The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 2 (18 page)

I waited a long minute before I said, “Okay, it’s us. I want it that way anyhow.”

Velda slid off the desk and reached for my hand. I squeezed it hard, happy as hell I had the sense to realize that I knew what I wanted at last. She said it very simply. “I love you, Mike.”

I had her in my arms, searched for her mouth and found it, a warm mouth with full, ripe lips that burned into my soul as they fused with mine. I tasted the love she offered and gave it back with all I had to give, crushing her until her breath came in short, quick jerks.

I held her face in my hands and kissed her eyes and her cheeks, listened to her moan softly and press herself closer and closer. I was lucky as hell and I knew it.

She opened her eyes when I held her off. I dropped my hand in my pocket and took out the box that I had picked up that afternoon. When I pressed the button the lid flew up and the sapphire threw back a perfect star. My fingers felt big and clumsy when I took it out and slipped it over her finger.

You don’t have to speak at a time like that. Everything has been said and if anything remains it’s written there in a silent promise your heart makes and that’s all there is to it. Velda looked at it with a strange wonder for a long time before she kissed me again.

It was better than the last time.

It told her everything she wanted to know and no matter what happened now nothing would ever change.

“We have to go,” I said.

She snapped out the lights while I waited at the door and we went down the elevator together. The watchman gave me the okay sign, so I knew nobody had been near my car while I was gone. When we were back in the fog I told her about Pat’s having kept a man on Oscar’s house and she picked it right up.

“Maybe ... maybe we’ll be the first.”

“I’m hoping that,” I said.

“What will they look like?”

“I don’t know. If Moffit had them in his pocket, then they were in a package or an envelope big enough to fit in there. It may be that we’re barking up the wrong tree. They might have been on microfilm.”

“Let’s hope we’re right.”

About two blocks away I ran the car in between a couple of parked trucks and waved her out. “We’re taking the long way around this time.”

“Through the alley?”

“Uh-huh. I don’t like the idea of using the front door. When we reach the opening between the buildings duck in and keep on going.”

Velda felt for my hand and held on to it. For all the world we might have been just a couple of dopes out for a walk. The fog was a white tube all around us, but it could be hiding a lot of things beside us. We crossed the street, came up around the subway kiosk and walked in the protection of the wall, the two of us searching for the narrow passageway that led behind the buildings.

As it was, we almost passed it. I stepped in holding Velda’s hand and the darkness swallowed us up. For two or three minutes we stood there letting our eyes accustom themselves to this deeper gloom, then edged forward slowly, picking our way through the trash that had accumulated over the years. Animals and people had made a barely perceptible path through the center of the litter and we followed it until we stood behind the building and could feel our way along the alley by sticking close to the rotted planking that formed the wall of the yards behind the houses.

Velda was fishing in her handbag and I told her, “No lights. Just keep looking for a pile of bottles. There’s a door in the wall behind it and that’s the place.”

I tried to judge the distance from that other night and found little to remember. Soft furry things would squeal and run across our feet whenever we disturbed the junk lying around. Tiny pairs of eyes would glare at us balefully and retreat when we came closer. A cat moved in the darkness and trapped a pair of eyes that had been paying too much attention to us and the jungle echoed with a mad death cry.

Velda tugged my hand and pointed to the ground. “Here’re the bottles, Mike.” She dropped my hand to walk around them. “The door is still open.”

I pushed her through into the yard and we held still, taking in the black shadow of the building. The back door still swung open on one hinge. How many people lived here, I thought. How long ago was it when this dirty pile of brick and mortar was a home besides being a house? I went up the short flight of steps and took the flashlight from my pocket.

Velda flashed hers on the wall beside the door, illuminating a printed square of cardboard tacked to the framework. It read, THIS BUILDING HAS BEEN CONDEMNED FOR OCCUPANCY. A paragraph explained why and a rubber stamp signature made it official.

Ha.

The air had a musty odor of decay that collected in the long hall and clung to the walls. There was a door that led to the cellar, but the stairs were impenetrable, piled high with an unbelievable collection of scrap. Velda opened the door to the room that faced the backyard and threw her spot around the walls. I looked in over her shoulder and saw a black, charred mass and the remains of some furniture. It must have been a year or more since that room had started to burn, and nobody had been in it since. It was amazing to me that the house still stood.

Halfway down the hall there was a doorframe but no door and the room was stacked with old bedframes, a few mattresses left to the fleas and nothing worth stealing. The next room was, or had been, Oscar’s. I had my hand on the knob when Velda grabbed me and we froze there.

From somewhere in the upper recesses of the house came a harsh, racking cough and the sound of someone vomiting.

I heard Velda take a deep breath of relief. “Drunk,” she said.

“Yeah.” I went back to the door. A plain skeleton key unlocked it and we stepped inside, locking it again behind us. Velda went to the windows, and tucked the shade in so there would be no chance of our lights being seen from the outside. Then we started to take that room apart.

Oscar’s effects were collecting dust in the police storeroom, but it was unlikely that they had been in his bag or among his clothes. If they had been I would have found them the first time. We peeled the covers off the bed, found nothing and put them back. We felt in the corners and under things. I even tore the molding off the wall and shoved my hand behind it. There was nothing there, either.

Velda was working her way along the rear wall. She called softly, “Mike, come here a minute.”

I followed the track of light to where she was fiddling with some aged draperies that had been tacked to the wall in a vain attempt to give a tapestry effect. She had one side pulled away and was pointing to it. “There used to be a door here. It led to that storeroom on the other side.”

“Umm. This house was a one-family job at one time.”

“Do you suppose....”

“That it’s in there?” I finished. She nodded. “We better look. This room is as bare as a baby’s spanked tail.”

The two of us wormed out into the hall and shut the door. Velda led the way with her light and took a cautious step over the sill into the room beyond. From upstairs the coughing came again. I banged my shin against an iron bedpost and swore softly.

It only took ten minutes to go over that room, but it was long enough to see that nothing had been put in or taken out in months. A layer of dust covered everything; the junk was attached to the walls with thousands of spiderwebs. The only prints in the grime on the floor were those we had made ourselves.

I hated to say it; Velda hated to hear it. “Not a damn thing. Oscar never had those papers.”

“Oh, Mike!” There Was a sob in her voice.

“Come on, kid, we’re only wasting time now.”

The flashlight hung in her hand, the penny-sized beam a small, lonely spot on the floor, listlessly trying to add a bit of brightness to a night that was darker than ever now.

“All right, Mike,” she said. “There must be other places for it to be.”

The guy upstairs coughed again. We would have paid no attention to him except that we heard the thump of his feet hitting the floor then the heavy thud as he fell. The guy started cursing then was still.

It wasn’t a conscious thing that held us back; we just stood there and listened, not scared, not worried, just curious and cautious. If we hadn’t stopped where we were at the moment we did we would have walked right into the mouth of hell.

The front door opened and for a brief interval the Trench Coats were dimly silhouetted against the gray of the fog outside. Then the door closed and they were inside, motionless against the wall.

I did two things fast. I grabbed Velda and pulled out the .45.

Why did I breathe so fast? I hadn’t done a thing and yet I wanted to pant my lungs out. They were on fire, my throat was on fire, my brain was on fire. The gun that I used to be able to hold so still was shaking hard and Velda felt it too. She slid her hand over mine, the one that squeezed her arm so hard it must have hurt, and I felt some of the tension leave me.

Velda wasn’t shaking at all. Trench Coats moved and I heard a whispered voice. Something Velda did made a metallic snap. My brain was telling me that now it had come, the moment I had waited for. Trench Coats. Gladow and Company. The hammer and sickle backed up with guns. The general’s boys.

They came for me! Even in the fog they had managed to follow me here and now they were ready to try again.
The third time they won’t miss.
That was the common superstition, wasn’t it? It was to be at close quarters and a crossfire with me in the middle.

I could feel my teeth grinding together. A hot wave of hate, so violent that it shook me from top to bottom, swept through my body. Who the hell were they supposed to be? Did they expect to come in and find me with my back to the door? Was I supposed to be another sap ... the kind of guy who’d give people like them the old fighting chance ... a gesture of sportsmanship? I should take a chance on dying like that?

They went in the room then, softly, but not so softly that my ears couldn’t follow every step they took. I could hear their breathing coming hard, the scuff of leather against wood. I even heard the catch of the flashlight when it snapped on.

Very slowly I jacked the hammer of the .45 back. My hand told Velda to stay there. Just stay there and shut up. I bent down and unlaced my shoes, stepped out of them and into the hall. I lay on my stomach looking into the room, the .45 propped on my forearm. The light of the flash made a circuit of the wall then stopped on the draperies that covered up the opening to the other room. Trench Coat who didn’t have a flash stepped forward to pull the drapes down.

And Velda was in there waiting for me.

I said, “Looking for me, Martin?” The sudden shift of the flash and the lance of flame that spit from his gun came at the same time. I heard the bullets smack the wall over my head. He fired at the door where my belly should have been, mouthing guttural, obscene curses.

Then I shot him. I aimed a little below and inside the red eye of his gun barrel and over the blast of the .45 I heard his breath leave him in a wheezing shriek that died in a bubble of blood that came to his mouth. His rod went off once, a bullet ripped into the floor, and Trench Coat dropped.

The other one didn’t stay in the room. I heard cloth rip, feet stumble and a heavy body slam against the wood. The other killer had gone into the room with Velda!

I was on my feet trying to decide. I had to decide! Good God, I had to get him before he saw her. If I went in through either door he’d get me and I had to go! I could feel him waiting for me, the darkness screening him completely. He knew I’d come and he knew he’d get me.

I walked toward the door. I didn’t bother trying to be quiet.

I stepped into the doorway.

The crack of the gun was a flat noise that echoed once and was gone. There was no streak of flame, only that sudden, sharp sound and a peculiar hiss that seemed out of place. I felt no shock, no pain, only a sudden tensing of the muscles and a stillness that was nearly audible.

I must have caught it, I thought. It wasn’t like this before. The last time it hurt. I tried to raise my hand and it came up slowly, effortlessly. In the room a gun clattered on the bare planking and was followed immediately by a soft thunk.

She seemed far away, so far away. “Mike?”

I couldn’t get the breath out of my lungs at first. “You ... all right, Velda?”

“I killed him, Mike.”

Dear God, what was there to say? I reached for her and folded her against my chest feeling her sob softly. I grabbed her flash and threw it on Trench Coat. Martin Romberg lay on his face with a hole in his back. She must have held it right against his spine when she pulled the trigger. That’s why I didn’t see the flash.

I straightened Velda up and pulled her toward the door. “Come on. We can’t stay here.” I found my shoes and yanked them on without bothering to tie them.

It was easier going out. It always is. The fog was still there, rolling in over the walls, sifting down between the buildings. Our eyes, so long in the dark, could see things that were hidden before and we raced down that back alley heading for that narrow slit a block away from the house.

The curious had already started their pilgrimage toward the sound of the shooting. A police car whined through the night, its light a blinking eye that cleared the way. We lost ourselves in the throng, came out of it and found the car. Two more police cars passed us as we started to cut back to the land of the living on the other side of town.

Velda sat stiff and straight staring out the window. When I looked down she still held the gun in her hand. I took it away from her and laid it on the seat. “You can file another notch on it, kid. That makes two.”

I gave it to her brutally hoping it might snap her out of it. She turned her head and I saw that her mouth had taken on a smile. She picked up that nasty little .32 automatic and dropped it in her handbag. The snap catch made the same metallic sound that I had heard back there in the room. “My conscience doesn’t hurt me, Mike,” she said softly.

I patted her hand.

“I was afraid I wouldn’t be quick enough. He never saw me. He stood in the center of the room covering both entrances and I knew what he was waiting for and I knew you’d come after him. He would have killed you, Mike.”