The Mike Hammer Collection

“Not much like the city, is it?”

She laughed, said, “No,” and lifted her legs to strip off the ruins of her nylons. She stopped with one leg pointed toward the mountain. “You do it.”

What a broad.

I held her foot against my stomach, unhooked the snaps that held the stockings, and peeled one down, then the other. She said, “Ummm,” and patted the ground beside her. I crossed my legs and sat down, but she grabbed for me, tipped me over toward her, and held my face in her hands. “It’s going to be dark soon, Mike. We can’t go back through that again. Not until morning.” Her smile was impish.

“Any time, any place. You’re crazy.”

“I want you, Mike. Now.”

“It’s going to get cold.”

“Then we’ll suffer.”

I kissed her then, her mouth slippery against mine.

“It’s awfully warm now,” she murmured. She raised her legs and the dress slid down her thighs.

“Stop that.”

Her hand took mine and held it against the roundness of one thigh, keeping it there until she could take hers away and knew mine would stay. Ever so slowly my hand began a movement of its own, sensing the way to love, unable to stop the motion. With an age-old feminine motion she made it easier for me, her entire being trying to bring me into its vortex and I tried to fill the void. There was something I was fighting against, but it wasn’t a fight I knew I could win. There was a bulk between us and Velda’s hand reached inside my coat and pulled out the .45 and laid it on the ground in back of her.

The sun was low now, the rays angling into the trees. One of them picked up a strange color in the brush at the foot of the hill, an odd color that never should have been there. I stared at it, trying to make out what it was.

Then I knew.

The fingers of my hand squeezed involuntarily and Velda let out a little cry, the pain of it shocking her. I said, “Stay here,” and snapped to my feet.

“Mike . . .”

I didn’t take the time to answer her. I ran down the hill toward the color and with each step it took shape and form until it was what I knew it had to be.

A thirty-year-old taxi cab. A yellow and black taxi that had been stolen off the streets back in the thirties.

The tires were rotted shreds now, but the rest of it was intact. Only a few spots of rust showed through the heavy layers of paint that the cab had been coated with to protect it against the destruction of the wind-driven grit in the city.

I looked it over carefully and almost wanted to say that they sure didn’t make them like this anymore. The windows were still rolled shut hard against their rubber cushions so that the stuff fused them right into the body of the car with age. The car had been new when it was stolen, and they made that model to last for years. It was an airtight vault now, a bright yellow, wheeled mausoleum for two people.

At least they had been two people.

Now they were two mummies. The one in the front was slumped across the wheel, hat perched jauntily on a skeletal head covered with drawn, leathery flesh. There wasn’t much to the back of the head. That had been blown away.

The guy who did it was the other mummy in the backseat. He leaned against the other side of the car, his mouth gaping open so that every tooth showed, his clothes hanging from withered limbs. Where his eyes were I could see two little dried bits of things that still had the appearance of watching me.

He still held the rifle across his lap aimed at the door in front of me, fingers clutched around its stock and his right forefinger still on the trigger. There was a black stain of blood on the shirt that could still give it a startlingly white background.

Between his feet were three canvas sacks.

A million dollars in each.

I had finally found Blackie Conley.

She came up on bare feet and I didn’t hear her until her breath hissed with the horror of what she saw. She pressed the back of her hand against her mouth to stop the scream that started to come, her eyes wide open for long moments.

“Mike . . . who . . .?”

“Our killer, Velda. The Target. The one we were after. That’s Blackie Conley in the backseat there. He almost made it. How close can a guy come?”

“Pretty close, Mr. Hammer. Some of us come all the way.”

I didn’t hear him either! He had come up the side of the hill on sneakered feet and stood there with a gun on us and I felt like the biggest fool in the world! My .45 was back there in the love nest and now we were about to be as dead as the others. It was like being right back at the beginning again.

I said, “Hello, Sonny.”

The Snake. The real snake, as deadly as they come. The only one that had real fangs and knew how to use them. His face had lost the tired look and his eyes were bright with the desirous things he saw in his future. There was nothing stooped about him now, nothing of the old man there. Old, yes, but he wasn’t the type who grew old easily. It had all been a pose, a cute game, and he was the winner.

“You scared me, Mr. Hammer. When you got as far as Malek you really scared me. I was taking my time about coming here because I wasn’t ready yet and then I knew it was time to move. You damn near ruined everything.” What I used to call a cackle was a pose too. He did have a laugh. He thought it was funny.

Velda reached for my arm and I knew she was scared. It was too much too fast all over again and she could only take so much.

“Smart,” he said to me. “You’re a clever bastard. If all I had was the cops to worry about it would have been no trouble, but I had to draw you.” His mouth pulled into a semblance of a grin. “Those nice talks we had. You kept me right up to date. Tell me, did you think I had a nice face?”

“I thought you had more sense, Sonny.”

He dropped the grin then. “Get off it, guy. More sense? For what? You think I was going to spend all my life in the cooler without getting some satisfaction? Mister, that’s where you made your mistake. You should have gone a little further into my case history. I always was a mean one because it paid off. If I had to play pretty-face to make it pay off I could do that too.”

“You won’t make it, Sonny.”

“No? Well, just lose that idea. For thirty years I worked this one out. I had all the time in the world to do it too. With the contacts I had in the can I got enough on the big boys to make them jump my way when I was ready. I put together a mob and now I’ll have to move to get it rolling. You think I won’t live big for what little time I have left? Well, you’re making a mistake when you think that. A lot of planning went into this dodge, kid.”

“You still hate, don’t you?”

Sonny Motley nodded slowly, a smile of pure pleasure forming. “You’re goddamn right. I hated that bastard Torrence and tried to get at him through his kid. Mistake there . . . I thought he loved the kid. I would’ve been doin’ him a favor to rub her out, right?”

“He was trying for her too.”

“I got the picture fast enough. When I knocked him off in his house I thought I’d get the kid just for the fun of it. She fooled me. Where was she, mister?”

I shrugged.

“Hell, it don’t matter none now.” He lifted the gun so I could see down the barrel. “I thought sure you’d get on to me sooner. I pulled a boner, you know that, don’t you?”

I knew it now, all right. When Marv Kania tried to nail me with the cab it was because Sonny had called him from the back room when he faked getting me old clippings of his crime and told him where I was going. When Marv almost got me in my apartment it was because Sonny told him my new address and that I’d be there. I made it easy because I told Sonny both times.