[Mike Hammer 03] - Vengeance Is Mine Read Free Page A

against my cheek. “Cut it, sugar, nothing is that bad. They took away my ticket and made me a Joe Doe. The D.A. finally got me where he wanted me.”
    She shook her hair back and gave me a light tap in the ribs. “That insipid little squirt! I hope you clobbered him good!”
    I grinned at her G.I. talk. “I called him a name, that’s what I did.”
    “You should have clobbered him!” Her head went down on my shoulder and sniffed. “I’m sorry, Mike. I feel like a jerk for crying.”
    She blew her nose on my fancy pocket handkerchief and I steered her over to the desk. “Get the sherry, Velda. Pat and I had a drink to the dissolution of the Mike Hammer enterprise. Now we’ll drink to the new business. The S.P.C.D., Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Detectives.”
    Velda brought out the makings and poured two short ones. “It isn’t that funny, Mike.”
    “I’ve been hearing that all morning. The funny part is that it’s very funny.”
    The sherry went down and we had another. I lit a pair of smokes and stuck one between her lips. “Tell me about it,” she said. The tears were gone now. Curiosity and a little anger were in her eyes, making them snap.
    For the second time today I rehashed what I know of it, bringing the story right through the set-up in the D.A.’s office.
    When I finished she said some very unladylike curses and threw her cigarette at the waste basket. “Damn these public officials and their petty grievances, Mike. They’ll climb over anybody to get to the top. I wish I could do something instead of sitting here answering your mail. I’d like to turn that pretty boy inside out!” She threw herself into the leather chair and drew her legs up under her.
    I reached out a toe and flipped her skirt down. On some people legs are just to reach the ground. On Velda they were a hell of a distraction. “Your days of answering the mail are over, kid.”
    Her eyes got wet again, but she tried to smile it off. “I know. I can always get a job in a department store. What will you do?”
    “Where’s your native ingenuity? You used to be full of ideas.” I poured another glass of sherry and sipped it, watching her. For a minute she chewed on her fingernail, then raised her head to give me a puzzled frown.
    “What are you getting at, Mike?”
    Her bag, a green leather shoulder-strap affair, was lying on the desk. I raised it and let it fall. It hit the polished wood with a dull clunk. “You have a gun and a license to carry it, haven’t you? And you have a private operator’s ticket yourself, haven’t you? Okay, from now on the business is yours. I’ll do the legwork.”
    A twitch pulled her mouth into a peculiar grin as she realized what I meant. “You’ll like that, too, won’t you?”
    “What?”
    “The legwork.”
    I slid off the edge of the desk and stood in front of her. With Velda I didn’t take chances. I reached out a toe again and flipped her dress up to the top of her sheer nylons. She would have made a beautiful calendar. “If I went for any I’d go for yours, but I’m afraid of that rod you use for ballast in your handbag.”
    Her smile was a funny thing that crept up into her eyes and laughed at me from there. I just looked at her, a secretary with a built-in stand-off that had more on the ball than any of the devil’s helpers I had ever seen and could hold me over the barrel without saying a word.
    “You’re the boss now,” I said. “We’ll forget about the mail and concentrate on a very special detail ... getting my license and my gun back where it belongs. The D.A. made me out a joker and put the screws on good. If he doesn’t send ’em back with a nice, sweet note, the newspapers are going to wheel out the chopping block for the guy.
    “I won’t even tell you how to operate. You can call the signals and carry the ball yourself if you want to. I’ll only stick my nose in during the practice sessions. But if you’re smart, you’ll concentrate on the