The Mike Hammer Collection Part 30

"Perhaps not. First, let me tell you that it's by accident that I'm here at all. Sue was sort of taken in hand by my secretary and I made a promise to look into things before letting her return."

"Oh?" He looked down into his hands. "You are . . . qualified for this matter then?"

The wallet worked its magic again and the hostility faded from his face. His expression was serious, yet touched with impatience. "Then please get to the point, Mr. Hammer. I've worried enough about Sue so . . ."

"It's simple enough. The kid says she's scared stiff of you."

A look of pain flitted across his eyes. He held up his hand to stop me, nodded, and looked toward the window. "I know, I know. She says I killed her mother."

He caught me a little off base. When he looked around once more I said, "That's right."

"May I explain something?"

"I wish somebody would."

Torrence settled back in his chair, rubbing his face with one hand. His voice was flat, as though he had gone through the routine countless times before. "I married Sally Devon six months after her husband died. Sue was less than a year old at the time. I had known Sally for years then and it was like . . . well, we were old friends. What I didn't know was that Sally had become an alcoholic. In the first years of our marriage she grew worse in spite of everything we tried to do. Sally took to staying at my place in the Catskills with an old lady for a housekeeper, refusing to come into the city, refusing any help . . . just drinking herself to death. She kept Sue with her although it was old Mrs. Lee who really took care of the child. One night she drank herself into a stupor, went outside into the bitter cold for something, and pa.s.sed out. She was unconscious when Mrs. Lee found her and dead before either a doctor or I could get to her. For some reason the child thinks I had something to do with it."

"She says her mother told her something before she died."

"I know that too. She can't recall anything, but continues to make the charge against me." He paused and rubbed his temples. "Sue has been a problem. I've tried the best schools and let her follow her own desires but nothing seems to help matters any. She wants to be a showgirl like her mother was." He looked up at me slowly. "I wish I knew the answer."

This time I was pretty direct. "She says you're trying to kill her."

His reaction was one of amazement. "What?" "What?" Very slowly he came to the edge of his seat. Very slowly he came to the edge of his seat. "What's that?" "What's that?"

"A car tried to run her down, she was deliberately followed, and somebody took a shot at her."

"Are you sure?"

"I am about the last time. I was there when it happened." I didn't bother giving him any of the details.

"But . . . why haven't I heard . . .?"

"Because it involved another matter too. In time you'll hear about it. Not now. Just let's say it happened."

For the first time his courtroom composure left him. He waved his hands like a lost person and shook his head.

I said, "Mr. Torrence, do you have any enemies?"

"Enemies?"

"That's right."

"I . . . don't think so." He reflected a moment and went on. "Political enemies, perhaps. There are two parties and . . ."

"Would they want to kill you?" I interrupted.

"No . . . certainly not. Disagree, but that's all."

"What about women?" I asked bluntly.

He paid no attention to my tone. "Mr. Hammer . . . I haven't kept company with a woman since Sally died. This is a pretty well-known fact."

I looked toward the door meaningfully. "You keep pretty company."

"Geraldine King was a.s.signed to me by our state chairman. She has been with me through three political campaigns. Between times she works with others in the party running for office."

"No offense," I said. "But how about other possibles? Could you have made any special enemies during your political career?"

"Again, none that I know of who would want to kill me."

"You were a D.A. once."

"That was twenty-some years ago."

"So go back that far."

Torrence shrugged impatiently. "There were a dozen threats, some made right in the courtroom. Two attempts that were unsuccessful."

"What happened?"

"Nothing," he said. "Police routine stopped the action. Both persons were apprehended and sent back to prison. Since then both have died, one of T.B., the other of an ulcer."

"You kept track of them?"

"No, the police did. They thought it best to inform me. I wasn't particularly worried."

"Particularly?"

"Not for myself. For Sue and anyone else, yes. Personally, my recourse is to the law and the police. But remember this, Mr. Hammer, it isn't unusual for a District Attorney to be a target. There was a man named Dewey the mobs could have used dead, but to kill him would have meant that such pressure would be brought on organized crime that when Dutch Schultz wanted to kill him the Mob killed Dutch instead. This is a precarious business and I realize it. At the same time, I won't alter my own philosophies by conforming to standards of the scared."

"How often have you been scared?"

"Often. And you?"

"Too often, buddy." I grinned at him and he smiled back slowly, his eyes showing me he knew what I meant.

"Now about Sue."

"I'll speak to her."

"You'll bring her home?"

"That's up to Sue. I'll see what she says. Supposing she won't come?"

Torrence was silent a moment, thinking. "That's up to her then. She's a . . . child who isn't a child. Do you know what I mean?"

"Uh-huh."

He nodded. "She's well provided for financially and frankly, I don't see what else I can do for her. I'm at a point where I need advice."

"From whom?"

His eyes twinkled at me. "Perhaps from you, Mr. Hammer." "Could be."

"May I ask your status first?"

"I hold a very peculiar legal authorization. At the moment it allows me to do d.a.m.n near anything I want to. Within reason, of course."

"For how long?"

"You're quick, friend." He nodded and I said, "Until somebody cuts me out of it or I make a mistake."

"Oh?"

"And the day of mistakes is over."

"Then advise me. I need advice from someone who doesn't make mistakes anymore." There was no sarcasm in his tone at all.

"I'll keep her with me until she wants out."

A full ten seconds pa.s.sed before he thought it over, then he nodded, went to the other side of his desk and pulled out a checkbook. When he finished writing he handed me a pretty green paper made out for five thousand dollars and watched while I folded it lengthwise.

"That's pretty big," I said.

"Big men don't come little. Nor do big things. I want Sue safe. I want Sue back. It's up to you now, Mr. Hammer. Where do you start?"

"By getting you to remember the name of the other guys who threatened to kill you."

"I doubt if those matters are of any importance."

"Suppose you let me do the deciding. A lot of trouble can come out of the past. A lot of dirt too. If you don't want me probing you can take your loot back. Then just for fun I might do it anyway."

"There's something personal about this with you, isn't there, Mr. Hammer? It isn't that you need the money or the practice. You needn't tell me, but there is something else."

We studied each other for the few ticks of time that it took for two pros in the same bit of business to realize that there wasn't much that could be hidden.

"You know me, Torrence."

"I know you, Mike. Doesn't everybody?"

I grinned and stuck the check in my pocket. "Not really," I said.

CHAPTER 3.

You can always make a start with a dead man. It's an ultimate end and a perfect beginning. Death is too definite to be ambiguous and when you deal with it your toes are in the chocks and not looking for a place to grab hold.

But death can be trouble too. It had been a long time and in seven years people could forget or stop worrying or rather play the odds and get themselves a name in the dark shadows of the never land of the night people.

Kid Hand was dead. Somebody would be mad. Somebody would be worried. By now everybody would know what happened in that tenement room and would be waiting. There would be those who remembered seven years ago and would wonder what came next. Some would know. Some would have to find out.

Me, maybe.

Off Broadway on Forty-ninth there's a hotel sandwiched in between slices of other buildings and on the street it has a screwy bar with a funny name filled with screwier people and even funnier names. They were new people, mostly, but some were still there after seven years and when I spotted Jersey Toby I nodded and watched him almost drop his beer and went to the bar and ordered a Four Roses and ginger.

The bartender was a silent old dog who mixed the drink, took my buck, and said, "h.e.l.lo, Mike."

I said, "h.e.l.lo, Charlie."

"You ain't been around."

"Didn't have to be."

"Glad you dumped the slop chutes."

"You hear too much."

"Bartenders like to talk too."

"To who?"

"Whom," he said.

"So whom?"

"Like other bartenders."

"Anybody else?"

"n.o.body else," he said gently.

"Business is business," I grinned.

"So be it, Mike."

"Sure, Charlie," I told him.

He walked away and set up a couple for the hookers working the tourist traffic at the other end, then sort of stayed in the middle with a small worried expression on his face. Outside it was hot and sticky and here it was cool and quiet with the dramatic music of Franck's Symphony in D Minor coming through the stereo speakers too softly to be as aggressive as it should. It could have been a logical place for anybody to drop in for a break from the wild city outside.

One of the hookers spotted my two twenties on the bar and broke away from her tourist friend long enough to hit the cigarette machine behind me. Without looking around she said, "Lonely?"

I didn't look around either. "Sometimes."