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

the men who helped one of a few models who had a couple too many down the elevator and into a cab.”
    I started to grin. “Models?”
    He shook his head. “Forget it,” he told me, “it wasn’t a smoker with a dirty floor show for dessert.”
    “Okay, go on.”
    “From then on he was in and out of the hotel periodically and each time he had a little more of a jag on. He checked in with you and was dead before morning. The hotel was very put out. That’s it.”
    He waited a second and repeated, “That’s it, I said.”
    “I heard you.”
    “Well?”
    “Joe, you’re a lousy detective.”
    He shot me an impatient glance tainted with amazement. “I’m a lousy detective? You without a license and I’m the lousy detective? That’s a hell of a way of thanking me for all my trouble! Why I’ve found more missing persons than you have hairs on that low forehead of yours and ...”
    “Ever shoot anybody, Joe?”
    His face went white and his fingers had trouble taking the cigarette out of his mouth. “Once ... I did.”
    “Like it?”
    “No.” He licked his lips. “Look, Mike ... this guy Wheeler ... you were there. He was a suicide, wasn’t he?”
    “Uh-uh. Somebody gave him the business.”
    I could hear him swallow clear across the room. “Uh ... you won’t need me again, will you?”
    “Nope. Thanks a lot, Joe. Leave the notes on the bed.”
    The sheaf of papers fell on the bed and I heard the door close softly. I sat on the arm of the chair and let my mind weave the angles in and out. One of them had murder in it.
    Someplace there was a reason for murder big enough to make the killer try to hide the fact under a cloak of suicide. But the reason has to be big to kill. It has to be even bigger to try to hide it. It was still funny the way it came out. I was the only one who could tag it as murder and make it stick. Someplace a killer thought he was being real clever. Clever as hell. Maybe he thought the lack of one lousy shell in the clip wouldn’t be noticed.
    I kept thinking about it and I got sore. It made me sore twice. The first time I burned up was because the killer took me for a sap. Who the hell did he think I was, a cheap uptown punk who carried a rod for effect? Did he think I was some goon with loose brains and stupid enough to take it lying down?
    Then I got mad again because it was my friend that died. My friend, not somebody else’s. A guy who was glad to see me even after five years. A guy who was on the same side with me and gave the best he could give to save some bastard’s neck so that bastard could kill him five years later.
    The army was one thing I should have reminded Pat of. I should have prodded his memory with the fact that the army meant guns and no matter who you were an indoctrination course in most of the phases of handling lethal weapons hit you at one time or another. Maybe Chester Wheeler did try to shoot himself. More likely he tried to fire it at someone or someone fired it at him. One thing I knew damn well, Chet had known all about automatics and if he did figure to knock himself off he wasn’t going to fire any test shot just to see if the gun worked.
    I rolled into bed and yanked the covers up. I’d sleep on it.

Chapter 3
    I STOOD ON THE CORNER of Thirty-third Street and checked the address from Joe’s notes. The number I wanted was halfway down the block, an old place recently remodeled and refitted with all the trimmings a flashy clientele could expect. While I stared at the directory a covey of trim young things clutching hatboxes passed behind me to the elevator and I followed them in. They were models, but their minds weren’t on jobs. All they talked about was food. I didn’t blame them a bit. In the downstairs department they were shipshape from plenty of walking, but upstairs it was hard to tell whether they were coming or going unless they were wearing falsies. They were pretty to look at, but I wouldn’t give any of them bed room.
    The elevator