The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 3 Read online

  “I don’t have any new clothes.”

  “You have now. You can pay me later.”

  “I’ll pay you up the guzukus later.”

  He walked over, seemingly balancing on the balls of his feet. Very quietly he said, “You can get yourself another belt in the kisser without trying hard, mister.”

  I couldn’t let it go. I tried to swing coming up out of the chair and like the last time I could see it coming but couldn’t get out of the way. All I heard was a meaty smash that had a familiar sound to it and my stomach tried to heave again but it was too late. The beautiful black had come again.

  My jaws hurt. My neck hurt. My whole side felt like it was coming out. But most of all my jaws hurt. Each tooth was an independent source of silent agony while the pain in my head seemed to center just behind each ear. My tongue was too thick to talk and when I got my eyes open I had to squint them shut again to make out the checkerboard pattern of the ceiling.

  When the fuzziness went away I sat up, trying to remember what happened. I was on the couch this time, dressed in a navy blue suit. The shirt was clean and white, the top button open and the black knitted tie hanging down loose. Even the shoes were new and in the open part of my mind it was like the simple wonder of a child discovering the new and strange world of the ants when he turns over a rock.

  “You awake?”

  I looked up and Pat was standing in the archway, another guy behind him carrying a small black bag.

  When I didn’t answer Pat said, “Take a look at him, Larry.”

  The one he spoke to pulled a stethoscope from his pocket and hung it around his neck. Then everything started coming back again. I said, “I’m all right. You don’t hit that hard.”

  “I wasn’t half trying, wise guy.”

  “Then why the medic?”

  “General principles. This is Larry Snyder. He’s a friend of mine.”

  “So what?” The doc had the stethoscope against my chest but I couldn’t stop him even if I had wanted to. The examination was quick, but pretty thorough. When he finished he stood up and pulled out a prescription pad.

  Pat asked, “Well?”

  “He’s been around. Fairly well marked out. Fist fights, couple of bullet scars—”

  “He’s had them.”

  “Fist marks are recent. Other bruises made by some blunt instrument. One rib—”

  “Shoes,” I interrupted. “I got stomped.”

  “Typical alcoholic condition,” he continued. “From all external signs I’d say he isn’t too far from total. You know how they are.”

  “Damn it,” I said, “quit talking about me in the third person.”

  Pat grunted something under his breath and turned to Larry. “Any suggestions?”

  “What can you do with them?” the doctor laughed. “They hit the road again as soon as you let them out of your sight. Like him—you buy him new clothes and as soon as he’s near a swap shop he’ll turn them in on rags with cash to boot and pitch a big one. They go back harder than ever once they’re off awhile.”

  “Meanwhile I can cool him for a day.”

  “Sure. He’s okay now. Depends upon personal supervision.”

  Pat let out a terse laugh. “I don’t care what he does when I let him loose. I want him sober for one hour. I need him.”

  When I glanced up I saw the doctor looking at Pat strangely, then me. “Wait a minute. This is that guy you were telling me about one time?”

  Pat nodded. “That’s right.”

  “I thought you were friends.”

  “We were at one time, but nobody’s friends with a damn drunken bum. He’s nothing but a lousy lush and I’d as soon throw his can in the tank as I would any other lush. Being friends once doesn’t mean anything to me. Friends can wear out pretty fast sometimes. He wore out. Now he’s part of a job. For old times’ sake I throw in a few favors on the side but they’re strictly for old times’ sake and only happen once. Just once. After that he stays bum and I stay cop. I catch him out of line and he’s had it.”

  Larry laughed gently and patted him on the shoulder. Pat’s face was all tight in a mean grimace and it was a way I had never seen him before. “Relax,” Larry told him. “Don’t you get wound up.”

  “So I hate slobs,” he said.

  “You want a prescription too? There are economy-sized bottles of tranquilizers nowadays.”

  Pat sucked in his breath and a grin pulled at his mouth. “That’s all I need is a problem.” He waved a thumb at me. “Like him.”

  Larry looked down at me like he would at any specimen. “He doesn’t look like a problem type. He probably plain likes the sauce.”

  “No, he’s got a problem, right?”

  “Shut up,” I said.

  “Tell the man what your problem is, Mikey boy.”

  Larry said, “Pat—”

  He shoved his hand away from his arm. “No, go ahead and tell him, Mike. I’d like to hear it again myself.”

  “You son of a bitch,” I said.

  He smiled then. His teeth were shiny and white under tight lips and the two steps he took toward me were stiff-kneed. “I told you what I’d do if you got big-mouthed again.”

  For once I was ready. I wasn’t able to get up, so I kicked him right smack in the crotch and once in the mouth when he started to fold up and I would have gotten one more in if the damn doctor hadn’t laid me out with a single swipe of his bag that almost took my head off.

  It was an hour before either one of us was any good, but from now on I wasn’t going to get another chance to lay Pat up with a sucker trick. He was waiting for me to try it and if I did he’d have my guts all over the floor.

  The doctor had gone and come, getting his own prescriptions filled. I got two pills and a shot. Pat had a fistful of aspirins, but he needed a couple of leeches along the side of his face where he was all black and blue.

  But yet he sat there with the disgust and sarcasm still on his face whenever he looked at me and once more he said, “You didn’t tell the doctor your problem, Mike.”

  I just looked at him.

  Larry waved his hand for him to cut it out and finished repacking his kit.

  Pat wasn’t going to let it alone, though. He said, “Mike lost his girl. A real nice kid. They were going to get married.”

  That great big place in my chest started to open up again, a huge hole that could grow until there was nothing left of me, only that huge hole. “Shut up, Pat.”

  “He likes to think she ran off, but he knows all the time she’s dead. He sent her out on too hot a job and she never came back, right, Mikey boy? She’s dead.”

  “Maybe you’d better forget it, Pat,” Larry told him softly.

  “Why forget it? She was my friend too. She had no business playing guns with hoods. But no, wise guy here sends her out. His secretary. She has a P.I. ticket and a gun, but she’s nothing but a girl and she never comes back. You know where she probably is, Doc? At the bottom of the river someplace, that’s where.”

  And now the hole was all I had left. I was all nothing, a hole that could twist and scorch my mind with such incredible pain that even relief was inconceivable because there was no room for anything except that pain. Out of it all I could feel some movement. I knew I was watching Pat and I could hear his voice but nothing made sense at all.

  His voice was far away saying, “Look at him, Larry. His eyes are all gone. And look at his hand. You know what he’s doing. He’s trying to kill me. He’s going after a gun that isn’t there anymore because he hasn’t got a license to carry one. He lost that and his business and everything else when he shot up the people he thought got Velda. Oh, he knocked off some goodies and got away with it because they were all hoods caught in the middle of an armed robbery. But that was it for our tough boy there. Then what does he do? He cries his soul out into a whiskey bottle. Damn—look at his hand. He’s pointing a gun at me he doesn’t even have anymore and his finger’s pulling the trigger. Damn, he’d kill
me right where I sit.”

  Then I lost sight of Pat entirely because my head was going from side to side and the hole was being filled in again from the doctor’s wide-fingered slaps until once more I could see and feel as much as I could in the half life that was left in me.

  This time the doctor had lost his disdainful smirk. He pulled the skin down under my eyes, stared at my pupils, felt my pulse and did things to my earlobe with his fingernail that I could barely feel. He stopped, stood up and turned his back to me. “This guy is shot down, Pat.”

  “It couldn’t’ve happened to a better guy.”

  “I’m not kidding. He’s a case. What do you expect to get out of him?”

  “Nothing. Why?”

  “Because I’d say he couldn’t stay rational. That little exhibition was a beauty. I’d hate to see it if he was pressed further.”

  “Then stick around. I’ll press him good, the punk.”

  “You’re asking for trouble. Somebody like him can go off the deep end anytime. For a minute there I thought he’d flipped. When it happens they don’t come back very easily. What is it you wanted him to do?”

  I was listening now. Not because I wanted to, but because it was something buried too far in my nature to ignore. It was something from way back like a hunger that can’t be ignored.

  Pat said, “I want him to interrogate a prisoner.”

  For a moment there was silence, then: “You can’t be serious.”

  “The hell I’m not. The guy won’t talk to anybody else but him.”

  “Come off it, Pat. You have ways to make a person talk.”

  “Sure, under the right circumstances, but not when they’re in the hospital with doctors and nurses hovering over them.”

  “Oh?”

  “The guy’s been shot. He’s only holding on so he can talk to this slob. The doctors can’t say what keeps him alive except his determination to make this contact.”

  “But—”

  “But nuts, Larry!” His voice started to rise with suppressed rage. “We use any means we can when the chips are down. This guy was shot and we want the one who pulled the trigger. It’s going to be a murder rap any minute and if there’s a lead we’ll damn well get it. I don’t care what it takes to make this punk sober, but that’s the way he’s going to be and I don’t care if the effort kills him, he’s going to do it.”

  “Okay, Pat. It’s your show. Run it. Just remember that there are plenty of ways of killing a guy.”

  I felt Pat’s eyes reach out for me. “For him I don’t give a damn.”

  Somehow I managed a grin and felt around for the words. I couldn’t get a real punch line across, but to me they sounded good enough.

  Just two words.

  CHAPTER 2

  Pat had arranged everything with his usual methodical care. The years hadn’t changed him a bit. The great arranger. Mr. Go, Go, Go himself. I felt the silly grin come back that really had no meaning, and someplace in the back of my mind a clinical voice told me softly that it could be a symptom of incipient hysteria. The grin got sillier and I couldn’t help it.

  Larry and Pat blocked me in on either side, a hand under each arm keeping me upright and forcing me forward. As far as anybody was concerned I was another sick one coming in the emergency entrance and if he looked close enough he could even smell the hundred-proof sickness.

  I made them take me to the men’s room so I could vomit again, and when I sluiced down in frigid water I felt a small bit better. Enough so I could wipe off the grin. I was glad there was no mirror over the basin. It had been a long time since I had looked at myself and I didn’t want to start now.

  Behind me the door opened and there was some hurried medical chatter between Larry and a white-coated intern who had come in with a plainclothesman. Pat finally said, “How is he?”

  “Going fast,” Larry said. “He won’t let them operate either. He knows he’s had it and doesn’t want to die under ether before he sees your friend here.”

  “Damn it, don’t call him my friend.”

  The intern glanced at me critically, running his eyes up and down then doing a quickie around my face. His fingers flicked out to spread my eyelids open for a look into my pupils and I batted them away.

  “Keep your hands off me, sonny,” I said.

  Pat waved him down. “Let him be miserable, Doctor. Don’t try to help him.”

  The intern shrugged, but kept looking anyway. I had suddenly become an interesting psychological study for him.

  “You’d better get him up there. The guy hasn’t long to live. Minutes at the most.”

  Pat looked at me. “You ready?”

  “You asking?” I said.

  “Not really. You don’t have a choice.”

  “No?”

  Larry said, “Mike—go ahead and do it.”

  I nodded. “Sure, why not. I always did have to do half his work for him anyway.” Pat’s mouth went tight and I grinned again. “Clue me on what you want to know.”

  There were fine white lines around Pat’s nostrils and his lips were tight and thin. “Who shot him. Ask him that.”

  “What’s the connection?”

  Now Pat’s eyes went half closed, hating my guts for beginning to think again. After a moment he said, “One bullet almost went through him. They took it out yesterday. A ballistics check showed it to be from the same gun that killed Senator Knapp. If this punk upstairs dies we can lose our lead to a murderer. Understand? You find out who shot him.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Anything for a friend. Only first I want a drink.”

  “No drink.”

  “So drop dead.”

  “Bring him a shot,” Larry told the intern.

  The guy nodded, went out and came back a few seconds later with a big double in a water glass. I took it in a hand that had the shakes real bad, lifted it and said, “Cheers.”

  The guy on the bed heard us come in and turned his head on the pillow. His face was drawn, pinched with pain and the early glaze of death was in his eyes.

  I stepped forward and before I could talk he said, “Mike? You’re—Mike Hammer?”

  “That’s right.”

  He squinted at me, hesitating. “You’re not like—”

  I knew what he was thinking. I said, “I’ve been sick.”

  From someplace in back Pat sucked in his breath disgustedly.

  The guy noticed them for the first time. “Out. Get them out.”

  I waved my thumb over my shoulder without turning around. I knew Larry was pushing Pat out the door over his whispered protestations, but you don’t argue long with a medic in his own hospital.

  When the door clicked shut I said, “Okay, buddy, you wanted to see me and since you’re on the way out it has to be important. Just let me get some facts straight. I never saw you before. Who are you?”

  “Richie Cole.”

  “Good. Now who shot you?”

  “Guy they call . . . The Dragon. No name . . . I don’t know his name.”

  “Look . . .”

  Somehow he got one hand up and waved it feebly. “Let me talk.”

  I nodded, pulled up a chair and sat on the arm. My guts were all knotted up again and beginning to hurt. They were crying out for some bottle love again and I had to rub the back of my hand across my mouth to take the thought away.

  The guy made a wry face and shook his head. “You’ll . . . never do it.”

  My tongue ran over my lips without moistening them. “Do what?”

  “Get her in time.”

  “Who?”

  “The woman.” His eyes closed and for a moment his face relaxed. “The woman Velda.”

  I sat there as if I were paralyzed; for a second totally immobilized, a suddenly frozen mind and body that had solidified into one great silent scream at the mention of a name I had long ago consigned to a grave somewhere. Then the terrible cold was drenched with an even more terrible wash of heat and I sat there with my hands bunched into fists to kee
p them from shaking.

  Velda.

  He was watching me closely, the glaze in his eyes momentarily gone. He saw what had happened to me when he said the name and there was a peculiar expression of approval in his face.

  Finally I said, “You knew her?”

  He barely nodded. “I know her.”

  And again that feeling happened to me, worse this time because I knew he wasn’t lying and that she was alive someplace. Alive!

  I kept a deliberate control over my voice. “Where is she?”

  “Safe for . . . the moment. But she’ll be killed unless . . . you find her. The one called The Dragon . . . he’s looking for her too. You’ll have to find her first.”

  I was damn near breathless. “Where?” I wanted to reach over and shake it out of him but he was too close to the edge of the big night to touch.

  Cole managed a crooked smile. He was having a hard time to talk and it was almost over. “I gave . . . an envelope to Old Dewey. Newsy on Lexington by the Clover Bar . . . for you.”

  “Damn it, where is she, Cole?”

  “No . . . you find The Dragon . . . before he gets her.”

  “Why me, Cole? Why that way? You had the cops?”

  The smile still held on. “Need someone . . . ruthless. Someone very terrible.” His eyes fixed on mine, shiny bright, mirroring one last effort to stay alive. “She said . . . you could . . . if someone could find you. You had been missing . . . long time.” He was fighting hard now. He only had seconds. “No police . . . unless necessary. You’ll see . . . why.”

  “Cole . . .”

  His eyes closed, then opened and he said, “Hurry.” He never closed them again. The gray film came and his stare was a lifeless one, hiding things I would have given an arm to know.

  I sat there beside the bed looking at the dead man, my thoughts groping for a hold in a brain still soggy from too many bouts in too many bars. I couldn’t think, so I simply looked and wondered where and when someone like him had found someone like her.

  Cole had been a big man. His face, relaxed in death, had hard planes to it, a solid jawline blue with beard and a nose that had been broken high on the bridge. There was a scar beside one eye running into the hairline that could have been made by a knife. Cole had been a hard man, all right. In a way a good-looking hardcase whose business was trouble.