Mike Hammer--King of the Weeds Read online

  When he’d left, I hit the intercom button and it took about thirty seconds for Velda to join me. She wore a pleased expression as she laid a miniaturized tape spool on my desk. Buckley probably had been wired too, but at least our visit was on record now.

  She sat where Buckley had, but when she crossed her legs, the view was much better. “You sure get some high priority types for visitors, Mike.”

  “He was just putting me on notice, doll.”

  “Oh?”

  “From now on we’re going to have Big Brother’s top-of-the-line surveillance teams covering every move we make. Their top guns, their best equipment… the works.”

  She cocked her head, unsure. “Mr. Buckley seemed to have trouble considering you a real threat… at least till you mentioned our deceased parking-garage visitor. So now you’re comparing yourself to Patton, huh?”

  “Better than Hitler.”

  She was amused. “You don’t need to be Patton or Hitler. You’re Mike Hammer, and that’s plenty.”

  “In this thing, I’m just an accidental participant, due to my long-ago association with Marcus Dooley. But an accidental participant can really screw up the best laid plans of mice and men.”

  Velda shook her head and jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “So is that guy Buckley a mouse or a man, Mike?”

  “Not just sure yet,” I admitted.

  She got up. “Pat stuck his head in fifteen minutes ago and I told him you were in with a visitor. He said he’d meet you for a late lunch at Suzie’s, and then drive you over to his office for your statement.”

  This lunch date meant Pat had something to tell me he didn’t want someone else listening to. Which was odd for Pat. He was a real by-the-book type and didn’t like to jump off the rules.

  As I was heading out, Velda was back at her desk, musing, “A billion-dollar finder’s fee, Mike. Think of it.”

  “Yeah, doll,” I said, getting into my trenchcoat, “but after taxes, we’d only have half of that.”

  * * *

  We had one of Suzie’s special dinners, eaten American style with a fork. The soft hum of voices was easy to blend into and there were no faces there we recognized. Nor any that paid any attention to us, either. Fragrances of steaming food on its way to tables tickled my nose like friendly phantoms.

  Between bites, I asked, “What’s going on, Pat?”

  “This is the computer age, buddy.”

  “Stop the presses.”

  “I’m just saying,” he said, with a shrug, “the New York Police Department works on a very sophisticated level these days.”

  “Good for them.”

  “In the last five years some incredible talent has come out of the academy. They have university educations, they’ve specialized in law enforcement, and on top of that, they are top-flight computer experts. Hell, even the F.B.I. would like to go head-hunting among our personnel… but our guys are strictly New York City types who have no love for the Fibbies.”

  “You are working toward some kind of a point here, aren’t you, Pat?”

  His eyebrows rose and he smiled, just a little. “One of our boys has come up with some interesting and… offbeat information.”

  My forkful of food and I waited.

  Pat said, “Do I have to tell you organized crime has reached new heights, too?”

  “So the rackets are still flourishing. So what?”

  “So they will continue to flourish, but in a much revised fashion. The mob organizations still in operation exercise considerable influence in public affairs. They are more and more in legitimate business, leaving the illegal stuff to affiliates from overseas—Asians, Russians, South Americans.”

  “With layers of insulation and money-laundering to protect them,” I said, impatiently. “What’s with the Mafia 101 routine?”

  “Four of the five families are in the hands of that young, better-educated generation, the computer generation the old dons distrusted so much. But since Don Ponti bought it, the Ponti family is in flux. They are in a… crisis of leadership. They may be dying out, Mike. Somebody like the Gaetano bunch may swallow them up.”

  “Am I supposed to bust out crying?”

  “I’m just suggesting… what would a massive infusion of cash do for the Pontis about now?”

  “Not much, since the Pontis are pretty much all in the ground.”

  He was enjoying this. “But if a new leader steps in… with all that money… then what?”

  “I guess they’re back strong as ever. What do I care?”

  Pat ate a few bites, and we sat in silence, as if the conversation was over. Then Pat touched his lips with a napkin and said through a small smile, “Your dead friend in the garage. We already have a match, Mike. We already know who he is.”

  I pushed aside my half-eaten plate. “Hell, that was fast.”

  “I told you it was the computer age, pal.”

  “Spill it.”

  “Well, he isn’t Ronald Johnson. Elias Cardi. Corsican. Freelance assassin with mostly French connections, if you’ll forgive the joke.”

  “So he’s mob. Big surprise.”

  “No, he’s somebody the mob uses. Used. A high-end hitter who is about as out-of-town as talent gets. Mike, this guy was suspected in some major political hits.”

  “Which means that there is likely a mob contract out on me. Well, we suspected as much.”

  “Oh, but there’s more, Mike. Our computer experts have zeroed in on some highly sensitive transmissions. They’ve uncovered coded communications out of the mob groups that read like a World War Two spy network in operation.”

  “What the hell are you—”

  “If you’re wondering why I’m laying this on you, it’s because your name has come up enough times in these transmissions to make you a subject worthy of investigation.”

  I grunted a laugh. “So we’re back to the eighty-nine billion dollar missing hoard of mob loot again, huh?”

  “There’s more to it than the money,” Pat said.

  I didn’t try to hide my surprise. “What do your computer cops think is more important than eighty-nine billion? Hell, Pat… you could finance a small war with that!”

  For a few seconds, Pat sat quietly. If he were a smoker he’d be lighting up a butt, but a long time ago he had quit like I had, so he simply shifted in his chair before he said, “Something in that treasure trove the old dons left was a lot more important than the money.”

  “Like what?”

  “Beats me,” Pat said with a shrug. “Nobody alive has ever seen that money. Nobody except maybe…”

  “Don’t say it, Pat.”

  “…you.”

  “I’m not on my deathbed yet, buddy.”

  “I’m not asking you to tell me, Mike. If you’re keeping it to yourself, I guess you’ve got your reasons.”

  “Then what the hell are we talking about?”

  The check came. He cracked open his fortune cookie, glanced at the little slip of paper, made a face and tossed it away. I broke open mine and ate it without reading the fortune. I’ll make my own future, thanks.

  He said quietly, “You’re walking around like a guy without a care in the world while federal agencies are keeping a constant check on you, and the new crime outfits have you listed under a code name in their computers, while unanswered suppositions fly around like bees on a summer hive.”

  I let out a snort of a laugh. “Nobody’s going to knock me off if they think I’m the only one who knows where that loot is buried.”

  Something grave came into his tone. “Mike, you’re about to get married. You think I’m the only one who knows how close you and Velda are? She’s been used as leverage to get at you before.”

  “She can take care of herself,” I said.

  But he was right. If this was just me, I’d say fuck it and take what came at me. But if anything happened to Velda, when we were finally heading into the sunset together…

  “People close to you, Mike,” he said, “mak
e a bad habit of dying.”

  “You’re doing all right, Pat.”

  “Who knows? Maybe I’ll be the next cop to go down in this unlucky streak.”

  This morning, two cops in a squad car had interrupted a burglary in progress, engaging the perps in a gun battle, capturing both, but one uniformed cop was seriously injured with a gunshot wound to his chest. He was hospitalized and currently in critical condition.

  * * *

  On our way to One Police Plaza, Pat took a detour to a place that time had worn out and tried to throw away but couldn’t quite shake off its hand, as if static electricity or stickiness prevented it.

  The famous bums of the Bowery had become an endangered species lately, the city trying to shoo the homeless out as part of the general revival of the Lower East Side. The restaurant supply places hadn’t been chased out, and neither had the lamp shops. But the high crime rate of Skid Row days would soon be replaced by high-rise condos. Yet even now there were flophouses and tenements, blocks where the tide of gentrification had not yet swept through in its wave of cleansing cruelty.

  There was room to park because nobody who lived on this block owned a car, and those on other blocks wouldn’t want to. Kids didn’t play here because kids didn’t live here. Old stores were empty and if their windows weren’t broken, it was because they had been boarded up.

  Pat parked in front of the ratty old four-story tenement where Brogan had lived for many decades and cut the engine.

  “I did a little digging,” he said, before we got out, “and came up with something interesting.”

  “I’ll bite.”

  “Brogan purchased this building not long after Olaf was sent up.”

  “Where did Brogan get the dough?”

  “Presumably from the robbery-murders he pulled off. It’s one of the most convincing aspects of his story. The rent here has been his income ever since. His only job was playing super, which in a rat-trap like this didn’t amount to much.”

  Up the steps and at the front door, I asked Pat if we had a warrant to search the place.

  He shook his head. “We’re checking the roof is all. We don’t need a warrant.”

  “Checking the roof why?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Not having to trip over garbage or drunks on the stairs was a little unexpected. A smell of musty emptiness permeated the building, no odor of cooking, though the bouquet of a stuffed-up toilet hung on like a bad memory. At the top of the stairs the roof door was open an inch and had to be forced to swing back all the way.

  “Nice view,” Pat remarked.

  Across the rooftop were the similar clusters of tenements, old wire clothes-dryer racks sagging between their T-bar uprights. One roof held the remnants of a TV antenna, a bent aluminum relic with a pair of crossbars still attached.

  Pat motioned with his head for me to follow him and we picked our way through the accumulated clutter and across two retaining walls until Pat pointed one building over and said, “That’s where Olaf originally lived.”

  “Why’d we come up through the other way?”

  “Because we’d still be climbing through the garbage, that’s why. Besides, right here is where Brogan led our boys to the murder gun.”

  I didn’t say anything. This was Pat’s day, a lot of years after that first day when we took Rudy Olaf down. He walked to the chimney, a weather-eroded old redbrick affair. On the north side a pair of iron pipes jutted up out of the wrinkled tar surface. The debris that had been caught between them had been pushed away. The masonry between the bricks had been removed and wooden wedges kept them in their proper positions.

  Pat yanked the wedges out, tugged at the bricks until they came loose and the carefully constructed hiding place for Rudy Olaf’s gun became evident.

  “The wrapped-up weapon was in a galvanized can,” Pat said, “painted with several coats of black waterproof material. Of course that, and the sealed plastic bag that had been inside, is now in an evidence locker.”

  Traffic sounds seemed oddly muted, a world away, not mere blocks.

  I said, “Pat, why the hell did you drag me all the way up here to see this?”

  “Because you were there at the beginning, kiddo. I want you to be right there at the end.”

  “Why?”

  “You tell me, Mike.”

  I thought for a few seconds, then said, “Because something is seriously fucked-up about this.”

  “You got it. Figured out what yet?”

  A siren screamed a few blocks away.

  “Maybe,” I said. “But for sure I know it smells worse than anything else in this neighborhood, which is saying something.”

  “Damn right.” Pat pointed. “What was the purpose of this hidey hole? I mean, initially—going way back?”

  “To stow the rod between jobs. The wallets that were found just hadn’t been dumped yet, but the Bowery Bum slayer would always take the time to hide the murder weapon.”

  “A weapon bagged protectively for its next use.”

  I nodded. “So say Brogan is the killer. All those years ago, he lucks into having Olaf get wrongly tagged for the crimes. Now he has a free pass. He’s had a couple of big scores, so cuts out the robberies and the kills that go with ’em. He buys his building and lives off the rent money, happily ever after.”

  “Right.”

  “But Pat—why would he hold onto the piece?”

  “Maybe to have something to hang over Olaf’s head.”

  “Naw, that stinks, Pat. Olaf was already in stir for the long haul. Look, we didn’t have professional mob types here. We have two old slobs with nothing on their minds, just plodding along like Old Man River… only then one of them suddenly learns he’s got the Big C. He has skyrocketing hospital bills and a couple of grandkids he cares about, and maybe, just maybe, he sees a way to lay one hell of a debt load on the city.”

  “So Brogan initiated the plan?”

  I thought about it a while.

  Then I shook my head and said, “I don’t think so. I think this is Rudy baby all the way. Brogan came on his regular visits, and Olaf—hearing his old pal was dying—came up with the big scheme.”

  Pat was nodding slowly. “Olaf tells him where to find the gun. Brogan takes the rap. That simple.”

  “That simple, but…”

  “But what, Mike?”

  “Something still smells. If Brogan wasn’t the killer, why those visits?”

  “They were pals.”

  “Pretty damn good ones for Brogan to come around once a week for forty years bringing smokes and playing chess. Maybe it was Olaf who had something hanging over Brogan’s head.”

  “What are you saying?”

  My grin was suitably nasty. “What key group of people didn’t testify at Olaf’s trial, Pat?”

  “Well… the victims, of course. They were dead to a man.”

  “Right. So maybe Olaf and Brogan were a team. Maybe they were in on this together from day one. Two muggers can take a guy down easier than one.”

  Pat snapped his fingers. “Shit! That makes perfect sense. Cut to the present day, and Brogan is dying. Olaf suggests his old pal step up and take the whole rap, and make his release possible so he can look out for the terminal Brogan’s precious grandkids—thanks to the settlement the city will make for forty years of false imprisonment.”

  “Irony is,” I said, looking across the ragged desolate landscape of rooftops, “when gentrification gets to this block, this old building will be a valuable property. There are probably speculators even now who would give a half-way decent price.”

  Pat punched a palm. “Brogan doesn’t have the time to wait for this property to accumulate worth. And why settle for a speculator’s low-ball offer when you can take the whole damn town for a bundle?”

  I nodded. “And have the pleasure of damaging Captain Patrick Chambers’ rep, right around retirement time, as a cherry on the sundae.”

  He thought about that, paced a small area
of the rough rooftop. Then he said, “How do we prove this? My God, these are forty-year-old murders!”

  “We can’t,” I said, “but you could. Go back to the original files. Put some grunts on the detail and get them digging.”

  “For what?”

  “For similar way-back-when incidents on Skid Row’s gay-bar row. There may have been unsuccessful attempts, where a victim wriggled away. And/or robberies without killings that preceded the spree, as Olaf and Brogan warmed up. Hell, maybe Olaf had problems handling victims one-on-one and brought Brogan in as back up. Or vice versa.”

  His brow was furrowed; he looked worried. “That’s thin, Mike. Any victims would be reluctant, particularly back then, to come forward, because of the homosexual aspect.”

  “It’s worth checking, Pat. You may find old police reports that will lead you to surviving witnesses. Yes, it was forty years ago, but guys in their twenties or thirties hanging out in Bowery gay bars may well still be around today. And with changing times, may be more forthcoming.”

  “Does sound worth a try.” Pat shook his head. “I would hate for these old bastards to get away with it.”

  I grinned at him. “You mean, get away with murder? Or tarnishing your golden reputation?”

  “Screw you, buddy,” he said.

  But he was grinning, too.

  * * *

  At five o’clock that evening, when the late papers were already on the stands, Rudy Olaf was released from Sing Sing. The six o’clock TV news shows made mention of the incident, and radio stations carried brief bites about it, but the original crimes all happened so long ago, and involved such long-dead inconsequential people, that there was little news value. Nothing was said about the cash settlement Rudy Olaf was to receive.

  Pat’s rep took no hit at all—that the well-known captain of Homicide had made the initial arrest didn’t rate a word. Apparently lawyer Rufus Tomlin had agreed to avoid publicity, if the price was right, and Pat got a free ride in public.

  But at One Police Plaza, and at City Hall, powerful people would consider Pat a loser. He would likely be pressured to take early retirement, blotting out any possibility that he’d conclude his NYPD service as an inspector.

  That wouldn’t sit well with Pat.