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."
"So Doolan was your mentor, too?"
"Oh, yes. He knew this city, and its inner workings, like nobody else. Now I'll just have to take off the training wheels and learn to ride on my own."
Pat glanced at me and grunted. "Guess old Doolan had angles I never knew about."
"Well, he needed a hobby, Pat—too old to chase women anymore. How'd you get to know him, Alex?"
"It was a few years back, when I was a reporter for McWade's."
"That's the Canadian magazine, right? Sort of their Life?"
"Right. But I covered the New York beat for them, or anyway was one of several journalists who did. There was some juvenile gang activity in Doolan's neighborhood and he pulled out all the stops to help get things calmed down. That guy was damned near unbelievable, the way he could relate to young roughnecks."
"Tell me about it," I said.
"Anyway, I did a big layout on his neighborhood work, and we got to be friends. He's the one who encouraged me to move out of journalism and into politics—to quit writing about problems, and really get my hands dirty solving them." He stopped, nodding toward the door. "Well—here they come..."
"Eight o'clock," Pat said with a lift of the eyebrows.
"Rogue's gallery on parade," I muttered.
It took two men in delivery livery to carry each floral wreath, fourteen altogether. When the wreaths were arranged, the donors appeared, somber well-dressed men who made the circuit past the suddenly hushed assembly to the pine coffin, then to Anna and her husband.
Camera flashes started then, not with the wild brilliance of the old bulbs, but the muted winks from the new electronic jobs. I hadn't even noticed the damn reporters and photogs lurking, but they scurried into play like cockroaches when a light switches on.
The press had been waiting for this parade of dapper killers, the other inhabitants of Doolan's world who had come under the inspector's gun, and respected him for it.
Every one of these cops knew every one of them, the young crowd who hated the term "button man," the capos who had the look of progressive business about them, and the elder dons, two under indictment and another just released from a five-year sentence.
And Alberto Bonetti.
The old man wasn't big, but he had the forced rigidity of a soldier on parade. His oval face had a softness to it, but I knew that was forced too, his gray hair combed back immaculately, his eyebrows black as an eightball. He was a man of many masks and this was the one he wore at funerals. Even his hands were under total control and, if you didn't know him, you would think he was merely a dignified old man trying to live out his life.
Only when he was almost past me did he stop, turning his whole body on a swivel to recognize me with a smile. "Ah, Mr. Hammer. Michael Hammer."
I barely nodded. "Mr. Bonetti."
His smile widened a bit as I matched the formality he'd given me. "Please know that I am very sorry for the loss of your friend. He was an honest man. A good man. A rare thing in a dishonorable world."
I managed not to tell him to stuff the pretty speeches. Instead I just said, "You knew Doolan pretty well yourself, I understand."
"Oh yes, very well." The old don chuckled. "Don't you recall, Mr. Hammer? A long time ago, he sent me up for seven years."
"A bad rap?"
Again, the mob don let out a little laugh. "Only my being caught was bad. I understand, many years ago, he threw you off the force."
"Not exactly threw me off. Recommended I be taken off the street and put on a desk."
"Which, of course, he knew would mean you would resign, and seek other employment. So we have Bill Doolan to blame for Mike Hammer becoming a private vigilante."
"Not vigilante. Not anymore. Just a private detective. And a retired one."
"Really?" He paused to look at me critically, taking in my tan. "You have enjoyed Florida, I see."
I almost smiled. "Well, it makes a nice change from the city."
"Yes. I get to Florida from time to time. My friends there tell me you have quite a reputation as a fisherman. For snook, I believe."
"I'm a rank amateur. But I go out with pros, so yeah ... I caught a few fish in my time."
That made him smile, just a little. Then: "Maybe someday I will join you in sunny retirement. When a man gets lonely, there are some things better done in another's company."
"Anytime, Mr. Bonetti."
"Good evening, Mr. Hammer."
He turned on a swivel again to join the others, smiling back at the hostility coming at him from the rows of police. The cameras never stopped until the doors closed behind them.
Only then did Alex Jaynor say, "What was that all about?"
There was a touch of irony in Pat's voice when he said, "Old Alberto was letting my friend here know that he knew all along where Mike Hammer has been holed up. That he could have had Mike tapped out at any time."
Jaynor frowned. "Killed?"
"Certainly."
"But why?"
I said, "Because I blew his kid's head off."
The politician's jaw dropped in sudden remembrance. "Hell, that's right, isn't it? A year ago ... but you were almost friendly with the man, Mike."
"Old man Bonetti knows his son Sal was a bad seed," I said. "He knows it was self-defense. If he'd decided to have me killed, it would have been to save face, not out of revenge."
Pat was studying me. "You see any of his guys down there in sunny F-L-A?"
"I wasn't looking."
He made a face. "Playing stupid isn't your game, buddy."
"Pat, I just didn't give a damn. And I wasn't in the game. Still aren't."
"Now you know Bonetti knows your Florida address. Doesn't that bother you?"
"Why should it? If he wanted me dead, it would have gone down a long time ago. And now? Now there's no sense killing me anymore."
Jaynor had the expression of a guy visiting a foreign country who has lost his translation booklet. "Why would you think that, Mike?"
"Because there's no profit in it, Alex—and profit is all those guys live for."
Pat was checking his watch. "Mike—it's time." He reached in his suitcoat pocket and handed me the small canvas pouch with the metallic lump in it.
"Sure you don't want to handle this, Pat?"
"No. Doolan would've wanted you to do it."
So I nodded to each of the men as I walked to the coffin. All of them wore those invisible scars of the field, and they nodded back, each with a subtle look of curiosity because although I was, in a way, one of them, I hadn't played on their team for a long, long time.
I stood there looking at what was left of Bill Doolan. Once he had been young and vital as hell, but what was left was an old gray-headed corpse, barely recognizable. The stupid embalmer had tried to cover up the scar across his left eye and fill out the cheeks that had always been hollow with contained rage. Those bony hands should have been clenched into fists instead of being folded across his chest like all the other dead bodies in the world.