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  "Fuck you!"

  "Well, there are rough edges we'll have to polish off. But for now, as the drugs begin their magic, you should feel compelled to answer my questions."

  He wasn't melting. The walls weren't pulsing, and I was getting centered. Maybe I had hold of it.

  Then the lights went down and the flashing orange and purple lights kicked in, and above me the mirrored ballroom ball was spinning and catching those lights and sending them everywhere, like that splintering multicolored effect inside my head. Music blared from the sound system, a raucous soul number with few words that could be discerned, but "Shotgun!" was one of them. That crazy stitched-together film was flickering on the brick wall over the stage, just above and in back of Wren and his men, those weird images of flowers and rotting carcasses and Buster Keaton and Guadalcanal and Woody Woodpecker and Lana Turner and Adolf Hitler and fashion models and Venus de Milo and Shirley moved in front of me, blocking Wren, and she leaned down and her voice was kind.

  "Tell him what he wants to know, Mike. He won't hurt you if you cooperate. Tell him what he wants to know, and we can be together in this. You and I can be together again. The Snowbird has a lot of girls, and boys, too, and he won't mind ... he won't mind...."

  It was a nice little speech but the jarring thing was that halfway through she seemed to turn into Velda, when the orange light hit her, and then back to herself on the purple, and then Velda, then Shirley, but the voice for both was slow and slurry like a 45 rpm record on 33⅓

  She moved away and Wren stepped forward. If my hands had been free, I could have grabbed his throat, or that .45 from his waistband. But my hands weren't free, they were roped behind me.

  "Mr. Hammer, I have reason to believe Dr. Harrin was the middleman on the super shipment, and I suspect he was planning to hijack it, perhaps even turn it over to the feds. His son Davy was one of my people, and died of an overdose, as maybe you know ... and I became suspicious of Harrin's solicitude, although he seems to have fooled that idiot Evello entirely."

  I heard every word, but this time speeded up, the 33⅓ on 45, and his face seemed distorted, like putty that was stretching itself. And the gunmen behind him, two on either side, had disappeared to be replaced by Jesus and Satan on the one side, and Milton Berle and Pinky Lee on the other. But they all still had guns....

  "Did Dr. Harrin tell you anything about the shipment, Mr. Hammer?"

  He had made a mistake telling me about the LSD, because I knew, for now I knew anyway, that these distorted sights and sounds were hallucinations, they were not real, I did not need to be frightened, though the reality behind them remained deadly. Jesus and Satan and Uncle Miltie and Yoo-Hoo It's Me My Name Is Pinky Lee all had guns and would kill my ass and it would not be a TV channel I could change or a dream I would wake up from.

  So I told him what he wanted to hear: "Yes. He told me. The doctor told me."

  The bizarre sights and sounds could be closed out by shutting my eyes, though I saw intense colors in strange patterns, like an abstract painting that moved and wiggled and slithered across the inside of my eyelids, but even so I could still hold on to some sense of sanity, some sense of me, and I knew something that Wren did not.

  I knew that I always carried a safety-razor blade inserted in a slit in my belt for just such occasions. I'd been tied with my hands behind my back before, and more than once, but after the first time, I said never again, and ever since carried that tiny blade. But I had to hold on to my marbles long enough to get that blade out and start working on the ropes....

  "What do you know about the shipment?" Wren spoke softly and yet his voice seemed to echo throughout the old warehouse.

  I hoped there was nobody I didn't know about behind me, no one who could see what I was up to. It was a delicate process cold sober, getting the blade out of its little hiding place, but I managed it, though I was hammered on a hallucinatory cocktail and the world was going crazy all around me and if I dropped that blade, I was finished, because I probably would spill what I knew and this fucker would kill me, that bullshit about working for or with him was bullshit, and thank God my hands were steady and I could somehow focus and I did not drop the blade and the rope was nice and soft.

  "I know the date," I said.

  "When?"

  "Tomorrow."

  "What time?"

  "One o'clock."

  "What pier?"

  My hands were loose and I brought that safety blade around in a vicious swing that sliced the air and then sliced Wren, too, across the cheek, opening a long red gleaming cut, and he backpedaled, screaming, fingers on his face, but he was close enough for me to grab my .45 from his belt, though the action toppled me down on my side, onto the dance floor, chair and all, because my ankles were still tied to its legs.

  I fired blindly toward Satan who became the black guy again and he had his rod halfway out of his pants when the .45 slug angled through his open yelling mouth and up through the roof of his bald head, bursting it in bloody chunks like a target-range melon. Pinky Lee turned back into the stocky guy, who was pointing that sawed-off at me, his geometric shirt shifting and changing. Shirley wasn't Velda at the moment, just Shirley, standing frozen in terror, and from my fallen, chair-bound position, I managed to spin on the slick dance floor in such a way that my legs came around and caught her and she fell into the shotgun blast, which took her head off her shoulders and some of her shoulders, too. What was left of her flopped onto the floor and twitched like a dancer who'd slipped but just kept frugging, even as the soul singer's voice shouted, " Shot-guuun!" from high speakers.

  Blood-spattered, still tied to the damn chair, I got onto my back and spread my feet apart as far as the ropes would allow, making them taut, and shot the ropes apart with the .45. Uncle Miltie, Pinky Lee, and Jesus had gone scrambling back toward the tables under a balcony overhang, and Wren had disappeared, I didn't know to where, but I somehow got the ropes and the now-broken chair off me without anybody killing me, and I stayed low as I hustled for the tiki bar. With no shoes on, I sort of skated over the dance floor, but picked up speed on the carpet under the tables with the stacked chairs, whose legs weren't dancing right now, then I dove over the counter and landed on the floor back there, breathing hard.

  You're doing fine, I told myself. You're doing fine. But who are you? What was my name? What was my fucking name?

  But then the floor began to move—it was rippling, it was breathing, and I looked up and saw a thatched roof and I was in that island village again, hiding in that hut with the steaming jungle and Christ knew how many Japs out there, and I could hear the mocking cries of the birds up in those trees with their bladelike leaves and the rough bark and Christ it was hot, steaming hot, and when the Jap leaned through the window, I screamed at him, a scream as shrill as any jungle bird, but he was a cartoon Jap, you're a sap Mr. Jap in the Popeye cartoons, and I stopped screaming and started laughing as I put a .45 slug in his eye, and when he flopped over the counter, he was the Oriental guy with the Fu Manchu mustache, but he still had his goddamn eye shot out.

  Mike Hammer. I'm Mike Hammer.

  I got to my feet but stayed in a crouch, and went out through the bartender access and moved under the balcony, opposite where I'd sat for that friendly cup of coffee with the Snowbird. Music was blaring, the Rolling Stones, "Satisfaction," even an old Stan Kenton man like me knew that song, and I was going to get me some satisfaction, all right. I was going to hold on to my marbles and stay focused, even as the Day-Glo colors on the wall pulsed, even as my own movement made rainbow trails, like I was writing my own name in the air with my every motion.

  I knew where I was headed. Unless there had been reinforcements, there were three of them left: Wren, Jesus the Marine, and Pinky Lee the stocky shit with the shotgun. I ignored the throbbing wall I moved along, and I stayed very low when I came out at the edge of the dance floor near the steps up onto the platform stage. That weird movie was still flickering and I tried to resist the im
ages, rotting dog, Vogue cover girl, and stormed up those steps and hopped up into the suspended Plexiglas Go-Go Girl booth.

  "There he is!" somebody shouted.

  Wren was out there in the middle of the dance floor, pointing with a gun in his lacy-cuffed hand, only he was a white bird now except for that hand, a snowbird or a pigeon, but an armed one. He fired at me, but the slug whanged off the Plexiglas. Out from under the balcony at stage right came the Marine, on the run, shooting, and I reached around the side of my three-sided Plexiglas shield and fired at his head but caught him in the throat instead, but that did it, sent him down in a gurgling dance to join the sprawled headless girl who no longer heard the beat.

  The guy with the shotgun had made it onto the stage, without my seeing it, and he was getting in close, because with that sawed-off he needed to get in close, and I used all my momentum to swing the cage, and it caught him in the chest and sharply swung up the shotgun, which went off, sheering off the front of his face and leaving him a ghastly wet mask and still alive enough to scream until I leaned out and shattered his skull with a .45 slug and put him out of his misery.

  But I lost my balance taking that shot, and dumped myself onto the stage floor, a slug slamming into the bass drum just behind me.

  Wren was still out there, in the middle of the dance floor, not a bird but a man now, having taken aim and missed. A railing across the front of the stage blocked my shot at him, and I couldn't risk standing and presenting an easy target, so I fired twice, up at where the mirrored ball was attached to the ceiling, and fired again and finally the thing came down, fast as gravity, and shatter-slammed into the dance floor, not right on top of him, but close and sending shards of glass flying.

  I had only one slug left and no clip, so I was counting on that to be the distraction I needed to give me my shot. Then I was on my feet, with the .45 poised to shoot, when I saw him standing with arms outstretched, the revolver limp in his right hand. Then he let the gun slip to the floor and he staggered a step and raised his hand to his neck where the jagged shard of glass was embedded, catching the flashing lights to wink at him and me and no one else, because the rest of them were dead.

  When he jerked it from his throat, the blood geysered in a perfect arc that painted a distant tabletop a colorful shimmering red that made a startling psychedelic effect when the pulsing orange and purple lights hit it.

  Unless I was just seeing things.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I FOUND MY THINGS. My hat, my coat, my wallet, my shoes, all piled in what had been Jay Wren's office. There was a couch in that office and I would have liked to stretch out and wait and ride this thing out. But at some point, employees would show up to open the Pigeon for business, and despite my unsteady grasp on reality, I somehow knew the club would open at 10:30 P.M., and realized I needed not to be there.

  Apparently I remembered to go in the men's room and wash off the blood spatter, because when I got to Velda's, I didn't have any on my face and not even my clothes. She had just got home from the office and was surprised, and relieved, to see me. But she knew at once something was wrong.

  "Mike—what...?"

  "I came in a cartoon cab."

  "You what?"

  "I need a bed. You need to stay with me."

  She did. Sometimes sitting like a visitor at a patient's hospital bedside, sometimes curled up next to me with all her clothes on. I would wake now and then, with a start, and see her there in the crack of light from the door she'd left ajar on the hall, and that would settle me.

  I managed to sleep, and the dreams were colorful and had Woody Woodpecker and Hitler in them, but otherwise no more surreal than usual. I don't remember telling her I'd been slipped acid-laced sugar cubes, but I must have, because she already knew when I finally rolled myself out of the rack.

  I figure it was about twelve hours since I'd been dosed, and felt pretty much my normal self, whatever the hell that was. Velda sat down with me in her breakfast nook, around eight A.M., and we had coffee and I was able to eat some scrambled eggs and toast.

  After the meal, I told her what had happened.

  "I'm not really sure what went down," I said. "I could have imagined most or all of it, after the LSD kicked in."

  We were still at the table in the nook, on our second cups of coffee. She said, "Pretty sure Jesus and Pinky Lee weren't there."

  "Don't bet on it."

  She frowned. "Mike—what do we do about this? Do we bring Pat in?"

  I shook my head. "I left no witnesses and if even half of what I remember really went down, I'd make a full-course meal for Assistant D.A. Traynor."

  Her frown deepened. "You were using your .45, though. What about ballistics?"

  I patted her hand. My kind of girl. "I changed barrels last month, doll, remember? That's not in the police files. Nothing to match. I'll toss this barrel down a sewer and let the rats ride it as a raft."

  That got a laugh out of her, tiny, but a laugh. "With your way of looking at things, Mike, it's no wonder you took a bad trip."

  "Not as bad a trip as the ones I left behind."

  We decided to go in to the office, and make things look normal. We skipped the coffee and went right to work, and she brought me in some reports from Tiller and the other agencies who'd been covering for me of late, when I remembered to ask, "The Blue kid drop off an envelope for me?"

  "Yes." She frowned. "He said you wanted it put in the safe, and I did. Is it important?"

  "Yeah."

  "That's all I get?"

  "Yeah."

  She shrugged and was going out when I said, "Bring it here, would you?"

  She did, and I had the sealed thing in my hands as she stood there expectantly.

  "Shoo," I said.

  She smirked, shook her head, and the arcs of shining dark pageboy swung as she turned on her heels, muttering, "Come crying to somebody else, next time somebody slips you a mickey."

  I opened the envelope and, when the phone rang, had been sitting there for maybe five minutes, staring at Dr. Harrin's handwritten words to me, which included today's date and the time and pier number for the big shipment's delivery in the form of apparently harmless ceramic molds.

  "Michael Hammer," I said.

  "The shit hit the fan, kid."

  "Hello to you, too, Pat. What shit hit what fan?"

  "Looks like Evello clipped the Snowbird's wings, big-time. It's the worst mob bloodbath since St. Valentine's Day."

  "No kidding. Capone missed Bugs Moran, though—you saying Wren wasn't there?"

  Pat chuckled harshly. "Oh, he was there, all right, Wren, four bodyguards, and that society girl who found out the hard way slumming with scum has its risks."

  "When was this?"

  "Yesterday afternoon, at that discotheque of Wren's, which was closed at the time. We've reconstructed the action, at least in a preliminary fashion."

  "Yeah?"

  "Looks like Wren was having a sit-down with Evello and his boys, and Evello turned the tables. Would've taken at least three or four men to do this kind of damage, and nasty customers, at that."

  "Takes all kinds to make a world."

  "Yeah, but what a world. Anyway, this may make your life easier—we traced those two freaks who tried to hit you and took out Doc Harrin instead, and they were in the Snowbird's flock, all right. So you can safely say that Wren was the source of the attempts on your life, and the Snowbird won't be giving anybody a hard time anymore, except maybe the devil."

  Nope, I thought. The devil was on Wren's side—I saw him there, yesterday....

  "I appreciate you sharing the lowdown, old buddy," I said. "Anything on the supposed big shipment?"

  "There's thinking that the stuff is coming in this week, maybe even today. The T-men are blanketing the harbor."

  "That would take a lot of T-men. That's a thousand miles of shoreline and maybe a dozen active ports."

  "It's more narrowed down than that, Mike. Agents Radley and Dawson are c
hecking every ship coming in from France—from passenger liners to container carriers. That's still a good number of vessels, but it can be done."

  "Just because the Syndicate buys its product in France doesn't mean they shipped from there."

  "No. But it's a start. Narrows down the needle hunt from the whole damn farm to a haystack."

  I grunted. "Good luck to them."

  He laughed in a world-weary way exclusive to longtime cops. "Why do we bother, Mike? So we find and stop the super shipment, what then? There'll be another, and another. You can't stop a vicious circle."

  "If a snake is eating its tail, chum, you can still cut it in half."

  "Yeah. You ought to sew that on a sampler and hang it in your office."

  He didn't know how close he was.

  The Port of New York's piers have one thing in common: they stink. All that salt air gets swamped in grease and oil and dead fish and the heady bouquet of workingman body odor. Add to that the cacophony of man over nature, squawking of seagulls and lazy lapping tide drowned out by grinding machinery and cargo pallets slamming to the cement, while the toots of tugboats vainly fight the throaty whistles of steamships. Anybody confusing the New York waterfront for a beach has never seen sand.

  The S.S. Paloma out of Marseilles docked at 1:04 P.M. on a chilly afternoon that made its nasty point that summer was over and fall was here, and live with it. Even with the canopy, women held down their skirts and men clamped their hats on, rattling down the gangplank, eight-hundred-some passengers disembarking into the waiting arms of U.S. Customs.

  The Customs officers looked a little like porters only with badges on their caps and, in some cases, guns on their hips. This all took place dockside in a big brick open-sided shed, where the officers inspected every bag, looking for all the smuggler's tricks, and they knew a few.

  After the passengers, the cargo—fairly limited, as this was a luxury liner not a container carrier—began its unloading process, stevedores swinging down nets of boxed and crated material and dropping them with impressive precision onto the dock. A number of trucks and vans were waiting, but so were the Customs officers, who did not turn anything over until crates had been opened and checked and weighed on a big ungainly scale that looked a little like a medieval torture rig.