The Mike Hammer Collection

Pat nodded sagely. “Great. Facts are one thing, but there’s still that crazy mind of yours. You make the same facts come out with different answers somehow.” He held up his hand to shut me up. “Oh, I agree, you’re cooperative and all that jazz. You lay it on the line like you’re requested to do and still make it look like your own idea. But all the time you’re following a strange line of reasoning nobody who looks at the facts would take. I always said you should have been a straight cop in the first place.”

“I tried it a long time ago and it didn’t work.”

“You would have made a perfect crook. Sometimes I wonder just what the hell you really are inside. You live in a half world of your own, never in, never out, always on the edge.”

“Nuts to you, Pat. It works.”

“The hard way.”

Pat walked to the window, stared down into the courtyard a moment, then came back. “Kania say anything to you before he died?”

“Only how he was going to enjoy killing me.”

“You didn’t ask him any questions?”

“With a gun on me and him ready to shoot? There wasn’t anything to ask.”

“There wasn’t any chance you could have taken him?”

“Not a one.”

“So I’ll buy it. Now, how’d he find you?”

“I’m not that hard to find. He did it twice before. He probably picked up Velda at my office and followed her here.”

“She talk yet?”

“No,” I told him, “but maybe she will now. Let’s ask her.”

The doctor had finished with Velda, assuring us both that it was only a minor concussion that should leave no aftereffects, gave me a prescription for a sedative, and left us alone with her.

She smiled up at me crookedly, her face hurting with the effort.

“Think you can talk, kitten?”

“I’m all right.”

“How’d that punk get in here?”

She shook her head and winced. “I don’t know. I left the door unlocked thinking you’d be in shortly, then I went to the bathroom. When I went back into the living room he stepped out of the bedroom. He held the gun on me . . . then made me lie on the couch. I knew he was afraid I’d scream or something so he just swung the gun at me. I remember . . . coming awake once, then he hit me again. That’s all I remember until you spoke to me.”

I glanced at Pat. “That’s how he did it then. He waited at the office.”

“Did you know Grebb kept a man staked out there?”

“Didn’t everybody? I told you to stay off my neck.”

“It wasn’t my idea.”

“Kania must have spotted him the same as I did. He simply waited outside or across the street until Velda came out. When she came alone he figured she could lead him to me and stayed with her. She made the job easy by leaving the door open.”

“I’m sorry, Mike.”

“No sweat, baby,” I said. “It won’t happen again.”

“Mike . . .”

“What?”

“Mrs. Lee. She’d like to see you again.”

She was bypassing Pat, but he caught it and grinned. “I haven’t heard about her.”

“An old lady. Sally Devon’s old wardrobe mistress. She was with her when she died. She’ll talk to anybody for company’s sake but she might come up with something.”

“Still going back thirty years?”

“Does money get old?” I asked him.

There was a jack next to the bed so I got the phone from the living room and plugged it in and laid it on the nightstand where Velda could reach it. “You stay put all day, honey. I’ll check in with you every now and then and if you want anything, just call down for it. I’ll leave your key with the super and he can check on anybody who comes in.”

“Mike . . . I’ll be fine. You don’t have to . . .”

I cut her off. “Look, if I want you for anything, I’ll call. There’s a lot you can do without getting out of bed. Relax until I need you. Shall I get somebody to stay with you?”

“No.”

“I’ll be moving fast. I don’t know where I’ll be. But I’ll check in every couple of hours. Maybe Pat here can give you a buzz too.”

“Be glad to,” he said. There was restraint in his voice and I knew how he was hurting. It isn’t easy for a guy who loves a woman to see her going down the road with somebody else. War, love . . . somebody’s got to be the loser.

So I covered her up and went outside with Pat. About twenty minutes later two men from his division came in, got a rundown on Kania, and started backtracking him. A contract killer wasn’t notorious for leaving a trail, but Marv Kania had a record, he was known. He might have been tight-lipped about his operation, but somewhere somebody was going to know something.

One thing. That’s all we needed. You could start with dead men, all right, but it won’t do you any good if they only lead to other dead men. Mr. Dickerson had played some smart cards. He had picked his people well. The ones here were clean. The ones who weren’t were dead. The hoods in town could be taken in and questioned, but if they knew nothing because the orders hadn’t been issued yet, they couldn’t say anything. It was still a free country and you couldn’t make them leave the state as long as they stayed clean. The men behind them were power who could still turn on the heat through odd but important channels so you couldn’t roust them too far.