Killing Town Page 3

  “You’ll get it later,” he said. This was Sykes, apparently. To his driver and all the cops surrounding, he called, “Roll those cars!”

  Now the reporter leaned in, ignoring that. “We’ll get it now. What’s he bein’ held for?”

  “Sex murderer. He raped and killed a factory worker named Jean Warburton a couple hours ago. We got him cold.”

  Which was how the muggy night suddenly got.

  Cold.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The lights damn near burned the raw skin off my face. They ate into my eyes until everything was blurred, and when I went to wipe my vision clear, a hand with a wet leather glove on it would push my fingers away. My lips were swollen tight around my teeth, with my tongue a dry rough rasp that licked ineffectually at my mouth.

  There would be a question followed by a smack, the sound of it wet. Fingers would try to twist the ears off my head and the flat of a palm would snap against the back of my neck until there wasn’t any feeling left in me at all.

  I was in a small room with no furniture but the hard chair I’d been slammed into. My right hand was cuffed to a uniformed cop standing beside me. A lamp with the kind of wattage you can get a sunburn from was craning its neck at me curiously, like some weird damn bird. The room had enough floating rank cigar smoke to please a bunch of backroom politicians.

  The tall dick called Sykes wasn’t just supervising—he liked to get involved. I could make him out all right, but his bully boys were just more of the blur. Between slaps and questions and answers I gave that nobody cared about, he would lean in and train light-blue eyes on me that were oh so pretty, in a long angular puss that wasn’t pretty at all.

  Sykes leaned back out of the light and said, “We’ll go through it again. Your name is Mike Hammer.”

  I nodded, wishing I could work up enough spit to spatter all over his shoes.

  “You’re a bum,” the tall detective said clinically.

  I shrugged. “You’re a bastard.”

  The wet leather glove had a fist in it that splatted against my cheek—Sykes doing his own hitting.

  “You got off a freight in the yards,” Sykes said, “picked up this tomato and killed her. Don’t try to lie your way out of it.”

  I searched for just the right words and used them. The fist came into the light and did the same thing again. I said the words again. This went on for a while.

  A door creaked open. Heavy footsteps came in.

  A rough-edged voice outside the light cut in with, “Pretty tough, huh?”

  Sykes again: “We’ll soften him up.”

  “Better leave it go for a while. He’s marked up enough as it is.”

  The sarcasm came out of Sykes all sing-songy: “Maybe we should give him a big feed and a soft bed. Maybe we ought to get him a nice friendly broad to sleep with, too, keep him warm and happy.”

  “Henny,” the rough voice answered, with tired exasperation, “do as you’re told for a change. Softening him up some is one thing. Outright beatings I don’t put up with—how many times do I…?” A long sigh. “Bring him up to my office.”

  I couldn’t make it on my own steam, so they half-carried me. Most of the lights were off this time of night at City Hall or anyway the police station part. They dragged me through shadows while footsteps on the finished concrete floor echoed in the hall like erratic gunfire. Muffled traffic sounds said the world was still out there somewhere. Nice to know.

  We went up a few steps to a corridor, got in an elevator until it wheezed up and whined to a stop, then went down another shadowy corridor to an office with HERMAN BELDEN, CHIEF OF POLICE lettered on the frosted glass of the door. This was a good-size office with a green-shaded lamp on a big oak desk with awards and citations on the wall and a thick rug on the floor with decent furniture here and there. I got my eyes open long enough to take all that in before they closed again.

  The chair they threw me in wasn’t like the one downstairs. This one was big and soft with smooth arms and leather upholstery that took some of the ache out. There were no lights that burned and no smell of cheap cigars here. I’d been hauled back into civilization. The rough-edged voice rattled off a couple of names and told them to stay. The rest went outside.

  Somebody ran water from a cooler into a cup and threw the works in my face. It was the nicest thing they could have done for me. The splash washed out my eyes so they could open most of the way and took some of the stiffness from my mouth. The cup came back again, this time to my lips, and I went for it until there was none left.

  I sat there for a good minute before anybody said anything. My host, Herman Belden, was the stocky, middle-aged guy in the swivel chair behind the desk, all thinning hair, pouchy eyes, thick lips, and mottled skin. His purple tie was loose and he was in shirtsleeves with sweat circles under his arms. Tall Henny Sykes, in a brown suit and darker brown tie, derby in hand, looked like he never broke a sweat in his life. He glowered at me from his position by the door, arms folded, legs crossed though he was standing up. Another big detective stood right beside me, a couple hundreds of pounds of potatoes in a cheap suit, swinging a leather-covered billy into the palm of his hand like a cop walking his beat.

  Only right now I was his beat.

  In the corner, in a white blouse, black skirt, and low black heels, a female hardcase with a decent build chewed gum while she doodled on her steno pad. Taking notes during the Third Degree was nothing new to her. Behind the hornrim glasses and under the piled-up dishwater hair, she had features that could stand up to dim lighting, but five would get you ten, if you screwed her, she’d be chewing gum then, too.

  Belden put down the sheet he was staring at and picked up something else. My wallet. He thumbed out two tens and a couple of ones, laid a few cards down beside each other and arranged them into various positions. The dockworkers union card was there, Social Security, driver’s license. Satisfied with his arrangement his eyes crawled up to mine.

  He rose and wandered over, as if he just noticed someone was in his office, his voice polite with a sandpaper finish. “Shall we talk now, Mr. Hammer?”

  My grin was a fake, but it made me feel better. “Nuts. Either you book me or let me out of here. If I’m booked, I get a phone call.”

  A grunt made his belly shake, like the kind of department store Santa that sent kids screaming. “Know a lot about the legal system, do you, son?”

  “That much I do.”

  His smile had a puckish quality, as if he enjoyed a little light banter between dishing out beatings. “In this state we can hold you seventy-two hours without doing a damn thing. How do you like that?”

  “I got nothing pressing.”

  His mouth tightened. “Then we have plenty of time to talk.”

  “Go ahead and talk,” I said. “I’d like to know what this is all about myself.”

  Any goodwill left in his face disappeared altogether. “I don’t know why you people insist on doing it this way, but since I’m more or less legally obliged to explain the crime even to the criminal himself, I’ll give you a run-through.”

  You people? Freight-car riding bums? Strangers hauled in and beaten senseless? Citizens in general whose very existence was an annoyance to hardworking public officials?

  “At eleven-fifteen,” Belden was saying, pacing slowly before me like a D.A. summing up for a jury, “a white male approximately thirty years of age was seen to accost a young woman on South Richmond Street. There appeared to be an argument about the pick-up, and the male dragged the woman off into the bushes. The witness managed to get close enough to see pants around the now-prone male’s ankles, and to hear the victim’s screams. The witness ran for the police, but when they returned, the woman had been killed by strangulation and obviously raped, and the male was no longer around. The search started and you were picked up. You were positively identified by the witness who saw you accost the woman. Is there anything else you’d like to know?”

  “Yeah. When do I get to see this w
itness?”

  Belden made a vague motion. “Bring him,” he told Sykes.

  The tall plainclothes cop opened the door, said something to somebody outside, then maybe a minute passed before a skinny little guy in a filthy rumpled suit was ushered in by an arm. He needed a shave as badly as I did, and stood wringing his battered hat in his hands and finally stuffed it in a frayed pocket. His eyes went around the room until they found me, opened a little wider as he licked his lips, then went back to Sykes, who nodded just enough to identify me to this ringer.

  The chief said, “This the man?”

  “That’s him all right.” He bobbed his head and tried to find some place to put his hands, his watery eyes landing everywhere except on the guy he was fingering.

  “Okay?” Sykes asked Belden.

  Belden had a world-weariness as he said, “Okay.”

  Sykes tapped the witness on the shoulder, got a startled look, then led him back outside again.

  Belden returned to his desk and his swivel chair, and put on his phony good-natured smile. “Well, Mr. Hammer?”

  “I’m impressed. You got most of the liquor smell off him.”

  “What are you insinuating?”

  “I’m ‘insinuating’ he’s full of crap,” I said. I made something of a show of not being impressed. “I don’t know why he’s lying, but I’ll tell you, flat out—I was eating supper when this sex kill was supposed to have happened.”

  A disgusted sigh made Belden’s heavy body move in the chair, as if a hedgehog were burrowing just under ground. “Where?”

  “A hash house near the yards. It had a signal switch for a sign outside the door.”

  Belden and Sykes exchanging glances said they knew the place. The chief picked up a pencil and tapped it on the desk. “Think anybody there could identify you?”

  I leaned back in the chair with my breath feeling a little less strained in my throat. The remains of a butt and some matches were in my pocket. They let me light the thing, which was more than they did downstairs.

  “Sure,” I said. “The waitress who took my order. We had a nice talk for a few minutes. She got a buck tip out of me. She’ll remember.”

  “For your sake, Hammer,” the chief said, “I hope she does.”

  But somehow I didn’t think he hoped that at all.

  * * *

  This time the joint was nearly empty.

  It was between shifts at the yards and, during the break, most of the help was in back, cleaning up. Lonnie Shaker was the owner’s name, a bald little guy with an Italian accent, who shook hands with the chief, grinning too big and too much, then squeezed out a nod for Sykes and the two sour-eyed detectives with him.

  Belden nodded toward the kitchen. “You got the same bunch working now that was on around eleven?”

  “Yeah, sure.” Lonnie waved his thumb behind him. “They’re in there. What’s up?”

  “We need an identification. Tell him, Hammer.”

  I said to the manager, “A blonde waitress with dark streaks in her hair. Prettiest one working, when I was here. Green eyes?”

  “Oh sure.” A smile crinkled Lonnie’s mouth. “That’s Louise.” His butter-wouldn’t-melt smile went to Belden. “You wait. I’ll get her for you.”

  He went back through the swinging doors and his voice got lost in the clatter of crockery. The cop I was with pulled out a pack of butts, stuck one in his mouth, remembered I was there too, and handed the pack over.

  I nodded thanks and got myself a smoke out, my hand shaking.

  For a minute my trembling hand guiding the cigarette to my lips was the only thing in the room that moved—a big, palsied paw, doing a shimmy that held every eye fixed. The dick I was cuffed to gave me a light, waved out the match. Not a bad guy, I thought. Then I noticed his nasty, knowing smile.

  The chill started at my scalp and crept all the way down into my shoes, like cold water on the verge of turning to ice. When I looked up, I could see their faces. Henny Sykes sneering as he sat casually on the edge of a nearby table; the dick on my right nodding; Belden rocking back on his heels—a cop chorus singing a wordless song that said it was all over but the hanging.

  Or the frying.

  What I had left of my guts started turning to mush. This damned thing was a nightmare! The lousy bastards were putting the screws on me and getting ready to turn them tighter.

  I felt like screaming but couldn’t get a sound out. The cigarette fell from my fingers as the waitress came through the door and, seeing her blank expression, I could feel the clamps come down hard and cold. It was coming, I knew it was, but there wasn’t a goddamn thing I could do about it.

  The dame was looking at us and her eyes passed right over mine, like I wasn’t there at all, a stone skipping across a pond. Those eyes were a lovely green, all right. Lovely, green, and empty.

  Belden said, “You were on all evening, miss?”

  She nodded once. Her forehead puckered up between her eyes, like that was a tough question and she really had to concentrate. “That’s right. Haven’t been off the floor, except to go in the kitchen.”

  “Do you remember tonight’s customers?”

  “Oh sure. I know most of them by name.”

  “You’d remember anybody new?”

  Two nods this time. “Practically everybody that comes in here are regulars. Anybody new would stand out.”

  Belden’s head came around to me slowly. He said, “Ever see this man before?”

  Nothing showed in her face. She was looking right at me and nothing.

  “I was here from eleven to eleven thirty,” I prompted.

  She cocked her head as if trying to find something, anything, familiar about me.

  And I was puffy and scuffed up, so maybe…

  “Damn it,” I said, “these punks messed me up, but look close— you’ll remember me. We talked about New York. I sat over there at the counter and gave you a buck tip.”

  But I was talking to myself.

  She drew back from me, white rubbing out the flush in her cheeks. “I, uh…” Her empty gaze returned to Belden. “He wasn’t in here. Sorry. No.”

  I leaned forward, held back by the dick. “Damnit, girl, think, will you? I sat right over there! We talked! You must re—”

  The girl was shaking her head, still looking right at the bulky Belden.

  He said, “Okay, miss, thanks for your cooperation. We’ll get a statement from you later.”

  She got back behind the counter.

  The dick yanked on the handcuff. “Come on, you.”

  My sneering disgust took all the Cossacks in. “You stinking crooked bastards, you lousy, scrimy—”

  Sykes didn’t bother with gloves this time, he just came off the edge of the table and the knuckles of his right fist smashed my nose into a bloody pulp. His face was livid with rage and he was getting set to try it again, hard bony fists ready. I half leaned against the cop beside me feeling the blood drip off my chin.

  Belden’s voice held a flat snarl. “ Jesus! Sykes, this time it goes on your record, and enough of this could damn well cost you your badge. Maybe you’ll learn to act on orders someday.”

  I watched Sykes get madder, watched his lips thin out into a pale gash of rage, heard him say, “Yes, sir,” as sarcastically as he could.

  But it was more than he could take. His mind was saying the hell with Belden and he stepped in to take another shot at me and soon as he took that one step forward, I kicked him in the crotch so hard, he lifted off the floor, his pants ripping, and the next second he was a screaming, gasping lump on the floor, doubled up into a knot. His mouth was coughing up a bloody, foaming vomit. He didn’t even look human.

  The little waitress took this in with terror, a hand curled at her cheek. I hoped she was the one who had to clean up that puke.

  My arm was twisted up behind my neck, and if it wasn’t for Belden, the dick at my side would have torn it off. Two uniformed guys came in at Belden’s call and carried Sykes ou
t like a guy who took a really bad hit on the football field. They dragged him out to the car and pushed me in the other one.

  Now I felt better.

  Pushing back always made me feel better.

  I was in the back seat, grinning to myself. A uniformed cop was driving and Belden was riding. He glanced over a shoulder at me.

  “Sykes is a bad enemy to make, son,” he told me, shaking his head. Such concern.

  The driver asked, “Back to the station, Chief?”

  “No,” Belden said. “Make it the morgue.”

  * * *

  The hospital was in the middle of town, surrounded by housing that were more like hovels. It was an ancient brick structure that had the kind of gothic look Dr. Frankenstein might have gone for, lacking only lightning in the background to really set it off. Getting hauled to this nightmarish joint for medical attention would be bad enough.

  But the morgue was in the basement.

  Somewhere water dripped, as an antiseptic smell did battle with a general musty dankness. The corridor walls were concrete block, the floor just plain concrete. Leaving the other cops behind, Belden took me by the arm through double doors into a high-ceilinged, chilly area where half a dozen sheet-covered corpse-accommodating wheeled trays were waiting to move their passengers to refrigerated drawers lining the walls nearby.

  The attendant was a gray little man: gray hair, gray eyes, gray skin, gray suit glimpsed under a white smock with irregular maroon dried-blood striping. He had a lidded-eyed look that seemed like boredom at first but was really the deadness that he had caught, like the flu, from his tenants.

  “Warburton girl,” Belden told him.

  The gray attendant checked his clipboard. “No autopsy yet,” he said.

  “We want a quick look at her.”

  Someone came in behind us.

  As we turned, Belden told me in a helpful whisper, “Medical examiner.”

  The M.E. was small and plump, his suit a three-piece tweed not appropriate to this time of year, unless you spent a lot of time in a room as cold as this. He had a round face, thinning white hair, and a tiny smile that was strictly a superficial wound.