The Big Bang Page 15

  "Somebody takes on that job," I said, "and if it ever catches up with them, more than a car would hit them."

  "Exactly. These are insurance scammers, who are well outside mob circles. But they know the possible consequences, plying their talent on big-time criminals like the Snowbird and Junior."

  "Which is why one driver was a gal in a car, and the other a guy in a truck."

  "Right," Bud said, nodding vigorously. "Guys like Wren and Evello, they're going to look hard at any accident, to see if it really is an accident."

  "And in these cases, it wasn't."

  "They were not accidents, no. But the cops accepted them as such, and more important, so did the victims, Evello and Wren."

  "Who was the client?"

  His eyes went wide and he shook his head. "No. That info's not available."

  "You lead me to your contact, and I'll make it available."

  "I know you would, Mike. But I have to protect my sources. I do a lot of insurance work. More than you. All I can do is confirm that somebody had the kind of money that could make these scammers take on the very risky job of playing hit-and-run with a goddamn Mafia boss."

  I swirled my beer, looking into it like I expected tea leaves to read. "Wealthy client, then."

  "Fair to say."

  "Not another mob guy?"

  Bud shook his head again. "I would say not. This I just gathered, Mike. More gut than intel, okay? But I would say a straight john hired this done. Somebody way out of the loop."

  "And yet somebody who was somehow able to get to these scammers. Who would have that kind of inside info?"

  "I don't know. An insurance investigator like me, maybe? Possibly a medic?" He gave up an eloquent shrug. "Afraid I'm going to have to charge you for this one, Mike."

  "I know."

  "Don't choke when you see my bill. It's gonna be over a grand."

  "I'm hip. But why don't you buy the fuckin' beers, at least?"

  Bud's bulldog puss split in a grin, and he said, "My treat, amigo," and stopped at the bar and paid up, on his way out.

  I just sat there with my Pabst, wishing my mind weren't taking me where it was, when I looked up and two guys who were definitely not in Hawaiian shirts were standing there, looming over me, like ads in Esquire come to life.

  One was tall and thin and in a dark gray tailored suit with a black necktie. The other was short and thin and in a dark gray tailored suit with a gray-and-black necktie. They had hair cut short but left long enough to run a comb through, and the kind of pale complexions you get in casinos or in a coma or maybe on surveillance.

  "FBI?" I asked. "Or T-men?"

  They slid in the booth opposite me, the shorter one first. The tall one, who had blue eyes as faded as the ass of an old pair of jeans, seemed to be in charge.

  "Treasury," he said. His voice was baritone with no inflection to speak of. "Would you like to see ID?"

  "Why not?"

  They both showed me their plastic cards with photo identification. The shorter guy had brown eyes, but otherwise these two were peas in the same federal pod.

  "Agent Radley," I said to the tall one. "Agent Dawson."

  "Make it 'mister,' Mr. Hammer," Radley said. "We don't advertise our status as agents."

  Like hell they didn't.

  "I appreciate the trouble you've gone to," I said. "Normally my tax refund just comes in the mail."

  Radley smiled but it was small and a real effort. "I know your reputation, Mr. Hammer. And you might be interested to know that there are those of us, in government circles, who appreciate your methods. Even ... envy them."

  "Thanks. Maybe you can be a character witness the next time I'm up on charges."

  He smiled again and with less effort. "Your friend Captain Chambers speaks highly of you."

  Not to me, he didn't.

  The smaller T-man piped in: "And he suggested that we make contact with you directly."

  "Swell. What can I do you for?"

  "Mr. Hammer," Radley said, "you and Captain Chambers recently discussed the rumored shipment of heroin that is, right now, about the only thing heroin-related on these streets. The notion that this so-called super shipment might be a myth or a ruse, either on our side or the ... other side? We want to disabuse you of that notion."

  Dawson said, "It's very real, Mr. Hammer. Hundreds of pounds of pure heroin, about to hit these shores."

  "When?" I asked.

  "That," Radley said, "we do not know. We believe it to be ... imminent."

  "Define 'imminent.'"

  "As soon as a day or two. No longer than five or six."

  "Okay. Narrowing it down like that means we're right on top of nothing at all."

  Radley exchanged blank glances with Dawson. Then he said, "We're aware, of course, that you are deeply embroiled in this affair, starting with the attempted robbery of William Blue. That there have been attempts on your life, and that you have been in touch with many of the major players."

  "Yeah, I know all this. I was there."

  Dawson said, "Captain Chambers told us about your theory."

  "What theory is that?"

  "That a third party, someone new in the equation, may be attempting to take possession of this shipment ... possibly as part of an effort to overthrow Evello and Wren. That this third party may be using you to play Evello off Wren, and vice versa."

  I shrugged. "Just piecing things together, boys."

  "Well, it's an interesting theory, Mr. Hammer. And one we had not contemplated."

  Radley asked me, "Whom do you suspect?"

  "Someone inside."

  "Inside the Syndicate drug operation, you mean?"

  "Not Radio City Music Hall."

  "Who, Mr. Hammer?"

  "No idea." Actually, I was starting to have an idea, but I wasn't ready to share it.

  I gave them a grin that was only a little threatening. "Fellas, I don't mean to cut in on your action. But this is personal. When people try to knife me or shoot me, I take an interest."

  Radley held up a hand, a stop motion, but a gentle one. "We are not asking you to stop investigating, Mr. Hammer. Quite the opposite. You have ways and means not available to the Treasury Department. You have access to people and places that we do not, and cannot, without raising suspicion and undue questions."

  "And?"

  "And," Radley said, "we ask only that you keep us abreast of your efforts."

  Dawson handed me a card. It had four phone numbers on it and no names and no agency designation.

  "You hear anything about the shipment," Radley said, "whether solid information about the time and date and delivery, or just a rumor ... you let us know."

  They gave me curt smiles and matching nods, and slid out of the booth and vanished like your money in government hands.

  I finished the beer and put their card in my wallet. So—Uncle Sam was on my side.

  But was that a good thing?

  Chapter Ten

  VELDA MET ME for lunch at the Blue Ribbon Restaurant. I got there first, and picked up a stein of Prior's dark beer at the bar and went to my table, tucked in a corner where I wouldn't be bothered. And it was my table—all it took was a phone call half an hour out to keep anybody else from claiming it, including the mayor and any of the celebrities in the framed signed photos hanging around me.

  Velda was in a white cotton blouse with a little tan jacket over it—it was getting cooler—and a tight black skirt with black pumps. Simple attire on any other dame, grounds for an indecent-exposure arrest on her. She had the big black purse under her arm, big enough for all her girl garbage plus the .32 auto and anything else she might need to tuck away.

  Halfway over to me, she was already getting into the bag, plucking out a fat manila folder to deposit in front of me like an oversize summons she was serving.

  She took her chair, and I called, "George! Coffee regular, over here," got a nod from the headwaiter who co-owned the place, and smiled at my secretary.

&nb
sp; "You could smuggle state secrets in that thing," I said, nodding to the big purse, which she rested on an otherwise vacant chair at our table for four.

  "No secrets," she said. "Public knowledge, for anybody who wants to spend four hours traipsing through microfilm of that fascinating publication, the Weekly Home News."

  "A real kick, huh?"

  She grunted a little laugh. "Yeah, if high school football scores and amateur concerts and church bazaars jingle your chain."

  "Then why the smile?"

  And she did have one going—the kind that turns up at the corners in that cat-munching-a-canary way.

  "I'll order first," she said.

  "Tease," I said.

  "Look who's talking."

  I got the knockwurst again and she had a corned beef sandwich, requesting the fat be trimmed, which ought to be criminal in the state of New York. Her coffee came, with cream and sugar just how she liked it (courtesy of George), and she sipped it, then nodded to the manila folder.

  "Those are crummy copies," she said. "You know how those microfilm machines are."

  They were crummy, all right—gray and smeary, the stuff coming off on your fingers. But the content was worth the trouble. As I thumbed through the pages, Velda did a running commentary.

  "Davy Harrin was the top athlete everybody said he was," she said. "But there are interesting wrinkles. His sophomore year, he sat out two games on disciplinary action."

  "Does it say for what?"

  "No. But the clerk at the News was a little guy who'd been in school with Davy, and he helped me read between the lines. His sophomore year, Davy was arrested for drunk and disorderly, along with half a dozen other kids, at an all-night party. You won't find any records on that, because he was a juvenile."

  "Plus, his pop was a prominent doctor."

  "Right." She pointed at the gray copy I was perusing. "The News gives four pages over every week to the local high school—it's apparently in lieu of a school paper. The articles are by the students, including a kind of gossip column. Again, I got some help from the clerk, who seemed to like me for some reason..."

  "Imagine."

  "...and the jokey, coy copy written by various giddy girls makes it clear that Davy was a legendary bad boy around campus ... very popular, but linked with just about every pretty girl in school, from cheerleaders to Honor Society, and known to be a real 'party animal.' That phrase even gets into the gossip column, more than once."

  I had a drink of beer. "We know Davy was into booze when he was probably only, what, fifteen? What else was he into? Your clerk pal say?"

  "No, just that Davy was 'wild' and also 'kind of a jerk.' But I don't think my pal and the Harrin kid ran in the same circles. Davy was your most-likely-to-succeed type, and Between the Lines was treasurer of the chess club."

  I was still flipping through the pages. She was watching me, that catlike smile going again—only I was no canary she was stalking. A mouse maybe, or a rat.

  Then I came to the piece of cheese she had for me—a page dominated by a picture of three girls and two boys, facing the camera with big smiles, the pair of guys in the center holding up a plaque together—the cut line said, DEBATE CLUB WINS DIVISION. One of the guys was Davy.

  "The other one," Velda said, "is Jay Wren."

  My mouth dropped and my eyes rose. "Davy Harrin and the Snowbird were in school together?"

  "Yup. And not just classmates, but teammates, on the debate club. Davy was a freshman, Jay a senior. Could be innocent. A guy I went to school with became a United States senator, and that doesn't make me a crook."

  Our food came, and we ate in silence.

  Then I said, "I need to talk to Wren. Time we met."

  "I doubt he's in the book."

  "No ideas?"

  She thought. "I did some checking. Word is, Wren is a silent partner backing that new club in the Village—the Pigeon?"

  "That club was a favorite hangout of Russell Frazer's, according to Susie, our little supermarket chick."

  "Makes sense." She shrugged. "I could try calling over there, but they don't even open for business till ten-thirty at night."

  "Try till you get somebody. For now, I'm heading over for another Dorchester Medical College visit. There's somebody I want to talk to again, who'll either be there or at Saxony Hospital."

  "Billy?"

  "No. No use talking to him again. He's a good kid, and straight as they come. But he won't fink on other kids. That's the code."

  Velda shook her head. "He gets jumped by these freaks, and still feels loyalty to them?"

  "That's not it. We're over thirty, kitten. We can't be trusted."

  She smirked at me. "You couldn't be trusted at twenty."

  This time I found Dr. Alan Sprague at Saxony Hospital. It took a little doing, because he was in surgery, and I sat around for an hour reading year-old Life magazines.

  When I finally caught up with him, the round little doc was sitting on a bench with a blood-spattered smock on and his surgical mask hanging loose, like a stagecoach robber who'd been foiled.

  The doctors' locker room might have been in a YMCA or attached to a high school gym, an aquamarine chamber with metal hallway-type lockers and communal showers. Twenty or more could have used the locker room at once, but Sprague was alone, sitting slumped, dejected, smoking a cigarette. Or anyway he had a cigarette between the fingers of a hand draped over one leg as ashes drifted to the tile floor.

  The mood was somber enough that I took off my hat and said, "Excuse me, Dr. Sprague—this may be a bad moment...."

  The little man glanced up, glazed-looking, and it took a couple of seconds for him to recognize me. Since I have one of the more easily made maps in New York, this demonstrated how deep in the dumps he was.

  "Mr. Hammer," he said. "No, please. Sit down." The humidity and sweat from his recent surgical effort had conspired to flatten down his bristly gray hair. "You'll have to excuse my appearance...." He gestured to the bloodstained smock.

  "I have the same problem sometimes," I said.

  I sat next to him, but giving him some space. "Lose one?"

  "Yeah."

  "It happens."

  "A child. Mere child. Not even ten." He remembered his smoke and had a drag. "It's not easy to lose any patient, but surgeons learn to cope with that early on, or they don't last. Still, when a life gets cut off before it's had a chance to really begin. ..."

  "What about a teenager who makes a bad choice, doc?"

  That question pulled him back from where he'd been and he turned to look at me, curiously. "What do you mean?"

  "When do they have to take responsibility? We're in a do-your-own-thing world right now. If a sixteen-year-old, a seventeen-year-old goes the wrong way, is it the parents' fault? Or society's?"

  "Did you drop by for a philosophical discussion, Mr. Hammer? Or perhaps you're taking a sociological survey."

  I grinned at him, got out my deck of Luckies, and shook one free. "I'm just asking. I really don't know. I was a stupid kid once. I started smoking at fifteen—Christ, I'd like to kick this habit someday."

  "That makes two of us," Sprague said, making a disgusted face. He dropped his smoke to the tile and crushed it with a heel. "What are you really asking me, Mr. Hammer?"

  I fired up the Lucky with my Zippo, then snapped it shut, a sound that bounced off the ceramic-tile walls. "I know you and Dr. Harrin are tight. I know you're good friends...."

  "He's my best friend," Sprague said. "He could be my brother."

  "How about his kid—Davy? Was he like a nephew, then?"

  Sprague's eyes tensed and they turned away from my gaze. "I wasn't really close to Davy. When he was a little boy, yes ... but later on, no. He was a gifted youth. It's a tragedy, of course. So many scholarship offers, so much potential, and to ... to die like that."

  "To die like what?"

  He swallowed. "After that track meet. Exerted himself. Heart attack. Surely you know the story."

 
; "I know the story. I'm after the truth."

  He gave me something that was supposed to be a smile but played as a grimace. "Mr. Hammer, if you don't mind, I need to have a shower."

  I wasn't going anywhere. "Be my guest."

  We spoke as he got out of the clothes. I'll skip the details—this was not a striptease worth recording.

  "I think Davy was a druggie," I said. "A user. And maybe even a pusher at school."

  "Why do you make these assumptions?"

  "Just from digging. He was pals with Jay Wren—the Snowbird, remember him? Maybe that's why you were so familiar with Wren—your surrogate nephew was tight with him. Wren was an upperclassman, and might have set Davy up in business. Maybe Davy was Wren's high school connection."

  The fat little man, naked now, tromped into the nearby showers. I stayed put on the bench a while. He was in there, clouded in steam, and the sound of water needles discouraged conversation. But not me.

  I got up, leaned a hand against the wall where it opened into the shower room, and called out, "The kid was gifted! He was a good athlete, maybe a great one—but not a great kid."

  "You don't know that!" His voice echoed, rising above the driving spray.

  "Davy died of an overdose, didn't he?"

  Nothing but spray now, and the doc soaping himself.

  "What was it, Dr. Sprague—heroin? He started out early on the daddy of gateway drugs—booze. Arrested for drunk and disorderly at a tender age, right?"

  He came trundling out, feet slapping against the wet tiles. I had a towel ready for him. Thoughtful of me, but also I prefer naked fat men to cover up.

  I gave him room while he toweled off. And I said nothing as he got into shorts and T-shirt and socks. Then I asked, "Who are you protecting? A kid who died stupid?"

  He turned to me with such speed, the water on his bristly hair flecked me. Anger turned to regret, and then to full-bore sadness. Still in his skivvies, he sat heavily on the bench, his back to the shower, head bowed and almost bumping his locker.

  "Talent unbridled," he said, "can be a dangerous thing in a boy. He was an only child, and his mother spoiled him terribly, and his father ... his father was a doctor, and doctors are around for everybody who needs them, except their families."