“But the blackmail…”
“What precisely Hughes intended to blackmail you over will be lost in the shuffle. And the police will cooperate. They’ll have no appetite to take on a U.S. senator! It’ll be a snap to make that go away.”
“You really think so?”
I nodded. “The original cassette tape is gone and, if you’re right about your loyal lapdog, all the dupes are, too. You could be in the clear. It’s an old term, but it’s apropos—you and Jamie need a fall guy. And Andrew would do just fine.”
“You can’t expect Andrew to go along with that,” she said, bending close, voice low. “Not even if I arrange a lawyer who could get him off on an insanity plea or some other technicality, or sneak him out of the country, when he’s out on bail. And he knows things! If he talked… no. No, this will never work.”
I gestured to myself. “Again, do I look like somebody who trips over the niceties of the law? Do you know how many bad guys in my storied career I’ve put down and called it self-defense? And that pretty-boy son of a bitch kicked me in the head, remember! We rig something up, I put Morrow out of his misery, and presto, a gun suddenly appears in his cold dead fingers. You could even witness it!”
That was his cue.
I figured he’d hear it and respond. I knew he was in the apartment—the doorman had seen him leave and come back, with the timing right for Morrow to get to the Waldorf and stage the suicide, and then get back afterward, before I dropped by.
And when I’d been invited in, Nicole had practically shouted my name, and she had been far more loudly concerned about my bruised head than she had any reason to be… not unless she was warning her little lover boy to run off to his hidey hole.
But I figured the house stud would be eavesdropping, and I was right, because here he was.
Staggering out in a gray designer suit, light gray shirt, and dark gray tie that he’d almost certainly worn to blend in when he went to the Waldorf earlier. But Andrew Morrow clutched something in his hand he would not have carried openly through the hotel lobby…
…a gun.
A Browning 9mm again. Obviously his weapon of choice. The handsome, chin-dimpled mug under the slicked-back black hair wore the kind of devastated, disappointed look kids have when they learn Santa is a hoax.
He moved toward us in a slow lurch, almost dancing to Miles in a slow-motion free-form number.
“Nicole… you couldn’t do what he says.” Morrow swallowed. Shook his head. “You couldn’t do that to me.”
She had turned around on the couch when she heard him enter, and was on her knees on the lower cushion, as if begging or maybe praying, leaning her elbows against the upper one, hands clasped. “No! No, of course not, darling! I was just… just…”
“Stringing me along,” I said, turning to look at him casually as he approached where we sat, coming up from behind us. “Maybe she was. Or maybe she was going to rat you out. Anything you say about all this would sound like the ravings of some obsessive lovesick loon.”
“Shut up!”
“Or maybe she’d just serve you up to me for slaughter.”
“Shut up!”
He came at me faster than I figured, and was swinging the gun-in-hand to smack me with it, when he should have just fired at me—not that it would have done any good because I leapt over the back of the couch and flung myself at him, taking him down, and sending the couch over with me and onto its back, spilling Nicole, sending her tumbling and crying out, to land in a pile on the floor. I was on top of the bastard then, jamming a forearm into his throat, producing a choking gurgle, while with my left hand I had his wrist, the wrist that went with the fist that had the Browning in it. He was strong, and younger than me, and it was my left against his right, which gave him the advantage as we waved it around. He was forcing the snout of that gun toward me, with some success, but when it went off, the bullet flew between us, right past me like a rocket taking off, the explosion of it turning my ears to a whining near-deafness, but I heard her gasp just the same, when the bullet hit.
I didn’t see it hit, but I saw where it hit, in her throat as she sat awkwardly on that bone-color floor, the entry wound like a shimmering ruby in a necklace at the hollow of her neck, and I saw too the blood stream out of the back of her, scarlet with particles of bone from a shattered section of spine. She fell back, like a hinge had broken, and her hair surrounded her like a crown of flames until it quickly soaked in her blood and became just one damn grotesque mess framing a face that somehow still managed to be lovely, though the green eyes had filmed over and couldn’t even see the ceiling they were staring at.
Both of us, the majordomo and I, froze, taking this in, but he recovered faster, shoving me off and scrambling across the floor toward her. As I got to my feet, he scooped her in his arms, saying, “Darling! No! Not you! No!”
Then he lay her down quickly but gently and there was nothing handsome about the teeth-bared face with the wild dark tear-oozing eyes in it when he rose and began to raise the Browning and aim it at me, unsteadily, but aiming it nonetheless.
“You’ve killed her! She’s dead.” Like Nicole had been the Wicked Witch of the West and not the toast of the East Side. “I’m going to make you suffer….”
Enough of this shit.
I yanked out the .45 and drilled the idiot in the head.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Leaving the scorched odor behind, I found a phone on the wall of a kitchen that was as white and modern as the living room. The entire apartment seemed at odds with the Dakota’s Addams Family motif, although the fresh corpses did fit in.
I called the Waldorf’s switchboard and asked to be put through to the governor’s suite, figuring Pat would still be working the crime scene—I was right, because Pat himself answered.
“This is Captain Chambers with the NYPD. Who is calling?”
“Pat,” I said, “I hate to tear you away, but I have two more dead bodies you might find interesting. One is Nicole Winters, whose Dakota Building penthouse this is—residence 72. The other is her male secretary, who killed those people in Brooklyn and staged the governor’s suicide.”
“Mike!”
“I can just call the Homicide Bureau or you can take it yourself. Dealer’s choice, buddy.”
Even on the phone you could tell he was talking through clenched teeth: “What the hell have you done this time… ‘buddy’?”
“Be easier to walk you through. Phone won’t do it justice.”
I hung up. Grinned. Nice to be able to do that under these circumstances.
But I had barely hung up, my hand still on the receiver, when the damn thing rang again and made me jump.
I started, “Look, Pat—”
But the familiar voice that interrupted was not the Homicide captain’s.
“Who is this?” Jamie Winters demanded.
“Oh. Senator, this is Mike Hammer.” I made a quick decision to keep him in the dark… and away from the Dakota. “There’s a situation here. The police are headed over, Captain Chambers specifically. Looking into a certain blackmail matter and a suspicious suicide.”
“What the hell is going on? What are you doing there?”
“Advising you as a valued client, I would strongly suggest that you stay away from home base right now. I can explain my presence and everything else, but first I have to deal with Chambers and the cops and talk my way out.”
“I want to speak to my wife.”
“She can’t come to the phone right now.” Well, she couldn’t. “Look. We need to meet tonight. Let’s say midnight. Somewhere private and out of the way.”
A tortured sigh. “Well… my unfinished office at the new Vankemp Building should do. It worked before as a secure location.”
“And it’ll work again,” I said. “See you there. If I’m late, hang around. Give me at least an hour. I don’t know what I’m in for at this end with the cops.”
I hung up. I just stared at the phone for a long ten
seconds, in case it was in the mood to ring again and scare the crap out of me. It wasn’t. It didn’t.
But my mind was racing. I had things to do. I had those young women to protect. If I stayed around here and talked to Pat, it could take hours. I might even get hauled over to One Police Plaza and checked into a private room, and it wouldn’t be a penthouse. Couldn’t be having that.
On the counter near the wall phone was a yellow pad of Post-it notes with a pen. I huffed a laugh and grinned again as I wrote: “Had to run, Pat. See you tomorrow. Love, Mike.” I tore the note off and went out into the living room. Strolled over and pressed the Post-it note to the chest of the late Andrew Morrow, who was staring up at the ceiling like the other corpse lounging out here.
After getting into my hat and trenchcoat, I slipped into the hall, snugging the collars up. The doorway down the way opened and a petite attractive Japanese woman, who I’d never met but immediately recognized, peeked out. I got a glimpse of a black-and-red silk kimono.
“I hear something,” she said.
“There’s been a shooting,” I told her. I got out my leather fold and held the badge up for her to see, and from where she stood it must have seemed legit enough. “More police are on the way, ma’am. Everything’s under control.”
She nodded and sealed herself back up.
I didn’t blame her for being gun-shy.
A cab wasn’t hard to catch and within half an hour I was sitting on the couch with Velda in the outer area of the safe house, our backs to the tight-shut doors of the rooms of our female guests, the lights out here dim, the TV aglow with Johnny Carson going but the sound way down.
I was in my shirt sleeves, tie loose, and she was in gray sweats— clothes she could sleep in but didn’t have to change if something sudden came up. Nothing had so far.
It took a good half hour to fill her in on the events at the Dakota. She stared at me through the telling, rarely blinking, but never interrupting.
Her arms were folded, her gym-stockinged feet on a divan, her dark eyes wide as she looked at me. When I was done, she said, “You’re going to be in a lot of trouble, Mike, leaving the scene of a crime like that.”
“Don’t sweat the small stuff, baby. Bigger fish to fry and all that.” I was seated the same way, arms folded, feet up, shoes off. “Something Nicole Winters said is bothering me.”
She smirked. “No kidding. Everything she said is bothering me.”
I shook my head. “No, what I mean is… she started out lying, then essentially copped to being responsible for the Brooklyn murders and faking the governor’s Dutch act. She claimed to the end that it was all her doing, with her boy toy’s help. Insisted that her husband had nothing to do with the killings. Had nothing to do with trying to erase everybody and everything, on and surrounding that sex tape.”
Now she was shaking her head. “But why would Nicole stop lying only to tell the truth about everything except that? Why would she go to such lengths to protect her husband?”
I shrugged. “Because she loved him. Jamie screwed around on her, yes, but with her blessing, and she herself seemed to consider sex just another flavor of aerobic exercise. But the bottom line, baby, is she loved the guy.”
Velda smirked again, this time accompanied by her eyebrows going up. “Well… women have been known to fall in love with cheating bastards before.”
I half-smirked. “Let’s not get personal, doll.”
“Didn’t mean to cross the line.”
I shifted my position to look right at her. Really lock eyes. “But there’s something in all those lies and truths Nicole spun for me that really sticks out.”
“You’ll have to point me to it, Mike, because it’s all one big blur in my brain by now.”
“The only murder Nicole didn’t openly cop to was Lisa Long’s. She even seemed… emphasis on ‘seemed’… to think it might really have been an accident.”
Velda squinted at me. “What do you make of that?”
I shrugged a shoulder. “Not sure. It doesn’t jibe with her insistence that the senator wasn’t part of the killings that she and the majordomo hatched. Because if she really didn’t know that the Long hit-and-run was a murder, that indicates her husband arranged it. Without her knowledge.”
Velda nodded again. “Because otherwise she’d have taken the blame for that, too.”
“Right.”
“So what does it all mean, Mike?”
“I’m not sure. But one thing jumps out about that kill—the ‘hit man’ was a kid. A fresh-faced boy. What kind of hired killer is that?”
She couldn’t tell me.
I got up, stretched, and went for my coat and hat. I was almost out the door when Velda was right there, handing me something.
She smiled just a little. “You don’t want to forget this.”
“No,” I said, tucking it away in my suit coat pocket. “I don’t. I’d sooner leave my .45 behind. Which I’m not about to.”
I told Velda to keep an eye on our slumber party participants while I made one last call on this very long day and night.
At the Vankemp Building construction site.
* * *
The rain finally came.
Had it been any colder, it would have been snow or sleet or even hail again. Thunder roared like King Kong and lightning curled its ragged spooky fingers while the wind seemed to be angry that just about everybody had made it inside, leaving the streets and sidewalks as close to empty as New York ever gets.
The downpour was brief, the onslaught starting in just as I was climbing into a cab outside the safe house. By the time I reached the stretch of Fifth Avenue where tenements used to rule and which now was home to high-rise wealth, the attack was over, with only the wind remaining to let you know who was boss. It whipped at my trenchcoat and made me hold my hat on as I approached the chain-wire fence. A few last bursts of electricity were reflecting off the sixty-story glass-and-steel obelisk of the Vankemp Building like a lighting effect in a dance club.
Nothing had changed but the newly added pools of rainwater around the construction site grounds, the machinery huddling under skins of raindrop-pearled plastic, tarps shielding them in anticipation of the sky exploding, a promise that had been kept. The Caterpillar tractors looked like oversize pooches that had forgotten how to shake the wetness off after an unwanted bath.
The chatty old cop at the chain-link fence’s gate recognized me and let me in without fanfare. Still dripping from the cloudburst, he was not in the mood to talk tonight. Some cardboard sheets spread around outside the multiple entry doors allowed me to wipe my feet after the walk across the muddy work area. The old boy unlocked the glass door and let me in, managed a damp smile and a nod, then disappeared.
The smell of rain had found its way in to mingle with the glue and paint odors of a building in progress. The somewhat dirty, tile-floored lobby looked the same as a few days ago.
A few days ago! Was that really all it had been? So much deception, so much corruption, so much murder! And in so short a time?
Full circle so soon, pushing the up button, stepping on the elevator, using the key I’d held onto to access the sixtieth floor. Whisked up to an unfinished lobby with bulging plastic over uninstalled windows and those autopsy-like hanging veins and arteries of wiring dangling over uncarpeted floor. Knocking at a mahogany door that said SENATOR JAMIE B. WINTERS. And without saying a word, hearing, “Come in, Mike!”
Was I here again, or just still here?
Again, Jamie Winters was behind the makeshift desk of plywood and sawhorses, seated on a stool, with a metal stool waiting opposite. He wore a very conventional but clearly tailored charcoal suit, padded shoulders the only fashion concession, with a white shirt, collar open, no tie in sight. His boyish countenance could have stood a shave—it had been a long day for him, too— and his dark hair’s hundred-dollar cut had been mussed some by wind before he got here.
Right now the dazzling white smile had been put away. H
is expression was business-like with a dollop of skepticism, and maybe a hint of anger, his forehead and eyebrows tight. No bottles of Canadian Club and Canada Dry awaited me this time. No wrapped hotel-room glasses. He had a cigarette going in the ashtray, a pack of Salems nearby.
He gestured to the stool. “Sit. Please.”
Another stool had been pushed to one side. I slipped out of my trenchcoat and draped it over the seat, set the porkpie fedora on top. It was cold enough to leave them on, but I thought I might not want to be encumbered. I unbuttoned my suit coat. I sat.
The floor-to-ceiling windows at either side of the room were fluttering, or anyway the plastic was where soon glass would be, sometimes expanding, sometimes contracting, like this large, mostly empty office was a living, breathing animal. A dangerous one.
“I heard on the radio,” he said.
“What did you hear, Senator?”
“That Governor Hughes is dead. Unconfirmed sources are reported as saying it’s suicide. Was it you, Mike?”
That surprised me. I admit it. I gestured to myself as I said, “Me? Hell no.”
One eyebrow went up. “You must admit it sounds like you. And if you’ve overstepped your role in so ghastly a fashion, as my representative? I am having none of it.”
I almost laughed. That was good. He was smart. Turning it around on me like that? With that touch of righteous indignation? There was a natural politician sitting across from me, all right.
“I had nothing to do with that,” I said. I held up a palm, as if swearing in at court. “Let’s make some ground rules. I’m here to report on what I know. May take a while. When I’m done, ask whatever questions you like.”
Mike Hammer--Murder, My Love Page 15