Broadway had bloomed again. It was there in all its colorful glory, stretching wide-open arms to the sucker, crying out with a voice that was never still. I walked toward the lights, trying to think, trying to put bits together and add pieces where the holes were.
I found a delicatessen, went in and had a sandwich. I came out and headed up Broadway, making the stops as I came to them. Two hours went by in a hurry and nothing had happened. No, I didn't stay on the Stem because nobody would be looking for me on the Stem. Later maybe, but not now.
So I got off the Stem and went east where the people talked different and dressed different and were my kind of people. They didn't have dough and they didn't have flash, but behind their eyes was the knowledge of the city and the way it thought and ran. They were people who were afraid of the monster that grew up around them and showed it, yet they couldn't help liking it.
I made my stops and worked my way down to the Twenties. I had caught the looks, seen the nods and heard the whispers. At any time now I could have picked the boys out of a lineup by sight from the descriptions that came to me in an undertone. In one place something else was added. There were others to watch for too. Two-thirty and I had missed them by ten minutes. The next half hour and they seemed to have lost themselves. I got back to the Stem before all of the joints started closing down. The cabbie dropped me on a corner and I started the rounds on foot. In two places they were glad to see me and in the third the bartender who had pushed a lot of them my way tried to shut the door in my face, mumbling excuses that he was through for the night. I wedged it open, shoved him back inside and leaned against it until it clicked shut.
"The boys were here, Andy?"
"Mike, I don't like this."
"I don't either. When?"
"About an hour ago."
"You know them?"
His head bobbed and he glanced past me out the side window. "They were pointed out to me."
"Sober?"
"Two drinks. They barely touched em." I waited while he looked past me again. "The little guy was nervous. Edgy. He wanted a drink but the other one squashed it."
Andy ran his hands down under his fat waistband to keep them still. "Mike... nobody's to say a word to you. This is rough stuff. Do you... well, sort of stay clear of here until things blow over."
"Nothing's blowing over, friend. I want you to pass it around where It'll get heard. Tell the boys to stay put. I'll find them. They don't have to go looking for me any more."
"Jeepers, Mike."
"Tell it where it'll get heard."
My fingers found the door and pulled it open. The street outside was empty and a cop was standing on the corner. A squad car went by and he saluted it. Two drunks turned the corner behind his back and mimicked him with thumbs to their noses.
I turned my key in the lock. I knew the chain should be on so I opened the door a couple of inches and said, "It's me, Lily.
There was no sound at first, then only that of a deeply drawn breath being let out slowly. The light from the corner lamp was on, giving the room an empty appearance. She drifted into it silently and the glow from her hair seemed to brighten it a little.
Something was tight and strange in the smile she gave me through the opening in the door. Strange, faraway, curious. Something I couldn't put my finger on. It was there, then it was gone and she had the door unhooked and I stepped inside.
It was my turn to haul in my breath. She stood there almost breathlessly, looking up at me. Her mouth was partly open and I could see her tongue working behind her teeth. For some reason her eyes seemed to float there, two separate dark wells that could knead your flesh until it crawled.
Then she smiled, and the light that gilded her hair made shadows across the flat of her stomach and I could see the lush contours harden with an eager anticipation that was like her first expression... there, then suddenly gone like a frightened bird.
I said, "You didn't have to wait up."
"I... couldn't sleep."
"Anybody call?"
"Two. I didn't answer." Her fingers felt for the buttons on the robe, satisfied themselves that they were all there from her chin down to her knees, an unconscious gesture that must have been a habit. "Someone was here." The thought of it widened her eyes.
"Who?"
"They knocked. They tried the door." Her voice was almost a whisper. I could see the tremor in her chin and from someplace in the past I could feel the hate pounding into my head and my fingers wanted to squeeze something bad.
Her eyes drifted away from mine slowly. "How scared can a person get, Mike?" she asked. "How... scared?"
I reached out for her, took her face in my hands and tilted it up. Her eyes were warm and misty and her mouth a hungry animal that wanted to bite or be bitten, a questioning thing waiting to be tasted and I wanted to tell her she never had to be scared again. Not ever.
But I couldn't because my own mouth was too close and she pulled away with a short, frenzied jerk that had a touch of horror in it and she was out of reach.
It didn't last long. She smiled and I remembered her telling me I was a nice guy and nice guys have to be careful even when the lady has been around. Especially a lady who has just stepped out of the tub to open the door for you and had nothing to put on but a very sheer silk robe and you know what happens when those things get wet. The smile deepened and sparkled at me, then she drifted to the bedroom and the door closed.
I heard her moving around in there, heard her get into the bed, then I sat down in the chair facing the window and turned out the light. I switched the radio on to a late station, sitting there, seeing nothing at all, my mind miles away up in the mountains. I was coming around a curve and then there was that Viking girl standing there waving at me. She was in the beams of the lights, the tires shrieking to a stop, and she got closer and closer until there was no hope of stopping the car at all. She let out one final scream that had all the terror in the world in it and I could feel the sweat running down the back of my neck. Even when she was dead under the wheels the screaming didn't stop, then my eyes came open and my ears heard again and I picked up the phone and her cry stopped entirely:
I said a short hello into it, said it again and then a voice, a nice gentle voice asked me if this was Mike Hammer.
"That's right," I said. "who's this?"
"It really doesn't matter, Mr. Hammer. I merely wanted to call your attention to the fact that as you go out today please notice the new car in front of your building. It belongs to you. The papers are on the seat and all you have to do is sign them and transfer your plates."
It was a long foul smell that seeped right through the receiver. "What's the rest of it, friend?"
The voice, the nice gentle voice, stopped purring and took on an insidious growl. "The rest of it is that we're sorry about your other car. Very sorry. It was too bad, but since things happened as they did, other things must change."
"Finish it."
"You can have the car, Mr. Hammer. I suggest that if you take it you use it to go on a long vacation. Say about three or four months?"
"If I don't?"
"Then leave it where it is. We'll see that it is returned to the buyer."
I laughed into the phone. I made it a mean, low kind of laugh that didn't need any words to go with it. I said, "Buddy... I'll take the car, but I won't take the vacation. Someday I'll take you too."
"However you wish."
I said "That's the way it always is," but I was talking to a dead phone. The guy had hung up.
They were at me from both ends now. The boys walking around the Stem on a commission basis. One eye out for me, the other for the cops that Pat would have scouting. Now they were being generous.