Vengeance Is Mine

I swore to myself and went back to the filing cabinet where I slid out an insurance policy on Perry’s wife. I used the policy as a pusher to get all the bits into the envelope, then sealed the flap and put the policy back in the drawer.

Before I went out I tried to make sure everything was just like he had left it. When I gave a few things an extra adjustment I closed the door and let the two locks click into place.

I went out the same way I came in, making a rough attempt at wiping out the tracks I had left in the snow and mud behind the bushes. When I climbed in behind the wheel of my car I wasn’t feeling too bad. Things were making a little more sense. I turned on the key, let the engine warm up and switched back to Manhattan.

At Fifty-ninth Street I pulled over and went into a drugstore and called the Calway Merchandising outfit. They gave me Perry’s business address and I put in a call to them too. When I asked for Mr. Perry the switchboard operator told me to wait a moment and put through a connection.

A voice said, “Mr. Perry’s office.”

“I’d like to speak to Mr. Perry, please.”

“I’m sorry,” the voice said, “Mr. Perry has left town. We don’t know when he’ll be back. Can I help you?”

“Well . . . I don’t know. Mr. Perry ordered a set of golf clubs and wanted them delivered today. He wasn’t at home.”

“Oh . . . I see. His trip was rather sudden and he didn’t leave word here where he could be reached. Can you hold the parcel?”

“Yeah, we’ll do that,” I lied.

Emil Perry had very definitely departed for parts unknown. I wondered how long he’d be away.

When I got back in my car I didn’t stop until I had reached my office building. I had another package waiting for me. If I hadn’t gone in through the basement it would have been a surprise package. The elevator operator gave a sudden start when I stepped in the car and looked at me nervously.

I said, “What’s the matter with you?”

He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Maybe I shouldn’t tell you this, Mr. Hammer, but some policemen went up to your office a little while ago. Real big guys they were. Two of ‘em are watching the lobby besides.”

I stepped out of that car fast. “Anybody in my office now?”

“Uh-huh. That pretty girl who works for you. Is there any trouble, Mr. Hammer?”

“Plenty, I think. Look, forget you saw me. I’ll make it up to you later.”

“Oh, that’s all right, Mr. Hammer. Glad to help.”

He closed the door and brought the elevator upstairs. I walked over to the phone on the wall and dropped in a nickel, then dialed my own number. I heard the two clicks as both Velda’s phone and the extension were lifted at the same time.

Velda sounded nervous when she said good morning. I held my handkerchief over the mouthpiece and said, “Mr. Hammer, please.”

“I’m sorry, but he hasn’t come in yet. Can I take a message?”

I grunted and made like I was thinking, then, “Yes, if you please. He is to meet me at the Cashmore Bar in Brooklyn in an hour from now. I’ll be a few minutes late, so if he calls in, remind him.”

“Very well,” Velda replied. Her voice had a snicker in it now,

“I’ll tell him.”

I stood there by the phone and let ten minutes go by slowly, then I put in another nickel and did the same thing over again.

Velda said, “You can come up now, Mike. They’re gone. Brooklyn is a long way off.”

She had her feet up on the desk paring her nails with a file when I walked in. She said, “Just like you used to do, Mike.”

“I don’t wear dresses you can see up, though.”

Her feet came down with a bang and she got red. “How’d you find out . . .” her head nodded toward the door, “about them?”

“The elevator operator put me wise. He goes on our bonus list.

What did they want?”

“You.”

“What for?”

“They seemed to think you shot somebody.”

“That sniveling little bastard had the nerve to do it!” I threw my hat at the chair and ripped out a string of curses. I swung around, mad as hell. “Who were they?”

“They let me know they were from the D.A.’s office.” A little worried frown drew lines across her forehead. “Mike . . . is it bad?”

“It’s getting worse. Get me Pat on the phone, will you?”

While she was dialing I went to the closet and got out the other bottle of sherry. Velda handed me the phone as I finished pouring two glasses.

I tried to make my voice bright but there was too much mad in it. I said, “It’s me, Pat. Some of the D.A.’s boys just paid me a visit.”

He sounded amazed. “What are you doing there, then?”

“I wasn’t here to receive them. A dirty dog sent them on a wild-goose chase to Brooklyn. What goes on?”

“You’re in deep, Mike. This morning the D.A. sent out orders to pick you up. There was a shooting out on the island last night. Two guys caught a slug and one of them was a fellow named Rainey.”

“Sounds familiar. Was I identified?”

“No, but you were seen in the vicinity and overheard threatening this Rainey fellow just a short time before.”

“Did Rainey say all this himself?”

“He couldn’t very well. Rainey is dead.”

“What!” My voice sounded like an explosion. “Mike . . .”

My mouth couldn’t form an answer.

Pat said it again. “Mike . . . did you kill him?”

“No,” I got out. “I’ll be in the bar up the street. Meet me there, will you? I have things to talk about.”

“Give me an hour. By the way, where were you last night?” I paused. “Home. Home in bed sound asleep.”

“Can you prove it?”

“No.”

“Okay, I’ll see you in a little while.”

Velda had drained both glasses while I was talking and was filling them up again. She looked like she needed them. “Rainey’s dead,” I told her. “I didn’t kill him but I wish I had.”

Velda bit her lip. “I figured as much. The D.A. is tagging you for it, isn’t he?”

“Right on the nose. What happened last night?”

She handed me a glass and we lifted them together. Hers went down first. “I won some money. Clyde got me slightly drunk and propositioned me. I didn’t say no; I said later. He’s still interested. I met a lot of people. That’s what happened.”

“A waste of time.”

“Not entirely. We joined a party of visiting firemen and some very pretty young ladies. The life of the party was Anton Lipsek and he was quite drunk. He suggested they go up to his apartment in the Village and some of them did. I wanted to go but Clyde made a poor excuse of not being able to break away from his business. One other couple refused too, mainly because the boy friend was ahead on the roulette wheel and wanted to go back to it. The girl with him was the same one you had that night.”

“Connie?”

“Is that her name?” she asked coldly.

I grinned and said it was.

Velda rocked back in her seat and sipped the sherry. “Two of the girls that went along with Anton worked with Connie. I heard them talking shop a few minutes before your girl friend made some catty remarks that brought the conversation to a halt.”

She waited until I had finished’ my drink. “Where were you last night?”

“Out to see a guy named Rainey.”

Her face went white. “But . . . but you told Pat . . .”

“I know. I said I didn’t kill him. All I did was shoot him in the leg a little bit.”

“Good heavens!” Then you did . . .”

I rocked my head from side to side until she got the idea. “He wasn’t hurt bad. The killer did me one better and plugged him after I left. That’s the way it had to be. I’ll find out the details later.” I stuck a cigarette in my mouth and let my eyes find hers while I lit it. “What time did you meet Clyde last night?”

Her eyes dropped and her lips went into a pout. “He made me wait until twelve o’clock. He said he was tied up with some work. I got halfway stood up, Mike, and right after you were telling me how nice I looked.”

The match burned down to my fingers before I put it out. “That gave him a chance to get out to Rainey, kill him, and get back. That just about does it!” Velda’s eyes popped wide-open and she swallowed hard. “Oh, no, Mike . . . no I--I was with him right after . . .”

“On Dinky it wouldn’t show if he just killed a guy. Not on Dinky. He’s got too many of ‘em under his belt.”

I picked up my hat from the chair where I had tossed it and straightened out the wrinkles in the crown. “If the police call again stall ‘em off. Don’t mention Pat. If the D.A. is there call him a dirty name for me. I’ll be back later.”

When I stepped out the door I knew I wasn’t going to be anywhere later. A big burly character in high-top shoes got up off the top step where he was sitting and said, “Lucky the boys left a couple of us here after all. They’re gonna be mad when they get back from Brooklyn.” Another character just as big came from the other end of the hall and joined in on the other side.

I said, “Let’s see your warrant.”

They showed it to me. The first guy said, “Let’s go, Hammer, and no tricks unless you want a fist in your face.” I shrugged and marched over to the elevator with them.

The operator caught wise right off and shook his head sadly. I

could see he was thinking that I should’ve known better. I squeezed over behind him as some others got on and by the time we hit the lobby I felt a little better. When the operator changed his uniform tonight he was going to be wondering where that .25 automatic came from. Maybe he’d even turn it in to the cops like a good citizen. They’d have a swell time running down that toy.

There was a squad car right outside and I got in with a cop on either side of me. Nobody said a word and when I pulled out a pack of butts one of the cops slapped them out of my hands. He had three cigars stuffed in the breast pocket of his overcoat and when I faked a stretch my elbow turned them into mush. I got a dirty look for that. He got a better one back.

The D.A. had his office all ready for me. A uniformed cop stood by the door and the two detectives ushered me to a straight-backed chair and took their places behind it. The D.A. was looking very happy indeed.

“Am I under arrest?”

“It looks that way, doesn’t it?”

“Yes or no?” I gave him the best sarcasm I could muster. His teeth grated together.

“You’re under arrest,” he said. “For murder.”

“I want to use the telephone.”

He started smiling again. “Certainly. Go right ahead. I’ll be glad to speak to you through a lawyer. I want to hear him try to tell me you were home in bed last night. When he does I’ll drag in the super of your apartment, the doorman and the people who live on both sides of you who have already sworn that they heard nothing going on in your place last night.”

I picked up the phone and asked for outside. I gave the number of the bar where I was supposed to meet Pat and watched the D.A. jot it down on a pad. Flynn, the Irish bartender, answered and I said, “This is Mike Hammer, Flynn. There’s a party there who can vouch for my whereabouts last night. Tell him to come up to the D.A.’s office, will you?”

He was starting to shout the message down the bar when I hung up. The D.A. had his legs crossed and kept rocking one knee up and down. “I’ll be expecting my license back some time this week. With it I want a note of apology or you might not win the next election.”

One of the cops smacked me across the back of my head. “What’s the story?” I asked.

The D.A. couldn’t keep still any longer. His lips went thin and he got a lot of pleasure out of his words. “I’ll tell you, Mr. Hammer. Correct me if I’m wrong. You were out to the Glenwood Arena last night. You argued with this Rainey. Two men described you and identified you from your picture. Later they were all in the office when you opened the door and started shooting. One was hit in the leg, Rainey was-hit in the leg and head. Is that right?”

“Where’s the gun?”

“I give you credit enough to have gotten rid of it.”

“What happens when you put those witnesses on the stand?”

He frowned and grated his teeth again.

“It sounds to me,” I told him, “that they might make pretty crummy witnesses. They must be sterling characters.”

“They’ll do,” he said. “I’m waiting to hear who it is that can alibi you.”

I didn’t have to answer that. Pat walked in the office, his face gray around the mouth, but when his eyes lit on the smirking puss of the D.A. it disappeared. Bright boy gave him an ugly stare. Pat tried for a little respect and didn’t make it. I’ve heard him talk to guys in the line-up the same way he did to the D.A. “I was with him last night. If you had let the proper department handle this you would have known it sooner. I went up to his apartment about nine and was there until four A.M. playing cards.”

The D.A.’s face was livid. I could see every vein in his hand as he gripped the end of the desk. “How’d you get in?”

Pat looked unconcerned. “Through the back way. We parked around the block and walked through the buildings. Why?”

“What was so interesting at this man’s apartment that made you go there?”

Pat said, “Not that it’s any of your business, but we played cards. And talked about you. Mike here said some very uncomplimentary things about you. Shall I repeat them for the record?”

Another minute of it and the guy would have had apoplexy. “Never mind,” he gasped, “never mind.”

“That’s what I mean about having witnesses with sterling characters, mister,” I chipped in. “I take it the charges are dropped?”

His voice barely had enough strength to carry across the room. “Get out of here. You, too, Captain Chambers.” He let his eyes linger on Pat. “I’ll see about this later.”

I stood up and fished my other deck of Luckies. The cop with the smashed cigars still sticking out of his pockets watched me with a sneer. “Got a light?” He almost gave me one at that until he realized what he was doing. I smiled at the D.A., a pretty smile that showed a lot of teeth. “Remember about my license. I’ll give you until the end of the week.”

The guy flopped back in his chair and stayed there.

I followed Pat downstairs and out to his car. We got in and drove around for ten minutes going nowhere. Finally Pat muttered, “I don’t know how the hell you do it.”

“Do what?”

“Get in so much trouble.” That reminded me of something. I told him to stop and have a drink, and from the way he swung around traffic until we found a bar I could see that he needed it.

I left him at the bar to go back to the phone booth where I dialed the Globe office and asked for the sports editor. When Ed came on I said, “This is Mike, Ed. I have a little favor to ask. Rainey was knocked off last night.”

He broke in with, “Yeah, I thought you were going to tell me if anything happened. I’ve been waiting all day for you to call.”

“Forget it, Ed, things aren’t what you’re thinking. I didn’t bump the bastard. I didn’t know he was going to get bumped.”

“No?” His tone called me a liar.

“No,” I repeated. “Now listen . . . what happened to Rainey is nothing. You can do one of two things. You can call the D.A. and say I practically forecasted what was going to happen last night or you can keep quiet and get yourself a scoop when the big boom goes off. What’ll it be?”

He laughed, a typical soured reporter’s laugh. “I’ll wait, Mike. I can always call the D.A., but I’ll wait. By the way, do you know who Rainey’s two partners were?”

“Tell me.”

“Petey Cassandro and George Hamilton. In Detroit they have quite a rep, all bad. They’ve both served stretches and they’re as tough as they come.”

“They’re not so tough.”

“No . . . you wouldn’t think so now, would you? Well, Mike, I’ll be waiting to see what gives. It’s been a long time since I had a scoop on the police beat.”

Pat wanted to know what I did and I told him I called the office. I straddled the stool and started to work on the highball. Pat had his almost finished. He was thinking. He was worried. I slapped him on the back. “Cheer up, will you? For Pete’s sake, all you did was make the D.A. eat his words. That ought to make you feel great.”

Pat didn’t see it that way. “Maybe I’m too much cop, Mike. I don’t like to lie. If it wasn’t that I smelt a frame I would have let you squirm out of it yourself. The D.A. wants your hide nailed to his door and he’s trying hard to get it.”

“He came too damn close to getting it to suit me. I’m glad you got the drift of the situation and knew your way around my diggings well enough to make it sound good.”

“Hell, it had to sound good. How the devil would you be able to prove you were home in bed all night? That kind of alibi always looks mighty foolish on a witness stand.”

“I’d never be able to prove it in a million years, chum,” I said.

The drink almost fell out of his hand when it hit him. He grabbed my coat and spun me around on the stool. “You were home in bed like you said, weren’t you?”

“Nope. I was out seeing a guy named Rainey. In fact, I shot him.”

Pat’s fingers loosened and his face went dead-white. “God!”

I picked up my glass. “I shot him, but it wasn’t in the head. Somebody else did that. I hate like hell to put you on the spot, but if we’re going to tie into a killer the both of us’ll do better than just one.”

Pat rubbed his face. It still didn’t have its normal color back. I thought he was going to get sick until he gulped down his drink and signaled for another. His hands shook so bad he could hardly manage it without the ice chattering against the glass.

“You shouldn’t’ve done it, Mike,” he said. “Now I’ll have to take you in myself. You shouldn’t’ve done it.”

“Sure, take me in and have the D.A. eat your tail out. Have him get you booted off the force so some incompetent jerk can take your place. Take me in so the D.A. can get his publicity at the expense of the people. Let a killer go around laughing his head off at us. That’s what he wants.

“Hell, can’t you see how the whole thing smells? It reeks from here to there and back again.” Pat stared into his glass, his head shaking in outrage. “I went to see Emil Perry. Rainey was there. Perry tied up with Wheeler because he gave an excuse for Wheeler’s suicide when actually he didn’t even know the guy except to say hello to at business affairs. Perry ties in with Wheeler and Rainey ties in with Perry.

“Every month Perry had been pulling five grand out of his bank. Smell it now. Smells like blackmail, doesn’t it? Go on, admit it. If you won’t here’s something that will make you admit it. Yesterday Perry withdrew twenty grand and left town. That wasn’t traveling expenses. That was to buy up his blackmail evidence. I went out to his house and found what was left of it in his fireplace.”

I reached inside my coat for the envelope and threw it down in front of him. He reached for it absently. “Now I’ll tell you what started the Rainey business. When I first saw Perry I told him I was going to find out what it was that Rainey had on him and lay the whole thing in the open. It scared him so much he passed out. Right away he calls Rainey. He wants to buy it back and Rainey agrees. But meanwhile Rainey has to do something about it. He took a shot at me right on Broadway and if I had caught a slug there wouldn’t have been a single witness, that’s the way people are.

“When I went out to see him I put it to him straight, and just to impress him I ploughed a hole in his leg. I did the same thing to one of his partners.”

I didn’t think Pat had been listening, but he was. He turned his head and looked at me with eyes that had cooled down to a sizzle. “Then how did Rainey stop that other bullet?”

“Let me finish. Rainey wasn’t in this alone by a long shot. He wasn’t that smart. He was taking orders and somewhere along the line he tried to take off on his own. The big boy knew what was cooking and went out to take care of Rainey himself. In the meantime he saw me, figured I’d do it for him, and when I didn’t he stepped in and took over by himself.”

Pat was picturing the thing in his mind, trying to visualize every vivid detail. “You’ve got somebody lined up, Mike. Who?”

“Who else but Clyde? We haven’t tied Rainey to him yet, but we will. Rainey isn’t hanging out in the Bowery because he likes it. I’ll bet ten to one he’s on tap for Clyde like a dozen other hard cases he keeps handy.”

Pat nodded. “Could be. The bullet in Rainey’s leg and head were fired from the same gun.”

“The other guy was different. I used his pal’s automatic on him.”

“I don’t know about that. The bullet went right through and wasn’t found.”

“Well, I know about it. I shot him. I shot them both and left the guns right there on the table.”

The bartender came down and filled up our glasses again. He shoved a bowl of peanuts between us and I dipped into them. Pat popped them into his mouth one at a time. “I’ll tell you what happened down there, Mike. The one guy who wasn’t shot dragged his partner outside and yelled for help. He said nobody came so he left Rainey where he was figuring him to be dead and pulled his buddy into a car and drove to a doctor over in the Glenwood development. He called the cops from there. He described you, picked out your picture and there it was.”

“There it was is right. Right there you have a pay-off again. The killer came in after I left and either threatened those two guys or paid ‘em off to put the bee on me and keep still as to what actually did happen. They both have records in Detroit and one carried a gun. It wouldn’t do either one of ‘em any good to get picked up on a Sullivan charge.”

“The D.A. has their affidavits.”

“You’re a better witness for me, kid. What good is an affidavit from a pair of hoods when one of the finest sticks up for you?”

“It would be different under oath, Mike.”

“Nuts. As long as you came in when you did it never gets that far. The D.A. knew when he was licked. In one way I’m glad it happened.”

Pat told me to speak for myself and went back to his thinking. I let him chase ideas around for a while before I asked him what he was going to do. He said, “I’m going to have those two picked up. I’m going to find out what really happened.”

I looked at him with surprise and laughed. “Are you kidding, Pat? Do you really think either one of those babies will be sticking around after that?”

“One has a bullet hole in his leg,” he pointed out.

“So what?” I said. “That’s nothing compared to one in the head. Those guys are only so tough . . . they stop being tough when they meet somebody who’s just a little bit tougher.”

“Nevertheless, I’m getting out a tracer on them.”

“Good. That’s going to help if you find them.” I doubt it. By the way, did you check on the bullets that somebody aimed at me?”

Pat came alive fast. “I’ve been meaning to speak to you about that. They were both .38 specials, but they were fired from different guns. There’s more than one person who wants you out of the way.”

Maybe he thought I’d be amazed just to be polite, at least. He was disappointed. “I figured as much, Pat. It still works down to Rainey and Clyde. Like I said, when I left Perry, he must’ve called Rainey. It was just before lunch-time and maybe he figured I’d eat at home. Anyway, he went there and when I stopped to pick up my coat and gloves he started tailing me. I wasn’t thinking of a tail so I didn’t give it a thought. He must have stuck with me all day until I was alone and a good target.”

“That doesn’t bring Clyde into it.”

“Get smart, Pat. If Rainey was taking orders from Clyde then maybe Clyde followed him around too, just to be sure he didn’t miss.”

“So Clyde took the second shot at you himself. You sure made a nice package of it. All you need is a photograph of the crime.”

“I didn’t see enough of his face to be sure it was him, fit it was a man in that car, and if he shot at me once he’ll shoot at me again. That’ll be the last time he’ll shoot anyone.”

I finished my drink and pushed it across the bar for more. We both ordered sandwiches and ate our way through them without benefit of conversation. There was another highball to wash them down. I offered Pat a Lucky and we lit up, blowing the smoke at the mirror behind the bar.

I looked at him through the silvered glass. “Who put the pressure on the D.A., Pat?”

“I’ve been wondering when you were going to ask that,” he said.

“Well . . .”

“It came from some odd quarters. People complaining about killers running loose and demanding something be done about it. Some pretty influential people live out in Glenwood. Some were there when the questioning was done.”

“Who.”

“One’s on the Board of Transportation, another is head of a political club in Flatfish. One ran for state senator a while back and lost by a hair. Two are big businessmen and I do mean big. They both are active in civic affairs.”

“Clyde has some fancy friends.”

“He can go higher than that if he wants to, Mike. He can go lower where the tougher ones are too if it’s necessary. I’ve been poking around since I last saw you. I got interested in old Dinky Williams and began asking questions. There weren’t too many answers. He goes high and he goes low. I can’t figure it, fit he’s not a small-timer anymore.”

I studied the ice in the glass a minute. “I think, pal, that I can make him go so low he’ll shake hands with the devil. Yeah, I think it’s about time I had a talk with Clyde.”

Chapter Nine

I didn’t get to do what I wanted to do that night because when I went back for my car I checked into the office long enough to find Velda gone and a note on my desk to call Connie. The note was signed with a dagger dripping blood. Velda was being too damn prophetic.

Dagger or no dagger, I lifted the phone and dialed her number. Her voice didn’t have a lilt in it today. “Oh, Mike,” she said, “I’ve been so worried.”

“About me?”

“Who else? Mike . . . what happened last night? I was at the club and I heard talk . . . about Rainey . . . and you.”

“Wait a minute, kitten, who did all this talking?”

“Some men came in from the fights on the island and they mentioned what happened. They were sitting right behind me talking about it.”

“What time was that?”

“It must have been pretty late. Oh, I don’t know, Mike. I was so worried I had Ralph take me home. I . . . I couldn’t stand it. Oh, Mike . . .” Her voice broke and she sobbed into the phone.

I said, “Stay there. I’ll be up in a little while and you can tell me about it.”

“All right . . . but please hurry.”

I hurried. I passed red lights and full-stop intersections and heard whistles blowing behind me twice, fit I got up there in fifteen minutes. The work-it-yourself elevator still wasn’t working so I ran up the stairs and rapped on the door.

Connie’s eyes were red from crying and she threw herself into my arms and let me squeeze the breath out of her. A lingering perfume in her hair took the cold out of my lungs and replaced it with a more pleasant sensation. “Lovely, lovely,” I said. I laughed at her for crying and held her at arm’s length so I could look at her. She threw her head back and smiled.

“I feel so much better now,” she said. “I had to see you, Mike. I don’t know why I was so worried fit I was and couldn’t help it.”

“Maybe that’s because I remind you of your brothers.”

“Maybe fit that’s not it.” Her lips were soft and red. I kissed them gently and her mouth asked for more.

“Not in the doorway, girl. People will talk.” She reached around behind me and slammed it shut. Then I gave her more. Her body writhed under my hands and I had to push her away to walk into the living room.

She came in behind me and sat down at my feet. She looked more like a kid who hated to grow up than a woman. She was happy and she rubbed her cheek against my knees. “I had a lousy time last night, Mike. I wish I could have gone with you.”

“Tell me about it.”

“We drank and danced and gambled. Ralph won over a thousand dollars then he lost it all back. Anton was there and if we had gone with him he wouldn’t have lost it.”

“Was Anton alone again?”

“He was while he stayed sober. When he got a load on he began pinching all the girls and one slapped his face. I didn’t blame her a bit. She didn’t have anything on under the dress. Later he singled out Lilies Corbett-she works through the agency-and began making a pass at her in French. Oh, the things he was saying!”

“Did she slap him too?”

“She would have if she understood French. As it was the dawn began to break and she gave him the heave-ho. Anton thought it was all very funny so he switched back to English and started playing more games with Marion Lester. She didn’t have any objections, the old bag.”

I reached down and ran my fingers through her hair. “So Marion was there too?”

“You should have seen her switching her hips on the dance floor. She got Anton pretty well worked up and he isn’t a man to work up easily. A guy about a half a head shorter than she was moved in on Anton and outplayed him by getting him soused even worse. Then he took Marion over and Anton invited everyone up to his place. What a time they must have had.”

“I bet. What did you do then?”

“Oh, some more gambling. I wasn’t having much fun. Ralph would rather gamble than dance or drink any day. I sat and talked to the bartender until Ralph lost the money had had won, then we went back to a table and had a couple of champagne cocktails.”

Her head jerked up and that look came back on her face. “That was when those men came in. They talked about the shooting and about Rainey and you. One said he read about you in the papers not so long ago and how you were just the type to do something like that and then they started betting that the cops would have you before morning.”

“Who lost the bet?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t turn around to look. It was bad enough sitting there hearing them talk about it. I . . . I started to get sick and I guess I cried a little. Ralph thought it was something he did to me and began pawing. me to make up for it. I made him take me home. Mike . . . Why didn’t you call me?”

“I was busy, Sugar. I had to explain all that to the cops.”

“You didn’t shoot him, did you?”

“Only a little bit. Not enough to kill him. Somebody else did that.”

“Mike!”

I rocked her head and laughed at her. “You got there early, didn’t you?” Connie nodded yes. “Did you see Clyde at all during that time?”

“No . . . come to think of it, he didn’t show up until after midnight.”

“How’d he look?”

Connie frowned and bit her thumb. Her eyes looked up into mine after a while and she grimaced. “He seemed . . . strange. Nervous, sort of.”

Yes, he would seem nervous. Killing people leaves you like that sometimes. “Did anyone else seem interested in the conversation? Like Clyde?”

“I don’t think he heard about it. There was just those men.”

“Who else was there, Connie? Anybody that looked important?”

“Quit kidding. Everybody is important. You don’t just walk into the Bowery Inn. Either you’re pretty important or you’re with somebody who is.”

I said, “I got in and I’m a misfit.”

“Any beautiful model is better than the password,” she grinned.

“Don’t tell me they have a password.”

“Clyde used to . . . to the back rooms. A password for each room. It’s gotten so you don’t need it now. That’s what those little rooms are for between the larger rooms. They’re soundproof and they’re lined with sheet steel.”

I tightened my fingers in her hair and pulled her head back so I could look into her face. “You found out a lot in a hurry. The first time you were there was with me.”

“You told me I had brains too, Mike. Have you forgotten already? While I sat on my fanny at the bar while Ralph gambled the bartender and I had a very nice discussion. He told me all about the layout including the alarm and escape system. There are doors in the wall that go off with the alarm in case of a raid and the customers can beat it out the back. Isn’t that nice of Clyde?”

“Very thoughtful.”

I gave the hassock she was sitting on a push with my foot. “Gotta go, Sugar, gotta go.”

“Oh, Mike, not yet, please.”

“Look, I have things to do much as I’d like to sit here. Someplace in this wild, wild city, there’s a guy with a gun who’s going to use it again. I want to be around when he tries.”

She tossed her hair like an angry cat and said, “You’re mean. I had something to show you, too.”

“Yeah?”

“Will you stay long enough to see it?”

“I guess I can.”

Connie stood up, kissed me lightly on the cheek and shoved me back in the chair. “We’re doing a series for a manufacturing house. Their newest number that they’re going to advertise arrived today and I’m modeling it for a full-page, four-color spread in the slick mags. When the job is done I get to keep it.”

She walked out of the room with long-legged strides and into the bedroom. She fussed around in there long enough for me to finish a cigarette. I had just squashed it out when she called out, “Mike . . . come here.”

I pushed open the door of the bedroom and stood there feeling my skin go hot and cold then hot again. She was wearing a floor-length nightgown of the sheerest, most transparent white fabric I had ever seen. It wasn’t the way the ad would be taken. Then the lights would be in front of her. The one in the room was behind her and she didn’t have anything on under it.

When she turned the fabric floated out in a billowy cloud and she smiled into my eyes with a look that meant more than words.

The front of it was wide open.

“Like me, Mike?”

My forefinger moved, telling her to come closer. She floated across the room and stood in front of me, challenging me with her body. I said, “Take it off.”

All she did was shrug her shoulders. The gown dropped to the floor.

I looked at her, storing up a picture in my mind that I could never forget. She could have been a statue standing there, a statue molded of creamy white flesh that breathed with an irregular rhythm. A statue with dark, blazing eyes and jaunty breasts that spoke of the passion that lay within. A statue that stood in a daring pose that made you want to reach out to touch and pull so close the fire would engulf you too.

The statue had a voice that was low and desiring. “I could love you so easily, Mike.”

“Don’t,” I said.

Her lips parted, her tongue wet them. “Why?”

My voice had a rough edge to it. “I can’t take the time.”

The coals in her eyes jumped into flame that burned me. I grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her against my chest, bruising her lips against mine. Her tongue was a little spear that flicked out, stabbing me, trying to wound me enough so I wouldn’t be able to walk away.

I didn’t let it stab me deep enough. I shoved her back, tried to talk and found that my voice wasn’t there anymore.

So I walked away. I walked away and left her standing there in the doorway, standing on a white cloud stark naked, the imprints of my fingers still etched in red on her shoulders.

“You’ll get the person you’re after, Mike. Nothing can stop you. Nothing.” Her voice was still husky, but there was a laugh behind it, and a little bit of pride, too. I was closing the door when I heard her whisper, “I love you, Mike. Really and truly, I do.”

Outside, the snow had started again. There was no wind, so it drifted down lazily, sneaking up on the city to catch it by surprise. What few stragglers were left on the street stuck close to the curb and looked back over their shoulders for taxis.

I got in the car and started the wipers going, watching them kick angrily through the snow that had piled up on the windshield. At least the snow made all cars look alike. If anybody with a gun was waiting for me he’d have a fine time picking out my head from the others.

Thinking about it made me mad. One gun was in an exhibit folder at police headquarters and the other was probably hanging in a locker if it hadn’t been thrown away. It gave me an empty, uneasy feeling to be traveling without a rod slung under my arm. Sullivan Law? Hell, let me get picked up. It was all right for some harmless citizen to forget there were kill-crazy bastards loose, but one of them was looking for me.

There was a .30-caliber Luger sitting home in the bottom drawer of my dresser with a full clip of shells. It was just about the same size as a .45 too, just the right size to fit in my holster.

A plow was going by in front of my apartment house when I got there, so I figured it would be another hour at least before it would be around again and safe enough to park there.

I took the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator and didn’t bother to shuck my coat when I opened the door. I felt for the light switch, batted it up, but no light came on. I cursed the fuse system and groped for a lamp.

What is it that makes you know you’re not alone? What vague radiation emanates from the human body just strongly enough to give you one brief, minute premonition of danger that makes you act with animal reflexes? I had my hand around the base of the lamp when I felt it and I couldn’t suppress the half-scream halfsnarl that came out of my throat.

I threw that lamp as hard as I could across the wall, letting the cord rip loose from the socket as it smashed into a thousand pieces against the wall. There were two muffled snorts and a lance of flame bit into the darkness, bracketing me.

I didn’t let it happen again. I dove toward the origin of the snorts and crashed into a pair of legs that buckled with a hoarse curse and the next moment a fist was smashing against my jaw driving my head against the floor. Somehow I got out of the way of that fist and slugged out with my forearm trying to drive him off me.

My feet got tangled in the table and kicked it over. The two vases and the bar set splintered all over the room with a hellish racket and somebody in the next apartment shouted to somebody else. I got one arm under me then and grabbed a handful of coat. The guy was strong as a bull and I couldn’t hold it. That fist came back -and worked on my face some more with maniacal fury I couldn’t beat off. I was tangled in my coat and there were lights in the room now that didn’t come from the lamps.

All I knew was that I had to get up . . . had to get my feet under me and heave to get that thing off my back. Had to get up so I could use my hands on any part of him I could grab. I did it without knowing it and heard him ram into a chair and knock it on its side.

My teeth must have been bared to the gums and I screamed when I went in for the kill because I had him cold.

Then my legs got tangled in the lamp cord and I went flat on my face. My head hit something with a sharp crack that was all noise and no pain because there’s a point at which pain stops and unconsciousness takes over, and in that second between I knew the killer was deciding between killing me or making a break for it. Doors started to slam and he decided to run and I let my eyes close and drew in the darkness like a blanket around me and slept an unnatural sleep that was full of soft golden hair and billowy white nightgowns I could see through and Velda in a dress she was more out of than in.

The man bending over me had a serious round face with an oval-shaped mouth that worked itself into funny shapes. I began to laugh and the serious face got more serious and the mouth worked more furiously than before. I laughed at that funny little mouth going through all those grotesque distortions for quite a while before I realized he was talking.

He kept asking me my name and what day it was. At last I had sense enough to stop laughing and tell him my name and what day it was. The face lost its seriousness and smiled a little bit. “You’ll be all right,” it said. “Had me a bit worried for a minute.” The head turned and spoke to somebody else. “A slight concussion, that’s all.”

The other voice said it was too bad it wasn’t a fracture. I recognized the voice. In another minute or two the face came into focus. It was the D.A. He had his hands in his coat pockets trying to look superior like a D.A. should look because there were people around.

I wormed into a sitting position that sent knives darting through my brain. The crowd was leaving now. The little man with the funny mouth carrying his black bag, the two women with their hair in curlers, the super, the man and woman who seemed to be slightly sick. The others stayed. One had a navy blue uniform with bright buttons, two wore cigars as part of their disguise. The D.A., of course. Then Pat. My pal. He was there too almost out of sight in the only, chair still standing on its own legs.

The D.A. held out his palm and let me look at the two smashed pellets he was holding. Bullets. “They were in the wall, Mr. Hammer. I want an explanation. Now.”

One of the cigars helped me up on my feet and I could see better. They all had faces with noses now. Before they had been just a blur. I didn’t know I was grinning until the D.A. said, “What’s so funny? I don’t see anything funny.”

“You wouldn’t.”

It was too much for the bright boy. He reached out and grabbed me by the lapels of my coat and pushed his face into mine. Any other time I would have kicked his pants off for that. Right now I couldn’t lift my hands.

“What’s so funny, Hammer? How’d you like . . .”

I turned my head and spit. “You got bad breath. Go ‘way.”

He half threw me against the wall. I was still grinning. There was white around his nostrils and his mouth was a fine red line of hate. “Talk!”

“Where’s your warrant?” I demanded easily. “Show me your warrant to come in my house and do that, then I’ll talk, you yellow-bellied little bastard. I’m going to meet you in the street not long from now and carve that sissified pasty face of yours into ribbons. Get out of here and kiss yourself some fat behinds like you’re used to doing. I’ll be all right in a few minutes and you better be gone by then and your stooges with you. They’re not cops. They’re like you . . . political behind-kissers with the guts of a bug and that’s not a lot of guts. Go on, get out, you crummy turd.”

The two detectives had to stop him from kicking me in the face. His legs, his knees, his whole body shook with coarse tremors. I’d never seen a guy as mad as he was. I hoped it’d be permanent. They took him out of there and with their rush they never noticed that Pat stayed on, still comfortably sunk in the chair.

“I guess that’s telling him,” I said. “A man’s home is his castle.”

“You’ll never learn,” Pat said sadly.

I fumbled for a butt and pushed it between my lips. The smoke bit into my lungs and didn’t want to let go. I got a chair upright and eased into it so my head wouldn’t spin. Pat let me finish the butt. He sat back with his hands folded in his lap and waited until I was completely relaxed. “Will you talk to me, Mike?”

I looked at my hands. The knuckles were skinned all to hell and one nail was torn loose. A piece of fabric was caught in it. “He was here when I came in. He took two shots at me and missed. We made such a racket he ran for it after I fell. If I hadn’t fallen the D.A. would have had me on a murder. I would have killed the son-of-a-bitch. Who called him in?”

“The neighbors called the precinct station,” Pat told me. “Your name was up and when it was mentioned the desk man called the D.A. He rushed right over.”

I grunted and kneaded my knuckles into my palm. “Did you see the slugs he had?”

“Uh-huh. I dug ‘em out myself.” Pat stood up and stretched. “They were the same as the ones in the windows on Broadway. That’s twice you’ve been missed. They say the third time you aren’t so lucky.”

“They’ll be matching the bullets from one of those rods.”

“Yeah, I expect they will. According to your theory, if they match the one from the Broadway window, the guy who attacked

you was Rainey. If they fit the one from the Thirty-third Street incident it’s Clyde.”

I rubbed my jaw, wincing at the lump and the scraped flesh. “It couldn’t be Rainey.”

“We’ll see.”

“See hell! What are you waiting for? Let’s go down and grab that louse right now!”

Pat smiled sorrowfully. “Talk sense, Mike. Remember that word proof Where is it? Do you think the D.A. will support your pet theory . . . now? I told you Clyde could pull strings. Even if it was Clyde he didn’t leave any traces around. No more traces than the guy who shot Rainey and the other punk at the arena. He wore gloves too.”

“I guess you’re right, kiddo. He could even work himself up a few good alibis if he had to.”

“That’s still not the answer,” Pat said. “If we were working on a murder case unhampered it would be different. On the books Wheeler is still a suicide and we’d be bucking a lot of opposition to make it look different.”

I was looking at my hand where my thumb and forefinger pinched together. I was still holding a tiny piece of fabric. I held it out to him. “Whoever he was left a hunk of his coat on my fingernail. You’re a specialist. Let the scientists of your lab work that over.”

Pat took it from my fingers and examined it closely. When he finished he pulled an envelope from his pocket and dropped it in. I said, “He was a strong guy if ever I met one. He had a coat on and I couldn’t tell if he was just wiry-strong or muscle-strong, but one thing for sure, he was a powerhouse.

“Remember what you said, Pat . . . about Wheeler having been in a scuffle before he died? I’ve been thinking about it. Suppose this guy was tailing Wheeler and walked into the room. He figured Wheeler would be in bed but instead he was up going to the bathroom or something. He figured to kill Wheeler with his hands and let it look like we had a drunken brawl. Because Wheeler was up it changed his plans. Wheeler saw what was going to happen and made a grab for my gun that was hanging on the chair.”

“Picture it, Pat. Wheeler with the gun . . . the guy knocks it aside as he fires and the slug hits the bed. Then the guy forces the gun against Wheeler’s head and it goes off. A scrap like that would make the same kind of marks on his body, wouldn’t it?”

Pat didn’t say anything. His head was slanted a little and he was going back again, putting all the pieces in their places. When they set just right he nodded. “Yes, it would at that.” His eyes narrowed. “Then the killer picked up one empty shell and dug the slug out of the mattress. A hole as small as it left wouldn’t have been noticed anyway. It would have been clean as a whistle if you didn’t know how many slugs were left in the rod. It would have been so pretty that even you would have been convinced.”

“Verily,” I said.

“It’s smooth, Mike. Lord, but it’s smooth. It put you on the spot because you were the only one looking for a murderer. Everyone else was satisfied with a suicide verdict.” He paused and frowned, staring at the window. “If only that damn hotel had some system about it . . . even a chambermaid with sense enough to keep on her toes, but no. The killer walks out in the hall and drops his slug and shell that we find hours later.”

“He was wearing an old suit.”

“What?”

“It must have been old if it had a hole in the pockets.”

Pat looked at me and the frown deepened. His hand fished for his notebook and he pulled out several slips of paper stapled together. He looked through them, glanced up at me, then read the last page again. He put the book back in his pocket very slowly. “The day before Wheeler died there were only two registered guests,” he said. “One was a very old man. The other was a comparatively young fellow in a shabby suit who paid in advance. He left the day after Wheeler was shot before we were looking for anyone in the hotel, and long enough afterward to dispel any suspicions on the part of the staff.”

The pain in my head disappeared. I felt my shoulders tightening up. “Did they get a description? Was it . . .”

“No. No description. He was of medium build. He was in town to see a specialist to have some work done on a tooth. Most of his face was covered by a bandage.”

I said another four-letter word.

“It was a good enough reason for his being without baggage. Besides, he had the money to pay in advance.”

“It could have been Clyde,” I breathed. My throat was on fire.

“It could have been almost anybody. If you think Clyde is the one behind all this, let me ask you one thing. Do you honestly think he’d handle the murder end by himself?”

“No,” I said with disgust. “The bastard would pay to have it done.”

“And the same thing for that deal at the arena.”

I smacked the arm of the chair with my fist. “Nuts, Pat. That’s only what we surmise. Don’t forget that Clyde’s been in on murder before. Maybe he has a liking for it now. Maybe he’s smart enough not to trust anybody else. Let’s see how smart he can get. Let’s let it hang just a few days longer and see if he’ll hang himself.”

I didn’t like the look on his face. “Why?”

“The D.A. didn’t believe my story about being with you. He has his men out asking questions. It won’t take them very long to get the truth.”

“Oh, God!”

“The pressure is on the lad. The kind of pressure he can’t ignore. Something’s going to pop and it may be your neck and my job.”

“Okay, Pat, okay. We’ll make it quicker then, but how? What the hell are we going to do? I could take Clyde apart but he’d have the cops on my neck before I could do anything. I need some time, damn it. I need those few days!”

“I know it, but what can we do?”

“Nothing. Not a damn thing . . . yet.” I lit another butt and glared at him through the smoke. “You know, Pat, you can sit around for a month in a room with a hornet, waiting for him to sting you. But if you go poke at his nest it’ll only be a second before you’re bit.”

“They say if you get bitten often enough it’ll kill you.”

I stood up and tugged my coat on. “You might at that. What are your plans for the rest of the evening?”

Pat waited for me by the door while I hunted up my hat. “Since you’ve gotten my schedule all screwed up I have to clean up some work at the office. Besides, I want to find out if Rainey’s two pals have been found yet. You know, you called it pretty good. They both disappeared so fast it would make your head swim.”

“What did they do about the arena?”

“They sold out . . . to a man who signed the contracts and deeds as Robert Hobart Williams.”

“Dinky . . . Clyde! I’ll be damned.”

“Yeah, me too. He bought it for a song. Ed Cooper ran it in the sports column of the Globe tonight with all the nasty implications.”

“I’ll be damned,” I said again. “It tied Rainey in very nicely with Clyde, didn’t it?”

Pat shrugged. “Who can prove it? Rainey’s dead and the partners are missing. That isn’t the only arena Clyde owns. It now appears that he’s a man quite interested in sporting establishments.”

We started out the door and I almost forgot what I came for. Pat waited in the hall while I went back to the bedroom and pulled out the dresser drawer. The Luger was still there wrapped in an oily rag inside a box. I checked the clip, jacked a shell into the chamber and put it in half cock.

When I slid it into the holster it fit loosely, but nice. I felt a lot better.

The snow, the damned snow. It slowed me to a crawl and did all but stop me. It still came down in lazy fashion, but so thick you couldn’t see fifty feet through it. Traffic was thick, sluggish and people were abandoning their cars in the road for the subway. I circled around them, following the cab in front of me and finally hit a section that had been cleared only minutes before.

That stretch kept me from missing Velda. She had her coat and hat on and was locking the door when I stepped out of the elevator. I didn’t have to tell her to open up again.

When she threw her coat on top of mine I looked at her and got mad again. She was more lovely than the last time. I said. “Where you going?”

She pulled a bottle out of a cabinet and poured me a stiff drink. It tasted great. “Clyde called me. He wanted to know if that was `later.’ “

“Yeah?”

“I told him it might be.”

“Where does the seduction take place?”

“At his apartment.”

“You really have that guy going, don’t you? How come he’s passing up all the stuff at the Inn for you?”

Velda looked at me quickly, then away. I reached for the bottle. “You asked me to do this, you know,” she said.

I felt like a heel. All she had to do was look at me when I got that way and I felt like I was crawling up out of a sewer somewhere. “I’m sorry, kid. I’m jealous, I guess. I always figured you as some sort of a fixture. Now that the finance company is taking it away from me I get snotty.”

Her smile lit the whole room up. She came over and filled my glass again. “Get that way more often, Mike.”

“I’m always that way. Now tell me what you’ve been doing to the guy.”

“I play easy to get but not easy to get at. There are times when sophistication coupled with virtue pays off. Clyde is getting that look in his eyes. He’s hinting at a man-and-mistress arrangement with the unspoken plan in mind of a marriage license if I don’t go for it.”

I put the glass down. “You can cut out the act, Velda. I’m almost ready to move in on Clyde myself.”

“I thought I was the boss,” she grinned.

“You are . . . of the agency. Outside the office I’m the boss.” I grabbed her arm and swung her around to face me. She was damned near as tall as I was and being that close to her did things to me inside that I didn’t have time for. “It took me a long time to wise up, didn’t it?”

“Too long, Mike.”

“Do you know what I’m talking about, Velda? I’m not tossing a pass at you now or laying the groundwork for the same thing later. I’m telling you ‘something else.”

My fingers were hurting her and I couldn’t help it. “I want you to say it, Mike. You’ve played games with so many women I won’t be sure until I hear you say it yourself. Tell me.”

There was a desperate pleading in her eyes. They were asking me please, please. I could feel her breath coming faster and knew she was trembling and not because I was hurting her. I knew something was coming over my face that I couldn’t control. It started in my chest and overflowed in my face when the music in my head began with that steady beat of drums and weird discord. My mouth worked to get the words out, but they stuck fast to the roof of my mouth.

I shook my head to break up the crazy symphony going on in my brain and I mumbled, “No . . . no. Oh, good God, I can’t, Velda. I can’t!”

I knew what the feeling was. I was scared. Scared to death and it showed in my face and the way I stumbled across the room to a chair and sat down. Velda knelt on the floor in front of me her face a fuzzy white blur that kissed me again and again. I could feel her hands in my hair and smell the pleasant woman smell of cleanliness, of beauty that was part of her, but the music wouldn’t go away.

She asked me what had happened and I told her. It wasn’t that. It was something else. She wanted to know what it was, demanded to know what it was and her voice came through a sob and tears. She gave me back my voice and I said, “Not you, kid . . . no kiss of death for you. There’ve been two women now. I said I loved them both. I thought I did. They both died, but not you, kid.”

Her hands on mine were soft and gentle. “Mike . . . nothing will happen to me.”

My mind went back over the years-to Charlotte and Lola.

“It’s no good, Velda. Maybe when this is all over it’ll be different. I keep thinking of the women who died. God, if I ever have to hold a gun on a woman again I’ll die first, so help me I will. How many years has it been since the yellow-gold hair and the beautiful face was there? It’s still there and I know it’s dead but I keep hearing the voice. And I keep thinking of the dark hair too . . . like a shroud. Gold shrouds, dark shrouds. . . .”

“Mike . . . don’t. Please, for me. Don’t . no more.”

She had another drink in my hand and I poured it down, heard the wild fury of the music drown out and give me back to myself again. I said, “All over now, sugar. Thanks.” She was smiling but her face was wet with tears. I kissed her eyes and the top of her head. “When this is settled we’ll take a vacation, that’s what we’ll do. We’ll take all the cash out of the bank and see what the city looks like when there’s not murder in it.”

She left me sitting there smoking a cigarette while she went into the bathroom and washed her face. I sat there and didn’t think of anything at all, trying to put a cap over the raw edges of my nerves that had been scraped and pounded too often.

Velda came back, a vision in a tailored gray suit that accentuated every curve. She was so big, so damn big and so lovely. She had the prettiest legs in the world and there wasn’t a thing about her that wasn’t beautiful and desirable. I could see why Clyde wanted her. Who wouldn’t? I was a sap for waiting as long as I had.

She took the cigarette from my mouth and put it in her own. “I’m going to see Clyde tonight, Mike. I’ve been wondering about several things and I want to see if I can find out what they are.”

“What things?” There wasn’t much interest in my words.

She took a drag on the cigarette and handed it back. “Things like what it is he holds over people’s heads. Things like blackmail. Things like how Clyde can influence people so powerful they can make or break judges, mayors or even governors. What kind of blackmail can that be?”

“Keep talking, Velda.”

“He has conferences with these big people. They call him up at odd hours. They’re never asking . . . they’re always giving. To Clyde. He takes it like it’s his due. I want to know those things.”

“Will they be found in Clyde’s apartment, baby?”

“No, Clyde has them . . .” she tapped her forehead, “here. He isn’t smart enough to keep them there.”

“Be careful, Velda, be damn careful with that guy. He might not be the pushover you think he is. He’s got connections and he keeps his nose too damn clean to be a pushover. Watch yourself.”

She smiled at me and pulled on her gloves. “I’ll watch myself. If he goes too far I’ll take a note from that Anton Lipsek’s book and call him something in French.”

“You can’t speak French.”

“Neither can Clyde. That’s what makes him so mad. Anton calls him things in French and laughs about it. Clyde gets red in the face but that’s all.”

I didn’t get it and I told her so. “Clyde isn’t one to take any junk from a guy like Anton. It’s a wonder he doesn’t sic one of his boys on ‘im.”

“He doesn’t, though. He takes it and gets mad. Maybe Anton has something on him.”

“I can’t picture that,” I said. “Still, those things happen.”

She pulled on her coat and looked at herself in the mirror. It wasn’t necessary; you can’t improve on perfection. I knew what it was like to be jealous again and tore my eyes away. When she was satisfied with herself she bent over and kissed me. “Why don’t you stay here tonight, Mike?”

“Now you ask me.”

She laughed, a rich, throaty laugh and kissed me again. “I’ll shoo you out when I get in. I may be late, but my virtue will still be intact.”

“It had damn well better be.”

“Good night, Mike.”

“ ‘Night, Velda.”

She smiled again and closed the door behind her. I heard the elevator door open and shut and if I had had Clyde in my hands I would have squeezed him until his insides ran all over the floor. Even my cigarettes tasted lousy. I picked up the phone and called Connie. She wasn’t home. I tried Juno and was ready to hang up when she answered.

I said, “This is Mike, Juno. It’s late, but I was wondering if you were busy.”

“No, Mike, not at all. Won’t you come up?”

“I’d like to.”

“And I’d like you to. Hurry, Mike.”

Hurry? When she talked like that I could fly across town.

There was an odd familiarity about Juno’s place. It bothered me until I realized that it was familiar because I had been thinking about it. I had been there a dozen times before in my mind but none of the eagerness was gone as I pushed the bell. Excitement came even with the thought of her, a tingling thrill that spoke of greater pleasures yet to come.

The door clicked and I pushed it open to walk into the lobby. She met me at the door of Olympus, a smiling, beautiful goddess in a long hostess coat of some iridescent material that changed color with every motion of her body.

“I always come back, don’t I, Juno?”

Her eyes melted into the same radiant color as the coat. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

It was only the radio playing, but it might have been a chorus of angels singing to form a background of splendor. Juno had prepared Olympus for me, arranging it so a mortal might be tempted into leaving Earth. The only lights were those of the long waxy tapers that flickered in a dancing yellow light, throwing wavy shadows on the wall. The table had been drawn up in the living room and set with delicate china, arranged so that we would be seated close enough to want to be closer, too close to talk or eat without feeling things catch in your throat.

We spoke of the little things, forgetting all the unpleasantness of the past few days. We spoke of things and thought of things we didn’t speak of, knowing it was there whenever we were ready. We ate, but the taste of the food was lost to me when I’d look at her in that sweeping gown that laughed and danced in the rising and falling of the lights. The cuffs of her sleeves were huge things that rose halfway to her elbows, leaving only her hands visible. Beautiful large hands that were eloquent in movement.

There was a cocktail instead of coffee, a toast to the night ahead, then she rose, and with her arm in mine, the short wisps of her hair brushing my face, took me into the library.

Cigarettes were there, the bar set was pulled out and ice frosted a crystal bowl. I put my crumpled pack of Luckies alongside the silver cigarette box to remind me that I was still a mortal, took one and lit it from the lighter she held out to me.

“Like it, Mike?”

“Wonderful.”

“It was special, you know. I’ve been home every minute since I saw you last, waiting for you to come back.”

She sat next to me on the couch and leaned back, her head resting on the cushion. Her eyes were beginning to invite me now. “I’ve been busy, goddess. Things have been happening.”

“Things?”

“Business.”

One of her fingers touched the bruise on the side of my jaw.

“How’d you get that, Mike?”

“Business.”

She started to laugh, then saw the seriousness in my face. “But how . . .”

“It makes nasty conversation, Juno. Some other time I’ll tell you about it.”

“All right, Mike.” She put her cigarette down on the table and grabbed my hand. “Dance with me, Mike?” She made my name sound like it was something special.

Her body was warm and supple, the music alive with rhythm, and together we threw a whirling pattern of shadows that swayed and swung with every subtle note. She stood back from me, just far enough so we could look at each other and read things into every expression. I could only stand it so long and I tried to pull her closer, but she laughed a little song and twisted in a graceful pirouette that sent the gown out and up around her legs.

The music stopped then, ending on a low note that was the cue to a slow waltz. Juno floated back into my arms and I shook my head. It had been enough . . . too much. The suggestion she had put into the dance left me shaking from head to foot, a sensation born of something entirely new, something I had never felt. Not the primitive animal reflex I was used to, not the passion that made you want to squeeze or bite or demand what you want and get it even if you had to fight for it. It made me mad because I didn’t know what it was and I didn’t like it, this custom of the gods.

So I shook my head again, harder this time. I grabbed her by the arm and heard her laugh again because she knew what was going on inside me and wanted it that way.

“Quit it, Juno. Damn it, quit fooling around. You make me think I want you and I lose sight of everything else. Cut it out.”

“No.” She drew the word out. Her eyes were half closed. “It’s me that wants you, Mike. I’ll do what I can to get you. I won’t stop. There’s never been anyone else like you.”

“Later.”

“Now.”

It might have been now, but the light caught her hair again. Yellow candlelight that changed its color to the gold I hated. I didn’t wait to have it happen to me. I shoved her on the couch and reached for the decanter in the bar set. She lay there languidly, waiting for me to come to her and I fought it and fought it until my mind was my own again and I could laugh a little bit myself. She saw it happen and smiled gently. “You’re even better than

I thought,” she said. “You’re a man with the instincts of some

jungle animal. It has to be when you say so, doesn’t it?” I threw the drink down fast. “Not before,” I told her. “I like that about you too, Mike.”

“So do I. It keeps me out of trouble.” When I filled the glass I balanced it in my hand and sat on the arm of the couch facing her. “Do you know much about me, Juno?”

“A little. I’ve been hearing things.” She picked one of her long cigarettes out of the box and lit it. Smoke streamed up lazily from her mouth. “Why?”

“I’ll tell you why I’m like I am. I’m a detective. In spirit only, now, but I used to have a ticket and a gun. They took it away because I was with Chester Wheeler when he used my gun to commit suicide. That was wrong because Chester Wheeler was murdered. A guy named Rainey was murdered too. Two killings and a lot of scared people. The one you know as Clyde is a former punk named Dinky Williams and he’s gotten to be so big nobody can lay a finger on him, so big he can dictate to the dictators.

“That isn’t the end of it, either. Somebody wants me out of the way so badly they made a try on the street and again in my apartment. In between they tried to lay Rainey’s killing at my feet so I’d get picked up for it. All that . . . because one guy named Chester Wheeler was found dead in a hotel room. Pretty, isn’t it?”

It was too much for her to understand at once. She bit her thumbnail and a frown crept across her face. “Mike . . .”

“I know it’s complicated,” I said. “Murder generally is complicated. It’s so damn complicated that I’m the only one looking for a murderer. All the others are content to let it rest as suicide . . . except Rainey, of course. That job was a dilly.”

“That’s awful, Mike! I never realized . . .”

“It isn’t over yet. I have a couple of ideas sticking pins in my brain right now. Some of the pieces are trying to fit together, trying hard. I’ve been up too long and been through too much to think straight. I thought that I might relax if I came up here to see you.” I grinned at her. “You weren’t any help at all. You’ll probably even spoil my dreams.”

“I hope I do,” she said impishly.

“I’m going someplace and sleep it off,” I said. “I’m going to let the clock go all the way around, then maybe once more before

I stir out of my sack. Then I’m going to put all the pieces together and find me a killer. The bastard is strong . . . strong enough to twist a gun around in Wheeler’s hand and make him blow his brains out. He’s strong enough to take me in my own joint and nearly finish it for me. The next time will be different. I’ll be ready and I’ll choke the son-of-a-bitch to death.”

“Will you come back when it’s over, Mike?”

I put on my hat and looked down at her. She looked so damn desirable and agreeable I wanted to stay. I said, “I’ll be back, Juno. You can dance for me again . . . all by yourself. I’ll sit down and watch you dance and you can show me how you have fun on Olympus. I’m getting a little tired of being a mortal.”

“I’ll dance for you, Mike. I’ll show you things you never saw before. You’ll like Olympus. It’s different up there and there’s nothing like it on this earth. We’ll have a mountaintop all to ourselves and I’ll make you want to stay there forever.”

“It’d take a good woman to make me stay anywhere very long.”

Her tongue flicked out and left her lips glistening wetly, reflecting the desire in her eyes. Her body seemed to move, squirm, so the sheen of the housecoat threw back the lithe contours of her body, vivid in detail. “I could,” she said.

She was asking me now. Demanding that I come to her for even a moment and rip that damn robe right off her back and see what it was that went to make up the flesh of a goddess. For one second my face must have changed and she thought I was going to do it, because her eyes went wide and I saw her shoulders twitch and this time there was woman-fear behind the desire and she was a mortal for an instant, a female crouching away from the male. But that wasn’t what made me stop. My face went the way it did because there was something else again I couldn’t understand and it snaked up my back and my hands started to jerk unconsciously with it.

I picked up my butts and winked good night. The look she sent me made my spine crawl again. I walked out and found my car half buried in a drift and drove back to the street of lights where I parked and checked into a hotel for a long winter’s nap.

Chapter Ten

I slept the sleep of the dead, but the dead weren’t disturbed by dreams of the living. I slept and I talked, hearing my own voice in the stillness. The voice asked questions, demanded answers that couldn’t be given and turned into a spasm of rage. Faces came to me, drifting by in a ghostly procession, laughing with all the fury the dead could command, bringing with their laughter that weird, crazy music that beat and beat and beat, trying to drive my senses to the furthermost part of my brain from which they could never return. My voice shouted for it to stop and was drowned in the sea of laughter. Always those faces. Always that one face with the golden hair, hair so intensely brilliant it was almost white. The voice I tried to scream with was only a hoarse, muted whisper saying, “Charlotte, Charlotte . . . I’ll kill you again if I have to! I’ll kill you again, Charlotte!” And the music increased in tempo and volume, pounding and beating and vibrating with such insistence that I began to fall before it. The face with the gold hair laughed anew and urged the music on. Then there was another face, one with hair a raven-black, darker than the darkness of the pit. A face with clean beauty and a strength to face even the dead. It challenged the golden hair and the music, commanding it to stop, to disappear forever. And it did. I heard my voice again saying over and over, “Velda, thank God! Velda, Velda, Velda.”

I awoke and the room was still. My watch had stopped and no light filtered in under the shade. When I looked out the sky was black, pinpointed with the lights of the stars that reflected themselves from the snow-covered street below.

I picked up the phone and the desk answered. I said, “This is Hammer in 541. What time is it?”

The clerk paused, then answered, “Five minutes to nine, sir.”

I said thanks and hung up. The clock had come mighty close to going around twice at that. It didn’t take me more than ten minutes to get dressed and checked out. In the restaurant that adjoined the hotel I ate like I was famished, took time for a slow smoke and called Velda. My hand trembled while I waited for her to answer.

I said, “Hello, honey, it’s Mike.”

“Oh . . . Mike, where have you been? I’ve been frantic.”

“You can relax, girl. I’ve been asleep. I checked into a hotel and told them not to disturb me until I woke up. What happened with you and Clyde? Did you learn anything?”

She choked back a sob and my hand tightened around the receiver. Clyde was dying right then. “Mike . . .”

“Go on, Velda.” I didn’t want to hear it but I had to.

“He almost . . . did.”

I let the phone go and breathed easier. Clyde had a few minutes left to live. “Tell me,” I said.

“He wants me in the worst way, Mike. I--I played a game with him and I was almost sorry for it. If I hadn’t gotten him too drunk . . . he would have . . . but I made him wait. He got drunk and he told me . . . bragged to me about his position in life. He said he could run the city and he meant it. He said things that were meant to impress me and I acted impressed. Mike . . . he’s blackmailing some of the biggest men in town. It’s all got to do with the Bowery Inn.”

“Do you know what it is?”

“Not yet, Mike. He thinks . . . I’m a perfect partner for him. He said he’d tell me all about it if . . . if I . . . oh, Mike, what shall I do? What shall I do? I hate that man . . and I don’t know what to do!”

“The lousy bastard!”

“Mike . . . he gave me a key to his apartment. I’m going up there tonight. He’s going to tell me about it then . . . and make arrangements to take me in with him. He wants me, Mike.”

A rat might have been gnawing at my intestines. “Shut up! Damn it, you aren’t going to do anything!”

I heard her sob again and I wanted to rip the phone right off the wall. I could barely hear her with the pounding of the blood in my head. “I have to go, Mike. We’ll know for sure then.”

“No!”

“Mike . . . please don’t try to stop me. It isn’t nearly as . . . serious as what you’ve done. I’m not getting shot at . . . I’m not giving my life. I’m trying to give what I can, just like you . . . because it’s important. I’m going to his apartment at midnight and then we’ll know, Mike. It won’t take long after that.”

She didn’t hear me shout into the phone because she had hung up. There was no stopping her. She knew I might try to, and would be gone before I could reach her.

Midnight. Three hours. That’s all the time I had.

It wasn’t so funny any more.

I felt in my pocket for another nickel and dialed Pat’s number. He wasn’t home so I tried the office and got him. I told him it was me without giving my name and he cut me off with a curt hello and said he’d be in the usual bar in ten minutes if I wanted to see him. The receiver clicked in my ear as he hung up. I stood there and looked at the phone stupidly.

The usual bar was a little place downtown where I had met him several times in the past and I went there now. I double-parked and slid out in front of the place to look in the windows, then I heard, “Mike . . . Mike!”

I turned around and Pat was waving me into my car and I ran back and got in under the wheel. “What the hell’s going on with you, Pat?”

“Keep quiet and get away from here. I think there’s been an ear on my phone and I may have been followed.”

“The D.A.’s boys?”

“Yeah, and they’re within their rights. I stopped being a cop when I lied for you. I deserve any kind of an investigation they want to give me.”

“But why all the secrecy?”

Pat looked at me quickly, then away. “You’re wanted for murder. There’s a warrant out for your arrest. The D.A. has found himself another witness to replace the couple he lost.”

“Who?”

“A local character from Glenwood. He picked you out of the picture file and definitely established that you were there that night. He sells tickets at the arena as a sideline.”

“Which puts you in a rosy red light,” I said. Pat muttered, “Yeah. I must look great.”

We drove on around the block and on to Broadway. “Where to?” I asked.

“Over to the Brooklyn Bridge. A girl pulled the Dutch act and I have to check it myself. Orders from the D.A. through higher headquarters. He’s trying to make my life miserable by pulling me out on everything that has a morgue tag attached to it. The crumb hopes I slip up somewhere and when I do I’ve had it. Maybe I’ve had it already. He’s checked my movements the night I was supposed to have been with you and is getting ready to pull out the stops.”

“Maybe we’ll be cellmates,” I said.

“Ah, pipe down.”

“Or you can work in my grocery store . . . while I’m serving time, that is.”

“I said, shut up. What’ve you got to be cheerful about?”

My teeth were clamped together, but I could still grin. “Plenty, kid. I got plenty to be cheerful about. Soon a killer will be killed. I can feel it coming.”

Pat sat there staring straight ahead. He sat that way until we reached the cutoff under the bridge and pulled over to the curb. There was a squad car and an ambulance at the wharf side and another squad car pulling up when Pat got out. He told me to sit in the car and stay there until he got out. I promised him I’d be a good boy and watched him cross the street.

He took too long. I began to fidget with the wheel and chain-smoked through my pack of butts. When I was on the last one I got out myself and headed toward the saloon on the corner. It was a hell of a dive, typically waterfront and reeking with all the assorted odors you could think of. I put a quarter in the cigarette machine, grabbed my fresh deck and ordered a beer at the bar. Two guys came in and started talking about the suicide across the street.

One was on the subject of her legs and the other took it up. Then they started on the other parts of her anatomy until the bartender said, “Jeez, cut it out, will ya! Like a couple ghouls ya sound. Can the crap.”

The guy who liked the legs fought for his rights supported by the other one and the bartender threw them both out and put their change in his pockets. He turned to me and said, “Ever see anythin’ like that? Jeez, the dame’s dead, what do they want of her now? What ghouls!”

I nodded agreement and finished my beer. Every two minutes I’d check my watch and find it two minutes later and start cursing a slimy little bastard named Clyde.

Then the beer would taste flat.

I took it as long as I could and got the hell out of the saloon and crossed the street to see what was taking Pat so long. There was a handful of people grouped around the body and the ambulance was gone. The car from the morgue had taken its place. Pat was bending over the body looking for identification without any success and had the light flashed on her face.

He handed one of the cops a note he fished out of her pocket and the cop scowled. He read, “He left me.” He scowled some more and Pat looked up at him. “That’s all, Captain. No signature, no name. That’s all it says.”

Pat scowled too and I looked at her face again.

The boys from the morgue wagon moved in and hoisted the body into a basket. Pat told them to put it in the unidentified file until they found out who she was.

I had a last look at her face.

When the wagon pulled away the crowd started to break up and I wandered off into the shadows that lined the street. The face, the face. Pale white to the point of transparency, eyes closed and lips slightly parted. I stood there leaning up against a plank wall staring at the night, hearing the cars and the trolley rattle across the bridge, hearing the cacophony of noises that go to make up the voice of the city.

I kept thinking of that face.

A taxi screamed past and slid to a stop at the comer. I backed up and a short fat figure speaking a guttural English shoved some bills in the driver’s hand and ran to the squad cars. He spoke to the cop, his arms gesticulating wildly; the cop took him to Pat and he went through the same thing again.

The crowd that had turned away turned back again and I went with them, hanging on the outside, yet close enough so I could hear the little fat man. Pat stopped him, made him start over, telling him to calm himself down first.

The fat man nodded and took the cigarette that was offered him but didn’t put it in his mouth. “The boat captain I am, you see?” He said. “The barges I am captain of. We go by two hours ago under the bridge and it is so quiet and peaceful then I sit on the deckhouse and watch the sky. Always I look up at the bridge when I go by. With my night glasses I look up to see the automobiles and marvel at such things as we have in this country.

“I see her then, you understand? She is standing there fighting and I hear her scream even. She fights this man who holds his hand over her mouth and she can’t scream. I see all this, you understand, yet I am not able to move or do a thing. On the barge we have nothing but the megaphone to call with. It happens so fast. He lifts her up and over and she goes into the river. First I thought she hit the last barge on the string and I run and shout quickly but it is not so. I must wait so long until I can get somebody to take me off the barge, then I call the police.

“The policeman, he told me here to come. You were here. The girl has already been found. That is what I have come to tell you. You understand?”

Pat said, “I understand all right. You saw this man she fought?” The guy bobbed his head vigorously.

“Could you identify him?”

Everyone’s eyes were on the little guy. He lifted his hands out and shrugged. “I could tell him from someone else . . . no. He had on a hat, a coat. He lifted this girl up and over she goes. No, I do not see his face for I am too excited. Even through the night glasses I could not see all that so well.”

Pat turned to the cop next to him. “Take his name and address. We’ll need a statement on it.”

The cop whipped out a pad and began taking it down. Pat prompted him with questions until the whole thing was straight then dismissed the batch of them and started asking around for other witnesses. The motley group hanging around watching didn’t feel like having any personal dealings with the police department for any reason at all and broke up in a hurry. Pat got that grim look, muttered something nasty and started across the street to where I was supposed to be.

I angled over and met him. “Nice corpse,” I said.

“I thought I told you to stay in the car. Those cops have you on their list.”

“So what. I’m on a lot of lists these days. What about the girl?”

“Unidentified. Probably a lovers’ quarrel. She had a couple of broken ribs and a broken neck. She was dead before she hit the water.”

“And the note . . . did the lover stuff that in her pocket before he threw her overboard?”

“You have big ears. Yes, that’s what it looks like. They probably argued previously, he invited her for a walk, then gave it to her.”

“Strong guy to mess her up like that, no?”

Pat nodded. I opened the door and he got in, sliding over so I could get behind the wheel. “He had to be to break her ribs.”

“Very strong,” I mused. “I’m not a weak sister myself and I know what it’s like to come up against one of those strong bastards.” I sat there and watched him.

A look of incredulity came over his face. “Now wait a minute. We’re on two different subjects, feller. Don’t try to tell me that he was the same . . .”

“Know who she was, Pat?”

“I told you she was unidentified at present. She had no handbag but we’ll trace her from her clothes.”

“That takes time.”

“Know a better way?”

“Yeah,” I said. “As a matter of fact I do.” I reached behind the seat and dragged out an envelope. It was crammed with pictures and I dumped them into my lap. Pat reached up and turned on the overhead light. I shuffled through them and brought out the one I was looking for.

Pat looked a little sick. He glanced at me then back to the picture. “Her name is Jean Trotter, Pat. She’s a model at Anton Lipsek’s agency. Several days ago she eloped.”

I thought he’d never stop swearing. He fanned out the pictures in his hand and squinted at them with eyes that blazed hot as the fires of hell. “Pictures. Pictures. Goddamn it, Mike, what are we up against? Do you know what that burned stuff was that you found in Emil Perry’s house?”

I shook my head.

“Pictures!” he exploded. “A whole mess of burned photographs that didn’t show a thing!”

The steering wheel started to bend under my fingers. I jammed my foot on the starter and roared away from the curb. Pat looked at the picture again in the light of the dash. His breath was coming fast. “We can make it official now. I’ll get the whole department on it if I have to. Give me a week and we’ll have that guy ready to face a murder trial.”

I glowered back at him. “Week hell, all we have is a couple of hours. Did you trace that piece of fabric I gave you?”

“Sure, we traced it all right. We found the store it came from . . . over a year ago. It was from a damn good suit the owner remembered selling, but the guy had no recollection for faces. It was a cash transaction and he didn’t have a record of the size or any names or addresses. Our killer is one smart Joe.”

“He’ll trip up. They all do.”

I cut in and out of traffic, my foot heavy on the accelerator. On the main drag I was lucky enough to make the lights and didn’t have to stop until I was in front of the Municipal Building. I said, “Pat, use your badge and check the marriage bureau for Jean Trotter’s certificate. Find out who she eloped with and where she was married. Since I can’t show my nose you’ll have to do this on your own.”

“Where’ll you be?”

I looked at my watch. “First I’m going to see what I can get on the girl myself. Then I’m going to stop a seduction scene before it starts.”

Pat was still trying to figure that one out when I drove off. I looked in the rear-vision mirror and saw him pocket the photograph and walk away up the street.

I stopped at the first drugstore I came to and had a quarter changed into nickels then pushed a guy out of the way who was getting into the booth. He was going to argue about it until he saw my face then he changed his mind and went looking for another phone. I dropped the coin in and dialed Juno’s number. I was overanxious and got the wrong number. The second time I hit it right, but I didn’t get to speak to Juno. Her phone was connected to one of those service outfits that take messages and a girl told me that Miss Reeves was out, but expected home shortly. I said no, I didn’t want to leave a message and hung up.

I threw in another nickel and spun the dial. Connie was home. She would be glad to see me no matter what the hour was. My voice had a rasp to it and she said, “Anything wrong, Mike?”

“Plenty. I’ll tell you about it when I get there.”

I set some sort of a record getting to her place, leaving behind me a stream of swearing-mad cab drivers who had tried to hog the road and got bumped over to the side for their pains.

A guy had his key in the downstairs door so I didn’t have to ring the bell to get in. I didn’t have to ring the upstairs bell either, because the door was open and when Connie heard me in the hall she shouted for me to come right in.

I threw my hat on the chair, standing in the dull light of the hall a moment to see where I was. Only a little night light was on, but a long finger of bright light streamed from the bedroom door out across the living room. I picked my way round the furniture and called, “Connie?”

“In here, Mike.”

She was in bed with a couple of pillows behind her back reading a book. “Kind of early for this sort of thing, isn’t it?”

“Maybe, but I’m not going out!” She grinned and wiggled under the covers. “Come over here and sit down. You can tell me all your troubles.” She patted the edge of the bed.

I sat down and she put her fingers under mine. I didn’t have to tell her something bad had happened. She could read it in my eyes. Her smile disappeared into a frown. “What is it, Mike?”

“Jean Trotter . . . she was murdered tonight. She was killed and thrown off the bridge. It was supposed to look like suicide, but it was seen.”

“No!”

“Yes.”

“God, when is it going to stop, Mike? Poor Jean . . “

“It’ll stop when we have the killer and not before. What do you know about her, Connie? What was she like . . . who was this guy she married?”

Connie shook her head, her hair falling loosely around her shoulders. “Jean . . . she was a sweet kid when I first met her. I-I don’t know too much about her, really. She was older than the teen-age group of course, but she modeled clothes for them. We . . . never did the same type work, so I don’t know about that.”

“Men . . . what men did she go with? Ever see them?”

“No, I didn’t. When she first came to work I heard that she was engaged to a West Point cadet, then something happened. She was pretty broken up for a while. Juno made her take a vacation and when she came back she seemed to be all right, though she didn’t take much interest in men. One time at an office party she and I were talking about what wolves some men are and she was all for hanging every man by their thumbs and making it a woman’s world.”

“Nice attitude. What changed her?”

“Now you’ve got me. We sort of lived in different parts of the world and I never saw too much of her. I know she had a good sum of money tied up in expensive jewelry she used to wear and there was talk about a wealthy student in an upstate college taking her out, but I never inquired about it. As a matter of fact, I was very surprised when she eloped like that. True love is funny, isn’t it, Mike?”

“Not so funny.”

“No, I guess not.”

I put my face in my hand, rubbing my head to make things come out right. “Is that all . . . everything you know about her? Do you know where she was from or anything about her background?”

Connie squinted at the light and raised her forefinger thoughtfully. “Oh . . . think . . .”

“Come on, come on . . . what?”

“I just happened to think. Jean Trotter wasn’t her right name. She had a long Polish name and changed it when she became a model. She even made it legal and I cut the piece out of the paper that carried a notation about it. Mike . . . over there in the dresser is a small leather folder. Go get it for me.”

I slid off the bed and started through the top drawer until Connie said, “No . . . the other one, Mike.”

I tried that one too but couldn’t find it. “Damn it, Connie, come over here and get it, will you!”

“I can’t.” She laughed nervously.

So I started tossing all her junk to the floor until she yipped and threw back the covers to run over and make me stop. Now I knew why she didn’t want to get out of bed. She was as naked as a jaybird.

She found the folder in the back of a drawer and handed it to me with a scowl. “You ought to have the decency to close your eyes, at least.”

“Hell, I like you like that.”

“Then do something about it.”

I tried to look through the folder, but my eyes wouldn’t stand still. “For Pete’s sake, put something on, will you!”

She put her hands on her hips and leaned toward me, her tongue sticking out. Then she turned slowly, with all the sultry motion she could command, and walked to the clothes closet. She pulled out her fur coat and slipped into it, holding it closed around her middle. “I’ll teach you,” she said. Then she sat in a low boudoir chair with her legs crossed, making it plain that I could look and be tempted, but that was all, brother, that was all.

When I went back to pawing through the folder she let the coat slip open and I had to turn my back and sit down. Connie laughed, but I found the clipping.

Her name had been Julia Travesky. By order of the court she was now legally Jean Trotter. Her address was given at a small hotel for women in an uptown section. I stuffed the clipping in my wallet and put the folder in the dresser drawer. “At least it’s something,” I said. “We can find out the rest from the court records.”

“What are you looking for, Mike?”

“Anything that will tell me why she was important enough to kill.”

“I was thinking . . .”

“Yeah?”

“There are files down at the office. Whenever a girl applies for work at the agency she has to leave her history and a lot of sample photos and press clippings. Maybe Jean’s are still there.”

I whistled through my teeth and nodded. “You’ve got something, Connie. I called Juno before I came up, but she wasn’t home. How about Anton Lipsek?”

Connie snorted and pulled the coat back to bare her legs a little more. “That drip is probably still sleeping off the drunk he worked up last night. He and Marion Lester got crocked to the ears and they took off for Anton’s place with some people from the Inn about three o’clock in the morning. Neither of them showed up for work today. Juno didn’t say much, but she was plenty burned up.

“Nuts. Who else might have keys to the place then?”

“Oh, I can get in. I had to once before when I left my pocketbook in the office. I kissed the janitor’s bald head and he handed over his passkey.”

The hands of my watch were going around too fast. My insides were beginning to turn into a hard fuzzy ball again. “Do me a favor, Connie. Go up and see if you can get that file on her. Get it and come right back here. I have something to do in the meanwhile and you’ll be helping out a lot if you can manage it.”

“No,” she pouted.

“Cripes, Connie, use your head! I told you . . .”

“Go with me.”

“I can’t.”

The pout turned into a grin and she peeked at me under her eyelashes. She stood up, put a cigarette between her lips, and in a pose as completely normal as if she had on an evening gown, she pushed back the coat and rested her hands on her hips and swayed over until she was looking up into my face.

I had never seen anything so unnaturally inviting in all my life.

“Go with me,” she said, “then we’ll come back together.”

I said, “Come here, you,” and grabbed her as naked as she was and squeezed her against my chest until her mouth opened. Then I kissed her good. So good she stopped breathing for long seconds and her eyes were glazed.

“Now do what I told you to do or you’ll get the hell slapped out of your hide,” I said.

She lowered her eyes and covered herself up with the coat. The grin she tried so hard to hide slipped out anyway. “You’re the boss, Mike. Any time you want to be my boss, don’t tell me. I’ll know it all by myself.”

I put my thumb under her chin and lifted her face up. “There ought to be more people in this world like you, kid.”

“You’re an ugly so-and-so, Mike. You’re big and rough just like my brothers and I love you ten times as much.”

I was going to kiss her again and she saw it coming. She shed that coat and flew into my arms and let her body scorch mine. I had to shove her away when it was the one thing I didn’t want to do, because it reminded me that soon something like this might be happening to Velda and I couldn’t let it happen.

The thought scared the hell out of me. It scared me right down to my shoes and I was damning the ground Clyde walked on. I practically ran out of the apartment and stumbled down the stairs in my haste. I ran to the comer and into a candy store where the owner was just turning out the lights. I was in the phone booth before he could tell me the place was closed and my fingers could hardly hold the nickel to drop it in the slot.

Maybe there was still time, I thought. God, there had to be time. Minutes and seconds, what made them so important? Little fractions of eternity that could make life worth living. I dialed Velda’s number and heard it ring. It rang a long time and no one answered, so I let it go on ringing and ringing and ringing. It rang for a year before she answered it. I said it was me and she wanted to hang up. I shouted, and she held it, and cautiously asked me where I was.

I said, “I’m nowhere near your place, Velda, so don’t worry about me pulling anything funny. Look, hold everything. Don’t go up there tonight . . . there’s no need to now. I think we have the thing by the tail.”

Velda’s voice was soft, but so firm, so goddamn firm I could have screamed. She said, “No, Mike. Don’t try to stop me. I know you’ll think of every excuse you can, but please don’t try to stop me. You’ve never really let me do anything before and I know how important this is. Please, Mike . . .”

“Velda, listen to me.” I tried to keep my voice calm. “It isn’t a stall. One of the agency girls was murdered tonight. Things are tying up. Her name was Jean Trotter . . . before that she was Julia Travesky. The killer got her and . . .”

“Who?”

“Jean . . . Julia Travesky.”

“Mike . . .. that was the girl Chester Wheeler told his wife he had met in New York. The one who was his daughter’s old school chum.”

“What!”

“You remember. I spoke of it after I came back from Columbus.”

My throat got dry all of a sudden. It was an effort to speak. “Velda, for God’s sake, don’t go up there tonight. Wait . . . wait just a little while,” I croaked.

“No.”

“Velda . . .”

“I said no, Mike. I’m going. The police were here earlier. They were looking for you. They want you for murder.”

I think I groaned. I couldn’t get the words out.

“If they find you we won’t have a chance, Mike. You’ll go behind bars and I couldn’t stand that.”

“I know all about that, Velda. I was with Pat tonight. He told me. What do I have to do, get on my knees . . .”

“Mike . . .”

I couldn’t fight the purpose in her voice. Good Lord, she thought she was helping me and I couldn’t tell her differently! I was trying to protect her and she was going ahead at all costs! Oh, Lord think of a way to stop her, I couldn’t! She said, “Please don’t bother to come up, Mike. I’ll be gone, and besides, there are policemen watching this building. Don’t make it any harder for me, please.”

She hung up on me. Just like that. Damn it, she hung up and left me cooped up in that two-by-four booth staring at an inanimate piece of equipment. I slammed the receiver back on the hook and ran past the guy who held the pull cord of the light in his hand, ready to turn it out. Lights out. Lights out for me too.

I ran back to the car and started it up. Time. Damn it, how much time? Pat said give him a week. A while ago I needed hours. Now minutes counted. Minutes I couldn’t spare just when things were beginning to make sense. Jean Trotter . . . she was the one Wheeler met at that dinner meeting. She was the one he went out with. But Jean eloped and got out of the picture very conveniently and Marion Lester took over the duty of saying Wheeler was with her, and Marion Lester and Anton Lipsek were very friendly.

I needed a little talk with Marion Lester. I wanted to know why she lied and who made her lie. I’d tell her once to talk, and if she wouldn’t I’d work her over until she’d be glad to talk, glad to scream her guts out and put the finger on the certain somebody I was after.

Chapter Eleven

I tried hard to locate Pat. I tried until my nickels were spent and there wasn’t any place else to try. He was out chasing a name that didn’t matter anymore and I couldn’t find him at the time when I needed him most. I left messages for him to either stay in his office or go home until I called him and they promised to tell him when, and if, he came in. My shirt was soaked through with cold sweat when I got finished.

The sky had loosened up again and was letting more flakes of snow sift down. Great. Just great. More minutes wasted getting around. I checked the time and swore some big curses then climbed in the car and turned north into traffic. Jean Trotter and Wheeler. It all came back to Wheeler after all. The two were murdered for the same reason. Why . . . because he saw and recognized her as an old friend? Was it something he knew about her that made him worth killing? Was it something she knew about him?

There was blackmail to it, some insidious kind of blackmail that could scare the pants off a guy like Emil Perry and a dozen other big shots who couldn’t afford to leave town when it pleased them. Photographs. Burned photographs. Models. A photographer named Anton Lipsek. A tough egg called Rainey. The brains named Clyde. They added.

I laughed so loud my chest, hurt. I laughed and laughed and promised myself the skin of a killer. When I had the proof I could collect the skin and the D.A., the cops and anybody else could go to hell. I’d be clean as a whistle and I’d make them all kiss my rear end. The D.A. especially.

I had to park a block away from the Chadwick Hotel and walk back. My coat collar was up around my face like everyone else’s and I wasn’t worried about being seen. A patrolman swinging a night stick went by and never gave me a tumble. The lobby of the hotel was small, but crowded with a lot of faces taking a breather from the weather outside.

The Mom type at the desk gave me a smile and a nasal hello when I went to the desk. “I’d like to see Miss Lester,” I said.

“You’ve been here before, sonny. Go ahead up.”

“Mind if I use your phone first?”

“Nah, go ahead. Want me to connect you with her room?”

“Yeah.”

She fussed with the plugs in the switchboard and triggered her button a few times. There was no answer. The woman shrugged and made a sour face. “She came in and I didn’t see her go out. Maybe she’s in the tub. Them babes is always taking baths anyway. Go on up and pound on her door.”

I shoved the phone back and went up the stairs. They squeaked, but there was so much noise in the lobby nobody seemed to mind. I found Marion’s room and knocked twice. A little light was seeping out from under the door so I figured the clerk had been right about the bath. I listened, but I didn’t hear any splashing.

I knocked again, louder.

Still no answer.

I tried the door and it opened easily enough.

It was easy to see why she couldn’t answer the door. Marion Lester was as dead as a person could get. I closed the door quietly and stepped in the room. “Damn,” I said, “damn it all to hell!”

She had on a pair of red satin pajamas and was sprawled out face down. You might have thought she was asleep if you didn’t notice the angle of her neck. It had been broken with such force the snapped vertebra was pushed out against the skin. On the opposite side of the neck was a bluish imprint of the weapon. When I put the edge of my palm against the mark it almost fit and the body was stone-cold and stiff.

The only weapon our killer liked was his strong hands.

I lifted the phone and when the clerk came on I said, “When did Miss Lester come in?”

“Hell, she came in this morning drunk as a skunk. She could hardly navigate. Ain’t she there now?”

“She’s here now, all right. She won’t be going out again very soon either. She’s dead. You better get up here right away.”

The woman let out a muffled scream and started to run without bothering to break the connection. I heard her feet pounding on the stairs and she wrenched the door open without any formalities. Her face went from white to gray then flushed until the veins of her forehead stood out like pencils. “Lawd! Did you do this?”

She practically fell into a chair and wiped her hand across her eyes. I said, “She’s been dead for hours. Now take it easy and think. Understand, think. I want to know who was up here today. Who called on her or even asked for her. You ought to know, you’ve been here all day.”

Her mouth moved, the thick lips hanging limp. “Lawd!” she said.

I grabbed her shoulders and shook her until her teeth rattled. A little life came back into her eyes. “Answer me and stop looking foolish. Who was up here today?”

Her head wobbled from side to side. “This tears it, sonny. The joint’ll be ruined. Lawd, there goes my job!” She buried her face in her hands and moaned foolishly.

I slapped her hands away and made her look at me. “Listen. She isn’t the first. The same guy that killed her killed two others and unless he’s stopped there’s going to be more killing. Can you understand that?”

She nodded dumbly, terror creeping into her eyes. “All right, who was up here to see her today?”

“Nobody. Not nobody at all.”

“Somebody was here. Somebody killed her.”

“H--how do I know who killed her?”

“I didn’t say that. I said somebody was here.”

She pulled her thick lips together and licked them. “Look, sonny, I don’t take a count of who comes and goes in this place. It’s easy to get in and it’s easy to get out. Lotsa guys come in here.”

“And you don’t notice them?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I ain’t . . . I ain’t supposed to.”

“So the dump’s a whorehouse. Nothing but a whorehouse.”

She glared at me indignantly, the terror fading. “I ain’t no madam, sonny. It’s just a place where the babes can stay with no questions asked, is all. I ain’t no madam.”

“Do you know what’s going to happen around here?” I said. “In ten minutes this place will be crawling with cops. There’s no sense running because they’ll catch up with you. When they find out what’s going on . . . and they will . . . you’ll be up the creek. Now you can either start thinking and maybe have a little while to get yourself a clear story to offer them or you can take what the cops have to hand out. What will it be?”

She looked me straight in the eye and told the God’s honest truth. “Sonny,” she said, “if my life depended upon it I couldn’t tell you anything different. I don’t know who was in here today. The place was crawling with people ever since noontime and I read a book most of the day.”

I felt like I fell through a manhole. “Okay, lady. Maybe there’s somebody else who would know.”

“Nobody else. The girls who clean the halls only work in the morning. The guests take care of their own rooms. Everyone who lives here is a regular. No overnighters.”

“No bellboys?”

“We ain’t had ‘em for a year. We don’t need ‘em.”

I looked back at the remains of Marion Lester and wanted to vomit. Nobody knew a thing. The killer had no face. Nobody saw him. They felt him and didn’t live to tell about it. Only me. I was lucky, I got away. First the killer tried to shoot me. It didn’t work. Then he tried an ambush and slipped up there. I was the most important one in the whole lot.

And I couldn’t make a target of myself because there wasn’t time to play bait.

I looked at Marion and talked to the woman who sat there trembling from head to foot. “Go on downstairs and put me through to the police department. I’ll call them from here but I won’t be here when they come. You can tell them the same thing you told me. Go on, beat it.”

She waddled out, her entire body bearing the weight of the calamity. I held the phone to my ear and heard her call the police. When the connection was through I asked for homicide and got the night man. I said, “This is Mike Hammer. I’m in the Chadwick Hotel with a dead woman. No, I didn’t kill her, she’s been dead for hours. The D.A. will want to hear about it so you better call him and mention my name. Tell him I’ll drop by later. Yeah, yeah. No, I won’t be here. If the D.A. doesn’t like that he can put my name on his butt-kissing list. Tell him I said that, too. Good-by.” I walked downstairs and out the front door with about a minute to spare. I was just starting up my car when the police came up with their sirens wide open, leading a black limousine that skidded to a halt as the D.A. himself jumped out and started slinging orders around.

When I drove by I beeped the horn twice, but he didn’t hear it because he was too busy directing his army. Another squad car came up and I looked it over hoping to see Pat. He wasn’t with them.

My watch said twenty minutes to twelve. Velda would be leaving her apartment about now. My hands were shaking when I reached for a Lucky and I had to use the dashboard lighter to get it lit, a match wouldn’t hold still. If there was any fight left inside me it was going fast, draining out with each minute, and in twenty minutes there wouldn’t be a thing left for me, not one damn thing.

I stopped at a saloon and pulled the phone book from its rack and fingered through the L’s until I came to Lipsek, Anton. The address was right on the fringe of the Village in a section I knew pretty well. I went back to the car and crawled down Broadway.

Twenty minutes. Fifteen now, Tempus Fugit. Tempus Fugits fast as hell. Twelve minutes. It started to snow harder. The wind picked it up and whipped the stuff into parallel, oblique lines across the multicolored lights that lined the street. Red lights. I made like I was skidding and went through. Cars honked and I cursed back, telling them to be quiet. The gun under my arm was burning a hole in my side and my finger under the glove kept tightening up expectantly.

Fourteenth Street went by and two cabs were bumper-locked in the middle of the road. I followed a pickup truck onto the sidewalk and off again to get around them. A police whistle blew and I muttered for the cop to go to the devil and kept on my way behind the truck.

Five minutes. My teeth were making harsh, grinding noises I could feel through my jaw. I came to my street and pulled into a parking space. Another minute went by while I oriented myself and followed the numbers in the right direction. Another two minutes went by before I found it.

Three minutes. She should almost be there by now. The name on the bell read, ANTON LIPSEK, Esq., and some kid had written a word under it. The kid had my sympathy. I felt the same way myself. I pushed the bell and heard it tinkle someplace upstairs.

Nothing happened. I pushed it again and kept my finger on it. The tinkling went on and on and on and still nothing happened. I pushed one of the other bells and the door clicked open. A voice from the rear of the first floor said, “Who is it?”

“Me,” I said. “I forgot my key.”

The voice said, “Oh . . . okay,” and the door closed. Me, the magic password. Me, the sap, the sucker, the target for a killer. Me, the stupid bastard who was going around in circles while a killer watched and laughed. That was me.

I had to light a match at every door to see where I was. I found Anton’s on the top floor with another Esq. after it. There was no sound and no light, and when I tried the knob it was locked.

I was too late. I was too late all around. It was five after twelve. Velda would be inside. The door would be closed and the nuptial couch laid. Velda would know all about it the hard way.

I kicked the door so hard the lock snapped and the door flew open. I kicked it shut the same way and stood there hoping the killer would come at me out of the darkness, hoping he’d run right into the rod I held in my fist. I prayed that he’d come, listened hard hoping to hear him. All I heard was my own breathing.

My hand groped for the wall switch and found it, bathing the place with a brilliant white light. It was some place. Some joint. The furniture was nothing but wooden porch furniture and the lamps were rigged up from discarded old floodlights. The rug on the floor must have been dragged out of an ash can.

But the walls were worth a million dollars. They were hung with canvas painted by the Masters and must have been genuine, otherwise their lavish frames and engraved brass nameplates were going to waste. So Anton had money and he didn’t spend it on dames. No, it went into pictures, something with a greater permanent value than money. The inscriptions were all in French and didn’t mean a thing to me. Although the rest of the room was littered with empty glasses and cigarette butts, not a speck of dust nested on the frames or the pictures, and the brass plates had been recently polished.

Could this be Anton’s reward for wartime collaboration? Or was it his own private enterprise?

I picked some of the trash out of the way and prowled around the apartment. There was a small studio filled with the usual claptrap of a man who brings his work home with him, and adjoining, a tiny darkroom. The sinks were filled and a small red light burned over a table. That was all there was to it. I would have left, but the red light winked at me from a reflected image in a shiny bit of metal against the wall and I ran my hand over the area.

It wasn’t a wall, it was a door. It was set flush with the wall and had no knob. Only the scratch on the concealed hinge showed me where it was. Someplace a hidden latch opened it and I didn’t waste time looking for it. I braced my back against the sink and kicked out as hard as I could.

Part of the wall shook and cracked.

I kicked again and my foot went through the partition. The third time I had made a hole big enough to crawl into. It was an empty clothes closet that faced into another apartment.

Here was where Anton Lipsek lived in style. A wall had separated two worlds. There was junk lying around here, just the evidence of a recent and wild party. One side was a bar, stocked to the hilt with the best that money could buy. The rest of the room was the best that money could buy too. There were couches and tables that didn’t come from any department store and they matched the drapes and color scheme perfectly. Someone with an eye for good taste had done a magnificent job of decorating. Someone like an artist-photographer named Anton Lipsek. The only things out of place were the cheap prints that were framed in bamboo. They belonged outside with the junk. Anton was as cracked as the Liberty Bell.

Maybe.

There were other rooms, a whole lot of rooms. Apparently he had rented two apartments back to back and used the darkroom as a secret go-between. There was a hall that led into three beautiful bedrooms, each with its own shower stall and toilet. Each bedroom had ash trays filled with cigarette butts, some plain, some stained with lipstick. In one room there were three well-chewed cigar stubs squashed out in a glass coaster beside the bed.

Something was wrong. There had to be something wrong. I would have seen it if my mind wasn’t twisted and dead. The whole thing was as unnatural as it was possible to be. Why the two apartments? Why the one place crawling with dirt and decorated with a fortune in pictures and the other lavish in furnishings and nothing else?

Anton was a bachelor. Until recently he didn’t mess with women, so why all the bedrooms? He wasn’t so popular that he was overloaded with guests. I sat on the edge of the bed and shoved my hat back on my head. It was a nice bed, soft, firm and quiet. It made me want to lean back and sleep forever to wash the fatigue from my mind. I lay back and stared at the ceiling.

It was a white ceiling with faint lines crisscrossing in the calcimine. My eyes followed the lines to the wall where they disappeared into the molding. Those lines were like the tracks the killer made. They started at no place and went everywhere, disappearing just as effectively. A killer who was strong as he was vicious.

I stared at the molding some more then picked out the pictures that hung over the bed and stared at them. They were funny little pictures painted on glass, seascapes, with the water a shimmering silver. The water had tiny palms. I got up off that bed slowly and looked at the lines crisscrossing it too, reflecting the cracks in the ceiling.

My breath was hot in my throat and my eyes must have been little slits. I could feel my nails bite into my palms. The water was shiny and silver because the water part was a mirror. It made a lovely, decorative picture.

Lovely, but very practical. I tried to wrench the frames loose, but they were screwed into the wall. All I could do was swear and claw at the damn things and it didn’t do any good. I ran back through the living room, opened the door of the closet and wiggled through the hole in the wall. The splinters grasped at my coat and held me back until I smacked at them with my hand.

The pictures. Those beautiful canvases by the Old Masters. They were worth a million as they stood and they had another million dollars’ worth behind them. I grabbed the one with the two nudes playing in the forest and lifted it from the hook. It came away easily and I had what I was looking for.

On the other side a hole had been cut into the wall and I saw the little seascape in its frame on the other side. The shore line and the sky were opaque under the paint, but where the glass had been silvered you could see everything that went on in the room.

What a blackmail setup that was! One-way glass set above a bed! Oh, brother!

It took me about ten seconds to locate the camera Anton used. It was a fancy affair that would take shots without missing a single detail of expression. It had been tucked in a cabinet along with a tripod whose legs were still set at the proper level to focus the camera into the bedroom.

I threw it all on the floor and hauled out everything else that was in that cabinet. I was looking for pictures, direct evidence that would be hanging evidence. Something that would give me the big excuse when I pumped a slug into his guts.

It was simple as hell now, as simple as it could ever get. Anton Lipsek was using some of the girls to bait the big boys into the bedroom. He took pictures that set him up for life. It was the best kind of blackmail I could think of. The public could excuse anything else, but coarse infidelity, no.

Even Chester Wheeler fitted it. He was money, big money. He was in town alone and a little bit drunk. He walked into the trap, but he made one mistake that cost him his life. He recognized the girl. He recognized her as a girl that went to school with his daughter. The girl got scared and told Anton so Anton had to see to it that Wheeler died. But the girl was still scared and eloped, grabbing the first guy who was handy. She did fine until the killer caught up with her again and didn’t take any chances with her getting so scared she would talk.

Yeah, it all was so simple now. Even Marion. Anton was afraid of me. The papers had it down that I was a cop and my ticket had been lifted. If I had never shown my face around neither Jean nor Marion would have died, but it was too late to think of that now. Anton made Marion pick up the story and say she was the one who went out with Wheeler, but she gave it an innocent touch that couldn’t be tracked down. It should have stopped there.

What happened? Did Marion get too big for her pants and want a pay-off for the story she told? Sure, why not? She was in this thing. When those pictures turned up her face would be there. All she could lose would be her character and her job, but if she had something on somebody too, she didn’t stand to lose a thing. So she died. Pretty? You bet your life it was!

I started to grin and my breath came fast through my teeth. Even right back to the beginning it checked. It didn’t start from the night Wheeler died, it started a few days before, long enough to give the killer time to register in the hotel and take Wheeler at a convenient moment. I was just there by accident. I was a witness who didn’t matter because I was out cold, and if I had been anybody else but me it made the killing so much the better. Whiskey-drunk and out like alight with no memory of what happened. The cops would have tagged me and I would have tagged myself.

All the killer forgot was my habit of keeping that .45 loaded with six shots. He took back the extra slug and shell case and overlooked that one little item. If the killer had had sense enough to go through my pockets he would have found a handful of loose shells and replaced that one bullet that went into the mattress.

But it only takes one mistake to hang a guy. Just one. He made it.

The killer must have been scared witless when he found out I was a cop. He must have known I’d been looking to get my ticket back, and he must have gone even further . . . he’d want to know what I was like. He’d check old papers and court records and ask questions, then he’d know what I was like. He’d know that I didn’t give a damn for a human life any more than he did. I was just a bit different. I didn’t shoot anything but killers. I loved to shoot killers. I couldn’t think of anything I’d rather do than shoot a killer and watch his blood trace a slimy path across the floor. It was fun to kill those bastards who tried to get away with murder and did sometimes.

I started to laugh and I couldn’t stop. I pulled the Luger out and checked it again when it didn’t need it. This time I pulled the trigger off half cock and let it sit all the way back ready to nudge a copper-covered slug out of the barrel and into a killer’s face.

It was later than ever, late enough to make my blood turn cold as ice. I had to make myself stop thinking. I couldn’t look for those pictures and think too.

If ever a room got torn apart, this was it. I ripped and I smashed and I tore looking for those damn photographs and there wasn’t a damn thing to see except some unexposed plates. I pulled the room apart like Humpty Dumpty and started on the darkroom when I heard the steps outside.

They came from the hall that led into the good apartment, the one with the bedrooms. The key turned in the lock and the door opened. For one second I had a glimpse of Anton’s face, a pale

face suddenly gone stark white, then the door slammed shut and the feet pounded down the stairs.

I could have killed myself for leaving the lights on when they had been out!

My coat caught on the sink and ripped. It caught again when I crawled through the hole in the partition. I ripped it loose and felt it tear clear up to the collar. I screamed my rage and took plaster and lath with me when I burst through.

Damn that son-of-a-bitch, he was getting away! I twisted the lock and tumbled into the hall without bothering to close the door. I heard feet slamming on the stairs and the downstairs door smash shut. I started down the steps and fell. I ran and fell again and managed to reach the bottom without breaking any bones. All over my body were spots that would wait until later to hurt, raw spots that stuck to my clothes with my own blood.

My gun was in my hand when I ran out on the street and it was nothing more than a useless weight because Anton’s car was screaming up the street toward the intersection.

How important can a guy get? What does he have to do to please the fates that hamstring him_ every inch of the way? I saw the red dot of -his tail-light swing to the right as a cruising cab cut him off. I heard the grinding of metal and the shouts of the drivers and Anton Lipsek was up on the sidewalk trying to back off.

It was too far to run, too much of a chance to take. I wheeled and dashed into the alleyway that passed between the buildings and leaped for the fence at the end and pulled myself over. I climbed in my car and turned the key, felt the motor cough and catch, and I said a prayer that the snow under the wheels would hold long enough for me to get away.

The fates laughed a little and gave me a push. I pulled away from the curb and sped down the street. Just as I turned the corner Anton drove across the sidewalk and back into the street while the cab driver ran after him waving his arms and yelling at the top of his lungs. I had to lean on my horn to get him out of the way.

Anton must have heard the horn because he stepped on the gas and the big, fat sedan he was using leaped ahead like it had a rocket on it. That sedan was the same one that was used as a gun platform when I was shot at on Thirty-third Street. Rainey. I hoped he was burning in hell where he belonged. He did the shooting while Anton drove.

I was glad to see the snow now. It had driven the cars into garages and the cabs to the curbs. The streets were long funnels of white stretched out under the lights. I was catching up to him and he stepped down harder on the pedal. Red lights blinked on and were ignored. The sedan started to skid, came out of it safely and tore ahead.

Now he could get scared. Good acid scared. He could sit there behind the wheel with the spit drooling out of the corner of his mouth and wonder why he couldn’t get away. He would curse that big, fat sedan and ask it why the hell it couldn’t shake an old rattletrap like mine. Anton could curse and he’d never know about the oversized engine under my hood. I was only fifty yards away and coming closer.

The sedan tried to make a turn, yawed into a skid and slammed against the curb. It seemed to come out of it for a moment and my stomach suddenly turned sour because I knew I’d never make it if I tried too. This time the fates laughed again and gave me Anton. They gave me Anton with a terrible crash that threw the sedan into the wall of a building and left it upside down on the sidewalk like a squashed bug.

I drove my heel into the brake and did a complete circle in the street. I backed up and stopped in the middle of the road and ran to the sedan with my gun out.

I put the gun back and grunted some obscene words. Anton was dead. His neck was topped with a bloody pulp that used to be a head. All that was left were his eyes and they weren’t where they were supposed to be. The door was wrenched open and I took a quick look around, hoping to find what I was after. The only thing in the car was Anton. He was a couple of bucks’ worth of chemicals now. One of the dead eyes watched me go through his pockets. When I opened his wallet I found a sheaf of five-hundred-dollar bills and a registered mail receipt. There was a penciled notation on it that said “Sent Special Delivery” and it was dated this morning.

It was addressed to Clyde Williams.

Then it wasn’t Anton after all . . . it was Clyde. That ratty little punk was the brains. Clyde was the killer and Velda was with him now. Clyde was the brains and the killer and Velda was trying to pump a guy who knew every angle.

I was an hour and a half too late.

Time had marched on. It marched on and trampled me underfoot into the mud and slime of its passing. But I could get up and follow it. I could catch up with that lost hour and a half and make it give back what it had stolen, by God!

People were screaming at me from the windows when I jumped in my car. From down the block came the low wailing of a siren and a red eye that winked on and off. The screaming came from both directions then, so I cut down a side street and got out of their path. Somebody was sure to have grabbed my license number. Somebody was sure to relay it to the police and when they found out it was me the D.A. would eat his hat while his fat head was still in it. Suicide, he had said. He gave his own, personal opinion that Chester Wheeler had been a suicide.

Smart man, our D.A., smart as a raisin on a bun.

The sky agreed with a nod and let loose more tiny flakes of snow that felt the city out and called for reinforcements. There was still a mile to go and the snow was coming down harder than ever. My fate snickered.

Chapter Twelve

I checked the address on the mail receipt against the one on the apartment. They both read the same. The building was a yellow brick affair that towered out of sight into the snow, giving only glimpses of the floors above.

A heavy blue canvas canopy sheltered the walk that led into the lobby, guarded by a doorman in an admiral’s uniform. I sat in the car and watched him pace up and down, flapping his arms to keep him warm. He took the admiral’s hat off and pressed his hands against his cauliflowered ears to warm them and I decided not to go in the front way after all. Guys like him were too eager to earn a ready buck being tough.

When I crossed the street I walked to the next building until the snow shielded me, then cut back to the walk that took me around the rear. A flight of steps led down to a door that was half open and I knocked on it. A voice with a Swedish accent called back and an old duck with lip whiskers that reached to his ears opened the door and said “Ya?”

I grinned. The guy waited. I reached in my pocket and pulled out a tenspot. He looked at it without saying anything. I had to nudge him aside to get in and saw that the place was part of the boiler room in the basement. There was a table under the solitary bulb in the place and a box drawn up to it. I walked over to the table and turned around.

The old boy shut the door and picked up a poker about four feet long.

I said, “Come here, pop.” I laid the ten on the table.

He hefted the poker and came over. He wasn’t looking at the tenspot. “Clyde Williams. What’s his apartment number?”

Whatever I said made his fingers tighten around the poker. He didn’t answer. There wasn’t time to be persuasive. I yanked out the Luger and set it next to the ten. “Which one, pop?”

His fingers got tighter and he was getting ready to take me. First he wanted to ask a question. “Why you want him?”

“I’m going to break him in little pieces, pop. Anybody else that stops me might get it too.”

“Poot back your gun,” he said. I shoved it in the holster. “Now poot back your money.” I stuck the ten in my pocket. He dropped the poker to the floor. “He is the penthouse in. There is elevator in the back. You use that, ya? Go break him, ya?”

I threw the ten back on the table. “What’s the matter, pop?”

“I have daughter. She was good girl. Not now. That man . . .”

“Okay, pop. He won’t bother you again. Got an extra key for that place?”

“No penthouse key.” The ends of his whiskers twitched and his eyes turned a bright blue. I knew exactly how he felt.

The elevator was a small service job for the tradesmen delivering packages. I stepped in and closed the gate, then pressed the button on top marked “UP.” The cable tightened and the elevator started up, a slow, tedious process that made me bite my lip to keep from yelling for it to hurry. I tried counting the bricks as they went by, then the floors. It dragged and dragged, a mechanical object with no feeling for haste. I wanted to urge it, lift it myself, do anything to hurry it, but I was trapped in that tiny cubicle while my watch ticked off the precious seconds.

It had to stop sometime. It slowed, halted and the gate rattled open so I could get at the door. My feet wanted to run and I had to force them to stand still when I turned the handle and peered out into the corridor.

There was a stillness about the place you would expect in a tomb, a dead quiet that magnified every sound. One side of the hall was lined with plate-glass windows from ceiling to floor, overlooking a city asleep. Only the safety light over the elevator showed me the hall that stretched along this enclosed terrace to the main hall farther down. I let the door close softly and began walking. My gun was in my hand and cocked, ready to blast the first person I saw into a private hell of their own. The devil didn’t get any assistants because the hall was empty. There, around the bend, was a lobby that would have overshadowed the best room in the executive mansion, and all it was used for was a waiting room for the elevator.

On the walls were huge framed pictures, magnificent etchings, all the gimmicks of wealth. The chairs were of real leather, enough of them to seat twenty people. On the end tables beside the chairs were huge vases of fresh-cut roses that sent their fragrance through the entire room. The ash trays were sterling silver and clean. Beside each ash tray was a sterling silver lighter. The only incongruous thing was the cigar butt that lay right in the middle of the thick Oriental rug.

I stood there a moment taking it all in, seeing the blank door of the elevator that faced the lobby, seeing the ornate door of the apartment and the silver bell that adorned the opposite wall. When I stepped on the rug there was no sound of my feet except a whisper that seemed to hurry me forward until I stood in front of the door wondering whether to shoot the lock off or ring the bell.

Neither was necessary. Right on the floor close to the sill was a small gold-plated key and I said thanks to the fate that was standing behind me and picked it up. My mouth was dry as a bone, so dry that my lips couldn’t pull over my teeth when I grinned.

Velda had played it smart. I never thought she’d be so smart. She had opened the door and left the key there in case I came.

I’m here, Velda. I came too late, but I’m here now and maybe somehow I can make it all up to you. It didn’t have to be this way at all, but I’ll never tell you that. I’ll let you go on thinking that you did what was right; what you had to do. You’ll always think you sacrificed something I wanted more than anything else in the world, and I won’t get mad. I won’t get mad when I want to slap the hell out of the first person that mentions it to me, even if it’s you. I’ll make myself smile and try to forget about it. But there’s only one way I can forget about it and that’s to feel Clyde’s throat in my hand, or to have him on the end of a gun that keeps going off and off until the hammer clicks on an empty chamber. That way I’ll be able to smile and forget.

None

I turned the key in the lock and walked in. The door clicked shut behind me.

The music stole into the foyer. It was soft music, deep music with a haunting rhythm. The lights were low, deliberately so to create the proper effect. I didn’t see what the room was like; I didn’t make any attempt to be quiet: I followed the music through the rooms unaware of the splendor of the surroundings, until I saw the huge phonograph that was the source of the music and I saw Clyde bending over Velda on the couch. He was a dark shadow in a satin robe. They both were shadows there in the corner, shadows that made hoarse noises, one demanding and the other protesting. I saw the white of Velda’s leg, the white of her hand she had thrown over her face, and heard her whimper. Clyde threw out his arm to toss off the robe and I said, “Stand up, you stinking bastard!”

Clyde’s face was a mask of rage that turned to fear in the single instant he saw me.

I wasn’t too late after all. I was about one minute early.

Velda screamed a harried “Mike!” and squirmed upright on the couch. Clyde moved in slow motion, the hate . . . the unbounding hate oozing out of him. The skin of his face was drawn tight as a bowstring as he looked at her.

“Mike, you said. You know him then! It was a frame!” He spoke every word as though it was being squeezed out of him.

Velda came out of the chair and under my arm. I could feel her trembling as she sobbed against my chest. “She knows me, Dinky. So do you know me. You know what’s going to happen now?”

The red hole that had been his mouth clamped shut. I lifted Velda’s face and asked, “Did he hurt you, kid?”

She couldn’t speak. She shook her head and sobbed until it passed. When it was over she mumbled, “Oh, Mike . . . it was awful.”

“And you didn’t learn a thing, did you?”

“No.” She shuddered and fumbled with the buttons of her suit coat.

I saw her handbag on the table and pointed to it. “Did you carry that thing with you, honey?”

She knew I meant the gun and nodded. “Get it,” I said.

Velda inched away from me, loath to leave the protection of my arm. She snatched the bag and ripped it open. When she had the gun in her hand I laughed at the expression on Clyde’s face.

“I’m going to let her kill you, Dinky. I’m going to let Velda put a slug in you for what you tried and for what you’ve done to other girls.”

He stuttered something I didn’t get and his lower lip hung away from his teeth. “I know all about it, Dinky. I know why you did it and how you did it. I know everything about your pretty little blackmail setup. You and Anton using the girls to bring in the boys who counted. When the girls had them in bed Anton took the pictures and from then on you carried the ball. You know something, Dinky . . . you got a brain. You got a bigger brain than I’ve ever given you credit for.

“It just goes to show you how you can underrate people. Here I’ve been figuring you for a stooge and you’re the brain. It was clever as hell the way you killed Wheeler, all because he recognized one of the kids. Maybe he was going to have his little affair and keep quiet, but you showed up with the pictures and wanted the pay-off. He wired for five grand and handed it over, didn’t he? Then he got sore and got in touch with Jean Trotter again and told her who he was. So Jean ups and tells you, which put the end to Wheeler.”

Clyde looked at me speechlessly, his hands limp at his sides.

“That really started things. You had Wheeler planned for a kill and Wheeler grabbed my gun and tried to hand it to you. Only two things stump me. What was it you had planned for Wheeler before he reached for my rod and gave you the bright idea of suicide? And why kill Rainey? Was it because he wasn’t the faithful dog you thought he was? I have an idea on that . . . Rainey missed his first try at me on the street and you gave him the whip, hard enough so that Rainey got sore and made off with the dough he got for the photos from Emil Perry. You went out there to the arena to kill him and spotted me. You saw a nice way to drop it in my lap and promised the two witnesses a sixgun pay-off unless they saw it your way.

“Brother, did you get the breaks. Everything went your way. I bet you even have a dandy alibi rigged up for that night. Velda told me you were out until midnight . . . supposedly at a conference. It was enough time, wasn’t it?”

Clyde was staring at the gun in my hand. I held it at him level, but he was looking right down the barrel. Velda’s was aimed right at his stomach.

“What did you do with Jean, Clyde? She was supposed to have eloped. Did you stash her away in a rooming house somewhere planning to get rid of her? Did she read the papers and find out about Rainey and break loose until you ran her down and tossed her over the bridge? Did Marion Lester put the heat on you for cash when she had you over the barrel until she had to be killed too?”

“Mike . . .” he said.

“Shut up. I’m talking. I want to know a few things, Clyde. I want to know where those pictures are. Anton can’t tell me because Anton’s dead. You ought to see his head. His eyes were where his mouth was supposed to be. He didn’t have them so that puts it on you.”

Clyde threw his arms back and screamed. Every muscle of his face contorted into a tight knot and the robe fell off his shoulders to the floor. “You aren’t hanging murder on me, you shamus! I’m not going to hang for any murder, not me!”

Velda grabbed my arm and I shrugged her off. “You called it, Clyde. You won’t hang for any murder, and you know why? Because you’re going to die right here in this room. You’re going to die and when the cops come I’ll tell them what happened. I’ll tell them that you had this gun in your hand and I took it away from you and used it myself. Or I can let Velda do it and put this gun in your hand later. It came from overseas . . nobody will ever trace it to me. How do you like those apples, Clyde?”

The voice behind me said, “He don’t like ‘em, mister. Drop that gun or I’ll give it to you and the broad both.”

No, it couldn’t happen to me again. Not again. Please, God, not this time. The hard round snout of a gun pressed against my spine. I dropped the Luger. Velda’s hit the floor next to it. Clyde let out a scream of pure joy and staggered across the room to fall on it. He didn’t talk. He lifted that rod by the butt and slashed it across my jaw. I tried to grab him and the barrel caught me on the temple with a jolt that dropped me to my knees. The voice with the gun took his turn and the back of my head felt like it flew to pieces.

I don’t know how long I lay there. Time didn’t mean a thing anymore. First I was too late, then I was early, now I was too late again. I heard Clyde through the fog ordering Velda into another room. I heard him say to the guy, “Drag him in with her. It’s soundproof in there, nobody’ll hear us. I’ll fix him good for this when I get through with her. I want him to watch it. Put him in a chair and make him watch it.”

Then there were hands under my arms and my feet dragged across the floor. A door slammed and I felt the arms of a chair digging in the small of my back. Velda said, “No ... oh, God ... NO!”

Clyde said, “Take it off. All of it.” I got my eyes open. Clyde was standing there flexing his hands, his face a picture of lust unsatisfied. The other guy stood to one side of me watching Velda back away until she was against the wall. He still had the gun in his hand.

They all saw me move at the same time. My heart hammered me to my feet and I wanted to kill them both. Clyde rasped, “Shoot him if he tries anything.” He said it knowing I was going to try it anyway, and the guy brought the gun up.

There was only a single second to see it happen. Clyde and the guy had their eyes off Velda just long enough. Her hand went inside her suit jacket and came out with a little hammerless automatic that barked a deadly bark and the guy with the gun grabbed his stomach and tried to swear.

The pain in my head wouldn’t let me stand. I tried to reach her and fell, seeing Clyde grab her arm and wrestle for the rod even as I was dragging myself toward the snubnosed revolver that was still clutched in the other guy’s hand.

Velda screamed, “Mike . . . get him! Mike!” She was bent double trying to hold on to the gun. Clyde gave a wrench and she tumbled to the floor, her jacket ripping wide open. Velda screamed again and the gun clattered across the floor. Clyde wouldn’t have had time to get it before I reached the other one and he knew it. He swore obscenely and ran for the door and slammed it shut after him. A bolt clicked in the lock and furniture was rammed into it to block the way. Then another door jarred shut and Clyde was gone.

Velda had my head in her lap rocking me gently. “Mike, you fool, are you all right? Mike, speak to me.”

“I’m okay, kid. I’ll be fine in a minute.” She touched the cuts on my face, healing them with a kiss. Tears streamed down her cheeks. I forced a grin and she held me tighter. “Shrewdie, a regular shrewdie, aren’t you?” I fingered the straps of the miniature shoulder holster she was wearing under the ruins of her jacket. “You’ll do as a partner. Who’d ever think a girl would be wearing a shoulder rig?”

She grinned back and helped me to my feet. I swayed and held on to the chair for support. Velda tried the door, rattling the knob with all her strength. “Mike . . . it’s locked! We’re locked in.”

“Damn it!”

The guy on the floor coughed once and twitched. Blood spilled out of his mouth and he gave one final, convulsive jerk. I said, “You can put a notch on your gun, Velda.”

I thought she was going to get sick, but that animal look screwed her face into a snarl. “I wish I had killed them both. Mike, what are we going to do? We can’t get out.”

“We have to, Velda. Clyde . . : “

“Did he . . . is he the one?”

My head hurt. My brain was a soggy mass that revolted against thought. “He’s the one. Try that door again.” I finally picked the gun up off the floor and stood with it in my hand. It was almost too heavy to hold.

“Mike . . . that night that Rainey was killed . . . Clyde was at a conference. I heard them talking about it in the Bowery Inn. He was there.”

My stomach heaved. The blood was pounding in my ears. I put the gun to the lock and pulled the trigger. The crack of it sent it spinning out of my hand. The lock still didn’t give. Velda repeated, “Mike . . .”

“I heard you, goddam it! I don’t care what you saw or what anybody said. It was Clyde, can’t you see that? It was Clyde and Anton. They had the pictures and . . . “

I stopped and stared at the door. “The pictures . . . Clyde’s gone after those pictures. If he gets them he’ll have the protection he needs and he’ll get out of this sure as grass grows in the springtime!”

I found the gun and leveled it at the lock, pulling the trigger until the room reeked with fumes of burned powder. Damn his soul! Those pictures . . . they weren’t in Anton’s apartment and they weren’t here . . . the outside door had slammed shut too fast to give him time to pick anything up on the way. That left only one other place, the agency office.

Thinking about it gave me the strength I needed to bash it with my shoulder until it budged. Velda pushed with me and the furniture on the other side moved. We leaned against the dead weight, harder, working until the cords stood out in our necks. Something toppled from the pile and the door moved back far enough to let us out.

There was utter silence.

I threw the revolver on a chair and picked the Luger off the floor and stuffed it under my arm. I waved my thumb to the phone. “Call Pat. Try until you get him and if you can’t, call the D.A.’s office. That’ll get action quick enough. Make them put out a call for Clyde and we might be able to stop him in time.” I half-ran, half-stumbled to the door and held it open. Velda shouted something after me that I didn’t hear and I scrambled out to the lobby. The elevator pointer was the bottom floor, the basement. But the service car was still in place. It took its own, agonizing time about going down and I stopped it at the main hall and ran out the front. The admiral gave me a queer look, tried to grab me and got a fist in the mouth. He lost me in the snow before he could get up, but I could hear him yelling as I got in my car. I was two blocks away from the apartment building when the first squad car shot by. I was five blocks farther on when I remembered that Connie had gone up to the office that night.

I got that funny feeling back in my stomach again and jammed my foot down on the throttle and weaved across town so I could intersect Thirty-third Street without wasting a minute.

When I came to the cemetery of buildings I slowed down and parked. A light was on behind the entrance doors and an old fellow sat under it reading a paper. He was just checking his turnip watch when I pulled the door open. He shook his head and waved for me to go away.

I kicked the door so hard it shook violently. The old guy threw his paper down and turned the lock. “It’s too late. You can’t go in. We closed up half-hour ago. Not even late visitors. Go on, scram.”

He didn’t get a chance to close it on me. I rammed it with the heel of my hand and stepped inside. “Anybody been here in the last few minutes?”

His head jerked nervously. “Ain’t been nobody here for over an hour. Look, you can’t come in, so why don’t you . . .”

Clyde hadn’t shown up. Hell, he had to come here! He should be here! “Is there another way in this place?”

“Yes, the back way. That’s locked up tight. Nobody can get in that way unless I unbolt it. Look, mister . . .”

“Oh, keep quiet. Call the cops if you want to.”

“I don’t understand . . . what you after?”

I let him have the nastiest look I could work up. “A killer. A guy with a gun.”

He swallowed hard. “Nobody’s been in . . . you’re kidding, ain’t you?”

“Yeah, I’m kidding so hard it hurts. You know who I am, Mac? My name is Mike Hammer. The cops want me. The killer wants me. Everybody wants my skin and I’m still walking around loose. Now answer my question, who was in here tonight?”

This time he gulped audibly. “Some . . . a guy from the first . . . floor. He came back and worked. A few people from the insurance came in. Some others were with Roy Carmichael when he came in. They got some likker out of the office and left. I saw some others standing around the register later. Maybe if you looked there . . . “

“Sure, he wrote his name down. Take me upstairs, pop. I want to get in the Anton Lipsek Agency.”

“Oh, say now. Young girl went in there while back. Nice kid. Sure I let her in there. Don’t remember seeing her come back. Must’ve been making my rounds.”

“Take me upstairs.”

“You better use the self-service elevator . . .”

I shoved him in one of the main cars and he dropped his time clock. He glared at me once and shut the door. We got out and walked down the hall to the office and my gun was in my hand. This time there wouldn’t be anybody coming up behind me.

The light was on and the doors were open, wide open. I went in running with my gun waist-high and covered the room. The watchman was wheezing in the doorway, bug-eyed with fright. I combed the rooms until the place was lit up like it was a working day. There were dressing rooms and minor offices, closets for supplies and closets for clothes. There were three neat darkrooms and one not so neat. I found the room I was looking for branching off a layout studio.

I found it and I opened the door and stood there with my mouth open to let me breathe up all the insane hatred that was stored up in my chest.

Connie was lying in the middle of the room with her eyes wide open. Her back had been bent to form a “V” and she was dead.

The room was ceiling-high with storage cabinets, covered with dust that revealed its infrequent use. The drawer of one of those cabinets gaped wide open and a whole section of folders had been removed.

I was too late again.

The watchman had to hold on to me to keep from fainting. He worked his mouth, trying to keep his eyes from the body. He made slobbering noises and shouted his fear and he held on tighter. He was still holding my arm when I kneeled down to look at Connie.

No marks, just that look of incredible pain on her face. The whole thing had been done with one swift, clean stroke. I opened her fingers gently and lifted out the piece of shipping tag she had clutched so tightly. The part that was left said, “To attach magnifier to screen . . .” the rest had been torn off. In the dust of the floor was the outline of where a crate had stood. Another fine line in the dust showed where the same crate had been tipped on end and dragged out in the hall. There were no marks after that and no crate either.

I left the door open and went back to the foyer, the little watchman blubbering behind me. After I tried a half-dozen combinations in the switchboard I got an outside wire. I said, “Give me the police.” The watchman sat down and trembled while I told the desk man at the precinct station where to look for a body. When I hung up I steered the little guy back to the elevator and made him run me down to the basement.

It was just what I had expected. The door that was supposed to have been bolted so tightly to keep people out was swinging wide where a killer had gotten out.

The watchman didn’t want to be left alone, and begged me not to go. I shoved him away and walked up the stairs and around the building.

I knew where the killer was hiding now.

Chapter Thirteen

The snow that had tried so hard to block me wasn’t something to be fought any longer. I leaned back against the cushions of the car in complete relaxation and had the first enjoyable cigarette I’d had in a long time. I sucked the smoke down deep into my lungs and let it go reluctantly. Even the smoke looked pretty as it drifted out the window into the night.

Everything was so white, covering up so much filth. Nature doing its best to hide its own. I drove slowly, carefully, staying in the tracks of the cars ahead. When I turned on the radio I heard my name mentioned on the police broadcast band and turned the dial until I had some late music.

When I reached my destination I backed in between two cars and even went to the trouble of locking the door like any good citizen would who expects to go home and to bed for the rest of the night. There were a few lights on in the apartment building, but whether they came from the one I wanted or not, I couldn’t tell.

I took one last drag on the butt and flipped it into the gutter. It lay there a moment fizzling before it went out. I walked in the lobby and held my finger on the buzzer until the door clicked, then I walked in.

Why hurry? Time had lost its value. My feet took each step carefully, one after the other, bringing me to the top. I walked straight down the hall to the door that stood open and said, “Hello, Juno.”

I didn’t wait for her answer. I brushed right past her and walked inside. I walked through the room and pulled chairs from their corners. I walked into the bedroom and opened the closet doors. I walked into the bathroom and ripped the shower curtain down. I walked into the kitchen and poked around the pantry.

My hands were ready to grab and my feet were ready to kick and my gun was ready to shoot. But nobody was there. The fires began in my feet and licked up my body until they were eating into my brain. Every pain that had been ignored up to this moment gave birth to greater pains that were like teeth gripping my flesh apart. I held the edge of the door and spun around to face her with all that pain and hatred laid bare on my face.

My voice was a deadly hiss. “Where is he, Juno?”

The hurt that spoke to me from her eyes was eloquent. She stood there in a long-sleeved gown, her hands clutching her throat as my madness reached her. “Mike . . .” that was all she could say. Her breasts rose under the gown as her breath caught.

“Where is he, Juno?” I had the Luger in my hand now. My thumb found the hammer and dragged it back.

Her lips, her beautiful lips, quivered and she took a step away from me. One step then another until she was standing in the living room. “You’re hiding him, Juno. He came here. It was the only place the crazy bastard could come. Where is he?”

Ever so slowly she closed her eyes, shaking her head. “Oh, please, please, Mike. What have they done to you! Mike . . .”

“I found Connie, Juno. She was in the storeroom. She was dead. I found the files gone. Clyde might have had just enough time to get in and tear those files out after he killed Connie. I found something else, the same thing she found. It was part of a shipping ticket for a television set. That was the set you were supposed to deliver to Jean Trotter, but you knew she wasn’t going to need that so you had it stacked in the storeroom until you could get rid of it. You were the only one who knew it was there . . . until tonight. Did Clyde find it and take it away so you wouldn’t get tied into this?”

Her eyes opened wide, eyes that said it wasn’t true, not any part of it. I didn’t believe them. “Where is he, Juno?” I grabbed the gun up until it pointed at a spot midway between those laughing, youthful breasts under the gown.

“Nobody is here, Mike. You saw that. Please . . .”

“Seven people are dead, Juno. Seven people. In this whole crazy scheme of things you have a part. It’s a beautiful scheme though, hand-tailored to come apart whenever you try to get a look at it. Don’t play games with me, Juno. I know why they were killed and how they were killed. It was trying to guess who killed them that had me going in circles. Your little blackmail cycle would have remained intact. Just one of those seven would have died if I hadn’t been in the room with Wheeler that night. Who knew that I’d do my damndest to break it open?”

She watched me, her hands still at her throat. She shook her head and said, “No, Mike, no!” and her knees trembled so she fought to keep her balance. It was too much. Juno reached out her hand to steady herself, holding the back of a chair. Slowly, gracefully even now, she sat down on the edge of it, her lower lip between her teeth.

I nodded yes, Juno, yes. The gun in my hand was steady. The hatred I had inside me bubbled over into my mouth and spilled out. “I thought it was Anton at first. Then I found a mail receipt to Clyde. Anton had sent him some pictures. The Bowery Inn was a great place to draw the girls. It was designed specifically for that. It got the girls and with them the suckers.

“Who led the girls there in the first place, Juno? Who made it a fad to hang out down there where Clyde could win at his gambling tables and insure his business with photos that gave him the best coverage in the world? Did you do that, Juno? Did Clyde have a crush on you at one time and figure a good way of being able to stay in business? Was it Clyde who saw the possibilities of getting blackmail evidence on the big shots? Or was it you? It wasn’t Anton, for sure. That goon had rocks in his head. But he co-operated, though, didn’t he? He co-operated because he saw a way to purchase all those expensive paintings he had in his place.”

Her eyes were dull things, all the life gone from them. She sat with her head down and sobbed, one hand covering her face.

I spit the words out. “That’s the way it was, all right. It worked fine for a while. Clyde had his protection and he was using it for all he was worth. But you, Juno . . . you wanted to go on with it. It wasn’t so hard to do because money is easy to like. You were the brains of the outfit . . . the thinking brains. Clyde was the strong-arm boy and he had his little army to help him out.”

I stopped and let it sink in. I waited a full minute. “Juno . . .”

She raised her head slowly. Her eyes were red, the mascara streaking her cheeks. “Mike . . can’t you . . .”

“Who killed them all, Juno? Where is he?”

Her hands dropped to her lap, folded across her stomach in despair. I raised the gun. “Juno.” Only her eyes looked at me. “I’m going to shoot you, Juno, then I’m going to go out and get him all by myself. I’m going to shoot you where it will hurt like hell and you won’t die quickly . . . if you don’t tell me. All you have to do is tell me where I can find him and I’ll give him the chance to use his hands on me like he tried to do before and like he did to some of the others. Where is he, Juno?”

She didn’t speak.

I was going to kill her, so help me God. If I didn’t she could fake her way out because I was the only one who knew what had happened. There wasn’t a single shred of evidence against her that could be used in court and I knew it. But I could kill her. She had a part in this! The whole thing was her doing and she was as guilty as the killer!

The gun in my hand wavered and I clamped down on the butt to keep it lined up. It was in my face, I could feel it. She could see it. The poison that is hate was dripping out of me and scoring my face. My eyes burned holes in my head and my whole body reeled under the sickening force that pulled me toward her.

I pointed the gun at her head and sighted along the barrel and said, “My God, I can’t!” because the light was in her hair turning it into a halo of white that brought the dead back to life and I was seeing Charlotte’s face instead of hers.

I went crazy for a second. Stark, raving mad. My head was a throbbing thing that laughed and screamed for me to go on, bringing the sounds out of my mouth before I could stop it. When the madness went away I was panting like a dog, my breath coming in short, hot gasps.

“I thought I could do it. I thought I could kill you, Juno. I can’t. Once there was another woman. You remind me of her. You’ve seen me when I was hating something . . . I was hating her. I loved her and I killed her. I shot her in the stomach. Yeah, Juno . . . I didn’t think it would be this much trouble to kill another woman but it is.

“So you don’t die tonight. I’ll take you down to the police and do what I said. Go on, sit there and smile. You’ll get out of it, but I’m going to do everything I can to see that you don’t.”

I stuck the gun back under my arm and reached for her hand. “Come on, Juno. I have a friend on the force who will be happy to book you on my word, even if it means his job.”

She came up out of the chair.

Then all hell broke loose. She grabbed my arm and a fist smashed into my nose and I staggered back. There wasn’t time to get my hands up before I crashed into the wall, stunned. A devil had me by the throat and a knee came up into my groin. I screamed and doubled over, breaking the grip on my neck. Something gave me the sense to lash out with my feet and the next second she was on top of me clawing for my eyes.

I jerked my head away feeling the skin go with it and brought my fist up and saw it split her nose apart. The blood ran into her mouth and choked off a yell. She tried to get away, fought, kicked and squirmed to get away, but I held on and hammered until she rolled off me.

She didn’t stay off. The room echoed with a torrent of animal noises and my arm was wrenched back in a hammerlock that pulled me completely off my feet. A knee went into my spine and pushed, trying to split me in half. My madness saved me. It flowed into my veins giving me the strength for a tremendous, final effort that hurled me out of her arms and tumbled her in front of me. She came back for another try and I leaped in to meet her and got my hands on her clothes to jam her in close.

But she twisted away and there was a loud whispering tear of cloth and the gown came away in my hands. Juno went staggering across the room stark naked except for the high-heel shoes and sheer stockings. She rammed an end table, her hands reaching for the drawer, and she got it open far enough for me to see the gun she was trying to get at.

I had mine out first and I said harshly, “Stand still, Juno.”

She froze there, not a muscle in that beautiful body moving. I looked at all that white bare skin, seeing it in contrast with the shoes and the stockings. Her hands were still on the drawer and inches away from the gun. She didn’t have to be told that it couldn’t be done.

I let her stand in that position, that ridiculous, obscene position while I lifted the phone off its hook. I had to be sure of just one thing. I went through Information and gave her an address, and I heard Clyde’s phone ring. It took a little persuasion to get the cop off the line and Velda on it. I asked her one question and she answered it. She said Clyde was down in the basement out cold. The janitor had gotten him with a poker for some reason or other when he tried to get out. Clyde had never been near the office! She was still asking questions when I hung up.

It was all over now. I had found out why, I had found out how, now I knew who. The dead could go back to being dead forever.

I said, “Turn around, Juno.”

No dancer of ballet could have been more poised. Juno balanced delicately on tiptoe and stared at me, the devils of the pit alive in her eyes. The evil of murder was a force so powerful that I could feel it across the room. Juno, queen of the goddesses, standing naked before me, her skin glistening in the light.

Tomorrow I’d get my license back from the D.A. with a note of apology attached. Tomorrow Ed Cooper would have his scoop. Tomorrow would be tomorrow and tonight was tonight. I looked across Olympus and stared at Juno.

“I should have known, Juno. It occurred to me every time you rolled those big beautiful eyes at me. I knew it every time you suggested one of your little love games, then got scared because you knew you didn’t dare go through with it. Damn it, I knew it all along and it was too incredible to believe. Me, a guy what likes women, a guy who knows every one of their stunts . . . and I fall for this. Yeah, you and Clyde had a business arrangement all right. You had a lot more than that too. Who kept who, Juno? Are you the reason why Velda went over so big with Clyde? God, what an ass I was! I should have caught it the day you hauled me into that Village joint for dinner. There was a Lesbian who followed you into the ladies’ room. I bet she could have kicked herself when she found out you were no better than she was. It was a part that fitted you to perfection. You played it so well that only the ones who didn’t dare talk knew about it. Well, Juno, I know about it. Me. Mike Hammer, I know all about it and I’ll talk. I’ll tell them you killed Chester Wheeler because he got mad enough to try to expose the girl who framed him, and you killed Rainey because he tried to clip you out of some dirty dough, and Jean Trotter died for knowing the truth, and Marion Lester for the same reason. You couldn’t have anybody knowing a truth that could be held over your head. Then Connie died because she discovered the truth when she found that television set in the storeroom and knew you never delivered it because Jean Trotter was no more married than you were. Yeah, I’m going to talk my fool head off, you slimy bastard, but first I’m going to do something else.”

I dropped the Luger to the floor.

It was too impossible for her to comprehend and she missed her chance. I had the Luger back in my hand before she could snatch the gun out of the drawer. I forgot all my reservations about shooting a woman then. I laughed through the blood on my lips and brought the Luger up as Juno swung around with eyes blazing a hatred I’ll never see again. The rod was jumping in my hand, spitting nasty little slugs that flattened the killer against the wall with periods that turned into commas as the blood welled out of the holes. Juno lived until the last shot had ripped through flesh and intestines and kicked the plaster from the wall, then died with those rich, red lips split in a snarl of pain and fearful knowledge.

She lived just long enough to hear me tell her that she was the only one it could have been, the only one who had the time. The only one who had the ability to make her identity a bewildering impossibility. She was the only one who could have taken that first shot at me on Broadway because she tailed me from the minute I left her house. She was the one all the way around because the reasons fit her perfectly as well as Clyde and Clyde didn’t kill anybody. And tomorrow that was tomorrow would prove it when certain people had their minds jarred by a picture of what she really looked like, with her short hair combed back and parted on the side.

Juno died hearing all that and I laughed again as I dragged myself over to the lifeless lump, past all the foam rubber gadgets that had come off with the gown, the inevitable falsies she kept covered so well along with nice solid muscles by dresses that went to her neck and down to her wrists. It was funny. Very funny. Funnier than I ever thought it could be. Maybe you’d laugh, too. I spit on the clay that was Juno, queen of the gods and goddesses, and I knew why I’d always had a resentment that was actually a revulsion when I looked at her.

Juno was a queen, all right, a real, live queen. You know the kind.

Juno was a man!