The Big Kill

At a quarter past ten I got up, dressed and made myself some breakfast. Right in the middle of it the phone rang and when I answered it the operator told me to hold on for a call from Miami. Velda's husky voice was a pleasure to hear again. She said, "Mike?"

And I said, "Hello, sweetheart. How's everything?"

"Fine. At least it's partly fine. Our boy got out on a plane, but he left all the stuff behind. The insurance investigator is here making an inventory of the stuff now."

"Great, great. Try to promote yourself a bonus if you can."

"That wouldn't be hard," she laughed. "He's already made a pass. Mike, miss me?"

I felt like a heel, but I wasn't lying when I said, "Hell yes, I miss you."

"I don't mean as a business partner."

"Neither do I, kitten."

"You won't have to miss me long. I'm taking the afternoon train out."

My fingers started batting out dots and dashes on the table. I wanted her back but not too soon. I didn't want anybody else climbing all over me. "You stay there," I told her. "Stay on that guy's tail. You're still on salary from the company and if you can get a line on him now they'll cut us in for more business later. They're as interested in him as they are in recovering the stuff."

"But, Mike, the Miami police are doing all they can."

"Where'd he hop to?"

"Some place in Cuba. That's where they lost him."

"Okay, get over to Cuba then. Take a week and if it's no dice forget it and come on home."

She didn't say anything for a few seconds. "Mike... is something wrong up there?"

"Don't be silly."

"You sound like it. If you're sending me off..."

"Look, kid," I cut her off, "you'd know about it if anything was wrong. I just got up and I'm kind of sleepy yet. Be a good girl and stay on that case, will you?"

"All right. Love me?"

"You'll never know," I said.

She laughed again and hung up. She knew. Women always know.

I went back and finished my breakfast, had a smoke then turned on the faucet in the bathroom sink to bring the hot water up. While I shaved I turned on the radio and picked up the commentator who was just dropping affairs in Washington to get back to New York and as far as he was concerned the only major problem of the day was the District Attorney's newest successes in the gambling probe. At some time last night a series of raids had been carried out successfully and the police dragnet had brought in some twenty-five persons charged with bookmaking. He gave no details, but hinted that the police were expecting to nail the kingpins in the near future.

When I finished shaving I opened my door and took the tabloid out of the knob to see what the press had to say about it. The front page carried the pictures of those gathered in the roundup with appropriate captions while the inside double spread had a layout showing where the bookies had been operating.

The editorial was the only column that mentioned Ed Teen at all. It brought out the fact that Teen's personal staff of lawyers were going to bat for the bookies. At the same time the police were finding that a lot of witnesses were reluctant to speak up when it came to identifying the boys who took their money or paid off on wins, places and shows. At the end of the column the writer came right out with the charge that Lou Grindle had an organization specially adept at keeping witnesses from talking and demanded that the police throw some light on the subject.

I went through the paper again to make sure I didn't miss anything, then folded it up and stuck it in the bottom of my chair until I got around to reading it. Then I went downstairs and knocked on the door of the other apartment and stood there with my hat in my hands until the door opened and the nurse said, "Good morning, Mr. Hammer. Come on in."

"I can only stay a minute. I want to see how the kid is."

"Oh, he's a regular boy. Right now he's trying to see what's inside the radio."

I walked in behind her to the living room where the kid was doing just that. He had the extension cord in his fists and the set teetered on the edge of the table a hair away from complete ruin. I got there first and grabbed the both of them.

The kid knew me, all right. His face was sunny with a big smile and he shoved his hand inside my coat and then chattered indignantly when I pulled it out. "How's the breakage charge coming?"

"We won't count that," the nurse said. "As a matter of fact, he's been much better than I expected."

I held the kid out where I could look at him better. "There's something different about him."

"There ought to be. I gave him a haircut." I put him back on the floor where he hung on my leg and jabbered at me. "He certainly likes you," she said.

"I guess I'm all he's got. Need anything?"

"No, we're getting along fine."

"Okay, anything you want just get." I bent down and ruffled the kid's hair and he tried to climb up my leg. He yelled to come with me so I had, to hand him back and wave good-by from the door. He was so damn small and pathetic-looking I felt like a heel for stranding him, but I promised myself I'd see that he got a lot of attention before he was dropped into some home for orphans.

The first lunch shift was just hitting the streets when I got to Pat's office. The desk man called ahead to see if he was still in and told me to go right up. A couple of reporters were coming out of the room still jotting down notes and Pat was perched on the edge of a desk fingering a thick Manila folder.

I closed the door behind me and he said, "Hi Mike."

"Making news?"

"Today we're heroes. Tomorrow we'll be something else again."

"So the D.A.'s making out. Did you find the hole?"

He turned around slowly, his face expressionless. "No, if that cop is passing out the word then he wised up. Nothing went out on this deal at all."

"How could he catch on?"

"He's been a cop a long time. He's been staked out often enough to spot it when he's being watched himself."

"Did he mention it?"

"No, but his attitude has changed. He resents the implication apparently."

"That's going to make pretty reading. Now the papers'll call for the D.A. to make a full-scale investigation of the whole department, I suppose."

"The D.A. doesn't know a damn thing about it. You keep it to yourself too. I'm handling the matter myself. If it is the guy there's no sense smearing the whole department. We still aren't sure of it, you know."

He tossed the folder on top of the filing cabinet and sat down behind the desk with a sigh. There were tired lines around his eyes and mouth, little lines that had been showing up a lot lately.

I said, "What came of the roundup?"

"Oh, hell, Mike." He glanced at me with open disgust, then realized that I wasn't handing him a dig. "Nothing came of it. So we closed down a couple of rooms. We got a hatful of small-timers who will probably walk right out of it or draw minimum sentences. Teen's a smart operator. His lawyers are even smarter. Those boys know all the angles there are to know and if there are any new ones they think them up.

"Teen's a real cutie. You know what I think? He's letting us take some of his boys just to keep the D.A. happy and get a chance to put in a bigger fix."

"I don't get it," I said.

"Look, Teen pays for protection. That is, if it takes money to keep his racket covered. If it takes muscle he uses Lou Grindle. But supposing it does take dough... then all the chiselers, petty politicians and maybe even the big shots who are taking his dough are going to want more to keep his personal fix in because things are getting tougher. Okay, he pays off, and the more those guys rake in the deeper in they are too. Suddenly they realize that they can't afford to let Teen get taken or they'll go along with him, so they work overtime to keep the louse clean."

"Nice."

"Isn't it though?" He sat there tapping his fingers on the desk, then: "Mike, for all you've heard, read and seen of Ed Teen, do you know what we actually have on him?"

"Tell me."

"Nothing. Not one damn thing. Plenty of suspicions, but you don't take suspicions to court. We know everything he's hooked up with and we can't prove a single part of it. I've been upside down for a month backtracking over his life trying to tie him into something that happened a long time ago and for all I've found you could stuff in your ear." Pat buried his face in his hands and rubbed his eyes.

"Have you had time to do anything about Decker and Hooker?"

At least it made him smile a little. "I haven't been upside down that long, Pal," he said. "I was going to call you on that. Routine investigation turned up something on Hooker. For the last four months he made bank deposits of close to a thousand bucks each time. They apparently came in on the same date and were all for the same amount, though he spent a little of each wad before he deposited it. That sort of ties in with your story about him hitting the winning ponies."

I rolled a cigarette between my fingers slowly then stuck it in my mouth. "How often were the deposits made?"

"Weekly. Regular as pie."

"And Decker?"

"Clean. I had four men cover every minute of his time as far back as they could go. As far as we could find out he didn't even associate with any shady characters. The kind of people who vouched for him were the kind who knew what they were talking about too. Incidentally, I talked to his parish priest personally. He's made all the arrangements for the boy and cleared them with the authorities, so he'll pick him up at the end of the week."

He stopped and watched my face a moment. The silence was so thick you could slice it with a knife. "All right, now what are you thinking, Mike?"

I let a lazy cloud of smoke sift up toward the ceiling. "It might scare you," I said.

The tired lines got deeper when his mouth clamped shut. "Yeah? Scare me then."

"Maybe you've been closer to nailing Teen than you thought, chum."

His fingers stopped their incessant tapping.

"After Decker was killed a lot of awfully funny things started to happen. Before they didn't seem to make much sense, but just because you can't actually see what's holding them together doesn't mean that they're not there. Wouldn't it be a scream if the guy who killed Decker could lead you to Teen?"

"Yeah, I'd laugh myself sick." Now Pat's eyes were just thin shiny slits in his head.

I said, "Those bank deposits of Hooker's weren't wins. Hooker was being paid off to do something. You got any idea what it was?"

"No," sullenly.

"I'd say he was being paid to see that a certain guy was put in a certain spot where he was up the creek."

"Damn it, Mike, quit talking in riddles!"

"Pat, I can't. It's still a puzzle to me, too, but I can tell you this. You've been routine on this case all, along. It's been too small-time to open up on but I think you'd damn well better open up on it right now because you're sitting on top of the thing that can blow Teen and his racket all to hell. I don't know how or why... yet. But I know it's there and before very long I'm going to find the string that's holding it together. As far as Ed Teen's concerned I don't care what happens to him, only someplace in there is the guy who made an orphan out of a nice little kid and he's the one I want. You can take it for what it's worth or I can go it alone. Just don't shove the Decker kill down at the bottom of the page and hope something turns up on it because you think grabbing Teen is more important."

He started to come up out of his chair and his face was strictly cop without tired lines anymore. He got all set to give me the business, then, like turning on the light, the scowl and the tired lines went away and he sat back smiling a little with that excited, happy look I hadn't seen him wear for so long.

"What's it about, Mike?"

"I think the Decker murder got away from somebody. It was supposed to be nice and clean and didn't happen that way."

"What else?"

"A lot of scrambled facts that are going to get put right fast if you help out. Then I'll give it to you so there's sense to it."

"You know, you're damn lucky I know what makes you tick, Mike. If you were anybody else I'd hammer out every last bit of information you have. I'm only sorry you didn't get on the force while you were still young enough."

"I don't like the hours. The pay either."

"No," he grinned, "you'd sooner work for free and get me all hopped up whenever you feel like it. You and the D.A. Okay, spill it. What do you need?"

"A pair of private detectives named Arthur Cole and Glenn Fisher."

He jotted the names down and stared at them blankly a second. "Nocky... ?"

"That's Cole."

"You should have given me their names before."

"I didn't know them before."

He reached out and flipped the switch on the intercom. "Tell Sergeant McMillan to come in a moment, please.

A voice rasped that it would and while we waited Pat went to the filing cabinet and pawed through the drawers until he had what he wanted. He tossed the stuff in my lap as a thick-set plain-clothesman came in chewing on a dead cigar.

Pat said, "Sergeant, this is Mike Hammer."

The cop shifted his cigar and held out his hand. I said, "Glad to know you."

"Same here. Heard lots about you, Mike."

"Sergeant McMillan has the inside information on the up-town boys," Pat said. He turned to the plain-clothesman with, "What do you know about two supposedly private detectives named Cole and Fisher?"

"Plenty. Fisher lost his license about a month ago. What do you want to know?"

Pat raised his eyebrows at me. "Background stuff," I said.

"The guys are hoods, plain and simple. Especially Fisher. You ever see them?"

I nodded. Pat pointed to the folder in my lap and I pulled out a couple of candid shots taken during a strike-breaking melee on the docks. My boys were right there in the foreground swinging billies.

The cop said, "They're troublemakers. About a year ago somebody with a little pull had them tagged with badges so what they did would be a little bit legal. Neither one of 'em have records, but they've been pulled in a few times for minor offenses. Brawling mostly. They'll work for anybody who pays off. You want me to put out a call for 'em, Captain?"

"What about it, Mike?" Pat asked.

"It wouldn't be a bad idea, but you won't find them in New York. Stick them on the teletype and see if they aren't holing up in another city. You might try alerting the railroads dicks to keep an eye out for them. They skipped out last night and might still be traveling. Cole has a broken hand and Fisher's face is a mess. They ought to be easy to identify."

"You want to do that, sergeant?"

He nodded at Pat. "I have everything I need. They shouldn't be too hard to trace." He said so-long to me and went back the way he came.

Pat picked the photo up and studied it. "What's with these two?"

"They worked for Toady Link." Pat's head came up quickly. "They were on to Hooker for some reason until I started buzzing the guy, then they went into me. I didn't get the pitch in time or Hooker might still be alive. Last night I paid a visit to our friend Link and he was happy to tell me who the boys were."

"Mike, damn it."

"If you're wondering how I found out who they were when the cops didn't know... I have a friend who gets around. With blondes."

"I'm not wondering that at all! I'm wondering how the hell I could have been so negligent or stupid, whatever you want to call it." He grinned wryly. "I used to be a bright boy. A year ago I would have seen the connection or let you talk me into something a lot sooner. Everything you do is tying right in with this Teen affair. Did you know that we had Link slated to go through the mill this week?"

"No."

"Well, we had. He and four others. While the D.A.'s been getting pushed around he's been doing one, hell of a job on the organization's working men. Toady's about a month away from a man-sized stretch up the river. Every move you make you step on my toes."

"Why didn't you pick it up sooner?"

"Because it's no novelty to be tied up with Teen or Grindle, especially when there's money or murder concerned. Some of the help those two employ have turned up on more than one offense. It wasn't too difficult to suppose that Basil was just out for extra cash when he went in on that robbery and shot Decker afterward."

"Are you positive that he's the one who did the shooting?"

"As positive as the paraffin test. Of course, he may have discharged the bullet prior to the killing, but if he did I don't know where. If this Decker thing has even the slightest tie-up with the boys we want then we'll get to it."

"Hang on, Pat. I'm not saying that it has."

"I'll damn soon find out."

I tried to be unconcerned as I pulled on my smoke. "How about letting me find out for you. So far Decker has been my party."

"Nix, Mike. I know what you want. All you have in your head is the idea that you want to tangle with that killer. Not this time. Taking that one guy out of play could screw up this whole thing so nicely we'll be left with nothing at all."

"Okay, Pal," I grinned, "go right to it. Just try to get an identification out of me. Just try it."

"Mike.

"Aw, nuts, Pat. I'm as critical to this thing as those two mugs are. It was me who saw them and me who pushed them around. Without my say-so you don't have a thing to haul them in on. You're taking all the gravy for yourself... or at least you're trying to."

"What do you want, Mike?"

"I want three or four days to make my own play. Things are just beginning to look up. I'd like a file on Toady Link too."

"That's impossible. The D.A. has it classified top secret. That's out."

"Can't you get it, kid?"

"Nope. That would mean an explanation and I'm not giving blue boy a chance to climb up my back again."

"Well, hell... do you know anything about the guy at all?"

He leaned back in the chair and shook his head slowly. "Probably no more than you, know, Mike. I haven't done anything more than listen in and supply a little information I had when Toady's name came up. The D.A. had his own men doing the legwork."

I looked out the window and while I watched the people on the roof across the street Pat studied my face and studied it hard. I could feel his eyes crawl across me and make everything I was thinking into thoughts and words of his own.

He said, "You're thinking Toady Link's the last step in the chain, aren't you?"

I nodded.

"Spell it out for me."

So I spelled it out. I said, "Big-money boys like to splurge. They say they go for wine, women and song but whoever said it forgot to add the ponies too. Go out to the races and take a look around. Take a peek at the limousines and convertibles and the bank rolls that own them."

"So?"

"So there was a big-money boy named Marvin Holmes who likes his blondes fast and furious and very much on hand. He spends his dough like water and keeps plenty of it locked up in a safe on his wall. He plays the nags through a bookie named Toady Link and doesn't like the way the ponies run so he won't pay off his bet. He's too big to push around, but Link can't take a welch so he looks around for a way to get his dough. Somebody tips him about a former safe expert named Decker, but the guy is honest and wants to stay that way. Okay so Toady waits until the guy needs dough. He finds out who his friend is... a guy named Mel Hooker, and pays him to steer Decker his way. They use a rigged-up deal to make it look like they're winning a pot and everybody is happy. Then Decker goes in over his head. He borrows from a loan shark to make the big kill and loses everything. That's where the pressure starts. He's not a big shot and he's got a kid and he's an easy mark to push around. He knows what happens on this loan-shark deal and he's scared, so when Toady comes up with the proposition of opening a safe... a simple little thing like that... Decker grabs it, takes a pay-off from Link to keep the shark off his neck and goes to it.

"It would have been fine if Decker had hit the right apartment, but he made a mistake he couldn't afford. He had to take a powder. Maybe he had even planned on taking a powder and arranged for his kid to be taken care of if things didn't go right. I don't know about that. He had something planned anyway. The only trouble was that he didn't plan well enough, or the guys who went out with him in the job were too sharp. They had him cold. Basil shot him then went over him for the dough. He must have yelled out that Decker was clean just before I started shooting. When he went down the driver couldn't afford to let him be taken alive and ran over him.

"Just take it from there... he already knew where Decker lived and thought that maybe when he went back for his kid he stashed the dough he was supposed to have. The guy searched the place and couldn't find it. Then he got the idea that maybe Basil had been too hurried when he searched Decker's corpse... but I had been right there and figured that I wouldn't overlook picking up a pile from a corpse if I got the chance. So while I was out my apartment was searched and I came back in time to catch the guy at it. I was in too damn much of a hurry and he beat the hell out of me.

"Now let's suppose it was Toady. Two guys are dead and he can be right in line for the hot seat if somebody gets panicky and talks. After all, Hooker didn't know the details of the kill so he could have thought that Toady was getting him out of the way to keep him from talking. That puts him in the same spot and he's scared stiff. Evidently he did have one run-in with the tough boys before and carried the scar around on his face to prove it.

"So Hooker spots two of Toady's boys and gets the jumps. They're sticking around waiting for the right spot to stick him. When Hooker got confidential with me they must have thought that Mel was asking for protection or trying to get rid of what I knew so they tried to take me. They muffed that one and went back to get Hooker. They didn't muff that one.

"Up to there Toady didn't have too much to worry about, but, when I showed my face he got scared. Just before that he packed his boys out of town because he couldn't afford to have them around, so if we can get them back we ought to finger Toady without any trouble at all. Not the least little bit of trouble."

There was a silence that lasted for a full minute and I could hear Pat breathing and my own watch ticking. Pat said, "That's supposing you got all this dealt out right."

"Uh-huh."

"We can find out soon enough." He picked up the phone and said, "Give me an outside line, please," and while he waited riffled through the phone book. I heard the dial tone come on and Pat fingered out a number. The phone ringing on the other end made a faraway hum. Then it stopped. "I'd like to speak to Mr. Holmes," Pat said. "This is Captain Chambers, Homicide, speaking."

He sat there and frowned at the wall while he listened, then put the receiver back too carefully. "He's gone, Mike. He left for South America with one of his blondes yesterday morning."

"That's great," I said. My voice didn't sound like me at all.

Pat's mouth got tight around the corners. "That's perfect. It proves your point. The guy isn't too big to push around after all. Somebody's scared him right out of the city. You called every goddamn move right on the nose."

"I hope so."

I guess he didn't like the way I said it.

"It looks good to me."

"It looks too good. I wish we had the murder weapons to back it up."

"Metal doesn't rot out that fast. If we get those two we'll get the gun and we'll get Toady too. It doesn't matter which one we get him for."

"Maybe. I'd like to know who drove the car that night."

"Toady certainly wouldn't do it himself."

I stopped watching the people on the roof across the way and turned my face toward Pat. "I'm thinking that he did, Pat. If it was the kind of haul he expected he wasn't going to let it go through a few hands before it got back to him. Yeah, feller, I think I'll tag Toady with this one."

"Not you, Mike... we'll tag him for it. The police. The public. Justice. You know."

"Want to bet?"

Suddenly he wasn't my friend any more. His eyes were too gray and his face was too bland and I was the guy in the chair who was going to keep answering questions until he was done with me. Or that's what he thought.

I said, "A few minutes ago I asked you if you'd like to nail the whole batch of them at once."

"So there's more to it?"

"There could be. Lots more. Only if I get a couple extra days first."

Something you might call a smile threw a shadow around his mouth. "You know what will happen to me if you mess things up?"

"Do you know what will happen to me?"

"You might get yourself killed."

"Yeah."

"Okay, Mike, you got your three days. God help you if you get in a jam because I won't."

He was lying both times and I knew it. I'd no more get three days than he'd give me a boot when I needed a hand, but I played it like I didn't catch the drift and got up out of my chair. He was sitting there with the same expression when I closed the door, but his hand had already started to reach for the phone.

I went down the corridor to where a bunch of typewriters were banging out a madhouse symphony and asked one of the stenos where I could find Ellen Scobie. She told me that she had gone out to lunch at noon and was expected back that afternoon, but I might still find her in the Nelson Steak House if I got over there right away.

It took me about ten minutes to make the four blocks and there was Ellen in the back looking more luscious than the oversize T-bone steak she was gnawing on.

She saw me and waved and I wondered what it was going to cost who to get hold of that file on Toady Link.

It made nice wondering.

Chapter Seven

She was all in black, but without Ellen inside it the dress would have been nothing. The sun had kissed her skin into a light toast color, dotting the corner of her eyes with freckles. Her hair swept back and down, caressing her bare shoulders whenever she moved her head.

She said, "Hello, man."

I slid in across the table. "Did you eat yourself out of company?"

"Long ago. My poor working friends had to get back to the office."

"What about you?"

"You are enjoying the sight of a woman enjoying the benefits of working overtime when the city budget doesn't allow for unauthorized pay. They had to give me the time off. Want something to eat?"

A waitress sneaked up behind me and poised her pencil over her pad. "I'll have a beer and a sandwich. Ham. Plenty of mustard and anything else you can squeeze on."

Ellen made a motion for another coffee and went back to the remains of the steak. I had my sandwich and beer without benefit of small talk until we were both finished and relaxing over a smoke.

She was nice to look at. Not because she was pretty all over, but because there was something alive about everything she did. Now she was propped in the corner of the booth with one leg half up on the bench grinning because the girl across the way was talking her head off to keep her partner's attention. The guy was trying, but his eyes kept sliding over to Ellen every few seconds.

I said, "Give the kid a break, will you?"

She laughed lightly, way down in her throat, then leaned on the table and cupped her chin in her hands. "I feel real wicked when I do things like that."

"Your friends must love you."

"Ooh," her mouth made a pouty little circle, "... they do. The men, I mean. Like you, Mike. You came in here especially to see me. You find me so attractive that you can't stay away." She laughed again.

"Yeah," I said. "I even dream about you."

"Like hell."

"No kidding, I mean it."

"I can picture you going out of your way for a woman. I'd give my right arm to hear you say that in a different tone of voice, though. There's something about you that fascinates me. Now that we have the love-making over with, what do I have that you want?

I shouldn't have let my eyes do what they did.

"Besides that, I mean," she said.

"Your boss has a certain file on Toady Link. I want a look at it."

Her hands came together to cover her eyes. "I should have known. I spend every waking hour making myself pretty for you, hoping that you'll pop in on me and when you do you ask me to climb up a cloud."

"Well?"

"It's... well, it's almost impossible, Mike."

"Why?"

Her eyes drifted away from mine reluctantly. "Mike, I..."

"It isn't exactly secret information with me, Ellen. Pat told me about the D.A. getting ready to wrap Link up in a gray suit."

"Then he should have told you that those files are locked and under guard. He doesn't trust anybody."

"He trusts you."

"And if I get caught doing a thing like that I'll not only lose this job and never be able to get another one, but I'll get a gray suit too. I don't like the color." She reached out and plucked a Lucky from my pack and toyed with it before accepting the light I held out.

"I only want a look at it, kid. I don't want to steal the stuff and I won't pass the information along to anybody."

"Please, Mike."

I bent the match in my fingers and threw it on my plate. "Okay, okay. Maybe I'm asking too damn much. You know what the score is as well as I do. Everything is so almighty secret with the D.A. that he doesn't know what he has himself. If he'd open up on what he knows he'd get a little more action out of the public. Right now he's trying to squelch the big-time gambling in the city and what happens? Everybody thinks it's funny. By God, if they had a look behind the scenes at what's been going on because of the same gambling they condone they'd think twice about it. They ought to take a look at a corpse with some holes punched in it. They ought to take a look at some widows crying at a funeral or a kid who was made an orphan crying for his father who's one of the corpses."

The cigarette had burned down in her fingers without being touched, the long ash drooping wearily, ready to fall. Ellen's eyes were bright and smoky at the same time; languid eyes that hid the thoughts behind them.

"I'll get it for you, Mike."

I waited and saw the richness of her lips grow richer with a smile.

"But it'll cost you," she said.

I didn't get it for a second. "Cost me what?"

"You."

And that thing on my spine started crawling around again.

She reached out for my hand and covered it with hers. "Mike... you're only incidental in the picture this time. It's the only way I'll ever be able to get you and it's worth it even if I have to buy you. But it's because of what you said that I'm doing it."

There was something new about her, something I hadn't noticed before. I said, "You'll never have to buy me, Ellen."

It was a long minute before I could take my eyes off her face and get rid of the thing chasing up my back. The waitress dropped the check on the table and I put down a bill to cover them both and told her to keep the change. When we came out of the booth together the guy across the room looked at me enviously and Ellen longingly. His lunch date looked relieved.

We went back to the street and got as far as the bar on the corner. Ellen stopped me and nodded toward the door. "Wait here for me. I can't go back upstairs or somebody's likely to think it peculiar."

"Then how are you going to get the file out?"

"Patty--my short and stout roommate, if you remember--is on this afternoon. I'll call her and have her take them when she leaves this evening. The way my luck runs, if I took them any earlier he'd pick just this day to want to see them."

"That's smart," I agreed. "You know her well enough so there won't be a hitch, don't you?"

She made an impatient gesture with her hand. "Patty owes me more favors than I can count. I've never asked her for anything before and I had might as well start now. I'll be back in about ten minutes. Stay at the bar and wait for me, will you?"

"Sure. Then what?"

"Then you're going to take me to the races. Little Ellen cleans up today."

I gave her my fattest smile and jingled a pocketful of coins. "Pat told me about that. You're not going to be selfish about the thing, are you?"

"I think we're both going to have a profitable day, Mike," she said impishly. She wasn't talking about money, either. I watched her cross the street and admired her legs until she was out of sight, then went into the bar and ordered a beer.

The television was tuned to the game in Brooklyn and the bets were flowing heavy and fast. I stayed out of the general argument and put my beer away. A tall skinny guy came in and stood next to me and did the same thing himself. A kid came in peddling papers and I bought one before the bartender told him to scram and quit annoying the customers.

But it didn't do any good. The guys on my left were arguing batting averages and one poked me to get my opinion. I said he was right and the other guy started jawing again and appealed to the tall skinny guy. He shrugged and tapped his ear, then took a hearing aid out of his shirt pocket and made indications that it wasn't working. He was lucky. They turned back to me again, spotted my paper and I handed it over to settle the argument., The one guy still wouldn't give in and I was about to become the backstop of a beautiful brawl.

But Ellen walked in just then and baseball switched to sex in whispers. I got her out so they could see her going away and really have something to talk about.

She cuddled up under my arm all the way back to the car and climbed in next to me looking cool and lovely and very pleased with herself. When I had about as much silence as I could take I asked, "Did it work out?"

"Patty was glad to help out. She was a little nervous about it, but she said she'd wait until everyone had cleared out and put it in her briefcase. She's taking some work home with her tonight and it shouldn't be hard to do at all."

"Good girl."

"Don't I deserve a kiss for effort?" She timed it as the light turned red.

Her mouth wasn't as cool as it looked. It was warm, a nice soft, live warmth with a delicate spicy sweetness that was excited into a heady wine by the tip of her tongue.

Then the car behind me blasted that the light was green again and I had to put my cup of wine down not fully tasted.

I hit three winners that afternoon. The two of us crowded the railing and yelled our heads off to push the nags home and when the last one slowed up in the stretch my heart slowed up with it because I had a parlay riding on his nose that was up in four figures. Fifty yards from the finish the jock laid on the whip and he crossed the line leading by a nostril.

Ellen shook my arm. "You can open your eyes now. He won."

I checked the board to make sure and there it was in big square print. I looked at the tickets that had gotten rolled up in the palm of my hand. "I'll never do that again! How the hell do the guys who bet all their lives stand this stuff! You know what I just won?"

"About four thousand dollars, didn't you?"

"Yeah, and before this I worked for a living." I smoothed out the pasteboards with my thumb and forefinger. "You ought to be a millionaire, kitten."

"I'm afraid not.

"Why? You cleaned up today, didn't you?"

"Oh, I did very well."

"So?"

"I don't like the color of the money."

"It's green, isn't it? You got a better color than that?"

"I have a cleaner kind of green," she said. Her body seemed to stiffen with a tension of some sort, drawing her hands into tight little fists. "You know why I like to see the Scobie horses win. It's the only way and the best way I can get back at my father. Just because of me he tries to run them under other colors, but I always learn about it before the races. He pays me a living whether he wants to or not and it hurts him right where he should be hurt. However, it's still money that came from him, even if it was indirectly given, and I don't want any part of it."

"Well, if you're going to throw it away, I'll take it."

"It doesn't get thrown away. You'll see where it goes."

We walked back to the ticket window and picked up a neat little pile of brand-new bills. They felt crisp as new lettuce and smelled even better. I folded mine into my wallet and stowed it away with a fond pat on the leather and started thinking of a lot of things that needed buying bad. Ellen threw hers in the wallet as if it happened every day. Thinking about it like that put a nasty buzz in my head.

"Why can't somebody follow you play for play? If anybody used your system and put a really big bundle down the odds would go skittering all over the place."

She gave me a faint smile and took my hand going up the ramp to the gate. "It doesn't work that way, Mike. All Scobie horses don't win by a long sight. It just happens that I know the ones that will win. It isn't that I'm a clever handicapper either.

Dad has a trainer working for him who taught me all I know about horses. Whenever a winner is coming up I'm notified about it and place my bets."

"That's all there is to it?"

"That's all. Once the papers did a piece about it and according to them I did all the picking and choosing. I let them get the idea just to infuriate the old boy! It worked out fine."

"You're a screwball," I said. She looked hurt. "But you're nice," I added. She squeezed my arm and rubbed her face against my shoulder.

On the way back to the city the four G's in my pocket started burning through and it was all I could do to keep it there and let it burn. I wanted to stop off at the fanciest place we could find and celebrate with a drink, but Ellen shook her head and made me drive over to the East Side, pointing out the directions every few minutes.

Everything was going fine until we got stuck behind a truck and I had a chance to see where we were. Then everything wasn't so fine at all. There was a run-down bar with the glass cracked across the center facing the sidewalk. The door opened and a guy walked out, and before it shut again the familiarity of it came back with a rush and I could smell the rain and the beer-soaked sawdust and almost see a soggy little guy kissing his kid good-by.

My throat went dry all of a sudden and I breathed a curse before I wrenched the wheel and sent the heap screaming around the truck to get the hell out of the neighborhood.

We went straight ahead for six blocks, then Ellen said, "Turn right at the next street and stop near the corner."

I did as I was told and parked between a beer truck and a dilapidated sedan. She opened the door and stepped out, looking back at me expectantly. "Coming, Mike?"

I said okay and got out myself.

Then she walked me into a settlement house that was a resurrected barn or something. The whole business took about five minutes. I got introduced to a pair of nice old ladies, a clergyman and a cop who was having a cup of tea with the old ladies. Everybody was all smiles and joy and when Ellen gave one of the women a juicy wad of bills I thought they were going to cry.

Ellen, it seemed, practically supported the establishment.

I had a chance to look through the door at a mob of raggedy kids playing in the gym and I got rid of a quarter of the bundle of my wallet. I avoided a lot of thanks and got back to the car as fast as I could and looked at Ellen like I hadn't seen her before.

"Boy, am I a big-hearted slob," I said.

She laughed once and leaned over and kissed me. This time I had a long sip of the wine before she took my cup away. "It was worth it at that," I mused.

"You know something, Mike... you're not such a heel. I mean, such a very big heel."

I told her not to come to any hasty conclusions and backed the car out. It was a quarter to six and both of us were pretty hungry, so I drove up Broadway to a lot, left the car and walked back to a place that put out good food as well as good dinner music. While we waited for our orders Ellen bummed a nickel from me and went back to the phone booth to call Patty.

I could hardly wait for her to sit down again. "Get her?"

"Uh-huh. Everything's all set. Most of the office crew have left already. She'll leave the stuff at the house for us."

"Could we meet her somewhere? It would save time."

"Too risky. I'd rather not. Patty seemed a little jittery on the phone and I doubt if she'd like it either. I only hope they can be put back as easily as they're taken out."

"You won't have any trouble." Maybe. I didn't put enough conviction in my voice, because she just looked at me and bent down to her salad. I said, "Now quit worrying. There won't be anything there that I couldn't find out if I had the time to look for it."

"All right, Mike, it's just that I've never done anything like that before. I won't worry."

She wrinkled her nose at me and dug into her supper.

It was eight-ten when we left the place. A thunderhead was moving up over Jersey blotting out the stars, replacing them with the dull glow of sheet lightning. I let Ellen pick up a couple quarts of beer while I rolled the car out and met her on the corner. She hopped in as the first sprinkle of rain tapped on the roof.

Sidewalks that were just damp a moment before took on a black sheen of water and drained it off into the gutter. Even with the wipers swatting furiously like a batter gone mad I could hardly see out. The car in front of me was a wavering shadow with one sick red eye, the neon signs and window fronts on either side just a ghostly parade of colors.

It was another night like that first one. The kind that made you run anywhere just to get away from it. You could see the vague shapes that were people huddled under marquees and jammed into doorways, the braver making the short dash to waiting cabs and wishing they hadn't.

By the time we reached Ellen's apartment it had slacked off into a steady downpour without the electrical fury that turned the night into a noisy, deafening day.

A doorman with an oversize umbrella led Ellen into the foyer and came back for me. Once we were out of it we could laugh. I was only making sloshing noises with my shoes but Ellen had gotten rained on down the back and her dress was plastered against her skin like a postage stamp. Going up in the elevator she stood with her back against the wall and edged sidewise after making me walk ahead of her.

I was going to knock first, but she poked her key in the lock and waved me inside.

"Nobody home?"

"Don't be silly. Tonight's date night... or haven't you noticed the couples arm in arm dashing for shelter."

"Yeah." I kicked my shoes off and carried them out to the kitchen. Ellen dumped the beer on the table and showed me where the glasses were.

"Pour me, Mike. I'll be back as soon as I get these wet things off."

"Hurry up."

She grinned at me and waltzed out while I was uncorking the bottles. I just finished topping the glasses off when she waltzed right back in again wrapped up in a huge terrycloth bathrobe, rubbing the rain out of her hair with a towel.

I handed her a glass and we clinked them in a toast we didn't speak. I drank without taking my eyes from hers, watching the deep blue swirl into a smoky gray that seemed to come up from the depths of a fire.

It got to be a little more than I could take. She knew it when I said, "Let's look at the files, Ellen."

"All right." She tucked the bottle under her arm and I trailed after her into the living room. A large console set took up a corner of the room and she pulled it away from the wall and worked her hand into the opening.

"Your private safe?"

"For intimate letters, precious nylons and anything else a nosy cleaning woman might take home with her."

She pulled out another of those Manila folders held together with a thick rubber band and handed it to me. My hand started to shake when I worked the band off it. The thing snapped and flew across the room.

I took it sitting down. I reached in and pulled out a stack of official reports, four photographs and more affidavits than I could count. I spread them out across the coffee table and scanned them to see what I could pick up, laying the discards on top of the empty folder. When I tried to do it carefully I got impatient, and when I went faster I got clumsy and knocked the whole batch on the floor. Ellen picked them up and sorted them out again and I went on from there.

I was cursing myself and the whole damn mess long before I was finished because it was ending in a blank, a goddamn stone wall with nothing there but a fat ha-ha and to hell with you, bub. My hand went out of its own accord and spilled everything all across the room while Ellen let out a little scream and stepped back with her hand to her mouth.

"Mike!"

"I'm sorry, kid. It's a dud. Goddamn it, there's not a thing in there!"

"Oh, Mike... it can't be! The D.A. has been working on that a month!"

"Sure, trying to tangle Link up in that lousy gambling probe of his. So he proves he's a bookie. Hell, anybody can tell you that. All he had to do was go in and lay a bet with the guy himself. I'll say he's worked a month on it. Link doesn't stand a chance of getting out of this little web, but for all the time he'll draw for it, it will be worth it."

I scooped up a couple of the reports and slammed them with my fingers. "Look at this stuff. Two official reports that give any kind of background on the guy at all and those were turned in while Roberts was the D.A. What was going on in all the years until a month ago?"

Ellen glanced at the reports curiously and took them out of my hand, tapping the rubber-stamped number in the upper right-hand corner with her finger. "This is a code number, Mike. These reports are part of a series."

"Where are the rest of them then?"

"Either in the archives or destroyed. I won't say so for certain, but it's more likely that they were discarded. I've been with the department long enough to have seen more than one new office holder make a clean sweep of everything including what was in the files."

"Damn!"

"I'll check on it the first thing in the morning, Mike. There's a possibility that they're stored away someplace."

"Nuts on tomorrow morning. There isn't that much time to waste. There has to be another way.

She folded the sheets up carefully, running her nail along the edges. "I can't think of anything else unless you want to contact Roberts. He might remember something about the man."

"That's an idea. Where does he live?"

"I don't know... but I can find out." She looked at me pensively. "Does it have to be tonight?"

"Tonight."

I caught up with her before she reached the phone. I put my arms around her and breathed the fragrance that was her hair. "I'm sorry, Kitten."

Ellen let her head fall back on my shoulder and looked up at me. "It's all right, Mike, I understand."

She had to make three separate calls to locate Roberts' number. It was an address in Flushing and when she had it she handed me the phone to do the calling. It was a toll call, so I put it through the operator and listened to it ring on the other end. When I was about ready to hang up a woman came on and said, "Hello, this is Mrs. Roberts."

"Can I speak to Mr. Roberts, please?"

"I'm sorry, but he isn't home right now. Can I take a message?"

Somebody had bottled up all my luck and thrown it down the drain. I said, "No, but can you tell me when he'll be back?"

"Not until tomorrow sometime. I expect him about noon."

"Well, thanks. I'll call him then. 'By."

I tried not to slam the receiver back in its cradle. I tried to sit on myself to keep from exploding and if it hadn't been for Ellen chuckling to herself from the depths of the couch I would have kicked something across the room. I spun around to tell her to shut up, but when a woman looks at you the way she was doing you don't say anything at all. You just stand there and look back because a toast-colored body that is all soft, molded curves and smooth hollows makes a picture to take your breath away, especially when it is framed against the thick texture of white terrycloth.

She laughed again and said, "You're trapped, Mike."

I wanted to tell her that I wasn't trapped at all, but there wasn't any room for words in my throat. I walked across the room and stood there staring at her, watching her come up off the couch into my arms to prove that she was real and not just a picture after all.

The cup was full this time, the wine mellow and sweet, and she was writhing in my arms fighting to breathe, yet not wanting me to stop holding her. I heard her say, "Mike... I'm sorry you're trapped, but I'm glad... glad." And I kissed her mouth shut again letting the rain slashing against the window pitch the tempo, hearing it rise and rise in a crescendo of fury, shrieking at me because the minutes were things not to be wasted.

It took all I had to shove her away. "Texas gal, don't make it rough for me. Not now."

She opened her eyes slowly, her fingers kneading my back. "I can't even buy you, can I?"

"You know better than that, sugar. Let me finish what I have to do first."

"If I let you get away you'll never come back, Mike. There are too many others waiting for you. Every week, every month there will be someone new."

"You know too much."

"I know I'm a Texas gal who likes a Texas man."

My grin was a little flat. "I'm a city boy, kid."

"An accident of birth. Everything else about you is Texas. Even a woman doesn't come first with you."

She stretched up on her toes, not far because she didn't have to go far, and kissed me lightly. "Sometimes Texas men do come back. That's why there are always more Texas men." She smiled.

"Don't forget to take those files in," I reminded her. Then there was nothing more to say.

I went back to the rain and the night, looking up just once to see her silhouetted against the window waving to me. She didn't see me, but I waved back to her. She would have liked it if she'd known what I was thinking.

On the way back I stopped off for a drink and a sandwich and tried to think it out. I wanted to be sure of what I was doing before I stuck my neck out. I spent an hour going over the whole thing, tying it into Toady Link and no matter how I looked at it the picture was complete.

At least I tried to tell myself that it was.

I said it over and over to myself the same way I told Pat, but I couldn't get it out of my mind that some place something didn't fit. It was only a little thing, but it's the little things that hold bigger things together. I sat there and told myself that it was Toady who drove the murder car and Toady who gave the orders to Arnold Basil because he couldn't afford to trust anybody else to do the job right. I told myself that it was Toady who engineered Hooker's death and tried to engineer mine.

Yet the more I told myself the more that little voice inside my head would laugh and poke its finger into some forgotten recess and try to jar loose one fact that would make me see what the picture was really like.

I gave up in disgust, paid my bill and walked out.

I walked right into trouble, too. Pat was slouched up against the wall outside my apartment with the friendliness gone completely from his face.

He didn't even give me a chance to say hello. He held out his hand with an abruptness I wasn't used to. "Let's have your gun, Mike."

I didn't argue with him. He packed it open, checked the chamber and the slide, then smelled the barrel.

"You already know when I shot it last," I said.

"I do?" It didn't sound like a question at all.

It started down low around my belly, that squeamish feeling when something is right there ready to pop in your face. "Quit being a jerk. What's the act for?"

He came away from the door frame with a scowl. "Goddamn it, Mike, play it straight if you have to play it at all!"

I said a couple of words.

"You've had it, Mike," he told me. He put it flat and simple as if I knew just what he meant.

"You could tell me about it."

"Look, Mike, I'm a cop. You were my friend and all that, but I'm not getting down on my knees to anybody. I did everything but threaten you to lay off and what happened? You did it your way anyhow. It doesn't go, feller. It's finished, washed up. I hated to see it happen, but it was just a matter of time. I thought you were smart enough to understand. I was wrong."

"That isn't telling me about it."

"Cut it, Mike. Toady's dead., He was shot with a .45," he said.

"And I'm tagged."

"That's right," Pat nodded. "You're tagged."

Chapter Eight

Sometimes you get mad and sometimes you don't. If there was any of that crazy anger in me it had all been drained out up there in Ellen's apartment. Now it's making sense, I thought. Now it's where it should be.

Pat dropped my gun in his pocket. "Let's go, Mike."

So I went as far as the front door and watched the rain wash through under the sill. Before Pat opened the door I said, "You're sure about this, aren't you?"

He was sure. Two minutes ago he had been as sure of it as the day he was born and now he wasn't sure of it at all. His mouth hardened into a gash that pushed his eyes halfway shut with some uncontrollable emotion until they seemed to focus on something right behind me.

I didn't want him to answer me before he knew. "I didn't kill him, Pat. I was hoping I would, but somebody beat me to it."

"The M.E. sets the time of death around four o'clock last night." His voice asked for an explanation.

I said, "You should have told me, Pat. I was real busy then. Real busy."

His hand came away from the door. "You mean you can prove it?"

"I mean just that."

"Mike... if you're lying..."

"I've never been that stupid. You ought to know that."

"I ought to know a lot of things. I ought to know where you were every minute of last night."

"You know how to find out."

"Show me."

I didn't like the way he was looking at me at all. Maybe I'm not so good at lying any more, and I was lying my head off. Last night I was busy as hell sleeping and there wasn't one single way I could prove it. If I tried to tell him the truth it would take a month to talk my way clear.

I said, "Come on," and headed for the phone in the lobby. I shoved a dime in the slot and dialed a number, hoping that I could put enough across with a few words to say what I wanted. He stood right there at my elbow ready to take the phone away as soon as I got my party and ask the question himself.

I couldn't mistake her voice. It was like seeing her again with the lava green of her dress flowing from her waist.

"This is Mike, Marsha. A policeman... wants to ask you something. Mind?"

That was as far as I could get. Pat had the phone while she was still trying to figure it out. He gave me a hard smile and turned to the phone. "Captain Chambers speaking. I understand you can account for Mr. Hammer's whereabouts last night. Is that correct?"

Her voice was music pouring out of the receiver. Pat glanced at me sharply, curiously, then muttered his thanks and hung up. He still didn't quite know what to make of it. "So you spent the night with the lady."

I said a beautiful thanks to Marsha under my breath. "That's not for publication, Pat."

"You better stop tomcatting around when Velda gets back, friend."

"It makes a good alibi."

"Yeah, I'd like to see the guy who'd sooner kill Toady than sleep with a chick like that. Okay, Mike, you got yourself an alibi. I have a screwy notion that I shouldn't believe it, but Link isn't Decker and if you're in this there'll be hell to pay and I'll find out about it soon enough."

I handed him a butt and flipped a light with my thumbnail.

"Can I hear about the deal or is it secret info like everything else?"

"There's not much to it. Somebody walked in and killed him."

"Just like that?"

"He was in bed asleep. He got it right through the head and whoever killed him went through the place like a cyclone. I'm going back there now if you want to come along."

"Blue boy there?"

"The D.A. doesn't know about it yet. He's out with the vice squad again," Pat said tiredly.

"You checked the bullet, didn't you?"

Pat squirmed a little. "I didn't wait for the report. I was so goddamned positive it was you that I came right over. Besides, you could have switched barrels if you felt like it. I've seen the extras you have."

"Thanks. I'm a real great guy."

"Quit rubbing it in."

"Who found the body?"

"As far as we know, the police were the first on the scene. A telegraph boy with a message for Toady saw the door open and went to shut it. Enough stuff was kicked around inside to give him the idea there was a robbery. He was sure of it when he rang the bell and nobody answered. He called the police and they found the body."

"Got any idea what they were looking for... or if they found it?"

Pat threw the butt at the floor. "No. Come on, take a look at it yourself. Maybe it'll make you feel better."

What was left of Toady wouldn't make anybody feel better. Death had taken the roundness from his body and made an oblong slab of it. He lay there on his back with his eyes closed and his mouth open, a huge, fat frog as unlovely dead as he was alive. Right in the center of his forehead was the hole. It was a purplish-black hole with scorched edges flecked by powder burns. Whoever held the gun held it mighty close. If there was a back to his head it was smashed into the pillow.

Outside on the street a couple more prowl cars screamed to a stop and feet came pounding into the house. A lone newshawk was sounding off about the rights of the press and being told to shut up. Pat left me there with a plain-clothesman while he got things organized and started the cops going through the rooms in a methodical search for anything that might be a lead.

When I had enough of Toady I went downstairs and followed Pat around, watching him paw through the wreckage of the living room. "Somebody didn't make a lot of noise, did they?"

I got a sharp grin. "Brother, this place was really searched."

I picked up a maple armchair and looked at it closely. There wasn't a scratch on it. There weren't any scratches on anything for that matter. For all the jumble that it seemed to be, the room had been carefully and methodically torn apart and the pieces put down nice and gently. You could even see some order in the way it was done. The slits in the seat cushions were evenly cut all in the same place. Anything that could be unscrewed or pulled out was unscrewed or pulled out. Books were scattered all over the floor, some with the back linings ripped right out of them.

Pat had one in his hand and waved it at me. "It wasn't very big if they went looking for it here."

I thought I said something to myself, but I said it out loud and Pat's head swiveled around at me. "What?"

I didn't tell him the second time. I shook my head, knowing the leer I was wearing had pulled my face out of shape and if Pat had good eyes he could read what I was thinking without looking any farther than my eyes. He might have done it if a cop hadn't come up to tell him about the junk in the basement, and he left me standing in the middle of the room right where Toady had made me stand, only this time I wasn't after Toady's hide any more because he wasn't the end at all.

Another cop came in looking for Pat. I told him he was downstairs and would be right back. The cop spread out the stuff in his hand and flashed it at me. "Look at the pin-ups I found." He gave a short laugh. "I guess he didn't go for this new stuff. Don't blame him. I like the pre-war crop better myself."

"Let's see them."

He handed them over to me as he looked through them.

Half of them were regular studio stills and the rest were enlargements of snapshots taken during stage shows. Every one of them was personally autographed to Charlie Fallon with love and sometimes kisses from some of the biggest stars in Hollywood.

When he was done with the pictures the cop let me look at a couple of loose-leaf pads that had scrawled notations of appointments to be made for more photos of more lovelies and the list of private phone numbers he had accumulated would have made any Broadway columnist drool. Every so often there was a reminder after a name... introduction to F.

And there it was again. Fallon. No matter where I turned the name came up. Fallon, Fallon, Fallon. Arnold Basil was an old Fallon boy. All the dames knew Fallon, Toady had some connection with Fallon. Damn it, the guy was supposed to be dead!

I didn't wait for Pat to come back. I told the cop to tell him I'd left and would call up tomorrow. Before I got to the door the reporter who was trying to make the most of being first on the scene tried to corner me for a story and I shook my head no. He dropped me for the cop and got the same story.

Something had gentled the rain, taking the madness out of it. The curious were there in a tight knot at the gate shrinking together under umbrellas and raincoats to gape at the death place and speculate among themselves. I managed to push myself through to the outer fringes of the crowd with about a minute to spare. Just as I broke clear the D.A. came in from the other side with his boys doing the blocking. His face was blacker than the night itself and I knew right away that somebody had crossed him up on another deal. His boat still had a hole in the bottom and if it leaked any more he was going to get swamped.

If it hadn't been so late I would have called Marsha to kiss her hand for pulling me out of a spot, but tonight I didn't want to see anybody and speak to anybody. I wanted to stretch out in bed and think. I wanted to start at the beginning and chew my way through it slowly until I found the tough hunk that didn't chew so easily and put it through the grinder.

Then I'd have my killer.

Two blocks down a hackie tooted his horn at me and I ran for the door he held open. I gave him my address and settled back into the seat. The guy was one of those Dodger fans who couldn't keep quiet about how the bums were doing and talked my ear off until I climbed out in front of my apartment and handed over a couple of bucks.

I got all the way upstairs and there they were again. Two of them this time. One was big as a house and the other wasn't much smaller. The little guy closed in with a badge flashing in his palm while the other one stood by ready to take me if I didn't act right. Both of them kept one hand in their pockets just to let me know that the play was theirs all the way.

The guy said, "Police, buddy," and stowed the badge back in his pants.

"What do you want with me?"

"You'll find out. Get moving."

The other one said, "Wait a minute," and yanked my gun out of the holster. Under his flat smile his teeth were yellowed from too much smoking. "You're supposed to have a bad temper. Guns and guys with bad tempers don't go together."

"Neither do badges without those leather wallets a cop keeps them in."

I caught the quick look that passed between them, but I caught the nose of a gun in my back at the same time. The big guy smiled again. "Wise guy. You wanta do it the hard way."

"That rod'll make a big boom in here. A nice quiet joint like this people'll want to know what all the noise is about."

The gun pressed in a little deeper. "Maybe. You won't hear it, buddy. Move."

Those two were real pros. Not the kind of hoods who pick up some extra change with nickel-plated rods either. These were delivery boys, the real McCoy. They knew just where to stand so I couldn't move in and just how to look so nobody would get the pitch. One had a pint bottle of whisky outlined in his inside jacket pocket to pour over me so I'd smell like a drunk in case they had to carry me out. And they had that look. Somebody had given the orders to bump me fast if I tried to get rough.

That look was enough for me. Besides, I was curious myself.

We got downstairs and big boy said, "Where's your car?"

I pointed it out. He snapped his fingers for my keys and got them. The other one did something with his hand and a car down the block pulled away from the curb and shot by us without looking over.

It didn't take much to see what was going to happen. I was getting a one-way ride in my own car. After I was delivered someplace first. I wasn't supposed to know about it. I was supposed to be a real good boy and act nice and polite so they wouldn't have any trouble with me. I was supposed to be a goddamn fool and let myself get killed with no fuss at all while a couple of pros congratulated themselves on their technique.

My head started banging with that insane music that was all kettledrums and shrill flutes blended together in wild discord until my hands shook with the madness of it. What kind of a simple jerk did they take me for? Maybe they thought they were the only ones who were pros in this game. Maybe they thought this had never happened before and if it had I wouldn't be ready for it to happen again.

By God, if they played this the way a pro would play it they were going to get one hell of a jolt. I had a .32 hammerless automatic in a boot between the seat and the door right where I could get at it if I had to.

They played it that way too. Big boy said, "You drive, shamus. Take it nice and easy or we'll take it for you." He held the door open so I could get in and was right there beside me when I slid under the wheel. He didn't crowd me. Not him, he was an old-timer. He kept plenty of room between us, sitting jammed into the corner with his arm on the sill. His other arm was in his lap pointing my own gun at me. The little guy didn't say much. He climbed in back and leaned on the seat behind my head like he was talking to me confidentially. But it was the gun he had pressed against my neck that was doing all the talking.

We took a long ride that night. We were three happy people taking a cruise out to the shore. To keep everybody happy I switched on the radio and picked up a disk jockey and made a habit of lighting my cigarettes from the dashboard lighter so they'd get used to seeing my arms move around.

My pal beside me was calling the turns and someplace before we came to Islip he said, "Slow down." Up ahead a macadam road intersected the highway. "Go right until I tell you to turn."

I swung around the corner and followed the black strip of road. It lasted a half-mile, butting against an oiled-top dirt road that went the rest of the way. We made a few more turns after that and I started to smell the ocean coming in strong with the wind. The houses had thinned out until they were only black shapes on spindly legs every quarter-mile or so. The road curved gently away from the shore line, threading its way through the knee-high sawgrass that bent with the breeze and whisked against the fender of the car with an insidious hissing sound.

Nobody had to tell me to stop. I saw the shaded lights of the house and the bulk of the sedan against its side and I eased on the brakes. Big boy looked pleased with himself and the pressure of the gun on my neck relaxed. The guy behind me got out and stood by the door while the other one tucked the keys in his pocket and came up stepping on my shadow.

"You got the idea good," he told me. "Let's keep it that way. Inside and take it slow."

I practically crawled. The boys stayed behind me and to the right and left, beautiful spots in case I tried to run for it. Either one of them could have cut me down before I got two feet. I picked the last smoke out of my pack and dropped the empty wrapper. Shortie was even smart enough to pick that up. I didn't have a match and nobody offered me one, so I let it droop there between my lips. It was a little too soon to start worrying. This wasn't the time nor the place. A body doesn't hide so easy and neither does a car. When we went we'd go together. I could almost draw a picture of the way it would happen.

The door opened and the guy was a thin dark shadow against the light. I said, "Hello, scrimey."

I should have kept my mouth shut. Lou Grindle backhanded me across the mouth so that my teeth went right through my lips. Two guns hit me in the spine at the same time ramming me right into him and I couldn't have gotten away with it in a million years but I tried anyway. I hooked him down as low as I could then felt my knuckles rip open when I got him in the mouth.

Neither of the guys behind me dared risk a shot, but they did just as well. One of them brought a gun barrel around as hard as he could. There wasn't even any pain to it, just a loud click that grew into a thunderous wave of sound that threw me flat on the floor and rolled over me.

The pain didn't come until later. It wasn't there in my head where I thought it would be. It was all over, a hundred agonizing points of torture where the toe of a shoe had ripped through my clothes and torn into the skin. Something dripped slowly and steadily like a leaky faucet. Every movement sent the pain shooting up from my feet and if screaming wouldn't have only made it worse I would have screamed. I got one eye open. The other was covered by a puffy mass of flesh on my cheekbone that kept it shut.

Somebody said, "He's awake."

"He'll get it worse this time."

"I'll tell you when." The voice was so decisive that nobody gave it to me worse.

I managed to focus the one good eye then. It was pointed at the floor looking at my feet. They were together at attention strapped to the rungs of a chair. My arms weren't there at all so I guess that they were tied someplace behind the same chair. And the drip wasn't from the faucet at all.

It was from something on my face that used to be a nose.

Somehow, I dragged myself straight up. It didn't hurt so bad then. When the fuzziness went away I squinted my one good eye against the light and saw them sitting around like vultures waiting for the victim to die. The two boys with the rods over by the door and Lou Grindle holding a bloody towel to his mouth.

And Ed Teen perched on the edge of the leather armchair with his chin propped on a cane. He still looked like a banker, even to the gray Homburg.

He stared at me very thoughtfully for a minute. "Feel pretty bad?"

"Guess." The one word almost choked me.

"It wasn't necessary, you know. We just wanted to talk to you. Everything would have been quite friendly." He smiled. "Now we have to tie you down until we're finished talking."

Lou threw the towel at me. "Christ, quit stalling around with him. I'll make him talk in a hurry."

"Shut up." Ed didn't even stop smiling. "You're lucky I'm here. Lou is rather impulsive."

I didn't answer him.

He said, "It was too bad you had to kill Toady, Mr. Hammer. He was very valuable to me."

I got the words out. "You're nuts."

He pushed himself up off the cane and leaned back in the chair. "Don't bother with explanations. I'm not the police. If you killed him that's your business. What I want is what's my business. Where is it?"

My lips felt too thick to put any conviction in my voice. "I don't know what the hell you're talking about."

"Remind him, Lou."

Then he sat back chewing on a cigar and watched it. Lou didn't use his foot this time. The wet towel around his fist was enough. He was good at the job, but I had taken so much the first time that even the half-consciousness I had left went fast.

I tried to stay that way and couldn't. My head twitched and Teen said metallically, "Now do you remember?"

I only had to shake my head once and that fist clubbed it again. It went on and on and on until there was no pain at all and I could laugh when he talked to me and try to smile when the delivery boy in the corner got sick and turned his head away to puke.

Ed rapped the cane on the floor. "Enough. That's enough. He can't feel it any more. Let him sit and think about it a few minutes."

Lou was glad to do that. He was breathing hard through his mouth and his chin was covered with blood. He went over and sat down at the table to massage his hand. Lou was very happy.

The cane kept up a rhythm on the floor. "This is only the beginning you know. There's absolutely no necessity for it."

I managed to say, "I didn't... kill Link."

"It doesn't matter whether you did or not. I want what you took from his apartment."

Lou started to cough and spat blood on the floor. He gagged, put his hand to his mouth and pushed a couple of teeth into his palm with his tongue. When he brought his head up his eyes bored into mine like deadly little black bullets. "I'm going to kill that son of a bitch!"

"You sit there and shut up. You'll do what I say."

He was on his feet with his hands apart fighting to keep himself from tearing Teen's throat out with his fingers. Ed wasn't so easy to scare. The snub-nosed gun in his hand said so.

Lou's face was livid with rage. "Damn you anyway. Damn you and Fallon and Link and the whole stinking mess of you!"

"You're lisping, Lou. Sit down." Lou sat down and stared at his teeth some more. He was proud of those teeth. They were so nice and shiny.

They lay where they were dropped on the table and seemed to fascinate him. He kept feeling his gums as though he couldn't believe it, cursing his heart out in black rage. Ed's gun never left him for a second. Right then Lou was in a killing rage and ready to take it out on anybody.

He kept saying over and over, "Goddamn every one of 'em! Goddamn 'em all!" His mouth drew back baring the gap in his teeth and he slammed the table with his fist. "Goddamn, this wouldn't've happened if you'd let me do it my way! I would've killed Fallon and that lousy whore he kept and Link and this wouldn't've happened!" I got the eyes this time. They came around slow and evilly. "I'll kill you for it, too."

"You'll get new teeth, Lou," Ed said pleasantly. Everything he said was pleasant.

Grindle gagged again and walked out of the room. Water started to run in a bowl somewhere and he made sloshing noises as he washed out his mouth. Ed smiled gently. "You hit him where he hurts the most... in his vanity."

"Where does it hurt you the most, Ed?"

"A lot of people would like to know that."

"I know." I tried to grin at him. My face wouldn't wrinkle. "It's going to hurt you in two places. Especially when they shave the hair off your head and leg."

"I think," he told me, "that when Lou comes back I'll let him do you up right."

"You mean... like old times when Fallon pulled the strings... with cigar butts and pliers?"

His nostrils flared briefly. "If you have to say something at all, tell me where it is."

"Where what is?"

The water was still running inside. Without turning his head Ed called, "Johnny. Give it to him."

The big guy came over. Under his shirt his stomach made peculiar rolling motions. His techniques stunk. His fist made a solid chunk against my chin and I went out like a light. They poured cold water over me so I'd wake up and watch it happen all over again.

It started to get longer between rounds. I would come only partially back out of that jet-black land of nowhere and hang there limply. The big guy's voice was a hoarse croak. "He's done, Ed. I don't think he knows what you're talking about."

"He knows." His cane tapped the floor again. "Give him another dousing."

I got the water treatment again. It washed the blood out of my eyes so I could see again and the shock of it cleared my mind enough to think.

Ed knew when I was awake. He had a cigar lit and gazed at the cherry-red end of it speculatively. "You can hear me?"

I nodded that I could.

"Then understand something. I shall ask you just once more. Remember this, if you're dead you can't use what you have."

"Tell... me what the hell... you want."

Only for a second did his eyes go to the pair leaning on the window sill. If they weren't there I would have had it, but whatever I was supposed to know was too much for their big ears. "You know very well what I mean. You've been trouble from the very first moment. I know you too well, Mr. Hammer. You're only a private investigator, but you've killed people before. In your own way you're quite as ruthless as I am... but not quite as smart. That's why I'm sitting here and you're sitting there. Keep what you have. I've no doubt that it's hidden some place you alone can get it, and after you're dead nobody else will find it. Not in my time at least. Johnny... go see what's keeping Lou."

The guy walked inside and came right back. "He's lying down. He puked on the bed."

"Let him stay there then. Untie this man."

The straps came off my hands and legs, but I couldn't get up. They let me sit there until the circulation came back, with it the flame that licked at my body. When I could move Johnny hauled me to my feet.

"What'll I do with him, Ed?"

"That's entirely up to you. Martin, drive me back to the city. I've had enough of this."

The little guy saluted with his two fingers and waited until Ed had picked up his topper. He made a beautiful flunky. He opened the door and probably even helped him down the steps. I heard the car purr into life and drag back on the road.

Johnny let go my coat collar and jammed the gun in my back. "You heard what the man said." He started me off with a push to the door.

The long walk. The last ride. The boys call it a lot of things. You sit there in the car with your head spinning around and around thinking of all the ways to get out and every time you think of one there's a gun staring you in the face. You sweat and try to swallow. All your joints feel shaky and though you want a cigarette more than anything in the world you know you'll never be able to hold one in your mouth. You sweat some more. Your mouth wants to scream for help when you see somebody walking along the street. A gun pokes you to keep quiet. There's a cop on the corner under the arc light. A prayer gets stuck in your throat. He'll recognize them... he'll see the glint of their guns... his hand will go up and stop the car and you'll be safe. But he looks the other way when the car passes by and you wonder what happened to your prayer. Then you stop sweating because your body is dried out and your tongue is a thick rasp working across your lips. You think of a lot of things, but mostly you think of how fast you're going to stop living.

I remembered how I thought of all those things the first time. Now it was different. I was beat to hell and too far gone to fight. I had the strength to drive and that was all. Johnny sat there in his corner watching me and he still had my own gun.

This time I wanted a cigarette and he gave me one. I used the dash lighter again. I finished that and he gave me another while he laughed at the way my hand shook when I tried to get it in my mouth. He laughed at the way I kept rolling the window up first to get warm then to get cooled off. He laughed at the way I made the turns he told me to take, creeping around them so I'd have seconds longer to live.

When he told me to stop he laughed again because my arms seemed to relax and hang limply at my sides.

He took his eyes off me for one second while he searched for the door handle and he never laughed again.

I shot him through the head five times with the .32 I had pulled out of the boot and kicked him out in the road after I took my gun from his hand. When I backed around the lights of the car swept over him in time to catch one final involuntary twitch and Johnny was getting his first taste of hell.

The gray haze of morning was beginning to show in the sky behind me when I reached the shack again. It was barely enough to show me the road through the grass and outline the car against the house. I killed the engine, backed into the sand and opened the door.

This time the car wasn't any big sedan. It was the same coupe that had brought the boys to get me then pulled away at their signal. I knew who was in there. The little guy Ed called Martin had come back for Lou.

I made a circuit of the house and stopped under the bedroom window. Lou was cursing the guy, telling him to stop shaking him. I straightened up to look in, but there was no light and the curtains made an effective blind. Somebody started running the water and there was more talk I couldn't catch. It faded away until it was in the back of the house and I grabbed at the chance.

I hugged the wall climbing up on the porch, squeezing myself into the shadows. The wood had rotted too soft to have any squeak left in it but I wasn't taking any chances. I got down low with the gun in one hand and reached up for the knob with the other.

Somebody had oiled it not so long ago. It turned noiselessly and I gave the door a shove. The guy with the oilcan was nice people. He had oiled the hinges too.

My breath stuck in my lungs until I was inside with the door closed behind me, then I let it out in a low hiss and tried to breathe normally. The blood was pounding through my body making noise enough to be heard throughout the house. My legs wanted to drag me down instead of pushing me forward and the .45 became too heavy to hold steadily.

I had to fight against the letdown that was sweeping over my body. It couldn't come now! The answer was there in Lou's bloody mouth waiting to be squeezed out. I started to weave a little bit and reached out to grab the wall and hang on. My hand hit the door of a closet and slammed it shut.

Silence.

A cold, black silence.

A tentative voice calling, "Johnny?"

I couldn't fake an answer. My knees started to go.

Again, "Johnny, damn it!"

Lou cursed and a tongue of flame lashed out of a doorway.

There was no faking about the way I hit the floor. Lou had heard too many men fall like that before. It was real, but only because my legs wouldn't hold me any longer. I still had the .45 in my mitt and I let the feet come my way just so far before I squeezed the trigger.

The blasting roar of the gun echoed and shattered on the walls. I rolled until I hit something and stopped, my free hand clawing my one good eye to keep it open. The remnants of a scream were still in the air and the pin points of light were two guns punching holes in the woodwork searching for me. I got my hand around the leg of an end table and let it go. The thing bounced on the floor and split under the impact of the bullets. They were shouting at each other now, calling each other fools for wasting shots. So they stopped wasting shots. They thought I was hit and waited me out.

Somebody was breathing awfully funny. It made a peculiar racket when you took time to listen to it. I could hear them changing position, getting set. I went as quietly as I could and changed position myself.

It had to come soon. A few more minutes and the light would come through the curtains and they could see better than I could. It went on like a kid's game, that incessant crawling, the fear that you'd be caught, the deliberate motions of stealth that were so hard to make.

The funny breathing was real close. I could reach out and touch it. It was there on the other side of the chair. It heard me too, but it didn't change its tone. From across the room came the slightest sound and a whisper from only five feet away. "He's over there."

Orange flame streaked across the room and the sound jolted my ears even before the scream and the hoarse curse. The answer was two shots that pounded into the floor and a heavy thud as a body toppled over.

Lou's voice said, "I got the son of a bitch." He still lisped.

He moved out past the chair and I saw him framed in the window.

I said, "You got your own man, Lou."

Lou did too many things at once. He tried to drop, shoot and curse me at the same time. He got two of them done. He dropped because I shot him. His gun went off because a dead hand pulled the trigger. He didn't curse because my bullet went up through his mouth into his brain taking the big answer with it.

There was nothing left there for me at all.

Outside the gray haze had brightened into morning, very early morning. It took me a long time to get back to the car, and much, much longer to get to the highway.

Fate allowed me a little bit of luck. It gave me a hitchhiker stranded between towns. I picked him up and told him I'd been in a fight and that he could drive.

The hiker was glad to. He felt sorry for me.

I felt sorry for myself too.

Chapter Nine

We were on a side street just off Ninth Avenue and the guy beside me was pulling my arm to wake me up. He tugged and twisted until I thought the damn thing would come off. I got the one eye open and looked at him.

"You sure were dead to the world, brother. Took me a half-hour to get you out of it."

"What time is it?"

"Eight-thirty. Feel pretty rotten?"

"Lousy."

"Want me to call somebody?"

"No."

"Well, look, I have to catch a bus. You think you're going to be all right? If you're not I'll stick around awhile."

"Thanks. I'll make out."

"Okay, it's up to you. Sure appreciate the ride. Wish I could do something for you."

"You can. Go get me a pack of butts. Luckies."

He waved away the quarter I handed him and walked down to the corner to the newsstand. He came back with the pack opened, stuck one in my mouth and lit it. "You take care now. Better go home and sleep it off."

I said I would and sat there smoking the butt until a cop came along slapping tickets on car windows. I edged over behind the wheel, kicked the starter in and got out of there.

Traffic wasn't a problem like it usually was. I was glad to get behind a slow-paced truck and stay there. Every bone and muscle in my body ached and I couldn't have given the wheel a hard wrench if I wanted to. I got around the corner somehow and the truck crossed over to get in the lane going through the Holland Tunnel. I dropped out of position, squeezed through the intersection as the light changed and got on the street that led up to police headquarters.

Both sides of the street were lined with people going to work. They all seemed so happy. They walked alone or in couples, thousands of feet and legs making a blur of motion. I envied them the sleep they had had. I envied their normal unswollen faces. I envied a lot of things until I took time to think about it. At least I was alive. That was something.

The street in front of the red brick building was a parade ground of uniformed patrolmen. Some were walking off to their beats and others were climbing in squad cars. The plain-clothes men went off in pairs, separating at the corner with loud so-longs. Right in front of the main entrance three black sedans with official markings were drawn up at the curb with their drivers reading tabloids behind the wheel. Directly across from them a pair of squad cars pulled out and the tan coupe in front of me nosed into the space they left. I followed in behind him, did a better job of parking than he did and was up against the bumper of the car behind me so the guy would have room to maneuver.

I guess the jerk got his license wholesale. He tried to saw his way in without looking behind him and I had to lean on the horn to warn him off. Maybe I should have planted a red flag or something. He ignored the horn completely and slammed into me so hard I wrapped my chest around the wheel.

That did it. That was as much as I could take. I opened the door with my elbow and got out to give him hell. You'd think with all the cops around one of them would have jumped him, but that's how it goes. The guy was getting out of his heap with a startled apology written all over him. He took a look at my face and forgot what he was going to say. His mouth hung open and he just looked.

I said, "You deaf or something? What the devil do you think a horn's for?"

His mouth started to say something, but he was too confused to get it out. I took another good look at him and I could see why. He was the guy who stood next to me in the bar the afternoon before with the busted headset. He was making motions at his ears and tapping the microphone or whatever it was. I was too disgusted to pay any attention to him and waved him off. He still smacked the bumper twice again before he got himself parked.

This was starting off to be a beautiful day too.

When I got in the building I started to attract a little attention. A cop I know pretty well passed right by me with no more than a cursory glance. One asked me if I was there to register a complaint and looked surprised when I shook my head no. The place was a jumble of activity with men going in and out of the line-up room, getting their orders at the desk or scrambling to get off on a case.

Too much was popping in the morning to hope Pat would be in his office, so I waited my turn at the information desk and told the cop at the switchboard that I wanted to see Captain Chambers.

He said, "Name?"

And I said, "Hammer, Michael Hammer."

Then his hand paused with the plug in it and he said, "Well, I'll be damned."

He tried about ten extensions before he got Pat, said Yes, sir a few times and yanked the plug out. "He'll be right down. Wait here for him."

By the clock I waited exactly one minute and ten seconds. Pat came out of the elevator at a half-run and when he saw me his face did tricks until it settled down in a frown.

"What happened to you?"

"I got took, pal. Took good, too."

He didn't ask me any more questions. He looked down at his shoes a second then put it to me hard and fast. "You're under arrest, Mike."

"What?"

"Come on upstairs."

The elevator was waiting. We got on and went up. We got off at the right floor and I started to walk toward his office automatically, but he put out his hand and stopped me.

"This way, Mike."

"Say, what's going on?"

He wouldn't look at me. "We've had men covering your apartment, your office and all your known places of entertainment since six this morning. The D.A. has a warrant out for your arrest and there's not a damn thing you can do about it."

"Sorry. I should have stayed home. What's the charge?"

We paused outside a stained-oak door. "Guess."

"I give up."

"The D.A. looked for Link's personal file last night and found it missing. He was here when Ellen Scobie tried to put it back this morning. You have two girls on the carpet right this minute who are going to lose their jobs and probably have charges preferred against them too. You're going in there yourself and take one hell of a rap and this time there's no way out. You finished yourself, Mike. You'll never learn, but you're finished."

I dropped my hands in my pockets and made like I was grinning at him.

"You're getting old, son. You're getting set in your ways. For the last two years all you've done is warn me about this, that, and the next thing. We used to play a pretty good game, you and me, now you're starting to play it cautious and for a cop who handles homicide that's no damn good at all."

Then just for the hell of it that little finger that was probing my brain deliberately knocked a couple of pieces together that made lovely, beautiful sense, and I remembered something Ellen had told me not so long ago. I twisted it around, revamped it a little and I was holding something the D.A. was going to pay for in a lot of pride. Yep, a whole lot of pride.

I reached for the knob myself. "Let's go, chum. Me and the D.A. have some business to transact."

"Wait a minute. What are you pulling?"

"I'm not pulling a thing, Pat. Not a thing. I'm just going to trade him a little bit."

Everything was just like it was the last time. Almost.

There was the D.A. behind his desk with his boys on either side. There were the detectives in the background, the cop at the door, the little guy taking notes and me walking across the room.

Ellen and her roommate were the exceptions this time. They sat side by side in straight-back chairs at the side of the big desk and they were crying their eyes out.

If my face hadn't been what it was there would have been a formal announcement made. As it was, everybody gave me a kind of horrified stare and Ellen turned around in her seat. She stopped crying abruptly and put heir hand to her mouth to stifle a scream.

I said, "Take it easy, kid."

Her teeth went into her lip and she buried her face in her hands.

The District Attorney was very sarcastic this time. "Good morning, Mister Hammer."

"I'm glad you remembered," I told him.

Any other time his face would have changed color. Not now. He liked this cat-and-mouse stuff. He had waited a long time for it and now he was going to enjoy every minute of it while he had an audience to appreciate it. "I suppose you know why you're here?" He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. The two assistants did the same thing.

"I've heard about it."

"Shall I read the charges?"

"Don't bother." My legs were starting to go again. I pulled a chair across the floor and sat down. "Start reading me off any time you feel like it," I said. "Get it all off your chest at once so you'll be able to listen to somebody else except your yes men for a change."

The two assistants came to indignant attention in their seats.

It was so funny I actually got a grin through.

The D.A. didn't think it was so funny. "I don't intend to take any of your nonsense, Mister Hammer. I've had about all I can stand of it."

"Okay, you know what you can do. Charge me with conspiracy and theft, toss me in the pokey and I catch hell at the trial. So I'll go up."

"You won't be alone." He glanced meaningly at the two women.

There were no tears left in Ellen any more, but her friend was sobbing bitterly.

I said, "Did you stop to think why the three of us bothered to take a worthless file out of here?"

"Does it matter?"'

Ellen had nudged her companion and the crying stopped. I took the deck of cigarettes out of my pocket and fiddled with it to keep my hands busy. The white of the wrapper flashed the light back at the sun until attention seemed to be focused on it rather than me.

"It matters," I said. "As the charge will state, it was a deliberate conspiracy all right, perpetrated by three citizens in good standing who saw a way to accomplish something that an elected official couldn't manage. The papers will have a field day burying you."

He smiled. The damn fool smiled at me! "Don't bother going through that song and dance again."

He was getting ready to throw the book in my face when Pat spoke from the back of the room. His voice held a strained note, but it had a lot of power behind it. "Maybe you better hear what he has to say."

"Say it then." The smile faded into a grimace of anger. "It had better be good, because the next time you say anything will be to a judge and jury."

"It's good. You'll enjoy hearing about it. We," and I emphasized that "we," "found the hole in the boat."

I heard Pat gasp and take a step nearer.

"Ellen suggested it to you at one time and the full possibilities of the thing never occurred to you. We know how information is getting out of this office."

The D.A.'s eyes were bright little beads searching my face for the lie. They crinkled up around the edges when he knew I was telling the truth and sought out Pat for advice. None came so he said, "How?"

Now I had the ball on his goal line and I wasn't giving it up. "I won't bother you with the details of how we did it, but I can tell you how it was being done."

"Damn it... How!"

I gave him his smile back. On me it must have looked good. "Uh-uh. We trade. You're talking to three clams unless you drop all those charges. Not only drop 'em, but forget about 'em."

What else could he do? I caught Pat's reflection in the window glass behind the D.A.'s head and he was grinning like an idiot. The D.A. tapped his fingers on the desk-top, his cheeks working. When he looked up he took in the room with one quick glance. "We'll finish this privately if you gentlemen don't mind. You may stay, Captain Chambers."

As far as the two assistants were concerned, it was the supreme insult. They hid their tempers nicely though and followed the others out. I laughed behind their backs and the thing that was working at the D.A.'s cheeks turned into a short laugh. "You know, there are times when I hate your guts. It happens that it's all the time., However, I admire your precocity in a way. You're a thorn in my skin, but even a thorn can be used to advantage at times. If what you have to say is true, consider the charges dropped completely."

"Thanks," I said. The women couldn't say anything. They were too stunned. "I understand you have a man in the department who is suspected of carrying information outside."

He frowned at Pat. "That is correct. We're quite sure of it. What we don't know is his method of notifying anyone else."

"It isn't hard. There's a guy with a tin ear who stands across the street. He wears a hearing aid that doesn't work. He reads lips. A good dummy can read lips at thirty feet without any trouble at all. Your man gets to the street, moves his mouth silently like he's chewing gum or something, but actually calls off a time and place, gets in a car and goes off on a raid. Meanwhile the guy had time to reach a phone and pass the word. Those places are set up for a quick scramble and are moved out before you get there. It's all really very simple."

"Is he there now?"

"He was when I came in."

The D.A. muttered a damn and grabbed the phone.

You know how long it took? About three minutes. He started to blab the second they had him inside the building. The voice on the phone got real excited and the D.A. slammed the phone back. His face had happy, happy smeared all over it and he barely had time to say thanks again and tell the women that their efforts were appreciated before he was out the door.

I got to Ellen and tried to put my arms around her. She put her hands on my chest and pushed me away. "Please, Mike, not now. I... I'm much too upset. It was... horrible before you came."

"Can I call you later?"

"Yes... all right."

I let go of her and she hurried out, dabbing at her mouth with a damp handkerchief.

"Well," Pat said, "you're a smart bastard anyway. You certainly made life miserable for them for a while even if you did get them off the hook in the end."

He held the door open and came out behind me. We walked down the corridor to his office without saying anything and when we were inside he waved me into a chair I needed worse than ever and slumped into his own in back of the desk.

Pat let me get a smoke going. He let me have one long drag, then: "I'm not the D.A., Mike. You don't have anything to trade with me so let's have it straight. That business with the dummy outside was strictly an accident. If the D.A. wasn't so damn eager to grab Teen and Grindle he would have seen it. Two good questions would have put you right back on the spot again."

"And I still would have had something to trade."

"Like what?"

"Lou Grindle is dead. I killed him a few hours before I walked in here. Not only that, but two of his boys are dead. I got one and Lou bumped the other by mistake thinking he was me."

"Mike..." Pat was drumming his fists on the arms of the chair.

"Shut up and listen. Teen had me picked up. He thought I killed Link and took something from the apartment. It was kidnapping and I was within the law when I shot them so don't worry about it. There's a body in the road out near Islip someplace and the local police ought to have it by now. The other two are in a house I can locate for you on a map and you better hop to it before they get turned up.

"Ed Teen gave the orders to bump me but you can bet your tail you aren't picking him up for it. He probably had an alibi all set for an emergency anyway, and now that he no doubt knows what happened he'll insure it."

"Why the hell didn't you tell me this earlier? Good Lord, we can break any alibi he has if he's involved!"

"You're talking simple again, friend. I'd like to see you break his alibi. Whoever stands up for him has a chance of being dead if he talks. All you can offer is a jail cell. Nope, you won't put anything down on Teen. He's been through this mill before."

Pat slammed his head with his open palm. "So you waste an hour playing games with the D.A. Damn, you should have said something."

"Yeah, I had plenty of time to talk. You would have heard all about it if you didn't give me that under arrest business."

"I wish I knew what was going on, Mike."

"That makes two of us."

He dragged out a map of the Island and handed it to me. I penciled in the roads and marked the approximate spot where the house was and handed it back. Pat had the thing on the wires immediately. Downstairs somebody checked with the police in Islip and verified the finding of the body on the road.

I said, "Pat..."

He covered up the mouthpiece of the phone and looked at me.

"Go through the motions of finding Lou's body before you hand the story to the D.A., will you?"

The phone went back into its cradle slowly. "What's the score, Mike?"

"I think I know how we can get Teen."

"That's not a good reason at all." His voice was soft, dangerous.

"You tell him now and I'll get the treatment again, Pat. Look... you've been working this from the wrong angle. You would have gotten there, but it would have taken longer. I'm hot now. I can't stop while I'm hot. You said I could have three days."

"The picture's changed."

"Nix... it's just hanging a little crooked, that's all. With all your cops and all your equipment, you're still chasing after shadows."

"You know it all, is that it?"

"No... but I got the shadows chasing me now. I know something I shouldn't know. I wish to God I knew where and how I picked it up. I've been wandering through this thing picking up a piece here and there and it should have ended when Toady died. I thought he was the one I was after."

"He was."

Pat said it so flatly that I almost missed it.

"What'd you say?"

"He drove the car when Decker was killed."

It was like a wave washing up the beach, then receding back into itself, the way my body was suddenly flushed before it was drained completely dry. I couldn't get my hands unclenched. They were the only live part of me, balled up in my lap doing the cursing my throat wanted to do. The killer was supposed to be mine, goddamn it. I promised the kid and I promised myself. He wasn't supposed to die in bed never knowing why he died. He should have gone with his tongue hanging out and turning black while I choked the guts out of him!

"How do you know?"

"Cole and Fisher were apprehended in Philadelphia. They decided to shoot it out and lost. Cole lived long enough to say a few things."

"What things?"

"You were right about Hooker and Decker. Toady gave the orders to get Mel. He was going to put Cole and Fisher out with Decker, changed his mind and went himself instead. That was all they knew."

"You mean they were supposed to bump Decker?"

"No... just go with him when they pulled the job.

I got up slowly. I put my hat back on and dropped my butt in the ash tray on the desk. "Okay, Pat, get Teen your own way. I still want you to give me a break with the D.A. I want to get some sleep. I need it bad."

"If Grindle's dead he'll stay dead. Make yourself scarce. When you wake up give me a ring. I'll hold things as long as I can."

"Thanks."

"And Mike..."

"Yeah?"

"Do something about your face. You look like hell."

"I'll cut it off at the neck and get a new one," I said.

Pat said seriously, "I wish you would."

Chapter Ten

I had company again. I had a whole hall full of company. Everybody was coming to see me. I was the most popular guy in town and everybody was standing in front of my door dying to get a look at me. One of my company gasped in a huge breath of air before she said, "Oh... oh, thank heavens, there he is."

The super's wife was a big fat woman no corset could contain properly and with all that air in her she looked ready to burst. But she was smiling as she recognized my walk and then the smile froze on her face. The super stopped poking a key in the lock on my door, pushed through the small knot and he froze too.

Then there was Marsha. She shoved them all out of the way. The laugh she had ready for me twisted to dismay and she said, "Mike!"

"Hello, sugar."

"Oh, Mike, I knew something happened to you!" She ran into my arms and the tears welled into her eyes. Her fingers touched my cheek gently and I felt them tremble. "Darling, darling... what was it..."

"Oh, I'll tell you about it sometime. What's all the excitement about?"

She choked and gasped the words out. "I kept calling you and calling you all last night and this morning. I... thought something happened... like that last time in your apartment. Oh, Mike..."

"It's all right now, honey. I'll be back to normal soon."

"I... came up and you didn't answer. I told the superintendent you might be hurt... and he... he was going to look. Mike, you scared me so."

The super was nodding, licking his lips. The others crowded in for a last look at me before going back to their apartments. His wife said, "You scared us all, Mr. Hammer. We were sure you were dead or something."

"I almost was. Anyway, thanks for thinking of me. Now if you don't mind, I'd just like to be left alone for a while. I'm not feeling any too hot."

"Is there anything..."

"No, nothing, thanks." I took out my key and opened the door. I had to prop myself against the sill for a minute before I could go in. Marsha grabbed my arm and held me steady, then guided me inside to a chair and helped me down.

The day had been too long... too much to it. A guy can't take days like that one and stay on his feet. I let my head fall back and closed my eyes. Marsha sobbed softy as she untied my shoes and slid them off. The aches and pains came back, a muted throbbing at first, taking hold slowly and biting deeper with each pulse beat.

Marsha had my tie off and was unbuttoning my shirt when the knock came. It didn't make any difference any more who it was. I heard her open the door, heard the murmur of voices and the high babble of a child's voice in the background.

"Mike... it's a nurse."

"The superintendent asked me to look in on you," the other voice said.

"I'm all right."

Her voice became very efficient. "I doubt it. Will you watch the child, please? Thank you." Her hand slipped under my arm. "You'll do better lying down."

I couldn't argue with her. She had an answer for everything. Marsha was on the couch still crying, playing with the kid. I got up and went to the bedroom. She had me undressed and in bed before I realized it. The sting of the iodine and the cold compresses on my face jerked me out of immediate sleep and I heard her telling Marsha to call a doctor. It seemed like only seconds before he was there, squeezing with hands that had forgotten how to be gentle, then gone as quickly as he had come. I could hear the two women discussing me quietly, deciding to stay until I had awakened. The kid squealed at something and it was the last thing I heard.

There were only snatches of dreams after that, vague faces that had an odd familiarity and incomprehensible mutterings about things I didn't understand. It took me away from the painful present and threw me into a timeless zone of light and warmth where my body healed itself immediately. It was like being inside a huge beautiful compound where there was no trouble, no misery and no death. All that was outside the transparent walls of the compound where you could see it happen to everyone else without being touched yourself.

They were all there, Decker with his child, listening intently to what Mel Hooker had to say, and Toady Link in the background watching and nodding to make sure he said it right, his boys ready to move in if he said the wrong thing. Lou and Teen were there too, standing over the body of a man who had to be Fallon, their heads turned speculatively toward Toady. A play was going on not far away. Everybody was dressed in Roman togas. Marsha and Pat held the center of the stage with the D.A. and Ellen was standing in the open wings waiting to come on. They turned and made motions to be quiet to the dozens of others behind them... the women. Beautiful women. Lovely women with faces you could recognize. Women whose faces I had seen before in photographs.

When the players moved it was with deliberate slowness so you could watch every move. I stood there in the center of the compound and realized that it was all being done for my benefit without understanding why. It was a scene of impending action the evil of it symbolized by the lone shadow of the vulture wheeling high above in a gray, dismal sky.

I waited and watched, knowing that it had all happened before and was going to happen again and this time I would see every move and understand each individual action. I tried to concentrate on the players until I realized that I wasn't the only audience they had. Someone else was there in the compound with me. She was a woman. She had no face. She was a woman in black hovering behind me. I called to her and received no answer. I tried to walk to her, but she was always the same distance away without seeming to move at all. I ran on leaden feet without getting any closer, and tiring of the chase turned back to the play.

It was over and I had missed it again.

I said something vile to the woman because she had caused me to miss it and she shrank back, disappearing into the mist.

But the play wasn't over, not quite. At first I thought they were taking a curtain call, then I realized that their faces were hideous things and in unreal voices of pure silences they were all screaming for me to stop her and bring her back. Teen and Grindle and Link were slavering in their fury as they tried to break through the transparent wall and were thrown back to the ground. Their faces were contorted and their hands curved into talons. I laughed at them and they stopped, stunned, then withdrew out of sight.

The gray and noiseless compound dissolved into sound and yellow light. I was rocked gently from side to side and a voice said, "Mike... please wake up."

I opened my one eye and the other came open with it a little bit. "Marsha?"

"You were talking in your sleep. Are you awake, Mike?"

She looked tired. The nurse behind her looked tired too. The boy in her arms was smiling at me. "I'm awake, honey." I made a motion for her to pull down the shade. "Same day?"

"No, you slept all through yesterday, all night and most of today."

I rubbed my face. Some of the puffiness had gone down. "Lord. What time is it?"

"Almost four-thirty. Mike... that Captain Chambers is on the phone. Can you answer him?"

"Yeah, I'll get it. Let me get something on."

I struggled into my pants, swearing when I hit a raw spot. I was covered with adhesive tape and iodine, but the agony of moving was only a soreness now. I padded outside and picked up the phone. "Hello..."

"Where've you been, Mike? I told you to call me."

"Oh, shut up. I've been asleep."

"I hope you're awake now. The D.A. found Grindle."

"Good."

"Now he wants you."

"What's it this time, a homicide charge?"

"There's no charge. I explained that away. He wants Teen and he thinks you're pulling a fast one again."

"What's the matter with the guy?"

"Put yourself in his shoes and you'll see. The guy is fighting to hang onto his job."

"Christ, I gave him enough. What does he want... blood? Did he expect me to get Teen the hard way for him?"

"Don't be a jerk, Mike. He doesn't want Teen dead. He doesn't want a simple obit in the papers. He wants Teen in court so he can blow the whole thing wide open before the public. That's the only thing that will keep him in office."

"What happened to tin ear?"

"All the guy had was the telephone number of a booth in Grand Central Station. If he didn't call in every hour it meant there was trouble. We traced the number and there was nobody around. The guy worked through an intermediary who passed the information on to the right people. Both of them got paid off the same way... a bundle of cash by mail on the first of every month."

"I suppose Ed Teen's laughing his head off."

"Not exactly, but he's grinning broadly. We checked his alibi for the night before last and it's perfect. You know and I know that it's phoney as hell, but nobody is breaking it down in court. According to Teen the entire thing is preposterous. He was playing cards with a group of friends right through the night."

"Nuts. His story is as old as his racket. One good session under the lights and he'll talk."

"You don't put him under lights."

"There're other things you can do," I suggested.

"You don't do that either, Mike. Teen's going around under the watchful eye of a battery of lawyers well protected by a gang of licensed strong-arm boys. You try anything smart and it'll be your neck."

"Great. Now what's with the D.A.?"

It was a moment before he said anything. "Mike... are you on the level with me?"

"You know everything I know, Pat. Why?"

"You're going to be tied up with our boy for a long time if you don't get a move on," he said. "And by the way, call Ellen when you have time. She wants to talk to you."

"She there now?"

"No, she left a little while ago. I got something else for you.

The playboy is back."

"Marvin Holmes?"

"Yeah. Customs passed the word on to us but it was too late to stop him. We traced him as far as New York and lost him here. The last lead we had said he was with a foreign-looking blonde and was doing his damnedest to stay under cover."

I let it run through my mind a minute. "He's still scared of something."

"It looks that way. I'm hoping to pick him up some time today. He's too well known to stay hidden long. Look, you give me a call when you have time. I have to get going now. This place is a madhouse. I wish the D.A. would operate out of his own office for a change."

I heard the click of his receiver cutting off the connection. Good old Pat. We still played on the same ball team. He was still worrying about me enough to want me to pick my own time and place when I had a long talk with the District Attorney.

Marsha was propped against the corner of the couch yawning. "We have to scram, kid."

Her mouth came shut. "Something wrong?"

"People want to talk to me and I can't afford the time. I want to go someplace and think. I want to be where nobody'll bother me for a week if I don't feel like seeing them."

"Well... we can go to my place. I won't bother you, Mike. I just want to crawl in bed and sleep forever."

"Okay. Get your things on. I'll get dressed."

I went back to the bedroom and finished putting on my clothes. There was a light tap on the door and I yelled come on in. The nurse opened the door and stood there holding the boy's hand. He would have been content to stay there, only he spotted the sling of the shoulder holster dangling from the dresser and made a dash for it.

This time she grabbed him before he was halfway there and dragged him back.

"I wish he liked his toys that way," she said.

"Maybe he'll grow up to be a cop."

I got a disapproving look for that. "I hope not!" she paused. "Miss Lee tells me you have to leave again."

"That's right."

"Then perhaps you'll do me a favor."

"Sure."

"They came to repaint my apartment this morning. I was wondering if you'd mind my staying here tonight."

"Go right ahead. You'll be doing me the favor if you stay. If anybody calls tell them I'm out, you don't know where I am, nor when I'll be back. Okay?"

A frown creased her forehead. "You... expect callers?" There was a tremulous note in her voice.

I laughed at her and shook my head. "Not that kind. They'll be respectable enough."

She sighed uncertainly and took the kid back to the living room with her. I finished tying my shoes, strapped the gun around my chest and picked my jacket off a coat hanger in the closet. My other suit was draped over the back of the chair and a quick inspection said that it wasn't worth wearing any more. I emptied out the pockets on the dresser, rolled them up in a tight ball and carried them out to the kitchen. I stuffed them into the garbage can on top of the kid's old clothes, pressed the lid down tight and shoved the can back into the corner.

Marsha was waiting for me inside trying to hide her red-rimmed eyes with some mascara. We said good-by to the nurse and the kid and picked up the elevator going down. She fell asleep almost immediately and I had a hell of a time trying to wake her up when we got to her place.

I tried shaking her, pinching her and when that didn't work I bent over and kissed her.

That worked.

She wrinkled her nose and fought her eyes open. I said. "We're here. Come on, snap out of it."

"You did this to me," she smiled.

"That mustached bodyguard you got upstairs will wring my neck for it."

Her lips crinkled in a grin. "So that's why you came so readily. You thought you were going to be chaperoned. I'm sorry, Mike, but I'm all alone. The nurse is gone."

I gave her a playful rap on the chin and scooted her out of the car. She took my hand and we went up together. The guy on the elevator gaped at me until I said, "Up," twice, then he swallowed hard and slid the door shut. It was too bad he didn't see me yesterday.

We were so far away from everything up there. The evening filtered through the blinds, the late, slanting rays of the sun forming a crosshatch pattern on the rug. She settled me back in a big chair and disappeared in the kitchen where she made all the pleasant sounds of a woman in her element. I smelled the coffee and heard the bacon and eggs sizzling in the pan. My stomach remembered how long it was since it had been filled, and churned in anticipation.

I was out there before she called me, trying to be helpful by making the toast. She said, "Hungry?"

"Starving."

"Me too, I finished a box of stale crackers in your place and haven't eaten since."

That was all we said. You just don't talk when you don't leave room between bites. The coffee was hot and strong the way I like it and I finished it before I picked up a smoke.

Marsha turned the small radio on to a local station and picked up a supper orchestra and everything was perfect. It stayed that way until the band went off on the hour and a news commentator came on. It was the same boy who got all worked up over affairs in the city and this time he was really running over.

He gushed through his usual routine of introducing himself to the public and said, "Tonight has seen the end of an era. The man known to the police, the press, and the underworld as Lou Grindle has been found dead in a summer cottage near Islip, Long Island. Two men known to have been Grindle's associates were found shot to death, one in the same house and another twenty miles east of the spot. The house was the scene of violent gunplay and according to police ballistics experts, it was a bullet from Grindle's own gun that killed one of his men. An early reporter on the scene claims that the house had been used as some sort of inquisition chamber by Grindle and his men, but when questioned on the point the police refused to comment. Because of the significance of Grindle's death, the District Attorney has issued a No comment statement, but it is hinted that he is in full possession of the facts.

"Lou Grindle was a product of the racketeering of the early Twenties. Since the repeal of Prohibition he has been suspected of being a key figure in..."

I reached out and tuned in another station. I got a rhumba band that was all drums filling in behind a piano and let it beat through the room. But Marsha wasn't listening to it. Her mouth held a fixed position of surprise that matched the startled intensity of her eyes.

"Mike... that was... you?"

So I grinned at her. My mouth twisted up on the side and I said, "They were going to kill me. They worked me over then took me for a ride."

Her hands were flat on the table, pushing her up from her chair. "Good heavens, Mike, no!" She trembled all over.

"They won't do it again, kid."

"But... why, Mike?"

"I don't know. Honest to God, I don't know."

She sat down limply and pushed her hair back from her face. "All this all this started... from that night..."

"That's right. From a loused-up robbery. You got beat to hell, I got beat to hell. A kid's an orphan. A big-shot racketeer and two of his boys are dead. Arnold Basil's dead. Toady Link is dead and so are a pair of phony private investigators who tried to shoot it out with the cops. Mel Hooker's dead. Goddamn, there won't be anybody alive before you know it!"

"Supposing they come back?"

"They won't. I'm not going to give them the chance. If anybody goes after anybody else I'll do the going." I snubbed the butt out in my saucer. "Mind if I use your phone?"

She told me to go ahead and came inside with me. I checked the directory again and dialed Marvin Holmes' number. It buzzed at steady intervals and just as somebody picked it up there was a knock at the door and Marsha grabbed my arm. It rattled me for a second too. Then I picked the .45 out of the holster, thumbed the safety off and handed it to her while I answered the hellos that were making a racket in my ear.

She opened the door with the gun pointed straight ahead, stared a moment then began to shake in a soft hysterical laugh. I said, "Is Mr. Holmes there?"

It was the butler with the accent. "If this is the police again may I say that he has not come in during the last five minutes. You are being very annoying. He is not expected back, but if he comes I will give him your message."

I slammed the phone back the same time he did and walked over to Marsha who was still laughing crazily. The kid with his arm in a sling was trying to comfort her and shake the gun loose at the same time. I picked it out of her fingers, put it back where it belonged and shook her until she snapped out of it.

The laughing left her and she leaned against my shoulder. "I... I'm sorry, Mike. I thought..."

The kid said, "Gee, Marsha..."

"Come on in, Jerry." He stepped inside and shut the door. "This is Mr. Hammer... Jerry O'Neill."

Jerry said "Hi," but didn't make any effort to shake hands. Jerry didn't like me very much. It was easy to see why.

Marsha gave my hand a little squeeze. "Mike, I need a drink. Do you mind?"

"Not a bit, kitten. How about you, Jerry?"

"No. No, thanks. I gotta go right away. I..." he looked at Marsha hoping for some sign of jealousy, "... gotta date tonight."

She disappointed him. The stars in his eyes blinked out when she said, "Why, that's fine, Jerry. Is there something you wanted to see me about?"

"Well," he hesitated and shot me a look that was pure disgust, "we were all kind of worried when you didn't show up today. We called and all that and I kinda thought, well, they didn't want me to, but I came up anyway. To make sure. Nobody was home then."

"Oh, Jerry, I'm sorry. I was with Mr. Hammer all day."

"I see."

"You tell them they can stop worrying."

"I'll do that." He reached for the knob. "By, Marsha."

"Good-by, Jerry."

He didn't say anything to me. I handed Marsha the drink. "You shouldn't have done that. He's crazy mad in love with you."

She sipped and stared at the amber liquid thoughtfully. "That's why I have to do it, Mike. He's got to learn sometime."

I raised my glass and toasted her. "Well, I don't blame the kid much at that."

"I wish you felt the same way," she said.

It was a statement that needed an answer, but she didn't let me give it. She smiled, her face reflecting the fatigue of her body, finished her drink in a long draught and walked away to the bedroom. I sat down on the arm of the chair swirling the ice around in the glass. I was thinking of the kid with the busted wing, knowing how he must have felt. Some guys got everything, I thought. Others have nothing at all. I was one of the lucky ones.

Then I knew how lucky I was because she was standing in the doorway bathed in the last of the light as the sun went down into the river outside. The soft pink tones of her body softened the metallic glitter of the nylon gown that outlined her in bronze, flowing smoothly up the roundness of her thighs, melting into the curve of her stomach, then rising higher into rich contours to meet the dagger point of the neckline that dropped into the softly shaded well between her breasts.

She said simply, "Good night, Mike," and smiled at me because she knew she was being kissed right then better than she had ever been kissed before. The sun said good night too and drowned in the river, leaving just indistinct shadows in the room and the sound of a door closing.

I waited to hear a lock click into place.

There wasn't any.

Chapter Eleven

I thought it would be easy to sit there with a drink in my hand and think, staring into the darkness that was a barrier against any intrusion. It wasn't easy at all. It was comfortable and restful, but it wasn't easy. I tried to tell myself that it was dark like this when Decker had come through the window and gone to the wall directly opposite me and opened the safe. I tried like hell to picture the way it started and see it through to the way it ended, but my mind wouldn't accept the continuity and kept throwing it back in jumbled heaps that made no sense. The ice in my glass clinked against the bottom four times and that didn't help either.

Someplace, and I knew it was there, was an error in the thought picture. It was a key that could unlock the whole thing and I couldn't pick it out. It was the probing finger in my brain and the voice that nagged at me constantly. It made me light one butt after another and throw them away after one drag. It got to me until I couldn't think or sit still. It made my hands want to grab something and break it into a million fragments and I would have let myself go ahead and do it if it weren't for Marsha asleep in the room, her breathing a gentle monotone coming through the door.

I wasn't the kind of guy who could sit still and wait for something to happen. I had enough of the darkness and myself. Maybe later I'd want it that way, but not now.

I snapped the latch on the lock that kept it open and closed the door after me as quietly as I could. Rather than go through another routine with the elevator operator I took the stairs down and got out to the street to my car without scaring anybody. I rolled down the window and let the breeze blow in my face, feeling better for it. I sat there watching the people and the cars go by, then remembered that Pat had told me Ellen had wanted me to call her.

Hell, I could do better than that. I shoved the key in the lock and hit the starter.

My finger found the bell sunk in the framework of the door and pushed. Inside a chair scraped faintly and heels clicked on the woodwork. A chain rattled on metal and the door opened.

"Hello, Texas."

She was all bundled up in that white terrycloth robe again and she couldn't have been lovelier. Her mouth was a ripe red apple waiting to be bitten, a luscious curve of surprise over the edges of her teeth. "I... didn't expect you, Mike."

"Aren't you glad to see me?"

It was supposed to be a joke. It went flat on its face because those eyes that seemed to run through the full colors of the spectrum at times suddenly got cloudy with tears and she shook her head.

"Please come in."

I didn't get it at all. She walked ahead of me into the living room and nodded to a chair. I sat down. She sat down in another chair, but not close. She wouldn't look directly at me either.

I said, "What's the matter, Ellen?"

"Let's not talk about it, Mike."

"Wait a minute... you did tell Pat that you wanted me to call, didn't you?"

"Yes, but I meant... oh, never mind. Please, don't say anything more about it." Her mouth worked and she turned her head away.

That made me feel great. Like I kicked her cat or something.

"Okay, let's hear about it," I said.

She twisted out of the chair and walked over to the radio. It was already pulled out so she didn't have to fool with it. Then she handed me another one of those Manila folders.

This one had seen a lot of years. It was dirty and crisp with years. The string that held it together had rotted off leaving two stringy ends dangling from a staple. Ellen went back to her chair and sat down again. "It's the file on Toady Link. I found it buried under tons of other stuff in the archives."

I looked at her blankly. "Does the D.A. know you have this?"

"No."

"Ellen..."

"See if it's what you want, Mike." Her voice held no emotion at all.

I turned up the flap only to have it come off in my hand, then reached in for the sheets of paper that were clipped together. I leaned back and took my time with these. There wasn't any hurry now. Toady was dead and his file was dead with him, but I could look in and see what his life had been like.

It was quite a life.

Toady Link had been a photographer. Apparently he had been a good one because most of the professional actresses had come to him to have their publicity pictures made. Roberts hadn't missed a trick. His reports were full of marginal notes speculating on each and every possibility and it was there that the real story came out.

Because of Toady's professional contacts he had been contacted by Charlie Fallon. The guy was a bug on good-looking female celebrities and had paid well for pictures of them and paid better when an introduction accompanied the photographs.

But it wasn't until right after Fallon died that Toady became news in police circles. After that time there was no mention made of photography at all. Toady went right from his studio into big-time bookmaking and though he had little personal contact with Ed Teen it was known that, like the others, he paid homage and taxes to the king and whenever he took a step it was always up.

There was a lot of detail stuff there that I didn't pay any attention to, stuff that would have wrapped Toady up at any time if it had been put to use. Roberts would have used it, that much was evident by the work put in on collecting the data for the dossier. But like Ellen had said, a new broom had come in and swept everything out including months and miles of legwork.

Ellen had to speak twice before I heard her. "Does it... solve anything?"

I threw them on the coffee table in disgust. "Fallon. It solves him. He's still dead and so is Toady. Goddamn it anyway."

"I'm sorry. I thought it would help."

"You tried, kid. That was enough. You can throw these things away now. What the D.A. never saw he won't miss." I picked up my cigarettes from the table and stuffed them in my pocket. She still watched me blankly. "I'd better be going," I told her.

She didn't make any motion to see me out. I started to pass her and stopped. "Texas... what the hell goes on? Tell me that at least, will you? It wasn't so long ago that you were doing all the passing and I thought you were a woman who knew what was going on. All right, I asked you to do me a favor and I put you in a spot. It wasn't so bad that I couldn't get you off it."

"That's not it, Mike." She still wouldn't look at me.

"So you're a Texas gal who likes guys that look like Texas men. Maybe I should learn to ride a horse."

She finally looked up at me from the depths of the couch. Her eyes were blue again and not clouded. They were blue and hurt and angry all at once. "You're a Texas man, Mike. You're the kind I dreamed of and the kind I want and the kind I'll never have, because your kind are never around long enough. They have to go out and play with guns and hurt people and get themselves killed.

"I was wrong in wanting what I did. I read too many stories and listened to too many old men telling big tales. I dreamed too hard, I guess. It isn't so nice to wake up suddenly and know somebody you're all gone over is coming closer to dying every day because he likes it that way.

"No, Mike. You're exactly what I want. You're big and strong and exciting. While you're alive you're fun to be with but you won't be any fun dead. You're trouble and you'll always be that way until somebody comes along who can make bigger trouble than you.

"I'm afraid of a Texas man now. I'm going to forget all about you and stop looking for a dream. I'll wait until somebody nice and safe comes along, somebody peaceful and quiet and shy, and I'll get all those foolish romanticisms out of my head and live a bored and relatively normal life."

I planted my feet apart and looked down at her with a laugh that came up from my chest. "And you'll always wonder what a Texas man would have been like," I said.

The change stole over her face slowly, wiping out the bitterness. Her eyes half closed and the blue of her irises was gray again. The smile and the frown blended together like a pleasant hurt. She leaned back with a fluid animal motion, her head resting languidly against the couch. The pink tip of her tongue touched her lips that were parted in a ghost of a smile making them glisten in the light of the single lamp. Then she stretched back slowly and reached out her arms to me, and in reaching the entire front of the robe came open and she made no move to close it.

"No," she said, "I'll find out about that first."

We said good-by in the dim light of morning. She said goodby, Texas man, and I said so-long, Texas gal, and I left without looking back because everything she had said was right and I didn't want to hear it again by looking back at her eyes. I got in the car, drove over to Central Park West and cruised along until I found a parking place. It was right near an entrance so I left it there and walked off the pavements to the grass and sat on a hill where I could see the sun coming up over the tops of the buildings in the background.

The ground still held the night dampness, letting it go slowly in a thin film of haze that was suspended in mid-air, rising higher as the sun warmed it. The whole park had a chilled eerie appearance of something make-believe. An early stroller went by on the walk, only the top half of him visible, the leash in his hand disappearing into the fog yet making all the frantic motions of having some unseen creature on its end.

When the wind blew it raised the gray curtain and separated it into angry segments that towered momentarily before filtering back into the gaps. There were other people too, half-shapes wandering through a dream world, players who didn't know they had an audience. Players buried in their own thoughts and acts on the other side of a transparent wall that shut off all sound.

I sat there scowling at it until I remembered that it was just like my dream even to the colors and the synthetic silence. It made me so uncomfortable that I turned around expecting to see the woman in black who had no face.

She was there.

She wasn't in black and she had a face, but she stopped when she saw me and turned away hurriedly just like the other one did. This one seemed a little annoyed because I blocked her favorite path.

And I knew who the woman was in the compound with me that night. She had a name and a face I hadn't seen yet. She was there in the compound trying to tell me something I should have thought of myself.

I waited until the sun had burned off the mist and made it a real world again. I went back to the daylight and searched through it looking for a little guy with big ears and a brace of dyed blondes on his arms. The sun made an arc through the sky and was on its way down without me finding him.

At three-thirty I made a call. It went through three private secretaries and a guy who rumbled when he talked. He was the last man in front of Harry Bailen, the columnist, and about as high as I was going to get.

I said, "This is a friend of Cookie Harkin's. I got something for him that won't keep and I can't find the guy. I want his address if you have it."

He had it, but he wasn't giving it out. "I'm sorry, but that's private information around here."

"So is what I got. Cookie can have it for your boss free or I can sell it to somebody else. Take your pick."

"If you have anything newsworthy I'll be glad to pass it on to Mr. Bailen for you."

"I bet you would, feller, only it happens that Cookie's a friend of mine and either he gets it or the boss'll get scooped and he isn't gonna like that a bit."

The phone dimmed out a second as he covered up the mouthpiece. The rumble of his voice still came through as he talked to somebody there in the office and when he came back to me he was more sharp than before.

"Cookie Harkin lives in the Mapuah Hotel. That's M-A-P-UA-H. Know where it is?"

"I'll find it," I told him. "And thanks."

He thanked me by slamming the phone back.

I looked up the Mapuah Hotel in the directory and found it listed in a crummy neighborhood off Eighth Avenue in the upper Sixties. It was as bad as I expected, but just about the kind of a place a guy like Cookie would go for. The only rule it had was to pay the rent on time. There was a lobby with a couple of old leather chairs and a set of wicker furniture that didn't match. The clerk was a baldheaded guy who was shy a lower plate and he was bent over, the desk reading a magazine.

"Where'll I find Cookie Harkin?"

"309." He didn't look up and made no attempt at announcing me.

The only concession to modernization the place made was the automatic elevator. Probably they couldn't get anybody to run a manual job anyway. I closed the door, pushed the third button in the row and stood there counting bricks until the car stopped.

Cookie had a good spot. His room took up the southwest corner facing the rear court where there was a reasonable amount of quiet and enough of a breeze that wasn't contaminated by the dust and exhaust gases on the street side.

I knocked twice, heard the bedsprings creak inside, then Cookie yelled, "Yeah?"

"Mike, Cookie. Get out of the sack."

"Okay, just a minute."

The key rattled in the lock and Cookie stood there in the top half of his pajamas rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. "This is a hell of an hour to get up," I said.

"I was up late."

I looked at the second pillow on his bed that still had the fresh imprint of a head, then at the closed door that led off the room.

"Yeah, I'll bet. Can she hear anything in there?"

He came awake in a hurry. "Nah. Whatcha got, Mike?"

"What would you like to have?"

"Plenty. Did you see the papers?" I said no. "I'm not so dumb, Mike. The D.A.'s giving out a song and dance about that triple kill in Islip. Me, I know what happened. The rags gotta clam up because no names are mentioned, but you let me spill it and I'll clean up."

I sat down and pulled out a butt. "I'll swap," I said.

"Now wait a sec, Mike..."

"There aren't any rough boys this time. Do something for me and you'll get the story. Right from the beginning."

"You got a deal."

So I told him straight without leaving anything out and he was on the phone before I was finished talking. Dollar bills were drooling out of his eyes and the thing was big enough to get a direct line to Harry Bailen himself. I told him not to play the cops down and when he passed it down with the hint that more was yet to come if it was played right, the big shot agreed and his voice crackled excitedly until he hung up.

Cookie came back rubbing his hands and grinning at me. "Just ask me, Mike. I'll see that you get it."

I dragged in on the smoke. "Go back a ways, Cookie. Remember when Charlie Fallon died?"

"Sure. He kicked off in a movie house on Broadway, didn't he? Had a heart attack."

"That's right."

"He practically lived in them movies. Couldn't tell if he was in the classiest playhouse or the lousiest theater if you wanted to go looking for him."

I nodded that I knew about it and went on, "At the time he was either married or living with a woman. Which was it?"

"Umm..." he tugged at one ear and perched on the edge of the bed. "Nope, he wasn't married. Guess he was shacking with somebody."

"Who?"

"Hell, how'd I know? That was years ago. The guy was woman-happy."

"This one must have been special if he was living with her." His eyes grew shrewd. "You want her?"

"Yep."

"When?"

"As soon as you can."

"I dunno, Mike. Maybe she ain't around no more."

"She'll be around. That kind never leaves the city."

Cookie made a face like a weasel and started to grin a little bit. "I'll give it a spin. Supposing I gotta lay out cash?"

"Go ahead. I'll back it up. Spend what you have to." I stood up and scrawled a number on the back of a match-book cover. "I'll be waiting for you to call. You can reach me here anytime and if anybody starts buzzing you about that story your boss is going to print, tell them you picked it up as a rumor and as far as I'm concerned, you haven't seen me in a month of Sundays."

"I got it, Mike. You'll hear from me."

He was reaching for his shorts when I closed the door and I knew that if she was still there he'd find her. All I had to do was wait.

I went back to Marsha's apartment, went in and made myself a drink. She was still asleep. I knew how she felt.

It wasn't so bad this time because somebody else was doing the work. At least something was in motion. I picked up the phone, tried to get Pat and missed him by a few minutes. I didn't bother looking for him. The liquor was warm in my stomach and light in my head; the radio was humming softly and I lay there stretched out watching the smoke curl up to the ceiling.

At a quarter to eight I opened the door to the bedroom and switched on the light. She had thrown back the covers and lay there with her head pillowed on her arm, a dream in copper-colored nylon who smiled in her sleep and wrinkled her nose at an imaginary somebody.

She didn't wake up until I kissed her, and when she saw me I knew who it was she had been dreaming of. "Don't ever talk about me, girl, you just slept the clock around too."

"Oh... I couldn't have, Mike!"

"You did. It's almost eight P.M."

"I was supposed to have gone to the theater this afternoon. What will they think?"

"I guess we're two of a kind, kid."

"You think so?" Her hands met behind my head and she pulled my face down to hers, searching for my mouth with lips that were soft and full and just a little bit demanding. I could feel my fingers biting into her shoulders and she groaned softly asking and wanting me to hold her closer.

Then I held her away and looked at her closely, wondering if she would be afraid like Ellen too. She wrinkled her nose at me this time as if she knew what I had been thinking and I knew that she wouldn't be afraid of anything. Not anything at all.

I said, "Get up," and she squirmed until her feet were on the floor. I backed out of the room and made us something to eat while she showered, and after we ate there was an hour of sitting comfortably watching the sun go back down again, completing its daily cycle.

At five minutes to ten it started to rain again.

I sat in the dark watching it slant against the lights of the city. Something in my chest hammered out that this, too, was the end of a cycle. It had started in the rain and was going to end in the rain. It was a deadly cycle that could start from nothing, and nothing could stop it until it completed its full revolution.

The Big Kill. That's what Decker had wanted to make.

He made it. Then he became part of it himself.

The rain tapped on the window affectionately, a kitten scratching playfully to be let in. A jagged streak of lightning cut across the west, a sign that soon that playful kitten would become a howling, screaming demon.

At seven minutes after ten Cookie called.

There was a tenseness in my body, an overabundance of energy that had been stored away waiting for this moment before coming forward. I felt it flow through me, making the skin tighten around my jaws before it seeped into my shoulders, bunching the muscles in hard knots.

I picked up the phone and said hello.

"This is Cookie, Mike." He must have had his face pressed into the mouthpiece. His voice had a hoarse uncertain quality. "Go ahead."

"I found her. Her name is Georgia Lucas and right now she's going under the name of Dolly Smith."

"Yeah. What else?"

"Mike... somebody else is after her too. All day I've been crossing tracks with somebody. I don't like it. She's hot, Mike."

The excitement came back, all of it, a hot flush of pleasure because the chase was still on and I was part of it. I asked him, "Who, Cookie? Who is it?"

"I dunno, but somebody's there. I've seen signs like these before. I'm telling you she's hot and if you want her you better do something quick."

"Where is she?"

"Not twenty-five feet away from where I'm standing. She's got on a red and white dress and hair to match. Right now she's doing a crummy job of singing a torch song."

"Where, dammit!"

"It's a place in the Village, a little night club. Harvey's."

"I know where it is."

"Okay. The floor show goes off in about ten minutes and won't come on for an hour again. In between times she's doubling as a cigarette girl. I don't like some of the characters around this place, Mike. If I can I'll get to her in the dressing room. And look, you can't get in the back room where she is if you're stag, so I better call up Tolly and have her meet us."

"Forget Tolly. I'll bring my own company. You stick close to her." I slapped the phone back, holding it in place for a minute. I was thinking of what her face would be like. She was the woman in the compound with me, the other one watching the play. She was the woman Lou Grindle found worth cursing in the same breath with Fallon and Link and me. She was the woman somebody was after and the woman who could supply the answers.

From the darkness Marsha said, "Mike..."

My hands were sweating. It ran down my back and plastered my shirt to my skin. I said, "Get your coat on, Marsha. We have to go out."

She did me the favor of not asking any questions. She snapped on the lights and took her coat and mine out of the closet.. I helped her into it, hardly knowing what I was doing, then opened the door and walked out behind her.

We got on Broadway and drove south while the windshield wipers ticked off the seconds.

The rain had grown. The kitten was gone and an ugly black panther was lashing its tail in our faces.

The bars were filling up, and across town on the East Side an overpainted redhead in last year's clothes would be rubbing herself up against somebody else.

A guy would be nursing a beer down at the end of the bar while a pair of drunks argued over what to play on the juke box.

The bartender would club somebody who got out of line. The floor would get damper and stink of stale beer and sawdust.

Maybe the door would open and another guy would be standing there with a bundle in his arms. A little wet bundle with a wet, tousled head.

Maybe more people would die.

"You're quiet, Mike."

"I know. I was remembering another night like this."

"Where are we going?"

I didn't hear the question. I said, "All the way it's been Fallon. Whenever anything happened it was his name that came up. He was there when Decker was killed. He was there when Toady died. He was there when Grindle died. He was there at the beginning and he's right here at the end. There was a woman in it. She disappeared after Fallon died and she's the one we're going to see. She's going to tell us why she disappeared and why Toady Link got so important and when she tells that I'll know why Decker made his own plans to die and kissed his kid good-by. I'll know why Teen sat there and watched me being cut up and know what was so important in Toady's apartment. I'll know all that and I'll be able to live with myself again. I went out hunting a killer and I missed him. I never missed one before. Somebody else had a bigger grudge and cut him down before I had a chance, but at least I have the satisfaction of knowing he's dead. Now I want to know why it happened. I want to make sure I did miss. I've been thinking and thinking... and every once in a while when I think real hard I can see a hole no bigger than a pinhead and I begin to wonder if it was really Toady I was after at all."

Her hand tightened over mine on the wheel. "We'll find out soon," she told me.

A rain-drenched canopy sagging on its frame braced itself against the storm. Lettered on the side was HARVEY'S. The wind had torn a hole in the top and the doorman in the maroon uniform huddled in the entrance to stay dry. I parked around the corner and locked the car, then dragged my raincoat over the two of us for the run back to the joint.

The doorman said it was a bad night and I agreed with him.

The girl in the cloakroom said the same thing and I agreed with her too.

The headwaiter who was the head bouncer with a carnation didn't say anything. I saw Cookie over at a corner table with another bleach job and let muscles make a path through the crowd for us until we reached him.

Somewhere, Cookie had lost his grin. We went through the introductions and ordered a drink. He looked at me, then at Marsha and I said, "You can talk. She's part of it."

The blonde who looked like a two-bit twist caught my attention. "Don't mind my getup. I can get around better when I act like a floozie. I've been on this thing with Cookie ever since he started."

"Arlene's one of Harry's stenos. We use her once in a while. She's the one who dug up the flame."

"Where is she, Cookie?"

His head made a motion toward the back of the bandstand. "Probably changing. The act goes on again in a few minutes." He was scowling.

The blonde had a single sheet of paper rolled up in her hand. She spread it out and started checking off items with her fingernail.

"Georgia... or Dolly... is forty-eight and looks like it. She was Fallon's girl friend and then his mistress. At one time she was a looker and a good singer, but the years changed all that. After Fallon died she went from one job to another and wound up being a prostitute. We got a line on her through a guy who knows the houses pretty well. She took to the street for a while and spent some time in the workhouse. Right after the war she was picked up on a shoplifting charge and given six months. Not two weeks after she got out she broke into an apartment and was caught at it. She got a couple years that time. She got back in the houses after that to get eating money, broke loose and got this job. She's been here a month."

"You got all that without seeing her?"

The blonde nodded.

"I thought you were going to speak to her, Cookie."

"I was," he said. "I changed my mind."

He was staring across the room to where Ed Teen was sitting talking to four men. Only two of them were lawyers. The other two were big and hard-looking. One chewed on a match-stick and leered at the dames.

My drink slopped over on the table.

Cookie said, "I thought you told me there wouldn't be any rough stuff. "

"I changed my mind too." I had to let go of the glass before I spilled the rest of it. "They see me come in?"

"No."

"They know you or why you're here?"

Cookie's ears went back, startled. "Do, I look like a dope?" His tongue licked his lips nervously. "You think... that's who I been crossing all day."

I was grinning again. Goddamn it, I felt good! "I think so, Cookie," I said.

And while I was saying it the lights turned dim and a blue spot hit the bandstand where a guy in a white tux started to play. A girl with coal-black hair stepped out from behind the curtains and paused dramatically, waiting for a round of applause before going into her number.

I couldn't wait any longer. It was coming to a head too fast. I said, "I'm going back there. Cookie, you get over to the phone and call the police. Ask for Captain Chambers and tell him to get down here as fast as he can move. Tell him why. I don't know what's going to happen, but stick around and you'll get your story."

I could see Cookie's face going white. "Look, Mike, I don't want no part of this. I..."

"You won't get any part of it unless you do as you're told. Get moving."

I started to get up and Marsha said, "I'm going with you, Mike."

All the hate and excitement died away and there was a little piece of time that was all ours. I shook my head. "You can't, kid. This is my party. You're not part of the trouble any more." I leaned over and kissed her. There were tears in her eyes.

"Please, Mike... wait for the police. I don't want you... to be hurt again."

"Nobody's going to hurt me now. Go home and wait for me."

There was something final in her voice. "You won't... come back to me, Mike."

"I promise you," I said. "I'll be back."

A sob tore into her throat and stayed there, crushed against her lips by the back of her hand. Part of it got loose and I didn't want to stay to see the pain in her face.

I nudged the .45 in the holster to kick it free of the leather and tried to see across the room. It was much too dark to see anything. I started back and heard Marsha sob again as Cookie led her to the front. The blonde had disappeared somewhere too.

Chapter Twelve

A curtain covered the arch. It led into a narrow, low-ceilinged alcove with another curtain at the far end. The edges of it overlapped and the bottom turned' up along the floor, successfully cutting out the backstage light that could spoil an effective entrance.

I stepped through and pulled it back to place behind me. The guy tilted back in the chair put his paper down and peered at me over his glasses. "Guests ain't allowed back here, buddy."

I let him see the corner of a sawbuck. "Could be that I'm not a guest."

"Could be." He took the sawbuck and made it vanish. "You look like a fire inspector to me."

"That'll do if anybody asks. Where's Dolly's room?"

"Dolly? That bag? What you want with her?" He took his glasses off and waved them down the hall. "She ain't got no room. Under the stairs is a supply closet and she usually changes in there." The glasses went back on and he squinted through them at me. "She's no good, Mac. Only fills in on an empty spot."

"Don't worry about it."

"I won't." He tilted the chair back again and picked up the paper. His eyes stayed on me curiously, then he shrugged and started reading.

There was a single light hanging from the ceiling halfway down and a red exit bulb over a door at the end. A pair of dressing rooms with doors side by side opened off my right and I could hear the women behind them getting ready for their act. In one of them a man was complaining about the pay and a woman told him to shut up. She said something else and he cracked her one.

The other side was a blank beaverboard wall painted green that ran down to, the iron staircase before meeting a cement-block wall. It must have partitioned off the kitchen from the racket that was going on in back of it.

I found the closet where the guy said it would be. It had a riveted steel door with an oversize latch and SUPPLIES stenciled across the top. I stepped back in the shadows under the staircase and waited.

From far off came the singer's voice rising to the pitch of the piano. Down the hall the guy was still tilted back reading. I knocked on the door.

A muffled voice asked who it was. I knocked again.

This time the door opened a crack. I had my foot in the opening before she could close it. She looked like she was trying hard to scream. I said, "I'm a friend, Georgia."

Stark terror showed in her eyes at the mention of her name. She backed away until the fear reached her legs, then collapsed on a box. I went all the way in and shut the door.

Now the figure from the mist had a face. It wasn't a nice face. Up close it showed every year and experience in the tiny lines that crisscrossed her skin. At one time it had been pretty. Misery and fear had wiped all that out without leaving more than a semblance of a former beauty. She was small and fighting to hold her figure. None of the artifices were any good. The red hair, the overly mascaraed eyes, the tightly corseted waist were too plainly visible. I wondered why the management even bothered with her. Maybe she sang dirty songs. That always made a hit with the customers who were more interested in lyrics than music.

The kind of terror that held her was too intense to last very long. She managed to say, "Who... are you?"

"I told you I was a friend." There was another box near the door and I pulled it over. I wanted this to be fast. I sat down facing the door, a little behind it. "Ed Teen's outside."

If I thought that would do something to her I was wrong. Longsuffering resignation made a new mask on her face. "You're afraid of him, aren't you?"

"Not any more," she replied simply. The mascara on her lashes, suddenly wet, made dark patches under her eyes. Her smile was a wry, twisted thing that had no humor in it. "It had to come sometime," she said. "It took years to catch up with me and running never put it behind me."

"Would you like to stop running?"

"Oh, God!" Her face went down into her hands.

I leaned on my knees and made her look at me. "Georgia... you know what's happened, don't you?"

"I read about it."

"Now listen carefully. The police will be here shortly. They're your friends too if you'd only realize it. You won't be hurt, understand! Nobody is going to hurt you." She nodded dumbly, the dark circles under her eyes growing bigger. I said, "I want to know about Charlie Fallon. Eveything. Tell me about Fallon and Grindle and Teen and Link and anybody else that matters. Can you do that?"

I lit a cigarette and held it out to her. She took it, holding her eyes on the tip while she passed her finger through the column of smoke. "Charlie... he and I lived together. He was running the rackets at the time. He and Lou and Ed worked together, but Charlie was the top man.

"It... it started when Charlie got sick. His heart was bad. Lou and Ed didn't like the idea of doing all the work so they... they looked for a way to get rid of him. Charlie was much too smart for them. He found out about it. At the time, the District Attorney was trying his best to break up the organization and Charlie saw a way to... to keep the two of them in line. He was afraid they'd kill him... so he took everything he had that would incriminate Ed and Lou, things that would put them right in the chair, and brought them to Toady Link to be photographed. Toady put them on microfilms.

"Charlie told me about it that night. We sat out in the kitchen and laughed about it. He thought... he had his partners where they could never bother him again. He said he was going to put the microfilms in a letter addressed to the District Attorney and send it to a personal friend of his to mail if anything ever happened to him.

"He did it, too. He did it that same night. I remember him sitting there doing all his correspondence. It was the last letter he ever wrote. He intended to wait awhile, then tell Lou and Ed about it, but something else happened he didn't foresee. Toady Link saw a way to work himself into the organization. He went to Ed and told him what Charlie had done.

"That's... where I came into it. Lou came for me. He threatened me. I was afraid. Honest, it wasn't my fault... I couldn't help myself. Lou... would have killed me if I didn't do what he said! They wanted to kill Charlie so they wouldn't be suspected at all. They knew he had frequent attacks and had to take nytroglycerin tablets and they made me steal the tablets from his pockets. God, I couldn't help myself! They made me do it! Charlie had an attack the next day and died in the theater. God, I didn't mean it, I had to do it to stay alive!"

"The bastards!" The word cut into her sobbing. "The lousy miserable bastards. Toady pulled a double-cross as long as your arm. He must have made two prints of those films. He kept one himself and let the boys know about it, otherwise they would have knocked him off long ago. That was his protection. That's what Teen thought I took out of his apartment!"

Georgia shook her head, not knowing what I was talking about, but it made sense to me. It made a damn lot of sense now.

I said, "After Fallon died... what happened? What did the District Attorney do?"

"Nothing. Nothing happened."

The evil of it was like the needle-point of a dagger digging into my brain. The incredible evil of it was right there in front of my face and needed nothing more than a phone call to make it a fact.

All along I had tripped over that one stumbling block that threw me on my face. I had missed it because it had been so goddamn small, but now it stuck out like a huge white rock with a spotlight on it.

I grabbed Georgia by the arm and lifted her off the box. "Come on, we're getting out of here. Anything you want to take with you?"

She reached out automatically for her hat and purse, then I shoved her out the door. The hallway was empty. There was no guy in the chair down under the light. A pair of tomtoms made the air pulsate with a harsh jungle rhythm that seemed to enjoy echoing through the corridor as if it were in its natural element.

I didn't like it a bit.

The red exit light pointed the way out. If Ed Teen was waiting to see Georgia he was going to have a long wait. Maybe he thought he was the only one looking for her and he didn't have to hurry. I pulled the door open and stepped out ahead of her, feeling for the step.

The voice behind the gun said, "This the one, Ed?"

And Ed said, "That's the one. Take him."

I was keyed up for it. There was no surprise to it except for them. A gun is a gun and when one is rammed in your ribs you aren't supposed to scream your guts out while you slam into a woman in the darkness and hit the pavement as the flame blasts out above your head.

The .45 was a living thing in my hand cutting its own lightning and thunder in the rain. I rolled, scrambled to my feet and ran in a crouch only to roll again. They were shouting at each other, running for the light that framed the end of the alley. The bright flashes of gunfire at close range made everything blacker than before. I saw the legs go past my face and grabbed at them, slashing at a head with the barrel of my gun. Back in the shadows Georgia's voice was a wail of terror. There was the sound of other feet hugging the wall and for an instant a shape was there in the frame. I had time to get in one shot that sparked off the brick wall then a body slammed into mine that was all feet and something heavy that pounded at my head.

The cursing turned into a hoarse wheeze when my fingers raked across a throat and held on. But a foot found my stomach and my fingers slid off. They had me down on my back; an arm was under my chin wrenching my head to the side and the guy was telling the other one to give it to me.

Before he could a siren moaned and wheels screamed on the pavement. There was only that one way out. They ran for it and I saw them stop completely when the beams of three torches drenched them. Georgia was still a shrill voice buried under the shadows and Pat was calling to me. His light picked me out of the rubble and he jerked me to my feet.

I said, "She's back there. Go find her."

"Who?"

"Fallon's old girl friend."

He said something I couldn't catch and went back for her, letting me lean up against the wall until my breath came back. I heard him in there behind the garbage can, then he came back with her in his arms. She hung there limply, completely relaxed.

I didn't want to ask it. "Is she... dead?"

"She's all right. Passed out, I think."

"That's good, Pat. You don't want anything to happen to her. Right now she's the most precious thing you have. The D.A. is going to love her."

"Mike, what the hell is this about?"

"She'll tell you, Pat. Treat her nice and she'll tell you all about it. When you hear her story you're going to have Ed Teen just a step away from the chair. He was an accomplice before the fact of Fallon's murder and she's the girl who's going to prove it."

I followed him back to the street, my feet dragging. The two boys were trying to explain things to a cop who didn't want to listen. Pat passed Georgia into a car and told the driver to get her down to headquarters. He looked at the big boys and they started to sweat. The rain was beating in their faces, but you could still tell they were sweating.

I said, "They're Teen's men, Pat. Ed was here to supervise things himself. He was real smart about it too. I had a man trying to run down the woman while Ed was doing the same thing. He guessed who was doing it. He came to make sure I didn't get away with it. He's gone now, but you won't have any trouble picking him up. An hour ought to do it.

The crowd had gathered. They fought for a look, standing on their toes to peer over shoulders and ask each other what had happened. Cookie was on the edge and I waved him over. He had my coat in his hand and I put it on. "Here's the guy I was telling you about, Pat. I'd appreciate it if you'd let him in on the story before it gets out to the papers. Think you can?"

"Who's going to tell the story... you?"

"No... I'm finished, kid. It's all over now. Let Georgia tell it. She had to live with it long enough; she ought to be glad to get it off her chest. I'm going home. When you get done come on up and we'll talk about it."

Pat made a study of my face. "All this... it had something to do with Decker?"

"It had a lot to do with Decker. We just couldn't see it at first."

"And it's finished now?"

"It's finished."

I turned around and walked through the crowd back to my car. The rain didn't matter now. It could spend its fury on me if it wanted to. The city was a little bit cleaner than it was before, but there was still some dirt under the carpet.

Back uptown I found a drugstore that was open all night and went into the phone booth. I dialed the operator and got a number out on the Island. It rang for a few minutes and the voice that answered was that of a tired man too rudely awakened. "Mr. Roberts?"

"Speaking."

"This is Mike Hammer. I was going to call you earlier but something came up. If you don't mind, there's something I'd like to ask you. It's pretty important."

His voice was alert now. "I don't mind a bit. What is it?"

"During your term in office you conducted a campaign to get rid of Fallon and his gang. Is that right?"

"Yes, quite right. I wasn't very successful."

"Tell me, did you ever have any communication from Fallon about that?"

"Communication?"

"A letter."

He thought a moment, then: "No... no, I didn't." Then he thought again. "Now that you mention it... yes, there was a peculiar incident at one time. An envelope was in my wastebasket. It was addressed to me and had Fallon's home address on it. I recognized the address, of course, but since he lived in an apartment hotel that was fairly prominent I didn't give it another thought. Besides, Fallon was dead at that time."

"I see. Well, thanks for your trouble, Mr. Roberts. Sorry I had to bother you." It was a lie. I wasn't a bit sorry at all.

"Perfectly all right," he said, and hung up.

And I had the answer.

I mean I had all of it and not just part of it like I had a minute before and my brain screamed a warning for me to hurry before it was too late even though I knew that it was already too late.

I cursed the widow-makers and the orphan-makers and every goddamn one of the scum that found it so necessary to kill because their god was a paper one printed in green. But I didn't curse the night and the rain any more. It kept the cars off the street and gave me the city for my own where red lights and whistles didn't mean a thing.

It gave me a crazy feeling in my head that pushed me faster and faster until the car was a mad dervish screaming around corners in a race with time. I left it double-parked outside my apartment and ran for the door. I took the stairs two at a time, came out on my floor with the keys in my hand reaching out for the lock.

I didn't stop to feel the gimmick on the lock. I turned the key, shoved the door open and pushed in with my gun in my fist and she was there like I knew she'd be there and it wasn't too late after all. The nurse was face down on the floor with her scalp cut open, but she was breathing and the kid was crying and pulling at her dress.

"Marsha," I said, "you're the rottenest thing that ever lived and you're not going to live long."

There was never any hate like hers before. It blazed out of those beautiful eyes trying to reach my throat and if ever a maniac had lived she was it. She dropped the knife that was cutting so neatly into the sofa cushion and got up from her crouch like the lovely deadly animal she was.

I looked at the partial wreckage of the room and the guts of the chairs that were spread over the floor. "I should have known, kid. God knows it slapped me in the face often enough. No man would cut up a cushion as neat as that. You're doing almost as nice a job here as you did in Toady's place. You're not going to find what you're looking for, Marsha. They were never hidden. You couldn't believe that everybody's not like yourself, could you? You had to think that anybody who saw those films would try to make them pay off like you did."

She started to tremble. Not from fear. It was an involuntary spasm of hate suffusing her entire body at once. I laughed at her. Now I could laugh.

Her mouth wasn't soft and rich now. It was slitted until it bared her teeth to the gums. "You don't like me to laugh, do you? Hell, you must have laughed at me plenty of times. Woman, when you were alone you must have laughed your damned head off. You know, it was funny the way this thing went. I based everything I had on a false premise yet I wound up with the right answers in the long run. You had me talked into it as nicely as you please.

"All this time I thought Decker had made a mistake in apartments. Like hell! Decker knew what he was doing. They had your place cased too well to make any mistake.

"But just to see if I'm right, let's go back to the beginning. I' haven't got a damn thing to stand on but speculation, yet I bet I can call every turn right on the button. What I have got will hold you until we can dig up the real stuff though. We may have to go back a way, but we'll get it and you'll bum for it.

"You were even nice enough to give me a lot of hints. There you were out in Hollywood in a spot most girls would give their right arms to be in and there was only one drawback. You weren't big time. You weren't going to get to be big time, either. You were one of that big middle class of actors who were okay, but not for the feature films. Then a man came along who gave you a hard time and you got sour on the world.

"Right then you were ripe for the kicker. You were shaking hands with the devil and didn't know it. Back in New York a guy named Charlie Fallon was writing a batch of letters. One was a fan letter to you. The other was to the District Attorney with enough evidence on microfilms to put a couple of racketeers where they belonged. Old Charlie was feeling good that night. He felt so good that he got his envelopes mixed and those films came to you.

"That was just before your secretary died, wasn't it? Yeah, I can tell that much by your face. She was all for turning them in to the authorities and you put the kibosh on that. You saw a way to get yourself a lot of easy dough. That man came in handy too. When you knocked off that secretary you made it look like a suicide and it wasn't hard to explain away at all.

"Now let me speculate on what happened right here in New York. The D.A. got a letter, all right. It was from Fallon, but it contained a fan letter to you. Teen and Grindle put out a lot of cash to have a pipeline in where it counted and they had a slick cop watching the mail for that letter. When they got it they must have turned green because it didn't take much thought to figure out what had happened. All they could do was to sit back and see what you would do.

"You did it. You came around with your hand out and they greased it to whatever tune you called. For ten years that went on. Even the time checks. It's a lot of years, too. Hell, you know what blackmail is like. It grows and grows like a damned fungus. Ed and Lou had two of you on their necks. When Toady Link made those films for Fallon he made a copy for himself. But at least he added something to the outfit. Then one day one of you put too much pressure on the boys. One of you had to go. Toady probably pulled the squeeze play. Since he knew all about it anyway they told him that if he could lift those copies you had he'd make out better himself.

"That's where Decker came in. Good safe men are hard to get for those jobs. Toady located Decker somehow and had Mel Hooker steer him right into a trap where he had to play ball with Toady or else. They figured it out nice as you please and never stopped to figure out what can go on inside a guy's mind.

"Decker had been through the mill and he wasn't setting his kid up to have any part of it. In his own way he was a martyr. He knew what he was going to do and knew he'd die for it. When he lifted that stuff from your place I think he planned to take it straight to the police. He didn't move fast enough though. So he did the next best thing. He stuck those films where they'd probably be found and went out and died.

"You know the rest of it from there, Marsha. I don't have to tell you anymore, do I? I shot my mouth off to you and spilled it about Toady, so you went up there to see him yourself. You did a nice job of bumping him. Nice and clean. Maybe in those ten years you figured it all out for yourself, and if you didn't think Toady had those films you were going to get his copy. Yeah, me and my big mouth. You hung on like a leech and kept giving me the old sex treatment just to know where you stood. And I fell for it. You sure learned how to act these last ten years, all right. I thought it was pretty real.

"What gets me is the way you thought that I had them all this time. You couldn't get that out of your head. You thought I had them and Teen thought I had them. They were worth a million bucks on the open market and I didn't look like a guy who'd throw it away. You even went to the trouble of getting a copy made of my keys while I was asleep, didn't you? Tonight you used them. Tonight you had to take a look to be sure because you knew that when I talked to Fallon's old girl I was going to know the truth!

"Yeah, everybody was looking for those pictures. That's what should have tipped me off. Toady searched Decker's apartment and I thought Toady or his boys searched mine. That was where I kept tripping up. That was the one fault in the whole picture. When Toady drove that car he never had time to see who I was at all, so how could he know where I lived? You, Marsha, were the only other person at the time who knew I had gone over Decker's body right after he was shot because I told you that myself.

"That was a nice set-up here that night. Want me to guess who it was? It was that jerk from the theater... the kid with the broken arm who's so much in love with you that he'd do anything you ask. He got me with that damn cast.

"Where is he tonight? He'd like to be in on this, wouldn't he?"

All that pent-up hate on her face turned into a cunning sneer and she said, "He's here, Mike.

I started to move the same time she started to talk and I wasn't fast enough. I had a glimpse of something white streaking toward my head just before it smashed the consciousness from my body.

my eyes could see again I knew what would be there when I opened them. I heard the kid crying, a series of terror-stricken gasps because the world was too much for him. I pushed up from the floor, forced my eyes open and saw him huddled there in the corner, his thin body shivering. Whatever I did with my face made him stop, and with the quick switch of emotions a child is capable of, he laughed. He climbed to his feet and held on to the arm of the chair babbling nonsense at the wall.

I raised my head and caught her looking at me, a spiteful smile creasing her face. She was a big beautiful evil goddess with a gun in her hand ready to take a victim and there wasn't a thing I could do about it. My .45 was over there on the table and I didn't have the strength to go for it.

Jerry was in a chair holding his broken arm to his chest, rocking back and forth from the pain in it. One side of the cast was split halfway.

Then I saw the junk on the floor. The suit I had thrown away and the kid's overalls that had been stuffed in the bottom of the can. And Marsha smiled. She opened her palm and there were the films, four thin strips of them. "They were in the pocket of the overalls." She seemed amazed at the simplicity of it.

"They won't do you any good, Marsha. Teen's finished and so are they. Your little racket's over." I had to stop for breath. Something sticky ran down my neck.

"They'll serve their purpose," she said. "Somebody else might guess like you did, but they'll never know now. Those Toady had I destroyed. These will go too and only you will be left, Mike. I really hate having to kill you, but it's necessary, you know."

There was none of the actress in her voice now. There was only death. She had finished acting. The play was over and she could put away the smiles and tears until the next time.

I swung my head around until my eyes were fixed on Jerry. He stopped rocking. I said, "Then I guess you'll have to marry Jerry, won't you? He'll have you trapped like you had Ed and Lou trapped. He'll have something you'll pay dearly for, won't he?"

I think she laughed again. It was a cold laugh. "No, Mike. Poor Jerry will have to go too. You see, he's my alibi." Her hand went out and picked up my gun. "Everyone knows how crazy he is about me. And he's so jealous he's liable to do anything... especially if he came up here and caught us together... like tonight. There would have been gunplay. Unfortunately, you killed each other. The nurse was in the way and she died too. Doesn't that make a good story, Mike?"

Jerry came out of his chair slowly. He had time to whisper incredulously, "Marsha!" The .45 slammed in her hand and blasted the night to bits. She watched the guy jerking on the floor and threw the gun back on the table. The rod she held on me was a long-barreled revolver and it didn't tremble in her hand at all. She held it at her hip slanting it down enough to catch me in the chest.

She was going to get that shot off fast for the benefit of the people who were listening. She was killing again because murder breeds murder and when she had killed she was going to put the guns in dead hands and go into her act. She'd be all faints and tears and everyone would console her and tell her how brave she was and damn it all to hell, her story would stand up! There wouldn't be a hole in it because everything was working in her favor just like when she killed her secretary! It would be a splash in the papers and she could afford that.

The hate was all there in my face now and she must have known what I was thinking. She gave me a full extra second to see her smile for the last time, but I didn't waste it on the face of evil.

I saw the kid grab the edge of the table and reach up for the thing he had wanted for so long, and in that extra second of time she gave me his fingers closed round the butt safety and trigger at the same instant and the tongue of flame that blasted from the muzzle seemed to lick out across the room with a horrible vengeance that ripped all the evil from her face, turning it into a ghastly wet red mask that was really no face at all.

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve