I grinned. "Ever been knifed, Doctor? Stabbed?"
"I wield a blade myself, but in the manner you suggest—I can't say I have."
"It isn't very pleasant, having a knife shoved in your back. That was tried on me last night."
He leaned forward. "Tried...?"
I told him what had happened.
"And you think it was related to the attack on Billy Blue?"
"'Think' isn't exactly the right word, Doc. It's an oddball feeling I have that for some reason somebody is trying to toss my ass in the wringer. Like being in the jungle—you don't always go by what you see ... you go by what you feel, or else something's going to drop on you from overhead, or kill you from the blind side."
"What do you propose doing?"
"Just making a nuisance of myself maybe. Antagonize something or somebody into coming out in the open where it can be clobbered."
"That isn't a very antiseptic method, is it, Mr. Hammer?"
I grinned at him and got ready to leave. "Look at how long Madame Curie worked at it before she isolated radium."
Dr. Sprague smiled gently, his eyes thoughtful. "You might keep something else in mind, Mr. Hammer. Madame Curie died of radiation poisoning."
Chapter Five
SOMEWHERE IN PAT CHAMBERS' private collection, not on public display, are four medals for wartime valor, nine commendations from the New York Police Department, and a couple of civilian citations for exceptional bravery. He had faced down armed gunmen, rescued little old ladies from burning buildings, and driven mad chases in pursuit of bandits.
All that without batting an eye.
Right now, however, he was scared shitless.
The knife in his trembling hand didn't want to go through a filet that should cut like butter, and when he tried to stir his coffee, the spoon rattled like a blind beggar shaking the pencils in his cup.
I grinned at the terrified captain of police, that bachelor brute of the Homicide Division, whose words were choking up in his throat when he was asked to make simple, polite conversation.
All because Velda had brought a friend to supper who had this crazy typing-paper-colored hair and big, full breasts that tried to burst through a semi-sheer, laced-up blouse, and seemed about to succeed any second. The air-conditioning in Finero's Steakhouse, just off Broadway, wasn't really necessary, but it did make the dame's nipples stand out like bullets, which was fitting because that was what Pat was sweating, electric breeze or not.
Helen DiVay had started out as a stripper and never forgot it, even though she'd long since come up in the world. One day maybe half a dozen years ago, she had taken five grand out of her savings from traveling skin shows, invested in a then-unknown stock issue called Xerox, and now, ten years later, she had a few million bucks from a company that had seen one stock split after another.
And yet she was still looking for a husband.
Velda said it was because Helen intimidated men, too rich, too shapely, too pretty—guys usually thought she was out of reach, a dream that couldn't come true. So the big beautiful broad could find herself on a blind date like the one Velda set up with Pat, only without the handsome, gray-eyed lug's knowledge—much less permission.
Helen was rather delicately eating the shrimp salad that was the only food she'd ordered.
She was saying in her husky, knowing, yet ever-so-feminine voice, "It must be terribly exciting being a detective. I mean, your friend Mike here is a detective, but to be captain of Homicide! The things you've seen, the pressures you've been under ... and yet you look so young. ..."
Pat said, "Uh ... th-thanks."
She gestured with a speared shrimp. "I dated a fireman once, and he seemed so calm all the time, and I just couldn't understand why. He told me it was because when he was with me, he wasn't at the firehouse. Said he saved his nerves for on the job. But, you know, I think he was just naturally brave. He was just one of those men who are innately cut out for dangerous work. Are you one of those men, Captain Chambers?"
"Puh."
"Pardon me?"
"Puh-Pat. Call me puh-Pat."
He sounded like a tugboat.
I couldn't figure whether Pat was shook up because Helen was deliberately pouring herself all over him, or because he was one of those guys Velda talked about, afraid he couldn't handle what was on offer.
When the two girls left to go to the powder room, I just sat there and laughed at the big chump, who was still trying to get down the last of his steak, and said, "There's a slice of cheesecake available, buddy, if you're up for dessert."
"Mike ... you have no shame, no class, no sympathy...."
"No shit." I grinned, and looked off into nowhere. I molded the air with a hand. In the background a jazz piano seemed designed to accompany my words. "Try to imagine that work of art making you coffee in the morning, wrapped up in a little shortie terrycloth robe that keeps falling open...."
"Show respect. She's a nice woman."
"Very."
"I find her most intelligent."
"I'm sure she was impressed with your dinner-table conversation, too, old buddy. All five words."
He pushed his plate aside. "Is that all you think about?"
"What?"
"Sex."
"Sure. I admit it. What're you saving it up for? Waiting for the sperm bank to raise its rates? Civil-service pay just doesn't cut it, huh?"
He gave me a disgusted look, then let a smile twist the corner of his mouth. "Boy, you sure can back a guy into a corner."
I nodded toward Helen's empty chair. "With those babies prodding you, is there a better place to be?"
"You ought to know, you lecherous bastard," he said.
"Not lecherous," I said, and raised a teacherly finger. "It's just that I have my own means of interrogating certain suspects of the female persuasion. Too bad the department regulations don't give you boys a little more leeway."
Pat shook his head at me. "You're lucky you went private. You'd never have made it, over the long haul, as a real cop."
"Maybe not," I said, and sipped coffee. "But I bet I could have tracked down a mugger who carves up his victims, by now."
It was his turn to grin. "Don't look so smug, you slob—we did find him."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. Those hookers returned to their favorite street corner, finally, and we ran 'em in and turned the screws, and two of 'em made a positive identification."
"How about that?" I fired up a Lucky with my Zippo. Snapped it shut. "Tell me about your suspect, Uncle Patrick."
The captain of Homicide waggled his own lecturing finger at me. "He's more than just a suspect. He's a middle-aged drifter who's been in the city the past two years. Wanted in Oklahoma on a burglary charge, and Texas had a warrant out on him for manslaughter. We picked him up dead drunk in a hotel room uptown, along with a whore who had just lifted his roll."
"How much did he have on him?"
"A little under three hundred bucks."
"From the Frazer punk?"
"So he admits."
I blew a smoke ring. "Does he also admit stabbing the guy?"
Pat drank water. Didn't look at me. "No."
"Did you find the knife?"
"Hell, no! That would've gone down a gutter. You know that."
"No, I don't, not if stabbing his marks after robbing 'em is this guy's M.O."
"Mike, he's the guy."
"He may be the guy who rolled Frazer. But is he the guy who stuck him?"
Pat seemed ready to take me on again.
So I held up a palm. "Okay. All right. Then let's go back to square one—what would Frazer want to mug me for? A guy like that, with sharp clothes and lots of bread coming in?"
"Maybe he didn't like your ugly face," Pat said, but he had an odd expression, so I knew there was more.