[Mike Hammer 03] - Vengeance Is Mine Read Online Free PDF Page A

out of that rod. Isn’t that enough?”
    “Not for me it isn’t. Is that all you have?”
    I nodded and dragged in on the butt.
    Pat’s face seemed to soften and he let the air out of his lungs slowly. He even smiled a little. “I guess that’s that, Mike. I’m glad I didn’t get sweated up about it.”
    I snubbed the cigarette out on the table top. “Now you’ve got me going. What are you working up to?”
    “Precedent, Mike. I’m speaking of past suicides.”
    “What about ’em?”
    “Every so often we find a suicide with a bullet in his head. The room has been liberally peppered with bullets, to quote a cliché. In other words, they’ll actually take the gun away from the target but pull the trigger anyway. They keep doing it until they finally have nerve enough to keep it there. Most guys can’t handle an automatic anyway and they fire a shot to make sure they know how it operates.”
    “And that makes Wheeler a bona fide suicide, right?”
    He grinned at the sneer on my face. “Not altogether. When you pulled your little razzmatazz about the slugs in your gun I went up in the air and had a handful of experts dig up Wheeler’s itinerary and we located a business friend he had been with the day before he died. He said Wheeler was unusually depressed and talked of suicide several times. Apparently his business was on the dawngrade.”
    “Who was the guy, Pat?”
    “A handbag manufacturer, Emil Perry. Well, if you have any complaints, come see me, but no more scares, Mike. Okay?”
    “Yeah,” I hissed. “You still didn’t say how you found me.”
    “I traced your call, friend citizen. It came from a bar and I knew you’d stay there awhile. I took my time at the hotel checking your story. And, er ... yes, I did find the bullet hole in the mattress.”
    “I suppose you found the bullet too?”
    “Why yes, we did. The shell case too.” I sat there rigid, waiting. “It was right out there in the hall where you dropped it, Mike. I wish you’d quit trying to give this an element of mystery just to get me in on it.”
    “You chump!”
    “Can it, Mike. The house dick set me straight.”
    I was standing up facing him and I could feel the mad running right down into my shoes. “I thought you were smart, Pat. You chump!”
    This time he winked. “No more games, huh, Mike?” He grinned at me a second and left me standing there watching his back. Now I was playing games. Hot dog!
    I thought I was swearing under my breath until a couple of mugs heard their tomatoes complain and started to give me hell. When they saw my face they told their dames to mind their business and went on drinking.
    Well, I asked for it. I played it cute and Pat played it cuter. Maybe I was the chump. Maybe Wheeler did kill himself. Maybe he came back from the morgue and tried to slip out with the slug and the shell too.
    I sure as a four letter word didn’t. I picked up my pack of butts and went out on the street for a smell of fresh air that wasn’t jammed with problems. After a few deep breaths I felt better.
    Down on the corner a drugstore was getting rid of its counter customers and I walked in past the tables of novelties and cosmetics to a row of phone booths in the back. I pulled the Manhattan directory out of the rack and began thumbing through it. When I finished I did the same thing with the Brooklyn book. I didn’t learn anything there so I pulled up the Bronx listing and found an Emil Perry who lived in one of the better residential sections of the community.
    At ten minutes after eleven I parked outside a red brick one-family house and killed the motor. The car in front of me was a new Cadillac sedan with all the trimmings and the side door bore two gold initials in Old English script, E. P.
    There was a brass knocker on the door of the house, embossed with the same initials, but I didn’t use it. I had the thing raised when I happened to glance in the window. If the guy was Emil Perry, he was big and fat with