Velda asked, “Are you still pursuing acting?”
“Still making a somewhat half-hearted attempt of it, I admit. I audition, just not as frequently... as doggedly. It wears you down after a while.”
I said encouragingly, “You’re not a waitress. You’re a hostess.”
She laughed a little. “You sure know how to build up a girl, Mr. Hammer.”
Velda was smiling a little. Apparently men can be idiots sometimes. Who knew?
Sheila said, “Before you go, I’ll give you my phone number at my girl friend’s. I’ll help you any way I can. I’ll encourage Vincent to cooperate. He isn’t always Mr. Hyde. Even now, he’s usually Dr. Jekyll.”
She got up, smiled and nodded pleasantly. And now when she returned to her post, the hostess in green glided.
“Getting somewhere,” I said.
“I feel bad for her,” Velda said.
“Why’s that?”
“She’s gone from an abusive boy friend to another guy with a terrible temper. Of course, that doesn’t mean Vincent would strike her or anything, but... it’s an unsettling possibility.”
I shrugged. “Well, it’s helpful to know she’s cooperating with us now.”
Velda nodded. “It is.”
“But I think before this goes any further, I should talk to Casey Shannon, and get the skinny as he sees it where Vincent Colby is concerned. There’s a couple of other suspicious deaths on the fringes here.”
She touched my hand. “I forgot to tell you, Mike. I spoke to Pat this afternoon, on some follow-up on that Penta case.”
“Oh?”
“He said in passing that Shannon has gone to the Keys for a getaway vacation. Will be out of town two or three weeks anyway. There’s some old gal friend of his down there he’s going to be shacking up with.”
I put on a wistful look. “If only I had an old gal friend to shack up with.”
“You want to get kicked again?”
We paid at the register and I collected my hat and coat from the blonde near the door. Pete approached and was his old smiling self again.
“Everything work out okay with Sheila?” he asked. “She came away in a good mood, Mike, so you must have behaved yourself.”
“Velda’s a calming influence.”
He was closing up, the place almost empty. Last call here was 1 a.m., and the clock was fifteen minutes fast, as was the custom in so many bars.
We stepped out into crisp autumn air — my favorite time of year. Traffic was light, and we’d have to walk to the nearest corner to grab a cab going in the right direction. I paused to give Velda a quick verbal reconstruction of the hit-and-run, painting the picture as best I could.
“Wouldn’t have happened,” Velda said, “if he’d parked in that ramp down the block.”
“Are you kidding? Rich guys hate to pay.”
An unfamiliar hand settled on my shoulder, hard enough to squeeze through the topcoat fabric.
“You better fucking listen,” a baritone voice snarled, “you son of a bitch...”
It was the bartender, his breath visible in the chill, coming out his nostrils like dragon’s breath.
Gino Mazzini was handsome in a Travolta sort of way, dark-haired, olive-complected with big teeth that looked nasty with that upper lip curled back. “You stay away from my girl — leave her alone! Hear me? Stay the hell away from her, old man, or I’ll put you in a damn wheelchair!”
I should have decked him then and there, but I might need to interview him later, and beating him to a pulp might alienate him.
So I said, “Cool it,” holding my hands out, palms open. “I’m investigating that hit-and-run and had a few questions for her. That’s all. She’s in no trouble, and you may have noticed I already have a girl.”
I saw it coming, the sucker punch that would have brought up my steak sandwich, and I bobbed to one side, my hat flying off, but that got me just off-balance enough for him to turn his missed blow into a swinging backhand that knocked me to the sidewalk. Now I was ready to see anything and everything that this prick could send my way, and that included the kick he aimed at my ribs as I lay sprawled on my side. I caught his foot in two hands in midair and yanked it like I was uprooting a small tree and the world went out from under him but obligingly came up to meet him, and the way he landed on cement on his back like that had to hurt like hell. His breath whooshed out like a dam bursting and now, as I got to my feet, it was my turn. I stomped on his stomach with one foot, like he was a big goddamn bug, and then stepped away as he curled up in a fetal ball, hugging himself, his moans stitched together with whimpering.
Somebody in the restaurant must have seen the fun out the tinted-glass windows, because Pete and a few patrons and, of course, Sheila Ryan came bounding out onto the street. Nothing so impressive as a hit-and-run to gawk at this time around, just a scuffle that had ended in pain for the shit who started it.
Only then I got greedy. I leaned in and straddled him and grabbed him by his white shirt and pulled him up to where I could grin into his face.
“Not as easy,” I said, getting ready to smack him one more time, “as hitting women, is it?”
But he was younger than me, and for all his pain he managed to swing a fist into my side. The bartender had some power left because it was enough to knock me off him. He was just getting up, ready to come at me again, when his eyes opened wide.
He could feel the snout of the little .32 automatic at his temple.
Velda said through a lovely terrible smile, “Of course with some women, it’s not easy at all.”
Then she thumped him on the head with the barrel and he went down on his knees, trying not to cry but not making it.
The diminutive Pete was looming over his fallen bartender now. “Your ass is fired, you dumb bastard!”
Then the restauranteur came over to apologize as his hostess and the handful of patrons trailed back inside.
“He must not know,” Pete said, “who Mike Hammer is.”
“I forgot for a minute there myself,” I said, smoothing my coat, looking around for my hat.
Chapter Five
The next morning, behind the door with CAPTAIN PAT CHAMBERS, HOMICIDE DIVISION lettered in gold-outlined black, I was sitting across from my old friend in his painfully modern, glassed-in office at One Police Plaza. I was sipping coffee laced with my usual milk and sugar, my coat and hat hung up with his on a metal tree. We were waiting for a call from a guy he knew on the Accident Investigation Squad.
With his own cup of coffee going, black, Pat was in shirt sleeves and loose tie, and he was scratching at his blond head of hair as he studied me. Cops were wearing their hair way too damn long for my taste these days.
“Mike,” Pat said, leaning back in the old anomaly of a brown-leather swivel chair he’d brought over with him from the ancient Centre Street HQ, “you stay up on things. Always seem to know what’s going on in your field. Right on top of whatever new tricks the bad guys are up to.”
“I try, buddy. Thanks for noticing.”
Then came the zinger: “So how is it you’re so backward when it comes to making use of modern technology?”
My laugh was short but not sweet. “What are you talking about, Pat? I have a top private forensics lab where I can get things checked out when need be. I have connections with the FBI and CIA and alphabet soup guys you don’t even know exist, and all their resources. I consult with top security company experts. And I have an in with a high-ranking cop who gets me access to what I need from his lab and other sources. Maybe you saw him in the mirror this morning.”