She shivered and nodded, holding the edges of the blanket together under her chin.
The guy at the reception desk was a sleepy-eyed tall guy who sat there hating everybody who bothered him. He watched me cross the hall and didn’t make any polite sounds until I got to him.
He asked one question. “You a member?”
“No, but ...”
“Then the place is closed. Scram.”
I pulled a fin out of my wallet and laid it on the desk.
He said, “Scram.”
I took it back, stuffed it away and leaned across the chair and belted him right on his back. I picked him up by his skinny arms and popped him a little one in the gut before I threw him back in his chair again. “The next time be nice,” I said. I held out the key and he looked at it with eyes that were wide awake now.
“You bastard.”
“Shut up. What’s the key for?”
“Locker room.”
“See who has 529.”
He curled his lip at me, ran his hand across his stomach under his belt and pulled a ledger out of the desk drawer. “Raymond. Ten-year membership.”
“Let’s go.”
“You’re nuts. I can’t leave the desk. I ...”
“Let’s go.”
“Lousy coppers,” I heard him say. I grinned behind his back and followed him down the stairs. There was a sticky dampness in the air, an acrid smell of disinfectant. We passed a steam room and the entrance to the pool, then turned into the alcove that held the lockers.
They were tall affairs with hasps that allowed you to install your own lock. Raymondo had slapped on a beauty. It was an oversized brass padlock with a snap so big it barely passed through the hasp. I stuck the key in, turned it and the lock came apart.
Death, crime and corruption were lying on the floor in two metal containers the size of lunch pails. The seams were welded shut and the units painted a deep green. Attached to each was the cutest little rig you ever saw, a small CO2 bottle with a heavy rubber ball attached to the nozzle. The rubber was rotted in the folds and the hose connection had cracked dry, but it didn’t spoil the picture any. All you had to do was toss the unit out a porthole, the bottle stopper opened after a time interval and the stuff floated to the top where the rubber ball buoyed it until it was picked up.
The answer to the Cedric was there too, a short story composed of sales slips stapled together, a yarn that said Raymondo had taken good care of his investment and was on hand to pick up the junk when they stripped the ship. There was one special item marked “wall ventilators—12.50 ea. 25.00.”
I squatted down to pull them out and the guy down the end came away from the wall showing too much curiosity. The stuff had to be dumped someplace but I couldn’t be carrying it to the dumping ground. Pat had to see it, the Washington boys would want a look at it. I couldn’t take any kind of a chance at all on losing it. Not now.
So I shut the door and closed the lock through the hasp. It had been there a lot of years ... a few more hours wouldn’t hurt it any. But now I had something I could talk a trade with. I could describe the stuff so they’d be sure and it would be my way all the way.
The guy followed me back upstairs and got behind his desk again. He was snottier looking than ever but when I stood close the artificial toughness faded into blankness and he had to lick his lips.
I said, “Remember my face, buddy. Take a good look and keep it in your mind. If anybody who isn’t a cop comes in here wanting to know about that locker and you kick through with the information I’m going to break your face into a dozen pieces. No matter what they do I’ll do worse, so keep your trap shut.” I turned to go, stopped a second and looked back over my shoulder. “The next time be polite. You could have made dough on the deal.”
My watch read five minutes to three. Time, time, time. The rain was a solid sheet blasting the sidewalks and spraying back into the air again. I yelled for Lily to open the door, made a dash for it and slid aboard. She trembled under the gust of cold air that got in with me, her face set tighter than it was before.
I reached over and put my arm around her shoulders. She was pulled tight as a drumhead, a muscular stiffness that made her whole body almost immobile. “Cripes, Lily, I got to get you to a doctor.”
“No ... just get me where it’s warm, Mike.”
“I haven’t got much sense.”
She forced a smile. “I ... really don’t mind ... as long as you ...”
“No more chasing around, kid. I found it. I can take you back now.”
There was a catch in the sob that came out of her. Her eyes glistened and the smile didn’t have to be forced.
I sat there looking into the rain, pulling on a Lucky while I figured it out. I said, “You’ll go back to my apartment, kid. Dry off and sit tight.”
“Alone?”
“Don’t worry about it. There are cops stationed around the building. I’ll tip them to keep the place well covered. We have to move fast now and I can’t waste time. I have a key to a couple of million bucks in my pocket and I can’t put all my eggs in one basket. I’m getting a duplicate of that key made and you’re hanging on to it until Captain Chambers picks it up. I don’t want you to move out of that place until I get back and don’t pull a stunt like you did before. Let’s go, I still have a fast stop to make that won’t take more than five minutes.”
That was all it did take. My friend turned out the key while he swore at the world for getting him out of bed so I left him to buy a good night in a gin mill for his trouble.
We reached my block at a quarter to four with the rain still lashing at the car in frenzied bursts. There was a patrol wagon at each end and two plain-clothes men were standing in the doorway. When they saw us they looked so mad they could bust and one spit disgustedly and shook his head.
I didn’t give them a chance to ask questions. “Sorry you were standing guard over a hole, friend. One of those things. We got this business breaking over our heads and I can’t go explaining every move I make. I’ve been putting in calls all over the lot for Pat Chambers and if one of you guys feels like expediting things you’ll get on the line too.”
I pointed to Lily. “This is Lily Carver. They’re after her as bad as they are me. She’s got a message for Pat that can’t wait and if anything happens to her between now and when he sees her he’ll have your hides. One of you better take her up and stick outside in the hall.”
“Johnston’ll go.”
“Good. You’ll call around for Pat.”
“We’ll locate the captain somehow.”
I got Lily inside, saw her through the front door with the cop beside her and felt the load go lighter.
“You got something, Hammer?” The cop was watching me closely.
“Yeah. It’s almost over.”
His grunt was a sarcastic denial. “You know better, buddy. It never ends. This thing is stretched all over the states. Wait till you see the morning papers.”
“Good?”
“Lovely. The voters’ll go nuts when they see the score. This town is going to see a reform cleanup like it never happened before. We had to book four of our own boys this evening.” His hand turned into a fist. “They were playing along with them.”
“The little guys,” I said. “They pay through the nose. The wheels keep rolling right along. They string the dead out and walk over them. The little guy pays the price.”
“We got wheels too. Evello’s dead.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“How far did they get with his step-sister?”
“As far as here, buddy. People are thinking about that.”
I looked across the lobby at him. “They would. They’ll try to put the finger anyplace.”
Michael Friday and her wet, lovely mouth. The mouth that never did get close enough, really close. Michael Friday with the ready smile and the laugh in her walk, Michael Friday who got tired of the dirt herself and put herself on my side of the fence. Coming to me with the
thing I wanted even more than the stuff in the locker. She should have known. Damn it, those things had been happening under her nose. She should have known the kind of people she was messing around with. They’re fast and smart and know the angles and they’re ready to follow through. She should have thought it out and got herself a cordon of cops instead of cutting loose herself to get the stuff to me. Maybe she knew they’d be after her. Maybe she thought she was as smart as they were. Berga thought those things too.
Lovely Michael Friday. She steps outside and they have her. She could have been standing right where I was that minute. The door behind her locks shut. There’s only one person outside and that’s the one she’s afraid of. Maybe she knew she only had a minute more to live and her insides must have been tumbling around loose.
Like Berga. But Berga did something in that minute.
I got that creepy feeling again, an indescribable tingling sensation that burned up my spine and touched my brain with thoughts that seemed improbable. I looked down at my feet, my teeth shut tight, squinting at the floor. The cop’s breathing seemed the loudest thing in the room, even drowning out the thunder and the rain outside. I walked to the mailbox and opened it with my key.
Michael had thought too. She had left an empty envelope in there telling me exactly what she meant. It didn’t have my name on it, but I read the message. It said, “William Mist,” but it was enough.
It was more than enough. It was something else. The gimmick I was looking for, the one I knew I had come across someplace else but I couldn’t put my finger on. But for a little while it was enough.
I crumpled the thing up into a little ball and dropped it. I could feel the hate welling up in me until I couldn’t stand it any more. My head was filled with a crazy overture of sound that beat and beat and beat.
I ran out of the place. I left the cop standing there and ran out. I forgot everything I was doing except for one thing when I got in the car. Light, traffic? Hell, nothing mattered. There was only one thing. I was going to see that greaseball die between my fingers and he was going to talk before he did. The car screamed at the corners, the tail end whipping around violently. I could smell the rubber and brake lining and hear the whining protest of the engine and occasionally the hoarse curses that followed my path. The stops were all out this time and nothing else counted.
When I reached the apartment building I didn’t push any bells to be let in. I kicked out a pane of glass on the inside door, reached through the hole and turned the knob. I went up the stairs to the same spot I had been before and this time I did hit the bell.
Billy Mist was expecting somebody, all right, but it wasn’t me. He was all dressed except for his jacket and he had a gun slung in a harness under his shoulder. I rammed the door so hard it kicked him back in the room and while he was reaching for his rod I smashed his nose into a mess of bloody tissue. He made a second try while he was on the floor and this time I kicked the gun out of his hand under the table and picked him up to go over him good. I held him out where I wanted him and put one into his ribs that brought a scream choking up his throat and had the next one ready when Billy Mist died.
I didn’t want to believe it. I wanted him alive so bad I shook him like a rag doll and when the mouth lolled open under those blank eyes I threw him away from me into the door and his head and shoulders slammed it shut. His broken face leered at me from the carpet, the eyes seeing nothing. They were filmy already. I let it go then. I let that raspy yell out of me and began to break things until I was out of breath.
But Billy still leered.
Billy Mist, who knew where Velda was. Billy Mist who was going to talk before he died. Billy Mist who was going to give me the pleasure of killing him slowly.
It was thinking of Velda that smoothed it. My hands stopped shaking and my mind started thinking again. I looked around the mess I had made of the place, avoiding the eyes on the floor.
Billy had been packing. He had been five minutes away from being killed and he was taking a quick-acting powder. The one suitcase had a week’s supply of clothes in it but he could afford to buy more when he got there because the rest of the space was taken up by packets of new bills.
I was picking the stuff apart when I heard them at the door. They weren’t cops. Not these boys. They wanted in because I was there and nothing was stopping them.
How long ago was it that I asked Berga how stupid could she get?
Now I was the one. Sammy had told me. They were waiting for me. Now in squad cars on the corner of my block. Not for the Ford because by now they’d have figured the switch. So I go busting loose with the pack on my back and now I was up the tree.
Shoulders slammed into the door and a vertical crack showed in it. I walked to the overturned chair, picked up Billy’s rod and kicked the safety off. They were a little stupid too. They knew I was traveling clean but forgot Billy would be loaded. I pumped five fast ones through the wood belly-high and the screams outside made a deafening cacophony that brought more screams from others in the building.
The curses and screams didn’t stop the others. The door cracked again, started to buckle and I turned and ran into the bathroom. There was a barrel bolt on the door made for decency purposes only and wouldn’t hold anything longer than a minute or two. I slid it in place, took my time about opening the bathroom window and sighting along the ledge outside.
I got my feet on the sill, started to go through when my arm swept the bottles from the shelf. Dozens of bottles. A sick man’s paradise and Billy had been a very sick man after all. There was one left my arm didn’t touch and I picked it up. I stared at it, swore lightly and dropped it in my pocket.
The door inside let loose. There was more letting loose too. Shots and shrieks that didn’t belong there and I crawled through the window before I could find out why. I felt along the ledge with my toes, leaning forward at an angle with my hands resting on the building on the other side of the airway. I made the end where the building joined, found handholds on the other sills and went up.
For a change I was glad of the rain. It covered the noises I made, washed clean places for my fingers and toes and when I reached the roof bathed me in its coolness. I lay there on the graveled top breathing the fire out of my lungs, barely conscious of the fury going on in the streets. When I could make it I got across the building, got on the fire escape and crawled down.
Somebody in a dark window was screaming her lungs out telling the world where I was. Shouts answered her from someplace else and two shots whined off into the night. They never found me. I hit the yard and got out of there. Sirens were converging on the place and a hundred yards off the rapid belch of a tommy gun spit a skinful of sudden destruction into the airway.
I laughed my fool head off while I stood there on the sidewalk and felt good about it. In a way it paid to be stupid as long as you overdid it. I was too stupid to figure the boys planted around my apartment would follow me and too stupid to remember there were the Washington boys who would run behind them. It must have made a pretty picture when they joined forces. It was something that had to come. The Mafia wasn’t a gang, it was a government. And governments have armies and armies fight.
The trouble was that while the war raged the leader got away and had time to cover his tracks. I pulled the bottle out of my pocket, looked at it and threw it away.
Not this leader. He wasn’t going anywhere except a hole in the ground.
CHAPTER 13
The office was dark. Water leaked through the hole I had made in the glass and the pieces winked back at me. Nobody at the desk. No beautiful smile, challenging eyes. I knew where to look and pulled the file out. I held a match to it and the pieces clicked in place. I put the card back and went through the rooms.
Off the inner office a door led to stairs that ran up, thickly carpeted stairs that didn’t betray the passage of a person. There was another door at the top and an apartment off it. I kicked my shoes off, laid the change in my pocket on the floor a
nd walked away from the one that showed the light.
There was only one room that was locked, but those kinds of locks never gave me any trouble at all. I stepped inside, eased the door shut and flicked my lighter.
She was laced into an easy chair with a straitjacket, her legs tied down. A strip of adhesive tape was across her mouth and around it were red marks where other tapes had been ripped off to feed her or hear what she had to say. There was a sallowness about her face, a fearful, shrunken look, but the eyes were alive. They couldn’t see me behind the lighter, but they cursed me just the same.
I said, “Hello, Velda,” and the cursing stopped. The eyes didn’t believe until I moved the lighter and the tears wiped out her vision. I took the ropes off, unlaced the jacket and lifted her up easily. The hurt sounds she wanted to make but couldn’t came out in the convulsions of her body. She pressed against me, the tears wetting my face. I squeezed her, ran my hands across her back while I whispered things to her and told her not to be afraid any more. I found her mouth and tasted her, deeply, loving the way she held me and the things she said without really saying anything.
When I could I said, “You all right?”
“I was going to die tonight.”
“Somebody’ll take your place.”
“Now?”
“You won’t be here to see it.” I found the key in my pocket and pressed it in her hand. I gave her my wallet to go with it and pulled her to the door. “Take a cab and find yourself a cop. Find Pat if you can. There’s an address on that key. Go hold what’s in the locker it opens. Can you do that much?”
“Can’t I ...”
“I said get a cop. The bastards know everything there is to know. We can’t lose any time at all ... and most of all I can’t lose you at all. Tomorrow we’ll talk.”
“Tomorrow, Mike.”
“It’s crazy this way. Everything’s crazy. I find you and I’m sending you off again. Damn it, move before I don’t let you go.”
“Tomorrow, Mike,” she said and reached for me again. She wasn’t tired now, she was brand-new again. She was a woman I was never going to let go again ever. She didn’t know it yet, but tomorrow there would be more than talk. I wanted her since I had first seen her. Tomorrow I’d get her. The way she wanted it. Tomorrow she was going to belong to me all the way.
The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 2 Page 63