"I guess in the pottery game, you have to pay attention to detail. Same in the detective game."
"I'm sure," she said, the velvety voice making a purr out of it. "You know, I rather appreciate your indirect approach. No lies, but not terribly generous with the truth."
"No use showing your hand until you have to."
She was studying me now, the big eyes going narrow. "Then your interest in this matter is ... personal?" Her voice remained calm. "Rather than professional?"
"It's always personal when somebody tries to kill me."
The eyes got big again. "Well, Mr. Hammer—you are Mike Hammer, aren't you?"
"Yeah."
"I seem to remember a rather sensational magazine that made mention of another violent incident involving you ... a few years ago?" She smiled again. "The publisher tried to sue you, after you did something, uh ... detrimental to his well-being?"
"He caught an acute case."
"An acute case of what, Mr. Hammer?"
"Broken ribs." I shrugged. "No big deal. He withdrew the charges upon advice of counsel, after receiving a ten-cent phone call."
"Anonymous call, you mean?"
"Oh no. I gave my name loud and clear."
The smile had something flirtatious in it now. I'd told Pat the dolls went for Neanderthals.
She said, "Who tried to kill you this time, Mr. Hammer?"
"Your friend Russell Frazer."
The smile vanished, and she tilted her head. "That doesn't make sense...."
"Murder never does," I said. "At first, anyway."
"Russell rarely raised his voice around here. He was nice, rather funny, I'd even say charming. I can't imagine him trying to kill anyone, much less ... much less someone as, uh, formidable? As you, Mr. Hammer."
"It's like you said, Miss Vought."
"What?"
"You never know about people." I pushed the chair back and stood up. "Thanks for the conversation. I hope I wasn't a bother and kept you too long from your work."
With her penchant for detail, Shirley Vought was watching me carefully and the eyes were wide again, curiosity twinkling at their corners.
Very abruptly she said, "I was wrong."
"Wrong?"
"You are anything but indirect, Mr. Hammer. I would say ... you are remarkably di-rect."
"Thanks."
Her expression grew slyly catlike, and openly sensual. "Tell me, Mr. Hammer ... do you make love with that same direct approach?"
I grinned at her, taking the invitation of that remark to allow my eyes a sweep over her body. The streak of green on her cheek glowed like some sort of psychedelic beauty mark under the fluorescent lighting.
"No," I told her. "I'm a little more devious in my lovemaking. I like it nice and lazy, after a good, long chase ... so I can appreciate the explosion, when it comes."
She couldn't hold back the laugh, throaty but still velvet all the way.
"You know," she said, "I believe it."
I gave her another half grin. "Interested?"
This time her eyes smiled, too.
"This," she said softly, rising from the table, "is where I say 'Thank you ... call again.'"
I was almost through the curtains when I glanced back and said, "Don't you mean 'come again'?"
She gave me a little shrug. We'll see, she seemed to be saying. We'll see....
Her name was Susie Moore, she ran the checkout register at counter number two in Supermarket East, and she was glad to have a sandwich with me at the rear table at a lunchroom around the corner. She was twenty-three, shared an apartment with two other girls who worked in the neighborhood, and was saving her money to enroll in a secretarial school that winter.
Susie wasn't exactly pretty, just cute in a pug-nosed way with brown pixie-cut hair, a lithe figure, and a bubbly charm that was attraction enough—one of that new breed of kids you see leading peace marches and waving out of the window of a police van on the way to being booked at the local precinct house for having disturbed the tranquility of the Establishment.
We were next to a window in the unpretentious little deli restaurant. The rain had stopped but its tendrils were trickling down the glass nearby. I had pastrami, corned beef, and Swiss cheese on rye, and she had a tuna salad sandwich. She didn't eat meat, she said. That would be news to the tuna.
Analytical eyes picked me apart across the table, trying to separate me into beast or benefactor, or maybe just plain lecher looking to add a few female flower children to his well-thumbed black book.
She had accepted the invitation of a free lunch with a knowing smile—as long as she picked the place—willing to cross swords with me just so it saved her another couple bucks for her secretarial kitty. She was wearing her pale blue checkout uniform, which was miniskirt short, showing off her long, bare Go-Go Girl stems.
Before she had finished her sandwich, she had rattled off most of her life history without bothering with any of mine, and when she suddenly realized that, she paused between bites and said, "You play it pretty cool, don't you, Mr. Hammer?"
"Do I?"
"Uh-huh." She swallowed down her last bite of tuna fish sandwich, and sipped her Coke through a straw. "Here I've been waiting for the big pitch, figuring there might be a new angle, and it's like it's never gonna happen." Her tongue flicked a crumb from her lower lip and she put the glass down. "You play it nice and cool—let me do all the work."
"Maybe I'm just interested."
"Maybe ... but what's your ult?"
"My what?"
"Ulterior motive?"
"It's not like that."
She grew a knowing, smirky look that didn't become her. "Isn't it?"
"No. Honey, I'm not after your body."
That surprised her, and probably hurt her feelings a little, but that's what she got for getting too cute. She gestured down at herself and back to me. "I haven't had any complaints before."
I shrugged. "You have a nice figure. Like a model. Only, my tastes go back about ten years, when women had some meat on the bone—more hips, bigger boobies."
Now she was really puzzled. "Well, that's not today's scene."
"It'll come back," I said, not convinced it had ever left.
Susie didn't like to be sidetracked. "Let's get back to your ult. If it's not me, what is it?"
"Suppose we start with Russell Frazer."
This time she squinted and wrinkled her nose at me. "Why?"
"Isn't he a friend of yours?"
"Until he got to be a drag. I used to date him. Just broke it off, like, the other day. What about him?"
She obviously didn't know he was dead, but she had dated him, so things could turn ugly, even with a cutie like this. Still, there are ways of saying things without having to lie or actually say anything at all.
"Maybe," I said, "the best way to put it is that I'm looking for character references on him."
"Is Russ in some kind of trouble?"
Once again I could be truthful about it. I simply said, "Nope."
After all, Russell Frazer would never be in trouble again, not unless his coffin got caught on a tree root, getting lowered into the big hole.
She refused the cigarette I offered her, and I waited. This time the computer eyes had hesitated because the keyboard was sending out odd vibrations. She shook off the confusion, trying the Coke again. Her mouth working the straw was pretty cute, but I'd rather she talk.
Finally, she did: "Listen, I said he was a drag, but if you're checking up on him, really, Russ is okay. I met him right here, you know." She gestured to the little deli sandwich shop around us.
"You dated him? How serious did it get?"
She shrugged and tapped out a rhythm on the tabletop with her fingernails. "Not serious at all. Oh, I balled him plenty of times, sure. He thought he was God's gift, but he was all show and no go, you know? A wham-bam type who figured a girl could get her jollies just because he pulled down his zipper. He was hung like a horse."