The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 2 (64 page)

“I don’t think so, Mike.”

“Positive.”

“Good enough.”

I ran my eyes over the copy of the medical report, folded it before I finished it and tucked it back into the envelope. “Brief me on this thing,” I said.

“There really isn’t much. She appeared before Dr. Martin Soberin for an examination, he diagnosed her case as extreme nervousness and suggested a rest cure. They mutually agreed on the sanitarium she was admitted to, an examination there confirmed Dr. Soberin’s diagnosis and that was that. She was to stay there approximately four weeks. She paid in advance for her treatment.”

If ever there was a mess, this was it. Everything out of place and out of focus. The ends didn’t even try to meet. Meet? Hell, they were snarled up so completely nothing made any sense.

“How about this Congressman Geyfey?”

“Nothing special. He was seen with her at a couple of political rallies. The man isn’t married so he’s clean that way. Frankly, I don’t think he knew anything about her.”

“This keeps getting worse.”

“Don’t get impatient. We’re only getting started. What did Pat have to say about her?”

“It’s all in writing. Probably the best parts they’re not telling. Except for her connection with Evello she didn’t seem to be out of the ordinary for a kid with her tastes. She was born in Pittsburgh in 1920. Her father was Swedish, her mother Italian. She made two trips to Europe, one when she was eight to Sweden, the next one in 1940 to Italy. The jobs she held didn’t pay the kind of money she spent, but that’s easy to arrange for a babe like that.”

“Then Evello’s the connection?”

“Evello’s the one,” I said. She looked at my face and her breathing seemed to get heavier. “He’s here in New York. Pat’ll give you the address.”

“He’s mine then?”

“Until I get around to him.”

“What’s the angle?”

“An approach. Better arrange for a regular introduction and let him do the rest. Find out who his friends are.”

Only her eyes smiled. “Think I can pull it off?”

“You can’t miss, baby, you can’t miss.”

The smile in her eyes got bigger.

“Where are you carrying the heater, kitten?”

The smile faded then. It got a little bit cold and deadly. “The shoulder rig. Left side and low down.”

“Nobody’d ever notice, kitten.”

“They’re not supposed to,” she said.

We finished eating and went back into the daylight. I watched her get into the cab the way she had got out and when the hack turned the corner I could feel the skin on my shoulder crawl thinking about where she was going. The next cab that came along I flagged down, gave him a Brooklyn address with instructions to stop by the Atlantic Avenue apartment first. The answer came fast enough when we reached the joint. The name was still on the wall but the neighbors said she had moved out during the night and the apartment was empty. A small truck with the trunks of a new customer started backing into the curb as we drove away.

The second Brooklyn address belonged to a newspaperman who had retired ten years ago. He was forty-nine years old but looked seventy. One side of his face had a scar that ran from the corner of his eye to his ear and down to his mouth. If he took off his shirt he could show you the three dimples in his stomach and the three larger angry pink scars in his back. One arm couldn’t move at the elbow. He hadn’t retired because he had wanted to. Seems like he had written an expose about the Mafia one time.

When I came out it was two hours later and I had a folio of stuff under my arm that would have been worth ten grand to any good slick magazine. I got it free. I took another cab back uptown, sat in the back room of a drug store a buddy of mine ran, went through it twice, then wrapped it and mailed it back to the guy I got it from. I went into a bar and had a beer while the facts settled down in my mind. While I sat there I tried to keep from looking at myself in the mirror behind the back bar but it didn’t work. My face wasn’t pretty at all. Not at all. So I moved to a booth in the back that had no mirrors.

Evello’s name was there. Billy Mist’s name was there. In the very beginning. They were punks then but they showed promise. The guy in Brooklyn said you didn’t pick up the connections any more because most likely the boys had new assignments. They had been promoted. That was a long time ago so by now they should be kings. There were other names that I didn’t know, but before long I’d know. There were empty spaces where names should be but couldn’t be supplied and those were in the throne room. Nobody knew who the royalty was. They couldn’t even suspect.

Big? Sure, they were big. But then even the big ones would hear the word and their bigness would start to leak out all the holes. I was thinking about it and wondering if they had heard it yet when Mousie Basso came in.

Guys like Mousie you see around when there’s not too much light and never see around when the heat’s on. Guys like Mousie you see in the papers when the police pull in their dragnet at a time when there were no holes in the walls for them to duck into. In the faces of guys like Mousie you can tell the temperature of the underworld cauldron or read your popularity with the wrong people by the way they shy away or hang on to you.

From Mousie’s face I knew I was hot.

I knew, too, I wasn’t very popular.

Mousie took one look at me sitting there, shot a quick look at the door and would have been out if I hadn’t been reaching inside my coat for a smoke at the time. Mousie got white past the point of being pale when he saw where my hand was and when I gave him the nod to come over, he didn’t walk, he slunk.

I said, “Hello, Mousie,” and the corner of his mouth made a fast, fake smile and he slid into the booth hoping nobody had seen him.

He grabbed a nervous cigarette that didn’t do him a bit of good, shook out the match and flicked it under the table. “Look, Mr. Hammer, you and me ain’t got a thing to talk about. I ...”

“Maybe I like your company, Mousie.”

His lips got tight and he tried hard to keep from watching my hands. Half under his breath he said, “You ain’t good company to be seen with.”

“Who says?”

“Lots of people. You’re nuts, Mr. Hammer ...” He waited to see what would happen and when nothing did, said, “you go blowing off your stack like you been doing and you’ll be wearing a D.O.A. tag on your toe.”

“I thought we were friends, kid.” I bit into my sandwich and watched him squirm. Mousie wasn’t happy. Not even a little bit.

“Okay, so you did me a favor. That doesn’t make us that kind of buddies. If you want trouble you go find it by yourself. Me, I’m a peace-loving guy, I am.”

“Yeah.”

Mousie’s face sagged under the sarcasm. “So I’m a chiseler. So what? I don’t want shooting trouble. If I’m small potatoes that’s all I want to be. Nobody gets bumped for being small potatoes.”

“Unless somebody sees them talking to big potatoes,” I grinned at him.

It scared him, right down to his shoes. “Don’t ... don’t kid around with me, will you? You don’t need me for nothing. Besides which if you do I ain’t giving or selling. Lay off.”

“What did you hear, Mousie?”

His eyes were quick things that swept the whole room twice before they came back to me. “You know.”

“What?”

“You’re going to scramble some people.”

“What people.” I didn’t ask him. I told him to say it.

He whispered the word. “Mafia.” Then as if it had been a key he swallowed he spilled over with the things he had been holding down while his eyes bulged in his head. His hands grabbed the edge of the table and hung on while the butt he had started to smoke burned through the tablecloth. “You’re nuts. You went and got everybody hopped up. Wherever you go you’ll be poison. Is it true you got something on the wheels? You better clam if you have. That kind of stuff is sure to lead to trouble. Charlie Max and Sugar ...” The mouth stopped and stayed open.

“Say it, Mousie.”

Maybe he didn’t like the way I had edged forward. Maybe he saw the things that should have been written across my face.

The bulging eyes flattened out, sick. “They’re spending advance money along the Stem.”

“Moving fast?”

I could hardly hear his voice. “Covering the bars and making phone calls.”

“Are they in a hurry?”

“Bonus, probably.”

Mousie wasn’t the same guy who came in. He was the mouse, but a mouse who didn’t care any more. He was the mouse who spilled his guts to the cat about where the dog was and if the dog found out, he was dead. He reached for the remains of the cigarette, tried to drag some life into it and couldn’t make it. I shook a new one out of my pack and handed it to him. The light I held out was steady, but he couldn’t keep the tip of the butt in it. He got it going after a few seconds and stared into the flame of the lighter.

“You ain’t scared a bit, are you?” He looked at his own hands, hating himself. “I wish I was that way. What makes a guy like me, Mr. Hammer?”

I could hate myself too. “Guys like me,” I said.

The laugh came out his nose like he didn’t believe me. “One guy,” he said, “just one big guy and everybody gets hopped up. For anybody else, even the mayor, they wouldn’t even blink, but for you they get hopped up. You say you’re going to scramble and they make like a hillbilly feud. The word goes out and money starts passing hands. Two of the hottest rods in town combing the joints looking for you and you don’t even get bothered enough to stop eating. They know you, Mr. Hammer. Guess maybe everybody knows something about you. That’s why Charlie Max and Sugar Smallhouse got the job. They don’t know nothing about you. They’re Miami boys. You say you’re going to do something, you do it and always there’s somebody dead and it ain’t you. Now the word has it you’re going to scramble the top potatoes. Maybe you will and maybe you won’t. With anybody else I’d take bets on your side, only this time it’s different.”

He stopped and waited to see what I’d say. “It’s not so different.”

“You’ll find ouf.”

He saw my teeth through the smile and shuddered. It does funny things to some people. “The world still goes,” I said. “From now on to the end they’ll have to stay away from windows and doors. They’ll never be able to go out alone. Every one of the pack will have to keep a rod in his fist and wait. They’ll have to double check everything to make sure I won’t find out who they are and no matter how hard they try I’ll reach them. Their office boys’ll try to check me off but they’re like flies on the wall. I’m going to the top. Straight up. I’m finding out who they are and when I do they’re dead. I know how they operate ... they’re bad, but they know me and I’m worse. No matter where I find them, or when ... any time, any place ... that’s it. The top dogs, those are the ones I want. The slime who pull the strings in the Mafia. The kings, you understand? I want them.”

My grin got bigger all the time. “They’ve killed hundreds of people, see, but they finally killed the wrong dame. They tried to kill me and they wrecked my car. That last part I especially didn’t like. That car was hand built and could do over a hundred. And for all of that a lot of those top dogs are paying through the kiester starting now. That’s the word.”

Mousie didn’t say anything. He stood up slowly, his teeth holding his bottom lip to keep it up. He jerked his head in what was supposed to be a so long and slid out from behind the table. I watched him walk to the door, forgetting the sandwich that lay on top of the counter. He opened the door slowly, walked out to the sidewalk and turned east, not looking to either side of himself. When he had gone I got up myself, paid my bill and took the change to a phone booth.

Pat was home and still up. I said, “It’s me, pal. Velda told me you heard the news.”

He sounded a little far away. “You don’t have much sense, do you?”

“They’re looking for me. Two boys by the name of Charlie Max and Sugar Smallhouse.”

“They have reps.”

“So I hear. What kind?”

“Teamwork. Max is the one to watch. They’re killers, but Smallhouse likes to do it slow.”

“I’ll watch Max then. What else?”

“Charlie Max is an ex-cop. He’ll probably have a preference for a hip holster.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.”

I slapped the receiver back on the hook. The dime plinked into the box and the gaping mouth of the thing laughed at me silently. Well, in a way it was a pretty big joke. The army of silent men couldn’t stay silent. I didn’t know them but they knew me. They were just like the rest: crumbs who knew how to play a one-sided game—but when they were playing somebody who could be twice as silent, twice as dirty and twice as quick they broke in the middle and started begging. Someplace in the city were people with names and some without names. They were organized. They had big money in back of them. They had political connections. They had everything it took to stay where they were except one thing and that was me with my own slab in a morgue. They knew what to expect from the cops and what to expect from the vast machine that squatted on the Potomac but they didn’t know what to expect from me. Already one guy had told them, a punk with crooked yellow teeth who had had a gun on me and lost it. Then they’d ask around if they didn’t already know and the stories they’d hear wouldn’t be pretty. The fear they handed out so freely to others they’d taste themselves, knowing that before long, if I was still alive, they’d have to chew the whole lump and swallow it.

At the cigarette counter I picked up a fresh deck of Luckies, went out into the air and headed for the Stem. Out there were the hunters spending advance money. Cold boys with reps who didn’t know the whole score. They knew the word was out and wanted to cut it off.

But they didn’t hear the whole word. Before the night was over they’d hear a lot of things that might make them want to change their minds. One of the things was the rest of the word. They’d find out the hunters were being hunted.

Just for the fun of it.

CHAPTER 8

The
Globe
gave me the information on Nicholas Raymond. It was an old clipping that Ray Diker dragged out for me and which wouldn’t have been printed at all if there hadn’t been an editorial tie-up. The press was hot on hit-and-run drivers and used his case to point up their arguments about certain light conditions along the bridge approaches.