I let the knife inch its way toward me, then pulled back, and with all my strength, brought the blade down, all right, in his hands and mine, but swung it around into his midsection. Deep—the sound like a boot stepping in thick wet mud. His eyes bulged in fear and agony as we did the final steps of our dance, face-to-face, almost nose-to-nose, his mouth moving silently, maybe in a prayer, and I grinned as his hand fell away and my two hands gripped the handle of the knife whose blade was already all the way in and jerked it upward on a terrible path and then made a circular sideways motion, taking the blade on a grim ride.
Then I stepped away.
And grinned at him some more as he looked at me, astonished, then down at the red spreading across his white shirt and the knife pitching to the floor as a flap of flesh opened and he caught the tumble of bloody slimy intestines in his fingers, though some of the scarlet-smeared snakes slithered from his grasp, and I would swear he fainted before he fell to the carpet to die.
That was when I realized Angela was screaming.
I crawled up on the bed where she was still jerking that cuff and said, "It's all right, baby. He can't hurt you. He's dead."
Only her horrified eyes weren't on the corpse, but on me.
I had Angela uncuffed, and she had padded into the bathroom, taking her clothes with her, when the phone rang. It was the front desk, complaining about noise, which was quick, because the guy had only been dead a couple of minutes. I told the desk man to tell any on-duty manager that there had been an assault on a guest, me, and that the hotel doctor should come up, and the police should be called immediately.
I hung up, got the switchboard, and gave the girl Pat Chambers's home number.
"I need you to get over here," I told him.
"Over where?" he said sleepily. "Jesus, Mike. I'm at home. I have a life, you know."
"Is there a woman in bed with you?"
"No."
"Then I'd argue the point about you having a life. There's a dead body on my hotel room floor. I've already had the desk call for the cops. But I figure you'll want to be in on this."
"Mike ... Mike. Did you make him dead?"
"I didn't shoot him."
"You didn't?"
"He had a knife."
A long pause.
Then he said "Mike" again, almost sorrowfully, and hung up.
I went to the bathroom door and knocked. "Are you all right, honey?"
"...Yes."
"I've called the police. A doctor'll be up soon to check on our friend."
"He's dead! He has to be dead!"
"Yeah, he's dead, all right, but there are procedures. Hell, I'm telling you? Listen, if uh ... if you want to slip out before anybody gets here...."
"No. No, I'll stay."
"Fine. Do you want the doc to check you over?"
"No. No."
The doctor came up, a sixty-ish gent, looked the dead intruder over, and got to his feet, a ghastly white. "This is a first at the Commodore," he said.
"Come on, doc, people die in hotels all the time."
"Not like this."
"Oh. Yeah, well I can see that."
The doc was long gone when the uniforms got there. The older of the pair wanted my story and I told him I was Mike Hammer and that Captain Chambers of Homicide was on the way. That satisfied him, and Pat made it in less than half an hour. He looked a little rumpled and he'd forgot his hat, but he made it.
Pat stood looking down at the dead guy, shaking his head, hands on hips. "This tears it. This really fucking tears it."
"You want to hear what happened?"
He grunted something that wasn't quite a laugh. "Why not?"
I told him, referring only to Angela as "a lady friend." I left the handcuffs out, too, basically starting with me getting up to go to the john.
He glared at me. "You call this self-defense?"
"Hell yes! The prick comes into my hotel room, with a goddamn Bowie knife, intending to cut me up while I slept."
"But you disemboweled him."
"Yeah. And?"
"And? How the hell do you disembowel somebody in self-defense?"
I shrugged. "He got on my bad side."
Pat closed his eyes. I thought maybe he was praying. Then he opened them, but he didn't look at me. "Well, where is she, your lady friend? I hope she makes a good witness."
The toilet flushed again. I figured the first time was her puking; the second was anybody's guess.
She came out, looking fairly spiffy in the silk blouse and short dark skirt. Not a lovely hair out of place, but her eyes were off. I don't know whether Pat noticed that, because he was just gaping at her in general.
"Angela Marshall," he said, to me, not her. "The assistant district attorney is your witness?"
"She should make a good one," I said.
Pat sighed heavily, then went to the phone and called for the lab boys. Then he gently walked Angela out to the hall, away from the body, and asked her to wait. After that, he returned to take a brief statement from me, just inside the door.
When he'd slipped his notebook away, Pat said, "I don't mean to encourage you, but I do have a couple of pieces of information you might appreciate hearing."
"Go ahead. Liven up my evening."
"Remember Ollie Joe's Steak House, where Ginnie Mathes worked? Where she talked to a patron at some length before she left and went out and got killed?"
"Uh huh."
"Well, the register girl at Ollie Joe's identified Joseph Fidello's picture as the chatty patron."
"Really. What do you make of that?"
"Nothing yet. But there can be no question we're looking at murder, not some random mugging. Not with both of them dead. On the other hand, I believe we've confirmed that the little hooker, the Thorpe girl, was not the intended hit-and-run victim. It was all you, Mike."
"Why do you say that?"
Pat arched an eyebrow. "Washington kicked back some interesting info on Dulcie Thorpe's former pimp, the one she shot?"
"What's the deal?"
"The deal is he's dead. And has been dead for three months. The feds had him on tap because he was involved in some interstate heisting of stolen stereo equipment. Got killed in one of those falling-outs among thieves you hear about. Appears he gave up pimping, after Dulcie popped him."
"Tough to keep discipline with the rest of the stable," I said, "once one of the girls shoots your ass."
He glanced toward the dead body. "So ... I'm sure you've noticed something significant about your caller tonight."
"You recognize him, too?"
Pat's laugh rumbled out of his gut. "Oh yeah. That's Frankie Cerone. One of the top Bonetti guns. Seems old Alberto may still have a grudge against you after all, Mike. For taking out his boy Sal."
"I don't think Alberto gives a shit about Sal."
"What?"
I shook my head. "Word is, old Alberto's been getting credit for staging Doolan's suicide, though I don't think he did. And for trying to have me run down, too, which I also don't think he did." I nodded toward the gutted killer. "I think he decided he might as well really get in the game."
"What, to build up his rep?"
I nodded. "My guess is the old man is trying to stage a comeback. Maybe I'll have a talk with Alberto."
"Mike, you stay the hell away from him. I will throw your ass in jail so fast—"
"How can you make that speech and keep a straight face? Listen, I'm going to call the desk to arrange for a new room. This one's a mess."
I went over and stepped carefully across the corpse and called down to the desk. When the arrangements were made, I returned to Pat and said, "Take it easy on Ms. Marshall, Pat. She's had a bad shock."