The Big Bang

Chapter Ten

VELDA MET ME for lunch at the Blue Ribbon Restaurant. I got there first, and picked up a stein of Prior's dark beer at the bar and went to my table, tucked in a corner where I wouldn't be bothered. And it was my table—all it took was a phone call half an hour out to keep anybody else from claiming it, including the mayor and any of the celebrities in the framed signed photos hanging around me.

Velda was in a white cotton blouse with a little tan jacket over it—it was getting cooler—and a tight black skirt with black pumps. Simple attire on any other dame, grounds for an indecent-exposure arrest on her. She had the big black purse under her arm, big enough for all her girl garbage plus the .32 auto and anything else she might need to tuck away.

Halfway over to me, she was already getting into the bag, plucking out a fat manila folder to deposit in front of me like an oversize summons she was serving.

She took her chair, and I called, "George! Coffee regular, over here," got a nod from the headwaiter who co-owned the place, and smiled at my secretary.

"You could smuggle state secrets in that thing," I said, nodding to the big purse, which she rested on an otherwise vacant chair at our table for four.

"No secrets," she said. "Public knowledge, for anybody who wants to spend four hours traipsing through microfilm of that fascinating publication, the Weekly Home News."

"A real kick, huh?"

She grunted a little laugh. "Yeah, if high school football scores and amateur concerts and church bazaars jingle your chain."

"Then why the smile?"

And she did have one going—the kind that turns up at the corners in that cat-munching-a-canary way.

"I'll order first," she said.

"Tease," I said.

"Look who's talking."

I got the knockwurst again and she had a corned beef sandwich, requesting the fat be trimmed, which ought to be criminal in the state of New York. Her coffee came, with cream and sugar just how she liked it (courtesy of George), and she sipped it, then nodded to the manila folder.

"Those are crummy copies," she said. "You know how those microfilm machines are."

They were crummy, all right—gray and smeary, the stuff coming off on your fingers. But the content was worth the trouble. As I thumbed through the pages, Velda did a running commentary.

"Davy Harrin was the top athlete everybody said he was," she said. "But there are interesting wrinkles. His sophomore year, he sat out two games on disciplinary action."

"Does it say for what?"

"No. But the clerk at the News was a little guy who'd been in school with Davy, and he helped me read between the lines. His sophomore year, Davy was arrested for drunk and disorderly, along with half a dozen other kids, at an all-night party. You won't find any records on that, because he was a juvenile."

"Plus, his pop was a prominent doctor."

"Right." She pointed at the gray copy I was perusing. "The News gives four pages over every week to the local high school—it's apparently in lieu of a school paper. The articles are by the students, including a kind of gossip column. Again, I got some help from the clerk, who seemed to like me for some reason..."

"Imagine."

"...and the jokey, coy copy written by various giddy girls makes it clear that Davy was a legendary bad boy around campus ... very popular, but linked with just about every pretty girl in school, from cheerleaders to Honor Society, and known to be a real 'party animal.' That phrase even gets into the gossip column, more than once."

I had a drink of beer. "We know Davy was into booze when he was probably only, what, fifteen? What else was he into? Your clerk pal say?"

"No, just that Davy was 'wild' and also 'kind of a jerk.' But I don't think my pal and the Harrin kid ran in the same circles. Davy was your most-likely-to-succeed type, and Between the Lines was treasurer of the chess club."

I was still flipping through the pages. She was watching me, that catlike smile going again—only I was no canary she was stalking. A mouse maybe, or a rat.

Then I came to the piece of cheese she had for me—a page dominated by a picture of three girls and two boys, facing the camera with big smiles, the pair of guys in the center holding up a plaque together—the cut line said, DEBATE CLUB WINS DIVISION. One of the guys was Davy.

"The other one," Velda said, "is Jay Wren."

My mouth dropped and my eyes rose. "Davy Harrin and the Snowbird were in school together?"

"Yup. And not just classmates, but teammates, on the debate club. Davy was a freshman, Jay a senior. Could be innocent. A guy I went to school with became a United States senator, and that doesn't make me a crook."

Our food came, and we ate in silence.

Then I said, "I need to talk to Wren. Time we met."

"I doubt he's in the book."

"No ideas?"

She thought. "I did some checking. Word is, Wren is a silent partner backing that new club in the Village—the Pigeon?"

"That club was a favorite hangout of Russell Frazer's, according to Susie, our little supermarket chick."

"Makes sense." She shrugged. "I could try calling over there, but they don't even open for business till ten-thirty at night."

"Try till you get somebody. For now, I'm heading over for another Dorchester Medical College visit. There's somebody I want to talk to again, who'll either be there or at Saxony Hospital."

"Billy?"

"No. No use talking to him again. He's a good kid, and straight as they come. But he won't fink on other kids. That's the code."

Velda shook her head. "He gets jumped by these freaks, and still feels loyalty to them?"

"That's not it. We're over thirty, kitten. We can't be trusted."

She smirked at me. "You couldn't be trusted at twenty."

This time I found Dr. Alan Sprague at Saxony Hospital. It took a little doing, because he was in surgery, and I sat around for an hour reading year-old Life magazines.

When I finally caught up with him, the round little doc was sitting on a bench with a blood-spattered smock on and his surgical mask hanging loose, like a stagecoach robber who'd been foiled.

The doctors' locker room might have been in a YMCA or attached to a high school gym, an aquamarine chamber with metal hallway-type lockers and communal showers. Twenty or more could have used the locker room at once, but Sprague was alone, sitting slumped, dejected, smoking a cigarette. Or anyway he had a cigarette between the fingers of a hand draped over one leg as ashes drifted to the tile floor.

The mood was somber enough that I took off my hat and said, "Excuse me, Dr. Sprague—this may be a bad moment...."

The little man glanced up, glazed-looking, and it took a couple of seconds for him to recognize me. Since I have one of the more easily made maps in New York, this demonstrated how deep in the dumps he was.

"Mr. Hammer," he said. "No, please. Sit down." The humidity and sweat from his recent surgical effort had conspired to flatten down his bristly gray hair. "You'll have to excuse my appearance...." He gestured to the bloodstained smock.

"I have the same problem sometimes," I said.

I sat next to him, but giving him some space. "Lose one?"

"Yeah."

"It happens."

"A child. Mere child. Not even ten." He remembered his smoke and had a drag. "It's not easy to lose any patient, but surgeons learn to cope with that early on, or they don't last. Still, when a life gets cut off before it's had a chance to really begin. ..."

"What about a teenager who makes a bad choice, doc?"

That question pulled him back from where he'd been and he turned to look at me, curiously. "What do you mean?"

"When do they have to take responsibility? We're in a do-your-own-thing world right now. If a sixteen-year-old, a seventeen-year-old goes the wrong way, is it the parents' fault? Or society's?"

"Did you drop by for a philosophical discussion, Mr. Hammer? Or perhaps you're taking a sociological survey."

I grinned at him, got out my deck of Luckies, and shook one free. "I'm just asking. I really don't know. I was a stupid kid once. I started smoking at fifteen—Christ, I'd like to kick this habit someday."

"That makes two of us," Sprague said, making a disgusted face. He dropped his smoke to the tile and crushed it with a heel. "What are you really asking me, Mr. Hammer?"

I fired up the Lucky with my Zippo, then snapped it shut, a sound that bounced off the ceramic-tile walls. "I know you and Dr. Harrin are tight. I know you're good friends...."

"He's my best friend," Sprague said. "He could be my brother."

"How about his kid—Davy? Was he like a nephew, then?"

Sprague's eyes tensed and they turned away from my gaze. "I wasn't really close to Davy. When he was a little boy, yes ... but later on, no. He was a gifted youth. It's a tragedy, of course. So many scholarship offers, so much potential, and to ... to die like that."

"To die like what?"

He swallowed. "After that track meet. Exerted himself. Heart attack. Surely you know the story."

"I know the story. I'm after the truth."

He gave me something that was supposed to be a smile but played as a grimace. "Mr. Hammer, if you don't mind, I need to have a shower."

I wasn't going anywhere. "Be my guest."

We spoke as he got out of the clothes. I'll skip the details—this was not a striptease worth recording.

"I think Davy was a druggie," I said. "A user. And maybe even a pusher at school."

"Why do you make these assumptions?"

"Just from digging. He was pals with Jay Wren—the Snowbird, remember him? Maybe that's why you were so familiar with Wren—your surrogate nephew was tight with him. Wren was an upperclassman, and might have set Davy up in business. Maybe Davy was Wren's high school connection."

The fat little man, naked now, tromped into the nearby showers. I stayed put on the bench a while. He was in there, clouded in steam, and the sound of water needles discouraged conversation. But not me.

I got up, leaned a hand against the wall where it opened into the shower room, and called out, "The kid was gifted! He was a good athlete, maybe a great one—but not a great kid."

"You don't know that!" His voice echoed, rising above the driving spray.

"Davy died of an overdose, didn't he?"

Nothing but spray now, and the doc soaping himself.

"What was it, Dr. Sprague—heroin? He started out early on the daddy of gateway drugs—booze. Arrested for drunk and disorderly at a tender age, right?"

He came trundling out, feet slapping against the wet tiles. I had a towel ready for him. Thoughtful of me, but also I prefer naked fat men to cover up.

I gave him room while he toweled off. And I said nothing as he got into shorts and T-shirt and socks. Then I asked, "Who are you protecting? A kid who died stupid?"

He turned to me with such speed, the water on his bristly hair flecked me. Anger turned to regret, and then to full-bore sadness. Still in his skivvies, he sat heavily on the bench, his back to the shower, head bowed and almost bumping his locker.

"Talent unbridled," he said, "can be a dangerous thing in a boy. He was an only child, and his mother spoiled him terribly, and his father ... his father was a doctor, and doctors are around for everybody who needs them, except their families."

"So he turned into an arrogant little prick."

He swallowed, turned to me with a ghastly expression, and said, "A ... very arrogant little prick. But such potential. He might have grown out of it. Only, he ... he wasn't as smart as his father, was he?"

"You tell me."

"He wasn't. He had charm, which he got from his mother, and his father had been a high school and college athlete, as well—baseball. But Davy was merely an average student, and he didn't try hard at all. Of course, the teachers passed him, padded his grades—he was the star player, you know, football, basketball, track."

"I suppose he started out on speed. Most athletes do."

Sprague said, "Do we have to belabor this?"

"Was he a pusher, Doc?"

"I ... I don't know. I wouldn't be surprised."

"Does his father know all this?"

"Certainly."

"Have you ever discussed it?"

"Never." Then he added, "Not directly."

I let him get his suit on—he deserved to gather a little dignity. Two more doctors entered during this phase, and when he was dressed, Sprague said, "Let's have some coffee in the doctors' lounge."

Soon we were seated quietly at a table near a window.

"There's something else we should discuss," he said.

"Okay."

He was putting a third sugar packet into his coffee. What would his doctor say about that?

"The last time we spoke," he said, "I expressed my frustration with the way Dr. Harrin has fraternized with the likes of Wren and Evello."

"Graduates of your celebrity suite."

"Indeed. I have a suspicion, Mr. Hammer. It is based on observation, and is not ungrounded ... but I caution you that it is a suspicion only."

"All right."

Very quietly, glancing to make sure we weren't being overheard in the good-sized but near-empty lounge, he said, "Do you know what a 'Dr. Feelgood' is, Mr. Hammer?"

"Sure. A medic who prescribes drugs to patients without regard to actual need—essentially, a pusher with a medical degree, dispensing illegal recreation, not required medication."

He smiled faintly. "Very well put, sir. Would it shock you to hear that I think my colleague, my trusted friend, has become just such a practitioner ... and to the most unsavory clientele imaginable?"

"Little shocks me, Doc." I frowned at him, though, as if trying to pull him back into focus. "You're saying Dr. Harrin has become a Dr. Feelgood to the Syndicate?"

"I am."

I thought it over. "We'd be talking Evello, not Wren. The Snowbird is close enough to the street action to use his own product, if he's so inclined. A guy like Junior Evello, though, has layers of protection—he insulates himself from the nastier aspects of his business. Syndicate guys like him don't dare use street product."

"Why not, Mr. Hammer?"

I shrugged. "Their lives are too carefully watched."

"But why would David do it? He hardly needs the money. David Harrin is one of the wealthiest doctors in Manhattan."

"Yeah?"

Sprague nodded. "You're aware he's a rare-diseases specialist. He's heavily involved in research and testing, and has been for years. He was on Salk's polio vaccine team, and had a hand in the development of half a dozen other vital vaccines. He's done a great deal of public good, certainly, but also has amassed something of a fortune doing it."

I was still frowning. "So he doesn't exactly need to play Dr. Feel-good to anybody."

"No! And why would he befriend the likes of Evello and this Snowbird character? These men were indirectly responsible for his son's death!"

I didn't bother responding. Dr. Sprague was in the business of saving lives. But I worked the other end of that equation. I came in when a victim was beyond help, and the only thing even approaching a remedy was taking vengeance.

Was Dr. Harrin ingratiating himself with Evello and Wren, to get close enough to take them out?

But those two slobs had been under Harrin's care at the hospital—he'd had the perfect opportunity to murder them in some medically undetectable fashion.

Dr. Sprague said, "Perhaps I should apologize, Mr. Hammer. I may be sending you down a blind alley. And the notion that Dr. David Harrin could have any affiliation with the likes of Junior Evello and Jay Wren, why ... it defies credulity."

"That's okay, Doc," I said. I put on my hat and got up. "I've had my credulity defied before."

In the hospital lobby, I used a phone booth to check in with Velda. I figured she deserved to know that her hours at the Weekly Home News had paid off, Sprague confirming that Davy Harrin had been a user and possibly a pusher.

But I hadn't started getting my news out before she blurted hers: "I got him!"

"Who, kitten?"

"Jay Wren—I got through to him at the Pigeon. He has an office there. And he was very nice, gracious even. Wanted very much to speak with you."

"Great. I can head over there now...."

"No, he has meetings. He said he'd be glad to see you at the club tonight. He'll have a table reserved for us."

"Us?"

"Yeah ... I think I deserve a night out. Come on, Mike—the Pigeon is the latest thing. The new 'in' spot. Throw a girl a crumb."

"Crumbs don't throw crumbs," I said, but she stayed at it and I finally said yes.

Somebody called it the City That Never Sleeps.

And although plenty of honest working folk snooze away in the dusk-till-dawn hours, nightlife has been a part of New York since not long after the Dutch screwed over the Indians.

Vices and passions too troubling for daylight flourish in a smoky nocturnal realm where the things respectable people pretend to believe by day are eclipsed by casual carnality at night. Here, social barriers are banished, and one-night stands encouraged between fashion models and bikers, debutantes and delivery boys, gangsters and housewives.

Some niteries, like the Copacabana and Stork Club, have been around since dry days, but Harlem's Cotton Club lives only in memory, like a sax solo fondly but dimly recalled. Lately El Morocco had been transformed into a discotheque called Arthur—an all-night party for the Broadway and Hollywood crowd opened out of revenge by Sybil Burton after hubby Dick dumped her for Liz Taylor.

It was a loud new scene, and a blast in its brash way, even if I'd rather be squeezed in at a tiny table at Jules Podell's Copa, listening to Nat King Cole or Bobby Darin out in front of a big band. But those days were fading fast, and even now, my columnist buddy Hy Gardner at the Herald Tribune was preparing to gather his loot and head into the happy sunset.

How long would it be, I wondered, before I didn't recognize my own damn town?

It was eleven when we got to the old warehouse on a side street in the East Village. This was an establishment that went to no great shakes announcing itself, almost like something out of speakeasy days. The only indication that the building wasn't abandoned was a small glowing white neon outline of a bird—a pigeon, apparently—that stuck out above the door, next to which stood a bouncer type in a white shirt, black tie, and black leather pants.

This guy eyeballed everybody who entered, and turned some away. His criteria did not seem to be a matter of dress code, since a straight in a nice suit and tie was half of a rejected couple ahead of us.

Velda had been working all day and hadn't had time to change—she was still in the white blouse, tan jacket, and black skirt. But a tall dark-haired beauty like her, even if she was a decade older than the kids standing around the sidewalk smoking, was not about to be turned away anywhere. Even accompanied by a charm-school reject like me.

Within, the senses were immediately assaulted, starting with a smokiness that suggested a fire, and music so loud it took a while to discern it as more than white noise. Passing through a crowded, fairly narrow holding area off of which was the coat check to one side and MEN'S and LADIES' to the other, we entered a high-ceilinged near-darkness that the black light only magnified.

The warehouse interior had not been remodeled much, except for varicolored Day-Glo spatter on the walls that I guessed was meant to suggest pigeon droppings. A thatched-roof tiki-hut bar would shoot you either left or right into a sea of tables, many abandoned for the dance floor beyond. More tables were at left, tucked under facing balconies that had stairs at either end, and most of these were filled, amber cigarette eyes staring out, the sweet smell of weed wafting through the tobacco stench.

An unpretentious open stage had been put in against the back wall and a band of shaggy fake Beatles were doing what I now could tell was a Chuck Berry song with a British accent, using huge black and chrome amplifiers whose collective sound wasn't any louder than a 747 taking off. The drummer was up on a platform of his own, trying to break his cymbals. In Plexiglas cages suspended over the left and right of the stage, girls with long straight swinging hair wore fringe but not much else as they go-go-goed.

And on the wall above and behind the band, right onto the bricks, a bizarre film was playing, a nonsensical, stitched-together thing that combined still images ranging from the beautiful (bright flowers) to the horrific (decomposing animals) with clips from old silent films and newsreels, even World War Two footage from the Pacific, my jungle memories jarringly intercut with a Woody Woodpecker cartoon.

Colored lights were flashing, and now and then a strobe effect kicked in. Weirdly, a ceiling-suspended mirrored ball, right out of a ballroom for squares, was rotating and catching and throwing around those lights, the dance floor near the stage arrayed with teenagers and adults in their twenties and thirties and forties, all flapping their hands, winglike, and bobbing their heads. A pigeon dance? I didn't know and I didn't care.

Velda was smiling, though, getting a kick out of it. She always stayed simple with her fashion choices, but I saw her taking in with interest the miniskirts—polka dots and stripes and geometric shapes—while I took in the legs beneath.

We were still stranded toward the back of the big chamber, getting our bearings. A blonde wearing a mini comprised of small yellow plastic discs seemed to be the hostess—she had a short, jagged haircut that looked like an accident. We got lucky, because right when the blonde approached us, the band took its break, and we had just long enough, before the disc jockey took over, to tell her who we were and that we were expected.

We were shown up carpeted stairs to a balcony where we seemed to be above the sound system speakers enough for us to be able to hold something like a conversation. The blonde seated us at a standard-issue round black bar table near an iron railing over the dance floor, and a girl in a pink mini-dress with very tall platinum hair and exaggerated makeup worthy of a transvestite came and took our drink order.

I asked for a Pabst and Velda requested a Tab, and they arrived sooner than I expected. I went to pay and the little tall-hair honey waved "no"—it was on the house.

The balcony was fairly empty. You could tell the tables were occupied from the jackets on chairs and the drinks left behind by dancers on the floor below. The guy spinning platters talked to the crowd over the P. A., building momentum and doing the personality bit like a radio DJ. I was thinking about lighting up a Lucky and then decided with all the smoke in the air, it would be redundant.

A tall slender man in a powder-blue suit cut in the mod style with lacy collar and cuffs approached us with a smile and a decided limp. His clean shoulder-length hair was shades of brown and golden blond, a combination unknown to nature but familiar to hairdressers, and he was deeply tan. His smile was big and toothy, his face handsome with high cheekbones but very lined for his age, and he wore sunglasses whose lenses were the same light blue as his suit. The need for sunglasses in this dark club was not great, unless maybe you had a medical condition requiring protection from the flashing and strobing lights.

He extended a bony hand and I stood and shook it, then sat back down.

"Welcome, Mr. Hammer," he said, in a midrange voice easily heard above the music. He didn't even seem to be trying that hard. How did he do that?

"Mr. Wren," I acknowledged with a nod. Making him was no problem: he wore the same big smile as in that debate-club photo. "Hopping joint."

"Thank you." He beamed at Velda. "And your lovely companion...?"

He was using a phony English accent. Not overdoing it, but from a guy born in Queens, it was a little much.

"My secretary," I said. "Miss Sterling."

"Yes, we spoke on the phone," he said, and took her hand as if about to kiss it. But he didn't.

He sat next to me, opposite Velda. Wren had a good two inches on me, but I had shoes that weighed more. I wondered if he partook of his own product, like Russell Frazer and the Junkman. Or maybe he just had the metabolism of a pigeon.

"I was pleased," he said, "hearing you wanted to meet with me."

"Really?" I was almost shouting.

"I considered approaching you, but ... what with your colorful reputation ... I decided against it. Let's begin with me assuring you that I had nothing to do with the attempts on your life."

"Good to hear." Hell, it was good to hear anything.

He raised a forefinger. The DJ was spinning an instrumental with a distorted guitar solo, and even Wren had to work to get up over it. "I also did not sanction that unprovoked attack on William Blue."

"Those were your people."

His smile continued, but the teeth disappeared. He gave me that one-man-of-the-world-to-another look. "Certain of my employees are not of the caliber I'd like. Aspects of my business require taking on help that can be less than ... wholly reliable. And, anyway, all of my people—like me—are really Junior Evello's people."

I gave him the hairy eyeball. "You're saying Evello's behind the bungled Billy Blue rip-off? And the flubbed hits on me?"

The Snowbird shrugged elaborately. "He can reach out and make things happen, Evello. You know that, Mr. Hammer."

"He denies any responsibility."

Wren was smiling again. "And you believe him?"

"I'm reserving my judgment." I gave him some teeth. "Hearing your denial, Mr. Wren, I'm still reserving it."

Another shrug. "I can understand that. But you and I have no argument, while—"

"I have history with the Evello Family, yeah ... but Junior doesn't really have cause to go after me."

And yet another shrug. "Maybe he thought he did."

"Go on." I wondered if I'd shout when I talked for the next few days till I noticed I was doing it.

He upraised a palm. "You were at the scene when William Blue was attacked. Then you went around talking to Dr. Harrin. You have been known to ... look into things that aren't entirely your business. Meaning no offense at all."

"So I talked to Harrin—so what?"

He worked surprise into the smile. "Mr. Hammer, don't you know who Dr. Harrin is to Junior Evello? That he is Evello's personal physician?"

I notched it up one: "His Dr. Feelgood, you mean?"

That pleased him and the smile returned. "Precisely. I'm impressed, Mr. Hammer. You really do have a way of digging things out."

"It's a gift."

He turned over a hand. "As for why Evello would try to remove you from the scene, consider—Dr. Harrin is a confidant of Evello's, a valued and trusted associate. You sniffing around the doctor, after the Blue assault, might well make Evello nervous. Very nervous."

I didn't deny that.

He leaned back. "Now, Mr. Hammer, I'm going to reach into my inside coat pocket. Please don't interpret it as a threat."

"Fine. But first I'll reach inside mine." I did. "Feel free to interpret that any fucking way you like."

For the first time, the big toothy smile grew nervous. I had my hand around the .45's butt and he damn well knew it. But Wren reached inside his coat anyway, slowly and with care, and withdrew a folded-over envelope. He handed it to Velda.

She looked it over, hefted it, then said to me, "Sealed. Feels like cash."

"That," Wren said, "is because it is cash. Four thousand dollars in hundreds." He jabbed a finger at the air. "I want you to give that to Billy Blue. He has college plans, I hear."

"Why so generous?"

"Consider it a settlement. I didn't order it to happen, but either my people took this upon themselves, to jump the Blue kid, for their own petty reasons ... or Evello reached out to them. Either way, they're my people, and I take full responsibility."

Velda gave me a look and I shrugged. She stuffed the envelope in that big purse of hers.

"In the meantime," Wren said, getting up, "you're guests of the house. The bar serves cold sandwiches until two A.M. And thank you for stopping by. How do you like the club?"

"I dig it. It's handy having the idiots all in one place."

That wiped the smile off him.

I got up and so did Velda.

I said, "For now, I'm taking you at your word. But if I find out you sent Russell Frazer to shiv me, and then those St. Louie boys to bat cleanup? I'll start with rebreaking your goddamn leg, then see where inspiration takes me."

I took Velda by the arm and guided her away, though she did smile back pleasantly at him and say, "I wish I could tell you he's all talk...."