Kiss Her Goodbye (16 page)

Christ—so he'd been staking somebody out. Who at this point in his life would Doolan be watching, undercover?

"Funny thing, though."

"Yeah?"

"A couple of times he looked pretty damned sharp."

"Sharp."

"Yeah. Nice suit. Like he really had dough. Mostly he was dressed like, well, any old bird his age. I asked where he was going all duded up, and you will not believe what he said."

"Try me."

"I say, 'Where are you going tonight, Bill? Club 52?' And you know what he says?"

"What?"

"'You must be psychic, Fred. That's exactly where I'm headin'.' Right. An old coot like that, going to Club 52. I gave him the horse laugh, but then a week later, he came in all duded up again, and I say, 'Expectin' another wild night at Club 52, are ya, Bill?' He says sure, and says if I don't believe him, have a gander at this ... and he shows me a plastic card, signed by that guy Anthony Tret-something, who owns the joint."

"Yeah?"

"It's a plastic card with Club 52 on it and it says
ALL ACCESS.
You
believe
that?"

"Did you ever ask Doolan why a guy his age would be going to Club 52?"

"Sure I did. Get this—he says to me, 'Don't be a stick in the mud, Fred—don't you
dig
disco?' Dig
disco?
Was he kidding?"

This was the Doolan who died listening to recordings of the great symphonies, a lover of all the fine classics—and in his final days, he dug disco?

"When did you see him last?"

"Couple days before he killed himself."

"So did he seem really sick? Was he depressed, or in pain...?"

"Not really, but then he was taking strong painkillers before he died, and wouldn't be feeling it much if at all. Who knows—maybe there at the end, he was having one last fling. Hell, twice, he bought some rubbers from me."

"Maybe he didn't want to be a daddy at his age."

"Nuts. Didn't want to catch a dose, I'd say."

Either way, it was an interesting purchase for an octogenarian.

There wasn't much else Fred the druggist could tell me, so I said thanks and left. He'd warmed up—I was glad I hadn't slapped him. For a nontalkative guy, he and Doolan had gabbed plenty.

But all I had was one more screwy bit about my old friend that didn't make any sense at all—he had not only been to Club 52, he'd been a regular, or enough of one to rate a signed entry card from Little Tony himself.

I was going back in time now.

Down at the end of the street would be an old barroom with scarred furniture and artifacts dating to Prohibition days. Some of the customers would look like they had been there that long themselves, and the old sportswriters would be gathered at one end arguing about something that never happened anyway.

I would meet Velda at the back booth where the phone was right on the wall and she would have a cold beer and a meatball sandwich already ordered for me and we would compare notes of what had happened in the world of sports that day, with Ernie and Vern constantly butting in.

The taste in my mouth was sour and I spit it out. This time there would be no Velda and I shut her out of my mind. Vern had died the way a sportswriter should, of a heart attack after filing a story about a no-hitter at Yankee Stadium last year.

Two old-timers looked at me, surprised, then grinned. Somebody said hello from a booth and I waved in that direction while I moved through the modest crowd.

There in back was Ernie—a dark little balding mustached guy with a stubby pencil behind one ear, rolled up sleeves, a loose necktie, and baggy trousers, looking like he was trying out for a revival of
The Front Page.
Vern had been sports, but Ernie was police beat.

Right now he had the phone stuck to his ear, his waving hand describing something that couldn't be seen on the other end of the line. Not unless the rewrite man was psychic.

When I sat down in the booth nearby, he gaped at me, then hung the phone up without saying goodbye.

"How you doing, Ernie?"

"Man..." He shook his head, whether in disgust or amazement, I couldn't quite tell. "You
are
the fuck alive. I hardly believe it. Somebody
said
you were at Doolan's funeral, but I said they were either lying or hallucinating."

"I was there, all right. One of the youngest."

"That's not much to brag about," he said with a snort of a laugh. He slid in the side where his half-drunk beer was already waiting. "Where the hell have you been, Mike?"

"Away."

"Oh, so it's twenty questions? You think I don't ask enough questions in a given day, that you have to play cute?"

"I was living in Florida."
That was the first time I'd used the past tense for that.

"No shit? I thought you died. Everybody thought you were dead. When the Bonetti kid popped you, and you just disappeared, everybody figured you'd bought it. Either crawled off to bleed out someplace on your own, or got followed there and put out of your misery." He shrugged. "Mike Hammer's dead, there goes New York, I said."

"Sure you did, Ernie."

"But here you are back again, right?"

"Right."

"And you don't even look like some old shot-up piece of shit."

"Thanks a bunch."

"You look fit in fact. Packing heat?"

"I'm warm enough."

"That old glow in your eyes is there and everything. Somebody gonna die?"

"Somebody might."

He shifted in the booth. "So something big's going down, right?"

"Right."

"And if I ask what it is, you're going to tell me to shove it up my ass, right?"

"Right."

"Shit." He threw the rest of the beer down, then waved until the waitress saw him, and he held up two fingers. "So where's Velda?"

"I don't know, Ernie."

"Was she in Florida with you?"

"No."

Everything seemed to stop in midair, then he frowned.

I said, "It's over."

That got another snort of a laugh out of him. "In a pig's ass it's over," he said. "You don't just drop a broad like that. George Washington don't drop Martha. Tarzan don't dump Jane."

"Maybe Jane dumped Tarzan. Anyway, I hear she's got somebody else. And she's not in the city anymore." I managed a shrug. "These things happen."

"Jesus, Mike—this is like when the Yankees dropped Babe Ruth."

"Yet somehow the Yankees survived. Now forget it."

A young waitress came up and set down two foaming steins of beer in front of us.

"Want some pretzels, fellas?" she asked.

We both nodded.

"I'll bring 'em," she told us.

Ernie was smiling at me.

"What?" I said.

"That kid doesn't even know you. Maybe you gone out of fashion."

I was in no mood. "I need some information, Ernie." A frown started and I added, "Not asking you to share anything off the record, if you're not so inclined."

He wiped foam off his mustache. "Hey, if it's news, Mike, everything's on microfilm and you can look it up."

"You're quicker, pal." I took a pull of the beer. It was icy cold and tasted good. "This disco, Club 52—what goes on there?"

"It's popular and expensive and harder than hell to get into. It's where that dance, the hustle, got famous. You see everybody from movie stars to the big politicians inside."

"Even though they do coke in back?"

He frowned. "I've never been in there, Mike. I don't know
where
they do the coke."

"But they do it."

"Probably. Sure. Everybody in the upper register seems to."

"And nobody cares?"

"Hell, no."

"Because the 52's mobbed up? Little Tony Tret's running it, right?"

Ernie's head shake said no, but his mouth said, "Yes." Then he amended it: "Only, Mike, it's not a mob thing. Tony divorced himself from his family a long, long time ago. He was just a young entrepreneur who had the right idea at the right time. This cocaine kick, it's no big deal. It's just social. They keep it discreet, and nobody complains. It's not like there's piles of stuff on tables and everybody's bending over and snorting it."

"The clientele is the young and the beautiful, right?"

"Sure, and the old and the rich. Now and then tourists get in, if they know somebody or throw a hell of a tip at the doorman. But it's a hard ticket, man."

"Yeah? I know a guy who had an all-access pass."

"Like for backstage at rock concerts? Well, it makes sense. It's called a disco, but they do live music, too."

"That right?"

"Big sensation now is that Chrome broad from Spain or Mexico or somewhere—she was on Johnny Carson, you know, and got signed to a major record label. Gonna tour at these franchise clubs Tony Tret is opening all around the country." He chugged his beer, thumped the stein down, and cocked his head at me. "Who the hell would a middle-aged type like you know that would rate
that
kind of backstage pass?"

"You knew him, too—Bill Doolan."

"Aw, balls."

Said the queen.

"Oh, he had that kind of pass," I insisted.

He was shaking his head, not buying it. "Come on, Mike, you knew Doolan better than
that.
"

"I thought I did. Story is, he was taking pictures for some newspaper guy out in L.A. Which is funny, since I don't remember Doolan being any kind of photographer."

Ernie made a farting sound with his lips. "Doolan was a photographer like all you dicks are photographers—point it at a naked broad through a motel window, and shoot. Hey, if he was doing pro-level photographic work, I'd have known."

"Didn't he feed you tips in recent years?"

"Sure he did—old Doolan came onto stuff, usually when he was working for his pal Cummings, who's a real P.I. Unlike you, Mike, who just pretend to be one so you can find excuses to shoot people, and not with a camera."

"If it's not likely Doolan was shooting photos for an L.A.-based reporter, then what
was
he doing?"

He leaned forward. "You can bet that old son of a bitch wasn't just chasing young tail. He was working."

"Like how?"

"Beats the shit outa me. He was always into somethin'. He was an old pro and just liked to keep his hand in. Some guys never learn how to quit. Right, Mike?" Ernie paused, chewed on his lip a moment, then said, "Hard to believe he killed himself."

I just looked at him without saying anything at all, then all his gears started to mesh and I saw him tighten up across the shoulders.

He darted a look around, then said very softly, "So
that's
why you're back. You don't think Doolan snuffed himself either, do you, Mike?"

"No," I said.

He sat there thinking for maybe thirty seconds. Then he said, "Somebody you should talk to."

"Okay."

He slid out and came back two minutes later with a young guy about five ten with the long hair and mustache of his generation and a canary shirt with a pointed collar over a sport jacket that looked like couch upholstery.

"This is Lonnie Dean," he said, making room as the younger man slid in next to him.

"Christ, you
are
Mike Hammer," the kid said in a thin baritone. "I heard you were back in the city."

I just nodded.

Ernie said, "Mike, Lonnie wrote that story a while back about the new breed of organized crime family. Won a bunch of journalistic awards."

"Didn't see it," I admitted.

A grin blossomed under the younger reporter's thick mustache. "You wouldn't have, Mr. Hammer. The mob shake-up I wrote about followed that shoot-out on the pier you walked away from."

"Crawled is more like it," I said. "So I was an instrument of change, huh? Like the kids say, groovy."

His eyes were bright. He seemed enthusiastic and nervous, like he was meeting a movie star. "Mr. Hammer—"

"Make it 'Mike,' Lonnie."

"Mike. I could hardly believe it when Ernie came over and told me you were over here..."

Christ. Not a damn autograph hound.

"...I mean, we've never met, I've only been on the O.C. beat for a year. But you are
news.
"

"Yeah, well. Some people would be flattered but—"

"No, I mean news right now. Didn't make the media, but that hooker who got run down? You got clipped, too, didn't you? And walked away from it?"

I frowned. "Where did you hear that, son?"

"I have sources."

"In the department?"

"Sure, Mr. Hammer ... Mike ... but those aren't the sources I'm talking about." He used a forefinger to bend his nose in the time-honored fashion to indicate he meant wiseguys. "Do you know who's claiming credit for almost running you down?"

"Surprise me."

"Alberto Bonetti."

I squinted at him. "Why? It wasn't his people."

Ernie got in a question: "How can you know that, Mike?"

I shrugged. "Alberto would've used a pro. A pro wouldn't have got the girl, if I was the target."

Lonnie said, "You mean, you'd be dead now."

"Maybe. I've been out of the game. But hit-and-run isn't the mob's style either. Too many potential witnesses, too imprecise. And that driver was strictly amateur night." I sipped beer, thought about it. "The word on the street is Bonetti hired it done?"

"Yeah." If the kid's eyes had been any brighter, I would have needed sunglasses. "And there's more, Mike. Your pal Doolan may not have been a suicide."

I managed not to smile. "Do tell."

"Bonetti's taking credit for
that
kill, too. Well, that may be oversimplifying it...
You
have something to do with that, too."

"Me?"

The shaggy-haired crime reporter nodded. He looked like a fucking Muppet, but he seemed to know his shit. "Nobody was figuring old Bill Doolan for murder until you came back to town. Word got out you were starting to nose around, which people took to mean Doolan musta been whacked, and the credit started going to Bonetti. Whether the rumors began with the old don, or just grew ... that's where it stands."

I was nodding slowly. "So the street says ... or anyway
thinks
...that Bonetti took Doolan out to get back at me, and lure me out of hiding...?"