The Big Bang

Chapter Six


IT WAS AN HOUR later before we decided to use the bed for sleeping and at least two hours after that when the phone rang.

Velda sat up, and clicked the nightstand light on. The covers were around her waist and she was nude as a grape and a half-lidded glimpse of those full, lush, unbound breasts was enough to snap me wide awake, if the phone hadn't already.

Even from my side of the bed, the imperative but trying-too-hard-to-be-casual voice could easily be heard, apologizing for the late call, and asking Velda if she knew where I could be reached on an urgent matter.

She nudged me and said in a sleepy tone that didn't go with her alert expression, "Why, yes—yes, he's right here. ..."

Before she could hand me the phone, the voice chuckled, like one old friend catching another in the act, and said with a laughing inflection, "Don't tell me he's been there all night?"

She could sure play the game, embarrassed confusion, the stammer and inadvertent confession all in one run-on sentence of, "Uh, yes—that's right, I mean ... well, what business is it of yours if he spent the night with me?"

All the while her shrewd, dark eyes were locked on mine. With her nakedness to distract me, keeping my eyes on hers shows you how seriously we were taking this. And how severely she really had sapped my strength....

She was saying, "Who is this?"

"I'm sorry to have bothered—"

"Here, let me put him on and—"

"No," the commanding voice said. "No, never mind. Thank you, ma'am, and again I apologize for the lateness."

And hung up.

She cradled the phone, propped a pillow, sunk an elbow in it, and rested her chin against a fist, looking at me with tousled accusation.

"Friend of yours?" I asked her lightly.

"Not hardly."

"Oh?"

"I get the occasional middle-of-the-night call from a strange man, but not a wide-awake, sober one, and with a teletype clicking and deep voices in the background."

"Wasn't our friend the captain of Homicide?"

"No. I'd like to have let you give that character your own performance." Her eyes narrowed. "Offhand, I'd say that was the esteemed Vance Traynor."

"Oh, laughing boy from the D.A.'s office. He must be riding Pat's back again." I let out my own chuckle. "I wonder if he had to run Pat down and shake him out of Helen DiVay's bed."

She arched an eyebrow at me. "You really think Pat was up to that challenge?"

"No."

She reached over and clicked off the bedside lamp and yanked the covers up and said, "Turn the other way."

I turned the other way and she snuggled herself against me.

I was enjoying that warmth and the darkness, and the near silence of Manhattan after midnight where even the occasional muffled siren had a dreamlike quality.

Then she whispered, "Mike—don't keep secrets from a girl. Who did you kill this time?"

I reached behind me to trace the smooth rise of her hip. "Nobody you know, sugar."

The warmth and the silence began lulling me again. Then I realized her lips were near my ear.

"Want to try killing me? With kindness maybe?"

"That might take two or three weeks."

"What's time anyway?" she said, and she was crawling on top of me.

Where was a can of spinach when you needed it?





The morning papers and early TV shows headlined the gruesome find in my apartment-house lobby with a publicity-conscious fat woman giving the vivid details of how she had stumbled over the corpses after returning home from a party at her son-in-law's.

Jerry the doorman was okay, telling the cops how the guy they found dressed in his uniform had approached him about a supposed tenant, asked him to verify an address on a letter, and then coldcocked him while his attention was diverted.

Velda and I hadn't been in the office long enough for me to make it into my inner sanctum, from sharing coffee and Danish at her desk in the outer one, when our visitors arrived.

One was the kind who could drop by unannounced anytime, no problem—Pat Chambers, his eyes puffy from a long rough night that I guessed was not courtesy of a certain wealthy ex-ecdysiast. His suit was the one I'd seen him in at the restaurant and it looked almost as rumpled as he did.

But he wasn't even the first through our door. That honor was reserved for the ambitious young assistant D.A. whose suit was almost as sharp as his eyes. Vance Traynor, with his lanky frame and insincere smile, still struck me as a guy who might go far in politics.

Not a compliment.

"I'm sorry to just drop by, Mr. Hammer," he said.

"Phones out over at City Hall?" I asked good-naturedly, wiping some Danish off my mouth with a paper napkin.

"No, I just took a chance."

"I've taken a few of those. Velda, get our guests some coffee, would you? Captain Chambers, always a pleasure."

Standing behind Traynor, Pat gave me a look that was half apologetic and half annoyed. Pissed off at me as he might be, he did not take kindly to carrying anybody's water, especially a slick young political rung-climber like Traynor.

Soon I was behind my desk, and Velda had served our guests coffee in plastic cups, and refilled mine. I asked her to join us and take notes on the conversation.

"That's not necessary," Traynor said, opposite me in a client's chair, Pat next to him in the other one.

"This is my office," I said. "Not yours. I'd like to have a record of what's said."

"That's a fairly extreme reaction, when you don't even know why I'm here."

I grinned at him. "There were two men killed in the lobby of my apartment house last night. I read the newspapers. I sometimes even listen to TV and radio."

Pat, looking embarrassed, said, "Mike, if it had been up to me—"

"Anyway, I'd say," I cut in, "having an assistant district attorney and the captain of Homicide drop in on you, first thing in the morning, also qualifies as 'fairly extreme.' Velda?"

She went out for her stenog pad and came back in and got settled. She was in a white blouse and black skirt and black pumps and yet still looked like a damn pinup girl. But she sat with her knees together, not crossing her distracting legs. Always thinking of the boss, my Velda.

"At this point," Traynor said, in a voice so smooth you could bead water off it, "I'm not looking for a formal statement. Captain Chambers suggested we just have a friendly talk, and determine whether any further steps are needed."

"And I assume Captain Chambers has told you," I said, "that he and I and Miss Sterling, my secretary, had dinner together at Finero's Steakhouse. The captain's date was a young lady named DiVay, and I'm sure he's given you information on how to contact her."

Pat shifted in his chair. "Actually, I didn't get her contact information. I thought you or Velda might be able to help with that."

I glanced at Velda. Her expression said what I was thinking: Poor dumb schmuck.

Velda told Traynor she'd get the phone number and address for him before he left, and I told my story of how my secretary and I had left Pat and Helen at the restaurant, and had walked home, and then never left her apartment.

Traynor listened quietly but his expression was rather glazed. Pat had no doubt told him exactly what to expect out of me.

Then the assistant D.A. folded his arms and smiled on one side of his face and said, "And here we are again, Mr. Hammer."

"Where would that be, Mr. Traynor?"

"At that improbable place where you expect me to accept a wild coincidence. It's been only a few days since you expected me to accept the last one."

"What coincidence are we talking about this morning?"

"That two men were murdered in the lobby of your apartment house, and you were conveniently away at the time. One of the men was battered in a manner so brutal as to suggest an assailant of considerable strength, and with a reckless disregard for human life."

"Was I seen there?"

"...No."

"Any witnesses place me there?"

"...No."

I grinned again and leaned back in the swivel chair. "Not wishing to embarrass my secretary, Mr. Traynor, I invite you to steal a glance at her and determine whether it's far-fetched that I would rather spend time at her place than mine."

She was smiling just a little as the assistant D.A. couldn't help himself but to steal that glance.

Then I said, "And I don't have the statistics—you'd have to check with Captain Chambers about that—but my guess is there were a whole lot of murders in New York City last night, and the night before that, and before that. This is that concrete jungle you hear so much about. And I am not necessarily involved with any of those homicides."

"You aren't necessarily not involved, either."

"No. But unless you have evidence or witnesses or a motive—little details like that—I need to remind you that I am not on the city's payroll. I have a business to run. And if you don't have any other questions, I would respectfully ask you not to let the door hit you on the ass on the way out."

Pat hadn't said anything during my indignant denial of the innuendos, but I knew he'd be out checking taxicab trip sheets and my route home the minute he left, and if he reached that newspaper stand, my tail would be in a sling.

Give Traynor credit. He merely smiled, shrugged, and said, "Point taken."

He rose and turned to the Homicide captain.

Pat said, "I'll hang behind, sir. If you don't mind. I can find my way back."

Traynor gave Pat a nod, too, and went out. Velda followed to get that DiVay info for him, and Pat got up, went over, and shut the door behind them. He took the client chair where Traynor had been sitting.

"Where do you get your luck?" he asked.

"Same place as my nerve."

He shook his head. I offered him a cigarette and he took it. We both fired up and he sat there and laughed. I didn't know what was so funny.

Finally, he told me: "Somebody saw you last night, Mike."

I felt the back of my neck prickle.

"Somebody saw you when you went in Velda's place after walking her home."

So Lady Luck did love me.

He filled me in. Across the street from Velda's building, a plain-clothes cop on a stakeout on an unrelated matter was sitting in a parked car, and spotted us going in ... and swore he never saw me leave. He had been surveilling the area the past eight hours.

Pat and I both knew that if the flatfoot had fallen asleep, he obviously wouldn't say so; and if he had missed me, because his attention was elsewhere, whether on a sandwich or a girlie mag, he couldn't even know he had. He could only present himself as the ever-vigilant watchman of the NYPD, and along the way provide me with one lucky alibi.

Move over, Sky Masterson and Nathan Detroit.

"Then what the hell," I said, "was Traynor dropping in about?"

"He wanted to see if you'd spill something before you knew you were covered by a cop, no less."

I laughed and, to his credit, so did Pat.

Also to his credit, Pat didn't bother to ask whether I had or hadn't taken that lobby pair out of the action. He could see it was my style, but what he didn't know couldn't hurt me.

"Give me one reason," he said, heaving a smoky sigh, "why I should share police information with you?"

I hadn't asked for any, but I said, "Because I saved your life a couple times?"

"I've saved yours three times."

"Who's counting?"

He grunted. "The two lobby stiffs have been positively identified as a pair of contract hit men from St. Louis."

They were importing help to deal with me. I felt complimented.

Pat was saying, "Even though the slugs, the prints, and the paraffin tests for gunpowder tell the story of an angry shootout between the pair, nobody in their right mind's going to believe it."

"Why not?"

"Two reasons—first, why would they come all the way from St. Louis together just to shoot each other? And second, how did this falling-out between a couple of St. Louie hard guys just happen to happen in Mike Hammer's lobby?"

I spread my hands. "The things some people will do to rub up against a celebrity."

He didn't even smile at that. He just got up and went to the door, where he stopped and glared at me.

"You may be a celebrity, Mike. But you're going to look like just another dead nobody wrapped up in a rubber body bag."

He went out quickly, not shutting the inner-office door.

Velda ambled in, in her catlike way, and asked, "What's his problem?"

"Ah, he's just pissed because we set him up with that broad Helen."

"Why would that make him mad?"

I pawed at the air. "The sap just can't handle the steep banks and the dark tunnels."

That got a nice purring laugh from her, and she dropped off the notes of the Traynor meeting, already typed up.

"You're fast," I said.

"Took you long enough." She perched on the edge of my desk, plucked the Lucky out of my mouth, and sucked on it. She let the smoke curl out and I gave her a don't-start-with-me look, and she said, "So why the charade?"

"Huh?"

"Don't play dumb. That lobby bit was self-defense that you rigged to stay out of it. Why did you bother? You could have walked away clean."

I waved that off. "So soon after nailing Billy Blue's attackers? That clown Traynor would have kept me downtown forever. Might have charged me on manslaughter or even murder. At the very least, I'd have had my P.I. ticket suspended and my gun permit pulled."

"I'd still have my ticket and my permit."

"Swell, but you're holding down the fort while I'm out chasing Indians. Anyway, I like the message it sends."

"To the cops and the D.A.'s office?"

"No. F*ck the cops and the D.A.'s office. I'm talking about whoever sent those St. Louis bozos to splatter me. I like knowing that somewhere some a*shole is wondering how I pulled that off, and is coming to the realization of just how much trouble he's in."

She frowned down at me. "What 'a*shole'? This Jay Wren? Or maybe Junior Evello?"

"Or both," I said.

She slid off the desk and shook her head and the dark tresses shimmered and bounced. "You need a new hobby."

"And I bet you have a suggestion."

She nodded and gave me a look that made the need-anything-just-whistle one Bacall gave Bogie seem like kid stuff. She took her feline time making her way back to her desk, leaving the door between us open so she could drive me crazy with those long legs.

No problem. I wasn't planning to hang around the office, anyway.





Old friends have other friends and, if the word is good, they can pass you up the line until one has something to say.

It had taken me three days and two hundred bucks to get to Marvin Stedman, a thirty-five-year-old heroin addict they called the Junkman.

Junkman was no ordinary heroin addict, if there is such a thing. Coming off twenty years of pulling down scores, and building a rep as a crook you could trust, Stedman had thrown in with Jay Wren to aid in the dope operation. So far so good, but the exheister made the classic dealer mistake of liking his own product too well, and he got himself hooked.

Within a period of less than two years, he'd been nailed by the narco squad on seven different occasions, and got retired out of the organization. He did not get a gold watch. Getting fired from the rackets often entails getting fired at—and the Snowbird's boys tried to liquidate him twice, not with slugs but with overdoses.

Apparently they didn't know how much immunity the Junkman had built up for himself. He'd survived both attempts and emerged with an even bigger habit. Since before he'd gone to work for Wren, Stedman had been a first-class heister, and he'd returned to his old ways. More reckless now, the Junkman still had a knack for small-scale knockovers.

The Wren outfit took him off their hit list when they found Junkman, out of desperation, overpaying for his bundle of glassine packets with two- to ten-carat chunks of jewelry lifted from show-biz personalities' hotel rooms. A junkie with this kind of initiative was rare, and he went from liability to the kind of prime customer worth keeping.

Also, the Snowbird apparently had his own uses for the Junkman's talent as a break-in artist, and kept him handy for certain delicate jobs. Junkman could plant evidence for the narcs, if a balky operator didn't like the way the game was going, or do a home invasion that was in reality a mission, Junkman checking out anybody Wren thought might be trying to work the territory.

Sweetest of all, Junkman's services came cheap. All they had to do was cut off his supply, and he was ready to do whatever it took to climb back on the Horse.

I did it the other way around.

He was hurting when I found him, and I made sure he got his fix—at least enough of one to calm him down and set me up as an all-right guy. But he was going to need more and fast, and knowing how tight the stuff was on the street, Junkman was grateful for the jolt that eased the big hurt that had him on a bare, ancient mattress, cramped up against the headboard of a metal bed in the crummy old hotel.

Funny. Around the turn of the century, these walls and halls had been filled with wealthy wastrels of the Stanford White and Harry Thaw variety, a luxurious hideaway for monied marital cheaters and other high-hat sinners. But neighborhoods change and shift, and the old hotel had long ago decayed into a way station for transients and junkies and other dwellers on the fringes of society.

I had walked a hall where paint peeled and occasional bare bulbs gave off halfhearted yellow light. You could smell the disinfectant but also the urine, mingled with the smell of cheap canned food getting heated up. The fate of the old dump might be a hot plate with a frayed cord causing a fire, or a slumlord with a can of gasoline doing the same. Either way, the terrible promise of hellish flames hung over everything.

Now I was sitting in a creaky, scarred-up wooden chair next to the Junkman's bed, as if I were visiting a patient at the world's worst hospital.

Skinny, pale, sunken-chested, Marvin Stedman was a little man made smaller by life, his face an oval of deep-grooved flesh, his thin gray matted hair as long as any hippie kid on the street, but not a fashion statement or a social protest. He wore frayed, faded long johns and no shoes—the needle marks between his toes were as obvious as on the track-marked forearm that he used to wipe his nose.

"Thanks, man," he said. His voice was a rasp crossed with a wheeze. "I was dying, man. I was really no shit dying." A shudder racked him again, and when it passed, he looked at me with bloodshot eyes, his tobacco-stained teeth clamped tightly together under gums with nasty sores. "Ain't been that close in a long time, my friend."

"Pretty bad, huh?"

"Bad don't cover it. What's your name, buddy?"

"Hammer."

"Where'd you score, man? Ain't nothin' out there. Them streets are naked as shit."

"A buddy of mine was holding a spare."

He worked at studying my face. "You don't look like no junkie, man."

"I'm not."

"And I ... don't make you no narco, neither."

"Right again."

A little light seeped into the rheumy eyes that radiated pure fear. "What do you want from me?"

There had been no questions before. No questions when a stranger in a trench coat showed up at his door with a glassine bag of powder for him. Just snatch it up and find the spoon and heat it up and slam it home.

Now he had questions.

"You want to know something," he said, "don't you?"

"Everybody wants to know something, Junkman."

"Ain't nothin' free. You're gonna hold me here ... until it hits again ... and then you figure I'll talk."

"Nope. I'm just going to walk out."

He sat up. The metal bed groaned. So did Junkman. "Look, man, you gotta tell me where you scored!"

"I don't gotta do nothing," I said.

"Man, I'll die!" He pushed away from the headboard and half collapsed on the filthy mattress. "You don't know how it is, man. I can't make it by myself."

He dropped his head in an attitude of pure pathos, staring blankly at his hands. They weren't trembling. Thanks to me, he'd shot up not long ago. But they were empty—as empty as his prospects.

"Man, man, I didn't know I wanted to keep on living so bad. Used to be ... I thought dying was nice ... only come to find, it's worse'n livin'."

"They got treatment centers, Junkman."

The shake of his head was barely discernible. "Forget it. Wouldn't do nohow. Ain't nothin' for me but this." His smile was a death mask. "You're lookin' at a real, hardcore head, Mr. Hammer. You see ... I like it. Mother's milk. Nectar of the gods. Only thing worth livin' for."

"But you're killing yourself, Junkman."

"Yeah, man, but slow. Like real slow... floating, man...."

"Only when you aren't floating, Junkman, you're hurting—hurting all the way. Is it worth it?"

"Well ... that ... that's ... the bad part. I admit it. Look, Mr. Hammer, I appreciate what you done for me. But you know I am gonna need another fix, and soon. I am really gonna need another fix. You think maybe you could help me out again?"

"We can talk about that after."

"After what, Mr. Hammer?" He was mellow now.

"After you answer some questions."

"I was right ... I was right about you...."

"You said it yourself—the street has dried up. Who's holding back the stuff, Junkman? What the hell is shaking out there? A price war on?"

"Might be a war coming."

"Oh?"

"Snowbird and the Syndicate."

"I thought they worked together?"

"Snowbird ... he has ambitions."

"So he's holding back?"

"No! No ... no ... too much heat ... cops got lucky couple times, and now ... no stuff. Not for ages, not for ever. Everybody's waitin' ... dying inside and waitin'..."

"Till the Snowbird comes through?"

"That ... that bastard don't care about nothin' or nobody. He ain't no user. He ain't dying. He don't know how it feels to have your guts churn up inside you like they was tryin' to crawl out."

I shifted and the chair complained. "Junkman, businesses can't let their customers die. Otherwise there won't be a business."

"Sure, sure, and it is comin' in. It is comin'."

"Who says?"

"The street. Word on the street."

"Who's spreading that word?"

"Snowbird's boys. Only ... I can't wait two more weeks, Mr. Hammer. Man, I'm carryin' one heavy f*ckin' monkey, you know? I got King F*ckin' Kong on my back! I don't need it next week! I need it right now!"

"What happens next week?"

He got his head up and his eyes had more of a shine in them. "Mr. Hammer, that's just the word that's out. I told you. I don't know from nothin'."

"Where's the new shipment coming from?"

"I don't give a shit, understand? I just know I'm gonna need it...."

"Junkman," I told him, "I can tap a couple of sources, but whatever those guys can spare, you won't be off the hook for more than today. I'm sorry, man, but that's all I can manage. It's tighter outside for me than it is for you. I have my contacts, my sources, but this is your world."

And welcome to it.

"Yeah, Mr. Hammer, I hear you, but you got bread, man. I ain't even been able to hustle a tie clip since the heat went on."

"A week is a long time," I reminded him. "If you know who I can hit, to get the stuff, you better give me the word. And maybe I can score you some."

His cheeks seemed to sink in even further and he fell back against the headboard again. "Just the Snowbird and his boys. That's the only ones I know."

I shrugged. "Then I can't help you."

He smiled weakly. "So, then, it's dying time, man, right? If it ain't on the street..."

"The Snowbird's cupboards are bare? I figured he was just doling out a supply."

"What supply? He's waitin', too."

"Who's his source?"

It was another slow span of time before he spoke again. "You're asking too small a fry, man. All I know is ... it all ... comes down the line."

"Who's in line ahead of Snowbird?"

The Junkman rolled his palms up helplessly. "You said it, Mr. Hammer ... the Syndicate. The Evello Family, working their middlemen ... the receivers."

"No names?"

"No names, no faces, nothin', man. They're just there, and if they don't come through fast ... man, this town's gonna be really strung out, like you never seen."

"You know Russell Frazer?"

His voice was a harsh whisper: "I know the f*ckin' fink."

"He bought it," I said.

"Bastard tried to O.D. me, once." His eyes came up and peered at me through the mental haze. "Come around saying he felt sorry for me. Do me a favor, for old times, fink Frazer. Gimme a hot shot. Tried to boil me out." Somehow he managed a skull-with-skin grin. "Sent me flyin', but I fooled him—man, I came down. Who's he think he's dealin' with? Bastard fink."

Then my words finally sank in and he squinted, trying to get me in focus. "Bought it? You mean ... he bad-tripped out?"

"Naw. Knife job."

The Junkman nodded approvingly. "Good. Good f*ckin' riddance. Now he won't be hittin' no more school kids. That's the new way, Mr. Hammer—screw the old trade ... hook the straights. Suck the money kids." He shook his head. "That bastard was due."

He took a breath, then fumbled in the ashtray for a broken cigarette butt.

I gave him a fresh Lucky and held a match out to the tip. He drew on it till the tip burned red, but then just held it without smoking.

"Who ... who carved his ass?"

"The cops said it was a mugging."

His dry lips stretched humorlessly across the bad teeth. "Not that fink. He just made too many ... too many bad runs."

There was more I wanted to ask him, but it would have to be another time. The Junkman's eyes weren't all the way closed, but he was off in happy land.

I took the burning cigarette from fingers already scarred from hot tips, and squashed it out. No need to let the hellish flames take this old hotel, and Junkman, sooner than necessary.

But the old junkie had told me something.

I wasn't sure just exactly what it was, but something had been fed into the computer between my ears, and was sitting there waiting for other bits and pieces of information that would finally read out an answer.

Who was I kidding? I didn't know what the question was—though I was pretty sure it had something to do with why bringing in guns from St. Louis to kill Mike Hammer was a good business move.

For somebody.