The bluntness of that made him flinch. “Are you asking me as a friend, Mike? Or suspect?”
“Let’s keep it friendly.”
“I’ve seen that look on your face before. You aren’t quite sure about me, are you?”
“Does it matter?”
“But you’ll check me out, is that it?”
“All the way, Senator. I’m setting the machinery in motion today.”
“Then let me anticipate the result. I’ve never lied to you, Mike.”
“Have you held back any aspect of how I came to replace Ralph Marley?”
“No. Nothing.”
“The job you hired me for. Marley’s job. what I know it to be is the extent of it?”
“Absolutely.”
“And no one suggested to you that I be chosen as Marley’s replacement?”
“No one.” He shifted on the chair, sighed, gestured with an open hand. “Marley I knew for a long time. Used his services on numerous occasions. His job was exactly the same one you took over. Since he was an employee of the agency I hired him through, he must have filed reports that you should be able to get access to. I would appreciate it if you checked into the matter thoroughly.”
“I intend to,” I said.
He gave me a sad, wry smile. “After what we’ve been through together, I’m sorry it’s necessary at all.”
Actually we hadn’t been through that much together, just the preliminary part of my Russian “adventure,” as Irene Worth had put it.
“No one pressured you to take me along,” I said, trying again.
“No.” He shrugged. “You were there that night when Marley was shot. You were the hero of the hour. You were the logical, natural choice. There was nothing sinister about it, Mike. All right?”
“All right,” I said. “I’m glad we cleared the air.”
His smile turned sideways and he shook his head. “You’re a tough man, Mike.”
“I have to be,” I said.
* * *
At the Blue Ribbon Restaurant on West Forty-fourth Street, I positioned Des Casey at the bar and went to my regular table in the corner where two walls of autographed celebrity pictures looked over your shoulder while you ate. Velda came gliding in, getting her usual round of amazed silent wolf whistles and wide-eyed stares of male approval. Women were divided on the subject of Velda: some could appreciate what God collaborating with a beautiful woman could accomplish, and the rest flat-out hated her.
She wore a navy-blue tailored suit that but for a near-mini-length skirt couldn’t have been more conservative and yet didn’t hide a single curve. Those crazy long legs of hers were a stimulant more potent than any double martini the bar could serve up.
When she sat down, I said, “They’re looking at you like you should be on the menu.”
She shot me that funny little smile and her eyes crinkled with warmth. “At ease, you.”
“I’m not at attention yet.”
“Give it time.” She passed me a manila folder thick with onionskin second sheets of original reports. “The New York branch of Ralph Marley’s California office was glad to cooperate.”
“They had these on file?”
“Because Marley was killed in New York, these papers were transferred in case the NYPD needed them.”
“But of course they didn’t.”
Velda nodded. “Too open-and-shut.”
“Why is it the open-and-shut cases so often need re-opening? It’s a rhetorical question. Brief me.”
She signaled for a drink, then leaned forward on the table, the dark arcs of the page boy swinging nicely. “Those are Marley’s daily reports to the office on every occasion when he was assigned to the senator.”
“Good.”
“Not really. Every bit of it is routine. All simple watchdog work. No special instructions. There were a few predictable incidents, given Jasper’s conservative leanings. fanatics trying to break up a speech, threatening letters and the like, but nothing really unusual.”
“Okay.”
“I called Mercer, the head man in the California office, and he said Marley was pretty bored with working for the senator. That he didn’t especially enjoy the assignment, but that the senator thought a lot of Marley and requested his services each time.”
“Any tie-ins with other jobs?”
“Nothing, Mike. All of Marley’s other assignments in the same period were in the industrial field—checking out inventory losses, guarding payrolls, that sort of standard stuff. Nothing he did ever brought him into in contact with any of the senator’s associates, at least that we know of.”
“He ever say why he didn’t want to work for Jasper anymore?”
Velda nodded. “Boredom. Nothing personal—apparently he thought the senator was an all right guy. Marley just liked the industrial end better, and staying home in California. He was married, you know, with three kids. Very conservative himself, in the lifestyle sense, anyway.”
“Yeah, I know. Ralph had an eye for the ladies but he never did anything about it that I know of. A real family man. Loved his wife exclusively.”
“A dying breed, I hear,” she said, giving me a look.
“Skip the comedy. What else?”
“Mercer admitted he was irritated with Ralph, because they might lose the gig. The senator was partial to having Ralph around.”
“And Mercer wasn’t anxious to lose such a high-paying client.”
She was nodding. “Which is why Marley stayed on the job. He suffered through it. I got the impression that he couldn’t stand either political party, and the general D.C. crowd the senator was associated with.”
“Yeah,” I grunted, “I can imagine.”
I thumbed through the sheets in the folder and pulled out the last one. It was the final report Marley had submitted, the day before he was killed. In addition to a summary of the day’s activities, it included a proposed program for the following day, concluding with the party at the senator’s apartment and the guest list. I took down the names and addresses in my little notebook, stuffed the rest back in the folder, and handed it back to Velda.
“Get copies made and return these,” I told her.
“Will do.” She pointed to the names in my notebook, which I was studying. “Shall I follow up on those?”
I tore the page out and then in half and gave her the lower section. “Take these. I’ll check the rest out.”
She glanced over the sheet and frowned. “You can get most of their histories in the public library, you know. If you’re looking for suspects, these are primarily public figures.”
“So was John Wilkes Booth,” I said.
“You know that bothering these people will raise all kinds of hell, don’t you? And you have enough pressure on you, already.”
“Not if you do it right,” I said with a shrug. “Call Hy Gardner and our other columnist friends. See what the names on that list have to hide.”
“Who says they do?”
“Doll, I never saw anybody that didn’t have something to hide. Find out first what that is, and they’ll cooperate, all right.”
“You’re a bastard, Mike,” she said, grinning, shaking her head, the black hair shimmering.
“Don’t try to sell that tip to the columnists,” I said, grinning back at her. “That’s very old news.”
We had some lunch.
She was gathering her purse to go, when she said, “You want me to dump those shadows the Feds have on me?”
I shook my head. “No, they aren’t interested in interfering with your business. They’re just concerned with you staying healthy and in circulation.”
“Why are they interested in my welfare all of a sudden?”
“Because you can be used as a lever against me. It’s been done enough times in the past.”
A look of extreme concern clenched her pretty face. “Mike— why is the K.G.B. risking blowing up a minor international incident into a major one, just to take you out? They haven’t l
ost that much face... have they?”
“I’ll be damned if I know, doll, but I’ve never been an expert on Soviet thinking.” We got up and were heading out. Des Casey fell in behind us. “I’ll check with you at your apartment tonight, doll.”
“You better.”
“After all these months without you, how could I not?”
Her teeth showed in a wicked smile between lush lips that promised more than a man should know about in advance, her eyes a brown velvet fire.
“Thinking about catching up, are you?” she said.
“Get out of here,” I said. “Get to work!”
She was going to kill me before the K.G.B. did.
But what a way to go.
* * *
Des Casey didn’t like what I was asking of him.
“Sticking with you, man,” he said, “that’s my job. I can just picture my stripes going down the crapper after you get picked off, and me not around to pick up the pieces.”
I put my hand on my heart. “And wasn’t that a touching speech?”
We were standing out in front of the Blue Ribbon. Ricochets of sunlight were bouncing off buildings but the afternoon was chilly, the fall weather just starting to assert itself.
I didn’t have to be told that my personal M.P. had special orders to make regular reports to Art Rickerby, with the agents shadowing us at a distance sure to report that he’d split off from me.
We climbed in back of a cab together.
“Look, Mike,” Casey said apologetically, “I know you can brush me anytime you feel like it. So I’m gonna do what you ask. You just cover me the best you can.”
“Don’t kid a kidder, Des. It’s not a reprimand you’re afraid of. You’re just worried you’re going to miss some of the action.”
He didn’t deny it, but did return my grin.
The M.P. already had his assignment—I wanted him to run a check on Allen Jasper, and jotted some names and numbers on a notebook page of resources whose reliability was well-tested, from longtime snitches to Hy Gardner and his newspaperman peers. Casey let out a low whistle when he saw some of the latter names, but didn’t question it any. I had already arranged for the Blue Ribbon to serve as our contact point, with George, the owner, and his wife Angie—both old friends—handling the communications.
We shared a cab for a short trip downtown and went through a regular procedure I had used before to shake anybody on my tail. It was a routine I had set up a long time ago, which included two quick wrong-way trips down one-way streets, and cost a ten spot every time I used it.
When I was certain we were clear, I said so long to Casey, let him keep the ride, and climbed out to flag down the next cruising cab, where I settled back in the cushions. That ache in my thigh was still acting up, a heavy muscle wound with some bite to remind me I wasn’t getting any younger. I closed my eyes until we reached the dusty brick building out of which worked Captain Pat Chambers of the Homicide Division.
I stood in the doorway of Pat’s office until he looked up, then grinned at him slowly. There had been times when we were friends and times when we were enemies. We knew each other so well each could anticipate the other’s every word and action. Right now we were friends again, a pair of old pros whose jobs sent us both into New York’s jungle of violent crime, a jungle that with each passing year seemed to grow ever more dense and thick, inhabited by ever more dangerous predators.
Even after more than two months, there was no hello, no handshake. He just looked up at me like a teacher who had caught a pupil clowning in front of the class.
His mouth managed not to smile but those gray-blue eyes did it anyway. “Where do you get your luck, Mike?”
“What do you care?” I said. “It’s all bad.”
“Well, you’re still walking around,” he said.
“That’s not luck, Pat.” I tossed my hat on his desk and sat down. “That’s survival instinct.”
He shoved some paperwork away and closed the folder he had been studying. “I heard about a few of your detractors who didn’t survive... About forty-five of them?”
“Ah. You’ve been reading my publicity.”
He leaned back in his swivel chair. “Read it! Hell, I helped write it. Washington picked up on every file with your name in it in the NYPD system, and had me type out a twenty-page report on my personal association with you.”
“I hope you made me look good.”
“Let’s just say I didn’t make any fans upstairs.”
“You’ll never make inspector that way.”
“Not helping you, I won’t.”
“We closed a lot of cases, buddy.”
“But damn few made it into the courts. They all seem to end with somebody dead.”
“As long it’s not me or you, what’s the problem?”
A trace of a smile showed at one corner of his mouth. “Funny thing. I think the Justice Department boys were a little shook at the people who came to your defense. You have some powerful friends in some strange places. What have you got on them, Mike?”
“Just favors owed,” I said.
“Like that guy Rickerby, huh? And what favor do you want from me?”
I leaned forward just a little. “When the G came sniffing around about me, did they make any inquiries about the night I was in that shoot-out at Jasper’s penthouse pad?”
“Just that they wanted to know how you happened to be hired for that particular job.”
“What did you tell them, Pat?”
“That Marley asked you to give him a hand. That you and he had a history of sending work each other’s way. And that Senator Jasper approved Marley’s request. That was all in my report. You still haven’t asked me for the favor yet.”
“What can you tell me about the guy who killed Marley?”
“And wounded the great Mike Hammer, who promptly sent him on a twelve-story swan dive?” Pat shrugged. “Pietro Romanos, smalltime local hood with nine arrests and two convictions. Don’t you remember, Mike? We went over this at the time.”
“Not in detail. What did Romanos go down for?”
Another shrug. “Robbery the first time, aggravated assault the second. He did short time that didn’t seem to teach him a lesson. He was reputedly the bagman for Harris before Harris got killed in Newark. As far as we know, he was working the stolen car racket after that.”
“And you figure the motive at the senator’s party was robbery?”
“There was a lot of ice being worn that night. You know the Carroll woman?”
“I met her earlier today,” I said.
“You’ll recall that she was late to the party—showed up after you got hit and were carted off to get patched up. Rolled in wearing her usual quarter million in gems.”
“How would Romanos have known she’d be there?”
“That we don’t know.”
“Okay, so somehow he knew she’d be there. How did he know she’d be wearing the jewels?”
“Hell, Mike, that broad never shows up at a party without the damn things. She’s so careless about it she can’t get them insured.”
“Well, with her kind of loot, Pat, she can just buy more. Like when you run out of toilet paper.”
“Maybe so, but that ice makes pretty good bait for a punk like that Romanos.” He shook his head, chuckled. “You know, you don’t know how lucky you were.”
“So you still think I’m lucky?”
“Damn straight. That little hood had a reputation we knew nothing about. He was a firearms buff. When we shook down his pad, we came up with twelve pieces in top working order and six hundred rounds of assorted ammunition. Eight of those pieces were target pistols of various calibers, and his prized possessions were trophies he picked up at matches around the country. Seems like he worked the state fairs and gave exhibitions at any given opportunity.”
“So when he went up against me, he went up against somebody better.”
“Taking nothing away from your modesty, pal, I doubt
it. He went there to knock the place off, expecting to find one man on duty, ran into two. He took care of Marley, didn’t he?”
I mulled it. “Maybe he wasn’t there for a heist at all, Pat. A guy with his firearms skills has the makings of an assassin. He was heading right for Senator Jasper when Marley jumped in front of the bullet.”
Pat said nothing for a few moments. Then he said, “I could maybe buy that. The senator is a controversial figure. There are plenty who would like to see him silenced, and uh. there is one thing we turned up that might help substantiate your theory.”
“Share the wealth, Pat.”
“Well, it struck me as peculiar at the time. Just two weeks before the shooting at Jasper’s place, Romanos deposited one hundred grand in a savings account.”
“A pay-off. For a political assassination?”
He shook his head. “That’s not my bailiwick, man. Not my area of expertise.”
“Was it the ‘bailiwick’ of those feds you made the report to?”
He nodded. “I passed that info on. But obviously, Romanos himself is a literal dead-end.”
“And isn’t that convenient.”
“Well, you shot him.” He frowned. “You think it was a political hit, and Jasper ducked a bullet with his name on it?”
I shrugged. “All I know for sure, Pat, is that it all started that night. And I was supposed to be dead by now, too.”
Pat locked his fingers behind his head and leaned back in his chair. “Maybe it’s time you told me about your summer vacation.”
I took a half hour to spell it all out to him and watched him put the pieces of information into mental slots where he could analyze them later. The computer between that guy’s ears was something IBM would love to invent.
When I finished, he tilted forward and tapped a pencil against his desk. “So Senator Jasper was an assassination target?”
“Probably,” I said, “but a lot of prominent people were there that night. No matter who the victim, if Romanos was on a contract kill, then somebody was paying for it.”
For a while Pat was silent, then he looked up, his eyes tight. “That’s a pretty cold trail by now. Unless the feds are pursuing it.”
I stood up. “Will you look into it?”
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