Mike Hammer--King of the Weeds Read online

  “If you mean somebody wants me dead, yeah. Tell me something—you been covering this area about the same time the past week?”

  He let out a grunt. “For the past six months is more like it. We’re winding down the shift right now. Why? What is it you need?”

  I gave them a description of my assailant, but both were quick to say they hadn’t noticed anybody fitting that description, or for that matter anything unusual on the Hackard Building’s block. They did admit that they might not have been quite so sharp at the end of their tour, which wound up in this section. And the past week had been a pretty busy time. But they’d ask around and if anything turned up, they’d pass it on to Pat.

  “Or me directly,” I said, and knowing a card from a P.I. was nothing a cop wanted on him, added: “I’m in the book. You never know when a client wants to get in touch.”

  “Yeah,” Steve said, “or some asshole with a gun.”

  When they pulled away I went back to the Hackard Building and waited till Bill Raabe, the night security guard, came up from the basement locker room. He was in slacks and a sports jacket with a raincoat slung over his shoulder; like a lot of retired cops, he still wore an out-of-sight gun in a belt holster.

  He knew that I had spotted the bulge and said, “Mike, it’s a habit I can’t seem to break.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I told him, and gave him a quick peek at the .45 under my left arm.

  “If that baby could talk,” he said, shaking his head and smiling.

  “If it could, my friend,” I said, “I would be in stir.”

  He laughed at that, then moved his head to see behind me, making sure nobody was in earshot. “What went on upstairs, Mike? Two uniforms came around, kids I broke in on the street ten years ago, and took statements from me. Not that I could tell ’em anything.”

  “Somebody tried to knock me off. Couple days ago. Shot me twice.”

  Nothing fazed this guy. Without a change of expression, he asked me the same body armor question Rita had.

  When I told him about the dictionary, he said, “Well, I’d trade Mr. Webster in on some real armor if I were you, Mike. If some bastard is out for you. You wouldn’t believe the bullet-proof gear they got today.”

  “Actually I would. I’ve used it.”

  He frowned. “Well, use it again.”

  I was privy to an experimental lightweight vest courtesy of an inventor pal of mine who developed high-tech gear for law enforcement, both local and federal.

  But when I didn’t share that info with him, Bill just said, “What are you after, Mike? Clue me in.”

  “You had much foot traffic through here at night lately?”

  “For the past month, it’s been only the same six tenants. Five males and one female. They’ve been in this building since I been here. Two are with an insurance outfit, the other three, which includes the woman, is a lawyer’s office. These six do a lot of night work.”

  “And how do you pass the time?”

  “Sit and read, mostly. If I get antsy, I get up and go look out the window. Hardly anybody out there at night, no drunks, no hookers, in this section… It’s a real quiet street.”

  “You said ‘hardly.’”

  His mouth worked itself into a very faint smile. “Sometimes I forget what business you’re in.”

  I waited.

  He said, “About four days ago, I saw the same guy go past here three different times.”

  “So?”

  “Where’s there to go around here? There’s two office buildings, one small apartment house that’s empty ’cause of refurbishing, and all the rest is closed stores. Closest diner or coffee shop is two blocks.”

  I described my assailant as best I could.

  Bill nodded. “That could be him. Small guy, natty but not flashy. I was close to the window the last time he went by, and he turned his head as if he had seen somebody on the other side of the street, which maybe was him not wanting me to get a better fix on him. I glanced over where he was looking and nobody was there.”

  “You think he could have been casing this building for anything?”

  “Why? It’s not like we’re the diamond district. I suppose the computers in these offices might be worth a…” He stopped abruptly and frowned. “Jesus, I’m slow on the uptake today. I blew that guy off because… Mike, damnit, I’m sorry. A hit never occurred to me.” He wet his lips with his tongue. “Nobody in this place is worth hitting except you.”

  “Don’t I count, Bill?”

  “Yeah, but… you don’t run in the kind of circles you used to. Everybody says… nothing.”

  “What, Bill?”

  “I mean no offense, Mike, but after you got shot up on the waterfront, and fell off the grid, well… since you came back, everybody talks like you’re just another…”

  “Old fart?”

  “I didn’t say that. I feel like a fool, a goddamn idiot, not alerting you to this guy. I mean, a lot of people could have grudges against you. I remember you knocking off some real hard-cases back in the old days. They could have relatives.”

  “That’s not what this is about.”

  “What is it about, Mike?”

  “If I knew,” I said, “I wouldn’t be out asking questions.”

  He looked past me, as a couple walked toward the elevator. “Married,” he said. “They run that photography studio. Not the commercial, the studio.”

  “Yeah.”

  Then, very casually, and softer than before, he said, “Back before the holidays, I heard a rumor that you had come into some real dough. That true, Mike?”

  “Do I look like I’m carrying a bankroll?”

  “Well, that might explain somebody popping you. Maybe you’re carrying around a wad, and this was just a kind of mugging.”

  “Not what it was. Where did you hear this, me coming into money?”

  “Ah, I’m just passing on a rumor.”

  “Where’d you hear it?”

  “In a bar.” He leaned in. “Remember Teddy Baer?”

  “Sure. Killed breaking into an electronics store. Didn’t know the owner slept there. How would he get a story like that?”

  “Teddy told a friend of mine. Said that’s what one of Ponti’s guys had heard.” He saw my face tighten at that. “Fatso Berg told Teddy. Fatso ate like a horse but was skinny as a rail, which is why they called him Fatso. It’s ironic.”

  “Is that what it is. Where’s Fatso now?”

  “A cemetery. He got hit by a bakery truck and killed not long after.”

  Now that was ironic.

  I said, “Hell, a small-fry like Fatso wouldn’t have the skinny. He was no made man.”

  “Come on, Mike, he had ears. Even those fringe mob guys pick up on things.”

  “You tell all this to the cops who came around the other day?”

  “They didn’t ask me the same questions as you, Mike. Since I didn’t know what was going on, I never gave it much thought.”

  I let out a sigh. “Okay, Bill. Keep your eyes open, will you? If you see pale-hat boy again, let me know.”

  He patted his jacket over the belted .38. “Want me to take him?”

  “No! Don’t get ambitious. Just call me. I’m more anxious to talk to him than kill him. You know—first things first.”

  “You want who hired him.”

  “I want his employer, yes.” I reached in my pocket and took out some bills.

  Bill caught my wrist. “Mike… cut the comedy. Not necessary.”

  “I’m always glad to help a guy out who helps me out.”

  He grinned, shook his head. “In thirty years with the department, I got to know some high-rollers on Wall Street. Over time, I made a bundle. Now I’m retired and nobody’s shooting at me.”

  “Then why the hell are you working nights in this place, Bill?”

  “A guy’s got to get out of the house,” he said. “I have breakfast with the guys from the precinct, then go home and sleep all day, so I don’t have to lis
ten my wife ranting and raving.”

  “Personal problems, Bill?”

  “Oh yeah.” His eyes widened. “She’s a Democrat.”

  * * *

  When I got on the elevator, I had that funny feeling in the pit of my stomach and I automatically opened my jacket to make it easier to get to my .45. I went up and the elevator door slid open, but nobody was there. From down the hall came the muted voices of the commercial photographers having a final coffee before getting to their assignments.

  I stepped out, saw nobody, and walked to the office. I unlocked the door and went in, Velda not in yet. I shrugged out of my trenchcoat and hung it up, feeling that small ache in my side and the tightness of my bruised chest. I started the coffee, then went into my inner office, took the clip out of the automatic, and laid it on my desk. My watch said it wasn’t seven yet and for some stupid reason I felt like I had already done a hard day’s work.

  The window behind me as I sat at the desk revealed a day that couldn’t quite stop being night, overcast and threatening rain. Suddenly every ache in me decided to throb and I had that fox-hole feeling where everything seemed to be closing in on me.

  There was a time when waiting for school to let out for the summer, the days dragged by as if they were hauling a load of rocks. Time moved slow when you were a kid, and summer lasted forever but not long enough. Summer for me as a kid was the beach. But now hot days and warm ocean water seemed a lifetime away. No, not summer, but Florida was calling me back, to spend whatever time Velda and I had left far away from bullet alley, where the sand was warm and the pace was slow. This was the city, where everything was greased and slippery; time was on a fast roll, rocket-driven, and all you could see was an indefinable blur that was your life passing by and it hardly made any sense at all.

  How long ago was Marcus Dooley killed? Not much more than a year, that’s all. How long had it taken him to bury eighty-nine billion dollars? He had all the time he needed and the equipment to do it with, and a bunch of doomed workers, and nobody to oversee him because Don Lorenzo Ponti made sure he was a world away when the big haul went down. It was all done so silently and quickly. Nobody would notice bulldozers working if that’s where they were supposed to be. Nobody would pay attention to trucks if they were supposed to be there. And who would care if they saw nothing accomplished after all that work? They’d probably just figure it to be some government project.

  So how long ago was it that the fertile minds of shrewd old men decided to harvest all their vast wealth into a single touchy-feely pile, dollars in denominations that could still be cashed? Ten years ago, minimum. Their offspring couldn’t be trusted. The new generation would kill their fathers as fast as their enemies. The spawn knew the old guard had given them a royal screwing but they didn’t know how.

  What they did know was that eighty-nine billion dollars in unmarked, used currency represented one vast accumulation of wealth that just didn’t turn into dust and blow into the wind.

  No, that was wrong. They didn’t know. There was no proof. But they suspected with near absolute certainty that the rumor was true.

  And that was enough to kill for.

  To send an assassin in a pale blue hat to take me out.

  So I would deal with the prick. Fine by me. That was the price of doing business when you were Mike Hammer.

  But why now?

  No money ever surfaced. Any wise guy would have to assume that if somebody had tapped into that pile of dough, a lead to that somebody would have surfaced by now. The Ponti affair was ancient news. The government had turned its best people loose to find that rumored cache. They had probed and dug and searched and come up with only a rumor.

  The legal minds in the mob must have done some heavy thinking, trying to weave me into that caper. All they could come up with was an old-time shot-up private dick who’d rushed to the bedside of a dying war buddy. A dinosaur with no smarts, not when he shows himself back in New York where Don Lorenzo Ponti would surely want vengeance on the man who killed Azi, his beloved son, his heir apparent.

  But it hadn’t worked out that way. Azi and his brother Ugo had turned on Don Ponti, and now Azi and the don were dead, and Ugo was buried deep in federal custody. The Pontis were ancient history. And, in a way, so was I.

  But if somebody in what remained of the Ponti camp had figured out that I was the key to all that hidden loot, why in hell would they want me dead?

  The outer door opened and shut and I heard Velda cross the room. Her purse thudded on the desk, and when she opened the door to the inner office, her lovely dark eyes read my mind as easily as if were they were the front page over her morning coffee.

  Speaking of coffee, she brought two cups as she asked, “Any news on various fronts?” She was in a gold silk blouse and a darker gold skirt, and looked like a million.

  Make that billion.

  I said, “What happened to ‘good morning’?”

  She grinned and came over and leaned across the desk and kissed me. It was a soft, warm, light kiss that shouldn’t have done much, but still drew my stomach in with an erotic tickle.

  “Is that good morning enough, Mike?”

  “You’re lucky you’re on that side of the desk,” I told her.

  She glanced at the unloaded weapon on my desk. “What’s with the gun, Mike?”

  “It’s a heavy piece, kitten. Rubs where I hurt.” She didn’t say anything, so I added, “The butt’s pointing my way and it’s well within reach.”

  “It’s unloaded.”

  “There’s one in the chamber.”

  She gave her head a little shake and all that raven hair bounced beautifully. “You never change.”

  “Neither do you, and I like it that way. You’re packing the .32 in your pocketbook again.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I heard it hit the desk.”

  “One would almost think the man’s a detective.”

  She walked around the corner of my typewriter—no computer for me—and settled her sweet rump on my desk and took my hand in hers, then made me feel where she kept her hidden .25 automatic. I took my hand away and said, “Keep that up and I’ll have you go lock the office door.”

  She sat in my lap and put her arms around me, her head back, studying me for clues. “Why don’t we get out of this town, Mike? Find a beach and a cottage where we can make love all day.”

  “And not the night?”

  “The nighttime, too.” She gave me another light kiss, then got up and went around to the client’s chair, settling in and having a sip of coffee. “How long are we going to wait till things ‘settle down’ before we can get married?”

  “Baby, before taking that step, I insist on finding out who wants a piece of me besides you.”

  For a second her eyes went troubled. “You think the hit is tied to the money issue.”

  Now I sipped coffee. “I do. After talking to both Olaf and Brogan, I admit to not knowing which of them was the Bowery Bum slayer, but I can’t see any way either of them could tie in with some sophisticated hitman making a try on me. I asked around the neighborhood, doll—this guy was good. The only person who spotted him was Bill Raabe. And Bill says the guy definitely was casing the building.”

  “A pro.”

  “A high-end pro.”

  “So it’s got to be the money.”

  “Well, it could be some revenge angle from the past, but I don’t buy it.”

  She shrugged and her breasts fought the silk blouse like puppies under a blanket. “You’ve killed more than your share of high-up mob types.”

  “Yes, but any new regime that comes in doesn’t give a shit. Hell, I helped them! No, it’s not mob. Not unless they have somehow figured out where the stash of cash is, and want me out of the picture.”

  An eyebrow arched. “That is possible, Mike. Is anything else possible?”

  I nodded. “The mysterious helper. If Dooley brought along a buddy to help him out, that means another person k
nows about the mountain cave and its secret.”

  Her frown was thoughtful. “So how do we track that? Pat’s tracking the military intelligence side, but what can we do? Dooley is dead, his wife, too, and his employer, and… but not his son!”

  I grinned and nodded. “That’s right. His son Marvin is alive. He and his father weren’t all that tight in recent years, but Marvin may know if there were any friends of his dad’s, maybe drinking buddies from the old days, who Dooley might have turned to.”

  She was already on her feet, heading back to her desk. “We have a phone number on him. I don’t think he’s employed, so we may catch him. I’ll call.” She paused at the connecting door and glanced back prettily. “Finish your coffee.”

  “Why, you think I need the caffeine?”

  “You never know. And load that gun.”

  But I already had.

  * * *

  Marvin Dooley was willing to see us. He lived in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and that was a forty-five-minute drive this time of day. If the rain ever happened, that might slow us, but this seemed a worthwhile day trip.

  Velda locked up the office and we took the elevator down to the building’s basement parking garage. My heap, as I affectionately called my nondescript black Ford, was parked in its designated slot between a pillar and an empty space.

  We were in the car, and I was about to turn the key in the ignition when Velda gripped my arm. “Mike!… This is too familiar…”

  For a long time Velda had bugged me about what a slob I was, getting my car washed every decade or so. But a while back she had finally figured out the method in my madness—that the dirty vehicle left telltale signs of tampering. She had learned this last year, when my gaze down the hood line had stopped me and I had pointed where somebody had left a smeared-clean patch, having squeezed in between the car and the wall to open the hood.

  That had hardly been the first time my car had been rigged to explode upon ignition—back when the Evello mob was after me, they’d left me a sweet new ride, with a very special set of accessories, starting with dynamite sticks rigged with the starter, easy to spot, and a second more sophisticated kicker prepped to go off when I hit a higher speed.