Hannah Bronto - Lovers in paradise

"All right, I'm on my way over now. I'll be at your apartment in twenty minutes."

"Wait! What's this all about, bub?"

"I'll explain to you when I get there." I terminated. I turned back toward my bedroom, cursing to myself. All I could think of was Spens' suggestion: get a good night's sleep. I had a feeling it was going to be a long night.

Seventeen minutes later I was standing again in front of that warped, gritty black door. "Hammer!" I shouted. "Open up! It's me, Detective Browne."

The animal began to yap and bark. From inside I heard: "Shaddup!" The door snapped suddenly open, and peering out at me, another cigarette dangling from his lips, was Archie Hammer.

"What the fuck you yelling about?" he demanded. He stepped outside and carefully looked around, squinting into the darkness. Apparently satisfied, he moved back inside. "Why don't ya knock, fer Christ's sakes! Where were you brought up? A barn?"

I wanted to ask him what knocking and a barn were, but I reconsidered and didn't. This wasn't the time for broadening my vocabulary, as archaic as the words might have been. I followed him into the apartment.

Something small and white ran at me, growling loudly and barking. I froze in terror, not knowing how to react.

"Quiet, Blackie – quiet!" Hammer demanded. The animal growled once, then made a purring sound, and rolled over on its back, all four-legs pointing at the ceiling. Hammer bent down and stroked the animal. "Good boy, Blackie… good boy. Good dog."

A dog, I thought. Seeing it as submissive as it was, watching Hammer stroke it affectionately, some of my fear of animals lessened. After all, it did look harmless enough; although those teeth… Why would anyone keep an animal in a city? Animals belonged in zoos.

"Is he dangerous?" I asked tentatively.

"Who, Blackie here?" Hammer laughed. "He'd rip your arm off if I told him to. But don't worry; as long as I'm here you've got nothing to be afraid of."

That was reassuring.

Still holding myself back, away from the dog, I asked: "What kind of dog is he?"

"Blackie is a bulldog. He's a good of dog, he is. Me and him been together a lot of years." He petted Blackie's belly. "I used to have a Boston Terrier, but he died. Now all I got is my Blackie."

I looked at Blackie's mug-like face, and I studied Hammer's pushed in, stubble-darkened face, and I realized they had a lot in common. They were both incredibly ugly. I think I liked the dog better.

"If we can get down to my questions," I suggested, inching into the apartment, edging past the lazy but fierce-looking dog. "I realize it's late…"

"Right," Hammer said. He straightened. "Inside now, Blackie. Good doggie. Inside."

The dog ran off deep into the apartment. Hammer turned toward me. "Now what's this all about?"

"Effie Spade."

He blinked. "Effie? The lez from upstairs?" He sounded surprised. "The one what croaked?"

"Yes. We're having some difficulty in locating her family," I lied. No sense in telling him she was murdered. The fewer people who knew the better. "Something was wrong with her name card. We think that Effie Spade might not be her real name."

"Effie," he said. He laughed. "Why didn't you say so right off?" He thought for a moment. "Not her real name, you say? As far as I always knew…"

"Could we go inside?" I suggested.

"Sure… sure." He took me by my arm and led me into the apartment. We sat at a kitchen table, Hammer on one side, me on the other. Blackie was in the corner, Hammer said: "I'd offer you a drink, but I don't drink anything but milk." He patted his broad belly. "Ulcers."

"That's quite all right. Actually, all I want are a few answers and I'll be on my way."

"Shoot." He poured himself a glass of milk.

"Some of the other people upstairs," I made a generalized gesture toward the ceiling, "mentioned something about her having had a visitor before she died. Do you know anything about that?"

He sipped his milk, then wiped the foam from his top lip with the back of his hand. "Sure I do. I saw him."

"Him. Then her visitor was a male."

"Sure. I recognized him from her group therapy meetings."

The casualness with which he'd said that last sentence was electrifying. Her visitor, the man who was the last known person to see Effie Spade before she was found murdered, was a member of her group! What did that mean? Was I right after all? Was there a connection between the two murdered women? But what could it be?

The revelation, I suddenly saw, said something even more disconcerting: all of a sudden, Archie Hammer knew an awful lot about Effie Spade.

I shook my head. "I don't understand," I said. "How do you know the man you saw visiting Miss Spade was in her therapy group? Are you one of its members?"

"Me?" Hammer questioned with rising incredulity. He began to laugh. "I ain't no psycho from the loony-bin! Not by a longshot."

"Well, then, how do you know?"

"I recognize the guy. You see, sometimes the group used to meet in Effie's apartment. It's a very progressive group, or so Effie tells me. They like to get away from the doctor's office for their meetings, you know what I mean? It's a very casual, loose group."

"You've seen him then, coming and going?"

"That and I saw him in her apartment. Sometimes they got a little loud, and the rest of the tenants began to complain about all those nuts up there. So I had to go up once or twice."

"Can you recognize him?" I pressed. "Do you know who he was?"

"Sure I recognized him. He's a good-looking son of a bitch too. Young." Archie Hammer drained his glass of milk. "He's the guy who runs that group. What's his name again? Dr… I got it. Doctor Gideon."

For the second time today I stood in front of the opaque pebbled glass door, rereading the bold black letters that read: Dr. C. Auguste Gideon By Appointment Only. This time I did not push the bell on the doorjamb. No one would have answered it. The office was dark and empty.

After I'd left Archie Hammer, I shot across town to headquarters. There, furtively, I stole up to "the Black Museum" and "lifted" an electronic tonal lever: in short, a jimmy.

I had to get into Dr. Gideon's office without anyone knowing about it. It was going to take all my, police training to do it and not get caught. For if I did get caught, legally I'd be just as guilty as any criminal I'd ever apprehended. Still, I had to take that chance. The solution was behind that door. Dr. Gideon, in some way, was the key to this entire case.

After sneaking into the building through an open window in the rear, I made my way across the lobby toward the elevators. Aware that the shafts probably were electronically surveilled, I prayed that the elevators would not be. Thankfully they weren't, and I slipped in and made my way up to the office.

The hallway was dark, even when I stepped into it from the elevator, so I assumed that the sensors were closed down for the evening. I was glad that, in addition to the tonal lever, I had brought with me a condensation of cold light. I depressed the button, and a shimmering ball of cold light sprayed from the nozzle of the condenser. The light levitated a foot or so above my head, casting an eerie half-light against the glass door of Gideon's office.

I quickly inserted the tonal lever into the voice card slot, then activated the switch. Electronically, in a blink of an eye, the lever was searching out the exact combination of tones needed to spring the lock in the door. There was a soft click from inside. The door was open.

I tried the handle, turning it slowly, again hoping there was no alarm that would be triggered. The tonal lever should have taken care of one, if there was one, and it was wired into the lock. However, some doors had an auxiliary system independent of the lock, as a counter measure to just this type of illicit entry, but I didn't think Dr. Gideon's office should have needed one. If it had, and the alarm tripped, it was all over for me.