The Snake mh-8 Page 6

  "Or maybe you're doing a favor ahead of time."

  "What's that mean?"

  "Like Kid Hand was maybe doing a personal favor and stepped down off his pedestal to look like a big man."

  The silence was tight. Del Penner just stared at me, not bothered at all by what I said. His hand reached up and touched his homburg and he sat back in his chair. "Warning then, Hammer. Don't make any more noise around me. I imagine you'd be about a fifteen-hundred-buck job. One thousand five hundred bucks can buy both of you dead and no mud on my hands. Clear?"

  I put both hands on the table and leaned right into his face. "How much would you cost, Del?" I asked him. He glared at me, his eyes hard and bright. I said, "Come on, Velda. They're giving us a ride home."

  We sat in the front next to the driver, the skinny guy in back. All the way into Manhattan he kept playing with my gun. When we got to my office the one behind the wheel said, "Out, mac."

  "Let's have the rod."

  "Nah, it's too good a piece for a punk like you. I want a souvenir."

  So I put the .32 up against his neck while Velda swung around in her seat and pointed the automatic at the skinny guy and his whine was a tinny nasal sound he had trouble making. He handed over the .45 real easy, licking his lips and trying to say something. The one beside me said, "Look, mac...

  "I never come easy, buddy. You tell them all."

  His eyes showed white all the way around and he knew. He knew all right. The car pulled away with a squeal of tires and I looked at Velda and laughed. "You play it that way by accident, honey?"

  "I've had to read a lot of minds the past seven years. I knew how it would work. I just wanted you ready."

  "I don't know whether to kiss you or smack your ass."

  She grinned impishly. "You can always kiss me."

  "Don't ask for it."

  "Why not? It's the only way I'm going to get it, I think."

  Teddy's place is a lush restaurant about as far downtown as it's possible to get without falling in the river. It seemed an unlikely spot for good food and celebrities, but there you got both. Hy Gardner was having a late supper with Joey and Cindy Adams, and when he spotted us, waved us over to the table.

  Before we could talk he ordered up scampi and a steak for both of us, then: "You come down for supper or information?"

  "Both."

  "You got Joey really researching. He comes to me, I go to somebody else, and little by little I'm beginning to get some mighty curious ideas. When are you going to recite for publication?"

  "When I have it where it should be."

  "So what's the pitch on Sally Devon?"

  "All yours, Joey," I said.

  He could hardly wait to get it out. "Boy, what a deal you handed me. You threw an old broad my way. There was more dust on her records than a Joe Miller joke. Then you know who comes up with the answers?"

  "Sure, Cindy."

  "How'd you know?"

  "Who else?"

  "Drop dead. Anyway, we contacted some of the kids who worked with her only like now they're ready for the old ladies' home. Sure, she was in show business, but with her it didn't last long and was more of a front. Her old friends wouldn't say too much, being old friends and all, but you knew what they were thinking. Sally Devon was a high-priced whore. She ran with some of the big ones for a while, then got busted and wound up with some of the racket boys."

  Velda looked at me, puzzled. "If she was involved with the rackets, how'd she end up with Sim Torrence who was supposed to be so clean? That doesn't make sense."

  "Sure it does," Hy told her. "He got her off a hook when he was still an assistant D.A. Look she was still a beautiful doll then and you know the power of a doll. So they became friends. Later he married her. I can name a couple other top politicos who are married to women who used to be in the business. It isn't as uncommon as you think."

  He put his fork down and sipped at his drink. "What do you make of it now?" When I didn't answer he said, "Blackmail?"

  "I don't know," I admitted.

  "Well, what else do you want?"

  For a moment I sat there thinking. "Torrence is a pretty big wheel now, isn't he?"

  "As big as they get without being in office."

  "Okay, he said repeated threats were made on him by guys he helped put away."

  "Ah, they all get that."

  "They all don't have a mess like this either."

  "So what?"

  "This, Hy... I'd like a rundown on his big cases, on everyone who ever laid a threat on him. You ought to have that much in your morgue."

  Hy shrugged and grinned at me. "I suppose you want it tonight."

  "Why not?"

  "So we'll finish the party in my office. Come on."

  Hy's file on Sim Torrence was a thick one composed of hundreds of clippings. We all took a handful and found desk space to look them over. A little after one we had everything classified and cross-indexed. Joey had four cases of threats on Sim's life, Cindy had six, Velda and I both had three, and Hy one. He put all the clips in a Thermofax machine, pulled copies, handed them over, and put the files back.

  "Now can we go home?" he said.

  Joey wanted to go on with it until Cindy gave him a poke in the ribs.

  "So let's all go home," I told him.

  We said so-long downstairs and Velda and I headed back toward the Stem. In the lower Forties I checked both of us into a hotel, kissed her at the door, and went down to my room. She didn't like it, but I still had work to do.

  After a shower I sat on the bed and started through the clips. One by one I threw them all down until I had four left. All the rest who had threatened Sim Torrence were either dead or back in prison. Four were free, three on parole, and one having served a life sentence of thirty years.

  Life.

  Thirty years.

  He was forty-two when he went in, seventy-two when he came out. His name was Sonny Motley and there was a picture of him in a shoe repair shop he ran on Amsterdam Avenue. I put the clips in the discard pile and looked at the others.

  Sherman Buff, a two-time loser that Sim had put the screws to in court so that he caught a big fall. He threatened everybody including the judge, but Torrence in particular.

  Arnold Goodwin who liked to be called Stud. Sex artist. Rapist. He put the full blame for his fall on Torrence, who not only prosecuted his case but processed it from the first complaint until his capture. No known address, but his parole officer could supply that.

  Nicholas Beckhaus, burglar with a record who wound up cutting a cop during his capture. He and two others broke out of a police van during a routine transfer and it was Sim Torrence's office who ran him down until he was trapped in a rooming house. He shot a cop in that capture too. He promised to kill Torrence on sight when he got out. Address unknown, but he would have a parole officer too.

  I folded the clips, put three in my pants pocket, and leaned back on the bed. Then there was a knock on the door.

  I had the .45 in my hand, threw the bolt back, and moved to the side. Velda walked in grinning, closed the door, and stood there with her back against it. "Going to shoot me, Mike?"

  "You crazy!"

  "Uh-uh "

  "What do you want?"

  "You don't know?"

  I reached out and pulled her in close, kissed her hair, then felt the fire of her mouth again. She leaned against me, her breasts firm and insistent against my naked chest, her body forming itself to mine.

  "I'm going to treat you rough, my love... until you break down."

  "You're going back to bed."

  "To bed, yes, but not back." She smiled, pulled away, and walked to my sack. Little by little, slowly, every motion a time-honored motion, she took off her clothes. Then she stood there naked and smiling a moment before sliding into the bed where she lay there waiting.

  "Let's see who's the roughest," I said, and lay down beside her. I punched out the light, got between the top sheet and the cover, turned on my si
de and closed my eyes.

  "You big bastard," she said softly. "If I didn't love you I'd kill you."

  Chapter Five

  I was up and dressed before eight. The big, beautiful, tousled black-haired thing who had lain so comfortably against me all night stirred and looked at me through sleepy-lidded eyes, then stretched languidly and smiled.

  "Frustrated?" I asked her.

  "Determined." She stuck her tongue out at me. "You'll pay for last night."

  "Get out of the sack. We have plenty to do."

  "Watch."

  I turned toward the mirror and put on my tie. "No, damn it."

  But I couldn't help seeing her, either. It wasn't something you could take your eyes off very easily. She was too big, too lovely, her body a pattern of symmetry that was frightening. She posed deliberately, knowing I would watch her, then walked into the shower without bothering to close the door. And this time I saw something new. There was a fine, livid scar that ran diagonally across one hip and several parallel lines that traced themselves across the small of her back. I had seen those kind of marks before. Knives made them. Whips made them. My hands knotted up for a second and I yanked at my tie.

  When she came out she had a towel wrapped sarong-fashion around her, smelling of soap and hot water, and this time I didn't watch her. Instead I pulled the clips out, made a pretense of reading them until she was dressed, gave them to her to keep in her handbag, and led her out the door.

  At the elevator I punched the down button and put my hand through her arm. "Don't do that to me again, kitten."

  Her teeth flashed through the smile. "Oh no, Mike. You've kept me waiting too long. I'll do anything to get you. You see... I'm not done with you yet. You can marry me right now or put up with some persecution."

  "We haven't got time right now."

  "Then get ready to suffer, gentleman." She gave my arm a squeeze and got on the elevator.

  After breakfast I bypassed Pat's office to get a line on the parole officers handling Buff, Goodwin, and Beckhaus. Both Buff and Beckhaus were reporting to the same officer and he was glad to give me a rundown on their histories.

  Sherman Buff was married, lived in Brooklyn, and operated a successful electronics shop that subcontracted jobs from larger companies. His address was good, his income sizable, and he had a woman he was crazy about and no desire to go back to the old life. The parole officer considered him a totally rehabilitated man.

  Nicholas Beckhaus reported regularly, but he had to come in on the arm of his brother, a dentist, who supported him. At some time in prison he had been assaulted and his back permanently damaged so that he was a partial cripple. But more than that, there was brain damage too, so that his mental status was reduced to that of a ten-year-old.

  The officer who handled Arnold Goodwin was more than anxious to talk about his charge. Goodwin had been trouble all the way and had stopped reporting in three months ago. Any information we could dig up on his whereabouts he'd appreciate. He was afraid of only one thing... that before Goodwin was found he'd kill somebody.

  Arnold Goodwin looked like a good bet.

  Velda said, "Did you want to see the other probable?"

  "Sonny Motley?"

  "It will only take a few minutes."

  "He's in his seventies. Why?"

  She moved her shoulders in thought. "He was a good story. The three-million-dollar killer."

  "He wasn't in for murder. He was a three-time loser when they caught him in that robbery and he drew an automatic life sentence."

  "That could make a man pretty mad," she reminded me.

  "Sure, but guys in their seventies aren't going to hustle on a kill after thirty years in the pen. Be reasonable."

  "Okay, but it wouldn't take long."

  "Oh, hell," I said.

  Sonny Motley's shoe repair shop had been open at seven as usual, the newsboy said, and pointed the place out to us. He was sitting in the window, a tired-looking old man bent over a metal foot a woman's shoe was fitted to, tapping on a heel. He nodded, peering up over his glasses at us like a shaven and partially bald Santa Claus.

  Velda and I got up in the chairs and he put down his work to shuffle over to us, automatically beginning the routine of a shine. It wasn't a new place and the rack to one side of the machines was filled with completed and new jobs.

  When he finished I gave him a buck and said, "Been here long?"

  He rang the money up and smiled when I refused the change. "Year and a half." Then he pulled his glasses down a little more and looked at me closely. "Reporter?"

  "Nope."

  "Well, you look like a cop, but cops aren't interested in me any more. Not city cops. So that makes you independent, doesn't it?"

  When I didn't answer him he chuckled. "I've had lots of experience with cops, son. Don't let it discourage you. What do you want to know?"

  "You own this place?"

  "Yup. Thirty years of saving a few cents a day the state paid me and making belts and wallets for the civilian trade outside bought me this. Really didn't cost much and it was the only trade I learned in the pen. But that's not what you want to know."

  I laughed and nodded. "Okay, Sonny, it's about a promise you made a long time ago to kill Sim Torrence. "

  "Yeah, I get asked that lots of times. Mostly by reporters though." He pulled his stool over and squatted on it. "Guess I was pretty mad back then." He smiled patiently and pushed his glasses up. "Let's say that if he up and died I wouldn't shed any tears, but I'll tell you Mr..."

  "Hammer. Mike Hammer."

  "Yes, Mr. Hammer... well, I'm just not about to go back inside walls again. Not that this is any different. Same work, same hours. But I'm on the outside. You understand?"

  "Sure."

  "Something else too. I'm old. I think different. I don't have those old feelings." He looked at Velda, then me. "Like with the women. Was a time when even thinking of one drove me nuts, knowing I couldn't have one. Oh, how I wanted to kill old Torrence then. But like I told you, once you get old the fire goes out and you don't care any more. Same way I feel about Torrence. I just don't care. Haven't even thought about him until somebody like you or a reporter shows up. Then I think of him and it gets funny. Sound silly to you?"

  "Not so silly, Sonny."

  He giggled and coughed, then looked up. "Silly like my name. Sonny. I was a heller with the women in them days. Looked young as hell and they loved to mother me. Made a lot of scores like that. For a moment his eyes grew dreamy, then he came back to the present. "Sonny. Ah, yeah, they were the days, but the fire is out now."

  "Well..." I took Velda's arm and he caught the motion.

  Eagerly, a man looking for company, he said, "If you want I could show you the papers on what happened. I had somebody save 'em. You wait here a minute." He got up, shuffled off through a curtained door, and we could hear him rummaging through his things. When he came back he laid out a pitiful few front pages of the old World and there he was spread all over the columns.

  According to the testimony, in 1932 the Sonny Motley mob, with Black Conley second in command, were approached secretly by an unknown expert on heisting through an unrevealed medium. The offer was a beautifully engineered armored-car stickup. Sonny accepted and was given the intimate details of the robbery including facets known only to insiders which would make the thing come off.

  Unfortunately, a young Assistant District Attorney named Sim Torrence got wind of the deal, checked it out, and with a squad of cops, broke up the robbery... but only after it had been accomplished. The transfer of three million dollars in cash had been made to a commandeered cab and in what looked like a spectacular double cross, or possibly an attempt to save his own skin, Black Conley had jumped in the cab when the shooting started and taken off, still firing back into the action with the rifle he had liked so well. One shot caught Sonny Motley and it was this that stopped his escape more than anything else. In an outburst of violence in the courtroom Sonny shouted that he had sh
ot back at the bastard who double-crossed him and if he didn't hit him, then he'd get him and Torrence someday for sure. They never found the cab, the driver, the money, or Black Conley.

  Sonny let me finish and when I handed the papers back said, "It would've gone if Blackie didn't pull out."

  "Still sore?"

  "Hell no."

  "What do you think happened?"

  "Tell you what, Mr. Hammer. I got me a guess. That was a double cross somehow, only a triple cross got thrown in. I think old Blackie wound up cab and all at the bottom of the river someplace."

  "The money never showed."

  "Nope. That went with Blackie too. Everybody lost. I just hope I did shoot the bastard before he died. I don't see how I coulda missed."

  "You're still mad, Sonny."

  "Naw, not really. Just annoyed about them thirty years he made me take. That Torrence really laid it on, but hell, he had it made. I was a three-timer by then anyway and would have taken life on any conviction. It sure made Torrence though." He pulled his glasses off, looked at the papers once with disgust, rolled them into a ball, and threw them away from him into a refuse carton. "Frig it. What's the sense thinking on them things?"

  He looked older and more tired in that moment than when we came in. I said, "Sure, Sonny, sorry we bothered you."

  "No trouble at all, Mr. Hammer. Come in for a shine any time."

  On the street Velda said, "Pathetic, wasn't he?"

  "Aren't they all?"

  We waited there a few minutes trying to flag a cab, then walked two blocks before one cut over to our side and squealed to a stop. A blue panel truck almost caught him broadside, but the driver was used to those simple occupational hazards and didn't blink an eye.

  I let Velda off at the office with instructions to get what she could from Pat concerning Basil Levitt and Kid Hand and to try to re-establish some old pipelines. If there were new faces showing in town like Jersey Toby said, there was a reason for it. There was a reason for two dead men and a murder attempt on me. There was a reason for an assassination layout with Sue Devon the target and somebody somewhere was going to know the answers.

  When Velda Pot out I gave the cabbie Sim Torrence's Westchester address and sat back to try and think it out. Traffic was light on the ride north and didn't tighten up until we got to the upper end of Manhattan.