Don't Look Behind You (2 page)

I yawned, sat up, tasted the nasty thickness in my mouth, and said, “What’s been shaking, Pat?”

He just sighed, went over and opened his office door and I went in. The space was modest, a few filing cabinets and scads of framed citations. I took the visitor’s chair while he shambled behind the desk. A couple of cardboard cups of coffee were waiting and I sampled mine.

The homicide captain laced his fingers behind his head and leaned back in his swivel chair. His grin was as rumpled as his shirt. “Your damn luck is something else, Mike.”

I shrugged.

“Your tail really ought to be hanging out on this one. Your reputation precedes you, you know. And this new administration isn’t like the old one, chum. They won’t be happy with you ruining the Fun City image.”

“Who gives a shit?”

Pat let a small grin crease his mouth. “This time you may just get away with that flip-ass attitude. Come the inquest, you’ll no doubt have a list of formidable witnesses ready to testify to your character, thanks to you getting them out of various jams.”

“That’s right. Haven’t you heard? I’m beloved.”

“Not by the new crowd you aren’t. The big boys would be ready to stand you on your ear for erasing one Milton Woodcock…”

“Is that who he was?”

“…a reputable businessman from the suburbs of Chicago who recently elected to re-establish himself in the insurance game in our fair town.”

“Sure,” I said, “he was a nice, reputable guy all right. He came around to tell me how much he admired me while he pointed that fancy silenced rod at my chest.” I shoved my hat back and slouched in the chair. “So are these big boys of yours going to lean on me or not?”

“Not.” Pat took his hands down and folded them on the desk. He grunted a deep laugh and shook his head. “A dinosaur like you, and modern science gets you off the hook. That and a certain pal of yours in the Homicide Division.”

“Sounds like somebody did me a favor.”

“He did. I did. I rushed that foreign-make automatic through ballistics. Those boys don’t like to work fast but I lit a fire.”

“Thanks, buddy. When should we hear from ’em?”

“We have heard.” His face drained of anything frivolous. “Woodcock had used that weapon before. He had routinely switched out the barrel so ballistics couldn’t match up any slugs, but the last time out, he didn’t recover all the ejected shells… and the firing pin marks tallied with the gun he held on you. I called a friend of mine on the Chicago PD, at home, and he put me in touch with a night-shift homicide dick who had a file on Mr. Woodcock as thick as your skull.”

“No kidding.”

“The Chicago lads were never able to indict the respectable Mr. Woodcock, but they linked him to half a dozen homicides and figured those were the tip of a very bloody iceberg. That and a few more goodies pointed to him as a contract killer, which explains his relocating to our little island.”

“I should nap outside your office more often,” I commented drily. “It does a taxpayer’s heart good to know public servants are working like elves for him while he slumbers.”

Pat spoke two words, one of them nasty, but his grin took off all the edge.

I said, “So—where do we go from here?”

The grin on Pat’s mouth spread a little. “I had calls about this from two of the upstairs crowd, making lots of noise, but now they’re mostly embarrassed. Woodcock’s presence in our fair city is more of a liability than yours, apparently.”

“So I helped keep the city clean, even if I did litter up my office. You’re welcome, kiddo.”

“Oh, don’t get this wrong—the big shots aren’t offering any apologies… but you’ll walk through the inquest. In fact, I’ve already been instructed to return your license, gun and good name.”

“Generous souls.”

“Consider it a show of good faith.” What he said next he tossed out casually, like a kid buying a pack of rubbers between a comb and a candy bar. “And they’ve given me a special assignment—investigate why you were the target of a certain contract killer.”

“When you find out,” I said, “be sure to let me know.”

I saw the grin fade and Pat’s eyes got that curious, almost spooky look I had seen so often. “Something must be running around in your mind. Like Daffy damn Duck.”

I shook my head. “No way, old buddy. I haven’t been on anything worth shooting me over in a long damn while. I’m just a working P.I. with a colorful reputation.”

Pat waited a second, then said, “Maybe it’s for something you
didn’t
do.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

He shrugged. “Could be some case you got recently that you haven’t dug into yet. Or maybe some client feels you didn’t deliver, or maybe you did deliver and it caused somebody else trouble. This doesn’t necessarily have to come from your gaudy past.”

But I was waving that off. “Sorry. All my assignments for the year so far have been completed to the clients’ satisfaction and none of it was anything that wasn’t a simple civil case. And there’s nothing shaking at all right now.”

“For a guy who had a hitman caller,” Pat said, “you don’t seem very worried.”

“Why should I be? I’ve been shot at before.”

“You haven’t been dead before. Anyway, not so you’d notice.” His eyes were steady on mine. “A contract for a guy like you would come high. You’ve been keeping a low profile in recent years, granted, but you still have a hell of a rep.”

“Thanks, buddy.”

He ignored that. “The more prominent the target, the bigger the fee… but when there’s a big element of possible failure involved, because the target is capable of deadly defense? Well, the price goes sky high.”

My smile turned into a laugh. “When you’re an aging legend, it’s nice to know you’re still wanted. Somebody just watched a bundle go down the drain along with the esteemed Mr. Woodcock. A contract like that would be paid in front of the kill.”

“Or at least half down,” Pat said, nodding. “But that much loot would mean there’s plenty more where it came from. Meaning the client can afford to lay out a new bundle for another contract. So I
will
be investigating this incident, Mike. Personally. Count on it.”

I wiped my hands across my eyes. It had been a long night. That snooze had been at the price of a wooden-bench backache. “And I’ll do the same thing, old friend.”

“That I don’t like hearing. That’s not your role here. You’re the potential victim.” His sigh started at his toes. “Could you just for once let me do my damn job, Mike?”

“Who’s stopping you?”

“Well, having you to trip over around every corner is not my idea of a good time.”

“It isn’t much fun for me either,” I told him, sitting forward, my hands clasped and draped between my legs.

His eyes narrowed. “Don’t tell me it’s getting to you. That this made one kill too many.”

My laugh was as grating as a cough. “Are you kidding? Wiping out a punk like Woodcock doesn’t strain my conscience any, Pat… but it sure can mess up an office. Cleaning blood and guts off the wall—you know the stain it’ll leave? So there’s a new paint job, and who pays for that? And a bullet hole in plaster, that’s gonna need some work.”

“Cut the comedy,” Pat said.

I straightened up in the chair, tugged my hat down, and reached across the desk for my P.I. ticket and the .45 automatic that Pat shoved at me. The gun was going to need a good cleaning to get the fingerprint powder off it and one edge of my license was torn.

I said, “I guess you know the score here. The pattern.”

“Let’s hear your version,” Pat said.

“Contract killers come in from the outside,” I said. “The farther away the arrangements are made, the better. But L.A. and Frisco have their own internal problems right now, and anyway their business dealings are too closely allied with New York’s to call somebody in from those locales. If your boys picked up a hitman from either city, you’d just assume the local mob was bringing in out-of-town talent, which negates the effort.”

“With you so far, Mike.”

“And then there’s Chicago, Woodcock’s former recent domicile. That’s a kind of middle ground—the windy town isn’t in the pocket of the New York crime families, and plenty of talent’s available there, plus the transportation options are so many you can get lost in them.”

He was staring at me. “Which adds up to…?”

“The contract originating in New York.”

“That’s what I think,” Pat said, nodding his admission.

I grinned at him. “Which means somebody around here doesn’t like me.” I shoved the .45 into the shoulder holster and slipped the P.I. ticket back in its plastic slot in my wallet. “And here I thought I was a beloved local institution.”

“Whoever hired this thing is going to love you even less now, Mike. Taking Woodcock out means the price will go up.”

“How about that?” I said.

His eyebrows climbed. “The man in the big chair at Gracie Mansion has surely been advised by now that you’re potential trouble for the Big Apple.”

“Am I?”

“Sure—a famous, dangerous target walking around the streets of Manhattan, just waiting to turn it into a Wild West show. Add to that, publicity about you reaches out all over the country. Right now our governor’s pretty damn sensitive about his position, and his state’s image.”

“Screw him. I didn’t vote his ticket.”

“You don’t vote at all, Mike.” He shook his head, smiling, but there was no amusement in it. “They’ll be watching for developments. The gov’s got his own personal bird dogs, you know.”

“Screw them too. I’m a tax-paying citizen.”

“So you seem to remind me every time we get together.” Pat’s face turned a little grim. “Whether you’re a local institution or not—or just deserve to be put in one—you are not exactly a desirable character. Our elected leaders will be waiting for just one wrong move if you go barreling out on your own.”

“Is this where I bust out crying?”

Pat’s face got very hard and yet something soft lingered in his eyes. “Stay out of my way on this one, okay, Mike? Just for this once?”

I got up and leaned two hands on his desk. “Buddy, if there’s a contract out on me,
me
is who they’ll come looking for. Not you.”

“Granted, but—”

“I told you. Jump in. The water’s fine—maybe a little cold this time of year. Anyway, it promises to be interesting. Do I have to tell you how I feel about this kind of thing?”

“No. I know how you think.” Pat looked at me a long moment, then added, “And I know something else.”

“Yeah?”

“That you can be just as bad as the bad guys yourself sometimes.”

“Sometimes somebody has to,” I said softly. “Sometimes you have to be worse.”

He was shaking his head again. “You and that damn .45 of yours.”

“It
has
been a big help, from time to time.”

I started for the door. Pat’s voice stopped me when my hand was on the knob. “Mike…”

“Yeah?”

“High-priced killers don’t usually make mistakes.”

“So I hear.”

“Well, our friend Woodcock—what was his mistake?”

I grinned at him and opened the door. “He was a secret admirer of mine.”

Pat goggled at me. “An
admirer
?”

“Yeah… on a professional basis. A real fan.”

“So then what was his damn mistake, Mike?”

I shrugged. “He talked too much.”

And I left him there to chew on that.

Hell, when
was
the war?

How many years ago?

You lay in the mud waiting to shoot and get shot at, and you wind up shooting a lot of people you never saw or knew and when you did a really good job of killing, you got a medal or two that you could stick in your desk drawer and look at, whenever the scarred tissue in your body told you it was going to rain. They didn’t always get the little shrapnel pieces out in those field hospitals and you never really had time to deal with it after you got home. So when it rained, you remembered, and if you were me, you wondered why it was they didn’t give you medals any more for killing guys who needed it.

The closest thing, over the years, had been the headlines, but that was a mixed bag. Good for business in its way, but turning you into some kind of cockeyed celebrity. To this paper you were a hero, to that one a villain or maybe even “a psychopathic menace to society.” That one popped into my mind a lot, sometimes making me grin and sometimes not.

Of course, the power that was the press had been chopped down by the demands of supposedly honestly elected crooks who seemed curiously inspired to curtail the news and events from the biggest city of them all and divert them into preselected channels that didn’t need direction to be cautiously liberal to the point of fear, or consciously radical enough to be dangerous.

The
World Telegram
was dead, the
Journal-American
gone and the
Herald Tribune
buried, and with them the reporters and columnists, like my pal Hy Gardner, who could have laid on a rebuttal to the two papers that chewed me up without having all the facts. Somebody at the
News
had gotten the word, though, and the story was minimized and presented as an attempted murder and my action as justifiable homicide. Nobody played it up really big. Luckily, the Mid-Eastern thing was still a hot issue in the UN, so there wasn’t enough space to bear down really hard.

I tossed the papers in the receptacle outside the elevator, then walked down the corridor of the old Hackard Building to my office, and opened the door.

No day can be all bad. This one blossomed like a rose in sunlight because Velda was bent over filing papers in the lower drawer of a file cabinet with her back toward me, standing with that stiff-kneed dancer’s stance, feet together, and no woman in the world has legs like she has. Those calves and thighs, and the lush globes they led to, came from an era when women were fully-fleshed and the posture she was maintaining would be damn near obscene if it weren’t unintentional. And what this big luscious brunette could do to a simple white silk blouse, a black pencil skirt and nylons was sheer sexual alchemy.