Vengeance Is Mine

She pulled on a pair of elbow-length gloves and let me stand there with my mouth watering, knowing damn well she had me where it hurt. “Business, Mike, business before pleasure always.” Her face was blank.

I let my tone get sharp. “What were you doing here before I came in?”

“There’s a note on your desk explaining everything. I visited the Calway Merchandising Company and rounded up some photographs they took of the girls that night. You might want to see them. You take to pretty girls, don’t you?”

“Shut up.”

She glanced at me quickly so I wouldn’t see the tears that made her eyes shine. When she walked to the desk to get her coat I started swearing under my breath at Clyde again because the bastard was getting the best when I had never seen it. That’s what happens when something like Velda is right under your nose.

I said it again. This time there was no sharpness in my voice. “I wish I had seen you like that before, Velda.”

She took a minute to put on her coat and it was so quiet in that room I could hear her breathing. She turned around, the tears were still there. “Mike . . . I don’t have to tell you that you can see me any way you like . . . anytime.”

I had her in my arms, pressing her against me, feeling every warm, vibrant contour of her body. Her mouth reached for mine and I tasted the wet sweetness of her lips, felt her shudder as my hands couldn’t keep off the whiteness of her skin. My fingers dug into her shoulders leaving livid red marks. She tore her mouth away with a’ sob and spun around so I couldn’t see her face, and with one fast motion that happened too quickly she put her hands over mine and slid them over the flesh and onto the dress that clung and down her body that was so warmly alive, then pulled away and ran to the door.

I put a cigarette in my mouth and forgot to light it. I could still hear her heels clicking down the hall. Absently, I reached for the phone and dialed Pat’s number out of habit. He said hello three times before I answered him and told him to meet me in my office.

I looked at my hands and the palms were damp with sweat. I lit my cigarette and sat there, thinking of Velda again.

Chapter Seven

It took pat thirty minutes to get there. He came in stamping the snow off his shoes and blowing like a bull moose. When he shed his coat and hat he threw a briefcase on the desk and drew up a chair.

“What are you looking so rosy about, Mike?”

“The snow. It always gets me. How’d you make out today?”

“Fine,” Pat said, “just fine and dandy. The D.A. made a point of telling me to keep my nose clean again. If he ever gets boosted out of office I’m going to smack him right in the sneezer.” He must have read the surprise on my face. “Okay, okay, it doesn’t sound like me. Go ahead and say it. I’m getting tired of being snarled up in red tape. You had it easy before you threw away your ticket and you didn’t know it.”

“I’ll get it back.”

“Perhaps. We have to make murder out of suicide first.”

“You almost had another on your hands today, chum.”

He stopped in the middle of a sentence and said, “Who now?”

“Me.”

“You!”

“Little me. On a crowded street, too. Somebody tried to pop me with a silenced gun. All they got was two windows.”

“I’ll be damned! We got a call on one of those windows, the one on Thirty-third. If the slug didn’t poke a hole through all the scenery and land where it could be found it would have passed for an accident. Where was the other one?”

I told him and he said he would be damned again. He reached for the phone and buzzed headquarters to have them go through the window for the slug. When he hung up I said, “What’s the D.A. going to do when he hears about this?”

“Quit kidding. He isn’t hearing anything. You know the rep you have . . . the bright boy’ll claim it’s one of your old friends sending a greeting card for the holidays.”

“It’s too early for that.”

“Then he’ll grab you on some trumped-up charge and get himself a big play in the papers. The hell with him.”

“You aren’t talking like a good cop now, feller.”

Pat’s face darkened and he leaned out of his chair with his teeth bared to the gums. “There’s a time when being a good cop won’t catch a killer. Right now I’m teed off, Mike. We’re both on a hot spot that may get hotter and I don’t like it. It might be that I’m getting smart. A little favorable publicity never hurts anybody and if the D.A. tries to trim my corns I’ll have a better talking point if I have something I can toss at him.”

I laughed. Cripes, how I laughed! For ten years I had sung that song to him and now he was beginning to learn the words.

It was funnier now than it was in the beginning.

I said, “What about Rainey? You find him?”

“We found him.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah what. He was engaged in the so-called legitimate profession of promoting fights. Some arena on the island. We couldn’t tap him for a thing. What about him?”

There was a bottle of booze in the desk and I poured out two shots. “He’s in this, Pat. I don’t know just how he fits, but he’s there.” I offered a silent toast and we threw them down. It burned a path to my stomach and lay there like a hot coal. I put down the glass and sat on the window sill. “I went out to see Emil Perry. Rainey was there and had the guy scared silly. Even I couldn’t scare him worse. Perry said Wheeler had spoken of suicide because business was bad, but a check showed his outfit to be making coin hand over fist. Riddle me that one.”

Pat whistled slowly.

I waited for him to collect his thoughts. “Remember Dinky Williams, Pat?”

Pat let his head move up and down. “Go on.” His face was getting that cop look on it.

I tried to make it sound casual. “What’s he doing now? You know?”

“No.”

“If I were to tell you that he was running a wide-open gambling joint right here in the city, what would you do?”

“I’d say you were crazy, it’s impossible, then put the vice squad on it.”

“In that case I won’t tell you about it.”

He brought his hand down on the desk so hard my cigarettes jumped. “The hell you won’t! You’ll tell me about it right now! Who am I supposed to be, a rookie cop for you to play around with?”

It was nice to see him get mad again. I eased down off the window sill and slumped in my chair. His face was red as a beet. “Look, Pat. You’re still a cop. You believe in the integrity and loyalty of the force. You may not want to, but you’ll be duty bound to do just what you said. If you do a killer gets away.”

He went to talk but I stopped him with a wave of my hand. “Keep still and listen. I’ve been thinking that there’s more to this than you or I have pictured. Dink’s in it, Rainey’s in it, guys like Emil Perry are in it too. Maybe lots more we don’t know about . . . yet. Dinky Williams is cleaning up a pretty penny right this minute running wheels and bars without a license. Because I told you that don’t go broadcasting it around. It may hurt you to be reminded of the fact, but just the same it has to be . . if Dinky Williams runs a joint, then somebody is getting paid off. Somebody big. Somebody important. Either that or a whole lot of small somebodies who are mighty important when you lump them all together. Do you want to fight that setup?”

“You’re damned well told I do!”

“You want to keep your badge? You think you can buck it?”

His voice was a hoarse whisper. “I’ll do it.”

“You have another think coming and you know it. You’d just like to do it. Now listen to me. I have an inside track on this thing. We can play it together or not, but we’re doing it my way or you can stick your nose in the dirt and root up the facts yourself. It won’t be easy. If Dinky is paying off we can get the whole crowd at once, not just Dinky. Now call it.”