Murder Never Knocks

Chapter Nine

As I rolled down the hill in my black Ford, the trio of three-story white-washed stucco buildings, as alike as Monopoly houses, seemed to give off a ghostly glow. Some of that came from security lighting, the rest from moonlight making its way through the misty night.

Valley Vista Sanitarium dominated a dip between rolling hills a few miles south of Newburgh. You had to catch a look at the complex coming down, as the private facility had a seven-foot brick wall and a big wooden gate. The well-spaced-out cluster of buildings on tree-dotted grounds worthy of a country club perched on the Hudson River side, providing patients with a nice view and the hospital with another discreet method for patient arrival and admittance. The river was just a black ribbon with shimmering ivory highlights.

I’d left Pat’s office around two a.m. and by three-fifteen was pulling into the short drive up to the imposing Valley Vista gates with their welcoming signs: PRIVATE — KEEP OUT. I got out, 45 in hand, tugged down my hat brim and, leaving the car running, crouched on the driver’s side. I was waiting to see if I’d been right that I hadn’t been followed here. For a full five minutes, nobody came in either direction, indicating my abilities to spot a tail remained undiminished by time.

So I put the big gun back in the shoulder rig and went over to use the intercom and announce myself. I’d called ahead and was expected. As the mist’s ambitions rose into a light rain, I waited some more, until a beefy orderly in white walked down the much longer, slightly sloping drive to open the gates for me.

The Valley Vista was generally known as a sanitarium for the mentally ill. The middle building was for patients who were receiving therapy after being committed and who would, in time, be released. The building at left was for seriously chronically deranged souls who were humanely store-housed here and would likely never see sunshine on the other side of the brick wall.

The third identical building, at right, was something else again. This was a hospital where patients who needed discreet care could come, and that included the occasional movie star recovering from plastic surgery, a politician drying out, or unsavory types who needed a bullet wound or other illegal-work-related injury tended to without the notification of the authorities.

Only a select few among the citizenry were in the know about the services that third building offered — that it was a cross between Switzerland and a fortress. The orderlies were bruisers and the security team consisted of former Green Berets and other Special Forces types. In its thirty years of existence, Valley Vista had served as neutral territory. Rival gangland bosses were safe here. And it was the one place in this state where Mike Hammer would not kick down a door to get at some mob slob who needed killing. Or anyway the need for that had never come. Valley Vista stopped short of hiding out wanted men, after all, and had made a very handy resource for Michael Hammer Investigations, from time to time. I’d been here twice recuperating from gunshot wounds that back in the real world would have made me vulnerable. And in my business you sometimes had to hide a witness from the bad guys. Or the cops.

At reception the nurse was giving my ID the onceover twice when Dr. Benson came out from his office and granted me his benediction. Also, his permission not to check my weapon, though I did hang up my raincoat and hat. They could use drying off.

Billy was on the third floor, the doc said, and gave me the room number.

“How serious?” I asked him.

Benson was in his fifties, and had been a medic in the Korean hostilities. He was an average-looking face-in-the-crowd guy except for his prematurely white hair and very light-blue eyes.

“Mr. Batson broke two of his ribs,” the doc said. “No sign of internal hemorrhage. When I last looked in, he was still unconscious, but not in a coma. Still, there are often special medical considerations with these little people, and I’d like to keep him here for at least a few days.”

I told him that it might be longer. That my friend could be a target for a dangerous but as yet unidentified assassin, and he thanked me for the information. I might have told him someone left their car lights on in the parking lot.

A hospital at night is an eerie place — the beeps and boops of monitoring equipment, the low-key lighting, the nurses floating down corridors like occasional ghosts, plus the usual antiseptic smells. The place was asleep, but fitfully.

In this unique hospital, certain floors had armed guards seated outside doors, big men in light blue uniforms with big revolvers on their hips. Their only concession to the time of night was to sit in wooden chairs as old as the building, and nobody was reading or snacking much less napping. These were men trained in jungles to stay alert in darkness waiting for any snap of a twig to signal an approaching enemy capable of exploding the night into a daylight of orange muzzle discharge and the silence into a symphony of screams and gunfire.

The guard on the door was already on his feet when I turned down the corridor. Just outside the room, he looked me over, but his walkie had already told him to expect me.

He had a naturally sleepy-eyed look, like Robert Mitchum, but he was as alert as hell. Very softly he said, “I believe they’re both sleeping, Mr. Hammer.”

“Thanks,” I said, but I’d have to wake Velda if necessary.

But it wasn’t. She was leaned back in a recliner, resting, with the .32 automatic on her lap, but very much awake. Across from her, a light on in the john, its door cracked, provided just enough illumination not to disturb the patient. She had changed into a black jumpsuit — I could see her overnight bag peeking out from behind the chair — and looked like a commando, although I never saw a commando built like that.

Billy, seeming very small, lay on his back in the hospital bed, asleep, breathing hard but not snoring and in no apparent discomfort. They had an IV going.

As soon as I came in, Velda sat up, put the .32 on the table by the recliner, and got to her feet. With a wide smile, she came over into my arms and punched me in the mouth with those pillowy lips of hers.

Then, still in each other’s arms, we stared at each other, as if making sure we were both real and not just wishful thinking.

“I’ve been so worried,” she whispered.

Quietly, with a nod toward Billy, I said, “He hasn’t woken up yet?”

“No. They’ve got a morphine drip going, and that may keep him out a while.”

I tipped my head toward the door. “We need to talk, kitten.”

She nodded.

We made our way to a little waiting area with a couple of chairs and a couch and a low-slung table with the same magazines as the last time I was here, six months ago. Not even the best hospital has a cure for that condition.

I sat in a chair and she sat nearby on the couch. They let you smoke down here and I did. I told Velda I’d filled Pat in and that, after some pissing and moaning, he was onboard with our investigation. Then I got a folded manila envelope out of my inside suit coat pocket.

“Pat rounded up some very interesting art studies for us,” I said.

I handed her two crime scene photos from the aftermath of the bridal-shower shooting that clearly showed Borensen talking to Pat in the background.

“The elusive Leif,” she said with a smile.

“You keep those for when Billy wakes up.”

She shook her head and all that raven hair danced. “I can’t believe it’s so damn tough to find photos of Borensen.”

I shrugged. “I don’t think the lack of photos was on purpose. He just wasn’t somebody who, despite working in show business, generated much press, or anyway pics. But he knew that marrying Gwen Foster meant wedding photos in the papers, even though the nuptials were going to take place in Hawaii.”

“The specialness of that,” Velda said, “means even bigger coverage. Anyway, he’s poised to go on to bigger things. As the producer, and husband of the star, of a new Broadway musical, he’ll be a celebrity himself.”

I nodded. “And he couldn’t risk Billy seeing any of that splashed all over the papers and other media.”

I took out three more photos and handed them to her. Each was an angle on a man slumped over a desktop with a hole in his right temple. His right arm was flung on the desk, his hand palm up, and nearby was a little automatic.

“Smith and Wesson Escort,” Velda said. “A .22.”

“Small but it did the job. The dead guy is Martin Foster.”

“I figured as much. Is that his gun?”

I nodded again. “Registered to him, yes. I’m going to guess he carried it with him for protection in the theater district. He was a well-known, successful man, and a strong personality who wouldn’t put up with a mugging or robbery without a fight.”

“A strong personality,” Velda said, “who killed himself.”

“He had lung cancer, and he knew it.”

“Leave any note?”

“No.”

“No note to his daughter?”

“No. You see any red flags?”

She looked from photo to photo. “I don’t think so. Do you, Mike?”

“Not a red flag maybe, but... the fatal wound is side to side, entry wound in one temple, with the expected powder burns and stippling, exit wound through the other temple. To do that, Foster would have to sit down, raise his arm straight, with the elbow out, and fire. A ninety-degree angle.”

“That’s not impossible.”

“Not impossible,” I granted. “It might reflect a kind of firing squad mentality. But it’s more common, when a suicide sits at a table or desk, for the arm to be at a forty-five degree angle, with the exit wound out the top of the head on the opposite side. Some lean on their elbow and do it.”

She shook her head, just a little. “That’s not enough to make anything out of, Mike. Nothing says a man like Foster, taking his own life, might not hold his arm straight out. And with his arm on the desk, on its elbow, if he leaned his head against the snout, you’d get the same temple-to-temple effect.”

“I know. But it might still be enough to get Pat to look into this deeper. You notice Foster was in his pajamas, and his body wasn’t found till the next morning, when Gwen showed up at their beach house.”

“I’m not sure I see the significance.”

“Well, did he wake up in the middle of the night and kill himself?”

“I’m sure it happens.”

“Velda, most depressed types who resort to the Dutch act are well-dressed, almost anticipating their next stop is an open coffin. And Foster doted on his daughter. Would he do this, knowing that she almost had to be the one who found him? Would he do that leaving no farewell message? Particularly if the act was due to ill health, not standard despondence.”

Velda’s narrow-eyed expression said she was buying in. She shook the photos. “So this is Borensen’s work?”

“Yes. Dick Blazen let Martin Foster know all about Borensen’s seedy side, and Foster confronted Borensen. The result is a faked suicide, and a hit-and-run death for Blazen... with the need to get rid of Billy as the only witness capable of identifying him.”

“You think Borensen hired that hit-and-run?”

“No. That was Leif himself, all right.”

“But, Mike — if our scary friend on the phone the other night was the driver of that hit-and-run vehicle, he could be the one who needed Billy dead. After all, he, or one of his people, threw those slugs at Billy tonight, right?”

“Right. But I think Borensen didn’t go the hitman route until he figured that I needed to be handled. That would take a pro. No more do-it-yourself murder. In fact, I’d bet you a marriage license to a buck that this ‘suicide’ is the work of a professional. The professional who’s been sending his minions my way, and who either shot at Billy tonight or had it done.”

“No bet,” Velda said. “I think you’re right. I think Borensen handled Blazen himself, then the fallout was something he couldn’t handle. Possibly his mob friends stepped in and ordered him to go with a professional, here on out.”

I grinned at my smart cookie of a partner. “Velda, that’s a very good read. I should have thought of that.”

Her expression melted and she reached out and touched my unshaven face. “Mike... you look beat, darling. You have to get some sleep. You want to camp out in Billy’s room? We’ll have a rollaway sent up.”

I stretched. “No, I better get back to the city. I’ll grab some sleep and get back at it.”

I looked in on Billy and he was still off in a drug-induced Happy Land.

“You call me when he’s had a look at those crime scene photos,” I whispered, as I walked her back to the recliner. “With Billy’s ID, Pat may be able to move on Borensen.”

“What’s your next move?”

“Getting to Borensen before Pat does.”

She shook her head. “And what? Kill him?”

“No,” I said. “At least not until I beat the name of his hitman out of him.”

“Leif’s a big guy, Mike.”

“Bigger they are, the harder—”

“They fall, yes,” she said with a smirk, “I know, everybody knows.”

Half-way out the door I said, “I was going to say, the harder I kick their teeth in.”

The rain got out of the sun’s way and by the time I got back to Manhattan, dawn was clawing its way up and around the towering glass-and-steel tombstones. I left the Ford in the parking garage, but walking to the elevator, I felt an uneasiness settle in over me like a flu-driven chill. So many cars, and no one but me around. Even the attendant off duty. My footsteps were hollow little things, tiny signs of life in a dead cavernous space.

Fear is an old friend to me. I embrace it. I grin at it. I know how to turn it into energy, into alertness, into big goddamn trouble for the other guy.

But right now the emptiness around me as I walked spooked me bad. Was it fear? Not really. But a guy as good at killing as my phone caller claimed to be could pop up out of anywhere and plunk me into the next life...

...leaving Velda alone, to fend for herself.

I knew if any woman could do that, really could fend for her own self, Velda was that woman. But the idea of danger, of death, hovering over her without me there to stop it, was fueling the fearful uneasiness that was giving me chill-like shakes.

That hospital, Valley Vista, was a citadel not easily stormed, but it could be done. Any fort can be breached, any soldier can go down under another soldier’s gun. And if something happened to me, wouldn’t Velda leave Billy behind and go out on some crazy-ass revenge trip like... like I would?

But nobody popped out from behind a parked car to pop me, and I rode the elevator alone up to the third floor and my apartment at the end of the hall, went in with the .45 ready, and found the place empty.

You’re paranoid, a voice in my head said derisively. Then another voice said, You’re not paranoid when they’re really out to get you, Hammer.

“But what are you,” I asked the room, “if you’re hearing voices?”

The .45 went on my nightstand and I got out of my suit and tie, but that was as far as I made it before collapsing onto the bed into something deep and mercifully dreamless.

The phone woke me.

I fumbled for it. “Yeah?”

“Pat,” the phone said. “You asleep?”

“Not now.”

The clock radio said 1:10 and a high-up sun was filtering through the windows.

“Well, some of us keep regular hours,” he said. “You know, like working from eight in the morning till two the next morning? It’s Sunday, chum, but no day of rest for either of us. Wipe the sleep from your eyes, because I found out something that will interest you.”

Wide awake now, I sat up, stuffed a pillow behind me and leaned back against the headboard. “Go, man, go.”

“Borensen owns a vehicle that matches the one your friend Billy described. According not only to Billy but several other witnesses — who did not see the driver well but did see the hit-and-run go down — the vehicle was a dark green late-model Cadillac... with no license plates.”

“That says premeditation right there, removing the plates. Homicide by hit-and-run, intentional.”

“Yes it does. Now here’s the really interesting thing. The same day that Richard Blazen got run down by a dark green Caddy, Leif Borensen reported his car stolen.”

“Before or after the hit-and-run?”

“After. Not much after, though.”

“He probably pulled over and removed those license plates before he did the deed. Then ducked in somewhere, a parking garage maybe, and put them back on.”

“No argument.”

“Was the ‘stolen’ car ever found?”

“Nope,” Pat said. “I’m guessing it never will be.”

“Leif probably turned it over to some chop shop crew. Or left it on the street with the keys in and let the laws of human nature do his dirty work for him.”

“Mike, if we can get that ID out of Billy, we’ve got the real beginnings of a case against Borensen here. So how about you letting your tax dollars work for you? Tell me where you’re keeping Billy. And then stay out of this one, okay?”

I hung up on him.

A hot shower and a shave under the spray turned me human again. Toweling off, I caught my reflection in the mirror and saw a patchwork of healed bullet and blade wounds and other residual scar tissue. The Frankenstein monster had nothing on me.

In my jockey shorts and T-shirt, I got into a fresh white shirt, then slipped on the shoulder holster. I dripped a few drops of oil into the .45’s slide mechanism and checked the clip before easing the rod in. Safety off, one in the chamber. When a hired gun is on your tail, certain precautions need to be sacrificed.

I picked out a clean suit, cut to conceal the weapon of course, a medium gray number that would look pretty sharp with a darker gray tie.

After all, I was calling on millions of dollars and wanted to look my Sunday best.

Outside the Blue Ribbon, where I’d caught up with lunch, I flagged a cab, getting a wide-eyed look from the Puerto Rican driver who must have read the papers or maybe watched the local TV news, because his reaction said he not only recognized me, but knew what had happened to another recent cabbie who’d pulled over for me.

To his credit, he just took the address, nodded, and got going, through light traffic. Like the song says, the big city was taking a nap. Before long the cab pulled up at the fancy Park Avenue apartment building across from which Central Park, courtesy of a sunny Sunday, was showing a good time to couples, families and tourists.

Of course, immediately opposite us was the stone wall where a shooter, not long ago, had perched.

The cabbie said, “Isn’t this where...?”

“Yup. Right here.”

“Ea diablo! I would have to draw Mike Hammer for a fare.”

I already had the rider’s side rear door open, and handed him up a ten. “You’re a good man, panna. Keep the change.”

He grinned at me, then at the sawbuck, and got instant amnesia about what had happened to his fellow hackie.

“You welcome in my cab any time, Mr. Hammer!”

The doorman in his comic-opera livery recognized me, too, and gave me a nod and a “Good afternoon, sir.”

I told the guy I was just dropping by to see how the Borensens were doing after that nasty business at the Waldorf-Astoria the other day.

He gave me a look that said people didn’t just “drop by” this kind of apartment building, no matter how well-meaning.

“You’ll have to phone up there,” I said, “and make sure I’m welcome.”

That he could handle, and he stepped inside to use the house phone on the entryway wall. I couldn’t hear him on the other side of the glass, but he was nodding as he listened.

Soon he came out, opened the door for me, gave me the respectful head lowering routine, and said, “Miss Foster said to go on up, Mr. Hammer.”

I nodded to him and went in and crossed the marble-floored ballroom of a lobby to the bank of elevators. When I stepped off into the apartment’s entry area, the rush of its waterfall sounding like somebody forgot to turn off a big spigot, Gwen was already waiting for me.

This was neither the pop-art girl in red nor the bride-to-be in a yellow cocktail dress. This was the kind of fresh-faced collegiate type that made a high school dropout sorry.

Her honey-blonde hair was swept back off her forehead and brushed the shoulders of a white turtle-neck sweater interrupted by the perk of perfect handfuls on the way down to low-slung gray trousers with a wide black leather belt with a big buckle that would have looked just right on a pirate. She wore dark brown moccasins with no socks, and her only make-up was some pink gloss on lips that, years before she was born, would have been characterized as bee-stung.

Gwen Foster was a doll, the living variety, and she sure as hell deserved better than Leif Borensen.

She bounced up to me and gripped both of my hands as if I were a favorite uncle and gave me a lovely smile, the blue eyes catching light and tossing it around. “Mike... so wonderful to see you.”

“I just wanted to check up on you and Leif. See how you two were doing in the aftermath of that bridal shower interruptus.”

Gwen rolled her eyes. “I’m just glad you and Miss Sterling were there.”

She accompanied me into and across the high-ceilinged foyer with its marble floor and crystal chandelier. Her voice echoed a little now. Our footsteps, too.

“I admit I had some trouble sleeping that first night, Mike, but I’ve been fine since. I just got back from brunch with some of my girl friends, who were there at the Waldorf, and assured me it was a shower no one would ever forget.”

When she followed this with some brittle laughter, it seemed a little forced to me. But at least she wasn’t freaked out over the incident.

“I think Leif is probably in the study,” she said, as we went down the landing strip of a hallway with its wall-hugging antiques and museum’s worth of pricey paintings. Once again she looped her arm in mine. Her perfume had a sparkling brightness about it and I recognized it as one Velda had been wearing lately — Oh! De London.

“I just got back a little while ago from my luncheon,” she said, as we neared the door. “I know Leif will be pleased to see you. We owe you some money, don’t we?”

“That’s not why I’m here. I just wanted to check up on you, you know, since that shower didn’t go exactly as planned.”

Or had it gone exactly as Borensen had planned it?

I said, “But I do have some business matters I need to go over with Mr. Borensen. Much as your company would surely help relieve the boredom, I’d suggest you take a pass.”

I really didn’t want her there when I spoke to her husband-to-be. I hoped the future bride would be somewhere else in this vast apartment, and far enough away not to hear me interrogate the future groom by beating the living shit out of him.

She didn’t need to learn, so brutally, that the man she loved had murdered her father by way of a cold-blooded staged suicide. And there was always the possibility that Borensen, faced with my knowledge of his wrongdoing, might go for a gun, giving me the pleasure of blowing the insides of his head all over some very expensive shelved books, though their leather bindings should clean off nicely.

No, none of it was anything I wanted Gwen to see. I’m just too considerate a guy for that.

“Business talk bores me,” she said, hand on the knob. “So I’ll leave you two to it. Let me just check on Leif and make sure he’s not in the middle of anything.”

She slipped into the study, leaving the door ajar, and perhaps three seconds later came the scream.

High-pitched and bloodcurdling, turning sharp and shrill as it resounded off the high ceiling of the library-like room.

I went in fast, with my .45 in my fist. But almost immediately I stuffed the weapon back under my arm, because it wouldn’t be needed.

At a small writing desk in the far corner, Leif Borensen, in a brown terry-cloth bathrobe, sat slumped with his head to one side, in a pool of congealing blood, displaying the small powder-burned hole in his temple, his hand, palm up, limply near a small .22 handgun — a Smith and Wesson Escort.