The Big Bang

Chapter Four

RUSSELL FRAZER'S APARTMENT was everything little Susie had said, and more.

She had apparently never opened the mahogany box with the heavy-duty diamond cufflinks and the Cartier jeweled watch. She had not found the two packets of fifty-dollar bills, or seen the empty wrappers for three others, because they were tucked in back of a bottom bureau drawer otherwise occupied by black silk socks, the kind worn by guys with dough or as the primary costume of some stud in a stag reel.

Frazer hadn't lied to Susie when he said he'd paid cash for everything. His receipts were all filed in one compartment of a black-lacquered wall unit with built-in storage cabinets and shelves for his hi-fi components and enough electronic gadgetry to make NASA turn green.

The living room motif was black and white, from the thick white pile wall-to-wall carpet to the black couch and stacked black cushions and white ones that apparently took the place of chairs for guests. The walls bore black-lacquer-framed black-and-white nude female photos that must have been art because the pubic deltas weren't airbrushed out, and the built-in bar in one corner was mirrored where it wasn't a black-and-white checkerboard design.

With the exception of the white carpet, though, the bedroom was in shades of brown and black, since the center-stage round bed's leopard spread seemed the focal point—a mirror above said Russell Frazer was no spring sybarite. That opinion was confirmed by the lavish bathroom's big sunken tub with its water-jet sprays, perfect for two. Or more.

Oh, it was an expensive, elaborate layout all right, taking one hell of a lot of bread, too heavy for a hundred-plus-a-week ceramics worker to handle; but if you had a good sideline going for you, it could be bought.

That character reference Susie had sketched for me was turning into a full-scale portrait as I shook down the rooms. This was all just one big playhouse and these were a little boy's toys. Russell Frazer probably never had the likes of them before, except in his fantasies or reading Playboy magazine.

But he sure had made up for lost time. There wasn't one sign of anything of solid investment value—just the ephemeral junk of a have-not who'd been given his head in some overpriced, trend-happy department store. The black satin sheets and the brass cigar humidor on the nightstand were the crowning touches.

Except the humidor didn't hold cigars—it was packed with dozens of condoms topped by a dozen fancy French ticklers, so he could do his entertaining in style. Either he had never heard of the Pill or he was understandably paranoid about VD.

One thing he did have: sense enough not to leave anything around that had a name or a number that wasn't his. And if he had a drug stash, I sure didn't find it. I was starting to wonder if I'd been the first guy to look this coop over.

Because I know how to shake a place down, and nothing pertinent turned up. I double-checked to make sure I hadn't missed anything, then finally headed out. The Homicide team could take it from here and put it through their own system of analysis, and maybe those sharp-eyed boys you never see because they live in labs could work out better answers than yours truly.

All I had going for me was a tight feeling across my shoulders and those funny fingers flexing in my mind and tapping out the message that something in this horny bachelor's pad was emitting a bigger smell than even my trained nose could sniff out.

Near the door, a four-shelved niche showcased a set of male-joined-to-female statuettes depicting just about every sex act imaginable. These weren't the kind of knickknacks you found for sale back at that pottery shop. They were arranged in an almost studied progression, lessons in a book to be learned and practiced, each one more acrobatically ambitious than the next.

Apparently Frazer was pretty serious about his Don Juan image. I could picture him hopping out of bed for a quick run to his knickknack rack to review a posture, then scurrying back to correct his technique. I grunted out a laugh.

His collection was pretty complete, plaster figures based on the most famous Hindu temple reliefs, hand-painted with loving care for detail ... and nothing that was new to me at all.

I could have told my pal Russell Frazer that he was missing at least one good arrangement Velda had devised.

Hell, I had muscle cramps for two days after.

It took me three hours of talking to half a dozen merchants and citizens, but I made the connection between Norman Brix and Russell Frazer.

Alex Singer, a retired tailor whose stone front stoop was his bleacher seat on the world, remembered them both and didn't have a good word for either.

He was a small blue-eyed man with thin white hair, looking lost in a dark woolen suit the temperature didn't call for. No doubt he'd perfectly tailored that number for himself some years ago, but age was shrinking him.

"Mr. Hammer, that Frazer was a real nogoodnik. The kind of slimeball that can bring a neighborhood down. The kind of crudder that can give young kids the wrong idea about what is 'cool,' and send them off down the wrong path."

"You make him sound like Fagin."

"I don't mean to say he paid any attention to the younger kids, nothing more than a grin and a nod. But when they saw him usher sexy young women up his front steps, and watched him getting in and out of expensive cars with a driver no less, well ... it gives those kids the wrong kind of ideas."

I didn't point out to the old gent that he seemed to be paying pretty close attention to the dolls parading in and out himself.

"Now older kids?" the geezer was saying. "That's another story. Like that Brix boy. Ever since Frazer moved into the neighborhood, occupying that apartment by himself? It turned into the worst kind of hangout for street punks and these trashy little girls they attract. Sometimes I'd see him go in with about five of these punks, Brix and these other greasy-haired bums, and just one girl ... and she would come out looking tired and frazzled, but counting her money."

"Any specific girl?"

"No. A good half-dozen of them. Skinny with dead eyes, all of 'em."

"There's a little doll named Susie, with a short haircut and long legs, skinny like a model—you see her?"

He nodded. "She'd go in there with him, sometimes. She looked nicer than the others. She wasn't one of those, uh..."

"Gang-bang gals?"

He shivered as if the early fall evening had turned bitterly cold. "Not her. Those parties of his, though ... you could smell the stuff coming out of his windows at night."

"What stuff?"

"Marijuana!"

How much of the old tailor's tale was envy for the younger generation—he probably went 23 skidoo with Charleston fillies and drank hooch in speaks in his day—and how much was righteous indignation, I neither knew nor cared. But the picture of Russell Frazer having dough to throw around, and maybe access to narcotics, kept getting clearer and clearer.

Singer suggested I talk to Angelo Sito. I knew the name—Sito had been a heavyweight back in the '40s, had been a contender for a couple of years, then in the '50s became a semi-name who could throw a fight and build a younger slugger's rep. The fight racket had made Sito enough dough to retire, not to luxury, but to an apartment on this almost respectable street.

I bought the old boxer a beer at the corner tavern. He had been a mauler and had come away with the requisite cauliflower ears and bulbous nose broken so many times, it qualified more for decoration than breathing apparatus. With his full head of salt-and-pepper hair, he had a rough-hewn dignity about him, wearing a white short-sleeve shirt and tan slacks that were clean and fairly new.

"I heard of you, Hammer," he said, his grin big and white and store-bought. "You had a few fights yourself in your day."

"Not in the ring."

"Safer in the ring. They don't shoot at you."

Not unless you don't throw the fights you're supposed to, I thought.

But I said, "Alex Singer told me you could fill me in on Russell Frazer. Your neighbor who got stabbed to death yesterday?"

Sito sneered. "He should have only bought it sooner. He was a miserable lowlife bastard."

"That's okay, Angelo," I said, and sipped my Blue Ribbon. "They probably don't need you to deliver the eulogy."

The fighter's lopsided grin said he liked that crack.

Then he went into it: "I got a kid in his twenties. He's married, has a little boy, and he's got a decent job in the Garment District. Then he starts hanging around that fuck pad across the street. Pot, booze, broads."

"Some people would say that's just a good time."

"Not when you risk your job and marriage and your kid's welfare." His eyes managed to narrow, despite their puffy surroundings. "I think there was more'n pot up there, Mike. Hate to say this, but ... my boy, I think, was maybe doing harder stuff. Not horse or anything, but the nose candy, might be."

"You said he was in his twenties. He's a big boy."

He shook his head. "I can't give you anything but a feeling, Mike. A hunch. But I think that this louse Frazer was trying to get my kid into some kind of ... illegal crapola. I don't know what. Could be dope. Could be a goddamn bank robbery, I don't know."

"No offense, Angelo, but it's no secret you got your hands dirty back in the old days."

He just shrugged. "Doesn't mean a guy can't want better for his kid. Anyway, what harm did I ever do anybody? Fight game's just entertainment."

"So is dope, some would say."

"You don't O.D. watching boxing."

I sipped the Pabst. "So you told your boy to stay away from Frazer?"

"I did. And his mother did, and his wife did, and he's straight as an arrow now, Mike, I swear to you."

"And that's all it took?"

"No. I also went across the street and told that lowlife bastard Frazer to get lost or get broken up."

Even in his fifties, Angelo Sito could put the hurt on a guy.

He added, "Bum moved out."

"Wise decision. You know where to?"

"Some hotel downtown, I think. I ain't seen him around since."

"You know a kid named Norm Brix, Angelo?"

"Yeah. He's in the hospital, I hear."

"I put him there."

His scar-tissue-heavy brows beetled. "He tried to jump some other kid, right? Yeah, it was in the papers! Were you mixed up in that...?"

"What about Brix?"

"His parents used to live on this street. Mom was decent, Pop was a drinker. The father burned himself up in bed, smoking and drinking. The mother moved upstate with her sister, but the kid stayed around here."

"What about the kid?"

"Nasty. A bully. A dropout. He was pals with this Frazer slob, you know. That's one thing I can give my son credit for—he never liked the Brix kid."

"Well, thanks, Angelo."

"Thank you, Mike." He got up and slid out of the booth. "I'll buy next time."

"Deal."

I stayed put and finished the beer I'd only nursed along, talking to the old pug. Just sat there, thinking it through....

The connection was there, all right, and maybe Velda had it figured—these punks have strange loyalties, and Frazer trying to knife me really could add up to revenge.

I let it go through my mind once more, then threw the notion on the discard pile. So I'd caused Brix some grief, so what? Brix was still just a punk. Frazer had something going for him, something bringing in real dough. Punk loyalties stop when one of them jumps from the minors over into the big league.

I couldn't help but picture those hippie kids in Frazer's fancy pad, a guy in mod threads and Beatle boots lording it over kids in T-shirts and jeans, playing the big-shot host. He would not view the likes of Brix, Felton, and Haver as equals, or even associates, much less the kind of friends whose misfortune might inspire him to take it upon himself to go wipe out the guy responsible.

Frazer was a god to these punks, but in the greater scheme, he was just another minion—a minion someone above had dispatched to take me out.

I picked up the afternoon paper and read it over another cold beer. On page three I found the story that Frazer had been identified, but was still classed as a victim of a mugging-kill. When I finished the funnies and the coffee, I threw a buck on the counter and went outside.

Saxony Hospital was two blocks away.

Billy Blue had been released from his bed and was back working, taking inventory of boxed medical supplies in a storeroom. The short-haired kid, in blue-and-red-striped shirt and jeans and tennies, was moving awkwardly, holding himself stiff. It hurt his face when he got a smile through, but he was clearly glad to see me.

He perched on a carton, and I did the same. I asked if it was okay to smoke and he said it was, but turned down my offer of a Lucky.

He told me, "Dr. Sprague figured I might as well be hurting down here as in a bed."

"How'd you manage it?"

"Ah, I psyched him out. Told the doc I was getting stir-crazy, and said I would sue if I got bed sores." He shook his head. "I couldn't take it, man, those nurses are always fussing around with me. Gives me the jumps."

I grinned and shook my head. "You don't know when you've got it good."

He made a face. "I don't like older women."

"Why, how old are these hags?"

"Late twenties, early thirties, I guess—flirting and flitting around like a bunch of girls."

"Yeah," I said, letting smoke out around my grin, "that does sound like hell."

"I mean, they're nice enough, but what if you want to sleep or read or watch TV? They don't give a guy a minute's peace. Like with that cowboy actor, who got tossed off his horse at the Garden? Nonstop attention. You better not be some old guy with a hernia or some housewife with a broken ankle or something, when there's a man around here, under thirty, with a pulse."

"Sounds like sheer agony, kid."

"Or like when that Evello guy was in there. He wasn't even some good-looking actor. I mean, he's an old guy, fifty or something. But he's a celebrity, and of course that's how it goes in the celebrity suite."

I frowned at him. "Who are we talking about?"

"You mean, the actor?"

"No," I said. "I know who the actor is—Lance Vernon." I also knew those nurses wouldn't get very far with Lance. "You said ' Evello'—did you mean Junior Evello?"

"Yeah, yeah, Evello. Right name, Carlo Evello—old-style don, head of the sixth Family. Don't you know about him, Mr. Hammer, in your line of work?"

"Yeah, I do, but where do you come off?"

He laughed through his cracked lips. "Menial staff at a hospital doesn't exactly draw executive types, Mr. Hammer, and I work in the basement. Some of these neighborhood guys tell some pretty crazy stories. Sounds like Junior Evello's a real big shot in their backyards."

"Sure, when it comes to extortion, drugs, prostitution—you name it."

Billy's nod was age-old and unconcerned. "You name it," he agreed, "and wherever you are, you'll find it. They say Junior was behind a hundred hits but never got indicted once."

"They aren't wrong."

Billy cocked his head. "Why is it he's called Junior, Mr. Hammer? He's no kid."

"He was named after his uncle, a Syndicate guy who bought it back in the early '50s. He looks a lot like his uncle did, and got nicknamed Junior as a kid, and it held, even as he rose to a similar position of power. He's a bad apple, Billy. You don't want to get too friendly with the likes of Junior Evello."

"Funny thing," Billy said, shaking his head, "but you'd never know that. He was nice to everybody, Mr. Hammer! Hell, he gave gold watches to the nurses, money to the orderlies—I got a ten-dollar tip for mailing a letter for him."

"What was he in for?" I asked.

"Not what you'd think," Billy said. "You'd figure maybe one of his enemies would get him, or he'd get shot up by the cops over something. But instead he started to cross against the light on Lexington Avenue, and got clipped by a lady driver making a turn. He made them bring him up here, because he didn't want to be too far from where he lives. Dr. Harrin took care of him, personally. Junior left a beaut of a watch for him."

I wondered if Harrin had kept it.

"That actor was something else, too. The nurses went crazy trying to keep the girls out of there. But at the same time, they were swarming all over that poor guy themselves. Half of them bawled when he was released, would you believe it?" Billy stopped, and a half-embarrassed smile blossomed. "Was there ... something you wanted to see me about, Mr. Hammer?"

"Yeah, there was," I said, letting more smoke out. "You familiar with the Village Ceramics Shoppe?"

"Sure," he said with a shrug. "Dr. Harrin's sent me over there for materials a few times. The kids in therapy use the stuff. Dr. Harrin started the project last year and it works swell. They seem to—"

I cut in: "A guy name of Russell Frazer worked there. You know him?"

After a moment's thought, he said, "Tall, slim fella, kind of slicked down, about twenty-five?"

I said that could fit him all right.

"Didn't know his name," Billy went on, "but he took the doc's order from me once. He delivers the ceramics here for the shop. Why?"

"Somebody killed him."

Billy frowned. "That's too bad. I mean, I didn't really know the guy, but ... why are you telling me this, Mr. Hammer?"

"Frazer used to live close to the Brix kid. He could have known Felton and Haver, too."

The blood drained from his face, leaving the abrasions more prominent than ever. "How was he killed?"

I gave him the whole thing, from the attack on me through the discovery of Frazer's corpse.

"Christ," the kid said, breathlessly.

"Billy," I asked him, locking eyes, "the other day when we were talking—are you sure you gave it to me straight?"

His answer was quiet, but very direct: "Right down the line, Mr. Hammer."

"Nothing you might have left out?"

"Like what?"

"This ceramics shop is a new wrinkle. You knew Frazer from there, a little. Did you ever see those punks hanging out there—Brix, Felton, Haver?"

"No, but ... well, I might have seen them near the place. On the street. I mean, it's the same general neighborhood, but never in the shop or loafing in the alley or anything."

"Okay," I said with a nod.

And when I nodded, he knew that I believed him and he smiled back, the color returning to his face.

I was getting up from the carton when he added, "But, Mr. Hammer—I didn't tell you everything I was thinking."

That stopped me. "Want to try it now?"

He took a deep breath and looked right at me. "You have any idea what hospital security is like in this city?"

"From what I read in the papers, pretty lax."

"Lax is right. Get an addict in for treatment, and he'll still get his junk. Try the big hospitals, and they're buying and selling all over the place. Somebody even stole the copper roofing off Bellevue to pay for the stuff."

"So I heard."

"Mr. Hammer, some of the guys who work here at Saxony worked other places, before, and when I hear how they schemed to lay their hands on narcotics, I get sick. They brag about how they used to switch stuff around, so the loss wasn't noticeable right away."

"You report this, Billy?"

"No. Could just be talk, and I got to swim in these waters, don't I? I go around finking, and something bad will happen."

I didn't remind him that his face was battered and he'd just crawled out of a hospital bed.

"Anyway," he was saying, "it can't happen at the college, and because Saxony is small, it's pretty tight here, too. But even in this place, when you match the inventory sheets with the checkout lists, you can see the shortages."

I sat back down on the carton. "Go on, Billy."

"I don't use, Mr. Hammer. But I know people who do...."

"What kind of people?"

"Various kinds. Please don't press me on it."

"Okay."

"I'll just say, you'd be surprised how young some of them are right now. And I hear things."

"What have you heard?"

We couldn't have been more alone, but his voice dropped to a hush. "There's a shortage of stuff on the street. It isn't hitting the guys with the big money, but it's got the nickel- and dime-bag buyers in a real bind. Hospitals are getting forced withdrawal cases all over the city. Either the dealers are holding back, to jump the prices, or the stuff isn't coming through."

"Which is why Brix and Felton put the squeeze on you to supply them."

"Exactly right, Mr. Hammer. They figured, with me on the inside, and them pushing? We could grab off all the small stuff, and really clean up."

"Could you have gotten the stuff?"

He shook his head. "Not at the college."

"What about here?"

His half-smile was more a smirk. "I could have figured something out," he told me honestly. "If I had wanted to."

"And your old schoolmates knew that."

He nodded glumly. "They knew it."

I dropped my cigarette butt in the half-empty soda bottle somebody used for an ashtray, and stood up. "Thanks, Billy." I handed him my business card. "Keep right on thinking. If anything comes of it, let me know."

"Sure." He tucked the card in his back jeans pocket. "And, Mr. Hammer—this Frazer guy? You didn't ... didn't come back and take him out, did you?"

"No, son," I said. "Somebody else beat my time."

Dr. Alan Sprague, friend and colleague of Dr. David Harrin, also worked at both Saxony Hospital and Dorchester Medical College. I caught up with him at the latter.

He was a round little guy with bristly gray hair and a tired but ready smile. He was in a short-sleeve white shirt with a blue bow tie, his white coat hanging on a hook, and was rocking in the chair behind Dr. Harrin's desk, the office being about the only quiet place on the floor.

Harrin had left that morning for Paris, to make the first three days of seminars before touring the hospitals where experimental work in cancer research was in progress. Sprague had taken over Harrin's caseload and his classes, and right now was catching a breather from his work.

I settled in the chair opposite him. I had a Lucky going and he his pipe.

I said, "Paris isn't bad this time of the year, Doc. You should have joined him."

Sprague waved off the idea with a grunt. "We have enough of that right here in the States," he said in his gruff baritone. "Finding time to keep up with all the new medical developments, and just getting the work done, is bad enough, let alone taking a trip on the social side of the scientific world. I'm surprised David even bothered with it."

"Why's that?"

"He's a damn workhorse." Sprague glanced at the pipe in his fingers and scrubbed the bowl with his thumb. "And I'll tell you one thing—if ever anybody needed a break in his routine, it's David. I've been trying to get him to take a vacation ever since his son died, and all I ever managed was two days on a golf course. He drives himself too hard, too goddamn hard."

"I've seen it happen before," I told him. "Not much left when you lose your family."

"Oh, it's understandable, all right. Just not conducive to good health. Even machines wear out if they're mistreated." He rocked back. "Now, Mr. Hammer ... what can I do for you?"

He was familiar with what had happened and, when I mentioned what Billy had told me about lax security at the hospital, agreed Saxony had its flaws in that area and admitted he didn't see a solution.

"In most cases," he told me, "it's a plain case of oversize institutions with heavy traffic in and out of restricted areas. Keys can be lost, duplicated, and used before locks can be changed. Because of a supervisory shortage, one person will be in charge of a maintenance crew or cleanup team. Then again, you can even have the problem of some authorized person removing drugs without accounting for them."

"Medical personnel?"

He raised an eyebrow and nodded. "There have been such cases. We had two right here, where underpaid interns were so far in debt they took the chance. And they blew their careers right out the window."

I nodded, then asked, "Much pilferage lately?"

"Holding at the usual rate. Why?"

"They say things are getting tight on the street."

He tented his fingers before his face, and his eyes narrowed. "Wait until the Snowbird gets back. It'll loosen up, then."

"Who?"

His smile was a world-weary one. "His right name is Jay Wren, a little joke his mother played on him. Locally he's known as the Snowbird, a big-time pusher who moved in on this ... I believe the word is... 'turf,' a few years ago."

I sighed smoke. "I don't know which surprises me more, Doc—that I never heard of this Snowbird, or that you know all about him."

He shrugged. "On the latter score, Mr. Hammer, we deal with more than our share of drug-related illness here, from infection caused by dirty needles to O.D.'s and full-scale addiction. So we have a better than layman's knowledge of what goes on in the world around our facility. As for your lack of knowledge of the Snowbird, he would have been until very lately too minor a player to have made it onto your singular scorecard."

"But he's moved up?"

"And beyond. He represents a new generation, and possibly a threat to the older one."

"You mean the Syndicate? The Evello crowd? Your former patient, Junior?"

"Yes. Our former patient." He puffed at his pipe while he weighed what to say. Then: "My understanding is that there's an uneasy alliance between the Snowbird and the old-guard mob. He has the means and the methods to get the product to a, let's call it, younger audience."

I sat forward. "Wren wasn't on my scorecard till just now. What about the cops? Is he on theirs?"

"The police have him pegged, all right, but they haven't caught up with him ... yet." He made a disgusted face and a sound to match. "It's a shame to watch these people living it up on the blood of school kids."

"Where is the Snowbird now?"

Sprague shrugged again and sucked on his pipe. The fire had gone out and he picked up the crystal lighter from the desk, flicked it a half-dozen times without getting a flame, then put it down in annoyance.

"I give David a nice new present," he said, "and he doesn't even bother to put fluid in it—just like him."

"He doesn't have your slogan up yet, either," I said with a little smile, gesturing to the framed "Caveat emptor" parchment leaned against the wall.

"He has seemed preoccupied of late," Sprague said. "But then, most doctors are."

I handed him my Zippo across the desk and, when he was stoked up again, he handed it back and said, "Wren was here, or rather at Saxony ... we discharged him a month ago. He still had the cast on his leg, and all I know is he told David he was going to take a vacation until it came off."

"What happened to him?"

"Automobile accident."

"Like with Junior Evello?"

Sprague gave me a twisted smile and laughed. "Billy tell you about the celebrity suite?"

"He mentioned it."

"No, Wren didn't get clipped by a lady driver. He was getting out of his limousine on the driver's side in heavy traffic and got swiped by a truck. Far as I'm concerned, it's too bad it didn't roll over him, although that wouldn't have done more than put a temporary dent in the drug scene around here." He shrugged. "Somebody else would have taken over anyway."

I asked, "How bad is it up here?"

He was inspecting the chewed end of his pipe. "We only get to see the ones who are crippled by it, of course, but it's a good indicator of the trend. In brief, it's growing fast. The sad part is that the growth rate is largely in the younger group. Our methadone program here never stops expanding. Right behind it is the VD problem. Until a few years ago you rarely saw an under-eighteen-year-old patient. Now they're coming in sucking lollipops."

"And that's not all they've been sucking," I said.

He gestured with an open palm. "Free love is expensive for these children. When the Pill replaces condoms, social disease has a field day. But what I truly despise is the way these children treat it all like a big joke—no concern for themselves or anybody else."

"Doc, you said it—they're children. They don't have the maturity."

"They're mature enough to mouth the phrases—society pushed them into it, society can take care of them—only society can't tell them what to do, because they're 'doing their own thing.' Over fifty percent of our drug-abuse patients are repeaters, Mr. Hammer, and fifty percent of those have arrest records ... and who knows what percentage will die early, and bring others down with them."

"Any answers?"

Sprague made a face and spread his hands. "If you could pick out one specific group as being responsible and direct your attention toward them—maybe. But it's spread to the rich and poor, educated and uneducated, and all the strata between. Nobody gives a damn because it's their life, right? But if things go awry, society will take care of them."

"Drug chic, they call it."

"A disease, I call it." He shook his head in grave frustration. "David and I have spoken about this so very many times. And yet he seemed to get along with both Wren and Evello—treated them with the deference and courtesy you would any patient."

"Doesn't that have something to do with that oath you took?"

His eyes flared. "But we don't have to be friendly to them. Businesslike is enough! I've asked David why he ... fraternizes with such scum, but he's never had a reason that makes sense."

"Why, does he have one that doesn't make sense?"

"Several times he's said to me, 'Alan, it takes dead cells to create a vaccine.'"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Who knows? He's said it so often, it ought to be on parchment in one of these stupid frames." He tapped the sludge out of his pipe and leaned forward on the desk, looking at me carefully. "Which brings me to you, Mr. Hammer. In view of your reputation, and your profession, your interest in the matter here is a little disconcerting."

I grinned. "Ever been knifed, Doctor? Stabbed?"

"I wield a blade myself, but in the manner you suggest—I can't say I have."

"It isn't very pleasant, having a knife shoved in your back. That was tried on me last night."

He leaned forward. "Tried...?"

I told him what had happened.

"And you think it was related to the attack on Billy Blue?"

"'Think' isn't exactly the right word, Doc. It's an oddball feeling I have that for some reason somebody is trying to toss my ass in the wringer. Like being in the jungle—you don't always go by what you see ... you go by what you feel, or else something's going to drop on you from overhead, or kill you from the blind side."

"What do you propose doing?"

"Just making a nuisance of myself maybe. Antagonize something or somebody into coming out in the open where it can be clobbered."

"That isn't a very antiseptic method, is it, Mr. Hammer?"

I grinned at him and got ready to leave. "Look at how long Madame Curie worked at it before she isolated radium."

Dr. Sprague smiled gently, his eyes thoughtful. "You might keep something else in mind, Mr. Hammer. Madame Curie died of radiation poisoning."