The Mike Hammer Collection (68 page)

By the end of the fourth bout everybody who was going to be there was there. The two welters who had waltzed through the six rounds went past me into the hall behind the wall trailing their managers and seconds. I got up and joined the procession. It led to a large, damp room lined with cheap metal lockers and wooden plank benches with a shower room spilling water all over the floor. The whole place reeked of liniment and sweat. Two heavies with bandaged hands were playing cards on the bench keeping score with spit marks on the floor.

I walked over to one of the cigar-smoking gents in a brown striped suit and nudged him with a thumb. “Where's Rainey?”

He shifted the cigar to the other side of his mouth and said, “Inna office, I guess. You gotta boy here tonight?”

“Naw,” I told him. “My boy's in bed wita cold.”

“Tough. Can't maka dime that way.”

“Naw.”

He shifted the cigar back bringing an end to that. I went looking for the office that Rainey was inna. I found it down at the end of the hall. A radio was playing inside, tuned to a fight that was going on in the Garden. There must have been another door leading to the office because it slammed and there was a mumble of voices. One started to swear loudly until another told him to shut up. The swearing stopped. The voices mumbled again, the door slammed, then all I heard was the radio blaring.

I stood there a good five minutes and heard the end of the fight. The winner was telling his story of the battle over the air when the radio was switched off. I opened the door and walked in.

Rainey was sitting at a table counting the receipts for the night, stacking the bills in untidy piles and keeping the tally in a small red book. I had my hand on the knob and shut the door as noiselessly as I could. There was a barrel bolt below the knob and I slid it into the hasp.

If Rainey hadn't been counting out loud he would have heard me come in. As it was, I heard him go into the five thousand mark before I said, “Good crowd, huh?”

Rainey said, “Shut up,” and went on counting.

I said, “Rainey.”

His fingers paused over a stack of fives. His head turned in slow motion until he was looking at me over his shoulder. The padding in his coat obscured the lower half of his face and I tried to picture it through the back window of a sedan racing up Thirty-third Street. It didn't match, but I didn't care so much either.

Rainey was a guy you could dislike easily. He had one of those faces that looked painted on, a perpetual mixture of hate, fear and toughness blended by a sneer that was a habit. His eyes were cold, merciless marbles hardly visible under thick, fleshy lids.

Rainey was a tough guy.

I leaned against the door jamb with a cigarette hanging from my lips, one hand in my pocket around the grip of the little .25. Maybe he didn't think I had a gun there. His lip rolled up into a snarl and he reached under the table.

I rapped the gun against the door jamb and even through the cloth of the coat you could tell that it was just what it was. Rainey started to lose that tough look. “Remember me, Rainey?”

He didn't say anything.

I took a long shot in the dark. “Sure, you remember me, Rainey. You saw me on Broadway today. I was standing in front of a plate-glass window. You missed.”

His lower lip fell away from his teeth and I could see more of the marbles that he had for eyes. I kept my hand in my pocket while I reached under the table and pulled out a short-nosed .32 that hung there in a clip.

Rainey finally found his voice. “Mike Hammer,” he said. “What the hell got into you?”

I sat on the edge of the table and flipped all the bills to the floor. “Guess.” Rainey looked at the dough then back to me.

The toughness came back in a hurry. “Get out of here before you get tossed out, copper.” He came halfway out of his seat.

I palmed that short-nosed .32 and laid it across his cheek with a crack that split the flesh open. He rocked back into his chair with his mouth hanging, drooling blood and saliva over his chin. I sat there smiling, but nothing was funny.

I said, “Rainey, you've forgotten something. You've forgotten that I'm not a guy that takes any crap. Not from anybody. You've forgotten that I've been in business because I stayed alive longer than some guys who didn't want me that way. You've forgotten that I've had some punks tougher than you'll ever be on the end of a gun and I pulled the trigger just to watch their expressions change.”

He was scared, but he tried to bluff it out anyway. He said, “Why don‘tcha try it now, Hammer? Maybe it's different when ya don't have a license to use a rod. Go ahead, why don'tcha try it?”

He started to laugh at me when I pulled the trigger of the .32 and shot him in the thigh. He said, “My God!” under his breath and grabbed his leg. I raised the muzzle of the gun until he was looking right into the little round hole that was his ticket to hell.

“Dare me some more, Rainey.”

He made some blubbering noises and leaned over the chair to puke on the money that was scattered around his feet. I threw the little gun on the table. “There's a man named Emil Perry. If you go near him again I'll put the next slug right where your shirt meets your pants.”

I shouldn't have been so damn interested in the sound of my own voice. I should have had the sense to lock the other door. I should've done a lot of things and there wouldn't have been anybody standing behind me saying, “Hold it, brother, just hold it right there.”

A tall skinny guy came around the table and took a long look at Rainey who sat there too sick to speak. The other one held a gun in my back. The skinny one said, “He's shot! You bastard, you'll catch it for this.” He straightened up and backhanded me across the mouth nearly knocking me off the table. “You a heist artist? Answer me, damn you!” The hand lashed out into my mouth again and this time I did go off the table.

The guy with the gun brought it down across the back of my neck throwing a spasm of pain shooting through my head and shoulders. He stood in front of me this time, a short pasty-faced guy with the urge to kill written all over him. “I'll handle this, Artie. These big boys are the kind of meat I like.”

Rainey retched and moaned again. I picked myself up slowly and Rainey said, “Gimme the gun. Lemme do it. Goddamn it, gimme that gun!” The skinny guy put his arms around his waist and lifted him to his feet so he could hobble over to the wall where I was.

The guy with the automatic in his hand grinned and took a step nearer. It was close enough. I rammed my hand against the slide and shoved it back while his finger was trying like hell to squeeze the trigger. It didn't take much effort to rip it right out of his hand while I threw my knee between his legs into his groin. He hit the floor like a bag of wet sand and lay there gasping for breath.

Someday the people who make guns will make one that can't be jammed so easily. The skinny guy holding Rainey let go and made a dive for the .32 on the table.

I shot him in the leg too.

That was all Rainey needed. The toughness went out of him and he forgot about the hole in his thigh long enough to stagger to his chair and hold his hands up in front of him, trying to keep me away. I threw the automatic on the table with the .32.

“Somebody told me you boys were pretty rough,” I said. “I'm a little disappointed. Don't forget what I told you about Emil Perry.”

The other guy with the hole in his leg sobbed for me to call a doctor. I told him to do it himself. I stepped on a pack of ten-dollar bills and they tore under my shoe. The little guy was still vomiting. I opened the door and looked back at the three tough guys and laughed. “A doctor'll have to report those gunshot wounds,” I reminded them. “It would be a good idea to tell him you were cleaning a war souvenir and it went off.”

Rainey groaned again and clawed for the telephone on the table. I was whistling when I shut the door and started back toward my car. All that time gone to waste, I thought. I had been playing it soft when I should have played it hard.

There had been enough words. Now the fun ought to start.

CHAPTER 8

I
was in bed when Joe called. The alarm had been set for eleven-thirty and was five minutes short of going off. I drawled a sleepy hello and Joe told me to wake up and listen.

“I'm awake,” I said. “Let's hear it.”

“Don't ask me how I got this stuff. I had to do some tall conniving but I got it. Emil Perry has several business accounts, a checking account for his wife and a large personal savings account. All of them except his own personal account were pretty much in order. Six months ago he made a cash withdrawal of five thousand bucks. That was the first. It's happened every other month since then, and yesterday he withdrew all but a few hundred. The total he took out in cash was an even twenty thousand dollars.”

“Wow,” I said. “Where did it go?”

“Getting a line on his personal affairs wasn't as easy as I thought. Item one, he has a wife and family he loves almost as much as his standing in the community. Item two, he likes to play around with the ladies. Item three, put item one and two together and what do you have?”

“Blackmail,” I said. “All the setup for blackmail. Is that all?”

“As much as I had time for. Now, if there's nothing else on your mind and I hope there isn't, I'll be seeing you never again.”

“You're a real pal, Joe. Thanks a million.”

“Don't do me any more favors, Mike, hear?”

“Yeah, I hear. Thanks again.”

There was too much going on in my head to stay in bed. I crawled under the shower and let it bite into my skin. When I dried off I shaved, brushed my teeth and went out and had breakfast. Fat little Emil scared to death of Rainey. Fat little Emil making regular and large withdrawals from the bank. A good combination. Rainey had to get dough enough to throw in the kitty to build that arena some way.

I looked out the window at the gray sky that still had a lot of snow in it, thinking that it was only the beginning. If what I had in mind worked out there ought to be a lot more to come.

The little .25 was still in the pocket of my jacket and it slapped against my side as I walked out to the elevator. The streets were clear and I told the boy to take off the chains and toss them in the trunk. He made himself another couple of bucks. When I backed out of the garage I drove across to Broadway and turned north pointing for the Bronx.

This time the big sedan with the gold initials was gone. I drove around the block twice just to be sure of it. All the blinds on the upper floor were drawn and there was a look of desertion about the place. I parked on the corner and walked back, turning in at the entrance.

Three times I lifted the heavy bronze knocker, and when that didn't work I gave the door a boot with my foot. A kid on a bicycle saw me and shouted, “They ain't home, mister. I seen 'em leave last night.”

I came down off the stoop and walked over to the kid. “Who left?”

“The whole family, I guess. They was packing all kinds of stuff in the car. This morning the maid and the girl that does the cleaning left too. They gimme a quarter to take some empty bottles back to the store. I kept the deposit too.”

I fished in my pocket for another quarter and flipped it to him. “Thanks, son. It pays to keep your eyes open.”

The kid pocketed the coin and took off down the street, the siren on the bike screaming. I walked back up the path to the house. A line of shrubs encircled the building and I worked my way behind them, getting my shoes full of snow and mud. Twice I stopped and had a look around to be sure there weren't any nosy neighbors ready to yell cop. The bushes did a good job. I felt all the windows, trying them to see if they were locked. They were.

I said the hell with it and wrenched a stone out of the mud and tapped the glass a good one. It made a racket but nobody came around to investigate. When I had all the pieces picked out of the frame I grabbed the sill and hoisted myself into the room.

If sheet-covered chairs and closed doors meant what it looked like, Emil Perry had flown the coop. I tried the lamp and it didn't work. Neither did the phone. The room I was in seemed to be a small study, something where a woman would spend a lot of time. There was a sewing machine in the corner and a loom with a half-finished rug stretched out over nails in the framework.

The room led into a hallway of doors, all closed. I tried each one, peering into the yellow light that came through the blinds. Nothing was out of place, everything had been recently cleaned, and I backed out a little bit madder each time.

The hallway ran into a foyer that opened to the breezeway beside the house. On one side I could see the kitchen through a small window in the wall. On the other side a heavily carpeted flight of stairs led to the next floor.

It was the same thing all over again. Everything neat as a pin. Two bedrooms, a bathroom, another bedroom and a study. The last door faced the front of the house and it was locked.

It was locked in two places, above and below the knob.

It took me a whole hour to get those damn things open.

No light at all penetrated this room. I flicked a match on my thumbnail and saw why. A blackout shade had been drawn over the other shade on each of the two windows. It didn't hurt to lift them up because nobody could see in through the outermost shade.

I was in Emil Perry's own private cubicle. There were faded pictures on the wall and some juicy calendar pinups scattered around on the tables and chairs. A day bed that had seen too many years sagged against one wall. Under one window was a desk and a typewriter, and alongside it a low, two-drawer filing cabinet. I wrenched it open and pawed through the contents. Most of it was business mail. The rest were deeds, insurance papers and some personal junk. I slammed the drawers shut and started taking the place apart slowly.