The Mike Hammer Collection (47 page)

The light got away from me before I could shove them back and the super said, “Think this is it.” I held the light while he dragged out a corrugated cardboard box tied with twine. A big SAVE was written across the front in red crayon. He nodded and pursed his mouth, looking for a rat to spit tobacco juice at. He saw one on a pipe and let loose. I heard the rat squeaking all the way to the end, where he fell off and kicked around in some papers. The stuff he chewed must have been poison.

I pulled the twine off and opened the top. Inside was another box tied with lighter cord that broke easily enough. My hand was shaking a little as I bent back the cover and I pulled the light closer.

There were pictures in this one, all neatly sorted in two rows and protected by layers of tissue paper. Both sides of the box were lined with blotters to absorb any moisture, and between each group of shots was an index card bearing the date they were taken.

Perhaps I expected too much. Perhaps it was the thought of the other pictures that were stolen from me, perhaps it was just knowing that pictures fitted in somewhere, but I held my breath expectantly as I lifted them out.

Then I went into all the curse words I knew. All I had was another batch of street photos with smiling couples waving into the camera or doing something foolish. I was so damn mad I would have left them there if I hadn't remembered that they cost me five bucks and I might as well get something for my dough. I tucked the box under my arm and went back to the elevator.

When we got to the street floor the super wanted to know if I felt like signing the after-hours book and I scratched J. Johnson in it and left.

At eight-fifteen I called Pat's home. He still hadn't come in, so I tried the office. The switchboard located him and the minute I heard his voice I knew there was trouble. He said, “Mike? Where are you?”

“Not far from your place. Anything new?”

“Yes.” His words were clipped. “I want to speak to you. Can you meet me in the Roundtown Grill in ten minutes?”

“I'll be there. What's up?”

“Tell you then. Ten minutes.” Someone called to him and he hung up. Ten minutes to the second I reached the Roundtown and threaded my way to the back and found Pat sitting in the last booth. There were lines of worry across his forehead that hadn't been there before, giving him an older look. He forced a grin when he saw me and waved me to sit down.

Beside him he had a copy of the evening paper and he spread it out on the table. He tapped the headline. “Did you have anything to do with this?”

I shoved a butt in my mouth and fired it. “You know better than that, Pat.”

He rolled the paper up into a ball and threw it aside, his mouth twisting into a snarl. “I didn't think so. I had to be sure. It got out some way and loused things up nice.”

“How?”

A waiter set two beers down in front of us and Pat polished his off before the guy left and ordered another, quick. “I'm getting squeezed, pal. I'm getting squeezed nice. Do you know how many rotten little jerks there are in this world? There must be millions. Nine-tenths of them live in the city with us. Each rotten little jerk controls a bloc of votes. Each rotten little jerk wants something done or not done. They make a phone call to somebody who's pretty important and tell him what they want. Pretty soon that person gets a lot of the same kind of phone calls and decides that maybe he'd better do something about it, and the squeeze starts. Word starts drifting up the line to lay off or go slow and it's the kind of a word that's backed up with a threat that can be made good.

“Pretty, isn't it? You get hold of something that should be done and you have to lay off.” The second beer followed the first and another was on its way. I had never seen Pat this mad before.

“I tried to be a decent cop,” he ranted, “I try to stick to the letter of the law and do my duty. I figure the taxpayers have a say in things, but now I begin to wonder. It's coming from all directions ... phone calls, hints that traveled too far to trace back, sly reminders that I'm just a cop and nothing but a captain, which doesn't carry too much weight if certain parties feel like doing something about it.”

“Get down to cases, Pat.”

“The D.A. called Ann Minor's death murder. He's above a fix and well in the public eye, so there's no pressure on him. The murder can be investigated if necessary, but get off the angles. That's the story. Word got out about the book, but not the fact that it's in code.”

I tapped the ashes in the tray and squinted at him. “You mean there are a lot of big boys mixed up with call girls and the prostitution racket who don't want their names to get out, don't you?”

“Yes.”

“And what are you going to do about it?”

No, Pat wasn't a bit happy. He said, “Either I go ahead with it, dig up the stuff and then get nicely pushed into a resignation, or I lay off and keep my job, sacrificing this case to give the public their money's worth in future cases.”

I shook my head pathetically. “That's what you get for being honest. What'll it be?”

“I don't know, Mike.”

“You'll have to make up your mind soon.”

“I know. For the first time I wish I were wearing your badge instead of mine. You aren't so dumb.”

“Neither are you, kid. The answer's plain, isn't it?” I was sneering myself now. He looked up and met my eyes and nodded. A nasty grin split his lips apart and his teeth were together, tight.

“Call it, Mike.”

“You take care of your end. I'll brace the boys who give you trouble. If I have to I'll ram their teeth down their throats and I hope I have to. There's more to it than that. I don't have to tell you how big this racket is. The girls in the flashy clothes and the high price tags are only one side of it. The same group with its hand on them reaches down to the smaller places, too. It's all tied in together. The only trouble is that when you untie one knot the whole thing can come apart.

“They are scared now. They're acting fast. We have that book, but you can bet it isn't much. There are other books, too, nicely ducked out of sight where it'll take a lot of looking to dig up. They'll come. We'll get hold of somebody who will sing, and to save their own necks the others will sing, too. Then the proof will pop up.”

I slammed my hand against the table and curled my fingers into tight knots until the flesh was white around the knuckles. “We don't need proof, Pat. All we have to do is look for proof. The kind of boys behind the curtain won't take that. They'll make a move and we'll be ready for them.”

“Yeah, but when?”

“Tomorrow night. The big boys are hiring their work done. One of their stoolies is on the list because he sounded off to me. Tomorrow night at exactly nine-thirty a pimp called Cobbie Bennett is going to walk out of his rooming house and down the street. Sometime that night he's going to be spotted and a play will be made. That's all we need. Beat them to the jump and we'll make the first score. It will scare the hell out of them again. Let them know that politics are going to pot. We can get the politicians later if we have to.”

“Does this Bennett know about this?”

“He knows he's going to be a clay pigeon of some sort. It's his only chance of staying alive. Maybe he will and maybe he won't. He has to take it. You have your men spotted around ready to wade in when the trouble starts. After it's finished, let Cobbie beat it. He's no good any more. He won't be back.”

I wrote the address of the rooming house on the back of an envelope, diagramming the route Cobbie would take, and passed it over. Pat glanced at it and stuck it in his pocket. “This can mean my job, kid.”

“It might mean your neck, too,” I reminded him. “If it works you won't have any more sly hints and phone calls, and those rotten little jerks with the bloc of votes will be taking the next train out of town. We're not going to stop anything because the game is as old as Eve. What we will do is slow it up long enough to keep a few people alive who wouldn't be alive and maybe knock off some who would be better off dead.”

“And all because of one redheaded girl,” Pat said slowly.

“That's right. All because of Nancy. All because she was murdered.”

“We don't know that.”

“I'm supposing it. I've uncovered a few other things. If it was an accident she wasn't expected to die that way. Nancy was slated to be killed. Here's something else, Pat. This looks like one thing, the part you can't see is tied in with that same redhead. I can't understand it, but I'm kicking a few ideas around that look pretty good.”

“The insurance company is satisfied it was an accident. They're ready to pay off if her inheritors can be found.”

“Ah, that's the rub, as the bard once said. That, my chum, is the big step.”

My watch was creeping up on itself. I stood up and finished the beer that had turned flat while we talked. “I'll call you early tomorrow, Pat. I want to be in on the show. Let me know what comes out of the little black book.”

He still wore his sneer. Back of his eyes a fire was burning bright enough to put somebody in hell. “Something came out of it already. We paid a call on Murray Candid. Among his belongings we found a few doodles and some notes. The symbols compare with some of those in his book. He's going to have to do some tall explaining when we find him.”

My mouth fell open at that. “What do you mean ... find him?”

“Murray Candid has disappeared. He wasn't seen by anybody after he left us,” he said.

CHAPTER 12

A
s I got in my car I thought over what Pat had said. Murray was gone? Why? That damned, ever present why? Did he duck out to escape what would follow, or was he taken away because he knew too much? A guy like Murray was a slicker. If he knew too much he knew he knew it, and knew what it would cost him, so he'd have to play it smart and have insurance. Murray would let it be known that anybody who tried to plow him under would be cutting their own throats. He'd have a fat, juicy report in a lawyer's hands, ready to be mailed to the police as soon as he was dead. That's double indemnity ... the bigger boys would have to keep him alive to keep their own noses clean.

No. Murray wasn't dead. The city was big enough to hide even him. He'd show sooner or later. Pat would have covered that angle, and right now there'd be a cop watching every bus terminal, every train station. I bet they'd see more rats than Murray trying to desert the sinking ship.

The rain had turned into a steady drizzle that left a slick on the pavement and deadened the evening crowd. I turned north with the windshield wipers clicking a monotonous tune and stopped a block away from Lola's apartment. A grocery store was still open and the stack of cold cuts in the window looked too inviting to pass up. When I had loaded my arms with more than I could eat for a month, I used the package to shield my face and walked up to her place.

I kicked the door with my foot and she yelled to come in. I had to peek around the bundle to see her stretched out on the couch with her shoes off and a wet towel across her forehead.

“It's me, honey.”

“Do tell. I thought it was a horse coming up the stairs.”

I dropped the package in a chair and sat down on the edge of the couch, reaching for the towel. She came out from under it grinning. “Oh, Mike. It's so good to see you!”

She threw her arms around my neck and I leaned over and kissed her. She was nice to look at. I could sit there all day and watch her. She closed her eyes and rubbed her hair in my face. “Rough day, kid?”

“Awful,” she said. “I'm tired, I'm wet and I'm hungry. And I didn't find the camera.”

“I can take care of the hungry part. There's eats over there. Nothing you have to cook either.”

“You're a wonderful guy, Mike. I wish....”

“What?”

“Nothing. Let's eat.”

I slid my arm under her and lifted her off the couch. Her eyes had a hungry sparkle that could mean many things. “You're a big girl,” I said.

“I have to be ... for you. To the kitchen, James.” She scooped up the bag as I passed the chair and went through the doorway.

Lola put the coffee on while I set the table. We used the wrappings for plates and one knife between us, sitting close enough so our knees touched. “Tell me about today, Lola.”

“There isn't much to tell. I started at the top of the list and reached about fifteen hock shops. None of them had it, and after a few discreet questions I learned that they never had had it. A few of the clerks were so persuasive that they almost made me buy one anyway.”

“How many more to go?”

“Days and days worth, Mike. It will take a long time, I'm afraid.”

“We have to try it.”

“Uh-huh. Don't worry, I'll keep at it. Incidentally, in three of the places that happened to be located fairly close to each other, someone else had been looking for a camera.”

My cup stopped halfway to my mouth. “Who?”

“A man. I pretended that it might have been a friend of mine who was shopping for me and got one clerk to remember that the fellow had wanted a commercial camera for taking street pictures. Apparently the kind I was after. He didn't look any over; just asked, then left.”

It was a hell of a thought, me letting Lola run head on into something like that. “It may be a coincidence. He may have shopped just those three places. I don't like it.”

“I'm not afraid, Mike. He....”

“If it wasn't a coincidence he might shop the other places and find that you were ahead of him. If he guessed what you were doing he could wait up for you. I still don't like it.”