The Mike Hammer Collection (72 page)

I wormed into a sitting position that sent knives darting through my brain. The crowd was leaving now. The little man with the funny mouth carrying his black bag, the two women with their hair in curlers, the super, the man and woman who seemed to be slightly sick. The others stayed. One had a navy blue uniform with bright buttons, two wore cigars as part of their disguise. The D.A., of course. Then Pat. My pal. He was there too, almost out of sight in the only chair still standing on its own legs.

The D.A. held out his palm and let me look at the two smashed pellets he was holding. Bullets. “They were in the wall, Mr. Hammer. I want an explanation. Now.”

One of the cigars helped me up on my feet and I could see better. They all had faces with noses now. Before they had been just a blur. I didn't know I was grinning until the D.A. said, “What's so funny? I don't see anything funny.”

“You wouldn't.”

It was too much for the bright boy. He reached out and grabbed me by the lapels of my coat and pushed his face into mine. Any other time I would have kicked his pants off for that. Right now I couldn't lift my hands.

“What's so funny, Hammer? How'd you like ...”

I turned my head and spit. “You got bad breath. Go 'way.”

He half threw me against the wall. I was still grinning. There was white around his nostrils and his mouth was a fine red line of hate. “Talk!”

“Where's your warrant?” I demanded easily. “Show me your warrant to come in my house and do that, then I'll talk, you yellow-bellied little bastard. I'm going to meet you in the street not long from now and carve that sissified pasty face of yours into ribbons. Get out of here and kiss yourself some fat behinds like you're used to doing. I'll be all right in a few minutes and you better be gone by then and your stooges with you. They're not cops. They're like you ... political behind-kissers with the guts of a bug and that's not a lot of guts. Go on, get out, you crummy turd.”

The two detectives had to stop him from kicking me in the face. His legs, his knees, his whole body shook with coarse tremors. I'd never seen a guy as mad as he was. I hoped it'd be permanent. They took him out of there and with their rush they never noticed that Pat stayed on, still comfortably sunk in the chair.

“I guess that's telling him,” I said. “A man's home is his castle.”

“You'll never learn,” Pat said sadly.

I fumbled for a butt and pushed it between my lips. The smoke bit into my lungs and didn't want to let go. I got a chair upright and eased into it so my head wouldn't spin. Pat let me finish the butt. He sat back with his hands folded in his lap and waited until I was completely relaxed. “Will you talk to me, Mike?”

I looked at my hands. The knuckles were skinned all to hell and one nail was torn loose. A piece of fabric was caught in it. “He was here when I came in. He took two shots at me and missed. We made such a racket he ran for it after I fell. If I hadn't fallen the D.A. would have had me on a murder. I would have killed the son of a bitch. Who called him in?”

“The neighbors called the precinct station,” Pat told me. “Your name was up and when it was mentioned the desk man called the D.A. He rushed right over.”

I grunted and kneaded my knuckles into my palm. “Did you see the slugs he had?”

“Uh-huh. I dug 'em out myself.” Pat stood up and stretched. “They were the same as the ones in the windows on Broadway. That's twice you've been missed. They say the third time you aren't so lucky.”

“They'll be matching the bullets from one of those rods.”

“Yeah, I expect they will. According to your theory, if they match the one from the Broadway window, the guy who attacked you was Rainey. If they fit the one from the Thirty-third Street incident it's Clyde.”

I rubbed my jaw, wincing at the lump and the scraped flesh. “It couldn't be Rainey.”

“We'll see.”

“See hell! What are you waiting for? Let's go down and grab that louse right now!”

Pat smiled sorrowfully. “Talk sense, Mike. Remember that word proof? Where is it? Do you think the D.A. will support your pet theory ... now? I told you Clyde could pull strings. Even if it was Clyde he didn't leave any traces around. No more traces than the guy who shot Rainey and the other punk at the arena. He wore gloves too.”

“I guess you're right, kiddo. He could even work himself up a few good alibis if he had to.”

“That's still not the answer,” Pat said. “If we were working on a murder case unhampered it would be different. On the books Wheeler is still a suicide and we'd be bucking a lot of opposition to make it look different.”

I was looking at my hand where my thumb and forefinger pinched together. I was still holding a tiny piece of fabric. I held it out to him. “Whoever he was left a hunk of his coat on my fingernail. You're a specialist. Let the scientists of your lab work that over.”

Pat took it from my fingers and examined it closely. When he finished he pulled an envelope from his pocket and dropped it in. I said, “He was a strong guy if ever I met one. He had a coat on and I couldn't tell if he was just wiry-strong or muscle-strong, but one thing for sure, he was a powerhouse.

“Remember what you said, Pat ... about Wheeler having been in a scuffle before he died? I've been thinking about it. Suppose this guy was tailing Wheeler and walked into the room. He figured Wheeler would be in bed but instead he was up going to the bathroom or something. He figured to kill Wheeler with his hands and let it look like we had a drunken brawl. Because Wheeler was up it changed his plans. Wheeler saw what was going to happen and made a grab for my gun that was hanging on the chair.

“Picture it, Pat. Wheeler with the gun ... the guy knocks it aside as he fires and the slug hits the bed. Then the guy forces the gun against Wheeler's head and it goes off. A scrap like that would make the same kind of marks on his body, wouldn't it?”

Pat didn't say anything. His head was slanted a little and he was going back again, putting all the pieces in their places. When they set just right he nodded. “Yes, it would at that.” His eyes narrowed. “Then the killer picked up one empty shell and dug the slug out of the mattress. A hole as small as it left wouldn't have been noticed anyway. It would have been clean as a whistle if you didn't know how many slugs were left in the rod. It would have been so pretty that even you would have been convinced.”

“Verily,” I said.

“It's smooth, Mike. Lord, but it's smooth. It put you on the spot because you were the only one looking for a murderer. Everyone else was satisfied with a suicide verdict.” He paused and frowned, staring at the window. “If only that damn hotel had some system about it ... even a chambermaid with sense enough to keep on her toes, but no. The killer walks out in the hall and drops his slug and shell that we find hours later.”

“He was wearing an old suit.”

“What?”

“It must have been old if it had a hole in the pockets.”

Pat looked at me and the frown deepened. His hand fished for his notebook and he pulled out several slips of paper stapled together. He looked through them, glanced up at me, then read the last page again. He put the book back in his pocket very slowly. “The day before Wheeler died there were only two registered guests,” he said. “One was a very old man. The other was a comparatively young fellow in a shabby suit who paid in advance. He left the day
after
Wheeler was shot before we were looking for anyone in the hotel, and long enough afterward to dispel any suspicions on the part of the staff.”

The pain in my head disappeared. I felt my shoulders tightening up. “Did they get a description? Was it ...”

“No. No description. He was of medium build. He was in town to see a specialist to have some work done on a tooth. Most of his face was covered by a bandage.”

I said another four-letter word.

“It was a good enough reason for his being without baggage. Besides, he had the money to pay in advance.”

“It could have been Clyde,” I breathed. My throat was on fire.

“It could have been almost anybody. If you think Clyde is the one behind all this, let me ask you one thing. Do you honestly think he'd handle the murder end by himself?”

“No,” I said with disgust. “The bastard would pay to have it done.”

“And the same thing for that deal at the arena.”

I smacked the arm of the chair with my fist. “Nuts, Pat. That's only what we surmise. Don't forget that Clyde's been in on murder before. Maybe he has a liking for it now. Maybe he's smart enough not to trust anybody else. Let's see how smart he can get. Let's let it hang just a few days longer and see if he'll hang himself.”

I didn't like the look on his face. “Why?”

“The D.A. didn't believe my story about being with you. He has his men out asking questions. It won't take them very long to get the truth.”

“Oh, God!”

“The pressure is on the lad. The kind of pressure he can't ignore. Something's going to pop and it may be your neck and my job.”

“Okay, Pat, okay. We'll make it quicker then, but how? What the hell are we going to do? I could take Clyde apart but he'd have the cops on my neck before I could do anything. I need some time, damn it. I need those few days!”

“I know it, but what can we do?”

“Nothing. Not a damn thing ... yet.” I lit another butt and glared at him through the smoke. “You know, Pat, you can sit around for a month in a room with a hornet, waiting for him to sting you. But if you go poke at his nest it'll only be a second before you're bit.”

“They say if you get bitten often enough it'll kill you.”

I stood up and tugged my coat on. “You might at that. What are your plans for the rest of the evening?”

Pat waited for me by the door while I hunted up my hat. “Since you've gotten my schedule all screwed up I have to clean up some work at the office. Besides, I want to find out if Rainey's two pals have been found yet. You know, you called it pretty good. They both disappeared so fast it would make your head swim.”

“What did they do about the arena?”

“They sold out ... to a man who signed the contracts and deeds as Robert Hobart Williams.”

“Dinky ... Clyde! I'll be damned.”

“Yeah, me too. He bought it for a song. Ed Cooper ran it in the sports column of the
Globe
tonight with all the nasty implications.”

“I'll be damned,” I said again. “It tied Rainey in very nicely with Clyde, didn't it?”

Pat shrugged. “Who can prove it? Rainey's dead and the partners are missing. That isn't the only arena Clyde owns. It now appears that he's a man quite interested in sporting establishments.”

We started out the door and I almost forgot what I came for. Pat waited in the hall while I went back to the bedroom and pulled out the dresser drawer. The Luger was still there wrapped in an oily rag inside a box. I checked the clip, jacked a shell into the chamber and put it in half cock.

When I slid it into the holster it fit loosely, but nice. I felt a lot better.

 

The snow, the damned snow. It slowed me to a crawl and did all but stop me. It still came down in lazy fashion, but so thick you couldn't see fifty feet through it. Traffic was thick, sluggish and people were abandoning their cars in the road for the subway. I circled around them, following the cab in front of me and finally hit a section that had been cleared only minutes before.

That stretch kept me from missing Velda. She had her coat and hat on and was locking the door when I stepped out of the elevator. I didn't have to tell her to open up again.

When she threw her coat on top of mine I looked at her and got mad again. She was more lovely than the last time. I said, “Where are you going?”

She pulled a bottle out of a cabinet and poured me a stiff drink. It tasted great. “Clyde called me. He wanted to know if this was ‘later.' ”

“Yeah?”

“I told him it might be.”

“Where does the seduction take place?”

“At his apartment.”

“You really have that guy going, don't you? How come he's passing up all the stuff at the Inn for you?”

Velda looked at me quickly, then away. I reached for the bottle. “You asked me to do this, you know,” she said.

I felt like a heel. All she had to do was look at me when I got that way and I felt like I was crawling up out of a sewer somewhere. “I'm sorry, kid. I'm jealous, I guess. I always figured you as some sort of a fixture. Now that the finance company is taking it away from me I get snotty.”

Her smile lit the whole room up. She came over and filled my glass again. “Get that way more often, Mike.”

“I'm always that way. Now tell me what you've been doing to the guy.”

“I play easy to get but not easy to get at. There are times when sophistication coupled with virtue pays off. Clyde is getting that look in his eyes. He's hinting at a man-and-mistress arrangement with the unspoken plan in mind of a marriage license if I don't go for it.”

I put the glass down. “You can cut out the act, Velda. I'm almost ready to move in on Clyde myself.”

“I thought I was the boss,” she grinned.

“You are ... of the agency. Outside the office I'm the boss.” I grabbed her arm and swung her around to face me. She was damned near as tall as I was and being that close to her did things to me inside that I didn't have time for. “It took me a long time to wise up, didn't it?”