She shook her head, just a little. “That’s not enough to make anything out of, Mike. Nothing says a man like Foster, taking his own life, might not hold his arm straight out. And with his arm on the desk, on its elbow, if he leaned his head against the snout, you’d get the same temple-to-temple effect.”
“I know. But it might still be enough to get Pat to look into this deeper. You notice Foster was in his pajamas, and his body wasn’t found till the next morning, when Gwen showed up at their beach house.”
“I’m not sure I see the significance.”
“Well, did he wake up in the middle of the night and kill himself?”
“I’m sure it happens.”
“Velda, most depressed types who resort to the Dutch act are well-dressed, almost anticipating their next stop is an open coffin. And Foster doted on his daughter. Would he do this, knowing that she almost had to be the one who found him? Would he do that leaving no farewell message? Particularly if the act was due to ill health, not standard despondence.”
Velda’s narrow-eyed expression said she was buying in. She shook the photos. “So this is Borensen’s work?”
“Yes. Dick Blazen let Martin Foster know all about Borensen’s seedy side, and Foster confronted Borensen. The result is a faked suicide, and a hit-and-run death for Blazen… with the need to get rid of Billy as the only witness capable of identifying him.”
“You think Borensen hired that hit-and-run?”
“No. That was Leif himself, all right.”
“But, Mike—if our scary friend on the phone the other night was the driver of that hit-and-run vehicle, he could be the one who needed Billy dead. After all, he, or one of his people, threw those slugs at Billy tonight, right?”
“Right. But I think Borensen didn’t go the hitman route until he figured that I needed to be handled. That would take a pro. No more do-it-yourself murder. In fact, I’d bet you a marriage license to a buck that this ‘suicide’ is the work of a professional. The professional who’s been sending his minions my way, and who either shot at Billy tonight or had it done.”
“No bet,” Velda said. “I think you’re right. I think Borensen handled Blazen himself, then the fallout was something he couldn’t handle. Possibly his mob friends stepped in and ordered him to go with a professional, here on out.”
I grinned at my smart cookie of a partner. “Velda, that’s a very good read. I should have thought of that.”
Her expression melted and she reached out and touched my unshaven face. “Mike… you look beat, darling. You have to get some sleep. You want to camp out in Billy’s room? We’ll have a rollaway sent up.”
I stretched. “No, I better get back to the city. I’ll grab some sleep and get back at it.”
I looked in on Billy and he was still off in a drug-induced Happy Land.
“You call me when he’s had a look at those crime scene photos,” I whispered, as I walked her back to the recliner. “With Billy’s ID, Pat may be able to move on Borensen.”
“What’s your next move?”
“Getting to Borensen before Pat does.”
She shook her head. “And what? Kill him?”
“No,” I said. “At least not until I beat the name of his hitman out of him.”
“Leif’s a big guy, Mike.”
“Bigger they are, the harder—”
“They fall, yes,” she said with a smirk, “I know, everybody knows.”
Half-way out the door I said, “I was going to say, the harder I kick their teeth in.”
* * *
The rain got out of the sun’s way and by the time I got back to Manhattan, dawn was clawing its way up and around the towering glass-and-steel tombstones. I left the Ford in the parking garage, but walking to the elevator, I felt an uneasiness settle in over me like a flu-driven chill. So many cars, and no one but me around. Even the attendant off duty. My footsteps were hollow little things, tiny signs of life in a dead cavernous space.
Fear is an old friend to me. I embrace it. I grin at it. I know how to turn it into energy, into alertness, into big goddamn trouble for the other guy.
But right now the emptiness around me as I walked spooked me bad. Was it fear? Not really. But a guy as good at killing as my phone caller claimed to be could pop up out of anywhere and plunk me into the next life…
…leaving Velda alone, to fend for herself.
I knew if any woman could do that, really could fend for her own self, Velda was that woman. But the idea of danger, of death, hovering over her without me there to stop it, was fueling the fearful uneasiness that was giving me chill-like shakes.
That hospital, Valley Vista, was a citadel not easily stormed, but it could be done. Any fort can be breached, any soldier can go down under another soldier’s gun. And if something happened to me, wouldn’t Velda leave Billy behind and go out on some crazy-ass revenge trip like… like I would?
But nobody popped out from behind a parked car to pop me, and I rode the elevator alone up to the third floor and my apartment at the end of the hall, went in with the .45 ready, and found the place empty.
You’re paranoid, a voice in my head said derisively. Then another voice said, You’re not paranoid when they’re really out to get you, Hammer.
“But what are you,” I asked the room, “if you’re hearing voices?”
The .45 went on my nightstand and I got out of my suit and tie, but that was as far as I made it before collapsing onto the bed into something deep and mercifully dreamless.
* * *
The phone woke me.
I fumbled for it. “Yeah?”
“Pat,” the phone said. “You asleep?”
“Not now.”
The clock radio said 1:10 and a high-up sun was filtering through the windows.
“Well, some of us keep regular hours,” he said. “You know, like working from eight in the morning till two the next morning? It’s Sunday, chum, but no day of rest for either of us. Wipe the sleep from your eyes, because I found out something that will interest you.”
Wide awake now, I sat up, stuffed a pillow behind me and leaned back against the headboard. “Go, man, go.”
“Borensen owns a vehicle that matches the one your friend Billy described. According not only to Billy but several other witnesses—who did not see the driver well but did see the hit-and-run go down—the vehicle was a dark green late-model Cadillac… with no license plates.”
“That says premeditation right there, removing the plates. Homicide by hit-and-run, intentional.”
“Yes it does. Now here’s the really interesting thing. The same day that Richard Blazen got run down by a dark green Caddy, Leif Borensen reported his car stolen.”
“Before or after the hit-and-run?”
“After. Not much after, though.”
“He probably pulled over and removed those license plates before he did the deed. Then ducked in somewhere, a parking garage maybe, and put them back on.”
“No argument.”
“Was the ‘stolen’ car ever found?”
“Nope,” Pat said. “I’m guessing it never will be.”
“Leif probably turned it over to some chop shop crew. Or left it on the street with the keys in and let the laws of human nature do his dirty work for him.”
“Mike, if we can get that ID out of Billy, we’ve got the real beginnings of a case against Borensen here. So how about you letting your tax dollars work for you? Tell me where you’re keeping Billy. And then stay out of this one, okay?”
I hung up on him.
* * *
A hot shower and a shave under the spray turned me human again. Toweling off, I caught my reflection in the mirror and saw a patchwork of healed bullet and blade wounds and other residual scar tissue. The Frankenstein monster had nothing on me.
In my jockey shorts and T-shirt, I got into a fresh white shirt, then slipped on the shoulder holster. I dripped a few drops of oil into the .45’s slide mechanism and checked the clip before eas
ing the rod in. Safety off, one in the chamber. When a hired gun is on your tail, certain precautions need to be sacrificed.
I picked out a clean suit, cut to conceal the weapon of course, a medium gray number that would look pretty sharp with a darker gray tie.
After all, I was calling on millions of dollars and wanted to look my Sunday best.
* * *
Outside the Blue Ribbon, where I’d caught up with lunch, I flagged a cab, getting a wide-eyed look from the Puerto Rican driver who must have read the papers or maybe watched the local TV news, because his reaction said he not only recognized me, but knew what had happened to another recent cabbie who’d pulled over for me.
To his credit, he just took the address, nodded, and got going, through light traffic. Like the song says, the big city was taking a nap. Before long the cab pulled up at the fancy Park Avenue apartment building across from which Central Park, courtesy of a sunny Sunday, was showing a good time to couples, families and tourists.
Of course, immediately opposite us was the stone wall where a shooter, not long ago, had perched.
The cabbie said, “Isn’t this where…?”
“Yup. Right here.”
“Ea diablo! I would have to draw Mike Hammer for a fare.”
I already had the rider’s side rear door open, and handed him up a ten. “You’re a good man, panna. Keep the change.”
He grinned at me, then at the sawbuck, and got instant amnesia about what had happened to his fellow hackie.
“You welcome in my cab any time, Mr. Hammer!”
The doorman in his comic-opera livery recognized me, too, and gave me a nod and a “Good afternoon, sir.”
I told the guy I was just dropping by to see how the Borensens were doing after that nasty business at the Waldorf-Astoria the other day.
He gave me a look that said people didn’t just “drop by” this kind of apartment building, no matter how well-meaning.
“You’ll have to phone up there,” I said, “and make sure I’m welcome.”
That he could handle, and he stepped inside to use the house phone on the entryway wall. I couldn’t hear him on the other side of the glass, but he was nodding as he listened.
Soon he came out, opened the door for me, gave me the respectful head lowering routine, and said, “Miss Foster said to go on up, Mr. Hammer.”
I nodded to him and went in and crossed the marble-floored ballroom of a lobby to the bank of elevators. When I stepped off into the apartment’s entry area, the rush of its waterfall sounding like somebody forgot to turn off a big spigot, Gwen was already waiting for me.
This was neither the pop-art girl in red nor the bride-to-be in a yellow cocktail dress. This was the kind of fresh-faced collegiate type that made a high school dropout sorry.
Her honey-blonde hair was swept back off her forehead and brushed the shoulders of a white turtle-neck sweater interrupted by the perk of perfect handfuls on the way down to low-slung gray trousers with a wide black leather belt with a big buckle that would have looked just right on a pirate. She wore dark brown moccasins with no socks, and her only make-up was some pink gloss on lips that, years before she was born, would have been characterized as bee-stung.
Gwen Foster was a doll, the living variety, and she sure as hell deserved better than Leif Borensen.
She bounced up to me and gripped both of my hands as if I were a favorite uncle and gave me a lovely smile, the blue eyes catching light and tossing it around. “Mike… so wonderful to see you.”
“I just wanted to check up on you and Leif. See how you two were doing in the aftermath of that bridal shower interruptus.”
Gwen rolled her eyes. “I’m just glad you and Miss Sterling were there.”
She accompanied me into and across the high-ceilinged foyer with its marble floor and crystal chandelier. Her voice echoed a little now. Our footsteps, too.
“I admit I had some trouble sleeping that first night, Mike, but I’ve been fine since. I just got back from brunch with some of my girl friends, who were there at the Waldorf, and assured me it was a shower no one would ever forget.”
When she followed this with some brittle laughter, it seemed a little forced to me. But at least she wasn’t freaked out over the incident.
“I think Leif is probably in the study,” she said, as we went down the landing strip of a hallway with its wall-hugging antiques and museum’s worth of pricey paintings. Once again she looped her arm in mine. Her perfume had a sparkling brightness about it and I recognized it as one Velda had been wearing lately—Oh! De London.
“I just got back a little while ago from my luncheon,” she said, as we neared the door. “I know Leif will be pleased to see you. We owe you some money, don’t we?”
“That’s not why I’m here. I just wanted to check up on you, you know, since that shower didn’t go exactly as planned.”
Or had it gone exactly as Borensen had planned it?
I said, “But I do have some business matters I need to go over with Mr. Borensen. Much as your company would surely help relieve the boredom, I’d suggest you take a pass.”
I really didn’t want her there when I spoke to her husband-to-be. I hoped the future bride would be somewhere else in this vast apartment, and far enough away not to hear me interrogate the future groom by beating the living shit out of him.
She didn’t need to learn, so brutally, that the man she loved had murdered her father by way of a cold-blooded staged suicide. And there was always the possibility that Borensen, faced with my knowledge of his wrongdoing, might go for a gun, giving me the pleasure of blowing the insides of his head all over some very expensive shelved books, though their leather bindings should clean off nicely.
No, none of it was anything I wanted Gwen to see. I’m just too considerate a guy for that.
“Business talk bores me,” she said, hand on the knob. “So I’ll leave you two to it. Let me just check on Leif and make sure he’s not in the middle of anything.”
She slipped into the study, leaving the door ajar, and perhaps three seconds later came the scream.
High-pitched and bloodcurdling, turning sharp and shrill as it resounded off the high ceiling of the library-like room.
I went in fast, with my .45 in my fist. But almost immediately I stuffed the weapon back under my arm, because it wouldn’t be needed.
At a small writing desk in the far corner, Leif Borensen, in a brown terry-cloth bathrobe, sat slumped with his head to one side, in a pool of congealing blood, displaying the small powder-burned hole in his temple, his hand, palm up, limply near a small .22 handgun—a Smith and Wesson Escort.
CHAPTER TEN
Pat stood with his hands on his hips and surveyed the death scene, close enough to tap Borensen on his shoulder. I was sitting across the big book-lined room on one of the comfortable brown-leather chairs where I’d first spoken with my late client. I had an ankle on a knee and was smoking a cigarette. I’d already had my own good close look, waiting for Pat to get here.
I figured correctly that he’d be home by now, so the way I called the crime in was to phone him at his apartment. I knew he wouldn’t want any other homicide dick catching this one. As it was, he’d beat everybody else here, but now a small army of NYPD lab boys awaited access in the vast hallway, as well as a photographer and three plainclothes guys from the Homicide Division. Uniforms were here and there, standing just outside the study and posted variously, in the waterfall entry area by the elevators for example, and downstairs keeping the liveried doorman company. A policewoman, plainclothes, was sitting with the distraught Gwen in the kitchen.
Pat turned and frowned at me. “Bored, Mike?”
For a guy who’d probably collapsed on his couch a few hours ago after one of his longer days, he looked pretty fresh. Crisp blue suit and blue-and-red tie, freshly shaved, hair brushed back. And from where I sat, you couldn’t see his bloodshot eyes.
“No,” I said. “I just know when somebody is telling me t
o go screw myself.”
He frowned at that and walked over to the central area of chairs on the Oriental rug. “You shouldn’t smoke.”
“Yeah, that’s what Velda says.”
“No, I mean at a crime scene. Put it out.”
I put it out on an ashtray on the glass-topped coffee table that displayed Playbills from various Martin Foster productions. Pat sat opposite me with that coffee table between us. He was frowning, staring at me with his gray-blue eyes. Bloodshot gray-blue eyes.
“Mind explaining,” he said, “why you think someone is telling you to go screw yourself?”
I shrugged. I felt nicely comfortable in the over-stuffed chair. “It’s not just me being told that. You’re getting the big ‘up yours,’ too.”
“Tell me.”
“You want me to spell it out?”
“Yes.”
“That’s no suicide.”
“You make it as phony.”
“And so do you, Pat.”
“So what is it, then?”
“Well, it’s homicide, of course. But a cute one—a replication of another phony suicide. The killer staged this not in order to fool anybody, but to laugh his ass off at us. The body is positioned just like Foster’s. The wound is identical—that same ninety-degree angle that has the bullet going straight through one temple and out the other. The weapon is not only the same caliber but the identical make and model. No suicide note. Informal attire, in Foster’s case pajamas, in Borensen’s a bathrobe. He isn’t even wearing slippers.”
“Why would a killer do this?”
Some edge colored my tone. “You aren’t listening, Pat. Maybe you hear me, but you are not goddamn listening. The killer is thumbing his nose at us.”
His voice had grown very quiet. “And you know who that killer is?”
“I do. I can’t give you his name and his address or even his description, but I know who and what we’re dealing with here.”
He shifted in his comfy chair. “Are you trying to tell me we’ve been looking at the wrong suspect? That Borensen didn’t drive that hit-and-run vehicle? That he didn’t hire your contract killing?”
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