Mickey Spillane - Black Alley

The phone rang. It was a thing that had been sitting there, black and quiet like a holstered gun, unlisted, unknown to anybody, used only for local outgoing calls, and when it was triggered it had the soft, muted sound of a silenced automatic. I picked up the receiver off the cradle and in as growling a voice as I could put on, said, "Yes?"

When I heard his first word I felt a chill work its way across my shoulders. He said; "Hi, Mike." His tone was as pleasant as could be.

I took another deep, easy breath. "Hi, Pat."

He paused a moment. "Somebody shot Marcos Dooley."

Softly, I muttered, "Damn."

Pat Chambers knew what I was thinking and let me take my time. Old buddy Marcos Dooley had brought Pat and me into the intelligent end of the military before the war ended and steered us to where we were today. Only Pat could still wear the uniform, an NYPD blue. I carried a New York State P.I. ticket and a permit to keep a concealed weapon on my person. Marcos Dooley had become a wild-ass bum, and now he was dead.

"What happened, Pat?"

"Somebody broke in and shot him in the guts."

"You know who?"

"Not yet. We may have a suspect."

"Anyone I know?"

"You shot his brother. Ugo Ponti."

I said something unintelligible. "How is he?"

"Dying. He wants to see you."

"I'll be there."

...

Pat had made the way easy for me. A plainclothesman I recognized met me at Bellevue Hospital and took me in.

I turned the knob, went in and closed the door behind me.

The place was a death room. It hung heavy in the air. Light came from the instrument panel behind the bed, the glow a pale orange yellow. You could smell death.

When my eyes adjusted I saw the mound under the sheet. Quietly, I walked over and stood beside the bed, looking down on something with a hole in it that let life leak out. His breathing was shallow but even, the pain of the wound buried under the weight of narcotics.

While I was trying to figure out a way to wake him he seemed to sense he was not alone, and with an effort his eyes opened, strayed vacantly, then centered on me. "You made it, huh?"

"Sure, for you, Dooley. Why didn't you ask for Pat?"

"He's not a snake like you are."

"Come on -" I started to say, but he cut me off with a shake of his head.

"Mike... you're a mean slob. You're... nasty. You do the damnedest things. Pat's not like you."

"He's a cop, Marcos."

"Uh-huh." He coughed lightly and his face twitched with pain. My eyes were almost fully adjusted to the gloom and I could see him clearly. The years hadn't been good to him at all and the final indignity of getting shot had drained him.

There was a clock ticking behind his eyes. I knew it and he knew it. Each tick took him closer to the end. He strained to see me again, finally found my eyes. "Mike... remember Don Angelo?"

I thought he was drifting back along memory lane. Don Angelo had been dead for 20 years. At the age of 90-something he had died in peace in his Brooklyn apartment, surrounded by his real family. His other family was a hundredfold larger, spread out over the East Coast domain the don called his own.

"Sure, Dooley. What about him?" His expression looked strained and there was shame in his eyes. There was a long pause before he said, "I worked for him, Mike."

It was hard to believe.

"Dooley," I asked him, "what kind of work would you do for the Mob? You were no gunhand. You never messed around in illegal business."

He held his hand up, and I stopped talking. "It was... a different... kind of business." My silent nod asked him a question and he answered it. "Do you know... what the yearly take... of the..." he groped for the words and said, "associated mobs... adds up to?"

"It's a pile of loot," I said.

"Mike," he said very solemnly, "you haven't got the slightest idea."

"What are you getting at, Dooley?" His chest rose under the sheet while he took several deep breaths, his eyes closing until whatever spasm it was had calmed down. When he looked up his mouth worked a bit.

"Mike, remember when the young guys tried to take over... the family business?"

"But they didn't make it, Dooley."

"No... not then." He sucked in another big lungful of air. "But it made the dons think."

"What are you getting to, Dooley?" Once again, he gave out a grunt, this time of satisfaction. "They... were all getting screwed... by their kids. The ones they put through college. The ones they... tapped to run the business... when they handed it over."

"The dons weren't that dumb," I interrupted.

"Computers," Dooley said.

"Computers!"

"They learned... how to use them... in college. They didn't want to wait. They wanted it now... and were getting it. Now shut up and don't talk until I'm finished."

"I don't like it when somebody tells me to shut up," I said with mock indignation. Then added, "But now I'm shut up."

"OK. Stay that way... and listen. All the old dons... never exploited their wealth. They might spend it, but they never looked like they had a dime. Lousy apartments, their wives did the cleaning and cooking. The kids... the bad ones... didn't know where the dons kept it." He was starting to breathe with an unnatural rhythm and I didn't like it, but there was no way to stop him now. "That was when... they got hold of me."

A little red light flashed on the panel behind his head. It stayed on about two seconds, then went off. Nobody came in, so I ignored it.

He said, "Nobody really knows... how they did it. Cash and valuables got moved by truck with different crews so that no one knew where it came from or where it was going. Except the last crew."

"What happened to them?"

"Like the old pirate days. Their skeletons are still there. When their job... was done... so were they." He rolled his eyes up to mine again. "Now stay shut up... OK?"

I gave him the nod again.

"All their heavy money... was in paper. They cashed in everything they had and turned it into dollars. They pulled out all their numbered accounts in Switzerland, the Bahamas, the Caymans. The cash flow was still coming in from gambling and drugs and all that... crap, you know?" I nodded again. "That's what fooled... the young bucks. The walking... walking-around money was there, but the capital had disappeared."

"When did they find out?"

"Maybe a year ago. The computers came up with it. At first they... they thought it was... like a mistake. When the machines said no way, then they... thought they were being ripped off. All those hotshots went nuts."

He made sense. There had been unrest in the upper echelons of the underworld fraternity a couple of years back.

Dooley said, "The dons were getting old by then. When they died off... it all... seemed natural. You know, strokes and heart attacks, falls down stairs."

"I remember that. There was a regular parade of those gaudy funerals."

I looked straight down at Dooley, and he read my thoughts perfectly.

"I was... working for Lorenzo Ponti, Mike. Ponti... was in charge. He moved faster than the kids... he kept ahead of everybody, that guy."

"Did he move right in when the others died?" I asked him.

"Hell, Mike, they didn't... just die. They were killed. All of them. Except Ponti. And when he goes there won't be any more dons... just the young phonies howling mad because their inheritance has disappeared. Poof! Just... like that." He tried to snap his fingers but didn't have the strength.

"Dooley, doesn't Lorenzo Ponti know where this hoard is?"

"He thinks he does."

"But somebody faked him out?"

"Me," Dooley told me. "I faked... him out. I changed the road signs... covered up paths... and I disguised everything."

Suddenly sheer, raw pain flashed across his face and his back arched under the covers. He was beginning to look down his own black alley now, and it was too fearful to believe.