The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 2 Page 39

  This was starting off to be a beautiful day too.

  When I got in the building I started to attract a little attention. A cop I know pretty well passed right by me with no more than a cursory glance. One asked me if I was there to register a complaint and looked surprised when I shook my head no. The place was a jumble of activity with men going in and out of the line-up room, getting their orders at the desk or scrambling to get off on a case.

  Too much was popping in the morning to hope Pat would be in his office, so I waited my turn at the information desk and told the cop at the switchboard that I wanted to see Captain Chambers.

  He said, “Name?”

  And I said, “Hammer, Michael Hammer.”

  Then his hand paused with the plug in it and he said, “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  He tried about ten extensions before he got Pat, said Yes, sir a few times and yanked the plug out. “He’ll be right down. Wait here for him.”

  By the clock I waited exactly one minute and ten seconds. Pat came out of the elevator at a half-run and when he saw me his face did tricks until it settled down in a frown.

  “What happened to you?”

  “I got took, pal. Took good, too.”

  He didn’t ask me any more questions. He looked down at his shoes a second then put it to me hard and fast. “You’re under arrest, Mike.”

  “What?”

  “Come on upstairs.”

  The elevator was waiting. We got on and went up. We got off at the right floor and I started to walk toward his office automatically, but he put out his hand and stopped me.

  “This way, Mike.”

  “Say, what’s going on?”

  He wouldn’t look at me. “We’ve had men covering your apartment, your office and all your known places of entertainment since six this morning. The D.A. has a warrant out for your arrest and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.”

  “Sorry. I should have stayed home. What’s the charge?”

  We paused outside a stained-oak door. “Guess.”

  “I give up.”

  “The D.A. looked for Link’s personal file last night and found it missing. He was here when Ellen Scobie tried to put it back this morning. You have two girls on the carpet right this minute who are going to lose their jobs and probably have charges preferred against them too. You’re going in there yourself and take one hell of a rap and this time there’s no way out. You finished yourself, Mike. You’ll never learn, but you’re finished.”

  I dropped my hands in my pockets and made like I was grinning at him.

  “You’re getting old, son. You’re getting set in your ways. For the last two years all you’ve done is warn me about this, that, and the next thing. We used to play a pretty good game, you and me, now you’re starting to play it cautious and for a cop who handles homicide that’s no damn good at all.”

  Then just for the hell of it that little finger that was probing my brain deliberately knocked a couple of pieces together that made lovely, beautiful sense and I remembered something Ellen had told me not so long ago. I twisted it around, revamped it a little and I was holding something the D.A. was going to pay for in a lot of pride. Yep, a whole lot of pride.

  I reached for the knob myself. “Let’s go, chum. Me and the D.A. have some business to transact.”

  “Wait a minute. What are you pulling?”

  “I’m not pulling a thing, Pat. Not a thing. I’m just going to trade him a little bit.”

  Everything was just like it was the last time. Almost.

  There was the D.A. behind his desk with his boys on either side. There were the detectives in the background, the cop at the door, the little guy taking notes and me walking across the room.

  Ellen and her roommate were the exceptions this time. They sat side by side in straight-back chairs at the side of the big desk and they were crying their eyes out.

  If my face hadn’t been what it was there would have been a formal announcement made. As it was, everybody gave me a kind of horrified stare and Ellen turned around in her seat. She stopped crying abruptly and put her hand to her mouth to stifle a scream.

  I said, “Take it easy, kid.”

  Her teeth went into her lip and she buried her face in her hands.

  The District Attorney was very sarcastic this time. “Good morning, Mister Hammer.”

  “I’m glad you remembered,” I told him.

  Any other time his face would have changed color. Not now. He liked this cat-and-mouse stuff. He had waited a long time for it and now he was going to enjoy every minute of it while he had an audience to appreciate it. “I suppose you know why you’re here?” He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. The two assistants did the same thing.

  “I’ve heard about it.”

  “Shall I read the charges?”

  “Don’t bother.” My legs were starting to go again. I pulled a chair across the floor and sat down. “Start reading me off any time you feel like it,” I said. “Get it all off your chest at once so you’ll be able to listen to somebody else except your yes-men for a change.”

  The two assistants came to indignant attention in their seats.

  It was so funny I actually got a grin through.

  The D.A. didn’t think it was so funny. “I don’t intend to take any of your nonsense, Mister Hammer. I’ve had about all I can stand of it.”

  “Okay, you know what you can do. Charge me with conspiracy and theft, toss me in the pokey and I catch hell at the trial. So I’ll go up.”

  “You won’t be alone.” He glanced meaningly at the two women. There were no tears left in Ellen any more, but her friend was sobbing bitterly.

  I said, “Did you stop to think why the three of us bothered to take a worthless file out of here?”

  “Does it matter?”

  Ellen had nudged her companion and the crying stopped. I took the deck of cigarettes out of my pocket and fiddled with it to keep my hands busy. The white of the wrapper flashed the light back at the sun until attention seemed to be focused on it rather than me.

  “It matters,” I said. “As the charge will state, it was a deliberate conspiracy all right, perpetrated by three citizens in good standing who saw a way to accomplish something that an elected official couldn’t manage. The papers will have a field day burying you.”

  He smiled. The damn fool smiled at me! “Don’t bother going through that song and dance again.”

  He was getting ready to throw the book in my face when Pat spoke from the back of the room. His voice held a strained note, but it had a lot of power behind it. “Maybe you better hear what he has to say.”

  “Say it then.” The smile faded into a grimace of anger. “It had better be good, because the next time you say anything will be to a judge and jury.”

  “It’s good. You’ll enjoy hearing about it. We,” and I emphasized that “we,” “found the hole in the boat.”

  I heard Pat gasp and take a step nearer.

  “Ellen suggested it to you at one time and the full possibilities of the thing never occurred to you. We know how information is getting out of this office.”

  The D.A.’s eyes were bright little beads searching my face for the lie. They crinkled up around the edges when he knew I was telling the truth and sought out Pat for advice. None came so he said, “How?”

  Now I had the ball on his goal line and I wasn’t giving it up. “I won’t bother you with the details of how we did it, but I can tell you how it was being done.”

  “Damn it ... How!”

  I gave him his smile back. On me it must have looked good. “Uh-uh. We trade. You’re talking to three clams unless you drop all those charges. Not only drop ‘em, but forget about ’em.”

  What else could he do? I caught Pat’s reflection in the window glass behind the D.A.’s head and he was grinning like an idiot. The D.A. tapped his fingers on the desk-top, his cheeks working. When he looked up he took in the room with one quick glance. “We
’ll finish this privately if you gentlemen don’t mind. You may stay, Captain Chambers.”

  As far as the two assistants were concerned, it was the supreme insult. They hid their tempers nicely though and followed the others out. I laughed behind their backs and the thing that was working at the D.A.’s cheeks turned into a short laugh. “You know, there are times when I hate your guts. It happens that it’s all the time. However, I admire your precocity in a way. You’re a thorn in my skin, but even a thorn can be used to advantage at times. If what you have to say is true, consider the charges dropped completely.”

  “Thanks,” I said. The women couldn’t say anything. They were too stunned. “I understand you have a man in the department who is suspected of carrying information outside.”

  He frowned at Pat. “That is correct. We’re quite sure of it. What we don’t know is his method of notifying anyone else.”

  “It isn’t hard. There’s a guy with a tin ear who stands across the street. He wears a hearing aid that doesn’t work. He reads lips. A good dummy can read lips at thirty feet without any trouble at all. Your man gets to the street, moves his mouth silently like he’s chewing gum or something, but actually calls off a time and place, gets in a car and goes off on a raid. Meanwhile the guy had time to reach a phone and pass the word. Those places are set up for a quick scramble and are moved out before you get there. It’s all really very simple.”

  “Is he there now?”

  “He was when I came in.”

  The D.A. muttered a damn and grabbed the phone.

  You know how long it took? About three minutes. He started to blab the second they had him inside the building. The voice on the phone got real excited and the D.A. slammed the phone back. His face had happy happy smeared all over it and he barely had time to say thanks again and tell the women that their efforts were appreciated before he was out the door.

  I got to Ellen and tried to put my arms around her. She put her hands on my chest and pushed me away. “Please, Mike, not now. I ... I’m much too upset. It was ... horrible before you came.”

  “Can I call you later?”

  “Yes ... all right.”

  I let go of her and she hurried out, dabbing at her mouth with a damp handkerchief.

  “Well,” Pat said, “you’re a smart bastard anyway. You certainly made life miserable for them for a while even if you did get them off the hook in the end.”

  He held the door open and came out behind me. We walked down the corridor to his office without saying anything and when we were inside he waved me into a chair I needed worse than ever and slumped into his own in back of the desk.

  Pat let me get a smoke going. He let me have one long drag, then: “I’m not the D.A., Mike. You don’t have anything to trade with me so let’s have it straight. That business with the dummy outside was strictly an accident. If the D.A. wasn’t so damn eager to grab Teen and Grindle he would have seen it. Two good questions would have put you right back on the spot again.”

  “And I still would have had something to trade.”

  “Like what?”

  “Lou Grindle is dead. I killed him a few hours before I walked in here. Not only that, but two of his boys are dead. I got one and Lou bumped the other by mistake thinking he was me.”

  “Mike ...” Pat was drumming his fists on the arms of the chair.

  “Shut up and listen. Teen had me picked up. He thought I killed Link and took something from the apartment. It was kidnaping and I was within the law when I shot them so don’t worry about it. There’s a body in the road out near Islip someplace and the local police ought to have it by now. The other two are in a house I can locate for you on a map and you better hop to it before they get turned up.

  “Ed Teen gave the orders to bump me but you can bet your tail you aren’t picking him up for it. He probably had an alibi all set for an emergency anyway, and now that he no doubt knows what happened he’ll insure it.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you tell me this earlier? Good Lord, we can break any alibi he has if he’s involved!”

  “You’re talking simple again, friend. I’d like to see you break his alibi. Whoever stands up for him has a chance of being dead if he talks. All you can offer is a jail cell. Nope, you won’t put anything down on Teen. He’s been through this mill before.”

  Pat slammed his head with his open palm. “So you waste an hour playing games with the D.A. Damn, you should have said something.”

  “Yeah, I had plenty of time to talk. You would have heard all about it if you didn’t give me that under arrest business.”

  “I wish I knew what was going on, Mike.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  He dragged out a map of the Island and handed it to me. I penciled in the roads and marked the approximate spot where the house was and handed it back. Pat had the thing on the wires immediately. Downstairs somebody checked with the police in Islip and verified the finding of the body on the road.

  I said, “Pat ...”

  He covered up the mouthpiece of the phone and looked at me.

  “Go through the motions of finding Lou’s body before you hand the story to the D.A., will you?”

  The phone went back into its cradle slowly. “What’s the score, Mike?”

  “I think I know how we can get Teen.”

  “That’s not a good reason at all.” His voice was soft, dangerous.

  “You tell him now and I’ll get the treatment again, Pat. Look ... you’ve been working this from the wrong angle. You would have gotten there, but it would have taken longer. I’m hot now. I can’t stop while I’m hot. You said I could have three days.”

  “The picture’s changed.”

  “Nix ... it’s just hanging a little crooked, that’s all. With all your cops and all your equipment, you’re still chasing after shadows.”

  “You know it all, is that it?”

  “No ... but I got the shadows chasing me now. I know something I shouldn’t know. I wish to God I knew where and how I picked it up. I’ve been wandering through this thing picking up a piece here and there and it should have ended when Toady died. I thought he was the one I was after.”

  “He was.”

  Pat said it so flatly that I almost missed it.

  “What’d you say?”

  “He drove the car when Decker was killed.”

  It was like a wave washing up the beach, then receding back into itself, the way my body was suddenly flushed before it was drained completely dry. I couldn’t get my hands unclenched. They were the only live part of me, balled up in my lap doing the cursing my throat wanted to do. The killer was supposed to be mine, goddamn it. I promised the kid and I promised myself. He wasn’t supposed to die in bed never knowing why he died. He should have gone with his tongue hanging out and turning black while I choked the guts out of him!

  “How do you know?”

  “Cole and Fisher were apprehended in Philadelphia. They decided to shoot it out and lost. Cole lived long enough to say a few things.”

  “What things?”

  “You were right about Hooker and Decker. Toady gave the orders to get Mel. He was going to put Cole and Fisher out with Decker, changed his mind and went himself instead. That was all they knew.”

  “You mean they were supposed to bump Decker?”

  “No ... just go with him when they pulled the job.”

  I got up slowly. I put my hat back on and dropped my butt in the ash tray on the desk. “Okay, Pat, get Teen your own way. I still want you to give me a break with the D.A. I want to get some sleep. I need it bad.”

  “If Grindle’s dead he’ll stay dead. Make yourself scarce. When you wake up give me a ring. I’ll hold things as long as I can.”

  “Thanks.”

  “And Mike ...”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do something about your face. You look like hell.”

  “I’ll cut it off at the neck and get a new one,” I said.

  Pat said seriously, �
�I wish you would.”

  CHAPTER 10

  I had company again. I had a whole hall full of company Everybody was coming to see me. I was the most popular guy in town and everybody was standing in front of my door dying to get a look at me. One of my company gasped in a huge breath of air before she said, “Oh ... oh, thank heavens, there he is.”

  The super’s wife was a big fat woman no corset could contain properly and with all that air in her she looked ready to burst. But she was smiling as she recognized my walk and then the smile froze on her face. The super stopped poking a key in the lock on my door, pushed through the small knot and he froze too.

  Then there was Marsha. She shoved them all out of the way. The laugh she had ready for me twisted to dismay and she said, “Mike!”

  “Hello, sugar.”

  “Oh, Mike, I knew something happened to you!” She ran into my arms and the tears welled into her eyes. Her fingers touched my cheek gently and I felt them tremble. “Darling, darling ... what was it ...”

  “Oh, I’ll tell you about it sometime. What’s all the excitement about?”

  She choked and gasped the words out. “I kept calling you and calling you all last night and this morning. I ... thought something happened .. , like that last time in your apartment. Oh, Mike ...”

  “It’s all right now, honey. I’ll be back to normal soon.”

  “I ... came up and you didn’t answer. I told the superintendent you might be hurt ... and he ... he was going to look. Mike, you scared me so.”

  The super was nodding, licking his lips. The others crowded in for a last look at me before going back to their apartments. His wife said, “You scared us all, Mr. Hammer. We were sure you were dead or something.”

  “I almost was. Anyway, thanks for thinking of me. Now if you don’t mind, I’d just like to be left alone for a while. I’m not feeling any too hot.”