“The automat, where you’re going to buy me a sandwich.”
I dumped Velda at her hairdresser’s after we ate, then headed north to Westchester. I hadn’t planned to call on George Kalecki until the following day, but a call to Charlotte’s office dealed that one out. She had left for home, and the wench in the reception room had been instructed not to give her address. I told her I’d call later and left a message that I wanted to see her as soon as possible. I couldn’t get that woman off my mind. Those legs.
Twenty minutes later I was pulling the bell outside a house that must have cost a cool quarter million. A very formal butler clicked the lock and admitted me. “Mr. Kalecki,” I said.
“Who shall I say is calling, sir?”
“Mike Hammer. I’m a private detective.” I flashed my tin on him but he wasn’t impressed.
“I’m rather afraid Mr. Kalecki is indisposed at the moment, sir,” he told me. I recognized a pat standoff when I saw one, but I wasn’t bothered.
“Well, you tell him to un-dispose himself right away and get his tail down here or I’ll go get him. And I’m not kidding, either.”
The butler looked me over carefully and must have decided that I meant what I said. He nodded and took my hat. “Right this way, Mr. Hammer.” He led me to an oversize library and I plunked myself in an armchair and waited for George Kalecki.
He wasn’t long coming. The door banged open and a grey-haired guy a little stouter than his picture revealed came in. He didn’t waste words. “Why did you come in after my man informed you that I was not to be disturbed?”
I lit a butt and blew the smoke at him. “Don’t give me that stuff, chum. You know why I’m here.”
“No doubt. I read the papers. But I’m afraid that I can’t help you. I was home in bed when the murder occurred and I can prove it.”
“Hal Kines came in with you?”
“Yes.”
“Did your servant let you hi?”
“No, I used my own key.”
“Did anyone else beside Hal see you come in?”
“I don’t think so, but his word is good enough.”
I sneered into his face. “Not when the both of you are possible murder suspects, it isn’t.”
Kalecki turned pale when I said that. His mouth worked a little and he looked ready to kill me. “How dare you say that,” he snarled at me. “The police have not made an attempt to connect me with that killing. Jack Williams died hours after I left.”
I took a step forward and gathered a handful of his shirt front in my fist. “Listen to me, you ugly little crook,” I spat in his face, “I’m talking language you can understand. I’m not worried about the cops. If you’re under suspicion it’s to me. I’m the one that counts, because when I find the one that did it, he dies. Even if I can’t prove it, he dies anyway. In fact, I don’t even have to be convinced too strongly. Maybe just a few things will point your way, and when they do I’m going after you. Before I’m done I may shoot up a lot of snotty punks like you, but you can bet that one of them will have been the one I was after, and as for the rest, tough luck. They got their noses a little too dirty.”
Nobody had talked to him like that the past twenty years. He floundered for words but they didn’t come. If he had opened his mouth right then, I would have slammed his teeth down his throat.
Disgusted with the sight of him, I shoved him back toward an end table in time to push myself aside far enough to keep from getting brained. A crockery vase smashed on my shoulder and shattered into a hundred fragments.
I ducked and whirled at the same time. A fist came flying over my head and I blocked it with my left. I didn’t wait. I let fly a wicked punch that landed low then came up with the top of my skull and I rammed the point of a jaw with a shattering impact. Hal Kines hit the floor and lay there motionless.
“Wise guy. A fresh kid that tries to bust me from behind. You’re certainly not training him right, George. Time was when you stood behind a chopper yourself, now you let a college kid do your blasting, and in a houseful of mirrors he tries to sneak up behind me.” He didn’t say anything. He found a chair and slid into it, his eyes narrow slits of hate. If he had a rod right then he would have let me have it. He would have died, too. I’ve had an awful lot of practice sneaking that .45 out from under my arm.
The Kines kid was beginning to stir. I prodded him in the ribs with my toe until he sat up. He was still pretty green around the gills, but not green enough to sneer at me. “You lousy bastard,” he said. “Have to fight dirty, don’t you.”
I reached down and grabbed him under the arm and yanked him to his feet. His eyes bugged. Maybe he thought he was dealing with somebody soft. “Listen, pimple face. Just for the fun of it I ought to slap your fuzzy chin all around this room, but I got things to do. Don’t go playing man when you’re only a boy. You’re pretty big, but I’m three sizes bigger and a hell of a lot tougher and I’ll beat the living daylights out of you if you try anything funny again. Now sit down over there.”
Kines hit the sofa and stayed there. George must have gotten his second wind because he piped up. “Just a moment, Mr. Hammer. This has gone far enough. I am not without influence at city hall. . . .”
“I know,” I cut in. “You’ll have me arrested for assault and battery and have my license revoked. Only when you do that, keep a picture in your mind of what your face will look like when I reach you. Someone already worked over your nose, but it’s nothing compared to what you’ll look like when I get done with it. Now keep your big mouth shut and give me some answers. First, what time did you leave the party?”
“About one or a little after,” George said sullenly. That checked with Myrna’s version.
“Where did you go after you left?”
“We went downstairs to Hal’s car and drove straight home.”
“Who’s we?”
“Hal, Myrna and myself. We dropped her off at her apartment and came here after putting the car in the garage. Ask Hal, he’ll verify it.”
Hal looked at me. It was easy to see that he was worried. Evidently this was the first time he had been mixed up in anything so deep. Murders don’t appeal to anyone.
I continued with my questioning. “Then what?”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, we had a highball and went to bed. What else do you think we did?” Hal said.
“I don’t know. Maybe you sleep together.” Hal stood up in front of me, his face a red mask of fury. I put my mitt in his face and shoved him back on the sofa. “Or maybe,” I went on, “you don’t sleep together. Which means that either one of you had plenty of time to take the car back out and make the run to town to knock off Jack and get back here without anyone noticing it. If you do sleep together you both could have done it. See what I mean?
“If either of you think you’re clean you’d better think again. I’m not the only one that has a mind that can figure out angles. Right now Pat Chambers has it all figured out on paper. He’ll be around soon, so you’d better be expecting him. And if either of you are tapped for the hot seat, you’d do a lot better by letting Pat pick you up. At least that way you’ll live through a trial.”
“Someone calling me?” a voice said from the doorway. I spun around. Pat Chambers was framed in the hardwood paneling wearing his ever-present grin.
I waved him over. “Yeah. You’re the main topic of conversation around here at this minute.” George Kalecki got up from the overstuffed cushions and walked to Pat. His old bluster was back.
“Officer, I demand the arrest of this man at once,” he fairly shouted. “He broke into my home and insulted me and my guest. Look at the bruise on his jaw. Tell him what happened, Hal.”
Hal saw me watching him. He saw Pat standing ten feet away from me with his hands in his pockets and apparently no desire to stop what might happen. It suddenly hit him that Jack had been a cop and Pat was a cop and Jack had been killed. And you don’t kill a cop and get away with it. “Nothing happened,” he said.
“You stinking little liar!” Kalecki turned on him. “Tell the truth! Tell how he threatened us. What are you afraid of, this dirty two-bit shamus?”
“No, George,” I said quietly, “he’s afraid of this.” I swung on him with all of my hundred and ninety pounds.
