When I made a complete circle around the block I ambled over to the car and got in. For a change the streets were half empty and I breezed uptown without having to stop for a red light. When I got to Ninety-sixth Street I turned toward the river, found a place to park and got out.
A breeze was blowing up from the water, carrying with it the partially purified atmosphere of a city at work. It was cool and refreshing, but there was still something unclean about it. The river was gray in color, not the rich blue it should have been, and the foam that followed the wake of the ships passing by was too thick. Almost like blood. In close to shore it changed to a dirty brown trying to wash the filth up on the banks. It was pretty if you only stopped to look at it, but when you look too close and thought enough it made you sick.
(She removed her hat, shoes, jacket ... laid them down on the planks with her bag on top, and jumped in.) That would be a woman’s way of doing it ... a woman who had given suicide a lot of thought. Not a sudden decision, the kind that took a jump and tried to change her mind in mid-air. A suicide like this would be thought out, all affairs put in order to make it easy for those who did the cleaning up. If it was a suicide. Neat, like it had been planned for a long, long time.
My feet had carried me down to the grass that bordered the water, taking me over toward a pier that was partially ripped up. They had a watchman on it now in a brand-new shack. I was conscious of a face curling into a nasty smile. It was still there when the watchman came out, a short fat guy with a beer bottle in his hand. He must have picked me for another cop because he gave me the nod and let me walk down the runway to the end without bothering to ask questions.
I could hear the music going off in my head. It was always like that when I began to get ideas and get excited. I was getting a crazy, wild idea that might prove a point and bring Pat into it after all, then the crap would really fly. Heads would roll. They’d set up a guillotine in Times Square and the people could cheer like at a circus, then slink back and get ready to start the same thing all over again.
There was an empty peanut-butter jar with dead worms in it on top of the piling. I shook the things out and wiped the jar clean with a handkerchief until it shone, then threw the handkerchief away, too. I climbed down the supports and filled the jar nearly full before I worked my way back, then screwed the lid back on and went back to the street.
Instead of calling Pat I drove straight to his office. He shook hands and invited me down the hall where he picked up a report sheet, then took me back to his cubicle. He handed me the form. “There it is, Mike. She died by suffocation. Drowning. We called the time right, too. No doubt about it now.”
I didn’t bother to read the report. Instead I tossed it back on his desk. “The coroner around, Pat?”
“He’s downstairs, if he hasn’t left already.”
“Call and find out.”
He was about to ask a question, but thought better of it and reached for the phone. After a minute he said, “He’s still there.”
“Tell him to wait.”
“It better be good. He’s pretty cranky. Besides, he’s with the D.A.”
“It’s good.”
Pat told the operator to hold him, his eyes never leaving mine. When he hung up he leaned forward over his desk. “What is it this time?”
I laid the jar on his desk. “Have him analyze that.”
He picked up the jar and scrutinized it, shaking it to bring the sediment to the top, frowning into the murky ooze inside the jar. When he saw I wasn’t going to explain it he got up abruptly and went out the door and I heard the elevator take him downstairs.
I went through half a deck of Luckies before I heard the elevator stop again. His feet were coming toward the office fast and hard and I knew he was mad.
He was. He slammed the jar on the desk and swung around with anger written across his face. “What kind of a steer did you call that? He analyzed it all right ... he told me it was nothing but water filled with every kind of mess there was. Then he wanted to know the whys and wherefores. I looked like a damn fool. What was I going to say, that a private cop is using the police for a workbench to figure out a crazy scheme? I didn’t know what I expected to find in there, but I thought it would be better than that!”
“Why didn’t you ask the coroner if it was the same stuff he found in her lungs? Not her stomach, mind you, but her lungs. When you drown you suffocate because that little valve in your throat tightens up the air passage to keep anything from running into your lungs. It doesn’t take much to suffocate a person ... just enough water to make that little valve jam. There’s water in the stomach, but very little in the lungs. Go ahead, ask him.”
Pat’s eyes were ready to pop. His teeth bared in an animal-like grin and he said, “You brainy bastard, you.”
He picked up the phone and called downstairs. The conversation didn’t take more than a minute, but there was a lot of excited talk going on. He put the phone back and slid into his chair. “They’re double-checking now. I think you called it.”
“I told you that before.”
“Don’t go too fast, Mike. We have to wait for the report. Now tell it your own way.”
“Simple, Pat. Ann Minor was drowned, most likely in her own place. Then she was tossed into the river.”
“That means carrying the body out of the house without being seen, you know.”
“What of it? Who’s on the street at that hour? Hell, getting her out isn’t the hard job. Dumping her wouldn’t be a hard job either.”
“There’s only one catch. The suicide note.”
“I got ideas on that, too.”
Pat dropped his head in his hand. “You know, I’m pretty smart. I’ve been tied up in police work as long as you have. I love it, I’m good at it. But you come up with the ideas. Do you think I’m getting too set in my ways any more? Am I reverting to type or something? What the hell is wrong with me, Mike?”
The only thing I could do was chuckle at him. “You aren’t slowing up, kid. You just forget ... sometimes a smart crook knows as much as a smart cop. You ought to start thinking like one of them sometimes. It helps.”
“Nuts.”
“We have two murders now. They both looked like something else. We haven’t proved the first one, but this second shows you the kind of people you’re up against. They aren’t amateurs by a long shot.”
Pat looked up. “You were talking about an idea you had. . . .”
“No dice. Get your own. This one’s a little cockeyed even for you. If it’s what I’m thinking it’s just another piece in the puzzle. Maybe it’s even from a different puzzle.”
The phone rang again and Pat answered it. His face stayed blank until he finished the conversation. He wasn’t too happy. “My department has it now. The water in her lungs was clear. Traces of soap. She was drowned in a bathtub, probably. Not a sign of contamination.”
“Then cheer up.”
“Yeah, I’ll break out in smiles. They’re patting me on the back downstairs, but they want to know how I got wise. What the hell will I tell them?”
I pushed the chair back and stood up. “Tell ’em you made it all up out of your own two little heads.”
When I left, Pat said damn, soft like, but he was grinning now.
And I was grinning because I wanted the police in on this thing. Where I was going was too much trouble for one person. Much too much. Even for me. The cops had the boys and the guns. They had the brains, too. Pretty soon now those heads were going to roll.
I had my supper in the Automat before I went home. I loaded up a tray with everything they had and picked a table where I was alone and able to think. When I finished I felt better and kept thinking over a cigarette. All the assorted pieces of the puzzle were clear in my mind, but I couldn’t get them together. But at least they were clear and if I couldn’t see the picture on the puzzle. I knew one thing ... there would be one when I got it together. I looked at Nancy’s ring again and said, “Soon, Red ... ver
y soon now.”
In an hour the day had lost its brightness and a light rain rolled in with the dusk. I turned up my collar and stayed close to the buildings until I reached my car. Traffic was heavier now, but I got on an express street that was running freely and headed home. By the time I made my apartment the rain was coming down hard with no signs of letting up. I drove into the garage, and ran for it. Just the same, I got soaked before I reached the canopy over the gates.
When I tried to get my key in the lock it jammed. I tried again and it jammed again. Then I saw scratches on the brass. The lock had been jimmied. I hauled out my rod with one hand and kicked at the door. It flew open and I charged in there like a jerk wide open to get myself killed, only there was nobody else in there with me.
The lights were on in every room and the place was turned upside down. Nothing was where it belonged. The cushions in the chairs and couch were ripped apart and the breeze was blowing the stuffing through the air like a field of ragweed.
Drawers were emptied and discarded in the middle of the floor. All my clothes were out of the closet and heaped in a pile, the pockets turned inside out. They didn’t even overlook the refrigerator. Bottles, cans and cold cuts were drawing flies and dirt on the table and under the sink.
I grabbed the phone and dialed the house number downstairs and waited for the doorman to answer. When he came on I had to fight to keep my voice down. “This is Mike Hammer in 9-D. Was anybody here looking for me?”
The guy replied in the negative.
“Was anybody hanging around the place today. Anybody who doesn’t belong here?”
Another negative. He asked me if there was any trouble.
I said, “No, but there damn soon will be. Somebody’s ruined my joint.”
He got excited at that but I told him to keep it quiet. I didn’t feel like answering questions or scaring the neighbors. I went into the bedroom and started to yank the covers from the heap in the corner. The overnight case was there under the layers of wool, the top gaping open and the baby clothes scattered around it. Some of them hadn’t even been unfolded. Both side pockets and the top pocket had been ripped completely off and the lining opened so a hand could search underneath.
And the folder of pictures was gone.
I took an inventory of everything in the house, a search that cost me two hours, but the only thing missing was the pictures. Just to be sure I looked again. I needn’t have bothered. Fifty-four bucks and a wrist watch lay on top of the dresser untouched, but an old set of films was gone.
They didn’t mean anything to me, but they did to somebody else. That’s why Ann died. I sat on the wreckage of a chair with a butt dangling from my lips, tallying things up. A clock lay on the floor, smashed from a heel. A cigarette box was forced open, broken. A socket fixture on the wall had been pried loose, leaving the wire ends hanging out like broken fingers.
I looked around me more carefully this time, noticing the pattern of the search. They took the pictures, but they were looking for something else, a something small enough to hide in almost anything. The inkwell had been emptied on the desk, and I remembered the salt and pepper shaker that had been dumped in the kitchen.
Sure, it was simple enough. I lifted my hand and grinned at the ring. “They’ll be back, kid,” I told it. “They didn’t get you that time, so they’ll be back. And we’ll be waiting for them.”
I could relax now. It was going to cost me, but I could relax. The pattern was taking shape. Nancy was the figurehead. The ring was Nancy. And they wanted her pictures back. What for, I couldn’t say. They were old and they didn’t show anything, but they were important, too. The baby clothes didn’t mean anything to them, but the ring and the pictures did.
My eyes were staring into the distance and I was seeing Nancy’s letter to me. Someday she might need me again ... she was doing many things... only one of which had any meaning to her ... ours was a trust.
Words. Now I had a lot of words. Some of them were tugging at my brain trying to claw their way into the clear. What was it? What the hell was it I was trying to remember? It was shrieking out to be heard and my mind was deaf. I was listening but I couldn’t hear it. Damn it, what was there? What was I trying to remember! Somebody said something. It didn’t mean a thing then, yet it sank in and stayed there until now. Who said it? What was it?
I shook my head to clear it, hoping to bring it back. The shrill clamor of the phone snapped me out of the fog and I got up and answered it. Pat’s voice said hello with a tone that had a snap to it.
“What’s up, Pat?”
“I just want to tell you we went over the thing again. It works out. The coroner and the D.A. are calling it murder. Now they want an answer to the suicide note. It was authentic as hell. What was the idea you had ... I’m up the creek without a paddle.”
I answered him listlessly. “Go ask some questions of her friends. See if she had ever talked about committing suicide. There’s a chance she did at one time and wrote the note. Somebody could have talked her out of it, then kept the note for future use.”
“You think of everything, don’t you?”
“I wish I did, Pat.”
“It isn’t going to be as easy as that. I put the whole question to the D.A. and it stood him on his ear. He thought the idea was preposterous.”
“What do you think?”
“I think we got a snake by the tail.”
“That’s the only safe way to pick up a snake.”
“I hope you’re right. You still playing ball, Mike?”
“All the way, kid. You’ll hear from me when I have something. Like now. Somebody broke into my apartment and wrecked it. They were looking for Nancy’s ring. They didn’t get it, but they did take those snapshots I got from the blonde.”
“Hell!” Pat exploded. “What made you keep them? You know better than that!”
“Sure, I’ll close the barn door after the horse is stolen. I wouldn’t have known they were important if they hadn’t been lifted. I’m not worried about them. They wanted the ring, why, I don’t know. It’s impossible to trace the thing, but they wanted it.”
Pat was silent, then he said, “I have news for you, too. I got an answer from a hospital in Chicago. We were lucky to get it back so quickly.”
I squeezed the receiver. “Yeah?”
“Nancy Sanford had a baby there four years ago. She was an unwed mother. She refused to divulge the name of the father and she was put in a charity ward sponsored by a group that takes care of those affairs. It was a stillbirth. Nobody knows where she went after that.”
My hand was shaking and my voice was almost a whisper when I thanked him for the information. Before I could hang up he said, “That ring ... better drop it off with me, Mike.”
I laughed harshly. “Like hell. Nancy is still a suicide on your books. When you call it murder you can have it.”
Pat was arguing about it when I interrupted.
“What are you going to do about the blonde? ... and Murray?”
“He was just picked up at his club. On his way over now. Listen, about the ring, I want. . . .”
I said thanks and cradled the receiver. Murray was about to be questioned. That meant a couple of hours at least, unless he had a good lawyer and good connections. It was enough time.
Chapter Nine
MURRAY CANDID had two listings: one at the club and the other in a fancy residential section of Brooklyn. I didn’t like either one of them. I tried the one in Brooklyn and a butler with a British accent answered and told me Mr. Candid was out and wasn’t expected back until the club had closed for the night and could I leave a message. I told him never mind and hung up.
A butler yet. Probably golden candelabras and rare Ming vases, too.
I held my hand over the dial and on second thought punched Lola’s number out. She recognized my voice and smiled over the phone. “Hello, darling. Where are you?”
“Home.”
“Am I going to see you?”
/>
She made me feel nice and warm with just a few words. “In a little while maybe. Right now I’m up to my ears in something. I thought you might be able to help.”
“Of course, Mike. What ... ?”
“Did you know Ann Minor? She worked for Murray.”
“Certainly. I’ve known her for years. Why?”
“She’s dead.”
“No!”
“Yes. She was murdered and I know why. It had to do with Nancy, only the cops are in on this one.”
“Oh, Mike ... what makes these things happen? Ann wasn’t one ... one of us. She never did anything wrong. Why, she used to take care of the kids in the racket ... try to help them. Oh, Mike... why? Why?”
“When I know that I’ll know who killed her, honey. But that’s not the point. Do you know where Murray might have a private hangout? Not his place in Brooklyn, but someplace where he could do some trick entertaining or contact business associates?”
“Y-yes. He used to have a place in the Village. It won’t be the same one I knew because he changed the spots regularly. He didn’t like to stay in one place too long, but he favored the Village. I ... was up there once ... a party. It wasn’t nice, Mike; I’d rather not speak about it.”
“You don’t have to. Where was the place?”
She gave me the location and I scribbled it down. “You’d have to ask around to see where he is now. I could find it, I guess, but. . . .”
“You sit pat. I’ll find it myself. I don’t want you sticking your neck out.”
“All right, Mike. Please don’t get hurt ... please.”
I grinned. Not many people worried about me and it was a nice feeling. “I’ll be real careful, sugar. In fact, I’ll call you back later so you’ll know everything is all right. Okay?”
“If you don’t I’ll never forgive you. I’ll be waiting for you.”
I put the phone back easy and patted it.
The evening was well on its way when I finished dressing. I had on the made-to-order suit with space built in for my armory, looking like something out of the prohibition era. I found my raincoat under the rest of the other stuff and climbed into it, stuffing a pack of butts in each pocket.
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