Requiem for a Sucker

****SPOILERS*** Private Eye Mike Hammer, Darren McGavin,is out to help a friend of his Della Sermis', Evelyn Bunn, degenerate gambler husband Briney O'Brien, Stewart Bradley, who's accused of killing his bookie "Buckets" Marberg, Richard Benedict, after he broke his fingers for welching on a bet with him. Briney didn't help his cause by threatening "Buckets" and having his gun found at "Buckets" apartment together with his dead and bullet ridden body.

Hammer searching for clues finds the smell of a strong perfume where "Buckets" was found and suspects one of the showgirls working with Briney the pianist at the "Roug D'Or" nightclub was the one who did him in. Smelling his way around, like a bloodhound, at the nightclub Hammer can't pick up the scent on any of the showgirls working there. It's later that Hammer tracks down "Buckets" bodyguard Zig Segman, Len Lesser, who after working him over finds out that he in no way was involved in "Buckets" murder. But as things soon turned out Segman himself ended up getting murdered by the person who murdered "Buckets" to keep him from finding out who murdered him!

****SPOILERS**** It's later that Hammer gets to find out who in fact did murder both "Buckets" and Segman almost by accident when he visited showgirl Chinchilla Jones, Joan Tabor, whom "Buckets" and Segman murderer was madly in love with. With Hammer about to take him apart the killer pulled out his what looked like a be-be gun and feeling that he's now in charge of the situation foolishly tries to shoot it out with him. Like with his puny and manicured fists so with his gun the killer couldn't make an impression, with a bullet, on the hard boiled Mike Hammer who put him away and his ambition of getting away with murder in the blink of an eye or flash of a gun blast!