But it only takes one mistake to hang a guy. Just one. He made it. The killer must have been scared witless when he found out I was a cop. He must have known I’d been looking to get my ticket back, and he must have gone even further ... he’d want to know what I was like. He’d check old papers and court records and ask questions, then he’d know what I was like. He’d know that I didn’t give a damn for a human life any more than he did. I was just a bit different. I didn’t shoot anything but killers. I loved to shoot killers. I couldn’t think of anything I’d rather do than shoot a killer and watch his blood trace a slimy path across the floor. It was fun to kill those bastards who tried to get away with murder and did sometimes.
I started to laugh and I couldn’t stop. I pulled the Luger out and checked it again when it didn’t need it. This time I pulled the trigger off half cock and let it sit all the way back ready to nudge a copper-covered slug out of the barrel and into a killer’s face.
It was later than ever, late enough to make my blood turn cold as ice. I had to make myself stop thinking. I couldn’t look for those pictures and think too.
If ever a room got torn apart, this was it. I ripped and I smashed and I tore looking for those damn photographs and there wasn’t a damn thing to see except some unexposed plates. I pulled the room apart like Humpty Dumpty and started on the darkroom when I heard the steps outside.
They came from the hall that led into the good apartment, the one with the bedrooms. The key turned in the lock and the door opened. For one second I had a glimpse of Anton’s face, a pale face suddenly gone stark white, then the door slammed shut and the feet pounded down the stairs.
I could have killed myself for leaving the lights on when they had been out!
My coat caught on the sink and ripped. It caught again when I crawled through the hole in the partition. I ripped it loose and felt it tear clear up to the collar. I screamed my rage and took plaster and lath with me when I burst through.
Damn that son of a bitch, he was getting away! I twisted the lock and tumbled into the hall without bothering to close the door. I heard feet slamming on the stairs and the downstairs door smash shut. I started down the steps and fell. I ran and fell again and managed to reach the bottom without breaking any bones. All over my body were spots that would wait until later to hurt, raw spots that stuck to my clothes with my own blood.
My gun was in my hand when I ran out on the street and it was nothing more than a useless weight because Anton’s car was screaming up the street toward the intersection.
How important can a guy get? What does he have to do to please the fates that hamstring him every inch of the way? I saw the red dot of his tail-light swing to the right as a cruising cab cut him off. I heard the grinding of metal and the shouts of the drivers and Anton Lipsek was up on the sidewalk trying to back off.
It was too far to run, too much of a chance to take. I wheeled and dashed into the alleyway that passed between the buildings and leaped for the fence at the end and pulled myself over. I climbed in my car and turned the key, felt the motor cough and catch, and I said a prayer that the snow under the wheels would hold long enough for me to get away.
The fates laughed a little and gave me a push. I pulled away from the curb and sped down the street. Just as I turned the corner Anton drove across the sidewalk and back into the street while the cab driver ran after him waving his arms and yelling at the top of his lungs. I had to lean on my horn to get him out of the way.
Anton must have heard the horn because he stepped on the gas and the big, fat sedan he was using leaped ahead like it had a rocket on it. That sedan was the same one that was used as a gun platform when I was shot at on Thirty-third Street. Rainey. I hoped he was burning in hell where he belonged. He did the shooting while Anton drove.
I was glad to see the snow now. It had driven the cars into garages and the cabs to the curbs. The streets were long funnels of white stretched out under the lights. I was catching up to him and he stepped down harder on the pedal. Red lights blinked on and were ignored. The sedan started to skid, came out of it safely and tore ahead.
Now he could get scared. Good and scared. He could sit there behind the wheel with the spit drooling out of the corner of his mouth and wonder why he couldn’t get away. He would curse that big, fat sedan and ask it why the hell it couldn’t shake an old rattletrap like mine. Anton could curse and he’d never know about the oversized engine under my hood. I was only fifty yards away and coming closer.
The sedan tried to make a turn, yawed into a skid and slammed against the curb. It seemed to come out of it for a moment and my stomach suddenly turned sour because I knew I’d never make it if I tried too. This time the fates laughed again and gave me Anton. They gave me Anton with a terrible crash that threw the sedan into the wall of a building and left it upside down on the sidewalk like a squashed bug.
I drove my heel into the brake and did a complete circle in the street. I backed up and stopped in the middle of the road and ran to the sedan with my gun out.
I put the gun back and grunted some obscene words. Anton was dead. His neck was topped with a bloody pulp that used to be a head. All that was left were his eyes and they weren’t where they were supposed to be. The door was wrenched open and I took a quick look around, hoping to find what I was after. The only thing in the car was Anton. He was a couple of bucks’ worth of chemicals now. One of the dead eyes watched me go through his pockets. When I opened his wallet I found a sheaf of five-hundred-dollar bills and a registered mail receipt. There was a penciled notation on it that said “Sent Special Delivery” and it was dated this morning.
It was addressed to Clyde Williams.
Then it wasn’t Anton after all ... it was Clyde. That ratty little punk was the brains. Clyde was the killer and Velda was with him now. Clyde was the brains and the killer and Velda was trying to pump a guy who knew every angle.
I was an hour and a half too late.
Time had marched on. It marched on and trampled me underfoot into the mud and slime of its passing. But I could get up and follow it. I could catch up with that lost hour and a half and make it give back what it had stolen, by God!
People were screaming at me from the windows when I jumped in my car. From down the block came the low wailing of a siren and a red eye that winked on and off. The screaming came from both directions then, so I cut down a side street and got out of their path. Somebody was sure to have grabbed my license number. Somebody was sure to relay it to the police and when they found out it was me the D.A. would eat his hat while his fat head was still in it. Suicide, he had said. He gave his own, personal opinion that Chester Wheeler had been a suicide.
Smart man, our D.A., smart as a raisin on a bun.
The sky agreed with a nod and let loose more tiny flakes of snow that felt the city out and called for reinforcements. There was still a mile to go and the snow was coming down harder than ever. My fate snickered.
CHAPTER 12
I checked the address on the mail receipt against the one on the apartment. They both read the same. The building was a yellow brick affair that towered out of sight into the snow, giving only glimpses of the floors above.
A heavy blue canvas canopy sheltered the walk that led into the lobby, guarded by a doorman in an admiral’s uniform. I sat in the car and watched him pace up and down, flapping his arms to keep himself warm. He took the admiral’s hat off and pressed his hands against his cauliflowered ears to warm them and I decided not to go in the front way after all. Guys like him were too eager to earn a ready buck being tough.
When I crossed the street I walked to the next building until the snow shielded me, then cut back to the walk that took me around the rear. A flight of steps led down to a door that was half open and I knocked on it. A voice with a Swedish accent called back and an old duck with lip whiskers that reached to his ears opened the door and said, “Ya?”
I grinned. The guy waited. I reached in my pocket and pulled out a ten spot.
He looked at it without saying anything. I had to nudge him aside to get in and saw that the place was part of the boiler room in the basement. There was a table under the solitary bulb in the place and a box drawn up to it. I walked over to the table and turned around.
The old boy shut the door and picked up a poker about four feet long.
I said, “Come here, pop.” I laid the ten on the table.
He hefted the poker and came over. He wasn’t looking at the ten spot. “Clyde Williams. What’s his apartment number?”
Whatever I said made his fingers tighten around the poker. He didn’t answer. There wasn’t time to be persuasive. I yanked out the Luger and set it next to the ten. “Which one, pop?”
His fingers got tighter and he was getting ready to take me. First he wanted to ask a question. “Why you want him?”
“I’m going to break him in little pieces, pop. Anybody else that stops me might get it too.”
“Poot back your gun,” he said. I shoved it in the holster. “Now poot back your money.” I stuck the ten in my pocket. He dropped the poker to the floor. “He is the penthouse in. There is elevator in the back. You use that, ya? Go break him, ya?”
I threw the ten back on the table. “What’s the matter, pop?”
“I have daughter. She was good girl. Not now. That man ...”
“Okay, pop. He won’t bother you again. Got an extra key for that place?”
“No penthouse key.” The ends of his whiskers twitched and his eyes turned a bright blue. I knew exactly how he felt.
The elevator was a small service job for the tradesmen delivering packages. I stepped in and closed the gate, then pressed the button on top marked UP. The cable tightened and the elevator started up, a slow, tedious process that made me bite my lip to keep from yelling for it to hurry. I tried counting the bricks as they went by, then the floors. It dragged and dragged, a mechanical object with no feeling for haste. I wanted to urge it, lift it myself, do anything to hurry it, but I was trapped in that tiny cubicle while my watch ticked off the precious seconds.
It had to stop sometime. It slowed, halted and the gate rattled open so I could get at the door. My feet wanted to run and I had to force them to stand still when I turned the handle and peered out into the corridor.
There was a stillness about the place you would expect in a tomb, a dead quiet that magnified every sound. One side of the hall was lined with plate-glass windows from ceiling to floor, overlooking a city asleep. Only the safety light over the elevator showed me the hall that stretched along this enclosed terrace to the main hall farther down. I let the door close softly and began walking. My gun was in my hand and cocked, ready to blast the first person I saw into a private hell of their own. The devil didn’t get any assistants because the hall was empty. There, around the bend, was a lobby that would have overshadowed the best room in the executive mansion, and all it was used for was a waiting room for the elevator.
On the walls were huge framed pictures, magnificent etchings, all the gimmicks of wealth. The chairs were of real leather, enough of them to seat twenty people. On the end tables beside the chairs were huge vases of fresh-cut roses that sent their fragrance through the entire room. The ash trays were sterling silver and clean. Beside each ash tray was a sterling silver lighter. The only incongruous thing was the cigar butt that lay right in the middle of the thick Oriental rug.
I stood there a moment taking it all in, seeing the blank door of the elevator that faced the lobby, seeing the ornate door of the apartment and the silver bell that adorned the opposite wall. When I stepped on the rug there was no sound of my feet except a whisper that seemed to hurry me forward until I stood in front of the door wondering whether to shoot the lock off or ring the bell.
Neither was necessary. Right on the floor close to the sill was a small gold-plated key and I said thanks to the fate that was standing behind me and picked it up. My mouth was dry as a bone, so dry that my lips couldn’t pull over my teeth when I grinned.
Velda had played it smart. I never thought she’d be so smart. She had opened the door and left the key there in case I came.
(I’m here, Velda. I came too late, but I’m here now and maybe somehow I can make it all up to you. It didn’t have to be this way at all, but I’ll never tell you that. I’ll let you go on thinking that you did what was right; what you had to do. You’ll always think you sacrificed something I wanted more than anything else in the world, and I won’t get mad. I won’t get mad when I want to slap the hell out of the first person that mentions it to me, even if it’s you. I’ll make myself smile and try to forget about it. But there’s only one way I can forget about it and that’s to feel Clyde’s throat in my hand, or to have him on the end of a gun that keeps going off and off until the hammer clicks on an empty chamber. That way I’ll be able to smile and forget.)
I turned the key in the lock and walked in. The door clicked shut behind me.
The music stole into the foyer. It was soft music, deep music with a haunting rhythm. The lights were low, deliberately so to create the proper effect. I didn’t see what the room was like; I didn’t make any attempt to be quiet. I followed the music through the rooms unaware of the splendor of the surroundings, until I saw the huge phonograph that was the source of the music and I saw Clyde bending over Velda on the couch. He was a dark shadow in a satin robe. They both were shadows there in the corner, shadows that made hoarse noises, one demanding and the other protesting. I saw the white of Velda’s leg, the white of her hand she had thrown over her face, and heard her whimper. Clyde threw out his arm to toss off the robe and I said, “Stand up, you stinking bastard!”
Clyde’s face was a mask of rage that turned to fear in the single instant he saw me.
I wasn’t too late after all. I was about one minute early.
Velda screamed a harried “Mike!” and squirmed upright on the couch. Clyde moved in slow motion, the hate ... the unbounding hate oozing out of him. The skin of his face was drawn tight as a bowstring as he looked at her.
“Mike, you said. You know him then! It was a frame!” He spoke every word as though it was being squeezed out of him.
Velda came out of the chair and under my arm. I could feel her trembling as she sobbed against my chest. “She knows me, Dinky. So do you know me. You know what’s going to happen now?”
The red hole that had been his mouth clamped shut. I lifted Velda’s face and asked, “Did he hurt you, kid?”
She couldn’t speak. She shook her head and sobbed until it passed. When it was over she mumbled, “Oh, Mike ... it was awful.”
“And you didn’t learn a thing, did you?”
“No.” She shuddered and fumbled with the buttons of her suit jacket.
I saw her handbag on the table and pointed to it. “Did you carry that thing with you, honey?”
She knew I meant the gun and nodded.
“Get it,” I said.
Velda inched away from me, loath to leave the protection of my arm. She snatched the bag and ripped it open. When she had the gun in her hand I laughed at the expression on Clyde’s face. “I’m going to let her kill you, Dinky. I’m going to let Velda put a slug in you for what you tried and for what you’ve done to other girls.”
He stuttered something I didn’t get and his lower lip hung away from his teeth. “I know all about it, Dinky. I know why you did it and how you did it. I know everything about your pretty little blackmail setup. You and Anton using the girls to bring in the boys who counted. When the girls had them in bed Anton took the pictures and from then on you carried the ball. You know something, Dinky ... you got a brain. You got a bigger brain than I’ve ever given you credit for.
“It just goes to show you how you can underrate people. Here I’ve been figuring you for a stooge and you’re the brain. It was clever as hell the way you killed Wheeler, all because he recognized one of the kids. Maybe he was going to have his little affair and keep quiet, but you showed up with the pictures and wanted the
pay-off. He wired for five grand and handed it over, didn’t he? Then he got sore and got in touch with Jean Trotter again and told her who he was. So Jean ups and tells you, which put the end to Wheeler.”
Clyde looked at me speechlessly, his hands limp at his sides.
“That really started things. You had Wheeler planned for a kill and Wheeler grabbed my gun and tried to hand it to you. Only two things stump me. What was it you had planned for Wheeler before he reached for my rod and gave you the bright idea of suicide? And why kill Rainey? Was it because he wasn’t the faithful dog you thought he was? I have an idea on that ... Rainey missed his first try at me on the street and you gave him the whip, hard enough so that Rainey got sore and made off with the dough he got for the photos from Emil Perry. You went out there to the arena to kill him and spotted me. You saw a nice way to drop it in my lap and promised the two witnesses a six-gun pay-off unless they saw it your way.
“Brother, did you get the breaks. Everything went your way. I bet you even have a dandy alibi rigged up for that night. Velda told me you were out until midnight ... supposedly at a conference. It was enough time, wasn’t it?”
Clyde was staring at the gun in my hand. I held it at him level, but he was looking right down the barrel. Velda’s was aimed right at his stomach.
“What did you do with Jean, Clyde? She was supposed to have eloped. Did you stash her away in a rooming house somewhere planning to get rid of her? Did she read the papers and find out about Rainey and break loose until you ran her down and tossed her over the bridge? Did Marion Lester put the heat on you for cash when she had you over the barrel until she had to be killed too?”
“Mike ...” he said.
“Shut up. I’m talking. I want to know a few things, Clyde. I want to know where those pictures are. Anton can’t tell me because Anton’s dead. You ought to see his head. His eyes were where his mouth was supposed to be. He didn’t have them so that puts it on you.”
The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 1 Page 59
