Kill Me If You Can by Max Allan Collins

Author:Max Allan Collins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags:  
Publisher: Titan

CHAPTER ELEVEN

When I hopped a cab on Christopher Street, the rain was still coming down steady. I gave Velda’s address, not mine, wanting to see how Hazard’s boys had got in to grab Vickie. The overcast afternoon’s fake night was the real thing now, the wet street and sidewalks reflecting the garish lights of the city like shiny black mirrors.

The cabbie didn’t comment on my physical condition, the puffiness of eyes and lips, much less my rumpled wardrobe. So I’d taken a beating. He’d picked me up in Greenwich Village. Probably I’d been mugged. Maybe I insulted the wrong party. This was New York. What else was new?

At Velda’s, no evidence of a break-in awaited. Not even the scratchy signs of somebody working with lock picks. I went down and checked with the landlady and Mrs. Murphy hadn’t seen anything unusual. That could mean Vickie had let her captors in, suggesting someone was along who she knew and trusted before they snagged her.

Back upstairs, my first move was to call Pat.

“Am I out of favors?” I asked.

“Since about two years ago.” Good will was not dripping off the line. “What do you have in mind?”

My Zippo fired up the Lucky waiting in my poor puffy lips. “You trust anybody in Vice?”

“I know a guy or two. Why?”

“I want you to order up a raid on the Glass House. On 52nd Street?”

“I know it and I know where it is and I know who runs it. That human toad Mel Hazard.”

“That’s a nasty thing to say about toads. Mel baby runs a backroom casino, wide open, so he’s protected.”

“This is a news flash how?”

I let smoke drift out like a ghost looking for a house to haunt. “You just need to be careful who knows about the raid. I don’t want Hazard warned. If he’s tipped, this does me no good.”

“How does it do you good if he isn’t?”

Carefully, I said, “I think he snatched Victoria Valance. He may be holding her somewhere at the Glass House.”

A long pause. “You seem to be making a habit out of misplacing the women in your life, Mike. If it’s a kidnapping, I need to call the FBI. That’s a federal crime. Maybe you read about the Lindbergh baby in the newspapers when you were a lad.”

If I shared the real circumstances with him, I’d be cooked. So I just said, “Vickie isn’t even a missing person yet. Hasn’t been twenty-four hours. Too early to call the PD in officially, let alone the feds.”

“So what is this, then—a hunch?”

“It’s a request from one old friend to another. I’ll stay away, but I want you to go along. Tell whoever your honest pal in Vice is that you think Hazard is a suspect in the Paragon slaying and you want him rousted.”

“Haul him in, you mean.”

“No!”

“No? What the hell, Mike….”

I sighed smoke. “Raid him. Chase the customers out. The locals, whether they’re posh or street, won’t think twice about it. The tourists will have a story to tell when they get back to Peoria.

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