"Never too old to learn."
For a full hour I went through the prescribed exercises. My body ached, the sweat poured off me, but there was the satisfying feeling of knowing that I was coming back together again. The one thing I couldn't do was overexert myself. Inside me a lot of healing still needed doing. I put in fifteen minutes of light jogging on the treadmill, then soaked in the shower room a full half hour before I got dressed.
On my way out, Bing asked, "You gonna be a regular again?"
"Long as I'm in town."
"What does that mean? A vacation's one thing, Mike, but you belong in the city."
"Not anymore."
A knowing grin creased his face. "Balls. Guy like you can't escape the city. Hell, you got a blood contract with this place. You're married to the old girl."
I grunted. "I'm about ready to kiss her goodbye."
He just shook his head. "Never happen."
"Think not?"
"Naw, Mike, never. You forgot to sign a prenup."
I laughed, let him have the exit line, went back down to the street, and started walking.
It was a different Forty-second Street at that time of morning, still dirty and noisy, but busy with a freshness that would last until after lunch. I took my time and just before nine reached the official building I wanted. The person I was after had a listing on the directory, and I caught the elevator to the fifth floor.
In an office suite paneled in what we used to call a masculine fashion, the severe young woman behind the desk regarded me with no apparent curiosity whatever. She had dark-rimmed glasses and light brown hair pinned back, but it didn't do any good—she was still attractive.
In a neutral tone that made me long for the day when the girls guarding the gates had flirted with me, she asked, "May I help you?"
I worked on whether to ask for Ms. Marshall or Angela, and settled for the latter.
The familiarity of that shot her eyebrows straight up. "Do you have an appointment with the assistant D.A.?"
"More like a date." I slipped a hip on the edge of her desk and relished the astonished reaction. "I'm surprised, too. It's been a long time since a classy doll like Ms. Marshall wanted to date me this early in the day. But, hell, she was the one who made it."
This was all a little too much for the receptionist, whose eyes behind the lenses were doing a cartoon pop. She punched a button on her intercom and said, "Ms. Marshall, I think you had better come out here right away."
The strained tone of her voice—which implied her next step was to buzz security—got an immediate response.
There Angela Marshall was, in another power suit (charcoal gray today, skirt not slacks), with a cold, chiseled beauty Rodin might have envied, if he'd worked in synthetics.
At first her expression displayed that open challenge that seemed to be her standard setting, then she recognized me and the dark eyes flared.
"Hi, beautiful," I said. "What's shaking?"
Well, she was. And it wasn't bad to see. She had all gears going, and held the door open so I could step inside her private office.
Maybe she had seen too many movies. The way she strode around the desk, the regal manner she assumed in sitting down, her posture as she leaned on an elbow to study this walking-talking exhibit from the Male Chauvinist Museum—it all seemed too deliberately scripted, a scene carefully broken down into shots and angles, and she was director and star.
"What is your name, detective." It wasn't even a question.
"Hammer. Michael."
"Your grade?"
"I made it halfway through the twelfth." Before I enlisted in the army.
"If you made the force, then you must have a G.E.D." She didn't even look up from her notes. "You are a detective?"
"Right. And I have a junior college degree, too. Took some night classes."
"Well, good for you. And now as to your rank—what is your grade, Detective Hammer?"
This time I gave it a long double beat, and when she finally raised her eyes, I stopped screwing with her and said, "Private detective, kid. A plain old-fashioned private eye, licensed in the state of New York with a ticket to carry a gun, and free to buddy around with all sorts of people, including Captain Chambers. I'm even allowed to call a public servant an asshole if he—or she—decides to behave like one."
She may have been a whiz in the courtroom and a political star on the rise, but she'd never make it as a poker player. From her expression, I knew exactly what her next line would be, and beat her to the punch again.
"And don't give me any garbage," I said, pawing the air, "about having my license revoked. That takes cause, not clout, and anyway, I can go a hell of a lot higher up than you can. I've taken more bad guys off the street, one way or another, than any ten plain-clothes coppers in this sorry-ass city."
"Mike Hammer ... you're Mike Hammer."
"Right. You start hassling me, little girl, and I'll call in some favors that'll get you squashed right down to handling juvie beefs."
This time she took the long beat. "Michael Hammer. Yes, I remember you now."
"What do you remember?"
"What I've read. What I've heard. I feel I know you already."
Everybody was saying that lately.
"So what do you know about me, Ms. Marshall?"
"That you're nasty. Most unpleasant. And very tough."
"That's a pretty good summary. Anything else?"
"Yes. I understand for a long time there was an office pool about which of us on the D.A.'s staff would break one of your fancy self-defense pleas."
"You in on that pool?"
"Oh, no, Mr. Hammer. They stopped doing that. It's before my time."
"Ouch. Now that we've got insulting each other out of the way, how about some breakfast? All I've had is coffee."
From the way the receptionist looked at me on the way out, I knew she had kept the intercom key down all the while. I winked at her, put my hand under her boss's arm, and steered the great lady into the hall.
On the elevator, Ms. Marshall gave me a sharp look and said, "You are such an unregenerate macho bastard."
But she squeezed my hand when she said it.
A taxi took us over to Cohen's Deli, not as famous as the Stage but cheaper, plus they had a Mike Hammer mile-high sandwich on the menu board—pastrami, corned beef, Swiss cheese, American cheese, cole slaw, and Russian dressing. If anybody asked why it was named after Mike Hammer, the waiter would say, "It'll kill you just as fast."
Unaware of my sandwich fame, she went in ahead of me like she owned the joint, but her eyes went back to mine when squat, mustached Herman—in white shirt, black bow tie, and black trousers—said, "Ah, Mr. Mike! You're back in town!"
"Hi, Herm."
"And who is your beautiful young lady?"
"This is Angela Marshall."
"Ah, yes. Our lovely assistant district attorney."
He guided us to a window booth.
Watching him go, she muttered, "Was he putting me down?"
"Never," I told her. "Your beauty simply overwhelms him."
"Bullshit."
"He knew who you are, didn't he?" I said. We were across from each other in the booth.
"Did you hear him say your beautiful young lady? And that slight emphasis on assistant?"
"Don't worry, kid, you're such a pain in the ass, you're bound to be top dog someday."
"Damn, I hate men," she said.
Looking at the menu, I asked, "Do you?"
She looked at her menu, too. "Not really."
Breakfast with a real doll can be damn exciting. They're awake, showered, and manicured, and all the weapons are pointed right at whatever chump is dumb enough to be sitting across from them. To such dolls, the guy on the other end of the fork is a big, ripe plum ready for the plucking, because that world of economic dominance he dwells in, and whatever male aggression he possesses, are overshadowed by the two most basic hungers.