Mike Hammer--Murder, My Love Page 4

“Yes.”

  “Working-class girl, then.”

  She bristled just a little. “That’s right.”

  I held up a palm. “Hey, I’m a junior college grad myself. Took a while. Nights. Police science. We’re a couple of scientists, looks like.”

  She unbristled and decided to smile again. “What did your father do, Mr. Hammer?”

  “Bartender. So do you travel to D.C. with the senator? Run his office there?”

  She shook her head, the bounce of that stylish thatch of hers reminding me of Nicole again. Why did men so often have affairs with women who looked like their wives? If you’re tired of Coke, why have a Pepsi?

  “I hold down the New York office,” she said, cocking her head. “He has a considerable staff in Washington… You’re not writing anything down.”

  “I’m getting what I need, Ms. Long. When did your involvement with the senator begin?”

  She blinked, then the big brown eyes stayed open wide. “Excuse me?”

  “The senator wasn’t specific. How long, as they say, has this been going on? Couldn’t be too long, because I don’t make you for over twenty-five or -six.”

  She swallowed. “I don’t think there’s any reason for…”

  For what she didn’t seem able to say.

  “Mrs. Winters told you to give me full cooperation,” I reminded her. “She’s aware of the affair, and the senator is aware that she’s aware.”

  This cool, professional young woman seemed clearly flustered now. “You’ve been misinformed, Mr., what was it?”

  “Hammer.”

  “Mr. Hammer.” She smoothed the front of her. Did I mention she had a nice figure? She had a nice figure.

  She went on: “There is no affair. My relationship with the senator is strictly employer/employee.”

  I’d run into a lot of those in my time.

  I sat there smirking, a conscious prick move, and let her spin her wheels: “Mr. Hammer, I think Mrs. Winters may have some unfounded suspicions, and has sold you a bill of goods. I have no… intimate relationship with Senator Winters. I can’t imagine him confirming this outrageous assertion. Surely you haven’t talked to him directly.”

  I shook my head slowly. “I’m afraid I have, Ms. Long. I met with both the senator and his wife, at the same time. And your relationship with him… your ‘intimate relationship’… is not his first affair.”

  I almost said “dalliance,” but figured that might insult her, not wanting to push the prick thing too far.

  Her chin came up and the lids on the eyes came back down, to half-mast. “I suppose that’s possible,” she said, some ice hanging on the words. “The senator’s marriage is a most unhappy one.” The chin came up even further. “His wife has been cheating on him for years.”

  Imagine that.

  “If this…” Her voice tried to be strong—it was certainly louder now—but a quaver gave her away. “…if this is… something that woman has initiated… if that’s the kind of investigator you are…”

  I held up a hand. “I don’t do divorce work. This is more serious than that.”

  She laughed humorlessly, then huffed, “More serious than divorce?”

  “The senator is being blackmailed.”

  Now she had no expression at all. Just wide-open eyes. Then she said, “Oh dear.”

  I was careful not to say that she was part of that. But I was bum enough to at least vaguely suggest she might be.

  Holding up a hand again, I said, “As I say, the senator’s had a lot of relationships over the years. It’s somewhat surprising he’s not had the press dogging his heels on that account during previous campaigns. Or that he hasn’t encountered blackmail before, although perhaps he has. I wouldn’t necessarily know. This is my first job for Mr. and Mrs. Winters.”

  That was kind of cruel—saying “Mr. and Mrs. Winters.” She seemed to shrink in her chair.

  Then, in a very small voice, reminding me how recently she’d been a little girl, the young woman asked, “What can I do? To help. Help make this go away. Is Jamie… is Jamie going to pay whoever this is?”

  Calling him Jamie dropped any last hint of denial from the senator’s latest mistress.

  I said, “I really don’t know. I hope to find the person responsible and stop them.”

  “And take them to the police?”

  “No. Hell no.”

  She sat forward. “What can you do, Mr. Hammer?”

  “You say your father is a fireman in New Jersey? He’s still alive?”

  “Very much so. He’s still on the job.”

  I got a little melodramatic then. I unbuttoned the Perry Ellis jacket and let her glimpse the massive-looking butt of the .45 Colt Automatic, U.S. Army model, vintage 1914, in the shoulder sling, which had required some tailoring.

  I said to the young woman, who was vintage 1966 or so, “Ask your old man who Mike Hammer is.”

  She took that in, swallowed, nodded.

  I asked, “Who knows about the affair?”

  She frowned, not angry, more surprised. “Well, no one, of course!”

  “A roommate?”

  “No. No, no.”

  “Do you have a roommate?”

  “No, not since…”

  “Since the senator got you your own place?”

  “How did you know that?”

  “I’m a detective. No girlfriends who know?”

  “No girlfriends who know, no.”

  “Now, Ms. Long… Lisa… if you have a boyfriend on the side…” That sounded funny—a mistress with a boyfriend on the side—but it was all too typical. “…you need to tell me.”

  “No!”

  “No, you won’t tell me?”

  “No, I don’t have a boyfriend! On the side or anywhere.”

  “Other than the senator, you mean.”

  “…Other than the senator.”

  “Because if you do,” I said, and buttoned the coat back up, “I’ll find out. Again, ask your old man.”

  She swallowed. “I don’t have a boyfriend.”

  “Well, if you do, young lady,” I said, putting some condescension in, “and you two are in on this together? You should tell me now. And I’ll put an end to this with nobody getting hurt or going to jail. I promise you that.”

  Halfway through that little speech, she began shaking her head—no, no, no!—and got all that brown stuff tousled. She started to cry and her make-up ran. She got a box of tissues out of a drawer and tried to clean herself up. It wasn’t enough.

  She rose unsteadily. “Mr. Hammer… I need to use the rest room….”

  I stood. “I’m going to have a look at the senator’s inner office while you do that. Okay? It’s unlocked?”

  She nodded, swallowed, obviously appreciating the opportunity to freshen up, and hurried out.

  At least she was on one of the odd-numbered floors. When this place was built, there were only men’s rooms. Now it was MEN on the even and WOMEN on the odd. Finally some equality.

  As had been the case with the unfinished office in the high-rise-in-progress, a mahogany door announced SENATOR JAMIE B. WINTERS with a nameplate. As promised, the door wasn’t locked, but the other side of that door revealed it could be locked from within, turning the workplace into a trysting spot.

  I was in the front prow of the building now, a space filled with light even mid-afternoon. The walls narrowed to six feet across, where a curved balcony faced north onto the park, and from here you could get a good look at two large Corinthian columns and the top of a terra-cotta medallion.

  The walls were eggshell white, the one at my left arrayed with framed photos of the senator with other famous people—photos signed by the various celebs to him. Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Bill Cosby and other movie and music luminaries, were joined by President Carter, Walter Mondale, and Teddy Kennedy, plus sports figures including George Steinbrenner, Joe Namath, and O.J. Simpson. These hung above several old-fashioned radiators, which were putting out just enou
gh heat to deal with the fall cold snap.

  On the right was a very comfortable-looking brown leather couch. I gave it a raised-eyebrow look, just in case it was in the mood to make a confession. It wasn’t talking, but it did whisper. Two file cabinets faced each other just beyond the couch, their sides to the wall, to deal with the narrowing space.

  The senator’s desk was at right, too, the back of it to the wall with a visitor’s chair along the right-hand side. Winters would have to swivel a little to give a guest proper attention. Claustrophobic as it was in here, this remained an impressive office, truly one of a kind—or one of a handful, since there were potentially another twenty or so spaces like this elsewhere in the building.

  I didn’t bother with the file cabinets. I doubted the senator kept folders on his conquests, and anyway I had the ones his wife had worked up, right? But the drawers to his mahogany desk were worth a look. I expected they might be locked, one or two of them anyway, but that wasn’t the case. And the drawer on the bottom right was a pip.

  It was home to a “value” box of Trojan rubbers, a few sex toys and several bottles of booze—whiskey and vodka. I’d already spied a little fridge on the other side of the desk. Did I really have to check it for ice and mixer?

  By the time I was through in the inner office, the senator’s secretary was back at her desk, looking like a million bucks again. I thought, Some guys have all the luck, then remembered who my secretary had been for a lot of years now. And this little doll probably couldn’t even handle a gun.

  “You all right?” I asked her, standing by her desk.

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “You look fine.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I didn’t mean to upset you, but I’m that guy you hear about who goes around doing all those dirty jobs that somebody has to do.”

  That made her smile a little. “How can I help?”

  “You’ve helped plenty already.” I noticed the intercom/answer machine on the desk. “Let me try something.”

  “Pardon?”

  I handed her the receiver and hit record on the machine, then said, “I’m going back in the senator’s office. Call me on the intercom.”

  She frowned in confusion. “Okay…”

  I went in there and then her voice came over the little tinny mate to the intercom on her desk. “Can you hear me, Mr. Hammer?”

  “Yeah. I can hear you fine, Ms. Long. Leave the connection open till I say otherwise.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  That was the problem, being my age. Women who looked like her always called men who looked like me “sir.”

  I went over to the couch and sat, then spoke in a normal tone. “This is a test. Testing, one two three.”

  Then I got up and went all the way down to where the prow-shaped office was only six feet wide. In a normal voice, I said, “This is Mike Hammer. You’re a very lovely young woman, in case I forgot to mention it.”

  Then I went over by the desk and said to the intercom, “Okay, Ms. Long. Shut ’er off.”

  I walked back into the outer office where a red light was flashing on the answer machine. I hit play. It rewound automatically, and then I heard everything I’d said in the inner office, including how lovely Ms. Long was.

  She looked up at me like I’d just invented the light bulb. I smiled down at her and she smiled back at me till her smile soured. She’d just figured it out.

  Any hanky-panky going on in that inner office could be recorded by somebody out here.

  She covered her mouth with those coral-tipped fingers, and her eyes were so huge the big lenses barely contained them.

  “Someone…” she began. “Someone has a tape of… of the senator and I…?”

  “Yeah. May I assume you reserved your socializing till after office hours?”

  She nodded, nodded, nodded.

  “Who could have been in the building when you two were occupied?”

  “We always went out for dinner first. Sometimes to a show, movie, play, you know. Then back here or to my apartment.”

  “I’m interested in when you were here, together. Who else would be in the building then?”

  That took no thought. “It was usually pretty late. A security guard, doing rounds. A cleaning woman.”

  “You know them? Know their names?”

  “I know their first names. He’s Myron and she’s Erin. She lives in Brooklyn, I think, no older than me. You can probably get their names from the building superintendent.”

  I put a hand on her shoulder. “Okay. You just go on about your business as usual. I don’t want you to worry.”

  “It’ll be hard not to.”

  “You ask your father, the fireman.”

  “Ask him what?”

  “Ask him if Mike Hammer will look out for you.”

  That seemed to reassure her for a moment, but as I went out, I glanced at her and she was hugging her arms to herself, shivering.

  And it wasn’t cold in there at all.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  When it opened back in ’73, the new NYPD HQ, replacing the old Centre Street building, was described as a prime example of Brutalist architecture. Which is a fancy way of saying One Police Plaza, near City Hall and the Brooklyn Bridge, had all the personality of a big corrugated concrete box.

  I had never gotten used to Captain Pat Chambers of Homicide working out of a glassed-in, modern, personality-free office off the bullpen’s sea of metal desks and computers with their bulky monitors. Pat just never seemed to fit outside the world of scarred-up wooden desks and matching battered file cabinets, and certainly wasn’t suited to being on fishbowl display at all times.

  How’s a guy supposed to slap an uncooperative suspect?

  But he had brought his old brown leather swivel chair along with him, though the visitor’s chair I settled myself into had a padded back and seat, to offset its Brutalist design. I felt damn near welcome.

  “So what’s this about?” he asked, narrowing the gray-blue eyes at me.

  His tie was loose and he was in his rolled-up shirtsleeves. About my age, he had been my best friend since we’d gone to the police academy together, two lifetimes ago—a big, blond guy with no fat on him, and a still-handsome mug despite all the lines it had earned.

  “It’s just a job I’m on,” I said. “I could use a little help, is all.”

  Suspicion was in his DNA. “What kind of help?”

  “Just some background on a guy who used to be a cop.”

  He thought about that. “I heard somewhere you’re a detective. That would seem like the sort of thing you could root out for yourself.”

  I grinned. “Do I have to give you the taxpayer speech?”

  That got me a grin for my trouble. “Let’s go back to my first question. What’s this about?”

  “Pat, it’s just a job I’m on.”

  “I need some context.”

  “I can’t give you any without betraying a client. Let’s just say I’m looking into a security guy at a building where somebody may have entered my client’s office with illegal intent.”

  No grin now. “Sounds like police business.”

  I shrugged, flipped a hand over. “It’s just something I’m checking out. I have an address for this guy in the Bronx. But I thought maybe you might be familiar with him or know somebody who would be. The super I talked to said the guy retired from the detective bureau a couple of years ago, which might put him on your radar.”

  He rocked a little in the chair. “Security guy where?”

  “Flatiron Building.”

  “What’s the guy’s name?”

  “Myron Henry.”

  Pat stopped rocking. He leaned forward, folded his hands and looked at me like a warden regarding a prisoner who’d started more than his share of riots.

  “You’re kidding,” he said.

  “Yeah, this is a gag. A real rib-tickler. What the hell, Pat? What’s the score on this Henry character?”

  “
You don’t know?”

  I threw my hands up. “Sure, I know all about him. I just wanted to waste your time. I get a charge out of that.”

  He cocked his head and gave me the wary look. “You must have smelled something or you would’ve just phoned. You dropped by ’cause you heard something.”

  I copped to it. “The name Myron Henry rang a bell, when the Flatiron building manager gave it to me. Something about pilfering. But all I remember is you making a passing comment, one time. Nothing that made the papers.”

  “Pilfering puts it mildly,” Pat said, eyebrows up then down. “Henry was working Homicide, out in the Bronx, where he lives. Funny how every corpse he came across had no money on them.”

  “Not even pennies on their eyes, huh?”

  Pat grunted a laugh, pointed out at the bullpen beyond the glass. “We moved him here, to burglary. Which I said was a mistake, because it muddied up whether the actual robberies hadn’t been padded out by what Henry may have lifted.”

  “Was he ever brought up on charges?”

  Pat shook his head. “Cops have a bad habit of staying loyal to each other, even when it’s not deserved. Just like the bad guys, the good guys don’t rat each other out.”

  “Even when one of theirs is a bad guy himself,” I said, nodding. “But how could Henry have gotten on at the Flatiron, with that rep? Surely they checked his background.”

  “No charges, remember? File was clean. He even had a couple of commendations. But I knew what he was up to, and I called him on it.”

  “Even though he wasn’t one of yours?”

  Pat shrugged. “He’d got back on Homicide by then. This was just a couple of years ago.”

  “I don’t remember running into him.”

  “Well, you’ve kept your nose out of my business lately, pretty much. How long has it been since you got wrapped up in a murder case?”

  “That Penta business,” I said, referring to a contract killer who’d targeted me last year. Guess who came out on top. “And before that, nothing much for damn near a decade.”

  “Face it, Mike. You’re getting old.”

  “And you’re getting younger? You gonna make inspector before you put yourself out to pasture or what?”

  He smiled a little. “If you stay put on the bench, I just might. There are those who say my friendship with you has stood in my way, you know. How many self-defense pleas have you pulled off over the years?”