The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 2 (77 page)

I thought I heard voices and one was Velda’s. She kept calling to me and I couldn’t answer back. Somebody was hurting her and I mouthed silent curses while I fought invisible bonds that held me tied to the ground. She was screaming, her voice tortured, screaming for me and I couldn’t help her. I strained and kicked and fought but the ropes held until I was breathless and I had to lie there and listen to her die.

I opened my eyes and looked into the darkness, knowing it was only a dream but going nuts because I knew it could be real. My breathing was harsh, laboring, drying my mouth into leathery tissue.

The covers were pulled up to my neck, but under them there was nothing. The skin over my bruised muscles felt cool and pliable, then I found the answer with the tips of my fingers as they slid along flesh that had been gently oiled with some aromatic unguent. From somewhere the faint clean odor of rubbing alcohol crossed my nostrils, disturbing because of its unusual pungent purity. It was the raw smell of fine chemistry, the sharp, natural smell you might expect, but don’t find in fresh, virgin forests.

Slowly, waiting for the ache to begin, I pulled my arm free, laid it across the bed, felt the warmth of a body under the back of my hand, then jerked it away as she almost screamed and pulled out of reach to sit there bolt upright with eyes still dumb with sleep reflecting some emotion nobody in the world would be able to put his finger on.

“Easy, Lily ... It’s only me.”

She let her breath out with more of a gasp than a sigh, trying to wipe the sleep from her eyes. “You ... scared me, Mike. I’m sorry.” She smiled, sat on the edge of the bed and put her shoes on.

Her dreams must have been pretty rough too. She had taken care of me, lay there while I slept until her eyes closed too. She was a good kid who had been through the mill and was scared to death of a return trip. She wasn’t going to get it from me.

I said, “What time is it?”

Lily checked her watch. “A little after nine. Can I get you something to eat?”

“What happened to the day?”

“You slept through. You groaned and talked ... I didn’t want to wake you up, Mike. Can I get you some coffee?”

“I can eat. I need something in my gut.”

“All right. I’ll call you.” Her mouth creased in a smile, one corner of it pulling up with an odd motion. I let my eyes drift over her slowly. As they moved her hands tightened at her throat and the strangeness came back in her face. The smile disappeared into a tight grimace and she twisted around to go out the door.

Some of them are funny, I thought. Beautiful kids who would do anything one minute and scared stiff of doing it the next.

I heard her in the kitchen, got up, showered, managed to get the brush off my face and climbed into some clean clothes. I could hear things frying when I got on the phone and dialed Michael Friday’s number.

The voice that answered was deep and guarded. It said, “Mr. Evello’s residence,” but the touch of Brooklyn in the tone was as plain as the badge it wore.

“Mike Hammer. I’m looking for Michael Friday, Carl’s sister. She there?”

“I’m afraid ...”

“Is Captain Chambers there?”

It caught the voice off base a second. “Who’d you say this was?”

“Hammer. Mike Hammer.”

There was a muffled consultation, then: “This is the police, Hammer, what did you want?”

“I told you. I want Friday.”

“So do we. She isn’t around.”

“Damn!” It exploded out of me. “You staked out there?”

“That’s right. We’re covering the place. You know where the girl is?”

“All I know is that she wants to see me bad, feller. How can I reach Chambers?”

“Wait a minute.” The phone blanked out again and there was more talk behind a palm stretched over the mouthpiece. “You gonna be where you are a while?”

“I’ll be here.”

“Okay, the sergeant here says he’ll try to get him for you. What’s your number?”

“He knows it. Tell him to call me at home.”

“Yeah. You get anything on that Friday dame, you pass it this way.”

“No leads?”

“No nothing. She disappeared. She came back here after she left headquarters the other day, stayed a couple of hours and grabbed a cab into Manhattan.”

“She was coming to see me,” I said.

“She was what!”

“I was out. She left a note and took off again. That’s why I called her place.”

“I’ll be damned. We checked all over the city to find out where she went to.”

“If she’s using cabs maybe you can pick her up from when she left here.”

“Sure, sure. I’ll pass it along.”

The phone went dead and I socked it back in its hanger. Lily called me from the kitchen and I went out and sat down. She had it ready on the table, that same spread like she thought I was two more guys and instead of it looking good my stomach tried to sour at the sight of it. All I could think of was another one gone. Another kid cut down by a pack of scrimy hoods who wanted that two million bucks’ worth of hell so bad they’d kill and kill and kill until they had every bit of it.

I smashed my fist into the table saying the same dirty words over and over until Lily’s face went a pasty white and she backed against the wall. I was staring into space, but she was occupying the space ahead of me and whatever she saw going across my face made her shrink back even further.

How stupid were they? How far did they have to go? Wasn’t their organization big enough to know every damn detail inside and out? They wouldn’t be reaching the stuff now, not with the cops going over every inch of the
Cedric.
The whole shebang was coming apart at the edges and instead of piling up the counts against them they ought to be on the run.

Lily slid out of sight. She came up against me and reached out her hand until it was on my shoulder. “Mike ...”

I looked at her without seeing her.

“What is it, Mike?”

The words started out of me. They came slow at first, then turned into a boiling current that was taking in the whole picture. I was almost finished with it when I could feel the sharp points of the gimmicks sticking out and ran my mind back to pick them up. Then I sat and cursed myself because I wasn’t fast enough. They weren’t there any more.

There was just one minor little detail. Just a little one I should have thought of long ago. I said to Lily, “Did you go to see Berga Torn in the sanitarium at all?”

Her eyebrows knit, puzzled. “No, I didn’t.” She pinched her lower lip between her teeth. “I called her twice and the second time she mentioned that someone had been to see her.”

I was half out of my chair. “Who? Did she say who?”

She tried hard for it, reaching back through the days. “I think she did. I honestly didn’t pay any attention at the time. I was so worried about what was happening it didn’t register.”

I had her by the shoulders, squeezing my fingers into her skin. “The name’s important, kid. That somebody tipped the whole thing. Right then was the beginning of murder that hasn’t ended yet. As long as you got that name in your head a killer is going to be prowling around loose and if he ever knows you might have it you’re going the same way Berga did.”

“Mike!”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m not letting you out of my sight for a minute any more. Damn it, you got to dig that name out. You understand that?”

“I ... think I do. Mike, please ... you’re hurting me.”

I took my hands down and she rubbed the places where they had bitten in. There were tears in the corners of her eyes, little drops of crystal that swelled and I took a step closer to her. I reached out again, more gently this time, close enough for a second to taste the faint crispness of rubbing alcohol.

Lily smiled again. It was like the first time. The kind of smile you see on the face of a person waiting for death and ready to receive him almost gratefully. “Please eat something, Mike,” she whispered.

“I can‘t, kid. Not now.”

“You have to have something in your stomach.”

Her words sent something racing up my back. It was a feeling you get when you know you have something and you can’t wait to get it out of you. You stand there and wait for the final answer, waiting, waiting, waiting.

It was there in my hand when the phone set up a jangling that wouldn’t stop. I grabbed the extension and Pat barked a short hello. I asked him, “Did you find Friday?”

He held his voice down. He sat on it all the way but the roughness showed through anyway. “We didn’t find a damn thing. Nothing, got that? No Friday, no jug of hop, no nothing. This town’s a madhouse. The feds are cutting a swath through the racket a mile wide and we still haven’t come up with the stuff. Mike, if that stuff sits there ...”

“I know what it means.”

“Okay then, are you holding anything back?”

“You know better.”

“Then what about Friday? If she was up there ...”

“She wanted to see me. That’s all I know.”

“You know what I think?”

“I know what you think,” I repeated softly. “Billy Mist ... where’s he?”

“You’d never guess.”

“Tell me.”

“Right now he’s having supper at the Terrace. He’s got an alibi for everything we can throw at him and nobody’s going to break it for a damn long while. He’s got people in Washington batting for him and boys with influence pulling strings so hard they’re knocking us silly ... Mike ...”

“Yeah?”

“Find Velda?”

“Not yet, Pat. Soon.”

“You’re not saying it right, friend.”

“I know.”

“In case it makes you feel better, I put men on it.”

“Thanks.”

“Figured it might not be holing out like you expected.”

“Yeah.”

“Something else you better know. Your joint’s been covered. Three guys were stationed around waiting for you. The feds picked them up. One of the muscle lads is in the morgue.”

“So?”

“There may be more. Keep your eyes open. You may have a tail or two if you leave. At least one’ll be our man.”

“They’re sticking close to me.” I said the words through my teeth.

“You’re primed for the kill, Mike. You know why? I’ll tell you. News has it you were part of the thing from the beginning. You’ve been fooling me and everybody else, but they got the pitch. Tell me one thing ... have you been shoving it in me?”

“No.”

“Good enough. We’ll keep playing it this way then.”

“What about the
Cedric?”

He cursed under his breath. “It’s screwballed, Mike. It’s the whole, lousy, stinking reason behind all this. The ship is in a Jersey port right now undergoing repairs. She was a small liner before the war and was revamped to carry troops. All the staterooms were torn out of her and junked to make it over into a transport. The stuff might have been there once, but it’s been gone a long time now. None of this should’ve happened at all.”

I let a few seconds pass before I spoke. I was feeling cold and dead all over. “You got a lot of people you’ve been wanting to get.”

“Yeah, a lot of them.” His voice was caustic. “A lot of punks. A lot of middle-sized boys. A few big ones. Hydra even lost a few of her heads.” He laughed sarcastically. “But Hydra is still alive, buddy. She’s one big head who doesn’t care how many of her little heads she loses. We can chop all the little ones off and in a few months or years she’ll grow a whole new crop as vicious as ever. Yeah, we’re doing fine. I thought we did good when I had a look at the shiv hole in Carl. I felt great when I saw Affia’s face. They were nothing, Mike. You know how I feel now?”

I didn’t answer him. I put the phone back while he was still talking. I was thinking of Michael Friday’s wet, wet mouth and the way Al Affia had looked and what Carl Evello had told me. I was thinking of undercurrents that could even work through an organization like the Mafia and I knew why Michael Friday had tried to see me.

Lily was a drawn figure slumped in the chair. Her fingers kept pushing the silken strands away from her eyes while she watched me. I said, “Get your coat.”

“They’ll be waiting for us outside?”

“That’s right, they’ll be waiting.”

Even the last shred of hope she had nursed so long left her face. There was a dullness in her eyes and in the way she walked.

“We’ll let them wait,” I said, and she turned around and grinned with some of the life back in her.

While I waited for her I turned out the light and stood in front of the window watching the city. The monster squirmed, its bright-colored lights marking the threshing of its limbs, a sprawling octopus whose mouth was hidden under a horribly carved beak. The mouth was open, the beak ready to rip and tear anything that stood in its way. It made sounds out there, incomprehensible sounds that were the muted whinings of deadly terror. There were no spoken words, but the sounds were enough. The meaning was clear.

“I’m ready, Mike.”

She had on the green suit again, trimly beautiful, her hair gone now under a pert little hat with a feather in it. The expression on her face said that if she must die it would be quick and clean. And dressed. She was ready. We both were ready. Two very marked people stepping out to look for the mouth of the octopus.

We didn’t go down the stairs. We went up to the roof and crossed the abutments between the apartments. We found the door we wanted through the roof of a building a hundred yards down and used that. We took the elevator to the basement and went out through the back. The yard there was an empty place, too steeped in darkness to reflect any of the window lights above. The wall was head-high brick, easy to get over. I pushed Lily up, got over myself and helped her down. We felt our way around the wall until we reached the other basement door but the luck we had had bent a little around a lock under the knob.

I was ready to start working on it when I heard the muffled talk inside and the luck unbent a little bit. I whispered to Lily to keep quiet and pushed her against the side of the building. The talk got louder, the lock clicked and somebody shoved the door open.

The stream of light that flooded the yard didn’t catch us. We stayed behind the door and waited. The kid with the wispy mustache backed out swearing under his breath while he tugged at a leash and for a second I was ready to jump him before the racket started. Lily saw it too and grabbed my hand so hard her nails punched holes into my skin. Then the kid was out and walking toward the wall in back with so much to say about people who have cats taken for a walk on a leash that he never saw us go through the door at all.