The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 3 Page 4

  His hand lay outside the sheet, the fingers big and the wrist thick. The knuckles were scarred, but none of the scars was fresh. They were old scars from old fights. The incongruous part was the nails. They were thick and square, but well cared for. They reflected all the care a manicurist could give with a treatment once a week.

  The door opened and Pat and Larry came in. Together they looked at the body and stood there waiting. Then they looked at me and whatever they saw made them both go expressionless at once.

  Larry made a brief inspection of the body on the bed, picked up a phone and relayed the message to someone on the other end. Within seconds another doctor was there with a pair of nurses verifying the situation, recording it all on a clipboard.

  When he turned around he stared at me with a peculiar expression and said, “You feel all right?”

  “I’m all right,” I repeated. My voice seemed to come from someone else.

  “Want another drink?”

  “No.”

  “You’d better have one,” Larry said.

  “I don’t want it.”

  Pat said, “The hell with him.” His fingers slid under my arm. “Outside, Mike. Let’s go outside and talk.”

  I wanted to tell him what he could do with his talk, but the numbness was there still, a frozen feeling that restricted thought and movement, painless but effective. So I let him steer me to the small waiting room down the hall and took the seat he pointed out.

  There is no way to describe the immediate aftermath of a sudden shock. If it had come at another time in another year it would have been different, but now the stalk of despondency was withered and brittle, refusing to bend before a wind of elation.

  All I could do was sit there, bringing back his words, the tone of his voice, the way his face crinkled as he saw me. Somehow he had expected something different. He wasn’t looking for a guy who had the earmarks of the Bowery and every slop chute along the avenues etched into his skin.

  I said, “Who was he, Pat?” in a voice soggy and hollow.

  Pat didn’t bother to answer my question. I could feel his eyes crawl over me until he asked, “What did he tell you?”

  I shook my head. Just once. My way could be final too.

  With a calm, indifferent sincerity Pat said, “You’ll tell me. You’ll get worked on until talking won’t even be an effort. It will come out of you because there won’t be a nerve ending left to stop it. You know that.”

  I heard Larry’s strained voice say, “Come off it, Pat. He can’t take much.”

  “Who cares. He’s no good to anybody. He’s a louse, a stinking, drinking louse. Now he’s got something I have to have. You think I’m going to worry about him? Larry, buddy, you just don’t know me very well anymore.”

  I said, “Who was he?”

  The wall in front of me was a friendly pale green. It was blank from one end to the other. It was a vast, meadowlike area, totally unspoiled. There were no foreign markings, no distracting pictures. Unsympathetic. Antiseptic.

  I felt Pat’s shrug and his fingers bit into my arm once more. “Okay, wise guy. Now we’ll do it my way.”

  “I told you, Pat—”

  “Damn it, Larry, you knock it off. This bum is a lead to a killer. He learned something from that guy and I’m going to get it out of him. Don’t hand me any pious crap or medical junk about what can happen. I know guys like this. I’ve been dealing with them all my life. They go on getting banged around from saloon to saloon, hit by cars, rolled by muggers and all they ever come up with are fresh scars. I can beat the hell out of him and maybe he’ll talk. Maybe he won’t, but man, let me tell you this—I’m going to have my crack at him and when I’m through the medics can pick up the pieces for their go. Only first me, understand?”

  Larry didn’t answer him for a moment, then he said quietly. “Sure, I understand. Maybe you could use a little medical help yourself.”

  I heard Pat’s breath hiss in softly. Like a snake. His hand relaxed on my arm and without looking I knew what his face was like. I had seen him go like that before and a second later he had shot a guy.

  And this time it was me he listened to when I said, “He’s right, old buddy. You’re real sick.”

  I knew it would come and there wouldn’t be any way of getting away from it. It was quick, it was hard, but it didn’t hurt a bit. It was like flying away to never-never land where all is quiet and peaceful and awakening is under protest because then it will really hurt and you don’t want that to happen.

  Larry said, “How do you feel now?”

  It was a silly question. I closed my eyes again.

  “We kept you here in the hospital.”

  “Don’t do me any more favors,” I told him.

  “No trouble. You’re a public charge. You’re on the books as an acute alcoholic with a D and D to boot and if you’re real careful you might talk your way out on the street again. However, I have my doubts about it. Captain Chambers is pushing you hard.”

  “The hell with him.”

  “He’s not the only one.”

  “So what’s new?” My voice was raspy, almost gone.

  “The D.A., his assistant and some unidentified personnel from higher headquarters are interested in whatever statement you’d care to make.”

  “The hell with them too.”

  “It could be instrumental in getting you out of here.”

  “Nuts. It’s the first time I’ve been to bed in a long time. I like it here.”

  “Mike—” His voice had changed. There was something there now that wasn’t that of the professional medic at a bedside. It was worried and urgent and I let my eyes slit open and looked at him.

  “I don’t like what’s happening to Pat.”

  “Tough.”

  “A good word, but don’t apply it to him. You’re the tough one. You’re not like him at all.”

  “He’s tough.”

  “In a sense. He’s a pro. He’s been trained and can perform certain skills most men can’t. He’s a policeman and most men aren’t that. Pat is a normal sensitive human. At least he was. I met him after you went to pot. I heard a lot about you, mister. I watched Pat change character day by day and what caused the change was you and what you did to Velda.”

  The name again. In one second I lived every day the name was alive and with me. Big, Valkyrian and with hair as black as night.

  “Why should he care?”

  “He says she was his friend.”

  Very slowly I squeezed my eyes open. “You know what she was to me?”

  “I think so.”

  “Okay.”

  “But it could be he was in love with her too,” he said.

  I couldn’t laugh like I wanted to. “She was in love with me, Doc.”

  “Nevertheless, he was in love with her. Maybe you never realized it, but that’s the impression I got. He’s still a bachelor, you know.”

  “Ah! He’s in love with his job. I know him.”

  “Do you?”

  I thought back to that night and couldn’t help the grin that tried to climb up my face. “Maybe not, Doc, maybe not. But it’s an interesting thought. It explains a lot of things.”

  “He’s after you now. To him, you killed her. His whole personality, his entire character has changed. You’re the focal point. Until now he’s never had a way to get to you to make you pay for what happened. Now he has you in a nice tight bind and, believe me, you’re going to be racked back first class.”

  “That’s G.I. talk, Doc.”

  “I was in the same war, buddy.”

  I looked at him again. His face was drawn, his eyes searching and serious. “What am I supposed to do?”

  “He never told me and I never bothered to push the issue, but since I’m his friend rather than yours, I’m more interested in him personally than you.”

  “Lousy bedside manner, Doc.”

  “Maybe so, but he’s my friend.”

  “He used to be mine.”


  “No more.”

  “So?”

  “What happened?”

  “What would you believe coming from an acute alcoholic and a D and D?”

  For the first time he laughed and it was for real. “I hear you used to weigh in at two-o-five?”

  “Thereabouts.”

  “You’re down to one sixty-eight, dehydrated, undernourished. A bum, you know?”

  “You don’t have to remind me.”

  “That isn’t the point. You missed it.”

  “No I didn’t.”

  “Oh?”

  “Medics don’t talk seriously to D and D’s. I know what I was. Now there is a choice of words if you can figure it out.”

  He laughed again. “Was. I caught it.”

  “Then talk.”

  “Okay. You’re a loused-up character. There’s nothing to you anymore. Physically, I mean. Something happened and you tried to drink yourself down the drain.”

  “I’m a weak person.”

  “Guilt complex. Something you couldn’t handle. It happens to the hardest nuts I’ve seen. They can take care of anything until the irrevocable happens and then they blow. Completely.”

  “Like me?”

  “Like you.”

  “Keep talking.”

  “You were a lush.”

  “So are a lot of people. I even know some doctors who—”

  “You came out of it pretty fast.”

  “At ease, Doc.”

  “I’m not prying,” he reminded me.

  “Then talk right.”

  “Sure,” he said. “Tell me about Velda.”

  CHAPTER 3

  “It was a long time ago,” I said.

  And when I had said it I wished I hadn’t because it was something I never wanted to speak about. It was over. You can’t beat time. Let the dead stay dead. If they can. But was she dead? Maybe if I told it just once I could be sure.

  “Tell me,” Larry asked.

  “Pat ever say anything?”

  “Nothing.”

  So I told him.

  “It was a routine job,” I said.

  “Yes?”

  “A Mr. Rudolph Civac contacted me. He was from Chicago, had plenty of rocks and married a widow named Marta Singleton who inherited some kind of machine-manufacturing fortune. Real social in Chicago. Anyway, they came to New York, where she wanted to be social too and introduce her new husband around.”

  “Typical,” Larry said.

  “Rich bitches.”

  “Don’t hold it against them,” he told me.

  “Not me, kid,” I said.

  “Then go on.”

  I said, “She was going to sport all the gems her dead husband gave her, which were considerable and a prime target for anybody in the field, and her husband wanted protection.”

  Larry made a motion with his hand. “A natural thought.”

  “Sure. So he brought me in. Big party. He wanted to cover the gems.”

  “Any special reason?”

  “Don’t be a jerk. They were worth a half a million. Most of my business is made of stuff like that.”

  “Trivialities.”

  “Sure, Doc, like unnecessary appendectomies.”

  “Touché.”

  “Think nothing of it.”

  He stopped then. He waited seconds and seconds and watched and waited, then: “A peculiar attitude.”

  “You’re the psychologist, Doc, not me.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re thinking that frivolity is peculiar for a D and D.”

  “So go on with the story.”

  “Doc,” I said, “later I’m going to paste you right in the mouth. You know this?”

  “Sure.”

  “That’s my word.”

  “So sure.”

  “Okay, Doc, ask for it. Anyway, it was a routine job. The target was a dame. At that time a lot of parties were being tapped by a fat squad who saw loot going to waste around the neck of a big broad who never needed it—but this was a classic. At least in our business.”

  “How?”

  “Never mind. At least she called us in. I figured it would be better if we changed our routine. That night I was on a homicide case. Strictly insurance, but the company was paying off and there would be another grand in the kitty. I figured it would be a better move to let Velda cover the affair since she’d be able to stay with the client at all times, even into the ladies’ room.”

  Larry interrupted with a wave of his hand. “Mind a rough question?”

  “No.”

  “Was this angle important or were you thinking, rather, of the profit end—like splitting your team up between two cases.”

  I knew I had started to shake and pressed my hands against my sides hard. After a few seconds the shakes went away and I could answer him without wanting to tear his head off. “It was an important angle,” I said. “I had two heists pulled under my nose when they happened in a powder room.”

  “And—the woman. How did she feel about it?”

  “Velda was a pro. She carried a gun and had her own P.I. ticket.”

  “And she could handle any situation?”

  I nodded. “Any we presumed could happen here.”

  “You were a little too presumptuous, weren’t you?”

  The words almost choked me when I said, “You know, Doc, you’re asking to get killed.”

  He shook his head and grinned. “Not you, Mike. You aren’t like you used to be. I could take you just as easy as Pat did. Almost anybody could.”

  I tried to get up, but he laid a hand on my chest and shoved me back and I couldn’t fight against him. Every nerve in me started to jangle and my head turned into one big round blob of pain.

  Larry said, “You want a drink?”

  “No.”

  “You’d better have one.”

  “Stuff it.”

  “All right, suffer. You want to talk some more or shall I take off?”

  “I’ll finish the story. Then you can work on Pat. When I get out of here I’m going to make a project of rapping you and Pat right in the mouth.”

  “Good. You have something to look forward to. Now talk.”

  I waited a minute, thinking back years and putting the pieces in slots so familiar they were worn smooth at the edges. Finally I said, “At eleven o’clock Velda called me at a prearranged number. Everything was going smoothly. There was nothing unusual, the guests were all persons of character and money, there were no suspicious or unknown persons present including the household staff. At that time they were holding dinner awaiting the arrival of Mr. Rudolph Civac. That was my last connection with Velda.”

  “There was a police report?”

  “Sure. At 11:15 Mr. Civac came in and after saying hello to the guests, went upstairs with his wife for a minute to wash up. Velda went along. When they didn’t appear an hour and a half later a maid went up to see if anything was wrong and found the place empty. She didn’t call the police, thinking that they had argued or something, then went out the private entrance to the rear of the estate. She served dinner with a lame excuse for the host’s absence, sent the guests home and cleaned up with the others.

  “The next day Marta Civac was found in the river, shot in the head, her jewels gone and neither her husband nor Velda was ever seen again.”

  I had to stop there. I didn’t want to think on the next part anymore. I was hoping it would be enough for him, but when I looked up he was frowning with thought, digesting it a little at a time like he was diagnosing a disease, and I knew it wasn’t finished yet.

  He said, “They were abducted for the purpose of stealing those gems?”

  “It was the only logical way they could do it. There were too many people. One scream would bring them running. They probably threatened the three of them, told them to move on out quietly where the theft could be done without interruption and allow the thieves to get away.”

  “Would Velda have gone along with them?”

&n
bsp; “If they threatened the client that’s the best way. It’s better to give up insured gems than get killed. Even a rap on the head can kill if it isn’t done right and, generally speaking, jewel thieves aren’t killers unless they’re pushed.”

  I felt a shudder go through my shoulders. “No. The body—showed why.” I paused and he sat patiently, waiting. “Marta was a pudgy dame with thick fingers. She had crammed on three rings worth a hundred grand combined and they weren’t about to come off normally. To get the rings they had severed the fingers.”

  Softly, he remarked, “I see.”

  “It was lousy.”

  “What do you think happened, Mike?”

  I was going to hate to tell him, but it had been inside too long. I said, “Velda advised them to go along thinking it would be a heist without any physical complications. Probably when they started to take the rings off the hard way the woman started to scream and was shot. Then her husband and Velda tried to help her and that was it.”

  “Was what?”

  I stared at the ceiling. Before it had been so plain, so simple. Totally believable because it had been so totally terrible. For all those years I had conditioned myself to think only one way because in my job you got to know which answers were right.

  Now, suddenly, maybe they weren’t right anymore.

  Larry asked, “So they killed the man and Velda too and their bodies went out to sea and were never found?”

  My tired tone was convincing. I said, “That’s how the report read.”

  “So Pat took it all out on you.”

  “Looks that way.”

  “Uh-huh. You let her go on a job you should have handled yourself.”

  “It didn’t seem that way at first.”

  “Perhaps, but you’ve been taking it out on yourself too. It just took that one thing to make you a bum.”

  “Hard words, friend.”

  “You realize what happened to Pat?”

  I glanced at him briefly and nodded. “I found out.”

  “The hard way.”

  “So I didn’t think he cared.”

  “You probably never would have known if that didn’t happen.”

  “Kismet, buddy. Like your getting punched in the mouth.”