Kill Me, Darling Page 5

  “Not all my kills made the papers.”

  “Nor did his. You won’t find it in type, but I know about it. The cops know about it, too, and so do a lot of people, but said people won’t talk because a good number of them are dead, and the ones who are breathing don’t want to join Nolly’s list. He’s quite a character. Right out of Damon Runyon by way of the Marquis de Sade. You two ought to get along famously.”

  I got out a deck of Luckies, fished one out and lit it up. “The hell with Nolly. I didn’t come down after him.”

  “Oh… you’re after the woman.”

  “That’s right.”

  “If she’s running with Nolly, you’ll soon realize it’s the same thing, Mike. He takes his women pretty seriously.”

  “So do I.”

  The editor looked at me steadily. The swimming in his eyes seemed to stop altogether. He dropped the sheets and leaned forward on the desk. “Do I get to hear the whole story? Strictly off the record.”

  “It isn’t much,” I said with a shrug. “I had a secretary. She was a lot of woman and we were engaged, or so I thought. Four months ago, she took a powder. The latest I have on her is she was down here with Nolly. If it was only that, maybe I wouldn’t mind… but it looks like the thing started before she left. The guy was fooling around with her in New York, when I thought she was mine, and that kind of crap I don’t go for. Nobody’s making me look like a sucker.”

  “Sounds like this woman did.”

  “Not even a woman. Not when I’m finished.”

  “What do you expect to do about it?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t rightly know, but I’m damn well going to find out why she went for that character and when I do, he’s going to lose whatever it was about him that she liked.”

  He didn’t need to know, even off the record, the part of this that had to do with the late Wade Manley.

  Rocking in his chair a little, he said, “Then, what? She gets her tail paddled and dragged home by the hair?”

  “Something like that. I haven’t decided yet.”

  “Maybe some of your reputation isn’t deserved, Mike.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Sounds like you don’t know women as well as they say you do.” He tapped the folder with a fingernail. “And you sure as hell don’t know Nolly Quinn.”

  He pulled the drawer open and reached in for the bottle. It was out of habit, and he froze, his eyebrows coming up questioningly.

  I said, “Go ahead, man. It doesn’t bother me.”

  I was lying like hell and he knew it. My mouth felt dry and puckered and something in my brain screamed out to go ahead and get rid of the agony. One short one and everything would be smooth and in focus again. It would clear up the bells in my brain and take the tremor out of my fingers. I took another pull on the Lucky and looked away. If I couldn’t get used to people drinking in front of me, I was finished.

  The editor poured himself one, drank it down in two gulps, and said, “You got more guts than I have, Mike. I tried quitting once and got the D.T.s so bad they stuck me in a hospital.”

  “What happened?”

  “They dried me out and my first stop upon my release was the nearest bar.”

  He corked the thing and put it back in the drawer, but the smell of it floated around the room, a tantalizing odor that clawed and scratched like a woman’s nails. He sighed, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and picked up a chewed cigar from the ashtray. “Now… what information did you want exactly?”

  “Where I can find Nolly Quinn.”

  He nodded and slipped a pencil from his pocket and began scratching on a pad. It was half-filled before he finished and handed it across to me.

  “There’s a list of the places you might locate him. His home is in Miami Beach, where he also has a nightclub called Nolly Q’s. But he’s got a few legitimate businesses in town, a yacht in the basin, an office uptown and a few spots he seems partial to. If he isn’t at any of those, you can ask around and find him. He isn’t hiding.”

  “He should be.” I folded the slip and stuck it in my wallet. “You said he has some legitimate businesses.”

  “Yeah. A few. Real estate mostly, a Miami staple. He’s got a piece of a construction company. I imagine he figures to use them for a cushion if anything goes wrong with the other things.”

  “For instance?”

  The editor let out an unintelligible grunt. “You name it, Mike. He’s got his fingers in everything. Get to know some of the hundreds of flyboys you find hanging around here, then get them drunk and talking. You’ll see what I mean.”

  “Smuggling?”

  “That’s the latest word. Nolly’s suspected of being a big one in the narcotics business. He’s said to have Mafia connections up your way, though we don’t have enough to publish that. We know damn well he’s got the fruit and vegetable business by the neck down here, but all the evidence the cops have on him, you can shove in your eye.”

  “What about the cops?”

  “Hell, they can’t move without evidence, you know that. They tried for years to clean this place up and when the feds stepped in, they did all right. Since that senate committee flap, the Miami area is strictly tourist.”

  “No illegal gambling at all?”

  “The well-organized bookie ring that ran this town is gone. The strip joints are sanitized, the gay joints shuttered, drag acts illegal, bars close at two a.m. not sun-up. We’ve got legal gambling during the season with the ponies and dogs. There are a few protected spots, even a couple of outright casinos, but a relative handful. Nothing that will bring the feds back in. The Miami area got a real black eye from that, Mike. But this narcotics angle changes everything. It’s big. And it doesn’t run wide open and attract attention—we’re just a damn port, a conduit.”

  “Cuba?”

  “Highly likely. Like I said, you’re going after a big one when you go after Nolly Quinn. I’ve heard it said that he doesn’t use any of his gun hands when he wants a job done right. He takes any challenge to heart and cleans up the matter himself.” He scowled at me. “Why don’t you keep bastards like Quinn bottled up in their own backyards, and knock ’em off up there? Then the slimeballs wouldn’t be down here making a mess of things.”

  “Don’t blame us. I’ve done my share to rid the world of that breed. Anyway, you’ve got a few locals who’ve made themselves a name.”

  “Yeah, no denying that.” He chewed on the stub of the cigar. “Miami attracts money and that’s where the wolves gather. We’re a playground for top gangsters, and maybe it’s our own fault for letting them worm themselves so far in that they can’t be shaken loose.”

  “Maybe you aren’t trying hard enough.”

  “Think so? I wish I could show you some of what I wrote that got the spike. Hell, I could have broken the biggest local stories of the year, but when word got around, the pressure was put on the paper. They knew how to do it, too. They worked through the advertisers and scared ’em silly, and when the advertisers stop advertising we stop printing, so the stories never make the stands. Great, isn’t it?”

  “Things need changing.”

  The editor looked at me with a strange sadness in his eyes. “That they do, but it never happens. So. What about this girl friend of yours? What’s her name, anyway?”

  “Velda Sterling.”

  His eyes tensed, his mouth smiled slightly. “Tall, dark and beautiful?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s the one.”

  “Well, what do you know.” He reached for the phone and held down a button on the base of the cradle. “Hello, Art? Look, get me some information on Nolly’s latest window dressing.” He paused, then: “That’s the one. Right, right, address and anything else.” He stuck the phone back in its rack. “He’ll buzz me right back.”

  “Thanks, Ben. You’re saving me a whole lot of legwork.”

  “Don’t mention it. I’d like to see you and Nolly Quinn, uh… get to know each other.”


  “There’d be a story in it.”

  “That there would.” He gave me the eyes again, up and down. “But I’m afraid if I put any money on the thing, it’d have to be on him. He’s pretty fast with a piece.”

  “We talking dolls or guns?”

  “Let’s say guns.”

  “So he’s fast. So am I.”

  But was I now? In this shape? Shaking so bad that I’d left my damn rod in a motel-room drawer?

  The phone broke in with a sharp peal. The editor slipped the receiver against his ear and started jotting things down on a pad. He hung up, ripped the page loose and handed it to me.

  “There you go. She’s got an apartment in Miami Beach in one of the high-rent complexes. Art claims she’s not being kept. She’s strictly a mystery woman around town, seen on Nolly’s arm but not moved in at his pad. She’s got a lot of eyes on her, trying to figure the score, enjoying the view.”

  The slip went in my wallet with the other one. “Know anything about Nolly’s friends? Associates?”

  This time his grin had a sharp note in it. “Not much. But if you get anything, come back round and show your gratitude. I want to know everything about that guy, friend. Everything. When I get it all down in black and white, and can prove it? I’m going to dangle him by the short-and-curlies.”

  I snubbed the butt out in the ashtray on the desk and got to my feet. Outside someone was sweeping up and the building was vibrating from the presses rolling in the basement. My watch said a quarter after ten, but that wasn’t important. Nothing was important any more. Looking at the time was just another meaningless habit.

  I gave Ben Sauer my hand across the desk. He took it and I felt the latent power that still surged through him.

  I said, “Thanks for the info. If I get anything, I’ll call.”

  “Yeah, do keep in touch. You got my curiosity all aroused now. I feel like maybe I’ve helped shake things up a little. If there’s anything I can do to help, let me know.”

  I said I would and I went out into the balmy night, thinking about Nolly Quinn.

  When I found him, I’d find Velda, and I would see just what the hell was going on, and how the murder of Wade Manley fit in, if it fit in at all.

  I went cold all over with the thought of seeing her again. Any other time, the thought of her would have sent warmth flooding through me. Now, I kept seeing her as she was, as she’d been, tall and lovely, something perfect and the only decent thing that ever happened in my life.

  If Nolly Quinn had spoiled that, he was going to die slow and hard.

  Even if I went with him.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  By one a.m., the life had left the city and the skeleton of it made a drowsy hum on the breeze that came in from the water. The streets were empty except for the occasional taxi or lost tourist and the smell of the exhaust from the air-conditioning units hanging heavily out of apartment windows lay a blanket of hothouse smells down the sidewalks. Across Biscayne Bay, Miami Beach would be alive and hopping, for off-season, anyway. Not Miami. Not by a long shot.

  I reached the corner and stood there a minute, watching the prowl cars come and go in front of the precinct house down the block across the way. At least here was a part of the city I could call home, a building I could be familiar with, without ever having been inside it, a routine, a pattern that was as unchanging here as it was in New York and as much a part of me as an old pair of shoes.

  I felt for the deck of Luckies in my pocket, took one out, straightened it and held a match to the tip. The flame was a mocking thing that did a crazy dance before it was whipped away in a breath of smoke and with that one drag my mouth felt like dry ashes. I swore silently at the whole silly business the Indians had conned Sir Walter Raleigh into and the pack of butts went into the gutter. To make it final my heel squashed them into a mess against the pavement as I crossed the street.

  The desk sergeant wasn’t around. The station house seemed dead. Two uniformed cops checking stolen plate numbers on a clipboard looked up when I came over and said, “Detective Bureau?”

  One waved down the hall with his thumb, and they got back to it.

  This time of night, this time of year, the Detective Bureau bullpen was not bustling. This was graveyard shift, eleven to seven, and only a couple of desks were filled by guys living on coffee and who hadn’t given up cigarettes like I had. I didn’t need to ask for help because one of a row of office doors had CAPTAIN B. PELL lettered on its frosted-glass pane.

  I knocked, got a “Yeah,” and opened the door and stuck my head in.

  The anxious-looking cop inside was penciling notes on a report of some kind. He glanced up at me with a big grin that was not the usual kind of reception I got at police stations.

  “Captain Pell?”

  “Come on in! Come on in.” He was beefy but not fat, in a short-sleeved white shirt with sweat circles and a loose necktie, his hair reddish-brown, his pleasant, blue-eyed, bulb-nosed face lightly freckled. He got up fast, pulled a chair out from the wall and pulled it in close to the front of his desk.

  I said thanks, sat down and by that time he had an open box of Muriels under my nose.

  He grinned at me like an affable madman. “Have a cigar.”

  I started to reach, then remembered. “No thanks. I recently quit.”

  “How’s that going?”

  “So far so good.”

  He closed the box and put it on a corner of the desk, then grinned at me some more. “Glad for a little company, bud. See, I’m having a baby.”

  “I bet your wife’s helping.”

  He laughed, some nervousness in it. “Yeah, I guess she is.” He glanced at his watch like the birth was scheduled. “Any minute now, I guess. You got any kids?”

  I shook my head.

  “Quite an experience. Gets a guy all rattled.”

  “How come you’re not at the hospital?”

  He put up both hands as if in surrender. “I was, all day today. Connie’s been in labor since… Christ, hours and hours. I was going batty and the doctor said I should take a break. Hanging around a hospital gets to you. That medicinal smell was making my stomach jump.”

  “Not sure it was the smell doing it. Going to work’s your idea of a break?”

  “Only place where maybe I’d be distracted a little. No kids, huh?”

  “No kids.”

  “So you never been through this. This waiting is rough. It’s not so bad if you got something to do, but when all you can do is wait, you get all shook up. It’ll be different when it’s over, I guess. This is my first.”

  “No kidding.”

  He gestured vaguely toward the street. “Squad car outside, waiting to take off soon as it happens. I’m five minutes away with the siren. Can’t be too soon for me. So you’re not married then?”

  “That’s right. I’m no help.”

  “Glad for the company, just the same. Gets pretty quiet at night. Something I can do for you? What precinct you from?”

  “I’m not a cop exactly.”

  At first I thought he hadn’t heard me or hadn’t paid any attention, but I was wrong. His expression shifted and his eyes made a funny, brief bring-me-into focus squint and his voice was different as he said, “New York?”

  I nodded.

  “Pat Chambers’ pal,” he said softly, eyes half-lidded, nodding. “Mike Hammer.”

  “Right. But we had dealings, you and I.”

  “A teletype conversation about two years ago.” All business now. “Killer named Capper drifted up your way and you spotted him, collared him. He was extradited.”

  “And executed,” I said pleasantly. “Down your way.”

  He loosened up a slow grin and leaned back in his chair. “So I guess I owe you one, Mr. Hammer.”

  “Not really. But maybe you owe Pat one. All I know is, he gave me your name as a police contact down here.” I shifted in the hard chair. “Where do you know Pat from? You don’t sound like a transplanted New Yorker.
”

  He shook his head. “Strictly a Magic City boy. Pat I know from cop conventions. You aren’t exactly a cop, are you? You’re one of those crazy characters who should have been, though. What kept you out?”

  I turned a hand over. “I was in for a while. Pat and me, we joined up about the same time. After the war.”

  His smile grew harder to read. “Did they throw you out, Mike, or did you quit?”

  Since we seemed to be on a first-name basis now, I said, “Well, Barney, after I won a couple of commendations, they stuck me behind a desk and I walked.”

  “Why? All of us have to ride a desk from time to time.”

  “Too many rules. I hate rules. And I hate crooked politicos who make the rules for the crooked punks that live just inside them.”

  He grinned and unwrapped one of his own cigars. “That ain’t the real reason, friend. Is it?”

  I showed him some teeth. “There’s better things for you to investigate than my mind… friend.”

  “Not at the moment there isn’t.” He lighted up the Muriel with multiple puffs. The smoke smelled foul to me. “From what I hear, you have a mind that could stand investigating… if not by somebody, by something. Like a crowbar maybe.”

  I put the teeth away. “We have a mutual friend, Barney. Let’s play nice.”

  He rocked back. “That’s kind of tough for me, Mike. Playing nice. See, I used to sit back and think about you, fella. Oh, you got a lot of national play, plenty of press coverage down here, too. I used to think you were what I wanted to be when I grew up… because you pitched a fast ball and made it do what you wanted it to and you called the score before you even started the game.”

  “What made you change your mind?”

  “Well, maybe I did grow up,” he said. Smoke gathered between us like a threatening cloud. “Maybe I grew up a few minutes ago when I took a real hard look at you. Seeing you now? Well. You see, I’ve read just about every single thing written about you, and now I feel like a sap for doing it. You’re a real disappointment, Mike.”

  “What were you expecting?”

  No grin at all now. “Not a guy who’s been reading the labels on too many bottles. You been drying out, haven’t you, friend? But it hasn’t taken yet.”