Lady, go die

CHAPTER FIVE

We hit the floor together.

My head connected hard with the edge of a crate on the way down and I could feel my eyes film. For a few seconds tiny particles of fire burned my cheek, then the whole side of my face felt as if it were lying in a brazier of hot coals. I pushed Poochie’s limp form from me and fought my way to my feet.

The shot had come through the pane-less window. I yanked the. 45 from under my shoulder, thumbed off the safety, kicked the slide back. I threw the shack’s crude door open and dashed outside.

The beach was deserted.

No overt sounds interrupted a silence that wasn’t really silence at all, wind whispering over sand, waves lapping, trees rustling, my watch ticking. A motorboat, not close enough to have carried away the assailant, put-putted along, no telling how far out, the way wind carried sound on the water.

The moon showed me footprints in the sand by the window, but they led to the line of trees up and back, behind the shack. Where the sand gave way to grassy land, I bent down and laid my ear to the ground. Somebody was running, running hard. Very faintly, I picked up the footsteps, but they grew steadily fainter and died out altogether.

He was gone.

The bastard.

Holstering the. 45, I ran back to the shack. Poochie was prostrate on the floor, blood seeping through his shabby robe. I ripped away the t-shirt beneath and examined the wound. It was high up against his neck. The bullet had gone through cleanly, not touching the bone, missing the jugular vein by a hair.

I pulled a handkerchief from my hip pocket and tore it in half, then made a compress of each section and pressed it to the openings of the hole. I tore off the tail of my shirt and tied it around his neck to hold the compresses in place.

Poochie’s eyes flickered once. He smiled, and passed out again. The little dope had tried to take that bullet for me. He had deliberately thrown himself in front of me to save my life. By God, from now on he was going to stay under my wing.

And if he died somebody was going to leave this world screaming with a broken back.

He was light as a feather in my arms. I cradled him as gently as I could and half-ran to the Wesley house. By the time I reached the car, I was panting heavily. That trek through the sand had taken it out of me. I gently rested Poochie down in the passenger’s seat, then got behind the wheel and backed out of the driveway and took off for town like a bat out of hell.

That heap of mine was a pre-war number that looked like nothing but was really something, with good rubber and a souped-up engine. Trees blew by like a giant picket fence as I cut down the middle of a highway that was all mine, hitting one hundred by the time the modest twinkling of lights announced Sidon.

I went through the city with my hand on the horn. Parked cars glared at me with the reflection of my brights in their unlit headlamps as I swept by. A few lights were on and there was a small crowd stuffed in Big Steve’s place-probably reporters. In front of the grocery I braked to a stop. The two floors above the grocery were Dr. Moody’s office and living quarters. I hoped my old drinking buddy wasn’t on a Saturday night bender.

But Dr. Moody opened the door, looking crisp and alert in what was likely his one and only suit. As the coroner, he’d had to inspect Sharron Wesley’s corpse and he was still dressed for the occasion. His eyes flared at the sight of the little guy I had carried up two flights like Daddy conveying a slumbering child to a bedroom.

“What have you got there, Mike?”

“Gunshot wound. Where’ll I put him?”

Moody led us back down a flight to his offices on the second floor, unlocking the door quickly as I carried the unconscious Poochie into a small waiting room, ancient but clean. The doc pointed to a door, which he opened for us, and I lugged Poochie in. The examining room was done up as well as any hospital’s, and just as completely. The old boy may have been a drunkard, but he still knew his stuff.

As gently as possible, I laid the unmoving form down on the examining table with its crisp white paper. Moody was washing his hands at a gleaming sink. When he finished, he came over and unfastened the crude bandages I had applied and inspected the wound.

I asked, “How does it look?”

“He’ll live.”

“I like the sound of that diagnosis.”

“Maybe so, but little Poochie here came really close to cashing in. We’ve graduated from a severe beating to a nearly fatal gunshot wound. What the hell happened this time?”

As I told him, Moody cleansed and dressed the wound. Together we got Poochie out of his rags down to his skivvies and slid him into a white gown. The doc cranked the examining table into a prone position and made sure his unconscious patient had his head comfortably positioned. The little guy was still out. I guess the shock of it was too much for him.

Moody crooked his finger for me to follow him, and I did, back out into the waiting room. We took a couple of chairs and I scooted mine to face him.

“Mike, you’ll have to leave him here with me for a few days.”

I gave him a quick look. “Why, Doc? It’s a clean wound-in and out.”

“Infection. That and shock are real possibilities. I know Poochie pretty well, and his habits, from eating to exercise, aren’t conducive to good health-his kind doesn’t have much resistance to this sort of thing. He’s little more than a hobo, Mike.”

“He makes his way in the world okay.”

“Yes he does, under normal conditions. But right now, no-he’ll be better off where I can keep an eye on him.”

“Listen, Doc,” I said, “somebody took a shot at me and that little guy stepped in front of it-stepped into it-purposely. I owe him. He saved my life, and if anything happens to him, I’ll rip this lousy town wide open.”

Moody was raising his hands in surrender. “Nothing will happen.”

“You don’t get it yet, Doc. Some bastard tried to murder me… and Poochie was staring at the window at the time. He saw who did it… and I want him to be able to talk.”

Moody sighed, thought that over. Then he prescribed me a cigarette and I took him up on it.

We lit up.

“You know, Mike,” he began, “I am fully aware of the deplorable conditions in this town. As a doctor, I have the questionable distinction of being connected with the so-called local legal system as police coroner. However, that service is rendered by me purely as a protective measure.”

He pulled heavily on his cigarette and blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling and continued.

“I was a good doctor once,” he said. “I had a fine practice and a family, over in Wilcox… but I lost that family at one blow. It happened when our car overturned while coming home from a trip. From then on I went to pieces. I began drinking, realizing the consequences that would follow, but not caring. Naturally, my practice dropped off. Before I went completely to pot, I moved to Sidon with all my equipment. The police coroners offered me the post and I took it so that, in any event, I would still have an income. As the only doctor, I do have a small practice here in town. I’ve been careful to limit my self-sedation to off-hours. I can honestly say I have never endangered any patient’s life with my… weakness.”

“So what do you think of the local law, and the angles they play?”

“They stink-the cops and their angles. You’ve been here enough times, Mike, to know that the town operates solely for the profits it derives from its summer visitors. As long as the political system assists the local populace in getting the almighty dollar, a populace that overlooks the methods practiced in doing so, they keep the system in place and intact. Of course, by now the system has its hooks so far into the people that they have to vote a certain way, to protect their own interests.”

“I figured that out in about fifteen seconds. What about Sharron Wesley? How does she figure? Or I should say, how did she?”

Moody squinted at me curiously. “How much do you know about her?”

“Just about everything,” I told him.

Maybe I was making a mistake, admitting that. Moody’s disapproval of the local “system” didn’t lessen his obligation to the dirty cops and corrupt public officials who provided him with a pay check.

But so what if anything got back to those sons of bitches? If I was stepping on toes, I didn’t give a damn. I’d just as soon smash every goddamn toe in that system Moody complained about. There was nothing that I had to lose, and if they felt like playing rough, they were walking right up my alley in the dark.

Where I’d be waiting for them.

Unexpectedly, Moody said, “Mrs. Wesley put that mansion of hers at the disposal of certain influences and operated it as an all year-round gambling house.”

“Certain influences? Such as?”

He smiled at me, the eyes behind the wire-rim glasses surprisingly bright. But then so was his drink-veined nose. “That I don’t know, Mike. I’m sure it wasn’t anyone here in town.”

“Hell, don’t tell me that Mayor Holden and the cops weren’t in on it! Those guys are chiselers from way back.”

“Oh, our glorious mayor and Chief Beales and his corrupt crew, they all have an interest all right… or had. Don’t underestimate Holden-he looks like a smalltime burgomaster, but he is one shrewd article. You can be sure that a nice slice of the profits line his pockets too.”

I grunted a laugh. “That’s putting it mildly. I’d be willing to bet that if the proceeds of Sharron Wesley’s indoor playground were matched against the town’s yearly take, it would make the legitimate stuff look like a drop in the bucket.”

The doctor said nothing. He snubbed the butt out in a tray built into the waiting-room chair. Then he closed his eyes. He sat that way for damn near a minute, and then finally opened his eyes and stared at me. They had a twinkly cast now.

“You’re a very impetuous person, Mike. Like everybody in Sidon, I read a New York City paper or two, and your… exploits, shall we call them… have made you a celebrity of sorts, and a notorious character. So naturally, what you’ve done so far on your Sidon ‘getaway’ is all over town. I won’t say I disapprove of your activities, either. In fact, I’d like to help you. I’m not that far gone as a dipso. What is your next step?”

“Ha.” I grinned at him. “That depends on a lot of things, Doc. Are you really serious about helping me?”

“Quite.”

“Swell. The first thing you can do is, forget about reporting this gunshot wound.”

Moody nodded.

“You have a nurse that comes in?”

He nodded again.

“Well, she and nobody is to know you have a temporary roommate in Poochie. Keep him in your private apartment, and don’t let him stick his head out a window, much less hike back to that shack of his. Tell him his cats’ll do fine for a couple days.”

“All right.”

“And when he comes to, let me know.”

Another nod.

“Now,” I said, “the other thing you can do is give me the inside dope on Sharron Wesley’s death. The coroner eye-view.”

He sighed. “Very well. Death by strangulation-I’d say about a week ago-with the body immediately thrown into the water. Somehow, she was taken from the ocean before being turned into that grotesque display in our city park.”

“How do you know it was the ocean?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Salt water on her body, sand particles peculiar to this region ground into her skin, seaweed in her hair…”

I grunted an okay and he went on.

“I would estimate her body was placed on the statue about two hours from the time it was found. That’s as close as I could place that-I checked the humidity with a wet bulb thermometer and computed the rate of evaporation.”

Yup, the doc still knew his stuff.

He continued: “Tomorrow will be the autopsy, and I will be able to place the time of her death more closely, if you think it necessary.”

“No, that’s good enough, Doc. It is damn funny, though, that the corpse was reclaimed from the ocean. That’s what we detectives call ‘suggestive.’”

“Suggestive of what, Mike?”

“That it didn’t have to be the murderer who placed Godiva’s waterlogged corpse on her stone horse. That one incident has all the makings of fouling this case up.”

The doc’s eyes were slitted behind the lenses of his wire-rims. “Why would the killer… or for that matter, someone else… make such a display out of the Wesley woman’s remains? A week later? There has to be a reason behind it, Mike. As a detective you must know that.”

“Sure, there’s a reason for every killing, and reasons for every aspect of any killing-only some of them are too damn complicated to figure on the spot. But it’ll come to me, Doc.”

He chuckled and nodded. “I’m sure it will, Mike. I’m sure it will.”

I got up to go and Moody walked me to the door.

Before I left I told him, “Doc, you may be on the square with me, but I don’t know that for sure. I mean no offense, but remember-if anything happens to Poochie, I’m holding you personally responsible.”

“I understand,” he said somberly. “You can have him back in a day or two. I can get in touch with you at the hotel?”

“Yes, but leave no messages. You talk to Velda or me, and not any hotel clerk. Actually, even if you get me or Velda, don’t mention anything. Nothing about Poochie. Just say we need to talk, and I’ll call you from a pay phone.”

“Loose lips sink ships.”

“Yeah,” I said. I opened my suit coat and showed him the. 45 in the speed rig, and winked. “But then so does heavy artillery.”

When I got downstairs, I wiped some of the blood off the car-seat cushions and drove back to the hotel.

Velda was waiting for me in the lobby, which was otherwise almost empty.

I said, “Thought I saw reporters in Big Steve’s diner.”

She nodded. “They swarmed in here like locusts, then swarmed out. When they get back, maybe we can camp out in the bar and see what they’ve learned.”

“Don’t bother,” I said, keeping my voice down. “I just talked to Doc Moody myself.”

She glanced around. The skeletal night clerk was on duty again. He was staring at us the way a sailor on a long overdue shore leave eyes a curvy dame.

“Let’s go up to my room,” she said.

Like that was an invitation I’d turn down.

She steered me up the stairs and down the hall. She worked the key in the lock and I opened the door for her and closed it behind us. That was when she noticed the red stains on my coat.

The big beautiful brown eyes showed white all round. “Mike… you’re hurt!”

She reached for me but I held her off.

“Not me. This is Poochie’s blood.”

“Poochie! Mike, what the hell happened?”

I told her while I cleaned the coat with water from a basin.

She listened intently. When I’d finished she said, “Then you have all the details on the Wesley woman. That’s exactly what I learned.”

“Where?”

“The hotel bar’s pretty busy on a Saturday, even before the reporters showed. For some reason, men just like to buy me drinks and talk to me.”

“Yeah, that’s a tough one to figure.”

“So what’s next on the docket?”

“We’re driving to New York tomorrow, Velda. Pat should have something for me and I want do some digging that can’t be done over the phone.”

This time, surprisingly, she didn’t want to go with me. She was sitting on the edge of her bed. “Why not leave me here?”

“Yeah?”

“Maybe something will develop in Sidon, and it would be better if one of us was on hand.”

Once Velda got her teeth into a case, she was as single-minded as a dog with a spare rib.

“You stay here in town then,” I said, climbing back into my coat. “Keep a check on Moody, too.”

“Don’t you trust him?”

“Everybody I trust in this town is in this room. If you see Dekkert or Beales anywhere near Moody-his office and living quarters are over that grocery down from the picture show-you give me a buzz at Pat’s. Try his office first, then his house.”

“Roger.”

“If that happens, maybe you can create a diversion yourself and keep those louses out of there.”

“Okay.”

I sat next to her on the bed. “You might also try dropping in to see Big Steve again. He may have the inside track on things without knowing it. Guy like him, working behind a diner counter, picks up on more than he even realizes.”

She was nodding, taking it all in.

“Get the political angle in town… where these Keystone cops fit in… exactly where Holden stands… get everything and anything. It’ll be fairly quiet, on a Sunday, but do what you can.”

“Got it.”

“I’ll probably be gone before you get up in the morning. If anyone inquires for me, tell them that I’m around town somewhere. Stall ’em off.”

Velda’s business-like expression turned thoughtful. “Did you find the bullet that was fired at you from the shack?”

I shook my head. “No. First, I went after the shooter, with no luck, then hauled ass out of there getting Poochie to the doctor.”

“Understandable.”

“Anyway, that slug can wait. So far, it’s been the only gun used on this case, and it could belong to anyone. Poochie had his eyes right on the window when the shot was fired, remember. I’m more interested in his story than tracing the bullet.”

“You know darn well,” Velda said with a humorless smirk, “that the little guy could never tell that story to a jury and have it believed.”

I looked at her. “When I get whoever fired that bullet, kid, there won’t be any jury trial.”

“Mike…”

“You know how I operate. Nobody tries to kill me and gets to keep breathing.”

She was shaking her head, her expression glum now. “You’re just asking for trouble.”

That was a laugh. “And they aren’t? Don’t forget that one of this outfit has already resorted to murder. If that isn’t trouble, what is?”

“All right, Mike,” she said, with a sigh. “Have it your own way. Just be careful.”

I got up to leave, but she grabbed my coat sleeve and pulled me back onto the edge of the bed, and the springs bounced us some.

I knew what she wanted. Because I wanted it, too.

I tilted her chin with my fingers and kissed her. Just a friendly goodnight kiss, more than a peck, but not much more.

It was enough to get us started, though. It made me hungry for more, and she knew it. Before I could help myself, she was in my arms and I was crushing her to me. Her mouth was on fire, her hands behind my head holding my face to hers. She had those incredible breasts pressed against me like a threat or maybe a promise, and every fibre in my body was jumping with passion.

When it was over, she nuzzled my ear and kissed my neck lightly.

“Sleep tight,” she said.

After a kiss like that, I’d be lucky if I could sleep at all.

So I went out into slumbering Sidon for a little late evening walk on what turned out to be a cool, breezy night. Every storefront was closed except a couple of bars, and I was almost surprised the sidewalks weren’t literally rolled up.

It wasn’t just Velda’s kiss, though, that was keeping me awake and sending me out for a stroll. I had someone to call on and figured that by now the reporters would be done with him.

Mayor Rudolph Holden, if the flimsy little Sidon phone book could be trusted, lived two blocks off the business section in a red-brick turn-of-the-century two-story house. Quaint but well kept-up, with a nice well-trimmed lawn, this was the largest home I had spotted in the community. Across the street was a Baptist church that was only marginally bigger.

There were lights on downstairs, so His Honor was up. But I wasn’t surprised when my two rings of his doorbell got no response. With that pack of reporters in town, who could blame him for ignoring it? So I hammered on the door and kept at it. Either Rudy would answer or the dead would wake. Either way should be interesting.

Rudy didn’t answer, but it wasn’t the dead, either. The woman was very much alive, slender and about fifty in a nice floral frock, and she hadn’t removed her make-up though it was after nine. She was the kind of older-looking dame who could put on an air of respectability without losing her sex appeal. Unless this was the housekeeper, Rudy had done all right for himself.

Even if it was the housekeeper, he’d still done all right for himself.

“Yes?” she said, her tone impatient, letting me know she didn’t appreciate being disturbed. She had nice hazel eyes and her white hair was youthfully arranged.

“Mrs. Holden?”

“Yes,” she said again, even more impatient.

“I’m not a reporter, ma’am.”

This seemed to take some of the starch out of her. But she said one more time, “ Yes? ”

Like, what the hell is it?

“Would you tell your husband that Mike Hammer is here to see him?”

“My husband is not home.”

“Okay. If he is home, you should tell him I’m here. He’ll want to see me. If he isn’t home, you should tell me where I can find him. It’s important. I’m a detective on the Wesley murder.”

Her irritation turned to alarm, and she said, “Just a moment.”

His Honor received me in his book-lined study. We sat in two comfy chairs before a fireplace that was of course unlighted. His wife had turned friendly, even gracious, and brought us sugar cookies on a plate and glasses of iced tea, which she set on a small table between her husband and me.

“Mr. Hammer,” he said, and he had a warm baritone that was a little odd coming from a small-ish, almost roly-poly individual.

He was in the same short-sleeve white shirt as at the park, but had ditched the too-short tie. He had lost much of his hair, but boyish features kept him young-looking. Minus the pot belly, and plus a full head of hair, he’d have been a nice-looking man. Nice enough to catch that attractive wife, anyway.

Superficially, he seemed calm. But he was eating the cookies nervously. I had one-he had six as we spoke, sugar gathering on his chin like a frost on a winter window.

“We’re lucky to have you in Sidon,” he said, nibbling.

“Really? And why is that?”

“Well, a detective of your abilities. Your renown. We’re a small town, and we’re not well acquainted with murder.”

“Murder gets acquainted with people in all kinds of towns, Your Honor. But you have Deputy Chief Dekkert to lean on, don’t you? He has real big-city experience.”

“Yes, Mr. Hammer, but his background is in vice.”

It sure was.

“Well, I’d be glad to help,” I said.

Was that how they planned to play it? Work with me, and keep an eye on what I was up to? In a pig’s ass that would happen.

On the other hand, the mayor had just opened the door for me to make noises like a cop.

“Mayor Holden, what can you tell me about Sharron Wesley?”

“Call me Rudy, please. Everyone in Sidon knows everyone else, and we like it that way.”

“Swell. But my question…?”

“Well, she was an upstanding citizen, of course. A respected citizen.”

“Really? I understand she had a lot of wild parties out at her digs. And that her guests sometimes came roaring into town causing trouble, like cowboys after a cattle drive.”

He shifted in his comfy chair. Nibbled a cookie. “Well, that certainly has elements of truth. But it’s an exaggeration. We are a one-industry town, Mr. Hammer. And that industry is tourism.”

“In other words, showing out-of-towners a good time.”

“That’s not how I’d put it, but I can’t disagree.”

I leaned forward and grinned at him. It was a nasty enough grin to freeze him mid-cookie.

“Listen, Rudy. The Wesley broad was running a casino out there. I’ve only been here since Friday night and I already know that. So let’s not pretend you don’t.”

“Well… again. We’re a one-industry town.”

I glanced around. “You and your lovely wife have a lovely home here.”

“Well, uh, thank you, Mr. Hammer.”

“Pretty much everything about your set-up is lovely.”

“Set-up?”

“Deputy Chief Dekkert got tossed off the New York Police Department for graft, Rudy. That would make it hard for him to get hired on a lot of forces. But I think it was a gold star on his record, where Sidon was concerned.”

He smiled through sugar-flecked lips. “I’m afraid I’m not following you.”

“I know how these small towns operate. You have a casino on the outskirts. I was inside, I saw the lay-out, and it’s big city all the way. Somebody from New York was backing Sharron Wesley’s play.”

He swallowed a bite of cookie. “Suppose that’s true. What does it have to do with her death?”

“Probably everything. She was strangled, Rudy. Somebody would seem to be unhappy with her. I’d like to have a word or two with her silent partner. And yours.”

He shook his head, smiling again, but it was a sick smile. “I’m afraid you’re making an unwarranted assumption, Mr. Hammer. Much as I would like to help you, I simply don’t know.”

He nibbled on a cookie and I slapped it out of his hand. Then I slapped him a couple of times. He looked as startled as a guy in bed with somebody else’s wife when the flashbulbs went off.

“I don’t know the name! There is no name!”

His wife leaned in from the next room. “Dear? Is there a problem?”

“No! No.”

“You’re sure?”

I said, “He’s sure,” and looked at her with my nicest smile till she smiled back and went away.

Holden tried to straighten up and crawl inside the upholstery at the same time. “Are you insane, man? I’m the mayor of this town! You come into my house, uninvited, and threaten me, and rough me up?”

“I didn’t rough you up. You’d know it if I roughed you up.” I raised a hand in a peaceful gesture, but he jerked back, thinking I was going to slap him again. “I’m a little excitable tonight, Rudy. You see, somebody tried to kill me earlier, and I think it was your boy Dekkert.”

Veins stood out on his forehead. “What? My God! What were the circumstances?”

“The circumstances were, he missed. Big mistake. You and Chief Beales and his boys need to steer clear of me, or I will treat them, and you, like the cheap crooks you are. I was just kind of curious about Sharron Wesley and why somebody would strangle her, but you know what? I didn’t even like the dame. I don’t approve of wholesale murder, but I don’t make every killing my business. Only when I see a slobbermouth like Dekkert damn near beat to death an innocent little guy, I get annoyed. And then when somebody tries to put a bullet in my brain, I get mad.”

He was shaking his head and kept on shaking it. “Mr. Hammer-I have no idea who Sharron Wesley’s silent partner was. I will not deny that I had a small piece of her action. But I dealt only with her.”

“Interesting.”

“Interesting?”

“That makes you a suspect.”

I left him there with one last cookie on the plate. I thanked his wife for the iced tea and told her she had a lovely home.

She smiled, as if to say, What a polite young man, and showed me to the door.