From behind my desk, which was piled with paperwork, I said, “Okay, but let’s make it a late supper. Look for me around nine. I’m going to stay late and catch up on this work.”
She nodded her okay and went out. From the connecting doorway, she leaned back in with a wry smile and called, “I’ll make sure to lock up good and proper.”
I heard the outer door close behind her and the appropriate clicks, then got up, walked out there and undid the secondary lock. I returned to the inner office and cleared everything off my desk except Dr. Beech’s letter. I slipped out of my suit coat and slung it over the desk chair, then got the .45 out, checked the action, and returned it to its home under my left arm.
Then I stretched out on my back on the black-leather couch along the side wall, to the left as you entered. My hands were intertwined behind my neck, and I used an arm of the couch as a pillow, my elbows winged. I had a good view of the door between this office and the outer one. The couch was well-padded and I’d had many a nice snooze here.
But I was wide awake — relaxing, relaxed, but alert.
It would end where it began.
Velda had been gone maybe half an hour when I heard the door open and the footsteps move cautiously toward my inner chamber. I’d left the connecting door open. I wanted to make it easy for him.
The man, rather tall in a well-tailored charcoal suit, stood framed in the doorway, a Garcia-Beretta nine millimeter in his right hand. No gloves. He had a narrow, smooth face with unmemorable features, his eyes dark and cold, like polished stones.
Those eyes went to the desk first, then to me on the couch.
“Have a seat, Shack,” I said.
He smiled just a little. I had a feeling that emotions were something that didn’t run deep with him, at least emotions that required empathy or sympathy. That gave his face an unused look. A younger-than-it-was look. But he had really appeared young with that wig of shoulder-length brown curls helping him play hippie.
I said, “I figured you’d have a copy of the key that Woodcock made. And since you could defeat the secondary lock anyway, with your kind of skills, I just unlatched it for you. As a time-saving courtesy.”
He nodded his thanks.
Then cautiously he made his way to the client’s chair and with his free hand turned it toward me, then sat. He crossed his legs and rested the barrel of the nine millimeter on his knee.
I said, “I’m going to very slowly sit up and swing around. So we can make eye contact as we talk. Is that all right, Shack?”
He nodded.
I did so, positioning myself on the edge of the middle cushion. “How old are you really?”
The tiny smile again. “Thirty-five.”
“You interest me, Shack. I’m going to use that name, because it’s the only one I have for you. That okay?”
He nodded again.
I said, “Tell me a little about yourself.”
“You must be joking, Hammer.” The voice was somewhere between the hippie kid and the middle-of-the-night caller.
“No. I’ve encountered all kinds in my line of work. What’s your story? Chapter and verse is fine, or condense it if you like.”
He shook his head. The cold eyes blinked only rarely.
“Then do you mind if I take a stab? You were in the military. You’re the right age for Korea, if you went right out of high school. You found out over there that killing people didn’t bother you at all. In fact, you got a kick out of it. You came home with some medals and went to college on the G.I. bill. You took business courses.”
The blank, unused face made it difficult to discern, but I detected the frown, which was mostly a tensing of the eyebrows. He really thought maybe I knew who he was and had found all this stuff out.
I continued: “You may have opened an insurance agency or some other small business, something white collar, no retail for you. And then it dawned on you that you had a marketable skill, not to mention the college background to take that skill to a new level. How many years have you been killing people for profit, Shack?”
“Seven,” he said.
“Not all of it here in New York. You were somewhere else for a while, things got hot, a change of name, a change of location, and you aligned yourself with the Bonettis.”
The polished-stone eyes narrowed slightly. “You’re shrewder than I expected, Hammer. You’re smarter. I knew you were a ruthless killer, and good at it. But I admit it — I’m impressed.”
I grinned at him. “Thanks. A few other questions, before we get to it, if that’s all right?”
He nodded.
“How long,” I asked, “were you Shack, the hippie kid across the way?”
“Five weeks, more or less.”
“The purpose? No, let me try. It was several things. You wanted to get rid of Blazen’s incriminating materials for Joey Pep. No wonder nobody heard or saw those boxes of research leave the apartment building — all you had to do was lug them across the landing into your own pad. And, too, you wanted to see how long it took me to track Marcy Bloom down. Of course you always intended, in your own good time, to kill her. She would make too important a witness for the cops, with all she knew about Blazen’s digging. She was a loose end. And you do not like loose ends, do you, Shack?”
“I don’t,” he admitted.
“And that I don’t understand. What’s wrong with loose ends in your situation? After all, that disease is going to kill you. Who cares if you’re revealed as a hired killer? I mean, don’t you see yourself as the greatest gun that ever shot some poor innocent kid? Like Marcy Bloom?”
No expression now. Blank. “Now you don’t seem so smart, Hammer.”
“Oh, you want me to think it through for you? How about this? If the cops get you, they’ll stick you in a prison hospital where keeping you comfy will be a priority rating somewhere between changing shit-on sheets and emptying bedpans. You have a high-priced clinic lined up somewhere... maybe in Europe?”
The minuscule smile returned.
I laughed. “That’s it! Somewhere with the best care, the best drugs, though as I understand it, there’s not much ahead for you, no matter how much you spend, but horror.”
The smile disappeared.
“Also,” I said, “you figured to get me off-guard. You wanted me to buy what Captain Chambers did — that Dennis Clark was the mastermind. Really, Shack, that was pretty transparent — a hundred grand deposited a few days before, three solitary names in an address book. You left some of your things in that apartment, which I believe really was yours, but you took a lot with you. So I figure your man Dennis Clark came at your request to that apartment, to meet you on business. You gave him a key or let him in, then told him you had to step out for a while... whatever. You were the boss. He did as he was told. And you repaid his loyalty by setting him up for the kill. You’d told him that the cops were closing in, right? So that he’d blast away when they showed. And the mastermind hitman would be dead. Anything you’d like to correct?”
He shook his head, a small motion.
“You know, I should have tipped sooner, at the Bloom girl’s pad. You said you were a painter, but there was no coloration under your fingernails. But I thought the painting bit was a sham designed to get money out of your parents. That is, the imaginary parents of an imaginary hippie... Do you mind if I smoke, Shack? This is a tense situation, and it may calm me.”
“No,” he said sharply. “Don’t smoke.”
“I’m not going to throw an ashtray at you or anything, like I did your boy Woodcock. Oh, wait... I know. I get it. It’s that ever-present smell of ashes that you experience. It’s an early symptom. Getting more extreme, as time runs out, is it? Okay, to help you stay comfortable, Shack... I won’t smoke.”