“And the day of mistakes is over.”
“Then advise me. I need advice from someone who doesn’t make mistakes anymore.” There was no sarcasm in his tone at all.
“I’ll keep her with me until she wants out.”
A full ten seconds passed before he thought it over, then he nodded, went to the other side of his desk and pulled out a checkbook. When he finished writing he handed me a pretty green paper made out for five thousand dollars and watched while I folded it lengthwise.
“That’s pretty big,” I said.
“Big men don’t come little. Nor do big things. I want Sue safe. I want Sue back. It’s up to you now, Mr. Hammer. Where do you start?”
“By getting you to remember the name of the other guys who threatened to kill you.”
“I doubt if those matters are of any importance.”
“Suppose you let me do the deciding. A lot of trouble can come out of the past. A lot of dirt too. If you don’t want me probing you can take your loot back. Then just for fun I might do it anyway.”
“There’s something personal about this with you, isn’t there, Mr. Hammer? It isn’t that you need the money or the practice. You needn’t tell me, but there is something else.”
We studied each other for the few ticks of time that it took for two pros in the same bit of business to realize that there wasn’t much that could be hidden.
“You know me, Torrence.”
“I know you, Mike. Doesn’t everybody?”
I grinned and stuck the check in my pocket. “Not really,” I said.
CHAPTER 3
You can always make a start with a dead man. It’s an ultimate end and a perfect beginning. Death is too definite to be ambiguous and when you deal with it your toes are in the chocks and not looking for a place to grab hold.
But death can be trouble too. It had been a long time and in seven years people could forget or stop worrying or rather play the odds and get themselves a name in the dark shadows of the never land of the night people.
Kid Hand was dead. Somebody would be mad. Somebody would be worried. By now everybody would know what happened in that tenement room and would be waiting. There would be those who remembered seven years ago and would wonder what came next. Some would know. Some would have to find out.
Me, maybe.
Off Broadway on Forty-ninth there’s a hotel sandwiched in between slices of other buildings and on the street it has a screwy bar with a funny name filled with screwier people and even funnier names. They were new people, mostly, but some were still there after seven years and when I spotted Jersey Toby I nodded and watched him almost drop his beer and went to the bar and ordered a Four Roses and ginger.
The bartender was a silent old dog who mixed the drink, took my buck, and said, “Hello, Mike.”
I said, “Hello, Charlie.”
“You ain’t been around.”
“Didn’t have to be.”
“Glad you dumped the slop chutes.”
“You hear too much.”
“Bartenders like to talk too.”
“To who?”
“Whom,” he said.
“So whom?”
“Like other bartenders.”
“Anybody else?”
“Nobody else,” he said gently.
“Business is business,” I grinned.
“So be it, Mike.”
“Sure, Charlie,” I told him.
He walked away and set up a couple for the hookers working the tourist traffic at the other end, then sort of stayed in the middle with a small worried expression on his face. Outside it was hot and sticky and here it was cool and quiet with the dramatic music of Franck’s Symphony in D Minor coming through the stereo speakers too softly to be as aggressive as it should. It could have been a logical place for anybody to drop in for a break from the wild city outside.
One of the hookers spotted my two twenties on the bar and broke away from her tourist friend long enough to hit the cigarette machine behind me. Without looking around she said, “Lonely?”
I didn’t look around either. “Sometimes.”
“Now?”
“Not now,” I said.
She turned around, grinned, and popped a butt in her pretty mouth. “Crazy native,” she said.
“A real aborigine.”
She laughed down in her throat. “So back to the flatland foreigners.”
Jersey Toby waited until she left, then did the cigarette-machine bit himself before taking his place beside me. He made it look nice and natural, even to getting into a set routine of being a sudden bar friend and buying a drink.
When the act was over he said, “Look, Mike . . .”
“Quit sweating, buddy.”
“You come for me or just anybody?”
“Just anybody.”
“I don’t like it when you don’t come on hard.”
“A new technique, Toby.”
“Knock it off, Mike. Hell, I know you from the old days. You think I don’t know what happened already?”
“Like what?”
“Like what’s with Levitt and Kid Hand. You got rocks in your head? You think you can come shooting into the city anymore? Man, things ain’t like before. You been away and you should’ve stayed away. Now before you get me involved, let me tell you one big thing. Don’t make me out a patsy. I ain’t telling you nothing. Not one goddamn thing. Lay off me. I been doing a lot of small-time crap that don’t get me no heat from either direction and that’s the way I like it.”
“Great.”
“And no soft stuff too. Save that bull for the enlisted men.”
“What are you pitching now?”
“I’m a pimp.”
“You came down in the world.”
“Yeah? Well maybe I did, but I got bucks going for me now and a couple of broads who like the bit. I do it square and not like some of the creeps and on top there’s enough juice to pay off who needs paying off, like. Y’know?”
“I won’t eat your bread, kiddo.”
“Goddamn right.”
He sat there glowering into his drink, satisfied that he had made his point, then I reached over and took his hand and held it against my side where the .45 was strung and said, “Remember?”
When he took his hand back he was shaking. “You’re still nuts,” he said. “You ain’t nothing no more. One push with that rod and you’ve had it. I’m still paying juice.”
This time I pulled the other cork. I took out the wallet and opened it like I was going to put my money back only I let him see the card in the window. He took a good look, his eyes going wide, then reached for his drink. “An
