Rudy didn’t answer, but it wasn’t the dead, either. The woman was very much alive, slender and about fifty in a nice floral frock, and she hadn’t removed her make-up though it was after nine. She was the kind of older-looking dame who could put on an air of respectability without losing her sex appeal. Unless this was the housekeeper, Rudy had done all right for himself.
Even if it was the housekeeper, he’d still done all right for himself.
“Yes?” she said, her tone impatient, letting me know she didn’t appreciate being disturbed. She had nice hazel eyes and her white hair was youthfully arranged.
“Mrs. Holden?”
“Yes,” she said again, even more impatient.
“I’m not a reporter, ma’am.”
This seemed to take some of the starch out of her. But she said one more time, “ Yes? ”
Like, what the hell is it?
“Would you tell your husband that Mike Hammer is here to see him?”
“My husband is not home.”
“Okay. If he is home, you should tell him I’m here. He’ll want to see me. If he isn’t home, you should tell me where I can find him. It’s important. I’m a detective on the Wesley murder.”
Her irritation turned to alarm, and she said, “Just a moment.”
His Honor received me in his book-lined study. We sat in two comfy chairs before a fireplace that was of course unlighted. His wife had turned friendly, even gracious, and brought us sugar cookies on a plate and glasses of iced tea, which she set on a small table between her husband and me.
“Mr. Hammer,” he said, and he had a warm baritone that was a little odd coming from a small-ish, almost roly-poly individual.
He was in the same short-sleeve white shirt as at the park, but had ditched the too-short tie. He had lost much of his hair, but boyish features kept him young-looking. Minus the pot belly, and plus a full head of hair, he’d have been a nice-looking man. Nice enough to catch that attractive wife, anyway.
Superficially, he seemed calm. But he was eating the cookies nervously. I had one-he had six as we spoke, sugar gathering on his chin like a frost on a winter window.
“We’re lucky to have you in Sidon,” he said, nibbling.
“Really? And why is that?”
“Well, a detective of your abilities. Your renown. We’re a small town, and we’re not well acquainted with murder.”
“Murder gets acquainted with people in all kinds of towns, Your Honor. But you have Deputy Chief Dekkert to lean on, don’t you? He has real big-city experience.”
“Yes, Mr. Hammer, but his background is in vice.”
It sure was.
“Well, I’d be glad to help,” I said.
Was that how they planned to play it? Work with me, and keep an eye on what I was up to? In a pig’s ass that would happen.
On the other hand, the mayor had just opened the door for me to make noises like a cop.
“Mayor Holden, what can you tell me about Sharron Wesley?”
“Call me Rudy, please. Everyone in Sidon knows everyone else, and we like it that way.”
“Swell. But my question…?”
“Well, she was an upstanding citizen, of course. A respected citizen.”
“Really? I understand she had a lot of wild parties out at her digs. And that her guests sometimes came roaring into town causing trouble, like cowboys after a cattle drive.”
He shifted in his comfy chair. Nibbled a cookie. “Well, that certainly has elements of truth. But it’s an exaggeration. We are a one-industry town, Mr. Hammer. And that industry is tourism.”
“In other words, showing out-of-towners a good time.”
“That’s not how I’d put it, but I can’t disagree.”
I leaned forward and grinned at him. It was a nasty enough grin to freeze him mid-cookie.
“Listen, Rudy. The Wesley broad was running a casino out there. I’ve only been here since Friday night and I already know that. So let’s not pretend you don’t.”
“Well… again. We’re a one-industry town.”
I glanced around. “You and your lovely wife have a lovely home here.”
“Well, uh, thank you, Mr. Hammer.”
“Pretty much everything about your set-up is lovely.”
“Set-up?”
“Deputy Chief Dekkert got tossed off the New York Police Department for graft, Rudy. That would make it hard for him to get hired on a lot of forces. But I think it was a gold star on his record, where Sidon was concerned.”
He smiled through sugar-flecked lips. “I’m afraid I’m not following you.”
“I know how these small towns operate. You have a casino on the outskirts. I was inside, I saw the lay-out, and it’s big city all the way. Somebody from New York was backing Sharron Wesley’s play.”
He swallowed a bite of cookie. “Suppose that’s true. What does it have to do with her death?”
“Probably everything. She was strangled, Rudy. Somebody would seem to be unhappy with her. I’d like to have a word or two with her silent partner. And yours.”
He shook his head, smiling again, but it was a sick smile. “I’m afraid you’re making an unwarranted assumption, Mr. Hammer. Much as I would like to help you, I simply don’t know.”
He nibbled on a cookie and I slapped it out of his hand. Then I slapped him a couple of times. He looked as startled as a guy in bed with somebody else’s wife when the flashbulbs went off.
“I don’t know the name! There is no name!”
His wife leaned in from the next room. “Dear? Is there a problem?”
“No! No.”
“You’re sure?”
I said, “He’s sure,” and looked at her with my nicest smile till she smiled back and went away.
Holden tried to straighten up and crawl inside the upholstery at the same time. “Are you insane, man? I’m the mayor of this town! You come into my house, uninvited, and threaten me, and rough me up?”
“I didn’t rough you up. You’d know it if I roughed you up.” I raised a hand in a peaceful gesture, but he jerked back, thinking I was going to slap him again. “I’m a little excitable tonight, Rudy. You see, somebody tried to kill me earlier, and I think it was your boy Dekkert.”
Veins stood out on his forehead. “What? My God! What were the circumstances?”
“The circumstances were, he missed. Big mistake. You and Chief Beales and his boys need to steer clear of me, or I will treat them, and you, like the cheap crooks you are. I was just kind of curious about Sharron Wesley and why somebody would strangle her, but you know what? I didn’t even like the dame. I don’t approve of wholesale murder, but I don’t make every killing my business. Only when I see a slobbermouth like Dekkert damn near beat to death an innocent little guy, I get annoyed. And then when somebody tries to put a bullet in my brain, I get mad.”
He was shaking his head and kept on shaking it. “Mr. Hammer-I have no idea who Sharron Wesley’s silent partner was. I will not deny that I had a small piece of her action. But I dealt only with her.”
“Interesting.”
“Interesting?”
“That makes you a suspect.”
I left him there with one last cookie on the plate. I thanked his wife for the iced tea and told her she had a lovely home.
She smiled, as if to say, What a polite young man, and showed me to the door.
CHAPTER SIX
“All right,” Pat Chambers said, “go over it again.”
He leaned back in his swivel chair and listened while I told the story for the third time. This captain of Homicide was careful and crafty, with an adding machine for a brain and the smooth manner of a man-about-town.
But all cop.
We were in his office off the station-house bullpen of the red-brick building where he worked, sometimes even on Sunday, like this afternoon. The place maybe was bustling a little less than on other days, but otherwise, it was business as usual.
My third recitation took longer than
the last as I fitted in little details and opinions that had escaped the previous tellings. I ended with my leaving Sidon that morning, after breakfast at Big Steve’s. A man has got to eat.
“You come up with a murder motive yet?” Pat asked.
“For Sharron Wesley or for me? I damn near bought it, you know.”
He shrugged. “Take your pick.”
I gave him a shrug back. “No definite motive. But plenty of reasons for one.”
“What reasons?”
“Start with, that town is as crooked as a corkscrew. Isn’t that reason enough?”
He rocked in the chair, hands locked behind his neck, elbows winged out. “I just love the way you think, Mike. So simple and direct.”
“That doesn’t sound like a compliment.”
Now he sat forward, resting his hands on his desk and folding them, as if about to say grace. “Naturally, there’s a motive and it won’t be an obscure one, but based on what you’ve gathered so far, I’d say getting down to it will be tough. What can I do for you?”
That was the line I’d been waiting for.
“First of all,” I said, and I sat forward too, “I want to see if you can get me any info on Rudy Holden. Find out if he is as innocuous as he looks and sounds. When I talked to him last night, he played dumb, but he’s living in the biggest, swellest house in town filled with the kind of furniture you don’t get at the Salvation Army.”
Pat scribbled Holden’s name down on a note pad.
I went on: “Rumor around Sidon is that he’s a little guy in the bigger scheme of things… but in a small town, a little guy can be pretty goddamn big.”
Pat raised a hand for me to hold it a minute, got on the phone, spoke a few words, and before he had even lowered his hand, he passed the note to a uniformed cop who scrambled in, took it, and scrambled back out.
“You realize, Mike, that I can’t get too deep in this thing. If it had started here in the city, I could pull strings to work with you out there in Sidon. But unless some developments carry it back to Manhattan, you’re going to have to do most of the work yourself.”
“I know,” I said through a yawn. “That’s what I’m hoping for.”
“Oh, you’re a one-man cleaning crew now, I suppose?”
I patted the holstered rod under my arm. “Just me and my broom.”
Pat gave me a disgusted smirk. “Then you certainly don’t need my help.”
“But I do. Anyway, there is a tie-up with the city. Most of the clientele at Sharron Wesley’s gambling house are almost certainly New York City residents. Those kind of big spenders don’t limit themselves to one or two shindigs on the weekend. They’ll do plenty during the week, too.”
“Granted.”
“So if you hear of the vice boys pulling any raids on joints around town, try to find out if any of their high-roller arrests had at any time been patrons of Sharron’s shed. How’s that?”
He was rocking again. “Fair enough. I’ll do what I can.” An eyebrow went up. “Now, how about the potshot taken at you? You’re sure it was Dekkert?”
I laughed long and loud. “Natch, chum. Who else but? That punk is laying for me.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
I shrugged. “Make him sweat. Then when I get ready, I’m going to take him down. All the way. As much for what he’s put poor Poochie through as for the shot he sent in my direction.”
Pat looked at me very seriously and spread his hands on the desk. “How can you be so sure it was Dekkert?”
“Why shouldn’t I be?”
He shook his head slowly. “You could be treading on some mighty sensitive toes here, Mike. After all, you have got yourself a reputation and not a nice one at that. You stand up in front of the wrong judge with one of your self-defense ploys…”
“That’s pleas, Pat.”
“…and you’re going to take a long, hard fall. Say what you will about Dekkert-and I’ll say the same and worse-but he is a cop.”
I blew a half-hearted Bronx cheer.
“Suppose,” Pat went on, “the murderer knew of your antagonism for Dekkert, and used that to remove you both? If Dekkert is not the murderer… and there’s no reason to think he is anything but a bent small-town cop with a grudge against you… then the real murderer could kill you, and suspicion would be thrown on Dekkert. The real killer could take a shot at you and miss, safely knowing you’d go after Dekkert without looking around for anyone else.”
I gave that one some thought. That adding-machine mind of Pat’s again had come up with an analysis that certainly sounded logical enough. But hell, who else but Dekkert would make a sucker play like that? So far I hadn’t garnered anything around Sidon that was worthwhile shooting me over, just some nosing around.
Pat knew enough to let me sit there and mull it over for a while.
Then he said, “After the body was discovered, did the police get over to Sharron Wesley’s place very fast?”
“No. I drove up there immediately. Took fifteen minutes or so getting there, and I fooled around for at least half an hour. After that I was at Poochie’s maybe fifteen minutes before the shot was fired at me, then I carried him back to my car. In all that time there was no sign of the gendarmes.”
“Unless the guy that shot at you was one-like Dekkert, for example.”
“Roger, pal. Now you’re seeing things from my point of view. To me it looks like the local boys didn’t bother going out to Sharron’s, because they knew just what to expect there. According to the leads I got, the entire political regime of Sidon had their fingers in that pie.”
Pat was nodding. “And they couldn’t go out to that casino to investigate without risking exposure of a racket they were into up to their own necks. I get the picture.”
“Yeah, well, you’re a little slow, Pat, but I knew you’d catch up.”
That made him laugh, and he was still grinning as he said, “Okay, Mike, I’ll get some men to work on this end. Suppose I call you tomorrow and let you know what I find out.”
“Fine,” I said, getting up to go. “You can reach me at the Sidon Arms. If I’m not there give the message to Velda. But don’t leave anything pertinent-just say I should call you back.”
“Got it. The walls have ears and eyes.”
“Yeah, and one of these days I’ll give those walls a nice new paint job. Guess what color.”
“You do know I’m a cop, right?”
We grinned at each other, shook hands, and I walked out.
I left the heap in the usual garage and walked the half block to the Hackard Building. Getting in the building required a key that only long-time tenants possessed. There was nobody manning the visitor’s book on Sunday and the lobby was so dead, I was almost surprised tumbleweed wasn’t blowing through.
I took the elevator up to the eighth floor where we kept a two-room suite of offices, and I was fishing out my keys when I noticed the lights on and shadows moving behind the pebbled glass that said HAMMER INVESTIGATING AGENCY.
My keys wouldn’t be needed-the door was a little ajar already. I put them back in my pocket and got the. 45 in my mitt and thumbed the safety off and went in fast and low.
But there were two of them, one going through the filing cabinets to the right, and that gave him the chance to hammer me on the back with clenched hands, sending me face down, hitting the wood floor hard with the rod spilling from my fingers and skittering under Velda’s desk, spinning like a deadly top. Somebody clicked off the overhead lights, and with no windows in the reception area, shadows draped everything and all I could make out as I rolled onto my back were two shapes in baggy suits and hats, one at my right, coming at me with clawed fingers, and the other at the left, going through Velda’s personal filing cabinet, pausing to reach under his arm and that meant a gun would soon be belching flame, and in the wrong direction. I spun to my right and with an underhanded swing jammed four stiff fingers into the belly of the guy who’d slugged me, and he folded up like
a card table, only card tables don’t vomit all over the floor when they go down.
The other visitor’s rod was halfway out now, a revolver, and I threw myself at him, in a wild tackle that took him down, bone-jostling hard. The fingers of both my hands found his throat and his face was just a shadowy, reddening, tongue-bulging blur as I strangled him and battered his skull into the floor in fury-fueled overkill and before I could kill the bastard, I got clouted on the back of the head, maybe with a gun butt, and fell with limp, lazy, painless ease, floating down headlong into the temporary death that was unconsciousness.
When I came around, my first thought was to keep my head down, because the Japs were out there, maybe twenty yards away, just waiting for the right target to pop up like at an arcade. I would wait till somebody laid down some covering fire and then and only then I would make a break for it, fleeing from the fox hole into the jungle with a grenade ready to toss back in their goddamn laps and let those evil assholes laugh that off.
But I wasn’t in the jungle. I was on the floor of my office, the reception area. The place had been given a thorough, professional shakedown-only the two drawers they’d been rifling when I’d come in were still sticking out.
Velda would make an inventory that would say whether anything had been taken, but I felt I knew what this was about.
I sat on the couch. It stunk in there. A modern art masterpiece on the floor was where the one guy had puked. My hand found the knot on the back of my skull, but my fingers carried back no blood. They could have killed me, easy, but hadn’t. Absent-mindedly, I got up, knelt down like a kid looking under his bed for his missing dog and retrieved my. 45.
Gun holstered, I sat back down. My head hurt but it wasn’t pounding. I was lucky. And I was almost glad it had happened.
Because now I knew this led back to the city. Now I knew somebody had been called, and that somebody had sent that pair around to check up on my office and see if I left anything of interest lying around.
Lady, go die (mike hammer) Page 8