The Big Bang

Chapter Three


UNDER THE PAGE FIVE photograph, the mini-headline read MIDTOWN MURDER, and beneath that the caption: Unidentified Man Knifed in Mugging Attack.

I was behind my desk and Velda was draping the Daily News across my blotter with narrow-eyed accusation. I had called her last night and filled her in on the day's events, including the attempted mugging.

I shrugged, flipped the paper closed, and handed it back to her. "Doll, he wasn't like that when I left him. Scout's honor."

She gave me a long, slow look and I saw the tension creeping across her shoulders. That same old worry was back in her voice, tight, low, and a little breathless, as she said, "Then this is the guy who came at you?"

"Yeah." I gestured with open hands and gave her as innocent a look as I could muster. "The bastard tried to knife me and I splashed him—what do you want from me?"

"Mike..."

"Hey, he was flat on his back when I left the scene—out cold, plenty the worse for wear, but breathing, baby. Breathing."

She opened the paper again, held it out in front of her. I couldn't see the page she was perusing—the front page faced me, full of Casey Stengel, recently retired as Mets manager—but I knew she was studying the face-down corpse in the crime-scene photo.

"If this isn't your handiwork..."

"It isn't."

The dark eyes flared. "Then whose is it?"

I shrugged again. "Plenty of easy answers, kid. Either there was a backup man, to pay the guy off the hard way, if he bungled the job—which he did, remember—or maybe one of those faded flowers started frisking him for his loot and the guy started coming around and the gal had to kill the son of a bitch, to keep him quiet. I mean, that knife was right there beside him, kitten, when I took off. It was only later the thing got stuck in his back."

She pulled up the client's chair and sat, her expression empty of accusation, full of thought.

"You had just left Pat," she stated, "and were on your way home. The guy really could have been just trying to mug you, you know."

I shook my head. "No dice, honey. Open street muggings are usually strong-arm attempts and involve two people, one to latch on to the mark and the other to beat and bash him. This was a solo kill, carefully set up to be enough like a mugging to be written off as one."

"You just said yourself there may have been a second person...."

"Yeah, but not in the mugging-team sense. Hit men often have a backup, you know, running interference, waiting with wheels." I batted the air. "And even from that newspaper photo, couldn't you catch how wrong that bozo's threads were?"

"Not exactly typical mugger attire."

"Naw. That was one sharp suit. Tailored, British kind of cut."

She was shaking her head, the dark tresses dancing. "But, Mike—you weren't working on anything."

My eyebrows went up. "I'm beginning to wonder. Anyway, that isn't the point, whether I was working on something."

"What is?"

"Whether somebody might have thought I was."

I pulled the license and social security card out of my coat pocket. The name was the same on both: Russell Frazer—address, the Avondale Hotel on upper Broadway.

I reached for the phone and dialed Pat's number. They located him in a police cruiser, gave him my message, and told me to stay put until he got there.

Fifteen minutes later, Pat brushed by Velda at her desk with a polite nod and locked himself in with me in my private office, obviously trying to decide whether to haul my ass downtown to the cooler or listen to me try to worm my way out of the bind. He tossed his hat on my desk, deposited himself in the client's chair, and his eyes dared me to win him over. It took me all of three minutes to give him the details, and he was good enough not to interrupt. Then I let him check Russell Frazer's ID cards.

When he was finished looking those over, he gave me the long-suffering face and said, "I'm supposed to ignore you walking away from an attempted mugging? A mugging where you beat the hell out of the guy? The day after you send two other guys to the morgue and another to the critical ward?"

I lifted a shoulder and put it down again. "Would you rather I called it in, and the two of us had another scintillating session with that assistant D.A., Traynor?"

He just scowled at me.

"What did the medical examiner come up with?"

Pat tucked the cards away, gnawed at his lip a moment, then said, "It could have been a fight that ended in a knifing. Or it could have been a mugging. Poetic justice—mugger gets mugged. Guy's pants pockets were turned inside out, some loose change was in the gutter nearby, and his wallet was missing."

I held up an honest-injun palm. "I didn't take the wallet—just his license and social security."

"Any dough in the thing?"

"There were bills in it when I stuck it back in his pocket, yeah. You got any witnesses?"

He smirked without humor. "You kidding? Right now, you'd think that corner last night had been as deserted as Sunday morning. Nobody saw a damn thing, and the girls who work that block must be working some other block today." Then he shrugged. "But just as soon as we let a little heat loose, we'll get it put together."

"You're giving this that kind of priority?"

"I am now that I know you were on the scene." He crossed his arms and glared at me, tiny lines showing at the corners of his eyes. "So—what's your angle, Mike?"

"Quit playing the heavy," I told him. "All I did was protect myself."

"That's all you ever do," he said sarcastically. "Why did you lift his IDs?"

I got up, walked over to the mini-refrigerator, took out a can of Pabst beer, and popped it open. Hadn't had time for breakfast. Pat waved it off when I offered him one.

"You didn't answer me," he said.

"Because," I said, settling back behind my desk, "if there was another reason for the attack, besides a mugging, I wanted the bum to know I could finger him."

"Don't give me that mugging crap, Mike. You're not exactly the kind of target those guys pick on. They go after little old ladies or rabbity tourists who won't fight back. Most of these muggers have a habit, and they don't want to do any cold-turkey time in a jail cell."

I leaned back in my swivel chair. "Okay, so there's only one angle left—somebody had to be tailing me."

"And the great Mike Hammer didn't notice?"

I batted that away. "Hell, Pat, I didn't have any reason to sweat it—I wasn't on anything active. Only you and Velda knew I was going to be at the Blue Ribbon last night, so they had to pick me up someplace before I got to the restaurant."

He was frowning. "Why would they bother tailing you? And if this wasn't a mugging, who wants you dead? Scratch that—plenty of people want you dead...."

"It's bugging me, too," I said, ignoring his last statement. "I'm going to have to think about it."

Pat and I had been friends too long for him not to know when a conversation of ours had come to the end of the line. The gray eyes narrowed and he was very likely still considering putting a hold order on me for my own good; but we were both pros, and he would hold the reins loose until I started to bolt. My sources of information weren't as broad as his, but sometimes they were a lot more specific when some long green was handy to grease the way.

So he nodded curtly, a silent acknowledgment that I could try to satisfy my curiosity just a little bit. A very little bit. He plucked his hat off my desk, put it on, and headed out.

At the door, though, he stopped, turning around and saying, "By the way, Mike, where were you before we met up at the Blue Ribbon?"

I made a face and shrugged. "Pat, believe it or not, I was visiting a sick friend."

"Horseshit," he said.

But it was fairly good-natured, and he even threw me a kind of wave.

I heard him tell Velda so long and, when he was gone, she came into my inner sanctum and up to my desk and handed me a memo. "You didn't exactly put a big smile on his face," she said, though she was smiling.

"He should buy me a six-pack for what I gave him. Right now he's one up on every other cop in town."

"Not on us." She flicked the memo. "I took the liberty of calling Bud Tiller to do a little work for us."

"Yeah? He does owe me a favor."

"Not anymore. Bud pried a little information out of the desk clerk at the Avondale Hotel, which is not a flophouse exactly, if only a couple rungs up."

"My mugger in the mod suit was living in less than luxury?"

"So it would seem. Russell Frazer moved out of that place six months ago after a two-year stay. Apparently he never bothered changing his address on his driver's license. Anyway, he moved someplace up near his job and gave his work as his forwarding address, in case he got any mail." She gave me a look that said another shoe was about to drop. Then she dropped it: "Russell Frazer was employed six blocks from Dorchester Medical College."

I let out a low whistle. "Isn't that interesting? Where exactly did my well-dressed attacker work?"

"It's a ceramics shop. Apparently he drove the delivery truck, but we'll need to do some more digging. And you'll want to do some digging, because I've got a connection between Frazer and one of the freaks who jumped Billy Blue."

If I had straightened any more, I'd be standing. "Spill it, sugar."

"Before Frazer moved to the Avondale? He lived on the same street as the Brix kid—just a few blocks away."

My eyes tightened; so did my hands. "What a cute little play this is...."

She cocked her head. "Mike—if they were friends, hitting you could have a revenge motive."

"Naw, it's thin."

She arched an eyebrow. "People have been known to kill other people, over revenge, you know."

I gave her a look. "Sarcasm doesn't become you, baby."

She was smiling. If I weren't preoccupied, I would have smashed her in that mouth. With my mouth.

"So," I asked her, "were they friends?"

"Bud didn't get that far. But it's possible. Frazer was three years older, and that's roughly the same age bracket."

"It could make sense," I said, and sighed. "But where could he have picked me up? Nobody knew I was going to the hospital. Not even you. Not even me."

Her smile had settled on one side of her face, and she shook the dark tresses again. "You're not exactly hard to find, Mike. The papers didn't carry your address, but we're in the book. It wouldn't have been tough. He could have tailed you all day, waiting for the right opportunity, and you wouldn't have known it."

"He'd have to be good for that."

"Not necessarily. You weren't expecting anything."

I'd made the same point to Pat. "You'd like it that way, wouldn't you? Just somebody settling a score?"

"Well, if it were a simple revenge factor, it'd all be over now."

"Unless there are some more out there who'd like to try their hand at the same game."

"What happened to Frazer," Velda said with an eyebrow high again, "wouldn't exactly encourage them to try again."

"Maybe ... but I think I'd better emphasize the point a little."

She smiled at me and went back to the outer office and her desk, leaving the door open. I sat there and stared at her legs and she parted them to give me a better view and then stuck out her tongue at me, in that taunting, tantalizing way of hers.

She was damn lucky I was preoccupied.

I flipped a paper clip at her, but it only made half the trip. Then I got my .45 out of the top desk drawer and checked the clip, and shoved the rod in the holster and got up.

Outside it had started to rain.





The state of mind called Greenwich Village had gone through another of its periodic shifts, though you would find the same zigzag streets and street-corner poets and shaggy-haired oddballs selling canvases that would make Picasso say, "What the hell?" But the beatniks were gone and the hippies were here, the folk music electric now, and the shops had tourists in mind, not the local populace.

Both large windows facing the street read VILLAGE CERAMICS SHOPPE in Old English lettering, the rain hitting their surfaces and blurring the multicolored pieces on display behind them. It was a three-story renovated building tucked between two newer, higher ones, faced with stucco and stained timbers like an old London townhouse. A pair of young housewife types, heads tucked under those silly mushroom umbrellas, ducked around me, went inside, and I followed them in.

The interior was bare brick walls and a hardwood floor with aisles of pine shelving displaying glazed pottery, mostly in shades of green and brown but with the occasional more colorful item. The feeling was of spare simplicity and, for a few minutes, I just went up and down the aisles, looking at the finished pieces with price tags that landed somewhere between reasonable and outrageous. A few aisles were devoted to the practical—vases and bowls, plates and cups and other dinnerware—but the majority were decorative pieces, cats and leopards and female nudes as well as abstractions.

Eventually the heavyset woman at the counter waiting on a customer noticed me, hit a hand bell, and the curtains to the rear section flipped open and a lovely blonde in a paint-stained smock stood there filling the archway. She was in her mid-twenties, maybe five five, with the kind of curves even a loose-fitting outfit like that couldn't hide, her eyes big and brown and generously lashed.

She used those remarkable orbs to look around until she found the unattended customer, then smiled and happy-hipped over, trying to wipe the stains from her hands on a paper towel. A little smear of green highlighted one cheek, but that only made her prettier, and then she asked, "May I help you, sir?"

It was in a voice that fit the rest of her perfectly—smooth, rounded, and velvety.

I shook the rain off my hat and said, "Maybe. But I'm not exactly a customer."

She gazed up at me, still smiling. Nice dimples. "I didn't think you were," she said, vaguely amused. "You don't, uh ... look like the kind of person who makes or buys ceramics. Of course, you never know about people."

"No argument there." I shifted on my feet. "It's about Russell Frazer. Any place we can talk privately?"

The smile faded—not into irritation, but sadness. "A terrible thing. Terrible." She paused, then nodded toward the archway. "You're another investigator?"

"That's right."

She nodded, businesslike. "Then we can speak back in the studio."

I followed her through the curtains and across to a large table loaded with partially painted figurines, and surrounded by a half-dozen beat-up wooden chairs. The rest of the room was a maze of shelves and bins packed with chalky molds, raw bisque, and greenware. It wasn't anywhere near the season yet, but holiday items seemed to predominate, little Santas and reindeer and elves that didn't quite fit with the artier junk out front.

She noticed me eyeing that stuff and said, "Christmas underwrites the rest of our year."

"You and about every other shop in town."

When I had pulled out a chair for her and sat down myself, I said, "I take it you just found out about what happened to Mr. Frazer?"

She shuddered. "Not thirty minutes ago. There was a call from police headquarters, then a squad car stopped by, and right now, Mr. Elmain—he's the manager—is on his way to identify the body. But then you must know that."

"Pretty standard procedure," I said evasively.

She frowned just a little. She had smooth skin and, at her age, such frowns had only delivered glancing blows. "Mr., uh..."

"Hammer," I said. I hadn't bothered to introduce myself. I'd wanted to connect with her before we got around to the ugly reality of who I was in this.

But she was no fool. When I said "Hammer," she must have caught the lack of rank before my name. Because now she was cocking her head, looking at me peculiarly. "You are a policeman...?"

"I'm a private investigator, Miss..." And this time I let it hang, because she hadn't introduced herself, either.

"Shirley Vought." She may have been suspicious, but her manner remained direct and essentially positive.

"Miss Vought," I said, and gave her a serious smile, "I was involved in helping the police identify Mr. Frazer. There's an odd set of circumstances at play here, which might make Mr. Frazer's death relate to a problem of mine."

"Oh?"

"You might be able to help me."

Again, she remained direct and positive: "Certainly, if I can."

"Do you know any of Mr. Frazer's friends?"

For a moment she looked puzzled. Then she answered, "Well, there was a young woman, just a girl really ... Susie something ... who met Russell a few times, after work...."

"Know where she lives?"

"No, but she works in the market on the corner. I can point you there." She gave me directions, briefly.

"Thank you. Any men Mr. Frazer hung around with?"

She thought again before shaking her head. "Outside the shop, I can't say I know any of Russell's friends."

"What exactly did he do here?"

"Pickup and deliveries. In between, he poured slip in the molds, loaded the kilns, waited on customers."

"Well paid?"

She nodded, chin crinkled. "I'd have to say, yes. Mr. Elmain is an exceptionally generous employer. Russ made over a hundred a week for what you'd have to say was menial work."

I nodded, remembering that tailored mod suit, and the wallet in his pocket, thick with big-number bills. Whoever had rolled the late Mr. Frazer was walking around fat and happy. But even at a generous hundred bucks a week for unskilled labor, how had my buddy Russell rated In Crowd threads and a wad of dough like that?

Somehow she picked the thought out of my mind and said, "Russ lived by himself, Mr. Hammer. He did have rather expensive tastes in clothes, but he didn't have much else to spend it on."

"No family?"

"He originally came from Chicago, I believe." She thought harder, then said, "I can't say I ever heard him specifically mention anybody back home, either family or close friends."

"Where did he live?"

"Let's see—I think on Peck Street. That's one block from the new housing development this side of Saxony Hospital. But I'd better check it."

She got up and went to a counter; she had black slacks on under the dusty smock and, where it tied, a glimpse of nicely rounded rear peeked out and said hello.

She riffled through a card file a moment and came back to the table and sat. "Peck Street, all right," she said. "Number 1405. Before that he lived on the Boulevard."

"Miss Vought—have you ever heard the names Herman Felton, Norman Brix, Timothy Haver, or William Blue?"

Those lovely dark eyes angled into mine a second and twin narrow lines formed a brief furrow between her brows. "Yes."

That perked me up. "You did?"

She nodded. "I read about them in the papers. And, of course, I knew Billy Blue."

"You knew him?"

"Know him. We deliver a quantity of greenware pieces to the hospital for their therapeutic program ... in the children's ward? Billy often came by here to pick up some incidental supplies—brushes, paints, that sort of thing."

I waited, thinking.

"And Mr. Hammer—I remember reading about you now, too." There was a wise glint in her eyes.

I gave up half a grin. "I've been around too long to bother trying to con anybody, Miss Vought. I never misrepresented myself."

"Yes, I know," she said. "I pay attention to such things." She gave me a small smile.

"I guess in the pottery game, you have to pay attention to detail. Same in the detective game."

"I'm sure," she said, the velvety voice making a purr out of it. "You know, I rather appreciate your indirect approach. No lies, but not terribly generous with the truth."

"No use showing your hand until you have to."

She was studying me now, the big eyes going narrow. "Then your interest in this matter is ... personal?" Her voice remained calm. "Rather than professional?"

"It's always personal when somebody tries to kill me."

The eyes got big again. "Well, Mr. Hammer—you are Mike Hammer, aren't you?"

"Yeah."

"I seem to remember a rather sensational magazine that made mention of another violent incident involving you ... a few years ago?" She smiled again. "The publisher tried to sue you, after you did something, uh ... detrimental to his well-being?"

"He caught an acute case."

"An acute case of what, Mr. Hammer?"

"Broken ribs." I shrugged. "No big deal. He withdrew the charges upon advice of counsel, after receiving a ten-cent phone call."

"Anonymous call, you mean?"

"Oh no. I gave my name loud and clear."

The smile had something flirtatious in it now. I'd told Pat the dolls went for Neanderthals.

She said, "Who tried to kill you this time, Mr. Hammer?"

"Your friend Russell Frazer."

The smile vanished, and she tilted her head. "That doesn't make sense...."

"Murder never does," I said. "At first, anyway."

"Russell rarely raised his voice around here. He was nice, rather funny, I'd even say charming. I can't imagine him trying to kill anyone, much less ... much less someone as, uh, formidable? As you, Mr. Hammer."

"It's like you said, Miss Vought."

"What?"

"You never know about people." I pushed the chair back and stood up. "Thanks for the conversation. I hope I wasn't a bother and kept you too long from your work."

With her penchant for detail, Shirley Vought was watching me carefully and the eyes were wide again, curiosity twinkling at their corners.

Very abruptly she said, "I was wrong."

"Wrong?"

"You are anything but indirect, Mr. Hammer. I would say ... you are remarkably di-rect."

"Thanks."

Her expression grew slyly catlike, and openly sensual. "Tell me, Mr. Hammer ... do you make love with that same direct approach?"

I grinned at her, taking the invitation of that remark to allow my eyes a sweep over her body. The streak of green on her cheek glowed like some sort of psychedelic beauty mark under the fluorescent lighting.

"No," I told her. "I'm a little more devious in my lovemaking. I like it nice and lazy, after a good, long chase ... so I can appreciate the explosion, when it comes."

She couldn't hold back the laugh, throaty but still velvet all the way.

"You know," she said, "I believe it."

I gave her another half grin. "Interested?"

This time her eyes smiled, too.

"This," she said softly, rising from the table, "is where I say 'Thank you ... call again.'"

I was almost through the curtains when I glanced back and said, "Don't you mean 'come again'?"

She gave me a little shrug. We'll see, she seemed to be saying. We'll see....





Her name was Susie Moore, she ran the checkout register at counter number two in Supermarket East, and she was glad to have a sandwich with me at the rear table at a lunchroom around the corner. She was twenty-three, shared an apartment with two other girls who worked in the neighborhood, and was saving her money to enroll in a secretarial school that winter.

Susie wasn't exactly pretty, just cute in a pug-nosed way with brown pixie-cut hair, a lithe figure, and a bubbly charm that was attraction enough—one of that new breed of kids you see leading peace marches and waving out of the window of a police van on the way to being booked at the local precinct house for having disturbed the tranquility of the Establishment.

We were next to a window in the unpretentious little deli restaurant. The rain had stopped but its tendrils were trickling down the glass nearby. I had pastrami, corned beef, and Swiss cheese on rye, and she had a tuna salad sandwich. She didn't eat meat, she said. That would be news to the tuna.

Analytical eyes picked me apart across the table, trying to separate me into beast or benefactor, or maybe just plain lecher looking to add a few female flower children to his well-thumbed black book.

She had accepted the invitation of a free lunch with a knowing smile—as long as she picked the place—willing to cross swords with me just so it saved her another couple bucks for her secretarial kitty. She was wearing her pale blue checkout uniform, which was miniskirt short, showing off her long, bare Go-Go Girl stems.

Before she had finished her sandwich, she had rattled off most of her life history without bothering with any of mine, and when she suddenly realized that, she paused between bites and said, "You play it pretty cool, don't you, Mr. Hammer?"

"Do I?"

"Uh-huh." She swallowed down her last bite of tuna fish sandwich, and sipped her Coke through a straw. "Here I've been waiting for the big pitch, figuring there might be a new angle, and it's like it's never gonna happen." Her tongue flicked a crumb from her lower lip and she put the glass down. "You play it nice and cool—let me do all the work."

"Maybe I'm just interested."

"Maybe ... but what's your ult?"

"My what?"

"Ulterior motive?"

"It's not like that."

She grew a knowing, smirky look that didn't become her. "Isn't it?"

"No. Honey, I'm not after your body."

That surprised her, and probably hurt her feelings a little, but that's what she got for getting too cute. She gestured down at herself and back to me. "I haven't had any complaints before."

I shrugged. "You have a nice figure. Like a model. Only, my tastes go back about ten years, when women had some meat on the bone—more hips, bigger boobies."

Now she was really puzzled. "Well, that's not today's scene."

"It'll come back," I said, not convinced it had ever left.

Susie didn't like to be sidetracked. "Let's get back to your ult. If it's not me, what is it?"

"Suppose we start with Russell Frazer."

This time she squinted and wrinkled her nose at me. "Why?"

"Isn't he a friend of yours?"

"Until he got to be a drag. I used to date him. Just broke it off, like, the other day. What about him?"

She obviously didn't know he was dead, but she had dated him, so things could turn ugly, even with a cutie like this. Still, there are ways of saying things without having to lie or actually say anything at all.

"Maybe," I said, "the best way to put it is that I'm looking for character references on him."

"Is Russ in some kind of trouble?"

Once again I could be truthful about it. I simply said, "Nope."

After all, Russell Frazer would never be in trouble again, not unless his coffin got caught on a tree root, getting lowered into the big hole.

She refused the cigarette I offered her, and I waited. This time the computer eyes had hesitated because the keyboard was sending out odd vibrations. She shook off the confusion, trying the Coke again. Her mouth working the straw was pretty cute, but I'd rather she talk.

Finally, she did: "Listen, I said he was a drag, but if you're checking up on him, really, Russ is okay. I met him right here, you know." She gestured to the little deli sandwich shop around us.

"You dated him? How serious did it get?"

She shrugged and tapped out a rhythm on the tabletop with her fingernails. "Not serious at all. Oh, I balled him plenty of times, sure. He thought he was God's gift, but he was all show and no go, you know? A wham-bam type who figured a girl could get her jollies just because he pulled down his zipper. He was hung like a horse."

She said this with full frankness and volume, even though we were hardly alone in the little restaurant. She might have been saying he had dark hair or his name was Jones.

Now she got confidential, leaning forward. "You know, a guy who is too big, he never gets really hard. Plus, he can only get part of it in."

I think maybe she was trying to shock me or possibly get me interested in her, despite my tastes in fleshier dolls. I ignored it, but didn't insult her. Just let her prattle on....

"You have to fake it for a guy like that," she said, sitting back, almost wistful. "They should pay girls for faking it so convincingly. That kind of guy, you'll hurt his feelings, if he thinks you didn't come through the roof. I hate to hurt people's feelings."

"Did I hurt yours?"

Her smile was a little too big. "Come on, Mr. Hammer, feelings are all any of us have. You have got to care." Her expression was more teenager than twenty-three-year-old.

"I've been known to care," I said.

"Have you?" She shook her head doubtfully. "Or do you really understand at all? Over thirty and the compassion just goes. Phhffttt. I'm sure you were really nice, once. But now? No compassion, no understanding at all."

"You're wrong, Susie."

"Am I?"

"I was never nice."

That caught her by surprise and made her laugh. It was a childish giggle, but appealing.

"Understanding is one thing," I said. "Toleration is another, Susie. And some things just can't be tolerated."

She had her chin up. "If we ever made it, Mr. Hammer? And you didn't ring my bell? I swear, I'd go right ahead and hurt your feelings."

"I might hurt more than your feelings, kid. But let's get back to Russ."

"All right," she said with an agreeable shrug. "I've known him for over a year—ever since he began working at the Village Ceramics Shoppe. He liked to show a girl a good time, and didn't mind spending money. He had ... well, ambition. Someday he was going to be somebody big, he always told me."

"You kidding? Working in a ceramics shop?"

"He had other interests, and real possibilities, big opportunities."

"Such as?"

"Oh, he didn't tell me about them, but I believed him, all right."

My face said I didn't believe her, and she frowned indignantly.

"Well, I did believe him!"

"Why, Susie? You said he was all show and no go."

"In the bedroom. But when somebody gets calls from Hawaii and Rome and has Cadillacs sent around to pick him up, it's because he has some kind of potential, right?"

"Right," I said pleasantly. "But it depends on who's making the calls and driving the Cadillac."

Her smirk was supposed to put me down. "This Cadillac had a chauffeur, Mr. Hammer—an Oriental chauffeur in a proper uniform."

"Careful, girl. You're cultivating Establishment tastes."

She let another giggle escape her lips and her shoulders moved in a childish gesture. "It was cute, though, getting the limo treatment. My roomie, Elsie, was real jealous. Before then, she thought Russ was just a big-mouth drag."

"All show and no go again."

She smirked and nodded. "Like, I been flapping my lips and what you wanted was a character reference for Russ. I guess I haven't done him any favors."

"Depends on how you look at it."

"How are you looking at it, Mr. Hammer?" She lifted the Coke again, slurped the last dregs down in the ice, and put it back on the table.

"Through a Coke glass, darkly," I said.

She let half a minute go by while she made designs on the damp table with a fingertip. "Lay it on me, Mr. Hammer. What's this really about?"

"Russell Frazer is dead," I told her flatly. "Last night he tried to stick a knife in my back."

There was no doubt about her believing what I said. It was there in the dull shadow of her eyes and the tight lines around her mouth. Her voice was a bare whisper when she said, "And you... you killed him?"

"No, I didn't kill him. I knocked him on his ass, into the gutter, and left him there. Later, somebody rolled him for his loot, and stuck Russ's own shiv through his heart in the process."

She blinked at me, as if in time with her brain processing the information. Then she blurted, "I saw something about that incident ... in the papers? But it don't show the man's face, or—"

"Papers called the victim an unidentified man this morning. They know who he is now. Later you'll probably get some visitors from Homicide."

"Are you one of them?" Her expression had turned nauseated. "You're not a... pig?"

"I oink in a different tone of voice, Susie." I gave her a business card. "The others who come around will have a little more pork behind them."

She started to change somehow, like the slow cracking of an ice floe. Her tongue made a nervous pass over suddenly dry lips and she shook her head in bewilderment. "But Russ was never ... I didn't know ... didn't see anything that..."

"Everybody hides things," I said. "You're a hip chick, not some teenybopper, even if you like to act like one. You didn't notice anything hinky when you were at Russell's pad?"

"I ... I just didn't think much about it."

"About what?"

"Like ... well, his apartment. He made over the loft in that funky old building, and laid out a lot of bread on it. The big stereo with the record collection, and the tape recorders and the big color TVs—all of that was awfully expensive. You can buy toys like that on time and all, but he bragged about paying cash. I thought it was more of his big talk, until, you know..."

"The phone calls and Cadillacs?"

Susie nodded, her eyes worried. "One time I answered his phone and got an overseas operator."

"Remember the conversation?"

"No. Russell took the call in the bedroom. I was in the living room."

"When did you see him last?"

"Just two nights ago. He was going to take me to that new 'in' place—the Pigeon? Then he called it off because something came up."

"What?"

"He had to meet somebody."

"Who?"

"Russ didn't say. He was all excited and sort of, well, secretive. Like, I offered to go with him but he didn't want me along."

"He say why?"

"No." She stopped and looked down at the table again and the watery designs she'd made. "I broke it off right after that. Funny. You know, before that? I was set to see him tonight. He was taking me to a ball game to celebrate."

"There aren't any ball games in town tonight, Susie."

Her eyes came up expressionlessly. "Not that kind of ball game. I mean, the swinging kind we played at his apartment—you've really got to stay with it, Mr. Hammer, the new culture, the new language."

"I'll try to catch up with you kids. Susie, you've obviously been to Russell's place lately—I was told he moved out."

She shook her head. "He had a hotel room somewhere, where he'd been staying, but I think that was for business, mostly."

"Were you ever at this hotel room?"

"No, and I don't know what hotel or even what part of town. I do know, with his loft pad? Russ had some troubles with the neighbors, and stopped having parties there, and kept a way lower profile. I gave him a bad time about having to sneak around going into his own place."

"You have a key?"

She nodded, fished in her little purse, and held out a key in her palm.

I didn't make any move to take it. "Susie, you can hold that for the cops or give it to me. Your choice."

Her hand stayed outstretched. "Why break the door down? Besides, whatever you are, you're not exactly an Establishment type."

"That's a character reference I can appreciate, sugar."

That made her smile a little. I plucked the key from her palm and dropped it in my pocket.

When I paid the bill, and walked her to the door, she stopped me with her hand on my arm. "I feel awfully funny, Mr. Hammer, now that I think back."

"About what?"

"Having balled a dead man."

"He wasn't dead then."

She took her hand away and let it drop at her side. "Yes he was," she said.