"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 disbelief.
"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."