Pat nodded. “Explain that.”
“Don’t you have anything in your ballistics library on it?”
“I checked.”
“So?”
Pat said, “One of the U.S. firms came up with a new technology. It was a vast improvement, but it wasn’t merchandised properly, or our buyers had their heads up their tails. I think it was the British that bought into it.”
“What was different about it?”
“For one thing, it was about four times as effective in stopping a bullet. The bulk . . . the size factor . . . was minimal and the weight was negligible. Nobody would know you were wearing it, and as long as you didn’t get hit in the head, you were safe. The bad part was the price. I understand it was considerable, out of the range of ordinary people. On top of that the technology is very restrictive. Super secret. They probably keep it for the royals or extremely high-risk projects.”
“Let’s not call the bad guys ordinary people, Pat,” I told him. “One thing they have is a lot of that ‘considerable’ stuff, and that can buy a lot of secrets. Have you pulled Ugo in since then?”
“It took a month to find him after the supposed first time. He was down in Mexico on a vacation. The second time he came home after six weeks from a junket in Canada.”
“No passports needed, right?”
“Right. Just a visa for Mexico. We know the old man was pretty well pissed off at him, but he’s the apple of his eye and there was no rough stuff. The kid even let us give him a physical, but there were no injury marks on him. Clever, huh?”
“Yeah.” I stood up and stretched. “His alibis good?”
“Of course. Ponti has good liars on his side.”
“What’s the official version on all this? The DA’s office ought to be saying something.”
“They sure ought to, but they’re not. In that ruckus on the waterfront the dead and the shooters became one big package. They cancelled each other out. It was blamed as a gang war and none of the dead are going to be missed.”
“Not even me?”
Pat said, “Strangely enough, you didn’t draw bad press. The papers publicized your history and since they couldn’t figure out what you were doing there, they played you down.” He swung his feet off the desk drawer and planted them on the floor. “Some of the reporters knew about that beef you had with Lorenzo Ponti.”
“Hell, Pat, that wasn’t a beef. It was a job. I had to find out who really owned those four buildings on Fifth Avenue. So it was old Lorenzo. Big deal. There were no back taxes to be paid or shady dealings in the purchase. Those threats came because he thought I was prying in his personal affairs.”
“You didn’t have to manhandle him in his own nightclub, for Pete’s sake!”
“He didn’t have to give me any lip, either.”
“Come on, Mike, he had his own gunnies there.”
“Yeah, but I had him, my back was against the wall and I had my own rod where I could get it.”
“You were lucky, kiddo.”
“The heck I was. I had Ponti in front of me. He would have been the first one hit.”
“Then you would have bought it.”
I let my teeth show through my grin. “Pat . . . you keep forgetting something.”
“Like what?”
“Like that reputation I have. I’m a real big shooter, Pat. I have all the clippings to prove it.”
“You have scars too.”
“But I’m still here, pal.”
“For how long?”
“We’ll worry about that when the chips go down,” I said.
3
THERE WAS NO WAY I could have escaped the coming-out party. New York was still a tabloid town, even with the Times running the show. The subway crowd still wanted their photos and the combination of local and network TV newscasters fought for camera space if anything had an offbeat flavor to it.
And I sure was offbeat.
Velda called the DA’s office first and told them to shove their demands to have me go to their office. I was still “in recovery” and they either came to my office or forget it. They made the appointment for ten and it was nine-thirty now.
In a way, I had a little celebrity status hanging on from the old days, but not enough to jolt the head man into doing any interrogating . . . unless he knew he could slap an arrest warrant on me and make it stick. To him, I was interesting, but old news and the election wasn’t until next year anyway.
Had he known Velda or the hungry reporters he would have been on the spot soaking up the news coverage, but, like always, politicians weren’t that smart unless bands were playing and flags were flying in their faces. My office was packed with TV teams, cameras set up, lighting arranged, and half had already gotten information down for voice-over commentary on the early broadcasts. Most of that would be running with the post-action shots of the riverfront rumble.
Exactly at ten the squad from the DA’s office arrived, four of them walking two abreast. They walked in formation, but they weren’t in step, and all I could think of was why government lawyers have to look like a toy mechanical rabbit advertising batteries on TV. They could have carried signs, at least.
Florence Lake led the pack. Her suit matched the others except for the skirt and she didn’t seem too happy about being different. When she saw the mob scene in the office the outrage hit her face with a deep flush and the cords in her neck showed as they pulled her face into a wooden mask. The others were junior executive types and didn’t seem to mind at all. Any coverage was good publicity for them.
The TV teams and reporters had already been alerted and were damn well aware of the confrontation. They were going to enjoy this, especially if somebody could stick a needle in the DA lady’s behind.
Florence Lake knew the angles too. She was all smiles and politeness and asked for a few minutes alone with me inside my private quarters and seemed very pleased when everybody was glad to agree. Pleased? She was burning up.
I glanced over at Velda. She was holding back a grin and gave me the knife-across-the-throat gesture to lay on the Lake broad during the interview. And that was easy to do. I gave her a lot of color and nothing she didn’t already know. But she was a lawyer and she was smart enough to know that there was something more to be had, but she didn’t know where to probe.
Florence Lake didn’t take notes. Her assistant did that. She gave me an intimidating look and said, “Your reason for being there doesn’t seem quite valid, Mr. Hammer.”
“Look,” I told her, “you know how it is when you get a tip. You want to check it out first to make sure it hasn’t got a spin on it.”
“Your informant wasn’t reliable?”
“He could tell you where the nearest bar was, or how to scrounge up enough for a drink on a rainy day. It was a tip given offhand and I wasn’t concerned with reliability.”
“Then what did concern you?”
“Having those hard cases think I might have set Lorenzo Ponti up for a hit.”
“Your altercation with him was that serious?”
“Only to his ego, ma’am. It wasn’t physical and it didn’t cost him any money, but some of these old-country types have a lot of misplaced pride and you don’t want to mess with that.”
“So you only went to the waterfront to warn him?”
“Yes.”
Her expression said she didn’t believe me at all. “What made you think Mr. Ponti would take your word for it?”
“He wasn’t dumb, ma’am.”
She changed the subject abruptly. “Who shot you?”
I wasn’t under oath, so I could tell her anything I wanted. I did it in a noncommittal way with a shrug of my shoulders. I said, “It was dark. The area is hardly lit, as you know.”
“Yes.” There was another pause. “Did you fire your gun?”
“Why do you assume I had a gun?”
“Because you are licensed to carry one.”
“A lot of private investigators don’t carry them.”<
br />
“But you’re Mike Hammer,” she said lightly
When I let a grin crease my mouth she didn’t like it a bit. “True,” I said. “But I got shot right in the beginning of that mess. Two hits in soft, deadly places.”
Florence Lake was looking at me as if I were the biggest liar in the world and she was about to expose me to the world. Before she could, I pulled the shirt out of my pants and lifted it up, my fingers going under the bandage I had lightly taped down, and when I leaned back in my chair she got a good look at the scarred, ugly mess on my belly that was still runny with a pinkish discharge and dotted with tiny stitch marks that held it all together. Right now, it needed a lot of taking care of, but it looked worse than it was, disgusting enough to make the lady DA’s face contort with a spasm as her guts churned and she damn near vomited on her own feet. It didn’t bother the other three. They all leaned forward in curiosity, like they were appreciating some artwork.
I put my shirt back and I thought she was going to thank me.
She had only lost her composure momentarily. As if nothing happened, she asked, “Who took care of that wound?”
Again, the shrug. “I didn’t gain consciousness for over a week.”
“You knew where you were?”
“Uh-huh. In a medical facility somewhere. I really didn’t care.”
“Who attended you?”
“I knew it was a male. He wasn’t young, at least that was my impression.”
“You do have a bill for services.”
“No. I will probably get one. I said probably. Somebody could have taken care of me out of the goodness of his heart.”
“And probably not,” she said, then added, “At least none that I know.”
“What difference does it make?”
“He could be a witness to a murder.”
“Whose?”
“The man who shot you.”
“Lady, I don’t know who that was.” I lied, but there was no way she could prove it. “Besides, I don’t have the slugs that got me.”
“The doctor should. A legitimate doctor wouldn’t destroy evidence like that.”
I didn’t back off. “He could have been a vet, ma’am, or a medical student. Or maybe some old retired guy who decided to keep his hand in but was a little shook up about what had happened.” At least I was closer to the truth there. “I already told you, I was out of it. I was moved down to Florida into something like a rental beach house. Most of the time I was sedated. I was alone for a long while, just healing up.”
“What made you come back?”
Another white lie. “I read The Daily News somebody had dropped near the house. A good friend of mine had been murdered. We had been in the army together and I wanted to go to the funeral.”
“Who was the person?” she asked me.
“Marcos Dooley.” Her assistant wrote the name down. Later he would check it out.
For half a minute it was quiet. Nobody spoke and she never took her eyes off me. She retracted the tip of the ballpoint pen she kept in her fingers for effect, then said, “You know, of course, we could take you downtown and hammer all this out in great detail.”
I nodded. “Sure, I know that, but I wouldn’t tell you anything more or different. Besides . . .” and I gave her a big grin again, “with all those cameras doing the local color out there and ready to catch all the action they can get, I don’t think it would be a good idea, do you?”
She forced a smile and stood up. The rest of the coterie was on its feet immediately. “I didn’t know this was going to be a press conference, Mr. Hammer,” she said. “The next time we’ll make it more private.”
You didn’t have to spell it out for the newssharks. They got the picture right away. When the door opened the buzz of conversation died down and the little tight-lipped smiles began. A couple of floodlights went on and their cameras turned, but it was for file copy only unless something really big came out of my return.
When I went out there it wasn’t like that at all and we had a swinging press conference. I told them nothing different or new, but laid it on the way an audience would enjoy it. They got twelve minutes on tape before I ran out of steam and my belly started to hurt again. It showed in my face and they closed the show down with big smiles.
It was great to be back.
I showered unhurriedly, letting the hot water from the needle spray massage fresh life back into me. When I dried off I climbed into fresh underwear and opened the closet door to a rack of suits cleaned and pressed, shoes shined and laid out on the floor rack, shirts and ties in the right places and a new trench coat with a wintery lining still zipped in. All I could think of was that my secretary really knew how to take care of a guy. Then, for a few seconds I just froze, wondering if I could stand all that attention, then thought, what the heck, we both have to give in a little.
Velda never knew where I kept my guns in a built-in hidden compartment inside the closet and they were just as I had left them. The Gold Cup .45 and the Colt Combat Commander lay wrapped side by side, four full clips of ammo ready to go. All the accessories were waiting, but it wasn’t gun time anymore. That hurting place in my gut told me that. I picked up a loaded clip with chrome-cast .45s and slipped it into my pocket. It wasn’t much, but I felt a little more normal with some weight on that side.
But who was I kidding? Carrying slugs without a gun was like wearing a yachting hat without having a boat. Ah, hell, I thought, I felt better so I did it anyway.
Outside, it was cool enough for the trench coat, but without the lining. Florida had gotten me spoiled. For a few minutes I stood in front of the building and watched the traffic go by. It was only six-thirty and the traffic flow seemed normal. I turned right, walking toward the corner where the angled window of a dress shop did a mirror reflection of what was behind me.
Nobody was there at all. I flagged down a cab and gave Velda’s address.
A half hour before I had taken the pill dosage on Frank Morgan’s list. The day had been hectic enough that I felt like I could use the two little pink ones he suggested for the purpose. The only trouble was, he didn’t tell me to stay home afterward. Whatever those little buggers were, they were giving me a funny feeling. I called Velda from the lobby of her building and she came down within two minutes, a big, luscious woman who could turn any man’s head and give every woman a touch of envy. She didn’t have that touch of youthful naïveté any longer. She wore sheer full-bloomed womanhood like a cape, her eyes that same deep brown, reflecting an intelligence that was beautifully female.
We didn’t kiss. She simply hooked her arm under mine and gave me a squeeze that said a lot of things, a muscular, sensual gesture that made me go all shaky. “Cut that out,” I said softly.
“I didn’t do anything,” she answered.
“The heck you didn’t.”
Her smile had a provocative touch to it. “Boy,” she told me, “are you going to be easy to please.”
There’s no answering a newly engaged woman who’s filled with gut-churning love. A man can’t seem to respond to that kind of emotion, so I just opened the door to the cab that drove up to the canopy, helped her in and told the cabbie to take us to Le Cirque.
Velda moved closer to me and said, “We’re going fancy tonight, aren’t we?”
“Don’t get too used to it, kitten.”
In ten minutes we were on Sixty-fifth Street and joined the early dinner crowd edging up to the door. Out of habit I took one last look around before we went in, just in time to see two men stepping out of a black limousine, one on each side, speaking to others who hadn’t emerged yet. Both guys were in their early forties, well dressed and styled with class. They were loaded with money and welcome at any place in town, but these two bums worked the legitimate side of Lorenzo Ponti’s business in Manhattan. They had come over the line from the old muscle days when they were young hoods and into an area well protected by professional business personnel and all the legal machinery that mone
y could buy. One was Howie Drago and the other one was Leonard Patterson. But they were still punks.
The captain was an old friend and held out his hand to me. His first look at Velda almost floored him, but his attitude was very appreciative and he gave me one of those how do you do it looks and I just winked at him. We got a table upstairs, picking one in a far corner. The early evening news would have splashed me all over the tube again, but Le Cirque’s customers saw enough people on TV sitting next to them and wouldn’t make a big thing of it.
Then while the waiter was taking our drink orders I saw Velda frown, her eyes catching something behind my back. I didn’t look. I waited until she said, “Patterson and Drago just came in. They’re three tables over.”
“I wonder if the company is coincidental or deliberate.”
“Think they come in here often?” Velda queried.
“Maybe,” I told her, “I could ask.”
“Who did you tell about us coming here, Mike?”
“Nobody. I called and got a reservation, that’s all.”
The drinks came, we toasted each other silently, tasted the iced tea and stared at each other, thinking the same thing. As we looked down at the menu she said, “The office phone could have been tapped. Someone in the TV bunch could be doing a big favor.”
“It’s nice to be wanted,” I said. “Somebody is working fast. They’re quicker than the IRS.”
Supper was served and I enjoyed my homecoming meal like turkey on a major holiday. Florida may have a lot of sun and some great seafood restaurants, but this was real New York eating at its best. We went through dessert and were working on the coffee when Velda said, “Can you hear them, Mike?”
“Who?”
“The group who came in the limo.”
There was a quiet hum of conversation going on in the room. The early crowd never was very boisterous so I didn’t have to listen hard to pick them out. It had to be deliberate. Not loud enough to be told to keep it down, but just enough so I would overhear what was being said. My name was clear enough. The nastiness that went with it was even clearer.
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