The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 2 (59 page)

I said, “This is Mike Hammer, John. Did you let some men in up here?”

He hedged with, “Men? You know, Mr. Hammer, I ...”

“It’s okay, I had a talk with them. I just wanted to check on it.”

“Well, in that case ... they had a warrant. You know what they were? They were F.B.I, men.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“They said I shouldn’t mention it.”

“You’re sure about it?”

“Sure as anything. They had a city cop along too.”

“What about anybody else?”

“Nobody else, Mr. Hammer. I wouldn’t let a soul in up there, you know that.”

“Okay, John. Thanks.” I hung up the phone and looked around again.

Somebody else had gone through the apartment. They had done a good job too. But not quite as good as the feds. They had left their trademark around.

The smoke that was trouble started to boil up around me again. You couldn’t see it and you couldn’t smell it, but it was there. I started whistling again and picked up the .45.

CHAPTER
4

She came in at half-past eleven. She used the key I had given her a long time ago and walked into the living room bringing with her the warmth and love for life that was like turning on the light.

I said, “Hello, beautiful,” and I didn’t have to say anything more because there was more in the words than the sound of my voice and she knew it.

She started to smile slowly and her mouth made a kiss. Our lips didn’t have to touch. She flung that warmth across the room and I caught it. Velda said, “Ugly face. You’re uglier now than you were but I love you more than ever.”

“So I’m ugly. Underneath I’m beautiful.”

“Who can dig down that deep?” she grinned. Then added, “Except me, maybe.”

“Just
you, honey,” I said.

The smile that played around her mouth softened a moment, then she slipped out of the coat and threw it across the back of a chair.

I could never get tired of looking at her, I thought. She was everything you needed just when you needed it, a bundle of woman whose emotions could be hard or soft or terrifying, but whatever they were it was what you wanted. She was the lush beauty of the jungle, the sleek sophisticate of the city. Like I said, to me she was everything, and the dull light of the room was reflected in the ring on her finger that I had given her.

I watched her go to the kitchen and open a pair of beer cans. I watched while she sat down, took the frosted can from her and watched while she sipped the top off hers and felt a sudden stirring when her tongue flicked the foam from her lips.

Then she said what I knew she was going to say. “This one’s too big, Mike.”

“It is?”

Her eyes drew a line across the floor and up my body until they were staring hard into mine. “I was busy while you were in the hospital, Mike. I didn’t just let things wait until you got well. This isn’t murder as you’ve known it before. It was planned, organizational killing and it’s so big that even the city authorities are afraid of it. The thing has ballooned up to a point where it’s Federal and even then it’s touching such high places that the feds have to move carefully.”

“So?” I let it hang there and pulled on the can of beer.

“It doesn’t make any difference what I think?”

I set the can on the end table and made the three-ring pattern on the label. “What you think makes a lot of difference, kitten, but when it comes to making the decisions I’ll make them on what I think. I’m a man. So I’m just one man, but as long as I have a brain of my own to use and experience and knowledge to draw on to form a decision I’ll keep on making them myself.”

“And you’re going after them?”

“Would you like me better if I didn’t?”

The grin crept back through the seriousness on her face. “No.” Then her eyes laughed at me too. “Ten million dollars’ worth of men and equipment bucking another multi-million outfit and you elect yourself to step in and clean up. But then, you’re a man.” She sipped from the beer can again, then said, “But what a man. I’ll be glad when you step off that bachelorhood pedestal and move over to where I have a little control over you.”

“Think you ever will?”

“No, but at least I’ll have something to bargain with,” she laughed. “I’d like to have you around for a long time without worrying about you.”

“I feel the same way myself, Velda. It’s just that some things come first.”

“I know, but let me warn you. From now on you’re going to be up against a scheming woman.”

“That’s been tried before.”

“Not like this.”

“Yeah,” I said, and finished the beer. I waited until she put hers down too, then shook out a Lucky and tossed the pack over to her. “What did you pick up?”

“A few details. I found a trucker who passed your car where they had it parked with the flares fore and aft. The guy stopped, and when he saw nobody around he went on. The nearest phone was three miles down the road in a diner and he was surprised when nobody had shown up there because he hadn’t seen anyone walking. The girl in the diner knew about an abandoned shack a few hundred yards from the spot and I went there. The place was alive with feds.”

“Great.”

“That’s hardly the word for it.” She squirmed in the chair and ran her fingers through her hair, the deep ebony of it rubbed to a soft glow in the pale lamplight. “They held me for a while, questioned me, and released me with a warning that had teeth in it.”

“They find anything?”

“From what I could see, nothing. They backtracked the same way that I did and anything they found just supported what you had already told them.

“There’s a catch in it though,” she said. “The shack was a good fifty yards in from the highway and covered with brush. You could light the place up and it wouldn’t be seen, and unless you knew where to look you’d never find it.”

“It was too convenient to be coincidental, you mean?”

“Much too convenient.”

I spit out a stream of smoke and watched it flow around the empty beer can. “That doesn’t make sense. The kid was running away. How’d they know which direction she’d pick out?”

“They wouldn‘t, but how would they know where that shack was?”

“Who’d the shack belong to?”

A frown creased her forehead and she shook her head. “That’s another catch. The place is on state property. It’s been there for twenty years. One thing I did learn while I was being questioned was that aside from its recent use the place had no signs of occupancy at all. There were dates carved in the doorpost and the last one was 1937.”

“Anything else?”

Velda shook her head slowly. “I saw your car. Or what’s left of it.”

“Poor old baby. The last of the original hot rods.”

“Mike ...”

I finished the beer and put the empty down on the table. “Yeah?”

“What are you going to do?”

“Guess.”

“Tell me.”

I had a long pull on the smoke and dropped the butt into the can. “They killed a dame and tried to frame me for it. They wrecked my heap and put me in the hospital. They’re figuring us all for suckers and don’t give a hang who gets hurt. The slobs, the miserable slobs.” I rammed my fist against my palm until it stung. “I’m going to find out what the score is, kid. Then a lot of heads are going to roll.”

“One of them might be yours, Mike.”

“Yeah, one of ‘em might, but it sure won’t be the first to go. And you know something? They’re worried, whoever they are. They read the papers and things didn’t quite happen like they wanted them to. The law of averages bucked ’em for a change and instead of getting a sucker to frame they got me. Me. That they didn’t like because I’m not just the average joe and they’re smart enough to figure out an angle.”

Her face pulled tight and the question was in her eyes. “They were up here looking around,” I said.

“Mike!”

“Oh, I don’t know what they were after, but I don’t think they knew either. But you can bet on this, they went through this place because they thought I had something they wanted and just because they didn’t find it doesn’t mean they think I haven’t got it. They’ll be back. The next time I won’t be in an emergency ward.”

“But what could it be?”

“Beats me, but they tried to kill two people to find out. Whether I like it or not I’m in this thing as deep as that dame was.” I grinned at Velda sitting there. “And I like it, too. I hate the guts of those people. I hate them so bad it’s coming out of my skin. I’m going to find out who ‘they’ are and why and then they’ve had it.”

A note of sarcasm crept into her voice. “Just like always, isn’t that right?”

“No,” I said, “Maybe not. Maybe this time I’ll do it differently. Just for the fun of it.”

Velda’s hands were drawn tight on the arms of the chair. “I don’t like you this way, Mike.”

“Neither do a lot of people. They know something just like their own names. They know I’m not going to sit on my fanny and wait for something to happen. They know from now on they’re going to have to be so careful they won’t even be able to spit because I’m going to get closer and closer until I have them on the dirty end of a stick. They know it and I know it too.”

“It makes you a target.”

“Kitten, it sure does and that I go for. If that’s one way of pulling ‘em inside shooting range I’m plenty glad to be a target.”

Her face relaxed and she sat back. For a long minute neither one of us spoke. She sat there with her head against the cushion staring at the ceiling, then, “Mike, I have news for you.”

The way she said it made me look up. “Give.”

“Any shooting that’s to be done won’t be done by you.”

A muscle in my face twitched.

Velda reached in her jacket pocket and came out with an envelope. She flipped it across the room and I caught it. “Pat brought it in this morning. He couldn’t do a thing about it, so don’t get teed off at him.”

I pulled the flap out and fingered the sheet loose. It was very brief and to the point. No quibbling. No doubting the source. The letterhead was all very official and I was willing to bet that for the one sheet they sent me a hundred more made up the details of why the thing should be sent.

It was a very simple order telling me I no longer had a license to carry a gun and temporarily my state-granted right to conduct private investigations was suspended. There was no mention of a full or partial refund of my two-hundred-buck fee for said license to said state.

So I laughed. I folded the sheet back into the envelope and laid it on the table. “They want me to do it the hard way,” I said.

“They don’t want you to do it at all. From now on you’re a private citizen and nothing else and if they catch you with a gun you get it under the Sullivan law.”

“This happened once before, remember?”

Velda nodded slowly. There was no expression at all on her face. “That’s right, but they forgot about me. Then I had a P.I. ticket and a license for a gun too. This time they didn’t forget.”

“Smart boys.”

“Very.” She closed her eyes again and let her head drop back. “We’re going to have it rough.”

“Not we, girl. Me.”

“We.”

“Look...”

Only the slight reflection of the light from her pupils showed that her eyes were open and looking at me. “Who do you belong to, Mike?”

“You tell me.”

She didn’t answer. Her eyes opened halfway and there was something sad in the way her lips tried to curve into a smile. I said, “All right, kid, you know the answer. It’s we and if I stick my neck out you can be there to help me get back in time.” I picked the .45 up off the floor beside the chair, slid the clip out and thumbed the shells into my palm. “Your boy Mike is getting on in years, pal. Soft maybe?”

There was laughter in the sad smile now. “Not soft. Smarter. We’re up against something that’s so big pure muscle won’t even dent it. We’re up against a big brain and being smart is the only thing that’s going to move it. At least you have the sense to change your style.”

“Yeah.”

“It won’t be so easy.”

“I know. I’m not built that way.” I grinned at her. “Let’s not worry about it. Everybody’s trying to step on me because they don’t want me around. Some of ‘em got different reasons, but the big one is they’re afraid I’ll spoil their play. That happened before too. Let’s make it happen again.”

Velda said, “But let’s not try so hard, huh? Seven years is a long time to wait for a guy.” Her teeth were a white flash in the middle of her smile. “I’d like him in good shape when he gets ready to take the jump.”

I said, “Yeah,” but not so loud that she heard me.

“Where do we take it from here, Mike?”

I let the shells dribble from my fingers into the ash tray. They lay there, deadly and gleaming, but helpless without the mother that could give them birth.

“Berga Torn,” I said. “We’ll start with her. I want those sanitarium records. I want her life history and the history of anybody she was associated with. That’s your job.”

“And you?” she asked.

“Evello. Carl Evello. Someplace he comes into this thing and he’s my job.”

Velda nodded, drummed her fingernails against the arm of the chair and stared across the room. “He won’t be easy.”

“Nobody’s easy.”

“Especially Evello. He’s organized. While you were under wraps in the hospital I saw a few people who had a little inside information on Evello. There wasn’t much and what there was of it was mostly speculation, but it put the finger on a theme you might be interested in.”

“Such as?”

She looked at me with a half smile, a beautiful jungle animal sizing up her mate before telling him what was outside the mouth of the den. “Mafia,” she said.

I could feel it starting way down at my toes, a cold, burning flush that crept up my body and left in its wake a tingling sensation of rage and fear that was pure emotion and nothing else. It pounded in my ears and dried my throat until the words that came out were scratchy, raspy sounds that didn’t seem to be part of me at all.

“How did they know?”

“They don’t. They suspect, that’s all. The Federal agencies are interested in the angle.”

“Yeah,” I said. “They
would
be interested. They’d go in on their toes, too. No wonder they don’t want me fishing around.”