The Mike Hammer Collection (5 page)

I took Pat by the arm. “Coming?” I asked him.

“Yeah, nothing more to do here.”

Outside Pat's car was drawn up under the covered portico. We climbed in and he started it up and drove around the house to the graveled driveway to the highway and turned south toward the city. Neither of us had spoken until I asked him, “Get an earful back there?”

He gave me a glance and nodded. “Yeah, I was outside the door while you were going through your spiel. Guess you laid it out the same way I did.”

“By the way,” I added, “don't get the idea I'm slipping. I was onto the tail you put on me. What did he do, call from the front gate or the filling station where I left my heap?”

“From the station,” he answered. “He couldn't catch on to why the hike and called for instructions. By the way. Why did you walk a mile and a half to his house?”

“That ought to be easy, Pat. Kalecki probably left instructions not to admit me after he read that piece in the papers. I came in over the wall. Here's the station. Pull up.”

Pat slid the car off the road to the cindered drive. My car was still alongside the stucco house. I pointed to the grey-suited man sitting inside asleep. “Your tail. Better wake him up.”

Pat got out and shook the guy. He came to with a silly grin. Pat motioned in my direction. “He was on to you, chum. Maybe you had better change your technique.”

The guy looked puzzled. “On to me? Hell, he never gave me a tumble.”

“Nuts,” I said. “Your rod sticks out of your back pocket like a sore thumb. I've been in this game awhile myself, you know.”

I climbed into my buggy and turned it over. Pat stuck his head in the window and asked, “You still going ahead on your own, Mike?”

The best I could do was nod. “Natch. What else?”

“Then you'd better follow me in to town. I have something that might interest you.”

He got in the squad car and slid out of the cinders to the highway. My tail pulled out behind Pat and I followed him. Pat was playing it square so far. He was using me for bait, but I didn't mind. It was like using a trout for bait to catch flies as far as I was concerned. But he was sticking too close to me to make the game any fun. Whether he was keeping me from being blasted or just making sure I didn't knock off any prominent Joes whom I suspected I couldn't say.

The article in the paper didn't have enough time to work. The killer wouldn't be flushed as quickly as that. Whoever pulled the trigger was a smart apple. Too damned smart. He must have considered me if he was in his right mind at all. He had to consider the cops even if it was an ordinary job. But this was a cop killing which made it worse. I was sure of one thing though, I'd be on the kill list for sure, especially after I made the rounds of everyone connected with it.

So far, I couldn't find anything on Kalecki or Kines. No motive yet. That would come later. They both had the chance to knock off Jack. George Kalecki wasn't what people thought him to be. His finger was still in the rackets. Possibilities there. Where Hal came in was something else again. He was tied up in some way. Maybe not. Maybe so. I'd find out.

My thoughts wandered around the general aspects of the case without reaching any conclusions. Pat went through the city sans benefit of a siren, unlike a lot of coppers, and we finally pulled up to the curb in front of his precinct station.

Upstairs he pulled open the bottom drawer of his desk and drew out a pint of bourbon from a lunch box. He handed me a man-sized slug of the stuff and set up one for himself. I poured mine down in one gulp.

“Want another?”

“Nope. Want some information. What were you going to tell me?” He went over to a filing cabinet and drew out a folder. I noticed the label. It read, “Myrna Devlin.”

Pat sat down and shook out the contents. The dossier was complete. It had everything on her that I had and more. “What's the angle, Pat?” I knew he was getting at something. “Are you connecting Myrna with this? If you are you're barking up the wrong tree.”

“Perhaps. You see, Mike, when Jack first found Myrna trying to go over the railing of the bridge, he treated her like any other narcotic case. He took her to the emergency ward of the hospital.” Pat rose and shoved his hands in his pockets. His mouth talked, but I could see that his mind was deep in thought. “It was through constant contact with her that he fell in love. It was real enough for him. He saw all the bad side of her before he saw the good. If he could love her then he could love her anytime.”

“I don't follow, Pat. I know Myrna as well as Jack did. If you smear her all over the papers as a number-one candidate for the hot squat you and me are going to have it out.”

“Don't fly off the handle, Mike. There's more to it than that. After she was released, she made Jack promise not to follow it up any further. He agreed.”

“I know,” I cut in, “I was there that night.”

“Well, Jack held up his end to her all right, but that didn't take in the whole department. Narcotics comes under a separate bureau. The case was turned over to them. Myrna didn't know anything about it, but while she was out, she talked. We had a steno taking down every word she said and she said plenty. Narcotics was able to snare a ring that was operating around the city, but when they made the raid there was some shooting, and during it the one guy that would have been able to spill the beans caught one in the head and the cycle stopped there.”

“That's news to me, Pat.”

“Yeah, you were in the army then. It took awhile to track the outfit down, nearly a year. It didn't stop even then. The outfit was working interstate and the feds were in on it. They laid off Myrna when they went into her history. She was a small-town girl here in the city to break into show business. Unfortunately, she got mixed up with the wrong outfit and got put on the stuff by one of her roommates. Their contact was a guy who was paying for protection as a bookie, but who used the cover to peddle dope. His guardian angel was a politician who now occupies a cozy cell in Ossining on the Hudson.

“The head of the outfit was a shrewd operator. No one knew or saw him. Transactions were made by mail. Dope was sent in to post-office boxes, very skillfully disguised. In each box was a number to send the cash to. That turned out to be a box somewhere, too.”

That I couldn't figure. Pat turned and sat down again before he went on, but I beat him to it with a question.

“Something screwy, Pat. The whole thing's backwards. The stuff is usually paid for in advance, with the peddlers hoping they come through with enough decks to make money on it.”

Pat lit a butt and nodded vigorously. “Exactly. That's one reason why we had trouble. Undoubtedly there's stuff sitting in post-office boxes right now loaded to the brims with the junk. It isn't an amateur's touch, either. The stuff came in too regularly. The source was plentiful. We managed to dig up a few old containers that hadn't been destroyed by the receiver and there were no two postmarks alike.”

“That wouldn't be hard to work if it was a big outfit.”

“Apparently they had no trouble. But we had operatives in the towns the stuff was sent from and they went over the places with a fine-tooth comb. Nothing was turned up. They checked the transient angle since it was the only way it could have been done. Busses and trains went through these towns, and it's possible that the packages could have been dropped off by a person posing as a traveler. Each place was used once. So there was no way of telling where the next one was coming from.”

“I get the picture, Pat. Since the last outfit was pulled, have they found any other sources?”

“Some. But nothing they could connect with the last. Most of it was petty stuff with some hospital attendant sneaking it out of stock and peddling it on the outside.”

“So far you haven't told me where Myrna comes into this. I appreciate the information, but we're not getting anyplace. What you've given me is strictly police stuff.”

Pat gave me a long, searching glance. His eyes were screwed up tight like he was thinking. I knew that look well. “Tell me,” he said, “hasn't it occurred to you that Jack, being a cop, could have welshed on his promise to Myrna? He hated crooks and sneaks, but most of all he hated the dirty rats that used people like Myrna to line their own pockets.”

“So what?” I asked.

“So this. He was in on things in the beginning. He might have been holding back something on us. Or he might have gotten something from Myrna we didn't know about. Either he spoke up at the wrong moment or he didn't. But somebody was afraid of what he knew and bumped him.” I yawned. I hated to disillusion Pat but he was wrong. “Fellow, you are really mixed up. Let me show you where. First, classify all murders. There are only a few. War, Passion, Self-Protection, Insanity Profit and Mercy Killings. There are some others, but these are enough. To me it looks like Jack was killed either for profit or self-protection. I don't doubt but what he had something on someone. It must have been something he had known all along, and suddenly realized its importance, or it was something he recently found out. You know how active he was in police work even though he was disabled and attached to the job with the insurance company.

“Whatever it was, he apparently wanted to make a choice. That's why you heard nothing about it. The killer had to have something he had, and killed to get it. But you searched the place, didn't you?” Pat agreed with a movement of the eyes. “And there was nothing removed, was there?” He shook his head. “Then,” I went on, “unless it was something Jack had outside, which I doubt, it wasn't a killing for profit. The killer knew that Jack had some poop which would mean exposure or worse. To protect himself, the killer knocked Jack off. Self-protection.”

I picked up my battered hat from the desk and stretched. “Got to blow, pal. Since I'm not on an expense account or a salary, this is one job I can't afford to lose time on. Thanks for the try, anyway. If I turn anything up I'll let you know.”

“How long after?” Pat said with a smile.

“Just long enough to keep the jump on you,” I shot back at him. I fished for a smoke and pulled a wreck of a butt from my pocket, waved so long to Pat and walked out. My tail was waiting for me, trying to look inconspicuous in a crowd of cigar-smoking detectives in the anteroom. As I stepped outside I flattened myself into a niche in the brick wall. The guy came out, stopped and looked frantically both ways up and down the street. I stepped out and tapped him on the shoulder.

“Got a light?” I asked, flipping the ancient butt between my lips. He turned beet-red and lit me. “Instead of playing cops and robbers,” I told him, “why not just walk along with me?”

He didn't quite know what to say, but got out an “Okay.” It sounded more like a growl. The two of us ambled over to my car. He got in and I slid under the wheel. There was no use trying to talk to the guy. I couldn't get a word out of him. When I hit the main stem, I went down a side street past a little hotel. After I pulled up in front of it, I got out with my tail right behind me, went through the revolving door, kept right on going until I was outside where I went in. That left my tail still in the door. I bent down and stuck a rubber wedge I had taken from my car window under the door and walked back to the car. Inside the door, the cop was pounding on the glass and calling me dirty names. If he wanted me, he had to go out the back door and around the street. I saw the clerk grinning. That wasn't the first time I had used his hotel for that gag. All the way downtown my window shook like it would fall out, which reminded me that I had better get some more wedges in case I was tailed again.

CHAPTER 4

T
he anteroom was ultramodern, but well appointed. Chairs that looked angular were really very comfortable. Whoever decorated the interior had a patient's mental comfort well in mind. The walls were an indescribable shade of olive, cleverly matched with a dull-finished set of drapes. The windows admitted no light, instead, the soft glow came from hidden bulbs installed directly into the wall. On the floor an ankle-thick carpet muffled any sound of footsteps. From somewhere came the muted tones of a string quartet. I could have fallen asleep right there if the secretary who had given me the telephone brushoff didn't motion me over to the desk. From her tone it was evident that she knew that I was no patient. With a full day's growth of beard and the wrinkled ruin of a suit I had on, I was lower than the janitor in her estimation.

She inclined her head toward the door behind her and said, “Miss Manning will see you now. Please go in.” With special emphasis on the please. When I went past her she drew back slightly.

“Don't worry, honey,” I told her out of the corner of my mouth, “I won't bite. This is just a disguise.” I yanked open the door and went in.

She was better than her picture. She was delicious. There was a lot about her that couldn't be put into words. Charlotte Manning was sitting at her desk, hands folded in front of her as if she were listening for something. Beautiful was a poor description. She was what you would expect to find in a painting if each of the world's greatest artists added their own special technique to produce a masterpiece.

Her hair was almost white as I thought. It fell in such soft curls you wanted to bury your face in it. Each of her features were modeled exquisitely. A smooth forehead melted into alive, hazel eyes, framed in the symmetrical curves of naturally brown eyebrows, studded with long, moist lashes.

The dress she wore was not at all revealing, being a long-sleeved black business garb, but what it attempted to conceal was pure loveliness. Her breasts fought the dress as valiantly as they had the bathing suit. I could only imagine how the rest of her looked since the desk blocked my vision.