Don't Look Behind You Page 5

I went on through into a two-story study, dominated by dark masculine woods, the kind of book-lined affair that needs library ladders on both its floors. One wall was plaster and bookless, though, reserved for a fireplace and framed photos of stage and screen stars and the occasional celebrity politician, all featuring the late Martin Foster in handshake or arm-around-the-shoulder pose. In the midst of this was a big framed Hirschfeld caricature of the departed producer—damn near the size of a movie poster.

  The floor was parquet but a good deal of it was taken up by another Oriental carpet, on which perched half a dozen brown-leather easy chairs surrounding a glass-topped coffee table, fairly massive, Playbill programs of Foster’s many theatrical productions spread out on display within.

  But the most impressive thing in the room was a man who had to be Leif Borensen, a big, grinning blond guy looking for all the world as if he had just stepped ashore from a Viking longboat—if Vikings wore camel-colored cardigans, light pink shirts, gray slacks, and Rolex watches.

  He’d heard me come in and left his easy chair by the coffee table to approach with a smile and an outstretched paw. We shook, and neither of us showed off, and he introduced himself and gestured me to one of the easy chairs.

  “Can I get you something to drink, Mr. Hammer?”

  “I wouldn’t turn my nose up at a rye and ginger.”

  “Rocks?”

  “Why not?”

  At a nearby bar cart, he built that and something for himself as well, and sat across from me, that glassed-in array of his late father-in-law’s theatrical triumphs between us.

  “You live up to your billing, Mr. Hammer.”

  “Do I?”

  He gestured with his tumbler of what appeared to be Scotch. “You’re big and look mean as hell. I’d cast you in one of my TV shows if I didn’t think you’d scare the women and children.”

  I smiled at that. “Call me if a bad guy role opens up. Now what’s this about a thousand dollars?”

  He sipped the apparent Scotch. Single malt, no doubt. I wondered if it was older than his fiancée. He certainly was—fifty, easily, though his face wasn’t as lined as you’d think. Plastic surgery perhaps, or maybe he didn’t use his face much.

  “I have to admit,” he said, smiling mostly with his eyes and confirming my latter notion, “that I was tickled when Smith-Torrence suggested you as a referral.”

  “Oh?”

  He nodded and set the drink down on a coaster on a little mahogany table between him and the next chair. “I admit to being a fan. You may not know this, but I was a working actor… or anyway, I worked occasionally… back in your heyday in the early ’50s.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Am I irritating you?”

  “No. I always look and sound like this.”

  He shook his head, chuckled. “Well, I used to get a real kick out of it. Years later, I would tell the writers on my private eye shows, ‘Do a little research on that Mike Hammer in New York. Then you’ll know what a real tough private eye is really like.’”

  “Nobody ever accused me of that before.”

  He sipped Scotch, then gave me a concerned look. “What about this recent incident? Killing a burglar in your building?”

  “Just looking after my interests,” I said with a shrug.

  Everybody didn’t need to know a hitman was gunning for me. That might discourage business.

  “So,” I said, changing the subject, “I’m who you think is right for a bridal shower security job? Sounds a little like overkill to me.”

  He waved a hand like a bored magician. “I’ll understand if you want to take a pass, Mr. Hammer. This might be beneath you.”

  “Yeah, it might be,” I said, “but that grand you mentioned to Smitty is just about eye level.”

  He grinned with his whole face this time, and some lines came out of hiding. “It’ll be an afternoon affair, starting at four and going till six-thirty, this coming Friday.”

  This was Tuesday. “I was going to ask you about that. Why such short notice?”

  “The invites have been out for two weeks, but it was only after I got to thinking that I realized having some security makes a lot of sense. You see, we’re getting married in Hawaii at the end of the month, no family, with just a handful of friends we’re flying out with us. Just a romantic beach-side ceremony with lots of flowers and a luau after.”

  I was ahead of him. “So this shower takes the place of a wedding reception.”

  “Right. I have almost no friends in Manhattan any more, but of course Gwen does, and that means the gift table will be piled with treasures.”

  “Understood.”

  “I’d want you there at three, Mr. Hammer, just to get a handle on things. It’s at the Waldorf. I forget the suite number—I’ll get it to you.”

  “How many guests?”

  “Fifty very wealthy women. We’ll have some high-end entertainment, too. It’s essentially a cocktail party.”

  “Do you expect trouble?”

  “Not at all. But between the gifts and what those women will drape themselves with… could make a thief’s haul worth a couple of hundred thousand.”

  I worked up a whistle.

  “And a hold-up man with a gun,” Borensen said, eyebrows raised, “wouldn’t have much trouble intimidating a room full of females.”

  Maybe, but not all females were alike.

  I said, “I’m bringing my second-in-command along.”

  “Miss Sterling? Velda?”

  “That’s right. You’ve done your research.”

  He smiled, shrugged. “She used to make the papers, too. Yes, I think that would be fine. I can bump the fee to $1500, if you like.”

  “Bump away.”

  He wrote me out a $750 check on the spot as a retainer.

  I held the check in my fingertips and let the ink dry. “Do I need to rent a tux?”

  “No. Just your best business suit.”

  I gestured to myself. “This is it. Suitable?”

  “A suitable suit, Mr. Hammer. Not to worry.”

  He rose. I was in the process of being dismissed.

  I got up, glancing around. “Cozy little place you have here.”

  He laughed sadly as he came around to walk me out. “Yes, Martin was a hell of a showman. And he didn’t live small. He was only married once, though—did you know that?”

  “I guess I didn’t.”

  “Kind of remarkable, considering the, uh, opportunities a man like him would have. Gwen’s mother was in the chorus line of one of Martin’s first musicals. She had Gwen’s looks but not her talent. Still, she grew into the role of a society woman, as the Foster fame grew.”

  The Foster bankroll, too.

  “I heard you were in the process of mounting a new musical yourself,” I said, “when Foster took his life.”

  He visibly paled. “Terrible thing. Awful tragedy. I had no idea Martin was in such… misery. He’d kept his cancer from us entirely. I haven’t smoked for years, and I’m glad of it.”

  “Me, too, only recently I picked it back up again.”

  “Well, stop, Mr. Hammer, if you don’t mind a little friendly advice. And, yes, I returned to the scene of my initial failure in show business in search of the redemption that can only be brought by success.”

  That had come out of nowhere, and sounded like a line he’d worked up for the newspapers.

  I asked, “Is it shelved now, the project?”

  “Temporarily. But I have Johnny Mercer on board for the music, and I’ve got Larry Gelbart on the hook for the book—he wrote A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.”

  “I saw that. Some good laughs. Lots of pretty girls. Do that again.”

  He chuckled. “I’ll try. I can guarantee you one thing.”

  “Which is?”

  He sipped his Scotch. “We’ll have a hell of a fantastic leading lady.”

  As promised, Gwen was there in her silly red puffy hat and nicely snug jeans, waitin
g to see me back out. She and Borensen shared a quick kiss before he disappeared back into the study. Then she batted the big blue eyes at me as she took my arm.

  “So, Mike. What do you think of my man?”

  “He’s well-preserved.”

  She smiled smirkily. “You don’t approve of a girl in her twenties marrying a man in his fifties?”

  “Maybe you should consider a younger man. I’m in my thirties, for example. And will be for another month.”

  That got a musical laugh from her.

  Soon we were down the wide endless corridor and through the marble-floored foyer and at the door.

  “Seriously,” she said, “what’s your impression of Leif? I imagine, in your business, you have to be a really good judge of character.”

  “I liked him fine,” I said. “And I just love his retainer.”

  * * *

  Outside the apartment building, I flagged a Yellow Cab and opened the back door, leaning in. I gave the cabbie the address of the Blue Ribbon, where I was meeting Velda and Hy in half an hour for a post-game report. My driver was a friendly black guy who automatically craned around to give me a smile.

  I was half-way through my sentence when dampness spattered my face and tiny stinging shards flecked my cheeks while something metallic hit my chest, not enough to break the skin, just a thump.

  As the rifle’s crack reached my ears, I had a flash of the bloody irregular hole the size of a quarter in the cabbie’s forehead before he fell back over the seat onto the rider’s side, the smile still there.

  My face was splashed with blood and my cheeks nicked by skull fragments and my chest hurting just a little from the thump of a slowed-down bullet, its velocity cut into harmlessness by travelling through all that bone.

  Scrambling, I backed out of the cab crouching onto the sidewalk, the vehicle between me and the shooter, if he was still in position, and I yanked the .45 from under my arm and clicked off the safety. The sidewalks weren’t crowded in a high-class neighborhood like this, but an old gal walking two poodles started screaming and a few other pedestrians did, too. Whether they’d heard the shot and were reacting to that or just saw my scarlet splattered face, I had no idea.

  I did know who the target was here, and it wasn’t the smiling cabbie. Somebody with a rifle had propped himself behind and on the edge of the Central Park wall opposite and taken a tricky shot that would have hit home if that friendly cabbie hadn’t suddenly turned to make human contact with me.

  I duck-walked around the cab and into the street, the snout of the .45 angled up. Traffic was unaware of the gunshot and kept moving, and was fairly light anyway and not fast either, so I was able to stay low and weave between cars, getting some wide eyes and a few squealing brakes from drivers when they saw a wild-eyed bloody-faced guy in a well-tailored business suit on the prowl with a big automatic in his mitt.

  I could already see that no shooter was in place now along the thick stone wall with its touches of green in crevices and overhanging trees spotted along.

  Hell—could he have taken his shot from one of these trees?

  No, that was stupid. But unless he was a giant, he’d used something to get up over the five-foot high, foot-thick barrier, and take his shot.

  I was across the pavement now, still staying low, and onto the wide, tree-shaded brick walkway. What few pedestrians had been around were gone now. Very little impresses New Yorkers, but gunfire gets their attention and summons respect.

  I cut left to jump up and grab a low-hanging branch and pulled myself up and over the wall, skirting its pyramidal top, dropping to the grass, landing fairly light, and again keeping low. To my right as I faced the park was a bench against the wall, either a providential aid for my would-be assassin or something he’d moved into place, likely ahead of time. A spent cartridge winked sunlight at me from the grass. I didn’t take time to pick it up.

  No one suspicious-looking or otherwise was in sight near that bench, but to my left a man was walking very quickly away—a man wearing a gray topcoat unnecessary on this unseasonably balmy day. No one seemed to be in this part of the park right now, possibly because Manhattanites out strolling through it knew a gunshot when they heard it. They were tucked behind trees or had hit the dirt behind bushes.

  The man in the topcoat was likely heading toward the exit/entrance at Fifth Avenue at Sixtieth. I felt confident this was my would-be assassin, but maybe not confident enough to shoot him.

  That kind of mistake was hard to live down.

  And anyway, I needed him alive for a conversation. That friendly cabbie deserved better, but I needed not to shoot this prick. Somebody had hired him and I would find out who. Gun in hand, upright, I ran hard now, cutting the distance quickly.

  When I was within fifty feet of him, I yelled, “Stop or I’ll shoot!”

  He kept moving, glancing back at me. He wore sunglasses, the orange tactical variety, on a bland oval face. He was the shooter, all right. White guy, medium height, in that gray topcoat, hatless, short black hair, another face in the crowd like my late pal Woodcock.

  I fired a shot into the ground—fire it in the air and a slug might come down and clip somebody—and the roar of it was like a lion was loose from the park zoo.

  “I changed my mind!” I yelled. And I stopped running. I aimed the .45 in a two-handed grip, my feet apart, firing-range style. “Please don’t stop!”

  But he did stop, swinging around and dropping to one knee—he, too, was in a firing-range stance—bringing the rifle out and up from under the topcoat and aiming.

  That was as far as he got.

  My .45 slug hit him at the bridge of his nose and split his skull like an ax and he toppled onto his side with blood and brains leaking out like he’d done a Humpty Dumpty off the nearby wall. And all the king’s horses couldn’t do a goddamn thing for this bastard. King’s men, either.

  People were yelling now, and I heard a police whistle as I approached the corpse.

  Something told me conversation with this guy was out.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I got to the office at eight the next morning and found Velda already there, with the coffee going and some Danish waiting. She was in a pale yellow silk blouse and a brown skirt whose above-the-knee length was her only concession to changing fashions. She didn’t work in heels—she was damn near as tall as me without them.

  I’d never made it to my meeting with Hy Gardner and Velda at the Blue Ribbon yesterday afternoon, and had to phone there to call it off from the lobby of Gwen Foster’s apartment building. The doorman had let me use the lobby restroom as well, to wash the cabbie’s blood off my face.

  Wordlessly Velda and I got ourselves cups of coffee and paper napkins for our pastry and went to her desk, where she got behind and sat, and I sat opposite, like a client.

  “You’ve seen the papers,” she said.

  “Yup.”

  “They’re onto you.”

  “Yup.”

  She picked up the News from her blotter. “‘PRIVATE EYE IS PUBLIC TARGET.’ ‘Who’s out to get the infamous Mike Hammer?’”

  I was half-way through my Danish. “What’s the difference between ‘infamous’ and ‘famous,’ anyway?”

  “You are.” She folded the tabloid in half and dumped it with a thunk into the wastebasket by her desk. “And that’s the friendly paper. The rest dredged up your every kill and self-defense plea going back to the Jack Williams case.”

  “What can we do about it?” I sipped coffee. I may be tough but I take it with milk and sugar. “Anyway, it might drum up business.”

  Her eyelids were at half-mast. “Sure. Who doesn’t want to do business with a guy with a bull’s-eye on his back?”

  I shrugged. “Borensen didn’t take us off that bridal shower. Did I tell you on the phone last night about both him and Gwen coming over to the park, after they heard what was going on?”

  “No, you left that out.”

  “Well, they did, and backed up my story
that I’d had a business meeting with them before taking my innocent leave.”

  She almost choked on her coffee. She takes it black. “I hope you didn’t use the word ‘innocent’ when Pat showed up. He’d laugh your tail into jail.”

  “Very poetic, but I told you already. Captain Chambers was fine at the scene. He’s concerned about his old pal. Even called me at home last night, after you and I talked.”

  “Oh?”

  I nodded. “It was going on midnight. He’d had a busy evening. Him and maybe twenty other plainclothes cops—looking for witnesses in the park, and talking to tenants in that fancy apartment house with its expensive view on the park.”

  “What did they get?”

  “Bupkus.”

  “Any evidence in the park?”

  “Just the son of a bitch I shot, his rifle and a couple spent shells, one of them mine. I was in the clear from the starting gun.”

  “Which you fired, of course.” The phone on Velda’s desk rang and she answered: “Michael Hammer Investigations… Yeah, he just got here.” She covered the receiver and said, “Pat. His ears must’ve been burning.”

  I got up, tossing my empty coffee cup and wadded napkin down the funnel the News made in her wastebasket. “I’ll take it in there.”

  She nodded as I headed into my inner sanctum. I left the door open, though—no secrets between Velda and me. No office secrets, anyway.

  “Morning, Pat,” I said into the phone, getting behind my desk. “Anything on our dead shooter?”

  “That’s why I’m calling,” his voice said. “Charles Maxwell, thirty-eight, unmarried, former military, and until about three months ago he had a little insurance agency in Baltimore. Sound familiar?”

  “It does if the Baltimore PD suspects his agency was a front for a professional killer, though he’d never been charged. Seems to me I’ve heard that song before.”

  “Yeah, I thought it was real damn familiar tune, too. I’m having a screwy thought, Mike, and I’m guessing you’re having it, too.”

  “Like someone local recruited Woodcock and Maxwell, bringing them in from cities where their cover was all but blown, offering a fresh start in the same field? And I don’t mean insurance.”