The Mike Hammer Collection (55 page)

Somehow I got the box on edge and heaved, the effort throwing me back to the floor. But it smashed the window out and fell to the ground and I heard an excited shout and a voice yell, “Somebody is in the room up there!”

The sudden opening of the window created a draft that sucked the flames right out of the wall, sent them blasting into my face. I smelled hair burning and saw the legs of Berin's pants smolder. His gun was lying right under my hand.

He should never have spoken to me that way, but he did and it gave me strength to go it all the way. I reached for the gun, a .38, and fitted the butt into my hand.

“Look at your employee, Berin. See what I'm going to do? Now listen carefully to what I tell you and think about it hard, because you only have a few minutes left. That tomb of yours won't be empty. No, the redhead will live there. The girl your pride kicked out. She'll be in that tomb. And do you know where you'll be? In potter's field next to Feeney Last, or what's left of you. I'll tell the police what happened. It won't be the truth, but it'll fit. I'll tell them the body up here is that of one of your boys you sent to get me. They'll never find you even though they'll never give up looking, and whenever your name is mentioned it will be with a sneer and a dirty memory. The only clean thing will be the redhead. You'll die the kind of death you feared most ... lost, completely lost. Animals walking over your grave. Not even a marker.”

The horror of it struck him and his mouth worked.

“But I won't deprive myself of the pleasure of killing you, mister rat. It will make up for the blonde and Lola. I'll kill you so I can live with myself gain. I'll tell them we fought it out and I killed you. But you'll know the truth. It hurts, doesn't it?”

The pain in his eyes wasn't physical any longer.

“They'll be up here in a minute. I'll be waiting for them. I'll let them take me down and tell them there's no use going back in again. I'll let you burn until there isn't a thing left to identify you.”

A stream of water hit the side of the wall, centered on the window and turned the room into a steaming inferno.

“A ladder will be pushed up here in just a minute now. When it comes I'll pull the trigger. Think about it, think hard.”

A truck was being run into position. The shouts below grew louder. I crouched into the protection of the same timber that had him pinned down. The ceiling over the corridor outside fell in with a crash, dragging the front wall with it. I heard the crackling and looked up. Directly overhead the ceiling began to buckle, sagging in the middle with flame lancing through the cracks.

I looked at Berin and laughed. He turned his head and stared right into the muzzle of his own gun. Minutes, seconds. Fractions of time. The ceiling was swaying now. The killer's face was a vile mask of hatred, praying for the ceiling to get us both. He was going to go first if it happened that way.

Something banged against the side of the window and slid over the sill: two prongs with a crossbar between them. A ladder bobbed as someone came up it, covered by the stream of water.

Berin had his mouth open, screaming with all the furies of the gods dethroned, but my laugh was even louder.

He was still screaming when I pulled the trigger.

VENGEANCE IS MINE!

To
Joe and George
who are always ready for
a new adventure
And to
ward
.......
who used to be

CHAPTER 1

T
he guy was dead as hell. He lay on the floor in his pajamas with his brains scattered all over the rug and my gun was in his hand. I kept rubbing my face to wipe out the fuzz that clouded my mind but the cops wouldn't let me. One would pull my hand away and shout a question at me that made my head ache even worse and another would slap me with a wet rag until I felt like I had been split wide open.

I said, “Goddamn it, stop!”

Then one of them laughed and shoved me back on the bed.

I couldn't think. I couldn't remember. I was wound up like a spring and ready to bust. All I could see was the dead guy in the middle of the room and my gun. My gun! Somebody grabbed at my arm and hauled me upright and the questions started again. That was as much as I could take. I gave a hell of a kick and a fat face in a fedora pulled back out of focus and started to groan, all doubled up. Maybe I laughed, I don't know. Something made a coarse, cackling sound.

Somebody said, “I'll fix the bastard for that!” but before he could the door opened and the feet coming in stopped all the chatter except the groan and I knew Pat was there.

My mouth opened and my voice said, “Good old Pat, always to the rescue.”

He didn't sound friendly. “Of all the damn fool times to be drunk. Did anyone touch this man!” Nobody answered. The fat face in the fedora was slumped in a chair and groaned again.

“He kicked me. The son of a bitch kicked me ... right here.”

Another voice said, “That's right, Captain. Marshall was questioning him and he kicked him.”

Pat grunted an answer and bent over me. “All right, Mike, get up. Come on, get up.” His hand wrapped around my wrist and levered me into a right angle on the edge of the bed.

“Cripes, I feel lousy,” I said.

“I'm afraid you're going to feel a lot worse.” He took the wet rag and handed it to me. “Wipe your face off. You look like hell.”

I held the cloth in my hands and dropped my face into it. Some of the clouds broke up and disappeared. When the shaking stopped I was propped up and half pushed into the bathroom. The shower was a cold lash that bit into my skin, but it woke me up to the fact that I was a human being and not a soul floating in space. I took all I could stand and turned off the faucet myself, then stepped out. By that time Pat had a container of steaming coffee in my hand and practically poured it down my throat. I tried to grin at him over the top of it, only there was no humor in the grin and there was less in Pat's tone.

His words came out of a disgusted snarl. “Cut the funny stuff, Mike. This time you're in a jam and a good one. What the devil has gotten into you? Good God, do you have to go off the deep end every time you get tangled with a dame?”

“She wasn't a dame, Pat.”

“Okay, she was a good kid and I know it. There's still no excuse.”

I said something nasty. My tongue was still thick and unco-ordinated, but he knew what I meant. I said it twice until he was sure to get it.

“Shut up,” he told me. “You're not the first one it happened to. What do I have to do, smack you in the teeth with the fact that you were in love with a woman that got killed until you finally catch on that there's nothing more you can do about it?”

“Nuts. There were two of them.”

“All right, forget it. Do you know what's outside there?”

“Sure, a corpse.”

“That's right, a corpse. Just like that. Both of you in the same hotel room and one of you dead. He's got your gun and you're drunk. What about it?”

“I shot him. I was walking in my sleep and I shot him.”

This time Pat said the nasty word. “Quit lousing me up, Mike. I want to find out what happened.”

I waved my thumb toward the other room. “Where'd the goons come from?”

“They're policemen, Mike. They're policemen just like me and they want to know the same things I do. At three o'clock the couple next door heard what they thought was a shot. They attributed it to a street noise until the maid walked in this morning and saw the guy on the floor and passed out in the doorway. Somebody called the cops and there it was. Now, what happened?”

“I'll be damned if I know,” I said.

“You'll be damned if you don't.”

I looked at Pat, my pal, my buddy. Captain Patrick Chambers, Homicide Department of New York's finest. He didn't look happy.

I felt a little sick and got the lid of the bowl up just in time. Pat let me finish and wash my mouth out with water, then he handed me my clothes. “Get dressed.” His mouth crinkled up and he shook his head disgustedly.

My hands were shaking so hard I started to curse the buttons on my shirt. I got my tie under m
^y
collar but I couldn't knot it, so I let the damn thing hang. Pat held my coat and I slid into it, thankful that a guy can still be a friend even when he's teed off at you.

Fat Face in the fedora was still in the chair when I came out of the bathroom, only this time he was in focus and not groaning so much. If Pat hadn't been there he would have laid me out with the working end of a billy and laughed while he did it. Not by himself, though.

The two uniformed patrolmen were from a police car and the other two were plain-clothes men from the local precinct. I didn't know any of them and none of them knew me, so we were even. The two plain-clothes men and one cop watched Pat with a knowledge behind their eyes that said, “So it's one of those things, eh?”

Pat put them straight pretty fast. He shoved a chair under me and took one himself. “Start from the beginning,” he said. “I want all of it, Mike, every single detail.”

I leaned back and looked at the body on the floor. Someone had had the decency to cover it with a sheet. “His name is Chester Wheeler. He owns a department store in Columbus, Ohio. The store's been in his family a long time. He's got a wife and two kids. He was in New York on a buying tour for his business.” I looked at Pat and waited.

“Go on, Mike.”

“I met him in 1945, just after I got back from overseas. We were in Cincinnati during the time when hotel rooms were scarce. I had a room with twin beds and he was sleeping in the lobby. I invited him up to share a bed and he took me up on it. Then he was a captain in the Air Force, some kind of a purchasing agent, working out of Washington. We got drunk together in the morning, split up in the afternoon, and I didn't see him again until last night. I ran into him in a bar where he was brooding into a beer feeling sorry for himself and we had a great reunion. I remember we changed bars about half a dozen times, then he suggested we park here for the night and we did. I bought a bottle and we finished it after we got up here. I think he began to get maudlin before we hit the sack but I can't remember all the details. The next thing I knew somebody was beating my head trying to get me up.”

“Is that all?”

“Every bit of it, Pat.”

He stood up and looked around the room. One of the plain-clothes men anticipated his question and remarked, “Everything is untouched, sir.”

Pat nodded and knelt over to look at the body. I would like to have taken a look myself, but my stomach wouldn't stand it. Pat didn't speak to anyone in particular when he said, “Wound self-inflicted. No doubt about it.” His head jerked up in my direction. “You know, you're going to lose your license over this, Mike.”

“I don't know why I didn't shoot him,” 1 said sourly.

Fat Face sneered, “How do you know you didn't, wise guy?”

“I never shoot people when I'm drunk,” I snarled, “unless they push me around and make like they're tough.”

“Wise guy”

“Yeah, real wise.”

“Cut it out, the both of you,” Pat snapped. Fat Face shut up and let me alone with my hangover. I slouched across the room to a chair in the corner and slid down into it. Pat was having a conference over by the door that wound up with everyone but Fat Face leaving. The door hadn't closed shut before the coroner came in, complete with wicker basket and pallbearers.

The little men in my head started up with their hammers and chisels, so I closed my eyes and let my ears do the work. The medical examiner and the cops reached the same conclusion. It was my gun that shot him. A big round .45 fired at very close range. The fingerprint boys picked my prints off the rod and the other guy's too. His were on top.

A call came in for Pat right then and while he was on the phone I heard Fat Face suggest something to the M.E. that brought me straight up in the chair.

Fat Face said, “...Murder just as easy. They were drunk and had an argument. Bright eyes plugged him and put the gun in his hand to make it look like suicide. Then he soused himself up with liquor to make it look good.”

The M.E. bobbed his head. “Reasonable enough.”

“You dirty fat slob, you!” I came out of the chair like a shot and spun him around on his heels. Cop or no cop, I would have caved his nose in for him if Pat hadn't dropped the phone and stepped in between us. This time he took my arm and didn't let go until he finished his phone call. When the body had been hoisted into the basket and carted off Pat unbuttoned his coat and motioned for me to sit on the bed.

I sat.

He had his hands in his pockets and he spoke as much to the plain-clothes man as to me. His words didn't come easy, but he didn't stumble over them exactly. “I've been waiting for this, Mike. You and that damn gun of yours were bound to get in trouble.”

“Stow it, Pat. You know I didn't shoot the guy.”

“Do I?”

“Hell, you ought to ... ?”

“Do you know you didn't?”

“It was a closed room and I was so far gone I didn't even hear the gun go off. You'll get a paraffin test on the body that will prove it anyway. I'll go for one myself and that will settle that. What are we jawing about?”

“About you and that rod, that's what! If the guy was a suicide you'll be up the creek without a license. They don't like for people to be carrying firearms and a load of liquor too.”

He had me cold on that one. His eyes swept the room, seeing the clothes on the backs of the chairs, the empty whisky bottle on the windowsill, the stubs of cigarettes scattered all over the floor. My gun was on the desk along with a spent casing, with the white powder clotting in the oil, still showing the prints.