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  If a huge supply of fatally contaminated heroin hit these hungry New York streets, the overnight death toll would be staggering.

  And the Syndicate would take the rap, and the public outcry for justice would be loud and harsh and relentless. Harrin had envisioned the families and friends of victims rising up with guns and knives and clubs and anything they could get their hands on, to take bloody vengeance like villagers with torches storming Frankenstein's castle.

  Would there be riots, vigilante action, if such a thing happened? Very possibly. But certainly the shared tragedy would create a new and undeniable demand that law enforcement grow itself a spine, and make the war on crime a real one, not just a slogan.

  Could the Mafia really be brought down by such a demented scheme?

  No way, I thought, shaking my head.

  Then my eyes caught one of the framed sayings: "The man who says it can't be done is interrupted by the man who did it."

  Others spoke to me, too: "Keep Cool and Obey Orders," "The king can do no wrong," "Let Them Eat Cake," "Caveat emptor" ...

  "Jesus," I said to the empty office. "You really did it, didn't you?"

  And the clever, even foolproof ceramics delivery system, from molds to pottery, was in place to do the late Harrin's bidding. Had Harrin played intermediary for Evello, or had he been attempting to overturn the longtime mob boss? And in either case, would the good doctor have invested his ill-gotten gains in charity or medical research or perhaps even to buy and contaminate another cash crop of junk, to feed the rest of the country his deadly vaccine?

  I could never know.

  But I did know where and when the poisoned shipment would hit the docks.

  I stuffed the sheets back in the envelope, sealed it, and went out in the hall and handed it to Billy.

  "Messenger this over to my office, kid."

  "Sure, but I can get you a stamp—there's a mail slot on this floor, Mr. Hammer."

  "No, deliver it personally to my secretary and have her put it in the safe." I handed a five toward him.

  He raised surrender-like palms. "Hey, you don't need to do that, Mr. Hammer...."

  "Kid, everybody's got to make a living. Take it and go."

  He took it and went.

  With the cops and the Treasury Department breathing down my neck, I didn't want to risk carrying that packet on my person. I had several things to do this afternoon, including call on Shirley Vought and inquire about her good friend Jay Wren, and didn't want those papers on me.

  Good thing, too, because I was just to my car in the parking lot when the van rolled in and three guys in jumpsuits, faces distorted by nylon-stocking masks, leaped from the vehicle. I was clawing for the .45 when the chloroform found my face and my last memory was them dragging me.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I CAME AWAKE SLOWLY, the first sensation one of dizziness, then a grogginess quickly took over, only to be cut by a sudden headache—nothing blinding or pounding, just a dull steady ache.

  I was in my shirt with my tie loosened, my shoulder holster empty of course, and they'd left me my pants but taken my shoes. I'd been plopped down in a comfortable chair, an overstuffed easy chair.

  Across from me was Jay Wren, smiling amiably, seated in his own comfy but mismatching chair. We were in an area underneath a balcony at the Pigeon, his trendsetting discotheque, where low-slung square plastic-topped tables were surrounded by purposely dissimilar seating straight out of secondhand shops.

  The shabbiness was supposed to be hip or clever or something, and maybe that worked in the dark. But the lights were up in the Pigeon, in off hours—this was presumably still the afternoon, I hadn't been out that long—and, like any nightclub, the reconverted warehouse looked pretty seedy, the Day-Glo paint spatters on the brick walls un-enhanced by black light and looking like kindergartners had done the decor.

  The regular seating beyond, surrounding the dance floor, had its chairs up on tabletops, and the functional platform of the stage revealed itself as what you might see in a high school gymnasium set up for a concert. The smell of disinfectant mingled with the spilled beer and stale smoke common to any club, between closing and opening hours, and the thatch-hatted tiki-hut bar, designed for serving on all sides, looked pretty shabby by day.

  Not that the illumination was intense. The house lights were meager, and the windows were high up and blacked out. The dimness preserved a fraction of the club's nighttime appeal, though the size of the chamber, with its two facing balconies and high ceiling, was the only aspect of the club that was more impressive after hours.

  The Snowbird again wore a mod-cut suit, this one lime green, and a white shirt including the trademark lacy collar and cuffs. With his long blond hair and golden tan, he looked like a Breck Girl who'd had a hard life. By male standards, he was almost handsome, though like the club, better lighting did not improve him, his cheeks revealing pockmarks and stressing the artificiality of his hair color.

  His sunglasses were the same lime green as the suit and his smile was, as before, generously wide and with more teeth than absolutely necessary. Maybe I could do something about that.

  I moved my arms, my hands.

  He waved a cigarillo like a magic wand, and the smile shifted sideways.

  "No, Mr. Hammer," he said, in that light yet still phony British accent. "You are not bound. You are our guest, not our prisoner. But I do insist you maintain a certain ... decorum."

  His eyes lifted to right and left, and I glanced behind me. I'd been too groggy to even sense their presence, but standing over my shoulders were two big boys, one a black guy with a shaved skull in a black muscle shirt and black chinos, the other a shovel-jawed hardcase with a Marine haircut, a pale yellow T-shirt, and camouflage trousers. Together they weighed maybe four hundred fifty pounds, ten of it fat.

  I glanced at the gyrene-type hardcase and said, "Almost didn't see you there, pal. In those pantaloons, you damn near disappear."

  He ignored that, like I was a tourist and he was a Buckingham Palace guard.

  "I do apologize," Wren said, exhaling smoke through his nostrils, "for the rude invitation."

  "You mean the kidnapping?"

  He fluttered a dismissive hand. "We needed to talk, and I had reason to believe you might harbor ill feelings toward me."

  I shrugged, settled back in the comfy chair. "Why, because you sent Russell Frazer to stab me? Or hired those St. Louis clowns to ambush me at home, thinking I'd blame Evello if I squirmed out of it? Maybe you mean last night, when you sent those freaks around to splatter me, and got Doc Harrin instead."

  The cigarillo slanted out of his thin lips, which when the teeth weren't showing formed a wide, never-healing cut in his tanned face. "I won't deny it. If we're going to have an honest conversation, Mr. Hammer, I have to be frank with you. Ah... here's someone you know."

  Coming over from the tiki bar, with a tray, was a good-looking blonde in tight black slacks and a frilly white blouse that might have been the stuff Wren's cuffs and collars were cut from. She was halfway over before I realized it was Shirley Vought.

  On the tray, she carried several coffee cups, a tiny pitcher of cream, a little dish of cubed sugar, and a gleaming silver coffee pot.

  "Hi, Mike," she said.

  "Hiya."

  She was pouring coffee for Wren. "Not surprised to see me?"

  "Nope."

  She poured me some, smiled faintly. "Why not? What gave me away?"

  "The surveillance photos of you going down on Jaybird here." I made a clicking sound in one cheek. "I'm a trained detective—give me something like that, and I can put two and two together."

  That threw her a little. But she managed, "You take cream and sugar, don't you?"

  "I'll doctor it myself, thanks."

  She put the stuff on the table, then pulled up her own comfy chair and joined us. Wren was already drinking from his cup, so the java wasn't spiked.

  I took a couple sugars and poured in some cream and said
, "Ain't we a cozy bunch? So, Mr. Wren—why isn't one of us dead by now? What do we have to talk about?"

  He sipped coffee, then set his cup down on the plastic tabletop, where an ashtray held his cigarillo, its smoke swirling upward in almost a question mark. "This entire affair, Mr. Hammer, is unfortunate. A study in false assumptions on my part and yours. Strictly a comedy of errors."

  "You might want to get more specific than that."

  He shrugged and his long blond hair bounced off his shoulders—that hair looked better on Veronica Lake. "When you took an interest in the little incident, involving that messenger boy—including getting next to Dr. Harrin—well, I jumped to some ... unfortunate conclusions."

  "I didn't get next to Harrin. I just talked to him one afternoon."

  He sighed cigarillo smoke. "Yes, well, you have a rather notorious reputation, Mr. Hammer. And you have a history with the Evello Family, with whom I've frequently done business. I thought you had taken it upon yourself to cause me problems. So I took preventative measures."

  "You had Frazer try to shiv me."

  He raised both hands in surrender. "As I say, I jumped to conclusions, and I overreacted. And things began to spiral out of control."

  "You mean, you kept trying to have me killed."

  His smile was embarrassed. "I know ... I know. It does call my judgment into question."

  What the hell could I say to that?

  He leaned forward, his expression laughably earnest. "Mr. Hammer, you stumbled into my business at a most inopportune moment, and I reacted badly. What I am trying to do is see if we can negotiate a truce, and perhaps a peace. I believe we may have mutual interests."

  "This I gotta hear."

  "As I said, you have long been a thorn in the side of the Evello Family, and they have caused you a certain amount of grief over the years, themselves. Weren't you until recently in Florida, recuperating from one such attack?"

  "Yeah. We must have been down there at the same time." I grinned at Shirley, whose big brown eyes couldn't seem to meet mine. "Too bad we couldn't have got together, and started our friendship sooner."

  Forcing herself, Shirley looked at me. "Mike, you don't understand—this situation is a delicate one, and very dangerous."

  "I kind of think I do understand." I grinned some more, but nastier. "It's delicate, because you're the Snowbird here's girlfriend, and you work for Mr. Elmain, who is in Evello's pocket. That makes you a kind of spy, right? And as for dangerous, I'm going to cite the corpses piling up, as evidence."

  She was avoiding my gaze again, pouring herself some coffee. She stirred cream in.

  "Mr. Hammer," Wren said, "we are at the birth of a new era, a new golden age of entertainment. My club here is a harbinger of things to come. The pharmaceuticals I dispense, without a prescription I grant you, are merely one wing of that entertainment."

  I gaped at him. "Heroin is entertainment?"

  He winced, as if I shouldn't bring up such unpleasantness. "That's at the far extreme of things, and I engage in that business only because there's a market, a market well established before I came onto the scene. But the world of drugs is changing—marijuana is already commonplace among the young, and cocaine is a favorite among well-moneyed grownups."

  I turned to Shirley. "That's where you fit in, isn't it, baby? You didn't get your inheritance, did you? But you still have friends among the jet set, and you became Evello's connection to that market, and now the Snowbird's. Right?"

  She gave Wren a nervous glance, but he only smiled and raised a palm in stop fashion. "As I've gathered, Mr. Hammer, you are very astute. You understand. As a small businessman yourself, and man of unconventional tastes, you grasp that I am merely another capitalist, serving willing, even eager customers. After all, one cannot legislate morality."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  He frowned, waved as if to a departing child. "I'm not talking thievery or murder. I'm talking about adultery, and sex acts considered perverse by some, and obviously recreational drugs—hallucinogens are already the rage on college campuses—and such old standbys as gambling and prostitution."

  "You're saying gambling and prostitution aren't illegal? What planet do you live on?"

  "I'm a neighborhood boy, Mr. Hammer, raised in and around the Village—and my earliest memories are of whores, junkies, and queers ... don't misunderstand, many of my best friends and certainly business associates fall into one or more of those unflattering categories ... and among those early memories are the tourists and New Yorkers from beyond the neighborhood, who came to the Village for some naughty good fun."

  I suppose I could have asked how a neighborhood kid got the British accent, but I just didn't give a shit.

  "No, Mr. Hammer, I'm saying making things illegal that people want and crave does no one any good, not individuals or society at large. It doesn't stop a single customer from wanting to buy, and in fact creates a nicely wicked atmosphere in which customers are not only willing to buy forbidden goods, but to pay premium prices."

  "Yeah, all right. I get that."

  "You do, but the Evellos of the world do not. They are locked in Old World ways, antiquated thinking. It will take a visionary to take full advantage of the opportunities of the new freedom."

  "And you're the guy. You're the visionary."

  "With no false modesty, I would have to say yes." He sat forward. "I am making alliances that the old Mafia families, with their inbreeding and prejudice, could never conceive, much less execute. I have business associations overseas that will transform conventional drug trafficking—forget France, Mr. Hammer. How about South America? What about Vietnam? New sources, rich sources, new alliances, lasting alliances."

  "I don't know. I never was much of a United Nations guy myself."

  "Diplomacy has its place." He gestured with an open hand, a fey gesture considering the lacy cuff. "If you and I can sit down, as representatives of our warring nations, and come to terms of peace ... we can do business together."

  "What can I do for you?"

  "I need a chief of security. I need a man who understands law enforcement but who has no hesitation to do whatever is necessary to make a point, or gain an advantage. I need someone terrible. Someone ruthless. I need you, Mr. Hammer."

  While all this talk was going on, I'd been thinking about how I was going to make my exit. The coffee pot was both metal and filled with steaming liquid, so that alone could incapacitate the muscle-bound Frick and Frack behind me. Shirley wasn't armed, except for her natural thirty-eights, and they'd already done all the damage to me they were going to. And I didn't think Wren was even armed, certainly the tight cut of his suit didn't allow for it, and that was when Shirley's face started melting.

  I tried to blink it away, and looked toward Wren and he was melting, too, like one of those Dali clocks, and not just his face but all of him, mod suit, lace cuffs and all, and the plastic table between us was pulsing, as if taking breaths. I tried to stand, but the floor was rubbery, and before I could flop back down in the chair, hands were gripping me, and pulling me away from there, dragging me bodily, and my feet and legs were as long as a stilt-walking man's, but useless. The guys who were hauling me were tall and then short and then tall again, as they towed me through those tables with the chairs on top, the silver legs wiggling like Busby Berkeley gals on their backs, and for the big finish, the inside of my head exploded, splintering into a thousand multicolored fragments.

  Someone said, "Hit the lights. Sound system, too. And get the projector started."

  I was shoved into a hard chair and it, at least, felt solid under me. The hands on my arms turned into tentacles, tight, clutching, only they weren't tentacles but ropes, clothesline I think, and for a while the room, the world, settled down, and I knew who I was and where I was—roped into a chair on the dance floor of the discotheque.

  "Settle down, Mr. Hammer," Wren said. His coat was open now and I could see my .45 stuffed in his waistband. Had it been
there all along? Was it there at all?

  "What the hell..."

  The black muscle man and the maybe Marine came from behind me and fell in on either side of Wren—they both had guns stuck in their waistbands, too, the black guy a .38 revolver, the one in camouflage trousers a nine millimeter. From somewhere on the sidelines, two more bodyguard types fell in with Wren, one on either side—a big Oriental guy with a Fu Manchu beard and a red shirt and brown chinos, sporting an automatic of some kind in a shoulder rig; and a short, stocky character with shoulder-length brown hair, a yellow and orange and green geometric shirt and green bell-bottoms, a sawed-off shotgun in his hands.

  "It's called LSD," Wren was saying. "Lysergic acid diethylamide. Maybe you've heard of it? Very big on campus."

  "You... you drank the coffee, too.... And the bitch had the cream. ..."

  "But you dropped the sugar cubes, Mr. Hammer. Miss Vought told me when you took her to dinner how the big tough guy took sugar with his coffee."

  "You're dead."

  "No, Mr. Hammer. That's just another hallucination of yours. Now, we need to get to work. The cocktail I gave you is unpredictable."

  "Cock ... tail?"

  "I'm not Dr. Harrin. I don't resort to simple sodium pentothal, although that's in the mix, along with horse tranquilizer and of course the dose of acid. I know a good deal more than Harrin did about narcotics—he was only a doctor, but I'm an artist, although ironically not one who partakes of my own art."

  "You're dead."

  "You're repeating yourself, but that's to be expected. We don't have a lot of time before you go-go-go on your trip ... that's what they call it, Mr. Hammer, a trip, which you'll take inside your mind, and from which you will probably recover, despite the strength of the dose."

  "What ... what was all that bullshit...?"

  "Over there, at the table? Not bullshit. It's quite a sincere offer. I think you're a man of considerable talent, and as close to a violent psychopath as one can be and still make recruiting worthwhile—I feel you're socialized to a workable degree."