The Mike Hammer Collection (48 page)

She became grim then, letting a shadow of her former hardness cloud her face for an instant. “Like you said, Mike, I'm a big girl. I've been around long enough to stand any guy off if he pulls something on the street. A knee can do a guy a lot of damage in the right places, and if that doesn't work, well ... one scream will bring a lot of heroes around to take care of any one guy no matter how tough he is.”

I had to laugh at that. “Okay, okay, you'll get by. After that speech I'll even be afraid to kiss you good night.”

“Mike, with you I'm as powerless as a kitten and as speechless as a giraffe. Please kiss me good night, huh?”

“I'll think about it. First we have work to do.”

“What kind, I hope?”

“Look at pictures, I have a batch of pics Nancy had tucked away. They're pictures and I paid for them, so I'll look at them.”

We cleared the mess off the table and I went in for the box. I took them out of the box and piled half in front of Lola and half in front of me. When we took our seats I said, “Give every one a going-over. They may mean something, they may not. They weren't where they should have been, that's why I'm thinking there might be something special in the lot.”

Lola nodded and picked a snapshot from the top of her pile. I did the same. At first I took in every detail, looking for things out of the ordinary, but the pictures followed such a set pattern that my inspection grew casual and hurried. Faces and more faces. Smiles, startled expressions, deliberate poses. One entire group taken from the same spot on Broadway, always the same background.

In two of them the man in the picture tried to shield his face. The camera was fast enough to stop the motion, but the finger on the shutter trigger was too slow to prevent him getting his hand in the way. I went to put one back on the discard pile, looked at it again carefully and put it aside instead. The portion of the face that showed looked familiar.

Lola said, “Mike....”

She had her lip between her teeth and was fingering a snap. She turned it around and showed it to me, a lovely young girl smiling at a middle-aged man who was frowning at the camera. My eyes asked the question. “She was ... one of the girls, Mike. We . , . went on dates together.”

“The guy?” “I don't know.”

I took the snap and laid it face down with the other. Five minutes later Lola found another. The girl was a poetic creature about thirty with the statuesque lines of a mannequin. The guy she was with could have been a stand-in for a blimp. He was short and fat, in clothes that tried to make him look tall and thin and only made him look shorter and fatter.

“She's another one, Lola?”

“Yes. She didn't last long in New York. She played it smart and married one of the suckers. I remember that man, too. He runs a gambling joint uptown. Some sort of a small-time politician, too. He used to call for her in an official car.”

It was coming now. Little reasons that explained the why. Little things that would be big things before long. My pile was growing nicely. Maybe every picture on the table had a meaning I couldn't see. Maybe most were just camouflage to discourage hasty searchers.

I turned the snap over, and lightly penciled on the back near the bottom was “See S-5.” There was more to it than the picture, evidently.

Could it be nothing more than an office memo ... or did Nancy have a private file of her own?

My breath started coming in quick, hot gasps. It was like seeing a half-finished picture and recognizing what it would be like when it was finished. If this was an indication ... I pulled the remaining photos closer and went to work on them.

The next one came out of my deal. I got it because I was lucky and I was hating some people so damn hard that their faces drew an automatic response. The picture was that of a young couple, no more than twenty. They smiled into the camera with a smile that was youth with the world in its pocket and a life to be led. But they weren't important.

It was the background that was important. The faces in the background. One was that of my client, his hand on the knob of a door, a cane swinging jauntily over his arm. Behind him was Feeney Last in a chauffeur's uniform, closing the door of the car. It wasn't just Feeney, it was the expression on his face. It was a leer of hateful triumph, a leer of expectancy as he eyed a guy in a sports outfit that had been about to step past him.

The guy was popeyed with fear, his jaw hanging slack, and even at that moment he had started to draw back as he saw Feeney.

He should have been scared. The guy's name was Russ Bowen and he was found shot full of holes not long after the picture was taken.

I could feel the skin pulling tight around my temples and my lips drew back from my teeth. Lola said something, but I didn't hear her. She grabbed my hand, made me look at her. “What is it? What is it, Mike? Please ... don't look that way!”

I shoved the picture in front of her and pointed to the little scene in the background. “This guy's dead, Lola. The other guy is Feeney Last.”

Her eyes came up slowly, unbelievingly. She shook her head. “Not Feeney ... it can't be, Mike.”

“Don't tell me, kid. That's Feeney Last. It was taken when he worked for Mr. Berin. I couldn't miss that greaseball in a million years.”

She stared at me hard. Her eyes drifted back to the picture and she shook her head again. “His name is Miller. Paul Miller. He-he's one of the men who supplies girls to ... the houses.”

“What?”

“That's right. One of the kids pointed him out to me some time ago. He used to work the West Coast, picking them up there and sending them East to the syndicate. I'm positive that's him!”

Nice going, Feeney, I thought, very nice going. Keep a respectable job as a cover-up for the other things. Good heavens, if Berin-Grotin in all his insufferable pride ever knew that, he would have had Feeney hanging by the thumbs! I looked at the snap again, saw my client unaware of the little scene behind him, completely the man about town bent on an afternoon of mild pleasure. It was a good shot, this one. I could see the lettering on the door there. BAR ENTRANCE, ALBINO CLUB, it read. Apparently Mr. Berin's favorite haunt. He'd have his cup of good cheer while five feet away a murder was in progress.

“Do you know the other guy?”

“Yes. He ran some houses. They—found him shot, didn't they?”

“That's right. Murdered. This thing goes back a long way.”

Lola closed her eyes and dropped her head forward. Her face was relaxed in sadness. She took a deep breath and opened her eyes. “There's something on the back, Mike.”

It was another symbol. This one said, “See T-9-20.” If that dash stood for “to,” it meant eleven pages of something was connected with this. The details of the Russ Bowen murder maybe? Could there be a possibility that the redhead had come up with something covering that murder? Ye gods, if that were true, no wonder Feeney was on her neck. How many angles could there be to this thing?

I couldn't find anything else; I went through my pile twice and nothing showed for me, so I swapped with Lola and started all over again. I didn't find any more, either, but Lola did. When she was through she had half a dozen shots beside her and called my attention to the women. They were her former associates. She knew some of the men by sight, too, and they weren't just pickups. They dripped dough in the cut of their clothes and the sparkle of diamonds on their fingers.

And always was that notation on the back referring to some other file. There was an envelope on the dish closet and I tucked the prints in it, stowing them in my pocket. The rest I threw back in the box and pushed aside. Lola followed me into the living room, watched me pace up and down the room. When she held out a lit cigarette I took it, had one deep drag and snuffed it out in a dish.

Feeney Last. Paul Miller. He came from the Coast. He saw a way to get back East without arousing suspicion. He was connected with the racket but good, and he could operate under the cover of old boys' respectability. Feeney was after Nancy and for good reason. If it was blackmail, the plot went pretty deep. She wasn't content to stick to strangers with herself as the catch ... she used the tie-up with girls already in the racket.

I stopped in the middle of the floor, fought to let an idea battle its way into my consciousness, felt it blocked by a dozen other thoughts. I shook my head and began pacing again.

“I need a drink,” I said.

“There's nothing in the house,” Lola told me.

I reached for my hat. “Get your coat. We're going out.”

“Aren't you supposed to be dead?”

“Not that dead. Come on.”

She pulled a raincoat from the closet, stepped into frilly boots that did things for her legs. “All set, Mike. Where are we going?”

“I'll tell you better when we get there.”

All the way downtown I put my mind to it. Lola had snuggled up against me and I could feel the warmth of her body soaking through her coat to mine. She knew I was trying to think and kept quiet, occasionally looking up at me with interest. She laid her head on my shoulder and squeezed my arm. It didn't help me think any.

The rain had laid a pall over the city, keeping the spectators indoors. Only the tigers were roaming the streets this night. The taxis were empty hearses going back and forth, the drivers alert for what few faces there were, jamming to a stop at the wave of a hand or a shrill whistle.

We went past the Zero Zero Club and Lola sat up to look. There wasn't much to see. The sign was out and the place in darkness. Somebody had tacked a “Closed” sign on the door. Pat was going whole hog on this thing. I pulled into a half-empty parking lot and we found a small bar with the windows steamed up. Lola had a Martini and I had a beer there, but the place had a rank odor to it and we left. The next bar was three stores down and we turned into it and climbed on the stools at the end.

Four guys at the other end with nothing much to talk about until we came in suddenly found a topic of conversation and eight eyes started looking Lola up and down. One guy told the bartender to buy the lady a drink and she got another Martini and I got nothing.

She was hesitant about taking it at first and I was too deep in thought to argue the point. The redhead's face floated in front of me. She was sipping her coffee again, the ring on her finger half turned to look like a wedding band. Then the vision would fade and I'd see her hands again, this time folded across her chest and the ring was gone, leaving only a reddish bruise that went unnoticed among the other bruises. The greaseball would laugh at me. I could hear his voice sneering, daring, challenging me to get the answer.

I ordered another beer. Lola had two Martinis in front of her now and one empty pushed aside. The guys were laughing, talking just loud enough to be heard. The guy on the end shrugged as he threw his leg off the stool, said something dirty and came over to Lola with a cocky strut.

He had an arm around her waist and was pulling out the stool next to her when I rolled the cigarette down between my fingers and flipped it. The lit end caught him right in the eye and his sweet talk changed into a yelp of pain that dwindled off to a stream of curses.

The rest of the platoon came off the stools in a well-timed maneuver that was a second later than mine. I walked around and kicked the wise guy right in the belly, so hard that he was puking his guts out before he hit the floor doubled up like a pretzel. The platoon got back on their stools again without bothering to send a first-aid party out.

I bought Lola the next Martini myself.

The guy on the floor groaned, vomited again and Lola said, “Let's leave, Mike. I'm shaking so hard I can't lift the glass.”

I shoved my change toward the bartender who was watching me with a grin on his face. The guy retched again and we left. “When are you going to talk to me?” Lola asked. “My honor has been upheld and you haven't even bestowed the smile of victory on me.”

I turned a smile on her, a real one. “Better?”

“You're so ugly you're beautiful, Mike. Someday I want you to tell me about those scars over your eyes ... and the one on your chin.”

“I'll only tell you part of the story.”

“The women in your life, huh?”

When I nodded happily she poked me in the ribs and pretended to be hurt.

One side of the street was fairly well deserted. We waited for a few cars to pass and cut over, our collars turned up against the drizzle. The rain in Lola's hair reflected a thousand lights, each one shimmering separately on its deep-toned background. We swung along with a free stride, holding hands, our shoulders nearly touching, laughing at nothing. It struck me that we were the faces in those pictures, the kind of people the redhead snapped, a sure thing to buy a print to remember the moment.

I wondered what her cut of the quarter was. Maybe she got five cents for every two bits sent in. A lousy nickel. It wasn't fair. Guys like Murray Candid rolling in dough, monkeys with enough capital to finance a week end with a high-class prostitute. Greaseballs like Feeney Last being paid off to talk a girl into selling her body and soul for peanuts. Even Cobbie Bennett got his. Hell, I shouldn't squawk, I had mine ... and now I had five hundred bucks too much. Ann Minor certainly didn't have time to cash that check. It should still be in her apartment, nobody else could cash it, not with the newspapers carrying all that tripe about the investigation and her death.

“Where are we going?” Lola had to step up her pace to keep abreast of me.

“The Albino Club. Ever been there?”

“Once. Why there? I thought you didn't want to be seen.”