The Big Bang Read online

  "Okay. And what do you make of that?"

  Radley picked back up: "There's the possibility that Harrin was acting as an intermediary for Junior Evello—or possibly for Jay Wren, who we think is hoping to either take over from Evello's old guard, or eclipse them."

  "In a bloody war?"

  "Perhaps just by controlling the product. And then there's your theory to consider."

  "My theory? Remind me."

  Dawson twitched a smile. "That a third party may be attempting to assert himself in this illegal trafficking. That a new drug kingpin, or let's say someone who aspires to that position, may have inserted himself into the picture."

  "And you think that was Harrin?"

  Radley said, "Again, Harrin may only have been playing intermediary for a party we've not yet identified—it can be very useful to criminal types to engage a respected citizen as a front." His eyebrows rose. "Or Harrin could indeed have been setting himself up for a power play."

  I shifted in the chair; it creaked, or maybe that was my bones. "And you think the doc got himself shot for that?"

  Radley lifted a shoulder. "Possibly. Of course, the previous attempts on your life would seem to make you the logical target, Mr. Hammer."

  I let out a short laugh. "You're forgetting something, fellas. Doesn't matter whether we're talking the Evello bunch or Wren's up-and-comers. Unless they already know the specifics of the shipment, its arrival date and place and the nature of the smuggling scheme? Then killing Harrin makes no sense."

  Radley and Dawson frowned at each other.

  "No, somebody tried to hit me, boys, and if I hadn't killed their asses, their boss probably would have, for the stupidity of missing me and hitting the doc. You don't kill the Golden Goose, and that's what Harrin potentially was."

  Radley stayed silent for a while, then in an overly measured fashion said, "We can't know what you and Dr. Harrin discussed. Unfortunately, we did not have his apartment wired for surveillance—a day or two later, and ... well. No use bemoaning what wasn't." He gave me the Uncle Sam pointing finger. "But if by some chance, for whatever reason, he shared with you any information about that shipment..."

  "Like what day it's coming in, you mean, and at what pier?"

  The eyes on the two T-men popped; it was comical, like one of those rubber dolls you squeeze.

  Radley, a tremor in his voice, asked, "What do you know, Mr. Hammer?"

  "Not a damn thing."

  Radley's voice grew hushed and it grew tight. "Listen to me. We've been patient with you. We've not subjected you to a recitation of your record with its alarming number of killings."

  "Justifiable homicides, you mean."

  "Self-defense cannot excuse the outrageous number of vigilante actions you've taken... yes, vigilante actions, Mr. Hammer, and we will not suffer such foolishness, not in a situation so dire, so critical."

  I grinned. "Few days ago, you guys were encouraging me to keep investigating. You were saying how I could go places and get away with things you couldn't. Why is my fan club turning on me?"

  Radley ignored that. "Never in history has a shipment of this magnitude been in the offing. We can save lives, and we can put a real dent in the Syndicate with this one. It's important. If you learn anything, anything at all, you need to share it with us. It's your patriotic duty, Mr. Hammer."

  Whenever they start talking to me about my patriotic duty, I check my wallet.

  "I served in the Pacific," I said. "Draft somebody younger." I stood. "Is that all, gentlemen? I like to get in bed before sunup—otherwise I have trouble nodding off."

  Radley swallowed thickly. "You know where to reach us. If you learn anything, bring the information to us. Do not take it upon yourself to deal with this situation, Mr. Hammer. You really are in over your head on this one."

  Second time I'd been told that tonight.

  "Then I better go home," I said, "and put on my water wings."

  On my way out through the bullpen, Pat came up and took me by the arm. With his back to the rest of the room, he carefully slipped me a manila folder. "I could get my ass in a wringer, helping you."

  "Sounds like a safe bet. What are these?"

  "The Jay Wren surveillance shots you asked for, courtesy of the Miami PD. Nothing from the feds, but maybe these'll tell you something."

  "Thanks, buddy."

  I didn't look at the photos till I got to my car. They showed Wren in the walled-in pool area of a fancy Spanish stucco villa with the expected palm trees. The angle was high, from one of those palms maybe or an adjacent house.

  In the earlier dated photos, Wren started out with his leg in a cast, and then after it came off, he was just another skinny tanned dude lounging by his pool. Nothing remarkable about it, except the blonde in the bikini, who was only in some of the shots. In two, she was giving the Snowbird mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, below the belt. Mostly she just worked on her tan.

  It was a tan I was familiar with—I'd even seen the white flesh and dark snatch under the skimpy two-piece.

  Jay Wren's bikini babe was Shirley Vought.

  I didn't make it in till midmorning. I'd phoned Velda a couple times the night before, from Central Headquarters, so she knew what I was in for and that I'd drag in late. I came in without a coat because the day was sunny, and Velda gave me a wide-eyed look and bobbed her head to her left, at the couch where clients waited when business was really good.

  Seated there, on the edge of a cushion like an expectant father waiting for the word, was Dr. Alan Sprague, Harrin's round little gray-haired, bespectacled colleague. He wore a brown suit and red bow tie and a constipated expression. On the floor next to him, leaning against the couch, was an oblong butcher-paper-wrapped package, not thick at all.

  On seeing me, Sprague shot to his feet. "I don't have an appointment, Mr. Hammer. I do apologize."

  "No problem," I said, gesturing to the door of my inner office, and he scurried ahead of me and let himself in.

  I followed and shrugged at Velda and gave her a what-the-hell look, and she shrugged at me and did the same. She started to get up, reaching for her pad, but I shoved a palm at her and shook my head. She sat back down, and I closed myself in with my guest.

  Sprague was already in the client's chair. His eyes were spider-webbed red, his bristly hair even bristlier than usual, and he had a rumpled, haphazard look.

  I got behind the desk and asked, "How can I help you, Doctor?"

  "I don't know if you can." He had the awkward butcher-paper package on his lap, held with two hands like some weird musical instrument. "From what I understand, what I read and hear, you ... you were there last night."

  "Yes," I said. "You have my condolences, sir. I know you and Dr. Harrin were close."

  His shell-shocked expression was pretty pitiful. "Yes ... yes, he was my closest friend. And yet sometimes I feel that I didn't know him at all." He placed the package on the desk. "I had instructions from Dr. Harrin—he asked me, yesterday afternoon, right after he got back, to give this to you, should anything... unexpected ... happen to him."

  "Only then?"

  His eyes widened, then returned to normal—bloodshot normal, anyway. "Well, I suppose he meant, he'd give it to you himself, otherwise."

  "Are you saying he anticipated something might happen to him?"

  Sprague shook his head, shrugged, a frustrated mess. "I don't know. I really don't. There's so much I don't understand. Perhaps ... would you mind opening it, before I go?"

  "You haven't seen it?"

  "No." He pointed a tentative finger at the package. "He left it for me ... for you ... wrapped like that."

  I could feel through the paper what it was—there was no box, and the wood and the glass of it were apparent: one of his framed sayings. I tore the paper off, and the fancy lettering on parchment-style paper said: "At the darkest moment comes the light." The attribution was to Joseph Campbell.

  "I don't know him," I said, pointing to the name under the saying. "
What is he, the soup guy?"

  "No. He's an author David admired."

  "What does it mean?"

  "That it's darkest before the storm, I suppose. That eventually light will follow. I don't know. I really don't."

  I leaned forward. "Would you like something to drink, Doctor? Some coffee? Some water, maybe?"

  "No. No, thank you. I wonder if ... no."

  "What?"

  "There is something troubling me. I don't know who to share it with. It may be nothing, nothing at all. But when I heard about this, this ... shooting ... for some reason, what David told me, just yesterday afternoon, came rushing back, and I felt a chill. An awful chill to my very soul. How, how very silly, how stupid that sounds...."

  "What did he tell you, Dr. Sprague?"

  Sprague, looking every bit the absent-minded professor, flopped back in the chair, his eyes dazed behind wire-framed glasses. "He told me a story. He said it was just a story, anyway. A kind of fantasy of his. Purely hypothetical."

  "Go on."

  "He said ... suppose there was a doctor whose son took an overdose, and that doctor became so angry over his tragic loss that he decided to go into the drug business himself. Not for profit, mind you, but ... for revenge. Maybe ... maybe I will have that water, Mr. Hammer."

  I didn't call for Velda. I went out and got him a cup from the cooler myself. From her desk, Velda gave me another wide-eyed look and I gave her the palm again, and went back in, shut the door, and gave the guy his water. He sipped it greedily.

  "Now go on, Doctor."

  "Well. In David's story ... the doctor goes to Europe, and he acquires this huge load of heroin. The method of smuggling is strange but I would say credible. The heroin has been fashioned into molds, the kind of molds they use in ceramics. They look just like ordinary molds, for dishes, for statuettes. They would easily pass Customs. But these molds, when crushed down, would become pure heroin."

  Why not? Using ceramic figurines and art pieces and dinnerware as innocent items that could be sold out of a shop and shipped around the country, that was only part of the plan. The stuff could come into the country, via that same shop, in the form of plasterlike white molds....

  Dr. Sprague sipped his water some more, and then resumed: "But this doctor, he was not interested in money, remember, only in vengeance. With his expertise as a research scientist and master chemist, he developed a deadly, undetectable poison that could be mixed in when the heroin went through the process of being formed into those molds. He had gone to the source of the heroin and dictated certain additives and, without anyone's knowledge but his own, he arranged for this entire shipment to be contaminated."

  "Fatally so?"

  He nodded several times. "Anyone who took a single shot, no matter how they diluted it, would die. Thousands would die."

  "My God..."

  He sat forward, eyes wild as the story began to take hold of him. "But the friends and families of the thousands who died would be so consumed by rage at those who sold their loved ones this poisoned poison that they would rise up as one, and they would take down the Mafia. They might do so through police channels, but more likely as obsessed avengers, 'Hit the Mafia, kill them all.' Possessed by grief-fueled outrage."

  "Thousands ... would die?"

  "Oh yes, many thousands. The doctor reasoned that these would be chiefly hardcore addicts, because heroin is not a casually taken drug. These are people who are already lost souls, on the road to hell, the doctor has decided."

  "But his son..."

  "He mentioned his own son as a case in point. He said Davy had been lost to him long, long ago. The selfish monster his boy had become, who had used and sold hard drugs to other children, was already dead. Morally dead, spiritually dead, even before the overdose took him."

  "Damn."

  For a long time, Sprague said nothing.

  And neither did I.

  "Mr. Hammer ... tell me—was it just a story? A fantasy?"

  "It would have to be," I said, but I was not at all convinced.

  Sprague was staring into nothing. "He was very troubled. He was sick in his heart. Bitter, of course, but a ... a good man. Could a good man like David do something so horrific ... so terrible?"

  "No."

  His gaze found mine and was so haunted I could barely maintain eye contact. "I keep hearing what he said to me, so many times ... 'Alan, it takes dead cells to create a vaccine.' Could he have done such a thing, Mr. Hammer? Could he have equated the drug problem with such a ... a radical treatment?"

  I stood. "No. I'm sure not. You've lost a friend, and you're upset, and your imagination is getting away from you."

  He rose, sighed heavily, struggled to form a small smile. "I hope so. I hope that's all it is. Thank you for the reassurance ... it may help me to sleep tonight. It may." He nodded toward the framed saying on my desk. "I hope you'll consider giving that a place of prominence here in your office, Mr. Hammer. In memory of a great, if troubled, man."

  We shook hands across the desk, then he nodded almost shyly, and was gone.

  I picked up the framed piece and looked at the flowing script: "At the darkest moment comes the light."

  I propped it against a wall, then went into the outer office, and over to the closet to grab my hat, and Velda, on her feet, said, "Hey! Where are you off to? And what was that all about?"

  "You don't want to know," I said.

  My plan was to find Billy Blue at Dorchester Medical College, and for him to let me into Dr. Harrin's office. But the kid made it easy for me—he was in Harrin's office already, the door ajar, seated at his late mentor's desk, slumped over with his head on his folded arms, like a napping grade-school kid. He'd been crying.

  "Billy?"

  He popped up. "Oh ... hello, Mr. Hammer."

  I stepped inside and shut the door behind me. I took my hat off and said, "I'm sorry, kid. I was right there, but I couldn't do anything about it."

  He came out from around the desk, as if I'd caught him at something. He wasn't crying now, fresh out of tears, but their trails, both wet and dry, streaked his cheeks. With his short haircut and baby-face features, in the blue-and-white-striped T-shirt and jeans, he looked younger than his age, the wholesome kid Dr. David Harrin wished he'd had.

  I motioned the boy over to a beat-up two-seater sofa between file cabinets and we sat down, the framed slogans and sayings on the walls all around and behind us.

  Billy asked, "Do you know when the funeral's going to be, Mr. Hammer?"

  "No. I figure Dr. Sprague's probably handling the details. Pretty tough, kid. You hanging in there?"

  He swallowed and nodded. "I had a phone call this morning, from Dr. Harrin's lawyer. I'm supposed to go around and talk to him next week—about the college trust fund the doctor set up for me."

  "The doc thought the world of you, son."

  He was shaking his head. "What do I do now? Where do I go for advice and...?"

  I put a hand on his shoulder. "You take the financial help Doc Harrin left you, and you get educated, and you make the kind of life for yourself he'd have been proud of."

  "I'll do my best, Mr. Hammer, but ... God, it hurts."

  "I know. I know." I squeezed the shoulder. "Look, can you give me a couple of minutes in here alone, Billy? I need to do some snooping. Wait in the hall for me, would you?"

  "Will it help get the bastards who killed him?"

  "Might."

  "Okay," he said, nodding, and he snuffled snot and did as he'd been told.

  I went over to the desk. I had only one idea, only one card to play; either I'd gotten the message from Harrin or I hadn't. I picked up the crystal lighter from the desk, with its many flat edges and its naturally abstract design. Tried to light the clunky thing several times, and got nothing.

  I give David a nice new present, Sprague had bitched, on our first meeting, and he doesn't even bother to put fluid in it.

  Turning the lighter over revealed a metal plate that would allow
me to get inside and change the flint and put in fluid, if that was what I had in mind.

  It wasn't.

  But I took off that plate, anyway, hoping I'd seen the light like Harrin asked ... and found an envelope, rolled up like a fat little scroll. I withdrew it, flattened it out on the desk. The envelope was blank and unsealed. Its contents consisted of several sheets. One page, under Harrin's letterhead, was addressed to me.

  For Mike Hammer, it began, followed (with no further preamble or explanation) by two lines—one, tomorrow's date and a time; and the other, the street address and number of a certain Port of New York pier.

  Also included was a carbon copy of a bill of lading, with a handwritten sheet of stationery paper-clipped to it:

  On behalf of the Evello Family, Jerome Elmain of the Village Ceramics Shoppe will be present for pickup at this time and date; he will have his own copy of the bill of lading. Jay Wren has been attempting to discover the time and date of the shipment in order to intercept it. I do not believe he has had any success.

  If you are reading this, I am no longer in a position to carry out my plans. You will only need this bill of lading should you wish, for whatever reason, to intercept the shipment.

  I ask that you honor my intentions, but cannot insist that you do so. In fact, some shred of doubt about the sanity of my actions has compelled me to share this burden with you. I do apologize. But the decision, Mr. Hammer, will now be yours.

  D.H.

  This was obviously the much-awaited big shipment of heroin. But was it in fact fatally toxic? Or had what Dr. Sprague heard from his tortured friend been a fantastic fantasy of revenge?

  If so, it was an incredibly elaborate one....

  And the tone, the words, of the message seemed to confirm the story Harrin told Sprague as no parable, nothing at all hypothetical. Ask any junkie in New York out there, from the Junkman to the freaked-out kids Davy Harrin hooked, they would all say they were dying for dope. Maybe they didn't know how right they were.