The Big Kill

Mickey Spillane

THE BIG KILL

First Published in 1951

Chapter One

It was one of those nights when the sky came down and wrapped itself around the world. The rain clawed at the windows of the bar like an angry cat and tried to sneak in every time some drunk lurched in the door. The place reeked of stale beer and soggy men with enough cheap perfume thrown in to make you sick.

Two drunks with a nickel between them were arguing over what to play on the juke box until a tomato in a dress that was too tight a year ago pushed the key that started off something noisy and hot. One of the drunks wanted to dance and she gave him a shove. So he danced with the other drunk.

She saw me sitting there with my stool tipped back against the cigarette machine and change of a fin on the bar, decided I could afford a wet evening for two and walked over with her hips waving hello.

"You're new around here, ain't ya?"

"Nah. I've been here since six o'clock."

"Buy me a drink?" She crowded in next to me, seeing how much of herself she could plaster against my legs.

"No." It caught her by surprise and she quit rubbing.

"Don't gentlemen usually buy ladies a drink?" she said. She tried to lower her eyelids seductively but one came down farther than the other and made her look stupid.

"I'm not a gentleman, kid."

"I ain't a lady either so buy me a drink."

So I bought her a drink. A jerk in a discarded army overcoat down at the end of the bar was getting the eye from the bartender because he was nursing the last drop in his glass, hating to go outside in the rain, so I bought him a drink too.

The bartender took my change with a frown. "Them bums'll bleed you to death, feller."

"I don't have any blood left," I told him. The dame grinned and rubbed herself against my knees some more.

"I bet you got plenty of everything for me."

"Yeah, but what I got you ain't getting because you probably got more than me."

"What?"

"Forget it."

She looked at my face a second, then edged away. "You ain't very sociable, mister."

"I know it. I don't want to be sociable. I haven't been sociable the last six months and I won't be for the next six if I can help it."

"Say, what's eatin' you? You having dame trouble?"

"I never have dame trouble. I'm a misanthropist."

"You are?" Her eyes widened as if I had something contagious.

She finished her drink and was going to stick it out anyway, no matter what I said.

I said, "Scram."

This time she scowled a little bit. "Say, what the hell's eatin' you? I never..."

"I don't like people. I don't like any kind of people. When you get them together in a big lump they all get nasty and dirty and full of trouble. So I don't like people including you. That's what a misanthropist is."

"I coulda sworn you was a nice feller," she said.

"So could a lot of people. I'm not. Blow, sister."

She gave me a look she kept in reserve for special occasions and got the hell out of there so I could drink by myself. It was a stinking place to have to spend the night but that's all there was on the block. The East Side doesn't cater to the uptown trade. I sat there and watched the clock go around, waiting for the rain to stop, but it was as patient as I was. It was almost malicious the way it came down, a million fingers that drummed a constant, maddening tattoo on the windows until its steady insistence rose above the bawdy talk and raucous screams of the juke box.

It got to everybody after a while, that and the smell of the damp. A fight started down at the other end and spread along the bar. It quit when the bartender rapped one guy over the head with an ice stick. One bum dropped his glass and got tossed out. The tomato who liked to rub herself had enough of it and picked up a guy who had enough left of his change to make the evening profitable and took him home in the rain. The guy didn't like it, but biology got the better of common sense again.

And I got a little bit drunk. Not much, just a little bit.

But enough so that in about five minutes I knew damn well I was going to get sick of the whole mess and start tossing them the hell out the door. Maybe the bartender too if he tried to use the stick on me. Then I could drink in peace and the hell with the rain.

Oh, I felt swell, just great.

I kept looking around to see where I'd start first, then the door opened and shut behind a guy who stood there in his shirt sleeves, wet and shivering. He had a bundle in his arms with his coat over it, and when he quit looking around the place like a scared rabbit he shuffled over to one of the booths and dropped the bundle on the seat.

Nobody but me had paid any attention to him. He threw a buck on the bar, had a shot then brought the other shot over to his table. Still nobody paid any attention to him. Maybe they were used to seeing guys who could cry.

He set the drink down and took the coat off the bundle. It was quite a bundle, all right. It was a little kid about a year old who was sound asleep. I said something dirty to myself and felt my shoulders hunch up in disgust. The rain, the bar, a kid and a guy who cried. It made me sicker than I was.

I couldn't take my eyes off the guy. He was only a little squirt who looked as if he had never had enough to eat. His clothes were damp and ragged, clinging to him like skin. He couldn't have been any older than me, but his face was seamed around the mouth and eyes and his shoulders hung limply. Whatever had been his purpose in life, he had given up long ago.

But damn it, he kept crying. I could see the tears running down his cheeks as he patted the kid and talked too low to be heard. His chest heaved with a sob and his hands went up to cover his face. When they came away he bent his head and kissed the kid on top of his head.

All of a sudden my drink tasted lousy.

I turned around to put a quarter in the cigarette machine so I wouldn't have to look at him again when I heard his chair kick back and saw him run to the door. This time he had nothing in his arms.

For about ten seconds I stood there, my fingers curled around the deck of Luckies. Something crawled up my spine and made my teeth grind together, snapping off a sound that was a curse at the whole damn world. I knocked a drunk down getting around the corner of the bar and ripped the door open so the rain could lash at my face the way it had been wanting to. Behind me somebody yelled to shut the door.

I didn't have time to because I saw the guy halfway down the street, a vague silhouette under the overhead light, a dejected figure of a man too far gone to care any more. But he was worth caring about to somebody in the Buick sedan that pulled away from the curb. The car slithered out into the light with a roar and I heard the sharp cough of the gun over the slapping of my own feet on the sidewalk.

It only took two of them and the guy slammed forward on his face. The back door flew open and another shadow ran under the light and from where I was I could see him bend over and frisk the guy with a blurred motion of his hands.

I should have waited, damn it. I shouldn't have tried a shot from where I was. A .45 isn't built for range and the slug ripped a groove in the pavement and screamed off down the block. The guy let out a startled yell and tore back toward the car with the other guy yelling for him to hurry. He damn near made it, then one of the ricochets took him through the legs and he went down with a scream.

The other guy didn't wait. He jammed the gas down and wrenched the wheel over as hard as he could and the guy shrieking his lungs out in the gutter forgot the pain in his legs long enough to let out one final, terrified yell before the wheels of the car made a pulpy mess of his body. My hand kept squeezing the trigger until there were only the flat echoes of the blasts that were drowned out by the noise of the car's exhaust and the futile gesture as the gun held opened, empty.

And there I was standing over a dead little guy who had two holes in his back and the dried streaks of tears on his face. He didn't look tired any more. He seemed to be smiling. What was left of the one in the gutter was too sickening to look at.

I opened the cigarettes and stuck one in my mouth. I lit it and breathed out the smoke, watching it sift through the rain. The guy couldn't hear me, but I said, "It's a hell of a city, isn't it, feller?"

A jagged streak of lightning cut across the sky to answer me.

The police cars took two minutes getting to the spot. They converged from both ends of the street, howling to a stop under the light and the boys next to the drivers were out before the tires stopped whining.

One had a gun in his hand. He meant business with it too. It was pointed straight at my gut and he said, "Who're you?"

I pointed my butt at the thing on the sidewalk. "Eyewitness."

The other cop came behind me and ran his hand over my pockets. He found the gun, yanked it out of the holster and smelled the barrel. For a second I thought he was going to clip me with it, but this cop had been around long enough to ask questions first. He asked them with his eyes.

"Look in my side pocket," I said.

He dipped his hand in my coat and brought out my wallet. The badge was pinned to the flap with my P.I. ticket and gun license inside the cardcase. He looks them both over carefully, scrutinizing my picture then my face. "Private Investigator, Michael Hammer."

"That's right."

He scowled again and handed the gun and wallet back. "What happened?"

"This guy came in the bar back there a few minutes ago. He looked scared as hell, had two drinks and ran out. I was curious so I tagged after him."

"In this rain you were curious," the cop with the gun said.

"I'm a curious guy."

The other cop looked annoyed. "Okay, go on."

I shrugged. "He ran out and a Buick came after him. There were two shots from the car, the guy fell and one punk hopped out of the car to frisk him. I let loose and got the guy in the legs and the driver of the car ran over him. Purposely."

"So you let loose!" The lad with the gun came in at me with a snarl.

The other cop shoved him back. "Put that thing away and call the chief. I know this guy."

It didn't go over big with the young blood. "Hell, the guy's dead, isn't he? This punk admits shooting, don't he? Hell, how do we know there was a Buick?"

"Go take a look at the corpse over there," the cop said patiently.

Laddie boy with the gun shoved it back on his hip and walked across the street. He started puking after his first look and crawled back in the prowl car.

So at one o'clock in the morning Pat got there with no more fanfare than the winking red light on the top of the police car. I watched him step out and yank his collar up against the rain. The cops looked smart when he passed because there wasn't anything else to do. A killing in this neighborhood was neither important nor interesting enough to drag out the local citizenry in a downpour, so the harness bulls just stood at attention until the brass had given his nod of recognition.

The cop who had frisked me said, "Good evening, Captain Chambers."

Pat said hello and was led out to look over the pair of corpses. I stayed back in the shadows smoking while he bent over to look at the one on the sidewalk. When he finished his inspection he straightened up, listened to the cop a minute and wrinkled up his forehead in a perplexed frown.

My cigarette arched through the night and fizzled out in the gutter. I said, "Hi, Pat."

"What are you doing here, Mike?" Two cops flanked him as he walked over to me. He waved them away.

"I'm the eyewitness."

"So I've heard." Behind Pat the eager beaver cop licked his lips, wondering who the hell I was and hoping I didn't sound off about his gun-waving. "What's the whole story, Mike?"

"That's it, every bit of it. I don't know any more about it than you do.

"Yeah." He made a sour face. "Look, don't screw me. Are you on a case?"

"Chum, if I was I'd say so then keep my trap closed. I'm not on a case and I don't know what the hell happened. This guy got shot, I nicked the other guy and the boy in the car finished him off."

Pat shook his head. "I hate coincidence. I hate it especially when you're involved. You smell out murder too well."

"Sure, and this one stinks. You know either of them?"

"No. They're not carrying any identification around either."

The morgue wagon rolled up with the Medical Examiner about fifty feet in the rear. The boys hopped out and started cleaning up the mess after the verdict was given and the pictures taken. I ambled out to the middle of the street and took a look at the body that was squashed against the roadbed.

He looked like an hourglass.

Fright and pain had made a distorted death mask of his face, but the rain had scrubbed away the blood leaving him a ghostly white in contrast with the asphalt of the street. He was about forty-five and as medium as you can get. His clothes had an expensive look about them, but one shoe had a hole in the bottom and he needed a haircut bad.

The driver of the wagon splashed the light of a flash over him and gave me a toothy grin. "He's a goodie, ain't he?"

"Yeah, a real beaut."

"Not so much, though. You shoulda seen what we had last week. Whole damn trailer truck rolled over that one and we had to scrape him away from between the tires. Coulda put him in a shoe box."

"Do you sleep good nights?" I gave him my best disgusted look.

"Sure, why?" He even sounded surprised.

"Forget it. Put that light on his face again."

The guy obliged and I had a close look this time. I walked around and had a squint from the other side then told him to knock off the light. Pat was a vague figure in a trench coat, watching me closely. He said, "Know him?"

"I've seen him before. Small-time hardcase, I think."

"The M.E. remembered him. He was a witness at a coroner's inquest about twelve years ago. The guy was one of Charlie Fallon's old outfit."

I glanced at Pat then back to the corpse again. The guy had some odd familiarity I couldn't place and it wasn't Fallon I was thinking of. Fallon died of natural causes about the same time I was opening up shop and what I knew of him came strictly from the papers.

"Nope, can't quite place him," I said.

"We'll get him tagged. Too bad they couldn't've had the decency to carry a lodge card or something. The one on the sidewalk there only had forty cents in change and a house key in his pocket. This guy had a fin and two ones and nothing else."

I nodded. "A buck must have been all that first lad had then.. He bought two drinks in the bar before he left."

"Well, let's go back there and check. Maybe somebody'll know him there."

"Nobody will," I said.

"Never can tell."

"Nuts. They didn't know him when he came in, I'm telling you. He just had two drinks and left."

"Then what're you getting excited about?" He had his hands shoved down in his pockets and was watching me with eyes that were half shut.

"Skip it."

"The hell I'll skip it. Two guys are murdered and I want to know what the hell goes on. You got another wild hair up your tail, haven't you?"

"Yeah." The way I said it brought the scowl back to his face..."Spill it, Mike."

"Let's go back to the bar. I'm getting so goddamn sick of the things that happen in this town I have to take a bath every time I even stick my head out the door."

The rain stopped momentarily as if something had amazed it, then slashed down with all the fury it could muster, damning me with its millions of pellets. I took a look around me at the two rows of tenements and the dark spots on the pavement where the dead men were a minute ago and wondered how many people behind the walls and windows were alive today who wouldn't be alive tomorrow.

Pat left a moment, said something to the M.E. and one of the cops, then joined me on the sidewalk. I nudged a brace of Luckies out of the pack, handed him one and watched his face in the light. He looked teed off like he always did when he came face to face with a corpse.

I said, "This must gripe the pants off you, Pat. There's not one blasted thing you can do to prevent trouble. Like those two back there. Alive one minute, dead the next. Nice, huh? The cops get here in time to clear up the mess, but they can't move until it happens. Christ, what a place to live!"

He didn't say anything until we turned into the bar. By that time most of the customers were so helplessly drunk they couldn't remember anything anyway. The bartender said a guy was in for a few minutes awhile back, but he couldn't help out. Pat gave up after five minutes and came back to me. I was sitting at the booth with my back to the bundle in the corner ready to blow up.

Pat took a long look at my face. "What's eating you, Mike?"

I picked the bundle up and sat it on my knee. The coat came away and the kid's head lolled on my shoulder, his hair a tangled wet mop. Pat pushed his hat back on his head and tucked his lip under his teeth. "I don't get it."

"The dead guy... the one who was here first. He came in with the kid and he was crying. Oh, it was real touching. It damn near made me sick, it was so touching. A guy bawling his head off, then kissing his kid good-by and making a run for the street.

"This is why I was curious. I thought maybe the guy was so far gone he was deserting his kid. Now I know better, Pat. The guy knew he was going to die so he took his kid in here, said so-long and walked right into it. Makes a nice picture, doesn't it?"

"You're drawing a lot of conclusions, aren't you?"

"Let's hear you draw some better ones. Goddamn it, this makes me mad! No matter what the hell the guy did it's the kid who has to pay through the nose for it. Of all the lousy, stinking things that happen..."

"Ease off, Mike."

"Sure, ease off. It sounds real easy to do. But look, if this was his kid and he cared enough to cry about it, what happens to him?"

"I presume he has a mother."

"No doubt," I said sarcastically. "So far you don't know who the father is. Do we leave the kid here until something turns up?"

"Don't be stupid. There are agencies who will take care of him."

"Great. What a hell of a night this is for the kid. His old man gets shot and he gets adopted by an agency."

"You don't know it's his father, friend."

"Who else would cry over a kid?"

Pat gave me a thoughtful grimace. "If your theory holds about the guy knowing he was going to catch it, maybe he was bawling for himself instead of the kid."

"Balls. What kind of a kill you think this is?"

"From the neighborhood and the type of people involved I'd say it was pretty local."

"Maybe the killer hopes you'll think just that."

"Why?" He was getting sore now too.

"I told you he ran over his own boy deliberately, didn't I? Why the hell would he do that?"

Pat shook his head. "I don't think he did."

"Okay, pal, you were there and I wasn't. You saw it all."

"Damn it, Mike, maybe it looked deliberate to you but it sounds screwball to me! It doesn't make sense. If he did swerve like you said he did, maybe he was intending to pick the guy up out of the gutter and didn't judge his distance right. When he hit him it was too late to stop."

I said something dirty.

"All right, what's your angle?"

"The guy was shot in the legs. He might have talked and the guy in the car didn't want to be identified for murder so he put the wheels to him."

Suddenly he grinned at me and his breath hissed out in a chuckle. "You're on the ball. I was thinking the same thing myself and wanted to see if you were sure of yourself."

"Go to hell," I said.

"Yeah, right now. Let's get that kid out of here. I'll be up half the night again on this damn thing. Come on."

"No."

Pat stopped and turned around. "What do you mean... 'no'?"

"What I said. I'll keep the kid with me... for now anyway. He'll only sit down there at headquarters until morning waiting for those agency people to show up."

Maybe it's getting so I can't keep my face a blank any more, or maybe Pat had seen that same expression too often. His teeth clamped together and I knew his shoulders were bunching up under the coat. "Mike," he told me, "if you got ideas about going on a kill-hunt, just get rid of them right now. I'm not going to risk my neck and position because of a lot of wild ideas you dream up."

I said it low and slow so he had to listen hard to catch it. "I don't like what happened to the kid, Pat. Murder doesn't just happen. It's thought about and planned out all nice and neat, and any reason that involves murder and big fat Buicks has to be a damn good one. I don't know who the kid is, but he's going to grow up knowing that the guy who killed his old man died with a nice hot slug in the middle of his intestines. If it means anything to you, consider that I'm on a case. I have me a legal right to do a lot of things including shooting a goddamn killer if I can sucker him into drawing first so it'll look like self-defense.

"So go ahead and rave. Tell me how it won't do me any good. Tell me that I'm interfering in police work and I'll tell you how sick I am of what goes on in this town. I live here, see? I got a damn good right to keep it clean even if I have to kill a few bastards to do it. There's plenty who need killing bad and if I'm electing myself to do the job you shouldn't kick. Just take a look at the papers every day and see how hot the police are when politics can make or break a cop. Take a look at your open cases like who killed Scottoriggio... or Binnaggio and his pal in Kansas City... then look at me straight and say that this town isn't wide open and I'll call you a liar."

I had to stop and take a breath. The air in my lungs was so hot it choked me.

"It isn't nice to see guys cry, Pat. Not grown men. It's worse to see a little kid holding the bag. Somebody's going to get shot for it."

Pat knew better than to argue about it. He looked at me steadily a long minute, then down at the kid. He nodded and his face went tight. "There's not much I can do to stop you, Mike. Not now, anyway."

"Not ever. Think it's okay to keep the kid?"

"Guess so. I'll call you in the morning. As long as you're involved the D.A. is probably going to want a statement from you anyway. This time keep your mouth shut and you'll keep your license. He's got enough trouble on his hands trying to nail the big boys in the gambling racket and he's just as liable to take it out on you."

My laugh sounded like trees rubbing together. "He can go to hell for all I care. He got rough with me once and I bet it still hurts when he thinks about it. What's the matter with him now... can't he even close up a bookie joint?"

"It isn't funny, Mike."

"It's a scream. Even the papers are laughing."

A slow burn crept into his face. "They should. The same guys who do the laughing are probably some of the ones who keep the books open. It's the big shots like Ed Teen who laugh the loudest and they're not laughing at the D.A. or the cops... they're laughing at Joe Citizen, guys like you, who take the bouncing for it. It isn't a bit funny when Teen and Lou Grindle and Fallon can go on enjoying a life of luxury until the day they die while you pay for it."

He got it out of his system and remembered to hand me a good night before he left. I stared at the door swinging shut, my arms tight around the kid, hearing his words come back slowly with one of them getting louder every time it repeated itself.

Lou Grindle. The arm. Lou Grindle who was a flashy holdover from the old days and sold his services where they were needed. Lou Grindle, tough boy de luxe who was as much at home in the hot spots along the Stem as in a cellar club in Harlem.

Lou Grindle who was on his hands and knees in the back of Lake's joint a week ago shooting crap with the help while two of his own boys stood by holding his coat and his dough and the one who held his coat was the dead guy back in the gutter who looked like an hourglass.

I wrapped the coat around the kid and went out in the doorway where I whistled at cabs until one stopped and picked me up. The driver must have had kids of his own at home because he gave me a nasty sneer when he saw the boy in my arms.

I told him where to make his first stop and he waited until I came back. Then I had him make seven others before I got any results. A bartender with a half a bag on mistook me for one of the boys and told me I might find Lou Grindle on Fifty-seventh Street in a place called the Hop Scotch where a room was available for some heavy sugar card games once a week. I threw him a buck and went back to the cab.

I said, "Know where the Hop Scotch is on Fifty-seventh?"

"Yeah. You goin' there now?"

"Looks that way, doesn't it?"

"Don't you think you better take that kid home, buddy? It ain't no good fer kids to be up so late."

"Chum, there's nothing I'd like to do better, but first I got business to take care of."

If I was drunk the cabbie might have tossed me out. As it was, he turned around in his seat to make sure I wasn't, then rolled across to Fifty-seventh.

I left the kid in the cab with a fin to keep the driver quiet and got out. The Hop Scotch was a downstairs gin mill that catered to crowds who liked dirty floor shows and a lot of noise and didn't mind footing the bill. It was hopping with drunks and half drunks who ganged up around the dance floor where a stripper was being persuaded not to stay within the limits prescribed by New York law and when they started throwing rolled-up bills out she said to hell with the law, let go her snaps and braces and gave the customers a treat when she did a two-handed pickup of all the green persuaders.

A waiter was watching the show with a grin on his fat face and I grabbed him while he was still gone over the sight of flesh. I said, "Where's Lou?" just like we were real pals.

"Inside. Him and the others're playin'." His thumb made a vague motion toward the back.

I squeezed through the crowd to where a bus boy was clearing off an empty table and pulled out a chair. The boy looked at the five in my fingers and waited. "Lou Grindle's inside. Go tell him to come out."

He wanted the five, but he shook his head. "Brother, nobody tells Lou nothing. You tell 'im."

"Say it's important business, and he'll come. He won't like it if he doesn't get to hear what I have to tell him."

The guy licked his lips and reached for the five. He left the tray on the table, disappeared around a bend that led to the service bar and kitchen, came back for his tray and told me Lou was on his way.

Out on the floor another stripper was trying to earn some persuasion dough herself so the outside of the room was nice and clear with no big ears around.

Lou came around the bend, looked at the bus boy who crooked a finger my way, then came over to see who the hell I was. Lou Grindle was a dapper punk in his forties with eyes like glass marbles and a head of hair that looked painted on. His tux ran in the three-figure class and if you didn't look for it you'd never know he was packing a gun low under his arm.

The edges of his eyes puckered up as he tried to place me and when he saw the same kind of a gun bulge on me as he had himself he made the mistake of taking me for a cop. His upper lip twitched in a sneer he didn't try to hide.

I kicked another chair out with my foot and said, "Sit down, Lou."

Lou sat down. His fingers were curled up like he wanted to take me apart at the seams. "Make it good and make it quick," he said. He hissed when he talked.

I made it good, all right. I said, "One of your butt boys got himself killed tonight."

His eyes unpuckered and got glassier. It was as close as he could come to looking normally surprised. "Who?"

"That's what I want to find out. He was holding your coat in a crap game the other night. Remember?"

If he remembered he didn't tell me so.

I leaned forward and leaned on the table, the ends of my hand inside the lapel of my coat just in case. "He was a medium-sized guy in expensive duds with holes in his shoes. A long time ago he worked for Charlie Fallon. Right now I'm wondering whether or not he was working for you tonight."

Lou remembered. His face went tight and the cords in his neck pressed tight against his collar. "Who the hell are you, Mac?"

"The name's Mike Hammer, Lou. Ask around and you'll find what it means."

A snake wore the same expression he got just then. His eyes went even glassier and under his coat his body started sucking inward. "A goddamn private cop!" He was looking at my fingers. They were farther inside my coat now and I could feel the cold butt of the .45.

The snake look faded and something else took its place. Something that said Lou Grindle wasn't taking chances on being as fast as he used to be. Not where he was alone, anyway. "So what?" he snarled.

I grinned at him. The one with all the teeth showing.

"That boy of yours, the one who died... I put a slug through his legs and the guy who drove the car didn't want to take a chance on him being picked up so he put the wheels to him. Right after the two of 'em got finished knocking off another guy too."

Lou's hand moved up to his pocket and plucked out a cigar. Slowly, so I could watch it happen. "Nobody was working for me tonight."

"Maybe not, Lou, maybe not. You better hope they weren't."

He stopped in the middle of lighting the cigar and threw those snake eyes at me again. "You got a few things to learn, shamus, I don't like for guys to talk tough to me."

"Lou..." His head came back an inch and I could see the hate he wore like a mask. "... if I find out you had a hand in this business tonight I'm going to come back here and take that slimy face of yours and rub it in the dirt. You just try playing rough with me and you'll see your guts lying on the floor before you die. Remember what I said, Lou. I'd as soon shoot your goddamn greasy head off as look at you."

His face went white right down to his collar. If he had lips they didn't show because they were rolled up against his teeth. The number on the floor ended and the people were coming back where they belonged, so I stood up and walked away. When I looked back he was gone and his chair was upside down against the wall.

The cab was still there with another two bucks chalked up on the meter. It was nearly three o'clock and I had told Velda I'd meet her at two-thirty. I said, "Penn Station," to the driver, held the kid against me to soften the jolts of the ride and paid off the driver a few minutes later.

Velda isn't the kind of woman you'd miss even in Penn Station. All you had to do was follow the eyes. She was standing by the information booth tall and cool-looking, in a light gray suit that made the black of her hair seem even deeper. Luscious. Clothes couldn't hide it. Seductive. They didn't try to hide it either. Nobody ever saw her without undressing her with their eyes, that's the kind of woman she was.

A nice partner to have in the firm. And someday...

I came up behind her and said, "Hello, Velda. Sorry I'm late." She swung around, dropped her cigarette and let me know she thought I was what I looked like right then, an unshaven bum wringing wet. "Can't you ever be on time, Mike?"

"Hell, you're big enough to carry your own suitcases to the platform. I got caught up in a piece of work."

She concentrated a funny stare on me so hard that she didn't realize what I had in my arms until it squirmed. Her breath caught in her throat sharply. "Mike... what..."

"He's a little boy, kitten. Cute, isn't he?"

Her fingers touched his face and he smiled sleepily. Velda didn't smile. She watched me with an intensity I had seen before and it was all I could do to make my face a blank. I flipped a butt out of my pack and lit it so my mouth would have a reason for being tight and screwed up on the side. "Is this the piece of work, Mike?"

"Yeah, yeah. Look, let's get moving."

"What are you doing with him?"

I made what was supposed to be a laugh. "I'm minding him for his father."

She didn't know whether to believe me or not. "Mike... this Florida business can wait if there's something important."

The speaker system was calling off that the Miami Limited was loading. For a second I debated whether or not I should tell her and decided not to. She was a hell of a woman but a woman just the same and thought too goddamn much of my skin to want to see me wrapped up in some kind of a crazy hate again. She'd been through that before. She'd be everything I ever wanted if she'd just quit making sure I stayed alive. So I said, "Come on, you got five minutes."

I put her on the train downstairs and made a kiss at her through the window. When she smiled with that lovely wide mouth and blew a kiss back at me I wanted to tell her to get off and forget going after a punk in Miami who had a hatful of stolen ice, but the train jerked and slipped away. I waved once more and went back upstairs and caught another cab home.

Up in the apartment I undressed the kid, stuffed the ragged overalls in the garbage pail and made him a sack on the couch. I backed up a couple of chairs to hold him in and picked him up. He didn't weigh very much. He was one of those little bundles that were probably scattered all over the city right then with nobody caring much about them. His pale hair was still limp and damp, yet still curly around the edges.

For a minute his head lolled on my shoulder, then his eyes came open. He said something in a tiny voice and I shook my head. "No, kid, I'm not your daddy. Maybe I'll do until we find you another one, though. But at least you've seen the last of old clothes and barrooms for a while."

I laid him on the couch and pulled a cover up over him. Somebody sure as hell was going to pay for this.

Chapter Two

The sun was there in the morning. It was high above the apartments beaming in through the windows. My watch read a few minutes after ten and I unpiled out of bed in a hurry. The phone let loose with a startling jangle at the same time something smashed to the floor in the living room and I let out a string of curses you could have heard on the street.

If I yelled it got stuck in my throat because the kid was standing barefooted in the wreckage of a china-base table lamp reaching up for my rod on the edge of the end table. Even before I got to him he dragged it out of the clip by the trigger guard and was bringing his other hand up to it.

I must have scared the hell out of him the way I whisked him off the floor and disentangled his mitt from the gun. The safety was off and he had clamped down on the trigger while I was thanking the guy who invented the butt safety on the .45.

So with a gun in one hand and a yelling kid in the other I nudged the phone off the hook to stop the goddamn ringing and yelled hello loud enough so the yowls wouldn't drown me out.

Pat said, "Got trouble, Mike?" Then he laughed.

It wasn't funny. I told him to talk or hang up so I could get myself straightened out.

He laughed again, louder this time. "Look, get down as soon as you can, Mike. We have your little deal lined up for you."

"The kid's father?"

"Yeah, it was his father. Come on down and I'll tell you about it.

"An hour. Give me an hour. Want me to bring the kid along?"

"Well... to tell the truth I forgot all about him. Tell you what, park him somewhere until we can notify the proper agency, will you?"

"Sure, just like that I'll dump the kid. What's the matter with you? Oh, forget it, I'll figure something out."

I slammed the phone back and sat down with the kid on my knee. He kept reaching for the gun until I chucked it across the room in a chair. On second thought I called the doorman downstairs and told him to send up an errand boy. The kid got there about five minutes later and I told him to light out for the avenue and pick up something a year-old kid could wear and groceries he could handle.

The kid took the ten spot with a grin. "Leave it to me, mister. Me, I got more brudders than you got fingers. I know whatta get."

He did, too. For ten bucks you don't get much, but it was a change of clothes and between us we got the boy fed. I gave the kid five bucks and got dressed myself. On the floor downstairs was an elderly retired nurse who agreed to take the kid days as long as I kept him nights and for the service it would only cost me one arm and part of a leg.

When she took the kid over I patted his fanny while he tried to dig out one of my eyes with his thumb. "For a client," I said, "you're knocking the hell out of my bank roll." I looked at the nurse, but she had already started brushing his hair back and adjusting his coveralls. "Take good care of him, will you?"

"Don't you worry a bit now. As a matter of fact, I'm glad to have something to do with my time." The kid yelled and reached his hand inside my coat and when I pulled away he yelled again, this time with tears. "Do you have something he wants?" she asked me.

"Er... no. We were... er, playing a game with my coat before. Guess he remembered." I said so-long and got out. She'd eat me out if she knew the kid wanted the rod for a toy.

Pat was at ease in his office with his feet up on the desk, comparing blown-up photos of prints in the light that filtered in the windows. When I came in he tossed them aside and waved me into a chair.

"It didn't take us long to get a line on what happened last night."

I sat back with a fresh cigarette in my fingers and waited. Pat slid a report sheet out of a stack and held it in front of him.

"The guy's name was William Decker," he said. "He was an ex-con who had been released four years ago after serving a term for breaking and entering. Before his arrest he had worked for a safe and lock company in a responsible position, then, probably because of his trade, was introduced to the wrong company. He quit his job and seemed to be pretty well off at the same time a wave of safe robberies were sweeping a section of the city. None of those crimes were pinned on him, but he was suspected of it. He was caught breaking into a place and convicted."

"Who was the bad company?" I cut in.

"Local boys. A bunch of petty gangsters, most of whom are now up the river. Anyway, after his release, he settled down and got married. His wife died less than a year after the baby was born. By the way, the kid's name is William too.

"Now... we might still be up in the air about this if something hadn't happened last night that turned the light on the whole thing. We put Decker's prints through at the same time another investigation was being made. A little before twelve o'clock last night we had a call to investigate a prowler seen on a fire escape of one of the better apartment buildings on Riverside Drive. The squad car that answered the call found no trace of the prowler, but when they investigated the fire escape they came across a broken window and heard a moan from inside.

"When they entered they found a woman sprawled on the floor in a pretty battered condition. Her wall safe was open and the contents gone. There was one print on the dial that the boys were able to lift and it was that of William Decker. When we pulled the card we had the answers."

"Great." My voice made a funny flat sound in the room.

Pat's head came up, his face expressionless. "Sometimes you can't do what you want to do, Mike. You were all steamed up to go looking for a killer and now you're getting sore because it's all so cut and dried."

"Okay, okay, finish reading. I want to hear it."

He went back to the report. "Like I said, his wife died and in all likelihood he started going bad again. He and two others planned a safe robbery with Decker opening the can while the others were lookouts and drove. It's our theory that Decker tried to get away with the entire haul without splitting and his partners overtook and killed him."

"Nice theory. How'd you reach it?"

"Because it was a safe job where Decker would have to handle the thing alone... because he went home long enough after the job to pick up his kid... and because you yourself saw the man you shot frisking him for the loot before you barged in on the scene."

"Now spell it backwards."

"What?"

"Christ, can't you see your own loopholes? They're big enough."

He saw them. He stuck his tongue in the corner of his cheek and squinted at the paper. "Yeah, the only catch is the loot. It wasn't."

"You hit it," I agreed. "And something else... if he was making a break for it he would have taken the dough along. This guy Decker knew he was damn well going to die. He walked right out into it like you'd snap your fingers."

Pat nodded. "I thought of that too, Mike. I think I can answer it. All Decker got in that haul was three hundred seventeen dollars and a string of cultured pearls worth about twenty bucks. I think that when he realized that was all there was to be had, he knew the others wouldn't believe him and took a powder. Tried to at least."

"Then where's the dough?"

Pat tapped his fingernails against his teeth. "I think we'll find it in the same place we'll find the pearls... if anybody's honest enough to turn it in... and that's on top of a garbage pail somewhere."

"Aw, nuts. Even three hundred's dough these days. He wouldn't chuck it."

"Anger and disgust can make a person do a lot of things."

"Then why did he let himself get knocked off?"

Pat waited a moment then said, "I think because he realized that they might try to take out their revenge on the child."

I flipped the butt into the wastebasket. "You sure got it wrapped up nice and tight. Who was the other guy?"

"His name was Arnold Basil. He used to work for Fallon and had a record of three stretches and fourteen arrests without convictions. We weren't able to get much of a line on him so far. We do know that after Fallon died he went to Los Angeles and while he was there got drunk and was picked up for disorderly conduct. Two of our stoolies reported having seen him around town the last month, but hadn't heard about him being mixed up in anything."

"Did they mention him sticking close to Lou Grindle?"

Pat scowled. "Where'd you get that?"

"Never mind. What about it?"

"They mentioned it."

"What're you doing about it?"

"Checking."

"That's nice."

He threw the pencil across the desk. "Don't get so damn sarcastic, Mike." He caught the stare I held on him and started tapping his teeth again. "As much as I'd like to pin something on that cheap crook, I doubt if it can be done. Lou doesn't play for peanuts and you know it. He has his protection racket and he manages to stay out of trouble."

"You could fix that," I said. "Breed 'im some trouble he can't get out of."

"Yeah, try it."

I stood up and slapped on my hat. "I think maybe I will just for the hell of it."

Pat's hands were flat on the desk.. "Damn it, Mike, lay off. You're in a huff because the whole thing works out and you're not satisfied because you can't go gunning for somebody. One of these days you're going to dig up more trouble than you can handle!"

"Pat, I don't like orphan-makers. There's still the driver of that car and don't forget it."

"I haven't. He'll be in the line-up before the week is out."

"He'll be dead first. Mind if I look at this?" I picked up the report sheet and scanned it. When I finished remembering a couple of addresses I tossed it back.

He was looking at me carefully now, his eyes guarded. "Mike, did you leave something out of what you've told me?"

"Nope, not a thing."

"Then spill it."

I turned around and looked at him. I had to put my hand in my pocket to keep it still. "It just stinks, that's all. The guy was crying. You'd have to see him to know what he looked like and you didn't see him. Grown men don't cry like that. It stinks."

"Your're a crazy bastard," Pat said.

"So I've been told. Does the D.A. want to see me?"

"No, you were lucky it broke so fast."

"See you around then, Pat. I'll keep in touch with you."

"Do that," he said. I think he was laughing at me inside. I wasn't laughing though. There wasn't a damn thing to laugh about when you saw a guy cry, kiss his kid, then go out and make him an orphan.

Like I said, the whole thing stunk.

To high heaven.

It took me a little while to get over to the East Side. I cruised up the block where the murder happened, reached the corner and swung down to the street where Decker had lived. It was one of those shabby blocks a few years away from condemnation. The sidewalks were littered with ancient baby buggies, a horde of kids playing in the garbage on the sidewalks and people on the stoops who didn't give a damn what the kids did so long as they could yap and slop beer.

The number I had picked from Pat's report was 164, a four-story brownstone that seemed to tilt out toward the street. I parked the car and climbed out, picking my way through the swarm of kids, then went up the steps in to the vestibule. There wasn't any door, so I didn't have to ring any bells. One mailbox had SUPT scratched into the metal case under the 1-C. I walked down the dark channel of the hallway until I counted off three doors and knocked.

A guy loomed out of the darkness. He was a big guy, all right, about two inches over me with a chest like a barrel. There might have been a lot of fat under his hairy skin, but there was a lot of muscle there too.

"Watta ya want?" The way he said it you could tell he was used to scaring people right off.

I said, "Information, friend. What ya bet you give it to me?"

I watched his hands. They looked like they wanted to grab me. I stood balancing myself on my toes lightly so he'd get the idea that whatever he had I had enough to get away from him. Just like that he laughed. "You're a cocky little punk."

"You're the first guy who ever called me little, friend."

He laughed again. "Come on inside and have some coffee and keep your language where it belongs. I got all kinds of visitors today."

There was another long hallway with some light at the end that turned out be a kitchen. The big guy stood in the doorway nodding me in and I saw the priest at the table nibbling at a hard roll. The big guy said, "Father, this is... uh, what's the name?"

"Mike Hammer. Hello, Father."

The priest held out a big hand and we shook. Then the super tapped his chest with a forefinger. "Forgot myself, I did. John Vileck's the name. Sit down and have a bite and let's hear what you got on your mind." He took another cup and saucer off the shelf and filled it up. "Sugar'n milk's on the table."

When I was sugared and stirred I put my cards on the table. "I'm a private investigator. Right now I'm trying to get a line on a guy who lived here until last night."

Both the priest and the super exchanged glances quickly. "You mean William Decker?" the priest asked.

"That's right."

"May I ask who is retaining you?"

"Nobody, Father. I'm just sore, that's all. I was there when Decker was knocked off and I didn't like it. I'm on my own time and my own capital." I tried the coffee. It was strong as acid and hot as hell.

Vileck stared at his cup, swirling it around to cool it off. "Decker was an all-right guy. Had a nice wife, too. The cops was here last night and then morning again."

"Today?"

He looked up at me, his teeth tight together. "Yeah, I called 'em in about an hour before you come along. Couple cops in a patrol car. Me and the Father here went upstairs to look around and somebody'd already done a little looking on their own. The place's a wreck. Turned everything upside down."

The priest put his cup down and leaned back in his chair. "Perhaps you can make something of it, Mr. Hammer."

"Maybe I can. If the police have the right idea, whoever searched Decker's place was looking for a pile of dough that he was supposed to have clipped during a robbery last night. The reason he was bumped was because he never got that dough to start with and knew his pals wouldn't believe him. He tried to get out but they nailed him anyway. Apparently they thought that when he came back to get his kid he stashed the money figuring to pick it up later."

Vileck said, "The bastards!" then looked across the table. "Sorry, Father."

The priest smiled gently. "Mr. Hammer... do you know anything at all about William Decker?"

"I know he had a record. Did you?"

"Yes, he told me about that some time ago. You see, what puzzles me is the fact that William was such a straight-forward fellow. He was doing his best to live a perfect life. It wasn't easy for him, but he seemed to be making a good job of it."

Vileck nodded agreement. "That's right, too. Me and the Father here was the only ones around here that knew he had a record. When he first moved here he made no bones about it, then he started having trouble keeping a job because guys don't like for ex-cons to be working for them. Tell you somethin'... Decker was as honest as they come. None of this wrong stuff for him, see? Wouldn't even cheat at cards and right on time with his rent and his bills. Never no trouble at all. What do you make of it?"

"Don't you know?"

There was genuine bewilderment in his eyes. "For the love of me, I sure don't see nothing. He was okay all the way. Always doing things fer his kid since his wife died of cancer."

"Then he had it tough, eh?"'

"Yeah, real tough. Doctors come high and he couldn't afford much. She was supposed to have an operation and he finally got her lined up for it, but by that time it was too late and she died a few days after they cut her apart. Decker was in bad shape for a while."

"He drink much?" I asked.

"Nope. Never had a drop all that time. He didn't want to do nothin' that might hurt his kid. He sure was crazy about that boy. That's why he was strictly on the up and up."

The priest had been listening, nodding occasionally. When Vileck finished he said, "Mr. Hammer, a week ago William came to church to see me and asked me if I would keep his insurance policies. They are all made out to the child, of course, and he wanted to be sure that if ever anything happened to him the child would be well provided for."

That one stopped me for a second. I said, "Tell me, was he jumpy at the time? I mean, now that you look back, did he seem to have anything on his mind at all?"

"Yes, now that I look back I'd say that he was upset about something. At the time I believed it was due to his wife having died. However, his story was plausible enough. Being that he had to work, he wanted his important papers in safe hands. I never believed that he was intending to... to..."

Vileck balled his hands up and knocked his knuckles together. "Nuts. I don't believe he done it because he was going to rob a joint. The guy was straight as they come."

"Some things happen to make a guy go wrong," I said. "Did he need dough at all?

"Sure he needed dough. He'd get in maybe two, three days a week on the docks... pier 51 it was, but that was just enough to cover his eats. He lived pretty close, but he got by."

"Any friends?"

The super shrugged. "Sometimes a guy from the docks would come up awhile. He played chess with the blind newsie down the block every Monday night. Both of 'em picked it up in the big house. Nope, can't say that he had any other friends 'cept me. I liked the guy pretty much."

"No reason why he needed money... nothing like that?"

"Hell, not now. Before the wife died, sure. Not now though."

I nodded, finished my coffee and turned to the priest. "Father, did Decker make any tentative plans concerning the boy at all?"

"Yes, he did. It was his intention that the boy be brought up by one of our church organizations. We discussed it and he went so far as to make a will. The insurance money will take care of the lad until he finishes school, and what else Decker had was to be held in trust for his boy. This whole affair is very distressing. If only he had come to me with his problem! Always before he came to the church for advice, but this time when he needed to most he failed. Really, I..."

"Father, I have the boy. He's being well cared for at present and whenever you're ready I'll be glad to turn him over to you. That kid is the reason I'm in this and when I get the guy that made him an orphan they can get another grave ready in potter's field. This whole town needs its nose wiped bad. I'm sick of having to live with some of the scum that breeds here and in my own little way I'm going to do something about it."

"Please... my son! I..."

"Don't preach to me now, Father. Maybe when it's over, but not now."

"But surely you can't be serious."

Vileck studied my face a second, then said, "He is, Father. If I can help ya out, pal... lemme know, will ya?"

"I'll let you know," I said. "When you make arrangements for the boy, Father, look me up in the phone book. By the way, who was the friend of Decker's... the one on the docks?"

"Umm... think his name was Booker. No, Hooker, that's it. Hooker. Mel Hooker."

I pushed the cup back and shoved away from the table. "That's all then. Any chance of taking a look around the apartment?"

"Sure, go on up. Top floor, first door off the landing. And it won't do no good to ask them old biddies nothin'. They was all doing the weekly wash when whoever took the place apart was there. Once a week they get hot water and their noses were all in the sinks."

"Thanks," I said. "For the coffee too."

"Don't mention it."

"So long, Father. You'll buzz me later?"

He nodded unhappily. "Yes, I will. Please... no violence."

I grinned at him so he'd feel better and walked down the tunnel to the hall.

Vileck hadn't been wrong about somebody taking the place apart. They had started at one end of the three tiny rooms and wound up at the other leaving a trail of wreckage behind them that could have been sifted through a window screen. It was one hell of a mess. The bag of garbage beside the door that had been waiting to get thrown out had been scattered with a kick and when I saw it I felt like laughing because whatever they were looking for they didn't get. There was no stopping place in the search to indicate that the great It had been located.

For a while I prowled through the ruin of poverty, picking up a kid's toy here and there, a woman's bauble, a few work-worn things that had belonged to Decker. I even did a little probing in a few spots myself, but there wasn't a damn thing of any value around. I finished my butt and flipped it into the sink, then closed the door and got out of there.

I had a nasty taste in my mouth because so far it looked like Pat was right all along the line. Decker had gotten himself loused up with a couple of boys and pulled a job that didn't pay off. The chances were that they had cased the joint so well they wouldn't have believed him when he gave them the story of the nearly empty safe.

I sat there in the car and thought about it. In fact, I gave it a hell of a lot of thought. I thought so much about it I got playing all the angles against each other until all I could see was Decker's face with the tears rolling down his cheeks as he bent over to kiss the kid.

So I said a lot of dirty words.

The goon who drove the car was still running around loose and if I had to go after somebody it'd might as well be him. I stepped on the starter, dragged away from the curb and started back across town.

It was more curiosity than anything else that put me on Riverside Drive. When I finally got there I decided that it might be a good idea to cruise around a little bit and see if anybody with a pair of sharp eyes might have spotted the boys who cased the joint before they pulled the job.

I didn't have any more luck than you could stuff in your eye. That section of town was a money-district, and the people who lived there only had eyes for the dollar sign. They were all sheer-faced apartment buildings with fancy doormen doing the honors out front and big, bright Caddies hauled up close to the curb.

One of the janitors thought he remembered a Buick and a couple of men that hung around the neighborhood a week back but he couldn't be sure. For two bucks he took me through an underground alley to the back court and let me have a look around.

Hell, Decker had had it easy. Every one of the buildings had the same kind of passageway from front to back, and once you were in the rear court it was a snap to reach up and grab the bottom rung of the fire ladder. After I had my look I told the guy thanks and went back to the street.

Two doors down was the building where Decker had pulled the job so I loped in past the beefy doorman and went over the bellboard until I found LEE, MARSHA and gave the button a nudge. There was a phone set in a niche in the wall that gave the cliff dweller upstairs a chance to check the callers before unlocking the door and I had to stand with it at my ear a full minute before I heard it click.

Then heaven answered. What a voice she had. It made the kind of music song writers try to imitate and can't. All it said was, "Yes?" and I started getting mental images that couldn't be sent through the mail.

I tried hard to sound like a gentleman. "Miss Lee?"

She said it was.

"This is Mike Hammer. I'm a private investigator. Could I speak to you a few minutes?"

"Oh... about the robbery?"

"That's right," I said.

"Why... yes. I suppose you may. Come right up."

So I went up to heaven in a private elevator that let me out in a semi-private foyer where cloud 4D had a little brass hammer instead of a doorbell. I raised it, let it drop and a ponderous nurse with a mustache scowled me in.

And there was my angel in a big chair by the window. At least the right half of her was angel The left half sported a very human mouse under the eye and a welt as big as a fist across her jaw.

My face must have been doing some pretty funny things trying to keep from laughing, because she tapped her fingers on the end of the chair and said, "You had better be properly sympathetic, Mr. Hammer, or out you go."

I couldn't hold it back and I laughed anyway, but I didn't go out. "Half of you is the most beautiful girl I ever saw," I grinned.

"I half thank you," she grinned back. "You can leave if you want to, Mrs. Ross. You'll be back at five?"

The nurse told her she would and picked up her coat. When she made sure her patient was all right she left. I was hoping she'd get herself a shave while she was out.

"Please sit down, Mr. Hammer. Can I get you a drink?"

"No, I'll get it myself. Just tell me where to find the makings."

My angel got up and pulled the filmy housecoat around her like a veil. "Hell, I'll get it myself. This leading the life of a cripple is a pain. Everybody treats me like an invalid. The nurse is the compliments of the management hoping I don't sue them for neglecting to keep their property properly protected. She's a good cook, otherwise I would have told them to keep her."

She walked over to a sideboard and I couldn't take my eyes off her. None of this fancy hip-swinging business; just a nice plain walk that could do more than all the fancy wriggling a stripper could put out. Her legs brushing the sheer nylon of the housecoat made it crackle and cling to her body until every curve was outlined in white with pink undertones.

She had tawny brown hair that fell loosely about her shoulders, with eyes that matched perfectly, and a mouth that didn't have to go far to meet mine. Marsha must have just come from a bath, because she smelt fresh and soapy without any veneer of perfume.

When she turned around she had two glasses in her hands and she looked even prettier coming toward me than going away. Her breasts were precocious things that accentuated the width of her shoulders and the smooth contours of her stomach, rising jauntily against the nylon as though they were looking for a way out.

I thought she was too busy balancing the glasses to notice what I was doing, but I was wrong. She handed me a highball and said, "Do I pass?"

"What?"

"Inspection. Do I pass?"

"If I could get my mouth unpuckered I'd let out a long low whistle," I told her. "I'm getting tired of seeing dames in clothes that make them look like a tulip having a hard time coming up. With all the women wearing crew cuts with curled ends these days it's a pleasure to see one with hair for a change."

"That's a left-handed compliment if ever I heard one. What a lover you'd make."

I looked at her a long time. "Don't fool yourself."

She looked at me just as long. "I'm not."

We raised the glasses in a silent toast and sipped the top off them. "Now, Mr. Hammer..."

"Mike."

Her lips came apart in a smile. "Mike. It fits you perfectly. What was it you wanted to see me about?"

"First I want to know why you seem so damn familiar. Even with the shiner you remind me of somebody I've seen before."

Her hands smoothed the front of the housecoat. "Thank you for remembering." She let her eyes drift to the piano that stood in the corner and the picture on top of it. I picked up my drink and walked over to it and this time I did let out a long low whistle.

It was a big shot of Marsha in a pre-Civil War dress that came up six inches above her waist before nature took over. The makeup artist had to do very little to make her the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She had been younger when it was taken, but me... I'd take Marsha like she was now. Time had only improved her. Almost hidden by the frame was a line that said the photo was released by the Allerton Motion Picture Company.

Marsha was familiar because I had seen her plenty of times before. So have you. Ten years ago she was an up-and-coming star in Hollywood.

"Yesteryear, those were the days," she said.

I put the picture back and sat down opposite her so I could see her better. She was well worth looking at and she didn't have to cross her legs to attract attention, either. They were nice legs, too.

"It's a wonder I forgot you," I said.

"Most people do. The public has a short memory."

"How come you quit?"

"Oh, it's a sad but brief story. Perhaps you read about it. There was a man, a bit player but a charming heel if ever I saw one. He played up to me to further his own career by picking up a lot of publicity. I was madly in love with him until I found that he was making a play for my secretary in his spare time. In my foolishness I made an issue of it and he told me how he was using me. So, I became the woman scorned and said if he saw her again I'd see that he was blacklisted off every lot in Hollywood. At the time I carried enough potential importance to let me get away with it. Anyway, he told my secretary that he'd never see her after that and she promptly went out and drove her car off a cliff.

"You know Hollywood. It was bad publicity and it knocked me back plenty. Before they could tear my contract up I resigned and came back East where I stuck my savings in investments that allow me to live like I want to."

I made a motion with my head to take in the room. The place held a fortune in well-chosen furniture and the pictures on the wall weren't any cheap copies either. Every one of them must have cost four figures. If this was plain living, I'd like to take a crack at it myself.

I pulled out a smoke and she snapped the catch on a table lighter, holding the flame out to me. "Now... you didn't come up here for the story of my life," she said. Her eyes danced for me.

"Nope, I want to know about the robbery."

"There's little to tell, Mike. I left here a few minutes before seven to pick up one of the Little Theater members who broke his arm in a fall, drove him home, stopped off at a friend's for a while then came in about a quarter to twelve. As I was about to turn on the lights I saw the beam of a flashlight inside here and like a fool ran right in. For a second I saw this man outlined against the window and the next thing I knew I was flat on my back. I got up and tried to scream, then he hit me again and the world turned upside down. I was still there on the floor when the police came."

"I got that much of the story from Captain Chambers. Did they tell you the guy is dead?"

"No, they haven't gotten in touch with me at all. What happened?"

"One of his partners killed him. Ran right over him with the car.

"Did they... recover the money?"

"Nope, I'm beginning to think they never will, either."

"But..."

I dragged on the butt and flipped the ashes off in the tray. "I'm willing to bet that the guy chucked the cash and your pearls on the top of some rubbish pile. He didn't come in here for any three hundred bucks. That kind of job isn't worth the trouble."

She bit her lips and frowned at me. "You know something, Mike, I was thinking the same thing."

I looked at her curiously. "Go on."

"I think this... this robber knew what he was doing, but got his floors mixed. Do you know Marvin Holmes?"

"The playboy who keeps a stable of blondes?"

"That's right. He has the apartment directly above me. The rooms are laid out exactly the same and even the wall safe is in the identical spot as mine. He always keeps a small fortune on hand and he wasn't home last night either. I met him just as I was going out and he mentioned something about a night club."

"You've been up there?"

"Several times. He's always throwing parties. I don't rate because I'm not a blonde," she added as an afterthought.

It made sense, all right. Just to see how much sense it did make I picked Marvin Holmes' number out of the phone book and dialed it. A butler with a German accent answered, told me yes, Mr. Holmes was at home and put him on. I lied and said I was from the insurance company and wanted to know if he kept a bundle at his fingertips. The sap sounded half looped and was only too happy to tell me there was better than ten grand in his safe and tacked on that he thought the guy who opened the safe on the floor below him had made a mistake. I thanked him and hung up.

Marsha said, "Did he..."

"The guy has the same idea as you, chick. He thinks there was a one-floor error and for my money you're both right."

Her shoulders made a faint gesture of resignation. "Well, I guess there's little that can be done then. I had hoped to recover the pearls for sentimental reasons. I wore them in my first picture."

If I grinned I couldn't have been nice to look at. My lips felt tight over my teeth and I shook my head. "It's a dirty mess, Marsha. Two guys are dead already and there'll be another on the way soon. The guy who robbed your place left a baby behind, then went right out to get chopped down. Hell, it isn't what he took, it's why he took it. He was on the level for a long time then just like that he went bad and no guy like him is going to pull something that'll let his own kid get tossed to the dogs.

"Damn it, I was there and saw it! I watched him cry and kiss his kid good-by and go out and cash in his chips. Now I have the kid and I know what he must have felt like. Goddamn it anyway, there's a reason why these things happen and that's what I want. Maybe it's only a little reason and maybe it's a big one, but by God, I'm going to get it."

Her eyes were square and steady on mine, a deep liquid brown that got deeper as she stared at me. "You're a strange kind of guy," she said. I picked up my hat and stood up. She came forward to meet me, holding her hand out. "Mike... about the child... if I can help out with it, well I'm pretty well set up financially..."

I squeezed her hand. "You know, you're a strange kind of guy yourself "

"Thanks, Mike."

"But I can take care of the kid okay." She gave me a lopsided smile that made her look good even with the shiner. "By the way... would you happen to have an extra picture around... like that one?" I nodded toward the piano.

For a long space of time she held on to my hand and ran her eyes over my face. "What for, won't I do in person?"

I let my hat drop and it stayed on the floor. My hands ran up her arms until my fingers were digging into her shoulders and I drew her in close. She was all' woman, every bit of her. Her body was taut, her breasts high and firm with all the vitality of youth, and I could feel the warm outlines of her legs as I pressed her against me. She raised herself on her toes deliberately, tantalizing, a subtle motion that I knew was an invitation not lightly given.

I wanted to kiss her, but I knew that when I did I'd want to make it so good and so hard it would hurt long enough to be remembered and now wasn't the time. Later, when her mouth was smooth and soft again.

"You'll be back, Mike?" she whispered.

She knew the answer without being told. I pushed her away and picked up my hat.

There were things in this city that could be awfully nasty.

There were things in this city that could be awfully nice too.

Chapter Three

I stopped by the office that afternoon. The only one in the building to say hello was the elevator operator and he had to look twice to recognize me. It was a hell of a feeling. You live in the city your whole life, take off for six months and you are unknown when you come back. I opened the door and felt a little better when I saw the same old furniture in the same old place. The only thing that was missing was Velda. Her desk was a lonely corner in the anteroom, dusted and ready for a new occupant.

I said something dirty. I was always saying something dirty these days.

She had left a folder of correspondence she thought I might want to see on my desk. It wasn't anything important. Just a record of bills paid, my bank statements and a few letters. I closed the folder and stowed it away in a drawer. There was a fifth of good whiskey still there with the wrapper on. I stripped off the paper, uncorked the bottle and looked at it. I worked the top off and smelled it. Then I put it back and shut the drawer. I felt stinking and didn't like the feeling.

Outside on Velda's desk the phone started ringing. I went out in a hurry hoping it might be her, but a rough voice said, "You Mike Hammer?"

"Yeah, who's this?"

"Johnny Vileck. You know, the super down in Decker's building. I had a hell of a time tryin' to get you. Lucky I remembered your name."

"What's up?" I asked.

"I was thinking over what we was speaking about this morning. Remember you asked me about Decker needin' dough?"

"Uh-huh."

"When I went out to get the paper I got talking to the blind newsie on the corner. The old guy was pretty busted up about it. Him and Decker was pretty good friends. Anyway, one night after the old lady died, he was up there playing chess when this guy come around. He wanted to know when Decker was going to get the cash he owed. Decker paid him something and the guy left and after it he mentioned that he had to borrow a big chunk to cover the wife's operation. Mentioned three grand."

I let it jell in my head for a minute, twisting it around until it made sense. "Where could he get that kind of dough?"

Vileck grunted and made a shrug I couldn't see. "Beats me. He never borrowed nuthing and it's damn sure he didn't go to no bank."

"Anybody in the neighborhood got it?"

"Not in this neighborhood, pal. Once somebody'll hit a number or a horse, but he ain't lending it out, you can bet. There's plenty of tough guys around here who show up with a roll sometimes, but it's flash money and they're either gone or in jail the next day. Nope, he didn't get it around here."

"Thanks for the dope, John. If you ever need a favor, let me know."

"Sure, pal, glad to let you know about it."

"Look... did you mention this to the cops?"

"Naw. I found out after they left. Besides, they don't hear from me unless they ask. Cops is okay long as they stay outa my joint."

I told him so-long and put the receiver back. There was the reason for murder and it was a good one. Three grands' worth. Now it was coming out right. Decker went into somebody for three grand and he had to bail himself out by stealing it. So he made a mistake when he raids the wrong apartment and his pals didn't believe it. They thought he was holding out. So they bump him figuring to lift a jackpot and all they got was a measly three hundred bucks and a string of pearls.

Damn it, the whole thing made me boil over! Because a guy couldn't wait to get his dough back a kid is made an orphan. My city, yeah. How many places around town was the same thing going on?

I sat down on the edge of the desk to think about it and the whole thing hit me suddenly and sharply and way back in my head I could hear that crazy music start until it was beating through my brain with a maddening frenzy that tried to drive away any sanity I had left. I cursed to myself until it was gone then went back to my desk and pulled out the bottle. This time I had a drink.

It took me all afternoon to find what I wanted. I went down to the docks and let my P.I. ticket and my badge get me inside the gates until I reached the right paymaster who had handled William Decker's card. He was a little guy in his late fifties with an oversize nose built into a face that was streaked with little purple veins.

He made me wait until he finished tallying up his report, then stuck the clipboard on a nail in the wall and swung around in his chair. He said, "What's on your mind, buddy?"

I offered him a smoke and he waved it away to chew on a ratty cigar. "Remember a guy named Decker?"

He grunted a Yes and waited.

"He have any close friends on the docks here?"

"Might have. What'cha want to know for?"

"I heard he died. I owed him a few bucks and I want to see that it goes to his estate."

The guy clucked and sucked his tongue a minute. He opened his desk drawer and riffled through a file of cards until he came to the one he wanted. "Well, here's his address and he's got a kid. Got him down for two dependents, but I think his wife died awhile back."

"I found that out. If I can dig up a pal of his maybe he'll know something more about him."

"Yeah. Well, seems like he always shaped in with a guy named Hooker. Mel Hooker. Tall thin guy with a scar on his face. They got paid off today so they'll be in the joints 'cross the way cashing their checks. Why don'cha go over an' try?"

I stuffed the butt in the ash tray on the desk. "I'll do that. Give me his address in case I miss him."

He scratched something on a pad and handed it over. I said thanks and left.

It wasn't that easy. I thought I hit every saloon on the street until a guy told me about a couple I had missed and then I found him. The place was a rattrap where they'd take the drunks that had been kicked out of other places and make them spend their last buck. You had to go down a couple of steps to reach the door and before you reached it you could smell what you were walking into.

The place was a lot bigger than I expected. They were lined up two deep at the bar and when they couldn't stand any more they sat down at the bench along the wall. One guy had passed out and was propped up against a partition with his pockets turned inside out.

Mel Hooker was down the back watching a shuffleboard game. He had half a bag on and looked it. The yellow glare of the overhead lights brought out the scar that ran from his forehead to his chin in bold relief almost as if it was still an ugly gash. I walked over and pulled out the chair beside him.

He looked at me enough to say, "Beat it."

"You Mel Hooker?"

"Who wants to know?" His voice had a nasty drunken snarl to it.

"How'd you like to get the other side of your face opened up, feller?"

He dropped his glass like it was shot out of his hand and tried to get up off his chair. I shoved him back without any trouble. "Stay put, Mel. I want to talk to you."

His breathing was noisy. "I don't wanna talk to you," he said.

"Tough stuff, Mel. You'll talk if I tell you to. It's about a friend of yours. He's dead. His name was William Decker."

The flesh around the scar seemed to get whiter. Something changed in his eyes and he half twisted his head. One of the guys at the shuffleboard was taking a long time to make his play. Mel unfolded himself and nodded to an empty table over in the corner.

"Over... here. Make it quick."

I got up and went back to the bar for a pair of drinks and brought them back to the table. When Mel took his, his hand wasn't too steady. I let him take half of it down in one gulp before I asked, "Who'd he owe dough to, Mel?"

He almost dropped this glass, too. In time, he recovered it and set it down very deliberately and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "You a cop?"

"I'm a private investigator."

"You're gonna be a dead investigator if you don't get the hell outa here."

"I asked you a question."

His tongue flicked out and whipped over his lips. "Get this, I don't know nothing about nothing. Bill was a friend of mine but his business was his own. Now lemme alone."

"He needed three grand, Mel. He borrowed it from somebody. He didn't get it around home so he must have got it someplace around here."

"You're nuts."

"You're a hell of a friend," I said, "one hell of a friend."

Hooker dropped his head and stared at his hands. When he looked up his mouth was drawn back tight. His voice came out barely a whisper. "Listen, Mac, you better quit asking questions. Bill was my friend and I'd help him if I could, but he's dead and that's that. You see this scar I got? I'd sooner have that than be dead. Now blow and lemme alone."

He wouldn't look back at me when he left. He staggered out to the bar and through the mob around it until he reached the door, then disappeared up the stairs. I polished my drink off and waved the waiter over with another. He gave me a frozen look and snatched the buck out of my hand.

The place got too damn quiet. The weights weren't slamming on the shuffleboard and everybody at the bar seemed to have taken a sudden interest in the television set over the bar. I sat there and waited for my change, but I had the drink gone without seeing it.

This I liked. This I was waiting for because the stupid bastards should have known better. My God, did I look like some flunkey from the sticks or did the wise boys lose their memories too?

I pushed the glass back and got up. I found the men's room in the back by the smell and did what I had to do and started to wash my hands. That's how long they gave me.

The guy in the double-breasted suit in the doorway spoke out of the corner of his mouth to somebody behind him. His little pig eyes looked like he was getting ready to enjoy himself. "He's a big one, ain't he?"

"Yeah." The other guy stepped in and seemed to fill up the doorway.

The little guy's hand came out of his pocket with a sap about a foot long and he swung it against his knee waiting to see if I was going to puke or start bawling. The big guy took his time about slipping on the knucks. Outside the volume on the television went up so loud it blasted its way all the way back there.

I dropped the paper towel and backed off until my shoulders were up against the doors of the pot. The little guy was leering. His mouth worked until the spit rolled down his chin and his shoulder started to draw back the sap. His pal closed in on the side, only his eyes showing that there might be some human intelligence behind that stupid expression.

The goddamn bastards played right into my hands. They thought they had me nice and cold and just as they were set to carve me into a raw mess of skin I dragged out the .45 and let them look down the hole so they could see where sudden death came from.

It was the only kind of talk they knew. The little guy stared too long. He should have been watching my face. I snapped the side of the rod across his jaw and laid the flesh open to the bone. He dropped the sap and staggered into the big boy with a scream starting to come up out of his throat only to get it cut off in the middle as I pounded his teeth back into his mouth with the end of the barrel. The big guy tried to shove him out of the way. He got so mad he came right at me with his head down and I took my own damn time about kicking him in the face. He smashed into the door and lay there bubbling. So I kicked him again and he stopped bubbling. I pulled the knucks off his hand then went over and picked up the sap. The punk was vomiting on the floor, trying to claw his way under the sink. For laughs I gave him a taste of his own sap on the back of his hand and felt the bones go into splinters. He wasn't going to be using any tools for a long time.

They moved aside and let me get in to the bar. They moved aside so far you'd think I was contaminated. The bartender looked at me and his thick lips rubbed together. I dropped the knucks and the sap on the bar and waved the bartender over with my forefinger. "I got some change coming," I said.

He turned around and rang up a no sale on the register and handed me fifty-five cents.

If somebody breathed before I left I didn't hear it. I got out of there feeling like myself again and went back to the car. I only had one thing to do before I saw Pat. I checked the slip the timekeeper gave me and saw that Mel Hooker lived not too far from where Decker had lived. I got snarled up in traffic halfway there and it was dark by the time I found his address.

The place was a rooming house with the usual sign outside advertising a lone vacancy and a landlady on the bottom floor using her window for a crow's nest. She was at the door before I got up the steps waiting to smile if I was a renter or glare if I was a visitor.

She glared when I asked her if Mel Hooker had come in yet. Her finger waved up the stairs. "Ten minutes ago and drunk. Don't you two raise no ruckus or out you both go."

If she had been nicer I would have soothed her feelings with a bill.. All she got was a sharp thanks and I went upstairs. I heard him shuffling around the room and when I knocked all sound stopped. I knocked again and he dragged across the floor and snapped the lock back. I don't know who he expected to see. It sure wasn't me.

I didn't ask to come in; I gave the door a shove and he reeled back. His face had lost its tenseness and was dull, his mouth sagging. There was a table in the middle of the room and I perched on it, watching him close the door, then turn around until he faced me.

"Christ!" he said.

"What'd you expect, Mel?" I lit a Lucky and peered at him through the smoke. "You're a hell of a guy," I told him. "I guess you knew those boys would tag after me and you didn't want to stick around to see the blood."

"Wh... what happened?"

I grinned at him. "I've been messing around with bastards like that for a long time. They should have remembered my face. Now they're going to have trouble remembering what they used to look like before. Did you pull the same stunt on your friend Decker, Mel? Did you beat it when they went looking for him?"

He staggered over to a chair and collapsed in it. "I don't... know... what'cha talking about."

I leaned forward on the edge of the table and spit the words out. "I'm talking about the loan shark racket. I'm talking about a guy named William Decker who used to be your friend and needed dough bad. He couldn't get it from a legitimate source so he hit up a loan shark and got what he needed. When he couldn't pay off they put the pressure on him probably through his kid so he tries to cop a bank roll from a rich guy's safe. He miffed the job and they gave him the works. Now do you know what I'm talking about?"

Hooker said, "Christ!" again and grabbed the arms of the chair. "Friend, you gotta get outa here, see? You gotta leave me alone!"

"What's the matter, Mel? You were a tough guy when I met you tonight. What's getting you so soft?"

For a minute a crazy madness passed over his face, then he let out a gasp and buried his head in his hands. "Damn it, get outa here!"

"Yeah, I'll get out. When you tell me who's banking the soaks along the dock I'll get out."

"I... I can't. Oh, Lord, lemme alone, will ya!"

"They're tough, huh?" He read something in my words and his eyes came up in a series of little jerks until they were back on mine. "Are they tougher than the guys you pushed on me?" Mel swallowed hard. "I didn't..."

"Don't crap me, friend. Those guys weren't there by accident. They weren't there just for me, either. Somebody's got a finger on you, haven't they?

He didn't answer.

"They were there for you, I said, "only you saw a nice way to shake them loose on me. What gives?"

His finger moved by, itself and traced the scar that lay along the side of his jaw. "Look, I got cut up once, I did. I don't want to fool around with them guys no more. Honest, I didn't do nothing! I don't know why they was there but they was!"

"So you're in a trap too," I said.

"No I ain't!" He shouted it. His face was a sickly white and he drooled a little bit. "I'm clean and I don't know why they're sticking around me. Why the hell did you come butting in for?"

"Because I want to know why your pal Decker needed dough."

"Christ, his wife was dying. He had to have it. How'd I know he couldn't pay it back!"

"Pay what back to who?"

His tongue flashed over his lips and his mouth clammed shut.

"You have a union and a welfare fund for that, don't you?" This time he spit on the floor.

"Who'd you steer him to, Mel?"

He didn't answer me. I got up off the edge of the table and jerked him to his feet. "Who was it, Mel... or do you want to find out what happened to the tough boys back in the bar?"

The guy went limp in my hands. He didn't try to get away. He just hung there in my fist, his eyes dead. His words came out slow and flat. "He needed the dough. We... thought we had a good tip on the ponies and pooled our dough."

"So?"

"We won. It wasn't enough so we threw it back on another tip, only Bill hit up a loan shark for a few hundred to lay a bigger bet. We won that one too and I pulled out with my share. Bill thought he could get a big kill quick and right after he paid the shark back, knocked him down for another grand to add to his stake and this time he went under."

"Okay, so he owed a grand."

Mel's head shook sadly. "It was bigger. You pay back one for five every week. It didn't take long to run it up into big money."

I let him go and he sank back into the chair. "Now names, Mel. Who was the shark?"

I barely heard him say, "Dixie Cooper. He hangs out in the Glass Bar on Eighth Avenue."

I picked up my deck of smokes and stuffed them in my pocket. I walked out without closing the door and down past the landlady who still held down her post in the vestibule. She didn't say anything until Mel hobbled to the door, glanced down the stairs and shut it. Then the old biddy humphed and let me out.

The sky had clouded up again, shutting out the stars and there was a damp mist in the air. I called Pat from a candy store down the corner and nobody answered his phone at home, so I tried the office. He was there. I told him to stick around and got back in my car.

Headquarters building was like a beehive without any bees when I got there. A lone squad car stood at the curb and the elevator operator was reading a paper inside his cab. The boys on the night stand had that bored look already and half of them were piddling around trying to keep busy.

I got in the elevator and let him haul me up to Pat's floor. Down the corridor a typewriter was clicking busily and I heard Pat rummaging around the drawers of his file cabinet. When I pushed the door open he said, "Be right with you, Mike."

So I parked and watched him work for five minutes. When he got through at the cabinet I asked him, "How come you're working nights?"

"Don't you read the papers?"

"I didn't come up against any juicy murders."

"Murders, hell. The D.A. has me and everybody else he can scrape together working on that gambling probe."

"What's he struggling so hard for, it isn't an election year for him. Besides, the public's going to gamble anyway."

Pat pulled out his chair and slid into it. "The guy got scruples. He has it in for Ed Teen and his outfit."

"He's not getting Teen," I said.

"Well, he's trying."

"Where do you come in?"

Pat shrugged and reached for a cigarette. "The D.A. tried to break up organized gambling in this town years ago. It flopped like all the other probes flopped... for lack of evidence. He's never made a successful raid on a syndicate establishment since he went after them."

"There's a hole in the boat?"

"A what?"

"A leak."

"Of course. Ed Teen has a pipeline right into the D.A.'s office somehow. That's why the D.A. is after his hide. It's a personal affront to him and he won't stand for it. Since he can't nail Teen down with something, he's conducting an investigation into his past. We know damn well that Teen and Grindle pulled a lot of rough stuff and if we can tie a murder on them they'll be easy to take."

"I bet. Why doesn't he patch that leak?"

Pat did funny things with his mouth. "He's surrounded by men he trusts and I trust and we can't find a single person who's talking out of turn. Everybody's been investigated. We even checked for dictaphones, that's how far we went. It seems impossible, but nevertheless, the leak's here. Hell, the D.A. pulls surprise raids that were cooked up an hour before and by the time he gets there not a soul's around. It's uncanny."

"Uncanny my foot. The D.A. is fooling with guys as smart as he is himself. They've been operating longer too. Look, any chance of breaking away early tonight?"

"With this here?" He pointed toward a pile of papers on his desk. "They all have to be classified, correlated and filed. Nope, not tonight, Mike. I'll be here for another three hours.

Outside the racket of the typewriter stopped and a stubby brunette came in with a wire basket of letters. Right behind her was another brunette, but far from stubby. What the first one didn't have she had everything of and she waved it around in front of you like a flag.

Pat saw my foolish grin and when the stubby one left said, "Miss Scobie, have you met Mike Hammer?"

I got one of those casual glances with a flicker of a smile. "No but I've heard the District Attorney speak of him several times."

"Nothing good, I hope," I said.

"No, nothing good." She laughed at me and finished sorting out the papers on Pat's desk.

"Miss Scobie is one of the D.A.'s secretaries," Pat said. "For a change I have some help around here. He sent over three girls to do the manual labor."

"I'm pretty good at that myself." I think I was leering.

The Scobie babe gave me the full voltage from a pair of deep blue eyes. "I've heard that too."

"You should quit getting things secondhand."

She packed the last of the papers in a new pile and tacked them together with a clip. When she turned around she gave me a look Pat couldn't see but had a whole book written there in her face. "Perhaps I should," she said.

I could feel the skin crawl up my back just from the tone of her voice.

Pat said, "You're a bastard, Mike. You and the women."

"They're necessary." I stared at the door that closed behind her.

His mouth cracked in a grin. "Not Miss Scobie. She knows her way around the block without somebody holding her hand. Doesn't her name mean anything to you?"

"Should it?"

"Not unless you're a society follower. Her family is big stuff down in Texas. The old man had a ranch where he raised horses until they brought oil in. Then he sat back and enjoyed life. He raises racing nags now."

"The Scobie Stables?"

"Uh-huh. Ellen's his daughter. When she was eighteen she and the old boy had a row and she packed up and left. This department job is the first one she ever had. Been here better than fifteen years. She's the gal the track hates to see around. When she makes a bet she collects."

"What the hell's she working for then?"

"Ask her."

"I'm asking you."

Pat grinned again. "The old man disinherited her when she wouldn't marry the son of his friend. He swore she'd never see a penny of his dough, so now she'll only bet when a Scobie horse is running and with what she knows about horses, she's hard to fool. Every time she wins she sends a telegram to the old boy stating the amount and he burns up. Don't ask her to tip you off though. She won't do it."

"Why doesn't the D.A. use her to get an inside track on the wire rooms?"

"He did, but she's too well known now. A feature writer for one of the papers heard about the situation, and gave it a big play in a Sunday supplement a few years ago, so she's useless there."

I leaned back in my chair and stared at the ceiling. "Texas gal. I like the way they're built."

"Yeah, big." Pat grunted. "A big one gets you every time." His fingers rapped on the desk. "Let's come back to earth, Mike. What's new?"

"Decker."

"That's not new. We're still looking for the driver who ran down his buddy. They found the car, you know."

I sat up straight.

"You didn't miss everything that night. There were two bullet holes in the back. One hit the rear window and the other went through the gas tank. The car was abandoned over in Brooklyn.'

"Stolen heap?"

"Sure, what'd you expect? The slugs came from your gun, the tires matched the imprints in the body and there wasn't a decent fingerprint anywhere."

"Great."

"We'll wrap it up soon. The word's out."

"Great."

Pat scowled at me in disgust. "Hell, you're never satisfied."

I shook a cigarette out and lit up. Pat pushed an ash tray over to me. I said, "Pat, you got holes in your head if you think that this was a plain, simple job. Decker was in hock to a loan shark for a few grand and was being pressured into paying up. The guy was nuts about his kid and they probably told him the kid would catch it if he didn't come across."

"So?"

"Christ, you aren't getting to be a cynic like the rest of the cops, are you? You want things like this to keep on happening? You like murder to dirty up the streets just because some greaseball wants his dirty money! Hell, who's to blame... a poor jerk like Decker or a torpedo who'll carve him up if he doesn't pay up? Answer me that."

"There's a law against loan sharks operating in this state."

"There's a law against gambling, too."

Pat's face was dark with anger.

"The law has been enforced," he snapped.

I put the emphasis on the past tense. "It has? That's nice to know. Who's running the racket now?"

"Damn it, Mike, that isn't my department."

"It should be; it caused the death of two men so far. What I want to know is the racket organized or not?"

"I've heard that it was," he replied sullenly. "Fallon used to bank it before he died. When the state cracked down on them somebody took the sharks under their wing. I don't know who."

"Fallon, Fallon, hell, the guy's been dead since 1940 and he's still making news."

"Well, you asked me."

I nodded. "Who's Dixie Cooper, Pat?"

His eyes went half shut. "Where do you get your information from? Goddamn, you have your nose in everywhere."

"Who is he?"

"The guy's a stoolie for the department. He has no known source of income, though he claims to be a promoter."

"Of what?"

"Of everything. He's a guy who knows where something is that somebody else wants and collects a percentage from the buyer and seller both. At least, that's what he says."

"Then he's full of you know what. The guy is a loan shark. He's the one Decker hit up for the money."

"Can you prove it?"

"Uh-huh."

"Show me and we'll take him into custody."

I stood up and slapped on my hat. "I'll show you," I said. "I'll have him screaming to talk to somebody in uniform just to keep from getting his damn arms twisted off."

"Go easy, Mike."

"Yeah, I'll do just that. I'll twist 'em nice and easy like he twisted Decker. I'll go easy, all right."

Pat gave me a long look with a frown behind it. When I said so-long he only nodded, and he was reaching for the phone as I shut the door.

Down the hall another door slammed shut and the stubby brunette came by, smiled at me politely and kept on going to the elevator. After she got in I went back down the corridor to the office, pushed the door open and stuck my head in. Ellen Scobie had one foot on a chair with her dress hiked up as far as it would go, straightening her stocking.

"Pretty leg," I said.

She glanced back quickly without bothering to yank her dress down like most dames would. "I have another just like it," she told me. Her eyes were on full voltage again.

"Let's see."

So she stood up in one of those magazine poses and pulled the dress up slowly without stopping until it couldn't go any further and showed me. And she was right. The other was just as pretty if you wasted a sight like that trying to compare them.

I said, "I love brunettes."

"You love anything." She let the dress fall.

"Brunettes especially. Doing anything tonight?"

"Yes... I was going out with you, wasn't I? Something I should learn about manual labor?"

"Kid," I said, "I don't think you have anything to learn. Not a damn thing."

She laughed deep in her throat and came over and took my arm. "I'm crazy about heels," she said. "Let's go."

We passed by Pat's office again and I could still hear him on the phone. His voice had a low drone with a touch of urgency in it but I couldn't hear what he was saying. When we were downstairs in the car Ellen said, "I hope you realize that if we're seen together my boss will have you investigated from top to bottom."

"Then you do the investigating. I have some fine anatomy."

Her mouth clucked at me. "You know what I mean. He's afraid to trust himself these days."

"You can forget about me, honey. He's investigated me so often he knows how many moles I got. Who the hell's handing out the dope, anyway?"

"If I knew I'd get a promotion. Right now the office observes wartime security right down to burning everything in the wastebaskets in front of a policeman. You know what I think?"

"What?"

"Somebody sits in another building with a telescope and reads lips."

I laughed at her. "Did you tell the D.A. that?"

She grinned devilishly. "Uh-huh. I said it jokingly and damned if he didn't go and pull down the blinds. Everybody hates me now." She stopped and glanced out the windows, then looked back at me curiously. "Where're we going?"

"To see a guy about a guy," I said.

She leaned back against the cushions and closed her eyes. When she opened them again I was pulling into a parking lot in Fifty-second Street. The attendant took my keys and handed me a ticket. The evening was just starting to pick up and the gin mills lining the street were starting to get a play.

Ellen tugged at my hand. "We aren't drinking very fancy tonight, are we?"

"You come down here much?"

"Oh, occasionally. I don't go much for these places. Where are we going?"

"A place called the Glass Bar. It's right down the block."

"That fag joint," she said with disgust. "The last time I was there I had three women trying to paw me and a guy with me who thought it was funny."

"Hell, I'd like to paw you myself, I laughed.

"Oh, you will, you will." She was real matter-of-fact about it, but not casual, not a bit. I started to get that feeling up my back again.

The Glass Bar was a phony name for a phonier place. It was all chrome and plastic, and glass was only the thing you drank out of. The bar was a circular affair up front near the door with the back half of the place given over to tables and a bandstand. A drummer was warming up his traps with a pair of cuties squirming to his jungle rhythm while a handful of queers watched with their eyes oozing lust.

Ellen said, "The bar or back room?"

I tossed my hat at the redhead behind the check booth. "Don't know yet." The redhead handed me a pasteboard with a number on it and I asked her, "Dixie Cooper been in yet?"

She leaned halfway out of the booth and looked across the room. "Don't see him. Guess he must be in back. He came in about a half hour ago."

I said thanks and took Ellen's arm. We had a quick one at the bar, then pushed through the crowd to the back room where the babes were still squirming with the drummer showing no signs of tiring. He was all eyes for the wriggling hips and the table with the queers had been abandoned for one closer to the bandstand.

Only four other tables were occupied and the kind of people sitting there weren't the kind I was looking for. Over against the wall a guy was slouched in a chair reading a late tabloid while he sipped a beer. He had a hairline that came down damn near to his eyebrows and when his mouth moved as he read his top teeth stuck out at an angle. On the other side of the table a patsy was trying to drag him into a conversation and all he was getting was a grunt now and then.

The guy with the bleached hair looked up and smiled when I edged over, then the smile froze into a disgusted grimace when he saw Ellen. I said, "Blow, Josephine," and he arched his eyebrows and minced off.

Buck teeth didn't even bother to look at me.

Ellen didn't wait to be invited. She plunked herself in a chair with a grin and leaned on the table waiting for the fun to start.

Buck teeth interrupted his reading long enough to say, "Whatta you want?"

So I took the .45 out and slid it down between his eyes and the paper and let him stare at it until he went white all the way back of his ears. Then I sat down too. "You Dixie Cooper?"

His head came around like somebody had a string on it. "Yeah." It was almost a whisper and his eyes wouldn't come away from the bulge under my coat.

"There was a man," I said. "His name was William Decker and he hit you up for a loan not long ago and he's dead now."

Cooper licked his lips twice and tried to shake his head. "Look... I..."

"Shut up."

His eyes seemed to get a waxy film over them.

"Who killed him," I said.

"Honest to God, Mac, I... Christ... I didn't kill 'im. I swear..."

"You little son of a bitch you, when you put the squeeze on him for your lousy dough he had to pull a robbery to pay off!"

This time his eyes came away from my coat and jerked up to mine. His upper lip pared back from his teeth while his head made funny shaking motions. "I... don't get it. He... didn't get squeezed. He paid up. I give 'im a grand and two days later he pays it back. Honest to God, I..."

"Wait a minute. He paid you back all that dough?"

His head bobbed. "Yeah, yeah. All of it."

"You know what he used it for?"

"I... I think he was playing the ponies."

"He lost. That means he paid you back and his losses too. Where'd he get it?"

"How should I know? He paid me back like I told you."

Dixie started to shake when I grinned at him. "You know what'll happen to you if I find out you're lying?"

He must have known, all right. His buck teeth started showing gums and all. Somehow he got his lips together enough to say, "Christ, I can prove it! He... he paid me off right in Bernie Herman's bar. Ask Bernie, he was there. He saw him pay me and he'll remember because I bought the house a drink. You ask him."

I grinned again and pulled out the .45 and handed it to Ellen under the table. Dixie couldn't seem to swallow his own spit any more. I said, "I will, pal. You better be right. If he tries to scram, put one in his leg, Ellen."

She was a beautiful actress. She never changed her smile except to give it the deadly female touch and it wasn't because she meant it, but because she was having, herself a time and was enjoying every minute of it.

I went out to the phone and looked up Bernie Herman's number and got the guy after a minute or so and he told me the same thing Dixie had. When I got back to the table they were still in the same position only Dixie had run out of spit altogether.

Ellen handed me the rod and I slipped it back under my coat. I nodded for her to get up just as a waiter decided it was about time to take our order. "Your friend cleared you, Dixie. You better stay cleared or you'll get a slug right in those buck teeth of yours. You know that, don't you?"

A drop of sweat rolled down in his eye and he blinked, but that was all.

I said, "Come on, Kitten," and we left him sitting there. When I passed the waiter I jerked my thumb back to the table. "You better bring him a whiskey. Straight. Make it a double."

He jotted it down and went over to the service bar.

Outside a colored pianist was trying hard to play loud enough to be heard over the racket of the crowd that was four deep around the bar. I pushed Ellen behind me and started elbowing a path between the mob and the booths along the side and if I didn't almost trip over a foot stuck out in the aisle' I wouldn't have seen Lou Grindle parked in the booth across from a guy who looked like a Wall Street banker.

Only he wasn't a banker, but the biggest bookie in the business and his name was Ed Teen.

Lou just stopped talking and stared at me with those snake eyes of his. I said, "Your boy's still in the morgue, Lou. Don't you guys go in for big funerals these days?"

Ed Teen smiled and the creases around his mouth turned into deep hollows. "Friends of yours, Lou?"

"Sure, we're real old buddies, we are," I said. "Some day I'm gonna kick his teeth in."

Lou didn't scare a bit. The bastard looked almost anxious for me to try it. Ellen gave me a little push from behind and we got through the crowd to the checkroom where I got my hat, then went outside to the night.

Her face was different this time. The humor had gone out of it and she watched me as though I'd bite her. "Lord, Mike, a joke's a joke, but don't go too far. Do you know who they were?"

"Yeah, scum. You want to hear some dirty words that fit 'em perfectly?"

"But... they're dangerous."

"So I've heard. That makes it more fun. You know them?"

"Of course. My boss would give ten years off his life to get either one of them in court. Please, Mike, just go a little easy on me. I don't mind holding your gun to frighten someone like that little man back there, but those two..."

I slipped my arm around her shoulders and squeezed. "Kitten, when a couple of punks like that give me the cold shivers I'll hang up. They're big because money and the power and guns that money can buy, but when you take their clothes off and there's no pockets to hold the money or the guns they're just two worms looking for holes to hide in."

"Have it your way, but I need a drink. A big one and right now. My stomach is all squirmy."

She must have been talking about the inside. I felt her stomach and it was nice and flat. She poked me with her elbow for the liberty and made me take her in a bar.

Only this one was nearly empty and the only dangerous character was a drunk arguing with the bartender about who was going to win the series. When we had our drink I asked her if she wanted another and she shook her head. "One's enough on top of what happened tonight. I think I'd like to go home, Mike."

She lived in the upper Sixties on the top floor of the only new building in the block. About a half-dozen brownstones had been razed to clear an area for the new structure and it stood out like a dame in a French bathing suit at an old maids' convention. It was still a pretty good neighborhood, but most of the new convertibles and sleek black sedans were lumped together in front of her place.

I got in line behind the cars at the curb and opened the door for her. "Aren't you coming up for a midnight snack, Mike?"

"I thought I was supposed to ask that, I laughed.

"Times have changed. Especially when you get my age."

So I went up.

There was an automatic elevator, marble-lined corridors under the thick maroon rugs, expensive knickknacks and antique furniture all for free before you even hit the apartment itself. The layout wasn't much different inside, either. For apartment-hungry New York, this was luxury. There were six rooms with the best of everything in each as far as I could see. The living room was one of these ultra modern places with angular furniture that looked like hell until you sat in it. All along the mantle of the imitation fireplace was a collection of genuine Paul Revere pieces that ran into big dough, while the biggest of the pieces, each with its own copper label of historical data, was used beside the front windows as flowerpots.

I kind of squinted at Ellen as I glanced around. "How much do they pay you to do secretarial work?"

Her laugh made a tinkling sound in the room. "Not this much, I'll tell you. Three of us share this apartment, so it's not too hard to manage. The copper work you seem to admire belongs to Patty. She was working for Captain Chambers with me tonight."

"Oh, short and fat."

"She has certain virtues that attract men."

"Money?"

Ellen nodded.

"Then why does she work?"

"So she can meet men, naturally."

"Cripes, are all the babes after all the men?"

"It seems so. Now, if you'll, just stay put I'll whip up a couple of sandwiches. Want something to drink?"

"Beer if you have it."

She said she had it and went back to the kitchen. She fooled around out there for about five minutes and finally managed to get an inch of ham to stay between the bread. A lanky towheaded job in one of those shortie nightgowns must have heard the raid on the icebox, because she came out of the bedroom as Ellen came in and snatched the extra sandwich off the plate. Just as she was going to pop it in her mouth she saw me and said, "Hi."

I said "Hi" back.

She said, "Ummm," but that was before she bit into the sandwich.

Moving her arms jerked the shortie up too far. Ellen blocked the view by handing me my beer and called back over her shoulder, "Either go put some more clothes on or get back in bed."

The towhead took another bite and mumbled, "With you around I need a handicap." She took another bite and shuffled back to the bedroom.

"See what I have to put up with?"

"I wish I had to put up with it."

"You would."

So we sat and finished the snack and dawdled over a beer until I said it was time to scram and she looked painfully unhappy with an expression that said I could stay if I wanted to badly enough. I told her about the kid and the arrangements I had made with the nurse, tacking on that I should have tucked him into bed long ago.

The same look she had in the office stole into her face. "Tuck me into bed too, Mike," she said. With the lithe grace of an animal she slid out of the chair past me and in the brief second the passion that our eyes met I felt the heat of passion that burned behind those deep blue irises.

Not much more than a minute could have passed. Her voice was a husky whisper calling, "Mike..." and I went to her.

There was no light except that which seeped in from the other room, a faint glow that made a bulky shadow of the bed with against the deeper blackness of the room itself. I could hear the rhythmic sigh of her breathing too heavy to be normal, and my hands shook when I stuck a cigarette in my mouth.

She said, "Mike..." again and I struck the match.

Her hair was a smooth mass of bronze edges on the pillow, her mough full and rich, showing the shiny white edges of her teeth. There was only the sheet over her that rose and dipped between the inviting hollows of her breasts. Ellen was beautiful as only a mature woman can be lustful.

"Tuck me in, Mike."

The match burned closer to my fingers. I reached down and got the corner of the sheet in my fingers and flipped way back. She lay there beautiful and naked and waiting.

"I love brunettes," I said.

The tone of my voice told her no, not tonight, but her smile didn't fade. She just grinned impishly because she knew I'd never be able to look at her again and say no. "You're a heel, Mike." The match went out.

"You told me that once tonight."

"You're a bigger heel than I thought." Then she laughed. When I backed out of the room she was still chuckling, but that thing was running up my back again.

I was thinking of her all the way back to my apartment and thinking of her when I put my car away. I was thinking too damn much to be careful. When I stabbed my key in the lock and turned it there was a momentary catch in the tumblers before it went all, the way around and I swore out loud as I rammed the door with my shoulder and hit the floor. Something swished through the air over my head and I caught an arm and pulled a squirming, fighting bundle of muscle down on top of me.

If I could have reached my rod I would have blown his guts out. His breath was in my face and I brought my knee up, but he jerked out of the way bringing his hand down again and my shoulder went numb after a split second of blinding pain. He tried again with one hand going for my throat, but I got one foot loose and kicked out and up and felt my toe smash into his groin. The cramp of the pain doubled him over on top of me, his breath sucking in like a leaky tire.

Then I got cocky. I thought I had him. I went to get up and he moved. Just once. That thing in his hand smashed against the side of my head and I started to crumple up piece by piece until there wasn't anything left except the sense to see and hear enough to know that he had crawled out of the room and was falling down the stairs outside. Then I thought about the lock on my door and how I had a guy fix it so I could tell if it had been jimmied open so I wouldn't step into any blind alleys without a gun in my hand, but because of a dame who lay naked and smiling on a bed I wouldn't share I had forgotten all about it.

And that was all.

Chapter Four

I thought I was in a boat that was sinking and I tried to get over the side before it turned over on me. I clawed for the railing that wouldn't stand still while the screaming of the bells and mechanical pounding of laboring engines blasted the air with frantic insistence.

Somehow I got my eyes open and saw that I wasn't in a boat, but on the floor of my own apartment trying to grab the edge of the table. My head felt like a huge swollen thing that throbbed with a terrible fury, sending the pain shooting down to the balls of my feet. I choked on my tongue and muttered thickly, "God... my head... my head!"

The phone didn't let up and whoever was pounding on the door wouldn't go away because they could hear me inside.

I staggered to the door first and cursed. It was still unlocked; nobody had to pound like that. The damn thing was almost too heavy for me to open with one hand.

I guess I must have looked pretty bad. The elderly nurse took one look at me and her arms tightened protectively around the kid. He didn't scare so easily though, or maybe he was used to seeing a bloated, unshaven face. He laughed.

"Come on in," I said.

The old lady didn't like the idea, but she came in. Mad, too. "Mr. Hammer..." she started.

"Look, get off my back. I wasn't drunk or disorderly. I damn near got my skull smashed in..." I looked at the light streaming in the windows, "last night. Right here. I'm sorry you were inconvenienced, but I'll pay for it. Goddamn that phone... hello, hello!"

"Mike?"

I recognized Pat's voice. "Yeah, it's me. What's left of me."

"What happened?" He sounded sharp and impatient.

"Nothing. I just got jumped in my own joint and nearly brained, that's all. The bastard got away."

"Look, you get down here as fast as you can, understand? On the double.

"Now what's up?"

"Trouble, and it's all yours, friend. Damn it, Mike, how many times do I have to remind you to keep your nose out of police business!"

"Wait a minute..."

"Wait my foot. Get down here before the D.A. sends somebody after you. There's another murder and it's got your name on it."

I hung up and told my head to go right ahead and explode if it wanted to.

Then the old lady let out a short scream and nearly broke her neck running for the kid. He was on his hands and knees reaching for my gun that lay under the table on the floor. She kicked it away and snapped him back on her lap.

Lord, what a day this was going to be!

Somebody else was at the door this time and all they had to do was rap just once more before I got it opened and they'd get a rap right in the teeth. The guy in the uniform said, "You Michael Hammer?"

Nodding my head hurt, so I grunted that I was.

He handed me a box about two feet long and held out a pad. "Package from the Uptown Kiddie Shop. Sign here, please."

I scrawled my name, handed him a quarter and took the package inside. There was a stack of new baby clothes under the wrappings with a note on top addressed to me. It said,

Dear Mike:

Men are never much good at these things, so I picked up some clothes for the little boy. Let me know if they fit all right.

Marsha

The nurse was still eyeing me suspiciously. I handed her the boy and edged back to a nice soft chair. "Before you say anything, let me explain one thing. The kid's old man was bumped. Murdered. He's an orphan and I'm trying to find out who made him that way. Somebody doesn't like the idea and they got funny ways of telling me so, but that isn't stopping me any. Maybe this'll happen again and maybe it won't, but you'd be doing me and the kid a big favor if you'll put up with it until this mess is cleaned up. Will you?"

Her face was expressionless a moment, then broke into a smile. "I... think I understand."

"Good. Arrangements are being made now so the kid'll be taken care of permanently. It won't be long." I patted the back of my head and winced.

"You'd better let me take a look at your scalp," she said.

She let me hold the kid while she probed around the lump awhile. If she had found a hole to stick her finger in, I wouldn't have been at all surprised. Finally she stood back satisfied and picked the kid up. "There doesn't seem to be anything wrong, but if I were you I'd see a doctor anyway."

I told her I would.

"You know, Mr. Hammer, in my time I've seen a great deal of suffering. It isn't new to me, not by a long sight. All I ask is that you don't bring any of it home to the child."

"Nothing will bother the kid. I'll see to that. He'll be all right with you then?"

"I'll take perfect care of him." She paused and her face creased in a frown. "This town is full of rabid dogs and there's not a dogcatcher in sight."

"I kill mad dogs," I said.

"Yes, I've heard that you do. Good morning, Mr. Hammer." I handed her the box of clothes, picked the rod up from the floor and ushered her out.

My, head was still booming away and I tried to fix it up with a hot shower. That helped, but a mess of bacon and eggs helped even more. It woke me up enough to remember Pat said my name was on a murder and I didn't have the sense to ask who he was talking about.

I gave it a try on the phone anyway, but they couldn't locate Pat in the building anywhere. I held the receiver down for a second, long enough to check Marsha's number in the book, then punched out her call. The nurse with the mustache answered and told me that Miss Lee had just left for a morning rehearsal of the Little Theater Group and wasn't expected back until later that afternoon.

Nuts. So now I had to go down to police headquarters and face an inquisition. My legs had more life in them by the time I reached the street, and when I had pulled up in front of the building downtown I was back to normal in a sense. At least I felt like having a beer and a butt without choking over the thought.

They were real happy to see me, they were. They looked like they hoped I wouldn't come so they could go drag me down by the neck, but now that I was there everything was malicious, tight smiles and short, sharp sentences that steered me into a little room where I was supposed to sit and sweat so I'd blab my head off when they asked me questions.

I spit on the floor, right in the middle, to be exact, and had the Lucky I wanted. The college boy with the pointed face who rated as the D.A.'s assistant glared at me but didn't have the guts to back it up with any words. He parked behind a desk and tried to look important and tough. It was a lousy act.

When I started wondering how long they were going to let me cool my heels the corridor got noisy and I picked out Pat's voice raising Cain with somebody. The door slammed open and he stalked in with his face tight in anger.

I said, "'lo, Pal," but he didn't answer.

He walked up to the desk and leaned on it until his face wasn't an inch away from the D.A.'s boy and he did a good job of keeping his hands off the guy's neck. "Since when do you take over the duties of the Police Department? I'm still Captain of Homicide around here and when there's murder I'll handle it myself, personally, understand? I ought to knock your ears off for pulling a stunt like that!"

The boy got a blustery red and started to get up. "See here, the District Attorney gave me full permission..."

"To butt into my business because a friend of mine is suspected of murder!"

"Exactly!"

Pat's voice got dangerously low. "Get your ass out of this office before I kick hell out of you. Go on, get out. And you tell the D.A. that I'll see him in a few minutes."

He practically ran to the door. I could see the D.A. getting a sweet version of the story, all right. I said, "What'd he do to you, kid?"

"Crazy little bastard. He thinks because I'm a friend of yours I'll do a little whitewashing. He got me out of the building on a phony call right after I spoke to you."

"You're not going to be very popular with the D.A. for that."

"I'm sick of that guy walking all over this office. They pulled a raid on a wire room last night and all they got was an empty apartment with a lot of holes in the walls and a blackboard that still showed track results and a snotty little character who said he was thinking of opening a school for handicappers. The guy was clean and there wasn't a thing the D.A. could do."

"Sounds like a good business. Whose wire room was it?"

"Hell, who else has wire rooms in this town? The place was run by one of Ed Teen's outfit."

"Or so your information said."

"Yeah. So now the D.A. gets in a rile and raises hell with everyone from the mayor down. He's pulled his last rough sketch on, me with this deal though. Let him try getting rough just once and the news boys are going to get a lot of fancy stuff that won't do a thing for him when election time comes."

"Where is he now?"

"Inside waiting for you."

"Let's see the guy then."

"Just a minute. Tell me something straight. Did you kill a guy named Mel Hooker?" he asked.

"Oh, God!"

Pat's eyes got that squinty look. "What's the matter?"

"Your corpse was the friend of William Decker... That beautiful local-type kill the police seem to be ignoring so well."

"The police aren't ignoring anything."

"Then they're not looking very hard. Mel and Decker were playing the ponies and Mel introduced him to a loan shark that financed his little escapades. There was a catch in it. Mel said Decker lost his shirt, but the loan shark, that Dixie Cooper guy, said Decker paid him off in full and was able to prove it."

Pat muttered something under his breath. He nodded for me to follow him and started for the door. This time the tight smiles loosened up and nobody seemed to want to get in our way. From the way Pat was glowering it looked like he was ready to take me and anybody else apart and had already started.

Pat knocked on the door and I heard the D.A. call out for somebody to see who it was. The door opened, a pair of thick-lensed glasses did a quick focus on the two of us and the D.A. said, "Show them in, Mr. Mertig."

It was quite a gathering. The D.A. straddled his throne with two assistant D.A.'s flanking him, a pair of plain-clothesmen in the background and two more over by the window huddled together for mutual protection apparently.

"Sit down, Hammer," the D.A. said.

Everybody watched me with the annoyed look you see when the king isn't obeyed pronto. I walked up to his desk, planted my hands on the top and leaned right down in his face. I didn't like the guy and he didn't like me, but he wasn't getting snooty now or any other time. I said, "You call me Mister when you use my name. I don't want any crap from you or your boys and if you think you can make it tough for me just go ahead and try it. I came in here myself to save you the trouble of getting a false arrest charge slapped against your office and right now I'm not above walking out just to see what you'd do. It's about time you learned to be polite to your public when you're not sure of your facts."

The D.A. started to get purple. In fact, a lot of people started to get purple. When they all got a nice livid tinge I sat down. He made a good job of keeping his voice under control. "We are sure of the facts... Mister Hammer."

"Go on."

"A certain Mel Hooker has been found dead. He was shot to death with a .45."

"I suppose the bullet came from my gun?" I tried to make it sound as sarcastic as possible.

The purple started to fade into an unhealthy red. Unhealthy for me, I mean. "Unfortunately, no. The bullet passed through the man and out the window. So far we haven't been able to locate It."

I started to interrupt, but he held up, his hand. "However, you were very generous with your fingerprints. They're all over the place. The landlady identified your picture and vouched that she heard threats before you left, so it is quite a simple matter to see what followed."

"Yeah, I went back later and shot him. I'm really that stupid."

"Yes, you really are." His eyes were narrow slits in his face.

"And you got rocks in your head, I said. He started to get up but I beat him to it. I stood there looking down at him so he could see what I thought of him. "You're a real bright boy, you are. Brother, the voters sure must be proud of you! Christ, you're ready to kick anything around because your vice racket business is getting the works. It's got you so far down you're all set to slap me in the clink without having the foresight to ask me if I got an alibi or not for the time of the shooting. So it happened last night and I don't know what time and without bothering to find out I'll hand you my alibi on a platter and you can choke on it."

I pointed to the intercom on his desk. "Get Ellen Scobie in here."

The D.A.'s face was wet with an angry sweat. His finger triggered the gadget and when Ellen answered he told her to come in.

Before the door opened I had a chance to look at Pat and he was shaking his head slowly trying to tell me not to go overboard so far I couldn't get back. Ellen came in, smiled at me through a puzzled frown and stood there waiting to see what was going on. From the look that passed between us, the D.A. caught on fast, but he wasn't letting me get in any prompting first. He said, "Miss Scobie, were you with this... with Mister Hammer last night at, say eleven-thirty?"

She didn't have to think to answer that one. "Yes, I did happen to be with him."

"Where were you?"

"I should say that we were sitting in a bar about then. A place on Fifty-second Street."

"That's all, Miss Scobie."

Everybody ushered her out of the room with their eyes. When the door clicked shut the D.A.'s voice twanged like a flat banjo string. "You may go too, Mister Hammer. I'm getting a little tired of your impertinence." His face had turned a deadly white and he was speaking through his teeth. "I wouldn't be a bit surprised if your license was revoked very shortly."

My voice came out a hiss more than anything else. "I'd be," I said. "You tried that once before and remember what happened?"

That's all I had to say and for a few seconds I was the only one who didn't stop breathing in the room. Nobody bothered to open the door for me this time. I went out myself and started down the corridor, then Pat caught up with me.

We must have been thinking the same things, because neither one of us bothered to speak until we were two blocks away in Louie's place where a quick beer cooled things down to a boil.

Pat grinned at me in the mirror behind the bar. "You're a lucky bastard, Mike. If the press wasn't so hot on the D.A.'s heels you'd be out of business if he lost the election over it."

"Aw, he gives me a pain. Okay, he's got it in for me, but does he have to be so goddamn stupid about it? Why didn't he do some checking first. Christ, him and his investigators are making the police look ridiculous. I'm no chump. I got as much on the ball as any of his stooges and in my own way maybe I got as many scruples too."

"Ease off, Mike. I'm on your side."

"I know, but you're tied down too. Who has to get murdered before the boob will put some time in on the case? Right now you got three corpses locked together as nicely as you please and what's being done?"

"More than you think."

I sipped the top of my beer and watched his eyes in the mirror. "It wasn't any news that Decker and Hooker were tied up. The lab boys lifted a few prints out of his apartment. Some of them were Hooker's."

"He have a record?"

Pat shook his head. "During the war he had a job that required security and he was printed. We picked up the blind newspaper dealer's prints too. He had a record."

"I know. They graduated from the same Alma Mater up the river."

Pat grinned again. "You know too damn much."

"Yeah, but you do it the easy way. What else do you know?"

"You tell me, Mike."

"What?"

"The things you have in that mind of yours, chum. I want your angle first."

I ordered another round and lit a cigarette to go with it. "Decker needed dough. His wife was undergoing an operation that cost heavy sugar and he had to get it from someplace. He and Hooker got some hot tips on the nags and they pooled their dough to make some fast money. When they found out the tips were solid ones they went in deeper. Hooker pulled out while he was ahead, but Decker wanted to make the big kill so he borrowed a grand from Dixie Cooper. According to Hooker, he lost everything and was in hock to Cooper for plenty, but when I braced the guy he proved that Decker had paid him back.

"Okay, he had to get the dough from somebody. He sure as hell didn't work for it because the docks have been too slow the past month. He had to do one of two things... either steal it or borrow it. It could be that when he went back to his old trade he found it so profitable he couldn't or didn't want to give it up. If that was the case then he made a mistake and broke into the wrong apartment. He and his partners were expecting a juicy haul and if Decker spent a lot of time casing the joint a gimmick like breaking into the wrong apartment would have looked like a sorry excuse to the other two who were expecting part of the proceeds. In that case he would have tried to take a flyer and they caught up with him."

Pat looked down into his glass. "Then where does Hooker come in?"

"They were friends, weren't they? First Decker gets bumped for pulling a funny stunt, the driver of the car gives the second guy the works so he won't be captured and squeal, then he goes and gets Hooker because he's afraid Decker might have spilled the works to his friend."

"I'll buy that," Pat said. "It's exactly the way I've had it figured."

"You buy it and you'll be stuck," I told him. I finished my beer and let the bartender fill it up again. Pat was making wry faces now. He was waiting for the rest of it.

I gave it to him. "William Decker hadn't been pulling any jobs before that one. He was going straight all along the line. He must have known what might happen and got his affairs in order right down to making provisions for his kid. If Decker paid off Cooper then he borrowed the dough from somebody else and the somebody put on the squeeze play. For my money they even knew where the dough could be had and laid it out so all Decker had to do was go up the fire escape and open up the safe.

"That's where he made his mistake. He got into the wrong place and after all the briefing he had who the hell would believe his story. No, Decker knew he jimmied the wrong can and didn't dare take a chance on correcting the error because Marsha Lee could have come to at any time and called the cops. In the league where he was playing they only allow you one mistake. Decker knew they would believe that he had stashed the money thinking to come back later and get it, so he took off by himself.

"What happened was this... he had to go home for his kid. When they knew he had taken a powder they put it together and beat it back to his place. By that time he was gone, but they picked him up fast enough. When he knew he was trapped he kissed his kid good-by and walked out into a bullet. That boy of Grindle's searched him for the dough and when he didn't find it, the logical thought was that he hid it in his apartment. He didn't have much chance to do anything else. So the driver of the car scooted back there and got into the place and messed it up."

Pat's teeth were making harsh grating noises and his fingers rasped against the woodwork of the bar. "So you're all for nailing the driver of the murder car, right?"

The way I grinned wasn't human. It tied my face up into a bunch of hard knots. "Nope," I said, "that's your job. You can have him. I want the son of a bitch who put the pressure on him. I want the guy who made somebody decent revert back to a filthy crime and I want him right between my hands so I can squeeze the juice out of him."

"Where is he, Mike?"

"If I knew I wouldn't tell you, friend. I want him for myself. Someday I want to be able to tell that kid what his face looked like when he was dying."

"Damn it anyway, Mike, you can stretch friendship too far sometimes."

"No, I'll never stretch it, Pat. Just remember that I live in this town too. Besides having what few police powers the state chooses to hand me, I'm still a citizen and responsible in some small way for what happens in the city. And by God, if I'm partly responsible then I have a right to take care of an obligation like removing a lousy orphan-maker."

"Who is he, Mike?"

"I said I didn't know."

"But you know where to find out."

"That's right. It isn't too hard if you want to take a chance on getting your head smashed in."

"Like you did last night?"

"Yeah. That's something else I have to even up. I don't know why or how it happened, but I got a beaut of an idea, I have."

"Something like looking for a guy named Lou Grindle whom you called all sorts of names and threatened to shoot on sight if you found out he was responsible for Decker's death?"

My mouth fell open. "How the hell did you get that?"

"Now you're taking me for the chump, Mike. I checked the tie-up Arnold Basil had with Grindle thoroughly, and from the way Lou acted I knew somebody had been there before me. It didn't take long to guess who it was. Lou was steamed up to beat hell and told me what happened. Let me tell you something. Don't try anything with that boy. The D.A. has men covering him every minute he's awake trying to get something on him."

"Where was he last night then?"

A thundercloud rolled over Pat's face. "The bastard skipped out. He pulled a fastie and skipped his apartment and never got back until eleven. In case you're thinking he had anything to do with Hooker's death, forget it. He couldn't have gotten back at that time."

"I'm not thinking anything. I was just going to tell you he was in a place called the Glass Bar on Eighth Avenue with Ed Teen somewhere around ten. The D.A. ought to get new eyes. The old ones are going bad."

Pat swore under his breath.

I said, "What made you say that, Pat?"

"Say what?"

"Oh, connect Lou and Hooker."

"Hell, I didn't connect anything. I just said..."

"You said something that ought to make you think a lot more, boy. Grindle and Decker and Hooker don't go together at all. They're miles apart. In fact, they're so far apart they're backing into each other from the ends."

He set his glass down with a thump. "Wait a minute. Don't go getting this thing screwed up with a lot of wacky ideas. Lou Grindle isn't playing with anything worth a few grand and if he is, he doesn't send out blockheads to do the job. You're way the hell out of line."

"Okay, don't get excited."

"Good Lord, who's getting excited? Damn it, Mike..."

My face was as flat as I could make it. I just sat there with the beer in my hand and stared at myself in the mirror because I started thinking of something that was like a shadow hovering in the background. I thought about it for a long time and it was still a shadow when I finished and it had a shape that was so curious I wanted to go up closer for another look.

I didn't hear Pat because his voice was so low it was almost a whisper, but he repeated it loud enough so I could hear it and he made me look at him so I wouldn't forget it. His hands were a nervous bunch of fingers that opened and shut with every word and his mouth was all teeth with sharp biting edges.

"Mike, you try pulling a smart frame that will pull Grindle into that damn murder case of yours and you and I are finished! We've worked too damn long and hard to nail that punk and his boss to have you slip over a cutie that will stink up the whole works. Don't give me the business, friend. I know you and the way you work. Anything appeals to you just as long as you can point a gun at somebody. For my money Lou Grindle is as far away from this as I am and because one of his boys tried to pick up some extra change you can't fix him for it. All right, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say that if you tried hard enough and lived through it you'd do it, but Lou's got Teen and a lot more behind him. He'd get out of that charge easy as pie and only leave the department open for another big laugh. When we get those two, we want them so it'll stick, and no frame is going to do it. You lay off, hear?"

I didn't answer him for a long minute, then; "I wasn't thinking of any frame, Pat."

Pat's hands were still jerking on the bar. "The hell you weren't. Remember what I told you, that's all." He spilled his beer down and fiddled with the empty glass until the bartender moved in and filled it up again. I didn't say a damn thing. I just sat. Pat's fingernails were little firecrackers going off against the wood while his coat rippled as the muscles bunched underneath the fabric.

It lasted about five minutes, then he drained the glass and shoved it back. He muttered, "Goddamn!"

I said, "Relax, chum."

Then he repeated what he said the first time, told me to take it easy, and swung off the stool. I waited until he was out the door, then started to laugh. It wasn't so easy to be a cop. At least not a city cop. Or maybe it was the years that were getting him down. Six years ago you couldn't get him excited about anything, not even a murder or a naked dame with daisies in her hair.

The bartender came over and asked me if I wanted another. I said no and shoved him a quarter to make into change, then picked up a dime and walked back to the phone booth. The book listed the Little Theater as being on the edge of Greenwich Village and a babe with a low-down voice told me that Miss Lee was there and rehearsing and if I was a friend I could certainly come up.

The Little Theater was an old warehouse with a poster-decorated front that was a lousy disguise. The day had warped into a hot afternoon and the air inside the place was even hotter, wetter and bedded down with the perfumed smell of make-up. A sawed-off babe in a Roman toga let me in, locked the door to keep out the spies, then wiggled her fanny in the direction of all the noise to show me where to go. A pair of swinging doors opened and two more dames in togas came through for a smoke. They stood right in the glare of the only light in the place looking too cool to be real and lit up the smokes without seeing me there in the shadows.

Then I saw why they were so cool. One of them flipped the damn thing open and stood with her hands on her hips and she didn't have a thing on underneath it. Sawed-off said, "Helen, we have a visitor."

And Helen finally saw me, smiled, and said, "How nice."

But she didn't bother to do anything about the toga. I said, "The play's the thing," and sawed-off grinned a little like she wished she had thought of the open-toga deal first herself and sort of pushed me into the swinging doors.

Inside, a pair of floor fans moved the air around enough to make you think you were cool, at least. I opened my shirt and tie, then stood there for a moment getting used to the artificial dusk. All around the place were stacks of funeral parlor chairs with clothes draped over them. Up front a rickety stage held up some more togas and a few centurians in uniform while a hairy-legged little squirt in tennis shorts screamed at them in a high falsetto as he pounded a script against an old upright piano.

It wasn't hard to find Marsha. There was a baby spot behind her outlining a hundred handfuls of lovely curves through the white cotton toga. She was the most beautiful woman in the place even with a touched-up shiner, and from where I stood I could see that there was plenty of competition.

The squirt with the hairy legs called for a ten-minute break and sawed-off called something up to Marsha I didn't catch. She tried to peer past the glare of the footlights, didn't make out too well, so came off the stage in a jump and ran all the way back to where I was.

Her hands were warm, friendly things that grabbed mine and held on. "Did you get my package, Mike?"

"Yup. Came down to thank you personally."

"How is the boy?"

"Fine, just fine. Don't ask me how I feel because I'll give you a stinking answer. Somebody tried to break my head open last night."

"Mike!"

"I got a hard head."

She moved up close and ran her hand over my hair to where the bump was and wrinkled her nose at me. "Do you know who it was?"

"No. If I did the bastard'd be in the hospital."

Marsha took my arm and nodded over to the side of the wall.

"Let's sit down a few minutes. I can worry better about you that way."

"Why worry about me at all?"

The eye with the shiner was closed just enough to give it the damnedest look you ever saw. "I could be a fool and tell you why, Mike," she said. "Shall I be a fool?"

If ever I had wanted to kiss a woman it was then, only she had too much make-up on and there were too many people for an audience. "Later. Tonight, maybe," I told her. "Be a fool then." I was grinning and her lips went into a smile that said a lot of things, but mostly was a promise of tonight.

When we had a pair of cigarettes going I tipped my chair back against the wall and stared at her. "We have another murder on our hands, kitten."

The cigarette stopped halfway to her lips and her head came around slowly. "Another? Oh, no!"

I nodded. "Guy named Mel Hooker. He was Decker's best friend. You know, Marsha, I think there's a hell of a lot more behind this than we thought."

"Chain reaction," she said softly.

"Sort of. It didn't take much to start it going. Three hundred bucks and a necklace, to be exact."

Marsha nodded, her lips between her teeth. "My playboy friend in the other apartment was coerced into keeping his money in a bank instead of the wall safe. The management threatened to break his lease unless he co-operated. Everybody in the building knows what happened and raised a fuss about it. Apparently the idea of being beaten up by a burglar doesn't sound very appealing, especially when the burglar is wild over having made a mistake in safes."

"You got off easy. He might have killed you."

Her shoulders twitched convulsively. "What are you going to do, Mike?"

"Keep looking. Make enough stink so trouble'll come looking for me. Sometimes it's easier that way."

"Do you... have to?" Her eyes were soft, and-her hand on my arm squeezed me gently.

"I have to, kid. I'm made that way. I hate killers."

"But do you have to be so... so damned reckless about it?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I do. I don't have to be but that's the way I, like it. Then I can cut them down and enjoy it."

"Oh, Lord! Mike, please..."

"Look, kid, when you play with mugs you can't be coy. At first this looked all cut-and-dried-out and all there was to it was nailing a bimbo who drove a car with a hot rod in the back seat. That's the way it looked at first. Now we got names creeping into this thing, names and faces that don't belong to any cheap bimbos. There's Teen and Grindle and a guy who died a long time ago but who won't stay buried... his name was Charlie Fallon and I keep hearing it every time I turn around.

Somebody said, "Charlie Fallon?" in a voice that ended with a chuckle and I turned around chewing on my words.

The place was getting to look like backstage of a burlesque house. The woman in the dress toga did a trick with the oversize cigarette holder and stood there smiling at us. She was medium in height only. The rest of her was over done, but that's the way they liked them in Hollywood. Her name was Kay Cutler and she was right in there among the top movie stars and it wasn't hard to see why.

Marsha introduced us and I stood there like an idiot with one of those nobody-meets-celebrity grins all over my pan. She held my hand longer than was necessary and said, "Surprised?"

"Hell, yes. How come all the talent in this dump?"

The two of them laughed together. Kay did another trick with the holder. "It's a hobby that gets a lot of exciting publicity. Actually we don't play the parts for the audience. Instead we portray them so the others can use our interpretation as a model, then coach them into giving some sort of a performance. You wouldn't believe it, but the theater group makes quite a bit of money for itself. Enough to cover expenses, at least."

"You come for free?"

She laughed and let her eyes drift to one of the centurians who was giving me some dark looks. "Well, not exactly."

Marsha poked me in the back so I'd quit leering. I said, "You mentioned Charlie Fallon before. Where'd you hear of him?"

"If he's the one I'm thinking of a lot of people knew him. Was he the gangster?"

"That's right."

"He was a fan-letter writer. God, how that man turned them out! Even the extras used to get notes and flowers from the old goat. I bet I've had twenty or more."

"That was a long time ago," I reminded her.

She smiled until the dimples showed in her cheeks. "You aren't supposed to mention the passage of time so lightly. I still claim to be in my early thirties."

"What are you?"

I got the dimples again. "I'm a liar," she said. "Marsha, didn't you ever get mail from that character?"

"Perhaps. At the time I didn't handle my own correspondence and it was all sorted out for me." She paused and squinted a little. "Come to think of it, yes. I did. I remember talking about it to someone one day."

I pulled on the butt and let the smoke out slowly. "He was like that. The guy made plenty and didn't know how to spend it, so he threw it away on the girlies. I wonder if he ever followed it up?"

"Never," Kay stated flatly. "When he was still news some of the columnists kept up with his latest crushes and slipped in a publicity line now and then, but nobody ever saw him around the Coast. By the way, what's so important about him now?"

"I wish I knew. For a dead man he's sure not forgotten."

"Mike is a detective, Kay," Marsha said bluntly. "There have been a couple of murders and Mike's conducting an investigation."

"And not getting far," I added.

"Really?" Her eyebrows went up and she cocked the holder between her teeth and gave me a look that was sexy right down to her sandals. "A detective. You sound exciting."

"You're not going to sound at all if you don't get back to your warrior, lady," Marsha cut in. "Now scram."

Kay faked a pout at her and said so-long to me after another long hand-clasp. When she was across the room Marsha slipped her arm through mine. "Kay's a wonderful gal, but if you have it and it wears pants she wants it."

"Good old Kay," I said.

"Luckily, I know her too well."

"Any more around like that?"

"Well, if it's a celebrity you'd like to meet, I can take you backstage and introduce you to a pair of Hollywood starlets, a television sensation, the country's biggest comic and..."

"Never mind," I said: "You're enough for me."

She gave me another one of those squeezes with a laugh thrown in and I wanted to kiss her again. The kid with an arm in a sling who tapped her on the shoulder as he murmured, "Two minutes more, Marsha," must have read my mind, because his eyes went limp and sad.

Marsha nodded as he walked off and I pointed my cigarette at his back. "The kid's got a crush on you."

She watched him a moment, then glanced at me. "I know it. He's only nineteen and I'm afraid he has stars in his eyes. A month ago he was in love with Helen O'Roark and was so far down in the dumps when he found out she was married he almost starved himself to death. He's the one I took to the hospital the night the Decker fellow broke into my apartment."

"What happened to him?"

"He was setting up props and fell off the ladder."

Down at the end of the hall hairy legs in short pants was banging on the piano again screaming for everyone to get back on the stage. Togas started to unravel from the floor, chairs and the scenery and if I had a dozen more pairs of eyes I could have enjoyed myself. Those babes didn't give a damn what they showed and I seemed to be the only one there who appreciated the view. The overhead lights went out and the stage spots came on and I was doing good watching the silhouettes until Marsha said, "I'm getting jealous, Mike.

It wasn't so much what she said as the way she said it that made me jerk around. And there she was leaning on the stack of chairs like a nymph under a waterfall with her own toga wide open down the middle and an impish little grin playing with her mouth. She was barely a reflection of light and shadow, a vague white statue of warm, live flesh that moved with her breathing, then the toga came shut slowly before I could move and she was out of reach.

"You don't have to be jealous of anybody," I said.

She smiled again, and in the darkness her hand touched mine briefly and the cigarette fell out of my fingers to the floor where it lay like a hot red eye. Then she was gone and all I could think about was tonight.

Chapter Five

After the little theater the glare of the sun was almost blinding. I fired up another butt and climbed back into the car where I finished smoking it before I had myself in line again. All the while I kept seeing Marsha in that white toga until it was branded into my brain so deeply that it blotted out everything else. Marsha and Kay and Helen of Troy or something in a lot of white togas drifting through the haze like beautiful ghosts.

Like the ghost of a killer I was after. I threw the butt out the window and hit the starter.

I let my hands and my eyes drive me through traffic while the rest of me sat and thought. It should have been so damn easy. Three guys dead and a killer running loose looking for his lousy split of a robbery that didn't happen. Decker dead on the sidewalk. Arnold Basil dead in the gutter. Hooker dead in his own room and me damn near dead on the floor. Sure, it was easy, just like an illiterate doing acrostics.

Then where the hell was the big puzzle? Was it because Basil had been Lou Grindle's boy, or because Fallon's name kept cropping up? I jammed the horn down at the guy in front of me and yelled as I pulled around him. He gave me a scared grimace and plenty of room and I shot by him swearing at the little things that piled up one after the other.

Then I grinned because that was where the puzzle was. In all the little things.

Like the boys who tried to take me when I was putting the buzz on Hooker.

Like the money that Decker had picked up from somewhere to pay off Dixie Cooper.

Like Decker putting his affairs in order before he walked out and got himself bumped.

Now I knew where I was going and what I wanted to do, so I got off the avenue onto a street and headed west until I could smell the river and see the trucks pulling into their docks for the night and hear the mixture of tongues as the longshoremen streamed out of the yards.

The nearest of them were still ten minutes away when I pulled up outside the hole-in-the-wall saloon and there weren't any early birds inside when I pushed the door open. The bartender was perched on a stool watching the television and his hand automatically went out for a glass as he heard me slide up to the bar.

I didn't let him waste his beer. I said, "Remember me, buddy?"

He had a frown all set and his mouth shaped to tell me off when his memory came back with a jolt. "Yeah." His frown had a twisted look now.

I leaned on the bar so my coat hung loose enough for him to see the leather of the gun sling and he knew I wasn't kidding around. "Who were they, buddy?"

"Look, I..."

"Maybe I ought to ask it different. Maybe I ought to ask it with the nose of a gun shoved down your throat. You can get it that way if you want."

He choked up a little and his eyes kept darting toward the door hoping someone would come in. He licked his lips to bring the words out and said, "I... don't know... who the hell they were."

"You like it the hard way, don't you? Now just once I'm going to tell you something and I want an answer. Scarface Hooker is dead. He was shot last night and because you know who they were you might be sitting on top of a powder keg. In case you're not sure, let me tell you that you are right now with me. I'm going to bust you wide open or leave you for those babies to handle."

The guy started to sweat. It formed in little cold drops along the ridges of his forehead and rolled down his cheeks. He made a swipe with the back of his hand across his mouth and swallowed hard. "They was private detectives."

"They were like hell."

"Look, I'm telling ya, I saw their badges."

"Tell me some more."

"They come in here looking for Hooker. They said he was working against the union and pulling a lot of rough stuff. Hell, how'd I know? I'm a union man myself. If that's what he was doing he shoulda got beat up. They showed me their badges and said they was working for the union so I played along."

"Ever see them before?"

"No."

"Anybody else see them?"

"Yeah."

"Goddamn it, say something! Don't give me one word."

"One guy says they was uptown boys. They was roughs... strong-arm boys. The little guy... I heard the other one call him Nocky."

"What else?"

"That's all. I swear to God I don't know no more."

I slid my elbows off the bar and gave him a tight grin. "Okay, friend, you did fine. Let me give you a word of advice. If either of those boys come in here again you pick up the phone and call the nearest precinct station."

"Sure. I'll ask 'em to blow my crazy head off, too."

"They might do it before you reach the phone, mister. Those lads were after Hooker and it might have been them who got to him. They won't like anybody who can put the finger on 'em. Remember what I told you."

He started to sweat again. All along his neck the cords were standing out against the layer of fat. He didn't look a bit happy. A couple of longshoremen pushed in through the door and lined up at the rail and he had one hell of a time trying to keep the glasses under the beer tap. He didn't want to look up when I left, but he had to and I could feel his eyes on my back.

So they were private dicks and one's name was Nocky. Anybody could pick up a badge to flash if he wanted to, but there was just the chance that they were the real thing, so the first pay station I came to I changed two bucks into, nickels and started dialing all the agencies I knew of.

None of them picked up the description, but one of them did hear of a Nocky something-or-other but was sure it was a nickname. He couldn't give me any further information so I tried a couple precincts uptown where I had an in at the desk. A Sergeant Bellew came on and told me the name was familiar, but that was all. He had the idea that the guy was a private dick too but couldn't be sure.

On the off-chance that Pat might know, I called his office. He picked up his phone on the first ring and his voice had a snap to it that wasn't too nice. I said, "It's Mike, Pat. What's eating you now?"

"Plenty. Listen, I'm pretty busy now and..."

"Nuts. You're not that busy."

"Damn it, Mike, what is it now?"

"Ever hear of a private cop called Nocky? It's a nickname."

"No."

"Can you check on it for me?"

"Hell no!" His voice had an explosive crack to it. "I can't do a damn thing except obey orders. The D.A.'s working up another stink ever since this afternoon and he's got us nuts up here."

"What happened, another raid go sour?"

"Ah, they all go sour. He closed down a wire room and pulled in a couple of punks when he was looking for something big. Ed Teen came down with a lawyer and a bondsman and got them both out within the hour."

"No kidding? So Ed's taking a personal interest in what goes on now."

"Yeah. He doesn't want 'em to talk before he does a little coaching first. You know, I think we're onto something this time. We had to pull a Gestapo act and check on our own men, but I think we have that leak located."

"How does it look?"

"Lousy. He's a first-grade detective and up to his ears in hock. He's one of three who have been in on every deal so far and money might be a powerful persuader to get him to pass a sign along somehow."

"Have you picked up the tip-off yet?"

"Nope. If he's doing it he's got a damn good system. Keep shut about this. The only reason I mentioned it is because I may need you soon. The guy knows all the other cops and I may have to stick a plant along the line to see who's picking up the flash from him."

"Okay, I'll be around any time you need me. If you run into anything on that Nocky character, let me know."

"Sure, Mike. Wish I could help you out now, but we're all tied up "

I said so-long and hung up. I still had a handful of nickels to go so I made a blind stab at a barroom number downtown and asked if Cookie Harkin was there. I had to wait while the guy looked and after a minute or so a voice said, "Cookie speaking."

"Mike Hammer."

"Hey, boy. Long time no see. How's tricks?"

"Good enough. You still got wide-open ears?"

"Sure. See all, hear all and say plenty if the pay's right. Why?"

"Ever hear of a private dick named Nocky? He's a wise runt who has an oversize partner. Supposedly a couple of tough boys from somewhere uptown."

I didn't get any answer for a minute, so I said, "Well?"

"Wait a minute, Mike. You know what you're asking about, don't you?" He spoke in next to a whisper. I heard him pull the door of the booth closed before he said anything else. "What're you working on?"

"Murder, friend."

"Brother!"

"Who is he?"

"I'll have to do a little checking around first. I think I know who you mean, all right. I'll see what I can do, but if it's the guy I think it is, I'm not sticking my neck out too far, understand?"

"Sure, do what you can. I'll pay you for it."

"Forget the pay. All I want is some inside stuff I can pass along for what it's worth. You know my angle."

"How long will it take?"

"Gimme a coupla hours. Suppose I meet you at the Tucker Bar. It's a dive, but you can get away with anything in there."

It was good enough. I told him I'd be there and put the rest of the nickels back in my pocket. They make a big lump and a lot of noise so I went across town to an Automat and spent them all on a supper I needed bad.

It was dark when I finished and had started to rain again. The Tucker Bar was built under a neon sign that put out more light in advertising than was used up inside. It was off on a side street in a place nobody smart went to even on a slumming party, but it was a place where people who knew people could be found and gotten drunk enough to spill over a little excess information if the questions were put right.

I saw Cookie in the back room edging through the tables with a drink in his hand, stopping at a table here and there to say hello. He was small and skinny with a big nose, bigger ears and loose pockets that could spill out the right kind of dough when he needed it. The guy looked and acted like a cheap hood when he was the head legman for one of the biggest of the syndicated columnists. I waited at the bar nursing a beer until the act on the dance floor was finished. A couple of strippers were trying to see how fast they could shed their clothes in time to the same music. They got down to bare facts in a minute's time and there was a lot of noise around the ringside. The rest of the crowd was having a hard time trying to see what they were paying for.

There was a singer and a solo pianist after that before the management decided to let the customers go back to drinking. I picked up my glass and squeezed through the bunch standing under the arch that led to the back room and worked my way to the table where Cookie was sitting.

He had two chicks with him, a pair of phony blondes with big bosoms and painted faces and he was showing them a coin trick so they had to lean forward to see what he was doing and he could leer down their necklines. He was having himself a great time. The blondes were drinking champagne. They were having a great time too.

I said, "Hello, ape man."

He looked up and grinned from one big ear to another until he looked like a clam just opened. "How do ya like that, my old pal, Mike Hammer! What're you doin' down here where people are?"

"Looking for people."

"Well, sit right down, sit right down. Here's one all made to order for you. Meet Tolly and Joan."

I said, "Hi," and pulled out the fourth chair.

"Mike's a friend of mine from way back, kids. A real good skate." He nodded at the blonde who was giving me the eye already. "You take Tolly, Mike. Joan and me's already struck up a conversation. She's a French maid from Brooklyn who works for the Devoe family. Wait'll you catch her accent. She sure fooled them. Gawd, what a family of jerks they are!"

I caught his expression and the slight wink that went with it. Tomorrow the stuff Joan was handing out would turn up in print and the hell would get raised in the Devoe household. She gave us a demonstration of her accent with giggles and launched into a spiel of how the old man had tried to make her and how she refused and I almost wanted to ask her how she got the mink cape that was draped over the back of her chair on a maid's salary.

Tolly turned out to be the better of the two. She was a juicy eyeful with a lot of skin showing and nothing on under the dress she wore just to be conventional. She told me she had been posing for an artist down in the village until she caught him using a camera instead of a paintbrush. She found he was peddling the prints and made him kick in with a fifty-fifty cut or get the pants knocked off him by an ex-boy friend in the Bronx, and now she was living off the cream of the land.

"Your artist friend sure mixes pleasure with business, honey," I told her. "Hell, I wouldn't mind seeing you undraped, a bit."

She snapped open her purse and tossed me a wallet-sized print with a laugh. "Get right to it." She had a body that would make a statue drool, and with the poses the artist got her into it was easy to see why she wasn't hurting for dough. She let me look at it a little while, asked me if I wanted to dance and laughed when I said maybe later, but not right then.

Finally we got up and danced while Cookie sat and yapped with the French maid from Brooklyn. Tolly didn't have any trouble giving me the business because the mob on the dance floor had us pressed together like the ham in a sandwich.

Every bit of her was pressed against every bit of me and her mouth was right next to my ear. Every once in a while she'd stick her tongue out and send something chasing down my spine. "I like you, Mike," she said.

I gave her a little squeeze until her eyes half closed and she said something through her teeth. I slapped her fanny for it. We got back to the table and played kneesies while we talked until the girls decided to hit the powder room.

As they walked away Cookie said, "Cute kids, hey?"

"Real cute. Where the devil do you find them?"

"I get around. I don't look like much, but I get around. With a pair like them on my arms it's a ticket to anyplace I want to go so long as a guy's taking up the tickets."

I picked a smoke out of my pack and handed one to him. "What about our deal?"

His eyes crawled up my arm to my face. "I know them. The boys are hurting right now. You do that?"

"Uh-huh."

"What a mess. The little one wants your guts."

"Who are they?"

"Private dicks. That's what the little piece of paper says in their wallets. They're hoods who'll do anything for some cash."

"If they're cops they aren't making any money unless they're hired to protect somebody."

"They are. You know anything about the rackets, Mike?"

"A little."

"The town's divided into sections, see. Like the bookies. They pay off to the local big boy who pays off to Ed Teen."

The cigarette froze in my fingers. "Where's Teen in this?"

"He's not, but one of his local boys is the mug who uses your two playmates for a bodyguard. His name is Toady Link. Ever hear of him?"

"Yeah."

"Then you didn't hear much. He keeps his nose clean. The bodyguards are to keep the small-timers moving and not to protect him. As bookies go, the guy's okay. Now how about coming across with something I can sell."

I squashed the butt out and started on another. Cookie's ears were pinned and he leaned across the table with a grin like we were telling dirty stories. I said, "There was a little murder the other night. Then there was another. In the beginning they looked little, but now they're starting to look pretty big. I haven't got a damn thing I can tell you... yet. When it happens you'll get it quick. How's that?"

"Fair enough. Who got killed?"

"A guy named William Decker, Arnold Basil, then the next day Decker's friend Mel Hooker."

"I read about that."

"You'll be reading more about it. Where'll I find this Toady Link?"

Cookie rattled off a couple of addresses where I might pick him up and I let them soak in so I wouldn't forget them. "Just one thing, Mike," he added, "you don't know from nothing, see? Keep me out of it. I stay away from them boys. My racket takes dough but no rough stuff, and when it comes to rods or brass knucks you can count me out. I don't want none, of them hoods after my hide."

"Don't worry," I said. I stood up and threw a fin on the table to cover some of Tolly's champagne.

Cookie's eyebrows went up to his hairline. "You aren't going now, are you? Hell, what about Tolly? She's got a yen for you already and I can't make out with two dames."

"Sure you can. Nothing to it."

"Aw, Mike, what a guy you are, and after I hand you such a sweet dish too."

My mouth twisted into a lopsided smile. "I can get all the dishes I want without having them handed to me. Tell Tolly that maybe I'll look her up someday. She interests me strangely."

He didn't say anything, but he looked disappointed. He sat there wiggling those big ears and I cleared out of the place before the blonde came back and twisted my arm into staying.

Dames.

It was turning into a night just like that first one. The sidewalks and pavements were one big wet splash reflecting the garish lights of the streets and throwing them back at you. I pulled my raincoat out of the back and slipped into it, then climbed behind the wheel.

My watch read a few minutes after nine and it was tonight. Marsha said tonight. But there were other things first and Marsha could wait. It would be all the better for the waiting.

So I got in line behind the other cars and headed uptown. On the edge of the Bronx I turned off and looked for the bar that was one of the addresses Cookie had given me and found it in the middle of the block. I left the engine going while I asked around inside, but neither the bartender nor the manager had seen the eminent Mr. Link so far that night. They obliged with his home address and I thanked them politely even though I already had it.

Toady Link was at home.

Maybe it would be better to say he was occupying his Bronx residence. That's the kind of place it was. All fieldstone and picture windows on a walled-in half-acre of land that would have brought a quarter-million at auction. There were lights on all three floors of the joint and nobody to be seen inside. If it weren't for the new Packard squatting on the drive I would have figured the lights to be burglar protection.

I slid my own heap in at the curb and walked up the gravel to the house and punched the bell. Inside there was a faraway sound of chimes and about a minute later the door opened on a chain and a face looked at me waiting to see what I wanted.

You could see why he was called Toady. It was a big face, bigger around the jowls than it was on top with a pair of protuding eyes that seemed to have trouble staying in their sockets.

I said, "Hello, Toady. Do I get asked in?"

Even his voice was like a damned frog. "What do you want?"

"You maybe."

The frog face cracked into a wide-mouthed smile, a real nasty smile and the chain came off the lock. He had a gun in his hand, a big fat revolver with a hole in the end big enough to get your finger into. "Who the hell are you, bub?"

I took it easy getting my wallet out and flipped it back so he could see the tin. I shouldn't have bothered. His eyes never came off mine at all. I said, "Mike Hammer. Private Investigator, Toady. I think you ought to know me."

"I should?"

"Two of your boys should. They tried to take me."

"If you're looking for them..."

"I'm not. I'm looking for you. About a murder."

The smile got fatter and wider and the hole in the gun looked even bigger when he pointed it at my head. "Get in here," he said.

I did like he said. I stood there in the hall while he locked the door behind me and I could feel the muzzle of that rod about an inch behind my spine. Then he used it to steer me through the foyer into an outsized living room.

That much I didn't mind. But when he lowered the pile of fat he called a body into a chair and left me standing there on the carpet I got a little bit sore. "Let's put the heater away, Toady."

"Let's hear more about this murder first. I don't like people to throw murder in my face, Mr. Investigator. Not even lousy private cops."

Goddamn, that fat face of his was making me madder every second I had to look at it.

"You ever been shot, fat boy?" I asked him.

His face got red up to his hairline.

"I've been shot, fat boy," I said. "Not just once, either. Put that rod away or I'm going to give you a chance to use it. You'll have time to pump out just one slug and if it misses you're going to hear the nastiest noise you ever heard."

I let my hand come up so my fingertips were inside my coat. When he didn't make a move to stop me I knew I had him and he knew it too. Fat boy didn't like the idea of hearing a nasty noise a bit. He let the gun drop on the chair beside him and cursed me with those bug eyes of his for finding out he was as yellow as they come.

It was better that way. Now I liked standing in the middle of the room. I could look down at the fat slob and poke at him with a spear until he told me what I wanted to hear. I said, "Remember William Decker?"

His eyelids closed slowly and opened the same way. His head nodded once, squeezing the fat out under his chin.

"Do you know he's dead?"

"You son of a bitch, don't try tagging me with that!" Now he was a real frog with a real croak.

"He played the ponies, Toady. You were the guy who picked up his bets."

"So what! I pick up a lot of bets."

"I thought you didn't fool around with small-time stuff."

"Balls, he wasn't small-time. He laid 'em big as anybody else. How'd I know how he was operating? Look, you..."

"Shut up and answer questions. You're lucky I'm not a city cop or you'd be doing your talking with a light in your face. Where'd Decker get the dough to lay?"

He relaxed into a sullen frown, his pudgy hands balled into tight fists. "He borrowed it, that's where."

"From Dixie Cooper if you've forgotten." He looked at me and if the name meant anything I couldn't read it in his face. "How much did Decker drop to you?"

"Hell, he went in the hole for a few grand, but don't go trying to prove it. I don't keep books."

"So you killed him."

"Goddamn you!" He came out of the chair and stood there shaking from head to foot. "I gave him that dough back so he could pay off his loan! Understand that? I hate them creeps who can't stand a loss. The guy was ready to pull the Dutch act so I gave him back his dough so's he could pay off."

He stood there staring at me with his eyes hanging out of that livid face of his sucking in his breath with a wheezy rasp. "You're lying, Toady," I said. "You're lying through your teeth." My hands twisted in the lapels of his coat and I pulled him in close so I could spit on him if I felt like it. "Where were you when Decker was killed?"

His hands fought with mine to keep me from choking him. "Here! I was... right here! Let go of me!"

"What about your boys... Nocky and that other gorilla?"

"I don't know where they were. I... didn't have anything to do with that! Goddamn, that's what I get for being a sucker! I should've let them work on the bastard. I should've kept his dough and kicked him out!"

"Maybe they did work over somebody. They had Decker's buddy all lined up for a shellacking until he shook 'em off on me. I thought I taught 'em to keep their noses out of trouble, but I guess I didn't teach 'em hard enough. The guy they were going to give the business to died with a bullet in him the same night. I hear tell those boys work for you, and they weren't out after the guy on their own."

"You... you're crazy!"

"Am I? Who put them on Hooker... you?"

"Hooker?" He worked his head into a frown that wouldn't stick.

"Don't play innocent, damn it. You know who I'm talking about. Mel Hooker. The guy who teamed up with Decker to play the nags."

An oversize tongue made a quick pass over his lips. "He... yeah, I know. Hooker. Nocky and him got in a fight. It was when he picked up his dough and cleared out. He was drunk, see? He started shooting off his mouth about how it was all crooked and he talked enough to keep some dough from coming across the board. That's how it was. Nocky tried to throw him out and he nearly brained him."

"So your boy picked him off?"

"No, no. He wouldn't do that. He was plenty mad, that's why he was laying for him. He didn't knock anybody off. I don't go for that. Ask anybody, they'll tell you I don't go for rough stuff."

I gave him a shove to get him away from me. "For a bookie you're a big-hearted son of a bitch. You're one in a million and, brother, you better be telling the truth, because if you aren't you're going to get a lot of that fat sweated off you. Where's these two mugs?"

"How the hell do I know?"

I didn't play with him this time. I backhanded him across the mouth and did it again when he stumbled away and tried to grab the gun on the chair. His big belly shook so hard he swayed off balance and I gave it to him again. Then he just about fell into the chair and with the rod right under his hand he didn't have the guts to make a play for it.

I asked him again. "Where are they, Toady?"

"They... have rooms over the... Rialto Restaurant."

"Names, Pal."

"Nocky... he's Arthur Cole. The other one's Glenn Fisher." He had to squeeze the words out between lips that were no more than a thin red gash in his face. The marks of my fingers were across his cheek, making them puff out even farther. I could tell that he was hoping I'd turn my back, even for a second. The crazy madness in his eyes made them bulge so far his eyelids couldn't cover them.

I turned my back. I did it when I picked up the phone, but there was a mirror right in front of me and I could stand there and watch him hate me while I thumbed through the directory until I found the number listed under "Cole" and dialed it.

The phone rang, all right, but nobody answered it. Then I called the Rialto Restaurant and went through two waiters before the manager came on and told me that the boys didn't live there any more. They had packed their bags about an hour before, climbed into a cab and scrammed. Yeah, they were all paid up and the management was glad to be rid of them.

I hung up and turned around. "They beat it, Toady."

Link just sat.

"Where'd they go?"

His shoulders hunched into a shrug.

"I have a feeling you're going to die pretty soon, Toady," I said. And after I said it I looked at him until it sank all the way in and put his eyes back in place so the eyelids could get over them. I picked up the gun that lay beside him, flipped out the cylinder and punched the shells into my hand. They were .44's with copper-covered noses that could rip a guy in half. I tossed the empty rod back on the chair beside him and walked out of the room.

Somehow the night smelled cleaner after Toady. The rain was a light mist washing the stink of the swamp away. It shaded part of the monstrous castle the ugly frog sat in as though it were ashamed of it. I looked back at the lights and I could see why they were all on. They were the guy's only friends.

When I got back in my car I drove down to the corner, swung around and came back up the street. Before I got as far as the house the Packard came roaring out of the drive and skidded halfway across the road before it straightened out and went tearing off down the street. I had to laugh because Toady wasn't going anyplace at all. Not driving like that he wasn't. Toady was so goddamn mad he had to take it out on something and tonight the car took the beating.

I would have kept right on going myself if he hadn't left the door wide open so that the light made a streaming yellow invitation down the gravel. I jammed on the brakes and left the car sitting, the motor turning over and picked up the invitation.

The house was Toady's attempt at respectability, but it was only an attempt. The upstairs lights were turned on from switches at the foot of the stairs and only one set of prints showed in the dust that lay over the staircase. There were three bedrooms, two baths and a sitting room on the top floor, a full apartment-sized layout on the second and the only places that had been used were one bedroom and a shower stall. Everything else was neat and dormant, with the dust-mop marks last week's cleaning woman had left. Downstairs the kitchen was a mess of dirty dishes and littered newspapers. The pantry was stocked to take care of a hundred people who never came and the only things in the guest closet were Toady's hat and coat that he hadn't bothered to wear when he dashed out.

I rummaged around in the library and the study without touching anything then went down the cellar and had a drink of private stock at his bar. It was a big place with knotty pine walls rimmed with a couple hundred beer steins that were supposed to give it the atmosphere of a beer garden. Off to one side was the poolroom with the balls neatly racked and gathering more dust. He even had a cigarette machine down there. The butts were on the house and all you had to do was yank the lever, so I had a pack of Luckies on Toady too.

There were two other doors that led off the poolroom. One went into the furnace room and I stepped into a goddamned rattrap that nearly took my toes off. The other was a storeroom and I almost backed out of it when the white clothes that shrouded the stockpile of junk took shape. I found the light switch and turned it on. Instead of an overhead going on, a red light blossomed out over a sink on the end of the wall, turning everything a deep crimson.

The place was a darkroom. Or at least it had been. The stuff hadn't been touched since it was stored here. A big professional camera was folded up under wraps with a lot of movie-screen type backdrops and a couple of wrought-iron benches. The processing chemicals and film plates had rotted away on a shelf next to a box that held the gummy remains of tubes of retouching paints. Off in the corner was a screwy machine of some sort that had its seams all carefully dust-proofed with masking tape.

I put the covers back in place and turned the light off. When I closed the door I couldn't help thinking that Toady certainly tried hard to work up a hobby. In a way I couldn't blame him a bit. For friends all that repulsive bastard had was a lot of toys and dust. The louse was rich as sin with nobody to spend his money on.

I left the door open like I found it and climbed in under the wheel of my heap. I sat there feeling a little finger probing at my mind, trying to jar something into it that should already be there and the finger was still probing away when I got back to Manhattan and started down Riverside Drive.

So damn many little things and none of them added up. Some place between a tenement slum that had belonged to Decker and Toady's dismal swamp castle a killer was whistling his way along the street while I sat trying to figure out what a finger nudging my mind meant.

Lord, I was tired. The smoke in the car stung my eyes and I had to open the window to let it out. What I needed was a long, natural sleep without anything at all to think and dream about, but up there in the man-built cliffs of steel and stone was Marsha and she said she'd wait for me. The back of my head started to hurt again and even the thought of maybe sleeping with somebody who had been a movie star didn't make it go away.

But I went up.

And she was still waiting, too.

Marsha said, "You're late, Mike."

"I know, I'm sorry." She picked the hat out of my hand and waited while I peeled off my coat. When she had them stowed in the closet she hooked her arm under mine and took me inside.

There were drinks all set up and waiting beside a bowl that had held ice but was now all water. The tall red candles had been lit, burned down a few inches, then had been blown out.

"I thought you would have been here earlier. For supper perhaps."

She handed me a cigarette from a long narrow box and followed it with a lighter. When I had my lungs full of smoke I leaned back with my head pillowed against the chair and looked at her close up. She had on a light green dress that swirled up her body, over her shoulder and came down again to a thin leather belt at her waist. The swelling around her eye had gone down and in the soft light of the room the slight purple looked good.

I watched her a second and grinned. "Now I'm nearly sorry I didn't. You're nice to look at, kitten."

"Just half?"

"No. All this time. From top to bottom too."

Her eyes burned softly under long lashes. "I like it when you say it, Mike. You're used to saying it too, aren't you?"

"Only to beautiful women."

"And you've seen plenty of them." The laugh was in her voice now.

I said, "You've got the wrong slant, kid. Pretty is what you mean. Pretty and beautiful are two different things. Only a few women are pretty, but even one who's not so hot to look at can be beautiful. A lot of guys make mistakes when they turn down a beautiful woman for one who's just pretty.

Her eyebrows went up in the slightest show of surprise, letting the fires of her irises leap into plain view. "I didn't know you were a philosopher, Mike."

"There're a lot of things you don't know about me."

She uncurled from the chair and picked up the glasses from the table. "Should I?"

"Uh-huh. They're all bad." I got that look again, the one with the smile around the edges, then she brought in some fresh ice from the kitchen and made a pair of highballs. The one she gave me went down cold and easy, nestling there at the bottom of my stomach with a pleasant, creeping kind of warmth that tiptoed silently throughout my body until it was the nicest thing in the world to just sit there with my eyes half shut and listen to the rain drum against the windows.

Marsha's hand went to the switch on the record payer, flooding the room with the soft tones of the "Blue Danube." She filled the glasses again, then drifted to the floor at my feet, laying her head back against my knees. "Nice?" she asked me.

"Wonderful. I'm right in the mood to enjoy it."

"You still..."

"That's right. Still." I closed my eyes all the way for a minute.

"Sometimes I think I'm standing still too. It's never been like this before."

Her hand found mine and pulled it down to her cheek. I thought I felt her lips brush my fingers, but I wasn't sure. "Do you have the boy yet?"

"Yeah, he's in good hands. Tomorrow or maybe the next day they'll come for him. He'll be all right."

"I wish there was something I could do. Are you sure there isn't? Could I keep him for you?"

"He'd be too much for you. Hell, he's only a little over a year old. I have a nurse for him. She's old, but reliable."

"Then let me take him out for a walk or something. I really do want to help, Mike, honest."

I ran my fingers through the sheen of her hair and across the soft lines of her face. This time I knew it when her lips parted in a kiss on my palm.

"I wish you could, Marsha. I need help. I need something. This whole thing is getting away from me."

"Would it help to tell me about it?"

"Maybe."

"Then tell me."

So I told her. I sat there staring at the ceiling with Marsha on the floor and her head on my knees and I told her about it. I lined up everything from beginning to end and tried to put them together in the right order.

When you strung them out like that it didn't take long to tell. They made a nice neat pile of facts, one on top of the other, but there was nothing there to hold them together. One little push scattered them all over the place. Before I finished my jaws ached from holding my teeth together so tightly.

"Being so mad won't help you think," Marsha said.

"I gotta be mad. Goddamn, you can't go at a thing like this unless you are mad. I never knew much about kids, but when I held the Decker boy in my hands I could see why a guy would give his insides to keep his kid alive. Right there is the thing that screws everything up. Decker knew he was going to die and didn't try to do a single thing about it. Three days before, he knew it was going to happen too. He got all, his affairs put right and waited. God knows what he thought about in those three days."

"It couldn't have been nice."

"Oh, I don't know. I don't get it at all." I rubbed my face disgustedly. "Decker and Hooker tie in with Toady Link and he ties in with Grindle and Teen and it was one of Grindle's boys who shot Decker. There's a connection there if you want to look for one."

"I'm sorry, Mike."

"You don't have to be."

"But I am. In a way it started with me. I keep thinking of the boy."

"It would have been the same if Decker had broken into the other apartment. The guy knew he was going to die... but why? Whether or not he got what he was after he was still planning to die!"

Marsha lifted her face and turned around "Couldn't it have been... a precaution? Perhaps he was planning to run out with the money. In that case he would know there was a possibility that they, might catch up with him. As it was, it turned out to be the same thing. He knew they'd never believe his story about the wrong apartment so he ran anyway, bringing about the same results.".

My eyes felt hot and heavy. "It's crazy as hell. It's a mess no matter how I look at it, but someplace there's an answer and it's lost in my head. I keep trying to work it loose and it won't come. Every time I stop to think about it I can feel it sitting here and if the damn thing was human it would laugh at me. Now I can't even think any more."

"Tired, darling?"

"Yeah."

I looked at her and she looked at me and we were both thinking the same thing. Then her head dropped slowly and her smile had a touch of sadness in it.

"I'm a fool, aren't I?" she said.

"You're no fool, Marsha."

"Mike... have you ever been in love?"

I didn't know how to answer that so I just nodded.

"Was it nice?"

"I thought so." I was hoping she wouldn't ask me any more. Even after five years it hurt to think about it.

"Are you... now?" Her voice was low, almost inaudible. I caught the brief flicker of her eyes as she glanced at my face.

I shrugged. I didn't know what to tell her.

She smiled at her hands and I smiled with her. "That's good," she laughed. Her eyes went bright and happy and she tossed her head so that her hair fell in a glittering dark halo around her shoulders. "I had tonight all planned. I was going to be a fool anyway and make you want me so that you'd keep wanting me."

"It's been like that."

She came up off the floor slowly, gracefully, reaching for my hand to pull me out of the chair. Her mouth was warmer than it should have been. Her body was supple and lovely, like a fluid filling in the gaps between us. I ran my fingers through her hair, pulling her face away while still wanting to keep her crushed against me.

"Why, Marsha?" I asked. "Why me? You know what I'm like. I'm not fancy and I'm not famous and I work for my dough. I'm not in your class at all."

She looked up at me with an expression you don't try to describe. A sleepy expression that wasn't a bit tired. Her hands slid up my back and tightened as she leaned against me. "Let me be a woman, Mike. I don't want those things you say you're not. I've had them. I want all the things you are. You're big and not so handsome, but there's a devil inside you that makes you exciting and tough, yet enough of an angel to make you tender when you have to be."

My hands wanted to squeeze right through her waist until they met and I had to let her go or she would have felt the way they were shaking. I turned around and reached for the bottle and glass on the table and while I was pouring one there was a click and the light dimmed to a pale glow.

Behind me I heard her say softly, "Mike... you never told me whether I was... just pretty or beautiful."

I turned around and was going to tell her that she was the most lovely thing I had ever seen, but her hands did something to her belt and the fold of the dress that came up over one shoulder dropped away leaving her standing there with one hand on the lamp like a half-nude vision and the words got stuck in my throat.

Then the light disappeared altogether and I could only drink the drink quickly, because although the vision was gone it was walking toward me across the night and somewhere on the path there was another whisper of fabric and she was there in my hands without anything to keep her from being a woman now, an invisible, naked dream throwing a mantle of desire around us both that had too great a strength to break and must be burned through by a fire that leaped and danced and towered in a blazing crescendo that could only be dampened and never extinguished.

And when the mantle was thrown back I left the dream there in the dark, warm and soft, breathing quickly to tell me that it was a dream that would come back on other nights too, disturbing and at the same time satisfying.

She was beautiful. She was pretty, too.

She was in my mind all the way home.

Chapter Six