The Mike Hammer Collection

New York, when the traffic is thick, is a maddening place. From high above the streets the cars look like a winding line of ants, but when you are in the convoy it becomes a raucous noise, a composite of horns and engines and voices cursing at other voices. It’s a heavy smell of exhaust fumes and unburned hydrocarbons and in the desire to compress time and space the distance between cars is infinitesimal.

The running lights designed to keep traffic moving at a steady pace seem to break down then. They all become red. Always, there is a bus or truck ahead, or an out-of-town driver searching for street signs. There are pedestrians who take their time, sometimes deliberately blocking the lights in the never-ceasing battle against the enemy, those who are mounted.

In the city the average speed of a fire truck breaks down to eighteen miles an hour with all its warning devices going, so imagine what happens to time and distance when the end-of-day rush is on. Add to that the rain that fogged the windshields and made every sudden stop hazardous.

Ordinarily from Brooklyn the Torrence place would have been an hour away. But not this night. No, this was a special night of delay and frustration, and if Pat hadn’t been able to swing around two barriers with his badge held out the window it would have been an hour longer still.

It was a quarter to eight when we turned in the street Sim Torrence lived on. Behind the wall and the shrubbery I could see lights on in the house and outside that there was no activity at all. From the end of the street, walking toward us, was the patrolman assigned to the beat on special duty, and when we stopped his pace quickened so that he was there when we got out.

Pat held his badge out again, but the cop recognized me. Pat said, “Everything all right here?”

“Yes, sir. Miss King and the girl left some time ago and Torrence arrived, but there has been no trouble. Anything I can help with?”

“No, just routine. We have to see Torrence.”

“Sure. He left the gate open.”

We left the car on the street and walked in, staying on the grass. I had the .45 in my hand and Pat had his Police Positive out and ready. Sim Torrence’s Cadillac was parked in front of the door and when I felt it the hood was still warm.

Both of us knew what to do. We checked the windows and the back, met again around the front, then I went up to the door while Pat stood by in the shadows.

I touched the buzzer and heard the chime from inside.

Nobody answered so I did it again.

I didn’t bother for a third try. I reached out, leaned against the door latch, and it swung in quietly. I went in first, Pat right behind me covering the blind spots. First I motioned him to be quiet, then to follow me since I knew the layout.

There was a deathly stillness about the house that didn’t belong there. With all the lights that were going there should have been some sort of sound. But there was nothing.

We checked through the downstairs room, opening closets and probing behind the furniture. Pat looked across the room at me, shook his head, and I pointed toward the stairs.

The master bedroom was the first door on the right. The door was partly open and there was a light on there too. We took that one first.

And that was where we found Sim Torrence. He wasn’t winning anymore.

He lay facedown on the floor with a bullet through his head and a puddle of blood running away from him like juice from a stepped-on tomato. We didn’t stop there. We went into every room in the house looking for a killer before we finally came back to Sim.

Pat wrapped the phone in a handkerchief, called the local department, and reported in. When he hung up he said, “You know we’re in a sling, don’t you?”

“Why?”

“We should have called in from Brooklyn and let them cover it from this end.”

“My foot, buddy. Getting in a jam won’t help anything. As far as anyone is concerned we came up here on a social call. I was here last night helping out during an emergency and I came back to check, that’s all.”

“And what about the women?”

“We’ll get to them before anybody else will.”

“You’d better be right.”

“Quit worrying.”

While we waited we checked the area around the body for anything that might tie in with the murder. There were no spent cartridges so we both assumed the killer used a revolver. I prowled around the house looking for a sign of entry, since Geraldine would have locked the door going out and Sim behind him, coming in. The killer must have already been here and made his own entry the easy way through the front door.

The sirens were screaming up the street outside when I found out where he got in. The window in Sue’s room had been neatly jimmied from the trellis outside and was a perfect, quiet entry into the house. Anybody could have come over the walls without being seen by the lone cop on the beat. From there up that solid trellis was as easy as taking the steps.