Mike Hammer--Murder, My Love

by Max Allan Collins

  “Who’s counting? Anyway, half of those framed commendations and medals on your wall over there are from cases I cracked and handed your way. So don’t blame me for your lack of upward mobility. I’ve seen how you talk to the brass. Nobody takes less shit than Pat Chambers.”

  Now he grinned big. “Nobody but Mike Hammer.”

  “Sure, but I’m self-employed.”

  His expression darkened with thought. “Speaking of put-out-to-pasture… just between us insubordinate types, that’s how I got rid of Henry. I led him to believe he’d be brought up on charges if he didn’t take retirement at twenty years.”

  “Were you bluffing?”

  Pat’s eyes flared. “Hell yes! But Henry knew he’d made an enemy out of me and, even if he figured I didn’t have the goods on him, he was smart enough to know I’d make him my hobby.”

  I nodded slowly. “Good to know.”

  Pat studied me. “So, Mike. What’s this really about?”

  I raised a palm. “No can do, buddy. Client confidentiality. But if things drift into your domain, I will let you know.”

  “Doesn’t sound like murder.” He chuckled, shook his head. “Kind of refreshing, seeing you tackle a real job, and not just goin’ off on a tear, getting even with some poor bastard who had the nerve to screw over one of your friends.”

  “It does pay better,” I admitted. “You want to do me another favor?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Does Henry still have pals on the department? Somebody who might know his hangouts?”

  Pat frowned, nodded, reached for the phone, punched an extension in, muttering, “Thank God not all the taxpayers want your kind of service… Donnigan, you must be about ready to head home for the day…. Glad I caught you. Stop by my office for a second.”

  He hung up and said, “You know Lou Donnigan, don’t you, Mike?”

  “Sure. Good man.”

  “He was Henry’s partner, at the end. They got along.”

  Donnigan, a tall skinny plainclothes detective, was coming up the aisle between the rows of metal desks and cops writing reports and taking calls. A raincoat was over his arm. Pat nodded to him through the glass and they exchanged smiles and Donnigan opened the office door without knocking.

  He leaned in, said, “What can I do you for, Captain?” Around forty, he had a homely, pockmarked face and thinning dirty blond hair, his light blue eyes and ready smile improving the mix.

  “You know Mike Hammer,” Pat said.

  Donnigan grinned as I half-stood, and came all the way in to shake my hand. “Good to see you, Mike. Marry that good-looking secretary yet?”

  “We’re engaged,” I said.

  “Don’t know what she sees in you.”

  “Nobody does.”

  I told Donnigan I was looking to connect with Myron Henry, and sooner was better than later. Any haunts of his ex-partner’s where I might check? I’d already called his home in the Bronx and got no answer.

  “Well,” Donnigan said, “he’s working security at the Flatiron, nights. I’m not telling tales out of school when I say he almost always stops for a few beers before he goes into work, and maybe grabs a sandwich. You know the Old Town Bar, there in the Flatiron district?”

  I did. Most New Yorkers did.

  Donnigan shrugged. “That’s his home away from home.”

  “He strictly night shift?”

  “Last I heard. Works four days a week, Tuesday through Friday, eight p.m. till six a.m.”

  From the Flatiron building manager, I’d got the name and other info of the Saturday-through-Monday guy, but Lisa Long said the senator’s office was only open Tuesday through Friday.

  I asked, “What can you tell me about your old partner, Lou?”

  He shrugged. “I always liked him well enough. I never personally saw him exercise any sticky fingers, but of course I heard the scuttlebutt. We’re not as tight as we were, though.”

  “Why’s that?”

  The homely face really could work up a nice smile. “Well, our wives were friendly, but he got divorced last year. His kids are grown and the missus threw him out. Can’t blame her.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “He’s a cheater. Those sticky fingers extend to more than just crime scenes and evidence lockers, I guess…. Anything else, Mike? Captain?”

  No.

  That was quite enough.

  * * *

  The sign, red on top and bottom, green in the middle, said and must have gone back to at least the ’40s. But the watering hole itself dated to 1892, and if it was ever remodeled, must have been before I was born.

  OLD TOWN

  BAR

  RESTAURANT

  The joint was proudly dark, dingy and narrow, with a long marble and mahogany bar with an endless bottle-lined mirror behind, sixteen-foot tin ceilings, and a subway-tile floor. The wooden booths sported well-worn green leather backing, and the white-shirt, black-tie bartenders were as efficient as they were surly.

  Early evening the joint was pretty busy, a combo of people hanging out after work and others meeting up for a night out. For those in their twenties and thirties, this was just the first stop, but the regulars, age forty to the grave, were here for the duration. The dining room was upstairs and a dumbwaiter brought food from the basement, which wasn’t an appetizing thought. But I settled into one of the booths and ordered a burger and fries, anyway, figuring the alcohol content of the Miller Lite would sterilize any germs.

  I’d polished away the food, which was easily worth a third of what it cost, and was on my third beer when I started to wonder if he wasn’t going to show.

  Then he did.

  I didn’t know the guy, but I recognized him at once—Myron Henry had ex-cop written all over him. He was about five ten, pale as death, pushing fifty but looking solid, his bucket head home to a Marine-style haircut in a stylish salt-and-pepper shade, with a jutting jaw that could have used a Kirk Douglas dimple. His expression was pleasant and his dark little close-set eyes crowded his hawkish nose, making him look kind of stupid.

  That probably gave him an edge.

  And if you’re wondering how I could be so confident that this was my guy and an ex-cop, it’s not because I’m the greatest detective in the world: he was wearing a dark blue shirt and lighter blue pants and a security guard badge. If he carried a gun and/or a baton on the job, they must be in his locker at the Flatiron.

  He was about to slide onto a stool when I called out from my nearby booth: “Hey, Myron!”

  He turned and squinted at me with those dark eyes that looked dumb but weren’t. He came over slow, thinking all the way.

  “You’re Mike Hammer,” he said.

  “Yeah. You used to work burglary. Sit down. I’ll buy you one.”

  He thought about that, shrugged, looked at a bartender, which was how a regular ordered in a place like this, and then sat across from me in the ancient wooden booth. The jukebox was playing Sinatra’s “New York, New York.” Sue me.

  “I don’t remember,” Myron Henry said, “we ever met.”

  “I don’t think we ever did. You were pointed out to me, though.” Not true.

  “What? By your pal, Chambers?”

  I smiled a little. Sipped some Miller. “Well, Pat can be that way.”

  “What way?”

  “Kind of a stickler, sometimes. Can be a real tight-ass, you know?”

  He shrugged, hunkered over. “What he is is a prick.”

  I turned the smile into a grin. “What, none of your pals are pricks?”

  That got a grin out of him. A big-hair, lipstick-pout waitress came over, and he gave her a lecherous grin as she sat down a Pilsner of something on tap and summoned a smile for him, before carting off her nice fanny.

  He sipped the beer I’d be paying for. Said, “You just bein’ friendly, Hammer? One ex-cop to another? You are an ex-cop, right? What, you were on the job six months before they fired you?”

  “About that
long. But like the man says, they didn’t fire me, I quit. They’d stuck me on a desk because I got carried away sometimes, on the street.”

  “You really as tough as they say?”

  I shrugged. “Not anymore. Shit, I’m older than dirt. I brought frankincense to the Jesus baby. Or was it myrrh?”

  He was giving me a hard look. “You seem like you’re in shape, for an old fart.”

  “Yeah, I work out regular at Bing’s. When you have a rep like mine, sometimes people get ideas.”

  “Even now?”

  “Even now. Sometimes I have to give out a free lesson. You work at the Flatiron, I hear.”

  “That’s right.” The dark little eyes were suspicious, but they didn’t narrow. They bore in. “Is that what this is about?”

  “I’m not sure. What are you talking about?”

  The eyes got even smaller. “When somebody like you turns up, I get to wondering—has somebody accused me of somethin’? Look, man, if there’s been anything taken at the Flatiron, I’m not the one. You talk to the weekend guy. I don’t do that shit no more.”

  “What shit?”

  He finished the beer in a bunch of gulps, then looked at the bartender again. This was going to cost me at least two beers.

  Myron Henry said, “I’m not saying I ever took a goddamn thing on the job, not from evidence or a crime scene neither. So if you’re wearing a fuckin’ wire for that pal of yours, guess again, tough guy. This ain’t gonna play. And I work out, too, Hammer. I have to stay fit. You know how many floors I got to cover in an eight-hour shift? I work my tail off. So if something’s missing, you talk to the other guy. The one on weekends.”

  “Nothing’s missing, Myron. I’m not wearing a wire, either.”

  He held up both palms. “Well, if you are, first it’s entrapment, and second, I ain’t sayin’ jack shit, anyhow. Now if you’ll excuse me.”

  He was about to climb out of the booth, but the pouty waitress was back with his second beer, which she set in front of him. She looked at me, as if to say, Is this still on your tab? And I nodded at her and she hipped off.

  “Stay another beer’s worth, Myron,” I said pleasantly. “I just have a few questions, and they’re not about your well-known sticky fingers.”

  He let a bunch of air out. Frowned. But he stayed.

  Then he said, “Tuesday through Friday, I’m the only guy workin’ that whole damn building. If things would start goin’ missing, who do you think they’d look at?”

  “Not the weekend guy. They’d check up on you, really check up this time, and somebody like Pat Chambers would tell them how you retired under pressure because of suspicion you’re a damn thief, and the fuzz wouldn’t bother with a wire. They’d just pull you in and grill you like one of the damn burgers in this joint. They’re a little small, the burgers, don’t you think? Fries are pretty good, though.”

  He was confused now. The eyes were starting to look actually stupid. It occurred to me that maybe he had just the smarts to steal pocket money off a dead man and share stolen property with some fence. But blackmail a United States senator? I was starting to doubt it.

  I cut to the chase. “I’m working for Senator Winters.”

  He looked genuinely surprised, even confused. “So?”

  “So you tell me.”

  His shrug overdid it. “I run into the senator a couple of times. He has an office on the nineteenth floor… did he send you? I don’t even really know him. If he says I took something, he’s lying. He’s usually gone by the time I come on.”

  “Is he?”

  The ex-cop straightened. He hadn’t touched the fresh beer yet. Then he managed, “I don’t follow you.”

  “I understand Senator Winters works nights, now and then.”

  “Uh, sure… that’s why I run into him a few times.”

  “Is it?”

  “Is it… what?”

  “Why you ran into him. Ever run into his secretary?”

  His mouth dropped open. The stupidity was really outdistancing the smarts now. With his mouth open like that, he decided to fill it with beer, probably because he didn’t know what to say.

  “She’s a looker,” I reminded him. “Name’s Lisa Long.”

  He swallowed some beer. Nodded. “I met her a couple times, too. Didn’t know her name. She seems nice.”

  “Nice piece of tail, you mean? You have an eye for the ladies, don’t you, Myron? Cost you a marriage, I understand. And a bunch of alimony, too, I bet.”

  He reddened. “What does Cindy have to do with this?”

  “Who’s Cindy?”

  “My wife! Ex-wife…”

  I chuckled. “Nothing. I don’t know Cindy. I was just rattling your cage a little. Myron, what do you know about Lisa Long and the senator?”

  A lesser shrug. “They work together.”

  “Take another run at that.”

  He smiled like a naughty boy with a secret. Then he blurted it: “He bangs her pretty regular. Whenever he’s in town, he bangs that babe.”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  He gulped the rest of the beer down, looked at the bartender again. Well, one thing was for sure—all these beers were going on the senator’s expense account.

  Leaning in, like we were suddenly buddies, the ex-cop said, “She’s not the only one.”

  “She isn’t?”

  “No! I started at the Flatiron before that Lisa What’s-It ever worked for that Winters clown. He had another secretary before that, he’s banging. And sometimes he had other babes in there. I’m telling you, that son of a bitch gets more tail than Sinatra!”

  Who was singing “New York, New York” again. I swear. That playing over and over on the jukebox was probably why the help here was so surly.

  Very quietly, I said, “What if I told you somebody was blackmailing the senator?”

  He laughed. Not the reaction of a blackmailer caught at it, I have to say.

  He said, “I ain’t surprised. Guy like that—he’s got a babe for a wife, too, you know. She’s in the News all the time, with her tits hangin’ out. That redhead, what’s her name?”

  “Nicole Vankemp.”

  “Right! How many babes does one asshole need?”

  I could have asked him the same question, but instead I said, “Have you met her, the senator’s wife?”

  “No.”

  “Let me rephrase that—have you seen her? Has she ever been around the office?”

  He shook his head. “Not on my shift. But why would she? Her, he can bang at home.”

  Good point. Maybe Henry had been a hell of a detective, in his day.

  “Myron, do you have a tape of the senator enjoying some after-hours nookie with his secretary?”

  He frowned. “What, a video or something?”

  “Or anything. An audio cassette, say.”

  He shrugged one shoulder. “Hell, I still got an eight-track in my car.”

  So he was either smarter or dumber than I’d thought.

  “What if I told you,” I said, “that an operative of mine is searching your house in the Bronx for that tape, even as we sit here enjoying a beer and each other’s manly company?”

  He grunted a laugh. “I’d say, I hope he’s good with pit bulls, your operative, because my pit bull has the run of the place when I’m gone.” Then he frowned. “Hey, if your guy puts a slug in Clarence, I’ll kick his ass from here to Sunday. That pooch cost me two hundred bucks! He’s got papers!”

  I didn’t think he meant he put papers down for the animal.

  I raised a hand. “That was a bluff, my friend. But I’ll tell you what isn’t a bluff: if you’re behind this blackmail scheme, I will tell Captain Chambers all about it, which I haven’t yet. And when you get out of stir, we’ll see what kind of security job you can land.”

  “Hey! You best back the hell off!”

  “No, thanks. Now. My client prefers to keep this quiet. In fact, we could negotiate a generous payment, if you hand
over the tape and any copies. But if we make such an agreement, and you break it, Myron—it won’t be your pit bull that takes a slug.”

  The former cop/current security guard could have reacted any number of ways. He was younger than me and tough in his way, although he surely knew of my reputation. Still, he might have laughed me off and made a genuine denial, or half dozen other things.

  But what he said was, “Hell, man—I wish I had that tape. Wish I’d thought of recording that horny politico and one of his honeys. I’d sell you that thing and you’d never hear from me again. I’d get out of this damn city and live high on the hog, somewhere.” He shook his head. “But that’s what I get for playing it straight, huh?”

  He thanked me for the beers, with no sarcasm at all, and downed the last one before heading out to his job at the Flatiron Building.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  No question about it—the combination of preening oddballs and wide-eyed tourists in Greenwich Village always gives me a pain.

  But some of the best entertainment in town could be seen and heard there, from the Village Vanguard and the Blue Note to the Bitter End and Bottom Line. And the piano bars on Grove Street were where you might find Velda and me, when the mood struck us.

  Not that such venues as Marie’s Crisis, The Five Oaks and Rose’s Turn—all on the same tree-lined street a few doors from each other—didn’t have their shortcomings. They crouched in low-slung basements foggy with cigarette smoke, their sound systems like carnival booth loudspeakers, the bathrooms a horror show, though the strength of their cocktails could not be denied.

  Rose’s Turn perched in space vacated by the Duplex, when it moved to Christopher Street. Downstairs, the former owners had left behind the black baby grand, the record-shop-poster-adorned brick walls, and the little black candle-lit tables, each crowded by four battered black chairs. Also a reputation as an intimate piano bar with character. An example of the latter was the time a guy at the bar unzipped and suddenly relieved himself with the velocity of a racehorse, the singer at the mike lifting her left foot to avoid the stream as she shifted from “Just One of Those Things” to “Cry Me a River.”