"He's doing all right now," I said. I told him so-long and went back to the car. Lily was waiting, her face a pale glow behind the window.
I slid under the wheel, sat there fiddling with the gearshift, letting the thought I had jell. Lily put her hand on my arm, held it still and waited. "I wonder if Pat found it," I muttered.
"What?"
"Michael Friday stooled on her brother. She went back home and found something else but this time she was afraid to give it to the police."
"Mike..."
"Let me talk, kid. You don't have to listen. I'm just getting it in order. There was trouble in the outfit. Carl was expecting to take over somehow. In that outfit you don't work your way up. Carl was expecting to move up a slot so somebody else had to go. That boy knew what he was doing. He spent some time getting something on the one he was after and was going to smear him with it."
I put it through my mind again, nodded, and said, "Carl was close enough to start the thing going so the other one knew about it. He went after what Carl had and found it gone. By that time the cops were having a field, day with the labor department of the organization so he had a good idea who was responsible. He must have tailed her. He knew she had it and what she was going to do with it so he nailed her."
"But... who, Mike? Who?"
My teeth came apart in the kind of a smile nobody seemed to like. I was feeling good all over because I had my finger on it now and I wasn't letting go. "Friend Billy," I said. "Billy Mist. Now he sits quiet and enjoys his supper. Someplace he's got a dame on the hook and enjoying life because whatever it was Carl had isn't any more. Billy's free as a bird but he hasn't got two million in the bush to play with. He's got an ace in the hole with Velda in case the two million shows up and a deuce he can discard anytime if it doesn't. The greasy little punk is sitting pretty where he can't be touched."
The laugh started out of my chest and ripped through my throat. It was the biggest joke I ever laughed at because the whole play was made to block me out and I wasn't being mousetrapped. I was going back a couple of hours to the kitchen and what Lily had said and back even further to a note left in my office. Then, so I wouldn't forget how I felt right there at the beginning when I wanted to kill something with my hands, I went back to Berga and the way she had looked coming out of that gas station.
I kicked the engine over, pulled around the squad car and pointed the hood toward the bright eyes of Manhattan. I stayed with the lights, watching the streets click by, cut over a few blocks to the building with the efficient look and antiseptic smell and pulled in behind the city hearse unloading a double cargo.
It was a little after one but you could still find dead people around.
The attendant in the morgue called me into his office and wanted to know if I wanted coffee. I shook my head. "It takes the smell away," he said. "What can I do for you?"
"You had a body here. Girl named Berga Torn."
"Still have it."
"Slated for autopsy?"
"Nope. At least I haven't heard about it. They don't usually in those cases."
"There will be one in this case. Can I use the phone?"
"Go ahead."
I picked it up and dialed headquarters. Pat wasn't around so I tried his apartment. He wasn't there, either. I buzzed a few of the places he spent time in but they hadn't seen him. I looked at my watch and the hand had spun another quarter. I swore at the phone and at myself and double cursed the red tape if I had to go through channels. I was thinking so hard I wasn't really thinking at all and while I was in the middle of it the door of the office opened and the little guy with the potbelly came in, dropped his bag on the floor and said, "Damn it, Charlie, why can't people wait until morning to die?"
I said, "Hi, doc," and the coroner gave me a surprised glance that wasn't any too pleased.
"Hello, Hammer, what are you doing here? Should I add `again'?"
"Yeah, add it, doc. I always seem to come home, don't I?"
"I'd like it better if you stayed out of my sight."
He went to go past me. I grabbed his arm, turned him around and looked at a guy with a safe but disgusting job. He went up on his toes, tried to pull his arm away, but I held on. "Listen, doc. You and I can play games some other time. Right now I need you for a job that can't wait. I have to chop corners and it has to be quick."
"Let go of me!"
I let go of him. "Maybe you like to see those bodies stretched out in the gutter."
He turned around slowly. "What are you talking about?"
"Suppose you had a chance to do something except listen for a heartbeat that isn't there for a change. Supposing you had it in your hand to kick a few killers right into the chair. Supposing you're the guy who stands between a few more people living or dying in the next few hours... how would you pitch it, doc?"
The puzzle twisted his nose into a ridge of wrinkles. "See here... you're talking like..."
"I'm talking plain. I've been trying to get some official backing for what I have in mind but nobody's home. Even then it might take up time we can't spare. That chance I was talking about is in your hand, doc."
"But . . "
"I need a stomach autopsy on a corpse. Now. Can do?"
"I think you're serious," he said in a flat tone.
"You'll never know how serious. There may be trouble later. Trouble isn't as bad as somebody having to die."
I could see the protest coming out of the attendant. It started but never got there. The coroner squared his shoulders, let a little of the excitement that was in my voice trickle into his eyes and he nodded.
"Berga Torn," I told the attendant. "Let's go see her."
He did it the fast, easy way you do when you cut corners. He did it right there in the carrier she lay on and the light overhead winked on the steel in his hand. I didn't get past the first glimpse because fire does horrible things to a person and it was nicer to remember Berga in the headlights of the car.
I could hear him, though.
I could even tell when he found it.
He did me the favor of cleaning it before he handed it to me and I stood there looking at the dull glitter of the brass key wondering where the lock to it was. The coroner said, "Well?"
"Thanks."
"I don't mean that."
"I know... only where it goes nobody knows. I thought it would be something else."
He sensed the disappointment and held out his hand. I dropped the key in it and he held it up to the light, turning it over to see both sides. For a minute he concentrated on one side, held it closer to the bulb, then nodded for me to follow him across the room. From a closet he pulled out a bottle of some acrid liquid, poured it into a shallow glass container, then dropped the key in. He let it stay there about twenty seconds before dipping it out with a glass rod. This time the dullness was gone. It was a gleaming thing with a new look and no coating to dull the details. This time when he held it in the light you could see City Athletic Club, 529 scratched into the surface and I squeezed his arm so hard he winced through his grin.
I said, "Listen, get on the phone out there and find Captain Chambers. Tell him I found what we were looking for and I'm going after it. I'm not going to take any chances on this getting away so he can hop up to my office for a print of this thing."
"He doesn't know?"
"Uh-uh. I'm afraid somebody else might find out the same way I did. I'll call you back to see how you made out. If there's any trouble about... back there... Chambers'll clear things. Someday I'll let you know just how much of a boost up you gave the department."
The excitement in his eyes sparkled brighter and he was holding his jaw like a guy who's just done the impossible. The morgue attendant was on his way over for an explanation and apparently he wanted it in writing. He tried to stop me for some talk on the way out but I was in too much of a rush.