The Mike Hammer Collection

“Better get him to a hospital. Ain’t none here. Nearest one’s in Sidon.” He yanked a pad out of his pocket and wet the tip of a pencil with his tongue. “What’s your name, mister?”

I almost blurted it out without thinking. If he heard it I’d be under his gun in a second, and there wasn’t much I could do with this mob around. I stood up and motioned him away from the crowd. On the other side of the upturned car I looked him square in the eye.

“This wasn’t an accident,” I said, “I ran him off the road.”

“You what?”

“Keep quiet and listen. This guy is a kidnapper. He may be a killer. I want you to get to the nearest phone and call Sergeant Price of the state police, understand? His headquarters is on the highway outside of Sidon. If you can’t get him, keep trying until you do.”

His hands gripped my lapels. “Say, buster, what are you trying to pull? Who the hell are you, anyway?”

“My name is Mike . . . Mike Hammer. I’m wanted by every crooked cop in this part of the state and if you don’t get your paws off me I’ll break your arm!”

His jaw sagged, but he let go my coat, then his brows wrinkled. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “I always did want to meet you. Read all the New York papers y’ know. By damn. Say, you did kill that Sidon cop, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did.”

“By damn, that’s good. He put a bullet into one of our local lads one night when he was driving back from the casino. Shot him while he was dead drunk because he didn’t like his looks. He got away with it too, by damn. What was that you wanted me to tell the police?”

I breathed a lot easier. I never thought I’d find a friend this far out. “You call Price and tell him to get out to the casino as fast as his car will bring him. And tell him to take along some boys.”

“Gonna be trouble?”

“There’s liable to be.”

“Maybe I should go.” He pulled at his chin, thinking hard. “I don’t know. The casino is all we got around here. It ain’t doing us no good, but the guy that runs it runs the town.”

“Stay out of it if you can help it. Get an ambulance if you want to for that guy back there, but forget the hospital. Stick him in the cooler. Then get on the phone and call Price.”

“Okay, Mike. I’ll do that for you. Didn’t think you shot that cop in cold blood like the notices said. You didn’t, did you?”

“He was sitting on top of me about to bash my brains out with a billy when I shot the top of his head off.”

“A good thing, by damn.”

I didn’t hang around. Twenty pairs of eyes followed me across the field to my car, but if there was any explaining to be done the cop was making a good job of it. Before I climbed under the wheel he had hands helping to right the car and six people carrying the figure of The Face to the road.

Nelson, the Boss. Another character. Where did he come in? He wasn’t on the level if rat-puss was working for him. Nelson, but no Mallory. I stepped on the starter and ran the engine up. Nelson, but no Mallory. Something cold rolled down my temple and I wiped it away. Sweat. Hell, it couldn’t be true, not what I was thinking, but it made sense! Oh, hell, it was impossible, people just aren’t made that way! The pieces didn’t have to be fitted into place any longer . . . they were being drawn into a pattern of murder as if by a magnet under the board, a pattern of death as complicated as a Persian tapestry, ugly enough to hang in Hitler’s own parlor. Nelson, but no Mallory. The rest would be only incidental, a necessary incidental. I sweated so freely that my shirt was matted to my body.

I didn’t have to look for the killer any longer. I knew who the killer was now.

The early crowd had arrived at the casino in force. Dozens of cars with plates from three states were already falling into neat rows at the direction of the attendant and their occupants in evening dress and rich business clothes were making their way across the lawn to the doors. It was an imposing place built like an old colonial mansion with twenty-foot pillars circling the entire house. From inside came the strains of a decent orchestra and a lot of loud talk from the bar on the west side. Floodlights played about the grounds, lighting up the trees in the back and glancing off the waters of the bay with sparkling fingers. The outlines of a boathouse made a dark blot in the trees, and out in the channel the lights from some moored yachts danced with the roll of the ships.

For five minutes I sat in the car with a butt hanging between my lips, taking in every part of the joint. When I had the layout pretty well in my mind I stepped out and flipped the attendant a buck. The guy’s watery eyes went up and down my clothes, wondering what the hell I was doing there.

“Where’ll I find Nelson, friend?”

He didn’t like my tone, but he didn’t argue about it. “What do you want him for?”

“We got a load of special stuff coming in on a truck and I want to find out what he wants done with it.”

“Booze?”

“Yeah.”

“Hell, ain’t he taking the stuff off Carmen?”

“This is something special, but I’m not jawing about it out here. Where is he?”