At her desk, Velda was dunking a bagel into her coffee cup. Pat walked over, saw the gimmick she had laid out on her blotter and mumbled around his hard roll, “What’s that?”
“The latest in telephone bugs,” she told him.
“Who’d give you guys an order to tap a phone?” We were good buddies, but he was still a cop.
For a minute we let him stew in it, then I said, “Nobody, pal. That was laid on us.”
Velda tapped the desk phone in front of her. “This one.”
“Nice,” Pat said. “Who’d do that?”
I told him, “We know when, we know why, but we don’t know who.”
“Great. Now explain.” He took another bite of his hard roll.
“That press conference was a pretty public affair. We only made a few calls and let them spread the word. Let’s face it, me coming back all of a sudden was an interesting news item. Somebody who was at ease thinking I had been knocked off suddenly got the jumps to find out it hadn’t happened. That one had an employee in the bunch that showed up here. Planting a bug would have been a snap during the interview when all eyes were focused on me.”
“So?”
“So let me feel important, will you?”
Pat finished his roll and nodded. “Be my guest.”
“By the way, how big a bundle would a million bucks in hundreds make?”
He looked at me like I was kidding, but my eyes said I wasn’t.
“A big cardboard carton full. Clothes dryer size.”
“Then a billion would take a thousand cartons like that.”
Pat seemed puzzled now. “Yeah, why?”
I chose a smaller number for easier figuring. “Then how big a place would you need to store eighty thousand cartons that size?”
“Mike,” he said, “getting shot has plain screwed up your mind.”
“That’s no answer.”
“How about a great big warehouse, then?”
“That’s what I figured.” I grinned at him and said, “What would you do with a bundle that big, Pat?”
“Buy a new car,” he growled, wondering what brought all this on.
“That is what I thought,” I said, grinning at his answer.
Velda didn’t get the exchange either and shook her head at us. “What do we do with the bug, Mike?”
“Can you put it back?”
“I took it off, didn’t I? Only let’s not use the same phone. This gadget is a miniature transmitter so it will work off any unit, except that it will transmit only what we want somebody to hear.”
“Good,” I said. “Do it.”
While she inserted the bug into the phone on the other desk, Pat and I finished the goodies, had a last half cup of coffee and checked the time.
Downstairs we caught a cab over to Richmond’s funeral parlor, saw DOOLEY neatly lettered in on a mahogany sign with an arrow pointing to the chapel on the left. The quietness that sat on these moneyed morgues was dank. Like a fog. Faces would go by dripping with grief or rigid with stoicism, determined to fight a terrible sorrow. Only the attendants seemed human. They were good at pretending grief or consolation, even when their shorts were too tight. But that was not out of place because somebody had to hold the pieces together.
I was expecting to find the place empty, but that wasn’t the way it was at all. There must have been two dozen people there. Two were women. They were in a corner together talking softly and one was crying. Not much, but the grief showed. Most of the others were ordinary guys. They could have been workers who came out during their lunch hour or maybe neighbors of old Dooley. Four of them were gathered around a chest-high display table that held a graciously carved urn.
I knew what that was. Marcos Dooley was in there.
And the guy looking at me was wishing it was me instead. He was almost as tall as I was and from the way his six-hundred-dollar suit fit you knew he worked out on all the Nautilus equipment and most likely jogged fifty miles a week. He had the good looks of a Sicilian dandy and the composure of a Harvard graduate, but under that high-priced facade he was a street punk named Ponti. The
younger
.
I walked over to him. We had never met, but we didn’t need an introduction. I said, “Hello. Come to pay your respects?”
Under his coat his muscles tightened and his eyes measured me. There was a wary tautness in the way he stood, ready for anything and hoping it would happen, and the sooner the better. He was like an animal, the young male in the prime of life and now he wanted to challenge the old bull. He knew that the longer nothing happened the less chance he had to win and an expectant anxiety showed in the lines around his mouth. He looked just like Drago and Patterson at Le Cirque.
I played the old bull’s part perfectly. I said, “Your buddies left my calling card on their table. I took it back.”
His eye twitched, so he wasn’t as cool as he thought he was. “Oh?”
Real Harvard-like,
I thought. “Tell them I’m saving it, Ugo.”
His eyes flicked to see if anyone was listening. “I’ll do that.”
The old bull said, “You didn’t answer my question.”
“Dooley worked for my father.”
“I know that.” I got a frown again, strangely concerned this time.
“And how do you know him?”
“We were in the army together. So was that cop over there.” Ugo didn’t have to look. He knew who I meant. Pat was looking right at us. He got that twitch again and I knew the young buck had lost the confrontation. But there would be another time and the young buck would get stronger and the old bull would be aging out of the picture. He hoped.
At the display table, I got a close look at Dooley’s encapsulation. It was a dulled metallic urn, modestly decorated at the top and bottom with a plaque in the middle engraved with gold lettering.
His name, age and birthplace were at the top, then under it a brief history that gave his GI serial numbers in eight digits and a record of his service aboard the U.S. destroyer
Latille
. Nothing about his army time at all. Hell, both Pat and I knew Dooley had come from someplace else he wouldn’t speak about before he was attached to our outfit. Now we knew. He had served in, then ducked out of the U.S. Navy. The son of a gun probably got seasick and called it quits, but was patriotic enough to get right back into the mess with another combat unit.
The funeral director for Richmond’s sidled up next to me and asked, “Can I see you a moment, Mr. Hammer?”
I nodded and followed him to the far side of the room. He stood there primly, wondering how to explain the situation. “When Mr. Dooley purchased our . . . accommodations, he asked that you see to his . . . remains.”
“Be glad to,” I told him. “What did he want done with them?”
“He said he had a son named Marvin and wanted you to find him and deliver his ashes in the urn to the boy.”
“I never knew about a kid.”
“Apparently he had one he never mentioned.”
“Well,” I said to him, “if that’s what he wanted, that’s what he gets. I sure owe him that much.”
He looked at his watch. Half the crowd had signed the register and already left. The others would be out in a few minutes. “I’ll box the urn for you and you can pick it up in my office.”
The three of us left the parlor with Dooley in my arms, packed in a box like a specimen of some kind. Pat wanted to know what I was going to do with him and I told him there was a private repository for jars of dead people in Queens. You paid a lifetime fee and visitors could come see your remains in a niche on a concrete wall. Pat wanted to split the fee with me because of our past relationship, so I agreed and took Dooley home with me.
Women are strange people. They are inbred nesters, ready to make a home the minute they have the chance, cleaning and changing and stirring up dirt where none was at all. Velda was doing this right now. Not physically, but with her mind and eyes. Mine was a bachelor’s apartment. You knew a man lived here. It was expensive, but it had no frills. The decorations had a masculine nature, all in good taste. But Male. Now that was being softened with feminine overtones. She had been here often enough, but now it was different.
When the inspection was finished she said almost casually, “When are you planning to marry me, Mike?”
“You in a hurry?”
“Like you couldn’t believe.”
“Then help me to finish this Dooley affair,” I said. She sat down and I slid into the cushion next to her. I told her about Dooley’s tying in with Lorenzo and what he had said about the dons. In a general way I described the discord in the families and what they were going to do with their funds. Right then she turned quickly, her eyes narrowed, and said, “Did you notice that little fat guy as we went into Dooley’s area?”
“Grey double-breasted suit, pink shirt?”
“That’s the one.”
“What about him?”
“He was either a Treasury man or an IRS agent. Six months ago I covered a trial at the Kings County Courthouse in Brooklyn and he was a witness for the prosecution.”
“What was he doing at the funeral home?”
“He was
watching,
Mike.”
A little hiss seeped through my lips.
“What’s happening?” she asked me.
“You sure about that guy? The fat guy?”
“About ninety percent,” she stated. “Now tell me what’s going on.”
“The leaks have started, kitten. One of them got picked up by Uncle Sam. The tax boys have a scent and they’ll follow it all the way through.”
“To what?”
“To where eighty-nine billion dollars are stashed.” It was the first time I had mentioned the numbers to her and she opened her mouth in an expression of utter disbelief.
“Mike . . .”
“Don’t play it down, kid. The annual take from California’s biggest cash crop would knock your socks off.”
“What crop is that?”
“Marijuana. Happy grass.”
“Mike . . . you said billions. Each billion is a thousand million.”
“Pat thought so too.”
“Then you weren’t kidding . . . ?”
“Not about something that big.” I gave her hand a gentle squeeze of reassurance. “Right now they’re looking for dinosaurs. There aren’t any. All they can find are fossils. Interesting to look at, but that’s all. The only one who could tell them about it is dead.”
“You believed Dooley, didn’t you?”
I agreed with her. I did believe Dooley, all right. He told me what he did with all that loot, but he didn’t tell me where. How he did it was another matter. How
would
you move eighty thousand cartons of pure, spendable cash and valuables in a way that was totally sight unseen? It was like watching Karloff in
The Mummy
when he was buried alive beside the lady who cheated on her husband. To keep the grave secret all the slaves were killed by the soldiers.
I always wondered what happened to the soldiers. They had sworn loyalty to the pharaoh so they were considered beyond suspicion of acting traitorously. At least until a stronger pharaoh came on the scene.
I shook the thought out of my head and stood up. “Tomorrow I want you to go down to the Veterans Administration and run down Dooley’s service record.” I scanned the serial numbers on the urn and wrote them down, handing the slip to Velda.
“What am I looking for?”
“His kid. He’s supposed to have a son. All that information would have been recorded when he signed up.”
“Where do I look first?”
“Try Washington, D.C. Use the phone. If they want any reason for the query, tell them we’re trying to find an inheritor.”
“Fine, Mike . . . but why
are
we looking for him?”
“Because fathers with sons are funny. They’ll entrust things to their kids they wouldn’t put in a safe deposit box. That kid, Marvin, may know something we need.” After a moment I added, “One more thing. Check your calendar and see when you went to the Kings County Courthouse. Find out who that government witness was. You have any friends over there?”
“The best. The court stenographer. It’s all public information anyway, but she can expedite matters.”
When I didn’t come up with something else, Velda folded the slip into her wallet then locked that in her purse. Her eyes came up to mine again, nice clear, deep brown, hungry eyes that didn’t push or play games. She said, “That’s for tomorrow. What’s for tonight?”
“Kitten,” I said, “you really know how to twist my tail. Now listen to me one more time. If you want to get married to me, you’re going to do it the old-fashioned way. We can hold hands and kiss and hug all you want, but we keep our clothes on and stay out of bed. Got it?”
“Did that doctor . . . do anything to you, Mike?”
“Yeah. He kept me alive so that soon enough I
can
do
anything
. One round with you under the sheets and I’ll be on a slab.”
With a tiny smile she said, “What a prude. He can brace two tough guys with no gun and one bullet and can’t make love to his fiancée.”
“Just following doctor’s orders, sweetie.”
“Mike,” she said, “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
The building was simple, wasting no space. It was concrete, boxlike, with a minimum of ornamentation, a cemetery supermarket where urns could be placed to be seen in delicately formed mini-caves pressed into the cement or hidden behind inch-thick facades with histories worked into their surfaces.
Marshall Brotorrio toured me through the lower recesses of the modern crypt knowing that would be all the inspection I would need. Since Dooley would not be getting many visitors he suggested the last niche on the row. I went along with that, opted to keep the urn in view, then went back to his office to complete the paperwork.
Dooley was still sitting on his desk, but somebody had cleaned and polished the metal container while we were away, slipping a plastic shield over it to keep fingertips from spotting its beauty.