Nelson Algren - The New Black Mask Quarterly (№ 1)

She looked at me, eyes intense. “His style... all the violence and the beatings... he swore that Mike Hammer was really Race Williams and that Mickey had made millions by using his detective, and that he had died broke.”

“ Died ?”

“You know, in his life before this one.”

“Wow,” I said softly.

“He’s convinced that in his new body he has this cosmic duty to avenge his other self — the one who died back in 1958.”

The guy obviously has a lot of rungs missing in his ladder, I said. “Every writer starts with a role model, another writer he likes to read. And Mickey was probably influenced by Daly’s work. But that’s a long way from outright theft.”

“Not to this guy, it isn’t,” she said.

“How was his stuff — the stories he read from?”

A smile bloomed on her face. That special smile. “It was all terrible crap,” she said.

I phoned my cop friend and had him put out an A.P.B. for the wacko. Then I poured Charlene a Scotch rocks, another for me. We were feeling warm and relaxed, knowing it was over, that they’d pick up the guy soon, probably back at his place on Sunset Crest.

“You did a brave thing tonight, Nick,” she told me. “Coming through that bedroom door to help me, not knowing if the creep was still in here with his gun aimed at you. He could have blown you in half.”

“Stupid is what it was, not brave. But when I heard you whimpering I just had to find out if you were okay. I’m just glad he wasn’t still around.”

“That makes two of us,” she said softly, leaning toward me and kissing me on the chin, cheeks, forehead. Little sex kisses. Meant to arouse me.

I was aroused.

We were downstairs, on one of the thick rugs, with a fire going. She looked great in her pink robe by firelight.

I put down my Scotch, reached for her, folding her tightly into my arms. She felt even better than she looked.

“Remember my T-shirt?” she said with a cat’s smile.

“Who could forget it?”

“Well... what you see is what you get.”

And she slipped out of the robe.

Sometimes, being a lust-crazed private detective has its advantages.

We phoned Mickey at the hotel to let him know Charlene was okay, and he said for us to come on over. He was shooting a commercial at the Marmont, and we could all have a long talk after he finished.

“I thought they shot commercials in the daytime,” I said.

“They do, but this one is special. We gotta do it tonight because of the background.”

“Costs more, doesn’t it?”

“A bundle. The crew’s on golden time. But I let my producer worry about cost. I’m just a hired hand. You coming on over?”

“Sure,” I said. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

At the Marmont, the desk clerk told us that Mr. Spillane was in the Red Room, “with all those pulpcon freaks.”

I arched an eyebrow. “Pulpcon? What’s that?”

“Pulp magazine convention — where all these freak-type collectors meet to swap issues and gas it up about the grand old pulp days. They have a big get-together each fall and this year they picked this hotel for their weirdo shindig.”

Suddenly I turned as green as my socks and pulled the .380 Browning from my belt. “The poem! Mickey was all wrong about the poem!”

“Nick! What’s happened?” Charlene was staring at me, wide-eyed, like the desk clerk.

“You know the poem I quoted to Mickey. I told you about it...”

“Yes, but—”

“Those old magazines were made from wood pulp — and that was what he meant when he said ‘the thief will die near the woods.’ He didn’t mean Big Sur. And when he said ‘while the Eye is watching,’ he meant the camera eye! That psycho’s going to blow Mickey away during the beer commercial!”

And I took off for the Red Room at full gallop.

Franklin E. Edwards, alias John D. Carroll, alias Carroll John Daly, was off to one side of the big convention room, standing behind a red velvet-covered pillar, his Winchester aimed at Mickey, who was holding up a beer can and grinning for the camera when I came through the wide oak-and-brass swing door like a bull into a china shop, knocking six startled pulp collectors flat on their asses.

The place was jammed with addicts poring over piles of flaking yellowed magazines stacked on some two dozen large display tables across the room — but I spotted our boy instantly, dropped to one knee, and squeezed off a round. And another. And another. Missing him with all three shots.

I was nervous.

Edwards swung the pumper in my direction and blew two crystal lamps that were set into the flocked-velvet wall above my head into tiny glittering pieces. Guess he was a little nervous himself.

Then with everybody yelling and stampeding, with tables falling and magazines fluttering, Edwards darted through a side door, me right after him, and sprinted up a short flight of stairs to a freight elevator. I got there just as the sliding door shut, but I could guess where he was headed.

Straight for the hotel roof.

I caught the next elevator and followed him up there, snapping a fresh clip into the Browning.

After I’d ducked out of the elevator and taken a dive behind a large standing air vent, the roof got very, very quiet. In all the Red Room confusion my gun-happy friend had made a clean getaway. Apparently I was the only one to follow him up here.

Which was an unsettling thought.

Here we were, me with my .380 pea-shooter, which suddenly felt very small in my fist, against a killer with a cannon powerful enough to blow away half the building. I’d robbed him of his cosmic destiny, and I knew he was plenty pissed.

Nicky boy, I said to myself, you have royally screwed up. There’s a good chance you are going to leave this hotel with no head.

A mothering big 747 made a lot of noise then, coming in low for its landing approach at LAX, going over us like the wrath of God. The whole roof vibrated.

When things had quieted down again I tried a yell: “Give it up, Edwards! The cops are on the way. Put down that Winchester and come out with your hands in the air where I can see ’em and you won’t get hurt.”

This was prime bull and we both knew it. I wasn’t going to hurt him; he was going to hurt me.

And when the air vent blossomed into sudden shell-burst fragments in front of me I knew I was right. The concussion knocked the .380 out of my hand. It ricocheted across the roof, hitting the psycho’s shoe.

He stood up, into the light, maybe ten feet in front of me, with the round black mouth of that Winchester aimed at my belly. He pumped the weapon, setting it up for the shot.

“Oh, shit,” I said.

There was no place to hide. It was time for me to enter private eye heaven.

Which was when Sam showed. I saw him crawl out of an open glass skylight directly behind the psycho, saw him raise the short-barrel Colt .45 he was packing and cock it.

The psycho spun at the sound. Brought up his gun. But not fast enough.

A round from the Colt took his head apart.

Sam walked over to me.

“I’ve seen you before,” I said. “Earlier tonight. Leaving Kathleen’s apartment.”

“Right,” he said. “I was tailing our friend here. But I lost him out on Harbor Boulevard. That was embarrassing because I’m a pretty fair shadow man. Usually I don’t lose people.”

“How long have you been following him?”

“Ever since the day I spotted that Winchester pump in the back seat of his car. Then there was something about his eyes. Aroused my suspicious nature.”

“You a cop?”

“Nope. I’m an insurance salesman. But I used to be a Pink.”