The Mike Hammer Collection (76 page)

Maybe there was still time, I thought. God, there had to be time. Minutes and seconds, what made them so important? Little fractions of eternity that could make life worth living. I dialed Velda's number and heard it ring. It rang a long time and no one answered, so I let it go on ringing and ringing and ringing. It rang for a year before she answered it. I said it was me and she wanted to hang up. I shouted, and she held it, and cautiously asked me where I was.

I said, “I'm nowhere near your place, Velda, so don't worry about me pulling anything funny. Look, hold everything. Don't go up there tonight ... there's no need to now. I think we have the thing by the tail.”

Velda's voice was soft, but so firm, so goddamn firm I could have screamed. She said, “No, Mike. Don't try to stop me. I know you'll think of every excuse you can, but please don't try to stop me. You've never really let me do anything before and I know how important this is. Please, Mike ...”

“Velda, listen to me.” I tried to keep my voice calm. “It isn't a stall. One of the agency girls was murdered tonight. Things are tying up. Her name was Jean Trotter ... before that she was Julia Travesky. The killer got her and...”

“Who?”

“Jean... Julia Travesky.”

“Mike ... that was the girl Chester Wheeler told his wife he had met in New York. The one who was his daughter's old school chum.”

“What!”

“You remember. I spoke of it after I came back from Columbus.”

My throat got dry all of a sudden. It was an effort to speak. “Velda, for God's sake, don't go up there tonight. Wait ... wait just a little while,” I croaked.

“No.”

“Velda ...”

“I said no, Mike. I'm going. The police were here earlier. They were looking for you. They want you for murder.”

I think I groaned. I couldn't get the words out.

“If they find you we won't have a chance, Mike. You'll go behind bars and I couldn't stand that.”

“I know all about that, Velda. I was with Pat tonight. He told me. What do I have to do, get on my knees ...”

“Mike ...”

I couldn't fight the purpose in her voice. Good Lord, she thought she was helping me and I couldn't tell her differently! She thought I was trying to protect her and she was going ahead at all costs! Oh, Lord think of a way to stop her, I couldn't! She said, “Please don't bother to come up, Mike. I'll be gone, and besides, there are policemen watching this building. Don't make it any harder for me, please.”

She hung up on me. Just like that. Damn it, she hung up and left me cooped up in that two-by-four booth staring at an inanimate piece of equipment. I slammed the receiver back in the hook and ran past the guy who held the pull cord of the light in his hand, ready to turn it out. Lights out. Lights out for me too.

I ran back to the car and started it up. Time. Damn it, how
much
time? Pat said give him a week. A while ago I needed hours. Now minutes counted. Minutes I couldn't spare just when things were beginning to make sense. Jean Trotter ... she was the one Wheeler met at that dinner meeting. She was the one he went out with. But Jean eloped and got out of the picture very conveniently and Marion Lester took over the duty of saying Wheeler was with her, and Marion Lester and Anton Lipsek were very friendly.

I needed a little talk with Marion Lester. I wanted to know why she lied and who made her lie. I'd tell her once to talk, and if she wouldn't I'd work her over until she'd be glad to talk, glad to scream her guts out and put the finger on the certain somebody I was after.

CHAPTER 11

I
tried hard to locate Pat. I tried until my nickels were spent and there wasn't any place else to try. He was out chasing a name that didn't matter any more and I couldn't find him at the time when I needed him most. I left messages for him to either stay in his office or go home until I called him and they promised to tell him when, and if, he came in. My shirt was soaked through with cold sweat when I got finished.

The sky had loosened up again and was letting more flakes of snow sift down. Great. Just great. More minutes wasted getting around. I checked the time and swore some big curses then climbed in the car and turned north into traffic. Jean Trotter and Wheeler. It all came back to Wheeler after all. The two were murdered for the same reason. Why ... because he saw and recognized her as an old friend? Was it something he knew about her that made him worth killing? Was it something she knew about him?

There was blackmail to it, some insidious kind of blackmail that could scare the pants off a guy like Emil Perry and a dozen other big shots who couldn't afford to leave town when it pleased them. Photographs. Burned photographs. Models. A photographer named Anton Lipsek. A tough egg called Rainey. The brains named Clyde. They added.

I laughed so loud my chest hurt. I laughed and laughed and promised myself the skin of a killer. When I had the proof I could collect the skin and the D.A., the cops and anybody else could go to hell. I'd be clean as a whistle and I'd make them all kiss my rear end. The D.A. especially.

I had to park a block away from the Chadwick Hotel and walk back. My coat collar was up around my face like everyone else's and I wasn't worried about being seen. A patrolman swinging a night stick went by and never gave me a tumble. The lobby of the hotel was small, but crowded with a lot of faces taking a breather from the weather outside.

The Mom type at the desk gave me a smile and a nasal hello when I went to the desk. “I'd like to see Miss Lester,” I said.

“You've been here before, sonny. Go ahead up.”

“Mind if I use your phone first?”

“Nah, go ahead. Want me to connect you with her room?”

“Yeah.”

She fussed with the plugs in the switchboard and triggered her button a few times. There was no answer. The woman shrugged and made a sour face. “She came in and I didn't see her go out. Maybe she's in the tub. Them babes is always taking baths anyway. Go on up and pound on her door.”

I shoved the phone back and went up the stairs. They squeaked, but there was so much noise in the lobby nobody seemed to mind. I found Marion's room and knocked twice. A little light was seeping out from under the door so I figured the clerk had been right about the bath. I listened, but I didn't hear any splashing.

I knocked again, louder.

Still no answer.

I tried the door and it opened easily enough.

It was easy to see why she couldn't answer the door. Marion Lester was as dead as a person could get. I closed the door quietly and stepped in the room. “Damn,” I said, “damn it all to hell!”

She had on a pair of red satin pajamas and was sprawled out facedown. You might have thought she was asleep if you didn't notice the angle of her neck. It had been broken with such force the snapped vertebra was pushed out against the skin. On the opposite side of the neck was a bluish imprint of the weapon. When I put the edge of my palm against the mark it almost fit and the body was stone-cold and stiff.

The only weapon our killer liked was his strong hands.

I lifted the phone and when the clerk came on I said, “When did Miss Lester come in?”

“Hell, she came in this morning drunk as a skunk. She could hardly navigate. Ain't she there now?”

“She's here now, all right. She won't be going out again very soon either. She's dead. You better get up here right away.”

The woman let out a muffled scream and started to run without bothering to break the connection. I heard her feet pounding on the stairs and she wrenched the door open without any formalities. Her face went from white to gray then flushed until the veins of her forehead stood out like pencils. “Lawd! Did you do this?”

She practically fell into a chair and wiped her hand across her eyes. I said, “She's been dead for hours. Now take it easy and think. Understand, think. I want to know who was up here today. Who called on her or even asked for her. You ought to know, you've been here all day.”

Her mouth moved, the thick lips hanging limp. “Lawd!” she said.

I grabbed her shoulders and shook her until her teeth rattled. A little life came back into her eyes. “Answer me and stop looking foolish. Who was up here today?”

Her head wobbled from side to side. “This tears it, sonny. The joint'll be ruined. Lawd, there goes my job!” She buried her face in her hands and moaned foolishly.

I slapped her hands away and made her look at me. “Listen. She isn't the first. The same guy that killed her killed two others and unless he's stopped there's going to be more killing. Can you understand that?”

She nodded dumbly, terror creeping into her eyes.

“All right, who was up here to see her today?”

“Nobody. Not nobody atall.”

“Somebody was here. Somebody killed her.”

“H-how do I know who killed her?”

“I didn't say that. I said somebody was here.”

She pulled her thick lips together and licked them. “Look, sonny, I don't take a count of who comes and goes in this place. It's easy to get in and it's easy to get out. Lotsa guys come in here.”

“And you don't notice them?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I ain't ... I ain't supposed to.”

“So the dump's a whorehouse. Nothing but a whorehouse.”

She glared at me indignantly, the terror fading. “I ain't no madam, sonny. It's just a place where the babes can stay with no questions asked, is all. I ain't no madam.”

“Do you know what's going to happen around here?” I said. “In ten minutes this place will be crawling with cops. There's no sense running because they'll catch up with you. When they find out what's going on ... and they will ... you'll be up the creek. Now you can either start thinking and maybe have a little while to get yourself a clear story to offer them or you can take what the cops have to hand out. What will it be?”

She looked me straight in the eye and told the God's honest truth. “Sonny,” she said, “if my life depended upon it I couldn't tell you anything different. I don't know who was in here today. The place was crawling with people ever since noontime and I read a book most of the day.”

I felt like I fell through a manhole. “Okay, lady. Maybe there's somebody else who would know.”

“Nobody else. The girls who clean the halls only work in the morning. The guests take care of their own rooms. Everyone who lives here is a regular. No overnighters.”

“No bellboys?”

“We ain't had ‘em for a year. We don't need 'em.”

I looked back at the remains of Marion Lester and wanted to vomit. Nobody knew a thing. The killer had no face. Nobody saw him. They felt him and didn't live to tell about it. Only me. I was lucky, I got away. First the killer tried to shoot me. It didn't work. Then he tried to lay murder in my lap and that didn't work either. Then he tried an ambush and slipped up there. I was the most important one in the whole lot.

And I couldn't make a target of myself because there wasn't time to play bait.

I looked at Marion and talked to the woman who sat there trembling from head to foot. “Go on downstairs and put me through to the police department. I'll call them from here but I won't be here when they come. You can tell them the same thing you told me. Go on, beat it.”

She waddled out, her entire body bearing the weight of the calamity. I held the phone to my ear and heard her call the police. When the connection was through I asked for homicide and got the night man. I said, “This is Mike Hammer. I'm in the Chadwick Hotel with a dead woman. No, I didn't kill her, she's been dead for hours. The D.A. will want to hear about it so you better call him and mention my name. Tell him I'll drop by later. Yeah, yeah. No, I won't be here. If the D.A. doesn't like that he can put my name on his butt-kissing list. Tell him I said that, too. Good-by.” I walked downstairs and out the front door with about a minute to spare. I was just starting up my car when the police came up with their sirens wide open, leading a black limousine that skidded to a halt as the D.A. himself jumped out and started slinging orders around.

When I drove by I beeped the horn twice, but he didn't hear it because he was too busy directing his army. Another squad car came up and I looked it over hoping to see Pat. He wasn't with them.

My watch said twenty minutes to twelve. Velda would be leaving her apartment about now. My hands were shaking when I reached for a Lucky and I had to use the dashboard lighter to get it lit, a match wouldn't hold still. If there was any fight left inside me it was going fast, draining out with each minute, and in twenty minutes there wouldn't be a thing left for me, not one damn thing.

I stopped at a saloon and pulled the phone book from its rack and fingered through the L's until I came to Lipsek, Anton. The address was right on the fringe of the Village in a section I knew pretty well. I went back to the car and crawled down Broadway.

Twenty minutes. Fifteen now. Tempus Fugit. Tempus Fugits fast as hell. Twelve minutes. It started to snow harder. The wind picked it up and whipped the stuff into parallel, oblique lines across the multicolored lights that lined the street. Red lights. I made like I was skidding and went through. Cars honked and I cursed back, telling them to be quiet. The gun under my arm was burning a hole in my side and my finger under the glove kept tightening up expectantly.

Fourteenth Street went by and two cabs were bumper-locked in the middle of the road. I followed a pickup truck onto the sidewalk and off again to get around them. A police whistle blew and I muttered for the cop to go to the devil and kept on my way behind the truck.