I checked the load, closed the cylinder, and stuck it in my belt. The last time I had seen that gun was when it tore the head of a guy who was risking getting me killed to save his own hide. I started to tell the old boy thanks, but his eyes were closed and his hand slipped away from mine. The rhythm of his breathing was barely perceptible under the sheet.
Trying to be quiet, I walked to the door, but before I got there he said, “I didn’t get your name.”
“Mike,” I told him. “Mike Hammer.”
“I should have known. You... made your name after I retired.”
“I did. I never came around because, well...”
“You thought I might not approve of your tactics.”
“Yeah.”
His smile was a crease among the many creases in the gaunt face. “Guess again.”
I could hear him chuckling behind me as I closed the door.
The cute nurse at her counter said, “Does he need anything?”
“No. Not now.”
“He was a big man in this city, in his day, wasn’t he?”
“A great man. Great old guy.”
It was quiet in a ward that wasn’t the kind that attracted too many visitors. The smell of age and death made this pretty brunette nurse so full of life a vague insult, a shout of youth in a silence that came from being forgotten and left alone in a still place, alone until the priest came around, anyway.
I asked, “Anybody ever come to see him?”
“One old man in a wheelchair,” she said.
“Any idea who he was?”
“A retired policeman from the nursing home where the patient lived. A male attendant brought him around.”
“What nursing home?”
“Long Island Care Center.”
“Nobody else?”
“Like you said — he had no family.”
“Yes he has.”
“Oh?” Her psychological training was showing in the frown under her cap. Then her business administration side took over and she yanked a drawer open to check her files.
I saved her the trouble.
“I meant me,” I told her.
Her smile remained very businesslike and professional. If I were dying in a hospital ward, and she smiled at me any way at all, I’d bust out crying.
She said, “Oh, I’m sorry. Are you his son?”
For fun I gave her a big tiger grin like the Chief used to have.
“No, doll,” I said. “Just a great big fucking ghost out of the distant past.”
She blinked long lashes at me. “May I... may I... have your name?”
“Sure, honey. Mike. Mike Hammer.”
She frowned. “I’ve heard that name before.”
“Well, that’ll make me easier to remember, in case I didn’t make an impression.”
I went downstairs and got in my car.
Ten minutes later, somebody slipped into the Chief’s room and stuck a knife between his ribs, robbing him of the hours or maybe minutes he had left.
But at least they didn’t get the key.
“All this heat’s unnecessary, Pat,” I said to the Captain of Homicide, who was sucking himself back in the shadows of his office while the DA was riding me. “Tell this big shot I just got back from Florida, and I already have a tan.”
I’d made an impression on that cute nurse, all right. She’d remembered my name just fine, as her murdered patient’s last visitor, when the cops had asked.
I was sitting in a hard chair in Pat’s office, ankle on a knee, with my back to his desk where I’d tossed my hat. I gave the DA a tight-lipped smile that meant screw the politicians and turned back to Inspector Milroy, who had already read me my rights and was trying like hell to get a confession out of me.
I said, “Either charge me and book me, or let me go.”
The DA frowned. It gave his blankly handsome face a little character, at least. “Mr. Hammer...”
“Talk to my lawyer.”
He shook his head, threw up his hands, and stormed out, shutting the door behind him so hard it gave the window glass the shakes. But Milroy stayed at it. We’d tangled asses many times over the years, and which of us hated the other more was up for grabs. He was in his sixties but still dangerous, blond hair mingled with white now, husky and florid, with a scar across his forehead from an automobile crash. When his face got red, it stood out like a vertical lightning bolt. Like now.
“There was a metal box in that room,” Milroy said. “It was open, and the contents scattered about. Did you take something, Hammer?”
“What, after I killed him you mean? Yeah, there was a Cadillac in there. I drove it down the hall. Didn’t the nurse tell you?”
He bared teeth the color of sweet corn, but there wasn’t anything sweet about the two big fists he raised to his chest, hunching as he moved forward, lumbering closer.
“Please,” I said. “Please do it. I’ve been waiting years for this.”
Pat was behind him then, his hands latched onto the big cop’s shoulders, holding him back, speaking softly, gently, into his ear: “I know what the Chief meant to you. But you can’t do it this way, Inspector. You can’t throw thirty years away.”
When Milroy turned toward Pat, they were close enough to kiss, only Milroy was sputtering, spitting. “Why, if I take this monkey apart, you’ll testify on his behalf? Are you two really that tight, Chambers?”
“Yes,” Pat said.
Milroy shuddered, shaking his arms, and his fists turned into fingers. He seemed to relax, but his face was still bunched up. He straightened his tie. “Shit,” he said.
“Anyway,” Pat said, “you wouldn’t take him apart. He’s twenty years younger and fifty pounds lighter, Inspector, and I’d be trading this problem for a new one.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Mike would kill you, and I’d be very unpopular around here when I went on the record saying it was self-defense.”
I was rocking back in a hard chair, grinning. “I can step outside, if you girls want to be alone.”
“Some day, Hammer,” Milroy said. “Some day.”
“Better rush it. You’re retiring soon, right? Make sure I get an invite to the gold watch party.”
The inspector pushed Pat aside, hard enough that the Homicide Captain damn near lost his balance, and the door slammed again, giving that glass its second stress test in five minutes.
Pat sighed. Now it was his turn to straighten his tie. “You are a hobby I wish I didn’t have, Mike.”
“Interesting new interrogation technique. The cops yell at each other. Maybe you should take it up a notch. Rough each other up some.”
“Not funny, Mike. Not funny.” Pat got behind his desk and fired up a Lucky. He didn’t offer me one — he knew I’d quit. So had he — a dozen times. “Anything you want to tell me that you didn’t want the DA and my superior to know?”
“If that guy’s your ‘superior,’ Liberace’s a better ivory tickler than Van Cliburn.”
“Liberace’s more popular. Spill, Mike. What are you holding back?”
Nothing much — just a little metal key.
“Not a damn thing, Pat. Would I hold out on you?”
“You wouldn’t give me the time of day if my watch was broken.”
“Now that’s just unkind. So Milroy is taking this personally, huh? He was that close to the Chief?”
Pat nodded. “Working out of the Chief’s office till the old boy retired. What was the Chief to you, Mike? He retired before you made your rep. Did he even know who you were?”
“He didn’t recognize the face, but the name he knew.” I shrugged. “When I was a kid, and he wasn’t the Chief yet, he did me a favor.”