The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 2 (49 page)

“You sure were dead to the world, brother. Took me a half-hour to get you out of it.”

“What time is it?”

“Eight-thirty. Feel pretty rotten?”

“Lousy.”

“Want me to call somebody?”

“No.”

“Well, look, I have to catch a bus. You think you’re going to be all right? If you’re not I’ll stick around awhile.”

“Thanks ... I’ll make out.”

“Okay, it’s up to you. Sure appreciate the ride. Wish I could do something for you.”

“You can. Go get me a pack of butts. Luckies.”

He waved away the quarter I handed him and walked down to the corner to the newsstand. He came back with the pack opened, stuck one in my mouth and lit it. “You take care now. Better go home and sleep it off.”

I said I would and sat there smoking the butt until a cop came along slapping tickets on car windows. I edged over behind the wheel, kicked the starter in and got out of there.

Traffic wasn’t a problem like it usually was. I was glad to get behind a slow-paced truck and stay there. Every bone and muscle in my body ached and I couldn’t have given the wheel a hard wrench if I wanted to. I got around the corner somehow and the truck crossed over to get in the lane going through the Holland Tunnel. I dropped out of position, squeezed through the intersection as the light changed and got on the street that led up to police headquarters.

Both sides of the street were lined with people going to work. They all seemed so happy. They walked alone or in couples, thousands of feet and legs making a blur of motion. I envied them the sleep they had had. I envied their normal unswollen faces. I envied a lot of things until I took time to think about it. At least I was alive. That was something.

The street in front of the red brick building was a parade ground of uniformed patrolmen. Some were walking off to their beats and others were climbing in squad cars. The plain-clothesmen went off in pairs, separating at the corner with loud so longs. Right in front of the main entrance three black sedans with official markings were drawn up at the curb with their drivers reading tabloids behind the wheel. Directly across from them a pair of squad cars pulled out and the tan coupé in front of me nosed into the space they left. I followed in behind him, did a better job of parking than he did and was up against the bumper of the car behind me so the guy would have room to maneuver.

I guess the jerk got his license wholesale. He tried to saw his way in without looking behind him and I had to lean on the horn to warn him off. Maybe I should have planted a red flag or something. He ignored the horn completely and slammed into me so hard I wrapped my chest around the wheel.

That did it. That was as much as I could take. I opened the door with my elbow and got out to give him hell. You’d think with all the cops around one of them would have jumped him, but that’s how it goes. The guy was getting out of his heap with a startled apology written all over him. He took a look at my face and forgot what he was going to say. His mouth hung open and he just looked.

I said, “You deaf or something? What the devil do you think a horn’s for?”

His mouth started to say something, but he was too confused to get it out. I took another good look at him and I could see why. He was the guy who stood next to me in the bar the afternoon before with the busted headset. He was making motions at his ears and tapping the microphone or whatever it was. I was too disgusted to pay any attention to him and waved him off. He still smacked the bumper twice again before he got himself parked.

This was starting off to be a beautiful day too.

When I got in the building I started to attract a little attention. A cop I know pretty well passed right by me with no more than a cursory glance. One asked me if I was there to register a complaint and looked surprised when I shook my head no. The place was a jumble of activity with men going in and out of the line-up room, getting their orders at the desk or scrambling to get off on a case.

Too much was popping in the morning to hope Pat would be in his office, so I waited my turn at the information desk and told the cop at the switchboard that I wanted to see Captain Chambers.

He said, “Name?”

And I said, “Hammer, Michael Hammer.”

Then his hand paused with the plug in it and he said, “Well, I’ll be damned.”

He tried about ten extensions before he got Pat, said Yes, sir a few times and yanked the plug out. “He’ll be right down. Wait here for him.”

By the clock I waited exactly one minute and ten seconds. Pat came out of the elevator at a half-run and when he saw me his face did tricks until it settled down in a frown.

“What happened to you?”

“I got took, pal. Took good, too.”

He didn’t ask me any more questions. He looked down at his shoes a second then put it to me hard and fast. “You’re under arrest, Mike.”

“What?”

“Come on upstairs.”

The elevator was waiting. We got on and went up. We got off at the right floor and I started to walk toward his office automatically, but he put out his hand and stopped me.

“This way, Mike.”

“Say, what’s going on?”

He wouldn’t look at me. “We’ve had men covering your apartment, your office and all your known places of entertainment since six this morning. The D.A. has a warrant out for your arrest and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.”

“Sorry. I should have stayed home. What’s the charge?”

We paused outside a stained-oak door. “Guess.”

“I give up.”

“The D.A. looked for Link’s personal file last night and found it missing. He was here when Ellen Scobie tried to put it back this morning. You have two girls on the carpet right this minute who are going to lose their jobs and probably have charges preferred against them too. You’re going in there yourself and take one hell of a rap and this time there’s no way out. You finished yourself, Mike. You’ll never learn, but you’re finished.”

I dropped my hands in my pockets and made like I was grinning at him.

“You’re getting old, son. You’re getting set in your ways. For the last two years all you’ve done is warn me about this, that, and the next thing. We used to play a pretty good game, you and me, now you’re starting to play it cautious and for a cop who handles homicide that’s no damn good at all.”

Then just for the hell of it that little finger that was probing my brain deliberately knocked a couple of pieces together that made lovely, beautiful sense and I remembered something Ellen had told me not so long ago. I twisted it around, revamped it a little and I was holding something the D.A. was going to pay for in a lot of pride. Yep, a whole lot of pride.

I reached for the knob myself. “Let’s go, chum. Me and the D.A. have some business to transact.”

“Wait a minute. What are you pulling?”

“I’m not pulling a thing, Pat. Not a thing. I’m just going to trade him a little bit.”

Everything was just like it was the last time. Almost.

There was the D.A. behind his desk with his boys on either side. There were the detectives in the background, the cop at the door, the little guy taking notes and me walking across the room.

Ellen and her roommate were the exceptions this time. They sat side by side in straight-back chairs at the side of the big desk and they were crying their eyes out.

If my face hadn’t been what it was there would have been a formal announcement made. As it was, everybody gave me a kind of horrified stare and Ellen turned around in her seat. She stopped crying abruptly and put her hand to her mouth to stifle a scream.

I said, “Take it easy, kid.”

Her teeth went into her lip and she buried her face in her hands.

The District Attorney was very sarcastic this time. “Good morning,
Mister
Hammer.”

“I’m glad you remembered,” I told him.

Any other time his face would have changed color. Not now. He liked this cat-and-mouse stuff. He had waited a long time for it and now he was going to enjoy every minute of it while he had an audience to appreciate it. “I suppose you know why you’re here?” He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. The two assistants did the same thing.

“I’ve heard about it.”

“Shall I read the charges?”

“Don’t bother.” My legs were starting to go again. I pulled a chair across the floor and sat down. “Start reading me off any time you feel like it,” I said. “Get it all off your chest at once so you’ll be able to listen to somebody else except your yes-men for a change.”

The two assistants came to indignant attention in their seats.

It was so funny I actually got a grin through.

The D.A. didn’t think it was so funny. “I don’t intend to take any of your nonsense,
Mister
Hammer. I’ve had about all I can stand of it.”

“Okay, you know what you can do. Charge me with conspiracy and theft, toss me in the pokey and I catch hell at the trial. So I’ll go up.”

“You won’t be alone.” He glanced meaningly at the two women. There were no tears left in Ellen any more, but her friend was sobbing bitterly.

I said, “Did you stop to think why the three of us bothered to take a worthless file out of here?”

“Does it matter?”

Ellen had nudged her companion and the crying stopped. I took the deck of cigarettes out of my pocket and fiddled with it to keep my hands busy. The white of the wrapper flashed the light back at the sun until attention seemed to be focused on it rather than me.

“It matters,” I said. “As the charge will state, it was a deliberate conspiracy all right, perpetrated by three citizens in good standing who saw a way to accomplish something that an elected official couldn’t manage. The papers will have a field day burying you.”

He smiled. The damn fool smiled at me! “Don’t bother going through that song and dance again.”

He was getting ready to throw the book in my face when Pat spoke from the back of the room. His voice held a strained note, but it had a lot of power behind it. “Maybe you better hear what he has to say.”

“Say it then.” The smile faded into a grimace of anger. “It had better be good, because the next time you say anything will be to a judge and jury.”

“It’s good. You’ll enjoy hearing about it. We,” and I emphasized that “we,” “found the hole in the boat.”

I heard Pat gasp and take a step nearer.

“Ellen suggested it to you at one time and the full possibilities of the thing never occurred to you. We know how information is getting out of this office.”

The D.A.’s eyes were bright little beads searching my face for the lie. They crinkled up around the edges when he knew I was telling the truth and sought out Pat for advice. None came so he said, “How?”

Now I had the ball on his goal line and I wasn’t giving it up. “I won’t bother you with the details of how we did it, but I can tell you how it was being done.”

“Damn it ... How!”

I gave him his smile back. On me it must have looked good. “Uh-uh. We trade. You’re talking to three clams unless you drop all those charges. Not only drop ‘em, but forget about ’em.”

What else could he do? I caught Pat’s reflection in the window glass behind the D.A.’s head and he was grinning like an idiot. The D.A. tapped his fingers on the desk-top, his cheeks working. When he looked up he took in the room with one quick glance. “We’ll finish this privately if you gentlemen don’t mind. You may stay, Captain Chambers.”

As far as the two assistants were concerned, it was the supreme insult. They hid their tempers nicely though and followed the others out. I laughed behind their backs and the thing that was working at the D.A.’s cheeks turned into a short laugh. “You know, there are times when I hate your guts. It happens that it’s all the time. However, I admire your precocity in a way. You’re a thorn in my skin, but even a thorn can be used to advantage at times. If what you have to say is true, consider the charges dropped completely.”

“Thanks,” I said. The women couldn’t say anything. They were too stunned. “I understand you have a man in the department who is suspected of carrying information outside.”

He frowned at Pat. “That is correct. We’re quite sure of it. What we don’t know is his method of notifying anyone else.”

“It isn’t hard. There’s a guy with a tin ear who stands across the street. He wears a hearing aid that doesn’t work. He reads lips. A good dummy can read lips at thirty feet without any trouble at all. Your man gets to the street, moves his mouth silently like he’s chewing gum or something, but actually calls off a time and place, gets in a car and goes off on a raid. Meanwhile the guy had time to reach a phone and pass the word. Those places are set up for a quick scramble and are moved out before you get there. It’s all really very simple.”

“Is he there now?”

“He was when I came in.”

The D.A. muttered a damn and grabbed the phone.

You know how long it took? About three minutes. He started to blab the second they had him inside the building. The voice on the phone got real excited and the D.A. slammed the phone back. His face had happy happy smeared all over it and he barely had time to say thanks again and tell the women that their efforts were appreciated before he was out the door.

I got to Ellen and tried to put my arms around her. She put her hands on my chest and pushed me away. “Please, Mike, not now. I ... I’m much too upset. It was ... horrible before you came.”

“Can I call you later?”

“Yes ... all right.”

I let go of her and she hurried out, dabbing at her mouth with a damp handkerchief.

“Well,” Pat said, “you’re a smart bastard anyway. You certainly made life miserable for them for a while even if you did get them off the hook in the end.”

He held the door open and came out behind me. We walked down the corridor to his office without saying anything and when we were inside he waved me into a chair I needed worse than ever and slumped into his own in back of the desk.

Pat let me get a smoke going. He let me have one long drag, then: “I’m not the D.A., Mike. You don’t have anything to trade with me so let’s have it straight. That business with the dummy outside was strictly an accident. If the D.A. wasn’t so damn eager to grab Teen and Grindle he would have seen it. Two good questions would have put you right back on the spot again.”