The Mike Hammer Collection (57 page)

Once more Velda said, “It
isn't
funny, Mike.”

I lit another cigarette and pushed my hat back on my head. “You'll never know how real funny it actually is, kid. You see, only one bullet killed Chester Wheeler. I always carry six in the clip and when Pat emptied it out there were only four of them.”

Velda was watching me with the tip of her tongue clenched between her teeth. There wasn't any kitten-softness about her now. She was big and she was lovely, with the kind of curves that made you want to turn around and have another look. The lush fullness of her lips had tightened into the faintest kind of snarl and her eyes were the carnivorous eyes you could expect to see in the jungle watching you from behind a clump of bushes.

I said it slowly. “If you had that gun in your hand pointed at somebody's belly, could you pull the trigger and stand ready to pull it again if you had to?”

She pulled her tongue back and let her teeth close together. “I wouldn't have to pull it twice. Not now I wouldn't.”

She was watching me as I walked across the office. I looked over my shoulder and waved so long, then closed the door fast. She still hadn't bothered to pull her dress back down, and like I said, I wasn't taking any chances.

Someday she wasn't going to get so smart with me.

Or maybe she would.

CHAPTER 2

T
he papers were full of it that night. The tabloids had me splashed all over the front pages and part of the middle section. The same guys that hung on my tail when they had wanted a story took me apart at the seams in their columns. Only one bothered to be sentimental about it. He wrote me an epitaph. In rhyme. The D.A. was probably laughing his head off.

In another hour he'd be crying in his beer, the jerk.

I finished off an early supper and stacked the dishes in the sink. They could wait. For fifteen minutes I steamed under a shower until my skin turned pink, then suffered under a cold spray for a few seconds before I stepped out and let a puddle spread around my feet. When I finished shaving I climbed into a freshly pressed suit and transferred a few hundred bucks from the top drawer to my wallet.

I took a look in the mirror and snorted. I could have been a man of distinction except for my face and the loose space in my jacket that was supposed to fit around a rod. That at least I could fix. I strapped on a mighty empty holster to fill out the space under my arm and felt better about it. I looked in the mirror again and grimaced. It was a hell of a shame that I wasn't handsome.

Last night was a vague shadow with only a few bright spots, but before I started to backtrack there was something I wanted to do. It was just past seven o'clock when I found a parking place near the hotel that had caused all the trouble. It was one of those old-fashioned places that catered to even older-fashioned people and no fooling around. Single girls couldn't even register they unless there were over eighty. Before I went in I snapped the back off my watch, pushed out the works and dropped it in my shirt pocket.

The desk clerk wasn't glad to see me. His hand started for the telephone, stopped, then descended on the desk bell three times, loud and clear. When a burly-shouldered individual who kept the lobby free of loiterers appeared the clerk looked a little better. At least his shaking stopped.

There wasn't any need to identify myself. “I lost the works out of my watch last night. I want 'em back.”

“But ... the room hasn't been cleaned yet,” he blurted.

“I want 'em now,” I repeated. I held out a thick, hairy wrist and tapped the empty case. The burly guy peered over my shoulder interestedly.

“But...

“Now.”

The house dick said, “I'll go up with 'im and we can look for it, George.”

Evidently the clerk was glad to have his decisions made for him, because he handed over the keys and seemed happy at last.

“This way.” The dick nudged me with his elbow and I followed him. In the elevator he stood with his hands behind his back and glared at the ceiling. He came out of it at the fourth floor to usher me down the hall where he put the key in the lock of number 402.

Nothing had changed. The blood was still on the floor, the beds unmade and the white powder sprinkled liberally around. The dick stood at the door with his arms crossed and kept his eyes on me while I poked around under the furniture.

I went through the room from top to bottom, taking my time about it. The dick got impatient and began tapping his fingernails against the wall. When there was no place left to look the dick said, “It ain't here. Come on.”

“Who's been here since the cops left?”

“Nobody, feller, not even the cleaning girls. Let's get going. You probably lost that watch in a bar somewhere.”

I didn't answer him. I had flipped back the covers of the bed I slept in and saw the hole right in the edge of the mattress. The slug had entered the stuffing right near the top and another inch higher and I would have been singing tenor and forgetting about shaving.

Mattress filling can stop a slug like a steel plate and it couldn't have gone in very far, but when I probed the hole with my forefinger all I felt was horsehair and coil springs. The bullet was gone. Someone had beaten me to it. Beaten me to a couple of things ... the empty shell case was gone too.

I put on a real bright act when I made like I found my watch works under the covers. I held it up for the guy to see then shoved it back in the case. He grunted. “All right, all right. Let's get moving.” I gave him what was supposed to be a smile of gratitude and walked out. He stuck with me all the way down and was even standing in the doorway to see me go down the street to my car.

Before long he was going to catch all kinds of hell.

So would the desk clerk when the cops got wise to the fact that Chester Wheeler was no more of a suicide than I was. My late friend of the night before had been very neatly murdered.

And I was due for a little bit of hell myself.

I found a saloon with an empty parking place right out in front and threw a buck on the bar. When my beer came I took a nickel from the change and squeezed into a phone booth down the end. It was late, but Pat wasn't a guy to leave his office until things were cleaned up and I was lucky this time.

I said, “Michael Q. Citizen, speaking.”

He laughed into the receiver. “How's the grocery business?”

“Booming, Pat, really booming. I have a large order for some freshly murdered meat.”

“What's that?”

“Just a figure of speech.”

“Oh.”

“By the way, how clear am I on the Wheeler death?”

I could almost see the puzzled frown on his face ... “As far as I can see you can't be held for anything. Why?”

“Just curious. Look, the boys in blue were in that room a long time before I came back to the land of the living. Did they poke around much?”

“No, I don't think so. It was pretty obvious what happened.”

“They take anything out with them?”

“The body,” he said, “your gun, a shell casing, and Wheeler's personal belongings.”

“That was all?”

“Uh-huh.”

I paused a moment, then; “Don't suicides generally leave a note, Pat?”

“Generally, yes. That happens when they're sober and there isn't a witness. If they've thought about it awhile they usually try to explain. In a fit of passion they rarely waste the time.”

“Wheeler wasn't a passionate man, I don't think,” I told him. “From all appearances he was an upright businessman.”

“I thought of that. It
was
peculiar, wasn't it? Did he look like the suicide type to you?”

“Nope.”

“And he didn't mention anything along that line beforehand. Hmmm.”

I let a few seconds go by. “Pat ... how many slugs were left in my rod?”

“Four, weren't there?”

“Correct. And I hadn't shot it since I was on the target range with you last week.”

“So ... ?” His voice had an uneasy tinge to it.

Real softly I said, “That gun never has less than six in it, chum.”

If he had been a woman he would have screamed. Instead he bellowed into the phone and I wouldn't answer him. I heard him shouting, “Mike, goddamn it, answer me ...
Mike!”

I laughed just once to let him know I was still there and hung up.

All he needed was five minutes. By that time he'd have the D.A. cornered in his office like a scared rabbit. Sure, the D.A. was big stuff, but Pat was no slouch either. He'd tell that guy off with a mouthful of words that would make his hair stand on end and the fair-haired boy of the courts wouldn't dare do a thing.

It was getting funnier all the time. I went back to the bar and drank my beer.

The after-supper crowd began drifting in and taking places at the bar. At eight-thirty I called Velda but she wasn't home. I tried again an hour later and she still wasn't there. She wasn't at the office, either. Maybe she was out hiring a sign-painter to change the name on the door.

When I finally shifted into the corner up against the cigarette machine I started to think. It didn't come easy because there hadn't been any reason to remember then and we had let the booze flow free. Last night.

Famous last words.

Last night the both of us had thrown five years to the wind and brought the war back to the present. We were buddies again. We weren't the kind of buddies you get to be when you eat and sleep and fight with a guy, but we were buddies. We were two-strong and fighting the war by ourselves. We were two guys who had met as comrades-in-arms, happy to be on the right side and giving all we had. For one night way back there we had been drinking buddies until we shook hands to go finish the war. Was that the way it was supposed to be? Did some odd quirk of fate throw us together purposely so that later we'd meet again?

Last night I had met him and drunk with him. We talked, we drank some more. Was he happy? He was after we ran into each other. Before that he had been curled over a drink at the bar. He could have been brooding. He could have been thinking. But he was happy as hell to see me again! Whatever it was he had been thinking about was kicked aside along with those five years and we had ourselves one hell of a drinking bout. Sure, we fought the war again. We did the same thing anybody else did when they caught up with someone they knew from those days. We talked it and we fought it and we were buddies again decked out in the same uniform ready to give everything for the other guy on our side whether we knew him or not. But the war had to give out sometime. The peace always has to come when people get too tired of fighting. And yet, it was the end of our talk that brought the cloud back to his eyes. He hadn't wanted it to stop or be diverted into other channels. He told me he had been in town a week and was getting set to go home. The whole deal was a business trip to do some buying for his store.

Yeah, we were buddies. We weren't long, but we were buddies good. If we had both been in the jungle and some slimy Jap had picked him off I would have rammed the butt of a rifle down the brown bastard's throat for it. He would have done the same for me, too. But we weren't in any damn jungle. We were right here in New York City where murder wasn't supposed to happen and did all the time. A guy I liked comes into my own city and a week later he's dead as hell.

One week. What did he do? What happened? Who was he with? Where was the excuse for murder, here or in Columbus, Ohio? A whole damn week. I slapped my hat on the stool to reserve it and took another few nickels from my change and wormed into the phone booth again. There was one other question, what was I going to do about it? My face started to go tight again and I knew the answer.

I dialed two numbers. The second got my man. He was a private investigator the same as I used to be except that he was essentially honest and hard-working. His name was Joe Gill and he owed me a favor that he and his staff could begin repaying as of now.

I said, “This is Mike, Joe. Remember me?”

“Hell,” he laughed, “with all your publicity how could I forget you? I hope you aren't after a job.”

“Not exactly. Look, you tied up right now?”

“Well ... no. Something on your mind?”

“Plenty, friend. You still doing insurance work?”

Joe grunted an assent. “That's
all
I'm doing. You can keep your guns and your tough guys. I'll track down missing beneficiaries.”

“Care to do me a favor, Joe?”

He only hesitated a second. “Glad to, Mike. You've steered me straight plenty of times. Just name it.”

“Swell. This guy that died in the hotel room with me, Chester Wheeler—I want some information on him. Not a history ... I just want him backtracked over the past week. He's been in town doing some buying for his store in Columbus, Ohio, and I want a record of what he'd done since he hit town. Think it can be done?”

I could hear his pencil rasping on paper. “Give me a few hours. I'll start it myself and put the chain gang out on the details. Where can I reach you?”

I thought a moment, then told him, “Try the Greenwood Hotel. It's a little dump on a side street up in the Eighties. They don't ask questions there.”

“Right. See you later.”

I cradled the receiver and picked my way back through the crowd to the bar. My hat was hanging over a pin-up lamp on the wall and my seat was occupied and the guy was spending my money for beer.

I didn't get mad, though. The guy was Pat.

The bartender put down another beer and took some more of my change. I said, “How's tricks, kid?”