by the Jury I
“This is Mike Hammer again,” I said. “I’m expecting a friend and I told him to call your office, so when he does tell him where I went, will you?”
“Oh, that won’t be necessary,” she replied. “He already has. I told him you’d be in the park. Did you miss him?”
“No, he’ll be along,” I lied.
So, somebody is on my tail, I told myself as I hung up. Good old George. Followed me, lost me, but figured I’d see Charlotte, very clever.
I made another drink, then stretched out on the sofa. He must have tailed me and I never got wise. I couldn’t figure how he knew I’d see Charlotte unless it was written all over me. They say love is like that. But what a way to get put on the spot. He picked the time and place nicely. If I hadn’t ducked, Kalecki would have scored a bull’s-eye. He did his shooting at point-blank range. What the hell, Kalecki knew the score. If the cops picked him up in the dragnet it would be a miracle. I’ll bet he had plenty of places he could hole up in if the time came. George was a smart apple. I wasn’t worried about the police flushing him any more. Mr. Kalecki was reserved—for me. Pat was going to be awfully sore.
Charlotte was out and dressed in record time. Neither of us spoke about what had happened, but each knew that it was foremost in the other’s mind. She made herself a drink, then sat down beside me. “How did you know I was coming today?”
She gave me a bright smile. “Mike, darling, I’ve been expecting you ever since I saw you. Or am I doing it wrong?”
“Not as far as I’m concerned.”
“But you told me that you like to do the chasing.”
“Not with you. Time is too damned important.”
When she settled in my arms I told her about the call to her office. She didn’t like it a bit. “You’re not trying to be very careful, Mike. If it is Kalecki, he is smart. Please, Mike, watch yourself. If anything happens to you, I’ll ...”
“You’ll what?”
“Oh, Mike, can’t you see that I love you?”
I stroked her golden hair and blew in her ear. “Yes, silly, I can see it. It must be sticking out all over me the same way.”
“Yes,” she said, “it is.” We both grinned at each other. I felt like a school kid. “Now, let’s get back to business before I rush off to the office,” she went on. “You came to see me for something besides just being nice. What was it?”
It was my turn to be amazed. “Now, how the hell did you know that?” I demanded.
Charlotte patted my hand. “How many times do I have to remind you that I am a practicing psychiatrist? It doesn’t mean that I can read minds, but I can study people, observe their behavior and determine what lies underneath. Especially,” here she gave a coy smile, “when you really take an interest in a person.”
“You win.” I blew a couple of smoke rings and continued. “What I want is everything you know about Hal Kines.”
She came back to earth abruptly at the mention of his name. “That’s what I thought after you spoke about what happened. Well, you know that he was in a medical school. Pre-med to be exact. From what you said, he was there ostensibly to procure women for this vice syndicate. Isn’t that an unusual way of doing it?”
“No. Not when you know people,” I said. “In order to have a good hold on the girls they have to break them away from their homes, then get them trapped in the mill. I imagine they have some sort of evidence concerning their activities that they hold over their heads. So what can the girls do? They’ve been betrayed, kicked out of their homes, no one to turn to, but the door is open to the old profession. At least they can eat and have a roof over their heads—and make plenty of cash. Then once they’re in they can’t get out even if they wanted to. It takes time, but it’s big business and pays off. Using a method like this, Hal could get the girl he wanted without running too much of a personal risk.”
“I see.” She mulled over what I had said a moment, then gave me the rest. “Anyway, I gave a lecture at the school by invitation of the board and, after examining the records and work of the student body specializing in psychiatry, chose several students to study my clinical methods. Hal Kines was one of them. He was an excellent worker, knew what he was doing every minute. He was far in advance of the others.
“At first I credited it to natural ability and a medical home background, but now I can see that it was simply the result of so much training in the field. After sixteen years of being exposed to teaching you are bound to pick up something.”
“I guess so,” I cut in. “How about his outside contacts?”
“He lived at an apartment hotel three blocks from me while he was here. During the time he was at school he lived in a dorm, I suppose. On weekends he would visit the clinic and stay with Mr. Kalecki. Hal never spoke much about outside matters, he was so wrapped up in his work. He was in a scrape one day and Jack Williams helped him out.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I know all about that from Hal himself. What about his personal side? Did he ever make a pass at you?”
“No. Never attempted one. Do you think he might have been, er, after me to join his syndicate?”
“Why, that dirty ...” I stopped there when I saw her laughingly silently at me. “I doubt that. You were too smart to get caught in that kind of web. I think he was with you either to have an excuse to stay in the city, or really study psychiatry to help him in his work.”
“Did it ever occur to you that he might have been here to kill Jack?”
That idea wasn’t a new one to me. I’d been playing with it all day. “Could have been. I thought it over. Maybe he was here because Jack had already caught on and was making him stay. Jack was soft-hearted, but not when it came to a thing like that. Not being in the department any longer, he couldn’t put the screws on him officially, but held something over his head to make him stay.”
“Then who killed Jack-Hal?”
“That,” I said, “is something I’d give both legs and one arm to know. Just so long as I had one arm to shoot with. And that’s something I’m going to find out before long.”
“And what about Hal and this girl, Eileen?”
“The killer got them both. The way I see it, Hal Kines went there to kill the girl, but before he got the chance the killer knocked them both off.”
“But if that was the case, how would Jack have known he would be there to kill her?”
“You’ve got something there, Charlotte. Maybe Jack knew he’d be there for some reason. Think so?”
“Perhaps. Either that or he knew the killer would be there, too. But until then the killer hadn’t killed, so he had another purpose in the visit. Sounds sort of scrambled, doesn’t it?”
“You’re not kidding,” I laughed. “But as the plot thickens it thins out, too. Whatever the motive, it takes in a lot of people. Three of them are dead, one is running around the city taking pot-shots at me, and the killer is someplace sitting back quietly giving all of us the horse laugh. What the hell, let him laugh. He won’t be doing it much longer. There’s too many people working on this case and they’ll uncover something. Murder is a hard thing to hide. Pat is setting a fast pace in this race. He wants the trigger-happy son as badly as I do, but I’ll be damned if he’s going to get him. From now on I’m going to get out in front of Pat and stay there. Let him stick close to my heels; when the time comes for me to put a bullet in the killer’s gut I’m going to be alone. Just me, the rat and a single bullet It’ll go in neat, right in the soft part of the belly. One steel-jacketed slug that will be as effective as ten dumdums.”
Charlotte was listening intently, her eyes wide. She was making a typical study of me as though she were hearing the story of a confessed murderer and trying to analyze the workings of the mind. I cut in short and gave her a friendly push. “Now you think I’m off my nut, I bet.”
“No, Mike, not at all. Have you been like that just since the war? So hard, I mean.”
“I’ve always been like that,” I said, “as long as I could remembe
r. I hate rats that kill for the fun of it. The war only taught me a few tricks I hadn’t learned before. Maybe that’s why I lived through it.”
I checked my watch; it was getting late. “If you want to keep your appointment, you’d better hurry.”
Charlotte nodded. “Drive me back to the office?”
“Sure. Get your coat.”
We drove back slowly, timing it so that we’d have as much time together as possible. We made small talk, mentioning neither the case nor the near affair in the apartment. When we reached Park Avenue, and turned off to stop, Charlotte said, “When will I see you again, Mike?”
“Soon,” I answered. “If the joker that called today to see where I went tries it again, have your secretary tell him that I’m meeting you on this corner. Then try to get hold of me and maybe we can ambush the lug. It was Kalecki, all right; your secretary will probably recognize his voice when she hears it again.”
“Okay, Mike. What if Mr. Chambers calls on me?”
“In that case, verify the story of the shooting, but forget about the phone call. If we can trap him, I want it to be my own party.”
She leaned in and kissed me again before she left. As she walked away I watched the flashing sleekness of her legs disappear around the corner. She was a wonderful woman. And all mine. I felt like I should let out a loud whoop and do a jig.
A car honked behind me, so I threw the car into gear and pulled away from the curb. I was stopped for a red light two blocks away when I heard my name yelled from across the street. The cars alongside me obscured the person, but I could see a brown-suited figure dancing between them trying to get to my jalopy. I opened the door and he got in. “Hello, Bobo,” I said. “What are you doing up this way?”
Bobo was all excited over meeting me. “Golly, Mike. Sure is nice seeing you. I work up here. No place special, just all the places.” Words bubbled out of him like out of a water faucet. “Where are you going?”
“Well, I was going downtown, but maybe I can drive you someplace. Where are you going?”
Bobo scratched his head. “Lessee. Guess I can go downtown first. Gotta deliver a letter around Canal Street.”
“Swell, I’ll drop you off there.”
The light turned and I swung on to Broadway and turned left. Bobo would wave at the girls on the street, but I knew how he felt. “Hear anything more about Kalecki?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Naw. Something’s happened to him. I saw one of the guys today and he ain’t working for him no more.”
“How about Big Sam’s place? No news from there?”
“Nope. Anyway, since you beat up the two jigs nobody will talk to me. They’re scared I might get you after ’em.” Bobo let out a gleeful chuckle. “They think I’m a tough guy, too. My landlady heard about it and told me to stay away from you. Isn’t that funny, Mike?”
I had about as many friends as a porcupine up that way. “Yeah,” I said. “How’s the bee situation?”
“Oh, good, good, good. Got me a queen bee. Hey. That wasn’t true what you said. A queen bee don’t need a king bee. It said so in the book.”
“Then how are you going to get more bees?” That puzzled him.
“Guess they lay eggs, or something,” he muttered.
Canal Street lay straight ahead, so I let Bobo out when I stopped for the red light. He gave me a breezy “so long” and took off down the street at a half trot. He was a good kid. Another harmless character. Nice, though.
CHAPTER TEN
Pat was waiting for me on the firing range. A uniformed patrolman took me to the basement and pointed him out. Pat was cursing over a bad score when I tapped him on the shoulder.
“Having trouble, bub?” I grinned at him.
“Nuts. I think I need a new barrel in this gun.” He took another shot at the moving target, a figure of a man, and got it high up on the shoulder.
“What’s the matter with that, Pat?”
“Hell, that would just knock him over.” Pat was a perfectionist. He caught me laughing at him and handed me the gun. “Here, you try it.”
“Not with that.” I pulled the .45 out and kicked the slide back. The target popped up and moved across the range. The gun bucked in my hand. I let three go one after the other. Pat stopped the target and looked at the three holes in the figure’s head.
“Not bad.” I felt like pasting him.
“Why don’t you tell me I’m an expert?” I said. “That’s shooting where it counts.”
“Phooey. You’ve just been working at it.” I shoved the rod under my coat and Pat pocketed his. He pointed toward the elevator.
“Let’s go up. I want to check that slug. Got it with you?” I took the .45 out and unwrapped it, then handed it over. Pat studied it in the elevator, but markings weren’t defined clearly enough to be certain of anything. A bullet hitting a stone wall has a lot less shape left than one that has passed through a body.
The ballistics room was empty save for ourselves. Pat mounted the slug inside a complicated slide gadget and I turned the lights out. There was a screen in front of us, and on it was focused an image of two bullets. One was from the killer’s gun, the other was the slug Kalecki fired at me. My souvenir still had some lines from the bore of the gun that came out under magnification.
Pat turned the bullet around on its mount, trying to find markings that would match with the other. He thought he did once, but when he transposed the images one on top of the other there was quite a difference. After he had revolved the slug several times he flicked the machine off and turned on the lights. “No good, Mike. It isn’t the same gun. If Kalecki did the other shooting, he used another gun.”
“That isn’t likely. If he kept it after the first killing he’d hang on to it.”
Pat agreed and rang for one of his men. He handed the bullet over to him and told him to photograph it and place it in the files. We sat down together and I gave him the full details of the shooting and my views on the Kines kill. He didn’t say much. Pat is one of those cops who keep facts in their heads. He stores them away without forgetting an item, letting them fume until they come to the surface by themselves.
It constantly amazed me that there were men like him on the force. But then, when you get past the uniforms and into the inner workings of the organization you find the real thinkers. They have all the equipment in the world to work with and plenty of inside contacts. The papers rag the cops too much, I thought, but in the pinch they called the game. Not much went on that they didn’t know about. There was vice. As much as in any outfit, but there were still men like Pat that no money could buy. I would have been one myself if there weren’t so damn many rules and regulations to tie a guy down.
When I finished, Pat stretched and said, “Nothing I can add to it for you. Wish I could. You’ve been a great help, Mike. Now tell me one thing. You gave me facts, this time give me an opinion. Who do you think did it?”
“That, chum, is the sixty-four-dollar question,” I countered. “If I had any definite idea, you’d have a justified homicide on your hands. I’m beginning to think of someone outside of those we know. Hell, man, look at the corpses we have floating around. And Kalecki on the loose with a rod. Maybe he did it. He has reason to. Maybe it’s the guy behind him again. It could fit in with this syndicate that runs the houses of prostitution. Or the numbers racket George worked. Jack could have found out about that, too. Maybe it was a revenge kill. Hal fouled up enough women in his life. Suppose one of them found out how he did it and made a play for him. When she saw that Jack was going to arrest him she killed Jack, then killed Hal, shooting Eileen to keep her from spouting off what she had seen.
“Maybe it wasn’t a girl like that. Could be the brother or father of one. Or a boy friend for that matter. There’s lots of angles.”
“I thought of that, Mike. For my money, it’s the most plausible idea I’ve had.” Pat stood up. “I want you to come upstairs with me. We have a friend of yours there that you might like to
see.”
A friend? I couldn’t begin to guess whom he was talking about. When I queried him about it he smiled and told me to be patient. He led me into a small room. Two detectives were there with a woman. Both of them fired questions at her, but received no answers. She sat with her back to the door and I didn’t recognize her until I stood in front of her.
Friend, hell. She was the madam that ran out the night Hal and Eileen were killed.
“Where did you pick her up, Pat?”
“Not far from here. She was wandering on the streets at four A.M. and the patrolman picked her up on suspicion.”
I turned to the madam. Her eyes were vacant from the long hours of questioning. She held her arms across her ample breasts in a defiant attitude, though I could see that she was near the breaking point.“Remember me?” I asked her.
She stared at me through sleep-filled eyes a moment, then said dejectedly, “Yes, I remember.”
“How did you get out of that house when it was raided?”
“Go to hell.”
Pat drew up a chair in front of her and sat backwards on it. He saw what I was driving at right away. “If you refuse to tell us,” Pat said quietly, “you’re liable to find yourself facing a charge for murder. And we can make it stick.”
She dropped her arms at that one and licked her lips. This time she was scared. Then her fear passed and she sneered. “You go to hell, too. I didn’t kill them.”
“Perhaps not,” Pat answered, “but the real killer left the same way you did. How do we know you didn’t show him the way? That makes you an accessory and you might just as well have pulled the trigger.”
“You’re crazy!” Gone was the composure she had the first time I met her. She didn’t look respectable any more. By now her hair had a scraggly appearance and the texture of her skin showed through in the light. White, porous skin. She bared her teeth and swallowed. “I-I was alone.”
“The charge will still stick.”
Her hands fell into her lap and shook noticeably. “No. I was alone. I was at the door when the police came up. I knew what it was. I ran for the exit and left.”