Mickey Spillane - [Mike Hammer 02] (2 page)

Red’s eyes danced. “Big mugs like you never have to pay, mister. With you it’s the woman who pays.”

I pulled out a deck of Luckies and offered her one. When we lit up I said, “I wish all the babes I met thought that way.”

She blew a stream of smoke toward the ceiling and looked at me as if she were going back a long way. “They do, mister. Maybe you don’t know it, but they do.”

I don’t know why I liked the kid. Maybe it was because she 7 had eyes that were hard, but could still cry a little. Maybe it was because she handed me some words that were nice to listen to. Maybe it was because I was tired and my cave was a cold empty place, while here I had a redhead to talk to. Whatever it was, I liked her and she knew it and smiled at me in a way I knew she hadn’t smiled in a long time. Like I was her friend.

“What’s your name, mister?”

“Mike. Mike Hammer. Native-born son of ye old city presently at loose ends and dead tired. Free, white, and over twenty-one. That do it?”

“Well, what do you know! Here I’ve been thinking all males were named Smith or Jones. What happened?”

“No wife to report to, kid,” I grinned. “That tag’s my own. What do they call you besides Red?”

“They don’t.”

I saw her eyes crinkle a little as she sipped the last of her coffee. Shorty was casting nervous glances between us and the steamed-up window, probably hoping a cop wouldn’t pass by and nail a hustler trying to make time. He gave me a pain.

“Want more coffee?”

She shook her head. “No, that did it fine. If Shorty wasn’t so touchy about extending a little credit I wouldn’t have to be smiling for my midnight snacks.”

From the way I turned and looked at her, Red knew there was more than casual curiosity back of the remark when I asked, “I didn’t think your line of business could ever be that slow.”

For a brief second she glared into the mirror. “It isn’t.” She was plenty mad about something.

I threw a buck on the counter and Shorty rang it up, then passed the change back. When I pocketed it I said to Red, “Did you ever stop to think that you’re a pretty nice girl? I’ve met all kinds, but I think you could get along pretty well ... any way you tried.”

Her smile even brought out a dimple that had been buried a long while ago. She kissed her finger, then touched the finger to my cheek. “I like that Mike. There are times when I think I’ve lost the power to like anyone, but I like you.”

An el went by overhead just then and muffled the sound of the door opening. I felt the guy standing behind us before I saw him in the mirror. He was tall, dark and greasy looking, with a built-in sneer that passed for know-how, and he smelled of cheap hair oil. His suit would have been snappy in Harlem, edged with sharp pleats and creases.

He wasn’t speaking to me when he said, “Hello, kid.”

The redhead half turned and her lips went tight. “What do you want?” Her tone was dull, flat. The skin across her cheeks was drawn taut.

“Are you kidding?”

“I’m busy. Get lost.”

The guy’s hand shot out and grabbed her arm, swinging her around on the stool to face him. “I don’t like them snotty remarks, Red.”

As soon as I slid off the stool Shorty hustled down to our end, his hand reaching for something under the counter. When he saw my face he put it back and stopped short. The guy saw the same thing, but he was wise about it. His lip curled up and he snarled, “Get the hell out of here before I bust ya one.”

He was going to make a pass at me, but I jammed four big, stiff fingers into his gut right above the navel and he snapped shut like a jackknife. I opened him up again with an open-handed slap that left a blush across his mouth that was going to stay for a while.

Usually a guy will let it go right there. This one didn’t. He could hardly breathe, but he was cursing me with his lips and his hand reached for his armpit in uncontrollable jerks. Red stood with her hand pressed against her mouth, while Shorty was croaking for us to cut it out, but too scared to move.

I let him almost reach it, then I slid my own .45 out where everybody could get a look at it. Just for effect I stuck it up against his forehead and thumbed back the hammer. It made a sharp click in the silence. “Just touch that rod you got and I’ll blow your damned greasy head off. Go ahead, just make one lousy move toward it,” I said.

He moved, all right. He fainted. Red was looking down at him, still too terrified to say anything. Shorty had a twitch in his shoulder. Finally she said, “You ... didn’t have to do that for me. Please, get out of here before he wakes up. He’ll... kill youl”

I touched her arm, gently. “Tell me something, Red. Do you really think he could?”

She bit her lip and her eyes searched my face. Something made her shudder violently. “No. No, I don’t think so. But please go. For me.” There was urgent appeal in her voice

I grinned at her again. She was scared, in trouble, but still my friend. I took out my wallet. “Do something for me, will you, Red?” I shoved three fifties in her hand. “Get off this street. Tomorrow you go uptown and buy some decent clothes. Then get a morning paper and hunt up a job. This kind of stuff is murder.”

I don’t ever want anybody to look at me the way she did then. A look like that belongs in church when you’re praying or getting married or something.

The greaseball on the floor was awake now, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at my wallet that I held open in my hand. His eyes were glued to the badge that was pinned there, and if I still didn’t have my rod dangling by the trigger guard he would have gone for his. I reached down and pulled it out of the shoulder holster, then grabbed his collar and dragged him out the door.

Down on the comer was a police call box and I used it. In two minutes a squad car pulled up to the curb and a pair of harness bulls jumped out. I nodded to the driver. “Hello, Jake.”

He said, “Hi ya, Mike. What gives?”

I hoisted the greaseball to his feet. “Laughing boy tried to pull a gun on me.” I handed over the rod, a short-barreled .32. “I don’t think he has a license for it, so you can lock him up on a Sullivan charge. I’ll press charges in the morning. You know where to reach me.”

The cop took the gun and prodded the guy into the car. He was still cursing when I walked up to my heap.

 

It was early morning when I woke up to stay. Those forty-eight hours were what I needed. I took a hot and cold shower to shake the sleep out of my eyes, then stood in front of the mirror and shaved. I certainly was a mess. My eyes were still red and bleary and I felt like I was plowing my whiskers under instead of shaving them off. At least I felt better. A big plate of bacon and eggs made my stomach behave to the point where I could get dressed and start the rest of the day off with a decent meal.

Jimmy had a steak in the broiler as soon as I entered the door of his snack bar. Luckily, I like it rare and it was on deck before it was fully warmed through. While I was shoveling it down Jimmy said, “That dame in your office has been on the phone all day. Maybe you better call her back.”

“What’d she want?”

“Wondered where you were. Guess she thinks you were out with a broad somewhere.”

“Nuts. She’s always thinking something.” I finished my dessert and threw a bill down. “If she calls up again, tell her I’m on my way up to the office, will you?”

“Sure, Mr. Hammer, glad to.”

I patted my meal in place, lit up a smoke and hopped into my car. The trip downtown didn’t take long, but I was a half hour finding a parking place. When I finally barged into the office Velda looked up with those big brown eyes starting to give me hell before she even opened her mouth. When I got a girl to hold down the office I figured I’d might as well get a good-looking one as a bean head, and I sure skimmed the cream off the top. Only I didn’t figure she’d turn out to be so smart. Good-looking ones seldom are. She’s big and she’s beautiful, and she’s got a brain that can figure angles while mine only figures the curves.

“About time you got in.” She looked me over carefully for lip stick stains or whatever those tip-offs are that spell trouble for a guy. I could tell by the way she let a slow grin play around with her mouth that she decided that my time was on the job and not on the town.

When I shucked out of my coat I tossed most of the package of fifties on her desk. “Meal money, kiddo. Take expenses out of that and bank the rest. Any callers?”

She tucked the cabbage in a file and locked it. “A couple. One wanted a divorce setup and the other wanted himself a bodyguard. Seems like his girl friend’s husband is promising to chill him on sight. I sent both of them over to Ellison’s where they’d get proper treatment.”

“I wish you’d quit making up my mind for me. That bodyguard job might have been all right.”

“Uh-huh. I saw a picture of the girl friend. She’s the bosomy kind you go for.”

“Ah, bugs. You know how I hate women.”

I squeezed into the reception chair and picked up the paper from the table. I riffled through it from back to front, and as I was going to lay it down I caught the picture on the front page. It was down there in the comer, bordered by some shots of the heavyweight fights from the night before. It was a picture of the redhead lying cuddled up against the curbstone. She was dead. The caption read, HIT-AND-RUN DRIVER KILLS, ESCAPES.

“The poor kid! Of all the rotten luck!”

“Who’s that?” Velda asked me.

I shoved the paper over to her. “I was with that kid the other night. She was a streetwalker and I bought her a coffee in a hash joint. Before I left I gave her some dough to get out of the business, and look what happened to her.”

“Fine company you keep.” Her voice was sarcastic.

I got sore. “Damn it, she was all right. She wasn’t after me. I did her a favor and she was more grateful than most of the trash that call themselves people. The first time in a month of Sundays I’ve done anything halfway decent and this is the way it winds up.”

“I’m sorry, Mike. I’m really sorry, honest.” It was funny how she could spot it when I was telling the truth. She opened the paper and read the news item, frowning when she finished. “She wasn’t identified. Did you know her name?”

“Hell no. She was a redhead, so I called her Red. Let’s see that.” I went over the item myself. She was found in the street at half past two. Apparently she had been there for some time before someone had sense enough to call the cop on the beat. A guy who had passed her twice as she lay there told the cop that he thought she was a drunk who had passed out. It was reasonable enough. Over there you find enough of them doing just that. But the curious part was the complete lack of identification on her.

When I folded the paper up I said, “Look, stick around a while, I have a little walking to do.”

“That girl?”

“Yeah. Maybe I can help identify her someway. I don’t know. Call Pat and tell him I’m on my way down.”

“Okay, Mike.”

I left the car where it was and took a cab over to the red-brick building where Pat Chambers held down his office. You want to see that guy. He’s a Captain of Homicide and all cop, but you couldn’t tell it to look at him. He was young and charged with knowledge and the ambition to go with it, the best example of police efficiency I could think of. It isn’t often that you see cops hobnobbing with private dicks, but Pat had the sense to know that I could touch a lot of places outside the reach of the law, and he could do plenty for me that I couldn’t for myself. What started out as a modest business arrangement turned into a solid friendship.

He met me over in the lab where he was running a ballistics test. “Hello, Mike, what brings you around so early?”

“A problem, chum.” I flipped the paper open in front of him and pointed to the picture. “This. Have you found out about her?”

Pat shook his head. “No ... but I will. Come on in the office.” He led me into the cubbyhole off the lab and nodded to a chair. While I fired a cig he called an extension number and was connected. He said, “This is Chambers. I want to find out if that girl who was killed by a hit-and-run driver last night has been identified.” He listened a little bit, then frowned.

I waited until he hung up, then: “Anything?”

“Something unusual—dead of a broken neck. One of the boys didn’t like the looks of it and they’re holding the cause of death until a further exam is made. What have you?”

“Nothing. But I was with her the night before she was found dead.”

“So?”

“So she was a tramp. I bought her coffee in a hash house and we had a talk.”

“Did she mention her name?”

“Nope, all I got out of her was ‘Red.’ It was appropriate enough.”

Pat leaned back in his chair. “Well, we don’t know who she is. She had on all new clothes, a new handbag with six dollars and change in it, and not a scar on her body to identify her. Not a single laundry mark, either.”

“I know. I gave her a hundred and fifty bucks to get dressed up and look for a decent job. Evidently she did.”

“Getting bighearted, aren’t you?” He sounded like Velda and I got mad.

“Damn it, Pat, don’t you give me that stuff, too! Can’t I play saint for five minutes without everyone getting smart about it. I’ve seen kids down on their luck before, probably a damn sight more than you have. You think anyone would give them a break? Like hell. They play ’em for all they can get and beat it. I liked the kid; does that make me a jerk? All right, she was a hustler, but she wasn’t hustling for me and I did her a favor. Maybe she gets all wrapped up in a new dream and forgets to open her eyes when she’s crossing the street, and look what happens. Any time I touch anything it gets killed!”

“Hey, wait up, Mike, don’t jump me on it. I know how you feel... it’s just that you seemed to be stepping out of character.”

“Aw, I’m sorry, Pat. It’s kind of got me loused up.”