Mike Hammer--Murder, My Love

by Max Allan Collins

  I held up a “stop” hand. “I leave such things to you political types. I’m just a working-class capitalist who was hired to find, and deal with, a blackmailer. And with all due respect, sir, you seem to be it.”

  His expression was somber, even regretful. “I’m not after money, Mike.”

  “What are you after?”

  Now his eyes bore down on me, hard and dark and direct. “A simple public announcement from Jamie Winters.”

  I looked back at him the same way. “You want him to drop out of the presidential race?”

  A quick shrug. “Well, he hasn’t officially announced yet… but yes. That’s exactly what I want.” Something proud and yet defensive came into his expression, his chin lifting. “That is this reluctant blackmailer’s price. What I require.”

  I leaned back, shook my head, gave up half a smile. “The trouble, Governor, is we’re talking about a cassette tape—so easily copied. There’s really no way for you to assure my clients that you haven’t made backups.”

  The chin stayed up. “You would have my word.”

  “That would be good enough for me, Governor.” I shook my head. “But probably not my clients.”

  His eyes tightened as he looked past me into his thoughts. Then his gaze swiveled back to me.

  “All right,” he said. “Suppose I had made copies. Suppose I made them even now. If my price has been met—if Jamie Winters makes that statement, and indeed does not make a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination—what further value could that tape possibly have for me? Only a negative value—as evidence that I used illegal means to force a rival out of the race.”

  “But you’re telling me you haven’t made copies.”

  A confident nod. “I have not. My recourse, should Winters agree to drop out of the race and then not keep his word, would be to seek a qualified investigator… not you, Mike, because that would be a conflict of interest… to look into the senator’s extramarital affairs. My understanding is that his current secretary is only the latest in a long line of such conquests. It would be distasteful to me, but I would see to it that he was properly…”

  “Smeared,” I said.

  He said nothing.

  I grunted a laugh. “You’d work through one of the papers, I would imagine. Investigative reporters, political columnists.”

  “Yes. I still have my media contacts. Do I disappoint you, Mike?” His smile returned, bitter now. “That I would engage in such end-justifies-the-means behavior?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t think I have a lot of room to bitch in that department, Governor…. I’ll make a call.”

  At the bar I was provided with a phone. I found Senator Winters back at his Flatiron Building office. Lisa Long put me right through.

  The bartender was polite enough to stand well away and none of the few customers present, including the governor, were near enough to hear. Still, I was circumspect, and spoke in terms at times that would be vague to anyone but the client I was filling in. I took my time and Winters mostly just listened.

  When I’d wrapped it up, Winters said, biting off the words, “That sanctimonious old bastard. Goddamnit!… What do you think I should do, Mike?”

  “Well, first talk it over with Nicole, of course. Is she around?”

  “She’s at the penthouse. I’ll call her and see what she says. Damnit!”

  “Mr. Winters. Jamie. This political crapola is admittedly not my area of expertise. But as an outsider, I can take a look at you and say, what the hell—you’re a young man. Keep your nose clean and go for another senate term, why don’t you? Bide your time.”

  His words were acid-edged: “Hughes is crazy if he thinks a White House bid is in the cards for him.”

  “So let him try, and fail. You and Nicole close up shop on the open marriage, and keep your eyes on the prize.”

  “…I’ll talk to her. But the old goat has to have copies!”

  “Actually, I doubt it. I think this whole thing puts a bad taste in his mouth. You postpone your White House urge till after another senate term, and you’ll be fine.”

  “You really think so, Mike?”

  What I really thought was we ought to have term limits in this country, but I left that out.

  “Yeah,” I said. “You can trust him. As far as it goes.”

  “How far is that?”

  “Well, he’s a politician. Think it over. Call me when you decide. I’ll ask for a couple days to mull it.”

  “He’s still there at the 21 with you?”

  “Right. Not listening in, of course. We’re lunching. I’m waiting on a solid-gold hamburger.”

  We said curt goodbyes and hung up.

  That burger was just arriving as I sat.

  “Jamie and his wife are discussing it,” I told the governor. “I said he could have a couple of days. Is that all right?”

  “Agreeable,” he said with a nod.

  The meatloaf-ish burger was tasty, if not twenty-one bucks’ worth. It came on grilled Italian bread with a nice side of handcut fries. The senator and I concentrated on eating, avoiding the embarrassment of any further talk.

  We were just finishing up when the bartender called me back to the phone.

  “Take the deal,” the senator’s voice said.

  Damn, that was fast!

  I said, “Nicole’s on board?”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t sound happy.”

  “Would you be?”

  He hung up.

  I went back to the table. The waiter was there. The governor was ordering another round, but I declined another of my “usual.” You could accuse 21 of overpricing but not of watering the drinks.

  Sitting down again, I said, “You have a clear field, Governor—at least where Senator Winters is concerned. He’s decided he’s a little too young and unseasoned to go after the big prize just now. He thinks going after a second term in the Senate makes perfect sense.”

  “Was that your suggestion?”

  I nodded. “You two will make a pol out of me yet. After he makes his statement, why don’t you deliver that tape to me and I’ll get it to my clients.”

  “Why don’t I?” he said, with one of the saddest smiles I’ve ever seen. He reached into his suit coat pocket and brought out an Ampex cassette tape and laid it on the red-and-white checkered tablecloth like a tip.

  I pointed at it, keeping a distance, as if it might bite. “That’s the original? Right out of the senator’s intercom set-up?”

  “That’s it,” the governor said, nodding. “And, as I said, there are no copies. You don’t mind delivering that, do you, Mike?”

  “No,” I said. “But I think I’ll have that drink after all.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Even before Rosemary’s Baby and John Lennon were shot there, the gothic, nineteenth-century Dakota Building on the Upper West Side looked like something out of a horror show, the kind of monstrosity of a mansion you walked to on a rain-swept dark night when your car broke down and you had no other option. The same was true in the afternoon.

  Rumor had it that ghosts, including the late Beatle’s, turned up frequently at 72nd Street and Central Park West, but it was better known as a haunt of the rich and famous who were mostly still with us. Lauren Bacall and Leonard Bernstein lived here (not together) and so once had Lillian Gish and Boris Karloff (also not bunkmates). Current residents included Joe Namath, Roberta Flack, and Rudolf Nureyev. Plenty of others, just as rich and famous, had been turned down by the notoriously picky co-op board.

  I couldn’t have gotten in even on a temporary basis, if I hadn’t been expected by a tenant. A cab dropped me at the arched main entry, designed to accommodate horse-drawn carriages. Past the uniformed doorman, in the courtyard of the looming square-shaped building, I took an elevator in the nearest corner and went up to the seventh floor. Surrounded by dark, gloomy woodwork, I made my way to residence 72 and pushed the buzzer.

  The door was answered by a guy who was
maybe thirty, around five eleven, in a stylish gray suit and a black t-shirt whose athletic build didn’t need those shoulder pads, unless a round of touch football was in the offing. As handsome as a guy in a Ralph Lauren ad, his chin dimpled, his complexion olive, he wore his black hair fairly long and slicked back. But his most distinguishing feature was a flattened nose that indicated somewhere in his past—collegiate probably—there had been boxing.

  “Mike Hammer,” I said, “for Nicole Winters. I’m expected.”

  He nodded politely, said, “Yes, Mr. Hammer,” and stepped aside, gesturing me in. He took my hat and coat and hung them in a closet, then led the way down a long entry corridor.

  He glanced back. “I’m Andrew Morrow, Ms. Winters’ secretary.” His voice was mellow and mid-pitched. He glanced back with a smile, adding, “Actually, I work for the Nicole Vankemp Foundation.”

  “The umbrella for her various charitable endeavors, I assume.”

  “That’s right, Mr. Hammer.”

  We entered into a sun-streaming, airy, ivory-drenched loft-like endless living room with a wet bar, a white baby grand piano, and a twelve-foot ceiling, easy. The sidewall was mirrored, like a ballet studio, making the impressive space seem even more vast, the floor’s oak sanded to a near bone, the whiteness of the room offset slightly by carved mahogany. At the far and near end of the staggering space were fireplaces original to the room, their fancy woodwork washed white, and over their respective mantels hung big-framed images—a blue-dominated Marilyn by Warhol and a Roy Lichtenstein comic-book panel of a redheaded woman talking into a phone.

  The result was a vintage area turned modern, the furnishings metallic with colorful pop-art cushions, red, blue, yellow, green. On the red-cushioned couch, before a glass-and-steel coffee table between her and the tall windows onto the park, sat Nicole in an emerald jumpsuit. The redheaded beauty was leaning forward, leafing through oversize photographs of nightclub interiors.

  She glanced up at me with a smile, her lipstick a shade similar to her hair, which was ponytailed back. With no preamble, she said, “I’m just looking over some venues in Miami. We’re doing a cancer fund-raiser down there in a few months.”

  “For or against?”

  That stopped her for a moment, then she laughed and it had a nice musical quality. “You’re a very bad man, Mike.”

  “So I hear.”

  The male secretary was at my side and Nicole looked up at us and nodded toward him. “I see you’ve met Andrew—my majordomo.”

  “We’ve met.” I threw him a smile. “What does a majordomo do in this day and age?”

  Andrew frowned a little, wondering if he should answer. Nicole relieved him of the chore.

  “Well, right now,” she said, and gestured to a spiral pad on the glass coffee-table top, just to one side of the nightclub photos, “he’s been taking dictation. Something like a dozen letters today— people wanting help, people wanting money.” She shrugged. “We do what we can.”

  Andrew collected his spiral pad and said to her, “Would you like me to run those errands now, Ms. Winters?”

  “Yes, would you please, Andrew?” she asked brightly.

  He gave her a half-bow, then smiled tightly and gave me a quarter of one. He went back the way we’d come. I heard a closet door open, and the sound of him climbing into a topcoat, then the front door opened and closed.

  She patted the cushion next to her. “Alone at last.”

  I sat. “What sort of errands?”

  She flipped a hand. “Oh, banking. Arranging for us to have flowers at an event coming up. A banquet at the Waldorf with details that need tending. A hundred things.”

  “He doesn’t look it.”

  “Look what?”

  “Gay.”

  The musical laugh again. “Well, he’s not. He’s quite hetero. Not that you can tell just looking at a person.” She shook her head and the ponytail swung. “What an amusingly Cro-Magnon way of looking at things you have, Mike.”

  “Is that what I have? Frankly, with that boxer’s nose and fullback’s build, I figured he might be security.”

  She nodded. “Well, actually to a degree he is. Andrew wears several hats, Mike, and I don’t mean fedoras. He handles much of the actual work that my foundation requires, and he acts as our in-house security. Also, he’s a sort of bodyguard who goes almost everywhere with me.”

  “He’s live-in, then?”

  “Yes. This is a sizeable condo, Mike. Front to back, this living room space alone is 3,500 feet. Andrew has a room off the kitchen, and comes and goes through the service entrance. Are you wondering if he’s also my boy toy?”

  I grinned at her. “I hadn’t got that far. But it might be convenient having that in-house, too.”

  She pursed her lips in a wry smile and patted my leg. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Mike, but my husband takes care of that kind of thing around here when I’m so inclined, or is that reclined? The open arrangement Jamie and I’ve enjoyed these last few years doesn’t preclude enjoying each other as well…. Would you like a drink? Your usual?”

  She knew what my usual was, too, even if this was my first time here.

  “No, I had a late lunch,” I said, “and it included three cocktails.”

  “That’s right. Jamie said you were at 21, meeting with the ex-governor.” The ponytail swung again. “What a surprise that was! That stuffy old goat, a blackmailer! Still waters do run deep.”

  “How do you think your husband will take having to give up his presidential bid?”

  Her eyebrows went up and down. “Oh, he’ll take it hard. But I’m not so sure waiting till he’s a little older, and has been in office a while, isn’t such a bad thing…. Nothing I can get you?”

  I shrugged. “If you have coffee, I’d take it.”

  “I could use some myself. Black, I assume?”

  “No. Cream and sugar. I like it sweet.”

  “I bet you do.” She got up and padded off, the emerald jumpsuit designed to be loose on the legs but to hug her bottom, which was worth hugging. Her feet were bare.

  While she was gone—fetching coffee in this place was like going on safari—I got up, skirted the glass-and-steel table and went over to the many windows onto the world. And the world was mostly Central Park.

  Autumn had set the park on fire with orange and red, a dazzling display of shades and shimmer as wind riffled through. Here, in the midst of a town that had so much ugliness in it, was the beauty of nature, a reminder of what this hunk of real estate had been before we screwed the Indians out of it. Of course if you walked through all that nature at night, you could still get scalped. Ugliness likes to conceal itself in beauty.

  Nicole returned with a little deco silver service with two cups, a coffee pot, matching sugar bowl and lidded creamer. This she set on the glass-top table and poured herself a cup and then me.

  “I didn’t want to guess,” she said, indicating the sugar and cream.

  I fixed up my own cup, not sparing either of the add-ons, and she smiled and said, “You are a sissy.”

  “Flaming,” I said, and sipped. Perfect.

  She leaned back and did some sipping herself. Put her bare feet and their orange-red toenails on the glass table-top. She was looking out toward the park and its fall colors, or so I thought— really she was dipping into her thoughts.

  “Andrew is a special young man,” she said, musingly. “He was a good friend of my late brother’s. David? Davie was a troubled soul, I’m afraid.” She swallowed. “He was driving when…”

  I’d read about it in the papers, several years ago, but nothing had brought it to mind in these circumstances till now. “Your brother had several drunk driving arrests, I recall. Didn’t have a license when he crashed.”

  She frowned over at me. I guess I sounded callous.

  “Andrew was in the car with him,” she said in a measured way. “He was badly injured, a broken leg, broken arm. Needed some facial reconstruction. We took care of him.
Now he takes care of us.”

  “Was he in college with your brother?”

  She sipped coffee, nodded. “They were at Cornell. David was studying law, Andrew business. After David’s death, Andrew finished up and we hired him.”

  “A security man with those kinds of injuries?”

  Nicole waved that off. “Oh, Andrew is one hundred percent. He was an absolute star at physical therapy.” She shrugged. “He was a boxing champ at Cornell. On scholarship.”

  “Doesn’t come from your kind of background, though.”

  “No.” She gave me half a smile; it was prettier than most women’s whole ones. “Do I strike you as a snob, Mike?”

  I shook my head. “No. I know you’ve had your share of tragedy. I read the papers. Your mother committed suicide when you were small. You have a sister in Europe who I gather you haven’t spoken to in years. Your father died fairly young. Being heir to a fortune doesn’t buy anybody out of misfortune.”

  “Not a snob, then.”

  “Not that I can tell. I did describe you as a spoiled brat to our ex-governor, though.”

  She beamed. “Ha! I suppose that’s right. How can anyone swimming in my kind of money be anything else?”

  “Well, at least you haven’t drowned in it.” I shrugged. “You get points for trying to use your wealth, your fame, for good.”

  Nicole looked at me searchingly, as if there might be sarcasm or irony or judgment in my words. She couldn’t find any because there weren’t any to find.

  Very quietly, she said, “Thank you, Mike.”

  She placed her coffee cup on the glass table-top. She sat back, tucked her legs under her, arms winged out along the couch cushions behind her. The hair and lipstick and painted toenails seemed almost too perfectly matched. Was she really a redhead, or was that just another fashion statement?

  I drank my coffee. “Nice little pad. These studio apartments are great.”

  That amused her. “Used to be Judy Garland’s place. Yoko Ono lives next door. I can hear her making music through the walls.”

  “The management ought to give you a discount.”