The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 2 (54 page)

From far off came the singer’s voice rising to the pitch of the piano. Down the hall the guy was still tilted back reading. I knocked on the door.

A muffled voice asked who it was. I knocked again.

This time the door opened a crack. I had my foot in the opening before she could close it. She looked like she was trying hard to scream. I said, “I’m a friend, Georgia.”

Stark terror showed in her eyes at the mention of her name. She backed away until the fear reached her legs, then collapsed on a box. I went all the way in and shut the door.

Now the figure from the mist had a face. It wasn’t a nice face. Up close it showed every year and experience in the tiny lines that crisscrossed her skin. At one time it had been pretty. Misery and fear had wiped all that out without leaving more than a semblance of a former beauty. She was small and fighting to hold her figure. None of the artifices were any good. The red hair, the overly mascaraed eyes, the tightly corseted waist were too plainly visible. I wondered why the management even bothered with her. Maybe she sang dirty songs. That always made a hit with the customers who were more interested in lyrics than music.

The kind of terror that held her was too intense to last very long. She managed to say “Who ... are you?”

“I told you I was a friend.” There was another box near the door and I pulled it over. I wanted this to be fast. I sat down facing the door, a little behind it. “Ed Teen’s outside.”

If I thought that would do something to her I was wrong. Long-suffering resignation made a new mask on her face. “You’re afraid of him, aren’t you?”

“Not any more,” she replied simply. The mascara on her lashes, suddenly wet, made dark patches under her eyes. Her smile was a wry, twisted thing that had no humor in it. “It had to come sometime,” she said. “It took years to catch up with me and running never put it behind me.”

“Would you like to stop running?”

“Oh, God!” Her face went down into her hands.

I leaned on my knees and made her look at me. “Georgia ... you know what’s happened, don’t you?”

“I read about it.”

“Now listen carefully. The police will be here shortly. They’re your friends too if you’d only realize it. You won’t be hurt, understand! Nobody is going to hurt you.” She nodded dumbly, the dark circles under her eyes growing bigger. I said, “I want to know about Charlie Fallon. Everything. Tell me about Fallon and Grindle and Teen and Link and anybody else that matters. Can you do that?”

I lit a cigarette and held it out to her. She took it, holding her eyes on the tip while she passed her finger through the thin column of smoke. “Charlie ... he and I lived together. He was running the rackets at the time. He and Lou and Ed worked together, but Charlie was the top man.

“It ... it started when Charlie got sick. His heart was bad. Lou and Ed didn’t like the idea of doing all the work so they ... they looked for a way to get rid of him. Charlie was much too smart for them. He found out about it. At the time, the District Attorney was trying his best to break up the organization and Charlie saw a way to ... to keep the two of them in line. He was afraid they’d kill him ... so he took everything he had that would incriminate Ed and Lou, things that would put them right in the chair, and brought them to Toady Link to be photographed. Toady put them on microfilms.

“Charlie told me about it that night. We sat out in the kitchen and laughed about it. He thought ... he had his partners where they could never bother him again. He said he was going to put the microfilms in a letter addressed to the District Attorney and send it to a personal friend of his to mail if anything ever happened to him.

“He did it, too. He did it that same night. I remember him sitting there doing all his correspondence. It was the last letter he ever wrote. He intended to wait awhile, then tell Lou and Ed about it, but something else happened he didn’t foresee. Toady Link saw a way to work himself into the organization. He went to Ed and told him what Charlie had done.

“That’s ... where I came into it. Lou came for me. He threatened me. I was afraid. Honest, it wasn’t my fault ... I couldn’t help myself. Lou ... would have killed me if I didn’t do what he said! They wanted to kill Charlie so they wouldn’t be suspected at all. They knew he had frequent attacks and had to take nitroglycerin tablets and they made me steal the tablets from his pockets. God, I couldn’t help myself! They made me do it! Charlie had an attack the next day and died in the theater. God, I didn’t mean it, I had to do it to stay alive!”

“The bastards!” The word cut into her sobbing. “The lousy miserable bastards. Toady pulled a double-cross as long as your arm. He must have made two prints of those films. He kept one himself and let the boys know about it, otherwise they would have knocked him off long ago. That was his protection. That’s what Teen thought I took out of his apartment!”

Georgia shook her head, not knowing what I was talking about, but it made sense to me. It made a damn lot of sense now.

I said, “After Fallon died ... what happened? What did the District Attorney do?”

“Nothing. Nothing happened.”

The evil of it was like the needle-point of a dagger digging into my brain. The incredible evil of it was right there in front of my face and needed nothing more than a phone call to make it a fact.

All along I had tripped over that one stumbling block that threw me on my face. I had missed it because it had been so goddamn small, but now it stuck out like a huge white rock with a spotlight on it.

I grabbed Georgia by the arm and lifted her off the box. “Come on, we’re getting out of here. Anything you want to take with you?”

She reached out automatically for her hat and purse, then I shoved her out the door. The hallway was empty. There was no guy in the chair down under the light. A pair of tom-toms made the air pulsate with a harsh jungle rhythm that seemed to enjoy echoing through the corridor as if it were in its natural element.

I didn’t like it a bit.

The red exit light pointed the way out. If Ed Teen was waiting to see Georgia he was going to have a long wait. Maybe he thought he was the only one looking for her and he didn’t have to hurry. I pulled the door open and stepped out ahead of her, feeling for the step.

The voice behind the gun said, “This the one, Ed?”

And Ed said, “That’s the one. Take him.”

I was keyed up for it. There was no surprise to it except for them. A gun is a gun and when one is rammed in your ribs you aren’t supposed to scream your guts out while you slam into a woman in the darkness and hit the pavement as the flame blasts out above your head.

The .45 was a living thing in my hand cutting its own lightning and thunder in the rain. I rolled, scrambled to my feet and ran in a crouch only to roll again. They were shouting at each other, running for the light that framed the end of the alley. The bright flashes of gunfire at close range made everything blacker than before. I saw the legs go past my face and grabbed at them, slashing at a head with the barrel of my gun. Back in the shadows Georgia’s voice was a wail of terror. There was the sound of other feet hugging the wall and for an instant a shape was there in the frame. I had time to get in one shot that sparked off the brick wall then a body slammed into mine that was all feet and something heavy that pounded at my head.

The cursing turned into a hoarse wheeze when my fingers raked across a throat and held on. But a foot found my stomach and my fingers slid off. They had me down on my back; an arm was under my chin wrenching my head to the side and the guy was telling the other one to give it to me.

Before he could a siren moaned and wheels screamed on the pavement. There was only that one way out. They ran for it and I saw them stop completely when the beams of three torches drenched them. Georgia was still a shrill voice buried under the shadows and Pat was calling to me. His light picked me out of the rubble and he jerked me to my feet.

I said, “She’s back there. Go find her.”

“Who?”

“Fallon’s old girl friend.”

He said something I couldn’t catch and went back for her, letting me lean up against the wall until my breath came back. I heard him in there behind the garbage can, then he came back with her in his arms. She hung there limply, completely relaxed.

I didn’t want to ask it. “Is she ... dead?”

“She’s all right. Passed out, I think.”

“That’s good, Pat. You don’t want anything to happen to her. Right now she’s the most precious thing you have. The D.A. is going to love her.”

“Mike, what the hell is this about?”

“She’ll tell you, Pat. Treat her nice and she’ll tell you all about it. When you hear her story you’re going to have Ed Teen just a step away from the chair. He was an accomplice before the fact of Fallon’s murder and she’s the girl who’s going to prove it.”

I followed him back to the street, my feet dragging. The two boys were trying to explain things to a cop who didn’t want to listen. Pat passed Georgia into a car and told the driver to get her down to headquarters. He looked at the big boys and they started to sweat. The rain was beating in their faces, but you could still tell they were sweating.

I said, “They’re Teen’s men, Pat. Ed was here to supervise things himself. He was real smart about it too. I had a man trying to run down the woman while Ed was doing the same thing. He guessed who was doing it. He came to make sure I didn’t get away with it. He’s gone now, but you won’t have any trouble picking him up. An hour ought to do it.”

The crowd had gathered. They fought for a look, standing on their toes to peer over shoulders and ask each other what had happened. Cookie was on the edge and I waved him over. He had my coat in his hand and I put it on. “Here’s the guy I was telling you about, Pat. I’d appreciate it if you’d let him in on the story before it gets out to the papers. Think you can?”

“Who’s going to tell the story ... you?”

“No ... I’m finished, kid. It’s all over now. Let Georgia tell it. She had to live with it long enough; she ought to be glad to get it off her chest. I’m going home. When you get done come on up and we’ll talk about it.”

Pat made a study of my face. “All this ... it had something to do with Decker?”

“It had a lot to do with Decker. We just couldn’t see it at first.”

“And it’s finished now?”

“It’s finished.”

I turned around and walked through the crowd back to my car. The rain didn’t matter now. It could spend its fury on me if it wanted to. The city was a little bit cleaner than it was before, but there was still some dirt under the carpet.

Back uptown I found a drugstore that was open all night and went into the phone booth. I dialed the operator and got a number out on the Island. It rang for a few minutes and the voice that answered was that of a tired man too rudely awakened. “Mr. Roberts?”

“Speaking.”

“This is Mike Hammer. I was going to call you earlier but something came up. If you don’t mind, there’s something I’d like to ask you. It’s pretty important.”

His voice was alert now. “I don’t mind a bit. What is it?”

“During your term in office you conducted a campaign to get rid of Fallon and his gang. Is that right?”

“Yes, quite right. I wasn’t very successful.”

“Tell me, did you ever have any communication from Fallon about that?”

“Communication?”

“A letter.”

He thought a moment, then: “No ... no, I didn’t.” Then he thought again. “Now that you mention it ... yes, there was a peculiar incident at one time. An envelope was in my waste basket. It was addressed to me and had Fallon’s home address on it. I recognized the address, of course, but since he lived in an apartment hotel that was fairly prominent I didn’t give it another thought. Besides, Fallon was dead at that time.”

“I see. Well, thanks for your trouble, Mr. Roberts. Sorry I had to bother you.” It was a lie. I wasn’t a bit sorry at all.

“Perfectly all right,” he said, and hung up.

And I had the answer.

I mean I had all of it and not just part of it like I had a minute before and my brain screamed a warning for me to hurry before it was too late even though it knew that it was already too late.

I cursed the widow-makers and the orphan-makers and every goddamn one of the scum that found it so necessary to kill because their god was a paper one printed in green. But I didn’t curse the night and the rain any more. It kept the cars off the street and gave me the city for my own where red lights and whistles didn’t mean a thing.

It gave me a crazy feeling in my head that pushed me faster and faster until the car was a mad dervish screaming around corners in a race with time. I left it double-parked outside my apartment and ran for the door. I took the stairs two at a time, came out on my floor with the keys in my hand reaching out for the lock.

I didn’t stop to feel the gimmick on the lock. I turned the key, shoved the door open and pushed in with my gun in my fist and she was there like I knew she’d be there and it wasn’t too late after all. The nurse was face down on the floor with her scalp cut open, but she was breathing and the kid was crying and pulling at her dress.

“Marsha,” I said, “you’re the rottenest thing that ever lived and you’re not going to live long.”

There was never any hate like hers before. It blazed out of those beautiful eyes trying to reach my throat and if ever a maniac had lived she was it. She dropped the knife that was cutting so neatly into the sofa cushion and got up from her crouch like the lovely deadly animal she was.

I looked at the partial wreckage of the room and the guts of the chairs that were spread over the floor. “I should have known, kid. God knows it slapped me in the face often enough. No man would cut up a cushion as neat as that. You’re doing almost as nice a job here as you did in Toady’s place. You’re not going to find what you’re looking for, Marsha. They were never hidden. You couldn’t believe that everybody’s not like yourself, could you? You had to think that anybody who saw those films would try to make them pay off like you did.”

She started to tremble. Not from fear. It was an involuntary spasm of hate suffusing her entire body at once. I laughed at her. Now I could laugh.