I was ready to start working on it when I heard the muffled talk inside and the luck unbent a little bit. I whispered to Lily to keep quiet and pushed her against the side of the building. The talk got louder, the lock clicked and somebody shoved the door open.
The stream of light that flooded the yard didn’t catch us. We stayed behind the door and waited. The kid with the wispy mustache backed out swearing under his breath while he tugged at a leash and for a second I was ready to jump him before the racket started. Lily saw it too and grabbed my hand so hard her nails punched holes into my skin. Then the kid was out and walking toward the wall in back with so much to say about people who have cats taken for a walk on a leash that he never saw us go through the door at all.
We got out the other end of the building and circled around the block to the garage. Sammy was just coming on duty and waved my way when he saw us. It was a funny kind of a wave with a motion of the other hand under it. I pushed Lily in ahead of me and closed the door.
Sammy didn’t know whether to laugh or not. He decided not to, wrinkled up his face in a serious expression and said, “You hot, Mike?”
“In a way I’m boiling. Why?”
“People been around asking about your new heap. One of the boys tipped me that there’s eyes watching for it.”
“I heard the story.”
“Hear what happened to Bob Gellie?” His face grew pretty serious.
“No.”
“He got worked over. Something to do with you.”
“Bad?”
“He’s in the hospital. Whatever it was he wouldn’t talk.”
The bastards knew everything. What they didn’t know they could find out and when they did the blood ran. The organization. The syndicate. The Mafia. It was filthy, rotten right through but the iron glove it wore was so heavy and so sharp it could work with incredible, terrible efficiency. You worked as they’d tell you to work or draw the penalty. There was no in-between. There was only one penalty. It could be slow or fast, but the result was the same. You died. Until they died, until every damn one of them was nothing but decaying flesh in a pile on the ground the killings would go on and on.
“I’ll take care of him. You tell him that for me. How is he?”
“Bob’ll come through it. He won’t ever look the same, but he’ll be okay.”
“How do you feel, Sammy?”
“Lousy, if you gotta know. I got me a .32 in the drawer there that’s gonna stay right handy all night and maybe afterward.”
“Can you get me a car?”
“Take mine. I figured you’d be asking so I have it by the door nosing out. It’s a good load and I like it, so bring it back in one piece.”
He waved to the door, pulled down the blind over the window and followed us into the garage. He hauled the door up, grinned unhappily when we pulled out and let it slam back in place. I told Lily to get down until I was sure we were clear, made a few turns around one-way streets, parked for a few minutes watching for lights, then pulled out again and cut into traffic.
Lily said, “Where are we going, Mike?”
“You’ll see.”
“Mike ... please. I’m awfully scared.”
Her lower lip matched the flutter of her voice. She sat there pinching her hands together, her arms making jerky movements against her sides to control the shudder that was trying to take over her body.
“Sorry, kid,” I told her. “You’re as much a part of this as I am. You ought to know about it. We’re going to see what made a woman want to see me pretty badly. We’re going to find out what she knew that put her on the missing list. There isn’t much you can do except sit tight, but while you’re sitting there’s plenty you can do. Remember that name. Dig up every detail of that talk you had with Berga and bring that name out.”
She looked straight ahead, her face set, and nodded. “All right, Mike. I’ll ... try.” Then her head came around and I could feel the challenge of her stare but couldn’t match it while I was weaving through the traffic. “I’d do anything for you, Mike,” she finished softly. There was a newness in her voice I’d never heard before. A controlled excitement that made me remember how I had awakened and what she was thinking of. Before I could answer she turned her head with the same suddenness and stared straight ahead again, but this time with an excited expression of anticipation.
There were only two men assigned to the place when we got there. One sat in the car and the other was parked in a chair by the door looking like he wanted a cigarette pretty bad. He gave me that frozen look all cops keep in reserve and waited for me to speak my piece.
“I’m Mike Hammer. I’ve been cooperating with Captain Chambers on the deal here and would like to take a look around. Who do I see?”
The freeze melted loose and he nodded. “The boys were talking about you before. The captain say it’s okay?”
“Not yet. He will if you want to go get a call in to him.”
“Ah, guess it’s okay. Don’t touch anything, that’s all.”
“Anybody around inside?”
“Nope. Joint’s empty. The butler took an inventory of liquor before he left though.”
“Careful guy. I’ll be right out.”
“Take your time.”
So I went in and stood in the long hallway. I held a light up to the Lucky between my lips and blew a thin overcast into the air. There were lights on along the walls, dim things that gave the place the atmosphere of a funeral parlor and hardly any light.
In the back of my mind I had an idea but I didn’t know how to start it going. You don’t walk in and pick up important things after the cops have been through a place. Not unless they don’t want what you’re looking for.
I made the rounds of the rooms downstairs, finished the butt and snubbed it, then tried upstairs. The layout was equally as elaborate, as well appointed as the other rooms, a chain of bedrooms, a study, a small music room and a miniature hobby shop on the south side. There was one room that smelled of life and living. It had that woman smell I couldn’t miss. It had the jaunty, carefree quality that was Michael Friday and when I snapped the lights on I saw I was right.
There was an orderly disarray of things scattered around that said the woman who belonged to the room would be back. The creams, the perfumes, the open box of pins on the dresser. The bed was large with a fluffy-haired poodle doll propped against the pillows. There were pictures of men on the dresser and a couple of enlarged snapshots of Michael in a sailboat with a batch of college boys in attendance.
Scattered, but neat.
Other signs too, professional signs. A cigar ash in the tray. Indentations in the rolled stockings in the box where a thumb had squeezed them. I sat on the edge of the bed and smoked another cigarette. When I had it halfway down I reached over to the night table for an ash tray and laid it on the cover beside me. The tray made an oval in the center of the square there, a boxy outline in dust. I picked it up, looked at the smudge on the cover and wiped at it with my fingertip.
The other details were there too, the thin line of grit and tiny edges of brownish paper that marked the lip of a box somebody had spilled out in emptying it on the bed. With my fingers held together the flat of my hand filled the width of the square and two hands made the length. I finished the butt, put it out and went back downstairs.
The cop on the porch said, “Make out?”
“Nothing special. You find any safes around?”
“Three of ’em. One upstairs, two downstairs. Nothing there we could use. Maybe a few hundred in bills. Take a look yourself. There’s a pair in his study.”
They were a pair, all right. One was built into the wall behind a framed old map of New York harbor, but the other was a trick job in the window sill. Carl was kicking his psychology around when he had them built. Two safes in a house a person could expect, but rarely two in the same room. Anyone poking around couldn’t miss the one behind the map, but it would take some inside dope to find the other. The dial was prett
y badly beaten up and there were fresh scratches in the wood around the thing. I swung the door open, held my lighter in front of it and squinted around. The dust marked the outline of the box that had been there.
The cop had moved to the steps this time. He grinned and jerked his head at the house. “Not much to see.”
“Who opened the safes?”
“The city boys brought Delaney in. He’s the factory representative of the outfit who makes the safes. Good man. He could make a living working lofts.”
“He’s doing all right now,” I said. I told him so-long and went back to the car. Lily was waiting, her face a pale glow behind the window.
I slid under the wheel, sat there fiddling with the gearshift letting the thought I had jell. Lily put her hand on my arm, held it still and waited. “I wonder if Pat found it,” I muttered.
“What?”
“Michael Friday stooled on her brother. She went back home and found something else but this time she was afraid to give it to the police.”
“Mike ...”
“Let me talk, kid. You don’t have to listen. I’m just getting it in order. There was trouble in the outfit. Carl was expecting to take over somehow. In that outfit you don’t work your way up. Carl was expecting to move up a slot so somebody else had to go. That boy knew what he was doing. He spent some time getting something on the one he was after and was going to smear him with it.”
I put it through my mind again, nodded, and said, “Carl was close enough to start the thing going so the other one knew about it. He went after what Carl had and found it gone. By that time the cops were having a field day with the labor department of the organization so he had a good idea who was responsible. He must have tailed her. He knew she had it and what she was going to do with it so he nailed her.”
“But ... who, Mike? Who?”
My teeth came apart in the kind of a smile nobody seemed to like. I was feeling good all over because I had my finger on it now and I wasn’t letting go. “Friend Billy,” I said.
“Billy Mist. Now he sits quiet and enjoys his supper. Someplace he’s got a dame on the hook and enjoying life because whatever it was Carl had isn’t any more. Billy’s free as a bird but he hasn’t got two million in the bush to play with. He’s got an ace in the hole with Velda in case the two million shows up and a deuce he can discard anytime if it doesn’t. The greasy little punk is sitting pretty where he can’t be touched.”
The laugh started out of my chest and ripped through my throat. It was the biggest joke I ever laughed at because the whole play was made to block me out and I wasn’t being mousetrapped. I was going back a couple of hours to the kitchen and what Lily had said and back even further to a note left in my office. Then, so I wouldn’t forget how I felt right there at the beginning when I wanted to kill something with my hands, I went back to Berga and the way she had looked coming out of that gas station.
I kicked the engine over, pulled around the squad car and pointed the hood toward the bright eyes of Manhattan. I stayed with the lights watching the streets click by, cut over a few blocks to the building with the efficient look and antiseptic smell and pulled in behind the city hearse unloading a double cargo.
It was a little after one but you could still find dead people around.
The attendant in the morgue called me into his office and wanted to know if I wanted coffee. I shook my head. “It takes the smell away,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
“You had a body here. Girl named Berga Torn.”
“Still have it.”
“Slated for autopsy?”
“Nope. At least I haven’t heard about it. They don’t usually in those cases.”
“There will be one in this case. Can I use the phone?”
“Go ahead.”
I picked it up and dialed headquarters. Pat wasn’t around so I tried his apartment. He wasn’t there, either. I buzzed a few of the places he spent time in but they hadn’t seen him. I looked at my watch and the hand had spun another quarter. I swore at the phone and at myself and double cursed the red tape if I had to go through channels. I was thinking so hard I wasn’t really thinking at all and while I was in the middle of it the door of the office opened and the little guy with the pot belly came in, dropped his bag on the floor and said, “Damn it, Charlie, why can’t people wait until morning to die?”
I said, “Hi, doc,” and the coroner gave me a surprised glance that wasn’t any too pleased.
“Hello, Hammer, what are you doing here? Should I add ‘again’?”
“Yeah, add it, doc. I always seem to come home, don’t I?”
“I’d like it better if you stayed out of my sight.”
He went to go past me. I grabbed his arm, turned him around and looked at a guy with a safe but disgusting job. He went up on his toes, tried to pull his arm away, but I held on. “Listen, doc. You and I can play games some other time. Right now I need you for a job that can’t wait. I have to chop comers and it has to be quick.”
“Let go of me!”
I let go of him. “Maybe you like to see those bodies stretched out in the gutter.”
He turned around slowly. “What are you talking about?”
“Suppose you had a chance to do something except listen for a heartbeat that isn’t there for a change. Supposing you had it in your hand to kick a few killers right into the chair. Supposing you’re the guy who stands between a few more people living or dying in the next few hours ... how would you pitch it, doc?”
The puzzle twisted his nose into a ridge of wrinkles. “See here ... you’re talking like ...”
“I’m talking plain. I’ve been trying to get some official backing for what I have in mind but nobody’s home. Even then it might take up time we can’t spare. That chance I was talking about is in your hand, doc.”
“But ...”
“I need a stomach autopsy on a corpse. Now. Can do?”
“I think you’re serious,” he said in a flat tone.
“You’ll never know how serious. There may be trouble later. Trouble isn’t as bad as somebody having to die.”
I could see the protest coming out of the attendant. It started but never got there. The coroner squared his shoulders, let a little of the excitement that was in my voice trickle into his eyes and he nodded.
“Berga Torn,” I told the attendant. “Let’s go see her.”
He did it the fast, easy way you do when you cut corners. He did it right there in the carrier she lay on and the light overhead winked on the steel in his hand. I didn’t get past the first glimpse because fire does horrible things to a person and it was nicer to remember Berga in the headlights of the car.
I could hear him, though.
I could even tell when he found it.
He did me the favor of cleaning it before he handed it to me and I stood there looking at the dull glitter of the brass key wondering where the lock to it was. The coroner said,
“Well?”
“Thanks.”
“I don’t mean that.”
“I know ... only where it goes nobody knows. I thought it would be something else.”
He sensed the disappointment and held out his hand. I dropped the key in it and he held it up to the light, turning it over to see both sides. For a minute he concentrated on one side, held it closer to the bulb, then nodded for me to follow him across the room. From a closet he pulled out a bottle of some acrid liquid, poured it into a shallow glass container, then dropped the key in. He let it stay there about twenty seconds before dipping it out with a glass rod. This time the dullness was gone. It was a gleaming thing with a new look and no coating to dull the details. This time when he held it in the light you could see City Athletic Club, 529 scratched into the surface and I squeezed his arm so hard he winced through his grin.
I said, “Listen, get on the phone out there and find Captain Chambers. Tell him I found what we were looking for and I’m going after it. I’m not going to take any chances on this getti
ng away so he can hop up to my office for a print of this thing.”
“He doesn’t know?”
“Uh-uh. I’m afraid somebody else might find out the same way I did. I’ll call you back to see how you made out. If there’s any trouble about ... back there ... Chambers’ll clear things. Someday I’ll let you know just how much of a boost up you gave the department.”
The excitement in his eyes sparkled brighter and he was holding his jaw like a guy who’s just done the impossible. The morgue attendant was on his way over for an explanation and apparently he wanted it in writing. He tried to stop me for some talk on the way out but I was in too much of a rush.
Lily knew I had it when I came bouncing down the stairs, opened the door for me and said, “Mike?”
“I know almost all the answers now, chicken.” I held up the key. “Here’s the big baby. Look at it, a chunk of metal people have died for and all this time it was in the stomach of a girl who was ready to do anything to beat them out of it. The key to the deal. For the first time in my life a real one. I know who had it and what’s behind the door it opens.”
As if the words I had said were a formula that split open Valhalla to let a pack of vicious, false gods spill through, a jagged streak of lightning cut across the sky with the thunder rolling in its wake. The first crashing wave of it was so sudden Lily tightened against it, her eyes closed tight.
I said, “Relax.”
“I ... can’t, Mike. I hate thunderstorms.”
You could feel the dampness in the air, the fresh coolness of the new wind. She shuddered again and turned up the little collar of her jacket around her neck. “Close the window, Mike.”
I rolled it up, got the heap going and turned into traffic heading east. The voice of the city was starting to go quiet now. The last few figures on the streets were starting to run for cover and the cabs picked up their aimless cruising.
The first big drops of rain splattered on the hood and brought the scum flooding down the windshield. I started the wipers, but still had to hunch forward over the wheel to see where I was going. I could feel time going by. The race of the minutes. They never went any faster or any slower, but they always beat you. I turned south on Ninth Avenue, staying in tempo with the lights until I reached the gray-brick building with the small neon sign that read CITY ATHLETIC CLUB.
Kiss Me Deadly Page 19
