“So do I.” Juno turned her head and a pleased smile flashed at me for a second and disappeared. The devils in her eyes laughed their pleasure too and she walked to her desk.
That was when the gray light from the window seeped into the softness of her hair and turned it a gold that made my heart beat against my chest until I thought it would come loose.
There was a bad taste in my mouth.
My guts were all knotted up in a ball and that damnable music began in my head. Now I knew what that creepy feeling was that left my spine tingling. Now I knew what it was about Juno that made me want to reach out and grab her.
She reminded me of another girl.
A girl that happened a long time ago.
A girl I thought I had put out of my mind and forgotten completely in a wild hatred that could never be equaled. She was a blonde, a very yellow, golden blonde. She was dead and I made her that way. I killed her because I wanted to and she wouldn’t stay dead.
I looked down at my hands and they were shaking violently, the fingers stiffened into talons that showed every vein and tendon.
“Mike ...?” The voice was different. It was Juno and now that I knew what it was I could stop shaking. The gold was out of her hair.
She brought her coat over to me to hold while she slipped into it. There was a little piece of mink fur on her hat that matched the coat. “We are going to lunch, aren’t we?”
“I’m not here on business.”
She laughed again and leaned against me as she worked the gloves over her fingers. “What were you thinking of a minute ago, Mike?”
I didn’t let her see my face. “Nothing.”
“You aren’t telling the truth.”
“I know it.”
Juno looked at me over her shoulder. There was a pleading in her eyes. “It wasn’t me ... something I did?”
I forced a lopsided smile. “Nothing you did, Juno. I just happened to think of something I shouldn’t have.”
“I’m glad, Mike. You were hating something then and I wouldn’t want you to hate me.” She reached for my hand almost girlishly and pulled me to the door at the side of the room. “I don’t want to share you with the whole office force, Mike.”
We came out around the corner of the corridor and I punched the bell for the elevator. While we waited she squeezed my arm under hers, knowing that I couldn’t help watching her. Juno, a goddess in a fur coat. She was an improvement on the original.
And in that brief second I looked at her the light filtered through her hair again and reflected the sheen of gold. My whole head rocked with the fire and pain in my chest and I felt Charlotte’s name trying to force itself past my lips. Good God! Is this what it’s like to think back? Is this what happened when you remember a woman you loved then blasted into hell? I ripped my eyes away and slammed my finger against the buzzer on the wall, holding it there, staring at it until I heard metal scraping behind the doors.
The elevator stopped and the operator gave her a princely nod and a subdued murmur of greeting. The two other men in the car looked at Juno, then back to me jealously. She seemed to affect everyone the same way.
The street had taken on a slippery carpet of white that rippled under the wind. I turned up my coat collar against it and peered down the road for a cab. Juno said, “No cab, Mike. My car’s around the corner.” She fished in her pocket and brought out a gold chain that ran through two keys. “Here, you drive.”
We ducked our heads and went around the block with the wind whipping at our legs. The car she pointed out was a new Caddy convertible with all the trimmings that I thought only existed in show windows. I held the door open while she got in, slammed it shut and ran around the other side. Stuff like this was really living.
The engine was a cat’s purr under the hood wanting to pull away from the curb in a roar of power. “Call it, Juno. Where to?”
“There’s a little place downtown that I discovered a few months ago. They have the best steaks in the world if you can keep your mind on them. The most curious people in the world seem to eat there ... almost fascinatmg people.”
“Fascinating?”
Her laugh was low, alive with humor. “That isn’t a good word. They’re ... well, they’re most unusual. Really, rve never seen anything like it. But the food is good. Oh, you’ll see. Drive down Broadway and I’ll show you how to go.”
I nodded and headed toward the Stem with the windshield wipers going like metronomes. The snow was a pain, but it thinned out traffic somewhat and it was only a matter of minutes before we were downtown. Juno leaned forward in the seat, peering ahead at the street corners. I slowed down so she could see where we were and she tipped her finger again the glass.
“Next block, Mike. It’s a little place right off the corner.”
I grinned at her. “What are we doing ... slumming? Or is it one of those Village hangouts that have gone uptown?”
“Definitely not uptown. The food is superb.” Her eyes flashed just once as we pulled into the curb. I grinned back and she said, “You act all-knowing, Mike. Have you been here before?”
“Once. It used to be a fag joint and the food was good then too. No wonder you saw so many fascinating people.”
“Mike!”
“You ought to get around a little more, woman. You’ve been living too high in the clouds too long. If anybody sees me going in this joint I’m going to get whistled at. That is ... if they let me in.”
She passed me a puzzled frown at that. “They tossed me out one time,” I explained. “At least they started to toss me out. The reinforcements called for reinforcements and it wound up with me walking out on my own anyway. I had my hair pulled. Nice people.”
Juno bit her lip trying to hold back a laugh. “And here I’ve been telling all my friends where to go to find wonderful steaks! Come to think of it a couple of them were rather put out when I mentioned it to them a second time.”
“Hell, they probably enjoyed themselves. Come on, let’s see how the third side lives.”
She shook the snow out of her hair and let me open the door for her. We had to go through the bar to the hat-check booth and I had a quick look at the gang lined up on the stools. Maybe ten eyes met mine in the mirror and tried to hang on but I wasn’t having any. There was a pansy down at the end of the bar trying to make a guy who was too drunk to notice and was about to give it up as a bad job. I got a smile from the guy and he came close to getting knocked on his neck. The bartender was one of them too, and he looked put out because I came in with a dame.
The girl at the hat-check booth looked like she was trying hard to grow a mustache and wasn’t having much luck at it. She gave me a frosty glare but smiled at Juno and took her time about looking her over. When the babe went to hang up the coats Juno looked back at me with a little red showing in her face and I laughed at her.
“Now you know, huh?” I said.
Her hand covered the laugh. “Oh, Mike, I feel so very foolish! And I thought they were just being friendly.”
“Oh, very friendly. To you, that is. I hope you noticed the cold treatment I got and I usually get along with any kind of dame.”
The dining room was a long, narrow room with booths along the sides and a few tables running down the middle. Nobody was at the tables, but over half the booths were filled if you can call two people of the same sex sitting along the same side filled. A waiter with a lisp and hair that curled around his neck came over and curtsied then led us to the last booth back.
I ordered a round of cocktails to come in front of the steaks and the waiter gave me another curtsy that damn near had a kiss in it. Juno opened a jeweled cigarette case and lifted out a king size. “I think he likes you, Mike,” she said. “Smoke?”
I shook my head and worked the next to last one out of my crumpled pack. Outside at the bar somebody stuck a nickel in the jukebox and managed to hit a record that didn’t try to take your ears off. It was something sweet and low-down with a throaty sax carryi
ng the melody, the kind of music that made you want to listen instead of talk. When the cocktails came we picked them up together. “Propose a toast, Mike.”
Her eyes shone at me over the glass. “To beauty,” I said, “To Olympus. To a goddess that walks with the mortals.”
“With very ... wonderful mortals,” Juno added.
We drained the glasses.
There were other cocktails and other toasts after that. The steaks came and were the best in the world like she said. There was that period when you feel full and contented and can sit back with a cigarette curling sweet smoke and look at the world and be glad you’re part of it.
“Thinking, Mike?”
“Yeah, thinking how nice it is to be alive. You shouldn’t have taken me here, pretty lady. It’s getting my mind off my work.”
Her face knitted in a frown. “Are you still looking for a reason for your friend’s death?”
“Uh-huh. I checked on that Marion babe, by the way. She was the one. Everything was so darned aboveboard it knocked the props out from under me. I was afraid it would happen like that. Still trying, though, still in there trying.”
“Trying?”
“Hell yes. I don’t want to wind up a grocery clerk.” She didn’t get what I meant. My grin split into a smile and that into a laugh. I had no right to feel so happy, but way back in my head I knew that the sun would come up one day and show me the answer.
“What brought that on? Or are you laughing at me?”
“Not you, Juno. I couldn’t laugh at you.” She stuck out her tongue at me. “I was laughing at the way life works out. It gets pretty complicated sometimes, then all of a sudden it’s as simple as hell, if hell can be simple. Like the potbellies with all the bare-backed babes in the Bowery. You know something ... I didn’t think I’d find you there.”
She shrugged her shoulders gracefully. “Why not? A great many of your ‘potbellies’ are wonderful business contacts.”
“I understand you’re tops in the line.”
I could see that pleased her. She nodded thoughtfully. “Not without reason, Mike. It has meant a good deal of exacting work both in and out of the office. We only handle work for the better houses and use the best in the selection of models. Anton, you know, is comparatively unknown as a person, simply because he refuses to take credit for his photography, but his work is far above any of the others. I think you’ve seen the interest he takes in his job.”
“I would too,” I said.
Her tongue came out again. “You would, too. I bet nothing would get photographed.”
“I bet a lot would get accomplished.”
“In that case you’d be running headlong into our code of ethics.”
“Nuts. Pity the poor photographer. He does all the work and the potbellies have all the fun.” I dragged on my cigarette and squinted my eyes. “You know, Clyde has a pretty business for himself.”
My casual reference to the guy brought her eyebrows up. “Do you know him?”
“Sure, from way back. Ask him to tell you about me someday.”
“I don’t know him that well, myself. But if I ever get the chance I will. He’s the perfect underworld type, don’t you think?”
“Right out of the movies. When did he start running that place?”
Juno tapped her cheek with a delicate forefinger. “Oh ... about six months ago, I think. I remember him stopping in the office to buy photographs in wholesale lots. He had the girls sign all the pictures and invited them to his opening. It was all very secret of course. I didn’t get to go myself until I heard the girls raving about the place. He did the same thing with most of the agencies in town.”
“He’s got a brain, that boy,” I drawled. “It’s nice to have your picture on the wall. He played the girls for slobs and they never knew it. He knew damn well that a lot of them traveled with the moneybags and would pull them into his joint. When word got around that there was open gambling to boot, business got better and better. Now he gets the tourists too. They think it’s all very smart and exciting ... the kind who go around hoping for a raid so they can cut their pictures out of the papers and send them home to the folks for laughs.”
She stared at me, frowning.
“I wonder who he pays off?” I mused.
“Who?”
“Clyde. Somebody is taking the long green to keep the place going. Clyde’s shelling out plenty to somebody with a lot of influence, otherwise he would have had the cops down his throat on opening night.”
Juno said impatiently. “Oh, Mike, those tactics went out with the Prohibition era ...” then her voice got curious. “Or didn’t they?”
I looked across the table at this woman who wore her beauty so proudly and arrogantly. “You’ve only seen the best side of things so far, kid. Plenty goes on you wouldn’t want to look at.”
She tossed her head. “It seems incredible that those things still happen, Mike.”
I started to slap my fist against my palm gently. “Incredible, but it’s happening,” I said. “I wonder what would happen if I shafted my old buddy Dinky Williams?” My mouth twisted into a grin. “Maybe it’s an angle. Maybe....” I let my sentence trail off and stared at the wall.
Juno signaled the waiter and he came back with another round of cocktails. I checked my watch and found myself in the middle of the afternoon. “We’ll make these our last, oke?”
She leaned her chin on her hands, smiling. “I hate to have you leave me.”
“It’s not a cinch for me, either.” She was still smiling and I said, “I asked another beautiful girl who could have had ten other guys why she picked me to hold hands with. She gave me a good answer. What’s yours, Juno?”
Her eyes were a fathomless depth that tried to draw me down into them. Her mouth was still curved in a smile that went softer and softer until only a trace of it was left. Full, lovely lips that barely had to move to form the words. “I detest people who pamper me. I detest people who insist upon putting me on a pedestal. I think I like to be treated rough and you’re the only one who has tried it.”
“I haven’t tried anything.”
“No. But you’ve been thinking of it. Sometimes you don’t even speak politely.”
She was a mind reader like all good goddesses should be and she was right. Quite right. I didn’t know what the hell was going on in my head, but sometimes when I looked at her I wanted to reach across the table and smack her right in the teeth. Even when I thought of it I could feel the tendons in the back of my hand start twitching. Maybe a goddess was just too damn much for me. Maybe I’d been used to my own particular kind of guttersnipe too long. I kicked the idea out of my mind and unlocked the stare we were holding on each other.
“Let’s go home,” I said. “There’s still some day and a long night ahead of me.”
She was wanting me to ask her to continue this day and not break it off now, but I didn’t let myself think it. Juno pushed back her chair and stood up. “The nose. First I must powder the nose, Mike.” I watched her walk away from me, watched the swing of her hips and the delicate way she seemed to balance on her toes. I wasn’t the only one watching, either. A kid who had artist written all over her in splotches of paint was leaning against the partition of the booth behind me. Her eyes were hard and hot and followed Juno every step of the way. She was another one of those mannish things that breed in the half-light of the so-called aesthetical world. I got a look that told me I was in for competition and she took off after Juno. She came back in a minute and her face was pulled tight in a scowl and I gave her a nasty laugh. Some women, yes. Others, nix.
My nose got powdered first and I waited by the door for her after throwing a good week’s pay to the cashier.
The snow that had slacked off started again in earnest. A steady stream of early traffic poured out of the business section, heading home before the stuff got too deep. Juno had snow tires on the heap so I wasn’t worried about getting caught, but it took us twice the time to get back
uptown as it did to come down.
Juno decided against going back to the office and told me to go along Riverside Drive. At the most fashionable of the cross streets I turned off and went as far as the middle of the block. She indicated a new gray stone building that stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the others, boasting a doorman in a maroon uniform and topcoat. She leaned back and sighed, “We’re home.”
“Leave the car here?”
“Won’t you need it to get where you’re going?”
“I couldn’t afford to put gas in this buggy. No, I’ll take a cab.”
I got out and opened the door. The maroon uniform walked over and tipped his hat. Juno said, “Have the car taken to the garage for me please?”
He took the keys. “Certainly, Miss Reeves.”
She turned to me with a grin. The snow swirling around her clung to the fur of her collar and hat, framing her face with a sprinkling of white. “Come up for a drink?” I hesitated, “Just one, Mike, then I’ll let you go.”
“Okay, baby, just one and don’t try to make it any more.”
Juno didn’t have a penthouse, but it was far enough up to make a good Olympus. There was no garishness about the place, big as it was. The furnishings and the fixtures were matched in the best of taste, designed for complete, comfortable living.
I kept my coat and hat on while she whipped up a cocktail, my eyes watching the lithe grace of her movements. There was an unusual symmetry to her body that made me want to touch and feel. Our eyes met in the mirror over the sofa and there was the same thing in hers as there must have been in mine.
She spun around with an eloquent gesture and held out the glasses. Her voice was low and husky again. “I’m just a breeze past thirty, Mike. I’ve known many men. I’ve had many men too, but none that I really wanted. One day soon I’m going to want you.”
My spine chilled up suddenly and the crazy music let loose in my head because she had the light in her hair again. The stem of the glass broke off in my fingers, tearing into my palm. The back of my neck got hot and I felt the sweat pop out on my forehead.
I moved so the light would be out of her hair and the gold would be gone from it, covering up the insane hatred of memory by lifting my hand to drink from the bowl of the broken glass.
[Mike Hammer 03] - Vengeance Is Mine Page 8