Lady, go die

CHAPTER TEN

Thanks to Marion Ruston’s hijinx, my suit was still damp as a dishrag. That meant a stopover at the cave in that modern cliff on the East Side that I called home. My best suit waited in the closet, tweeds custom-made to conceal my shoulder-slung. 45, and perfect for where I’d be heading next-you can’t walk into the Waldorf-Astoria like so much riff-raff.

But this was turning into a long day, and that cute little twist had tired me out. A hot and cold shower gave me a new lease on life, and I climbed into the dry threads feeling refreshed. Before I slipped the rod into its leather womb, I took time to shoot a few drops of oil in the slide mechanism, checked the clip, grabbed an extra one for my side suit coat pocket, then wiped down the weapon and tucked it under my arm.

I felt right at home moving through the mosaic-floored, marble-columned Waldorf-Astoria lobby. I might have been some swell dropping by the Wedgewood Room or a business executive from Philly on his way to an important conference. Instead I was a private eye looking for a poker game.

Maybe the Waldorf seems an unlikely place for such a lowbrow, illegal activity. But the kind of high stakes game involved made the setting just right. I wandered around overstuffed chairs and potted plants till I detected the bank of elevators. I told the attendant where I wanted to go and he took me there, halfway up the hotel’s fifty floors.

Nobody was outside Suite 2525, no watchdogs in or out of coats cut for underarm armory. I didn’t knock-bad form. This was the kind of hotel suite where you rang the bell.

The lug who cracked the door had confidence-he wasn’t bothering with a night-latch. I didn’t know this character but he was bigger than me, and I’m big enough. The half a bashed nose and single cauliflower ear showing said he was an ex-pug, though not on any circuit around this part of the universe.

“It’s closed,” the doorman rumbled.

Whether that meant the table was not open to the uninvited or that the tourney was at a late stage where additional players were not welcome, I had no clue.

I said, “I need a word with Bill Evans and Miami Bull.”

“Both of them?”

“Well, one of them anyway.”

“They’re busy.”

I flashed the badge that comes with a New York State investigator’s license. Do it fast enough, it can fool people.

Not the ex-pug. “That’s a private badge, bud. Shove off.”

He started to close the door but I gave it the kind of straight-arm a lineman gives a blitzing linebacker, and it opened, all right, the slapping hand of it sending the gatekeeper stumbling backward.

I shut the door quietly behind me and had a good look at what I was dealing with.

He was even burlier when you saw all of him, and both ears were cauliflower. He was well-groomed for a thug, clean-shaven and in a suit almost as nice as my tweeds. But he was still just a thug, with a punch-drunk patina and no discernible weapon, and when he started at me with both fists ready, I took out the. 45 the way I would a match to light a cigarette, and let him look down the barrel.

There was nothing down that dark hole that you could call comforting.

“See, I did have an invitation,” I said.

He started to say something, and I thought maybe he was going to yell a warning. He probably figured this was a robbery, and that made sense because there would be plenty of cash on hand. If not on the table, near it, where the dealer played banker with the chips.

But I clamped my hand over his mouth and shoved the. 45 snout in his belly and shook my head sternly, like a father to a misbehaving child.

Quietly I said, “It’s not a heist, friend. I really am here just to talk to Bill Evans or maybe Miami Bull, between hands. This is a friendly call… so far.”

We were in an entryway and beyond us was a marble-floored, white-throw-carpeted living room where two decorative dames sat on opposing couches over by a fireplace that this time of year was also strictly decorative. One doll was a bright-eyed blonde chewing gum and filing her nails, the other a redhead reading a fashion magazine. The redhead had her back to me and might have been naked, since all I could see was the well-coifed shoulder-length hair and bare freckled shoulders. The blonde had on a white halter top with matching bolero pants and little white heels, a creamy little cutie. Neither had picked up on the little melodrama at the entryway.

The poker game would be to the left of this tableau, in the dining room. I’d been in Waldorf suites before and the layout was always the same.

The ex-pug in the nice suit was backing up slow, his sausage-fingered mitts raised about chest high. I was pressing forward with the. 45 in my right hand and the forefinger of my left hand raised to my lips, shushing him. We were pretty deep into the living room before the two dames noticed us.

The blonde yiped like a puppy with its tail stepped on and I gave her a nasty glance that shut her up. The redhead, who had green eyes and a dress and heels to match, did not seem impressed. She barely looked up from her Vogue.

I motioned with a finger twirl for the ex-pug to turn around and he did. With my gun in his back, I walked him through the open archway into the dining room, which had been converted for poker play. Somehow the standard multi-leaf dining room table had gone away and a big, round, green-felt table with compartments for poker chips and drinks had taken its place.

The men around the table under the cut-glass chandelier had the look of expectant fathers in a waiting room when everybody’s wife was in her thirty-second hour of labor. There were six of them, serious-faced men with loosened ties and suspenders and faces that hadn’t been shaved lately. On the periphery several other bodyguard types sat, reacting to our entry with professional alarm but knowing enough to keep their butts planted. Another doll-nice-looking, in a French maid get-up-was there to provide drinks when asked. From the way she slumped in her chair, next to a buffet with a silver tray on it, she hadn’t been asked for a while.

The ex-pug and I just stood there till they finished the hand. I was behind him, so nobody knew about the. 45 except the poor bastard with its nose nudging his back, but I couldn’t see being impolite. No cash was on the table, though the pot was a couple shovelfuls of a pile of mostly blue chips.

I only made three of the faces, but one belonged to Bill Evans. Sitting across from him was Miami Bull, who I only knew by reputation, though I was confident that was him. The big slump-shouldered guy’s wide beezer and his massive neck explained his nickname, though he was pale enough to have never set foot in Miami.

Evans won the big pot with three tens. Nobody made a comment as he hauled the chips in with two hands. I doubted much talking had gone on for some time now.

The ex-pug cleared his throat and finally everybody noticed us. They weren’t any more impressed than the redhead. Of course, they couldn’t see the gun.

“This guy wants to talk to Mr. Evans or maybe Mr. Peters.”

Mr. Peters was Miami Bull.

“We’re not on a break,” the dealer said. He was a small mustached man who talked tough but looked like he’d break like a matchstick.

I edged out a little from behind the pug, still keeping the rod concealed. “Hiya, Bill. Been a while.”

Evans broke focus enough to smile a little. “Well, hi Mike.” He was stacking the chips he’d just won. That would take a while. “Guys, this is Mike Hammer. He’s that crazy private eye that makes the papers all the time.”

I touched the tip of my hat with my left hand. My right still had the. 45 in the ex-pug’s spine, which remained our little secret.

“I just need a couple of minutes with Bill,” I said. “And maybe Miami Bull.” To the latter, I added: “Excuse the informality. I know we’ve never met.”

Miami Bull replied in a nasal drone, “I ain’t much on formalities,” and scooted his chair back and stood. He stretched and buttons almost popped on a protuberant belly. “I could use a piss, anyhow. I’ll catch you on the way back, Mike.”

Everybody took that opportunity to do their own stretching, and several followed Miami Bull into the kitchen, which apparently provided passage to the nearest john.

I patted the doorman on the shoulder and said, “You can go now,” and he scooted, fast enough for most of the players to notice me shoving the. 45 back under my arm. No reaction from this bunch, just the poker faces you’d expect.

Bill walked over, working his neck, popping vertebrae. “I wish you’d gone into chiropractic and not policing, Mike. What can I do for you? You got more than one favor coming, after that night in Chicago you ran those Outfit wops off my tail.”

“I don’t need a favor, Bill. Just a word.”

“Lead the way.”

We left the dining room and went through the living room out onto the terrace with its view on the black-and-white checkerboard skyline where the Empire State Building hogged attention.

Bill was one of those medium guys-medium build, medium height, medium weight, with the kind of face they build crowds out of. But after hour upon hour of poker, he was way past medium into well-done-his eyes bloodshot, his stubble making his face look dirty, and his dark blond hair as greasy as bacon at a one-arm joint.

“You’re a mess, pal,” I said.

“No I’m not,” he said with a sly half grin. “I’m winning. Glad to have an excuse to slow things down. I want this game over with so I can gather my loot and get on with my life.”

“On to the next game, you mean.”

He shrugged, grinned bigger. “You live the life you choose, right, Mike?”

“Right. And I sure picked a doozy, huh? Have you heard about the Sharron Wesley killing?”

He had. He knew all about her gambling set-up, too, and had been out there several times. The stakes were high. Oh, there were smaller-stakes attractions for the suckers, from slots to faro. But the poker tables were for serious play.

I said, “Sharron Wesley was no Vassar girl. She was no dope, either, but we’re still talking a chorus-gal cupcake who parlayed a nice build into a rich husband.”

Bill smirked. “A rich husband they say she bumped.”

“I’ll lay odds that’s more than a rumor. But my point is, there is no way in hell that ocean-side casino was her private operation. She had to have a silent partner.”

He nodded. “You bet she did. Is that what you’re trying to find out? Don’t the cops know?”

“My in is with Captain Chambers of Homicide. I don’t know the vice boys that well.”

“Well, if you had a contact there, maybe you wouldn’t have to go around breaking up friendly card games slinging around Old Ironsides there.” He nodded to where I’d stowed the rod.

“I’ll keep that in mind. So illuminate me.”

“There are only a handful of really big-ticket gambling czars in this town. There’s a guy who is probably not number one, but he’s in the top three and he’s moving up. Expanding out of the city onto the Island is part of that move. Ever hear of Johnny C?”

“Johnny Casanova?”

“That’s the one.”

His name was actually Casanove, but he was a pretty boy who attracted dames like flies to sugar, and the lover-man nickname had been around as long as he’d been on the scene.

“This game here?” Bill said, with a head bob back toward the dining room. “This is Johnny C’s action. He was around the first few hours the first day, pressing the flesh, then made himself scarce. He doesn’t gamble himself. He’s too smart for that.”

“That was his casino, outside Sidon?”

“Yes it was.”

“But the Wesley dame inherited big dough. Why would she let a syndicate type like Casanova take over her private mansion, and keep her on to play hostess?”

Bill shrugged. “Word is Johnny C had something on her. Maybe proof she bumped off her rich hubby. Who knows?”

“Could she have been Casanova’s mistress? If she was gone on the guy, she might hand him the keys to that mansion.”

“I can’t answer that. But I’ve sat in a couple of games in the last six months or so where Sharron Wesley was hanging around. She’d show all dolled up, and seem like she was part of the entertainment committee…” He jerked a thumb toward the blonde and redhead sitting in the living room nearby. “…but those two in there? Anybody at the table who wants to grab one by the arm, on a break, is free to do so.”

“Free to do what?”

“What I said! Grab her by the arm. Haul her in that bedroom. But not Sharron. She sat around looking pretty, flirted with players, held onto their arms, cheered winners on, that sort of thing. But she never went off into the bedroom with anybody but Johnny C. And then not for long.”

“Not long enough to… entertain?”

“Not unless the Great Casanova is a thirty-second man. But because she seemed, in some way anyway, to be Johnny C’s moll, nobody tried anything with her, beyond just friendly flirting. Don’t you get it yet? How about this, Mike? She always came with a purse. A great big purse. And I don’t think it had her knitting in it.”

Miami Bull came out and joined us, smoking a stogie that could use the outdoors.

Bill nodded toward me. “I was just catching up Mike here on the Johnny C and Sharron Wesley ‘romance.’”

“Romance my Hungarian balls,” Miami Bull droned, leaking blue smoke. “She was his damn bag man! Good-looking one, maybe, but a bag man all the way. Regular Virginia Hill.”

Pat had told me about Sharron Wesley’s New York visits, and her party-girl hanging-on at poker fetes like this. I should have put it together sooner. But at least I knew now.

“Gents,” I said, with a hand on either of their shoulders, “you have done me a big favor. Much appreciated, and I wish you both many happy hands and one whopping pot after another.”

Miami Bull grunted a laugh and waved his stogie like a magic wand. “Bill here is making hash out of both of them notions.”

Bill chortled and said, “Ask him, Mike, how much he took off me last month?”

I was halfway into the living room when I looked back and asked, “Either of you fellas have any idea where Johnny C might hang out on a Monday night?”

“Almost any night,” Bill said, “you can find him at El Borracho, Nicky Q’s fancy bistro. Johnny’s got a back booth that’s as close as he comes to an office.”

“Thank you, fellers.”

On the way out, I stuffed a sawbuck in the breast pocket of the ex-pug doorman’s spiffy suit.

I was gone before he could figure out whether ten bucks was worth what I put him through.

Nicky Q-short for some convoluted Sicilian moniker I won’t even attempt-was a genial oddball whose East Side wine-and-dinery on 55 ^ th attracted cafe society, theatrical types, and your better class of criminal. The walls were adorned with whiskey bottle labels, losing $100 horse-race tickets, and note cards with lipstick kisses courtesy of female patrons.

El Borracho meant drunkard in Spanish, but no tamales were on the menu, though Nicky’s joke two-headed “Siamese fish” was listed at four grand a serving. If you wanted Nicky to have his pet talking Mynah bird taken off its bar-side perch for frying, that would be six grand. So far no takers on either. You could get a veal cutlet, though, for only ten times what Big Steve would charge you for one back in Sidon.

I got myself a rye and soda at the bar and made my way to Johnny C’s office-a corner booth near the riser-type stage, just off a dance floor actually roomy enough for dancing. But the Latin-styled orchestra was on break.

That meant Johnny C would not be out doing his Valentino routine with one of the baby dolls who sat on either side of him. A redhead and a blonde again, wearing green and white plunging gowns respectively, maybe sent from the same call service as the two at the Waldorf suite. This time it was the blonde who seemed bored and the redhead who looked bright-eyed.

As for matinee-idol handsome Johnny C, he had broad shoulders or anyway the tux did, an average-size guy who seemed taller. Johnny had shiny black curls that sat on his head like a Roman council, and a black beauty mark of a mole near sensuous lips, adding to a generally debauched air. The long dark eyelashes and dark brown blinkers were part of that, too. Then there were the ruffled cuffs and bejeweled fingers, plus that dark complexion-not a tan, a gift from Mommy and Daddy back in Sicily.

Book-ending the booth, seated on the outside next to the redhead and blonde, were two outsize bodyguards. Like the pug-ugly doorman at the Waldorf, this matched pair dressed really well for hoods. Not tuxes like the boss, though, or tweeds either. But decent charcoal suits with sharp dark-blue silk ties, even if their rods did bulge.

One hood, seated next to the blonde, had an interesting decorative touch around his thick neck-purple and yellow bruises, splotchy things. Like the kind that got made when somebody was choking you and really putting some effort into it. I had never seen this boy, a tiny-eyed sort with a hook nose, or his friend, a dimple-chinned specimen with a black burr haircut.

What was interesting was that they were both scowling at me in apparent recognition.

Being a shrewd detective, I deducted more or less immediately that this was the pair who yesterday had rifled my office and scuffled with me in the dark.

“Mike Hammer,” Johnny C said in his smooth baritone, lifting his Manhattan as if in a toast. “Isn’t El Borracho a little rich for your blood? Or are private detectives in demand for divorce work in our glorious post-war world?”

“I don’t do divorce work,” I said, yanking over a chair from a nearby table for four, with a nod to a startled couple who could spare it. I sat facing Johnny and jerked a thumb at the tiny-eyed hood and then his dimple-chin partner. “Maybe I came for the two-headed fish.”

The goons frowned at this, but Johnny chuckled. Speaking of private eyes, the redhead was giving me one, slipping me a wink when Johnny wasn’t looking. You’d think she would prefer the Don Juan who brung her to a rough apple like yours truly.

“What did you come for, Mr. Hammer?” Johnny C asked, his ripe lips smiling but his eyes cold.

I reached in my suit coat pocket and got out the scented hanky and tossed it on the table. It landed right in front of him and he frowned down at it.

“I’ve spent a couple days trying to find out who Sharron Wesley’s silent partner was,” I said, “and all this time the answer was in my pocket. I found that hanky in a money cage at the casino. I figured it for a lady’s because of the delicate work and the scent. But that ‘G’ on it stands for Giovanni… Italian for John.”

Johnny C said nothing. The smile was gone, the cold eyes remained.

I sipped my rye and soda. “Maybe it is a ‘lady’s’ hanky. Maybe you sleep with Frick and Frack here, and the dollies are just window dressing.”

Now the blonde was smiling at me, too. Pay dirt.

“I don’t really give a damn either way,” I said, “but Sharron Wesley sure as hell wasn’t your moll. I don’t think she was your partner, either. You had her under your thumb. She lived in a little apartment in her own mansion, and played hostess on weekends and bag woman on week-days.”

Johnny C shrugged, reclaimed the hanky and stuck it away somewhere. “Joe, Tony… show Mr. Hammer outside. In the alley. I’ll join you shortly. I’d like to have a private talk with him.”

Both hoods grinned at their boss, nodded, then grinned at me.

“I’m game,” I said, getting up.

Both girls were frowning now, possibly in concern or maybe because the floor show was over. I just let Joe and Tony guide me by either arm across the dance floor to a side door onto the alley.

It was no darker out there than in El Borracho. Tony shut the door on the nightclub noises and city sounds took over, like the yell Joe let out when I sent my heel into his knee, sharp and hard. Joe’s grip on my arm was gone and I swung around to face Tony, whose tiny little eyes got as wide as they could and I head-butted him in his hooked nose.

Then Tony’s grip was gone, too-he was busy dealing with twin streams of blood from flared nostrils. Thanks to his hurting knee, Joe was kneeling like he was about to receive communion, but what he got was a roundhouse right hand that turned his mouth into a red foamy thing spitting teeth like seeds and he went down all the way, his hands covering his face with more red squirting between his fingers. Tony was trying to recover, still on his feet but wobbly, his lower face a mask of scarlet. I figured he needed some rest, too, like his pal, and sunk a fist into his gut so deep that puking was his only option. That, and tottering till he fell, doing a nasty belly-flop on the bricks. Joe was holding up red-smeared palms, begging for mercy, or anyway I think he was-you couldn’t make out much from the bubbling froth.

I might consider mercy for Joe, but at the moment I was busy bringing back a foot to kick Tony in the face when the door opened and Johnny C stepped out, his easy smile turning to horror-struck alarm as he saw the bloody mess his fallen angels were making.

“ Don’t, Hammer! You’ll kill him! Please! ”

I didn’t figure a kick in the head would kill the punk, but it might have, and Johnny had said please.

The too-handsome gambling czar rushed over, his eyes white all the way round, making a stark contrast with his head of black Roman curls. He was gesturing with both hands, pleading.

“Ye gods, Hammer! I really just wanted to talk in private! There was no need for this.”

“You should have been more clear,” I said with a shrug, digging out a ruined deck of Luckies and fingering out a semblance of a cigarette. “Anyway, those two shook down my office yesterday. And they handed me my tail. So I handed theirs back.”

“They’re just doing their job!”

“Yeah, that’s what the Nazis said.” I stuffed the rumpled cigarette in my mouth and got it going somehow. “Why have my office tossed, Johnny? What did I ever do to you?”

He sighed. His boys were providing background music with their whimpering. Actually, Joe was weeping. Their boss glanced at them with concern. Maybe he did sleep with them.

Then he turned to me, calm as the spring breeze that was playing with refuse in the alley. “Hammer, I have friends in Sidon… in official circles.”

“No kidding.”

“I heard you were poking around into the Sharron Wesley killing. I have my own interests in that matter.”

I blew smoke at him. “There wasn’t a murder case when I went out there. The dead woman didn’t even turn up till the day after I arrived. Of course, she was dead a week already. Maybe you knew that.”

He shook his head. “No. I had nothing to do with her murder-she was the last person I wanted to see dead. I had reason to believe she’d been holding out on me. That she had a great deal of my money hidden away somewhere.”

I frowned at that. “Didn’t you own the casino together?”

He shook his head. He dug a silver cigarette case and got out his own cigarette. It wasn’t rumpled, but I gave him a light, anyway.

“Sidon was strictly my operation,” he said.

“But it was her place! Her mansion! What happened to the cool million she inherited?”

He drew smoke in through his sly smile. “Oh, a lot of that money went into the set-up, all right. She just didn’t have a piece of it.”

“What the hell did you have on her, Johnny? Evidence that she killed old E.J. Wesley? Or maybe you bought the jurors. Is that it, jury-rigging? Maybe it wasn’t Sharron’s long legs that got her acquitted, but your long green.”

That sly smile turned downright decadent. “Does it matter, Mike? May I call you Mike? I’d like us to be friends.”

He put a bejeweled hand on my shoulder and I picked it off like a gaudy insect that had lit there.

“We’ll keep it friendly,” I allowed. “But I’m particular about choosing my friends. What’s on your mind, Johnny? What the hell was going on out there that has you and Dekkert and the entire Sidon city government doing handstands?”

He thought about those questions for a while. Clearly he was making a decision. He’d said he wanted me to be his friend. But what I thought he really wanted was me as an ally.

I was right.

“Mike,” he said, “you’re probably aware Sharron delivered our weekend take to me, in cash, regularly. We did it discreetly, playing into her reputation as a sort of party girl, and mine as a Romeo.”

And both had been a facade.

“She was never really my ‘moll,’” he said, quietly amused. “She was strictly a bag man, or bag woman, if you prefer. I paid her well. I wasn’t a cruel partner.”

“You weren’t a partner at all. You were her boss.”

“Yes. Yes, you’re right, and that was the problem, wasn’t it?”

“Was it?”

He nodded, and his smile turned into a sour twitch. “She was skimming from me. For how long, I have no damn idea, but she was skimming. I believe she was building a sort of stake that would be enough for her to leave the country, and live comfortably, starting anew, under another name.”

“And out from under your thumb, huh? That makes sense. She wasn’t keeping all the money then-she was giving you enough to fool you, for a while, anyway-but the skim over a period of months, or even a year, that could really add up.”

“Yes. Yes, it could. We’re both lucky, you and I, that Sidon has the corrupt police force it does. A real murder investigation, conducted by the state police, would mean that mansion and those grounds would be turned upside down. My money would be found, and confiscated.”

“Do you think the Sidon cops are wise to Sharron’s money stash?”

He quickly shook his head. “I don’t see how they could be… but they could blunder onto it.”

I raised an eyebrow. “If Dekkert doesn’t know there was a hoard of cash stashed out there, why was he so hot to find out what became of Sharron Wesley? He damn near beat a little beachcomber to death, just because the guy lived close enough to the Wesley place to have seen something.”

Johnny sucked in deep on the cigarette holder, and when he finally exhaled, smoke floated skyward like a new Pope had been picked. “You may be right, Mike. Dekkert may have gotten wise. All the more reason for me to enlist your help.”

“What do you have in mind?”

He leaned closer. He smelled like that hanky. “If you can find the stashed skim money, you can have yourself a fat finder’s fee. Twenty-five percent.”

“You wouldn’t be trying to distract me now, would you, Johnny?”

He scowled. “You know damn well I didn’t kill the Wesley woman! I wanted her alive, to find out where she hid what she stole from me. So your search for her killer will not lead to me.”

Damn. I believed him.

“If you don’t find the money,” he went on, with a casual shrug, “or if someone beats you to it, I will still pay your daily rate.”

“All right,” I said. “Fifty a day. I cover my own expenses.”

“Very generous of you, Mike. We’ll start that rate as of yesterday, as a gesture to make up for what happened at your office. Mea culpa.”

“Yeah. Your culpa, all right.”

That pretty boy mug of his dealt me a seductive, hood-eyed gaze. “Could you help with one other item, Mr. Hammer?”

“Uh, what’s that?”

He nodded toward his two boys, who had managed to get themselves into sitting positions against the side of the building, their legs sticking straight out.

“I’d like to get Joe and Tony to a hospital. Could you help me convey them to my car?”

What the hell-why not?

That took only five minutes, and then I was on my way back to Sidon.

The pieces were coming together now. I didn’t know if I could lay hands on Johnny C’s skim money. But I would soon have a killer in my grasp, or on the end of my rod.

Either way, I’d be squeezing.