The Mike Hammer Collection

“Am I supposed to know you?”

She flicked her eyes to her hands, to Velda, then to me. “I have another name.”

“Oh?”

“Torrence. I never use it. He had me legally adopted a long time ago but I never use his name. I hate it.”

I shook my head. “Sorry, kid. I don’t make you at all.”

Velda reached out and touched my hand. “Sim Torrence. He was the District Attorney once; now he’s running in the primaries for governor of the state.”

“Win with Sim?”

“That’s right.”

“I remember seeing posters around but I never tied him up with the D.A.’s office.” I let a grin ease out. “It’s been a rough seven years. I didn’t keep up with politics. Now let’s hear the rest of this.”

Sue nodded, her hair tumbling around her face. She bit at her lip with even white teeth, her hands clasped so tight the knuckles showed white. “I ran away from him.”

“Why?”

The fear was a live thing in her eyes. “I think . . . he killed my mother. Now he wants to kill me.”

When I glanced at Velda I knew she was thinking the same thing I was. I said, “People running for governor don’t usually kill people.”

“He killed my mother,” she repeated.

“You said you thought he did.” She didn’t answer so I asked, “When was this supposed to have happened?”

“A long time ago.”

“How long?”

“I . . . was a baby. Eighteen years ago.”

“How do you know he did this?”

She wouldn’t look at me. “I just know it, that’s all.”

“Honey,” I said, “you can’t accuse a man of murder with a reason like that.”

She made a little shrug and worked her fingers together.

I said, “You have something else in your mind. What is it?”

Velda slipped her arm around her shoulders and squeezed. Sue looked at her gratefully and turned back to me again. “I remember Mama talking. Before she died. Whatever she said . . . is in my mind . . . but I can’t pick out the words. I was terribly frightened. She was dying and she talked to me and told me something and I don’t remember what it was!” She sucked her breath in and held it while the tears welled up in her eyes.

When she relaxed I said, “And what makes you think he wants to kill you?”

“I know . . . the way he looks at me. He . . . touches me.”

“Better, baby. You’ll have to do better than that.”

“Very well. There was a car. It almost hit me.”

“Did you recognize it?”

“No.”

“Go on.”

“There was a man one night. He followed me home from the theater. He tried to cut me off but I knew the roads and lost him not far from the house.”

“Did you recognize him or his car?”

“No.”

“Did you report the incidents?”

“No,” she said softly.

“Okay, Sue, my turn. Do you know you’re an exceptionally pretty girl?” She looked up at me. “Sure you do. Men are going to follow you, so get used to dodging. Nearly everybody has had a close call with a car, so don’t put too much store in that. And so far as your stepfather is concerned, he’d look at you like any man would his daughter and touch you the same way. You haven’t said anything concrete yet.”

“Then what about that man you killed and the other one?”

“Touché,” I said. But I couldn’t let it lay there. She was waiting and she was scared. I looked at Velda. “Did you tell her where you’ve been for seven years and what happened?”

“She knows.”

“And about me?”

“Everything.”

“Then maybe this is an answer . . . those men were part of an enemy organization who had to destroy Velda before she talked. They moved in to get her, not you. And now it’s over. Nobody’s going to kill her because now she’s said her piece and it’s too late. What do you think about that?”

“I’m not going back,” she said simply.

“Supposing I go see your stepfather. Suppose I can really find out the truth, even to what your mother told you. Would that help any?”

“Maybe.” Her voice was a whisper.

“Okay, kid, I’ll play Big Daddy.”

Velda looked up with eyes so full of thanks I had to laugh at her. She scooted the kid off to the other end of the room, took my arm, and walked me to the door. “You’ll do all you can?”

“You know, you’d think I’d know better by now.”

“Mike . . . don’t change.”

“No chance, baby.”

She opened the door. “Do you . . . believe that about . . . those men coming for me?”

After a few seconds I said, “No. Basil Levitt said he wanted both you and the kid so it wasn’t anything to do with the last operation. She’s in it someplace.” I knew I was frowning.

“What are you thinking of ?”

“Something he said, damn it.” I wiped my face with my hand and grimaced. “I’ve been away too long. I’m not clicking.”

“It will come.”

“Sure, honey,” I said. I touched her face lightly. “Later?”

“I’ll be waiting.”

“Put the kid to bed.”

She made a face at me, grinned and nodded.

It was like there had never been those seven years at all.

There wasn’t much trouble getting background material on Simpson Torrence. He had been making headlines since the ’30s, was featured in several of the latest magazines, and was the subject of three editorials in opposition newspapers. I took two hours to go over the bits and pieces and what I came up with made him a likely candidate for governor. In fact, several of his high-ranking constituents were looking past the mansion at Albany to the White House in Washington.

But good points I wasn’t looking for. If there was anything to the kid’s story at all, then something would have to point to another side of the guy’s character. People just don’t come all good.

I called Hy Gardner and asked him to meet me at the Blue Ribbon with anything he might have on Torrence. All he said was, “Now what?” But it meant he’d be there.

He showed up with Pete Ladero, who did legwork for a political columnist, and over lunch I picked out all the information on Torrence I could get. Substantially, it was the same as the better magazines had reported. Sim Torrence was a product of New York schools, had graduated magna cum laude and gone into public service immediately afterward. He had a small inheritance that made him independent enough to be able to afford the work and a determination that took him from an assistant D.A. through the main office into the State Legislature and Senate, and now he was standing at the threshold of the governorship. I said, “What’s wrong with the guy?”

“Nothing,” Pete told me. “Find out something and I’ll peddle it to the opposition for a million bucks.”

“Didn’t they try?”

“You kidding?”

Hy shoved his glasses up on his forehead. “So what’s the business then, Mike? What are you laying into Torrence for?”

“Curiosity right now. His name came up in a little deal a while back.”

“This for publication?”

“No. It’s strictly for curiosity value.”

“I wish to hell you’d say what you’re going to say.”

“Okay,” I agreed. “What about his marriage?”

Pete and Hy looked at each other, shrugged, and Pete said, “His wife died years ago. He never remarried.”

“Who was she?”

Pete thought a moment, then: “Her name was Devon, Sally Devon. If I remember right she was a fairly pretty showgirl when it was fashionable to marry showgirls. But hell, she died not long after the war. There was never any scandal connected with his marriage.”

“What about the kid?” I asked.

Pete shook his head. “Nothing. I’ve met her several times. Torrence adopted her when her mother died, sent her to pretty good schools, and she’s lived with him since.”

“She ran away.”

“You don’t run away when you’re over twenty-one,” he reminded me. “Sim probably has given her a checking account that will keep her provided for wherever she goes.” He paused a moment. “I don’t get the angle there.”

“Because I haven’t got one,” I said. “In my business names and people get dropped into funny places and no matter who they are they get checked out. Hell, it never hurts to prove a clean man clean.”

Pete agreed with a nod, finished his coffee, and told us so-long. Hy said, “Satisfied?”

“I’m getting there.”

“Do I get a hint at least?”

“Sure. The two dead men the night I found Velda.”

Hy frowned and pulled his glasses off, his cigar working across his mouth. “The ones who followed you and tried to nail Velda at the last minute?”

“That’s the story the papers got, friend.”

He waited, staring at me.

I said, “They had nothing to do with the espionage bit. They were part of another story.”

“Brother!” Hy poked the cigar out in the ashtray and reached for his pencil and scratch sheets.

“No story yet, Hy. Hold it back. I’ll tell you when.”

Reluctantly, he put them back. “Okay, I’ll wait.”

“Velda had Torrence’s kid with her. She took her in like a stray cat. Strictly coincidence, but there we are. The kid said she was hiding out from her old man, but whether she’s lying or not, we know one thing: two dead men and a possible third say trouble’s there.”

“How the hell can you suppress stuff like that!” Hy exploded.

“Angles, buddy.”

“Boy, you sure come on like gangbusters. I hope you’re protecting yourself.”

“Don’t worry about me.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t.”

Hy had to get back to his desk at the Tribune building so I dropped him off and went ahead to Pat’s office. The uniformed sergeant at the desk waved to me, said Pat was upstairs in new quarters and to go ahead up.

He was eating at his desk as usual, too crammed with work to take time out at a lunch counter. But he wasn’t too busy to talk to me. I was part of his work. He grinned and said, “How is Velda?”

“Fine, but not for you.”

“Who knows?” He reached for the coffee container. “What’s up?”

“What did you get on Levitt and the other guy?”

“Nothing new on Levitt. He’d been sporting some fresh money lately without saying where it came from. It was assumed that he picked up his old blackmail operations.”

“And the other one?”

“Kid Hand. You knew him, didn’t you?”

“I’ve seen him around. Small-time muscle.”

“Then you haven’t seen him lately. He’s gone up in the world. Word has it that he’s been handling all the bookie operations on the Upper West Side.”

“Tillson’s old run?”

“Hell, Tillson was knocked off a year ago.”

“So who’s Hand working for?”

“I wish I knew. Mr. Big has been given the innocuous-sounding name of Mr. Dickerson, but nobody seems to know any more about him.”

“Somebody’s going to be taking over Hand’s end. There’ll be a shake-up somewhere.”

“Mike . . . you just don’t know the rackets anymore. It’s all I.B.M.-style now. Business, purely business, and they’re not being caught without a chain of command. No, there won’t be a shake-up. It’ll all happen nice and normally. Somebody else will be appointed to Kid Hand’s job and that will be that.”

“You guessed the bug, though, didn’t you?”

Pat nodded. “Certainly. What’s a wheel like Hand taking on a muscle job for anyway? You know the answer?”

“Sure. I’d say he was doing somebody a favor. Like somebody big.”

“Yeah,” Pat said sourly. “Now the question is, who was killing who? You nailed Hand, Levitt fired two shots, and we recovered one out of the ceiling.”

“Another one got Hand’s friend in the gut. You might check the hospitals.”

“Now you tell me.”

“Nuts, Pat. You figured it right after it happened.”

He swung around idly in his chair, sipping at the coffee container. When he was ready he said, “What were they really after, Mike?”

I took my time too. “I don’t know. Not yet I don’t. But I’ll find out.”

“Great. And with all that top cover you got I have to sweat you out.”

“Something like that.”

“Let me clue you, Mike. We have a new Inspector. He’s a tough nut and a smart one. Between him and the D.A., you’re liable to find your tail in a jam. Right now they’re trying hard to bust you loose for them to work over, so you’d better have pretty powerful friends in that office you seem to be working for.”

I put my hat on and stood up. “Anything I come up with you’ll get.”

“Gee, thanks,” he said sarcastically, then grinned.

Sim Torrence lived inside a walled estate in Westchester that reflected the quiet dignity of real wealth and importance. A pair of ornate iron gates were opened wide, welcoming visitors, and I turned my rented Ford up the drive.

The house, a brick colonial type, was surrounded by blue spruces that reached to the eaves. Two black Caddies were parked in front of one wing and I pulled up behind them, got out, touched the doorbell, and waited.

I had expected a maid or a butler, but not a stunning brunette with electric blue eyes that seemed to spark at you. She had an early season tan that made her eyes and the red of her mouth jump right at you and when she smiled and said quizzically, “Yes? ” it was like touching a hot line.

I grinned crookedly. “My name is Hammer. I’m looking for Mr. Torrence.”

“Is he expecting you?”

“No, but I think he’ll see me. It’s about his daughter.”

The eyes sparked again with some peculiar fear. “Is she . . . all right?”

“Fine.”

Then relief took over and she held out her hand to me. “Please come in, Mr. Hammer. I’m Geraldine King, Mr. Torrence’s secretary. He’s going to be awfully glad to see you. Since Sue ran off again he’s been so upset he can’t do a thing.”

“Again?”

She glanced up at me and nodded. “She’s gone off several times before. If she only knew what she does to Mr. Torrence when she gets in one of her peeves she’d be more considerate. In here, Mr. Hammer.” She pointed into a large study that smelled of cigars and old leather. “Make yourself at home, please.”

There wasn’t much time for that. Before I had a chance to make a circuit of the room I heard the sound of hurried feet and Big Sim Torrence, the Man-Most-Likely-To-Succeed, came in looking not at all like a politician, but with the genuine worry of any distraught father.

He held out his hand, grabbed mine, and said, “Thanks for coming, Mr. Hammer.” He paused, offered me a chair, and sat down. “Now, where is Sue? Is she all right?”

“Sure. Right now she’s with a friend of mine.”

“Where, Mr. Hammer?”

“In the city.”

He perched on the edge of the chair and frowned. “She . . . does intend to come back here?”

“Maybe.”

His face hardened then. It was a face that had an expression I had seen a thousand times in courtrooms. It became a prosecuting attorney’s face who suddenly found himself with a hostile witness and was determined to drag out the right answers the hard way.

Torrence said, “Perhaps I don’t understand your concern in this matter.”

“Perhaps not. First, let me tell you that it’s by accident that I’m here at all. Sue was sort of taken in hand by my secretary and I made a promise to look into things before letting her return.”

“Oh?” He looked down into his hands. “You are . . . qualified for this matter then?”

The wallet worked its magic again and the hostility faded from his face. His expression was serious, yet touched with impatience. “Then please get to the point, Mr. Hammer. I’ve worried enough about Sue so . . .”

“It’s simple enough. The kid says she’s scared stiff of you.”

A look of pain flitted across his eyes. He held up his hand to stop me, nodded, and looked toward the window. “I know, I know. She says I killed her mother.”

He caught me a little off base. When he looked around once more I said, “That’s right.”

“May I explain something?”

“I wish somebody would.”

Torrence settled back in his chair, rubbing his face with one hand. His voice was flat, as though he had gone through the routine countless times before. “I married Sally Devon six months after her husband died. Sue was less than a year old at the time. I had known Sally for years then and it was like . . . well, we were old friends. What I didn’t know was that Sally had become an alcoholic. In the first years of our marriage she grew worse in spite of everything we tried to do. Sally took to staying at my place in the Catskills with an old lady for a housekeeper, refusing to come into the city, refusing any help . . . just drinking herself to death. She kept Sue with her although it was old Mrs. Lee who really took care of the child. One night she drank herself into a stupor, went outside into the bitter cold for something, and passed out. She was unconscious when Mrs. Lee found her and dead before either a doctor or I could get to her. For some reason the child thinks I had something to do with it.”

“She says her mother told her something before she died.”

“I know that too. She can’t recall anything, but continues to make the charge against me.” He paused and rubbed his temples. “Sue has been a problem. I’ve tried the best schools and let her follow her own desires but nothing seems to help matters any. She wants to be a showgirl like her mother was.” He looked up at me slowly. “I wish I knew the answer.”

This time I was pretty direct. “She says you’re trying to kill her.”

His reaction was one of amazement. “What?” Very slowly he came to the edge of his seat. “What’s that?”

“A car tried to run her down, she was deliberately followed, and somebody took a shot at her.”

“Are you sure?”

“I am about the last time. I was there when it happened.” I didn’t bother giving him any of the details.

“But . . . why haven’t I heard . . .?”

“Because it involved another matter too. In time you’ll hear about it. Not now. Just let’s say it happened.”

For the first time his courtroom composure left him. He waved his hands like a lost person and shook his head.

I said, “Mr. Torrence, do you have any enemies?”

“Enemies?”

“That’s right.”

“I . . . don’t think so.” He reflected a moment and went on. “Political enemies, perhaps. There are two parties and . . .”

“Would they want to kill you?” I interrupted.

“No . . . certainly not. Disagree, but that’s all.”

“What about women?” I asked bluntly.

He paid no attention to my tone. “Mr. Hammer . . . I haven’t kept company with a woman since Sally died. This is a pretty well-known fact.”

I looked toward the door meaningfully. “You keep pretty company.”

“Geraldine King was assigned to me by our state chairman. She has been with me through three political campaigns. Between times she works with others in the party running for office.”

“No offense,” I said. “But how about other possibles? Could you have made any special enemies during your political career?”

“Again, none that I know of who would want to kill me.”

“You were a D.A. once.”

“That was twenty-some years ago.”

“So go back that far.”

Torrence shrugged impatiently. “There were a dozen threats, some made right in the courtroom. Two attempts that were unsuccessful.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Police routine stopped the action. Both persons were apprehended and sent back to prison. Since then both have died, one of T.B., the other of an ulcer.”

“You kept track of them?”

“No, the police did. They thought it best to inform me. I wasn’t particularly worried.”

“Particularly?”

“Not for myself. For Sue and anyone else, yes. Personally, my recourse is to the law and the police. But remember this, Mr. Hammer, it isn’t unusual for a District Attorney to be a target. There was a man named Dewey the mobs could have used dead, but to kill him would have meant that such pressure would be brought on organized crime that when Dutch Schultz wanted to kill him the Mob killed Dutch instead. This is a precarious business and I realize it. At the same time, I won’t alter my own philosophies by conforming to standards of the scared.”

“How often have you been scared?”

“Often. And you?”

“Too often, buddy.” I grinned at him and he smiled back slowly, his eyes showing me he knew what I meant.

“Now about Sue.”

“I’ll speak to her.”

“You’ll bring her home?”

“That’s up to Sue. I’ll see what she says. Supposing she won’t come?”

Torrence was silent a moment, thinking. “That’s up to her then. She’s a . . . child who isn’t a child. Do you know what I mean?”

“Uh-huh.”

He nodded. “She’s well provided for financially and frankly, I don’t see what else I can do for her. I’m at a point where I need advice.”

“From whom?”

His eyes twinkled at me. “Perhaps from you, Mr. Hammer.” “Could be.”

“May I ask your status first?”

“I hold a very peculiar legal authorization. At the moment it allows me to do damn near anything I want to. Within reason, of course.”

“For how long?”

“You’re quick, friend.” He nodded and I said, “Until somebody cuts me out of it or I make a mistake.”

“Oh?”

“And the day of mistakes is over.”

“Then advise me. I need advice from someone who doesn’t make mistakes anymore.” There was no sarcasm in his tone at all.

“I’ll keep her with me until she wants out.”

A full ten seconds passed before he thought it over, then he nodded, went to the other side of his desk and pulled out a checkbook. When he finished writing he handed me a pretty green paper made out for five thousand dollars and watched while I folded it lengthwise.

“That’s pretty big,” I said.

“Big men don’t come little. Nor do big things. I want Sue safe. I want Sue back. It’s up to you now, Mr. Hammer. Where do you start?”

“By getting you to remember the name of the other guys who threatened to kill you.”

“I doubt if those matters are of any importance.”

“Suppose you let me do the deciding. A lot of trouble can come out of the past. A lot of dirt too. If you don’t want me probing you can take your loot back. Then just for fun I might do it anyway.”

“There’s something personal about this with you, isn’t there, Mr. Hammer? It isn’t that you need the money or the practice. You needn’t tell me, but there is something else.”

We studied each other for the few ticks of time that it took for two pros in the same bit of business to realize that there wasn’t much that could be hidden.

“You know me, Torrence.”

“I know you, Mike. Doesn’t everybody?”

I grinned and stuck the check in my pocket. “Not really,” I said.

CHAPTER 3

You can always make a start with a dead man. It’s an ultimate end and a perfect beginning. Death is too definite to be ambiguous and when you deal with it your toes are in the chocks and not looking for a place to grab hold.

But death can be trouble too. It had been a long time and in seven years people could forget or stop worrying or rather play the odds and get themselves a name in the dark shadows of the never land of the night people.

Kid Hand was dead. Somebody would be mad. Somebody would be worried. By now everybody would know what happened in that tenement room and would be waiting. There would be those who remembered seven years ago and would wonder what came next. Some would know. Some would have to find out.

Me, maybe.

Off Broadway on Forty-ninth there’s a hotel sandwiched in between slices of other buildings and on the street it has a screwy bar with a funny name filled with screwier people and even funnier names. They were new people, mostly, but some were still there after seven years and when I spotted Jersey Toby I nodded and watched him almost drop his beer and went to the bar and ordered a Four Roses and ginger.

The bartender was a silent old dog who mixed the drink, took my buck, and said, “Hello, Mike.”

I said, “Hello, Charlie.”

“You ain’t been around.”

“Didn’t have to be.”

“Glad you dumped the slop chutes.”

“You hear too much.”

“Bartenders like to talk too.”

“To who?”

“Whom,” he said.

“So whom?”

“Like other bartenders.”

“Anybody else?”

“Nobody else,” he said gently.

“Business is business,” I grinned.

“So be it, Mike.”

“Sure, Charlie,” I told him.

He walked away and set up a couple for the hookers working the tourist traffic at the other end, then sort of stayed in the middle with a small worried expression on his face. Outside it was hot and sticky and here it was cool and quiet with the dramatic music of Franck’s Symphony in D Minor coming through the stereo speakers too softly to be as aggressive as it should. It could have been a logical place for anybody to drop in for a break from the wild city outside.

One of the hookers spotted my two twenties on the bar and broke away from her tourist friend long enough to hit the cigarette machine behind me. Without looking around she said, “Lonely?”

I didn’t look around either. “Sometimes.”

“Now?”

“Not now,” I said.

She turned around, grinned, and popped a butt in her pretty mouth. “Crazy native,” she said.

“A real aborigine.”

She laughed down in her throat. “So back to the flatland foreigners.”

Jersey Toby waited until she left, then did the cigarette-machine bit himself before taking his place beside me. He made it look nice and natural, even to getting into a set routine of being a sudden bar friend and buying a drink.

When the act was over he said, “Look, Mike . . .”

“Quit sweating, buddy.”

“You come for me or just anybody?”

“Just anybody.”

“I don’t like it when you don’t come on hard.”

“A new technique, Toby.”

“Knock it off, Mike. Hell, I know you from the old days. You think I don’t know what happened already?”

“Like what?”

“Like what’s with Levitt and Kid Hand. You got rocks in your head? You think you can come shooting into the city anymore? Man, things ain’t like before. You been away and you should’ve stayed away. Now before you get me involved, let me tell you one big thing. Don’t make me out a patsy. I ain’t telling you nothing. Not one goddamn thing. Lay off me. I been doing a lot of small-time crap that don’t get me no heat from either direction and that’s the way I like it.”

“Great.”

“And no soft stuff too. Save that bull for the enlisted men.”

“What are you pitching now?”

“I’m a pimp.”

“You came down in the world.”

“Yeah? Well maybe I did, but I got bucks going for me now and a couple of broads who like the bit. I do it square and not like some of the creeps and on top there’s enough juice to pay off who needs paying off, like. Y’know?”

“I won’t eat your bread, kiddo.”

“Goddamn right.”

He sat there glowering into his drink, satisfied that he had made his point, then I reached over and took his hand and held it against my side where the .45 was strung and said, “Remember?”

When he took his hand back he was shaking. “You’re still nuts,” he said. “You ain’t nothing no more. One push with that rod and you’ve had it. I’m still paying juice.”

This time I pulled the other cork. I took out the wallet and opened it like I was going to put my money back only I let him see the card in the window. He took a good look, his eyes going wide, then reached for his drink. “An ace, Toby,” I said. “Now do we go to your place or my place?”

“I got a room upstairs,” he told me.

“Where?”

“313.”

“Ten minutes. You take off first.”

It was a back-alley room that had the antiseptic appearance of all revamped hotel rooms, but still smelled of stale beer, old clothes, and tired air. Jersey Toby opened a beer for himself when I waved one off, then sat down with a resigned shrug and said, “Spill it, Mike.”

“Kid Hand.”

“He’s dead.”

“I know. I shot him. The top of his head came off and left a mess on the wall. He wasn’t the first and he probably won’t be the last.”

Toby put the beer down slowly. “You’re nuts.”

“That’s the best you can say?”

“No,” he repeated. “You’re nuts. I think you got a death wish.”

“Toby . . .”

“I mean it, Mike. Like word goes around fast. You don’t make a hit in this town without everybody knowing. You was crazy enough in those old days, but now you’re real nuts. You think I don’t know already? Hell, like everybody knows. I don’t even want to be in the same room with you.”

“You don’t have a choice, Toby.”

“Sure, so I’ll pay later. So will you. Damn, Mike . . .”

“Kid Hand,” I repeated.

“He took Tillson’s job. Everybody knew about that.”

“More.”

“Like what, you nut! How the hell should I know about Kid? We ain’t in the same game. I’m pimping. You know what he was? Like a big shot! Mr. Dickerson’s right-hand boy. You think I’m going to . . .?”

“Who?”

“Knock it off . . . you know.”

“Who, Toby?”

“Mr. Dickerson.”

“Who’s he, buddy?”

“Mike . . .”

“Don’t screw around with me.”

“Okay. So who knows from Dickerson? He’s the new one in. He’s the big one. He comes in with power and all the hard boys are flocking back. Hell, man, I can’t tell you more. All I know is Mr. Dickerson and he’s the gas.”

“Political?”

“Not him, you nut. This one’s power. Like firepower, man. You know what’s happening in this town? They’re coming in from the burgs, man. Bit shooters and they’re gathering around waiting for orders. I feel the stream going by but I ain’t fishing. Too long the mobs have been dead . . . now it’s like Indians again. A chief is back and the crazy Soos is rejoicing. That’s all I can say.”

“Kid Hand?”

“Crazy, man. A shooter and he knew where his bread was. He was on the way up until he decided to get back in the ranks again. He should’ve stayed where he was.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“He pulled on me. I don’t take that crap.”

“He knew it was you, maybe? He knew it was anybody?”

“Somebody said he might have been doing a personal favor.”

Toby got up and faced the blank window. “Sure, why not? Favors are important. It makes you look big. It proves like you’re not a punk. It proves . . .”

“It proves how fast you can get killed, too.”

Slowly, he turned around. “Am I in the middle, Mike?”

“I don’t see how.”

“Ask it straight.”

“Who is Dickerson?”

“Nobody knows. Just that he’s big.”

“Money? ”

“I guess.”

“Who takes Kid Hand’s place?”

“Whoever can grab it. I’d say Del Penner. He’s pretty tough. He had a fall ten years ago, but came back to grab off the jukes in Chi, then moved into the bolita and jai alai in Miami. He was pushing Kid pretty hard.”

“Then maybe Kid’s move in on me was part of a power grab.”

“Favors don’t hurt nobody.”

“It killed Kid.”

“So he didn’t know it was you.”

I looked at him a long time, then his face got tight and he turned away. When he gulped down his beer he looked at me, shrugged, and said, “Word goes it was a personal favor. You were a surprise. You just don’t know what kind of a surprise. It wasn’t with you. It was something else. That’s all. I don’t know . . . I don’t want to know. Let me make my bucks my own way, only stay loose, man.”

“Why?”

“You’re hot now, man. Everybody knows. Everybody’s looking.”

“I’ve had heat before.”

“Not like this.” He looked into his beer, shrugged, and decided. “You ever hear of Marv Kania?”

“No.”

“He’s a contract man from St. Loo. Punk about twenty-eight, got a fall for murder second when he was a teenager, joined with Pax in K.C., then did the route with Arnold Philips on the coast and back to St. Loo. They figured he was a contract kill on Shulburger, Angelo, and Vince Pago and the big Carlysle hit in L.A. He’s got plenty of cover and is as nuts as you are.”

“What does that make me, Toby?”

“A target, man. He’s in town with a slug in his gut and everybody knows how it happened. If he dies you’re lucky. If he don’t you’re dead.”

I got up and put on my hat. “My luck’s been pretty good lately,” I said.

He nodded gravely. “I hope it holds.”

When I went to open the door he added, “Maybe I don’t, too.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want to be around when it stops. You’ll make an awful splash.”

“It figures.”

“Sure it does,” he said.

Then I went back to her, the beautiful one whose hair hung dark and long, whose body was a quiet concert in curves and colors of white and shadow that rose softly under a single sheet into a woman’s fulfillment of mounded breasts and soft clefts.

She didn’t hear me come in until I said, “Velda . . .”

Then her eyes opened, slowly at first, then with the startled suddenness of a deer awakened and her hand moved and I knew what she had in it. When she knew it was me her fingers relaxed, came out from under the cover, and reached for mine.

“You can lose that way, kid,” I said.

“Not when you’re here.”

“It wasn’t always me.”

“This is now, Mike,” she said. It was almost me thinking again when I walked up the steps a couple of days ago.

I took her hand, then in one full sweep flipped the sheet off her body and looked at her.

What is it when you see a woman naked? Woman. Long. Lovely. Tousled. Skin that looks slippery in the small light. Pink things that are the summit. A wide, shadowy mass that is the crest. Desire that rests in the soft fold of flesh that can speak and taste and tell that it wants you with the sudden contractions and quickening intake of breath. A mouth that opens wetly and moves with soundless words of love.

I sat on the edge of the bed and let my fingers explore her. The invitation had always been there, but for the first time it was accepted. Now I could touch and feel and enjoy and know that this was mine. She gasped once, and said, “Your eyes are crazy, Mike.”

“You can’t see them.”

“But I know. They’re wild Irish brown green and they’re crazy.”

“I know.”

“Then do what I want.”

“Not me, kid. You’re only a broad and I do what I want.”

“Then do it.”

“Are you ready?” I asked.

“I’ve always been ready.”

“No you haven’t.”

“I am now.”

Her face was turned toward mine, the high planes in her cheeks throwing dark shades toward her lips, her eyes bright with a strange wetness, and when I bent forward and kissed her it was like tasting the animal wildness of a tiger filled with an insensate hunger that wanted to swallow its victim whole and I knew what woman was like. Pure woman.

Across the room, muffled because of the alcove, came a peculiar distant tone that made the scales, rising and falling with an eerie quality that had a banshee touch, and Velda said, “She’s awake.”

I pulled the sheet up and tucked it around her shoulders. “She isn’t.”

“We can go somewhere.”

“No. The biggest word.”

“Mike . . .”

“First we get rid of the trouble. It won’t be right until then.”

I could feel her eyes. “With you there will always be trouble.”

“Not this trouble.”

“Haven’t we had enough?”

I shook my head. “Some people it’s always with. You know me now. It comes fast, it lasts awhile, then it ends fast.”

“You never change, do you?”

“Kitten, I don’t expect to. Things happen, but they never change.”

“Will it be us?”

“It has to be. In the meantime there are things to do. You ready?”

She grinned at me, the implication clear. “I’ve always been ready. You just never asked before.”

“I never ask. I take.”

“Take.”

“When I’m ready. Not now. Get up.”

Velda was a woman. She slid out of bed and dressed, deliberately, so I could watch everything she did, then reached into the top drawer of the dresser and pulled out a clip holster and slid it inside her skirt, the slide going over the wide belt she wore. The flat-sided Browning didn’t even make a bulge.

I said, “If anybody ever shot me with that I’d tear their arms off.”

“Not if you got shot in the head,” she told me.

I called Rickerby from downstairs and he had a man stand by while we were gone. Sue was asleep, I thought, but I couldn’t be sure. At least she wasn’t going anyplace until we got back. We walked to the parking lot where I picked up the rented Ford and cut over to the West Side Highway.

She waited until I was on the ramp to ask, “Where are we going?”

“There’s a place called ‘The Angus Bull.’ It’s a new one for the racket boys.”

“Who told you?”

“Pat.”

“And whom do I con?”

“A man named Del Penner. If he isn’t there you’ll pick up a lead if you work it right. He was pushing Kid Hand and will probably take his place in the group. What you want to know is this . . . who is Mr. Dickerson?”

She threw me a funny glance and I filled her in on the small details. I watched her out of the corner of my eyes while she picked it all apart and put it back together again. There was something new about her now that wasn’t there seven years ago. Then she had been a secretary, a girl with her own P.I. ticket and the right to carry a gun. Then she had been a girl with a peculiar past I hadn’t known about. Now she was a woman, still with a peculiar past and a gun, but with a strange new subtlety added that was nurtured during those years behind the Iron Curtain in the biggest chase scene civilization had ever known.

“Where do we clear?”

“Through Pat.”

“Or your friend Rickerby?”

“Keep him as an alternate. It isn’t his field yet, so we’ll stay local.”

“Where will you be?”

“Running down the immediate past of a guy called Basil Levitt. Pat came up with nothing. They’re still on the job, but he had no office and no records. Whatever he carried he carried in his hat, but he sure was working for somebody. He was after you and the kid and was four days watching your joint. I don’t know what we have going, but these are the only leads we have.”

“There’s Sue.”

“She has nothing to say yet.”

“Did you believe what she said about her father trying to kill her? ”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because it isn’t logical. The kid’s a neurotic type and until something proves out I’m not going along with childish notions.”

“Two dead men aren’t notions.”

“There’s more to it than that, baby. Let me do it my way, okay?”

“Sure. It’s always your way, isn’t it?”

“Sure.”

“Is that why I love you?”

“Sure.”

“And you love me because I think that way?”

“Why sure.”

“I’m home, Mike.”

I touched her knee and felt her leg harden. “You never were away, kid.”

She was on her own when I dropped her downtown. She grinned at me, waved, and I let her go. There was something relaxing about the whole thing now. No more tight feeling in the gut. No more of that big empty hole that was her. She was there and bigger than ever, still with the gun on her belt and ready to follow.

Going through Levitt’s place was only a matter of curiosity. It was a room, nothing more. The landlady said he had been there six months and never caused trouble, paid his rent, and she didn’t want to talk to any more cops. The neighbors didn’t know anything about him at all and didn’t want to find out. The local tavern owner had never served him and couldn’t care less. But up in his room the ashtrays had been full of butts and there were two empty cartons in the garbage and anyone who smokes that much had to pick up cigarettes somewhere.

Basil Levitt did it two blocks away. He got his papers there too. The old lady who ran the place remembered him well and didn’t mind talking about it.

“I know the one,” she told me. “I wondered when the cops would get down here. I even woulda seen them only I wanted to see how fast they’d get here. Sure took you long enough. Where you from, son?”

“Uptown.”

“You know what happened?”

“Not yet.”

“So what do you want with me?”

“Just talk, Mom.”

“So ask.”

“Suppose you tell.” I grinned at her. “Maybe you want the third degree, sweetie, just like in TV . . . okay?”

She waved her hand at me. “That stuff is dead. Who hits old ladies anymore except delinquents?”

“Me. I hit old ladies.”

“You look like the type. So ask me.”

“Okay . . . any friends?”

She shook her head. “No, but he makes phone calls. One of the hot boys . . . never shuts the door.” She nodded toward the pay booth in back.

“You listened?”

“Why not? I’m too old to screw so I get a kick out of love talk.”

“How about that?”

“Yeah, how? ” She smiled crookedly and opened herself a Coke. “He never talked love talk, never. Just money and always mad.”

“More, Mom.”

“He’d talk pretty big loot. Five G’s was the last . . . like he was a betting man. Was he, son?”

“He bet his skin and lost. Now more.”

She made a gesture with her shoulders. “Last time he was real mad. Said something was taking too long and wanted more loot. I don’t think he got it.”

“Any names?”

“Nope. He didn’t call somebody’s house, either.”

I waited and she grinned broadly.

“He only called at a certain time. He had to speak up like wherever the other party was, it was damn noisy. That’s how come I heard him.”

“You’d make a good cop, Mom.”

“I been around long enough, son. You want to know something else?”

“That’s what I’m here for.”

“He carried a package once. It was all done up in brown paper and it wasn’t light. It was a gun. Rifle all taken down, I’d say. You like that bit?”

“You’re doing great. How’d you know?”

“Easy. It clunked when he set it down. Besides, I could smell the gun oil. My old man was a nut on those things before he kicked off. I smelled that stuff around the house for years.”

Then I knew what bugged me right after Basil Levitt died. I said my thanks and turned to go. She said, “Hey . . .”

“What?”

“Would you really hit an old lady?”

I grinned at her. “Only when they need it,” I said.

I stood in the room that had been Velda’s and scanned the other side of the street. It didn’t take long to sort out the only windows that were set right for an ambush. Ten bucks to a fat old man got me the key with no questions asked and when I opened the door to the first one that was it.

The gun was an expensive sporting rifle with a load in the chamber, blocked in on a tripod screwed to a tabletop and the telescopic sights were centered on the same window I had looked out of a few minutes before. There were two empty cigarette cartons beside the gun, a tomato-juice can full of butts and spent matches, and the remains of a dozen sandwiches scattered around.

Basil’s vigil had been a four-day one. For that long a time he had waited. At any time he could have had Velda. He knew she was there. He told me so. He had watched her that long but couldn’t move in.

The reason for his wait was plain now. It wasn’t her he was after at all. It was the kid. He wanted her. He was on a contract to knock her off and had to wait for her to show.

Only she didn’t. Velda had kept her upstairs out of sight. It was only when I came on the scene that he had to break his pattern. He didn’t know why I was there but couldn’t take any chances. I might be after the same target he was after but for a different reason: to get her out.

So now it was back to the little Lolita-type again.

CHAPTER 4

It had been a long time since I had seen Joey Adams and his wife Cindy. Now, besides doing his major nightclub routines with time off for tent-circus Broadway musicals and worldwide junkets, he was president of AGVA. But he hadn’t changed a bit. Neither had Cindy. She was still her same stunning self in the trademark colors of scarlet and midnight whamming out a column for TV Guide.

I told the girl not to announce me and when I went in Joey was perched on the edge of his desk trying to talk Cindy out of something new in minks. He wasn’t getting anywhere. I said, “Hello, buddy.”

He looked over his shoulder, grinned, and hopped off the desk with his hand out. “I’ll be damned,” he said, “you finally picked up the rain check. Where you been?”

“On the wrong street.” I looked past him. “Hello, beautiful.”

Cindy threw me a flashing smile. “I told Joey you’d show up. We’ve been following the obituaries. You leave a trail, Mike.”

“I was following one.”

“That’s what Hy said. You big fink, why didn’t you come visit when you needed help?”

“Hell, kid, I didn’t need any help to stay drunk.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Joey waved at her impatiently. “Come on, come on, what’s new? Look, suppose we . . .”

“I need help now, pal.”

It caught him off balance a second. “Listen, I’m no AA, but . . .”

“Not that kind of help,” I grinned.

“Oh?”

“You’ve been bugging me to play cop for how long, Joey?”

His eyes lit up like a marquee but Cindy got there first.

“Listen, old friend, you keep my boy away from the shooters. Like he’s mine and I want to keep him in one piece. He’s just a comedian and those gun routines are hard on the complexion.”

“Cut it out, Cindy. If Mike wants . . .”

“Don’t sweat it, friend. Just a simple favor.”

He looked disappointed.

“But it’s something you can get to where I can’t,” I added.

Joey laughed and faked a swing at my gut. “So name it, kid.”

“How far back do your files go?”

“Well,” he shrugged, “what do you want to know?”

I sat on the edge of the desk and lined things up in my mind. “There was a showgirl named Sally Devon who was in business over twenty years ago. Name mean anything?”

Joey squinted and shook his head. “Should it?”

“Not necessarily. I doubt if she was a headliner.”

“Mike . . .” Cindy uncoiled from her chair and stood beside Joey. “Wasn’t she Sim Torrence’s wife at one time?”

I nodded.

“How’d you know?” Joey asked.

“I’m just clever.”

“What do you know about her, honey?”

“Nothing at all, but I happened to be talking politics to one of Joey’s friends and he dropped her name in the hat. He had worked with her at one time.”

“Now she’s in politics,” Joey grunted. “So who were you talking to?”

“Bert Reese.”

“What do you think, Joey? Do a rundown for me? Maybe Bert can steer you to somebody else that would know about her.”

“Sure, but if it’s politics you want, Cindy can . . .”

“It’s not politics. Just get a line on her show-biz activities. She would’ve been in from twenty to thirty years back. Somebody at Equity might know her or the old chorus-line bunch. She was married to Sim Torrence while he was still a small-timer so the connection might bring somebody’s memory back. Seem possible?”

“Sure, Mike, sure. The kids always keep in touch. They never forget. Hell, you know show business. I’ll dig around.”

“How long will it take?”

“I ought to have something by tomorrow. Where’ll I get in touch?”

“My old office. I’m back in business, or reach me through the Blue Ribbon Restaurant.”

He gave me that big grin again and winked. Now he was doing an act he liked. There are always frustrated cops and firemen. I shook hands with Joey, waved at Cindy, and left them to battle about the mink bit again.

Rickerby’s man gave me a funny look and a curt nod when I showed, asked if there were anything else, and when I said no, made his phone call to clear and took off. Then I went upstairs.

I could hear her all the way, like a wild bird singing a crazy melody. She had an incredible range to her voice and just let it go, trilling some strange tune that had a familiar note, but was being interpreted out of its symphonic character.

The singing didn’t come from the floor where I had left her, either. It was higher up and I made the last flight in a rush and stood at the end of the corridor with the .45 in my hand wondering what the hell was going on. She had everything wrapped up in that voice, fear, hate, anxiety, but no hope at all.

When I pushed the door open slowly her voice came flooding out from the peculiar echo chamber of the empty room. She stood facing the corner, both hands against the wall, her head down, her shoulders weaving gently with the rhythm of her voice, her silken blond hair a gold reflection from the small bulb overhead.

I said, “Sue . . .” and she turned slowly, never stopping, but, seeing me there, went into a quiet ballet step until she stopped and let her voice die out on a high lilting note. There was something gone in her eyes and it took a half minute for her to realize just who I was.

“What are you doing up here?”

“It’s empty,” she said finally.

“Why do you want it like that?”

She let her hands drift behind her back. “Furniture looks at you. It means people and I don’t want any people.”

“Why, Sue?”

“They hurt you.”

“Did somebody hurt you?”

“You know.”

“I know that nobody has hurt you so far.”

“So far. They killed my mother.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes I do. A snake killed her.”

“A what?”

“A snake.”

“Your mother died of natural causes. She was . . . a sick woman.”

This time Sue shook her head patiently. “I’ve been remembering. She was afraid of a snake. She told me so. She said it was the snake.”

“You were too young to remember.”

“No I wasn’t.”

I held out my hand to her and she took it. “Let’s go downstairs, sugar. I want to talk to you.”

“All right. Can I come back up here when I want to?”

“Sure. No trouble. Just don’t go outside.”

Those big brown eyes came up to mine with a sudden hunted look. “You know somebody wants to hurt me too, don’t you?”

“Okay, kid, I won’t try to con you. Maybe it will make you a little cautious. I think somebody is after you. Why, I don’t know, but stick it out the way I tell you to, all right?”

“All right, Mike.”

I waited until she had finished her coffee before I dropped the bomb on her. I said, “Sue . . .”

Then her eyes looked up and with a sudden intuition she knew what I was going to say.

“Would you mind going home?”

“I won’t go,” she said simply.

“You want to find out what really happened to your mother, don’t you?”

She nodded.

“You can help if you do what I ask.”

“How will that help?”

“You got big ears, kid. I’m an old soldier who knows his way around this business and you just don’t fool me, baby. You can do anything you want to. Go back there and stay with it. Somebody wants you nailed, sugar, and if I can get you in a safe place I can scrounge without having you to worry about.”

Sue smiled without meaning to and looked down at her hands. “He wants me dead.”

“Okay, we’ll play it your way. If he does there’s nothing he can do about it now. There’re too many eyes watching you.”

“Are yours, Mike?”

I grinned. “Hell, I can’t take ’em off you.”

“Don’t fool with me, Mike.”

“All right, Sue. Now listen. Your old man paid me five grand to handle this mess. It isn’t like he’s caught in a trap and is trying to con me because he knows all about me. I’m no mouse. I’ve knocked over too many punks and broke too many big ones to play little-boy games with.”

“Are you really convinced, Mike?”

“Honey, until it’s all locked up, tight, I’m never convinced, but at this stage we have to work the angles. Now, will you go back?”

She waited a moment, then looked up again. “If you want me to.” “I want you to.”

“Will I see you again?”

Those big brown eyes were a little too much. “Sure, but what’s a guy like me going to do with a girl like you?”

A smile touched her mouth. “Plenty, I think,” she said.

Sim Torrence was out, but Geraldine King made the arrangements for a limousine to pick up Sue. I waited for it to arrive, watched her leave, then went back to my office. I got out at the eighth floor, edged around the guy leaning up against the wall beside the buttons with his back to me, and if it didn’t suddenly occur to me that his position was a little too awkward to be normal and that he might be sick I never would have turned around and I would have died face down on the marble floor.

I had that one split-second glance at a pain- and hate-contorted face before I threw myself back toward the wall scratching for the .45 when his gun blasted twice and both shots rocketed off the floor beside my face.

Then I had the .45 out and ready but it was too late. He had stepped back into the elevator I had just left and the doors were closing. There wasn’t any sense chasing him. The exit stairs were down the far end of the corridor and the elevator was a quick one. I got up, dusted myself off, and looked up at the guy who stuck his head out of a neighboring door. He said, “What was that?”

“Be damned if I know. Sounded like it was in the elevator.”

“Something’s always happening to that thing,” he said passively, then closed his door.

Both slugs were imbedded in the plaster at the end of the hall, flattened at the nose and scratched, but with enough rifling marks showing for the lab to make something out of it. I dropped them in my pocket and went to my office. I dialed Pat, told him what had happened, and heard him let out a short laugh. “You’re still lucky, Mike. For how long?”

“Who knows?”

“You recognize him?”

“He’s the guy Basil Levitt shot, buddy. I’d say his name was Marv Kania.”

“Mike . . .”

“I know his history. You got something out on him?”

“For a month. He’s wanted all over. You sure about this?”

“I’m sure.”

“He must want you pretty badly.”

“Pat, he’s got a bullet in him. He’s not going to last like he is and if he’s staying alive it’s to get me first. If we can nail him we can find out what this is all about. If he knows he’s wanted he can’t go to a doctor and if he knows he’s dying he’ll do anything to come at me again. Now damn it, a shot-up guy can’t go prancing around the streets, you know that.”

“He’s doing it.”

“So he’ll fall. Somebody’ll try to help him and he’ll nail them too. He just can’t follow me around, I move too fast.”

“He’ll wait you out, Mike.”

“How?”

“You’re not thinking straight. If he knows what this operation is about he’ll know where you’ll be looking sooner or later. All he has to do is wait there.”

“What about in the meantime?”

“I’ll get on it right away. If he left a trail we’ll find it. There aren’t too many places he can hole up.”

“Okay.”

“And, buddy . . .”

“What, Pat?”

“Hands off if you nail him, understand? I got enough people on my back right now. This new D.A. is trying to break your license.”

“Can he?”

“It can be done.”

“Well hell, tell him I’m cooperating all the way. If you look in the downstairs apartment in the building across the street from where Velda was staying you’ll find a sniper’s rifle that belonged to Basil Levitt. Maybe you can backtrack that.”

“Now you tell me,” he said softly.

“I just located it.”

“What does it mean?”

I didn’t tell him what I thought at all. “Got me. You figure it out.”

“Maybe I will. Now you get those slugs down to me as fast as you can.”

“By messenger service right now.”

When I hung up I called Arrow, had a boy pick up the envelope with the two chunks of lead, got them off, then stretched out on the couch.

I slept for three hours, a hard, tight sleep that was almost dreamless, and when the phone went off it didn’t awaken me until the fourth or fifth time. When I said hello, Velda’s voice said, “Mike . . .”

“Here, kitten. What’s up?”

“Can you meet me for some small talk, honey?”

My fingers tightened involuntarily around the receiver. Small talk was a simple code. Trouble, it meant, be careful.

In case somebody was on an extension I kept my voice light. “Sure, kid. Where are you?”

“A little place on Eighth Avenue near the Garden . . . Lew Green’s Bar.”

“I know where it is. Be right down.”

“And, Mike . . . come alone.”

“Okay.”

On the way out I stopped by Nat Drutman’s office and talked him out of a .32 automatic he kept in his desk, shoved it under my belt behind my back, and grabbed a cab for Lew Green’s Bar. There was a dampness in the air and a slick was showing on the streets, reflecting the lights of the city back from all angles. It was one of those nights that had a bad smell to it.

Inside the bar a pair of chunkers were swapping stories in a half-drunken tone while a TV blared from the wall. A small archway led into the back room that was nestled in semi-darkness and when I went in a thin, reedy voice said from one side, “Walk easy, mister.”

He had his hands in his side pockets and would have been easy to take, loaded or not, but I went along with him. He steered me past the booths to the side entrance where another one waited who grinned in an insolent way and said, “He carries a heavy piece. You look for it?”

“You do it,” the thin guy said.

He knew right where to look. He dragged the .45 out, said, “Nice,” grinned again, and stuck it in his pocket. “Now outside. We got transportation waiting. You’re real V.I.P.”

The place they took me to was in Long Island City, a section ready to be torn down to make way for a new factory building. The car stopped outside an abandoned store and when the smart one nodded I followed him around the back with the thin one six feet behind me and went on inside.

They sat at a table, three of them, with Velda in a chair at the end. A single Coleman lamp threw everything into sharp lights and shadows, making their faces look unreal.

I looked past them to Velda. “You okay, honey?”

She nodded, but there was a tight cast to her mouth.

The heavy-set guy in the homburg said, “So you’re Mike Hammer.”

I took a wild guess. “Del Penner.”

His face hardened. “He clean?”

Both the guys at the door behind him nodded and the one took my .45 out and showed it. Del said, “You came too easy, Hammer.”

“Who expected trouble?”

“In your business you should always expect it.”

“I’ll remember it. What’s the action, Penner?”

“You sent her asking about me. Why?”

“Because I’m getting my toes stepped on. A guy named Kid Hand got shot and I hear you’re taking his place. I don’t like to get pushed. Now what?”

“You’ll get more than pushed, Hammer. Word’s around that you got yourself some top cover and knocking you off can make too much noise. Not that it can’t be handled, but who needs noise? Okay, you’re after something, so spill it.”

“Sure. You are stepping up then?”

Penner shrugged elaborately. “Somebody takes over. What else?” “Who’s Dickerson?”

Everybody looked at everybody else before Del Penner decided to answer me. He finally made up his mind. “You know that much, then you can have this. Nobody knows who Mr. Dickerson is.”

“Somebody knows.”

“Maybe, but not you and not us. What else?”

“You pull this stunt on your own?”

“That you can bet your life on. When this broad started nosing around I wanted to know why. So I asked her and she told me. She said they were your orders. Now get this . . . I know about the whole schmear with you knocking off Kid Hand and getting Levitt bumped and leaving Marv Kania running around with a slug in his gut. I ain’t got orders on you yet but like I said, when anybody noses around me I want to know why.”

“Supposing I put it this way then, Penner . . . I’m the same way. Anybody tries to shoot me up is in for a hard time. You looked like a good place to start with and don’t figure I’m the only one who’ll think of it. You don’t commit murder in this town and just walk away from it. If you’re stepping into Kid Hand’s job then you should know that too.”

Penner smiled tightly. “The picture’s clear, Hammer. I’m just stopping it before it gets started.”

“Then this bit is supposed to be a warning?”

“Something like that.”

“Or maybe you’re doing a favor ahead of time.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Like Kid Hand was maybe doing a personal favor and stepped down off his pedestal to look like a big man.”

The silence was tight. Del Penner just stared at me, not bothered at all by what I said. His hand reached up and touched his homburg and he sat back in his chair. “Warning then, Hammer. Don’t make any more noise around me. I imagine you’d be about a fifteen-hundred-buck job. One thousand five hundred bucks can buy both of you dead and no mud on my hands. Clear?”

I put both hands on the table and leaned right into his face. “How much would you cost, Del?” I asked him. He glared at me, his eyes hard and bright. I said, “Come on, Velda. They’re giving us a ride home.”

We sat in the front next to the driver, the skinny guy in back. All the way into Manhattan he kept playing with my gun. When we got to my office the one behind the wheel said, “Out, Mac.”

“Let’s have the rod.”

“Nah, it’s too good a piece for a punk like you. I want a souvenir.”

So I put the .32 up against his neck while Velda swung around in her seat and pointed the automatic at the skinny guy and his whine was a tinny nasal sound he had trouble making. He handed over the .45 real easy, licking his lips and trying to say something. The one beside me said, “Look, Mac . . .”

“I never come easy, buddy. You tell them all.”

His eyes showed white all the way around and he knew. He knew all right. The car pulled away with a squeal of tires and I looked at Velda and laughed. “You play it that way by accident, honey?”

“I’ve had to read a lot of minds the past seven years. I knew how it would work. I just wanted you ready.”

“I don’t know whether to kiss you or smack your ass.”

She grinned impishly. “You can always kiss me.”

“Don’t ask for it.”

“Why not? It’s the only way I’m going to get it, I think.”

Teddy’s place is a lush restaurant about as far downtown as it’s possible to get without falling in the river. It seemed an unlikely spot for good food and celebrities, but there you got both. Hy Gardner was having a late supper with Joey and Cindy Adams, and when he spotted us, waved us over to the table.

Before we could talk he ordered up scampi and a steak for both of us, then: “You come down for supper or information?”

“Both.”

“You got Joey really researching. He comes to me, I go to somebody else, and little by little I’m beginning to get some mighty curious ideas. When are you going to recite for publication?”

“When I have it where it should be.”

“So what’s the pitch on Sally Devon?”

“All yours, Joey,” I said.

He could hardly wait to get it out. “Boy, what a deal you handed me. You threw an old broad my way. There was more dust on her records than a Joe Miller joke. Then you know who comes up with the answers?”

“Sure, Cindy.”

“How’d you know?”

“Who else?”

“Drop dead. Anyway, we contacted some of the kids who worked with her only like now they’re ready for the old ladies’ home. Sure, she was in show business, but with her it didn’t last long and was more of a front. Her old friends wouldn’t say too much, being old friends and all, but you knew what they were thinking. Sally Devon was a high-priced whore. She ran with some of the big ones for a while, then got busted and wound up with some of the racket boys.”

Velda looked at me, puzzled. “If she was involved with the rackets, how’d she end up with Sim Torrence, who was supposed to be so clean? That doesn’t make sense.”

“Sure it does,” Hy told her. “He got her off a hook when he was still an assistant D.A. Look, she was still a beautiful doll then and you know the power of a doll. So they became friends. Later he married her. I can name a couple other top politicos who are married to women who used to be in the business. It isn’t as uncommon as you think.”

He put his fork down and sipped at his drink. “What do you make of it now?” When I didn’t answer he said, “Blackmail?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

“Well, what else do you want?”

For a moment I sat there thinking. “Torrence is a pretty big wheel now, isn’t he?”

“As big as they get without being in office.”

“Okay, he said repeated threats were made on him by guys he helped put away.”

“Ah, they all get that.”

“They all don’t have a mess like this either.”

“So what?”

“This, Hy . . . I’d like a rundown on his big cases, on everyone who ever laid a threat on him. You ought to have that much in your morgue.”

Hy shrugged and grinned at me. “I suppose you want it tonight.” “Why not?”

“So we’ll finish the party in my office. Come on.”

Hy’s file on Sim Torrence was a thick one composed of hundreds of clippings. We all took a handful and found desk space to look them over. A little after one we had everything classified and cross-indexed. Joey had four cases of threats on Sim’s life, Cindy had six, Velda and I both had three, and Hy one. He put all the clips in a Thermofax machine, pulled copies, handed them over, and put the files back.

“Now can we go home?” he said.

Joey wanted to go on with it until Cindy gave him a poke in the ribs.

“So let’s all go home,” I told him.

We said so-long downstairs and Velda and I headed back toward the Stem. In the lower Forties I checked both of us into a hotel, kissed her at the door, and went down to my room. She didn’t like it, but I still had work to do.

After a shower I sat on the bed and started through the clips. One by one I threw them all down until I had four left. All the rest who had threatened Sim Torrence were either dead or back in prison. Four were free, three on parole, and one having served a life sentence of thirty years.

Life.

Thirty years.

He was forty-two when he went in, seventy-two when he came out. His name was Sonny Motley and there was a picture of him in a shoe repair shop he ran on Amsterdam Avenue. I put the clips in the discard pile and looked at the others.

Sherman Buff, a two-time loser that Sim had put the screws to in court so that he caught a big fall. He threatened everybody including the judge, but Torrence in particular.

Arnold Goodwin who liked to be called Stud. Sex artist. Rapist. He put the full blame for his fall on Torrence, who not only prosecuted his case but processed it from the first complaint until his capture. No known address, but his parole officer could supply that.

Nicholas Beckhaus, burglar with a record who wound up cutting a cop during his capture. He and two others broke out of a police van during a routine transfer and it was Sim Torrence’s office who ran him down until he was trapped in a rooming house. He shot a cop in that capture too. He promised to kill Torrence on sight when he got out. Address unknown, but he would have a parole officer too.

I folded the clips, put three in my pants pocket, and leaned back on the bed. Then there was a knock on the door.

I had the .45 in my hand, threw the bolt back, and moved to the side. Velda walked in grinning, closed the door, and stood there with her back against it. “Going to shoot me, Mike?”

“You crazy?”

“Uh-uh.”

“What do you want?”

“You don’t know?”

I reached out and pulled her in close, kissed her hair, then felt the fire of her mouth again. She leaned against me, her breasts firm and insistent against my naked chest, her body forming itself to mine.

“I’m going to treat you rough, my love . . . until you break down.”

“You’re going back to bed.”

“To bed, yes, but not back.” She smiled, pulled away, and walked to my sack. Little by little, slowly, every motion a time-honored motion, she took off her clothes. Then she stood there naked and smiling a moment before sliding into the bed where she lay there waiting.

“Let’s see who’s the roughest,” I said, and lay down beside her. I punched out the light, got between the top sheet and the cover, turned on my side and closed my eyes.

“You big bastard,” she said softly. “If I didn’t love you I’d kill you.”

CHAPTER 5

I was up and dressed before eight. The big, beautiful, tousled blackhaired thing who had lain so comfortably against me all night stirred and looked at me through sleepy-lidded eyes, then stretched languidly and smiled.

“Frustrated?” I asked her.

“Determined.” She stuck her tongue out at me. “You’ll pay for last night.”

“Get out of the sack. We have plenty to do.”

“Watch.”

I turned toward the mirror and put on my tie. “No, damn it.”

But I couldn’t help seeing her, either. It wasn’t something you could take your eyes off very easily. She was too big, too lovely, her body a pattern of symmetry that was frightening. She posed deliberately, knowing I would watch her, then walked into the shower without bothering to close the door. And this time I saw something new. There was a fine, livid scar that ran diagonally across one hip and several parallel lines that traced themselves across the small of her back. I had seen those kind of marks before. Knives made them. Whips made them. My hands knotted up for a second and I yanked at my tie.

When she came out she had a towel wrapped sarong-fashion around her, smelling of soap and hot water, and this time I didn’t watch her. Instead I pulled the clips out, made a pretense of reading them until she was dressed, gave them to her to keep in her handbag, and led her out the door.

At the elevator I punched the down button and put my hand through her arm. “Don’t do that to me again, kitten.”

Her teeth flashed through the smile. “Oh no, Mike. You’ve kept me waiting too long. I’ll do anything to get you. You see . . . I’m not done with you yet. You can marry me right now or put up with some persecution.”

“We haven’t got time right now.”

“Then get ready to suffer, gentleman.” She gave my arm a squeeze and got on the elevator.

After breakfast I bypassed Pat’s office to get a line on the parole officers handling Buff, Goodwin, and Beckhaus. Both Buff and Beckhaus were reporting to the same officer and he was glad to give me a rundown on their histories.

Sherman Buff was married, lived in Brooklyn, and operated a successful electronics shop that subcontracted jobs from larger companies. His address was good, his income sizable, and he had a woman he was crazy about and no desire to go back to the old life. The parole officer considered him a totally rehabilitated man.

Nicholas Beckhaus reported regularly, but he had to come in on the arm of his brother, a dentist, who supported him. At some time in prison he had been assaulted and his back permanently damaged so that he was a partial cripple. But more than that, there was brain damage too, so that his mental status was reduced to that of a ten-year-old.

The officer who handled Arnold Goodwin was more than anxious to talk about his charge. Goodwin had been trouble all the way and had stopped reporting in three months ago. Any information we could dig up on his whereabouts he’d appreciate. He was afraid of only one thing . . . that before Goodwin was found he’d kill somebody.

Arnold Goodwin looked like a good bet.

Velda said, “Did you want to see the other probable?”

“Sonny Motley?”

“It will only take a few minutes.”

“He’s in his seventies. Why?”

She moved her shoulders in thought. “He was a good story. The three-million-dollar killer.”

“He wasn’t in for murder. He was a three-time loser when they caught him in that robbery and he drew an automatic life sentence.”

“That could make a man pretty mad,” she reminded me.

“Sure, but guys in their seventies aren’t going to hustle on a kill after thirty years in the pen. Be reasonable.”

“Okay, but it wouldn’t take long.”

“Oh, hell,” I said.

Sonny Motley’s shoe repair shop had been open at seven as usual, the newsboy said, and pointed the place out to us. He was sitting in the window, a tired-looking old man bent over a metal foot a woman’s shoe was fitted to, tapping on a heel. He nodded, peering up over his glasses at us like a shaven and partially bald Santa Claus.

Velda and I got up in the chairs and he put down his work to shuffle over to us, automatically beginning the routine of a shine. It wasn’t a new place and the rack to one side of the machines was filled with completed and new jobs.

When he finished I gave him a buck and said, “Been here long?”

He rang the money up and smiled when I refused the change. “Year and a half.” Then he pulled his glasses down a little more and looked at me closely. “Reporter?”

“Nope.”

“Well, you look like a cop, but cops aren’t interested in me anymore. Not city cops. So that makes you independent, doesn’t it?”

When I didn’t answer him he chuckled. “I’ve had lots of experience with cops, son. Don’t let it discourage you. What do you want to know?”

“You own this place?”

“Yup. Thirty years of saving a few cents a day the state paid me and making belts and wallets for the civilian trade outside bought me this. Really didn’t cost much and it was the only trade I learned in the pen. But that’s not what you want to know.”

I laughed and nodded. “Okay, Sonny, it’s about a promise you made a long time ago to kill Sim Torrence.”

“Yeah, I get asked that lots of times. Mostly by reporters though.” He pulled his stool over and squatted on it. “Guess I was pretty mad back then.” He smiled patiently and pushed his glasses up. “Let’s say that if he up and died I wouldn’t shed any tears, but I’ll tell you Mr. . . .”

“Hammer. Mike Hammer.”

“Yes, Mr. Hammer . . . well, I’m just not about to go back inside walls again. Not that this is any different. Same work, same hours. But I’m on the outside. You understand?”

“Sure.”

“Something else too. I’m old. I think different. I don’t have those old feelings.” He looked at Velda, then me. “Like with the women. Was a time when even thinking of one drove me nuts, knowing I couldn’t have one. Oh, how I wanted to kill old Torrence then. But like I told you, once you get old the fire goes out and you don’t care anymore. Same way I feel about Torrence. I just don’t care. Haven’t even thought about him until somebody like you or a reporter shows up. Then I think of him and it gets funny. Sound silly to you?”

“Not so silly, Sonny.”

He giggled and coughed, then looked up. “Silly like my name. Sonny. I was a heller with the women in them days. Looked young as hell and they loved to mother me. Made a lot of scores like that.” For a moment his eyes grew dreamy, then he came back to the present. “Sonny. Ah, yeah, they were the days, but the fire is out now.”

“Well . . .” I took Velda’s arm and he caught the motion.

Eagerly, a man looking for company, he said, “If you want I could show you the papers on what happened. I had somebody save ’em. You wait here a minute.” He got up, shuffled off through a curtained door, and we could hear him rummaging through his things. When he came back he laid out a pitiful few front pages of the old World and there he was spread all over the columns.

According to the testimony, in 1932 the Sonny Motley mob, with Black Conley second in command, were approached secretly by an unknown expert on heisting through an unrevealed medium. The offer was a beautifully engineered armored-car stickup. Sonny accepted and was given the intimate details of the robbery including facets known only to insiders, which would make the thing come off.

Unfortunately, a young Assistant District Attorney named Sim Torrence got wind of the deal, checked it out, and with a squad of cops, broke up the robbery . . . but only after it had been accomplished. The transfer of three million dollars in cash had been made to a commandeered cab and in what looked like a spectacular double cross, or possibly an attempt to save his own skin, Black Conley had jumped in the cab when the shooting started and taken off, still firing back into the action with the rifle he had liked so well. One shot caught Sonny Motley and it was this that stopped his escape more than anything else. In an outburst of violence in the courtroom Sonny shouted that he had shot back at the bastard who double-crossed him and if he didn’t hit him, then he’d get him and Torrence someday for sure. They never found the cab, the driver, the money, or Black Conley.

Sonny let me finish and when I handed the papers back said, “It would’ve gone if Blackie didn’t pull out.”

“Still sore?”

“Hell no.”

“What do you think happened?”

“Tell you what, Mr. Hammer. I got me a guess. That was a double cross somehow, only a triple cross got thrown in. I think old Blackie wound up cab and all at the bottom of the river someplace.”

“The money never showed.”

“Nope. That went with Blackie too. Everybody lost. I just hope I did shoot the bastard before he died. I don’t see how I coulda missed.”

“You’re still mad, Sonny.”

“Naw, not really. Just annoyed about them thirty years he made me take. That Torrence really laid it on, but hell, he had it made. I was a three-timer by then anyway and would have taken life on any conviction. It sure made Torrence though.” He pulled his glasses off, looked at the papers once with disgust, rolled them into a ball, and threw them away from him into a refuse carton. “Frig it. What’s the sense thinking on them things?”

He looked older and more tired in that moment than when we came in. I said, “Sure, Sonny, sorry we bothered you.”

“No trouble at all, Mr. Hammer. Come in for a shine any time.”

On the street Velda said, “Pathetic, wasn’t he?”

“Aren’t they all?”

We waited there a few minutes trying to flag a cab, then walked two blocks before one cut over to our side and squealed to a stop. A blue panel truck almost caught him broadside, but the driver was used to those simple occupational hazards and didn’t blink an eye.

I let Velda off at the office with instructions to get what she could from Pat concerning Basil Levitt and Kid Hand and to try to reestablish some old pipelines. If there were new faces showing in town like Jersey Toby said, there was a reason for it. There was a reason for two dead men and a murder attempt on me. There was a reason for an assassination layout with Sue Devon the target and somebody somewhere was going to know the answers.

When Velda got out I gave the cabbie Sim Torrence’s Westchester address and sat back to try and think it out. Traffic was light on the ride north and didn’t tighten up until we got to the upper end of Manhattan.

Then it was too thick. Just as the cab slowed for a light somebody outside let out a scream and I had time to turn my head, see the nose of a truck almost in the window, and throw myself across the seat as the cab took a tremendous jar that crushed in the side and sent glass and metal fragments ripping above my head. There was one awful moment as the cab tipped, rolled onto its side, and lay there in that almost total silence that follows the second after an accident.

Up front the cabbie moaned softly and I could smell the sharp odor of gasoline. Somebody already had the front door open and arms were reaching in for the driver. I helped lift him, crawled out the opening, and stood there in the crowd brushing myself off. A couple dozen people grouped around the driver, who seemed more shaken than hurt, and for a change a few were telling him they’d be willing to be witnesses. The driver of the truck had cut across and deliberately slammed into the cab like it was intentional or the driver was drunk.

But there wasn’t any driver in the truck at all. Somebody said he had jumped out and gone down into a subway kiosk across the street and acted like he was hurt. He was holding his belly and stumbled as he ran. Then I noticed the truck. It was a blue panel job and almost identical to the one which almost nailed the cab when Velda and I first got in it.

Nobody noticed me leave at all. I took the number of the cab and would check back later, but right now there wasn’t time enough to get caught up in a traffic accident. A block down I got another cab and gave him the same address. At the Torrence estate I told the driver to wait, went up, and pushed the bell chime.

Seeing Geraldine King again was as startling as it was the first time. She was in a sweater and skirt combination that set off the titian highlights in her hair, giving a velvet touch to the bright blue of her eyes. There was nothing businesslike about the way she was dressed. It was there only to enhance a lovely body and delight the viewer. I had seen too many strap marks not to know she was skin naked beneath the sweater.

She caught my eyes, let me look a moment longer, and smiled gently. “Stickler for convention?”

“Not me, honey.”

“Women should be like pictures . . . nice to look at.”

“Not if you haven’t got the price to afford to take them home.”

“Sometimes you don’t have to buy. There are always free gifts.”

“Thanks,” I grunted. Then I laughed at her. “You sure must be one hell of a political advantage to have around.”

“It helps.” She held the door open. “Come on in. Mr. Torrence is in the study.”

When I went in Sim pushed some papers aside, stood up, and shook hands. “Glad to see you again, Mike. What can I do for you?”

“Some gal you got there.”

“What?” He frowned behind his glasses. “Oh . . . oh, yes, indeed. Now . . .”

“I’ve been checking out your enemies, Mr. Torrence. Those who wanted to kill you.”

“Oh?”

“You said you knew of a dozen persons who threatened to kill you. Would Arnold Goodwin be one?”

“The sex offender?”

“Among other things.”

“Yes . . . he made threats. Since he was so young I paid no attention to them. Why?”

“Because he’s out and is in violation of his parole. He hasn’t reported in for some time.”

“He was quite an emotionally disturbed young man. Do you think . . .?”

I shrugged. “Those guys can do anything. They’d hurt anybody to get to the primary object of their hate. I haven’t followed through on him, but I will.”

“Well, the police should be informed immediately . . .”

“They will be. His parole officer has him listed already. The thing is, he can cut a wide path before they nail him. Meantime, any protection for Sue or yourself should be direct and personal. I’d suggest an armed guard.”

“Mr. Hammer . . . we’re coming into an election year. If this kind of thing gets out do you know what it means?”

“So take your chances then.”

“I’ll have to. Nevertheless, it may be sensible to keep somebody here in the house with me. I think Geraldine can arrange for someone.”

“You want me to?”

“No, we’ll take care of it.”

“Okay then. Incidentally, I saw Sonny Motley.”

“Sonny Motley?” He tugged at his glasses and pulled them off. “He was given a life sentence.”

“Life ends at thirty years in the pen. He’s out. You remember him then?”

“I certainly do! It was that case that made me a public figure. You don’t think . . .”

“He’s an old guy who runs a shoe shop uptown now. No, he’s safe enough. You don’t play tough when you’re over seventy. Those brick walls took too much out of him. It was a pretty interesting case. Neither Blackie Conley or the loot ever showed up, did it?”

“Mike, we covered every avenue possible looking for that money. We alerted every state, every foreign government . . . but whatever happened to Conley or the money has never come to light.”

“What do you think happened?” I asked him. Torrence made a vague gesture with his hands. “If he could have gotten out of the country, affected a successful new identity, and didn’t try to make too much of a splash so as to attract attention he could have made it. Others have done it on a smaller scale. So might he. That job was well engineered. Whether or not Conley actually planned a double cross or took off when he saw how the fighting was going, we’ll never know, but he got away.”

“There was the cab.”

“He could have killed the driver and dumped the cab somewhere. He was a ruthless man.”

“Sonny seemed to think somebody else got to him.”

Torrence shook his head, thinking. “I doubt it. There was still the cab and driver, still the money whose serial numbers were recorded. No, I think Conley made a successful escape. If he did, he’s probably dead by now. He was eight years older than Sonny, if I remember right. That would put him in his eighties at the end of this time.” He looked at me steadily. “Funny you should bring that up.”

“Something’s come out of the past, buddy. There’s trouble. I’m in the middle of it.”

“Yes,” he nodded, “you are. Now, how can I be of further help?”

“Look back. No matter how slight it might seem, see who wants you badly enough to try to hurt Sue or yourself.”

“I will, Mr. Hammer.”

“One more thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Your former wife.”

“Yes?”

“How much did you know about her?” I asked him.

Torrence flinched visibly, dropped his eyes to his hands, then brought them back to my face again. “I assume you went to the trouble of looking into her background.”

“I heard a few things.”

“Then let me say this . . . I was well aware of Sally’s history before marrying her. In way of explanation I’ll tell you that I loved her. In way of an excuse you might understand, say there’s no accounting for taste. We met when she was in trouble. A business relationship developed into friendship that became love. Unfortunately, she maintained her alcoholism and died because of it. Why do you ask?”

“I was thinking of blackmail possibilities.”

“Discard them. Everything is a matter of public record. I wouldn’t tolerate blackmail.”

“Maybe it hasn’t been tried yet.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “There are just some interesting possibilities that have developed. You try to stay ahead of them.” I got up and put on my hat. “Okay, if I need anything else I’ll stop by.”

“I’m always available, Mr. Hammer.” With a gesture of dismissal he went back to his papers, so I eased out the door and looked for Geraldine King.

She was in a smaller room toward the front, one that had been converted into a small but efficiently equipped office. Behind a typewriter, with black-rimmed glasses perched on her nose, she looked like a calendar artist’s idea of what a secretary should be. Through the knee well in the desk I could see her skirt hiked halfway up her thighs for comfort and the first thing she did when she saw me in the doorway was reach for the hem and tug it down.

I let out a half-silent wolf whistle and grinned. “Man,” I said.

She pulled her glasses off and dropped them in front of her. “Distracting, aren’t I?”

“Tell me, honey, how the hell does Torrence work with you around?”

Geraldine chuckled and shrugged. “With ease, that’s how. I am a fixture, a political associate and nothing more. I can prance around this house in the buff and he’d never notice.”

“Want to bet?”

“No, I mean it. Mr. Torrence is dedicated. His political life is all he knows and all he wants. He’s been in public service so long that he thinks of nothing else. Any time he is seen with a woman having supper or at some social function is for a political advantage.”

“The female votes?”

“Certainly. Women don’t mind widowers who seem to still have a family instinct but they do seem to resent confirmed bachelors.”

“That’s what the men get for giving them the vote. Look, kid, Sim tells me you’ve been through a few of his political campaigns.”

“That’s right.”

“He ever have any trouble before?”

“Like what?”

“Something from his past coming out to shake him. Any blackmail attempts or threats against his personal life. He says no, but sometimes these things go through the party rather than the individual.”

She sat back, frowning, then shook her head. “I think I’d know of anything like that. The organization is well knit and knows the implications of these things and I would have been told, but as far as I know nothing can interfere with his career. He’s exceptionally clean. That’s why we were so concerned about Sue’s running off. Even a thing like that can affect voting. A man who can’t run his own house can hardly be expected to run a state.”

“You know he’s in a position to be hurt now.”

“I realize that.” She got up, pushed her chair back and walked toward me with a swaying stride, not conscious at all of the subtle undulations beneath the tight-fitting sweater and skirt. “Do you think Sue will be all right?”

“She’s a big girl. She may not look it, but don’t be fooled.”

“This business . . . about Mr. Torrence killing her mother.”

“That’s an idea she’ll have to get out of her mind.”

Geraldine said, “She dreams it. Dreams can be pretty real sometimes. Her very early childhood couldn’t have been very nice. I don’t think she ever knew who her father was. If she makes open accusations it can damage Mr. Torrence.”

“I’ll speak to her. She around?”

“There’s a summer house on the south side where she practices. She practically lives there.”

She was standing in front of me now, concern deep inside those wild blue eyes. I said, “I’ll see what I can do.”

Geraldine smiled, reached up slowly, and put her arms around my neck. With the same deliberate slowness she pulled herself on her toes, wet her lips with her tongue, and brought my mouth down to hers. It was a soft teasing, tasting kiss, as if she were sampling the juice from a plum before buying the lot. Her mouth was a warm cavern filled with life and promise, then just as slowly she drew away, smiling.

“Thank you,” she said.

I grinned at her. “Thank you.”

“I could hate you easier than I could like you.”

“Which is worse?”

“That you’ll have to find out for yourself.”

“Maybe I will, baby.”

At first I didn’t think she was there, then I heard the sounds of a cabinet opening and I knocked on the door. Her smile was like the sun breaking open a cloud and she reached for my hand. “Hello, Mike. Gee I’m glad to see you.” She looked past me. “Isn’t Velda with you?”

“Not this time. Can I come in?”

She made a face at me and stepped aside, then closed the door.

It was a funny little place, apparently done over to her specifications. One wall was all mirror with a dancer’s practice bar against it. Opposite was a record player with a shelf of LP’s, a shoe rack with all the implements of the trade, a standup microphone attached to a record player, a spinet piano covered with lead sheets of popular music and Broadway hits, with a few stuffed animals keeping them in place.

The rest of the room was a girl-style den with a studio couch, dresser, cabinets, and a small conference table. Cardboard boxes, books, and a few old-fashioned paper files covered the table and it was these she was going through when I found her.

“What’re you up to, Sue?”

“Going through my mother’s things.”

“She’s a long time dead. Face it.”

“I know. Would you like to see what she looked like?”

“Sure.”

There were a few clippings from the trade papers of the time and some framed nightclub shots taken by the usual club photographers and they all showed a well-built blonde with a slightly vacuous expression. Whether it was intended or built-in I couldn’t tell, but she almost typified the beautiful but dumb showgirl. There were four photos, all taken in night spots long since gone. In two of them she was with a party of six. In the other two there were four people, and in those she was with the same man, a lanky darkhaired guy with deep-set eyes who almost seemed like a hell-fire preacher touring the sin spots for material for a sermon.

“She was pretty,” I said.

“She was beautiful,” Sue said softly. “I can still remember her face.”

“These were taken before you were born.” I pointed to the dates on the back of the photos.

“I know. But I can remember her. I remember her talking to me. I remember her talking about him.”

“Come on, kid.”

Her hair swirled as she made a small negative gesture. “I mean it. She hated him.”

“Sue . . . they were married.”

“I don’t care.”

I looked at her sharply. “Want me to be blunt?”

She shrugged and bit into her lip.

“Your mother was an alcoholic. Sim tried everything to dry her out. Alcoholics hate that. If she hated him it was because he wanted to help. Get it out of your mind that he killed her.”

“She told me the snake killed her.”

“Drunks see snakes and elephants and everything else. Don’t go getting wrapped up in an obsession.”

“She told me to look for a letter. Someday I’ll find it.”

“You were three years old. How could you remember those things?”

“I just do.”

“Okay, you look for it then. Meanwhile, I want you to do something for me.”

“What?”

“Don’t cause trouble. You stay out of his hair until we clear this thing up. Promise me?”

“Maybe.” She was smiling at me.

“What do you want?”

“Kiss me.”

I grunted. “I just got done kissing Geraldine King.”

“You’re nasty, but I don’t care.” She sidled around the desk and stood there with her hands behind her back. “I’ll take seconds,” she said.

So I kissed her.

“Not like that.”

“How?” The damn game was getting out of hand. The big broads I could handle, but how do you get the kids off your back?

Then she showed me how in a moment of sudden violence that was all soft and tender yet filled with some latent fury I couldn’t understand. The contact was brief, but it shook me and left her trembling, her eyes darkly languid and her face flushed.

“I hope you like seconds best.”

“By far, kid, only don’t do it again.” I faked a laugh and held her away. “Stay cool, okay?”

“Okay, Mike.”

Then I got out of there and back into the taxi where I gave the driver Pat’s address.

CHAPTER 6

The new Inspector was a transfer from another division, a hard apple I had seen around years ago. His name was Spencer Grebb and one of his passionate hatreds was personnel from other fields poking around in his domain, with first cut going to private investigators and police reporters. From the look he gave me, I seemed to have a special place in his book and was target one on his big S list.

Charles Force was a D.A. out for Charlie Force. He was young, talented, on the way up, and nothing was going to deter his ambition. He was a nice-looking guy, but you couldn’t tell what was going on behind his face. He had made it the hard way, in the courtrooms, and was a pro at the game right down the line.

Now they both sat at one side of the room with Pat in the middle, looking at me like I was game they were going to let out of the box long enough to get a running start so that hunting me down would be a pleasure.

After the introductions I said, “You check those slugs out, Pat?”

“Both from the same gun that killed Basil Levitt. You mentioned Marv Kania. Could you identify the guy, the guy who pulled the trigger?”

“If he’s Kania I could.”

“Try this.” Pat flipped a four-by-five photo across the desk and I picked it up.

I looked at it and tossed it back. “That’s the one.”

“Positive?”

“Positive. He’s made two passes at me, once in the office building and today with a truck. It rammed a taxi I was in.”

Inspector Grebb had a hard, low voice. “This you reported right away.”

“Now I’m doing it. At the moment it could have been a simple traffic accident. I ducked out because I had something to do. Now I’m tying it all in.”

His smile was a twisted thing. “You know, it wouldn’t be too hard to find a charge to press there, would it, Mr. Force?”

Charlie Force smiled too, but pleasantly. A courtroom smile. “I don’t think so, Inspector.”

As insolently as I could make it, I perched on the edge of Pat’s desk and faced them. “Let’s get something straight. I know what you guys would like to see, but I’m not going to fall easily. The agency I represent is federal. It’s obscure, but pulls a lot of weight, and if you want to see just how much weight is there, push me a little. I’m operating in an official capacity whether you like it or not, which gives me certain latitudes. I’ve been around long enough to know the score on both ends so play it straight, friends. I’m cooperating with all departments as Captain Chambers will tell you. Just don’t push. You’d be surprised what kind of a stink I can raise if I want to.”

I looked at Charlie Force deliberately. “Especially in the publicity circuit, buddy.”

His eyebrows pulled together. “Are you threatening me, Mr. Hammer?”

I nodded and grinned at him. “That I am, buster. That’s one edge I have on you. A bad schmear and you can go down a notch and never hit the big-time. So play ball.”

They didn’t like it, but they had to take it. In a way, I couldn’t blame them a bit. An ex private jingle coming in with a big ticket isn’t easy to take. Especially not one with a reputation like mine.

The D.A. seemed to relax. He was still stalling, but it wasn’t for real. “We’ve been advised to cooperate.”

Thanks, Rickerby, I thought. You’re still paying for The Dragon.

Pat said, “We ran a pretty thorough check on Basil Levitt.”

“Anything?”

“We located a girl he used to shack up with. She told us he was on a job but wouldn’t say what it was. He said he was getting paid well for it but there would be more later and he was already making big plans. Outside of a few others who knew he had fresh money on him, nothing.”

“What about the rifle?”

“Stolen from a sporting goods store upstate about a month ago. We had the numbers on file. He must have worn gloves in the room where he had the gun set up, but got careless when he loaded the clip. There was a single print that tied him in with it.”

Before I could answer, Charlie Force said, “Now what we are interested in knowing is who he was shooting at.”

I looked at my watch and then at his face. “Art Rickerby clued you in. You know what Velda was involved with.”

“Yes,” he agreed pleasantly. “We know. But I’m beginning to wonder about it all.”

“Well, stop wondering.”

“You were there too. Right in the middle.”

“Fresh on the scene. Levitt had been there some time. Days.”

“Waiting for you?”

Let them think it, I figured. I wasn’t cutting him in on anything. “I’m trying to find that out too,” I told him. “When I do you’ll get the word.”

Grebb and Force got up together and headed for the door. Their inspection trip was over. They were satisfied now that I’d make a good target. Grebb looked at me through those cold eyes, still smiling twistedly. “Be sure to do that,” he said.

When they were gone Pat shook his head. “You don’t make friends easily.”

“Who needs them?”

“Someday you will.”

“I’ll wait until then. Look, buddy, you know what the action is in town?”

Pat just nodded.

“Dickerson?”

He spread his hands. “We’re working on it.”

“How can a wheel come in already operating and not be known?”

“It isn’t hard. You want to know what we have?”

“Damn right.”

“Hoods are showing up from all over the country. They’re all clean, at least clean enough so we can’t tumble them. We can roust them when we want to, but they have nothing we can pin on them.”

“How many?”

“Not an army, but let a dozen wrong types hit town at once and it sets a pattern. Something’s about to happen.”

“They’re not holding a convention.”

“No, they’re getting paid somehow. Either there’s loot being laid out or they’re operating under orders. There are Syndicate men in and sitting by nice and quietly waiting for the word. All we can do is wait too. In the meantime there’s a shake-up in the rackets. Somebody’s got the power to pull strings long enough to get action out of the Midwest and the coast. There’s a power play going on and a big one. I wish I could figure it out.”

He sat there drumming his fingertips on the desktop. “What do you think, Mike?”

I gave it to him straight, right down the line, laying the facts face up from the time I walked into the apartment until I reached his office. I watched his mind close around the details and put them into mental cubbyholes to hold there until he had time to assimilate them. But I gave him no opinions, nothing more than facts.

Finally he said, “There are some strange implications.”

“Too many.”

“I suppose you want something from me now.”

“Yeah. Get a killer off my back.”

His eyes touched mine and narrowed. “We’ll do all we can. He can’t get around too long with a bullet in him.”

“Up to now he’s been doing great.”

I got up off the desk and put on my hat. “This Arnold Goodwin . . .”

“I’ll get a team out on it. This is one of the implications I don’t like. These are the real potential killers. Whether Torrence likes it or not, I’ll see that somebody is staked out around his house. We’ll keep it quiet, so what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

“Good deal. I’ll see you later.”

“By the way, Joey Adams called here for you. He wants to see you about something.” He grinned at me. “Said he got stopped on a traffic violation and flashed his honorary badge with all the little diamonds and just found out from the arresting officer what it was good for.”

“Old joke.”

“Funny though.”

I called Joey from downstairs and had him meet me in the Blue Ribbon. It was between the meal hours and nobody was there, so George and I sipped coffee until he got there.

After he ordered milk and cake I said, “What’s the bit?”

“Look, you had me chasing down Sally Devon’s old friends. Well, I’m up in the office when Pauline Coulter comes in to tell me what she forgot. About a week ago she ran into Annette Lee, who was with Sally when she died.”

“Man, she was old then.”

“She’s older now, but still kicking. Annette Lee used to be a wardrobe mistress in a show Sally worked in and afterwards worked for Sally as sort of personal maid. Now how about that? You think I’ll make a cop yet?”

“Not if you keep flashing that police badge.” I grinned.

“Come on!”

“Okay, it was a joke.” I laughed. “No kidding though . . . this Lee gal might clean up a few things. It’s nice to have friends in important places.”

“Anytime, Mike.” He pulled out a card and scribbled down an address. “Here’s where she is. It’s a rooming house across town. She never goes anywhere so you can always find her home.”

I stuck the card in my pocket. “How about now? You free?”

“Like a bird, man.”

Annette Lee had a front room downstairs in one of the countless brownstones along the street. Her pension money kept her adequately, her cat kept her company, and whatever went on outside her window was enough to keep her busy. She was a small woman, shrunken with age, but in the straight-back rocker, with tiny feet pushing against the floor with tireless rhythm to keep her in motion, she had a funny pixyish quality that was reflected in her faded gray eyes.

There was no telling her accurate age, but it had crept up on her so that her talk wandered into peculiar directions and it was difficult to keep her on one track. But she remembered Sally Devon well. They had been good friends and it was Sally who had taken her in when she was sick and needed an operation, and Sally who cared for her and paid her expenses, so that when Sally needed her, she was glad to go.

She eyed us sharply when I questioned her about Sally’s background, but until she was aware that I knew about her past, was reluctant to talk about it. It was Sally’s earnings in the seamier side of life that paid her expenses and she was grateful. Little by little she gave it to us. Sally had left show business to take up with men, had gotten involved with the wrong ones and found herself in trouble.

Yes, she knew Sim Torrence, and although she didn’t like him, thought he had done well by Sally. He had taken her in when she needed help, and if it hadn’t been for Sally’s drinking the marriage might have been successful. What she thought was that Sally’s guilt complex for bringing a tarnished background into Sim Torrence’s life drove her to alcoholism.

She remembered the night Sally died, too. Outside in the cold. Drunk. It was a shame. She couldn’t revive her. I asked her directly if she thought Sim Torrence had anything to do with Sally’s death.

Annette Lee gave me a shriveling glance. “Don’t be silly,” she said.

“Just clearing up a point,” I told her.

“Then what’s this all about, young man?”

“Sue thinks so.”

“Sally’s little baby?”

“That’s right.”

“Rubbish. She was only a mite.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But she’s pretty insistent about it. One minute she has the idea Torrence was responsible, the next she says it was a snake.”

Annette’s face pulled into a tight expression and for a moment her eyes were less faded-looking. “Snake? Sally used to talk about that. When she was drunk. She kept mentioning the snake. Funny you should bring it up. Never thought it would make an impression on a child. Yes, she used to talk about the snake all right. But no snake killed her. She died right there in the front yard, right in my arms. Like to froze, the poor thing did, all drunk up and sick. Maybe it was for the best though.”

She sat back in the rocker and closed her eyes. Too much talking was wearing her down. I motioned to Joey and we got up. “Well,” I said, “thanks for the talk. Maybe I’ll come back again sometime.”

“Please do.”

We walked to the door as the rhythm of her rocking slowed down. Just as I was about to leave it picked up again and she said, “Young man . . .”

“Ma’am?”

“They ever catch him?”

“Who’s that?”

“The one who ran off with all that money. A whole lot of money. Sally’s old boyfriend.”

I called Joey back in and shut the door. “A lot of money?”

“Indeed. Three million dollars. Conley, I think his name was. Blackie Conley. He was a mean one. He was the meanest of them all. They ever catch him?”

“No, they never did.”

With her eyes still closed she shook her head. “Never thought they would. He was a thinker. Even heard where he was going after they stole it.”

“Where, Miss Lee?” I asked softly.

She didn’t answer. She was asleep.

“Damn,” I said.

The picture was suddenly getting a sharp outline.

I dropped Joey at his AGVA office and went back to my own where Velda was waiting. She had compiled a report on Del Penner for me and from what it looked like he was in solidly now, a natural inheritor of Kid Hand’s old territory. It was a step up and he was ready for it, taking advantage of an occupational hazard. Nothing was solidified yet, but he was there and holding on.

When I finished it I got Pat on the phone, asked him if he could pull a package on Blackie Conley from the file, then told Velda to run over and pick it up. When she left I sat back in my chair and swung around so I could stare out the window at the concrete escarpment that was New York.

It was getting dark out and a mist was closing in. Another hour and it would be raining again. The multicolor neons of the city were bursting against the gray overcast like summer heat lightning and someplace across town a siren wailed. Another followed it.

Trouble out there. Trouble all over, but trouble out there all the time. Someplace was a guy with a slug in him and a gun in his hand. Someplace was Marv Kania, hurting like hell, waiting for me to show up so he could put one in my gut too. It was Levitt who had done it, but me in his mind. I was the living one, so I did it. Screw him. Let him hurt.

Three million dollars. That could bring trouble to a city. That could bring a man back to power and buy muscle. That was big starter money and a prize for anybody.

Sim Torrence thought Blackie Conley could have made it. Okay, suppose he did. Suppose he sat on that three million all these years, afraid to spend it, not wanting to convert it because of the loss he’d take in the transaction. He just sat on it. It was power to him. Brother, he sure waited for the heat to cool, but it happens like that sometimes. Harmony Brothers sat on a million and a half for forty-one years and only told where it was on his deathbed. Frankie Boyle kept seventy thousand in his mattress for sixteen years, sleeping happily on it every night without ever touching it, then went out of his mind when the rooming house was burned down along with his unspent fortune.

So Blackie Conley got away and sat on three million for thirty years. In the last of his life he gets a power complex and wants to buy his way back in. He’d know how to do it all right. If he could stay undercover thirty years he could still do it.

Blackie Conley! Mr. Dickerson.

A big, fat possible.

Question: Why try to knock off Sue Devon?

Answer: A cute possible here too. If Blackie was in love with Sally, and IF Sally had a child by another man, there might be enough hatred to want the child destroyed.

There was only one thing wrong with the premise. Too many people wanted Sue dead. Basil Levitt was trying for it when Kid Hand and Marv Kania came in.

But there was an answer to that one too, a money answer. Sue was a target with a price on her head and if it was big enough the shooters would fight each other for a crack at her. Kid Hand could use the dough and make himself a big one in somebody’s eyes at the same time. That could explain why Levitt came in so fast after I got there. He thought I was after head money too.

Blackie Conley, Mr. Dickerson, three million bucks. And the vultures.

Velda came in then and laid the package on my desk. Inside the folder was a picture of Conley. I had seen one like it not too long before in Sue’s room. Blackie Conley was the guy in the nightclubs with Sally Devon.

His arrest history went back to when he was a child and if he was alive today he’d be eighty-two years old. There were a lot older people still around and some of them right up there with the best. Age doesn’t hit everybody the same way.

Pat had included some notes for me suggesting I go into a transcript of the trial if I wanted more information on Conley since it was the last that he was ever mentioned. He was tied in with the gang and his history brought out, but since the trial was a prolonged affair it would take a lot of reading to pick out the pieces.

I looked up at Velda and she stuck her tongue out at me. “I know, you want me to do it.”

“You mind?”

“No, but what am I looking for?”

“Background on Conley.”

“Why don’t you ask Sonny Motley?”

“I intend to, kitten. We have to hit it from all sides.”

I filled in the picture for her, watching her face put it together like I did. She nodded finally and said, “You could have it, Mike. It . . . seems right.”

“But not quite?”

She ran the tip of her tongue between her teeth. “I just have a feeling.”

“I know. Missing pieces. Suppose you meet Annette Lee and see if you can get any more out of her. It won’t come easy, but try. She might give you someplace to start with Conley too.”

“Okay, lover.”

“And be careful, honey. That nut Kania is still loose. So is Arnold Goodwin. Those guys could be keys to this thing.”

“Pat said he’d call you if anything came in on them.”

“Good.”

“And he said to tell you Charlie Force is protesting your association with the agency you work for.”

“He knows what he can do.”

“That Inspector Grebb is trouble. He’s covering you like a blanket. Do you know you have a tail waiting downstairs?”

“I expected it. I know a way out too.”

“You’re asking for it, wise guy. I just don’t want to see you get killed, that’s all. I want to kill you myself. It’ll take days and days.”

“Knock it off.” I swung off my chair and stood up. She grinned, kissed me lightly, and picked up her handbag.

“I arranged for an apartment for you. It’s furnished and the key’s in the desk. It’s got a big double bed.”

“It’s polite to wait till you’re asked.”

Velda cocked her head and smiled. “There’s a couch in the living room if you still want to be the gentleman.”

“Can’t you wait until we get married?”

“No.” She pulled on her raincoat and belted it. “If I don’t push you you’ll never come.”

“I suppose you have a key.”

“Naturally.”

“Change the damn lock.”

She made a face and walked to the door. “So I’ll do like you and shoot it off. Adios, doll.”

Sonny Motley had closed his shop an hour ago, but the newsboy was still in his kiosk and told me the old guy had a beer or so every night in a joint two blocks down.

It was a sleazy little bar that had sort of just withered within the neighborhood, making enough to keep going, but nothing more. A half-dozen tables lined one wall and the air smelled of beer and greasy hamburgers. Two old broads were yakking it up at the bar, a couple of kids were at the other end watching the fights on TV while they pulled at their drinks, and Sonny Motley sat alone at the last table with a beer in front of him and a late-edition tabloid open in front of him. Beside his feet was a lunchbox and change of a dollar on the table.

I sat down opposite him and said, “Hello, Sonny.”

He looked up, closed the paper, and gave me a half-toothless smile. “By damn, didn’t expect you. Good you should come. I don’t see many people socially.”

“This isn’t exactly social.”

“ ’Course not. When does a private cop and a con get social? But for me any talk is social. Sometimes I wish I didn’t finish my time. At least then I’d get to see a parole officer for a chat once in a while. But who the hell has time for an old guy like me?”

“Ever see any of your old mob, Sonny?”

“Come on . . . what’s your name? Hammer . . .” He ticked off his fingers, “Gleason, Tippy Wells, Harry the Fox, Guido Sunchi . . . all dead. Vinny Pauncho is in the nuthouse up by Beacon and that crazy Willie Fingers is doing his big stretch yet in Atlanta. I wrote to Willie once and never even heard back. Who’s left?”

“Blackie Conley.”

“Yeah, he’s left dead.”

“Sim Torrence thinks he might have made it.”

“Baloney.”

I told the bartender to bring me a beer and turned back to Sonny. “Suppose he did.”

“So let him.”

“Suppose he came back with the three million bucks you guys heisted? ”

Sonny laughed abruptly and smacked his hands on the table. “That would be the funniest yet. What the hell could he do with it? All that stud wanted was broads and at his age it would be like shoving a wet noodle up a tiger’s . . . no, Hammer, it wouldn’t do him no good at all.” He sat back and chuckled at the thought and waved for another beer.

“Let’s consider it,” I insisted.

“Sure, go ahead.”

“So he’s old. He wants one more crack at the big-time.”

“Who the hell would listen to him?”

“You could pull a power play from behind the scenes. Three million bucks can do a lot of talking and if somebody is fronting for you who knows what you look like?”

Sonny stopped smiling then, his face wrapped in thought. Then he dragged on the beer and put half of it down at once. “No,” he said, “Blackie ain’t coming back, Hammer. He never ain’t.”

“Why not?”

His grin was tight-lipped, satisfied with what he was thinking. “Because I nailed old Blackie, I did. Man, with a rod I was good. I mean good, Hammer. You know he got me with that damn rifle. It put me down and stopped me, but I had one chance at him when he took off in that taxi and let one go while he still had the rifle poked out the window. I didn’t miss with that shot. I think I got old Blackie and he crawled off and died or wound himself and the taxi both up in the drink.”

“Maybe.”

“Okay, so I’m wrong. Hope I am.” He chuckled again and finished the beer. “Like to see old Blackie again. I’d like to find out if I really did get him or not.”

“Ever hear of Mr. Dickerson?” I asked him.

“Nope. Should I?”

“Not especially.”

“Who is he?”

“I don’t know either.”

“Like hell you don’t.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked him.

“Because I’ve lived with cons too damn long, Hammer. You get so you can tell things without them having to be said. Take now, f’instance. You ain’t asked all you came here to ask yet, have you?”

It was my turn to buy and I yelled for another brew. “Okay, old-timer, I’ll put it straight. You remember Sally Devon?”

Sonny frowned slightly and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Sure. Used to be my broad.”

“I thought she was Conley’s.”

“That bastard would go after anything in skirts no matter who she belonged to.”

“Even yours?”

“Sure. I warned him off a few times. Had to knock him on his keister once. But hell, what difference does it make? In those days he was a sharp article. Older than we were and pretty smooth. Sally was always sweet on him. If I didn’t bounce her around she woulda left me for him any day.”

He stopped suddenly, his eyes going cold. “You’re thinking maybe because of her Blackie dumped the heist and tried to take me?”

“Could be.”

Then the coldness left his eyes and the age came back. He let out a muted cackle and shook his head at the joke. “Damn,” he said, “that guy was always thinking.”

“Where were you going with the money if that job paid off, Sonny?”

“What’s the matter, don’t you read?”

“You tell me.”

He bobbed his head, relishing the moment. “I even see it done on some TV shows now, but it woulda worked. We had a truck with a tailgate ramped down. We was to drive the cab right in there and take off. So the cops found the truck and another one we was going to change to. It’s all down. Instead that bastard Blackie crossed us.”

“What were you going to do to the driver?”

“Toss him out, bump him. Who knows? We woulda figured somethin’.”

“You had a hideout?”

“Yeah, a house in the Catskills we had rented ahead of time. The cops plastered that looking for Blackie. He made all the arrangements on that end and never got to use ’em. Coulda been the crime of the century.”

“Maybe it was,” I said.

Sonny was reaching for his glass and stopped short. “What’re you thinking, boy?”

“Maybe while Blackie was making plans for you he was making other plans for himself. Suppose he arranged for an alternate hideout and made it after all. Suppose he bumped the driver, ditched the car, and holed up all these years and finally decided to come back again. Now he’s here with three million bucks taking his last fling, buying himself an organization.”

He listened, sat silent a moment, then shook his head and picked up his beer. “Not old Blackie. He couldn’t live without the broads and now he’s too old.”

“Ever hear of a voyeur?”

“What’s that?”

“They can’t do it so they just watch. I know a few old jokers who get their kicks that way. They got millions too.”

“I think you’re nuts,” he said, “but any time you want to talk about it come back and talk. You’re the first company I had around in a long time.”

“Sure.” I wrote down my new address on a matchbook cover and passed it to him. “Reach me here or at the office if you get any ideas. You can earn some cash.”

I put a buck on the table and left. Behind me Sonny was still chuckling. I’d like to be there if he ever got to meet Blackie face to face.

CHAPTER 7

I called Hy from a drugstore on the avenue and got Pete Ladero’s address from him. I reached him at home and asked him if he could get the newspaper clips on the Motley-Conley job thirty years ago and bring them up to the office. He griped about leaving his favorite TV program, but his nose for news was too big and he said it would take an hour, but he’d be there.

At the Automat on Sixth between Forty-fourth and Forty-fifth I picked up a tray, loaded it with goodies, and went upstairs to think for a while. It wasn’t accidental. I knew Jersey Toby would be there the same as he had been there at the same time every night the past ten years. I let him finish his meal, picked up my coffee, and joined him at his table. When he saw me he almost choked, gave a quick look around, and tightened up.

“Damn, can’t you get off my neck? Whatta you want?”

“Talk, Toby, just talk.”

“Well, I said all I’m gonna say. Scratch off, Mike. I don’t want no part of you, buddy. You know I got asked questions already?”

“Who asked?”

“Some broad in the other joint. She knew you all right. I tried to lie out of it and said you was looking for a dame for that night but she wouldn’t buy it. Said she knew you too well. You’re hooked for somebody else. You’re putting my tail in a sling.”

“So I’ll make it short.”

“Like hell. You won’t make nothing.”

“Okay, Toby, then tomorrow a pickup goes out on you. You get rousted every time you step on the street. Lineup twice a week, complaints . . .”

Jersey Toby looked at me, his face white and drawn. “Come on, you wouldn’t do that.”

“Try me.”

He finished his coffee, looked around nervously again until he was assured we were alone, and nodded. “You would at that. Okay, spill it.”

“Let’s go back to Dickerson again, Toby.”

“We went through that once.”

“You get the word.”

“Sure . . . secondhand through the broads.”

“Good enough. What’s the word on the money angle? If out-of-town hoods are moving in, something’s drawing them. Who’s spreading the green around?”

Toby’s tongue flicked at dry lips and he pulled on the butt. “Look . . . if I prime you, this is the last?”

I shrugged.

“Let’s hear it, Mike.”

“You bought it. I’ll back off.”

“Okay then, Marge . . . she’s the redhead. She was with . . . a guy one night. No names, Mike. I ain’t giving you names. I specialize in that end of the trade. Marge, she’s a favorite with the hard boys. Does a lot of fancy tricks for them, see? Well, this guy . . . like he’s representing somebody big. He’s like muscle on lend. He comes in to do a favor. He’s Chicago and ready. He ain’t saying what’s to do, but he stands ready. Now his boss man lends him out because a favor was asked, only his boss man don’t do no favors. It’s got to be bought or got to be forced. Somebody’s got something on his boss man and is making a trade.

“Don’t ask what it is. Who am I to know? I just put two and two together until it works out. Somebody is building an organization and although money is there it’s the pressure that’s bringing the boys in.”

I tipped back in the chair watching him. “It plays if somebody is building an organization. Whatever the pressure is, it brings muscle in that can’t be bought, then the muscle can be used to square the money.”

“You play it,” Toby said. “I don’t even want to think on it no more.”

“How many are in?”

“Enough. With a mob like’s here I could damn near run the town single-handed.”

“These boys all come from big sources?”

Toby’s head bobbed once. “The biggest. The Syndicate’s lending men. They come out of the individual operations, but the boss men are the Syndicate men. You’re trouble, boy.”

“Thanks, kiddo. You’ve been a help.”

“For that I ain’t happy. I hope they get you before they tie me into anything.”

“Forget it,” I said and got up from the table.

I left him there and walked out into the rain back toward my office. If Jersey Toby was right Mr. Dickerson was pulling off a cute trick. It figured right, too, because he’d be smart enough and would have had the time to work it out. Little by little he could have built the things he needed to pressure the big ones into line. He had the background, experience, and the desire. One thing led to another. Once the mob was in, an organization could be built that could utilize three million bucks properly.

If Mr. Dickerson was Blackie Conley it fitted just right.

Up in the office I had to wait only fifteen minutes before Pete Ladero came in with a folio under his arm. He laid the stuff on the table and opened it up. “Do I get an explanation first?”

“Research on Blackie Conley,” I said.

“Aw, for crying out loud, he’s been dead for years.”

“Has he?”

“Well . . .” He paused and searched my face. “You on to something?”

“You familiar with this case?”

“I ran over it. The magazine writers rehashed it enough so I know the general background. Give.”

“If Conley’s alive he’s got three million bucks in his kick. He might be old and fiesty enough to start trouble with it.”

“Boy, bring-’em-back-alive Hammer.” He reached for the paper. “You looking for anything special?”

“Conley’s connection with the heist. Take half and we’ll go through them.”

So we sat down and read. Velda called and I told her to hop over, then went back to the papers again.

The prosecution had a cut-and-dried case. Sonny Motley pleaded guilty since he was nailed in the act and faced an automatic sentence anyway. He ranted and raved all the way through the trial, cursing everybody from the judge down, but Torrence and Conley in particular. Torrence because he wouldn’t let him alone, but kept hammering for details, and Conley for the big double cross and a bullet in his shoulder.

The main item of interest was the missing three million dollars, but despite the speculation and the nationwide police search, not one thing was turning up. Sonny Motley didn’t mind spilling his guts if it meant nailing Blackie Conley and the unseen face who engineered the deal. Right then he figured they pulled the double cross together, but Sim Torrence couldn’t get any evidence whatsoever on the one behind the action.

There was another witness. Her name was Sally Devon and she was called because she was assumed to be a confederate of Sonny’s. Her testimony was such that she turned out to be the beautiful but dumb type after all, knowing nothing of the mob’s operation. Sonny and the others all admitted she was only a shack job as far as they were concerned and that seemed to end her part in the affair. Only one reporter mentioned a statement that had any significance. Just before she was discharged from the stand she said that “she’d like to get the snake that was responsible.”

And that was what had bothered me. Sue had said the same thing, only there had been a minor discrepancy in her statements. First she said it was a snake that had killed her mother. Later she said the snake! Sue Devon remembered something, all right. Sally had raved in her drunkenness too . . . not about snakes . . . but about the snake. Old Mrs. Lee just hadn’t understood right.

Now The Snake was emerging. It was the one who engineered the whole damn business. The one nobody knew about or saw. The one who could have engineered it into a massive double cross to start with.

Blackie Conley. He really played it cute. He stood by as a lieutenant to Sonny Motley, but it was his plan to start with. He worked it into a cross and took off with the profits. He was bigger than anybody gave him credit for being. He was big enough to hold on until he felt like it and make the most incredible comeback in the history of crime.

If it worked.

And it was working.

I had been looking over the paper too long. Pete said, “You found it, didn’t you?”

“I think I have.”

“Do I get it?”

“Why not? ” I put the paper down and looked at him. “Can you hold it?”

“Better tell me about it first.”

When I did he whistled softly and started writing. I said, “If it goes out now this guy might withdraw and we’ll never get him. You can call the shots, buddy, but I’d advise you to wait. It could be bigger.”

He put the pencil away, grinning. “This is bonus stuff, Mike. I’ll sit on it. Make it mine though, will you?”

“Done.”

“Want Hy in?”

“Damn right. The office can use the publicity. Give him the same poop.”

“Sure, Mike.” He folded the news clips together and headed for the door. “Call me when you need anything.”

I waved when he left, then picked up the phone and dialed Pat. He was home for a change, and sore about being dragged out of bed. I said, “How’d you make out, Pat?”

“Got something new for you.”

“Oh?”

“Write off Arnold Goodwin. He’s dead.”

“What happened?”

“He was killed a couple of months ago in an automobile accident near Saratoga. His body’s been lying in a morgue up there unclaimed. The report just came in with his prints.”

“Positive?”

“Look, it was a stiff with good prints. He was on file. He checked out. The dead man was Goodwin. The accident involved a local car and was just that . . . an accident.”

“Then it narrows things down. You still working on Basil Levitt?”

“All the way. We’ve gone over his record in detail and are trying to backtrack him up to the minute he died. It won’t be easy. That guy knew how to cover a trail. Two of my men are working from a point they picked up three months ago and might be able to run it through. Incidentally, I have an interesting item in his history.”

“What’s that?”

“After he lost his P.I. license he had an arrest record of nineteen. Only two convictions, but some of the charges were pretty serious. He was lucky enough each time to have a good lawyer. The eleventh time he was picked up for assault and it was Sim Torrence who defended him and got him off.”

“I don’t like it, Pat.”

“Don’t worry about it. Sim was in civil practice at the time and it was one of hundreds he handled. Levitt never used the same lawyer twice, but the ones he used were good ones. Torrence had a damn good record and the chances are the tie-in was accidental. We got on this thing this morning and I called Torrence personally. He sent Geraldine King up here with the complete file on the case. It meant an hour in court to him, that’s all, and the fee was five hundred bucks.”

“Who made the complaint?”

“Some monkey who owned a gin mill but who had a record himself. It boils down to a street fight, but Torrence was able to prove that Levitt was merely defending himself. Here’s another cute kick. Our present D.A., Charlie Force, defended Levitt on charge seventeen. Same complaint and he got him off too.”

“Just funny that those two ever met.”

“Mike, in the crime business they get to meet criminals. He does, I do, and you do. Now there’s one other thing. The team I have out are circulating pictures of Levitt. Tonight I get a call from somebody who evidently saw the photo and wanted to know what it was all about. He wouldn’t give him name and there wasn’t time to get a tracer on the call. I didn’t tell him anything but said that if he had any pertinent information on Levitt to bring it to us. I was stalling, trying for a tracer. I think he got wise. He said sure, then hung up. As far as we got was that the call came from Flatbush.”

“Hell, Pat, that’s where Levitt comes from.”

“So do a couple million other people. We’ll wait it out. All I knew was that it was an open phone, not a booth unless the door was left open, and probably in a bar. I could hear general background talk and a juke going.”

“We’ll wait that one out then. He has something on his mind.”

“They usually call again,” Pat said. “You have anything special?”

“Some ideas.”

“When do I hear them?”

“Maybe tomorrow.”

“I’ll stand by.”

When I hung up I stared at the phone, then leaned my face into my hands trying to make the ends meet in my mind. Screwy, that’s all I could think of. Screwy, but it was making sense.

The phone rang once, jarring me out of my thought. I picked it up, said hello, and the voice that answered was tense. “Geraldine King, Mike. Can you come out here right away?”

“What’s up, Geraldine?”

She was too agitated to try to talk. She simply said, “Please, Mike, come right away. Now. It’s very important.” Then she gave me no choice. She hung up.

I wrote a note to Velda telling where I was going and that I’d head right back for the apartment when I was done, then left it in the middle of her desk.

Downstairs I cut around back of the cop assigned to watch me, took the side way out without being seen, and picked up a cruising cab at the street corner. The rain was heavier now, a steady, straight-down New York rain that always seemed to come in with the trouble. Heading north on the West Side Highway I leaned back into the cushions and tried to grab a nap. Sleep was out of the question, even for a little while, so I just sat there and remembered back to those last seven years when forgetting was such a simple thing to do.

All you needed was a bottle.

The cop on the beat outside Torrence’s house checked my identity before letting me go through. Two reporters were already there talking to a plainclothesman and a fire captain, but not seeming to be getting much out of either one of them.

Geraldine King met me at the door, her face tight and worried.

I said, “What happened?”

“Sue’s place . . . it burned.”

“What about the kid?”

“She’s all right. I have her upstairs in bed. Come on inside.”

“No, let’s see that building first.”

She pulled a sweater on and closed the door behind us. Floodlights on the grounds illuminated the area, the rain slanting through it obliquely.

There wasn’t much left, just charred ruins and the concrete foundation. Fire hoses and the rain had squelched every trace of smoldering except for one tendril of smoke that drifted out of one corner, and I could see the remains of the record player and the lone finger that was her microphone stand. Scattered across the floor were tiny bits of light bouncing back from the shattered mirror that had lined the one wall. But there was nothing else. Whatever had been there was gone now.

I said, “We can go back now.”

When we were inside Geraldine made us both a drink and stood in the den looking out the window. I let her wait until she was ready to talk, finishing half my drink on the way. Finally she said, “This morning Sue came inside. I . . . don’t know what started it, but she came out openly and accused Mr. Torrence of having killed her mother. She kept saying her mother told her.”

“How could she say her mother told her she was murdered when she was alive to tell her?” I interrupted.

“I know, I know, but she insisted her mother wrote something and she was going to find it. You know she kept all her mother’s old personal things out there.”

“Yes, I saw some of them.”

“Mr. Torrence is in the middle of an important campaign. He was quite angry and wanted this thing settled once and for all, so while Sue was in here he went out and went through her things, trying to prove that there was nothing.

“Sue must have seen him from upstairs. She came down crying, ran outside, and told him to leave. Neither one of us could quiet her down. She locked herself inside and wouldn’t come out and as long as she was there we didn’t worry about it. This . . . wasn’t exactly the first time this has happened. We were both used to her outbursts.

“Late this afternoon Mr. Torrence got a call and had to leave for his office on some campaign matter. It was about two hours later that I happened to look out and saw the smoke. The building was burning from the inside and Sue was still there. The record player was going and when I looked in the window she was doing some crazy kind of dance with one of those big stuffed toys that used to belong to her mother.

“She wouldn’t come out, wouldn’t answer me . . . nothing. I . . . guess I started screaming. There was a policeman outside the fence, fortunately. He just happened to be there.”

I shook my head. “No, he wasn’t. This department was cooperating with the requests of the city police. He was there purposely. Go on.”

“He came in and broke down the door. By that time Sue was almost unconscious, lying there on the floor with the flames shooting up the walls. We dragged her out, got her in the house, and I put her to bed. One of the neighbors saw the flames and called the fire department. They came, but there was nothing to do. The damage was not really important . . . except now we’ll never know what Sue had of her mother’s that she was always searching for.”

“Where was Torrence at this time?”

Slowly, she turned around, fingering the drink in her hand. “I know what you’re thinking, but perhaps twenty minutes before that I spoke to him on the phone. He was in the city.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because I spoke to two others in his office on some party matters.”

“Where is he now?”

“On the way to Albany with some of his constituents. If you want I’ll see that he’s notified and we’ll get him right back.”

“I don’t think it’s necessary. Can I see Sue?

“She’ll be asleep. She was totally worn out. She started the fire, you know.”

“I don’t.”

“But I do.”

“How?”

“She told me. She’ll tell you too when she’s awake.”

“Then we’ll awaken her.”

“All right.”

Sue’s bedroom was a composite of little girl and grown-up. There were framed still pictures of Sally Devon on her dresser and vanity along with some of herself in leotards and ballet costumes. There was another record player here and an almost identical stack of classical L.P.’s. Scattered here and there were toys from another year, mostly fuzzy animals and dolls in dancing clothes.

She lay in bed like a child, her yellow hair spilling around her face, one arm snuggling an oversized animal whose fur had been partially burned off, the face charred so that it was almost unrecognizable for whatever it was. She smiled dreamily, held the toy close to her, and buried her face against it. Some of the straw was sticking out on one side and she pushed it out of the way.

I touched her arm. “Sue . . .”

She didn’t awaken immediately. I spoke her name twice again before she opened her eyes.

She said, “Hello, Mike.”

“Sue . . . did you set the fire?”

“Yes, I was . . . burning Mother’s old papers. I didn’t want him to see anything of hers.”

“What happened?”

She smiled again. “I . . . don’t know. Everything . . . seemed to start burning. I sort of felt happy then. I didn’t care. I sang and danced while it was burning and felt good. That’s all I remember.”

“Okay, go back to sleep.”

“Mike . . .”

“What?”

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right.”

“He’ll . . . put me away or something now, won’t he?”

“I don’t think so. It was an accident.”

“Not really it wasn’t. I meant it.”

I sat on the edge of the bed and took her hand. She was still in a state of semi-shock and sometimes that’s the time when they can say the right thing. I said, “Sue . . . you remember telling me your mother was killed by the snake?”

Her eyes drifted away momentarily, then came back to mine. “The snake did it. She said so. The snake would kill her because he had to.”

“Who is the snake, honey?”

“She said the snake would kill her,” she repeated. “I remember.” Her eyes started to widen and under my hand her arm grew taut. “She said . . .”

But I wouldn’t let her talk any more. She was too near the breaking point, so I leaned over and kissed her and the fear left her face as suddenly as it appeared and she smiled.

“Go back to sleep, honey. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Don’t leave, Mike.”

“I’ll be around.”

“Please, Mike.”

I winked and stood up. “Sleep, baby, for me.”

“All right, Mike.”

I left a night-light on and the door partly open and went back downstairs with Geraldine. I sat back on the couch and took the drink she made me, sipping it slowly.

Outside the rain slapped at the windows, massaging them with streaky, wet fingers. She turned on the record player, drew the heavy draperies across the windows, and turned out all the lights except one. Then she sat down beside me.

Only then did she say, “What shall we do, Mike?”

“Nothing yet.”

“There were reporters out there.”

“What did you tell them?”

“That it was accidental. It really wasn’t too important . . . just a small outbuilding. If it weren’t Mr. Torrence’s place it would never draw a mention, but . . . well, you understand.”

“They won’t make much out of it.”

“But if Sue keeps making these accusations . . . it’s an election year, Mike. The campaign for governor of a state is of maximum importance. You know how both parties look at it. This is a key state. From here a governor can go into the White House or at least have a major effect on national policy. If anything . . . anything at all comes up that can be detrimental to a selected candidate it can be disastrous. This . . . this business with Sue is getting out of hand.”

“Your bunch knows about it then?”

She nodded, then took a swallow of her drink. “Yes . . . in a way it’s why I’m here. I’ve been with Sim Torrence on his other campaigns as much as a guardian for Sue as an assistant to Mr. Torrence. She doesn’t realize all this and I’ve made it a point to keep it almost businesslike, but I do manage to find things for Sue to do and distract this antagonistic attitude she has. All her life she’s been trying to emulate her mother . . . trying to be a showgirl. She’s been coached in singing, dancing, the arts . . . given the very best Mr. Torrence can give her. She’s taken advantage of those opportunities, not just to help her into show business but it gets her away from him. Sad, but true.”

“You speculating now?”

She looked at me over her glass. “No, she’s told me that. You can ask her.”

“I believe it.”

“What can we do? It’s critical now.”

“I’ll think of something.”

“Will you, Mike? We need help badly.”

“You sure love this political crap, don’t you?”

“My life, Mike. I gave my life to it.”

“Hell, you’re too young to die. Maybe you should have been born a man.”

“There’s a place for women in politics.”

“Bull.”

“You just like them to be women, don’t you?”

“That’s what they are.”

“All right. For you I’ll be a woman.”

She put her drink down on the coffee table, took mine from my hand and put it next to hers, both unfinished. There was a sudden hunger in her eyes and a warmth to her face that made her mouth seem to blossom into a new fullness. Her fingers went to her throat and one by one she unbuttoned her blouse until it lay open, then with the slightest shrug of her shoulders it slid away so that her fingers could work more magic with the soft fabric of the bra. She whisked it away and it floated to the floor where it lay unnoticed.

I looked at her, not touching her, taking in the lovely slope of her breasts that were swelled with emotion and tipped with the firm pinkness of passion. I could smell the fragrant heat of her only inches away, and as I watched, her stomach undulated and moved spasmodically against the waistband of her skirt.

“How am I . . . as a woman, Mike?”

“Lovely,” I told her. I reached for her, turned her around, then lay her as she was, half naked, across my lap, my fingers caught in her hair, touching her gently at first, then with firm insistence that made her shudder.

She raised herself against me, twisting her head, searching for my mouth until she found it, then with a small whimper she was part of me, her lips a ripe, succulent fruit, her tongue an alive, vital organ that was a soul seeking another soul. I let her fall away from me reluctantly, her mouth still working as though it were kissing mine yet, her eyes closed, her breath coming heavily.

Someplace in the house a clock chimed and a dull rumble of thunder outside echoed it. I let my hand run down the naked expanse of her stomach until the tips of my fingers traced a path across her waist under the skirt. She moaned softly and sucked in her breath so there would be a looseness at her belt. I felt her briefly, kneaded the pliant flesh, then took my hand away.

Her eyes opened, she smiled once and closed them again. Then she was asleep. It had been a hard day for her too. I held her until I was sure she wouldn’t awaken, then raised her, propped a cushion beneath her shoulders, and let her down onto it. I covered her with her blouse and a plaid car blanket that was folded over the back of a chair.

In the morning she’d feel better. She’d hate me maybe, but then again, maybe not. I went upstairs and checked Sue. She had turned on her side and the oversized stuffed toy was almost crushed beneath her.

I called a cab in from town, let myself out, and waited by the gate. The cop on the beat asked me if everything was all right and I told him the women were both asleep and to stay on his toes. He still couldn’t read me but with the card I carried he wasn’t taking any chances. He saluted cordially and walked off into the darkness.

Inspector Grebb should have seen that, I thought. He’d flip. He’d sooner I got a boot in the tail.

When the cab came he didn’t want to take me clean into the city so I changed cabs at the George Washington Bridge and gave that driver the address of my new apartment. I started to grin, thinking of what Velda would do if she knew where I was an hour ago. Hell, she never would believe me if I told her the truth anyway, so why say a word? But you can’t go through two of those deals in one night and stand up to it. If Velda was there I hoped she was sacked out tight. Right then I needed sleep more than anything I could think of.

I paid the cab off and went inside. The place was freshly renovated and smelled of paint. I took the automatic elevator to the third floor, found my new apartment at the very end of the hall, and stuck the key in the lock. There was a soft glow from a table lamp at the end of the couch in the living room and a radio was playing softly. From where I stood I could see her stretched out comfortably and laughed to myself. Velda had determination, but sleep had won out. She got the couch and I got the bed this time. Tomorrow she’d sizzle, but she’d still be waiting.

I went in on the balls of my feet, walking quietly so as not to wake her, but I couldn’t help looking at her as I passed. And when I saw her I turned ice cold inside because she wasn’t just asleep at all. Somebody had brought something down across her temple turning it into a livid welt that oozed dark blood under her ear into her hairline.

I grabbed her, said “Velda!” once, then she let out a little meowing sound and her eyes flicked open. She tried to talk but couldn’t and it was her eyes that got the message across. I looked up to the side where he stood with one hand holding his belly and the other a gun and he had it pointed right at my head.

Marv Kania had finally found me.

His eyes had death in them, his and mine. His belly was bloated and I could smell the stench of a festering wound, the sickening odor of old blood impregnated into cloth. There was a wildness in his face and his mouth was a tight slash that showed all his teeth. Marv Kania was young, but right there he was as old as death itself.

“I was waiting for you, mister.”

Slowly, I got up. I was going to have to pull against a drawn gun and there wasn’t a chance I could make it. He was dying, but the gun in his hand was there with the deft skill of the professional and it never wavered an inch. He let the muzzle drift down from my head until it pointed at my stomach.

“Right where I got it, man, and there’s no coming back after that. Everything inside goes. You’ll live a little while and you’ll hurt like I hurt. You try to move away from it and I put one more in your head.”

I was thinking fast, wondering how fast I could move away from the shot. He knew what I was going to do and grinned through the pain he felt. Just to let me know it was no good he made two quick wrist motions to show he still had it and I had it, then he thumbed the hammer back.

“The girl. What about her?”

“What do you care? You’ll be dead.”

“What about her?”

His face was a mask of pain and hate. “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. With her she gets one shot. Same as you. Then I go outside and die. Out in the rain, just so long as I don’t die in no crummy room. In the park, that’s where I die. I always wanted to die there.” His eyes half shut momentarily as a spasm of pain took him, then he snapped them open and grinned, his teeth bare against his gums.

Velda turned on the couch, whispering my name softly. She must have come in when he was there. He held a gun on her, belted her out, and kept on waiting. Now he was going to kill her along with me.

“You ready, you bastard?”

I didn’t move. I just stood there hoping Velda could do something while my own body half shielded her from him, hoping she could move fast enough to get the hell out. He saw that too and started to laugh. It was so funny to him with all the hate bottled up inside he laughed even harder as he aimed the rod with every ounce of professional technique he ever had.

And it was the laugh that did it. The laugh that broke the last thing inside. The laugh that burst the lifeline. He felt it go and his eyes went so wide the whites of them showed the horror he felt because he was still a loser and before he could put that final fraction of pressure on the trigger the gun dropped from his hand and he pitched facedown on the floor with a sickening squashing sound as some ghastly, putrescent fluid burst from his belly.

I picked Velda up, carried her into the bedroom, and washed the blood from her temple. Then I loosened her clothes and pulled the blanket over her before flopping down on the bed beside her.

Outside I had another dead man at my feet, but he was going to have to wait until morning.

CHAPTER 8

Pat was there at nine in the morning. So was Inspector Grebb and Charles Force. Pat’s face told me he had no choice so I threw him a brief nod so he knew I got the picture.

The police photographers got all the shots they wanted, the body was carried out, Velda had a doctor in with her, and Grebb pointed at a chair for me and sat down himself.

“You’ve been a thorn in our side, Hammer,” he said pleasantly.

“Tough.”

“But I think we have you nailed now.”

“For failing to report a body?”

“It’s enough. You don’t step that far outside and still get a gun-carrying privilege. It will break you with that fancy agency because they like closed mouths about their operations. They lift your ticket and you’re back in the ranks again.”

Charlie Force was standing there with that same old courtroom smile, like his bait had caught the fish. I said, “I warned you, Charlie.”

“Mr. Force, if you don’t mind?”

This time I let him see the kind of grin I had, the one with teeth in it. I said, “Okay, buddy, I’ll come to your party, only I’m bringing my friends. I’m bringing in pressures you never heard of. Get something in your goddamn heads . . . you’re two public servants and all you’re looking for is another step up. If you got the idea you’ll get it over me you’re wrong. Don’t think that agency is going to back down a bit. I gave them too much and they’re still paying off for it. I’ll keep giving them more and more until they can’t afford to lose me. The agency is bigger than both you guys and now you’re going to find it out the hard way.

“As for you, Force, before you were playing in courtrooms I was pushing a legal gun around this town and there are guys I know and friends I made who’d like nothing better than to wipe your nose in a mess. Believe me, buddy, if you ever did one lousy thing in your life . . . and you can bet your ass you did because everybody does, I’ll nail it down and you’ll go with it. It won’t even be a hard job. But I’ll do even better than that to you, kid. I’ll pull the stool right out from under you. This little bugger I’m on now is a hot little bugger and it’s mine. You get no slice of it at all. I’ll make the action and get the yaks.”

I spun around and looked at Pat. “Tell them, friend.”

“You did a pretty good job. I’m still a Captain.”

“Well, maybe we’ll get you raised one after this, okay, Inspector?”

He didn’t say anything. He sat there glowering at me, not knowing what to think. But he was an old hand and knew when the wind was blowing bad. It showed in his eyes, only he didn’t want me to to see it. Finally he looked at his watch, then up to me. “We’ll wait some more,” he said. “It’s bound to happen sometime.”

“Don’t hold your breath waiting,” I said.

“You take care of things here, Captain,” he said to Pat. “I’ll want to see the report later.”

“I’ll have it on your desk, Inspector.”

They left then, two quiet men with one idea in their minds nobody was ever going to shake loose. When they were out I said to Pat, “Why the heat?”

“Because the city is on edge, Mike. They haven’t got the answers and neither have I. Somehow you always get thrown in the middle of things so that you’re the one to pull the switch.”

“You got everything I know.”

Pat nodded sagely. “Great. Facts are one thing, but there’s still that crazy mind of yours. You make the same facts come out with different answers somehow.” He held up his hand to shut me up. “Oh, I agree, you’re cooperative and all that jazz. You lay it on the line like you’re requested to do and still make it look like your own idea. But all the time you’re following a strange line of reasoning nobody who looks at the facts would take. I always said you should have been a straight cop in the first place.”

“I tried it a long time ago and it didn’t work.”

“You would have made a perfect crook. Sometimes I wonder just what the hell you really are inside. You live in a half world of your own, never in, never out, always on the edge.”

“Nuts to you, Pat. It works.”

“The hard way.”

Pat walked to the window, stared down into the courtyard a moment, then came back. “Kania say anything to you before he died?”

“Only how he was going to enjoy killing me.”

“You didn’t ask him any questions?”

“With a gun on me and him ready to shoot? There wasn’t anything to ask.”

“There wasn’t any chance you could have taken him?”

“Not a one.”

“So I’ll buy it. Now, how’d he find you?”

“I’m not that hard to find. He did it twice before. He probably picked up Velda at my office and followed her here.”

“She talk yet?”

“No,” I told him, “but maybe she will now. Let’s ask her.”

The doctor had finished with Velda, assuring us both that it was only a minor concussion that should leave no aftereffects, gave me a prescription for a sedative, and left us alone with her.

She smiled up at me crookedly, her face hurting with the effort.

“Think you can talk, kitten?”

“I’m all right.”

“How’d that punk get in here?”

She shook her head and winced. “I don’t know. I left the door unlocked thinking you’d be in shortly, then I went to the bathroom. When I went back into the living room he stepped out of the bedroom. He held the gun on me . . . then made me lie on the couch. I knew he was afraid I’d scream or something so he just swung the gun at me. I remember . . . coming awake once, then he hit me again. That’s all I remember until you spoke to me.”

I glanced at Pat. “That’s how he did it then. He waited at the office.”

“Did you know Grebb kept a man staked out there?”

“Didn’t everybody? I told you to stay off my neck.”

“It wasn’t my idea.”

“Kania must have spotted him the same as I did. He simply waited outside or across the street until Velda came out. When she came alone he figured she could lead him to me and stayed with her. She made the job easy by leaving the door open.”

“I’m sorry, Mike.”

“No sweat, baby,” I said. “It won’t happen again.”

“Mike . . .”

“What?”

“Mrs. Lee. She’d like to see you again.”

She was bypassing Pat, but he caught it and grinned. “I haven’t heard about her.”

“An old lady. Sally Devon’s old wardrobe mistress. She was with her when she died. She’ll talk to anybody for company’s sake but she might come up with something.”

“Still going back thirty years?”

“Does money get old?” I asked him.

There was a jack next to the bed so I got the phone from the living room and plugged it in and laid it on the nightstand where Velda could reach it. “You stay put all day, honey. I’ll check in with you every now and then and if you want anything, just call down for it. I’ll leave your key with the super and he can check on anybody who comes in.”

“Mike . . . I’ll be fine. You don’t have to . . .”

I cut her off. “Look, if I want you for anything, I’ll call. There’s a lot you can do without getting out of bed. Relax until I need you. Shall I get somebody to stay with you?”

“No.”

“I’ll be moving fast. I don’t know where I’ll be. But I’ll check in every couple of hours. Maybe Pat here can give you a buzz too.”

“Be glad to,” he said. There was restraint in his voice and I knew how he was hurting. It isn’t easy for a guy who loves a woman to see her going down the road with somebody else. War, love . . . somebody’s got to be the loser.

So I covered her up and went outside with Pat. About twenty minutes later two men from his division came in, got a rundown on Kania, and started backtracking him. A contract killer wasn’t notorious for leaving a trail, but Marv Kania had a record, he was known. He might have been tight-lipped about his operation, but somewhere somebody was going to know something.

One thing. That’s all we needed. You could start with dead men, all right, but it won’t do you any good if they only lead to other dead men. Mr. Dickerson had played some smart cards. He had picked his people well. The ones here were clean. The ones who weren’t were dead. The hoods in town could be taken in and questioned, but if they knew nothing because the orders hadn’t been issued yet, they couldn’t say anything. It was still a free country and you couldn’t make them leave the state as long as they stayed clean. The men behind them were power who could still turn on the heat through odd but important channels so you couldn’t roust them too far.

I told Pat I’d see him sometime after lunch, walked him downstairs, left a key with the super, and gave him a fin for his trouble. Pat went on downtown and I hopped a cab across town to Annette Lee’s place, got the landlady to let me in, and stepped into her living room.

The old gal was still in her rocker, still going through that same perpetual rhythm, stopping only when her chair had inched against another piece of furniture. Her curtains were drawn back, letting in the early light, and she smiled a big hello when she saw me.

“How nice of you to come back, young man,” she said. She held out her hand without getting up and I took it. “Sit down, please.”

I tossed my hat on a table and pulled up another straight-back chair and perched on the end of it.

“Your young lady was here yesterday. We had a lovely visit. It isn’t often I get company, you know.”

I said, “She mentioned you wanted to see me.”

“Yes.” Annette Lee nodded, then leaned her head back against the chair with her eyes half shut. “We were talking. I . . .” She waved her hand vaguely in front of her face. “Sometimes I forget things. I’m going on ninety now. I think I’ve lived too long already.”

“You never live too long.”

“Perhaps so. I can still enjoy things. I can dream. Do you dream, Mr. . . . ?”

“Hammer.”

“Mr. Hammer. Do you dream?”

“Sometimes.”

“You’re not old enough to dream back like I do. It’s something like being reborn. I like to dream. They were good days then. I dream about them because they’re all I have to dream about. Yes, they were fine days.”

“What was it you wanted to tell me, Miss Lee?” I asked her gently.

“Oh?” She thought a moment, then: “There was something. Your young lady and I talked about Sally and Sue. Yes, that was it. Dear Sally, she was so lovely. It was a pity she died.”

“Miss Lee . . .”

“Yes?”

“The night she died . . . do you remember it well?”

“Oh yes. Oh yes indeed.” Her rocking slowed momentarily so she could shift positions, then started again.

“Was she drunk, really drunk?”

“Dear me, yes. Sally drank all the time. From very early in the morning. There was nothing I could do so I tried to keep her company and talk to her. She didn’t want to talk too much, you know. When she did it was drunk talk I couldn’t always understand. Do you know what I mean?”

“I’ve heard it.”

“There was that thing with the snakes you mentioned. It was rather an obsession with her.”

“She was frightened of the snake?”

Annette Lee lifted her head and peered at me. “No, that was the strange thing. She wasn’t afraid. It was . . . well, she hated it.”

“Was the snake a person?”

“Excuse me?”

“Could she have been referring to a person as The Snake? Not snakes or a snake. The Snake.”

The rocking stopped completely. She looked at me curiously in the semi-darkened room, her fingertip touching her lips. “So that was what she meant.”

“Go on.”

“No wonder I didn’t understand. My goodness, never understood in all this time. Yes, she said the snake. It was always the snake. She hated the snake, that was why she wanted to live so far away from the city. She never wanted to go back.”

“Annette . . . who was Sue’s father?”

The old girl made a face at me and raised the thin line of her eyebrows. “Does it matter?”

“It might.”

“But I’m afraid I couldn’t tell you.”

“Why not?”

“Simply because I don’t know. Sue has Sally’s maiden name, you know. She never got her father’s name because she doesn’t know who he is. I’m afraid Sally was . . . a bit promiscuous. She had many men and among them would be Sue’s father. I doubt if Sally ever really knew either. A pity. Sue was such a lovely baby.”

“Could it have been Blackie Conley?”

For the first time Annette Lee giggled. “Dear no. Not him. Never Blackie.”

“Why?”

“Simply because he wasn’t capable. I think that was one of the reasons Blackie was so . . . so frustrated. He did like the ladies, you know. He slept with one after the other. He even married two of them but it never worked out. He always wanted an heir but he wasn’t capable. Why . . . the boys used to kid him about it.”

Her feet pushed harder until she had to edge the chair away from the wall so that she faced me more directly. “Do you ever remember Bud Packer?”

“Just the name.”

“Bud was . . . joshing him one day about his . . . impotence and Blackie shot him. You know where. I think Blackie did time for that but I don’t rightly remember. No, Blackie was not Sue’s father by any means. Besides, you’re forgetting one big thing.”

I let her say it.

“Blackie’s been gone . . . for years. Long before Sue was born. Blackie is dead somewhere.”

She put her head back and closed her eyes. I said, “Tired?”

“No, just thinking. Daydreaming.”

“How about this angle . . . could Sim Torrence have been the father? ”

Her giggle broke into a soft cackle only the old can make. “Sim Torrence? I’m afraid not. Sue was born before they were married.”

“He could still be the father.”

“You don’t understand, Mr. . . .”

“Hammer.”

“Mr. Hammer. You see, I was with Sally always before. I knew the many faces she was with. I know who she slept with and none of them were Sim Torrence. It wasn’t until after the baby was born that they were married when he took her in and provided for them.” The flat laugh came out again. “Those two could never have a baby of their own though.”

“Why not?”

“Because she and Sim never slept together. After the baby was born Sally never let a man near her. She underwent a change. All she thought of was the baby, making plans for her, hoping for her to grow up and be somebody. You know, I hate to give away women-secrets, but Sally deliberately cultivated Sim Torrence. They knew each other for some time earlier. Some court case. She managed to meet him somehow and I remember them going out for a couple of weeks before she brought him to our apartment and told me they were going to get married.”

“Did Torrence take it well?”

“How does any man take it who is going to lose his bachelorhood?” She smiled knowingly. “He was rather shaken. Almost embarrassed. But he did provide well for Sally and Sue. They had a simple ceremony and moved into his town house.”

“Were you with them?”

“Oh yes. Sally wouldn’t leave me. Why, I was the only one who could take care of her and the baby. She wasn’t very domestic, you know. She wasn’t supposed to be. Yes, those were different women then. Showgirls. They had to be pampered.”

“Why wouldn’t she let Torrence near her in bed?”

“Does it sound strange that a woman who was a . . . a whore would be afraid of sex?”

I shook my head. “Most of them are frigid anyway,” I said bluntly.

“So true, so true. Well, that was Sally. Frigid. Having the baby scared her. Even having a man scared her.”

“Was she scared of Torrence?”

“Of every man, Mr. . . .” and this time she remembered my name and smiled, “. . . Hammer. Yes, Sim Torrence scared her but I think he understood. He let her stay at that place in the country. He came up on occasions and it was very strained but he was very understanding about it too. Of course, like all men, he could bury himself in his work. That was his real wife, his work.”

“Miss Lee . . . the last time I was here we talked about Blackie Conley, remember?”

“I remember.”

“You said you knew about the plans he made for that robbery he and Sonny Motley were involved in. What were they?”

She stopped rocking, her face curious again. “Are you looking for the money?”

“I’m a cop, Miss Lee. I’m looking for a killer, for the money . . . for anything that will help keep trouble from Sue.”

“Sue? But that was before she was born.”

“It can come back to hurt her. Now what did you hear?”

She nodded, pressing her lips together, her hands grasping the arms of the rocker. “Do you really think . . . ?”

“It might help.”

“I see.” She paused, thought a moment, then said, “You know that Sonny really didn’t plan the robbery. It was his gang, but he didn’t plan it. They were . . . acting for someone.”

“I know about that.”

“Blackie had instructions to find a place where they were going to hide out. He was told where to go and how to do it. I remember because I listened to the call.” She chuckled at the thought. “I never did like Blackie. He was at Sally’s place when he took the call. In fact, that was where they did all their planning, at Sally’s apartment. Sonny was going with her then when she wasn’t sneaking off with Blackie.”

“I see.”

“Really,” she told me, “I wasn’t supposed to know about these things. I was always in the other room out of sight, but I was worried about Sally and tried to find out what was going on. I listened in and they didn’t know it.”

“None of this came out at the trial,” I reminded her.

“Nor was it about to, young man. I didn’t want to involve Sally any more than she was. She did appear in court, you know.”

“Briefly. She wasn’t implicated. She was treated as an innocent victim.”

Those watery old eyes found mine and laughed in their depths. “No, Sally wasn’t so innocent. She knew everything that went on. Sally’s pose was very deliberate. Very deliberate. She was a better actress than anyone imagined.”

Annette Lee leaned forward like some old conspirator. “Now that it can’t hurt her, let me tell you something. It was through dear Sally that this robbery came about. All arrangements, all contacts were made through her. Sonny was quite a man in those days and ran a sizable operation. But it was through Sally Devon that another party interested Sonny in that robbery. No, Sally was hardly the innocent victim.”

I didn’t let her see me take it in. I passed it off quickly to get her back on the track again, but now the angles were starting to show. I said, “When Blackie Conley got this call . . . what happened?”

Jerked suddenly from one train of thought, she sat back frowning. “Oh . . . Blackie . . . well, I heard this voice . . .”

“A man?”

“Yes. He told Blackie to see a man in a certain real estate agency, one that could be trusted. He gave him the phone number.”

I added, “And Blackie arranged to rent a house in the Catskills?”

“That’s right. He made the call right then and said he’d be in the next day.” She opened her eyes again, now her fingers tapping a silent tune on the chair. “But then he made another call to Howie Green.”

“Who?”

“Howie Green. He was a bootlegger, dearie, but he owned properties here in the city. He invested his money wisely, Howie did, and always had something to show for it. Howie was as crooked as they come, but smarter than most of them. One of Howie’s enterprises was a real estate agency that used to be someplace on Broadway. Oh yes, Howie was a big man, but he owed Blackie Conley a favor. Blackie killed a man for Howie and held it over his head. He told Howie he wanted a place to hole up in somewhere away from the city and to pick it out.”

“Where was it, Annette?”

“I don’t know, young man. Howie merely said he’d do it for him. That was all. I suppose Blackie took care of it later. However, it’s all over now. Howie Green’s dead too. He died in an accident not long afterward.”

“Before the robbery?”

“I really don’t remember that.”

I reached for my hat and stood up. “You’ve been a great help, Annette.”

“Have I really?”

I nodded.

“Will Sue be . . . all right?”

“I’m sure she will.”

“Someday,” she asked me, “will you bring her to me? I would like to see her again.”

“We’ll make a point of it.”

“Good-bye then. It was nice of you to come over,”

“My pleasure, Miss Lee.”

At two o’clock I contacted Pat and made a date to meet him at his office. He didn’t like the idea because he knew Grebb would want to sit in on the conversation but thought he could arrange it so we could be alone.

I took a cab downtown, found Pat alone at his desk buried in the usual paperwork, waited for him to finish, then said, “What officers were in on the Motley holdup? Any still around?”

“This your day for surprises?”

“Hit me.”

“Inspector Grebb was one. He was a beat cop who was alerted for the action.”

“Oh hell.”

“Why?”

“Think he’d remember the details?”

“I don’t remember Grebb ever forgetting anything.”

“Then let’s call him in.”

“You sure about this?” Pat asked me.

“It’s the easy way. So we give him a bite after all.”

Pat nodded, lifted the phone, and made a call. When he hung up he said, “The Inspector will be happy to see you.”

“I bet.”

It didn’t take him long to get up there. He didn’t have Charlie Force with him either. He came in with the patient attitude of the professional cop, always ready to wait, always ready to act when the time came. He might have been a tough, sour old apple, but he made it the hard way and you couldn’t take it away from him.

Inwardly I laughed at myself because if I wasn’t careful I could almost like him.

“Whose party is it this time?” he asked.

Pat said, “He’s throwing it.”

“I never thought you’d ask, Hammer.” He dragged a chair out with his foot, sat in it heavily and sighed, but it was all an act. He was no more tired or bored than I was. “Shoot,” he said.

“Pat tells me you were in on the Motley thing thirty years ago.”

“My second day on the beat, Hammer. That shows you how close to retirement I am. My present job is a gratuity. One last fling for the old dog in a department he always wanted to run.”

“Better luck in your next one.”

“We aren’t talking about that. What’s with the Motley job?”

“How did the cops get wise?”

“Why don’t you read the transcript of the trial? It was mentioned.”

“This is easier. Besides, I wanted to be sure.”

Grebb pulled a cigar from his pocket, snapped off the end, and fired it up. “Like a lot of big ones that went bust,” he said, “somebody pulled the cork. The department got a call. It went through the D.A.’s office.”

“Torrence?”

“No, one of the others got it and passed it to him. Torrence handled it personally though.”

“Where were you?”

“Staked out where the truck was hidden in case they got through somehow. They never made it. We got the truck and the driver. Second day on the beat too, I’ll never forget it. Fresh out of school, still hardly shaving, and I get a hot one right off. Made me decide to stay in the department.”

“How long did you have to get ready?”

“About an hour, if I remember right. It was plenty of time. We could have done it in fifteen minutes.”

“They ever find out who made the call?”

“Nope.”

“They look very hard?”

Grebb just shrugged noncommittally. Then he said, “Let’s face it, we’d sooner have stoolies on the outside where they can call these things in than a live guy testifying in court who winds up a dead squealer a day later. We didn’t break our backs running down anybody. Whoever it was played it the way we liked it. The job was a bust and we nailed the crew.”

“It wasn’t a bust, Inspector.”

He stared at me until his face hurt.

“Nobody ever located the money.”

“That’s happened before. One of those things.”

“Blackie Conley simply disappeared.”

The cigar bobbed in his mouth. “And if he lived very long afterward he’s a better man than I am. By now he’d be dead anyway.” He took the cigar away from his mouth and flipped the ash off with his pinky. “But let’s get back to the money . . . that’s the interesting part.”

“I have an idea it might show up.”

“Maybe we better listen to your idea.”

“Uh-uh. Facts I’ll give you, ideas stay in my pocket until I can prove them out.”

“Facts then.”

“None you don’t already have if you want to check the transcript like you suggested. I just make something different out of them, that’s all.”

Grebb put the cigar back between his teeth and pushed himself out of his chair. When he was on his feet he glanced at Pat meaningfully, said, “Don’t let me wait too long, Captain,” then went out.

“I wish you’d quit pushing him,” Pat told me. “Now what’s with this bit?”

I sat in the chair Grebb had vacated and propped my feet on Pat’s desk. “I think Blackie Conley’s alive.”

“How’d he do it?”

“He was the planner behind the operation. He set it up, then phoned in a double cross. Trouble was, he should have cut it shorter. He almost lost it himself. He laid out one escape plan, but took an alternate. He got away in that cab with the three million bucks and sat on it someplace.”

Pat tapped a pencil on the desk as I gave him the information Annette Lee gave me. Every once in a while he’d make a note on a pad, study it, then make another.

“We’ll have to locate whatever records are left of Howie Green’s business. If he was dealing in real estate it will be a matter of public record.”

“You don’t think Blackie would use his own name, do you?”

“We can narrow it down. Look, check your file on Green.” Pat put in another call and for the twenty minutes it took to get the papers up we went over the angles of the case. I still wouldn’t lay it out the way I saw it, but he had enough to reach the same conclusion if he thought the same way.

The uniformed officer handed Pat a yellowed folder and Pat opened it on his desk. Howie Green, deceased. Known bootlegger, six arrests, two minor convictions. Suspected of duplicity in a murder of one Francis Gorman, another bootlegger who moved into his territory. Charge dropped. Known to have large holdings that were legally acquired as far as the law could prove. His annual income made him a rich man for the times. He was killed by a hit-and-run driver not far from his own house and the date given was three days before the robbery of the three million bucks.

“Pretty angle, Pat.”

“Spell it out.”

“If Conley did get hideout property from Green, paid for it, made the transaction, and accepted the papers in a phony name and took possession, then killed him before Green knew what he wanted it for, who could say where he was? Chances were that nobody but Conley and Green ever saw each other and Green wasn’t around to talk anymore.”

Pat closed the folder and shoved it in his desk. “We could check all the transactions Green made in the few weeks prior to his death.”

“Time, buddy. We haven’t got the time.”

“But I have one thing you don’t have.”

I knew what he was going to say.

“Men. We can put enough troops on it to shorten the time.”

“It’ll still be a long job.”

“You know a better way?”

The phone rang before I could answer and although I could hear the hurried chatter at the other end I couldn’t make it out. When he cradled the phone Pat said, “One of my squad in Brooklyn on that Levitt rundown.”

“Oh?”

“He was eating with one of the men from the precinct over there when a call came in about a body. He went along with his friend and apparently the dead guy is one of the ones he showed Basil Levitt’s picture to.”

“A starter,” I said.

“Could be. Want to take a run over?”

“Why not?”

Pat got his car from the lot and we hopped in, cutting over the bridge into the Brooklyn section. The address was in the heart of Flatbush, one block off the Avenue, a neighborhood bar and grill that was squeezed in between a grocery and a dry-cleaning place.

A squad car was at the curb and a uniformed patrolman stood by the door. Two more, obviously detectives from the local precinct, were in the doorway talking. Pat knew the Lieutenant in charge, shook hands with him, introduced him to me as Joe Cavello, then went inside.

Squatting nervously on a stool, the bartender watched us, trying to be casual about the whole thing. Lieutenant Cavello nodded toward him and said, “He found the body.”

“When?”

“About an hour ago. He had to go down to hook into some fresh beer kegs and found the guy on the floor. He’d been shot once in the head with a small-caliber gun . . . I’d say about a .32.”

“The M.E. set the time of death?” I asked him.

“About twelve to fifteen hours. He’ll be more specific after an autopsy.”

“Who was he?” Pat said.

“The owner of the place.”

“You know him?”

“Somewhat,” Cavello said. “We’ve had him down to the precinct a few times. Twice on wife beating and another when he was picked up in a raid on a card game. This is kind of a chintzy joint. Local bums hang out here because the drinks are cheap. But that’s all they sell anyway, cheap booze. We’ve had a few complaints about some fights in here but nothing ever happened. You know, the usual garbage that goes with these slop chutes.”

Pat said, “I had Nelson and Kiley over here doing a rundown on Basil Levitt. You hear about it?”

“Yeah, Lew Nelson checked in with me right after it happened. He saw the body. It was the guy he spoke to all right. I asked around but nobody here seemed to know Levitt.”

“How about the bartender?” I said.

Cavello shook his head. “Nothing there. He does the day work and nothing more. When the boss came on, he went off. He doesn’t know the night crowd at all.”

“He live around here?”

“Red Hook. Not his neighborhood here and he couldn’t care less.”

While Pat went over the details of what the police picked up I wandered back to the end of the bar. There was a back room used as a storeroom and a place for the food locker with a doorway to one side that opened into the cellar. The lights were on downstairs and I went down to the spot behind the stairs where the chalk marks outlined the position of the body. They were half on the floor and half on the wall, so the guy was found in a sitting position.

Back upstairs Cavello had taken Pat to the end of the bar and I got back in on the conversation. Cavello said, “Near as we could figure it out, this guy Thomas Kline closed the bar earlier than usual, making the few customers he had leave. It was something he had never done before apparently. He’d stick it out if there was a dime in the joint left to be spent. This time he bitched about a headache, closed up, and shut off the lights. That was it. We spoke to the ones who were here then, but they all went off to another place and closed it down much later, then went home. Clean alibis. All working men for a change. No records.

“We think he met somebody here for some purpose. Come here.” He led the way to a table in one corner and pointed to the floor. A small stain showed against the oiled wood. “Blood. It matched the victim’s. Here’s where he was shot. The killer took the body downstairs, dumped it behind the staircase where it couldn’t be seen very easily, then left. The door locks by simply closing it so it was simple enough to do. One block down he’s in traffic, and anyplace along the Avenue he could have picked up a cab if he didn’t have his own car. We’re checking all the cabbies’ sheets now.”

But I had stopped listening to him about then. I was looking at the back corner of the wall. I tapped Pat on the arm and pointed. “You remember the call you got from someone inquiring about Levitt?”

“Yeah,” he said.

There was an open pay phone on the wall about four feet away from a jukebox.

Pat walked over to it, looked at the records on the juke, but who could tell rock and roll from the titles? He said to Cavello, “Many places got these open phones?”