Black Alley Part 9

"He had to call for somebody. His wife was dead and he probably didn't know where his kid lived. He wanted me to pa.s.s on his remains to his boy if I could find him. Why, what do you think he wanted to see me for?"

"It could have been a deathbed confession."

"Come on, Dooley had no part of religion. He lost that during the war. Do I look like a clergyman?"

"He could have been entrusting you with some vital information."

I leaned back in my chair and let a grimace cross my face. "Like what? When Dooley died he left an old house in a shoddy side of Brooklyn. There was an old car out back. If he had a bank account there wouldn't be much in it. Possessing things wasn't his big stick."

"He had a long-time connection with the Ponti organization, Mr. Hammer."

"Like how, Mr. Watson? d.a.m.n, I sound like Sherlock Holmes."

"Dooley took care of his estate on Long Island and his place in the Adirondacks."

"Big deal. He was a handyman. He raked gra.s.s, he planted shrubs and took out the garbage. How does that make him an a.s.sociate member of the Ponti bunch? Come on, use some sense."

"He could have overheard things."

Watson was reaching now, so I reached too. I said, "What things, Homer?"

"You know what I'm talking about."

"Like how all the young bucks in the families are grousing about their futures?"

A new light came into his eyes. "What would that be?"

"Beats me, but I hear a lot of them are pretty uncomfortable with all the legitimizing that has been going on. Seems like the old dons had a better life of it when they played dirty."

He couldn't put a finger on my answer at all. What I had said was totally ambiguous, yet common knowledge on the street. Yet in a way, it had sense to it and he tried to read something into my expression.

Covering his consternation, he nodded. "The new heads of the families are all looking for something."

"They ought to be. It's a new business world out there. It isn't booze and wh.o.r.es anymore. It's high-tech crime on airline loading docks and the financial houses of Wall Street. They buy a plane to run in one big load of c.o.ke, ditch it after making the drop and charge the cost off to business expenses. A kilo of H used to be a heavy deal, but narcotics comes in tonnages now and who knows how much loot gets pa.s.sed under the table."

"We estimate it pretty well, Mr. Hammer."

Lightly, I said, "And how much would that be?"

Just as lightly he shot back, "Could go into the billions, I imagine."

"Imagine the taxes on that," I said.

"Yes, and the government could use it," he told me. There was a sharp tone in his voice.

"What would they do with it?" I asked him.

"I don't think that would be any of your business, Mr. Hammer."

"We, the people," I said softly.

He didn't hear me. "What?"

"Nothing. I figured you'd say that."

The conversation wasn't giving him what he was looking for at all. He eased himself to his feet and looked at me across the desk. "I think we both have the same objective in mind, Mr. Hammer. I would prefer your cooperation, but I don't think I'm going to get it. However, please keep in mind the enormous potential of the federal government. There's nothing it can't do."

"Don't make it so complete, Homer. Say there's little it can't do."

He stared at me a few seconds and said, "Let's make that as little as possible."

When Watson had gone I sat back in my chair and stared out the window. The sky had clouded over, so that meant it was going to rain and my side was going to start burning again. Before it could happen I thumbed open the bottle of capsules and shook one out. Good lunch. A saltine and a pill. At the rate I was taking those things I was going to need a refill, and Dr. Ralph Morgan was the only one who had the prescription. I made a cryptic note on my desk pad for later.

First I had to find out something about Bulletproof Ponti. Pat's earlier remarks on the two shoot-outs had a casual overtone to them, but he was using me as a sounding board and I hadn't made much of an echo. It used to be that only the big agency teams or the SWAT boys went into a firefight wearing armor. The hoods seemed to wear their macho image the way the Indians used magic medicine to ward off the bullets and always got sucked up the tube for their egotism.

But now, things had changed. They didn't use old hard-tire trucks to haul their goods in. Planes did that. Ground rules might have been laid down during the prohibition days, but there had been a lot of improvement since. Even in the last five years body armor had undergone a radical transformation. Planes went from reciprocating engines to jet driven overnight. They still had wings, but the power had been so drastically upgraded they hardly acted like airplanes anymore.

I dialed a number I hadn't used in a long time. Bud Langston was still at the address. He was really glad to hear my voice.

Bud was a super secret whose mail-in paycheck came from some bureau in the Washington loop. His office was small, well organized and laid out for his business, which was computer programming. Any one of the major electronics firms would gladly have had him in their organizations, but Bud was not into corporate living.

Bud Langston was an inventor. Tell him what you needed and he'd invent it for you. We had met when we had adjoining seats for a Wagner presentation at the old Metropolitan Opera House before they tore it down and all the singers trooped over to Lincoln Center.

So we sat and talked Wagner and Franz Liszt for a half hour before Bud said, "What's bothering you, Mike?"

I grimaced, twisted in my seat and favored the bad side.

Bud shook his head. "That's not what's bothering you, my friend."

"I need some information, Bud."

His eyes looked directly into mine. "If it isn't cla.s.sified I might help."

"If it were redlined I wouldn't ask," I said. "Have you heard anything new about body armor?"

"Let's skip past the Kevlar developments, right?"

"Right," I said.

A little muscle pulled at the corner of his mouth, making him grin a little lopsidedly. "Well, that's not cla.s.sified."

"I didn't think it would be."

He nodded slowly and clasped his hands behind his head. "You sure can get into some strange research, Mike."

"So?"

"So yes, there was a buzz in the armaments business a few years ago. Remember when the scuba divers were experimenting with a metal mesh designed after the old chain mail the knights used?"

"For stopping shark bites, wasn't it?"

"Yes, and it worked. At least on smaller sharks. n.o.body ever tested it out on a great white."

"And that stopped high-power bullets?"

"No. That experimentation just led into other avenues and along the way somebody lucked into a material that nothing short of a twenty-millimeter could penetrate. It was light, flexible . . . all the things needed for military use. The only trouble was the expense."

"Why didn't the military get into it then?"

"Mike . . . there won't be any military in the next war."

I waited. My mind kept bringing back episodes from the war I was in. Bud seemed to know what I was thinking and shook his head.

"Those old wars were too expensive. They didn't solve anything. The bad guys and the good guys just swapped sides, that's all. The wall came down, Russia fell, Africa came apart and the military industrial complex is simply getting rid of its surplus hardware. What happens next is going to be biological and chemical with no noise and no blood. Just death. Ugly, destructive death."

"Who gets what's left?" I asked him.

"Who belongs to the big country clubs?" he fired back.

"And that's the plan?"

Bud said, "I think it's their plan."

"You think it'll work?"

"h.e.l.l, no. There are a lot of people smarter than big governments. But what's all this have to do with body armor?"

"Who invented it, Bud?"

"A young chemistry whiz two years out of some university. His name is Dan Coulter. He manufactured enough product to demonstrate to the government, but everybody balked at the price and he peddled it somewhere else."

"He patent it?"

"No way. He kept his process strictly secret, and now n.o.body is ever going to find out how he did it."

"Why not?"

"Because his whole place blew up with him in it. Dan Coulter is dead."

"d.a.m.n," I said.

"Before you ask, there was nothing suspicious about the blast. He was using some very critical materials. It's a wonder he got as far as he did."

"One more question, Bud."

"Sure."

"Could you duplicate his work?"

"Certainly," he said amicably, "but not right now. Living is still a pleasant way to be."

"What are you hinting at, Bud?"

"Two of his suppliers are both dead too. They were involved with his work."

"How?"

"Separate car accidents three weeks apart. Suspiciously accidental."

I eased myself into a standing position. "You knew this Coulter guy, didn't you?"

"Both of us belonged to diving clubs."

"You said you could duplicate his work."

"There's no reason to."

"Supposing I'd like to see what the stuff looks like."

"In that case then I'll get a sample and show it to you."

"Why do I have to drag everything out of you, Bud?"

"I'm just giving you back some of your own medicine, kiddo. Stop by in about a week and I'll put on a show for you."

5.

THERE ARE THINGS some people can get done on a telephone that seem incredible, but when you a.n.a.lyze it, the whole affair is simple, direct and logi-cal. It had taken an hour for Velda to locate Marvin Dooley's latest address on the outskirts of New Brunswick and find out it was a single-room apartment in a run-down section of the city. He had been there for three months, coming from Trenton, was self-employed, had a driver's license, but no car was registered in his name. I left a call on her answering machine to be ready at four so I could pick her up and beat the rush out of Manhattan.

And she was ready, all right, but just as ready to start up all over again about us not carrying beepers so we could have a more immediate contact. I closed the car door on her, went around to the driver's side and climbed in. I slid the key into the slot and was about to turn the ignition on when I looked down the hood line and stopped.

Velda caught my reaction right away and drew in her breath. "What is it, Mike?"

After a moment I asked, "What is it you don't like about my vehicle, kitten?"

"You're a slob. It's always dirty."

"Uh-huh."

I picked the keys back out, put the gear lever in neutral and told her to get out of the car and stand around the corner.

"Why?"