There were hellos from a dozen different directions. Michael smiled, waved back and started to steer me toward the closest group. Leo Harmody was there in all of his self-assuming importance, ready to introduce her to the others. I took my arm away and said, "You go to it, baby. I'll find the bar and get a drink."
She nodded, a trace of a frown shadowing the corner of her mouth.
So I went to the bar.
Where Affia was holding Velda's hand and Billy Mist was giving her a snow job while Carl Evello watched cheerfully.
Velda was good. She showed pleasant curiosity and smiled. Carl wasn't so good. He got a little white.
Billy Mist was even worse. He got color in his greasy face but most of it was deep red and his lips tightened so much his teeth showed. I said, "If you're wondering, Carl, your little sister invited me along."
"Oh?"
"Charming girl," I said. "You'd never know she was your sister."
Then I looked at Billy. I was hating his guts inside and out so hard I could hardly stand still. I looked him over real slow like I was trying to find a spot in the garbage pail for the latest load and said, "Hello, stupid."
They can't take it. You can tear their heart out with one word and they can't take it. Billy's face was something ready to blow up like a landmine and he wasn't even thinking of the consequences. He was all alone in the room with me for that brief second and his hand tightened, got ready to grab something under his coat and right at the top of everything he felt I just stood there lazy-like and said, "Go ahead."
And he thought and thought about the dead men and watched his bubble bust wide open because his mind was telling him he'd never make it while he faced me and he got like Carl. White.
But I wasn't watching Billy Mist any more. I was watching Al Affia, plodding Al Affia who had the waterfront sewed up. Ignorant, thickheaded, slow Al who kept stroking Velda's hand all the while and who didn't turn color or go tight or do anything at all except say, "What's the matter with you guys?"
Velda repeated it. "What is the matter? After all..." "Forget it, honey," Billy told her. "Just kidding around. You know how it is."
"Sure you know how it is," Al said.
I looked at the Brooklyn boy and watched him carve his face into a grin, muscle by muscle. Somebody should have mentioned Al's eyes to the boys. They weren't a bit stupid. They were small and close together, but they were bright with a lot of things nobody ever knew about. Someday they'd know.
"Nobody introduced me to the lady," I said.
Carl put his drink down on the bar, afraid to let go of it.
"Hammer, I believe it is." He looked at me questioningly and I grinned. "Yes, Mike Hammer. This is Miss Lewis. Candy Lewis." "Hello, Candy," I said.
"Hello, Mike."
"Neat. Very neat. Model?"
"I do fashions for newspaper advertising."
Good mind, that secretary of mine. Nice and easy to explain to Billy how come she was shooting it with a couple of newshawks. I wondered how she had smoothed out his feelings.
She knew what I was thinking and went me one better. "What do you do, Mr. Hammer?"
They were watching me now. I said, "I hunt." "Big game?"
"People," I said, and grinned at Billy Mist.
His nostrils seemed to flare out a little. "Interesting."
"You'll never know, chum. It gets to be real sport after a while."
His mouth pressed together, a nasty smirk starting. "Like tonight. I got me two more. You ever hunt?"
His face wasn't red any more. It was calm and deadly. "Yeah, I hunt."
"We ought to try it together sometime. I'll show you a few tricks."
A low rumble came from Al's chest. "I'd like to see that," he laughed. "I sure would."
"Some people haven't got the guts for it," I told him. "It looks easy when you're always on the right side of a gun." I took them all in with one sweep of my eyes. "When you're on the wrong end it gives you the squirms. You know what I mean?"
Carl was on the verge of saying something. I would like to have heard it, but Leo Harmody came up, bowed himself into our little clique with a deep laugh and spoke to Velda. "Could I borrow you long enough to meet a friend of mine, my dear?"
"No, certainly not. You don't care, do you, Billy?"
"Go ahead. Bring her back," he told Leo. "We was talking."
She smiled at the four of us, got down off the stool and walked away. Billy wasn't looking at me when he said, "You better stay home nights from now on, wise guy."
I didn't look at him either. I kept watching Velda passing through the crowd. I said, "Any time, any place," and left them there together. A waiter came by with a tray, offered me a drink and I picked one up. It was a lousy drink but I threw it down anyway.
People kept saying, hello just to be polite and I said hello back. I picked Michael out of the crowd and saw that she was looking around for me too. Just as I started toward her I heard a whispered, "Mike!"
I stood there, took another drink from a passing waiter and sipped it. Velda said, "Meet me on the corner in an hour. The drugstore."
It was enough. I walked off, waved to Michael and waited while she made excuses to her friends.
Her smile looked tired, her face worried, but she swung across the room and held her hands out to me. "Enjoying yourself?"
"Oh, somewhat."
"I saw you talking to my brother."
"And friends. He sure has great friends."
"Is everything... all right?"
"For now."
She sucked her lip between her teeth and frowned. "Take me home, Mike."
"Not tonight, kid." Her face came up, hurt. "I've been read off," I said. "I'm unhealthier than ever to be seen with. When it happens I don't want you around."
"Carl?"
"He's part of it."
"And you think I am too."
"Michael, you're a nice kid. You're lovely as hell and you have everything to go with it. If you're trying to get something across to me I don't get it. Even if I did I wouldn't trust you a bit. I could go crazy nuts about you but I still wouldn't trust you. I told you a word the last time I saw you. It was Mafia. It's a word you don't speak right out because it means trouble. It's a word that has all the conniving and murder in the world behind it and as long as it touches you I'm not trusting you."
"You... didn't feel that way... when you kissed me."
There was no answer to it. I ran my hand along her cheek and squeezed her ear while I grinned at her. "A lot of things don't make much sense. They just happen."
"Will I see you again?"
"Maybe."
She walked to the door with me, said good-bye and let her tongue run over her mouth slowly like she was enjoying the taste of something. I grabbed my hat and got out of there fast before she talked me into something I wasn't going to get talked into.
The two goons were still outside. There was something set in their faces and they didn't move when I went past them. When the elevator came up I stepped in, hit the button marked B and had a smoke on the way down. The door opened, I hit the mainfloor buzzer as I got out and the elevator went back up a floor.
It wasn't hard to get out of there the back way. I went past the furnaces, angled around closed storerooms and found the door. There was a concrete yard in back bordered by a fence with a door that swung into the same arrangement on the other side. This time I met a young kid firing one of the furnaces, held out a bill as I went by and said, "Dames. You know how it is." He nodded wisely, speared the bill and went back to his work whistling.
I found the drugstore and went in for a soda. They sold magazines up front so I brought one back with me while I waited. It was five minutes past the hour when Velda came in, saw me and slipped into the booth.
"You get around, Mike."
"I was thinking of saying the same to you. How come you tangled with Mist?"
"Later. Now listen, I haven't too much time. Earlier this evening
two n
ames came up. One of Carl's men turned in a report and
I was close enough to hear it. The report was that somebody had double-checked on Nicholas Raymond and Walter McGrath. Carl got all excited about it.
"At the time I was talking to Al and Billy and had my back to Carl. He sent the guy off, called Billy off and I could tell from Billy's face that he passed the news on to him. He looked like a dead fish when he came back to the bar with us. He was so mad his hands were shaking."
I said, "Did Affia get the news?"
"Most likely. I excused myself for a few minutes to give him a chance to pass it politely."
"I wonder about something, Kitten."
"What?"
"I made a few phone calls."
"It sounded more important than that."
"Maybe Washington is getting hot.
"They'll have to get hotter," Velda grinned. "Billy said he had to talk a little business tonight." She reached in her handbag and brought out something. "He gave me a key to his apartment and told me to go ahead up and wait for him there."
I whistled between my teeth and picked the key out of her fingers. "Let's go then. This is hot."
"Not me, Mike. You go." There was a deadly seriousness about her face.
"What's the rest of it, Velda?"
"This is a duplicate key I dragged Carlo Barnes out of bed to make up for me. It took some fast and fancy working to get it so quickly."
"Yeah."
"Al Affia caught the pitch and invited me up to his place for awhile before I went to Billy's," Velda said softly.
"The lousy little..."
"Don't worry about it, Mike."
"I'm not. I'm just going to smash his face in for him, that's all." I sat there with my hands making fists and the hate pumping through my veins so hard it hurt.
Velda squeezed my hand and dumped a small aspirin bottle out of her bag and showed it to me. There weren't any pills in it, only a white powder. "Chloral," she said. "Don't worry."
I didn't like it. I knew what she figured to do and I didn't go for the play. "He's no tourist. They guy's been around."
"He's still a man."
My mouth felt dry. "He's a cagey guy."
Her elbow nudged her side meaningly. "I still have that, Mike." You have to do things you don't want to do sometimes. You
hate yourself for it but you still have to do it. I nodded, said,
"Where's his place?"
"Not Brooklyn. He has a special little apartment under the name of Tony Todd on Forty-seventh between Eighth and Ninth Avenues." She pulled a note pad out, jotted down the number with the phone to go with it and handed it over. "Just in case, Mike."
I looked at it, memorized every detail there, then let the flame of my lighter wipe it out of existence. My beautiful, sleek animal was smiling at me, her eyes full of excitement and when you looked hard you could see the same thing there that you could see in mine. She stood up, winked and said, "Good hunting, Mike."
Then she was gone.
I gave her five minutes. I followed the shadows further uptown along the Drive to the building Billy Mist owned.
For the first time I was glad he was such a big man. He was so damn big he didn't have to stake anybody out around his place. He could relax in the luxury of security, knowing that just one word could bring in an army if anybody tried to take the first step across the line.
It was another one of those things that came easy. You go in like you belonged there. You get on the elevator and nobody notices. You get off and go down the hall, then stick the key in the lock and the door opens. You get treated to the best that money can buy even if the taste is crummy.
There were eight rooms in all. They were spotlessly clean and treated with all the care a well-paid maid could give them. I took forty-five minutes going through seven of them without finding one thing worth looking at until I came to the eighth.
It was a little room off the living room. At one time it must have been intended for a storeroom, but now it had a TV set, a tilt-back chair with an ottoman in place facing it, a desk and a bookcase loaded with pulps. Out of eight rooms here was the place where Billy Mist spent his solo time.
The desk was locked, but it didn't take more than a minute to get it open. Right in the middle section was a dimestore scrapbook fat with clippings and photos and he was in all of them. My greasy little friend was one hell of an egotist from the looks of the thumbmarks on the pages.
Another ten minutes went by going through the book and then I came to Berga's picture. There was no caption. It was just a rotogravure cutout and Billy was grinning at the camera. Berga was supposed to be background but she outsmiled Billy. Two pages later she came up again only this time she was with Carl Evello and it was Billy who was in the background talking to somebody hidden by Carl's back. I found two more like that, first with Billy, then with Carl, and topping it all was a close-up glossy of Berga at her best with "love to my Handsome Man" penned in white across the bottom.
Nothing else unless you wanted to count the medicine bottles in the pigeonholes. It looked like the cabinet in the bathroom. Billy must have had a pretty nervous stomach.
I closed the desk, locked it and wiped it clean. I went back to the living room, checked my watch and knew the time was getting close. I picked up the phone and dialed Pat's home number. Nobody answered so I called headquarters and that's where he was. It was a tired, disgusted Pat that said hello.
"Busy, Pat?"
"Yeah, up to my ears. Where have you been? I've been calling between your office and your house all night."
"If I told you you'd never believe it. What's up?"
"Plenty. Sugar Smallhouse talked."
I could feel the chills crawl up my legs until the hairs on the backs of my hands stood straight out.
"Give, Pat. What's the score?"
He lowered his voice deliberately and didn't sound like himself at all. "Sugar was on the deal when Berga got bumped. Charlie Max was called in on the job but didn't make it."
"Come on, come on. Who did he finger?"
"He didn't. The other faces were all new to him."
"Damn it," I exploded, "can't you get something out of him?"
"Not any more, pal. Nobody can. They were taking the two downtown to the D.A.'s and somebody chopped them."
"What're you talking about?"
"Sugar and Charlie are dead. One federal man and one city cop are shot up pretty bad. They were sprayed by a tommy gun from the back seat of a passing car."
"Capone stuff. Hell, this isn't prohibition. For Pete's sake. Pat, how big are these guys? How far can they go?"
"Pretty far, it looks like. Sugar gave us one hot lead to a person with a Miami residence. He's big, too."
I could taste something sour in my mouth. "Yeah," I said, "so now he'll be asked polite questions and whatever answers he gives will satisfy them. I'd like to talk to the guy. Just him and me and a leather-covered sap. I'd love to hear his answers."
"It doesn't work that way, Mike."
"For me it does. Any trace of the car?"
"Sure, we found it." He sounded very tired. "A stolen job and the gun was still in it. We traced it to a group heisted from an armory in Illinois. No prints. Nothing. The lab is working on other things."
"Great. A year from now we'll get the report. I'd like to do it my way."
"That's why I was calling you."
"Now what."
"That screwball play of yours with Sugar and Max. The feds are pretty sore about it."
"You know what to tell them," I said.
"I did. They don't want to waste time pulling you out of jams."
"Why, those apple heads! Who are they supposed to be kidding? They must have had a tail on me all night to run me down in that joint and they sure waited until it was finished before they came in to get their suits dirty."
"Mike..."
"Nuts to them, brother. They can stick their heads..."
"Shut, up for a minute, will y
ou!" Pat's voice was a low growl. "You didn't have a tail... those two hoods did. They lost the boys and didn't get picked up again until they reached Long
John's."
"So what?"
"So they needed a charge to drag them in on. The boys caught the tail, ditched their rods someplace and when one of our plainclothesmen braced them they were clean. They had a second tail and didn't know it, but they didn't take any chances and pulled some pretty fancy footwork just in case. If they could have been pulled in on a Sullivan rap we would have squeezed something out of them. You didn't leave them in condition to talk."
"Tell em thanks," I grunted. "I don't like to be gunned for. I'll try not to break up their next play."
"Yeah," Pat said sourly.
"Anything on Carver yet?" I asked him.
"Not a thing. We have two freshly killed blondes, more or less. One's been in the river at least three days and the other was shot by an irate lover just tonight. They interest you?"
"Quit being funny." I looked at my watch. Time was getting too damn short. I said, "I'll buzz you if anything turns up, otherwise I'll see you in the morning."
"Okay. Where are you now?"
"In the apartment of a guy named Billy Mist and he's due in any second."
His breath made a sharp hissing sound over the phone as I hung up. I had almost timed it too close. The elevator marker was climbing toward the floor when I reached it and just in case I stepped around the corner of the stairs, went up to the first landing and waited.
Billy Mist and a heavyset muscleman came off the elevator, opened the apartment door and went in. There wasn't anything I wanted to talk to him about so I took the stairs back down instead of the elevator and got out the front door in one piece.
I got halfway down the block when some elusive little thing flashed across my mind and my eyes twisted into a squint as I tried to catch it. Something little. Something trivial. Something in the apartment I should have noticed and didn't. Something that screamed out to be seen and I had passed it by. I tried to bring it into focus and it wouldn't come and after a minute or so it passed out of sight altogether.
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