The Big Bang Read online

  The kid even opened the door for me.

  Feeling just a little guilty, I said, "I'll put in the good word for you with Captain Chambers."

  "Thanks, Mr. Hammer!"

  The kid would need it.

  They had given Brix a butch haircut, possibly to attend better to his minor head injuries, and he was hooked up to a hanging plastic bag of clear liquid. He was as pale as death, but he was breathing, all right, a skinny, battered-looking guy in a blue gown with the covers pulled way up. He was watching a game show on a wall-mounted TV, and I went over and clicked the remote on his bed stand.

  He gave me a half-lidded look of non-recognition. His enunciation not up to snuff, thanks to the wired jaw, he demanded, "Who the hell are you?"

  "The guy who de-balled you."

  Now the eyes popped wide. They were dark blue and bloodshot and scared as hell. He reached for the little white doohickey with the button that called for the nurse, but I got there first, and dropped the thing to the floor, letting it dangle on its cord.

  His consonants were sketchy, and his vowels droned, but the wired jaw didn't keep the hate in: "You... Hammer ... you bastard ... you bastard.... You castrated me!"

  "Yeah, that's what de-balled means. Hey, you've still got your prick, at least. It'll still work, stand up and say howdy and everything. Where you're going, being able to make babies is kind of a moot point."

  "Get out of here! I'll scream bloody—"

  I clamped my hand over his steel-reinforced mouth and his eyes bulged. "That's no way to talk, Norm. I come around to pay my respects, and you treat me like this? I'm just here to ask you a few questions, pal. Then I'll leave you to enjoy whatever kind of junk they're pumping into you. Got it?"

  Under my hand, he nodded, though the eyes remained big and terrified.

  I let go of him. "Why did you and your buddies jump Billy Blue? The truth, Norm."

  He didn't scream, I'll give him that.

  And he had the balls, metaphorically speaking, to say, "Go fuck yourself, Hammer."

  I nodded toward the hanging plastic bag of clear liquid hooked into his arm. "What is this? Methadone? Morphine? Good shit, Norm? How's the staff here at Bellevue—they get it right? Or do they sometimes have a screwup?" I clutched the bag and squeezed it. "I suppose even the tightest ship has the occasional O.D., huh?"

  "Don't! Shit! Don't!"

  I let go of it. "Billy Blue, Norm. What's the score? The real one."

  He shook his head. With his hippie hair sheared off, he looked like a boot-camp recruit, the type that would wash out the first day.

  "Herm and me, we knew Billy from years ago, from school. If he wanted to, he could get us stuff from the hospital—Saxony? And they got a pretty decent supply at that medical college, too."

  "Why fool with such piddling product, Norm?"

  "Man, ain't you heard, the streets are bone dry. We needed some kind of shit, something to tide us over. Our customers are climbing the walls, and I mean, really climbing. And Billy, selfish goddamn son-of-a-bitch bastard, wouldn't help ... so we figured, teach the little pussy a lesson."

  "You were going after him with a bicycle chain, Norm. That could've killed his ass. What kind of 'lesson' is that?"

  He shook his head. "We wasn't gonna kill him. But after how he reacted, when we hit him up for a source? We didn't figure, no matter what we did, he'd ever play along. There's others at that hospital who might, though ... and, you know, if they saw what could happen to somebody who messed with me and Herm, then they'd think twice about saying no to us."

  I asked, "No other reason for the takedown?"

  "No! What other reason could there be?"

  "Word could have come down from the Snowbird to—"

  "Hell no! The Snowbird don't know Billy Blue from Little Boy Blue."

  I believed him. I wished I didn't, I wished I'd got a new lead here, but this sick kid wasn't lying. He was too scared and too stupid.

  I pressed on, anyway. "Whose idea was it?"

  "What idea?"

  "Teaching Billy this lesson."

  "It was Hem's idea, strictly Herm. This is all his damn fault. I'd like to wring his stupid neck."

  "When you get out," I said, "why don't you dig him up and do that?"

  He was stupid, but not stupid enough to reply. He just lay there, mute, watching me go, praying for me to go, and I did.

  The uniformed cop got to his feet. "Everything okay, Mr. Hammer?"

  "Yeah. Swell."

  "Get what you needed?"

  I nodded to him, and the kid called after me, "Don't forget to put in a good word with Captain Chambers!"

  "You bet," I said, knowing it would probably be, Don't fire the little twerp on my account, buddy.

  The Village serves up a pizza slice of Little Italy, south of Washington Square and all the way to Spring Street. At the pushcart market on Bleecker between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, you can get the best fruits and vegetables in the city—all the usual suspects from peppers to bananas, but also more exotic items like zucchini and finocchio. Locals mingle with tourists, who dig the occasional street fairs with their singing and dancing, and their ices and candies.

  What the tourists really want to see are the Mafiosi. And the many cafés and restaurants offer plenty of opportunities for that kind of negative star-gazing, though the mobsters dress like businessmen and are only identifiable by their bodyguards, who also dress Madison Avenue but physically run to type.

  Also, some of the bigger bosses avoid the times of day when out-of-towners come around asking who got shot at what table.

  Which is why I didn't go to Salvatore's—a brick-fronted street-level ristorante—until after two o'clock. With the rain still tommy-gunning down, the place should be free of tourists, and the guy I wanted to see might have taken an earlier lunch, knowing that.

  But I figured Carlo "Junior" Evello would stick to his pattern. The Evellos of the world have a keener sense than most of the random, chaotic nature of things, and they seek solace in habit, in a self-designed structure that gives them a false sense of security. The joke, of course, is such behavior makes them prey to police and federal surveillance, not to mention prone to getting dropped in their spaghetti sauce by business rivals.

  I came in and got out of my trench coat and left it on a hook just inside the door. I hung on to my hat, after shaking the rain off it, and moved into the dark, chilly restaurant. Over at the left, in a black vest, white shirt, and black bow tie, a bartender—whose bullnecked build tagged him as doing double duty as the bouncer—was doing zero business. I bought a glass of Pabst on tap from him, just to make him feel wanted.

  The place was so empty it might have been closed for cleaning. The carpet was red, the tables black, the booths red. The yellow stucco walls had the typical gilt-framed Sicilian landscapes—oils not prints. The lighting was subdued and made more so by the lack of sunlight through the street windows onto the day's gloom. The deeper into the narrow restaurant you walked, the darker it got.

  And the only customers were three businessmen in a booth. Two were big and greasy-haired and could have been twins but for the slightly smaller one's pockmarks. They were not eating—they didn't even have drinks. Between the big guys, seated in the booth with his back to the wall, was the only one of the trio eating.

  And all he had was a bowl of what looked to be chicken soup. Water and no wine, not even coffee.

  Carlo Evello was about as threatening-looking as a seventh-grade English teacher, his importance suggested only by the gray Brooks Brothers suit and the darker gray silk tie. He had small, dark, sad eyes in pouches of fat that didn't go with the rest of his fairly slender frame. His eyebrows were slashes of black and his hair was gray and his well-lined face had a funeral-parlor pallor.

  When I walked up to the booth, the bookend bodyguards got halfway out of their seats, their tiny eyes flaring even as their tinier minds crawled into action.

  "Why don't you tell your goons you'd already be
dead," I said to Evello, "if that's what I was here for."

  He made a calming motion with one hand and the two settled back down, the pockmarked one frowning. The idiot didn't like being called a goon.

  "Join me, Mr. Hammer," Evello said with a smooth voice that didn't go with the diamond-hard beady eyes. "The kitchen is closed till four, but I'm sure for a guest of your ... renown ... an exception can be made."

  "That's okay. I already ate at Fortunio's. They serve a mean manicotti."

  He shrugged and pushed his dish away. He frowned at the half-eaten soup. "Chicken broth and tortellini, Mr. Hammer. I suffer the curse of today's busy executive—an ulcer."

  "Having a hole in your stomach can be painful." I nodded one at a time at the two greasy-haired watchdogs. "Can you dismiss Heckle and Jeckle? They don't have to leave the room. I just want us old friends to share some privacy."

  He studied me for a moment, nodded once per bodyguard, and they frowned and shifted but stayed put.

  The smooth-cheeked, slightly bigger one said, "At least he should let us take his gun, Mr. Evello."

  I gave the guy more attention than he deserved. "Why, are you girls going to give me yours?"

  Evello frowned and waved that off, and finally the two thugs slid out of the booth and took a table halfway across the otherwise empty restaurant, where they sat and pouted.

  Their boss smiled and laughed to himself, though no sound came out. "Bearding the lion in his den, Mr. Hammer?"

  I put my hat on the table, set my beer and myself down, got comfy. "You and I both know, Carlo, that the feds staking you out saw me come in, and they'll expect to see me come out."

  He shrugged. He was getting something out of his suit-coat pocket—a silver cigarette case. He removed a small brown smoke and I gave him a light with my Zippo, then fired up a Lucky. I had an ankle on a knee and was casual as hell. We were old friends, though we'd never spoken before.

  "I know, generally," Evello said, and painted an abstract picture in the air with a hand that bore a couple gold-and-diamond rings, "why you're here. But let me start."

  "Like the man said—shoot."

  That made him smile again, and he shook his head, as if saying, That Mike Hammer—what a card.

  Then his face went somber, suddenly as hard as the eyes. "I was not responsible for what those two former employees of mine did outside that Chinese restaurant, some weeks ago. They had been drinking, I understand. They knew the stories about you having ... having a hand in my uncle's death. They thought they could please me by taking you on, and out. They were fools. I didn't desire it, and they weren't capable of it."

  "It's all right. They're as dead as your uncle now."

  He waved that off, exhaling blue smoke. "As well they deserve to be. My understanding is that you were badly wounded, and that it required a trip out of town to recover, and ... well, I apologize for the inconvenience."

  "Yeah?"

  "Yeah. Wherever this discussion goes, that's behind us. Ancient history."

  I gave him a guarded grin. "What about your uncle?"

  Half a smile twitched the gray face. "No one knows precisely what happened to my uncle. There were marks on his neck, as if someone had tried to strangle him ... but he was killed by a knife belonging to one of his own men."

  "I didn't kill him," I said.

  And I hadn't. He had tied me to a bed and let his men work me over, but I hadn't killed him. I'd gotten loose and I'd squeezed his throat so hard, his eyes almost popped out of their sockets, but I hadn't killed him. I'd watched his head roll back and his tongue loll out, but I hadn't killed him. He was still breathing when I tied him to the bed in my position in the darkened room and called for his guy to come in and finish the job. I hadn't killed him—his own knife-wielding thug had.

  Of course, him I killed.

  "The truth, Mr. Hammer, is that I never much liked my uncle. He was a cold man, selfish and innately cruel. But he was a successful man, with a considerable reputation, and my physical resemblance to him aided me in my ... climb. I rather resent the nickname this earned me—Junior—and I notice you pay me the respect of calling me Carlo, and I do appreciate that."

  "I find grown men don't take to being called Junior."

  This time you could hear the chuckle. "Absolutely right, Mr. Hammer. You are a keen observer of human foibles."

  "But the word on the street has always been that you blamed me for your uncle's death."

  Blue smoke exited his nostrils, dragon-style. "Simply a face-saving gesture. It is expected of me to speak ill of the man responsible for my 'beloved' uncle's death. At any rate, I'm not suggesting that you and I are destined for a great friendship, Mr. Hammer—just that we are not, today at least, adversaries. Now—what brings you to Little Italy ... besides Fortunio's."

  I sipped beer. My tone would have fit right in with discussing sports scores. "Did you read about the two St. Louie guys who got in a shootout in the lobby of my apartment building? One was playing dress-up, pretending to be a doorman."

  He stiffened. "Mr. Hammer, that also was not my doing...."

  "Louis 'Frenchy' Tallman?" I said. "Gerald Kopf? Out-of-town talent with ties to the Evellos. Graduates of the Jackers, the street gang who even today make up the Evello Family junior auxiliary...."

  He was holding up both hands as if in surrender. "Mr. Hammer, that attempt on your life had nothing to do with me or any of my ... immediate associates."

  "How about your not immediate associates?"

  He shrugged with his eyebrows, sucked on his little brown cigarette or cigar or whatever-the-hell, then asked, "Aren't my connections, nationally and internationally, extensive enough to secure gunmen who would not be so immediately traceable to me?"

  "Are you suggesting somebody wanted me to make that jump? Knowing my history with the Evello Family?"

  He turned a hand over. "Isn't that more likely? More logical?"

  "Who?"

  He sipped his water. Smiled again, but there was no amusement in the tiny hard eyes. "You've been nosing around, Mr. Hammer, as is your wont. You have a rather well-known nose."

  "When something stinks, I know it."

  "Admirable. You recently came to the aid of a young man who was set upon by two of Jay Wren's people—the Snowbird?"

  "That's right. Billy Blue. You know Billy, Carlo. He mailed a letter for you once."

  "Did he?"

  I sat forward. "If that's what this is about—if you think that kid saw something he shouldn't have, remembered a name he shouldn't have—then here's your one warning: Back the hell off. I talked to that kid, and he doesn't remember a damn thing about—"

  Through most of that he'd been shaking his head, and now the surrender palms were up again. "Mr. Hammer, Mr. Hammer—I swear on my mother's grave that I have no memory of what that letter was. He's a nice boy. He ran some harmless errands for me—nothing sinister—while I was hospitalized."

  I settled back. Had a sip of beer. "I spoke to the Brix kid—one of the two attackers—today, at Bellevue. He swears they jumped Billy just because he turned them down on some petty drug-pilfering scheme at Saxony."

  He let smoke out, lifted a shoulder. "That sounds credible to me."

  "What you said before—about no 'immediate' associates. Would that include the Snowbird? Where does Jay Wren rate with you?"

  One of the black eyebrows rose. "He is an ambitious young man who has done an excellent job for me. But, as you well know, Mr. Hammer—ambition has its pitfalls."

  "You're suggesting the Snowbird hired those two St. Louis torpedoes."

  His faint smile spoke volumes.

  "And that Wren did so," I went on, "intending to leave a trail to you?"

  He sighed. Sipped his water again. "Mr. Hammer, Jay Wren has, for reasons unknown to me, apparently singled you out as a threat to him. Perhaps he envisions a scenario in which you and I take each other out of the picture. Who can say?"

  "But he's just a glorified dealer, right?
An underling."

  "From time immemorial," he said, "underlings have had a way of ... getting ideas."

  I wasn't buying it. "And he did all this from Miami, I suppose?"

  The tiny eyes under the dark slashes of brow blinked a couple times, then he said, "I don't believe so. Wren has been back in town for several days. Since before this incident with the Blue boy even went down."

  "I had police information otherwise."

  That got more than a chuckle out of him. "Yes, well, Mr. Hammer ... we all know how reliable police intelligence is."

  I grinned at him. "Police intel says a big shipment of H is coming in. How reliable is that, Carlo? A shipment that will turn this dry spell into streets awash with junk."

  No smile, now. Just eyes as dead as his Uncle Carl's, if not bulging. "I don't think that's an area we should get into. You are, Mr. Hammer, in your unique way, a policeman yourself. You may or may not have killed my uncle, all those years ago, but you definitely cost him, and my family, a rather major shipment of a certain commodity. And I have no reason to think that your ... unique views on how to solve what the do-gooders call 'the narcotics problem' have radically changed over those years."

  "What do you call it, if it's not a problem?"

  The brown cigarillo was between the fingers of the hand he waved, and it made little gray-blue trails. "It's a personal choice, Mr. Hammer. We are in an era of young people who are expanding their reach, their minds, who seek entertainment in ways forbidden to our more stodgy generation. I'm a capitalist in this Marxist world, and am happy to supply freethinkers of all ages with their entertainment needs."

  "What a load of horseshit," I said.

  And what a load of horse.

  Then something came together in my mind. I sat forward again. "This super shipment, should it exist—are you implying the Snowbird has his eye on it? That he might try to hijack it, steal it from you, and set out on his own?"

  Evello let out an appreciative grunt. Then he took a small pillbox from his pocket and selected two capsules and popped them with his water. "Goddamned ulcer—we all have our drugs, don't we, Mr. Hammer?"