A Long Time Dead Read online

  I finished my coffee and went over and put the cup on the table by the percolator. Then I paced and talked as I thought.

  “Kitten, we have a guy who was involved in one vehicular killing and another near-one where I’m concerned. That’s a common denominator that makes me suspect the Fainey woman was a hit, not an accident.”

  Still seated on the couch, her knees primly together, she said, “A car as a murder weapon is a very specialized choice. That’s a hit man with an M.O. we can track.”

  I kept pacing. “That’s right. He only went with the subway gag and the mugging bit because I might be on the lookout for another vehicular try. But we’re forgetting the main point.”

  She was, as usual, ahead of me. “Helen Fainey was a target. Somebody paid to have her run down ‘accidentally.’”

  “Which means the person behind the attempted hits on me isn’t necessarily the hit man, but—”

  “Whoever hired him,” she finished.

  I came to a stop in front of her. “So that’s where I’ll start. With the first victim, Helen Fainey. You work on tracking our driver. Call Pat—he’d do anything for you, doll. Ask him about suspected hit men who fit the bill. Check with the insurance companies we do business with to see if they have names of individuals suspected of staging accidents for payouts.”

  That lush red-lipsticked mouth turned wry on me. “I spend the afternoon on the phone, with a cop and some insurance men, and you go out and chat up hookers?”

  I grinned at her. “Honey, why would I want hamburger when I have filet at home?”

  “First of all, I don’t live at your home. Second of all, you are very much a hamburger kind of guy.”

  “That’s just plain mean, doll.”

  She stood and faced me. In those heels, we were damn near eye level. “Anyway, you have to postpone your inquiries till this afternoon, or late morning at least. You have an appointment at ten with a potential client.”

  “When did that come in?”

  “Late yesterday afternoon.” She brushed by me and went to her desk to check her appointment book, frowning. “Mike … this is odd. Very damn odd.”

  “What is?”

  She glanced over, the frown deepening. “I don’t know why I didn’t remember … why it didn’t ring a bell …”

  “What?”

  The big brown eyes showed white all around. “Your ten o’clock appointment is with a Mr. Andrew Fainey.”

  He sat across from me in the client’s chair with Velda seated just behind him to his right, where she could take notes and make eye contact with me.

  Andrew Fainey was gray. Hair, eyes, complexion, well-trimmed mustache, even the business exec’s fabled gray flannel suit. Somewhere in his mid-fifties, he was trim, tall and sadder than a wet Sunday afternoon.

  “I don’t know where Betty and I went wrong with Helen, Mr. Hammer.” His voice had color where the rest of him didn’t, a mellow thing worthy of a radio announcer but without the bounce. “She was such a good girl, growing up. Then in high school she started going out with this … greasy duck-tail character with a hot rod. Drinking, out to all hours, disobedient, smart-mouthed, and her grades just went to hell. Not a new story, I know.”

  He was from Cincinnati, Ohio, where he owned “the most successful ad agency in the Tri-State area.”

  “Helen got pregnant in her senior year,” he said. “She had the baby, wanted to keep it, but we … I’m afraid we pressured her into giving it up for adoption. She moved out after that. Came east. There were phone calls, usually seeking money. Occasional letters, the same. Waitressing at first. Lately she told us she was working at a boutique in the East Village. We didn’t know … didn’t know what she really did for a living until the police contacted us about … about what happened.”

  He was apparently past tears, but the dignified if well-grooved gray face was nothing if not morose.

  I said, “What can I do for you, Mr. Fainey?”

  He sat forward a little. “You were a witness, Mr. Hammer. What did you see?”

  “I saw what appeared to be a drunk driver lose control and come up over the curb and run down your daughter. It was after three in the morning and I was across the street. I didn’t get a look at the guy. She was gone when I got to her. That was all in the police report.”

  His eyebrows lifted a quarter of an inch. “I know. That’s how I learned your name. My attorney, back in Cincinnati, had heard of you. Read something about you in a true-detective magazine.”

  That put a small smile on Velda’s lips.

  “Probably something exaggerated,” I said. “Is there some way I can help you, Mr. Fainey?”

  His eyes narrowed. “My attorney hired a private detective here in New York when it became clear finding my daughter’s killer was not a police priority. The detective talked to some other … young women … in my daughter’s … profession. He learned that Helen had broken off with her longtime …” He sighed. “… procurer. These girls, these women, believed Helen had been killed by this … pimp. To make an example of her.”

  “What’s the detective’s name?”

  The question seemed to surprise him. “Oh, I never dealt with him directly. Is that important? Would you like me to call my attorney and get the number of his agency?”

  “That would be helpful. We could compare notes, if you’re here to have me pick up where he left off.”

  He nodded. “That is why I’m here, Mr. Hammer. This information was gathered by the investigator, and shared with the police, and nothing has come of it. I happened to be in town on business … we have a relationship with a top Madison Avenue firm … and, frankly, on impulse I thought I would look you up.”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “Well, there’s a name I do have.” He removed his wallet from an inside suitcoat pocket and got out a slip of paper and handed it across to me.

  Tony Dyne, it said. Grissi’s.

  “I believe,” he said, “it’s a bar.”

  “I know the joint,” I said. “Rough area. Nasty damn spot. What, Dyne works out of there?”

  Fainey nodded. “He keeps a back booth as a kind of … office, from mid-evening till, oh, God knows when. Or so our private detective said. If you could go down there and size this Dyne character up, and … interrogate him? Perhaps we could find something out.”

  “Perhaps.”

  Velda was frowning now.

  “Mr. Fainey,” I said. “Did that true-detective article give you any ideas about me?”

  “Uh … ideas? Such as … ?”

  “Such as maybe if this guy spooks seeing me, I might wind up ridding the world of your daughter’s killer?”

  He swallowed thickly. “The detective we hired said he’d done all he could. The police have no interest in pursuing this further. You do sound like the sort of man who might … make something happen.”

  Velda’s eyebrows went up and one half of a smile did, too.

  “A grieving father,” he said, looking at the floor, “has all sorts of dark fantasies where the party or parties responsible for his child’s death is concerned.” Now he looked at me with blank gray eyes. “Would I like some avenging angel to wipe this foul creature off the planet? Of course. But do I expect that? No.”

  “What do you expect?”

  He seemed to shrug with his entire body. “My hope is that he will betray himself to you. That he may say or do something that you, with your considerable reputation, might be able to take to the police. And that they would reopen the case and take my daughter’s death seriously. You do have police connections, don’t you, Mr. Hammer?”

  I used to.

  We settled on a retainer and he paid in cash. He was staying at the New Yorker and left his room number, where I could call him. He’d be in town till the weekend.

  When he’d go
ne, we were back in the outer office where Velda perched on the corner of her desk with plenty of leg showing in that way a woman does who knows a guy has seen it all already.

  She asked, “So … did our client hire your detecting skills or your gun?”

  “Not sure,” I said. “I’m not sure he knows, either.”

  “You still planning to spend the afternoon talking to hookers over by Lexington and Thirty-ninth?”

  “No. Change of program. I still want you to check with our insurance pals, but skip calling Pat. I’m going to drop by his office.”

  “I didn’t know you were still welcome there.”

  “I’m not. And do I have to tell you what else to look into while I’m gone?”

  She shook her head, her smile as faint as it was pretty.

  “No,” she said.

  The baroque old building on Centre Street near Little Italy looked more like a majestic courthouse than police headquarters. But there was nothing majestic about the aging interior of the place, including Pat’s third-floor office off a bustling bullpen. The door stood open and I knocked on the jamb, leaning in.

  Pat had a desk as well-ordered as his mind, file folders stacked neatly, each waiting its turn. His suitcoat was on but his tie was loose, and on the yellow legal pad in front of him was the hasty but legible evidence of hours spent the way any good detective spends them.

  On the phone.

  “Mind if I sit down?” I asked. “Do my taxes cover that?”

  He didn’t smile but he did gesture to the hardwood chair as he rocked back a little in his swivel one. Green metal filing cabinets backed him up like a police phalanx.

  I sat and crossed my legs. “Ever hear of a guy named Tony Dyne?”

  “No. Should I have?”

  “I hear he was Helen Fainey’s pimp till she gave him the boot to go freelance.”

  His eyes closed and opened slowly, a lazy blink. But there was nothing lazy about the mind behind those eyes.

  “The hooker who got run down a few weeks ago. You were a witness.”

  “Right. That was Traffic Division, so I didn’t know if a hooker buying it like that would make it onto your high-flying radar.”

  “It didn’t. I checked up on you, old buddy. To see what you’ve been up to lately. Your name popped up in relation to the accident.”

  I gave him a nasty smile. “If it was an accident.”

  He rocked a while. “Is the Gus Smalley killing related in some way?”

  “I don’t know. Not obviously related, no. But for old times’ sake? See what Tony Dyne’s package has to say, would you?”

  No stalling now. He reached for the phone, made his ASAP request, then sat back to rock some more.

  “Either you’re going to tell me,” I said, “or not. I’m not gonna ask. But since it’s just possible I’m onto something with this Tony Dyne character, you might want to bring me up to speed.”

  “Sure sounds like you’re asking.”

  I shrugged.

  The wall of tension between us was damn near palpable. Not long ago we both thought Velda had been killed and the only thing Pat and I agreed on was it was my fault. We each reacted in our own way. I crawled into a gutter and drank myself numb. Pat decided to hate me over it and finally admitted he had it bad for Velda, too. Then when she turned up alive and well, I forgave myself. He didn’t.

  He said, “Lou and Ricky Salem have alibis. They were at a pizza joint celebrating Ricky’s wedding anniversary.”

  “Class all the way, the Salem boys.”

  “Witnesses up the wazoo. Maybe too conveniently so.”

  “Like if you send a hit man out to do your dirty work, it pays to be seen out and about at the time.”

  “Like that.” He glanced at his yellow pad. “As for Gus Smalley, he was a widower. You knew that. He and his late wife Millie had two boys and a girl, all three grown, scattered to the winds—Texas, Minnesota, California. He lived alone. In three months, his pension would’ve kicked in. Played poker once a week and cribbage twice. Hung around at a bar where he watched sports on the weekend and bet as much as a buck at a throw.”

  “Big spender, old Gus. Nice life. Boring life.”

  Pat slapped the legal pad. “Meaning no disrespect, Gus is a dead-end in his own damn death.” The gray-blue eyes zeroed in on me. “Which means this is about you, Mike.”

  I winged my arms behind my neck. “I never thought otherwise. Neither did you, old buddy. But you being a dot the t’s and cross the i’s sort of guy, you had to go by the book. Gus was the murder victim, so you start with who might want him dead.”

  “Actually … old buddy … I started with the Salem brothers. I think maybe they hired somebody to take you out.” His eyes narrowed. “What do you know that I don’t, Mike?”

  “Oh, we really don’t have time to go into all that, do we, Pat?”

  “Funny as a crutch.”

  “All right.” I sat forward. “Here’s something that might make you smile. There were three tries to take me out before some bastard made Gus a dead bystander.”

  He stopped rocking, and I told him about the vehicular attempt, the subway theatrics, and the faked mugging.

  He frowned so hard I thought the creases would stick. “And you didn’t report any of this?”

  “I didn’t read any of it right. The first two seemed like typical big city crap. It’s a dangerous town, right? The mugging, well … after you stick a knife in a guy’s left ass cheek, you don’t figure to hang around and talk to the cops about it. Even when you didn’t bring the knife.”

  He closed his eyes. His hands closed into fists. Did he really hate me? Or maybe just hated that I’d once been his friend?

  The phone rang and two tough detectives jumped a little.

  “Yeah,” he said into the receiver. He listened and wrote on his legal pad, nodding and saying, “Uh-huh … uh-huh … uh-huh,” and finally, “Thanks.”

  He hung up and said, “No procuring arrests for Mr. Dyne, but that doesn’t mean anything. These pimps have girls covering for them on the street and shysters covering for them in court. But he has a pretty impressive sheet.”

  “Give.”

  “Anthony J. Dyne. Twenty-nine. Lived in just about every borough, making a mark in every one. Breaking-and-entering. Assault with a deadly weapon, did a year. Three drug arrests, no convictions.”

  “Using or dealing?”

  “Dealing. It goes on and on … but no pimping and only the one conviction. But there were two arrests on suspicion of murder. I can get the details to see if he sounds like a possible hit man.”

  I got up and yawned. “You might want to do that.”

  “Mike,” he said softly, and there was something softer in his face, too, a remnant of a friendship gone south. “We’re not kids anymore.”

  “I noticed.”

  “Can you do me a favor … like you said, for old times’ sake? I know Gus was a pal of yours. And I know you feel responsible in a way. But for once, no wild west, okay? Just call me with what you’ve got.”

  “Where’s the fun in that?”

  He scowled at me and waved toward the door. “Just get out, Mike. Just get out.”

  The cabbie took me down to the docks and snatched up the fin I promised with a look like he was memorizing my face for when the cops checked his log book and he had to identify his fare’s corpse.

  The evening sky was gray and growling but I had left the trenchcoat behind and my suitcoat unbuttoned. This was the kind of sketchy gin mill where I wanted easy access to the .45 under my arm. The waterfront bouquet greeted me, salt air, grease, oil, sweat and dead fish drifting like a ghost with body odor.

  If you needed to know anything about the harbor facilities stretching from the Battery to Grant’s Tomb, or wanted a line on anybody in the National Maritime U
nion or the Teamsters, this was your port of call. If you wanted to get laid or make somebody dead, that could be arranged, too. You know the place. They have them in London and Mexico City and Rome and Hong Kong, with smaller variations in smaller locales. But none were meaner or dirtier than the bar run by Benny Joe Grissi.

  The green neon GRISSI’S shorted in and out with an electric tremor above a window so filthy its glowing beer signs looked faded. A couple of miniskirt mesh-stocking whores were talking to a pair of longshoremen looking for a wet place to put it and not particular where. Compared to these girls, Helen Fainey had been a high-class call girl.

  Two hardcases in old suits and new ties sat at a table just inside the door scrutinizing customers. This was not a joint for tourists and if you were the wrong color or maybe were queer or worse a cop, Grissi’s got suddenly exclusive. They shot me the cop look, then remembered me from a year ago when I cleaned their clocks, and gave me timid smiles that got me grinning.

  The place stunk of stale beer and sawdust, cigarette smoke floating like foul fog while a jukebox played Gene Vincent’s latest hit of maybe ten years ago. The bar was along the back wall and I didn’t spot my guy at the stools or the scattering of tables. The booths were arranged so you couldn’t see who was sitting in them unless you went down the aisle between.

  I leaned against the bar, ordered a beer and Benny Joe Grissi trundled over, his fat face smiling around his fat cigar. His voice was a sandpaper croak that went swell with his toad-like puss.

  “What, are you a regular now, Mike? My boys didn’t know whether to shit or piss themselves, seeing you back again.”

  “They could do both as far as I care.”

  “They ain’t that coordinated.”

  I looked at the wide little man in the big loud tie, his belly challenging the shirt buttons under an unbuttoned orange-and-yellow plaid sportcoat that never was in style.

  I said very quietly, “You know a guy named Dyne? Tony Dyne?”

  “And if I say yes, what, you brace him? And my fine establishment gets turned ass-over-tea-kettle and inside out?”

  My beer came. “Maybe you should consider a cover charge.”