Mike Hammer--Murder, My Love

by Max Allan Collins

“And you look in the closet.”

  “I do.”

  “And get jumped and kicked in the head and close to shot.”

  “Close only counts in horseshoes.”

  “One last question, Hammer.”

  “Yeah?”

  “When he pointed that silenced rod at you?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Why didn’t you crap your pants?”

  I grinned. “I was busy having my life pass in front of my eyes.”

  Detective Brice took all of my contact information and shook me loose. On Fifth Avenue, I pulled over and stopped near the phone booth that I used the day before and used it again, calling Velda at the office.

  I filled her in.

  “You’re determined to get yourself killed,” she said as I wrapped it up, “before you make an honest woman out of me.”

  “It’s the only way out left to me, doll. Look, before I called it in, I gave that apartment a thorough search, from the kitchenette drawers and cabinets to the shelves in that closet.”

  “And?”

  “No Maxwell cassette tape.”

  “Damn.”

  “But… I found two little cassette players and some cables that could be used for dubbing. And half a carton of blank Ampex tapes, each one still in its plastic wrapper.”

  Excitement colored her voice. “Which means copies of the sex tape had probably already been made.”

  “And the guy who jumped me may have gotten them.”

  “Could have found the original, too.”

  “Yes.”

  “Who sent the guy, Mike? Any idea?”

  “Several. But all I have to work on is that he had dark eyes, a decent build, and was maybe as tall as me.”

  “Sounds like a real brute… Mike, I have another call. That’s the number from Pat’s car phone! I better take it.”

  She was gone for almost thirty seconds. I was just starting to think we’d been cut off when she was back.

  “That was Pat,” she said. “He’s at the scene, outside the Flatiron Building—on Broadway. There’s been a hit-and-run. Mike… it’s the Long girl! Lisa Long’s been killed.”

  I swallowed. “Stay put, kitten. I’m heading there.”

  A sob caught in her throat, but she got the words out: “Mike, does murder have to follow us?”

  “No. But we have to follow it.”

  * * *

  The shouting, like they say, was over by the time the cab dropped me on Broadway outside the Flatiron. No ambulance, just a squad car pulled over to block a lane of traffic, its cherry top whirling. The sad chalk outline of a sprawl that had been a young woman’s body could be seen, as could the dark Rorschach stain of blood that the outline didn’t contain. Two uniformed officers were still at the scene, one on the sidewalk and another in the street. A plainclothes man was questioning shell-shocked pedestrians.

  One of the uniforms, Manny Romero, recognized me and told me where I could find Captain Chambers. Romero was middle-aged and said, “I see you still wear a hat. Weather like this makes me think I should dig one of mine out.”

  The sky was grumbling and night was moving in early.

  I said, “They issue a hat and a trenchcoat, you know, when we take out a P.I. ticket.”

  That amused him, barely. “Is that right?”

  “What do you make of this one? Straight hit-and-run?”

  “I would’ve said that,” Romero said. “But the newsstand guy? Claims the car accelerated. He hit that poor girl like a torpedo.”

  “‘He’?”

  “Some baby-faced teenager. Rebel without a clue. Out gettin’ his kicks, little fucker.”

  I nodded, patted the cop on the shoulder, and headed across Broadway.

  When I went through the revolving doors into the narrow lobby, Pat was over at left, notepad in hand, interviewing the fifty-ish uniformed guardian-at-the-gate behind his little white desk. In a raincoat and no hat, the big rangy blond captain of Homicide heard me come in, wrote down a few final notes, nodded in curt thanks to the interviewee and tucked his spiral pad away. Then he walked out of the guard’s earshot and summoned me with a curled finger.

  When he got a closer look at me, Pat asked, “What happened to you?”

  He meant the nasty hematoma at my left temple.

  “Like Dino says,” I said, “ain’t that a kick in the head.”

  His chuckle was dry. “From this afternoon, huh? You should get that looked at.”

  “I didn’t know you cared.”

  Pat nodded toward the guard at the desk. “Just picked up an interesting tidbit,” he said. His smile was the kind that went well with hard, irritated eyes.

  “Must be gratifying when that happens,” I said pleasantly. “So little wheat and so much chaff in an officer of the law’s day.”

  He ignored that. “Seems the late Erin Dunn’s section of the building to clean included Senator Winters’ office. That’s Senator Jamie Winters, whose secretary became a hit-and-run fatality a little over an hour ago.”

  “Now you’re going to remind me,” I said, “that I asked the Super for Erin Dunn’s contact information the other day.”

  The grin didn’t pretend to be anything but sarcastic. “Oh, I thought we might skip that and go right to a phone call I got from a Detective Brice over in Brooklyn.”

  I folded my arms and gave him a nice friendly smile. “So that saves me from having to fill you in about that little incident.”

  “That ‘little incident’ where three people got killed and you had a run-in with their killer? No. I’m up to speed, thanks. We can jump right to where you tell me how this all connects up.”

  The best way to handle a smart cop is to answer a question with another question. Or two. “Have you talked to the senator? Was he still here when this happened?”

  “He was. He still is.” Pat nodded upward. “He’s waiting in his office because so far I’ve only interviewed him in the most perfunctory way. You see, he saw it happen.”

  “Oh?”

  Pat nodded. “He’d been chatting with the Long woman outside the building. End of their workday, see-you-tomorrow kind of thing. She was heading to a bus stop and he was about to go the other direction to a parking garage. He saw her cross the street, in the middle of the block, and she turned to wave, and he waved back, just as a car came up fast. A big Buick Riviera, dark blue with white trim. Hit her so hard, she flew up and rolled off the hood and windshield, and the bastard went right over her. Some of the witnesses lost their lunch. Some damn near lost their minds.”

  I shook my head. “I spoke to her yesterday. She was a nice kid.”

  “Skip it. What I want to know is—was this simple hit-and-run, or just…”

  “A hit? A murder? Could be, Pat. Anybody get a good look at the driver?”

  “A look, yes, several of the sickened spectators. That’s what doesn’t feel like anything but a real accident—it was young kid, smooth-faced boy maybe in his teens, in a red stocking cap and a Jets sweatshirt. And here’s the kicker—somebody got the license plate number.”

  “Well, great!”

  “Not so great. We ran it and the car was reported stolen earlier this afternoon. Which makes this sound like a joyride.”

  “Maybe it’s supposed to sound that way.”

  He frowned; all the homicides he’d seen, something like this could still tie his guts into knots. “Mike, what the hell is this about? Where does the senator come in? I’ve got a hunch he’s your client. That the murdered cleaning gal and her boyfriend are tied in with, what, blackmail? The senator has a rep as a womanizer.”

  I gave him half a grin and a shoulder pat. “You’ll make a good detective someday, Captain Chambers. Tell you what—let’s go up and talk to the senator.”

  “Yeah. Let’s.”

  “But first, me.”

  “Whaddya mean, first you?”

  I gestured to myself. “Well, let’s say, hypothetically, that the senator is my client. In such a case, I�
�d want to get his permission before answering a question from you about a hypothetical extortion attempt. And maybe other information that I couldn’t otherwise reveal.”

  Pat was quietly steaming. He knew about my arrangement with a lawyer in the Hackard Building that gave me attorney/client privilege with all of my clients. Knew damn well it was standard with me.

  “All right,” he said, sighing. “We’ll go up. You can have a few minutes with your… hypothetical client. I’ll even let you sit in on the interview… but I’m asking the questions. Understood?”

  “Understood. You’re the law enforcement professional, after all.”

  That actually made him laugh. Nice to see his mood improve so quick.

  So we went up to the nineteenth floor and Pat stayed out in the hall and had a smoke. He’d quit that nasty habit more times than I had, and was between tries at the moment.

  I found my client sitting behind his secretary’s desk. He was slumped there, leaning on his elbows, hands covering his face. Hearing me come in, the hands lowered but the elbows stayed put. His green eyes were bloodshot and his perfectly barbered dark brown hair had an atypically unruly look. The dark gray suit coat of a tailored number was still on, but the pink-and-white tie around the white collar of his pale gray shirt was loose, a knot the hangman hadn’t snugged yet.

  The boyishly handsome face looked its full early-forties reality for a change. “Mike… what are you doing here?”

  “I guess you could say I’m reporting in.” I sat in the visitor’s chair opposite him. Tugged back my hat.

  “What happened to you?” he asked, nodding toward the black-and-blue blossom to one side of my forehead.

  “Turns out not everybody likes me,” I said.

  He didn’t know what to make of that.

  I folded my arms again, put an ankle on a knee. “You got lucky. Captain Chambers is a friend. Probably my best friend in the world. Or we wouldn’t be having this pre-interview chat.”

  “Captain Chambers… he… he already interviewed me.”

  “That was just the warm-up. You’re in for more, maybe much more. I don’t have to level with Chambers for him to find out what’s been going on. He’s already jumped to blackmail without any help from me.”

  “I… I can’t even think of any of this… not after…” He swallowed hard. “I saw her die, Mike. I saw that car come roaring out of nowhere and then she was just… in the air… and then… you could hear the crunching… bones… things inside her…” He covered his face, shuddering, shivering.

  “You should save that stuff for Chambers. I don’t have time for melodramatics, whether they’re sincere or not.”

  The bloodshot eyes flared and he leaned back in his dead secretary’s chair. “Are you accusing me of…?”

  “Nothing. I believe you cared about that girl.” I believed he cared about all of those girls, in his way. “But right now, Jamie boy, I need instructions from you, and you need some from me.”

  “In… structions?”

  “How much do you know about what’s happened today?”

  He said his wife had informed him that the cassette tape that ex-Governor Hughes had sold us was a copy.

  “What else is there to know?” he asked hollowly.

  I told him that I had spoken to the governor this morning and revealed to him that Erin Dunn and her boyfriend had swindled him. That Hughes had hired me to handle the situation, including preventing his exposure and likely arrest as a blackmailer. When my client started to react, I added that the governor’s fee would be contributed by me to the Vankemp Foundation.

  Then I told him about my second visit to the brownstone in Park Slope.

  “Three dead,” he said, his expression glazed.

  “And me damn near dead,” I pointed out.

  He threw his hands in the air. “What the hell is going on, Mike?”

  “Well, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that your secretary was a vehicular homicide victim the same day Dunn and Licata were shot to death. And neither does Captain Chambers. Understandably.”

  He was sitting forward now. “You think the same person killed all three?”

  I shrugged. “The same person could be responsible, but a grown man killed that couple, and some young male was behind the wheel when Lisa Long got hit. And in the latter case, ‘hit’ is the right word. Someone likely contracted both kills. Someone connected. Someone with money.”

  He winced in thought. “Could the governor be cleaning up after himself?”

  “That thought has occurred to me. He doesn’t seem the type, but then he’s a politician… no offense.”

  “None taken. So what about those instructions you have for me?”

  I held up a “stop” palm. “Don’t withhold anything from Chambers. But don’t offer him anything, either—make him ask. Let him dig for his share of our taxpayer dollars.”

  He nodded, his eyes sharp now.

  I continued: “Specifically, keep the governor out of this… unless the captain directly asks. You received an anonymous blackmail call. You hired me and I learned that Dunn had stolen the tape. Leave it at that, if you can.”

  “What are you going to do, Mike?”

  “Well, the governor and I are going to talk again. But I have a few other things in mind to do first. For now, I’ll sit in on the interview with Chambers. I’ll give you an occasional prompt. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  So Pat came in and I kept my chair while the Homicide captain made a looming presence, trying to intimidate a man who met important people every day, including his own damn wife.

  Jamie was properly upset about the accident, but avoided melodramatics, and in a fifteen-minute interview that covered no new ground at all Pat didn’t ask about the governor. Apparently he was still in the dark there.

  I had bought myself a little time.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Caffe Reggio on MacDougal Street in the Village was in business a good twenty years before I was. Some said neither one of us had changed much since. And my porkpie fedora and trenchcoat were pretty much the same, even if personally I was considerably more weathered.

  As for the Caffe Reggio, it still boasted the same sagging ceiling, elaborately framed paintings, old clocks on wall pedestals, dim lighting, folk music, and green walls as ever. Like the lines in my face, the cracks in those walls lent what they call character. Same was true of the ceiling fan that could have been a prop out of Casablanca, and was, or the espresso machine dating to the turn of the century that cost the original owner of the café a cool grand in 1927, back when that was real money.

  Half of a wide, ornately carved wooden booth, with two small round marble-topped tables facing it, was where Velda and I and three young women with whom Senator Jamie Winters had enjoyed carnal relations were currently in conference. We fit in fine with the mix of aging hippies, over-the-hill bohemians, tourists, and grad-school wait staff.

  Of the three young women seated across from us—Velda and I each had a little table to ourselves—I had previously met only Nora Kent, the “blonde” singer from Rose’s Turn who’d turned out really to have black, pixie-cut hair under her big frizzy wig. Right now she was wigless, in a blue-and-green plaid shirt and jeans (all three girls were in jeans) that went well with the Reggio’s earth tones.

  Velda introduced me to the other two—Helen Wayne, who wore a loose dark-green sweater, her hair short and brown and permed; and Judy McGuire, in a jeans jacket over a black t-shirt, her hair long and brown and brushing her shoulders.

  I had assigned Velda the task of rounding up the three women for this meeting, and had chosen this spot for a meet because the Village was where they lived and worked. By the time I got there—it was early evening now—all three of the senator’s former paramours were present, and so was Velda. The young women, seated in a row like that, were peas in a pod, short but not petite, curvy but not voluptuous, cute more than pretty, none wearing anything but the lightest make-up. />
  Velda had caught up with all of them by phone at their jobs— the singer at Rose’s Turn was also a waitress there—and told each it was vital to come see her, because the blackmail matter with the senator had really heated up.

  She did not mention that two others like them would be present, too. Or, for that matter, that murders had been committed. Today.

  Now they sat, each nursing espresso cups, eyeing each other nervously, sometimes exchanging twitchy little smiles, but not engaging in conversation. I had told Velda not to tell them what they had in common, but to let them figure it out. They had to know they were of a similar type.

  The senator’s type.

  “Let them squirm a little,” I’d told Velda.

  And squirming they were, when I’d arrived and settled in my chair.

  I nodded to them, said hello, ordered myself a coffee with cream and sugar, then thanked the women for accepting our invitation.

  “I’m guessing,” I said, “you’ve figured out what you three have in common.”

  Helen Wayne blushed. Judy McGuire frowned. And Nora Kent smirked. A sort of human female variation on see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil.

  “Ladies,” I said quietly, “I don’t mean to alarm you, but another member of your society was a hit-and-run victim today. A fatality. Very likely a murder.”

  All three looked at me now with identical wide-eyed expressions of alarm. It might have been comical, under other circumstances.

  I continued: “Lisa Long, who until her demise a few hours ago was Senator Winters’ current secretary, now resides in the city morgue. And as you’ve no doubt surmised, the Long woman was having an affair with the senator. The blackmailer has a recording of them together. Doing what, I believe, can be left to your imagination.”

  The alarm was gone and various shades of shame, irritation, and regret passed across the similarly cute faces as I continued.

  “Two of the parties involved in the blackmail scheme,” I said, “were murdered today in Brooklyn.”

  Alarm returned and, as I spoke, evolved into fear. Not one of the women had as yet asked a question or made a remark.

  I said, “Erin Dunn was on the nighttime cleaning staff at the Flatiron Building and is the source of the tape recording. Her live-in boyfriend, Anthony Licata, was part of the scheme. Both were shot and killed in Dunn’s apartment late this morning.”