The Mike Hammer Collection

“I’ll take it, York, but if there’s going to be trouble I’d like to know where it will come from. Who’s the man-hating turnip that has you in a brace?”

His lips tightened. “I’m afraid I cannot reveal that, either. You need not do any investigating. Simply protect my interests, and my son.”

“Okay,” I said as I rose. “Have it your own way. I’ll play dummy. But right now I’m going to beat the sheet. It’s been a tough day. You’d better hit it yourself.”

“I’ll call Harvey.”

“Never mind, I’ll find it.” I walked out. In the foyer I pulled the diagram out of my pocket and checked it. The directions were clear enough. I went upstairs, turned left at the landing and followed the hand-carved balustrade to the other side. My room was next to last and my name was on white cardboard, neatly typed, and framed in a small brass holder on the door. I turned the knob, reached for the light and flicked it on.

“You took long enough getting here.”

I grinned. I wondered what Alice Nichols had used as a bribe to get Harvey to put me in next to her. “Hello, kitten.”

Alice smiled through a cloud of smoke. “You were better-looking the last time I saw you.”

“So? Do I need a shave?”

“You need a new face. But I’ll take you like you are.” She shrugged her shoulders and the spiderweb of a negligee fell down to her waist. What she had on under it wasn’t worth mentioning. It looked like spun moonbeams with a weave as big as chicken wire. “Let’s go to bed.”

“Scram, kitten. Get back in your own hive.”

“That’s a corny line, Mike, don’t play hard to get.”

I started to climb out of my clothes. “It’s not a line, kitten, I’m beat.”

“Not that much.”

I draped my shirt and pants over the back of the chair and flopped in the sack. Alice stood up slowly. No, that’s not the word. It was more like a low-pressure spring unwinding. The negligee was all the way off now. She was a concert of savage beauty.

“Still tired?”

“Turn off the light when you go out, honey.” Before I rolled over she gave me a malicious grin. It told me that there were other nights. The lights went out. Before I corked off one thought hit me. It couldn’t have been Alice Nichols he had meant when he called some babe a man-hating bitch.

Going to sleep with a thought like that is a funny thing. It sticks with you. I could see Alice over and over again, getting up out of that chair and walking across the room, only this time she didn’t even wear moonbeams. Her body was lithe, seductive. She did a little dance. Then someone else came into my dream, too. Another dame. This one was familiar, but I couldn’t place her. She did a dance too, but a different kind. There was none of that animal grace, no fluid motion. She took off her clothes and moved about stiffly, ill at ease. The two of them started dancing together, stark naked, and this new one was leading. They came closer, the mist about their faces parted and I got a fleeting glimpse of the one I couldn’t see before.

I sat bolt upright in bed. No wonder Miss Grange did things that bothered me. It wasn’t the woman I recognized in her apartment, it was her motions. Even to striking a match toward her the way a man would. Sure, she’d be a man-hater, why not? She was a lesbian.

“Damn!”

I hopped out of bed and climbed into my pants. I picked out York’s room from the diagram and tiptoed to the other side of the house. His door was partly opened. I tapped gently. No answer.

I went in and felt for the switch. Light flooded the room, but it didn’t do me any good. York’s bed had never been slept in. One drawer of his desk was half open and the contents pushed aside. I looked at the oil blot on the bottom of the drawer. I didn’t need a second look at the hastily opened box of .32 cartridges to tell me what had been in there. York was out to do murder.

Time, time, there wasn’t enough of it. I finished dressing on the way out. If anyone heard the door slam after me or the motor start up they didn’t care much. No lights came on at all. I slowed up by the gates, but they were gaping open. From inside the house I could hear a steady snore. Henry was a fine gatekeeper.

I didn’t know how much of a lead he had. Sometime hours ago my watch had stopped and I didn’t reset it. It could have been too long ago. The night was fast fading away. I don’t think I had been in bed a full hour.

On that race to town I didn’t pass a car. The lights of the kid’s filling station showed briefly and swept by. The unlit headlamps of parked cars glared in the reflection of my own brights and went back to sleep.

I pulled in behind a line of cars outside the Glenwood Apartments, switched off the engine and climbed out. There wasn’t a sign of life anywhere. When this town went to bed it did a good job.

It was one time I couldn’t ring doorbells to get in. If Ruston had been with me it wouldn’t have taken so long; the set of skeleton keys I had didn’t come up with the right answer until I tried two dozen of them.