“Yes, Mr. Hammer, but his background is in vice.”
It sure was.
“Well, I’d be glad to help,” I said.
Was that how they planned to play it? Work with me, and keep an eye on what I was up to? In a pig’s ass that would happen.
On the other hand, the mayor had just opened the door for me to make noises like a cop.
“Mayor Holden, what can you tell me about Sharron Wesley?”
“Call me Rudy, please. Everyone in Sidon knows everyone else, and we like it that way.”
“Swell. But my question…?”
“Well, she was an upstanding citizen, of course. A respected citizen.”
“Really? I understand she had a lot of wild parties out at her digs. And that her guests sometimes came roaring into town causing trouble, like cowboys after a cattle drive.”
He shifted in his comfy chair. Nibbled a cookie. “Well, that certainly has elements of truth. But it’s an exaggeration. We are a one-industry town, Mr. Hammer. And that industry is tourism.”
“In other words, showing out-of-towners a good time.”
“That’s not how I’d put it, but I can’t disagree.”
I leaned forward and grinned at him. It was a nasty enough grin to freeze him mid-cookie.
“Listen, Rudy. The Wesley broad was running a casino out there. I’ve only been here since Friday night and I already know that. So let’s not pretend you don’t.”
“Well… again. We’re a one-industry town.”
I glanced around. “You and your lovely wife have a lovely home here.”
“Well, uh, thank you, Mr. Hammer.”
“Pretty much everything about your set-up is lovely.”
“Set-up?”
“Deputy Chief Dekkert got tossed off the New York Police Department for graft, Rudy. That would make it hard for him to get hired on a lot of forces. But I think it was a gold star on his record, where Sidon was concerned.”
He smiled through sugar-flecked lips. “I’m afraid I’m not following you.”
“I know how these small towns operate. You have a casino on the outskirts. I was inside, I saw the lay-out, and it’s big city all the way. Somebody from New York was backing Sharron Wesley’s play.”
He swallowed a bite of cookie. “Suppose that’s true. What does it have to do with her death?”
“Probably everything. She was strangled, Rudy. Somebody would seem to be unhappy with her. I’d like to have a word or two with her silent partner. And yours.”
He shook his head, smiling again, but it was a sick smile. “I’m afraid you’re making an unwarranted assumption, Mr. Hammer. Much as I would like to help you, I simply don’t know.”
He nibbled on a cookie and I slapped it out of his hand. Then I slapped him a couple of times. He looked as startled as a guy in bed with somebody else’s wife when the flashbulbs went off.
“I don’t know the name! There is no name!”
His wife leaned in from the next room. “Dear? Is there a problem?”
“No! No.”
“You’re sure?”
I said, “He’s sure,” and looked at her with my nicest smile till she smiled back and went away.
Holden tried to straighten up and crawl inside the upholstery at the same time. “Are you insane, man? I’m the mayor of this town! You come into my house, uninvited, and threaten me, and rough me up?”
“I didn’t rough you up. You’d know it if I roughed you up.” I raised a hand in a peaceful gesture, but he jerked back, thinking I was going to slap him again. “I’m a little excitable tonight, Rudy. You see, somebody tried to kill me earlier, and I think it was your boy Dekkert.”
Veins stood out on his forehead. “What? My God! What were the circumstances?”
“The circumstances were, he missed. Big mistake. You and Chief Beales and his boys need to steer clear of me, or I will treat them, and you, like the cheap crooks you are. I was just kind of curious about Sharron Wesley and why somebody would strangle her, but you know what? I didn’t even like the dame. I don’t approve of wholesale murder, but I don’t make every killing my business. Only when I see a slobbermouth like Dekkert damn near beat to death an innocent little guy, I get annoyed. And then when somebody tries to put a bullet in my brain, I get mad.”
He was shaking his head and kept on shaking it. “Mr. Hammer-I have no idea who Sharron Wesley’s silent partner was. I will not deny that I had a small piece of her action. But I dealt only with her.”
“Interesting.”
“Interesting?”
“That makes you a suspect.”
I left him there with one last cookie on the plate. I thanked his wife for the iced tea and told her she had a lovely home.
She smiled, as if to say, What a polite young man, and showed me to the door.
CHAPTER SIX
“All right,” Pat Chambers said, “go over it again.”
He leaned back in his swivel chair and listened while I told the story for the third time. This captain of Homicide was careful and crafty, with an adding machine for a brain and the smooth manner of a man-about-town.
But all cop.
We were in his office off the station-house bullpen of the red-brick building where he worked, sometimes even on Sunday, like this afternoon. The place maybe was bustling a little less than on other days, but otherwise, it was business as usual.
My third recitation took longer than the last as I fitted in little details and opinions that had escaped the previous tellings. I ended with my leaving Sidon that morning, after breakfast at Big Steve’s. A man has got to eat.
“You come up with a murder motive yet?” Pat asked.
“For Sharron Wesley or for me? I damn near bought it, you know.”
He shrugged. “Take your pick.”
I gave him a shrug back. “No definite motive. But plenty of reasons for one.”
“What reasons?”
“Start with, that town is as crooked as a corkscrew. Isn’t that reason enough?”
He rocked in the chair, hands locked behind his neck, elbows winged out. “I just love the way you think, Mike. So simple and direct.”
“That doesn’t sound like a compliment.”
Now he sat forward, resting his hands on his desk and folding them, as if about to say grace. “Naturally, there’s a motive and it won’t be an obscure one, but based on what you’ve gathered so far, I’d say getting down to it will be tough. What can I do for you?”
That was the line I’d been waiting for.
“First of all,” I said, and I sat forward too, “I want to see if you can get me any info on Rudy Holden. Find out if he is as innocuous as he looks and sounds. When I talked to him last night, he played dumb, but he’s living in the biggest, swellest house in town filled with the kind of furniture you don’t get at the Salvation Army.”
Pat scribbled Holden’s name down on a note pad.
I went on: “Rumor around Sidon is that he’s a little guy in the bigger scheme of things… but in a small town, a little guy can be pretty goddamn big.”
Pat raised a hand for me to hold it a minute, got on the phone, spoke a few words, and before he had even lowered his hand, he passed the note to a uniformed cop who scrambled in, took it, and scrambled back out.
“You realize, Mike, that I can’t get too deep in this thing. If it had started here in the city, I could pull strings to work with you out there in Sidon. But unless some developments carry it back to Manhattan, you’re going to have to do most of the work yourself.”
“I know,” I said through a yawn. “That’s what I’m hoping for.”
“Oh, you’re a one-man cleaning crew now, I suppose?”
I patted the holstered rod under my arm. “Just me and my broom.”
Pat gave me a disgusted smirk. “Then you certainly don’t need my help.”
“But I do. Anyway, there is a tie-up with the city. Most of the clientele at Sharron Wesley’s gambling house are almost certainly New York City residents. Those kind of big spenders don’t limit themselves to one or two shindigs on the weekend. They’ll do plenty during the week, too.”