The Body Lovers

Chapter 7

I never remembered having fallen asleep. I awoke with the fading light of day suffusing the room and the mice feet of rain on the window beside the bed. My watch said ten minutes to four and I swore under my breath for letting time get away from me.

When I rolled out of the sack a note fell off my chest. Blue Ribbon at six, stinker, it read and was signed with Velda's elaborate V. A quick shower straightened me out. I shaved the stubble off my face and pawed through the suitcase of clothes she had brought for me and got dressed. Automatically, I checked the action on the .45, slipped it into the holster and pulled my coat on.

Last night had been a rough one. I grinned, reached for the phone and dialed Dulcie's office number. The one who answered was Miss Tabor, the old maid I had ruffled so badly the first time around. When I asked for Dulcie she said Miss McInnes had left for Washington on the ten o'clock plane and would be out of town for several days. She asked who was calling and when I told her I could hear her quick gasp and she stammered that she would tell Miss McInnes that I had called.

I hung up the phone and started to get up when it rang. I picked it up again and said, "Yes?"

"This Mike Hammer?"

"You got him."

"Ray Tucker, Mike. I'm the cab driver you told to follow that girl last night."

I had damn near forgotten about that. "Sure, Ray. Where'd she go?"

"Well, it's hard to say. She came out and flagged me down and I took her to that five-story public parking lot on Eighth and Forty-sixth. She hopped out and went inside. The gate was closed on one side so I cruised around the other and waited a few minutes, then a car came out I think was her. I was going to follow her a ways, but a passenger boarded me and I was laying back too far to really tail her. She drove down to Seventh, then turned right again on the block where there's a southbound entrance to the West Side Highway. That's the best I could do."

"Get the make of the car?"

"A light blue Chevy sedan. A new one. Couldn't spot the plates," he said. Then suddenly he added, "Oh, yeah, there was a dent in the right rear fender. Just a little one."

"Okay, Ray, thanks. Let me know where to reach you and I'll send you a check."

"Forget it, Mike. Them things are kind of fun." He hung up and I put the phone back.

There it was again. Something that didn't belong there. You don't own a new car while you're bedding down in the squalid quarters of the Sandelor Hotel. But Ray Tucker wasn't sure, either, and if the driver in the car wasn't Greta Service, she could have used the parking lot as a cute gimmick to check on anyone following her. I knew the place, and while one side was open to traffic, the gate on the other merely admitted a person and not a car. If she thought I might have been on her tail it would have been a perfect spot to dump me.

I grabbed my hat and raincoat, went downstairs, checked for messages, then went out and waited five minutes before a cab pulled over for me. I gave him the address of the Sandelor Hotel and sat back. I don't usually get mistaken for a tourist, but the cabbie took a chance on it. He caught my eyes in the rear-view mirror and said, "If anybody steered you to the broads in that place, buddy, drop it."

"No good." I asked absently.

"Crap. You'd do better with a pick-up from one of the joints. That's real gook stuff there."

The tautness started across my mouth. "Oh?"

"Sure, foreign seamen, weirdie boys, all that. Maybe half a dozen broads work outa that place and I wouldn't pay five cents to throw a rock at it."

"I'm not after a dame. There may be a friend of mine there."

He shook his head sympathetically. "Tough," he muttered. "That's a real bughouse."

There was a new man on the desk this time, a tall sallow-faced guy in a worn blue serge suit with rodent eyes that seemed to take everything in at once without moving at all. When I passed the desk he said, "Say..." in a whispery voice and I turned, walked back again and stood there for a good ten seconds without taking my eyes off him.

He tried to bluster it out, but it was the kind of situation he didn't like. "Can I...help you?"

"Yeah. You can stay right there and keep your mouth shut. Is that plain enough?"

Those narrow little eyes half shut and the rodent look turned snakelike. He passed it off with a shrug and went back to his bookkeeping. I went up the stairs and down the corridor to the room I had been in last night.

This time the light was already on, and inside a man's hoarse voice was spitting obscenities at a girl. She came back at him with some vile language, then there was the fleshy sound of a hand cracking across a jaw and I shoved the door open.

She sprawled on the floor against the wall, momentarily stunned, one hand pressed against her cheek, a dirty blonde life had prematurely aged. The guy was a big one, heavy under the sport coat and slacks, his face showing the signs of a losing ring career. His nose was flattened and twisted, one ear lumpy and a scar dragged down one comer of his mouth.

He looked at me with A sneer and said, "You got the wrong room, buster."

"I got the right one."

Surprise turned the sneer into a half-smile of anticipation. "Out, out. Like maybe you don't know any better?"

I just stood there. He let two seconds go by, then dropped into a familiar crouch and came at me. He started to feint with his left to cross one over to my jaw, only I never let him get that far. I put a straight jab in his mouth that jarred him back, then hooked him in the gut and again under the chin before he realized what had happened. His legs went rubbery and he went into a sagging dance of defeat. I made sure of it with another right that almost snapped his head off and he crashed against the lone dresser and knocked the lamp off it.

The girl was looking up at me with outright fear, wide awake now. "What...did you do...that for?"

"Be happy, kid. He belted you, didn't he?"

She started to struggle to her feet. I yanked her up, led her to the bed and let her sit down. "We...hell, he's my...we work together." Anger flooded her face and she spoke through clenched teeth. "You damn fool, now he'll beat the hell out of me. You crazy or something? What did you make trouble for? Why don't you go...?"

I held out my wallet so she could see the glint of metal inside. Like I figured, she wasn't the kind who wanted to question a badge so far as even take a good look at it. Tiny white lines etched the corners of her mouth and she threw a nervous glance at the guy on the floor. "Let's start with names," I said.

There wasn't any anger in her voice any more. "Listen, mister..."

"Names, kid. Who are you?"

She looked down at her feet, her fingers twisting at the bedclothes. "Virginia Howell."

"Where's Greta Service?"

I saw her frown, then she looked up at me. "I don't know any Greta Service."

Too many times I had put up with lying broads and I could tell when they were spinning one off. This one wasn't. Now it was all back to where it started again.

"Let's start with last night, Virginia. Where were you?"

"I was...out on a trick." She dropped her eyes again.

"Go on."

"It...was a hotel on Forty-ninth. Some john from out of town, I guess. Probably from one of the ships. He...he wasn't nothing, but he gave me a hundred bucks and I spent the night with him."

"Where'd you pick him up?"

"I didn't." She pointed to the guy on the floor. "He arranged the date like most of the time. He don't like me doing my own business." A touch of irony came into her voice. "I suppose I got to split with you too. Well, get it off him. He got it all now. Never even let me keep my percentage because I gave him some lip."

"You let anybody use your room?"

"Who the hell wants to use this dump?"

"I didn't ask that."

"No," she said.

I stepped over the guy on the floor. He was breathing heavily through his nose and a trickle of blood was dribbling down his chin. I opened the door of the closet. The same rack of clothes and suitcase was there that I had seen last night.

Virginia said, "You'd better blow, mister. He hates cops."

"Who is he, kid?"

"Lorenzo Jones. He used to fight."

"He's not doing so good right now."

"Just the same, he's mean. Don't think he won't look for you."

I bent over and plucked Lorenzo Jones' wallet from his pocket. He had five hundred and thirty bucks in it, a driver's license issued to himself giving the hotel as his permanent address and two tickets to the fight at the Garden next week. "Where's his room?"

Virginia made a disgusted grimace. "Who knows? He's got six girls in his string. Whoever's empty that night is where he stays. He won't pay for anything. He says he lives here. That's a lot of bull. He used to before he took on the other girls."

"Let's get back to last night again."

She sighed, squeezed her eyes shut and named the hotel, the room and the man as simply "Bud." He was middle-aged, dark, had a trace of an accent and a scar on his chin. Lorenzo Jones had met her at their usual place at eleven o'clock, told her where to go and she went. The whole arrangement had been customary as far as she was concerned except that Jones had bragged about how he had taken the sucker for a bundle. Remorsefully, she added, "You know something, mister? Two years ago I was getting two hundred bucks a night every time."

"These streets go two ways, kid. You don't have to stay around."

"Cut it out. Where the hell is there to go?"

I threw Lorenzo's wallet on the bed and reached down to jerk him to his feet. The voice from the doorway said, "Just hold it like that."

A pair of them stood there, one blocking the doorway with his body, the other slapping a billy against his palm suggestively. They were gutter punks trained in countless street brawls and the kind of predators who were turning the city into a shambles. They were in their late twenties, dangerous as hell because they liked what they were doing and were completely equipped for it.

The first one sensed what I was going to do and moved like a cat. Before I could get the .45 in my hand he was on me, swung the billy in a flat arc and I got my arm up just in time to deflect it. The thing caught me high on the shoulder and my whole arm went numb. He started a backhand swing when I chopped a short one up between his legs. He let out a breathless yell, but I hadn't caught him squarely enough and he was back again, cursing through his teeth. The other one came in from the door, launched a roundhouse right into my ribs, knocking me back against the bed and sending Virginia to the floor. He saved my neck because he knocked me out of the way of the billy, but I didn't have time to think about it.

Maybe they thought I was going to use my hands. They should have known I had been through the mill too. I braced myself, kicked out and smashed the second guy's face to a pulp with my heels, rolled, got to my feet, stepped into the clear and let the one with the billy make another try for me. He came in grinning, tried to fake me out and brought his arm around. I went under it, caught his forearm, threw him into a lock and went against the elbow joint with such leverage that the bone splintered under my fingers and the guy jerked like a crazy puppet with the agonizing pain that tore through his body. For one second his mouth opened to scream, then he went limp in a faint and I let him drop to the floor. The other one was on his hands and knees, trying to get up. I kicked him in the face again and he flopped back like a big rag doll.

Virginia Howell was crouched in the corner, hands pressed to her mouth, eyes great staring orbs of fear. There wouldn't be any use trying to talk to her now. I picked up my hat and looked around.

Lorenzo Jones was gone.

I went downstairs and when the desk clerk saw me coming, he turned pale. He didn't move when I grabbed his shirt front, didn't make a sound when I backhanded him across the mouth three times. He was caught short and was paying for it, hoping the others would be as easy on him. While he watched, I picked up the phone, called Pat and told him what happened. Everything was turning screwy and we'd want a pickup on Greta Service no matter what the excuse would be, and one on Lorenzo Jones, which would be easy to make stick. He told me to stand by to give the details to the squad car that was on the way, but I didn't have any intention of doing that at all. Those boys knew how to get what they wanted and the ones upstairs would still be here when they arrived.

In fifteen minutes I was supposed to meet Velda. She was going to have to wait. I went back into the rain, walked two blocks north along the curb, trying to spot an empty cab, finally flagged one down and had him take me to the Proctor Building.

The attendant in the lobby had just come on duty and told me the staff had already left for the day, but he was the same one who had been there last night and remembered me being with Dulcie. I told him she had asked me to get something from Theodore Gates' office, that it was damn important and somebody's head would roll if her wishes weren't complied with. He was so eager to please that he called his assistant in to watch the lobby and took me upstairs himself.

When we reached Gates' office I went directly to his rotary card file and spun it around to the G's. What I wanted was those symbols he had inscribed there and to get them translated. I thought I had missed her name and tried again, then a third times to be sure.

Greta Service's card was missing.

The attendant was watching me closely. "Find what you needed, sir?"

I didn't answer him. Instead, I asked, "Who's the receptionist on this floor?"

He thought a moment, then: "A Miss Wald, I believe."

"I want her home phone."

"There's probably a directory in the desk there." He went to the top drawer, pulled out a slide and ran his finger down it. "Here you are." He read the number off to me. I picked up theta phone and dialed it. After four rings a young voice answered and I said, "Miss Wald, I'm calling for Theodore Gates. Was he in the office today?"

"Why, yes, he was. He came in about ten, but canceled his appointments and left."

"Know where I can reach him?"

"Did you try his home?"

"Not yet."

"Then I don't know where he could be. You'll have to wait until tomorrow." I told her thanks and hung up. I found his home number, dialed it, let it ring a dozen times before I was sure there was nobody there, then hung up and jotted down his address.

"Will that be all, sir?"

"Yeah," I said. "For now."

Gates had a combination studio apartment in a renovated brownstone in the Fifties. Two other photographers occupied the building and apparently the one on the bottom floor was working because the lights were on and the foyer door open. I went inside, up the stairs to the second floor and pushed the buzzer to Gates' apartment.

Nobody answered.

I tried six picks on the lock before getting one that worked, stepped inside and felt for the light, the .45 tight in my fist. I flipped it on, moved sideways and covered the room. The place was a maze of equipment, smelling of hypo and water-colored backdrops, but it was empty. I tried each of the rooms to make sure. Theodore Gates wasn't there. Two closets were still full of his clothes, his dresser drawers well filled and orderly, but there was no telling whether or not he had taken anything with him.

In the studio itself was a desk cluttered with photographic supply catalogues and opened mail, another of those rotary files centered on it. I thumbed through this one too, but there was no Greta Service in it either. Along one side was a row of metal filing cabinets and I pulled out the one under "S." A folder of proofs on Greta Service was there, all right, duplicates of the ones in the Proctor Building. I was about to shut the drawer when I noticed that the contents had been alphabetically arranged from the P's to the T's. Out of curiosity I thumbed the first few back.

Then I saw the name Helen Poston.

Only four proofs were in the folder, but they were enough. Teddy Gates had posed her so that every inch of her lush form was visible through the sheer Grecian gown, the same one Greta had modeled in. She wasn't a Proctor Girl, but neither was Greta. It was too bad. They made the Proctor Girls look pretty sickly. I put the proofs back and tried the "D" file and came up with three on Maxine Delaney. The redhead wore a sarong, but the effect was the same. All woman, but no Proctor Girl. There was too much breast and thigh, too much inborn seductiveness rather than the lean emaciated look the fashion magazines demanded.

I closed the drawers and checked the rotary file again. Neither Helen Poston nor Maxine Delaney had an index card there. That I could expect. They were both dead. Taking their photos out of the files would come with a general cleanup. But Greta Service's had been there and wasn't any longer.

Any prints I might have left, I wiped off, then went downstairs, back to Broadway where I picked up a cab and headed for the Blue Ribbon.

Velda had almost given me up and was on her last cup of coffee. Angie was trying to keep her company at a table in the back, but they had run out of conversation just as I arrived. She had sparks in her eyes and if there had been something to throw I would have caught it, but she took one look at my face where the guys at the Sandelor had worked me over and the anger subsided into an expression of concern and she grabbed for my hand.

Angie brought me coffee and a sandwich and while I finished it I gave her the details. The little fine points I would liked to have elaborated on wouldn't come out. They were still ideas that wouldn't congeal into a solid and until they did they just lay there dormant, oozing through my mind, waiting to be recognized.

Velda had had a phone pickup service put on the office line and the only ones who had called were Hy and Pat. Pat had two possibles on persons who had been convicted on sex charges, later paroled and were presumed to be in the area. Both were parole violators and an intensive search was on for both. The men who jumped me were in custody, accusing the desk clerk of having hired them to lay me out. I was supposed to go in and press charges. There was a tracer out for Lorenzo Jones, but a guy like that could disappear anywhere in New York. Virginia Howell came up with the names and addresses of his other women, but he wasn't at any of those places.

Hy wanted to see me as soon as possible. Al Casey had come up with something he wanted corroborated and I was to meet him at ten at his office.

When Velda had given me the information she said, "What does it look like?"

"It smells. When it gets this damn complicated there's something else going on."

"I found the car Greta Service used. It was a rental job and she had it out twice. Both times it was registered to her and the mileage figures were nearly identical. The first time it was 118 miles, the second, 122." She reached in her pocketbook and brought out a map of the New York, Jersey and Long Island area.

"Figuring it as a round trip each way," she said, "I laid out a general sixty-mile radius from the city. Here it is." She shoved the map to me and sketched the circled area with her forefinger.

"That's a hell of a lot of square miles," I told her.

"We're only interested in the perimeter."

"If she went directly to her target, yeah."

"Well have to assume some things. Anyway, she had Helen Poston with her and women don't usually get too devious when they're driving."

I traced the line of her circle, picking out the cities the line touched. Peculiarly, there weren't many that it intersected at all. According to the diagram, the extent of Greta's trip would have led her to some pretty remote spots.

There was one that it did come close to, though. It was on Long Island and the name was Bradbury. I took out my pen and drew a circle around the town. "We'll start here."

She looked across the table at me and nodded. "Thee origin of that letter Greta had."

"When Harry mentioned it she cut him off. It may mean something."

"I know the section, Mike. When I was a kid it was a very exclusive place for the wealthy. It's come down a lot since the general population move to the suburbs, but there are still a lot of big people out that way."

"Who would Greta know there?" I asked her.

"A beautiful woman might know anybody. At least it's a lead. Supposing I check into a hotel out that way and see what I can do. I'll call you when I'm located."

"You watch it. You're a beautiful doll too."

"It's about time you noticed." She gave me a big grin. "And when I think of those lovely adjoining rooms going to waste."

"I'm hurting too, kitten."

She looked at her left hand and the ring I had given her. "I can come closer to getting married than any girl in the world. Why did I have to pick you?"

"Because we're made for each other," I told her. "Now get moving."

I could tell when Pat was burning. He stared at me with those cold eyes of his as if I were a suspect and let me go through my story for the third time around before he said, "Just tell me why you didn't hold Greta Service."

"For what reason?"

"You could have called me."

"Sure, and if there was something backing up this mess and she's involved she would have clammed right up."

"That doesn't cut it with me, Mike."

"No? I'd like to see what a lawyer would do to you if you tried it. I played it my way and that's the way it is. Any word on Lorenzo Jones or Gates yet?"

"Not a damn thing. Jones is holed up somewhere and the best we got on Gates was a statement from the elevator operator in the Proctor Building that he left sometime after ten. He carried no luggage and seemed to be in a hurry. The cleaning woman who took care of his place said everything was still there as far as she knew, but she had the idea he kept a woman somewhere and a change of clothes at her apartment. We're still looking. Incidentally, the other desk clerk at the Sandelor Hotel handed us a blank. He knew the Howell dame but couldn't identify Greta. He's generally half in the bag and can't see too well anyway. We leaned on him a little but couldn't cut it at all."

"And Dulcie McInnes?"

"She was on live TV from Washington this afternoon M.C.ing a fashion show for some big women's organization. She's a house guest of a woman who's the wife of one of our biggest lobbyists and couldn't give us a lead to Gates at all. She suggested that he might have gone off on an independent assignment. Our men didn't think so because the equipment he would have carried is still at his studio."

I leaned back in the chair with my hands folded behind my head. "Not much is being said in the papers about Mitch Temple."

"Which is the way we wanted it and they're cooperating."

On the wall the clock ticked the seconds away. Pat finally said, "The M.E. had replies to his queries about the poison that was used on the Poston girl. It wasn't as exclusive as he thought it was. There are certain other derivatives from similar sources that have been used by the Orientals for centuries. It went out of fashion when the royalty class was deposed by the rabble, but available. Interpol reported its use several times during some big family vendettas in Turkey."

"I'm missing your point," I said.

Pat picked up a pencil and doodled on a pad on the desk.

"There isn't any. I'm just throwing it up for grabs."

"Sorry, buddy."

"We hit a dead end on the whip that killed the Delaney kid."

"You still have one more to go. Find out who owns a rack."

Pat shot me an annoyed glance. "Mike...this could be an individual. A nut. He preys on one type. He uses gimmicks." He threw the pencil down and slapped the desk with an open hand. "Damn it, I haven't got the feeling that it is and neither do you."

I didn't say anything.

"Damn it, Mike..."

"Something's wrong. Too many things miss being on the line by a fraction. There are people involved who have no right being there at all. Kills like this generally touch only certain persons...they don't get spread out all over the map like this one." I stopped and let the chair ease forward. "No, I don't think it's an individual. It's too well coordinated. If it were an individual somebody would have seen something. If those kills were related there was nothing spontaneous about them."

"Get to it, Mike."

"Theodore Gates could be the key. He knew three of them. Photos of them were in his files. I saw Greta's name in his personal index and the next time it wasn't there at all. He had the time to destroy it. Greta could have called him after I left there to tell him I had located her. A little thought would put his finger on what happened. He took the card out and disappeared."

"Why?"

"And therein lies the rub," I quoted. "Why? Unless he and Greta had something going for them. Somebody obviously paid off Lorenzo Jones to use Virginia Howell's room that night. I'll take her word for it she didn't know what the scoop was."

"We'll get him."

"Sure, but what good will it do? He's a pimp, a punchy pimp. If there's a hot one here nobody's going to invite him in on the deal. That type is too likely to blow it to pieces. No, he was used somehow. I can see how a guy like Gates might have had contact with Jones. Gates had outside assignments that could have led to Jones or he just could have been one of the guy's clients. When you get a file on Gates that stuff will come out. We just can't wait around, that's all."

Pat got up and stalked to the window, snapping his fingers, with impatience. "Mitch Temple puts it all in the same package," he said. "He spotted the same similarity and followed it up. He recognized somebody and died for it." He turned around and squinted at me. "Then there was that guy who tried for you. Nothing came of that either. We're dealing with a cast of nobodies."

"But they're there."

"Sure. And we're here. Three punks are in the can on an assault and battery charge. Great record. You know what the papers will be doing to this office if there's no action before long?"

I nodded. "Every reporter in the city is working overtime."

"The difference is, friend, that they don't have to be the goats."

"Pat," I said quietly.

"Yeah?"

"What's out at Bradbury?"

"Now what hole in your head did that come out of?"

"It came up along the line," I said.

Pat's smile was a tight thing that barely crinkled his mouth. There was no humor in it at all. Before he could push it I added, "Harry Service mentioned Greta having a letter from there once. He didn't see it."

Some of the frost left his face. "When was this?"

"Her last visit."

Pat went over it in his mind a moment and told me, "It's resort area along the coast and a residential area for the wealthy, further in. I haven't been there for five years."

"Nothing else?"

"You pushing an angle?" he demanded.

"Curious, that's all."

"She could have been there. The place is public beaches, yacht harbor and motel area now. Some of the Fire Island crowd took it over and ran it down. It's getting a reputation of being an artists-and-models colony. The old permanent residents complained, but it didn't help any. I guess they thought it would ruin their image, especially after a couple of the embassies bought into the area there."

"What embassies?"

"Oh, the French have a place there...so do one of the Russian satellite countries. I think one of the Middle East outfits moved out there a couple of years ago too."

I laughed with surprise. "And I thought if it didn't happen in the city here you wouldn't know about it."

"The reason I know is because some of our best officers retired from the force to take up security jobs there at twice the pay."

"Not at the embassies?"

"No, they have their own security. The town has a jazz festival every year that brings in a mob of town wreckers. The public finally anted up for a bigger force before somebody caused an international incident. It's gotten worse every year. It's too damn bad Gerald Ute wouldn't be philanthropic in other fields."

"Ute?"

"Yeah, the one you met the other night."

"He's got a place out there?"

"Not him. He simply financed the jazz festivals. He turned his place into a communal recreation center for the bigwigs of the U.N. The city runs it, but on a pretty restricted basis. It was a grand gesture and got him a lot of publicity, but it got a white elephant off his hands too...along with a fat tax deduction."

He sat down, swinging idly in his chair, watching my face, "Velda's out there," I said.

"So are a hundred agents from Washington to make sure nothing happens to the housecats from the U.N. These days nobody wants to take a chance of having some politico scratched. Hell, the way diplomatic immunity goes these days we can't even give out parking tickets."

I didn't want Pat to see my face. He didn't know it, but he had just been the catalyst that jelled one of those thoughts that had been so damn elusive.

When I got up I tossed a note on Pat's desk. "Can you see Harry gets this? It's a report that his sister is alive."

"Okay. You going to press charges against those three we're holding?"

"Right now."

"You're going to have a lot to talk about when you're in court on that kill."