But now, things had changed. They didn’t use old hard-tire trucks to haul their goods in. Planes did that. Ground rules might have been laid down during the prohibition days, but there had been a lot of improvement since. Even in the last five years body armor had undergone a radical transformation. Planes went from reciprocating engines to jet driven overnight. They still had wings, but the power had been so drastically upgraded they hardly acted like airplanes anymore.
I dialed a number I hadn’t used in a long time. Bud Langston was still at the address. He was really glad to hear my voice.
Bud was a super secret whose mail-in paycheck came from some bureau in the Washington loop. His office was small, well organized and laid out for his business, which was computer programming. Any one of the major electronics firms would gladly have had him in their organizations, but Bud was not into
corporate living
.
Bud Langston was an inventor. Tell him what you needed and he’d invent it for you. We had met when we had adjoining seats for a Wagner presentation at the old Metropolitan Opera House before they tore it down and all the singers trooped over to Lincoln Center.
So we sat and talked Wagner and Franz Liszt for a half hour before Bud said, “What’s bothering you, Mike?”
I grimaced, twisted in my seat and favored the bad side.
Bud shook his head. “That’s not what’s bothering you, my friend.”
“I need some information, Bud.”
His eyes looked directly into mine. “If it isn’t classified I might help.”
“If it were redlined I wouldn’t ask,” I said. “Have you heard anything new about body armor?”
“Let’s skip past the Kevlar developments, right?”
“Right,” I said.
A little muscle pulled at the corner of his mouth, making him grin a little lopsidedly. “Well, that’s not classified.”
“I didn’t think it would be.”
He nodded slowly and clasped his hands behind his head. “You sure can get into some strange research, Mike.”
“So?”
“So yes, there was a buzz in the armaments business a few years ago. Remember when the scuba divers were experimenting with a metal mesh designed after the old chain mail the knights used?”
“For stopping shark bites, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, and it worked. At least on smaller sharks. Nobody ever tested it out on a great white.”
“And that stopped high-power bullets?”
“No. That experimentation just led into other avenues and along the way somebody lucked into a material that nothing short of a twenty-millimeter could penetrate. It was
light,
flexible . . . all the things needed for
military
use. The only trouble was the expense.”
“Why didn’t the military get into it then?”
“Mike . . . there won’t be any military in the next war.”
I waited. My mind kept bringing back episodes from the war I was in. Bud seemed to know what I was thinking and shook his head.
“Those old wars were too expensive. They didn’t solve anything. The bad guys and the good guys just swapped sides, that’s all. The wall came down, Russia fell, Africa came apart and the military industrial complex is simply getting rid of its surplus hardware. What happens next is going to be biological and chemical with no noise and no blood. Just death. Ugly, destructive death.”
“Who gets what’s left?” I asked him.
“Who belongs to the big country clubs?” he fired back.
“And that’s the plan?”
Bud said, “I think it’s their plan.”
“You think it’ll work?”
“Hell, no. There are a lot of people smarter than big governments. But what’s all this have to do with body armor?”
“Who invented it, Bud?”
“A young chemistry whiz two years out of some university. His name is Dan Coulter. He manufactured enough product to demonstrate to the government, but everybody balked at the price and he peddled it somewhere else.”
“He patent it?”
“No way. He kept his process strictly secret, and now nobody is ever going to find out how he did it.”
“Why not?”
“Because his whole place blew up with him in it. Dan Coulter is dead.”
“Damn,” I said.
“Before you ask, there was nothing suspicious about the blast. He was using some very critical materials. It’s a wonder he got as far as he did.”
“One more question, Bud.”
“Sure.”
“Could you
duplicate
his work?”
“Certainly,” he said amicably, “but not right now. Living is still a pleasant way to be.”
“What are you hinting at, Bud?”
“Two of his
suppliers
are both dead too. They were involved with his work.”
“How?”
“Separate car accidents three weeks apart. Suspiciously accidental.”
I eased myself into a standing position. “You knew this Coulter guy, didn’t you?”
“Both of us belonged to diving clubs.”
“You said you could duplicate his work.”
“There’s no reason to.”
“Supposing I’d like to see what the stuff looks like.”
“In that case then I’ll get a sample and show it to you.”
“Why do I have to drag everything out of you, Bud?”
“I’m just giving you back some of your own medicine, kiddo. Stop by in about a week and I’ll put on a show for you.”
5
THERE ARE THINGS some people can get done on a telephone that seem incredible, but when you analyze it, the whole affair is simple, direct and logi-cal. It had taken an hour for Velda to locate Marvin Dooley’s latest address on the outskirts of New Brunswick and find out it was a single-room apartment in a run-down section of the city. He had been there for three months, coming from Trenton, was self-employed, had a driver’s license, but no car was registered in his name. I left a call on her answering machine to be ready at four so I could pick her up and beat the rush out of Manhattan.
And she was ready, all right, but just as ready to start up all over again about us not carrying beepers so we could have a more immediate contact. I closed the car door on her, went around to the driver’s side and climbed in. I slid the key into the slot and was about to turn the ignition on when I looked down the hood line and stopped.
Velda caught my reaction right away and drew in her breath. “What is it, Mike?”
After a moment I asked, “What is it you don’t like about my vehicle, kitten?”
“You’re a slob. It’s always dirty.”
“Uh-huh.”
I picked the keys back out, put the gear lever in neutral and told her to get out of the car and stand around the corner.
“Why?”
“Because somebody squeezed in between the car and the wall to open the hood and left a big clean spot on the metal.”
“You think you have a bomb under there?”
“Somebody did something.”
“Then call Pat and let him get the squad over here.”
“If I’m wrong I’ll be using up brownie points. If I’m right I’ll have the DA’s office under my feet again.”
“Mike . . . are you looking to get dead?”
“No. Now get around the corner like I told you.”
“Up yours, boss. You die, I die. They’ll have to give us a double funeral. After all this time I’m not letting you off the hook so easy.”
“Swell. Then start pushing the car back a couple of feet.”
I had unlocked the hood latch from inside the car, the same way they did. I slid the lever over, pulled the hood up and shone a flashlight down into the engine compartment. There was no attempt to hide the unit, a simple arrangement hooked to the ignition for a power source, but this time there wasn’t a bundle of dynamite sticks, but a one-inch-by-four-inch foil-wrapped charge carefully selected for its destructive capabilities. Whoever installed it seemed very sure of himself. There was no booby trap device, no motion igniting mechanism, just that little packet of death waiting for the turn of a key to turn us into red splashes and pieces of flesh.
I unhooked the ignition contact and lifted out the charge. Velda looked around the parking area and said, “What would that have done . . . to all this, Mike?”
I knew she was thinking about the bombing of the Towers downtown. “It wouldn’t be like that, kitten. This would have wiped us out along with the cars on both sides and left a lot of soot on this level.” I grinned at her. “We’d be like red graffiti.”
“You’re disgusting, Mike.”
“Watch it, doll, we’re not married yet.”
I wrapped the wires around the foil package and slid it under the driver’s seat. Velda gave me an incredulous look. “You’re not taking that thing with you . . . are you?”
“It isn’t the kind of explosive that goes off with normal impact. You can squeeze it, hit it, stomp on it . . . but just don’t toss it in the fireplace or jolt it with an electrical spark.”
She finally asked, “Who did it, Mike?”
“The orders probably came from Ponti the Younger. The old man’s too smart to be this obvious. Lorenzo doesn’t play the emotion game. There’s more at stake than that. He’ll want to know what
he thinks
I know before he makes any move on me.”
“And what would that be?”
“Whatever Dooley told me.” I looked over at her, my eyes narrowing in a frown. “And that is relatively nothing,” I added.
I turned the key and the engine purred into life. It was a heck of a way to find out, but there were no slimy seconds under the hood to cover for a misfire. I backed out of the slot and cranked the wheel over and went up the ramp to the street. If anybody was watching, they’d most likely swear under their breath and take it out on their supplier of military goodies.
Velda had charted the run to New Brunswick right on the nose. There were no wrong turns, no stopping to ask directions, just a straight, easy drive. When I stopped in front of the decrepit old building where Marvin Dooley lived, she said, “You like my navigation?”
I grinned. “Beautiful, kitten. I hope you can cook like that.”
The place had a common vestibule that housed eight mailboxes, a single overhead bulb and the smell of multiracial cooking. The slots beneath the mailboxes held names, except for one, and since Dooley wasn’t in any of the others, that blank one had to be Marvin’s. I pushed the button and tried the door. It swung open with no trouble. Muted TV voices overlapped in the area and somewhere a radio was tuned in to a rock station that thumped out a monotonous beat. Behind me, Velda closed the door.
To our left was a wooden staircase leading to the second level. A door creaked open, feet clicked across the floorboards and a male voice yelled over the banister, “Yeah, whatta ya want?”
“Marvin?”
There was a moment’s hesitation before he answered, “Who wants him?”
But by then I was up the stairs and his head jerked around, not knowing whether to hold his ground or duck back into his room. “I’m Mike Hammer, Marvin. I was in the army with your father.”
“He’s dead.”
“We know.”
“Who’s
we
?”
Just then Velda came up the stairs and took his breath away long enough for him to lose his antagonistic attitude. “We are more people than you could imagine,” I said quietly. “You mind inviting us inside?”
He glanced at me a few seconds, frowned, then stared at Velda long enough to change his mind and nodded toward the door. I waited for him to go in first, followed him in closely, then waved to Velda to come and close the door.
As I expected it was a nothing place. One room with a cot that doubled as a sofa, a two-burner stove, small sink and a narrow old-fashioned refrigerator that took up a corner. The kitchen table had two wooden chairs and an old canvas beach chair was right in front of a fairly new TV that was set on the floor. But at least it was clean. There were no dirty dishes, no dust accumulation, no pile of clothes and the only lingering smell was that of an antiseptic soap.
He caught my thoughts right away and said, “I’m poor but neat, Mr. Hammer.” His eyes shifted to Velda and he added, “No woman’s here, lady. It was something I picked up in the navy.”
“The lady is my associate,” I told him. “Her name is Velda.”
No surprise showed in his expression. He nodded toward her and said, “The piece in the paper mentioned her. At the funeral.”
“Why weren’t you there, Marvin?”
He shrugged eloquently. “What good would that have done?”
I knew what he meant. “You didn’t miss anything. He was just ashes in a metal vase.”
“Who came to see him off ?”
“Just people who knew him in the old days. Some others he worked for. Not too many.”
“That mob bunch, huh?”
“Somebody had to cut their grass,” I said.
“Baloney. If my old man did that he was playing a game.”
“Marvin . . . how would you know? When was the last time you saw your father?”
“Before I went in the navy. We hardly kept in touch. A couple of letters and a card that gave me his new address.” A touch of shrewdness seemed to touch his eyes and he looked directly at me. “What did the old man leave me, Mr. Hammer?”
“An urn full of ashes, kiddo. What did you expect?”
“Don’t give me that crap, buster. You didn’t come all the way down here to tell me that. He left me something and you need me to get it.”
“I need you like a hole in the head,” I said. I took out my notepad and wrote down a name and address, then handed it to him. “All your father wanted was for me to get in touch with you. I took his ashes and put them in a repository. This is where they are. Do what you want with them.”
The shrewdness seemed to seep out of his eyes. He fingered the paper, mouthing the address silently. He finally looked up at me. “That’s all?”
“That is all.”
He studied me again, his teeth grating at his lips. “You said you were in the army with my father.”