I said, "Hello, Carl." I made it good and snotty, but he didn't lose the grin.
"The infamous Mike Hammer. I hope the boys did a good job. They can do a better one if I let them."
"They did a good job."
I rolled my head and took a good look at him. "So, you're ... the boss."
The grin changed shape this time. One side of it dropped caustically. "Not quite... yet." The evil in his eyes danced in the candlelight. "Perhaps by tomorrow I will be. I'm only the boss locally... now.
"You louse," I said. The words seemed to have an effort to them. My breathing was labored, coming through my teeth. I closed my eyes, stiffened and heard him laugh.
"You did a lot of legwork for us. I hear you blundered right on what we have been looking for."
I didn't say anything.
"You wanted to trade. Where is it?"
I let my eyes come open. "Let her go first."
He gave me that twisted grin again. "I'm not trading for her. Funny enough, I don't even know where she is. You see, she wasn't part of my department."
It took everything I could do to hold still. I could feel the nervous tremors creeping up my arms and I made fists of my hands to keep from shaking.
"It's you I'm trading for. You can tell me or I can walk out of here and say something to the boys. You'll want to talk then." "The hell with you."
He leaned a little closer. "One of the boys is a knife man. He likes to do things with a knife. Maybe you can remember what he did to Berga Torn." I could see the smile on his face get ugly. "That isn't even a little bit what he'll do to you."
The side of his hand traced horrible gestures across my body, meaningful, cutting gestures with the nastiest implications imaginable in them. Then the gestures ended as the side of his palm sliced into my groin for emphasis and the yell that started in my throat choked off in a welter of pain and I mumbled something Carl seemed to want to hear and he bent forward saying, "What? What?"
And that repeated question was the last Carl Evello ever spoke again because he got too close and there were my hands around his throat squeezing so hard his flesh, buried my fingers while his eyes were hard little marbles trying to roll out of their sockets. I squeezed and pushed him on his knees and there wasn't even any sound at all. His fingernails bit into my wrists with an insane fury that lived only a few seconds, then relaxed as his head went back with his tongue swelling in the gaping opening that was his mouth. Things in his throat stretched and popped and when I let go there was only the slightest wheeze of air that trickled back into lungs that were almost at the bursting point.
I got him on the bed. I spread him out the way I had been and let him lie there. The joke was too good to pass up so Carl lived a minute longer than he should have. I tried to make my voice as close to his as I could and I called to the door, "He talked. Now put him away."
Outside a chair scraped back. There was a single spoken word, silence, and the slow shuffle of footsteps coming toward the door. He didn't even look at me. He walked up to the bed and I could hear the snick as the knife opened. The boy was good. He didn't drive it in. He put it in position and pushed. Carl's body arched, trembled and as I stepped away from the candle the boy saw the mistake and knew he had made the last one. I put everything I could find into the swing that caught the side of his neck and mashed his vertebrae into his spinal cord and he was dead before I eased him to the floor.
Cute. Getting cuter all the time.
I came out of the door with a yell I couldn't keep inside me and dived at the guy at the table. His frenzied stare of hesitation cost him the second he needed to clear his rod and while he was still digging for it my fingers were ripping into his face and my body smashed him right out of the chair. The gun hit the floor and bounced across the room.
My knees slammed into him, brought a scream bubbling out of his mouth that snapped off when my fist twisted his jaw out of shape. He didn't try for the gun any more. He just reached for his face and tried to cover it but I didn't let him have the pleasure out of not seeing what was happening. His eyes had to watch everything I did to him until they filmed over and blanked out when the back of his head cracked against the floor. The blood trickled out his nose and ears when I stood over him, a bright red that seemed to match the fire burning in my lungs. I pulled him inside to the other two, tangled his arms around the boy who still held the knife and left them that way.
Then I left. I got out on the street and let the rain wash me clean. I breathed the air until the fire went out, until some of the life I had left back inside crawled into my system again.
The guy sitting in the doorway ten feet away heard me laugh. His head jerked up out of the drunken stupor and he looked at me. Maybe he could see the way my face was and understand what was behind the laugh. The eyes bleary with cheap whiskey lost their glassiness and he trembled a little bit, trying to draw back into his doorway. My laugh got louder and he couldn't stand it, so he stood up and lurched away, looking back twice to make sure I was still there.
I knew where I was. Once you put in time on Second Avenue you never forget it. The storefront I came out of was dirty and deserted. At one time it had been a lunch counter, but now all that was left was the grease stains and the FOR RENT sign in the window. The gin mill on the comer was just closing up, the last of the human rubble that inhabited the place drifting across the street until he dissolved into the mist.
I walked slow and easy, another one of the dozens you could see sprawled out away from the rain. Another joe looking for a place to park, another joe who couldn't find one. I made the police call box on the second corner down, got it open and said hello when I heard the voice answer. I didn't have to try hard to put a rasp into my voice, I said, "Copper, you better get somebody down this way fast. Somebody screaming his head off in that empty dog wagon two blocks south."
Two minutes were all they took. The siren whined through the rain and the squad car passed me with its tires spitting spray. They'd find a nice little mess, all right. The one guy left could talk his head off, but he was still going to cook in the hot squat up the river.
I pulled my wallet out and went through it. Everything was there except money. Even my change was gone. I needed a dime like I never needed one before and there wasn't even a character around to bum one from. Down the street, lights of a diner threw a yellow blob on the sidewalks. I walked toward it, stood outside the door a second looking at the two drunks and the guy with the trombone case perched on the stools.
There wasn't any more I could lose so I walked in, called the counterman over and tossed my watch on the counter. "I need a dime. You can hold my watch."
"For a dime? Mac, you nuts? Look, if you need some coffee say so."
"I don't need coffee. I want to make a phone call."
His eyes went up and down me and his mouth rounded into a silent "oh." "You been rolled, huh?" He fished in his pocket, tossed a dime on the counter and pushed my watch back to me. "Go ahead, mac, I know how it is."
Pat wasn't at home. My dime clinked back and I tried his office. I asked for Captain Chambers and he wasn't there either. The cop on the board wanted to take a message and the captain would take care of it when he came in. I said, "Pal, this kind of message won't wait. It's something he's been working on and if I can't get word to him right away he's going to hit the roof."
The phone dimmed out as the operator spoke away from it. I could hear the hurried exchange of murmurs, then: "We'll try to contact the captain by radio. Can you leave your phone number?"
I read it off the dial, told him I'd wait and hung up. The counterman was still watching me. There was a steaming hot cup of coffee by an empty stool with a half pack of butts lying alongside it. The guy grinned, nodded to the coffee and made himself a friend. Coffee was about all my stomach would hold, but it sat there inside me like a million bucks in my hand. It took the shakes out of my legs and the ache from my body.
I lit a smoke, relaxed and watched the window. The w
ind in the street whipped the rain against the plate glass until it rattled. The door opened, a damp blast momentarily freshening the air. Another musician with a fiddle case under his coat sat down tiredly and ordered coffee. Someplace off in the distance a siren moaned, and a minute later another crossed its fading echo. Two more came on top of it, not close, but distant voices racing to a sore spot in the great sprawling sick body of the city.
Corpuscles, I thought. That's what they were like. White corpuscles getting to the site of the infection. They'd close in and wipe out the parasites and if they were too late they'd call for the carpenter corpuscles to come and rebuild broken tissue around the wound.
I was thinking about it when Pat walked in, tired lines around his eyes, his face set in a frozen expression. There was a twitch in the corner of his mouth he tried to wipe away with the back of his hand.
He came over and sat down. "Who kicked the crap out of you, Mike?"
"I look that bad?"
"You're a mess."
I could grin then. Tomorrow, the next day, the day after, maybe, I'd be too sore to move, but right then I could grin. "They reached me but they didn't hold on to me, chum."
His eyes got narrow and very, very bright. "There was a dirty little mess not too far from here. That wouldn't be it, would it?" "How good is it like it stands?"
Pat's lips came apart over his teeth. "The one guy left is wanted for three different kills. This one finishes him." "The coroner say that?"
"Yeah, the coroner says that. I say that. We have two experts on the spot who say that too but the guy doesn't say that. The guy doesn't know what to say. He's still half out and he says things about a girl named Berga Torn he worked over and when he knew what he did it woke him up and now he won't say anything. He's the scaredest clam you ever saw in your life."
"So it stands?"
"Nobody'll break it. Now what do you say about it?"
I took a big pull on the butt and stamped it out in the ashtray. "It's a detail. Right now it doesn't mean a damn one way or other to you or me. Someday over a beer I'll make it. into a good story."
"It better be good," Pat said. "I have all hell breaking loose around my ears. Evello's sister came to us with a list of phone calls yesterday and we tracked down the names into the damnedest places you ever saw. We have some of the wheels in the Mafia dangling by their you-know-whats and they're scramming for cover. They're going nuts down in Florida and on the Coast the police have pulled in people big enough to make your hair stand on end. Some of em are talking and the thing's opening wider."
He passed his hand over his eyes and drew it away slowly. "Damn it, we're up as far as Washington itself. It makes me sick."
The shake was back in my legs again. "Talk names, Pat."
"Names you don't know and some you do. We have the connections down pat but the ones up top are sitting tight. The Miami police pulled a quick raid on a local big shot and turned up a filing case of information that gives us a line into half the narcotics outlets in the States. Right now the federal boys have assigned extra men to pick up the stuff and they're coming home loaded."
"How about Billy Mist?" I asked him.
"Nothing doing. Not a word on him so far. He can't be located, anyway."
"Leo Harmody?"
"You got another case? He's howling police persecution and threatening to take things up with Congress. He can yell because there's nothing we can slap him with"
"And Al Affia's dead," I said.
Pat's head turned toward me, his eyes a sleepy gray. "You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"
"It couldn't've happened to a better guy."
"He was chopped up good. Somebody had a little fun."
I looked at him, lit another smoke and flipped the match in the ashtray where it turned into a charred arc. "How far did you get with him?"
"Not a thing. There wasn't a recognizable print on that bottle."
"What's the word on it, Pat?"
His eyes got sleepier. "His waterfront racket is going skyhigh. There's been two killings down there already. The king is dead, but somebody is ready to take his place."
The rain had the sound of a rolling snare drum. It was working up in tempo, backed by the duller, more resonant peals of thunder that cracked the sky open. The three drunks stared at the window miserably, hugging their cups as an anchor to keep from drifting out into the night. The fiddle player shrugged, paid his bill and tucked the case back under his coat and left. At least he was lucky enough to grab an empty cab going by.
I said, "Do you have the picture yet, Pat?"
"Yeah, I have a picture," he said. "It's the biggest one I ever saw."
"You're lost, kid."
The sleepiness left his eyes. His fingers turned the ashtray around slowly, then he gave me that wry grin of his. "Play it out, Mike."
I shrugged. "Everything's coming your way. Now you're having fun. What started it?"
"Okay, so it began with Berga."
"Let's not forget it. Let's tie it all up together so when you're out there having fun you'll know why. I'll make it short and sweet and you can check on it. Ten, twelve, maybe fifteen years ago a guy was bringing a package of dope into the country for delivery to the Mafia. He tangled with a dame on board and fell for her. That's where Berga came into it. Instead of handing over the package he decided to keep it for his sweetie and himself even though he ran the risk of being knocked off."
"Nicholas Raymond," Pat said.
I knew the surprise showed on my face when I nodded. "Nicholas had them on the spot. They couldn't bump him until they located the stuff and he wasn't stupid enough to lead them to it. There was two million bucks' worth in that consignment and they needed it badly. So Nick goes on living with this gal and one day he dies accidentally. It's a tricky pitch but it isn't a hard one. They figured that by this time he would have passed the secret along to her or she would have found out herself somehow.
"But it didn't happen that way. Nick was trickier than they thought. He got the word to her in case something happened to him, but even she didn't know where it was or what it was that keyed it. I guess they must have tried to scare it out of her for a while because she hired herself a bodyguard. He played it too good and moved in. The Mafia didn't like that. If he came across the stuff they'd be out of luck, so he went too."
Pat was watching me closely. There was an expression on his face like I wasn't telling him anything new, but he wasn't saying a word.
"Now we come to Evello. He gets a proper knockdown to her somehow and off he goes on the big pitch. He gave her the whole treatment and probably winds it up with a proposal of marriage to make it sound good. Maybe he over-played his hand. Maybe he just wasn't smart enough to fool her. Something slipped and Berga got wise that he was one of the mob. But she got wise to something else too. About then she suddenly discovered what it was they were all after and when she had the chance to get Evello creamed before that Congressional committee she put in her bid, figuring to get the stuff on her own hook later."
Now Pat's face was showing that he didn't know it all. There were sharp lines streaking out from the corners of his eyes and he waited, his tongue wetting down his lips from time to time.
I said, "She pulled out all the stops and so did they. The boys with the black hands get around. They scared her silly and by that time it didn't take much. She went to pieces and tried to fight it out in that sanitarium."
"That was her biggest mistake," Pat said.
"You mentioned a woman who came to see her."
He gave a slow nod, his hands opening and closing slowly. "We still can't make her."
"Could it have been a man dressed like a dame?"
"It could have been anything. There was no accurate description and no record of it."
"It was somebody she knew."
"Great."
"Now the stuff is still missing."
"I know where it is."
Pat's head came around faster t
his-time.
"The two million turned into four by just sitting there," I said.
"Inflation."
"Damn it, Mike, where?" His voice was all tight.
"On the good ship Cedric. Our friend Al Affia was working on the deal. He had given all the plans to her in his dive back there and whoever killed him walked off with them."
"Now you tell me," he said hoarsely. "Now you spill it when somebody has had time to dig it loose."
I took a deep breath, grunted when the sting of pain stabbed across my chest and shook my head. "It's not that easy, Pat. Al had those plans a long time. I'm even beginning to think I know why he was bumped."
Pat waited me out.
"He tried to sucker Velda into his dump for a fast play at her. She slipped him a dose of chloral and while he was out started turning the place upside down. Al didn't stay out very long. He got sick, his stomach dumped the stuff overboard and he saw what she was doing. Velda used the bottle on him then."
His eyes snapped wide open. "Velda."
"She didn't kill him. She bopped him one and it cut his head open. He staggered out after her and got word to somebody. That somebody caught the deal in a hurry and someplace she's still sweating." All at once every bit of pain in my body flooded back and trapped me in its agony before fading away. I finished with, "I hope."
"Okay, Mike, let it looose! Damn it, what else have you got? So the kid's sweating, you hope... and I hope too. You know them well enough to realize what's liable to happen to her now."
"She was on her way to see Billy Mist." My grin turned sour and my teeth came out from under my lips again. "The cops didn't find her."
"Supposing she never reached there?"
"It's a possibility I've been considering, friend. I saw her pass in a cab and she wasn't alone."
I was going warm again. The coffee didn't sit so well in my gut any more. I thought about it as long as I could, then shut out the picture when I buried my face in my hands.
Pat kept saying. "The bastards, the bastards!" His nails made a tattoo of sound on the counter and his breathing was almost as hard as mine was. "It's breaking fast, but it's not wide open yet, Mike. We'll get to Billy. One way or another."
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