Mike Hammer--King of the Weeds Read online

  A half-empty pack of cigarettes and a Zippo lighter were under his fingers and when we sat down opposite him, he said, “You guys haven’t changed much in forty years. Chambers, you’re still a handsome man. Hammer, you’re still ugly as hell. What’s new?”

  “I made captain,” Pat said.

  “I heard. That was a long time ago, wasn’t it? How about you, Hammer?”

  “I’m getting married.”

  “Well, it only took you forty years to find a woman. Well, good for the both of you.” His smile looked like a rip in the gray mask of his face. “What can I do for you fellas?”

  Pat said, “Tell us about your pal—Henry Brogan.”

  Olaf’s fingers found his deck of cigarettes and he shook one out, stuck it in his mouth, and then offered us one. We both waved him off.

  He flicked the lighter, took in a big drag, held it in his lungs a long time, then let the smoke seep out like gray fog. “My only vice,” he said.

  “That shit’ll kill you,” I told him.

  “At my age, what’s to lose?”

  Pat said, “Maybe that big settlement your lawyer’s trying for.”

  “Trying hell. He’ll get it. You fellas screwed up. Sometimes a mistake takes a while to catch up with a guy. But this one finally caught you two in the tail.”

  Pat ventured a smile and said, “Not if your buddy changes his story.”

  “Why should he do that?”

  “Because it’s not true. You killed those people.”

  “Captain Chambers, believe that if it helps you sleep at night. At this stage, what difference is it, what really happened? If I did it, I’ve served my time. I could’ve got out on parole years ago if I’d just copped to the killings… but I didn’t, because I’m innocent. And as an innocent man, what can I do to get those forty years back? Not a damn thing. But I can milk the city for enough to make my retirement years a hell of a lot more pleasant than living ’em out in Sing Sing.”

  I said, “You’re trying to say, ‘no hard feelings’?”

  “You might say that, Hammer. Oh, I’m human. I suppose I’ll take some pleasure in seeing Captain Chambers here denied his inspectorship after all this time. For him to have to put up with a little disgrace for a while… But it’s better than being tagged a serial killer for forty years, hey, Captain?”

  Pat asked, “You want me to believe Brogan is telling the truth?”

  “So what if he isn’t? Ol’ Brogan hasn’t got long before he kicks off, anyway. Maybe he’s decided to do his old buddy a favor.”

  “Is that what he’s up to?”

  His laugh was a smoker’s cough. “You wish! The bitter reality, Captain Chambers, is that finally Henry Brogan got bothered by what he pulled and what he put his pal through and he decided he had to repent somehow. He tells me what he did and begs me to forgive him. So I forgive him. Why not?”

  I echoed him, astounded: “Why not?”

  “Hammer, this place is home to me. I have spent most of my life here. You forget I was living on the Bowery. Here, I get three hots and a cot, like the man says… so I keep my nose clean and land a cushy job in the library, which means plenty to read and plenty of time to do it in. They got movie night weekly and TV in the commons, man—hell, it’s not so bad. You two should try it.”

  “I’ll pass,” I said.

  Skeletal shoulders shrugged. “But I’m also fine with moving up to a whole new class of goodies. Walk right into a restaurant and order a meal, imagine that. That’s one thing I miss—deli food. You know, Brogan really deserves a cut of the pie New York City is gonna dish out to me.”

  “From what I understand,” Pat said to him, “he won’t have much time to use it.”

  “Well, remind me to cry my eyes over that, will you?” The words had a sneer in them.

  I asked, “You ever suspect Brogan of setting you up?”

  “Never occurred to me. He didn’t seem that smart.”

  “Yet you expect us to buy that he was smart enough to pull it off.”

  “Well… he was… shrewd. Yeah, that’s the word for it. Back then, he saw a way he could get himself off the hook, let somebody else take the fall, and then he stopped killing, which made it seem all the more credible.”

  Pat said, “And all these years he’s visited you.”

  “Yes. Isn’t that something? I thought it was friendship, and here it was guilt.”

  I said, “You played chess with him. So he was smart enough to do that.”

  “Ah, but ask him how many times he won.”

  Pat shook his head. “No hard feelings for Brogan, either, huh? You expect us to believe a lot, Rudy.”

  “Too late for hard feelings. I’m an old man, and he’s an old man—dying old man. Hey, at least he kept coming up here to see me.” He blew out more gray smoke. “Kept bringing me my butts, bless him.”

  I asked, “Why isn’t your lawyer sitting in with us today? Where’s the Champion of the Underdog?”

  “What’s for him to hear? What’s for him to say? Brogan came forward and got it all off his chest. He produced the gun for them, and what else is there? Except, ‘Goodbye, Sing Sing, it’s been nice to know you.’ Funny, once his confession was on the table, everything made sense, even his coming up here to visit. He was trying to make up for what he did to me. Little pieces of redemption, one visit at a time, and then one final pay-off.”

  “No bitterness,” Pat said, “about the system? About me and other cops?”

  This time Olaf let out a harsh smoky laugh and shook his head. “Captain Chambers, I won’t lie to you—I got no love for cops. I never did have. I don’t love dentists or lawyers either, but sometimes a guy needs a tooth pulled… or somebody to sue the city for you. Captain, if you want to know how I feel about you? It’s nothing. Hell, I don’t waste my time worrying about what’s happened. The joint’s not so bad when you get used to it. In fact, I’m going to miss a lot of things about it… but I’ll be glad to go home again.”

  I asked, “Where’s home after all this time, Olaf?”

  “Damn, that’s a funny one. Till the settlement comes through, I’m staying at Henry Brogan’s place. It’s empty ’cause he’s in the hospital, and he invited me. Isn’t that the craziest damn thing you ever heard?”

  Soft, Pat said, “The whole world’s crazy.”

  For maybe ten seconds there was a quiet spell with Olaf just looking at us blankly. Then he frowned again and reached for his cigarettes. He stuck one in his mouth and thumbed the wheel on his lighter. He flicked it four times, but nothing came up but sparks.

  “You’re out of fluid,” I said.

  “One of you guys help me out with a light?”

  “I don’t smoke anymore,” Pat told him.

  I shook my head. “I quit years ago.”

  “Nobody quits smoking,” he rasped. “You think you have, but one day that old urge’ll rear up and kick you in the slats. Don’t you worry about me, fellas. I’ll get a light from one of these screws. They love me in here. But they’re gonna just have to learn to get along without me.”

  * * *

  When we got in the car, Pat asked me, “What do you make of old Rudy?”

  “I’m not a psychologist, pal.”

  “Sure you are. All cops are.”

  “Then you go first.”

  He waited till we were out of the prison lot and on our way back for the thirty-mile ride to the city.

  “That Olaf has one strange reaction to all this,” Pat said. “He takes it like it’s just another day in the life. He’s not mad, he’s not grateful, he couldn’t care less. All the money that could come his way from the city makes no real impression on him. He’s looking forward to eating at restaurants.”

  “Like the local deli,” I said with a smirk. “Pat, if Olaf and his cellmate were shacked up for decades, how does that tally with him as a killer targeting gays?”

  Pat gave a one-shoulder shrug. “That was just the part of town he was working, Gay Bar R
ow. Anyway, plenty of guys in stir are just having the kind of sex that’s available.”

  “Yeah, but maybe Rudy was a self-loathing gay. Maybe he was killing himself each time he killed a victim. Maybe he lured guys into the alley for a brick-wall fling, then killed and robbed them, hating himself all the way.”

  Pat smiled a little. “Mike, you are a psychologist. But it’s all just theory, and forty years ago, there was damn little exploration of the gay angle in our case, and what little there was got kept out of the media.”

  I chuckled without much humor. “Mandy Clark isn’t going to like our report very much, buddy.”

  He gave me one of his noncommittal grunts. “I don’t think she expected very much either. The big deal here is keeping this played down in the press.”

  I grunted back. “Olaf doesn’t seem revenge-oriented. If he gets his payday with no questions asked, maybe he won’t go to the media.”

  “Any negative blowback will put a hell of a dent in the D.A.’s election plans.”

  “Come on, Pat. Aside from a minor human interest story, what can the media make of it? There’s a big Wall Street trial starting today that’ll grab all the news flashes. Everything else will go on the back page.”

  “You think so?”

  I felt a smile tugging at my mouth. “You’re wondering where Rufus Tomlin fits into this, aren’t you?”

  “Well, we know Rufus loves the spotlight, and if this goes all the way, he’ll be in the middle of a big one. Doesn’t seem likely there’s a mob tie-in, though.”

  I nodded. “Agreed. Have you asked yourself why the D.A. chose you, the guy who supposedly screwed the case up forty years ago, to interview Rudy Olaf?”

  Pat let out a short laugh. “To keep me nice and snug in the pasty seat, right?”

  “As rain, old buddy. You’re big enough to keep the heat off the politicos, but small enough not to cause a ruckus if a fall guy is needed.”

  “Grim damn evaluation, Mike.”

  “But that’s the way you size it up, too, isn’t it?”

  That didn’t require an answer. Conversation fell off, Pat staring out the windshield, eyes tight with thought.

  Ten minutes passed before I finally said, “Spill it, buddy. What’s on your mind?”

  “Name Roger Buckley ring a bell?”

  “Should it?”

  “Old holdover from two administrations ago. Very sharp operator. Got into law enforcement right out of college, then into government as a specialist in nailing syndicate money deals. Broke up a money-laundering scheme that went from the U.S. through South America and into the Orient.”

  “So I’m impressed. So what?”

  “So word is that your eighty-nine billion bucks has caught his attention.”

  “Who says it’s mine? Just a rumor, buddy.”

  “Mike, Buckley starts with rumors until he tracks down the facts behind them.”

  “And rumor says I’m the guy who knows where the big bucks are.”

  “Right.”

  I grinned at him. “Buddy, not long ago we had a president who was predicting a one-hundred-eighty-seven trillion dollar surplus. Surplus, man! That makes eighty-nine billion look like small pickings, doesn’t it?”

  “Why, you got change for a billion on you?” Pat wasn’t grinning back.

  “Okay,” I said. “What’s the largest denomination note you can get from a bank these days?”

  “Five hundred.”

  “Right. And till thirty years ago, you could still get thousand-dollar bills. Now, do you think these mobsters would storehouse five, tens and twenties when they could lay their cash up in five-hundred and thousand-dollar bills?”

  “Of course not.”

  “But,” I went on, “walk into a bank now with a bundle of thousand-dollar bills, you better have a verifiable story of how your old grandfather left them to you in an attic trunk.”

  “Nevertheless,” Pat said, “those bills still have face value.”

  My grin grew bigger now. “And you think I’m smart enough to figure out how to cash them in?”

  “You’d sure figure something out.”

  I didn’t want to disappoint him. “Probably.”

  “Those old bills were larger, too,” he mused, “if they go back that far. But still backed by the U.S. Government.”

  “I’ll bet the bulk would be in five-C notes.”

  “You speaking from experience, Mike?”

  “What am I, a suspect you’re trying to trick a confession out of?”

  Pat and I had been friends for a long time. We were tight enough that we didn’t infringe on each other’s affairs and knew where the lines were drawn, but both knew there were times when the door had been left open just enough to take a peek inside a forbidden room.

  Quietly, he said, “If I asked you to confirm that eighty-nine billion, would you?”

  “Sure. On my deathbed.”

  Pat nodded silently. He took that as the implied yes that it was.

  “Let me tell you about Buckley,” he said. “He and his office don’t like the common man thumbing his nose at the idiots in Washington.”

  “I like to think of myself as an uncommon man.”

  “Mike, Buckley’s here in New York, and you’re the target. He’s got financing and power to back up his actions.”

  “Big fucking deal.”

  “You’re not bothered by it?”

  “Been tried before, pal.”

  Pat glanced over gravely. “These aren’t the old days, Mike. Our political system has updated its technology. And I don’t just mean computers. Federal agents carry guns that have eighteen rounds.” He turned his head and looked at me slyly. “And we both know what you carry.”

  A little shrug touched my shoulders. “My good old Army Issue Colt .45 with six in the clip. I could slam in seven, but I don’t want to put too much pressure on the spring.”

  “Just six?”

  “Yeah. But there’s always one in the chamber in case the action goes down fast.”

  “You think that’s safe?”

  “Nope,” I told him. “Just practical.”

  “Then why aren’t you carrying the thing? Or has that blossom on your chest already faded?”

  “Maybe a man of my advanced years is scared of loaded guns.”

  Pat just shook his head and pulled into a parking lot close to Bellevue Hospital.

  * * *

  Henry Brogan was a shriveled-up old guy who still looked like he could survive a New York winter the hard way—cooped up in a cardboard box with newspapers for blankets, living off garbage-can buffets and never catching cold or getting a bellyache. Somebody who wasn’t very good at it had given him a haircut and shave. Had he been able to get out of that hospital bed, and remove the tubes in his arms, he’d have been maybe five-six. Scrawny. Nothing impressive about him.

  With one exception—those rat eyes. So many survivors out on the street had such eyes, dark, steady, merciless. Such eyes could see everything without moving at all. He saw us and he knew us even though we’d never met. He nodded to Pat and to me. We both nodded back as we took our place at his bedside in the small single room.

  The plainclothes cop near the door said, “You want me to wait outside, Captain?”

  “Stick around in case the witness gets tough.”

  Brogan coughed up a phlegmy laugh. “Hell, I’m a dying man down to a hundred-ten. Couldn’t hurt you if I had a tommy gun.”

  Pat said, “You know, you don’t have to talk to me at all without your lawyer present.”

  “Sure, I know that,” Brogan agreed. “You’re not even assigned to this case, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Didn’t figure you to be. You’re the cop who took Rudy down, aren’t ya?”

  Pat just nodded.

  “Captain Patrick Chambers. Natural for you to have an interest. Potentially embarrassing, me comin’ forward.”

  Pat said nothing.

  “And you’re Hamme
r,” Brogan said to me. “You were there when Rudy was arrested. And then you got famous. Whatever happened to you, anyway? Not much in the papers for years.”

  “I died,” I told him.

  That stopped him. Then his colorless face came up with a ghastly yellow-toothed smile. “I musta missed that edition. You know, back when the Bowery Bum kills were the big thing, I saved all the newspapers. Kept them for years. Lot of pictures of you, Captain Chambers, when you was a rookie cop. Hell, you haven’t changed much, considering.”

  If Henry Brogan thought Pat was smiling, he was dead wrong. “But you have, Henry,” he said.

  “How’s that, Captain?”

  I had seen Pat with that placid grin before. “I’m sorry you’re dying,” he told him, “only because it’s too easy a way out for you.”

  “So you believe I did those killings?”

  “If you did them, you’re getting off easy. Decades of freedom followed by a few weeks of dying. If you didn’t do the crimes, you’re letting a serial killer loose, and that makes you an accomplice. So I’m fine with you being dead.”

  “Expect me to be offended, Captain? Or maybe bust out crying?”

  I said, “Getting good drugs there, Henry? Feeling no pain?”

  “It’s morphine. It’s the best.”

  To Pat, I said, “Means I might have to put some muscle in it, to loosen him up. But we should try. Why don’t we let this nice officer here step outside for a while, Pat, and take a break while we… interrogate the suspect?”

  Brogan gave me a sudden, sharp stare.

  I went on: “We can break some fingers and maybe an elbow and he’ll hurt like hell, morphine or not, and it will look like he fell out of bed. Oh, he’ll still be able to talk, when he’s not screaming.”

  Suddenly the chatty Brogan couldn’t think of a thing to say as the uniformed cop got up out of his seat and started for the door, doing a damn fine job of hiding his grin.

  Then Brogan got his voice back and yelled, “Don’t you go, officer! Don’t you go, you hear!”