My Gun Is Quick

Chapter One

When you sit at home comfortably folded up in a chair beside a fire, have you ever thought what goes on outside there? Probably not. You pick up a book and read about things and stuff, getting a vicarious kick from people and events that never happened. You're doing it now, getting ready to fill in a normal life with the details of someone else's experiences. Fun, isn't it? You read about life on the outside, thinking of how maybe you'd like it to happen to you, or at least how you'd like to watch it. Even the old Romans did it, spiced their life with action when they sat in the Colosseum and watched wild animals rip a bunch of humans apart, revelling in the sight of blood and terror. They screamed for joy and slapped each other on the back when murderous claws tore into the live flesh of slaves, and cheered when the kill was, made. Oh, it's great to watch, all right. Life through a keyhole. But day after day goes by, and nothing like that ever happens to you, so you think that it's all in books and not in reality at all and that's that. Still good reading, though. Tomorrow night you'll find another book, forgetting what was in the last, and live some more in your imagination. But remember this: there are things happening out there. They go on every day and night, making Roman holidays look like school picnics. They go on right under your very nose and you never know about them. Oh, yes, you can find them all right. All you have to do is look for them. But I wouldn't if I were you, because you won't like what you'll find. Then, again, I'm not you, and looking for these things is my job. They aren't nice things to see because they show people up for what they are. There isn't a Colosseum any more, but the city is a bigger bowl and it seats more people. The razor-sharp claws aren't those of wild animals, but man's can be just as sharp and twice as vicious. You have to be quick, and you have to be able, or you become one of the devoured, and if you can kill first, no matter how and no matter who, you can live and return to the comfortable chair and the comfortable fire. But you have to be quick. And able. Or you'll be dead.

At ten minutes after twelve I tied a knot in my case and delivered Herman Gable's lost manuscript to his apartment. To me, it was nothing more than a sheaf of yellow papers covered with barely legible tracings, but to my client it was worth twenty-five hundred bucks. The old fool had wrapped it up with some old newspapers and sent it down the dumbwaiter with the garbage. He sure was happy to get it back. It took three days to run it down and practically snatch the stuff out of the city incinerator; but when I fingered the package of nice, crisp fifties he handed me I figured it was worth going without all that sleep.

I made him out a receipt and took the elevator downstairs to my heap. As far as I was concerned the dough would live a peaceful life until I had a good, long nap. After that, maybe, I'd cut loose a little bit. At that hour of the night traffic was light. I cut across town, then headed north to my own private cave in the massive cliff I called home.

But the first time I hit a red light I fell asleep across the wheel and woke up with a dozen horns blasting in my ears. A couple of cars banged bumpers backing up so they could swing around me, and I was too damned pooped even to swear back at some of the stuff they called me. The hell with 'em. I pulled the jalopy over to the curb and chilled the engine. Right up the street under the el was an all-night hash joint, and what I needed was a couple of mugs of good java to bring me around.

I don't know how the place got by the health inspectors, because it stunk. There were two bums down at one end of the counter taking their time about finishing a tencent bowl of soup, making the most out of the free crackers and catsup in front of them. Half-way down, a drunk concentrated between his plate of eggs and hanging on to the stool to keep from falling off the world. Evidently he was down to his last buck, for all his pockets had been turned inside out to locate the lone bill, that was putting a roof on his load.

Until I sat down and looked in the mirror behind the shelves of pie segments, I didn't notice the fluff sitting off to one side at a table. She had red hair that didn't come out of a bottle, and looked pretty enough from where I was sitting.

The counterman came up just then and asked, "What'll it be?" He had a voice like a frog's.

"Coffee--black."

The fluff noticed me then. She looked up, smiled, tucked her nail tools in a peeling plastic handbag and hipped it in my direction. When she sat down on the stool next to me she nodded towards the counterman and said, "Shorty's got a heart of steel, mister. Won't even trust me for a cup of joe until I get a job. Care to finance me to a few vitamins?"

I was too tired to argue the point. "Make it two, feller."

He grabbed another cup disgustedly and filled it, then set the two down on the counter, slopping half of it across the washworn linoleum top.

"Listen, Red," he croaked, "quit using this joint fer an office. First thing I get the cops on my tail. That's all I need."

"Be good and toddle off, Shorty. All I want from the gentleman is a cup of coffee. He looks much too tired to play any games tonight."

"Yeah, scram, Shorty," I put in. He gave me a nasty look, but since I was as ugly as he was and twice as big, he shuffled off to keep count over the cracker bowl in front of the bums. Then I looked at the redhead.

She wasn't very pretty after all. She had been once, but there are those things that happen under the skin and are reflected in the eyes and set of the mouth that take all the beauty out of a woman's face. Yeah, at one time she must have been almost beautiful. That wasn't too long ago, either. Her clothes were last year's old look and a little too tight. They showed a lot of leg and a lot of chest; nice white flesh still firm and young; but her face was old with knowledge that never came out of books. I watched her from the corner of my eye when she lifted her cup of coffee. She had delicate hands, long fingers tipped with deep-toned nails perfectly kept. It was the way she held the cup that annoyed me. Instead of being a thick, cracked mug, she gave it a touch of elegance as she balanced it in front of her lips. I thought she was wearing a wedding band until she put the cup down. Then I saw that it was just a ring with a fleur-de-lis design of blue enamel and diamond chips that had turned sideways slightly.

Red turned suddenly and said, "Like me?"

I grinned. "Uh-huh. But, like you said, much too tired to make it matter."

Her laugh was a tinkle of sound. "Rest easy, mister, I won't give you a sales talk. There are only certain types interested in what I have to sell."

"Amateur psychologist?"

"I have to be."

"And I don't look the type?"

Red's eyes danced. "Big mugs like you never have to pay, mister. With you it's the woman who pays."

I pulled out a deck of Luckies and offered her one. When we lit up I said, "I wish all the babies I met thought that way."

She blew a stream of smoke towards the ceiling and looked at me as if she were going back a long way. "They do, mister. Maybe you don't know it, but they do."

I don't know why I liked the kid. Maybe it was because she had eyes that were hard, but could still cry a little. Maybe it was because she handed me some words that were nice to listen to. Maybe it was because I was tired and my cave was a cold empty place, while here I had a redhead to talk to. Whatever it was, I liked her and she knew it and smiled at me in a way I knew she hadn't smiled in a long time. Like I was her friend.

"What's your name, mister?"

"Mike. Mike Hammer. Native-born son of ye old city, presently at loose ends and dead tired. Free, white and over twenty-one. That do it?"

"Well, what do you know! Here I've been thinking all males were named Smith or Jones. What happened?"

"No wife to report to, kid," I grinned. "The tag's my own. What do they call you besides Red?"

"They don't."

I saw her eyes crinkle a little as she sipped the last of her coffee. Shorty was casting nervous glances between us and the steamedup window, probably hoping a cop wouldn't pass by and nail a hustler trying to make time. He gave me a pain.

"Want more coffee?"

She shook her head. "No, that did it fine. If Shorty wasn't so touchy about extending a little credit I wouldn't have to be smiling for my midnight snacks."

From the way I turned and looked at her, Red knew there was more than casual curiosity back of the remark when I asked, "I didn't think your line of business could ever be that slow."

For a brief second she glared into the mirror. "It isn't." She was plenty mad about something.

I threw a buck on the counter and Shorty rang it up, then passed the change back. When I pocketed it I said to Red, "Did you ever stop to think that you're a pretty nice girl? I've met all kinds, but I think you could get along pretty well... any way you tried."

Her smile even brought out a dimple that had been buried a long while ago. She kissed her finger, then touched the finger to my cheek. "I like you, Mike. There are times when I think I've lost the power to like anyone, but I like you."

An el went by overhead just then and muffled the sound of the door opening. I felt the guy standing behind us before I saw him in the mirror. He was tall, dark and greasy looking, with a built-in sneer that passed for know-how, and he smelled of cheap hair oil. His suit would have been snappy in Harlem, edged with sharp pleats and creases.

He wasn't speaking to me when he said, "Hullo, kid!"

The redhead half turned and her lips went tight. "What do you want?" Her tone was dull, flat. The skin across her cheeks was drawn taut.

"Are you kidding?"

"I'm busy. Get lost."

The guy's hand shot out and grabbed her arm, swinging her around on the stool to face him. "I don't like them snotty remarks, Red."

As soon as I slid off the stool Shorty hustled down to our end, his hand reaching for something under the counter. When he saw my face he put it back and stopped short. The guy saw the same thing, but he was wise about it. His lip curled up and he snarled, "Get the hell out of here before I bust ya one."

He was going to make a pass at me, but I jammed four big, stiff fingers into his gut right above the navel and he snapped shut like a jack-knife. I opened him up again with an openhanded slap that left a blush across his mouth that was going to stay for a while.

Usually a guy will let it go right there. This one didn't. He could hardly breathe, but he was cursing me with his lips and his hand reached for his armpit in uncontrollable jerks. Red stood with her hand pressed against her mouth, while Shorty was croaking for us to cut it out, but too scared to move.

I let him almost reach it, then I slid my own .45 out where everybody could get a look at it. Just for effect I stuck it up against his forehead and thumbed back the hammer. It made a sharp click in the silence. "Just touch that rod you got and I'll blow your damn greasy head off. Go ahead, just make one lousy move towards it," I said.

He moved, all right. He fainted. Red was looking down at him, still too terrified to say anything. Shorty had a twitch in his shoulder. Finally she said, "You... didn't have to do that for me. Please, get out of here before he wakes up. He'll... kill you!"

I touched her arm gently. "Tell me something, Red. Do you really think he could?"

She bit her lip and her eyes searched my face. Something made her shudder violently. "No. No, I don't think so. But please go. For me." There was urgent appeal in her voice.

I grinned at her again. She was scared, in trouble, but still my friend. I took out my wallet. "Do something for me, will you, Red?" I shoved three fifties in her hand. "Get off this street. Tomorrow you go uptown and buy some decent clothes. Then get a morning paper and hunt up a job. This kind of stuff is murder."

I don't ever want anybody to look at me the way she did then. A look that belongs in church when you're praying or getting married or something.

The greaseball on the floor was awake now, but he wasn't looking at me. He was looking at my wallet that I held open in my hand. His eyes were glued to the badge that was pinned there, and if I still didn't have my rod dangling by the trigger guard he would have gone for his. I reached down and pulled it out of the shoulder holster, then grabbed his collar and dragged him out the door.

Down on the corner was a police call-box and I used it. In two minutes a squad car pulled up to the curb and a pair of harness bulls jumped out. I nodded to the driver. "Hullo, Jake."

He said, "Hi ya, Mike. What gives?"

I hoisted the greaseball to his feet. "Laughing boy tried to pull a gun on me." I handed over the rod, a short-barrelled .32. "I don't think he has a license for it, so you can lock him up on a Sullivan charge. I'll press charges in the morning. You know where to reach me."

The cop took the gun and prodded the guy into the car. He was still cursing when I walked up to my heap.

None*

It was early morning when I woke up to stay. Those forty-eight hours were what I needed. I took a hot and cold shower to shake the sleep out of my eyes, then stood in front of the mirror and shaved. I certainly was a mess. My eyes were still red and bleary and I felt like I was ploughing my whiskers under instead of shaving them off. At least I felt better. A big plate of bacon and eggs made my stomach behave to the point where I could get dressed and start the rest of the day off with a decent meal.

Jimmy had a steak in the broiler as soon as I entered the door of his snack bar. Luckily, I liked it rare and it was on deck before it was fully warmed through. While I was shoveling it down Jimmy said, "That dame in your office has been on the phone all day. Maybe you better call her back."

"What'd she want?"

"Wondered where you were. Guess she thinks you were out with a broad somewhere."

"Nuts! She's always thinking something." I finished my dessert and threw a bill down. "If she calls up again, tell her I'm on my way up to the office, will you?"

"Sure, Mr. Hammer, glad to."

I patted my meal in place, lit up a smoke and hopped into my car. The trip downtown didn't take long, but I was a half-hour finding a parking place. When I finally barged into the office, Velda looked up with those big brown eyes starting to give me hell before she even opened her mouth. When I got a girl to hold down the office I figured I might as well get a good-looking one as a bean head, and I sure skimmed the cream off the top. Only, I didn't figure she'd turn out to be so smart. Good-looking ones seldom are. She's big and she's beautiful, and she's got a brain that can figure angles while mine only figures the curves.

"About time you got in." She looked me over carefully for lipstick stains or whatever those tip-offs are that spell trouble for a guy. I could tell by the way she let a slow grin play around with her mouth that she decided that my time was on the job and not on the town.

When I shucked out of my coat I tossed most of the package of fifties on her desk. "Meal money, kiddo. Take expenses out of that and bank the rest. Any callers?"

She tucked the cabbage in a file and locked it. "A couple. One wanted a divorce set-up and the other wanted himself a bodyguard. Seems like his girlfriend's husband is promising to chill him on sight. I sent both of them over to Ellison's where they'd get proper treatment."

"I wish you'd quit making up my mind for me. That bodyguard job might have been all right."

"Uh-uh. I saw a picture of the girl friend. She's the bosomy kind you go for."

"Ah, bugs! You know how I hate women."

I squeezed into the reception chair and picked up the paper from the table. I ruffled through it from back to front, and as I was going to lay it down I caught the picture on the front page. It was down there on the corner, bordered by some shots of the heavyweight fights from the night before. It was a picture of the redhead lying cuddled up and against the curbstone. She was dead. The caption read HIT-AND-RUN DRIVER KILLS, ESCAPES.

"The poor kid! Of all the rotten luck!"

"Who's that?" Velda asked me.

I shoved the paper over to her. "I was with that kid the other night. She was a street-walker and I bought her a coffee in a hash joint. Before I left I gave her some dough to get out of the business, and look what happened to her."

"Fine company you keep." Her tone was sarcastic.

I got sore. "Damn it, she was all right. She wasn't after me. I did her a favor and she was more grateful than most of the trash that call themselves people. The first time in a month of Sundays I've done anything half-way decent and this is the way it winds up.

"I'm sorry, Mike. I'm really sorry, honest." It was funny how she could spot it when I was telling the truth. She opened the paper and read the news item, frowning when she finished. "She wasn't identified. Did you know her name?"

"Hell, no. She was a redhead, so I called her Red. Let's see that." I went over the item myself. She was found in the street at half-past two. Apparently she had been there for some time before someone had sense enough to call the cop on the beat. A guy who had passed her twice as she lay there told the cop that he thought she was a drunk who had passed out. It was reasonable enough. Over there you find enough of them doing just that. But the curious part was the complete lack of identification on her.

When I folded the paper up I said, "Look, stick around a while; I have a little walking to do."

"That girl?"

"Yeah. Maybe I can help identify her some way. I don't know. Call Pat and tell him I'm on my way down."

"O.K., Mike."

I left the car where it was and took a cab over to the red-brick building where Pat Chambers held down his office. You want to see that guy. He's a Captain of Homicide and all cop, but you couldn't tell it to look at him. He was young and charged with knowledge and the ambition to go with it, the best example of efficiency I could think of. It isn't often that you see cops hobnobbing with private dicks, but Pat had the sense to know that I could touch a lot of places outside the reach of the law, and he could do plenty for me that I couldn't do for myself. What started out as a modest business arrangement turned into a solid friendship.

He met me over in the lab where he was running a ballistics test. "Hullo, Mike, what brings you around so early?"

"A problem, chum." I flipped the paper open in front of him and pointed to the picture. "This. Have you found out about her?"

Pat shook his head. "No... but I will. Come on in the office." He led me into the cubbyhole off the lab and nodded to a chair. While I fired a cig he called an extension number and was connected. He said, "This is Chambers. I want to find out if that girl who was killed by a hit-and-run driver last night has been identified." He listened a little bit, then frowned.

I waited until he hung up, then: "Anything?"

"Something unusual--dead of a broken neck. One of the boys didn't like the looks of it and they're holding the cause of death until a further exam is made. What have you?"

"Nothing. But I was with her the night before she was found dead."

"So?"

"So she was a tramp. I bought her a coffee in a hash house and we had a talk."

"Did she mention her name?"

"Nope, all I got out of her was 'Red.' It was appropriate enough."

Pat leaned back in his chair. "Well, we don't know who she is. She had on all new clothes, a new handbag with six dollars and change in it, and not a scar on her body to identify her. Not a single laundry mark either."

"I know. I gave her a hundred and fifty bucks to get dressed up and look for a decent job: Evidently she did."

"Getting big-hearted, aren't you?" He sounded like Velda, and I got mad.

"Damn it, Pat, don't you give me that stuff, too! Can't I play saint for five minutes without everyone getting smart about it? I've seen kids down on their luck before, probably a damn sight more than you have. You think anyone would give them a break? Like hell! They play 'em for all they can get and beat it. I liked the kid; does that make me a jerk? All right, she was a hustler, but she wasn't hustling for me and I did her a favor. Maybe she gets all wrapped up in a new dream and forgets to open her eyes when she's crossing the street, and look what happens. Any time I touch anything it gets killed!"

"Hey, wait up, Mike, don't jump me on it. I know how you feel... it's just that you seemed to be stepping out of character."

"Aw, I'm sorry, Pat. It's kind of got me loused up."

"At least you've given me something to go on. If she bought all new clothes we can trace them. If we're lucky we can pick up the old stuff and check them for laundry marks."

He told me to wait for him and took off down the corridor. I sat there for five minutes and fidgeted, and cursed people who let their kids run loose. A hell of a way to die. They just lower you into a hole and cover you up, with nobody around but the worms, and the worms don't cry. But Pat would find out who she was. He'd put a little effort behind the search and a pair of parents would turn up and wring themselves dry with grief. Not that it would do much good, but at least I'd feel better.

Pat came back looking sour. I guess I knew what was coming when he said, "They covered that angle downstairs. The sales clerks in the stores all said the same thing... she took her old clothes with her and wore the new ones."

"Then she must have left them at home."

"Uh-huh. She wasn't carrying them with her when she was found."

"Nope, I don't like that, either, Pat. When a girl buys a new outfit, she won't look at the old one, and what she had on when I met her was a year out of date. She probably chucked them somewhere."

Pat reached into his desk and came up with a notepad. "I think the best we can do is publish her picture and hope someone steps up with an identification. At the same time we'll get the bureau checking up in the neighborhood where you met her. Does that suit you?"

"Yeah. Can't do more than that, I guess."

He flipped the pages over but, before I could tell him where the hash house was, a lab technician in a white smock came in and handed over a report sheet. Pat glanced at it, then his eyes squinted and he looked at me strangely.

I didn't get it, so I stared back. Without a word he handed me the sheet and nodded to dismiss the technician. It was a report on Red. The information was the same that Pat had given me, but down at the bottom was somebody's scrawled notation. It said very clearly that although there was a good chance that death could have been accidental, the chance was just as good that she had been murdered. Her neck had been broken in a manner that could have been caused only by the most freakish accident.

For the first time since I'd known him, Pat took a typical cop's attitude. "A nice story you gave me, Mike. How much of it am I supposed to believe?" His voice was dripping with sarcasm.

"Go to hell, Pat!" I said it coldly, burning up inside.

I knew damn well what was going on in that official mind. Just because we had tangled tails on a couple of cases before, he thought I was pitching him a fast one. I got it off my chest in a hurry. "You used to be a nice guy, Pat," I said. "There was a time when we did each other favors and no questions asked. Did I ever dummy up a deal on you?"

He started to answer, but I cut him off. "Yeah, sure, we've crossed once or twice, but you always have the bull on me before we start. That's because you're a cop. I can't withhold information... all I can do is protect a client. Since when do you figure me to be putting the snear on you?"

This time Pat grinned. "O.K., that makes me sorry twice today. Do me another favor and admit I had a half-way decent reason to be suspicious. You're usually in something up to your neck, and you aren't above getting a little free info even from me, and I can't blame you. It's just that I have to look out for my own neck once in a while. You know the pressure that's being put on our department. If we get caught short we have a lot of people to answer to."

He kept talking, but I wasn't listening to him. My eyes kept drifting back to that report sheet until that one word, MURDERED, kept jumping at me like it was alive. I was seeing Red standing there with the dimples in her cheeks, kissing her finger and smiling a smile that was for me alone. Just a two-bit tramp who could have been a lady, and who was, for a few short minutes, a damn decent friend.

And I had jinxed her.

My guts were a tight little ball under my belt, because Red wasn't the only one I remembered. There was the greaseball with the rod and the dirty sneer. There was the way Red had looked at him with terror in her eyes, and I felt my fingernails bite into my palms, and I started cursing under my breath. It always starts that way, the crazy mad feeling that makes me want to choke the life out of some son of a bitch, and there's nothing to grab but air. I knew damn well what it was then.

They could cross all the probable words off in front of murder and let it stand alone.

Pat said, "Give, Mike."

"There's nothing to give," I told him. "I'm teed off. Things like this give me the pip. I might as well have killed her myself."

"What makes you think it's murder?" He was watching me closely again.

I flipped the sheet to his desk. "I don't know, but she's dead and what difference does it make how she died. When you're dead you're dead and it doesn't matter much to you any more how you got that way."

"Let's not have any tangents, Mike. What do you know that I don't?"

"What she looked like when she was alive. She was a nice kid."

"Go on."

"Nuts! There isn't any place to go. If she was killed accidentally, I feel like hell. If she was murdered..."

"Yeah, Mike, I've heard it before... if she was killed you're going to go out all by yourself and catch the bastard and rub his nose in the dirt. Maybe so hard that you break his neck, too."

"Yeah," I said. Then I said it again.

"Mike."

"What?"

"Look, if it's a kill it belongs to my department. It probably isn't, but you get me so damn excited I'm getting positive that it is, and I'm getting mad, too, because you have thoughts in that scrambled brain of yours that will make the track nice and muddy if it's another race. Let's not have any more of that, Mike. Once was enough. I didn't mind so much then, but no more of it. We've always played it square, though only God knows why I set myself up to be knocked down. Maybe I'm the jerk. Are you levelling with me on what you know?"

"I'm levelling, Pat." I wasn't lying. What I had told him was the truth. I just hadn't told him the rest. It's awfully nice to get so goddamn mad at something you want to bust wide open, and it's a lot better to take that goddamn something you're mad at and smash it against the wall and do all the things to it you wanted to do, wishing it could have been done before it was too late.

Pat was playing cop with his notebook again. "Where did you meet her?" he asked me.

"A joint under the el on Third Avenue. I came off the bridge and ran down Third and stopped at this joint along the way. I don't remember the street because I was too tired to look, but I'll go back and check up again and find it. There's probably a thousand places like it, but I'll find it."

"This isn't a stall, is it?"

"Yeah, it's a stall. Lock me up for interfering with the process of the law. I should have remembered every detail that happened that night."

"Can it, Mike."

"I told you I'd find it again, didn't I?"

"Good enough. Meanwhile, we'll pull an autopsy on her and try to locate the old clothes. Remember, when you find the place, let me know. I'll probably find it without you anyway, but you can make it quicker... if you want to."

"Sure," I said. I was grinning, but nothing was funny. It was a way I could hold my mouth and be polite without letting him know that I felt as if ants were crawling all over me. We shook hands and said civilized "so longs" when I wanted to curse and swing at something instead.

I don't like to get mad like that. But I couldn't help it. Murder is an ugly word.

When I got downstairs I asked the desk sergeant where I could get in touch with Jake Larue. He gave me his home number and I went into a pay station just off the main corridor and dialed the number. Jake's wife answered, and she had to wake him up to put him on, and his voice wasn't too friendly when he said hullo.

I said, "This is Mike Hammer, Jake. What happened to that punk I gave you the other night?"

Jake said something indecent. Then, "That was some deal you handed us, Mike."

"Why?"

"He had a license for that gun, that's why. You trying to get me in a jam or something?"

"What are they doing, giving licenses away in New York State, now?"

"Nuts! His name is Feeney Last and he's a combination chauffeur and bodyguard for that Berin-Grotin guy out on the Island."

I whistled through my teeth and hung up. Now they were giving out licenses to guys who wanted to kill people. Oh, great! Just fine!