I didn't know what to say.
"Otherwise," he said, and he flicked a finger at the .45, then did a trigger-pulling gesture, "you can get it over with right here. Life has little meaning to me now, other than a desire to carry out my last, my most radical therapy."
I didn't know what the hell he was talking about. Maybe he was nuts. Maybe I was nuts. But one thing was certain—I no longer thought the point of all this was for Dr. David Harrin to become top hoodlum in the narcotics racket.
"Shit," I said, and eased the hammer down. "I hate dealing with people smarter than me."
I put the gun away, safety on.
Then I stood and said, "You want a week, Doc? Well, I need a day to think about your week. How's that for a compromise?"
He rose and nodded. "Fair enough."
We shook on it.
"Here," he said, almost gently, as he got my things from the closet, "I'll walk you out."
I shrugged into the trench coat, shoved the hat on my head, and we exited the spartan apartment, which he did not lock behind him.
Soon we were on the front stoop of the building. The rain was over, even the mist gone, though water pooled and glimmered where time had made impressions in the stone steps. The residential street was quiet, the wildness and weirdness of MacDougal Street a block and a half up.
He put a hand on my shoulder, looming over me, a good three inches, anyway. His expression was serene.
"Please understand, Mr. Hammer. I cannot tell you precisely what my intentions are. It's not so much that you might disagree with my approach, and try to stop me—"
"If I did, Doc, I would."
"I know.... It's more that I do not want you to be implicated, because what I have in mind has far-reaching implications, legally and ethically."
"Legalities and ethics, Doc, don't always enter in with me."
His smile turned gentle, almost wistful. "You never know, Mr. Hammer. You never know. Perhaps one day ... you'll see the light." Half turning, he was about to go back in when he added, "Maybe you will see the light."
Which, as fate would have it, was exactly when light washed over his face, headlights, and the serene look was overtaken by wide-eyed alarm, and the doc stepped in front of me, pushing me down, and the night exploded with gunfire and three slugs stitched their way across his sweater, forming black periods that welled into red commas, and his expression was blank-eyed and slack-jawed as he thumped back against the door, and slid down, leaving three smeary trails on the wood.
I was in a crouch when I fired at the vehicle, which had slowed initially but now screamed into the night, and I took the seven steps to the street in two bounds and was out in the slick black pavement firing at the car, a late-model green Buick. The rear windshield shattered and the car swerved over to the left and just missed a parked car to go up over the curb and into the side of a brick building.
A horn blared in loud monotony and I ran almost a block, coat flapping, losing my hat along the way, until I got to the vehicle. The driver was a longhaired kid who had taken one of my .45 slugs in the back of the head, the windshield dripping with gray and red and white material that had exploded out his forehead.
The shorter-haired rider—in T-shirt and jeans, who'd done the shooting—had broken his forearm against the dashboard, on impact, and I could see jutting white bone glistening with decorative red against brown skin. He was a Puerto Rican kid, and was swearing or praying or something, and I'd have spared him if he hadn't gone one-handed scrambling for the nine millimeter that had fallen in his lap. The .45 slug entered his right temple, splattered blood and brains onto the dead driver, and shut off the rider's chatter like a switch.
People were yelling and screaming, but I ignored that and, not even stopping to retrieve my hat, ran back to the brownstone, where a hippie girl up on the stoop was holding Dr. Harrin in her arms like the Pietà, and wailing, "Somebody help him!"
But even if a doctor as good as Harrin had been around, it wouldn't have helped. Nobody had ever found a cure for his condition.
Chapter Twelve
THERE WAS NO ducking it.
No sneaking over to Velda's and avoiding the mess and the time and the trouble, and playing the Little Man Who Wasn't There. Harrin had died next to me, pushing me down to safety, taking three bullets likely intended for me, and maybe that oath he took a long time ago about protecting others from harm had still held some sway over him.
The only thing that went fast was how long it took for Pat Chambers to get there. He beat the lab boys to the scene, and I met him as he climbed from the rider's side of the unmarked that pulled up in the street, siren blaring and cherry top painting the already shell-shocked bystanders a shade of red rivaling the blood they'd been gawking at.
"Man," I said, "that's service."
"Normally," he grumbled, "I'd have left this to the night-tour boys. But I have standing orders that when Mike Hammer's name comes up, I get a call."
"I'll take that as a compliment."
He had a rumpled, got-dressed-in-a-hurry look, and something smudgy red under his ear.
"What's this?" I said, and worked my thumb on the smear. "Looks like Helen DiVay's shade."
He grinned and damn near blushed and said, "Cut it, man. This is serious."
"I'll say. You dog."
That was as light as the banter got for the next six hours. We were at the scene for the first two, and the rest were at Central Headquarters. Pat had gotten the scoop on the street, but of course at HQ, I had to go through chapter and verse for Assistant D.A. Traynor.
The sharply dressed, sharp-eyed Traynor deposited himself behind Pat's desk again, while its rightful occupant sat behind the same mousy stenog, his arms folded, chin on his chest, possibly half asleep. Helen must have given him a real workout.
The closest Traynor got to anything significant was when he pressed about why I'd been at Harrin's: "He's been out of the country for a week, Mr. Hammer. And the first day he's back, barely unpacked, he invites you over for the evening?"
"I told you before. He's taken that boy Billy Blue under his wing. He wanted an update on my investigation into the kid getting jumped."
"Why, was Harrin your client?"
"No. Just an interested party. Anyway, my investigation didn't stem from that attack on the Blue kid, which I believe was strictly those freaks getting back at Billy for refusing to be a drug supplier."
Traynor frowned. "Then what did it stem from, Mr. Hammer?"
"From Russell Frazer trying to mug and maybe kill me, and then getting killed himself. And from those hit men showing up in my lobby."
He gaped at me. "You're admitting that was your handiwork?"
"I'm admitting to known professional killers showing up from out of town, to die in my apartment-house lobby. I thought you said that coincidences bothered you, Mr. Traynor?"
That went on for over two hours, and got absolutely nowhere. I didn't lie to the guy, I just wasn't forthcoming. What Dr. Harrin and I had discussed, I planned to keep to myself. Other aspects of my inquiries—like Harrin being their inside-the-Syndicate tipster—were in that same column, for now, anyway. Let them do their own damn work.
Finally Traynor gave up, and Pat accompanied me to the break room, where we had coffee and vending-machine sandwiches, which added up to cruel and unusual punishment as far as I was concerned.
But Pat didn't grill me, not exactly. He seemed genuinely concerned.
"That's the third try, Mike," he said, meaning the third murder attempt on me. His gray eyes were melancholy. "You're in over your head, buddy."