A Long Time Dead Read online

  “The book?”

  He nodded. “The book, Mr. Hammer. The book of my father’s secrets.”

  I sat forward. “Containing everything he knew, a record of every crooked thing he’d done, and all of those he’d conspired with to break God knows how many laws.” I shook my head. “Even if you go down a straight path, son, that book would be valuable.”

  He nodded. “It’s valuable, all right. But I don’t want it, Mr. Hammer. I’m not interested in it or what it represents.”

  “What are you going to do with the thing?”

  “Give it to you.” He shrugged. “Do what you will with it. I want only one thing in return.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Ensure that my mother is safe. That she is not in any danger. And do the same for me, if you can. But Mom … she did so much for me, sacrificed everything, gave her life to me … I want her safe.”

  “I think I can handle that.”

  He extended his hand for me to shake, and I did.

  He got up and went over to a plank-and-block bookcase under the window onto the neon-winking street. I followed him. He was selecting an ancient-looking sheepskin-covered volume from a stack of books carelessly piled on top when the door splintered open, kicked in viciously, and two men burst in with guns in hand.

  First in was Flavio, still wearing the light-blue suit and yellow pointy-collar shirt, but I never did get the name of his pal, the big guy with the weak chin and Neanderthal forehead. They come in twos, you know, hoods who work for guys like Sonny Giraldi.

  They had big pieces in their fists, matching .357 mags. In this part of town, where gunshots were commonplace, who needed .22 autos with silencers? The big guy fell back to be framed in the doorway like another work of East Village art, and Flavio took two more steps inside, training his .357 on both of us, as young Nick and I were clustered together.

  Hoods always came in twos.

  Flavio, in his comically high-pitched voice, said, “Is that the book? Give me that goddamned book!”

  “Take it,” Nick said, frowning, more disgusted than afraid, and he stepped forward, holding out the small, thick volume, blocking me as he did.

  I used that to whip the .45 from under my shoulder, and I shoved the kid to the floor and rode him down, firing up.

  Flavio may have had a .357, but that’s a card a .45 trumps easy, particularly if you get the first shot off, and even more so if you make it a head shot that cuts off any motor action. What few brains the bastard had got splashed in a shower of bone and blood onto his startled pal’s puss, and the Neanderthal reacted like he’d been hit with a gory pie, giving me the half second I needed to shatter that protruding forehead with a slug and paint an abstract picture on the brick out in that landing, worthy of any East Village gallery.

  Now Nick was scared, taking in the bloody mess on his doorstep. “Jesus, man! What are you going to do?”

  “Call a cop. You got a phone?”

  “Yeah, yeah, call the cops!” He was pointing. “Phone’s over there.”

  I picked the sheepskin-covered book up off the floor. “No—not the cops. A cop.”

  And I called Pat Chambers.

  I didn’t call Sonny Giraldi until I got back to the office around three a.m. I had wanted to get that valuable book into my office safe.

  The heir to the old don’s throne pretended I’d woken him, but I knew damn well he’d been up waiting to hear from his boys. Or maybe some cop in his pocket had already called to say the apartment invasion in the East Village had failed, in which case it was unlikely Sonny would be in the midst of a soothing night’s sleep when I used the private number he’d provided me.

  Cheerfully I asked, “Did you know that your boy Flavio and his slopehead buddy won a free ride to the county morgue tonight?”

  “What?”

  “I sent them there. Just like you sent them to the Burrows kid’s apartment. They’d been following me, hadn’t they? I really must be getting old. Velda caught it, but I didn’t.”

  The radio-announcer voice conveyed words in a tumble. “Hammer, I didn’t send them. They must be working for one of my rivals or something. I played it absolutely straight with you, I swear to God.”

  “No you didn’t. You wanted me to lead you to the book, and whoever had it needed to die, because they knew what was in it, and I had to die, just to keep things tidy. Right? Who would miss an old broken-down PI like me, anyway?”

  “Believe me, Hammer, I—”

  “I don’t believe you, Sonny. But you can believe me.”

  Actually, I was about to tell him a whopper, but he’d never know.

  I went on: “This book will go in a safe deposit box in some distant bank, and will not come out again until my death. If that death is nice and peaceful, I will leave instructions that the book be burned. If I have an unpleasant going away party, then that book will go to the feds. Understood?”

  “… Understood.”

  “And the Burrows woman and her son, they’re out of this. Any harm befalls either one, that book comes out of mothballs and into federal hands. Capeesh?”

  “Capeesh,” he said glumly.

  “Then there’s the matter of my fee.”

  “Your fee! What the hell—”

  “Sonny, I found the book for you. You owe me one hundred grand.”

  His voice turned thin and nasty. “I heard a lot of bad things about you, Hammer. But I never heard you were a blackmailing prick.”

  “Well, you learn something every day, if you’re paying attention. I want that hundred k donated to whatever charities that Father Mandano directs. Think of the fine reputation you’ll earn, Sonny, continuing your late uncle’s good works in Little Italy.”

  And I hung up on him.

  Cops always come in twos, they say, but the next morning, when Hanson entered my private office, he left his nameless crony in the outer one to read old magazines and enjoy the view of Velda, back at her reception desk.

  “Have a seat, Inspector,” I said, getting behind my desk.

  The brown sheepskin volume, its spine ancient and cracked, lay on my blotter at a casual angle, where I’d tossed it in anticipation of his visit.

  “That’s the book,” he said, eyes wide.

  “That’s the book. And it’s all yours for ten grand.”

  “May I?” he asked, reaching for it.

  “Be my guest.”

  He thumbed it open. Pleasure turned to confusion on his face, then to shock.

  “My God …” he said.

  “It’s valuable, all right. I’m no expert, though, so you might have overpaid. You may want to hold onto it for a while.”

  “I’ll be damned,” he said, leafing through.

  “As advertised, it has in it everything the old don knew about dirty schemes and double-dealing. Stuff that applies to crooks and cops and senators and even presidents.”

  He was shaking his head, eyes still on the book.

  “Of course, we were wrong about it being a ledger. It’s more a how-to-book by another Italian gangster. First-edition English-­language translation, though—1640, it says.”

  “A gangster named Machiavelli,” Hanson said dryly.

  “And a book,” I said, “called The Prince.”

  Skin

  If it weren’t for the hand lying next to the carnage wreaked on a human body, you would have thought it was road kill that half a dozen vehicles had rolled over.

  This was something out of a war zone, not what you expected to find just off the highway in rural upstate New York. A glistening string of tendon seeped into splintered bone, a grisly signpost that this had been a body, a living, viable human animal. Now it was barely identifiable as something that used to think and talk. Unless that lonely hand’s fingerprints had something to say.

  Pat Chambers, Cap
tain of Homicide back in the city, gave me one of those long, steady stares I had been on the receiving end of for decades. He was a big guy, like me, his suit less rumpled than mine, and we were rare holdouts who still stuck hats on our aging skulls.

  “How’d you find this, Mike?”

  I had to shrug. “Sure as hell wasn’t looking for it. Something caught my eye, driving by.”

  This was a late September afternoon and cool. A low hanging sun ricocheted off the dying trees of the nearby woods. We were on our way back from an event at the Police Academy and had taken separate cars but I’d wanted to get there early and talk to an instructor who was about to retire. We were cadets together. A long time ago.

  “Great. Just swell.” Pat kept staring at me, those gray-blue eyes barely blinking. “The bushes here cover that mess up pretty well. From a moving car going in either direction, it’s damn near invisible. And yet it caught your eye?”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t make that thing from the highway.” I pointed near the roadside. “There was a dog there, stretched out pointer fashion, and shivering like it had tripped over a puma. Had its teeth bared, and I sure knew something was up.”

  “And that was enough to make you stop your car.”

  “Hey, I still got reflexes in my old age! I jammed on my brakes, pulled over and got out.”

  That smile of his was damn near a sneer. “What if it had been a puma?”

  I patted under my arm where the holstered .45 lived.

  “Anyway,” I said, and shrugged, “the mutt took its eyes away, spotted me and ran. If it had been a puma, Rover would have just backed off slowly.”

  He sighed. “So you had a look.”

  “Right.”

  “And now we’re in the middle of this and won’t get back for hours.”

  “So I’m a good citizen.”

  He nodded toward the mess. “And what did you think when you saw … that?”

  “Figured somebody fell out of a plane.”

  “You still think so?”

  I let out a grunt and shook my head. “Couldn’t have been. A body would have splashed. Would’ve come in at an angle and likely got torn up by those trees.”

  “Maybe that’s what’s left of an animal’s supper.”

  I shook my head. “A predator wouldn’t dine roadside. And if it made its attack in the woods, over there, this mess would’ve stayed there. Anyway, no animal did this.”

  “You sound sure.”

  “Well, a human animal maybe. But not anything that lives in those woods.”

  “Yeah? Why?”

  I showed him my teeth. “Too much meat left.” I shook my head again. “This body was dumped here.”

  Pat took a step closer and inspected the ball of entrails, then stepped back. “Somebody carry it in his arms, you think?”

  “Like a bride over the threshold? That would have been messy. Imagine what would get on your clothes. Of course, the thing might have been wrapped up in plastic. Or maybe the killer used a big shopping bag. Or butcher paper.”

  “You’re talking killer already?”

  “Somebody dead got dumped. That spells killer.”

  Pat didn’t argue, eyes searching the area. “You’re probably right that this body was conveyed somehow. No drag marks.”

  “Real professional.”

  “How about magical,” Pat muttered. “I knew we should have come up here in one car. You just cannot be left to your own devices. No, instead you have to leave first, and I have to stop like a good goddamn Samaritan because I think you have a flat or something.”

  I showed him a small grin. “You couldn’t abandon me out in the sticks, buddy, and get a good night’s sleep.”

  “I’ll get a good night’s sleep after viewing this mess of meat?”

  I laughed at him. “Hey, at least no local cop is going to be hauling me over the coals. You have a badge to back me up with an alibi.”

  He growled sarcastically, “Oh, you’re so famous they know you outside New York City, I suppose?”

  “Oh yeah,” I said, “they know me. They have television up here and everything.” Then I let out a little chuckle. “They may even have heard of you. How about that?”

  “Yeah, how about that.” His tone was sour.

  I put my hand on his shoulder. “Lighten up, Pat. Didn’t you like my pep talk to those rookies? Hell, didn’t I play you up, bigtime?”

  He smirked. “Yeah, thanks. Your talk of an ‘impending much-overdue promotion’ can rattle a few cages up the food chain, pal. It’s bad enough even being mentioned in the same breath with you.”

  “So they’ve heard of me, up the food chain, then? You know, I mostly been staying out of trouble in my golden years.”

  I moved in for a closer look at the scarlet and splintered white and stringy mess with slithery things weaving them together and unidentifiable strips of hair and gristle poking out of impossible places.

  You used to be somebody, I thought.

  Hell, so did I.

  I said, “You’d better quit pouting and call in the troops, buddy. The local newspaper will pick up the call, too, most likely. And having a police photog out here fast won’t do a bit of harm either.”

  Under his breath Pat said something unintelligible. While he got out his cell and made the call, the thought of photos sent me to my car, where I got the digital camera and grabbed a dozen color shots of the mangled pile of human body parts and the area around it. I put the camera back and waited there with Pat for the locals to show.

  It took hardly any time for the black-and-white to roll up to us. Two guys got out, both in uniform, a heavyset middle-aged sergeant and a skinny young patrolman.

  Pat flashed his NYPD badge and the sergeant nodded politely and said, “Captain.” He held out his hand and Pat took it.

  “Mal Tooney,” the older cop said. “We were right up the road when the call came in. The other crew should be here in a few minutes. Where’s the body?”

  Pat indicated the direction with a nod and the sergeant and his young driver followed him into the brush. I tagged after. We didn’t have to go in very far at all. The well-seasoned sergeant took in a deep breath and swallowed. His young partner just puked.

  “Ever see anything like that before?” I asked the older cop, keeping the grin down.

  “Not like that,” Sergeant Tooney said. “You?”

  “A couple of times,” I told him. Then explained, “A few wars ago.”

  “I’ve seen some car crash victims pretty tore up,” he said, and took off his cap and brushed back what hair he had left. “But this? Damn.”

  The patrolman was still puking. Lot in his stomach, for a skinny kid. Finally, sheepishly, he wiped his mouth and turned his head away. “I’m new at this,” he admitted.

  “You’ll get used to it,” Pat told him.

  Used to frequent death and everyday gore, maybe. But getting used to running across something this ghastly? Not bloody likely, as the Brits say.

  Both of us gave an initial report to the sergeant while the rookie jotted it down in detail. Just as we finished, another squad car drove up with a white station wagon tagging behind.

  The call letters of a television station were emblazoned on the doors and a young guy in jeans and a sweatshirt with the same call letters jumped out of the passenger side with a shoulder-­mounted TV camera that sat there like a robotic second head.

  The driver got out slowly, one of those impossible beauties who seem to have taken over the bright spots on the networks, and if looks and style were anything, this tall lovely brunette in a tight blue jumpsuit was well on her way to the big studios in Manhattan.

  I grinned at Pat. “Looks like we’re going to make the evening news on this one.”

  Pat put out an arm and held me back, getting me out of the way. Seemed
the young cameraman was real eager. He was moving fast, an eye glued to the viewfinder, as he rushed in for the shot, took his eye away for one second while he scoped the terrible sight in front of him, then vomited all over himself.

  He gave a pathetic little look around him, and, out of sheer desperation, triggered the camera and tilted forward to capture the whole scene in glaring color.

  Pat and I exchanged looks as the sick smell wafted its way to us. We both knew no TV station manager would allow that kind of thing to go on the air, not without pixelating it beyond recognition.

  Maybe it would find its way to the Internet for all the horror lovers out there.

  The lovely newscaster came over to us and introduced herself. Her skin had an ivory glow in an afternoon giving way to dusk.

  “Melodie Anderson, Eye Witness News. Why, you’re Mike Hammer!”

  I gave Pat a nasty little sideways grin and he smirked and shook his head.

  “In the flesh,” I said.

  Her smile was flirtatious. “You don’t look a day over fifty.”

  At my age, that was a compliment. But she was immediately embarrassed, thinking she’d insulted me.

  “Sorry,” she said. “My late father was in the news business, too. He covered a lot of your stories, years ago. He thought you were a great guy.”

  Pat said, “That’s because Mr. Hammer here used to generate a lot of news.”

  Her eyes were a lovely light hazel. “And you’re Pat Chambers! Captain Chambers.”

  Now it was Pat’s turn to give me a self-satisfied look.

  I said, “If what you’re saying is that I’m old enough to be your father, doll, I plead guilty.”

  The “doll” amused her. “Is that right?”

  “That’s right. That’s the bad news. The good news is, I’m not your father.”

  That made her laugh and Pat shook his head, muttering something to the effect that I would never change.

  Her gaze hopped from me to Pat and back again. “Are you gentlemen willing to be interviewed on camera?”