Mike Hammer--King of the Weeds

by Mickey Spillane

  “But he wasn’t specific about it,” I said.

  Nick said, “Well, he said we’d get a ‘windfall.’ He used that word a bunch of times. He was happy about being able to do that for us.”

  Velda asked, “When was this?”

  Amy shrugged and said, “Starting maybe… six months ago?”

  I said, “When he found out he had cancer.”

  She shrugged again, bigger this time. “I don’t know about that. Henry never told us he had cancer.”

  I looked from her face to his. “And now you figure that ‘windfall’ was the settlement that the city made with Rudy Olaf. That your grandfather made a deal with Olaf. That if Henry came forward and confessed to being the Bowery Bum slayer, then the cleared Olaf would share any settlement proceeds with you two kids.”

  They nodded slowly.

  “It’s also possible,” I said, “that Olaf did the murders, and your dying grandfather stepped forward to take the blame—after Olaf told him where that murder gun had been hidden away all these years. And assuring Henry that, again, you two would share in the settlement.”

  Another mutual slow nod.

  I went on: “But that wasn’t the kind of deal you can put in writing. Your grandfather had to trust Olaf. Trust him not to betray him… and you.”

  Amy sighed in frustration and Nick frowned the same way.

  I shifted in my chair. “Listen, kids… you do know who I am? What role I played in your grandfather’s life?”

  Amy said, “You and that Captain Chambers put Rudy Olaf away for the crimes our grandfather committed.”

  I said, “You really think your grandfather murdered those men?”

  Nick said, “I don’t. Olaf was his best bud going back to high school, and I figure when Henry knew he was going to die, he made the deal with Olaf that you outlined, Mr. Hammer.”

  Amy shook her head. “That’s where Nick and I disagree. I think Henry did those crimes. I mean, our grandfather was always a guilt-ridden old goat. He was depressed and he drank a lot and felt sorry for himself. He couldn’t go to sleep without drinking himself that way. Yes, you bet your ass I think Henry framed his friend, and then made a penance out of visiting him in prison. Playing speed chess with him weekly, if you can imagine.”

  I asked, “Did your grandfather play chess with anyone else?”

  Shaking his head, Nick said, “Not that I know of. Just Rudy Olaf. When he was a kid, I think Henry was really into chess. But he lost interest a long time ago.”

  “Except for the ongoing game with Olaf.”

  “Right.”

  Amy was shaking her head. “No, that’s not right. There was that one guy from Brooklyn, Nickie… when we were kids, remember? He’d come in and play with old Henry now and then.”

  I exchanged glances with Velda: Marcus Dooley.

  “I don’t remember that,” Nick said with a shrug.

  I asked Amy, “Do you remember his name? What he looked like?”

  “No,” she said. “I was a kid, he was a grown-up. That’s it.”

  But that felt like enough: Brogan was Dooley’s chess buddy, all right. Had he been Dooley’s helper, too?

  I looked from young face to young face again. “So why did you come to me, Amy? Nick? The last time I saw your grandfather was in his hospital room, and our meeting was less than cordial.”

  Nick said, “I don’t know anything about that. What I do know is that Henry said to come to you if anybody tried to… this is what he said, exactly… ‘screw you and your sister out of what’s rightfully yours.’”

  I shrugged. “Well, he just passed away, last night. Don’t tell me there’s already been a reading of the will and you were left out on the curb.”

  “Worse,” Amy said, bleakly bitter. Nick was nodding forcefully. She went on: “That slimeball attorney Rufus Tomlin called this morning to inform us that there would be a reading of the will in his office tomorrow afternoon, and that we were welcome to come… but needn’t bother.”

  Velda sat forward. “Needn’t bother?”

  Nick said, “That’s right. He said we ‘needn’t bother’ because we weren’t in our grandfather’s will. The sole beneficiary is—”

  “Rudy Olaf,” I said.

  “Yes!” they both said.

  I sighed, rocked back. “There’s a possibility that your grandfather had an arrangement with Olaf to provide for you. Apart from whatever was in the will. Nothing in writing, but maybe Olaf will honor it.”

  Veins were standing out in Amy’s forehead as she sat forward, but Nick beat her to the punch: “Oh, we talked to that old bastard this morning! He’s living in Henry’s apartment, you know! Same building we live in.”

  Amy said, “We asked if our grandfather had made any provisions with him to make us a part of his estate.”

  I asked, “And what did he say?”

  “In a word,” Amy said, “he said, ‘No.’”

  “And that’s it?”

  Nick said, “Well, he said we were welcome to stay on in our apartment, but that we weren’t his grandchildren, so we should expect to pay rent, like anybody else.”

  Amy was sitting with clenched fists, trembling all over, her dark eyes flashing. “It’s obvious Olaf is bitter about spending all those years in jail for what our grandfather did. I mean, who could blame him? Obviously Olaf encouraged Henry to come forward in that scheme to squeeze money out of the city. That way Olaf could benefit, and our grandfather could leave us well-off. But that sneaky old bastard bamboozled our grandfather. Clearly. Mr. Hammer, is there anything you can do?”

  Nick said, “I know we must sound terrible to you, a couple of greedy kids who’ve been dreaming about the windfall they’ll get when their grandfather dies… but Henry did say we should come to you for help.”

  Something in what the kid said made a puzzle piece slide into place with a click that reverberated through my brain. Something that had not made sense before suddenly did. And it was nothing to do with why these kids were here. And yet it was.

  Velda, sensing I had drifted, said, “Mike?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You should tell them. Tell them what can be done. What is being done.”

  I nodded. They were on the edge of their seats, the hope in their eyes so desperate it was almost funny. And pitiful.

  “I think you’re going to come out of this all right,” I said. “I’m certainly going to do my part. But before I fill you in, you need to understand something. You need to understand who your grandfather was.”

  They frowned.

  “Don’t ask me to go on,” I said, “unless you’re prepared to hear the worst.”

  They swallowed, exchanged glances, then nodded in tandem.

  “The most likely scenario,” I said, “and one that newly uncovered facts support, is that Rudy Olaf and Henry Brogan were accomplices—they were, together, the Bowery Bum slayer. They trolled gay bars on the Bowery looking for victims to lure into alleys promising sex but delivering robbery and murder. My guess is that Olaf did the luring and your grandfather did the killing, granted at Olaf’s direction. Olaf took the fall, and your grandfather owed him, and stayed his friend… his chess partner… all those years. And then Henry Brogan got cancer. Your gramps stepped up to take the blame and absolve his partner, freeing the latter while taking the city for a ride… to provide for the two grandchildren he loved.”

  They said nothing. Their mutual expression might well have been Henry Brogan’s the moment after the doctor’s fatal diagnosis.

  Nick grunted a kind of weary laugh. “I guess our grandfather shouldn’t have trusted a sociopath to do the right thing.”

  “Probably not,” I said. “But here’s the deal—and this is confidential, kids—the D.A.’s office is looking into both the original murders and the conspiracy to defraud the city that your grandfather and Rudy Olaf entered into.”

  “That means,” Amy said, eyes tensed, “that the settlement money would be returned to the city.�
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  “If the investigation is successful,” I said, nodding, “and I believe it will be.”

  Nick smiled a little. “So much for the windfall.”

  “True,” I said. “But the rest of your estate—that tenement apartment building that is going up in value even as we speak—will go to you two, once the dust settles.”

  Amy frowned. “Why is that?”

  “Any inheritance received as a result of the commission of a crime—in this case conspiracy—is revoked… and goes to the next-in-line to inherit. Which is you two.”

  “Well, that would be wonderful,” the girl said.

  “It’d be great,” Nick said, grinning. “And Rudy Olaf will go back to prison?”

  Sending the King of the Weeds back to Sing Sing was like tossing Br’er Rabbit into the Briar Patch.

  “Or something,” I said.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The sky remained as gray as the city it draped itself over, but there was no overt threat of rain, and I didn’t mind the chill. Wearing my blood-spattered trenchcoat might have made an interesting fashion statement on an afternoon trip with a Treasury agent. But Velda had already sent it off to the dry cleaners. She was both female and private investigator, after all, so her desire to make things right ran deep.

  She would not be making the trip to the Adirondacks with Roger Buckley and me—I had another assignment for her. Right after the Brogan grandkids left the office, I’d had a call from faux bag lady Rita Callaghan about the surveillance efforts outside the Hackard Building. It appeared the government guys were gone—Buckley had apparently called them off after we set up our day trip—but two other vehicles might be stalking our building. Each had a single party who remained in a parked car—sometimes on the rider’s side or in the back seat—which was periodically moved. Basic surveillance technique. And from Rita’s descriptions I thought I made them both.

  I was down on the street at two o’clock when Buckley pulled up promptly in a dark blue Buick Regal. I was in suit and tie and looked like any other businessman, or at least an Old School one in a porkpie fedora. That I was a .45-packing P.I. was not at all apparent, thanks to the cut of my suit—certainly not one wearing body armor, however lightweight.

  Buckley, too, looked like any other businessman, or anyway executive. He might have been my boss. His dark gray vested suit was beautifully tailored. He looked like the guys in magazine ads in the ’60s gone just slightly to seed, his chiseled good looks compromised by pouchiness and paunch.

  Nothing about us said we were off to visit a treasure hoard in the Hall of the Mountain Kings.

  We established right away that Buckley would drive and I would navigate. A major part of the deal was for me to provide the location of a hideaway filled with mob loot. He might as well learn his way there today.

  I directed him to cross the George Washington Bridge and head up 9W, taking the scenic route along the Hudson River. I didn’t need a map—I’d made the trip only a few times, but the pathway to billions isn’t something you forget.

  For the first leg of the trip, we just rode. Maybe each of us was waiting for the other to make the first move. Just outside Newburgh, Buckley glanced my way, his gray eyes tight.

  “You know,” the Treasury agent said, “I’m aware we’re headed to the Adirondacks.”

  I grinned. “Well, if you have it narrowed down that much, what do you need me for?”

  “We do have a deal, right, Mr. Hammer?”

  “Isn’t that understood?”

  “Let’s spell it out—the finder’s fee we discussed in exchange for taking me to this secret location.”

  “That’s it.”

  At least a full minute passed before he said: “Why don’t I tell you what I know, Mr. Hammer? And then you fill in the rest.”

  “Sure. It’s a long drive.”

  “Is it?”

  I nodded. “Like you said—you go first.”

  He knew that the New York state police and the federal government had both gone to two suspected locations for the stored money and other valuables. First, a cavern on the property of Don Lorenzo Ponti, which turned out to be in use for mushroom farming. Second, a cavern in a mountain roughly in the same area that had been used by a bootlegger named Slipped Disk Harris both during Prohibition and after.

  Nothing had been found in either.

  That seemed to be the extent of his knowledge.

  So I told him what I knew. That the old dons of the Five Families had distrusted the next generation and taken the remarkable step of turning assets into cash and commodities. That Marcus Dooley had been a trusted non-mobbed-up worker of Don Ponti’s who had been recruited by the capo to help him move all that money. That Dooley had double-crossed the don by hiding it elsewhere other than the cavern on Ponti’s own property. That on his deathbed Dooley had given me the clues that had led me to the treasure. And that I had come to believe that Dooley meant for his son Marvin to benefit when the billions were either turned back over to the mob or handed in to the government.

  Buckley, behind the wheel, said, “Your friend Dooley must have known that any finder’s fee would be substantial. That there’d be plenty to go around, for you and his kid.”

  “Maybe. Anyway, I’m really not that interested.”

  That made him smile and his gaze went from the highway to me and back again. “You really aren’t, are you, Mr. Hammer?”

  “Oh, I’ll take that finder’s fee you’re offering. This isn’t a hobby, it’s a business, and I don’t mind plumping up my retirement funds. But how does any one man spend a billion bucks, anyway?”

  He let out something half-way between a sigh and a laugh. “Many a man would relish the opportunity to try, Mr. Hammer. Tell me, do you expect us to provide Marvin Dooley with a separate finder’s fee?”

  “Naw. I’ll take care of him.”

  Outside Albany, I had Buckley stop at a farm equipment store, where I picked up two mag flashlights and some batteries. Soon we were headed into the North Country, the real New York, where you could smell pine cones, not exhaust fumes, where trees and mountains towered, not buildings.

  When the state roads ran out, county ones took over, but these were inconsistently maintained, depending on whether the townships in question wanted to bother. But finally, without a single wrong turn, we came to the single narrow lane that corkscrewed through the trees toward the majestic rise of the Adirondacks. We passed a landmark that had become familiar to Velda and me—a ditch where lay the twisted, rusted wreckage of an old truck held by two stout pine trees preventing its further downward slide.

  Buckley, eyes wide, asked, “You suppose that relic was hauling slate when it skidded off the road?”

  “More likely booze, a lifetime ago. A legit business would have salvaged the thing.”

  Then the Buick swung around a turn and the forest fell away, replaced by a vast empty field on the edge of a mountain that worked hard at blotting out the gray sky. Here and there around the property, hillocks of gray slag rose like ugly oversize anthills, wearing thistles that stubbornly insisted on growing.

  When Velda and I had first seen what was left of the old estate of Slipped Disk Harris, three weather-beaten buildings had lurked in the mountain’s shadows. Now they were gone. The mighty power of the federal government had swept them away, tearing apart anything that might provide a clue to those missing billions. Little piles of what discoveries metal detectors had made—rusty cans, truck chains, and assorted other debris—served as ironic reminders of a search that failed.

  We stopped at the point where the lane branched out in five ways, only one of which was passable.

  Buckley shot me an irritated look. “What’s the idea, Hammer? This is the Harris property. This site was ruled out by all the experts. It’s been gone over with a fine-tooth comb.”

  “I didn’t use a fine-tooth comb,” I said. “I used a backhoe.” I pointed. “Drive.”

  Frowning, the Treasury man did as he was t
old, not stopping till the path ran out and we faced a high ridge of bushes.

  “Pull around them,” I said.

  “There’s no road.”

  “That shrubbery was planted by bootleggers to hide the entrance to their cave. It’s a little overgrown, but you can still see the ruts of other vehicles in the grass. Drive.”

  He drove, and as we came around the ridge of bushes, the ground veered steeply up, its green merging into the rocky side of the mountain proper, as if a volcano had burst through a hillside. The quietness here was almost startling, the only noise wind whistling through the trees. This is what it would sound like when the infestation that was man was finally purged from the planet. And it didn’t strike me as all that bad.

  Buckley was hesitating. “Should we get out here? I don’t see anything.”

  “Look there. Look closer.” I pointed again. “See that cleft in the hillside? The angle from here makes it look narrow but it’s fairly wide. They used to have a big wooden barn door there, to drive their booze trucks in and out.”

  The T-man frowned, but hunkered over the wheel and crept up the hillside, bump bump bump. He paused at the clutch of bushes that partially concealed the cleft and I said, “Push on through the brush. We can use the headlights in there.”

  “This is the Harris cave.”

  “It is. Now ease on through.”

  He scowled but followed orders, and barely inside the mouth of the cave, he put it in park. I told him to drive a little deeper, because we could use the visibility, and he somewhat reluctantly obeyed. The surface under the wheels was surprisingly smooth.

  Finally I told him to stop but leave the headlights on, and we got out into the cool, dry atmosphere. Somehow you could sense the size of it all around you, and if you ever wondered how silence could be deafening, you understood now. I handed him one of the big heavy flashlights and kept the other for myself. We both clicked them on and their beams immediately picked up dust motes the car had kicked up from the hard-packed dirt floor.

  There was just enough incline for the headlight beams to have an upward angle, and that provided an immediate sense of the actual size of the big natural cave, of its impressive width, depth and height. Even so, we could only make out one rough wall of this almost chilly cavern that had made such a perfect warehouse for a bootlegger.