His frown tightened until his eyes were almost shut. "Goddamn you, Mike. Why do you have to be such a fucking catalyst? You come back, and everything gets activated."
"Bullshit."
"No. Not bullshit. The guys at Doolan's funeral knew it, seeing you materialize like a goddamn apparition. Those goombahs sure as hell knew it. Les Graves knew it, seeing you at that crime scene last night. Now finally I know it. Finally it gets through my thick skull that Mike Hammer has decided an open-and-shut suicide is a murder, and so is a mugging fatality so routine it barely made the papers. One lousy goddamn day, and you've turned it all upside down again."
"It's a gift, Pat."
But there was no way to tell him that coming up on the plane, I'd had the same feeling—vague, but there. Not that I was going to do something, but that something was going to be done to me. Done to me good—real good. It wasn't a nice feeling at all.
"So what was Marshall doing at that crime scene?"
His turn to shrug. "Far as I know, just checking out a murder."
"And that's it?"
"She wanted to know whether Homicide was looking into that girl's murder."
"Virginia Mathes, you mean."
His eyes widened. "How the hell do you know her name? It wasn't in the papers."
"Maybe I'm psychic."
"Mike ... Mike. I'm getting too near retirement to play your kind of games."
A little laugh rumbled out of me. I took a look around, saw every crack in the masonry, and smelled the garbage in the gutter. Where I came from, the ocean would be warm, the sand squeaky-crunching under bare feet, and the boat ready to nose out into the Gulf Stream.
I said, "Who was she, Pat?"
He made one of those little noncommittal gestures. "You said it yourself—Virginia Mathes."
"Pat..."
"She was nobody."
"Nobody's nobody."
"She was," he told me. "Six years ago, she made a stab at entertaining in a club and got printed as part of our licensing requirement. We ran her through Social Security, got her address and where she worked. She was a waitress at Ollie Joe's Steak House for two years, was well liked, had nothing against her in our files, just walked out of Ollie Joe's last night and got herself killed."
"Just like that."
"You were there, Mike."
"Ollie Joe's sure as hell isn't in that neighborhood. But you've already been to Ollie Joe's, haven't you, Pat? And found out something else, too?"
Ten seconds dragged by; we were just two gawkers on the street watching a film crew. Finally he looked at me.
"Mike, I didn't find out a damned thing."
"What didn't you find out?"
I knew he was going to tell me. He ran it around his brain a couple of times, but we had been together too many times on too many things for too goddamn long.
"Before she left," he said with a sigh, "a guy came in and—according to the cashier—seemed to know her. He had a cup of coffee and a piece of pie. She was a little more attentive to this patron than usual, but since there weren't many customers there, the cashier didn't think anything about it. The girl liked to gab, I guess."
"What time was this?"
"Just before she punched out. She signed her paycheck at the desk, picked up her cash, and left."
"How much cash?"
"Thirty-five bucks. Her big money was in tips. The cashier said something seemed to be on her mind when she left."
"What about the patron she got friendly with?"
He pitched his gum in the gutter. "He waited maybe two minutes, then he went out too."
"Like maybe she was about to date this customer...?"
"Maybe. And according to the cashier, that was unusual. Ginnie—that's what they called her—never did that."
I gave him the slow grin. "You haven't scratched on Ginnie Mathes's door yet, have you?"
Pat rubbed his hand over his hair, then took a deep breath of polluted air. "I didn't want to spoil your fun, buddy. Here."
He slid the manila envelope out from under his arm.
"What's this?"
"Doolan stuff. All copies, and you can keep 'em—and keep 'em confidential."
"Sure."
His gray eyes studied me like I was a fingerprint under a microscope. "You going to his apartment now?"
I nodded. "Right from here."
"Thought maybe you'd hit the Mathes girl's pad first. You're a busy guy for a retired detective—two suspicious deaths to look into, and not back a day."
"You said that before."
"Did I?" He slipped a hand into his suitcoat pocket and brought out a key paper-clipped to one of his cards. "This is for the police padlock on Doolan's door. We have a light cover on the place, so if anybody tries to stop you, give them my card. If I'm not in the office, my guys will confirm things."
I nodded my thanks. "Pat, you're welcome to come along. That'd make it official."
"Since when did you want anything official? Anyway, Mike—what's to see? I told you we picked that place apart. No, this is all yours, my friend. I want you to be totally satisfied with the answers. What I don't want is for you to get a bug up your ass, and go prowling for something that's not there."
I looked at the key like I was imagining things. "You're fine with this?"
"I'm fine with this. For once we have a commissioner who likes your style. Why, I'll never know, but he okayed this bit of action. At least I got my ass covered this time."
"If Doolan's suicide is so open-and-shut, why bother?"
His grin was an odd mingling of amusement, frustration, and maybe affection. "Mike, you're one of those weird Irishers, the kind they say carries little people in his pocket. You've always had a nose for murder, and you've always been able to smell out the bizarre posing as the routine."
"Thanks."
"On the other hand? Sometimes I think when something's going down, and you're riding along, white becomes black, wrong becomes right, and the whole works gets turned upside the hell down."
"My track record isn't all bad, kiddo."
"I know, and that's what shakes me up. This Doolan deal is suicide, all right. But I want there to be no doubts. I figure if you're satisfied, anybody would be satisfied."
"I hope I am, Pat." I meant it, too. "I'm not looking for trouble."
"Not looking for trouble—do you expect me to believe that? Do you really have yourself believing that?"
I said nothing.
He put a hand on my shoulder. "Listen, Mike—on this Mathes thing? I do need to come along. I'll be free in a couple of hours. You call me before you go over there."
"If Doolan is a straight-up suicide," I said, "and the Mathes kid is a run-of-the-mill mugging turned fatal ... why sweat letting me look into it, Pat? What have you got to lose?"
"With you around, Mike? Just my badge. Or maybe my sanity."
I didn't argue the point, just assured Pat I'd call him before I checked the Mathes girl's pad, then grabbed a cab, and gave the driver Doolan's address.
Chapter 4
BACK IN THE LATE nineteen-thirties, this neighborhood had been fashionable enough to attract those who had survived the Depression in style. But that bunch moved outward and upward during the Second World War years, and new generations changed the face of it as the growing pains of the city wrenched neighborhoods apart and then rebuilt them all over.
For twenty years, it had been livable again, a strangely quiet area hoping it wouldn't be noticed. And Doolan had lived there through all the changes, fifty-two years' worth, the last ten as a widower.