“Oh, hell, Mike, I can’t drive! Never bothered to learn. What’s the point, in the city?”

* * *

I took Velda out for lunch at Charlie’s Deli. It was one of those gimmick places with lots of ’50s nostalgia by way of Elvis on the jukebox, vintage advertising signs on the walls, and gum-snapping waitresses in poodle skirts.

But the food was authentic, even if the atmosphere was ersatz. Velda had a salad with chicken and I chowed down on a pastrami, corned beef and Swiss on rye, coleslaw on the sandwich. Billy might be right that it wouldn’t be a bullet that took Mike Hammer out.

I filled her in on my conversation with Pat, and shared what I’d learned from Billy, including that the pride of Singer’s Midgets still had a tall yen for her.

“Opinion,” I said, between bites.

She shrugged. “I think I’ll stick with you, Mike. Billy has a nice business going there, but you may make the grade one of these days.”

I tried not to smile and failed. “No. I mean, do I share what Billy told me with Pat?”

“That the Ferrari in question is a special model? Possibly rare?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s what a good citizen would do.”

“So—no, then.”

She smiled, spearing a piece of broiled chicken from the salad. “I didn’t say that exactly. But you’re not wrong. If Pat goes to the Accident Squad clowns who caught the hit-and-run, they might track those leads down…maybe…but who knows what they’ll do with it, if they do?”

I sighed deep. “It’s been over two weeks. That ride’s had its bodywork done on the q.t. by now. Maybe the NYPD’s finest will prove it’s been worked on, but even so, we’re still looking at a hit-and-run with no real description of the driver, no license plate number, and a victim who spent a single night in the hospital.”

“Right. Or,” she said, and chewed chicken, then swallowed it, and continued, “I can call my contact at Motor Vehicles and ask her to run a check on how many…what’s that model called again?”

“An F40.”

She shrugged; her silk blouse was pink today and she did a bang-up job filling it. “I could call my friend and see how many red F40 Ferraris are in Manhattan, and the state of New York. I’ll also ask if either one has been reported stolen, and then perhaps turned up on the street somewhere, either with some slight damage or no damage at all…because it was repaired before being dumped somewhere to be easily found.”

The Platters started singing “Only You,” and they could have been talking about Velda.

“I oughta marry you, doll,” I said.

“You think?”

The answer was two.

Two red F40 Ferraris in Manhattan, and that constituted every one of them in the state of New York.

CHAPTER SIX

That afternoon I found myself, more than a little unexpectedly, back on the thirty-seventh floor of the Financial District building that housed the offices of Colby, Daltree & Levine. Once again I moved largely unnoticed through the boiler room of cold-calling young brokers basking in that green aquarium luster of computer monitors. The murmur of hard sell pretending to be soft sell followed me as I made my way through.