Kiss Her Goodbye Page 3

  "I got no argument with that philosophical insight."

  I followed Pat, nodding to some of the cops I knew. One, a captain from uptown, said, "I thought you was dead."

  "You thought right," I told him.

  He frowned, trying to work that out.

  Nearer the coffin, the crowd thinned. Pat fell in line by the mass of floral displays from the police and fire departments, a dozen lodges, and a full wall from old friends. I looked at my own watch. Ten minutes to eight.

  A red-headed fading beauty, Anna Marina, Doolan's only grandchild, was putting on her own stage play. Her makeup was dutifully smeared, her dark, church-perfect clothes indicated proper bereavement, but there was no real sorrow on display. Her hulking husband stood beside her, not really capable of showing any decent emotion, unless it was a frustrated desire for a drink. His dark suit was rumpled and he could use a shave.

  I had known Anna since she was a kid, but no love was ever lost between us. I saw through her manipulative girly ways, so she was never pleased to see me. Maybe in part it was because I busted her wiseass husband in the chops one night for a lousy remark he made about somebody whose color he felt superior to.

  She looked up at me, her mouth tight.

  I said, "Anna. Sure sorry about this. Doolan and I were always great friends."

  "I'll never understand that. He got you fired."

  "It was the right thing. Doolan put me on my path."

  Her upper lip curled. "It would be more respectful if you called him 'Mr. Doolan,' or even 'Bill.'"

  "Sure. Bill was a mentor to me, and I'll always love him for it. You and I have never been tight, but if you ever have problems..." I glanced at the husband who had sent her to the emergency room more than once. "...just let me or Pat know."

  Now I swung my head and stared straight at hubby Harry Marina. He was looking at me and gauging the pounds I'd lost, and taking in the looseness of my collar, and he had a wet-lipped expression like a nasty, stupid mutt wondering whether or not to take a bite out of a puppy.

  What the hell. I was trying to keep it friendly, out of respect to Doolan. Anyway, I was an old tiger now, and who knew if I could go up against a big slob like this anymore.

  So I just grinned at him and his face seemed to freeze and little white lines formed half-moons around his nostrils and almost unconsciously he pulled back a few inches.

  Pat was watching me, his eyes narrowing. I nodded to Anna and walked away.

  When we were in the crowd, Pat said, "I'd swear that clown wanted a piece of you."

  "You think?"

  "Man, you shouldn't grin at people that way. You scared the shit out of him."

  I was about to tell Pat I wasn't trying for that kind of action, but suddenly he wasn't there, having paused to speak to somebody—a tall, sandy-haired guy with a narrow, well-chiseled face with light blue eyes and a tan even deeper than mine. The guy's dark gray tailored suit with lighter gray silk tie screamed money, but quietly.

  "Mike, meet Alex Jaynor."

  Jaynor's hand gave up a good, solid grip.

  "I feel like I know Mr. Hammer already," Jaynor said good-naturedly. "My admiration goes way back—you've made for a lot of great reading over the years."

  "More fun to read about," I said with half a grin, "than to experience."

  "Alex is our new congressman from this district," Pat told me.

  Jaynor held up a hand as he gave me his own half a grin. "Don't hold that against me," he said.

  "I'm not a voting type myself," I told him.

  "Why not, Mr. Hammer?"

  "The politicians—it only encourages them."

  "Ouch," Jaynor said, still friendly. "I'm hoping there are a few of us these days who might change your opinion, maybe even get you into a voting booth."

  "You're welcome to try. Where'd you get your tan?"

  "Damn," he said with a chuckle, "I was just about to ask you that." One dark hand gestured to another. "What you see here, I'm afraid, comes out of a machine in a little cubicle—one hour a day, every other day. You've caught me already, Mr. Hammer—just another phony."

  I smiled at that. "Honest enough to admit it, anyway. And make it 'Mike'...me, I'm a beach bum these days—Florida."

  He gave me a confused frown. "I thought you were strictly a Manhattanite."

  "Call it a leave of absence." I shrugged. "Got to where I'd had about as much of New York as I could stand. You getting a head start on a summer tan?"

  Jaynor laughed abruptly. "Hell no. This is show-off stuff. The voters love it. And you know who advised me to do it? Bill Doolan. He said I should follow the JFK model—present myself as young, vital, fresh. Said voters were tired of looking at ward-heeler types."

  "So Doolan was your mentor, too?"

  "Oh, yes. He knew this city, and its inner workings, like nobody else. Now I'll just have to take off the training wheels and learn to ride on my own."

  Pat glanced at me and grunted. "Guess old Doolan had angles I never knew about."

  "Well, he needed a hobby, Pat—too old to chase women anymore. How'd you get to know him, Alex?"

  "It was a few years back, when I was a reporter for McWade's."

  "That's the Canadian magazine, right? Sort of their Life?"

  "Right. But I covered the New York beat for them, or anyway was one of several journalists who did. There was some juvenile gang activity in Doolan's neighborhood and he pulled out all the stops to help get things calmed down. That guy was damned near unbelievable, the way he could relate to young roughnecks."

  "Tell me about it," I said.

  "Anyway, I did a big layout on his neighborhood work, and we got to be friends. He's the one who encouraged me to move out of journalism and into politics—to quit writing about problems, and really get my hands dirty solving them." He stopped, nodding toward the door. "Well—here they come..."

  "Eight o'clock," Pat said with a lift of the eyebrows.

  "Rogue's gallery on parade," I muttered.

  It took two men in delivery livery to carry each floral wreath, fourteen altogether. When the wreaths were arranged, the donors appeared, somber well-dressed men who made the circuit past the suddenly hushed assembly to the pine coffin, then to Anna and her husband.

  Camera flashes started then, not with the wild brilliance of the old bulbs, but the muted winks from the new electronic jobs. I hadn't even noticed the damn reporters and photogs lurking, but they scurried into play like cockroaches when a light switches on.

  The press had been waiting for this parade of dapper killers, the other inhabitants of Doolan's world who had come under the inspector's gun, and respected him for it.

  Every one of these cops knew every one of them, the young crowd who hated the term "button man," the capos who had the look of progressive business about them, and the elder dons, two under indictment and another just released from a five-year sentence.

  And Alberto Bonetti.

  The old man wasn't big, but he had the forced rigidity of a soldier on parade. His oval face had a softness to it, but I knew that was forced too, his gray hair combed back immaculately, his eyebrows black as an eightball. He was a man of many masks and this was the one he wore at funerals. Even his hands were under total control and, if you didn't know him, you would think he was merely a dignified old man trying to live out his life.

  Only when he was almost past me did he stop, turning his whole body on a swivel to recognize me with a smile. "Ah, Mr. Hammer. Michael Hammer."

  I barely nodded. "Mr. Bonetti."

  His smile widened a bit as I matched the formality he'd given me. "Please know that I am very sorry for the loss of your friend. He was an honest man. A good man. A rare thing in a dishonorable world."

  I managed not to tell him to stuff the pretty speeches. Instead I just said, "You knew Doolan pretty well yourself, I understand."

  "Oh yes, very well." The old don chuckled. "Don't you recall, Mr. Hammer? A long time ago, he sent me up for seven years."r />
  "A bad rap?"

  Again, the mob don let out a little laugh. "Only my being caught was bad. I understand, many years ago, he threw you off the force."

  "Not exactly threw me off. Recommended I be taken off the street and put on a desk."

  "Which, of course, he knew would mean you would resign, and seek other employment. So we have Bill Doolan to blame for Mike Hammer becoming a private vigilante."

  "Not vigilante. Not anymore. Just a private detective. And a retired one."

  "Really?" He paused to look at me critically, taking in my tan. "You have enjoyed Florida, I see."

  I almost smiled. "Well, it makes a nice change from the city."

  "Yes. I get to Florida from time to time. My friends there tell me you have quite a reputation as a fisherman. For snook, I believe."

  "I'm a rank amateur. But I go out with pros, so yeah ... I caught a few fish in my time."

  That made him smile, just a little. Then: "Maybe someday I will join you in sunny retirement. When a man gets lonely, there are some things better done in another's company."

  "Anytime, Mr. Bonetti."

  "Good evening, Mr. Hammer."

  He turned on a swivel again to join the others, smiling back at the hostility coming at him from the rows of police. The cameras never stopped until the doors closed behind them.

  Only then did Alex Jaynor say, "What was that all about?"

  There was a touch of irony in Pat's voice when he said, "Old Alberto was letting my friend here know that he knew all along where Mike Hammer has been holed up. That he could have had Mike tapped out at any time."

  Jaynor frowned. "Killed?"

  "Certainly."

  "But why?"

  I said, "Because I blew his kid's head off."

  The politician's jaw dropped in sudden remembrance. "Hell, that's right, isn't it? A year ago ... but you were almost friendly with the man, Mike."

  "Old man Bonetti knows his son Sal was a bad seed," I said. "He knows it was self-defense. If he'd decided to have me killed, it would have been to save face, not out of revenge."

  Pat was studying me. "You see any of his guys down there in sunny F-L-A?"

  "I wasn't looking."

  He made a face. "Playing stupid isn't your game, buddy."

  "Pat, I just didn't give a damn. And I wasn't in the game. Still aren't."

  "Now you know Bonetti knows your Florida address. Doesn't that bother you?"

  "Why should it? If he wanted me dead, it would have gone down a long time ago. And now? Now there's no sense killing me anymore."

  Jaynor had the expression of a guy visiting a foreign country who has lost his translation booklet. "Why would you think that, Mike?"

  "Because there's no profit in it, Alex—and profit is all those guys live for."

  Pat was checking his watch. "Mike—it's time." He reached in his suitcoat pocket and handed me the small canvas pouch with the metallic lump in it.

  "Sure you don't want to handle this, Pat?"

  "No. Doolan would've wanted you to do it."

  So I nodded to each of the men as I walked to the coffin. All of them wore those invisible scars of the field, and they nodded back, each with a subtle look of curiosity because although I was, in a way, one of them, I hadn't played on their team for a long, long time.

  I stood there looking at what was left of Bill Doolan. Once he had been young and vital as hell, but what was left was an old gray-headed corpse, barely recognizable. The stupid embalmer had tried to cover up the scar across his left eye and fill out the cheeks that had always been hollow with contained rage. Those bony hands should have been clenched into fists instead of being folded across his chest like all the other dead bodies in the world.

  I looked at a mannequin cosmetically prepared to hide all signs of reality. For that I was glad. This wasn't Doolan at all. The real man still lived in memory.

  When I'd finished looking at what was left of my mentor, I took a step back and felt the others come up around me. I reached in the canvas pouch, then unwrapped the oily cloth and held out the hammerless Browning automatic for all of them to see.

  Carefully, I dropped the clip and let them see me thumb a full load in place, then snap it back and jack one into the chamber. With the rag I cleaned the piece off, then separated Doolan's hands from their frozen position and got the Browning into his right palm as best I could.

  The Little Italy bunch weren't the only ones who had rituals.

  I said, "Bill Doolan gave this to Pat Chambers a long time ago, and really it should be Pat up here talking now. Pat and the rest of you were really his boys. Yet in my two short years on the force, Doolan twice saved my ass, and if he had notched this gun butt the way they did in the old West, there wouldn't be anything to hold on to now. At least when that pine box he's in collapses under the dirt, he and that gun will fade out of existence at the same time. So long, buddy."

  Two of the quiet men stepped forward, closed the lid of the coffin, then hammered it shut with steel-cut nails. In that solemn place the sound of the banging was almost thunderous, and when they were done, what was left was just a box—a rough-cut pine box resting on a pair of sawhorses, as Doolan himself had specified.

  Everybody turned their backs when the attendants came in with the table and wheeled the coffin out.

  Strange, I thought, real strange. Like a bunch of kids in their clubhouse, playing at something.

  These cops may have shared a strange little ritual, preparing their friend for the boneyard; but those guys weren't playing. Death was part of every cop's life, whether you bought it on the street or survived into an old age haunted by nightmares or ate the muzzle of your gun as a rookie who couldn't take it or an old soldier who wanted to one-up the Big C.

  The guests had started to clear out. The photogs were first, hurrying to get their pictures into the labs, then the police. Pat and I walked Alex Jaynor to the door—he seemed moved by the simple, if odd ceremony. Well, Doolan had been his mentor, too.

  Alex got cornered by a reporter, and we left him behind as we headed down the street for a booth in the nearest gin mill.

  Pat and I both ordered a Canadian Club and ginger ale, and toasted each other silently

  Over the second drink Pat suddenly said, "What about Velda, Mike?"

  The sound of her name hit like a physical blow and I had trouble looking at him. "It's over."

  "That simple. 'It's over.' Why is it over?"

  "Can't we drop the subject?"

  "No. She was too much a part of you. Of us. What happened?"

  Suddenly the drink tasted lousy. "Hell, I was dying. My life expectancy was maybe a month. I wasn't about to let her watch me go out like a cat that's been half run over, yelling and screaming until they shot the drugs into me again."

  "But you pulled through."

  "Nobody thought that old army surgeon could bring it off. The odds were ridiculous. I signed the papers and let him go ahead because I thought it would be an easy way to get the whole damn thing finished with in a hurry."

  "What are the odds now?"

  I shrugged. "If I'm not too stupid, I'm going to make it."

  He nodded, sipped his drink. "That brings us around to Velda again. When you knew you were coming out of the tunnel, why not let her know?"

  I shook my head. "You saw Bonetti in there. His soldiers might have shown up at any time. She'd have been at my side when the bullets started flying."

  "She's a big girl. Not your average secretary. She's a P.I. herself, and then there's her military intelligence background. What makes you think she couldn't have handled that?"

  "Because she loved me, Pat. You know it, I know it, and we both know I didn't deserve her, but there it is. She would have been so distracted, worrying about me, nursemaiding me, she could easily have taken a hit. And I could stand a lot of things, Pat ... but after all these years, losing her because she's trying to save me? No. No way. Now can we change the subject?"

  "Mike, yo
u don't tune somebody out when you love them."

  "You said it yourself, Pat. She's a P.I. Probably a better detective than either of us. If she'd really wanted to find me, she could have."

  "Really? After your letter?"

  Barroom noise and chatter filled a pregnant silence.

  Finally I said, "You know about that?"

  A sad little frown flitted across his face. "Yeah, I know about it."

  I tried not to ask. I swear to God, I tried not to ask.

  "What's happened to her, Pat?"

  He looked past me, gnawing gently at his lip. When he was ready, he said, "Six months ago, she called. She'd gotten your letter. She read it to me, Mike. How could you say those things to her?"

  I had to ask him.

  "How'd she sound?" I tried to keep the anxiety out of my voice.

  He thought about it, then shrugged. "Cold. Remote. Not the way she used to."

  "Come on, Pat."

  "There was a new man in her life, she said. She said she'd moved on, and called me to say she was leaving town. She did ... just mention that she ... wondered if you were still alive, or if you had asked about her."

  My chest felt tight and my shoulders bunched up under my coat.

  He was saying, "I told her I didn't know where you were, and that we hadn't spoken since you slipped our guard at the hospital. She told me your letter had a Miami postmark, which gave me a starting point, tracking you down. The last I heard, she'd left town."

  "...New man in her life. Well, good. I'm glad for her."

  "In a pig's ass you are."

  "Let's just say I can handle it, okay? It was a phase of my life."

  "A goddamn long phase."

  "You know me, Pat. Women come and go."

  "Yeah, you come and they go. But not Velda—she was a constant. She was with you for ... forever."

  I'd thought it would be forever.

  "Like I said," I said as casually as I could manage, "now it's over."

  "I'm supposed to believe you're not hurting?"

  "I'm not hurting. I won't forget her, but I'm not all whacked out of shape over it."

  I leaned back and wondered whether or not I was lying. For sure, I'd never forget her.

  Never.