My Gun Is Quick

Chapter Three

I hit New York in the middle of a rainstorm and drove straight to my apartment to change my clothes and down a bottle of beer. As soon as I finished I grabbed a quick bite in a luncheonette and headed back towards the office. The rain was still coming down when I found a parking space two blocks away, so I hopped a cab to save my only remaining suit.

It was after five, but Velda was still there. So was Pat. He looked up with a grin and waved hullo. "What are you doing here?" I asked.

"Oh, just stopped by to give you some news. Velda makes good company. Too bad you don't appreciate her more."

"I do, but I don't have a chance to show it." She wrinkled her nose at me. "What news?"

"We found the guy that killed the redhead."

My heart started hammering against my ribs. "Who?"

"Some young kid. He was drunk, speeding, and beat out the red light. He remembered hitting somebody and knew he was in the wrong, whole hog, and kept on going. His father turned him in to us."

I had to sit down after that. "You sure, Pat?"

"As sure as you were that she was killed deliberately." He laughed, and said, "I was all hopped up for a while, but it's been turned over to another department and I can relax. Every time I'm on the same trail as you I get the jumps. You ought to be a city cop, Mike. We could use you."

"Sure, and I'd go bats trying to stay within all the rules and regulations. Look, what makes you so sure the kid did it?"

"Well, as far as we can determine, it was the only accident along the avenue that night. Then, too, we have his confession. The lab checked the car for fender dents and paint chips on her clothing, but the kid had anticipated that before he confessed and did a good job of spoiling any traces that might have been left. We had a good man on the job and he seems to think that the unusual nature of the accident was caused because she was hit a glancing blow and broke her neck when she struck the edge of the curb."

"It would have broken the skin, then."

"Not necessarily. Her coat collar prevented that. All the indications point that way. The only abrasions were those caused by the fall and roll after she was hit. Her cheek and knees were skinned up, but that was all."

"What about identification."

"Nothing yet. The Bureau of Missing Persons is checking on it."

"Horse manure!"

"Mike," he said, "just why are you so damn upset about her name? There are thousands of kids just like her in the city and every day something happens to some of them."

"Nuts, I told you once. I liked her. Don't ask me why, because I don't know, but I'll be damned if I'm not going to find out. You aren't going to stick her in a hole in the ground with an 'X' on a slab over her head!"

"O.K., don't get excited. I don't know what you can do about it when there's a full-staffed bureau working on it."

"Horse manure to the bureau, too."

I jammed the butt in my mouth and Pat waited until I lit it, then he got up and walked over to me. He wasn't laughing any more. His eyes were serious and he laid an arm on my shoulder and said, "Mike, I kind of know you pretty well. You still got a bug up your tail that says she's been murdered, right?"

"Uh-huh!"

"Got the slightest reason why?"

"No."

"Well, if you find out, will you let me know about it?"

I blew a stream of smoke at the ceiling and nodded my head. I looked up at him and the old friendship was back. Pat was one of those guys with sense enough to know that other people had hunches besides the cops. And not only hunches. There's a lot of experience and know-how that lies in back of what people call hunches.

"Is she in the morgue now?" I asked him. Pat nodded. "I want to see her."

"All right, we'll go down now."

I looked at Velda, then the clock, and told her to blow. She was putting on her coat when we went out the door. On the way Pat didn't say much. I fought the traffic up to the old brick building and slid out to wait for Pat.

It was cold inside there. Not the kind of cold that comes with fresh air and wintry mornings, but a stale cold that smelt of chemicals and death. It was quiet, too, and it gave me the creeps. Pat asked the attendant for the listing of her personal belongings, and while he ruffled through a desk drawer we waited, not speaking.

There wasn't much. Clothes--but everybody wears clothes. Lipstick, powder and some money; a few trinkets of no account every girl totes in a handbag. I handed the listing back. "Is that all?"

"All I got, mister," the attendant yawned. "Want to see her?"

"If you don't mind."

The attendant went down the row of file cases, touching them with his finger like a kid does with a stick on a picket fence. When he came to the "Unidentified" row he checked a number with a slip in his hand and unlocked the second case from the bottom. For all he was concerned, Red could have been a stack of correspondence.

Death hadn't changed her, except to erase some of the hardness from her face. There was a bruise on the side of her neck and abrasions from the fall, neither seemingly serious enough to be fatal. But that's the way it is. People go under subway cars and get back on the platform, scared but laughing; others pile a car over a cliff and walk away. She gets clipped lightly and her neck is broken.

"When's the autopsy, Pat?"

"There won't be one now. It hardly seems necessary when we have the driver. It isn't murder any more."

Pat didn't see me grimace then. I was looking at her hands folded across her chest, thinking of the way she held that cup of coffee, Like a princess. She had had a ring, but there wasn't one now. The hand it had graced was scratched and swollen, and the marks where some bastard had forced the ring off went unnoticed among the others.

No, it wasn't stolen. A thief would have taken the handbag and not the ring while she had lain in the gutter. And girls aren't ones to forget to wear rings, especially when they're dressed up.

Yeah, Pat was wrong. He didn't know it, and I wasn't about to tell him... yet. It was murder if ever I saw one. And it wasn't just a guess now.

"Seen enough, Mike?"

"Yep. I've seen everything I want to see." We went back to the desk and for a second time I checked the listing of her belongings. No ring. I was glad to get out of there and back into fresh air. We sat in the car a few minutes and I lit up a cigarette.

"What's going to happen to her now, Pat?"

He shrugged. "Oh, the usual thing. We'll hold the body the regular time while we check information, then release it for burial."

"You aren't burying her without a name."

"Be reasonable, Mike. We'll do everything we can to trace her."

"So will I." Pat shot me a sidewise look. "Anyway," I said, "whatever happens, don't put her through the disposal system. I'll finance a funeral for her if I have to."

"Uh-huh. But you're thinking you won't have to again. All right, Mike, do what you want to. It's officially out of my hands now, but damn it, man... if I know you, it will be back in my hands again. Don't try to cut my throat, that's all. If you get anything, let me know about it."

"Of course," I said, then started up the car and pulled away from the curb.

The letter was three days late. The address had been taken from the telephone book, which hadn't been revised since I moved to my new apartment. The post office had readdressed it and forwarded it to me. The handwriting was light and feminine, touched with a gracious Spencerian style.

My hand was shaking when I slit it open; it shook even more when I started to read it, because the letter was from the redhead.

Dear Mike,

What a lovely morning, what a beautiful day and I feel so new all over I want to sing my way down the street. I can't begin to tell you "thank you" because words are so small and my heart is so big that anything I could write would be inadequate. When I met you, Mike, I was tired... so tired of doing so many things... only one of which had any meaning to me. Now I'm not tired at all and things are clear once more. Some day I may need you again, Mike. Until now there has been no one I could trust and it has been hard. It isn't a friendship I can impose upon because we're really not friends. It's a trust, and you don't know what it means to me to have someone I can trust.

You've made me very happy.

Your Redhead.

Oh, damn it to hell, anyway. Damn everybody and everything. And damn me especially because I made her happy for half a day and put her in a spot where living was nice and it was hard to die.

I folded the letter up in my fist and threw it at the wall.

A bumper bottle of beer cooled me off and I quit hating myself. When I killed the quart I stuck the empty under the sink and went back and picked up the letter, smoothing it out on the table top. Twice again I read it, going over every word. It wasn't the kind of letter a tramp would write; the script and the phrasing had a touch of eloquence that wasn't used by girls who made the gutter their home. I've seen a lot of bums, and I've fooled around with them from coast to coast, and one thing I know damn well... they're a definite type. Some give it away and some sell it, but you could pick out those who would and those who wouldn't. And those who would had gutter dirt reflected in everything they did, said and wrote.

Red had been a decent kid. She had to give up her decency to do something important. Something had a meaning for her... and some day she was going to need me again. She needed me more now than she ever did. O.K., I was hers, then.

They don't start walking the streets until midnight, if that's what you're after. But if you're in a hurry there are guys you can see who will steer you straight to a house and pick up their cut later. Usually they're sallow-faced punks with sharp pointed faces and wise eyes that shift nervously, and they keep toying with change in their pockets or a key chain hooked to high-pleated pants as they talk out of the corner of their mouths.

Cobbie Bennett was like that. As long as there are girls who make a business out of it, you'll find guys like Cobbie. The only shadow he cast was by artificial light, and he looked it. I found him in a dirty bar near Canal Street, his one hand cupped around a highball and his other hooked in his belt, in earnest conversation with a couple of kids who couldn't have been more than seventeen. Both of them looked like high-school seniors out to spend a week's allowance.

I didn't wait for them to finish talking. Both kids looked at me once when I nudged in, beside them, turned a little white and walked away without a word.

"Hullo, Cobbie," I said.

The pimp was more like a weasel backed into a corner than a man. "What do you want?"

"Not what you're selling. By the way, who are you selling these days?"

"Try and find out, banana nose."

I said O.K. and grabbed a handful of skin around his leg and squeezed. Cobbie dropped his drink and started cursing. When spit drooled out of the corner of his mouth I quit and ordered him another drink. He could hardly find his face with it. "I could punch holes in you and make you talk if I felt like it, pal." I grinned.

"Damn it, what'd you do that for?" His eyes were squinted almost shut, chopping me up into little pieces. He rubbed his leg and winced. "I don't have to draw you pitchers, you know what I'm doing. Same thing I been doing right along. What's it to you?"

"Working for an outfit?"

"No, just me." His tone was sullen.

"Who was the redhead who was murdered the other night, Cobbie?"

This time his eyes went wide and he twitched the corner of his mouth. "Who says she was murdered?"

"I do." The bartender drew a beer and shoved it at me. While I sipped it I watched the pimp. Cobbie was scared. I could see him try to shrink down inside his clothes, making himself as unobtrusive as possible, as though it weren't healthy to be seen with me. That put him in a class with Shorty... he had been scared, too.

"The papers said she was hit by a car. You call that murder?"

"I didn't say what killed her. I said she was murdered."

"So what am I supposed to do?"

"Cobbie... you wouldn't want me to get real sore at you, would you?" I waited a second, then, "Well... ?"

He was slow in answering. His eyes sort of crawled up to meet mine and stayed there. Cobbie licked his lips nervously, then he turned and finished his drink with a gulp. When he put the glass down he said, "You're a dirty son of a bitch, Hammer. If I was one of them hop-heads I'd go get a sniff and a rod and blow your goddam guts out. I don't know who the hell the redhead was except another whore and I don't give a damn either. I worked her a couple of times, but mostly she wasn't home to play ball and I got complaints from the guys, so I dropped her. Maybe it was lucky for me that I did, because right after it I got word that she was hot as hell."

"Who passed the word?"

"How should I know? The grapevine don't come from one guy. Enough people said it, so I believed it and forgot her. One of the other babes told me she wasn't doing so good. The trade around here ain't like it is uptown. We don't get no swells... some kids maybe, like them you loused up for me, but the rest is all the jerks who don't care what they get so long as they get it. They heard the word and laid off, too. She wasn't making a nickel."

"Keep talking." He knew what I was after.

Cobbie rapped on the bar for another drink. He wasn't talking very loud now. "Get off me, will you! I don't know why she was hot. Maybe some punk gunslinger wanted her for a steady and was getting rough. Maybe she was loaded three ways to Sunday. All I know is she was hot and in this business a word is good enough for me. Why don't'cha ask somebody else?"

"Who? You got this end sewed up pretty tight, Cobbie. Who else is there to ask? I like the way you talk. I like it so much that I might spread it around that you and me have been pretty chummy and you've been yapping your greasy little head off. Why should I ask somebody else when I got you to tell me. Maybe I don't know who to ask."

His face was white as it could get. He hunched forward to get his drink and almost spilled that one too. "... Once she said she worked a house..." He finished the highball and muttered the address as he wiped his mouth.

I didn't bother to thank him; it was favor enough to throw my drink down silently, pick up my change and walk out of there. When I reached the street I crossed over and stood in the recess of a hallway for a few minutes. I stuck a butt between my lips and had just cupped my hands around a match when Cobbie came out, looked up and down the street, jammed his hands in his pockets and started walking north. When he rounded the corner I got in the car and sat there a few minutes, trying to figure just what the hell was going on.

One redheaded prostitute down on her luck. She was killed, her room was searched, and her ring was missing.

One trigger-happy greaseball who searched her room because she stole his blackmail set-up. He said.

One ex-con who ran a hash house the redhead used for a hangout. He was scared.

One pimp who knew she was hot but couldn't say why. Maybe he could, but he was scared, too.

It was a mess no matter how you looked at it, and it was getting messier all the time. That's why I was so sure. Death is like a bad tooth... no matter what's wrong with it, you pull it out and it's all over. That's the way death usually is; after that people can talk all they want, they even do things for dead joes that they wouldn't do for the living. Death is nice and clean and antiseptic. It ends all trouble. Someone gathers up your belongings, says a word of praise, and that's it. But the redhead's was a messy death. There was something unclean about it like a wound that has healed over on top, concealing an ugly, festering sore brewing a deadly poison that will kill again.

When the butt burned down to my fingers I started the car and shoved off, threading my way across town to the address Cobbie had given me. New York had its sinkholes, too, and the number of this one placed it smack in the middle of the slime. It was a one-way street of rats' nests, with the river at one end and a saloon on each corner, peopled with men and women that had the flat vacant look of defeat stamped on their faces.

I checked the numbers and found the one I wanted, but all it was was a number, because the house was gone. Unless you can call a flame-gutted skeleton of masonry a house. The doorway yawned open like a leper's mouth and each window had its scar tissue of peeling paint.

The end of the trail. I swore and kicked at the curb.

A kid about ten looked at me and said, "Some jerk t'rew a match out the winder inta the garbage coupla weeks ago. Most of the dames got killed."

These kids knew too much for their age nowadays. I needed a drink bad this time. The joint on the left was closer, so I went in and stood at the bar making tight fists with my hands until the nails cut into my palms. Now this, I kept thinking, now this! Did every corner to this have a blank wall I couldn't hurdle. The bartender didn't ask... he shoved a glass and a bottle under my nose and drew a chaser from the beer tap, then made change from my buck. When I had the second he put all the change in the register, then came back and waited.

"One more?"

I shook my head. "Just beer this time. Where's your phone?"

"Over in the corner." He jerked his head towards the end of the bar while he pulled the beer. I went down to the booth and dropped a nickel in, then dialed Pat at his home.

This time I had a little luck because he answered. I said, "This is Mike, chum. Need a favor done. There was a fire in one of the bawdy houses down the street here and I want to know if there has been an investigation made. Can you check it?"

"Guess so, Mike. What's the number?" I gave it to him and grunted when he checked it back to me. "Hang up while I call and I'll buzz you back. Give me your number there."

He got that, too, and I hung up. I went down and got my beer, then went back to the seat in the phone booth and sat there sipping the stuff slowly. The minute it rang I snatched it off the hook.

"Mike?"

"Yeah."

"The fire happened twelve days ago. A complete investigation was made because the place had been condemned for occupancy a month before and nothing had been done about it. The fire started accidentally and the guy who flipped the lit match out the window is still in the hospital recovering. Apparently, he was the only one who got out alive. The flames blocked the front door and the rear was littered with junk so as to be impassable.

"Three girls perished on the roof, two in the rooms and two jumped to their deaths before the firemen could get the nets up. Destruction was complete because the floors caved in completely."

Pat didn't give me a chance to thank him. Before I could say a word his voice thinned out and had an edge on it. "Give me what you know, Mike. You aren't there out of curiosity and if you're still thinking in terms of murder I want a trade. And right now, too."

"O.K., sharp guy," I laughed. "I'm still trying to find out who the redhead was. I met a guy who knew where she had worked before she free-lanced and I wound up here."

This time Pat was the one who laughed. "Is that all? I could have told you that if you'd called me." I froze on the phone. "Her name was Sanford, Nancy Sanford. She used several first names, but seemed to stick to Nancy most of the time, so we picked it as her own."

My teeth grinding together made more sound than my voice. "Who said so?"

"We have a lot of men on the Force, Mike. A couple of the patrolmen got on to her."

"Maybe you know who killed her, too."

"Sure. The kid did. The lab finally found traces of fender paint on her clothes, and strands of fibres from her dress on the car. It was as simple as that."

"Was it?"

"Uh-huh. Besides, we have a witness. At least a witness who saw her just a few minutes before she was killed. A janitor was putting out the ashes and saw her staggering up the street, dead drunk. She fell, got up again and staggered some more. Later she was discovered a half-block away in the gutter where she was hit."

"Did you trace her parents--anybody at all who knew her?"

"No, we couldn't get that far. She did a good job, of wiping out all traces of her past."

"So now she gets the usual treatment... pine box and all."

"What else, Mike? The case is closed except for the kid's trial."

I snarled into that mouthpiece, "So help me, Pat, if you lower her coffin before I'm ready, I'll beat the hell out of you, cop or no cop!"

Pat said quietly, "We're not in a hurry, Mike. Take your time, take your time."

I set the receiver back in its cradle gently and stood up, saying her name over and over again. I must have said it too loud, because the willowy brunette at the corner table looked up at me with a quizzical expression in eyes that had seen through too many bottles of liquor. She was a beaut, all right, not part of this section of town at all. She had on a black satin dress with a neckline that plunged down to her belt buckle, and she sat there with her legs crossed, unconscious of what she was giving away for free.

The heavy rouged lips parted in a smile and she said, "Nancy... always Nancy. Everybody's looking for Nancy. Why don't they pay a little attention to pretty Lola?"

"Who was looking for Nancy?"

"Oh, just everybody." She tried to lean her chin on her hand, but her elbow kept slipping off the table. "I think they found her, too, because Nancy isn't around any more. Nancy's dead. Did you know Nancy was dead? I liked Nancy fine, but now she's dead. Won't pretty Lola do, mister? Lola's nice and alive. You'll like Lola lots when you get to know her."

Hell, I liked Lola already.