It's in the Book (2 page)

“I don't have any politics, Senator.”

Those Groucho eyebrows climbed toward a shaggy forelock. “You were famously associated with my conservative colleague, Senator Jasper. There was that rather notorious incident in Russia when you accompanied him as a bodyguard.”

“That was just a job, sir.”

“Then perhaps you won't have any objection to doing a job for a public servant of … a
liberal
persuasion.”

“As long as you don't try to persuade me, Senator.”

“Fair enough,” he said with a chuckle, and settled back in the chair, tenting his fingers. “I would hope as a resident of our great state that you might have observed that I fight for my constituency and try to leave partisan politics out of it. That I've often been at odds with my party for the good of the people.”

“Senator, you don't have to sell me. No offense, but I haven't voted in years.”

A smile twitched in one corner of his fleshy face. “I am only hoping that you don't view me as an adversary. That you might have some small regard for my efforts.”

“You're honest and you're a fighter. That goes a good distance with me.”

His pale cheeks flushed red.
Had I struck a nerve without intending?

“I appreciate that,” he said quietly.

Sunshine was filtering through sheer curtains, exposing dust motes—even the St. Moritz had dust. Horns honked below, but faintly, the city out there paying no heed to a venerable public servant and an erstwhile tabloid hero.

“Nicholas Giraldi died last night,” he said.

What the hell?

Don Nicholas Giraldi, head of New York's so-called sixth Mafia family, had died in his sleep yesterday afternoon in his private room at St. Luke's Hospital. It had been in the evening papers and all over the media: “Old Nic,” that most benign of a very un-benign breed, finally gone.

“I heard,” I said.

Boylan's smile was like a priest's, blessing a recalcitrant parishioner. “You knew him. There are rumors that you even did jobs for him occasionally. That he trusted you.”

I sipped my Miller Lite and shrugged. “Why deny it? That doesn't make me a wiseguy any more than taking on a job for you makes me a liberal.”

He chuckled. “I didn't mean to suggest it did. It does seem … forgive me, Mr. Hammer … it does seem a trifle strange that a man who once made headlines killing mobsters would form an alliance with one.”

“Alliance is too strong a word, Senator. I did a handful of jobs for him, unrelated to his … business. Matters he didn't want corrupted by his own associates.”

“Could you be more specific?”

“No. Him dying doesn't mean client confidentiality goes out the window. That cop Hanson, in the other room, has the receipt for that C-note that I signed before coming. Spells it out in the small print, if you're interested.”

The dark eyebrows flicked up and down. “Actually, that's something of a relief. What I want to ask you dances along the edges of that confidentiality, Mr. Hammer. But I hope you might answer. And that you would trust me to be discreet as well.”

“You can ask.”

He folded his arms, like a big Irish genie about to grant a wish. “Did you receive something from the old don, shortly before … or perhaps
upon
… his death?”

“No. What would it have been if I had?”

“A book. A ledger, possibly.”

I put the beer bottle back on the coffee table. “No. Is that what you're trying to recover? A ledger?”

He nodded. Now when he spoke it was nearly a whisper: “And here your discretion is key. The don was in power a very long time … going back to the late forties. His ways, by modern standards, were old-fashioned, right up to the end. One particular antiquated practice peculiar to Don Giraldi was, apparently, keeping a hand-written record of every transaction, every agreement he ever made. No one knows precisely what was in that book. There were other books kept, accounting records that were largely fictional, intended for the IRS but in this particular volume he was said to record the real events, the actual dealings of his business. When asked about such matters, he would say only, ‘It's in the book.'”

I shrugged. “I heard the rumors. That he kept a book under lock and key, or in a safe somewhere, and all his secrets were kept in the thing. But I never believed it.”

“Why not?”

I pawed at the air dismissively. “He was too shrewd to write anything down and incriminate himself if it fell into the wrong hands? Naw. It's a myth, Senator. If that's what you want to send me out looking for, my advice is to forget it.”

But the big head was shaking side to side. “No, Mr. Hammer, that book is very real. Old Nic told his most innermost associates, when his health began to fail earlier this year, that the book would be given to the person he trusted most.”

I frowned, but I also shrugged. “So I'm wrong. Anyway,
I'm
not that person. He didn't send me his damn book. But how is it you know what his ‘innermost associates' were told?”

“FBI wiretaps.” His smile had a pixieish cast, but his eyes were so hard they might have been glass. “Do you think you could find that ledger, Mr. Hammer?”

I shrugged. “It's a big city. Puts the whole needle-in-a-haystack bit to shame. But what would you do with the thing? Does the FBI think they can make cases out of what's in those pages?”

He swallowed thickly. Suddenly he wasn't looking me in the eye. “There's no question, Mr. Hammer, that names and dates and facts and figures in a ledger would be of interest to law enforcement, both local and federal. There's also no question of its value to the old don's successors.”

I was nodding. “Covering their own asses and giving them valuable intel on the other mob families and crooked cops and any number of public figures. The blackmail possibilities alone are …”

But I didn't finish. Because the senator's head lowered and his eyes shut briefly, and I knew.

I knew
.

“You've always been a straight shooter, Senator. But you didn't come from money. You must have needed help in the early days, getting started. You took money from the don, didn't you?”

“Mr. Hammer …”

“Hell. And so did somebody else.” I hummed a few nasty off-key bars of “Hail to the Chief.”

“Mr. Hammer, your country would be very—”

“Can it. I put in my time in the Pacific. I should let you all swing. I should just sit back and laugh and laugh and let this play out like Watergate was just the cartoon before the main feature.”

He looked very soft, this man who had come from such a hard place so long ago. “Is that what you intend to do?”

I sighed. Then I really did laugh, but there wasn't any humor in it. “No. I know what kind of foul waters you have to swim in, Senator. And your public record
is
good. Funny, the president having to send you. Your politics and his couldn't be much more at odds. But you're stuck in the same mire, aren't you? Like dinosaurs in a tar pit.”

That made him smile sadly. “Will you walk away and just let us decay, Mr. Hammer?”

“Why shouldn't I?”

“Well, for one thing, somewhere out there, in that big city, or that bigger country beyond, are people that Old Nic trusted. People like you, who aren't tainted by the Mob. And who are now in grave danger.”

He was right about that.

“And Mr. Hammer, the way we came looking for you does not compare to the way other interested parties will conduct their search—the other five families, for example. And they may well start with you.”

I grunted a laugh. “So I owe you a big thank you, at least, since I would have had no idea I was in anybody's cross-hairs over this. I get that.”

“Good. Good.” He had his first overdue sip of beer. He licked foam off those rather sensual lips and the Leprechaun twinkle was back. “And what would you say to ten thousand dollars as a fee, Mr. Hammer?”

“Ten thousand dollars of the tax payers' money?” I got up and slapped on my hat. “Sure. Why not? It's a way for me to finally get back some of what I paid in, anyway.”

“Bring me the book, Mr. Hammer.” His smile was reassuring but the eyes were hard again. “Bring
us
the book.”

“See what I can do.”

Hoods always come in twos. The bent-nose boys accompany their boss to business meetings, often in restaurants. Sometimes they sit with their boss, other times at an adjacent table. Or one sits nearby while the other stays outside in the car, at the wheel, an eye on the entrance. Or maybe parked in the alley behind a restaurant, which is a smarter move. Mob watchdogs are always teamed up in twos. So are assassins.

This time the guy waiting in the hall outside my office in the Hackard Building was in his twenties, wearing a yellow shirt with a pointy collar and no tie under a light-blue suit that gave no hint of gun bulge. But a piece was under there, all right. He would have been handsome if his nose hadn't been broken into a misshapen thing, stuck on like clay a sculptor hadn't gotten around to shaping. His dark hair was puffy with hair spray and his sideburns were right off the cough-drop box.

Hoods these days.

“Let's go in and join your boss and your buddy,” I said.

“What?” His voice was comically high-pitched and his eyes were small and stupid, all but disappearing when he frowned.

I made an educated guess. “You're with Sonny Giraldi's crew. And Sonny and your opposite number are waiting inside. I'm Hammer.” I jerked a thumb toward the door. “Like on the glass?”

He was still working that out when I went in and held the door open for him.

John “Sonny” Giraldi, nephew of Don Nicholas Giraldi and assumed heir to the throne, was seated along the side wall like a patient waiting to get in to see the doctor. He was small, slender, olive-complected, with a narrow face, a hook nose, and big dark eyes that had a deceptively sleepy cast. The other bodyguard, bigger than the guy in the hall, was another pointy-collared disco dude with heavy sideburns; he had a protruding forehead and a weak chin, sitting with a chair between himself and his boss.

Sonny's wardrobe, by the way, was likely courtesy of an Italian designer, Armani maybe, a sleekly cut gray number with a black shirt and gray silk tie. No way a gun was under there anywhere. Sonny let his employees handle the artillery.

“I'd prefer, Mr. Hammer,” Sonny said, his voice a radio-announcer baritone too big for his small frame, “if you'd let Flavio keep his position in the corridor. This is a … uh … transitional time. I might attract unwanted company.”

“Fine. Let Flavio stand watch. Hell, I know all about unwanted company.”

That got a tiny twitch of a smile from Velda, over at her desk, but prior to that she had been sitting as blankly unconcerned as a meter maid making out a ticket. The Giraldi mob's heir apparent would not have suspected that the unseen right hand of this statuesque beauty undoubtedly held a revolver right now.

I shut the door on Flavio and turned to walk toward my inner office door, saying, “Just you, Mr. Giraldi. I take it you're here for a consultation.”

He rose on his Italian loafers and gave me a nod, tossing a flat-hand gesture to the seated bodyguard to stay that way. Velda's head swivelled slightly and I flashed her a look that said be ready for anything. She returned that with a barely perceptible nod.

I shut the door and gestured Sonny Giraldi toward the client's chair. I got behind the desk as Sonny removed a silver cigarette case from inside his suit coat. No chance he was going for a gun the way those threads fit. He reached his slender, well-manicured hand out to offer me a smoke from the case and I shook my head.

“I gave those up years ago,” I said. “How do you think I managed to live so long?”

He smiled, a smile so delicious he seemed to taste it. “Well, a lot of us were wondering. Mr. Hammer, do you know why I'm here?”

“You want your uncle's ledger.”

“Yes. Do you have it?”

“No. Next question.”

He crossed his legs as he lighted up a cigarette. He was not particularly manly, though not effeminate, either. “Do you understand why I thought you might have the book?”

“Yeah. On his deathbed, your uncle said he was bequeathing the thing to somebody he trusted.”

He nodded slowly, the big dark sleepy eyes in the narrow face fixed on me. “You did a few jobs for the old don, jobs that he didn't feel he could entrust to his own people.”

“That's true as far as it goes.”

“
Why
did he trust
you
, Mr. Hammer? And why would
you
work for
him?
You're well-known to be an enemy of La Cosa Nostra. Carl Evello. Alberto Bonetti. Two dons, representing two of the six families, and you killed them both. That massacre at the Y and S men's club—
how
many soldiers did you slaughter there, anyway? Thirty?”

“It was never proven I did that. Anyway, who's counting?”

Another tasty smile. There was an ashtray on my desk for the benefit of clients, and he used it, flicking ash with a hand heavy with bejeweled golden rings. The suit might be Armani, but down deep Sonny was still just another tacky goombah.

He was saying, “And yet Don Nicholas, Old Nic himself, not only let you live, he trusted you to do jobs for him. Why?”

“Why did he let me live? Now and then I killed his competitors. Which saved him the trouble. As for why I would do a job for Old Nic … let's just say he did me a favor now and then.”

“What kind of favor, Mr. Hammer? Or may I call you ‘Mike'? After all, you and my uncle were thick as thieves.”

“Not that thick, but you can call me Mike … Sonny. Let's just say your uncle helped me out of the occasional jam in your world.”

The hooded eyes narrowed to slits. “They say he helped you get out of town after the waterfront shoot-out with Sal Bonetti.”