The Mike Hammer Collection (30 page)

No, it wasn't stolen. A thief would have taken the handbag and not the ring while she had lain in the gutter. And girls aren't ones to forget to wear rings, especially when they're dressed up.

Yeah, Pat was wrong. He didn't know it and I wasn't about to tell him ... yet. It was murder if ever I saw one. And it wasn't just a guess now.

“Seen enough, Mike?”

“Yep. I've seen everything I want to see.” We went back to the desk and for a second time I checked the listing of her belongings. No ring. I was glad to get out of there and back into the fresh air. We sat in the car a few minutes and I lit up a cigarette.

“What's going to happen to her now, Pat?”

He shrugged. “Oh, the usual thing. We'll hold the body the regular time while we check identification, then release it for burial.”

“You aren't burying her without a name.”

“Be reasonable, Mike. We'll do everything we can to trace her.”

“So will I.” Pat shot me a sidewise look. “Anyway” I said, “whatever happens, don't put her through the disposal system. I'll finance a funeral for her if I have to.”

“Uh-huh. But you're thinking you won't have to again. All right, Mike, do what you want to. It's officially out of my hands now, but damn it, man ... if I know you, it will be back in my hands again. Don't try to cut my throat, that's all. If you get anything, let me know about it.”

“Of course,” I said, then started up the car and pulled away from the curb.

The letter was three days late. The address had been taken from the telephone book, which hadn't been revised since I moved to my new apartment. The post office had readdressed it and forwarded it to me. The handwriting was light and feminine, touched with a gracious Spencerian style.

My hand was shaking when I slit it open; it shook even more when I started to read it, because the letter was from the redhead.

Oh, damn it to hell, anyway. Damn everybody and everything. And damn me especially because I made her happy for half a day and put her in a spot where living was nice and it was hard to die.

I folded the letter up in my fist and threw it at the wall.

A bumper bottle of beer cooled me off and I quit hating myself. When I killed the quart I stuck the empty under the sink and went back and picked up the letter, smoothing it out on the table top. Twice again I read it, going over every word. It wasn't the kind of letter a tramp would write; the script and the phrasing had a touch of eloquence that wasn't used by girls who made the gutter their home. I've seen a lot of bums, and I've fooled around with them from coast to coast, and one thing I know damn well ... they're a definite type. Some give it away and some sell it, but you could pick out those who would and who wouldn't. And those who would had gutter dirt reflected in everything they did, said and wrote.

Red had been a decent kid. She had to give up her decency to do something important. Something had a meaning for her ... and someday she was going to need me again. She needed me more now than she ever did. Okay, I was hers then.

 

They don't start walking the streets until midnight, if that's what you're after. But if you're in a hurry there are guys you can see who will steer you straight to a house and pick up their cut later. Usually they're sallow-faced punks with sharp, pointed faces and wise eyes that shift nervously, and they keep toying with change in their pocket or a key chain hooked to high-pleated pants as they talk out of the corner of their mouths.

Cobbie Bennett was like that. As long as there are girls who make a business out of it, you'll find guys like Cobbie. The only shadow he cast was by artificial light, and he looked it. I found him in a dirty bar near Canal Street, his one hand cupped around a highball and his other hooked in his belt, in earnest conversation with a couple of kids who couldn't have been more than seventeen. Both of them looked like high-school seniors out to spend a week's allowance.

I didn't wait for them to finish talking. Both kids looked at me once when I nudged in beside them, turned a little white and walked away without a word.

“Hello, Cobbie,” I said.

The pimp was more like a weasel backed into a corner than a man. “What do you want?”

“Not what you're selling. By the way, who are you selling these days?”

“Try and find out, banana nose.”

I said okay and grabbed a handful of skin around his leg and squeezed. Cobbie dropped his drink and started cursing. When spit drooled out of the corner of his mouth I quit and ordered him another drink. He could hardly find his face with it. “I could punch holes in you and make you talk if I felt like it, pal,” I grinned.

“Damn it, what'd you do that for?” His eyes were squinted almost shut, chopping me up into little pieces. He rubbed his leg and winced. “I don't have to draw you pitchers, you know what I'm doing. Same thing I been doing right along. What's it to you?”

“Working for an outfit?”

“No, just me.” His tone was sullen.

“Who was the redhead who was murdered the other night, Cobbie?”

This time his eyes went wide and he twitched the corner of his mouth. “Who says she was murdered?”

“I do.” The bartender drew a beer and shoved it at me. While I sipped it I watched the pimp. Cobbie was scared. I could see him try to shrink down inside his clothes, making himself as unobtrusive as possible, as though it weren't healthy to be seen with me. That put him in a class with Shorty ... he had been scared, too.

“The papers said she was hit with a car. You call that murder?”

“I didn't say what killed her. I said she was murdered.”

“So what am I supposed to do?”

“Cobbie ... you wouldn't want me to get real sore at you, would you?” I waited a second, then, “Well ... ?”

He was slow in answering. His eyes sort of crawled up to meet mine and stayed there. Cobbie licked his lips nervously, then he turned and finished with his drink with a gulp. When he put the glass down he said, “You're a dirty son of a bitch, Hammer. If I was one of them hop-heads I'd go get a sniff and a rod and blow your goddamn guts out. I don't know who the hell the redhead was except another whore and I don't give a damn either. I worked her a couple of times, but mostly she wasn't home to play ball and I got complaints from the guys, so I dropped her. Maybe it was lucky for me that I did, because right after it I got word that she was hot as hell.”

“Who passed the word?”

“How should I know? The grapevine don't come from one guy. Enough people said it, so I believed it and forgot her. One of the other babes told me she wasn't doing so good. The trade around here ain't like it is uptown. We don't get no swells ... some kids maybe, like them you loused up for me, but the rest is all the jerks who don't care what they get so long as they get it. They heard the word and laid off too. She wasn't making a nickel.”

“Keep talking.” He knew what I was after.

Cobbie rapped on the bar for another drink. He wasn't talking very loud now. “Get off me, will you! I don't know why she was hot. Maybe some punk gun slinger wanted her for a steady and was getting rough. Maybe she was loaded three ways to Sunday. All I know is she was hot and in this business a word is good enough for me. Why don'tcha ask somebody else?”

“Who? You got this end sewed up pretty tight, Cobbie. Who else is there to ask? I like the way you talk. I like it so much that I might spread it around that you and me have been pretty chummy and you've been yapping your greasy little head off. Why should I ask somebody else when I got you to tell me. Maybe I don't know who to ask.”

His face was white as it could get. He hunched forward to get his drink and almost spilled that one too. “... Once she said she worked a house....” He finished the highball and muttered the address as he wiped his mouth.

I didn't bother to thank him; it was favor enough to throw my drink down silently, pick up my change and walk out of there. When I reached the street I crossed over and stood in the recess of a hallway for a few minutes. I stuck a butt between my lips and had just cupped my hands around a match when Cobbie came out, looked up and down the street, jammed his hands in his pockets and started walking north. When he rounded the corner I got in the car and sat there a few minutes, trying to figure just what the hell was going on.

One redheaded prostitute down on her luck. She was killed, her room was searched, and her ring was missing.

One trigger-happy greaseball who searched her room because she stole his blackmail setup. He said.

One ex-con who ran a hash house the redhead used for a hangout. He was scared.

One pimp who knew she was hot but couldn't say why. Maybe he could, but he was scared, too.

It was a mess no matter how you looked at it, and it was getting messier all the time. That's why I was so sure. Death is like a bad tooth ... no matter what's wrong with it, you pull it out and it's all over. That's the way death usually is; after that people can talk all they want, they even do things for dead joes that they wouldn't do for the living. Death is nice and clean and antiseptic. It ends all trouble. Someone gathers up your belongings; says a word of praise, and that's it. But the redhead's was a messy death. There was something unclean about it, like a wound that has healed over on top, concealing an ugly, festering sore brewing a deadly poison that will kill again.

When the butt burned down to my fingers I started the car and shoved off, threading my way across town to the address Cobbie had given me. New York had its sinkholes, too, and the number of this one placed it smack in the middle of the slime. It was a one-way street of rats' nests with the river at one end and a saloon on each corner, peopled with men and women that had the flat, vacant look of defeat stamped on their faces.

I checked the numbers and found the one I wanted, but all it was was a number, because the house was gone. Unless you can call a frame-gutted skeleton of masonry a house. The doorway yawned open like a leper's mouth and each window had its scar tissue of peeling paint.

The end of the trail. I swore and kicked at the curb.

A kid about ten looked at me and said, “Some jerk t'rew a match out the winder inta the garbage coupla weeks ago. Most of the dames got killed.”

These kids knew too much for their age nowadays. I needed a drink bad this time. The joint on the left was closer, so I went in and stood at the bar making tight fists with my hands until the nails cut into my palms. Now this, I kept thinking, now this! Did every corner to this have a blank wall I couldn't hurdle? The bartender didn't ask ... he shoved a glass and a bottle under my nose and drew a chaser from the beer tap, then made change from my buck. When I had the second he put all the change in the register, then came back and waited.

“One more?”

I shook my head. “Just beer this time. Where's your phone?”

“Over in the corner.” He jerked his head toward the end of the bar while he pulled the beer. I went down to the booth and dropped a nickel in, then dialed Pat at his home.

This time I had a little luck because he answered. I said, “This is Mike, chum. Need a favor done. There was a fire in one of the bawdy-houses down the street here and I want to know if there has been an investigation made. Can you check it?”

“Guess so, Mike. What's the number?” I gave it to him and grunted when he checked it back to me. “Hang up while I call and I'll buzz you back. Give me your number there.”

He got that, too, and I hung up. I went down and got my beer, then went back to the seat in the phone booth and sat there sipping the stuff slowly. The minute it rang I snatched it off the hook.

“Mike?”

“Yeah.”

“The fire happened twelve days ago. A complete investigation was made because the place had been condemned for occupancy a month before and nothing had been done about it. The fire started accidentally and the guy who flipped the lit match out the window is still in the hospital recovering. Apparently, he was the only one who got out alive. The flames blocked the front door and the rear was littered with junk so as to be impassable.

“Three girls perished on the roof, two in the rooms and two jumped to their deaths before the firemen could get the nets up. Destruction was complete because the floors caved in completely.”

Pat didn't give me a chance to thank him. Before I could say a word his voice thinned out and had an edge to it. “Give me what you know, Mike. You aren't there out of curiosity and if you're still thinking in terms of murder I want a trade. And right now, too.”

“Okay, sharp guy,” I laughed. “I'm still trying to find out who the redhead was. I met a guy who knew where she had worked before she free-lanced and I wound up here.”

This time Pat was the one who laughed. “Is that all? I could have told you that if you'd called me.” I froze on the phone. “Her name was Sanford, Nancy Sanford. She used several first names, but seemed to stick to Nancy most of the time, so we picked it as her own.”