Mike Hammer - Murder, My Love by Max Allan Collins & Mickey Spillane

Author:Max Allan Collins & Mickey Spillane [Collins, Max Allan & Spillane, Mickey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B07DZQSN58
Publisher: Titan Books
Published: 2019-03-19T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

Even before Rosemary’s Baby and John Lennon were shot there, the gothic, nineteenth-century Dakota Building on the Upper West Side looked like something out of a horror show, the kind of monstrosity of a mansion you walked to on a rain-swept dark night when your car broke down and you had no other option. The same was true in the afternoon.

Rumor had it that ghosts, including the late Beatle’s, turned up frequently at 72nd Street and Central Park West, but it was better known as a haunt of the rich and famous who were mostly still with us. Lauren Bacall and Leonard Bernstein lived here (not together) and so once had Lillian Gish and Boris Karloff (also not bunkmates). Current residents included Joe Namath, Roberta Flack, and Rudolf Nureyev. Plenty of others, just as rich and famous, had been turned down by the notoriously picky co-op board.

I couldn’t have gotten in even on a temporary basis, if I hadn’t been expected by a tenant. A cab dropped me at the arched main entry, designed to accommodate horse-drawn carriages. Past the uniformed doorman, in the courtyard of the looming square-shaped building, I took an elevator in the nearest corner and went up to the seventh floor. Surrounded by dark, gloomy woodwork, I made my way to residence 72 and pushed the buzzer.

The door was answered by a guy who was maybe thirty, around five eleven, in a stylish gray suit and a black t-shirt whose athletic build didn’t need those shoulder pads, unless a round of touch football was in the offing. As handsome as a guy in a Ralph Lauren ad, his chin dimpled, his complexion olive, he wore his black hair fairly long and slicked back. But his most distinguishing feature was a flattened nose that indicated somewhere in his past—collegiate probably—there had been boxing.

“Mike Hammer,” I said, “for Nicole Winters. I’m expected.”

He nodded politely, said, “Yes, Mr. Hammer,” and stepped aside, gesturing me in. He took my hat and coat and hung them in a closet, then led the way down a long entry corridor.

He glanced back. “I’m Andrew Morrow, Ms. Winters’ secretary.” His voice was mellow and mid-pitched. He glanced back with a smile, adding, “Actually, I work for the Nicole Vankemp Foundation.”

“The umbrella for her various charitable endeavors, I assume.”

“That’s right, Mr. Hammer.”

We entered into a sun-streaming, airy, ivory-drenched loft-like endless living room with a wet bar, a white baby grand piano, and a twelve-foot ceiling, easy. The sidewall was mirrored, like a ballet studio, making the impressive space seem even more vast, the floor’s oak sanded to a near bone, the whiteness of the room offset slightly by carved mahogany. At the far and near end of the staggering space were fireplaces original to the room, their fancy woodwork washed white, and over their respective mantels hung big-framed images—a blue-dominated Marilyn by Warhol and a Roy Lichtenstein comic-book panel of a redheaded woman talking into a phone.

The result was a vintage area turned modern, the furnishings metallic with colorful pop-art cushions, red, blue, yellow, green.

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