The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 2 (58 page)

I grinned at that one. “Nope, just ask questions and I’ll do what I can to answer them. But thanks anyway.”

The tall one nodded and looked over my head at someone else. “Bring in the file,” he said. In back of me a door opened and closed. He leaned forward on the desk, his fingers laced together. “Now, Mr. Hammer, we’ll get down to cases. You’re completely aware of the situation?”

“I’m aware that no situation exists,” I said bluntly.

“Really?”

I said, “Look, friend. You may be the F.B.I, and I may be up to my ears in something you’re interested in, but let’s get something straight. I don’t get bluffed. Not even by the feds. I came here of my own free will. I’m fairly well acquainted with the law. The reason I didn’t squawk about coming down here was because I wanted to get straightened out all the way around and quick because I have things to do when I leave and I don’t want any cops tagging me around. That much understood?”

He didn’t answer me right away. The door opened and closed again and a hand passed a folder over my shoulder. He took it, flipped it open and glanced through it. But he wasn’t reading it. He knew the damn thing by heart. “It says here you’re pretty tough, Mr. Hammer.”

“Some people seem to think so.”

“Several close brushes with the law, I notice.”

“Notice the result.”

“I have. I imagine your license can be waivered if we want to press the issue.”

I dragged out my deck of Luckies and flipped one loose. “I said I’d cooperate. You can quit trying to bluff me.”

His eyes came over the edge of the folder. “We’re not bluffing. The police in upstate New York want you. Would you sooner talk to them?”

It was getting a little tiresome. “If you want. They can’t do anything more than talk either.”

“You ran a roadblock.”

“Wrong, chum, I stopped for it.”

“But you did lie to the officer who questioned you?”

“Certainly. Hell, I wasn’t under oath. If he had any sense he would have looked at the dame and questioned her.” I let the smoke drift out of my mouth toward the ceiling.

“The dead woman in your car ...”

“You’re getting lame,” I said. “You know damn well I didn’t kill her.”

His smile was a lazy thing. “How do we know?”

“Because I didn’t. I don’t know how she died, but if she was shot you’ve already checked my apartment and found my gun there. You’ve already taken a paraffin test on me and it came out negative. If she was choked the marks on her neck didn’t match the spread of my hands. If she was stabbed ...”

“Her skull was crushed by a blunt instrument,” he put in quietly.

And I said just as quietly, “It matched the indentation in my own skull then and you know it.”

If I thought he was going to get sore I was wrong. He twisted his smile in a little deeper and leaned back in the chair with his head cradled in his hands. Behind me someone coughed to cover up a laugh.

“Okay, Mr. Hammer, you seem to know everything. Sometimes we can break even the tough ones down without much trouble. We did all the things you mentioned before you regained consciousness. Were you guessing?”

I shook my head. “Hell, no. I don’t underestimate cops. I’ve made a pretty good living in the racket myself. Now if there’s anything you’d really like to know I’d be glad to give it to you.”

His mouth pursed in thought a minute. “Captain Chambers gave us a complete report on things. The details checked ... and your part in it seems to fit your nature. Please understand something, Mr. Hammer. We’re not after you. If your part was innocent enough that’s as far as we need to go. It’s just that we can’t afford to pass up any angles.”

“Good. Then I’m clear?”

“As far as we’re concerned.”

“I suppose they have a warrant out for me upstate.”

“We’ll take care of it.”

“Thanks.”

“There’s just one thing ...”

“Yeah?”

“From your record you seem to be a pretty astute sort of person. What’s your opinion on this thing?”

“Since when do you guys deal in guesswork?”

“When that’s all we have to go on.”

I dropped the cigarette into the ash tray on the desk and looked at him. “The dame knew something she shouldn’t have. Whoever pulled it were smart cookies. I think the sedan that waited for us was one that passed us up right after I took her aboard. It was a bad spot to try anything so they went ahead and picked the right one. She wouldn’t talk so they bumped her. I imagine it was supposed to look like an accident.”

“That’s right, it was.”

“Now do you mind if I ask one?”

“No. Go right ahead.”

“Who was she?”

“Berga Torn.” My eyes told him to finish it and he shrugged his shoulder. “She was a taxi dancer, night-club entertainer, friend of boys on the loose and anything else you can mention where sex is concerned.”

A frown pulled at my forehead. “I don’t get it.”

“You’re not supposed to, Mr. Hammer.” A freeze clouded up his eyes. It told me that was as much as he was about to say and I was all through. I could go now and thanks. Thanks a lot.

I got up and pulled my hat on. One of the boys held the door open for me. I turned around and grinned at him. “I will, feller,” I said.

“What?”

“Get it.” My grin got bigger. “Then somebody else is going to get it.”

I pulled the door closed and got out in the hall. I stood there a minute leaning up against the wall until the pounding in my forehead stopped and the lights left my eyes. There was a dry sour taste in my mouth that made me want to spit, a nasty hate buzzing around my head that pulled my lips tight across my teeth and brought the voices back in my ears and then I felt better because I knew that I’d never forget them and that some day I’d hear them again only this time they’d choke out the last sound they’d ever make.

I took the elevator downstairs, called a cab and gave him Pat’s office address. The cop on the desk told me to go ahead up and when I walked in Pat was sitting there waiting for me, trying on a friendly smile for size.

He said, “How did it go, Mike?”

“It was a rotten pitch.” I hooked a chair over with my foot and sat down. “I don’t know what the act was for, but they sure wasted time.”

“They
never
waste time.”

“Then why the ride?”

“Checking. I gave them the facts they hadn’t already picked up.”

“They didn’t seem to do anything about it.”

“I didn’t expect them to.” He dropped the chair forward on all four legs. “I suppose you asked them some things too.”

“Yeah, I know the kid’s name. Berga Torn.”

“That all?”

“Part of her history. What’s the rest?”

Pat dropped his eyes and stared at his hands. When he was ready to speak he looked up at me, his face a study in caution. “Mike ... I’m going to give you some information. The reason I’m doing it is because you’re likely to fish around and find it yourself if I don’t and interference is one thing we can’t have.”

“Go ahead.”

“You’ve heard of Carl Evello?”

I nodded.

“Evello is the boy behind the powers. The last senatorial investigations turned up a lot of big names in the criminal world, but they never turned up his. That’s how big he is. The others are pretty big too, but not like him.”

I felt my eyebrows go up. “I didn’t know he was that big. Where does it come from?”

“Nobody seems to know. A lot is suspected, but until there’s plenty of concrete evidence, no charges are going to be passed around even by me. Just take my word for it that the guy is big. Now ... they want him. They want him bad and when they get him all the other big boys are going to fall too.”

“So what.”

“Berga Torn was his mistress for a while.”

It started to make sense now. I said, “So she had something on the guy?”

Pat shrugged disgustedly. “Who knows? She was supposed to have had something. She can’t talk. When they were giving her the business as you said they were trying to get it out of her.”

“You figure they were Carl’s men then.”

“Evidently.”

“What about the sanitarium she was in?”

“She was there under the advice of her doctor,” Pat said. “She was going to testify to the committee and under the strain almost had a nervous breakdown. All the committee hearings were tied up until she was released.”

I said, “That’s a pretty picture, kid. Where do I come in?”

Little light lines seemed to grow around his eyes. “You don’t. You stay out of it.”

“Nuts.”

“Okay, hero, then let’s break it down. There’s no reason for you to mess around. It was just an accident that got you into it anyway. There’s nothing much you can do and anything you try to do is damn well going to be resented by all the agencies concerned.”

I gave him my best big grin. All the teeth. Even the eyes. “You flatter me.”

“Don’t get smart, Mike.”

“I’m not.”

“All right, you’re a bright boy and I know how you work. I’m just trying to stop any trouble before it starts.”

“Pal, you got it wrong,” I said, “it’s already started, remember? I got patted between the eyes, a dame got bumped and my car is wrecked.” I stood up and looked down at him feeling things changing in my smile. “Maybe I have too much pride, but I don’t let anybody get away with that kind of stuff. I’m going to knock the crap out of somebody for all that and if it gets up to Evello it’s okay with me.”

Pat’s hand came down on the edge of the desk. “Damn it, Mike, why don’t you get a little sense in your head? You ...”

“Look ... suppose somebody took you for a patsy. What would you do?”

“That didn’t happen.”

“No ... but it happened to me. Those boys aren’t that tough that they can get away with it. Damn it, Pat, you ought to know me better than that.”

“I do, that’s why I’m asking you to lay off. What do I have to do, appeal to your patriotism?”

“Patriotism, my back. I don’t give a damn if Congress, the President and the Supreme Court told me to lay off. They’re only men and they didn’t get sapped and dumped over a cliff. You don’t play games with guys who pull that kind of stuff. The feds can be as cagey as they like, but when they wrap the bunch up what happens? So they testify. Great. Costello testified and I can show you where he committed perjury in the minutes of the hearing. What happened? Yeah ... you know what happened as well as I do. They’re too big to do anything with. They got too much dough and too much power and if they talk too many people are going to go under. Well, the hell with ‘em. There are a bunch of guys who drove a sedan I want to see again. I don’t know what they look like, but I’ll know them when I see them. If the feds beat me to ’em it’s okay by me, but I’ll wait, pal. If I don’t reach them first I’ll wait until they get through testifying or serving that short sentence those babies seem to draw and when I do you won’t be having much trouble from them again ever.”

“You have it all figured?”

“Uh-huh. Right down to the self-defense plea.”

“You won’t get far.”

I grinned at him again. “You know better than that, don’t you?”

For a moment the seriousness left his face. His mouth cracked in a grin. “Yeah,” he said, “that’s what I’m afraid of.”

“That wasn’t any ordinary kill.”

“No.”

“They were a bunch of cold-blooded bastards. You should have seen what they did to that kid before they killed her.”

“Nothing showed on her body ... or what was left of it after the fire.”

“It was there. It wasn’t very pretty.” I stared at him hard. “It changes something in the way you were thinking.”

His eyes came up speculatively.

“They didn’t give her the works to see how much she knew. They were after something she knew and they didn’t. She was the key to something.”

Pat’s face was grave. “And you’re going after it?”

“What did you expect?”

“I don’t know, Mike.” He wiped his hand across his eyes. “I guess I didn’t expect you to take it lying down.” He turned his head and glanced out of the window at the rain. “But since it’s going to be that way you might as well know this much. Those government boys are shrewd apples. They know your record and how you work. They even know how you think. Don’t expect any help from this end. If you cross those boys you’re going to wind up in the can.”

“You have your orders?” I asked him.

“In writing. From pretty high authority.” His eyes met mine. “I was told to pass the news on to you if you acted up.”

I stood up and fiddled with my pack of butts. “Great guys. They want to do it all alone. They’re too smart to need help.”

“They have the equipment and manpower,” Pat said defensively.

“Yeah, sure, but they don’t have the attitude.” A grimace pulled at my mouth. “They want to make a public example out of those big boys. They want to see them sweat it out behind bars. Nuts to that. Those lads in the sedan don’t give a hoot for authority. They don’t give a damn for you, me or anybody besides themselves. They only respect one thing.”

“Say it.”

“A gun in their bellies that’s going off and splashing their guts around the room. That kind of attitude they respect.” I stuck my hat on my head, keeping it back off the blue lump between my eyes. “See you around, Pat,” I said.

“Maybe, maybe not,” he said to my back.

I went downstairs into the rain and waited there until a cab came along.

Unless you knew they were there you’d never notice it. Just little things out of place here and there. A streak through the dust where a coat sleeve dragged, an ash tray not quite in place, the rubber seal around the refrigerator door hanging because they didn’t know it was loose and had to be stuffed back by hand.

The .45 was still hanging in the closet, but this time there was a thumbprint on the side where I knew I had wiped it before I stuck it away. I picked the rig off the hook and laid it on the table. The Washington boys were pretty good at that sort of thing. I started to whistle a tuneless song as I climbed out of my jacket when I noticed the waste-basket beside the dresser. There was a cigarette butt in the bottom with the brand showing and it wasn’t my brand. I picked it up, stared at it, threw it back and went on whistling. I stopped when the thought of it jelled, picked up the phone and dialed the super’s number downstairs.