Mel's head shook sadly. 'It was bigger. You pay back one for five every week. It didn't take long to run it up into big money.'
I let him go and he sank back into the chair. 'Now names, Mel. Who was the shark?'
I barely heard him say, 'Dixie Cooper. He hangs out in the Glass Bar on Eighth Avenue.'
I picked up my deck of smokes and stuffed them in my pocket. I walked out without closing the door and down past the landlady who still held down her post in the vestibule. She didn't say anything until Mel hobbled to the door, glanced down the stairs and shut it. Then the old biddy humphed and let me out.
The sky had clouded up again, shutting out the stars and there was a damp mist in the air. I called Pat from a candy store down the corner and nobody answered his phone at home, so I tried the office. He was there. I told him to stick around and got back in my car.
Headquarters building was like a beehive without any bees when I got there. A lone squad car stood at the curb and the elevator operator was reading a paper inside his cab. The boys on the night stand had that bored look already and half of them were piddling around trying to keep busy.
I got in the elevator and let him haul me up to Pat's floor. Down the corridor a typewriter was clicking busily and I heard Pat rummaging around the drawers of his file cabinet. When I pushed the door open he said, 'Be right with you, Mike.'
So I parked and watched him work for five minutes. When he got through at the cabinet I asked him, 'How come you're working nights?'
'Don't you read the papers?'
'I didn't come up against any juicy murders.'
'Murders, hell. The D.A. has me and everybody else he can scrape together working on that gambling probe.'
'What's he struggling so hard for, it isn't an election year for him. Besides, the public's going to gamble anyway.'
Pat pulled out his chair and slid into it. 'The guy got scruples. He has it in for Ed Teen and his outfit.'
'He's not getting Teen,' I said.
'Well, he's trying.'
'Where do you come in?'
Pat shrugged and reached for a cigarette. 'The D.A. tried to break up organized gambling in this town years ago. It flopped like all the other probes flopped... for lack of evidence. He's never made a successful raid on a syndicate establishment since he went after them.'
'There's a hole in the boat?'
'A what?'
'A leak.'
'Of course. Ed Teen has a pipeline right into the D.A.'s office somehow. That's why the D.A. is after his hide. It's a personal affront to him and he won't stand for it. Since he can't nail Teen down with something, he's conducting an investigation into his past. We know damn well that Teen and Grindle pulled a lot of rough stuff and if we can tie a murder on them they'll be easy to take.'
'I bet. Why doesn't he patch that leak?'
Pat did funny things with his mouth. 'He's surrounded by men he trusts and I trust and we can't find a single person who's talking out of turn. Everybody's been investigated. We even checked for dictaphones, that's how far we went. It seems impossible, but nevertheless, the leak's here. Hell, the D.A. pulls surprise raids that were cooked up an hour before and by the time he gets there not a soul's around. It's uncanny.'
'Uncanny my foot. The D.A. is fooling with guys as smart as he is himself. They've been operating longer too. Look, any chance of breaking away early tonight?'
'With this here?' He pointed toward a pile of papers on his desk. 'They all have to be classified, correlated and filed. Nope, not tonight, Mike. I'll be here for another three hours.
Outside the racket of the typewriter stopped and a stubby brunette came in with a wire basket of letters. Right behind her was another brunette, but far from stubby. What the first one didn't have she had everything of and she waved it around in front of you like a flag.
Pat saw my foolish grin and when the stubby one left said, 'Miss Scobie, have you met Mike Hammer?'
I got one of those casual glances with a flicker of a smile. 'No but I've heard the District Attorney speak of him several times.'
'Nothing good, I hope,' I said.
'No, nothing good.' She laughed at me and finished sorting out the papers on Pat's desk.
'Miss Scobie is one of the D.A.'s secretaries,' Pat said. 'For a change I have some help around here. He sent over three girls to do the manual labor.'
'I'm pretty good at that myself.' I think I was leering.
The Scobie babe gave me the full voltage from a pair of deep blue eyes. 'I've heard that too.'
'You should quit getting things secondhand.'
She packed the last of the papers in a new pile and tacked them together with a clip. When she turned around she gave me a look Pat couldn't see but had a whole book written there in her face. 'Perhaps I should,' she said.
I could feel the skin crawl up my back just from the tone of her voice.