Masquerade for Murder

Chapter One

It wasn’t New York any more, not the old New York. Over on the Main Stem, the lights still blazed as bright as ever and the people were just as many, but that was Tourist Town. Action Street. The Big Beanery.

And when you stood on the corner of Second and 44th, on a chill November night promising winter, and watched five lanes of taxis cruise by heading south in time with the signals, you knew you had kissed off the old New York a long time ago. The Els were down, the cobwebs gone, and even the slop chutes had their faces lifted. The Blue Ribbon restaurant was a memory, fading into history with Broadway pen pushers like Walter Winchell, Earl Wilson and Hy Gardner, whose newspapers were as dead as they were. The hole-in-the-wall joints were done-over and intimate now, the prices high and the lighting low, where the rich married slobs could slip off with some poor sexy broad without causing too much of a stir. Even the junk shops catered to class. Now they had hand-carved ANTIQUES signs over the doors, and brand-new price tags on the same old worthless rummage.

Across the street from where the hackie dropped me, one place was still open and unchanged — PETE’S CHOPHOUSE, said the neon lettering above dark-tinted windows that glowed with electric beer signs like fireflies in the night. I was meeting Captain Pat Chambers of Homicide, my oldest friend in the world, going back all the way to the army and the kind of war nobody protested. One of his best officers, Lt. Casey Shannon — “the Wall Street Cop,” the News called him — was retiring soon, and this was his send-off.

Diminutive Pete himself met me just inside — he was his own maitre d’, a small jet-black-haired man in his sixties (only his hairdresser knew for sure) wearing a shiny tuxedo and a thick mustache and a puffy face that bore a smile like a duty, but one he didn’t mind. The place was smoky and dark, mirrored walls working to make the joint bigger — one of those male bastions where women were welcome, as long as they came accompanied. Like me, Pete’s was a relic — a supper club clinging desperately to the past.

“Mike!” Pete said, the smile turning real. “Or is it Mr. Hammer now that you’re respectable?”

I grinned at him. “I just killed somebody important for a change.”

I took off my porkpie fedora and Pete helped me out of the trenchcoat and took the hat and handed the works over to the blonde at her window; she was maybe twenty-five but in that low-cut sparkly thing, she looked like fifty-five — 1955, that is, and that was fine by me.

“One of these serial killers you read about, huh?” Pete burbled. “Hidin’ in plain sight, in a government job yet! And you flush him out. You got a lotta play in the papers, Mr. Hammer, Mike — like the old days! Your girl Velda, she’s okay? Bastard put her in the hospital, they say.”

“She’s great. That was months ago, Pete. Old news.”

I patted his shoulder and slipped away — I wasn’t here to talk to an aging restauranteur about my latest fifteen minutes of infamy.

The hostess, a stunning redhead in a green evening dress with matching emerald eyes, intercepted me. Though I hadn’t been to Pete’s for a while, I was enough of a regular to know that her first name was Sheila, though by now we were too well-acquainted for me to ask what her last name was.

She was ten curvy pounds the right side of plump and had cherry-red lipsticked lips with a bruised Bardot look that made her smile seem knowing and sly without even trying. Her arm slipped into the crook of mine as she slow-walked me, winding around tables, pausing for bus boys and wait staff.

“Alone tonight, Mike?” She was flirty in that way that you knew would never amount to anything.

“Velda doesn’t like this place.”

Lovely raven-haired Velda was officially my secretary but unofficially my partner in a bunch of ways, with her own P.I. license and a .32 automatic in her purse and my heart tucked under her arm.

The Bardot lips twitched with amusement. “Food not to Velda’s taste?”

“Food very much to her taste. That’s why she doesn’t like it.”

Sheila gave me a kiss of a smile. “Watching her figure?”

“Her and me and every other right-minded man in town. Are you okay, kid?”

“Super. Why?”

“I got X-ray vision. Me and Clark Kent. I can see right through that make-up.”

Her left eye was a little swollen and expertly dabbed with flesh-colored cosmetic.

She frowned just a tad. “Is it that obvious, Mike?”

“Could be I’m a detective. What’s his name? I might have something for him.”

She brought us to a stop and her smile turned into a tragic thing that wouldn’t fool anybody. “No, Mike. Please don’t. Please stay out of it. I’m breaking it off. I promise. I swear.”

I touched her cheek, lightly. “You have any trouble shaking loose, kid, you know where to find me. And it won’t cost you a penny. I enjoy spending time with men who think beating up women is fun.”

She swallowed, nodded, then delivered me to my destination and slipped back to her post.

Pat hadn’t lined up a backroom or anything, just a big corner booth filled with rumpled men in rumpled suits. I shook hands with everybody, then squeezed in next to Pat, who was my age, blond with gray-blue eyes, a trimly muscular build, and a methodical mind.

“We decided,” Pat said, “not to wait for you before we started drinking.”

“Good call,” I said.

There were seven of us, including but not limited to burly, balding Shannon himself; Chris Peters, his slim young current partner on the PD; and Ben Higgins, an already retired skin-and-bones copper who’d been the sidekick before that.

I’d barely settled when a waitress in a white dress shirt and black skirt delivered me a Canadian Club and ginger. Like I said, I was something of a regular at Pete’s. My preferences were known.

We talked old times. I won’t bore you with it, but Peters loved hearing everything, particularly the tales that showed how dogged and tough Shannon could be, but also the ones that made this older mentor of his seem human, like when the Wall Street Cop was on the receiving end of his former partner Ben Higgins’s practical jokes.

“Hell,” Higgins was saying, “I didn’t even know you could melt Ex-Lax down and make a decent hot fudge sundae out of it. Turns out you can!”

Over everybody else’s laughter, a smirking Shannon said, “It made hot fudge all right, let me tell you.”

Several rounds of drinks went by before we finally ordered. Everybody got the house specialty — bone-in rib-eyes — and the waitress was still getting the particulars, salad dressing, veggies, potato and so on, when a tall, broad-shouldered guy of maybe thirty-five came in, leading two men a decade or so older who seemed vaguely servile yet bore a distinguished quality the younger man somehow lacked.

They were peeling out of their Burberry cashmere trenches, the older men revealing Brooks Brothers suits each worth a week of my rent at the Hackard Building. Shannon — sitting next to Pat — leaned over and said to both of us, “What the hell are they doing in a joint like this?”

Shannon looked something like the old movie actor Pat O’Brien at a similar age, but less hair, wisps of white only. Like that old-time actor, he had a hint of Ireland in his voice — not from once having lived there, but growing up in a home where the parents had, and the brogue had been catching.

That other Pat said, “Don’t let Pete hear you calling his white-tablecloth joint a joint, pal.”

Shannon raised a single hand of surrender. “No, it’s not that. It’s just... that Colby kid is more a Four Seasons type. Or the Union Square Café, when he feels like dressing down.”

I looked sideways at the newcomers, who Pete was handing off to Sheila for seating. “That’s Vincent Colby, huh?”

“In the flesh. And that’s probably a good two-grand worth of fabric and cut.”

Colby was not in mere Brooks Brothers. I made that beautifully assembled charcoal pin-striped affair as Armani, similar to one Velda had tried, unsuccessfully, to get me into.

I’d heard of this handsome young guy. Read about him (profiles in the Sunday Times and New York Magazine). Ivy League school (Harvard Business, wasn’t it?). Prominent in the family brokerage firm (Colby, Daltree & Levine). Eminently eligible bachelor (dating society girls).

I asked Shannon, “Is that kid as upstanding as his rep?”

Shannon was watching as Sheila led Colby across the room, the two Wall Street big shots trailing along like litter bearers.

“Far as I know,” Shannon said. “Like his old man, that ‘kid’ served in the Navy, made Lieutenant.”

“Straight shooter all the way?”

His mouth twitched. “Some youthful indiscretions, I understand. No police record, but under-age records get expunged, particularly if you have connections.” He sipped his highball. “Colby’s guilty, all right — of being a rich Golden Boy, but that’s about it.”

“Far as you know.”

“Far as I know, Mike.”

Sheila was getting them seated in a booth at the bar area, across the dining room. Only Colby didn’t sit down right away. He was standing there chatting with the redhead. She was smiling and trading talk in a friendly way. More of that going-nowhere flirtation? Or something else?

I said, “He sounds too good to be true.”

“That’s been my feeling,” Shannon admitted. “I always felt like he was playing me.”

“Playing you how, Casey?”

He twitched another sneer. “Too friendly. Too cooperative. Patronizing, like he was putting one over.”

“How did you rub shoulders with the lad?”

“I had a couple of investigations that took me to the Colby firm.”

“What kind of investigations?”

He didn’t look at me while we talked. Suddenly it was like pulling teeth. He said, “A secretary there died of an overdose. A low-level employee was the victim of a hit-and-run.”

“Fatal?”

Shannon nodded. “Vaguely suspicious but nothing came of either. Colby was in the lives of both parties. Was helpful to a fault.”

Sheila was lingering, and Colby took her two hands in his and smiled and she smiled back, then peeled away. Could this privileged punk be the guy roughing her up? Maybe somebody needed to put the break in brokerage.

Colby was finally about to sit down, but maybe he felt our eyes on him, because he paused, spotted us, beamed and came over, navigating the sea of tables of diners like the Navy man he was.

He stood before our booth and half-nodded to each of us in turn, but reserved his dazzling white smile for Shannon, who was looking up at the man in Armani with a smile as rumpled as his own decidedly off-the-rack suit.

This was my first close look at the guy, and it revealed a male specimen who was almost too handsome, with long eyelashes and dark curly hair worn rather short and wet with product, giving him a Roman Emperor look. But was he Julius Caesar or Caligula? Either way, he sported a tan that said trips to warmer climes were not infrequent or maybe he just used a tanning bed somewhere. At home, maybe.

Colby leaned in and offered his hand to Shannon, who half-stood, as much as possible in the booth anyway, and accepted the proffered paw for a shake, then settled back down.

“So I’m guessing this is a retirement party?” Colby said, his voice mellow and smooth. He could become a TV or radio announcer if being a rich Wall Street heir didn’t work out.

“Pre-retirement,” Shannon said genially. You could never have discerned that the old copper had any suspicions or negative thoughts at all about the guy. Strictly friendly time.

“I recognize both of your partners in crime,” the young man said, showing off those white teeth some more. His nods were more acknowledging this time around. “Sergeant Higgins. Detective Peters.” The teeth and pretty eyes came to me and his smile settled in one cheek. “You’re Mike Hammer, aren’t you?”

“Guilty as charged.”

Dark eyebrows rose above the long lashes. “That was some case you wrapped up a while back. Caused ripples from here to Europe. Stock market took a dive when those revelations about the CIA being infiltrated made the news.”

I gave him a smile. A little one, not dazzling at all. “That wasn’t my intention. To me he was just a bad guy, a very bad guy, who needed to be dealt with.”

Colby’s smile went damn near pixie-ish. “By which you mean... you shot him. Killed him.”

I shrugged. “He had a gun. A little one. Mine was bigger.”

The smile broadened in genuine amusement. “And here I thought size wasn’t everything.”

“It isn’t. But it doesn’t hurt.”

“If it’s big enough it does.” He sighed, smiled again, no teeth now. “Well, gentlemen, I didn’t mean to intrude. I just wanted to say hello to Casey here. Congratulate him on his retirement.” He turned his eyes on Shannon. “See you later.”

He flipped a casual wave and ambled across the room, graceful in a masculine way. Handsome devil, like Tony Curtis and George Hamilton had a kid. Women were looking at him the way men look at women.

“Why’s he so friendly,” I asked, “to a cop he encountered on a couple of suspicious-death inquiries? First name basis and everything. ‘See you later?’”

Shannon said, “We go to the same gym.”

I frowned. “I thought you went to Bing’s, like me?”

A shrug. “I used to. I switched to the Solstice Fitness Center, few months ago.”

I frowned deeper. “Over on Broadway?”

Shannon nodded.

“Isn’t that a little pricey?”

Bigger shrug. “I got a deal on a membership. Have a personal trainer and everything. Just ’cause I’m retiring doesn’t mean I want to grow a gut.”

He kind of already had grown one, but I didn’t say anything.

Our food came. Crisp cold salad with iceberg lettuce and garlic dressing. The rib-eyes thick and tender, mine blood-rare the way I like it. We shared two orders of Pete’s legendary hash browns with onions, and the chow was such that conversation got mostly sidelined for a while.

I was keeping half an eye on Sheila and not just because she was worth at least that. On two occasions Colby got up and happy accidents let him come back into contact with her. Happily contrived accidents, I figured.

Once when he got up to go to the head, which took him past her station, that gave him an excuse to pause and jaw with her a while, on his way back to the booth.

Another time he joined her at the bar where she was chatting with the white-shirt, black-bowtie bartender, who was another good-looking guy in his late twenties or early thirties, but just maybe lacking the Colby kid’s bank book. The Wall Street heir took her by the arm — not rough at all, and I was watching for that — and walked her over to one side and then they were talking in a serious way.

Not an argument. But not chit-chat or flirtation, either. These two knew each other. The bartender was taking this in, glaring at them as he filled orders. What the hell was that about?

We were having a round of after-dinner highballs as I watched Colby and the hostess discussing something near the bar again, and the bartender maybe resenting it. I wondered if the bartender was just a friend of Sheila’s who maybe knew Colby had been treating her roughly, and was considering stepping in and doing something about it. In which case, hurrah for the bartender.

I said to Shannon, “I thought Colby dated the debutante crowd.”

“He does. Sometimes.”

“Not always?”

“He’s been known to date models.”

“The Vogue variety?”

Shannon sipped his highball. Shook his head. “More like Playboy and Penthouse. He parties at the Tube in Chelsea.”

The Tube was more blue jeans than Armani, a trendy spot known for multiple lounges with such funky themes as an S & M dungeon, Victorian library, and a dance floor with cages, plus hot-and-cold-running cocaine.

After a final round of drinks, the little retirement get-together petered out, and Shannon and his two partners all took their leave, after fighting over who would take the check. Pat won. I hadn’t made a bid, because I was always happy to see a cop pick up a check for a change.

Soon Pat and I were alone in the booth. Over in the bar area, the three stock brokers were having their own after-dinner drinks, and Colby had not invented any more excuses to bump into Sheila.

“Is it my imagination,” I said to Pat, “or was something going on with Shannon?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, he starts out kind of bitching about this Colby character. Then as I get to asking questions, suddenly I have to work to pry even tidbits of information out of him about the boy. And Casey Shannon going to a rich-guy, personal-trainer-type gym? What the shit? And the friendly way he talks to that ‘Golden Boy,’ and then how wary he seemed, and unfriendly toward him, when Colby wasn’t standing in front of us?”

“Yeah,” Pat said, “I picked up on that.”

“So you’re still a detective, then. Good to know. So what the hell do you make of it?”

Pat sucked in air and let it out again. “Feels like maybe he’s doing some kind of undercover operation pertaining to Colby. Then when you got interested, he pulled back.”

“You know something I don’t?”

“I know plenty you don’t, buddy.” Then, with a shrug, Pat said, “Hey, I’m his boss and I sure as hell didn’t assign anything like that.”

I leaned in. “Could somebody above you have put something in motion?”

“Maybe,” he said, with another shrug and a shake of his head, “but with a guy a few weeks out from retirement? Doesn’t make sense.”

“How about something personal? A case he wants to wrap up before he heads for the exit and pension land?”

“Possible. Possible.” Pat gave me that wry, sly grin of his. “I have known certain assholes go off on private tears, now that you mention it.”

“Screw you, buddy,” I said with my own nasty grin.

As it happened, we almost followed Colby and his party out onto the sidewalk.

Colby was saying good night to his friends, and was just stepping into the street to jaywalk across the light eastbound traffic, apparently to his parked car, glancing back at them as he did with a smile and a wave. I’d already heard the squeal of tires from down the street, and the low-slung red vehicle came up so fast it might have materialized.

Seemed to have come from just down the block, though, so the sports car hadn’t picked up much speed when it clipped Colby, who tumbled across the hood of the car, as the driver saw him and slowed, then picked speed back up when the man who’d been struck lay in a pile on the street.

I didn’t get much of a look at the driver, but I saw a pony tail and it wasn’t a woman — not unless she had a beard.

Pat was yelling at the fleeing vehicle, then got his little notebook out to jot down the license number, but I could see the plate was smeared with mud, so that was a non-starter.

Me, I was joining the two Wall Street gents in bending over their fallen friend, as the few cars out on the street right now were reducing speed and winding around us — nobody else stopping to help or offer witness info. People suck sometimes.

Colby, in his Burberry, was sitting up, holding his head with both hands, wincing, moaning.

“Vincent,” said one of his friends, leaning in, “are you all right, man?”

The other friend said, “Can you get to your feet?”

Colby managed to nod and, with the help of both his companions, rose and hobbled over to the sidewalk, where a few pedestrians and some other diners from the restaurant were gathered for a gawk. The accident victim kept one hand on the side of his head.

“Bounced... bounced,” the young man said. “Off the windshield. Shit, it hurts.”

“We’ll get you to the hospital,” the first friend said, “right now.”

That’s when I noticed Sheila had emerged from the restaurant. She was standing there, agape, a hand over her mouth. She seemed about to go to Colby, but then — for some reason — stayed put. Still, she appeared on the verge of tears.

The bartender showed up behind her. His expression was hard to read, but not impossible. Amusement flicked on his lips. That was a hint of a smile, all right. And reacting with even a hint of satisfaction at the sight of somebody who’s just been hit by a car, that isn’t normal. That isn’t typical. That sucked even more than usual for human behavior.

The bartender put a hand on her shoulder, supportive or pretending to be, and she patted the hand.

Was that redheaded hostess in the middle of two men? Such triangles can have their violent aspects. Women far less good-looking than Sheila Who’s-it have stirred up a shitload of harm without meaning to.

Pat came up to the little group supporting Colby, falling in next to me, and held up his badge in its leather fold, saying, “I’m a police officer. Captain Chambers.” He quickly took their names and jotted them in the notebook. Then he handed both Wall Street gents a card and asked for theirs. He would be in touch soon.

“I’ll take care of reporting this,” he told them. “Can anyone here say what make that vehicle was?”

The two gents shook their heads and Colby ignored the question, busy with his headache.

“Just a foreign job,” I said. “Ferrari maybe.”

One of the Wall Street guys, thinking it over, said, “Ferrari, yes — definitely.”

The other one was flagging a cab, and then they were piling Colby carefully in back and they took off.

Pat, hands on his hips, watched the cab drive away. “That guy is lucky to be alive.”

“Yeah.”

“Five’ll get you ten he’s a concussion case.”

“Yeah.”

He frowned at me. “Something bugging you, Mike?”

“Don’t know. Not sure.”

“Come on, buddy. Spill.”

I sighed. It was colder now and I snugged the trenchcoat collars up. “Just seemed a little... off to me.”

Pat’s grin was a scoffing thing. “Right. The guy intentionally stepped out in front of a speeding Jaguar, why? To get his jollies?”

“I don’t know why. And don’t know that he did. And that was a Ferrari.”

He shook his head. “You have to be the most suspicious son of a bitch I ever knew.”

“Really? How often am I wrong when I am?”

He didn’t have an answer to that. He asked me if I needed a lift and I said yes. On the way to my place, I said damn near nothing. My mind was busy replaying what I’d seen, and wondering why it felt wrong somehow.