Somebody else had gone through the apartment. They had done a good job too. But not quite as good as the feds. They had left their trademark around.
The smoke that was trouble started to boil up around me again. You couldn't see it and you couldn't smell it, but it was there. I started whistling again and picked up the .45.
Chapter Four
She came in at half-past eleven. She used the key I had given her a long time ago and walked into the living room, bringing with her the warmth and love for life that was like turning on the light.
I said, "Hello, beautiful," and I didn't have to say anything more because there was more in the words than the sound of my voice and she knew it.
She started to smile slowly and her mouth made a kiss. Our lips didn't have to touch. She flung that warmth across the room and I caught it. Velda said, "Ugly face. You're uglier now than you were but I love you more than ever."
"So I'm ugly. Underneath I'm beautiful."
"Who can dig down that deep?" She grinned. Then added, "Except me, maybe.
"Just you, honey," I said.
The smile that played around her mouth softened a moment, then she slipped out of the coat and threw it across the back of a chair.
I could never get tired of looking at her, I thought. She was everything you needed just when. you needed it, a bundle of woman whose emotions could be hard or soft or terrifying, but whatever they were it was what you wanted. She was the lush beauty of the jungle, the sleek sophisticate of the city. Like I said, to me she was everything, and the dull light of the room was reflected in the ring on her finger that I had given her.
I watched her go to the kitchen and open a pair of beer cans. I watched while she sat down, took the frosted can from her and watched while she sipped the top off hers and felt a sudden stirring when her tongue flicked the foam from her lips.
Then she said what I knew she was going to say. "This one's too big, Mike."
"It is?"
Her eyes drew a line across the floor and up my body until they were staring hard into mine. "I was busy while you were in the hospital, Mike. I didn't just let things wait until you got well. This isn't murder as you've known it before. It was planned, organizational killing and it's so big that even the city authorities are afraid of it. The thing has ballooned up to a point where it's federal and even then it's touching such high places that the feds have to move carefully."
"So?" I let it hang there and pulled on the can of beer.
"It doesn't make any difference what I think?"
I set the can on the endtable and made the three-ring pattern on the label. "What you think makes a lot of difference, kitten, but when it comes to making the decisions I'll make them on what I think. I'm a man. So I'm just one man, but as long as I have a brain of my own to use and experience and knowledge to draw on to form a decision I'll keep on making them myself."
"And you're going after them?"
"Would you like me better if I didn't?"
The grin crept back through the seriousness on her face. "No." Then her eyes laughed at me too. "Ten million dollars' worth of men and equipment bucking another multi-million outfit and you elect yourself to step in and clean up. But then, you're a man." She sipped from the beer can again, then said, "But what a man. I'll be glad when you step off that bachelorhood pedestal and move over to where I have a little control over you."
"Think you ever will?"
"No, but at least I'll have something to bargain with." She laughed. "I'd like to have you around for a long time without worrying about you."
"I feel the same way myself, Velda. It's just that some things come first."
"I know, but let me warn you. From now on you're going to be up against a scheming woman."
"That's been tried before."
"Not like this."
"Yeah," I said, and finished the beer. I waited until she put hers down too, then shook out a Lucky and tossed the pack over to her. "What did you pick up?"
"A few details. I found a trucker who passed your car where they had it parked with the flares fore and aft. The guy stopped, and when he saw nobody around he went on. The nearest phone was three miles down the road in a diner and he was surprised when nobody had shown up there because he hadn't seen anyone walking. The girl in the diner knew about an abandoned shack a few hundred yards from the spot and I went there. The place was alive with feds."
"Great."
"That's hardly the word for it." She squirmed in the chair and ran her fingers through her hair, the deep ebony of it rubbed to a soft glow in the pale lamplight. "They held me for a while, questioned me, and released me with a warning that had teeth in it."
"They find anything?"
"From what I could see, nothing. They backtracked the same way that I did and anything they found just supported what you had already told them.
"There's a catch in it though," she said. "The shack was a good fifty yards in from the highway and covered with brush. You could light the place up and it wouldn't be seen, and unless you knew where to look you'd never find it."
"It was too convenient to be coincidental, you mean?"
"Much too convenient."
I spit out a stream of smoke and watched it flow around the empty beer can. "That doesn't make sense. The kid was running away. How'd they know which direction she'd pick out?"
"They wouldn't, but how would they know where that shack was?"
"Who'd the shack belong to?"
A frown creased her forehead and she shook her head. "That's another catch. The place is on state property. It's been there for twenty years. One thing I did learn while I was being questioned was that aside from its recent use the place had no signs of occupancy at all. There were dates carved in the doorpost and the last one was 1937."
"Anything else?"
Velda shook her head slowly. "I saw your car. Or what's left of it."
"Poor old baby. The last of the original hot rods."
"Mike..."
I finished the beer and put the empty down on the table. "Yeah?"
"What are you going to do?"
"Guess."
"Tell me."
I had a long pull on the smoke and dropped the butt into the can. "They killed a dame and tried to frame me for it. They wrecked my heap and put me in the hospital. They're figuring us all for suckers and don't give a hang who gets hurt. The slobs, the miserable slobs." I rammed my fist against my palm until it stung. "I'm going to find out what the score is, kid. Then a lot of heads are going to roll."
"One of them might be yours, Mike."
"Yeah, one of em might, but it sure won't be the first to go. And you know something? They're worried, whoever they are. They read the papers and things didn't quite happen like they wanted them to. The law of averages bucked em for a change and instead of getting a sucker to frame they got me. Me. That they didn't like because I'm not just the average joe and they're smart enough to figure out an angle."
Her face pulled tight and the question was in her eyes. "They were up here looking around," I said.
"Mike!
"Oh, I don't know what they were after, but I don't think they knew either. But you can bet on this, they went through this place because they thought I had something they wanted and just because they didn't find it doesn't mean they think I haven't got it. They'll be back. The next time I won't be in any emergency ward."
"But what could it be?"
"Beats me, but they tried to kill two people to find out. Whether I like it or not I'm in this thing as deep as that dame was." I grinned at Velda sitting there. "And I like it, too. I hate the guts of those people. I hate them so bad it's coming out of my skin. I'm going to find out who `they' are and why and then they've had it."
A note of sarcasm crept into her voice. "Just like always, isn't that right?"