Her hair was a chestnut brown like the irises of her eyes. She must have had some sun lately or spent time under a lamp, for there was a faint tinge of tan covering what I could see of her skin. There was nothing startling about her shape. Average. Not very heavy in the breasts, but her legs were nice. I felt sorry for the girl.
“Hello.” Her voice was pleasant enough. She sat there as though she was getting ready to go out and I was a husband casually looking for a cuff link. “Early, aren’t you?”
“Sort of, but I was getting tired of hanging around a bar.” I got in a quick look around the room, then went to an end table and ran through a set of books. My fingers felt under the table edge before I inspected the walls. I was looking for wires. These places have been rigged for sound more than once and I didn’t want to get snared in a trap. The bed was next. I got down on my hands and knees and looked under it. No wires.
Mary had been watching me curiously. “If it’s a dictaphone you’re searching for, we haven’t any,” she said. “And the walls are soundproofed besides.” She stood up in front of me. “Want a drink first?”
“No.”
“Afterwards, then.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t come here for that.”
“Well, for goodness’ sake, what did you come for, to make small talk?”
“You hit it, Eileen.” I thought she’d pass out. At first she got deathly white, then her eyes hardened and her lips tightened. I could see that this wasn’t going to be so easy.
“What’s the gag, mister? Who are you?”
“The monicker is Mike Hammer, kid. I’m a private eye.
She knew who I was all right. She tightened up all over when she heard my name. A traceless fear crept into her body. “So you’re a shamus. What does that have to do with me? If my father sent you ...”
I cut her short. “Your father didn’t send me. Nobody did. A pal of mine got killed a short time ago. His name was Jack Williams.” Her hand flew to her mouth. For a second I thought she’d scream. But she didn’t. She sat down on the edge of the bed, and a tear trickled down her cheek leaving a streak in the make-up.
“No. I—I didn’t know.”
“Don’t you read the papers?” She shook her head. “Among his things I found your name. He’d seen you just before, hadn’t he?”
“Yes. Please, am I under arrest?”
“No. I don’t want to arrest anybody. I just want to shoot somebody. The killer.” The tears were coming freely now. She tried to wipe them away but they came too fast.
It was hard to understand. Here was a dame I had tagged as being as hard as they come, yet she thought enough of Jack to cry when I told her he was dead. And she hated her father, apparently. Well, that was a woman. There was still that much left in her.
“Not Jack. He was so nice. I—I really tried to keep this from him, but he found out. He even got me a job before, but I couldn’t keep it.” Mary rolled over on her face and buried her head in the pillow. She was sobbing hard now.
I sat down next to her. “Crying won’t help. What I want are a few answers. Come on, sit up and listen.” I raised her by the shoulders. “Jack wanted to have this place raided tonight, but the message never reached the police. He was killed before he could do anything about it. What’s going on tonight?”
Mary straightened up. Her tears were gone now and she was thinking. I had to let her take her time. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “Jack had no cause to do anything. Places like this flourish in the city and they don’t have to pay off to anyone.”
“Maybe there’s more to it than you think,” I added. “Just who is expected tonight?”
She continued, “The show. Lots of people come to see it. You know the kind. Usually there’s a convention in town and prospective buyers are brought here for a little fun. I never see any important people. The kind that are in the public eye, I mean. Just fairly prosperous people.”
I knew the kind. Fat greasy people from out of town. Slick city boys who played the angles and were willing to shell out the dough. Rich jokers of both sexes who liked smut and filth and didn’t care where they got it. A pack of queers who enjoyed exotic, sadistic sex. Nasty people. Clerks who scraped their nickels to go and then bragged on the street corners.
I tried a different approach. “How did you get in this, Mary?”
“Nuts. It’s a long story, but I wouldn’t tell you.”
“Listen. I’m not trying to pry into your life. I want you to talk about this, the whole thing. Something you say may have no meaning to you, but may throw some light on the whole affair. I’m convinced that whatever you are connected with has a contributing factor to Jack’s death. I could do it differently. I could slap it out of you. I could wreck this whole setup if I felt like it. But I’m not going to; it would take too long. It’s up to you.”
“All right. If you think it would help. I wouldn’t do it if it weren’t for him. In all my life he was one of the very few square guys I ever met. He gave me plenty of breaks, trying to help me, but I failed him, every time. Generally I start bawling when I tell this, but too much water has gone under the bridge to make it upset me any more.”
I sat back and dragged out a cigarette and offered her one. She took it and we lit up. I leaned back on the bed and waited.
“It started in college. I went to the Midwest to become a teacher. It was a co-ed school, and in due time I met a fellow. His name was John Hanson. Tall and good-looking. We intended to get married. One night we parked after a football game and you know what happened. Three months later I had to leave school. John didn’t want to get married yet, so he took me to a doctor. When the operation was over I was shaky and nervous. We set up an apartment, John and I, and for a while lived as man and wife without benefit of clergy.
“How my folks got wind of it, I don’t know. Those things happen. I got a letter from my father completely disowning me. That same night John didn’t come home. I waited and waited, then called the school. He had dropped from the curriculum. Disappeared. My month was nearly up in the apartment and I didn’t know what to do.
“Now the unpleasant part. I started to receive visitors. Male visitors. What they offered was the only way I could make any money. That kept on for a few weeks before the landlord found out and kicked me out of the place. No, I didn’t walk the streets. A car came and got me and I was driven to a rooming house.
“It wasn’t like this. It was dirty and dingy. The madam was an old hag with a mean temper and liked to throw things at us. The first thing she did was to tell me that she had a record of my activities that she would hand over to the police if I didn’t cooperate. What could I do?
“Then one night I had a talk with my roommate. She was a character. Tough as an apple and she knew how to sell herself. I told her all that had happened to me and she laughed like a fiend. The same damned thing had happened to her. But here’s the hitch. I described John. He was the guy that put her in the spot, too. She flew off the handle when she heard that. Both of us looked all over for him, but that was the last time I saw him.
“I was part of a big outfit. We were shipped around wherever we were needed. I wound up here quite awhile ago and that’s that. Any questions?”
The same old story. I felt sorry for her even if she didn’t feel sorry for herself. “How long ago were you in college?” I asked.
“That was twelve years ago.”
“Umm.” As far as I could see there wasn’t a thing to be gained. I reached in my wallet and pulled out a five spot and a card. “Here’s where you can locate me if you dig up anything else. And here’s a fin for yourself. I have some heavy thinking to do so I’m going to blow.”
She looked at me amazed. “You mean ... you don’t want anything else?”
“No. But thanks anyway. Keep your eyes open.”
“I will.”
I found a different way out and hit the downstairs hall from a rickety flight of st
eps that was half hidden behind a flowered set of drapes. The woman in charge was sitting in the waiting room reading. She put down the book long enough to say, “Leaving already? I thought you wanted to spend the night.”
As I picked up my hat, I said, “I did, but I guess I’m not as young as I used to be.” She didn’t bother to get up to let me out.
Back in the car I started up and ran it closer to the house. I wanted to see who might be coming. Jack had a good reason for wanting that place raided or he wouldn’t have mentioned it in his book. A show. A show with convenient chambers for the indiscreet later on. A place that quack doctors like to see well packed so they could work their own racket on suckers that got caught up with V.D. Inwardly, I said a silent thanks to Uncle Sam for showing me those posters and films.
I sat back against the cushions and waited for something to happen. Just what, I couldn’t say. So far there was no rhyme or reason to anything. It was too jumpy. Jack’s death. The people he was connected with. His book of notes and this. The only thing there was in common was an undertone. The deep tone that spelled hate and violence, a current of fear that seemed to fit in whenever I looked. I could feel it, yet see nothing.
Take Eileen: A prostitute. Taking a quick trip to the grave because she got messed up with a rat who knocked her up, played with her awhile, then took off. That kind of guy ought to be hunted down and strung up by the thumbs. I’d like to do it personally. And her roommate. Another dame in the same profession who got there the same way. It must have made Eileen feel pretty low when she found out the same guy put her in the fix, too. John Hanson, never heard of him. She might have been a decent kid, too. Those guys get it in the neck in the long run. But that was over twelve years ago. That would make Eileen about ... let’s see, entered college around eighteen ... maybe she met him when she was nineteen, and twelve would put her at thirty-one. Hell, she looked a lot older. If her father had been the least bit sensible he could have prevented all this. A kind word when kindness was important, a home to go to, and she never would have been trapped. Just the same, it seemed pretty damned funny that the old man could get wind of what went on in a Midwest college when he was living a thousand miles away in Poughkeepsie, New York. That kind of news travels fast anywhere, though. Probably a jealous schoolgirl with a dirty mind and a poison pen. Maybe another of Hanson’s babes. I’ll bet he had plenty of them. Going from bad to worse. Not financially—Eileen was making plenty of cash even if she only got a ten-percent cut. The joint she worked in had money written all over it. A syndicated outfit with lots of the long green. For instance, this show tonight. It meant a rake-off in the thousands. And ...
I was letting my mind ramble on so fast I hardly noticed the taxi that pulled up in front of the stoop. A young punk in a double-breasted suit stepped out and gave a hand to the fat boy with him. A greasy slob, coming in for the show or some fun, maybe both. I thought I recognized the kid from a bookie’s uptown, but I wasn’t sure. The fat guy I had never seen before. There were no questions at the door, so I supposed they were well known there.
Five minutes later another car drove up and a pair of dillies climbed out. The man, if you could call him that, was done up in a camel’s-hair coat, his skinny neck protruding above a flaming-red ascot. He had a marcel that was brand-new. His companion was a woman. The only way you could tell was by the skirt. The rest of her was strictly male. She walked with a swagger and he minced his way to the sidewalk holding on to her arm. Fruit.
She did the bell ringing and pushed him in ahead of her. Fine people. There’s everything in this world. It’s too bad they were hiding behind the door when sexes were handed out. They got what was left over and not enough of it at that.
I sat there a whole hour watching a cross section of humanity that came from every walk of life. If I had an infrared camera I could have made a fortune. Eileen probably wasn’t well read enough to identify persons as being important, but I was. There were four politicians from my own ward there. Plus a few who hardly skipped a week without having their pictures in the papers for something or other. Everyone was going in, no one coming out. That meant the show was on. Generally a half hour was enough time to transact their kind of business.
Twenty minutes went by and no more cars. If Jack had expected to snag somebody in there it wasn’t anyone at the party or someone whom he had connections with that I knew about. I didn’t get it.
Then I did. Or at least I thought I did.
I started the motor and pulled away from the curb, then made a U-turn in the middle of the block. I tried to beat out the red lights, but the traffic got away from me. Even the short cuts didn’t help, so I cut back to the main thoroughfare and took it straight up to Jack’s apartment.
This time I went in the front door. I broke the seal and the flimsy padlock with my gun butt and opened the lock with one of my skeleton keys. Before I did anything else I went for the phone hoping that it hadn’t been disconnected. It hadn’t. I dialed my number and waited. Then, “Police Headquarters.”
“Hello, give me Captain Chambers, Homicide. Shake it.” Pat was on in an instant.
“Captain Chambers speaking.”
“Pat, this is Mike Hammer, I’m at Jack’s apartment. Listen, get a couple of men and whip up here, and if you took any books from here bring them along. One other thing. Better tell the riot squad to stand by for an emergency call.”
Pat grew excited. “What’s up, Mike, got anything?”
“I may have,” I answered, “but if you don’t snap it up I may lose it.” I hung up before he could ask any more questions. I turned on the lamp in the living room and pulled out what books were lying between cast bronze ends and stacked in the bookcase. I found what I was looking for. Three of them were college yearbooks, and they were dated from the past fifteen years. I remembered having seen them when I was in the apartment the last time. They didn’t mean much then, but they did now.
While I was waiting for Pat I scanned through them. They were student publications, all from Midwestern schools. What I was looking for was a picture of John Hanson.
It might be that simple. Jack saw Eileen after a long time and knew what she was doing. A cop wouldn’t have much trouble checking those things. He knew what happened to her and he knew the guy. On the flyleaf of each book was the name and address of a secondhand bookstore near Times Square, and the tab it was typed on was clean, so they had been recently bought. If Jack had tracked the guy down and approached him he set himself up for murder. Maybe the guy had a business or a family, but what he had could easily be wrecked by having that kind of information passed on to the wrong people.
I went through them fast, then again very carefully, but there was no picture labeled with the name Hanson. I was cursing softly to myself when Pat came in. Under his arm he had three more of the same kind of books.
“Here you are, Mike,” he said, dumping the books on the sofa beside me. “Now give.” In as few words as possible I told him where I stood. He watched me gravely and made me repeat a few things to keep track of things in his mind.
“So you think this Eileen Vickers may be the key, huh?”
I signified with a nod of my head. “Possibly. You go through these books and look for the guy. She said he was tall and good-looking, but dames in love all think their men are good-looking. By the way, why did you pick up these books?”
“Because these three were in the living room, open. He was reading them just before he was killed. It seemed funny to me that he should be going through old college yearbooks and I took them along to match the pics with some of our samples.”
“And ... ?”
“And I found two women who had been committed for bigamy, one guy that later hung for murder, and a friend of mine who runs a hardware store downtown and I see every day. Nothing else.”
The both of us sat down and read those damn books from cover to cover. When we were done we traded and read them again to make sure we didn’t skip anything. John Hanson was
nowhere to be found.
“Looks like a wild-goose chase, Mike.” Pat was frowning at the pile. He stuck a cigarette in his mouth and lit it. “Are you sure that was what Jack was looking for?”
“Hell, yes, why not? The dates on these things tie in. They’re twelve years old.” I dragged the black book out of my hip pocket and tossed it to him. “Take a look,” I said, “and don’t tell me I was withholding evidence.”
As Pat glanced through it he said, “I won’t. I was up here the day after you. Found it under the bottom drawer of his dresser, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, how did you know?”
“At home I happened to drop something over the back of a drawer like that myself. When I thought it over, I knew it was one place we hadn’t looked. Incidentally, I found your note.”
The Mike Hammer Collection Volume 1 Page 10