Mickey Spillane - The Big Bang

If so, it was an incredibly elaborate one....

And the tone, the words, of the message seemed to confirm the story Harrin told Sprague as no parable, nothing at all hypothetical. Ask any junkie in New York out there, from the Junkman to the freaked-out kids Davy Harrin hooked, they would all say they were dying for dope. Maybe they didn't know how right they were.

If a huge supply of fatally contaminated heroin hit these hungry New York streets, the overnight death toll would be staggering.

And the Syndicate would take the rap, and the public outcry for justice would be loud and harsh and relentless. Harrin had envisioned the families and friends of victims rising up with guns and knives and clubs and anything they could get their hands on, to take bloody vengeance like villagers with torches storming Frankenstein's castle.

Would there be riots, vigilante action, if such a thing happened? Very possibly. But certainly the shared tragedy would create a new and undeniable demand that law enforcement grow itself a spine, and make the war on crime a real one, not just a slogan.

Could the Mafia really be brought down by such a demented scheme?

No way, I thought, shaking my head.

Then my eyes caught one of the framed sayings: " The man who says it can't be done is interrupted by the man who did it. "

Others spoke to me, too: " Keep Cool and Obey Orders," "The king can do no wrong," "Let Them Eat Cake," "Caveat emptor " ...

"Jesus," I said to the empty office. "You really did it, didn't you?"

And the clever, even foolproof ceramics delivery system, from molds to pottery, was in place to do the late Harrin's bidding. Had Harrin played intermediary for Evello, or had he been attempting to overturn the longtime mob boss? And in either case, would the good doctor have invested his ill-gotten gains in charity or medical research or perhaps even to buy and contaminate another cash crop of junk, to feed the rest of the country his deadly vaccine?

I could never know.

But I did know where and when the poisoned shipment would hit the docks.

I stuffed the sheets back in the envelope, sealed it, and went out in the hall and handed it to Billy.

"Messenger this over to my office, kid."

"Sure, but I can get you a stamp—there's a mail slot on this floor, Mr. Hammer."

"No, deliver it personally to my secretary and have her put it in the safe." I handed a five toward him.

He raised surrender-like palms. "Hey, you don't need to do that, Mr. Hammer...."

"Kid, everybody's got to make a living. Take it and go."

He took it and went.

With the cops and the Treasury Department breathing down my neck, I didn't want to risk carrying that packet on my person. I had several things to do this afternoon, including call on Shirley Vought and inquire about her good friend Jay Wren, and didn't want those papers on me.

Good thing, too, because I was just to my car in the parking lot when the van rolled in and three guys in jumpsuits, faces distorted by nylon-stocking masks, leaped from the vehicle. I was clawing for the .45 when the chloroform found my face and my last memory was them dragging me.

I CAME AWAKE SLOWLY, the first sensation one of dizziness, then a grogginess quickly took over, only to be cut by a sudden headache—nothing blinding or pounding, just a dull steady ache.

I was in my shirt with my tie loosened, my shoulder holster empty of course, and they'd left me my pants but taken my shoes. I'd been plopped down in a comfortable chair, an overstuffed easy chair.

Across from me was Jay Wren, smiling amiably, seated in his own comfy but mismatching chair. We were in an area underneath a balcony at the Pigeon, his trendsetting discotheque, where low-slung square plastic-topped tables were surrounded by purposely dissimilar seating straight out of secondhand shops.

The shabbiness was supposed to be hip or clever or something, and maybe that worked in the dark. But the lights were up in the Pigeon, in off hours—this was presumably still the afternoon, I hadn't been out that long—and, like any nightclub, the reconverted warehouse looked pretty seedy, the Day-Glo paint spatters on the brick walls un-enhanced by black light and looking like kindergartners had done the decor.

The regular seating beyond, surrounding the dance floor, had its chairs up on tabletops, and the functional platform of the stage revealed itself as what you might see in a high school gymnasium set up for a concert. The smell of disinfectant mingled with the spilled beer and stale smoke common to any club, between closing and opening hours, and the thatch-hatted tiki-hut bar, designed for serving on all sides, looked pretty shabby by day.

Not that the illumination was intense. The house lights were meager, and the windows were high up and blacked out. The dimness preserved a fraction of the club's nighttime appeal, though the size of the chamber, with its two facing balconies and high ceiling, was the only aspect of the club that was more impressive after hours.

The Snowbird again wore a mod-cut suit, this one lime green, and a white shirt including the trademark lacy collar and cuffs. With his long blond hair and golden tan, he looked like a Breck Girl who'd had a hard life. By male standards, he was almost handsome, though like the club, better lighting did not improve him, his cheeks revealing pockmarks and stressing the artificiality of his hair color.

His sunglasses were the same lime green as the suit and his smile was, as before, generously wide and with more teeth than absolutely necessary. Maybe I could do something about that.

I moved my arms, my hands.

He waved a cigarillo like a magic wand, and the smile shifted sideways.

"No, Mr. Hammer," he said, in that light yet still phony British accent. "You are not bound. You are our guest, not our prisoner. But I do insist you maintain a certain ... decorum."

His eyes lifted to right and left, and I glanced behind me. I'd been too groggy to even sense their presence, but standing over my shoulders were two big boys, one a black guy with a shaved skull in a black muscle shirt and black chinos, the other a shovel-jawed hardcase with a Marine haircut, a pale yellow T-shirt, and camouflage trousers. Together they weighed maybe four hundred fifty pounds, ten of it fat.

I glanced at the gyrene-type hardcase and said, "Almost didn't see you there, pal. In those pantaloons, you damn near disappear."

He ignored that, like I was a tourist and he was a Buckingham Palace guard.

"I do apologize," Wren said, exhaling smoke through his nostrils, "for the rude invitation."

"You mean the kidnapping?"

He fluttered a dismissive hand. "We needed to talk, and I had reason to believe you might harbor ill feelings toward me."

I shrugged, settled back in the comfy chair. "Why, because you sent Russell Frazer to stab me? Or hired those St. Louis clowns to ambush me at home, thinking I'd blame Evello if I squirmed out of it? Maybe you mean last night, when you sent those freaks around to splatter me, and got Doc Harrin instead."

The cigarillo slanted out of his thin lips, which when the teeth weren't showing formed a wide, never-healing cut in his tanned face. "I won't deny it. If we're going to have an honest conversation, Mr. Hammer, I have to be frank with you. Ah... here's someone you know."

Coming over from the tiki bar, with a tray, was a good-looking blonde in tight black slacks and a frilly white blouse that might have been the stuff Wren's cuffs and collars were cut from. She was halfway over before I realized it was Shirley Vought.

On the tray, she carried several coffee cups, a tiny pitcher of cream, a little dish of cubed sugar, and a gleaming silver coffee pot.