broke too many big ones to play little-boy games with.”
“Are you
“Honey, until it’s all locked up, tight, I’m never convinced, but at this stage we have to work the angles. Now, will you go back?”
She waited a moment, then looked up again. “If you want me to.” “I want you to.”
“Will I see you again?”
Those big brown eyes were a little too much. “Sure, but what’s a guy like me going to do with a girl like you?”
A smile touched her mouth. “Plenty, I think,” she said.
Sim Torrence was out, but Geraldine King made the arrangements for a limousine to pick up Sue. I waited for it to arrive, watched her leave, then went back to my office. I got out at the eighth floor, edged around the guy leaning up against the wall beside the buttons with his back to me, and if it didn’t suddenly occur to me that his position was a little too awkward to be normal and that he might be sick I never would have turned around and I would have died face down on the marble floor.
I had that one split-second glance at a pain- and hate-contorted face before I threw myself back toward the wall scratching for the .45 when his gun blasted twice and both shots rocketed off the floor beside my face.
Then I had the .45 out and ready but it was too late. He had stepped back into the elevator I had just left and the doors were closing. There wasn’t any sense chasing him. The exit stairs were down the far end of the corridor and the elevator was a quick one. I got up, dusted myself off, and looked up at the guy who stuck his head out of a neighboring door. He said, “What was that?”
“Be damned if I know. Sounded like it was in the elevator.”
“Something’s always happening to that thing,” he said passively, then closed his door.
Both slugs were imbedded in the plaster at the end of the hall, flattened at the nose and scratched, but with enough rifling marks showing for the lab to make something out of it. I dropped them in my pocket and went to my office. I dialed Pat, told him what had happened, and heard him let out a short laugh. “You’re still lucky, Mike. For how long?”
“Who knows?”
“You recognize him?”
“He’s the guy Basil Levitt shot, buddy. I’d say his name was Marv Kania.”
“Mike . . .”
“I know his history. You got something out on him?”
“For a month. He’s wanted all over. You sure about this?”
“I’m sure.”
“He must want you pretty badly.”
“Pat, he’s got a bullet in him. He’s not going to last like he is and if he’s staying alive it’s to get me first. If we can nail him we can find out what this is all about. If he knows he’s wanted he can’t go to a doctor and if he knows he’s dying he’ll do anything to come at me again. Now damn it, a shot-up guy can’t go prancing around the streets, you know that.”
“He’s doing it.”
“So he’ll fall. Somebody’ll try to help him and he’ll nail them too. He just can’t follow me around, I move too fast.”
“He’ll wait you out, Mike.”
“How?”
“You’re not thinking straight. If he knows what this operation is about he’ll know where you’ll be looking sooner or later. All he has to do is wait there.”
“What about in the meantime?”
“I’ll get on it right away. If he left a trail we’ll find it. There aren’t too many places he can hole up.”
“Okay.”
“And, buddy . . .”
“What, Pat?”
“Hands off if you nail him, understand? I got enough people on my back right now. This new D.A. is trying to break your license.”
“Can he?”
“It can be done.”
“Well hell, tell him I’m cooperating all the way. If you look in the downstairs apartment in the building across the street from where Velda was staying you’ll find a sniper’s rifle that belonged to Basil Levitt. Maybe you can backtrack that.”
“Now you tell me,” he said softly.
“I just located it.”
“What does it mean?”
I didn’t tell him what I thought at all. “Got me. You figure it out.”
“Maybe I will. Now you get those slugs down to me as fast as you can.”
“By messenger service right now.”
When I hung up I called Arrow, had a boy pick up the envelope with the two chunks of lead, got them off, then stretched out on the couch.
I slept for three hours, a hard, tight sleep that was almost dreamless, and when the phone went off it didn’t awaken me until the fourth or fifth time. When I said hello, Velda’s voice said, “Mike . . .”
“Here, kitten. What’s up?”
“Can you meet me for some small talk, honey?”
My fingers tightened involuntarily around the receiver.
In case somebody was on an extension I kept my voice light. “Sure, kid. Where are you?”
“A little place on Eighth Avenue near the Garden . . . Lew Green’s Bar.”
“I know where it is. Be right down.”
“And, Mike . . . come alone.”
“Okay.”
On the way out I stopped by Nat Drutman’s office and talked him out of a .32 automatic he kept in his desk, shoved it under my belt behind my back, and grabbed a cab for Lew Green’s Bar. There was a dampness in the air and a slick was showing on the streets, reflecting the lights of the city back from all angles. It was one of those nights that had a bad smell to it.
Inside the bar a pair of chunkers were swapping stories in a half-drunken tone while a TV blared from the wall. A small archway led into the back room that was nestled in semi-darkness and when I went in a thin, reedy voice said from one side, “Walk easy, mister.”
He had his hands in his side pockets and would have been easy to take, loaded or not, but I went along with him. He steered me past the booths to the side entrance where another one waited who grinned in an insolent way and said, “He carries a heavy piece. You look for it?”
“You do it,” the thin guy said.
He knew right where to look. He dragged the .45 out, said, “Nice,” grinned again, and stuck it in his pocket. “Now outside. We got transportation waiting. You’re real V.I.P.”
The place they took me to was in Long Island City, a section ready to be torn down to make way for a new factory building. The car stopped outside an abandoned store and when the smart one nodded I followed him around the back with the thin one six feet behind me and went on inside.
They sat at a table, three of them, with Velda in a chair at the end. A single Coleman lamp threw everything into sharp lights and shadows, making their faces look unreal.
I looked past them to Velda. “You okay, honey?”
She nodded, but there was a tight cast to her mouth.
The heavy-set guy in the homburg said, “So you’re Mike Hammer.”
