Pig-faced Scarnetti did something that made me smile, which under the circumstances took some doing. He dropped his automatic—a Browning Hi-Power, I judged—in his right suitcoat pocket. Then he dug for something in an inside pocket and returned with a pouch about the size of an unfolded wallet. From this he selected what were almost certainly lock picks, smiled to himself, and started toward the front door, which I opened and shot him in the head.
He seemed to reflect on that, hanging there in space in the midst of blood mist, his two dark little eyes joined by a dark little hole between them. Then he flopped backward with a thud, the porkpie hat pushing down over the pig face, sparing the living from having to look at it.
Of course my shot had torn a big gaping hole in the silence, alerting Pigozzi, and I decided to head around the cottage after him rather than go through the house. I figured he wasn’t inside, since I hadn’t heard him bust the door down or anything, and if he’d been using lock picks, too, that gunshot had surely stopped that effort.
If I was wrong, and he was somehow already inside, I had to hope Melba really did know her way around a firearm. But me coming in behind him would be a break. Shooting an asshole in the back was a good way to end a gun fight before it got really ugly.
But when I came around, the back door was closed and the patio was empty. Pigozzi hadn’t had time to pick that lock and get inside and close the door behind him; and he hadn’t forced it open. I could see his Chevy parked down from here, but he wasn’t heading to it. Maybe he’d tucked behind the garage… only then wouldn’t he have taken a shot at me?
I checked anyway.
No sign of him there, but then I heard him, heard his footsteps as he ran, crunching twigs and leaves, batting branches out of his way as he went up that terribly steep, heavily wooded incline. That wall of green and brown, almost black in the night, showed no sign of him, as if it had swallowed him. But as he clawed and smashed through all that greenery, he created a percussive symphony that told of his fleeing.
I paused for just a moment.
I was damn near bare ass, in just the boxers and my sneakers, and heading through that thickness of brush and undergrowth, not to mention full-grown trees, I would get more scrapes and scratches than breaking up a pair of tom cats going at it over pussy.
But what choice did I have?
I glanced around to see if I could tell where exactly he’d taken off from, so I could take advantage of the path he’d forged. In the dark, with an area so wide, that was hopeless. The best I could do was follow the sounds.
“Shit,” I muttered to nobody, and started up the incline, pushing through bushes and past low-lying trees, following the noise of him knifing through up ahead of me, protected by his goddamn suit of clothes, while nettles and thistles and prickly shrubs had their way with me, the nicks and cuts and even gashes already stinging. I pressed on, little blood trails making random patterns on my flesh, for thirty seconds that felt like thirty minutes.
Then the sound of him halted, and so did I.
Had he heard my pursuit, and stopped to lie in wait?
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Then something, something I could hardly believe.
The sound said he was moving toward me! Doubling back? Why?
But he wasn’t really—the crunch-crunch-crunch of twigs and leaves and branches being pushed aside had shifted, were now off to my left, growing louder at first, then less so.
In fact, moving away…
He was heading back to his car! He’d heard me in pursuit or thought he had, and decided to cut at an angle that would take him to the car parked alongside the road, down from the cottage. He was the driver—he had the keys. Not a dumb move, not a dumb move at all.
My choices were limited. I could cut toward him, hoping my progress through the brush and trees was quicker than his, although the angle he was taking made that doubtful. My only other option, and I could waste no time in choosing, was to double back myself. From the patio I would have a clear shot at the car or at him approaching it from the wooded hillside. He would have to cut in front of my path—at a distance, but in front of it.
I doubled back. After all, I’d scuffed and scraped my skin to hell and gone making a path—why not take it?
And the descent was definitely quicker and easier than the ascent. I could hear him, to my right now, still snapping and splintering his way through, the leaves he was disrupting rustling like a hundred birds heading for the sky from the safe haven of trees. He would be hearing much the same from me.
My ears told me he reached the clearing before I did, the ground taking a sudden gentle slope after the drastic descent he’d just maneuvered. That had to have slowed him down. Maybe he even stumbled. When I reached the garage, I held my palms out to brace me, then skirted the structure to get to the patio.
He was at the Chevy and getting in.
The shot I threw was wild and at this range hopeless. But the thunder of it was enough to freeze him. That scarred mug scowled at me as I came at him, still half a football field away, and instead of getting behind the wheel and taking off, and maybe shooting at me out his window, he planted himself on the gravel road and took aim.
He might have hit me if I hadn’t anticipated the shot and rolled, grateful I was on grass not gravel. Then, instead of getting in the Chevy and the hell away, he came toward me, not even running, the .45 pointed in my direction but staying silent.
He’d misread it—I had rolled a fraction of a second after he fired, and he thought I’d been hit!
I was down on my side and I stayed put. Stayed motionless. The flat-nosed ex-pug was grinning down at me, so wide a grin the sideways scar turned into a second smile itself; he was ready to give me one last shot just for fun. He didn’t know my unblinking open eyes were still seeing and when I swung my arm up and shot him in the head, he was still grinning.
He went backward, already dead and, despite his grin suggesting the contrary, unable to enjoy the red wet fireworks exploding from the top of his skull.
But I know I did.
CHAPTER TEN
The soggy gray blanket of the sky rumbled and grumbled as I dragged Pigozzi to the Chevy and got him up and in behind the wheel. Then I did the same with Scarnetti on the rider’s side. It took some effort but my adrenalin was pumping, and I wasted no time. A guy in his boxers, all cut up and bleeding, hauling a couple of dead goons across the highway might have raised questions if someone drove by.
But no one did. This was damn near a private lane, this stretch of it anyway, and the other summer cottages along here were closed up for the coming cold.
I was pretty wiped out by the time I stumbled inside. I came in the front door and called out, “Me!” and went to her in the bedroom, the .45 in my hand but at my side now. She was still under the log-wood bed, her eyes glittering in the near-dark like a cornered animal’s. I flipped the light switch, said, “Me,” again, then went over and knelt and held out a hand.
When she was on her feet, still in the pink satin robe but no slippers, she got her first look at me. Her eyes showed white all around, which went well with her gasp.
“Good lord, Mike—what happened to you?”
My body was a welter of welts and nicks and scrapes, blood dried now in odd little trails, making modern art out of me. Maybe they could hang me in a museum and people could stare and wonder what the hell I meant.
“Honey, I just killed two men.”
She gasped again, but this time held it, and stood there stunned for several moments of suspended animation.
She was still that way when I asked, “Can you get your daddy on the phone?”
Looking numb now, she nodded, several times.
“Do it,” I said. “I’ll explain to him and you can listen.”
The phone was on the wall in the kitchenette. She dialed. Took a while for her to get an answer, not surprising at half-past four in the morning.
“Dad
dy? It’s Mel… No, I’m fine. I’m fine, but Mike needs to talk to you.”
She handed me the receiver, like a cornered outlaw giving up a gun.
“Senator,” I said, “I need your advice and maybe your help.”
“Is my daughter all right?”
“She is. She’s safe, a little rattled, but fine.”
“What is this about, son?”
“It’s about the real reason I came to Killington.”
And I told him—and by doing so told them both—that I had sneaked into town to deliver some money to the wife of a recently deceased army buddy, who had entrusted the loot to me because it was hot even for hot money.
“This wasn’t strictly legal, sir. My friend worked for a criminal outfit before the war, and that’s who he stole it from. Somehow they got a line on me coming to town and two men came around tonight—how they knew where to find me I’m not sure—to try to collect that money and kill me. They would likely have killed your daughter as well, just because she was here.”
An edge came into his voice. “You put my daughter in grave danger.”
“Unintentional, sir. But the advice I need is this—what do I do with the bodies? They’re sitting dead as hell in the car they came in, and it’s parked just down the road. It was self-defense and I can sell that, but my track record with the local cops isn’t great. Plus, I moved the bodies because I didn’t figure you wanted them littering up your property. Maybe if you called it in and paved the way, I wouldn’t get the rubber hose treatment or just flat-out shot.”
He said nothing.
So I went on: “Or, since as you said, you’re not without influence, maybe you’d like to clean up this mess for the sake of your daughter and her future husband.”
He said nothing.
“I have a feeling,” I said, “there’s probably some road not so close to this one where a couple of goombahs who got bumped off in a mob dispute might turn up. Or a fishing boat that could maybe provide a couple burials at sea. Or a cliff where—”
“I’ll take care of it.”
There was nothing at all folksy or fatherly in that voice now.
“I would like,” I said, “to bring your daughter to you. I think she would be safer with you than anywhere else in this city.”
Melba, who had been taking this all in with a frown, her lips parted as if about to speak, finally did: “Mike, I have an apartment in town. There’s no reason—”
But her father was talking and I lifted a palm to shush her.
“That’s a good idea, Mike,” he said, the friendly father-in-law tone returning somewhat. “I can put some staff on.”
“I don’t know if you’re thinking of using any local cops,” I said, “but I wouldn’t. The only person I told where I was staying was Chief Belden.”
“Belden can be trusted.”
“I was of that opinion myself, but maybe it’s loose lips sink ships. He must have mentioned my whereabouts to somebody in that stinking department. Somebody who can be bought and would know where to go to sell information.”
“…I have security staff at the two plants. I’ll enlist help from those ranks.”
“Good. Look for us by dawn.”
I hung up.
Melba, looking shell-shocked, stumbled over and started some coffee. I told her that was a good idea and went off to shower. I stripped out of my boxers, which were torn and streaked with green from the woods I’d plowed through, and got myself under the needles. I tried hot and that hurt, and cold and that hurt, too. Lukewarm felt fine, but when I soaped my scraped skin, it stung. I kept soaping.
I was toweling off when she slipped into the bathroom, which was barely big enough for us both. Her shell-shock was wearing off, replaced by concern as she took in my scratched-up body. Mostly they were superficial nothings, but a couple of the wounds were running blood again, their light scabbing scrubbed off in the shower.
She opened the medicine cabinet over the sink and got out a bottle of Mercurochrome and started daubing the nastier places a festive orange-red. It stung but the effort said she cared, and granted an implied forgiveness for me not sharing the truth with her earlier.
On the other hand, she still had plenty of truth yet to share with me.
I got back into my suit and packed my bag. She didn’t pack anything, saying her father would have some things from her apartment sent over. We left the Ford behind and I drove her to the Colonial mansion atop the Bluff, with very few words exchanged along the way. Again she sat hugging herself as if it were colder than it was, but she did not hug the passenger door. I sensed no hostility or fear in her.
But as I was taking the sloping driveway up toward the mansion, which was aglow in landscape lighting, she said, “You killed two men.”
“I did.”
“Did it bother you?”
“No. Them trying to kill me bothered me. And you’d have been a civilian casualty.”
“You make it sound like war.”
“It was. It is.”
“Will they try again?”
“I don’t know. If they reported back to the people who sent them, before they came calling… maybe.”
I rolled up to the pillared porch. The Senator, in a gold robe with black satin lapels, sash and cuffs, emerged, looking vaguely like a foreign potentate. His son, in a black-and-red plaid robe, lurked behind him like he ought to have a palm leaf fan. Both wore somber expressions.
I got out, opened Melba’s door, and walked her up. Appearing from behind Lawrence came Eva, like an ameba splitting off from itself. She was in a pale yellow chenille robe that hung on her like a lampshade; but even without make-up, her pretty features and tousled blondeness explained how Lawrence might have once come to marry her.
Eva moved quickly to Melba and put an arm around her and walked her inside, Lawrence following. Mel glanced at me just before she disappeared, her expression that of a kid dropped off at a new school.
The Senator and I were alone on the porch now, the patriarch’s homely face working on inventing some brand-new wrinkles.
“I can use somewhere to stay,” I said. “Suggestions?”
“I’ll book you a room at the Killington Arms.” Then he gave me a coldly accusatory stare. “Will any others come looking?”
I told him what I’d told Melba, but added, “Those two were the Mafia’s top torpedoes in New York City. Were. The word will get out soon enough—tangle with Mike Hammer and catch a slug in the head or maybe in the back. They’ll know I play it the same dirty way they do, and the ones who are smart will steer clear.”
His eyes flared; nostrils, too. “Let us pray they are smart. Because I won’t abide you putting my girl in any further danger.”
“I don’t intend to, but I live the life I live. Your family will have to put up with it. I’m going to assume you’re aware that our upcoming vows are your daughter’s idea. She got me out from under two very nasty criminal charges, and I appreciate that. And I like her.”
His head came back and his eyelids rolled up. “You think you’re doing her a favor, marrying her?”
I grinned at him. “I don’t know. What do you think?”
And with the sun filtering through the maple trees surrounding the mansion of the town’s number one mover-and-shaker, I got in my fiancée’s Packard and drove off to find myself a diner.
I’d had a busy night and could use some breakfast.
* * *
The house was something a realtor would call Colonial, but had nothing in common with the Colonial the Senator and his family lived in. This was just a modest one-and-a-half-story bungalow, white with dark green shutters, a walk winding up a small front yard dressed up with a handful of house-hugging bushes, a one-car garage off to the right.
Nothing much.
Just the life guys like Bob Lewis fought for overseas. Just the home front dream of wife and kids and a decent roof over your head.
I went up three cement steps to the stoop, looking like a pr
osperous door-to-door salesman in the fresh suit and tie I’d got into in my new hotel room. It was nine a.m. At the door, I knocked hard, because I heard a sweeper going.
It shut off and she answered quickly, impressive when you saw how pregnant she was. Her maternity top was floral, pink and white and yellow, her slacks dark blue, her sandals mustard-colored. Her hair was in a black-and-yellow bandana and she wore not a speck of make-up. But like Eva this morning, she was a beauty. Big wide-set baby-blue eyes with long curled-up lashes, a cute little nose, generous full lips, apple cheeks and a complexion like the cream you pour on strawberries.
The guys must have been lining up to make a mother out of this babe, but Bob had the lucky ticket. He’d always been a lucky son of a buck. Almost always.
“Yes?” she said, giving me a smile I hadn’t earned, her voice high and a little breathy.
“Mrs. Loomis?”
“Yes?”
“I’m Mike Hammer. A friend of Bob’s.”
Her eyes lit up. “Yes! Bob spoke of you often. Come in, come in! Please, come in.”
The living room, like the house itself, was modest but attractive. A couch and a couple of end tables and a matching chair were enough to fill the small area, with that Hoover in its midst. A little table had pictures of Bob and my hostess, and some other family photos. She scurried the vacuum clear out of the room, despite my protests, and wouldn’t hear of it till I’d agreed to coffee.
We had that in a full kitchen a little bigger than the cottage’s kitchenette. Everything was white and new, wedding gifts most likely. She sat me at a yellow-and-white Formica-topped table and served up coffee in jadeite cups, then excused herself to go to the bathroom. She smiled, a little embarrassed, and said, “Comes with the territory,” and I grinned.
When she returned, I had my coffee with a little cream and she took both cream and sugar. That she’d been doing some crying was clear, but Bob had been gone for over a week, so my guess was it was mostly happening at night now.
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