Mike Hammer: King of the Weeds by Mickey Spillane & Max Allan Collins

Author:Mickey Spillane & Max Allan Collins [Spillane, Mickey]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Titan
Published: 2014-05-06T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

At precisely four forty-five p.m., Velda buzzed me on the intercom and said, “There’s a call you’re going to want to take.”

I was swiveled toward the window where a gray afternoon was contemplating a shift into a gray evening. “That so?”

“That’s so—an attorney whose name will be familiar to you.”

I swiveled back around. “You don’t mean Rufus Tomlin, Champion of the Underdog?”

“My man’s a detective.”

“Put him on,” I told her.

There was a click and I said, “Michael Hammer here. What can I do for you, Mr. Tomlin?”

The voice was liquid with the Southern accent he had brought up with him from South Carolina many decades ago, a molasses drawl with a soothing pleasantness that had lulled many a juror.

“Mah apologies, Mr. Hammer, for callin’ so late in the day. Unlikely as it seems, we have never met, but ah believe we both know of each other by deed and reputation.”

“I believe we do, Mr. Tomlin.”

“As you know, I’m the attorney for Rudolph Olaf, and you might assume that’s my principal reason for callin’. But you would be wrong, Mr. Hammer. Ah am callin’ in reference to another client of mine, a gentleman who desires certain information and thinks that you might be able to supply same. Might we meet and talk?”

“I’m free right now.”

I was about to tell him to come to my office, but he anticipated that and said, “It’s toward the end of your business day. Might I make up for my abrupt insertion of myself into your schedule by offerin’ to buy you a meal over which we might talk a little business?”

“I could do that.”

“At some neutral meeting place, if you please. Mah client prefers anonymity as much as possible. Of course, he will pay for your time.”

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t walk into a deal like that, but I’d figured something like this was going to happen. And a public place would make it safe enough.

I said, “I don’t charge for a first conferral, but I will let you pick up the check.”

“Agreeable, sir.”

“You have any place in mind?”

“Ah believe there’s a deli restaurant a few blocks from your office, is there not?”

“Charlie’s you mean?”

“The very one, Mr. Hammer.”

“You close by?”

“Ah can meet you there in ten.”

“On my way, Mr. Tomlin.”

I told Velda where I was headed and was half-way out when she called, “Don’t forget we have an eight o’clock meeting with Marvin Dooley in New Brunswick.”

“I won’t be that long. This’ll be supper—what can I bring you?”

“Just a salad with Italian.”

That was part of how she beat back the clock. That and no smoking, moderate drinking, and every-other-day at the gym. I kept a similar regimen, but salad for supper wasn’t part of it.

Charlie’s Deli was a lively place with artifacts from the fifties. You could slip coins into a Wurlitzer and watch it spin 45 RPM platters still playing the best of Elvis or eye the gum-snapping waitresses in their short-skirted uniforms or be dazzled by the authentic signs, gas pumps and fixtures of an America that seemed more a figment of the imagination than a memory.

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