The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 2 Page 30

  I gave it a try on the phone anyway, but they couldn’t locate Pat in the building anywhere. I held the receiver down for a second, long enough to check Marsha’s number in the book, then punched out her call. The nurse with the mustache answered and told me that Miss Lee had just left for a morning rehearsal of the Little Theater Group and wasn’t expected back until later that afternoon.

  Nuts. So now I had to go down to police headquarters and face an inquisition. My legs had more life in them by the time I reached the street, and when I had pulled up in front of the building downtown I was back to normal in a sense. At least I felt like having a beer and a butt without choking over the thought.

  They were real happy to see me, they were. They looked like they hoped I wouldn’t come so they could go drag me down by the neck, but now that I was there everything was malicious, tight smiles and short, sharp sentences that steered me into a little room where I was supposed to sit and sweat so I’d blab my head off when they asked me questions.

  I spit on the floor, right in the middle, to be exact, and had the Lucky I wanted. The college boy with the pointed face who rated as the D.A.’s assistant glared at me but didn’t have the guts to back it up with any words. He parked behind a desk and tried to look important and tough. It was a lousy act.

  When I started wondering how long they were going to let me cool my heels the corridor got noisy and I picked out Pat’s voice raising Cain with somebody. The door slammed open and he stalked in with his face tight in anger.

  I said, “ ‘lo, Pal,” but he didn’t answer.

  He walked up to the desk and leaned on it until his face wasn’t an inch away from the D.A.’s boy and he did a good job of keeping his hands off the guy’s neck. “Since when do you take over the duties of the Police Department? I’m still Captain of Homicide around here and when there’s murder I’ll handle it myself, personally, understand? I ought to knock your ears off for pulling a stunt like that!”

  The boy got a blustery red and started to get up. “See here, the District Attorney gave me full permission . . .”

  “To butt into my business because a friend of mine is suspected of murder!”

  “Exactly!”

  Pat’s voice got dangerously low. “Get your ass out of this office before I kick hell out of you. Go on, get out. And you tell the D.A. that I’ll see him in a few minutes.”

  He practically ran to the door. I could see the D.A. getting a sweet version of the story, all right. I said, “What’d he do to you, kid?”

  “Crazy little bastard. He thinks because I’m a friend of yours I’ll do a little whitewashing. He got me out of the building on a phony call right after I spoke to you.”

  “You’re not going to be very popular with the D.A, for that.”

  “I’m sick of that guy walking all over this office. They pulled a raid on a wire room last night and all they got was an empty apartment with a lot of holes in the walls and a blackboard that still showed track results and a snotty little character who said he was thinking of opening a school for handicappers. The guy was clean and there wasn’t a thing the D.A. could do.”

  “Sounds like a good business. Whose wire room was it?”

  “Hell, who else has wire rooms in this town? The place was run by one of Ed Teen’s outfit.”

  “Or so your information said.”

  “Yeah. So now the D.A. gets in a rile and raises hell with everyone from the mayor down. He’s pulled his last rough sketch on me with this deal though. Let him try getting rough just once and the news boys are going to get a lot of fancy stuff that won’t do a thing for him when election time comes.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Inside waiting for you.”

  “Let’s see the guy then.”

  “Just a minute. Tell me something straight. Did you kill a guy named Mel Hooker?” he asked.

  “Oh, God!”

  Pat’s eyes got that squinty look. “What’s the matter?”

  “Your corpse was the friend of William Decker ... That beautiful local-type kill the police seem to be ignoring so well.”

  “The police aren’t ignoring anything.”

  “Then they’re not looking very hard. Mel and Decker were playing the ponies and Mel introduced him to a loan shark that financed his little escapades. There was a catch in it. Mel said Decker lost his shirt, but the loan shark, that Dixie Cooper guy, said Decker paid him off in full and was able to prove it.”

  Pat muttered something under his breath. He nodded for me to follow him and started for the door. This time the tight smiles loosened up and nobody seemed to want to get in our way. From the way Pat was glowering it looked like he was ready to take me and anybody else apart and had already started.

  Pat knocked on the door and I heard the D.A. call out for somebody to see who it was. The door opened, a pair of thick-lensed glasses did a quick focus on the two of us and the D.A. said, “Show them in, Mr. Mertig.”

  It was quite a gathering. The D.A. straddled his throne with two assistant D.A.’s flanking him, a pair of plainclothes men in the background and two more over by the window huddled together for mutual protection apparently.

  “Sit down, Hammer,” the D.A. said.

  Everybody watched me with the annoyed look you see when the king isn’t obeyed pronto. I walked up to his desk, planted my hands on the top and leaned right down in his face. I didn’t like the guy and he didn’t like me, but he wasn’t getting snooty now or any other time. I said, “You call me Mister when you use my name. I don’t want any crap from you or your boys and if you think you can make it tough for me just go ahead and try it. I came in here myself to save you the trouble of getting a false arrest charge slapped against your office and right now I’m not above walking out just to see what you’d do. It’s about time you learned to be polite to your public when you’re not sure of your facts.”

  The D.A. started to get purple. In fact, a lot of people started to get purple. When they all got a nice livid tinge I sat down.

  He made a good job of keeping his voice under control. “We are sure of the facts ... Mister Hammer.”

  “Go on.”

  “A certain Mel Hooker has been found dead. He was shot to death with a .45.”

  “I suppose the bullet came from my gun?” I tried to make it sound as sarcastic as possible.

  The purple started to fade into an unhealthy red. Unhealthy for me, I mean. “Unfortunately, no. The bullet passed through the man and out the window. So far we haven’t been able to locate it.”

  I started to interrupt, but he held up his hand. “However, you were very generous with your fingerprints. They’re all over the place. The landlady identified your picture and vouched that she heard threats before you left, so it is quite a simple matter to see what followed.”

  “Yeah, I went back later and shot him. I’m really that stupid.”

  “Yes, you really are.” His eyes were narrow slits in his face.

  “And you got rocks in your head,” I said. He started to get up but I beat him to it. I stood there looking down at him so he could see what I thought of him. “You’re a real bright boy, you are. Brother, the voters sure must be proud of you! Christ, you’re ready to kick anything around because your vice racket business is getting the works. It’s got you so far down you’re all set to slap me in the clink without having the foresight to ask me if I got an alibi or not for the time of the shooting. So it happened last night and I don’t know what time and without bothering to find out I’ll hand you my alibi on a platter and you can choke on it.”

  I pointed to the intercom on his desk. “Get Ellen Scobie in here.”

  The D.A.’s face was wet with an angry sweat. His finger triggered the gadget and when Ellen answered he told her to come in.

  Before the door opened I had a chance to look at Pat and he was shaking his head slowly trying to tell me not to go overboard so far I couldn’t get back. Ellen came in, smiled at me through a puzzled frown and stood there
waiting to see what was going on. From the look that passed between us, the D.A. caught on fast, but he wasn’t letting me get in any prompting first. He said, “Miss Scobie, were you with this ... with Mister Hammer last night at, say eleven-thirty?”

  She didn’t have to think to answer that one. “Yes, I did happen to be with him.”

  “Where were you?”

  “I should say that we were sitting in a bar about then. A place on Fifty-second Street.”

  “That’s all, Miss Scobie.”

  Everybody ushered her out of the room with their eyes. When the door clicked shut the D.A.’s voice twanged like a flat banjo string. “You may go too, Mister Hammer. I’m getting a little tired of your impertinence.” His face had turned a deadly white and he was speaking through his teeth. “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if your license was revoked very shortly.”

  My voice came out a hiss more than anything else. “I’d be,” I said. “You tried that once before and remember what happened?”

  That’s all I had to say and for a few seconds I was the only one who didn’t stop breathing in the room. Nobody bothered to open the door for me this time. I went out myself and started down the corridor, then Pat caught up with me.

  We must have been thinking the same things, because neither one of us bothered to speak until we were two blocks away in Louie’s place where a quick beer cooled things down to a boil.

  Pat grinned at me in the mirror behind the bar. “You’re a lucky bastard, Mike. If the press wasn’t so hot on the D.A.’s heels you’d be out of business if he lost the election over it.”

  “Aw, he gives me a pain. Okay, he’s got it in for me, but does he have to be so goddamn stupid about it? Why didn’t he do some checking first. Christ, him and his investigators are making the police look ridiculous. I’m no chump. I got as much on the ball as any of his stooges and in my own way maybe I got as many scruples too.”

  “Ease off, Mike. I’m on your side.”

  “I know, but you’re tied down too. Who has to get murdered before the boob will put some time in on the case? Right now you got three corpses locked together as nicely as you please and what’s being done?”

  “More than you think.”

  I sipped the top of my beer and watched his eyes in the mirror. “It wasn’t any news that Decker and Hooker were tied up. The lab boys lifted a few prints out of his apartment. Some of them were Hooker’s.”

  “He have a record?”

  Pat shook his head. “During the war he had a job that required security and he was printed. We picked up the blind newspaper dealer’s prints too. He had a record.”

  “I know. They graduated from the same Alma Mater up the river.”

  Pat grinned again. “You know too damn much.”

  “Yeah, but you do it the easy way. What else do you know?”

  “You tell me, Mike.”

  “What?”

  “The things you have in that mind of yours, chum. I want your angle first.”

  I ordered another round and lit a cigarette to go with it. “Decker needed dough. His wife was undergoing an operation that cost heavy sugar and he had to get it from someplace. He and Hooker got some hot tips on the nags and they pooled their dough to make some fast money. When they found out the tips were solid ones they went in deeper. Hooker pulled out while he was ahead, but Decker wanted to make the big kill so he borrowed a grand from Dixie Cooper. According to Hooker, he lost everything and was in hock to Cooper for plenty, but when I braced the guy he proved that Decker had paid him back.

  “Okay, he had to get the dough from somebody. He sure as hell didn’t work for it because the docks have been too slow the past month. He had to do one of two things ... either steal it or borrow it. It could be that when he went back to his old trade he found it so profitable he couldn’t or didn’t want to give it up. If that was the case then he made a mistake and broke into the wrong apartment. He and his partners were expecting a juicy haul and if Decker spent a lot of time casing the joint a gimmick like breaking into the wrong apartment would have looked like a sorry excuse to the other two who were expecting part of the proceeds. In that case he would have tried to take a flyer and they caught up with him.”

  Pat looked down into his glass. “Then where does Hooker come in?”

  “They were friends, weren’t they? First Decker gets bumped for pulling a funny stunt, the driver of the car gives the second guy the works so he won’t be captured and squeal, then he goes and gets Hooker because he’s afraid Decker might have spilled the works to his friend.”

  “I’ll buy that,” Pat said. “It’s exactly the way I’ve had it figured.”

  “You buy it and you’ll be stuck,” I told him. I finished my beer and let the bartender fill it up again. Pat was making wry faces now. He was waiting for the rest of it.

  I gave it to him. “William Decker hadn’t been pulling any jobs before that one. He was going straight all along the line. He must have known what might happen and got his affairs in order right down to making provisions for his kid. If Decker paid off Cooper then he borrowed the dough from somebody else and the somebody put on the squeeze play. For my money they even knew where the dough could be had and laid it out so all Decker had to do was go up the fire escape and open up the safe.

  “That’s where he made his mistake. He got into the wrong place and after all the briefing he had who the hell would believe his story. No, Decker knew he jimmied the wrong can and didn’t dare take a chance on correcting the error because Marsha Lee could have come to at any time and called the cops. In the league where he was playing they only allow you one mistake. Decker knew they would believe that he had stashed the money thinking to come back later and get it, so he took off by himself.

  “What happened was this ... he had to go home for his kid. When they knew he had taken a powder they put it together and beat it back to his place. By that time he was gone, but they picked him up fast enough. When he knew he was trapped he kissed his kid good-by and walked out into a bullet. That boy of Grindle’s searched him for the dough and when he didn’t find it, the logical thought was that he hid it in his apartment. He didn’t have much chance to do anything else. So, the driver of the car scooted back there and got into the place and messed it up.”

  Pat’s teeth were making harsh grating noises and his fingers rasped against the woodwork of the bar. “So you’re all for nailing the driver of the murder car, right?”

  The way I grinned wasn’t human. It tied my face up into a bunch of hard knots. “Nope,” I said, “that’s your job. You can have him. I want the son-of-a-bitch who put the pressure on him. I want the guy who made somebody decent revert back to a filthy crime and I want him right between my hands so I can squeeze the juice out of him.”

  “Where is he, Mike?”

  “If I knew I wouldn’t tell you, friend. I want him for myself. Someday I want to be able to tell that kid what his face looked like when he was dying.”

  “Damn it anyway, Mike, you can stretch friendship too far sometimes.”

  “No, I’ll never stretch it, Pat. Just remember that I live in this town too. Besides having what few police powers the state chooses to hand me, I’m still a citizen and responsible in some small way for what happens in the city. And by God, if I’m partly responsible then I have a right to take care of an obligation like removing a lousy orphan-maker.”

  “Who is he, Mike?”

  “I said I didn’t know.”

  “But you know where to find out.”

  “That’s right. It isn’t too hard if you want to take a chance on getting your head smashed in.”

  “Like you did last night?”

  “Yeah. That’s something else I have to even up. I don’t know why or how it happened, but I got a beaut of an idea, I have.”

  “Something like looking for a guy named Lou Grindle whom you called all sorts of names and threatened to shoot on sight if you found out he was responsible for Decker’s death?”


  My mouth fell open. “How the hell did you get that?”

  “Now you’re taking me for the chump, Mike. I checked the tie-up Arnold Basil had with Grindle thoroughly, and from the way Lou acted I knew somebody had been there before me. It didn’t take long to guess who it was. Lou was steamed up to beat hell and told me what happened. Let me tell you something. Don’t try anything with that boy. The D.A. has men covering him every minute he’s awake trying to get something on him.”

  “Where was he last night then?”

  A thundercloud rolled over Pat’s face. “The bastard skipped out. He pulled a fastie and skipped his apartment and never got back until eleven. In case you’re thinking he had anything to do with Hooker’s death, forget it. He couldn’t have gotten back at that time.”

  “I’m not thinking anything. I was just going to tell you he was in a place called the Glass Bar on Eighth Avenue with Ed Teen somewhere around ten. The D.A. ought to get new eyes. The old ones are going bad.”

  Pat swore under his breath.

  I said, “What made you say that, Pat?”

  “Say what?”

  “Oh, connect Lou and Hooker.”

  “Hell, I didn’t connect anything. I just said ...”

  “You said something that ought to make you think a lot more, boy. Grindle and Decker and Hooker don’t go together at all. They’re miles apart. In fact, they’re so far apart they’re backing into each other from the ends.”

  He set his glass down with a thump. “Wait a minute. Don’t go getting this thing screwed up with a lot of wacky ideas. Lou Grindle isn’t playing with anything worth a few grand and if he is, he doesn’t send out blockheads to do the job. You’re way the hell out of line.”

  “Okay, don’t get excited.”

  “Good Lord, who’s getting excited? Damn it, Mike ...”

  My face was as flat as I could make it. I just sat there with the beer in my hand and stared at myself in the mirror because I started thinking of something that was like a shadow hovering in the background. I thought about it for a long time and it was still a shadow when I finished and it had a shape that was so curious I wanted to go up closer for another look.