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  She wasn't kidding. She was the other licensed P.I. in our agency, after all, and she packed almost as many rods as I did, and in much more interesting places.

  I could feel my teeth showing, and a relaxed, easy feeling settled in and replaced the tension around my shoulders.

  It was on now, and I wouldn't have to make any excuses for it.

  I reached out and ran a hand under the sheer yellow cobwebs and touched the satiny roundness of her breasts, their erect points daring me to do something about them.

  "I appreciate it, kitten." I took my hand away and covered her up again.

  Velda asked softly, "Would you really like to show me how appreciative you can be?"

  "Uh-huh ... but maybe I'd better save my strength."

  "You're finking out. Sometimes I think you're as bad as Pat."

  "Not really." I buried my face in her neck and nuzzled.

  Then I told her ear: "This tomcat doesn't want anything else on his mind when he tangles with a beautiful pussy like you...."

  Droplets of night rain speckled the streets and the wind had a little bite to it as it blew out the last remnants of summer. Occasionally empty taxis would cruise by, but I ignored them, sticking to the nearly deserted sidewalks.

  A jumpy drunk on the corner hustled me for a buck, but the young hippie in the doorway farther down got a fast brushoff. When I reached my block, I picked up the early morning edition of the News, and cut down toward my apartment house.

  You've come a long way in a few years, Mr. Hammer, I thought. Used to be a West Side walkup, crappy but comfortable. Now here you are across town in a fancy pad with all the goodies, where you can stand on the ridiculous little patio and see both rivers at either end of the asphalt artery. From the street you can look up and see your quarters jutting out like a balustraded pouting lower lip, marked by the glow of the red overhead light.

  The rain almost caught me, but I made it under the canopy in time. Having a uniformed doorman usher me in had become one of life's little pleasures, but this time I had to shoulder the plate-glass barrier open myself, because the guy was sneaking a smoke beside the service elevator.

  He dropped the butt, squashed it out, and came dutifully over, looking guilty, forefinger flipping a sloppy salute. "Good evening, sir."

  "Hi," I said. "Thought Jerry was on tonight."

  "Supposed to be, but he called in sick."

  "Bad?"

  "No ... nothing serious. One of those virus deals."

  "Oh. Well, lot of that going around. Good night."

  "Good night, sir."

  I walked around the bend and punched the UP button on the elevator panel.

  Then I stepped back against the wall and got the .45 in my right hand and when the little uniformed bastard came around the corner with the silenced Luger in his fist, I smashed the cold steel of the Colt into his forehead and left one eyeball plastered to his cheek to dangle there and look at me with absolute horror.

  Pain-racked reflexes twisted him into me and we both hit the floor next to the gun that had dropped from suddenly nerveless fingers just as the other one came out of the service entrance. He was a big guy with a raincoat and no hat and I could see the huge bulk of the Magnum in his hand, obscenely tipped with a muffler, and I knew it was time to die, because the slugs that rod spat could whip through three people in tandem before they slowed down and my own piece was caught in the folds of a doorman's uniform.

  And it would have been time to die if he hadn't used hollow points designed to flatten so they could churn up guts like an eggbeater. That sadistic desire cost him, because each slug was like a fist pounding into the body I held in front of me, hitting without penetrating all the way, and he was trying for a head shot at me when my fingers found the corpse's hand with the Luger and I squeezed off one nine-millimeter phutt that took him in the throat and rocked him into a gurgling death twitch against the door.

  For a second I lay there, waiting.

  Across the foyer a leg gave an involuntary jerk as muscle tissue died in sequence. A foul intestinal smell hung under the cordite and something was making dripping sounds and it wasn't the rain.

  But it was over.

  I pushed the body away, making sure the Luger stayed in the lifeless fingers of the guy who didn't know that this was an expensive building with permanent, bonded doormen who only covered for each other, and each had a uniform that didn't have rolled-up pants cuffs or sleeves too long. And who were allowed to smoke on the job if they felt like it.

  I found Jerry in the locked mailroom, alive but unconscious, a purple welt behind his ear. Tomorrow he'd have a hell of a story to tell and maybe a few tenants would put another lock on their doors and a couple would move out. Whoever walked in on the mess would have a ball talking into the TV cameras and be a celebrity for a day.

  The job was too professional for me to be bothered frisking the bodies. Nothing would be there and I'd only waste time, and get in even deeper. I made sure no blood or gore showed on my clothes, and went back to the street through the rear entrance, ducking under the scope of the remote TV lens that monitored the doorway. I went up the four steps to the sidewalk and turned left.

  All was still quiet on the eastern front.

  For now.

  Velda's place didn't have a doorman, but I had the key and nobody saw me go in. I told her that if any questions were asked, just say I had been there all night.

  She didn't bother querying me. Not Velda. Not when something was on. She knew to let me play it out any way I wanted to.

  But she did give me one of those sloe-eyed smiles and say, "It's going to cost you, Mike."

  Her fingers did something and the transparent yellow cobweb hissed to her feet in a silken puddle and the Velda I loved so much was right there, starting to arch toward me in all that crazy nakedness.

  "Get ready to have your strength sapped," she told me.

  "I better catch a shower," I said.

  "We can start there," she said, and started unbuttoning my shirt.

  Chapter Six

  IT WAS AN HOUR later before we decided to use the bed for sleeping and at least two hours after that when the phone rang.

  Velda sat up, and clicked the nightstand light on. The covers were around her waist and she was nude as a grape and a half-lidded glimpse of those full, lush, unbound breasts was enough to snap me wide awake, if the phone hadn't already.

  Even from my side of the bed, the imperative but trying-too-hard-to-be-casual voice could easily be heard, apologizing for the late call, and asking Velda if she knew where I could be reached on an urgent matter.

  She nudged me and said in a sleepy tone that didn't go with her alert expression, "Why, yes—yes, he's right here. ..."

  Before she could hand me the phone, the voice chuckled, like one old friend catching another in the act, and said with a laughing inflection, "Don't tell me he's been there all night?"

  She could sure play the game, embarrassed confusion, the stammer and inadvertent confession all in one run-on sentence of, "Uh, yes—that's right, I mean ... well, what business is it of yours if he spent the night with me?"

  All the while her shrewd, dark eyes were locked on mine. With her nakedness to distract me, keeping my eyes on hers shows you how seriously we were taking this. And how severely she really had sapped my strength....

  She was saying, "Who is this?"

  "I'm sorry to have bothered—"

  "Here, let me put him on and—"

  "No," the commanding voice said. "No, never mind. Thank you, ma'am, and again I apologize for the lateness."

  And hung up.

  She cradled the phone, propped a pillow, sunk an elbow in it, and rested her chin against a fist, looking at me with tousled accusation.

  "Friend of yours?" I asked her lightly.

  "Not hardly."

  "Oh?"

  "I get the occasional middle-of-the-night call from a strange man, but not a wide-awake, sober one, and with a teletype clickin
g and deep voices in the background."

  "Wasn't our friend the captain of Homicide?"

  "No. I'd like to have let you give that character your own performance." Her eyes narrowed. "Offhand, I'd say that was the esteemed Vance Traynor."

  "Oh, laughing boy from the D.A.'s office. He must be riding Pat's back again." I let out my own chuckle. "I wonder if he had to run Pat down and shake him out of Helen DiVay's bed."

  She arched an eyebrow at me. "You really think Pat was up to that challenge?"

  "No."

  She reached over and clicked off the bedside lamp and yanked the covers up and said, "Turn the other way."

  I turned the other way and she snuggled herself against me.

  I was enjoying that warmth and the darkness, and the near silence of Manhattan after midnight where even the occasional muffled siren had a dreamlike quality.

  Then she whispered, "Mike—don't keep secrets from a girl. Who did you kill this time?"

  I reached behind me to trace the smooth rise of her hip. "Nobody you know, sugar."

  The warmth and the silence began lulling me again. Then I realized her lips were near my ear.

  "Want to try killing me? With kindness maybe?"

  "That might take two or three weeks."

  "What's time anyway?" she said, and she was crawling on top of me.

  Where was a can of spinach when you needed it?

  The morning papers and early TV shows headlined the gruesome find in my apartment-house lobby with a publicity-conscious fat woman giving the vivid details of how she had stumbled over the corpses after returning home from a party at her son-in-law's.

  Jerry the doorman was okay, telling the cops how the guy they found dressed in his uniform had approached him about a supposed tenant, asked him to verify an address on a letter, and then coldcocked him while his attention was diverted.

  Velda and I hadn't been in the office long enough for me to make it into my inner sanctum, from sharing coffee and Danish at her desk in the outer one, when our visitors arrived.

  One was the kind who could drop by unannounced anytime, no problem—Pat Chambers, his eyes puffy from a long rough night that I guessed was not courtesy of a certain wealthy ex-ecdysiast. His suit was the one I'd seen him in at the restaurant and it looked almost as rumpled as he did.

  But he wasn't even the first through our door. That honor was reserved for the ambitious young assistant D.A. whose suit was almost as sharp as his eyes. Vance Traynor, with his lanky frame and insincere smile, still struck me as a guy who might go far in politics.

  Not a compliment.

  "I'm sorry to just drop by, Mr. Hammer," he said.

  "Phones out over at City Hall?" I asked good-naturedly, wiping some Danish off my mouth with a paper napkin.

  "No, I just took a chance."

  "I've taken a few of those. Velda, get our guests some coffee, would you? Captain Chambers, always a pleasure."

  Standing behind Traynor, Pat gave me a look that was half apologetic and half annoyed. Pissed off at me as he might be, he did not take kindly to carrying anybody's water, especially a slick young political rung-climber like Traynor.

  Soon I was behind my desk, and Velda had served our guests coffee in plastic cups, and refilled mine. I asked her to join us and take notes on the conversation.

  "That's not necessary," Traynor said, opposite me in a client's chair, Pat next to him in the other one.

  "This is my office," I said. "Not yours. I'd like to have a record of what's said."

  "That's a fairly extreme reaction, when you don't even know why I'm here."

  I grinned at him. "There were two men killed in the lobby of my apartment house last night. I read the newspapers. I sometimes even listen to TV and radio."

  Pat, looking embarrassed, said, "Mike, if it had been up to me—"

  "Anyway, I'd say," I cut in, "having an assistant district attorney and the captain of Homicide drop in on you, first thing in the morning, also qualifies as 'fairly extreme.' Velda?"

  She went out for her stenog pad and came back in and got settled. She was in a white blouse and black skirt and black pumps and yet still looked like a damn pinup girl. But she sat with her knees together, not crossing her distracting legs. Always thinking of the boss, my Velda.

  "At this point," Traynor said, in a voice so smooth you could bead water off it, "I'm not looking for a formal statement. Captain Chambers suggested we just have a friendly talk, and determine whether any further steps are needed."

  "And I assume Captain Chambers has told you," I said, "that he and I and Miss Sterling, my secretary, had dinner together at Finero's Steakhouse. The captain's date was a young lady named DiVay, and I'm sure he's given you information on how to contact her."

  Pat shifted in his chair. "Actually, I didn't get her contact information. I thought you or Velda might be able to help with that."

  I glanced at Velda. Her expression said what I was thinking: Poor dumb schmuck.

  Velda told Traynor she'd get the phone number and address for him before he left, and I told my story of how my secretary and I had left Pat and Helen at the restaurant, and had walked home, and then never left her apartment.

  Traynor listened quietly but his expression was rather glazed. Pat had no doubt told him exactly what to expect out of me.

  Then the assistant D.A. folded his arms and smiled on one side of his face and said, "And here we are again, Mr. Hammer."

  "Where would that be, Mr. Traynor?"

  "At that improbable place where you expect me to accept a wild coincidence. It's been only a few days since you expected me to accept the last one."

  "What coincidence are we talking about this morning?"

  "That two men were murdered in the lobby of your apartment house, and you were conveniently away at the time. One of the men was battered in a manner so brutal as to suggest an assailant of considerable strength, and with a reckless disregard for human life."

  "Was I seen there?"

  "...No."

  "Any witnesses place me there?"

  "...No."

  I grinned again and leaned back in the swivel chair. "Not wishing to embarrass my secretary, Mr. Traynor, I invite you to steal a glance at her and determine whether it's far-fetched that I would rather spend time at her place than mine."

  She was smiling just a little as the assistant D.A. couldn't help himself but to steal that glance.

  Then I said, "And I don't have the statistics—you'd have to check with Captain Chambers about that—but my guess is there were a whole lot of murders in New York City last night, and the night before that, and before that. This is that concrete jungle you hear so much about. And I am not necessarily involved with any of those homicides."

  "You aren't necessarily not involved, either."

  "No. But unless you have evidence or witnesses or a motive—little details like that—I need to remind you that I am not on the city's payroll. I have a business to run. And if you don't have any other questions, I would respectfully ask you not to let the door hit you on the ass on the way out."

  Pat hadn't said anything during my indignant denial of the innuendos, but I knew he'd be out checking taxicab trip sheets and my route home the minute he left, and if he reached that newspaper stand, my tail would be in a sling.

  Give Traynor credit. He merely smiled, shrugged, and said, "Point taken."

  He rose and turned to the Homicide captain.

  Pat said, "I'll hang behind, sir. If you don't mind. I can find my way back."

  Traynor gave Pat a nod, too, and went out. Velda followed to get that DiVay info for him, and Pat got up, went over, and shut the door behind them. He took the client chair where Traynor had been sitting.

  "Where do you get your luck?" he asked.

  "Same place as my nerve."

  He shook his head. I offered him a cigarette and he took it. We both fired up and he sat there and laughed. I didn't know what was so funny.

  Finally, he told me:
"Somebody saw you last night, Mike."

  I felt the back of my neck prickle.

  "Somebody saw you when you went in Velda's place after walking her home."

  So Lady Luck did love me.

  He filled me in. Across the street from Velda's building, a plain-clothes cop on a stakeout on an unrelated matter was sitting in a parked car, and spotted us going in ... and swore he never saw me leave. He had been surveilling the area the past eight hours.

  Pat and I both knew that if the flatfoot had fallen asleep, he obviously wouldn't say so; and if he had missed me, because his attention was elsewhere, whether on a sandwich or a girlie mag, he couldn't even know he had. He could only present himself as the ever-vigilant watchman of the NYPD, and along the way provide me with one lucky alibi.

  Move over, Sky Masterson and Nathan Detroit.

  "Then what the hell," I said, "was Traynor dropping in about?"

  "He wanted to see if you'd spill something before you knew you were covered by a cop, no less."

  I laughed and, to his credit, so did Pat.

  Also to his credit, Pat didn't bother to ask whether I had or hadn't taken that lobby pair out of the action. He could see it was my style, but what he didn't know couldn't hurt me.

  "Give me one reason," he said, heaving a smoky sigh, "why I should share police information with you?"

  I hadn't asked for any, but I said, "Because I saved your life a couple times?"

  "I've saved yours three times."

  "Who's counting?"

  He grunted. "The two lobby stiffs have been positively identified as a pair of contract hit men from St. Louis."

  They were importing help to deal with me. I felt complimented.

  Pat was saying, "Even though the slugs, the prints, and the paraffin tests for gunpowder tell the story of an angry shootout between the pair, nobody in their right mind's going to believe it."

  "Why not?"

  "Two reasons—first, why would they come all the way from St. Louis together just to shoot each other? And second, how did this falling-out between a couple of St. Louie hard guys just happen to happen in Mike Hammer's lobby?"