Survival... ZERO! mh-11 Read online

  While I shaved there was news about the troop movements going into critical areas of the state, sections where power stations and reservoirs were located, their training missions all highly secretive. Results of the operations would be analyzed and announced within two weeks.

  Two weeks. That's how much time they knew they had. Success meant announcement. Failure meant destruction.

  There would be no need for an announcement then. Somehow I still couldn't get excited about it. I wondered what the city would look like if the project failed. New York without smog because the factories and incinerators had no one to operate them. No noise except the wind and the rain until trees grew back through the pavement, then there would be leaves to rustle. Abandoned vehicles would rot and blow away as dust, finally blending with the soil again. Even bones would eventually decompose until the remnants of the race were gone completely, their grave markers concrete and steel tombstones hundreds of feet high, the caretakers of the cemetery only the microscopic organisms that wiped them out. Hell, it didn't sound so bad at all if you could manage to stick around somehow and enjoy it.

  A commercial interrupted the broadcast, then the announcer came back with news of a sudden major-power meeting of the United Nations. A possible summit meeting at the White House was hinted at. The dove factions were screaming because our unexpected military maneuvers might trigger the same thing in hostile quarters. The hawks were applauding our gestures at preparedness. Everything was going just right. Eddie Dandy's bomb was demolished in the light of the blinding publicity that seared the unsuspecting eyes of the public.

  And all I wanted to do was find me a pickpocket. Plus a couple of guys who had tried to knock me off.

  I finished my shower, got dressed, made a phone call, then went down to the cabstand on the corner. Eddie Dandy met me for coffee in a basement counter joint on Fifty-third, glad to get away from the usual haunts where he was bugged about his supposed TV goof. He was sitting there staring at himself in the polished stainless steel side of the bread box, his face drawn, hair mussed, in a suit that looked like it had been slept in. Somehow, he seemed older and thinner and when I sat down he just nodded and waved to the counterman for another coffee.

  "You look like hell," I said.

  "So should you." His eyes made a ferret-like movement at mine, then went back to staring again.

  I spilled some milk and sugar into my coffee and stirred it. "I got other things to think about."

  "You're not married and got kids, that's why," he said.

  "That bad?"

  "Worse. Nothing's turned up. You know how they're faking it?" He didn't let me answer. "They've planted decoy containers in all shapes and sizes that are supposed

  to be explosive charges. Everybody's out on a search, Army, Navy, C.D. units, even the Scouts. They're hoping somebody will turn up something that isn't a decoy and they'll have a starting place. Or a stopping place."

  I grabbed a doughnut and broke it in two, dunking the big end in my coffee. "That bad?"

  "Oh, cool, Mike, cool. How the hell do you do it?"

  "I don't. I just don't worry about it. They got thousands of people doing the legwork on that one. Me, I have my own problems."

  "Like getting shot at in Lippy's apartment."

  "You get around, friend."

  "There was a news leak out of Kansas City and Pat had me in again. I heard him talking about it to the guy with the squeaky voice from the D.A.'s office. All I did was put two and two together. What happened?"

  "Nothing." I gave him the details of the episode and watched him shrug it off. Nothing was as big as what he was sitting on right then.

  "Maybe you got the right attitude after all," Eddie finally said. He sipped his coffee and turned around. I knew his curiosity would get the better of him. "When you going to ask me something you don't know?"

  I stuffed the rest of the doughnut in my mouth, wiped the jelly off my fingers and grinned at him. "Woody Ballinger," I said.

  "Come on, Mike." His voice sounded disgusted with me.

  "Two months ago you did that crime special on TV," I reminded him. "Part of the expose touched his operation."

  "So what? I made him a typical example of hoods the law doesn't seem to tap out, always with enough loot to hire good lawyers to find the loopholes. He hides everything behind legitimate businesses and goes on bilking the public. You saw the show."

  "I'm interested in what you didn't say, friend. You researched the subject. You got some pretty weird contacts too. You were fighting a time element in the presentation and the network didn't want to fight any libel suits, even from Woody."

  "Mike ... what's to know? He's in the rackets. The cops know damn well he's number two in the policy racket uptown but can't prove it. It used to be bootlegging and whores, then narcotics until he rubbed Lou Chello wrong and the mob gave him that one-ended split. He has what he has and can keep it as long as his nose stays clean

  with the lasagne lads. They'll protect their own, but only so far."

  "A year ago there was a rumble about buddy Woody innovating a new policy wrinkle in the Wall Street crowd. Instead of nickels and dunes it was a grand and up. Winning numbers came from random selections on the big board. There was a possibility of it being manipulated."

  "Balls. Those guys wouldn't fall for it," Eddie reminded me.

  "They're speculators, kid," I said. "Legit gamblers. Why not?"

  Eddie waited while the counterman poured him another coffee and left to serve somebody else. "I checked that out too. Nobody knew anything. I got lots of laughs, that's all."

  "Wilbur Craft supposedly made a million out of one payoff," I said.

  "Nobody saw it if he did. Or maybe he paid it to his lawyers to get him off that stock fraud hook. I spoke to him up in Sing Sing and he said it was all talk."

  "Maybe he didn't want to get hit with an income tax rap on top of everything else. He only drew three years on the fraud rap."

  "Keep trying, Mike."

  "Craft still has his estate in Westchester."

  "Sure, and the place in Florida and the summer place in Hawaii. It was all free and clear before they rapped him."

  "Upkeep, pal. It takes a lot of dough," I said.

  "I know. I got a five-room apartment on the East Side."

  "Suppose Woody did run a big operation independently?"

  "Then he'd be sticking his neck way out there just asking it to get chopped off. The dons would have their pizza punks out there with their shooters in his ears for even trying it. No dice, Mike."

  "Guys get big," I said. "They don't want somebody else's hand in their affairs. They think they're big enough to stand them off. They have their own shooters ready to protect the territory."

  "Unknown powers can do it. Not slobs who like to parade it in public."

  "Egos like to be recognized," I said.

  "That's how they get dead."

  "Just suppose," I asked him.

  Eddie blew on his coffee and tasted it. He had forgotten the sugar, made a face and stirred some in. "He'd have to

  do it in his head. No books, no evidence. All cash, personal contacts, and hard money payoffs."

  "Woody's a thinker, but no damn computer."

  "Then a minimum of notations, easy to hide, simple to destroy."

  "But it could be done?"

  "Certainly, but ..." Eddie put his cup down and turned around to look at me, his eyes squinted half shut. "Either you're trying to make me feel good by getting my mind off things or you got something. Which?"

  "You'll never feel good, kid. I was just confirming something I thought of."

  "Damn, you're a bastard," Eddie said with a quick grin.

  "Why does everybody call me that?" I asked.

  CHAPTER 7

  Velda had left a recorded message at ten fifteen stating that she had located Little Joe, the no-legged beggar who pushed himself along on a skate-wheeled platform. Little Joe had seen Lippy and a tall, skinny guy together o
n several occasions. They were obviously friends, but Little Joe didn't buy the other guy at all. He figured him for a hustler, but didn't ask any questions. His own business was enough for him. He could probably recognize the guy again if he saw him, but the skimpy description was the best Little Joe could do. Velda had left him my numbers to call if he saw him again and if it turned up right Little Joe earned himself a quick hundred. Meanwhile, Velda was going to stay in the area and see what else she could pick up.

  Tall and skinny. Probably a million guys like that in the city, but at least it was a start. Eliminate the squares, look for a hustler in a ten-block area during a critical time period when the theater crowds were going in and out and you could narrow it down to a handful. The trouble was, that handful would be the cagy ones. They wouldn't be that easy to spot. They had their moves plotted and a charted course of action if somebody made them. They could disappear into a hundred holes and nobody was going to smell them out for you. I put the phone back, turned my raincoat collar up and went outside and waited for a cab.

  Pat's office wasn't the madhouse I thought it would be. All officers available for duty were out in the field and only a lone bored-looking reporter was on a telephone turning in a routine report. A dozen empty cardboard coffee cups stuffed with drowned cigarette butts littered the desk, holding down sheafs of paper.

  I said, "Hi, buddy," and he turned around, his face seamed with fatigue lines, his eyes red-veined from lack of sleep. "You look beat."

  "Yeah."

  I pulled a chair up, sat down and stretched my legs. "Since when does an operation this size involve homicide?"

  "Ever since that guy died in the subway."

  "Anything new?"

  "Not a damn thing."

  "Then why don't you try sleeping in a bed for a change?"

  "We're not all private citizens," Pat growled.

  "How's the general reaction so far?"

  "We're managing."

  "Somebody's going to wonder about the Russians looking for a summit meeting and the bit going on in the U.N."

  "There's enough tension in the world to make it look plausible. You have four shooting fracases going on right now and three of those involved have nuclear capabilities if they decide to use them. There's reason enough for international concern. Washington can handle it if certain parties who know just a little too damn much can keep quiet."

  "Don't look at me, buddy. It's your problem."

  Pat gave me a lopsided grin. "Oh no. Some of it's yours. Unless you're immune to certain deadly diseases."

  "They isolate it yet?"

  "No."

  "Locate the agents that were planted here?"

  "No."

  "You talk too much," I said.

  Pat leaned back and rubbed his eyes. "There's nothing to talk about. For the first time the Reds are as bugged about it as we are. They know we have a retaliation policy and damn well know its potential. Nobody can afford to risk a C.B. war. They haven't been able to run down a single piece of written evidence on this business at all. If there ever was any, it's been deliberately destroyed by that previous regime. That bunch tried to keep a dead hand in office and they did a pretty good job. We have to work on rumor and speculation."

  "Did the technicians at Fort Derrick come up with anything?"

  His eyes gave me an unrelenting stare.

  "Come on, Pat. There's nothing really new about our chemical-biological warfare program being centered there."

  "What could they come up with?" he asked me softly.

  "Like nuclear physics, problems and solutions seem to be arrived at simultaneously. When that agent was planted here that bacteriological program would have been developed to a certain point. Now it's twenty-some years later, so they should be able to guess at what he had as a destructive force."

  "Nice," Pat said. "You're thinking. They can make a few educated guesses, all right, but even back then, what was available was incredibly destructive. Luckily, they worked on antibiotics, vaccines and the like at the same time so they could probably avoid total contamination with a crash immunization program."

  I looked at him and grinned. "Except that there isn't enough time to go into mass production of the stuff."

  Pat didn't answer me.

  "That means only a preselected group would be given immunization and who will that group consist of ... the technicians who have it at hand, a power squad who can take it away from them, or selection by the democratic method of polls and votes?"

  "You know what it means," Pat said.

  "Sure. Instant panic, revolution, everything gets smashed in the process and nobody gets a thing."

  "What would you do, Mike?"

  I grinned at him again. "Oh, round up a few hundred assorted styles of females, a couple of obstetricians, a few male friends to share the pleasure and to split the drinks, squirt up with antibiotics and move to a nice warm island someplace and start the world going again."

  "I never should have asked," Pat said with a tired laugh. "At least now I'll be able to get some sleep knowing the problem has been solved." He yawned elaborately, then stifled it. "Unless you got another one."

  "Just one. Did ballistics get anything on those shots in Lippy's apartment?"

  Pat moved a coffee cup aside and tugged out a stained typewritten sheet of paper. "They dug a .38 slug out of the floor. The ejected cartridge was a few feet away. The ring bands on the lead were well defined so it was either a new piece or an old gun with a fresh barrel. My guess would be a Colt automatic."

  "You check the sales from local outlets?"

  "Peterson did. Everything turned up clean since the new law in the state went into effect, but prior to that there were thousands of sales made outside the state that would be almost impossible to run down. Anybody intending to use a gun illegally is going to be pretty cagy about it,

  especially buying one through a legitimate source. I wouldn't pin any hopes on tracking that job down unless you locate the gun itself. Or have you?"

  "Not yet."

  "I wish I had the time or inclination to nail your pants to a chair," Pat said. "Right now I couldn't care less. Incidentally," he added, "I might as well give you a little fatherly advice. Although several people in rather high places who seem to know you pretty well have vouched for your so-called integrity, the skeptics from the bureaus in D.C. decided a little surveillance wouldn't hurt. They didn't like the contact between you and Eddie Dandy this morning."

  "I didn't have any tail on me."

  "Eddie did. He works in a more sensitive area than you do. It wouldn't surprise me a bit if he went into custody until this thing was over."

  "They wouldn't be that stupid."

  "Like hell they wouldn't. He tell you about that business in Kansas City?"

  "He mentioned it."

  "Plain luck we stopped it this time."

  "It'll get a lot stickier if anybody really wants to get Inquisitive," I said. "How about some lunch?"

  "Thanks, but I'm too bushed. I'm grabbing some sleep. Tonight I got a detail covering the reception at that new delegation building they just opened. The Soviets and their satellite buddies are throwing a bash and everybody's got visions of fire bombs and bullets dancing through their heads."

  "Crazy," I said. "Can I use your phone?"

  "Go ahead."

  I dialed my office number, waited for the automatic signal, held the tone gimmick up to the mouthpiece and triggered it. Four faint musical bleeps came out, there was a pause and a voice with a laugh hidden in it said, "Please, Mr. Tape Recorder, inform your master that his cultivator is available for an afternoon drink. He has the office phone number."

  I felt myself grinning and hung up. "Has to be a broad," Pat said. "It has to."

  "It was," I told him.

  "Just how many broads you figure you collect any given month, pal?"

  "Let's put it this way," I said. "I throw away more than most guys get to see."

  Pat wrinkled his face and wa
ved for me to get the hell away from him. Some perennial bachelors are different from others.

  The bar at Finero's Steak House was packed three deep with a noisy crowd fighting the martini-Manhattan war, the combatants armed with stemmed glasses and resonant junior-executive voices. A scattering of women held down the barstools, deliberately spaced out to give the stags room to operate, knowing they were the objects of attention and the possible prizes. The one on the end was nearly obscured by the cluster of trim young men jockeying for position, but for some reason the back of her head and the way her hair tumbled around her shoulders was strangely familiar to me. She swung around to say something and laugh at the one behind her who was holding out a lighter to fire up her cigarette when her eyes reached out between the covey of shoulders and touched mine.

  And Heidi Anders smiled and I smiled back.

  The two young men turned and they didn't smile because they were Woody Ballinger's two boys, Carl and Sammy, and for one brief instant there was something in their faces that didn't belong in that atmosphere of joviality and the little move they instinctively made that shielded them behind the others in back of them was involuntary enough to stretch a tight-lipped grin across my face that told them I could know.

  Could.

  From away back out of the years I got that feeling across my shoulders and up my spine that said things were starting to smell right and if you kept pushing the walls would go down and you could charge in and take them all apart until there was nothing left but the dirt they were made of.

  So I made a little wave with my forefinger and Heidi Anders said something to her entourage, put her glass down on the bar and came to me through the path they opened for her and when she reached me said, "Thank you, Mike."

  "For what?"

  "Yelling at me. I looked in the mirror. It's worse than the camera. It tells you the truth without benefit of soft lighting, makeup men and development techniques."

  "Sugar," I asked her, "when did you last pop one?"

  "You were there."

  "And it was cold turkey all the way? Kid, you sure don't look like you're in withdrawal."