Mickey Spillane - Black Alley Read online

  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 some
body 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.

  "How much time, Mike?"

  I said, "Any minute, kiddo. You're close. They probably think it's better if you just drift off alone. It won't hurt."

  His smile was brief and there was a small glow of relief on his face. "Listen to me," he said. "What would you do... if you had... $89 billion?"

  "Buy a new car," I told him.

  "I said... $89 billion, Mike." Facetious words that started to come out stopped at my lips. His eyes were clear now and hard into mine.

  Softly, I said, "Only a government has that kind of money, Dooley."

  "That's right," he agreed. "It's a government all right. It's got citizens and taxes and soldiers and more money than anyone... can imagine."

  When I scowled at him he knew I had gotten the message. He didn't want me to speak because he had more to say and no time to say it. "They left $89 billion, Mike. Billion, you know? I know where it is. They don't." Before I could speak I saw the spark begin to go out.

  His voice was suddenly soft. It had the muted quality of great importance and I leaned forward to hear him better. He said, "You can... find out... where it is." His eyes never closed. They just quietly got dead.

  ...

  I pushed open the office door and there was Velda behind her desk, chin propped in her hands, watching me. I said, "Am I supposed to say good afternoon or kiss you?"

  She gave me an insolent moue and pointed at my private quarters. "The arresting officer is in there."

  I went over and kissed the top of her head before I went in. Pat Chambers was comfortably folded into my nice, big office chair, his feet up on a half-opened desk drawer, drinking one of my cold Miller Lite beers like he owned the place.

  "It's for the clients," I told him.

  "Oh. You going to tell me how you did with Dooley?"

  I pulled a chair away from the wall and sat down. "He died practically in my arms, Pat. Didn't he have anybody else?"

  "You know Dooley. He was a loner. I wondered why he didn't call for me."

  I let a few seconds pass, then said, "You really want to know?"

  He set down the beer on my blotter and squinted at me. "Sure I do!" he said. "Hell, after all we went through together you'd think -"

  "Dooley thought you were too soft."

  "For what?"

  "To do what has to be done," I said. I sat there and studied my friend. Pat Chambers, a captain in the homicide division. Smart, streetwise, college educated, superbly trained in the nuances of detection. Tough, but not killing tough. His conscience was still finely honed, and that's what Dooley had meant. There was no way I could tell him what Dooley had told me.

  Pat picked up the beer can and emptied it in two swallows. There was nothing else in the wastebasket under the desk, so the can made a clanking sound when it hit bottom. "He wants you to nail the guy who shot him," he said flatly.

  "Something like that," I replied.

  "There's a lot of street talk over who wiped out Azi Ponti, Mike."

  "I shot the punk. I took him out with one fat cap-and-ball.45."

  "That's what I figured," Pat told me, "but if I were you, I'd keep it to myself."

  "By the way," I said, "how big a bundle would a million bucks in hundreds make?"

  He looked at me like I was kidding, but my eyes said I wasn't.

  "A big carton full. Clothes-drier size."

  "Then a billion would take a thousand cartons like that."

  Pat was puzzled now. "Yeah, why?"

  I chose a smaller number for easier figuring. "Then how big a place would you need to store 80,000 cartons?"

  "How about a great big warehouse?"

  "That's what I figured." I grinned at him and said, "What would you do with a bundle that big, Pat?"

  "Buy a new car," he growled.

  "That's what I thought," I said.

  ...

  Downstairs, Pat and Velda and I caught a cab over to Richmond's funeral parlor and saw DOOLEY neatly lettered on a mahogany sign with an arrow pointing to the chapel on the left. The silence was dank. Like a fog.

  I was expecting to find the place empty, but there must have been two dozen people there. Four of them were gathered around a chest-high display table that held a graciously curved urn.

  I knew what that was. It was Marcos Dooley.

  And the guy looking at me was wishing it was me instead. He was almost as tall as I was, and from the way his $600 suit fit you knew he worked out on all the Nautilus equipment and most likely jogged 50 miles a week. He had the good looks of a Sicilian dandy and the composure of a Harvard graduate, but under that high-priced facade he was a street punk named Ponti. The younger.

  I walked over. We had never met, but we didn't need an introduction. I said, "Hello. Have you come to pay your respects?"

  Under his coat his muscles tightened and his eyes measured me. He was like an animal, the young male in the prime of life who now wanted to challenge the old bull.

  I played the old bull's part perfectly. I said, "You haven't answered my question."

  His eyes flicked around. "Dooley worked for my father."

  "I know that." I got a frown again, strangely concerned this time.

  "And how do you know him?"

  "We were in the Army together. So was that cop over there." Ugo didn't have to look. He knew who I meant. Pat was looking right at us. He got that twitch again and I knew the young buck had lost the confrontation. But there would be another time, and the young buck would get strong and the old bull would be aging out of the picture. He hoped.

  At the display table, I got a close look at Dooley's encapsulation. It was a dull metal urn, modestly decorated at the top and bottom, with a plaque in the middle engraved with gold lettering.

  His name, age and birthplace were at the top, then under it a brief history that gave his GI serial number in eight digits and a record of his service aboard the U.S. destroyer Latille. Nothing about his Army time at all. He had served in, and then ducked out of, the U.S. Navy.

  The funeral director sidled up to me and asked, "Can I see you a moment, Mr. Hammer?"

  I nodded and followed him to the far side of the room. He stood there, wondering how he should explain his situation. "When Mr. Dooley purchased our services, he asked that you see to his remains."

  "Be glad to," I told him. "What did he want done with them?"

  "He said he had a son named Marvin, and he wanted you to deliver his ashes in the urn to the boy."

  "I never knew about a kid."

  "Apparently he had one."

  "Well," I said to him, "if that's what he wanted, that's what he gets. I sure owe him that much."

  He looked at his watch. Half the crowd had signed the register and already left. The others would be out in a few minutes. "I'll box the urn for you and you can pick it up in my office."

  As we waited, I said to Velda, "Tomorrow I want you to go down to the Veterans Administration and run down Dooley's service record." I scanned the serial numbers on the urn and wrote them down, then handed the slip to Velda.

  "What am I looking for?"

  "His kid. He's supposed to have a son. All that information would have been recorded when he signed up. If they want a reason for the query, tell them we're trying to find an inheritor."

  The three of us left the parlor with Dooley in my arms, packed in a box.

  ...

  The next day no new business had come in and I was ready to close up shop when Velda returned from the VA.

  "What did Dooley tell you?" she asked me shrewdly.

  "Eighty-nine billion dollars is stashed somewhere." It was the first time I had mentioned the numbers to her and she opened her mouth in disbeli
ef.

  "Mike... you said billion. Each billion is a thousand million."

  "I think Dooley wanted to tell me where it is, but all he said was that he had changed the signs so nobody could find it."

  "Why did he call you in, Mike?"

  Now I grinned real big. "Because I'm not nobody."