The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 2 (65 page)

Nicholas Raymond got it as he stepped into the street as the light changed and his body was flung through a store window. Nobody saw the accident except a drunk halfway down the block and the car was never tracked down. The only details about him were that he was forty-two years old, a small-time importer and lived in an apartment hotel in the lower Fifties.

I told Ray Diker thanks and used his phone to call Raymond’s old address. The manager told me in a thick accent that yes, he remembered Mr. Nick-o-las Raymondo, he was the fine man who always paid his bills and tipped like a gentleman extreme. It was too bad he should die. I agreed with him, poked around for some personal information and found that he was the kind nothing can be said about. Apparently he was clean.

Finding something on McGrath was easy. The papers carried the same stuff Velda had passed to me without adding anything to it. Ray made a couple calls downstairs and supplied the rest. Walter McGrath was a pretty frequent visitor to some of the gaudier night clubs around town and generally had a pretty chick in tow. A little persuasion and Ray managed to get his address. A big hotel on Madison Avenue. The guy was really living.

We sat there a few minutes and Ray asked, “Anything else?”

“Lee Kawolsky. Remember him?”

Ray didn’t have to go to his files for that. “Good boy, Mike. It was a shame he couldn’t follow through. Broke his hand in training and it never healed properly. He could have been a champ.”

“What did he do for a living after that?”

“Let’s see.” Ray’s face wrinkled in thought. “Seems like he bartended for Ed Rooney a bit, then he was doing a little training work with some of the other fighters. Wait a sec.” He picked up the phone again, called Sports and listened for a minute to the droning voice on the other end. When he hung up he had a question in his eyes.

“What’s the pitch, Mike?”

“Like what?”

His eyes sharpened a bit as they watched me. “Lee went to work for a private detective agency that specialized in supplying bodyguards for society brawls and stuff. One of his first assignments was sticking with a kid who was killed across the river a few days ago.”

“Interesting,” I said.

“Very. How about the story angle?”

“If I knew that I wouldn’t be here now. How did he die?”

“It wasn’t murder.”

“Who says?”

He picked up a pipe, cradled it in his hand and began to scrape the bowl with a penknife. “Killers don’t drive the same beer truck for ten years. They aren’t married with five kids and don’t break down and cry on the street when they’ve had their first accident.”

“You got a good memory, kid.”

“I was at the funeral, Mike. I was interested enough to find out what happened.”

“Any witnesses?”

“Not a one.”

I stood up and slapped my hat on. “Thanks for the stuff, Ray. If I get anything I’ll let you know.”

“Need any help?”

“Plenty. There’s three names you can work on. Dig up anything good and I’ll make it worth your while.”

“All I want is an exclusive.”

“Maybe you’ll get one.”

He grinned at me and stuck the pipe in his mouth. Ray wasn’t much of a guy. He was little and skinny and tight as hell with a buck, but he could get places fast when he wanted to. I grinned back, waved and took the elevator to the street.

Dr. Martin Soberin had his office facing Central Park. It wasn’t the world’s best location, but it came close. It took in a corner, was blocked in white masonry with Venetian shuttered windows and a very discreet sign that announced his residency. The sign said he was in so I pushed open the door while the chimes inside toned my arrival.

Inside it was better than I thought it would be. There was a neat, precise air about the place that said here was a prominent medical man suited to the needs of the upper crust, yet certainly within the financial and confidential range of absolutely anybody. Books lined the walls, professional journals were neatly stacked on the table and the furniture had been chosen and arranged to put any patient at ease. I sat down, started to light a cigarette and stopped in the middle of it when the nurse walked in.

Some women are just pretty. Some are just beautiful. Some are just gorgeous. Some are like her. For a minute you think somebody slammed one to your belly then your breath comes back with a rush and you hope she doesn’t move out of the light that makes a translucent screen out of the white nylon uniform.

But she does and she says hello and you feel all gone all over.

She’s got light chestnut hair and her voice is just right. She’s got eyes to go with the hair and they sweep over you and laugh because she knows how you feel. And only for a moment do the eyes show disappointment because somehow the cigarette gets lit as if she hadn’t been there at all and the smoke from my mouth smooths out any expression I might have let show through.

“The doctor in?”

“Yes, but he’s with a patient right now. He’ll be finished shortly.”

“I’ll wait,” I said.

“Would you care to step inside while I make out a card for you?”

I took a pull on the Lucky and let it out in a fast, steady stream. I stood up so I could look down at her, grinning a little bit. “Right now that would be the nicest thing I could think of, but I’m not exactly a patient.”

She didn’t change her expression. Her eyebrows went up slightly and she said, “Oh?”

“Let’s say I’ll pay the regular rates if it’s necessary.”

The eyebrows came down again. “I don’t think that will be necessary.” Her smile was a quick, friendly one. “Is there any way I can help you?”

I grinned bigger and the smile changed to a short laugh.

“Please,” she said.

“How long will the doctor be?”

“Another half hour perhaps.”

“Okay, then maybe you can do it. I’m an investigator. The name is Michael Hammer, if it means anything to you. Right now I’d like to get some information on a girl named Berga Torn. A short while back Dr. Soberin okayed her for a rest cure at a sanitarium.”

“Yes. Yes, I remember her. Perhaps you’d better come inside after all.”

Her smile was a challenge no man could put up with. She opened the door, walked into the light again and over to a desk in the corner. She turned around, saw me standing there in the doorway and smoothed out her skirt with a motion of her hands. I could hear the static jump all the way across the room and the fabric clung even closer than it had.

“You’d be surprised how fast a person decides he really isn’t sick after all,” she said.

“What about the women patients?”

“They get sicker.” Her mouth pursed in a repressed laugh. “What are you thinking?”

I walked over to the desk and pulled up the straight-backed chair. “Why a dish like you takes a job like this.”

“If you must know, fame and fortune.” She pulled out a file case and began to thumb through the cards.

“Try it again,” I said.

She looked up quickly. “Truly interested?”

I nodded.

“I studied to be a nurse right after high school. I graduated, and quite unfortunately, won a beauty contest before I could start practicing. A week later I was in Hollywood sitting on my ... sitting around posing for stills and nothing more. Six months later I was car-hopping at a drive-in diner and it took me another year to get wise. So I came home and became a nurse.”

“So you were a lousy actress?”

She smiled and shook her head.

“It couldn’t have been that you didn’t have a figure after all?”

Her cheeks sucked in poutingly and her eyes looked up at me with a you-should-know-better expression. “Funny enough,” she said, “I wasn’t photogenic. Imagine that?”

“No, I can’t.”

She sat up with three typewritten cards in her hand. “Thank you, Mr. Hammer.” Her voice was a song of some hidden forest bird that made you stop whatever you were doing to listen. She laid the cards out in front of her, the smile fading away. “I believe this is what you came for. Now can I see your insurance credentials, and if you have your forms I’ll ...”

“I’m not an insurance investigator.”

She gave me a quizzical look and automatically gathered the cards together. “Oh ... I’m sorry. You know, of course, that this information is always confidential and ...”

“The girl is dead. She was murdered.”

She went to say something and stopped short. Then: “Police?”

I nodded and hoped she didn’t say anything more.

“I see.” Her teeth pinched her lower lip and she looked sideways at the door to her left. “If I remember I believe the doctor had another policeman in to see him not long ago.”

“That’s right. I’m following up on the case. I’d like to go over everything personally instead of from reports. If you’d rather wait for the doctor ...”

“Oh, no, I think it will be all right. Shall I read these off to you?”

“Shoot.”

“To be brief, she was in an extremely nervous condition. Overwork, apparently. She was hysterical here in the office and the doctor had to administer a sedative. Complete rest was the answer and the doctor arranged for her to be admitted to the sanitarium.” Her eyebrows pulled together slightly. “Frankly, I can’t possibly see what there is here to interest the police. There was no physical disorder except symptoms brought on by her mental condition.”

“Could I see the cards?”

“Certainly.” She handed them to me and leaned forward on the desk, thought better of it when my head turned, smiled and sat back again.

I didn’t bother with the card she had read from. The first gave the patient’s name, address, previous medical history and down at the bottom along the left side was the notation RECOMMENDED BY and next to it was the name William Wieton. The other card gave the diagnosis, suggested treatment and corroboration from the sanitarium that the diagnosis was correct.

I looked at the cards again, made a face at the complete lack of information they gave me, then handed them back.

“They help any?”

“Oh, you can never tell.”

“Would you still like to see the doctor?”

“Not specially. Maybe I’ll be back.”

Something happened to her face. “Please do.”

She didn’t get up this time. I walked to the door, looked back and she was sitting there with her chin in her hands watching me. “You ought to give Hollywood another try,” I said.

“I meet more interesting people here,” she told me. Then added, “Though it’s hard to tell on such short acquaintance.”

I winked, she winked back and I went out on the street.

Broadway had bloomed again. It was there in all its colorful glory, stretching wide-open arms to the sucker, crying out with a voice that was never still. I walked toward the lights trying to think, trying to put bits together and add pieces where the holes were.

I found a delicatessen, went in and had a sandwich. I came out and headed up Broadway, making the stops as I came to them. Two hours went by in a hurry and nothing had happened. No, I didn’t stay on the Stem because nobody would be looking for me on the Stem. Later maybe, but not now.

So I got off the Stem and went east where the people talked different and dressed different and were my kind of people. They didn’t have dough and they didn’t have flash, but behind their eyes was the knowledge of the city and the way it thought and ran. They were people who were afraid of the monster that grew up around them and showed it, yet they couldn’t help liking it.

I made my stops and worked my way down to the Twenties.

I had caught the looks, seen the nods and heard the whispers.

At any time now I could have picked the boys out of a line-up by sight from the descriptions that came to me in an undertone.

In one place something else was added. There were others to watch for too.

Two-thirty and I had missed them by ten minutes.

The next half hour and they seemed to have lost themselves.

I got back to the Stem before all of the joints started closing down. The cabbie dropped me on a corner and I started the rounds on foot. In two places they were glad to see me and in the third the bartender who had pushed a lot of them my way tried to shut the door in my face, mumbling excuses that he was through for the night. I wedged it open, shoved him back inside and leaned against it until it clicked shut.

“The boys were here, Andy?”

“Mike, I don’t like this.”

“I don’t either. When?”

“About an hour ago.”

“You know them?”

His head bobbed and he glanced past me out the side window. “They were pointed out to me.”

“Sober?”

“Two drinks. They barely touched ‘em.” I waited while he looked past me again. “The little guy was nervous. Edgy. He wanted a drink but the other one squashed it.”

Andy ran his hands down under his fat waistband to keep them still. “Mike ... nobody’s to say a word to you. This is rough stuff. Do you ... well, sort of stay clear of here until things blow over.”

“Nothing’s blowing over, friend. I want you to pass it around where it’ll get heard. Tell the boys to stay put. I’ll find them. They don’t have to go looking for me any more.”

“Jeepers, Mike.”

“Tell it where it’ll get heard.”

My fingers found the door and pulled it open. The street outside was empty and a cop was standing on the corner. A squad car went by and he saluted it. Two drunks turned the corner behind his back and mimicked him with thumbs to their noses.

I turned my key in the lock. I knew the chain should be on so I opened the door a couple of inches and said, “It’s me, Lily.”

There was no sound at first, then only that of a deeply drawn breath being let out slowly. The light from the corner lamp was on, giving the room an empty appearance. She drifted into it silently and the glow from her hair seemed to brighten it a little.

Something was tight and strange in the smile she gave me through the opening in the door. Strange, faraway, curious. Something I couldn’t put my finger on. It was there, then it was gone and she had the door unhooked and I stepped inside.

It was my turn to haul in my breath. She stood there almost breathlessly, looking up at me. “Her mouth was partly open and I could see her tongue working behind her teeth. For some reason her eyes seemed to float there, two separate dark wells that could knead your flesh until it crawled.