know.'
'Sure, Mike. Wish I could help you out now, but we're all tied up '
I said so-long and hung up. I still had a handful of nickels to go so I made a blind stab at a barroom number downtown and asked if Cookie Harkin was there. I had to wait while the guy looked and after a minute or so a voice said, 'Cookie speaking.'
'Mike Hammer.'
'Hey, boy. Long time no see. How's tricks?'
'Good enough. You still got wide-open ears?'
'Sure. See all, hear all and say plenty if the pay's right. Why?'
'Ever hear of a private dick named Nocky? He's a wise runt who has an oversize partner. Supposedly a couple of tough boys from somewhere uptown.'
I didn't get any answer for a minute, so I said, 'Well?'
'Wait a minute, Mike. You know what you're asking about, don't you?' He spoke in next to a whisper. I heard him pull the door of the booth closed before he said anything else. 'What're you working on?'
'Murder, friend.'
'Brother!'
'Who is he?'
'I'll have to do a little checking around first. I think I know who you mean, all right. I'll see what I can do, but if it's the guy I think it is, I'm not sticking my neck out too far, understand?'
'Sure, do what you can. I'll pay you for it.'
'Forget the pay. All I want is some inside stuff I can pass along for what it's worth. You know my angle.'
'How long will it take?'
'Gimme a coupla hours. Suppose I meet you at the Tucker Bar. It's a dive, but you can get away with anything in there.'
It was good enough. I told him I'd be there and put the rest of the nickels back in my pocket. They make a big lump and a lot of noise so I went across town to an Automat and spent them all on a supper I needed bad.
It was dark when I finished and had started to rain again. The Tucker Bar was built under a neon sign that put out more light in advertising than was used up inside. It was off on a side street in a place nobody smart went to even on a slumming party, but it was a place where people who knew people could be found and gotten drunk enough to spill over a little excess information if the questions were put right.
I saw Cookie in the back room edging through the tables with a drink in his hand, stopping at a table here and there to say hello. He was small and skinny with a big nose, bigger ears and loose pockets that could spill out the right kind of dough when he needed it. The guy looked and acted like a cheap hood when he was the head legman for one of the biggest of the syndicated columnists. I waited at the bar nursing a beer until the act on the dance floor was finished. A couple of strippers were trying to see how fast they could shed their clothes in time to the same music. They got down to bare facts in a minute's time and there was a lot of noise around the ringside. The rest of the crowd was having a hard time trying to see what they were paying for.
There was a singer and a solo pianist after that before the management decided to let the customers go back to drinking. I picked up my glass and squeezed through the bunch standing under the arch that led to the back room and worked my way to the table where Cookie was sitting.
He had two chicks with him, a pair of phony blondes with big bosoms and painted faces and he was showing them a coin trick so they had to lean forward to see what he was doing and he could leer down their necklines. He was having himself a great time. The blondes were drinking champagne. They were having a great time too.
I said, 'Hello, ape man.'
He looked up and grinned from one big ear to another until he looked like a clam just opened. 'How do ya like that, my old pal, Mike Hammer! What're you doin' down here where people are?'
'Looking for people.'
'Well, sit right down, sit right down. Here's one all made to order for you. Meet Tolly and Joan.'
I said, 'Hi,' and pulled out the fourth chair.
'Mike's a friend of mine from way back, kids. A real good skate.' He nodded at the blonde who was giving me the eye already. 'You take Tolly, Mike. Joan and me's already struck up a conversation. She's a French maid from Brooklyn who works for the Devoe family. Wait'll you catch her accent. She sure fooled them. Gawd, what a family of jerks they are!'
I caught his expression and the slight wink that went with it. Tomorrow the stuff Joan was handing out would turn up in print and the hell would get raised in the Devoe household. She gave us a demonstration of her accent with giggles and launched into a spiel of how the old man had tried to make her and how she refused and I almost wanted to ask her how she got the mink cape that was draped over the back of her chair on a maid's salary.
Tolly turned out to be the better of the two. She was a juicy eyeful with a lot of skin showing and nothing on under the dress she wore just to be conventional. She told me she had been posing for an artist down in the village until she caught him using a camera instead of a paintbrush. She found he was peddling the prints and made him kick in with a fifty-fifty cut or get the pants knocked off him by an ex-boy friend in the Bronx, and now she was living off the cream of the land.
'Your artist friend sure mixes pleasure with business, honey,' I told her. 'Hell, I wouldn't mind seeing you undraped, a bit.'
She snapped open her purse and tossed me a wallet-sized print with a laugh. 'Get right to it.' She had a body that would make a statue drool, and with the poses the artist got her into it was easy to see why she wasn't hurting for dough. She let me look at it a little while, asked me if I wanted to dance and laughed when I said maybe
