After Mitch introduced himself and showed his identification, he asked Borsky about this wife of his and what she had against him.
“Dough,” Borsky said. “She wants the shirt off my back and just about everything else I got.”
“What does she look like?” Mitch asked.
Borsky let loose like he’d been saving up his answer and here was his big chance.
“Mary O’Shaughnessy,” he said, “has a build like Marilyn M., she’s got a temper like a Hottentot, and she packs a wallop like Ali. Only she does it with a hammer.”
Mitch gagged on that one. “Mary O’Shaughnessy? Who’s she?”
“My wife,” Borsky said. “I’m Bill O’Shaughnessy. In this racket you gotta have a name that can pull them in. Borsky. Short and sweet. People remember it.”
Mitch didn’t exactly follow. Still, this guy made a living out of it and he had a right to call himself Attila the Hun if he felt like it, so Mitch got back to the point, which was how to get hold of the O’Shaughnessy dame and pull her in before she went out on her private massacre.
“About this wife of yours that wants to chop you up,” Mitch said. “She around anywheres?”
Borsky gave the place a quick look that couldn’t have spotted an elephant. “Not here,” he said, “unless she hired somebody to do her dirty work.”
“Could be,” Mitch said. “Now if I’m going to take care of you, you better give me your schedule. And make sure you stick to it, too.”
“Well, I’m booked at the Hotel Fremont, they got me a reservation for a couple of days. Tonight I’ll eat up in my room and go to bed early. A trip like this — airplanes upset me — so I got to take it easy. Then tomorrow I’ll go over to the concert hall and check the piano and maybe put in some practise for the evening.”
“What for?” Mitch said. “You’ll get all wore out.”
“Look,” Borsky said. “If you were going to pitch, you’d loosen up for a while, wouldn’t you? And pitching a ball game is nothing compared to the workout I put in. First of all, I got to dress up like Paderewski, and I sweat. I lose five pounds every time I’m out there. And my fingers got to be in shape. Take a look at them.”
He held up a hand with broad heavy fingers that ended up in thick pads. “The beating they take on the piano, they could pile-drive an oil rig fifty feet down. Anybody that thinks this racket is fun ought to try it. A different hotel every night. Receptions, and you got to pretend you like them. And then the fancy food they serve you, my stomach’s backing up on me. And with dames all over you, they won’t let you alone, and most of them ought to go back home and get reconstructed.”
“Yeah,” Mitch said. “Now one other thing — this concert, I ought to be there, where I can be ready for most anything. So me and the wife — you’ll fix it up, huh?”
Borsky got the idea. “Sure. Where do you want to sit? First row? Or maybe an aisle seat a little further back. Depends on the acoustics, I guess.”
“Up front sounds pretty good to me,” Mitch said, “but you’re the judge.”
So everything looked okay, no trouble he could see. Mitch had his unmarked car outside, Number Four, which was the one he liked, and he took Borsky up to the Fremont and checked him in and practically tucked him in bed for the night, and then Mitch went home and told Amy how they had tickets for the concert tomorrow night, and that was big stuff for Amy.
Mitch felt pretty good about things, and after dinner he had himself a beer and watched TV for a while without learning much, except that cops love danger and want nothing better than to get shot at a couple of times a week. That was news to Mitch. Still, he took it in stride, got to bed early, and was sound asleep when the phone rang.
What with it being around two in the morning, he figured it had to be bad news and it was, because the voice said, “Mr. Taylor? This is Bill, and I need you.”
“Bill? Bill who?”
“O’Shaughnessy. Borsky. Vladimir Borsky.”
“Oh, sure. Borsky. What’s up?”
“My wife. I think she’s here. You know my room, 807, so come over quick.”
“Be right there,” Mitch said. He put the phone down, told Amy something had come up, he had to leave, and then called the precinct and asked for a car. Five minutes later he was on his way to the Fremont, with Danny Epstein at the wheel.
The clerk, who had a long neck, was snoozing when Mitch got there, so Mitch told Danny to hang around for a while, Mitch might need him, and Mitch went on up to Room 807.
He tried the door first, before knocking, and it opened. The room was dark, though, except for a crack of light showing at the bottom of the bathroom door, and when Mitch got near it he could hear groaning inside. First off, before he did anything else, he had to figure out the best way to cover himself in case Borsky’d got himself cheesed up. And that was pretty easy, on account all Mitch had to say was he’d told Borsky to lock himself in and not open up for anybody except Mitch, and so that was the way it was, and Mitch opened the bathroom door.
The guy was flopped over the edge of the bathtub and was soaking his hands and he was hurt, but it wasn’t Borsky. Mitch grabbed him and stood him up, and the guy groaned and said, “My hands! I didn’t do anything. He was there waiting — with a hammer! He—”
Mitch picked him up on that and interrupted. “He?” Mitch said.
“He hit me on the hand. With a hammer.”
Mitch could see that a couple of fingers were pretty well mashed up, and he could guess what must have happened. This guy had found the door open, same as Mitch, and he’d probably stepped in to see if there was any loose cash around. This hammer nut must have been waiting inside, and what with the dark and being all keyed up, he’d jumped this guy and cracked down on his fingers before finding out he’d ruined the wrong hands. After that he’d blown, and he wasn’t Mary O’Shaughnessy and never had been, which Mitch hadn’t believed in the first place. Because why would she chop up the fingers that earned the dough she lived off of?
The thing that bothered Mitch most, though, was that it seemed Borsky had set him up. What was supposed to happen was, Mitch would walk in and this hammer nut would take a crack at him and either make chop suey out of Mitch’s hands or else miss and get strung out himself, but either way Mitch would probably make the collar, which would get this character out of Borsky’s hair.
The guy here wasn’t particularly worth Mitch’s time, so Mitch frisked him and got his name, which happened to be Sanger. With that much done, Mitch went to the phone and asked for Danny to come up, Danny could handle it from here on in. While he was waiting, Mitch asked this Sanger a couple of questions, mostly about who’d done the hammer job on him.
“I never saw him,” Sanger said in a croaking voice. “I got here by mistake, I was looking for my room and—”
“Skip it,” Mitch said. “I don’t give a damn why you were here, you can try your story out on Danny. All I want to know is who creamed you and what they looked like.”
Sanger gave out with a couple of groans, maybe they helped him a little, and this was certainly a night he was going to remember. “I never saw him,” Sanger said again, and sort of caught his breath. “I didn’t know anybody was here and I never even saw him until he jumped me. With a hammer.” Sanger took time out for another groan. “It hurts,” he said.
Around then Danny came in, and he knew Sanger right off. “We had him in the slammer a couple of times,” Danny said. “Just a grifter that sneaks into hotels and then goes around trying doors. Any time he finds one that isn’t double-locked or chained, he floats in and lets his fingers scratch around.”