“Pat . . . Dooley thought you were too soft.”
“For what?”
“To do what has to be done,” I said.
I sat there and studied my friend. Pat Chambers, a captain in the homicide division. Still young, but almost of retirement age. Smart, streetwise, college educated, superbly trained in the nuances of detection. Tough, but not
killing tough
. His conscience was still finely honed and that’s what Dooley had meant. There was no way now that I could tell him what Dooley had told me.
Pat picked up the beer can and emptied it in two swallows. There was nothing else in the wastebasket under the desk so it made a clanking sound when it hit bottom. “He wanted you to nail the guy who shot him,” he said flatly.
“Something like that,” I replied.
“There’s a lot of street talk over who wiped out Azi Ponti, Mike. A witness saw you get shot, but you jerked back from the initial impact and caved in at the second. The witness never actually saw who killed Azi Ponti, so it could be assumed a random shot got him.”
“The bullet that killed him was never recovered?”
“Azi had no top of his head left and in that area there was little chance of recovering anything. It could have gone into the river or lodged in a building somewhere. Who knows?”
“I know,” I said.
“You know what?”
“I shot the punk. I took him out with one fat cap and ball .45.”
“That’s what I figured,” Pat told me, “but if I were you, I’d keep it to myself. Now tell me this . . . why were you there at all?”
I ran through all the details I had given Dr. Morgan when I had recovered enough to discuss the situation. Pat wanted to know about the snitch who had put me onto the Gaetano-Ponti rumble, but the old guy wasn’t important at all. He just happened to be in the right place to overhear something that wasn’t supposed to be overheard. He got shook up and passed it on to me.
Pat digested all that I told him then turned and stared at me. “It doesn’t matter, Mike. Both Ugo and his old man have picked you out as the shooter.”
“They picked well,” I said.
“They’re pretty damn potent enemies, buddy.”
“Nobody better,” I said.
“The old man can pull strings and call the shots, but Ugo is the bad one. In the time you’ve been out of it that punk has gone plain crazy.”
I was thinking of what Dooley had told me. “I can understand it,” I said.
Pat didn’t quite get my meaning on that. He said, “You know what they call him, don’t you?”
“No,” I answered quizzically, “what?”
“Bulletproof Ponti.”
“Who calls him that, for Pete’s sake? I never heard that on the streets.”
Pat let out a short laugh. “It doesn’t come off the streets. It’s
our
guys who call him that. Twice we had shoot-outs with a perp identified as Ugo Ponti and the officers said they had direct hits on him but he didn’t go down.”
“Were these
positive
IDs?” I asked him.
“No. It was night, close to twelve both times, but the visibility was good.”
“What was going on, Pat?”
“All we can figure was a drug connection. We think Ugo was there to intercept somebody who wasn’t paying off and Ugo was the enforcer. His luck was lousy. Both times he was spotted by passing prowl cars who slowed up to investigate and got fired on. The officers returned the fire from the protection of their vehicles, saw the target stagger, then back off into the shadows. When they converged on the area he was gone. No blood spots, no evidence, nothing.”
“What were they shooting with?”
“The new weaponry. Heavy stuff.”
“Regulation ammo?”
“They said so, but nobody pressed the issue. I wouldn’t blame them for using hot loads, though.”
I leaned back in the chair and stared across the desk. I was about to ask the question, but Pat saw it coming and beat me to it. “We found all the slugs that were fired in one action.”
“All?”
“Every one. Some had smashed against the brick wall, three went into the woodwork and a couple into a metal garbage can.”
I waited, then, finally, he said it. “Two didn’t have the expected contours.”
“Oh?” This time he waited until I asked, “Cloth marks?”
“Possibly.”
“You think he was wearing body armor?”
He cocked his head and shrugged. “If it was Ugo, he would have known we don’t use the old .38’s anymore. The new stuff will penetrate ordinary armor.”
“Even what the SWAT teams wear?”
“That depends on a lot of factors. Distance, caliber . . . you know what I mean?”
“But if he
did
have on body armor, it sure worked. Ugo Ponti is still around and not showing any wear and tear.”
Pat nodded. “Explain that.”
“Don’t you have anything in your ballistics library on it?”
“I checked.”
“So?”
Pat said, “One of the U.S. firms came up with a new technology. It was a vast improvement, but it wasn’t merchandised properly, or our buyers had their heads up their tails. I think it was the British that bought into it.”
“What was different about it?”
“For one thing, it was about four times as effective in stopping a bullet. The bulk . . . the size factor . . . was minimal and the weight was negligible. Nobody would know you were wearing it, and as long as you didn’t get hit in the head, you were safe. The bad part was the price. I understand it was considerable, out of the range of ordinary people. On top of that the technology is very restrictive. Super secret. They probably keep it for the royals or extremely high-risk projects.”
“Let’s not call the bad guys ordinary people, Pat,” I told him. “One thing they have is a lot of that ‘considerable’ stuff, and that can buy a lot of secrets. Have you pulled Ugo in since then?”
“It took a month to find him after the supposed first time. He was down in Mexico on a vacation. The second time he came home after six weeks from a junket in Canada.”
“No passports needed, right?”
“Right. Just a visa for Mexico. We know the old man was pretty well pissed off at him, but he’s the apple of his eye and there was no rough stuff. The kid even let us give him a physical, but there were no injury marks on him. Clever, huh?”
“Yeah.” I stood up and stretched. “His alibis good?”
“Of course. Ponti has good liars on his side.”
“What’s the official version on all this? The DA’s office ought to be saying something.”
“They sure ought to, but they’re not. In that ruckus on the waterfront the dead and the shooters became one big package. They cancelled each other out. It was blamed as a gang war and none of the dead are going to be missed.”
“Not even me?”
Pat said, “Strangely enough, you didn’t draw bad press. The papers publicized your history and since they couldn’t figure out what you were doing there, they played you down.” He swung his feet off the desk drawer and planted them on the floor. “Some of the reporters knew about that beef you had with Lorenzo Ponti.”
“Hell, Pat, that wasn’t a beef. It was a job. I had to find out who really owned those four buildings on Fifth Avenue. So it was old Lorenzo. Big deal. There were no back taxes to be paid or shady dealings in the purchase. Those threats came because he thought I was prying in his personal affairs.”
“You didn’t have to manhandle him in his own nightclub, for Pete’s sake!”
“He didn’t have to give me any lip, either.”
“Come on, Mike, he had his own gunnies there.”
“Yeah, but I had him, my back was against the wall and I had my own rod where I could get it.”
“You were lucky, kiddo.”
“The heck I was. I had Ponti in front of me. He would have been the first one hit.”
“Then you would have bought it.”
I let my teeth show through my grin. “Pat . . . you keep forgetting something.”
“Like what?”
“Like that reputation I have. I’m a real big shooter, Pat. I have all the clippings to prove it.”
“You have scars too.”
“But I’m still here, pal.”
“For how long?”
“We’ll worry about that when the chips go down,” I said.
3
THERE WAS NO WAY I could have escaped the coming-out party. New York was still a tabloid town, even with the
Times
running the show. The subway crowd still wanted their photos and the combination of local and network TV newscasters fought for camera space if anything had an offbeat flavor to it.
And I sure was offbeat.
Velda called the DA’s office first and told them to shove their demands to have me go to their office. I was still “in recovery” and they either came to my office or forget it. They made the appointment for ten and it was nine-thirty now.
In a way, I had a little celebrity status hanging on from the old days, but not enough to jolt the head man into doing any interrogating . . . unless he knew he could slap an arrest warrant on me and make it stick. To him, I was interesting, but old news and the election wasn’t until next year anyway.
Had he known Velda or the hungry reporters he would have been on the spot soaking up the news coverage, but, like always, politicians weren’t that smart unless bands were playing and flags were flying in their faces. My office was packed with TV teams, cameras set up, lighting arranged, and half had already gotten information down for voice-over commentary on the early broadcasts. Most of that would be running with the post-action shots of the riverfront rumble.
Exactly at ten the squad from the DA’s office arrived, four of them walking two abreast. They walked in formation, but they weren’t in step, and all I could think of was why government lawyers have to look like a toy mechanical rabbit advertising batteries on TV. They could have carried signs, at least.
Florence Lake led the pack. Her suit matched the others except for the skirt and she didn’t seem too happy about being different. When she saw the mob scene in the office the outrage hit her face with a deep flush and the cords in her neck showed as they pulled her face into a wooden mask. The others were junior executive types and didn’t seem to mind at all. Any coverage was good publicity for them.
The TV teams and reporters had already been alerted and were damn well aware of the confrontation. They were going to enjoy this, especially if somebody could stick a needle in the DA lady’s behind.
Florence Lake knew the angles too. She was all smiles and politeness and asked for a few minutes alone with me inside my private quarters and seemed very pleased when everybody was glad to agree. Pleased? She was burning up.
I glanced over at Velda. She was holding back a grin and gave me the knife-across-the-throat gesture to lay on the Lake broad during the interview. And that was easy to do. I gave her a lot of color and nothing she didn’t already know. But she
was
a lawyer and she was smart enough to know that there was something more to be had, but she didn’t know where to probe.
Florence Lake didn’t take notes. Her assistant did that. She gave me an intimidating look and said, “Your reason for being there doesn’t seem quite valid, Mr. Hammer.”
“Look,” I told her, “you know how it is when you get a tip. You want to check it out first to make sure it hasn’t got a spin on it.”
“Your informant wasn’t reliable?”
“He could tell you where the nearest bar was, or how to scrounge up enough for a drink on a rainy day. It was a tip given offhand and I wasn’t concerned with reliability.”
“Then what
did
concern you?”
“Having those hard cases think I might have set Lorenzo Ponti up for a hit.”
“Your altercation with him was that serious?”
“Only to his ego, ma’am. It wasn’t physical and it didn’t cost him any money, but some of these old-country types have a lot of misplaced pride and you don’t want to mess with that.”
“So you only went to the waterfront to warn him?”
“Yes.”
Her expression said she didn’t believe me at all. “What made you think Mr. Ponti would take your word for it?”
“He wasn’t dumb, ma’am.”
She changed the subject abruptly. “Who shot you?”
I wasn’t under oath, so I could tell her anything I wanted. I did it in a noncommittal way with a shrug of my shoulders. I said, “It was dark. The area is hardly lit, as you know.”
“Yes.” There was another pause. “Did you fire your gun?”
“Why do you assume I had a gun?”
“Because you are licensed to carry one.”
“A lot of private investigators don’t carry them.”
“But you’re Mike Hammer,” she said lightly
When I let a grin crease my mouth she didn’t like it a bit. “True,” I said. “But I got shot right in the beginning of that mess. Two hits in soft, deadly places.”
Florence Lake was looking at me as if I were the biggest liar in the world and she was about to expose me to the world. Before she could, I pulled the shirt out of my pants and lifted it up, my fingers going under the bandage I had lightly taped down, and when I leaned back in my chair she got a good look at the scarred, ugly mess on my belly that was still runny with a pinkish discharge and dotted with tiny stitch marks that held it all together. Right now, it needed a lot of taking care of, but it looked worse than it was, disgusting enough to make the lady DA’s face contort with a spasm as her guts churned and she damn near vomited on her own feet. It didn’t bother the other three. They all leaned forward in curiosity, like they were appreciating some artwork.
I put my shirt back and I thought she was going to thank me.
She had only lost her composure momentarily. As if nothing happened, she asked, “Who took care of that wound?”
Again, the shrug. “I didn’t gain consciousness for over a week.”
“You knew where you were?”
“Uh-huh. In a medical facility somewhere. I really didn’t care.”