They said Senator Winters was headed for the White House. But we never had a First Lady who looked like this. Not even Jackie Kennedy. And Nicole Vankemp-Winters sure wasn’t Mamie Eisenhower.
At the plywood-plank desk, she unwrapped a glass and poured herself a drink, twitching a smile at her husband. He looked at her almost greedily, like he knew what he had. Maybe he did.
Then she unwrapped another glass and built her hubby one. Everybody was having what I was.
“My husband,” she said, in her Lauren Bacall purr, turning my way, “tells me the clippings say that you have more killings to your credit than—”
“I don’t think ‘credit’ is the word.”
She finished her thought: “More killings to your credit than any other living man.”
“Civilian killings,” I corrected.
“Explain, Mike. You don’t mind the familiarity?”
“There’s a distinction, Nicole… no, I don’t. Plenty of combat soldiers, and I was one for a while, racked up more notches than I ever did, on their belts or their guns or whatever. Audie Murphy took out two-hundred-and-forty and that’s strictly Germans. The Sicilians were just gravy.”
I was really only fucking with her, but I saw something in her eyes that disturbed me. Like the smells in the unfinished lobby, it was a cocktail of things—fear, excitement, anticipation.
I finished the CC and ginger and stood. “Okay, I think we’re done here.”
They both looked alarmed, and exchanged glances to that effect, and then the senator was on his feet. He had a decent build under those loose olive threads and that black t-shirt. These two were prime specimens, all right.
Winters said, “We’re just getting started, Mr. Hammer.”
“No. What you want is a hit man. I don’t kill people for money. It’s more for… sport.”
They both looked afraid now. Good.
But just between us, it’s never been for sport. It’s been to settle scores and balance the scales of justice, when the system screwed up, or I craved the satisfaction.
“I don’t like murder,” I said. “I put up with a lot out of people— humanity as a species is no prize… yet I have this old-fashioned respect for human life, anyway, that might seem…”
“Hypocritical?” she asked, arching a brow.
“Paradoxical,” I said. “You can’t imagine how many people I’ve killed. Most of ’em haven’t made the papers. But the people I took out, well… all put together? Collectively, they’d have gone on to kill far more than I ever managed.”
“You sound,” she said dryly, “like a pest control man.”
“Sometimes it works out that way,” I said with a shrug. “But you people seem to expect me to kill somebody for you. Well, I don’t do that anymore. Not so much, anyway.”
She put a hand on my arm. The full breasts under the black leather seemed to move of their own accord. She had my attention.
“Sit down, Mike,” she said. “We don’t want a hit man. And what we’re interested in is not the way you handle your enemies with… such ruthless dispatch. But rather…”
“…your reputation,” her husband said, sitting down again, “for coming through for your clients.”
The wind was playing banshee beyond the plastic windows.
Winters got out a pack of Salems, offered me one, and I raised a hand in a “pass” gesture.
“Everybody knows Mike Hammer smokes,” he said with a smile.
The clipping service again.
“I gave it up,” I said. “A couple of times, but it finally took. That stuff can kill you. Do I look reckless to you?”
They both smiled at that.
In that throaty purr, Nicole said, “What do you know about my husband?”
I shrugged. “United States senator from New York. Democrat but not crazy liberal. Rose through local ranks to the state legislature.” I shifted my gaze toward Winters. “Formerly a NYC-based publicist for TV and movie people, a skill that comes in handy now that you’re promoting yourself. And with the talk about a possible White House bid, your Hollywood connections will come in handy.”
The dazzler smile again. “Do I have your vote, Mike?”
I shook my head. “My secretary says I’m just to the right of Attila the Hun. Not that winning me over matters. I haven’t voted in years.”
Nicole frowned in confusion. “Why not, Mike?”
I looked at her husband. “It only encourages them.”
They were frozen for a couple of seconds, then burst into laughter.
“Mike,” Winters said, “you strike me as someone who has his ear to the ground, in this town.”
“I have my ins. With the cops. With the press boys. Uh, that’s what broken-down P.I.’s like me call the media.”
They were smiling. They seemed comfortable. And then they exchanged lingering glances that I couldn’t quite read.
Finally Winters looked right at me, as if landing my vote might yet be possible, and said, “Okay, then. What negatives have you heard about me?”
“Other than that you’re too damn liberal? Actually, some of my Democrat friends… and I do have some… think you’re not liberal enough. That you ride the center lane and try to make everybody love you.”
Winters said, “Is that so wrong?”
“No. Go for it. I mean, everybody loves me, and it’s really great.”
They laughed at that, too, gently. Which was about all it deserved.
“I take it,” I said, “that there’s something I might have known. Had my ear been even closer to the ground.”
They again looked at each other, and Nicole pulled in a deep breath and let it out slow. Which was something to see.
Then she nodded and her husband turned to me and said, “There might be scuttlebutt about our private life. We’ve largely been discreet, but… well, sometimes it’s hard to keep, uh…”
“The cat in the bag? Or should I say pussy?”
He swallowed and her eyebrows flicked up.
“Tell me,” I said.
He swallowed. Let out a long sigh.
“Mike… Nicole and I love each other very much. We’re devoted. And she’s devoted to my career, too, and I support her in her causes, and—”
“Keep that up and I might puke all over this lovely new office. It’s a hard smell to get out. What smell are you hiding?”
They looked at each other again, blank stares that spoke volumes. Then they nodded at each other.
The senator said, “From the start of our marriage… even before that, when we realized we wanted to be together… we also wanted to be with other people. We have… healthy appetites.”
“We have an open marriage,” Nicole said bluntly.
“Open to you,” I said, “closed to the public.”
“There was a time,” Winters said, gesturing off-handedly, “when the press looked the other way about such things. JFK and Marilyn and all that. But that time appears to be over.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Goes back to when Gary Hart suggested the press follow him around and see for themselves how he wasn’t cheating… and as I recall, he didn’t get to be president, did he?”
“Didn’t even get to try,” Winters said.
“You two will have to change your ways,” I said, “if you’re going for the big brass ring on the Pennsylvania Avenue merry-go-round. At least till you’re out of office… then nobody will care, or anyway not so much.”
He reached his hand out to her and she took it; they squeezed. “We know.”
I shook a finger at them. “From here on out, you need to be the most faithful couple this side of Missionary Position, Montana.”
They smiled a little. Nodded.
“But,” I said, “somehow I don’t think you called me here for marriage counseling.”
Again, they exchanged glances.
“Blackmail?” I asked.
He nodded. Then she did the same.
“An anonymous male caller,” Wint
ers said, “is in possession of a tape recording of… of a sexual episode of mine.”
I frowned. “Caller, you said. This was a phone call?”
“Yes.”
“No idea who?”
“None.”
“Any money demand yet?”
“‘The price will follow,’ he said.”
With Vankemp money in the mix, that would be hefty.
I said, “Yet you’re sure he has such a tape?”
Winters nodded glumly. “He played part of it for me, over the phone.”
“Did you recognize the voices on the tape? I assume it was more than just slap-and-tickle that got recorded.”
Nicole slipped her arm around her husband’s shoulder. “Jamie and his secretary, Lisa Long, have in the last year or so had a sporadic… dalliance.”
“And it was Lisa’s voice on the tape?”
Again Winters nodded glumly. “And mine.”
“Okay, does Lisa know about this open marriage of yours?”
Another exchange of looks.
But it was Nicole who answered. “No. I’m afraid she’s in love with my husband. He intends to break it off, gently, and he believes… and I believe… he can do that. Of course, if Lisa has sensed something…”
I said, “She could be behind this. Or at least an accomplice.”
Winters batted that way. “Impossible. She’s a very moral girl. She wouldn’t do any such thing.”
“Like,” I said, “she wouldn’t fool around with a married man.”
The wife’s eyebrows went up. The husband’s chin dropped down.
I stood. “I need the names of the women you’ve been with since you married Nicole. And I need all the information you can quickly put together on these women, including current addresses and phone numbers. You may have to pay some of them off.”
“Oh,” he said, “I can’t imagine…”
“I can. Look, this is not my usual kind of job. I don’t handle divorce work, for example. But I will do my best for you. Blackmailers piss me off. Please tell me you aren’t involved in swinging, and that this catting around hasn’t been with a dozen damn women.”
“No swapping,” he said, holding up a palm as if swearing in, in court. “Just three women. Not counting Lisa.”
“So what do you want me to do, exactly?”
“What can you do?”
“Try to lay hands on that tape and any copies. Act as a go-between with the blackmailer and pay him off, at the same time making it clear any subsequent attempts for further payment will be dealt with harshly. Mike Hammer style.”
They traded nodding looks.
The senator said, “How can you assure us confidentiality? Blackmail is a crime, after all.”
“Yes, and a licensed private investigator is an officer of the court. But my contracts all go through an attorney. Technically you’ll be his firm’s client. That makes me a lawyer’s leg man and protects you with attorney/client privilege.”
They were openly smiling now.
Nicole asked, “Will a $10,000 retainer, non-refundable, do the trick?”
I grinned. “It’ll stand up on its back legs and balance a ball on its nose. Based on $250 a day with my expenses covered.”
Nicole, very efficient, said, “I’ll gather those materials and have them for you… will tomorrow afternoon be soon enough? At your office?”
I said to him, “You should make her your secretary.”
They were holding hands as I went out, the wind whipping at those plastic rectangles. The sheets fluttered like human flesh in a wind tunnel.
The gray sky rumbled more aggressively as I left the construction site, escorted by the chatty rumple-faced ex-cop in the security uniform. But the storm never came.
Not just then.
CHAPTER TWO
The next morning, a Wednesday, I filled Velda in on the Winters meeting and got her take on it.
Despite her secretary designation, she is first and foremost my partner in the private eye business. Her pre-MICHAEL HAMMER INVESTIGATIONS past includes a wartime stint with military intelligence and vice squad work on the NYPD— both before she was old enough to vote.
She packs a variety of deadly little revolvers and automatics, depending on which purse she selects for her day- or nighttime ensemble. Sometimes there’s a sharp little knife in a sheath on the inside of a lovely thigh. She has custom-designed evening gowns with a slit up the front for easy access. To the sharp little knife, I mean.
Her ensemble that morning was nothing so exotic—a white silk blouse, a black pencil skirt, nylons, with low-riding black-and-white heels, her shoes the only real fashion touch at work. She doesn’t wear much make-up—doesn’t need to, though the candy-apple red of her lipstick carries quite a punch. She wears an engagement ring with a rock that would choke a horse, which tells you when I say she’s my partner, I’m covering several bases. We haven’t set the date yet. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves—we’ve only been together since just after the war.
Let’s get this out of the way. I am hovering around sixty— which side of that is my business—and Velda’s only a little younger, though you would make her for no more than forty. She has hair in a timeless, shoulder-length pageboy style as black as Edgar Allan’s raven and eyes so big and brown you can get lost in them. She is damn near as tall as me and built like Cyd Charisse and just as lovely.
“The Winters woman wore a black leather catsuit to a business meeting?” she asked, both eyebrows climbing.
She was sitting at her desk, opposite the entry of the office, which is roomy enough for a few reception chairs on either side and a table for coffee and snacks under a window. Behind her and to her right a little is the door to the inner office—my domain.
The Hackard Building had been around since the original Vankemp’s day, but a while back it got a wholesale facelift. But we were still occupying the same eighth-floor space we’d been in forever, just spruced up and modernized some.
“Nicole Vankemp always did have a reputation,” I said, “as a wild child.”
“With a social conscience,” Velda amended. “But she’s married now, to a United States senator, with presidential ambitions. She’ll have to change her ways. Or anyway her style.”
I was sitting on half a hip on a corner of her desk, sipping coffee from the cup that says MIKE. I’m a cream-and-sugar guy. A real pansy.
“Maybe not,” I said. “Times are changing.”
She hiked just one eyebrow. “Not enough to get an open marriage past the Bible Belt.”
“You’re probably right about that. And you may see her and her hubby change their style as that White House try gathers steam. For the moment, it’s enough to see if this blackmail thing can be quashed.”
She was shaking her head, the long arcs of shimmering black swinging like pretty scythes. “If they pay the blackmailer off,” she said, “they’re only inviting another scandal.”
I nodded. “Not to mention an ongoing payday for the extortionist.”
She looked at me with eyes as wide as they were beautiful. “So what’s your approach, Big Boy? Threaten the blackmailer? Rough him up and generally terrorize him?”
“There was a time,” I admitted. “I think we start with getting that tape and destroying it.”
“Even if you lay hands on it, how can you be sure there aren’t copies?”
“That’s when terrorizing the blackmailer becomes a real option.”
The rest of the morning was spent on some insurance work, billing, and me dictating a few letters—the exciting fare that doesn’t make it into these narratives but pays the bills. Business as usual, only Velda now had a personal computer and printer to work with. It wasn’t till after our usual lunch at the deli down the street that Nicole Vankemp-Winters blew in.
No black leather catsuit today—but her slacks were just as tight and black, and her emerald double-breasted blazer with shoulder pads, over a lacy white blouse, hit the red of her hair like
a slap. She had an oversize matching-color purse that was leather, slung over her shoulder on a strap. Her make-up was as heavy as Velda’s wasn’t, yet skillfully applied, from the turquoise eye shadow to the dark crimson lipstick.
She said, breathless, “Hope it’s okay I drop in like this, Mike.”
I was standing next to Velda’s desk, handing her some field notes of mine to work up. For a moment Nicole seemed not to see Velda—which was sort of like Sophia Loren not noticing Gina Lollobrigida—but she remedied that by going straight to Velda with an outstretched hand.
The two beauties clasped pretty palms and Velda was soon smiling because Nicole was saying, “And you’re the famous Velda! You’ve been in the news almost as much as your notorious boss. Your pictures don’t do you justice—they’re only gorgeous.”
I don’t figure Velda really bought that flattery, but she liked hearing it anyway, and appreciated the effort.
Like an operative reporting in, Nicole stood before Velda’s desk and fished a handful of manila folders out of the big green leather purse.
“I know I really should have called and set a specific time,” Nicole said to both of us. “But I’ve been running around gathering intel for you. That’s the word, isn’t it? Intel?”
“That’s the word,” I said.
The redhead held out the manila folders—three of them— and glanced from me to Velda and back again, not sure who to hand them to.
I took them and nodded toward the inner office door. “Let’s go into my sanctum sanctorum. Velda, your notebook? Nicole, would you like coffee? A soft drink?”
Our client smiled a little. “Not beer? You disappoint me, Mr. Hammer.”
“We do have beer,” I said with a grin, holding the door open for her, “and I’ll be glad to fetch you one. There’s a little fridge near my desk. But I’ve weaned myself off the stuff during business hours.”
Her laugh was throaty, too. “No beer, thanks. But you’re not living up to your reputation very well.”
“I’ll work at it harder.”
Nicole went into my office and I watched the nice rear view, then glanced at Velda, already on her feet with her notepad and pencil poised, and giving me a look that said I had better not live up to my reputation….
Mike Hammer--Murder, My Love Page 2