The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 2 Page 34

  Behind me I heard her say softly, “Mike ... you never told me whether I was ... just pretty or beautiful.”

  I turned around and was going to tell her that she was the most lovely thing I had ever seen, but her hands did something to her belt and the fold of the dress that came up over one shoulder dropped away leaving her standing there with one hand on the lamp like a half-nude vision and the words got stuck in my throat.

  Then the light disappeared altogether and I could only drink the drink quickly, because although the vision was gone it was walking toward me across the night and somewhere on the path there was another whisper of fabric and she was there in my hands without anything to keep her from being a woman now, an invisible, naked dream throwing a mantle of desire around us both that had too great a strength to break and must be burned through by a fire that leaped and danced and towered in a blazing crescendo that could only be dampened and never extinguished.

  And when the mantle was thrown back I left the dream there in the dark, warm and soft, breathing quickly to tell me that it was a dream that would come back on other nights too, disturbing and at the same time satisfying.

  She was beautiful. She was pretty, too.

  She was in my mind all the way home.

  CHAPTER 6

  At a quarter past ten I got up, dressed and made myself some breakfast. Right in the middle of it the phone rang and when I answered it the operator told me to hold on for a call from Miami. Velda’s husky voice was a pleasure to hear again. She said, “Mike?”

  And I said, “Hello, sweetheart. How’s everything?”

  “Fine. At least it’s partly fine. Our boy got out on a plane, but he left all the stuff behind. The insurance investigator is here making an inventory of the stuff now.”

  “Great, great. Try to promote yourself a bonus if you can.”

  “That wouldn’t be hard,” she laughed. “He’s already made a pass. Mike, miss me?”

  I felt like a heel, but I wasn’t lying when I said, “Hell yes, I miss you.”

  “I don’t mean as a business partner.”

  “Neither do I, kitten.”

  “You won’t have to miss me long. I’m taking the afternoon train out.”

  My fingers started batting out dots and dashes on the table. I wanted her back but not too soon. I didn’t want anybody else climbing all over me. “You stay there,” I told her. “Stay on that guy’s tail. You’re still on salary from the company and if you can get a line on him now they’ll cut us in for more business later. They’re as interested in him as they are in recovering the stuff.”

  “But, Mike, the Miami police are doing all they can.”

  “Where’d he hop to?”

  “Some place in Cuba. That’s where they lost him.”

  “Okay, get over to Cuba then. Take a week and if it’s no dice forget it and come on home.”

  She didn’t say anything for a few seconds. “Mike ... is something wrong up there?”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “You sound like it. If you’re sending me off ...”

  “Look, kid,” I cut her off, “you’d know about it if anything was wrong. I just got up and I’m kind of sleepy yet. Be a good girl and stay on that case, will you?”

  “All right. Love me?”

  “You’ll never know,” I said.

  She laughed again and hung up. She knew. Women always know.

  I went back and finished my breakfast, had a smoke then turned on the faucet in the bathroom sink to bring the hot water up. While I shaved I turned on the radio and picked up the commentator who was just dropping affairs in Washington to get back to New York and as far as he was concerned the only major problem of the day was the District Attorney’s newest successes in the gambling probe. At some time last night a series of raids had been carried out successfully and the police dragnet had brought in some twenty-five persons charged with bookmaking. He gave no details, but hinted that the police were expecting to nail the kingpins in the near future.

  When I finished shaving I opened my door and took the tabloid out of the knob to see what the press had to say about it. The front page carried the pictures of those gathered in the roundup with appropriate captions while the inside double spread had a layout showing where the bookies had been operating.

  The editorial was the only column that mentioned Ed Teen at all. It brought out the fact that Teen’s personal staff of lawyers were going to bat for the bookies. At the same time the police were finding that a lot of witnesses were reluctant to speak up when it came to identifying the boys who took their money or paid off on wins, places and shows. At the end of the column the writer came right out with the charge that Lou Grindle had an organization specially adept at keeping witnesses from talking and demanded that the police throw some light on the subject.

  I went through the paper again to make sure I didn’t miss anything, then folded it up and stuck it in the bottom of my chair until I got around to reading it. Then I went downstairs and knocked on the door of the other apartment and stood there with my hat in my hands until the door opened and the nurse said, “Good morning, Mr. Hammer. Come on in.”

  “I can only stay a minute. I want to see how the kid is.”

  “Oh, he’s a regular boy. Right now he’s trying to see what’s inside the radio.”

  I walked in behind her to the living room where the kid was doing just that. He had the extension cord in his fists and the set teetered on the edge of the table a hair away from complete ruin. I got there first and grabbed the both of them.

  The kid knew me, all right. His face was sunny with a big smile and he shoved his hand inside my coat and then chattered indignantly when I pulled it out. “How’s the breakage charge coming?”

  “We won’t count that,” the nurse said. “As a matter of fact, he’s been much better than I expected.”

  I held the kid out where I could look at him better. “There’s something different about him.”

  “There ought to be. I gave him a haircut.” I put him back on the floor where he hung on my leg and jabbered at me. “He certainly likes you,” she said.

  “I guess I’m all he’s got. Need anything?”

  “No, we’re getting along fine.”

  “Okay, anything you want just get.” I bent down and ruffled the kid’s hair and he tried to climb up my leg. He yelled to come with me so I had to hand him back and wave good-by from the door. He was so damn small and pathetic-looking I felt like a heel for stranding him, but I promised myself I’d see that he got a lot of attention before he was dropped into some home for orphans.

  The first lunch shift was just hitting the streets when I got to Pat’s office. The desk man called ahead to see if he was still in and told me to go right up. A couple of reporters were coming out of the room still jotting down notes and Pat was perched on the edge of a desk fingering a thick manila folder.

  I closed the door behind me and he said, “Hi, Mike.”

  “Making news?”

  “Today we’re heroes. Tomorrow we’ll be something else again.”

  “So the D.A.’s making out. Did you find the hole?”

  He turned around slowly, his face expressionless. “No, if that cop is passing out the word then he wised up. Nothing went out on this deal at all.”

  “How could he catch on?”

  “He’s been a cop a long time. He’s been staked out often enough to spot it when he’s being watched himself.”

  “Did he mention it?”

  “No, but his attitude has changed. He resents the implication apparently.”

  “That’s going to make pretty reading. Now the papers’ll call for the D.A. to make a full-scale investigation of the whole department, I suppose.”

  “The D.A. doesn’t know a damn thing about it. You keep it to yourself too. I’m handling the matter myself. If it is the guy there’s no sense smearing the whole department. We still aren’t sure of it, you know.”

  He tossed the folder on top
of the filing cabinet and sat down behind the desk with a sigh. There were tired lines around his eyes and mouth, little lines that had been showing up a lot lately.

  I said, “What came of the roundup?”

  “Oh, hell, Mike.” He glanced at me with open disgust, then realized that I wasn’t handing him a dig. “Nothing came of it. So we closed down a couple of rooms. We got a hatful of small-timers who will probably walk right out of it or draw minimum sentences. Teen’s a smart operator. His lawyers are even smarter. Those boys know all the angles there are to know and if there are any new ones they think them up.

  “Teen’s a real cutie. You know what I think? He’s letting us take some of his boys just to keep the D.A. happy and get a chance to put in a bigger fix.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said.

  “Look, Teen pays for protection. That is, if it takes money to keep his racket covered. If it takes muscle he uses Lou Grindle. But supposing it does take dough ... then all the chiselers, petty politicians and maybe even the big shots who are taking his dough are going to want more to keep his personal fix in because things are getting tougher. Okay, he pays off, and the more those guys rake in the deeper in they are too. Suddenly they realize that they can’t afford to let Teen get taken or they’ll go along with him, so they work overtime to keep the louse clean.”

  “Nice.”

  “Isn’t it though?” he sat there tapping his fingers on the desk, then: “Mike, for all you’ve heard, read and seen of Ed Teen, do you know what we actually have on him?”

  “Tell me.”

  “Nothing. Not one damn thing. Plenty of suspicions, but you don’t take suspicions to court. We know everything he’s hooked up with and we can’t prove a single part of it. I’ve been upside down for a month backtracking over his life trying to tie him into something that happened a long time ago and for all I’ve found you could stuff it in your ear.” Pat buried his face in his hands and rubbed his eyes.

  “Have you had time to do anything about Decker and Hooker?”

  At least it made him smile a little. “I haven’t been upside down that long, Pal,” he said. “I was going to call you on that. Routine investigation turned up something on Hooker. For the last four months he made bank deposits of close to a thousand bucks each time. They apparently came in on the same date and were all for the same amount, though he spent a little of each wad before he deposited it. That sort of ties in with your story about him hitting the winning ponies.”

  I rolled a cigarette between my fingers slowly then stuck it in my mouth. “How often were the deposits made?”

  “Weekly. Regular as pie.”

  “And Decker?”

  “Clean. I had four men cover every minute of his time as far back as they could go. As far as we could find out he didn’t even associate with any shady characters. The kind of people who vouched for him were the kind who knew what they were talking about too. Incidentally, I talked to his parish priest personally. He’s made all the arrangements for the boy and cleared them with the authorities, so he’ll pick him up at the end of the week.”

  He stopped and watched my face a moment. The silence was so thick you could slice it with a knife. “All right, now what are you thinking, Mike?”

  I let a lazy cloud of smoke sift up toward the ceiling. “It might scare you,” I said.

  The tired lines got deeper when his mouth clamped shut. “Yeah? Scare me then.”

  “Maybe you’ve been closer to nailing Teen than you thought, chum.”

  His fingers stopped their incessant tapping.

  “After Decker was killed a lot of awfully funny things started to happen. Before they didn’t seem to make much sense, but just because you can’t actually see what’s holding them together doesn’t mean that they’re not there. Wouldn’t it be a scream if the guy who killed Decker could lead you to Teen?”

  “Yeah, I’d laugh myself sick.” Now Pat’s eyes were just thin shiny slits in his head.

  I said, “Those bank deposits of Hooker’s weren’t wins. Hooker was being paid off to do something. You got any idea what it was?”

  “No,” sullenly.

  “I’d say he was being paid to see that a certain guy was put in a certain spot where he was up the creek.”

  “Damn it, Mike, quit talking in riddles!”

  “Pat, I can’t. It’s still a puzzle to me, too, but I can tell you this. You’ve been routine on this case all along. It’s been too small-time to open up on but I think you’d damn well better open up on it right now because you’re sitting on top of the thing that can blow Teen and his racket all to hell. I don’t know how or why ... yet. But I know it’s there and before very long I’m going to find the string that’s holding it together. As far as Ed Teen’s concerned I don’t care what happens to him, only someplace in there is the guy who made an orphan out of a nice little kid and he’s the one I want. You can take it for what it’s worth or I can go it alone. Just don’t shove the Decker kill down at the bottom of the page and hope something turns up on it because you think grabbing Teen is more important.”

  He started to come up out of his chair and his face was strictly cop without tired lines any more. He got all set to give me the business, then, like turning on the light, the scowl and the tired lines went away and he sat back smiling a little with that excited, happy look I hadn’t seen him wear for so long.

  “What’s it about, Mike?”

  “I think the Decker murder got away from somebody. It was supposed to be nice and clean and didn’t happen that way.”

  “What else?”

  “A lot of scrambled facts that are going to get put right fast if you help out. Then I’ll give it to you so there’s sense to it.”

  “You know, you’re damn lucky I know what makes you tick, Mike. If you were anybody else I’d hammer out every last bit of information you have. I’m only sorry you didn’t get on the force while you were still young enough.”

  “I don’t like the hours. The pay either.”

  “No,” he grinned, “you’d sooner work for free and get me all hopped up whenever you feel like it. You and the D.A. Okay, spill it. What do you need?”

  “A pair of private detectives named Arthur Cole and Glenn Fisher.”

  He jotted the names down and stared at them blankly a second. “Nocky ... ?”

  “That’s Cole.”

  “You should have given me their names before.”

  “I didn’t know them before.”

  He reached out and flipped the switch on the intercom. “Tell Sergeant McMillan to come in a moment, please.”

  A voice rasped that it would and while we waited Pat went to the filing cabinet and pawed through the drawers until he had what he wanted. He tossed the stuff in my lap as a thick-set plain-clothesman came in chewing on a dead cigar.

  Pat said, “Sergeant, this is Mike Hammer.”

  The cop shifted his cigar and held out his hand. I said, “Glad to know you.”

  “Same here. Heard lots about you, Mike.”

  “Sergeant McMillan has the inside information on the uptown boys,” Pat said. He turned to the plain-clothesman with, “What do you know about two supposedly private detectives named Cole and Fisher?”

  “Plenty. Fisher lost his license about a month ago. What do you want to know?”

  Pat raised his eyebrows at me. “Background stuff,” I said.

  “The guys are hoods, plain and simple. Especially Fisher. You ever see them?”

  I nodded. Pat pointed to the folder in my lap and I pulled out a couple of candid shots taken during a strike-breaking melee on the docks. My boys were right there in the foreground swinging billies.

  The cop said, “They’re troublemakers. About a year ago somebody with a little pull had them tagged with badges so what they did would be a little bit legal. Neither one of ‘em have records, but they’ve been pulled in a few times for minor offenses. Brawling mostly. They’ll work for anybody who pays off. You want me to put out a call
for ’em, Captain?”

  “What about it, Mike?” Pat asked.

  “It wouldn’t be a bad idea, but you won’t find them in New York. Stick them on the teletype and see if they aren’t holing up in another city. You might try alerting the railroad dicks to keep an eye out for them. They skipped out last night and might still be traveling. Cole has a broken hand and Fisher’s face is a mess. They ought to be easy to identify.”

  “You want to do that, sergeant?”

  He nodded at Pat. “I have everything I need. They shouldn’t be too hard to trace.” He said so long to me and went back the way he came.

  Pat picked the photo up and studied it. “What’s with these two?”

  “They worked for Toady Link.” Pat’s head came up quickly. “They were on to Hooker for some reason until I started buzzing the guy, then they went into me. I didn’t get the pitch in time or Hooker might still be alive. Last night I paid a visit to our friend Link and he was happy to tell me who the boys were.”

  “Mike, damn it...”

  “If you’re wondering how I found out who they were when the cops didn’t know ... I have a friend who gets around. With blondes.”

  “I’m not wondering that at all! I’m wondering how the hell I could have been so negligent or stupid, whatever you want to call it.” He grinned wryly. “I used to be a bright boy. A year ago I would have seen the connection or let you talk me into something a lot sooner. Everything you do is tying right in with this Teen affair. Did you know that we had Link slated to go through the mill this week?”

  “No.”

  “Well, we had. He and four others. While the D.A.’s been getting pushed around he’s been doing one hell of a job on the organization’s working men. Toady’s about a month away from a man-sized stretch up the river. Every move you make you step on my toes.”

  “Why didn’t you pick it up sooner?”

  “Because it’s no novelty to be tied up with Teen or Grindle, especially when there’s money or murder concerned. Some of the help those two employ have turned up on more than one offense. It wasn’t too difficult to suppose that Basil was just out for extra cash when he went in on that robbery and shot Decker afterward.”