fashion and there wasn't even the slightest bit of doubt that it would start going off the second I breathed too hard.
Carver wasn't pretty. She was small and full bodied, but she wasn't pretty. Maybe no dame can be pretty with a rod in her mitt, even one with bleached white hair and a scarlet mouth. A black velvet robe outlined her against the chair, seeming like the space of nighttime between the white of her hair and that of the fur-lined slippers she wore.
For a minute she looked at me, her eyes wandering over me
slowly. I let her look and pushed the door shut. Maybe she was satisfied by what she saw, maybe not. She didn't say anything, but she didn't put the gun away either. I said, 'Expecting someone else?'
What she did with her mouth didn't make up a smile. 'I don't know. What have you to say?'
'I'll say what it takes to make you point that heater someplace else.'
'You can't talk that loud or that long, friend.'
'Do I reach in my pocket for a smoke?'
'There's some on the table beside you. Use those.'
I picked one up, almost went for my lighter in my pocket, thought better of it and took the matches that went with the cigarettes. 'You're sure not good company, kid.' I blew a stream of smoke at the floor and rocked on my toes. That little round hole in the tip of the automatic never came off my stomach.
'The name is Mike Hammer,' I told her. 'I'm a private investigator. I was with Berga Torn when she got knocked off.'
This time the rod moved. I was looking right down the barrel.
'More,' her mouth said.
'She was trying to hitch a ride to the city. I picked her up, ran a roadblock that was checking for her, got edged off the road by a car and damn near brained by a pack of hoods who were playing for keeps. I was there with my head dented in when they worked her over and behind the wheel of the car they pushed over the cliff. To them I was a handy,, class-A red herring that was supposed to cover the real cause of her death only it didn't quite happen that way.'
'How did it happen?'
'I was thrown clear. If you want I'll show you my scars.'
'Never mind.'
So we stared at each other for a longer minute and I was still looking down the barrel and the hole kept getting bigger and bigger.
'You loaded?'
'The cops lifted my rod and P.I. ticket.'
'Why?'
'Because they knew I'd bust into this thing and they wanted to keep me out.'
'How did you find me?'
'It's not hard to find people when you know how. Anybody could do it.' Her eyes widened momentarily, seemed to deepen, then narrowed sharply.
'Suppose I don't believe you,' she said.
I sucked in a lungful of smoke and dropped the butt to the floor. I didn't bother to squash it out. I let it lie there until you could smell the stink of burned wool in the room and felt my face start to tighten around the edges. I said, 'Kid, I'm sick of answering questions. I'm sick of having guns pointed at me. You make the second tonight and if you don't stow that thing I'm going to beat the hell out of you. What'll it be?'
I didn't scare her. The gun came down until it rested in her lap and for the first time the stiffness left her face. Carver just looked tired. Tired and resigned. The scarlet slash of her mouth made a wry grimace of sadness. 'All right,' she said, 'sit down.'
So I sat down. No matter what else I could have done, nothing would have been more effective. The bewilderment showed on her face, the way her body arched before sinking back again. Her leg moved and the gun dropped to the floor and stayed there.
'Aren't you...'
'Who were you expecting, Carver?'
'The name is Lily.' Her tongue was a lighter pink against the scarlet as it swept across her lips.
'Who, Lily?'
'Just... men.' Her eyes were hopeful now. 'You . . told me the truth?'
'I'm not one of them if that's what you mean. Why did they come?'
The hardness left her face. It seemed to melt away like a film that should never have been there and now she was pretty. Her hair was a pile of snow that reflected the loveliness of her face. She breathed heavily, the robe drawing tight at regular intervals.
'They wanted Berga.'
'Let's start at the beginning. With you and Berga. How's that?'
Lily paused and stared into the past. 'Before the war, that's when we met. We were dance-hall hostesses. It was the first night for the both of us and we both sort of stuck together. A week later we found an apartment and shared it.'
'How long?'
'About a year. When the Oar came I was pretty sick of things and went into a defense plant. Berga quit too... but what she did for a living was her business. She was a pretty good kid. When I was sick she moved back in and took care of me. After the war I lost my job when the plant closed down and she got a friend of hers to get me a job in a night club in Jersey.'
'Did she work there too?' I asked. The white hair made a negative. 'She was... doing a lot of things.'
'Anybody special?'
'I don't know. I didn't ask. We went back living in the same apartment for a while, though she was paying most of the bills. She seemed to have a pretty good income.'
Lily's eyes came off the wall behind my head and fastened on mine. 'That's when I noticed her starting to change.'
'How?'
'She was... scared.' 'Did she say why?'
'No. She laughed it off. Twice she booked passage to Europe, but couldn't get the ship she wanted and didn't go.'
'She was that scared.'
Lily shrugged, saying nothing, saying much. 'It seemed to grow on her. Finally she wouldn't even leave the house at all. She said she didn't feel well, but I knew she was lying.'
'When was this?'
'Not so very long ago. I don't remember just when.' 'It doesn't matter.'
'She went out once in a while after that. Like to the movies or for groceries. Never very far. Then the police came around.' 'What did they want?'
'Her.'
'Questions or an arrest?'
'Questions, mostly. They asked me some things too. Nothing I knew about. That night I saw someone following me home.'
Her face had a curious strained look about it. 'It's been that way every night since. I don't know if they've found me here yet or not.'
'Cops?'
'Not cops.' She said it very simply, very calmly, but couldn't quite hide the terror that tried to scream the answer out. She begged me to say something, but I let her squeeze it out herself. 'The police came again, but Berga wouldn't tell them anything.' The tongue moistened the lips again. The scarlet was starting to wash away and I could see the natural tones on the wet flesh. 'The other men came... they were different from the police. Federal men, I think. They took her away. Before she came back... those men came.'
She put something into the last three words that wasn't in the others, some breathless, nameless fear. Her hands were tight balls with the nails biting into the palms. A glassiness had passed over her eyes while she thought
