The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 2 (36 page)

“Ask her.”

“I’m asking you.”

Pat grinned again. “The old man disinherited her when she wouldn’t marry the son of his friend. He swore she’d never see a penny of his dough, so now she’ll only bet when a Scobie horse is running and with what she knows about horses, she’s hard to fool. Every time she wins she sends a telegram to the old boy stating the amount and he burns up. Don’t ask her to tip you off though. She won’t do it.”

“Why doesn’t the D.A. use her to get an inside track on the wire rooms?”

“He did, but she’s too well known now. A feature writer for one of the papers heard about the situation, and gave it a big play in a Sunday supplement a few years ago, so she’s useless there.”

I leaned back in my chair and stared at the ceiling. “Texas gal. I like the way they’re built.”

“Yeah, big.” Pat grunted. “A big one gets you every time.” His fingers rapped on the desk. “Let’s come back to earth, Mike. What’s new?”

“Decker.”

“That’s not new. We’re still looking for the driver who ran down his buddy. They found the car, you know.”

I sat up straight.

“You didn’t miss everything that night. There were two bullet holes in the back. One hit the rear window and the other went through the gas tank. The car was abandoned over in Brooklyn.”

“Stolen heap?”

“Sure, what’d you expect? The slugs came from your gun, the tires matched the imprints in the body and there wasn’t a decent fingerprint anywhere.”

“Great.”

“We’ll wrap it up soon. The word’s out.”

“Great.”

Pat scowled at me in disgust. “Hell, you’re never satisfied.”

I shook a cigarette out and lit up. Pat pushed an ash tray over to me. I said, “Pat, you got holes in your head if you think that this was a plain, simple job. Decker was in hock to a loan shark for a few grand and was being pressured into paying up. The guy was nuts about his kid and they probably told him the kid would catch it if he didn’t come across.”

“So?”

“Christ, you aren’t getting to be a cynic like the rest of the cops, are you? You want things like this to keep on happening? You like murder to dirty up the streets just because some greaseball wants his dirty money! Hell, who’s to blame ... a poor jerk like Decker or a torpedo who’ll carve him up if he doesn’t pay up? Answer me that.”

“There’s a law against loan sharks operating in this state.”

“There’s a law against gambling, too.”

Pat’s face was dark with anger.

“The law has been enforced,” he snapped.

I put the emphasis on the past tense. “It has? That’s nice to know. Who’s running the racket now?”

“Damn it, Mike, that isn’t my department.”

“It should be; it caused the death of two men so far. What I want to know is, is the racket organized or not?”

“I’ve heard that it was,” he replied sullenly. “Fallon used to bank it before he died. When the state cracked down on them somebody took the sharks under their wing. I don’t know who.”

“Fallon? Fallon, hell, the guy’s been dead since 1940 and he’s still making news.”

“Well, you asked me.”

I nodded. “Who’s Dixie Cooper, Pat?”

His eyes went half shut. “Where do you get your information from? Goddamn, you have your nose in everywhere.”

“Who is he?”

“The guy’s a stoolie for the department. He has no known source of income, though he claims to be a promoter.”

“Of what?”

“Of everything. He’s a guy who knows where something is that somebody else wants and collects a percentage from the buyer and seller both. At least, that’s what he says.”

“Then he’s full of you know what. The guy is a loan shark. He’s the one Decker hit up for the money.”

“Can you prove it?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Show me and we’ll take him into custody.”

I stood up and slapped on my hat. “I’ll show you,” I said. “I’ll have him screaming to talk to somebody in uniform just to keep from getting his damn arms twisted off.”

“Go easy, Mike.”

“Yeah, I’ll do just that. I’ll twist ‘em nice and easy like he twisted Decker. I’ll go easy, all right.”

Pat gave me a long look with a frown behind it. When I said so long he only nodded, and he was reaching for the phone as I shut the door.

Down the hall another door slammed shut and the stubby brunette came by, smiled at me politely and kept on going to the elevator. After she got in I went back down the corridor to the office, pushed the door open and stuck my head in. Ellen Scobie had one foot on a chair with her dress hiked up as far as it would go, straightening her stocking.

“Pretty leg,” I said.

She glanced back quickly without bothering to yank her dress down like most dames would. “I have another just like it,” she told me. Her eyes were on full voltage again.

“Let’s see.”

So she stood up in one of those magazine poses and pulled the dress up slowly without stopping until it couldn’t go any further and showed me. And she was right. The other was just as pretty if you wasted a sight like that trying to compare them.

I said, “I love brunettes.”

“You love anything.” She let the dress fall.

“Brunettes especially. Doing anything tonight?”

“Yes ... I was going out with you, wasn’t I? Something I should learn about manual labor?”

“Kid,” I said, “I don’t think you have anything to learn. Not a damn thing.”

She laughed deep in her throat and came over and took my arm. “I’m crazy about heels,” she said. “Let’s go.”

We passed by Pat’s office again and I could still hear him on the phone. His voice had a low drone with a touch of urgency in it but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. When we were downstairs in the car Ellen said, “I hope you realize that if we’re seen together my boss will have you investigated from top to bottom.”

“Then you do the investigating. I have some fine anatomy.”

Her mouth clucked at me. “You know what I mean. He’s afraid to trust himself these days.”

“You can forget about me, honey. He’s investigated me so often he knows how many moles I got. Who the hell’s handing out the dope, anyway?”

“If I knew I’d get a promotion. Right now the office observes war-time security right down to burning everything in the wastebaskets in front of a policeman. You know what I think?”

“What?”

“Somebody sits in another building with a telescope and reads lips.”

I laughed at her. “Did you tell the D.A. that?”

She grinned devilishly. “Uh-huh. I said it jokingly and damned if he didn’t go and pull down the blinds. Everybody hates me now.” She stopped and glanced out the windows, then looked back at me curiously. “Where’re we going?”

“To see a guy about a guy,” I said.

She leaned back against the cushions and closed her eyes. When she opened them again I was pulling into a parking lot in Fifty-second Street. The attendant took my keys and handed me a ticket. The evening was just starting to pick up and the gin mills lining the street were starting to get a play.

Ellen tugged at my hand. “We aren’t drinking very fancy tonight, are we?”

“You come down here much?”

“Oh, occasionally. I don’t go much for these places. Where are we going?”

“A place called the Glass Bar. It’s right down the block.”

“That fag joint,” she said with disgust. “The last time I was there I had three women trying to paw me and a guy with me who thought it was funny.”

“Hell, I’d like to paw you myself,” I laughed.

“Oh, you will, you will.” She was real matter-of-fact about it, but not casual, not a bit. I started to get that feeling up my back again.

The Glass Bar was a phony name for a phonier place. It was all chrome and plastic, and glass was only the thing you drank out of. The bar was a circular affair up front near the door with the back half of the place given over to tables and a bandstand. A drummer was warming up his traps with a pair of cuties squirming to his jungle rhythm while a handful of queers watched with their eyes oozing lust.

Ellen said, “The bar or back room?”

I tossed my hat at the redhead behind the check booth. “Don’t know yet.” The redhead handed me a pasteboard with a number on it and I asked her, “Dixie Cooper been in yet?”

She leaned halfway out of the booth and looked across the room. “Don’t see him. Guess he must be in back. He came in about a half hour ago.”

I said thanks and took Ellen’s arm. We had a quick one at the bar, then pushed through the crowd to the back room where the babes were still squirming with the drummer showing no signs of tiring. He was all eyes for the wriggling hips and the table with the queers had been abandoned for one closer to the bandstand.

Only four other tables were occupied and the kind of people sitting there weren’t the kind I was looking for. Over against the wall a guy was slouched in a chair reading a late tabloid while he sipped a beer. He had a hairline that came down damn near to his eyebrows and when his mouth moved as he read his top teeth stuck out at an angle. On the other side of the table a patsy was trying to drag him into a conversation and all he was getting was a grunt now and then.

The guy with the bleached hair looked up and smiled when I edged over, then the smile froze into a disgusted grimace when he saw Ellen. I said, “Blow, Josephine,” and he arched his eyebrows and minced off.

Buck teeth didn’t even bother to look at me.

Ellen didn’t wait to be invited. She plunked herself in a chair with a grin and leaned on the table waiting for the fun to start.

Buck teeth interrupted his reading long enough to say, “Whatta you want?”

So I took the .45 out and slid it down between his eyes and the paper and let him stare at it until he went white all the way back of his ears. Then I sat down too. “You Dixie Cooper?”

His head came around like somebody had a string on it. “Yeah.” It was almost a whisper and his eyes wouldn’t come away from the bulge under my coat.

“There was a man,” I said. “His name was William Decker and he hit you up for a loan not long ago and he’s dead now.”

Cooper licked his lips twice and tried to shake his head. “Look ... I ...”

“Shut up.”

His eyes seemed to get a waxy film over them.

“Who killed him,” I said.

“Honest to God, Mac, I ... Christ ... I didn’t kill ‘im. I swear ...”

“You little son-of-a-bitch you, when you put the squeeze on him for your lousy dough he had to pull a robbery to pay off!”

This time his eyes came away from my coat and jerked up to mine. His upper lip pared back from his teeth while his head made funny shaking motions. “I ... don’t get it. He ... didn’t get squeezed. He paid up. I give ‘im a grand and two days later he pays it back. Honest to God, I ...”

“Wait a minute. He paid you back all that dough?”

His head bobbed. “Yeah, yeah. All of it.”

“You know what he used it for?”

“I ... I think he was playing the ponies.”

“He lost. That means he paid you back and his losses too. Where’d he get it?”

“How should I know? He paid me back like I told you.”

Dixie started to shake when I grinned at him. “You know what’ll happen to you if I find out you’re lying?”

He must have known, all right. His buck teeth started showing gums and all. Somehow he got his lips together enough to say, “Christ, I can prove it! He ... he paid me off right in Bernie Herman’s bar. Ask Bernie, he was there. He saw him pay me and he’ll remember because I bought the house a drink. You ask him.”

I grinned again and pulled out the .45 and handed it to Ellen under the table. Dixie couldn’t seem to swallow his own spit any more. I said, “I will, pal. You better be right. If he tries to scram, put one in his leg, Ellen.”

She was a beautiful actress. She never changed her smile except to give it the deadly female touch and it wasn’t because she meant it, but because she was having herself a time and was enjoying every minute of it.

I went out to the phone and looked up Bernie Herman’s number and got the guy after a minute or so and he told me the same thing Dixie had. When I got back to the table they were still in the same position only Dixie had run out of spit altogether.

Ellen handed me the rod and I slipped it back under my coat. I nodded for her to get up just as a waiter decided it was about time to take our order. “Your friend cleared you, Dixie. You better stay cleared or you’ll get a slug right in those buck teeth of yours. You know that, don’t you?”

A drop of sweat rolled down in his eye and he blinked, but that was all.

I said, “Come on, kitten,” and we left him sitting there. When I passed the waiter I jerked my thumb back to the table. “You better bring him a whiskey. Straight. Make it a double.”

He jotted it down and went over to the service bar.

Outside a colored pianist was trying hard to play loud enough to be heard over the racket of the crowd that was four deep around the bar. I pushed Ellen behind me and started elbowing a path between the mob and the booths along the side and if I didn’t almost trip over a foot stuck out in the aisle I wouldn’t have seen Lou Grindle parked in the booth across from a guy who looked like a Wall Street banker.

Only he wasn’t a banker, but the biggest bookie in the business and his name was Ed Teen.

Lou just stopped talking and stared at me with those snake eyes of his. I said, “Your boy’s still in the morgue, Lou. Don’t you guys go in for big funerals these days?”

Ed Teen smiled and the creases around his mouth turned into deep hollows. “Friends of yours, Lou?”

“Sure, we’re real old buddies, we are,” I said. “Some day I’m gonna kick his teeth in.”

Lou didn’t scare a bit. The bastard looked almost anxious for me to try it. Ellen gave me a little push from behind and we got through the crowd to the checkroom where I got my hat, then went outside to the night.

Her face was different this time. The humor had gone out of it and she watched me as though I’d bite her. “Lord, Mike, a joke’s a joke, but don’t go too far. Do you know who they were?”

“Yeah, scum. You want to hear some dirty words that fit ‘em perfectly?”

“But ... they’re dangerous.”

“So I’ve heard. That makes it more fun. You know them?”