The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 3 Page 32

  “But I have one thing you don’t have.”

  I knew what he was going to say.

  “Men. We can put enough troops on it to shorten the time.”

  “It’ll still be a long job.”

  “You know a better way?”

  The phone rang before I could answer and although I could hear the hurried chatter at the other end I couldn’t make it out. When he cradled the phone Pat said, “One of my squad in Brooklyn on that Levitt rundown.”

  “Oh?”

  “He was eating with one of the men from the precinct over there when a call came in about a body. He went along with his friend and apparently the dead guy is one of the ones he showed Basil Levitt’s picture to.”

  “A starter,” I said.

  “Could be. Want to take a run over?”

  “Why not?”

  Pat got his car from the lot and we hopped in, cutting over the bridge into the Brooklyn section. The address was in the heart of Flatbush, one block off the Avenue, a neighborhood bar and grill that was squeezed in between a grocery and a dry-cleaning place.

  A squad car was at the curb and a uniformed patrolman stood by the door. Two more, obviously detectives from the local precinct, were in the doorway talking. Pat knew the Lieutenant in charge, shook hands with him, introduced him to me as Joe Cavello, then went inside.

  Squatting nervously on a stool, the bartender watched us, trying to be casual about the whole thing. Lieutenant Cavello nodded toward him and said, “He found the body.”

  “When?”

  “About an hour ago. He had to go down to hook into some fresh beer kegs and found the guy on the floor. He’d been shot once in the head with a small-caliber gun . . . I’d say about a .32.”

  “The M.E. set the time of death?” I asked him.

  “About twelve to fifteen hours. He’ll be more specific after an autopsy.”

  “Who was he?” Pat said.

  “The owner of the place.”

  “You know him?”

  “Somewhat,” Cavello said. “We’ve had him down to the precinct a few times. Twice on wife beating and another when he was picked up in a raid on a card game. This is kind of a chintzy joint. Local bums hang out here because the drinks are cheap. But that’s all they sell anyway, cheap booze. We’ve had a few complaints about some fights in here but nothing ever happened. You know, the usual garbage that goes with these slop chutes.”

  Pat said, “I had Nelson and Kiley over here doing a rundown on Basil Levitt. You hear about it?”

  “Yeah, Lew Nelson checked in with me right after it happened. He saw the body. It was the guy he spoke to all right. I asked around but nobody here seemed to know Levitt.”

  “How about the bartender?” I said.

  Cavello shook his head. “Nothing there. He does the day work and nothing more. When the boss came on, he went off. He doesn’t know the night crowd at all.”

  “He live around here?”

  “Red Hook. Not his neighborhood here and he couldn’t care less.”

  While Pat went over the details of what the police picked up I wandered back to the end of the bar. There was a back room used as a storeroom and a place for the food locker with a doorway to one side that opened into the cellar. The lights were on downstairs and I went down to the spot behind the stairs where the chalk marks outlined the position of the body. They were half on the floor and half on the wall, so the guy was found in a sitting position.

  Back upstairs Cavello had taken Pat to the end of the bar and I got back in on the conversation. Cavello said, “Near as we could figure it out, this guy Thomas Kline closed the bar earlier than usual, making the few customers he had leave. It was something he had never done before apparently. He’d stick it out if there was a dime in the joint left to be spent. This time he bitched about a headache, closed up, and shut off the lights. That was it. We spoke to the ones who were here then, but they all went off to another place and closed it down much later, then went home. Clean alibis. All working men for a change. No records.

  “We think he met somebody here for some purpose. Come here.” He led the way to a table in one corner and pointed to the floor. A small stain showed against the oiled wood. “Blood. It matched the victim’s. Here’s where he was shot. The killer took the body downstairs, dumped it behind the staircase where it couldn’t be seen very easily, then left. The door locks by simply closing it so it was simple enough to do. One block down he’s in traffic, and anyplace along the Avenue he could have picked up a cab if he didn’t have his own car. We’re checking all the cabbies’ sheets now.”

  But I had stopped listening to him about then. I was looking at the back corner of the wall. I tapped Pat on the arm and pointed. “You remember the call you got from someone inquiring about Levitt?”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  There was an open pay phone on the wall about four feet away from a jukebox.

  Pat walked over to it, looked at the records on the juke, but who could tell rock and roll from the titles? He said to Cavello, “Many places got these open phones?”

  “Sure,” Cavello told him, “most of the spots that haven’t got room for a booth. Mean anything?”

  “I don’t know. It could.”

  “Anything I could help with?”

  Pat explained the situation and Cavello said he’d try to find anyone who saw Kline making a phone call about that time. He didn’t expect much luck though. People in that neighborhood didn’t talk too freely to the police. It was more likely that they wouldn’t remember anything rather than get themselves involved.

  Another plainclothes officer came in then, said hello to Pat, and he introduced me to Lew Nelson. He didn’t have anything to add to the story and so far that day hadn’t found anybody who knew much about Levitt at all.

  I tapped his shoulder and said, “How did Kline react when you showed him Levitt’s photo?”

  “Well, he jumped a little. He said he couldn’t be sure and I figured he was lying. I got the same reaction from others besides him. That Levitt was a mean son and I don’t think anybody wanted to mess around with him. He wanted to know what he was wanted for and I wouldn’t say anything except that he was dead and he seemed pretty satisfied at that.

  “Tell you one thing. That guy was thinking of something. He studied that photo until he was sure he knew him and then told me he never saw him before. Maybe he thought he had an angle somewhere.”

  There wasn’t much left there for us. Pat left a few instructions, sent Nelson back on the streets again, and started outside. He stopped for a final word to Cavello so I went on alone and stood on the sidewalk beside the cop on guard there. It wasn’t until he went to answer the radio in the squad car that I saw the thing his position had obscured.

  In the window of the bar was a campaign poster and on it a full-face picture of a smiling Torrence, who was running in the primaries for governor, and under it was the slogan, WIN WITH SIM.

  CHAPTER 9

  I made the call from the drugstore on the corner. I dialed the Torrence estate and waited while the phone rang a half-dozen times, each time feeling the cold go through me deeper and deeper.

  Damn, it couldn’t be too late!

  Then a sleepy voice said, “Yes?” and there was no worry in it at all.

  “Geraldine?”

  “Mike, you thing you.”

  “Look . . .”

  “Why did you leave me? How could you leave me?”

  “I’ll tell you later. Has Torrence come home yet?”

  My voice startled her into wakefulness. “But . . . no, he’s due here in an hour though. He called this morning from Albany to tell me when he’d be home.”

  “Good, now listen. Is Sue all right?”

  “Yes . . . she’s still in bed. I gave her another sedative.”

  “Well, get her out of it. Both of you hop in a car and get out of there. Now . . . not later, now.”

  “But, Mike . . .”

  “Damn it, shut up
and do what I say. There’s going to be trouble I can’t explain.”

  “Where can we go? Mike, I don’t . . .”

  I gave her my new address and added, “Go right there and stay there. The super has the key and will let you in. Don’t open that door for anybody until you’re sure it’s me, understand? I can’t tell you any more except that your neck and Sue’s neck are out a mile. We have another dead man on our hands and we don’t need any more. You got that?”

  She knew I wasn’t kidding. There was too much stark urgency in my voice. She said she’d leave in a few minutes and when she did I could sense the fear that touched her.

  I tapped the receiver cradle down, broke the connection, dropped in a dime, and dialed my own number. Velda came on after the first ring with a guarded hello.

  I said, “It’s breaking, baby. How do you feel?”

  “Not too bad. I can get around.”

  “Swell. You go downstairs and tell the super that a Geraldine King and Sue Devon are to be admitted to my apartment. Nobody else. Let him keep the key. Then you get down to Sim Torrence’s headquarters and check up on his movements all day yesterday. I want every minute of the day spelled out and make it as specific as you can. He got a phone call yesterday. See if it originated from there. I don’t care if he took ten minutes out to go to the can . . . you find out about it. I’m chiefly interested in any time he took off last night.”

  “Got it, Mike. Where can I reach you?”

  “At the apartment. When I get through I’ll go right there. Shake it up.”

  “Chop chop. Love me?”

  “What a time to ask.”

  “Well?”

  “Certainly, you nut.”

  She laughed that deep, throaty laugh and hung up on me and I had a quick picture of her sliding out of bed, those beautiful long legs rippling into a body . . . oh hell.

  I put the phone back and went back to Pat.

  “Where’d you go?” he said.

  “We got a killer, buddy.”

  He froze for a second. “You didn’t find anything?”

  “No? Then make sense out of this.” I pointed to the picture of Sim Torrence in the window.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Sim’s on the way up. He’s getting where he always wanted to be. He’s got just one bug in his life and that’s the kid, Sue Devon. All her life she’s been on his back about something in their past and there was always that chance she might find it.

  “One time he defended a hard case and when he needed one he called on the guy. Basil Levitt. He wanted Sue knocked off. Some instinct told Sue what he intended to do and she ran for it and wound up at Velda’s. She didn’t know it, but it was already too late. Levitt was on her tail all the while, followed her, set up in a place opposite the house, and waited for her to show.

  “The trouble was, Velda was in hiding too. She respected the kid’s fears and kept her undercover until she was out of trouble herself, then she would have left the place with her. Hell, Pat, Levitt didn’t come in there for Velda . . . he was after the kid. When he saw me he must have figured Torrence sent somebody else because he was taking too long and he wasn’t about to lose his contract money. That’s why Levitt bust in like that.

  “Anyway, when Torrence made the deal he must have met Levitt in this joint here thinking he’d never be recognized. But he forgot that his picture is plastered all over on posters throughout the city. Maybe Kline never gave it a thought if he recognized him then. Maybe Kline only got the full picture when he saw Levitt’s photo. But he put the thing together. First he called your department for information and grew suspicious when nobody gave him anything concrete.

  “Right here he saw Torrence over a barrel so yesterday he called him and told him to meet him. Sim must have jumped out of his skin. He dummied an excuse and probably even led into a trip to Albany for further cover . . . this we’ll know about when I see Velda. But he got here all right. He saw Kline and that was the last Kline saw of anything.”

  “You think too much, Mike.”

  “The last guy that said that is dead.” I grinned.

  “We’d better get up there then.”

  New York, when the traffic is thick, is a maddening place. From high above the streets the cars look like a winding line of ants, but when you are in the convoy it becomes a raucous noise, a composite of horns and engines and voices cursing at other voices. It’s a heavy smell of exhaust fumes and unburned hydrocarbons and in the desire to compress time and space the distance between cars is infinitesimal.

  The running lights designed to keep traffic moving at a steady pace seem to break down then. They all become red. Always, there is a bus or truck ahead, or an out-of-town driver searching for street signs. There are pedestrians who take their time, sometimes deliberately blocking the lights in the never-ceasing battle against the enemy, those who are mounted.

  In the city the average speed of a fire truck breaks down to eighteen miles an hour with all its warning devices going, so imagine what happens to time and distance when the end-of-day rush is on. Add to that the rain that fogged the windshields and made every sudden stop hazardous.

  Ordinarily from Brooklyn the Torrence place would have been an hour away. But not this night. No, this was a special night of delay and frustration, and if Pat hadn’t been able to swing around two barriers with his badge held out the window it would have been an hour longer still.

  It was a quarter to eight when we turned in the street Sim Torrence lived on. Behind the wall and the shrubbery I could see lights on in the house and outside that there was no activity at all. From the end of the street, walking toward us, was the patrolman assigned to the beat on special duty, and when we stopped his pace quickened so that he was there when we got out.

  Pat held his badge out again, but the cop recognized me. Pat said, “Everything all right here?”

  “Yes, sir. Miss King and the girl left some time ago and Torrence arrived, but there has been no trouble. Anything I can help with?”

  “No, just routine. We have to see Torrence.”

  “Sure. He left the gate open.”

  We left the car on the street and walked in, staying on the grass. I had the .45 in my hand and Pat had his Police Positive out and ready. Sim Torrence’s Cadillac was parked in front of the door and when I felt it the hood was still warm.

  Both of us knew what to do. We checked the windows and the back, met again around the front, then I went up to the door while Pat stood by in the shadows.

  I touched the buzzer and heard the chime from inside.

  Nobody answered so I did it again.

  I didn’t bother for a third try. I reached out, leaned against the door latch, and it swung in quietly. I went in first, Pat right behind me covering the blind spots. First I motioned him to be quiet, then to follow me since I knew the layout.

  There was a deathly stillness about the house that didn’t belong there. With all the lights that were going there should have been some sort of sound. But there was nothing.

  We checked through the downstairs room, opening closets and probing behind the furniture. Pat looked across the room at me, shook his head, and I pointed toward the stairs.

  The master bedroom was the first door on the right. The door was partly open and there was a light on there too. We took that one first.

  And that was where we found Sim Torrence. He wasn’t winning anymore.

  He lay facedown on the floor with a bullet through his head and a puddle of blood running away from him like juice from a stepped-on tomato. We didn’t stop there. We went into every room in the house looking for a killer before we finally came back to Sim.

  Pat wrapped the phone in a handkerchief, called the local department, and reported in. When he hung up he said, “You know we’re in a sling, don’t you?”

  “Why?”

  “We should have called in from Brooklyn and let them cover it from this end.”

  “My foot, buddy. Getting in a jam won’t hel
p anything. As far as anyone is concerned we came up here on a social call. I was here last night helping out during an emergency and I came back to check, that’s all.”

  “And what about the women?”

  “We’ll get to them before anybody else will.”

  “You’d better be right.”

  “Quit worrying.”

  While we waited we checked the area around the body for anything that might tie in with the murder. There were no spent cartridges so we both assumed the killer used a revolver. I prowled around the house looking for a sign of entry, since Geraldine would have locked the door going out and Sim behind him, coming in. The killer must have already been here and made his own entry the easy way through the front door.

  The sirens were screaming up the street outside when I found out where he got in. The window in Sue’s room had been neatly jimmied from the trellis outside and was a perfect, quiet entry into the house. Anybody could have come over the walls without being seen by the lone cop on the beat. From there up that solid trellis was as easy as taking the steps.

  Sue’s bed was still rumpled. Geraldine must have literally dragged her out of it because the burned stuffed toy was still there crammed under the covers, almost like a body itself.

  Then I could see that something new had been added. There was a bullet hole and powder burns on the sheet and when I flipped it back I saw the hole drilled into the huge toy.

  Somebody had mistaken that charred ruin for Sue under the covers and tried to put a bullet through her!

  Back to Lolita again. Damn, where would it end?

  What kind of a person were we dealing with?

  I went to put the covers back in their original position before calling Pat in when I saw the stuffed bear up close for the first time. It had been her mother’s and the fire had burned it stiff. The straw sticking out was hard and crisp with age, the ends black from the heat. During the night Sue must have lain on it and her weight split open a seam.

  An edge of a letter stuck out of it.

  I tugged it loose, didn’t bother to look at it then because they were coming in downstairs now, racing up the stairs. I stuck the letter in my pocket and called for Pat.