Heidi tilted her face and squinted at me, not understanding.
"That pair you're with are a couple of hoods."
"Oh . . . don't be silly." She gave me a disgusted grimace. "They work for Mr. Ballinger and Mr. Ballinger
"
"... is a legitimate businessman," I finished for her. "One day try old issues of the newspapers . . . about July, four years ago, or check into your nearest friendly precinct station. The desk sergeant will fill you in on his background."
"I don't believe . .."
"You got any reason not to believe me?"
"No." But her voice was hesitant.
"Somebody tried to kill me last night." I looked past her to the bar again and she almost turned to follow my gaze.
"But . .."
"When you go back there," I said, "tell your friends that I'll be looking them up. Right after I see their boss. We have a little business to discuss too."
Some of the color drained out of her face and she gave an annoyed toss of her head, her lower lip pinched between her teeth. "Damn! You men ..."
"Just tell them, Heidi."
"I don't know why ..."
"Tell them. And have the message passed on to Larry Beers too."
I winked at her and left her standing there a moment watching me before she walked back, that wild hip-swaying walk reflecting her annoyance. Carl and Sammy weren't going to be too happy with the news. They'd been too used to doing the chasing and calling the shots when and where they wanted them.
The maitre d' and headwaiter had seen Woody Ballinger earlier, but he had left about an hour ago. His office secretary had called a little while back looking for him, so he wouldn't be there. I just told them that they could tell Woody Mike Hammer was looking for him on a "business matter" and if he didn't find me I'd find him. Let Woody sweat a little too.
Between three and four in the afternoon the New York cabbies change shifts. It's bad enough on a nice day trying to fight the women shoppers and the early commuters for one, but in the rain, forget it. You could stand in the street and get splashed by their wheels or try walking, but either way you'd get soaked. For once the weathermen had been right and they were predicting three more days of the same. Intermittent heavy rain, occasional clearing, windy and cool. It was a hell of a time to be on the streets.
A girl walked by the store entranceway I was nestled in, head lowered into the slanted rain, her plastic coat plastered to her body, outlining her scissoring thighs as she doggedly made her way to the corner to make a green light. At least she reminded me of something. I went inside the store, bought a pack of cigarettes, walked back to the phone booth, put a dime in the slot and dialed a number.
The secretary told me to hold, checked me out, then put Renée Talmage on the line. She chuckled once and said, "Hello, teaser."
"But fun, kid."
"Too frustrating, but yes ... fun. At least different. Where are you?"
"A couple blocks away and soaking wet."
"There's a nice little bar downstairs in the building where you can dry out while we have a drink."
"Fine," I told her. "Five minutes."
It was closer to fifteen and she was part of the way through a cocktail, totally engrossed with the bartender in a discussion about the latest slump in the stock market, When I got there. I tossed my soggy trench coat and hat
on the back of a chair and climbed on the barstool next to her. "Must be great to be intelligent. Bring me a beer," I told the bartender.
She stopped in the middle of Dow-Jones averages and tilted her head at me. "And I thought you had class. A beer. How plebian."
"So I'm a slob." I took the top off the beer and put the glass down with a satisfied burp. "Good stuff, that. You have to raise your hand to get out of class?"
"Recess time." She laughed and sipped her cocktail. "Actually, the day is done. William is socializing with the wheels of the world and I'm left to my own devices for the time being."
"You got nice devices, kid," I said. The dress she had on wasn't exactly office apparel. The vee-neckline plunged down beside the naked swell of her breasts to disappear behind a four-inch-wide leather belt. "Don't you have anything on under that?" I asked her.
"We women are exercising our newfound freedom. Haven't you heard about the brassiere-burning demonstrations?"
"Yeah. I heard. Only I didn't figure on being this close to the ashes. It's distracting."
"Well?"
"Don't guys find it hard to keep their eyes off you?"
Renée looked at me with an amused smile, her mouth formed into a tiny bow. "Very hard."
"Cut it out."
Her smile got deeper. "Me? You're the one making all the dirty remarks."
I almost spilled my beer before I managed to get it down.
"Now what have you been doing to get so wet ... tailing a suspect?"
"Not quite. There are better ways of nailing them. Ive been walking and remembering a dead friend who shouldn't have died and thinking out why he died until things begin to make a little sense. One day, one second, it's all going to be nice and clear right in front of me and all those targets will be ready to be knocked off."
The funny little smile on her face warped into a worried frown and some deep concern showed in her eyes. "Is it... that personal, Mike?"
"All the way."
"But you're serious ... about killing."
"So was somebody else," I told her.
Renée looked into her glass, started to raise it, then put it down and looked at me again. "Strange."
"What is?"
"My impressions. I read about people in your line of work, I see the interpretations on TV and in movies ... it's rather hard to believe there really are people like that. But with you it's different. The police ..."
"Cops are dedicated professionals, honey. They're in a tough, rough, underpaid racket with their lives on the line every minute of the day. They get slammed by the public, sappy court decisions and crusading politicians, but somehow they get the job done."
"Mike ... I thought I knew people. I'm personally responsible for the actions and decisions of several thousands and answerable only to William Dorn. I can't afford to make mistakes in selecting them for sensitive positions, but I would have made a mistake with you."
"Why?"
"Because ... well, there are different sides of you that nobody can truly see."
"You've just lost touch with the lower class, kid. You work on too high a level. Get out there on the street where the buying public is and you'll see a lot of other faces too. Some of them probably work for you too. Not everybody is in an executive position. Macy's and Sears Roebuck still do a whopping big business by catering to their tastes."
"Take me with you, Mike," she said.
"What?"
"You could be right. I'd like to see these people."
"Renée, you'd get your clothes dirty, your nails broken, and your ass patted. It's different."
"I'll survive it."
She was so serious I had to laugh at her. I finished the fresh beer the bartender set in front of me and thought, what the hell, a change of pace could be good for her. It was one of those evenings where nobody was going anyplace anyway, so why not? We could cruise through the entrails of the city and maybe pick up pieces here and there that were lying around loose.
Down at the end the bartender had switched on the TV to a news station and the announcer finished with the weather and turned the program over to the team who handled the major events. Somebody in Congress was raising a stink about the expenses involved in calling up National Guard and Army Reserve units for a practice maneuver that apparently had no meaning. Film clips taken by some enterprising photographer who had slipped past the security barrier showed uniformed figures slogging through mud and water, flashlights probing the darkness. Another shot had a group locating and dismantling some apparatus of destruction around a power station. He even included the information that they were deliberately planted decoys with a minimum explosive capacity to sharpen the soldiers' abilities. It seemed that most of the activity was centered around the watershed areas in key areas across the nation with chemical analysis teams right in the thick of things. The commentator even speculated briefly on sophisticated chemical-biological warfare techniques and this exercise was possibly for training in detection and neutralizing an enemy's attack from that direction.