"You sold him the gun."
Jellybean sighed and nodded. "A Hammerli .22."
Bozo sat forward, frowning. "What's a guy carries his piece around in a carrying case need to buy a damn target pistol from you for?"
Jellybean held up his hands as if we'd made an arrest. "I told you, we don't ask questions on this side of the transaction." He shrugged. "I can tell you it wasn't cheap. Cost him a grand."
I said, "He hires a precision pistol—the kind you enter competitions with—and he doesn't kill his target? Then he books out of town? Doesn't make sense, Jellybean."
The gun dealer shrugged elaborately. "Means he won't try again. He's gone for good. To toss a grand around like that, he musta got paid good in the first place. Then when the job went bust, he grabbed the next plane out."
Jellybean looked at us one at a time, a little tic touching his left eye. Bozo, his eyes boring right into Jellybean's, said, "You sure got a lot to say without saying much, my brother."
"Bozo, I give it to you straight."
"Except for what he looked like. You left that out, Jellybean."
"He was dark. Not a black man, maybe ... Latino."
"Jellybean..."
"Or maybe one of them Ayrabs." Jellybean frowned. Then he lurched forward. "You go around telling people I sold a gun to some damn terrorist, I get my ass in a sling!"
"He went downtown in a gypsy cab," I reminded him.
"Sure. He dropped five bills on Lonnie Hartman to rent one of his old taxis for a couple hours, and hired some kid of Lonnie's to drive it. Hell, neither Lon or that kid knew the guy was a shooter. Far as they knew, he was a damn tourist!"
"Right," I said.
"Anyway, the kid driving didn't even hear the shots go off, but right after, the guy yelled for him to get out of there, he smelled burnt gunpowder. He dropped the shooter off at Grand Central, and that was the last he saw of him. Kid got the cab back to Lonnie Hartman's garage and scrammed." Jellybean paused, took a deep breath and added, "That's what I hear....Look, if this guy's some damn terrorist—"
I grinned at him. "Who said the guy was a terrorist, Jellybean?"
"I wouldn't sell shit to them motherfuckers, I ain't that evil a asshole. They crazy, Mr. Hammer. They fly airliners into buildings and think when they die, they go zip up to heaven. Live the life of ease up there."
"A lot of people believe in a life after death, Jellybean."
"Not me, Mr. Hammer. Man, I want to stay right here on God's green earth in the devil's own city. I like these badass streets. I like a fattie or maybe a cold beer at the end of the day. I like a ball game on my flat screen. I like some warm, snuggly cooze to curl up with. They can have their virgins in the afterlife. I'll take me some ho in the here and now."
I'd heard worse philosophies of life.
Bozo Jackson gave Jellybean a long, solemn look and eased off his stool, and we both said so long to him. On the way out, Jellybean called, "Mr. Hammer! You in the book?"
"Under Michael Hammer Investigations."
"I hear anything, I give you a call. If I'm lyin,' I'm dyin.'"
I gave him my nastiest grin. "It's a deal, Jellybean. And as an expert on small arms, you'll like my gun—it's a .45, a classic from the Great War."
But behind his spare desk, the man with the colorful smile was frowning. "Ain't nothin' great about any war, Mr. Hammer."
"Without war, Jellybean, there'd be no armaments. And you'd be out of business."
And now the big glittery grin came again. "I ain't worried about that ever happenin', Mr. Hammer."
Out on the sidewalk, trying to wave down a cab, Bozo asked, "What now, Mike?"
"Check out that purple gypsy for me, Bozo."
I held out a hand with a C-note in it. We shook and my hand came back bare.
Bozo was frowning. "I still don't know why a pro shooter buys a target pistol for a hit."
"Maybe it wasn't a hit."
And he was thinking about that when I got into the cab—a yellow, not a gypsy. Not today.
I called Velda and had her bring the kids around to the French House, an off-the-beaten-path restaurant she knew well.
"Call a cab," I told her. "Don't go down to the street for one."
"You don't have to insult me," she said.
"Sorry. I'm just worried about those kids."
"Those kids are about the age we were when we met."
"Don't remind me."
French fries were as close as the French House came to what its name implied, serving great deli-style food in a rough neighborhood near the Times Square theater district, where squad cars passed by every five minutes. I got there ten minutes before the kids and Velda, and had almost finished off half a bottle of Miller Beer when they spotted me in the booth.
They came quickly down the aisle and slid in opposite.
Neither one looked very happy.
"Hope you nice people had a quiet afternoon," I said, as Velda settled in next to me and gave me a small smile and a big nod.
The Hurley kids looked at each other, trying to find an answer. Then Jenna said, "Remember my friend in Israel who mailed the bone back to the States for us?"
I nodded.
"Marcy's her name—she got beat up yesterday."
I frowned. "How bad?"
Jenna's eyes were moist, but her voice stayed firm. "She didn't go to the hospital or anything. But two men—she thinks they were Palestinians—grabbed her on the street, dragged her into a car and, when they were in a desolate section of the city, pulled into an alley and yelled at her and beat her terribly."
"What were they after?"
"At first they didn't say. They just yelled at her and beat up on her, slapping her, slugging her. One was in the front seat, the other in back with Marcy, and ... anyway, she was hurt and crying and scared stiff and then they suddenly asked her in English where she had sent the package. She said, 'What package?' And the one in the front seat said, 'The one the American bitch gave you.'"
I heaved a sigh. I had given up smoking maybe twenty years ago, but I would've killed for a Lucky Strike right now. "And she told them, right?"
Jenna swallowed. Nodded. "She told them."
"Shit!" I said.
Jenna leaned forward and clutched my arm. "Mr. Hammer, I couldn't blame her. She thought they'd kill her if she didn't tell them. She's just a college girl from California. Getting a beating like that, it's nothing she'd ever imagined—"
"Don't sweat it, Jenna. It's not like we didn't already know people are ..." I almost said, After you. Instead I finished with, "... interested."
"I wish we'd never found that stupid fucking thing." Matthew touched her arm. "Jenna..."
"A bone. A stupid silly lousy hunk of bone."
I smiled. "Jenna, that big old bone makes an even bigger new symbol."
She was shaking her head. "Haven't they got enough hate for each other already over there? What do they need a stupid symbol for?"
A waitress came by with coffee for Velda and another beer for me, and the two kids asked for Diet Cokes.
I said, "You're dealing with people who have comparatively little compared to the Western world. They have armies equipped with antiquated equipment, and have very little personal wealth—that oil money doesn't exactly get spread around."
Jenna smirked. "Oil money doesn't exactly get spread around over here, either."
"Better than over there. On top of that, they have violent tendencies when it comes to religious and nationalistic beliefs. But don't for a minute think they're dumb."
They were still kids. College kids, but kids who hadn't lost all of their teenage habits, like suddenly letting their eyes flash to one another asking a silent, Should we or shouldn't we?
I said, "Go ahead and spill it. What I don't know can hurt you."
There was another sudden exchange of eye contact. Then they both looked squarely at me.
Matthew said, "One of the Israeli students assigned to help our parents out
with their Dead Sea Scroll research...? He called me on my cell this afternoon."
Jenna said, "His name's Jason Diamond. Seems like a nice guy. A little old for a student, maybe, but there are a lot like that in Israel. Everybody's taken time out for military training and service. Even the little kids have a degree of maturity you don't see over here."
"Probably because they've been living under tension so long," I said. "With all the suicide bombings from the crazies and the general world situation, those kids are well aware of what's going on." I paused, then asked, "But what about this Jason Diamond?"
"I can't emphasize enough that he was very nice," Jenna insisted. "Not mean or threatening."
I nodded. "What did he want?"
"It was just a phone call, saying hello, making sure we got back home safe. Nothing that, in itself, seemed significant."
Velda said, "Then why does it seem significant enough for you to mention to Mike?"
Jenna and Matthew exchanged glances, and then she went on with their story. "When Marcy called and told us what had happened to her, she said that Jason Diamond came around to see her, a few hours later, and seemed shocked to find her all bruised and frightened. He helped her with bandages and cool cloths."
"You said he was a nice guy."
"Right. But while he was helping her ... he asked her the same thing."
"What do you mean, 'the same thing'?"
"The same thing that her attackers asked—where Marcy had sent the package that included some of our things. He never mentioned the Goliath bone, but ... why else would he care about that package?"
I sat there watching Jenna lick her lips, thinking about what she was going to say next.
"Finally Marcy asked Jason how he knew she'd sent a 'package' home, with some things of Matt's and mine. And Jason told her he had overheard a couple of Palestinians talking about it."
I glanced at Velda, and she glanced at me, frowning. I said, "That was pretty thin."
"Maybe," Jenna said. "Still, maybe Marcy wouldn't have thought anything of it, even after taking a beating like that. But the thing is ... one other time? Marcy saw Jason going into a building where the Mossad had offices."
I frowned. "You think Jason Diamond is an Israeli agent?"
"Marcy does. She'd never made him for an agent before, because he seemed too young for a thing like that. She thought."
Velda said, "Too old for a student, too young for a spy."
I said, "However you slice it, Jenna, Matthew, your parent's hired 'helper' is more than he pretended to be."
"He seemed to know about the package," the girl agreed, "if not the bone."
We ordered a light supper and the conversation resumed. I said, "Until that bone is authenticated, everything else is speculation."
Matthew leaned forward in his seat, his eyes meeting mine. "Well, it will be authenticated soon. Probably already has been—my parents have been working on it all day."
"Even so," I said, "you can't tie it with a certainty to the historical Goliath."
"No, but the university has the latest technology at its disposal to do everything short of that. The artifact isn't all that old, relatively speaking—it was well preserved, and research bears out the probability that this could be part of the historical figure in question ... and does it really matter whether it was Goliath's femur or came from a wandering diplodocus? Both the Arab world and the Israelis seem to know about it ... and both want it."
I liked hearing him talk. He'd be a professor like his old man someday. "So what's the bottom line, Matthew?"
He leaned forward a little more, totally engrossed in his exposition. "Jenna's right, I'm afraid. It would be better if we'd never found that goddamn thing. The Israelis will see it as a symbol of defeating an Arab giant and his army. And the Arab world will want to keep it out of Israeli hands—whether to claim it as a symbol of their own fallen hero, or to destroy the thing. Who can say? We were just digging in the ground, Mr. Hammer—we didn't want to light a match and throw it in an ocean of gasoline. Remember after 9/11 and then the anthrax scare? They had all of us running scared, the American public buying up old surplus gas masks."
"Yeah, but not buying any extra filters. Damn, most of that stuff is World War II surplus."
"You didn't go out and buy any of that stuff, did you, Mr. Hammer?"
"Naw. I have my .45 Army-issue Colt automatic. Still shoots good, too. And I have about thirty boxes of vintage ammo and never had a misfire yet."
Velda smirked. "That relic'll blow up in his face one of these days, wait and see."
Jenna asked with a sweetly mocking little smile, "How is your aim, Mr. Hammer?"
"Well, my eyesight's twenty-twenty and I've never needed glasses, if you want a hint. Otherwise go check the old newspaper files and see. I was in all the papers."
"Like the war in Iraq?" Matthew asked, something gently mocking in him, too. "Instead of frontal attacks, we've got hidden car bombs, soldiers playing the role of civilians, kids sporting and using adult weapons. Israel tries to calm things down by emptying out villages to give back to the Palestinians, and it still does no good."
"Speaking of the papers," I said to the boy, "you might ask yourself one more question."
"Such as?"
"Such as, who's going to cover your tail when the media hails you brother-and-sister lovebirds as the discoverers of the Goliath bone?"
Another glance passed between Matthew and Jenna. Quietly, he asked me, "Would they? Print that, I mean."
"You think they'd restrain themselves?" I asked.
"Then where does that leave us?"
"With the world's biggest soup bone, Matthew. And you in it—the soup, I mean."
Jenna sat forward. "Is Matthew right, Mr. Hammer? Could our discovery lead to a wider war?"
"Could be," I said. "They can't fight us with weaponry, but a small lab can turn out a sizable amount of deadly bacteria that can decimate the population like the AIDS scourge that hit Africa. Smallpox did the same thing to the American Indians. Our friendly government agency sent them contaminated blankets and never had to waste bullets to shoot them."
Velda was looking at me gravely. "Mike—the way we outnumber this enemy is ridiculous."
"But they've had a lot of time to infiltrate us with personnel looking to be martyrs. We're a diverse country and they can move freely wherever they want to. Never play this enemy down. At this point, we don't know the extent of their intelligence, their intimate knowledge of their supposed enemy."
Matthew was frowning. "Supposed enemy? You mean the USA?"
"You spelled it right, anyway—us, Matthew. You and Jenna and me and Velda."
Our food arrived and everybody but me picked at it. I was hungry.
"My guess," I said, between bites of corned beef, pastrami, Swiss cheese, coleslaw, Russian dressing, and rye bread, "is they have you kids pretty well covered. They know you didn't move into that apartment where the shooters were waiting. And they most likely know you left Velda's apartment and came here."
Velda was nibbling at her salad. But the two kids had wide eyes and open mouths and forks slack in limp hands.
"Oh yeah," I said, gesturing around the packed restaurant. "They know you're here. Outside, a couple of more shooters will be bracketing the door, and if you go waltzing out front, they'll cut both of you down."
Jenna, pushing her plate away, went very white and her eyes opened even wider, fear sparking in them first, then anger. She was about to sound off in my face until I held up my hand and she pressed her lips together tightly.
"This restaurant is a safe house," I said, "and the owner is a friend of mine. We built an exit to the street behind this one that comes out six buildings down. A white Ford pickup truck already parked at the curb will be your ride. The driver will take you to different quarters, where you will stay until Velda or I come and get you. You'll have half a dozen men watching you; two inside, four out. Tomorrow your clothes and other personal belongings w
ill be delivered to you."
Matthew was frowning. Too much was flying by too damn fast. A taut expression pulled at his face, and he leaned forward on the table, the fingers of his hands interlocking. For the first time he dropped the "Mr. Hammer," saying, "Mike—we barely know you. You stumbled onto us, and I'd heard of you, of course, but figured you were just a plain old-fashioned private detective..."
Velda said, "Emphasis on the 'old-fashioned.'"
"...the kind who could handle the rough stuff, but this whole business sounds like a military operation. How come you can operate out of safe houses like the CIA, or be the point man on a historical artifact that can have, well, international repercussions?"
"Just lucky I guess," I said. "You two ready to go?"
I nodded toward the kitchen door and six waiters came out and bunched together, blocking anybody's view. The four of us got up and followed the owner through a side door while another foursome took our places at the table. Five minutes later, we had traversed the cluttered backyards of two houses, gone into the cellar of the third, and exited through the basement door of the old tenement.
There were no more comments or complaints. Matthew and Jenna got into the Ford pickup; the unseen driver started it up and took off. I took Velda's hand, and we had a leisurely walk to her apartment building.
Very softly, as we held hands, she asked, "When are you going to move the kids again?"
"You are sharp, kitten. Beautiful and sharp." I let my eyes run over her gorgeous contours. "We'll move them once a day—at different times, of course. Why do you ask?"
"Because those kids are the bargaining chips, aren't they? If the enemy grabs them, they have something to trade for the bone. And both you and I know that while their parents might be sucker enough to pay the ransom price—maybe even we would be sucker enough—all you'd get back would be two dead kids."
"And what would happen then, Velda? Something even bigger and wilder. What else?"
She knew, all right. She said, "The sleeping giant might awaken again, like after Pearl Harbor. A country of people so goddamn mad they'd be ready to go to war against every rogue state on the planet. Like a disturbed rattlesnake, there'd be a demand for the bloodiest retaliation you ever saw."
[Mike Hammer 14] - The Goliath Bone Page 7
