This time Pat grinned. "O.K., that makes me sorry twice today. Do me another favor and admit I had a half-way decent reason to be suspicious. You're usually in something up to your neck, and you aren't above getting a little free info even from me, and I can't blame you. It's just that I have to look out for my own neck once in a while. You know the pressure that's being put on our department. If we get caught short we have a lot of people to answer to."
He kept talking, but I wasn't listening to him. My eyes kept drifting back to that report sheet until that one word, MURDERED, kept jumping at me like it was alive. I was seeing Red standing there with the dimples in her cheeks, kissing her finger and smiling a smile that was for me alone. Just a two-bit tramp who could have been a lady, and who was, for a few short minutes, a damn decent friend.
And I had jinxed her.
My guts were a tight little ball under my belt, because Red wasn't the only one I remembered. There was the greaseball with the rod and the dirty sneer. There was the way Red had looked at him with terror in her eyes, and I felt my fingernails bite into my palms, and I started cursing under my breath. It always starts that way, the crazy mad feeling that makes me want to choke the life out of some son of a bitch, and there's nothing to grab but air. I knew damn well what it was then.
They could cross all the probable words off in front of murder and let it stand alone.
Pat said, "Give, Mike."
"There's nothing to give," I told him. "I'm teed off. Things like this give me the pip. I might as well have killed her myself."
"What makes you think it's murder?" He was watching me closely again.
I flipped the sheet to his desk. "I don't know, but she's dead and what difference does it make how she died. When you're dead you're dead and it doesn't matter much to you any more how you got that way."
"Let's not have any tangents, Mike. What do you know that I don't?"
"What she looked like when she was alive. She was a nice kid."
"Go on."
"Nuts! There isn't any place to go. If she was killed accidentally, I feel like hell. If she was murdered..."
"Yeah, Mike, I've heard it before... if she was killed you're going to go out all by yourself and catch the bastard and rub his nose in the dirt. Maybe so hard that you break his neck, too."
"Yeah," I said. Then I said it again.
"Mike."
"What?"
"Look, if it's a kill it belongs to my department. It probably isn't, but you get me so damn excited I'm getting positive that it is, and I'm getting mad, too, because you have thoughts in that scrambled brain of yours that will make the track nice and muddy if it's another race. Let's not have any more of that, Mike. Once was enough. I didn't mind so much then, but no more of it. We've always played it square, though only God knows why I set myself up to be knocked down. Maybe I'm the jerk. Are you levelling with me on what you know?"
"I'm levelling, Pat." I wasn't lying. What I had told him was the truth. I just hadn't told him the rest. It's awfully nice to get so goddamn mad at something you want to bust wide open, and it's a lot better to take that goddamn something you're mad at and smash it against the wall and do all the things to it you wanted to do, wishing it could have been done before it was too late.
Pat was playing cop with his notebook again. "Where did you meet her?" he asked me.
"A joint under the el on Third Avenue. I came off the bridge and ran down Third and stopped at this joint along the way. I don't remember the street because I was too tired to look, but I'll go back and check up again and find it. There's probably a thousand places like it, but I'll find it."
"This isn't a stall, is it?"
"Yeah, it's a stall. Lock me up for interfering with the process of the law. I should have remembered every detail that happened that night."
"Can it, Mike."
"I told you I'd find it again, didn't I?"
"Good enough. Meanwhile, we'll pull an autopsy on her and try to locate the old clothes. Remember, when you find the place, let me know. I'll probably find it without you anyway, but you can make it quicker... if you want to."
"Sure," I said. I was grinning, but nothing was funny. It was a way I could hold my mouth and be polite without letting him know that I felt as if ants were crawling all over me. We shook hands and said civilized "so longs" when I wanted to curse and swing at something instead.
I don't like to get mad like that. But I couldn't help it. Murder is an ugly word.
When I got downstairs I asked the desk sergeant where I could get in touch with Jake Larue. He gave me his home number and I went into a pay station just off the main corridor and dialed the number. Jake's wife answered, and she had to wake him up to put him on, and his voice wasn't too friendly when he said hullo.
I said, "This is Mike Hammer, Jake. What happened to that punk I gave you the other night?"
Jake said something indecent. Then, "That was some deal you handed us, Mike."
"Why?"
"He had a license for that gun, that's why. You trying to get me in a jam or something?"
"What are they doing, giving licenses away in New York State, now?"
"Nuts! His name is Feeney Last and he's a combination chauffeur and bodyguard for that Berin-Grotin guy out on the Island."
I whistled through my teeth and hung up. Now they were giving out licenses to guys who wanted to kill people. Oh, great! Just fine!
Chapter Two
It was a little after four when I got back to the office. Velda was licking envelopes in an unladylike manner and glad of an excuse to stop. She said, "Pat called me a little while ago."
"And told you to tell me to behave myself like a good boy, I suppose."
"Or words to that effect. Who was she, Mike?"
"I didn't find out. I will though."
"Mike, being as how you're the boss, I hate to say this, but there are a few prosperous clients knocking on the door and you're fooling around where there isn't any cash in sight."
I threw my hat on the desk. "Wherever there's murder there's money, chick."
"Murder?"
"I have that idea in mind."
It was nice sitting there in the easy chair, stretched out in comfort. Velda let me yawn, then: "But what are you after, Mike?"
"A name," I said. "Just a name for a kid who died without one. Morbid curiosity, isn't it? But I can't send flowers with just 'Red' on them. What do you know about a guy called Berin-Grotin, Velda?" I watched a fly run across the ceiling upside down, making it sound casual.
After a moment she told me: "That must be Arthur Berin-Grotin. He's an old society gent about eighty, supposedly one of the original Four Hundred. At one time he was the biggest sport on the Stem, but he got tangled with old age and became almighty pious trying to make up for all his youthful escapades."
I remembered him then, mostly from stories the old-timers like to pass out when they corner you in a bar for a hatful of free drinks. "Why would a guy like that need a bodyguard?" I asked her.
Velda dug back into her memory. "If I remember correctly, his estate out on the Island was robbed several times. An old man would be inclined to be squeamish, and I can't say that I blame him. I'd hire a bodyguard, too. The funny part is that the burglar could have had what he wanted for the asking by simply knocking on the door. Arthur Berin-Grotin is a sucker for hard-up stories... besides being one of the city's biggest philanthropists."
"Lots of money, hey?"
"Umm."
"Where did you get the dope on him?"
"If you'd read anything but the funnies, you'd know. He's in the news as often as a movie star. Apparently he has a fierce sense of pride, and if he isn't suing somebody for libel, he's disinheriting some distant relative for besmirching the fair name of Berin-Grotin. A month ago he financed a million-dollar cat and dog hospital or something. Oh, wait a minute..."