Mickey Spillane - Lady, go die

From that I took it that the house must be partially soundproofed.

I asked, “Were there many lights on?”

“Naw, not so many. It was hard to see on account of them shutters that was closed all the time. Guys used to give me dimes for helping ’em push out cars what was stuck in the sand. Sometimes I was too weak and they would let me sit behind the wheel and they would push.” His eyes brightened. “One give a dollar once!”

Big shots. Spend a fortune gambling and throw peanuts to the little moron. But Poochie didn’t care. He thought they were doing him a favor.

“Did you ever see any fights on the grounds? Maybe down on the beach?”

“No, not really. I saw a lady slap a guy once, though. They were in the bushes by the little house. They was wrestling, I think.”

That was a new name for it. I had to stop and think what to ask him next. Getting information out of this character was like trying to hold onto a wet eel.

“How often did the yellow-haired lady have parties, Poochie?”

“Oh, lots of times. Always on the same days.”

“When was that?”

“Oh, that was the days when the red bus goes past. I can tell that way.”

The red bus he mentioned was the area transit company’s weekend morning runs to Wilcox, the nearest town of any large size. It went by every Friday and Saturday morning about nine o’clock. I’d made the trip once myself, the last time I’d visited Sidon.

“Now think real hard, Poochie. Did you ever see anyone around there that really sticks in your memory? Somebody you might have seen before?”

A quick flash of fear passed over his face and he shrank back a little.

I pressed him. “Tell me, Poochie-did you?”

His head shook nervously. “No, Mike, don’t make me tell you things like that. I don’t want to get hit again.”

Again.

“Was it Dekkert you saw?”

He chewed on his lip and fell silent. He shrugged. Maybe he had forgotten the guy’s name.

“You know,” I insisted, “Dekkert-the deputy chief?”

“Yes, yes, Mike, I did see him there… but you won’t tell on me, will you? He’ll hit me again. I know he will.”

“Don’t you worry,” I assured him. “If Dekkert tries anything, I’ll knock his block off. Whatever you tell me is just between us pals, Poochie.”

The beachcomber was really jumpy now. He only knew that someone was dead, and that nobody around here liked him, and that he was liable to get throttled if he said too much.

Gently I said, “Now, just tell me when you saw him.”

The little guy was shaking his head, almost frantically. “He’s there all the time, Mike. At that place. When lots of people come, he always comes too. He caught me at the garbage cans one time, when I was looking for meat for my cats. He hit me, a bunch of times, and he woulda hit me more, only some lady yelled at him from a car and he just told me to get the heh… to get out of there.”

“At the yellow-haired lady’s place, Pooch… was he always outside?”

I figured Dekkert for doing security and helping cars get parked.

“ Not just outside. I watched out for him, ’cause I didn’t wanna get hit, but I guess he was inside most of the time. I stayed in the bushes so he wouldn’t see me, but I always saw him, coming out the door where the garbage cans are. He came out sometimes and went down to the little place with some men.”

“Little place?”

“By the trees. That little house.”

The gazebo.

I asked, “Did you follow him? Did you ever hear what they spoke about?”

Poochie shook his head slowly. “No sir, not me. I never went near ’em.”

Well, that was that. The gist of it seemed to be that Dekkert was there strictly as a strong-arm. He’d be good at that. I wondered if those little sojourns to the gazebo were to put the squeeze on a welcher. Nice out-of-the-way place for it.

And it was no wonder that the cops had started beating the bushes for Sharron Wesley a week after her vanishing act-without her around, there’d be no regular weekend “party” out at that ocean-side casino. Maybe Dekkert was interested in Sharron’s sudden departure because, as his employer, she owed him some cash.

It was later than I thought. I slapped my hat back on and was about to say good night to Poochie, but I never got that far. His mouth was open and his tongue fell loosely over his bottom lip. But his eyes were as glassy as beads and focusing over my shoulder.

“ Mike! ” he blurted.

Poochie’s skinny frame hit me before I could move.

There was a smashing roar in the room and the acrid fumes of cordite blasted at me.

We hit the floor together.

My head connected hard with the edge of a crate on the way down and I could feel my eyes film. For a few seconds tiny particles of fire burned my cheek, then the whole side of my face felt as if it were lying in a brazier of hot coals. I pushed Poochie’s limp form from me and fought my way to my feet.

The shot had come through the pane-less window. I yanked the. 45 from under my shoulder, thumbed off the safety, kicked the slide back. I threw the shack’s crude door open and dashed outside.

The beach was deserted.

No overt sounds interrupted a silence that wasn’t really silence at all, wind whispering over sand, waves lapping, trees rustling, my watch ticking. A motorboat, not close enough to have carried away the assailant, put-putted along, no telling how far out, the way wind carried sound on the water.

The moon showed me footprints in the sand by the window, but they led to the line of trees up and back, behind the shack. Where the sand gave way to grassy land, I bent down and laid my ear to the ground. Somebody was running, running hard. Very faintly, I picked up the footsteps, but they grew steadily fainter and died out altogether.

He was gone.

The bastard.

Holstering the. 45, I ran back to the shack. Poochie was prostrate on the floor, blood seeping through his shabby robe. I ripped away the t-shirt beneath and examined the wound. It was high up against his neck. The bullet had gone through cleanly, not touching the bone, missing the jugular vein by a hair.

I pulled a handkerchief from my hip pocket and tore it in half, then made a compress of each section and pressed it to the openings of the hole. I tore off the tail of my shirt and tied it around his neck to hold the compresses in place.

Poochie’s eyes flickered once. He smiled, and passed out again. The little dope had tried to take that bullet for me. He had deliberately thrown himself in front of me to save my life. By God, from now on he was going to stay under my wing.

And if he died somebody was going to leave this world screaming with a broken back.

He was light as a feather in my arms. I cradled him as gently as I could and half-ran to the Wesley house. By the time I reached the car, I was panting heavily. That trek through the sand had taken it out of me. I gently rested Poochie down in the passenger’s seat, then got behind the wheel and backed out of the driveway and took off for town like a bat out of hell.

That heap of mine was a pre-war number that looked like nothing but was really something, with good rubber and a souped-up engine. Trees blew by like a giant picket fence as I cut down the middle of a highway that was all mine, hitting one hundred by the time the modest twinkling of lights announced Sidon.

I went through the city with my hand on the horn. Parked cars glared at me with the reflection of my brights in their unlit headlamps as I swept by. A few lights were on and there was a small crowd stuffed in Big Steve’s place-probably reporters. In front of the grocery I braked to a stop. The two floors above the grocery were Dr. Moody’s office and living quarters. I hoped my old drinking buddy wasn’t on a Saturday night bender.