Vengeance Is Mine

I tried the door and it opened easily enough.

It was easy to see why she couldn’t answer the door. Marion Lester was as dead as a person could get. I closed the door quietly and stepped in the room. “Damn,” I said, “damn it all to hell!”

She had on a pair of red satin pajamas and was sprawled out face down. You might have thought she was asleep if you didn’t notice the angle of her neck. It had been broken with such force the snapped vertebra was pushed out against the skin. On the opposite side of the neck was a bluish imprint of the weapon. When I put the edge of my palm against the mark it almost fit and the body was stone-cold and stiff.

The only weapon our killer liked was his strong hands.

I lifted the phone and when the clerk came on I said, “When did Miss Lester come in?”

“Hell, she came in this morning drunk as a skunk. She could hardly navigate. Ain’t she there now?”

“She’s here now, all right. She won’t be going out again very soon either. She’s dead. You better get up here right away.”

The woman let out a muffled scream and started to run without bothering to break the connection. I heard her feet pounding on the stairs and she wrenched the door open without any formalities. Her face went from white to gray then flushed until the veins of her forehead stood out like pencils. “Lawd! Did you do this?”

She practically fell into a chair and wiped her hand across her eyes. I said, “She’s been dead for hours. Now take it easy and think. Understand, think. I want to know who was up here today. Who called on her or even asked for her. You ought to know, you’ve been here all day.”

Her mouth moved, the thick lips hanging limp. “Lawd!” she said.

I grabbed her shoulders and shook her until her teeth rattled. A little life came back into her eyes. “Answer me and stop looking foolish. Who was up here today?”

Her head wobbled from side to side. “This tears it, sonny. The joint’ll be ruined. Lawd, there goes my job!” She buried her face in her hands and moaned foolishly.

I slapped her hands away and made her look at me. “Listen. She isn’t the first. The same guy that killed her killed two others and unless he’s stopped there’s going to be more killing. Can you understand that?”

She nodded dumbly, terror creeping into her eyes. “All right, who was up here to see her today?”

“Nobody. Not nobody at all.”

“Somebody was here. Somebody killed her.”

“H--how do I know who killed her?”

“I didn’t say that. I said somebody was here.”

She pulled her thick lips together and licked them. “Look, sonny, I don’t take a count of who comes and goes in this place. It’s easy to get in and it’s easy to get out. Lotsa guys come in here.”

“And you don’t notice them?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I ain’t . . . I ain’t supposed to.”

“So the dump’s a whorehouse. Nothing but a whorehouse.”

She glared at me indignantly, the terror fading. “I ain’t no madam, sonny. It’s just a place where the babes can stay with no questions asked, is all. I ain’t no madam.”

“Do you know what’s going to happen around here?” I said. “In ten minutes this place will be crawling with cops. There’s no sense running because they’ll catch up with you. When they find out what’s going on . . . and they will . . . you’ll be up the creek. Now you can either start thinking and maybe have a little while to get yourself a clear story to offer them or you can take what the cops have to hand out. What will it be?”

She looked me straight in the eye and told the God’s honest truth. “Sonny,” she said, “if my life depended upon it I couldn’t tell you anything different. I don’t know who was in here today. The place was crawling with people ever since noontime and I read a book most of the day.”

I felt like I fell through a manhole. “Okay, lady. Maybe there’s somebody else who would know.”

“Nobody else. The girls who clean the halls only work in the morning. The guests take care of their own rooms. Everyone who lives here is a regular. No overnighters.”

“No bellboys?”

“We ain’t had ‘em for a year. We don’t need ‘em.”

I looked back at the remains of Marion Lester and wanted to vomit. Nobody knew a thing. The killer had no face. Nobody saw him. They felt him and didn’t live to tell about it. Only me. I was lucky, I got away. First the killer tried to shoot me. It didn’t work. Then he tried an ambush and slipped up there. I was the most important one in the whole lot.

And I couldn’t make a target of myself because there wasn’t time to play bait.

I looked at Marion and talked to the woman who sat there trembling from head to foot. “Go on downstairs and put me through to the police department. I’ll call them from here but I won’t be here when they come. You can tell them the same thing you told me. Go on, beat it.”

She waddled out, her entire body bearing the weight of the calamity. I held the phone to my ear and heard her call the police. When the connection was through I asked for homicide and got the night man. I said, “This is Mike Hammer. I’m in the Chadwick Hotel with a dead woman. No, I didn’t kill her, she’s been dead for hours. The D.A. will want to hear about it so you better call him and mention my name. Tell him I’ll drop by later. Yeah, yeah. No, I won’t be here. If the D.A. doesn’t like that he can put my name on his butt-kissing list. Tell him I said that, too. Good-by.” I walked downstairs and out the front door with about a minute to spare. I was just starting up my car when the police came up with their sirens wide open, leading a black limousine that skidded to a halt as the D.A. himself jumped out and started slinging orders around.

When I drove by I beeped the horn twice, but he didn’t hear it because he was too busy directing his army. Another squad car came up and I looked it over hoping to see Pat. He wasn’t with them.

My watch said twenty minutes to twelve. Velda would be leaving her apartment about now. My hands were shaking when I reached for a Lucky and I had to use the dashboard lighter to get it lit, a match wouldn’t hold still. If there was any fight left inside me it was going fast, draining out with each minute, and in twenty minutes there wouldn’t be a thing left for me, not one damn thing.

I stopped at a saloon and pulled the phone book from its rack and fingered through the L’s until I came to Lipsek, Anton. The address was right on the fringe of the Village in a section I knew pretty well. I went back to the car and crawled down Broadway.

Twenty minutes. Fifteen now, Tempus Fugit. Tempus Fugits fast as hell. Twelve minutes. It started to snow harder. The wind picked it up and whipped the stuff into parallel, oblique lines across the multicolored lights that lined the street. Red lights. I made like I was skidding and went through. Cars honked and I cursed back, telling them to be quiet. The gun under my arm was burning a hole in my side and my finger under the glove kept tightening up expectantly.

Fourteenth Street went by and two cabs were bumper-locked in the middle of the road. I followed a pickup truck onto the sidewalk and off again to get around them. A police whistle blew and I muttered for the cop to go to the devil and kept on my way behind the truck.

Five minutes. My teeth were making harsh, grinding noises I could feel through my jaw. I came to my street and pulled into a parking space. Another minute went by while I oriented myself and followed the numbers in the right direction. Another two minutes went by before I found it.

Three minutes. She should almost be there by now. The name on the bell read, ANTON LIPSEK, Esq., and some kid had written a word under it. The kid had my sympathy. I felt the same way myself. I pushed the bell and heard it tinkle someplace upstairs.

Nothing happened. I pushed it again and kept my finger on it. The tinkling went on and on and on and still nothing happened. I pushed one of the other bells and the door clicked open. A voice from the rear of the first floor said, “Who is it?”