Kiss Her Goodbye Page 5

  I worked on whether to ask for Ms. Marshall or Angela, and settled for the latter.

  The familiarity of that shot her eyebrows straight up. "Do you have an appointment with the assistant D.A.?"

  "More like a date." I slipped a hip on the edge of her desk and relished the astonished reaction. "I'm surprised, too. It's been a long time since a classy doll like Ms. Marshall wanted to date me this early in the day. But, hell, she was the one who made it."

  This was all a little too much for the receptionist, whose eyes behind the lenses were doing a cartoon pop. She punched a button on her intercom and said, "Ms. Marshall, I think you had better come out here right away."

  The strained tone of her voice—which implied her next step was to buzz security—got an immediate response.

  There Angela Marshall was, in another power suit (charcoal gray today, skirt not slacks), with a cold, chiseled beauty Rodin might have envied, if he'd worked in synthetics.

  At first her expression displayed that open challenge that seemed to be her standard setting, then she recognized me and the dark eyes flared.

  "Hi, beautiful," I said. "What's shaking?"

  Well, she was. And it wasn't bad to see. She had all gears going, and held the door open so I could step inside her private office.

  Maybe she had seen too many movies. The way she strode around the desk, the regal manner she assumed in sitting down, her posture as she leaned on an elbow to study this walking-talking exhibit from the Male Chauvinist Museum—it all seemed too deliberately scripted, a scene carefully broken down into shots and angles, and she was director and star.

  "What is your name, detective." It wasn't even a question.

  "Hammer. Michael."

  "Your grade?"

  "I made it halfway through the twelfth." Before I enlisted in the army.

  "If you made the force, then you must have a G.E.D." She didn't even look up from her notes. "You are a detective?"

  "Right. And I have a junior college degree, too. Took some night classes."

  "Well, good for you. And now as to your rank—what is your grade, Detective Hammer?"

  This time I gave it a long double beat, and when she finally raised her eyes, I stopped screwing with her and said, "Private detective, kid. A plain old-fashioned private eye, licensed in the state of New York with a ticket to carry a gun, and free to buddy around with all sorts of people, including Captain Chambers. I'm even allowed to call a public servant an asshole if he—or she—decides to behave like one."

  She may have been a whiz in the courtroom and a political star on the rise, but she'd never make it as a poker player. From her expression, I knew exactly what her next line would be, and beat her to the punch again.

  "And don't give me any garbage," I said, pawing the air, "about having my license revoked. That takes cause, not clout, and anyway, I can go a hell of a lot higher up than you can. I've taken more bad guys off the street, one way or another, than any ten plain-clothes coppers in this sorry-ass city."

  "Mike Hammer ... you're Mike Hammer."

  "Right. You start hassling me, little girl, and I'll call in some favors that'll get you squashed right down to handling juvie beefs."

  This time she took the long beat. "Michael Hammer. Yes, I remember you now."

  "What do you remember?"

  "What I've read. What I've heard. I feel I know you already."

  Everybody was saying that lately.

  "So what do you know about me, Ms. Marshall?"

  "That you're nasty. Most unpleasant. And very tough."

  "That's a pretty good summary. Anything else?"

  "Yes. I understand for a long time there was an office pool about which of us on the D.A.'s staff would break one of your fancy self-defense pleas."

  "You in on that pool?"

  "Oh, no, Mr. Hammer. They stopped doing that. It's before my time."

  "Ouch. Now that we've got insulting each other out of the way, how about some breakfast? All I've had is coffee."

  From the way the receptionist looked at me on the way out, I knew she had kept the intercom key down all the while. I winked at her, put my hand under her boss's arm, and steered the great lady into the hall.

  On the elevator, Ms. Marshall gave me a sharp look and said, "You are such an unregenerate macho bastard."

  But she squeezed my hand when she said it.

  A taxi took us over to Cohen's Deli, not as famous as the Stage but cheaper, plus they had a Mike Hammer mile-high sandwich on the menu board—pastrami, corned beef, Swiss cheese, American cheese, cole slaw, and Russian dressing. If anybody asked why it was named after Mike Hammer, the waiter would say, "It'll kill you just as fast."

  Unaware of my sandwich fame, she went in ahead of me like she owned the joint, but her eyes went back to mine when squat, mustached Herman—in white shirt, black bow tie, and black trousers—said, "Ah, Mr. Mike! You're back in town!"

  "Hi, Herm."

  "And who is your beautiful young lady?"

  "This is Angela Marshall."

  "Ah, yes. Our lovely assistant district attorney."

  He guided us to a window booth.

  Watching him go, she muttered, "Was he putting me down?"

  "Never," I told her. "Your beauty simply overwhelms him."

  "Bullshit."

  "He knew who you are, didn't he?" I said. We were across from each other in the booth.

  "Did you hear him say your beautiful young lady? And that slight emphasis on assistant?"

  "Don't worry, kid, you're such a pain in the ass, you're bound to be top dog someday."

  "Damn, I hate men," she said.

  Looking at the menu, I asked, "Do you?"

  She looked at her menu, too. "Not really."

  Breakfast with a real doll can be damn exciting. They're awake, showered, and manicured, and all the weapons are pointed right at whatever chump is dumb enough to be sitting across from them. To such dolls, the guy on the other end of the fork is a big, ripe plum ready for the plucking, because that world of economic dominance he dwells in, and whatever male aggression he possesses, are overshadowed by the two most basic hungers.

  Just to annoy her, I ordered an enormous breakfast—lox, onion and eggs omelet, hash browns, and pancakes on the side—saying nothing while she daintily dined on a single cream-cheese bagel and coffee. I cleaned my plate with the last of the kind of great buttered hard roll you can only get in New York, burped politely, and sat back waiting like Henry the Eighth to be served my second cup of coffee.

  "You're disgusting," she said with her big brown eyes cold and unblinking, her arms folded on the impressive shelf of her breasts.

  "And you dig it, don't you?"

  She tried not to smile. "Love it."

  "Then how come everybody thinks you're such a queen bitch?"

  "Because I am." For a brief second I got one of those eye flashes again, that dare that was such a great part of her.

  "Balls," I said.

  Her smile curled into another challenge. "That's the opening line of a famous poem," she said.

  "Oh, I know. One of my favorites."

  "Really? Then finish it."

  "It's blank verse and loses a little off the page."

  "Does it now?"

  "It does. 'Balls!' cried the queen. 'If I had to, I could be king.' 'Balls!' cried the prince. 'I have two, but I'm still not king!' And the king only laughed, not because he wanted to ... but because he had two." I took a sip of the coffee. "It's all semantics, baby."

  "Actually, it's homophones."

  "Naw. I got nothing against the gays."

  She chuckled at that, then leaned back, arms still folded. Then she opened her purse, took out a pack of Virginia Slims, and with a quick flip, popped one out at me.

  "No thanks," I said.

  "Not secure enough to smoke a woman's brand?"

  "I don't smoke any brand."

  "What happened to Luckies?"

  "I stopped about a year ago."

>   "What happened about a year ago?"

  "I shot a bunch of the Bonettis and the Bonettis shot me back. I've been away from the big bad city for a year or so, recuperating."

  From all the expression that got out of her, I might have just given her a weather report. "Are you better now?"

  "Much better. Kicking the nicotine habit is a nice side benefit of my general recuperation. I don't gasp for breath and I don't burn holes in my pants."

  Some motions are exquisitely casual, but this one was so damn deliberate, it didn't belong to a woman at all. Her fingers simply tightened around the pack of butts, squashed them into a little congested mess, and dropped it on her plate.

  "Satisfied?" she asked, arching an eyebrow.

  "Nice gesture. How long will it last?"

  "Remember the old song, Mr. Hammer? Anything you can do...?"

  "Good luck," I told her. I reached over and picked up her pretty gold lighter with the engraved A.M. on it and thumbed back the top. A little pressure and I popped the piece askew so it couldn't be used again.

  "You don't mind, do you?" I grinned. "I mean, you won't need that anymore. Just trying to help."

  There was a deadliness in the way she studied me. Her very manner had a leveling effect—she rather liked the man/woman game play, but only when she could put herself on the same plane as me. In her professional life, she had reached a plateau that few of either sex achieved, and there was no room for anything of the loser in her.

  Whoever in the past had challenged this one had only been a neophyte—he'd lost because he was a boy. But surely there had also been real men who'd gotten mired in her charm, only to buckle under the weight of her inherent confidence and educational superiority.

  "No," she said, with a glance at the ruined lighter, "I won't be needing that anymore." Very slowly she dropped it in her purse.

  Outside the window of the corner deli, the late risers of New York were drifting by. Most of them were the nothing people. Someplace they got money, but they didn't work. The better-dressed were husbands with rich wives, or kids with parents who paid the freight. The shabby ones were sheltered by the city or a church who kept them overnight but didn't let them back in till the evening. They were drifting now, all of them, walking and looking and wondering.

  "What makes you such a bastard, Mr. Hammer?"

  My mind had to refocus, and when it did, I said, "Maybe it's because I hate this place."

  "New York?"

  I nodded. "You weren't born here, were you?"

  "No. I grew up in Albany."

  "You should have stayed there." I was getting an edge in my voice.

  "But you were born here."

  "Unfortunately."

  "Did you always hate it?"

  "There was a time when it was love/hate, I suppose. But just about everything I loved about it is gone. From the Brooklyn Dodgers to the real Madison Square Garden."

  The prosecutor across from me considered that, then asked, "What's her name?"

  Velda.

  "That's a little personal," I said, "for a first date."

  "Is that what this is?" She picked up her coffee cup and smiled at me over the rim of it. "Why do you think I'm sitting here with you now, Mr. Hammer? Why did I accept your invitation?"

  "You really want to know?"

  She nodded, still watching me.

  "I laid it on you last night and I laid it on you today," I said, "and you still want to know?"

  "Certainly."

  It was my turn to sit back and do the looking. I let it all ooze up into me, settle there until I was ready to say it, then I grinned like that day a year ago had never happened.

  "To you," I said, "I'm an exercise. A far-out, way-out exercise to test your inherent abilities and your well-honed skills. Until now, everything has gone your way, because you have that glossiness beautiful girls get on their way to being women—that smooth surface that makes guys slide right off them. But someplace, way back, somebody smart warned you to watch out for a guy who had sandpaper on his hands, and who wouldn't slide off at all. You never thought you'd need that kind of guy, but, baby, you do now."

  She sipped at her coffee again.

  I said, "So why did you accept my invitation? Well, I'd say it has something to do with that crime scene last night—doesn't it, Angela?"

  When I used her first name, her eyes tightened.

  "You should have let your assistant call security," I said, "when I walked into your office."

  Another raised eyebrow accompanied a very pretty smirk. "Would that have done any good?"

  "Nope. But now think of the reputation you'll have."

  "Maybe I'll just tell people I'm thinking of starting up that office pool again."

  "Maybe." My eyes were tightening now and I let her see the edge of my teeth again. "What took you to that crime scene last night, Angela?"

  Her face became a pale mask. Lovely, but a mask. "What took you there, Mike?"

  "Coincidence, I think. I'm the rare cop who does believe in coincidence. Who thinks fate likes to move things around sometimes, like a chess master with a sick sense of humor."

  "Not very scientific."

  "Not scientific at all. But I do have my inquisitive side. For example—why would a powerful woman like you rush to the scene of such an insignificant kill?"

  She shifted in her seat. "It wasn't so insignificant to Virginia Mathes."

  "That was her name, huh?"

  She nodded.

  "What else do you know about her?"

  "Nothing. She was a mugging victim. I was out driving and heard the call on the scanner. Murder is serious where I come from, Mike."

  "Serious enough to accept a breakfast offer from an obnoxious bastard like me?"

  "Just that serious," she said. Then she checked her watch and gave me a look that said it was time to go.

  I left a three-buck tip, grabbed the check, and we slid out of the booth. I tried to pay but Herman wouldn't take my money.

  Outside, I asked, "Want a cab?"

  "No, I'll walk back." She reached in her purse and took out the ruined lighter. Looked at it. "Somebody I respect gave this to me."

  "Right. You bought it for yourself."

  Her smile was automatic, uncontrolled, unaffected. "You're a bastard, all right."

  "I don't make a secret of it," I said.

  She paused, looked at me very directly for a moment. "Will you tell me one thing?"

  "Ask."

  "Was I an exercise for you?"

  A truck roared by and a taxi squealed into the curb beside us. A guy with a briefcase got out, paid the driver, and walked away. The driver looked at us and I lifted my finger to claim the ride.

  But before I climbed in back, I said, "I already got my exercise today, honey."

  Over at the chief medical examiner's office on First Avenue, I managed to get hold of Dr. Adam MacCaffrey, the assistant medical examiner who had been called in when Doolan died.

  He was a type I had seen before, a man who had been edged into something he could do well, but didn't like at all. He was about fifty with a perpetual expression of puzzlement, as if he were wondering what he was doing there.

  Slender, mustached, and about as pale as his customers, he said from behind his desk, "I really don't see how you can question all the facts, Mr. Hammer."

  I shook my head. "I'm not questioning anything, doctor. I'm just looking for a little more information."

  "Well," he said, his eyes appraising me over his wire-rimmed glasses, "if I can help, I'll be glad to. Frankly, it's a pleasure to be asked to do anything around here that doesn't involve a scalpel." He found the loose-leaf pad he was looking for, fingered it open, and spread it out in front of him on the desk. "I may not be fast, Mr. Hammer, but I am thorough. Now, what is it you want?"

  "Doolan's right arm, principally, the wrist."

  He turned a page, then looked up at me again. "Yes?"

  "Any abrasions, marks of struggle?"


  "None," he said, without referring to the pad. "The victim was quite old, and any sign of a struggle would have been most evident. The skin would have shown even mildly rough treatment." He saw me frown and added, "I know what you're thinking. Could somebody have grabbed his hand and twisted it around on him, then fired the shot."

  "Something like that."

  "Not this time. The pressure of the trigger guard and the trigger itself would have marked him. Somebody's grasp like that would have left definite imprints. The skin of an eighty-five-year-old man is fairly fragile."

  "You're certain, doctor?"

  "Absolutely. One reason is that in apparently self-inflicted wounds, there is always that possibility, and I check that out immediately. The victim knew what he was doing. There was no unusual angle about the way he fired the gun. The entry was through the sternum and into the heart. Death was instantaneous." He stopped a moment, his pencil tapping on the desktop. "Tell me, Mr. Hammer, what prompts this inquiry?"

  "Suicide wasn't Doolan's game, doctor."

  He made a noncommittal gesture with his hands, then said, "That could have been true in his younger years, but this was not a younger man. He was old, desperately ill, and the fact he'd been going over his will, and buying up a burial plot that very afternoon, indicates no doubt as to his intentions."

  "You have no reservations at all?" I asked him.

  "Not from a medical viewpoint. No."

  "From any other angle then?"

  "I have no expertise other than medical."

  I raised an eyebrow. "Checking his wrist was a little more than medical."

  The doctor smiled gently. "That was something I picked up from Dr. Milton Helpern, New York's great forensic medical examiner." The smile broadened a little. "Besides, I'm a bit of a police detective buff. Which is why you're not having any trouble getting information out of me, Mr. Hammer."

  "Really?"

  "Oh yes. You're a famous character in this city. But you know that."

  "Some would say 'infamous.' Did you handle that girl who died in a mugging last night? Virginia Mathes?"

  He frowned. "As a matter of fact, yes. Why, does that have something to do with Inspector Doolan's death?"

  "Not that I know of. Took place less than two blocks from the funeral home where we were sending him off. But that's a pretty thin connection."