Kiss Me, Deadly mh-6 Page 9

  I said, "You didn't have to wait up."

  "I... couldn't sleep."

  "Anybody call?"

  "Two. I didn't answer." Her fingers felt for the buttons on the robe, satisfied themselves that they were all there from her chin down to her knees, an unconscious gesture that must have been a habit. "Someone was here." The thought of it widened her eyes.

  "Who?"

  "They knocked. They tried the door." Her voice was almost a whisper. I could see the tremor in her chin and from someplace in the past I could feel the hate pounding into my head and my fingers wanted to squeeze something bad.

  Her eyes drifted away from mine slowly. "How scared can a person get, Mike?" she asked. "How... scared?"

  I reached out for her, took her face in my hands and tilted it up. Her eyes were warm and misty and her mouth a hungry animal that wanted to bite or be bitten, a questioning thing waiting to be tasted and I wanted to tell her she never had to be scared again. Not ever.

  But I couldn't because my own mouth was too close and she pulled away with a short, frenzied jerk that had a touch of horror in it and she was out of reach.

  It didn't last long. She smiled and I remembered her telling me I was a nice guy and nice guys have to be careful even when the lady has been around. Especially a lady who has just stepped out of the tub to open the door for you and had nothing to put on but a very sheer silk robe and you know what happens when those things get wet. The smile deepened and sparkled at me, then she drifted to the bedroom and the door closed.

  I heard her moving around in there, heard her get into the bed, then I sat down in the chair facing the window and turned out the light. I switched the radio on to a late station, sitting there, seeing nothing at all, my mind miles away up in the mountains. I was coming around a curve and then there was that Viking girl standing there waving at me. She was in the beams of the lights, the tires shrieking to a stop, and she got closer and closer until there was no hope of stopping the car at all. She let out one final scream that had all the terror in the world in it and I could feel the sweat running down the back of my neck. Even when she was dead under the wheels the screaming didn't stop, then my eyes came open and my ears heard again and I picked up the phone and her cry stopped entirely:

  I said a short hello into it, said it again and then a voice, a nice gentle voice asked me if this was Mike Hammer.

  "That's right," I said. "who's this?"

  "It really doesn't matter, Mr. Hammer. I merely wanted to call your attention to the fact that as you go out today please notice the new car in front of your building. It belongs to you. The papers are on the seat and all you have to do is sign them and transfer your plates."

  It was a long foul smell that seeped right through the receiver. "What's the rest of it, friend?"

  The voice, the nice gentle voice, stopped purring and took on an insidious growl. "The rest of it is that we're sorry about your other car. Very sorry. It was too bad, but since things happened as they did, other things must change."

  "Finish it."

  "You can have the car, Mr. Hammer. I suggest that if you take it you use it to go on a long vacation. Say about three or four months?"

  "If I don't?"

  "Then leave it where it is. We'll see that it is returned to the buyer."

  I laughed into the phone. I made it a mean, low kind of laugh that didn't need any words to go with it. I said, "Buddy... I'll take the car, but I won't take the vacation. Someday I'll take you too."

  "However you wish."

  I said "That's the way it always is," but I was talking to a dead phone. The guy had hung up.

  They were at me from both ends now. The boys walking around the Stem on a commission basis. One eye out for me, the other for the cops that Pat would have scouting. Now they were being generous.

  Like Lily had said, how scared could a person get? They didn't like the way it was going at all. I sat there grinning at the darkness outside thinking about the big boys whose faces nobody knew.

  Maybe if I had boiled over like the old days they would have had me. The waiting they didn't go for.

  I shook a Lucky out of the pack and lit it up. I smoked it down to the end, put it out, then went in and flopped down on the bed. The alarm was set for eight, too early even at that hour, but I set it back to seven and knew I'd be hating myself for it.

  The heap was a beauty. It was a maroon Ford convertible with a black top and sat there gleaming in the early morning sunlight like a dewdrop. Bob Gellie walked around it once, grinning into the chrome and came back and stood by me on the sidewalk.

  "Some job, Mike. Got twin pipes in back." He wiped his hands on his coveralls and waited to see what came next.

  "She's gimmicked. Bob. Think you can reach it?"

  "Come again?" He stared at me curiously.

  "The job is a gift... from somebody who doesn't like me. They're hoping I step into it. Then goes the big boom. They're probably even smart enough to figure I'd put a mechanic on the job to find the gimmick so it'll be well hidden. Go ahead and dig it out."

  He wiped the back of his hands across his mouth and shoved the hat back further on his head. "Best thing to do is run it in the river for a couple of hours."

  "Hop to it, Bob, I need transportation."

  "Look, for a hundred I can do a lot of things, but..." "So I'll double it. Find the gimmick."

  The two C's got him. For that many pieces of paper he could take his chances with a gallon of soup. He wiped his mouth clean again and nodded. The sun wasn't up over the apartments yet and it was still cool, but it didn't do much for the beads of sweat that started to shape up along Bob's forehead. I went down to a restaurant, filled up with breakfast, spent an hour looking in store windows and came back.

  Bob was sitting behind the wheel looking thoughtful, the hood in front of him raised up like a kid with his thumb to his nose. He got out when he saw me, lit a cigarette and pointed to the engine. "She's hot, Mike. A real conversion."

  I could see what he meant. The heads were finned aluminum jobs flanking dual carburetors and the headers that came off the manifold poked back in a graceful sweep.

  "Wonder what she's like inside?"

  "Probably complete. Think your old heap could take this baby?" "I haven't even driven this one yet. Find the stuff?"

  His mouth tightened and he looked around him once, fast. "Yeah. Six sticks wired to the ignition."

  "It stinks."

  "That's what I thought too," he told me. "Couldn't find a thing anyplace else though. Checked the whole assembly inside and out and if there's more of it the guy who placed it sure knew his business."

  "He does, Bob. He's an expert at it."

  I stood there while he finished his butt. He walked around the hood, got down under the car and poked around there, then came back and looked at the engine again.

  Then his face changed, went back a half dozen years into the past, got tight, relaxed into a puzzled grin, then he looked at me and snorted. "Bet I got it, Mike."

  "How much?"

  "Another hundred?"

  "You're on."

  "I remember a booby trap they set on a Heinie general's car once. A real cutie." He grinned again. "Missed the general but got his driver a couple of days later."

  He slid into the car, bent down under the dash and worked at something with his screwdriver. He got out looking satisfied, shoved his tools under the car and crawled in with them. The job took another twenty minutes and when he came out he was moving slowly, balancing something in his hand. It looked like a section of pipe cut lengthwise and from one end protruded a detonation cap.

  "There she is," he said. "Nice, huh?"

  "Yeah."

  "Rigged to the speedometer. A few hundred miles from now a contact would have been made and you'd be dust. Had the thing wrapped around the top section of the muffler. What'll I do with it?"

  "Drop it in the river, Bob. Keep the deal to yourself. Drop up to my place tonight and I'll write you a
check."

  He looked at the thing in his hand, shuddered and held it even tighter. "Er... if it doesn't mean anything to you, Mike... I'd like to have the dough now."

  "I'm good for it. What're you worried..."

  "I know, I know, but if anybody's after you this bad you might not live to tonight. Understand?"

  I understood. I went up and wrote him out a check, gave him an extra buck for the cab fare to the river and got in the car. It wasn't a bad buy at all for three C's. And one buck. Then I started it up, felt good when I heard the low, throaty growl that poured out of the twin pipes and eased the shift into gear for the short haul north.

  Pat had been wrong about Carl Evello being in the city. In one week he had gone through two addresses and the last was the best. Carl Evello lived in Yonkers, a very exclusive section of Yonkers.

  At first the place seemed modest, then you noticed the meticulous care somebody gave the garden, and saw the Cadillac convertible and new Buick sedan that made love together in a garage that would have looked well as a wing on the Taj Mahal. The house must have gone to twenty rooms at the least and nothing was left out.

  I rolled up the hard-topped driveway and stopped. From someplace behind the house I could hear the pleasant laughter of women and the faint strains of a radio. A man laughed and another joined him.

  I cut the engine and climbed out, trying to decide whether I should crash the party or go through the regular channels. I started around the car when I heard tires turn into the driveway and while I stood there a light-green Merc drove up behind me, honked a short note of hello, revved up fast and stopped.

  Beauty is a funny thing. Like all babies are beautiful no matter how they're shaped. Like how there are times when any woman is beautiful as long as she's the color you want. It's not something that only shows in a picture. It's a composite something that you can't quite describe, but can recognize the second you see it and that's the way this woman was.

  Her hair was a pale brown ocean that swirled with motion and threw off the sunlight that bounced into it. She smiled at me, her mouth a gorgeous curve that had a peculiar attraction so that you almost missed the body that bore it. Her mouth was full and wet as if it had just been licked, a lush mouth with a will of its own and always hungry.

  She walked up with a long stride, pressing against the breeze, smiling a little. And when she smiled her mouth twisted a bit in the corner with an even hungrier look and she said, "Hi. Going to the social?"

  "I wasn't," I said. "Business, now I'm sorry."

  Her teeth came out from under the soft curves and the laugh filled her throat. For the barest second she gave me a critical

  glance, frowned with a mixture of perplexed curiosity and the smile got a shade bigger. "You're a little different, anyway," she said.

  I didn't answer and she stuck out her hand. "Michael Friday."

  I grinned back and took it. "Mike Hammer."

  "Two Mikes."

  "Looks like it. You'll have to change your name."

  "Uh-uh. You do it."

  "You were right the first time... I'm different. I tell, not get told."

  Her hand squeezed in mine and the laugh blotted out all the sounds that were around us. "Then I'll stay Michael... for a time, anyway." I dropped her hand and she said, "Looking for Carl?"

  "That's right."

  "Well, whatever your business is, maybe I can help you out. The butler will tell you he isn't in so let's not ask him, okay?"

  "Okay," I said.

  This, I thought, is the way they should be. Friendly and uncomplicated. Let the good breeding show. Let it stick out all over for anybody to see. That was beauty. The kind that took your hand as if you were lovers and had known each other a lifetime, picking up a conversation as if you had merely been interrupted in one already started.

  We took the flagstone path that led around the house through the beds of flowers, not hurrying a bit, but taking in the fresh loveliness of the place.

  I handed her a cigarette, lit it, then did mine.

  As she let the smoke filter through her lips she said, "What is your business, by the way? Do I introduce you as a friend or what?"

  Her mouth was too close and too hungry looking. It wasn't trying to be that way. It just was, like a steak being grilled over an open fire when you're starved. I took a drag on my own butt and found her eyes. "I don't sell anything, Michael... not unless it's trouble. I could be wrong, but I doubt if I'll need much of an introduction to Carl."

  "I don't understand."

  "Sometime look up my history. Any paper will supply the dope."

  I got looked at then like a prize specimen in a cage. "I think I will, Mike," she smiled, "but I don't think anything I find will surprise me." The smile went into that deep laugh again as we turned the corner of the building.

  And there was Carl Evello.

  He wasn't anything special. You could pass him on the street and figure him for a businessman, but nothing more. He was in his late forties, an average-looking joe starting to come out at the middle a bit but careful enough to dress right so it didn't show. He mixed drinks at a table shaded by a beach umbrella, laughing at the three girls who relaxed in steamer chairs around him.

  The two men with him could have been other businessmen if you didn't know that one pulled the strings in a racket along the waterfront that made him a front-page item every few months.

  The other one didn't peddle forced labor, hot merchandise or, tailor-made misery, but his racket was just as dirty. He had an office in Washington somewhere and peddled influence. He shook hands with presidents and ex-cons alike and got rich on the proceeds of his introductions.

  I would have felt better if the conversation had stopped when I walked over. Then I would have known. But nothing stopped. The girls smiled pleasantly and said hello. Carl studied me during the name swapping, his expression one of trying to recall an image of something that should have been familiar.

  Then he said, "Hammer, Mike Hammer. Well, of course. Private detective, aren't you?"

  "I was."

  "Certainly. I've read about you quite often. Leave it to my sister to find someone unusual for an escort." He smiled broadly, his whole face beaming with pleasure. I'd like you to meet Al Affia, Mr. Hammer. Mr. Affia is a business representative of a Brooklyn outfit."

  The boy from the waterfront pulled his face into a crooked smile and stuck out his hand. I felt like whacking him in the mouth.

  I said, "Hello," instead and laughed into his eyes like he was laughing in mine because we had met a long time ago and both knew it.

  Leo Harmody didn't seem to do anything. His hand was sticky with sweat and a little too limp. He repeated my name once, nodded and went back to his girl.

  Carl said, "Drink?"

  "No thanks. If you got a few minutes I'd like to speak to you." "Sure, sure."

  "This isn't a social visit."

  "Hell, hardly anybody comes to see me socially. Don't feel out of place. This a private talk?"

  "Yeah."

  "Let's go inside." He didn't bother to excuse himself. He picked up a fresh drink, nodded to me and started across the lawn toward the house. The two goons sitting on the steps got up respectfully, held the door open and followed us in.

  The house was just what I expected it to be. A million bucks properly framed and hung. A fortune in good taste that didn't come from the mouth of a guy who started life on the outer fringe of a mob. We went through a long hall, stepped into a study dominated by a grand piano at one end and Carl waved me to a chair.

  The two goons closed the door and stood with their backs to it. I said, "This is a private talk."

  Carl waved unconcernedly. "They don't hear anything," then sipped his drink. Only his eyes showed over the lip of the glass. They were almond-shaped and beady. They were the kind of eyes I had seen too many times before, hard little diamonds nestling in their soft cushions of fat.

  I looked at the goons and one grinned, rising on his toes a
nd rocking back and forth. Both of them had a bulge on the right hip that meant just one thing. They were loaded. "They still have ears."

  "They still don't hear anything. Only what I want them to hear." His face beamed into a smile. "They're necessary luxuries, you might say. There seem to be people who constantly make demands on me, if you know what I mean."

  "I know what you mean." I pulled a cigarette out and tapped thoughtfully against the arm of the chair. Then I let him watch me make a smile, turning a little so the two goons could see it too. "But they're not worth a damn, Carl, not a damn. I could kill you and the both of them, before any one of you could get a rod in his fist."

  Carl half rose and the big goon stopped rocking. For a second he stood that way and it looked like he'd try it. I let my smile tighten up at the edges and he didn't try it after all. Carl said, "Outside, boys."

  They went outside.

  "Now we can talk," I said.

  "I don't like that kind of stuff, Mr. Hammer."

  "Yeah. It spoils ‘em. They know they're not the hot rods they're paid off for being. It's kind of funny when you think of it. Put a guy real close to dying and he changes. I mean real close. They're only tough because they're different from ordinary people. They have little consciences and nothing bothers them. They can shoot a guy and laugh because they know they probably won't get shot back at, but like I said, let ‘em get real close to dying and they change. They found out something right away. I got a little conscience too."

  All the time I was speaking he was half out of his chair. Now he slid back into it again and picked up his drink. "Your business, Mr. Hammer."

  "A girl. Her name was Berga Torn."

  His nostrils seemed to flare out a little. "I understand she died." "Was killed."

  "And your interest in it?"

  "Let's not waste time, you and me," I said. "You can talk to me now or I can do it the hard way. Take your pick." "Listen, Mr. Hammer..."

  "Shut up. You listen. I want to hear you tell me about your connection with the dame. Nothing else. No crap. You play games with somebody else, but not me. I'm not the law, but plenty of times there were guys who wished the law was around instead of me."