The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 2 (79 page)

I said, “Listen, get on the phone out there and find Captain Chambers. Tell him I found what we were looking for and I’m going after it. I’m not going to take any chances on this getting away so he can hop up to my office for a print of this thing.”

“He doesn’t know?”

“Uh-uh. I’m afraid somebody else might find out the same way I did. I’ll call you back to see how you made out. If there’s any trouble about ... back there ... Chambers’ll clear things. Someday I’ll let you know just how much of a boost up you gave the department.”

The excitement in his eyes sparkled brighter and he was holding his jaw like a guy who’s just done the impossible. The morgue attendant was on his way over for an explanation and apparently he wanted it in writing. He tried to stop me for some talk on the way out but I was in too much of a rush.

Lily knew I had it when I came bouncing down the stairs, opened the door for me and said, “Mike?”

“I know almost all the answers now, chicken.” I held up the key. “Here’s the big baby. Look at it, a chunk of metal people have died for and all this time it was in the stomach of a girl who was ready to do anything to beat them out of it. The key to the deal. For the first time in my life a real one. I know who had it and what’s behind the door it opens.”

As if the words I had said were a formula that split open Valhalla to let a pack of vicious, false gods spill through, a jagged streak of lightning cut across the sky with the thunder rolling in its wake. The first crashing wave of it was so sudden Lily tightened against it, her eyes closed tight.

I said, “Relax.”

“I ... can‘t, Mike. I hate thunderstorms.”

You could feel the dampness in the air, the fresh coolness of the new wind. She shuddered again and turned up the little collar of her jacket around her neck. “Close the window, Mike.”

I rolled it up, got the heap going and turned into traffic heading east. The voice of the city was starting to go quiet now. The last few figures on the streets were starting to run for cover and the cabs picked up their aimless cruising.

The first big drops of rain splattered on the hood and brought the scum flooding down the windshield. I started the wipers, but still had to hunch forward over the wheel to see where I was going. I could feel time going by. The race of the minutes. They never went any faster or any slower, but they always beat you. I turned south on Ninth Avenue, staying in tempo with the lights until I reached the gray-brick building with the small neon sign that read CITY ATHLETIC CLUB.

I cut the engine in front of the door and went to get out. Lily said, “Mike, will you be long?”

“Couple of minutes.” Her face seemed to be all pinched up.

“What’s the matter, kid?”

“Cold, I guess.”

I pulled the blanket from the seat in the back and draped it over her shoulders. “You’re catching something sure as hell. Keep it around you. I’ll be right back.”

She shivered and nodded, holding the edges of the blanket together under her chin.

The guy at the reception desk was a sleepy-eyed tall guy who sat there hating everybody who bothered him. He watched me cross the hall and didn’t make any polite sounds until I got to him.

He asked one question. “You a member?”

“No, but ...”

“Then the place is closed. Scram.”

I pulled a fin out of my wallet and laid it on the desk.

He said, “Scram.”

I took it back, stuffed it away and leaned across the chair and belted him right on his back. I picked him up by his skinny arms and popped him a little one in the gut before I threw him back in his chair again. “The next time be nice,” I said. I held out the key and he looked at it with eyes that were wide awake now.

“You bastard.”

“Shut up. What’s the key for?”

“Locker room.”

“See who has 529.”

He curled his lip at me, ran his hand across his stomach under his belt and pulled a ledger out of the desk drawer. “Raymond. Ten-year membership.”

“Let’s go.”

“You’re nuts. I can’t leave the desk. I ...”

“Let’s go.”

“Lousy coppers,” I heard him say. I grinned behind his back and followed him down the stairs. There was a sticky dampness in the air, an acrid smell of disinfectant. We passed a steam room and the entrance to the pool, then turned into the alcove that held the lockers.

They were tall affairs with hasps that allowed you to install your own lock. Raymondo had slapped on a beauty. It was an oversized brass padlock with a snap so big it barely passed through the hasp. I stuck the key in, turned it and the lock came apart.

Death, crime and corruption were lying on the floor in two metal containers the size of lunch pails. The seams were welded shut and the units painted a deep green. Attached to each was the cutest little rig you ever saw, a small CO
₂
bottle with a heavy rubber ball attached to the nozzle. The rubber was rotted in the folds and the hose connection had cracked dry, but it didn’t spoil the picture any. All you had to do was toss the unit out a porthole, the bottle stopper opened after a time interval and the stuff floated to the top where the rubber ball buoyed it until it was picked up.

The answer to the
Cedric
was there too, a short story composed of sales slips stapled together, a yarn that said Raymondo had taken good care of his investment and was on hand to pick up the junk when they stripped the ship. There was one special item marked
“wall ventilators—12.50 ea. 25.00.”

I squatted down to pull them out and the guy down the end came away from the wall showing too much curiosity. The stuff had to be dumped someplace but I couldn’t be carrying it to the dumping ground. Pat had to see it, the Washington boys would want a look at it. I couldn’t take any kind of a chance at all on losing it. Not now.

So I shut the door and closed the lock through the hasp. It had been there a lot of years ... a few more hours wouldn’t hurt it any. But now I had something I could talk a trade with. I could describe the stuff so they’d be sure and it would be my way all the way.

The guy followed me back upstairs and got behind his desk again. He was snottier looking than ever but when I stood close the artificial toughness faded into blankness and he had to lick his lips.

I said, “Remember my face, buddy. Take a good look and keep it in your mind. If anybody who isn’t a cop comes in here wanting to know about that locker and you kick through with the information I’m going to break your face into a dozen pieces. No matter what they do I’ll do worse, so keep your trap shut.” I turned to go, stopped a second and looked back over my shoulder. “The next time be polite. You could have made dough on the deal.”

My watch read five minutes to three. Time, time, time. The rain was a solid sheet blasting the sidewalks and spraying back into the air again. I yelled for Lily to open the door, made a dash for it and slid aboard. She trembled under the gust of cold air that got in with me, her face set tighter than it was before.

I reached over and put my arm around her shoulders. She was pulled tight as a drumhead, a muscular stiffness that made her whole body almost immobile. “Cripes, Lily, I got to get you to a doctor.”

“No ... just get me where it’s warm, Mike.”

“I haven’t got much sense.”

She forced a smile. “I ... really don’t mind ... as long as you ...”

“No more chasing around, kid. I found it. I can take you back now.”

There was a catch in the sob that came out of her. Her eyes glistened and the smile didn’t have to be forced.

I sat there looking into the rain, pulling on a Lucky while I figured it out. I said, “You’ll go back to my apartment, kid. Dry off and sit tight.”

“Alone?”

“Don’t worry about it. There are cops stationed around the building. I’ll tip them to keep the place well covered. We have to move fast now and I can’t waste time. I have a key to a couple of million bucks in my pocket and I can’t put all my eggs in one basket. I’m getting a duplicate of that key made and you’re hanging on to it until Captain Chambers picks it up. I don’t want you to move out of that place until I get back and don’t pull a stunt like you did before. Let’s go, I still have a fast stop to make that won’t take more than five minutes.”

That was all it did take. My friend turned out the key while he swore at the world for getting him out of bed so I left him to buy a good night in a gin mill for his trouble.

We reached my block at a quarter to four with the rain still lashing at the car in frenzied bursts. There was a patrol wagon at each end and two plain-clothes men were standing in the doorway. When they saw us they looked so mad they could bust and one spit disgustedly and shook his head.

I didn’t give them a chance to ask questions. “Sorry you were standing guard over a hole, friend. One of those things. We got this business breaking over our heads and I can’t go explaining every move I make. I’ve been putting in calls all over the lot for Pat Chambers and if one of you guys feels like expediting things you’ll get on the line too.”

I pointed to Lily. “This is Lily Carver. They’re after her as bad as they are me. She’s got a message for Pat that can’t wait and if anything happens to her between now and when he sees her he’ll have your hides. One of you better take her up and stick outside in the hall.”

“Johnston’ll go.”

“Good. You’ll call around for Pat.”

“We’ll locate the captain somehow.”

I got Lily inside, saw her through the front door with the cop beside her and felt the load go lighter.

“You got something, Hammer?” The cop was watching me closely.

“Yeah. It’s almost over.”

His grunt was a sarcastic denial. “You know better, buddy. It never ends. This thing is stretched all over the states. Wait till you see the morning papers.”

“Good?”

“Lovely. The voters’ll go nuts when they see the score. This town is going to see a reform cleanup like it never happened before. We had to book four of our own boys this evening.” His hand turned into a fist. “They were playing along with them.”

“The little guys,” I said. “They pay through the nose. The wheels keep rolling right along. They string the dead out and walk over them. The little guy pays the price.”

“We got wheels too. Evello’s dead.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“How far did they get with his step-sister?”

“As far as here, buddy. People are thinking about that.”

I looked across the lobby at him. “They would. They’ll try to put the finger anyplace.”

Michael Friday and her wet, lovely mouth. The mouth that never did get close enough, really close. Michael Friday with the ready smile and the laugh in her walk, Michael Friday who got tired of the dirt herself and put herself on my side of the fence. Coming to me with the thing I wanted even more than the stuff in the locker. She should have known. Damn it, those things had been happening under her nose. She should have known the kind of people she was messing around with. They’re fast and smart and know the angles and they’re ready to follow through. She should have thought it out and got herself a cordon of cops instead of cutting loose herself to get the stuff to me. Maybe she knew they’d be after her. Maybe she thought she was as smart as they were. Berga thought those things too.

Lovely Michael Friday. She steps outside and they have her. She could have been standing right where I was that minute. The door behind her locks shut. There’s only one person outside and that’s the one she’s afraid of. Maybe she knew she only had a minute more to live and her insides must have been tumbling around loose.

Like Berga. But Berga did something in that minute.

I got that creepy feeling again, an indescribable tingling sensation that burned up my spine and touched my brain with thoughts that seemed improbable. I looked down at my feet, my teeth shut tight, squinting at the floor. The cop’s breathing seemed the loudest thing in the room, even drowning out the thunder and the rain outside. I walked to the mailbox and opened it with my key.

Michael had thought too. She had left an empty envelope in there telling me exactly what she meant. It didn’t have my name on it, but I read the message. It said, “William Mist,” but it was enough.

It was more than enough. It was something else. The gimmick I was looking for, the one I knew I had come across someplace else but I couldn’t put my finger on. But for a little while it was enough.

I crumpled the thing up into a little ball and dropped it. I could feel the hate welling up in me until I couldn’t stand it any more. My head was filled with a crazy overture of sound that beat and beat and beat.

I ran out of the place. I left the cop standing there and ran out. I forgot everything I was doing except for one thing when I got in the car. Light, traffic? Hell, nothing mattered. There was only one thing. I was going to see that greaseball die between my fingers and he was going to talk before he did. The car screamed at the corners, the tail end whipping around violently. I could smell the rubber and brake lining and hear the whining protest of the engine and occasionally the hoarse curses that followed my path. The stops were all out this time and nothing else counted.

When I reached the apartment building I didn’t push any bells to be let in. I kicked out a pane of glass on the inside door, reached through the hole and turned the knob. I went up the stairs to the same spot I had been before and this time I did hit the bell.

Billy Mist was expecting somebody, all right, but it wasn’t me. He was all dressed except for his jacket and he had a gun slung in a harness under his shoulder. I rammed the door so hard it kicked him back in the room and while he was reaching for his rod I smashed his nose into a mess of bloody tissue. He made a second try while he was on the floor and this time I kicked the gun out of his hand under the table and picked him up to go over him good. I held him out where I wanted him and put one into his ribs that brought a scream choking up his throat and had the next one ready when Billy Mist died.

I didn’t want to believe it. I wanted him alive so bad I shook him like a rag doll and when the mouth lolled open under those blank eyes I threw him away from me into the door and his head and shoulders slammed it shut. His broken face leered at me from the carpet, the eyes seeing nothing. They were filmy already. I let it go then. I let that raspy yell out of me and began to break things until I was out of breath.