The morgue wagon rolled up with the Medical Examiner about fifty feet in the rear. The boys hopped out and started cleaning up the mess after the verdict was given and the pictures taken. I ambled out to the middle of the street and took a look at the body that was squashed against the roadbed.
He looked like an hourglass.
Fright and pain had made a distorted death mask of his face, but the rain had scrubbed away the blood leaving him a ghostly white in contrast with the asphalt of the street. He was about forty-five and as medium as you can get. His clothes had an expensive look about them, but one shoe had a hole in the bottom and he needed a haircut bad.
The driver of the wagon splashed the light of a flash over him and gave me a toothy grin. “He’s a goodie, ain’t he?”
“Yeah, a real beaut.”
“Not so much, though. You shoulda seen what we had last week. Whole damn trailer truck rolled over that one and we had to scrape him away from between the tires. Coulda put him in a shoe box.”
“Do you sleep good nights?” I gave him my best disgusted look.
“Sure, why?” He even sounded surprised.
“Forget it. Put that light on his face again.”
The guy obliged and I had a close look this time. I walked around and had a squint from the other side then told him to knock off the light. Pat was a vague figure in a trench coat, watching me closely. He said, “Know him?”
“I’ve seen him before. Small-time hardcase, I think.”
“The M.E. remembered him. He was a witness at a coroner’s inquest about twelve years ago. The guy was one of Charlie Fallon’s old outfit.”
I glanced at Pat then back to the corpse again. The guy had some odd familiarity I couldn’t place and it wasn’t Fallon I was thinking of. Fallon died of natural causes about the same time I was opening up shop and what I knew of him came strictly from the papers.
“Nope, can’t quite place him,” I said.
“We’ll get him tagged. Too bad they couldn‘t’ve had the decency to carry a lodge card or something. The one on the sidewalk there only had forty cents in change and a house key in his pocket. This guy had a fin and two ones and nothing else.”
I nodded. “A buck must have been all that first lad had then. He bought two drinks in the bar before he left.”
“Well, let’s go back there and check. Maybe somebody’ll know him there.”
“Nobody will,” I said.
“Never can tell.”
“Nuts. They didn’t know him when he came in, I’m telling you. He just had two drinks and left.”
“Then what’re you getting excited about?” He had his hands shoved down in his pockets and was watching me with eyes that were half shut.
“Skip it.”
“The hell I’ll skip it. Two guys are murdered and I want to know what the hell goes on. You got another wild hair up your tail, haven’t you?”
“Yeah.” The way I said it brought the scowl back to his face.
“Spill it, Mike.”
“Let’s go back to the bar. I’m getting so goddamn sick of the things that happen in this town I have to take a bath every time I even stick my head out the door.”
The rain stopped momentarily as if something had amazed it, then slashed down with all the fury it could muster, damning me with its millions of pellets. I took a look around me at the two rows of tenements and the dark spots on the pavement where the dead men were a minute ago and wondered how many people behind the walls and windows were alive today who wouldn’t be alive tomorrow.
Pat left a moment, said something to the M.E. and one of the cops, then joined me on the sidewalk. I nudged a brace of Luckies out of the pack, handed him one and watched his face in the light. He looked teed off like he always did when he came face to face with a corpse.
I said, “This must gripe the pants off you, Pat. There’s not one blasted thing you can do to prevent trouble. Like those two back there. Alive one minute, dead the next. Nice, huh?” The cops get here in time to clear up the mess, but they can’t move until it happens. Christ, what a place to live!“
He didn’t say anything until we turned into the bar. By that time most of the customers were so helplessly drunk they couldn’t remember anything anyway. The bartender said a guy was in for a few minutes awhile back, but he couldn’t help out. Pat gave up after five minutes and came back to me. I was sitting at the booth with my back to the bundle in the corner ready to blow up.
Pat took a long look at my face. “What’s eating you, Mike?”
I picked the bundle up and sat it on my knee. The coat came away and the kid’s head lolled on my shoulder, his hair a tangled wet mop. Pat pushed his hat back on his head and tucked his lip under his teeth. “I don’t get it.”
“The dead guy... the one who was here first. He came in with the kid and he was crying. Oh, it was real touching. It damn near made me sick, it was so touching. A guy bawling his head off, then kissing his kid good-by and making a run for the street.
“This is why I was curious. I thought maybe the guy was so far gone he was deserting his kid. Now I know better, Pat. The guy knew he was going to die so he took his kid in here, said so long and walked right into it. Makes a nice picture, doesn’t it?”
“You’re drawing a lot of conclusions, aren’t you?”
“Let’s hear you draw some better ones. Goddamn it, this makes me mad! No matter what the hell the guy did it’s the kid who has to pay through the nose for it. Of all the lousy, stinking things that happen....”
“Ease off, Mike.”
“Sure, ease off. It sounds real easy to do. But look, if this was his kid and he cared enough to cry about it, what happens to him?”
“I presume he has a mother.”
“No doubt,” I said sarcastically. “So far you don’t know who the father is. Do we leave the kid here until something turns up?”
“Don’t be stupid. There are agencies who will take care of him.”
“Great. What a hell of a night this is for the kid. His old man gets shot and he gets adopted by an agency.”
“You don’t know it’s his father, friend.”
“Who else would cry over a kid?”
Pat gave me a thoughtful grimace. “If your theory holds about the guy knowing he was going to catch it, maybe he was bawling for himself instead of the kid.”
“Balls. What kind of a kill you think this is?”
“From the neighborhood and the type of people involved I’d say it was pretty local.”
“Maybe the killer hopes you’ll think just that.”
“Why?” He was getting sore now too.
“I told you he ran over his own boy deliberately, didn’t I? Why the hell would he do that?”
Pat shook his head. “I don’t think he did.”
“Okay, pal, you were there and I wasn’t. You saw it all.”
“Damn it, Mike, maybe it looked deliberate to you but it sounds screwball to me! It doesn’t make sense. If he did swerve like you said he did, maybe he was intending to pick the guy up out of the gutter and didn’t judge his distance right. When he hit him it was too late to stop.”
I said something dirty.
“All right, what’s your angle?”
“The guy was shot in the legs. He might have talked and the guy in the car didn’t want to be identified for murder so he put the wheels to him.”
Suddenly he grinned at me and his breath hissed out in a chuckle. “You’re on the ball. I was thinking the same thing myself and wanted to see if you were sure of yourself.”
“Go to hell,” I said.
“Yeah, right now. Let’s get that kid out of here. I’ll be up half the night again on this damn thing. Come on.”
“No.”
Pat stopped and turned around. “What do you mean ... ‘no’?”
“What I said. I’ll keep the kid with me ... for now anyway. He’ll only sit down there at headquarters until morning waiting for those agency people to show up.
”
Maybe it’s getting so I can’t keep my face a blank any more, or maybe Pat had seen that same expression too often. His teeth clamped together and I knew his shoulders were bunching up under the coat. “Mike,” he told me, “if you got ideas about going on a kill-hunt, just get rid of them right now. I’m not going to risk my neck and position because of a lot of wild ideas you dream up.”
I said it low and slow so he had to listen hard to catch it. “I don’t like what happened to the kid, Pat. Murder doesn’t just happen. It’s thought about and planned out all nice and neat, and any reason that involves murder and big fat Buicks has to be a damn good one. I don’t know who the kid is, but he’s going to grow up knowing that the guy who killed his old man died with a nice hot slug in the middle of his intestines. If it means anything to you, consider that I’m on a case. I have me a legal right to do a lot of things including shooting a goddamn killer if I can sucker him into drawing first so it’ll look like self-defense.
“So go ahead and rave. Tell me how it won’t do me any good. Tell me that I’m interfering in police work and I’ll tell you how sick I am of what goes on in this town. I live here, see? I got a damn good right to keep it clean even if I have to kill a few bastards to do it. There’s plenty who need killing bad and if I’m electing myself to do the job you shouldn’t kick. Just take a look at the papers every day and see how hot the police are when politics can make or break a cop. Take a look at your open cases like who killed Scottoriggio ... or Binnaggio and his pal in Kansas City ... then look at me straight and say that this town isn’t wide open and I’ll call you a liar.”
I had to stop and take a breath. The air in my lungs was so hot it choked me.
“It isn’t nice to see guys cry, Pat. Not grown men. It’s worse to see a little kid holding the bag. Somebody’s going to get shot for it.”
Pat knew better than to argue about it. He looked at me steadily a long minute, then down at the kid. He nodded and his face went tight. “There’s not much I can do to stop you, Mike. Not now, anyway.”
“Not ever. Think it’s okay to keep the kid?”
“Guess so. I’ll call you in the morning. As long as you’re involved the D.A. is probably going to want a statement from you anyway. This time keep your mouth shut and you’ll keep your license. He’s got enough trouble on his hands trying to nail the big boys in the gambling racket and he’s just as liable to take it out on you.”
My laugh sounded like trees rubbing together. “He can go to hell for all I care. He got rough with me once and I bet it still hurts when he thinks about it. What’s the matter with him now ... can’t he even close up a bookie joint?”
“It isn’t funny, Mike.”
“It’s a scream. Even the papers are laughing.”
A slow burn crept into his face. “They should. The same guys who do the laughing are probably some of the ones who keep the books open. It’s the big shots like Ed Teen who laugh the loudest and they’re not laughing at the D.A. or the cops ... they’re laughing at Joe Citizen, guys like you, who take the bouncing for it. It isn’t a bit funny when Teen and Lou Grindle and Fallon can go on enjoying a life of luxury until the day they die while you pay for it.”
He got it out of his system and remembered to hand me a good night before he left. I stared at the door swinging shut, my arms tight around the kid, hearing his words come back slowly with one of them getting louder every time it repeated itself.
Lou Grindle. The arm. Lou Grindle who was a flashy holdover from the old days and sold his services where they were needed. Lou Grindle, tough boy de luxe who was as much at home in the hot spots along the Stem as in a cellar club in Harlem.
Lou Grindle who was on his hands and knees in the back of Lake’s joint a week ago shooting craps with the help while two of his own boys stood by holding his coat and his dough and the one who held his coat was the dead guy back in the gutter who looked like an hourglass.
I wrapped the coat around the kid and went out in the doorway where I whistled at cabs until one stopped and picked me up. The driver must have had kids of his own at home because he gave me a nasty sneer when he saw the boy in my arms.
I told him where to make his first stop and he waited until I came back. Then I had him make seven others before I got any results. A bartender with a half a bag on mistook me for one of the boys and told me I might find Lou Grindle on Fifty-seventh Street in a place called the Hop Scotch where a room was available for some heavy sugar card games once a week. I threw him a buck and went back to the cab.
I said, “Know where the Hop Scotch is on Fifty-seventh?”
“Yeah. You goin’ there now?”
“Looks that way, doesn’t it?”
“Don’t you think you better take that kid home, buddy? It ain’t no good fer kids to be up so late.”
“Chum, there’s nothing I’d like to do better, but first I got business to take care of.”
If I was drunk the cabbie might have tossed me out. As it was, he turned around in his seat to make sure I wasn‘t, then rolled across to Fifty-seventh.
I left the kid in the cab with a fin to keep the driver quiet and got out. The Hop Scotch was a downstairs gin mill that catered to crowds who liked dirty floor shows and a lot of noise and didn’t mind footing the bill. It was hopping with drunks and half drunks who ganged up around the dance floor where a stripper was being persuaded not to stay within the limits prescribed by New York law and when they started throwing rolled-up bills out she said to hell with the law, let go her snaps and braces and gave the customers a treat when she did a two-handed pickup of all the green persuaders.
A waiter was watching the show with a grin on his fat face and I grabbed him while he was still gone over the sight of flesh. I said, “Where’s Lou?” just like we were real pals.
“Inside. Him and the others’re playin‘.” His thumb made a vague motion toward the back.
I squeezed through the crowd to where a bus boy was clearing off an empty table and pulled out a chair. The boy looked at the five in my fingers and waited. “Lou Grindle’s inside. Go tell him to come out.”
He wanted the five, but he shook his head. “Brother, nobody tells Lou nothing. You tell ‘im.”
“Say it’s important business and he’ll come. He won’t like it if he doesn’t get to hear what I have to tell him.”
The guy licked his lips and reached for the five. He left the tray on the table, disappeared around a bend that led to the service bar and kitchen, came back for his tray and told me Lou was on his way.
Out on the floor another stripper was trying to earn some persuasion dough herself so the outside of the room was nice and clear with no big ears around.
Lou came around the bend, looked at the bus boy who crooked a finger my way, then came over to see who the hell I was. Lou Grindle was a dapper punk in his forties with eyes like glass marbles and a head of hair that looked painted on. His tux ran in the three-figure class and if you didn’t look for it you’d never know he was packing a gun low under his arm.
The edges of his eyes puckered up as he tried to place me and when he saw the same kind of a gun bulge on me as he had himself he made the mistake of taking me for a cop. His upper lip twitched in a sneer he didn’t try to hide.
I kicked another chair out with my foot and said, “Sit down, Lou.”
Lou sat down. His fingers were curled up like he wanted to take me apart at the seams. “Make it good and make it quick,” he said. He hissed when he talked.
I made it good, all right. I said, “One of your butt boys got himself killed tonight.”
His eyes unpuckered and got glassier. It was as close as he could come to looking normally surprised. “Who?”
“That’s what I want to find out. He was holding your coat in a crap game the other night. Remember?”
If he remembered he didn’t tell me so.
I leaned forward and leaned on the table, the ends of my hand inside the lapel of my coat just in case. �
��He was a medium-sized guy in expensive duds with holes in his shoes. A long time ago he worked for Charlie Fallon. Right now I’m wondering whether or not he was working for you tonight.”
Lou remembered. His face went tight and the cords in his neck pressed tight against his collar. “Who the hell are you, Mac?”
“The name’s Mike Hammer, Lou. Ask around and you’ll find what it means.”
A snake wore the same expression he got just then. His eyes went even glassier and under his coat his body started sucking inward. “A goddamn private cop!” He was looking at my fingers. They were farther inside my coat now and I could feel the cold butt of the .45.
The snake look faded and something else took its place. Something that said Lou Grindle wasn’t taking chances on being as fast as he used to be. Not where he was alone, anyway. “So what?” he snarled.
I grinned at him. The one with all the teeth showing.
“That boy of yours, the one who died ... I put a slug through his legs and the guy who drove the car didn’t want to take a chance on him being picked up so he put the wheels to him. Right after the two of ‘em got finished knocking off another guy too.”
Lou’s hand moved up to his pocket and plucked out a cigar. Slowly, so I could watch it happen. “Nobody was working for me tonight.”
“Maybe not, Lou, maybe not. You better hope they weren’t.”
He stopped in the middle of lighting the cigar and threw those snake eyes at me again. “You got a few things to learn, shamus, I don’t like for guys to talk tough to me.”
“Lou ...” His head came back an inch and I could see the hate he wore like a mask. “... if I find out you had a hand in this business tonight I’m going to come back here and take that slimy face of yours and rub it in the dirt. You just try playing rough with me and you’ll see your guts lying on the floor before you die. Remember what I said, Lou. I’d as soon shoot your goddamn greasy head off as look at you.”
His face went white right down to his collar. If he had lips they didn’t show because they were rolled up against his teeth. The number on the floor ended and the people were coming back where they belonged, so I stood up and walked away. When I looked back he was gone and his chair was upside down against the wall.
The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 2 Page 24