The Big Kill mh-5 Page 5

  He made me wait until he finished tallying up his report, then stuck the clipboard on a nail in the wall and swung around in his chair. He said, "What's on your mind, buddy?"

  I offered him a smoke and he waved it away to chew on a ratty cigar. "Remember a guy named Decker?"

  He grunted a Yes and waited.

  "He have any close friends on the docks here?"

  "Might have. What'cha want to know for?"

  "I heard he died. I owed him a few bucks and I want to see that it goes to his estate."

  The guy clucked and sucked his tongue a minute. He opened his desk drawer and riffled through a file of cards until he came to the one he wanted. "Well, here's his address and he's got a kid. Got him down for two dependents, but I think his wife died awhile back."

  "I found that out. If I can dig up a pal of his maybe he'll know something more about him."

  "Yeah. Well, seems like he always shaped in with a guy named Hooker. Mel Hooker. Tall thin guy with a scar on his face. They got paid off today so they'll be in the joints 'cross the way cashing their checks. Why don'cha go over an' try?"

  I stuffed the butt in the ash tray on the desk. "I'll do that. Give me his address in case I miss him."

  He scratched something on a pad and handed it over. I said thanks and left.

  It wasn't that easy. I thought I hit every saloon on the street until a guy told me about a couple I had missed and then I found him. The place was a rattrap where they'd take the drunks that had been kicked out of other places and make them spend their last buck. You had to go down a couple of steps to reach the door and before you reached it you could smell what you were walking into.

  The place was a lot bigger than I expected. They were lined up two deep at the bar and when they couldn't stand any more they sat down at the bench along the wall. One guy had passed out and was propped up against a partition with his pockets turned inside out.

  Mel Hooker was down the back watching a shuffleboard game. He had half a bag on and looked it. The yellow glare of the overhead lights brought out the scar that ran from his forehead to his chin in bold relief almost as if it was still an ugly gash. I walked over and pulled out the chair beside him.

  He looked at me enough to say, "Beat it."

  "You Mel Hooker?"

  "Who wants to know?" His voice had a nasty drunken snarl to it.

  "How'd you like to get the other side of your face opened up, feller?"

  He dropped his glass like it was shot out of his hand and tried to get up off his chair. I shoved him back without any trouble. "Stay put, Mel. I want to talk to you."

  His breathing was noisy. "I don't wanna talk to you," he said.

  "Tough stuff, Mel. You'll talk if I tell you to. It's about a friend of yours. He's dead. His name was William Decker."

  The flesh around the scar seemed to get whiter. Something changed in his eyes and he half twisted his head. One of the guys at the shuffleboard was taking a long time to make his play. Mel unfolded himself and nodded to an empty table over in the corner.

  "Over... here. Make it quick."

  I got up and went back to the bar for a pair of drinks and brought them back to the table. When Mel took his, his hand wasn't too steady. I let him take half of it down in one gulp before I asked, "Who'd he owe dough to, Mel?"

  He almost dropped this glass, too. In time, he recovered it and set it down very deliberately and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "You a cop?"

  "I'm a private investigator."

  "You're gonna be a dead investigator if you don't get the hell outa here."

  "I asked you a question."

  His tongue flicked out and whipped over his lips. "Get this, I don't know nothing about nothing. Bill was a friend of mine but his business was his own. Now lemme alone."

  "He needed three grand, Mel. He borrowed it from somebody. He didn't get it around home so he must have got it someplace around here."

  "You're nuts."

  "You're a hell of a friend," I said, "one hell of a friend."

  Hooker dropped his head and stared at his hands. When he looked up his mouth was drawn back tight. His voice came out barely a whisper. "Listen, Mac, you better quit asking questions. Bill was my friend and I'd help him if I could, but he's dead and that's that. You see this scar I got? I'd sooner have that than be dead. Now blow and lemme alone."

  He wouldn't look back at me when he left. He staggered out to the bar and through the mob around it until he reached the door, then disappeared up the stairs. I polished my drink off and waved the waiter over with another. He gave me a frozen look and snatched the buck out of my hand.

  The place got too damn quiet. The weights weren't slamming on the shuffleboard and everybody at the bar seemed to have taken a sudden interest in the television set over the bar. I sat there and waited for my change, but I had the drink gone without seeing it.

  This I liked. This I was waiting for because the stupid bastards should have known better. My God, did I look like some flunkey from the sticks or did the wise boys lose their memories too?

  I pushed the glass back and got up. I found the men's room in the back by the smell and did what I had to do and started to wash my hands. That's how long they gave me.

  The guy in the double-breasted suit in the doorway spoke out of the corner of his mouth to somebody behind him. His little pig eyes looked like he was getting ready to enjoy himself. "He's a big one, ain't he?"

  "Yeah." The other guy stepped in and seemed to fill up the doorway.

  The little guy's hand came out of his pocket with a sap about a foot long and he swung it against his knee waiting to see if I was going to puke or start bawling. The big guy took his time about slipping on the knucks. Outside the volume on the television went up so loud it blasted its way all the way back there.

  I dropped the paper towel and backed off until my shoulders were up against the doors of the pot. The little guy was leering. His mouth worked until the spit rolled down his chin and his shoulder started to draw back the sap. His pal closed in on the side, only his eyes showing that there might be some human intelligence behind that stupid expression.

  The goddamn bastards played right into my hands. They thought they had me nice and cold and just as they were set to carve me into a raw mess of skin I dragged out the .45 and let them look down the hole so they could see where sudden death came from.

  It was the only kind of talk they knew. The little guy stared too long. He should have been watching my face. I snapped the side of the rod across his jaw and laid the flesh open to the bone. He dropped the sap and staggered into the big boy with a scream starting to come up out of his throat only to get it cut off in the middle as I pounded his teeth back into his mouth with the end of the barrel. The big guy tried to shove him out of the way. He got so mad he came right at me with his head down and I took my own damn time about kicking him in the face. He smashed into the door and lay there bubbling. So I kicked him again and he stopped bubbling. I pulled the knucks off his hand then went over and picked up the sap. The punk was vomiting on the floor, trying to claw his way under the sink. For laughs I gave him a taste of his own sap on the back of his hand and felt the bones go into splinters. He wasn't going to be using any tools for a long time.

  They moved aside and let me get in to the bar. They moved aside so far you'd think I was contaminated. The bartender looked at me and his thick lips rubbed together. I dropped the knucks and the sap on the bar and waved the bartender over with my forefinger. "I got some change coming," I said.

  He turned around and rang up a no sale on the register and handed me fifty-five cents.

  If somebody breathed before I left I didn't hear it. I got out of there feeling like myself again and went back to the car. I only had one thing to do before I saw Pat. I checked the slip the timekeeper gave me and saw that Mel Hooker lived not too far from where Decker had lived. I got snarled up in traffic halfway there and it was dark by the time I found his address.

&n
bsp; The place was a rooming house with the usual sign outside advertising a lone vacancy and a landlady on the bottom floor using her window for a crow's nest. She was at the door before I got up the steps waiting to smile if I was a renter or glare if I was a visitor.

  She glared when I asked her if Mel Hooker had come in yet. Her finger waved up the stairs. "Ten minutes ago and drunk. Don't you two raise no ruckus or out you both go."

  If she had been nicer I would have soothed her feelings with a bill.. All she got was a sharp thanks and I went upstairs. I heard him shuffling around the room and when I knocked all sound stopped. I knocked again and he dragged across the floor and snapped the lock back. I don't know who he expected to see. It sure wasn't me.

  I didn't ask to come in; I gave the door a shove and he reeled back. His face had lost its tenseness and was dull, his mouth sagging. There was a table in the middle of the room and I perched on it, watching him close the door, then turn around until he faced me.

  "Christ!" he said.

  "What'd you expect, Mel?" I lit a Lucky and peered at him through the smoke. "You're a hell of a guy," I told him. "I guess you knew those boys would tag after me and you didn't want to stick around to see the blood."

  "Wh... what happened?"

  I grinned at him. "I've been messing around with bastards like that for a long time. They should have remembered my face. Now they're going to have trouble remembering what they used to look like before. Did you pull the same stunt on your friend Decker, Mel? Did you beat it when they went looking for him?"

  He staggered over to a chair and collapsed in it. "I don't... know... what'cha talking about."

  I leaned forward on the edge of the table and spit the words out. "I'm talking about the loan shark racket. I'm talking about a guy named William Decker who used to be your friend and needed dough bad. He couldn't get it from a legitimate source so he hit up a loan shark and got what he needed. When he couldn't pay off they put the pressure on him probably through his kid so he tries to cop a bank roll from a rich guy's safe. He miffed the job and they gave him the works. Now do you know what I'm talking about?"

  Hooker said, "Christ!" again and grabbed the arms of the chair. "Friend, you gotta get outa here, see? You gotta leave me alone!"

  "What's the matter, Mel? You were a tough guy when I met you tonight. What's getting you so soft?"

  For a minute a crazy madness passed over his face, then he let out a gasp and buried his head in his hands. "Damn it, get outa here!"

  "Yeah, I'll get out. When you tell me who's banking the soaks along the dock I'll get out."

  "I... I can't. Oh, Lord, lemme alone, will ya!"

  "They're tough, huh?" He read something in my words and his eyes came up in a series of little jerks until they were back on mine. "Are they tougher than the guys you pushed on me?" Mel swallowed hard. "I didn't..."

  "Don't crap me, friend. Those guys weren't there by accident. They weren't there just for me, either. Somebody's got a finger on you, haven't they?

  He didn't answer.

  "They were there for you, I said, "only you saw a nice way to shake them loose on me. What gives?"

  His finger moved by, itself and traced the scar that lay along the side of his jaw. "Look, I got cut up once, I did. I don't want to fool around with them guys no more. Honest, I didn't do nothing! I don't know why they was there but they was!"

  "So you're in a trap too," I said.

  "No I ain't!" He shouted it. His face was a sickly white and he drooled a little bit. "I'm clean and I don't know why they're sticking around me. Why the hell did you come butting in for?"

  "Because I want to know why your pal Decker needed dough."

  "Christ, his wife was dying. He had to have it. How'd I know he couldn't pay it back!"

  "Pay what back to who?"

  His tongue flashed over his lips and his mouth clammed shut.

  "You have a union and a welfare fund for that, don't you?" This time he spit on the floor.

  "Who'd you steer him to, Mel?"

  He didn't answer me. I got up off the edge of the table and jerked him to his feet. "Who was it, Mel... or do you want to find out what happened to the tough boys back in the bar?"

  The guy went limp in my hands. He didn't try to get away. He just hung there in my fist, his eyes dead. His words came out slow and flat. "He needed the dough. We... thought we had a good tip on the ponies and pooled our dough."

  "So?"

  "We won. It wasn't enough so we threw it back on another tip, only Bill hit up a loan shark for a few hundred to lay a bigger bet. We won that one too and I pulled out with my share. Bill thought he could get a big kill quick and right after he paid the shark back, knocked him down for another grand to add to his stake and this time he went under."

  "Okay, so he owed a grand."

  Mel's head shook sadly. "It was bigger. You pay back one for five every week. It didn't take long to run it up into big money."

  I let him go and he sank back into the chair. "Now names, Mel. Who was the shark?"

  I barely heard him say, "Dixie Cooper. He hangs out in the Glass Bar on Eighth Avenue."

  I picked up my deck of smokes and stuffed them in my pocket. I walked out without closing the door and down past the landlady who still held down her post in the vestibule. She didn't say anything until Mel hobbled to the door, glanced down the stairs and shut it. Then the old biddy humphed and let me out.

  The sky had clouded up again, shutting out the stars and there was a damp mist in the air. I called Pat from a candy store down the corner and nobody answered his phone at home, so I tried the office. He was there. I told him to stick around and got back in my car.

  Headquarters building was like a beehive without any bees when I got there. A lone squad car stood at the curb and the elevator operator was reading a paper inside his cab. The boys on the night stand had that bored look already and half of them were piddling around trying to keep busy.

  I got in the elevator and let him haul me up to Pat's floor. Down the corridor a typewriter was clicking busily and I heard Pat rummaging around the drawers of his file cabinet. When I pushed the door open he said, "Be right with you, Mike."

  So I parked and watched him work for five minutes. When he got through at the cabinet I asked him, "How come you're working nights?"

  "Don't you read the papers?"

  "I didn't come up against any juicy murders."

  "Murders, hell. The D.A. has me and everybody else he can scrape together working on that gambling probe."

  "What's he struggling so hard for, it isn't an election year for him. Besides, the public's going to gamble anyway."

  Pat pulled out his chair and slid into it. "The guy got scruples. He has it in for Ed Teen and his outfit."

  "He's not getting Teen," I said.

  "Well, he's trying."

  "Where do you come in?"

  Pat shrugged and reached for a cigarette. "The D.A. tried to break up organized gambling in this town years ago. It flopped like all the other probes flopped... for lack of evidence. He's never made a successful raid on a syndicate establishment since he went after them."

  "There's a hole in the boat?"

  "A what?"

  "A leak."

  "Of course. Ed Teen has a pipeline right into the D.A.'s office somehow. That's why the D.A. is after his hide. It's a personal affront to him and he won't stand for it. Since he can't nail Teen down with something, he's conducting an investigation into his past. We know damn well that Teen and Grindle pulled a lot of rough stuff and if we can tie a murder on them they'll be easy to take."

  "I bet. Why doesn't he patch that leak?"

  Pat did funny things with his mouth. "He's surrounded by men he trusts and I trust and we can't find a single person who's talking out of turn. Everybody's been investigated. We even checked for dictaphones, that's how far we went. It seems impossible, but nevertheless, the leak's here. Hell, the D.A. pulls surprise raids that were cooked up an hour before a
nd by the time he gets there not a soul's around. It's uncanny."

  "Uncanny my foot. The D.A. is fooling with guys as smart as he is himself. They've been operating longer too. Look, any chance of breaking away early tonight?"

  "With this here?" He pointed toward a pile of papers on his desk. "They all have to be classified, correlated and filed. Nope, not tonight, Mike. I'll be here for another three hours.

  Outside the racket of the typewriter stopped and a stubby brunette came in with a wire basket of letters. Right behind her was another brunette, but far from stubby. What the first one didn't have she had everything of and she waved it around in front of you like a flag.

  Pat saw my foolish grin and when the stubby one left said, "Miss Scobie, have you met Mike Hammer?"

  I got one of those casual glances with a flicker of a smile. "No but I've heard the District Attorney speak of him several times."

  "Nothing good, I hope," I said.

  "No, nothing good." She laughed at me and finished sorting out the papers on Pat's desk.

  "Miss Scobie is one of the D.A.'s secretaries," Pat said. "For a change I have some help around here. He sent over three girls to do the manual labor."

  "I'm pretty good at that myself." I think I was leering.

  The Scobie babe gave me the full voltage from a pair of deep blue eyes. "I've heard that too."

  "You should quit getting things secondhand."

  She packed the last of the papers in a new pile and tacked them together with a clip. When she turned around she gave me a look Pat couldn't see but had a whole book written there in her face. "Perhaps I should," she said.

  I could feel the skin crawl up my back just from the tone of her voice.

  Pat said, "You're a bastard, Mike. You and the women."

  "They're necessary." I stared at the door that closed behind her.

  His mouth cracked in a grin. "Not Miss Scobie. She knows her way around the block without somebody holding her hand. Doesn't her name mean anything to you?"

  "Should it?"

  "Not unless you're a society follower. Her family is big stuff down in Texas. The old man had a ranch where he raised horses until they brought oil in. Then he sat back and enjoyed life. He raises racing nags now."