Kiss Her Goodbye (3 page)

But I did argue: "No," I said flatly, "I don't
know
that. I admit the logic is there, Pat. But it still doesn't sit right."

"Hell, man. Cut me a goddamn break. I put
everybody
on it—we blitzed every angle we could before the day was out. Any real enemies Doolan had died a hell of a long time ago. He wasn't involved with any police matters, his circle of friends was small and of long duration. He was well-liked in the neighborhood, occasionally took part in civic affairs..."

"Like how?"

"Attended meetings when it concerned neighborhood problems or renovation. Things like that."

"Social life?"

"He would go to departmental retirement parties sometimes—I figure for him that was a big night out."

"What about his granddaughter?"

His wife and daughter were deceased; the one granddaughter was the only relative I knew of.

Pat said, "She still lives upstate with that slob she married. They got in town a couple hours ahead of you."

"Nothing there either?"

"Zilch. The grandson-in-law hasn't missed a day at work all year. Staying sober is probably killing him. If he gets drunk and beats up on Anna one more time, he goes up for a year. The judge really laid on him last time."

"She ought to dump that bum," I said.

"Right now she thinks she loves him. You know, old Doolan beat that kid's ass couple years back—Doolan in his seventies, the guy in his late twenties or early thirties. Funny as hell."

"So there's a suspect already."

He winced at that, and his eyes seemed tired now. "I told you, Mike, I've covered
all
the angles, including that one. There's not a reason in the world to label it anything except suicide."

I nodded, knowing that Pat was certain of his facts, but still reluctant to admit Doolan would renege on his ethical standards and take his own life. Hell, drugs could wipe any pain out right until he died, and Doolan had kissed death often enough not to be afraid of her.

"Take me through it, Pat," I said.

"Mike, imagine how many times I've—"

"One more time."

He sighed. "We got the call, the squad car responded, the officer broke the door down, went back to Doolan's study, flipped on the light, and saw the body—"

"Hold it. The place was dark?"

"Sure. But that's not unusual. You remember how Doolan was. Whenever he had a problem, he'd sit there in the dark listening to that classical music. And he had a problem, all right. That's what he was doing—thinking out a problem ... a problem he finally solved with a single shot. And before you ask, the music tape was still going when the officer entered. At that point it was about three quarters completed."

"How long was the tape?"

"Ninety minutes." He let me drift over the picture, then added, "Convinced?"

I shrugged. "I keep forgetting the first lesson Doolan ever taught us."

"What's that?"

"Don't get emotionally involved with your cases."

Pat snorted. "Yeah, well, that's a lesson you didn't learn so good, did you?"

I grinned at him, but there was nothing funny in it. "Must've dozed off in class that day, Pat."

His eyes locked with mine. "You're satisfied with what I told you?"

"Absolutely, buddy," I said. "There's no disputing the facts at all. Everything points to a suicide. But are
you
satisfied, Pat?"

"Yes," he said. His eyes were hard, his chin jutted. "I'm satisfied." Then the eyes hooded and the chin lowered, and he let out a deep breath and shook his head. "But
you're
not, are you, Mike? Not
really?
"

"Buddy," I told him, "I'm not doubting you at all. It's just that I feel highly pissed off at Doolan for pulling a stunt like that."

If
he pulled a stunt like that.

"He wasn't Doolan," Pat said resignedly. "He was an old man, Mike."

I was older. I was jaded. I had changed. I was tired. I was retired.
But I was still Mike Hammer.

"Bother you if I look into it myself?" I asked Pat.

"Nope." He let out a sigh that must have started yesterday. "I knew you were going to. No matter what I said. Just tell me why."

"So I can be convinced—like you."

"Fine," he said. "Be my guest." He slapped the tabletop. "
Now
...let's go give the old boy a proper send-off."

And that was the real question, wasn't it?

Had somebody already given Doolan a send-off?

T
OMORROW THERE WOULD
be an inspector's send-off for Doolan.

The city would escort the cortege to the county line and the motorcycle squads would pick it up from there. At the gravesite there would be rifles fired over Doolan's casket, bugles blowing, and somebody would present a flag to his granddaughter. Then it would be over and everybody would go home glad that it
was
over so they could get back to normal again, the bureaucrats and the foot soldiers and distant relatives and kids of deceased parents who'd been the old boy's friends having served out their obligation to a dinosaur of a cop who had taken way too long to get around to dying.

But tonight was different.

Tonight would be the gathering of the clan, and like all reunions, the pack would assemble in little groups according to age, rank, and serial number—the old-timers, long-retired, with their own little clique near the casket, those working buddies of Doolan's getting ready for their own inspector's parades. Gold badges gleaming on freshly pressed uniforms as the brass arrange themselves in ladderlike order of importance, wearing their funeral masks beautifully, but singing no praises to the corpse. In their own way, they'd be working.

We found a parking place down the block and walked till Pat nodded toward the old brick building with the gold lettering on its window.

"Let's go on in," he said. "Just about everybody else'll be there already."

I followed Pat, leaving my bag and my hat in the coat closet. Religious music played just softly enough to be heard but not loud enough to be recognized, and a female employee in her fifties with a white corsage and a trained sad face had us sign in at the book.

A good thirty cops, plainclothes and uniformed alike, were milling, chatting, ranging in age from late fifties to early thirties. Old Doolan had trained a lot of guys—
special
guys. The kind who had gone into some pretty high places—some on the streets, where the pace was fast and deadly, others up the departmental ladder where the air got thin with politics.

For the cops in the trenches, it wasn't a game that you retired out of. The end usually came with a startling suddenness and with little note of it anywhere. A lucky few stayed alive and slowed down enough so that they went into a desk job, where it was the
lack
of pace that killed them.

Pat was one of those organizational types who didn't fit the wild-man mold, and had been steered by Doolan into an active but largely administrative role. Doolan was right in that decision, although Pat still could take care of himself on the street.

Me, Doolan had scoped out quickly. As far as he was concerned, I never should have had that early on-the-job army training in the Pacific, a kid who went in lying about his age and came out older than his years.
Lousy goddamn hellhole to go to school in,
he'd said.

"You learn to kill too young, kid," he'd told me, "and something happens. You can get to
like
killing—but on the PD, if you
have
to kill, you make it part of the job and not some emotional damn explosion."

I had a streak that worried him. Doolan had trained me and guided me, but I still lasted less than two years on the department before hanging out my private shingle.

"The rules dictate the action," he told me once.

And, punk kid that I was, I'd just grinned and said, "Yeah? Well, if there
are
no rules, you have to make your own up on the spot, don't you?"

Doolan had lost me my job. I hated him for it—for maybe a month. Years later, he let me read the memo he put through, advising that the NYPD send me to a desk or cut me loose.

"This is a good man," he'd written, "a brave man, and he has brains. But his emotions dictate his behavior, and he is the kind of unpredictable officer who will cause tragedy for himself and others."

I couldn't challenge that assessment.

Still, he had trained me well—all these years later, and here I was, still alive. One of the walking wounded maybe, but alive.

The sweet smell of flowers sickened me. I said to Pat, "Where are all the bad guys? Aren't they required by their dumb-ass code to come by and pay their respects?"

Pat glanced at his watch. "It isn't eight o'clock yet. They like to make an entrance."

"I'd like to help them make an exit. Why, after so many years, do these Cosa Nostra boys bother with all this ritualistic crap?"

"Tradition—gives 'em a sense of structure and pseudomorality. Whether they like it or not, they're still tied to old-country ways. The young guys hate it, but all of that omertà bull is bred into them, and they can't get rid of it."

"You turned into a regular philosopher, Pat."

"Hanging around you will do that." He nodded toward a little civilian crowd near the simple pine-box coffin. "Let's tell his granddaughter hello ... even though any tears she sheds will be of joy, anticipating what she'll inherit."

"I got no argument with
that
philosophical insight."

I followed Pat, nodding to some of the cops I knew. One, a captain from uptown, said, "I thought you was dead."

"You thought right," I told him.

He frowned, trying to work that out.

Nearer the coffin, the crowd thinned. Pat fell in line by the mass of floral displays from the police and fire departments, a dozen lodges, and a full wall from old friends. I looked at my own watch. Ten minutes to eight.

A red-headed fading beauty, Anna Marina, Doolan's only grandchild, was putting on her own stage play. Her makeup was dutifully smeared, her dark, church-perfect clothes indicated proper bereavement, but there was no real sorrow on display. Her hulking husband stood beside her, not really capable of showing any decent emotion, unless it was a frustrated desire for a drink. His dark suit was rumpled and he could use a shave.

I had known Anna since she was a kid, but no love was ever lost between us. I saw through her manipulative girly ways, so she was never pleased to see me. Maybe in part it was because I busted her wiseass husband in the chops one night for a lousy remark he made about somebody whose color he felt superior to.

She looked up at me, her mouth tight.

I said, "Anna. Sure sorry about this. Doolan and I were always great friends."

"I'll never understand that. He got you
fired.
"

"It was the right thing. Doolan put me on my path."

Her upper lip curled. "It would be more respectful if you called him 'Mr. Doolan,' or even 'Bill.'"

"Sure. Bill was a mentor to me, and I'll always love him for it. You and I have never been tight, but if you ever have problems..." I glanced at the husband who had sent her to the emergency room more than once. "...just let me or Pat know."

Now I swung my head and stared straight at hubby Harry Marina. He was looking at me and gauging the pounds I'd lost, and taking in the looseness of my collar, and he had a wet-lipped expression like a nasty, stupid mutt wondering whether or not to take a bite out of a puppy.

What the hell. I was trying to keep it friendly, out of respect to Doolan. Anyway, I was an old tiger now, and who knew if I could go up against a big slob like this anymore.

So I just grinned at him and his face seemed to freeze and little white lines formed half-moons around his nostrils and almost unconsciously he pulled back a few inches.

Pat was watching me, his eyes narrowing. I nodded to Anna and walked away.

When we were in the crowd, Pat said, "I'd swear that clown wanted a piece of you."

"You think?"

"Man, you shouldn't grin at people that way. You scared the shit out of him."

I was about to tell Pat I wasn't trying for that kind of action, but suddenly he wasn't there, having paused to speak to somebody—a tall, sandy-haired guy with a narrow, well-chiseled face with light blue eyes and a tan even deeper than mine. The guy's dark gray tailored suit with lighter gray silk tie screamed money, but quietly.

"Mike, meet Alex Jaynor."

Jaynor's hand gave up a good, solid grip.

"I feel like I know Mr. Hammer already," Jaynor said good-naturedly. "My admiration goes way back—you've made for a lot of great reading over the years."

"More fun to read about," I said with half a grin, "than to experience."

"Alex is our new congressman from this district," Pat told me.

Jaynor held up a hand as he gave me his own half a grin. "Don't hold that against me," he said.

"I'm not a voting type myself," I told him.

"Why not, Mr. Hammer?"

"The politicians—it only encourages them."

"Ouch," Jaynor said, still friendly. "I'm hoping there are a few of us these days who might change your opinion, maybe even get you into a voting booth."

"You're welcome to try. Where'd you get your tan?"

"Damn," he said with a chuckle, "I was just about to ask you that." One dark hand gestured to another. "What you see here, I'm afraid, comes out of a machine in a little cubicle—one hour a day, every other day. You've caught me already, Mr. Hammer—just another phony."

I smiled at that. "Honest enough to admit it, anyway. And make it 'Mike'...me, I'm a beach bum these days—Florida."

He gave me a confused frown. "I thought you were strictly a Manhattanite."

"Call it a leave of absence." I shrugged. "Got to where I'd had about as much of New York as I could stand. You getting a head start on a summer tan?"

Jaynor laughed abruptly. "Hell no. This is show-off stuff. The voters love it. And you know who advised me to do it? Bill Doolan. He said I should follow the JFK model—present myself as young, vital, fresh. Said voters were tired of looking at ward-heeler types."