Mickey Spillane - Lady, go die

I shook my head.

Big Steve delivered my coffee and pie.

Stirring some sugar into the java, I said absently, “No, I didn’t bother reporting that. You see, I’m pretty sure it was your deputy here that shot Poochie, so calling it in struck me as redundant.”

Dekkert flushed around the white bandages and blurted, “I did not do no such thing! Watch your mouth, Hammer! Accusations like that can get your ass hauled in.”

“I didn’t say I was sure you did it,” I said, shoveling in a bite of pie. It would have been better warm, but it was still good. “Anyway, I was the intended target, not Poochie.”

The chief swallowed. He tried to fill his chest with indignation but it looked like so much more flab to me. “Maybe my deputy is right, Mr. Hammer. Maybe we should go over to the station, and take down your statement.”

“Here’s my statement. Poochie’s been lying low at Doc Moody’s, recuperating from that bullet wound, not to mention the beating you devoted servants of the law gave him. I figure keeping the little guy with Moody was kosher since he is, after all, your local coroner.”

Dekkert spat, “He won’t be for long!”

I chewed, swallowed, washed it down. “That’s your business. I don’t mess in local politics. The thing is, somebody has grabbed Poochie out of the doc’s place. Looks to have been a struggle.”

The chief demanded, “When was this?”

“An hour ago at least. Not more than a few hours ago at most.”

“Was Doc Moody there when Poochie was taken?”

“Nah. He was out drinking somewhere. Anyway, what I need to know is…” I wiped off my mouth delicately with a paper napkin and then gave them my worst goddamn grin. “…was it you?”

I watched their reactions. The chief seemed honestly confused, and frankly so did Dekkert.

With a half-spin on the stool, I turned to face them with the suit coat hanging open, revealing that big nasty gun under my arm.

“Well, Chiefie?”

But he was already shaking his head. “No, Hammer, I don’t know anything about this.” He looked back at his deputy. “If you know something about this, Deputy Dekkert-”

“I don’t,” Dekkert said insistently, but it was the movement in his eyes-the fast, even desperate thinking he was doing-that made me believe him.

The chief seemed genuinely astounded. “Why would anybody want to kidnap Poochie? Why him of all people?”

I grunted a laugh. “Well, you local cops were interested enough in him the other day.”

The chief slammed a fat fist on the counter and my pie jumped. “Hammer, that was before Sharron Wesley turned up dead! We wanted to know if he’d seen anything on that beach. We were looking for any lead we could find.”

I studied him some more. “The disappearance of Sharron Wesley was troubling to you, wasn’t it, Chiefie? A lot was at stake. Plenty of local income, particularly off-season, depended on that dizzy dame.”

The chief shrugged. “Why should I deny it?” He cleared his throat rather theatrically. “Hammer, I’m going over to the station and I’m calling everybody in. The entire department, back on duty.”

What, all six?

He hopped off the stool like a big toad off a medium toadstool. “We’ll put out an All Points Bulletin on Poochie, or I should say Stanley Cootz. That’s his name. Whatever you may think of us, Mr. Hammer, know this-we run a safe community, safe for the citizens and safe for the visitors who we depend upon during the season. The Sidon PD will not sit still for having a serious crime like kidnapping take place in our jurisdiction.”

And he tipped his cap to Big Steve, probably in lieu of payment, then waddled out.

Dekkert, on the other hand, did seem to “sit still” for a crime like kidnapping. At least he was still sitting there. He was apparently ignoring his chief’s clarion call.

I slid over next to him as Big Steve cleared away a pile of dishes-Chiefie had had an appetite.

“Can you think of any reason,” I said, not putting even an ounce of menace into it, “why anybody would kidnap that beachcomber?”

Dekkert shook his head. He seemed to be staring at the open window onto the kitchen, where one of Big Steve’s big sons was cleaning up. But I had a feeling Dekkert wasn’t seeing much of anything but his own private thoughts. Private thoughts I would like to shake out of him.

But I had a different idea about how to handle this son of a bitch.

“Listen,” I said. “Let’s let Big Steve close up the joint for the night. We can go over to the hotel bar, find a quiet booth, and have a friendly talk.”

His scowl made his bandages shift. “Why the hell would I want to do that?”

“Because you used to be a cop in New York City. You’re not just another one of these hicks. You know what’s really going on around Sidon, which interests me. And I think you might be interested in hearing about what I’ve turned up lately.”

He thought about that.

Finally, he nodded at me, and left his own dirty dishes behind but tossed a quarter on the counter next to the buck I’d left. Whether that was a tip or his idea of payment, I couldn’t hazard a guess. Big Steve didn’t look thrilled either way.

Outside, I stuffed a smoke in my face and fired it up. I offered him a Lucky and he accepted it. Unlike the chief, he wore no cap, and within that butch cut didn’t have enough hair for the breeze to riffle it. The wind would have taken my hat if I hadn’t really snugged it down, and it snatched the smoke away from both our cigarettes, making vapor trails as we walked down the middle of a street in a town that would bustle in a few weeks. Right now it was deader than Sharron Wesley.

I said, “I was over in Wilcox the other day.”

“Yeah?”

“You know a guy named Dave Miles?”

“Naw.”

“Head of security at the brick factory.”

“Don’t know him.”

“I also talked to Sheriff Jackson.”

“Him I know.”

“Talked to Chief Chasen.”

“Him I know, too.”

“There’s a theory we three kicked around that the Wesley murder might be the work of the same maniac who killed those two college girls in Wilcox. And also that other young gal found strangled on the beach between Sidon and there.”

We were outside the hotel now. Wind whipped at his dark-blue blouse and my suit coat, flapping them like flags.

“Those college girls,” he said. “They were killed with a knife. Not choked, right?”

“Right.”

“And that other one, the girl on the beach? Wasn’t she strangled with a nylon?”

“Right again.”

Dekkert shrugged his big shoulders. “Sharron was strangled with powerful hands, not a stocking. And I don’t see what those girls in that barn have to do with anything.”

“There are similarities. All three cases, including the Wesley dame, involved young women-good-looking ones-murdered and left naked, their clothes never found.”

The deputy seemed to be mulling that as he sucked up smoke, then exhaled and let the wind whip it away. “Sharron wasn’t that young, though.”

I grinned. “Yeah, but she wasn’t old. She was under forty and still a beauty. You knew her, right?”

He shrugged again. “I don’t know anything about those other cases, Hammer, if that’s why you brung it up. Out of our jurisdiction.”

“Yeah, each kill in a different jurisdiction. Confuses the issue, muddies the waters, don’t you think? Somebody’s smart. Or knows enough about how law enforcement works to think of spreading his hobby around.”

Dekkert was frowning. It made the half-dozen bandages crinkle and bulge. “Is that an accusation?”

I raised my hands in a peace-keeping fashion. “No, just an observation. Buy you a drink?”