“You’d be surprised how fast a person decides he really isn’t sick after all,” she said.
“What about the women patients?”
“They get sicker.” Her mouth pursed in a repressed laugh. “What are you thinking?”
I walked over to the desk and pulled up the straight-backed chair. “Why a dish like you takes a job like this.”
“If you must know, fame and fortune.” She pulled out a file case and began to thumb through the cards.
“Try it again,” I said.
She looked up quickly. “Truly interested?”
I nodded.
“I studied to be a nurse right after high school. I graduated, and quite unfortunately, won a beauty contest before I could start practicing. A week later I was in Hollywood sitting on my .... sitting around posing for stills and nothing more. Six months later I was car-hopping at a drive-in diner and it took me another year to get wise. So I came home and became a nurse.”
“So you were a lousy actress?”
She smiled and shook her head.
“It couldn’t have been that you didn’t have a figure after all?”
Her cheeks sucked in poutingly and her eyes looked up at me with a you-should-know-better expression. “Funny enough,” she said, “I wasn’t photogenic. Imagine that?”
“No, I can’t.”
She sat up with three typewritten cards in her hand. “Thank you, Mr. Hammer.” Her voice was a song of some hidden forest bird that made you stop whatever you were doing to listen. She laid the cards out in front of her, the smile fading away. “I believe this is what you came for. Now can I see your insurance credentials, and if you have your forms I’ll ...”
“I’m not an insurance investigator.”
She gave me a quizzical look and automatically gathered the cards together. “Oh ... I’m sorry. You know, of course, that this information is always confidential and ...”
“The girl is dead. She was murdered.”
She went to say something and stopped short. Then: “Police ?”
I nodded and hoped she didn’t say anything more.
“I see.” Her teeth pinched her lower lip and she looked sideways at the door to her left. “If I remember I believe the doctor had another policeman in to see him not long ago.”
“That’s right. I’m following up on the case. I’d like to go over everything personally instead of from reports. If you’d rather wait for the doctor ...”
“Oh, no, I think it will be all right. Shall I read these off to you?”
“Shoot.”
“To be brief, she was in an extremely nervous condition. Overwork, apparently. She was hysterical here in the office and the doctor had to administer a sedative. Complete rest was the answer and the doctor arranged for her to be admitted to the sanitarium.” Her eyebrows pulled together slightly. “Frankly, I can’t possibly see what there is here to interest the police. There was no physical disorder except symptoms brought on by her mental condition.”
“Could I see the cards?”
“Certainly.” She handed them to me and leaned forward on the desk, thought better of it when my head turned, smiled and sat back again.
I didn’t bother with the card she had read from. The first gave the patient’s name, address, previous medical history and down at the bottom along the left side was the notation RECOMMENDED BY and next to it was the name William Wieton. The other card gave the diagnosis, suggested treatment and corroboration from the sanitarium that the diagnosis was correct.
I looked at the cards again, made a face at the complete lack of information they gave me, then handed them back.
“They help any?”
“Oh, you can never tell.”
“Would you still like to see the doctor?”
“Not specially. Maybe I’ll be back.”
Something happened to her face. “Please do.”
She didn’t get up this time. I walked to the door, looked back and she was sitting there with her chin in her hands watching me. “You ought to give Hollywood another try,” I said.
“I meet more interesting people here,” she told me. Then added, “Though it’s hard to tell on such short acquaintance.”
I winked, she winked back and I went out on the street.
Broadway had bloomed again. It was there in all its color-ful glory, stretching wide-open arms to the sucker, crying out with a voice that was never still. I walked toward the lights trying to think, trying to put bits together and add pieces where the holes were.
I found a delicatessen, went in and had a sandwich. I came out and headed up Broadway, making the stops as I came to them. Two hours went by in a hurry and nothing had happened. No, I didn’t stay on the Stem because nobody would be looking for me on the Stem. Later maybe, but not now.
So I got off the Stem and went east where the people talked different and dressed different and were my kind of people. They didn’t have dough and they didn’t have flash, but behind their eyes was the knowledge of the city and the way it thought and ran. They were people who were afraid of the monster that grew up around them and showed it, yet they couldn’t help liking it.
I made my stops and worked my way down to the Twenties.
I had caught the looks, seen the nods and heard the whispers.
At any time now I could have picked the boys out of a line-up by sight from the descriptions that came to me in an undertone.
In one place something else was added. There were others to watch for too.
Two-thirty and I had missed them by ten minutes. The next half hour and they seemed to have lost themselves.
I got back to the Stem before all of the joints started closing down. The cabbie dropped me on a corner and I started the rounds on foot. In two places they were glad to see me and in the third the bartender who had pushed a lot of them my way tried to shut the door in my face, mumbling excuses that he was through for the night. I wedged it open, shoved him back inside and leaned against it until it clicked shut.
“The boys were here, Andy?”
“Mike, I don’t like this.”
“I don’t either. When?”
“About an hour ago.”
“You know them?”
His head bobbed and he glanced past me out the side window. “They were pointed out to me.”
“Sober?”
“Two drinks. They barely touched ’em.” I waited while he looked past me again. “The little guy was nervous. Edgy. He wanted a drink but the other one squashed it.”
Andy ran his hands down under his fat waistband to keep them still. “Mike ... nobody’s to say a word to you. This is rough stuff. Do you ... well, sort of stay clear of here until things blow over.”
“Nothing’s blowing over, friend. I want you to pass it around where it’ll get heard. Tell the boys to stay put. I’ll find them. They don’t have to go looking for me any more.”
“Jeepers, Mike.”
“Tell it where it’ll get heard.”
My fingers found the door and pulled it open. The street outside was empty and a cop was standing on the corner. A squad car went by and he saluted it. Two drunks turned the corner behind his back and mimicked him with thumbs to their noses.
I turned my key in the lock. I knew the chain should be on so I opened the door a couple of inches and said, “It’s me, Lily.”
There was no sound at first, then only that of a deeply drawn breath being let out slowly. The light from the corner lamp was on, giving the room an empty appearance. She drifted into it silently and the glow from her hair seemed to brighten it a little.
Something was tight and strange in the smile she gave me through the opening in the door. Strange, faraway, curious. Something I couldn’t put my finger on. It was there, then it was gone and she had the door unhooked and I stepped inside.
It was my turn to haul in my breath. She stood there almost breathlessly, looking up at me. “Her mouth was partly open and I could see her tongue working behind her
teeth. For some reason her eyes seemed to float there, two separate dark wells that could knead your flesh until it crawled.
Then she smiled, and the light that gilded her hair made shadows across the flat of her stomach and I could see the lush contours harden with an eager anticipation that was like her first expression ... there, then suddenly gone like a frightened bird.
I said, “You didn’t have to wait up.”
“I ... couldn’t sleep.”
“Anybody call?”
“Two. I didn’t answer.” Her fingers felt for the buttons on the robe, satisfied themselves that they were all there from her chin down to her knees, an unconscious gesture that must have been a habit. “Someone was here.” The thought of it widened her eyes.
“Who?”
“They knocked. They tried the door.” Her voice was almost a whisper. I could see the tremor in her chin and from someplace in the past I could feel the hate pounding into my head and my fingers wanted to squeeze something bad.
Her eyes drifted away from mine slowly. “How scared can a person get, Mike?” she asked. “How ... scared?”
I reached out for her, took her face in my hands and tilted it up. Her eyes were warm and misty and her mouth a hungry animal that wanted to bite or be bitten, a questioning thing waiting to be tasted and I wanted to tell her she never had to be scared again. Not ever.
But I couldn’t because my own mouth was too close and she pulled away with a short, frenzied jerk that had a touch of horror in it and she was out of reach.
It didn’t last long. She smiled and I remembered her telling me I was a nice guy and nice guys have to be careful even when the lady has been around. Especially a lady who has just stepped out of the tub to open the door for you and had nothing to put on but a very sheer silk robe and you know what happens when those things get wet. The smile deepened and sparkled at me, then she drifted to the bedroom and the door closed.
I heard her moving around in there, heard her get into the bed, then I sat down in the chair facing the window and turned out the light. I switched the radio on to a late station, sitting there, seeing nothing at all, my mind miles away up in the mountains. I was coming around a curve and then there was that Viking girl standing there waving at me. She was in the beams of the lights, the tires shrieking to a stop, and she got closer and closer until there was no hope of stopping the car at all. She let out one final scream that had all the terror in the world in it and I could feel the sweat running down the back of my neck. Even when she was dead under the wheels the screaming didn’t stop, then my eyes came open and my ears heard again and I picked up the phone and her cry stopped entirely.
I said a short hello into it, said it again and then a voice, a nice gentle voice asked me if this was Mike Hammer.
“That’s right,” I said. “Who’s this?”
“It really doesn’t matter, Mr. Hammer. I merely wanted to call your attention to the fact that as you go out today please notice the new car in front of your building. It belongs to you. The papers are on the seat and all you have to do is sign them and transfer your plates.”
It was a long foul smell that seeped right through the receiver. “What’s the rest of it, friend?”
The voice, the nice gentle voice, stopped purring and took on an insidious growl. “The rest of it is that we’re sorry about your other car. Very sorry. It was too bad, but since things happened as they did, other things must change.”
“Finish it.”
“You can have the car, Mr. Hammer. I suggest that if you take it you use it to go on a long vacation. Say about three or four months?”
“If I don’t?”
“Then leave it where it is. We’ll see that it is returned to the buyer.”
I laughed into the phone. I made it a mean, low kind of laugh that didn’t need any words to go with it. I said. “Buddy ... I’ll take the car, but I won’t take the vacation. Someday I’ll take you too.” “However you wish.”
I said. “That’s the way it always is,” but I was talking to a dead phone. The guy had hung up.
They were at me from both ends now. The boys walking around the Stem on a commission basis. One eye out for me, the other for the cops that Pat would have scouting. Now they were being generous.
Like Lily had said, how scared could a person get? They didn’t like the way it was going at all. I sat there grinning at the darkness outside thinking about the big boys whose faces nobody knew. Maybe if I had boiled over like the old days they would have had me. The waiting they didn’t go for.
I shook a Lucky out of the pack and lit it up. I smoked it down to the end, put it out, then went in and flopped down on the bed. The alarm was set for eight, too early even at that hour, but I set it back to seven and knew I’d be hating myself for it.
The heap was a beauty. It was a maroon Ford convertible with a black top and sat there gleaming in the early morning sunlight like a dew drop. Bob Gellie walked around it once, grinning into the chrome and came back and stood by me on the sidewalk.
“Some job, Mike. Got twin pipes in back.” He wiped his hands on his cover-alls and waited to see what came next.
“She’s gimmicked. Bob. Think you can reach it?”
“Come again?” He stared at me curiously.
“The job is a gift ... from somebody who doesn’t like me. They’re hoping I step into it. Then goes the big boom. They’re probably even smart enough to figure I’d put a mechanic on the job to find the gimmick so it’ll be well hidden. Go ahead and dig it out.”
He wiped the back of his hands across his mouth and shoved the hat back further on his head. “Best thing to do is run it in the river for a couple of hours.”
“Hop to it, Bob, I need transportation.”
“Look, for a hundred I can do a lot of things, but...”
“So I’ll double it. Find the gimmick.”
The two C’s got him. For that many pieces of paper he could take his chances with a gallon of soup. He wiped his mouth clean again and nodded. The sun wasn’t up over the apartments yet and it was still cool, but it didn’t do much for the beads of sweat that started to shape up along Bob’s forehead. I went down to a restaurant, filled up with breakfast, spent an hour looking in store windows and came back.
Bob was sitting behind the wheel looking thoughtful, the hood in front of him raised up like a kid with his thumb to his nose. He got out when he saw me, lit a cigarette and pointed to the engine. “She’s hot, Mike. A real conversion.”
I could see what he meant. The heads were finned aluminum jobs flanking dual carburetors and the headers that came off the manifold poked back in a graceful sweep.
“Wonder what she’s like inside?”
“Probably complete. Think your old heap could take this baby?”
“I haven’t even driven this one yet. Find the stuff?”
His mouth tightened and he looked around him once, fast. “Yeah. Six sticks wired to the ignition.”
“It stinks.”
“That’s what I thought too,” he told me. “Couldn’t find a thing anyplace else though. Checked the whole assembly inside and out and if there’s more of it the guy who placed it sure knew his business.”
“He does, Bob. He’s an expert at it.”
I stood there while he finished his butt. He walked around the hood, got down under the car and poked around there, then came back and looked at the engine again.
Then his face changed, went back a half dozen years into the past, got tight, relaxed into a puzzled grin, then he looked at me and snorted. “Bet I got it, Mike.”
“How much?”
“Another hundred?”
“You’re on.”
“I remember a booby trap they set on a Heinie general’s car once. A real cutie.” He grinned again. “Missed the general but got his driver a couple of days later.”
He slid into the car, bent down under the dash and worked at something with his screwdriver. He got out looking satisfied, shoved his tools u
nder the car and crawled in with them. The job took another twenty minutes and when he came out he was moving slowly, balancing something in his hand. It looked like a section of pipe cut lengthwise and from one end protruded a detonation cap.
“There she is,” he said. “Nice, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Rigged to the speedometer. A few hundred miles from now a contact would have been made and you’d be dust. Had the thing wrapped around the top section of the muffler. What’ll I do with it?”
“Drop it in the river, Bob. Keep the deal to yourself. Drop up to my place tonight and I’ll write you a check.”
He looked at the thing in his hand, shuddered and held it even tighter. “Er ... if it doesn’t mean anything to you, Mike ... I’d like to have the dough now.”
“I’m good for it. What’re you worried ...”
“I know, I know, but if anybody’s after you this bad you might not live to tonight. Understand?”
I understood. I went up and wrote him out a check, gave him an extra buck for the cab fare to the river and got in the car. It wasn’t a bad buy at all for three C’s. And one buck. Then I started it up, felt good when I heard the low, throaty growl that poured out of the twin pipes and eased the shift into gear for the short haul north.
Pat had been wrong about Carl Evello being in the city. In one week he had gone through two addresses and the last was the best. Carl Evello lived in Yonkers, a very exclusive section of Yonkers.
At first the place seemed modest, then you noticed the meticulous care somebody gave the garden, and saw the Cadillac convertible and new Buick sedan that made love together in a garage that would have looked well as a wing on the Taj Mahal. The house must have gone to twenty rooms at the least and nothing was left out.
I rolled up the hard-topped driveway and stopped. From someplace behind the house I could hear the pleasant laughter of women and the faint strains of a radio. A man laughed and another joined him.
I cut the engine and climbed out, trying to decide whether I should crash the party or go through the regular channels. I started around the car when I heard tires turn into the driveway and while I stood there a light-green Merc drove up behind me, honked a short note of hello, revved up fast and stopped.
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