The Killing Man

it was a stormy afternoon and he had an appointment--with a corpse

Some days hang over Manhattan like a huge pair of unseen pincers slowly squeezing the city until you can hardly breathe. A low growl of thunder echoed up the cavern of Fifth Avenue, and I looked up to where the sky started at the 71st floor of the Empire State Building. I could smell the rain. It was the kind that hung above the orderly piles of concrete until it was soaked with dust and debris, and when it came down, it wasn't rain at all but the sweat of the city.

When I reached my corner, I crossed against the light and ducked into the ground-level arcade of my office building. It wasn't often that I bothered coming in on Saturdays, but my client couldn't make it any time other than noon today, and from what Velda had told me, he was representing some pretty big interests. I punched my button and rode the elevator up to the eighth floor.

On an ordinary day, the corridor would have been filled with the early-lunch crowd, but now the emptiness gave the place an eerie feeling, as though I were a trespasser and hidden eyes were watching me. Except that I was the only one there, and the single sign of life was the light behind my office door.

I turned the knob, pushed the door open and just stood there a second because something was wrong, sure as hell wrong, and the silence was as loud as a wild scream. I had the .45 in my hand and I crouched and edged to one side, listening, waiting, watching.

Velda wasn't at her desk. Her pocket-book sat there, and a paper cup of coffee had spilled over and stained the sheaf of papers before dripping to the floor. And I didn't have to move far before I saw her body crumpled up against the wall, half of her face a bloody mass of clotted blood that seeped from under her hair.

The door to my office was partially open and there was somebody still in there, sitting at my desk, part of his arm clearly visible. I couldn't play it smart. I had to explode and ram through the door in a blind fury, ready to blow somebody into a death full of bloody, flying parts.... Then I stopped, my breath caught in my throat, because it had already been done.

The guy sitting there had been taped to my chair, his body immobilized. The wide splash of adhesive tape across his mouth had immobilized his voice, too, but all the horror that had happened was still there in his glazed, dead eyes that stared at hands whose finger tips had been amputated at the first knuckle and lay in neat order on the desktop. A dozen knife slashes had cut open the skin of his face and chest, and his clothes were a sodden mass of congealed blood.

But the thing that had killed him was the note spike I kept my expense receipts on. Somebody had slipped them all off the six-inch steel nail, positioned it squarely in the middle of the guy's forehead and pounded it home with the bronze paperweight that held my folders down.

I ran back to Velda. Her pulse was weak, but it was there, and when I lifted her hair, there was a huge hematoma above her ear, the skin split wide from the vicious swelling of it. Her breathing was shallow and her vital signs weren't good. I grabbed her coat off the rack, draped it around her, stood up and forced the rage to leave me, then found the number in my phone book and dialed it.

The nurse said, "Dr. Reedey's office."

"Meg, this is Mike Hammer," I told her. "Burke in?"

"Yes, but--"

"Listen, call an ambulance and get a stretcher up here right away and get Burke to come up now. Velda's been hurt badly."

While she dialed, she said, "Don't move her. I'll send the doctor right up. Keep her warm and--" I hung up in midsentence.

Pat Chambers wasn't home, but his message service said he could be reached at his office. The sergeant at the switchboard answered, took my name, put me through, and when Pat said, "Captain Chambers," I told him to get to my office with a body bag. I wasn't about to waste time with explanations while Velda could be dying right beside me.

Her skin was clammy and her pulse was getting weaker. The frustration I felt was the kind you get in a dream when you can't run fast enough away from some terror that is chasing you. And now I had to stay here and watch Velda slip away from life while some bastard was out there getting farther and farther away all the time.

There were hands around my shoulders that yanked me away from her, and Burke said, "Come on, Mike, let me get to her."

I almost swung on him before I realized who he was. When he saw my face, he said, "You all right?"

After a moment, I said, "I'm all right," and moved back out of the way.

Burke Reedey was a doctor who had come out of the slaughter of Vietnam with all the expertise needed to handle an emergency like this. He and his nurse moved swiftly and the helpless feeling I had before abated and I moved the desk to give him room, trying not to listen to their comments. There was something in their tone of voice that had a desperate edge to it. Almost on cue, the ambulance attendants arrived, visibly glad to see a doctor there ahead of them, and carefully, they got Velda onto the stretcher and out of the office, Burke going with them.

"What happened, Mike?" asked Meg.

"I don't know yet." I pointed to the door of my office. "Go look in there."

A worried look touched her eyes and she walked to the door and opened it. I didn't think old-time nurses could gasp like that. Her hand went to her mouth and I saw her head shake in horror. "Mike...you didn't mention--"

"He's dead. Velda wasn't. The cops will take care of that one."

She backed away from the door, turned and looked at me. "That's the first...deliberate murder...I've ever seen." Slowly, very slowly, her eyes widened.

I shook my head. "No, I didn't do it, Meg. Whoever hit Velda did that, too."

The relief in her expression was plain. "Do you know why?"

"Not yet."

When she left, I walked over to the miniature bar by the window and picked up a glass. Hell, this was no time to take a drink. I put the glass back and went into my office.

The dead guy was still looking at his mutilated hands, seemingly ignoring the spike driven into his skull until the ornamental base of it indented his skin. The glaze over his eyes seemed thicker.

I heard the front door open and Pat shouted my name. I called back, "In here."

Pat was a cop who had seen it all. This one was just another on his list. But the kill wasn't what disturbed him. It was where it had happened. He turned to the uniform at the door. "Anybody outside?"

"Only our people. They're shortstopping everybody at the elevators."

"Good, keep everybody out for five minutes. Our guys, too."

"Got it," the cop said and turned away.

"Let's talk," Pat said.

It didn't take long. "I was to meet a prospective client at noon in my office. Velda went ahead to open up and get some other work out of the way. I walked in a few minutes before twelve and found her on the floor and the guy dead."

"And you touched nothing?"

"Not in here, Pat. I wasn't about to wait for you to show before I got a doctor for Velda."

Pat looked at me with the same old look.

"OK," he said. His eyes looked tired. "Let's get our guys in here."

While the photographer shot the corpse from all angles and did close-ups on the mutilation, Pat and I went into Velda's office, where the plain-clothes officers were dusting for prints and vacuuming the area for any incidental evidence. Pat had already jotted down what I had told him. Now he said, "Give me the entire itinerary of your day, Mike. Start from when you got up this morning, and I'll check everything out while it's fresh."

"I got up at seven. I showered, dressed and went down to the deli for some rolls, picked up the paper, went back to the apartment, ate, read the news and took off for the gym."

"Which one?"

"Bing's Gym. I got to the office a few minutes before twelve and walked into...this." I waved my hand at the room. "Burke Reedey will give you the medical report on Velda and the M.E. will be able to pinpoint the time of death pretty well, so don't get me mixed up in suspect status."

Pat finished writing, tore a leaf out of the pad and closed the book. He called one of the detectives over and handed him the slip, telling him to check out all the details of my story. "Let's just keep straight with the system, buddy. Face it; you're not one of its favorite people."

Pat bent over and examined the body carefully. His arm brushed the dead man's coat and pushed it open. Sticking up out of the shirt pocket was a Con Edison bill folded in half. When Pat straightened it out, he looked at the name and said, "Anthony DiCica." He held it out for me to look at. "You know him, Mike?"

"Never saw him before."

"DiCica was an enforcer for the New York Mob. He was a suspect in four homicides, never got tapped for any of them and gained a reputation of being a pretty efficient workman."

"Then?"

"Simple. Somebody cracked his skull open in a street brawl and he came all unraveled. He was in a hospital and left with severely impaired mental facilities."

"Who sponsored him?"

"Nobody took him in. He remembered very little of his past, but he could handle uncomplicated things."

"What's the tag line, Pat?"

"He could have made enemies. Somebody saw him and came after him."

"In my office?"

"OK, Mike, who would want you dead?"

"Nobody I can think of."

"Hell, somebody wants you even better than dead. They want you all chopped up and with a spike through your head. Somebody had a business engagement with you at noon, got here early, took out Velda and didn't have to wait for you because there was a guy in your office he thought was you and he nailed that poor bastard instead."

"I've thought of that," I said.

I picked up the phone and called the building super. I told him I needed the place cleaned up and what had happened. He said he'd do it personally. I thanked him and hung up.

Pat said, "Let's go get something to eat. You'll feel better. Then we'll go to the hospital."

"I don't want to eat. I'll tell you what you can do, though."

"What's that?"

"Station a cop at her door. Somebody missed Velda, and they may want another go when they find out what happened."

•

Pat had called ahead, and the cop at Velda's door looked at my I.D. and let me in. The hospital room was in a deep gloom, only a small night light on the wall, making it possible to see the outlines of the bed and the equipment. When the door snicked shut, I picked up the straight-backed chair by the sink, went to the bed and sat down beside her.

Velda. Beautiful, gorgeous Velda. Those deep-brown eyes and that full, full mouth. Shimmering auburn hair that fell in a pageboy around her shoulders.

Now her face was a bloated black-and-blue mask on one side, one eye totally closed under the bulbous swelling, the other a flat slit. Her hair was gone around the bandaged area and her upper lip was twice its normal size.

I put my hand over hers and whispered, "Damn it, kitten...."

Then her wrist moved and her fingers squeezed mine gently. "Are you...all right?" she asked me softly.

"I'm fine, honey, I'm OK. Now, don't talk. Just take it easy. All I want is to be here with you. That's enough."

I just sat there, and in a minute, she said, "I can...listen, Mike. Please tell me...what happened."

I played it back without building it up. I didn't tell her the details of the kill and hinted that it was strictly the work of a nut, but she knew better.

Under my fingers, I could feel her pulse. It was steady. Her hand squeezed mine again. "They came in...very fast. One had a hand over his face...and he was...swinging at me...with the other. I...never saw a face at all." Remembering it hadn't excited her. The pulse rate hadn't changed.

I said, "OK, honey, that's enough. You're supposed to take it real easy awhile."

But she insisted. "Mike...."

"What, kitten?"

"If the police...ask questions...."

I knew what she was thinking. In her mind, she had already put it on a case basis and filed it for immediate activity.

"Play sick," I said.

Until she made a statement, everything was up in the air. She was still alive, so there was a possibility that she could have seen the killers. They couldn't afford any witness at all, but if they tried to erase her, they'd be sitting ducks themselves. From here on, there would be a solid cover on the hospital room. The killers were going to sweat a little more now.

I thought I saw the good corner of her mouth twitch in a smile, and again, I got the small finger squeeze. "Be careful," she said. Her voice was barely audible and she was slipping back into a sleep once more. "I want...you back."

Her fingers loosened and her hand slipped out of mine. She didn't hear me when I said, "I want you back, too, baby."

•

Outside the door, a cop said, "How is she?"

"Making it." He was a young cop, this one. He still had that determined look. He had the freshness of youth, but his eyes told me he had seen plenty of street work since he left the academy. "Did Captain Chambers tell you what this is about?" I asked.

"Only that it was heavy. The rest I got through the grapevine."

"It's going to get rougher," I said. "Don't play down what you're doing."

He grinned at me. "Don't worry, Mike, I'm not jaded yet."

"Take care of my girl in there, will you?"

His face suddenly went serious. "You got it, Mike."

Downstairs, another shift was coming on, fresh faces in white uniforms replacing the worn-out platoon that had gone through a rough offense on the day watch. The interns looked too young to be doctors, but they already had the wear and tear of their profession etched into them. One had almost made it to the door when the hidden P.A. speaker brought him up short, and with an expression of total fatigue, he shrugged and went back inside.

I cut around the little groups and pushed my way through the outside door. The rain had stopped, but the night was clammy, muting the street sounds and diffusing the light of the buildings. Nights like this stank. There were no incoming taxis and it was a two-block walk to where they might cruise by. There was no other choice, so I went down to the street.

•

I thought the little guy in the oddball suit who shuffled up to me on the street outside my apartment was another panhandler. He peered at me, a grin twisting his mouth, and said, "Remember me? I'm Ambrose."

"Ambrose who?"

"How many people with a name like that you know? From Charlie the Greek's place, man. Charlie says he wants you to give him a call."

"Why?"

"Beats me, man. He just told me to tell you that. And the sooner the better. It's important."

I told him OK, handed him two bucks and watched him scuttle away. When I got upstairs, I dug out the old phone book, looked up the Greek's place and called Charlie. His raspy voice started chewing me out for not stopping by the past six months, and when he was finished, he said, "There's a gent that wants to meet with you, Mike."

Charlie was an old-fashioned guy. When he said gent, it was with quotation marks around it, printed in red. Any gent would be somebody in the chain of command that led to the strange avenues of what they deny is organized crime. He wasn't connected; he was simply a useful tool in the underworld apparatus.

"He got a name, Charlie?"

"Sure, I guess. But I don't know it."

"What's the deal?"

"Like tonight. Can you make it down here tonight?"

I looked at my watch. "OK, give me thirty. You think I need some backup?"

"Naw. This guy's clean."

"Tell him to sit at the bar."

"You got it, Mike."

The Greek's place was just a run-down old saloon in a neighborhood that was going under the wreckers' ball little by little. Half of the places had been abandoned, but Charlie's joint was near the corner, got a regular trade and a lot of daytime transients, but from four to seven every evening, the gay crowd took over like a swing shift, then left abruptly (continued on page 114)Killing Man(continued from page 86) and everything went back to sloppy normalcy.

A pair of old biddies were sipping beer at the end of the bar and right in the center was a middle-aged portly guy in a dark suit having a highball. His eyes had picked me up in the back bar when I'd come in and we didn't have to be introduced. He waved Charlie over. I said, "Canadian Club and ginger," then we picked up the drinks and went to a table across the room.

"Appreciate your coming," he said.

"No trouble. What's happening?"

"There are some people interested in Tony DiCica's death."

"Pretty messy subject. You know what happened to him?"

He bobbed his head. "Tough."

"Yeah. He sure as hell messed up my office. But that's not what you want to know. Let's get something squared away here. You guys don't give a shit whether DiCica is dead or alive, do you?" I snarled.

"Couldn't care less."

"You mean unless he told my secretary what you wanted."

After thinking about it, he acknowledged the point. "Something like that."

I said, "You know, I don't give a rat's ass what Tony had. I don't have it and she doesn't either."

"Some people aren't going to look at it that way," he told me. "Until they are absolutely satisfied, you're going to have a problem."

"There's one hell of a hole in your presentation, fella," I said. "Tony's been running loose a long time. If he had something, why didn't they get it from him when he was alive?"

"You know about Tony's history?"

"I know."

"If you guess the answer, I'll tell you if it's right."

Hell, there could be only one answer. I said, "Tony had something he could hang somebody with." The guy kept watching me. "He had permanent amnesia after getting his head bashed in and didn't remember having it or putting it somewhere." The eyes were still on mine. The story line started to open up now. "Just lately, he said or did something that might have indicated a sudden return of memory." The eyes narrowed and I knew I had it.

When he put his drink away in two quick swallows, he rolled the empty glass between his fingers a moment and said, "A week ago, he suddenly recognized somebody--he called him by his right name."

"Then he relapsed into amnesia again?"

"Nobody knows that."

"So?"

"You have your fingers in all kinds of shit. You move with the clean guys and you go with the dirty ones just as easy. Nobody likes to mess with you because you've blown a few asses off with that cannon of yours and you got buddies up in Badgeville, where it counts. So you'd be just the kind of guy Tony DiCica would run to with a story that would keep his head on his shoulders."

"Crazy," I said.

"He went to your office to arrange something with you. Before you got there, somebody showed up and did the job, expecting to walk away with the information. He didn't have it on him."

This thing was really coming back at me. "OK, what's my part?"

"He is your client, Mr. Hammer. He told you all in return for an escape route you were to furnish."

"That's a lot of bullshit, you know."

A gesture of his hands meant it didn't make any difference. "You see, as far as certain people are concerned, you're in until they say you're out. The information Tony had can be worth a lot of money and can cause a lot of killing. One way or another, they expect to get it back."

"What happens if the cops get it first?"

"Nobody really expects that to happen," he said. He pulled his cuff back and looked at his watch.

I took one more sip of my drink and stood up. "I guess somebody wants me to talk."

"Certain people are giving you a few days to make a decision."

I could feel my lips pulling back in controlled anger and knew it wasn't a nice grin at all. I pulled the .45 out and watched his eyes go blank until I flipped out the clip and fingered a shell loose. I handed it to him. "Give them that," I said.

"What's this supposed to mean?"

"They'll know," I told him.

•

I called Pat the next day. "What have you got on DiCica?"

"Interesting history. I'm going off duty. How about a beer?"

"How can you go off duty? It's afternoon."

"I'm the boss, that's how."

"I'll meet you downtown."

Over the beer, Pat told me about Anthony DiCica. He had a listing of all his arrests, convictions that were a laugh and the victims he was suspected of killing. Every dead guy was involved in the Mob scene, and two of them were really big time. Those two had been hit simultaneously while they were eating in a small Italian restaurant. DiCica, after shooting both parties in the head twice, made off with an envelope that had been seen on the table by a waiter. Following the hit, there had been an ominous quiet in the city for a week, then several other persons in the organization died. It was two weeks later that Anthony DiCica's head collided with a pipe in a street brawl.

"They went a little overboard in bringing him in and cracked his skull. After that, he was no good to anybody. They still needed his goods and had to wait for him to come out of his memory loss before they could move...."

Pat lifted his beer and made a silent toast. "We really took his place apart, you know."

"No, I didn't know. What did you find?"

"Zilch. There were no hiding places. We even tried the cellar area. If he had anything at all, it's someplace else. End of case. It died with Anthony."

"The hell it did," I said. "Somebody in the organization thinks DiCica suddenly remembered and dropped his secret on me."

"Brother!"

I nodded. "The bastards as much as said it's my ass if I don't produce."

"Shake you up?"

"I've been in the business too long, kiddo. I just get more cautious and keep my .45 on half cock."

He watched me, frowning, grouping his thoughts. "That mutilation of DiCica could have been a message to you, then."

"It's beginning to look like it," I said.

"What do you do now?"

"See how far I can go before I touch a trip wire."

"You don't give a damn, do you?" he said.

"About what?"

"Anything at all. You don't want any backup, no protection...you want to be out there all alone like a first-class idiotic target."

I shrugged.

"There's a lot more of them than there are of you."

I watched him and waited.

He finally said, "They know how you are, Mike. You're leaving yourself wide open."

I felt a tight grin stretch across my lips and said, "That's the trip wire I set out."

•

They knew me at the hospital but wanted to see my I.D. anyway. The cop at (continued on page 207)Killing Man(continued from page 114) the door scanned my P.I. ticket and driver's license, checking my face against the photo before letting me into Velda's room.

"Hey, kid," I said softly. In the dim light, I saw her head turn slowly and knew she was awake. They had propped her up, the sheet lying lightly across her breasts, her arms outside it. The facial swelling had lessened, but the discoloration still put a dark shadow on her face. One eye still was closed and I knew smiling wasn't easy.

"Do I look terrible?"

I let out a small laugh and walked to the bed. "I've seen you when you looked better." I took her hand in mine and let the warmth of her seep into me. Inside, I could feel a madness clawing at my guts, scratching at my mind because somebody had done this to her. They had taken soft beauty and a loving body and tried to smash it into a lifeless hulk because it was there and killing was the simple way of moving it.

"Mike, don't," she said.

I sucked my breath in, held it, then eased out. I was squeezing her hand too hard and relaxed my fingers. "Everything OK, kitten?"

"Yes. They are taking care of me." She tilted her head up. "What's happening?"

I filled her in with some of the general information, but she stopped me. She wanted details, so I gave them to her.

I put my hands on the mattress and bent down so my face was close to hers. Her tongue slipped between her lips, wetting them, and as my mouth touched hers, she closed one eye. A kiss is strange. It's a living thing, a communication, a whole wild emotion expressed in a simple moist touch and, when her tongue barely met mine, a silent explosion. We felt, we tasted, then, satisfied, we separated.

"You know what you do to me?" I asked.

She smiled.

"Now I'm as horny as hell and I can't go out in the hall like this. Not yet."

"You can kiss me again while you're waiting."

"No. I'll need a cold shower if I do." I stood up, still feeling her mouth on mine. "I'll be back tomorrow, kitten."

Her smile was crooked and her eye laughed. "What are you going to do with...that?" she asked me.

"Hold my hat over it," I told her.

•

I had the cabby drop me at the corner and picked up a late-evening paper at the kiosk. There was a mist in the air and the streetlights had a soft glow around them and lighted windows in the apartments were gently blurred. It was the kind of night that dampened street sounds and put a dull slick on the pavement.

The doorman at my place generally paced under the marquee, but tonight I couldn't blame him for staying inside. I hugged the side of the building out of the wind, moved around the garbage pails outside the areaway that ran to the rear and saw the feet inside the glass doors as the guy jumped me from behind.

Damn.

One arm grabbed me around the throat and a fist was ready to slam into my kidneys, but I was twisting and dropping at the same time, so fast that the fucker lost his rhythm and went down with me. His arm came loose and he rolled free, and I forgot all about him because the other one had come out of the hallway with a sap in his hand, ready to lay my skull open. I let the swing go past my face and threw a right smack into his nose, saw his head snap back, then put another into his gut.

Everything was working right. The guy behind me came off the sidewalk thinking he had me nailed. I didn't want any broken knuckles. I just drove my fist into his neck under his chin and didn't wait to see what would happen. The boy with the sap was still standing there, nose stunned, blood all over his face but not out of it.

You don't have to waste any skin on guys like that. I kicked him in the balls, and the pain-instinct reaction was so fast he nearly locked onto my foot. His mouth made silent screaming motions and he went clown on his knees, his supper foaming out of his mouth.

I went inside. The doorman was just coming out of it, a lump already growing on the side of his head. "Can you hear me, Jeff?" I said.

He grimaced, his eyes opened and he nodded. "That bastard...."

"I have them outside. You give the cops a call."

"Yeah. Damn right."

The big guy I had rapped in the throat was trying to get away. He was on all fours, scratching toward the car at the curb. I took out the .45, let him hear me jack a shell into the chamber and he stopped cold. That old Army automatic can have a deadly sound to it. I walked over to him, knelt down and poked the muzzle against his head.

"Who sent you?"

He shook his head.

I thumbed the hammer back. That sound, the double click, was even deadlier.

"We...was to...rough you up." His voice was hardly understandable.

"Who sent you?"

His head dropped, spit ran out of his mouth and he shook his head again.

"Why?" I asked him. I kept the tone nasty.

All the big slob had in his eyes was fear. "You sent...the guys...a bullet."

I heard the siren of a squad car coming up Third Avenue. "How much did they pay you?"

"Five hundred...each."

"Asshole," I said. I eased the hammer back on half cock and took the rod away from his head. A grand for a mugging meant that the victim would be wary and dangerous, and these two slobs hadn't given it a thought. I gave him a kick in the side and told him to get over beside his buddy. I didn't have to tell him twice.

Wheels squealing, a car turned at the corner and the floodlight hit me while it was still rolling. The cameraman came out, turning film, a girl in a flapping trench coat right behind him, giving into a hand mike a rapid, detailed description of what was going on, and I even let New York City's favorite on-the-spot TV team catch me giving the guy another boot just for the hell of it.

•

When the squad car got there, I identified myself, gave a statement and let the doorman fill in the rest. The two guys had waited near the curb nearly an hour, spotted me at the corner, then one had gone in, grabbed the doorman, then waited until the other had jumped me to lay a sap on his head before joining the fun. Luckily, the sweatband of the doorman's uniform cap had softened the blow. Both of the clowns had knives in their pockets along with the old stand-bys, brass knuckles and a blackjack. It took one radio call to get an I.D. on them and they were shoved, handcuffed, into the rear of the squad car.

Enough of the crowd had collected to make it an interesting spot in the late news coming up, and the reporter said, "Any further comment on this, Mr. Hammer?"

At least she'd remembered my name.

"They just tried to mug the wrong guy," I said. Then I winked into the lens and walked away.

•

Upstairs, I called Pat. I ran through the story again, then added, "It's all coming back to DiCica, buddy. They're making sure I know they're watching."

"You don't scare them, Mike."

"If they think I have access to what Anthony had, I can sure shake them up. What have you got?"

"Something extremely interesting. My boys came up with another lead, an old dealer who is straight now and doesn't want his name mentioned in any way. You're right. It all comes back to when DiCica shot those two gang leaders and picked up that envelope."

"And you know what was in it?"

"Yes. Directions."

"To what?"

"A truckload of cocaine."

"Do you realize how much stuff that is?"

"In dollars, the street value is incredible. Anyway, it came up via Route Ninety-five into the New York area. The trailer was delivered to a depot in Brooklyn, all the paperwork completed, and the next day, another tractor signed for it, hauled it out and it hasn't been seen to this day."

"But somebody would know where the cargo went to."

"Sure," Pat said. "The drivers would have known."

"So they were the only ones who knew?"

"Why not? The fewer the better. They picked their own hiding spot for the shipment, made up a map and delivered it to the bosses. On the way out, they were followed by hit men and taken out in a supposed accident. The bosses didn't want anybody knowing where the stuff went. Unfortunately, they were in line for a hit themselves that night. And DiCica got the map."

"Tell me something. How much is the street value of the junk today?"

He told me. I let out a low whistle. Nine-digit figures are understandable. When they reach ten, it's almost unbelievable.

"Mike, unless we find that cargo, nothing will ever end."

"Are you checking out all the leads?"

"The trailer would take a certain-size building to be concealed in. We're working on the assumption that something was bought, rather than leased. By now, taxes would be owing, and if anything matches, we'll be on it."

"You don't have that much time."

"Any other options?"

"A lot of luck."

•

Sickness and injury never stop in the big city. It was a bloody night in the emergency room, spatters of red on the walls, trails stringing along the floors, smeared where feet had skidded in its sticky viscosity. The walking wounded were crowded by stretchers and wheelchairs and my short cut to Velda's floor was blocked.

When I reached her floor, I pushed through the steel fire door into the corridor and the wave of quiet was a soft kiss of relief. The nurse's desk was to my left, the white tip of the attendant's hat bobbing behind the counter. Someplace, a phone rang and was answered. Halfway down the hall, a uniformed officer was standing beside a chair, his back against the wall, reading a paper.

The nurse didn't look up, so I went by her. Two of the rooms I passed had their doors open, and in a half-lit room, I could see the forms of the patients, deep in sleep. The next two doors were closed and so was Velda's.

Until I was ten feet away, the cop didn't give me a tumble, then he turned and scowled at me. This was a new one on the night shift and he pulled back his sleeve and gave a deliberate look at his wrist watch, as if to remind me of the time.

I said, "Everything OK?"

For a second, the question seemed to confuse him. Then he nodded. "Sure," he replied. "Of course."

All I could do was nod back, like it was stupid of me to ask, and I let him go back to leaning against the wall. At the desk, the nurse glanced up. She recognized me and smiled. "Mr. Hammer, good evening."

"How's my doll doing?"

"Just fine, Mr. Hammer. Dr. Reedey was in twice today. Her bandages have been changed and one of the nurses has even helped her with cosmetics."

"Is she moving around?"

"Oh, no. The doctor wants her to have complete bed rest for now. It will be several days before she'll be active at all." She stopped, suddenly realizing the time herself. "Aren't you a little early?"

"I hope not." Something was bothering me. Something was grating at me and I didn't know what it was. "Nothing out of order on the floor?"

She seemed surprised. "No, everything is quite calm, fortunately."

A small timer on her desk pinged and she looked at her watch. "I'll be back in a few minutes, Mr. Hammer...."

Now I knew what the feeling was. That cop had looked at his watch, too, and his was a Rolex Oyster, a big, fat, expensive watch street cops don't wear on duty. But the real kicker was his shoes. They were regulation black, but they were wing tips. The son of a bitch was a phony, but his rod would be for real and whatever was going down would be just as real.

I said, "How long has that cop been on her door?"

"Oh...he came in about fifteen minutes ago."

It was two hours too soon for a shift change.

"Did you see the other one check out?"

"Well, no, but he could have gone--"

"They always take the elevators down, don't they?"

She nodded, consternation showing in her eyes. She got the picture all at once and asked calmly, "What shall I do?"

"Give me the phone and you beat it. Don't look back. Do things the way you always do."

She patted her hair in place, went around the counter and stepped on down the hall. She didn't look back. I pulled her call sheet over where I could see it and dialed hospital security. The phone rang eight times and nobody answered. I dialed the operator and she tried. Finally she said, "I'll put their code on, sir. The guards must be making their rounds."

Or they're laid out on their backs someplace.

Overhead, the call bell started to ping out a quiet code every few seconds.

I hung up and dialed Pat's office. I said, "Pat, I have no time for talk. I'm at the hospital and everything's breaking loose. There's a phony cop at the door, so the real officer is down somewhere. They're going to try to snatch Velda. Get some cars up here and no sirens. They smell cops and they'll kill her."

"They moving now?"

I heard wheels rolling on the tile and squinted around the wall. Coming out of the last door down on the right was an empty gurney pushed by a man in an orderly's clothes. "They're moving, Pat. Shake your ass."

I hung up and stepped out into the corridor, whistling between my teeth. The guy pushing the gurney stopped and started playing with the mattress. I pushed the button on the elevator, looked down at the cop who was watching me and waved. The phony cop waved back.

When the elevator halted, I got in, let the doors close and pushed the stop button. I stood there, hoping the guy pushing the gurney wouldn't notice the lights over the door standing still. The rubber tires thumped a little louder, passed the elevator, and when I didn't hear them any longer, I pushed the open button and stared out into the corridor. I took my hat off, dropped it on the floor and yanked the .45 out of the holster. There was a shell in the chamber and the hammer was on half cock. I thumbed it back all the way and looked down the corridor.

The guy in the orderly's clothes was standing there with an AK-47 automatic rifle cradled in his arms, watching both ends of the hallway. His stance was low, and when he swung, his coat flopped open and it looked like he was wearing upper-body armor. The gurney was sticking out of Velda's door. She was strapped onto the carrier. The man in the uniform came out of her room, a police-service .38 in one hand and one hell of a big bruiser of an automatic in the other. Unless I got some backup, I was totally outgunned and no way could I close in on them without putting Velda's life on the line.

A quiet little code still pinged from the hall bell. Security still hadn't answered.

No wasted moves this time. The pair moved the gurney away from me and I knew they were headed toward the other bank of elevators. The phony orderly had draped a sheet over the gun on his arm. The uniform had hidden the automatic but had placed the .38 on the gurney next to Velda.

I stepped back into the car, let the doors close, pushed the first-floor button and hoped nobody tried to get on. Like all hospital elevators, this one took forever to pass each level, and before it stopped, I picked my hat up and held it over my .45. When it reached the first floor, I stepped out. This time, I didn't run. The gurney would be moving at proper walking speed, seemingly going through a normal routine, and as long as I hurried, I could meet it outside the building. There was no way this play could be stopped without some kind of shooting, and I didn't want anybody else in the way.

They came out of the elevator just as I stepped outside, and now I felt better. They had turned toward the walkway door and I was waiting out there in the dark. There were only a few seconds to look around for their probable course and find cover. The walkway curved down to the street, but the parking places were filled with off-street overnighters, and the cars there couldn't handle a limp patient. Unless they had planned on a mobile van or a station wagon, any transportation would have to be farther down the line, out of sight from where I was standing.

I moved on down the walk, reached the parked cars and got into the street behind them. The doors of the hospital swung inward. The guy in the orderly uniform came out first, the AK-47 under his arm, still covered. He never took his eyes off the area in front of him, pulling the gurney forward with one hand while the other man pushed from behind.

The gurney finally slid through the doors and now the phony cop had the oversized automatic in his hand.

I let them pass me, crouching down behind the cars, and when they were about ten feet in front of me, I kept pace with their movements.

A car turned up the road, momentarily lighting the area. It swept over the gurney, but the two went on in a normal manner. I stepped between the parked cars and let it pass. It was a civilian car with a woman at the wheel. It seemed like an hour had passed, but it had been only a few minutes.

Hell, the traffic was light. A squad car could have been here by now. Another set of lights turned up and a truck dropped down a gear and lumbered up the hill. I moved down two car lengths, still staying close, still silently swearing at the frustrating delays in emergency police actions. A car made a U turn at the hospital and came toward me from the other direction, and only when it got past me did a raucous blast from the loud-hailer yell, "Freeze, police!" and the power lights from the truck turned night into day, blinding the two men in the glare.

Everything happened so quickly that there was a hesitancy in the movements the men made. The phony orderly wasted one second trying to strip the sheet from the AK-47 and a pair of rapid blasts took him down and out. The phony cop jammed himself down in a crouch and his gun came up to shoot through the bottom of the gurney. He was out of the others' sight but not out of mine, and I squeezed off a single round that took him in the shoulder and spun him around like a rag doll.

I was standing and had my hands over my head so the cops wouldn't take me out with a wild shot, figuring me for the other side. Pat came running up, a snub-nosed .38 in his fist, and said, "You OK, Mike?"

"No sweat." I took my hands down in time to yell and point behind Pat, and he turned and fired at the phony cop, who was about to let go at the gurney again. Pat put one into the side of his head, blowing his brains all over the sidewalk. They all came out one side, so his face was gory but still recognizable.

The area was cordoned off so fast no spectators had a chance to get near the bodies. Two cops took the gurney out to the truck and lifted it into the back, and the lady cop from the first car got in with Velda and the truck lurched ahead, made a turn in the street and headed west.

Pat took my arm and hustled me toward his own marked cruiser that was close by. I said, "Where did you guys come from?"

"Come on, pal, I alerted this team as soon as you headed over here." He yanked a portable radio from his pocket and said into it, "Charlie squad, what do you have?"

There was a click and a hum, and a flat voice answered with, "One officer down in the patient's room, Captain. We have a doctor here who says he was sapped, then drugged. There are two syringes on the bed table, both empty."

"Is the officer OK?"

"Vital signs OK, doc says."

I tapped Pat on the shoulder. "Tell him to check the last room down the hall on the right."

He passed the message on, and a minute later, the receiver hummed and the voice said, "Got a nurse down in there, too, Captain. She got the same treatment. The patient who was there is gone."

"He sure is," Pat told him.

As we got into the car, the radio came alive again. Pat barked a go-ahead, and the cop on the other end said, "Captain, four hospital-security guys just got here. They answered a call in the basement and wound up locked in a storeroom."

"Good. Get a statement from them."

"Roger, Captain."

He turned the key and put the car in gear. Up ahead, the truck was turning the corner and he leaned on the gas to catch up to it. "Mind telling me where we're going?" I asked.

"For tonight, you're going fancy. I'm putting you up in my apartment. We'll hold you there overnight and get you squared away tomorrow. If you weren't a friend, I'd slap you in a prison ward to keep you out of trouble."

"Did you get a good look at the guy you shot?"

"I got a good look at both of them."

"Make 'em?"

He yanked the wheel, going around a car and pulling up directly behind the truck. "The slob playing cop was Nolo Abberniche. He started out as a kid with the Costello bunch. That bastard has knocked off a half dozen guys and all he has is three arrests on petty offenses."

"You seem to have a good line on him."

"Plenty of fliers, nationwide inquiries. Pal, you are traveling in some pretty heavy company. That other guy was Marty Santino. He's another hit man, but he likes fancy jobs. This one was right up his alley."

"Who's paying for it, Pat?"

"That died with those hoods. You know damn well we won't find anything to tie them in directly with any of the Mob boys."

"Beautiful," I said. "We wait for them to make another run on us."

"Not this time, Mike."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked him.

"Simple, pal. We have the location of the truck. It's in a barn on a farm north of Lake Hopatcong, New Jersey, on Route Ninety-four, just before Hamburg. Because it's an interstate operation, the FBI can get on this from their local offices a lot faster. And we're taking you and Velda out of the action. You're too important as witnesses and possible targets to be exposed during the mop-up. I know damn well you're not going to let her out of your sight, so we're setting both of you up at a safe house of our choosing. Any objections?"

"No."

"Good. I thought you'd do it my way for once. You'll be covering Velda and we'll be covering both of you, just in case. It may seem redundant, but we don't want to take any chances. Once we haul in that trailer, I expect things will quiet down."

"Things are never quiet around me, Pat. You should know that by now."

"Just shoulder the piece, Mike. You've had your revenge."

"Hell. Vengeance is mine," I said, and out of the corner of my eye, I caught Pat grinning at me. We both laughed, while the buildings of the city passed by.

"That mutilation of DiCica could have been a message to you,' he said. 'It looks like it.' I shrugged."