The Mike Hammer Collection (54 page)

The roof of the shack slanted down toward the back. I had to jump to reach it, preferring to chin myself up rather than use any of the empty soda boxes piled there. I left part of my coat on a nail and took the time to unsnag it. The slightest trace would be too much to leave behind.

I was able to reach a window then; tried it and found it locked. A recession in the wall farther down had stair steps of bricks making an interlocking joint and I ran my hand over it. I saw I had about ten feet to go to the roof, a vertical climb with scarcely a thing to hang on to.

I didn't wait.

My toes gripped the edges of the brick, holding while I reached up for another grasp, then my hands performed the same duty. It was a tortuous climb, and twice I slipped, scrambled back into position to climb again. When I reached the top I lay there breathing hard a minute before going on.

In the center of the roof was a reinforced glass skylight, next to it the raised outlines of a trap door. The skylight didn't give, but the trap door did. I yanked at it with my hands and felt screws pull out of weather-rotten wood, and I was looking down a black hole that led into the Seaside Hotel.

I hung down in the darkness, swinging my feet to find something to stand on, and finding none, dropped into a welter of rubbish that clattered to the floor around me. I had a pencil flash in my pocket and threw the beam around. I was in a closet of some sort. One one side shelves were piled with used paint cans and hard, cracked cakes of soap. Brooms lay scattered on the floor where I had knocked them. There was a door on one side, crisscrossed with spider webs, heavy with dust. I picked them off with the flash and turned the knob.

Under any other conditions the Seaside Hotel would have been a flophouse. Because it had sand around the foundations and sometimes you could smell the ocean over the hot dogs and body odors, they called it a summer hotel. The corridors were cramped and warped, the carpet on the floor worn through in spots. Doors to the rooms hung from tired hinges, eager for the final siege of dry rot, when they could fall and lie there. I went down the hallway, keeping against the wall, the flash spotting the way. To one side a flight of stairs snaked down, the dust tracked with the imprints of countless rat feet.

The front of the building was one story higher, and a sign pointed to the stairs at the other end. As I passed each room I threw the light into it, seeing only the empty bed and springs, the lone dresser and chair.

I found what I was looking for on the next floor. It was a room marked STORAGE, with an oversized padlock slung through the hasps. I held the flashlight in my teeth and reached for the set of picks I always carried in the car. The lock was big, but it was old. The third pick I inserted sent it clicking open in my hand. I laid it on the floor and opened the door.

It had been a bedroom once, but now it was a morgue of boxed sheets, mattresses, glassware and dirty utensils. A few broken chairs were still in clamps where an attempt had been made to repair them. Against the wall in the back an assortment of luggage had been stacked; overnight bags, foot lockers, an expensive Gladstone, cheap paper carriers. Each one had a tag tied to the handle with a big price marked in red.

The runner of carpet that ran the length of the room had been laid down without tacks and I turned it over to keep from putting tracks in the dust. I found what I was looking for. It was a small trunk that had Nancy Sanford stenciled on it and it opened on the first try

With near reverence I spread the folders apart and saw what was in them. I wasn't ashamed of Nancy now, I was ashamed of myself for thinking she was after blackmail. There in the trunk was her reason for living, a complete expose of the whole racket, substantiated with pictures, documents, notes that had no meaning at the moment but would when they were studied. There were names and familiar faces. More than just aldermen. More than just manufacturers. Lots more. The lid was coming off City Hall. Park Avenue would feel the impact. But what was more important was the mechanics of the thing, neatly placed in a separate folder, enlarged pictures of books the police and the revenue men would want, definite proof of to whom those books belonged. The entire pretty setup.

My ears picked up the sound, a faint metallic snapping. I closed the lid, locked it, then walked back on my original path, taking time to fold the carpet over and study it, and satisfied that I had left no trace, closed the door and snapped the padlock in place. From the baseboard around the wall I scooped a handful of dust and blew it at the lock, restoring to it the age my hands had wiped off.

A yellow flood of light wandered up the hall, centered on the stairs and held. I stepped back into a bedroom, stuffing my watch in my pocket so the luminous face would be out of sight.

The light was poking into rooms just as I had done. Feet sounded on the stairs, trying to be careful. Whoever stood behind that light was taking no chances, for it went down on the carpet, scanning it for tracks.

Back there in the room I grinned to myself.

The light came up the stairs throwing the whole corridor into flickering shadows, giving off a hissing noise that meant he carried a naphtha lantern. It came on to the door of the storage room. There was a sigh. He set the lantern on the floor, directing the beam toward the lock, and I heard him working over it with a pick.

He took longer than I did. But he got it open.

When I heard him enter the room I reached for my rod and stood with it in my hand. The racket he made dragging the trunk into the light covered the sound of my feet carrying me to the door. He was too excited to use a pick in the lock; instead he smashed it open and a low chuckle came out of his throat as he pawed through the contents.

I said, “Hello, Mr. Berin-Grotin.”

I should have shot the bastard in the back and kept quiet. He whipped around with unbelievable speed, smashing at the light and shooting at the same time. Before I could pull the trigger a slug hit my chest and spun me out of the doorway. Then another tore into my leg.

“Damn you anyway!” he screamed.

I rolled to one side, the shock of the bullet's impact numbing me all over. I lay on my face and pulled the trigger again and again, firing into the darkness.

A shot licked back at me and hit the wall over my head, but that brief spurt of flame had death in it. The lantern had overturned, spilling the naphtha over the floor, and it rose in a fierce blaze right in Berin's face. I saw his eyes, mad eyes, crazy eyes. He was on his hands and knees shoving himself back, momentarily blinded by the light.

I had to fight to get a grip on the gun, bring it back in line. When I pulled the trigger it bucked in my hand and skittered across the floor. But it was enough. The .45 caught him in the hip and knocked him over backward.

Everything was ablaze now, the flames licking to the bedding, running up the walls to the ceilings. A paint can and something in a bottle went up with a dull roar. It was getting hard to feel anything, even the heat. Over in the corner, Berin groaned and pushed himself erect. He saw me then, lying helpless on the floor, and his hand reached out for his gun.

He was going to kill me if it was the last thing he did. He would have if the wall hadn't blossomed out into a shower of sparks and given way. One of the timbers that had lost the support of rusted nails wavered, and like a giant falling pine tree, crashed into the room and nailed the goddamn killer to the floor under it.

I laughed like a fiend, laughed and laughed even though I knew I was going to die anyway.

“You lost, Berin, you lost! You could have gotten away, but you lost!”

He fought the heavy timber, throwing his hands against the flame of the wood to push it away and I smelt the acrid odor of burning flesh. “Get it off me, Mike! Get it off ... please. You can have anything you want! Get it off me!”

“I can't.... I can't even move. Maybe I would if I could, but I can't even move!”

“Mike....”

“No good, you filthy louse. I'll die with you. I don't give a damn any more. I'll die, but you'll go too. You never thought it would happen, did you? You had the ring and you thought you'd have time. You didn't know I killed Feeney and got the ticket from him.

“There was Lola waiting for me. You heard me tell her that on the phone. While you got the drinks you called Feeney and covered up by playing the phonograph for me. He must have walked right in on her. She was expecting me and she got a killer. Sure, you stalled me while Feeney went to my office and broke in. He did a good job of it, too. But he had to go back and kill Lola because she knew the address on the ticket and the camera could have been traced.

“Feeney called you right after he sank his knife in her, but she wasn't dead and saw him do it. You told Feeney to get out of there and wait for you somewhere. Sure, you wouldn't want Feeney to get his hands on that stuff. He got out ... just as I came in and Lola put the finger on him. She put the finger on you, too, when she pointed to the phone. Feeney got out, but I was coming in and he stepped back to let me pass and I didn't see him. I caught him, though. Yeah, you played it cautious right to the end. You took your time about getting here, careful not to attract attention in any way. Did you sneak out of your hotel or just pretend you were up early as usual?”

“Mike, I'm burning!”

His hair smoked, puffed up in a ball of flame and he screamed again. He looked like a killer, being bald like that. The other wall was a sheet of fire now.

“I didn't get the connection until tonight. It was the ring after all. The ring was very important. I sat there looking at a bottle of whiskey. The label had three feathers spread across the front just like the fancy plaque on your private morgue. I happened to think that the spread of the feathers looked just like a fleur-de-lis pattern, then I got it. The design on the ring
was
three feathers, battered but enough to make it hard to recognize.”

He fought the timber now, his face contorted in agony. I watched him a second and laughed again.

“The three feathers were part of your family crest, weren't they? An imitation of royalty. You and your damn pride, you bastard. Nancy Sanford was your own granddaughter. She was going to have a baby and you kicked her out. What did you think of her pride? So she turned from one job to another, working under an assumed name. She became a prostitute on the side. She got to know guys like Russ Bowen and his connection with Feeney. Then one day she saw you two together.

“I can imagine what she thought when she realized you were one of them, living your vain life of wealth on money that came from the bodies of the girls, hiding behind the front of respectability. You had it set up nice until she came along. She only had one thing in mind and that was to break the whole racket to pieces.

“Only she had to leave her baggage behind her until she had money to redeem it. Then you got the breaks. Feeney ran across her looking for a piece on the side and saw something. What was it, more pictures? Enough to make you get wise? Did he see the ring and know what it meant?”

Berin rolled from side to side. The timber, out of the flame, wasn't burning. It lay across his chest smoking. His eyes were on the ceiling watching the plaster crack and fall. The fire that spread, eating at everything it touched. Only on the floor was there an escape from the intense heat. But not for long. Soon the flames would come up from the floor and that would be it. I tried to move, drag myself, but the effort was too great, and all I could do was stare at the man under the timber and be glad to know that I wouldn't die alone.

I laughed and Berin turned his head. A hot spark lit on his cheek and he didn't feel it. “Nancy was murdered, wasn't she?” I said. “It wasn't planned to work out so nice, but who could tell that a girl who had been clubbed so hard by an expert that her neck was broken, would get up from where she was thrown out of a car and stagger down the street and out into the path of another car.

“You were Feeney's alibi the night she was killed. You tailed her, forced her into the car, went into your act and heaved her out—and it all very nicely worked into your normal routine!

“Feeney didn't usually miss those shots, but he missed on Nancy and he missed on me. I should have known that sooner, too, when Lola told me Nancy had no vices. No, she didn't drink, but people swore she staggered and assumed she was drunk. I bet you had a big laugh over that.

“Pride. Pride did it to you. In the beginning you were a playboy and spent all your dough, but your pride wouldn't let you become a pauper. The smart operators got hold of you and then you fronted for them until you squeezed them out and had the racket all to yourself. You could work the filthiest racket in the world, but your pride wouldn't let you take back your granddaughter after she made a mistake. Then your pride kept you from letting her interfere with your affairs.”

I could hardly talk over the roar of the flames now. Outside the engines were clanging up the streets and far away voices mingled with crashing of the walls. Only because the fire had to eat its way down had we stayed alive as long as this.

“But it's all there in that box, mister. You'll die and your fancy hyphenated name will be lost in the mud and slime that'll come out of it”

“It won‘t, goddamn you! It won't!” Even in pain his eyes grew crafty. “The box will burn and even if it doesn't they'll think I was here with you, Mike. Yes, you're my alibi, and my name
won't
be lost. Nobody will trace that girl now and the world will never know!”

He was right, too. He was so right that the anger welling up in me drove the numbness out of my leg and the pain from my chest and I pulled myself across the room. I reached the trunk, shoved it, shoved it again, my hands brushing aside the hot embers that fell from the ceiling. Berin saw what I was doing and screamed for me to stop. I grinned at him. He was bald and ugly. He was a killer in hell before he died.