Baby, It’s Murder

Chapter Three

When we got back from the burger joint, the sun hadn’t gone all the way down but was thinking about it. Velda and her sister went on in and I was fetching my bag from the heap, having transferred it to the trunk before we all piled in to go have a bite, when a motorcycle roared up sounding like the Hell’s Angels rolling into town.

The big Harley bumped up over the curb and across the sidewalk and caught the edge of the lawn, taking some green with it. The engine switched off.

“Hey!” I yelled. Then in classic old man fashion added: “Get that fucking thing off the lawn, you damn jerk!”

The jerk in question was lanky in a much-worn black-leather vest over a long-sleeve tee, frayed blue jeans and motorcycle boots, no helmet over a head of dark hair held back in a ponytail, his boyish, admittedly handsome face stubbled with maybe a week of beard. Hooded eyes gave him a naturally sullen look, but he didn’t argue with me, just guided the bike back onto the sidewalk, used the kickstand and walked quickly over. I was at the edge of the brick walk to the bungalow, the bag in hand, with half a mind to swing it at him.

“Sorry,” the kid said, voice mid-range. He was maybe twenty; like Second, a little older than Mikki’s high school crowd. “I was in a mood.”

“Really?” I said, not holding back the nasty. “I get that way myself, when somebody tears up a lawn. Try planting the stuff and mowing it and you’ll get what I mean.”

He risked a tiny smile. “You must be Mr. Hammer. Mikki told me about you.”

“She never told me about you, but I heard things.”

He thought about that for a few moments, then extended his black-gloved hand. “I’m a friend of hers. Brian Ellis. You sure she never mentioned me?”

I shook the hand; the grip was firm, anyway. “I’d remember. What can I do for you? Or were you just leaving?”

“I just stopped by to see how Mikki’s mother is doing.”

Was I supposed to believe that?

He went on: “You mind if I go up to the house? I wanna talk to her.”

“Mikki’s mother is in a nursing home.”

“I mean, I want to talk to Mikki.” He raised a gloved palm. “Sorry we got off on the wrong foot, Mr. Hammer.”

“How is it you know me? Can’t just be Mikki talking.”

“I saw you in the paper a few times.”

What was I, a damn comic strip?

“You killed five men, it said, last few weeks,” he commented. He seemed impressed and maybe a bit more intimidated than most bikers would be of some old guy who told ’em to get off his lawn.

“It was two different times,” I said, a little defensive, though not exactly knowing why. “The papers like to make a big deal out of everything.”

“You... you mind if I ask you something?”

“Try it and see.”

His eyes, gray-blue, narrowed. “How... how does it feel to kill somebody?”

I grunted something that was more or less a laugh. “I’d tell you to ask your psychology teacher, but I’m guessing you’re not in high school like Mikki.”

“Uh, no. I... was. But I am in college. Now.”

I almost said, You’re shitting me, but I had too much class, college or otherwise. “Then maybe ask your psyche prof... or do you want a personal answer?”

His chin came up. “I’m asking ’cause I want to know. I don’t mean any offense by it.”

I shrugged. “It depends on the situation, killing a man. If it’s war, it’s not about the enemy’s bad luck but your own ass. Why isn’t a healthy guy like you in Vietnam, anyway?”

“I’m 4-F.”

“Yeah? Lucky you.”

Now he risked a frown. “Not so lucky. I lost my left arm when I skidded in front of a four-wheeler.”

I hadn’t noticed it, but his left arm did hang loose at his side. Probably a prosthesis. I felt bad for being so tough on the kid.

But it didn’t stop me from saying, “If that’s all you got, out of a dust-up with a four-wheeler, you are lucky.” I sighed. “If you want to know how I felt about those drug dealers I took down, truth is? I didn’t feel a goddamn thing.”

“No... no remorse at all?”

“When somebody’s shooting at you, and you return fire? Remorse isn’t part of it. Strictly survival. You ever been shot at?”

“Of course not.”

“Try it sometime.”

“Brian!” Mikki’s voice called.

Mikki, still in her terry-cloth top and distressed jeans, came quickly out and down the steps on low-heeled sandals, pausing to whisper to me, “I’ll deal with this.”

Then the girl was shaking a finger in the Ellis kid’s face and reaming him a good one, although I didn’t catch anything of what she said, as her voice was down and I was heading into the house with my bag.

I met Velda at the door.

She gave me a look, the big brown eyes narrow. “Old boyfriends,” Velda said. “Always a problem.”

I went in and set my bag down. “Like when I pulled you out of that undercover operation with that pimp I wound up shooting?”

“Maybe not that big a problem.” She gave me a kiss, a quick one. “Let them talk it out.”

From the muffled arguing through the closed door, mostly Mikki’s voice, I’d say “talking it out” was an understatement.

But I said, “Sure.”

We were at the front window now, keeping an eye on things — with a rough kid like Ellis, who knew where this might lead? But then the brouhaha ended with the easy rider roaring off and, right on cue, Second pulled up in his golden Corvette.

Dressed as before, he got out, clearly concerned, went to her quickly and put his hands on her shoulders. Mikki seemed to be assuring him everything was fine.

What guy doesn’t flip out a little when his girl’s ex-boyfriend comes around? We were all lucky the three of them weren’t there at the same time, or things could’ve really got out of hand.

We saw Mikki nod at Second, leaving him at the curb as she came trotting toward the house; we pulled back from the window, not wanting to seem like we were minding her business and not our own, and the girl stuck her head in the door.

“Second is here,” Mikki said redundantly. “We’re going to catch a drive-in movie. Woodstock’s playing.”

Then she slipped out.

I said, “I don’t think that one has much of a plot.”

“Isn’t that the bird in Peanuts?”

“Who knows? I’m still a Terry and the Pirates man myself.”

Velda smirked at me. “You just have a yen for Dragon Lady types.”

“I sure do.”

That made her smile. “Let’s get you settled in, sonny boy, before you widen the generation gap any further.”

We went to the guest bedroom, where Velda was already camped out, and I set my bag on top of the bureau and filled the bottom two drawers. I’d just completed the task when I heard a long zipper humming its way down and reacted like a hound who clocked its master digging into a box of doggie treats.

Her brown velour pants suit puddled at her feet. She stepped out of them, wearing a beige support bra and matching panties that weren’t at all sexy but for their remarkable contents. She kicked off the dark brown kitten heels and undid the bra and it hung there a while, like mountain climbers who missed a step, then fell away; she shimmied out of the panties and a pubic tuft sprang into view and said hello.

Then she was standing there, hands defiantly on her hips, the full breasts with their hard pink tips thrust forward in dual dares, the muscular legs planted apart, like the statue of some ancient Amazon, a warrior queen whose shameless confidence knew no bounds.

By way of comparison, my strip tease was nothing to write home about, more like a kid on a hot day shedding his duds to jump in a lake and get cooled off, only there was nothing cool about what followed. Unlike the horny teens I’d interrupted earlier, we got under the covers and had some good old-fashioned frantic missionary sex, the kind called for when you haven’t seen your partner in weeks.

Why had I waited so many years to partake of her sweet fruit? It had taken those seven years apart for me to toss off my silly ideas about respecting convention, to believe that flings were fine but not with that special someone. Only now that we were truly partners, marriage license or not, all of that was irrelevant. Not long ago, on a hillside, with a dead miscreant named Blackie Conley at its foot, in the heat of surviving an assault, we had tossed off everything from clothes to customs and finally merged as man and wife. We’d wed for society one day; for now and forever, we already were.

Velda padded off into the hall bathroom and I got a smoke out of the breast pocket of my discarded shirt. Pulled on my boxers just to be decent and crawled back under the covers and lit up a Lucky.

She came in nude as a grape and slipped under with me. “Smoking after sex? You are such a cliche.”

“I never claimed not to be.”

She plucked it from my fingers like a flower, got out of bed again and disappeared bare-ass. I heard a toilet flush.

Under the covers again, pretending to be cranky, Velda said, “How many times have you quit?”

“Counting right now? Half a dozen maybe. You know me. I get weak when I get traumatized.”

“Why are you traumatized?”

“My best girl ran out on me.”

My Viking woman touched my face; the long red fingernails tickled. “Well, your best girl’s right here, right now. So no more bad habits.”

“Take my bad habits away, doll, and what do you have left?”

Her smile turned nicely wicked. “Maybe somebody who’ll finally make an honest woman of me.”

She pressed against me and nuzzled under my ear, the long black hair providing a second round of tickling. Then with her sweet face in the nape of my neck, my loyal secretary fell asleep and so did I.

When I awoke, and sat up a bit, not remembering where I was for a moment, she woke, too. Nothing but night was coming in around the window by the bureau. A clock on my nightstand read a luminous ten after ten. Velda reached over toward her bedside lamp and turned on a light at a low level.

She bent and opened her nightstand drawer and withdrew a pack of Virginia Slims and a silver horse’s-head lighter I’d given her years ago. After selecting a slender smoke from the pack, and lighting herself up, she offered me one.

I grinned at her. “When did you become a hypocrite?”

“A long time ago. I had a good teacher.” She nodded at me, encouragingly, offering the tobacco deck my way. “Take one — it probably won’t turn you gay.”

“What the hell,” I said with a bare-shouldered shrug, “I’ll risk it.”

She lit me up and, with a devilish smile, said, “You’ve come a long way, baby.”

We smoked in silence for a while, our exhales drifting like our thoughts. As a cigarette, this was better than nothing.

“What’s the deal?” I asked her.

“What do you mean, what’s the deal?”

“You haven’t smoked for years. Or have you been sneaking them behind my back?”

She cocked her head. “Nobody can sneak anything behind Mike Hammer’s back. You’re the most famous detective in Manhattan, remember?”

“Maybe, but we’re in Sidon.” I let some smoke out. “Has it got you down, baby, your mother’s condition?”

“No, she’s doing well. Making progress, healing on schedule. Of course, it’s anything but immediate.”

I studied her. “Then what’s got you filling your lungs with the Surgeon General’s warning?”

She had a troubled look now. “It’s our... it’s my sister.”

“Mikki? She seems fine to me.”

“It feels like... I’m probably wrong.” She let smoke out her nostrils, a lovely Dragon Lady. “It’s just the difference in our ages, Mikki and me.”

“What is?”

She turned to me, her eyes narrowed. “You know how important tennis has been to her.”

I shrugged. “Sure. She’s getting more college scholarship offers than the entire Jericho High basketball team. She’s gonna be the next Billie Jean King.”

Her head shook slowly. “Not if she doesn’t go out for tennis this year, she won’t.”

That sat me up. “What? I thought tennis was just about the most important thing in her life.”

“No, Mike, she’s a normal girl of seventeen. Lately she’s been majoring in Boys.”

That got a frown out of me. “You can’t mean she’s turning into some kind of little...” I couldn’t get the word “slut” out, but Velda knew it was on the tip of my tongue.

Her reply was firm. “No. Not at all. She went with this older boy for a while, the one you saw outside...”

“The Ellis kid.”

“Yes. I wasn’t crazy about that, nor was Mom. Some biker boy from a broken home. But he was always polite to me. You can’t judge a book by its cover, they say.”

“Well, they’re wrong. Ever see what they put on the front of The Carpetbaggers? That kid is a classic bad boy, from his motorcycle to his boots to that long, greasy hair.”

That seemed to amuse her a little. “Some females are attracted to ‘bad boys,’ Mike. Haven’t you been paying attention?”

She had me there.

“Look,” Velda said, “she’s with Second now, and he’s a good kid from a good family. Older than her, but in university. Let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth.”

“Maybe so, but...”

“But what, Mike?

Reluctantly I told her about catching those two in Mikki’s mom’s bedroom, half-dressed, obviously in a post-coital state.

“The girl’s a senior in high school,” Velda said, placatingly. “Second’s a sophomore in college. That she, that they, have an active sex life in today’s world is no surprise. How old was I when we first got together?”

Truth was, I didn’t remember asking.

“It probably has to do with her improved self-image,” Velda said, thoughtfully.

“What’s that supposed to mean? You listening to Dr. Joyce Brothers again?”

She shrugged her bare shoulders. “You know that Mikki put on some weight in her junior year.”

“Yeah, some. Didn’t slow her down on the tennis court.”

“Not much, but how she felt about herself was impacted, and she really worked at losing weight. She’s darn near skinny now.”

“Maybe a little. But she looked fine to me.”

“She looks fine. But there’s a downside.”

“Oh?”

Velda leaned on an elbow. “Most obviously, it’s her not going out for tennis, no matter how much her coach encourages her. Doesn’t mean a thing to her that her school counselor is talking all these scholarship offers, if she just stays at it. Of course, that might be a moot point.”

“Why’s that?”

Her head cocked. “Frankly, Mike, I wasn’t aware of this. Mom tried to keep it from me while she worked on... the problem.”

“What problem?”

She made a face, then: “Mikki’s grades.”

I waved that off. “Oh, come on. She’s been a straight A student since elementary school.”

But Velda shook her head and the raven arcs seemed to swing in slow motion. “Last semester she barely managed a C- average. She’s getting Ds now.”

I frowned. “Did you know about this?”

“No, not for a long time. As I said, my mother thought she could deal with it herself. But that was before Mom broke her hip and wound up in a nursing home.”

“Which is why you took your leave of absence.”

Velda nodded. “Which is why I took my leave of absence. Somebody has to look after that child.”

My smirk had no humor in it. “A child who has a boyfriend she makes hay with when the cat’s away.”

“Now who’s the hypocrite?”

“No, no, it’s fine. And if she wants to marry that rich kid and clip investment coupons and raise a bunch of spoiled brats to make Ivy League legacy students out of, that’s up to her. I guess. I was kind of looking forward to her winning the U.S. Open someday.”

Velda’s sigh was knowing. “Kids go their own way, Mike. If you were a father, you’d know that.”

“I already know it. But I don’t have to like it. And Mikki’s my goddaughter, remember.”

She gestured with an open palm. “Mikki breaking off with the Ellis boy is a good sign. Personally, I thought Brian was a nice kid, a little misguided maybe, but... just the same, Second is much better for her. Great family, nice prospects...”

“And short hair,” I said.

She laughed. “Yes, I know how important that is to you.”

We drifted back off to sleep, and something in the outer room woke me. I sat up sharply, taking in the luminous dial on my nightstand clock: well past two a.m.!

The lovely naked woman next to me roused as well, and said, whispering, “It’s not the bad guys, Mike. That’s just Mikki coming in. This is Long Island.”

“I know it is,” I said defensively. But my hand was in my nightstand drawer, where I’d stowed the .45. “But I have ‘friends’ in Manhattan who get around.”

Some muffled laughter and talk out there, followed by the door closing and footsteps in the hall, announced Velda’s reading of the situation as spot on. The only surprise was the quick knock at the guest-room door followed by that door opening.

No light was on in the hall, but the shadowed form was clearly female.

Not every woman in the world is my friend, so I turned the .45 in hand toward that open doorway and a hand reached in and clicked on the light. The “woman” poised there was Mikki, looking a little rumpled, both hair and clothing, but smiling big.

“Don’t shoot!” she said, holding up her hands, giggling.

I snapped, “Do you know what time it is, young lady?”

“What’s that?” Mikki said, still amused, taking in our half-concealed nude forms under a sheet. “Naked indignation...? Good night, you two. Nice to see you, Mike. Even if I’m seeing more than I care to.”

The girl clicked off the light and went out, shutting the door.

Velda clicked on her nightstand light. She seemed amused, too.

“I don’t find that funny,” I said, cross.

“It is kind of funny.”

“Didn’t you see what time it is?”

Her chin lowered and her eyes came up. “We both saw. It was a drive-in movie. They’re always at least double features, and this isn’t that late for that. Hey, she’s just pushing things because Mom is not around, and this is Spring Break, and she’s a senior, and—”

“Okay, okay,” I said, and slipped the rod back in the nightstand drawer. “I’ll cut her some slack.”

“Good. And maybe she’ll cut you some.”

Velda switched off the nightstand lamp.