Mike Hammer--King of the Weeds Read online

  And it sure as hell didn’t sit right with me.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  At precisely four forty-five p.m., Velda buzzed me on the intercom and said, “There’s a call you’re going to want to take.”

  I was swiveled toward the window where a gray afternoon was contemplating a shift into a gray evening. “That so?”

  “That’s so—an attorney whose name will be familiar to you.”

  I swiveled back around. “You don’t mean Rufus Tomlin, Champion of the Underdog?”

  “My man’s a detective.”

  “Put him on,” I told her.

  There was a click and I said, “Michael Hammer here. What can I do for you, Mr. Tomlin?”

  The voice was liquid with the Southern accent he had brought up with him from South Carolina many decades ago, a molasses drawl with a soothing pleasantness that had lulled many a juror.

  “Mah apologies, Mr. Hammer, for callin’ so late in the day. Unlikely as it seems, we have never met, but ah believe we both know of each other by deed and reputation.”

  “I believe we do, Mr. Tomlin.”

  “As you know, I’m the attorney for Rudolph Olaf, and you might assume that’s my principal reason for callin’. But you would be wrong, Mr. Hammer. Ah am callin’ in reference to another client of mine, a gentleman who desires certain information and thinks that you might be able to supply same. Might we meet and talk?”

  “I’m free right now.”

  I was about to tell him to come to my office, but he anticipated that and said, “It’s toward the end of your business day. Might I make up for my abrupt insertion of myself into your schedule by offerin’ to buy you a meal over which we might talk a little business?”

  “I could do that.”

  “At some neutral meeting place, if you please. Mah client prefers anonymity as much as possible. Of course, he will pay for your time.”

  Ordinarily, I wouldn’t walk into a deal like that, but I’d figured something like this was going to happen. And a public place would make it safe enough.

  I said, “I don’t charge for a first conferral, but I will let you pick up the check.”

  “Agreeable, sir.”

  “You have any place in mind?”

  “Ah believe there’s a deli restaurant a few blocks from your office, is there not?”

  “Charlie’s you mean?”

  “The very one, Mr. Hammer.”

  “You close by?”

  “Ah can meet you there in ten.”

  “On my way, Mr. Tomlin.”

  I told Velda where I was headed and was half-way out when she called, “Don’t forget we have an eight o’clock meeting with Marvin Dooley in New Brunswick.”

  “I won’t be that long. This’ll be supper—what can I bring you?”

  “Just a salad with Italian.”

  That was part of how she beat back the clock. That and no smoking, moderate drinking, and every-other-day at the gym. I kept a similar regimen, but salad for supper wasn’t part of it.

  Charlie’s Deli was a lively place with artifacts from the fifties. You could slip coins into a Wurlitzer and watch it spin 45 RPM platters still playing the best of Elvis or eye the gum-snapping waitresses in their short-skirted uniforms or be dazzled by the authentic signs, gas pumps and fixtures of an America that seemed more a figment of the imagination than a memory.

  I took the side way in and spotted the big man in the small booth immediately—he wore a yellow corduroy jacket with a string tie and suspenders, his white-ish hair a mop on loan from Clarence Darrow. The booth was a good choice, with a commanding view of the dining area.

  He had a finger hooked in a cup of coffee and pretended he hadn’t noticed me until I slid in across from him and said, “Good afternoon, Mr. Tomlin.”

  He had the kind of light blue eyes usually reserved for movie stars. The pleasant face on the bucket head was tanned from trips home, as well-worn and grooved with use as a Yankee catcher’s mitt. We were both seated as we shook hands.

  “Please take no offense, Mr. Hammer, but ah’m afraid ah must ask—are you electronically compromised?”

  “I’m not wired. Are you?”

  Shaggy black caterpillar eyebrows rose and fell and the blue eyes twinkled. “Ah am not, sir. But meaning no offense again, ah’m afraid ah’m unable to settle for your assurance. Might we repair to the men’s room?”

  I shrugged. “Since you asked nicely.”

  In the smallish john, he reached in the old briefcase that he’d set on the sink and took out something in a paper bag. He ran the electronic scanner over my body. I held my hand out with my keys, change and a penknife, and let him see Velda’s forty-five-caliber early wedding present under my arm, which got a non-twinkly look out of the blue eyes.

  When he packed the device away, he said, “Ah’m afraid mah client insisted.” The eyes held mine, waiting for several seconds, but I didn’t ask him who his client was.

  Then he graciously gestured for me to go first and we returned to our booth, which the waitress had held for us, getting rewarded with a ten-dollar Tomlin tip.

  As we both settled back in, he said, “Ah’m pleased that your friend Captain Chambers won’t be subjected to public humiliation due to the release of mah client.”

  “I admit I was surprised by that. Pat, too. Of course, as you know, counselor, the captain and I visited Rudy Olaf in prison, and the old boy didn’t express any particular bitterness toward either of us.”

  “No. He’s an interesting fellah, my client. He made the best out of his years of incarceration. And now he’s ready to enjoy a new life, a… richer one.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d care to say just how much richer.”

  His smile was a charming rumpled fold in that well-worn face. “No, Mr. Hammer, ah would not. Couldn’t if ah wanted to—client confidentiality, y’know, as well as the terms of the agreement. Suffice to say, Mr. Olaf’s final years will indeed be golden.”

  “But that’s not why we’re here.”

  “No, sir. It is not. Shall we order?”

  We did. I ordered a corned beef and Swiss on rye with potato salad on the side, while Tomlin was on the same health kick as Velda: salad with Italian dressing, though the attorney added in a broiled chicken breast.

  Conversationally, he said, “Say, the press surely made quite the hullabaloo out of that Ponti affair.”

  “Not an ‘affair,’ really. More a series of interwoven events.”

  “Concluding with the murder of Don Lorenzo by his son Ugo, and the latter’s capture by yourself, Mr. Hammer. It’s a particularly barbaric act, even in a world as cruel as ours, a son killing a father. A tragedy of Shakespearean proportions.”

  “Fuckin’ A.”

  My calculated crudity amused him, momentarily. “This Ugo Ponti… he killed your friend, too, didn’t he?”

  He meant Marcus Dooley. This was a sideways method of introducing the real subject of this meeting.

  “Ugo admitted it to me,” I said. “He wasn’t tried for the murder, though. They had him cold on his old man’s killing.”

  The attorney shook his head and the mop of white hair seemed to pulse. “It was as if the entire eastern-seaboard of that, uh, fraternity was havin’ itself a nervous breakdown.” He pointed at me with his fork. “Your sudden exit from the scene, after that waterfront fracas, followed by… some months later… your unannounced entry back to the land of the living, Mr. Hammer, well… that was perfect theatrics.”

  “Mr. Tomlin, there was nothing staged about it. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and got shot up pretty damn badly.”

  “Everyone thought you were dead. Even the press speculated as much.”

  “You know what they say about not believing everything you read in the papers.”

  Our food arrived. I gave the waitress Velda’s to-go order. The Champion of the Underdog ate a few bites of salad while I starting working my way through my thick sandwich.

  Then he said
, “Now that the elder Mr. Ponti and many of his staff are dead or in prison, those still standing can only wonder just what the fuss was all about.”

  Elvis was singing “Jailhouse Rock.”

  I gave Tomlin a quick grin and said, “Somebody ought to make a movie. Sell billions of tickets.”

  “Is that right, Mr. Hammer? Billions?”

  His eyes were like probing laser beams, but I was as good at this game as he was. Then he pushed the barely touched salad aside to say, “We are both busy individuals, Mr. Hammer. Might we please cut through the bullshit?”

  “Do they let you talk that way in court, Mr. Tomlin? But be my guest—cut away.”

  “Ah will do just that, but… delicately. Ah have a responsibility to keep my client out of the limelight. Mah client, and his client. Understood?”

  “Clearly.”

  “You do know the real subject at hand, here today… don’t you, Mr. Hammer?”

  “Money,” I said. “Everything’s about money.”

  He nodded sagely. “From the price of this meal, to the vast quantities of the stuff that it takes to run major corporate enterprises.”

  “Like the capital behind the late Don Ponti’s corporate enterprises?” I chuckled. “Isn’t it funny how death seems to exaggerate a person’s wealth? How in death rumored wealth seems to get bigger, grander…?”

  “Ah thought we were about to set aside the bullshit, Mr. Hammer.”

  “Then get to the point,” I told him through a rudely chewed bite of sandwich.

  Patiently he said, “Great organizations have modern technology at their literal fingertips. They hire persons with mind-bogglin’ expertise to search out what they want to know. Once they obtain that information, Mr. Hammer, they can squeeze very hard.” He paused, locking eyes with mine. “You do understand my meanin’, sir?”

  “Cash doesn’t leave a paper trail, Mr. Tomlin, and the paper it’s printed on doesn’t hold fingerprints.”

  “Perhaps I don’t understand your meanin’…?”

  “The kind of money that ‘great organization’ you represent is looking for wasn’t recorded in ledgers and, as far as tax records go, never existed.”

  “But it not only exists, Mr. Hammer—somebody stole it.”

  “Don’t look at me, Mr. Tomlin.” I was chewing again. “I’m just a two-bit NYC P.I. driving a Ford.”

  The black caterpillar eyebrows twitched, as if anxious to become butterflies. “Nonetheless, sir, there’s some who would say you know where all that money is.”

  “You believe that, Mr. Tomlin? Is street talk enough to sway a man of your expertise?”

  Tomlin’s blue eyes narrowed somewhat. “Why, you’re a rather interestin’ character, aren’t you, Mr. Hammer?”

  “Don’t pretend like you’re taking a crash course.” I leaned across the table. “You didn’t come at me cold, counselor. You researched me first. You should have a damn good read on me by now.”

  Tomlin’s eyes were so hard they might have been glass. “You could say that ah have, Mr. Hammer, yes.”

  “Then maybe you can tell me something. Where could I hide eighty-nine billion dollars? And if I had all that money, how would I spend it?”

  A touch of wry humor seeped into his expression. “Strange as it is,” he said, “there are some people who have little consideration for money at all. Are you one of that rare breed, Mr. Hammer?”

  “Maybe.”

  “What do you suppose makes that kind of person tick, sir?”

  I shrugged. “Imagine you suddenly had ten million bucks dropped in your lap. That may be small change to a successful Champion of the Underdog like yourself, but if that happened, who in your circle would be the happiest? You? Your wife? Your kids? Who, Mr. Tomlin?”

  “Ah would imagine ah would be the happiest in mah circle, Mr. Hammer.”

  “Not you, pal. Your banker. You’d dump all your new loot across his desk and he’d rub his hands and be giddy as hell because now he has ten million more bucks to play with. And what do you get in return? A deposit slip with numbers on it.”

  His half a smile was wider than most normal ones. “Well, now, Mr. Hammer, that may be the most outrageous, out-sized over-simplification I ever heard.”

  “It’s not an over-simplification at all. Tell me, Mr. Tomlin, what I could buy with eighty-nine billion dollars?”

  “Well, obviously, anything you might wish.”

  “Suppose I have a pretty good list of things and stuff I’d like to have. Now suppose I’ve bought them all. A penthouse on Park Avenue, mansions in the Bahamas and Hawaii and France. Three or four garages, full of cars, classic and contemporary. Small fleet of boats. Closet after closet of Brooks Brothers numbers. How much of that eighty-nine billion would be left?”

  “Most of it,” he admitted. “And ah think ah can speak to that very point.”

  Tomlin rested his hands on the table and sat forward. His voice was low and friendly, but his smile was the one little girls see when a guy in a van offers them candy.

  “Mah client,” he confided, “wants you to know that he is in a position to offer you a substantial sum, sir, enough to make you a very rich man for the rest of your life. In return, he can assure you and your lady friend absolute, complete safety, no matter where on the face of this earth you might choose to reside—with absolutely no recrimination from any of the organizations with whom my client associates. If you would require further inducements, he is prepared to consider whatever… sweeteners you might desire.”

  “Maybe you could be more specific about those ‘sweeteners.’”

  His smile turned sly. “How about keepin’ the gov’ment off your tail? We have surprisin’ influence in those quarters. Left to their own devices, the federal folks don’t take too kindly to the notion of a private citizen holdin’ onto these kind of unrecorded funds.”

  “Your client seems to have a lot of clout.”

  “Oh my, yes.”

  “But what makes you think Uncle Sam would hold still for that kind of pressure?”

  “Eighty-nine billion dollars is a whole hell of a lot of capital, Mr. Hammer. An off-the-books arrangement to share in the wealth could make everybody happy… and not just your hypothetical banker.”

  I grunted a laugh. “Know what else is hypothetical, Mr. Tomlin? Your eighty-nine billion dollars. You have any idea how big a pile that would make? Where the hell could I keep it without an army to back me up? But all right—let’s say those billions aren’t hypothetical.”

  His eyes twinkled again, cornpone Santa Claus that he was. “All right, Mr. Hammer—let’s do that little thing.”

  “Fine. And as soon as I give that information to your client, or to Uncle Sam for that matter, I’ll get a couple of slugs in the head and a grave in concrete.”

  He frowned, pretending to be offended. “This isn’t Chicago in the ’20s, Mr. Hammer. Nor is it Nazi Germany.”

  “Come off it, Rufus. Remember Waco? Wounded Knee ring a bell?”

  “Nothing has happened to you, Mr. Hammer.”

  The muscles across my shoulders started to bunch up and get jumpy and I snarled, “Like you said earlier, let’s cut the bullshit. Two days ago, I was shot twice outside my office. A pair of twenty-two slugs slammed right into the heart. A top notch pro did that, a studied hit with my moves researched and an aim worthy of a Desert Storm gunnery ship.”

  His change of expression was so subtle I almost missed it. “You are decidedly still alive, Mr. Hammer.”

  “Yeah, thanks to a pocket dictionary in an inside coat pocket. It decelerated the bullets and stopped them short of penetrating me. Hurt like hell. Still aches like a son of a bitch.”

  We might have been discussing the weather. “You know who did it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You could identify him?”

  “I don’t need to. I killed him this morning.”

  If he was shocked, he didn’t show it, and he asked for no details. “You don’t seem
terribly concerned, Mr. Hammer.”

  “Whoever sent him will probably send somebody else, and I’ll send that somebody back the same way—dead as hell. And in the meantime my focus is on finding out who sent him. Any questions?”

  “If the implication is that my client sent him, Mr. Hammer, I assure you that—”

  “If your client sent him, he wouldn’t have told you about it, would he?”

  The attorney said nothing. Then he leaned back in his seat, as if putting as much distance between us as possible. “Mr. Hammer, my client would appreciate a response from you, as to whether you might be amenable to negotiating a…”

  “Finder’s fee?”

  The attorney gave me a slow nod.

  Our waitress brought me a paper bag with Velda’s to-go order in it and put down the check. Connie Francis was singing “Who’s Sorry Now.”

  I slid out of the booth. “Tell your client I appreciate his offer, Mr. Tomlin, but if I did know where that kind of loot was stashed, I’d probably just let it stay there.”

  “Why on earth would you do such a fool thing, man?”

  “I don’t have any love for the mob or the federal government. Why help either one out? Hey, but it’s a real ego boost to think somebody would give me credit for sitting on a pile of cash that size.” I grinned at him again. “What’s your opinion, Tomlin? Unlikely reality or urban myth?”

  “Well, you were right about one thing,” he told me.

  “Oh? What’s that?”

  “I did do a good deal of research on you, Mr. Hammer, and I do know the outlandish things of which you’re capable.”

  He collected the check, but he and his shabby old briefcase remained in the booth as I headed for that side door.

  I knew he wouldn’t leave until I was out of sight.

  As for me, I was wondering less about who his client was than who his client’s client was.

  * * *

  Traffic on the Jersey Turnpike damn near made us late, but my lovely navigator got us to the New Brunswick address a couple minutes before eight.

  The gray sky wasn’t keeping its vague promise of rain, and the night had an almost sultry breeze, odd for this time of year. I left my trenchcoat in the car when we parked just down the block from the decrepit old apartment building in this rundown neighborhood on the city’s outskirts. In this shambling structure, a haven for unfortunates surviving on welfare checks and food stamps, lived the son of a father who had been worth eighty-nine billion bucks.