The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 2 (13 page)

“Sure, Mike. That’s social, but I know a little about them. Why?”

“Ethel Brighton’s on the outs with her father. Did it ever make the papers?”

I heard him chuckle a second. “Getting tony, aren’t you, kid? Well, part of the story was in the papers some time ago. It seems that Ethel Brighton publicly announced her engagement to a certain young man. Shortly afterwards the engagement was broken.”

“Is that all?”

“Nope,” he grunted, “the best is yet to come. A little prying by our diligent Miss Carpenter who writes the social chatter uncovered an interesting phase that was handled just as interestingly. The young man in question was a down-and-out artist who made speeches for the Communist Party and was quite willing to become a capitalist by marriage. He was a conscientious objector during the war though he probably could have made 4-F without trouble. The old man raised the roof but there was nothing he could do. When he threatened to cut Ethel off without a cent she said she’d marry him anyway.

“So the old man connived. He worked it so that he’d give his blessing so long as the guy enlisted in the army. They needed men bad so they took him and as soon as he was out of training camp he was shipped overseas. He was killed in action, though the truth was that he went AWOL during a battle and deserved what he got. Later Ethel found out that her father was responsible for everything but the guy’s getting knocked off and he had hoped for that too. She had a couple of rows with him in public, then it died down to where they just never spoke.”

“Nice girl,” I mused.

“Lovely to look at anyway.”

“You’ll never know. Well, thanks, pal.”

He stopped me before I could hang up. “Is this part of what you were driving at the other day . . . something to do with Lee Deamer?” His voice had a rasp.

“Not this,” I said. “It’s personal.”

“Oh, well call me any time, Mike.” He sounded relieved.

And so the saga of one Ethel Brighton. Nice girl turned dimwit because her old man did her out of a marriage. She was lucky and didn’t know it.

I looked at my watch, remembered that I had meant to buy Velda lunch and forgot, then went downstairs and ate by myself. When I finished the dessert I sat back with a cigarette and tried to think of what it was that fought like the hammers of hell to come through my mind. Something was eating its way out and I couldn’t help it. I gave up finally and paid my check. There was a movie poster behind the register advertising the latest show at the house a block over, so I ambled over and plunked in a seat before the show started. It wasn’t good enough to keep me awake. I was on the second time around when I glanced at the time and hustled into the street.

The Oboe Club had been just another second-rate saloon on a side street until a wandering reporter happened in and mentioned it in his column as a good place to relax if you liked solitude and quiet. The next day it became a first-rate nightclub where you could find anything but solitude and quiet. Advertising helped plenty.

I knew the headwaiter to nod to and it was still early enough to get a table without any green passing between handshakes. The bar was lined with the usual after-office crowd having one for the road. There wasn’t anyone to speak to, so I sat at the table and ordered a highball. I was on my fourth when Ethel Brighton came in, preceded by the headwaiter and a few lesser luminaries.

He bowed her into her seat, then bowed himself out. The other one helped her adjust her coat over the back of the chair. “Eat?” I asked.

“I’ll have a highball first. Like yours.” I signaled the waiter and called for a couple more.

“How’d the donations come?”

“Fine,” she said, “even better than I expected. The best part is, there’s more where that came from.”

“The party will be proud of you.” She looked up from her drink with a nervous little smile.

“I ... hope so.”

“They should. You’ve brought in a lot of mazuma.”

“One must do all one can.” Her voice was a flat drone, almost machine-like. She picked up her glass and took a long pull. The waiter came and took our orders, leaving another highball with us.

I caught her attention and got back on the subject. “Do you ever wonder where it all goes to?”

“You mean ... the money?” I nodded between bites. “Why . . . no. It isn’t for me to think about those things. I only do as I’m told.” She licked her lips nervously and went back to her plate.

I prodded her again. “I’d be curious if I were in your shoes. Give a guess, anyway.”

This time there was nothing but fear in her face. It tugged at her eyes and mouth, and made her fork rattle against the china. “Please . . .”

“You don’t have to be afraid of me, Ethel. I’m not entirely like the others. You should know that.”

The fear was still there, but something else overshadowed it. “I can’t understand you ... you’re different. It’s well....”

“About the money, give a guess. Nobody should be entirely ignorant of party affairs. After all, isn’t that the principle of the thing ... everybody for everybody? Then you’d have to know everything about everybody to be able to really do the party justice.”

“That’s true.” She squinted and a smile parted her lips. “I see what you mean. Well, I’d guess that most of the money goes to foster the schools we operate ... and for propaganda, of course. Then there are a lot of small things that come up like office expenses here and there.”

“Pretty good so far. Anything else?”

“I’m not too well informed on the business side of it so that’s about as far as I can go.”

“What does Gladow do for a living?”

“Isn’t he a clerk in a department store?”

I nodded as if I had known all along. “Ever see his car?”

Ethel frowned again. “Yes. He has a new Packard, why?”

“Ever see his house?”

“I’ve been there twice,” she said. “It’s a big place up in Yonkers.”

“And all that on a department store clerk’s salary.”

Her face went positively white. She had to swallow hard to get her drink down and refused to meet my eyes until I told her to look at me. She did, but hesitantly. Ethel Brighton was scared silly ... of me. I grinned but it was lost. I talked and it went over her head. She gave all the right answers and even a laugh at one of my jokes, but Ethel was scared and she wasn’t coming out of it too quickly.

She took the cigarette I offered her. The tip shook when she bent into the flame of my lighter. “What time do you have to be there?” I asked.

“Nine o‘clock. There’s . . . a meeting.”

“We’d better go then. It’ll take time getting over to Brooklyn.”

“All right.”

The waiter came over and took away a ten spot for his trouble while the headboy saw us to the door. Half the bar turned around to look at Ethel as she brushed by. I got a couple of glances that said I was a lucky guy to have all that mink on my arm. Real lucky.

We had to call the parking lot to get her car brought over then drove the guy back again. It was a quarter after eight before we pointed the car toward the borough across the stream. Ethel was behind the wheel, driving with a fixed intensity. She wouldn’t talk unless I said something that required an answer. After a while it got tiresome so I turned on the radio and slumped back against the seat with my hat down over my eyes.

Only then did she seem to ease up. Twice I caught her head turning my way, but I couldn’t see her eyes nor read the expression on her face. Fear. It was always there. Communism and Fear. Green Cards and Fear. Terror on the face of the girl on the bridge; stark, unreasoning fear when she looked at my face. Fear so bad it threw her over the rail to her death.

I’d have to remember to ask Pat about that, I thought. The body had to come up sometime.

The street was the same as before, dark, smelly, unaware of the tumor it was breeding in its belly Trench Coat was standing outside the door seemingly enjoying the night. Past appearance didn’t count. You showed your card and went in the door and showed it again. There was the same girl behind the desk and she made more of me than the card I held. Her voice was a nervous squeak and she couldn’t sit still. Deliberately, I shot her the meanest grin I could dig up, letting her see my face when I pulled my lip back over my teeth. She didn’t like it. Whatever it was scared her, too.

Henry Gladow was a jittery little man. He frittered around the room, stopped when he saw us and came over with a rush. “Good evening, good evening, comrades.” He spoke directly to me. “I am happy to see you again, comrade. It is an honor.”

It had been an honor before, too.

“There is news?” I screwed my eyebrows together and he pulled back, searching for words until he found them. “Of course. I am merely being inquisitive. Ha, ha. We are all so very concerned, you know.”

“I know,” I said.

Ethel handed him another of those envelopes and excused herself. I watched her walk to a table and take a seat next to two students where she began to correct some mimeographed sheets. “Wonderful worker, Miss Brighton,” Gladow smiled. “You would scarcely think that she represents all that we hate.”

I made an unintelligible answer.

“You are staying for the meeting?” he asked me.

“Yeah, I want to poke around a little.”

This time he edged close to me, looking around to see if there was anyone close enough to hear. “Comrade, if I am not getting too inquisitive again, is there a possibility that ... the person could be here?”

There it was again. Just what I wanted to know and I didn’t dare ask the question. It was going to take some pretty careful handling. “It’s possible,” I said tentatively.

He was aghast. “Comrade! It is unthinkable!” He reflected a moment then: “Yet it had to come from somewhere. I simply can’t understand it. Everything is so carefully screened, every member so carefully selected that it seems impossible for there to be a leak anywhere. And those filthy warmongers, doing a thing like that . . . so cold-blooded! It is simply incredible. How I wish the party was in power at this moment. Why, the one who did that would be uncovered before the sun could set!”

Gladow cursed through his teeth and pounded a puny, carefully tended fist into his palm. “Don’t worry,” I said slowly.

It took ten seconds for my words to sink in. Gladow’s little eyes narrowed in pleasure like a hog seeing a trough full of slops. The underside of his top lip showed when he smiled. “No, comrade. I won’t worry. The party is too clever to let a direct representative’s death go unpunished. No, I won’t worry because I realize that the punishment that comes will more than equal the crime.” He beamed at me fatuously. “I am happy to realize that the higher echelon has sent a man of your capacity, comrade.”

I didn’t even thank him. I was thinking and this time the words made sense. They made more than sense ... they made murder! Only death is cold-blooded, and who was dead? Three people. One hadn’t been found. One was found and not identified, even by a lousy sketch. The other was dead and identified. He was cold-bloodedly murdered and he was a direct representative of the party and I was the guy looking for his killer.

Good Lord, the insane bastards thought I was an MVD. man!

My hands started to shake and I kept them in my pockets. And who was the dead man but Charlie Moffit! My predecessor. A goddamned Commie gestapo man. A hatchetman, a torpedo, a lot of things you want to call him. Lee ought to be proud of his brother, damn proud. All by himself he went out and he knocked off a skunk.

But I was the prize, I was the M.V.D. guy that came to take his place and run the killer down. Oh, brother! No wonder the jerks were afraid of me! No wonder they didn’t ask my name! No wonder I was supposed to know it all.

I felt a grin trying to pull my mouth out of shape because so much of it was funny. They thought they were clever as hell and here I was right in the middle of things with an in that couldn’t be better. Any good Red would give his shirt to be where I was right this minute.

Everything started to come out right then, even the screwy test they put me through. A small-time setup like this was hardly worth the direct attention of a Moscow man unless something was wrong, so I had to prove myself.

Smart? Sure, just like road apples that happen behind horses.

Now I knew and now I could play the game. I could be one of the boys and show them some fun. There were going to be a lot of broken backs around town before I got done.

There was only one catch I could think of. Someplace was another M.V.D. laddie, a real one. I’d have to be careful of him. At least careful that he didn’t see me first, because when I met up with that stinkpot I was going to split him right down the middle with a .45!

I had been down too deep in my thoughts to catch the arrival of the party that came in behind me. I heard Gladow extending a welcome that wasn’t handed out to just everybody. When I turned around to look I saw one little fat man, one big fat man and a guy who was in the newspapers every so often. His name was General Osilov and he was attached to the Russian Embassy in Washington. The big and little fat men were his aides and they did all the smiling. If anything went on in the head of the bald-headed general it didn’t show in his flat, wide face.

Whatever it was Henry Gladow said swung the three heads in my direction. Two swung back again fast leaving only the general staring at me. It was a stare-down that I won. The general coughed without covering his mouth and stuck his hands in the pockets of his suitcoat. None of them seemed anxious to make my acquaintance.

From then on there was a steady flow of traffic in through the door. They came singly and in pairs, spaced about five minutes apart. Before the hour was out the place was packed. It was filled with the kind of people you’d expect to find there and it would hit you that when the cartoonists did a caricature of a pack of shabby Reds lurking in the shadow of democracy they did a good job.

A few of them dragged out seats and the meeting was on. I saw Ethel Brighton slide into the last chair in the last row and waited until she was settled before I sat down beside her. She smiled, let that brief look of fear mask her face, then turned her head to the front. When I put my hand over hers I felt it tremble.