Kill Me If You Can E-Book

Max Allan Collins

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 351

Beschreibung

Mike Hammer hits his 75th anniversary hard, after the disappearance of Velda, in this brand new case set between Kiss Me, Deadly and The Girl Hunters, based on an unproduced screenplay from Mickey Spillane's archives.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

Co-Author’s Note

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Epilogue

The 75th Anniversary of Mike Hammer

The Big Run

A Killer is Loose!

Killer’s Alley

The Punk

Tonight, My Love

About the Authors

Mike Hammer Novels

Also Available from Titan Books

KILL ME IF YOU CAN

A MIKE HAMMER NOVEL

MORE MIKE HAMMERFROM TITAN BOOKS

The Goliath Bone

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Lady, Go Die!

Complex 90

King of the Weeds

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The Big Bang

Masquerade for Murder

KILL MEIF YOU CAN

A MIKE HAMMER NOVEL

MICKEY SPILLANE

and

MAX ALLAN COLLINS

TITANBOOKS

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Kill Me If You Can: A Mike Hammer Novel

Print edition ISBN: 9781789097641

E-book edition ISBN: 9781789097665

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd 144

Southwark St, London SE1 0UP

First edition: August 2022

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work.

Copyright © 2022 Mickey Spillane Publishing, LLC

The Big Run © 2018 Mickey Spillane Publishing, LLC.

Originally published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

There’s a Killer on the Loose © 2008 Mickey Spillane Publishing, LLC.

Originally published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

Killer’s Alley © 2021 Mickey Spillane Publishing, LLC.

Originally published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

The Punk © 2018 Mickey Spillane Publishing, LLC.

Originally published in Mystery Tribune

Tonight, My Love © 2018 Mickey Spillane Publishing, LLC.

Originally published in The Strand

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

FOR KIM DEITCH—

a great storytellerwho appreciates Spillane

CO-AUTHOR’S NOTE

Kill Me If You Can takes place in the mid-1950s between the events of Kiss Me, Deadly (1952) and those of The Girl Hunters (1962).

The novel marks the 75th anniversary of Mike Hammer’s first appearance in I, The Jury (1947). An afterword charts the detective’s (and Mickey Spillane’s) rise to fame, and discusses the extensive materials in the writer’s files from which this book was developed.

Five short stories—two featuring Mike Hammer—are included here as bonus features, each introduced as to their histories and places in the Hammer-verse.

Max Allan CollinsAugust 2021

CHAPTER ONE

I had nothing to keep me company but my .45 and an itch to use it.

The intel was solid. I felt sure of that. But it was also sketchy as hell—they would hit this weekend, and that was all I knew. This very weekend the same robbery crew that hit the Civac reception last month would be dropping by unannounced.

They thoughtunannounced…

But the tip was solid. It came from Packy Paragon himself, the only mob guy in Manhattan worth trusting, ex-mob now but still tied in so tight he could hear a don pass wind. And he knew how bad I wanted the armed robbery crew who made the Civac score. They’d gotten more than just gems.

What they’d taken was far more valuable than any diamond, and they would die one by one until somebody spilled what he knew, and then he would spill, too, but it wouldn’t be information.

This was my third day in the brownstone mansion on Central Park West, just me and tens of thousands in antique furnishings, hundreds of thousands in artwork by museum-famous names, and a refrigerator stocked to the brim. But it was Sunday night now and I was running low on Blue Ribbon. The client could keep his caviar.

I’d spent weeks tracking the robbery crew, shaking the trees and the monkeys that fell out of them, paying for info, squeezing it out of some, and getting nowhere beyond the general news that an unknown outfit—apparently unaffiliated with any of the half dozen New York City crime families—was scooping up precious stones like kids on the beach shoveling sand for a castle.

Nasty damn kids.

They invaded homes, any time of day or night, usually when the owners were away but not always, assaulting anybody who got in their way. They crashed fancy do’s and don’t you just know they’d go around to the intimidated guests with open bags to stow jewelry and wallets in. Shouting, slapping, waving guns like Old West stagecoach robbers.

Then Packy, who I’d asked to sniff around for me, showed up at my office, 808 at the Hackard Building. He had something for me, but wasn’t about to use a phone—the feds were still tapping his, even though he’d gone straight, and who could say what cop or crook might be listening in on private eye Mike Hammer’s line?

Looking typically sharp in a tailored sharkskin suit, his steel-gray hair brushed back with no grease, Packy was a tall, slender George Raft-style slick about fifty who’d been the best of a bad bunch. We’d saved each other’s lives a couple of times and become unlikely friends.

“Don’t ask me where I got this, Mike,” Packy said in his radio announcer’s voice, ignoring the client’s chair, leaning in with a hand on the desk. He’d filled me in on everything he knew, which wasn’t a little.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I said.

“But this seems to be a crew unconnected to any of the six families. Some new kingpin is putting together teams for jewel heists of society types and visiting celebs. Appears to be doing the same for institutional robberies, too—banks, jewelry stores, payroll hits. These are guys who go in heavy and come out flush.”

“And this same crew made the Civac score?”

He straightened. “Can’t swear to it. But that’s the word.”

I nodded. “Thanks, Pack.”

“No trouble, Mike.” Finally he pulled up the chair. Leaned in like a worried priest. “Listen, you don’t mind my sayin’… you need to look out for yourself better. I heard they scraped you off the floor at the Hop Scotch the other night.”

I shrugged a shoulder. “Ever since the Civac mess, I gotta drink my way into a good night’s sleep.”

He wiggled a forefinger at me. “Well, you better start doin’ that at home. Keep snorin’ into the sawdust at this slopchute or that one, and somebody who doesn’t like you may catch up with you. Might take advantage of your current state of mind.”

“They might not like it if I woke up, though.”

“Right. If you woke up.” His handsome head tipped back. “You, uh, gonna make it to my grand opening?”

“That this weekend or next?”

“Friday next. Victoria’s on the bill.”

I grinned at him, surprised I could still do that. “Who else would be, on opening night?”

Packy was married to Victoria Valance—they’d been hitched a year but she was holding onto her maiden name, already established in show business with a minor hit record and a few national TV appearances. She was a curvy torch singer who sang like Julie London and looked just as good.

Maybe better.

“I bought that club for her,” Packy said, “so she’d have a home worthy of her talent. No more working the club circuit.”

Any guy with a wife like that would want to keep her close to home.

“I got a ringside table for you,” he said.

“Wouldn’t miss it,” I told him.

He got up and made his way to the door onto the empty outer office. Paused and looked back at me. “Mike, you really need to get a hold of yourself. Clean up your act. Would a shave and a bath kill you? And at least buy some Sen-Sen for Christ’s sake. Word to the wise guy.”

“Thanks, kid.”

“Don’t mention it.” He gave me a little salute and was gone.

What came next had been no trickier than putting the pin back in a grenade when you had the shakes. I looked up a number and dialed it. I talked my way past a receptionist and then a mellow, confident voice came on the line. “Walter Greenway speaking.”

“Mr. Greenway? Mike Hammer.”

“I know. That’s why I took your call.”

“Well, we haven’t met, Mr. Greenway….”

“No. But I’ve read about you in the Daily News and seen you make the eleven o’clock news. I figure a colorful individual as well-known in Manhattan as Michael Hammer may be able to afford a handsome investment or two.”

“I can’t even afford an ugly one. But something’s come up that concerns you, sir, and I should share it. And I may be able to help.”

*   *   *

Walter Greenway’s Wall Street office was the size of a chapel, but mammon was worshiped in this walnut-lined masculine chamber. And he eyed me from behind a mahogany pulpit of a desk worthy of the Pope but didn’t seem about to bestow a blessing. His gray vested suit was Brooks Brothers or better, his navy silk tie cost what my suit did; his frame loomed big with some heft but little fat, head oblong, eyes dark and sharp, features regular but grooved, hair white and perfectly in place, though the white eyebrows were out of control.

In early summer the fireplace off to my left went unlit, a gilt-framed oil painting over it, the subject of which was sitting opposite me. Skyscrapers were peering at us through windows at right, as if we had their rapt interest.

“I’m surprised, Mr. Hammer,” he said, his voice as warm as the fire and just as deadly, “that you might think someone in my position would not already employ sufficient security.”

“Normally I might agree with you. You have the usual door-shakers, the night watchmen making the rounds of your well-off neighborhood. They check the front and back and side doors three times through the night, and by day, too, if you and your wife are both away.”

Greenway’s nod took about as long as my words had.

I went on: “And you have the doors and first-floor windows hooked up to a real loud alarm, and wired to a central monitoring station by the same company you use for the door-shakers.”

“By ‘first-floor windows,’” Greenway said, “you imply the three floors above are somehow vulnerable.”

“I don’t know how they’re getting in,” I admitted.

That frown probably made his people pee a little. “But you’ve undertaken surveillance of our home, and have determined—”

“I haven’t,” I said, cutting in rudely, “done any surveillance at all.”

The big head went back. “Excuse me? You’ve just outlined our security measures in some detail. Where did you get that information?”

“I didn’t have to get it anywhere. Those are the best options available to you, unless you have live-in security, which almost no one does with a private residence in Manhattan.”

Suddenly the eyes were as wild as the eyebrows. “Then what is the point of this, Mr. Hammer?”

“The point is, I have reliable information that this weekend… youare away this weekend? Hamptons, as usual?”

Greenway thought about that, before nodding. But he did nod, and not so slowly this time.

I said, “My informant says you’ll be hit sometime this weekend.”

He sucked in air, huffed it out. “Thank you for this information, Mr. Hammer. I’ll share it with the police. If they think there’s anything to it—”

I raised a palm. “You’d get some cooperation from them, sure. You could even mention my name and that would lend some credibility. But I thought you might like to prevent this from happening again.”

“It hasn’t happened for the first time!”

“Then tell the police. Their prowl car will go by a few extra times and maybe… maybe… stop the robbery in its tracks. And you’ll file it away and in a few months you’ll be ripe for the plucking. Again.”

“I find this vaguely insulting.”

“Really I’m behaving myself.”

He sat forward, just a little. “Are you? I would say you need a shave. Have you been sleeping in those clothes? I’m disappointed by the way you present yourself, Mr. Hammer.”

“You’re not wrong, sir. I’m drinking too much and I’m disgusted with myself. You’ve read about the Civac robbery and its tragic aftermath?”

Another nod, neither slow nor fast.

“Then you must know,” I said, “that my agency was in charge of the security at the Civac affair.”

“I do indeed. Which colors my lack of enthusiasm for hiring you for a similar purpose.”

Now I leaned forward. “Mr. Greenway, I will stop these thieves and make an example of them. No one will ever again dream of attempting the burglary of your home. And no scrimy bastard will dare try pulling a heist where the Hammer Agency is providing security.”

He drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, thoughtfully. “As I said, Mr. Hammer, I’ve read of your…exploits. In the tabloid press, where perhaps they may well be exaggerated…”

“They are not exaggerated.”

“You would kill an intruder?”

“I would kill an armed robber.”

A part of him obviously liked the sound of that. He might never admit it in public, but I could read him. And he read me, all right. Frowning, he said, “I could never sanction a reckless disregard of—”

“I’ll do my best not to shoot up your antiques and artwork. Aren’t you going to ask me my price?”

Eyes wide, mouth too, he said, “Uh… what retainer would be required?”

“It’ll be a flat fee. One dollar, to make it legal. I work through an attorney and I’ll have him send the paperwork over. And I’ll handle his fee.”

“This sounds personal.”

I got on my feet. “It usually is with me. That’s why everybody’s heard of me, but I don’t have an office like this.”

*   *   *

If my client could have seen me after I’d camped out in his digs for the better part of three days, he might have changed his mind taking me on, even at a buck. I hadn’t shaved or showered since I got here. I’d slept in this old brown suit the night before I came on duty, though here my bed had been the couch in the study with my .45 in my hand and in my lap. And I didn’t sleep deep. A man in a living nightmare doesn’t risk actual dreaming.

My belly was operating on beer and cold meat—good stuff from the best deli, and useful protein. They had fresh fruit on hand, oranges and apples and pears. I had some cheese, too, like the human rat I was becoming, scurrying around this house, checking out all the rooms. Not because I thought somebody had sneaked in but to familiarize myself. How many were on this crew I had no clue. Where in this house full of valuable items they might go, I couldn’t be positive.

The safe was likely. More than. Packy had known about the safe in the study, which was a smaller version of the walnut chamber on Wall Street but with wall-to-wall bookcases on three sides, leather-bound volumes and pricey first editions. The safe was behind a row of deluxe Dickens volumes, a horizontal baby designed to tuck away nicely.

In that safe, I was told, were all the precious-gem-set jewelry Mrs. Greenway possessed. Some bearer bonds running to a hundred grand kept the rocks company, and some legal documents that wouldn’t mean bupkus to burglars.

The study itself was a metal-padded, soundproofed room—a so-called Faraday cage—dating to when the brownstone had been owned by the Republic of Yugoslavia a decade ago, where officials of the Soviet puppet state and visiting dignitaries (and spies) could converse or make calls without the risk of being wiretapped or otherwise surveilled.

Packy said it sounded like an inside job, that someone on the household staff had shared the layout of the joint as well as info about antique jewelry in the master bedroom and the location of key paintings of value and precious art pieces, sculpture, vases and such. This I hadn’t told Greenway. Some cards you play close to the vest.

Mr. Greenway’s cozy little sandstone-fronted pad sported thirteen-foot ceilings and consisted of five bedrooms, six bathrooms, hardwood floors, an elevator, nine working fireplaces, a central staircase, a living room/dining room with baby grand and satin drapes and crystal chandelier, with a terrace off the kitchen onto a garden. The four floors had an atrium under a stained-glass skylight with cherubs dancing or maybe flying. Picasso, Miró, and Matisse paintings watched me expensively from the walls and all those antiques had a French look, like this building built around the turn of the century was mistaking itself for Versailles.

I wasn’t just a fish out of water, I was a fish on the moon. But I looked past all that to focus on the overall layout. Top to bottom: basement had guest quarters with living room, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, and storage area; first floor a spacious living room and kitchen; second—family room, guest bedroom, two bathrooms; third—a master bedroom and a master bathroom bigger than my two-room office suite; and fourth—two guest bedrooms, two bathrooms, and the study.

With the jewels and bearer bonds in that safe, the study provided the logical focal point. When I wasn’t down in the kitchen feeding myself, or using one of the half-dozen bathrooms, I decided to wait for my guests in there—the comfy cream-in-your-coffee leather couch along one of the walls of books making a good place to camp out. When the help returned from the Hamptons with Mr. and Mrs. Greenway, their duties would include emptying the study’s matching leather wastebasket for apple cores and empty Blue Ribbon cans.

No TV or radio in the study, but I couldn’t have risked watching or listening anyway. So I lay back with my .45 handy and read a leather-bound copy of The Prisoner ofZenda—a good yarn—and was damn near the end when I heard the rustling on the roof.

I wouldn’t have heard it in that sound-proofed chamber, only I’d left the door standing open for that very reason. I put the book back on the shelf, grabbed my gun and slipped out into the hall that circled the stairwell under the stained-glass skylight. Moonlight made the cherubs glow but some devilish shadows were joining them now.

Directly across from the study was a bathroom and I ducked in there. I watched in the dark, with the door open, until from above came the screeeeeee of cutting glass. I closed the door but left enough to watch the skylight where a cherub disappeared and night took his place. A head appeared in the opening—eyes in a face obscured by a balaclava, peering down for a look-see—and I shut the door some more.

Gradually, the cherubs lifted out, via suction cups probably—the leaded-glass panels heavy enough to be a chore—and then half a dozen cherubs had flown and some wooden framework got kicked out, the pieces falling down the stairwell like brittle rain. The hole in the skylight was plenty to accommodate the crashers at my one-man party. A black nylon rope dropped through and hung there, the end coiling snakelike on the floor near the stairwell.

The aperture was filled by first one and then another and another slender man in tight long-sleeve stocking-mask-to-boot garb, sidearms holstered at their hips; they came down like water gliding along a flower’s stem, each man a globule. Two had fairly large canvas pouches slung over their shoulders, another a smaller variation. They dropped to the floor near the stairwell, one at a time, five in all, the first four scrambling out of the next one’s way, every man getting a gun into his black-gloved right hand as soon as he could.

I could have shot them, one by one, coming down—and don’t think I didn’t consider it. But I needed one alive to ask some questions. I closed the bathroom door until it was shut, save for an edge I could spy through. Three intruders rattled down the stairs. With no one home, I wondered what the rush was. On the other hand, these brownstones were slammed together side by side, and any commotion heard or seen could attract unwanted attention.

My hunch was they didn’t intend to go out the way they’d come in—more likely an amount of time had been set aside and a car would pull up and they’d go out the front door, loaded down with goodies. To hell with the stupid alarm—they’d be gone before any watchman or cop could react.

Only they weren’t going anywhere. They didn’t know it, but they weren’t.

The two who’d entered the study left the door open. I went over there and stood to one side, back to the wall, .45 snout up, and eavesdropped. Tossed books were hitting the floor. I gathered they’d be cracking the safe, not blowing it. And that horizontal number behind the leather-bound books wouldn’t take much to crack.

Time crawled, seconds adding up to minutes. Then:

“Got it!”

They laughed and congratulated themselves in profane jubilation, dumping gems and jewelry into the smaller pouch in a tinkling shower like the tiny pieces of ice the precious cut stones were named for.

“Look at this stuff,” the same voice said. “These are bearer bonds! Good as cash money. Better.”

Stacks of paper thumped into the pouch, the gems making a percussive rattle. “Let’s get the hell out,” the other one said.

That was my cue.

I stepped in, pushed the door of the soundproofed chamber shut behind me, and before I had the chance to introduce myself, the man in black nearest me raised his gun, a silenced automatic, and I had to plug the panicky idiot.

Being dead made him lose his balance; he tumbled backward even as a ribbon of red celebrated his demise above him. The safecracker had his hands full of the pouch. I gestured with the .45 barrel to the couch where I’d been reading Prisoner of Zenda.

“Take a seat,” I said.

The slender figure in black was frozen, looking at his fallen comrade, who stared out stocking-mask eye holes at the ceiling.

“Take… a… seat,” I repeated.

The safecracker swallowed. Nodded. Backed over to the couch and, when he felt it hit the back of his legs, sat clumsily. The canvas pouch was in his lap.

“Whose crew is this?” I asked.

He was shaking, teeth chattering as if from the chills. “I don’t know. I’m not one of them.”

“You had me fooled.”

“No! I’m just jobbing this. They needed that box open and I was here to open it. And I did.”

He gestured with the bag, then with a lurch to his feet flung the thing and its contents at me and I was showered with gems and gold-and-silver jewelry and flying bearer bonds, but if he thought that would faze me, he was wrong, because the .45 thundered in the small space, the sound-proofing only making the roar more extreme, and the slug caught him in the throat and sat him back down. Then he was sitting there gurgling—his hands, his wriggling fingers trying to rise to staunch the blood oozing from his throat but unable to quite pull it off.

I swore to myself, brushing gems off like oversize dandruff. I stuffed the .45 back under my arm and plucked the silenced automatic, a .22 Browning, from the disinterested fingers of the dead guy staring up in filmed-over blankness. I figured making less noise dealing with the other three wouldn’t be a bad idea, if they’d separated. When I slipped back into the hall, under the skylight where night was seeping through, the safe cracker had stopped gurgling.

The master bedroom, whose frou-frou pink-and-white decor reflected only the lady of the house, was home to a box of valuable costume jewelry—cheap stuff by the standards of the Greenways, but vintage material that could run into the hundreds and even thousands. I took the back stairs, the central stairwell making too much of a target out of me, and burst into the big room, staying low. One figure in black had been posted here, and he was at a fancy white mirrored dresser dumping out a fancy pink jewelry box into another modest-sized canvas shoulder pouch.

But when he swung my way, he had his own silenced .22 ready and I had no choice. My silenced rod coughed twice and he did a jerky dance and flung himself back, knocking over perfume bottles and knick-knacks and providing another festive stream of red to splash the mirror in a room dominated otherwise by pink.

That left two and I needed one alive.

I used the back stairs again and it brought me out by the baby grand. One of the black-clad burglars was helping himself to a Matisse over the fireplace and another was in the formal dining room area over at the right, grabbing a Picasso, the female subject of which gazed at me with one weird eye. He took off running toward the kitchen and, goddamnit, I tried for his legs and missed and had to take him down with a head shot; his momentum twisted him around and he gaped at me with only one eye left, a hideous gnarled scarlet exit wound taking the other one’s place, making his ghastly stare worse than the Picasso’s.

And then there was one.

His hands were filled with the framed Matisse, a landscape that looked childish to me.

He said, “You… Iknowyou….”

I didn’t know him. All I had to go on was eyes in a black mask, after all.

I said, “What happened to the woman on the Civac job?”

“…What?”

No, I didn’t recognize him, but those eyes recognized me all right, those eyes filled with hysteria and terror, bugged eyes blinking under sweat-dripping lashes….

I was trembling. “The woman on the Civac job. Not the fat dame. Not the beast. The beauty.”

“You’re Mike Hammer. Jesus! You’re Mike Hammer….”

He hurled the painting at me and I reflexively fired the .22 and he fell away, and over the mantle of the marble fireplace the wall displayed a brand-new abstract original.

In red.

“Shit,” I said.

CHAPTER TWO

The Blue Ribbon restaurant on West 44th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues was a dark-wood-paneled paean to old Bavaria and German cuisine, beer hall music piped faintly in. Its bar was superbly stocked, with a narrow aisle between stools and tables, the latter along a wall of endless autographed celebrity photos—with a sketch by Caruso being the prize. My regular spot was in a niche where the famous faces included mine, which hung crookedly at the moment. I didn’t bother straightening it.

Velda would have.

The place was our favorite, Velda’s and mine. Most people called Velda my secretary, but she was more than that, much more—a full partner, the other licensed PI in Michael Hammer Investigations. But, over the years, what we had between us grew into another kind of partnership, signified by the ring I’d given her, a half-karat number a Diamond District client had paid me with.

She and I had sat together at this table more times than memory could calculate.

Big tux-sporting George, the Greek manager of the German place, paused to settle a disapproving gaze on me. “You’ve hardly touched your knockwurst, Mike.”

“Takin’ my time.”

“That’s your third Prior’s Double Dark, Mike.”

“Cuttin’ me off, George?”

“Not yet. Not yet.”

I forked a bite of knockwurst to placate him. I even chewed and swallowed it, and he nodded and went away.

A familiar voice said, “You look like hell.”

I saluted Captain Pat Chambers of Homicide with my pilsner of Prior’s. “Let me guess. They yanked my ticket.”

He loomed over me for a moment, the picture of quiet disgust, a big dark-blond guy with gray eyes, the kind of pleasant face in a crowd that came in handy for a cop. His suit looked slept in, but compared to mine it just arrived from the cleaners. Finally he tossed his hat on the table and pulled out the chair Velda had so often used and sat and said, “Your private investigator’s license has indeed been suspended, pending the results of the hearing into the shooting at the Greenway residence.”

“It’s been suspended before, but never indeed been suspended. I’m coming up in the world.”

“I don’t think so. Your permit to carry a gun is revoked, too. I’d say you finally crossed the line.”

“How’d I manage that?”

He waved a hand. “Five dead on a home invasion? You working ‘security?’ Your client says you got a tip. Want to talk about it?”

“I didn’t get a tip. I had a hunch Greenway was a sitting duck for the crew going around relieving rich broads of expensive baubles they never needed in the first place.”

“So you’re an ambulance chaser now.”

“Usually the ambulance leaves after I get there.”

George brought Pat his own Prior’s and the two nodded at each other and for a moment they seemed to share a “what are we gonna do about this guy” look.

“By this ‘crew going around,’” Pat said to me, “you mean the plunder squad that made the Civac hit.”

I shrugged.

“You weren’t working security at Greenway’s,” Pat said through his teeth. “You were playing your same old ‘getting even’ game. The Mike Hammer blue plate special—Revenge with a side of Murder.”

I frowned at him. “I didn’t murder anybody. They were armed robbers. They had guns they were getting ready to use.”

“Like you were ready with your gun to use.”

I leaned way forward. “Listen, buddy, I didn’t want them dead. I wanted them alive and talking.”

He made a sound deep within him that was half cough, half laugh. “You just miscalculated, ‘buddy.’ You thought you’d put three or four of them down and the remaining couple of survivors would be so scared they’d shit themselves and start running off at the mouth like bawling kids caught with their hands in the cookie jar.”

My response was a mumble I barely heard myself. “I, uh… triedto… questionthem….”

Now he leaned across the table. “For years I been telling you this kill-happy spree of yours would catch up with you. That it would make you pay. Well, now it has, but you aren’t paying. Velda paid. But you sure as hell didn’t.”

“I’ll find her, Pat.”

He shook his head. “You just don’t get it, do you? You put her life on the line so you could pick up an extra paycheck. You already had something on the docket for the night of the Civac party—that suspicious death one of your precious insurance clients wanted you to make a murder out of. So you sent that girl in and she—”

“Velda was no ‘girl!’ Jesus, Pat, you know that. She was an experienced ex-policewoman with a Vice Squad background. She couldn’t carry a PI ticket in this state otherwise.”

He was shaking his head, his upper lip curling into a bitter smile. “A hundred people at that party, and half a million in rocks on just the lady of the house, never mind the damn guests, and you send in one operative? I call it negligence.”

I slapped the air dismissively. “What the hell is it to you, Pat?”

He got rid of half his beer. Set the glass down with a slosh and a thud. “What’s it to me? She was my friend, too.”

“Quit talking about her in the past tense, Pat. I’ll find her.”

He jerked a thumb at his chest. “If anybody finds her, it’ll be us poor underpaid public servants. And she’ll be in the same shape as Mrs. Civac. I told you that at the morgue. But okay. From now on, I’ll humor you. Present tense. She’s my friend, too.”

“She’s my girl, Pat.”

“Oh, now she’s a girl.”

“That’s right. Get your own.”

He took that like a punch. Then he got to his feet, stuffed on his hat, and said, “You better shower and shave before that hearing, Mike. And put on a clean pressed suit while you’re at it. Maybe skip the orange juice at breakfast—you know, the half-vodka pick-me-up?”

“Thanks a bunch for the advice.”

“You need it. Because you know what, chum? You stink.”

I gave him two short words, and then he shook his head and was gone.

A few minutes later, George dropped off a pilsner of dark beer. “Last one, Mike.”

I nodded. Sipped. Thought back.

*   *   *

The call came in six weeks before.

The voice on the phone had a distinct German accent. He introduced himself as Rudolph Civac, who had recently moved from Chicago with his wife Marta to an estate in Westchester County.

“We are throwing a little get-together to introduce ourselves to New York,” Civac said, as if human beings could introduce themselves to a city or maybe an entire state.

“I’m a two-person agency, Mr. Civac. But I can put together a whole security team, if you like.”

“That will not be necessary, Mr. Hammer.” He spoke in a rather slow, unhurried manner. “We have a security service already. They won’t be on the scene but will be on the alert. Still, I would feel better if Marta had a personal bodyguard nearby at all times.”

“Why is that, sir?”

“Marta’s first husband, her late husband, made a habit of giving her an annual anniversary gift of a precious gem, which would then be set in gold or silver, rings in particular. Half a million dollars’ worth, over time. And…” The voice chuckled deep. “… she does like to show them off.”

“Well, that could make her a prime target. There’s been a rash of jewel robberies at private functions of late. Perhaps you’ve read about them.”

“Oh yes. Which has spurred my concern, and my action. Of course, Marta has fine paste copies she could wear that would do perfectly well, but… you know women.”

Most of the women I knew had more sense, but I said, “I do. What’s the date of your event?”

He gave it to me and I checked my calendar.

“Mr. Civac, I have a conflict that evening. But my partner, Velda Sterling, is available. She’s a pro all the way—fully licensed as an investigator and to carry a gun. I might have recommended her in any case, because over time I’ve had two heists pulled under my nose when they happened in a ladies’ room.”

A slight tightness came into the voice. “I would feel better if you handled this personally.”

“Not possible, sir. But Miss Sterling can take on anything that might come up. I can drive out to your estate that night when my other business is finished. Where are you in Westchester?”

“Bedford Corners. Ours is a small estate. Eleven acres.”

He didn’t seem to be joking. Nor did he flinch when I gave him a quote at triple my usual rate. I told him I’d call back to confirm the job after I’d spoken to Miss Sterling.

Velda was in the outer office putting away a manila folder in a four-drawer filing cabinet. She was in a simple white blouse, a black pencil skirt, nylons and ballet flats, and made a Hollywood glamor-girl wardrobe out of them. Tall, damn near tall as me, her midnight hair a style-defying pageboy cut brushing her shoulders, she glanced at me in a smile that the lushness of her lips made special no matter how many times she sent it my way.

“You look like the cat,” she said, “who ate the canary.”

“We actually have a paying client, sugar.”

But her smile disappeared when I told her she now had plans for a certain upcoming Saturday night. She came over to me in that slow, casual way that was as lithe as a leopard and as graceful as a runway model.

Almost nose to nose, she said confrontationally, “Don’t you think you might have checked with me first?”

I touched that nose of hers lightly. “That’s what I’m doing now.”

Her smile returned when she heard what the client was willing to cough up for the privilege of her company.

“Grab your notebook,” I told her.

Soon she was sitting across from me in my office, those long, lovely yet muscular legs crossed, her pen poised to write in the hand that sparkled with that half-a-karat ring.

“You’d agree this seems like a routine job,” I said.

“I do.”

“You sound like a bride.”

“Promises, promises. But half a million in rocks is never routine. And with these jewelry heists lately…”

I nodded. “Can you handle it?”

“Don’t insult me.”

“Sorry, honey. But on that same Saturday night, I’m getting access to the penthouse apartment where that suspicious death took place, and the insurance people will be on hand, which means we can’t do this one together.”

When she shrugged, nice things happened in the white blouse; it was like a couple of kittens having a friendly fight. “I can handle it.”

“I know you can, doll. But I’ll drive out there when I’m done anyway. Make nice with our wealthy clients.”

She cocked her head, frowned just a little. “I’m not familiar with Civac or his wife.”

“And I’m not either. Understand, I haven’t accepted yet. We need to check Civac’s background, routine job or not. Call Irv Kupcinet in Chicago at the Sun Times, and I’ll call Hy Gardner at the Herald Tribune. Between the two of ’em, we’ll get the lowdown.”

She nodded, closed her notebook and scurried off. I took time out to watch her, thinking what a lucky damn man I was, then started dialing.

In half an hour, she was back in the chair again, legs crossed the opposite way, steno pad open and we compared notes.

“Irv says hi,” she began with a perfunctory nod. “Civac, a German emigre, was the European distributor for Singleton Manufacturing. Industrial machine parts. Singleton’s wife, Marta, a Chicago girl, is very big in Windy City society, a real Gold Coast diva.”

I gave a whistle. “Singleton Manufacturing. That’s sizeable dough.”

“Maybe you should have quadrupled the rate,” Velda said. “When Singleton died of a heart attack—no suspicious circumstances—Marta inherited everything. No kids, it seems. A year later, a little over a year ago, she and Civac married. Apparently, Marta put good people in charge of her late hubby’s business. Now she and Rudy have taken an early retirement to Westchester County and Marta has her eye on being a social influence in our little corner of the world.”

“That tallies with everything Hy told me,” I said. “His wife Marilyn says Marta is kind of a joke in society circles, but that doesn’t mean she won’t have a good crowd at her coming out party. He doesn’t have anything much on Civac. Nothing suspicious, but Civac doesn’t turn up in the newspaper files till ten years ago, when he went to work for Singleton. An unsubstantiated rumor is that he fled Germany to avoid a concentration camp. So. What do we think?”

“We think,” Velda said with a big beautiful smile, “I am going to restore the health of our bank account after spending an evening with Mrs. Rudolph Civac, helping her audition to high society by hanging half a million bucks in gems on herself like a Christmas tree.”

We both had a good laugh at that.

*   *   *

At eleven p.m. on the Saturday night in question, just as I was wrapping up work on the possible homicide, Velda called the prearranged number.

“Smooth as silk, boss,” Velda said. “Nothing unusual. Guests are oozing with reputations and money. No suspicious or unknown characters have crashed the party, and we already cleared the household staff. We said it would be routine, and it is routine.”

“What’s your read on the host and hostess?”

“Marta’s a ditz but nice enough. They’re holding dinner awaiting the arrival of Mr. Civac, who got delayed in the city.”

“Well, rich people like to eat late.”

“Yeah, they’re not five o’clock supper types like you, but midnight is overdoing it. He’s expected momentarily. You can skip coming out, if you like.”

“No. I think with the kind of loot they’ve invested in us, the famous Mike Hammer can put in an appearance.”

She laughed. “Certainly. The famous Mike Hammer can introduce himself to society.”

“Should I stop for my tux?”

“Like you own one. I better get back to it. Love you, you big lug.”

“Love you, doll.”

*   *   *

When I got to the estate on Succabone Road at just before one-thirty a.m., red and blue lights were stroking the night like a chef whipping up the night into a garish meal. A young cop stopped me at the gate and I told him who I was, showed him my ID, and was sent on ahead.

A thirtyish deputy sheriff named Garcia met me on the porch of the remodeled turn-of-the-century farmhouse. A swimming pool glimmered over to the right. All the lights in the big house were on.

I told him who I was and started to push past him, and he held me back. I held myself back till I heard him out.

“There’s been an abduction,” Deputy Garcia said.

“I want to talk to my operative—Miss Sterling.”

“She’s among the abducted.”