I figured it would be bad taste to ask him if he had to use blocks for his feet to reach the pedals.
Billy Batson batted the air, made a face, which with that mug was saying something.
“Oh, hell, Mike, I can’t drive! Never bothered to learn. What’s the point, in the city?”
I took Velda out for lunch at Charlie’s Deli. It was one of those gimmick places with lots of ’50s nostalgia by way of Elvis on the jukebox, vintage advertising signs on the walls, and gum-snapping waitresses in poodle skirts.
But the food was authentic, even if the atmosphere was ersatz. Velda had a salad with chicken and I chowed down on a pastrami, corned beef and Swiss on rye, coleslaw on the sandwich. Billy might be right that it wouldn’t be a bullet that took Mike Hammer out.
I filled her in on my conversation with Pat, and shared what I’d learned from Billy, including that the pride of Singer’s Midgets still had a tall yen for her.
“Opinion,” I said, between bites.
She shrugged. “I think I’ll stick with you, Mike. Billy has a nice business going there, but you may make the grade one of these days.”
I tried not to smile and failed. “No. I mean, do I share what Billy told me with Pat?”
“That the Ferrari in question is a special model? Possibly rare?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s what a good citizen would do.”
“So — no, then.”
She smiled, spearing a piece of broiled chicken from the salad. “I didn’t say that exactly. But you’re not wrong. If Pat goes to the Accident Squad clowns who caught the hit-and-run, they might track those leads down... maybe... but who knows what they’ll do with it, if they do?”
I sighed deep. “It’s been over two weeks. That ride’s had its bodywork done on the q.t. by now. Maybe the NYPD’s finest will prove it’s been worked on, but even so, we’re still looking at a hit-and-run with no real description of the driver, no license plate number, and a victim who spent a single night in the hospital.”
“Right. Or,” she said, and chewed chicken, then swallowed it, and continued, “I can call my contact at Motor Vehicles and ask her to run a check on how many... what’s that model called again?”
“An F40.”
She shrugged; her silk blouse was pink today and she did a bang-up job filling it. “I could call my friend and see how many red F40 Ferraris are in Manhattan, and the state of New York. I’ll also ask if either one has been reported stolen, and then perhaps turned up on the street somewhere, either with some slight damage or no damage at all... because it was repaired before being dumped somewhere to be easily found.”
The Platters started singing “Only You,” and they could have been talking about Velda.
“I oughta marry you, doll,” I said.
“You think?”
The answer was two.
Two red F40 Ferraris in Manhattan, and that constituted every one of them in the state of New York.
Chapter Six
That afternoon I found myself, more than a little unexpectedly, back on the thirty-seventh floor of the Financial District building that housed the offices of Colby, Daltree & Levine. Once again I moved largely unnoticed through the boiler room of cold-calling young brokers basking in that green aquarium luster of computer monitors. The murmur of hard sell pretending to be soft sell followed me as I made my way through.
I took the right toward the row of glassed-in offices of the Yuppies who had climbed up a few rungs; in that central, twice-the-size office for the CEO’s son, company president Vincent Colby, the massive desk was unattended. Off to my left was a receptionist, a blonde babe in a red blazer with shoulders wider than mine, her tresses up, her glasses round-framed and big-lensed, the better to see me with.
She was seated at a small dark-wood desk and looking formidable for a girl of maybe twenty-two.
“I’m Mr. Hammer,” I said.
A mouth worth looking at, its deep-red lipstick outlined in black, smiled in a businesslike fashion. “Mr. Owens is expecting you. May I take your coat and hat?”
“Sure.”
She did, stowing them in a nearby closet, then returned to her desk and used her phone to say Mr. Hammer was here. She listened, said, “Yes sir,” and hung up. Very sweetly she told me, “Just knock and you’ll be admitted.”
“Should I say Joe sent me?”
She frowned in confusion. “Why would you say that?”
“A joke. Little before your time.” Damn. I had to get newer material.
“Knocking will be sufficient,” she said, and gestured toward a specific office; her nails were the color of her mouth. Even with a doll like Velda at home, I couldn’t help wondering what being twenty years younger for an afternoon would be like.
Off to my right, down the hall of exec VP offices leading to the CEO’s, another receptionist was looking my way — the old man’s forty-something guardian at the gate, that no-nonsense brunette in the black-framed masculine specs. Snugly curvy in a brown striped power suit, the Ice Queen with the glass-cutter cheeks apparently remembered I’d been a welcome guest yesterday, because she granted me a slight nod and slighter smile.
I grinned and waved at her enthusiastically like a kid from a back seat. It actually made her smile broaden a little and maybe she even stifled a laugh. You still got it, Hammer, I thought — if they were over forty, anyway.
The inhabitant of the office labeled WILLIAM J. OWENS, MANAGING DIRECTOR saw me approaching — a blond Yuppie under thirty in the mandatory shirt sleeves and bright suspenders (dark orange). He was just hanging up his phone, and motioning me in.
I did so.
He was handsome in a Beach Boys Go to College way, hair tousled on purpose and frozen that way with product. His eyes were blue and heavy-lidded, making me think grass not coke was his likely recreational drug of choice; his nose was misshapen as a result of a break or two that indicated he had once been athletic. Maybe he still was. His mouth was small and clenched. If I were a cruder man, I’d say it reminded me of an anus.
“Mr. Hammer,” he said, half-rising, extending a hand for me to shake. I did. It was slippery. He gestured for me to sit in the client’s chair. I did.
“Appreciate you seeing me, Mr. Owens,” I said, “at such short notice.”
When he spoke, the little mouth sort of blew a kiss; combined with the other thing that orifice reminded me of, that was disturbing.
He said, “I was intrigued when I heard who it was. Who you are. My father used to get a kick out of reading about you in the papers, back when you stirred things up around town.”
I just smiled and nodded. Everybody’s father seemed impressed with me.
He sat forward, cocked his head and folded his hands; on the low-slung cabinet behind him, a trio of green monitor screens glowed, their cursors pulsing. “What’s this about my Ferrari?”
Yes, one of the two F40 Ferraris in Manhattan had turned out to belong to an employee of the Colby brokerage firm — this young exec, in fact.
I had called the other F40 owner, an attorney named Randall with Weiss & Lambrusa, a firm with a pricey Broadway office and a big reputation. The attorney had told me that his vehicle was housed at a private garage and that he’d used it just this past weekend. It hadn’t been stolen and he had not noticed signs of damage. I took down the information about where he stowed the wheels, to see if somebody there might have “borrowed” the Ferrari.
But that could wait.
An F40 owner who worked at Colby, Daltree & Levine seemed a more logical priority, and a higher one.
Despite what Captain Chambers had said about my thriving on coincidences, really I was just as wary about them as the next detective. I just didn’t view every coincidence as an impossibility or, for that matter, a conspiracy.