“With the bad guy in the morgue?” Hy said. Right now there was something pixie-ish in the middle-aged man’s expression. “Since when did you care about loose ends, Mike?”
“This whole thing has been about loose ends,” I said. “Maybe you shouldn’t head home to the beach and the sunshine just yet. I might have a story for you that’ll put you back on the front page.”
Hy waved that away. “It’s been a long time since I worked the crime beat, Mike. Those two Broadway musicals I covered this trip were criminal enough.”
“Well,” Velda said, “maybe Gwen Foster’s new one will make your next trip worthwhile.”
“Oh?”
I said, “Yeah, she called this morning. She’s going to back the production herself that her late father and the unlamented Leif were going to mount.”
“That girl’s going places,” Hy said. He checked his watch. “And so am I. I need to get back to the Plaza to pack and check out before heading to LaGuardia.”
He grabbed the check and gave Velda a kiss on the cheek, and headed out.
She and I had another cup of coffee.
“Mike,” she said softly, “why aren’t you satisfied that this thing is over? Pat seems to be.”
“It’s those damn loose ends, kitten.”
“Too many of them.”
“No. Not enough.”
She frowned, but didn’t ask for an explanation, which was fine, because I wasn’t sure I had one.
I flagged a cab and we took a ride to a certain corner on Lexington. It wasn’t on the way to the office, but my excuse was that I wanted to pick up the magazines that Billy regularly held for me.
He was back at the old stand, literally, a small, distinctive figure in his old plaid cap and new padded jacket, replacing the one that got shot up. Colorful comic-book covers were on racks at right and left, and the best newsstand selection of papers, paperbacks, and periodicals in Manhattan was on festive display under the little roof.
The tallest Singer Midget gave me the stack of magazines with Saga on top and Playboy hidden half-way down, out of respect to Velda.
I said, “You don’t look much the worse for wear, kiddo.”
“Hey, Mike, I feel like a million bucks and change. It’s like I took a rest cure!” Billy grinned at Velda on my arm, and there was a hint of lechery in it. “And best of all, I had me a real babe of a nurse.”
She gave him a kiss on the forehead that must have made at least his day and probably his week. Then we caught another cab and headed back to our home base at the Hackard Building.
The afternoon went quickly. I had some insurance company paperwork to deal with that had piled up. Velda had stacks of mail to go through, and now and then she’d come into my office with a question or a menial task — sign this, check that.
“Hey, you got something today from that Dr. Beech,” she said, waving an envelope at me.
“Wonder what this is,” I said, taking it. “Pat should be dealing with him by now, going after those contract-kill donors. I don’t see where I’d have anything to do with Dr. Beech at this point.”
She shrugged and went out, moving in that liquid way, like her bottom was operating on pistons. I took time out to watch. Some views you can’t ever see too many times.
The letter from Beech did include a paragraph about cooperating with Pat, but mostly it was something else. Something that made me really smile. I tucked the letter away and tossed it on the desk and had a big old laugh that damn near rattled the blinds.
Velda stuck her head in. “What’s so darn funny?”
“Nothing, doll. I just have a sick sense of humor.”
She smirked. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
I reached for the phone and soon had Pat on the line.
“What is it, Mike? Kind of busy here.”
“Why, is there a line of cops going out your door wanting to pat you on the back? Or maybe you have to see the Commissioner to hear about a medal or commendation for service above the—”
“Or maybe I’m just trying to live down saving Mike Hammer’s tail. You think there aren’t guys on the force who wouldn’t have liked to see you fall off that ledge? That would’ve been the splat heard round the department.”
He had a point.
“Just a couple of things I’d like to go over,” I said. “Some things aren’t tracking for me.”
“Okay.” Slight impatience in it.
“The other day, I got a look at that bank book you found. That hundred grand was deposited in a new account, just a few days before. Doesn’t that make your antennae tingle?”
There was a shrug in his voice. “Not particularly. I’m sure guys in Clark’s business move money around all the time. Is that all, Mike?”
“No. There’s the little black book you found. It only has three entries in it.”
“So what?”
“Well, start with this — what the hell kind of address book has only three names in it?”
“There’s no law that says it has to have more.”
“Hell, Pat, don’t you think it’s just a little suspicious? Kind of goddamn convenient? That it had the three names we wanted to see, and nothing or nobody else?”
“No. Those were the hitmen Clark recruited from out of town. Maybe there would have been more, eventually.”
“My middle-of-the-night caller didn’t have an ‘eventually.’ Not a few weeks away from that Phasger’s Syndrome kicking in.”
“Well, I just don’t see any significance.”
“Think! You need to have the coroner check and see if Clark had the disease.”
“There’s already been an autopsy, which is no picnic when the deceased hit cement from eight stories up, and nothing came up. Except maybe a few lunches.”
“But was the coroner looking for Phasger’s?”
“Mike—”
“I went down to Greenwich Village earlier today. Stopped by the Bloom girl’s building. Did you know that kid moved out?”
“Actually, I did.”
“And you didn’t mention it to me? Christ!”
“Mike, you aren’t on the Homicide Squad, last time I checked. But for your information, yes, our hippie pal ran out of headquarters scared shitless and skedaddled out of that apartment. Can you blame him?”
I laid on the sarcasm. “Surely he would have seen the media coverage of how a brave captain of homicide had brought the Borensen case to a successful, exciting conclusion...”
“Mike, Shack moved out that same afternoon. Before things came to a conclusion. Just kind of... disappeared. The building manager says these hippie kids are always moving suddenly. They don’t stay in one place long.”
“Ever consider that if the kid has ‘disappeared,’ maybe he’s dead? Gone swimming, maybe — the kind where you don’t come up for air until gas bloat brings you up? Maybe Shack’s another loose end that got tied off, and if so, Clark wasn’t our man.”
“Clark wasn’t our man? Damn! What the hell are you talking about, Mike?”
“I’m saying it smells like a set-up. You were handed just the right items, Pat — the bank book, the address book, and the perfect patsy, the perfect corpse, to make this case look closed.”
“You need to tame that imagination of yours, buddy.”
“And you need to develop an imagination, Captain Chambers!”
He hung up on me.
I called out to Velda. “Damnit! He hung up on me!”
From her desk, she called back: “Imagine that.”
Just before five, Velda leaned in the doorway between our offices and said, “How about a home-cooked meal tonight, Handsome? I think you know how to get to my apartment. But it does require the mastery of an elevator.”