into the city and banked it, is the way I understand it. That’s the beginning and end of it, Hammer. Okay?”
I shrugged. “Okay. It was worth a try.”
He slid out of the booth. “Word of advice, Hammer?”
“Always appreciated,” I said pleasantly.
“Get the hell out of Sidon.” His upper lip curled all the way back over big front teeth and feral incisors “There’s nothing here for you. Not answers. Not money. Not even a good time. Nothing. ”
He stalked out of there. Didn’t bother to offer to pay for the beers, but then cops didn’t seem to pay for anything around Sidon.
I sat there grinning. Well, he had taken the bait. I’d known damn well he wouldn’t go partners with me on the stashed cash, but he would want to beat Johnny C to the punch. So all I had to do was go out to Sharron Wesley’s and stake the place out and wait for Dekkert to lead me to the treasure.
Who had grabbed Poochie, I couldn’t say. But it really didn’t feel like the cops were responsible, and I talked myself into the chief meaning it when he said he’d round up his troops and put on a search for the little guy.
Right now the thread I was following was Dekkert, and it would lead to that cash. I wasn’t sure if finding Sharron Wesley’s getaway fund would lead me to her murderer, too, but I had a hunch it would.
Anyway, I didn’t mind the idea of taking a twenty-five percent finder’s fee from Johnny C. No, not at all. I had no other client in this case, and Velda would smile, seeing that kind of fee heading into our bank account.
Speaking of Velda, I tried her again on the house phone, got nothing, and decided to go up to my room to see if she’d left a note under my door or anything.
Nothing.
I was almost back out the door, to stake out the Wesley mansion, when the phone rang.
“Mike?”
It was Velda.
“Finally!” I said. “I’ve been back since midnight, and do I have plenty to report.”
“Tell me about it!” She sounded breathless; I could hear the rustle of wind in trees, so she must be calling from outside somewhere. “Mike, Mayor Rudy Holden has just been killed.”
“ What? ”
“You heard me. One shot behind the ear while he sat in his study. He-”
Her voice broke off with a muffled sound as though someone had slapped a hand over her mouth.
“Velda!.. Velda, what’s wrong? Where are you, honey? Answer me!”
The only response I got was the click of the receiver being slung back in its cradle.
I dialed the operator and barked an order at her. “I just had a call. I need to know where it came from. Hurry!”
“I’m sorry, sir,” she said with whiny high-pitched indifference. “We can’t give out that in-for- may — shun.” I was boiling. Velda in trouble, and some little snip wouldn’t get me the lead I needed.
“Damn it,” I yelled, “you’ll give that me right now, or I’ll come down where you work and slap the goddamn hell out of you. Get me that number and its location! This is detective Mike Hammer speaking, and I don’t want any crap out of you.”
It was a booth three blocks away.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The receiver dangled on its cord, swaying just a little, the violence of the interrupted conversation leaving behind a pendulum that, in the several minutes after the cut-off call, had dissipated to a gentle swing. Like a hanged man after the impact of that sudden fall had worn off.
The phone booth was on the northern edge of the business district, and just around the corner, two blocks down, was the nicest house in town, the red-brick dwelling of the late Mayor Rudolph Holden. Two Sidon police cars with their red lights flashing were parked down there, and even at this distance I could see figures in blue moving in and out of the Holden home.
Velda had said His Honor had “just been killed.” Had she been at the murder scene? Maybe discovered the body? In any case, she had been one of the first to know and rushed to call me.
Had the murderer seen her at the scene, and followed her to that phone booth, and put a muffling hand over her mouth to haul her away to… what? Silence her? Nowhere around the booth was there an alley or doorway to lay down an unconscious body with even the most minimal concealment. I looked at every possibility half a block in either direction.
Why had she been taken? Who had taken her? Probably the mayor’s murderer, but… why? To kill her, assault her, use her as a hostage? What?
The night was even colder now and the wind picking up. I cut through it like a blade as I ran down to where those red lights flashed, holding my hat onto my head, my open suit coat flapping like wings and if I could have flown, I would. First the beachcomber, now Velda-why? Who?
The two cops who’d backed up Dekkert in that alley at the start were standing on the open, poured-cement porch-that former high school athlete and his skinny pal. They started to say something as they tried to bar the door but I shoved them aside with either hand, hard enough that the skinny one tumbled off in a pile.
Stairs yawned ahead, and off to the right was a living room where on a Victorian sofa an older female relative or maybe family friend sat holding onto one of the new widow’s hands with both of hers. Mrs. Holden was weeping into a hanky. Whatever that husband of hers had been, I understood her grief. It was what my rage would turn into if I couldn’t get Velda back.
Another cop yelled, “Hey! There’s no entry here!”
But I brushed by him into the study where the mayor and I had once eaten sugar cookies.
Chief Beales saw me enter as two cops caught up with me and took me by the arms and I was getting ready to do something about that when Beales said, “It’s all right! It’s all right. Let go of him. Let him go!”
They did, and moved off growling, not knowing how lucky they were, and I went over to Beales, who was hovering over the corpse slumped in its chair by the cold fireplace. The mayor was in a purple silk robe with pajamas and slippers, the picture of casual comfort but for the black hole behind his left ear. The hole at the right side of the top of his skull was larger, ragged and red, like an angry whore’s mouth.
This wasn’t the work of any Jack the Ripper maniac like the one Pat pictured for the kills of the coeds, the Wilson girl and Sharron Wesley. This was an execution, syndicate style. Professional killing hung in the air with the smell of cordite.
Chief Beales looked at me and for once that fat face wasn’t flushed, but pale as a blister. His eyes were terrified and his forehead was a bas relief map of pulsing veins.
“What do you think, Mr. Hammer?”
“I think he’s dead. What do you think? Who called this in?”
“Mrs. Holden. She and her husband were in bed, reading, and someone rang the doorbell, maybe twenty minutes ago. Her husband went down to answer it, and a few minutes later, she heard the gunshot and went down to check. The front door was open.”
So the mayor knew the killer. Invited him or her in to the study for a friendly chat that had prematurely concluded with a gunshot of considerable caliber.. 38 anyway, judging by that gaping exit wound.
I said tightly, “What are you going to do about this?”
He was shaking his head in wide-eyed confusion; he didn’t look much better than the mayor, who at least seemed to be resting.
“I don’t know, Mr. Hammer. I honestly don’t know. I may have to ask the state police for help. Things are really getting out of hand.”
“Where’s your deputy? Dekkert’s got real big-city police training. Why isn’t he here?”
“He doesn’t answer his phone at home and I can’t raise him on his radio.”
That was because the bastard was already on his way out to the Wesley mansion, if he wasn’t there already. Had Dekkert done this? A mob-style hit was something I wouldn’t put past him. Had he grabbed Poochie, because the little guy saw something? What? Had Dekkert strangled Sharron on the beach and Poochie witnessed it? Had
