairs and told him to send up an errand boy. The kid got there about five minutes later and I told him to light out for the avenue and pick up something a year-old kid could wear and groceries he could handle.

  The kid took the ten spot with a grin. “Leave it to me, mister. Me, I got more brudders than you got fingers. I know whatta get.”

  He did, too. For ten bucks you don’t get much, but it was a change of clothes and between us we got the boy fed. I gave the kid five bucks and got dressed myself. On the floor downstairs was an elderly retired nurse who agreed to take the kid days as long as I kept him nights and for the service it would only cost me one arm and part of a leg.

  When she took the kid over I patted his fanny while he tried to dig out one of my eyes with his thumb. “For a client,” I said, “you’re knocking the hell out of my bank roll.” I looked at the nurse, but she had already started brushing his hair back and adjusting his coveralls.

  “Take good care of him, will you?”

  “Don’t you worry a bit now. As a matter of fact, I’m glad to have something to do with my time.” The kid yelled and reached his hand inside my coat and when I pulled away he yelled again, this time with tears. “Do you have something he wants?” she asked me.

  “Er ... no. We were ... er, playing a game with my coat before. Guess he remembered.” I said so long and got out. She’d eat me out if she knew the kid wanted the rod for a toy.

  Pat was at ease in his office with his feet up on the desk, comparing blown-up photos of prints in the light that filtered in the windows. When I came in he tossed them aside and waved me into a chair.

  “It didn’t take us long to get a line on what happened last night.”

  I sat back with a fresh cigarette in my fingers and waited. Pat slid a report sheet out of a stack and held it in front of him.

  “The guy’s name was William Decker,” he said. “He was an ex-con who had been released four years ago after serving a term for breaking and entering. Before his arrest he had worked for a safe and lock company in a responsible position, then, probably because of his trade, was introduced to the wrong company. He quit his job and seemed to be pretty well off at the same time a wave of safe robberies were sweeping a section of the city. None of those crimes were pinned on him, but he was suspected of it. He was caught breaking into a place and convicted.”

  “Who was the bad company?” I cut in.

  “Local boys. A bunch of petty gangsters, most of whom are now u
p the river. Anyway, after his release, he settled down and got married. His wife died less than a year after the baby was born. By the way, the kid’s name is William too.

  “Now ... we might still be up in the air about this if something hadn’t happened last night that turned the light on the whole thing. We put Decker’s prints through at the same time another investigation was being made. A little before twelve o‘clock last night we had a call to investigate a prowler seen on a fire escape of one of the better apartment buildings on Riverside Drive. The squad car that answered the call found no trace of the prowler, but when they investigated the fire escape they came across a broken window and heard a moan from inside.

  “When they entered they found a woman sprawled on the floor in a pretty battered condition. Her wall safe was open and the contents gone. There was one print on the dial that the boys were able to lift and it was that of William Decker. When we pulled the card we had the answers.”

  “Great.” My voice made a funny flat sound in the room.

  Pat’s head came up, his face expressionless. “Sometimes you can’t do what you want to do, Mike. You were all steamed up to go looking for a killer and now you’re getting sore because it’s all so cut and dried.”

  “Okay, okay, finish reading. I want to hear it.”

  He went back to the report. “Like I said, his wife died and in all likelihood he started going bad again. He and two others planned a safe robbery with Decker opening the can while the others were lookouts and drove. It’s our theory that Decker tried to get away with the entire haul without splitting and his partners overtook and killed him.”

  “Nice theory. How’d you reach it?”

  “Because it was a safe job where Decker would have to handle the thing alone ... because he went home long enough after the job to pick up his kid ... and because you yourself saw the man you shot frisking him for the loot before you barged in on the scene.”

  “Now spell it backwards.”

  “What?”

  “Christ, can’t you see your own loopholes? They’re big enough.”

  He saw them. He stuck his tongue in the corner of his cheek and squinted at the paper. “Yeah, the only catch is the loot. It wasn’t.”

  “You hit it,” I agreed. “And something else ... if he was making a break for it he would have taken the dough along. This guy Decker knew he was damn well going to die. He walked right out into it like you’d snap your fingers.”

  Pat nodded. “I thought of that too, Mike. I think I can answer it. All Decker got in that haul was three hundred seventeen dollars and a string of cultured pearls worth about twenty bucks. I think that when he realized that was all there was to be had, he knew the others wouldn’t believe him and took a powder. Tried to, at least.”

  “Then where’s the dough?”

  Pat tapped his fingernails against his teeth. “I think we’ll find it in the same place we’ll find the pearls ... if anybody’s honest enough to turn it in ... and that’s on top of a garbage pail somewhere.”

  “Aw, nuts. Even three hundred’s dough these days. He wouldn’t chuck it.”

  “Anger and disgust can make a person do a lot of things.”

  “Then why did he let himself get knocked off?”

  Pat waited a moment then said, “I think because he realized that they might try to take out their revenge on the child.”

  I flipped the butt into the waste basket. “You sure got it wrapped up nice and tight. Who was the other guy?”

  “His name was Arnold Basil. He used to work for Fallon and had a record of three stretches and fourteen arrests without convictions. We weren’t able to get much of a line on him so far. We do know that after Fallon died he went to Los Angeles and while he was there got drunk and was picked up for disorderly conduct. Two of our stoolies reported having seen him around town the last month, but hadn’t heard about him being mixed up in anything.”

  “Did they mention him sticking close to Lou Grindle?”

  Pat scowled. “Where’d you get that?”

  “Never mind. What about it?”

  “They mentioned it.”

  “What’re you doing about it?”

  “Checking.”

  “That’s nice.”

  He threw the pencil across the desk. “Don’t get so damn sarcastic, Mike.” He caught the stare I held on him and started tapping his teeth again. “As much as I’d like to pin something on that cheap crook, I doubt if it can be done. Lou doesn’t play for peanuts and you know it. He has his protection racket and he manages to stay out of trouble.”

  “You could fix that,” I said. “Breed ‘im some trouble he can’t get out of.”

  “Yeah, try it.”

  I stood up and slapped on my hat. “I think maybe I will just for the hell of it.”

  Pat’s hands were flat on the desk. “Damn it, Mike, lay off. You’re in a huff because the whole thing works out and you’re not satisfied because you can’t go gunning for somebody. One of these days you’re going to dig up more trouble than you can handle!”

  “Pat, I don’t like orphan-makers. There’s still the driver of that car and don’t forget it.”

  “I haven’t. He’ll be in the line-up before the week is out.”

  “He’ll be dead first. Mind if I look at this?” I picked up the report sheet and scanned it. When I finished remembering a couple of addresses I tossed it back.

  He was looking at me carefully now, his eyes guarded. “Mike, did you leave something out of what you’ve told me?”

  “Nope, not a thing.”

  “Then spill it.”

  I turned around and looked at him. I had to put my hand in my pocket to keep it still. “It just stinks, that’s all. The guy was crying. You’d have to see him to know what he looked like and you didn’t see him. Grown men don’t cry like that. It stinks.”

  “You’re a crazy bastard,” Pat said.

  “So I’ve been told. Does the D.A. want to see me?”

  “No, you were lucky it broke so fast.”

  “See you around then, Pat. I’ll keep in touch with you.”

  “Do that,” he said. I think he was laughing at me inside. I wasn’t laughing though. There wasn’t a damn thing to laugh about when you saw a guy cry, kiss his kid, then go out and make him an orphan.

  Like I said, the whole thing stunk.

  To high heaven.

  It took me a little while to get over to the East Side. I cruised up the block where the murder happened, reached the corner and swung down to the street where Decker had lived. It was one of those shabby blocks a few years away from condemnation. The sidewalks were littered with ancient baby buggies, a horde of kids playing in the garbage on the sidewalks and people on the stoops who didn’t give a damn what the kids did so long as they could yap and slop beer.

  The number I had picked from Pat’s report was 164, a four-story brownstone that seemed to tilt out toward the street. I parked the car and climbed out, picking my way through the swarm of kids, then went up the steps in to the vestibule. There wasn’t any door, so I didn’t have to ring any bells. One mailbox had SUPT scratched into the metal case under the 1-C. I walked down the dark channel of the hallway until I counted off three doors and knocked.

  A guy loomed out of the darkness. He was a big guy, all right, about two inches over me with a chest like a barrel. There might have been a lot of fat under his hairy skin, but there was a lot of muscle there too.

  “Whatta ya want?” The way he said it you could tell he was used to scaring people right off.

  I said, “Information, friend. What ya bet you give it to me?”

  I watched his hands. They looked like they wanted to grab me. I stood balancing myself on my toes lightly so he’d get the idea that whatever he had I had enough to get away from him. Just like that he laughed. “You’re a cocky little punk.”

  “You’re the first guy who ever called me little, friend.”

  He laughed again. “Come on inside and have s
ome coffee and keep your language where it belongs. I got all kinds of visitors today.”

  There was another long hallway with some light at the end that turned out to be a kitchen. The big guy stood in the doorway nodding me in and I saw the priest at the table nibbling at a hard roll. The big guy said, “Father, this is ... uh, what’s the name?”

  “Mike Hammer. Hello, Father.”

  The priest held out a big hand and we shook. Then the super tapped his chest with a forefinger. “Forgot myself, I did. John Vileck’s the name. Sit down and have a bite and let’s hear what you got on your mind.” He took another cup and saucer off the shelf and filled it up. “Sugar’n milk’s on the table.”

  When I was sugared and stirred I put my cards on the table. “I’m a private investigator. Right now I’m trying to get a line on a guy who lived here until last night.”

  Both the priest and the super exchanged glances quickly. “You mean William Decker?” the priest asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “May I ask who is retaining you?”

  “Nobody, Father. I’m just sore, that’s all. I was there when Decker was knocked off and I didn’t like it. I’m on my own time and my own capital.” I tried the coffee. It was strong as acid and hot as hell.

  Vileck stared at his cup, swirling it around to cool it off. “Decker was an all-right guy. Had a nice wife, too. The cops was here last night and then morning again.”

  “Today?”

  He looked up at me, his teeth tight together. “Yeah, I called ‘em in about an hour before you come alone. Couple cops in a patrol car. Me and the Father here went upstairs to look around and somebody’d already done a little looking on their own. The place’s a wreck. Turned everything upside down.”

  The priest put his cup down and leaned back in his chair. “Perhaps you can make something of it, Mr. Hammer.”

  “Maybe I can. If the police have the right idea, whoever searched Decker’s place was looking for a pile of dough that he was supposed to have clipped during a robbery last night. The reason he was bumped was because he never got that dough to start with and knew his pals wouldn’t believe him. He tried to get out but they nailed him anyway. Apparently they thought that when he came back to get his kid he stashed the money figuring to pick it up later.”