For a moment there was silence, then: "You can't be serious."
"The hell I'm not. The guy won't talk to anybody else but him."
"Come off it, Pat. You have ways to make a person talk."
"Sure, under the right circumstances, but not when they're in the hospital with doctors and nurses hovering over them."
"Oh?"
"The guy's been shot. He's only holding on so he can talk to this slob. The doctors can't say what keeps him alive except his determination to make this contact."
"But--"
"But nuts, Larry!" His voice started to rise with suppressed rage. "We use any means we can when the chips are down. This guy was shot and we want the one who pulled the trigger. It's going to be a murder rap any minute and if there's a lead we'll damn well get it. I don't care what it takes to make this punk sober, but that's the way he's going to be and I don't care if the effort kills him, he's going to do it."
"Okay, Pat. It's your show. Run it. Just remember that there are plenty of ways of killing a guy."
I felt Pat's eyes reach out for me. "For him I don't give a damn."
Somehow I managed a grin and felt around for the words. I couldn't get a real punch line across, but to me they sounded good enough.
Just two words.
Chapter 2
Pat had arranged everything with his usual methodical care. The years hadn't changed him a bit. The great arranger. Mr. Go, Go, Go himself. I felt the silly grin come back that really had no meaning, and someplace in the back of my mind a clinical voice told me softly that it could be a symptom of incipient hysteria. The grin got sillier and I couldn't help it.
Larry and Pat blocked me in on either side, a hand under each arm keeping me upright and forcing me forward. As far as anybody was concerned I was another sick one coming in the emergency entrance and if he looked close enough he could even smell the hundred-proof sickness.
I made them take me to the men's room so I could vomit again, and when I sluiced down in frigid water I felt a small bit better. Enough so I could wipe off the grin. I was glad there was no mirror over the basin. It had been a long time since I had looked at myself and I didn't want to start now.
Behind me the door opened and there was some hurried medical chatter between Larry and a white-coated intern who had come in with a plainclothesman. Pat finally said, "How is he?"
"Going fast," Larry said. "He won't let them operate either. He knows he's had it and doesn't want to die under ether before he sees your friend here."
"Damn it, don't call him my friend."
The intern glanced at me critically, running his eyes up and down then doing a quickie around my face. His fingers flicked out to spread my eyelids open for a look into my pupils and I batted them away.
"Keep your hands off me, sonny," I said.
Pat waved him down. "Let him be miserable, Doctor. Don't try to help him."
The intern shrugged, but kept looking anyway. I had suddenly become an interesting psychological study for him.
"You'd better get him up there. The guy hasn't long to live. Minutes at the most."
Pat looked at me. "You ready?"
"You asking?" I said.
"Not really. You don't have a choice."
"No?"
Larry said, "Mike--go ahead and do it."
I nodded. "Sure, why not. I always did have to do half his work for him anyway." Pat's mouth went tight and I grinned again. "Clue me on what you want to know."
There were fine white lines around Pat's nostrils and his lips were tight and thin. "Who shot him. Ask him that."
"What's the connection?"
Now Pat's eyes went half closed, hating my guts for beginning to think again. After a moment he said, "One bullet almost went through him. They took it out yesterday. A ballistics check showed it to be from the same gun that killed Senator Knapp. If this punk upstairs dies we can lose our lead to a murderer. Understand? You find out who shot him."
"Okay," I said. "Anything for a friend. Only first I want a drink."
"No drink."
"So drop dead."
"Bring him a shot," Larry told the intern.
The guy nodded, went out and came back a few seconds later with a big double in a water glass. I took it in a hand that had the shakes real bad, lifted it and said, "Cheers."
The guy on the bed heard us come in and turned his head on the pillow. His face was drawn, pinched with pain and the early glaze of death was in his eyes.
I stepped forward and before I could talk he said, "Mike? You're--Mike Hammer?"
"That's right."
He squinted at me, hesitating. "You're not like--"
I knew what he was thinking. I said, "I've been sick."
From someplace in back Pat sucked in his breath disgustedly.
The guy noticed them for the first time. "Out. Get them out."
I waved my thumb over my shoulder without turning around. I knew Larry was pushing Pat out the door over his whispered protestations, but you don't argue long with a medic in his own hospital.
When the door clicked shut I said, "Okay, buddy, you wanted to see me and since you're on the way out it has to be important. Just let me get some facts straight. I never saw you before. Who are you?"
"Richie Cole."
"Good. Now who shot you?"
"Guy they call...The Dragon. No name...I don't know his name."
"Look..."
Somehow he got one hand up and waved it feebly. "Let me talk."
I nodded, pulled up a chair and sat on the arm. My guts were all knotted up again and beginning to hurt. They were crying out for some bottle love again and I had to rub the back of my hand across my mouth to take the thought away.
The guy made a wry face and shook his head. "You'll...never do it."
My tongue ran over my lips without moistening them. "Do what?"
"Get her in time."
"Who?"
"The woman." His eyes closed and for a moment his face relaxed. "The woman Velda."
I sat there as if I were paralyzed; for a second totally immobilized, a suddenly frozen mind and body that had solidified into one great silent scream at the mention of a name I had long ago consigned to a grave somewhere. Then the terrible cold was drenched with an even more terrible wash of heat and I sat there with my hands bunched into fists to keep them from shaking.
Velda.
He was watching me closely, the glaze in his eyes momentarily gone. He saw what had happened to me when he said the name and there was a peculiar expression of approval in his face.
Finally I said, "You knew her?"
He barely nodded. "I know her."
And again that feeling happened to me, worse this time because I knew he wasn't lying and that she was alive someplace. Alive!
I kept a deliberate control over my voice. "Where is she?"
"Safe for...the moment. But she'll be killed unless...you find her. The one called The Dragon...he's looking for her too. You'll have to find her first."
I was damn near breathless. "Where?" I wanted to reach over and shake it out of him but he was too close to the edge of the big night to touch.
Cole managed a crooked smile. He was having a hard time to talk and it was almost over. "I gave...an envelope to Old Dewey. Newsy on Lexington by the Clover Bar...for you."
"Damn it, where is she, Cole?"
"No...you find The Dragon...before he gets her."
"Why me, Cole? Why that way? You had the cops?"
The smile still held on. "Need someone...ruthless. Someone very terrible." His eyes fixed on mine, shiny bright, mirroring one last effort to stay alive. "She said...you could...if someone could find you. You had been missing...long time." He was fighting hard now. He only had seconds. "No police...unless necessary. You'll see...why."
"Cole..."