The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 3 Page 29

  If Mr. Dickerson was Blackie Conley it fitted just right.

  Up in the office I had to wait only fifteen minutes before Pete Ladero came in with a folio under his arm. He laid the stuff on the table and opened it up. “Do I get an explanation first?”

  “Research on Blackie Conley,” I said.

  “Aw, for crying out loud, he’s been dead for years.”

  “Has he?”

  “Well . . .” He paused and searched my face. “You on to something?”

  “You familiar with this case?”

  “I ran over it. The magazine writers rehashed it enough so I know the general background. Give.”

  “If Conley’s alive he’s got three million bucks in his kick. He might be old and fiesty enough to start trouble with it.”

  “Boy, bring-’em-back-alive Hammer.” He reached for the paper. “You looking for anything special?”

  “Conley’s connection with the heist. Take half and we’ll go through them.”

  So we sat down and read. Velda called and I told her to hop over, then went back to the papers again.

  The prosecution had a cut-and-dried case. Sonny Motley pleaded guilty since he was nailed in the act and faced an automatic sentence anyway. He ranted and raved all the way through the trial, cursing everybody from the judge down, but Torrence and Conley in particular. Torrence because he wouldn’t let him alone, but kept hammering for details, and Conley for the big double cross and a bullet in his shoulder.

  The main item of interest was the missing three million dollars, but despite the speculation and the nationwide police search, not one thing was turning up. Sonny Motley didn’t mind spilling his guts if it meant nailing Blackie Conley and the unseen face who engineered the deal. Right then he figured they pulled the double cross together, but Sim Torrence couldn’t get any evidence whatsoever on the one behind the action.

  There was another witness. Her name was Sally Devon and she was called because she was assumed to be a confederate of Sonny’s. Her testimony was such that she turned out to be the beautiful but dumb type after all, knowing nothing of the mob’s operation. Sonny and the others all admitted she was only a shack job as far as they were concerned and that seemed to end her part in the affair. Only one reporter mentioned a statement that had any significance. Just before she was discharged from the stand she said that “she’d like to get the snake that was responsible.”

  And that was what had bothered me. Sue had said the same thing, only there had been a minor discrepancy in her statements. First she said it was a snake that had killed her mother. Later she said the snake! Sue Devon remembered something, all right. Sally had raved in her drunkenness too . . . not about snakes . . . but about the snake. Old Mrs. Lee just hadn’t understood right.

  Now The Snake was emerging. It was the one who engineered the whole damn business. The one nobody knew about or saw. The one who could have engineered it into a massive double cross to start with.

  Blackie Conley. He really played it cute. He stood by as a lieutenant to Sonny Motley, but it was his plan to start with. He worked it into a cross and took off with the profits. He was bigger than anybody gave him credit for being. He was big enough to hold on until he felt like it and make the most incredible comeback in the history of crime.

  If it worked.

  And it was working.

  I had been looking over the paper too long. Pete said, “You found it, didn’t you?”

  “I think I have.”

  “Do I get it?”

  “Why not? ” I put the paper down and looked at him. “Can you hold it?”

  “Better tell me about it first.”

  When I did he whistled softly and started writing. I said, “If it goes out now this guy might withdraw and we’ll never get him. You can call the shots, buddy, but I’d advise you to wait. It could be bigger.”

  He put the pencil away, grinning. “This is bonus stuff, Mike. I’ll sit on it. Make it mine though, will you?”

  “Done.”

  “Want Hy in?”

  “Damn right. The office can use the publicity. Give him the same poop.”

  “Sure, Mike.” He folded the news clips together and headed for the door. “Call me when you need anything.”

  I waved when he left, then picked up the phone and dialed Pat. He was home for a change, and sore about being dragged out of bed. I said, “How’d you make out, Pat?”

  “Got something new for you.”

  “Oh?”

  “Write off Arnold Goodwin. He’s dead.”

  “What happened?”

  “He was killed a couple of months ago in an automobile accident near Saratoga. His body’s been lying in a morgue up there unclaimed. The report just came in with his prints.”

  “Positive?”

  “Look, it was a stiff with good prints. He was on file. He checked out. The dead man was Goodwin. The accident involved a local car and was just that . . . an accident.”

  “Then it narrows things down. You still working on Basil Levitt?”

  “All the way. We’ve gone over his record in detail and are trying to backtrack him up to the minute he died. It won’t be easy. That guy knew how to cover a trail. Two of my men are working from a point they picked up three months ago and might be able to run it through. Incidentally, I have an interesting item in his history.”

  “What’s that?”

  “After he lost his P.I. license he had an arrest record of nineteen. Only two convictions, but some of the charges were pretty serious. He was lucky enough each time to have a good lawyer. The eleventh time he was picked up for assault and it was Sim Torrence who defended him and got him off.”

  “I don’t like it, Pat.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Sim was in civil practice at the time and it was one of hundreds he handled. Levitt never used the same lawyer twice, but the ones he used were good ones. Torrence had a damn good record and the chances are the tie-in was accidental. We got on this thing this morning and I called Torrence personally. He sent Geraldine King up here with the complete file on the case. It meant an hour in court to him, that’s all, and the fee was five hundred bucks.”

  “Who made the complaint?”

  “Some monkey who owned a gin mill but who had a record himself. It boils down to a street fight, but Torrence was able to prove that Levitt was merely defending himself. Here’s another cute kick. Our present D.A., Charlie Force, defended Levitt on charge seventeen. Same complaint and he got him off too.”

  “Just funny that those two ever met.”

  “Mike, in the crime business they get to meet criminals. He does, I do, and you do. Now there’s one other thing. The team I have out are circulating pictures of Levitt. Tonight I get a call from somebody who evidently saw the photo and wanted to know what it was all about. He wouldn’t give him name and there wasn’t time to get a tracer on the call. I didn’t tell him anything but said that if he had any pertinent information on Levitt to bring it to us. I was stalling, trying for a tracer. I think he got wise. He said sure, then hung up. As far as we got was that the call came from Flatbush.”

  “Hell, Pat, that’s where Levitt comes from.”

  “So do a couple million other people. We’ll wait it out. All I knew was that it was an open phone, not a booth unless the door was left open, and probably in a bar. I could hear general background talk and a juke going.”

  “We’ll wait that one out then. He has something on his mind.”

  “They usually call again,” Pat said. “You have anything special?”

  “Some ideas.”

  “When do I hear them?”

  “Maybe tomorrow.”

  “I’ll stand by.”

  When I hung up I stared at the phone, then leaned my face into my hands trying to make the ends meet in my mind. Screwy, that’s all I could think of. Screwy, but it was making sense.

  The phone rang once, jarring me out of my thought. I picked it up, said hello, and the voice that answered was t
ense. “Geraldine King, Mike. Can you come out here right away?”

  “What’s up, Geraldine?”

  She was too agitated to try to talk. She simply said, “Please, Mike, come right away. Now. It’s very important.” Then she gave me no choice. She hung up.

  I wrote a note to Velda telling where I was going and that I’d head right back for the apartment when I was done, then left it in the middle of her desk.

  Downstairs I cut around back of the cop assigned to watch me, took the side way out without being seen, and picked up a cruising cab at the street corner. The rain was heavier now, a steady, straight-down New York rain that always seemed to come in with the trouble. Heading north on the West Side Highway I leaned back into the cushions and tried to grab a nap. Sleep was out of the question, even for a little while, so I just sat there and remembered back to those last seven years when forgetting was such a simple thing to do.

  All you needed was a bottle.

  The cop on the beat outside Torrence’s house checked my identity before letting me go through. Two reporters were already there talking to a plainclothesman and a fire captain, but not seeming to be getting much out of either one of them.

  Geraldine King met me at the door, her face tight and worried.

  I said, “What happened?”

  “Sue’s place . . . it burned.”

  “What about the kid?”

  “She’s all right. I have her upstairs in bed. Come on inside.”

  “No, let’s see that building first.”

  She pulled a sweater on and closed the door behind us. Floodlights on the grounds illuminated the area, the rain slanting through it obliquely.

  There wasn’t much left, just charred ruins and the concrete foundation. Fire hoses and the rain had squelched every trace of smoldering except for one tendril of smoke that drifted out of one corner, and I could see the remains of the record player and the lone finger that was her microphone stand. Scattered across the floor were tiny bits of light bouncing back from the shattered mirror that had lined the one wall. But there was nothing else. Whatever had been there was gone now.

  I said, “We can go back now.”

  When we were inside Geraldine made us both a drink and stood in the den looking out the window. I let her wait until she was ready to talk, finishing half my drink on the way. Finally she said, “This morning Sue came inside. I . . . don’t know what started it, but she came out openly and accused Mr. Torrence of having killed her mother. She kept saying her mother told her.”

  “How could she say her mother told her she was murdered when she was alive to tell her?” I interrupted.

  “I know, I know, but she insisted her mother wrote something and she was going to find it. You know she kept all her mother’s old personal things out there.”

  “Yes, I saw some of them.”

  “Mr. Torrence is in the middle of an important campaign. He was quite angry and wanted this thing settled once and for all, so while Sue was in here he went out and went through her things, trying to prove that there was nothing.

  “Sue must have seen him from upstairs. She came down crying, ran outside, and told him to leave. Neither one of us could quiet her down. She locked herself inside and wouldn’t come out and as long as she was there we didn’t worry about it. This . . . wasn’t exactly the first time this has happened. We were both used to her outbursts.

  “Late this afternoon Mr. Torrence got a call and had to leave for his office on some campaign matter. It was about two hours later that I happened to look out and saw the smoke. The building was burning from the inside and Sue was still there. The record player was going and when I looked in the window she was doing some crazy kind of dance with one of those big stuffed toys that used to belong to her mother.

  “She wouldn’t come out, wouldn’t answer me . . . nothing. I . . . guess I started screaming. There was a policeman outside the fence, fortunately. He just happened to be there.”

  I shook my head. “No, he wasn’t. This department was cooperating with the requests of the city police. He was there purposely. Go on.”

  “He came in and broke down the door. By that time Sue was almost unconscious, lying there on the floor with the flames shooting up the walls. We dragged her out, got her in the house, and I put her to bed. One of the neighbors saw the flames and called the fire department. They came, but there was nothing to do. The damage was not really important . . . except now we’ll never know what Sue had of her mother’s that she was always searching for.”

  “Where was Torrence at this time?”

  Slowly, she turned around, fingering the drink in her hand. “I know what you’re thinking, but perhaps twenty minutes before that I spoke to him on the phone. He was in the city.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because I spoke to two others in his office on some party matters.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “On the way to Albany with some of his constituents. If you want I’ll see that he’s notified and we’ll get him right back.”

  “I don’t think it’s necessary. Can I see Sue?

  “She’ll be asleep. She was totally worn out. She started the fire, you know.”

  “I don’t.”

  “But I do.”

  “How?”

  “She told me. She’ll tell you too when she’s awake.”

  “Then we’ll awaken her.”

  “All right.”

  Sue’s bedroom was a composite of little girl and grown-up. There were framed still pictures of Sally Devon on her dresser and vanity along with some of herself in leotards and ballet costumes. There was another record player here and an almost identical stack of classical L.P.’s. Scattered here and there were toys from another year, mostly fuzzy animals and dolls in dancing clothes.

  She lay in bed like a child, her yellow hair spilling around her face, one arm snuggling an oversized animal whose fur had been partially burned off, the face charred so that it was almost unrecognizable for whatever it was. She smiled dreamily, held the toy close to her, and buried her face against it. Some of the straw was sticking out on one side and she pushed it out of the way.

  I touched her arm. “Sue . . .”

  She didn’t awaken immediately. I spoke her name twice again before she opened her eyes.

  She said, “Hello, Mike.”

  “Sue . . . did you set the fire?”

  “Yes, I was . . . burning Mother’s old papers. I didn’t want him to see anything of hers.”

  “What happened?”

  She smiled again. “I . . . don’t know. Everything . . . seemed to start burning. I sort of felt happy then. I didn’t care. I sang and danced while it was burning and felt good. That’s all I remember.”

  “Okay, go back to sleep.”

  “Mike . . .”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “He’ll . . . put me away or something now, won’t he?”

  “I don’t think so. It was an accident.”

  “Not really it wasn’t. I meant it.”

  I sat on the edge of the bed and took her hand. She was still in a state of semi-shock and sometimes that’s the time when they can say the right thing. I said, “Sue . . . you remember telling me your mother was killed by the snake?”

  Her eyes drifted away momentarily, then came back to mine. “The snake did it. She said so. The snake would kill her because he had to.”

  “Who is the snake, honey?”

  “She said the snake would kill her,” she repeated. “I remember.” Her eyes started to widen and under my hand her arm grew taut. “She said . . .”

  But I wouldn’t let her talk any more. She was too near the breaking point, so I leaned over and kissed her and the fear left her face as suddenly as it appeared and she smiled.

  “Go back to sleep, honey. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Don’t leave, Mike.”

  “I’ll be aro
und.”

  “Please, Mike.”

  I winked and stood up. “Sleep, baby, for me.”

  “All right, Mike.”

  I left a night-light on and the door partly open and went back downstairs with Geraldine. I sat back on the couch and took the drink she made me, sipping it slowly.

  Outside the rain slapped at the windows, massaging them with streaky, wet fingers. She turned on the record player, drew the heavy draperies across the windows, and turned out all the lights except one. Then she sat down beside me.

  Only then did she say, “What shall we do, Mike?”

  “Nothing yet.”

  “There were reporters out there.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “That it was accidental. It really wasn’t too important . . . just a small outbuilding. If it weren’t Mr. Torrence’s place it would never draw a mention, but . . . well, you understand.”

  “They won’t make much out of it.”

  “But if Sue keeps making these accusations . . . it’s an election year, Mike. The campaign for governor of a state is of maximum importance. You know how both parties look at it. This is a key state. From here a governor can go into the White House or at least have a major effect on national policy. If anything . . . anything at all comes up that can be detrimental to a selected candidate it can be disastrous. This . . . this business with Sue is getting out of hand.”

  “Your bunch knows about it then?”

  She nodded, then took a swallow of her drink. “Yes . . . in a way it’s why I’m here. I’ve been with Sim Torrence on his other campaigns as much as a guardian for Sue as an assistant to Mr. Torrence. She doesn’t realize all this and I’ve made it a point to keep it almost businesslike, but I do manage to find things for Sue to do and distract this antagonistic attitude she has. All her life she’s been trying to emulate her mother . . . trying to be a showgirl. She’s been coached in singing, dancing, the arts . . . given the very best Mr. Torrence can give her. She’s taken advantage of those opportunities, not just to help her into show business but it gets her away from him. Sad, but true.”