Free Mickey Spillane - [Mike Hammer 13] by Black Alley Page B

believe it too and it scares me. Will you answer me one question?”
    “Sure,” I agreed.
    For a moment she stood there, thinking silently, then said, “Eighty-nine billion dollars is an almost impossible amount of money. There is no way a person could spend it all. Governments or individuals would gladly kill to pull in numbers like that, and there are organizations and persons who have the financing and technology to search out a treasure that big.”
    I nodded and told her, “That’s not the question, doll.”
    “True,” she agreed. Then: “How are you going to beat them all to it?”
    My laugh was almost a grunt. “I’m smart,” I said.
    “Don’t give me that.” Now a frown had started between her eyes. “You can have the entire government of the United States on your back just like that.”
    “So?”
    “How are you going to handle that ?”
    “No problem,” I said.
    “Oh, great.”
    “Come on, Velda, I can’t tell them what I don’t know.”
    “What did Dooley tell you?” she asked me shrewdly.
    “Not enough.”
    “You knew the amount.”
    “Sure, but not where it was . I think Dooley wanted to tell me, but all he said was that he had changed the signs so nobody could find it.”
    “Why do you suppose he called you in, Mike?”
    Now I grinned real big. “Because I’m not nobody . Somehow Dooley dropped it right in my lap and now I have to look down at all the wrinkles in the napkin to see where the crumb is. That’ll tell me where it is.”
    “And what do you do with eighty-nine billion dollars after you find it?”
    “Same thing Pat would do. I’d buy a new car. Hell, you can have some too. New dress, shoes, things like that.”
    “Get serious,” Velda told me.
    “I am,” I said. “Now, what about Dooley’s history?”
    The change of pace rattled her for a moment, then she thumbed over another page of her notebook. For a moment she frowned at it, then her eyes drifted up to mine. “Those navy serial numbers were wrong, Mike. They weren’t his.”
    Before I could answer her she cut me off with a wave of her hand. “Oh, I found him, all right. I ran down the personnel on the destroyer Latille, and there he was. Then I got his proper ID. I had to mention a few names to get his son’s name and addresses, but I knew you wouldn’t mind.” She ripped a page out of the notepad and handed it to me. “Anyway, there’s the kid’s location as far as they know.”
    I looked at the address, memorized it and tucked the paper under my desk blotter. “We still have a problem, kitten.”
    She waited for me to say it.
    “What are those other numbers on the urn then?”
    “Maybe . . .” she searched for a name, then found it, “Marvin can tell you.”
    A little nerve tugged at my jaw. Dooley had always been out front with everything. He had wanted to bust right into a bunker rather than smoke an enemy out. He never seemed to be devious with anything, so it was hard to give him credit for it now. Hell, he could have made a mistake, but that sure didn’t seem likely. Nobody ever forgets his military serial number. Nobody. Ever. You don’t forget where to wear your hat either. Or put your socks.
    So? Okay, Dooley was trying to be devious. Oh boy, if those numbers were a code to all that loot and the government picked it up, their computers could break it in ten seconds. Maybe five. And the mob had the same technology too. So where did that leave me? I looked at Velda’s face and knew that she was thinking the same thing, picturing all those beautiful IBM machines and supercomputers and assorted goodies lined up in the government offices in Washington, making subtle clicking sounds, churning out reams of information all generated by a steady current of electricity smug with its power.
    “They’re only as good as what people put into them, Mike,” she offered.
    “Yeah,” I agreed.
    She smiled a little sweetly, then tested me. “What’s better than a computer virus, Mike?”
    But I