“Picture it, Pat. Wheeler with the gun ... the guy knocks it aside as he fires and the slug hits the bed. Then the guy forces the gun against Wheeler’s head and it goes off. A scrap like that would make the same kind of marks on his body, wouldn’t it?”
Pat didn’t say anything. His head was slanted a little and he was going back again, putting all the pieces in their places. When they set just right he nodded. “Yes, it would at that.” His eyes narrowed. “Then the killer picked up one empty shell and dug the slug out of the mattress. A hole as small as it left wouldn’t have been noticed anyway. It would have been clean as a whistle if you didn’t know how many slugs were left in the rod. It would have been so pretty that even you would have been convinced.”
“Verily,” I said.
“It’s smooth, Mike. Lord, but it’s smooth. It put you on the spot because you were the only one looking for a murderer. Everyone else was satisfied with a suicide verdict.” He paused and frowned, staring at the window. “If only that damn hotel had some system about it ... even a chambermaid with sense enough to keep on her toes, but no. The killer walks out in the hall and drops his slug and shell that we find hours later.”
“He was wearing an old suit.”
“What?”
“It must have been old if it had a hole in the pockets.”
Pat looked at me and the frown deepened. His hand fished for his notebook and he pulled out several slips of paper stapled together. He looked through them, glanced up at me, then read the last page again. He put the book back in his pocket very slowly. “The day before Wheeler died there were only two registered guests,” he said. “One was a very old man. The other was a comparatively young fellow in a shabby suit who paid in advance. He left the day after Wheeler was shot before we were looking for anyone in the hotel, and long enough afterward to dispel any suspicions on the part of the staff.”
The pain in my head disappeared. I felt my shoulders tightening up. “Did they get a description? Was it ...”
“No. No description. He was of medium build. He was in town to see a specialist to have some work done on a tooth. Most of his face was covered by a bandage.”
I said another four-letter word.
“It was a good enough reason for his being without baggage. Besides, he had the money to pay in advance.”
“It could have been Clyde,” I breathed. My throat was on fire.
“It could have been almost anybody. If you think Clyde is the one behind all this, let me ask you one thing. Do you honestly think he’d handle the murder end by himself?”
“No,” I said with disgust. “The bastard would pay to have it done.”
“And the same thing for that deal at the arena.”
I smacked the arm of the chair with my fist. “Nuts, Pat. That’s only what we surmise. Don’t forget that Clyde’s been in on murder before. Maybe he has a liking for it now. Maybe he’s smart enough not to trust anybody else. Let’s see how smart he can get. Let’s let it hang just a few days longer and see if he’ll hang himself.”
I didn’t like the look on his face. “Why?”
“The D.A. didn’t believe my story about being with you. He has his men out asking questions. It won’t take them very long to get the truth.”
“Oh, God!”
“The pressure is on the lad. The kind of pressure he can’t ignore. Something’s going to pop and it may be your neck and my job.”
“Okay, Pat, okay. We’ll make it quicker then, but how? What the hell are we going to do? I could take Clyde apart but he’d have the cops on my neck before I could do anything. I need some time, damn it. I need those few days!”
“I know it, but what can we do?”
“Nothing. Not a damn thing ... yet.” I lit another butt and glared at him through the smoke. “You know, Pat, you can sit around for a month in a room with a hornet, waiting for him to sting you. But if you go poke at his nest it’ll only be a second before you’re bit.”
“They say if you get bitten often enough it’ll kill you.”
I stood up and tugged my coat on. “You might at that. What are your plans for the rest of the evening?”
Pat waited for me by the door while I hunted up my hat. “Since you’ve gotten my schedule all screwed up I have to clean up some work at the office. Besides, I want to find out if Rainey’s two pals have been found yet. You know, you called it pretty good. They both disappeared so fast it would make your head swim.”
“What did they do about the arena?”
“They sold out ... to a man who signed the contracts and deeds as Robert Hobart Williams.”
“Dinky ... Clyde! I’ll be damned.”
“Yeah, me too. He bought it for a song. Ed Cooper ran it in the sports column of the Globe tonight with all the nasty implications.”
“I’ll be damned,” I said again. “It tied Rainey in very nicely with Clyde, didn’t it?”
Pat shrugged. “Who can prove it? Rainey’s dead and the partners are missing. That isn’t the only arena Clyde owns. It now appears that he’s a man quite interested in sporting establishments.”
We started out the door and I almost forgot what I came for. Pat waited in the hall while I went back to the bedroom and pulled out the dresser drawer. The Luger was still there wrapped in an oily rag inside a box. I checked the clip, jacked a shell into the chamber and put it in half cock.
When I slid it into the holster it fit loosely, but nice. I felt a lot better.
The snow, the damned snow. It slowed me to a crawl and did all but stop me. It still came down in lazy fashion, but so thick you couldn’t see fifty feet through it. Traffic was thick, sluggish and people were abandoning their cars in the road for the subway. I circled around them, following the cab in front of me and finally hit a section that had been cleared only minutes before.
That stretch kept me from missing Velda. She had her coat and hat on and was locking the door when I stepped out of the elevator. I didn’t have to tell her to open up again.
When she threw her coat on top of mine I looked at her and got mad again. She was more lovely than the last time. I said, “Where are you going?”
She pulled a bottle out of a cabinet and poured me a stiff drink. It tasted great. “Clyde called me. He wanted to know if this was ‘later.’ ”
“Yeah?”
“I told him it might be.”
“Where does the seduction take place?”
“At his apartment.”
“You really have that guy going, don’t you? How come he’s passing up all the stuff at the Inn for you?”
Velda looked at me quickly, then away. I reached for the bottle. “You asked me to do this, you know,” she said.
I felt like a heel. All she had to do was look at me when I got that way and I felt like I was crawling up out of a sewer somewhere. “I’m sorry, kid. I’m jealous, I guess. I always figured you as some sort of a fixture. Now that the finance company is taking it away from me I get snotty.”
Her smile lit the whole room up. She came over and filled my glass again. “Get that way more often, Mike.”
“I’m always that way. Now tell me what you’ve been doing to the guy.”
“I play easy to get but not easy to get at. There are times when sophistication coupled with virtue pays off. Clyde is getting that look in his eyes. He’s hinting at a man-and-mistress arrangement with the unspoken plan in mind of a marriage license if I don’t go for it.”
I put the glass down. “You can cut out the act, Velda. I’m almost ready to move in on Clyde myself.”
“I thought I was the boss,” she grinned.
“You are ... of the agency. Outside the office I’m the boss.” I grabbed her arm and swung her around to face me. She was damned near as tall as I was and being that close to her did things to me inside that I didn’t have time for. “It took me a long time to wise up, didn’t it?”
“Too long, Mike.”
“Do you know what I’m talking about, Velda? I�
�m not tossing a pass at you now or laying the groundwork for the same thing later. I’m telling you something else.”
My fingers were hurting her and I couldn’t help it. “I want you to say it, Mike. You’ve played games with so many women I won’t be sure until I hear you say it yourself. Tell me.”
There was a desperate pleading in her eyes. They were asking me please, please. I could feel her breath coming faster and knew she was trembling and not because I was hurting her. I knew something was coming over my face that I couldn’t control. It started in my chest and overflowed in my face when the music in my head began with that steady beat of drums and weird discord. My mouth worked to get the words out, but they stuck fast to the roof of my mouth.
I shook my head to break up the crazy symphony going on in my brain and I mumbled, “No ... no. Oh, good God, I can‘t, Velda. I can’t!”
I knew what the feeling was. I was scared. Scared to death and it showed in my face and the way I stumbled across the room to a chair and sat down. Velda knelt on the floor in front of me her face a fuzzy white blur that kissed me again and again. I could feel her hands in my hair and smell the pleasant woman smell of cleanliness, of beauty that was part of her, but the music wouldn’t go away.
She asked me what had happened and I told her. It wasn’t that. It was something else. She wanted to know what it was, demanded to know what it was and her voice came through a sob and tears. She gave me back my voice and I said, “Not you, kid ... no kiss of death for you. There’ve been two women now. I said I loved them both. I thought I did. They both died, but not you, kid.”
Her hands on mine were soft and gentle. “Mike ... nothing will happen to me.”
My mind went back over the years—to Charlotte and Lola.
“It’s no good, Velda. Maybe when this is all over it’ll be different. I keep thinking of the women who died. God, if I ever have to hold a gun on a woman again I’ll die first, so help me I will. How many years has it been since the yellow-gold hair and the beautiful face was there? It’s still there and I know it’s dead but I keep hearing the voice. And I keep thinking of the dark hair too ... like a shroud. Gold shrouds, dark shrouds....”
“Mike ... don’t. Please, for me. Don’t ... no more.”
She had another drink in my hand and I poured it down, heard the wild fury of the music drown out and give me back to myself again. I said, “All over now, sugar. Thanks.” She was smiling but her face was wet with tears: I kissed her eyes and the top of her head. “When this is settled we’ll take a vacation, that’s what we’ll do. We’ll take all the cash out of the bank and see what the city looks like when there’s not murder in it.”
She left me sitting there smoking a cigarette while she went into the bathroom and washed her face. I sat there and didn’t think of anything at all, trying to put a cap over the raw edges of my nerves that had been scraped and pounded too often.
Velda came back, a vision in a tailored gray suit that accentuated every curve. She was so big, so damn big and so lovely. She had the prettiest legs in the world and there wasn’t a thing about her that wasn’t beautiful and desirable. I could see why Clyde wanted her. Who wouldn’t? I was a sap for waiting as long as I had.
She took the cigarette from my mouth and put it in her own. “I’m going to see Clyde tonight, Mike. I’ve been wondering about several things and I want to see if I can find out what they are.”
“What things?” There wasn’t much interest in my words.
She took a drag on the cigarette and handed it back. “Things like what it is he holds over people’s heads. Things like blackmail. Things like how Clyde can influence people so powerful they can make or break judges, mayors or even governors. What kind of blackmail can that be?”
“Keep talking, Velda.”
“He has conferences with these big people. They call him up at odd hours. They’re never asking ... they’re always giving. To Clyde. He takes it like it’s his due. I want to know those things.”
“Will they be found in Clyde’s apartment, baby?”
“No. Clyde has them ...” she tapped her forehead, “here. He isn’t smart enough to keep them there.”
“Be careful, Velda, be damn careful with that guy. He might not be the pushover you think he is. He’s got connections and he keeps his nose too damn clean to be a pushover. Watch yourself.”
She smiled at me and pulled on her gloves. “I’ll watch myself. If he goes too far I’ll take a note from that Anton Lipsek’s book and call him something in French.”
“You can’t speak French.”
“Neither can Clyde. That’s what makes him so mad. Anton calls him things in French and laughs about it. Clyde gets red in the face but that’s all.”
I didn’t get it and I told her so. “Clyde isn’t one to take any junk from a guy like Anton. It’s a wonder he doesn’t sic one of his boys on ’im.”
“He doesn’t, though. He takes it and gets mad. Maybe Anton has something on him.”
“I can picture that,” I said. “Still, those things happen.”
She pulled on her coat and looked at herself in the mirror. It wasn’t necessary; you can’t improve on perfection. I knew what it was like to be jealous again and tore my eyes away. When she was satisfied with herself she bent over and kissed me. “Why don’t you stay here tonight, Mike?”
“Now you ask me.”
She laughed, a rich, throaty laugh and kissed me again. “I’ll shoo you out when I get in. I may be late, but my virtue will still be intact.”
“It had damn well better be.”
“Good night, Mike.”
“’Night, Velda.”
She smiled again and closed the door behind her. I heard the elevator door open and shut and if I had had Clyde in my hands I would have squeezed him until his insides ran all over the floor. Even my cigarettes tasted lousy. I picked up the phone and called Connie. She wasn’t home. I tried Juno and was ready to hang up when she answered.
I said, “This is Mike, Juno. It’s late, but I was wondering if you were busy.”
“No, Mike, not at all. Won’t you come up?”
“I’d like to.”
“And I’d like you to. Hurry, Mike.”
Hurry? When she talked like that I could fly across town.
There was an odd familiarity about Juno’s place. It bothered me until I realized that it was familiar because I had been thinking about it. I had been there a dozen times before in my mind but none of the eagerness was gone as I pushed the bell. Excitement came even with the thought of her, a tingling thrill that spoke of greater pleasures yet to come.
The door clicked and I pushed it open to walk into the lobby. She met me at the door of Olympus, a smiling, beautiful goddess in a long hostess coat of some iridescent material that changed color with every motion of her body.
“I always come back, don’t I, Juno?”
Her eyes melted into the same radiant color as the coat. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
It was only the radio playing, but it might have been a chorus of angels singing to form a background of splendor. Juno had prepared Olympus for me, arranging it so a mortal might be tempted into leaving Earth. The only lights were those of the long waxy tapers that flickered in a dancing yellow light, throwing wavy shadows on the wall. The table had been drawn up in the living room and set with delicate china, arranged so that we would be seated close enough to want to be closer, too close to talk or eat without feeling things catch in your throat.
We spoke of the little things, forgetting all the unpleasantness of the past few days. We spoke of things and thought of things we didn’t speak of, knowing it was there whenever we were ready. We ate, but the taste of the food was lost to me when I’d look at her in that sweeping gown that laughed and danced in the rising and falling of the lights. The cuffs of her sleeves were huge things that rose halfway to her elbows, leaving only her hands visible. Beautiful large hands that were eloquent in movement.
Th
ere was a cocktail instead of coffee, a toast to the night ahead, then she rose, and with her arm in mine, the short wisps of her hair brushing my face, took me into the library.
Cigarettes were there, the bar set was pulled out and ice frosted a crystal bowl. I put my crumpled pack of Luckies alongside the silver cigarette box to remind me that I was still a mortal, took one and lit it from the lighter she held out to me.
“Like it, Mike?”
“Wonderful.”
“It was special, you know. I’ve been home every minute since I saw you last, waiting for you to come back.”
She sat next to me on the couch and leaned back, her head resting on the cushion. Her eyes were beginning to invite me now. “I’ve been busy, goddess. Things have been happening.”
“Things?”
“Business.”
One of her fingers touched the bruise on the side of my jaw. “How’d you get that, Mike?”
“Business.”
She started to laugh, then saw the seriousness in my face. “But how ...”
“It makes nasty conversation, Juno. Some other time I’ll tell you about it.”
“All right, Mike.” She put her cigarette down on the table and grabbed my hand. “Dance with me, Mike?” She made my name sound like it was something special.
Her body was warm and supple, the music alive with rhythm, and together we threw a whirling pattern of shadows that swayed and swung with every subtle note. She stood back from me, just far enough so we could look at each other and read things into every expression. I could only stand it so long and I tried to pull her closer, but she laughed a little song and twisted in a graceful pirouette that sent the gown out and up around her legs.
The music stopped then, ending on a low note that was the cue to a slow waltz. Juno floated back into my arms and I shook my head. It had been enough ... too much. The suggestion she had put into the dance left me shaking from head to foot, a sensation born of something entirely new, something I had never felt. Not the primitive animal reflex I was used to, not the passion that made you want to squeeze or bite or demand what you want and get it even if you had to fight for it. It made me mad because I didn’t know what it was and I didn’t like it, this custom of the gods.
The Mike Hammer Collection Page 55