BA HAMMER Blackmail Ch. 02

The next day I was waiting to hear from Max at my office. I did hear from Max, but not what I was expecting. Mid-afternoon, just as I was contemplating leaving for the day, I heard my front office open. I went to see who it was only to find two very large men coming toward me. I stepped back into my office, but they charged. They stopped on each side of me."

"You really shouldn't be bothering Max. He is old and weak and doesn't need anyone bothering his retirement."

"I see. You're his healthcare committee, I take it." I tried backing up, but they stopped me.

"Take it any way you want but leave him alone. It might not be good for your long-term health."

We stared at each other for a few minutes. "I will take your advice into consideration. Anything else you've got to say?"

The guy almost behind me took a swing at me, but I knew he was going to swing, so I was able to step out of the way. It was too bad I stepped toward the second guy. He hit me square on the jaw and I saw Christmas lights all throughout the ceiling as I fell. One of them kicked me in the stomach on their way out. It took me several minutes to regain my breath, and my jaw felt like it was busted.

I got up and managed to get myself to a local doctor that I knew did health "checks" without the "paperwork". He was one of Fat Tony's doctors. I stumbled into his office. His nurse took one look at me and got the doctor.

They helped me into the back and laid me on a table. He took a bunch of pictures while I lay there, hurting.

He finally came to see me. "I don't know how, but it's not broken. Your jaw isn't going to work very well for a while. It's going to be sore. I'll give you some pain pills. Try not to take too many of them, okay? I don't need you to OD on them."

He gave me the pills. By then I was regaining my balance. I decided to go to my apartment and put ice on it. There was no need for Mary to see what it was going to look like in the morning. I wrapped my face with a bag of ice and tried to sleep.

I woke up the next morning with the mother of all headaches. I went to the bathroom to look in the mirror. That side of my face was swollen, but not as bad as I thought it would be. I did see one strange thing on the side of my face. There was a mark on the bottom of my jaw. I couldn't make out what it was, but it looked familiar.

Well, back to work. I got dressed and headed out. I had busted a photographer years ago for taking pictures of minor girls. That was a long time ago, and I believe he had been clean ever since, but he was still taking pictures for a living. I needed some help with people in the film industry.

When I entered his photography shop, he didn't recognize me, but I did him. Tony Samuels was grayer, fatter, and older, but it was the same guy. "Tony, remember me? I haven't seen you in several years. Taken any pictures of minors lately?"

"Get the hell out of here, Hammer. I've been clean ever since, and you know it."

"Relax Samuels, I'm not here to bust your chops. I need a favor and some information. That is all. I can be gone in five minutes. Maybe you won't see me again for another ten years."

He looked at me with pure disdain. But he didn't need any more problems. "What do you want?"

"See this mark on my chin." He looked at it and nodded. "I need you to take an enlargement of it. I think I recognize it, but it is too small to know for sure."

Samuels grunted and looked at my jaw. He took one of his cameras and took several pictures. I waited while he developed them. After a while he returned with the enlarged pictures of the mark on my jaw. The mark was left by the ring of the man who had hit me. I could not quite make out what was on the ring. I would have to wait until I come across him again to recognize him.

"I wonder if you remember a female camera person that went by the name of Twiggy?" Samuels looked surprised at that name.

"I haven't heard that name for years. Now I've heard it twice in a month." Now it was my turn to be surprised.

"When was the first time?"

"About a month ago, I got a call from the old porno king, Max Kleinman. I had taken pictures for him in the old days. He asked me if I had seen Twiggy recently. I told him that I hadn't, but when I asked why he was asking, he got really cagey. Something about her needing money because she was sick. I got the impression he was anxious to find her. I told him I hadn't seen her for years, he thanked me and hung up."

An idea was forming in my head. I was pretty sure I knew where the blackmail pictures and film had come from. The two neanderthal bouncers who played tag with me were very concerned that I stay away from Max Kleinman, and I find out Max is looking for the woman who filmed Ester Blasingame some twenty years ago. I don't believe in coincidences. It was connected.

I thanked Samuels and wished him well with his photography store. He just growled goodbye and good riddance as I left.

I hadn't seen Mary for a couple of days, so I decided to go see her performance that night. I showed up at the stage door and Tommy let me in. I surprised her in her dressing room. She was VERY happy to see me. Not so much to see my jaw. I sat on the couch and filled her in while she got some ice for my face. She then went back to getting ready for the night's performance. I kissed her as I left and told her I was going to watch her performance that night, and maybe I could be persuaded to go home with her afterwards. She laughed as I left. "To quote M.C. Hammer, "It's hammertime, sweetheart." This time I laughed.

I also wanted to see Willie. I wanted to update him on the case. At least in general terms. I found him talking to Bob, the stage manager. "Well, the wandering lover boy returns. What happened to your face?"

"I ran into a rather large gentleman's hand. Willie, can I talk to you for a minute?"

Bob took the hint and said, "Sure, I need to check a couple of things out anyway." He walked off.

"Your friend's case is progressing. I may be able to help them. How's the show running?"

"We are still selling well. Your friend will make his money back with a profit. Your fee will be swallowed up by the production company. They are happy to pay it. There is talk we may get to move to either the Broadway or Gershwin Theaters the first of next year if we can sustain our sales."

"That is good news. I am happy for everyone, especially Mary." Willie laughed.

"Yeah, steady work on Broadway is a very difficult thing to find. This could propel her to a starring role in a production of her own."

"Your lips to God's ears, as they say in the south." A Marine I knew in Kabul used to say the strangest southern expressions all the time.

I watched the performance from the wings. It was old hat for everyone by now. After the show ended, I left with Mary. I let her mother me about my bruised face for the rest of the night.

The next morning, I went to visit my old cop friend Ed O'Sullivan. He was a Captain of detectives downtown. I wanted him to check on the whereabouts of Twiggy and Max Kleinman.

"What do you think I run around here, a lost and found for you?"

"No, but I think our old friend Max is in some sort of trouble. It's his friends that tried to redecorate my face. Do you recognize the ring that made this mark?"

Ed looked at the pictures Samuel had made for me. "It looks like some sort of class ring, or something like that. I'll look up Max to see if anything turns up."

"How about my carry permit?"

"Yeah, that. I set you up with a firing test at the police range. You will need to pass the old test in order to move to the next step. You will love your old instructor. He's older than Moses, but he's still there."

"Kramer? Good God, he must be sixty by now."

"Nearly seventy. He's finally retiring, so I wanted him to give you yours before he left. I don't think you want Baker giving it to you." Lt. Baker and I have a history, so I agreed with Ed.

I went to see Kramer that afternoon. He was a good cop. Had been there for years. He saw the good and the bad come through there. He seemed to like me when I came through.

"Hammer, you old dog. You are still alive. Why didn't you come back to the force when you got out of the military?"

"You know everything around here, so I know that you know what happened to me."

"I'm afraid I do. I hope those two bastards were worth it."

"I don't have one regret. Some people in this world shouldn't be given a gun, it's as simple as that. They think they can do whatever they want."

Kramer looked at me and nodded. "That's the God's honest truth. Come on, let's get this over with. I don't think you will have problem passing this test." He was right. A couple of targets later, and I was certified. Now all I needed was for Ed to get my carry permit approved so I could be a full-fledged PI.

I went to see Lenny, my friend at the TV station. He is an "associate" of Fat Tony. I asked Lenny to run through the station's computer records looking for any mention of "Slim" Jim Anderson, Susie Neal, alias "Twiggy", or Max Kleinman. He promised to check and let me know.

I called Mary and asked to come over. She told me to come then because she only had a few hours until she had to leave for the theater.

When I arrived, we sat in her living room on the couch. Once we had gotten past our "greetings", I spoke up. "Mary, my love," I was thinking. You have your one day off Monday. I was thinking we could get out of town for the day. Anywhere you would like to go. Just some time for the two of us." She loved the idea and started talking about the places we could go. I told her anywhere with her was fine by me. I begged off going to the show that night and she left me alone with my thoughts.

I got a beer and sat down to think.

Twiggy had taken pictures while doing the film of Ester twenty-five years ago. That much is certain. Nothing else was.

Why were they surfacing now, after all these years?

Where is Twiggy and is she the one doing this? Because of Tweddle Dee and Tweddle Dumb, I am pretty sure she hadn't hired them.

She was supposedly sick. Is she still alive?

Where is "Slim Jim? Does he know Max and Twiggy.

Does Benny Bear have anything to do with this? Is he still alive?

Who does Dee and Dumb work for? Find him and I will find the truth.

I decided to take a shower and get ready for Mary to return. It was nearly midnight when she finally got home. She crawled under the sheets and woke me up with a man's favorite gift. We enjoyed ourselves until we fell asleep.

I got a call from Lenny the next morning. I agreed to meet him at a coffee shop near the station. After he had sat down, he slid an envelope over to me. "Here is everything I could find on all three people you asked for. Don't look through it here, just take it with you." I thanked Lenny and headed to my office.

Once I got there, I sat down and opened the envelope. Why was Lenny nervous with me opening the envelope in the coffee shop? I found out as I read what he had.

Susie Neal had died of cancer a month before. No one has seen Max Kleinman in the past month. Rumors abound about him. Jim Anderson has been retired from New York for many years. Lenny was able to locate him because one of the magazine shows had done a fluff piece about the death of the porn industry in the city years ago. They did a, "where are they now" kind of thing, and Anderson was one of the people they interviewed. However, he had died in a car accident a couple of days ago. The police aren't saying anything about the one car accident publicly, but rumors are that it was not an accident.

No wonder Lenny was nervous. He's been around his Uncle Tony long enough to know the marks of someone cleaning up a mess when he sees it.

Let's see if this plays.

Twiggy is dying and decides to use the film. How it would help her is beyond me, but people are fucked up when they are dying.

She either gave them to Anderson or Kleinman. Now one is dead, and the other is missing.

This is a lot of heavy handedness for a simple blackmail case. How much money do they really think they can squeeze out of Ester Blasingame? Is there something else about this I don't see yet?

Ed called me with the same information a couple of hours later. I acted very thankful and surprised. I promised I would let him know whatever I find out about the accident. He did have one piece of new information. The location of Benny Bear. Bear was living in a nursing home upstate. He was not doing very well and didn't have long. Ed gave me the address and suggested I had better hurry. I didn't tell him why I agreed with him very much. Bear may have less time than his doctors think.

I headed for Schenectady to see if I could talk to Bear before the two thugs silence him forever. I found the nursing home and asked for him. I was led to room and found a sick, old man sitting in a wheelchair. He looked like he had already passed, but when I spoke to him, he lifted his head.

"Benny Bear, my name is Hammer. I came to tell you Twiggy has died."

He looked at me. "I'll be joining her soon enough. The only reason I am still here is I can't get any of these do-gooders here to help me go."

"I think someone is coming who will take care of that for you. Do you know any reason the mob would want you, Twiggy, and Slim Jim Anderson dead?"

"They're all dead?" I nodded. "No, I haven't seen any of them for fifteen years. I've been here for the last ten."

"I think it has something to do with one of your old films."

He smiled. "Some kid in one of my old films became famous, huh?"

"Something like that." He looked up.

"In that drawer is a deposit box key." I opened it to find the key. "It's at the First National under the name of Robert Wilson. Twiggy and I split the films. She took some and I took the rest. Mine are in that box. Get them. Maybe they will help you. By the way, did you know Twiggy was pregnant.?" I shook my head. "Yeah, nobody knows because the child died at birth. But she gave it a name on the birth certificate. That name was important to her."

I was standing by the window, watching when Dee and Dumb pulled up. "I think your wait is over. The thugs are here to give you what you want. I must go."

"Wait. You can't get out the back easily. Hide in that closet. You can hide behind the junk and see what they say."

"Thanks, Benny. If it means anything to you, I loved your films as a kid."

"Great, helping kids get off is what I'll be remembered for." I looked in the closet. He was right. I pushed behind some clothes and boxes. They would have to dig to find me. I was barely settled when they entered the room.

"Benny, Benny, Benny. You don't look so good."

"I feel worse than that. If you have got something to do, just do it already. But first, mind telling me why?"

I saw through the slats in the closet the man with the ring on his hand pat Benny on his shoulder. "Sure, Benny. Our boss has an interest in one of your old films, and he doesn't like competition. First, Twiggy says hi."

"Did you do this to her, too?"

"Yeah, but she was dying of cancer. We just couldn't wait for mother nature to do the job. By the way, Vito says hi." He opened the top of the ring and made a prick on Benny's arm. They stood there until Benny's head drooped over. Benny was with Twiggy and Jim.

Ring man closed his ring and smiled. "That is the last of them. I wish they would have let us do Hammer when we had the chance. But they will change their minds, eventually."

He looked up at the closet and walked over to it. He opened the door and looked inside. I stayed very still. I sure could have used my gun right then. He pushed some clothes around and closed the door. They left quietly. I waited until I was sure they had left before I came out. I had to get back to the city. I was going to find Vito.