The Mike Hammer Collection (40 page)

I didn't need to know her name. There might have been a dozen bleached blondes in the Zero Zero, but I was willing to bet anything I had I knew who this one was. I said, “Suicide, Pat?”

He must have liked the nasal flatness of my words. He came back with, “Suicide beyond doubt, Mike. Don't try to steer this one into murder!”

“Was her name Ann Minor?”

“Yes ... you ... how did ... ?”

“Is the body at the morgue?”

“That's right.”

“Then meet me there in twenty minutes, hear?”

It took me forty-five minutes to get there and Pat was pacing up and down outside the place. When he saw my face his eyes screwed up and he shook his head disgustedly. “I hope they don't try to keep you here,” he said. “I've seen better-looking corpses than you.”

We went inside, over to the slab where the body was laid out. Pat pulled back the sheet and waited. “Know her?”

I nodded.

“Anything to do with the Sanford case?”

I nodded again.

“Damn you, Mike. One day the coroner is going to beat your head off. He's positive she was a suicide.”

I took the corner of the sheet from his hand and covered her face up again. “She was murdered too, Pat.”

“Okay, pal, let's go someplace and talk about it. Maybe over lunch.”

“I'm not hungry.” I was thinking of how she looked last night. She had wanted to be important to someone. To me. She was important to someone else, too.

Pat tugged at my sleeve. “Well, I'm hungry and murder won't spoil my dinner any. I want to know how a pretty suicide like this can be murder.”

There was a spaghetti joint a few blocks away so we walked over to it. Pat ordered a big lunch and I had a bottle of red wine for myself. After the stuff was served I started the ball rolling with “What's your side of it, Pat?”

“Her name is Ann Minor ... which you seemed to know. She worked for Murray Candid as a hostess four years. Before that a dancing career in lesser clubs and before that a tour with a carnival as a stripper. Home life nil. She had a furnished apartment uptown and the super said she was a pretty decent sort.

“The last few months she's been a little down in the dumps according to her co-workers, but nothing to positively indicate a suicide. The farewell note said she was just tired of it all, life was a bore and she was getting no place, thus the Dutch act. The handwriting checked with the signature on other documents.”

“Baloney!”

“No baloney, Mike. The experts checked it.”

“Then they'd better check it again.”

Pat let his eyes drop when he saw the set of my mouth. “I'll see that they do.” He went back to his spaghetti, forked in a mouthful, then reviewed the case. “We reconstruct it this way. Just before dawn she walked down the pier that's being dismantled off Riverside Drive, removed her hat, shoes, jacket ... laid them down on the planks with her bag on top, and jumped in.

“Apparently she couldn't swim. However, even if she could she would have drowned because her dress was caught on some bolts below the surface and held her there. About eight-thirty this morning some kids came along to do some fishing and they spotted her stuff first, then her. One of the kids called a cop who called the emergency squad. They didn't bother to work on her.”

“How long had she been dead?”

“Roughly, about four to five and a half hours.”

I poured another glass of the wine out and spilled it down. “I was with her until two-forty-five last night,” I said.

Pat's eyes blazed and he stabbed his fork into the pile of spaghetti. It could have been good but he wasn't tasting it. “Go on,” he answered.

“She found an overnight bag that belonged to Nancy. She gave it to me because before that I had asked her to poke around a little for some history on the redhead. The bag was full of baby clothes, all unused. We went up to her apartment.”

He nodded. “Was she frightened ... or remorseful?”

“When I left her she was a pretty happy girl. She was no suicide.”

“Damn it, Mike! 1....”

“When is the autopsy due?”

“Today ... right now! You got me dancing again! I wouldn't be surprised to find her full of arsenic, either!” He threw his fork down and pushed away from the table and went over to a wall phone. When he came back he grunted, “Two hours and there'll be an official report. The coroner's pulling the autopsy now.”

“I bet he won't change the verdict.”

“Why
^?
”

“Because somebody is pretty damn smart.”

“Or dumb. Maybe it's you that's dumb, Mike.”

I lit a cigarette and grinned at him, thinking of something somebody told me once about persons that drown. “I'm not so dumb, kid. Maybe we'll give the coroner a shock. I liked that blonde.”

“You think this is mixed up with Nancy, don't you?”

“Yup.”

“Positive?”

“Yup.”

“Then get me proof, Mike. I can't move without it.”

“I will.”

“Yeah, when?”

“When we get our hands on someone who knows enough to talk.”

Pat agreed with a flicker of his eyebrows. “I can see us making him talk.”

“You don't have to,” I reminded him. “When that party gets to you he'll be so happy to talk he'll spill his guts. You don't have to do a thing.”

“You're going to squeeze it out of him, I betcha?”

“Damn right, friend.”

“You know what you're bucking, of course.”

“Yeah, I know. Guys that are paying heavy for protection. Guys who can take care of themselves if that protection doesn't go through. Money boys with private armies maybe.”

“We're on touchy ground,” Pat grated.

“I know it. We're going to run into a lot of dirt unless I miss my guess. There will be people involved who will raise hell. That's where I have the edge, Pat. They can
make
you smell their stink. Me, I can tell ‘em to blow it. They can't take my job away and they can't scare me because I can'make more trouble than they can shake a stick at.”

“You're telling me!” Pat went back to his spaghetti while I finished the bottle of wine and I could almost hear the gears clicking in his head. When he finished he put down his napkin, but before he could enjoy a smoke the proprietor called him to the phone. He kicked his chair back and walked away.

Five minutes later he came back wearing a grin. “Your murder theory is getting kicked around. The men rechecked on the note. There is absolutely no doubt that the Minor girl wrote it. We had confirmation from several sources. Not a trace of forgery. You can't break it, Mike.”

I scowled at the empty glass in my hand. At least I was smart enough to know that the police labs mean what they say when a positive statement is issued.

Pat was watching me. “This takes it right out of my department, you know.”

“There's still the autopsy.”

“Want to go watch it?”

I shook my head. “No, I'll take a walk. I want to think. Supposing I call you back later. I'd like to know what's on the report.”

“Okay.” Pat checked his watch. “Give me a ring in a couple of hours. I'll be at the office.”

“One other thing....”

Pat grinned. “I was wondering when you were going to ask it.”

He was a sharp one, all right. “I haven't got the time, nor the facilities for a lot of legwork right now. How about having your wire service check the hospitals for me. See if they ever had a Nancy Sanford as a maternity case. Get the name of the man, family or anything else, will you?”

“I would have done it anyway, Mike. I'll get it off right away.”

“Thanks.”

I took the check and paid it, then said so long to Pat outside the door. For a while I strolled up the street, my hands in my pockets, whistling an aimless tune. It was a nice day, a lovely day ... a hell of a day for murder.

Suicide? Balls. They worked it so sweet you couldn't call it murder ... yet. Well, maybe you couldn't but I could. I was willing to bet my shirt that the blonde had asked the wrong questions in the wrong places. Somebody had to shut her up. It fitted, very nicely. She was trying to earn that five hundred. She got too much for her money.

When I made a complete circle around the block I ambled over to the car and got in. For a change the streets were half empty and I breezed uptown without having to stop for a red light. When I got to Ninety-sixth Street I turned toward the river, found a place to park and got out.

A breeze was blowing up from the water, carrying with it the partially purified atmosphere of a city at work. It was cool and refreshing, but there was still something unclean about it. The river was gray in color, not the rich blue it should have been, and the foam that followed the wake of the ships passing by was too thick. Almost like blood. In close to shore it changed to a dirty brown trying to wash the filth up on the banks. It was pretty if you only stopped to look at it, but when you looked too close and thought enough it made you sick.

That would be a woman's way of doing it ... a woman who had given suicide a lot of thought. Not a sudden decision, the kind that took a jump and tried to change her mind in mid-air. A suicide like this would be thought out, all affairs put in order to make it easy for those who did the cleaning up. If it was a suicide. Neat, like it had been planned for a long, long time.

My feet had carried me down to the grass that bordered the water, taking me over toward a pier that was partially ripped up. They had a watchman on it now in a brand-new shack. I was conscious of a face curling into a nasty smile. It was still there when the watchman came out, a short fat guy with a beer bottle in his hand. He must have picked me for another cop because he gave me the nod and let me walk down the runway to the end without bothering to ask questions.

I could hear the music going off in my head. It was always like that when I began to get ideas and get excited. I was getting a crazy, wild idea that might prove a point and bring Pat into it after all, then the crap would really fly. Heads would roll. They'd set up a guillotine in Times Square and the people could cheer like at a circus, then slink back and get ready to start the same thing all over again.

There was an empty peanut-butter jar with dead worms in it on top of the piling. I shook the things out and wiped the jar clean with a handkerchief until it shone, then threw the handkerchief away, too. I climbed down the supports and filled the jar nearly full before I worked my way back, then screwed the lid back on and went back to the street.

Instead of calling Pat I drove straight to his office. He shook hands and invited me down the hall where he picked up a report sheet, then took me back to his cubicle. He handed me the form. “There it is, Mike. She died by suffocation. Drowning. We called the time right, too. No doubt about it now.”

I didn't bother to read the report. Instead I tossed it back on his desk. “The coroner around, Pat?”

“He's downstairs, if he hasn't left already.”

“Call and find out.”

He was about to ask a question, but thought better of it and reached for the phone. After a minute he said, “He's still there.”

“Tell him to wait.”

“It better be good. He's pretty cranky. Besides, he's with the D.A.”

“It's good.”

Pat told the operator to hold him, his eyes never leaving mine. When he hung up he leaned forward over his desk. “What is it this time?”

I laid the jar on his desk. “Have him analyze that.”

He picked up the jar and scrutinized it, shaking it to bring the sediment to the top, frowning into the murky ooze inside the jar. When he saw I wasn't going to explain it he got up abruptly and went out the door and I heard the elevator take him downstairs.

I went through half a deck of Luckies before I heard the elevator stop again. His feet were coming toward the office fast and hard and I knew he was mad.

He was. He slammed the jar on the desk and swung around with anger written across his face. “What kind of a steer did you call that? He analyzed it all right ... he told me it was nothing but water filled with every kind of mess there was. Then he wanted to know the whys and wherefores. I looked like a damn fool. What was I going to say, that a private cop is using the police for a workbench to figure out a crazy scheme? I didn't know what I expected to find in there, but I thought it would be better than that!”

“Why didn't you ask the coroner if it was the same stuff he found in her lungs? Not her stomach, mind you, but her lungs. When you drown you suffocate because that little valve in your throat tightens up the air passage to keep anything from running into your lungs. It doesn't take much to suffocate a person ... just enough water to make that little valve jam. There's water in the stomach, but very little in the lungs. Go ahead, ask him.”

Pat's eyes were ready to pop. His teeth bared in an animal-like grin and he said, “You brainy bastard, you.”

He picked up the phone and called downstairs. The conversation didn't take more than a minute, but there was a lot of excited talk going on. He put the phone back and slid into his chair. “They're double-checking now. I think you called it.”

“I told you that before.”

“Don't go too fast, Mike. We have to wait for the report. Now tell it your own way.”