The Big Bang Read online

  "Sure, when it comes to extortion, drugs, prostitution—you name it."

  Billy's nod was age-old and unconcerned. "You name it," he agreed, "and wherever you are, you'll find it. They say Junior was behind a hundred hits but never got indicted once."

  "They aren't wrong."

  Billy cocked his head. "Why is it he's called Junior, Mr. Hammer? He's no kid."

  "He was named after his uncle, a Syndicate guy who bought it back in the early '50s. He looks a lot like his uncle did, and got nicknamed Junior as a kid, and it held, even as he rose to a similar position of power. He's a bad apple, Billy. You don't want to get too friendly with the likes of Junior Evello."

  "Funny thing," Billy said, shaking his head, "but you'd never know that. He was nice to everybody, Mr. Hammer! Hell, he gave gold watches to the nurses, money to the orderlies—I got a ten-dollar tip for mailing a letter for him."

  "What was he in for?" I asked.

  "Not what you'd think," Billy said. "You'd figure maybe one of his enemies would get him, or he'd get shot up by the cops over something. But instead he started to cross against the light on Lexington Avenue, and got clipped by a lady driver making a turn. He made them bring him up here, because he didn't want to be too far from where he lives. Dr. Harrin took care of him, personally. Junior left a beaut of a watch for him."

  I wondered if Harrin had kept it.

  "That actor was something else, too. The nurses went crazy trying to keep the girls out of there. But at the same time, they were swarming all over that poor guy themselves. Half of them bawled when he was released, would you believe it?" Billy stopped, and a half-embarrassed smile blossomed. "Was there ... something you wanted to see me about, Mr. Hammer?"

  "Yeah, there was," I said, letting more smoke out. "You familiar with the Village Ceramics Shoppe?"

  "Sure," he said with a shrug. "Dr. Harrin's sent me over there for materials a few times. The kids in therapy use the stuff. Dr. Harrin started the project last year and it works swell. They seem to—"

  I cut in: "A guy name of Russell Frazer worked there. You know him?"

  After a moment's thought, he said, "Tall, slim fella, kind of slicked down, about twenty-five?"

  I said that could fit him all right.

  "Didn't know his name," Billy went on, "but he took the doc's order from me once. He delivers the ceramics here for the shop. Why?"

  "Somebody killed him."

  Billy frowned. "That's too bad. I mean, I didn't really know the guy, but ... why are you telling me this, Mr. Hammer?"

  "Frazer used to live close to the Brix kid. He could have known Felton and Haver, too."

  The blood drained from his face, leaving the abrasions more prominent than ever. "How was he killed?"

  I gave him the whole thing, from the attack on me through the discovery of Frazer's corpse.

  "Christ," the kid said, breathlessly.

  "Billy," I asked him, locking eyes, "the other day when we were talking—are you sure you gave it to me straight?"

  His answer was quiet, but very direct: "Right down the line, Mr. Hammer."

  "Nothing you might have left out?"

  "Like what?"

  "This ceramics shop is a new wrinkle. You knew Frazer from there, a little. Did you ever see those punks hanging out there—Brix, Felton, Haver?"

  "No, but ... well, I might have seen them near the place. On the street. I mean, it's the same general neighborhood, but never in the shop or loafing in the alley or anything."

  "Okay," I said with a nod.

  And when I nodded, he knew that I believed him and he smiled back, the color returning to his face.

  I was getting up from the carton when he added, "But, Mr. Hammer—I didn't tell you everything I was thinking."

  That stopped me. "Want to try it now?"

  He took a deep breath and looked right at me. "You have any idea what hospital security is like in this city?"

  "From what I read in the papers, pretty lax."

  "Lax is right. Get an addict in for treatment, and he'll still get his junk. Try the big hospitals, and they're buying and selling all over the place. Somebody even stole the copper roofing off Bellevue to pay for the stuff."

  "So I heard."

  "Mr. Hammer, some of the guys who work here at Saxony worked other places, before, and when I hear how they schemed to lay their hands on narcotics, I get sick. They brag about how they used to switch stuff around, so the loss wasn't noticeable right away."

  "You report this, Billy?"

  "No. Could just be talk, and I got to swim in these waters, don't I? I go around finking, and something bad will happen."

  I didn't remind him that his face was battered and he'd just crawled out of a hospital bed.

  "Anyway," he was saying, "it can't happen at the college, and because Saxony is small, it's pretty tight here, too. But even in this place, when you match the inventory sheets with the checkout lists, you can see the shortages."

  I sat back down on the carton. "Go on, Billy."

  "I don't use, Mr. Hammer. But I know people who do...."

  "What kind of people?"

  "Various kinds. Please don't press me on it."

  "Okay."

  "I'll just say, you'd be surprised how young some of them are right now. And I hear things."

  "What have you heard?"

  We couldn't have been more alone, but his voice dropped to a hush. "There's a shortage of stuff on the street. It isn't hitting the guys with the big money, but it's got the nickel- and dime-bag buyers in a real bind. Hospitals are getting forced withdrawal cases all over the city. Either the dealers are holding back, to jump the prices, or the stuff isn't coming through."

  "Which is why Brix and Felton put the squeeze on you to supply them."

  "Exactly right, Mr. Hammer. They figured, with me on the inside, and them pushing? We could grab off all the small stuff, and really clean up."

  "Could you have gotten the stuff?"

  He shook his head. "Not at the college."

  "What about here?"

  His half-smile was more a smirk. "I could have figured something out," he told me honestly. "If I had wanted to."

  "And your old schoolmates knew that."

  He nodded glumly. "They knew it."

  I dropped my cigarette butt in the half-empty soda bottle somebody used for an ashtray, and stood up. "Thanks, Billy." I handed him my business card. "Keep right on thinking. If anything comes of it, let me know."

  "Sure." He tucked the card in his back jeans pocket. "And, Mr. Hammer—this Frazer guy? You didn't ... didn't come back and take him out, did you?"

  "No, son," I said. "Somebody else beat my time."

  Dr. Alan Sprague, friend and colleague of Dr. David Harrin, also worked at both Saxony Hospital and Dorchester Medical College. I caught up with him at the latter.

  He was a round little guy with bristly gray hair and a tired but ready smile. He was in a short-sleeve white shirt with a blue bow tie, his white coat hanging on a hook, and was rocking in the chair behind Dr. Harrin's desk, the office being about the only quiet place on the floor.

  Harrin had left that morning for Paris, to make the first three days of seminars before touring the hospitals where experimental work in cancer research was in progress. Sprague had taken over Harrin's caseload and his classes, and right now was catching a breather from his work.

  I settled in the chair opposite him. I had a Lucky going and he his pipe.

  I said, "Paris isn't bad this time of the year, Doc. You should have joined him."

  Sprague waved off the idea with a grunt. "We have enough of that right here in the States," he said in his gruff baritone. "Finding time to keep up with all the new medical developments, and just getting the work done, is bad enough, let alone taking a trip on the social side of the scientific world. I'm surprised David even bothered with it."

  "Why's that?"

  "He's a damn workhorse." Sprague glanced at the pipe in his fingers and s
crubbed the bowl with his thumb. "And I'll tell you one thing—if ever anybody needed a break in his routine, it's David. I've been trying to get him to take a vacation ever since his son died, and all I ever managed was two days on a golf course. He drives himself too hard, too goddamn hard."

  "I've seen it happen before," I told him. "Not much left when you lose your family."

  "Oh, it's understandable, all right. Just not conducive to good health. Even machines wear out if they're mistreated." He rocked back. "Now, Mr. Hammer ... what can I do for you?"

  He was familiar with what had happened and, when I mentioned what Billy had told me about lax security at the hospital, agreed Saxony had its flaws in that area and admitted he didn't see a solution.

  "In most cases," he told me, "it's a plain case of oversize institutions with heavy traffic in and out of restricted areas. Keys can be lost, duplicated, and used before locks can be changed. Because of a supervisory shortage, one person will be in charge of a maintenance crew or cleanup team. Then again, you can even have the problem of some authorized person removing drugs without accounting for them."

  "Medical personnel?"

  He raised an eyebrow and nodded. "There have been such cases. We had two right here, where underpaid interns were so far in debt they took the chance. And they blew their careers right out the window."

  I nodded, then asked, "Much pilferage lately?"

  "Holding at the usual rate. Why?"

  "They say things are getting tight on the street."

  He tented his fingers before his face, and his eyes narrowed. "Wait until the Snowbird gets back. It'll loosen up, then."

  "Who?"

  His smile was a world-weary one. "His right name is Jay Wren, a little joke his mother played on him. Locally he's known as the Snowbird, a big-time pusher who moved in on this ... I believe the word is... 'turf,' a few years ago."

  I sighed smoke. "I don't know which surprises me more, Doc—that I never heard of this Snowbird, or that you know all about him."

  He shrugged. "On the latter score, Mr. Hammer, we deal with more than our share of drug-related illness here, from infection caused by dirty needles to O.D.'s and full-scale addiction. So we have a better than layman's knowledge of what goes on in the world around our facility. As for your lack of knowledge of the Snowbird, he would have been until very lately too minor a player to have made it onto your singular scorecard."

  "But he's moved up?"

  "And beyond. He represents a new generation, and possibly a threat to the older one."

  "You mean the Syndicate? The Evello crowd? Your former patient, Junior?"

  "Yes. Our former patient." He puffed at his pipe while he weighed what to say. Then: "My understanding is that there's an uneasy alliance between the Snowbird and the old-guard mob. He has the means and the methods to get the product to a, let's call it, younger audience."

  I sat forward. "Wren wasn't on my scorecard till just now. What about the cops? Is he on theirs?"

  "The police have him pegged, all right, but they haven't caught up with him ... yet." He made a disgusted face and a sound to match. "It's a shame to watch these people living it up on the blood of school kids."

  "Where is the Snowbird now?"

  Sprague shrugged again and sucked on his pipe. The fire had gone out and he picked up the crystal lighter from the desk, flicked it a half-dozen times without getting a flame, then put it down in annoyance.

  "I give David a nice new present," he said, "and he doesn't even bother to put fluid in it—just like him."

  "He doesn't have your slogan up yet, either," I said with a little smile, gesturing to the framed "Caveat emptor" parchment leaned against the wall.

  "He has seemed preoccupied of late," Sprague said. "But then, most doctors are."

  I handed him my Zippo across the desk and, when he was stoked up again, he handed it back and said, "Wren was here, or rather at Saxony ... we discharged him a month ago. He still had the cast on his leg, and all I know is he told David he was going to take a vacation until it came off."

  "What happened to him?"

  "Automobile accident."

  "Like with Junior Evello?"

  Sprague gave me a twisted smile and laughed. "Billy tell you about the celebrity suite?"

  "He mentioned it."

  "No, Wren didn't get clipped by a lady driver. He was getting out of his limousine on the driver's side in heavy traffic and got swiped by a truck. Far as I'm concerned, it's too bad it didn't roll over him, although that wouldn't have done more than put a temporary dent in the drug scene around here." He shrugged. "Somebody else would have taken over anyway."

  I asked, "How bad is it up here?"

  He was inspecting the chewed end of his pipe. "We only get to see the ones who are crippled by it, of course, but it's a good indicator of the trend. In brief, it's growing fast. The sad part is that the growth rate is largely in the younger group. Our methadone program here never stops expanding. Right behind it is the VD problem. Until a few years ago you rarely saw an under-eighteen-year-old patient. Now they're coming in sucking lollipops."

  "And that's not all they've been sucking," I said.

  He gestured with an open palm. "Free love is expensive for these children. When the Pill replaces condoms, social disease has a field day. But what I truly despise is the way these children treat it all like a big joke—no concern for themselves or anybody else."

  "Doc, you said it—they're children. They don't have the maturity."

  "They're mature enough to mouth the phrases—society pushed them into it, society can take care of them—only society can't tell them what to do, because they're 'doing their own thing.' Over fifty percent of our drug-abuse patients are repeaters, Mr. Hammer, and fifty percent of those have arrest records ... and who knows what percentage will die early, and bring others down with them."

  "Any answers?"

  Sprague made a face and spread his hands. "If you could pick out one specific group as being responsible and direct your attention toward them—maybe. But it's spread to the rich and poor, educated and uneducated, and all the strata between. Nobody gives a damn because it's their life, right? But if things go awry, society will take care of them."

  "Drug chic, they call it."

  "A disease, I call it." He shook his head in grave frustration. "David and I have spoken about this so very many times. And yet he seemed to get along with both Wren and Evello—treated them with the deference and courtesy you would any patient."

  "Doesn't that have something to do with that oath you took?"

  His eyes flared. "But we don't have to be friendly to them. Businesslike is enough! I've asked David why he ... fraternizes with such scum, but he's never had a reason that makes sense."

  "Why, does he have one that doesn't make sense?"

  "Several times he's said to me, 'Alan, it takes dead cells to create a vaccine.'"

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "Who knows? He's said it so often, it ought to be on parchment in one of these stupid frames." He tapped the sludge out of his pipe and leaned forward on the desk, looking at me carefully. "Which brings me to you, Mr. Hammer. In view of your reputation, and your profession, your interest in the matter here is a little disconcerting."

  I grinned. "Ever been knifed, Doctor? Stabbed?"

  "I wield a blade myself, but in the manner you suggest—I can't say I have."

  "It isn't very pleasant, having a knife shoved in your back. That was tried on me last night."

  He leaned forward. "Tried...?"

  I told him what had happened.

  "And you think it was related to the attack on Billy Blue?"

  "'Think' isn't exactly the right word, Doc. It's an oddball feeling I have that for some reason somebody is trying to toss my ass in the wringer. Like being in the jungle—you don't always go by what you see ... you go by what you feel, or else something's going to drop on you from overhead, or kill you from the blind side."

 
"What do you propose doing?"

  "Just making a nuisance of myself maybe. Antagonize something or somebody into coming out in the open where it can be clobbered."

  "That isn't a very antiseptic method, is it, Mr. Hammer?"

  I grinned at him and got ready to leave. "Look at how long Madame Curie worked at it before she isolated radium."

  Dr. Sprague smiled gently, his eyes thoughtful. "You might keep something else in mind, Mr. Hammer. Madame Curie died of radiation poisoning."

  Chapter Five

  SOMEWHERE IN PAT CHAMBERS' private collection, not on public display, are four medals for wartime valor, nine commendations from the New York Police Department, and a couple of civilian citations for exceptional bravery. He had faced down armed gunmen, rescued little old ladies from burning buildings, and driven mad chases in pursuit of bandits.

  All that without batting an eye.

  Right now, however, he was scared shitless.

  The knife in his trembling hand didn't want to go through a filet that should cut like butter, and when he tried to stir his coffee, the spoon rattled like a blind beggar shaking the pencils in his cup.

  I grinned at the terrified captain of police, that bachelor brute of the Homicide Division, whose words were choking up in his throat when he was asked to make simple, polite conversation.

  All because Velda had brought a friend to supper who had this crazy typing-paper-colored hair and big, full breasts that tried to burst through a semi-sheer, laced-up blouse, and seemed about to succeed any second. The air-conditioning in Finero's Steakhouse, just off Broadway, wasn't really necessary, but it did make the dame's nipples stand out like bullets, which was fitting because that was what Pat was sweating, electric breeze or not.

  Helen DiVay had started out as a stripper and never forgot it, even though she'd long since come up in the world. One day maybe half a dozen years ago, she had taken five grand out of her savings from traveling skin shows, invested in a then-unknown stock issue called Xerox, and now, ten years later, she had a few million bucks from a company that had seen one stock split after another.